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inflation's been pretty bad i wouldn't be i miss remus and or i don't think we're asking much to reconsider raising that again so i'm just i just want to put this out there i mean this the way i see this is it is the the benefit is if you're a union member and i totally respect the union members and the cost is borne by the taxpayer and i just think this is a huge this is a huge issue for cheshire right now because we're talking about school modernization and so even if it was on the very conservative side the numbers we're talking about is in the millions of dollars in additional costs that we're going to be paying uh if we go to referendum and presumably prevailing wages in place we're talking about millions of dollars could be tens of tens of millions of dollars maybe i mean at least over three phases could i ask a question tim maybe it's worth um maybe it's worth looking into uh what other communities are interested in this topic as well i mean cheshire going at about something all on our own is is not as powerful as if there are you know all the communities we can't be the only ones who are interested in in changing those caps i guess yeah no i yeah i agree absolutely it's not so much a question it's a kind of a comment it's a good suggestion i mean build a coalition and um and who i don't know if there's a is there a professional association out there that like school construction laborers association i'm thinking this would probably be either it would be either cabe or ccm vin do you know if either looked at this at all yeah i mean the prevailing wage rate is always you know a legislative priority for many of the organizations i can't speak specifically to caps okay where their position is right now but you know this is not an uncommon topic for discussion yeah i think i mean to be totally frank i i would like something to i would like it to change to get those numbers up um the thing that just has me really concerned about it is we've got school modernization that we're talking about we just voted on it last night we're talking about like you just said what into 100 million for the total cost including the state funding and stuff we're talking about a lot of money and the prevailing wage will certainly be based on what you said in the millions of dollars on phase one it could be in the tens of millions of dollars um as a you know an increased cost of the taxpayers purely by way of state law that could be changed if our legislators chose to change it or you know if the legislature collectively did the governor agreed um so i really wanted i am interested in having a change but my goal is to put this out there in the public purview because particularly because we've got school modernization right now we're talking about big numbers so are we in in agreement that we would we would stand with the town council and adopt their language as well i i mean i'd be comfortable with that i would go even higher but i'd be comfortable with that at a minimum have they crafted something already yeah uh yes yes it was shared with uh carol sharer with the agenda so there were two documents there was the agenda and she also included the town council's legislative recommendations for 22.

and we set up uh two two lanes if you came into the high school came down the hill on one of the two sides with a advocate directing people you go left you go right the lines were on and as people got down to the hill by the front door there was a safety advocate in the table with the list that they had prepared just from the information that night and turned it around so quickly the people who they were checked off their name asked for an id and then about 75 yards up the driveway we had another table set up with four advocates and that's where the kids were we didn't want people clothes or traffic jams and what most people did was they were told open your trunk and they did and then the advocate came around and put the test kid in the trunk along with instructions what to do if they tested positive and the way they went and that went on for three or four hours it was pretty controlled the traffic really didn't back up we might have three or four cars waiting at one time but then it was very spread out it was all uh very safe and um i think we handed out 130 someone kicks that day people very pleased to get that so that worked as mentioned the principals have their allocation of kids in their schools with some uh instructions that are comparable describing them thanks john did a very thorough job explaining the process so um yeah that yeah the process for the distribution actually went fairly well and quickly and it was it was organized and your team did an amazing job also in getting those out um that happened on january 6th the criteria that we used with the staff again this was guidance that was issued by the state when the test was distributed to us and that was that you did not have covid in the last 90 days you were symptomatic and that you were direct contact and so in the initial first week when we sent the survey out to staff who were requesting we had about 170 778 staff from personal outperform and from that about 146 were eligible and about 31 were eligible with reasons like i just would feel better if i hadn't wanted to kind of at that point at this point in time it would not have anyone for everyone um you know those were kind of classified as ineligible or if it had coded uh within the last 90 days and so after that distributions uh occurred we did receive a lot of emails over the course of the weekend how can i still get a test can anyone now and so at that point the responsibility picked up the building level and so if a staff member still using the same criteria and the students as well in their code in the last 90 days was presented with symptoms or was it a confirmed direct contact then they could be requested from an administrator and if it was a student on the student side that would go through the nurse and the nursing both determinations as well and so um just taking a quick leach a good peek on our our master sheet it appears that we've handed out approximately about 100 809 student test kits so far since we started that on monday i'm sure that will grow or as people educate the forums it's kind of a fluid process at this point and then several more staff members as well so the good news is that we would be able to provide test kits for everybody who qualified and who needed one um and in the hopes that we will have another shipment that will come in um and be able to get these out a little bit more freely to everybody but um at the current time we're able to provide everybody who needed a test kit um with foreign mass and 95 mass using our federal government relieved money yes or 3 there was some money left to use those will be coming in in the next day or so they were in stock uh westport company had them cooking bought masks from before so more are on the way thank you and last but not least it's the update on quarantine guidelines and for students and staff sure thank you um and just before i go over that i just want to add that um the distribution of the kids really helped with this new process in place um cafe o'dowd as many of you are aware worked tirelessly all weekend as people were self-testing our employees at home to identify who could and who couldn't come into work and i do um you know believe that that has something to do with the significant increase in amendments for this week so um the the um cdc over the holiday break uh released updated guidance due to the new variant and with that guidance it was then reviewed by the state uh department of public health as well as the state department of education and so right before reopening and the meetings superintendent alston was talking about um the state had indicated to us that districts could feel free to adopt the new guidance by the cdc um and so the guidance is consistent in the first portion i'll go over that if you're symptomatic so any of the cold-like symptoms um that are commonly associated with cobia 19 you are to stay home you were to isolate um anywhere to test before you return to work or until you're not presenting with symptoms and the testing though did change slightly as you guys are aware that getting a pcr test was virtually impossible for many and so you could do a pcr test an anthogen test or a self-test kit um so that self-test kit which we were not previously accepting we're now allowed to accept for either staff or students um in addition um if you are testing positive for cobia 19 another one of the changes in the guidance was that you have to do a five-day quarantine so that was reduced from the previous 10 days i do want to clarify though the 5-day quarantine is it on day six you're no longer presenting with a fever and your symptoms your cold stopping this running nose has significantly uh dissipated then you're able to return to work on day six or a student is able to return to school on day six if your symptoms persist you need to remain out up until the 10th day or through the 10th day or until when you're feeling better it is also expected that between day 6 and 10 if you are back that you are wearing a mask around all others um consistently um which is common without doctors in school anyways but just highlighting um you know to a staff member then in the break room or something like that you need to make sure you're messed up the entire time um we are still quarantining um unvaccinated individuals and recommending that they test on day five after their last exposure um and then the last change in the guidance is regarding individual contact racing and this was all given out in a letter to our families in school community on january 3rd and what that is is we are no longer required to do individual contact tracing across the district and so what we were doing previously is if you are in a six foot radius of a positive individual you are given a contact notification as a parent or as a staff member and so now what we are required to do is after a positive identification is in place assuming all mitigation strategies are are in place as well so where i'm asked to think as much as possible that we do group notifications to that class so if you're an elementary student and you're in a kindergarten class with a child at test positive we're going to notify the kindergarten classroom um that there was a student within that class or there was an individual within that class because it could be an adult that tested positive we do not any longer do the six foot radius we're just notifying the location at the secondary level that is done by course um on advanced teams it's done by team or by club um so any contact in a school we're doing a general notification to the school community that there was an exposure how are we dealing with exposures in the high school college i mean i happen to know a student who received a call right before the holiday the person who sits next to him that guy would have assigned scenic at lunch was positive lo and behold the next day he woke up didn't feel well seven days later got the code results from saying before because it was funny was positive positive we are trying to the best of our ability within all locations in the school to do group notifications such as a lunch table um so if you know we have a signed seating in the lunch um so we do try to notify the individuals in the location i will tell you in those areas it's not a perfect science the classrooms are much more easier to do but we try to the best of our ability to keep people notified at the lower levels it's much easier as the classrooms eat together um at the secondary level it can be challenging hopefully at the secondary level you're calling your friends and tell them i would hope but um yeah just a quick question really um so when you talk about the um the change in the foreign tinkering and the need for folks to wear a mask in that five-day period following when they return how are we having like lunch or snacks and things like that so they are still able to eat lunch and snacks um but we are asking that they eat and then return with the mask on so just a heightened awareness to all um that you know you need to eat you can take a drink and then put the mask back on um the research is showing and from you know the information that's coming from directly from the state is not as likely to pass the virus on to others but we do want we know that this this variant is spreading much more quickly so just in common good practice for all kids um just a heightened sense of eat and then re-mask um but we do have you know there's not a there's not an individual place we can put everything that's returning from the quarantine um and then the only other exception would be um as you guys are aware we do have some individuals in classrooms many of which follow within my department um that we have some students that we know have more difficulty consistently wearing masks so in those locations for example some of our preschool classrooms some of our self-contained classrooms and so forth if we are aware that those individuals are not consistently wearing the mask then we are doing the individual contract tracing in those environments just because those mitigation strategies are not consistently in place and so depending on the scenario you may hear that there's a you know an individual contact tracing and a notification um if we have students that are not math compliant i'm happy to report that is a very minimal number of classes for individual students so we look at it on a case-by-case basis and consult with kathy and the school nursing learners if there's any other questions thank you just in general in terms of subs i mean nowhere ever was any district ever going to have enough subs to cover last week's trade recovery so this is a problem nationwide problem nationwide has going to county or bringing county services in does that increase the number of sums we have not yet time today they have been aggressive in their recruitment but it hasn't yielded us you know the results that we need right now um that's just brand new right so um um report i have quite a few things i'm sorry um it's just we haven't met forever and a lot of things happened and transpired since the last time we met just to touch upon committees briefly the draft uh are attached i spoke to most of you individually um but if there's any feedback you know i'm open to that um i'm also open to placing members on a waiting list for a specific spot that you know if there is one that opens um i can place you on a waiting spot on a waiting list but after tonight i mean that's pretty much said and ready to roll yes kate um [Music] yes were there many meetings um there are usually one a month but i will say i accepted an additional responsibility while sending into the board members so thank you for um negotiations can have informed me that we will be doing three contracts this upcoming summer so i'm looking for two members per group we have three of them uh the nea january teachers danbury pirate educators and custodians so if you are interested please just shoot me an email and let me know so i will need six six board members to cover those three this summer committees that are not on a regular schedule so we have three hopefully policy continues on a regular schedule finance and facilities which i'll talk about in a minute just please be aware that any any committees that are kind of like ad hoc schedule uh just touch base with cara um as soon as possible so that she could possibly set up the live stream it's the scheduling is getting a bit difficult with scheduling community meetings that aren't on a regular regular basis i just want to mention you know the committee meetings i know i mentioned this at the board orientation but attendance at the committee meetings even if you're not a committee member is very beneficial um just so you know when some inaction must be taken before the full board from committee you know gives you a little bit more background to what's going on um what i didn't mention at our orientation was just attendance in general at regular meetings is quite critical we should be committing committed to attend all regularly scheduled meetings we of course have members that really wanted to be here tonight so we're trying out this hybrid format um working through it hopefully very temporary um i um it's important to be in person you know it lends to a better better work environment and conversation cohesiveness of the board so bear with me as we work through this and i have to say a huge thanks to kara olga and our i.t our iot folks um you know they did have some advanced notice to try and work this out for us and i appreciate all that they did to make this work i mentioned the cave legislative breakfast that happened yesterday i attended with michelle and mr walton um and board members the conversation was mostly around uh special education cost and the cap on the ss plus grant that's been a topic for years now for the cave kate group and not only hiring you know diverse staff but just challenges around staffing in general we're all feeling it as mentioned previously the city-wide pto met on monday the day before that kevin and kate and i attended i will send the list of the pto liaisons to them so that they know who is their pto liaisons are um i think what i'm going to do is send them your email addresses so they can contact you but also try and capture their email addresses so you have a way to connect and hopefully attend some pto meetings and then let us know what's happening at the ptos um nick caruso is scheduled to come back this is very far in advance but we do have him on the calendar for march 30th to come back we tried to have a goals and responsibilities workshop um last year and felt that with new board members coming onto the board it's better to wait for them it's hard to schedule them so march 30th is what we're kind of stuck with um and then i want to say thank you to our new members who have really stepped up to participate and observe expulsion hearings and everyone in general just thank you for you know helping us with that um and that's it for me are there any other board updates just so i wasn't is there a question that is excuse me that i asked the question please yes guys uh the question to either the secret tenure or uh are we still looking into faith uh crossing god over the sand and when you're having near school think glass is asking about crossing guard or or some other sign for uh granville we had um yes this request come up before we are looking um and working with the city on our side i'm sorry i didn't hear but the reception is terrible so you know if i had to call someone personally i will uh you know so because i didn't hear what the remark was sorry gladys kelly kelly said that um they are working on that and they will follow up at our next meeting okay good enough thank you thank you just a quick question and i guess my last quote my last question will be and i will go um is it possible and i think it goes in in the order uh that has been in the test uh the superintendent secretary was sent to the very students that we as board members are being represented at pto members and send us back a list at the time that those schools are having their pto meetings so i guess my question is will we be receiving that that notice from the superintendent's secretary what i'd like to do is reach out to the citywide pto i think it'll be more efficient to just reach out directly to the ptos um it's a lot to try and track down when and where the ptos are meeting they're kind of all over the place and you know i tried to look on each individual pto website um they're not all always updated um so what i'd like to do is have uh just a list of board members and their email addresses and their pto that they're going to represent and put the ptos direct email address so that communication can just be direct is that clear okay uh but uh you know we can have a side commentation about that okay okay all right thank you sounds good okay my question good question i hope um as far as the committees like community relations who do you want to do you want me to organize a meeting i mean that that's a great question yeah i think as you are the um prior committee chair yes if you could as the as the chair um initiate the the first meeting and elect the elected chair yeah great oh i did have a note about facilities committee there was we'd like to move forward quickly with that there's a lot of work to be done so we're looking to hold a meeting on january 27th at 6 30.

again that's exhibit q poll appendix a page 107 through 110 as calendars will be up for approval separately under item 1014 having said that do i have a motion to adopt the amended agenda i'll move okay i have a motion a second all in favor aye all right i will have public comments closed session item is there anyone that wishes to address the board of trustees regarding closed session item i don't think we have anybody back there either right okay the border stresses will now hold a closed session to discuss items 4.1 through 4.6 on the agenda and it is now 33 p.m and we will move to close session thank you

you got it um miss duncan yeah mr good thing mr hopkins mr president mrs robertson yeah doctor dooley here dr chabot here president [Music] one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice on the board thank you mr president i want to thank the board for allowing us or putting up with the scheduling that had that hour early i think it's important to have some time and last night just saying driving back to rural valley you have a long night so we appreciate you coming in also i appreciate the board as the last board being improving to use asba i think it's a very professional way to do things and have experience to help help out make a good decision very few items arizona legislature opened yesterday i'm sorry we could go monday on the third today i was looking at the work there's 32 bills already in the hopper we have some bills that are anti what they're calling critical race theory there's bills opposed to quarantining uh there's bills composing vaccinations um there's no funds for education except some capital funds um the funds for this and the governor's bragging i'm frustrated with the governor right now he's bragging about the money he has in the rainy day fund which in my opinion he got a lot of that the year we were shut down 55 000 students the previous year they were public school students they were charter school students in arizona that weren't that opt out just like we lost 30 students a year uh that went to another system so that was a lot of money that the state saved they didn't pay for uh for uh student support i did the math at the time and i wish i still had it was it was staggering the number of zeros uh undermine the state saved the good of education right here but we didn't get it back almost is to be commended for it wasn't bob dooley i wish it was but when i came here aho had full day uh that was not paid for by the state and i paid for half of it so every half of that came out of the district down the middle budget half of it was paid for by adm governor napolitano hermann changed the law it was instrumental in changing the law and during her administration we were funded for full day k so however many students we have an adm if we have 30 students we don't get paid for 15 because we haven't fulfilled the state as far as have to what i did at that time then following governor did away with what i did at that time for one year we funded only half day k the following year since we it was a new program in essence the next year we were able to use title money to pay for all decades protect our own olympics so we continue to have all the cake the they're going to try to there's a bill that's going to propose that kindergartners that aren't paid for right now are going to be called group b students on the budget when you hear whoever our business manager is trying to talk about group b students we may have 430 kids in the school but we may be funded for 600 kids i'm just pulling those numbers out of the air not the 430 is pretty close but depending on the child's special education needs or i believe second language needs they may rank more than one person for example i know a blind child counts for five children this is the cost and getting people out here in the need to have a regular special ed kid that's wearing disabled by definition those students have to have average intelligence or they couldn't be ld they may get funded at 1.2 but it does help fund so there's a bill to i've never seen this happen before it'll be interesting to fund the rest of the kindergarten at with group b um our capital monies used to be two groups of monies and the legislature and the governor bragged about seven years ago that we're helping schools out we're only we're putting them all in one bucket it's called daa district additional assistance the only thing they did that helped districts is they made us have fewer reports on how we spend the money for capital before it was sizable projects like um [Music] buying curtains for dikes school buses were on the same budget for some reason as workbooks or textbooks so that was called supplemental and the other one's regular regular capital they have not they've been in the legislature have not part of the law when they did that was saying they would keep up with the inflation rate every year they haven't gotten close i was subpoenaed about two or three years ago now to give a deposition um about our funding and about our lack of capital in fact last year's law conference was a picture of our rock wall out here so talking about the lack of school security in rural schools and so there's a lawsuit coming up i thought it would be filed by now against the state and it's being promoted by the educational alphabet aspa asa i think even ada education association so all of a sudden the legislatures and i don't see how they can win the lawsuit they lost the last one it was 20 25 years ago they have a different executive director from the organizations to ensuing but they're saying we're going to pass a law they have to give us 22 more money every year well that's great unless we have a six percent inflation rate or five percent inflation rate if that does pass it won't take effect until 23 24 uh fiscal year um asba's being targeted by legislators by some legislators asba cannot be political so they have a sub organization that they pay people individually pay a different membership to to be to support candidates if they think or supporting public education what they're trying to do is pass a law and say public says apology that says public education funds cannot be used for a district to join aspa or send any of you or mean or lance or whoever to a conference that aspa is sponsoring that if that passes it will really hurt the organization i think it's unfortunate in my experience in the last number of years as an administrator i've been involved in asa which is arizona school administrators and since i've been here at asba in my opinion i'm going to go to an asba conference than an asa conference because number one as the asa conference is getting better because i know the executive director well uh he used to be a good old way network you give guys uh a chance to go play golf and they're playing the only c once a year that's not that's not what we're there for but i have a lot of respect for uh for asba i mentioned curtin critical race theory uh there's some laws that they're putting forth that say we have to make sure that be careful how to use race and so on and so forth when we're teaching kids uh so i people say race critical race theory doesn't exist some people think it does uh there was a question and i hope i'm not jumping ahead on the agenda about massing at the last meeting and talking with other administrators and dr jim boltz and i talking some districts are not even trying because they know the kids who yeah i'm going to make money with that my parents say i don't have to it becomes a strong a heavy distant problem so after the last board meeting uh dr chabots and i talked and i appreciate him taking the effort um so this is what we've done to inform people and try to enforce this but because the board voted for twice he has talked to the whole staff and during staff meetings he's talked to them today about the board's concern that some people aren't complying it's been on the morning announcements numerous times since the holiday talking students that aren't masked emailing teachers who are enforcing who we only have warranty teachers that are unasking yesterday's when dr boltz hit every classroom on campus let's talk about it and check it out only three teachers were not masked and he walked in their classroom and something like 92 percent of the students were so those are not perfect but they're they're pretty good lots i have i at the last board meeting i had received an email from [Music] mr hopkins over christmas about board policy and student handbook and i hope you got my email and i responded and i said i'll put we'll put this on uh like that i've responded the david came back the third i'll put this on entering a spreadsheet for for agenda items to come so when when you mentioned that the other night i wasn't even close to being prepared i was planning on doing that over the next three weeks we have a board being three weeks from day because this sport being late because the holiday um but if you folks email me or the email angelina if you have specific questions that you're worried about with aligning policy and handbook this is unusual because typically handbooks are strictly the domain school principle as a principal for 27 years i never had a superintendent or a board member look at my handbook i rewrote it every time i went to a new school pardon me the longer i was there the more it evolved because things would work or not work excuse me who might say longer is there longer than that school but if you have specific questions um the um the policy book i don't know the number of pages angela walked in i was majoring the part of the policy book that deals with student issues is one and three quarters one and a half inches thick that's a lot of paper the part because board responsibilities is not half inch but the handbook is 51 pages i have i've started i'm not done i hope i hope my goal excuse me it's not doing things in february it's going to be a meeting um i want to have it so i could make a report to you on on february um i have probably selected 20 policies already and i'm not i'm not trying to be glittered about this but if i go over 20 policies with you it's going to be 10 o'clock and you're going to be lucky they're not rich not privileged but i do believe everything i've looked at so far i feel pretty confident and so if you read anything you can do to help when lance's involved before we're done we will be here because i want to make sure it's not saying what we're following in the handbook the handbook at this point is kind of like the new confer document it grows with age one principle several years ago but all this philosophical philosophical flowery stuff in there there's nothing wrong with it it was pretty good but it took a lot of space next drums did away with most of it and so being coming to work and having hit the ground running with code no first year principal i've had the divine recollection has changed the student handbook now the second year of the year or the third year i see changes but not typically in the first year so any any specific question you have that would help us i will do my best to get it done and be able to answer that question that concludes on the important screen you're correct that almost never happens for first-year principles to change the studio yeah it's not unique i'm not picking him up he's not but we also have paper product institutes thank you mr president thank you and we have a motion to about the consensus all right first item personnel classified employment paraprofessional teachers aid and our law schools emma vasquez a former teacher's aide and secretary of oahu schools has been interviewed and referenced completed to a teacher's day position at office schools i'll second i'm mr hopkins all right mr guthrie aye ms robertson aye ms stephanie next personality vacant classified physician teachers um board voted to hire megan mejia as a teacher's aide during the december board meeting unfortunately due to family issues mayor mejia was not able to be located the administration is recommending this physician be declared basis may i have a motion second employment paraprofessional teachers aide anna gonzalez anna gonzalez has been interviewed and referenced checked completely for a teacher's acquisition with aqua schools the superintendent recommends that anna gonzalez is employment be approved as a teacher's aide for awkward schools mr hopkins [Music] has been interviewed and reference checks completed for a teacher's acquisition at all high schools he was recommended by superintendent by crystal pacheco's employment be approved as a teacher's aide for our home schools classified employment maintenance custodian rafael eduardo flores rafael aguano flora is a former employee at ahu schools has been interviewed and referred checks completed for a maintenance custodial position at the school and recommended by the superintendent that rafael orbado flores is importantly improved as a maintenance customer so is he going to be uh one of the paradise or is he going to be a classroom and he's going to be like he'll start starting nights and uh work uh his custodial initially will bring we've had for 20 months as near as i can count we've got two shortages in the maintenance department and so it um eduardo's position and he he left here because he probably made more money but he also found that leading big benefits so he wanted to come back he's a good guy um when the weather warms up jose and i didn't talk about it i'd like to get him on and do the more grounds work uh but he's gonna start out as a cleaner we'll bring one of the cleaners we have three cleaners and jose's here by himself during the day which isn't safe and so that way we'll have three at night and two during the day we'll bring one of the night cleaners down so may i have a motion on his employment motion mr guthrie hi robertson hi mr rocket hi also you know kind of an office of the ground once mark left and we start having minimum wage um minute of course minimum wage 1280 um positions open the shop i'm just getting overwhelmed with applicants and i don't know why they would come work for me and not come work for school i i you know i don't know what the issue is there but we're making the same salary yeah same salary one of the things i have contemplated is maybe making because if you drive anywhere when i go to prescott on the weekends some of the begins major businesses all have science four by eight we're hiring we're hiring where's the construction site or whether it's walmart and everybody's looking for somebody right now well i shouldn't say that a lot of people are looking for someone right now and i know sometimes it looks like we have a high turnover and we have a hard time we want to but it's not good enough so uh i don't believe so i thought about trying to raise maintenance up a little bit that's something i'm interested in are we doing the minimum wage discussion right now all i did just inform him that i'm getting a lot of applicants so maybe like he said that he advertises not really advertising something maybe we'll get more applicants for the for the um the maintenance positions there's people out there wanting jobs is what i'm trying to say yeah and i don't know why they're not coming to the school because it's going to be the place to work so well that ties into our first business approval of the minimum wage for the arizona voters approved minimum wage increase ahold unified school district must increase minimum wage to 12.86 an hour attached to our 22 district employees who will have their wages increased by 65 cents because of the voter approved law the superintendent recommends approval of the wage increase for the list of 22 staff members effective january of 2020.

yes okay and i would just want to make sure i knew where the it's all a compilation right so next year the way inflation is going up right now not only knows what it's going to be at next january that's what went so far this year we've had a couple people to address your question a couple people they don't they're not threatening to leave but they've kind of i think i've been here five years i'm making 10 cents one hour so things like that it's really good well the problem is we can't raise the price of kids to mistake it's not like if i had bond star and girl to raise the price of a hamburger can't do that because it's tough and one of the things even though that i mean i make much more than what's on there anyways but i'm a salary employee so whether i'm not an hourly employee so all the people that work like the cafeteria or teacher days or whatever that gets minimum wage they have to work those hours and then they have to get paid for those hours after their work so i work all year round so my if i work 80 hours a week and then for 80 hours for two weeks and then get divided up because of 365 days and i get split so i still get 500 spoons very packed already half of the winter break whatever and then so my paycheck is going to be the exact same regardless so they they're at a disadvantage where i'm in an advantage and they have so many days and they don't get big t-shirts so you supervise employees no she's not exactly she's not i'm not i'm not taller exactly no like john is salary not a death so he can't go into overtime but i i'm accelerating that i can't do over time right yeah because my understanding and you don't get lawyers so you pray i understand you're not correct but my understanding is you cannot make somebody salary exam um unless they supervise on these five employees right so that's your next dollar except uh the cafeteria manager salaries done because they're classified salaries and they have people involved i don't have anybody anything but i still that's how my paycheck works it's not horrible so even though i don't make as much i still come out better than the people that are making minimum wage so if they get a raise really not any benefit to me when you work salaries the more hours you have to work unless you're making out you're going to overall longer you're actually going to get less but if you're doing mr mr guthrie mr upkins mr robertson aye ms duncan aye morning next week decided the second greeting approval of foreign policy administration reviewed with the board on january 10 2022 recommended changes to policies the policy is ready for board approval and submission to ask superintendent recommendation is is it the decision for the board and folks need a time to discuss remote discussion if not and i have a motion [Music] to extend mandatory mass loading and offload schools at the october board meeting the board approved mandatory mass wearing went inside of offer facilities this motion was for masking to be approved until january the board discussed revisiting and potentially extending the district mastery mandate in january 2022 attached is an article from kg and minor tucson announcements people county's mask requirement and an article from the arizona department of health services showing killing cases superintendent recommendation is that your continuation of the covered pandemic and the development of the new day and the superintendent recommends the border print the masking mandate through july when can we discuss after the every second motion in the second industry i think just reading this uh pima county passes back face mask requirement and right underneath it says connie does not plan active enforcement and so i think we're going to be a hopeless case to try and get everyone to do what they want and also it said it only goes to february 28th and i think hours should go to february 28th to follow the procedure of the county rather than all seventh state that we've got to go every year we can vote again in february 28th that's not a big deal so correct me i'm wrong because i've heard some stuff over a while but this went to court that this went to court that whether the state said the school districts could not mandate math they already got blocking the courts because they didn't follow a procedure it has to be a stand-alone bill not a writer so right now school districts do have the right to mandate massive is that correct correct i live right now yes now would you be willing to go three months i'm just saying that pima county has passed the face mask requirement so i'm sure we would do it but the chances of us enforcing it is i think we can enforce it you think we can even if they haven't they're not taking part in activity that we can enforce it we've heard all kinds of threats we've had threats and that's a strong word i shouldn't use that stronghold we've heard frustrations from employees i used to talk to one every day at study all right yeah have yes exactly that have breathing issues they think this exacerbates i don't like it but i work and i work primarily to model for kids that's one of the things that lance talked to teachers about today um i think that uh it doesn't hurt me i can do it um i think we're gonna have a hard time if he stays on it and it's almost like and i don't want you to all the gold moments that go before lance it's almost like his plate and my plate basically is basically pretty full so if he has to go to every classroom every day that's the best part of being a principal but it takes a ton of time so it's almost like what do you want the principal to give up so my question that would be if if somebody lit up a cigarette in the classroom wouldn't the teacher take care of that they should they should let us know they wouldn't and i would hope that we have never had that happen at all i've got to have those people you understand where it comes from yeah so but we need we don't allow school to take more serious discipline yeah so if a kid refused to wear a mask in the classroom i don't think the principal should have to come to the classroom i think the teacher should send the principal to the office i mean send the kid to the office you know what they normally do with disciplinary actions send the kid up to the office if the student doesn't go out again right yeah if we sense today like when yesterday when he was in your classroom within seven percent that we're in massachusetts so seven percent of 430 kids is about 29 kids that's a line you'll never get to the school office and some of the faculty are not awesome three exactly here i digress okay so my biggest warriors employees are saying i'm gonna ask my kids and i'm gonna quit if you do we've had that now they haven't fallen through the threat that they made the threat in october and i was hoping please don't please don't do that and they haven't so hopefully no one's saying i don't know if they notice it on the agenda that's why i think that it's been better if we would just go until february end of february and that may be well they it's not that far away and then rules again at the end of february i don't think instead of at the end of february we just say until the march meeting and that way we're discussing it at the meeting without having the capital i want to have a conversation here for a minute mr president what does it do to mandate if if you're not going to mandate i mean i can mandate something at work that all the employees have to do something and then if they don't do it that's why i don't mandate very often right but if i mandate that everybody has to do something and then somebody chooses not to do it then what option do i have at that point i see where you're coming from i also think from what um dr boltz was saying we have pretty good compliance we have 20 we have 29 kids that aren't wearing masks every day which is seven percent which is and i get it stuff i have seven percent of my employees are driving 100 miles an hour everywhere they go what should i do about seven percent of my employees well and how many more of your employees would be driving that if you didn't if you told them even care if they drove that way my point is that having the mandate there is probably getting some of the ninety percent give me this example and i'm i have mandatory meetings he hasn't shown up for mandatory meetings but he still works for office right yeah so if i have a mandatory meeting and i say you have to be there then at that point if you're not there what do i do yeah what do i do do i fire you i can't afford a fire you don't have enough paramedics as it is so now i have to change my meetings from mandatory to incentive base right i will give you an incentive if you show up for this meeting right and and so so mandating anything without a consequence is not a mandate you understand where i come from now if the administration is telling us that they cannot enforce this whether it's one kid or two kids or a hundred kids if they cannot enforce this then what good is it us to make a mandate what are we prepared to do what are we prepared to tell them to do if a kid won't wear a mask and a class are we sending them home well that's not the admissions my point is i think we have 93 compliant approximately 93 compliance among students and fairly good compliance among teachers my bet is that we the board says you're not required to order them then so one number we can make it an advisory we advise everybody i would love to see is not saying this is a mandate but the district strongly proponent of wear a mask you know do this you know educating one of the procedures i i honestly think you'll still have about the same amount of compliance i think excuse me it might it probably would but i i personally don't see a mandate as being the answer it's i mean we can vote as a board say we highly recommend that staff and students wear a mask indoors on public on district property you know i mean but so there's a lawsuit i never found out how it came out but little joy was sitting next to ann and ann had coveted a little joey got covered so joey's mom sued the school board for not having a mass mandate and her kid got got covered off of a classmate right and so the burden of proof falls on they prove that they got it at school well i'm just kidding there's a lawsuit to that yeah that's going to happen one of the things i don't have an answer for that been asked in the last 24 hours is basketball season the basketball court is inside seriously we can't expect kids playing basketball to wear a mask they can't breathe someone said what if they sit on a bench does not apply to participating athletes and we didn't specify whether it was inside or outside all last uh you know start of the year volleyball players playing inside without masks sitting on the bench without masks that's that's part of um what we voted um as an exception last time just just to be clear you know and and thought this out but also have a mass mandate one two three four years clock your math block cdc doesn't recommend cloth mask because they're effective they won't remember k 95 or n95 that's a certificate that tells you what you were saying the other day where the cloth mask helped me from spreading it because it's catching most of the moisture coming from my breath that carries the virus it's not it's the n95 that would catch keep me from well but ketchup cdc is even recommending a certain type yes overclock they don't recommend cloth or uh in conjunction with each other no no no just cloth surgical and and they might not even they might not be recommending kn95 for people like us uh yet so it basically says that any mass is better than no matter i'm not going to vote for a mandate unless these gentlemen will tell me that that mandate can be enforced we can tell you that will be enforced but we can't tell you we can't guarantee uh but for sale i think frankly i think when he give me the numbers we have 93 of our kids that we saw in class and they annoying is coming so that's when and i will say the three teachers that i saw without mass later in the day had masked off but and i didn't go in there for that purpose i used that purpose but i had but i documented as i was in there so that wasn't even purpose but they didn't have a model later i'd say the biggest question is we can mandate as we are now a huge but it comes to what consequences for the ones that don't wear it right getting them out of school not good for education for their learning obviously for teachers the morale the time it takes to continuously remind and remind students to put the mouse on it's just stubborn i remind two or three times and then we move on because you know it's the majority of the students having one and they need to have the lesson they need to learn but what are our difficult objectives for the day and it shouldn't be reminding kids to wear masks all day so i guess that i guess consequences for not would be the big question um yeah yeah i was i was pleasantly surprised and and then primary is a whole different deal i mean our little ones need to be able to see lips move on a t-shirt they need to see where to place the timing this is uh you know across the board with the phonics and then all that's like because one of my kids have the same thing with pre-k and you know the whole visual it's it's amazing they don't get that visual they don't they're speeches so when the teacher pulls the mask down to and they're doing small groups or teaching that's that's something that i'm really have a philosophical disagreement with to consequence them on that when it's needed i think one of the things i said in the last year we're talking about because i said maybe we're looking at this wrong we're focusing on consequence to make report right now we could never say anything about consequences because we've gone off the hypersensitive kids we're not kidding you get sick of me saying this we have very good people here and and so i think if we're if the county can't give a consequence to the county board of supervisors and i expect him to give a consequence that's irrational and everything we talked about what we typically do in schools is suspend expel iss type thing we need these kids here i am worried that sometime this year we may have to go back to the hybrid system or some isolation i got an email from clark county today i know someone there and the press is going to be because the administration's thought about closing schools and and mrs duncan and i had this conversation at record meeting last year kids kids suffered last year and i agree with her we did it to keep kids alive um but man we didn't do a good job in education and i will see right now you guys already know my position on mandates you guys all know my position on mandates but the board put out where we strongly encourage the staff and students to wear them indoors i'd be all in support of that hundred percent not a mandate but we're it's over so eric i don't have a mask on right now right if i have covert you guys can all have your mask on and i've just exposed every one of you to cope it all it takes is one person in the classroom right and you don't have on a night night i've been outside the school where we have no spending i understand that you know i understand that our responsibility is not keeping a kid safe outside the that it's cool right you go home and smoke a cigarette that's on you that's not all that's cool um so 99.9 compliance with mask if that one percent point one percent has copic he just exposed everybody in the class correct but as you should know exposure does not mean infection that's an exposure can conley i know this isn't a point but i know her feelings on masking right and and she's told me that many times i love her death okay i know there's teachers in school that aren't going to mask they just aren't going to do it they're not going to do it they feel strongly as as marcia and eric okay um i don't think kids have that strong feeling i think they just don't do it right they just don't do it but i think most kids are learning from their teachers in their family you know how what their years said i don't mean straight away from the point but the omni omicron is that i've known three people recently adults that have had exposed but we've got one employee he's on his third week in the hospital right now and i talked to a parent yesterday and the husband had bleeding lungs for three weeks in a brazo um another associate of mine i take them all the hospital right i know 24 days and i'm going so i didn't think that delta was that long so i don't know that's a factor but you need to consider with masking and i don't think i don't think omicron's destroyed the state yet i think that's still a lot of cases with arnold crumb just making they say we're still like three weeks a month from having the peak of the omnicron right and so we've got another month but i'm going to say right now i will not vote for a mass mandate unless that mass mandate can be enforced because that's that's not that's not um i don't want you to think that the two of us are not trying to enforce i believe you are and it's just a matter of some and it goes back to psychology so you have rewards your mandatory meeting is intrinsic if you go you're interested in your job you want to do better if you have to use a reward that's expensive so again unfortunately schools have lived too long on expensive rewards if you do this you'll get this we even say that with grades if you make a c you get to play sports uh you need to make a c because you're smart you need to change that structure so i we can we can we could stop doing something and punish every kid that's going to be able to send us a pursuit you're going to have parents pulling their kids out of the system one question about that is definitely my understanding that um mr casey also helps out with discipline partners when he's not teaching well he's not teaching his teacher exactly i would say does he call majority of it to be honest okay yes i think that's the last part of what you said if if we if we don't do the policy if we do the policy people are going to pull their kids out what did you say i think i think that if no i don't think policy people just one way i think if if he or kc or i start dropping the hammer excuse the term on kids for not complying with the mandate kid i think people are going to start pulling their kids and put them on an online program and that's not the best for kids in my opinion you know if my phrase is not business i would think that those same parents would be the ones that would be complaining if we had to go back to online classes because well i think even i'd like to see it though um instead of going through to july or whatever it was at least follow what the county says and and how to make have them wear masks until the end of february and then they're going to come up with a new plan and we'll see what happens well i would say like i said before on those lines i would say let's remove that date but move it so that it matches up with when we're actually meeting next in march which would give us the two months so we have 430 kids 434 50 something like that yes 434 so if you put an n95 on every day the kids that want to wear it um both would that be 1200 a day that would cost us in about if you've got match for three bucks cost us 1200 a day right am i my ass right yes these masks i did the math when we had the first shutdown in march of i figured two mass per kid per day which is probably over computing because i don't do it right i know i've got five hanging on my turnstick on my vehicle uh i have 22 grand figuring 450 kids twice a day one year was one semester that was thousand dollars not to mention the special order ones for the pre-k which we have been out of for quite a while right so depending on some of those big order those don't work so when we say that it's financially unfeasible provide n95s to the kids that wanted to wear those to class let me say so i guess and that would solve the problem right if you're afraid about getting covered you're wearing 95 in class and that protects you against everybody that everybody else is that does that if i'm wearing n95 does that protect me from him as well as him yeah he is it's probably um when the board requires something of administrators clearly we expect compliance right but i would say this is a really important thing obviously that's why we're taking all this time with it and we can't expect perfection there's um there's a point at which is the expression sacrificing the good for the perfect yeah um we can expect you to do your best to achieve compliance but we can't expect you to have complete compliance i don't think and i'm i'm okay with that i i i do want to see that it is being um there are there's you know procedures in place to try and get that to happen um but i don't think anyone is suggesting there are certain types of punishments or disciplinary actions that should happen if any one particular student or staff is not wearing a mask good thank you any more discussion i will make the motion but i will make that change i heard about motions yeah then we need to make a new motion yeah so do we how how do you proceed from there you already have a motion in a second and now we're going to go back and change it oh this is real easy i'm just going to ask for an agenda item from the march meeting to revisit it see that's that's that's okay because you will get a second oh but wendy has to change the motion second the motion too technically you mean initial motion okay so i mean okay so so what is the motion on the on the floor right now the motion that was that was second and first was during the code that's what she i'm just not gonna do it and are we not i mean is that established that it's not going to be enforced i think over unfortunately we didn't have 93 already they think the students think it's force because their adults are telling them put a mask on they're going to excuse me we're not putting a pain what do you want to do dr daley i mean i'm really asking for your advice here what do you think is the best the mandate or to go with an advisor i'm fine with an invitation we're not going to we're not going to have our announcements if the mandate changed advising we're going to say kids but you asked about what you're asking and just like you say people like don't shoot down don't spit on the sidewalk i think what lance is describing or saying has almost become the new norm um it's unfortunate i remember seeing pictures over the years of people in beijing the air was so fluid they're wearing math but man i don't even want them that's ours my concern is that there will be a drop off okay that the mandate is propping up those numbers um and i have i have kids in there and yeah um yeah that concerns me and i i i would prefer a mandate if that's going to get those numbers higher and protect give a little bit more protection to the people in the classroom including staff i mean would you like to take mandate until march 9th do you think that board meeting yeah it's kind of confidentially what do you think the night the study station i would be fine um moving it to march also because i didn't exchange it about this by the way cases are dropping off and it's turned out that you know this isn't as much of a concern i'd [Music] last thursday or friday i went on the keeman county health department website and you're having 2 000 more cases per day than being kind now than where you're going how many children have had covered here here oh my gosh 24.

