i have taught every grade level from tk to 8th i have been a math coach a reading coach and an instructional coach when i first started teaching in the district we had a small district office and large schools now we have a large district office and small schools i am tired after 37 years to be dealing with the same issues year after year i am tired of going on the picket line and begging for a cost of living raid white race young teachers are frustrated my daughter just graduated from um san jose state with a master's in education and she was also honored as a summa laude um graduate she immediately applied to alum rock on december 31st to be a sub in the district she submitted a resume a cover letter her transcripts she also had passed the sea best tests so that she could sub however she is yet to be considered for subbing this is very frustrating as i have been asked to take students from absent teachers whose classes have been known to test positive for covid and their teacher is absent due to the exposure of covet positive students we have had classes with zero subs in alum rock yet alum rock takes too long to require and requires too much to get qualified substitutes this is frustrating and i am sick and tired thank you for your comments miss mckee next speaker is karen mcdonald karen you have two minutes please admit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin thank you thank you to god dr bauer and board of trustees for allowing me to share tonight please consider setting our mou in a more reasonable and dignified manner since august educators have continued to train on new digital learning platforms use old devices that are inoperable and motivate students who are distracted and unmotivated as loretta tanner pointed out one of the benefits of having fewer students because of the last couple weeks i had eight students out last week was our ability to see that the class sizes were smaller we could really pay attention to the kids and have more kids participate and pay um give them some really personal attention classroom magic management was really easy but i'm teaching kinder at lindale and kinders are little people when the district hired me five years ago i was a career fifth grade teacher i love prepping students from middle school but my fifth grade colleague lynn has 30 students on a full day please visualize the difference between 16 to 24 little people and 30 adolescents who have the same size classroom these classrooms were built like in the 1980s this isn't big enough for anybody to use for that many kids the bottom line is all students during the time need more care from us not less they deserve programs at work teachers that aren't overwhelmed and families that believe in the alum rock school district i prayerfully and gratefully thank you and pray for those in the bargaining team to reach a swift and fair settlement thank you miss mcdonald next speaker is sean swiss mr sweets you have two minutes please send me yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin all right um okay uh my name is sean swiss i work at dorsal elementary school you've heard of me many times i'm tired of coming to these shows uh to listen to you guys i've been up since five o'clock like most of us teachers we still get up early listening i like to a first make a resolution that when we have disputes like this with me for any other issues in our district so that you can honor us um let's talk numbers you guys like numbers as you know there's a seven percent increase in in inflation this year uh shelter costs has gone up 4.1 in december the month before it was 3.1 used vehicles for us who want to buy a car to get to school has gone up 37 i hate to see what a new car has gone up gasoline has gone up 50 since 2020.
we discussed the pla versus no pla which dr roberto uh touched on today um during his superintendent's report basically is if we're going to go with union only for the referendum or if we're going to go with prevailing wage for the job looks like we're going to be recommending to go with the pla but we'll make a final recommendation for the board by the next meeting um our construction management firm did recommend going with a pla and then then we talked about um if we're going to bid in bundles um or if we're going to do separately epic is recommending separate bids not grouped together so that we can get a more robust response and then we're going to see about bidding them with two weak gaps in between them so that people can prepare and we can discuss them one at a time versus looking at all of them at the same sitting does anyone have any comments or questions mr president so i have a question about the pla um so i know that you know during cove a lot of prices went up and i know that a lot of organizations are hit where they're doing jobs all over the place you see housing market booming is by going with a pla going to put us in a situation where we may not have people available to do the work and if so are we allowed to shift at will and decide okay now we're going to bid this job is not pla or is this just something we decide on a standard and then continue to hold that for the duration of the of all the jobs i can't answer that um so you want to go pla you cannot come off pla it is only your new job so that was one of my concerns that you know maybe we need to be able to bid um to a larger group but from my understanding and from um what we've been told is that the the big guys are going to be coming for this um so we shouldn't have a problem they're going to be putting their smaller jobs on hold to come and bid this so we shouldn't have a problem being staffed at least that's what we've been told so far but you're more than welcome to submit more questions because we're going to have more discussion in the next facilities meeting mr president yes ms master i have a question it speaks to miss lalama's question on the dais when she said about if we bid something out and we use the subcontractor under this method and we pay them i think she said 10 million dollars and their the cost is only five how do we ensure that the money is actually going to the subcontractor and it's the right amount of money and the contract is not making this big group of money on us um there aren't necessarily subcontractors it was a little bit of a misunderstanding we hired a construction management firm which is basically because dr robitosi myself when i was in charge of facilities mr marcion were not able or on you know there's no bandwidth to take on a project of this size we needed to bring in a professional firm that would have people on the ground at every single location every single day so that's what they're doing they're not billing us for any construction work whatsoever it is simply a consulting job so their only responsibility is to watch the people doing the construction and review the bills and everything like that so there isn't going to be subcontracting necessarily the big firms that we do hire to do the construction that will be a question that you know i'm sure is included in the bid documents is how they break out the work is it in-house is it outhouse but if we do go with union which is the pla it will be guaranteed that there won't be as much play within you know money-wise because they have to adhere to a stricter standard in order to continue to bid on government work okay because thank you because i know that was laurie's uh question mr lahuma's a question about the subcontracting and i uh there's also with my my worry is about the because we had spoke about this a while back in one of the meetings and we it became a discussion about the security background checks of the subcontractors being in the schools especially if they're in the schools during business during school hours around our children and they haven't been properly background checked i know we check out the company that we that we hire but if it goes to a subcontract i know that's a big that's a big issue with a lot of people about who those people are they're in our buildings and if they're you know they're allowed to be in our building so that was another thing that i know that was a big uh concern of people a couple years ago yeah that was another reason why we went with the um contracting firm to not not contracting the i guess like the project management firm um is because they'll be responsible for knowing who the people are and who belongs and who doesn't belong um the badging system although we each firm brought in security people actually with them um who talk about the you know the job safety it's not only security it's also like you know osha standards there's a lot of things that are going to be coming into this and that's why we hired the professional firm that will be able to take most of that worry off of the administration okay thank you thank you for clearing that up and people hearing that thank you i think that's all the questions i wasn't at the other meeting was invited i did one five the eleventh was i wasn't eleventh is me mr smith i think mr daley could probably read it okay sure going to head up to another location maybe that that'll work for a meeting of the facilities committee january 11 2022 uh president mr wade myself mr ivor dravo mr smith also president from the administration was dr robert tosi mr usi mr shiheida also we were interviewing uh three law firms at that juncture they were from a miss mckeever from the scroll law firm david blank from the skrinsky law firm and mr mancello and his team from the firm of ramon coughlin and mancello we started at 2 p.m and we ended at 5 p.m the gap was because we had the different firms at different times we interviewed the three firms the attorney for referendum work the committee discussed the firm's qualifications and interview a recommendation we're making today is to hire the firm of ramon chicago and minicella i will add that all the individual attorneys had many pluses they were all competent we felt that the vincello firm had a little incognito firm had a little bit more bandwidth in terms of the support staff to review contracts uh of the nature the the key element we focused on is the experience of the individual attorneys with construction contracts and and and i like so that's where the focus was if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer them just a correction um mr russia if you could correct this wasn't a facilities committee meeting this was a special committee for the appointment of the construction attorney it was not under the facilities committee so if we just make that change no problem okay so now let's move on we have uh 17 uh mr daley would you read that please swing over here yes sure uh ea 17.
uh our hope is we will see more students in the coming months so we at least maintain the referral rate of the last two years but we certainly hope to see improvements in the future the others listed on this graph are direct referrals from school districts families self-referring and other professionals such as audiologists or word of mouth and internet searches included in these numbers are students who are within three months of their third birthday this is a tricky time for them because we have to balance the requirements of the iep process along with the actual educational needs of of those students and families and next slide we are seeing more of the asdb referrals enroll in the last two years from moving from early intervention to preschool but we also with our existing relationships with school districts we have continued as well to get those direct referrals and direct pay but we have seen a decrease in outside enrolled referrals and we think that's likely due to a decrease in public school enrollment coming out of the pandemic next slide we do have some fears when we are looking at this graph there has been a drop in enrollment since the 1920s school year in addition coming out of the pressures of the pandemic the referral age most likely will rise and this is just giving all of us less time to close that language gap for those students and the next slide when we work together on early identification timely amplification and language intervention we will see more kids transition into mainstream classrooms in either kindergarten or their pre-kindergarten year but typically our students here at desert voices are transitioning to a mainstream classroom at their kindergarten age and the next slide this is the good stuff here we are results of our focus preschool services so we use the same assessments and these are normed for hearing peers these test scores you see are the same group that i shared earlier from um and we obtained these just as they were getting ready to transition so their age range is somewhere between four and six we can see the intensive services close the language gap a majority of our students test in the average range 86 to and the majority of our students score above the average range in both receptive and expressive vocabulary we do still have a few kids that score below the average range but no child is in that last range that you saw before while in early intervention this all means children that leave our program have not only made yearly progress but close the developmental gap to some degree between themselves and their typical hearing peers together this partnership we have set these students up for success in their future educational setting next slide here's our published tuition here for the preschool we do provide a full discount a full-time discount for school districts which does include asdb and again we we fundraise the gap and then lastly i just want to say our intent here today was to inspire ongoing conversations on how our partnership can continue to improve the outcomes of the students we serve and we hope we will be invited back on a regular basis for updates thank you again for your time and your attention and i'm happy to answer any questions thank you thank you so much deanne i have had the opportunity to personally um visit in 2016 and i'm sure there have been more innovations since i've been there but i also um two weeks ago had the opportunity to visit the campus of fbc on northern avenue i highly encourage any board members staff members that want to have a better understanding of that continuum of services that asdb provides through partnerships through what we do um it's mind-boggling what is happening and all the the great amazing things that are happening and at this point um president nigro i am turning item 1.03 back to you oh thank you dr rex um does anyone on the board have any questions for either ms chapman or mr gilson uh president agro this is dean howard can you hear me okay hi again dean hey um so one of the things i'd like to request is um potentially maybe having both groups and even zimmerman if that's an option come to the board on a quarterly basis and just give us an update as they are a strategic partner of ours um that that would be good to get some updates on how things are progressing how students are doing the numbers student enrollment that type of thing i was kind of caught off guard that we haven't had an update from this group these groups some of them not not in the in the near past so i thought it would be a good idea maybe if we could do that in the future uh yeah i mean i i think we certainly could do that um you know quarterly you know the frequency uh you know we meet six times a year for regular meetings in addition to other work study sessions etc so um you know maybe two or three times a year i think my work and coordinate with our with our meeting schedule but i think that's a good idea are there any other comments president nigro this is dean howard again and i'm just going to throw out a thought process since my time on the board is starting to come to an end in the same vein of progression and moving forward and thinking about the board and what asdb does um you know there might be some some discussions in the future that we could have about you know asdb on a asl stand side of of the equation being the school for that and potentially for listening spoken language you know those resources are there you know maybe that's the best avenue for for for listening spoken languages those two schools so just something to contemplate i think the board might want to be taking a look at that idea down the road just another thought to inject just a comment not a question all right thank you dean um ms chapman i did have a couple of questions for you um thank you um you know we do see these the numbers and i guess we can maybe go to maybe deal with birth to three first sure um so we see the these referrals um from the agency kind of decreasing in recent years and it seems like your total number of enrollment um you know or a number of students serving that zero to three is reducing is there and i just want to help better help me understand what the cause of that is is it that there aren't there just aren't people that are seeking uh your services or do you think that there are people that are seeking it but they don't know about you maybe it's a you know maybe maybe somehow they don't know of you for some reason um or is it is it something else great question and it's something where uh we've been trying to figure out for for quite quite some time and i would um love to get together with kendra and look at what numbers um you're seeing on identification and referral and how that looks for us but oftentimes it is families that just don't know about us we don't have access to those new new uh born screening hearings and so we have to depend on community partners often to talk to families about us as an option um so we don't we don't have that direct comment uh contact upfront right and that's because you know i'm trying to think of what you know the process typically is and there's you know by the time the student comes you know the asdb has you know the statewide jurisdiction for zero to three um so you know i i think that the agency is is at least letting parents know of your services i i think and tell me if you don't think that's the case um but also the you know but to come from the agency you have to be referred to the agency right so there are certainly children um who uh will go through those uh hearing screenings and it'll they'll be identified at a young age that we may not get to ace to be may not get to that those families may not know about early intervention and may not seek it uh but uh they may be seeking interactions with the medical community to uh get diagnosis you know for you know for these children so do you have any relationships with uh with the the medical community in in the area to try to get to to try to form a second pool of resources or second full of referrals um to see if you can at least identify other students that may may be interested in your school yes definitely we have a strong relationship with phoenix children's hospital so referrals do come through them often and also families uh will search for uh our types of or just look for services online and will come to us directly we always make sure to ask those families if they are already working with your agency and then we loop in their hearing specialist to make sure that they can attend the tour and then be involved with the services that we're providing here if they don't know about asdb and those services we refer them back to asdb as well so that they can access access those services great and then um in terms of the the cost you know your slides mentioned the cost of the zero to three services and then the cost of the preschool uh you know there is a contract between hdb and desert voices for the preschool so we understand that pricing structure um can you tell me more about the you know the support from the early learning program of acb what kind of support financial aid is that does that provide to your agency to offset some of these these numbers sure so um that is um some students are vouchered um to our school um and so that amount that uh just about twenty four thousand dollars that's the same amount that a school district um pays if they decide to directly refer and contract with us directly we currently have three students that are vouchered through asdb um so that's a really new uh system for us uh kendra and i were rushing to figure out that process in the middle of a pandemic and so that that is newer a newer way but still some school districts decide just to contract with with us directly because they've been doing that for many many years uh correct i understand about the preschool um and you know on the funding side of it you know those kids have ieps right so zero to three there's not going to be an iep there's not going to be uh finding support from the school district uh there is from asdb we operate the statewide you know the search three earlier invention program uh but the the numbers that we have on slide i don't know what's my number this is necessarily but it's the annual tuition birthday right um who you know does the agency um you know provide any financial help to you guys in that in that area because again that's the that's the real key part of this this year to three as you told us at the beginning that you tend to get better outcomes when children are identified earlier and are able to receive services earlier um you know so if you get to them at at four uh that's gonna be less effective so um you know for parents that are interested in these types of services um you know what what kind of financial support are you getting from the agency in that regard yes so an easier way to think about that is um our our hourly rate for parent coaching sessions is a hundred and twenty dollars an hour and the agency supports eighty-eight dollars of that cost and then we fundraise the difference and then with our um jump jump start program the agency currently does not support that that was a new program that came in um that we came up with uh after the contract had been signed so that's not part of the contract and then the toddler class it's 160 dollars per day and the agency uh supports 80 of that per um one day a week they do attend two days a week so parents once um children are in the toddler class parents are covering the second day and then we are fundraising the difference between what the agency supports what the family pays we're making up that difference in fundraising okay i think i maybe i got to read the transcript of what just said because i heard that for the toddler program uh the it's it's 160 a day uh the agency pays 80 a day um and so for the to make up that half um you said that the parents are paying but also your fundraising for the difference so correct um help me explain how both of those things are proven sure so our top what we do with our toddler class is we have um students attend two days a week our data shows that at least two two days a week is what is needed for us to um close that begin to close that language gap so the agency cover helps cover one day a week and then the parents are responsible for the tuition on the second day and we work with families on a sliding scale and um provide scholarship dollars for that for that second day is that is that clear okay so the parents are asked to pay and if they are not able to pay they can apply for a scholarship from your organization and that's given on a a need that if you're just looking at need on that or you're looking at other factors as well we they complete a financial application financial need application and it is based on their income their expenses and most families typically pay about 10 of the actual cost of those services so if they were in the toddler class that second day um they would pay 16 and then we fundraise the difference to provide them that scholarship okay and is the similar thing we talk you talk about fundraising the difference with the parent coaching jumpstart um is that a similar thing where parents are asked to pay or um it's just it's just from your general funding from your fundraising it's um they are asked to pay but we every every family that uh is enrolled here at desert voices is receiving some amount of scholarship dollars from us okay um okay i think that answers some of my questions there and then for transportation for zero to three who's covering the cost of transportation the families are um transporting to and from for zero to three okay and you just have the one campus correct correct we just have one campus and your your days are how long are these days is it six hours typical school day so the toddler class is three and a half hours and they come twice a week so they get seven hours of services and then the preschool is six and a half hours five days a week okay um and on the on the preschool um you know there is the for the voucher students are the parents being asked to pay anything on top of the the voucher now no anyone who is vouchered or has a school district contract doesn't pay any additional um funds okay and and and who arranges for transportation uh so transportation for voucher students is through asdb um but sometimes parents choose to transport them themselves um school districts also transport but again sometimes families feel more comfortable transporting themselves okay okay uh great no that's answered a lot of the questions that i had um one final time any anyone else on the board have any questions for either uh miss chapman or mr gilson all right uh seeing none thank you both and thank you dr rex uh for coming in and presenting today we can move on to 1.04 superintendents report superintendent reichman good afternoon hello president nigro members of the board directors assistant superintendent rex assistant superintendent cooper and members of the asdb community welcome to our january 20 2022 board meeting our first board meeting of the year 2022 i'm going to keep my remarks brief we do have a lot of items to discuss this afternoon during our board meeting i just want to take a moment and step back and look at the bigger picture [Music] for you as the board members what is your authority in the governance of asdb if we look at the arizona state constitution and arizona statutes they clearly give you as the board governance authority over asdb you make decisions and leave the agency when you look at our policies you can also see that there are three types of authority that you have the first type of authority is legislative that means that you develop and approve policies those policies become the rules so to speak that guide our agency and what we are supposed to do so first you set those policies and then your second authority is your executive authority you have the authority to run asdb [Music] through those policies you often divert that authority to me as the superintendent of asdb the third type of authority that you have is the authority to evaluate you are able to do appraisals of the asdb agency the education that we provide the supports that we provide and also my work as the superintendent those are the three areas where you have a direct authority and responsibility for the governance of asdb that second type of authority that i mentioned where you are able to grant me authority that executive authority that i mentioned allows me to run the agency you set the policies and then we as the agency implement those policies we follow essentially the rules that you of the as the board have set that's sort of a broad description of your authority and responsibilities as the board and my authority that you have granted to me as the superintendent to lead the agency and run our daily operations so i ask that in future discussions in future board meetings and other meetings you keep that in mind as the board of directors you have the specific authorities for governance and you are able to grant me authorities so that i can lead the agency with that in mind this afternoon during our january board meeting i am supposed to present on the state of the agency in your board docs under my report you will find the agency profile and that profile outlines our work and our accomplishments during the 2020-21 school year it looks like this and i strongly encourage you all to take 15 minutes or so to read through that report consider that during the covert pandemic these are the things that we were able to accomplish our teachers our staff our leadership team is very proud of that work so please take the time to read through that and get a better understanding of what we've been doing and what's happening right now in the agency at this moment i can talk about that it's really um all about the pandemic we are all facing the omicron variant and it ha it has had a widespread and significant impact on all of our lives it has had an impact on asdb as well last summer we decided that our students really needed to be in the classroom and be in person we really did not want to do remote or virtual education again and that was our goal for the school year so far we've been pretty successful the fall went along pretty steadily we got it done the number of staff um who became infected with the coronavirus from august the first week of august all the way through to the end of december was a total of 60 staff that was averaging three to four staff members per week that did cause some stress on the system our principals and program directors were moving things around and making accommodations on a daily basis to try to cover for those teachers who were out sick and of course the instructional assistants and other staff members who were out sick as well and then we had our christmas break and we were able to take a quick breath and when we came back in january those first two weeks that we've been back in january we have had a total of 30 staff members who have been infected with coronavirus so now we are averaging 15 per week that's not doubled that's not tripled that's almost quadrupled the number of cases that we had previously and i've been counting this week thus far i think we have 10 staff members this week who have contracted the coronavirus that sounds insignificant it sounds like it's not a big deal but it's not just that individual who who was directly affected and tested positive we are also identifying other staff who have been exposed and may have also contracted the virus and we are doing contract contact tracing to find those individuals who may have contracted it themselves who were a close contact with that individual if they were less than six feet from that person if they interacted without a mask they are isolating at home for five days and so we are doing that contact tracing and those who have the vaccine who do not get sick are able to come back um fairly quickly but if they have not had the vaccination then they have to stay home for that five days so on a daily basis we are having to follow up with every single one of those staff members every teacher who was infected all of their close contacts and then we are also having to find substitute teachers and find subs for other staff members for our instructional assistants for our principals every day are having to move all of these things around and doing the absolute best that they can our super intent or excuse me our principals and our nursing directors are doing this seven days a week they start very early in the morning six or seven in the morning until eight o'clock at night because they're having to make all of these phone calls and rearrange everyone's schedules make sure that we're covered and this doesn't even account for our students our students this time do seem to be contracting covid19 at a higher rate we are identifying the students who have been a close contact or who have been infected and we're sending them home and then we're checking with those students in their class to see if they've been vaccinated or if they haven't and then how we have to deal with their situation whether they're sick or not they may need to quarantine at home for several days and then we have to provide the parents with information let the parents know whether or not they're able to come back if they can't come back for five days then we're contract contacting our transportation department rearranging our bus routes to ensure that we're not stopping where students aren't supposed to be picked up yesterday on the tucson campus i am actually currently here on the tucson campus and yesterday our tucson campus preschool had to close reason being we had 11 teachers and instructional assistants total and eight of them could not come to work eight out of 11.
