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so this is our you know outside of salaries transportation is our largest line item and um i'll pause there mr gripper for questions andrew you had your hand raised sure van can you just go back to the last slide with the insurance number yes so is that am i so it's a 40 000 liability insurance increase so we use hd seeker so do we shop that to multiple parties i mean that's a 40 increase yeah that's that's what hd seeger does they shop um different carriers for us as our broker so between property insurance and liability you're looking at a 60 increase well no it's whatever 35 of those two lines combined right the average of 23 plus 39 percent right yeah it's it's a huge increase um higher than we've seen in many years is it because of like claims or is that just the industries dictating that yeah it's the industry it's it's the it's the broad claims that are happening you know with all the um hurricanes and and other events that have driven up insurance costs this is how the insurance company make it up it's really not uh because we've had extraordinarily high claims at all it's the industry and they're seeing this on the town side as well unfortunately maybe it's time to look at htc here i mean i i know that they're you know they do a lot of municipal um coverage but yeah i mean in fairness you know hd seeger um i know we had talked about it in the benefits section but you know they did shop at workman's comp insurance and so we saved about a hundred thousand dollars this year moving from kerma to travelers and for the next year we're expecting savings of about 72 000 against that line so it really is market forces that are driving this um and again hopefully we'll get some better news when the shopping process is finished but that's where it is currently thanks man okay timmy you had your hand raised sorry man i'm not sure if i missed this but i'm just looking at that transportation line going from 3 million to 3.6 million from extended to 2021 yeah to this year's budget what's so i mean okay we didn't do a lot of transportation runs in 2021 because of the pandemic so we were well below our budget at the 2.9 million if we look back at the history you know the three we've been in the three and a half million dollar range so that was a covet pickup it's really sort of um it's not the regular daily school bus routes morning afternoon it's the sports and the activities and stuff like that ended up getting reduced i know sports were reduced last year so because you were still doing the bus routes well it was a combination right so yes we were doing the bus routes but you know for example the high school was um you know there was no uh no bus routes for the high school on fridays okay yep all right gotcha yep yep yep okay so it was a combination of things yeah so the 2.9 million that was the actual expenditure let's call it a covert anomaly sure no no no okay that that makes sense and the um the one other thing that i'll just point out as unfortunate as as it is with these uh i've seen it recently the catalytic converter that's including with our own vehicles electric vehicles don't have catalytic converters so electric school buses hopefully in the not so distant future so another benefit pros are pros and cons to everything but that's one pro for electric thank you vin you're welcome thanks evan uh faith have your hand raised so uh this i i know we we purchased this the property and the liability insurance with the town and this may be a verboten question but have we ever considered or explored regional risk pools like ex cooperating with other towns and expanding our purchasing power well on these these two lines of insurance no we've i mean we've been uh with htc girl although we've shopped you know for different brokers we've been with htc girl who's been placing our insurance for several years um on the there's two places where we are taking advantage of risk pools you know one was when we were with kerma for our workers comp insurance which as i said just a few minutes ago we did exit kerma because we got a better rate from travelers and the other place where part of a multi-town municipal arrangement is our stop-loss insurance for medical with ct prime you know that's ten different um municipalities and or boards of ed that that cooperate with that but um that's a good question faith i mean we're we'll look at we're looking at this a little bit closer as to you know what are we going to do with those two particular insurance lines so we really had insurance from karma like bad karma oh not karma kerma c-i-r-m-a but that's a good one all right nevermind thanks okay okay then go ahead yep all right so um just to wrap up on on transportation the um you know that go is our provider that contract runs through june of 2024.

you know we were working aggressively on the school monetization plan we trim our requests down to bare bones but we really do need to start increasing the capital investment in our buildings beyond those buildings that will be replaced through the next generation plan we do have and we're almost done i did want to just point out as i do every year we do have an emergency fund in the event of some type of a of a repair need that we can't cover through our operating budget it's called the building maintenance cnr fund you know any disbursements from the fund which currently has a 233 000 balance needs to get approval of the board and then approval of the town council but you know that is there and you could see based on the list we've used it in the past for boiler replacements emergency roof replacements work on the utility tunnels in the high school back in 2011.

you know there's two percent escalations per year up until the last year of that contract which is a couple of years out and the way there's just a couple of things i wanted to mention um we are in the process of upgrading the software that we use to for routing and one thing that's unique about cheshire is that we plan the routes for the buses based on where the students live you know we don't let our service provider of that go do that and so you know our transportation manager luther miller you know does a really really good job of looking to you know improve bus routes consolidate stops wherever we can and that's been a significant savings over the years other things that we've done even though we didn't have summer school last year you know by changing the the locations where summer school is held to highland only you know we've reduced the number of buses that we need over the summer and this is we only provide buses for summer school for special education you know we do some route sharing for special ed and and technical school routes with other districts we are a member of aces where we do some route sharing on the special education side we we've been in contract with them i believe this is currently our third year you know we do try and mitigate you know costs wherever we can with fuel prices by locking in and then we've looked at programs such as you know can we have students opt out and we do that if for example a student at the high school is issued a senior or junior parking permit they're opted out of transportation so we can you know reduce the number of students that you know would be assigned to a bus run so we're always looking at ways where we can you know reduce the cost of transportation to the extent we can um on the operations side i'll pause for the question before i give you the breaking news here all right thanks and with the buses vince's you've been here have we reduced the number of buses yeah we have over the years and you know we were over 40 bus runs at one point and you know we're i believe it at 37 or 38 this year i'd have to just double check the number but a a regular ed bus run is roughly 60 000 a year so it's significant savings when you're able to reduce a bus run the special ed runs they're not um they're not quite that high it's about forty thousand dollars per year those are smaller uh buses and we also use vans in some cases which are even less expensive to run you know plus we have as i was saying we have a dozen vehicles you know with board of ed drivers that are significantly less expensive than having that outsourced dad go okay trying to get a lot of bang for our buck all right you ready for a little budget good news yes let's hear it i really do so we've gotten two grants approved in the last um 60 days that are very significant and i'm very pleased to let you know the first one is uh through the emergency connectivity fund which is basically an e-rate program um we received 649 that is used to replace student chromebooks that either are or will be at end of life now this is a grant that michael papa our technology director works with e-rate online which is a service provider that we use so that that award is already in effect it requires zero outlay of funds from the schools now we'll be able to purchase roughly eighteen hundred student chromebooks with that funding we have roughly four thousand two 200 chromebooks either in students hands that they take home or that they leave you know here in school and they use during the school day so our fleet of chromebooks is very very large this 640 000 essentially what it does is it is it frees up money that you know we have you know in our budget for chromebook replacements um that we'll be able to use for other things such as to upgrade the smart boards from smart ports to smart flat panels we funded the smart board project through capital we have not been doing that in recent years we're funding it out of our operating budget and again whenever we free up a budget line like the account that we would use for chromebook purchases which is the capital equipment account we can use it in other places so you know if next year we do have a need on the textbook line or you know on the on the library periodical line you know we can allocate the funding to do that so that's grant number one and then grant number two slightly different grant type but in june we applied for round five of the school security competitive grant and we [Music] were awarded 959 687 dollars now this grant is specifically for physical building security improvements it's a reimbursement grant we get 45 percent reimbursed so to get the 959 we have to spend 2.1 million it's important to note though that we do have funding allocated from our capital budget for some of the security improvements that we applied for this grant for not the least of which is the person traps that we installed at four schools this summer um so again very significant you know grants which you know either relieve our operating budget in the case of the first one or provide reimbursement against capital expenditures in the case of the school security one okay so that's my good news for this budget season and i see mr gripper there are some questions yes uh firstly uh vin congratulations to you and your team as uh mrs rosenberg also said um that i know that writing grants can be a tv tedious process so uh that's uh those are some big wins there um let's see i guess since faith's name shows up first faith you are on your hand go ahead kudos on that one on those two those are great hey um are you restricted in your ability your ability to shift accounts um do they have to stay or funds do they have to stay within the specific account or can you shift funds between accounts the way that process works is that we will offset during the school year generally we stay within the account line so support services stays within support services okay so we don't transfer funds we'll overexpend one where one is below budget and then the board formally approves at the year end the transfers between those account groupings so certified non-certified support instructional services maintenance and operations and medical benefits so that's how it works we don't do intra year fun transfers um so when we look at the monthly finance reports you know we we do spend some time and more so as we get to the end of the year showing here's where we're over here's where we're offending it and that's how we manage the budget and um you know stay you know of course we always have to stay within our budget the technically the board members are responsible if we ever go over our full budget right which will not happen on my watch i value my job so we'll always be within budget so just to make sure we can't say take 649 000 from um our equipment instructional equipment and put it in oh i don't know health benefits or um we could do that if if if that was illegal to desire no i'm not saying it is but it just could you could as long as you're within the total appropriation of the you know that's provided by the council you could do those kinds of shifts okay and there's as i say there's really two ways to do it over expend you know in one account where you and offset it with accounts where you're below budget or you could do formal transfers we've not done that you know here in cheshire previously but it could be done thank you you're welcome tim thanks adam hi vin thank you for doing this with her with regard to the first grant i is it i'm assuming it's safe to say that any of these new chromebooks would be in compliance with data privacy laws yeah none of them everything that we're doing none of that would change in terms of you know how the devices are managed um the protections that we offer through those devices i know there was a data privacy presentation i guess a month ago you know by our technology team and mike papa technology director so we would buy devices that is you know certainly compliant and you know while we're on the topic so what happens with the chromebooks is the chromebooks rely on the google platform um and there's a you know essentially an expiration date where google stops updating a particular device with the latest version of google software so that's when they're determined to be end of life it's really it's not so much our decision if the device is working and it's compliant and it can continue to get its operating system off the updates from google will keep them running but we do have a large number of devices that are reaching end of life you know this year and next year that need to be replaced and so that's what this allocation is for and again it's only student chromebooks we cannot use these funds for any staff chromebooks thank you for that yeah uh um i guess i'll just say as a as a parent i the date of privacy i i personally wonder if the the laws go far enough i mean google's gonna be light years ahead of any laws as far as i'm concerned and they do make money off of data as far as i know so it's just a general concern for me i don't know what the answer is i couldn't begin to tackle it but it is um it is concerning i mean it's not just google it's facebook all these social media that i assume they're making money off of data um so it's concerning um anyway thank you for going out and getting the grant i do appreciate it uh just a couple of other things um this isn't i mentioned this because we did some infrastructure upgrades to the network um 295 000 that was a capital project appropriation that was our net cost we had a 492 thousand dollar capital appropriation but we received 197 000 any rate funding for that equipment so again this goes and speaks to the fact that we do try and find every available um funding reimbursement grant or in the case of e-rate funding we do take advantage of those programs when they're available as we've seen our smart boards start to fail we are not replacing the old smart boards with the projector mounted smart boards technology is dated so we are moving to the smart interactive flat panels we waited a long time to make this purchase decision working with marlene and the curriculum staff as well as technology we shopped a bunch of different boards and uh it's kind of fortunate that we waited because smart came out with an interactive flat panel that's um at a very attractive price so we've replaced 83 boards over the last year or so and there are 28 boards that are on order that are being installed you know march 22nd so this means that we've replaced roughly a third of the of the boards over the years and we'll continue to make progress on that as i said that grant that we receive will help us accomplish the goal of replacing that the smart board equipment we just moved to a cloud-based fax server that saves us the funds from having to buy server equipment in the future and we've eliminated the telephone line cost so this is you know web-based fax server we no longer have fax machines in in the district faxes basically come through email now and then the last thing i wanted to mention is employee compliance training and professional development again this has been a focus in school district operations so we were able to take the alice um violent intruder training and incorporate it into the vector online learning platform which we've been using and then we also launched a pd program for our classified staff this past year these are just updates they're really not budget requests but i thought it was important to share just because we're on this particular topic so what i'm going to show you you know on the next screen is this is a report that comes out of the vector online training program and if if you look real quickly so one of the required online training programs is bloodborne pathogen exposure prevention for our certified staff 400 employees completed it so 99 of our employees completed it we have a very deliberate um follow-up process to make sure that our employees are keeping on top of the required annual training and that's what you know all these items represent bullying recognition cyber security email and messaging safety first aid if you look at the total as of this report which was run last week 97.7 percent of the required training has been completed that two point you know three percent that hasn't completed a lot of that has to do with employees who are on leaves it's not employees that have ignored us um because we don't let um employees ignore us so we are really in great shape since introducing this platform and then as i mentioned a minute ago we rolled out alice training we used to do in person we are able to now do it on this vector platform and so we just launched that a couple of months ago 91.3 of our staff has completed that training so we are following up with the you know roughly 70 employees that are listed here is not completed again some of those employees may be out but this has really been helpful to ensure compliance with you know mandated as well as optional training and then this is just a quick snapshot here if you look on the right side this is professional development that we rolled out for non-certified staff communication skills conflict resolution customer service that we use especially for our maintenance and our technology staff interpersonal skills teamwork this is something that our you know non-certified staff has been asking for for years to give them more professional development opportunities that are specific to their jobs and so i'm really happy with the success of these programs um and a lot of this training we are doing as you can see on the left we're using google webinar google oh sorry google webinars scott's quick bites that's scott conway um you know one of our you know technology educators we're using deer oaks which is our employee assistance program provider and then we're using hybrid video instructor led interactive workshops so these are not high cost training modules but they've they've proven to be very very um successful and our employees you know appreciate it and so that wraps up support services which you know you could see just looking at if you drew a trend line it has has been increasing it's been kind of up and down but the general trend line has been increasing a lot of that increase has to do with the cost of student transportation and i will pause there to see if there are any questions on support services ben i don't see any questions okay last um section here is maintenance and operations and so i'm gonna jump in um and unless you tell me to not go mr grippo uh well let me uh how long is uh how many slides you got ben um it's about 20 slides but some of them are going to be really quick there's not a lot of detail that you haven't seen in these um all right we don't need this one yeah we've seen this one plenty so um yeah go ahead go ahead oh you when you want me to stop i'll stop people everybody knows this average age of our building is a 71 years our schools are used not only as schools but schools and community facilities so you could see on the right hand side this is pre-covered but our buildings get a lot of views and i i know that the board members all know that and ms rosenberg is new to the board and i'm confident that she's aware of that um this is what this slide would look like in three years if we go forward and get approval for the new north elementary school and the new norton elementary school so we would have two buildings at a year old so our average age would would come down quite a bit obviously we'll still need to maintain those older buildings until they come offline but that would be the impact of school modernization phase one and i apologize that's the next generation phase one plan to us uh maintenance and operations five percent of our budget it's about a four million dollar total line item important thing though that i'd like to point out is of our maintenance budget of it goes to electricity heating garbage and recycling water gas propane and sewer use so you know even though it's a significant line item at four million dollars a significant portion of that does go to utilities and heating not to repairing buildings so the converse is what are we using for maintenance lines outside of utilities and heat and it's about 2.5 million however 31 of that is cleaning services um so the the amount that we allocate for building improvement is a few lines it's 596 000 for repairs and improvements to the buildings another 251 000 for grounds maintenance plus this um 297 000 for maintenance services those are outside providers that we use other than the cleaning service you know the rest are relatively small dollar amounts this is uh this hundred thirty thousand is our snow plow budget um so far this year we're looking pretty good however i know that there's a large star storm predicted for saturday hopefully we don't get um anywhere near the amount predicted but you know the snow plowing if we have a good season some of that 130 000 is freed up so that we can uh use those funds for other things within the building repair lines these are the lines the increases as you can see in the budget book they're relatively modest we did up heat and energy for next year simply because we don't know where fuel prices are gonna go hopefully they do subside um as we enter the new budget year we also budgeted you know i'll call them modest increases for our maintenance repair and maintenance supply line but there's really not a lot of increase requested in this uh this year's budget for maintenance and operations um the next section really would take me would take us through a high level review of the capital budget um so i'm going to keep moving on the um [Music] capital budget just to be clear capital budget is used to fund building improvements that are of a non-recurring nature and there are 110 000 or more um council approves a five-year capital expenditure plan but they only fund the first year in that plan and then any expenditure that's capital expenditure over 500 000 requires voter referendum this is proposed it hasn't been reviewed or opined on by the planning committee of the board of ed so this at this point is a proposal you know from uh you know dr solon and i and you could see that for the next five years the request is 32 million um i will note that it excludes chapman norton darcy and hummingston because those are the schools that would be affected if we go forward with the and get approval for the next generation plan and you could see roughly the categories there's no change here over prior years window replacements 9 million paving roofing sidewalk masonry 6.8 million improvements to the district cafeteria 5 million hvac improvements 3 million these are all items that are just necessary to keep our buildings in in good repair and operating efficiently if we look at of that 32 million instead of looking at it by category look at it by school you could see that not surprisingly high school is 11.8 million of the request followed by dot at 7.2 million followed by doolittle doolittle is a little bit of a surprise at 6.6 million but they need a roof system that's three million dollars that's included in the in the capital budget and then if i just highlight what's the request that we're asking for funding and money for 2223 it's in these categories window replacements million three roofing uh sidewalk and paving 975 000 district cafeteria improvements of 845 that's primarily for highland school um and then you could see the rest of the categories and again i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because it will go before the planning committee for additional review soon we are supposed to approve the capital budget at the same time as the operating budget over the last decade the boards requested an average of 24 million the council has approved about 19.6 million so the council has is approved the five-year plan at about an 81 rate however if we look at just a one-year funding approval the council's approval rate has been about 66 so we're really not investing enough in the buildings based on the requests some years like you could see here in 20 20 21 the request was 585 000.

so this is you know in the back of my mind i always know we have a little bit of a backstop for a moderate repair need that we can't cover you know any improvements we make you know in particular through the capital budget you know we we have to look at them as investments the pictures that you see here at the top left those are the three new boilers that went into doolittle this past summer over on the right side that gentleman is richard clavette he's our facilities director he's at highland standing next to the two brand new condensing boilers that were installed this summer and then that bottom picture i put in there because the investments we make in boiler plants are important and those the boilers at highland and doolittle and in particular at doolittle which were original to the building those needed to be replaced but that doesn't do as much for us as securing our building envelope so the bottom picture are the windows that were installed at cheshire high school a couple of years ago it's very very important that we continue to improve on our building envelopes many of our schools have original windows single pane glass really norton is the only one that's fully double paying glass and that's why when you look back at the capital budget you see 9.1 million dollars for windows you know we'll save significant dollars by replacing windows at these older buildings and so that's my story on that particular slide maintenance and operations as a percentage of budget has been held relatively flat we do what we need to do in the buildings and going back to some of the points that were made earlier you know when in doubt we apply our funding to educational needs but we do keep our buildings maintained and so that's it for ops and maintenance i'll pause there for questions because that does that does conclude the presentation for this evening andrew go ahead i'd just like to if if we could schedule something maybe just the planning committee sam uh tim and i i'd really like to go on a field trip then and and we're proposing and um more so just you know window replacement i understand we need window replacements in order to improve the envelope with the various school buildings but you know as we're planning these projects moving forward i just want to make sure we're really careful with where we spend the money um i know i've said that all of our planning committee meetings but i'd like to see some things in the field because i haven't you know i haven't seen some of these buildings in two years and if we're gonna prioritize and we're gonna have to make the case the town council i want to make sure that the case who makes the town council i'd like to be able to support that discussion in any way that i can i would i mean we would love to do that you know we've done it for the board and we've done it even for the council and you know in some years but i think it would be a great idea i'll talk to you offline tomorrow and we could schedule something that works awesome thank you you're welcome tim thank you adam um yeah just in terms of scheduling something i'm timing on that would that be before we vote in the next week or so or i'm thinking something before the council votes or before the council opines on it saying march or april just the thought on that um vin with regard to uh roofing um does roofing cost more if it if it um is built for a heavier weight load well uh to to allow for a heavier weight load that would require you know re-engineering some of the structure you know it's not the roof system it's not the replacement of the roof it's not the rubber membrane or the insulation layer we'd have to shore up the actual design of the of the roof systems and especially the large roof systems over gyms and you know cafeterias all those large spans so um yeah not such a simple thing no okay but it can be done yeah there's some money i get it and what i'm talking about what i'm thinking what's on my mind is uh you know another pro of uh sustainable construction if we can avoid those hvacs on the roofs using geothermal as an example uh that would be a potential savings right there and again pros and cons and everything um let me see i thought i had uh oh and one other question um do you do i don't need it right now maybe it could be for the planning committee but have you had any sort of update from energy resources on the solar arrays that had gotten proposed for was it doolittle and highland i'm just curious have you talked to him in the past six months no but um well i've talked to them in the past three months they know that they owe us the the next set of diagrams and an update and interestingly tim i i did notice that is on my calendar for follow-up uh the next week or the following week so i will i will reach out to them okay great that yeah that's it uh but maybe put it on planning if it's worth talking about whenever we meet in the next month or two thank you okay uh so then uh that you said that concluded your presentation for the evening we are we are actually done with the administrative review of accounts so yes we are done for the evening so the next meeting is the public info session on thursday okay so um so my thought was that since there was going to be public informational that um unless there was any um unless i'm getting a lot of pushback from the from the board that we would have that in person i think at the dodd cafetorium i think is where uh the thought was there that way if someone would wish to speak they can come and speak in person instead of sending an email or something like that um and uh for sam who hasn't um done this before that the next meeting is a little weird because that's where we'll all discuss our thoughts on the on the budget and add uh either motions for the for the finance committee anyway motions or changes to the proposed budget and then we can discuss that um and uh perhaps come to a final motion to bring to the board for full discussion um so the the next meeting so it's a look kind of weird you don't get the like have a subcommittee meeting beforehand every this all the discussion is done in public um which is why i think it'd be great to do that in person um is there any uh comment or or pushback on that at all i i mean i think it's i think it's definitely better if we do it in person to allow people to come speak i think that would be more uh inviting to people and i think it is important so i i think it'd definitely be better to do it in person yeah i agree i totally agree with tim and i just need another session to digest a little more and i know dr stolin said he was going to get some more information at least to um tease out some of the initial questions i already had so that's fine with me sam when you say you would like another session do you mean like um thursday is good for you or would you say um are you preferring to maybe we have more discussion on thursday and then push out our potential final recommendations of the full board out to um next tuesday what is your thought there i would like a thursday to be another discussion especially since you know i did ask some questions tonight and information will be forwarded um okay and if it's you know depending on what is provided we might be able to act on thursday but i'd like to have us have thursday as an opening an opportunity if need be to dive a little deeper into anything that's presented on thursday okay i personally don't have a problem with that um i get i'll i'll speak with tony uh since he's not on the meeting tonight to see if he has any uh thoughts on that but as far as the the committee goes um we have time uh vin right we have up until we we have to our drop that date is what uh february 15th right correct for the board to approve a recommendation correct i think technically the board is supposed to transmit the budget to the town by february 15th and as as of right now there is the public info session scheduled for thursday the 27th and you there is a special budget meeting of the board to adopt the budget on the calendar um for february 3rd that's the following thursday okay yeah adam i'm comfortable with that timeline that as set right now great okay good uh tim yes yeah so uh so i'm not really that concerned about how it plays out but if we don't vote if we don't vote on in two days on thursday january 27th i i hope that you and really tony just keeps it open so that if it works out we just have a finance committee followed up by a full board meeting on the 27th with a vote at that time and if it doesn't if it doesn't work out it doesn't work out but if it does then i'd rather just um do it all on one night the finance committee vote and the full board vote on thursday next thursday if that's what if that if it's just two oh sorry not the 27th i apologize february 3rd yeah yeah yeah yeah so we have two days finance committee meeting but no vote and then have a finance committee in a full board vote on thursday february 3rd however it works out yeah i think i just want to be open that makes sense to me too yeah we'll we'll see how we'll see how it plays out but yeah that that's yeah that's a good timeline still um okay um so was there anything else um if not i think we'll be having an in-person meeting on thursday i believe that's at uh seven o'clock again yes okay great um so seeing no other business on the agenda uh can i have a uh motion to adjourn uh wait let's let me take it from well i i can only see tim and andrew here is there oh yeah we're this is of the hole right so tim uh you made uh you made the motion andrew it looks like you're seconding um i can't see everyone so all in favor aye um i can't see everyone else yeah yeah the emotions

you know we were working aggressively on the school monetization plan we trim our requests down to bare bones but we really do need to start increasing the capital investment in our buildings beyond those buildings that will be replaced through the next generation plan we do have and we're almost done i did want to just point out as i do every year we do have an emergency fund in the event of some type of a of a repair need that we can't cover through our operating budget it's called the building maintenance cnr fund you know any disbursements from the fund which currently has a 233 000 balance needs to get approval of the board and then approval of the town council but you know that is there and you could see based on the list we've used it in the past for boiler replacements emergency roof replacements work on the utility tunnels in the high school back in 2011.

all the rest are they have to stay here at work do staff development so they're the teachers do not leave they're working those other days so first day of school the children leave early the teachers are here working those other days parent teacher conferences in november teachers are working they're doing conferences then so every one of those other days it's for teachers to do whether it's parent-teacher conferences staff development professional development that's what those days are used completely once again you know at the end of the year there's a a load of work for us to do whether it's creating classes for the following year um getting grades meeting teachers we do what's called up down meetings up down meetings mean i'll just use fourth grade as an example fourth grade teachers meet the third grade teachers and they communicate and then fourth grade teachers with fifth grade teachers to talk about the students um they have to there's a lot of paperwork that has to be done at the end of the school year uh creative classes you know there's a there's a lot of work that teachers have to get done before i let them leave the building because they're gone for the summer okay you're welcome and thank you chris for recognizing the board and so uh now we move on to action items and we start with um curriculum and programs i have a question it's really more of a procedural question not a question about things and this isn't the first time i've noticed this but sometimes there's things that we're approving for it's usually meetings and teachers whatever but we're approving them after they've already happened and um i mean i'm not normally it's not an issue because we say yes but what happens if something has already happened and we don't approve it you know what how does that work well most of the time it doesn't happen when you're looking at these virtual meetings sometimes pop up giving us 45 minutes 45 48 hours notice and we really think it's important for them to be there and since they're going to be in the building and it's virtual uh the answer meeting libraries they will bring in a specialist miss love talk to them i said let's go i don't want to miss out so um i i've never sent teachers to stuff that i don't think the board would want teachers to be you know learning or growing from so virtual over the last you know two years many of those webinars do not give us a month's notice and there's not the one on december i mean something you only have 45 after 45 hours okay i'm giving it to you for you to know that this is what we're doing but i could say as a superintendent you're the principal okay teacher i want you to see this webinar you're in your room watching it i wouldn't even tell you that they're doing it i understand so i will tell you it's not that you need no i don't need it yeah that we're doing i like seeing it i was just wondering about that right thank you for clairing i'm sorry i i'm saying you said that you're radicalizing it and i appreciate that we're finding out about it like i prefer that to not knowing about it but i guess david's question was should that be something different than we're proving something that the administration is assigning a staff member to do something they're going to get compensated because all right so before we move a section um there's been a change um well we're adding something on a11 um so i'll add eight of a and um there is a workshop on textbook scheduled for tomorrow and chris is scheduled to go but she's not able to attend so in her place she would like um mr xavier to attend so i would like to add that out there for mr savio to for it to be approved for him to attend this tomorrow there's not a cost for this um meeting except for mileage i think except for mileage would you organize sorry what's the name of the world it's a local they didn't have leisure but they do it every january at the end of every january i have attended in the past and i just think um colin should be there i'm not going to be here forever and he's going to be here forever mr sabian so what's the location for the record atlantic city powers he's not staying overnight [Music] to attend textville tomorrow in place of chris carlson who was board approved at the december meeting so you're looking for an emotional improvement or make a motion to move um [Music] yes and we don't have anything for policy or personnel um yes oh let's see okay so then um we don't have c so then c would be we want to add it we're going to want to change our english it's usually building thank you [Music] there's no [Music] i would recommend just putting c and adding buildings and grounds only because the others are still by the uh we have personnel and and then no report and then you know for the next meeting we'll have all the things yeah okay just there anyway um oh visitors business that is visitors are permitted to comment on agenda there was something that i had a question about [Music] we received an attachment it's the english language learner three-year plan 21-24 and so when i looked at it it's i we may have gotten the wrong one i'm not sure but it's more of a survey instead of the actual plan so i would like to take this so uh a9 well why don't you next time you can approve it with the appropriate plan i mean you're still motioning to approve the submission of the plan but it's not his attachment that's the easiest way of trying to retract the vote that's okay i wasn't right about that and um so we can just leave the language the way it is we need to change that yeah it's fine it's just gonna be different okay and then you can read the full plans all right and at this time visitors uh business visitors are permitted to comment on agenda and non-agenda items at this time you don't have any comments for us not yet by the way you're doing a great job thank you all right so i'll continue um the 11th discussion is there any discussion i'd like to congratulate the uh fellow wrestling team they won your division today yeah and tomorrow is our basketball match against wall we're going you know i think walla's favorite to win but i believe whoever wins tomorrow is wins all three of us um mrs carlson reported that we've had 100 students test positive and 33 staff has positive since return i recently interact with a number of students that are that are positive and i wanted to ask are we still offering did we ever offer on-site testing for teachers that were not vaccinated i remember there was a discussion about that okay and we discussed um tests to stay with that company to allow students who are close contacts to be able to do the test to stay oh the state has had some problems because they don't have the capacity to provide the tests okay thank you thank you just like to add sorry there was at least six you know six or seven braille students on the homeworks the coach hasn't pulled though um and they do a great job my son used to wrestle with them that coach does a wonderful job and he'll come through there's a couple more board meetings in the past we'll continue meetings there they do a nice presentation there as well also all right so um now it's payment of the bills uh that the board authorizes payment of the following january 22 bills list and the secretary is authorized to draw a warrant of the treasurer in the total amount of one million five hundred sixty two thousand eight hundred twenty four dollars and sixty nine cents thank you yes we're not having an executive session this evening um [Music] right now [Music]

i did skip a couple resolutions that are above that about the fourth resolution down resolution recommended to accept the retirement of suboc school nurse at school number six middle school effective june 30th sue has been with us for about 35 years i know she's been a nurse in school five she's been a nurse i believe in school four i believe she was a nurse in the high school and now she's been for the number of last couple of years a nurse in school number six the middle school always done a very nice job for us so i wish sue best of luck in her retirement also resolution to accept the resignation of bridget nunez teacher at school number six effective march 18th bridget is moving on to another district another position bridget has also been with us a number of years in the pre-k program elementary school at number four and number six she's currently the association president so i know she'll be resigning that position so we wish bridget best of luck in her new position page four a couple of maternity leaves uh third um resolution down crystal brown uh first grade teacher at school number four will be leaving on or about um may 26th and she'll be returning december 1st of 2022 so we wish crystal the best of luck joanna carnell who's an esl teacher at school number three joanna will be leaving on or about march 28th and she will be returning september 1st so those are positions that we would need to fill uh in a temporary basis skip one the next one um aliki who's a resource room teacher at school number four is also requesting a maternity leave uh on or about may 16th and she will return december 5th of 2022 right below that anna aceta who's a elementary school teacher at school number four requesting a maternity leave also which will begin on or about september 1st and she will return january 2nd 2023 last resolution on that page marissa simeli who's an english teacher on our middle school is currently on a maternity leave she was supposed to return april 22nd but she uh notified me today that she's going to extend the leave until june 30th the remainder of the school year and she'll return uh september 2022.