e e e welcome everyone at this time I'd like to call the meeting to order and we'll stand 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 thank you and let the record reflect that all board members are present today and first up we have item B1 um and that is the annual board organization meeting at this time I'll make a motion to elect uh Christine Pritchard as governing board president Madam president if you could uh rephrase that to nominate Miss Pritchard as motion to nominee motion or just it says motion to elect open up the floor for nominations okay thank you at this time I'll open it up for nominations and you can now thank you and now I'll make a motion to elect to nominate okay I'm still going off of the script to uh nominee Christine Pritchard as governing board president I'll second and Madam president if you could um ask Miss Pritchard if she is willing to accept that nomination thank you do you accept the nomination I do thank you thank you are there any other nominations okay I move that Christine Pritchard be elected as board president do I have a second second so a motion has been made by Don Densmore seconded by Crystal Chaffin and it there's nothing on her screen she keeps track of my screen no thank you motion passes congratulations thank you very much next we will move to B2 action to elect governing board Clerk and we'll follow the same process used for election of board president for the election of board clerk so at this time I will accept nominations for board Clerk and with that I would like to nominate Crystal shaen as board clerk second um M Adam president if you could ask Miss Chapan if she accepts that nomination Miss chap would you accept that nomination yes I accept are there any other nominations for board Clerk not hearing any then I will go ahead and move that the governing board elect Miss Crystal shaen as governing board clerk do I have a second second made by Christine Pritchard second in by Don Dunmore do I do motion carries congratulations mevin and with that I will hand these to you excuse me and when we get to D1 you just read the script okay I'll help you thank you all right next we'll move to celebrations recognitions and celebrations C1 choir performance Dr kis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet Mr Dean will introduce this item good evening Madam president members of the governing board Dr Kellis and members of cabinet this evening we are proud to present the Willow Canyon High School show choir under the direction of of Logan McDonald and this evening they're going to perform for us Never Enough from the movie The Greatest Showman [Music] I'm trying to hold my breath let it stay this way can let this moment [Music] set loud can you hear it [Music] be never be enough [Music] never [Music] St [Music] never [Music] never [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] guys sounded incredible are you guys going to be competing um in Spring uh well we hope so I think you're on that in a couple weeks so I do believe that is the plan be heading out in April but you let us know awesome you guys definitely seem prepared that's for sure be a good time this actually a song from our Winter concert we just had it was our biggest show in a couple years thanks to the way the world is and it was just it was incredible to have a full Auditorium of people really enjoying the show kids did a great job and we are just jumping into our spring music and getting ready for a whole lot of Fallout Boy this ouring concert we'd love to see you and thank you so much for having us back we always love be here it was a pleasure having you thank Youk okay then next we'll move to D1 audience with individuals this is the time for a public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ARS uh 38-4 3101 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further discussion and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limmit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record um our first one we have tonight is Janet LeBlanc good evening uh my name is Janet LeBlanc and I would like to the board to know that I am an awakened Grandma I am not woke but I am awakened to the atrocities and indoctrination that has been taking place in our school systems atrocities and indoctrinations that you have all allowed and even participated in first I'd like to say shame on you for allowing that to happen to not just my children and my grandchildren but to yours as well shame on you for not standing up for their inalienable rights that is granted by God and God alone you nor anyone else has any authority to mask inject or brainwash our children secondly I'd like to say shame on me for not paying attention and placing my full trust that you would do the right thing that I promise you will never happen again it is my understanding that transgender bathrooms and or locker rooms are going to be discussed I am here to express my utmost disgust that this subject is even allowed our school system and all who participate have got to start getting the is straight there are only two genders male and female doe the science DNA proves it any other gender anyone wants to try to identify is teaching false facts it is time boor to step up stand up and fight against these atrocities and indoctrinations against our children and Against Humanity I promise you this will not be the last time that you see me up here I believe I speak for many here many parents I thank you for your time and I hope that each of you take time to examine your own conscience and let that be your guide thank you Dr Kellis could you please make sure that um Miss LeBlanc is followed up with for statements please M president M Bill yes we will follow thank you um our next one is Lee IES yes I'll be oh so wait till I three oh sorry thank you um this one yeah they're all I three thank you thank you next we'll move to e superintendent governing board updates um Dr kis do have a student update evening um Madame President members of the board yes would' like to invite Miss Poundstone to the podium to give a student update good evening Madame President members of the board Dr Kellis cabinet and community my name is Json Poundstone and I'm a member of the daart student Leadership Council at our most recent meeting we continue to work on our upcoming events for all of the high schools high school we get together and learn from each other we also checked in with each Council to see what activities they had coming up on their campuses um a lot of the schools right now are planning a hoopcoming dance charity pageants and talent shows uh we are also in the process of planning a spirit conference for all the daart student councils to attend we look forward to sharing more information and more accomplishments with you thank you thank you thank you Jocelyn next we move to superintendent update Dr CIS thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um first of all I'd like to welcome everybody back happy New Year it was nice to have the break and to be able to take a breather as I say that with lots of uh reservations about breathing but uh it was nice to to take a breath and to um reset for the the rest of the school year which we are off and running um also U congratulate uh Mrs Pritchard for your selection as president look forward to working with you and Miss Densmore it was a pleasure working with you as board president thank you for the time in that position uh speaking of board members this is the national school board Rec recognition month so to all of you I say thank you for your volunteer time and it's um it's just amazing how much effort it goes into serve you have to work really hard just to have the opportunity to serve and that shouldn't be the case but we appreciate your service um we as you have seen in the media there's been a lot of attention to the amount of the extraordinary amount of work that staff are doing extra to cover for absente isms and for illnesses and I just want to extend a a very heartfelt thank you to all employees every position is doing double work to help their peers who are out and for covering in areas that you are just asked to do again and again thank you so very very much to everybody um was listening to a presentation today and they were indicating that things are going to probably spike in the next week and then we'll start to see a decline so um there is hope on the horizon but I appreciate all the employees and what what you do that's all I have to report thank you next we move to governing board update um just welcome everybody back hope everybody had a good relaxing and healthy Break um and with that I'll open it up to any of the board members that have any updates we go um gosh it's been so long I had to really go back and look at my calendar um I visited Sunset Hills uh simmeron Springs and Canyon Ridge and um I want to give a thank you to Mr Hicks and his Department last month last year um there was a question about some voucher uh purchases of bath bombs and sunglasses Etc thank you for the prompt response at all of these were for certain science projects at various schools in the district so thank you for that um I also want to give a shout out to the HR department um these folks are doing their normal and I know everybody in the district is doing their normal job I get in above and beyond but the HR department is not only doing their normal job but also Manning the co hotline and that means they're working weekends and nights so thank you very much uh Dr Cotto to your employees for all that they've been doing lately that's it anyone else actually I just want to welcome everybody back I know uh it was um the time to celebrate with family and friends and uh I am really excited to see uh several people that are here here in the audience for uh the board meeting so I am also looking forward to I believe there are several um uh concerts uh within the schools that are going to be coming up over the next couple of weeks so I am definitely looking forward to it and I will apologize again right now if you hear this crazy lady singing in the back of the auditorium that is me because I like singing so just be prepared thank you Tracy I couldn't hear you were youing with the choir yes yes we'll go ahead and move to um item F motion to approve consent agenda items I move that the board approve consent agenda items as presented second motion made by Christine Pritchard second by Joe Grant right motion carries next um information and discussion items H1 board monitoring of adopted policy section 7 Personnel sections 7.33 to 7.68 and sections eight meet and confer Dr Callis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet Dr Cotto will introduce this item thank you Dr Kellis Madame President members of the board superintend Kellis cabinet and guests tonight we continue on our policy monitoring with uh sections 7.33 to 7.68 uh in monitoring those policies we do have a change uh to section uh 7.52 I believe it is um support staff fringe benefits it is uh if you take a look in the green part it is when staff members are eligible for benefits so we needed to change language uh it used to be on the first day of the month now they're eligible for benefits depending on the day they start so if it's the first to the um 15th and it's on the 1st of the next month it's the 16th through the end of the month it's the first of the second month so not the following month and that's the way practice is so this policy needs to be brought up to date uh to reflect our practice other than that there are no changes in in the rest of the the policies any discussion from the board thank you next we move to H2 school reports rancha Gabriella Elementary in Valley Vista High School Dr Callis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet Dr P and Dr Dean will introduce these thank you Dr kis Madam president members of the board cabinet and audience I'd like to call up Mr Scott kirp principal at ranchel Gabriella for a school report good evening um newly elected president M Pritchard um congratulations um board members um cabinet members thank you Dr Kellis my name is Scott Kerr I'm the inter principal at Rancho Gabriella elementary school and I'm excited to be here um we have a little data and other things to go over so we're gonna all right can do well I can certainly cover the first slide no problem we have about 740 students prek through fourth grade um our our colors are orange and black our mascot is the Rattler we're dual language uh school which is kind of interesting for an elementary you don't see that very often so that's nice we have Spanish on our campus and every kid gets received Spanish we have some opportunities I'm just going to keep going I'm good with that opportunities um so I think what you have to know is I POS these questions to my staff and so by and large these answers are my staff answering which I'm happy to report um common culture one of the opportunities that we have um as our K our prek4 and our five eight schools were put together um we kind of swapped some teachers and within that we have to have next slide please um common culture we have to build that and that's built through building relationships with all the staff and through well when you do that you build trust and that's very much needed let's see there we go all right um staff growth and change we want to make sure that we are adapting to our students needs when we came off of the year that we came off of Not only was there just a lot of change on Rancho's campus and some other campuses with staff but now we are looking at students who some of them didn't go to kinder in our first grade some really didn't go to first grade earned second grade um and so on and so forth I can tell you um that that process of learning is so so so critical with the young kids it's so important for us to get it right when they're young so as they get older that those gaps don't grow on them and we need to be focused we need to make sure we're adapting to what students need and there are needs um and I'll I'll discuss one of those needs with you here in a minute strengthen our ability to work together um what is nice about combining two campuses is now you have twice as many ideas that's a that's a great advantage and so taking advantage of those opportunities and hearing voices of everyone matters um to be able to build us again our culture and our trust and our relationships is extremely important we also need to be student focused in our ability to work together we want to work together for a common goal that common goal are our students and their learning period that's number one we want to make sure that we use our professional learning communities plc's to help strengthen that the PLC I'd call it the Mantra is this what do we want want students to know really important question really important question you know what they are we want them to know the standards that's what we want them to know so as teachers we have to know them too as administrators we have to know them too so that we can convey them to kids we also want to make sure we understand and check assess if you want to call it what students know so we need to make sure not only do we have have a focus on what we're teaching them but we also have to check on that to make sure they're learning what they are supposed to be learning because if they don't we need to do something about that so there are two final steps that we have to take care of and one is what do we do with students who don't know and what do we do with students who do know we have to address those in our school and we do help Stu students grow academically and socially so here's one of the facts I'll I'll let you know of our students are behind I haven't seen these kind of numbers at ranchel before I have one reading interventionist she sees 45 kids five kids at a shot nine rotations of kids through the day that's 45 students she is able to help help them read those are kids that on Dibbles are are in the red or in the yellow which is not very good we don't want them there we want them being green being able to read I have 175 kids that are yellow and red that's a lot and I'm obviously not meeting that right now with that one interventionist so we got to think of ways outside the box to help meet those kids' needs we also have to make sure that we're addressing the needs of kids that have been out have been looking at devices for who knows what reason but being with other people has not what they've been doing so making sure that that we BR take that social awkwardness out we teach them the skills that they need walking in lines uh taking turns you know not hitting someone when they get in front of us in line that type of stuff and that's really really important um to have a a safe and orderly campus early intervention again is also critical we have to intervene early which means at Rancho not when they get to sorin Heights last thing is a curricular Focus again we have to know the standards and we have to we have to um deliver those standards as teachers to kids at the correct level of rigor let's try that there we go some of our celebrations you know what we are seeing victories with our students we're seeing growth and we like to see that we want to see that growth and that's happening our teachers are doing a great job I'm so proud of them um our staff works extremely hard and um as was eluded taking breaths is dangerous or whatever and it's difficult and all that kind of stuff we have several staff members out several but you know what we have other staff members that are picking it up and taking care of business including ourselves um I I'm my poor kindergarteners I was in a Kindergarten class for two hours today and um I I'm here so that's good not tied up somewhere um so I'm happy for that and and I feel like I was successful but that's the type of thing that needs to happen we all need to pull together and work together um we're in person with students that is so important um research shows that putting a student in front of a excellent a good to excellent teacher will overcome things that kids experience like poverty poverty like single parent homes like no parent homes like a parent who's in jail or whatever the case might be you put a good teacher in front of a student those things disappear it's so important for us to make sure we have kids in front of teachers period not on screens they have to be live team building we want to make sure we have competitions to help build morale community events that bring our community together and we can um work with them have fun with them enjoy the things around us ice breakers and activities and out of school activities we want to incorporate all those things to help build our team collaborating and working together we want to make sure we're again in just improving our plc's and making sure we're focusing on student learning um helping students grow academically and socially um learning through our benchmark scores what we need to do and um students interacting with each other and staff is again building that social awkwardness out and helping our kids develop what we want to focus on we want to focus on number one answer I was so happy to see this over and over from my teachers number one answer student growth learning at high level that was our number one answer from our staff building kids social skills we're k for we have a lot of little ones they need to be helped um creating a common culture and family atmosphere at our school not we're not two different sets of teachers or three different sets of teachers we're one set of teachers one set of Staff we're all together writing complete objectives and using academic conversation for student growth and learning which is what we're focusing on in our CIP but it's also what we're being trained in with West Ed and I was happy to see our teachers respond with this response and last but not least using our data to differentiate learning groups so with that we'll open for some questions if you have any thank you so much I really enjoyed your presentation and it's good to have you back you've always had a very um close group at Rancho very good culture and you guys all seem to grow together so I'm sure they're happy to have you back and you guys can continue your work together um I do like the fact how you had had said that you like to involve your staff with like okay what are our opportunities because then there's always that buy in so I love that and then I also liked um in your presentation how you talked about wanting to make sure everybody's on track before they get to sorin so it's just kind of like that accountability to not just your students um but also to your colleagues over at Sonoran and just so I just and our high schools too yeah I appreciate that so thank you anyone else um I did have something uh Mr Kerr it is awesome to have you back and um good to see you it's good to see you and um I remember years ago we uh uh a board member from another school district and I would banter once in a while that he said he was going to come back over here and steal you back and and I would tell him no he's not so um uh he didn't he didn't he didn't he didn't and and you know why he didn't um so thank you for coming back um I did have uh one question for you and it did have to do with the reading interventionist um 45 students and you said nine rotations um what type of ideas are you great question I was hoping you'd ask okay so one of the things we're doing right now and it's involving a lot of different people which is great um we're coming together and some people are doing some things in on our campus that are above and beyond which is great um our third and fourth grade are our heaviest especially fourth grade heavy testing grade for us and um label that's most of our label is going to come from fourth grade third grade also so what do we do we have some problems we're looking at benchmark scores we're looking at growth scores and we're talking about what we can do so we um involve our specials team in helping meet the needs of kids and what we do is we we are desire is to break down groups of kids to smaller groups so that we can manage that and help kids right where they need it the only way we can do that is we have the resources we need and now resources are people and so I'm going to put a plugin a couple of them for my reading interventionist and for my social worker because they both work hard at helping us in areas that we need help so what we do is we take our kids our our like for instance fourth grade gets together and our six teachers talk about kids and they look at their scores and they look at what they want to improve upon now kids who there are plenty of kids who have mastered that the these skills so what do we do with them they go to specials and it's kind of a reward for them it's a little different than just the regular specials for PE or for art or whatever it's a little different it's a little more interesting and motivating I would say but part of what they have to do in that group as an extension it's a three-week period they have to um take a standard from fourth grade and use it to write about what they learned about in PE art or music so there's a writing component to that that meets the standards of fourth grade in language arts what the teachers do in language arts since those kids are out of the way we take some of our special ed students we take some of our regular students we send them off to an aid to maybe a special ed teacher and now our six teachers have smaller groups of kids they have a choice they can um work on those skills as individuals or together so they take three language arts skills three math skills they're going to work on them and they're going to drill on them with the group of maybe 10 kids in the room now um rotating them through the three-week period where you have small group during our wi time which means what I need as a student and we are pushing that really hard right now so that is one of the ideas that we've come up with and involves a lot of teachers and a lot of resources on our campus um that help us with that so so did you start this at the beginning of the year or um meaning the beginning of school year not in this fashion no um but there was some structures put in place so that we are able to um we have done wind time at Rancho for a number of years now and it's evolved and we're kind of putting some things in place because our campus is a little different now than what it was is a K8 a pre8 sorry Chris um so you know we have to again change adapt and attack what needs to be delivered for our kids I'd be interested to see how it will come look well okay no but I would be really interested to see how after your you know a couple of the 3- we rotations um to see how um they have progressed right in that y okay I will I'll come over good thank you very much thank you you mentioned um the device overload for some of your students how do you manage that when they when they are in the classroom with Chromebooks for a big portion of their day do you try to limit the Chromebook experience as much as possible so that's a great question and on K4 campus it's not students are ignorant of Chromebooks right um but it is harder for them um as you're in Kinder first second third grade kids are learning how to read and fourth grade they're using their reading to learn um kind of transitioning then and write about then anyways so when you come to our campus you're going to see a lot more paper and pencil we want kids to write we want them to read um we want them to read books um bigger print is nice sometimes that font on the computer screen can be really small um so we um do have we do we do use our Chromebooks but not like you would probably see in a high school not probably like you'd see in a middle school okay is that fair yes thank you okay that's all I have okay well my first question to you is how was your Kinder experience today so here's what you need to understand my background is a high school math teacher for 16 years that's awesome but the math it was a math lesson so I was very successful with that um it was fun it really was the kids were great um I talked to um the teacher next door and I said Miss soy this is it just wasn't like your class I'm just telling you that right now and she goes no Mr Kurt you did pretty good so I was like bam um it was fun I it's a classroom that you know if I have to I'll go into do I want to that's another issue um but I've been in our fourth grade classrooms teaching language arts which is not my forte either but I if I have to do it I will um prior to that you know at when we were K8 I love to clear my schedule if I could and go into a seventh grade math class or an eighth grade math class and help out there so it's really important to be able to pitch in I want my staff to see that because I'm going to ask the same things of them and if I'm not doing it why should they I really appreciate that I appreciate your willingness to go in amid your staff shortage and go into a classroom and say well nobody's here I'm going to cover this you um I think that shows really good leadership you know not only stepping in to help you know for your students but also setting that example for your staff right and we have a lot of good leaders on our campus because a lot of our teachers are doing that too well and I would also like to point out that I really appreciate how you're using your special areas as the extension my my stance will always be special areas and electives we're not AIDS we're not babysitters we're not just your prep so I love how that your special areas are teaching their special areas in a different in a different manner kind of so your specials aren't a reward Bo but this extra special is yeah so they can do something even more that they don't get to do in the regular PE class and that we want that to be the intent I think that's awesome and I love how you're using that you're using your special areas in their fores this is what they know and the kids are also getting that extra experience and they're diving deeper into those standards and I love how you're tying it into the fourth grade reading where they're using these standards to write about what they learned so I love that connection there too right well without Miss Ashby who thought of that idea back at the beginning of the year and without our language arts teachers back here in fourth grade say hi and without our specials teachers like Mrs Mendoza over here that wouldn't be possible because they make it happen and and it's easy too it's not like oh you're asking me to do this or I don't want to do that it's yeah let's let's do it Scott what how can we do this what do we need help us well and it's always fun when you have a smaller group of students where you can really specialize that just makes it even more fun for the teacher too and that's what we want to do thank you yep good thank you very much thank you appreciate it guys have a great night too Madame President members of the governing board Dr Kell and members of cabinet it is my pleasure this evening to Welcome to the podium Dr Adam Wolf the principal at Valley Vista High School and with him this evening is his administrative team assistant principals Lisa parachini Aon McRae Joe Martinez and Pete jelic Dr Wolf the floor is yours Madame President members of the board Dr Kellis cabinet thank you for allowing me to be here my name is Adam wolf and I am proud to serve as principal of Valley Vista High School um thank you for the warm welcome thank you for introducing my team if you guys could just stand up and give them a wave so everyone knows come on you can do it we have Miss Partin on the right Miss McCrae in the middle there Mr Martinez on the left and our athletic director all the way in the back Mr gelic um I was not in a Kindergarten class today I'm not sure I can handle a Kindergarten class but I was in a Spanish class A couple days ago and it was a ton of fun um we're we're in some tough times now uh and we do have teachers out and I want to just first start off with the shout out to my staff and all their hard work um and for making this possible um they're continuing to step up daily covering classes um and I just cannot thank them enough for all their hard work and their efforts with that being said let's talk about Valley Vista High School so slide all right it's working so our current enrollment is 2345 students who arrive daily with Bright Smiles on their face ready to go every day at 7 11:15 a.m.

that evening surprise PD did a tremendous job visited two students homes somewhere between 10 p.m. and midnight and actually made an arrest at about 2:45 in the morning for a student who um had no credible means of carrying out a thread but it stated a thread on social media they contacted the principal at 3 I believe 3:14 a.m. that morning she took their call to make sure that she knew what was going on and the situation had resolved so PD I I provide that example to let you know that PD is very extensive regardless of what time we call them I know they're very responsive and and we're very appreciative of that piece um so I just wanted to make sure that we that we shared that information um Miss winterstein can answer a couple of your other questions but I it it was a very pertinent And Timely example to provide um the response that surprise PD provides to us and now marage PD is equally as responsive thank you madam president uh just to expand a little bit on that um many of the school shooting threats that come about by the time we get them on social media oh gosh there's going to be a school shooting when we drill down to where the origination of that threat comes from many of them have come from oh this boy looks like a school shooter and then the telephone gain comes and it just um continues to to uh become embellished and so the the police and our great PR department um are able to look at the origination the original post and so what happens is that we are um oftentimes in those no threat was ever stated it's taken out of context and so the administrators work very diligently in finding the students that are responsible for reposting and embellishing that and so the then then discipline is imposed for not necessarily making a threat but but inciting it and instigating it and making it much worse than it is but the vast majority of them are not ones that just B blatantly start with um I'm going to shoot up a school there are some but the majority of them um have snowballed into a much larger issue than actually someone stating I'm going to shoot up the school MH and I I would close the the series of questions um by just assuring the board and I believe we've had this conversation on a couple of different occasions over the course of many years we are always concerned about student safety which is why we take any stated threat very seriously we contact PD on any stated threat that we we receive nothing is taken lightly to the point of if there's something written on a bathroom wall we we contact PD immediately and move forward we are always working to be diligent in that piece and if there was ever a concern that something could possibly happen on a campus we would not have school that day um we would make sure that folks were communicated with and that school had been canceled for that day we take this each and every piece of this very very seriously and I I think there's two pieces to it I'm not there's the issue of are we are we um diligent in our efforts to get to the bottom of it and resolve the threat which I don't have question about I know we I know the police and I know our disert staff do what they need to do my piece of it was are we communicating with our parents are we making sure that they have an opportunity to be aware that the school that their child is being sent to was the subject of a threat and again not okay Tik Tock challenge someone's going to rip off a soap dispenser off a wall or there might be a fight at lunch I'm talking about school shooting type threats I just want to make sure that we're communicating with our parents so so they know because I again I just think that would be awful if this a student gets to school and a parent if they would have known that they might have chosen to keep their child home so and also with our staff I just want to make sure too that staff on those campuses are aware and that includes not just those who actually report to that particular building but we have a lot of transient um staff that travel and um whether it be related areas or um a lot of our different staff can travel from building to building making sure somehow that communication Loop is complete with our staff as well so I just need to make sure you guys hear that concern thank you and and we hear your concern very clearly but thank you very much and I would add that I was happy that the police department had the principal's phone number at 314 am.

good evening we're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order dr foley roll call president race members of the board please let the record show that all members are present thank you we're going to have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it seems one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice all right we have our first order of business as we do our first meeting in january is to elect board officers and i we're going to go ahead and start on 1.4 with the election of the governing board president for 2022 i would like to nominate mrs kaler second any issues i gladly accept all right perfect okay all those in favor aye aye that motion carries 5-0 mrs kaler you want to take the next all right so we're moving on thank you very much appreciate your support um 1.5 we're going to vote the election of our governing board vice president and i will start i nominate michelle anderson for our vice president this year second any comments or questions do i have to say i agree no okay if we vote you in i guess you don't have a choice i love it okay all those in favor aye aye motion carries five zero mrs taylor we're going to take a short recess so we can re-arrange and we'll be right back and also i just want to um say thank you president reece again for another year of fabulous service same to mrs wilson for vice presidency your work does not go unnoticed by many so thank you very much okay thank you for that we're going to move on now to our favorite part of the night well almost i move that we approve the agenda 2.1 second any questions or concerns about the agenda okay all those in favor aye motion carries 5-0 i do want to point out that we did have some donations we can go to that page oh sorry you're right sorry i'm moving too fast um now we are the superintendent's report thank you doc foley president kaler members of the board we want we have several celebrations tonight and actually we want to start our celebration tonight by acknowledging you our governing board so january asba recognizes this as our school board appreciation month and our school board recognition month and we just want to take a second on behalf of the district leadership our sites our schools our students to thank you in your extraordinary service to our district thank you so join me in applause [Applause] nice surprise thank you for your service to our district we have several celebrations tonight so we have some state championships over there at higley high school and so in the audience tonight we have birthday boy principal allen fields happy birthday alan but i'd like to invite mr dilly to come mr aaron dilly to come up so he can help us celebrate some super students honored to be here thank you board thank you for the opportunity to recognize uh what we are you know we were blessed to have amazing kids so honoring a couple of those amazing kids if i can have keaton in his bond please come on down she's all right yes i'm gonna read please because there's so many of them i'll mess it up if i don't get it i don't look at what i wrote down all right so this year alone uh old metal and two events in silver switch me up whoa all right he also won silver that brings his gold total in his high school career to full four state gold medals at state championships held several records do you know how many school records you hold okay he he's actually not wrong he's he said all of them it's a perfect line [Applause] in addition to what he's done here locally with aia he also competes on the national stage has set several national records uh currently holds where are you in the in the back last year you were third national yep so still sits third nationwide with his time in the backstroke recently signed a scholarship to one of the top swim schools in the country university of california berkeley let's give that up that's awesome and then he is slated i'm trying not to jinx him but uh he's slated to be one of our swimmers in the pool representing the united states at the next upcoming future olympics so yes keaton is doing it well so i'm going to embarrass him a little bit keaton you have anything you want to say i'm obviously really thankful to be a higley knight um i've had a great three years here um i hope that i can continue on next year senior year and i'm ready to go crush it in d1 and see what the team can do thank you yeah we got to do let me get a photo here do we want how do we want to do this are you guys be good back all right it's it's our pleasure uh keaton has to head to practice um and that's actually he's gonna stay for a little bit homework assignment is to stay for this board meeting normally he'd be heading to one of his numerous practices so we're going to move on to our one of our other points of pride here at higley high school a couple of years ago dr thomason came and said uh growing sport we got to get ahead of the curve here and let's jump all in on the esports and the district was kind enough to build a wonderful esports room in the media center if you haven't seen that it's spectacular our kids love it and so that was great that was step one step two was hiring the right person to coach it and this gentleman if coach if you can come on up coach byers uh the room and the person or the reason that we just won a state championship brophy thank you so he'll explain more but our friends at brophy and and i say friends and quotes our friends at brophy had won the state championship for several years they thought it was their state championship they'd want it so many times coach byers and our kids make sure they don't think that anymore thank you mr dilly so now we are going to celebrate some points of pride and i'd like to invite principal christine hansen to come share with us tonight we have some chaparral points of pride to celebrate this evening all right i need a i need multiple hands oh that'd be great yes please thank you all right well good evening president kaler governing board dr foley members of cabinet it is my pleasure to be here this evening to recognize four outstanding chaparral sharks i am the proud principal mrs hanson of chaparral elementary in what we like to refer to as a shark tank let's see here i'm going to try to i will try to stick to my script i'd like to recognize first our certified staff member bianca scroggins mrs scroggins cannot be with us this night tonight i hope she's watching at home but i would like to acknowledge her as well so mrs scroggins currently teaches second grade in our shark tank and she's been with us for two years she has made quite the impact on our campus she has consistently demonstrated a passion for creating meaningful relationships with students as well as challenging them with rigorous and innovative instructional strategies she collaborates with our instructional coaches and her colleagues to continue to grow professionally and she leads by an example in everything she does so mrs scroggins we are very proud of you [Applause] all right thank you all right next up i'd like to welcome miss kirsten elfin come on up kirsten all right kirsten we're proud of you and we have a bouquet for you kirsten i would be up here all night if i told you all the amazing things about this woman she was nominated by several of her colleagues for her flexibility and willingness to jump in where there is a need she has assisted our campus in almost every position you can think of and she does not hesitate to jump in in any capacity um just yesterday you helped me in the health office like she's just there she's on it so we appreciate you so much kirsten thank you [Applause] i think you stay up here thank you sherry uh all right next up i would like to recognize a very special parent this person is always she serves in many capacities as well so chrissy black come on up [Applause] all right mrs black congratulations thank you all right chrissy mrs black serves chaparral in a variety of ways she serves as on our pto as a hospitality coordinator and has made several events on campus very special this year she collaborated with our community to provide our school with a staff lounge makeover and has made our lounge a cozy and inviting place to be in addition to serving on pto mrs black substitute teaches in the higley and surrounding districts as well as volunteers in our classrooms she has taken on the challenge of art masterpiece coordinator and has ensured that all volunteers follow procedures and guidelines which is much appreciated by our secretary mrs vasquez and she's also provided an extra touch of thoughtfulness to this year's hospitality events and her efforts have not gone unnoticed we appreciate you okay thank you all right and this next person is also a very special vip addison hoover would you please join me all right this young lady is a fifth grade student on our campus in the shark tank and she was nominated by several teachers across our campus not just your amazing team who's here tonight she is a great leader on campus she's an amazing friend to other students and she always has a smile on her face she certainly leads by example we are very proud of you and thank you for being a leader [Applause] thank you chaparral sharks now we would like to invite mr armstrong and mr griggs to come up to celebrate our coronado points of pride [Applause] all right good evening president kaler vice president miss anderson now congratulations superintendency thank you for having us tonight we're super excited about this tonight we have to change ours up a little bit so we're going to introduce our parent first because this individual has to get out of here her children are performing for in a theater event tonight so we're going to work really hard and i'll try to be as fast as possible so bear with me we're going to go ahead and recognize our pto president the one and only miss brooke hewing so she can come on up [Applause] mrs ewing is i i don't have enough words to describe her she during the time of two years where we have battled various things the one thing miss healing came to me every every day about is what can we do to ensure that we keep our community close and we're still hosting events during a time where we can't be together and throughout this entire time miss ewing was able to get a team together of parents come up with ideas execute the ideas and bring our community together so that we can continue to have that we are one belief within coronado and she made it happen on very limited resources and gathering input from parents ms ewing you are an asset to our community you're an asset to our school and we thank you so very much we appreciate you hold on she she's going to go ahead and introduce who's here tonight so that we can recognize them as well who's here what do you mean there's like so many people here oh my husband well my husband but also all of the staff that's here at coronado we couldn't do what we do without them we rely so much on teachers and staff so thank you so much i'm going to introduce our actually classified staff she's unable to make it um today she knows how awesome i think she is but i need you guys to know how awesome she is um so elsa arvado she's one of our paraprofessionals as coronado coyotes we have a shared belief of commitment to students being first we have a commitment to excellence and a commitment to each other elsa demonstrates that she is one that continually works one-on-one with students she is one that is even branches out into working to make sure that her students integrate with the campus as a whole she is one that does whatever it takes to make sure that students succeed and is what we expect of every coronado coyote and we're so proud of elsa [Applause] all right we're going to go ahead and recognize our certified staff member who is miss alex dougherty come on down ms doherty is a third grade teacher on our campus and at coronado we have four core beliefs being student centered compassion commitment and integrity all four of those core beliefs are proven in class is shown by ms daugherty when we talk about being student centered she will do absolutely anything and everything for her students during contract time and outside of contract time when we talk about compassion ms dougherty's compassion for the care and the the well-being and social aspects of her students goes above and beyond and we cannot thank you enough for everything that you do at coronado being a part of the coyote nation you're an amazing teacher and we are so grateful for you thank you [Applause] and then finally i would like to recognize our student ron l davis come on up ronnel [Applause] so this is the model of a coronado coyote so ronnelle davis demonstrates our pause so every morning we talk about what it means to be a coronado coyote it's that footprint that you want to leave it's the positive perseverance acting respectfully working a potential and staying safe it's the pause that you leave on the world ronald demonstrates that with that positive perseverance he is one that knows no matter what problem faces him he has the skills to be able to meet it head-on he is one of the most respectful students that i have ever met and and that's not just hyperbole that's not me just saying it right now every single day hello mr griggs how are you mr griggs thank you mr griggs he is a very respectful individual i know that i'm not isolated in that many many teachers recognize your respect and he is definitely someone who is that model for other students so thank you for being that model i look forward to not only middle school and high school but how you're going to change the world for a positive difference nice job ronald [Applause] we want to thank all the points of pride for coming tonight we encourage you to stay if you'd like to stay but we also know you're very busy so if you'd like to leave at this time we do understand [Music] okay okay president kaler members of the board have a few more things for superintendent's report that i'd like to talk with you about um as you can see um up on the screen we have several upcoming events this is the interesting time of year when there ends up being multiple things on similar nights and lots of events happening but as you can see we have several meetings visits opportunities that are scheduled for the month of january um in the superintendent's report today too i'd like to include just a little update um for some just some information for context of awareness of this past friday afternoon i was fortunate to have the opportunity to be one of a thousand superintendents across the entire nation um that had the that had that an opportunity to be on a zoom call i was on a zoom call with united states secretary of education dr cardona department of education chief of staff christian rhodes united states surgeon general dr murthy public health advisor for education for center disease control for the education division john netherland and senior education policy advisor for the white house mary hall i have a picture of my screenshot it was kind of impressive i've never been in a zoo meeting with such high-ranking officials invited to talk directly not to governors not to um departments of education but to superintendents who are leading schools these national leaders and experts were speaking directly to school leaders and they warned that we are going to see a surge in the number of cases within our communities during the next few weeks and then the next few weeks ahead may be difficult and this is due to the variant of omnicron in this discussion they had with the leaders a thousand leaders from across the united states they said do not panic please do not panic what is known about this variant is that it is usually milder and doesn't last as long and that individuals are usually feeling better within a few days again they stress this is not every case but this is what is being documented for a majority of the cases that they are seeing they reassured us that more testing is coming and this is a good way to help minimize spread we do have testing and obviously one of the things they cautioned is that this cannot become the next toilet paper issue do not hoard testing more supplies are coming use it as you need it and they are on their way we do have some we are we are distributing quite frequently but we don't have we don't have enough to hoard but we do have enough to use and we have been reassured more is coming they have shared that we've learned a lot over the last uh past two years we are now on our third variant of coven and our collective knowledge allows us to be more precise and allows us to reduce the number of days and work that is missed because of what we know and are knowing about this variant this is why the most recent cdc guidance was changed to allow for isolation to be reduced when when symptoms allow the caveat being when symptoms allow the maricopa department of health and the arizona department of education have also supported and shifted to this recommendation they discussed the importance of keeping kids in school and they acknowledged that this can be challenging with increased illness the impact this has on everyone particularly staffing when we think about higley i want to thank everyone who is stepping up to help sub and cover as needed so that we are able to ensure our students are able to learn we have a good team and we are appreciating everybody's flexibility currently we are aware that there are increased cases within our community as a whole and we are closely monitoring this situation while we work with the health department on each and every case that's reported within our schools as we have previously shared in our mitigation plan if we see increased and sustained cases at a campus we will work with each site administration to determine if or which mitigation strategies we need to add back if we begin to see concern at any given case and of course we work directly with the health department and will do as directed mostly the most important thing we need to remind everybody is to please stay home when you are not feeling well one of the things they shared in this call was that because it is milder people think oh i probably just have a cold or or it's not it can't be that big i don't feel that bad they said stay home wait test sometimes people test too early and this is one of the things they said is if you can stress to your community stay home if you are not feeling well we are going to need everyone to be vigilant to stay home to the greatest extent possible so we can keep this off campuses we also encourage please reach out to your schools if you have individual concerns or questions reach out so that we can work with our health department we can work with our our team to answer questions explicitly as possible so that was information that was shared with me on this call and again more information is continuing to be circulated we are continuing to include this in our communication with our families and we'll be rescinding a reminder at the end of the week about the importance of yes this is happening yes we are aware please stay vigilant by staying thank you that concludes the superintendent's report thank you dr foley appreciate that extra information for everybody to ponder we are going to move on to board comments president taylor yes mrs wilson um before break which seems so long ago i was able to visit uh two different schools for their jingle jog both hta and gateway point and hta brought back coach um to run that and i just wanted to spend send a special thank you to him to come all the way down to you know he's been retired but he came down to help and uh just help that new coach get her feet wet with that um and then last night i was actually able to also go to hta and view their abandoned orchestra concert which was fabulous hearing those fifth and sixth graders perform on their instruments um some of them who have only had an instrument for six months or less so just thank you to both those schools thank you any other comments mrs kaler mrs reese last week we had the opportunity for the grand opening for the williamsfield athletic center and um i wanted to thank mayor peterson for joining us it was really exciting to see the athletic center and there was a lot of conversation on making sure that we were forward thinking and that we were not just doing things for today that with some of the um direction that they went was for future based on what they predict will happen how it will happen things like that so um it was it was great to be there i finally got to to see the facility it's amazing and i look forward more to come as we continue to expand thank you mrs reese i know i was unable to attend but um did talk to mayor peterson as well and she was so impressed with everything that was shown to her so thank you anybody else this is anderson oops sorry i just wanted to say thank you for sharing that bit about your conversation and what you learned in the meeting that you had and you made good points about how everybody's going to be affected by this and um first day back in 2019 2020 i can't remember when we went back into person or when we were trying to teach over in queen creek and what we needed to remind each other was have grace and it's not i don't think anybody's not stopped giving grace i think we remind ourselves because in the classroom it's hard i'm averaging probably four to six students out every class um i was telling dr foley that we had 24 teachers out on monday and we've been covering every during our preps uh all this week and we keep telling each other it's probably only going to get worse and so it's it's grace with the students they're the ones that are coming back from being out for a few days or those that are showing up with what they think are allergies or whatever they have they're they're not thinking well they're tired they're not performing well in class they're turning in assignments late i'm sure their families at home aren't able to help as they can they're staying home from work so it's just a rough time and for every every staff member in the district and everybody in the homes out there so thank you for reminding us about everybody involved in information thank you mrs anderson anything else no request to speak this is reach okay we're going to move on to six point one and i move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented second any comments or questions i do want to notate the um generous donation from i believe it's williamsfield blackhawk band boosters did some very large donations for their washington trip and their dc trip also coronado was able to get some window graphics for beautification and also um coronado received from aaron floman academy mortgage company corporation some money for snacks for the staff so and staff always love snacks so thank you for those generous donations all those in favor aye aye motion carries 5-0 is it too late to make a comment i just wanted to thank hr i noticed there are quite a few new bus drivers hired and para jobs failed so great job i can't imagine the work that took that's unexpected thank you vice president anderson mr crosby is also very happy about that was that part of the um referral program is that what drove good evening president kaler vice president anderson board member schultz i think it was a combination of a number of things so not only did we have the recruitment incentive we had the increase in pay as well as we did do a mini job fair for bus drivers and transportation department only so we got two to three individuals from those areas which was great i will say we're still struggling and having challenges for a variety of reasons of which you're all familiar with that's happening across our state and nationwide but hey more employees we're excited to bring on and continue to bring on wherever we can thank you very much we're going to move on to 7.1 and this is going to be a an update from mrs martens thank you again and good evening again president kaler vice president anderson members of the board this is an update in relation to our educational services inc which is our vendor in which provides district-wide permanent and certified substitutes as well as classified subs in our custodial and health aid area if applicable primarily more in the health aid area when we can find it so you'll see on their expenditures this is second quarter where we've spent and where we're at and what the board approved back in july of 21 21 2021 in terms of the larger 1.2 million dollar budget you'll see that we're trending um in terms of about a little less than half you know we look to probably think that some of that's because of the fact that we are having low sub-fill rates but i will say that we are seeing that the benefit of our increasing to higher rates on mondays and fridays has helped us and has been helpful for a number of individuals and they've been excited and have come back and said appreciate the increase just even at that 20 dollars so i'll entertain any questions if there are i was going to ask that very question mrs martens if our monday and fridays we're getting a little more attention so thank you for sharing that and i echo what mrs anderson said vice president anderson said is that we just have to be so thankful to our staff right now they're filling in everywhere and anywhere including our district office our coaches everybody is pitching in so i'm very grateful for all the help that everybody's putting forth right now any other questions or comments for mrs martins thank you very much next step i believe we're going to have an information video 7.2 for a first review of the 2022 bond proposal and i believe that because mr moore's not here he's going to president can share with us president kaler members of the board this evening mr moore is unable to join us however he has recorded the presentation that he had hoped to deliver tonight in person so that you have an opportunity to hear it is important to know that this is a high level overview this is going to be a conversation that we will be having with you for several meetings now as we as we begin to seek some additional information from our community which we will outline in this presentation tonight as well to kind of discuss a why why are we having these conversations and why would we be bringing these topics uh to you for the next several meetings as we discuss this for higley so we will watch the video and then at the end have any conversation and discussion good evening board president and members of the board this evening i will present the first review of the 2022 bond proposal this first review will take a high level look at the why higley is proposing to go out for another bond and outline the next steps of this bond cycle as noted this presentation will discuss why italy is proposing to go out for another bond this year first i will briefly discuss why school districts ask taxpayers for bonding authorization a lot of that has to do with the state and which we live in as i've noted several times arizona is one of the worst ranked states regarding education funding second i will discuss why does higley need a bond i will review the elephant in the room the middle school lease obligation higley currently has as an obligation each year i will discuss the current facilities and what the next five to ten years of projected maintenance needs are i will review the district's historical and projected enrollment over the past 10 years higley is one of the fastest growing school districts in the state and we are still projecting enrollment growth over the next five to 10 years i will also discuss the projected bonding capacity and show how the continued growth within higley has affected the last four years of total property third i will talk about how the district is committed to listening to our stakeholders and providing them an avenue to provide feedback and input into and lastly i will discuss the next steps for the bond and highlight some important dates along the way why bond typically school districts that ask voters for bonding authorization have large funding needs such as major cap multi-year capital projects and programs these can include new construction additions and or improvements to new and existing schools general facilities and grounds improvements safety and security technology furniture and equipment and people transportation now that we have discussed why school districts go out for bonds let's discuss why higley is going up for bond again in first the elephant in the room is the middle school leases as noted in almost every budget conversation the middle school leases play a large role in the district's financials as a reminder the district does not own the two middle schools under previous administration husd agreed to a charter school lease structure to fund this construction of the two middle schools sasebo middle school and cooley middle school husd does not own these schools nor writes to the lease as it is managed by a third party for the agreement now looking at the graph presented on the screen the green bars starting from fiscal year and continuing until this current fiscal year indicate husd's lease payment obligation every year and the amount of 4.4 million dollars the red line indicates the total payments compounded year after year to date husd has paid an approximate 44 million in lease payments from its state allocated capital budget husd has 31 more years of payments remaining totaling approximately 168 million so why is this a bonding problem first the district annually receives approximately six million dollars in capital funding from the state as noted the district has a 4.4 million dollar lease payment obligation every year that legally must be paid from its capital budget doing the math approximately 73 of the district's capital budget is spent on the annual lease payment as a reminder the capital budget is intended to support the annual upkeep of the district's facilities as well as technology and furniture and equipment among other things so for the last 10 fiscal years husd has operated with only 26 percent of its capital budget and has been forced to rely on transferring maintenance and operations funding which is funding used to pay for salaries and benefits of our district employees with less capital husd is forced to prioritize capital dollars to the highest need this in turn has already started to create a long-term financial problem where preventative maintenance on buildings facilities and equipment cannot be funded due to the need to prioritize what little capital funding is left after the annual lease payment in summary while the district is still in the research phase to determine if the middle school leases will be proposed as a category the 2022 bond what is clear is that the middle school leases will continue to play a large role in the district's annual budget until they are paid off which is currently set for fiscal year 2053.