so we um you know the only commodity that we're locked in right now is electricity everything else we're just you know paying whatever the market rate is but we have encumbered for higher heating and energy prices and transportation fuel prices so that's baked in to what you see on the budget report right now okay sorry then just for my own notification by the way during my day job when i get a call from the ceo i cringe a little because they tell me don't spend this money um and then i somehow figure out a way to maybe spend it but is there for us a um a needs if if need be to transfer amongst accounts and is there a um a transfer limit that would then have to go to the board so the the generally speaking the board does the trances at the end of the year we're not transferring money from account to account during the course of the year in some cases you'll see in in the finance report that has the line by line detail you'll see where we're going to be over and we adjust it to where we're going to be under but we don't physically make those transfers we're tracking it over the course of the year and usually the last business day of the year june 30th that assuming that's a monday through friday the board will meet at 7 30 a.m and transfer between our major line items certified salaries non-certified salaries medical benefits etc so that's the board's responsibility and that's within the law that's the way that we do it as far as other transfers the each of the principles there's a series of accounts that they can transfer money between but they stay within each account grouping so it doesn't require transfers outside of account groupings you're welcome um on that note actually um and i don't know if faith had touched upon it already but um there are two line items in the um financial report for a maintenance repair and maintenance supply that there's a a pretty decent size over under there is that fuel or later is that something else no so the maintenance supply which is that 561 300 account it's um it's over it's assigned budget by 178 thousand that's the account one of the sub accounts there is what we use to pay for the cost of pandemic expenses just so that we could track it more easily so that's the cost of tents which is about 180 000 as well as the cost of the additional intraday cleaning that we're doing in the schools so that's why it's over we'll balance that out at the end of the year either by transferring from other accounts or by using esser funds so as we progress through the the next several months i'll be reporting some more of that detail it's kind of early right now and again i think overall the budget including you know the cost of the additional pandemic health and safety needs still in good shape and we do have some accounts that are going to be under like our transportation line will be under budget some of our salary accounts will be under budget because we've had you know quite a few openings that we haven't filled so there's that ebb and flow that you know goes with every budget and then we continue to manage against um lastly um and i didn't i didn't ask this on tuesday night yes i think it was getting a little late i think we ran up to what 10 15 or something like that um as far as when you're getting the the medical claims um are you getting um demographic data like at least in age or or sex it's not the age i can obtain that data you know it doesn't it doesn't come as part of the reporting package so that's something i can obtain the only reason i asked is because i noticed there was a noticeable increase in the cardiac claims from year over year and i can't help but wonder if we're having some sort of um long covet effects because i know that covet is somewhat of a almost of a blood disease too uh where it's been affecting a lot of the cardiac system and it's just done a lot it's just an alarming change there and i just couldn't help but notice that we might be encroaching on a new chronic problem in in a younger demographic it wasn't you know we were just like oh you know we have retirees and they you know they're getting older and having you know you know chronic problems but they're just wondering for we're now starting to identify a new chronic problem in a in our you know able-bodied what able-bodied uh population so i just you know it's a great question and i you know often wonder what's driving you know where we are you know without claims year over year especially this one um but there's there are additional reports that i can obtain to try and get it some of that and so the report that i requested you know i think is a good starting point give us a little bit more data and you know the way it works when you look at certain analysis sometimes it leads you to the next two or three questions so we can keep you know digging uh and i think the impact of covet even though our direct covet illness claims are relatively low to your point it doesn't mean that within our broader claims there isn't some impact from culvert that we'll call it indirect i think time will tell but right now we don't don't have that information in hand i just hope that you know we you know we were talking about the five-year cycle i just hope that that remains true and it doesn't extend to perhaps an eight or nine year cycle because it's uh this keeps getting worse um so and it's uh what did we discuss it was is it well over half of the increase i i forget off the top of my head as far as uh you know replenishing the medical benefit budget the budget went up five point four percent three percent of that 2.2 million dollars was medical benefits right so there was really no hope in the report that we got on tuesday really so i i know it seems bleak but you have to have a little optimism here the claims will subside eventually it's just like when we look at things like enrollment for a while there we had discussions that enrollment was continuing to decline but it's not going to go to zero and it started to turn around it's it's the same phenomenon we you know we're just going to have to fund our way through it and if you look at even this month's report yes claims are high last year compared to the prior year we were up 22 this year we're up about five and a half percent so let's take that as a sign that at least it's leveling off and again if some of this is pandemic related indirectly then let's hope it subsides i mean we're not i don't expect that we're going to see claims get you know below 800 000 on average so we'll have to see where it shakes out but sure hope for the best thanks adam yeah i may have missed this but just want to make sure you're taking measures right now to try to avoid this going into deficit and having a deficit in the budget at the year end so um you know the more variable costs you have you're tamping tapping the brakes on that the town is already aware right because we share the trust fund with the town so okay that's a that's a leads me to a an update so there is that certainly the town council is well aware that when they funded a million and a half to the reserve last year that there was a risk that it may not be enough we are i just received an email from sean kimball today he asked me to join the town council budget committee to give them an update on our medical claims for the year so i will be reporting to them where we stand i'll share some of the information that we shared with the board at a workshop meeting so that you know they were aware of where we are you know hopefully you know as we turn into january february march we start the new hsa uh deductible resets to zero so if we get a reasonable um reduction in the claim rate and you know let's say our reserve balance you know once we get the stop-loss reimbursements is that 1.3 million hopefully we can get through the end of the year and not have to use any operating budget money to supplement the medical benefits trust and that's certainly something that i will you know discuss with the budget committee thank you yeah and i i mean as far as going to the council and asking them as to be a backstop that is that is very much a last resort that i would want to do because there are measures that we can take here but it is a big question so thank you man i'll mention i won't insist if you're a fan of the godfather that's where that's going just remind the board that you know another measure too is we're personally liable for the budget should we go over it so if we can't get money from the town council it's not a good place to be uh good luck find that in my pockets but point taken and and then on that note vincent i just for the board i i i i was i know i shouldn't have been shocked by the december number i thought it was going to come in at 1.1 which is still pretty massive as far as i can remember that 500 plus thousand dollar hit is probably the largest i've ever seen during my time so you know i at the budget meeting the other night there was a very detailed presentation a set of slides was also available on the cps website that talks about what's happening behind the medical claims very very very good information very detailed does talk about some high claims that we're carrying over but nonetheless just just a little tidbit here of the one and a half million dollars that was added to our budget for the medical reserve account after five six months of claims all that's remaining for an initial amount is 89 000 we've chewed through the entire 1.5 million dollars that was added to our reserve in less than six months pre-stop loss reimbursement so it is a little concerning that's all um seeing oh yes seeing no other questions i just wanted to say um we are intentionally having our uh finance meetings uh virtually uh not because we don't enjoy each other's company personally uh but that uh like the detailed presentations that we got on tuesday are are better easy or easier to see uh as they're uploaded on youtube as they're directly fed in so that everyone can see the slides and it's not a picture on a screen with some bad audio that i'm you know i know mike does a great job but um you know what sometimes you can only get what you get when we're here live uh so when we're we're all coming in virtually the the audio and visual is actually a lot better and so uh the uh if you do want to watch those presentations those will be up on our website and on youtube uh that concludes the finance report thank you mr thank you vincent uh moving on a rather new item is our legislative committee uh and just a little background on that is uh the board of ed has always had in his bylaws uh the ability to form legislative committee we've never actually done anything with over the years until almost recently due to so many things happening in and around us that are a center of control so uh there was uh support on the board to get that going again so that committee is comprised of tim white and herring of faith correct and tim you are the chair so if you want to give us a quick update on that let the board know what you all been talking about thank you tony yeah so we met last week we went through a number of different topics uh did not actually take a vote on anything however tonight where i'd like to start is um we got a draft report sort of a consolidation of items from the superintendent that i think fairly encapsulates uh the items we had discussed um and so i would like to just run through this really quickly with some uh thoughts on it uh hear what other people have to say maybe take a maybe make a motion on it um to have an official vote to adopt or uh reject superintendent's draft proposal here and then the idea with that is we could actually forward that to our legislators and say hey this is where at least one board of ed in the state of connecticut stands so keep that in mind the first item on the superintendent's list here is prevailing wage prevailing wage is it's a law which then correct me if i go off base here but it's a law which provides um it says look there is pr there are private construction contractors and union i should say union and non-union construction contractors for a government in connecticut to do construction we are required to use the union contract rates we cannot use the non-union rates and effectively what that does from a taxpayer's perspective is it increases the cost of construction for us that's a big deal we're talking about school modernization um you know we could be talking to hundreds of millions hundreds of millions of dollars for the total project costs and just with phase one that we'll be discussing tonight it could easily be costing the taxpayers an extra few million perhaps tens of millions of dollars it depends you have to get into the details a lot more but it costs a significant it is a significant cost to the taxpayer by virtue of having this law in place a law which could be uh changed entirely repealed by way of the state legislature of course on the flip side that's the benefit to the taxpayers there is there would be a cost to the construction workers who are getting paid union wages that's important too i'm simply coming from the perspective that right here in the town of cheshire we have school modernization facing us and we're talking about a lot of money and my preference would be to not have the law there but what we did have uh discussion on that there was i believe there was consensus on this in our discussion was to modify a request to modify the prevailing wage law which would increase the level at which the prevailing wage law kicks in so as an example right now um there's both new construction and renovation with regard to um is it the renovation the threshold right now is anything over a hundred thousand dollars the prevailing wage law kicks in so what is here come from the superintendent and i agree with it and i think it was consensus by the legislative committee last week is to increase that hundred thousand dollar threshold to 500 000 that is aligned with what the town council uh they may have voted on it or their this is they have voted on already they did okay so the time council already voted on it so we would be um in lockstep with them giving a broader voice to saying this is what we believe here in the town of cheshire would be a good thing so that's uh that's the general idea with prevailing wage so all i'm really asking for right now would be to support what the superintendent has requested in his draft another item here that i think is from my perspective is actually a pos it's it's doable it is uh with regard to ownership or control of the school bus depot on sandbank road yes so the school the school bus depot is owned by the state of connecticut and it doesn't really cost us anything to use but there are there's an administrative burden involved with it whenever we're doing anything there such as you know there's a building there for the school bus the the school bus company um and so you do things like that we just need to go to the state and get approval to do things it would make it simpler and this is from my you know from my memory when things have happened this is one of the things where we actually could make something happen if we could get our legislators behind it and go to the right people in the state hey can you make this happen i think it's possible and i'd like to i would like it if the board gave our legislators the backing saying this is something that should happen next on the superintendent's list relates to existing and potential mandates impacting education there's a whole slew of them and the superintendent has the list vin has the list there's a lot it also i'm gonna i'm gonna dovetail this with the k-8 model curriculum which is um right now is it is an option for me personally i'm okay with options i think they can be a good thing but i don't want the mandates i'd rather not have it i'd rather be able to think of things a little bit more with some more flexibility so basically the superintendent is saying he doesn't want any more mandates i agree k-8 model curriculum falls into the same bucket uh youth mental health access support for social emotional learning resources especially in the last two years this has for me the mental health has been an even bigger concern than previously so it's just looking for for support and understanding and moving forward with mental health issues um and the last item on the list is remote learning access which i don't believe the legislative committee actually uh discussed it all which is which is fine i i read it through the remote learning access i first of all i do not want to go back to remote learning like we did two years ago but having it like i said as an option i think um you know in particular like with snow days i could see i could see a situation where it could be beneficial um maybe not even for the entire school system for certain students for whatever reason i think having that flexibility would be a good thing so uh i'm not i'm not gonna get into every word here i don't agree with every word here i don't i'm not concerned about that i i appreciate you the superintendent putting together this draft and i support it so just a couple time thank you i know there was a lot of discussion in that meeting so just a couple procedural things you know one there there there's no vote necessary that has to happen in this uh so not tonight um if and when the board gets to a point that you know we want to put a vote behind something or per support we can say get there what i recommend is a lesson came out of legislative for the board of vote on there's nothing to vote on tonight um but that's okay we're just starting the process what i recommend is um and this is great i know i know that we've in various boards over the years i've talked about doing something with this well before you and i got here and then the school year starts or after the election we try to get together it's too late because let's say sorry set this agenda and ready to kick off around this month so there's really no rush to get anything out to them however what i encourage is um for board members to digest this give feedback to the committee these are things you want to discuss and um you know maybe another meeting or two we can go through one more time as i think we should present something to our cheshire representatives i did reach out to um all of them i believe i heard back from liz and you know she's happy to hear us and take whatever we have to you know to task out in hartford um so you know this is just starting by and i know dr sullin and vincent and marlene others have talked for a long time over the years the things they want to see addressed so i mean that's that's my feedback i you know give us more thought i appreciate all this being put together thank you good start yeah so the the one the one comment on that i'm i'm totally fine if we don't vote on anything tonight but one thing i would like that i i that gives me a little bit of pause is with regard to getting the bus depot getting ownership of that i'm guessing that does not have to go through any sort of law but it might because there's a property transfer involved um and it's just in relation to the timing on that i would um i would like to get that to our legislators if we are serious about i mean if anybody opposes that idea then say it but i think this is something that we could give to liz and leslie and say hey can you can you make this happen do what you need to do i'll just add that the council because it is a council legislative priority i believe it is in the hands of the legislators so you know the endorsement from the board of ed could be additional but i believe it is already there i just want to add uh regardless remote learning so one of the things that uh is happening and unfortunately um like the ecs formula it's a mystery uh in hartford is as part of this legislature there is a study underway to look at how remote learning hybrid learning performed during the pandemic not in connecticut but across the nation and there is a legislative committee that's working on that uh i asked it's been a couple months spending her back i asked sd for any information on that because i think cheshire should be part of that study since we've been significant investment on the technology side so i know something is happening i don't necessarily know there's going to be a vote on whether to allow remote learning i'm not saying i'm 100 behind that but it'd be a shame if cheshire wasn't including that study because there has been a significant investment and we were one of the early adopters to get there so we can certainly ask what is on that too so put that up there thank you are you that was that point i'm not sure i i just want to add a little context around that remote learning piece that uh to be clear for folks who can't see this at home or whatever that um my suggestion is not to just uh like without boundaries provide remote learning it's in the event of a snow day after we've had two snow days in the year to allow us the flexibility to have additional remote days that count toward our required 180 days of school and not be added on to the end of the year certainly we have the technology to be able to facilitate that we've done that in the past with very positive feedback from the community it was an addition for consideration just following jeff is that two consecutive snow days or just once we hit our two-day max we during day three we go room out correct on the latter part of that thank you faith um it just uh i guess to finally if if this uh becomes a full motion to go to our legislatures um the one thing i guess i would ask is perhaps in addition to just remote learning access was the promotion of synchronous learning i know that that was something that i think sde is looking at or perhaps uh kabe was looking at and i know that um i spoke to i believe was fran rabinowitz um who was um enthusiastic about that and said that she'd actually come and give us a presentation if we'd like on on their thoughts on a synchronous learning of something they're very excited about so um and i know that we have these this powerful tool uh what what do we call it a ram uh ramplified classroom we have our amplified classrooms that that can be used to either study with students from other schools or combine uh uh classes here uh in our own schools so i think it's a powerful tool that we can be that can be used so if that's something i don't know if that if that requires legislative action or if that's something we can just do uh but that was just uh something i want to just keep on yeah it's not something that we're able to do and it's not something that you know i think our administrative team as it sits today would necessarily recommend this is you know a singular modality in terms of learning so if it's a snow day all of our students are home and it's unsafe to travel and so all of our staff can provide instruction through that you know singular remote modality as i said it was effective last year we think we could sustain that efficacy moving forward um not to be used i mean if we get five days you know beyond the first two i can't recall when we've had seven snow days in a winter but i'm sure it's happened knocking out really don't run my mouth on that but um you know the first two after that second snow day the excitement wears off quite a bit and we're not too excited about tacking days on to the end of the year at that point it impacts a number of different plans that we as a district have but also families so the flexibility to if necessary add that uh is an actual remote day for all students would be nice right and i didn't mean for synchronous learning to be confused with yes yeah i just want everything yeah make sure those two are two separate separate things separate thing uh tony i just thank you for clarifying the point of order because i was actually very uncomfortable with voting on this tonight there's a lot to unpack here um especially for somebody who does sit on a model curriculum for the state um committee and there's just way more to discuss to to really have a vote or anything so i guess my my question right now is to dr solon are you requesting that this information just move forward to the representatives or can we at least have some further review and discussion on each topic no i'm simply responding to the legislative committee uh recommendations adding the remote learning and presenting it to you as a draft form and so if there was this unanimous enthusiasm to adopt it tonight then i guess it could be moved forward is suggested if it needs to be reviewed i mean that's that's fine too this is just a draft okay because as we were talking about prevailing wage and you're getting into a union non-union discussion and uh that right there alone is a huge topic um i don't disagree with the remote learning aspect but again we need to kind of delineate yeah i know you want just snow days but in 2012 we were closed for almost two weeks with you know a hurricane so i i just want to get a little more clarification on each item that you wrote here so that's that's where my comfort level lies i just and i don't know um with their request are they looking for a quick turnaround time in response as you said so this is a first draft uh it's a first discussion we've never gotten this far in the past so i certainly have no reason to move anything forward this point other than just to get folks aware that these topics whether or not this is the final list that we uh give our legislators or even perhaps invite them here to future mean to talk about some of our concerns if we can get consensus on it we'll figure that out but um so i you know i recommend keep the dialogue going let let's see the community meet again maybe open it up to the rest of the board member so we can all be there and get some feedback but we're not going to solve collective bargaining issues here we're not going to solve the common curriculum here but concerns from the district should be made aware that if cps wants a little bit of flexibility in the amount of curriculum we can ask for that it happens or not but what that means we have not talked about in curriculum yet so getting these ladies more more ideas so more concrete so i would say keep at it give the community some feedback schedule a meeting and you know maybe by the time the budget stuff is over we can reconvene on this see where we are because i guess everybody here has indicated it is important to keep our legislators close we never any boards never really work done directly in this fashion um and town council has their priorities more town white stuff but there's a real opportunity for us giving some of our legislators particularly um liz makes ourselves available that you know if there's some things here that we can help get our air on and the session starts i believe next month could be good timing but we'll see no worries at all yeah no i appreciate if she can come and speak to us a little more good uh just as a quick point of order i was just looking through the minutes was there a motion to come out of legislative committee to approve no anything for us to consider okay then okay then we're just all right thanks do we have a deadline to come up with a final draft no i mean the one thing where i think something actually is doable um in the short term would be the bus depot and so it really would just depend on what the legislators tell us if there's any sort of timing involved and i do i'm taking yes a property transfer probably does need to get into a law i think there is a property transfer law that gets passed and signed by the governor so we would probably want to have it lined up for that the rest of the stuff i don't expect um i don't expect to to have the a voice would be added um to a much bigger discussion and so whether we vote or not i don't see a deadline to it well to add a time frame the legislative session begins on february 9th right so but as far as the bus depot i know the town council in fact i know i'm talking with uh mr slocum that's something they've been looking into i would suggest you know kind of falls under planning here too so if you know we i know vince is going to bring us up at some point for one of the planning meetings uh if not now for cap or other you know definitely discuss it there was like i don't understand the benefits of owning the land i know there's some benefits i just i need to quantify them you know as far as the the trailer that's on there to work that was actually done by dako uh at their cost which was kind of nice because you know so um again we'll get more into it uh but i think there's a great topic for planning and maybe after the budget bring it to to andrew and that answered on yeah but on the agenda that was i mean that's something we can at least agree on in time for the ninth or their rounds and see what the legislative folks have to say what's uh that's fine with me and i'm sorry i'm happy if there's no vote tonight i just put it out there but i understand it i do agree that some of these issues are big thoughtful uh thought-provoking issues to consider so thank you yeah yes i would just like to um just generally put out there um for a couple of reasons that we refer to our representatives in hartford by their titles and not by their first names um both for a couple of reasons one for the clarity of the public so that they know who we're talking about and uh second just to afford respect to these women in these offices it's senator abrams representative linehan and representative zepkus it's just just a request thank you yeah by no means am i trying to i i respect what you're saying but you should know me better than think otherwise as far as mary leslie rob and craig are concerned uh they don't mind representing their first name but point taken hopefully we'll get them here at a future meeting uh they reach out to all and so we'll see what they say thank you anything else then ah planning committee mr martelly all right thank you so planning committee meeting of the whole we've had two meetings in the past month or so the first one was held on december the 16th over at hummuston school the first half of the meeting focused basically on the capital budget mr messiana gave us a presentation of the five-year look forward for capital expenditures across the school district not including any school modernization related items five-year total plan was 26 million 497 500 with the first year request of 5.4 million um a lot of those projects i just like to remind the board and the public that last year the planning committee we put forth a very lean proposal as we were going through the school modernization effort to try to determine which projects or which buildings were going to be hit first and so we weren't undoing any of the good work and dollars that were being spent on various projects across the district um don't have the exact breakdown of that but you know this was our first look at the capital at the five-year capital budget we're gonna have another look at it at the planning committee this full board will be able to review it and then it'll be forwarded to the town council and the town council will actually adopt the five-year budget with the one-year list of projects so we're gonna have other chances to take a look at that in the next couple weeks and months ahead second half of the meeting was dedicated to colliers who is um town consultant on school modernization effort um colyers over the past several months has been doing several test fits as well as geotechnical analysis of the two chosen school sites one the norton school site as well as casatana in the northwest corner of town due diligence has indicated no real surprises either on the bearing of the soils as well as any of the property's ability to house the schools and the ability to hook into existing infrastructure and infrastructure being brought to those schools in order to support their development at the meeting also we talked about looking ahead at other items that the town council would have to approve for funding as we move forward with school modernization and that one of the major items there is looking at school enrollment and engaging slams take a look at the enrollment trends and projecting out over the next eight years or so for uh growth within the district my friend mr white um discuss net zero buildings at length which we promised to take a look at through the school modernization effort and to make sure that that was included um as we develop the budgets moving forward with the projects that's the report on the meeting of december the 16th um january 11th meeting was held at dodd middle school i gave a presentation an 18 slide presentation on school modernization where we were where we are and where we may be going depending on action tonight by this board um i'm not going to go back through the 18 slides they are available on district website um there is a video of it so i anybody watching at home could pull that up and take a look at that um i pulled a few slides out um in the interest of time so school modernization was a multi-year effort school modernization was established by the town council but certain members two of which are well two three of us are here this evening um as well as just kind of across that cross-section of some town council members as well as others um that make up the general community um the plan that came out back in april of 2021 which was forwarded to the town council recommended the following phase one is two new k-6 elementary schools one located at the north end of town and one located at the south end of town possibly on the norton school site existing darcy enchantment buildings are taken offline norton is demolished depending south and school location and redistricting to be addressed as required i'm not gonna get into the phase two and phase threes of what the project is because um if i was to bet everything i had i'm gonna tell you now that these projects will change after the phase one is implemented and we move forward as a town and as a school district but i could be wrong but i don't know if i'll be sitting up here at the time but that's discussion for a later date um so our first cost for phase one which is the new elementary school in the north and in the south the district share after state reimbursement is 73.3 million low and 88.2 million dollars high before state reimbursement you would look at a low budget of 109 with a high budget of 131 million dollars so once i was adopted and forwarded to the town council the steps have been taken subsequent to smc's final recommendation um you know there's been talk that nothing's been done since it was originally forward that's furthest thing from the truth um projects at my house could attest to the nights that were spent reviewing the different plans as well as the different consultants that have been hired um to review the different um scenarios so the different steps of test fits um took place both at the marion and jarvis property also known as the kazatano farm fields over there as well as in the norton school a financial analysis was done by the town council as well as james jaska who's our finance director here as well as the establishment of a calculator on the town's website where you can input your property values and it'll tell you exactly what the tax implication would be to the average homeowner which is still alive and available for anyone's use environmental and geotechnical site assessments were done at both of the properties educational specifications were developed for darcy school to evaluate the fit for highland or not which we determined that darcy school cannot be placed over at the highland school site would have to be integrated into one of the new school sites valuation was performed at humberston school and central office for future needs so what does this all mean cheshire public schools next generation phase one summary is as follows construction of a new northland elementary school to include the birth of three preschool programming from darcy school construction of a new norton elementary school on the existing site chapman elementary school and darcy school are taken offline when the new schools are constructed in elementary elementary redistricting will occur when the new schools are built to accommodate the new buildings brought into the fold of the district so procedural next steps this slide that i had here we all received a gantt chart looking out over what needs to be done for various approvals depending on what happens by the sports action this evening um i just got this tonight so i'm not going to pretend like i could run through it so perhaps vin can um talk about what the next steps are um after we take a vote so i will be happy to walk through it exactly so looking at the gantt chart the one key milestone that i'm going to focus on is the red line about two-thirds of the page over which is the grant application the state requires that the school construction grant application has to be in by june 30th okay so that is the key date that we're targeting on if you look at the green bars those are the the things that need to be completed at a very high level these are the three most important things that we need to complete by april 1st the first is updated enrollment projections and finalizing the budgets slam which is a firm that will be updating the enrollment projections at this point has all the information that they needed it's the school modernization committee on board and town council members know we use mylana mcbroom which became slr to do the first uh enrollment projection so the staff that was at slr has left the key person mike zuba went to slam so slam and we'll be doing the projections but mike zuba gives us the continuity we need so that work is um going to start if it didn't already start again the key milestone date is it has to be completed by april 1.
most americans have gotten pay raises last year or pay bumps also but they haven't kept up but not us for the last few years we haven't had zip zippo big goose eggs all right now you know you listen to every teacher speak about how we are feeling that's how called a toxic relationship we're having with the district most big companies are looking into management of why they have toxic employees working in management positions so board members who are on the board i'd advise you to start looking inside the board or inside the district to see why this is happening why can't we get a raise all right and many of you like nestor says four of you could be gone in november which you know three of you i wouldn't wouldn't mind seeing because i don't think you have done much so show me that that i'm wrong show me that you can do the job that you're supposed to right so i can go on but i won't dr bowers give me a call anyhow thank you mr swiss our next speaker is brenda sandejas mesendejas you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello my name is brenda sindejas and pretty much everything that i want to say was said today today i stand here in solidarity with my teachers and staff um i do want to thank them all because i do think they do an incredible job since covet started i've always told the district we always need a plan b um and we need to be more organized um i'm yet to see look at us we're in omicron and look at what's happening in our classrooms and we're still running around saying you know this is unpredictable times but we kind of knew that this was going to happen covet wasn't going to go away in two years and i really hope that you are strategizing for next year because this is not going to go away anytime soon i do want to say that our teachers and our staff because we have part-time staff that has three years just imagine part-time staff three years with no raise as well just like the teachers try to live off that or try to survive in san jose silicon valley the cost of living has gone up food has gone up everything keeps going up and it's really sad to see that you guys can't make a fair contract for our teachers because that affects everyone that affects the staff that affects our janitors our heroes all our heroes and i just want you guys to really consider it all of you board members that are there that get endorsed by area your teachers expect you guys to stand by them and be their voice because i'm sure when you wanted their endorsement you guys made all these promises and this is when you deliver you deliver now because everyone's watching and i'm sure they will think twice about voting for anybody or endorsing anyone that doesn't stand by their teachers thank you miss andrejas our next speaker is dela linda mendoza ms mendoza you have two minutes please admit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good afternoon trustees and superintendent bauer my name is theodolinda mendoza i'm a second grade teacher at adelante i am speaking tonight as a teacher and as a human being this year has been very stressful mentally and physically we just have so much on our plates as teachers ensure trustee lawyer herrera we choose to be here because we want to however this does not mean that we could be treated disrespectfully yet we have felt disrespected and uncared for we are working under unsafe conditions we lack ppe our air purifier events are dirty and and clean infrequently as our classrooms and our students desk we are the last ones to know when there has been an exposure in our classrooms putting us at risk also as more of us get exposed and sick we lack substitutes which sets the stage for overcrowded classrooms and more exposures this is not safe we need we need a safety mou it is scary coming to school each day knowing anyone might be next our health and our paychecks are being impacted this is why we need a safety mou in place we know cobin has made teaching more complex we know that it will get better but in the meantime we need your help to mitigate the problems we are facing we need to be taken care of before we lose more good teachers our starting salary is 28th in the county you can do better you can do the right thing you can change this by selling our contract please consider not wasting money on costly meetings this means that we can work together to maintain a safe and productive environment conducive to learning thank you for listening thank you miss mendoza our next speaker is danielle the ambrosium it's the ambrosia you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening board members and dr bauer i hope you are you sorry i'm danielle d'ambrosio teacher at lindell for 21 years you've heard from me before i hope you're really listening to all the people that have spoken before me and have said some really heartfelt um really important things that cannot go unnoticed any longer um i honestly can't believe that we are teaching during a global pandemic and having to use our own sick days if we catch covet so it's like getting punished for coming on the front lines and you know teaching our kids every day with the chance that we could catch coven and you know bring it home to our families that's not okay it's also not okay that our starting salary is 28th in the county um it's you know not a livable wage and i would like all of you to go home tonight and ask yourself and really think about the answer to this question what is there to recruit and retain teachers in allen rock i i mean i've been thinking about this question for the last two hours and um the answer is not not so good and i i've been around 21 years and if i can't answer that in a positive way i'll say it again what is there to recruit and retain teachers in alum rock um i would like to also take my last few seconds please urge your negotiating team to settle our contract quickly and fairly thank you miss ambrosia the next speaker is scattered miss laurie you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi my name is kathy lowe i'm a middle school art teacher at sherwood middle school i've been at shepherd for 15 years um i took some time today to look through my notes that i've taken on um you know kids who've told me that they've had coveton it turns out that out of 145 of my students 25 almost 25 percent of them have caught coveted since january when returned to school in january um i we all knew this was going to happen i warned you about this you know in previous meetings and here we are and you know my kids don't have n95s k and 95s they are wearing cloth masks they are wearing surgical masks that is not enough protection for them we need to provide that for them we need to protect the students we need to protect the teachers the portable filter i've read the manual it's not enough for classroom sizes the filters are dirty the janitors don't have replacement filters regardless of what has been told to teachers who have emailed about that um this is an unsafe working environment and the fact that we're you know still coming in every day we're still trying as we drop like flies from covid and you know our classrooms are not covered and so we cover for each other this is this is not okay and still you're refusing to settle like i wake up every morning go i don't want to go to work i don't want to be there anymore and that's not the way that people should feel about their jobs that's not a good way of recruiting teachers thank you miss louie our next speaker is kimberly doughty ms dodie you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello yes we can hear you missed oh wonderful okay good evening board members and superintendent bauer um area is our union is asking for a reasonable fair and comparable settlement to our collective bargaining agreement we are asking for an agreement to our safety mou in order to protect our staff and students we are asking the district extend code of covet leaves excuse me therefore because it is forcing teachers to use personal sick leave for work related illnesses areas feeling dehumanized disrespected ignored and undervalued we are asking that this us you meaning district versus them area uh approach be uh as the other teacher said a toxic work um relationship or environment we do uh our area and the district office does have that it is many years and it's it's known and how about we stop you know how about we come to the negotiating table together um to work out agreements contracts that the animosity contentiousness finally stop in alum rock i invite you board members and superintendent bauer to visit the schools more regularly to see what is going on to know in reality the issues that are concerning area thank you for your time and again please visit the school sites to know what is going on thank you mistori our next speaker is nancy flores miss flores you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi good evening i'm a teacher in the district and my concern or i'm actually directing this question to the person whose job it is that decides when a pool test is going to be given and versus the antigen test so what's happening now is they're doing the pull testing on a given day say day one of our classes then the students are sitting in the classes they're going to the bathroom they're taking their mask off to eat they're playing at recess teachers are constantly telling them to put their mask on so one day goes by no results from the pull test two days go by no results from the pull test on the third day we say oh there's your pull test is negative okay so i've just been with it could be me it could be which one at least someone in my class is positive so now let's backtrack and say hey let's end let's test them all individually and find out who one two three four five students it is that we've just shared you know eight hours a day three days in close contact um can we get rid of the pool test and just go straight for the ant or the antigens the rapid test because i understand the pull test philosophy in the beginning of the pandemic but now we you know the boots are on the ground we need to do the rapids instead of the cool test thank you for your comments ms flores next speaker is maestra diaz is you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening dr bauer and trustees my name is elvia rodriguez diaz and i'm an 8th grade teacher at adelante dr bauer and trustees i invite you to come visit my classroom so that you can see how disgustingly dirty the carpets floor and trash cans are the trash sits in my classroom for days into the weekend i am told that the cleaning the basic cleaning of classrooms is not a priority right now the sanitation process is but let me ask you would you want to work in a filthy environment give us the ppe we need settle on a fair contract now teachers are suffering and leaving the profession every week we are constantly giving up our prep so that we can sub for our colleagues help recruit teachers by demonstrating the respect and dignity that we deserve dr bauer we supported you when you needed us show us your support show us you support us too where is your compassion where is your heart settle on a fair contract now thank you thank you for your comments juan stelias next speaker is ellen arneson ms arneson you have two minutes please send me yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello my name is ellen arneson i'm a third grade teacher at adelante i'm speaking to address the issue of recruiting and retaining teachers in alum rock i am a new teacher to the profession um this is my second year teaching um and i've been at adelante these two years the first one being fully online um with covid um first i'd like to say that i'm incredibly proud to be part of adelante i have received amazing mentorship from most especially from my teachers who have gone way out of their way to help me grow as an educator and i am sincerely wishing to stay at adelante but unfortunately you know i it breaks my heart to consider my future here because i live in a house with four other teachers the only way i'm able to pay my rent is because five teachers one of whom well two of us are alum rock teachers are paying rent to live here um and looking across the salary schedules knowing that we're 28th and in the county um it honestly you know respectfully it makes me feel foolish to not consider leaving and i really really want to stay um so i i urge you to please settle our contract um for the new teachers who really wish to stay and for all the teachers who continue to stay in this district for the kids um because they love the kids here thank you thank you miss erneston next speaker is sheri duarte miss duarte you have two minutes please unmute yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hi good evening um my name is sherry tuarte i'm a fourth grade teacher russell mcentee i've been teaching in the alamo district for 25 years but my relationship with the element district began when i was five years old as i am a result of this school district i too love my students but recently the day before coming back from our christmas break i did test positive for covid and i was out for 10 days i am grateful that i have hoarded away sick days and i have enough to cover my time but it breaks my heart to use all that time um and to be away from my kids but i was not in a you know i was contagious and i just had no energy to teach my class what i wanted to share with you is that at many of our schools we have some simple rules be respectful be responsible be safe and i want to say that i don't feel like i'm being respected as a teacher um and just right off the bat we need our contract settled in a fair and equitable way but otherwise we're also feeling tired depressed undervalued and under-appreciated teachers feel like we don't matter in terms of being responsible like i said i had to use my 10 days of sick leave i'd like the exclusion pay there was no 7 in my class for three days so my kids were shoved all over the place uh they were over credited classrooms leading to more exposures my student supplies were everywhere the lessons that i spent time working on uh weren't followed it was really kind of a waste of time and then finally we all need to be safe we need an mou adequate ppe um and in my classroom i don't have running water just fyi um please settle thank you for your comments miss suarte next speaker is nicole visacia miss visache you have two minutes please send me yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello i hope you all can hear me um my name is nicole b sacha i'm a teacher at george middle school go vikings i've called in a few times over the last year this is not my first board meeting and i'm going to be honest i came into it with a lot of frustration and a lot of upsetness and as i've been listening to all these public comments i've just been really struck by how respectful all of these teachers have been and how heartbroken and desperate we have all been and i've been trying to think of it from your perspective to the board and our superintendent and honestly if it were me in this position and i had just faced a barrage of what you might consider complaints i'd probably be pretty emotionally shut down by now and so i just want to ask you all very sincerely to reconsider this message and re-watch this section of the video at a later point you know when i have a student who comes in because they're upset because of someone you know a friend a teacher a parent a sibling whatever i try to coach them to sort of take a moment and recover from their emotional state and then think back objectively did they really say that did they really mean that what was your tone what are the facts and what could be the meaning behind what people said and so i'm just asking you all to please do that and re-listen to this later thank you very much thank you for your comments miss pistachio next speaker is erlina munoz miss munoz you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening my name is elena munoz and i am a sixth grade teacher at adelante i have been at this in this district and at this school i believe about 15 years now and i am a single mother and um i can only imagine how difficult it can be for some of the teachers that um just started out and are trying to make ends meet if i'm barely able to get by and so we definitely are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to pay in addition to that um less valentine's um i did lose my father to covid and so it's you can only imagine how difficult it's been for myself and my family um and knowing that i have to you know go to work every single day in these conditions um it's it's really hard because um my family worries for me i only have one kidney because i did donate it to my father um 10 years ago and so they worry for me and they wonder you know if i get the infection what would happen and so um i mean i just felt like there's there's there's just so many things that are not happening that should be happening in our schools um the last thing i would like to say is are i feel like i mean it's bad enough that our nation is always putting our students last our kids last in everything and i feel like this is just one of one another thing added to those things kids are never seen our children are never seen as an investment for the future and it just really saddens me that even in the schools it continues to be this way please settle our contract um before we we we all end up going somewhere else thank you ms munoz next speaker is sandra rivera mrs rivera you have two minutes please admit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello my name is sandra rivera and i am a tk teacher at chavez i'm listening to all of my colleagues tonight we've all touched on so many things i have a few things that i'd like to touch on for almost the last six days i've gotten the privilege of having a smaller class size but on that same note i do have a second class in with my class so i'm working two full contracts i'm working my contract and then i'm inheriting another group of students within those two classes 13 students in the other class had tested i had been out for covid related issues in my class i had five or six my hands are now chapped and bleeding on the back because i am constantly washing my hands i have kids throwing up in my classroom i don't understand how we can feel safe my desks and my classroom itself are not clean i have people who come in and spray sanitizer on the desks and so now those wonderful dividers on my desks just have smeared drip marks going down nobody comes back and wipes the desks they're merely just sprayed and moved on i don't have a ppe mask and i'm hoping that we will get more ppe masks the first one that i was issued the as soon as i tried to put it on the loophole broke this has caused significant sleep issues worrying panicking on whether or not i'm going to bring it home to my family and all of this while i'm living on two years back-to-back of no compensation please fix this thank you for your comments ms rivera next speaker is maestra cruz alcantar maestra you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin buenas noches todos my name is wendy cruz alcantar and i am a second grade teacher at adelante i have been in alam rock for 16 years and i have made it a goal to be the best teacher i can for my students so i have paid my own way through master's class education because i want to be the best i can unfortunately i cannot do that at this moment um i am afraid for my family i am afraid for myself because my students are constantly coming in with symptoms which makes even teaching scary i do not want to pass if i if i were to get sick i don't want to pass it on to my child who also attends adelante and um who is young i don't want to pass it on to my mom i don't want to pass it on to the rest of my family um we come in every day um scared for our health um and we still come in and the scary and the sad part is we are not even thanked by giving us a fair contract i'm urging all of you guys to please think of put yourselves in our shoes and think of how hard it is to live in the bay area um with our with our wage um we cannot continue on like this we're stressed we're extremely tired we are sick because many of my colleagues have called in sick because they've tested positive um this cannot happen we need your support ma'am superintendent bowers adelante has always been in your side and we've been there for you when when you've meeted us we are asking you to be in our side now for all of our teachers and set all contracts and give us a safe place to teach and thank you thank you maestro cruz alcantar our next speaker is lisa dreis miss lisa you have two minutes please submit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening i've been um emailing you guys for the last two months every single day so i'm sure you're familiar with me but i am lisa dries from hubbard i have been in this district for 22 years good evening superintendent bauer and board of trustees recently one of my colleagues has described the district as demoralizing i i tend to agree with her um i can see um many of us leaving in mass accidents including myself as i recently asked for some letters of recommendation sadly i don't want to do this i love my school i love my district i would like a swift and fair settlement please give us the covert sick relief that other schools are getting your actions speak way louder than words uh there it has seems to be these uh also describing us as chaotic and toxic i also tend to think that we lack communication as many of us had no idea where to input our report cards recently please settle our contracts settle it quickly um one of the speakers earlier said what are we doing to recruit and retain teachers um nothing we're not doing anything what are we doing to recruit and retain students we just had this slide show we're losing kids because we have nothing to offer teachers are giving a hundred percent are you we go into our classrooms we're masking our feelings because we're going through ptsd please show us respect i also agree with the speaker that talked about rapid tests i emailed you about this get do the rapid test from the get-go why are we putting inspected kids back to our room for four more days that makes no sense thank you for your time have a good evening and i will continue to email you thank you for your comments next speaker is miss gilbert miss gilbert you have two minutes please admit yourself when you begin speaking the timer will begin hello can you hear me yes we can hear you hi i'm miss gilbert i work at joseph george middle school i've been in the district for 25 years i was actually there when miss when superintendent bauer was uh principal at one of our schools um what i have to say is i guess i'm just kind of exhausted with the fact that whether it's this board or another board or superintendent after superintendent we always seem to be going back to the same thing where it has to be or we're threatening to have to strike before something can be settled i'm not exactly sure why this continues and why this has been continuing for the last 25 years in alum rock but you could be a board that could do something different um you know i can i can sit here and say you know we have issues our buildings are leaking when it rains we have holds in our fields our blacktop is cracked and falling down um [Music] in big chunks you know we don't have enough garbage cans teachers are being asked to deal with social and emotional issues of students and we don't have enough counselors and therapists to follow up with these kids that are or even teachers that really are having um ish like pts someone brought up ptsd from uh covid related stuff um you know the custodians it's i i unders i can see where it's difficult you know the sanitizing stuff should is supposed to be left on for two minutes and then cleaned off and we just don't have enough staff to do that so um i please you know subs just you know this it's just been a long time and um it would be really great if you could be the board that actually stood up and said hey we appreciate you teachers by settling the contract so thank you guys thank you miss gilbert our next speaker is scenada engineer this engineer you have two minutes please send me yourself and you begin speaking the timer will begin good evening i'm a first grade teacher at hubbard last week i was sent home due to having co tested positive for kobe i did not know i had it otherwise i would not have come to school in the first place anyway the whole week that i was home i was worried about my students i was worried how they were doing did they have a substitute etc um i did receive emails from my students who asked i was how i was feeling how i was doing they told me they missed me and it felt good i feel respected by them i felt respected by them then i feel respected by them every day but i completely feel absolutely disrespected by the administrators in the district office dragging this on is very demoralizing as lisa drives previously said please consider settling a contract and at the same time i would also like to hear a huge huge thank you to jonathan and olga martinez our principal and vice principal for all their support um they've been amazing amazing principal and vice principal supporting us teachers and our students at the same time and i cannot thank them enough to thank you i want to thank all the speakers who have spoken tonight we're going to go ahead and move on to item number 4.01 uh alan rock administrators association do we have somebody from the alpenrock administrators association yes uh board president miss viviana garcia is here to speak on behalf of the administrators all right good evening board president members of the board superintendent power my name is viviana garcia and i am the proud principal of dorsa elementary and i will be sharing a couple of comments on behalf of araa first and foremost i want to express tremendous gratitude to all staff across all sites and the district office for their incredible support these last couple of weeks during this surge of covid cases at our sites um it is has been quite intense there has been a lot that we've had to respond to together and we really just appreciate all of our partners all of the staff all the district office team members who have come out to help us in responding to the needs at our sites we also want to express appreciation to our parents for their patients i know that the guidelines especially the recent changes to the guidelines have tremendously impacted a number of families we understand that that has some major implications for child care and things like that and so we we truly respect and appreciate their grace and their patience with us as we are wanting to manage and make sure that we're tracking everything correctly um at the same time we you know amidst the last couple of weeks and the intensity of cases we are continuing with a lot of programming that is very exciting a number of elementary schools and partnership with little heroes have begun the elementary school elm rock sports league with our first sport being soccer we have held off on bringing schools together to compete against one another but sites are having practices um you know on their own in preparation and we look forward to inviting you out to those games once those are scheduled a number of sites have also partnered with small science as well as painters partnership with gen and tech science and to make sure students get exposure and experiences with science workshops a number of sites again thank you to the district for both the science and the social emotional learning partnerships have partnered with sky schools which has been something that has been very much needed this year sky schools helps promote students overall well-being by teaching calming strategies and breeding techniques and we are in partnership with them uh painter dual language program academy um is holding an event on january 27th in recognition of the upcoming lunar near lundler excuse me lunar new year um celebration um they will be having a special presentation of lion dancing drumming songs and more um this will be um via zoom and so um we're happy to invite you to that as well january 27th we continue with our mid-year testing we're just about done with that and in the coming weeks or so we will be helping our staff process the information in order to continue adjusting instruction and our after school programs in support of continued student learning and um we are also beginning to organize ourselves and carry out our recruitment strategies for this coming fall lastly i want to share and give special congratulations to alum rock administrators who have been nominated and put forth for access region 8 administrator of the year nominations and the following are our nominees for middle school principal mr vince iwasaki elementary site principal viviana garcia site principal olga martinez district office human resource administrator teresa smith district office special education administrator tony colonna district office business services administrator teresa langer district office student services administrator jesus and district office curriculum and instruction administrator barbara campbell thank you so much all right do we have somebody from teachers anybody representing local you don't see any race hands uh for president all right uh we're we'll go ahead and move on to csva uh level 305.