um i i know that it seems to be the new thing like you mentioned like for gilbert mesa going by gps or mps i'm so glad that we're not doing dps so thank you for that i really don't want another acronym so and dps has different thoughts so i like two or four the best personally i'd lean towards two only because if that was the parent choice that yeah just i would lean towards that but um are there any other comments before emotions made i'm between two and four do you like four okay you like you like both i was for two or three that were my main it sounds like two things only is because of you know like i said it was coming further from the book um that's opened up it's just the three students are coming further from the book and so it's to me it has a greater impact although too does have it's like the springboard so bringing into the future spring in the future yeah okay well i'll go ahead and make a motion then i move to approve dicert logo option number two as presented second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by john densmore motion carries and thank you so much for all your hard work they're beautiful yes and madam president just a reminder that that will begin to be rolled out in july thank you all right next we'll move to action discussion item three recommendation to see i caught myself revision to school calendar for the 2022-2023 school year dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr dean will introduce this item madame president members of the governing board dr kellis members of cabinet and guests every five approximately five years in the cycle of a school calendar the school calendar pushes itself back by a week or it has to be pushed back by a week to accommodate dates and to make sure that that when you return from winter break that you don't return on january 1st or december 31st or what have you in my 17 years in the school district i believe this has happened three times already and this would be the fourth as we move as we move forward however um upon the the recent revision to the 22 23 school year some concerns arose from community members from parents from teachers and administrators that the current calendar has the last day of winter break being december 23rd which is christmas eve eve which creates a bit of a hardship for teachers who or staff who are leaving town because it really provides them only christmas eve to travel and that certainly is understandable so in looking for an option to solve this piece administration sought the input of um of several stakeholders and present to you this evening some minor changes for record for approval for the school year it's hard to believe that we're saying the 22-23 school year but that being said we are the changes are very minor and they are as follows in our current calendar school is scheduled to start on august 4th in the revision calendar we are recommending that school start on august the 3rd one day earlier nothing else changes on the calendar until you get to winter break currently the calendar has winter break or the last day of the semester being december 23rd we are recommending that the last day of of the semester in the revised calendar be december the 20th and winter break would then begin on wednesday the 21st the full two-week break would be taken and we are recommending that school would resume for students on january the 5th in the next item for approval for the board for work calendars we are recommending that our teachers return two weeks after break begins on wednesday january 4th for a teacher work day that will be dedicated solely for them in preparation for the second semester so those are the recommendations that that we are looking to have approved this evening nothing else on the calendar changes fall break remains aligned to columbus day we continue to be able to have a week at at thanksgiving and the last day of school does not change nor does the graduation day so those are the recommendations that we are making this evening and i'd be happy to answer any questions the the half days um are those changed for the middle schools madam president miss densmore those are on the current calendar for this year our middle schools do take our middle school students take finals on the last two days of each semester and so that's currently in place it is okay yes do we normally have a teacher work day on the day after teachers come back from break madam president that would be a new addition to our to our calendar for this year and the reason for that is that we've heard um great success from other school districts that do that there are other districts that are close to us in proximity that do that it allows for what happens is we take one of the days that teachers normally have at the beginning of the school year so we bring all of our teachers back for four days prior to the school year starting we would bring them back for three days prior to the school year starting and then that fourth day would be the day before students return for the second semester and provides them the opportunity for any last minute pieces that need to be planned for plc's to gather again before the second semester begins when they return from break do we think that that's needed as much as giving them the extra days before the whole school year starts to take one of those days away madam president we believe that that it will be a very successful venture it is very successful for the school districts around us that use it and then are we um graduation this year is it on a wednesday madam president you're testing my memory um but i believe the answer is yes we're out of school i believe this year on a thursday i believe and graduation is the day before so that would be wednesday yes okay so i was just wondering um have we already so because this would bring graduation on a tuesday have we already like are we already in contract with that madam president the graduation date for 2023 is set with with the the venue yes all right i just thank you also for including columbus day our pleasure fall break any other questions just one dr dean how was this uh received by the teachers having that day after uh the christmas break madam president mrs orsinpo with applause with applause yes okay i can tell you that this would be a welcome change for teachers because the being back four days before the school year yeah it sounds great but usually those days are just jam-packed with pd so you got meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting and if you want to set up your classroom you got to come a week before to set up your classroom because and so you're working for free for a week so my question to dr dean is are we going to have pd's on this day on january 4th or is it actually going to be a work day madam president has promised by dr kellis to the certified counsel yesterday if this calendar is approved there will be no pd on that day before um the second semester begins it will be a full teacher work day oh hallelujah can you say that one more time and dr k that was a an absolute promise by dr kellis all right and it's recorded we got this recording it was recorded in that meeting yes okay this will help so much just with like you said plc's and grading and lesson plans because as a teacher you honestly feel and yeah you can do most of that before you go on winter break but a you're exhausted b you've got all these class parties you've got everything going on so having that day just to focus on planning and getting your stuff together is absolutely wonderful and madam president miss jeff and i might add that it will allow our staff to enjoy two weeks of winter break anybody else i just have so works i guess i'm a little confused or concerned about this year graduation is the 18th next year will be the 24th so we're adding we're going later into the month of may so what are we accommodating at the other end madam president members miss grant that's an excellent question so there are just a couple of differences in the current calendar that's pushed forward one of them is that we are we are adding two days to the vacation at the thanksgiving break so rather than having you know only three days of thanksgiving we're taking that entire week off and then that tends to push around a week here and there so go ahead and entertain a motion i moved the governing board oops hold on it just moved i moved the governing board approved the revision to the 2022-2023 school year calendar as presented motion made by tracy sorry sinkhole seconded by joe grant oh my yes motion carries thank you okay next we'll move to action discussion item h3 recommendation to approve the employee work calendars for the 2022-2023 school year dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent callus cabinet and guest tonight we bring to you the work calendars which coincide with the school calendars that you just approved most of the discussion already did occur on the work calendars in the last topic we do have some changes in the work calendars that do reflect some positions moving but however it's important to know we're just doing the calendars tonight those positions that will be moving calendars are coming to you at a different board board meeting once you approve the calendars so we have a basis and then we will share with you at a later meeting which jobs are moving to what calendar so with that all the discussion has occurred tonight earlier like i said with the work calendars and the changes to coincide with the school calendars that you just approved so i'll stand for any questions there's nine total calendars for all our workers madam president i also believe we have a call to public on this item i'll read the statement again this is the time for pub the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and we have uh miss janelle rodriguez good evening thank you members of the board for the dysart unified school district for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening my name is janelle rodriguez i'm currently a teacher at growing minds preschool for the pre-k level i've worked there since december of 2020.