okay bye hey is he back to roping yet sorry i just say that because i know i know ropers i'm not i'm just asking i'm not poking the bear i'm just saying that um like i don't i know guys i mean people rope until they okay and it's not me oh okay i'm going to call the meeting to order at six o'clock i need a motion to adopt the agenda i move to a jobs agenda i'll second all in favor aye aye aye you're on guys hi one more chad i'm here chad okay i got a motion from four to zero we'll get back to him all right thank you guys for attending um today's meeting we do have two of our revenue board members online so we'll be it'll be challenging let's go ahead and do the uh pledge of [Music] it allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay we have board minutes let's see yeah approval of the uh meeting minutes i moved to approve the minutes from the previous meeting as presented second all in favor aye aye aye i got an eye okay motion carries five to zero um all right so we will move into superintendent report thank you mr president um a couple things uh just a reminder that asba does have board operations and leadership training that's known as boltz training uh it's been adjusted a little bit i think they're now the tucson trip uh got moved by the tucson training got moved up here and they pushed it back out a little bit but if it is something that you're interested in attending uh just let mrs costano will get you signed up uh just uh over a couple overall uh impressions on enrollment uh in comparison to december we're about the same i think we're up maybe six or seven kids after two days i haven't looked at it for this week uh it's a little bit less than what it was last year at this time but if you recall last year at this time we we had a little bit of an influx uh at christmas after christmas coming back to the district just by the way kobe uh worked out so so you see 342 is a difference between the two and and prior to that we were running about 400 and that's just the influx of of kids that came back last year um midway through the year due to covet um the other piece that's in there for the first time you'll see that our alternative school for the middle school we have seven students as our alternative middle school um uh students there and that's the first time you've seen that other than that everything's been pretty much the same um in terms of in terms of numbers let's see a couple things going on i want to let you know that right before christmas the sports medicine program at the high school is recognized by the national athletic trainers association as a safe sports school what they need to do to get that award is to create a positive athletic health care administrative system provide and coordinate pre-participation physical exams promote safe and appropriate practices and competition facilities plan for selection fit for function and proper maintenance of athletic equipment provide a permanent appropriate equipped area to evaluate treat injured athletes develop injury and illness prevention strategies including protocols for environmental conditions provide and facilitate in an injury intervention create and rehearse venue specific emergency action plans provide or facilitate psychosocial consults consultation and nutritional counseling and education and then be sure that athletes and parents are educated about potential benefits and risk of the sports as well we'll get a banner but more importantly we're the only school district or only high school in the state that receive this award uh depending on and looking at past history um one or two schools in the state are all that receiving it on an annual basis so it's a pretty prestigious award it speaks uh very highly of mr nelson in the job he's doing it at the high school so and that's a very that's a very good program that's taking place up there we also had the combs ffa did their first district competition uh in december they'll have some other ones coming up in the spring uh did fantastic the ag mechanics team placed first the livestock judging team uh also was first and the horse evaluation team was third um uh this is just the first uh competition there are other competitions that will be coming up uh and then this uh this week uh the e4t conference is a conference at asu poly that kind of is for area high school kids so queen creek ourselves ala ben franklin and it's a chance to kind of work on uh possible career paths as juniors and uh we sent over 200 students that which was more than any other school uh schools that that went and they they had a chance to go through different breakout sessions and learn about different careers and and resume writing and all those kind of things that you need as part of as part of uh choosing careers and then they had a chance to go in and talk to different vendors and also they had post-secondary schools there that they could talk about you know what happens in the future there's your junior so a little bit of planning prior to your senior year uh and i didn't want to uh give out a shout out to mr scrogum i talked to uh uh chris clark who's the executive of the queen creek chamber and this was put on primarily by the queen creek chamber this morning at an event i was at and he just uh sung mr chris grogan's praise that he knows that when we're involved and john's involved that everything gets done and taken care of without hesitation in the right way and and very much a positive reflection on our district and on our school and so i do want to shout out to john and thank him for for everything he's done with that because it's a pretty good job and then just a reminder i know that all the kids in the audience will be just massively disappointed but this monday we won't have school because we have civil rights day uh and then we will have obviously our next board meeting in february uh next thing i have each month what we try to do is recognize different employee groups or individuals in the school district and january has been recognized as for school boards for national school boards i would say uh if you're not aware the three people up here and the two people on the on the phone um we pay them handsomely which is they get no money whatsoever so it's really easy on the budget um yeah there you go snickers um but they do take on a lot of challenges every uh every month and they they take a look at what's best for the school district and what's best for the kids we're in a time right now that there's a lot of complex issues out there there's a lot of different things happening with school boards recently and yet you have people that are willing to volunteer it's a four-year term there's some people that think they want to volunteer for school board and they get elected and then after the first school board meeting they think they have their agenda done and then someone says yeah now you have the rest of the three and a half years to go and it's like it's how long and so it's it's a significant commitment uh trying to understand the complexities of very complex system-like schools many people in the audience may be used to running businesses given all the rules and regulations that school districts have it's not quite the same as running a business it's much more complex and to come on board and try to learn all that takes quite a bit of time and their efforts and the amount of information they get from us as we try to explain what's taking place it's much more than just showing up once a month to meeting and so as january being a school board recognition month we wanted to take a moment and thank them for what they do for our staff for a community for our kids we have uh what's called the blue apple awards in this district as yes so so we got a special blue apple for each of you to say thank you for everything you've you've done yeah we don't need to get up you don't need to get up and take a picture thank you even though kayla's not here we'll still get a picture so if we get on the board [Applause] this is exciting right this is so awesome thank you so much yes thank you [Applause] yeah it is oh yeah thank you that's my report for today very nice okay we have um school and staff recognition mrs schaffner from cta if you come up please good evening madam president members of the board dr wyman and members of the audience i'm so excited to talk about cta i'm a new principal to your district but it's been super exciting to be a part of the community and the family we have lots of people here to talk about some programs that we have on campus so first i just want to get right to it and i'm sorry if we take a lot of time so be prepared so first up i'd like to introduce lisa allison and erica gonzalez they are our two kinder teachers and they are going to talk about some of the program that they put together to help some of our kindergartners you know we got a lot of preschoolers in that didn't get a chance to attend preschool or struggled and so they decided on their own a program that they wanted to put together so i'm going to let them talk super quick all right good evening everybody i'm lisa allison and i teach kindergarten at cta along with erica gonzalez and before the school year started we had talked about maybe starting some sort of club for our kindergartners we often work with kids after school to help them get caught up or tutor them for those who needed but we wanted to provide something that would be available for all of our kindergartners we decided to put together our reading enrichment club for that we it's not like your typical club like nhs or student council because we only offered it to kindergarten this year because of covid and it was our first time doing it and we wanted to see what kind of attendance we would get we just offered it to the kinders this year but we are looking to hopefully be able to maybe include first or second graders in the future we started it back in september and just ended right before christmas break and we're just trying to decide what we're going to do for the rest of the year if we want to start it back up or if we want to work with those kids who might need a little extra help and we actually got half of our kindergartners to attend which was about 22 kids and it uh we did it every tuesday until four o'clock after school so ms gonzalez is going to share a little bit about what that looked like so good evening and everybody um like miss allison had said we did want to try to give our students the kindergartners something to look forward to you know everybody else all the older grades that get you know some fun stuff so that's what we wanted was to make this fun for them so it wasn't anything to help them with their reading but it was just to help them love reading and be able to get a book and not just have it read to them or them read it but really look into the book and what is the book made out of so we did concentrate on characters and settings and you know the plot what could we do to make this story different that kind of thing and then we always incorporated some kind of activity for the kids to do after we read and talked about the book so it was just a way for them to dive deeper into the book instead of just reading it and see what the words were nice hang on just a second so they're always there really early really late so here's to get you some coffee have you seen them i made some salsa with your peppers and there's also a gift card in there for you guys to buy some books for your kindergartners she's always buying a skit i'm not crazy you're welcome we appreciate your support oh you bet they're not talking it up enough they really work hard with those kinders to really bring them some opportunities and it's been really great for them so thank you guys for doing that i appreciate it next up i'm going to have mrs heath come forward and she's got two of her students from nehs that are going to talk a little bit about what they're doing on campus for their program so come on i have emma butler and abby butler they're going to talk a little bit about um they're going to talk a little bit about what they've been doing on campus as well to um support our campus see i was smart i brought somebody else to talk so i'll give you just a little background on nehs my name is sherry heath and i teach sixth grade at cta and nhs was established in 1921 for high schools and it was a nationwide program including territories that lie outside the united states continental area it was based on four pillars that's i have to get these right service scholarship leadership and character and so they have to go through kind of a rigorous sorting through process to be able to qualify for the club um it started with nhs which was in the high schools and then it went to njhs which is in the junior high which we have a chapter here in our district and then finally trickled down to nehs national elementary honor society um the students are required to do several uh not several hours of community service volunteer hours some nothing you can get paid for so if you babysit your brother and sister and get paid you don't get any hours for that um but then they can they accumulate those hours throughout the year and then at the end we celebrate those hours and where they've uh where they've served other areas in their community whether that's church or school or uh at uh out just out in the community all right so i'm gonna let them tell you what we've done in the past it's a little bit tougher with covid because you can't get out there and really do a lot of community service um however we've been very creative with that and i tell you things that we've done in the past and things that we are doing this year so abigail hello my name is abigail butler and i'm the president of our nhs club this year the club is open to 5th and 6th graders currently we have 12 members nhs stands for national elementary honor society students have to go through an application process which includes writing an essay explaining why they would be a good candidate and get recommendations from three of their teachers you must also maintain all a's and b's and be good role models we do activities that benefit our school and community prior to covid we had sponsored activities for our school and families like carnivals and dances since covid we have focused on our students and staff last year we made ornaments for the staff honored our principal and counselor with posters and encouraging notes we held the virtual talent show the telethon which raised over 800 dollars for school chromebooks we also wrote letters to veterans and made posters for them this year we held a fundraiser called boograms students could send letters to their friends and nahs would deliver them we used some of the proceeds to purchase a pine tree for our school garden and bird feeders emma will tell you more about that my name is emma butler and i have been in nehs for two years we meet weekly and have a lot of fun this year our focus has been on our school on our school garden we have worked hard on creating a space for each grade level we painted the planters our school colors and did lots of weeding raking and rearranging one meeting we tried to make stepping stones but that didn't work out too well we made signs for each grades area and prepared their planters we also purchased bird blocks and feeders and supporting are supporting quite a few birds this winter this week we'll be scheduling grade level tours so students can start planning their spring planting next year we plan on starting a com posing program most of our sixth grade members plan on applying for njhs national juniors honor society when they come to the middle school next year so we can continue to contribute to our community thank you they're both very involved in school and so i might have played some trickery just in case you're wondering um so um mrs heath if you'll come up a little closer mrs is not only just one of our sixth grade teachers she one of her partner in sixth grade was out on leave and she had to jump in and help with the sub she does nehs she does the garden club we had some staff out during our veterans day celebration and she jumped in to help with that she's always super excited on campus every morning when the buses come in she's like buses are all in have a great day um so i wanted to make sure and honor you this month with a blue apple award i'm not going to take it out oh okay but i wanted to make sure and honor you with that because i i appreciate what you're doing very much you're always there no matter what um and you guys mentioned you guys have your gardening stuff so here's a couple of gardening tools um and a gift card for you guys to get some more stuff for your garden and some other things that you're doing thank you yeah it will break so don't drop that i'll try anyway [Applause] at sunshine club oh she makes sure everybody gets something for their birthday if they're dealing with a difficult situation like she is there all the time making sure and a lot of times she does that out of her own pocket so i really appreciate when she does that um even though i know she's spinning a lot next up i'd like mrs tapia she is our library assistant part-time and recently took on our part-time para position we lost a special ed teacher and we needed support for our students receiving special ed services we kept kind of scrambling around going what are we going to do what are we going to do and we thought oh the one that helps everybody let's ask her so come on up she um decided to take that position she doesn't want to talk she thinks she's here to present as well but she's not um she took that position on and she comes in every day we don't cry after six she's always happy it doesn't matter what time i text her she always goes i got this it doesn't matter where i put her doesn't matter what i do she always says i'll do whatever you need me to do just tell me where you need me to go so she misses out on library quite a bit for our poor kids but i will tell you that she just has always just got such a great attitude she's always super bubbly she's always super helpful so you don't have to speak tonight but she is doing a lot of help with our sped students by making sure that they get some services in the meantime and collaborating with the teachers to do that so this is your blue apple award you're very welcome tricked her husband into doing it too but he didn't make it so some office supplies some gift cards for you to be able to get some more stuff to help you out as well so i just wanted to say thank you so much you're very welcome so you don't have to speak yes [Laughter] i know i should she i told her you can just stand behind me and i'll just say the word you want me to say um but she really does she works really hard um so along with that trickery if i could have miss shauna skrogham come up [Applause] so shawna and i always john is a cta member by the way he is a knight with us sean is my admin assistant a lot of times people will say well it's because you guys work together every day no we really think we were siblings from other parents we're just not sure when i came on to cta shauna did nothing but accept me 100 she met me at the interview process she was kind polite she took me in she taught me a lot of things about what was happening at cta she challenges me sometimes to think about other things like sure you don't want to think about it this way she 100 percent has the back of our campus she supports me and every day she what do you need me to do she jumps in and helps with kovic she jumps in and helps with finding subs she jumps she just jumps in a hundred percent and she supports our staff she supports our kids just to talk to all the parents um and i think that she's always thought you know i just want to make sure that you're okay doing what you're doing and i'm like nope i've got this you just send those people my way and i'll talk to whoever you need me to talk to happy angry sad it doesn't matter um so this was just a way for me to to say thank you to you we don't cry after 6 p.m on our campus um so here's your blue apple glass of work don't break it it's very fragile so make sure i have your plan um there's your little plant she's a so delicious kind of freak a little bit um we try not to eat out a lot john but we do uh we try really hard um but i gotta get you some stuff so that you can have some fun and enjoy things that you deserve you're very welcome you can kill me tomorrow she's she's she's tad bit nosy so she's always like what's going on what are you doing why do i gotta go what's happening why do i i just need you to help me so on behalf of our campus i'd like to thank you for letting us honor our campus they are amazing staff and i love being a part of it so thank you very much [Applause] okay miss tuffy and i had some a lot of uh good conversations in the parking lot at pre-kinder [Laughter] um okay so we're over a student of the month dr buses madam president board members dr wyman again thank you for this opportunity as i say every time i'm up here this is the best part of my day and i sincerely mean that partly because of the great students that we have but also because i get to see my colleagues which i don't get to see a lot of times during the day so thank you could i have abigail wall come up from combs center of success we will celebrate abigail at a later date could i have kaylie compa come up from combs high school right over here kaylee was nominated by mrs goodrich and she said that she kaylee is the fccla president and she is one of the most caring students i have ever met she always tries to make sure people are included and feels good about and feels good about themselves as an example is when we went to conference and even though she was a senior and had a lot of friends at the conference she made sure our freshman students were not alone and she felt and tried to include them at all times kaylee is kind and shows her caring and paying attention to other people's needs congratulations kaylee could i have david sokovia pina come up from the middle school okay we will celebrate him next time could i have audrey castillo come up from cones traditional academy she was nominated by mrs kepp when i think about a character trait of respect audrey castillo immediately comes to mind audrey honors the rules of our school and classroom and is always working towards helping us reach our class vision she's polite and courteous and respectful and respects all the differences of others she's careful with student property and other items that friends may borrow of hers or of others when a conflict or a misunderstanding arises she's empathetic and tries to view things from the perspective of other parties involved she exemplifies the characteristic of respect in every aspect and mrs kepp is so proud to nominate you as a student of the month congratulations audrey could i have aiden perry come up from combs judicial academy [Applause] so for those of you turn around for those of you that were wondering why there's two this week it's because last week last time last month i apologize aidan couldn't make it so we're celebrating aiden tonight aidan is the most kind-hearted caring young man i know according to mrs nino he is sensitive to others emotions and genuinely cares if they are upset he gives kind and encouraging words to help friends through tough situation and he cares with his whole heart my opinion you're going to make a great teacher someday congratulations could i have anthony sanchez come up from ellsworth could i have all of her graves come up from harmon elementary okay he was nominated by the second grade team oliver is an amazing student he goes above and beyond showing the respect trait everywhere he is we are happy to have oliver as part of the second grade and we look forward to great things in the future with oliver congratulations oliver [Applause] could i have haley thatcher come up from ranch i love the hat love the hat my son has one too so when i was asked to think of a student this was by mrs hardo when i was asked to think of a student who showed the characteristics of respect mr thatcher immediately came to mind he's amazing and kind-hearted young man and he always treats others with respect uses good manners and is considerate of others feelings he is courteous and polite to everyone and he respects values and the feelings and thoughts of others he is always asking if he can make me and others and consistently help me and others and consistently demonstrates respect to adults and his peers congratulations haley and finally could i have mason lucas come up from symington oh i take that back we found out that mason was not going to be here tonight so that's our students of the month thank you we'll take some pictures we'll take a couple pictures real quick and then we'll continue on with the board meeting parents it's a great opportunity for you to take pictures and you don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting unless you feel like you want to is okay [Music] huh laugh or cry take your pick it's all good [Music] that was part of the problem and then the other one the lettering was tiny you what [Music] oh my god [Music] yeah i i couldn't help myself i kept looking out there and i wanted to go get a picture of it show up shelley i look out as i'm taking pictures i said board meetings got me like is that not the cutest thing you've ever seen in your life is what is he noticing okay we're going to go ahead and get started with the rest of this meeting so we can uh get on home so um do we have any um governing board updates anybody want to update on anything anything they've done no i i attended a uh combs clay crusher uh [Laughter] meet that was fun so my son's on there but anyway they did good um any them too do we have lisa chad nothing i have nothing okay public comments we don't have any oh interesting um okay so we have any um questions comments on the consent agenda no okay well then i will take a motion as presented on the mic now i move to approve the consent agenda as presented second all in favor look at you two motion carries five to zero look at that i'm all excited um okay so we have action items eight point 8.1 discussion and consideration of approval of a purchase of the 184 passenger bus and 214 mini buses now go ahead and introduce this and then if you have any questions for mr anderson he's there we're just looking uh we have uh in the 2016 bond uh there's still dollars that are available as we've taken a look at some of the issues we have with transportation uh we're looking to see if we get a couple more buses i know there's a number of buses bought uh the the first time around um but they're still dollars available uh what we're looking at with the minibuses is uh and especially if you start to like it look at the next couple years uh our uh sports teams as an example will be relatively speaking fairly close in the in the league with poston beauty eastmark ac h and chandler and and close trips alas and when we don't have enough buses we have to go ahead and go commercial and that is extremely expensive we've had some situations this year especially at the middle school where we're we're paying it for a significant amount of dollars to basically transport kids two miles uh and back and so we think this would be a good use of dollars to to go ahead and be able to transport kids you don't need a cdl license uh many of the rural communities this is the way they get kids around and coaches as an example could drive or anybody that that works for us could drive and so that's why we're recommending two of those at the same time we also run into situations with uh the lack of drivers and so trying to get another big bus might be able to help consolidate if we need to consolidate we would not look at these getting these buses for i mean would order them now but they probably would be coming in we hope it will be by the beginning of the year new year meaning july uh it just depends on supply chain issues and stuff like that so we'll look to pay for a chunk of this out of the bond money and then the differential will be out of daa for capital purchases i don't know if there's anything you need to talk with mr anderson he's talked with joan about this and so we're ready to move forward i think it's a great idea all right um no further questions i'll take a motion okay i moved to approve the purchase of one 84 passenger bus and two 14 passenger minibuses utilizing mojave contracts as presented second all in favor motion carries five to zero i'm liking you guys on top of this all right um 8.2 um discussion consideration for approval of additional qualified evaluator for combs unified school district for the 2122.

good evening madam president members of the board dr wyman remaining members of the audience um our auditors brought here actually yeah they're pretty good our auditors clifton larson allen has completed the fy21 financial audit that is the annual comprehensive financial report the single audit report package and the usfr compliance questionnaire which we provided to you for your review these items are brought to you each year and as a discussion item but in february of 2021 arizona revised statute 15 914 was amended and now includes section h that indicates school district governing boards shall publicly accept all audits and compliance questionnaires by a roll call vote the annual comprehensive financial report is a narrative overview and an analysis of the financial activities of the district in conformity with general accepted accounting principles or gaap the single audit reporting package is a report of internal controls over financial reporting and compliance and other matters based on an audit of financial statements performance in accordance with government auditing the single audit package noted three items for the com district for last year the first one was a reference of internal control of annual financial statements this notation has been in the last few audits and is regarding gap review the second item the auditors noted that the energy savings agreement was not included in the fy 20 annual comprehensive financial report and made the appropriate adjustments and notation in this year's audit findings and the third item was some capital item listings and depreciations required correction i've discussed each of these items with the auditors and i feel comfortable that each of these will be resolved when we review again in the fy 22 school year the final item that was provided was the uniform system of financial records or usfr compliance questionnaire this report assists the auditor of the off sorry the office of the auditor general in determining whether a district has attained an acceptable degree of compliance and internal controls the few items that were noted as above were the capital assets financial reporting and also attendance with your acceptance tonight all final reports will be sent to all required party parties and posted appropriately hard copies will be provided to you as soon as they are printed and clifton larson allen is working right now do you have any questions big document i know i would just like to make a comment that the three material weaknesses in the audit and financial reports are very minor and i know you've you're taking care of them and you know we can't expect people to be perfect but there was nothing um that shouldn't have happened it was just just you know human mistakes so that was very good and then on the uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire if i went through it i think there were 67 to 72 categories i looked through that believe it or not and only having three no's that were very minor is also very commendable so i want to thank you and your team for the good job they did on that thank you i'll make sure the team knows now we have to do a roll call vote on this yes ma'am any other questions no no okay so we'll start with uh bob we need to make a motion first right yes okay so i would move to accept the annual comprehensive financial report single audit and the usfr compliance questionnaire for fiscal year ending june 2021 as presented second okay so we'll start our roll call bob hi steve hi uh let's see lisa i chad i and myself shelly i okay motion carries five to zero do you pronounce that usfr or you suffer i do have a friend that calls it the russian chronicles [Laughter] i'm gonna tell you what steve you are on a roll tonight like he's got these one-liners like you wouldn't believe um i know you're missing it um discussion and possible consideration of action oh to approve the board organization this is the fun time we all love it so we get to decide we get to re-organize and decide who will be the president and the clerk for this next year since there was a train that came through here just a few minutes ago just note that under statute you do not have to do this this year the only time you legally have to do it is uh after an election and so therefore you can go through the process and if it's going to end up with the same results as we have right now we can dispense with motion one motion two motion three motion four motion five motion six and just keep the board uh how the board is constituted as it is so just know that legally you you do not have to do this agenda item if you do not want to if at the end of the day you're going to be exactly the same as you are right now so can we have a discussion first yep yeah that's how i have the discussion and if you're not going to do it then you can go from there okay go ahead steve what are your thoughts i think we should keep things the same and why because right now we just need consistency what about the budget what do you mean but we don't have to change our names oh yeah that's right and we don't have to change it was all about that that's right wouldn't want to put that extra expense out there right um bob i think shelley's doing a great job i would like to keep her as board president and i would be happy to serve again as clerk okay i'm good do i need to move to keep it the same wait wait we got two more what do you think chad i'd like to keep things the way they are it's working really good and i think uh i think it works well okay lisa do you have any thoughts i just think consistency is the way to go you get the way it is okay all right so you could just go ahead and table this item then and then we just continue with what we're doing all right i moved to table item 8.4 second okay where do i think well okay all in favor all right hold on um steve all in favor aye hi i motion carries five to zero all right that was pretty painless okay um discussion item 9.1 discussion and information on student achievement winter benchmark results marcus good evening madam president good to see you back here members of the board dr wyman i am here to give you an update on our winter benchmarks um so we're going to be looking at our third through eighth grade middle of the year benchmark results in our ninth through twelfth grade second quarter benchmark results uh just a reminder that we are looking at our district's standards-based benchmark area of our comprehensive assessment system so for us at the district level and even for our site leadership we're really looking at is the retained learning aligned with the state standards do we have gaps in our curriculum do we need to look at structural or instructional changes to our curriculum also for teachers because of the nature of these types of assessments it's really important that they're looking at the kinds of items that are being asked of students and really having those conversations at the site level about does the level of our instruction meet the level of how we're measuring them and now finally we want to we try to emphasize that this is not a grade and we shouldn't be grading students on that um so mastery is set at 75 or higher on these assessments so i want to make sure that you remember that as we're looking at this is that we're looking for when when you see the the the scores that um if they are proficient that means they scored a 75 percent at least third through eighth grade benchmarks they're comprehensive they're standards-based assessments that are aligned to the the new state assessment they're pre-built by illuminate they're technology enhanced it's online our window was from november 29th through december 17th and we assessed in ela and math so this first chart you're going to see is our third through eighth grade ela benchmark proficiency this is the percentage of students that were at or above mastery so again this is the percentage of students that scored above a 75 percent remember these are comprehensive meaning that they are end of the year assessments um and so we're measuring mid mid-year mastery of what we hope that we'll be mastering at the end of the year um so you can see a lot of our grade levels in ela there was an uh increase in the students proficient we've got a couple of blips out there with eighth grade and fifth grade this is the average percent correct um because we're measuring proficiency based on percentage correct on the test if i feel it's important for you to see what the actual average percent correct on each of the assessments was so when you look at that proficiency you can kind of get an idea of where our kids are and how close they are to that 75 mark get go ahead would it be fair to say that when we're looking at the middle of the year since it's halfway through what they should have been taught we're looking for somewhere around 50 percent is that a way to look at this it i would look at it more like beginning of the year was without any instruction at all so that's where they started so ideally yes we should see some uh i would love to see that they've made half of what they needed to do to get to 100 was the way i would i would put it okay so if third grade they started out at 35 so um 65 percentage points to get to 100 so if they had increased if we'd increased by about 32 and a half i would have been ecstatic so looking at it from that point of view the third grade didn't make as much progress as i would like yes and then this next chart um we have a a with an illuminate a report that we can run that that shows growth and so the way that [Music] growth is measured is we are looking at its formula so it takes the the pre-test score subtracts that from the post test score so the middle of the year and then that divides that by 100 minus the pre-test so so we're getting a percentage number um so kind of expected if it's for high growth we're looking for a number between 66 and 100 percent typical growth is about 41 to 65 percent moderate is 30 to 40.

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okay wow nice look okay tim all right uh let me see so where are we uh i'm looking for i have a um so call to order uh call the meeting to order uh roll call okay i will handle that mr white here is ham here ms harrigan here okay mr white you do have a quorum and your entire legislative committee here thank you um stand for the pledge okay give me one second can we see the flag not yet i don't see anything myself right now good pledge allegiance to the flag the flag the united states of america and to the republic for which it gets under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you thank you for that so um basically just uh i had some ideas on things that wait a second i had some ideas on things that uh from from my perspective possibly from the board's perspective might be beneficial to us um some the state i'm guessing will not agree with uh so the purpose of this meeting for people who are watching so this is the legislative committee and the idea is that as a board of ed committee you know we discuss legislative issues and how they could impact us um and so i just had so pulled together pulled together an agenda um and there's some items that uh i'd like to discuss tonight that could impact the cheshire schools and see if there's anything that we could do to work with the state on these things so the first item on the agenda is prevailing wage the mailing the prevailing wage law is so vin cut me off if i go off here or get anything wrong basically the prevailing wage law i believe is a law which requires uh native connect and government entities within the state of connecticut so municipal or state have to pay prevailing wage what is the prevailing wage the prevailing wage is basically the union wage and generally speaking unions get paid more than say private contractors and so the prevailing wage law has a has an effect of increasing the cost of construction when in the absence of the prevailing wage law the cost you know could very well be lower if you could just go with a private contractor at their rates is that a fair way to describe it then yes the prevailing wage is essentially it's a schedule published by this by the state every year that we're required to pay as a labor rate for any renovation construction project a hundred thousand or more uh and new construction is a million dollars or more and um the rough estimate that's used is your prevailing wage adds about 20 to the labor rate um had you not had to pay prevailing wage so i guess so i actually asked the town manager about it and the number the number he said as a rule of thumb was double the labor wages are you i'm just curious just to be clear on it is that possible or 20 of the total cost that might be half of the labor cost yeah well i don't want to put out anything there that i don't know to be accurate but you know what we use as the labor rate it adds about 20 to the labor rate had you not had to pay prevailing wage okay okay so do you know so i'm curious do you happen to have an idea why this really is in my mind right now is we're talking about school modernization we're talking about numbers that go into the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars so we so we're above new construction if it is new construction it's going to be above a million dollars so the prevailing wage law would um be enforced so i'm wondering do you know as the rule of thumb that you were using uh so what's the total what's the total proposed cost for the schools right now the two schools that are it's 88 million isn't it uh that would be the net cost to the town so the project value is over a hundred million dollars right okay projects for two labor you know labor is a component of that it's not the entire cost obviously can i ask a couple questions yeah you can you can go so what percentage of it let's just take a renovation project for example the new roof a job what percentage do you estimate labor will come what typically do you see is it 40 of the cost of the project it depends on what it is so i don't want to you know i don't want to guess at it i mean i we could probably put together some numbers and it's going to vary depending on you know what type of work is being done and the prevailing wage rate does vary by uh type of work being done you know there's a prevailing wage rate for roofing a prevailing wage rate for you know masonry work so it it varies and that schedule is published um you know while we're speaking here i can you know i can just pull up an example and show you and it it's created by town so just a thought i know we're never going to get the the legislature to agree to abandon prevailing wage maybe and i think this has been an approach taken in in years past we look to um raise those ceilings so instead of a hundred thousand dollars maybe we asked for a 500 000 750 000 cap um and for new construction maybe we go to 5 million something that yeah that um recognizes the reality of of the law yeah i did share um and i just like to mention that the town council did adopt its legislative agenda in uh december and what they are suggesting in in their proposal is that the renovation project threshold go up to 500 at least five hundred thousand dollars from the current 100 000 and they they didn't mention the new construction at a million because the legislature did raise that from 400 000 to the million dollars it's currently at back in 2017.