yeah no i just got to pull it up on my okay then yes it's a judiciary committee no this is the expression of condolence yeah okay that's what i thought yeah move up i guess there's two there right there it's right under unfinished business i have it okay um whereas on january 14th the community noted with sorrow the passing of peter j salzano jr and whereas mr salzano has served the clifton board of education and the children of put them faithfully and conscientiously over 22 years until his retirement in december of 2018 mr salzano started his career in the clifton district in 1996 as educational support counselor until his appointment to supervisor of counseling and student services in two thousand and twelve now therefore be resolved that the resolution be forwarded to his bereaved family to serve as an expression of great regard in which mr salzano held by the board of education the administration employees pupils and the clifton public schools and be further resolved that the contents of this resolution be noted in their entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for future generations to peruse okay motion by mr daley second second by mr what doesn't matter roll call please mr abhijava yes mr awak yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes and president smith yes motion carries um ea 18 um would you mind reading that sure um ea 18 yes please okay whereas on november 26 2021 the community noted with sorrow the passing of mr martini horvath and whereas mr horvath has served the board of education and children of clifton faithfully and conscientiously as a highly respected high school custodian for 38 years mr horvath was a graduate of the clifton high school and a long time member of the y m yha of clifton now therefore be it resolved that this resolution be forwarded to the breathe family to serve as an expression of the great respect in which mr horvath was held by the clifton board of education the administration employees and the pupils of clifton public schools and be it further resolved that the content of this resolution be noted in its entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for future generations to peruse make a motion yes motion by ms bashford second second by mr abu drabo roll call please mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes and president smith yes motion carries um ea 19 whereas on december 14 2021 the community noted with sorrow the passing of mrs louise and eddie and whereas mrs danetti had served the board of education and the children of the clifton faithfully and conscientiously had a highly respected high school secretary for 38 years missing eddie was a parishioner of the saint phillips roman catholic church in clifton and was a member of the passaic county republican committee now therefore be resolved that the resolution be forwarded to her bereaved family to serve as an expression of the great regard in which mississippi was held by the board of education the administration employees and pupils of the clinton public schools and be a further resolve that the contents of this resolution be noted in their entirety in the official minutes of the clifton board of education for future generations to pursue i make emotion well i can't do that motion motion by mr abhijava second by mr awad i just personally wanted to miss and eddie we knew her as chicky um she was a faithful and dedicated secretary at the high school when you walked into high school she was the the first person you saw she was funny yet at times she could be chris the real commander right and uh i remember chicky for for a long time she really was a great person and uh we're going to miss her anyone else want to say anything all right uh roll call please mr abedrabo mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries okay now we go on to um education administration we have ea 1 through ea 18.
they were either infected with copin 19 or they were exposed and they were required to stay at home or they were sick and they had just gotten a test for colby 19 but they had not gotten the results to determine whether they were negative or positive so we have these children at home who are sick who have been infected with coping 19 and as a result of the number of staff that were sick we had to to close the preschool next week we will be remote via zoom for that reason fortunately our parents are very understanding and they're working with us to make this work we are very fortunate in that regard we're also fortunate that the supervising teacher is very well prepared they had planned ahead for this eventuality and they already had the curriculum and materials ready to go to send out to families and parents in case this were to happen so that they can work with their preschool children next week while they're at home we are grateful for that our bus drivers um similar to the rest of the nation are facing a shortage we do not have enough drivers on the phoenix campus at the phoenix day school for the deaf we have 18 bus drivers um positions excuse me we have 18 positions eight of them are filled we only have eight full-time bus drivers that means we have 10 vacancies we have been attempting to recruit bus drivers for quite a while now and that has not been successful we are transporting students via contracted transportation services we're contracting with several different transportation agencies now those bus driving companies have hit their limits they are not able to offer us any additional services that means if one more full-time bus driver becomes sick or is otherwise absent we are going to have a significant challenge on our hands for the phoenix students providing transportation to and from school will be a problem does that mean we have given up that we have decided we can't do it obviously no we are continuing to problem solve we are um thinking outside the box and trying to find creative solutions to this issue i have faith and confidence that our leadership team our principals our directors our director of operations our manager of transportation all of those individuals all of our educators all of our staff are working very hard to make sure that we are able to achieve our goal which is to keep our students coming to school on our campuses in person we are making that effort so i just wanted to give you that information because currently we are in survival mode we are trying to keep our schools open and we are hoping that soon the current surge will start to decline and some of that pressure will be relieved until that happens i know that our agency leadership team and our teachers and staff will continue to do their best to figure out how we are able to get back to educating our students in a normal manner at the end of the day this is about our students and our students are experiencing that pressure they are feeling that stress so think about our students they've already faced all of these these challenges at home these challenges with um being deaf and not being able to keep communicate with their families in many instances maybe having additional disabilities being blind or visually impaired and that's compounding the stress that anyone else in this pandemic is facing when they come to school every day they don't know what's going to happen they don't know how their routine may be disrupted because they might have a different teacher they might have a different instructional assistant and we all know how important it is for our students to have emotional and mental health and emotional and mental stability that is provided by the routine that we are trying so desperately to provide we are not providing the most stable routine right now because of the pandemic once we start to just to see a decline in cases we really need to regroup we need to have those hard conversations and refocus our energies on bringing our kids back re-engaging our students in their learning getting them motivated again so that they can learn and that they can improve their academic skills and develop those social emotional skills that we know are so critical for them we are continuing to commit to being here to being present to keeping our students involved and engaged and being as supportive as we can in their education and that concludes my report thank you superintendent reichman are there any board members have any questions for the superintendent about a report uh seeing none we can move on superintendent right thank you so much and all the staff for uh continuing to work through in these last few weeks it's uh i know it's been very difficult um and you know appreciate all your hard work to keep the schools open as best that we can with the staff that we have that's that's healthy next is uh 1.05 information item assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction report assistant superintendent dr rex thank you president nigro board members asdb staff and viewers of our january meeting i also will keep my comments brief but i have something very exciting that i must share so at this time stephanie johnson if you can turn on your video screen i just want to introduce our board and the asdb stakeholders to region 1 director stephanie johnson who has joined us on the 17th of january by the way she has no relation to statewide director jay johnson who is also serving as the region 3 director but stephanie comes to us from deer valley unified school district and i look forward to her skills as a systems thinker to support our statewide redesign i've really seen with what superintendent reichman hit on today the true need for our directors and principals to be present for our staff as well as offering grace and supporting them i see a need for our directors to be out in the field meeting with our teachers our interpreters audiologists braillists admins and to truly support the work and the quality of service statewide stephanie will be working in region one for the remainder of this semester she will be working on the completion of staff evaluations supporting the work that's already been started developing a better understanding of region one as well as our agency this semester so welcome stephanie i just wanted the board and asdb to have an opportunity to have a look at our new region 1 director as annette alluded to as we continue to adjust and align the challenges and the changes of covid we are certainly moving on almost a daily scale i cannot tell you the amount of emails that we are updating and keeping to ensure that we have all the information for the newest cases how that affects our classrooms but i do want to assure this board that our programs are prepared and they will be ready to move to remote if necessary i value everyone's effort and the grace that they've given to each other and the support and the collaboration across all the educational programs people are stepping in and stepping up and i see that and i want to make sure this board understands all the efforts that are making sure the kids are able to learn i appreciate all the work that's being done and that concludes my report thank you dr rex are there any questions for dr rex about her report david i i don't have a question but i did want to mention that um both pv um jantz and linda bove have joined the meeting uh yes i i did see both when they both joined and i've noted the time at which they joined for the minutes thank you okay um all right hearing no further questions we will proceed to 1.06 information item assistant superintendent of agency operations and support services assistant superintendent cooper thank you good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex members of the board and astb community each of the directors have provided to you their departmental reports which i will provide a summary on and add to based on additional information that has come forth since the reports were provided last week all if not most of the work we do is tied to pillar 3 superb organizational culture and pillar for effective resource management the it department has issued more than 70 computers to staff and are on track to have the remaining 30 issued in the next few weeks the installation of the tucson campus classroom notification system that we receive funding from the state for is expected to begin in the next few weeks this system will provide a much needed audio as well as video public announcement system for our students that have been without for about six years the team is also working on finalizing the statement of work for the it network infrastructure refresh for all copper data runs on both ascv campuses that we plan to have completed before the end of the school year the operations department more specifically transportation has been working diligently to continue to address the transportation needs for our students and as superintendent reichman just provided you some of the challenges that the transportation department on both campuses are experiencing as a refresh in terms of where we are with recruitment for our drivers ptsd transportation is continuing to limp along with roughly 50 percent of the required staffing on the campus despite current recruiting efforts the pdst campus has limited success in finding additional cdl and non-cdl drivers due to house bill 2863 pdsc transportation has been required to coordinate the transportation of all fbc students which as jared had mentioned is about 45 students pdsd transportation has been able to either provide the transportation directly to these students or we've had to contract those services out to third-party vendors the tucson campus has had more success in hiring both cdl and non-cdl drivers and is performing well considering the national bus driver shortage for the food service department they have been able to correct and implement new guidelines in order to ensure compliance with all of our food-related allergies and requirements in addition they've been able to resolve some of the initial billing and claim issues in order to finalize the transition from in-house services to the food service management company for business services the financial report will be provided separately under agenda item 4.01 if you recall the last few meetings i've mentioned that the business services department has been vacant a few positions well we were able to finally fill the one last vacant student accounts club tucson campus position with an internal candidate which she is expected to start in the next week or two if you recall that position had been vacant for more than six months with that position now being filled the department has just had two staff who retired on january staff um january 7th excuse me so now we have two additional vacancies that we're trying to actively recruit for one of them being the procurement specialist and the other the payroll travel manager plans are in place to cover the work of those two positions until they are filled or the work is redistributed the early learning program broke the three vendor contracts with desert voices fbc and zimmerman have all recently been extended for another year to expire january 1st 2023 and a meeting has been set up in february to begin a thorough review of the contracts and amendments needed before they are set to expire so we have ample time for negotiations over these next couple of months the implementation of a new student information system will be delayed until fiscal year 2023 excuse me school year 2023 school year 2024 while we search for a vendor to develop our accounts receivable and payable needs and this portion of the system was not included in the original request for replacement of our cis which is currently power school but it is truly an integral part of our system and helps with our tracking of our voucher revenues as well as our fee for service billing last but not least the hr department has also been working on a number of initiatives and projects they've provided several virtual informational session meetings to our various leaders within the agency to include covering topics such as remote work how to deal with conflict fmla and skills for non-defensive communication to build our program and expand on the number of hires through practicum and internship placements so far for the 21 22 school year hr has been able to finalize placement for both campuses eop as well as the itinerant teams in addition to the work the four departments are doing i continue to actively work with several of the staff to analyze the current staff compensation structure to ensure internal equity and external competitiveness we are working to modify salary schedules including but not limited to eliminating compression issues for the entry-level positions that come from the minimum wage changes and reviewing the pay rates for various positions based upon market studies one of the first groups that we've been able to look at a little bit deeper and looking at changing the pay rates would include our instructional assistants and our technical aid intervenors which we hope to be able to make those rate changes effective beginning in july 2022 with board approval at the last board meeting in november the minimum wage paid schedule changes were approved with which increased the hourly rates from 12 15 to 12 and 80 cents affected this past january first and it affected about 130 staff if you recall i mentioned that tucson proposition 206 was approved in november which would increase the city's minimum wage for tucson from 1215 to 15 by january 1st 2025 and increasing it every january thereafter the first increment would be 13 effective april 1st 2022 at this time we still have not had an opportunity to complete the review of the details and determine if and how those rate increases will be implemented for our tucson staff members and as a reminder as an agency under the state of arizona we are not required to follow the minimum wage increase for arizona or its cities however we have been able to remain competitive with other employers and we do try to increase the minimum wage based on the city and the state's suggested minimum wage increases again i hope to be able to provide more information at the march board meeting i appreciate the work that each of the directors and their teams have done and continue to do for the departments for the students for the agency that concludes my verbal report however i'm going to turn it over to our executive director of human resources anita pyatt to provide an update on strategic plan pillar 3 superb organizational culture and at the march board meeting i will be providing an update on pillar 4 effective resource management thank you shayna good afternoon board president nigro memphis members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendent dr rex and assistant superintendent cooper i'm going to be providing an update on pillar 3 which is superb organizational culture in this pillar there are three objectives and the first objective is regarding our professional development plans and evaluations for our staff members right now our organizational development division team which is our odd team has been busy since the onset of the school year with professional development training purchasing professional development subscriptions and assessments for asdb staff members today asdb staff have participated in 22 external trainings nine internal trainings well an additional 10 that are ongoing currently our staff continue to participate in training virtually whenever possible and consistently rate external trainings at a rate at an eight in survey results this external training ranges among different business and educational aspects here are a few that i'm going to briefly list to give you a sense of the variety of topics forklift train the trainer by industrial commission of arizona see the spectrum of the aph low vision products from bisphero e iep pro bootcamp ade idea transitions conference pragmatic and socially equitable sld eligibility for our internal trainings we we have been providing those miss barbara randles our staff development specialist has been providing trainings for customer service and seven habits of highly effective people in addition we have julie jones an itinerant teacher from region 3 who's provided braille note touch resources for our staff members kalea cook our instructional technology specialist is providing instructional technology training for staff members who work in the classroom as well as all the support staff ms cook has been steadily providing support for google elite and we video training in the topics that kalea has been providing um wevideo google sheets google forms and google meet our surveys show a steady satisfaction rate of 7 or above for those writ for those trainings beginning in february we'll be sending out a google assessment to all asdb staff members to gauge their competency in the google suite and identify areas that need refinement the odd has also purchased professional development subscriptions for our campus-based related service staff this year these subscriptions are to assist and supplement the phoenix into tucson campus a friday professional development series the organization the odd team is also partnering with the principals and presenting in the areas of differentiated instruction behavior management and active engagement survey data was collected at the end of november and it will also be collected at the end of april and here are just a few samples of those subscriptions that have purchased we have purchased things for our occupational therapists eipa mentor track asha for our sl our speech language pathologist and audiologists physical therapy intervenor training and iterate online currently we have 23 itinerant teachers of the deaf who have begun a 14-week webinar training with fairview learning itinerant teachers do not have control over cur student curriculum however they are able to support the existing language curriculum with this program fairview gives literacy tools that help construct mental linguistic frameworks that allow students access to increase their fluency in english and asl the first online session started on monday january 10th and so the odd team will be collecting the survey data on staff progress and the satisfaction of that program at the end of each quarter in addition odd in partnership with jennifer scarborough the director of deaf programs had staff members participate in an asl proficiency interview testing it was determined that four teachers of the deaf one from each program from our phoenix campus our tucson campus elp and original cooperative would participate in the specialized instruction to assist with their goals these teachers are participating in this advanced asl training on saturdays in the month of december and january odd will also be looking at the rochester institute of technology asl testing program as well the teaching strategies gold this is an assessment given to preschool and kindergarten students which is a state requirement this data helps support developmental milestones for our students and we plan to use this data making decisions about the students and where they are in their development the first in-house teaching strategies gold training was held for five new staff members from the preschool programs which had a satisfaction rating of 9.6 robin eichner our assessment specialist is doing the in-house training for our staff as collaborating with foundation for the blind children and also desert voices we have first upload of that information to the state and are working on future discussions with teachers and supervisor staff to improve the documentation process the last part of objective one and pillar three is our working on improving the submission of performance evaluations for this school year last year in review of performance evaluation data that we the results were 34 of performance evaluations were not completed or turned in we're looking to decrease that number we started the year off with sending out resources and tools and provided performance evaluation training for supervisors we plan to send out information to supervisors in february regarding the performance evaluation deadlines for our completion and to decrease that number for objective 2 this is the model servitude for leadership by creating leadership opportunities and increasing our agency communication the agency has sent around 84 agency communications so far this year to staff members these communications cover covet updates strategic plan updates our agency vacancy list our agency safety newsletter our organizational development division monthly update newsletter and various communications that create agency awareness on important topics we are in our second year of the emerging leaders program based on feedback feedback from last year action plan coaching will still be in place for those who want to participate and the emerging leaders will receive the same leadership coaching content that the executive team receives the number of participants has almost doubled in the second year we have 21 staff members participating this year this program consists of staff members from as teachers audiologists and interpreters orrin katchkov director of odd has action plans and coaching sessions to review the program with the participants the participants have involved in the learning about decision traps behave smart teams and emotional bank accounts and as assistant superintendent cooper had previously stated human resources has been working on creating 12 informative sessions which we refer to as super sessions for our supervisors we have um 12 scheduled we've done 5 for this year have completed those so far and so we'll continue that until the end of april for objective 3 this is reviewing our the current data that we have on our students and our staff and how those numbers compare for our culture and currently odd is working with deaf mentor program coordinator christina voyer to identify pillar 3 baseline data as part of her leadership goals in the emerging leaders program the agency currently doesn't have a way to identify which staff consider themselves deaf hard of hearing blind deaf-blind or having low vision the survey that's already been completed will provide the agency with information to achieve this pillar's objective currently we are working on gathering a committee together to look at accessibility and language this committee will look at what we've done so far that is successful and what we can do better and the data will and this survey will also provide a baseline for us this concludes an update on pillar three at this time i'd like to make myself available for any questions that you may have thank you are there any questions all right um seeing none uh we can move on to the next part of the agenda um 2.01 i do note that it is we are 90 minutes into the meeting so um lucky if the interpreter is a 10 minute break so i'd like to take a break for 10 minutes and return at 5 40.