instead of asking for a capital override then to provide extra money to this budget you chose to prioritize the m o budget now we have a giant overage in the m o budget and we are told the roofs on schools are going to start leaking because we have no money in the capital budget if the district is to again propose a bond i'd like to see it borrow just enough to take care of the safety and technology improvements that you asked for and improve and extend the classroom availability so for the next few years when possible i would like to see you integrate a capital override to help pay for some of these capital needs in the second half of the of the decade right now i'd like to see us keep our powder dry for the future to see how the next few years pay out with the pandemic and the financial situation in the world before we make one mistake to try to fix another just because we can borrow a hundred million dollars doesn't mean we should thank you for your time thank you mr bender next i have michael simcox hope i said that correctly i'm sorry sorry about that okay my name is michael simcox i've been an employee for the school district for eight years i am on your agenda to be uh terminated from my job i do have a couple statements i'd like to make when you do go to make your decision on this final judgment i would like to ask you to take in consideration that like i said eight years with the district i've only had certain flaws which were two and right now everything is being jeopardized due to a fact that i was injured on the job um they said in the report to you guys that i consistently ask for help which is not correct i do ask for help when time is litigated to other casts that are at not my hand that need to be fixed or need to be taken care of promptly along with the absences that are going to be on there as well 15 of those were due to covid uh i was really sick and i was not able to fix that um also other issues uh with that with the five tardinesses that i have were out of my control due to car accidents as well blocking the road not being able to get to my job on time which i take at full uh consideration that i love my job i do my job to the best of my ability and also i would like it to be known that i was not shown any video of what they're discriminating on here that states that there's no proof of my injury to my left shoulder i have documentations from doctors i have a cd that i'm getting printed off friday and i'm seeing an ortho surgeon friday for my shoulder they're saying that there is no injury in a video i have not seen this video so i don't know if they're doctors and they can make a statement off that but in my final statement like i said i've been with the district for eight years i've never had a complaint from any other principal any other issues with anybody else i do my job to the best of my ability i do what i can i try to help the community i try to help people the students i even help teachers i even help other employees who need help so if you can take that in consideration i would really appreciate it and thank you board and anybody else i appreciate it thank you for your time next up i have emily anderson i'm sorry i have something if i can give it to you first just a note sheet oh you want to give us a piece of paper you can give it to mrs reach i had a speech with me but it got left on the table so i'm gonna wing it um okay so what i just gave you is a sheet about some music education facts my name is emily anderson i am a proud parent of these two right here in the front row um we moved last year from california because of the covid situation and they're unlivable restrictions in california and i've been incredibly happy with this district and thrilled that we moved to power ranch um what i wanted to speak on today was actually two things i'll start with the business the first would be um situations with substitutes um predominantly there's i know there's always a shortage but there's a even stronger shortage in like every district right now and there's one thing i can point that to i went to taco bell recently and this is 15 an hour starting pay subs don't make that i have 53 000 in loan debt to cal state long beach and i'm going to work a job that's not even 15 an hour that's kind of insulting i would love nothing more and i've been highly debating on applying to sub again because i was doing that for four years previously in huntington beach in california where they did in the recent a few years ago bump up pay to 150 a day but do i want somebody making like not even 100 take home in fact chandler was recently barely a hundred dollars before taxes teaching my kids not really that's not quality in my opinion you're not going to get you're going to get someone that's which i've ran into people in the past subbing just because they can do it with a degree and a little else um so that's kind of my stick on that but on the positive side i wanted to come and reach out to you and speak on music education recently last week there was the band bash with all the junior highs and the high school which i have my daughter ready to play her flute if you would so inclined to listen um and i just wanted to come and speak on behalf of the incredible benefits of music music ed which is what i just gave you from you know the connections to the left brain right brain cognitive benefits um discipline rates go down the graduation rates go sky high to like 90.2 percent from schools that have graduation rates there were programs in first grade with first graders that showed increase in comprehension and reading i mean the list as you can see goes on and on um i have another one here in fact um or whatever i'm running out of time but anyways um yeah so mr juaros is who my daughter has the benefit of having um and we'll be going to saseman where she will have mrs juaros and if you missed the band bash i you sorely missed out i do have a video on it and it was pretty phenomenal my daughter this is her first year in band and though as many times as i harp on her about practicing she has come i am beyond blown away how much she has learned um and so i just wanted to come and speak at you because i know music and arts is the first thing ever cut and i implore you to please think about that before any um cuts are ever made in the future if you'd like to hear her play a bit and she is prepared to do so thank you so much and have a great night thank you i'm sorry we have to get on to our next speaker but thank you so much and i know not sad thank you our next yes thank you our next speaker is john mason i am john mason i'm new to the district and and i'd like to start out by saying that i believe that the teachers and administrators are good decent people they're they're pillars of society and nevertheless good decent people make mistakes and and that is what i would like to address here today and i i don't want to point out any particular individual but i do think that there is a a problem overall that should be considered there is a problem of teacher facilitated academic dishonesty it is so common in the valley that even teachers at another district have complained to me many students in the valley seem to think that it is normal i sent an email to the administration detailing concerns about suspicious activities at the district they responded to my concerns with many statements that were not true one concern was teacher facilitated academic dishonesty in other words a teacher enabled students to cheat if the district truly investigated the teaching then they would know what happened it was obvious rather than properly investigate what happened the district responded as follows and i quote at no time are students allowed to encourage or sit or assisted on in cheating on any exam unquote this statement by the district is not even remotely plausible now sadly i must say the next thing how can higley believe that they are better than any other district in the valley given their embarrassing history of fraud we've all watched the news we know what's happened in the past is it a coincidence that i was stonewalled when i invested when i investigated suspicious activity at higley i don't think so now the next part pains me even more because we do know that teachers do not make enough money we do know that students do not have enough resources and and we do know that it that is very unfortunate to see the how teachers are are overloaded with bureaucratic requirements and administrators are always trying to follow the law and they're doing their best they can even when there's inconsistencies but i personally will not support any bond override until the district administration behaves more transparently thank you very much for your time thank you mr mason and that's all for our speakers tonight thank you very much for coming we're going to move on to our consent agenda items i move that we approve consent agenda items 6.1 through 6.8 second any questions comments or concerns all those in favor aye aye motion carries 4-0 sorry you can make a comment i just want to say um that the one of the things we improved was the arizona family surprise squad and the three thousand dollars for the higley high school um washington dc trip and how cool that is that channel three was able to come out and surprise those kids with that so yes yes i saw that on the news and then also um um amaz entertainment sorry yeah i think 12 150 for the district art festival so thank you about that yes we always want to thank our gifts and donations so thank you for pointing that out no motion carried 4-0 no problem all right information items next up we're excited to have our world language overview and foreign language immersion program update and i'm going to call on mrs sherry richards i believe president kaler members of the board cabinet and community we've been waiting for this evening for a long time so you're going to hear some exciting news today about our premier language program of choice that goes k-12 meaning that we're going to go into detail and share a little bit of our journey so before we get started i'm going to acknowledge people on the team and have them wave or stand up and wave all right so let's start with dr chris treat he is our assistant director of professional development next i want to introduce mr jeff armstrong principal of coronado you've got to stand nobody can see you all right we also have assistant principal mr brian griggs from coronado we also have mr ray mercado principal at san tan and his assistant principal at san tan lindsey reeves and i really want to give them a big hand for all of their work [Applause] all right so as we begin our story here we want you to know that in 2014 and rebecca rebecca i didn't mean to skip you is going to make a big deal out of you rebecca rodriguez is our dli world language coach i have a big to-do for her in a little bit but there's no way i can skip her she's the one holding us together and giving us direction all right so as we begin our program in 2014 at coronado we opened our doors for kindergarten and first grade students so that very first year we had kids learning mandarin in kinder and first grade these students are currently 7th and 8th graders going to cooley middle school if they followed the feeder pattern the following year in 2015 we opened doors at san tan elementary for our spanish dli program those kids are currently in fifth grade looking forward to going into sixth grade next year and then on to saw someone so it's important to understand the district has been involved and excited we've worked hard with miss martin's to ensure we have highly qualified teachers that are proficient in those target languages also to ensure we have appropriate resources in mandarin and spanish so the good news is there's more resources than there were in 2014 so that's the good news all right research tells us there are lots of benefits to acquiring a second language when dr foley joined the team again in june of 2019 on her very first day back in the job we met with this wonderful team to start planning what do we need to do to ensure our kids get language at the level that will benefit them all the way through school and all the way into the workforce so we worked carefully to create a systematic plan for professional development and support at that time we worked with miss veronica beyonce sandoval a language consultant she came in we all had input what's our mission what's our vision what do we want to make sure we communicate are the proven benefits because these are lifelong skills so it's not only important for our kids to be proficient orally proficient meaning they can speak it receptively they understand it express expressively they communicate but we also have goals that they can read and write which means you think in the other language as well so it's been very apparent to us that our kids have increased cognitive skills in a broader global awareness so we're super excited about this program and their journey that will only continue all right when we work together we know that a vision and a mission state statement define the purpose and unite us it keeps us focused on our goals and moving in the same direction and those look like that might have been easy to come up with but i if i asked the people on the other side of the room how long we spent on this we spent a long time so i feel like it's part of who we are so on this slide you're going to see the top of the slide talks about pre-k in elementary this is our dli dual language immersion programs and the bottom half of the slide deals with secondary world language courses so our dual language immersion program is a 50 50 model that means 50 of the day is in the target language of spanish or mandarin and the other 50 percent of the day is in english so that's important for our kids to be immersed in the language and not going back and forth in between english and their target language once they get to middle school and high school it looks more traditional their language course is the course during their day so you can tell we start with kids when they're really young because research tells you the best time to learn a language is when you're in preschool or even before so these kids at cooley have the opportunity to start in our mandarin program and if you haven't been there to see that you need to go see it last year dr foley and i went to visit and they sang to us in mandarin and it was probably one of the best experiences i've had because they they learn it they don't struggle they just get it also at sauceman early childhood center they're learning spanish and those classes fill up quickly it's sometimes hard to get in these programs feed into our elementary schools mandarin goes into coronado k-6 and spanish feeds into san tan right now it's k-5 next year they're adding sixth grade all right the exciting thing is we don't stop we don't stop when we get done with elementary school in middle school at both middle schools we offer spanish and mandarin courses however our kids that have been in dli have the opportunity to go into an immersive class that means they can take mandarin one and mandarin two and middle school and move into mandarin 3 at the high school level that will happen with spanish after this next school year we also at high school we add french so at the high school level we offer spanish mandarin and french and as we highlighted hva this evening great things are going on there i loved hearing about the spanish club because it aligns to what we're talking about this evening so we have french mandarin spanish and american sign language so we had kids this year take asl american sign language one those kids will have the opportunity to take american sign language too and we had kids in spanish this year which will have that extended opportunity as well mrs richards yes we actually had the experience to go to higley high i believe it was two fridays ago and we actually saw this in action with kiddos reading um and writing mandarin and it was absolutely fantastic they were able to tell us what they read about they knew and i don't remember what i think it was a mandarin 3-4 class combined and it was absolutely fantastic and i have seen the preschool as well so to see that move through from those little guys you know learning the mandarin and they are just very smart kiddos over there and it's just been fantastic so thank you it was an amazing experience and i think i wish i knew mandarin and i have a son that's in taiwan who just had a baby and i'm having trouble saying the baby's name in mandarin because of the tones and how the language is a difficult language but our kids are excelling as you're gonna see all right this has been a big deal for us as we've gone through professional development and how important it is to stay in that target language the bubble represents what happens when you break that target language and i learned something when we went to state level leadership training when i go in a classroom and they're speaking mandarin and i go up in english and say tell me about what are you doing what are you learning it it busts the bubble because they have to switch their little brains not that they can't do it but i didn't realize what i was doing by trying to show interest you know what i'm saying so i worked in a dli school in texas and we called that code switching no code switching do not go in and speak english and distract the kids so you'll see this little welcome to doi program and it's stating you're entering a room where we're speaking spanish so you'll see that preschool elementary all outside our dli classrooms so we're pretty proud of that so what you've been waiting for is to get a taste of what this looks like in action so thank you to our pr team for putting this together and for our amazing administrators teachers and kids [Music] m [Music] hi my name is lana logan i have been here learning mandarin for five years [Music] um [Music] learning mandarin here because i have a lot of friends and i enjoy learning mandarin and i also want to and i want to learn english and mandarin and a lot of other different languages too so i think it's kind of cool [Music] jackson my name is jackson winley i've been in the spanish program for six years that's foreign [Music] um [Music] i like the spanish program because i can speak a different language and when i go to countries that speak spanish i can communicate with them easier [Music] amazing right just amazing so now i am going to highlight the star miss rebecca rodriguez she was your higley 2021 teacher of the year it was rather difficult to convince principal tannenbaum that we needed her and she was going to impact so many children and so many teachers and he was gracious and he let us steal her but i can't there is no way i could sum up everything she's done in just a little over one semester it's been truly uh life-changing for us for somebody to support us she's got websites up she's doing professional development she's out there supporting teachers in ways that we have dreamed of so i am going to clap for you and highlight you in order for our district to become the premier language program of choice we have worked to gain insight and knowledge from the best resources available this year i have joined arizona's languages association or asla and i attended the asla fall conference and i will be attending the asla workshops in february these are giving us those insights about what's going on in arizona how we can best improve our practices here i also have joined actvol which is the american council on teaching foreign languages i attended the act full fall conference with several of our dli teachers to learn about the processes and best practices being used throughout the entire nation i have attended the monthly world language district meetings for all language district leaders in these meetings we discuss what is going on with the language learning and we work together to mitigate problems and make changes and inform one another what's going on in our state with the language programs this march i will be attending the language or sorry the dual language international convention at this convention i will have the opportunity to visit the dual language classroom in utah where dli is at the forefront of innovation i will learn from the global doi leaders about what works in dli and how we can continue to improve our amazing program we've also had the incredible opportunity to work with maria christina ladas she is a key expert in the dli world in arizona she has been on the actful board and is currently the asla board president she works with our district as a consultant we've worked with her in two capacities we worked with her as the dli leadership by going to their dli and leadership academy for days one and two this was a workshop where our district leadership learned how to best structure and organize our program we spent time working on our proficiency targets fidelity assurances and how to best support our teachers and our students through this workshop we've been able to partner with other districts and throughout the state and to develop our language program in alignment with what other districts are doing miss lavis has also come to coronado and santander to provide professional development to all of our dli teachers she demonstrates and models contemporary best practices while working with our teachers to bridge our target language and english teacher teams how to successfully teach in the target language and what we need to do to focus on proficiency language proficiency is defined as the independent use of language this means that our students are able to use what they're learning in the classroom setting to formulate new thoughts and ideas in their language that they're learning they communicate in ways that are not explicitly taught an example of this would be asking questions about a product at a store and not having a script or memorized questions and answers that they have in front of them while they're asking proficiency is focused on all facets of language reading writing listening speaking as well as cultural awareness we look at proficiency as a cone of language knowledge so you can see that in front of you when the student starts learning the language we start at the bottom of the cone they whether they learn at birth kindergarten or middle school they start at that novice level it's shown in blue this level builds the foundation of future language acquisition at the novice level level students can say only a few common words they can understand very familiar words and they can interact in only simple conversations about known topics students exit the novice level quickly once a student has mastered the most basic use of language they move into the intermediate level at the intermediate level students begin working within grammar rules and trying out unique sentences students at the intermediate level can understand basic streams of sentences and communicate about known topics they're progressing in reading and writing and speaking in their target language according to research most students will stay in the intermediate level in green on the cone for years and they improve and practice the target language even even though they're in it for years that they're not immersed so it takes longer the next proficiency level is advanced this is represented in orange on the cone at this level the students can understand complex and extended speech and can read and write extensively in the target language our ap students are beginning to demonstrate the advanced level as they prepare for college level proficiency the superior and distinguished levels of proficiency would be the university course level meaning they can report synthesize and understand the target language perfectly they are able to understand and work within the target language with ease the first the focus on proficiency is primarily because the mission of our language program is to teach students to become bilingual by literate and globally aware in another language so in order for us to meet that ability we have to focus on getting them from one level to the next also the actual standards have been adopted by arizona as our state standards so these standards are based on proficiency skills and levels within language acquisition and for us to be able to meet the state standards for language proficiency has to be our focus the arizona state world language standards are modeled after act-filled standards created to focus on language literacy real world applications and 21st century skills supporting this focus are the five c's communication cultures communities comparisons and connections within these five areas are 11 content standards that describe the knowledge and skills that our language students should acquire we have attached a video to this slide that further explains the standards this is a video that we use to inform our parents about the actual standards and how they are used to help their child reach proficiency in their target language this is also available on the website if you click on the language proficiency tab it is important to note that the standards are listed as proficiency markers and each district can set their proficiency targets for each language and level provided this enables us to accurately set goals and targets for all our language students no matter what age they enter our program this also allows us to monitor our students progress in the language and to direct our practices to best meet our students needs now we have the opportunity to hear from the principles of our elementary dual language immersion programs from coronado's mandarin dli we have principal jeff armstrong and from santan spanish dli we have principal ray mercado all right thank you we i'm going to talk a little bit about the proficiency targets that you see up on the board uh as you can see we set proficiency targets and this is just recent this all started roughly when dr foley came on board and we had started a lot of work and i'll never forget that first meeting the five of us are sitting in a room and here comes dr foley and she goes you guys ready to get to work we're like yep and it was it was work but the proficiency targets that you're seeing please note that these weren't just set based on how we feel these are guidance by other districts that we looked at throughout the state we looked at utah's proficiency targets we consulted with other consultants with ms lattis and from mesa public we had we took a lot of time to go ahead and dive into what where do we want our students as you heard from rebecca please know that the proficiency targets can be adjusted according to the needs of our students so just because we have it this year set at if you look at fourth grade in spanish it's a four mandarin it's a three which means it represents an intermediate low and novice high please know that those are adjustable and also take a look and if you have that question you're looking and you'll see that spanish and mandarin have two various proficiency targets please understand that that's due to the difficulty of the language put it in perspective students at coronado elementary in our dli program are learning a language in which a professor in china who is born and raised understands 200 000 characters that's someone who is speaking fluently every day that is distinguished on the if you go back to the cone that's a distinguished component we're asking our students to leave us in sixth grade at an intermediate low while santan is going to be asking them to leave at an intermediate mid and i also want to reiterate each individual student's comb is their own individual cone if you think back to where they're at everyone has to start somewhere okay and it's all through the hard work and through all of the efforts of the students and the teachers that are going to get them to where they need to be just because a student leaves a leaves third grade and may not be at the in the novice mid it doesn't mean that they're gonna they will never get beyond that it's just gonna take a little bit of additional time and that's where our rockstar teachers come into play um as we move on next slide please we're going to talk about proficiency and and uh i want to i want to brag a little bit about proficiency and performance i i i spoke at one of our family gatherings where we had families coming in and having a good old time learning about our program so proficiency versus performance put it into perspective mr marcotto and i we say this to all of our families it's okay if your kid doesn't perform on the spot and what i mean by that is this performance is when students are able to go ahead and speak to someone using contextual evidence context around them in school be able to elaborate and discuss with their classmates and the proficiency is what you saw in the video by one of our well two of our amazing students but one of our amazing students at coronado nothing to my job against the spanish program but our student at coronado please hear me that is true proficiency this is how that this is how it went i walked into her classroom and recorded her i pulled her out of the classroom and i said i want you to tell me your name how long you've been in the program and why do you like the program why do you want to learn language she had no script she had no frame of reference she was cold called to go ahead and describe and what you heard is that of someone who is definitely proficient in the partner language that she is learning and it was absolutely amazing so the concept that we use proficiency versus performance is this is we tell every parent when you're at home and you're there for thanksgiving and you're excited that your child is learning mandarin and you say jeff say something and they freeze that is perfectly okay that's the performance piece where they're oh my goodness what do we do the proficiency is when they say whatever they can and lay down make fun of mom and dad whoever it is you'll hear a little bit of reference later on in that but that is true proficiency is when they're able to articulate and speak in the target language without anything and how we measure proficiency is going to i'll elaborate on but mr macaulay wants to point something out in this slide so the proficiency just like any classroom teachers do it masterfully in daily curriculum daily interactions with students inside and outside the classroom just like on the general side on the dli side both in the mandarin program and our program at san tan we have the i can statements that are reflected of the standards so in spanish what you'll see in the classroom is your i can we want kids to be part of the journey of learning as well so when kids come in they know what the learning target is for the day so for this classroom yo puedo identification completed so i can i not all of us i can i have the responsibility as the student as a learner to identify a complete and an incomplete sentence so when i have forced four uh children and various grade levels mrs anderson i think you have one of my kids and so um i apologize for them uh so i can tell you that one of my frustrating things that i deal with at my household is i'll ask my kids what did you learn for the day oh nothing you're at school for eight hours what do you mean no nothing so creating an opportunity in a learning environment that is simple for students whether in kindergarten or fifth grade they can recite an i can statement and so that i can statement is tied to the academic standard that us as educators know and we are trying to obviously get to a proficiency level there so it starts as a student comes into class they can see this board that has the i can statement for these areas of learning and so we measure that through exit tickets in the classroom we measure that with interactions with the teacher whether in a whole group setting or a small group setting kids at san tan part of being a leader in me school they have their wigs wildly important goals and so they have these written in their leadership binders and so they're able to take the learning that's happening in class and then take it home to have these conversations so everyone's in the journey of learning together for language proficiency as well as other assessments that are happening with the curriculum common format assessments that teachers are doing together as teams or as a program and the stamp assessment that we'll talk about as well so we are consistently measuring proficiency in multiple ways whether it's informal or formal in the classroom in both sides proficiency it's ultimately where we want to go and i just want to share a quick email i received from a community member kids don't go to my school but i had two students that were at the gilbert regional park and this individual walked up and heard them speaking mandarin she speaks mandarin and she engaged in a conversation with my students and saw that they had a coronado shirts on and she sent me an email saying how impressed she was with our students and being able to have a conversation out in public with an individual learning it so when we talk about proficiency that's proficiency so we'll talk about how we measure it and that is on the next slide the stamp assessment as you see the stamp assessment is it stands for standards-based measurement of proficiency and what this is this is a nationally recognized assessment that measures language proficiency overall and it's aligned directly to the act full proficiency guidelines and it is a computer it's a computer adaptive assessment so it assesses students on reading speaking listening and writing and it measures where they're at and goes ahead and provides them the opportunity to show what they know on that the great thing about it is this year well last year we were able to have the the opportunity to assess all third through sixth grade and i'll show you that coming up but this year it's going to be awesome because every student third and up is going to be assessed using the stamp assessment and we're going to be able to have a really strong baseline data on how students are performing at both the li campuses as well as our world language courses that are happening in the middle school and the high school and it really is going to provide schools teachers administration and district personnel the opportunity to see how well our programs are are performing and make the adjustments needed and provide teachers with that pd so we're super excited about that next slide please i think you all know that i have no problem bragging about about my campus um and i'm gonna brag a little bit before before we even start all of this what you guys see up here uh please know that this is this is really due to the hard work of our students our teachers and the parents trying their best to help kids learn mandarin at home okay what you see is just a culmination of the strong dedication by teachers working extra hours putting in time to find resources putting in time to translate materials they are working to ensure that students meet the proficiency targets that are needed so what you're looking at is the stamp results from our from last school year you can read third and across you see grade level going vertically subject going across what we look at is that composite score so the proficiency targets that you saw earlier are based on the composite score and something i want to highlight in this is really pretty awesome so my current sixth graders were fifth grade last year and so if you take a look at that fifth grade line which some people in the room have students in my sixth grade but they're like i said fifth grade last year when they were in third grade when the last time they took the assessment follow with me if you look at the reading score when they're in third graders out of 1.2 and we're currently at a 2.25 and reading huge jumps writing was at a 2.7 and our students are at our 4.44 lane the listening component they were at a 2.1 when they're in third grade and i just want to highlight they're at a 4.07 and overall speaking they're at a 3.04 and they're at a 4.57 so when we talk about what our students are learning and how they're performing and and the hard work our teachers are going through and sitting on dual lingo and just mandarin matrix for hours this is this is a representation of the hard work of our students because we're asking them to learn a class 4 language and let me remind you that a professor in china who speaks and was born and raised in those 200 000 characters remember mandarin is stroke and tonal based that is how they learn that it's there it's very limited yes we have opinion but that is introduced periodically this is this is a true testament to to the students and i can't wait to see how how our fifth graders perform this upcoming school year um or this this school year in the assessment later on and really our our teachers i will tell you when you talk about a group of teachers who are learning how to teach in in a different country and with students they come to me we have monthly meetings and they sit down and i will tell you they're okay mr armstrong this is where we're at they're pulling assessment data yct vocabulary assessments i mean they're doing whatever they can to keep continue measuring where those students are so we're very excited and we're very proud of our of our teachers and our and our students within our program next side please some celebrations again i can brag all day for four points thanks mr mercado gotta remind him uh as you can see there's there's four four points i will highlight here but we're going to talk quickly parent university that's a pilot program this school year and i will tell you li xi zhao our fourth grade mandarin teacher and i we sat down and towards the end of last year beginning audition we said something that i've heard since i've come on campus is parents going hey we need help we're trying to help our kid we don't we don't know what we're doing so not that they know what they're doing in regards to the language but we sat down and we said let's develop a parent university and so miss zhao has graciously graciously given up two nights out of her month to go ahead and teach our parents language culture competency she has dual lingo they have assignments they have to complete we have 28 people who are showing up last night was absolutely awesome and there's a couple of people that can attest to it they learned how to make dumplings last night she showed them the region of china and the different foods that come from i mean yes it's not we can't teach them a second language we can't we're not we're not professors but i will tell you that the little bit is going to help and what was really what's been really awesome is the very first night we asked what what is why are you here why do you want this you know what's going on and i can guarantee you i'm not gonna don't quote me on the number but a high amount of people were saying we're tired of our kids being able to talk in a language when we don't know what they're saying and we can't help them or they're talking about us and that's that's concerning so it was really awesome to go ahead and hear that and the parents who are involved i've been with them for three meetings now and it it it's just amazing they walk in they're excited they're learning they they do retrieval practices it's basically being in school for an hour at the end of the evening so kudos to the parents who are involved but bigger kudos to miss lee ji zhao who has graciously done that parent school night that's different from our parent university night parent school night we open it up to everyone pre-covered we had them quarterly and then this year we were able to restart restart that so we're we have them we have two sessions this year we just had one so we went over the abcs of learning a language um we went over tones we went over strokes they ate food our teachers went out and purchased food thanks to our pto who supported us they went out and bought snacks and allowed parents to try traditional snacks from china and get involved with that and that was absolutely awesome so it's great we offer that we will be offering a quarterly we had to get through our covid our cova component right now we're going through it but we are we're going to be offering more of those so that parents get involved as well and annually our chinese new year celebration that's held at the school as well as at the district level and i believe that everyone you guys should have your invitations i'm gonna tell you you should go you can hear myself talking even more if that if you guys really wanna know you're gonna see a lot of great performances by our kiddos that chinese new year celebration is amazing and our pto they really support our teachers in fact they're going to be starting this friday afternoon we have parent volunteers who are coming in to decorate our hallway back to have to go ahead and start the chinese new year celebration off right next week so that's absolutely awesome and our yearly mid-autumn moon festival is absolutely amazing and a huge shout out to miss brookhun who's my pto president this year she was she was a little worried but they were able to bring it together and it was one of the best best events that we start i mean it was amazing we had families sitting outside under the moon we had activities going it it was awesome i couldn't go because i had a previous engagement but great job there and there's a couple of other things that aren't on there that i want to highlight we still are very much involved with our sister school and she says just recently my assistant principal brian griggs was able to participate in the international consortium for language schools from across the world so 14 countries were involved 31 professors and principals were in this event and they asked us to go ahead and participate in that and that is absolutely huge and one of the big things that i also want to highlight is gilbert says gilbert has sisters gilbert sisters city schools and what they're going to do is they are opening up a little section over here at the gilbert regional park it's it's by greg tilke he's part of he's the president he works for the chamber he's done a lot with the town of gilbert and he came by and toured our campus and has asked that when the ceremony begins to open that he's asked our campus to be able to perform at that ceremony as well so it's been it's been really awesome and then there's just there's so much i need to stop talking so that mr marcotte has some time but just know that i i the hard work of everyone the hard work of teachers the hard work of students you know you guys mentioned something miss wilson you mentioned something and you said it was amazing to see the high school students going at it and i'm just going to say just wait a couple years because when our students go from coronado to cooley and they get to that high school when they walk in it's not it's going to be eight times better just because of the foundation they already are going to have and the amount of work that they've already put in it's going to be awesome so just huge highlights and celebrations i guess you can thank you for some time here to share um as you see our program started after the mandarin program so we have one data point uh these students are my current fifth grade student so this was the cohort what you see in both assessments is a national norm of stamp assessment and the apple assessment that's also out there students testing at the end of third grade ish if not fourth grade so that's a national norm for this kind of assessment because if you remember the visual of the the um basically the uh cone that the expectation is that students k3 if not going into fourth grade are at the novice level so that's why you see data from coronado and at san tan starting at third obviously coming out of kovid we decided not to test the kiddos at that point and third but we tested them in may for that original cohort of students i was extremely impressed with these scores here i really expected that these students at the time in fourth grade in may that they would be scoring at about a three the expectation was stamp was at a four a level four four fourth grade so um i was really expecting threes across the board i would have been content with threes if not some twos one hundred percent appropriate due to covid and some loss of learning i saw these results and immediately i got goosebumps i got goosebumps right now because when you look at the the opportunity to assess these kids in an experience that they've never had before in a language that's not their home language for them to get these scores were absolutely just eye-opening to what can be done with the brain with these little ones and so i want to share with you because the data right here doesn't dive deep and i think that you all know as educators and supporting education we dive deep into data so when you look at this cohort there were 28 students that took the assessment three of them 28 three of them scored a three solid perfect i'm happy four or six of them scored um a four ten scored a five and nine scored a six that is huge in reading a second language and remember they're still in in fourth grade still learning academic language in their own language of english so that was absolutely amazing to see that data in listening five kids scored a three seven scored a four ten scored a five and six a six that was a huge celebration for language acquisition for these kiddos and so i wanted to share that with you and dive in deeper into that stamp result so i can tell you as we spoke about proficiency and we spoke about performance kids are performing kids are becoming proficient based on the actual standards and so it's really fun really exciting to see santan celebrations i didn't put bullet points because i have a million of them that's so hang tight we'll be here until tomorrow morning so is there like a friendly loving rival here i see i'm i'm beginning to see it very clearly all night president kaler this is this is the norm with these two and it's a good thing because they team well together and that's why we all love working with them one family encounter saying hey i had five i had five so i won't share those right now but if you want to talk we'll talk but family engagement we are supporting our families throughout the year we always invite families into the classrooms just like at coronado when we started the program there were a lot of family complaints that the spanish teachers did not want the families in the spanish side so we had to clarify that and so we dug dig we dug into those comments talked to a lot of families the challenge with that comment was the traditional way of supporting the classroom as a parent is you're reading in a small group you're assessing you're doing those things that require you to speak the language and so majority of our parents do not speak spanish so we had to explain to them that can you read this book in spanish can you go over these spelling words in spanish and the answer was no no no so we talked about ways they can support the spanish classroom and so um that when we have new families we constantly talk to them about come in and sit listen if you need to sit and listen for a full day listen for a full day but you got to come and experience um the language in the classroom so we are constantly inviting families uh to come and sit and listen parent-teacher conferences are very engaging with both teachers so these poor teachers are speaking to all families both teachers so they have 50 parent teacher conferences that they are doing when we have our parent teacher conferences so they want to make sure that both teachers are in that setting to support um the the learning that's happening uh so families are well aware volunteering as i said in the classroom so we don't at this point have uh which i absolutely love a parent university something of that nature so i will definitely talk to jeff and his team about that because it is something that for the most part there's some basic knowledge that our families know most of it's not good but they know um so there's some key words that they're able to for the most part understand i will tell you that i do require weekly newsletters from both teachers to the families and so they're able to see the learning and the activities that are happening on a weekly basis on the english side and the spanish side so that's another way that they can engage as far as the student engagement piece throughout the year the teachers are planning together to support soldering plcs they're planning instruction obviously as well as activities like hispanic heritage month so for the month between september 15th and october 15 they had multiple activities throughout the grade levels for presentation so students would go between each grade level there's one hallway where i have my k through four and then i have my fifth grade on the other side of campus not too far away but there was a lot of presentations that month from each grade level in each classroom pre-covered really excited and then when covet hit us really hard we had a folklorico club and so we had about 25 students that were literally twice a week practicing on the stage and it was a beautiful thing and they were ready to present and then covet hit so we had to take a step back and the presenter or the person that was in charge of the studio also got sick and so she had to step away but that's something that we want to bring back because it was it was definitely something that was a rich experience um december celebrations so we celebrated in once again the program with all of the latin american countries in regards to what they do to celebrate in the month of december so once again students were roaming between grade levels um in we found herberger theater that had a spanish play so we were able to take the kids at that time i believe it was k3 to watch and listen and chateau's kitchen was the play and so they were able to go experience that uh so that was really fun um leader in me spanish as you know we're a leader in me lighthouse school and we're able to utilize all of that language that business model and and academic model in spanish as well so what you'll see in the classrooms are the habits in spanish on the spanish side and then on the english side english and so were able to have that as a visual display and then something i need to celebrate between both programs we um we have to celebrate at the end of the year and it was i don't know what it was called but celebration of learning basically we got so big at coronado celebrating the awesome things that were happening and at santen that 2019-20 we were planning on presenting and having a huge celebration at hcpa and so we had walked the facility planned it and unfortunately coveted so we had to put that on pause but we have outgrown our gyms to have our year-end celebration so i'm excited for that to come back at some point because there's a lot to celebrate between both schools and so a lot of celebrations and we can continue to brag about the amazing things that are happening at both campuses but i just want to say thank you to you all i want to say thank you to dr foley sherry dr treat rebecca this is hard that's why you don't see a lot of districts choosing to bring dli programs to their their districts this is a choice and i believe that we have the numbers to show that parents want language acquisition and so i believe in about 15 years of experience running a dli school that we are set up perfectly regionally to support our areas and so i'm proud of the work that that's happened at coronado and at san tan and so i can tell you that these folks have really supported day one when they took their roles that made a tremendous difference in supporting the program i had the opportunity to start the program after but i was part of the decision on starting coronado first and then santan second and i can tell you that dr dr foley and and the support from the district has been amazing and that's why we're excited to celebrate the things that are happening in our program right now thank you dr pete thank you yes president kaler members of the board i want to continue the celebrations that we're talking a little bit about here not just what's happening at the dli elementary levels but also what's happening across uh our secondary schools as well in what you might consider to be a more traditional world language type of class and mr mercado used the word program uh you know as rebecca rodriguez and i talk about the best ways to support our schools whether dli or the secondary schools with their language classes we talk about wanting to have not just classes not just levels not just something that happens in one place or another but an overall concept a program of what world language instruction can be and all of these different components fit into that and so some of the things that you see happening at the secondary level we as you heard earlier we add in american sign language at hva right now we add in french as a language that we're able to study as well as spanish and mandarin and when we get into those secondary schools you uh see that 48 students accepted the challenge of taking an apa exam in a world language class last year it's a tremendous number and and to be commended because that's that's no small feat you see eight different students earn seals of bi-literacy and i'll talk a little bit about that more but it's that distinction that goes on that student's diploma that says that they went above and beyond in world language study when we think about our higley students whether they're world language students or not we think about our vision as what do we hope for for those students when they graduate what is what is that that student capable of when they walk across that stage when they get that diploma and i'm excited that this program that we're talking about this world language idea it aligns perfectly with this concept that we have this portrait of a graduate if you will when i look at the elements that are up there and i see things like an innovative learner well that just brings me back to some of the things our world language leaders learn with that mental flexibility as they develop that cognitive kind of strength that happens when you take on the challenge of another language when i see things like socially responsible citizens i know that our language programs align to this as well because we're not just studying language we're studying culture we're developing empathy through these processes and when i see things about like college and career ready that we have and hope for all of our higley graduates well when we start talking about limitless possibilities it's hard to imagine what what is more limitless than the ability to communicate with literally billions of people around the world who might not otherwise be able to do so so it's very exciting to see that while we have a vision of all higley graduates this world language vision that we have in mind aligns perfectly with that and helps kind of feed into that concept i mentioned earlier about the seals of bi-literacy we know the arizona department of education in a few areas allows the opportunity for students who want to strengthen their study deepen their knowledge in a subject area to go that extra mile to be recognized with a distinction on that diploma something that carries forward with them into the job market into the world and beyond and we happen to have that seal of bi-literacy here in higley unified school district as i mentioned eight students last year were able to get that seal but i have to tell you one of the challenges we always face with anything like this is how do you promote these sorts of ideas these opportunities for students because let's face it there are so many different opportunities for young people when they get particularly into secondary education it's easy to get lost in the middle of their day with all the types of things that young people want to achieve and so one of the things that we've done and really credit to rebecca rodriguez for creating this you're seeing here a poster which is in all of our schools it's in all of our world language classes it's in all of the dli classrooms and if you take a look on here not only does it spell out exactly what those requirements are so even if you're a young student you can begin thinking about this as an aspirational goal for yourself but it talks a little bit about why a seal of bi-literacy might matter why is it worthy of that that work that little bit of extra to get that distinction and if you'll notice that qr code there at the bottom that that's a handy tool so that a student can instantly in the moment now on their personal device have an ability to refer back to that particular program and get further information about that i have to tell you having been a high school teacher myself it's difficult sometimes to support students with all the different choices that they have and for even the person who is teaching them to keep up with the changes and programs because this is offered by the arizona department of education so we try to align to it but we want to make sure we're current having this type of information here that makes it possible for both the teacher and the student to know exactly what it is they need to do to be able to pursue something like this mr treat i'm sorry to interrupt um is this ever sent out to our parents in an email form because this would be fantastic for our parents to see like either in our weekly email or and i i'm opening it up to anyone who wants to answer either in the weekly email or directed directly to those kiddos who are in those ap honors classes now president kaler board member wilson i think that's a wonderful idea it was just developed recently so that is something that i think we ought to do for sure because again we go through this idea of promotion of possibilities and that's that that's that concept that's behind this and in fact i've asked all of our instructional coaches in all the areas that have their various seals that go along with their different academic disciplines to follow suit so that teachers in maybe history social studies or in some of the areas business finance and so on they can also not just promote but educate and point students into the right direction with this so i love the idea i think if our parents know about it sometimes they give a nice nudge to their student that the student may not think about doing and the parent might say this is really good and give some explanation so i just think it'd be nice if the parents also knew i couldn't agree more and that's that's a fantastic idea and we'll be certain to do that thank you one of the things that we want to highlight here if you've had a moment to hear a little bit about the work that happened in the dli and the world languages one of the things i want to take a moment to highlight and to share is you know the last two and a half years we had world language programs we had dli programs but you've heard from you had an entire team dedicated to defining it refining it and aligning it to the new standards proficiency targets professional development resources systems that take that take long times to put in place and your team this amazing dedicated team of administrators and their teachers and our curriculum did this in two years two and a half years in the middle of a pandemic which is one of the things when you look at we have grown exponentially because higley could say they had a program we now can say we have a model program and we're looking at one of the things that model programs have is and it takes vision of the leadership is it's not just the immediate but it's the long term so where does this go and how do we get there and how do we make sure that pathways and opportunities are there for students and and it looks it means looking beyond your own borders even in your own state are what are those uh dynamic model programs that exist out there affiliation with world language uh where languages either in the immersion model or in our classes is essential we're going to talk here in a minute about pathways forward you know one of the things we know is that immersion programs are immersion programs exist in a model in the elementary grades at the secondary remember you're dealing with you're dealing with two things you're dealing with you're dealing with highly qualified and you're dealing with level of proficiency remember at the secondary level as we're building their proficiency to continue that language and develop it the content expertise teachers have in that is that world language and making sure that teachers are performing and at that very level that's a challenge you will not find a a secondary immersion model in the fact that you're not going to find someone who's proficient in that level of language and highly qualified in all the content areas plus students now also have to begin to expand into other options you'll notice that's one of the things we have is multiple options so courses and offerings for students are huge one of the things that this team has been dedicated to is beginning to not only build our pathway build it stronger build it better but think ahead and you're going to begin to hear in just a little bit about this team is is leading in world languages now as we talk about what's potential what are we working on on the next front because um there's a need and and and our leadership is is trying to be part of leading that rather than lagging behind and ensure we have pathways and opportunities for our students at all grade levels so kind of keeping that in mind we're going to transition into uh the work of where are we going right yeah thank you dr foley that that's that's 100 correct that we are really doing everything we can to see that pre-k through 12 vision here to help make certain that well we just don't kind of end something prematurely and this is what this slide kind of demonstrates for you when we start thinking about those dli kids in particular but really any student that is able to achieve at high levels what happens is they start to kind of top out early we have some students that are able to sit for that ap exam in ninth grade and some that are able to get there in 11th grade but there's this idea that we don't want to let their language exploration their growth stop there if you think about it learning a language is a perishable skill it's something that must be practiced over and over you must be always moving forward to continue to grow and develop it's not something where you can say i have it and then i put it away and i pull it out every once in a while it has to be utilized and so what we want to make certain is that with our students who are excelling at these levels and when you hear the success stories from coronado and from san tan here comes a wave of students who are excelling at high levels combining that with our current high school kids we want to make sure that we carry them on through and don't just leave them off in ninth grade and so what we're doing right now is we're exploring some different options as to how we can bridge to this upper kind of levels of learning we start talking about higher education beyond 12th grade and so there are different models in different parts of the country that we're looking at we're in conversations with institutions of higher learning to see what are some ways that we can help maybe bridge the experience of a k-12 student in that with some university coursework just as you might find with dual language or excuse me dual credit courses where they can earn college credit while as a high school student well similar sorts of partnerships are things we're exploring right now with colleges and universities to see if we can't get students further down the road toward potentially a minor in their language by spending through the majority of the study that they're able to do with us right here in higley and so that next slide kind of shows the role that that bridge program can play again this is a model that we see in other states and something that we're exploring also with regional peer districts to try to figure out what's a way that we can make this work how can we get through the logistical hurdles to see that we have students that are able to carry on their study all the way through 12th grade and beyond to bridge them to the future in the next two slides i have our pathway plan that we have under construction we are hopeful to put this plan into action in the near future with help from other districts in the valley and moving forward with what we learned from utah and delaware this is our working plan for a bridge pathway for the mandarin program students can start at the pre-k level at coulee ecdc we have our kindergarten through sixth grade mandarin dual enrollment at coronado elementary way there where they can enter the program in kinder or first grade this feeds into our immersive classes for seventh and eighth grade at cooley middle school these classes are taught at a higher proficiency level than the 1a and 1b courses offered for our beginning mandarin students this immersive class is taught entirely in mandarin middle school beginning mandarin students will take level 1a and then 1b at either middle school they move into high school and have courses offered through their senior year next year it is expected that our 8th grade immersive mandarin students will feed into our honors mandarin level 3 class at williamsfield high school we will look at the 8th grade results from the stamp test to verify that students have reached the proficiency level to take that honors level three class if not they will be placed in the best class for their proficiency level then they will continue on with mandarin mandarin four and then the ap course this is where our courses would end for them if we don't bridge the gap i am working with other districts in conversation with local universities to grant the capabilities to then add an upper level mandarin course that they offer called third year chinese or chinese 301 302 as of right now this course is not offered at our high schools anywhere but at our high schools i just want to be clear it's not available yet so next slide this is our working plan for a bridge pathway for the spanish program students can start at the pre-k level at soseman ecdc we have our kindergarten through fifth grade spanish dual enrollment at san tan and next year our fifth graders will move into sixth grade where we will then have all of our grade levels with the spanish dual language this will then feed into our spanish immersive classes for seventh and eighth grade at soseman middle school these classes will be taught at the higher proficiency level than one or one a and they are offered that are offered for our spanish students that are beginning spanish in middle school the immersive classes will be taught entirely in spanish students who have never spoken spanish have the opportunity to start with spanish 1a or 1 in 7th grade and then they move into 1b or 2 at either middle school it is expected that our immersive spanish classes will then feed into our ap spanish class at higley high school students will take the stamp test in eighth grade again to verify that they have reached the best proficiency level to take that ap course if not they'll be placed in the best spanish class for their proficiency level this would be the last available class for our most spanish students if we don't offer anything beyond the ap course we do have the literature ap course but this is not ideal because this would duplicate their spanish college credits and we would rather have something better for those students so again i'm working with other districts in the valley to con in conversations with the local university to give us three upper level spanish courses spanish conversation and composition or spanish 314 for 10th grade introduction to spanish lit or spanish 325 in 11th grade and then the advanced conversation and composition course or spanish 412 in their senior year as of right now again these courses are not offered in arizona um a student would need to score well on their ap test in order to meet the prerequisites to enter the next level for chinese or spanish because that's the prerequisite for these courses at the university level these specific courses are on the bridge plan because they are required courses toward a minor in the language at the arizona universities if our students finished either the spanish or the mandarin bridge pathway they would be on course for a short sorry one course short of a minor in that language and well on their way to a major in it another exciting development this year has been the production of our dli website it's found on the husd webpage under departments and then you can also reach it through the link on this slide the goal of the website is to inform the community using current research and information on what we're doing in dual language what it is where it's located and how they can become involved thank you so much for your time attention and most especially for your support of our amazing language programs uh thank you so much for this very comprehensive um work study that i think we just endured um that's not the right word endured it's this is just that it came out endured it was all jeff's fault mr armstrong right um no all these things are exciting for our district and so thankful that we do have a world language coach i know that these were this was um a request by several um teachers throughout the years that we would have this position in the district office and what a difference it's made thank you to the principles that you invest your time energy into all these extracurricular activities that go along with this immersion program because i know there's many so thank you for that um i don't have any specific questions at the moment so i'm going to pass it over i know mrs schultz has some and mrs wilson have some so we'll start with mrs schultz i told mrs keller i have two pages of questions but i really don't i'll just so i will save all of my i am a parent of a dli two students so but i'll save all my personal questions for coronado next week but um one of the things i wanted to ask is what are we doing to promote the program to help grow the program right now i know that there's lots of parents that aren't we look at the numbers i know their mandarin is lower right now i know that kindergarten has a wait list with one student next year but what are we doing to promote that to the community i mean specifically it's i'm just going to be truthful being in the business being in this this business it really is the the marketing specifically is what is the program producing and what is the district doing overall and how are what are the goals moving forward that are going to continue to bring students into the campus you are right that spanish does have a waiting list and at san tan and we are we are working on doing that our our program is is being articulated by parents that are already in the program that feel that it it's doing their child a due diligence in terms of making sure that they're meeting the requirements and the needs of the of the dual language and i will tell you that out of all the marketing in the past we did flyers and we put things on websites that's all great but it really is that word of mouth and whether or not it's meeting that need of the parent that's going to be able to continue to articulate that so it's one of those showa show i believe show that we are doing it and show what's going on that's going to continue to bring it in i will say that out of it to really highlight the marketing component and i believe it's the same at san tan when we talk about inbounds and out of bound enrollment we have 72 students who are out of district open enrollments and that at each school is absolutely huge in terms of that and within the district i have 90 plus who are open enrollment in district as well so that's those are numbers yes we can always improve and we're always going to continue to try to grow but it's one of those you need to show in my eyes and i really do think that both programs are speaking for themselves and i'll say in years past we've also done a great job of posting on social media but as well as that on buses we've also had advertisement on buses as well so i think the biggest component though is the word of mouth our families do share um i have and i'm sure coronado as well i have every year several when i say several at least five parents that are seeking out dli programs for their currently third three-year-old for the future and i can tell you that's something that um i get emails just random emails hey i'm looking for kindergarten and i have a three-year-old awesome and and i'm able to promote the preschool program and so um that's something that you don't see nationally is that pre-k through that 12 experience and so really excited about that opportunity here but over the years we've done it several ways um but as well capacity to to host the program um and in the limited space like for me it would it would be very difficult to add a third section in kindergarten when in the past i've had the numbers but the capacity to have it is is a struggle for the space the teacher the resources it really throws a kink having three sections versus two sections in kindergarten it does not flow well for the program when it comes to the management of it but traditionally because majority of the kids are on open enrollment in the program we don't provide and it's we don't provide transportation for families and so various reasons families will choose to keep their kid at their home school because and so um we're able to go through that wait list most of the time throughout the year and so i can say that overall though the district has done a good job of promoting it on social media and other places as well uh president caleb schultz one of the things so promotional things obviously help but reputation helps and one of the things higley didn't have a presence at the state level as being a model program in the involvement like we have had in the last year year and a half i mean truly it is word of mouth and when you are working with a state representative who's known as the state when people go to and say where are the best programs i don't know that our name would have come up until our reputation again if you build it they will come i think the work that we're talking about you you can see some pride tonight in the work of the individuals truly the amount of work that's been done from building the curriculum to aligning the proficiencies to doing the professional development to taking what we were doing to another level systemically has been a massive process and we have brought in people to help us get there and i think we are now we are now going oh do you know what they're doing in higley which is really cool when i go to superintendent meetings with superintendents across the state who don't know about the east valley go oh i heard about your program i just beam with pride because it means what we're doing is making a difference so i think promotional is more promotion obviously happens but word of mouth and quality program matters and i think we're getting we're getting better awesome dr foley oh sorry you go how is this going to add to that and that we have more kids in the mandarin preschool program dli than we've ever had which typically or a lot of those kids will funnel into our elementaries we also promote these programs during kindergarten roundup and i have a funny story that happened today a parent called ed services and said how do i get my kid into the dli program do i just need to hold them back in preschool a year so they have an open slot and i thought well we've never had a call like that before that i think our pr department is great and social media seems seems to be the way to go so and i'm going to say also i think it goes into just like we're doing with if if mr telkien can get that sister cities those are the events that we were never never mentioned of and for him to come and walk on campus and say hey i want you to go ahead and have your students perform that's absolutely huge and so those are the types of things that people will start seeing when they're wearing their coronado gear and when they're wearing their santan gear and people are talking that's going to be the component that really is going to start grasping and hearing those conversations i think that's going to be the number one marketing course i have more thank you okay um so i we didn't see any numbers on stamp tests for seventh and eighth graders i know spanish isn't there yet but mandarin isn't there yet are those numbers there and how are we tracking those kids to make sure they're on track and supporting them i'm appreciative that there's kindergarten through six then you're here and this team but it doesn't seem to be involvement from the upper level grades in this program board member schultz i think we briefly mentioned that we're going to stamp test every student in a language course currently whether it's dli or our world language courses that's that's to help us understand you know how do we support our teachers do we need to do something differently that data is not a gotcha that data is to help us improve our practice and i think it is important for those mandarin kids that are currently at cooley to have a snapshot of where are you are you ready for mandarin so currently they're not having that right they haven't the kids that are in eighth grade haven't had a stamp test so they will this year like i mentioned i i hate to use the covet excuse but it threw off a couple of things last year honestly sure so but they are scheduled just like everybody else okay awesome um and where are we with the bridge program i know you've mentioned it is it reasonable to say it could happen in i don't know three years or is there a timeline or [Music] we've worked with the universities around here they have expressed interest we've actually gone to meetings with their dean of students and they are currently in talks the thing that's kind of holding us back right now is do we house the instruction or does the university house the instruction and so that's kind of where we're just in the talks with how does it look and who's in charge we're hoping that by the time our coronado kids get to that that final year that it will be ready for them because it's our desire president current eighth graders the coronado eighth graders will have leaders hopefully by the time they get to that senior year and why do you want to stay so you know we've looked at the different stuff as far as secondary schools go why would someone want to continue in the pathway as far as coronado de cooley to i mean if it's offered at saseman and offered it higley and we see the kids last week at um higley high already in ap what's the support or extra support or is there anything for them in the secondary schools okay let me make sure i'm understanding so did i ask that mandarin class is only offered at cooley right and so they have mandarin classes that saw someone but they don't have that immersive course so they wouldn't be getting higher levels i understand but you can still get there yes you can still get if you don't stay on the path you can still get there like through like we saw the kids that are in mandarin ap already at higley high school yes so this would be another entry point for students like if you were in 10th grade and you were in the ap class at higley high school and you got a five on that ap test you would be able to then move into those courses as well so it is for any student who is able to pass that ap test to move forward so this is going to benefit all of our students who are excelling in the language okay and then as far as the emerging immersion program and way we grow is it is it along the same lines as other districts as far as the continuation between kindergarten to we are very comparable to what's happening around here and we are actually very comparable to what's happening in the in utah and delaware those are kind of like the ones that everyone looks at because they started first and they have legislation that backs up their programs and we have actually been very closely aligned with what they are doing and moving forward we will be on that same pathway okay um mr mccarthy just what was the i just tried to ask but um what was the um the club that you mentioned that you were doing twice a week it was folklorico so dance oh okay okay awesome i just didn't hear what you said and so i wondered what the club asked me to do it awesome um i have some more but i'll let mrs wilson answer it thank you like i got my list come on mrs schultz i'll let you go ahead for now president taylor porter schultz i just wanted to expand upon one of the questions you had that also is important we talked about the funding of the resources the addition of the stamp that is an expensive component historically the stamp is a it's a standardized assessment not all of our world languages were utilizing that as a semester exam one of the things that ed services had to do was expand the budget and and to plan for it to expand it to all of our second world tour to our world languages as the secondary level one of the key pieces there is having a content coach who can work with the teachers to align the maps to use the tool for this purpose prior to this year we didn't have someone dedicated in that capacity which we do now which allows for that work to happen so hence the assessment component now is far more solid when we're saying pre-k-12 we're talking about the immersion program up to the secondary level the other component i wanted to hit on is it's important to remember that that bridge program requires us to work through the university system to grant the credit having been a previous university administrator both chris street and i have experienced in that area it can take a few years to get it through one of the challenges historically has been their their concern about whether or not um the elementary or the the high schools can teach it at the same level think dual enrollment credit the beautiful thing is because we have stamp and it's an international test it takes out the argument that we can't teach it at the proficiency level students would have so hence our ability to be able to offer it as long as we have the highly qualified person that that that that argument is going to make it easier it can take up to two years to work through the university system hence why it's important to get ahead of it the nice thing is is that when we talk about this this is happening with great momentum and speed because there's a desire for this so our hope the the some of this is outside of our control and some of this is mentally in our control and we're working through the right channels to get it there yeah i didn't expect like i didn't i just wondered if there was a timeline as far as that goes i understand working at the universities and all of that and dealing with it so i just wanted to see if there was if you had a timeline for it um um i just want to say i know sorry i just she brought so i didn't want to forget so 2019 is when this committee was formed and everything in the groups and and dual dli started in 2014 2015.