i could send it again do you want me to read it is that necessary yeah i mean i don't think so maybe somebody could share their screen i got it i can do it if i can figure this out give me a second okay uh i'm just checking out the 2022 state agenda legislative agenda there's nothing in here about i don't think i can share screen right i got it face i tried um oh present now i got it oh okay it's going to ask you to present your entire screen you could select that then hit share and then just go to the screen you want to share there you go can you guys see it [Music] no it's still coming up i think it's still loading it looks like it's stalled maybe yeah i agree with your hand on that all right well at least figured this out i think that the gist of it i have it up the gist of it is uh what vin said in 2017 new construction got bumped from 400 000 to a million right and however while the threshold for prevailing wage for new construction is a million renovation projects has remained at 100 uh dot dot dot therefore we again advocate for an increase to the threshold for renovation projects to at least 500 000 and also recommend that both thresholds for new construction renovation should be indexed annually to reflect the in the effect of inflation so i see no reason why we should very veer off of what the town has already decided on and it only makes sense for us to come together on that statement no i mean i'm fine with that i would go further but if we have if we have consensus on that then that's a good thing i'm happy with that again i think again part of this is i want i just want the public to understand it because i think that um it is it's a law that could change right and it's just huge numbers for us right now because of where we are i i would i would like to see higher thresholds but uh if we want to present a position or you know we want to be in solidarity with the if we're going to be more effective by standing with the town council on this one then i'm okay with the language okay um and i'm not just so everyone knows i'm not planning on calling for a vote tonight i mean obviously either you can if you want but this is just for discussion is what i'm thinking getting a sense of where we are um so uh if it's okay move on to the next item i think we should move through them if we're just it's quite a list you put together there yeah so let's move through it so i think this next one is relatively simple i'm not basically state law pertaining to referenda my point on this is that to some extent our referendum questions are governed by state law and also our referendum questions having been on the council i do believe that there is an incentive to come up with a small number uh if you want something to pass generally speaking it makes sense to me that a lower number is more likely to pass than a bigger number and in a certain way that incentivizes reducing the number and cutting things out for example we're doing school modernization we want to have a lower number let's take the insulation out of the ceiling it doesn't something like that wouldn't make any sense so all i'm thinking about is if the if there was more flexibility in terms of uh referendum wording that would be a good thing and it is i think it's partly governed by the charter it's also partly governed by the state it gets into legal nuance that i can't grapple with i've tried and it sounds like legal gibberish to me but my point is that uh more flexibility with referendum wording would be valuable so i just wanted to mention that okay is does this require a legal uh change in the law that i think it i think it could yeah i think it could yeah i i don't know the details of it that well i'd probably have to talk to a lawyer about it to even understand some of the stuff but okay um and one more question is this a board issue or is this a town council issue i mean who's putting forth the i think this would i think i mean it's both but the town is puts together the referendum yeah the thing for me is it comes back to school modernization right now this is like i don't feel like the board can be decoupled from some of this stuff because of that um school construction faith i think you would mention this one maybe the funding for it funding rating i think the point of this was do we foresee any changes in the construction formula and um it also if i we can actually combine here um because there's similar themes with the state pension issue which is just below it in both cases um there have there has been talk about adjusting formulas to um to address um concerns about inequities within the funding system between say alliance districts and wealthier districts and ben i don't know if you've heard any of this but it relates i've read a few things about lawmakers um particularly concerned about pensions um in making uh wealthier towns contribute more to the pensions to offset the fact that they can pay a higher salary than say a water but we can pay a higher salary than waterbury can supposedly um same two with construction are they going to adjust those so that the waterbury district gets more than we do which they already do but i mean there's there's those are all proposals at this point and you know the state did you know uh increase well we know that teachers pay in to their own retirement plan the state did increase the amount that teachers pay by one percent into their retirement plan that's probably about three or four years ago um i i don't know that that's open that's going to be proposed again legislatively and i hadn't heard about you know what you're referring to faith that they're going to try and change the formula how to to fund the state pension okay well um it was it was an article that i had read i believe in ct mirror and it may not even be able to get onto the agenda this this time around so if it's not then we don't at this point need to add it i guess because they are very tightly controlled in what they can introduce as as bills this time around aren't they the second session particular session isn't it mostly addressed the short session uh legislation or bills get introduced by the committee chairs i think and this is the short session the long session anybody can introduce it so you're probably going to have more legislation introduced in a long session yeah and and the focus primarily has to be on budget doesn't doesn't it or is that am i wrong i don't think so if if it has budget implication it just gets a fiscal note yeah because they do a two year they i think it's a two year budget the state actually does right okay okay i'm willing to take that off okay um yeah yeah with regard to the state pension i uh i don't really want to have that get tweaked too much or a huge cost get put on to the town all of a sudden that's my point i don't want the talent i don't want the cost imposed upon us that's all um next item here is existing or potential mandates impacting education faith you had mentioned some of it also leslie had mentioned something to me that you probably know better than i do which is the k-8 curriculum and there's so that that's just one of them but i'll just mention it right now it's further down the list but there's uh there's a change to to create a model k through eight curriculum yes right now it's optional and i'm i'm comfortable with optional stuff but i don't care for mandates so wait just in fact tim some background it has not been developed yet this was in the implementer bill um at the end of the session last time and it is um section 374 effective july 1st 2021 not later than january 1st 2023 the department of education in collaboration with the state education resource center shall develop a modical model curriculum for grades kindergarten to grade eight inclusive that may be used by may be used by local uh and regional boards the content of the model curriculum shall be rigorous age appropriate aligned with curriculum guidelines approved by the state board of education and in accordance with the statewide subject matter content standards adopted by the state board pursuant to section 10-4 of the general statutes be in accordance with blah blah blah um and it gives the language and it shall include and integrate throughout such model curriculum at least the following a the subject matter prescribed of the general statutes and gives the statutes um b native american studies c asian american and pacific islander studies d lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer and other sexual orientations and gender identity studies e climate change f personal finance management and financial literacy g the military service and experience of military veterans age civics and citizenship including instruction in digital citizenship media literacy that provides students with the knowledge skills necessary to safely ethically responsibly and effectively use digital technologies to create consume digital content communicate with others and participate in social civic activities principles of social emotional learning that was i and j racism it talks about how circ will develop the curriculum and consultation with persons and organizations with subject matter expertise in the model curriculum they may utilize existing and appropriate public or private materials personnel and other resources that goes on and said the state department shall make the model curriculum available to the local and regional boards of education and to the departments on the department's website and this shall be submitted not later january 15 2003 so that's what we're talking about so can i ask a question about this so is the purpose for developing this model curriculum so that districts have some guidelines or language to go by if they delve into any of those areas that you that you mentioned um good question it doesn't state its purpose it says its model and says districts may and i just i think i think the concern is that this does not become another curricular mandate that's i mean that's my concern i mean if it's out there as an option that's the law right now as it's optional but my understanding is that there are people who want to turn it into a mandate and i just disagree with that i mean i don't have any problems with it as it's currently states because i think it's a good thing to be developing some guidelines around all of those issues uh to the extent that there will be there are districts who will want to pick and choose some of these things and then you know then there's models to um refer to sure yeah no my understanding is that's what's happening right now is it's it's supposed to be getting crafted um for to serve as a model yeah to serve as a model yeah but it's it's an option it's it's not a mandate that's the difference and and it goes to the um broader issue and and we've talked about this i think with the last time with the last go around with the budget is just the number of mandates that the legislature continues to impose on districts that cost us you know a lot of money that takes away from instruction actual instruction and i i guess my message to the legislative uh delegation would be stop really you know let us catch up we've got three four five pages of single space tight you know single spaced list items of things that we have to comply with because it's very easy for the legislature to impose this upon us and we have to come up with some way of implementing it or be in non-compliance so i guess the general question is how do we how do we get them off this idea of continually mandating things that we have to do and that's a question anyone wants to answer i mean in some respects districts won't do stuff unless you do mandate it and there is stuff that needs to be done and and it costs money i agree with that but you know all the special ed all the special ed stuff for example you can't let some school districts just say it costs too much we're not doing that um it's a broad brush that i think many of these they are very general with their mandates and it embodies i agree with that as well so you know i think we're not we're not living you know in the early 1900s i think we all have a social conscience i think our town is equitable now if another district doesn't comply i'm sorry i don't i don't mean to be cruel that's not cheshire's problem we've got to concern be concerned about what cheshire is doing without for our students and ensure they have a safe environment and i don't think we're going to skirt corners or or in any way stiff our kids and i don't understand how a bunch of folks up in hartford can tell us what we need to do to keep our schools safe and our kids safe and our kids educated so i don't know i guess i'm on an autonomy kick but for me it's just for me it's a general principle i just don't want any additional mandates i support i mean i support special ed um but i guess where i'm coming from is i i don't we i don't want any new mandates making you know making jeff and vins and marlene's the whole school system their lives even more difficult um and it's not to say that it's not without a good intention but it does complicate things when you get mandates put down on you so that's that's where i'm coming from on it i wonder if um if we could uh change our focus a little bit and and think about looking at some of the past mandates and if there's anything that's obsolete stuff that should be taken off the rolls um at this point i mean it seems like that's the legislature's job to do that but i mean they do have a wonder if there are president oh i'm frozen you're good now all i was gonna say is they do have a legislative review committee that is at least in theory supposed to look at that stuff and repeal it when it becomes obsolete but i know vin is does anything come to mind for you for stuff that would just make your life easier if it because it really doesn't have any point to it at this point well sorry i'm gonna find it's just if you haven't no it's okay i'm just gonna bring up um you know one of the items that we always present in a in our budget hold on one second it's those pages yeah so this this is from last year we're actually in the process of updating it we'll be presenting this tuesday so this is this is a fairly comprehensive list it's it's not a hundred percent but some of the items on here you know the basic things you mentioned special education student transportation you know adult ed you know those are all items that yeah i just don't see those changings some things did change over the years like the you know this is the patient up at the top here if you could see where i highlighted the first item the patient portability the aca act a lot of those provisions have sunseted so it's it's not quite costing us what we were concerned it was going to cost and over the years what i've done is believe it or not i have taken items off these lists that no longer apply but for the most part items that come onto the mandate list don't come off this slide is the one that will update for tuesday night's presentation but you could see here you know some of the things that we the bolded ones are the ones that were added to the list last year so we know the connecticut state minimum wage went up that's not education specific but it certainly affected us the two-hour sexual harassment training for all employees we did complete that last year obviously the the pandemic requirements we put it on here as a mandate because they were certainly guidelines mandated by the state and you know i can't say anything specific comes to mind with you know with mandates that come off the list i i will mention uh because this has just come up and it's not a state mandate i stopped sharing the screen but you know i'm sure everyone's aware that the federal government uh has required you know that um individuals be employed be reimbursed for any home test kits that they purchase well as far as we know and this is being investigated you know the the onus is now on us as an employer if an if an employee who has health coverage with us bought a home test kit they'll now go through the claims process and they'll be reimbursed for that so if there's no money that will reimburse our medical benefits through cigna then that essentially becomes an unfunded mandate right or wrong i mean i'm not objecting to the fact that you know we want people to be able to test but it is going to add potentially a cost burden and so we'll talk about that a little bit on tuesday night tom kwalczyk from usi a benefits consultant and i talked to him about this question today and he was already aware of it and on it so the mandates you know come from different different levels of government you know i just don't expect them to stop coming you know my personal opinion is if there's a mandate it would be helpful if it comes with the dollars associated fund the mandate but at the end of the day there's only you know the taxpayers pay for all mandates whether it's funded by state or federal government or or locally see that's this what you just mentioned though is like it's one of the reasons why i just generally don't like mandates and that's independent of whether i agree with something or not the testing we have i think it's i think it's very valuable for us to be doing it but i would prefer if there was no mandate and you you know sat down and discussed it wait how do we do this what makes sense we know we have to do it what can we make happen how can we make it happen and then you also configure then you're also planning it before you before you make all this stuff happen you know how many staff you have how many teachers how many kids if they're on the medical plan you're gonna know how many kids they have and things like that you can start to come up with numbers on this stuff but that's why i prefer to be optional from a state perspective and then we're going to do it anyway but just not have it mandated and we can we can make it happen so ben back in september you sent me that document from shipman um what is it shipment and jimin and goodwin yeah i put together a comprehensive list of all mandates um the couple of years old at least it's 25 pages long i i wish i could share my screen so you could see this i mean it's just yeah i don't know it's uh it's it seems extreme so i you know we're not going to be able to i just would like very much to imp impress upon our legislators that just because they want it you know they're they're passing a bill puts another layer of expense and administrative burden on a district that again potentially takes away from our primary duty which is teaching these kids and so not going to see any bill come forward that says we'll no longer mandate but i i would just like them to be aware and sensitive too that was my point in putting that on um yeah so the yeah the the mandates are widespread um but i think we could probably just convey to our legislators you know in general and there are in general that you know mandates are not great um and uh they're burdensome yeah there's there's some uh yeah so we touch we've touched on a few of them and a few of them are specifically i'll just mention them right now um the next items on the agenda that are more specific they actually came the next two items came from jeff uh so vin i'm not sure if you'll want to speak to him at all but uh number one i'm trying i'm jumping around i've got a lot of uh school indoor air quality so then um correct me if i miss anything on this but the the concern that uh jeff has with this mandate it basically says we have to meet a certain our schools are old and this indoor air quality rule says that if we don't meet certain air quality standards over the course of two years the school gets closed so this is the this is the proposed legislation and i'm not saying that you know it's good to you know we need to address the air quality but supply chain issues everything else we're talking about school modernization we're going in the in the right direction i think i don't want to see our schools get close to all of a sudden that that to me would be a big problem we kind of saw that i don't think anything happens with the state all of a sudden well no well with kovid we saw it all of a sudden we're literally we're pretty much i know but the state moves a lot more slowly than that anyway but this is this is coming from jeff and he's saying this is a concern for him and i support him on it um is it did i kind of yeah i mean in a nutshell what this um proposed legislation would require is all schools to reach a certain level of ventilation standard you know air conditioning you know proper filtration i mean to your point to him because our buildings are old many of them don't have mechanical air systems at all so the cost of doing that in our district where you know only one of our buildings i would say would probably meet the standard that means seven buildings we would have to retrofit it would be i don't even want to say it's millions i i think it would be above 10 million dollars to make our schools compliant so we would we certainly don't have funding for that at this point and you know even if the state provides funding i i don't think realistically we can get it done in two years if all schools across connecticut have to upgrade to meet these standards so yeah i i i'm hopeful that you know whatever is proposed is gonna you know wind up with you know the right amount of time and the right amount of dollars to provide a solution that the state you know desires which i don't i don't disagree i mean it is 2022 right our building should you know have full air conditioning and you know you know the best quality ventilation to improve air circulation and a lot of this comes out of the pandemic concerns so it's something that should be done but how it gets done and how it's funded is a big question and certainly cheshire if you look at how much funding we received for esser you know the three grants combined was just under two million dollars so trisha did not get enough even to upgrade the hvc in one school and you know the two million dollars has basically been slated to either help and safety or earning loss we'll spend it all on that there won't be anything really left to do any meaningful improvements that the state's looking for in this proposed legislation thank you the next item on the agenda student data privacy and so this is basically there's a lot of laws um we want to ensure our student data is kept private but it gets into contracts and lawyers figuring this stuff out and it's done pretty much right now at a town level and what jeff is advocating in support of a particular in support of particular legislation is saying can the state do this because otherwise we have you know 169 towns looking at all these different contracts when you can do it much more simply at a state level it just would make more sense is that a fair way to put it yeah i wish it would have been done that way i think it's what three years in from when the legislation went into effect and so we've done all the legwork that we've needed to do and you know as jeff and you're saying when this got introduced and and passed 169 school districts all had to figure out how to comply and so yeah i mean hopefully this is kind of a model for how not to implement you know a uh a requirement like student data privacy um and so legislatively i think this is certainly something that should be mentioned as you know there was a lot of time and effort put in 169 different times to accomplish the same thing and you know i guess what i didn't explain is that most school districts are using a lot of the same software most school districts are using all the google apps most school districts are using power school most school districts you know are using um you know a lot of the software that students share on a common basis so if the state would have done all that legwork would have saved a lot of time and energy for for all of us um let's see so ben are we raising that as a comment just an observation um or is there any action we can ask them to undertake what i'm saying is i think we've solved the problem at this point because we are three years in i know we're compliant with the student data um privacy requirements you know as we at this point it's kind of ingrained in what we do so if we're going to go out and purchase a new piece of software you know which we we just did um earlier this year for transportation routing you know we made sure that we incorporated the student um data privacy requirements into the contract so it's kind of embedded in what we do we just saw a nice presentation on that too didn't we faith we did it was very good it was excellent it really instilled a lot of confidence in in what we're doing in cheshire public schools anyway but so it's a kind of a cautionary going forward make sure you find a better way to put something like this together if you is that yeah not to send 169 school districts scrambling to accomplish the same thing right okay and i think the legislation was kind of passed in a hurry because of some issues that were going on and concerns that were raised so it was a reactionary piece of legislation in my opinion and not enough time to implement it in a global manner okay um next item on the agenda uh mental health so this is i put this on here um i know this is a concern for jeff the actual the the first person i heard this from was liz linehan um so she i'll characterize which what she had conveyed to me which is um then i think i'm gonna get i think i'll get this right the state has been given a bunch of money from the federal government in relation to kovid that money has not been earmarked for anything and liz would like to have some of that money earmarked for to address mental health um particularly with children i think she chairs the children's committee um it goes right to you know the schools when we're talking about children um and so her her interest is in getting funds to uh fund mental health counselors um either uh at any moment in time throughout the school year so we have budgets and we have to we have certain details we have to live with our budgets um and make those decisions up front as to how we're going to spend money and so what she wants to do is to pass a law to provide funding for mental health counselors and provide it in a way that school districts don't have their hands tied for other reasons like annual cycles and things like that is somebody typing i hear a bunch of clicking going on i don't know if that's mic or not just to go on that was me just taking some notes oh okay yeah sorry um so that's basically where that's basically where liz i think what liz is looking for and when we meet i definitely don't want to put words in her mouth by any means um when we i think tony will put this you know the legislative committee will be on the agenda so we can bring some of this stuff up um and lizzle but i'll make sure that liz is aware of it so she could speak on her own behalf but at least put this out there um generally i look at it you know i i don't like spending lots of money but i do think mental health is mental health particularly in the last two years has been really important and in the absence of knowing where else the money would go i i generally i you know if she wants to say let's spend some of this money on mental health i think it's a perfectly um perfectly reasonable way to spend the money that's already been earmarked to be spent so tim was your sense that this is going to be this money though for this mental health for children is going to be allocated somehow through the schools no i think uh the school's the way i would say it is she was saying she would set up a grant system so the school applies for say you know eighty thousand dollars hundred thousand dollars for salary plus fringe for one year it's a durational position i'm thinking i i'm probably going a little bit further than our disc than my discussion with liz but it wasn't i'm pretty sure she said it would not be set up to create a cliff where it's locked in i'm not sure exactly where you know you hire you go out you get 10 counselors and then the next year everybody's gone i think she was trying to address that in some way because that's not an ideal situation either but i may very well be going beyond that could have been a conversation with someone else i don't recall uh i i hope that when tony puts this on the agenda she'll be able to speak to it herself i would like if we can and again i'm i'm looking forward to what liz has to say but um give the school the discretion to if we're going to be getting these funds some kind of funds um that it's the school's discretion where they go you know if if we decide that we need uh specialists for instructional remediation i would like to be able to access that money um if we feel we are adequately staffed for mental health um i just i don't want to pigeonhole money that may be coming our way yeah no and i understand that i don't know where this i have no idea where this where these funds how much the governor has how much the state has and where it's headed right now um it could be all headed to you know something that you know i would think is totally useless i have no idea um but i mean i i'd like to hear more i'd like to hear more from liz and i i just to be clear i did not even mention this meeting to her tonight it wasn't meant as any sort of slight i just figured she's busy and we could get her to uh we could hopefully she'll come to the full board meeting i mean i did speak to her about it and um i think that was the idea that we would try to get our legislative delegation to a board meeting rather than bringing people to committee meetings where we could chat more informally okay um let's see so we already touched on k through eight model curriculum um bullying interpretation and an application of connecticut general statute 10 22 d it's bullying i think some of this stuff if i recall correctly some of this gets to the laws or law that's been passed regarding bullying in recent years where parts of it are vague i don't know if it vindi are you close to are you close to this it's i think maybe it touches on staff or doesn't touch on staff i forget there's i know jeff is jeff knows it really well um anyway i think we could i don't think this is any sort of law or anything um i think this is just nudging this will just be nudging our legislators to get clarity on it and i think that's something that they probably could do rather than getting you know whatever it is 76 votes in the house another 18 or 19 votes in the senate uh just to get clarity from the uh administration on these things um the last item just other items i'm gonna throw i i'll i'll ask the two of you in a second if you have anything but one thing that i definitely want to mention is the school bus depot so we have our school bus depot on is that school house road or sandbank i forget stem bank road okay yeah it's on sandbank road right right almost right across the road from highland bowl for anybody who doesn't know where it is it is state property and we basically lease it from the state for a dollar every five years but it's still state property it would be easier we would have more flexibility if the town if it was granted to the town um and so i think this is something that we might actually our delegation may be able to advocate for and make happen um so that's something that i i'm a strong believer in i think it's a win for cheshire and i don't see what the loss is for the state because we do everything with it anyway it's just moving the ownership on the books i don't know even if you had anything more to add to it yeah i mean just the it's 3.26 you know as tim said we pay a dollar every five years but we do have to renew the lease um you know and it's an administrative process i mean the it's actually the department of corrections that owns or that supervises that piece of property and you know in addition to going through the administrative work of renewing the lease every time we need to make an improvement on the property like we did over the last few years we had to replace the septic system we had to replace the old office trailer which is is you know actually that goes property with a new one um we have to go get approval from the state and they've not been difficult to work with you know they they do give us the approvals to do the improvements but it doesn't really make a lot of sense for that property to stay with the department of corrections you know would be more sensible to transfer the property over to the town we're responsible for all costs related to the property and i don't you know believe that the department of corrections is ever going to need that property back so just make it a lot easier for everybody including the state to transfer the property it's not an unusual process for the state to do that in fact where the cheshire food bank is that's also was formerly department of corrections property and it was you know transferred to the ownership of the town so as you said tim i hope that the you know the delegation does support this and it can get done it was requested in last year's session it didn't it didn't make it through i don't think it got voted down i just think that they they didn't get this on the legislative dockets so hopefully this year we can get that through this would this would benefit the school buses and benefit the children so maybe this falls on this committee the children's committee i'm confident liz would support this one yeah um yeah no i know it is commonplace because i think we have the town has 10 acres um that mary fritz got for the town years ago and it's it's probably i'm not is it adjacent to the school bus depot or is it separated by parks it's my understanding that that property is you know which is route 10 yeah so for people who know it the property i'm talking about is north of jarvis west of route 10.

to keep their mouth from while we're here and also use the microphones teresa blind daily here hi joe silva here catherine hodgson here albert russo hmm [Music] welcomes public participation and asks that comments be limited to three minutes the public bank offers objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students snore against any person connected with the danbury public school system favorite public schools is temporary causing in-person public participation in board meetings as we collectively work through social distancing techniques to prevent the spread of profit 19 in our school community the danbury board of education invites members of the public or residents of the town to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to public comment underscore eob at favorite.k12.cds dear quarterback the parent pick up policy this is from gene river the parent of policy in our schools is a good one but only if it's fouled and enforced [Music] children in the u.s are abducted each year 90 of them by parents i am writing to let you know that pembroke school where my grandson attends is not following your product goals at all and has not since the beginning of the school year i think of my grandson about once a week i have never once been asked who i am or been asked for my id no one has ever checked to see if i'm on the list from his parents as an allowable person also all i have to do is tell them who i want and they call for him mind you my grandson is not the same race as me either so he doesn't look like me at all my daughter has emailed the principal several times and the principal insists the man at the door will check ids and that and then when verified will allow the child to go with the adult then the principle continues in the emails that the man at the door will always check ids check the list and then remember by facial recognition that the adult is allowed to take to child my daughter has shared the emails with me the particle has never once been followed the man of the door does not know me has never asked for nor seen my id and does not know how my grandson is related to me he does not recognize me because each time he has asked who i am therefore no one has ever checked if i or anyone else for that matter is allowed to take him my grandson has had at least five different people pick him up and no no one person has been asked for any id or check to see if they're on the allowed list maybe pembroke school has never had an incident but that does not ensure it will never happen this is an easy fix and one that should be enforced i'm asking you to see to it that schools in our district follow the protocol for fan and pickup asking the principal for verification is obviously not enough as nothing in her emails happened the border bank must see to it that these particles are enforced and adhered i will be picking him up in the weeks to come and hope to see a safe and positive difference thank you for your time mostly sincerely gene rick this one's from john smith my name is john smith and i'm a denver resident my question to the board tonight is my understanding is that the public is not allowed to attend these meetings in person tonight due to copyright calling 19 concerns and the record-setting spread of the virus in the community my understanding is only those who were invited are allowed to attend tonight i know that the issue regarding this switch to remote learning ultimately lies in the hands of the governor and state department of education but can the board please explain how you can allow students and teachers to go into overcrowded school buildings that lack the necessary code of mitigation tools and strategies and yet now allow those same people and the public in general to attend tonight's board meeting there is a clear element of hypocrisy here just as there is hypocrisy at the state level when the state capitol building was closed on thursday of last week due to positive code cases among their building staff superintendent wilson and other superintendents in the state should have the power to switch to remote learning when they so choose i encourage superintendent wallston to push governor lamont and the state the state department of education to allow districts the flexibility to go into remote learning and have those days count we must push harder for this for the sake of the safety and health of students teachers and school staff if there is a doubt to be had regarding this coveted safety in our schools i would encourage any board member to go into our schools and see the lack of code mitigation strategies present in our school's cafeterias when the kids kids eat their lunches this is where my friend contacted kobe last one is from elky props happy new year to the board of education this email means in regards to my support of our students and staff within examine public school system and to disclose my concern for funding risks that can negatively impact the danbury public school system the current funding is to provide imperative support services for our students and an increase of funding would ensure educational consistency as well as continue to maintain positive educational outcomes i currently provide support services for our teams and youth all within the dps within the dps listening to the concerns they have regarding mental health social and educational issues and their need for more support and educational staff my concern is that we need to work on funding areas in our public school to better support our students which will also provide support for staff if we don't we will see an increase of risk factors including emotional behavioral educational and social problems and challenges i'm also asking the board of honor the responsibility of serving all students in our dps and to seek out solutions that will reflect this responsibility for example a charter school will draw funds away from our dps and drastically and negatively simply impact students and staff part of empowering and providing protective factors for our students and staff is to ensure that funding is maintained and increased please do the work you were elected to do and protect january public schools i appreciate the opportunity to communicate with you today and will continue to do so moving forward stay safe respectfully i'll take calendars me thank you that the board of education approved the items on the consent calendar exhibits 22-1-22-5 as recommended by lauren kate any discussion on the confederate calendar seeing none all those in favor of warren if you do a little quote please sure just written hi teresa teresa you're on you okay sorry is that an eye rachel celesti hi michelle colello um kate panetta i'm gladys cooper yes lauren bailey i joseph de silva catherine fashion hi albert russo hi and melisa uh staff representatives erin would you like to take the microphone do a quick switch good evening everyone nice to see everyone for those of you who i have not met yet my name is erin bailey i am the president of nea danbury the teachers union and i just actually did the microphone sorry i think he was just too far away let's try again is teachers union and um basically i haven't seen many of you in a while but i wanted to introduce myself to our new board members and welcome you and thank you for your service and thank rachel congratulations on your appointment and we're glad to have you at home thank you and also to say goodbye to joseph sorry to see you go um but thank you also for your service and i know you're going on to do equally as important things so thank you for all that i also wanted to take a minute to share with you what went on today in our schools so i don't always dress all in black like johnny cash today we had what our state union was dubbed a blackout today and the blackout served a purpose to hopefully call attention public attention especially to get the attention of our governor to let him know all the things we still need here in danbury to keep our schools safe the intention although some may have seen it another light intention was not to call out administration or our superintendent in fact just the opposite you will know in a news times article that just came out a few hours ago that we as a teachers union are very supportive of our administration are thrilled with how we have been communicating and how things have been going for the past several months and we continue to hope to work collaboratively to problem solve and address the needs of not only our teachers but our entire staff and of course our students so the blackout today was to highlight the fact that we do not have the flexibility for remote instruction which after last week's difficulty keeping schools open i think probably everyone in this room could agree we need some kind of better plan for the coming weeks and coming months if we continue to face a surge in omicron so as we were hoping to call attention to this today all of our uh teachers rally together to kind of stand together in solidarity to show that we're still continuing to hold each other up and support each other even through these difficult times as you can imagine being an educator for these past few years now has been extremely traumatic for many of our folks and the past few weeks with so many of our teachers getting sick has put an increasingly huge strain on our teachers that we wanted to just let the public know that we're kind of continuing to endure so i wanted to also thank you for your continued support we were very appreciative of getting the n95 mask mask singular to us last week which i'm still wearing several days later and i spoke with superintendent paulson earlier today and we discussed the need to get those more masks in the hands of teachers because these are single use masks intended to be thrown away at the end of the school day not used continually most of us are double masking as you see us as you see that i'm doing tonight as well um the the strain and the emotional turbulence of our day-to-day experience as teachers is not just pseudocoping but it's due to taking on additional work responsibilities and having to fill in for the missing personnel our tutors and paraprofessionals have done an amazing job filling in for teachers when they are out and that's something that we all know shouldn't happen our support specialists our coaches our pbs service people they have all been going above and beyond and i just wanted to make sure and i'm sure everyone in this room understands that but for the public record to let the public know and acknowledge the hard work that our staff is doing to keep things wrong and it's very disheartening when we hear things on social media and from others out there in the public that may be saying that you know we're not doing our best to keep the doors open for our schools that is not the case and i think we've all been doing some serious creative problem solving so i just wanted to put that out there publicly and once again thank the board for all of your hard work and hopefully will continue in this next year have better circumstances to work together on thanks very much thank you moving on to our student please representatives [Music] vice yourselves hi my name is gregory parker and i'm the board of memphis president hi i'm nicole and i'm the thank representative for being here so to start off um the voice for change projects are coming to an end after the submission date was pushed back a week to january 17th students in both apa government and politics and peer leadership are dashing for four deals to submit in order to have a chance to win twenty thousand dollars um these projects include parking lot jobs remaining seniors are involved in the fafsa challenge organized by the state this friendly competition encourages students to apply for the fafsa and earn prior to winter break danbury high school decided to have a couple of fun events throughout the school building including a hot chocolate panda during lunch an ugly sweater day and a candy cane distribution and all three days were definitely a success students love this fun way of wrapping up their learning before leaving for break the board of governors are putting out applications for executive council in order to better hear the voices of the student body this application is open to primarily upperclassmen but we definitely want to see some sophomores and freshmen in order to again hear the voices of each different grade these students will also be helping with school-wide events peer leadership is beginning the process of recruiting new applicants from the class of 2023 these students not only must be leaders but also have exceptional collaboration communication good evening board of ed members cabinet community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative center for excellence the week before winter break a students and staff participated in the ace cares for everyone's leading card project the project was coordinated by english teacher joe mantle and resulted in 104 cards being created and delivered to the prime star center at the danbury hospital for patients this week a students will also be submitting essays about martin luther king jr it is a contest to recognize and celebrate contributions of dr king to our society and ace is currently providing visitations for dhs students interested in joining our community at ace for the second semester dhs students shadow ace students from school day before making the decision to set up an entrance meeting with guidance teachers in order to begin the relationship building process ace would like to recognize donovan matsuk who was awarded the ace of heart the ace of heart award for demonstrating care for others in the month of december ace would also like to recognize jay and batista as a revisiting of the ace of spades award for academics hard work and achievement in the month of december lastly ace would like to recognize haley sanchez and paige francino as our december students of the month and the consistent demonstration of our five behavioral expectations the warren banners will be recognized at our next large guidance and will be represented with certificates and dunking donuts thank you for allowing us to share what's going on with our ace family down on the 26th locust and stay safe and remain stronger thank you very much um do any board members have any questions or anything you'd like to say okay thank you uh you're welcome to stay but we understand if you prefer to leave don't feel free moving along to action foreign any promotion that the board of education accept the letter of resignation dated january 3rd 2022 for board member member joseph britton and in coordinates with exhibit 22-6 there's a motion on the floor by joseph silva any discussions a little newspaper let me bring this to you and i'll see so so one i just want to say how happy proud we are as a cabinet number one i think collectively as a board to know that one of our more most recent graduates of danbury high school is serving in this very important civic capacity you've been an amazing partner and board member these last couple of years and to know that we all know your journey going to school right now so very excited for you in whatever your professional journeys may take you but also really happy to see you on the other side of the council seat and know and hope that you will continue to support canterbury public schools and the children of them i think selfishly i must say with two of my own kids i'm proud you must be he's been an amazing partner for us and to know as former teachers in this district administrators in this district board members who rally and advocate for kids to know this is what we're producing i'm just really happy to see it happening so congratulations [Applause] [Music] um just britain yes theresa rachel toleski hi michelle colello hi kate panetta bye gladys cooper yes lauren daley i joseph silva catherine hodgson hi albert russo louisa i guess motion carries moving along [Music] i make motion that the board of education approved the 2021-2022 superintendent's goals in accordance with 22-07 moved by lauren seconded by tonight joseph brennan give it to him is there are there any discussions comments questions is right are you referring to just how do you write it was regarding the diversity rate between the teacher and students and some other kind of benchmarks for the goals that are set here that just needed a little bit more so not a problem so we can prepare that for our next board meeting is part of superintendent update and john spang and dr neat are on tonight as part of the budget presentations um kim thompson will be here for the next meeting on the hr update that's usually visited attendees may i ask a question yes will there be additional the question is will there be additional edits to the goals now the goals are as they're presented gladys [Music] miss cooper unless there's a request made by the board i i do not have plans to make any evidence to the goals [Music] yes rachel toleski hi michelle hollow okay kate canetta hi gladys cooper yes lauren daley i joseph de silva catherine hodgson yes albert russo all right louisa brandon bye [Music] correct there are two areas i would like to highlight this is budget season 22 to 23 school year and so this season starts off with certainly just kind of providing an overview for the board in the community of what to expect of course with our new chief finance officer so he's going to walk in the community what to expect over the next several months that that process also involves community and community input so dr mead is also going to speak to with those farmers but that's how that's going to take place a little different from last year in previous years the board might recall the community you might recall we had community forums for esser for essa grant and input we courtney and i as part of our community input also had this sort of feedback from the community regarding the operational budget as well um we felt like with that success this success and i had during these meetings we felt like this would be a good strategy to include annually as part of our budget process so john if you can start us off and hopefully you can find yourself with the first page so it's a great presentation uh overview of the process and need to get um that way um thank you very much [Music] thank you very much um so uh the superintendent mentioned it's gonna be uh both dan and i and um one of the parts i'm going to talk to you about is the budget calendar was put together and i think when i'm in the middle of that you get to the community forums i'm going to turn it over to dr b and then he'll come back to me and wrap up hopefully that'll work so we uh we have revamped the budget process from last year and um one of the reasons is we have a brand new uh software program um some of you filled with that name and uh that software is state-of-the-art it allows us to do a lot more things and most of that is done online so there'll be less paper and a lot more of the material electronically but the uh the key to the the key part of the change uh is on your first page where you can follow along um they're gonna build the budget uh in five component parts five parts and those are all things you're familiar with but we're putting them into a different buckets just to help identify them and manage them and control them a little better and each each of the parts has cost centers in and with those cost centers we'll have more accountability i think than we've had before not that we didn't have any uh but it's um it's more uh drilled down for example each of the schools will be a quad center end time principle some of the programs that we have uh iq for example sites and facilities those are will be cost centers they always have been but they'll have a different responsibility this year the first of the five components uh we'll call salaries and wages and that's a part of the budget that will be built here in the central office by my office along with hr and what we'll be doing is taking all of the employees that we had on our last payroll and in our software we'll you know most of those employees are are in bargaining units and unions they have a step function um salary schedule and we'll be able to uh move everybody up a step onto hello okay much better so you hold it down thank you uh so i mentioned the salaries and wages i won't go through that again but we're moving everybody up a step uh to our software so we'll have a pretty of a person like person exact um budget estimate uh once we do that that's done central the biggest change uh for us is the second part and i call that we call that base allocations and what what those what that means is the school our school principals will be responsible more responsible now for consumable materials classroom items what really what our staff and our teachers use every day this will be a little bit of a shift away from the way we've done things we've done more of that those decisions centrally and there still will be many made that way but uh gradually some of that will be moved to the schools and each iu school each school will have a budget it's based on their enrollment they're projected involved we've taken the last demographic enrollment that we have i think it was april of 2021 and looked at the number of students that are expected in each school in september and um schools get money based on that i'll use south street that's independent um you're expecting 341 students 37 you can hear me i know she muted the zoo and i'm [Music] you don't see where it says budget development process standard public school and then it went away it was like step two step i three don't have the same front page just the blue page oh they can hear us okay they can hear us i'm beauty good okay so we're expecting 341 students at south street in september and for every student the principal will get 65 or a total of 33 000 uh to budget for and those will be for things if the say a teacher wants to do something in the classroom maybe enhance the curriculum for example i don't know maybe they want to buy a chair for students to sit in while they read to the rest of the class or you know so all the things you see in the classrooms maybe there's posters on the wall of the uh presidents or maybe the principal wants to have a program to recognize a student of the month and give a certificate or have an assembly something like that things that are decisions that are day-to-day in the schools they'll use this base allocation to help buy that again it's not to change the curriculum but it's allow it's to allow teachers to do more is what's behind it um the the schools haven't had budgets but they've been kind of shaped the management of those has been shared and now more of it is going to come right from the classrooms and the principals who are making the day-to-day decisions um this will allow our central office our central administrators to concentrate more on improvements and direction and things like this um each each elementary school will get the same amount per pupil they'll get 65 but a bigger school will end up with more money than us uh the middle schools will get 75 dollars per student because they have more programs they have more lectures there's more things that go on and cost money in middle school and that same goes for the high school they'll get 85 per student 18 years to these kind of things the pro will the programs i'll call them for example id or sites and facilities they too will have base allocations or budgets and they'll be planning those as well for some of those central administration programs so that that's the second component the third component i'm going to call that uh improvements and you'll see on the chart there it's labeled initiatives but that third component is for really for new new directions that we might decide to take depending on our budget deliberations but they're really that component is designed to improve instruction over what we have now examples not that we've had any discussions yet but let's say we wanted to bring in a new mathematics curriculum middle school curriculum or something like that that would be budgeted centrally as an initiative and as an improvement the same for example the career academy that's coming up we begin to budget for some of the things there uh that would be an improvement that would be budgeted centrally because the base allocations that the principals have just aren't enough money for for things like that same with our strategic plan there are things in there that are different this is where we place the budget in this component or even the superintendent's goals some of those things might require some resources so they go in this third group of i call them improvements the fourth component are i call fixed costs and uh fixed costs are things that you really can't do it's hard to change in the short one it would be hard for us to change for july an example might be the contract with the bus company we just signed a five-year contract last year next year this year to sure we could change the number of buses but the contract is in place another example might be some of our special district tuitions those are driven by ieps a number of those students are likely to be in their same schools next year so that's kind of health insurance is another one you know we had our program sure we could change it but it would be hard to do by july so those are the fixed costs maybe some of your utilities might be found in there too and then the last the fifth component i'm going to call those special needs those are primarily one-time purchases that the school needs to make from time to time but they don't have enough money take the example i used in south street they have thirty thousand dollars if they needed to replace their copy machine or let's say in the art room uh the kiln needed to be replaced or in a school art room it's really not fair to say you have to do those big things out of your pupil that would leave you at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the other schools so there might be a few things there that we just said you know it's a one-time deal and that we're going to put money in so as to not disrupt the equity of the per pupil so those are those are the five component parts john i just wanted to add i just wanted to add one thing about the 500 building components there's one area specifically i'd like to highlight and that's the base allocations for school captain and i we've had quite an opportunity to talk about this strategy and we're seeing number one we feel strongly that our our principals our teachers leadership teams and their respective schools um this this provides some autonomy for them to make these kind of decisions that john has talked about perhaps in some cases they did not have before but for us in terms of building a budget it's an opportunity for us to build that accountability with budget decisions as well so you know danbury like most districts um kind of relied on here's a an emergency i need something to purchase someone makes the decision and unfortunately you get a whole lot of emergencies across the district john is trying to build in some buffer in everyone's budget so that their budget has these emergencies like a contingency built in again autonomy autonomy on staffing these one-time costs that john has talked about schools also have that flexibility but it's an opportunity for us to kind of also control costs because we're going to have schools kind of develop their own budget with your time you need to make some of these decisions but the accountability will be on them um we're seeing this i'm certainly seeing this as an opportunity to cut down on the requests once the budget season has started in the school year and so if you have an allocation for your school not just staffs but for other decisions that you can make in your building we're looking at this as an opportunity to cut down costs across the system so autonomy is great for our principles in our schools the um accountability and then also again opportunity for us to cut down across the processes sure thank you if we could look at the next slide in his budget process accomplishes right so so goal three when you read it it says um to establish an efficient budget process and i think this will do this because we've taken the budget we've put it into component parts easy to identify there's no other place you know where money is is part for something we don't really know about therapy so it's i think it's efficient and then everything is in a component the goal also is to establish a coherent plan and i think by by having components i think that's coherent you just heard how i describe them that can be i think it's pretty clear we'll have to you're new so take a while to become familiar with them but it does provide clearance but a goal 3 also says that we'll establish an equitable distribution of resources medical disputes and resources and the per people allocation does that every elementary school gets 65 per pupil every middle school 75 a high school 85 i think that's technical nobody gets more or less unless they have more students so it does happen and then the next um the next slide is we call it the budget timeline if you could switch to that for a second there's uh what what you're looking at is uh where we are right now with the budget calendar but as mr wallston mentioned we're in the budget season so we've done a few things already in late december we sent instructions out to the principals and program leaders with their allocation and with some instructions that said um here's what here's your money here's what you're allowed to stand on for example they cannot uh hire staff with that money they cannot do building projects or things like that it's it's for what goes on in our in our classrooms and offices but they got that in late december and they're friday we're going to have workshops with the principals either in person [Music] we're going to we're going to show them how to use the software to enter their requests so they'll enter what they want how much they like and um some description of how they use it and what it's for and again we'll be able to see that quite easily as soon as it's entered uh but we've also started projecting the salary and wages of the first component part you don't see that on the on the calendar here you've already started it um it's slow but it's going on and then what we're going to begin to do next week is the component of fixed costs we'll be looking very carefully at health insurance we're going to hear from our consultant what they recommend we budget for health insurance and look at some other things the bus contract things i mentioned but the budgets from the principals and program leaders are due back january 19th but let me uh turn to dr me down for a second and skip the day but your before and after the 19th cycle welcome for new board members should i just shout and so one of my goals is around community engagement and to really improve the two-way communication that we have with our families and back in the spring when we were looking at getting feedback from the families around the essers we felt we were very successful a by the number that came to the forums that we had the input that we received afterwards and then how we used all that input to process what we're going to use the ester money for and so building on that strength that we had already we felt that it was really important to capture families thoughts and feedback of what they wanted the budget spent on it is taxpayer dollar and so having their input is really important to this process so we have two dates coming up next tuesday night the 18th at seven o'clock and then uh the next week on thursday the 27th also at seven o'clock the invitation went out in an email um robocalls reminding families to look at their email messages last night and we have over 30 families signed up already as of when i checked about three o'clock this afternoon so families are interested in the budget we know we'll get good feedback we will on that night have english and spanish going on so we can capture all of our family's interests in the budget and their thoughts and their feedback so i'll take it back to john and that that's where we are with that thank you right and so there will be two of those uh the 18th and the 27th but if you look back at the calendar that allows us the principals and program leaders get their requests back on january 19th but with the forums then we'll have time to consider what the community wants and build that in or change what we already have and if you look at the calendar our goal our target is to have that already by february 4th and submitted to you we hope february 9th complete with as i said the principles the communities employed and things like that so and then then your work will begin or through your committee uh we'll go to the next step so uh that's what's planned it's gonna be a very busy january um i'm pleased to answer any questions in my sure i have a finance committee meeting for 6pm is this the same as this community forum meeting or is that a separate event i'll have a look at that that may be an old um recurring meeting possibly it's in here it's in google google calendar i will get that i'll ask her about that for when was that the 18th my question about the community forum um so it's great to invite families to get their feedback but what about the greater communities and yet also their [Music] their you know to make them aware of our budget and have good question thank you richard we um are submitting it to the newspaper that will go out we'll send it out through our facebook page and it'll go out tomorrow in a mass emailing to all of our community partners as well this is remote correct yes [Music] so the next item on the agenda is the board might recall some of our board newborn members they may not be aware during the spring of 2021 dr former superintendent had presented as part of the budget a new position called chief operations officer so we defunded school year that position as a result of that position as a result of an organizational study and then recent reorganization turned into chief of strategy and operations there are several departments that will report to this position dr mead just presented family community engagement community partnerships rit department facilities department also central registration which is always busy so those those departments just begin with in addition um it was important for us to have someone with a background in communications because this is also going to be a heavy lift for this department as well so communication will also sit in this department and will be a cabinet member as well so we had prior to the christmas break to the holiday break we had interviews held with two different panels both panels are recommended the gentleman i'm going to introduce to you this evening dr sealy had an opportunity we had an opportunity to interview him with the cabinet hopefully he was felt like he would be our good fit and provide the leadership that we need at this time so i would like to take this opportunity to introduce dr steven to the board into the community ask me to say a couple of words before we we him in the corner waiting his turn um uh thank you all this is uh this is really exciting um getting to see all the faces of all the names i've been hearing about reading about and i'm thrilled to be here and to get started with everybody next week um my superintendent wilson said my background is in k-12 and also in higher education i actually started my career as a high school english teacher in california i was at a comprehensive high school of about 1800 kids and then i moved into administration where i was in school from did instructional technology facilities making sure the football fields got mowed and painted and all that kind of good stuff too chaperoning games and staying there until alaska left it 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock in the morning so after i did that for a little while i went up and i did some state policy work too so i i actually got to see some of the inside of the state house and some some of how they say the sausage is made and getting a better understanding of how grants are written and how they come into formulation and sort of what they're thinking when that happens and most recently i was at city university of new york uh where i ran a lot of k-12 partnerships for the college in central brooklyn we did early college partnerships uh wrote a lot of grants did some fundraising with private entities as well and then did some general management stuff as well i was also um institutional effectiveness so we did everything from program management to making sure our accommodation was up to speed when the creditors came through um so uh i was very excited when i when i learned about this role will see you at wallston um my wife and i have been actually looking to come to this area for quite a while and that seemed really fortuitous when i learned about the role and it just seems just i'm very excited to be here and to start working with everybody thank you i just want to say thank you and welcome next on the agenda week of january 3rd delays and school code closures so i just look forward to updating you in real time during the week of january 3rd on first week i think in many ways it's that first week back is what i'm not going to suggest president wouldn't be here tonight anyway but the first week was a struggle for us not just in every public school but in our region and also across the state of connecticut and across the country the struggles we averaged 300 staff members out the week the first week so i just want to publicly thank uh to begin with my team the people who i see every day and through literally together every day over the break trying to plan and prepare for to reopen schools the following week and secondly i have to thank the staff because my team worked tirelessly but then the teachers and principals had to make it happen and i know the board is aware it's been made public by newspapers we had close to 30 bus drivers out monday tuesday and wednesday just mentioned in the days we were in school or almost in school which is wednesday just to be clear um every intention i had every attention to try to get our kids in school every single day um thursday and friday because the staff from projections were such it would not be safe to open our activities so i just want to circle back again and just say starting with the teachers and our principals in our schools thank them for helping us save our abilities i have to also thank the parent because we had a number a number of schools impacted with no business at all in short i had a lot of upset parents as you might imagine the majority of them just brought the kids to school and they understood the position we were in as the school community and they just brought together and so i just want to thank everyone for you know their own spirit of influence everyone kind of played a part in play neurologists want to take them i feel like we're in a little bit better place this week certainly not perfect but certainly a little bit better place this week i also want to share we i and i have to thank uh rich albert john spain um dr cassinero thompson ed miranda the team worked tirelessly it is open but then it was another just before we reopened on the third as everyone in this room is where the governor announced state department of education announced that the deliveries will be made to all the school districts with plans for those deliveries to land in the districts on sunday so i think there was an expectation across the state certainly here in danbury that our teachers our staff would be equipped with these masks for these tests on monday morning we did not have them available on monday morning but we had to go on we were ready on wednesday and this is because they were delivered on tuesday which is fine it was delivered on tuesday and john and we all communicated with our director facilities he's not here this evening but i just want to thank richard albert and custodial staff they went they picked up all the materials on tuesday they were in buildings on tuesday night and distributed around the school district by wednesday morning and available to be made available the students needed them and staff needed them or met the criteria to receive them of course we ended up not having school and that was unfortunate i know our rose and a lot of our staff were on the road our kids were already delayed i was a little delayed in calling the delay for staff and so some of our high school staff were actually on the road um conditions that quite frankly that were unsafe for them and not knowing the conditions would be poorly not only for the local goals but we also going later on the major roads as well thank goodness i understand is everyone got home safely we didn't have a teacher we did have an accident and so i you know i just hope everyone is safe and just going to be mindful of all the people who came out and tried to open up our schools i think it's just a credit to our staff to everyone last but not least phase one of the shipment of tests available to students and staff we received last tuesday and phase one because there is another phase two and we were informed earlier today that phase two will be arriving will be available for school districts as early as this friday so we are expecting once we get something official we will be able to pick up this additional shipment assuming they will be at the same pickup location than it was before but we have yet to receive those details and then with that that means we will have additional tests available for staffing students likely as soon as next week so again we have some procedures for students and staff kelly and kara actually going to walk us through it and i think that is it for me however just before friday before the storm because we anticipated a storm we anticipated this storm like everyone so we wanted to make sure we wanted to do everything we could to keep our staff safe our school community safe we did not have the capacity to distribute the tests to our students so we had to save that for monday but we did have the capacity to set up a test distribution day the day before the storm on thursday and so uh john and uh and our school safety advocates came out to support john if you could just walk the board of the community through what happened on thursday and then dr caspero going to ask you to yes they do so we were close all district staff we were averaging 300 staff members out last week on this week i believe monday it was like 130 140 district staff across the board which is normal normal numbers for us so in fact i think monday night tuesday one was the first time we didn't have to wake up at five o'clock and start to do text making sure we could open up the building sunday so right very happy thanks for that question sure thank you so so what we're talking about is the test kit distribution and if you recall we we knew we might be closed uh thursday and friday and this was after the ice storm wednesday and uh as uh superintendent explained we didn't want to be in a position where we were holding test kits when staff members needed them we wanted those test kits used so we could open school and um really the the heroes are kelly and kara on the day of uh wednesday uh they worked tirelessly to put an email uh out of all staff uh with an attachment an attachment a link that if you wanted a um a test kit the next day uh there was a few things you had to do um online you know indicate who you were where you were but the reason you were requesting it because we didn't have enough for everybody we wanted people who either had tested positive or been in close contact but there was a criteria you had to set up and what they did was they asked staff to uh fill out their forms by eight o'clock that night and people did we alerted them first that the um the email would be coming look for it people did they fill out the form but then that was really a heavy lifting they had to sort that information uh clearly make sure everyone that was requesting it was entitled to one and then get that information back to me so that thursday morning and they were given um appointment blocks i think the first one was from 11 30 to 12 and they loaded up people and that we were at the high school in front of the high school um another appointment 12 to 12 30 or 12 30 to 1.