the finalization of the budget once the enrollment is set will be done by colliers and obviously working with both the town and the board the development of the educational specs is that second green bar that work has already begun dan hansen is a consultant that is helping us with that uh and we'll be doing educational specs for the new norton school as well as the new north end elementary school to replace chapman interviews actually started uh this week and the first brand with was uh went very well and when i say interviews that's with the school principal staff from different departments in each of those schools and that they're trying to conduct those jointly the norton staff and chapman staff as well as our key administrators and then the third green bar is the development of not only the project budget but also the schedule for the construction which does have an impact on the budget colliers will be doing that again those deadlines are april 1st the next green bar which is a little further down is the step to compile all the grant application documents series of forms that need to be completed out um various uh individuals need to sign off on that including the the board chair superintendent of schools town manager and that deadline for that is may 27th and then if you look just two bars down this is the last one i want to talk about the town council has to pass resolutions that the state requires you know among those includes the formation of a building committee the fact that there will be a referendum held by a set date no later than november 15th oh the results have to be reported no later than november 15th and then even though the grant application is due june 30th this scan chart shows completion and submission of the grant application by the week of june 6 so we're allowing ourselves some leeway hopefully we don't need it once the grant application is in then the next milestone i'll just refer to is all the way over to the right the green one on the bottom and that is the voter referendum can take place on by november 8th but election day i know we talked about it is it it is november 8th so that is the set election date in november and that's what the gantt chart is shooting for so that's kind of the high level summary of the gantt chart this was uh developed by colliers and i will stop there yeah if we just add i know we don't have this on the screen anywhere and i noticed hopefully being on our website yes because uh it answers uh the one question we're getting asked quite a bit uh not just about the election but most recently because we've been working on this is you know why can't we have referendum in the springtime and it's hard to see this but essentially if you take this whole section and move it back to a year ago then there's probably a chance to hit the spring referendum and the items here i know it's very hard to see this but there are some key things that have to happen some work but also some key votes that have to happen between the border that and the town council uh tonight's vote is on the plan is more of a customary action symbolic if you will but the actual vote on the budget the specs and what has to go to the grant application has to happen sometime in april on the budget schedule and then the town council has to hold at least past three local resolutions as well as approving the referendum uh and those results uh that's happening sometime in may so there's a lot of work to do besides um what we've been talking about and i know in our meetings with colliers we asked if you know there's a way we can squeeze this timeline make some time estimates but it's just not going to work if we're you know trying to do something february march is just not feasible so i'm glad this is out there i think this will help the perspective for one together so hopefully make it available to the public thank you then it'll be posted in the morning so that anyone that wants to see it can great thank you um so with that i would like to make a motion if that's appropriate mr chairman okay i'd like to move to the cheshire board of education forward cheshire public schools next generation phase one plan to the town council for approval do i have a second adam all right discussion i just want to ask vin worst case scenario okay so somebody who picks this up or sees it online for the first time they're seeing a lot of work being done prior to that referendum right because it's necessary based on timelines once that we get to november 8th worst case scenario the referendum doesn't go through where are we from that point on because there's a lot of application processing and all that so if you can give a simple answer i'm afraid to give a simple answer to that one well i mean my gut answer is you're not back at square one because you've you've invested a lot of work in developing the plan so i think the next step would be to reassess and that would be something that the board and the town council would do and determine do they want to keep that same plan and go forward with the referendum on another date or is there a different decision to be made to adjust the plan and then go back to referendum it's not unusual in that town's history that we have an item that goes to referendum that doesn't pass the first time but does pass the second time the latest one that that comes to mind is the construction of that permanent structure at the town pool didn't pass the first time but it did the second mr chair might i add to that response please i i think you know from a procedural perspective mr maciana is spot on i think um logistically i don't want to lose sight of the fact that you've seen our not you uh miss rosenberg not you the board but i think you the community has seen our enrollment projections and the escalating enrollment and how that's you know really kind of exceeded expectations at this point my reservation about not moving forward is not necessarily simply the just the procedural but logistical with the number of students we have exceeding capacity in buildings to the point where we would have to invest at that point in you know portable units which just to me reeks of waste when that's you know in our hands right now to be preventable so i didn't want to lose sight of that element as well are you done sir i'm good thank you vin for that because again we get a lot of you know feedback where there's so and there has been a lot of work i mean we're going way back years before obviously i was aware of it two years ago but i just want some assurance that it's not again we go back to the one and done it's not gonna die in referendum we did all this work we're gonna be able to still capitalize on all the work that we've done so that we can move all this forward if i can make one more point and that is that if it fails that referendum in november the next cycle means that we we basically lose a full year because the state you know has that june 30th deadline they don't look at school construction applications in an interim period they do it basically once a year after the june 30th date ends so that that is a loss of a year and i think that speaks to the point that dr solon was making that you know now we have to potentially make provisions for alternate spaces for students so if i turn it back to tim uh so to further complicate that a little bit there's a uh blackout period where neither the board of vetted town council can promote the referendum i think that happens once the town council sets a referendum in other words we can talk about the project details that we can't say hey go out and vote support this planner so i bring that up because in addition to all the work that has to still happen there still is a communications aspect to this that has to be vetted out and other things and uh i will tell you this in some manager meetings i've had with um dr solon and vincent and town staff and colliers on this milestone uh i like to plan for the worst hope for the best so i think there is some i i think we'd i uh who was it was uh marlena that used to call me tony downer right was always had a negative outlook on things i don't want to be a tony downer but if our sewer treatment plan upgrade failed the first time out and that was only 33 23 million dollars um you know the finance and this have to be clear but should this fail um we would we being the board of town council would have to have some time to figure out why what the feedback is what could be different you know uh maybe redoing the phase one and you know that's not going to happen in thanksgiving right so now we're in and if you look at the collier's timeline for construction of schools i think you know once this does pass then the design work actually starts and at some point the construction starts after we find a project and so there's you're talking about three years out potentially before the doors open to the first school and there's gonna be two schools done at the same time that three years puts us right at the height of our seating functional capacity so there really is no going back without feeling some pain for a while so the good point i i'm not going to hold you to others will pass on that i think you know we we're all going to be ensuring that the right information gets out there to help it people make the right decision but um i think will behoove us to not plan for uh how to handle rejection so we'll we'll we'll figure it out i'll have an answer but some we're all aware of for sure good point soon thanks tony i'm gonna i'm going to support this motion tonight um i do think that going forward new construction makes the most sense for for these two projects the two different schools i think it makes the most sense if we're doing net zero or sustainable construction having said that this is expensive you said the state are our portion is probably going to be like 73 to 88 million dollars the red sort of the range 73 to 88.2 thank you um so i just want to reassure the public that we have looked at alternatives one concern that's been raised with me by several people including parents at norton is that norton is nice so why would not why would we knock it down and build new um we have looked at renovating as new and i believe the initial construction cost and i say that very specifically the initial construction cost because when you build new with sustainable construction the life cycle costs should be and i would support i do believe generally speaking and i would support this is the life cycle costs of sustainable construction are lower than the life cycle costs of non-sustainable construction non-sustainable construction being what we do all the time so i'd like to move forward make some progress on our built environment here in cheshire um but the initial cost would be higher for sustainable construction um and also uh taking that out of it the numbers we're looking at right now the 73 to 88 million or so as we've looked at alternatives my understanding is that the renovate as new for norton would be you know possibly seven million dollars less seven to eight million dollars less um to renovate as new but there are real reasons that we want to that i want to move forward with this the plan that we have right now and i'm wondering if somebody else more knowledgeable about this could speak to some of those such as what um you know what jeff had just what jeff had just mentioned a few minutes ago about um the portable classrooms stuff like that i mean that is something that i don't think many people really would want to have and i'm just wondering generally so summer what are some of the the um benefits to doing this rather than doing new construction rather than renovate as new so if i just get a little history i just want the board know that the town council and a lot of us were there in the fall when colliers did respond to a town council a question about renovators new on the dodd property and they present uh two things one was a test fit of what that would look like and the cost associated with that as part of that discussion the the just the fact that you're still stuck with an existing building layout and you build as new and you it's just you're locked into that whole design wasn't helpful it was about seven million dollars cheaper to renovate however in vincent and jeff gregory i believe the other issue though was some of the cost a lot of cost is negated because there's at least two million dollars worth of trailers to rent for over two years that that was the high low financial so it wasn't even palatable to town council however i think there is you did talk about some of the benefits and pros and cons on that yeah you know additionally to what you just added there uh mr chairman the issue of lifespan around a renovation project is 20 years new construction is 50 years and so you know when we look at the longevity of the facility after netting out things like trailers and the quality of life with respect to the traffic that they're being rather nightmarish and things like that you know it just didn't sound like didn't in the evaluation of numerous people didn't present itself is economically uh or logistically the right decision vin is there anything you want to add to that i'd also make the point that if you're gonna um try and renovate norton keep in mind you're doing it in place so you'll have students on the property in the building at the same time that you have construction work going on you can't build a school you can't renovate a school as quickly as you could build a new one even if it's on the same site because the way the construction that normal would work is that you'd segregate the new construction in fact the construction entrance would probably come around the back of the property so renovating norton will actually take us a longer period of time than a new construction would take that's certainly one of the considerations obviously the cost of the trailers has already been mentioned and from a life cycle cost perspective probably the most important thing is you're getting 20 years against the dollar spent on a renovation you're getting 50 years on new construction not not to mention um if you renovated norton we did look at it as as part of option 1a um you know and the cost that were determined were only for a school the same size so that would have other impacts on what you'd have to do to make sure you have enough capacity in the elementary so i think that's one of the reasons that the norton renovation in particular was not attractive and if i if i could just add to the the circulation that the test fits the preliminary test fits that have been done for that property provide for safe and more seamless drop-off for students and buses and queuing and you mean the situation over there now i mean i don't go there but i've been through the neighborhood before i mean and now you'll be able to actually have buses queuing on the property and have parents be able to drop off their children and have parking on site versus that kind of bottleneck where the school blocks off the entire rear portion of the property so um that's just my two cents on that thank you yeah i know there are definitely um there are definitely factors in there that don't have a straightforward obvious economic impact um the dust in the hallways while kids are walking around anything like that the traffic i mean i've seen i've seen norton you know i'm i'm at norton again now as a parent um the traffic could just stop at the right time whatever 9 a.m do little it stops at about 8 a.m at that four-way intersection it just becomes a nightmare um but with regard to norton specifically yeah i mean if we could improve the traffic flows that that doesn't have an obvious economic benefit that i that i could quantify but there are real benefits to it so i'm going to support this motion tonight and thank you for the for the feedback on that oh there's no dumb question like mr gripper oh did you no uh oh okay andrew feel free to vet the questions oh i i wasn't sure how it's uh who's the pro okay andrew thank you um i just wanted to say that i will be supporting this motion uh this evening i think i said it at the last meeting i've probably said it many many times over the last several months i think that this next generation plan is the best plan for cheshire the best plan for cheshire public schools to accommodate for the growing capacity that we have and is a great first step in modernizing our schools um as uh mr white can attest we were both graduates of of norton school um and uh and of cheshire public schools generally um and um as the uh uh the modernization committee uh progressed the one thing i was like oh man i hope we don't have to you know demolish norton school right love norton school my son goes to norton school your kids go to school it's a great thing to have that second generation of kids be able to go there and experience what we experience mostly mr rilles kickball field isn't there anymore but um but probably the best part right um yes but you know um you know it as adults we have to make adult decisions and we have to decide on on things uh for for the future of our school system uh you know the for the next generation of students and i think uh building uh a new school on the norton site and building a new elementary school in the uh the north end i think is the right thing to do it gives us the most flexibility uh since even even though we have these great studies that the population is still you know is not for certain it could be much more it could be it could stabilize could be less who knows but by building uh by accepting this plan i think gives us the the best way forward so i will be supporting this thank you yeah hi thanks um for all this information tonight i just wanted to explain why why i will not be supporting moving this project forward because there's some really good aspects to this project and the really good aspect is um a new elementary school in the north end of town and combining uh the darcy early childhood programs into that new construction because that affords us to close two buildings d'arcy and and chapman school which are really an adequate facilities the reason that i will not be supporting this moving forward is because it's for me based on a very flawed whole project aspect which is that um we heard so much information from really cogent information from educators and and people across the board about building a six through eight middle school and including a sixth grade in a middle school program and um and also a lot of information that we've garnered along the way over the years about the inadequacies of both the building and the site that dodd middle school currently sits on so for me two two school buildings being built one of them i completely agree with the elementary school on a very appropriate piece of land and including the early childhood and preschool programming but for me the second school really needs to be a sixth grade middle school we don't have a plot of land for that right now but i would like to encourage the whole town to start thinking about where we could get said piece of land and get the middle school off of that inadequate site uh and be able to put our sixth grade into the middle school uh programming so i just wanted to explain why i will not be supporting this project moving forward thank you man i appreciate everyone's comments and i don't have much more to add i've said them in various committee meetings so i just think it's time it's been two years in the making here and if you want to throw in the process before it's many more than that and you've got a viable plan you've got a viable plan that that addresses the most urgent need uh so anyway i think it's time for the to be able to give the town the chance to speak on this and and i know we've had public hearings and everything um where attendance has been light but i can't believe that this issue is flying under the radar so low that nobody is paying attention to it so i think it's time for us to make an a to take a move and then for the town council to do it and give it to the people and let them vote up or now it's it's long past due thank you faith can i just add something no please of course yes of course andrews just in response to and i think i'm gonna be voting in favor of this for the exact reason what she's saying she won't be voting in favor of this for is is that we don't have a site for the new middle school whether it's a seven or eight or six through eight and that is why phase one needs to move forward which is the two new elementary schools which is going to address our biggest need first and then phase two will be hopefully a new middle school and then we'll have the time to find the piece of land in order to build the adequate middle school to get it off the dot parcel and we could plan that over the next three years as we're going through the construction of these two new schools those schools could open and then we could be having that discussion moving a project for a new middle school forward so since we were elected in 2000 and whatever it was 2019 right um we have been studying and touring and going through the different facilities listening to the people and we had no idea what was going to happen with the enrollment and and here we are and so from where i sit here and from where i sit during my day job in town hall i feel as if we have a window right now to get a project forward this project was vetted and vetted and vetted and vetted by this board by the board before i mean this it's it's time to move something forward and if we wait any longer um i'm just not going to put kids in trailers so that's why people in favor tonight yes tim thanks tony yeah one other point um i've been asked about inflation and hedging it i know that so these are big numbers and the inflation is concerning me as imagine is to a lot of other people colliers gave us a quick update on what they're doing in terms of hedging inflation risk right now did you could you speak to that just briefly then i mean i can do it if if you start i'll pepper anything that you miss so yeah just so people just people in town now basically um the way i recall being conveyed was that in years past there was always some sort of risk for budgets their their contracts costs going up or down but generally they probably stayed within a band of a few percent say two or three percent and it was understood uh by colliers by the construction companies that that was part of what they did they took the profit with the loss and those small and that's relatively small banding and now that banding is widening and it's really on the cost side where it's widening and so what colliers has done has said they've been going to their contractors and saying all right put all your cards on the table tell us what your real costs are and we'll split the difference with you i think that's what pretty much what he said um so it is part of the discussion as this moves forward inflation is happening we see it so we're being mindful of it to the extent that we can thank you nothing you want to add you got it nice i'll leave it well good [Music] yes sam um so i again thank you all for sharing your points and being the new kid on the block i did follow this for the past two years and i think there's our you know having saturn planning for the couple meetings and looking all the information i think there are more pros and cons going forward and i feel more comfortable um especially after what um andrew just said that you know this is not one and done and and that's and that's where i feel most at ease is that we we as a board are going to go forward and and make sure i guess that's our task and make sure that we um we plan for that middle school we find you know that land and so on so i will be voting for this just you know mathematically i'm that's my background and there are more pros and there are cons with this and i i also want to thank the work that was done prior to this because it it has moved quicker than anything else i've seen in the past projects with this town so i appreciate that um because our kids can't wait and i have taught in one of those units and it is not fun so um i appreciate all the work thank you to the three of you that were on the committee and the engineer that sits out in the audience over here too um because i think we do have a pretty like face said a viable plan moving forward thank you thank you sam uh i always say my comments for last but before i do that uh is there anyone from the public that let the comment on this motion just in case i can answer any questions chuck's good and said enough okay uh chuck nut by the way you can't see him on camera but he was our acting chair and school modernization to help bring these plants to us and that being said before i say a few things um i do because there has been a lot of work that's gone into this not just by the three members of the board the board past board members and town council members but i do want to thank chuck and all the monetization committee members i think so much time has gone by that maybe some folks actually forgot the names so no particular order i just want to say thank you to matt bowman rich gossenberg ann harrigan jim jinx andrew martelly renee martinez sylvia nichols cataldano jeff pangaro myself don walsh rob orris chuck neth as well as a couple of former committee members there was a lot of work put into this plan um a lot of great debates a lot of that's history but it's relevant history and i know folks really want to look at those meetings they're all archived in the town website but i i i want to just put another piece information because we do a new board member and i was really surprised in talking to some of the public during the election cycle on how the modernization committee came to be so without going through the last iteration of the plan in 2017 what happened since 2017 uh essentially the board of ed put forth the very comprehensive uh plan would cost to the then town council and it went nowhere for very reasons a lot of stuff was happening in 2018 that kind of circumvented both the board and town council however late 2018 opportunity presented itself with the alexion building being available and uh you're probably asking well why is tommy telling this history because it's relevant this is the missed opportunities that short-sighted planning tends to bite this town so wonderful opportunity of luxon building at the time it was big enough to accommodate sunday middle school sixth grade middle school hummuston so unfortunately due to the timing and uh the fact that we have to go to referendum and that the owner of the building had a buyer ready to go uh the town counts on the board of ed that was working just could not get it there fast enough so i was missed opportunity and then for a year nothing happened for again various reasons but in 2019 uh what folks don't understand is there's as much as we want to have a body committee of the board of end town council our town charter doesn't allow us to do that i can't simply invite town council members to be part of our modernization committee if we had one of vice versa the best avenue was to create a separate committee uh comprised per town charter under a town council where we could belong to that but also open to the community because the big issue with the last plan in 2017 was as much as the board did a lot of work and as much as we tried to televise and promote the means that happened there was not a lot of public participation and it was very lacks town council participation at that time and there was no members on the on the committee for that so myself uh chairman chair helen at the time and ann worked with three members of the town council actually was rob orris uh paul bowman i think patty flynn harris at first to talk about this committee and also vet over 37 people that responded to volunteer for his committee so there was a very uh cordial bipartisan effort by the sixth of us at the time to get that committee going we the six of us as well as when andrew came on board when catherine uh uh stepped down from committee and i believe this feels like it was yesterday but so long ago pierre dalbert came on the board when so when uh patty from harris was the town council we put the last few folks on that committee committee was 13 people of which seven were community members and it was a strong emphasis that we have more communities say because this is a big nut so uh i think that was the right way to go uh you know we learned a lot of lessons from that committee i hope that the committee members will will stick uh close by because this is just the beginning and there's a lot more to do as sam uh alluded to so i hope that the folks on the committee will help us in the near future uh but to say that this was an unfair flawed process is not grounded in reality and uh it is not driven by a town council the reason the town council is involved all this time is because the board of ed has absolutely no ability to acquire land perform physical analysis tap into our town financial planner hire environmentalists pay colliers the perk test it was something that we needed the first plan around so i uh someone asked me is why is the town council telling you what to do they're not this has been a collaborative process since october of 2019.
anybody here on behalf of csa see sharon's here you and me sharon okay thank you jose good evening dr bauer board president quintero members of the board and faculty and community and and everybody the first thing i do want to say is happy new year to everybody it's hard to believe that we're already the 19th of january moving into february in a week and a half already time goes by so fast and i did want to make a comment on the presentations they were excellent i was so happy to hear them they're very informative very easy to follow and very easy to understand so for that i thank the presenters and dr bauer for bringing the presentations forward there's that i spoke with dr bauer earlier today and what questions i had she answered but i did want to i did make a comment to her about the amazing programs that alum rock offers to the students my kids went through alum rock and they've done they did great but the programs now are just there's so many of them i really do hope that in the future more students attend more students are aware and they can take all the advantages of what's out there for them to be successful as they go on to middle school and high school and college trade school whatever they want because from what i hear and what i see you the district has done a great job in recruiting partners and having amazing programs to offer the students and with that i won't take up too much any more of your time and everybody have a good evening and i will see you in february all right uh we're gonna go ahead and anybody different teachers out there if not then uh we'll go ahead and move on to 4.04 area jocelyn hi i'm here good evening trustees and superintendent bower i would first before i um go into what i had planned to share i would like to take a moment to thank uh all of the teachers and community members who spoke on behalf of area tonight i know that it was very difficult um it's it's difficult to hear it's got to be difficult as trustees to hear it as well because as um i mean listening to my colleagues speak about all the different issues that and things that they're experiencing right now that everyone's experiencing is just it's we're in a crisis um over the past month i found myself instead of wishing people a happy new year wishing people a healthy new year it's difficult to have a happy new year your family has been hit with this crazy omicron variant virus that made such an impressive appearance appearance over the holiday break not only has it made some people really sick there is also the fear and frustration associated with it it has had a tremendous impact on the alum rock community including staff and students as you heard from some tonight just last friday we had 80 teachers out along with almost 32 percent of our students many if not most of those absences were either a result of positive covid cases or exposures to such unfortunately 49 of those classrooms did not have substitutes to cover leaving the rest of the teachers and administrators to combine classes give up their prep periods and have overcrowded rooms at a time when they should be keeping more distance between each other needless to say many of the lesson plans had been tossed aside and the gold turned to just trying to make it through the day safely with no injuries and hopefully no additional exposures it's been a very sad and scary january well i understand that you don't have the remedy to the coveted problems it is within your purview to resolve the ongoing labor dispute and settle our contract without incurring the unnecessary expense time delays and resources that are involved in the fact-finding process if you are in sync with what has been happening at the school sites then i'm sure you are aware that aside from the surge in covid since our return on january 4th our teachers have also been participating in the organizing action of work to rule don't worry it's nothing illegal to the contrary it's working to the terms of our collective bargaining agreement that the district and area have previously agreed to nothing more nothing less drive by any school site in the morning and you won't see any teachers on campus prior to their contractual work hours 12 minutes before the school bell rings at the end of the 405 minute work day you will see the teachers leaving school empty-handed as opposed to carrying bags and arms filled with work that they're taking home to do i have even heard from some school sites that teachers who have uh usually in the past locked themselves in their classroom during lunch time to get some work done are actually joining their colleagues during their what's supposed to be their 40 minute duty free lunch and leaving their work on hold the longer their work to rule goes on teachers are not only adjusting to a 405 minute workday they're actually realizing how much more time they have available for their own families and to take care of themselves speaking as a former fourth grade teacher back in 1999 prior to the only strike that alum rock has experienced i took part in work to roll just long enough for it to for me to embrace my personal time off the clock it took me a while to get back into my whole old habit of staying at school until the work was done often times until six or seven o'clock at night the longer this impasse period continues the more damage is being done to any sort of alum rock family or community feeling the foundation has big cracks weakening its structure our teachers don't feel that the district is looking out for them actually as you heard tonight most of them feel that the district could care less about them there is so much talk about teachers looking to work elsewhere when this school year is over i used to hear it from the newer teachers and also from those who are close to retirement however now and just as you heard tonight i'm hearing it for more teachers who have invested a significant number of years in alum rock but still have many more good years that they're planning to teach but just not in our district where year after year we are being forced to beg for anything you will throw our way it feels like you're always looking for excuses to give us nothing and we took nothing literally nothing on the salary schedule for two years in a row what other district has done that none in our county that i am aware of and i have reached out to everyone i could go on and on because it's it is so upsetting but the reality is however you want the future of this district to be is contingent upon how you repair its foundation the teachers of this district are a key component as to the strength of the foundation the amount you choose to invest is in your hands think about the money you will spend on attorney fees and costs associated with fact finding maybe that money could be diverted to an increase in salaries instead it then becomes an investment in the future for all of us thank you all right uh moving on to item 4.05 superintendent good evening uh board members and audience i also want you to know that a teamsters is running a little behind just so that you know in case there's a little bit of time later on on the agenda um this have been very difficult times for all of us and i in the middle of of these very difficult times i want to highlight the tremendous effort of those people who have been able to step it up and support our schools to keep being open on behalf of our students i want to thank all of our principals who have been stellar through this moment without their leadership their commitment for every child and every staff member it would have been impossible for us to do that so i want to thank all each and every one of the principals inside administrators for what they've done another key group that merits highlighting is the academic services team they have changed their plans and completely changed everything they do from the very beginning of the day to be on call to see where they need to go and support we are not the only district that is being hit with the amount of uh sub shortages that we are experiencing as a matter of fact i know that it's difficult to accept this but in many ways we are doing better than some of our neighboring districts when it comes to subs which is very sad um that is not an excuse it's or a reason or anything like that is just a reality that is happening amongst us i also want to thank those staff members that usually we don't think about like our bus drivers in our paris and the people that are answering the phones our office assistants and our admins our community liaisons that are the link with our community on an everyday basis i want to thank each and every one of them for their commitment to our students and to our families thank you so very much i also want to pre-face something that is coming down later in the board agenda we're going to talk about a financial advisor and cover and i just met with our program manager our newly contracted program manager and those are uh that's a reason for hope for this district because just as trustee behrano mentioned earlier on this is a great opportunity for our district to reset itself with the the assets that the district has so i'm very excited about that about bringing to you uh in the near future a plan of action i know we have very little bond funds at this moment but with the um with hiring a financial advisor and consequently bond council we will be positioning the district in a safe place to begin to issue bonds that are desperately needed there's a lot of things that are coming up we also need to start talking about a parcel tax that affects everybody's especially teacher salaries and that will be something that we really need to come together and to um help our community to see how this is something that we need to support so in the middle of so many different difficult times we're also keeping the work of the district moving forward and we are being very mindful that we do need to maintain and sustain our schools open for all children thank you very much all right moving on to item 4.06 uh board of trustees comments communication i'll take you as i see you there's your hand uh where i'm from you need to meet yourself thank you mr president uh you know i know it's traditionally one should say happy new year and i want to wish everyone a happy and healthy new year it's been uh i'm not gonna sugarcoat it it's been tough i you know for those in the community and those within the district who contacted uh members of the board including myself i i i hear your pain um prior to prior to the right before the holiday break uh board president i started off our board presidency and board vice presidency uh with the visit to ocala ryan and mccollum very gratified to see good things happening the students at ocala were tackling advanced uh studies in fact they were planning to have a debate a school-wide debate i believe sometime in february and i look forward to hearing that uh i also wanted to comment on the the beautiful gardens school gardens at ryan and at mccollum and i believe that they're great ways for our students to have an opportunity to have uh hands-on learning in in the life sciences and i wanted to share a bit uh i was uh that i was a part of a third grade q a at mccollum on the day before we went to uh went went to the holiday break and uh i'm very surprised in many ways please that uh third graders at uh in miss lipinski's class asked some very tough questions about their education they asked me questions about you know what i thought were was the most important role for the year and also made requests regarding uh things they needed to learn and i was didn't expect it i was expecting a few questions about field trips that they asked for science things for science lab experiments and uh vocabulary cards so i i you know uh i i do hope that um i and my colleagues are able to to fulfill those expectations uh because uh they they certainly are looking to their future and i want to i think we all want to encourage their you know the sky's the limit and we want them to fulfill their potential to the best their abilities i also want to acknowledge that yes the public comment has been sober i uh the last two weeks have probably been the toughest two weeks in uh in this district's uh history uh you know we we've done some we we've been able to do uh to multitask and do a lot of things but i know that uh there are certainly things to to so i'd like to take this opportunity to to ask the administration to uh uh to look into the following uh to request action on urgent classroom repairs at the sites uh action on deliveries of ppe and sanitation in the classroom uh requesting a uh a report on the impacts of charter schools hopefully by either the february or march regular board meeting and uh you know request action in regards to where we can expedite the substitute hiring process in light of governor newsome's january 11th order waving certain restrictions on the uh hiring of substitutes to fulfill uh urgent classroom needs so on that note uh you know uh we've got a lot to do and i hope that you know you know to quote someone saying that the foundation is cracking i hope that you know they can do what we can to do to you know pour some concrete in those cracks and fill up those cracks thank you very much mr president the speakers remember thank you for president um i just want to also you know can't say happy new year but um hoping that everybody's having a gentle uh beginning to your gregorian new year for those of you that celebrate the gregorian new year um i hope it's been gentle it's been tough um so for some more than others it's been quite uh honored to um have been able to serve this county in uh with various hats including as a public information officer for the emergency operations center which has also given me the ability to be at the different schools and their parent meetings i'm giving an update as to the copa 19 the vaccines the clinics uh resources in our in our community and on some i've been able to stay um and through that experience i've been able to hear about all the amazing things happening including you know how different schools are dealing with the traffic situations with safety concerns um acquiring things like cones and making a huge difference you know just with cones sometimes so um it's been great to sit with parents and administration at the different schools to hear about the different uh things that are happening at each of the schools and the climate um and addressing those items so thank you for allowing me to come in and sit and listen to wage school at least on behalf of the parents are going through um i know that we're all doing our best you know and literally right now as a human being i have my daughter with covid um and i have my husband with possibly second time covid um and just you know trying to manage both and being that glue in between and trying to figure that out it's it's been tough you know considering the resources that i have that i'm blessed to have so i can't imagine you know i know each and every one of our situations are different some of us harder than others some of us have lost family members um and so just uh hoping that you know we all remember those things when we're either at the grocery store and somebody's having an attitude you know wherever that that may be um to remember you know that we're all we're all going through something and with that you know i know i've mentioned this in the past of our children and what they're going through um you know hearing about their teachers and you know um i mean just things that some of our children maybe can't comprehend along with testing positive maybe um and along with just being you know some teenagers and dealing with those changes um so keeping in mind that you know we access the resources um that are there you know i know through our district we have mental health resources we have great staff that are leading those resources make sure to access those um and even for you know yourselves you know um making sure that access resources if needed it's tough times um and i look forward you know to to also settling i look forward to coming together and coming to an agreement um just as much as everyone you know that has spoken in the beginning um you know wants wants to um we're ready you know ready to move forward and um and hopefully we can come to that agreement soon um and with that uh you know i look forward to this new gregorian uh year this 2022 um i think you know now after seeing some of the reports we've heard even today um i look forward to setting us up for success um during some of the continuing hard times you know i don't see a light yet um but i do see you know part of that foundation like mr fan mentioned um some of those things that will fill those foundations to be able to get past past this difficult time um for generations to come you know whether some of us you know continue past our terms or not um but that you know the next term can have uh a better district than um and find and that we leave it better than when we found it when we began um in our terms so looking forward to continuing to serve doing my best you know just like each and every one of you and each and every one of um our teachers you know thank you so much for being at the front lines being in the classrooms taking care of yourselves you know i've heard many things today um i think what jocelyn mentioned you know was um it's that you know positive and negative and i like to focus on the positive and that you know teachers are putting the masks on themselves right now and that's what they should be doing and i'm glad that they're doing that actually um as you know however that might sound that they're taking care of themselves first that they're taking lunch breaks that they're having lunch that they're leaving work in the classrooms being able to go home and celebrate with their families or you know just be with their families um i see that as a positive as weird as that might sound because we get to take care of ourselves and i as a trustee absolutely don't want to you know um hear that because you know i've been there where you overwork and overwork and it's never enough and um and so yeah let's get through this together um to be back in a place where we all feel good about what we're doing and um feel appreciated and all of all the wonderful things that we all should be feeling especially those that are um at the front line so i also look forward to coming to that agreement soon thank you so much remember chavez oh yes um i'd like to thank cassandra um for sending the email i'm sorry i did not receive it nor was uh didn't i looked in the uh district website and if you could please resend that email i would like to address that with dr bauer and also i want to thank the teacher jill mckee and uh i know it must be frustrating to hear that your daughter's on the sub list and if there's any way that uh we can expedite that and expedite getting subs that would be really good to help the teachers uh the subs that are waiting this time to hear if they're going to be hired or not there's a way to do that i hope that happens soon for you uh miss jill and your daughter also i want to thank karen mcdonald for speaking um truth in this meeting and i apologize to all the teachers for the lack of the ppe um we must do better and we will uh also there was one of the teachers who said that um that she heard everybody with the complaints and to me i don't look at them as complaints i see this as an opportunity to hear from the teachers and to listen and learn to what's going on to support the teachers in the way we can and to help the kids learn better so please um don't think of it as you're complaining you're not we're hearing you we're listening to you i am um and i want to reflect on that um one of the teachers said that you wanted us to reflect on the meeting tonight and go and listen to it again and i want to tell her that i do reflect on the meeting and listen to it again and all night long i go over it and several nights after that it's just not you're in the meeting and that's it it's over it's not like that for me um i like to i'd like you to know that i uh don't take this decision making lightly and i do what i think is best for the children and and i know that it's really rough on you guys right now and and i want to thank all of you for the way you're supporting the kids and the learning and um just know that we do value the teachers we do value the parents and the children the parents that bring their kids and trust you the teachers with them and thank you for all that you do for the children that's it thank you for the comments from the board all right cena and then i'll go ahead and make my comments um i want to thank everybody who came out and spoke i think it's part of the process and it's part of the democracy that we have here the ability to to express our concerns and so thank you for bringing forward the concerns um i think they're they're helpful in allowing us to go ahead and move forward in the decision making that we do i as i've seen it before in the past my direction as one board member has always been to the administration to bring forward a proposal that provides the best that we can that allows us to be able to move forward and to make sure that our budget is approved and is sound and that we maintain fiscal solvency and so i have no doubt that uh at some point in time in the near future we will be able to come to the resolution that is fair that both sides can agree upon so i'm looking forward to that time so that we can uh get back to business allow a lot of teachers to focus on what is it they love to do because that's the profession they entered into which is teaching and uh i'm looking forward to that so i have no doubt that the best days for alan rock are ahead of us um and i do i do have to differ on the idea that um to new year should always be understand that we're going through tough times but if we look back in history even during the depths of the bubonic plague people still figured out how to look towards a brighter future and so i i'm of that mindset that at some point in time we're going to get over this and we're going to move ahead and it's not to make light of the things that people are going through but uh i'm hopeful i'm hopeful that our our best days are ahead of us we're going to get beyond domicron and we're going to get beyond the issues that we've been facing and so with that said i want to thank each and every one of you who've been putting in work going above and beyond uh to continue to move the district forward as was mentioned before these have been some very very trying times we've been treading on some very unchartered waters and the personnel from the teachers the support staff the classified folks um those folks that are keeping the the rooms just infected um confidential employees everyone at the district that has been put in the work thank you very much uh for continuing to move on under these very trying circumstances dealing with the new reality that is this new reality that we have to live with and that we're we're having to to deal with so uh with that said i want to thank each and every one of you as i mentioned and i'm looking forward to getting into a place where we're all able to con to refocus when we've uh come to a conclusion of these issues um that we have before us um some folks have mentioned that they reach out and they don't receive a response it's not i as one individual i'm speaking for myself i'm not disrespectful the fact of the matter is that i choose to respond to the official representative of your bargaining union because that's the way i i'm a union member myself and i defer to the folks that represent me at my site and so uh i engage with folks here in the district through that process the officially recognized representative of your bargaining union that's why i speak to you uh when issues arise and i'm uh available to them and they have my my contact info so i i just want to be super clear that i don't uh um it's not i'm disregarding your concerns but i do engage with your official representative um if there are issues beyond uh bargaining and stuff that's for um then and you want to talk about other other issues uh pertaining to the district then we can't have the discussion um about anything related to the union i i take it out directly with your leadership thank you everyone uh for being here tonight we're going to go ahead and move on to item 5.01 and under this item we're going to have a discussion and consideration to approve resolution number 23-21 22 authorizing uh remote virtual talk conference meetings um uh the board the district committee subject to the product for the period of january 21st through february 19th 2022.