so this these are the two outcomes and the indicators for collaborator here how is the 912 part of the 912 indicators differentiated so we have the outcomes laid out so you did that as a whole committee but in terms of the indicators for 9 through 12 and this area we're working on that language now so that's a really rough draft so we're pretty we feel pretty good about the 6 8 draft that we have right now and again going through those in a curriculum committee our tdac committee however might want to see those in more detail would be great certainly welcome to get some feedback on that we had an administrative session scheduled just last week because of the snow and so they were going to get a chance to kind of see the continuum for 6 8 at least the draft anyways and then this is going to go back out to a larger group so um really this is just an orientation to the work type of work that we're doing uh just a small sample it's just too too detailed and there's too many examples to go through for this for this type of evening but certainly more in depth um for another conversation for sure okay so where are so next steps is we're going to continue to draft edit and review the indicators for the high school curriculum um sorry continuum and so right now some of the things that we're wrestling with as we initially went into this thinking we were going to do a 9 10 section and then 11 12 and we think that we're starting to get the nuances between 9 and 10 and 11 12 are really kind of stickies or thinking perhaps in 9 12 of service basket and outcomes so end of eighth grade and then 12th grade so we're working on on that piece now um we're gonna have to start to design and develop rumors so once we get that continuum set we're going to take detailed rubrics that will align with some curriculum examples to see how does this align where can we provide feedback and add these into student projects works and teacher lesson plans how do we build this and to create those those numbers and samples so a little far away from that but that is kind of the next the next work that that's supposed to cover um and then eventually we'll begin with professional development to give some teachers some opportunities to run some experiments hopefully by the end of the year so to take what we have uh drafted to date and to begin to put those in the hands of teachers a couple of teachers especially what that came together on the larger 612 group that we put together and to say let's let's start working kind of one-on-one and talking through where these could live in the curriculum or where are great opportunities and then where are places where we need to build different though um to to mirror these two together lots of work ahead for this we're really still about developing the continuum phase right now and then you know there's i keep saying we've got multiple trains running parallel that all have to come to the port or the train station at the same time um so in the background along with the continuum is that we are working on shifting to a new learning management system which is called schoology i think mr watson has mentioned it in past so if you think of google classroom as kind of our basic management system now for teachers and students schoology is really sort of the high-end version of that with way more bells and whistles and really unites a lot of systems together in one roof to make it easier for everybody and it's it's more robust so we're looking forward to that transition and we've started professional development along those lines and we hope to track the rubrics i'm sorry the continuum of the rubrics within the schoology system so that we can begin to report out on how our students are doing over time so that's again a very big project it's a multi-year project we also are building the academy model design in the background so that has its own action plan as well but again the idea is to create this transformational new way of operating here in danbury with teaching attorney so these new standards for the portrait of the graduate combined with new opportunities in the way that we're teaching students career-connected learning and this this really robust opportunity leadership and practice that's really empowering for students in a way that we haven't had in the past or pulling in pockets and then we're continuing to develop our business and industry partnerships that go along to support all of this so how are we engaging community businesses to support the academy uh we're in the process of uh hosting the academy director position as you know and that's the person who we expect to pound the pavement to go get those partnerships with all the local local businesses to come and sponsor certifications sponsor internships externships shadowing experiences come in and talk to our students about all these careers and partner with us right now we're really looking for them to partner with us to help us develop curriculums the next year will be a big curriculum year we'll get our work to start to develop out some of those foundational background courses and eventually the elective courses that open it but we need their expertise um to tell the students engineers computer scientists so that's pretty much it there's a there's a little bit of a timeline on there it's a little fuzzy to read from here but if you have it in your packet um and some of this is shifting a little bit obviously with cobin's cancellations and the ability to pull staff but we're we're moving along we're not too far off from that and we'll be readjusting this as we go we'll provide another update soon it will and certainly again happy to warranty anyone else is kind of just coming into the conversation of either portion of the graduate or the academies thank you i think the curriculum that that would be a good fit for and this is not actually in our package so if we could maybe send and send it out to board members or at least have it in the minutes um thank you um any board member have questions not educational experts here but um you know everybody here at this table is invested in what the curriculum looks like um and and what our learning goals are for students so this you made it really concise and easy to understand thank you my other question is sort of because we opened that door about the academy conversation and i just wanted to ask you really quickly um in terms of developing those partnerships with folks who um you know might be offering internships or shadowing opportunities and you know contributing to certain curriculum development how does that dovetail with the construction that we have to do at the actual career academy site and making sure that the classroom spaces we're building are a good fit for the learning that needs to go on there so we did a tremendous amount of groundwork with the folks from drafting the architectural plans um if you had an opportunity to see also the edge example right under document to orient folks too that was submitted to the state but we were very careful and very intentional about what needs to be in these classrooms by pathway so designing labs that are very specific to the types of activities that will be in there in addition to identifying equipment that would be needed to bring students to certification so very early on probably way earlier than you know anyone was probably asking for we identified as much as we could think of even though we're still in the process of developing but we did identify as many components as possible not just for not just pathways but also for the purpose of safe reimbursement down the line congratulations so at dead times maybe it's a product that can go into that are needed so um and we actually have a chance to take a look at some of the architectural draft plans um very exciting and i feel very comfortable that we'll have the equipment that we need and the designs of those labs and class spaces particularly for cte areas um at least at this stage in the game so we you know we you know we do feel good about that some of the other pieces are going to come along the way so for example we had a company a local company that reached out to melissa they do and said hey we have a bunch of computers here very high end that can run the type of software that you need that problems but right something's even higher end to run types of software and for design that you're going to need for from all your pathways they're old for us but they're gonna they're gonna be high-end for you are you interested yes that's talk so i i'm anticipating that we're going to continue to have people uh reach out to missouri's in order to make our views known so i do think you know over time we'll develop the equipment and all the interiors that we need you know at least through a lot of our partners in the area who are interested people are not being there they're interested in this so we're excited about that thank you but it's time to shift the academy director person to take out some of those that organization piece we really need that piece uh to perform working full-time in that area thank you so our next update is related to goal 4 and this is from kim thompson a human right hr update and hopefully we have that ready to go as well okay so i guess the segue to all that exciting conversation is who do you have that's going to do the work who do you have among us who is going to be the group of adults who drive all of these wonderful programs and instruction and so what i want to talk to you tonight about is what your incoming cohort of teachers look like we had another really big year when i kind of froze our data maybe two weeks ago we were 180 certified staff members that does include a handful of folks that have moved from different positions within our organization so they're kind of on my roster people in new jobs but it's about 180 now we're still doing maybe four or five new certified staff members a week so we continue to expand this group and what i might do is just update some of the numbers for you in another few months time but this is a snapshot for the bulk of the hiring that we've done to date we as you know we probably start in around may june and we really ramp things up through the summer so the first thing that i want to talk about tonight is um where are your teachers coming from and this data is you can see 179 108 new staff new teachers this year and 15 of your group come from danbury um and the other surrounding towns you can see there are kind of smaller numbers um that's usually that's about on trend for us might be a little bit low on the danbury side but that's about on trend for where we see teachers coming in to us and where they take up residence remember too that many of our teachers as homeowners have some benefits for working in a primary school district so we tend to also kind of lure people into the city limits for that reason as well um first slide on the left the first grade on the left our staff are predominantly still self-identified as female is it about a 75-25 split this year that's about on trend and to the right um the other kind of interesting metric is prior experience in the district um oftentimes we sort of cycle through are we taking too many internal people do they have an inside track are we not looking at external people so this is kind of an interesting kind of number to look at this year we had i think it's like a higher number of external candidates than they typically do in the past which shows that you know we're a district that is attracting new um talent we have i think a lot to offer particularly for newer teachers who are looking for something that's exciting and that's challenging particularly in an urban suburban district like this i think that's what accounts for kind of folks coming from outside of our district highly educated now part of this is driven by state requirement that teachers ultimately have master's degrees but we're seeing now as they're coming in the door about 60 percent of your teachers have master's degrees three percent which i thought was a pretty impressive number have doctorates already this sixth year um degree is that um degree that typically for folks who want to come in and be administrators that's kind of another 30 credits beyond having your first master's degree and of course the bachelor's and the ba so this is a slide i know everybody's waiting for um what does our ethnicity look like for our current incoming class now again remember this is not the whole district we'll look at that in a minute this is your incoming class and you can see the largest group of non-white teachers is your hispanic and latina group at clocking in almost 20 this year and that is something to watch as we go through the next slides that's a number that continues to grow over trend for us um and it is largely i think going to the types of positions that we've been filling we feel a lot of esl bilingual staffing positions and so you do tend to see native language speakers coming in and um and trying to get those positions so i think that's why you see that number um and about three percent um in the black african-american category one percent in asian and then um there's sort of some other pieces of the pie there folks with two or more ethnicities disclosed and those who just want to respond is this full time okay is this full time yes uh yes most of our teachers within very few sessions are programmers um this is kind of a look at since um we've been keeping this data or looking carefully since 2014 i've been making this presentation and you can see um particularly i think the purple line is the one at the top there that's that's really interesting um you continue to see an upward trend in terms of hiring teachers of color and that is being driven again by the blue line of um hispanic latino teachers and again followed by um black african american and asian candidates or teachers of color so you see the numbers starting to go up and and we're rapidly approaching kind of 25 again in the pool of newly hired teachers um so that's a trend that we're happy about okay so um this graph is showing total overall teachers now remember that you have teachers anywhere from 980 to a thousand teachers sometimes we're up a little bit higher than that but let's use a thousand as kind of a round number so if you see on that left-hand pie graph that eighty-five percent of your teaching staff are weight and eight percent are hispanic latino part of the problem here is that when you have a pool of a thousand and you're bringing in a pool of 200 change is very slow to the overall aggregate right so we may be um replacing teachers that are leaving but also expanding our teaching ranks and so change is going to be very incremental so you really don't see a whole lot if those numbers are rounded as they are for the purposes of pipe you're not seeing needle movers here but you're seeing it over time and so it's a very slight incremental change which is frustrating because as we bring in these classes of you know 180 or 200 teachers we're seeing some really good trend but it's really hard to make a difference in the large aggregate so that's what you're seeing here um i thought it made sense to take a minute to talk about nationwide because i think anybody that looks closely at minority hiring initiatives and how we're doing kind of around the globe or around the country or around the state and around our city it's a common theme that is very difficult to attract and retain teachers of color nationwide um these numbers surprise me a little bit um i will say another data is a little bit old um it's from the us department of education and so there's a lag behind us a few years but you can see um at the time in 1718 when these figures were compiled that the general um workforce among teachers was running at about 80 79 percent on hispanic and then you see the other groups this is our connecticut state data and what i think is interesting about this is um at the bottom line here you see a very gentle decline in the overall percentage of teachers who are awake normally hispanic and that is a five-year trend and it's slow progress again i think going to the fact that we're i think it's about 52 000 teachers so it takes some time to make a difference um so if you consider that as the national trend and the state trend let's look at how we're doing um so the numbers on the blue chart are the blue the blue bar and the green bar are state of candidate numbers from 2019 to 2020 and your numbers are the red and the purple bars so again i don't think it's hard to conclude from seeing the original pie graphs that within large numbers of hispanic and latino teachers were hiring that were really well ahead of trend when we put us up against the state we're on trend with the other on teacher caller groups but we're well above in in the hispanic and latino area and i think that's something that we should um certainly credit our teams in those content areas in our esl our core esl teams that do a really good job of recruiting but also training and providing opportunities for learning that is what's continuing to attract people into our district in particular so i think those numbers are very promising now this is the slide that sort of says why are we doing this right so we all have a priority i think toward equity and toward um these these recognition that these are valuable components to our workforce one of the metrics that's often looked at is what is your demographic demographics for your kids what does your school population look like and on the left you can see these are last year's numbers so um from progress october that um sixty percent of your student body is coming in self discloses hispanic or legendary sort of that little vote attracts was fighting with the powerful people um but you can see it's about 60 hispanic latino 25 white look at that compared to the property starter on the right which is again your new cohorts so if our goal is to try to provide for our kids mentors and enrollments who look like them right administrators and teachers that we're making slow progress um and it's gonna take us quite a long time and i think it may be an aspirational goal to ever get to the point where the demographics of our teaching rights would mirror exactly our students but this is kind of what we always keep in mind is the end goal this is kind of where we're trying to head toward by providing um clients and providers or role models and giving kids an opportunity to see people who look like them in the classroom oh and this i'm sorry this this slidings are existing published again the numbers are more sobering there um i like to show your new class numbers because those really are showing the work that we're doing now um on the right is sort of the we're in this slow slog or trying to get back to um you know a little more equitable representation so you can see that there okay so the question is are we just not hiring minority applicants are we not finding them what seems to be the issue why is there this slow or gentle increase and this is a document that takes a look at who's in the applicant rule so you know the magic of computers is everybody applies through applejack and we're able to run some really good statistics about how many people plug in what their what they look like and so you can see here that our candidate pool is still predominantly white and particularly i put in their special education um as a as an indicator that's another area which kelly will tell you it's very difficult to find a large pool of applicants who are teachers of color in that area um and then you can see just for a comparison in the esl area that's really where we start to see some parity um just a moment on on the hiring process just for new folks um so the actual hiring of candidates or teacher candidates does not run through hr it's a very central decentralized process so in this ring we start to talk to our administrators at our admin council meetings about the district's highway priorities what are we looking for what are our goals um you know how are we searching and finding applicants and it's the building principles or what i call the second book from the hiring administrators that are doing all the initial screenings and the bringing in candidates for interviews most if not all buildings will bring candidates in for a panel interview with some teachers and they will nine times out of ten have them do a demo lesson so that people can actually see them practicing their craft and see how they're doing um from that there is a recommendation that comes out of the building and it comes in the form of a ton will happen report into central office um and we will review in central office those hiring reports with kind of a more global view so we'll look um certainly for things like this certification in place how much experience does someone have we're trying to place them an appropriate place in the salary schedule and often members of cabinet will kind of bounce around some of the candidates that we see is this the right person um does this person have the right attributes are they too high on the scale that kind of thing so that's when it kind of comes into central office and that kind of last review happens it's rare that we may you know pause on anyone but it does happen sometimes and it's really a reflection of having a last place where we can look to see if some of our hiring goals are being met and the same goals that we talked about in the spring so that's kind of an overview of how the process works and then this is kind of a pie graph of where we're looking um in the last few years we've really started to spend more time looking at particular identified institutions we've always gone to uconn mountain a school we have wonderful candidates come out of there we've always worked with wescon sacred heart bridgeport and you see that in these numbers we're starting to see more traction and i think there's a reflection of kind of a younger pool of applicants at indeed or at ct reef the more digital online places where teachers tend to look for positions and we've also done some distance recruiting so we might go down to some of the historic black colleges and universities and talk with their career offices about kids that might be interested in coming up here to to work we do find that that kind of 100 mile radius rule tends to hold true that you don't see a lot of kids coming from southern schools up to the northeast unless they also existing connection so we talk a lot about those pieces and um this is really this polygraph is really where we see the majority of our applications coming in um being the biggest one that sort of blue column right and that's really exciting for educators just some general observations um you've heard me say a couple times tonight so bilingual um physicians tend to draw fluent language speakers who identify minority status um and we're seeing in the secondary area what we've seen over many years now math biology show periodic sites in candidates who are teachers of color but that they tend to be along with kind of more traditional english social studies and physics tend to be predominantly white applicants so we're starting to ask some questions we we um are listening to a lot of wisconsin state department of education they're trying to kind of bolster some programming for how we can bring more students of color through some of these programs and that's we're starting to partner with them but those are some trends that we continue to see and i will say that the state department of education has really made a lot of effort in recent years particularly with certification as an obstacle just some kids coming in and being able to teach and so this year more so than in the past we have a couple of teachers who needed to complete their student teaching in order to be eligible to be teachers and we've worked with some teacher prep programs to say they can come and sub for us and that will be in lieu of their student teaching so we're all trying to find ways to kind of fast track some candidates into the pipeline in a way that has traditionally provided obstacles for them um again um we all talk you know i think in education about goal setting and i think these are the two real goals that we've been focused on for the last few years to continue to support um a drive for minority hiring and open positions in a ratio that reflects the demographics of our kids and also to support the state department of education and other organizations that are really looking to expand the pool of talented diverse educators so um last slide is just a couple of action steps um the first these are sort of the priorities for us for this year um we've talked some about focusing on communications and that communications function within the district and using some new resources for kind of bolstering the way that you communicate out to the community and so i see that as something that will be very helpful to us um i would love to see a recruiter and mr wilson i've talked about this a couple of times would love to see a recruiter who could be dedicated to that for right now what i think we need is a stronger bridge between some of the materials that we've done in my office the brochures and the ad spots and really working to get the communication out into the district through some other forms of social media to see if we can't expand the pool number two is to look each year for two new sources to make an outdoor list it might be a new college program it might be a teacher prep program it might be a state department initiative but to try to build every year two new places to add to our roster so that we can see whether we're able to generate some more diversity of interest number three continue to build upon gains with our current minority hiring pipelines and those initiatives that are through westcott and nyu nyu is a new program to us last year westcon has been with us for many years and for those of you that are new that's a teacher prep program where we start to identify kids at denver high school who then go to west pond and take teacher prep classes and often we'll come and do some work in our summer school we hire three this year out of the pipeline which is the most we've ever hired and so we're really excited about that this program is kind of modeled under a successful program that runs out of new york state where it's kind of grow your own so you identify kids who are interested in teaching particularly their students of color and you kind of nudge them through this process which can be pretty long and grueling but moves them through this process and they give them opportunities to be successful and so we're going to continue to try to build it on those gains by working closely with mezcon and nyu and number four is a new pipeline idea we've bounced this around for the last couple of years we have a large group of paraprofessionals many of them have some education higher education credits so any of them are on the road toward a va or have a beyonce already and so those folks are people who um particularly if they're foreign language native speakers those are folks that we want to try to incentivize to go through an alternative route to certification where they might actually become teachers of ours so they start in one capacity and we give them a career career pathways into another capacity so we're looking at whether we can create some incentives partnering with educator union and also with the state to try to identify who those folks may be among us that would be good candidates for teaching ultimately and finally you know retention is always a question and our retention numbers are are pretty good we do tend to lose some of our bilingual and esl teachers to other districts once we've completed training so we go through all of the training and give them a really really good foundation and they get plucked by other districts so we're going to try to really work harder to understand why that happens aside for money if that's only while it is um but i think there may be some other reasons so we're going to try to work hard at kind of an exit interview process this year see if we can get some more attention to that and that's what we're doing in hr cam can you also just add a little bit about the westcon partnership for jamboree public schools over the years that have yielded in reading teacher hires um with students that graduated from denmark high school and just speak to that a little bit because i'm beginning to think it's probably rob cody's time for this year yeah i think we should bring rob back i know he he comes periodically to talk about and surely for the program the program is amazing um and i think that you know there's lots of people who are starting to say things like let's see if we can start to identify kids at the elementary level middle school the kids that want to grow up to be teachers and so by really partnering with the high school and and giving these kids a very clear pathway into westcon we've got some really great traction and these kids are awesome i mean they're just they're excited to be here many of them came through the embryo public schools all the way through and so they have stories to share about their own experiences here and then we give them a chance to really be in the classroom with their sleeves rolled up and kind of doing their thing so i think it's a wonderful program um we also in that i don't talk about substitutes because it's just kind of depressing topic but in the substitute area also we are really working closely with the teacher prep program at west common and we're looking to see if we can start to pull some of those kids into work with us as substitutes that's only going to continue to bolster this kind of connection that we've got with the school which has literally been here in our backyard and who has you know really have been very loyal to us as we have been to them so i think that's the kind of homegrown initiative we're going to really start taking some traction um and we hope that nyu um will continue to grow over time that's one that kevin made the first initiative with them and really tried to kind of mirror it and i think we may see some other partners on there as well thank you kevin thank you so much i don't know if there are any questions about that presentation any questions for ken thanks um it did have a couple questions and you sort of spoke to this a little bit and it sounds like you're attracting teacher attention you know and trying to you know figure out sort of how many folks are sticking with the district after your period can you give this like a snapshot maybe of like you know out of a potential class of 180 otters how many of you expect to retain past like a three-year-old yeah so i i think we do a decent job of retaining us it's super hard right now it has been for the last two years because with coped we've seen just mass numbers of people decide they don't want to teach anymore or they want to retire earlier so their numbers are really skewed um before that time you know we typically will have i don't know maybe maybe 30 retirements in a year and in terms of kind of mid-level folks who leave i would say maybe 30 a year so a lot of our numbers are replacing they're what we call backfilling but i think that we need to do a better job of more dialogue and for that it's time right but more dialogue with these folks who are leaving about why they're leaving i do talk to people that tend to go to other districts to kind of ask why that is and it can be anything from the length of my commute to um you know the amount of pay so it's really it's a hard thing to get our hands around um but you know i would expect every year that just for backfilling that we're looking at 125 150 teachers um if that gives you kind i think we can do a better job of tracking i'm just not quite sure how to track it yeah yeah there's a there's a lot of data they do for already without having to yeah um and then my second question is about you know when you're talking about the placement of teachers and the buildings and things like that it's my sense that from building the building we don't have the same demographics in terms of student population so is that a consideration when placing teachers so um right now and you know we have this debate every chunk of time uh about how to replace teachers we have had years where we kind of do the speed dating where a whole bunch of administrators sit in a room and they interview all sorts of people and then everybody arm wrestles for who's gonna go where um and so that didn't work right um and so we really have had this decentralized process and so in some respects we really are following the track record of the administrator right so whoever the building principle is has kind of a sense of the demographics of their building and i think hires accordingly um so it's a little bit tricky to kind of keep a handle on and that's why this centralized review at the end is so important for us um you know we have had times i think historically in time i've been here where we may have an administrator that we kind of hey you know i noticed that the last six hires that you've done you know were all white females or you know can you talk through with me about about this issue so i think it really is building specific but because we are decentralized it really is driven by your principles and so that requires us to really have um broad and deep conversations with them about what our priorities are as an institution thank you presentation was great and it looks like we're making great progress i'm gonna add you just said the bad word and i'm gonna say it again substitutes yes how are we doing it as kelly like has kelly services managed to dig up and say any new i'm sorry so kelly services they are here they've been here since the first week of january but they have been recruiting since september or october maybe um and in earnest really in november um they faced i think they saw the same headwinds that we were facing so there's only so many people in the pool um they have um gotten to their initial estimate which was to get 100 people up and running right away is that an addition to the is that including the people we already had that includes the people we have so they've converted almost 100 of the people that we had and now they're supplementing um so they're finding really good traction through indeed they're getting a lot of traffic that way and they are also trying to really exploit this relationship with westcon as well i would say and i meet with them on thursday mornings to get a recruiting update you're looking at about 25 a week that they can get through their system it does take them a little bit longer because they do extensive training so they have a special ed module they have you know a classroom management module so they do a lot more training than we ever did so it's taking a little bit longer but my hope is that in the next four weeks we'll see that we're going to get close to 175 something like that which is really our sweet spot that we came back from the break um when i2 was down for the account uh we had about 340 people out a day so i do think that's a long way of saying um i think they're making some strides i think the end of the holiday driving season is a bus for us because now there's people flooding in that are looking for alternative work um remember we also have almost 100 tutor positions that are open and that's really been a struggle to try to build so we're kind of got competing interests we did raise up the daily rate for our building subs and we are i think just shy of having two in every elementary school building now that's gonna really help a lot that's the full-time buildings up and that's a great idea yeah thank you yeah good luck i wish i could tell you 300 people we're in the same boat everywhere there's no magic bullet yeah anybody else thank you ken so the next item on the report is open choice program update so i just want to make the board and the community aware open choice originally projected to be launched in danbury region 2223 school year we've been informed by a ces partner that open trace program is going to be delayed at least one year gentleman eric nyquist our partner at ces had shared with us that he's going to need more time to develop these partnerships with local school districts to potentially open up doors for open choice options in surrounding areas so we will continue to work with him and learn of any developments throughout the next school year but at this time we've learned the launch will be delayed at least one school year i just wanted to make the board aware of that update we have also provided that update on our website as families continue to have questions a couple of months ago actually our partner asked us to make sure all the requests for open choice went directly to them so they can continue to survey and be able to share directly with the state the level of interest in our region and so i haven't heard a report from him the number of families that are actually interested but they did they did make it clear that it was very important for them to have that data in order to justify the work in our region so i'm hoping to have some more updates soon from ces and eric but for right now the launch has been delayed so i don't know if there are any questions on that before thank you all right so the next one reimbursement requests for unplanned expenditures and i'm going to ask john for some help and back up on this but let me just start by saying we partnered with our local lobbyists about a month ago along with in collaboration with the city of danbury across the mayor's office there's great optimism that we might be able to get reimbursed in some of these untapped monies federal monies from the state of connecticut and john can give some of the details 1920 or 2021 unspent i'm sorry monkeys that impacted us directly here in danbury john worked with the finance director and the lobbyists and helped to quite frankly put together i think a really good case for danbury to get reimbursed close to three million dollars well thank you so what we're talking about was back in march started back in march of 2020 when we were all set home our school lunch program um was affected there were there just weren't any kids coming into the schools uh for the rest of that year to sell lunch or breakfast to and that was the third of the school year our our school lunch program lost about seven hundred thousand dollars as a result of that sudden closing and that continued uh into the fall of we were still closed and by then there was an executive order from the governor that we should continue to pay our food service workers during the shutdown the gig but there was still no right not enough revenues coming in uh for half the year when we pay our staff it was we were short and when the year ended in june the loss that year was a million and a half dollars so for the two years losses of 2.2 million not just here all school lunch programs around had the same problems last october of 2021 we got a call from the city finance director who pointed out that school lunch losses were an eligible expense for sr3 that's a grant program sr3 is what the it's the arp money the american rescue plan money schools and towns got it but for schools it was it's called esser iii and when we got our allocation uh there were certain um there were only certain things you could spend it on or really pandemic related before that happened you might recall when you adopted our budget for this year in june of 2021 before this before the phone call came we developed a multi fund strategy where we had expenses coming out of the budget expenses coming out of the alliance grant the cares act the sr2 grant the sr-3 brand primarily a number of staff and services to support us during that pandemic and so those staff were hired in the summer we heard about it and began teaching they were have been in place uh for a couple months when uh city finance directors suggested um we look at the sr3 plan again he thought we should amend the plan that had been approved by the state and i said to him well we can't we've you the board had adopted a plan months ago and people were here working we really were in no position to send them home i didn't watch it frankly so the discussions continued and we did finally reach consensus as kevin pointed out some of us have heard that there was additional money that the state of connecticut had received under the american rescue plan that they did not dull out to all the municipalities we're not sure why we heard it a couple different ways so we contacted our lobbyists sullivan and shane and told them the situation we were in and they too weren't under the impression that there was more money that had not gone out to the districts so we decided to ask for together under the mayor's signature we put a request in it's actually written by the lobbyists you know what to write into who and that went in seeking reimbursement for these losses that occurred in the last two years from school lunch the city finance director also pointed out that the sr-3 would have also reimbursed the city for some chromebooks that we bought when we first shut down they were kids that didn't have computers at home and instruction uh was going on and we bought about 600 000 worth of chromebooks for the students so that is also in that's an eligible expense as well for reimbursement so together with the city there is a request now for two point eight or nine million dollars that was made to the office of policy and management for reimbursement from what we're pretty sure is a fund that the state is holding in us the superintendent pointed out um the lobbyist was optimistic that we could get something on that and that's that's the world they live in so they're good so we share their optimism so the next area is correct lottery partnership and couple of weeks ago i received an email from our correct partner who has administered our local lottery here in town for years now they've informed us that they are no longer going to serve as the administrator of our lottery so after trying to understand the rationale they went on to explain i was actually reminded of this story when i first blamed it here in the district that they initially stepped in it was an emergent situation here in the district they kind of came to the rescue and since then it's turned into an ais lottery west side lottery west side lottery that's complicated that's stem lottery and global studies and then of course ais that is continuing it's very also complicated and at this time they needed to move on assurance that they would continue to serve as a partner and provide any technical assistance that we needed so i just want to make the board aware we are currently in in pursuit of another administrator i immediately called our local rest which is at advance the mr jeff kitchen we have a meeting on february 8th and to take correct up on their offer to provide technical assistance they will also be part of that meeting to see if we can broker a different new partnership through in advance to get this work done so like the previous update i'm confident this administrator will also be able to lead us through a new partnership here locally so i'll have a new update for the board soon but i just wanted to make you aware that we are transitioning to an environment so no need to be nervous i don't think but it's i think it's just news that i just want everyone to be aware another update for the community and i think it requires some kind of background particularly for our new board members in the community i mean this is not on your agenda right now but this is regarding danbury primary school in brookfield we've had to as part of our lease agreement we last year during the spring as part of the cdc guidelines and recommendations we were you might recall during the 1920 school year in 2021 school year danbury public schools wrote a letter to the governor in the commission of education basically stating that our schools were too overpowered to come back and be able to adhere to the social distancing guidelines for that reason when others other school districts were in school whether 50 or uh or going back and forth we were either home uh remotely a hundred percent and then of course last year came back in the fifty percent hybrid and so during the 21-22 school year the opening of this school year we wanted to make sure that was not an obstacle for us um and by to the greatest extent possible which is a new world we love to use now greatest extent possible we wanted to make sure we can social distance throughout broadhouse school district which led to several hires across the district at the high school and elementary level but it also led to a new lease agreement in brookfield to help with our social media without social distance and efforts and so given at ellsworth elementary school south street elementary school two of our smaller cafeterias in the in the district and then stanley rough elementary school which is a large one of our larger cafeterias in the district but they were also growing by two additional sections at the school we made a decision at the district to move 11 kindergarten sections from those three those three affirmation schools and moved them to the brookfield site this came at a considerable investment we signed a two-year lease with an option with an opt-out after one year the opt-out was a i believe a two-month penalty and we went into agreement because we had all kindergarten students at the site it required considerable construction to make it work it required a new desk at the school site to make it work and our director of facilities his team between his team our director facilities rich jobert and our finance office we were able to open the doors at that school and do so successfully and frankly really on the backs of the teachers and staff to open their doors are we able to do so but now moving forward as we've talked about the financial cliff that's part of our budgeting process last school year the financial cliff that is a reality of the ester grants esther cares institution sf3 we have decided that it's in our best interest particularly on the hills of learning that our hillsborough annex project is scheduled to open on time which would mean instead of 11 11 sections opening netflix to the next year we would only be at seven sections and so given all of that information not to mention it sounds like we would need an additional a couple of hundred thousand dollars extra to continue to have that building function next year given the limitations of the limitations of the facility there um directory facilities as well as he believes that the site needs an additional oiler to make sure our classrooms are warm throughout the school year in addition to uh some because we have air conditioning at the site we built additional classrooms but there were challenges with to make sure that air got to all the new classrooms so that duct work also required additional upgrades i believe we went oh we've already gone over budget by several hundred thousand dollars and given those additional investments that will be necessary to open up the building we feel like it's in our best interest to come out of the police at this time and so again ellsworth will be returning back home and those four sections will be back in the building in this space they will have new spaces so certainly we've had significant growth in the downtown area particularly at hellsworth so we're very happy to announce it of course the bill is not open yet i'm very happy to announce that they've projected to open on time stanley roth on south street both talk to both principals and you know they've enjoyed an opportunity to kind of take that space they've never had before at least in the short time that i've been here just reminded them that those kindergarten teachers and students will be coming back next year so you know we we're mindful that the cdc guidelines are still in place but we've also learned a lot and since we have moved our students out i feel like we can bring our students back to their respective schools and do so safely as long as we continue to follow their mitigation so i just wanted to provide also that update for the board it certainly opens any questions i understand if it might be some given given the last minute questions thank you and that's it but i just wanted to follow up about our longest running thing with the session opening relatively soon has there been a discussion with him about sort of what our priorities are a discussion about ecs funding yes so we're working on a date to try to get brian back in asap as soon as possible so we can talk about some specific danbury priorities and i think many of them are not very different from last year asking for the state to expedite this schedule uh the schedule payment schedule if you will i think i think we've made a good case in years prior and i think we make an even better case now given our continued growth and frankly we're very different from most districts in the state of connecticut with the ongoing eol growth so i'm hoping that this will be a good time good times report we were provided a list of the committees in list form instead of a table form so those are there in front of you and put in the minutes for this meeting i know we're in the in the beginning stretch of the marathon meeting uh schedule so um if you're not aware the the meetings are listed at the end of the agenda for just so you're aware um cara did add the january 31st finance committee meeting as well as a tentative february 9th special board meeting for our uh interviews um the pto liaison list was distributed to all ptos through this pto distribution so they sent those out with your names and what's what pto you belong to so you should you know with the instruction to invite you all to their meeting or let you know what their meeting schedule is i found that um the past two years it's been very sporadic not on the regular schedule like you know pre-cold day so that is pto um would like to i know we're in we're about to you know hit a bunch of meetings but um establish at least establish our policy committee and uh curriculum and maybe sometime you know i think mid to late february awesome just so we can offer policy establish a chair and just get briefed on where we are where we left off and as far as our policy audit goes and then curriculum kind of you know establish what we want in that debate it's important that we're meeting in person and it's been a work in progress uh from our zoom meetings to to the black box and to here where there's technology and we can hear everyone and be heard um i think we're gonna move back to the black box it's just a bigger space i've been assured there will be microphones available to us so that you know sound won't be an issue so that moving forward we'll be at black box and we'll be able to open to the public and resume public comment in person um let's see what else uh west side is in great need of volunteers speaking of meeting marathon if you'd like to add some judge judge volunteer opportunities for their academic competitions the science fairs next tuesday february 1st for eighth grade and wednesday february 2nd for seventh grade the fair is virtual so you just have to log on to your computer from about 7 30 to 10 30.