and then from there meet monthly every third thursday of the month so for my facilities committee um i know our facility's chair is leaving us so i will i will be on that first committee meeting i'll open it and ask for a chair to step forward and we'll let you share them and then turn over the meeting to them okay and mr britton i'm sorry but go ahead no no worries no worries at all um yeah i had something prepared that i wanted to say and um i figured i'd let us handle business first before um being that this is the last time um i'm gonna be speaking as a board member the next time i speak somebody from over there yelling so um and good things hopefully um but first off uh really thank you uh characteristics to present wallston for really this very kind gesture and those kind words and really everybody three years i've been on the board and you know i i meant it in my letter when i said that you know my three years on the board was the biggest honor of my life you know i often felt that my time here was sort of a continuation of my education in danbury public schools because every meeting here i learned something new i there was a new challenge brought forward that really required a unique um you know approach to finding a solution and you know after tonight i can confidently say that i think i've completed my time as a student in danbury public schools um you know having said that i'm going to leave you all with a promise and that promise is although i'm leaving the board i'm not leaving any of you or anyone in this district everything that i've learned being a part of this group i'm taking with me to the city council because it's just a plain fact that this district for almost as long as i've been alive has not gotten its fair share of resources from both the state in the city and i know in my new role on the city council i'm going to be in a position to tell these folks you have to wake up and face reality because these problems are not going to go away with a wish um and to the district's credit year after year this district does more with less and it continues to blow past expectations and in my opinion provide the best education in connecticut and that's to entirely to the strength of our teachers our educators support staff the administration and to me that begs the question can you imagine what this district could do if we're given the resources that it requires and you know personally it also really grounds my ears when i hear people bash camera public schools because this is a strong district this is a great district we have strong educators we have strong administrators strong support staff and our students really received a strong education i i loved my time in danbury public schools and i think the reason why i'm sitting here today is because of the education that i've gotten and you know i'm proud to say i was part of this group we all got along it was all civil it was portable i loved it and you know i'm even more proud to say that i was a part of this group when we navigated the once in a generation pandemic to the credit of the administration and everything that was done um you know beginning the construction of the second high school the career academy i can't wait to see that you know become reality and hiring the first new superintendent in over a decade you know i think those are some pretty cool memories that i'm going to have and you know i want to give a shout out to the folks at shelter rock for being so great to me when i was a student there and when i was their board liaison which i'm now happily passing the rings off to our new board member luisa britton former pto president of shelter rock um and then you know thank you to uh turkish and schulewski former chair cooper all members of the cabinet nea danbury you know and our new rock star superintendent mr walston you know i owe you all a lot and i promise i'm going to have your backs on the city council you know i wish all of our new board members and our seasoned ones returning the best of luck and you know just one final thank you to everybody keep fighting the good fight and you know just remember at the end of the day this job is really about one thing and that's to take care of the students and so thank you all so much it really was an honor so thank you thank you with that i will entertain a motion to adjourn by mr da silva's second seconded by kate all those in favor [Music] and so one of the parents

wow [Music] no no no [Music] hello [Music] [Applause] me [Music] no no no [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] all right thank you so the anaheim union high school district board of trustees meeting of january 13 2022 is called to order at 3 p.m the following members are present anna l piercy and marie randall trejo katherine smith and brian o'neill and myself al jabbar staff has requested the following amendments to the agenda on page two of the agenda pull item 6.2 again that's page 2 of the agenda pull item 6.2 the second item is page 10 of the agenda pool item 10 11. this uh item saline health llc again that's page 10 of the agenda full item 10 11 saline health llc and then the third one is exhibit queue full append as in queen queen yes full appendix a that's from paige yeah appendix a page 107 through as calendars will be up for approval separately under item 10 14.

hey do we have a comfortable emotion then we have the conversation no oh discussion first for our discussion a second and um so awful ambulance we're having a raise believe it or not we have a lot of minimum wage employees right and so we're having to raise up to 1280 from 12 15. so for the last two years the wages have gone up 80 cents for our lowest employees well the guys have been there forever um they haven't got any rates right dessert there we give them 28 points in that year right points of the year raise and i keep expecting to get grumbling up the ladder about you know why why are these people getting raises and we're not we don't have any choice but to prove this because state mandated but down the line i would imagine there's going to be employees at the school that have been here for a little while that are that haven't got a raise and the minimum wage people are getting wages and they're probably going to voice their displeasure either by walking or or in whatever way so i just wanted to bring that up right right uh the arizona proved that you go up incrementally each year until it gets to 15.

yeah i would say the number we don't know is it's staggering what the numbers we do know we have what we have today 93 students out we had 100 and some students out last week for days in a row and parents are calling saying they're not doing well getting any kids out of well that's that's where you have to read between the lives yeah tomorrow maybe not for you he doesn't hopefully parents aren't saying that his school's sick either way you know even he does not go there you know say it shouldn't be in school was like yeah it's happening we don't have the right to ask the parents until about seven years ago uh we had two types of funding if you had more than six percent you wouldn't every daily membership instead of average day attendance by that time about seven or eight years ago allegedly away with that so my first 10 years here i was hammering in attendance because we'd lose a significant amount of money if we had more than six percent absence and even then we're bouncing around five to seven five days i'm not going to vote for a mandate that we can't enforce i'm telling you guys right now i'm not gonna do that and so um i i just don't think i don't think you can do that and i don't think that um that i want to vote for that and so um i would ask that we changed the term to an advisory um for for that reason you know and board highly um procedurally how does this work though she's already made the motion well she would have to second his motion on doing that and then if i don't then [Music] if right now this is an advisor so i mean really the only viable option on the table right now is um to um what are we calling it first business would be to actually do the voting rather than just she could change so fortunately this is expiring is that correct the board advises that all students and staff wear a mask inside through through whatever he recommends that stepping students were and look this thing gets worse we're not going to be in school anyway i mean we've got a quarter of the kids out right now and um so so apparently the masking isn't working so okay so the way i based on that the way it now reads by witness due to continuation of the coverage endemic and development of the new variant the superintendent recommends the board approve strongly advises the use of masks through january 23rd of june okay i'm okay with that all right so any more suspicions we're good okay miss robertson hi mr guthrie mr hopkins mr cruiser says i miss duncan hi hi agenda during studies the request was made for the board to discuss the process for adding agenda items after subsequent study sessions so that's the best we can have agenda items on mondays and wednesdays yeah so yeah so this is something we talked about multiple i have no problem with the theory that the policy has passed this five days morning to me so i don't know it's all about paul tell us this would prevent the policies if i understand it correctly would prevent a monday request for wednesday requests for the following monday oh well the monday the next month and the wednesday of next month is within five days but that's two days and that doesn't always give us time so i have a couple comments on that one is yes so a monday request wouldn't necessarily be for wednesday for the following month um also there are times and we've done it several times where we really do need to add it to the next next meeting there there are reasons um someone's missing from the monday session that we won't want to participate because they requested it there are reasons why we move it all the time so while we have that five-day window there are exceptions yeah and i think i think we had an inception at night yeah the guy that we hired for maintenance but i guess i think i agree unless it was an emergency we didn't have to have 24 if we had an emergency something happen tonight after we all went home we had a calamity in the town or among our students we could have boarded mark emergency um what i'm what i'm trying to protect lance and i try is a project that we can't get done right in 36 hours again right and i think that would just be a matter of communicating or if there's really no room on the agenda and the thing doesn't take precedence the item doesn't take precedent then it might have to be different um there are plenty of reasons why it might not happen i think that's more of communication so we don't have a vote um next business item is discussion of the german agreement the request was made to discuss the adjournment of meetings that would amend that to say the word process mr president i said something at night i'm sure that i've seen this happen for 40 years i've never seen a second i may be right i may not have but it's not work it's not illegal to have a second you don't have to vote on it accordingly to asb uh then you don't have discussion you say i i move that we adjourn at seven o'clock in monday seconds everybody stands up and comes home there's nothing left to discuss yeah you can do it either way the policy says you can do it either way yes because i know there's the one policy that says pretty much at any point in a meeting a board member can make the motion to assure then if it gets a second at the end just to assure that there's everybody's got their business out because there's something you know i don't think that candle itself that eric has something important but angelina just said i've seen this on youtube right we're having a very confrontational meeting with people are upset and pissed off and and so suddenly the president of whatever it is just gambles the meeting closed right and so that that's how it is right now with us right anytime the president of the board can just gather the meeting close greg well no the um yes no the president can call for a recess at any time and then obviously if there's an emergency it can be shut down but that would be a true emergency um part two to close the meeting to adjourn the meeting in the middle of an item discussion so at the end of the agenda the board president can adjourn the meeting you know what you're saying yeah so i think angelina what angelina said that's my understanding is there are two ways how we've been doing it which is you know if there's no other business the meeting is adjourned or there's the other way where there's a call for a motion second and then a quick vote i prefer the second and for the exact transition ronnie stated but it kind of formalizes the meaning and gets at the end of the meeting and gets consensus that we're we're done okay and it's very common among school boards this is this is a regular thing for school for us to do but i can't make any words rules of order is that what you're looking for thank you in order to maintain decorum and the governing board meeting rules of order so that would kind of include what you were talking about where people are just erupting then just to maintain the quorum without having a vote right it's also a recessive meaning we'll pick it up later when things are settled down yeah because they're much likely to still items i mean that's what happened in fayetteville [Music] everyone is comfortable with and you can start applying okay what no i i think it i i just like to say that is there anything more that we need to discuss and then just add a journal meeting rather than all of us vote but that's because i've been you every place i've been on board that's how it's done and i feel comfortable is it something that you feel strongly about that well i'm not going to die what's your preferred option so what happened is my preference is to do the motion and just again make sure the board's all clear if that's what you want that's fine and it seems to be from since it's one of just how the board functions and changes yeah it might be wrong i'm sorry with having the motion and second and final turning except in situations where it needs to happen because of outrageousness so what happens when you don't get a second so then there's really a reason for a little second so there's still business um that walks through i mean it's something posted on the agenda right you can't yeah but we all missed again no because we're going to bring a second right we all want to sit here all night right so what happened well it wouldn't happen because if there's nothing to discuss nothing further to discuss then someone will second it because there's no further business on the agenda yeah that's so does the president automatically get detectable i think if he's comfortable with that but do you understand that that it wouldn't happen right the only reason why it would happen is that at least a quorum of the board members wanted to keep the meeting going so unless there was we wanted to be remaining going for so how about this so we don't have that issue at all how about if someone wants to end the meeting the president not saying you would it just can't just gavel down it's almost in the media in the middle we should have a motion a second vote in the meeting i'm completely fine with this man here saying as there is no more items to discuss on the agenda meaning is now adjourned and that's it that's the court of the peace corps whatever is present ultimately and the principal has to download it down then why do we do the second because we already questioned that exactly so what happened that's why i'm saying for the end of the meeting i don't see an issue in friday just says as of you know whatever this is over bank and it's over now if it's during the meeting well the certainty would have to happen yeah that's just my recommendation i said i'm fine with the the motion for it to be if that situation came up it would be one where either the person is bringing up something which is off again that they wouldn't be able to or they're just bringing it up just to take time up which eventually gets down to that decorum thing and if you're trying to keep us here for five hours right [Music] which also means that if it does become problematic in the way you're saying we should also change it back without having a vote we okay about oh i'm sorry i did skip one i skipped one that was the request was made to have a discussion on the agenda spreadsheets [Music] i feel like this one might take a little bit more conversation just because it involves this spreadsheet um and the procedures around it right are you guys up for it or should we table it and uh february can you just give us a little forerunner or what you're going to bring up so we got to know sure so um you were there but how this process came off as when we had the dsp checkmate training training with the ukulele and she suggested this as a way to track the gender requests um so i feel that i personally find it helpful um there are some things that um i think need clarity um and so that was just my plan was to go over the reasons for having it some of the some of the um communication issues around it that i have seen um and just to come to a consensus so we all agree that this is how it should be working and and how it's how it best works for us and doesn't make a bunch of extra work for angelina that isn't doing anyone any good necessarily are you going to give us a presentation on that builder is [Music] oh do we ever limit how many you can put doesn't seem the rest of us are too anxious about the same problems i mean i think we're going to talk about it but that was i would like so that um the purple is something that we came to and then we didn't discuss so then it had to be moved to another item so a lot of these approaches that we have like they're duplicates right like this policy revision moved to this policy revision moved to this policy revision there's another one so a lot of them are duplicates because i've only been doing this for three months so um and then the red ones are ones that we're going to be on this meeting are going to be on february are done so i just followed what i thought was close enough and you want to keep doing this for the february name i think so also for your um if there's anything in it that gives you you know a few more weeks to work with it and maybe maybe there are some things about it that you'd like to change because it doesn't matter already so if you have problems with it that you need to change i'm hoping the suggestions okay but if i um thank thank you was it just one

our colors are purple black and silver we are home of the monsoon and as soon as I was hired Miss parachini pointed out to me that it is never the monsoons so thank you for that our signature programs at valy Vista High School our AVID program Avid stands for advancement via individual determination our law enforcement program our fire science and our culinary arts so let's talk about some of the opportunities here at Val Vista um so in looking at U specifically our data and our asm2 data for 10th grade for last school year um our reading and writing proficiency so the number of students scoring proficient or higher on the asm2 was at 32% um but then when you dig a little bit deeper into that data and go into our some of our subgroups and you look at our ESS exceptional student services we were at 2% proficient or higher and within our elll pop 0% within our math proficiency we're at 25% proficient or higher and within our ESS and elll you see the same numbers there of 2% and 0% so a lot of opportunities there um for learning uh and the teaching learning process and helping students to achieve at high levels our act data last year our uh composite score was 17.7 and you can see what the district and state averages were there and you will we will talk about a little bit later um but some of our goals this year specifically in the academics focus in on those pieces of data um of course R return to normaly what inperson instruction is going to look like we know there was a lot of students um who were undocumented students students who were in enrolled in a school and when the pandemic hint the students went missing we didn't necessarily have records of their withdrawal um and nor did they reenroll in another school and so um for some of our students uh it's been a while uh since they've returned to in-person teaching and learning additionally returning to our traditional curriculum returning to our events Games Etc and really just getting back to uh normal schooling and forging ahead at Valley Vista we really focus on preparing students for the lives they're going to lead outside of our high school and so we um feel that we have a great opportunity um to help promote career in college readiness and with that and look reviewing that data we also have some opportunities there um so what you're looking at is some cohort data from 2013 1 in 2015 um and the 14 date is not up there because um this is information from the national student Clearing House which tracks uh data for six years um and we all know for the 2014 class what kind of hit their sixth year uh that would be the pandemic so if we look at that data and we dive into it um 58% of valy Vista students enrolled in college within one year of graduating high school U for our 2013 cohort and if you look at our 2000 or excuse me within two years we're at 64% when you dive a little deeper into that and we look at the students who graduated so of the 64% we're talking right so um 500 students 64% of them is just over 300 students um 24% complete a degree within six years that's how long the Clearing House tracks his data um and if you break that down a little bit further 15% of those students was from a four-year school where whereas 9% was from a two-year school so we're talking about students who went to Valley Vista part of the 2013 cohort if we say there was 00 students who graduated 64% of them enrolled in in college within two years of graduating and of that 64% you're looking at um 24% of them completing a degree if we look at our 2015 cohort uh we had about 50% of our students enrolling uh in college within one year and then up to 56 within two years and you'll see a very similar Trend there um so of those students who graduated 23% completing a degree within six years in very similar data 17 and six for our 4ye and two years respectively so lots of opportunities there um for preparing students for the lives that they're going to leave after they graduate valy Vista High School um and you'll see whenever we get to our our goals how that focuses around this data so what are some of our celebrations well we have a lot of them and I might have been limited but I snuck a lot in there sorry Jim um Dr Dean excuse me so Staffing we had a new administrative team coming in uh at Valley Vista this school year four new administrators to the campus and uh we were very busy in the springtime and summertime and we um as well as uh with the help of various support staff members hired 31 new highly qualified Educators for our campus and we are very proud of that we're also extremely proud that all of our classrooms are staffed with a highly qualified teacher uh and I just want to thank my team for all their efforts uh with that our failure rate uh this year um this first semester we set a goal as a campus to be at 5% or less and as of January the 10th we still have some students who are completing some late finals and different assessments uh we are at 6.4% uh and historically and reviewing that we are extremely proud of where we have gone with our failure weight uh failure rate at valy Vista High School tardies so I said that students arrive every day at 7:15 excited to learn with a big smile on their face right um sometimes we have had a challenge of getting students to class on time and so we have restored some sweet practices and we have made a a a tremendous effort um specifically our staff in being present and visible in the hallways during passing periods and really encouraging students to get to class when that minute bell sounds to really be out and about um and not just uh welcoming not only welcoming them but also encouraging those to move along we got to get moving all right it's time to move and groove and get to learning um and you'll see that we really started tracking a lot of our data U for our tardies just beginning when we returned from uh winter break and you'll see that over a period of really just our first week how with the exception of first hour we've been able to just about cut all of those numbers in half um and I just want to thank my entire team at Valley Vista High School our staff our dedicated professionals our security our support staff uh it really takes a village to be successful and it's their tremendous hard work and efforts that have made this possible so thank you to all of them if you look at our walkthrough data uh and so this is specifically when we go out uh as an administrative team uh as well as our uh TLS our teaching and learning Specialists um also uh some of our district Personnel who do walkthroughs on our campus and evaluate teaching and learning uh we continue to do learning walks each and every month and we try to make sure that every staff member um has at least one Lear learning walk per month minimum and you'll see whenever it comes time to um the areas that we're focusing in on with our academics and our teaching and learning uh there's three of those uh that's the learning intention and success criteria being posted and being aligned so ensuring that U the learning is matching what we um intend for them to learn so does the does the task match what we intend for them to learn um and of course the alignment to the standard there and you'll see that in August we were at about 31% with the alignment there um do2 are higher so we're talking about the level of rigor in the class uh we have a strive for a goal to have um all of our teachers teaching at at least a do2 or higher and you'll see that in August we were at about approximately 31% and then our emphasis this year is on implementing quality instructional practices with a specific focus on learning conversations academic conversations within the classroom uh and so we are going through a lot of our professional development centers on collaborative structures and student discourse and in August we were at 38% uh coll a collaborative structure happening within the class if you fast forward that um to the last month of the first semester December our learning intentions posted aligned um to the learning task that is being um completed within the class we were at about 73% do2 were higher at 63% and collaborative structures were observed 45% of the time during those walkthroughs once again this is a credit directly to our hardworking staff and all of their efforts their commitment to being professionals uh who continue to evolve their teaching and practices and we are super proud of them going past academics um we've had a record ticket sales for our choir performance uh in fact our choir director is Mr Preston's brother uh from Willow Canyon and we are extremely proud of Preston and all his hard work uh at Valley Vista and if you ever have a chance to to visit one of our shows I would encourage you to do that in fact uh Shameless plug but clue starts tonight U with our drama club it will air tonight Thursday and Friday at 7 just a plug stuco um we are extremely proud of our student council in all their hard work and efforts they are really who lead our campus the campus belongs to them and it's their responsibility to lead and to facilitate um our culture on this on on at Valley Vista and we are proud uh they stepped up this year tremendously and they hosted an aasc fall Spirit conference and they are currently in the process of submitting a bid to host the state conference in 202 24 volleyball and bad mitt this year were region Champs Valley Vista and we had a girls golfer Nikki U Nikki Bowen who placed 11th in the entire state of of Arizona and she is competing in the highest level of golf that one can compete in the state that's the division one level obviously it's an individual Sport and she placed 11th and we're extremely proud of her and we have two more years with her and we can't wait to see if she can become a state champ at T1 level kayin Kenna uh girls volleyball was our region player the year and then Jenna asai girls basketball signed with the University of Oregon and we're extremely proud of her for that so our Focus for this year uh when you look at what we are trying to achieve as a campus um and the work that our instructional cabinet is doing as well as our teaching our teachers and support staff um they come to to school every day prepared to help students reach their full potential um and and as a campus we're committed to Preparing students for the lives that they're going to lead once they graduate from our school and so with that um we are working very hard uh to achieve goals uh that were set u with our instructional cabinet and input from our school stakeholders uh to achieve an a label academically to increase our act cut scores by 8% meaning the number of students who are achieving proficiency are higher and 40% of our students will um achieve proficiency or higher on the ACT Aspire and those will be our ninth graders finally our instructional goals which kind of Center on things I've already um mentioned earlier today but implementing our curriculum f with Fidelity so ensuring that we are teaching the standards to our students and that also has to do with those learning tasks making sure those are aligned to our standards engaging in the PLC plus process uh we believe a collaborative atmosphere is essential uh teachers learn great things from each other and they continue to learn and grow within their plc's um additionally we want to make sure that we have have um common things happen in our classrooms and so that all kids regardless of which teachers class they're in they are given access to a rich lesson that is aligned to the standards and finally utilizing quality instructional practices and again I've already mentioned focusing on those academic conversations so that has really been our Focus for the year as a staff and with that I will turn it over for questions thank you very much um so you you actually came in with virtually a whole new admin team which can be a challenge but it can also be fun and a lot of opportunity because you can kind of make the school your own so how was that process how how did that all evolve how you feeling about things now after you've had like a a two semesters under your belt now that's a great question and that's a a really difficult question um it was a challenge coming in with uh four new administrators to the team I always call miss parachini our historian uh and she keeps me grounded whenever I have whenever Grand ideas come up out uh she definitely grounds me but um it's it's been a it's been a great experience um for our our entire administrative team and for our staff uh one of the most important things I think that we can do coming in is to really get to know Valley Vista and what makes Valley Vista unique and special um we've worked really hard to focus in on building relationships and Trust within our campus um and with our school stakeholders and um our teachers have done a great job uh welcoming the entire new administrative team because there's I'm sure there was some fear there and anxiety with four new administrators coming in uh but they've been true professionals they've remained committed to teaching and learning uh processes and I'm super grateful and proud of them for for their efforts it's been exhausting at times I'm not going to lie um coming in with with four four new administrators uh but it's been a great opportunity um and you know as Monty Williams said everything difficult or hard as that one is on the opposite of hard something around along those lines and um I really feel that uh coming in it took a while to for us to settle but over time and I would say late quarter one early quarter two after fall break um it really felt like the campus was rolling forward in a positive direction and that we had turned the corner and I think that's um a testament to not only these wonderful folks that I get to work alongside each day um but just our resilient staff they are there and committed to teaching and learning and that hasn't changed even with the new team wonderful um kind of off of what you just said as far as um feeling like things are starting to turn a corner can you share um so obviously I'm share concern that the scores took a drop um are there some things that you've you've been able to kind of assess and and found that are moving in the right direction that you're excited about as far as interventions and opportunities for growth for our students in those areas yes so one of one of the one change that was made um early in the fall is that we're we are focusing in on those our those subgroups that I mentioned earlier right and ensuring that specifically our elll students are accessing grade level standards um which hasn't necessarily been the case and so we made some changes to to make sure that within their Ela classroom they are accessing those standards right if we're not teaching to those standards it's really hard to learn and to master what those standards are asking you um and so that's one change um leveraging the PLC plus process uh has also Mak made a huge difference within our um school so we have uh our teachers broken in I'm sure you're familiar with the PCS but um so they're all broken into the their plc's um and we are focusing really in on the um critical questions for learning um making sure that we understand what students want to know or need to learn and um I think that U the Partnerships we have on our campus um are within our plcs is very strong um we work with um Dave Nagel and Corin um education and um that process has evolved and he even credited our staff he said you know I've been to a lot of high schools and I've worked with a lot of high schools across this country and the level and commitment that your plc's have to um collaborating uh is something I've I rarely see on campuses and so um I think leveraging those plc's for the benefit of our students is also um something that is helping to drive our our instruction and our achievement that's good okay the only other question I had I was reviewing your integrated action plan development sheet and under um under the root cause you you had stated this was just on the website that the teachers don't possess the assessment literacy or have the tools necessary to empower students to analyze goal set and progress monitor can you um is that can you just explain that a little bit more what you meant by that yeah so um can can you can you repeat that I don't have our our sip in front of us but also um coming in new new to Valley oh did you not write that well I didn't write it oh okay then that's not a fair be happy to to try to no that's not a fair question then I'm sorry I I saw your name on it and I assumed that you you had a hand in that that's okay I'm I'm good thank you you sure yes I look forward to visiting your campus so we can chat more then how's that anytime M Mrs perard if I could address your comment Madam president sorry interrupt um the uh the I AP process is year round and there's deadlines in the spring that schools need to turn in for that next school year because it's such a long process to go through ad so um right I understand it was just it sounded like it was a finding that there was just some some work in the area of um of literacy the understanding of um assessment of literacy and so I was just curious about that statement thank you though any other questions yes um so I I wanted to just you know mention the the failure rate I know you said that the goal um was 5% but we're sitting at about 6.4 I I think that that's pretty incredible considering the other numbers presented here um with the proficiency data so um and also um there were some reports of surrounding districts with much higher failure rates so I'm really happy to see that number at Valley um and I just wanted to mention that the tardies I I want to apologize you know for being part of that that problem I signed my son and around noon today we had dentist appointments though so it's okay happens yeah um but I can just tell you as a a Valley Vista parent I have been very impressed with your leadership as as well as your team um and handling a lot of challenges including one of my own so I appreciate that thank you we're happy to have him thank you just had one quick thing and I almost called you Dr Schwarz so please I almost I'm sorry I'm almost I don't know why I did but he's the other bald out I know well I wasn't going to go there I wasn't going to go there you can say it it's fine no um but the fact that uh a couple of the areas of your uh classroom walkthrough data even doubled from August to December I think that's that's a big feather in your cap and uh I think all schools struggle with the tardies um it's it's just a fact of life but the fact that you're you're actually focusing on it and and working through it and even those over those four days um it it did dip down and several of them did D did dip down even further and as far as uh um Nikki Bowen being 11th in the in the state that is awesome um I I lettered in golf in high school and I didn't even get close to the 11th but um awesome awesome I can't wait to see what she does over the next two years so it's exciting thank you very much it's an exciting time to be a valy Vista High School it is thank you thank you thank you and that concludes our school report for this evening thank you right next we move to H3 information on school safety threat evaluation and communication protocols Dr K thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet at the request of a board member this item is added to the agenda and Dr Dean will introduce this item Madam president members of the governing board Dr Kellis and do and members of cabinet even those who are not doctors we would like to uh bring to the podium this evening Miss winterstein and Miss Ryan uh who will present this information on our school safety threat evaluation and communication protocols good evening Madame President govering board members Dr Kellis cabinet members and Community uh Miss Ryan and I are here this evening to share with you uh this process by which our administrators use in investigating potential School threats um of course um as is often uh most of our letters and communication starts with the safety of our students is a top priority and we continually monitor student behavior and safety concerns that are reported to us for school threats once the site administrator is notified of a potential concern or threat they very ver ify and collect additional information to begin an assessment student services cabinet and our law enforcement will be contacted based on the level of detail and the contents of the concern social media threats are publicized more frequently as they have the potential to escalate and expand very quickly the threat assessment process includes consideration of the circle of involvement and we talk about that um that includes um those that are involved the number um of students or or other uh people that are involved any additional people that might um expand on that information or that who know uh the social media shares reposts Etc also the type of threat uh they investigate investigate social media verbal written types of threats the details and the levels of specificity within those um threats or concerns when law enforcement is involved in the investigation they may include their terrorism le as an officer which is often called a t depending on the sever ity of the threat police have the ability to obtain details about social media account owners to identify the people responsible and that's com in very handy in a few of our most recent ones as part of the threat assessment process questions are asked of any students that may be involved as well as the Guardians um by both school and or police to make the determination if the student poses a threat um and by um also having the potential to carry out um what they have stated in their their threat law enforcement may move forward with charges or even an arrest if the threat even if the threat is not credible uh schools will follow their discipline processes depending on the individual student behaviors and now um Renee will share the communication determination process that follows thank you Karen um the pr office works very closely with Support Services cabinet site Administration and law enforcement to determine if a communication is needed in each um Potential Threat situation and our goal every time is to find the balance between communicating enough information without spreading false information and rumors because we do remind our students repeatedly not to do that so we want to make sure we're not falling into that causing undue without causing undue panic and fear without desensitizing our parents to critical school and District Communications and we also um don't want to incite copycat incidents there's a number of criteria that we look at as we evaluate each Potential Threat to determine if a communication is needed um so anytime there's a credible threat that's a yes obviously um and that would be determined with the police another reason that we would choose to um send a notification schoolwide would be as if it's a large uncontrolled circle of involvement as Karen explained the number of students involved in um um some knowledge of that threat and including rumors and as that information may or may not spread um we would also do one if threat messages continued coming in if those posts if it was social media were continuing to be shared and then concerns continue to be raised um by parents or community members anytime there's an arrest or unusual police presence on a campus anytime there's a lockdown evacuation or a shelter in place and and also when there's local and National Trends or media taking place such as the recent Tik Tok challenges we've seen so much about um over the last year there are a few instances where we would choose not to send a communication uh for example if the Potential Threat is deemed not credible um the function of the school was not impacted and no one posed a threat and none of those other yes criteria applied if the tight there was a tight circle of involvement there was only a handful of of people there was very few impacted discussion did not expand Beyond those involved and if it was an isolated report there were no additional reports received or social media posts um inquiries or questions and just to give you an example a couple of examples um I'll show you how that was applied um at one of our schools that had a couple of instances recently and we in one case we did send uh a not ification and in the other we did not so the first case was a comment on a social media post among a very small group of students and it was reported on a Sunday and it was resolved that evening so in that case it was a very small circle of involvement it was not credible discipline was imposed and the function of school was not impacted so in that case we did not send a notification um a a different instance with the same school uh social media post was generating rumors and a lot of comments about potential threats so in that case there was a larger circle of involvement the rumors were spreading and those rumors were impacting the function of the school so we wanted to obviously stop those rumors make sure everyone knew that the situation was managed and dealt with and so in that situation we did um choose to send a communication so as you can see there's a really delicate balance um involving many details um in each threat assessment and communication determination but I hope this helps clarify the process for you and we are happy to answer any questions you may have thank you for the information I was actually the board member that requested the item so I appreciate you following up with it you're welcome um my biggest con I mean obviously my main concern is making sure our students and staff are safe on our campuses um when threats come through and I wanted to get a better understanding of how um the threats are evaluated for whether not they're credible or not and I understand a large piece of that is law enforcement obviously and their investigation but um and I I do understand that there is a fine line between not wanting to spread rumor and not wanting to cause a lot of alarm over something that isn't anything but I almost wonder about um I struggle like with school shootings and it seemed like for a while there were several weeks whether it be with diard or maybe just in the in the media in general there was threats school shootings and things for something of that magnitude I feel like parents should know I feel like um especially if it's a threat that comes in maybe after hours and we have high schools that start at 7:15 um how we can something as big as a school shooting um how we can be sure that everything's tied up perfectly before the first student steps on that campus um and again that's what the police do and so obviously there's a way to do it and they they've done their job but I know like as a parent myself and I can't think I'm the only one if there's something that large and it's something that just barely got resolved an hour before school starts I feel like parents should have the opportunity and staff too um parents have the opportunity to be aware of it so they can make decisions for themselves whether or not they want to send their child to school that day and then communication to staff so they're more aware you know because things fall through the cracks or maybe not all the information or a late piece of information filters in that the police didn't have it changes the whole scenario so I just want to make sure that um you know again I want to get a better understanding of how thorough are these after hours late last minute um pieces of information that come in with threats as far as being resolved before students arrive and how are we making sure that I just wanted you to hear my concern so I can talk about it a bit how we're making sure parents have a choice an opportunity to make that decision to send their child or not because if heaven forbid something's missed and there was a scoo school shooting parents find out the district was aware didn't communicate it that's just tragic I just I don't know if it's our information to keep to ourselves Madam president I I'll answer the your your question in in a couple of different um or the couple questions that were asked so one of the things that you mentioned was um the uh the things that happened on the night shift with the police so uh the police are incredibly responsive regardless of of the time of day and certainly they their work hours are are based upon shifts the same amount of work expectation is assumed in the evening and late into the night in the morning as it is during the day and I'll give you a very recent example of that so last this past weekend we had a threat that a stated threat that came through a safe report at about 9:30 on Sunday evening winterstein and I worked with the principal or communicated back and forth with the principal who was in touch with surprise PD as late as 11:00 p.m.