mr smith we want to pool 17 and 18. did i uh 17 and 18 are they for executive 17 18 yes all right so we're doing ea one through uh sixteen yeah ea one through sixteen motion pushed by mr avocado second by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr abedrabo yes mr awad yes miss bashford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes for all but 12 of state on 12.
hello everyone it is 5 40 so i'd like to bring everyone back hello um we're going to resume uh 2.01 action item approval of a consent agenda consistent with four policies to include items 3.01 5.01 7.02 7.03 and 7.04 i trust that everyone's reviewed the consent agenda would anyone like to remove anything from the consent agenda uh hearing none uh i move that the board accept the consent agenda as proposed i see a second from sue k uh all in favor uh you can turn on your video uh with the thumbs up and if we can get the count here um it should be everyone i all right um any opposed no okay the consent agenda passes and we go on to three um sorry 3.02 action item approval of new district agreements assistant superintendent dr rex thank you president nigro as a reminder i've been asked by our board to identify when we bring on any new districts to our regional itinerant statewide program we have a few that are joining us within region one we have carpe diem collegiate high school and in region 2 hearn academy which is a ball charter school and madison elementary school district so i'm asking this board as an action item to approve the joining of three districts to our statewide itinerant program thank you dr rex uh board members have any comments on these three new additions all right uh seeing none i i move that we accept these three contracts is there a second i see lynn then and we'll record that excuse me president niger this is linda yes yes president nigro um i was blocked from turning on my video momentarily so i'm not sure if um my vote was visible i'm not sure what happened there why my video might have been blocked um for 3.02 we're we're indicating it right now so we i can see it right now the previous vote the preview wasn't enabled okay yes my video was blocked so i wasn't able to participate in the previous vote i tried to to turn my video on so i just wanted to make sure that um for the record everyone who wanted to vote was able to vote sure um i was able to see the others um and and uh so we will you and you did vote in uh positively on that last one great can you repeat your question president nigro uh on on 2.01 you did vote uh yes correct yes yes okay great um and on this one i think we have everyone that's on the line has voted yes except for mr wonders who has abstained okay great now we can move on to 3.03 information and discussion item uh educational interpreters role and responsibilities pursuant to ars 384310383 the board may vote to phone an executive session which dropped the open of the public for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the board's attorneys um so this one goes to dr red i believe this may go to superintendent reichman if you are going into executive session okay yeah that is a conversation from our november meeting that was asked to be brought back yes sir okay uh yeah you're listed on the agenda this is superintendent rankman um president nigro if you wouldn't mind allowing me to start the conversation there are two parts here one part um well really i should say two questions there are two questions here the first question is is asdb in compliance with the requirements with the individuals with disabilities education act i-d-e-a that's the first part or the first question and i invite uh miss debra i'm sorry the interpreter missed the last name it's debra sterling ms debra sterling to give a brief presentation and ms sterling will talk about the specifics of idea and our requirements so that will potentially answer the first question and after ms sterling's presentation the board will have opportunity to ask some questions you can ask questions here in the open forum available to the public or if you prefer we can go into a closed executive session in that executive session you would have the opportunity to ask questions specifically for legal advice to ms sterling so that's the first question and then the second question is how asdb is implementing best practices related to educational interpreters and their roles and responsibilities in the iep individualized education plan team meetings okay so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to miss sterling well uh superintendent rickman i think before we speak with uh ms sterling i'd like to move to go into executive session to obtain legal advice uh from ms sterling you don't want the presentation first president nigro oh there is so there's a serious presentation for for the public as well that that is not legal advice correct yes um i would say ms sterling could provide a brief presentation first um and then the board can decide if they would like to go into executive session at that time to ask more specific legal questions for legal advice from the sterling okay um mr elling if you're comfortable with that then we can go ahead good afternoon can you hear me i can't hear you yet yeah okay good afternoon board members and president board president nigro and asdb staff i was asked specifically to look at the role of the educational interpreter in terms of being part of the iep team in addition to the federal statutes that i will cite in a minute i reviewed the following materials the eipa guidelines of professional conduct for educational interpreters classroom interpreting parents what does special education law say about educational interpreters and the congressional re research services that is put out comparing the statute and the rules when i was asked to do this my first review was of the statutory requirements is set out in 20 usd 1401 i sent that to you i actually i apologize i didn't send that part to you um that part is what was the definition of related services provider of which an educational interpreter is considered and categorized as an education as a related services provider what i did provide to you was the actual statute that sets out what is required for an iep team the iep take the federal law requires that the iap team include one the parents of the child two not less than one regular education teacher of the child if the child is anticipating going into regular education not less than one special education teacher or appropriate not less than one special education provider a representative of the lea who meets specific criteria set out in statute about explaining different options and the next one is an individual can interpret instructional implications of evaluation results and that can be one of the other people already on the team the next one is one i want to focus on because it says at the discretion of the parent or the agency other individuals who have knowledge or specific expertise regarding the child including related services provider so that's where the related service services provide is specifically mentioned as being a part of the iep team at the request of the parent or the agency and the last i don't want to leave it out that when appropriate the child should be included on the team um there also is part of this iep's theme statutory scheme they have provisions where if a specific service or related service providers area is not being discussed at the specific meeting that there is a procedure by which that person can be excused from the iep team meeting and there's another procedure by which if their area is being discussed um they can provide information to other that they can provide their input even if they cannot attend um the rest of this i just focused on what the statute actually requires and thought that would be a good basis if there was any discussion um does anybody have any questions i don't believe we have any questions right now it is at the board's discretion if they want to go into an executive meeting yeah i i i yeah correct um i already moved earlier although it was on second not seconded yet but i already moved to go into executive session are there any seconds to that motion this is pv a second okay um all in favor please turn on your video and give a thumbs up thank you i think that's everyone any opposed okay uh so we're going to enter executive session um david i need yep yep okay um go ahead okay i just wanna okay all persons present here are reminded that it is un uh hold on one moment i don't know if that's the one i'm supposed to all right i'm going to read the same one all persons present are hereby reminded that it is unlawful to disclose or otherwise divulge to any person who is not now present other than a current member of the board or pursuant to a specific statutory exception anything that will be or transpired or discussed during the executive session failure to comply is a violation of ars 38-431.03 okay uh thank you i think for um the board members on the zoom call we should you should see a breakout room invitation now uh please join that uh and then we will come back out into the main room we are finished uh thank you okay i think that we are all back uh into the public session um thank you everyone thank you mr sterling for our discussion um so now um as superintendent reichman had mentioned we're uh on to the the public portion of 3.03 if anyone has any anything to to discuss unless mrs reichman you you um superintendent rickman you'd like to uh kind of reframe this yes i would prefer to let um i apologize for the interpreter mr j johnson um provide a presentation on the current agency practices regarding how we do business specifically um in relation to the three lead interpreter positions and then from that information we should be able to continue the discussion uh okay that sounds good mr johnson thank you board and thank you and superintendent reichman for giving me the opportunity to speak today today we've also invited all three of our elite interpreters throughout the state to be with us for any questions and or comments that the board may have as it relates to the current practices within the itinerant program when we look at the redesign and the work that we've done as a team we noticed that we had five regions as we're aware of a short two years ago and with those five regions we found that we were doing inconsistent practices throughout the state of arizona we found that some of our interpreters did not have a voice at any of the iep meetings and or giving information to any iep teams we also found that sometimes we had folks that were ill prepared to attend an iep meeting based on their background based on the questions from the team and based on the needs of the student we met together as a team the three lead interpreters as well as rosie hicks and myself to start discussing the programmatic changes that we could make as a team we also reached out to dr christian rex as a team of leaders to come together to determine what we were doing statewide not only within the itinerant program but also at pdsd and asdb tucson crown campuses what we found was the ptsd team had developed a format that all interpreters completed prior to an iep meeting this form was then shared with the dhh teachers to provide an update as it relates to interpreting the expressive language of the student and the needs of the students as it relates to growing through the communication standards they would need at pdsd we took that information then back to our lead interpreters shared that amongst the team and also determined that we may want to adjust the form and look at next academic year to make it more fitting for the itinerary program but we all agreed it was able to give us some standardization throughout the state so all interpreters had a voice at all iep meetings we then looked at how we would share this out with the entire team we sent the information out statewide to all staff so we'd have the opportunity to have that discussion as a team we reached out to our lead supervisor dhh teachers and developed a pattern so the interpreter not only sent the information to the tod but also to the lead dhh and their current director this enabled the team to look through the information share amongst the team and make sure that we were prepared for any iep meeting and or any discussions the iep team may have this enabled all interpreters to have a voice at all iep meetings throughout the state of arizona there is opportunity for interpreters to attend iep meetings when we're looking at access to language we also look at iep meetings that may need additional support as it relates to the students needs when they attend the iep meeting and or needs of the iep team we found that this practice has not only enabled the team to come together but also given us good data as it relates to the role of the i the interpreter when not only attending the iep meetings but also their role working within the school system this has given us the opportunity to really look at how interpreters provide services on a daily basis to the student that they're assigned to i'm very proud of the work that the team did coming together and pulling together that short two years ago five different regions under three lead interpreters rosie hicks and myself to really look at what best practice could be within the agency and mimic what the schools have been doing in their press packed past past practices again i appreciate the work of our team i appreciate the voices that we had at the table and i appreciate the standardization that we've had within the itinerary program i'll be available for any questions from the board annette frankman or dr rex for the remainder of the time thank you mr johnson uh superintendent reichman did you have anything further to say this is superintendent raymond no now is your opportunity to ask any questions of mr johnson and we also have our three lead interpreters with us and mr johnson would you mind introducing those three lead interpreters to the group please so that the board knows who they are absolutely can we have the three lead interpreters turn on cameras and i'm gonna have them introduce themselves so we'll kind of go by region with that we'll start in southern arizona so mj would you mind introducing yourself first and how many years you've been with the agency sure thank you very much jay and um dr dr rex and uh reichman my name is mary jo munis i work in region three um i've been with the agency for 17 years and 14 years as a supervisor for interpreters thank you mj we'll move our way north just a bit to brian in region 2.
and what folks probably didn't see between these meetings and town council meetings and modernization committee meetings those series of management discussions we've been having to talk about process and progress so at this point the town council essentially needs to know from us what do you want to do is this something we should pursue because i think in an upcoming meeting uh there's a request for more funding for colliers to continue working on the perk tests environmental studies traffic studies and before the town council could spend more money are we on board i think we are for the most part um so it is a collaborative process both bodies cannot get to this point with the amount of detail that we have without working together and off on the community so i want to thank everyone that was involved in that process because it was a lengthy process uh moving forward and samantha mentioned this and made a wonderful point and something that's overlooked and one of the main reasons the recommendations came as a different modernization there is no space to put a sixth straight middle school in cheshire it would barely fit on the marion property and there's some concerns there upon that size of a school on that parcel if we did put something there we don't have a place for chapman chapman is a new school that's going there the existing chapman property is too small to have the school in place infrastructure happen on site and they're probably so there's a good point here we don't have the land to expand the other point it was made tonight something that sunk a broken record this is just phase one this is a multi-phase plan for me and i know for all the board members this is not a short term one and done we do something three years from now and we don't do everything again for 20 years that's that kind of thinking that's caused us to have this problem that we have so that being said knowing that there's a phase two knowing we have to address doolittle because that's come up quite a bit knowing that we're going to have to renovate that middle school or build as new what is seven through eight or six through eight and even dull dots lower on the list in terms of school needs in that regard it has to be addressed wouldn't it be nice when the time comes let's say in three to four years whatever board is here is looking at dodd and actually has land available to plan for a new middle school a new high school if not in the next five seven years down the road so we we need that long-term planning so i'm committed to it i know our board members commit sam's so this is not the end this is just the beginning it may sound like we're getting ahead of ourselves but if i say this but i've been involved with our schools since 2009 and a lot of progress has been made as sam mentioned because back then had i i proposed 100 school i'd been left out of the community we had a hard time just getting the church high school boys locker room renovated and that was a drop in the bucket here we are fast forward 13 years later after at least six years of studies we have the body of the board of ed the body of the town council looking at an overall 400 plus million dollar three-phase plan and seriously willing to put the first phase out the referendum to me that's a miracle in this town and it speaks to the folks involvement so this is not over there's a lot more discussion to be had i certainly support this um you know i'm not gonna get into the sixth or eighth versus seven three debates there's merit on both i agree with sam samantha on you know there's more pros than cons there is no bad choice but we have to continue planning and working ahead not just us but with the town council and as we get moving on this as the town council starts uh finalizing their discussion on this once we pass it over uh we will be working with them talk about let's get ready for phase two um and i would just go back to somebody said earlier in terms of the referendum itself um you know if it does fail in november it's a problem and uh there's literally no time to recover from that and be ready for the enrollments that's hitting our elementary school right now so we will plan a little bit ahead for that strategize that being said i don't want to keep the meeting running longer so i want to thank everyone for the help um but this is just to confirm that you know we're ready to move forward this next generation plan and the one thing that wasn't mentioned tonight that was mentioned in the last two planning committee meetings as the one modification to the uh the scenario was there's been a lot of talk about what to do with hummingston um and uh lot to do with the birth to the birth of three program from darcy we know that that program itself will not fit highland uh if it did fit we are maxed out with space and highland we'd have to build out in that property which is impossible um so we don't want to shove birth to three at highland it makes more sense to put it in the new elementary school uh as an add-on on the merriam property we're comfortable not knowing the final cost for that we don't have to wait for us to move forward colliers is working on that hopefully it's within the range that's already there but as far as hummingston goes yes we need to do something hummuston it was not recognized as a priority one in the list but it was uh asked by a town council to include something in phase one so they at least have some money allocate from referendum so at the end of phase one we can start doing something there there is still no plan for homestead doesn't be a good fit no matter where we look at it the the planning committee i know most board members if all of us don't feel we need to wait another four months to vet out hummus then to move this forward so hummus then is not part of our consideration right now we will take that up as is either part of the capital project process or or the town council on a separate uh plan for that it's something out of the question but as far as the board is concerned it is not critical for this very first phase but to address it shortly thereafter so by and large that's the overview all this information will be online including the gantt chart and android i know you mentioned that the financial calculators on the town website i can't find it uh the link to the modernization committee disappear from the front page um so we need to get back that out there so um but pay close attention to that that being said um you know again it's i think the fun i believe this is fun is just getting started let's see where it goes i assume we support this barring any other comments uh i will call for a vote on the motion mr mertelli would you read the motion one more time sure thing to the cheshire board of education forward cheshire public schools next generation phase one plan to the town council for approval thank you is there a second i'm sorry all in favor six in favor all opposed want to pose thank you team the motion passer six to one [Applause] onward and upward okay next on the agenda anything else from planning mr martelly that concludes the uh planning committee for this evening thank you uh policy mr agrippa thank you mr chairman i'll try and uh make it brief um the uh the bulk of what we discussed on december 21st um i would recommend that you um view the uh the record the video that we had um done um so that uh you can uh view it at your uh leisure um but what we did discuss uh uh firstly was to uh bring our uh student hazing bullying policy to a third reading and i'll bring a motion forth uh shortly on that we had discussed that again it's even showing up on the legislative agendas the uh the definition of bullying is still a little confusing even though it's been reviewed or revised by the legislature uh but uh otherwise the the policy itself i think is uh i think the policy committee agreed is in its uh the best form that it's ever been thanks to our attorneys at uh uh bertram moses isn't it yes yeah yeah all right um and so um that's a a great policy and i think that if anyone's concerned that they it's a it's not easy reading but it's understandable reading um up until of course you get to the actual definition of bullying which is still very confusing uh we're going to try and uh clarify that as time goes on um uh secondly um we had a great discussion on school safety and security um i asked uh dr solon uh to bring uh with him or i asked dr sullivan for some clarification uh or updates on school safety and security brought with him uh mr uh vivia vivia um who is a i guess a uh sort of an unofficial consultant to the cheshire uh public schools um and i brought it um i wanted to discuss it in in light of the the oxford school shooting that occurred in michigan and some of the the fact pattern that occurred that uh that alarmed me and and i wanted to know if those sorts of things could theoretically happen here or are there are there laws in place or procedures in place and um we we reserve them or we received a lot of assurances that our procedures are uh and policies are a lot uh tighter and a lot more um uh i don't know forceful or uh or there's a lot a lot better intervention in our school system yeah and there's a lot of interdependence and checks and balances along the way um so there was a lot of great discussion there uh which was which is on video if you'd like to watch our discussion of left of bang in the uh alice training uh that has been done in the past and will continue on in the future for all of our staff um so and students um hopefully and um so yeah there's a there was a lot of great discussion there um so um and we adjourned at 7 15.
both to approve second all right so we have a motion in a second uh i'm going to go ahead and move on to public comment any public comment on this item uh no public comment at this time we're president okay all right uh there's no public comment any comments from the board team none we're going to go ahead no no no i i had a comment i had a caller member from yes thank you uh whatever chavez can you lower your hands um it's leading me to believe that there's more hands okay uh mr president thank you uh you know uh in in light of the situation you know uh i'm gonna be voting yes on this and you know with that uh along that you know i vote yes on this to uh do our part to appreciate though you know the those who work in allen rock by keep you know in by reducing their exposure to kovit to the extent possible and also urge uh those who have not uh gotten a vaccine or received a booster shot to do so it may mean the difference between uh health and grave sickness and you know so with that i'll be voting yes on the uh resolution thank you all right for the comments from the board see none i'll call for vote all's in favor um i'll call you as i see you on the screen or remember remember with my self floating eye the motion can pass the nervous sleep all right moving on to item 6.01 approval of the school sponsored field trip lists all right there's a motion second by board vice president bomb any uh any comments from the public scene on we're going to go ahead and move on to the vote unless there's comments from members of the board all right i know that uh board member farms really pumped about field trips so i knew he was going to make some comments and you know thank you lord president uh you know uh field trips are an important part of the learning experience there are lessons that are best taught in a hands-on manner and the environment and so uh i understand that you know yes there may be health concerns but uh you know as indicated in the board book that these field trips are conditioned upon the prevailing can prevailing health conditions what at the time of the proposed few trips so i believe that you know in the intra in the educational interests of the children uh this measure should be approved thank you all right other comments from the board all right see none uh i'll add my comments that i i also believe that field trips are very important they created some of the most memorable um experiences in my during my time here at alamo uh whether they were um to the local mission or to even the trip to the the refuse facility aka the dump uh where they showed us what happens to all the stuff it was very very enlightening um so very appreciative of all those opportunities and um i'll go ahead and call for a vote uh i believe i had already called the comment prior yes remind me all right thanks uh i'll call you the cu board member but i don't know i see you saying yes but we couldn't hear you aye all right uh board member hi we're remember chavez hi foreign vice president phone hi with myself floating eyes motion passes unanimously uh moving on to 7.01 action approval of 2020 2021 annual financial audit report uh do we have any motion motion board remember travis another question later second the motion is uh we have a motion a second and um let me go ahead and uh well board um dr bauer do we have a presentation i was going to turn it over to mr colvin and you also need um oh you already checked for public comment right not yet i'll take a little comment uh okay mr chang do you have anything else uh yes thank you dr bauer um yeah we do have um folks from crowe to do a short presentation of the audit report um and with that uh mr jose chavez can you elevate oh there is mr jeff jensen from uh mr jensen when you're ready good evening everyone so my privilege to be here tonight to present to you some audit results for the year ended june 30th 2021 i have a brief presentation which i hope you see on your screen in front of you right now to just walk you through some of the highlights for this year's audit and and i'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have so our job as your auditors is to express an opinion on your financial statements that are prepared by management in addition to auditing the financial statements we're also required to perform an audit over federal compliance as well as state compliance related to the various programs that the district operates and has expenditures related at the start of our audit we go through a process of evaluating the internal controls of the district and potential risks of misstatement that are out there to ultimately develop our audit approach which is divided up into several different proportions of visits this year all being done virtually but still kind of following the same general timeline so we start with our planning in in the early march time frame our interim which is looking at internal controls and compliance is during the may time frame and then we come back in the september october period to actually audit the numbers of the district and then to be able to be here tonight to report on the conclusion of those procedures for this year there was one new uh accounting standard that was required to be adopted for for your audit report and so that's gasb84 on fiduciary accounting over student body funds and essentially all this is really doing is moving it from a one location essentially in a report to a different location to follow the current accounting principles that are required for any governmental entity so that was accomplished in this year's audit it's always good to bring back to the board's attention whether we had any audit adjustments and i'm happy to report that there were no audit adjustments to the financial statements that your team provided to us to audit so those are the same numbers that were part of the unaudited actuals that you saw probably back in the september time frame there is one uncorrected misstatement and if you recall this presentation from prior years this is uh something that we have to monitor every year it's part of the participation in the mpp program uh through calstrs and so um in theory the district if they recorded this report this portion of the liability uh that's the amount it would uh impact your financial statements however we don't believe that that's a material amount which is why it's not corrected and as a perspective most districts in california don't actually record this balance but technically we do have to track it to make sure it's not a material number that can mistake your financial position and uh on the next slide here you can see that there were we had no difficulties in dealing with management or disagreements and completing with them as part of completing the audit everything very smoothly especially again for our second year of doing this from a remote perspective and there's nothing of any adverse or otherwise negative that i need to bring to the board's attention as part of our required responses to you just to summarize the audit opinions themselves so this year the district received an unmodified opinion on your financial statements which is the type of opinion you want to receive on your financial statements they comply with all the applicable accounting pronouncements and are free of material misstatement this year is part of federal compliance and we had to audit some programs that were new to the district as part of the covet 19 response there both the crf the coronavirus relief fund as well as esser the education stabilization fund those were the programs that were audited from a federal approach and we found the district to be in compliance with those programs so you received an unmodified opinion regarding your federal compliance and then the last opinion is on state compliance and this year there were a number of changes to the state compliance guide as you had to pivot to distance learning uh with all of your students in reaction to the uh pandemic and the district received an unmodified opinion regarding state compliance and so again i think that's very positive and especially in as tumultuous as the uh situation was last year during the the pandemic and pivoting to distance learning to have no compliance findings i think is a really good thing to bring to your attention so just to conclude the financial statements were presented fairly in all material specs we had no audit adjustments uh we had no findings this year and again management did a great job of responding to us and being prepared for our audits and allows us to be able to file the audit report on time uh this year it's the due date is january 31st which we're still in front of here and we've had the report done for a few weeks now so again good job to your team and i think again very good audit results for this year i'd be happy to answer any questions or remember for member thank you i don't actually have any questions i want to thank mr jensen and crow once again for coming out and doing their work with here here with our district um and i just want to um kind of put a little bit of perspective on where we are in terms of the our finances here with the district or or our reporting and our you know the way that the district manages our finances and so if if any of us were well some of us were for sure but i'm not sure for those who are listening who were around three four five years ago if you were paying attention but around that time if you just think back to the challenges that the district faced a number of different um investigations and audits and systems and processes that didn't make sense and weren't jiving with the um weren't um you know corresponding with the accounting and so you know in the very short time span of a few years we've come a long way and and i think that's a testament to to mr chang to his entire team to everyone in the district um because it's not obviously we we know the challenges that we face as a district um and those are there and we face them head on but also um i just think it's important because i still do see sometimes um comments that the district doesn't know how to you know handle the finances or isn't being responsible and things like that and i think several at least several years now we've had these kinds of reports that are unremarkable or or you know there's meaning that there's really nothing to report other than things are the way they should be and that i don't say that like that's some huge accomplishment because that's the way it should be it's not like we are um you know doing something really out of this world or i don't know if i'm phrasing it right but it's just the way that things should be the accomplishment is that is in where we have been and where we are now and i just want to make sure that we have perspective in um you know in light of everything else that's going on when those types of uh things are going out into the community about how the district is managing finances i always say we're not perfect and there are always room for room for improvement but at least when we see our audits come back now year after year you know very satisfactorily i think that says something for the stability of the district um the governance the the team behind the scenes that's doing the work and i think that needs to be recognized publicly so that's all i have to say thank you again mr jensen and crow and and mr changing team all right uh board member travis um i also want to thank him for the presentation i did have a question but um i was really happy to hear that there wasn't that many things going on but i did want to address the one thing that um he said he said that he got it uh to the district two weeks ago and so when i received this it was at 5 27 p.m two nights ago and it was a lot of material to go over because i really wanted to see all of the figures and and what we needed to do as far as the student retaining students so if we could have gotten that a little bit quicker for the next time and also um there was a uh it was miss corrected and i was trying to get pull up the um the page uh but it was miscorrected the the item that was 633 000 and changed yes so can you can you tell us a little bit more about that does it have to be written down there uh because you said that it wasn't noted in the report right so that balance is not recorded in your financial statements and because it's not a material number there's no reason to have to record it uh in your in your financial statements and that has been historically how the district has treated it and as i mentioned that's how most districts in california because this is a relatively uh newer thing that you're having to track it because of gasby 75 which was when we had to start recording other post-employment benefit liabilities differently and so this is a really a very small plan basically and so it's at a level that you are not required to record it from a material perspective and and you know for for your district because of some of the past challenges that you've had in prior years as was mentioned by your other trustee there the materiality levels that we use to do the audit are at a lower level than maybe some of your surrounding districts because of just the uh inherent nature of of our prior of some of your prior years so you know at some of the other districts this might not even rise to the level of an uncorrected misstatement so there's different levels basically within our auditing that determine whether one we have to even track it two if we have to track it but don't record it and three actually have to record it and so this rose to that level of having to track it but not record it uh and and so and and not and that would be you know that's something that we confer with management on and it's there that is ultimately their prerogative as to whether they should record it or not when it's below a material nature i guess what i'm asking probably would you recommend it to the board that it be recorded um or to the district that it be recorded so that that way i've always said that we need to have very accurate numbers so that you know it'll make the accounting at the end of the year um i guess balance so would that be your recommendation and do you provide that recommendation or do you just do the report or can you well if we felt the number was a material amount we would require the man we would require the district to record it it is not a significant number to the district's financial position as a whole when you look at your financial position as a district and so um your balance your your finances are in balance and there isn't a recommendation from your auditors us that that has to be recorded as i mentioned that's just something that through the course of the audit we will look at that those any numbers it doesn't just relate to just that program but anything else and determine whether it could materially impact your financial position in this case we feel that it does not and so that's why it doesn't need to be recorded all right thank you and thank you for all your work sure all right uh board vice president pump yes thank uh thank you mr president so i'll start with a question and end with a statement so the question my question you know to mr jensen or mr chang is you know could you please define what is what is a material amount so that our uh public would have a idea of what what is what is this distinction well if uh i hope you don't feel as though i'm dodging your question here but i will and i will answer it as directly as i can here which is to say that our material that our dollar amount of materiality is not something that we actually share outside of our audit file and my audit team because if i were to say hey your materiality is a hundred thousand dollars then if your management team was not uh honest and straightforward they would know that hey if we just keep it under a hundred thousand dollars then the otters will never find it right and so that's a number that we kind of we keep to ourselves essentially as auditors but is set through our risk assessment that we do in our planning procedures that we do from both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective to calculate a number that we feel that if someone were using your financial statements to make a decision would they be given reliable information based off of a materiality level and that's essentially how we set that dollar amount okay so uh thank you for for that answer uh you know and i i thank you and uh and your firm for for come uh first uh for the completion of the audit and uh i'm gratified that uh our audit is clean and i want to thank mr chang and business services for all their work in you know this is the second you know my second audit since this is in the second year of my tenure here so uh that uh you know ground very happy to say that uh this district is being careful with the people's money and uh you know i i want this you know uh to show alum rock that that we are mindful of the resources we are given to educate the children and maintain the assets that allow for that and that you know to to continue to to uh give us continue to have confidence that their children are in good hands so thank you very much board member thank you president um i just wanted some of that i won't repeat some of the comments that have been made um other than to you know say again congratulations i don't know we have to mr chang and his team um i you know and i know we know that they've been doing a great job um we see a day in day out you know um reporting uh giving us the budget updates giving us the information that we need in order to move forward in this district and make some of the decisions that we've had to in the past um so we see it but um it's always great mr jensen right to see it from an outside organization so thank you for doing that report and um putting this um again like i mentioned earlier you know the importance of transparency um for you know our our public as a whole our community at elim rock um considering where we've been you know um having been a parent where things weren't the same you know it's nice to be here um and to hear somebody else outside of the district acknowledge the work that we are continuing to do um through mr chang and his team so uh pat on the back mr chang and i hope uh you know i know you you've known your work too and you're what you've been doing and uh your value but um just want to say thank you you know as a trustee um for your diligent work and ensuring that um we come back up from where we've been um we clean up whatever mess was made um and that we move