so the next meeting if it's approved to this morning will be um february 10th at uh 5 p.m and that was due to um some scheduling conflicts with some of the board members so um do i have a motion to approve i do have a scheduling uh conflict for february 10th on the 10th yes oh okay okay so uh does it need to be later or you can't make it uh if i i just have another appointment that is already scheduled for february 10th at 5 30 and it usually takes an hour okay so another option would be [Music] another date or later on it has in order you could amend it later in the evening if that's the desire of the board um the 10th was a discussion for a quorum i believe you'll have at least a quorum on the 10th um but it's the desire of the board to change it and amend it as need be um i wouldn't mind going earlier like one or two because that will free me up to go to my other appointment um but i don't want to miss a board meeting just because um i want to be sure that i attend the board meetings as scheduled but not now that it's been changed i already had it in my books for the third and it's been changed to the 10th but now it has a conflict for the 10th for me so i would like to either have that meeting either at one two o'clock or three so that i can get out and then jump into the next meeting um that i'm scheduled for fighter we do need to hold the board meeting at least by the tenth due to some other timelines that we have to meet by the 10th i could do earlier in the day earlier than five at three o'clock i can cancel my three o'clock i'm i'm open but it's uh it's the pleasure of the board at this point so i'll go wherever you want to go the problem with doing it in the early afternoon is the public has a hard time getting here because of work commitments and then kids in school at that time as well and there is a lot of interest in the school meeting the board meeting recently so i would if we need b i would rather have it later in the evening than an earlier my personal opinion okay let's look at seven o'clock seven o'clock sure how about uh how about 6 30.

for the date time and place for this meeting similar notice has been posted in the town hall the brielle school website and the borough clerk has been notified roll call please and if we can also [Music] and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and we can have a motion to move the board of education uh minutes from the december 15 2021 and the january 5th 2022 regular public meeting second okay thank you and at this time do we have any presentations yes [Music] and then also i should do the uh january promotions and okay all right so for the december minutes um mr becker yeah yes jones yes yes this okay um yes [Music] yeah okay now i think you're ready for presentations yes would you join me okay i think it goes without saying that um this year 2022 as i shared the other day it's also been 22 months that as a community that we have worked under the conditions exactly 22 months and i think it goes without saying that the school board our teachers our parents our students and this community knows for a fact that there's three people that have done their job above and beyond the call of duty or above and beyond their job description working tirelessly many hours after work when many people leave at three their contract with time they're getting emails at nine nine thirty ten o'clock at night and of course on weekends and even christmas thanksgiving breaks thank you and i didn't want to wait till like the two-year anniversary because i thought this was the right time to let everyone know and recognize three amazing people that have you know never lived in my office as much as they've lived in my office for 22 months and have never i would say have ever worked so hard my joke about carathonies is she would say i wish we had likes in the building or when i come in every morning at a certain time she knew what time i'd be walking in after attendance was done and how are we today she would say it's groundhog day because what was yesterday is again today since this past september when school opened we have over 100 children in this building alone that tested positive we have close to 30 employees that tested positive we never closed we stayed open colin karen and shannon kept us all healthy kept us all calm kept us all working and this board kept us going we heard a lot of negativity in 22 months but we kept our heads hot we kept our building open we educated our kids we did a really good job this board should be commended because oftentimes in turbulence and turmoil and the unknown which we lived in we had the negativity thrown at us and we have come a long way we have survived our kids are thriving i'm even hearing rumors that maybe before maybe before graduation mask might be optional it's a rumor we'll see what happens it's been a challenge it's a difficult thing wearing mask you're all doing it right now we're sitting six feet apart that's what it looks like in classrooms i can assure you the children are doing the best but without colin xavier our vice principal our director of special services without careth looney as our head nurse and shannon healthy as the assistant we really wouldn't be here today because they guided parents we send notices home we send messages home we have stuff on our website we give them links we've offered a clinic here that's well over each time every clinic has over 80 people coming here getting boosters we've done an amazing job like with such a small district so first i'd like to have mr xavier come up here and what we have for mr savior is the golden apple he's one of the first to receive the golden apple in our school and it has his name mr collins savior it has his titles director of special services vice principal but his real title superhero [Applause] it has her name cara flooney it's a very happy heavy apple but it says not all heroes wear cakes some were stethoscopes [Applause] you did the same thing not all heroes were capes they were stethoscopes and so the nurses uh today i reminded them again that the boards would request that they give um just a talk 300 words or less prepare a speech and they came in tonight and they said they just didn't have enough time so then i said all right i'll let you out early tonight go home and i'll invite you back to export me but again i'm just joking i i mean it from all my heart and from the board three heads off keep me free [Applause] i understand you have another schedule tonight so unless you want to stay back [Music] so at this time we have visitors business visitors are permitted to comment on agenda items only at this time no comments at this time and so next we have committee reports um but we don't have any reports as of yet since we just established our committees but um i would like to get my report about the committees because there has been some changes i made some changes to the committees and i would like to explain that to everyone and then um i value your input and your feedback on this um so i'd like to begin by thanking you for sending me your committee interest i understand that we all have demanding schedules and at times it may be difficult to attend meetings in an effort to streamline our committees i decided to make some changes i met with joe last week to discuss these changes and after much discussion we agreed that this would be an effective change we decided to combine a couple of the committees we are now going from eight committees and this includes the representative to manage one to six commitments finance buildings and grounds is now district operations um and it is recommended that this committee meet monthly since they would be reviewing the bills lists that we approve at every board meeting personnel and negotiations is now human resources any changes and personnel should be reported to board members before appearing on the board agenda um policy and wellness is will now be policy uh the wellness is handled and miss looney just left but it's usually hampered by our school nurse and uh who reports to mr savior in the past i've worked with her whenever it related to policy for example any covet related um policies or mandated training for teachers and staff but that will pretty much be the extent of it after the policies are reviewed by the commitment by the policy committee if there is a policy that relates to any other committee for example curriculum programs or finance i recommend that the chair will send the policy to the corresponding committee for review and recommendations when this is completed the chair will send it back to the policy committee who will then finalize it and prepare it to be presented and added to the board agenda the committee the policy committee will handle all of the general policies uh and those are the changes those are the the major changes with the um committees and just a recommendation community relations um community relations will usually attend on events functions and they will report backs you know for example ef or the pto and then report back to us um one that i would like to point out um is the cpac special education parent advisory group last wednesday mr collin mr xavier had organized a meeting on with cpac it was a virtual meeting sean and i attended that meeting and we had many parents um attended as well um i think it's a great group um i'm really excited about having something like that in our community um as a parent with children who learn differently um that that's very important to me um so the the group is important for our children who learn differently students in our special education program so i just wanted to you know this is something new that we're doing and um so i just wanted to mention that to community relations so that you're aware of it and when you're able to attend these meetings and be able to report back to us overall committees are recommended to meet monthly but i do understand that there may not be anything to discuss i would recommend checking in with administration for updates for our chairs if there is ever a time that you are not able to attend a meeting please let us know i know that things happen um either joe herself will attend the meeting um and also due to the changes to the committees um the bylaws need to be changed um just to reflect this change i'm working on this and as soon as i'm done i'll have it ready i'll send it to all of you for a review and then um they should be going to be ready for next on board meeting okay any comments or any questions i like it very logical straight ones more from the very last minute like that friday just because you want to get them all paid bills once a month so we can't really meet any earlier so i think we could have the same meeting on the monday um for the wednesday board meeting because that's when the bills are usually ready but less because we have to start you know we have to pay as many as we possibly could as many as we could before those meetings but it really should be published along with the agenda 48 hours prior to the meetings [Music] is friday any other comments or questions okay and administrative report oh yes um today we had our honorable breakfast for sixth seventh and eighth graders uh we had um well over 30 students uh being recognized for achieving straight aids on the report card this was our first year that we've now run tri-semester so that's why we didn't have the breakfast until now our new cafeteria hosted the breakfast and it was wonderful and the children are so appreciative that we host a breakfast uh it's simple you know but the kids are just really appreciative that you recognize them for you know achieving straight aids basketball season is not coming to an end because we had so many uh schools that could not play because of kobe so uh the playoffs are probably probably not going to happen till the end of the month but right now where we're sitting it looks like but one never knows that both our girls and boys have a strong possibility of playing in that championship game so um i'd like to commend them but it hasn't happened yet and maybe it's wishful thinking but they're in that direction they're called two outstanding teams along with we had our virtual geography meeting and uh we had a winner in grades four five six seven eight we had our top three winners our top two uh winners will be competing at spring lake heights i don't know if you remember this i'll just remind everyone that when we did this two years ago when we competed against all the sending districts we took first and second place with a fifth grader and a seventh grader that seventh grader has now graduated but our fifth grader was our winner again and uh kiernan axana who's operating our cameras is our first runner-up so he's going to represent us at in uh spring lake also on february 10 and the next board meeting will bring all those winners in to be ready by the way but our children did an amazing job the one student that won received a perfect score that's amazing and then thank you [Applause] also our snow day that we had is going to be made up the calendars here we've approved in june um because our may um memorial day may weekend this year's calendar it's an early dismissal day so you can't use that as a makeup next year on the uh camera on the calendar that i'm recommending is the long weekend for memorial day the friday and monday and if there is a snow day that that friday will be taken away first school day um 21st so our eighth graders will graduate on the 20th uh the calendars there uh but everybody will finish school in the 21st cause the high school is graduating on the 21st and i think in this year's eighth grade class i have eight or nine eighth graders who are graduating who have siblings that are graduating high school so i have to keep you know both those days separate and plus i need to be at that graduation so our enrichment club our winter enrichment club is underway our chess club is underway our drama is practicing after school every day so we have a number of kids who are staying after school involved in great activities like enrichment chess drama basketball still cheerleading and so it's nice to have so many kids you know playing actively involved after school activities along with our our program so since our reward in two weeks a lot has happened like a snow day i'm very i'm very glad the forecast doesn't have me making a decision about saturday i might have to make one decision and that is do i allow this to be open on saturday for uh biddy and mohammed if the storm is bad keep everybody safe i will close the building down for the weekend but i'm not making that decision right now as far as school will be in school on friday today so uh i want to welcome julianne and sarah to our board your first official board meeting mcdonald your first meeting as president joe's vice president new beginnings are great and uh so it's great to have this new beginning today is there any time limit you have to give the organizations on saturday if you were canceled like the contract or whatever doesn't say we have to give them so many hours notice before what we're going to talk about what kind of agreement do we have we said mid monmouth or whoever the other organizations [Music] if the storm changes and it looks like we're getting some some forecast say five to eight and they look pretty positive friday i'll give people that notice friday i thought you know if that's what it looks like i think we don't want to be we want to have people come in but it's looking that way i'll call it early so the kids could build snowmen again but yeah there's no time now and yeah about the gentlemen that work here you know i want to be fair is it too early to ask about your heart kendra and registration uh no that's not too early but we just have a meeting about preschool uh open house and we're looking at february 25th it's a friday two o'clock to three 2-5-3 kindergarten registration is usually after we come back to winter break like that wednesday of february we just decided on the uh preschool so kindergarten look at that no no not too early because i can't wait to see them tomorrow yay you know and the fact that you're in public school we'd like to do the registration because it helps the board engage you know at numbers because we're building a budget right now so that's why we like to do it in february but the reality is you know we're virtu everyone here says you can register whatever you want but we like we get in brielle we get a solid number and it's usually in the 30s to 40s depending on the size of class when you look back i have all that down who comes in february and how many kids register between february and june and then how many children registered during the summer but both of our registration does happen in february and we'll get some of that and board members if you didn't notice you know i don't know how often you broadcast this school or come back to school but we did um recognize all of you as board members because this is board of education board members month and so we have your names upon the bolton who are thanking you on the front of the website we have this star that just said board members are important and we would you know really mean that and tonight there's a resolution we're not going to read it thoroughly i'm sure you already did before you came to this meeting a resolution just thank the u.s coordinator we'll be approving that tonight so thank you from our community the children of the staff for the hard work that you do as well thank you thank you any questions or in the comments in the proposed calendar there's 10 of them which is consistent this year during negotiations last year our contract with the two the one before the thanksgiving break and the one before christmas and i just wanted to ask about the ten though those days um two teachers can what they've come back in negotiations they could leave at 150.

you stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all mr alfano thank you mr roman gene i'd like to read a quick statement if i may the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the rights of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend the meeting of public bodies on which any business affecting their interest thrust or act of time in accordance with the provision of this act the cliffside park border that has caused notice of this meeting will be published by having the date time in place there are posted in the office of the borough clerk or the library for the rec department the office of performing ed and the offices of school number three four five six and the high school on december may and notice it reported to reporters of the record on december 9th 2021 this is an official meeting omg i'd just like to take the role if i may mrs abreu here mr katana here this is fredo here mr garcia dr pampliano here mr raincourt mr russo mr shelley here mr bhakta here mr yanuzi here okay mr roman gina okay thank you very much i'd like to welcome everyone to our meeting tonight uh just a couple of items i have on my report i just want to make our parents and our staff and community aware of some updated guidelines on our website regarding covert guidelines as you know we follow the recommendations set forth by the new jersey department of health and our local health author authority uh laurie lucanic are on our website we do have information regarding students who quarantine when they have to quarantine and who's eligible for virtual learning in the case of quarantining so that information is available for all of our parents on the website we do also have some updates on our covet guidelines as you know the cdc just recently changed their definition of a vaccinated person uh right now in order for them to be considered vaccinated you would have to have the booster so one of the up updates from the new jersey department of health is that effective february 1st all students 12 and up have to have the booster shot to be considered fully vaccinated and that would impact students who may or may not have to be quarantined but that information is available on our website and as always if parents have any questions they can contact their building principal or my office but um it is important that you refer to that information and check our website every few days because we do post websites on our agenda tonight we are making some revisions in our school calendar for this school year uh those revisions will be posted tomorrow to our website and an email will also go out to all staff regarding the updates basically what we did is we revised the uh june calendar so that we can allow for an additional three snow days in our calendar you know we've already had one snow day it's um just about the middle of january or a little past the middle of january so we want to be prepared as far as uh the rest of the winter is concerned so uh the calendar will be approved by the board tonight the revision and they it'll be posted to our website tomorrow just an upset up update on cusack you know that cusack is where the county comes in and the state to monitor each school district every three years in various areas last week january 19th we went through one module of the monitoring which is called curriculum and instruction i want to publicly thank mrs calabrese and her team for working on the curriculum and instructional part of the monitoring we don't have a any information yet as far as a grade or how we did but i can say we did very very well as we expected to do and once we go through the other facets of it which is financial governance operation and personnel then probably by april we'll get an official letter from the state and i'm confident it'll say that we've once again passed monitoring and see you in three years which is right now what the guidelines are i also posted to the website something called speak up where students have a phone number that they can either text or they can call anonymously a hotline and a company referred to as gaggle which we spoke to before would take the information uh if it has to do with a student suicide a fight that's going to occur uh bullying anything that a parent or a student wants to report it's done anonymously and that information is then turned over to the school district and then at that point we decide is it necessary for the police to be called in or is this something that we can handle within but it's an opportunity for uh parents and students to report something that might be suspicious or concerning to them i do want to congratulate mr helm who runs our one of our academies up in the high school the stem academy his students received the real world design challenge stage competition championship for new jersey it's a it's a stem competition uh mr um helm and his students did a great job they led new jersey which means the next step now is if covert wasn't here they'd be traveling to washington d.c to compete in the national competition but from what i understand it's going to be virtual this year but i do want to publicly congratulate them and uh i'll keep the board apprised of uh other competitions when they compete nationally uh how the students do and when it's going to take place you know the high school has three academies stem uh culinary and humanities which are open to students in grades uh nine through twelve uh and all of our teachers that are involved in that along with mr pinto and his administration do a great job okay at this point um any questions from the community before i look at the consent agenda anything on there no okay so at this time what i would like to any questions from the board okay i'd like to just go over some items in the consent agenda as we do each month page two we are approving uh professional development uh some virtual some in person as we do each year for our staff members going out to various um professional development uh programs outside of the district and or it could be virtual based on covert at this time page three uh fourth from the bottom uh teacher aide patty miscochi is teacher-rated school number three uh she's resigning patti's been with us a number of years she's leaving for i believe for another position so i wish her the best of luck we've also received a resignation from zara silver teacher aided school number four who's been with us for a number of years uh effective january 24th 2022.

so good luck to uh all of those people who are who will be getting a maternity leave uh page five you know we have a um a learning loss program as a result of covid where we do tutoring in the morning in the afternoon we've been running that program for about a month we added another teacher to school number four samantha strict who's an elementary school teacher so samantha will also be assisting mrs russes uh in morning early morning tutoring bottom of page 5 we have some additional volunteers who will be volunteering in the i don't think it's the fall sport program it should be spring spring spring sports for 2022 some of the people that are listed on this page have worked as volunteers before as per the guidelines all volunteers obviously are fingerprinted and have in most cases a substitute certificate so they'll be working softball middle school baseball page six we are approving some hiv incidents that occurred over the last month you know that a parent or student has a right to ask for an investigation that could be possibly bullying related we have a team in each building that does the investigation they come up with a a decision which is passed on to me and as far as confident confidentiality is concerned we are just um indicating that we recommend it or they recommend it to me to confirm the outcome of the bullying investigation there are two resolutions um below those that have to do with a mandated report that we submit to the state every six months this is called violence and vandalism report and also any kind of hiv training that exis that goes on during the school year in your packet tonight um gia gave you a printout of uh the incidents that have occurred uh from september 1st through december 31st this is information that jire enters into the state system on a monthly basis and then we report it to the public and we report it to the board twice a year so if you look at the summary sheet on the front real quick it lists our schools and it shows the number of incidents in each school so incidents could be referred to as a fight disagreement between students there's a wide range of definitions for what incidents occur and you can see the number of incidents that we have fortunately are very low two in the high school two in school three one in school four none in school five and three in the middle school and high school and then we also have to the right of that any hiv incidents that were investigated and the hiv trainings that took place and the hiv programs that took place within our schools like for example during respect week we do run programs our guidance department for students so i think there's a couple of pages a lot of the information is just repeated but i just wanted to to to mention that and and share that with the board uh we're also approving uh start strong for results in a couple of minutes uh one of our data people from our district angelo alvin will be uh sharing that report with you uh start strong was a test uh really a test that's much different than the new jersey student test that's taken in the spring which was formerly called park but we didn't have it last year because of covert but what the state did is they did test and gave the students an abridged version much shorter test in english and mathematics in september and we do have the results of the start strong test that we receive from the state summon some of the results were given to us in october but the official results didn't come to december so um again we're mandated to provide this information to the public and we'll be doing that in a couple of minutes also a resolution to revise the calendar which i spoke about earlier for the 21-22 school year and by the way um in your packet tonight for is just a draft copy of the calendar for next year and i'll be just pointing out one or two things after our meeting tonight but there should be a draft copy in your folder okay mr alfano do you have anything as far as finance a couple items mr romagino on the agenda tonight we're approving the december 2021 reports these reports will be electronically sent to the county tomorrow afternoon we are also approving a new 54 passenger bus refreshed in regard to as you know we transport nearly 300 regular and special needs students so that will also be approved tonight we are actively working on as we've introduced to the board over the last couple of meetings some of our capital projects for the summer of 2022.