and not mine any other questions for anybody else I I did have uh one question uh actually for both of you and whoever can answer it the quickest would be great is there any time that a school ad administrator is the one to release a news release about um to the parents without notifying PR I'm not aware of an instance that that has happened um in my time here um we work very closely together even after hours we're on the phone we're chatting communicating and sharing all that information so um it it has always run through our office for that okay just wanted to make sure thank you thank you um just sorry real quick um so I know that you mentioned that there were several arrests uh made and I'm assuming that at some point you're you would do a suspension on a child that makes such a threat right um what does that process look like once they're back Madam president member denmore I can answer that um as someone is responsible for uh student discipline long-term suspensions and expulsions are the worst part of my job one of them um because that deprives the student of uh a portion of their education um but we look at what uh the ramifications what their specific behavior is um in in whatever sometimes it's one person sometimes um there are there are more than one person so we do have uh we work with an independent hearing officer um uh the administration would put all of their facts together in a long-term suspension packet and they would recommend uh based on what our uh history is with the so uh the student Behavior the level of threat um according to our discipline Matrix and and determining uh the level of consequence uh we could go to long-term suspension all the way to expulsion uh depending on the severity of the threat and uh what that student specific behavior was okay oh and sorry specific to your your question when they return um there is always a plan in place there's uh we have a re-entry process for a students whether they return on a short-term suspension up to 10 days and definitely on the um anytime a student has returned from a long-term suspension okay and it usually involves safety plans uh whatever is specific to the need of that student student and parents Administration um are all involved in the process of creating those safety plans great thank you good okay all right thank you next we move to h four information on teaching and learning specialist position Dr kis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet at the request of a board member this item has been added to the agenda and Dr poing will introduce this item good evening Madam president members of the board Dr Kelson cabinet it's my pleasure to introduce Dr Shel asai director of curriculum instruction assessment for 912 thank you Dr asai good evening president pretard members of the board cabinet um I apologize in advance if I squint my glasses are at home um I am very honored tonight to present on teaching and learning specialist um I was honored to be hired as one of D's first instruct coaches back in the day so it's a program very near and dear to my heart um I thought about it yesterday or this weekend my kids got the honor of speaking to a basketball player who actually plays professionally and my kids are great basketball players but they don't always love practice and one of the comments was made wow it must be nice when you make the pros that all you have to do is go to practice in the games at which point um the guy looked at him and said it's not like that I work out with a trainer every single day because when once you get there it's about sharpening your skills and going from being great to being greater and that's really the role of our teaching and learning specialist is to coach our teachers to be the best they can be so going with our bullets why a teaching a teacher Coach position in daer uh today the demand for teachers is high is we have had great turnover and unfortunately we don't have as many new teachers entering the profession due to that teachers can really shop around I know that sitting at Valley doing interviews and sitting at Canyon one of the great attractions was always being able to say you'll have great support here we have a whole position dedicated to supporting you in your first years of teaching along with our great Monday PD um it's a recruitment tool we also know that 50% of teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years and this is unfortunate because most teachers reach their Peak Performance between years four and seven so if we have a chance to retain them and teach them them and increase their efficacy by being able to coach them we're producing Better Learning for students not only that it cost over $66,872 to replace a teacher in training so our TLs are in a way saving us money but what do they do teacher TLS and diert have been very purposely named um as they've been rebranded over the years and we specifically chose the name teaching and learning Specialists to let administrators to let teachers know and the position themselves if they're doing anything that's not relating to teaching and learning they shouldn't be doing it um this does have this it's kind of an exceptionality with covid because they have gone in they have covered classes they have filled in for longer stance when teachers were we were looking for teachers for a couple of weeks but on a normal everyday year they should be working with teachers to improve their craft and working to improve student learning they conduct new uh new educator orientation they work with plc's they work with data analysis which is really more important now than ever before when I taught 20 years ago um we really weren't required to get every kid across the finish line and we got a lot of kids across the finish line but if we lost a couple along the way it wasn't measured and now we're responsible for getting every kid to meet to meet those goals and data analysis and knowing where they are each step of the way is more important than ever and our TLS really help support teachers because not every teacher has time to really pull their data you know you're busy trying to get kids out on the playground you're busy talking to parents uh so to have the TLs be able to say here's your data let me help you with next steps let's target people together to pull for intervention or here's how that intervention group can work more efficiently research supports several things about teaching and learning Specialist or coaching positions as are usually found in the literature that having a coach helps us to implement skills more efficiently it lowers attrition rate establishes connections and improve improves student outcomes in daiser teaching and learning Specialists help in uh they help in a lot of ways uh but I tried to segment them into three uh three ways to talk about we support teachers in their first through third years of teaching they do this being there to support them they have bi-weekly Cycles where they pre-conference with the teacher and say okay Dr kellish you're working on classroom management today you know what specifically are you working on I'm working on my quiet signal great I'm going to come and observe give you feedback and then they conference after most of those goals are set by teachers sometimes it's hey we need to take care of management so we can teach um that happens to some of us in our first year of teaching um but having that support helps teachers to overcome the obstacles and establish the belief that they can do it they support our step program our new teachers in their first and second year Meet monthly that's facilitated by our TLS they help them with lesson planning in fact in fact one of the things we heard we had to transition four or five years ago we couldn't have a TLS at every site we transitioned to 21st century specialist um and one of the things we heard from our veteran teachers is I love to help the new teachers on my campus but I'm also busy planning for me so lots of times some of the responsibilities that TLS take on with our first three year third- year teachers helping them to grow fa our veteran teachers and put even more on their plate having that TLS gives some bit those teachers someone just to support them um because lots of times you're talking in your PLC and if you're blessed with a great PLC I'm going to use Justine Palmer who can talk math standards inside and out and if I'm a first year teacher I'm like what did she just say um so your TLS really helps you dig through that for our veteran teachers it really helps our great teachers become greater there's things that we can all improve on lots of times our veteran teachers ask how can I better differentiate in class I teach my lesson and I have a third of my kids that Excel I have a third in one place and a third that need a small group and what do you want me to do with the rest when I'm pulling small group they can benefit from having someone support them in planning for having an extra set of eyes or just to bounce ideas off of they also support our veteran teachers when they're engaged in things like being PLC leads I think one of the mistakes I made when I was first a principal in appointing PLC leads was to say hey you're a great teacher you're going to be the PLC lead we found out very quickly that just because I can lead students doesn't mean I can always lead adults um and coaches really get that uh formal training on how to work with adults and then they in turn work with their plc's on how to work with their plc's more efficiently because we want our harmonious working place that's focused laser like on student achievement finally they support the system in having a unified Vision um some of you have been around a long time like me but I'm not that old um but being around for a while when I came to dier I can't say there was a great unified vision for what great teaching and learning looks like you heard Dr W speak tonight you heard Scott Kerr reference things like academic conversations having learning intentions and success criteria I feel that we have a fairly standard vision of what the science of teaching looks like in daiser and that's not to say every teacher should still bring their own art the way Mr kert taught and the way I taught totally different however those elements of having academic conversations having learn in targets are all the same and so having a TLS that meets with the district and then a site based support helps to unify our district Vision so that the kids at daiser high and at Shadow Ridge are have the same expectations throughout and the same expectations for teachers and also that admin are able to provide targeted supports for teachers as well they do a lot more but um I wasn't sure what you're looking for so I kind of did a hodg Podge so I will stand for questions thank you for the presentation Dr exai I have one question um so for someone who maybe is isn't is familiar with the TLs position how would you explain how um a TLS would be helpful coaching a teacher that is outside of the tls's content area so how that's a that's a great question we actually um we're working on that at high school a lot I'm very blessed at high school I have Amy Crow who's a former dance teacher I have Aaron burges who is a math teacher Tracy Canan who was math and April who was social studies in English um so we talk about there's a there's a lot of elements that are the same our music teacher has an objective for the day English teacher has an objective for the day we find those objectives by looking at our standards looking at whatever is a performance spased test or unit test dissecting those and going back in posting objectives it doesn't matter what content I have for that academic conversations don't really matter but content coaching is very important in fact some of the best research talks about content coaching having a math person coach in that so we're really working to cross Trin on our road map for next year um you've seen our results as they go through we need help in math we need to focus on math uh so that is going to be a central focus of the TLs um and we do have a new Adoption too so it's the prime time to do it as we have a new Adoption but how do we train our T our TLS to be great coaches of math because they might not have all been Math teachers so I think it has to do with the training we are fortunate that we get to pull them um with Co like I said it's been a little up and down uh but we do plans for professional development for the TLs on how they can best support the teachers and we follow that throughout the year but that's exactly what I mean like how will they how can they learn that content how can um Spanish teacher who is now a TLS coach chemistry or trigonometry so the coaching that they do in those classes is mostly for best practice do I have an aligned objective even though I might not be a a chemistry teacher I can look at the chemistry standards I can see if the objectives aligned to that I can see if kids are I can see management I can see if kids are actively engaged uh you know we've all had I'm sure this has never happened to any of your kids um that the kids sitting there with droel coming down because the teachers just talking talking talking we know that's not an effective practice so at that point the teacher uh the TLs is able to say okay let's talk about the active engagement count I had 20 minute a teacher speak and I only had three kids that got a chance to speak we know that part of learning is verbalizing our thoughts that normally the person doing the talking is the person doing the learning so there's elements of pedagogy that they can still coach on to get better results in the classroom uh we do need to beef up probably our cross training with you know what does good um Ka does this really well because they're funded part through the literacy funds so they've done a nice job of what does good literacy look like you know so I think that it's something we could get better at they can still coach and we can still get better results um the thing I appre appreciate about my high school group is they're all working together uh they've also worked some with d because da does the Fine Arts and it looks a little bit different you know when you walk in there's not a board you know so how do you know kids are doing what they're supposed to you talk to the kids it's amazing they sometimes know what they're doing uh you know so you ask kids hey what is your learning Target for the day or what should you be able to do by the end I see thank you did that answer it yes okay thank you very much I don't have my glasses on so I can't you're not giving me dirty looks you anyone else I do have a question good were you going to go good so how is the TLs evaluated the TLs is evaluated by the principal um it's gone back and forth over the years it used to be by the district um and now it's the principal because they're site based and they are evaluated on they have a rubric I have to look I want to say it's been tweaked a little bit for them I think it's probably something that could be revised though and in what situation would a TLS um Step In so if you have a teacher resign like second or third month in the school and then at what point instead of having a long-term sub or just splitting the class at what point would a TLS actually step into the classroom to cover that I think that's probably a campus decision and it would depend for me if I was that site principal it would depend on multiple factors s um you know my nephew was at Freedom Amber Brink stepped into his class for two weeks I think two or three weeks until they found a teacher and that was a great experience Connie I don't think the time had a lot of new teachers um you know I think you really have to look collectively at the needs of your campus um do you have highly effective teachers who can take who it's better to absorb um an example I I can give you to parallel that when I was at Canyon I lost a fourth grade teacher and it was year that we didn't have TLS and I had to decide what are we going to do with the classes do you just put a substitute in the class well that's not fair to a whole set of 30 kids so we came up with a rotation where that person would teach uh a non-tested area we would rotate all the kids um so I there's not a set process because I think every situation you need to look at how much support do my new teachers need do I have a bunch of teachers on Spa which are the Midland between being on a plan and not being on a plan um because ultimately we want that person to impact the largest amount of kids you know someone had asked me oh well what happens if we put the TLs back in a classroom at Canyon's campus I go you lower class sizes for one grade level you know it's not like that person can pick from seventh grade e8th grade sixth grade you essentially lower third grade classes to some degree five or six kids okay and then how does a TLS know what's going on in every single classroom like if I'm teaching a classroom and I've got a TLS that just pops in for a minute and then kind of gives me feedback not knowing what I'm talking about not knowing anything about what my curriculum is and then I go and then they disappear after five minutes and I go um you were just criticizing me but you have no idea what's going on in my classroom um how how do how do how do we how do they know how to be effective for those classrooms I'm pausing because it's a really multifaceted thing because you get into people's personalities right you get you you talk about how how highly trained the coach is how does the coach how what Rapport do I have with that person you know my daughter is um she's very headstrong I I can't imagine where she gets that from uh she has a great relationship with Rachel matus Rachel Matas can look at my daughter in the square in the eye and say Jenna that suck to sit on the bench and figure it out if anyone else told her that I would be on the phone in a minute um and not that our TLS do that by any means that might not have been the best example um I I tend to be very straightforward and I have that relationship with my teachers but I also know when I went to Canyon I I needed to learn to be a little bit more blue after I put a second grade teacher in tear from giving her feedback which was not my intent in high school we kind of say hey this is going great and you might want to you know think about this to get it to the next level uh I found out very quickly you don't say that to K2 teachers um Mr Kerr and I can empathize with one another there um I think it's in training training our coaches and then I was fortunate that I was very well trained we've invested recently um I would say in the last two to three years and really doing a great job at training our TLS uh you need to know who you're giving feedback to right I need to know as the coach on campus hey when I phrase something to Chrissy she needs to hear it this way when I need to phrase something to Crystal I need to do it this way and also what coaching method does the teacher prefer some teachers you're in their classroom they say hey Shell what did you see what can I do differently and some are like okay I don't want you to say anything in the classroom so I think it's we need to make sure our TLs are well trained and they know how to deliver feedback and you're right five minutes from one lesson isn't a great slice what I used to tell my teachers though is five minutes over time if I come in five times in a math class and kids are off the wall and I have no kids writing anything down five times for five minutes over a period of time now that's a collect a picture you know and I think we need to be really careful that when we're coaching that things aren't a demand when I'm a coach I I don't supervise my the High School principles I suggest things to them I say hey you know you might think about doing something like this you might want to do something like that and the real beauty of having a coach versus a supervisor is when I tell people something they have to do it well not everybody my husband doesn't but lots of people do um you know I I'm supervising you you need to post your objective okay shell evaluates me I need to do that when I'm a coach I need to figure out a way to for the teacher to see a need to post the objective and sometimes I need to have that conversation with the teacher I went to I went to Fine Arts because that was not my area so I had to learn about a lot about Fine Arts and a lot about science um so I I studied them I worked with people to learn more about them I observed and so I think you need to to president pritchard's point you need to learn about that content area but you also need to know as a coach your audience how to deliver the message and that's what we continue to work with teachers on when we or TLS when we do trainings we actually do mock scenarios here's the situation how would you coach we've had them set in Triads where I coach you Don gives us feedback so it's really a skill okay and then one last question what if I had a bad experience with the TLs and I did not have a bad experience with the TLs the tls's I worked with were amazing they were wonderful so what if anybody has a TLS that they just buttthe heads with and they just don't get along and I guess they just have a horrible experience with that then how do we mitigate that so the last year we had uh we were fortunate many years ago to have two TLS at Valley because Valley has such a large staff and at the time one of us went into a classroom and the man was like I never want you coming in my classroom again um and it was fair the TLs Who had who had observed him was not of his conton area um it actually wasn't fair but uh she she was in his conton area and he went to he went to our principle at the time and said I don't want this person observing me and she was able to work with them through a process because the TLs needed to do her job and he needed there were things he needed to get better at so they worked together so I would say the first step would be to go to the principal and say Hey you know this isn't working out when Shel says things to me I think she's really mean and she Squints at me and you know and lots of times there's a logical explanation I think the principal that's part of my job as a principal to make sure my staff is harmonious and that we're maximizing you know our our agency working together so we're not there for our egos we're there to get results from kids and we all have to work together to do that so I would say the step would be to work with the principal on that you know there might be something else there might be an outlining issue surpris was a very interconnected community maybe we had a problem outside that's impacting that you know and then talking to the principal about wow could my AP work with me could this could this happen because I I'm guessing it wouldn't be that the teacher doesn't want to get better but they're not responsive to that coaching and I go back to when I was in the classroom I was in the right teacher for everyone I'm not the right principal for everyone you know but there is somebody who can always help me to get better tomorrow than today thank you in listening to you a bit I I thought of another question um yeah you're surprised I can tell um so just to prevent the burnout of our tls's what is a structure in place to where TLS goes in provides feedback to a teacher and is there any loop with either the assistant like does does a TLS report to an assistant principal or the principal to say hey this is the work I've been doing this week these are some areas with teacher so and so so the information they give is relevant and it's applied rather than thank you very much TLS I've been evaluated already this year good to know yeah so usually the information goes the other way the TLs in a coaching role is more of a support and confidential right like the TLs would never when I was at TLS I never would have gone to my principal and said there's a problem in Don's room unless it endangered kids if it endangers kids and it's a safety issue that's different but because your role is coaching and confidential and to help that teacher it shouldn't go in that direction now there were times that Tammy said shell I really need you to work with this teacher she's having problems with management and she would ask me did you go in and my answer would be yes uh from there she would Circle back in so there is a there is a collectiveness of working together to support that teacher sometimes it's more formal on a spa which is the precursor to a plan if the teacher needs to go on a plan but I would say very frequently when TLs are involved in supporting that Spa it doesn't turn into a plan not that it's a plan but how do you ensure that all the work that TLS is doing is incorporated into instruction I think that you see it in your walkthroughs so if you looked at Amy's professional development plan Amy Crow who is at Valley lots of her PDS have targeted their academic conversation uh they've done learning walks so you know the PD is about more than Monday is that she has Mondays going she has prep connects they're doing learning walks she's working with teachers giving them feedback and you see that in the rise in da data when I'm sweeping I should see an increase in the things that TLS has targeted over time and that would be my data okay thank you anything else thank you so much thank you all right next we will move [Music] to yes res recess for five minutes for break e e e thank you at this time we're going to go ahead and reconvene the meeting we next we'll move to item H5 update on DT's covid protocol and mitigation plan Dr Kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um it's been a while since the board has had the opportunity to have a conversation about the district's covid protocols um the CDC has come out with some recent changes and so this is a good opportunity for administration to present to the board some brief information and then just allow the board to um ask questions and have the the discussion so Dr Cotto and Dr Dean will be presenting this item Madame President members of the governing board Dr Kellis and members of cabinet this evening it is my pleasure as well as Dr crotos to present um just a reminder to the governing board on our covid protocols for the year Dr Coto is also going to share information that is new from the CDC we will um preempt this uh presentation by stating that we do not have any recommended recommended changes to the governing board to our current protocols this evening so just a reminder um to our public and to our governing board some of the mitigation actions that have taken place prior to this school year um our all of our buildings all of our AC duct work have been or have had air scrubbers installed um which work to clean the air continuously throughout a school day or throughout a day as well as removing um various particulates from that if the board the board will recall that that was Esser funding that allowed for those to be installed in all of our facilities additionally PPE is available for staff and students upon request um PPE is personal protective equipment we have masks available for students we have gloves that are available as well and cleaning supplies and hand sanitizer are available as part of our cleaning protocol for this school year the board will recall that face coverings and masks are optional for staff and students vaccinations are not required for staff or students we may put a little asterisk there um in terms of the Supreme Court currently making a decision on uh the federal mandate from the president however we have not V we have not mandated any vaccines for our staff or students we have continued our enhanced cleaning protocols and the board will recall that in the past in the first year of the pandemic we required temperature checks um we no longer require temperature checks in our facilities additionally we continue to to consider all of our staff as essential workers you heard this evening from two of our principles in school reports how valuable and essential that all of their staff are and how tremendous that their staff have been throughout the course of the year and in the most recent uh uptick in Corona virus cases with the Omicron variant how wonderful are staff are doing in working to cover classes to make sure that our students continue to have in-person learning and that that learning is Meaningful just a reminder that our students or staff that do test positive for covid-19 are required to isolate we provide direct contact notices um to any students who have been within direct contact of a student who tests positive and then if quarantine is necessary that is determined and notified by the County Health Department not by our school system we are not determining quarantine for students um that is determined by the County Health Department Madam president continuing on our employee isolation and quarantine uh as Dr Dean stated if you're positive for covid employee related it's 10 days from the symptoms or a test date uh we ask every employee who provides a positive test uh remember that you did uh provide 10 covid relief days uh earlier on this year for for them to miss work uh we ask them to identify close contacts also um the close contacts are notified um that they have been in contact with somebody that has tested positive as well as we notify Maricopa County of the close contacts and of the positive test for every single uh employee case if you're a direct contact we ask you to monitor symptoms uh there is no quarantine uh stay home and if symptomatic and get tests if needed our new CDC recommendations you may have this have been all over the news uh you may have seen these you may have not uh here is what the CDC has done now uh if you test positive for covid-19 everyone regardless of vaccination status uh needs to stay home for 5 days if you have no symptoms or your symptoms are resolved after 5 days you can leave your house you can return to work uh you need to continue to wear a mask around others for five additional days uh remember we do not have a mask mandate and we don't don't require our employees to wear masks uh it changes in the next piece if you were exposed to someone with covid-19 um next slide if you're exposed with somebody with covid-19 this is where it becomes very difficult uh to carry out the CDC recommendations uh if you have been boosted you have a booster you completed the primary series of fiser or Mna vaccine within the last 6 months or you completed the primary series of J&J vaccine within the last two months then you need to wear a mask around others for 10 days uh mandatory test on day five if possible if you completed the primary series of fiser or Mna vaccine over six months ago and are not boosted uh or you have completed the primary series of J&J over two months ago and are not boosted or you're unvaccinated you have to stay home for 5 days after that you need to continue wear a mask around others for five additional days if you can't quarantine you have to ma wear a mask for 10 days and you have to test on day five if possible just to note there uh we do not collect at this time I will talk in the next slide about our vaccine mandate Federal vaccine mandate but we do not collect uh vaccine status of our employees nor our students but I'm talking about employees here so we do not uh collect any of that vaccine status in order to carry out that piece the federal vaccine mandate you may have uh come in contact with this last year the president through OSHA uh OSHA had uh issued an ETS emergency temporary standard uh that all vac that all employees who have a 100 all employers who have 100 or more employees uh that they must uh have mandatory vaccination policy um what does that mean that uh we would have to build a database of employees that are vaccinated if we have unvaccinated employees then they would need to test weekly they would need to turn in that test uh if they did not test weekly then they may not come to work this has gone through uh the circuit courts the fifth and sixth uh the fifth circuit issued uh a stay on this ETS which means it paused it uh at that time there are very many um very many appeals to many Circuit Courts so they held a lottery kind of like you see on the Power Ball uh they threw all the balls in there and out came the six circuit the sixth circuit made the ruling they combined all the cour all the cases to the six circuit uh and the six circuit lifted that stay so in effect put the ETS back into effect um shortly after the Supreme Court decided that it would hear oral arguments and did so on January 7th uh the oral the result of the oral oral arguments have not come out the Supreme Court has not stated anything so we do not have a stay so as of Monday this last Monday the ETS is in effect um federally however uh it is our attorney our opinion of our attorney that in order to be effective in Arizona the Arizona industrial commission um they must adopt the ETS uh in order to be infect in a public entity so her recommendation is at this time we wait and see what happens a with the Supreme Court and B with the Arizona industrial commission so know that we are preparing uh and thinking about this we're not putting it on the back burner and putting all our marbles in this doesn't happen we are preparing and trying to get ready should this come into effect uh the OSHA has said that they will not find anybody there's a fine if you do not uh do not follow this ETS of 13,600 I believe per violation um so per person that you didn't collect this information on they have said that uh this will not be in effect until February 12th uh so we do have some time there um and we also have all these legal proceedings going on with that so um just know that it is in our process we're thinking about proc processes we're thinking what needs to be done should this go into effect and that's a should but we are not stating that going in effect I just want to update the governing board on that procedure or that policy or the ETS I should say and what that means for the district so with that as Dr Dean said at this time administration's not recommending changes to our protocol however we stand for questions and further directions from the governing board thank you for the information um just for clarity M uh Dr Dean when you were referencing the CDC uh the new guidelines as far as coming back and then masking for five days since Dart does not have a mask mandate then you're saying that we are not we're not going to um Implement that piece of it is that my understanding Madam president this evening we uh the intent was to present our protocols and share with the board the new CDC guidelines um so that the board was aware however we have no recommended changes to what we're currently doing okay um go ahead I sure I have another question but I lost it can I go um that the presentation was really hard to read from here and I can't see that at all even so could you provide that to the board Adam president member Grant absolutely um and then so there's twofold we have the Supreme Court that heard oral arguments so we have to wait and see what the Supreme Court said and then you said the attorney said that the the Arizona industrial commission would have to adopt it so depending on what happens with the subpreme court then the industrial commission would be involved is that Madam president member grant that is correct okay um so we're kind of in a holding pattern I'm waiting everybody has thought the Supreme Court would rule by now or at least make a statement or issue a stay or not issue a stay uh they have not done so we monitor it daily and I talked to our attorney daily and we're just awaiting what they what they're going to rule yeah but it still has a process so regardless what the Supreme Court does if they say yay then the Arizona industrial commission would then have to do their part so there's still a a process to all of this that is correct okay I just want to make sure I understood that piece okay thank you Dr CTO what did date did you say in February was uh the possibility of the fees starting February February 12th thank you any other questions um I am a little curious like why why we didn't get sorry I am a little curious why we don't have the um presentation attached to this item Madam president miss Densmore we were awaiting a possible Supreme Court decision and so the presentation was held uh to the very last minute in case the the Supreme Court were to rule as late as today that information could have been provided um that presentation will be emailed the presentation that you saw this evening will be emailed to you within a few minutes thank you um and just for clarity purposes um I I didn't see it but um you both spoke to it as far as us uh D start not requiring vaccinations uh I just want to make sure we're not requiring covid vaccinations thank you Miss denmore thank you for the clarity there there are vaccinations that are required for school entry except for the written exemptions that are in law exactly so thank you that the presentation should have correctly indicated it may have been on the screen I just couldn't see it it was not so you are correct okay that was it I know in the in the past um with covid positive employees we were having them quarantined for 10 days and then or maybe seven if they had a negative test I mean it's hard to keep up with all all the changes but now are you saying with with what's in place now um it's five days and then employees will be optional if they want to come back for five additional days ma Madam president um no our current practice is if you are positive uh you are out for 10 days okay are we still doing the seven days and a negative test no okay it's 10 days uh with a positive test you can access the covid leave uh one time in a year so this calendar year you've approved that to June 30th with the presentation of a positive tests from a health care facility you do not take the home tests okay and then um does that still also mean because I noticed on the from what I could see on the slide um the CDC had said resolving symptoms other than if you have a fever you can't come in so that means before we'd say no symptoms but are we allowing employees to come back after 10 days if they still have symptoms as long as it's not a fever no we say they should not have symptoms um and we do have people that call us and and say that they still have symptoms so we work with them and or their doctor provides a note saying they need to be out an additional four or five days sometimes it goes beyond those 10 days usually cover the whole piece because you have weekends in there so it's not 10 work days that they're missing so we work with them on that but uh we are very uh in tune to we do not want people that have symptoms in the workplace okay and then first positive students is that where the five days comes in the five days does not come in for any students or employees in this District we are not adopting the CDC policies okay unless we hear otherwise from the governing board okay so CDC has fallen back on their time frames but we're maintaining our 10 days okay that is correct okay and then um let's see when students are again back to the communication piece I know staff kind of let classmates know of a certain classmate who might have been posi as far as that contact tracing we still doing that that one goes over to Dr Dean Madam president yes our our school administrators our school health office staff are involved every day in contact tracing are we doing that for our employees though so like let's say it's a high school setting or a a school building where again there's staff that travel that may not be on that particular DG group or whatever you guys call them GG Group whatever for email um are we making sure all staff that may have had contact with that particular student are aware so they can monitor symptoms so is not to pingpong back to Dr Coto but I will pingpong the answer is yes we we work HR works with our staff um to direct contact Trace back and to answer your question when we have a student who um is positive we work to not only Trace direct contact to students but also anyone they've been in contact with on a campus okay can you um just double check that that includes traveling staff or staff that may not always be housed on those particular campuses Madam president yes I will do that thank you I believe the next question goes to Dr Cotto I'm thinking go ahead I'm gonna look at Dr CTO when I say this uh but he's writing feverishly uh you were talking about the covid uh 10day as far as one time yearly is that calendar year fiscal year um Madam president member so s bill um that is um these calendar years so and well not no let me say that correctly that is the fiscal year the school year so in describing that you you approved the governing board approved for this school year so the fiscal year from the beginning of school until June 30th thank you and if an employee is is showing symptoms um is it up to them to decide whether they're going to get tested or if they come to work with symptoms they're told you need to get tested or you need to stay home um how does that work our supervisor are very in tune to uh people with symptoms I mean there are um people that have colds and all imagine the other things but we're very in tune to suggesting that people do not come to the workplace if they're not feeling well and that testing um should be done if possible or they need to go home um and if they feel better and they recover if not they need to be tested so so they're very in tune to having those discussions with our employees but no mandatory it's not mandatory unless you have a positive test that's the only requirement that's correct okay and they cannot be covered by your absences that the governing board unless they produce that positive test so if they say I'm going home because I'm feeling sick I might get tested they are using their days until they produce a positive test to HR okay thank you any other questions um just one I I know know the positive test requirement and I and I understand that I don't know how how realistic this is but I know that there are some media reports of shortages on these tests have we experienced this have any of our staff experienced this has it become an issue um Madame President member denmore I I think it's becoming more of a more issue as as you see the omnicron variant um explode so tests are becoming harder and harder um to uh to locate but I believe they're still out there there's a number of places you can get tested I know I I spoke with employees today who um stayed home because they did not feel well and couldn't schedule a test till tomorrow so uh they're out there there's many websites we try to give them the websites obviously um or you know we we kind of learned more and more places that are doing this um and and so it is becoming more and more difficult to get a test but I think they're still out there at this point well thank you for that and I would assume that if it became a bigger issue than it is now then that would be something that we could revisit absolutely okay thank you I had a quick question so if an employee stays home and they have like runny nose sore throat they have a fever they stay home and they're not tested but they take their own personal sick time if they go get a test and produce a positive test are can they retrograde that covid leave to to use for that day and get their personal sick day back uh Madam president member Chaffin uh yes we do we do go back to the first date of symptoms because that's how we track so we do go back and um we do go back and credit their days and go into the city leave Bank uh for the co okay one more quick question and then I thought when we were approving the extra 10 days I could be wrong um I thought I understood it to where you had a whole 10 days you could either use them all at once or if you got Co again you could use the rest of them did I that is correct that is correct yeah you have 10 the whole year if you use five because it was three days before break and then you got better over break and so you have seven more left okay but you can only have 10 the entire year is the way it was approved and should we again should that become a huge problem we could bring that back to the governing board um for more discussion and to to get guidance on that but right now um it's working out pretty good because it's not 10 work days usually there's weekends built in and all that thank you you're welcome anything else thank you all right we'll move to auction discussion items um I one recommendation to add an interim Elementary School assistant principal position Dr kis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet Dr crto will introduce this item thank you Dr Kellis Madam president members of the board superintendent Kellis cabinet and guests tonight uh Administration is recommending the addition of an interm uh Elementary School assistant principal at Sunset Hills uh in order to provide appropriate coverage uh at that school and at this time we are recommending uh the appointment of shanen dhy to fill the interm position for the remainder of the 2122 school year just a reminder to the governing board that all interm positions that you have approved this year they will be posted actually we're building our pool right now uh and they will have to interview that will be open for interviews next year so that's just to cover this year and then they will need to go through the process in order to um fill those jobs for the next school year so with that I will stand for any questions questions from the board Miss Dy here tonight she is here she is right there in the front stand up so we can give you a Round of Applause well actually after they approve it hold the Applause with that I move to approve the addition of interim Elementary School assistant principal position and appoint of shanan Dy as interam Elementary School assistant principal at sunent Hills Elementary for the remainder of the 2021 2022 school year second motion made by Christine Pritchard second and by Tracy sor sville carries welcome welcome now it's we move to action item uh two revision of policies pursuant to asba recommendations second reading Dr kis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this item will be introduced by Dr CR thank you Dr Kellis Madame President members of the board superintendent Kellis cabinet and guest uh at our last governing board meeting we presented some policies for you uh 768 9.45 and 10.45 uh 49 that had needed to have revisions because language changes that came from law and then the law was repealed and those needed to change uh we took your feedback and we're bring them back to you for the second read tonight uh 768 is not changed because when you look at 768 uh that language has to do with uh law 15772 which uh does not exist anymore and that was a fine of $5,000 um the court May impose a civil uh penalty not to exceed $5,000 per School District charter school or state agency um and that law is no longer in effect so that one stays the same we would ask to strike that language however a few others that we can take a look at 9.45 teaching about contra controversial sensitive issues uh if you recall we had a whole paragraph starting um with a teacher administrator other employee uh we had that entire Pro paragraph uh struck in the first reading that we brought to you uh we received your feedback that you wanted to keep that language uh in the policy so therefore we changed a few key words so it would read appropriately for the school district and we kept the remainder of that language um in this policy the next policy uh was 10.49 immunization of students um we also uh took your feedback you wanted to keep that where we may not require a student or teacher to receive a vaccine or covid-19 or to wear a face covering to participate uh in inperson instruction we asked that was struck last time because the law changed however uh we heard your feedback you want to keep that again we made a few language changes to uh read appropriately for the school district just to note with our last presentation we may come back and revisit this policy depending on where all the legal stuff lands someday um but as of right now we're keeping that in the policy so with that uh those are the three policies we bring to you uh for the second read so I I have a question um m Mr CTO excuse me Mr Dr Cotto sorry um because at our last board meeting um we had uh voted to uh separate from the asba uh and this was asba recommendations does this still need to apply Madame President miss or if I could answer that one um the reason why it currently carries the asba reference is because this was presented for a first read and this is brought back for the second read so um I don't believe we have any other advisories coming from asba to drive our policy services so this would be a one that kind of straddles the line of the last board meeting and this board meeting um so that's why it has the SBA on I apologize like if this is um Twilight Zone for you for you guys when it comes to I know You' said Dr Coto as far as taking that one piece you had had that one piece out and then board discussion last time we decided to keep it in um hearing Dr Dean's uh presentation and just the discussion regarding the last item do we think that there is some um just validity to just waiting I mean because with if depending on what happens in the courts it's going to determine whether or not we're going to have to come back and change this policy again like should we just wait to see what happens before we make a policy change either way in regard to the vaccination of Staff which I also think should should be changed to staff rather than teacher because it sounds like it's going to be not just teachers it'll be all staff members correct and then also um the the face covering doesn't isn't so much like we're not waiting on that right now but I'm just thinking back to the last time like we never required it in dier we kind of fell underneath with the city and at the time the executive order of the governor um so with it all being up in the air I mean unless it's a big deal to or not a big deal to come back and take it out in a you know a week just because we're so close you know either way to see what the courts are going to say with that rather than solidifying in policy Madam president um yes that is a thought we can take Direction the board know that this policy right now is in place because we put it in place with when it was a law so it does read right now that we may not require a with the law with ars5 um 34205 that is in place right now in our current policy that law does not exist because Arizona Supreme Court uh ruled it unconstitutional but that is how our policy currently reads so it's in there so we would have to come back and strike that whole sentence if you want to wait um we can do that at the direction of the board it's very simple to do um but the policy right now is that we have a reference to an AR ARS uh code that is not valid it doesn't exist so we were We Were Striking it the first time the whole time because it didn't and then we got direction to kind of leave it so if we want to strike it and not have it we can do that again and I believe we'd have to bring it back for the third read Louisa or Madam president uh Dr Cotto so as Dr Cotto stated as you look at the text here whatever is um has the striketh through is what's changing so the current language says that uh School District may not require student or teacher which we can change the staff to receive and if you want to approve this with the edit that um approve the recommended changes with the caveat that teacher be replaced to student uh staff on policy 10.49 that that continues as is um if you want to strike it and put the strike through through that entire paragraph you can have the board discussion and and vote to um approve this item except for 10.49 which you would strike through that entire paragraph or just wait until the rules and then make our policy based on what the law says correct um keep in mind that the policy currently is that we cannot require vaccines I think I would personally prefer approving this policy as it's presented just because it is policy and it just takes out the wording and then if the Supreme Court rules a different way then I I feel like we could come back and visit it Madam president M jaff and you are correct um you could not change this policy ever but the Supreme Court does Trump your dis one thing I do want to mention though is um the information provided in here regarding the antibodies against a vaccine preventable disease that information I don't think is necessarily going to apply to covid as it may apply to measles or chickenpox because I from my understanding I I'm not a scientist or a medical professional um but as far as the antibodies go if you are have the covid infection and you have are carrying the antibodies I don't believe that that lasts forever or even for a full school year potentially so I think that maybe we need to create a CO specific policy that's my suggestion we don't need to do that tonight but I'm just suggesting that once a decision comes down from the Supreme Court um or the industrial commission that's my thoughts Madam president member denmore I if that ruling does come down from the Supreme Court there it is a requirement that you adopt a policy so we'd be bringing a policy to you right for that so I would also like to research and see what the life what the life of the antibodies are how long they last because if you've got antibodies then you don't need a vaccine I mean I've already had the chickenpox I don't need a Chickenpox vaccine because I done had it I've recovered I'm fine so if the co antibodies last like the chickenpox antibodies do then I don't think we need to beat a dead horse and get vaccinated if you've already got the covid antibodies those are my thoughts yeah I I really am concerned about Crossing that bridge um that's I would wait I mean we don't have enough research to say if the antibodies are going to last a year or going to last 10 years um because this is so brand new I I'm not prepared to pushed that one just yet just yet um but I did have one other thing on uh 9.5 uh Dr croo um under this technically the third paragraph where it says a teacher administrator other employee um the third bullet point oops the third bullet point and individual should be individually I don't know what individual do you see it we talking about I see that you see it okay it was just a small typo but if that could be changed I do have a question about 7.68 unless anybody else has 9.45 so last board meeting we talked about conferences we talked about conferences that are presenting workshops on possible CRT content whether it's blatant CRT or subtle and even though employees might say they're not going to those um it looks like it's in our policy saying we may not require an employee to engage in nor shall we use public monies for training orientation or therapy that presents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race ethnicity or sex and that does not preclude any training on sexual harassment so would it be is it the same to say that any time we pay for a conference that offers this material we are potentially violating our policy Madame President Miss Chaffin um looking at the second paragraph where it says in quotes blame or judgment on the basis of race ethnicity or sex is defined in ARS 411 1494 um I would we could get a legal opinion on that but I believe our conference registrations are not in violation of ARS 411 1494 and so if I'm an employee and I'm attending one of these sessions would I not be in violation of this policy Madam president miss jaffin again it would depend on the content and if it was in violation of ar14 1494 um the interpretation of that we would certainly could have an attorney reference the conference and the statute um but this is where we go to to determine the definition of this policy is statute because my concern is you know we can look at I can sign up for a conference and we can pay $800 for registration for however many people and there's no accountability there's no proof that yes I attended that or no I didn't attend that so we've got the possibility of employees attending these and that's that's just a violation of policy and that is a concern of mine because we are we have been very adamant about keeping the CRT elements out of our school district and out of our curriculum M pres Mr jaffin absolutely and we have made it very public that we do not um teach or endorse the CRT um however if you look at a national conference say um it's about Athletics and at that conference they might have um a three-day conference with a thousand people there there could be 200 sessions and if five of those sessions are related to CRT uh we would ask our staff to not attend those five sessions but there are amazing in um professional developments that can be gained from the other 195 sessions so as far as accountability um we haven't got to the point where we are conference police and we would follow them to say no don't go in that door go in this door but we would certainly have that expectation that um according to policy that we do not expend monies for training that relates to ARS 411 1494 any other questions I I'm just wondering if because of the way that this is written it's really more about you know what's going on um in the classroom with the teacher student um education but maybe we could add something that that states something about the employees going to the conferences and not participating in these things Madame President Mr denmore yes that that can happen I think the intent here is that that is what this policy is trying to get at if it needs to be clarified we can add more language to it trying to avoid coughing sorry um and open this up for discussion but do we think that we want to modify this policy um or do you think we need a separate policy for that is there a way to include it and to maybe like modify the existing I mean maybe include some sort of verbiage this includes conferences or um I'm not sure what the wording we could always bring it back um after some thought since we're also still waiting on 10.49 ruling anyway and just do both of them at the same time if there's more um opportunity to kind of think about what you'd like a policy to look like and how it'd be drafted I'd be okay with that yeah and I think Dr kis had also talked about uh um because I have 41 -1 1494 pulled up and talking about getting a legal opinion on that further so I I would really rather not go down that road yet without legal opinion I mean I I totally understand um but if he's talking about getting a legal opinion on it I would like to have that first I do want to just jump back to 10.49 real quickly I just want to make sure that there wasn't any confusion or mis understanding and what I was saying about the uh antibodies line that is in the second paragraph of the existing policy regarding the other vaccines not covid vaccines so I I'm not just pulling that out of thin air on that um so I just want to make sure that that particular piece of the policy is not necessarily going to be applicable to co it may or it may not um but I think that we really need to think this through line by line um after those decisions are made um and and really have a lot more um a much more robust conversation about this so we can either um take no action or just motion to table it does anyone have a preference well we still want to have a discussion about it correct right we would either motion to table it or we would just not take action and then nothing happens to it and it would come back and we'd have more discussion on it okay I I would like to make a motion um I would like to make a motion to approve to I'm sorry to table the uh revisions to policies 7.68 9.45 and 10.49 as presented um with the caveat that with 9.45 to change that one word grammatical error grammatical era thank sure Madame President member Sawyer s bill it's actually a word in the law individual yes which word is it I'm sorry individual oh really it is in for is in 411 1494 too if you have it still up oh I see it I'll second it Mission made by Don denore seconded by Christine Pritchard motion carries next we move to I3 discussion and possible action regarding the social worker program Dr Kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this is an item that was uh added to the agenda the request of a board member just as of note there is another item item I4 which is related to this item um and we will get to I4 but what happens with I4 may or may not be related to the discussion and action that happens with I3 um so I three um I don't have any recommendations or formal presentation the board has has received several informational presentations um already this year about social workers we'll be happy to answer any questions um about the the role of social workers in the district and I will add my my endorsement of the social worker um position and the work that is done as we look today have any time in my 30-year experience when student um supports were needed it is now I'm given the last two years and I'm not suggesting this but it it's not just students it's Society it's it's our staff it's our families it's our students um are at a extreme level of need and many of these needs do not originate in the classroom um they are things that inhibit their learning however because of the circumstances that that they are are facing seen in their lives um as has been presented previously the social workers are not tasked to fix um these problems they are tasked to connect students and families with the resources that are are needed to to help them get through those those challenges in their in their lives um as we continue to look at how to best meet the needs of kids putting the needs of kids in priority I appreciate the work that is done by our social workers um if there are concerns um these concerns from the general public have not been presented to Administration and we welcome any concerns that uh parents might have regarding the social workers and we can work towards those those uh remedies but I again I'm not hearing our principles are not hearing direct concerns about um about what social workers do or what they're not doing but we would welcome that conversation um I would also ask that uh as we continue to look forward I anticipate that we're going to see greater need it needs that even the social workers um will be stretched to resolve and that um we will be continuing to look at Partnerships with the district to be able to to assist students and and what they they need to be successful in the classroom Madam President we do have several uh individuals who have submitted requests to speak and so we'll let the Miss Chaffin um lead that and then it will just be for the board to have the conversation thank you okay um I'll read this one more time this is a time for public comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ARS 38- 431 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further discussion and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of 3 minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record we have Lee IES Madame President and fellow governing board members and Lee IES I'm here this evening representing my entire dice art Unified School District