forward on behalf of our children um and future generations and uh you know future of al-imran so thank you mr cheng to you and your team all right uh eight any other questions from the board latino and i'll go ahead and wrap up with my comments uh at least in terms of board comments i want to thank uh you and your team uh mr jensen and covera thank you for the great work that you've been doing uh to get us these results we went through some trying time as one mentioned before um and uh we've ride the ship we're moving the right direction and so very appreciative of the work that is being done by our fire our business folks um you know it was very tough very difficult and some people jumped ship took off um during those tough times um some people were we didn't take off they're told to leave uh and and uh but uh there are those ones who stuck around uh because the mindset that we need to leave the better place better than we found it and so very proud of the fact that uh we're moving in the right direction this is a a great day for alan rocket we really appreciate the findings and um the fact that there's nothing else to be done as a remember i don't mention you know this is kind of like normal run-of-the-mill and so i'm glad that we're getting alum rock to that place uh but remember you had your hand up is that from the previous time or yes sorry i didn't lower it oh okay just want to make sure um all right uh any public comments and i do have the bond reports to present too so i don't know where you want to take those um let me go ahead and take those under 7.02 so i'll just take all the comments inside i'm seeing none then i'm going to go ahead and call for a vote to approve the annual financial aid report well you know what there was a motion in a second correct correct yeah yeah uh motion by chavez second by i'll second my problem but uh so i was uh yeah i had six oh okay you did a second motion by travis second by ronaldo all right i'm gonna go ahead and call for a vote as i see you what remember i know hi what remember chavez hi board vice president found aye uh board member hi myself boarding i the motion passed unanimously without 7.02 approval of 2020 2021 annual performance financial audit of general obligation bond reports for measure j uh go ahead and take it off mr jensen great thank you this is uh just a quick presentation here for measure j so again as a requirement under proposition 39 you're required to have a bond audit done every year related to your bond expenditures and so we've completed that audit for the for the year ended june 30th and i'll start with the the financial statement so again you received an unmodified opinion regarding the financial statements of of measure j uh at june 30th 2021 there was approximately just over five million dollars uh in fund balance related to measure j based off the current issuances that you have done and during the current year there was minimal activity uh there's some interest income coming in and and a few expenses so there was a net change for the year of about eighty thousand dollars uh in that in that bond fund so you can see it's a pretty light as far as activity went for for this year and then the second report we have is the performance audit report and so our job as your auditors here is to complete a performance audit that's in compliance with proposition 39 in the california constitution and you intended to share your screen or i i can i'm sorry just so that folks can know what it is sorry about that not ours there we go all right so this is the um independent auditors report on the performance audit so again on this page of the report here at the bottom in the last paragraph we say that the results of our procedures indicate in all significant respects that the district expended measure j bond funds for specified use only for specified uses so it's a un unmodified or clean opinion here for the performance audit on the next page here we have the background on prop 39 and the basic requirements um along with when that was passed by the voters back in 2000 as well as down here on on measure j and then the really the bulk of the report here is our objectives was to complete a performance audit for the year ended june 30th 2021 there was about 155 000 worth of transactions that occurred so we took that and made sure the list was provided to us was mathematically accurate that it reconciled to the district's financial position and then selected a sample of expenditures that represented 78 000 or about half of the expenditures that occurred during the year and again found that they all represented valid bond expenditures so clean again a clean report for the measure j performance audit all right thank you for that report uh my purpose was to let folks know what what it is that a letter looks like i've seen it as a as a member of the bond oversight committee in the past and as a board member and so that way there's no mystery or anything like that people can see what it what it is that they're what we're talking about um do you have a motion in a second or did you already probably caution to approve motion by board room board vice president a second by second by chalice all right um is there any uh comments from the public uh no public comment at this time or president all right see none then we're gonna go ahead and call for a vote uh unless there's uh for the comments from members of the board all right cnn uh board member i don't know i mean my comment just ditto from my last comment that i think we continue to demonstrate in this area as well the same thing and so i mean i think it's important that we call that out that's all all right um i'm gonna listen to the further comments from the board i'll go ahead and call for the vote i'll call you as i see your board remember hi board member chavez hi all right thank you for that report mr jensen i'm going to go ahead and move on to 7.03 update on the rfp for financial advisor services dr bauer do you have a report on that board president i'm going to turn it over to mr chang thank you dr barr um thank you board today just want to give you a brief update um on where we're at with the rp financial advisor you may recall that we issued the rp back in early december we did receive six proposals and all six proposals met all the requirements um of the rp so at this point we're requesting uh the board for some directions in terms of how what process to use um in vetting and selecting a finalist so with that um all right thank you for that executive report um board member but i don't know yes thank you i mean i think we've been fairly consistent in our selection of different contractors vendors different people that we're working with um the process that we have outlined in our our board documents is for selecting or for appointing a trustee is that similar process that we've used for a number of different selections at this point um so i think we should remain consistent and um and in the same way that we've selected legal counsel and other things recently i think we should stick with that process unless any of my colleagues have a problem or maybe something that can make process even better um but that using that as a framework i think will be good for us all right uh board member chavez can i make a motion to approve the process we have used in selecting uh in the past um this is the agenda as an update for an rfp it doesn't make reference to um uh you know i'll just take it up with council or president may i may i recommend something dr brown yes remember that all you need to do is provide direction for us so you don't need to take a vote but you can if we if you say follow the same process we will just follow the same thing that we have done in the past setting up a special board meeting for the process for you guys to interview in front of the public all the different firms i can amend what i said sorry we've heard comments from board member we're hearing your proposed motion and then there's some nodding of the heads from other board members okay that's what i was going to mention um so could it could i just say approve the process we used in selecting can i just say that and then we have and have the district go forward in a to approve the process in in selecting the uh financial advisor services uh for the rfb all right so we've heard that that's what you want to do it's in line with what board member i don't want so let's hear the rest and then we can uh we can go ahead and take this on can you hear me yeah i can hear you okay because i wasn't sure i was talking earlier a couple times and i wasn't sure okay um so i was going to mention that and i think the only thing i would add for that direction is you know for the staff to coordinate with us to find a date that works best you know for that i agree oh uh where we from yes uh thank you mr president so uh i'm guessing that uh this uh the direction would be to follow roughly [Music] the same procedures we use uh for the appointment of the bond program management firm uh is that am i correct that's what i'm getting from the comments that we've heard from board member from the uh attempt to make a motion by board member chavez and then board member so yeah that's what i understand okay uh are we hearing the same are you hearing the same thing steph yes distribution follow the same process that's the direction that we're getting from you guys with the audition from board member what about uh uh pulling the board for a date that works for everyone sure so i'll add my two cents in there that i also agree i'm sure that we could probably follow a more streamlined process come up with some you know vetted organizations that are already doing work with most districts here but uh given um you know the history you know let's go ahead and dot our eyes cross our teeth so that we don't uh even out of an abundance of caution we we proceed with established procedure that we have so um i don't think we need to move forward with that uh motion so the direction is pretty clear the administration has already acknowledged that they receive the direction so we'll go ahead and leave it at that given that um the item is agendized in such a certain a different manner uh but remember yeah just the only thing that i would request and i think uh the team already does this but it's i guess more of a reminder because sometimes the materials that we get can be somewhat extensive um as soon as we can get those materials as they come in maybe that would be helpful for us to be able to review them but i'm confident that that we do get them as soon as possible but just a reminder for me at least the sooner the better so i can make sure that i have time to thoroughly review each one other than that nothing else yes uh well mr chang i'm sorry board president can i yeah go for it i just want to ask mr chang what will be the the soonest because remember we need to set up uh we need to start polling you about a time as soon as you know to give you enough time for you to review the materials so i just wanted to ask colvera how soon we can give the board the the proposals uh we can start we can send that out tomorrow uh both hard copy and uh via soft copy so that way the board that gives us an idea right do you need a week or two weeks just so that we can start pulling the boards we'll send that out tomorrow all right i see various hands um boy remember but i don't know let me go ahead and call on somebody else and i'll get right back to you reese too you still have a question no i'm just gonna respond to dr bowen okay go for it i mean i'm just gonna say a week would be good for me i forgot that we actually already have those materials so as long as we get them a week is good for me um i think that unless there's some other pressing time element to this but that would work for me all right remember travis see your handle i think if you have them now send them asap and then that'll determine i think might help us determine how much time we need and to set up a meeting and what times were available thank you all right uh further questions for the board see none then i'll go ahead and i i haven't called for the comment correct no oh you know correct uh you you need to have public comments no yeah yeah but i'm just trying to have you help me remember here i'm trying to get a little so no public comment i see no public comment at this time board president all right uh we'll go ahead and move on well um there is no need for a vote so before we move on for this item on the issue of these large items uh i want to make sure that we move away from this this idea of dragging on these meetings to very late then we need to be fresh be ready to engage and i think that everybody does it on the sport but in order to do that we have to have the information as early as possible so if we do have some heavy heavy dense items please shoot out that information as early as possible so there's absolutely no excuse by any board member as to why they're asking basic questions are on the first page of the report when they've had it for a week or a week and a half and they should have already read it this isn't knocking on any particular board member i'm just saying in general that's probably the best approach of having that information as early as possible so everything's already been read uh we go through the executive summaries uh here at the border level and it's already we move fairly quickly um and so that's just my my two cents to to the administration um all right so there is no vote to be taken on this item so we're moving on uh to 8.01 resignations for information only unless any members of the board have comments or questions we're going to go ahead and move on to public comment any members of the public wishing to speak please do so now indicated by raising your hand on item 8.01 resignations and i see no requests for public comment at this time all right see no public comment we're gonna go ahead and move on to consent calendar is there any any members of are there any items members of the board wish to pull from the consent calendar i see board member uh board vice president palmer raising his hand uh motion to approve the entire balanced consent calendar all right uh there's a motion is there a second okay the motion is second is there any public comments on the consent calendar members of the public wishing to speak please indicate by raising your hand and i see no request for public comment at this time board president all right see no public comment on this item we're gonna go ahead and call for a vote i'll call you as i see you or remember hi foreign member chavez hi boar member hi board member from hi with my cell phone i wish you passion and this moment we're going to go ahead and go to item oh nine point so item 10 uh item 10 which is closed session we're going to go ahead and reset the closed session and yeah whoa we almost hit it here it's 906 and we have an agenda for nine o'clock um open session will resume at the conclusion of closed session um i'm gonna go ahead and move on to item 10.02 the announcements and public comments regarding items to be discussed in closed session dr bauer you want to take that item i just wanted to yes 10.3 litigation as as described on the agenda um litigation uh uh pursuant subdivision of the code section ctg construction inc v alan rock 10.03 um conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation one potential case and 10.05 uh conference uh regarding labor negotiations employee organization area all right we'll be back uh mr president could i motion for a uh 10 minute recess or a break please i'm glad you held this up give me a second before we go to the 10-minute break um i'm gonna go ahead and call for members of the public we should speak on items that will be discussed in closed session uh if you wish to speak please indicate by raising your hand going once going twice one three times all right we're going to go ahead and reconvene at uh in closed session at um 9 18.
vice president daley yeah i'm i would like to have tabled the ea ii i had a hard time finding it sorry for the gap here the reason for that in the in the policy stated there the reason why i've asked for that to be tabled is that there's no uh clear time or or conditions that were put forth in the second paragraph about how long the public would speak and um and that was discussed and voted on uh by this board in in the recent past and it's not reflected in this resolution so i think we need to take a different look at it other than that so i think we for a motion for the table i think you act on that first the rest i'm okay with so i don't know how you procedurally you want to do that mr president can we open up a discussion sorry can we open um the tabling discussion with the board okay so mr awad and mr avadrabo if you'd remove your motions then we can go back and uh and discuss uh ea ii separately i will reset my motion likewise okay okay so now let's go to [Music] let's do ea one ea3 through sixteen motion what's my mr abhijava second second by mr awad discussion seeing non-roll call mr abhijaba yes mr awad yes miss bashford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris vice president daley yes and president smith yes motion skirt okay now we have a um request for um ea2 um so i need a motion in a second and then we can discuss it motion table second motion by mr abu drabo second by uh mr awad discussion ms beltran um wouldn't the public speaking portion be governed by the same policy as the in-person public speaking portion so the request to have an additional line put into this policy wouldn't it not be necessary as they're already governed by the same policies as the in person yeah uh and in response to ms beltran's uh inquiry and that's fine um the way it's work if you look at it it doesn't have to it doesn't really say it's regarding um you know electronic uh participation which i'm obviously okay with and in the second paragraph uh here here's my issue it's not clear art i don't know if i think it would but i think that maybe needs to be added to the to the policy so it's clear what's governed there i would assume the same things that are involved in a regular public meeting pertaining to electronic participation but it's not clear that that it says that so in in order to uh eliminate any ambiguity in this policy uh i think that should be clearly stated that's that's my reason for the table mr smith yes can we just make a um put it in that um there will be a limit of five minutes per person remotely speaking into the uh meeting bringing boarding to meeting why can't we just put the minutes in there this way it's done we don't hold it up for another meeting we can amend it right now vote on it and it'll be done on a colon and then they can come inside there's to me it looks like it's already in there motion the table not for remote not for calling mr smith mr smith yes instead of holding up the meeting tonight coach we could kick it back kick it back to policy please take a look at a little more carefully be sure and then discuss the next meeting there's no rush on this okay yeah so that's that's the motion of the table to bring it back to committee we're just under discussion would it come back as a second reading because if it comes back as a first reading this is going to be in june by the time we get it for the public so if they change it would have to come back as a first reading right if it's changed substantially it would come back as a first reading if it's not a substantial change it would come back as a second meeting substantial would be would have to be so let's discuss what needs to be changed publicly because i don't want it to be hidden into a policy meeting it should be discussed out here as to why what's the issue because it says on there the time limits that's why i'm not i'm not sure what the true crux of the issue is on the copy i have before me you know it doesn't say anything about electronic unless i was provided with a different copy the copy i'm reading here on on my board jocks the attachment says participation in pub in board meetings says nothing about electronics says nothing else about that participation if if i understand mr daley correctly um something in there should be with the line saying electronic participation one electronic participation or one in-person participation otherwise a person from the public can go to a public in person i'm sorry electronic participation from the car under a different name since we're not really mandating a video and then come back in and do one in person so they wouldn't get five minutes they would really get ten minutes uh mr you're saying no no no no is the copy i have on my map on our tablet here says nothing about any of that it looks like it's a repeat of the current 10167 policy mr president mr canova yeah so here the way i read this uh if if i missed a canova i'm going to give my tablet over to the uh mr smith and the attorney and they can look at what i have before me okay but one second so i'm reading paragraph four so in general this is a public participation in board meetings that we're adding to when it even says by law zero one sixteen zero one sixty four and it says anyone wishing to address the board at a public meeting may do some upon the crest request of the public recognition periods it states those two bylaws and then it refers to uh an electronic me electronic communications technology is available during said meeting individuals addressing the board remotely shall comply with and are subject to all the requirements rules and regulations so the policy itself is just referring to public participation board meetings because that's what we're inserting it into these other bylaws but it clearly states in paragraph four specifically what that is and those two bylaws reference already our five minute rule and the biggest concern for me is not necessarily any of this we can make whatever motion we want or edit whatever we want today but our board members even participated remotely in the last meeting and i mentioned this many meetings prior covet is here we still have to quarantine for five days it's unfair for people not to be able to be here to be heard so my concern is if we don't move this tonight or at least modify whatever we need to tonight and make this this policy in effect we're taking longer by not allowing people to speak and to me that's a big concern mr mr president yes mr david apparently apparently on my other tablet was a different version than what's on the current tablet because i have a substitute tablet now i would just ask the board indulgence if we have executive give me an opportunity to reread the correct version and we can vote on it later on in the meeting if that's okay with the members because i certainly didn't have because i read it and i made notes to myself uh at my house reviewing the agenda and it didn't have any of this stuff that's now on the on the tablet that i now have that was provided by the uh by our our i.t people today okay so mr president this is our second reading we've already seen this once already so regardless of what was on the tablet before or after we've already had one reading of this i'd like to call a motion right it's a motion the table is already on the floor this discussion table yes miss master jim with all due respect and i know where you're going with this but it's a simple fix so we can put five minutes in there joe mr conover commissioner conover is exactly correct if we we push it back it delays it we we specifically put that this was in reference to 016101610164 it actually refers to the standard in-person one and it gives the limitations um it was all this was only to allow remote for people to enter but the other ones it refers to the original ones about conduct and about time limits so when we discussed it in policy it was that was addressed as well with legal to make sure that we covered our we crossed the t's and dot dotted the eyes we referred to the other two policies to make sure that everything that we do physically in an in-person meeting is covered remotely except this policy only speaks to giving them access to being remote and that's all that's mr president yes uh if the board does not want to wish to give me the courtesy to re read this over the next until we come back out of an executive session that's their prerogative but um you know if you don't want to give me that hurry i'm not going to be supportive of it mr president call the vote yeah the motion is on the floor for to table this to send it back to committee so we need a roll call please ipod who was the first this is uh this is two table to send it back to committee and i'm sorry who was the first second of that um mr abu dravo and second by mr awad all right so this is to table oto correct all right mr abedraba yes mr awad yes miss bassford no miss beltran no mr canova no dr danny i i i abstain because i thought it was give him time to re for reading it so i i i'm confused i thought he was reading i thought he wanted time to read it so i abstain i don't know what mr paris no vice president daily no because i don't not my intents not to send it back to committee smith yes so the majority is not table i make a motion to let mr daley read it after executive session we come back under after executive session to re-read the policy and it either passes or fails at that point that's my emotion second second i don't think we need a motion for that but we can okay so motion is to bring it back uh after executive session so we have to go back and rescind the vote that went through we don't the table right okay so this this will bring back to after executive session for the board to consider so the motion by miss bassford second by mr paris discussion role call mr abidjaba mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes okay next we have okay so that ea 17 and 18 are both student matters that are for executive session now onto personnel we have p1 through p33 motioned by mr avadrabo second second by mr awad mr president okay let's remove p28 from that for executive session okay see no uh discussion roll call please mr abadrabo mr awad yes miss bassford yes and i'm abstaining on p um 30 my name only ms beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes and abstaining on p30 my name only mr paris uh yes i'm standing on 33 and 30 my name president smith yes motion security all right next we have financing facilities we have f1 through f12 what's your pleasure motion motion by mr konova second by mr avajavo discussion scene on roll call mr abu drabo mr awad yes miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris vice president daley yes and president smith yes what motion carries okay now we move on to uh board member comments um mr paris i usually like i usually ask the newly elected board member if they would like to go first if you don't rather go later it's your your pleasure thank you mr smith um i just want to um underscore the condolences to the salzanos the horvaths and the zen eddies all great contributors to what makes clifton school system what it is today i don't have too many comments to make at this point because i'm i'm new to the new to this and still getting my my feet wet i appreciate the everyone who showed up and made their public comments today um and that's pretty much all i have other than happy new year mr paris we welcome you to the board and i understand yesterday was a birthday for you so happy birthday all right next we will move on to mr awad thank you president smith um i just wanted to read one quote as my comment uh something you know that you know means dearly to me from envy is born malice and from malice is the root of evil whoever harbors harbors evil in his or her heart it produces a bitter tasting plant from which grows rage and is it and is a fruit is regret that is all thank you next uh miss beltran okay um tonight i'm going to use my time to discuss a very serious situation that is occurring on this board uh you may have noticed that i was listed on the first facilities committee meeting and not on the second which led to a little awkward exchange and a renaming of this meeting of that meeting here live on the dais that's because in the interim between the meetings i was removed from the committee by mr president smith why was i removed here you can use some imagination was it because i'm a strong female the only female on this committee over the last three years and at least 10 years before that was it because i'm a stickler for the rules and will not seek out a vendor that will supply kickbacks was it because i actually know what i'm doing in terms of facility management since i believe i am the only member on this board that actually owns a facility has built a facility or runs a facility daily we'll never know the real reason why i was able to accomplish and contribute a lot as the only female on this committee over the last three years i single-handedly discovered a million dollar vendor submitting fraudulent invoices helped select the must-need list before it eventually became the referendum which took over two years and countless meetings and contributed comments and suggestions to all the many installations and construction projects over the last three years thankfully after making a stink i was allowed to be a member of this committee however i lost my position as chair to someone who's never even been on the committee i was also removed from the finance committee after being on it for three years again long list of accomplishments countless hours dedicated to this committee as it was also the negotiations committee where we negotiated every single union contract in this district which if anyone has been a part of this before knows it's a very long process with meetings lasting five to six hours going late into the night and in some cases over years i believe i am the only member of this committee that has a finance degree i believe i was i am also the only member of this board that has worked for one of the largest accounting firms in the world i i wouldn't care that much about being removed from either of these committees if i was replaced by a female however i was not joe and jim who have also been on this committee for the last three years with jim being a member and chair over 10 years they were both allowed to stay and i was removed i lost all my committees that i was a member of less facilities which i only kept because it became my rate about being removed if i was removed for valid reasons or to allow or allow others with the same skill set to join these committees that wouldn't be an issue but that wasn't the reason why i was removed i ask why is it because i'm running for council and you thought weakening my position on the board would help your friends or maybe fellow board members looking to run is it because i speak my mind and hold staunch to my morals and ideals the public can use their imagination to think of reasons as to why i was removed whatever the reason mr smith has chosen to do this is an example of blatant disgusting sexism a proven example at the old boys club of clifton lives on i will not forget this the woman in this town will not forget this and sadly the female students will have an example that sexism is still alive and well here in america i will not be silenced i will not be go silently into the night this is only the beginning of my political career i will carry this battle wound proudly i will be used as kindling in the fire for success that will continue to burn bright inside me regardless of the unfair treatment by men in temporary positions of power thank you uh next we have uh miss bassford good evening everyone i didn't get three minutes last meeting because we didn't have public comments so i wanted to tell people out in the community because everybody's been asking me why did i nominate joe and dana i nominated joe and dana because when i was on the campaign trail there was a lot of sense from people and people telling me they wanted a younger generation joe brings a lot of good ideas he's always he has a different thought process about looking at things in a different way and i thought that he would be even keeled and have a good temperament to bring us forward especially during a rough time right now in education there's a lot of board members throughout the state of new jersey that are leaving boards because they can't handle the pressure and the attacks that have been brought onto them i figured joe would be even keeled and do it and also he fits the bill of a younger generation why dana female answering to what you just said and she's also she represents a diverse population of our community that's rising in clifton of the hispanic community so that's why i nominated them for that those positions nobody asked me why i didn't get a pre-phone call who was going to get nominated i don't usually get included in all these little conference calls but that's okay i did it because i thought they were right fit and from what people told me in the community when i was out on the campaign chair they want to change and hopefully those elections that come up the people will make those changes i ran a hard campaign i was number nine on the ballot i became number one top vote getter regardless if it's 43 4500 or 22 000 i didn't run unopposed i ran opposed and i worked hard as did miss danny and as the mr uh commissioner commissioner danny and commissioner paris we ran hard and we were successful in our bid to get here our voice should be heard why i am resign uh stepping down from policy and also from the education committee whether you've been paying attention or not i cannot work with the two members on those those committees my personal attorney jeffrey elvar catapine of penicillium vacating in ridgewood and paramus new jersey have informed me that i should not be working with them because of the legal action and the notification of a cease and desist that was served on me regardless of what new jersey school boards mr mr smith is in your email today or miss gutierrez has informed you my attorney is telling me otherwise i pay him a lot of money to keep me safe and i'm going to follow that suit congratulations to mrs morgie on your being selected of the staff member of the month condolences to peter salzado worked with him for a long time of school five when i was a home and school president it was a serious serious loss to humanity and mankind that man was gentle he was he was a solid person to the horvath family i'm deeply sorry for your loss i didn't know your family to louise and eddie chicky rest in peace to your family i wish you peace and i wish i hope you find sense out of out of the loss of your mom your father that father passed away over a year ago and it was just senseless to me so why why i why do i talk out loud i'm like that can i yield my time i didn't get any time last time to thank the community i'm going to mr smith you got 12 minutes last meeting no one no one got time in the last meeting no the previous meeting december 9th you got 12 minutes i can't i went back you can finish up your time thank you so why i stepped down i've been policy chair for about eight years i have worked my fingers to the moment whenever we had a policy i've you can ask the superintendent i researched it to death i went to other communities went on their website got the information i was moved out of the chairperson because mr smith told me an email today i have it in writing that i complained about to be in the policy chair i didn't complain about being anything on policy i complained about not being put on facilities in 11 years not being put on finance in 11 years not being put on athletics or negotiation in 11 years every well-rounded board of education moves their members around accordingly but fairly and fairly hasn't happened in this committee list it's sexist and not not only sexist but it's misogynistic and when there's only three of us on the board we do not get treated fair anybody wants to talk to me about this afterward i'll be glad and also i make a motion to cancel having any food at any board meetings going forward both regular meetings special meetings and committee meetings when i'm hungry i bring my own lunch that's a motion that's on the table during comments if you wish to bring on a new business you could do so i have made motions previously under my comments and in the past 11 years you're allowed to make a motion if you use your board member that's the purview of the person speaking absolutely not but anyhow point of order could i have a legal opinion if i am allowed to make emotion or not okay i'll do it on the new business good night okay mr canova good evening first i want to thank all the speakers who came out my condolences to three families tonight uh they weren't on our agenda congratulations to our award recipients tonight um the one thing i want to discuss here and i think i think everyone spoke about it a little bit and we saw that in some of the hibs and things that we that we saw in our presentation too is that in general and even dr robertosi spoke to us at the last meeting in general um children behaviors are on the rise in a negative way um and and we see how he mentioned that you know suicides are up and and mental health issues are up and i'm going to use this as a psa for that for for my parents at home um my father-in-law said to me uh we have a we have a pool at the house we have a little basketball court he had three boys and a girl um and i said you know you have a lot of things in your backyard here and the kids always want to come here and hang out and play and and uh you know barbecue and and spend time at the house and he said you know the reason why i do stuff like this it's not because yeah i'd like to hang out with with friends and family or whatnot but it's also because then the kids come to my house i get to see who they are i get to know who my kids are hanging out with and i get to know their families and bridge that gap and bring everyone together and you know that resonated with me because i think i think that's what we're missing we're missing going back to the old school of people knowing each other knowing what their kids are doing being involved in their lives asking them questions of you know what you do today at school and being genuinely interested in what they're telling you you know every child has a special gift and it's up to you as a parent to bring that out and it's up to you as a parent to support that so i would fall back not only are my teachers i'm sure you know the teachers are doing a great job ensuring that they're they're asking the questions and getting the students um and participating and and getting their uh their input on their ideas and making them become the person who they are but it's also up to the parents to to embellish that and to bring that out in the child when the child comes to them and they say they're they're looking at dancing they show them some special dance to give them some encouragement uh that goes a long way in a child's life so um i just want to make sure that the parents are aware and everyone is aware that we should be doing those things on a daily basis and i think a lot of those things may fall off because we're very busy and you know with this whole coveted thing and everyone's being being pulled in many different directions and there's a lot of frustration you know political and whatnot but just getting back to the basics i think is going to help our children so if you could just do that a little bit more um i think that we'd all be better off and as for remote participation you know i've always been a big proponent of it we showed it at a board meeting how it would work uh this is our second reading now our board members have to use it our attorney had to use it the other day um you know we live in a world with covid and i just wanna i just hope we see this through and we give people the voice that they they deserve to have thank you yes i'd like to first start by congratulating all the students of the month well-deserved great job condolences to the three families mr paris welcome look forward to working with you on the board um and um you know as time goes on you'll see you'll learn a lot of things and new things and attending the the school boards which you are at one of them is you know great because you learn a lot of new things so that's great and welcome um one thing i'd like to take some time just to thank administration staff custodians just secretaries everybody working in the school district thanking the students even was i feel like it's just at this time right now that everybody's you know we've been in for almost half a year now the school year and i think we're finally like you know finding some sort of a a group i think students are beginning to realize okay we're in school and i think it's very important that they are so do you think you know the virtual is really difficult um on on everybody i think it's difficult on teachers administrators trying to find out you know who's in who's out and really to give a shout out to our nurses because you know they're doing a lot right now um and i think it's just you know overwhelming i mean i know the district i'm in the nurse um just the amount of work that she's to do in it and and even administration it doesn't just end when they go home i mean they're they're checking their emails i mean i'm assuming that they're doing that as well here um in the clifton school district and so it's just a lot i think you know everybody is just feeling overwhelmed who's working in the school district and trying to make it you know great experience for students to finish off you know i often think about as a history teacher i teach tolerance and you know i just i sometimes think to myself you know could we ever be tolerant could we ever actually learn that i don't know because as adults we can't get it so we're expecting our students to be tolerant of different views and understand and it's okay to have different views and it's okay and i i i don't know your name i'm sorry you spoke so eloquently i can't remember the name i was waiting for it at the end i just want to finish like one second here that um i think it you know it's it's okay to have different views but it's how you express those different views and that's what i think is really important and you know sometimes i just don't say anything because i'm i i'm a person that doesn't like discord and i think that it's okay to disagree but to disagree in a manner that is acceptable wow i guess that's right the phone rang all right thank you good night uh mr albatro thank you president smith congratulations ms maruiji from school four um congratulations to our chs cheer team they went one in one who hosted a tournament um on monday and on mlk day to ms matano her