this time i'd like to call this regular meeting of the dysart governing board to order let the record reflect that all board members are present please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we'll go ahead and move to item b1 choir performance dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we're very excited this evening to hear some of the extraordinary talented students and dr pauline will introduce this group thank you dr kels madam president members of the board and cabinet it's my pleasure to introduce the sunset hills choir and they are led by mr randall badsgaard take it away [Applause] you won't believe it strange [Music] i see it i you [Music] black and white is [Music] magic [Music] who cares what they say over [Music] i see it i swear [Music] so what a beautiful job you all did thank you so much for coming so how many grades do we have represented right here there's uh three grades this is our sixth through eighth grade uh what we call our elite choir this is our after little wire beautiful job how often do you guys practice [Laughter] i can tell you work hard thank you so much for coming he did a great job this song is a part of our spring show which is actually entitled extraordinary magic that was magic uh and show is called extraordinary magic and uh uh that word is used very frequently in our district and uh we thought it was very fitting as we come back uh full force with choir this year to uh find the extraordinary magic within ourselves so that's the journey that we do musically with them this year with their show and that we are going to perform on the 30th of april in the disneyland resort trip there this year so thank you all very much for being supportive of that effort we're very excited about getting back there wow exciting have a wonderful time and do well [Applause] he does he does a great job oh man yeah because it was just on a second ago so i did that before and it went on but then just went off so i don't know i can go to the next item and maybe someone need to look at it see it still says it's low i think it's the battery's just going up i'm gonna get you up so the docking station is supposed to be charging and it's not right so let's look if we just take this out and stick it okay next we'll move to item b2 national board certified teachers dr kulas thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet we're super thrilled with some of our extraordinary employees who have gone to extraordinary efforts to get their national board certification and dr plain will introduce these individuals thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board and cabinet it's my pleasure to introduce this awesome team of teachers and if i could have dr kelson the board come up to meet these folks and stay for a picture i will explain so the national board certification is the most respected professional certification available in education and provides many benefits to fellow teachers and the students they work with it was designed to develop retain and recognize accomplished teachers and to generate ongoing movement in schools nationwide national board certification is an advanced teaching credential that complements their state teachers license so at this time i'm proud to announce that kim perano from luke elementary is among the newest national board certified teachers in arizona come on up kim she earned the certification in december bringing the total count of national board certified teachers and dysart to 57 please stay for a picture that'd be great additionally for dysart teachers attained renewal of their certificate so with kristin barnett special education teacher at kingswood elementary school please come up [Applause] and cali cachette from marley elementary school and finally molly davis from el mirage elementary school [Applause] and and finally danielle edgerton an english language arts curriculum specialist [Applause] thank you all congratulations uh all right next we move to official gold steel of good health keeping renewal award dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item thank you very much good evening madam president members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members it is my pleasure to present two awards so i'll do the this one and the very next one combined tonight last month miss janis peel our wellness and benefits manager attended two events that presented dysart with awards the first one was the official gold seal of the good healthy keeping from the wellness council of arizona that's a state organization and the second is from the american heart association that's a national association so these are both renewals and so it just continues to show uh the support that we continue to put in the focus that we put on wellness and the quality health programs that are placed in the dysart school district and i do want to thank miss peel for her efforts for champion wellness um two just two recent events is uh an example of her efforts to con constantly always look at something we sent out an email to all staff about maybe doing something with bluescribe farms and having a basket a vegetable basket delivered here at the district office and see if anybody wanted to sign up we had almost 250 people sign up and show interest and purchasing some fruit from some farms or some vegetables from our farms here and so she's spearheading that so that's a great event um and um the other one is at this event she also earned or one out of a raffle we have a free blood pressure machine in our lobby right now and i used it uh this evening and so you can go and get free blood pressure checks and she has a blood pressure challenge going on so she's constantly looking at areas and efforts for us to continue to focus on our wellness and um our benefits and um uh she also um were piloting a little bit um this year just to end this year this is new we haven't set an email out so it's a little new to anybody to have time with health coaches and so we've seen and had some testimonials from other organizations that use health coaches and have seen some success with it so we're looking to carve out some time every single day for the rest of the year that somebody could call and have some personal health coaching online with uh to get through the rest of the year to see if it's worthwhile if we want to implement something like this for next year but that's just another example of her willingness to constantly always look for areas to help improve the wellness in of our district and our employees so i just want to thank her and the payroll staff for all their efforts and support and our constant focus on wellness so and that is all i have thank you [Applause] okay next we'll move to item b4 2021 gold level workplace health achievement index recognition oh thank you thank you that's it okay well she said you're combining them so i apologize my computer is fixed sorry about that little distraction there okay next we will move to item c1 audience with individuals chefin um we have two this evening we have larry leblanc adam president we could just thank you for allowing me mr leblanc if we could just take a second i apologize and if i could um ask miss hawari to come back up again perhaps more technical difficulties with the recording of the meeting we want to make sure that this is all captured for historical records so sorry follow the distraction um i'll go ahead and wait until um just to make sure it's all recording okay first jeans um all i'll read the statement and then i will invite mr leblanc up this is the time for the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling mat the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record mr leblanc good evening i'm larry leblanc and thank you for having me tonight the first amendment in the u.s constitution contains five of our most cherished freedoms the founding fathers believed as do i that these freedoms were given to us directly from god and the purpose of the first amendment was to make sure that our government could never take them away september 25 1789 congress adopted these following words and sent them to the state for ratification congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof the freedom of religion of speech press peaceful assembly and to petition our government where we address our grievances first we have the freedom of religion not the freedom from religion this means that we have the freedom to live our own choice of faith or no religion at all and we must respect the rights of our fellow americans to live out theirs as well second the freedom of speech which means we have the right to say whatever we want even if it's not popular at this time third our freedom of press means that we get to choose from a market competition of news outlets rather than having a controlled media from the state fourth like we are doing here tonight we have the right to assemble and speak out should we disagree in fifth we have the freedom of petition for our grievances should we disagree in a peaceful manner let us all commit to be able to live out our freedoms of religion speech press assembly and petition thank you next up we have miss mrs janet leblanc hi good evening my name is janet leblanc and i would like to challenge each of you to show us where in the constitution whereby the federal government has authority over our educational system let me help you there is none zero zip nada now that you know and are aware that any federal funds received by this district are illegally distributed and received you may not know it but each of you is following unconstitutional laws so let's work together on correcting this let's start tonight by making constitutional laws and show americans how it's supposed to work let's stop the receipt of unconstitutional funds and start following constitutional laws for the proper funding of our schools and i'd like to address regarding the january 12 2022 meeting follow-up questions i submitted to you via email on january 17th i would like to expand on several of the answers provided by mr kalas on january 19th however since i only have three minutes i will present the utmost important and submit the remainder via email to you on question 10 i provide i was asked about providing documents on the agenda or minutes as well as displaying them on screen during the meeting this question was not fully answered the excuse of waiting for supreme court decision about the biden vaccine mandate end quote is unconstitutional in and of itself first remember the federal government has no authority over our schools secondly the supreme court has no constitutional authority to make law they only uphold law so once again know you are running our schools unconstitutionally this is another area that must be corrected and brought back to constitutional law on questions 11 i ask why do principals need directors i disagree with the answers provided due to the district and all who are involved in the education of our children are following unconstitutional laws and funding as a taxpayer citizen of this school district i am requesting the board vote no on any of the reorganizational plans presented we do not need more top heavy executives we need more money in the classrooms and to the teachers this is where you board members can begin this transition into the following of constitutional laws as far as my suggestion to post a draft agenda one week prior to the next meeting you responded that it avoids confusion or frustration due to changes that might need to be made before the agenda is filed final that serves an insult to the public please do not insult our intelligence i am once again requesting that a draft agenda be posted one week prior to the next meeting and if you still believe this practice to not be advantageous to keep the public informed i would like your justification as to why thank you for your time thank you and we have one more but we will save that for age three and dr kellis can you follow up with ms leblanc so she understands we do not have a vaccine mandate in our district at a present yes we will follow up next we will move to item e1 motion to approve consent agenda i'm sorry update sorry d1 student update all right madame president we have no student update superintendent update thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet i would just again like to extend a huge thank you this has been a very trying and difficult week for school employees etc filling vacant positions trying to cover empty classrooms working to fill other employee vacancies due to illness the nation has seen a stark spike in active cases but our employees have done an extraordinary job of helping each other out where needed and i just would extend my thanks to everybody for giving up their own time to help another peer in need and we have many stories of staff from one school actually leaving their school don't go help out in where other another school is in need and that's not something that was directed that's just out of the goodness of their heart and we extend acknowledgement of these services and thank all of our employees for for what you're doing and that goes to administrators to teachers to classified staff and we even have volunteers who after seeing media recently have called and said we want to help and so we appreciate our community as well um great news coming up it's exciting to have the dicer festival of the arts coming again this spring and we're anticipating a lot of student talent like we saw this evening march 26th that's a saturday from 10 to two at valley vista high school we again anticipate a lot a lot a lot of student talent to be on display and that's all i have to report thank you this is governing board update there we go i'll go ahead and start um let's see a couple of things i did i visited shadow ridge school i met with mr hawkins and mr greenway had a nice visit it's always good to sit and chat with a couple of our administrators and just kind of let the hair down even though they don't have much hair is just like me so it's still good to let the hair down and just chat i also attended the certified staff administrative advisory council excuse me where we had several certified staff members attend and a great conversation led by dr kellis i am looking forward to i believe willow canyon's mousetrap presentation is tomorrow and friday thank you so it was bumped from last week to next this week so i'm looking forward to that on friday and i too want to echo uh dr kellis's sentiments of our admin and classified staff and all those have gone um even more than above and beyond so thank you it is a lot of hard work but they are doing what needs to be done and that is for the success of our students so thank you new hills next we'll move to motion to approve consent agenda items and i move that the governing board approved the consent agenda items as presented second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by tracy sorry sink bill motion carries next we move to action discussion items h1 recommendation to approve an update to the dysart unified school district logo dr kellis adam president my goodness i am like way ahead of myself what does that say just wants this meeting over information items g1 board monitoring of adopted policy section 9 instruction 9.0 to 9.24 dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet and guest tonight we continue on our monitoring compliance with policies as as we go to policy nine so we do have two changes tonight with policy nine and to outline those changes uh dr pulling we'll outline the changes in those policies for you thank you dr croto madam president members of the board and 9.15 every so often the federal government updates education law and when they do that they change the name of it to a different name they like better so no child left behind is now called every student succeeds act although largely it's the same law and there were some modifications that are in there mostly around more specifics about family engagement and plans and student parent contact contacts and so those changes are noted as their had changed in the law secondly 9.16 there's a modification of state law and that adding local school superintendent must also sign a waiver for students parents opting out of english language learner classes so those two are the suggested changes i'll stand for any questions questions from the board for policy 9.15 can you walk us through that just a little bit is is this a requirement or a guideline from the federal government it's a requirement that title one principles um work on a parent family engagement plan and a school parent compact and um are distributed to parents and guardians thank you and then i also had a question on the 9.16 um not so much in regards to the policy for the bilingual instruction um and dr croto and i had a conversation about this offline but um there was a recent article i believe it was yesterday um and i think it may have been on the news as well in scottsdale unified school district they are having an opportunity presented to them where um afghan refugee children are being placed into their school district that is from the state level they're being housed nearby in a hotel are we having any um thing like that coming up for dysart that we know of uh no not that i'm aware of and we've not been contacted to my knowledge okay um if we did do we have the resources readily available to provide assistance for something of that magnitude it's a good question probably depend you know and how you know how many students are coming and what are the ramifications but certainly we have resources in our schools to support students who need second language learning okay thank you any other questions okay thank you you get to like nudge me you're like sure i'm on task uh g2 um school reports ashton ranch middle school and luke elementary school dr kellis thank you madam president dr pulling we'll introduce this item we're going to start with luke elementary school as um we'd like to postpone ashton ranch middle school uh if that's okay the principle of extending circumstances and so she's not here but it's my pleasure to introduce molly gillette principal of luke elementary school and she will present tonight cabinet i am molly gillett i am the principal of luke elementary school and this evening i am joined by miss jessica houg behind me as our dean of students we were very excited that miss piranha was honored tonight as our national board certified teacher this year and joining us up above is our tls marissa mulvey she could not be here tonight but she is watching so i have the privilege of sharing information about luke elementary and i will start with who we are um so a common phrase in our school that we often state is we are the jets um luke as you know is located next to luke air force base and the jets are just as much a part of our student body as our students are they fly overhead quite frequently during the day we currently have an enrollment of 546 k-8 students 40 additional students in our pre-k program our school colors are blue and yellow and our school mascot is the jets we have two structured teaching classrooms on our campus and our positive behavior acronym for our school is luke jets soar and we'll talk a little bit more about that so at luke we have some improvement opportunities and this year we're really focusing on our student achievement on increasing our enrollment and our partnership with luke air force base so i'll start with our student achievement we recently had a deep dive data dive with miss amy hartchen every teacher was focused on identifying five students that are in currently the minimally proficient range and we're focusing really intently on moving those students forward into the partially proficient we really want to close that achievement gap but we don't want to narrow it we want to keep our accelerated students moving and then bring the rest of the students up to meet them so that includes increasing our highly proficient students so we're looking at those opportunities as well teachers created goal setting sheets for each of the students that they identified that we felt that we could move who were close and just needed that additional support to push into the next level so they are doing weekly data monitoring right now and we're really highly focused on closing that gap over the last two years we have gone through two different re-boundaries and our enrollment has dipped from the 750 it was two years ago to approximately that 550 currently so we have a huge push on increasing that enrollment we have some great opportunities there we have new housing coming in across the street there's several different housing pods within that new neighborhood we've got luke landing marbella and some others that are going in thank you so one fun thing that we did this year um in this summer is we made these really cute swag bags that we took to all the builders um they have information on dysart high school and luke because we feed to dysart and they include some really cute gifts for our new families a sticker for their car some pens sticky notes and then a really fun little squishy jet for the kids to play with any new family that comes in we're enrolling them and welcoming them with our bag and we're really trying to promote to the new air force families that are moving in as they expand our air force men and women that luke is the premier school for the air force base so the next opportunity for us is working on our partnership with luke air force base um over the last two years dr kellis has done an excellent job partnering with then commander richardson who has now moved on and we have a new commander on base but we have expanded opportunities for transportation the district has purchased some additional white vans that we're going to use to support transporting luke air force base students from surrounding schools to the youth center which is their after-school program that accepts the air force credit so families are more apt to use those services on base so our district is helping those air force families with the extra opportunities for transportation we have a new school liaison from the air force base i meet with monthly and we're looking at all of her initiatives on base to connect more with our local school communities and then how luke can serve the air force families more effectively she has some initiatives that we're going to be partnering pretty closely with over the next few months and so those are really exciting i'll talk about those a little bit more in a minute um but right now we are working on a possible kinder recruitment event they have a child development center on the base that has several preschool classrooms and we are trying to bring dysart schools into those child development classrooms to inform parents on their opportunities within our fine schools in the district and then in april we have the month of the military child last year dr kellis dr poling joined myself our school liaison and the child development center staff as we celebrated all of the military children we took part in the parade with the child development center on base they came over to luke we all dressed in purple greeted our students as they walked through the gate we're planning a similar event this year we hope to include the child development center staff to come over see the school last year we gave away really cute purple bracelets and we applauded all the students in every single classroom and did a chant for military kids on our school and we wear purple every wednesday in april to celebrate the commitment that those families make to serve our country in the final partnership we started with this summer is the student-to-student military program our school social worker has been doing a lot of research and helping she's instrumental in this process it's a student leadership opportunity where we soften the transition for families who are being moved from base to base we have student leaders on our campus that welcome students introduce them to new friends help them acclimate to the new school community and really make that a soft landing for families as they're transitioning between service locations so some of the celebrations for us this year on our school report card last year we have been working very hard on our rti process our response to intervention identifying students who are in need of support and then providing additional resources to help them make academic gains we moved a very large percentage of our students who were struggling and they made extreme growth we on our state report card we earned 50 out of the 50 points for that growth we're continuing those programs and it's a very strong partnership between our interventionists and our teachers to collaborate and focus on student growth and achievement another area of celebration for us is increased use of our professional learning communities on campus our grade level teams and at multiple grade levels partnerships so this summer we took 16 of our teacher leaders and attended a plc plus training over the summer those teachers then brought back their expertise onto campus our district has committed to really focusing on plc plus playbook this year so our teachers use their knowledge from the training and then the district provided supports this year and they've been rolling out professional development for our whole staff and then in their plc's really supporting uh the growth of of data and use to collaborate around instructional practices on our campus and then if anyone has had the opportunity our social media page has some of the highest activity in dysart we have really focused on opening our school doors to our community we know that our service men and women are busy during the day and our parents can't always be at our school events they can't always be in the classroom seeing what their kids are doing but there's such amazing things happening at luke so it's been a school-wide effort that every teacher is taking pictures of the amazing work that they're doing in classrooms and that we're sharing those on our social media account if you haven't yet checked that out please go to luke's facebook or instagram the kids are adorable and the learning is amazing we even had macy's respond to us when our kinders did a macy's day parade activity macy's commented on that so we're we're really excited about getting that recognition and getting even community to interact with us on the social platforms and then you will also see that um we had uh excuse me mayor skip hall and councilwoman ali klein take part um they are featured on our social media pages as well because our fourth grade students won the surprise literacy challenge so the mayor and councilwoman were out to read stories to our students they held our class gecko they served ice cream it was just a really fun event for our students and all those pictures are up on the website the focus for the year we are going to continue our work with our data-driven plcs teachers are learning every time we meet how to access more and more data and how to understand how to use that for instructional purposes we're really excited about the potential for growth for our most in need students making data-driven decisions our pbis program so our positive behavior interventions and support we are part of the koi grant this year and we're in year one even though we had a platform we had the foundation of a solid positive behavior program on our campus we are now refining and making that part of our school culture in a way that it hasn't been before and we've seen really positive effects with student behavior drops in discipline and kids really responding well we recognize when kids meet our expectations with what we call a jet tag and then every week we do a positive recognition drawing our ptsa comes in and they award students with books um as as their prize for winning um and meeting our expectations every week and then finally we're going to continue working on that expanded partnership with luke air force base there are some really great ideas that our school liaison is working on across the united states there are purple star schools that we're hoping that that becomes an item that we can apply for here in arizona the student-to-student program is a nationally recognized program and so we're hoping to be recognized as a student-to-student school and then a big push is to have more volunteers from the base be present on campus our military men and women receive accommodation when they do volunteer and so miss holland is working to build up a volunteer pool to have members of the air force base on campus i think i just turned it off sorry questions thank you very much for your presentation um just a quick question so you mentioned how each student has some goals developed for them are those goals teacher generated or do students take part in creating those goals that's an excellent question so for our third through eighth grade classrooms right now every student has a goal sheet they're doing student-led conferencing for the second round of conferences and the students are going to be reporting to their parents with the support of their teacher how they're performing on their individually set goals they have access to all of their data they've created their goal sheets with all that information for the data dive specific for the students that we've identified those are more intervention goals that would then partner with goals that students have already set for themselves okay so a little bit of both exactly yeah okay okay and then what would you say is your biggest challenge um academically and what interventions are you seeing some real promise with um our biggest challenges right now um we're working on we have two goals as a building and that's our third grade reading and our seventh and eighth grade math um we're really focusing on moving our third grade minimally proficient students into the proficient category we have done some work with ms dana k and the excellent supports from district every other week they come out we look at data together as a team and we talk about next steps best instructional practices but really getting those third graders in that transition from learning to read to reading to learn is a huge focus for us and the same at that seventh and eighth grade level looking at those math standards and seeing how we can get more of our 8th grade and 7th grade math students prepared for algebra and above once they get to high school so getting them to that proficient and highly proficient area okay thank you and i was just going to say i also like the swag bag idea i don't know that i've heard of any other school doing that maybe there there are other schools doing it but we'll leave this here for you guys so you can see all the cute things i think that's a great way a great opportunity to grow your school and um just engage your community so that's really an innovative idea i really like that and then just a lot of the other community outreach things that you're doing it sounds very positive so thank you thank you anyone else have any questions comments i do have uh just a couple of things thank you mr le for being here as a former military brat air force brat i know how it can be a little daunting on changing air force bases whether it's at one year's time or two years time and the most i had spent on one particular place is three years so it is um you know even though we may have the grades when we come into a new school or a new base there's still that hesitancy on interacting with the teachers or interacting with other students so i do appreciate everything that you're doing making the students feel welcome and getting with you said was the wing commander uh yeah so um there there are multiple players um so we work with different people in different capacities on the base and then i haven't been able to attend the cat team meetings lately but it even goes as far as the mental health services and the chapel services and everyone in a team and we share out what's going on at the school and how we can partner wow thank you very much and also i saw the the billboard on glendale avenue as i was driving one time and talking about luke and getting enrolled and getting involved and so thank you very much for that and also congratulations on your plc plus getting that information to everyone so thank you thank you okay thank you very much thank you next we'll move to g3 information on plan to add school resource officers at the middle school dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis members of cabinet and guest this evening we want to share information with you as it relates to a plan to add school resource officers to the middle schools since our last governing board meeting and a request to discuss this item we have reached out and spoken with members from both the city of surprise and the city of el mirage we spoke with the city of surprise police chief the new police chief chief pena and addressed the notion of adding three school resource officers to the three middle schools that are in the city of surprise at the district's cost not the cost of the city um and chief pena's response was um you're telling me that you're giving me six months to provide you three resource officers and you're going to pay for them not a problem um and so he was very excited about that opportunity as a matter of fact jeff pena has a long history of working successfully with sro programs um in the city of peoria and so he's excited about not only adding the possibility of adding three sros to the three middle schools in surprise but also looking at and how we most effectively optimize the use of all of our school resource resource officers in addition to speaking with chief pena we've spoken with the city manager in el mirage i'm crystal dykes and el mirage is also on board with the thought of adding a school resolve resource officer to the middle school in el mirage and that's dysart middle school the plan at this point in time will be to continue conversations with both cities as we work to finalize igas and funding sources and then we would bring that information back to the governing board for approval and we are targeting uh the meeting in march to get to be able to bring that back and get that done and with that i'd be happy to answer any questions thank you so much um just out of curiosity what were some of the discussions regarding um how like what that would look like what would a what would an sro and a middle school look like did you talk about like specific areas of focus or responsibilities madam president first i have to tell you that our middle school principals are turning cartwheels with excitement about the the thought and the the possibility of adding a school resource officer it provides tremendous opportunities especially the city of surprise where they have extended their um programs down their their outreach programs they were looking to extend them to middle school with the sros as well and so this will provide opportunities for things like vaping education for things like extension of discipline consequences that that could lead to some city projects or city service those types of things with the opportunity to continue to build relationships with students with police officers at an early age with the end goal being to increase awareness and community support of police in the adulthood piece or adulthood level as they grow older we didn't get more specific than that but i will tell you that having seen chief pena's work with the sros at the high school level in peoria we're very excited to work with him at the middle school level as well i think it sounds like an amazing idea and just to reassure any community members pulling three officers from surprise or several officers at some point from el mirage this isn't going to impact obviously their protection of their cities or they'll probably replace those particular officers or add to their force madam president that was a concern that we had to address with the city and we wanted to make sure that it did not place them at any kind of hardship or jeopardize their service to the community and that did not seem to be a problem whatsoever as a matter of fact um i believe their plan will be to add officers to their to their um to their force and um you know when they're not working in our schools during the school year they return to the force and so actually it may be a benefit to the community as well thank you any other questions could you explain the funding for these officers madam president miss grant um those are conversations that we've just initially begun to have there are multiple opportunities in terms of funding sources for us for example we could use mips as the funding source for that and you know as as the governing board is aware mips is a ser is a fund that we receive for medicaid reimbursement for services that are provided to students and that fund continues to grow on a yearly basis and so that's just one possibility of a funding source we'll continue with mr hicks to explore the best funding opportunity for that but look forward to the opportunity to add officers is mips a permanent funding source madam president miss grant mips is a funding source that is generated every year i mean it's generated based upon service it is not what we would call hard funding um similar to mno funding that we received from the government or from the state excuse me however our mips our folks who work to provide reports to generate mips do a tremendous job and our mips ballot balance continues to increase each year and i know that the short time i've been on the board i've heard other things being funded by this so is there still money available to add to this or are we taking away from something else madam president miss grant not being the financial expert for the district that would be mr hicks however i will indicate that um it is our understanding that with the balance that this is a funding source that could be used over a course of a few years social workers come out of mips is that right i'll defer to mr hicks yes that's why i remember madam president members of the board you are correct social workers are funded from it's fun i want to thank you for um addressing this at my request um what you i know you said that you met with um with pena regarding that the three officers for surprise uh and that you met with dykes for the one com uh that would be in uh dysart in el mirage you didn't mention the i don't i unless i missed it i don't think you mentioned the funding for the el mirage madam president mrs densmore i apologize uh we would be looking at the same fund at this point in time we are we haven't had the opportunity to truly sit down and explore every funding option we'll do that in the next few weeks however the funding option would be the same for the city of el mirage officer we would look to use mips possibly for all four of those positions however we would also explore the opportunity to write grants um you know to possibly cover that as well okay thank you um and i apologize i cannot recall what the name of it is i know but i know that previously our school resource officer former school resource officer over at valley vista officer thomas he had implemented um a program for students to not necessarily get out of trouble but to help facilitate an easier way to to complete whatever that process looked like can you madam president mr dentamore i believe that you're speaking about a diversion program it's okay because earlier in the presentation it was escaping my mind as well and so part of what officer thomas had intended and is moving forward with is extending that diversion program to the middle school level in the city of surprise this will tie right into that conversation and provide a really good opportunity for students to learn other valuable lessons should they make some bad consequences in school that may not necessarily just be school consequences perfect and i assume that when you say middle school it would not just apply to our middle schools the four middle schools it would apply to our middle schoolers that are currently in k-8s as well madam president miss dinsmore we are exploring the the option of placing the school resource officers in the four middle schools right however the diversion program yes i'm sorry yes the diversion program yes they are working to to extend that to all of the schools in the city of surprise perfect okay thank you and then uh how long do you think like we're looking at do we do we approve this first when it's presented to us do we approve it first or does city council need to approve that first madam president miss densmore just as we're having conversations uh those um that we spoke with in the city will have conversations as well as matter of fact i know that those have already started in each of the cities we anticipate we actually started a conversation today regarding igas intergovernmental agreements with uh the cities and drafting those to make sure that we have all that in place we will work to finalize funding finalize igas between attorney groups and our target is to bring in approval to to the governing board or recommendation for approval in the march meeting simultaneously that will happen with the cities as well it just depends to answer your question directly it depends on the order of meetings who has meetings when okay thank you go ahead oh i was just going to say thank you i really appreciate the effort to increase the sros on our campuses for our student safety it's just really important and not just for student safety but also that diversion program that you're talking about because i mean we both we all know middle schoolers you know they do things they don't even know why they do it and then sometimes they make a huge mistake and then they have really big consequences and maybe having that sro yeah you're going to get your consequence but let's kind of talk about it and let's you know come up with a really good consequence to where you it's a learning experience not just a bam so i love that and i just i thank you so much for the work that our district administration is doing to get those sros in the middle schools um i do have a question um eventually could we expand these to the k-8s madam president ms chaffin first of all i would extend the thanks back to the governing board for allowing the conversation and the opportunity to exist we believe that adding additional sros to our schools not only benefits our students but benefits our cities as well and those that live therein to answer your question that will just depend down the road on funding and the availability of of officers as well so but certainly we look forward to the to the potential success of having them in our middle schools as we currently have them in our high schools and they are tremendously successful in our high schools and we look forward to this being an opportunity and and we'll see what the future brings with that thank you and that's what i was actually going to ask as far as can this be um kind of almost like a pilot like we've done for other programs and with the possibility of expanding um if it goes well or if we continue to see a lot of benefit that our other schools could benefit from having an sro as well so i'm glad to hear that that's a possibility depending so any other questions i do have one quick one it may be a mr hicks question um school safety grants so even with the funding of possibly using mips and everything this is it's still a competitive grant or it's not going to stop us from applying for the school safety grant correct madam president members of the board the school safety grant was a two and a three year awards so i don't know that they've opened up a new opening i had kind of heard something some rumbling okay so um that was just rumbling so that's probably in the governor's budget in that sense so we'll see if that is and yes they are very competitive grants we applied from before we didn't get awarded any on the first go round but we did get on the second go round and so we would continue to explore these especially as a new program going down further than what was existing it's not replacing so it have a good advantage in that sense and like i said there were just rumblings that i'd heard and madam president member service think bill we would not um just handcuff ourselves for the state school safety grant we would explore other options possibly as well are the recipients of the school safety grants public madam president members of the board yes it's on the adu website okay i may ask you if i can't find it i heard grumblings as well on the school safety grants that anyone who had applied for the grants for school resource officers specifically were were not honored or approved is that your understanding no madam president members of the board they broke it up into two groups that they had counselors social workers on one side and school resource officers on the other side and split up the money to divvy up they haven't had a recent award in this this is we're talking about a year and a half ago or two years ago um and so yes they did okay i will look for that thank you thank you so much appreciate it all right now we will move to action discussion items h1 recommendation to approve an update to the dysart unified school district logo dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board dr dean will introduce this item madam president members of the governing board dr callus members of cabinet and guests the public relations team has been working for quite some time to refresh the dysart unified school district logo or i should say to update the dysart unified school district logo their process has been extensive and has been lengthy and this evening they will share with you not only their process and but we'll also ask for um approval of a new logo for the district to begin to be used this summer with that director of pr renee ryan thank you good evening madam president members of the board superintendent kellison cabinet in conjunction with the district centennial last year we were tasked with updating our district logo and tonight i get the pleasure of walking you through that process and showing you several options to vote on first i want you to know that we did the project completely in-house with our the expertise and talent in our communications department and at no cost and it will be rolled out starting in july for next school year and it will come out in conjunction with our new website which we are working also on in-house with our it team it will take several years to fully transition because we'll update items as needed when things get out of date or we're running out of something so it will take a it will be a gradual transition that will take a couple of years to fully see before i present the options i would like to walk you through the lengthy process that we went through so it started actually about a year ago in april we did a survey we emailed parents and staff and put out to the community and got a lot of great feedback that way we evaluated those responses we also did a lot of market research on current trends trends specific to education things like that and developed goals which i'll share in a moment then in august we started creating hundreds upon hundreds of logo iterations if you could think it we probably tried it and we worked very closely with cabinet throughout that process and refining that and then this month earlier this month we did some focus groups with parents staff and students and got feedback on that and made some further revisions on that that which you which you will see tonight and then as i mentioned earlier we will roll that out starting in july so something to keep in mind with logos is that they're very subjective and everyone has opinions when it comes to design so we could probably show 10 different people the same thing and they'd have 10 different opinions about that so in order to guide the process we developed goals to ensure the final design achieved the intended results so our goals we wanted to be community focused with a less corporate design and feel we wanted to maintain our brand awareness by keeping the three abstract figures and similar colors we did not want to lose the brand awareness that we've had for the last 12 years with the current logo especially with that gradual transition as well we wanted it to look more modern with a less boxy font design and to increase the usability in printing and enhance the branding by using less but more clear text for example in the current logo the unified school district portion that's under dice art gets small very fast as you reduce the size of the logo and is difficult to read so in order to achieve these goals one of the adjustments we are making is in the name that we will use for branding purposes our official name will of course still be dysart unified school district but we are looking at using dysart schools for purposes of branding and in the logo we believe that it is a better branding practice it simplifies things and it gets to the heart of what we do immediately we are schools we educate it is a more modern practice there are some examples locally of districts that have done this pv schools is one example gilbert public schools and there are others as well we do believe dysart schools has a more welcoming community feel it's less corporate sounding and it's easier to work with and apply in a variety of places because it is a shorter term as far as the initial design changes that we started as we did the iterations we went to a softer blue and green to match the community style and be more welcoming and friendly we have more rounded shapes and text to create a softer community focus we varied the size of the figures to represent preschool through high school and the shape of the figures to represent the uniqueness of the community we maintained the graduation cap to represent the end goal and we added an additional educational element to further visualize our purpose you have four logo options with very slight differences for your consideration in front of you and we'll get those on the screen in a moment for everyone else to see please note that each option has a horizontal and a vertical version that would both need to be used in different applications and i'll walk you through the minor differences in each version i know it's hard to see so with our top options they have the same graphical element um the three figures in the middle are centered more in the book that they're coming out of and you will notice a difference from left to right in color so the left one's a full color version the right one introduces a gray in the book and the the bottom ones if you'll notice the individuals in the center are tucked down into the binding of the book um a little bit more so those are the primary differences and then left to right one of the other differences is the why there are some some other minor differences in the in the text itself but the why is the primary difference um one of the primary differences there so i mentioned earlier that we got focus group feedback uh so we did fine-tune these a little bit after we met with the focus groups and what you're seeing is based on some of that feedback and but i do want to let you know that the feedback we got of course everyone had some specific opinions on little you know things here or there but overall it was very positive everybody actually felt we achieved our goals um they felt it was reflective of who we are and what we do they felt that it exhibited academics student focus and community which were actually the top three words used to describe dysart when we did our survey back in april they all felt the colors reflected a softer more welcoming community feel and all of the graphical elements were clear everybody saw a book everyone saw three figures representing the grade the different grade levels that we serve and everyone saw a graduate which sometimes people when the lo when our current logo is small people don't even realize actually that there's a graduate in it so the minor changes that we made based on that feedback for these versions that we're showing you was the we moved the tassel on the graduate actually which was actually a really good point so the individual is facing us and has graduated so the tassel is on their left so that was a very important choice there we also adjusted the thickness or the thinness of some of the words and then we straightened the tail of the y in some of those options based on some of the the students were very interested in the font so they gave us some interesting feedback um in terms of modernizing that a bit so that was good as far as overall preferences like i said they were very positive about all of the options they were shown but we did ask them if you had to pick one which one would it be so the option three in the bottom left was the majority preferred followed by option one in the top left corner and then our parent group actually preferred option two so as you can see we've put a whole lot of work um and effort into this project um and got a lot of feedback on this i do want to thank my team ryan doing all of those versions and um the rest of our team as well as a very collaborative process internally and then getting a lot of feedback from a lot of different groups throughout so i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have thank you very much well i was glad to hear um as you were speaking that what i'm looking at are our two designs per square because at first i was like oh i can't do that it's not aligned and it's like it was driving me i was thinking that was about that would bug me so i was glad to hear that um i liked i mean i definitely like the logo i appreciate all the hard work and everything that was put into it um i'm partial to unified school district only because we are unified and not all school districts are unified so i think that kind of defines us a little bit more those are just some of my initial thoughts but i'll open it up to everybody else too we did speak to some of the parents about that specific question and some of them were from out of state and that didn't mean anything to them i think depending on where you come from there's different ways that they name school districts so they didn't seem to think that was a problem they didn't really understand what unified meant versus elementary's a little more clear but there's unions which are just high schools and that sort of thing so but we just felt like it got to the heart of what we do immediately so i do personally agree with the parents i like that i like the gray in there a little bit but anybody else have any comments madam president i might recommend or right might remind the board just so that as you're thinking that we are looking this evening for a recommendation as to which logo we would move forward with so as you're having conversation just please keep that in the back of your mind i think they look amazing and i just want to say thank you to our team you guys are incredibly talented um to come up with all this i mean it's very thoughtful all the process that you went through just refining it and retuning it that's a lot of work and i mean they look wonderful so thank you thank you and i kind of like i kind of like option two also i think they all look great also and it's going to be very difficult to choose um i i do like it how the um the three students are are directly coming out of the book a little bit more um but they all look they all look good just curious how many before you got to these final four how many did you have i don't think we counted but we went through many many many options i don't know i mean ryan could probably give you a better idea but he it was a lot i mean different types of people different types of books different different colors different fonts uh it was a lot he's putting a thumbs up like there was several there was okay all right okay no i mean it's it's great work and um the fact that you didn't go outside to do it because we had the talent here inside so um [Music] that's i mean it's putting this one up here you know and um a little bit as to what miss um pritchard this is i i've been used to the unified school district that doesn't mean that we can't change um uh that's it's always been kind of drummed in our heads as far as the elementary district union um high school district but i'm i'm open to change um and it's gonna be difficult to choose one i'm i'm between two and three they're all good though i i absolutely love the logo and i i think it's when i look at it i think of like a pop-up book you know like um i i love it i'm i feel a little attacked because i'm really partial to option four but i'm sorry welcome to logos i know um i mean and i don't really i don't feel that strongly about it but i i do like the font in in four and two i i guess sorry i think for the thought the font on schools is a little thicker that's why i like it yeah i just like it bolder yeah i think they both look great yeah they do but we're still gonna we're still gonna be unified school district like we're not getting rid of madam president that is correct um the official name of the dysart school district remains the dysart unified school district the intent in in the dysart schools piece is to revive to provide a a bit of branding opportunities and aligns with several market trends as well but yes you are correct that the official name of our school district is the dysart unified school district and we're going to keep our power in the preparation that's staying right if anything it's just the madam president yes this this conversation is solely related to a logo and i might add as well this is a good time um you've all said it and you've all been around it the amazing talent that we have in this department is on display this evening this is hundreds of hours of exceptional and i'll use the word because it's correct extraordinary work and you know we we joke a bit that ryan mcginley is um the current leader in the clubhouse for the number of extraordinary pins received by anybody in the school district but he's deserving of every single one and the effort that's been put forward by miss ryan to lead this project and and and mr mcginley's exceptional talent being displayed is just a testament to what we have in this school district so they deserve all of the accolades that you're giving them this evening madam president i would also add just for full disclosure that that is an abbreviated name of the district the actual name of the district is dicer unified school district number 89.