school Psych olist Department all 31 of us our intent is to communicate the need and value of our school social workers within the diarch schools from the perspective of school psychologists as mental health professionals who work closely with our school social workers we feel that their present is imperative in order to provide the support that our students families staff and communities need School social workers immense knowledge base unique skills and drive to assist all those in need are all invaluable assets to our schools during their time serving our dice art community over the past several years School social workers have positively impacted our students across all grade levels families staff and communities they provide vital support in times of Crisis by serving on our crisis teams threat assessment teams and navigate The Daily needs of our school campuses they work with staff to provide strategies that can be implemented in various situations for for example informing staff about coping strategies and developing safety plans for students they also collaborate with outside uh support staff to facilitate important home to- School connections such as reintegration meetings for students who have been hospitalized they help parents or Guardians navigate the process of seeking additional supports outside of the school setting such as with food resources gifts for the holidays and Community Resources School social workers address needs across all grade levels which all our students benefit from in addition to following District guidelines School social workers Provide support from members of the school Community while following their own strict code of ethics it is impossible to list the roles that each School social worker fills as they conform to the needs of their campuses but is without question that the value that they provide is unmatched although the need for these professionals on every school campus is apparent even in typical school years given the current social climate and the alarming increase in National mental health crises School social workers are essential to the functioning of our schools and the success of our students they are able to provide a wealth of knowledge and are advocates for our students and families sometimes for those who have never had this type of support before we ask that you consider the crucial role our school social workers play in The Daily functioning of our schools success of our students and families and facilitation of positive home to- School connection when making decisions regarding their continued support in our schools the impact of their present on our campuses over the past several years has felt W widely and they truly make our schools and Community a safer and more meaningful place to learn and grow thank you for your time [Applause] okay next we have Michelle Bohan good evening president Pritchard congratulations members of the governing board Dr Kellis um cabinet employees of derer and our community I am Michelle Bohan lead counselor at Shadle Ridge High School as an employee of this District since 1999 yes I am the oldest the most 10e school counselor in the district and married to the oldest math teacher I'm sorry honey the most tenur math teacher in our district we are blessed to be daer employes we've experienced many governing board members cabinet members superintendents staff members um as a parent as well graduate of Willow Canyon High School my daughter in 2013 and our current two students um Junior in sophomore at Shadow Ridge High School I have to my mind is just racing right now with a previous presentations as they spoke about reading struggles suffering academics Athletics and of course Arts so when we think about those and what our students are going through right now and we're and we think about student as a whole I want you to reconsider or consider the positive impact our social workers are doing to all of our students as a parent and I know most of us if you are a parent it is the toughest job toughest job in this world and when we have students struggling academically not knowing who to talk to our social workers their positive presence is it speaks volumes not only with our students but with our staff as well so considering the anxiety the suicidal ideation um the testing the testing being a member of the crisis team I want to make sure that you understand the importance the positive importance of our social workers with our students in in the in the district as I read behind you where it says power of the I can't even see that preparation I should probably take off my glasses excellence in the journey and success for a lifetime success for lifetime is what I hone in because to look at the student as a whole we need to look at their mental accessibility who can they talk to who can listen to them what are they going through and our social workers the collaboration that they have had with the school counselors and also with our staff in building those relationships having those positive courageous conversations with our students speaks volumes I just want to share the American Foundation Suicide Prevention suicide is a 10th leading cause of death in the US 47,51 deaths as of 2019 thank you for your time next we have Sarah ba Bax good evening Madame President members of the board my name is Sarah ba I'm the social worker at Willow Canyon High School and I'm presenting on behalf of Rebecca real the social worker at diart middle school I'm here to answer a question that has been posed at previous board meetings what do diart social workers do this question is usually answered by describing the day-to-day task we complete in our work however it's not been answered using the desired outcome that drives every interaction diart School social workers support students emotionally so their brains are primed to learn our purpose is to eliminate barriers that students face on a daily basis so they come to school ready to learn and reach their full academic potential learning requires activation of the prefrontal cortex the part of the brain essential for decision- making attention impulse inhibition memory and cognitive flexibility trauma and other complexities of Life have detrimental effects on typical brain function causing a sensitized fight flight pause and appease response when the brain is activated this way the prefrontal cortex goes offline and survival becomes the priority this can look like a student fleeing a classroom and ATT tension a panic attack or sleeping in class when this happens no learning takes place School social workers understand this concept and help students regulate to the point where their brain comes back on board thus allowing the students to participate and learn in the classroom students are not automatically primed to learn they walk through our school doors carrying tremendous weight that is often unseen or unknown some of their silent struggles include suicidal ideations self Haring behaviors threats of harm to others homelessness food insecurity substance use mental health issues disregulated behaviors unresolved and Newfound grief safety concerns in the home and missing out on social and emotional growth due to a global pandemic this year we've witnessed a drastic increase in the quantity and Acuity of issues we handle on our campuses this is consistent with what is being seen across the country our job is to teach students the skills to manage the obstacles they face so they can take those tools back into the classroom where they have a better chance of meeting learning objectives and responding to Big emotions and difficult situations in a calm safe and healthy way School social workers are professionals who possess unique skills to address the problems that occur in an educational setting we support teachers by handling situations they are not familiar with which allows them to focus on academic instruction and their class's educational achievement School social workers play an invaluable role in supporting advocating and helping to reduce barriers so that all students can grow and Achieve academic success thank you for your time [Applause] next we have tamy deasio good evening Madame President Estee board members cabinet Dr Kellis community members um my name is Tammy damasio I'm the lead social worker for the district I've spent the majority of my career working in Early Education and early intervention as an educator as a center director a mental health and disability coordinator and as a curriculum writer I've been fortunate to have witnessed many light bulb moments in little ones lives watching a young child investigate and learn something for the very first time is truly incredible my work has always been rooted in brain development giving the fact that the brain is developing at the highest rate from from birth to age five than any other time in life in fact over 90% of a child's brain growth occurs before children ever step foot into our kindergarten classrooms during early child brain development a child's brain is making over a million neural connections every single second it is these neural connections that allow our children's brain to develop in a manner that they need to be healthy and successful students and later successful adults these connections offer children the ability to build executive functioning skills such as solving problems thinking critically impulse control completing tasks and regulating Behavior after spending 25 years focusing on providing high quality Early Learning environments I made a big change I became a social worker at di art High School I decided to flip my career and start focusing on the students who needed someone to help them with these skills later on in their childhood somebody who would be patient and willing to watch them grow while all of us want to believe that most children are afforded the opportunity to experience an early childhood that's filled with opportunities for Rich learning nurturing relationships the reality is that many children do not have that experience children who experience positive and nurturing interactions in early childhood typically have success in schools while children who have repeated exposure to negative interactions and traumatic experiences often struggle to find success in school school social workers have a primary responsibility to create caring and responsive relationships it was questioned at the last board meeting about the role of the K4 social workers the easiest time to help a child who is struggling with executive functioning skills is in the lower primary grades it is in our K4 schools that school social workers have the ability to make the greatest change working with students at a young age increases their skill sets earlier leading to quicker academic and behavior Improvement in my lead leadership experience programs require over three consistent years to create solid change the social work program is still in the formative stages of creating successful systems in our schools additionally social workers have been faced with the ongoing impact that the pandemic has created in order to allow the program to grow to a flourishing part of the district it's critical that social workers remain in each of our schools to impact the children's need at the earliest age possible thank you for your time all right next we have Kimberly black and Magda scroggin Madame President cing board members Dr Kellis District cabinet good evening even um my name is Kimberly black I am the health assistant at Sunset Hills Elementary School I'm joined with my um colleague here another uh staff member here at sunsent Hills Elementary School um I'd first like to start by um uh inviting the social workers to um stand because although that we are not in the same Department we are a team and um I I would like to show Unison in that and that we are we're supporting each other in this um we work very intricately um we work together all day long um what I'd like to say to start with actually is uh Dr asai said something in her in her comments that really really struck me and uh I think it's going to stick with me for a long time she said uh made a comment that said um you'll be supported here um and and real quickly because this is my personality I'd just like to throw out my uh application for Dr asai new best friend um because she is my spirit person I think um uh but Dr asai said you'll be supported here um and that is something that I feel like when we have students that are coming from out of state students that are coming from other school districts students that are coming from other schools around the country um one of the things that we can say wholeheartedly and in all honesty we can say you'll be supported here um specifically uh before um after after break I had a parent uh email they were starting to enroll their student um they emailed and said hey my kiddo's got got um some some concerns my kiddo has severe anxiety my kiddo has severe depression my kiddo has has this and uh I am nervous for her she is nervous to go to school how can you support um and I was able to say oh my goodness we have this this and this in place um we have a social worker that is on it she is the most amazing here's what she can do here's the services she provides and uh the email back that I got from the parent um it was words but you can feel uh what what she meant um by her just being grateful for her help um in that email and uh that's why we do what we do right because of those things um so I I feel like uh that position had we not had that would be um difficult uh for that um uh another thing that I wanted to just say is that um and I am long-winded so I'm going to try and hurry here um 3.8 million adolescents uh per the US Department of Health Services um report major major depressive uh disorder in the last year 60% did not receive treatment but those that did only uh two-thirds of those that did receive treatment received it in our schools um that's a really big number 2/3 um especially in our pandemic uh that we're having right now not Ren social worker contracts does um compromise the mental health of our of our students both immediately and long term our students are losing family members they're losing they're losing grandparents they're losing parents and our social workers are the ones that have to step up and take place in that um so although I have so much more I'm going to wrap it up and just say that I hope that you can feel my heart in that and that you'll consider [Applause] all right next we have Marcy Hustler good evening Madame President and uh governing board members and cabinet I'm Marcy hestler I've been the proud principal at Countryside Elementary School for eight years I've been with this district for 12 years and this is my 28th year in Education Without a social worker and their expertise I cannot do my job when I was in the the classroom back in the early 99s all the way through the 2000s and even today they have more expertise more resources and more networks than I can ever imagine as a school principal we wear many hats all of us do in all of our various um capacities and there's no way I can add that to my very full banquet um I just want to take some time I know that you've heard a lot of Statistics from the other social workers I just want to to quickly have any principal in the audience who feels that they could not do the job of the social worker to please stand at this time we don't have the credentials we don't have the education and I just want to remind you we're going to go on a little memory trip here as a governing board because I've been coming to a lot of governing board meetings for 12 years actually for 28 years Mrs Pritchard you have sat on this dis for many years touting the importance of social workers in schools I have listened to many of your comments saying that they need to be added that we need to have them and now we're pulling the uh contract to go for another vote when you've asked for it for so many years and it's my understanding that you've worked with our district um and you know the needs of our schools directly um Miss Chaffin you were a teacher at our school for many years you know the importance of having all those extra hands on campus to help our teachers and our students and our community in our schools miss denmore your children attend our schools and I'm very fortunate to have your son at mine and I know that we've had several conversations over the past two years Miss Grant you're new to me I don't I've haven't had much conversation with you but I do know your passion and I do know that when you toured my school you saw some of my level C classrooms that have the greatest need and Miss Sawyer sink Bell I just want to say thank you for all of your support and being a champion over these last this last decade plus um being up there on the dis and doing what's right for kids so I'm going to end really quickly that I implore you implore you not to um look to attain your future aspirations on this dis don't look for a Golden Ticket endorsement but to really look at the faces of your families and your community in this district and serve them directly and put your aspirations on the Shelf because it's not worth it if going to do it on the backs of our students and our families and our very very supportive staff thank you and that's all our public comment thank you I do want to start by saying that anytime a governing board member chooses to ask for more information it's welcomed um it should never be interpreted as an us against them it should never be viewed as um something derogatory about a particular board member or about a particular position or a particular employee it's information so um I'm hoping that we can open up this conversation to learn get more information clarify any concerns that may have triggered um more exploration regarding these positions um and look at as an opportunity again to learn and explore what's before us here in regard to this position not as a um means of a threat to a position a threat to non-renew um recalling back to when this item was requested it was simply a request for information and that's how we're going to proceed right now um Dr kis I know with that last board meeting um and I'm sorry I don't recall the specifics maybe Miss Densmore you can remind me but there were some particular pieces that the board was asking about in preparation for this item um I don't know if you have those or if that's where you want to start and I did not write them down I did not have them with me but that might be a good place to open president um you'll have to refresh my memory I trying to think of the unanswered questions that were left pending you you and I have had many conversations about this topic um both in public and um in one-on-one conversations I I don't recall specifically um but I I can um start off by mentioning one of my questions that I've had for you and and that is initially my understanding when this was presented to the board I believe I want to say three years ago I could be wrong about that um about three years ago it was presented as a grant funded position and we were offered uh we were being offered the grant as a school safety grant that school safety Grant had an option of having social workers or school resource officers that was my understanding of it um my new understanding of this is that we did apply for the grant correct me if I'm wrong and we we failed to receive that Grant so these are being daart funded 100% without a grant uh Madam president miss stor yes and yes and kind of okay so the uh the need for social workers you're correct was about uh three and a half years ago okay um we this was was independent of the state safe schools Grant um it was just before that that that that came out and D started a pilot in the spring of 2019 I believe with five schools and that pilot was successful and that fall is my recollection um that the board approved to expand it to schools um about the same time um the state safe schools Grant Governor Ducey um was very favorable of the additional supports um there were monies made available for districts to apply which could have been for a school counselor a social worker or an SRO dcer did apply and we were not successful in that Grant um but we were already in that pathway my understanding if I remember is Karen still here um we asked for some counselors um so the funding source for the social workers at the time um and still today is not out of maintenance and operation funds it's out of the myips Medicaid and public schools funds um as Mr Hicks presented at that time um there was a healthy balance in the myips account and this would have been a great opportunity to um help kind of buy down that account um Mr Hicks presented recently that um we that account continues to be successful at generating revenues um so it uh it's a healthy fund and there's there's no risk currently of the funding source for the social workers I know there has been some questions in the past about um the type of things that social workers do I know Miss Pritchard has a social worker background and she has a Clear Vision of what she thinks the social worker position um her professional opinion as what it should look like and I believe there were concerns that maybe our social worker positions aren't looking exactly like they could be or maybe they should be if those are the correct words am I understanding that I can I'm not sure if that's from Dr Callis or if you're asking me my opinion on either one of you I'll go ahead um president M um cha and I would say that as one of the uh speakers indicated it's a work in progress from the very first time that we did the pilot to today there have been many modifications to the the roles and responsibilities um initially there were some classroom presentations some large group instruction um I don't think they even have time to do that anymore and intentionally So based on governing board feedback that has translated into changes in the the roles of the counselor or the social workers um it does look different today than it has in the previous couple of years um Miss PR I won't speak to your part of the question about um your vision of the counseling role versus what the actual role is and just to clarify I mean and maybe that got somewhat confused I have never been employed as a social worker with daart and nor did I create the job description so I can't I have no say over what it should look like in daart world I know a general um just uh industry standard of what social workers do in schools in general but outside of what daer does with them I mean I have no knowledge and have no input to that quite frankly we don't even approve job descriptions I don't believe they're just brought to us for information um my concern and and I'll be the the first to say as and I might be biased because I am a social worker not in a school but still they have tremendous value in so many different Arenas I mean that I would never say they don't my only concern um and I've been very forthcoming with this is that the board continues to get feedback of how they're used here yes and then miss winterstein speaks to us and says nope this is this is what our social workers do and it sounds amazing because it sounds like what they should be doing in our schools and then we get feedback that no they're either teaching large groups or they're talking about CRT or they're talking about inclusion or they're talking about all these controversial type things which in and of itself could be great I mean everyone has their own opinion and and what your what view you have on either side of that topic is your own and your family's own and the student needs to be separate from the social work individual social worker I don't I think there needs to be that clear line and it seems like it would constantly be blurred and so we'd ask for an item and again miss moers sign would come back or we'd get feedback from Dr Kellis that doesn't happen in our schools or we're addressing it on an individual basis um so my concern has only been not do social workers have value on our school which I 110% believe they do it's how is the social worker program working in daart and what is Administration done to make sure that when we have these pockets of of scenarios with student students or social workers that are deviating from that and causing concern with parents to where it get reaches the board level what are we doing to stop that from happening because historically and I don't remember Mr Dean you were you were here for sure I can't remember Dr polling if you were here then we had social workers way back when and we the superintendent at the time got rid of them because they weren't being used appropriately and they brought in Behavior coaches which are nothing like social workers at all shouldn't even be in the same category they do two totally different things and there was a void there and I I said I I wrote a proposal saying this is why we need social workers in daart and at the time the superintendent said no there's no place in di art for social workers so again I'll say it a third time I think there's a a lot of value and they do great work but we seem to have a problem in our district with how some of those individuals are using their role not all of them and I don't even have I have maybe one or two names but aside from that I couldn't pick any of them out of a crowd I just know emails that I get or conversations that I've had where people are like these types of things are family issues or value based issues or moral issues that's not what I want my child involved in when they interact with a social worker and I get concerned because I'm thinking we have this great opportunity to help these individuals and families and students with a social worker role and it's being tarnished by some people that are going outside of their Lane and how they're how they're carrying through their their day or their role and that's why we kept bring that's why I know in the past I did not request this item back tonight personally I understand why it was brought back but when I've asked for it in the past it's because hey tell me what this looks like in daart because I'm getting different pieces of information so that's my perspective is social workers are wonderful but the way that it's causing a lot of upheaval I think with some parents community and how we're using them and it's just frustrating to continue to get that feedback and then be told being given a presentation of the textbook role of what a social worker does and it sounds perfect and then the board meeting's over and everyone goes back to their buildings and things happen differently and parents are upset saying why is this being taught why is this said to my child oh a social worker said it um that's my frustration and that was my that's my perspective to your point on the upheaval and you're hearing from community and parents and and it reaches the board level I have never received one email from a parent I have never received an email from a Community member regarding a social worker going outside their Lane so if there is such an upheaval and such a concern why isn't the the entire and I can't speak for the rest of the board I can only speak for me but if there's such a concern on the community level then why hasn't the entire board been notified of this I've never received an email regarding that well we had a Community member speak to us Miss Grant regarding it and one issue went to Dr Kell so he's aware she spoke but you said there's a community um upheaval and parent one Comm one person speaking is not a community of people that's correct but I didn't say she was the only person I'm saying you said that's a person that came and spoke to the board yes I have never received an email I've never received a phone call regarding a concern of a social worker so I'm having a hard time understanding what the problem is and I can't explain why what I mean you get emails and you don't so but it's not an upheaval if they don't Comm if they don't contact everybody right shouldn't I learn of the problem just as much as the rest of you well it's possible that they believe that Miss Pritcher will take action that's why they send her the emails and not not that you wouldn't I didn't mean it like that I have been individually contacted on many different issues and I don't know whether it's them sending an individual email to each board member or am I blind copied or am I the only person receiving it but there's no way to really know that due to open meeting lot unless we were are all copied on that email we're never going to know so I I I think that we need to do away with any accusations on that on that I'm sorry I did not mean that the way it came out I apologize Jo okay I'm just saying if there's a concern in the community I mean you can say a parent contacted you or you um okay then but when you use the word community and parents if there's a concern and you even said and it makes it to the board level that we continue to have to talk about this it's not making it to the whole board level it's only making it to certain board me level and that concerns me [Applause] de not a debate I can let me chime in also um in my past 11 years um any type of concern I do I have always submitted it to the superintendent um but my time on the board I have yet to receive any type of feedback regarding social workers or school psychologist I have not um maybe I have it could have been singled out to just one two I have not received any any information about any type of feedback of what was being said how it was being done if one social worker was doing something and another one wasn't I haven't received anything regarding social workers have you received information regarding CRT in schools because a lot of my emails that are alleging alleging conversations between students in the schools and the social worker are in regard to CRT and Equity things and I know lots some of them the whole board was copied on from community so have you not received CRT concerns from the community I but how can you tie CRT back to social worker how can you tie CRT back to to teachers because that's what they said [Applause] I know I haven't received anything like that or I haven't interpretated sorry my mouth dry I have an interpretate you know what I mean um with regards to um feedback for CRT with social workers I know we we don't follow CRT I know that so I guess maybe I have put it out of my mind but I haven't received anything I will say I have received um some communication from a couple of Staff members regarding the school psychologist and I have received information regarding CRT from a couple of parents I think I received one email saying no CRT but I don't I don't connect CRT to the social worker or to the school psychologist that's a policy and again Dr Dean did a presentation I think you've done it twice now but the last one you did you were you did a chart that said this is what daart does and this is what daart doesn't do and you were so clear on we do not do CRT we do not do this and I mean it was just dot dot dot dot that's all I I mean but I've gotten maybe one email that just said I don't want CRT okay but that I don't I still don't tie that to a position well I think Al the concerns is social emotional learning can be used as a back door to CRT and different elements okay and thank you and also concerns I share Miss pritchard's concerns because I do receive communication that is concerning and sometimes I would receive screenshots and we bring it up and we submit our concerns and then we are presented and yeah it looks good on paper everything they should be doing but then at the same time it's kind of it's almost like this Balancing Act to where it goes this way and then it goes this way and then it goes this way and it's just it it just seems to not stop those are my concerns so I guess my question is what information is needed for the for the social worker program that it was pulled for more information so specifically what is more information needed I don't know I didn't I don't know I I didn't specifically there's there's several things several concerns that we had I know um but one of the pieces though I would like more information on is how it's being used at our in our high schools in their wi I don't know what you want to call intervention their intervention their their storm watch their study hall period I know I I have a an understanding I don't know if it's it's a correct understanding but it's being used differently at the different high schools question that's a question for you Dr kis mam president miss denmore as has been presented in the past about the high school advisory period thank you U the the topics there have um they're broad everything from preparing for a college application um to preparing for for college admissions exams um for kindness um I I won't repeat the whole presentation but okay um each one of those advisory periods as you just hinted to has a different title there's um stride at one school there's advisory going by the just the name there's each each High School calls it something different um that's not a social worker curriculum time that doesn't mean that the social workers aren't tasked with some supports for maybe on occasion but not not a regular classroom it's not their uh it's not their job description to prepare the the high school advisory period okay if I could mam president um also just again extend my sincere and true ask that if any board member has um parents who are coming to them we have a it's worked great actually to follow the lines of communication that they need to address those concerns with the principal or with the social worker and and go through the lines of communication so that these problems can be addressed at the appropriate level um when it goes straight to the board member and there the message gets lost or or it it gets stuck in into that that level and the opportunities to resolve concerns um falter so again I would even say that it it is the right thing to do to help parents use the lines of communication as have been established lots of times when I've gotten email sometimes there is concern either they have brought it forward and they don't feel like there was resolution and you know me we've had this conversation like I'll I'll respond if anyone has a question I mean I'll always respond to them I mean um I'll always ask if they followed up with their principal or if it's a teacher issue or whatever role we're talking about but I I would never just disregard it so there any other questions or or concerns do we have are we fully staffed with all of our social workers right now do we have any vacancies M denmore we're short to and it's currently all being paid through MBS M president M yes and there's one on every campus right now or other than the vacancy um Madam president there is a position allocated to every every site except for growing mines and Sundown so technically we have all and then also a lead at the district office correct or does she work with another Madam president I believe the lead is assigned to a school the lead is assigned to a school thank you did I hear right that it was 32 um m presid m denmore 32 positions and that would be 24 okay that was she's assed okay thank you okay I knew I heard 32 somewhere any other questions or more discussion well this is an action item so what do we that's discussion we don't have to action anything it was just mainly for discussion but but I um I do want to reiterate that if any board member ever has a need for more information regardless of whether or not it's shared by the majority of the board that they should never feel um hesitant to voice concern and need for more as board members we all have equal opportunity to ask for any item and no one should ever feel like that is not allowed or would be respected so I do want to just bring that to everyone's attention I think thank everybody and I don't fault anyone for bringing it forward it's it's good discussion and if there isn't any action then we don't have to take any we can just move to the next item I believe we do have to take action don't no mam president Miss Grant there is no motion if there's no motion made then there's no action next but it says it's action slash discussion so you you can discuss what the opportunity for action but you don't have to take action just as we did on a previous item we can just choose to take no action at all and move forward so next we'll move to I4 recommendation for renewal of eligible licensed social workers and authorization to issue employment contracts for the 2022 2023 school year Dr Kell thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet Dr CR will introduce this item thank you Dr Kellis Madame President members of the board superintendent Kell cabinet and guests um it is the recommendation uh this evening to uh have a motion to approve eligible licensed social workers for Reemployment and authorize the issue of employment contracts for the 2223 school year have any questions oh if you remember excuse me sorry madam president last meeting you approved the contract but we did not approve the issuance so this motion is to approve issuing authorizing the Reemployment and issuing the contract does anyone have any further discussion or questions the the language on the summary here is that typical I I don't recall seeing this language before Madam president denmore it is the same language is it okay thank you um I I did have one question on this and and thank you for bringing that up Miss denmore uh on the summary uh employees who are currently completing a 45 instructional day Improvement plan um do we currently have anybody on the plan Adam president um m s that's probably not something that we would address in public personel inform sometimes we have before I'll entertain a motion I move to approve eligible licensed social workers for Reemployment and authorize the issuance of employment contracts for the 222 23 school year I will second motion made by Joe Grant seconded by Tracy sing bille motion carries all right next we move to item I5 recommendation for approval of a district reorganization plan Dr CIS thank you madam president me Madame President members of the board and members of cabinet um this will be another joint presentation from doctors Dean and crto Madam president members of the governing board Dr Kell and members of cabinet not to relive the Ping ponging that happened earlier but we're going to relive the Ping ponging that happened a little earlier so both Dr Cotto and I will present information regarding this this action request the board will recall at the last meeting uh a reorganization plan for the student services department was brought forward with an approximate cost of about $40,000 to the district at the request of the board that reorganization has been reexamined and through collaboration of cabinet the district uh we are recommending this evening a reorganization plan involving the student services department and aspects of the human relations department that results in a budget savings to the district of recommending the following and do we have this slide does the board have this slide yes we okay good make sure we're all on the same page cabinet is recommending the addition of a director of student services for middle and high school a director of student services for K4 and K8 and an and an administrative sector crary 3 position for the student services department you'll note that the salary listed for the two director positions include experience in this conversation that was a topic of our last conversation that the amount that was requested in addition to our budget um did not necessarily reflect experience those two numbers do ex um reflect the experience base level of that position a job description for that position a requirement would be five years at least five years in a principal um role additionally in um the reorganization cabinet is recommending an additional HR Regional specialist so four four total positions for new positions as the board can see that results in a total amount of an increase of $292,000 $292,500 who is resigning or resigning due to retirement the student services manager position the safety and compliance specialist which is currently vacant as well as two positions from the human relations department the HR manager which is an administrator position and the HR receptionist in which we currently have two people that uh fill the role in the front office of the district office every day this would allow us to maximize our res our resources that creates a budget decrease of 31,8 $3 which results in a reorganization budget savings to the district of $1 19,28 which could be used to pay additional experience if needed to incoming directors and um I will turn it over to Dr Coto for any additional comments and any questions that may be related thank you Dr Dean I think Dr Dean served in Ace there's really no pingpong needed because he delivered the whole thing but um we uh went through ma to maximize our resources to repeat Dr Dean and look for efficiencies where we could make this happen um and again took the direction of the board to come back with a plan that did not cost the board any additional money so we have that before you and we'll stand for any questions did the um the eliminated positions that are that are presented tonight were these the same that were were presented in December specifically to the human relations department Madame President no they were not included in December so these two positions um just within the last month they were told that their positions are going to be eliminated Madam president um I did have a conversation with everybody of on the eliminated uh positions list that it would be coming to the governing board last night so yes I told them that and it is uh the intent through to do that um put this in place as July 1st next year however we do have some of these positions coming vacant now and we ask the governing board to allow us to hire them if they become vacant at this time um but we do not intend to eliminate those um positions that the people are in until July 1st of next year they may choose to leave we've told them six months ahead of time um and they are welcome to apply for any of the positions in our district and I have stressed that with each of them personally I just want to make sure I heard you right did you say that you advised them you had that conversation with them last night no no no I've had it in the last week week okay yeah not last night all right thank you but I did personally speak to every one of them my only question uh in all of this yes you put a time as far as um the Lev of experience uh Dr Dean you just said five years of principal role um principal in well you're talking middle and high school and then the other one is K4 K8 so in those particular areas Madam president Ming Dr CTO could answer the question better than I it is M Madam president member Sawyer s Bill uh the way the job description will be written as 5 years of experience at principal level or higher so it could be at any of those levels obviously if we're looking for a director in K4 to K8 we would want some kind of experience in K4 to K8 to be able to direct the principles at that level as well as high school middle school we would want somebody with high school or middle school experience but five years cumulative of a least principal or higher or higher okay okay that was it thank you so it was sent back to I think it was $40,000 was right Madam president member grant our initial proposal in December would have been an increase to the district of approximately $40,000 that however to be fair and and was correctly identified during conversation did not include an ex exponential index to hiring those directors this proposal includes experience in that salary so to do that we're laying basically laying off two people I guess laying off eliminate their positions now I can see I don't know the whole makeup of the district but I can see where in HR receptionist could get a when you say I encourage you to apply I can see we're an HR receptionist could easily apply for other positions within the district not necessarily receptionist but I don't know the terms in the front office they all have titles but an HR Manager that's going to be a little tricky to apply for another job within the district if you're an HR Manager and are looking for another HR manager position yes but there are other we have tons of positions open that they may qualify for okay May classified and member Grant I may add with that position that um to keep our the number of Administrators to be neutral in the district um in essence the recommendation is to add one administrator and the HR manager position is an administrator in the district and so um by eliminating that that keeps the number of Administrators to a neutral number okay thank you I guess I was hoping that when we said you know see if you go back and find the money within our budget I wasn't thinking that you know I guess in a perfect world I'm thinking do we have some big positions that we can maybe reduce the salary to or combine or something like that I wasn't thinking that we would come back eliminating people for a position and I know it's you know I know it's not ideal from what Miss winterstein said but for a position that we have someone doing an amazing job right now as one person Madam president um thank you for your concern for those whose positions are being eliminated I think anytime a you have that conversation it is it is challenging and administratively as we manage the the positions throughout the district um we take the charge from the board to keep the budget neutral um seriously we we heard your feedback and that is um looking at at the the needs the greatest needs of the district and the priorities um this was the Personnel decision that was is being recommended for for those employees who positioned were eliminating would they get priority I mean if they're qualified would they get priority status for any open current open positions as long as they have good standing um president Pritchard member ch jaffin um they will still need to apply as we do with any employee we don't guarantee positions for people so they would still need to go through the process and apply for any position they're interested in um so we it's not we don't operate in necessarily um assigning people to spots and I you might know this better than than I would Dr Coto but for an HR Manager especially classifi but $85,000 salary I think that's going to be hard for that person to be able to find a job at that same level especially nowadays the district yeah I don't know I personally that's personally I wasn't thrilled with the budget going up anyway that's why I I wanted to see the um Administration bring it back and and see if we could make this work with the money that we had but um to to cut people um I'm not feeling good about it and I'm I'm not feeling good about it either um I was I was fine with the first um reorg that we were presented back in December um I know that there's times that you do need to eliminate positions and everything but um and I thank you for the work that you actually went back through and and looked and Shuff and everything um but I'm I'm not happy I'm happy but I'm not happy if you get my meaning are there any other questions I guess I kind of share your concern I don't feel confident about eliminating somebody's position that particular position right now just eliminating it from the HR so unless anyone wants to make a motion um I I want to ask a few questions first um so what I'm looking at this under the new positions so we would basically have the two directors as well as an HR Regional specialist am I understanding that correctly Madame President um member denor that is correct we're adding so since we are deleting an admin in HR we are adding a regional specialist to pick up some of the duties that we have um would a receptionist be qualified to fill the role of the regional specialist RR yes that last can you ask that question again I was asking whether or not the receptionist would be qualified I mean on paper would they have matching qualifications um for the HR Regional specialist because it's you know another classified position HR Regional specialist would be the same as a receptionist qu qualification wise yeah but that just sounds like a different skill set different job Madam Madam president uh perhaps to assist the the conversation I will share again that as the board has directed Administration to present a plan we have looked at our priorities and our needs and this plan best meets um the the Personnel needs of the district I appreciate again the the concern about individuals and their positions and if the board would like to um move to approve the model that was presented at the last board meeting that perhaps um I would worry that if the board is dissatisfied with both of these these uh models um that we're a little bit confused about keeping the budget neutral and making the the Personnel decisions um that are best for the needs of the district but that might be based on individuals and not on the needs of the district so we can't have our cake and eat it too well I mean I I know that from the from the meeting I I think there was confusion and I I think that at least in my perspective it was communicated several times the the point was not necessarily the the financial aspect of it the point was replacing one really amazing person with with with two people I think that at face value is is what at least I was struggling with um not understanding why w why why we weren't paying her double the salary you know if she [Applause] was I know but I think that's just mentally what I struggled with when when I had been presented the information last time um and it was an increase obviously um so I I think you took one piece of the of the concern and ran with it but you didn't look at the entire picture that makes sense Madam president thank you for that clarification and you are absolutely right um cabinet did hear from the conversation that there was the concern was an increase to the budget of $40,000 and to come back with a plan that did not include a $40,000 increase and so with that goal in mind um we did look at the the structures that are currently in place and with a budget neutral even with a little bit of savings um developed a plan that is budget neutral and that did not um create an increase to the budget um essentially the the request at that time was to request an increase to the budget for the for that position for those two positions um going back to the original presentation the need exists um I think we have said many times that Mrs um winterstein is irreplaceable as a single person and she has done an extraordinary job and probably deserves a bucket of extraordinary pins um looking forward to the needs of the district they are great and as we look at the Personnel needs Administration is looking at the the management of of the Personnel in a way that best meets those needs so if I understood you correctly a portion of the role of the HR manager will go to the HR Regional specialist what about the rest of the job Madam president member Grant uh those duties will be um absorbed by our current staff who are already doing above and beyond absolutely we have an amazing staff so but they're doing already above and beyond their regular job and now you're adding more duties to them to all of us correct yeah to all of you and HR and then so and then eliminating the receptionist then right there will be a receptionist in the front there's currently two people that sit in the front so it's not the district office will not have a receptionist there will be somebody in the front there are currently two people that sit in the front so Dr Coto the one um regarding the HR Regional specialist the way we have the makeup right now um each of those Regional special have schools that are assigned to them so if we're adding a uh Regional specialist then we're going to be redistributing those schools correct that is correct okay and so then some of the other HR manager duties are going to be assumed by others so the the the case load meaning the school load the number of schools will be decreasing correct with those people those specialists but the other that is the concept correct okay we'll decrease some of the case load take some of the duties as well as Dr we for and myself okay I still would prefer the district work with the money that they have and and make it work but I'll entertain a motion I will go out on a limb and uh moved to approve the uh reorganization plan that was presented on December 8th 2021 is there a second sure I'll second that motion made by Tracy souring bill seconded by Joe Grant we're rewriting the motion so please hold it's not me oh the December 8th one now was a $40,000 increase correct that's the motion approxim minimum that did not include experience so is is there any way to look at the other one before I vote is there any way to look at them side by side I don't PR a copy yes it is online as a as an archived boarded agenda item okay did you pull it did you say thank you oh than okay okay you click how do you click off of the vote you just close it I just opened a new tab you're so smart and you do that information social work isn't it on oh here it is information H5 yeah there it is we H that's Madam president member Chap and I can just give a quick as you're searching for that information I can just give a quick recap as I I've been able to pull it up in front of me the information presented on December 8th regarding the student services reorganization recommendation included eliminating the current position of director of student services support services manager which is a currently vacant position and safety and compliance specialist that creates a budget decrease of approximately $253,000 then the recommendation went further to add a director of student services for high school and middle school and a director of student services for Ka as well as an administrative secretary 2 that came with a budget increase of approximately $293,000 which Nets to the $40,000 that we discussed however we want to make sure that we point out that that did not include an exponential factor in the director positions that was the base level salary for the directors we are we will be looking at job description to recommend or or to write job descriptions that have at least 5 years of experience a principal or hire therefore an experiential index would need to be paid to those folks that $40,000 does not include that experience piece so really we're looking at how much then if not 40 it's going to be Dr Coto Madame President I would without doing the figures here I would say 75 to 80 quickly off top of my head I can do the figures for I'm sorry for each position uh Madame President member denp total not each position instead of 40 it would be 75 to 80 and then on this this new one it looks like it's an increase of is it 292 no what's what's the increase on the second one to in total yes and it's a decrease of 19 $1,811 so it's a savings of 19,800 but is it really 19,000 or are we going to add another potential 70 to 880,000 on that Madame President member denmore we we would not add another 7080 because experience is already granted um as Miss Chaffin pointed out in the December 8th meeting that we didn't have experience so we included uh what you see there is Step six uh on the director because of 5 years experience minimum so it may go up um a few thousand doll but not more than that Savings of 19811 if we say somebody came in with seven or eight years of experience um we would add additional but that is in no way the 75 to 80 to clarify though that 19 in the previous motion that wasn't a savings of n that was only a savings of 19 because of the original 4 ,000 from the last time we're still going to see a budget increase of $119,000 Madam president no this is saving the the plan presented tonight is a net savings to the district of $1 19,8 if you follow this plan as presented tonight well there's a motion on the floor it's been made and seconded did I vote did I okay I didn't remember seeing confused be side by side I know that's what I was trying to say too it's not adding up right the other one did the one from December 8 did not include the elimination of these two position me I'm just going to stare at it for like 20 more minutes that would be mine that would be me no no no we're just I'm still deciding want vot yes yes I'm just not sure so the motion that's on the floor right now is Miss sville Sawyer s Bill's motion that um after hearing from Dr Coto could potentially have an increase to the budget of 75 to 80,000 that's what we're voting on right now correct why wouldn't the December 8th be the same as 107,000 for each of those positions Madam president member Grant we this is granting experience in tonight's proposal the December 8th proposal did not Grant experience to that position so that is the base pay of that position so we could say for the December 8th make the the two directors the 107,000 and not leave it blank based on experience because this is based on five years of EXP experience is that correct Madam M president Miss Grant um I think that would be a separate motion depending on I understand that but I'm asking that potentially we can redefine the first proposal and include the years of experience which would reflect the 70 80,000 and that would and that's an estimate it could be less I mean I have to do that but by putting in the years of experience and making it this 107 because I just did the math it would we wouldn't have that 75,000 potential it would be like this the same and not eliminate an H position the point they were saying is from the last presentation was that the level of experience they would need to bring forward they couldn't bring in an entry-level person they would need to bring them in with at least five years which means more salary we have but Mr Hicks we have how many not if asking them to redo it positions across the entire District that are not filled and we keep we we have several positions across the district that are not filled that we keep allocating funds for right um Madam president uh members of the board we do have vacant positions but if we were going to use one of those then we'd have to close it and not hire to it so there's the chance that they hired and so we don't have Perpetual vacant positions that we just bank if that's what you're yeah that's that's good it is good it is good okay all right guys I feel like we need to call for a vote Madam president the vote was we should be discussing the the vote died um there was no um majority vote on this so that motion is is dead okay we would ask if the board has a second motion or further Direction I think for at the late of the hour if there we move on and if an Administration wants to or if the board has Direction um to provide to the superintendent um in preparation if you want to bring something else back but I don't know as far as um could we possibly table this till the next meeting I understand this is time sensitive this needs to happen but maybe could we take till the next meeting where we can kind of process this a little more and figure out which plan can't T right so it's already that's why I was saying if we want to give some direction to Administration then they can bring back another item right um my my position still stands of have it you know try to make it work with what we have I don't like to just add more to the budget but certainly other board members um if there's any other specific Direction you think could make this a workable option then Administration can bring it back next time can you bring back the December 8th whoa whoa not everybody get excited with the experience cap like before there was if I understood you correctly there was the salary could go many ways because we didn't put an experience cap on this proposal there's a fiveyear experience B base Bas M president thank you for the feedback and we can bring back another proposal um we will just again for clarification keeping a budget neutral there will be a jobs eliminated to be able to accommodate the the plan unless we just hire that position as it is now which I mean not hire advertise that position as it is now as a possibility or or look into savings I know do or Mr Hicks you said that um we don't necessarily have a lot of positions that are just waiting vacant but maybe another quick scan see what we have and is it possible maybe in our next board packet to have all three of them attached that way we can kind of look at them that way if we want to go back and say oh we like the December 8th or we like the January 12th we can kind of see it ahead of time and look over that thank you it's so much easier I do have one more question um and I just lost it when you started talking um it's okay I'm trying to get it get it back um oh okay so I am wondering with with the two um director positions I I guess I'm curious why we would need both of them with the five-year experience base especially if we could maybe use one as I mean they would be partners they would be a team that they would be working together I would almost think that that would be easier like maybe if we had one at that lead in that lead role in a sense and then we had one that wouldn't necessarily require That Base even though we could have them at it mam president miss denmore the reason for the five years of experience for both of them is because these directors will be advising principles on a day-to-day basis on very serious issues um very high level serious issues and to have somebody without experience would be frustrating to the principles as well as potentially liability to to the district true are internal candidates have already expressed interest in these positions Madam president um no however to say that we have not posted it and we haven't had conversations about that so to say no doesn't mean that there aren't it just means that no one's come forward to say he it's not something that we have gone out and solicited for okay all right well thank you okay so next we'll move to um item I6 discussion and action to set a date and time for an executive session Dr K thank you mad president members of the board and members of cabinet this is um at the request of a board member to have a special meeting to review policy with the uh presence of an attorney this recommendation is for next Wednesday January 19th from 6:00 to 8:00 pm does that work for everybody sure and this would be an executive session next Wednesday not hearing any concerns then yeah no concerns um I move the board establish an executive session for January 19th 2022 at 6m pursuant to ARS section 38-43 1.03 A3 for the purpose of getting legal advice from the attorney from the public body regarding legal parameters regarding establishing policy addressing locker room and restroom use by transgender students do I have a second second motion made by Christine Pritchard seconded by Crystal shaen motion carries next request for future agenda items anyone have any items I would like an action discussion item um and information presented on school resource officers in our middle schools anyone else next we move to adjournment I move that we adjourn the meeting motion made by Christine Pritchard seconded by Joe Grant you v Joe you gonna vote no to Jour my vot yes I'm tired not popping up oh my gosh oh