coaching staff and all the cheerleaders great job there was some great competition whether it was private schools or public schools and they really held their own [Music] so i want to take a minute well a little time so why i understand that anyone from the public has the right to voice their opinions there are a few comments i'd like to comment i would like to comment regarding the reorganization meeting the reason commissioner awad and i were speaking last meeting during the reorganization meeting is because it was his first reorganization meeting in person and he was asking certain procedures many people like to clump board members together i don't speak for anybody on the board or in their personal conversations are there posts with anyone i believe everybody is entitled to speak for themselves someone mentioned harassment charges last meeting yes i did file horizon charges on a person who took photos of my family and posted my social media to come at me as a board member i'm fine with i'm a big boy to drag my family in my and a family member or follow me which i have videos of i'm not fine with the word that people like throw around or a person like to throw around it's a derogatory term and i will not drop or stoop down to that level of anyone or with anyone if you don't agree with me or if i don't agree with you as miss danny said there's a way to handle it and it's with dignity and respect and on that note if i may take some time as everybody else finished so the word sexism and attacks were used today um yes i do have a season to slaughter against against a board member and that is in their personal life and estates in the season this letter but anybody can translate to how they probably believe they should let's talk about something last month i worked with my mosque to provide 900 pieces of toys to nine organizations a person has a problem with that i hosted a board of ed forum back in november as not serving with the palestinian american community center as on their board i don't serve on their board nor am i an officer on their board nor was i a paid member on their board or the organization somebody had a problem with that and i can go on forever on a 20-page document yes ladies and gentlemen ethics violation number three ridiculous but i will let the system take care of this frivolous attacks that we're talking about here attacking me in my religion and in my culture and second of all if sexism and attacks on this board works for others but yet you want to utilize this against me in that center i think you should recheck yourself re-evaluate yourself yes miss password this is by you okay so to grand scale when you prefer and when you choose and when it's good for you but it's not good for others i got a problem with that and if you guys think i wasn't going to talk about it i'm afraid of this frivolous frivolous ridiculous and this only thing that does is pay taxpayer dollars for an attorney to defend me if that's not really thinking about what we're spending on in this district and talking about rather use that money for students for books for programs for other things in this district is ridiculous mr whoever's whoever is laughing back they keep laughing because apparently you find this funny you want to come up here and talk and point at people but yet you want to follow people throughout the city and you want to keep posting on your facebook because i'm i'm sorry mr president yeah let's not have the from the crowd curse words from the crowd should not be taken absolutely not please if you're in the audience please hold your comments to yourself okay because let you know you haven't scared me but you have definitely scared my wife five cameras on my house alarm in my house and yet when she sees you and she has seen you she's walked the other way because you are terrifying her you got a problem come at me i'm ready i'm ready my father told me to stay on my own ground i'm gonna protect my family till i die tell you that right now other people on this board have said their families have been attacked again when it's good for you it's okay but when it's for somebody else you want to do it as unacceptable unacceptable thank you you mr daley vice president daily thank you miss thank you mr president um there's a couple of things congrats to students of the month it's always good to see that we recognize our students here and again many thanks to miss paul orgooza and citing ms tracy morgini on her accomplishment on the pbis system i also would like to thank mr doctor for his presentation on on the hib one thing that always stands out for the clifton districts in our hip is that the our district has as far as i know has been very aggressive importing every incident accurately and documentedly and if you see numbers that are different in our district and that that's because we're the staff is totally transparent how they push this program and it's very important for the stability and integrity of our district here at clifton i'd like to say congrats to judy and lucy on their re-election here and looking forward them to continue to work with them and i'd like to welcome mr paris to his first full official board meeting put your seatbelts on so uh also like to recognize mr salzano who i had many interactions with during his tenure and his official duties here at the board of education he'll be sorely missed he was extremely unique individual and he he lit up everybody's face when he was present and doing his things um again as miss danny said like to thank all the administration this teachers the staff who are working so hard during these difficult times um one very uh unusual thing i believe your first name ma'am is annetta i didn't catch your full last name that was a the one the most thoughtful and welcoming comments i've seen here i've been on the board will be a total of 13 years come april that was outstanding and you're to be noted for the heart and thought you put into your remarks and i i personally appreciate that very much and lastly i'm extremely upset tonight that a member of the public took to attack our president our superintendent excuse me i've been here as i said the full 13 years i've been on many other official boards i know and boards of freeholder the whole nine yards i have couldn't be more pleased on the performance of our superintendent he is fully in charge of our district not only that he's projected kindness leadership every kind of aspect you would want from a leader and he's done that in spades here he's done an outstanding outstanding job and to have him his character in even the tiniest way besmirch is upsetting to me and really a disservice to this community so i just wanted to tell the public i fully support dr robitozi he's done a marvelous job he's even exceeded any expectations that i have had since his appointment and i look forward for hopefully he'll be here for many years doing what he does so very well for the students and the district and the town of clifton that concludes my remarks thank you mr daley my uh my comments as well we're going to uh to back up what you just said about the superintendent you may not like every decision that is made but there isn't anybody that works harder in this district for the welfare education and lives of students than our superintendent i've seen many superintendents and hands down clifton is so fortunate and lucky to have a man like dr robitosi i don't think anyone understands the magnitude of decisions that have to be made on a daily basis i often tell them i don't want to would not want to be in your shoes but he's always told me at the end of making his decisions that he always does what's best for kids how could we ever ask for anything better than that i don't want to stand up here and voice accomplishments and accolades that uh that i've had in my life people know who i am what i stand for and some accusations that were made today are not only unethical they cross the line of being illegal and people can throw darts and say what they wish but the person in this chair who was elected by his peers to do the very best that i can for this district no time would i ever exclude anyone or include anyone by their race by their sex by how they dress people that know me know the truth and i don't need to spend time up here to defend my character and who i am i do not want to stand up here and list my the accomplishments that this board made last year under my leadership five last year was probably six five or six board members saw the good in me to put me in this position and i will never listened to or tried to be taken down by people that need to come up and hear themselves talk for five minutes about nothing that helps the education of kids other than the last lady in miss llama who does it for a living nobody came up and spoke about how we can better educate kids no it was about everything else and pointing fingers i've been on this board i've been a board member longer than anyone up here and the experience that i've had from other boards i was never put on certain committees but that i attacked the president of not being fair because she was a female and i was a male no it's absurd is it unfair that other board members on this board can't have the opportunity to serve committees everyone has not should have an opportunity to do that someone who sits in this chair has to make those decisions and make those decisions for the betterment of the district where the ridiculous rumors of that there was another list made is beyond ridiculous nothing was released to any board member or administration because the committees had not been completed and i didn't do this alone and not to put mr daley in the in the hot seat as well but as my vice president i included him so are we all able to probably sit on any committee probably yes but why should the same people be in the same committees because they feel that's where they should be someone once said when i was on the board years ago i know nothing about education don't put me on education it's just a waste of time that person was probably one of the best board members that we had for education because they learned so much and then they were able to apply it to the district by not getting the chance to be on that committee that would have never been found so i'm not going to waste any more time but the people of clifton that know me that know my dedication to kids know that these silly accusations that happened today are just people that are upset because they didn't get a certain committee so come out and attack and is there any committee that is less important they are all important but why shouldn't others get an opportunity to serve on those committees whether they're male or female whether they're black they're white whether they're religion or whatever none of that is taken into consideration ever and mr daily if i'm wrong tell everyone that i'm wrong right now you can't please everybody here people and i know that but i will be damned if i don't continue to fight for the betterment of the educational system here in clifton and i will continue to fight for that because that's why i'm a board member no other reason and the five people that put me in this chair i thank you and i know i won't let you down and the others i hope will be part of a great system led by this man in making clifton great we say it's pra i'm proud to be a mustang it's a great day to be a mustang not with these accusations and innuendos that's not what it means to be a mustang people know who i am and know the real me and i will continue to work hard and make tough decisions that's the chair that i'm in people feel that i take personally because come up to the microphone and the time runs out well that's mr smith attacking me i didn't make these rules i'm putting the chair to make sure the rules are applied but attack me because i'm sitting in the chair some people want to follow some rules and not others person in this chair has to do the very best that they can do to help the system and i will continue to do that every day we have um two student matters one personnel matter for executive session right that's it okay um action will be taken um again i will guess the uh probably an hour in executive session have we decided to stay here or leave or we're going to stay here all right so we're going to stay here and hold our executive session so we asked if you could uh uh publicly vacate the room yes miss password oh you're right i'm sorry correct my computer went off all right so we know the executive session when it comes i don't have to repeat that new business i make a motion to discontinue the food at meetings both regular special and committee meetings uh if there's anything left over tonight it'd be donated to st peter's haven or eva's kitchen in patterson got a motion on the floor a second seconded by mr paris discussion seeing none roll call mr abba drabo i don't take foosa abstain mr awad abstain miss bassford mr paris yes vice president daley no president smith no the motion doesn't have a majority so it does not pass hey motion fails is there any other new business okay seeing none we'll have a motion for exec excuse me a motion for executive session motion second who said it mr abhijava second by mr awad okay we approximate about an hour in executive session uh if you'd like to wait outside um but the board will all right return from executive session roll call mr uc here mr every drawboat mr awad here miss bassford yeah miss beltran here mr canova here dr danny here mr paris here vice president daley here president smith here we have a corner board met an executive session to discuss student matters and a personnel matter we have e17 and 18 p28 and ea02 do i have a motion motion second mr kanova second by mr awad discussion seeing none roll call mr abby driver i'm sorry excuse me uh ea 02 is the policy or we i thought we were going to discuss it in public yeah that's what i thought too that's why i paused i just told the group okay so it's just e17 and 18 and p28 yes okay wait does the motion be amended on that one yeah will you separate mr kenova and mr awad yes yeah i'm in the motion seventeen seventeen and twenty eight yeah correct okay i think we're good okay roll call yes mr abhijabo mr awad yes miss bassmaster yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yes mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith yes motion carries okay um ea 02 i make a motion to amend the second reading policy to state i'm taking this from 167 is exact wording there will be one public session there will be one public recognition session each statement made by a participant shall be limited to five minutes for general for agenda or general matters pertinent to the district the board of education members will be limited to three minutes for board member comments that's from 167 that that should just be put into the policy and also in the the new bylaw it should read in paragraph i'm sorry i'm trying to get it on here hold on um in the third paragraph down it says public participation shall be permitted only as indicated on order of business and board bylaws 0 1 6 six zero one six zero and bylaw zero one six four and should include zero one six seven one six seven is the actual language that talks about the time limitations i i i did that while you guys were talking i think the fourth paragraph i read there had um five minutes the last sentence has five minutes and three minutes for board member comments i think it's already in there mr smith presents with five minutes i echo miss stan miss uh miss danny's comment said yeah they're already in there but my problem is this my problem is that if i was a public member i made comments from my vehicle not showing my face so we don't know who's behind it and i can easily change my name on zoom or whatever it may be and then come back into public sec into uh in person conversation or dialogue whatever i want from the from from the podium and eat up five more minutes it need there needs to be something in there that we need to see your face i mean you could be done from a phone it could be done from a laptop it could be done from anywhere i'm sorry we've seen things happen and we've seen people attack via when during covid and we don't know who it was and who's behind it and a name can be changed or hidden as private and there's no accountability whatsoever the answer is not no to this the answer is let's really dot our eyes and cross every team make sure everything's done to cover us and the district because any any child anybody from another district anybody from another city can say and do whatever they want but at the end of the day we don't have a face or a name to identify to that is my problem with this i'm i'm for the whole you know having options and accessibility for everybody particularly when working moms working dads and whomever are running late because they want to voice their child's opinion or voice therapy about their child but there needs to be some sort of accountability held president smith yes just when i'm thinking about that i mean i i just think as a board do we you know do we want um to be able to see the person i mean because here we see them so the stipulation in there be that we have to see them you know that that there has to be you know that they go onto a zoom or something because i mean i guess i could see that point like here we're seeing the person and and they're speaking and you know then i i could see possibly remember we had that one incident where the person called and we didn't see them and they just spoke and they said some things that were draw i mean i i think when you have to show yourself then you're you're more likely to really think about what it is that you will say so if we add that to it or so i think it's you know again i mean we're making a thing to allow them to participate but i think that it it's maybe key to say you know you have to show your face because and that's the whole point of why i motioned to kick it back to policy is because of that part we can't just say well let's stick it right there but then when we read it it just doesn't make sense i mean i'm sure the majority are not saying no to this it doesn't matter let's do it right and for me that's that's that's the gap and that's the error in it that i see and i've said this for a long time since the first time joe has brought it up and yet it's still not in there mr president yes if i may um if i may direct it to joe canova joe i i remember that you went back and there was a lot of technology questions that i think mr uh mr mountain addressed uh was there part of that that that there was a visual uh path for this as well not just a a voice one yeah we could offer two options one would be the video just like we did during darren covid and then we could also offer a dialing number so i think the idea were there was to be able to reach people who didn't have a a device that had a camera on it and i think that even even in one of the the i think there was in one of the policy meetings we said that if somebody came here and and they were had themselves covered we have to let them speak so whether or not we can see them is irrelevant because in general if someone's coming to speak you have to let them speak so i think the way we looked at it was whether they're virtual or not we need to follow the same rules and that's why we're setting the rules that we use for regular public comment where we say we asked them the name and and uh we used to be the address but i don't think it's that anymore the city uh so whatever rules that are that we follow we continue to follow i mean there's been plenty of times where i see people call into the city of clifton when they had their meetings the regular council meetings and they used the regular calling number so i don't see the difference i think i think the idea here is we just want to reach more people president smith if i may to respond to that i joe i i don't agree with you we shouldn't deny acts to anybody right fair equity acts across the board everybody should have opportunity to speak but if we have somebody who's covered we know somebody's there and we can identify somebody in the hallway if we pass by them right just by you know whatever they're covered by but at the end of the day if i just see a black screen with a private caller or a name change i still don't know who's behind that it could be somebody we can see the difference between here on council i don't watch my i watch some of the council meetings but you know we're here live and we see the attacks that happen how about that continues whether it's on the phone and then in person i want to know who's behind there anybody could hide behind anything and that that covers all of us that covers our district that covers us from liability and it holds people accountable that's what i'm looking at and that's what i'm looking for so i think if it gets to the point where there are certain regulations on as to when the the chair can cut off uh someone who's publicly speaking and i think we'll just follow those same guidance and the same rules so if someone's saying you know something they shouldn't be or cursing and being belligerent we're going to cut them off it's an electronic device yeah i i really have something that covers us in policy if we're going to if we're going to have it that way i want to see it in writing because if it's not in writing and it's it's it doesn't exist what do the kids say now if you don't have a photo of it you weren't there if you don't have in writing it doesn't exist i think that's why i was trying to kick it back to policy mr president yes i i i'm willing to give it a try if we start to have issues either by uh with the thing i mean we're going to jump right in and say hey this is not working or this needs to be modified and we can take care of that part of this since it is new is just as when we went to do these virtual meetings it's a it's a bit experimental you see how it works it's not everybody does it but more and more are so um you know i at this point if there's if a problem crops up i think we can do what we need to do at that point and address it so uh i don't i i'm not that i don't share your concerns but um i i think we can kind of figure out if it's getting funky or not and if it is then then we can um do whatever we have to do to either correct it or suspend it one of the other depending on the issue mr president yes we did speak about this in length about a kill switch and having somebody man that virtual component and pressing the buttons number four talks about when you when the president has the right to uh remove somebody stop them or prevent them from continuing speaking and his abcdef points here so it gives you the right to actually shut down the video or the audio at that point but we did speak about having a staff member purposely dedicated for that function that was that was discussed at length mr smith you you kill switch somebody guess what you're going to follow you're censoring you're stopping people that's what we're going to get hit for we could have if we yawn imagine if you stop somebody from from on whatever they want to say via via video via zoom they're going to say that you're an anarchist and if they're in person do we have that in writing in our policy thank you but it doesn't say exactly word for word in this policy that's what i'm trying to say so this policy calls on zero six yeah zero one six seven so item four the presiding officer may interrupt terminate a participant's statement or question interrupting our warrant participant with the statement or question is in abusive obscene or defamatory request any person to leave the meeting when that person does not observe reasonable quorum and it goes on and on there's there's it goes to f so that's what we do currently so i take that back my laptop's on from me that's why i didn't see it in person yeah as mr daley said this was we needed this policy in order to do the pilot because remember we just wanted to do this as a pilot so like we could hate it the first time and never do it again but we needed the policy in order to even try it could be a disaster it could be a wonderful thing yeah no one no one could call people are asking for access i mean call for a vote i would say okay we're in uh we're in uh roll call please i think we need a motion for you i thought we had it right because it was a discussion well who was the second i'm sorry mr vasper was the first uh i didn't hear a second yeah somebody over here miss password i think was the first thing you but overdrive always the second i didn't miss a second i didn't second anything no i'll make a motion to accept to vote this password is the third i'll second it we definitely had it because that's why we had discussion who the second day all right roll call please mr abba jabba it's not about accessibility so i'm going to abstain mr awad abstain miss basford yes miss beltran yes mr canova yes dr danny yeah mr paris yes vice president daley yes president smith abstain should go back to committee um six to six to zero to three motion carries okay uh seeing no other business motion to adjourn motion closed sorry exactly all those in favor meeting adjourned you
hello everybody sorry about that hello everybody um my name is brian von fulmer i'm the lead interpreter for region 2 in phoenix and i've been working for 10 years what they used to do already interrupt this is aaron um somebody has their mic on can we restart that portion please thank you are you sorry about that feedback [Music] is that any better [Music] no not really brian now we can't hear you at all there's always something [Music] hey brian go ahead and just turn down the volume on your computer that's probably the issue they're all in the same spot okay is this better it seems like you might have multiple windows open or your volume is turned up it's all the way off sorry it looks like it's mj that has her mic on how about now is that a little bit better gotta love technology it works great sometimes and then sometimes it doesn't sorry but hello my name is brian von fulmar i am the lead interpreter of region 2 in phoenix and i've been working for astb for 10 years thank you brian yeah technology can be challenging for all of us now and again and last but not least certainly not least we'll go to the north and to the west and linda would you mind introducing yourself and yours with the agency okay hi can you hear me my name is linda sullivan i have been with the agency for 16 and a half years 17 years i've been lead interpreter for about 10 and a half years now and i'm in the yuma area and a lot of the northern and western era part of arizona thank you linda this is superintendent reichman now as board members it is your opportunity to ask any questions that you may have of jay and the three lead interpreters hi this is lynn um i'd like to know what the procedure is now for interpreters we know that they are related service providers who may or may not be attending the iep meeting what is the procedure for having them attend they they have critical knowledge of the student um many of them most of them see the kids way more than any of the tods especially in the itinerant area [Music] so what is the policy of having them attend iep meetings you know lin that's a great question and thank you for asking that so i'm going to kind of give the bones i'll give the bones part of that but i am going to turn to the three experts because they're the ones that are helping us manage that and that will be mj brian and linda so the bones of it is is that we took the format as i mentioned before from pdsd and we push that out statewide so each interpreter can make their own copy of the same form which then looks at everything related to the interpreting services that a child is receiving there's also a portion that gives us a narrative on what's happening in the classroom concerns they may have issues going on and those type of things as well that then form gets sent out to the lead tud as well as the tod working in that particular school with that student and the director that group then comes together reviewing that information making sure we're asking questions what is happening in the classroom concerns they may have what would be happening as far as maybe expressive language or whatnot and then determine as a team whether or not they need additional information and or if the interpreter would need to attend um again based on if there's access to language based on a lot of different factors and then what they do is that form then follows the dhh the tod at that time to go to the iep meeting and be able to share all that information but to again to see some of the real world part of that what i would like to do is to call in the three leads to give us an example from each region when they've utilized that information and how it's actually bettered the process to help us really move forward so every interpreter has a voice at every meeting because again sometimes ieps are during the academic day and then we would you know look at services not being provided for a child after their work hours there's a lot of different factors so this was a way for us to just for many years jay and we usually make sure that all the pertinent team members who have knowledge of a student are able to attend the meeting in person because if you've been in these iep meetings you know that many things come up during the discussion that isn't on a piece of paper and we can discuss best practices after we hear from the yeah every league and and again i agree with you that there are a lot of schools that will look at the that the availability of the team to be there but we look at we have about 200 220 school districts and charters we work with and i can tell you that the practice is all over um as far as when meetings are held and we don't really have control over when that case manager is going to hold the meeting but i'm going to turn it over to mj first to kind of give us you know an example on when they've utilized that information and what the outcomes have been for her interpreter um again being part of that and the conversation that she's had not only with the tod but also she works hand in hand with karen our lead um supervisor teacher down in tucson so i think i don't know if her video is still on or not mj thank you very much jay and i appreciate your questions and i absolutely understand your concerns definitely the role and responsibility of the interpreter is to provide information regarding access and definitely we have to look at various components of when an interpreter provides information to the team um we have about 60 interpreters in total and and if you look at interpreting there's many different philosophies of how do you go about remaining in your role and responsibilities so i the directors and the leads kind of sat down and try to put systems in place where they can intend and share information however just making sure that they stay true to their role and responsibility and speak to that um because sometimes if an interpreter misspeaks or maybe kind of um talks more towards the curriculum or behaviors that is not an area in which we have expertise versus the teachers so what we really want to do is protect the interpreter protect the agency and making sure that we build a system in which the interpreters can successfully speak to the role and responsibilities and you're very right the way i look at it as an interpreter it's a little bit different than the teachers teachers attend an iep what they do is they go from an iep and then they have it the following year so they collect data so it's testing and everything and then everyone comes to the table the role of an interpreter is immediate it's immediate to um educate and re-educate and explain to their stakeholders the hearing teacher classroom students and the deaf student what the role and responsibilities i'll give you an example for instance closed caption we all know that deaf children need to be exposed to that so as an interpreter we wouldn't want our staff members to say well we're going to bring that to the iep in a several months and ask the teacher to have closed captioning we're doing that immediately so whereas teachers are collecting data we are we are working with the stakeholders the teachers the staff members the students and being able to uh modify what needs to be done in that moment so hopefully at that mo at that junction there's there's less to say at that iep but i completely understand what you're saying we are not saying that interpreters don't have much to bring to the table but we want to make sure that they're speaking definitely to the role and responsibility i hope this maybe provides a little bit more information i'm not sure if you have questions for jay and typically i would um i don't know if you know this mj i've been a teacher of the hearing impaired for many many years and i've worked with many many interpreters and have been in many different positions in many different school districts um the interpreter does bring a lot to the table and typically what would happen and what could be instructed by the agency whatever is that the tod and the interpreter talk about what's going to be discussed at the iep meeting so that everyone's clear in their roles yeah they don't discuss how they're doing academically but interpreters have so much information about how that student is communicating with their peers interacting um just classroom activities i can't tell you how much valuable information i've gotten from my interpreters in those meetings um so lynn again i know it is a team approach you're looking at and mj can you go more specific into how you've utilized what we've looked at as far as policy procedures where maybe the interpreters not attended but how their voice has been there and how they've partnered their work with the tod sure absolutely with this new model in the systems in place um that we have a form that we borrowed from pdsd which jay had already mentioned so it's a checklist of various um features of the language and communication access and they're there to give that to us as leads to the director that the tod and the tod supervisor and if it's deemed just to be able to attend an iep they attended i had one interpreter down in saurita area south tucson that because of the specific needs of that student a further discussion was needed at the iep and that that interpreter attended but again it's guided and and i definitely support what you're saying and i value your investment and interpreters um very dearly can i give you an offset of something that does happen more than not because we're looking at 60 interpreters i had an interpreter that was at a school assigned the principal came in and said is the interp is the student using you and offhand said no it doesn't really look at me in the afternoon that interpreter was in my office and i said i i think you're supposed to be at the school site why are you here the interpreter said the principal dismissed me the interpreter is not needed so that's how detrimental it can be as far as relationships with districts it could be an offset comment that we want to make sure that again it was harmless it maybe have been accurate but we have to make sure that interpreters are speaking in a particular structured way regarding their role and responsibilities i've been pretty lucky i've worked with fabulous interpreters and i i don't know what i would have done without them um how how many cases like that compared to how many wonderful successful supportive interpreters do you have and i know you know i've talked to phoenix college and and their program and they do weeks talking about how to participate in an iep the importance of the iep and um and not to go off on you mj it's just in general i the eipa lists the importance of interpreters at an iep meeting uh we have um hands and voices we have boys town through classroom interpreting which i'm sure you're all familiar with they all say interpreters should be attending iep meetings as best practice um and it's that's always been my practice for many many many years and i will have the interpreter participating as a team member and then get an interpreter for the student if he is attending so that that i absolutely support what you're saying and i've been in the field for 30 years imagine not having an interpreter but i also made it to give you a wider scope for tucson we hire a lot of practicum students they come right in in year one year two and again we're pushing 60 people forward and trying to get them all trained to know exactly what to say legally the legalities of an iep um it's there is challenges i guess i would pose to the superintendent i would pose to jay what happens when that when our team is not prepared in that way what is the detriment to the agency what is the detriment to the district so so and here's the thing i know we could probably write dissertations and papers on so many different topics that we're already kind of touching on here but one of the things lin that i wanted to share with you is that as we were doing our research we didn't know and did not only look internally on what we were doing as a practice within our agency and knowing what the two campuses were doing comparative to the itinerary program but we also looked externally and i did speak with special education directors that have their own program very similar to glendale union and asked them and said tell me about how your interpreters participate and it might be surprising to know that the directors i spoke with said our educational interpreters never attend an iep meeting they and i'm just sharing with you i'm fine i've worked in mesa in tucson and and they've always participated i'm just sharing with you and and really what it came down to we had an imbalance of the work that was going on and the imbalance was we had things that were happening throughout the entire itinerant and not just in one region or another we were finding all types of either concerns um from all walks of folks and we brought it together with the three leads like i mentioned as well as dr rex and as well as rosie hicks so we could all talk about this together very an open conversation and what we determined was is we needed to have a system that was set and that system was to bring forth all the voices of all the interpreters when mj mentions the 60 interpreters they're not all just in southern arizona that's throughout you know the entire state and then how do we support them in an accurate way to make sure that it's a standardization and that standardization was the procedure that was shared with you and what we found is it's been very positive interacting because the tod now having a good understanding of what's happening within those classrooms and a good understanding of what's happening in the basis of the information they're receiving prior to an iep which then could affect them writing goals as you know could affect them looking at the service time that's there there's a lot of factors that go into that and that's the pre-planning that we're now doing throughout the state does that say that an interpreter will never attend any iep meeting that was never what was stated to anybody but what we're looking at is do we need to attend all iep meetings and that's what the team came up with and again we had our dhh folks also involved in this conversation got their feedback and looking and saying it's like looking the eye in iep being individualized not all kids need all services so we were looking at saying well do all kids need all interpreters to be there and that team coming together and the answer that they came up with those experts within our field said no but there may be times that they need to attend and that's where we look through that standard practice and what we could be doing with that i did have some conversation with the u of a and their programming there they're actually looking at adding in a more component under idea and really understanding as a related service what their role is with that i'm in the midst right now of working with holly so she's actually going to build a module so they understand the difference between what an association may say versus what the public law has to say and what idea has to say so we've got good conversation happening at multiple levels with that and i'm just you know from the the public comments at the last um board meeting i've gotten a number of calls from various different people and there's there's a lot of concern out there i'm concerned basically about kids and making sure that the information is on the table iep meetings are are really important and we need to get talked to special ed directors and the comment i got was if they went to due process and the attorney asked was everyone present at the table who has information about this student the answer would have to be no you know i think lynn it would be great for us to get a study session with you and really talk to some of those folks that are within those concerns because then we can always look this is an ongoing process and i know you know as well as i do and as well as everybody that's on this um call right now we all want to put students first we all want to make sure we're doing what's right for every student there and like i said we took all the information we had at the time we took all of the data that we had we took all the experts opinion within the agency and outside the agency and like i mentioned the university as well and really tried to make the best decision we could based on all that information but we're always open for additional conversation and i would be i'd welcome that and we have none we heard some last board meeting could we hear from the other two um sure and i think give somebody else a chance um so lynn and i do want to recognize that you're right we did hit it here at the last board meeting from one region of the state um the other two regions we had not heard voices from that one region that we did not hear from was mj's which she shared information on that but let's continue through the state and brian you'd be up next in our pattern with that can you talk to and speak to how your folks have utilized this format and the form information and how it's gone to the tod and how it's actually impacted the work they're doing yes thank you jay um so we had used the same form uh that was given to us from ptsd and all of our interpreters have followed that um they've submitted a documentation based on what information they felt applied to the students uh mr von palmer um i'm sorry this is uh this is david uh i started to interrupt you um it is 7 10 so it's been 90 minutes so i do want to give the interpreters a 10 minute break so we're going to return at 7 20.