we've all worked so hard through this pandemic and now again facing the pandemic as it circulates through our school yet again we continue to stay open working hard and operating at our capacity that's not only something that creates additional stress as we additionally and traditionally have at least 10 members out on a consistent daily basis but it forces us to work a lot harder we run around and operate an awesome facility and we love these kids that we serve every day i feel that every single woman in this facility should be rewarded for their labor of love we do our best on a daily basis through sickness and health and most of us are here more than we are with our spouses and our own children and i believe that we should be rewarded for this i think a vacation is the least we should get as we work long days and need this time to relax i find that we come back better and we make the preschool a success we currently have more students than ever we're about to implement a new curriculum program and we can make this a success for years to come we all know that the saying of if it ain't broke don't fix it well i don't think our vacation is a problem that needs fixing many of us are single parents and need all the days and need that paid vacation time if we're ever to even consider affording to take a vacation i kindly request that the board members please consider the calendar change and that taking away our paid vacation time should not be on the agenda i have a signed petition from symbol members of our staff at the school that i would like to present to the board please for your consideration before you make any decision on the change to the calendar i thank you for this time and i render the rest of my time thank you thank you do i just approach you with the paperwork yes okay so dr croto um you and i um had a discussion as well as with dr kellis just for my own clarification again after listening to the presentation the way it was explained to me these employees are still going to be able to accrue their vacation or we call it discretionary days five days discretionary five days sick right they're still going to be getting that benefit those benefits aren't changing correct madam president that is correct the two um what our speaker is referring to is moving to a 222 calendar um and that um does afford them five discretionary days five sick days and 12 paid holidays um the 248 which they were on is um also has vacation days on there the 222 calendar does not have those vacation days and as i said before those will be brought to you those changes they are paid grade changes obviously there's less day's work so the board will have to vote with that at a different meeting next meeting oh i'm sorry what did you say they'll have to you'll have to as a board will present those changes to you of the pay the pay changes because there's less days worked so it's a change in the pay and that will be presented to you at another meeting and can you explain a little bit about the rationale um just for those in attendance as to why these employees are being moved to a 222 calendar madam president absolutely as you know the community education department runs growing minds and they fund all of their work and all of their employees they are self-funded they do not use district funds in order to pay that so the revenue they take in is the revenue they pay out and at this time our director mr williams has determined that there's not enough employment during certain times vacation times i.e vacation times times that our normal school is not in session that is not making money so he needs to make some financial changes in order to make this possible for community education madam president i might add a bit of context to the conversation so currently there are 276 students in growing minds preschool um total total preschool students during winter break that number dropped to 35 students total throughout the whole program during the winter break they came back after winter break but during the two weeks of winter break that was 35 students that were coming to the preschool during fall break of this year it dropped from 276 to 67 during that one week and in june when the summer starts it went from 276 to 97 and so as you see there are periods of time during the school year where preschool enrollment drops as parents are taking time off or parents or if there are teachers they're off in the summer and those kinds of things in july the enrollment starts to increase again as we get closer to the school year starting and then we pop to the to the large enrollment number as well and so as dr crota stated with a department that's completely self-funded they're looking for the flexibility in their employees calendars where when they have those times when they drop to 35 total students that the calendars for the for the employees match that as well and that they're not paying employees they're not paying a full staff for 35 students who are coming to preschool for two weeks they're not paying a full staff for 67 students in the month of june and so that's the intent of the the conversation i see so normally because they're on if they're on that calendar that different calendar with more days we are obligated obviously to pay them for all of those days but what you're saying is there's not enough work that's exactly what's happening rather than being called off we can't call off people because we're in that contract or that understanding that's correct so that's what this is about and as mr williams met with those groups he explained that should that number increase the 67 or the 35 that he would ask for people to work if they wanted in order to make up that time but they weren't guaranteed that work on the new calendar well and in fairness too um community ed has classified substitute positions correct correct so in fairness would these employees have priority to be called in first as like kind of the core staff before i mean do you guys have like a system where these employees would have an opportunity to make some of that money up before it goes to a sub situation i believe he does have that okay um and then the the growing minds employees on this new proposed new calendar they are not getting any less of benefit than any other dysart employee on a 222 calendar that is correct okay do we know where the cost savings is i mean i understand what you're saying as far as the reason but um just in full transparency so hurts from some community members um concerns about food service budget or um just concerns about where the money is going to be going the savings do you do we know do we know anything about like that concern just to kind of clarify that can we ask mr williams answer that he is here comfortable with that yeah okay good evening manager chair members of the board superintendent cabinet um yeah as as community ed takes a big picture look at all of our programs um we when we offer these programs these are essential programs to families beyond the normal k-12 school day these are costs to those families if you want to attend you have to pay for these services and so any time we're looking at these numbers as as dr dean explained when those numbers drop that accounts for our collective budget for the entire year as costs increase for us that's going to be next year food costs that's going to be keeping the lights on and every service that we have all the expenses that the school district incurs as you go through your budget and you see those increased costs we are absorbing those through community yet and so making these challenging decisions quite honestly we're trying to align with the normal school calendar and we're trying to continue to provide that service to families in our community when it's needed and keeping that that tuition rate which which currently if you compare us to any other public or private preschool or child care entity we are highly competitive um and so to continue to provide that service and do the extraordinary work that these people do and and and ms ms rodriguez explained it eloquently we we are seeing call outs like everybody else we don't have the the substitutes to fill in right away we're doing it ourselves they're carrying the ball and they're running with it we're not closing classes we're doing the best that we can with with the the staff that we have so so they are doing an extraordinary job and it's painful to have some of these conversations at times but there will be opportunities to make up for those that that lost revenue for each individual income and we're still providing that extraordinary service to those families at an extremely affordable rate so that's that's big picture 30 000 foot level rationale for for any decision we make is never made in isolation it's made with a team in here um and and there are a lot of intelligent minds on our dysart staff that that help contribute to that thank you and and thanks for explaining that and you mentioned meeting with the staff because i i think it's important and you've outlined it i mean it's not a matter of not valuing people or or treating some people on the same calendar in different ways it's a matter of your self-sustaining program and it's almost as if you'd be spending outside of your budget if you spending meaning employee salaries if you don't have the income to cover that expense and so it sounds like if for some reason we we market and we're able to get more attendance during those break times and the needs there then it sounds like these employees will have that opportunity or um mr croto you can probably speak to the fact are there other um positions for these individuals that they because this won't go into effect immediately obviously it'll be next year they could apply for a different position within the program um madam president that's correct it goes into effect next year okay well thank you for explaining that because i i was concerned um when we were hearing about losing i wanna make they do have vacation time discretionary days sick days and the holidays still that's not being taken away okay perfect thank you does anybody else have any questions i i do uh mr williams tell me um currently how many staff do we have oh great question um we have our structure is facilitators um and that would be just point of reference that would be your teacher um so we have approximately 34 facilitators um and and and that includes a vacancy of six facilitators i believe um and so as we grow that the need becomes greater to have more of those we have oh gosh we have three lead facilitators that that are that would be the equivalent to um they do the job at a school site just as a point of reference of support staff and your your assistant principals and and that's those are our leads they fill in for classrooms they manage call-outs um and then we have um assistant facilitators and aides um the there those they're on a 195 calendar the assistant facilitators and the aides so the the they don't get impacted by this particular conversation and are we in our third year we're going into our third year so we opened up with a pandemic year which was awesome um and then we're rolling out this year we're finally in a uh i would call it a normal year it doesn't feel normal right now but so would you say that uh even though we opened up in a pandemic year our we have 276 students right now how many students did we start off with enrollment fluctuates um and and it is fluctuated at a low during the pandemic we were only serving you know essential workers families and i think at that time we were still open when everything else was closed and we we had we averaged about 10 kids in a classroom in 14 different classrooms so you're still looking at between 100 and 140 students at a low point um and our goal um at full capacity with full staffing meeting licensing ratios is about 300 students so we have a wait list right now that would allow us to reach that goal but as you know staffing can be a challenge okay thank you all right thanks so the facilitators which are the teachers are they the ones so they could rotate so if there's more out at one facility you could pull for them to go there to help out am i understanding we're on a once we're on three sites so there's the main campus that's that's neighbors uh western peaks and then we have marley park there's two classes and one class at freedom can the freedom go to marley park if there is a need and you yeah the facilitator is a facilitator and that's the interesting dynamic in child care is we fall under child care licensing which is under arizona department of health services not under ade so um licensing allows any facilitator to cover any class and any child it's just one blanket requirement so technically if the enrollment is down at fall break at one versus another somebody could be called in from that other facility to go there to help out correct okay and then i guess so you have a wait list because you don't have enough teachers to cover the extra students currently as it stands with with our current dynamic dealing with covid yes okay i just want to make sure i understood that correctly and then did you say the aids are not going to be on the same calendar and i'm curious as to why not they're not um they haven't been um the just the demand isn't there and it's not required we do employ um child care aids most of our child care aides are collagen high school students um and and we do bring them back and they that we can we we can provide them those supplemental days as needed yeah okay thank you i had a question i mean not about preschool or anybody else have any questions real quick um so again i just want to make sure i understand so we're saying that we're going to be moving to the the smaller calendar but if you had maybe say a small skeleton staff right that that stays to cover the 35 67 or 97 kids that are still with you during those breaks would they then be adjusted to the larger calendar how does that work that's um supplemental pay so anything beyond your normal work calendar and i think um dr croter or mr hicks can attest to this anything beyond that it we we create a pay action and we pay them at their same rate so anybody on a 222 calendar if the demand is there and that's the flexibility of running and operating something that is self-sustaining like this sort of enterprise fund is we have the flexibility to bring the entire team back if that's what the demand is and pay them at their same rate if that makes sense okay but they would not get the same i don't want to say i don't know the benefits never go away they're 12 months out of the year so that as long as they're employed with dysart those benefits continue to exist what they couldn't do is if it's not on your work calendar they couldn't take the day off it's like taking a sunday off it's not on my work calendar i can't call that in i see okay go ahead sorry no you're fine um quick question are we moving any other class or grade of employees to a different calendar and if we approve these tonight are we approving each um department that goes with the calendars does that make sense madam president remember chaffin we are we will bring the moves to you at a later governing board meeting so tonight you're approving the calendars just the nine calendars that the district use if there is movement um which there will be i have a number of movements of calendars um then they will come to you at the probably the next being or the meeting after that okay so tonight all we are doing is approving dates that's correct we're not a okay right thank you any other questions i'll entertain a motion i move to approve the employee work calendars for the 2022-2023 school year as presented motion made by don densmore seconded by tracy sink bill motion carries we move to action discussion each four recommendation for approval of a district reorganization plan dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet this evening administration brings back an option three at the request of the board for the reorganization of student services which is a department within the district this was first presented to the board in december and we'll call this option one at that time administration proposed a reorganization plan that included an additional student services director the board heard from a cabinet and from mrs winterstein on the need for this additional position the position the the recommendation also included a reclassification of the then support services manager and the elimination of a safety and compliance specialist whose duties would be incorporated into the duties of the the directors and that it would include an administrative secretary three instead of on the support services manager um so the cost at that initial presentation um i think we said at that time as 40 000 at the request of the board that was adjusted to include experience and so that is at 63 000 as a cost to additional cost to the current pay structure um going back and listening to the recording of that board meeting cabinet was tasked to come up with a solution that did not include a cost increase and so at the last regular board meeting option two was presented which was a 20 000 savings from the current uh structure there were some other positions that were impacted and the the positions that were recommended were the two directors for student services based on the input or the the information provided to the board at the december meeting from cabinet and from mrs winterstein again included an administrative secretary but also included some changes in the hr department again that was a 20 000 savings the board after discussion on that option two asked administration to consider an option that did not include the elimination of personnel and so the cabinet brings forward option three and option three reduces the cost from option one and reduces the number of personnel who would be eliminated as recommended in option two and it uh now has a cost of sixteen thousand dollars estimated obviously again it would be based on experience that's already been accounted for to some level but depending the the position that was not eliminated or recommended for elimination would be the front desk receptionist and the other adjustments were the same as an option one including the restructuring of the safety and compliance specialists whose duties would be incorporated into the directors and the the manager support services manager position which would be reclassified to a secretary position so again at the request of the board all three options were brought forward for the board to consider um cabinet has worked very diligently to understand the will of the board with the cost and with the personnel um caveats and so with that we present option three and based on the conversation from the board at the last board meeting um you asked that all three options be presented so we present to you all three for your consideration i'll be happy to answer any questions before we go any further miss pritchard um and i do need mr hicks to bring up his rainbow report what is our this is what we're discussing um what is the district admin percentage that we've had for this year as opposed to last year and um you can just as it is compared to the state that's what i'm asking why you you can look thank you okay that's right um i'll i'll go ahead and start conversation i in speaking with dr croto and dr kalas my my concern was um i don't think i was the only member of the board but even i'll just speak for myself i know i expressed concern about or made comments about doing with what we have um so not wanting to increase the budget by 65 000 or almost 66 000 um i didn't like the idea of you know some employees just not planning on it but getting it getting noticed that their position was going to be cut you know week before the board meeting which isn't the way we do things i understand that was just the way it happened because administration wasn't planning on doing that at all so once they learned that they needed to look at another option they only had that much time and i understand that but i just you know the concern was cutting cutting lower level positions to create another director higher level position so i had concerned with that and i know i said again the last meeting i want us to come up with an option where we do we work with what we have um so i'm a little concerned that we every every option being brought back is administration's desire to have two directors two directors two directors i i was wanting to see something where how could we make this work with um the position we have which is one student services director perhaps with the open positions we can restructure them to where they're more of a support to help offset any extra tasks or duties that are pressing to our student services director that can kind of help alleviate the demands of that position um you know or but the other piece of it is too is that even though our student services director is amazing and that's probably why she's been able to do all the work that she's been doing and i know in a perfect world there's things that maybe she isn't able to get to that if she was able to get to that'd be better but in the grand scheme of things she's doing the job so you know perhaps another another avenue is increasing the salary a bit from some of those vacant positions and compensating that next person for the extra work that they're doing i don't know if our neighboring districts have two directors of student services but but mainly i was just hoping that administration would bring back an option where we're doing with what we have we have the one director and somehow making that work so i'm just a little um disheartened that we still every option we're looking at is two to two director positions so that's where i stand um i wish we could still see an option like that adam president if i could comment thank you for that and just for clarification it was the understanding of cabinet that when the board asked to make do with what we have the interpretation of that was financially and so the proposal that we brought forward to not only do with what we have but with less it was our thought that we were accommodating that request i can see where that may have been how it was interpreted um but i still i know i know that i've i know that i mentioned that you know can't we just either compensate higher or use some of the vacant positions to kind of help again i just i i don't like the idea of adding two directors at the expense of cutting other employees um i don't like the idea of increasing our budget by 65 000 i wish we could find a way again now if if administration all this time was coming forward to the board saying we have all this data to support that this one person isn't able to do these vital tasks of this job and as a result student safety is suffering or all these other things are happening but we have we we always just hear how wonderful karen winterstein is almost to her fault i understand detriment it sounds like but um those are my thoughts so i'll open it up for other board members to express their opinions i may be the only one that has this opinion but that's how i feel madam president just to answer your question about other districts so since our conversation earlier today we did a just a quick check and it was reported that peoria has three directors of student sources just that focus on student services or are they kind of like we split up our stuff with our superintendents no those are specific to student services thank you that was my first question to you dr kellis as far as but peoria has 34 schools correct 34 or 35.

good evening i'm going to call this meeting to order dr foley roll call please president kaler members of the board please let the records show that four members are present thank you so much uh right now we're gonna have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance all right we're going to go to 2.0 i move that we approve the agenda as presented second any questions or concerns all those in favor aye motion carries 4-0 dr foley superintendent's report please president keller members of the board we begin tonight with our favorite part of the agenda the celebration of our superstars and we're going to start this evening with our gateway gators so i have the joy of inviting miss katie harris and ms andrea zabo up to come on up [Applause] thank you guys so much for having us this evening we've been looking forward to this all year so we can't wait that it's our turn and we are going to start first with our student miss ava if you want to come on up sweet girl [Applause] so mrs harris gets the pleasure of reading something about you and you have so many support in the audience your teacher even came because she is so proud of you and everything that you do so i'm going to share with you miss ava is a role model for all students she works hard every day at everything she does not only does she strive to do well academically but she also constantly makes sure others are doing well she is the student that everyone can count on she is helpful caring determined hardworking and most importantly she is kind we are lucky to have such an amazing student in class and on our campus whenever someone needs help with a problem ava always offers to help without hesitation students in class strive to be like ava she makes all of the teachers and students around her smile she never does things for recognition she does them because she genuinely wants to help others and make them smile we could not think of another student more deserving of this award you are the true definition of a no excuses student ava congratulations we're going to take a picture good job okay miss ava do you want to come back real quick oh miss ava i forgot to ask you who did you bring with you tonight do you want to tell everybody who's here with you uh my mom my stepmom my dad my brother amy and thank you guys we so appreciate you guys coming all right mrs andrea zabo is going to recognize the next person so i have the honor of recognizing mrs shauna facetta mrs facetta is one of the reasons gateway point is so special because of shauna facetta our school is amazing she is known by mrs f to our community and is loved by all this is because she takes time to get to know each of the students she serves mrs f has built partnerships with members of our local community to help provide resources for our students in need because of this they always have new backpacks school supplies shoes and everything they need to start the year mrs f fills food bags and sends them home with students every friday this year she organized presidents for the holidays for more than 35 students on our campus mrs f also works hard to support our teachers by teaching social emotional lessons supporting students with challenging behaviors in the classroom every morning mrs f is in the courtyard greeting students helping to make sure their day is set up for success during lunches she hosts social groups provides peer mediation our campus shines bright because of her we could not duplicate mrs f because she is unique and we are proud to call her a gator [Applause] hmm would you like to say who joined you tonight oh who who joined me oh i am very fortunate that both my daughters are here with me one came all the way down from asu mckenzie who is a graduate from higley high school and caitlin who is my senior at higley high school as well so thank you girls all right next we have our teacher points of pride so miss megan rivera come on down [Applause] so miss megan is wonderful staff member and leader on our special education staff she teaches first by example by modeling professionalism and leadership in every way for all teachers on campus and all students she is so innovative in her instructional approach she is also humble and approachable and most of all she encourages students to think read and question they discuss all aspects of learning when they're with her she creates learning environments that carefully match each student's individual need she always goes the extra mile to create new tools to help her students be successful she encourages students and co-workers alike to be the best that they can she utilizes feedback from fellow teachers and students to improve the quality of teaching occurring here at gateway she brings both her general education knowledge and background plus her special education knowledge to every task that she's on this knowledge and use of skills makes her priceless priceless we are lucky to have such a caring and veteran teacher on our team thank you [Applause] thank you i just wanted to say thank you to my family who came my kids are here and then my team both fed and general education showed up and i really appreciate that thank you [Applause] so you're totally fine all right and last but not least is our volunteer which is a parent and unfortunately she's not feeling well so she couldn't come tonight but i still would like to recognize her so miss azita martin is one of our first grade parents and a graduate student at asu together with her fellow classmates they decided to give back to gateway and create a garden space to educate our youth about the importance of sustainable agriculture and healthy food consumption over the last several months azita has been writing grants and working with local organizations to make this vision come alive on december 4th over 40 community members came to show their support and build our new school garden if you've not had the chance to see it please come by and tour we know we have a school garden club now going on on fridays to help our students feel empowered by providing them with the knowledge that when they go home they can choose to eat healthy food or start gardens of their own we wanted to tell her thank you for all that she's done for our community and we're excited to see where this garden grows so welcome and thank you mrs eda for thank you again guys we look forward to this every year and thank you so much for our amazing gators we love you guys mr john dolan i'm going to hand you the stage now sir thank you you're welcome well um governing board dr foley this is richards mr lawson has i just want to thank you this is pretty neat experience for me because uh you gave me the opportunity to kind of open a new school and um now we get to recognize some of the people that are part of it so thank you guys for that opportunity i'm going to start with my students so nathan why don't you come on up here bud [Applause] who'd you bring with you my mom okay so nathan is the first student that uh signed up for hva met with you and your mom online if you remember and as things kept going what makes nathan worthy of a point of pride is he reached out to me and talked about you know i mentioned to him when we were meeting about a gaming club so he kept on me hey mr dolan what do you think about that can we do that and i said look i'm going to be honest with you i don't know very much about gaming i don't have a have any of that stuff so he kind of walked me through what we could do and i said well why don't you kind of be in charge of that he's like yeah no i don't want to do that but what's happened is on tuesdays when kids meet it's nathan who's there and he's kind of running and making sure kids are doing the right thing um he and his family even kind of got a what's it called a server got a server to do this so kids get this opportunity to get together and do something online because of this guy um so i thank you i know that uh his teacher's here he's um kind of doing well online so nathan thank you for everything you do i appreciate it [Applause] i'm not very good at it [Applause] hey kevin why don't you come on up here [Applause] who you got who'd you bring so i'm bringing my my my two sisters and my mom and dad okay thank you guys for coming so i got a chance to talk to kevin's mom yesterday not for the first time but we talked for a good while about kevin and his experiences online his teachers mrs webber who's here as well and um he's doing really really well but he's up here for a couple of reasons so let me get my notes kevin some terms that come up when i was talking to your teacher studious funny a leader kevin started a spanish club online he runs the club and he even created presentations for his fellow classmates so he's teaching his fellow classmates spanish but it's also an opportunity for them to get together and do some things so that's probably the biggest reason but the other reason is i mean you can see how is he kind of up here just his his attitude and just the way he approaches things whenever i talk to mrs webber she talked about how wonderful you are in class so i appreciate it and congratulations buddy [Applause] do you go buddy [Applause] so this the online school we have has two types of uh classrooms there's the k-6 model which the teachers are in person with me and the students meet them live and then there's the 712 model where the kids are asynchronous and they can meet their teacher by setting up meets et cetera so i have a teacher from each and i'm going to share karen files why don't you come up here first [Applause] is there anybody here with you my silent partner at home is managing my four children so karen is teaching 12th grade english and so when i thought about this um why i chose karen is just because of how much she cares it's very difficult i think to be an online teacher and connect with your kids but she's done that though i've asked teachers to create what i call a week at a glance so the weekly glance is a video that just tells the kids it's a minute to two minutes long hey this is what i need you to do hers are six minutes eight minutes no but because she's not only explaining she's hey don't forget to do this try this she's making connections with her students uh there was one student who was an a student who didn't come into ticker finals and she reached out to me and said hey you know i've tried i've done this just i mean just a person who overall cares about kids i thought absolutely deserves to be up here in a point of pride so karen thank you so much for caring so much [Applause] thank you i had a donut for her but i left it i can tell that story in a second on her page is um just dancing donuts and i talked to angie and apparently she really likes donuts so i'll have to mail it to you or something uh mrs weber come on up here [Applause] okay i don't have to look up my notes yet but in starting this venture um i was given the chance to interview teachers for k-6 now you gotta understand i've never had 30 years of education i've never stepped inside of a k-6 classroom except my daughter when it came to parent-teacher conferences and so um i had to defer to dr borzitch when it came to hey what kind of questions what are we looking for et cetera and i went through the resumes just kind of that's what i do beforehand anyway and i found sarah's because she had florida virtual experience which is the curriculum we use the same data i was looking through them she sent me an email that just said hey you know i'm interested as the process goes through we find out some other things and um my daughter i'm not my daughter my wife is now teaching her daughter in classes but that's not why she got hired i just put here i interviewed mrs webber because she had the experience with florida virtual i was looking for things that are more important to me and to me it's about creating relationships with kids and it's about your connection with your your colleagues as well if you can do those kind of things we can work on other stuff um so i hired her because of what other people said about her so she doesn't know this but um her the principle of dog zero i know very well and you gave me a list of all these people that were um kind of uh i guess recommendations and that's great but i'm going to call people that i know that know you so this is what they said about you that you were dynamic and you engaged kids her ability to get kids was incredible and so here's what i say about you after 20 plus weeks your patience with students and families is second to none and the most important thing your ability to make connections and support your team is terrific so i so glad that you're part of this venture with me congratulations [Applause] ladies and gentlemen that concludes our points of pride while you are welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting we also know that lots of you have to get ready for school tomorrow so now is a perfect time if you'd like to leave you are more than welcome to do but you're also welcome to stay president killer members of the lord i will continue with the superintendence report listed above are some upcoming dates for as you know next week we have the east valley boards consortium dinner and then we also have lots of things in february tis the season where lots of events are happening and thank you very much that concludes the superintendent's report thank you dr foley we're going to move on to board comments does anybody have any comments mrs wilson president kaler i just monday night i was able to visit higley high school for their freshman night and they just did a fantastic job their cafeteria was full um also tonight is williamsville night so if any parents are watching this remember you probably need to get over there i would have loved to be there but i'm sitting here instead uh cooley they had a sixth grade they had the sixth graders come over and visit for two days and i got to experience that and they did their student council did a fantastic job um just making those sixth graders understand the campus see everything they did tours they did a pep assembly they were fantastic i also got to visit a couple schools on the 100th day of school that we have passed now and i just want to congratulate all of our educators on making that milestone because that's a big one for us and to be able to celebrate that especially in a triumphant year as this one i'm going to celebrate that win that we have and also we got to see the spelling bee a few of us were actually able to visit the spelling bee as well yes thank you mrs wilson the spelling bee was quite amazing watching those kids think every word out but also i love the pictures of the hundredth day of school because these little ones dress like old people and they do it so well they're so cute any other comments mrs anderson i just wanted to make a comment um how interesting it was to see the online school come and a month you know we have a new school online and amidst a really down time with the pandemic to see new paths being made an online spanish club like that's awesome and to open up those avenues for communication from learning from students i just wanted to just comment how great that was to hear about that thank you nothing okay no it's okay we're going to move on to request to speak so i'm going to read this first we value input from our constituents the time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431.01 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your remarks to just three minutes and first we're going to start with i have marty bender good evening i appreciate the opportunity to address the district and our community my name is marty bender i'm a 19-year resident and a parent of a higley high graduate i want to talk a little bit about the bond proposal tonight and i want to make sure that the district knows that they need to be very judicious when it comes to evaluating bonds and putting them out there to borrow money as it obligates the community to future payments sometimes very large payments i'm happy to see that the district is making progress this year when it comes to community involvement in the bond program it gives us assurance that you're interested in our input and looking to seek what we have to say when it comes to the decisions you make regarding our financial future so thank you last year my research into the 95 million dollar bond proposal and freedom of information act requests with the district showed that the only community involvement really was through a political action committee this year's approach is much better and again i appreciate that the district needs to also make progress with regards to messaging transparency you cite the demographic survey a lot and in the survey it talks about you're going to need more space and more classroom but you don't talk about things that the survey also talks about like declining birth rates and a shrinking percentage of eligible students in the district that actually attend district schools you tell us that the bond will only increase our tax rates a small amount i think it was 14 cents one year but what you don't tell us is that it's going to increase or extend excuse me our repayment period for eight years through and you don't tell us that it's going to cost us 2 million a year in interest just to pay for the interest on these new bonds the last bond plan was heavily flawed and that's why i was a vocal opponent in both social media and local media trying to get the word out to vote no i felt that the plan had too much undefined spending increased our debt by 117 during a pandemic and was asking us to borrow to pay off a lease that has a relatively small cost in proportion to our overall budget and that i felt that was questionable our current capital needs could have been largely addressed back in 2019.