yes the board's required to prove all uh all qualified evaluators we bring you the majority of them at the beginning of the year uh mitchell hood is doing some work up at the high school uh to help out and has gone through the qualified evaluator training and so as we did last year with mr hill we're just bringing him since he's completed the training uh through i think it was asa or it's either asa or arizona department of bad uh during the fall we're bringing them forward for approval today so i'd recommend approval as presented any questions on that no no all right i'll take a motion i'll move to approve the 2021-2022 j.o combs unified school district qualified evaluators including now mitchell hood as presented second all in favor aye aye aye motion carries five to zero eight point three discussion review of the annual comprehensive financial report and single audit for fiscal year end june of 21.

low is less than 30 and then you can also go negative your post test could be less than your pre-test so what you're seeing here for me anything to the left what as i'm looking at it anything from low to high is good at this point in time um by the end of the year when when i do this we'll be comparing it from pretest to the end of the year test i hope that we'll see the majority of our numbers in the typical or the high growth area the negative is the area that that concerns me the most because that means that our kids went backwards and do we have any idea how much of that is as a result of loss of learning due to covid i don't i would have to go in and i'd have to know which students were out and for how long and have to do a correlation and unfortunately i don't have access to that i'd have to do some work on that so third through eighth grade math positive here we went from zero to at least one in almost all of our grade levels again with math we have to remember that again i'm looking at a 75 percent or greater is proficiency ela all of those standards the way they work i'm working with them from kindergarten all the way up through 12th grade the same standards pretty much just more complex and scaffolded math these are brand new concepts and skills that kids learn in each grade level they don't spiral quite to the extent that that ela does so when we look at this it's not quite as surprising because a lot of the material that kids are working with are new and they're still working with material that they may not have ever seen before on these benchmarks here with the the average percent correct you can see against improvement for the most part in the average percent correct overall and then here's our growth numbers and again they look to me they look better than than what we did with the ela except for sixth grade that's the one that that is the most troubling out of all of these and then we see the same thing with our sixth grade math scores usually on on state assessments uh there's a lot of new stuff with math in sixth grade and it it's hard for kids ninth through eleventh grade though for high school we are assessing the uh priority standards and some supporting standards that that carry over from quarter to quarter of the quarter so this is a different assessment than what we're doing with our third through uh eighth graders um so it's an end of quarter standard space assessment we are creating this one rather than using a pre-built because they don't have one for high school pre-built again the window is the same window november 29th through december 17th for ela we're testing 9th 10th and 11th graders but in 11th grade we're not doing advanced placement because advanced placement has a different curriculum basically than what our state standards are so 9th and 10th grade you see honors kids embedded 11th grade those honors kids get pulled out because they're taking ap for math algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2 which is typically our freshman sophomore junior level course so here 9th grade ela we had the same percentage of kids passing the benchmark as we did in first quarter 10th grade we saw a significant decrease in number percentage of kids um that passing the the second quarter benchmark and then 11th grade we saw a good increase from six percent to 12 12 passing and again that passing is a 75 percent or higher average percent correct so we did see a decrease even though the the percent passing was the same in ninth grade we saw a decrease in the percent average percent correct 10th grade again we saw a decrease in the percent passing but they were pretty close in their average percent correct and then 11th grade again we saw a good increase in that average percent correct math not a whole lot of improvement between first quarter and second quarter except in algebra two we saw a few more kids passing and then the average percent correct pretty much stayed about the same in both algebra 1 and geometry with a little bit of an increase in algebra 2.

inflation's been pretty bad i wouldn't be i miss remus and or i don't think we're asking much to reconsider raising that again so i'm just i just want to put this out there i mean this the way i see this is it is the the benefit is if you're a union member and i totally respect the union members and the cost is borne by the taxpayer and i just think this is a huge this is a huge issue for cheshire right now because we're talking about school modernization and so even if it was on the very conservative side the numbers we're talking about is in the millions of dollars in additional costs that we're going to be paying uh if we go to referendum and presumably prevailing wages in place we're talking about millions of dollars could be tens of tens of millions of dollars maybe i mean at least over three phases could i ask a question tim maybe it's worth um maybe it's worth looking into uh what other communities are interested in this topic as well i mean cheshire going at about something all on our own is is not as powerful as if there are you know all the communities we can't be the only ones who are interested in in changing those caps i guess yeah no i yeah i agree absolutely it's not so much a question it's a kind of a comment it's a good suggestion i mean build a coalition and um and who i don't know if there's a is there a professional association out there that like school construction laborers association i'm thinking this would probably be either it would be either cabe or ccm vin do you know if either looked at this at all yeah i mean the prevailing wage rate is always you know a legislative priority for many of the organizations i can't speak specifically to caps okay where their position is right now but you know this is not an uncommon topic for discussion yeah i think i mean to be totally frank i i would like something to i would like it to change to get those numbers up um the thing that just has me really concerned about it is we've got school modernization that we're talking about we just voted on it last night we're talking about like you just said what into 100 million for the total cost including the state funding and stuff we're talking about a lot of money and the prevailing wage will certainly be based on what you said in the millions of dollars on phase one it could be in the tens of millions of dollars um as a you know an increased cost of the taxpayers purely by way of state law that could be changed if our legislators chose to change it or you know if the legislature collectively did the governor agreed um so i really wanted i am interested in having a change but my goal is to put this out there in the public purview because particularly because we've got school modernization right now we're talking about big numbers so are we in in agreement that we would we would stand with the town council and adopt their language as well i i mean i'd be comfortable with that i would go even higher but i'd be comfortable with that at a minimum have they crafted something already yeah uh yes yes it was shared with uh carol sharer with the agenda so there were two documents there was the agenda and she also included the town council's legislative recommendations for 22.

um and yeah there's about 10 acres in there it's basically a big field behind a bunch of arborvities i think a whole row of our bivariates right i think that's exactly where it is yeah and there's that there's also a long um uh on the uh what is it 691 um over toward waterbury there's an exit ramp that got changed a few years back the land where the road hit the state highway had been i believe that got seated to the town okay because they didn't use it anymore and it butted up to the dime savings property so it made sense as from a green space perspective so this sort of stuff happens you just need to get the right people paying attention to it i think and it can't happen um is there did either did faith or and did you have any other thoughts on anything are you on you you're a mute faith said you have mine there so i'm okay okay anything you wanted to mention in no i i just was going through uh the cabe agenda their legislative priorities just to sort of see where we stand on things i didn't see anything that wasn't i didn't see anything that we would be want to jump on or anything that we would take issue with so yeah okay okay okay all right i mean i think that's it then um do i have a second or yeah sure all right all those in favor aye thank you thank you for uh thank you for talking tonight yes thank you ben and thanks for thanks for being here everybody have a good night

and we set up uh two two lanes if you came into the high school came down the hill on one of the two sides with a advocate directing people you go left you go right the lines were on and as people got down to the hill by the front door there was a safety advocate in the table with the list that they had prepared just from the information that night and turned it around so quickly the people who they were checked off their name asked for an id and then about 75 yards up the driveway we had another table set up with four advocates and that's where the kids were we didn't want people clothes or traffic jams and what most people did was they were told open your trunk and they did and then the advocate came around and put the test kid in the trunk along with instructions what to do if they tested positive and the way they went and that went on for three or four hours it was pretty controlled the traffic really didn't back up we might have three or four cars waiting at one time but then it was very spread out it was all uh very safe and um i think we handed out 130 someone kicks that day people very pleased to get that so that worked as mentioned the principals have their allocation of kids in their schools with some uh instructions that are comparable describing them thanks john did a very thorough job explaining the process so um yeah that yeah the process for the distribution actually went fairly well and quickly and it was it was organized and your team did an amazing job also in getting those out um that happened on january 6th the criteria that we used with the staff again this was guidance that was issued by the state when the test was distributed to us and that was that you did not have covid in the last 90 days you were symptomatic and that you were direct contact and so in the initial first week when we sent the survey out to staff who were requesting we had about 170 778 staff from personal outperform and from that about 146 were eligible and about 31 were eligible with reasons like i just would feel better if i hadn't wanted to kind of at that point at this point in time it would not have anyone for everyone um you know those were kind of classified as ineligible or if it had coded uh within the last 90 days and so after that distributions uh occurred we did receive a lot of emails over the course of the weekend how can i still get a test can anyone now and so at that point the responsibility picked up the building level and so if a staff member still using the same criteria and the students as well in their code in the last 90 days was presented with symptoms or was it a confirmed direct contact then they could be requested from an administrator and if it was a student on the student side that would go through the nurse and the nursing both determinations as well and so um just taking a quick leach a good peek on our our master sheet it appears that we've handed out approximately about 100 809 student test kits so far since we started that on monday i'm sure that will grow or as people educate the forums it's kind of a fluid process at this point and then several more staff members as well so the good news is that we would be able to provide test kits for everybody who qualified and who needed one um and in the hopes that we will have another shipment that will come in um and be able to get these out a little bit more freely to everybody but um at the current time we're able to provide everybody who needed a test kit um with foreign mass and 95 mass using our federal government relieved money yes or 3 there was some money left to use those will be coming in in the next day or so they were in stock uh westport company had them cooking bought masks from before so more are on the way thank you and last but not least it's the update on quarantine guidelines and for students and staff sure thank you um and just before i go over that i just want to add that um the distribution of the kids really helped with this new process in place um cafe o'dowd as many of you are aware worked tirelessly all weekend as people were self-testing our employees at home to identify who could and who couldn't come into work and i do um you know believe that that has something to do with the significant increase in amendments for this week so um the the um cdc over the holiday break uh released updated guidance due to the new variant and with that guidance it was then reviewed by the state uh department of public health as well as the state department of education and so right before reopening and the meetings superintendent alston was talking about um the state had indicated to us that districts could feel free to adopt the new guidance by the cdc um and so the guidance is consistent in the first portion i'll go over that if you're symptomatic so any of the cold-like symptoms um that are commonly associated with cobia 19 you are to stay home you were to isolate um anywhere to test before you return to work or until you're not presenting with symptoms and the testing though did change slightly as you guys are aware that getting a pcr test was virtually impossible for many and so you could do a pcr test an anthogen test or a self-test kit um so that self-test kit which we were not previously accepting we're now allowed to accept for either staff or students um in addition um if you are testing positive for cobia 19 another one of the changes in the guidance was that you have to do a five-day quarantine so that was reduced from the previous 10 days i do want to clarify though the 5-day quarantine is it on day six you're no longer presenting with a fever and your symptoms your cold stopping this running nose has significantly uh dissipated then you're able to return to work on day six or a student is able to return to school on day six if your symptoms persist you need to remain out up until the 10th day or through the 10th day or until when you're feeling better it is also expected that between day 6 and 10 if you are back that you are wearing a mask around all others um consistently um which is common without doctors in school anyways but just highlighting um you know to a staff member then in the break room or something like that you need to make sure you're messed up the entire time um we are still quarantining um unvaccinated individuals and recommending that they test on day five after their last exposure um and then the last change in the guidance is regarding individual contact racing and this was all given out in a letter to our families in school community on january 3rd and what that is is we are no longer required to do individual contact tracing across the district and so what we were doing previously is if you are in a six foot radius of a positive individual you are given a contact notification as a parent or as a staff member and so now what we are required to do is after a positive identification is in place assuming all mitigation strategies are are in place as well so where i'm asked to think as much as possible that we do group notifications to that class so if you're an elementary student and you're in a kindergarten class with a child at test positive we're going to notify the kindergarten classroom um that there was a student within that class or there was an individual within that class because it could be an adult that tested positive we do not any longer do the six foot radius we're just notifying the location at the secondary level that is done by course um on advanced teams it's done by team or by club um so any contact in a school we're doing a general notification to the school community that there was an exposure how are we dealing with exposures in the high school college i mean i happen to know a student who received a call right before the holiday the person who sits next to him that guy would have assigned scenic at lunch was positive lo and behold the next day he woke up didn't feel well seven days later got the code results from saying before because it was funny was positive positive we are trying to the best of our ability within all locations in the school to do group notifications such as a lunch table um so if you know we have a signed seating in the lunch um so we do try to notify the individuals in the location i will tell you in those areas it's not a perfect science the classrooms are much more easier to do but we try to the best of our ability to keep people notified at the lower levels it's much easier as the classrooms eat together um at the secondary level it can be challenging hopefully at the secondary level you're calling your friends and tell them i would hope but um yeah just a quick question really um so when you talk about the um the change in the foreign tinkering and the need for folks to wear a mask in that five-day period following when they return how are we having like lunch or snacks and things like that so they are still able to eat lunch and snacks um but we are asking that they eat and then return with the mask on so just a heightened awareness to all um that you know you need to eat you can take a drink and then put the mask back on um the research is showing and from you know the information that's coming from directly from the state is not as likely to pass the virus on to others but we do want we know that this this variant is spreading much more quickly so just in common good practice for all kids um just a heightened sense of eat and then re-mask um but we do have you know there's not a there's not an individual place we can put everything that's returning from the quarantine um and then the only other exception would be um as you guys are aware we do have some individuals in classrooms many of which follow within my department um that we have some students that we know have more difficulty consistently wearing masks so in those locations for example some of our preschool classrooms some of our self-contained classrooms and so forth if we are aware that those individuals are not consistently wearing the mask then we are doing the individual contract tracing in those environments just because those mitigation strategies are not consistently in place and so depending on the scenario you may hear that there's a you know an individual contact tracing and a notification um if we have students that are not math compliant i'm happy to report that is a very minimal number of classes for individual students so we look at it on a case-by-case basis and consult with kathy and the school nursing learners if there's any other questions thank you just in general in terms of subs i mean nowhere ever was any district ever going to have enough subs to cover last week's trade recovery so this is a problem nationwide problem nationwide has going to county or bringing county services in does that increase the number of sums we have not yet time today they have been aggressive in their recruitment but it hasn't yielded us you know the results that we need right now um that's just brand new right so um um report i have quite a few things i'm sorry um it's just we haven't met forever and a lot of things happened and transpired since the last time we met just to touch upon committees briefly the draft uh are attached i spoke to most of you individually um but if there's any feedback you know i'm open to that um i'm also open to placing members on a waiting list for a specific spot that you know if there is one that opens um i can place you on a waiting spot on a waiting list but after tonight i mean that's pretty much said and ready to roll yes kate um [Music] yes were there many meetings um there are usually one a month but i will say i accepted an additional responsibility while sending into the board members so thank you for um negotiations can have informed me that we will be doing three contracts this upcoming summer so i'm looking for two members per group we have three of them uh the nea january teachers danbury pirate educators and custodians so if you are interested please just shoot me an email and let me know so i will need six six board members to cover those three this summer committees that are not on a regular schedule so we have three hopefully policy continues on a regular schedule finance and facilities which i'll talk about in a minute just please be aware that any any committees that are kind of like ad hoc schedule uh just touch base with cara um as soon as possible so that she could possibly set up the live stream it's the scheduling is getting a bit difficult with scheduling community meetings that aren't on a regular regular basis i just want to mention you know the committee meetings i know i mentioned this at the board orientation but attendance at the committee meetings even if you're not a committee member is very beneficial um just so you know when some inaction must be taken before the full board from committee you know gives you a little bit more background to what's going on um what i didn't mention at our orientation was just attendance in general at regular meetings is quite critical we should be committing committed to attend all regularly scheduled meetings we of course have members that really wanted to be here tonight so we're trying out this hybrid format um working through it hopefully very temporary um i um it's important to be in person you know it lends to a better better work environment and conversation cohesiveness of the board so bear with me as we work through this and i have to say a huge thanks to kara olga and our i.t our iot folks um you know they did have some advanced notice to try and work this out for us and i appreciate all that they did to make this work i mentioned the cave legislative breakfast that happened yesterday i attended with michelle and mr walton um and board members the conversation was mostly around uh special education cost and the cap on the ss plus grant that's been a topic for years now for the cave kate group and not only hiring you know diverse staff but just challenges around staffing in general we're all feeling it as mentioned previously the city-wide pto met on monday the day before that kevin and kate and i attended i will send the list of the pto liaisons to them so that they know who is their pto liaisons are um i think what i'm going to do is send them your email addresses so they can contact you but also try and capture their email addresses so you have a way to connect and hopefully attend some pto meetings and then let us know what's happening at the ptos um nick caruso is scheduled to come back this is very far in advance but we do have him on the calendar for march 30th to come back we tried to have a goals and responsibilities workshop um last year and felt that with new board members coming onto the board it's better to wait for them it's hard to schedule them so march 30th is what we're kind of stuck with um and then i want to say thank you to our new members who have really stepped up to participate and observe expulsion hearings and everyone in general just thank you for you know helping us with that um and that's it for me are there any other board updates just so i wasn't is there a question that is excuse me that i asked the question please yes guys uh the question to either the secret tenure or uh are we still looking into faith uh crossing god over the sand and when you're having near school think glass is asking about crossing guard or or some other sign for uh granville we had um yes this request come up before we are looking um and working with the city on our side i'm sorry i didn't hear but the reception is terrible so you know if i had to call someone personally i will uh you know so because i didn't hear what the remark was sorry gladys kelly kelly said that um they are working on that and they will follow up at our next meeting okay good enough thank you thank you just a quick question and i guess my last quote my last question will be and i will go um is it possible and i think it goes in in the order uh that has been in the test uh the superintendent secretary was sent to the very students that we as board members are being represented at pto members and send us back a list at the time that those schools are having their pto meetings so i guess my question is will we be receiving that that notice from the superintendent's secretary what i'd like to do is reach out to the citywide pto i think it'll be more efficient to just reach out directly to the ptos um it's a lot to try and track down when and where the ptos are meeting they're kind of all over the place and you know i tried to look on each individual pto website um they're not all always updated um so what i'd like to do is have uh just a list of board members and their email addresses and their pto that they're going to represent and put the ptos direct email address so that communication can just be direct is that clear okay uh but uh you know we can have a side commentation about that okay okay all right thank you sounds good okay my question good question i hope um as far as the committees like community relations who do you want to do you want me to organize a meeting i mean that that's a great question yeah i think as you are the um prior committee chair yes if you could as the as the chair um initiate the the first meeting and elect the elected chair yeah great oh i did have a note about facilities committee there was we'd like to move forward quickly with that there's a lot of work to be done so we're looking to hold a meeting on january 27th at 6 30.

yes okay and i would just want to make sure i knew where the it's all a compilation right so next year the way inflation is going up right now not only knows what it's going to be at next january that's what went so far this year we've had a couple people to address your question a couple people they don't they're not threatening to leave but they've kind of i think i've been here five years i'm making 10 cents one hour so things like that it's really good well the problem is we can't raise the price of kids to mistake it's not like if i had bond star and girl to raise the price of a hamburger can't do that because it's tough and one of the things even though that i mean i make much more than what's on there anyways but i'm a salary employee so whether i'm not an hourly employee so all the people that work like the cafeteria or teacher days or whatever that gets minimum wage they have to work those hours and then they have to get paid for those hours after their work so i work all year round so my if i work 80 hours a week and then for 80 hours for two weeks and then get divided up because of 365 days and i get split so i still get 500 spoons very packed already half of the winter break whatever and then so my paycheck is going to be the exact same regardless so they they're at a disadvantage where i'm in an advantage and they have so many days and they don't get big t-shirts so you supervise employees no she's not exactly she's not i'm not i'm not taller exactly no like john is salary not a death so he can't go into overtime but i i'm accelerating that i can't do over time right yeah because my understanding and you don't get lawyers so you pray i understand you're not correct but my understanding is you cannot make somebody salary exam um unless they supervise on these five employees right so that's your next dollar except uh the cafeteria manager salaries done because they're classified salaries and they have people involved i don't have anybody anything but i still that's how my paycheck works it's not horrible so even though i don't make as much i still come out better than the people that are making minimum wage so if they get a raise really not any benefit to me when you work salaries the more hours you have to work unless you're making out you're going to overall longer you're actually going to get less but if you're doing mr mr guthrie mr upkins mr robertson aye ms duncan aye morning next week decided the second greeting approval of foreign policy administration reviewed with the board on january 10 2022 recommended changes to policies the policy is ready for board approval and submission to ask superintendent recommendation is is it the decision for the board and folks need a time to discuss remote discussion if not and i have a motion [Music] to extend mandatory mass loading and offload schools at the october board meeting the board approved mandatory mass wearing went inside of offer facilities this motion was for masking to be approved until january the board discussed revisiting and potentially extending the district mastery mandate in january 2022 attached is an article from kg and minor tucson announcements people county's mask requirement and an article from the arizona department of health services showing killing cases superintendent recommendation is that your continuation of the covered pandemic and the development of the new day and the superintendent recommends the border print the masking mandate through july when can we discuss after the every second motion in the second industry i think just reading this uh pima county passes back face mask requirement and right underneath it says connie does not plan active enforcement and so i think we're going to be a hopeless case to try and get everyone to do what they want and also it said it only goes to february 28th and i think hours should go to february 28th to follow the procedure of the county rather than all seventh state that we've got to go every year we can vote again in february 28th that's not a big deal so correct me i'm wrong because i've heard some stuff over a while but this went to court that this went to court that whether the state said the school districts could not mandate math they already got blocking the courts because they didn't follow a procedure it has to be a stand-alone bill not a writer so right now school districts do have the right to mandate massive is that correct correct i live right now yes now would you be willing to go three months i'm just saying that pima county has passed the face mask requirement so i'm sure we would do it but the chances of us enforcing it is i think we can enforce it you think we can even if they haven't they're not taking part in activity that we can enforce it we've heard all kinds of threats we've had threats and that's a strong word i shouldn't use that stronghold we've heard frustrations from employees i used to talk to one every day at study all right yeah have yes exactly that have breathing issues they think this exacerbates i don't like it but i work and i work primarily to model for kids that's one of the things that lance talked to teachers about today um i think that uh it doesn't hurt me i can do it um i think we're gonna have a hard time if he stays on it and it's almost like and i don't want you to all the gold moments that go before lance it's almost like his plate and my plate basically is basically pretty full so if he has to go to every classroom every day that's the best part of being a principal but it takes a ton of time so it's almost like what do you want the principal to give up so my question that would be if if somebody lit up a cigarette in the classroom wouldn't the teacher take care of that they should they should let us know they wouldn't and i would hope that we have never had that happen at all i've got to have those people you understand where it comes from yeah so but we need we don't allow school to take more serious discipline yeah so if a kid refused to wear a mask in the classroom i don't think the principal should have to come to the classroom i think the teacher should send the principal to the office i mean send the kid to the office you know what they normally do with disciplinary actions send the kid up to the office if the student doesn't go out again right yeah if we sense today like when yesterday when he was in your classroom within seven percent that we're in massachusetts so seven percent of 430 kids is about 29 kids that's a line you'll never get to the school office and some of the faculty are not awesome three exactly here i digress okay so my biggest warriors employees are saying i'm gonna ask my kids and i'm gonna quit if you do we've had that now they haven't fallen through the threat that they made the threat in october and i was hoping please don't please don't do that and they haven't so hopefully no one's saying i don't know if they notice it on the agenda that's why i think that it's been better if we would just go until february end of february and that may be well they it's not that far away and then rules again at the end of february i don't think instead of at the end of february we just say until the march meeting and that way we're discussing it at the meeting without having the capital i want to have a conversation here for a minute mr president what does it do to mandate if if you're not going to mandate i mean i can mandate something at work that all the employees have to do something and then if they don't do it that's why i don't mandate very often right but if i mandate that everybody has to do something and then somebody chooses not to do it then what option do i have at that point i see where you're coming from i also think from what um dr boltz was saying we have pretty good compliance we have 20 we have 29 kids that aren't wearing masks every day which is seven percent which is and i get it stuff i have seven percent of my employees are driving 100 miles an hour everywhere they go what should i do about seven percent of my employees well and how many more of your employees would be driving that if you didn't if you told them even care if they drove that way my point is that having the mandate there is probably getting some of the ninety percent give me this example and i'm i have mandatory meetings he hasn't shown up for mandatory meetings but he still works for office right yeah so if i have a mandatory meeting and i say you have to be there then at that point if you're not there what do i do yeah what do i do do i fire you i can't afford a fire you don't have enough paramedics as it is so now i have to change my meetings from mandatory to incentive base right i will give you an incentive if you show up for this meeting right and and so so mandating anything without a consequence is not a mandate you understand where i come from now if the administration is telling us that they cannot enforce this whether it's one kid or two kids or a hundred kids if they cannot enforce this then what good is it us to make a mandate what are we prepared to do what are we prepared to tell them to do if a kid won't wear a mask and a class are we sending them home well that's not the admissions my point is i think we have 93 compliant approximately 93 compliance among students and fairly good compliance among teachers my bet is that we the board says you're not required to order them then so one number we can make it an advisory we advise everybody i would love to see is not saying this is a mandate but the district strongly proponent of wear a mask you know do this you know educating one of the procedures i i honestly think you'll still have about the same amount of compliance i think excuse me it might it probably would but i i personally don't see a mandate as being the answer it's i mean we can vote as a board say we highly recommend that staff and students wear a mask indoors on public on district property you know i mean but so there's a lawsuit i never found out how it came out but little joy was sitting next to ann and ann had coveted a little joey got covered so joey's mom sued the school board for not having a mass mandate and her kid got got covered off of a classmate right and so the burden of proof falls on they prove that they got it at school well i'm just kidding there's a lawsuit to that yeah that's going to happen one of the things i don't have an answer for that been asked in the last 24 hours is basketball season the basketball court is inside seriously we can't expect kids playing basketball to wear a mask they can't breathe someone said what if they sit on a bench does not apply to participating athletes and we didn't specify whether it was inside or outside all last uh you know start of the year volleyball players playing inside without masks sitting on the bench without masks that's that's part of um what we voted um as an exception last time just just to be clear you know and and thought this out but also have a mass mandate one two three four years clock your math block cdc doesn't recommend cloth mask because they're effective they won't remember k 95 or n95 that's a certificate that tells you what you were saying the other day where the cloth mask helped me from spreading it because it's catching most of the moisture coming from my breath that carries the virus it's not it's the n95 that would catch keep me from well but ketchup cdc is even recommending a certain type yes overclock they don't recommend cloth or uh in conjunction with each other no no no just cloth surgical and and they might not even they might not be recommending kn95 for people like us uh yet so it basically says that any mass is better than no matter i'm not going to vote for a mandate unless these gentlemen will tell me that that mandate can be enforced we can tell you that will be enforced but we can't tell you we can't guarantee uh but for sale i think frankly i think when he give me the numbers we have 93 of our kids that we saw in class and they annoying is coming so that's when and i will say the three teachers that i saw without mass later in the day had masked off but and i didn't go in there for that purpose i used that purpose but i had but i documented as i was in there so that wasn't even purpose but they didn't have a model later i'd say the biggest question is we can mandate as we are now a huge but it comes to what consequences for the ones that don't wear it right getting them out of school not good for education for their learning obviously for teachers the morale the time it takes to continuously remind and remind students to put the mouse on it's just stubborn i remind two or three times and then we move on because you know it's the majority of the students having one and they need to have the lesson they need to learn but what are our difficult objectives for the day and it shouldn't be reminding kids to wear masks all day so i guess that i guess consequences for not would be the big question um yeah yeah i was i was pleasantly surprised and and then primary is a whole different deal i mean our little ones need to be able to see lips move on a t-shirt they need to see where to place the timing this is uh you know across the board with the phonics and then all that's like because one of my kids have the same thing with pre-k and you know the whole visual it's it's amazing they don't get that visual they don't they're speeches so when the teacher pulls the mask down to and they're doing small groups or teaching that's that's something that i'm really have a philosophical disagreement with to consequence them on that when it's needed i think one of the things i said in the last year we're talking about because i said maybe we're looking at this wrong we're focusing on consequence to make report right now we could never say anything about consequences because we've gone off the hypersensitive kids we're not kidding you get sick of me saying this we have very good people here and and so i think if we're if the county can't give a consequence to the county board of supervisors and i expect him to give a consequence that's irrational and everything we talked about what we typically do in schools is suspend expel iss type thing we need these kids here i am worried that sometime this year we may have to go back to the hybrid system or some isolation i got an email from clark county today i know someone there and the press is going to be because the administration's thought about closing schools and and mrs duncan and i had this conversation at record meeting last year kids kids suffered last year and i agree with her we did it to keep kids alive um but man we didn't do a good job in education and i will see right now you guys already know my position on mandates you guys all know my position on mandates but the board put out where we strongly encourage the staff and students to wear them indoors i'd be all in support of that hundred percent not a mandate but we're it's over so eric i don't have a mask on right now right if i have covert you guys can all have your mask on and i've just exposed every one of you to cope it all it takes is one person in the classroom right and you don't have on a night night i've been outside the school where we have no spending i understand that you know i understand that our responsibility is not keeping a kid safe outside the that it's cool right you go home and smoke a cigarette that's on you that's not all that's cool um so 99.9 compliance with mask if that one percent point one percent has copic he just exposed everybody in the class correct but as you should know exposure does not mean infection that's an exposure can conley i know this isn't a point but i know her feelings on masking right and and she's told me that many times i love her death okay i know there's teachers in school that aren't going to mask they just aren't going to do it they're not going to do it they feel strongly as as marcia and eric okay um i don't think kids have that strong feeling i think they just don't do it right they just don't do it but i think most kids are learning from their teachers in their family you know how what their years said i don't mean straight away from the point but the omni omicron is that i've known three people recently adults that have had exposed but we've got one employee he's on his third week in the hospital right now and i talked to a parent yesterday and the husband had bleeding lungs for three weeks in a brazo um another associate of mine i take them all the hospital right i know 24 days and i'm going so i didn't think that delta was that long so i don't know that's a factor but you need to consider with masking and i don't think i don't think omicron's destroyed the state yet i think that's still a lot of cases with arnold crumb just making they say we're still like three weeks a month from having the peak of the omnicron right and so we've got another month but i'm going to say right now i will not vote for a mass mandate unless that mass mandate can be enforced because that's that's not that's not um i don't want you to think that the two of us are not trying to enforce i believe you are and it's just a matter of some and it goes back to psychology so you have rewards your mandatory meeting is intrinsic if you go you're interested in your job you want to do better if you have to use a reward that's expensive so again unfortunately schools have lived too long on expensive rewards if you do this you'll get this we even say that with grades if you make a c you get to play sports uh you need to make a c because you're smart you need to change that structure so i we can we can we could stop doing something and punish every kid that's going to be able to send us a pursuit you're going to have parents pulling their kids out of the system one question about that is definitely my understanding that um mr casey also helps out with discipline partners when he's not teaching well he's not teaching his teacher exactly i would say does he call majority of it to be honest okay yes i think that's the last part of what you said if if we if we don't do the policy if we do the policy people are going to pull their kids out what did you say i think i think that if no i don't think policy people just one way i think if if he or kc or i start dropping the hammer excuse the term on kids for not complying with the mandate kid i think people are going to start pulling their kids and put them on an online program and that's not the best for kids in my opinion you know if my phrase is not business i would think that those same parents would be the ones that would be complaining if we had to go back to online classes because well i think even i'd like to see it though um instead of going through to july or whatever it was at least follow what the county says and and how to make have them wear masks until the end of february and then they're going to come up with a new plan and we'll see what happens well i would say like i said before on those lines i would say let's remove that date but move it so that it matches up with when we're actually meeting next in march which would give us the two months so we have 430 kids 434 50 something like that yes 434 so if you put an n95 on every day the kids that want to wear it um both would that be 1200 a day that would cost us in about if you've got match for three bucks cost us 1200 a day right am i my ass right yes these masks i did the math when we had the first shutdown in march of i figured two mass per kid per day which is probably over computing because i don't do it right i know i've got five hanging on my turnstick on my vehicle uh i have 22 grand figuring 450 kids twice a day one year was one semester that was thousand dollars not to mention the special order ones for the pre-k which we have been out of for quite a while right so depending on some of those big order those don't work so when we say that it's financially unfeasible provide n95s to the kids that wanted to wear those to class let me say so i guess and that would solve the problem right if you're afraid about getting covered you're wearing 95 in class and that protects you against everybody that everybody else is that does that if i'm wearing n95 does that protect me from him as well as him yeah he is it's probably um when the board requires something of administrators clearly we expect compliance right but i would say this is a really important thing obviously that's why we're taking all this time with it and we can't expect perfection there's um there's a point at which is the expression sacrificing the good for the perfect yeah um we can expect you to do your best to achieve compliance but we can't expect you to have complete compliance i don't think and i'm i'm okay with that i i i do want to see that it is being um there are there's you know procedures in place to try and get that to happen um but i don't think anyone is suggesting there are certain types of punishments or disciplinary actions that should happen if any one particular student or staff is not wearing a mask good thank you any more discussion i will make the motion but i will make that change i heard about motions yeah then we need to make a new motion yeah so do we how how do you proceed from there you already have a motion in a second and now we're going to go back and change it oh this is real easy i'm just going to ask for an agenda item from the march meeting to revisit it see that's that's that's okay because you will get a second oh but wendy has to change the motion second the motion too technically you mean initial motion okay so i mean okay so so what is the motion on the on the floor right now the motion that was that was second and first was during the code that's what she i'm just not gonna do it and are we not i mean is that established that it's not going to be enforced i think over unfortunately we didn't have 93 already they think the students think it's force because their adults are telling them put a mask on they're going to excuse me we're not putting a pain what do you want to do dr daley i mean i'm really asking for your advice here what do you think is the best the mandate or to go with an advisor i'm fine with an invitation we're not going to we're not going to have our announcements if the mandate changed advising we're going to say kids but you asked about what you're asking and just like you say people like don't shoot down don't spit on the sidewalk i think what lance is describing or saying has almost become the new norm um it's unfortunate i remember seeing pictures over the years of people in beijing the air was so fluid they're wearing math but man i don't even want them that's ours my concern is that there will be a drop off okay that the mandate is propping up those numbers um and i have i have kids in there and yeah um yeah that concerns me and i i i would prefer a mandate if that's going to get those numbers higher and protect give a little bit more protection to the people in the classroom including staff i mean would you like to take mandate until march 9th do you think that board meeting yeah it's kind of confidentially what do you think the night the study station i would be fine um moving it to march also because i didn't exchange it about this by the way cases are dropping off and it's turned out that you know this isn't as much of a concern i'd [Music] last thursday or friday i went on the keeman county health department website and you're having 2 000 more cases per day than being kind now than where you're going how many children have had covered here here oh my gosh 24.

that evening surprise PD did a tremendous job visited two students homes somewhere between 10 p.m. and midnight and actually made an arrest at about 2:45 in the morning for a student who um had no credible means of carrying out a thread but it stated a thread on social media they contacted the principal at 3 I believe 3:14 a.m. that morning she took their call to make sure that she knew what was going on and the situation had resolved so PD I I provide that example to let you know that PD is very extensive regardless of what time we call them I know they're very responsive and and we're very appreciative of that piece um so I just wanted to make sure that we that we shared that information um Miss winterstein can answer a couple of your other questions but I it it was a very pertinent And Timely example to provide um the response that surprise PD provides to us and now marage PD is equally as responsive thank you madam president uh just to expand a little bit on that um many of the school shooting threats that come about by the time we get them on social media oh gosh there's going to be a school shooting when we drill down to where the origination of that threat comes from many of them have come from oh this boy looks like a school shooter and then the telephone gain comes and it just um continues to to uh become embellished and so the the police and our great PR department um are able to look at the origination the original post and so what happens is that we are um oftentimes in those no threat was ever stated it's taken out of context and so the administrators work very diligently in finding the students that are responsible for reposting and embellishing that and so the then then discipline is imposed for not necessarily making a threat but but inciting it and instigating it and making it much worse than it is but the vast majority of them are not ones that just B blatantly start with um I'm going to shoot up a school there are some but the majority of them um have snowballed into a much larger issue than actually someone stating I'm going to shoot up the school MH and I I would close the the series of questions um by just assuring the board and I believe we've had this conversation on a couple of different occasions over the course of many years we are always concerned about student safety which is why we take any stated threat very seriously we contact PD on any stated threat that we we receive nothing is taken lightly to the point of if there's something written on a bathroom wall we we contact PD immediately and move forward we are always working to be diligent in that piece and if there was ever a concern that something could possibly happen on a campus we would not have school that day um we would make sure that folks were communicated with and that school had been canceled for that day we take this each and every piece of this very very seriously and I I think there's two pieces to it I'm not there's the issue of are we are we um diligent in our efforts to get to the bottom of it and resolve the threat which I don't have question about I know we I know the police and I know our disert staff do what they need to do my piece of it was are we communicating with our parents are we making sure that they have an opportunity to be aware that the school that their child is being sent to was the subject of a threat and again not okay Tik Tock challenge someone's going to rip off a soap dispenser off a wall or there might be a fight at lunch I'm talking about school shooting type threats I just want to make sure that we're communicating with our parents so so they know because I again I just think that would be awful if this a student gets to school and a parent if they would have known that they might have chosen to keep their child home so and also with our staff I just want to make sure too that staff on those campuses are aware and that includes not just those who actually report to that particular building but we have a lot of transient um staff that travel and um whether it be related areas or um a lot of our different staff can travel from building to building making sure somehow that communication Loop is complete with our staff as well so I just need to make sure you guys hear that concern thank you and and we hear your concern very clearly but thank you very much and I would add that I was happy that the police department had the principal's phone number at 314 am.