and uh so i have a motion let's see where's the motion motion is right here so i'd like to bring a motion mr chair um that the cheshire board of education give a third and final reading to policy number 5131.911 student hazing student hazing bullying and direct the superintendent to put said policy into immediate effects is there a second that's a tie there i'm going to go with tim 10 seconds great yeah discussion mr gripper um yeah is there any discussion on that motion oh yes yes [Music] sorry i i i said this to you i have a problem with just a single act in my life um but uh kids are cured kids do silly things kids act irrationally and i want to know just you know and it could seem like a single act could seem like a significant thing and that child goes home in his eyebrows but that one significant act will be in that child's record and i just yeah so i i absolutely share the reservation around the ambiguity and the the language and a lot of times what we see in law is that legislators will write a law but judges define laws really and it goes through a judicial process before we really have a little bit more black and white around what is meant i'm definitely sensitive i think our administrative team is sensitive and i mentioned before that there are a lot of checks and balances in place and when we have significant incidents to the developmental you know place a student is in whether they're 7 or 17 is dramatically different the acts are dramatically different and there is some check and balance that allows for the superintendent over periods of time to remove items from a disciplinary file so you know if the behavior was as you indicated the concern a singular event that was not repeated for many years there's there's still an opportunity to expunge that i can also tell you as a former high school principal the absent the military academies you know we don't get requests for disciplinary records of students applying to college so i don't want to say that's not important because it is but um the impact may not be as severe about something that happened in the distant future and as i said there's a opportunity to expunge that if it is warranted but yeah i understand the ambiguities is tough it's tough for us administratively too well [Music] sorry i'm not talking here asking for a um a record uh the child is going to be labeled a bully for a potentially irrational act and um everyone in that peer group little stigma i don't know i just i wish i knew more i i i i can't wait for we can't wait for a court to define what significant means i i just have serious problems with it just a single act because i know you're going to be careful i guess but down the road i i don't know um yeah it's just the way the law is written it is problematic i don't disagree okay i i just i have i just want it on the record that i have a serious problem with the way that it's written right now as far as i can tell dr someone can just kind of give a quick i'm i'm i know firsthand that there are restorative practices you know when a child does something there's there's a process that we go through before getting to the point where you have to put it on their record so to speak um so i don't know if you can kind of shed some light on what what the process is restoratively sure if i mean it really what makes uh conversations around this more difficult is that it is so circumstantial and individual each case is incredibly unique we look at things like the time frame over which acts occurred we look at the severity of acts we look at any potential history of prior intervention and was this continued after prior intervention generally speaking from a disciplined perspective our philosophy is not that um you know it's not punitive in nature if punitive responses were successful the you know most outstanding organization in the community would be the cheshire correctional facility um and so we don't we don't come from a punitive we come from a restorative as you said sam or or uh constructive perspective it's about teaching the student to avoid these things in the future and that being said there are also consequences sometimes the behavior is significant enough that you know statutorily the the consequence is the identification of the bully label which i hate that myself to to say that oh now you're a bullying you're a bully we don't say that we say that the act what you had done meets the definition of bullying now what do we do to make it right how do we learn from this you're not a bully um but that's you know kind of our philosophy on things in a nutshell oh yes and go ahead is it safe to say that um this policy was reviewed and revised to meet changes in the law yeah it was um it reflects changes in the law and was drafted as um adam said by our legal team and we you know i think we really appreciated on the policy committee having reviewed past you know policy and the law that um what was presented to us by bertram moses was incredibly clear and as concise as can be under those circumstances great thank you because i very much agree with faith on this issue i you know legislating behavior is i don't know it's a difficult road to go down but i mean our our policies our school policies have to be in alignment with with the law and so um i don't know how we get around that but i do commiserate with you faith can i commiserate with both of you and in faith i i annie took the words on my mouth i we don't want uh the laws dictating definitions of behavior but i am encouraged however you know what dr sullin was uh what i and again i know there's no guarantees but i i guess the for parents out there that might be paying attention to this i i hope uh they realize that just because there may be a single act of bullying for their student doesn't necessarily mean it's going to hit this vague criteria i trust that dr sone and his team will follow process and procedures they've been doing to make sure that you know wrongs aren't happening this process so i i i will vote for this i i like but i think it's up to us in our school districts that if we're running situations with the definition of that term to give our legislators some feedback to help fix that if we get there but so but i am encouraged by a lot of the other changes that have happened to this policy since 2018 um which i will go through them all but so thank you thank you for doing the work and i know policy spends a lot of time on these issues so i appreciate your time on this seeing no uh further discussion all in favor of the motion it is uh six four uh against one against thank you mr chairman that concludes uh the policy uh update all righty we're in the home stretch so uh in our packets uh we are in section five which is approval of minutes we have minutes from meetings held on december 9th uh both the organizational and business meetings that evening as well as our meeting on january 13th so i uh move the board education approve the minutes from the meetings held on december 9th and january 13th 2022 is there a second second any discussion or changes additions edits to the minutes seeing as there are none uh i move the motion is of the board education approve the minutes from meetings held on december 9th and january 13th 2022 all those in favor please raise your hands it is unanimous thank you very much mrs harrigan correspondents do we have any correspondence this evening i was given no correspondence to read this evening thank you thank you very much and now we're at the much anticipated superintendent's report dr sullivan it's all yours thank you very much uh first i want to just begin by apologizing for my tardiness tonight unfortunately i had something come up that was unavoidable um in part i'm you know disappointed i hate to to miss uh our meetings but also to miss suez wick's moment of silence i considered her a dear friend and colleague you know her commitment to cheshire high school was incredible even after her graduation to come back and substitute and spend time there her smile made a difference every day at cheshire high that she was there so rest in peace sue um i want to take a second you know it's not rare that i applaud when we pass a motion but i think after six years of working diligently on addressing school modernization that was was warranted and i uh have to say i i'm wildly excited about the thought of moving this plan forward what it means for our kids and our community um you know they're this is educationally and logistically and financially beneficial for our community and i hope that you know those watching and our broader community will support this plan uh to that point you know mr peregini talked about where to find the school modernization info if you go to our home page there's a bold center of the page top of the page school modernization link if you click there you can follow the link to the town site which does have the financial calculator a little bit difficult to find i agree when you go to the town site but if it's easier you can just go to our site and get yourself there pretty quickly if i can interrupt you quickly i am tomorrow when i go in i will make sure that that's on the school modernization it is on there if you go to if you go to the town website you go to government to the drop down you go to school modernization but once you're there it's kind of difficult to find it you gotta click click here button then you gotta click another one it's uh it's a little needle in the haystack but we'll uh we can find it off our page maybe a bit easier um i wanna announce that the cheshire ed foundation has their annual trivia contest scheduled at the gideon wells dining hall on the campus of cheshire academy on saturday march 26th teams of four compete in fun trivia contests for a great cause the cheshire ed foundation does so much and sam is a member of that to support our school system by offering grants and scholarships it's a great organization the event begins at 7 00 pm byob may be the best part of it for some of us um i i you know with all due respect to my former teammates i've not had much success but i've always had fun um so i'll notify folks when tickets are available the cost is about fifty dollars per team uh so certainly very reasonable and uh worth a great night out good times um more good news we've seen a precipitous decline in covid cases since we've returned from school on january third during that first week back we averaged at that point more than 130 positive students daily for the week so a lot of positivity that that first week after christmas break the absentee rate in our schools was over 10 on average a lot of students out so uh i appreciate everybody's in the community support as we had that early dismissal uh that thursday to really address the needs of our kids and reschedule the professional development day for the 27th what we've seen this week is that we've gone from about 130 positive cases on average to 60.
see you all in closed session uh do you want to announce what time we're going to be back um dr bauer what are you uh 10 15 just to be honest all right see you all at 10 15. [Music] hello all right looks like we got uh quorum so we're going to go ahead and move on to item 11.01 dr bauer do you want to report is there any reportable action from closed session uh there's nothing to report okay all right um and with regard to 12.01 um if there is any uh future board agenda requests by all means please forward more to the administration and they will go ahead and deal with them um all right at this point i'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting at 13 uh at um 10 24 hi everyone have a good night thank you
perfect thank you thank you okay everyone it's uh 7 20 so we're back um thank you for that uh for that break um mr johnson i had some questions for you uh when you're ready sure uh sure so um and again i just want to kind of summarize uh you know what we've been hearing and and and what prior practice was so prior practice um you know was uh prior practice depended on uh the region or different depending on the region for depending on the school so in some regions uh educational interpreters attended iep meetings as a rule um and at pdsd they filled out a form uh that was then submitted to the iep team for the meeting as part of your standardization to ensure uniformity of services across the state you surveyed a variety of practices both within the agency without and you along with others made the decision to adopt the ptsd format statewide by using the form uh for all educational interpreters uh to submit it to uh to the iep team for their meetings is that is that correct yes and what we found was is in some regions of the state our interpreters weren't involved with the iep team at all okay so we wanted to give them an opportunity to be involved okay so um across the state you know an iep as you know is an individualized document so uh you know if we have 68 children and we looked at 60 ieps there none of them are going to be the same but in general are the educational interpreters part of the iep team well i think as debra mentioned earlier they're considered a related service and many related service folks are part of teams and giving information that's there we also know that sometimes our even our gen ed peers or our special education peers don't attend iep meetings but then we'll give a summary of performance that's happening with a particular student so that does become part of the record and that information is included either as part of the met determining services and or helping develop iep goals or service time but if i were to look at again the group of students that we're talking about um look at their survey there ieps the ieps have an iep team you know specific named individuals part of the ihp team uh you know their general education teacher some of their special education teachers some of those related service personnel um are the educational interpreters in general uh listed and are part of the iep teams for these students i think i know where you're you're going with that so if we look at the signature page that's when we would know who's in attendance right for any iep as you guys know there isn't a location that's on there that lists through either iep pro or other iep programs that specifically lists an iep educational interpreter but like i said we have many folks who attend all types of iep meetings and met meetings that um would be under that related services umbrella which could be a multitude of an ot a pt and slp which again may not attend all meetings but then their voices are heard through any iep okay so what you're telling me is the educational server interpreters are typically not part of the iep team there isn't a location on the signature page specifically for an educational interpreter i i can tell you that and it varies our state is a local control state so what varies from one district could be very different in the district right next door we find that within the itinerary program all the time as it relates to the services that we provide that are standardized but then how the school district goes about how they actually implement the other portions of the iep can vary from district to district i understand that in the itinerant services model the local school districts have a great deal of control as to how the ieps are formed but as the agency we see all of these right we have a survey of all of these ieps and i guess i'm not asking whether or not there's a signature line that says educational interpreter i'm asking if educational interpreter you know john doe has he been added to the iep because you can add people to the iep teams right when you build the ieps you add you make up your iep team and there's not a form that says educational to our proven that's not applicable to everyone with ieps um there's a form that you add names and their respective roles uh i've seen them i deal with ips for a long time um you know personally might beat up my first one uh so you know you add those roles and there could be it could be ot there could be speech therapy um and those people are named as individuals on the iep team and that's in uh and you know i know that the tools um the tools enable you do that the it tools enable you to do that but even if the ip tools didn't enable you to do that that's not necessarily make something right or wrong either but i guess what i'm hearing from you though is that educational interpreters as you as having seen ieps across hundreds of students that we serve in the internet uh itinerary services uh organization you're saying that most of the time the educational interpreter is not a member of the iep so i think you're bringing up a great question and i really think it's something that our team could go back and do an audit and actually give that information in february when we come together we're going to have a work study session with the board and i think that would be a great opportunity for us to come back to the table and give some of that historical data that we have and then also look at where we've been moving forward together i could look at that and give a report back to the the board during that work study session right and i'm interested in current i mean historical is is fine but i'm really interested in of the ieps that we help serve and you're right school districts provide some of the services on their own it's we only you know provide certain services uh for our expertise uh do we have educational interpreters as members of the of the iet iep team is that a frequent occurrence is that in all cases is that no cases is that in 75 percent of the cases um we're interested in whether or not these iep teams include educational interpreters and from what what you're telling me is i guess if you're saying that they're that they're your senses that they're generally that you don't know the exact number but in general you believe that they are not members of the iep team so again i would need to look at the data that we have we have just over 1200 students within the itinerary program so i could pull our teams together to research that and then have that prepared for the board in february and really speak to that i really want to speak you know i would be speaking from the cuff and i'd rather not do that here but i'd rather have the real hard numbers for you and we would look at the current ieps that we have in powerschool so we could pull that and see how many of them had educational interpreters attending versus not attending so it's not just attending just as a member of the team i'm i haven't i'm not speaking about who's attending yet although we're going to get there i'm talking about who is a named member of the iep teams and when we survey all of the ieps that we help serve do what percentage of them you know for for deaf students obviously there's no blind students need them unless they're deafblind um for the students that we serve that use educational interpreters what percentage of them are named members of the iep team or are not members of the iep team it is what i'm looking at that's that specific point uh the second part is uh do you are you aware that of parents asking whether to name an educational interpreter as part of an iep currently i have not received any information from our locations of parents asking why an educational interpreter was not present at a meeting not present again i'm not not talking about attendance at meetings i'm talking about uh are you aware of a situation where a parent has has in an iep meeting or called an iep meeting for the purposes of at least saying i would like to add an education the educational interpreter that works with my child to the iep i am not aware of that but again i could look at our current data and do a deeper dive for our february meeting okay uh so if we go if we move on to attendance uh it is now you know you've now pushed this form model out to the engineering services organization uh so the agency you know what you're telling me is that you've made an agency decision to i would say discourage or prevent educational interpreters from attending iep is that is that correct i don't know if that's the wording i would use what i would say is that we want to make sure we're reviewing all the information about the services a student is receiving to make sure that it's deemed appropriate for an interpreter to go to that meeting and that's the process that we're looking at and that's why that information is provided up to the tod the lead supervisor tod and the director so again that team can come together and really look at the needs of the child the needs of the program and then the needs of of our educational interpreters they're they're still important i mean that process have there been any instances where recently since the forum uh practice has been uh implemented had there been any instances where it was determined that an educational interpreter was needed at an iep meeting absolutely there has okay so since so so since this change has been made there have been determinations that educational interpreters were needed in an iep meeting and did they in fact attend those iep meetings they did under the direction of the tod and the lead tod and the director okay and that for the times that the uh it was determined by others that the educational interpreters uh would not need to be at the meeting has has the educational interpreter ever disagreed with that uh determination and thought that they should contend there has been some conversation um within a couple of the regions of the state um with interpreters understanding um how we're utilizing that important information but then again going back to the iep team the the team and the res responses that we've received back from our schools is they felt like they had all the data that they needed from the educational interpreter at that meeting could we get numbers of how many um interpreters have attended meetings who were requested can we see some numbers and lynn i would be happy to pull that together for our february meeting that would be awesome thank you and then uh for has a parent ever requested that an educational interpreter be present at a meeting the only request that i'm aware of is if a family has requested that it was to have access for the child to be at the iep meeting either it could be a student-led meeting or maybe we have a high school student that's in attendance of their iep meeting and then we have provided the educational interpreter to provide access for that student uh so you're saying if the student because you know there are times for older students that they age in the ietv you're saying that in instances where the student attends the iep meeting uh the parents have asked for the educational interpreter to be present it's been rare that our family has asked that because again since we have a process now we've known that on the front end and we've approved that interpreter to go to the meeting but so sometimes the parents might be a little anxious and maybe they're not aware that that educational interpreter is going to attend so they may reach out to us just to confirm but it hasn't been like a parent request because we try to be more proactive than reactive with that and then that way that proactive approach is assigning the educational interpreter to attend okay um in cases where the child is not present at the iep meeting has a parent ever asked for the educational interpreter to be president not to my knowledge but again i could reach out to the team to see if some information has been provided okay um and on these iep meetings where the educational interpreter is not present uh are is the agency is it the standard practice of the agency to obtain written consent of the parent uh for the excusal or lack of attendance for the education um we have not developed that procedure with that and that has not been requested by any one of our school districts or charters okay so uh the agent so it's it's our agencies practice to not send the educational interpreters in these in these cases but you do not believe that we're getting parental consent for that that is not something that has been you know bubbled up to my level at this point um again you know when we look at idea and we look at the practice with our school districts and charters they're the holder of the iep so they are the case manager they are you know the lea that's in charge of that iep so if there was information that they requested from us if someone was going to be in non-attendance and they wanted parent permission we would provide that and work collaboratively with them but none of the districts nor charters have requested that from us since they are the lead and case manager those are all my questions for for now is there anyone else i don't know if we still wanted to hear from the other leagues you know i think um i mean we certainly can i mean you know we're we are going to talk about best practices and uh you know things of that nature so we certainly can't if there's some interest that they can briefly uh give us an extended income okay thank you and i know brian was going to share how how he's utilized uh the format and how the tod has been able to use that information and brian are you still us there you are hi yes i'm still here thank you um so in region 2 uh historically we have attended iep meetings before in the past so this is a bit of a new venture for us but we've all complied with the processes that have been requested which is filling out the ptsd form and i do know that the ptsd form um was utilized in a way that on their campus if an interpreter was with a student for a couple hours only they would be providing that form the rest of the time they were with deaf staff so who could speak to the language use of the students so i think we're kind of trying to take the form and mold it to what we do which i think could definitely be beneficial as in the past we've never been asked to provide anything written ongoing there are tods that we work with in our region who will reach out and say hey can you provide something for us so there it has been around the board that they've been asked to provide that but nothing standardized again as jay was mentioning nothing completely standardized across the whole agency so we're starting to move in that direction um and i do know that there were many times that interpreters have requested specifically to go to iep meetings um and i don't believe uh they were allowed to go to the meetings so um there's seems to be a little bit of inconsistency that way um but i think that as we move forward in this new direction i think we can all come together and find a way to create a more standardized system that creates a voice for the educational interpreters um because i do support some of the opinions that were voiced today regarding the interpreters being in attendance at the meeting and i'd like to specify attendance at the meeting is not to go and interpret at the meeting for a student that they see every day it would be attendance at the meeting to sit at the table with the other members of the team and we've done that all all along in the past so i i would hope that that there would be some discussion in the future about that that we could do that um i know we have had an interpreter approved to go to the meeting to interpret for a high school student who was in attendance at her own meeting but i i think that having a little more voice from around the agency from some of the staff that we work with out at the member schools i think that would be a great opportunity to find kind of a happy balance that way so other than that if there's any additional information you need i'm sure we'll all be gathered for the february session and we can provide some of that for you thank you brian thank you and we don't want to leave out region one i know linda you're also i think there okay hi oh there we go now you can see me yes before colvin i was the lead director for swr which is which is yuma and in yuma swr we attended iep meetings and we also provided an interpreter if the student was there so that the interpreter who is with the student every day was part of the meeting then when covet hit i took over as lead for the northern and western part of arizona also and we found that there were some of the newer interpreters there that had not been trained on how to attend a meeting and what to say at a meeting so there were some problems that came up so i understand the need to have the same thing all around and to figure out what to do like our questions we did always write a paragraph and give it to the tod and it was put in an iep that was standard but our form that we use was different from pdsds was different from what the other regions used so we've now handed out the pdsd form to our interpreters and they're using that to fill out and they're requesting to go if they would like to go um i know one we we felt it was best if that interpreter did not go because their brand new interpreter i have not had a chance to train that interpreter on what to say at a meeting and we didn't want any problems to happen because of that i have had a couple interpreters who went to the meetings but they were as the interpreter because they were high school students who attended their own meetings and they were deaf deaf that need an interpreter at the meeting and whatever your decision whatever the decision is that's made i know that i've talked with my interpreters in yuma and we will honor and respect the decision and abide by whatever the policy is thank you linda and you know i want to kind of reiterate you know what the three interpreters have said with this and the leads that are out there that we looked at as all the information that we had from the entire continuum from zero to a hundred and what we were looked at saying is what can we do as a standard practice to involve all folks within the agency all iep members and our partnering school districts and charters and what we made was the decision with all voices present and as i mentioned before we also reached out to our dhh our tod counterparts and making sure that we had the information from them as well and what the leads had kind of touched on in some cases we had a lot of documentation on the front end and in some cases we had zero documentation on the front end so we improved that part of the process and then also considering the need and purpose for the interpreter to be there one of the things that just recently came up in with another region of the state was an interpreter was being asked to attend an iep meeting because they were considering using them as a paraprofessional and as we all know within our agreements our interpreters are there to interpret for a child and not to cross that boundary over to a paraprofessional now that doesn't mean they're not another adult in the room that can assist you know from one thing to another but there's a very fine line between interpreting and acting as a paraprofessional and what we're trying to do is align those efforts throughout the state so our school districts and charters understand our role as part of asdb and the needs of that child that may need a one-on-one paraprofessional assigned to them and the interpreter is not in that role so that's been one of the things that we have found through this process we're able to take a higher view of all of the schools and all of the regions and finding that in some cases in the past we may have interpreters that have been in dual roles attending those iep meetings in that dual role and really thinking on how much time they were interpreting versus how much time they may have been a paraprofessional and thinking about what's in the best interest of that child and looking at the district to provide that pera rather than having our interpreters in those dual roles so that's one of the things that we found as as almost an unintended consequence we didn't realize that that was happening but as we collected more data from our school districts and charters we're able to see that there had been some misunderstandings throughout the field of interpreting and how do we make sure that we make that a strong agreement between the districts and myself and the districts and our agency and the districts and each one of the regions so that's one of the things that's going on and a matter of fact we're going to be holding a meeting with one of our districts that had that misunderstanding coming up in the next week or so so we can understand our role and their role as it comes to the education of the child thank you i just want to read a couple things i have tons of information i can read on all night but i'll save it for our work session but just quote this was from the eipa classroom interpreting eipa standards the interpreter should be present at iep meetings as a member of the educational team and not as an interpreter the interpreter should share observations about how well the student understands the interpreted classroom or any other issues related to interpreting hands and voices the individuals with disabilities education act of federal law has classified educational interpreters as a related service provider this means that the your child's educational interpreter should participate in iep meetings as a service provider not as an interpreter for the student and i have more but that's all i'm going to bore you with tonight um thank you for listening to me uh thank you lynn are there any more uh comments from the board again this is an information only uh item so we can't take any action here but if there's any any other comments we'll move on and i don't see any so let's move on to 4.01 information item finance report thank you president nigro our most recent finance committee meeting was held last thursday on january 13th with board members gordon jantz and wonders superintendent reichman and principal akap meetus from the phoenix campus the formats as well as more detailed information pertaining to the agency's fiscal update was provided and discussed with the committee in summary were reviewed in detail and discussed the budget fiscal year 2022 numbers the available cash balance student teacher ratios and filled full-time equivalents as well as the grant revenues and expenditure reports we review the per student revenue and cost and also spent some time with principal acap needs describing the current student enrollment population on the phoenix campus we hope to be able to have our directors for early learning and the itinerant services programs provide similar information regarding their student population to the committee please note that the business services staff were not able to prepare the december 31st finance reports due to the agency being closed the last two weeks of the year and did not have enough time between the return break and the due date for report submission as such all the finance reports that i will be discussing and summarizing is based on data as of november 30th we will provide the december 31st and january 31st reports at the march 3rd board meeting as referenced on page one of the financial report asdb had 2130 enrolled students as of december 1st an increase of about 22 students from last year's student count of 2108.
so a really as i said precipitous drop-off the absentee rate this week has been below 5 so dramatically better which is really gives me hope and optimism that we're on the right side of this we're also offering a booster clinic in partnership with just for cot that'll be offered at cheshire high school on thursday january 27th please see the chesapeake website for more information or to book an appointment for your child age 5 to 18 it's also available for our staff at this point so encourage anybody that's interested to to seek that out moving on to my next item it's the aces open choice we're not required to vote on this but i think it's important to have conversation and communication around this we currently have open choice students enrolled in our schools that's that's great they're a tremendous benefit uh to our community and they provide a diverse school environment and the funds that we receive from the state help provide additional supports and programming uh we think it's really a mutually beneficial program and so as you know marlene and myself and ryan murphy we evaluate our enrollment next year unfortunately you know if anybody remembers anything from my budget presentation i think it's two things medical benefits and you know ballooning enrollment so there aren't as many new spots to available to offer next year but um we do have uh several openings that we were going to offer based on the lowest spots of enrollment across the district at the elementary grades chapman is looking at one seat in kindergarten one in first and two in third grade norton won in first grade do a little one in kindergarten and nine excuse me five students in ninth grade at cheshire high school because we're opening these seats doesn't necessarily mean that they get filled last year we offered 14 seats and eight were ultimately filled mostly at the high school so we're offering them they may or may not be filled and we receive three thousand dollars per student from the state of connecticut like as i said it goes to provide additional supports and programming um predominantly directed toward open choice services so the cost is offset dramatically there so that's what you know our plan was to submit uh as i said not perhaps the the growth we would like but um under the circumstances we're happy to do anything um and then finally covid19 emails there there are none for tonight's meeting um and so that concludes my report thank you i'll certainly entertain any questions sam yeah show your hand um dr i just want to say um thank you to whoever idea that is to send out the interest in the late and early um arrival just to study hall to eliminate at least decrease you know population um i i'm i'm thinking that that is helping in assisting with the covet numbers you know the decrease in covenant numbers yeah i mean that was uh a student suggestion pre-omicron uh for junior um privilege that you know we revisited post omicron and felt it was in everybody's best interest to lighten the load where possible in terms of the population density yeah that's something that's working so i apologize my second question is how are we messaging the open choice program we we message that through new haven okay uh new haven communicates that through aces to their um you know entire population of uh school-age eligible eligible children and we you know hope that they get filled from that perspective and it's okay uh one of the i think the downsides is i've had numerous conversations with students that are open choice participants over the years as a principal and superintendent and we are the northernmost town the the farthest drive from new haven uh to participate last year you know when i found out exactly how much time the kids had to be out at the bus before six o'clock in the morning for high school it's obscene so we added a number of seats for the high school run to um necessitate two buses so that it i think it it changed the pickup time by 45 minutes which is significant but it's still very early and so um hopefully the message gets out and you know our kids are having a positive experience and you know they tell a friend and we're able to fill those seats just kind of follow up to that do you have the number of kids who leave or attend from our district their magna schools i could get that for you unfortunately i don't know that off the top of my head that it's a limited number uh tony's suggesting one uh we do have some we have a diversity of magnet opportunities or vocational ed or you know so uh i can provide a more comprehensive uh report to the board on that i actually have a report for that i said on the governing board afford it too yeah the aces boy i think it's one don't quote me but it was pretty yeah at least into that the magnet program in new haven i think we yeah that goes up full time we have more than that who attend the educational center for the arts which is a part-time magnet program in in new haven that our kids from chs go to i'm sorry adam even uh just a couple comments um you know it wasn't too long ago i think that you know that you had reported that uh for open choice i think um students participating was at 30 so at least we're up to 37 which is you know a little better but no progress right you know it's progress right exactly so i'm glad you know that we still have seats uh still available to help expand the program thank you um and uh secondly um i'm happy to see that the the cheshire um education foundation is having that trivia because i know that the team that uh i was on with mr mrs ham i believe uh we took third place that the last time was offered so i think yeah you guys are formidable opponents you guys are prize winners that's not gaming yeah oh man we took second place one year they took second place challenge accepted that sounds like a challenge they took second place the year that i couldn't make it that's the uh i was on their team the year before we didn't place it it kind of hurt a little bit yeah i think they gave me a prize though anyway so anyway uh yes uh i'm glad to see uh open choice releases increasing and uh lastly is seeing our coveted numbers are going down amen yes sam yeah jeff um about the early dismissal for i just wanted to report that i have heard from teachers how much they appreciate having that time and all of the half days that they had built into the schedule last year i think and i i just want people to know that the reason they appreciate it is not because they go home midday and sit around on their couches eating bonbons they really need that time to put together materials when they have students who are coming in from quarantining at home being remote learners and and other students going to being remote learners on a daily basis it's different and they are working really hard to put materials together so that they can send home the correct materials to keep kids on track with their learning and i know that marlene knows this and jeff knows this but um i have heard reports of how much that's appreciated and even if it's only 60 kids now instead of um i you know it might be worth thinking about adding another early dismissal day down the road for for the teachers so that they can do what they need to do to keep all the kids uh better on track so i just wanted to report that and and um let you know that it really is appreciated when it happens thank you if i'm hearing it it's going to be it's it's um it's backed up by professional literature of late about burnout in the profession and that you know i could shower you with gratitude and uh even if i gave you a day off the work file's up tomorrow and it's it's contributing to burnout so giving people time they need to execute the additional work and for us one of the other components is the skills that they need so marlene and her team our administrators put a lot of time in acceleration last year which lends confidence to people to be able to navigate the challenges that we face this year and so yeah certainly that time is very much appreciated thank you any other questions from the board and superintendent's report thank you dr song um moving on we have no old business new business uh it's a few quick items from my my for me uh the board knows but there's a cable legislative breakfast coming up on january 28th i know at least one of us a couple of us have already registered for it we're in area seven so it's not just czech republic schools board members that will be there but area seven starts from cheshire all the way down to milford it's about school districts so there should be ample representation from boards there in addition to and in no particular order representative linehan representative abrams uh and representative zupkis i heard back from a couple of them but there'll be more from the area so i encourage us if we can make it it is in the morning which is kind of a mixed blessing because good work schedules not everybody can make it but it's not just to hear from our legislators they hear from us but we can also hear from other board members and get some ideas what's going on with priorities so if you can make it great i'll see if it'll be recorded so this will be available via webinar for us um i one other item uh i uh somehow got taught in doing the ymca polar plunge uh for camp sloper yeah yeah you do want to see plunge in the cold water i don't blame i think a lot of people's town would love to see that um it's at the end of february it's worthwhile cause uh we do have a team treasurer set up and i believe that after someone you have a team cheshire public schools uh i'll forward links out to folks who make donations um doug levins who's the community co director here mca is uh it's hard to turn that turned down he's quite the persuader so uh you know we're trying to raise a lot of money for those kids and beat sunnington this year so anything you can do would help um i i am going to take liberty as chair to do one thing tonight i'm going to embarrass my daughter so my daughter victoria is a senior at cheshire high school uh she's very heavily into her design um she was entered in the connecticut regional art show and she actually won the gold key award i just found out the other day she wouldn't thank you she wouldn't tell me my wife would tell me and i didn't even see the artwork until my shoulder was a little embarrassed but uh very proud of her for that and i know the artwork will be on display uh in hartford for a couple weeks and also further embarrassment for her she uh got accepted into new york school of visual arts as well as the georgia school of art design so hopefully she's going to become illustrator or animation expert we'll see just so you know that it's not just a boastful parent i saw the artwork it's amazing so stay tuned for our social media i did ask our art department chair mr casarto to get student permission to post the artwork on our social media accounts hopefully you'll see those up there soon very amazing stuff thank you it wasn't as victoria i think there was a there's also a handful of students two other students which is great uh that artwork is amazing um you can't really see on the website but it's amazing how talented these kids are so now that i've gloated and embarrassed my daughter enough i am uh i am done with the chair portions update uh very quickly upcoming meetings uh we continue our budget process next week there's a second public public budget review uh administer review of charter accounts uh january 27th at 7 pm that will be virtual um there's also some more discussion some responses from the board that night depending on that meeting goes we may have more workshops to be determined uh we have scheduled a february 3rd meeting especially in board event to adopt the budget if we're ready and necessary and um some upcoming committee meetings we have a calendar committee on january 31st at 4 p.m and then as we head into february we have a policy committee of february 8th at 6 30 p.m and i'll leave it at that that's all i have for meetings uh i call for a motion to adjourn mr gripple seconded by faith all those in favor thank you everyone the meeting is adjourned
the increase is primarily within the itinerant k-12 and birth to age 3 programs offset by a decrease in the site based k-12 and preschool students when you review the current school year 21 2022 student count you'll see that as november 1st we had 2143 students and as i mentioned as of december 1st we one hundred had thirty so a d slight decrease of about 13 students from last month as of january 1st the student count has risen to 2167 and included in those numbers is desert voices preschool students at 2 and fbc preschool students at 45. on page 2 the average revenue cost and voucher reimbursement averages per student is shown by program you'll see that the 21 excuse me the 2020 2021 school year student count the average voucher revenue per student ranges between 26 to thirty two thousand dollars the average fee for service and membership fee revenues per student is a little over fifty three hundred dollars the average cost per student is anywhere between seven thousand to seventy six thousand the seven thousand would be for our birth to three students and the highest would be seventy six thousand for the tucson campus students preschool and phoenix students average about 31 000 and our itinerant students average at about 15 000.