thank you and what is so what if you guys go away what is it to keep it going because we haven't had it in the years before you know as far as making sure there is still a cohesive plan and that it's not up and down because we have seen turnover and so we've seen people excited about the programs and then kind of go down and then back up again so i want to make sure that we're able to maintain that for everyone so what's in place i guess one of the things that's really important is sustainability of programs and a lot of that becomes one of the starting points that we started was defining it creating a handbook creating thinking maps aligning aligning a curriculum maps aligning resources a lot of infrastructure work has happened that continues to happen that didn't exist not that work wasn't happening but not systemically pre-k-12 and and again that includes professional development that includes resources that includes a lot of the processes and procedures that we've put in place and sort of been bringing to you to show that um that if individuals are no longer in those capacities those resources don't walk away with the individual they're they are they are owned by the district and that there are systems in place to ensure that they're implemented and that's one of the things that ha that is important with leadership and it's also important with the sustainability of programs which is what this team has been working really hard because it's one thing to talk it it's another thing to have evidence artifacts and documents that that that support the conversation which we've been building it and have come a long way um and i'm so proud this doesn't happen without everybody working and lifting really hard my turn okay [Laughter] dr foley i know i asked before but could you go over how many open enrollment kiddos we have in these two programs just for our community so they can hear uh i'm sorry mrs richards maybe it's you um i just want our community to hear how many kiddos have chosen to come to higley because of this okay so um currently in district open enrollment at coronado the mandarin dli program there are 93 students and as was mentioned here there are 72 students out of district open enrollment for spanish immersion in district we have 110 open enrolled students out of district weirdly enough we have 72 so there's some connection between these two gods i haven't figured it out a competitiveness yes those two so those are those are outstanding numbers and show that people value this they want this and i think the dedication here radiates out of both of them so mr mercado already has a kindergartner on a waiting list so he's got 51 kids oh i don't know that that happened today can we put banners at both of these schools saying like now enrolling for our dual language um is that an option to do some sort of banner as an advertisement that our print shop could possibly do um board member taylor uh president gaylord board member wilson we have a fantastic print job and our promotional team has helped us create some lovely things i think that's a lovely idea um it just might be good if someone is driving by to be able to see that we are offering spanish at and mandarin um i just thought of that when mrs schultz was asking about what we're doing um do our students have to maintain a certain grade in order to stay in that pro in the elementary programs mostly i know middle school that's a whole new ball game but at the elementary level if we're if they're struggling in english should we really have them doing spanish how does that work what do we do there board member wilson that's a great question [Music] the i'm assuming the coronado team but also the santan team this is why teachers do such a fantastic job of making connections with kids to monitor that progress knowing that the program the teachers only have the kids for about two and a half hours during the day they work systematically as a team the english teacher and the spanish teacher on the other side as well to ensure that kids are growing and so we don't want them to start falling behind what i will tell you traditionally i don't have the data in front of me traditionally at san tan the district benchmarks that we do our kids in the dli program in general majority of the time outperform the general side and that is typically in second grade and higher when we start looking at that data we also look at past dibbles data but it also shows in that dibbles data cadence data that our k1 kids typically outperform the general side and those assessments are done in english and so knowing that i can just tell you on behalf of san tan with me being there for eight years and starting the program over the past eight years that's what you traditionally see with those district benchmark assessments on the english side also can a kid out when they get to middle school if they've been in either of your programs and they get to middle school and they decide that they want to continue mandarin or spanish but they also want to try another foreign language as well because in my line of work i've seen people who have eight languages under their belt because they learn one and it's like a bug and they want to keep learning is that a possibility at higley that we allow a middle schooler to continue taking mandarin and or spanish and then take french or well we don't offer french in middle school let's go with some the opposite one is that have we ran into it hey and can we do that can we allow that okay so that it is allowed as long as they have the elective credits available they can take whichever credits they prefer okay um and then just one more quick follow-up um i looked for the email and our email's kind of weird on district email um but a few years back i had a parent write an email and just thanked us for the mandarin program sorry mr romano you're gonna be very upset um and just thanked us for the program and said i believe they were driving their child over 45 minutes one way to this program to because it was the program um i want to highlight that parent thank them for their email they were concerned about the program making sure that we kept it but it was something to be said that they reached out to us back then to remind us how important this program was to their family and their students yeah miss wilson that that student actually just left us last year and when they decided not to because they decided to go into a different district because they were driving 45 minutes the parents came to me and expressed the sincere gratitude for that so when we're talking what we're doing and open enrollment and that kind of stuff we are i'm going to echo what dr foley was saying we truly are moving towards being the premier says it in our mission that's our goal but we're talking about being the premier dual language immersion program and world language program in the in the valley i mean the work that's going on is is remarkable and unexplainable per se and when parents reach out to you about that those are things that are highlighted and that parent was distraught i can't express it enough they were really upset so we appreciate that thank you mr schultz you can hack at the floor again uh mr ricardo i wanted to say that you were very proud of your students and last week year i sat next to you at the teacher of the year um breakfast and you showed me all the numbers on your stamp test and how proud of your students were so that was great and also just missed um jau doesn't get she get got credit for mr armstrong but she sends out besides the two nights that she dedicates she also sends you a recap she videotapes the lesson sends it out to you and sends you probably five different emails during the week about how to practice and what to do and now i'm a terrible parent i signed up for it and i haven't been able to go as mr armstrong knows but it's amazing and it's a great program and i know lots of parents that are a part of that one of the things i wanted to ask if kids are in the immersion program and i know there's only two electives and so they get excited and want to maybe try something else and mandarin is one of them is it possible for them to not take the classes in middle school then test into the program into in and test into the ap courses or president kaler board member schultz you actually hit on the question i was actually going to say because one of the things we find in middle school actually is that you know for the first time they have some opportunity for electives and they don't have very many electives and all of a sudden they want to try the dance they want to try the band they want to try something else and we encourage that because there's other enrichment opportunities that they have yes one of the things that we can do is and again there's entry points so you may you may not do this for a couple years which is one of the reasons why programs die if you don't have pathways if you don't have feeder schools because kids do take a little break but then they rejoin that and there's options for re-entry at the secondary level and utilizing the stamp as a tool it allows us to place appropriately so that we set the student up for success so we are in a far better place now with the use of this additional tool to give options for flexibility because we do find some students get to middle school and go i still i love my language and i will keep this but i want to try something else and we encourage them to do that that's important thank you that's great um i'm glad to know that that's an option um i think i'll let mrs sanderson talk one of the things i just want to say is as a parent that's been in the program for seven years then i am super happy with the way it's been going and also i'm grateful for the language program as i sought out a language program for my kids is a i think that's extremely important and my kids think spanish is hard when i try to teach them spanish and so obviously i mean i don't mandarin i don't know what they're saying and i can't help them at all but i finally got the dialect right on one word after seven years and i still terrible so i'm very grateful for the program existing even though i give mr armstrong crap about it um through member wilson's question my question kind of or you guys answered my question but i was wondering if you were tracking the academics uh comparing like the students that were going through this program and how they like you said probably do better in the standard classes and i didn't know if that could be now a good point for promotion for the community to see that i'm going to say we do and i think that's a great point however i think a dli program goes beyond just the academic component as we talked about the abcs of dual language immersion and that kind of stuff academic team being only one of them but that promotion of bilingualism and bi-literacy and cultural competency is going to is truly going to take it beyond and above when we talk about we have we we're an educational institution we want students moving forward in academics we want them to perform so yeah we look at it but that's not the only solid piece really the solid piece is being able to sit there and say as as a sixth grader leaving coronado this year man i'm i'm here and i want to continue moving forward because eventually i'm going to get a job that does this or i'm going to do this and i want to see i said it in a blurb is that the the the information our students in both campuses and then those at the middle school in high school that are receiving in another language they have no clue right now what what exists for them in the future and ultimately that's all that's the goal and i want to reiterate yes we do look at the academic piece but our job is to continue giving these individuals these young minds to go ahead and continue moving forward regarding what does it truly mean to have the acquisition of another language and be able to perform and be the best citizen they can be when they leave us and when they enter the workforce so that's something that i yes but i wanted to make sure i touch base on that because i get a little passionate about it i'm sorry i was just going to wrap things up unless you have something else i can thank you guys because i think you did a fantastic job i know that um just having the pathways now more secure is a huge huge step for higley um i know that just even at my tenure here on the board coming in i was very concerned what are we doing in seventh grade for these kiddos and now we have plans and things in place and i'm so grateful for that because i think that does give the security to the program for the long term and now i even see the high school with the college pathways hopefully god willing coming that just gives the stability to the programs both so kudos to all of you and the hard work that's been do going on i sat with dr foley this past week so kind of already got a preview of what was going to go on tonight but you guys covered it further and more in depth than i expected and i'm grateful for that sorry for my word earlier i didn't mean endure it's just been a long time since we've had a two hour plus meeting to be very honest it was those were the kova days and we would say those were enduring [Laughter] so um thank you so much for your time and all the energy that you guys have put into these programs we're very blessed in higley for that i think she has one more question i don't have a question i just want to say thank you and also um i just want to make sure that you're not going to go anywhere rebecca like okay thank you thank you thank you for all that came tonight um would it be okay if we took a five-minute break please and we will come back for our mno um budget review thank you okay thank you for that little recess um 7.2 you can see the report are there any questions or concerns i'm good anything if not we're going to move on that's just an informational item and next up we have mr tyler moore he's going to give us the first review of the 2022-2023 emino budget here we go all right good evening president kaler vice president anderson and members of the board tonight we will review the first review of the 2022-2023 maintenance and operations budget as a reminder the eminent budget accounts for all the district's financials resources with the exception of the capital items and various cash controlled funds such as tax credit gifts and donations and student activities which are typically fees and contributions to a particular cause like sports participation etc so this is our our whole budget um with the with those exceptions i also want to point out that is january and we're right in the middle of the current budget year but by law school districts must do a budget revision for the current year in fiscal 22 in may and then of course we know we adopt a budget in june um so we're in that time frame to talk budget um and that's what we'll do today so okay so first uh we're going to review the current budget for fiscal year 2022 and the highlights that are contributing to the budget at first we're not anticipating any additional covered relief grant funding as we presented last year the district expanded esther 1 and sr2 on items outlined in the requirements and the federal guidelines sr-3 spending plan was presented to the governing board on november 3rd and that plan will go through fiscal year 2024.

all please stand i pledge allegiance with liberty and justice here michelle's aloha here kate hannah here gladys cooper absent lauren daley here joe silva here catherine ashton here albert russo here william here how would you please read the public participation script the board welcomes public participation and asks that communications be limited to three minutes the public may offer objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints or defamatory comments about the board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system danbury public schools is temporarily pausing in personal public participation in board meetings as we collectively work through social distancing techniques to prevent the spread of code in 19 in our school community the nanbury board of education invites members of the public who are residents of the town to send brief comments and questions via email in advance to dps underscore public comment underscore eoe dameron.k12.ct.us thank you so much this message is from john smith good evening my name is john smith and i'm a danbury resident my question statement for the board meeting on wednesday night january 26 22 is as follows good evening board members and superintendent wilson at the last board meeting i asked the board to respond to my question regarding the allowance of students and schools get staff into school buildings during the week and yet not allow those same people in the public in general into board meetings this is the second board meeting now this year for the public has not been allowed in person i have not heard a response if you state that you are collectively working through social justice and test techniques to prevent the spread of cognitive in our school community then why are you allowing students and staff to go into overcrowded school buildings where there's complete lack of social distancing and substandard approach to mitigation as this virus i also have not heard a response regarding visitation by your board members into our school's cafeterias where my understanding is that in these locations in our schools there's near complete absence of social distance in the mitigation i say all of this as my friend who works in the neighborhood public schools has reported to me that she has not adequately provided with n95 masks as a source of mitigation she should be getting a new one every day as they are now meant to be used after a 24 hour period with clear guidance out now from cbc regarding the power of that 95 masters against the virus it tells me that there isn't a collective push not only at the andrew but by other super contenders in the state to where not only every staff member but every student with m95 masks i asked the board and the superintendent to not remain silent at the conclusion of my statement i wish a verbal response in this board meeting tonight to my concerns the youtube livestream the local news press and i will be waiting but not commenting on my statement verbally tonight then the optics of your silence will entail a hypocritical combination before well nothing we can do let's protect ourselves and not worry about students teachers and administrators in our buildings my statement is not included thank you please respond and nothing else moving on to the consent calendar as recommended moved by lauren seconded by mr russo any discussion from board members yes rachel chaleski hi michelle colello hi kate canetta lauren daley aye jessica facilla all right katherine hodgson aye albert russo r louisa britton aye it's unanimous moving on to staff representatives students hello welcome [Music] 1977 after racial alliance at [Music] continues today after 45 years of operation ace is proud that they have graduated over a thousand students and continues to function as a very important part of our school system where we are so appreciative all of my mr president and for students over the years and we wanted to recognize and remember him this evening thank you ace will also be hosting a barbecue on saturday may 19th to celebrate reporting make working celebrate and appreciate you hello a select publicly recognized in january graduates lily coman jensena olivio cenino serena song christine eugene kim seguenza axel valenzuela larissa medeiros and jalen javista we will be celebrating your graduates this upcoming friday during our whole school virtual world regards a certain qa guidance teacher should speak about each graduate to recognize their accomplishments and why we appreciate each and every one following that our graduates will have the opportunity to speak to our current students and staff january graduates also wrote graduation speeches to share our june graduation congratulations january graduates um new students and interviews the asp is excited to welcome new students from dhs to start semester two year with us saturday students started with us this week with additional students visiting and interviewing the upcoming week [Music] thank you very much does anyone have any questions for our student representatives or comments thank you thank you very much and for that statement as well moving on to action items mr russo would you make the motion please yes action item a december 2021 finance financial report motion that the board of education accepted december 2021 financial report according to the exhibit 22-12 motion's been made is there a second second segmented by catherine any discussion looking at the summary of the report a cfo and eddie did a great job the numbers are in line however not with some of the encumbrances that exceed the budget will exceed the budget here and something before we have left over it's is it my understanding am i correct to say there's going to be a lot of adjustments in these line items in the later portion of the year where we take over this from some to make up the deficiencies of some of the other lines so yes we're in the process of moving line items by atlanta depending on what the um so we're tracking it on a weekly monthly basis um so if there's a shortage you online make sure to see how the other line is and we'll trigger of funds very simple very similar to the grades as well thank you is is that relative is that normal or abnormal where you have a sometimes you go over on one and a surplus of the other is that is that ordinary or is that something unusual it happens um i think you know due to the when we transfer to tyler um you know the numbers came in you know they might have been protected a little higher or in the wrong line so that's what we've been doing for the last few months is identifying those items um making sure you know it was a million dollars in one item over budgeted it and you move it into the item that may be under budget so that's where that is thank you for watching thank you any other questions or comments um just a quick question about um you've got to know here that the health care plan is going to be rising this coming year um we're talking this this year 2022 or we talking next leader just want to clarify that first that's it that's for next year as we're building our budget you know more about that next month okay great and then i just wanted to um ask if there are any expenditures you anticipate this year going beyond what we've allotted already well um the expenditures i'm aware of are really as we've tried to fill our vacancies with teachers and things being out so our expenditures for substitutes and overages are higher than planned because of the pandemic but we also have some positions we were not able to fill um so it's that money that will be used for the extra substitute costs thank you [Music] good evening everyone first i'd like to thank the sda students as always for their contributions and updates about ace but two also want to echo the sentiments of regarding our late principal joke mr joe heaven it is my understanding at ace they are looking to have a more formal recognition um there's a pep in the spring and so at that time i'm hoping over the next couple of months to speak with the principal former principals and hopefully some family members and see if we can't have a more homework recognition for the many contributions the principal has made to the denver community which i understand is a long list of contributions that he has made so i'm looking forward to that time and i just wanted to update the board us in our regards to the families so next superintendent goals and update there are two areas i'd like to focus on this evening one of them is college and career readiness dr cass casimiro will update the board on our pog initiatives and kind of updates on the work that's been going on during the 21-22 school year and then second my chief hr hr hr officer will be updating on hiring report for the 2021-22 school year i think dr casimir is going gonna go first quick [Music] that's okay [Music] is um so tonight we're just going to update you just briefly on the status of the portion of the graduate i know um you know for many of the board members uh who have been on board the last couple years you know that was quite a bit of work that only the board members engaged in but also the community at large in terms of building that vision together and identifying the skills and attributes that we're saying are going to be important as a danbury high school graduate and so at some point would be great to do a little bit of an orientation to some of the newer board members that's really the deeper timeline of where we came from but tonight is just a brief update on that work um and i'm happy to provide anybody orientation to work more deeply inside meeting or perhaps the curriculum committee as we move forward in the months ahead and take the time to do that okay but okay thank you so just a reminder uh not too long ago we revamped our vision and mission uh to be in line with some of the great goals that we've established for our students here on that being that danville public schools aspires to enhance all learners to their highest potential and our mission being that we have a partnership with families and the community and provide transformational learning experiences designed to provide thoughtful and care graduates and that's really what the portion of writing is about and the word transformational is really going to describe not just the portion of the graduate and some of the other work that you have at the academy as well that you'll be learning about so the portion of the graduate defines the skills knowledge and the dispositions valued by the schools in our community that are critical for college and career life many times throughout our interviews with our business community or various times we've learned that some of the things beyond academics that our community partners would love to see from our graduates are those collaborator skills those good communicator skills uh someone can get along with others and is a great team player and that's really the kind of soft skills that we're talking about here so in addition to that we provide not just the life skills and 21st century skills but also social emotional learning skills developing those relationships self-regulation building uh learning how to work well with others understanding their own emotions and regulating those and so the buckets if you will or the large characteristics the broad characteristics that blended up is advocates collaborators communicators innovators and learners and while there's five simple words up there i can tell you it took a very long time to get to those words okay okay so why why focus on those so beyond academics we all have common core skills we have ngss 21st century technology skills those are kind of standard and in school systems we typically focus on those and focus pretty hard on us but again those soft skills are things that we really want to make sure in our unfortunate graduate that we're getting students to really reflect on and to understand how they can improve those areas and they're not easy areas to measure there's a lot of self-reflection so how do we do that self-reflection goal setting with students a lot of conversation about that continuous meaningful feedback so how are we giving students feedback along the lines of these very important attributes that we're saying are going to help them in the future and again typically so focused on academics you don't often build these opportunities in and intentionally provide feedback for students this is really important and then opportunities to take leadership initiatives take ownership of projects and just use to give students feedback along those lines as well that's a good start this week a lot of boxing no i'm fine that's just sense um and then be explicit on expectations in order to be explicit on the expectations you have to have something explicit and after the framework comes in with language that helps to guide those conversations it provides a roadmap for students over the course of their time with us and so i think um half of you may have participated in some orientations with the future design school there's a terrific organization that we partner with to help us with this work they've done this in many places very innovative but also really helps to tease the best out of the groups that they're working with to get to the place where we say we want to be so they've been working with us to help us develop this framework they've been um thank you so the goal is the partnership is to create that measurement measurement framework which which we've been meeting on quite extensively over the last i would say four months on a regular basis with a small core team as we start to develop and find the framework right now we're mostly focused on grade six through eight we're in the process of drafting lengths for twelve and i'll show you a little bit about what that looks like and then we'll work on k5 next year so the first part is really tracking that framework out and then we're going to have to develop outcome measurements by grade level which is very detailed work um and then develop rubrics to support the work and then develop and identify sort of model work that are serves as good examples of what these things look like so teachers and students know what the expectations are then of course another part of this is communicating the work that we're doing and then train staff so that they understand how to use the framework uh and then we uh you know provide training i think it's like providing feedback how to get students to reflect um and different ways that we can improve the curriculum in order to build more opportunities in to give kids practice with skills that we say are hard and so the continuum framework and again i'll show you a little snippet of where we are so you understand what that looks like um it's really important to demonstrate a vertical alignment and the development of each of the attributes and so how does what does a collaborator look like in uh at the elementary level versus the middle school versus the high school so obviously the sophistication of what that looks like should progress it should be vertically aligned that's probably the hardest part of the work is that our little enemy piece is very language and nuance intensive and our team spent already hours and hours going back and forth with language on that and then also making sure that what we're putting into the framework yeah and these indicators are aspirational and that they're attainable again there's a lot of things that are difficult to measure when you're doing soft skills and these types of work so how is it that we can inspire students to reach and then how to help them attain these goals what types of processes do you put in place so that students can actually see themselves growing and getting feedback in this area then of course making sure again critical steps is empowering as learners to make sure that they are seeing themselves growing along one institute yes and so we landed on four categories to demonstrate the progression along certain pieces of the framework so when we say we define an attribute and we have indicators we're saying that we're identifying what we want students to know understand and do and so similar to a proficiency scale if you think of proficiency as achieving the four categories to demonstrate the continuum of proficiency we've bucketed those terms calling them exploring so obviously at the very beginning right progressing getting better you're getting closer achieving you're there for where you should be at your grade level and then consciously pursuing that's really sort of an advanced level of performing uh at that for that indicator so an example of this is uh for collaborator we'll start with the two outcomes that the committee selected so i'll give you a chance to take a look at so if you remember each of the five attributes we identified specific outcomes for each some had two some had three and so for collaborator we said students will work effectively with diverse team members respected for opinions and balance seeking to understand what's trying to be understood and then you said students will soon share responsibility when working interdependently to accomplish goals and persevere through disagreement to build common understanding so when you take those two outcomes and that's as far as we got with the committee work and you overlay them in the next slide oh that's a little tiny so in your packet you want to reference that if you look at the achieving column you can see so the outcome is listed at the top so it's one of the outcomes that we just read and if you look at this as i won't quite call it a rubric because it's not quite a rubric but it is a continuum and if you look at the achieving as sort of the target area you can see that the indicators we take the outcome and we identify three indicators for that outcome and those are the areas those are the target areas that we'd like to see think of them as sort of sub-categories of the outcome and then we will provide students feedback along those lines and you can see how the level of skill differentiates from exploring all the way through the consciously pursuit and you can see a level of sophistication once you get up to that to that level and i can tell you and really that the next slide is the same it's just about the outcome number two okay if you want to advance that just to give you an idea of the depth of this um once we get this and this is a sixth sixth through eighth grade snapshot and so the amount of language and revision that this has already gone through now this is just one of the um attributes in the portion of the graduate so we have five so there's several examples of these that we're working on now this is just one to show you to give you an example of the type of work that it that we're doing and so basically we'll be taking the six eight where we've landed out the draft and we're gonna begin at 9 12.

it is um it's a nice experience you get to you know see the kids present to you um and you know you just have like a handful of kids i think to just to hear from and then kind of give feedback on their projects and so if anyone's available please contact john newcastle at westside or you can always call the school and the main office will kind of do yes it's the first and the second it is the first and the second is that a tuesday and a wednesday next tuesday yes yep um and just so you know i was on the um the monthly cave board chair check-in last week which is helpful it's a nice network of chairs across the state and i was added to there to the cave chair distribution email list and we all kind of share procedures and processes through through that connection that's just nice just wanted to share that update for me are there any board communications comments anything from we haven't had no updates go ahead okay um so i met with dsabc and they are going virtual with their mentorships right now they will be in the process of looking for new mentors and they are um kind of getting ready to go into a big fun cruiser season where they're going to be doing the guide to doing into the local restaurants thank you anyone else any updates comments before we adjourn i will entertain a motion to adjourn move by joe is there a second let's please go up saying aye we are adjourned

good okay all right it's 11 00 a.m and that's we'll call this special board meeting to order on january 27th and with that we'll start with uh roll call uh dennis bender here christopher nunez here maria okara present and will sin so is absent he's out of the area and rick rowley is present all right real quickly california department of public health requiring mass to be worn at all indoor public settings irrespective of vaccine status for eight weeks december 15 through february 15 2022 alpha valley unified school district will continue to follow facility mask entry guidelines uh with that uh chris would you lead us in the pledge please stand right hand over your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you prior uh to moving forward we're going to have a moment of silence here as some of you may have known lisa metzger was part of the unified school district family who passed away on saturday january 22nd so if we can just bow our heads in for a moment of silence thank you thank you okay we needed uh adoption of the agenda the board may approve the agenda as is or add or pull items um we have a motion to approve so dennis ii maria ii all in favor aye aye on the opposition hearing then that'll be the order kylie we have any uh public comments we do not okay thank you and um superintendent comments just that we have made it through what i believe is the highest point of our surge i'm having to do with cover 19 and staffing and i'm seeing some downward trends with numbers and so we remained open we continue to um rotate the transportation um routes that have to be canceled um in order to not uh impact too many families but we're hopeful that in the coming weeks we will be back to fully restored thank you thanks for the good news yeah maria do you have any comments i have no comments uh christopher nunez no comment dennis no comment and i have no comments either all right moving right along a discussion action session is recommended that the board of trustees discuss and take action on the following items approve the amended 2021-2022 board meeting schedule is there any discussion on this item did we even get the the new schedule it was attached in the board docs item and the only amendment to it was the february third meeting would be shifted to february 10th and the times have now all been listed as um five o'clock start time as opposed to 5 30.

can you make 6 30 i should be just jumping out of one and driving out here for it so that's why i'm kind of worried about the window to do the drive out to a board meeting yeah i apologize to the board i i was under the impression that each board member was checked um based on the date and time and that it was a free date and time and that's why we offered that date as the proposed date well unfortunately somebody forgot to check with me what about the night it has to be on a thursday right it does not you can amend it to meet any of the timelines as long as um the original board meeting was thursday the 3rd and it was proposed to be moved and to the 10th the following thursday at this end that only adjusts the time on the calendar because we found out at the last board meeting that we would only have three board members on the third and um that puts us at a concern for a quorum always right if we were to move it um either the seventh seventh eighth or ninth would that would that be something that we could do and keep it at the regular time of five people the seventh is a district holiday um so schools are closed that day the eighth um one of those days that the union has do you schedule a meeting on a union the board can the the board um is allowed to schools are not allowed to okay so the second the eighth is fine with me i have a conflict that night yeah and the ninth is not good for me and the tenth obviously and the friday is you you can't make the ninth either maria uh the ninth is not good for me i have a meeting that's seven on that day six actually six to seven [Music] we've already noted we were waiting um to notify families so we just have to make a decision um from a discussion all right let's just let's go at uh let's let's let's try 6 30 and um if maria if you're a little bit late would that be a problem i mean if we could start at 6 30 because i really hate to go up to seven o'clock because it's pretty late in the night and then um this is still going to put us back an hour and a half if we start at 6 30 but it's up to the board just throwing that out there i can do that i just left if maria did miss she just missed the opening step she wouldn't miss a closed session or anything and you wouldn't miss the comments after closed session but if i came if i got here 15 minutes after 6 30 you're already in closed session can you join i think seven o'clock is just too late to start the meeting it's it's it's um but the same way that we're having this meeting at 11 o'clock uh we can have it anytime during the day um the board meeting is actually a meeting where the public is invited to see what the board is doing uh we're not holding a meeting so that the public will guide how we do the meeting and so as a matter of fact if we want to hold the meeting earlier we can hold the meeting earlier it's already on live stream and the public could view it that way um we could do that this one time yeah do it early i think the public understand and we don't have don't really have another option we can't we can't delay it anymore we got commitments on this thing okay how about how about um 3 p.m will that work for the rest of the party 3pm 3pm okay so i move that we change the february board meeting to 3 p.m on february 10.

i did skip a couple resolutions that are above that about the fourth resolution down resolution recommended to accept the retirement of suboc school nurse at school number six middle school effective june 30th sue has been with us for about 35 years i know she's been a nurse in school five she's been a nurse i believe in school four i believe she was a nurse in the high school and now she's been for the number of last couple of years a nurse in school number six the middle school always done a very nice job for us so i wish sue best of luck in her retirement also resolution to accept the resignation of bridget nunez teacher at school number six effective march 18th bridget is moving on to another district another position bridget has also been with us a number of years in the pre-k program elementary school at number four and number six she's currently the association president so i know she'll be resigning that position so we wish bridget best of luck in her new position page four a couple of maternity leaves uh third um resolution down crystal brown uh first grade teacher at school number four will be leaving on or about um may 26th and she'll be returning december 1st of 2022 so we wish crystal the best of luck joanna carnell who's an esl teacher at school number three joanna will be leaving on or about march 28th and she will be returning september 1st so those are positions that we would need to fill uh in a temporary basis skip one the next one um aliki who's a resource room teacher at school number four is also requesting a maternity leave uh on or about may 16th and she will return december 5th of 2022 right below that anna aceta who's a elementary school teacher at school number four requesting a maternity leave also which will begin on or about september 1st and she will return january 2nd 2023 last resolution on that page marissa simeli who's an english teacher on our middle school is currently on a maternity leave she was supposed to return april 22nd but she uh notified me today that she's going to extend the leave until june 30th the remainder of the school year and she'll return uh september 2022.

we've got state project numbers for our roof at number six our roof at the high school our office renovation at the high school and we're also working on potentially having our pa systems the new pa systems installed at school number four and school number six to board the rest of those two projects and we are starting to work on the preliminary 2020 2022-2023 budget getting our ducks in a row on that directionally right now looks like the governor's address will be february 22nd and two days after that we'll know our state aid we haven't got any direction on where stadium is going to go up down or stay flat so with the original budget inputs we're going to keep the state aid flat year over year and the submission is due march 4th uh to the county that's pretty much it mr ramgino okay uh any questions on the consent agenda from the public or the board before we i ask for a motion to accept i have one question yes on the buildings and grounds it says high school gymnasium march 11 22.

um i i know that it seems to be the new thing like you mentioned like for gilbert mesa going by gps or mps i'm so glad that we're not doing dps so thank you for that i really don't want another acronym so and dps has different thoughts so i like two or four the best personally i'd lean towards two only because if that was the parent choice that yeah just i would lean towards that but um are there any other comments before emotions made i'm between two and four do you like four okay you like you like both i was for two or three that were my main it sounds like two things only is because of you know like i said it was coming further from the book um that's opened up it's just the three students are coming further from the book and so it's to me it has a greater impact although too does have it's like the springboard so bringing into the future spring in the future yeah okay well i'll go ahead and make a motion then i move to approve dicert logo option number two as presented second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by john densmore motion carries and thank you so much for all your hard work they're beautiful yes and madam president just a reminder that that will begin to be rolled out in july thank you all right next we'll move to action discussion item three recommendation to see i caught myself revision to school calendar for the 2022-2023 school year dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr dean will introduce this item madame president members of the governing board dr kellis members of cabinet and guests every five approximately five years in the cycle of a school calendar the school calendar pushes itself back by a week or it has to be pushed back by a week to accommodate dates and to make sure that that when you return from winter break that you don't return on january 1st or december 31st or what have you in my 17 years in the school district i believe this has happened three times already and this would be the fourth as we move as we move forward however um upon the the recent revision to the 22 23 school year some concerns arose from community members from parents from teachers and administrators that the current calendar has the last day of winter break being december 23rd which is christmas eve eve which creates a bit of a hardship for teachers who or staff who are leaving town because it really provides them only christmas eve to travel and that certainly is understandable so in looking for an option to solve this piece administration sought the input of um of several stakeholders and present to you this evening some minor changes for record for approval for the school year it's hard to believe that we're saying the 22-23 school year but that being said we are the changes are very minor and they are as follows in our current calendar school is scheduled to start on august 4th in the revision calendar we are recommending that school start on august the 3rd one day earlier nothing else changes on the calendar until you get to winter break currently the calendar has winter break or the last day of the semester being december 23rd we are recommending that the last day of of the semester in the revised calendar be december the 20th and winter break would then begin on wednesday the 21st the full two-week break would be taken and we are recommending that school would resume for students on january the 5th in the next item for approval for the board for work calendars we are recommending that our teachers return two weeks after break begins on wednesday january 4th for a teacher work day that will be dedicated solely for them in preparation for the second semester so those are the recommendations that that we are looking to have approved this evening nothing else on the calendar changes fall break remains aligned to columbus day we continue to be able to have a week at at thanksgiving and the last day of school does not change nor does the graduation day so those are the recommendations that we are making this evening and i'd be happy to answer any questions the the half days um are those changed for the middle schools madam president miss densmore those are on the current calendar for this year our middle schools do take our middle school students take finals on the last two days of each semester and so that's currently in place it is okay yes do we normally have a teacher work day on the day after teachers come back from break madam president that would be a new addition to our to our calendar for this year and the reason for that is that we've heard um great success from other school districts that do that there are other districts that are close to us in proximity that do that it allows for what happens is we take one of the days that teachers normally have at the beginning of the school year so we bring all of our teachers back for four days prior to the school year starting we would bring them back for three days prior to the school year starting and then that fourth day would be the day before students return for the second semester and provides them the opportunity for any last minute pieces that need to be planned for plc's to gather again before the second semester begins when they return from break do we think that that's needed as much as giving them the extra days before the whole school year starts to take one of those days away madam president we believe that that it will be a very successful venture it is very successful for the school districts around us that use it and then are we um graduation this year is it on a wednesday madam president you're testing my memory um but i believe the answer is yes we're out of school i believe this year on a thursday i believe and graduation is the day before so that would be wednesday yes okay so i was just wondering um have we already so because this would bring graduation on a tuesday have we already like are we already in contract with that madam president the graduation date for 2023 is set with with the the venue yes all right i just thank you also for including columbus day our pleasure fall break any other questions just one dr dean how was this uh received by the teachers having that day after uh the christmas break madam president mrs orsinpo with applause with applause yes okay i can tell you that this would be a welcome change for teachers because the being back four days before the school year yeah it sounds great but usually those days are just jam-packed with pd so you got meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting and if you want to set up your classroom you got to come a week before to set up your classroom because and so you're working for free for a week so my question to dr dean is are we going to have pd's on this day on january 4th or is it actually going to be a work day madam president has promised by dr kellis to the certified counsel yesterday if this calendar is approved there will be no pd on that day before um the second semester begins it will be a full teacher work day oh hallelujah can you say that one more time and dr k that was a an absolute promise by dr kellis all right and it's recorded we got this recording it was recorded in that meeting yes okay this will help so much just with like you said plc's and grading and lesson plans because as a teacher you honestly feel and yeah you can do most of that before you go on winter break but a you're exhausted b you've got all these class parties you've got everything going on so having that day just to focus on planning and getting your stuff together is absolutely wonderful and madam president miss jeff and i might add that it will allow our staff to enjoy two weeks of winter break anybody else i just have so works i guess i'm a little confused or concerned about this year graduation is the 18th next year will be the 24th so we're adding we're going later into the month of may so what are we accommodating at the other end madam president members miss grant that's an excellent question so there are just a couple of differences in the current calendar that's pushed forward one of them is that we are we are adding two days to the vacation at the thanksgiving break so rather than having you know only three days of thanksgiving we're taking that entire week off and then that tends to push around a week here and there so go ahead and entertain a motion i moved the governing board oops hold on it just moved i moved the governing board approved the revision to the 2022-2023 school year calendar as presented motion made by tracy sorry sinkhole seconded by joe grant oh my yes motion carries thank you okay next we'll move to action discussion item h3 recommendation to approve the employee work calendars for the 2022-2023 school year dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent callus cabinet and guest tonight we bring to you the work calendars which coincide with the school calendars that you just approved most of the discussion already did occur on the work calendars in the last topic we do have some changes in the work calendars that do reflect some positions moving but however it's important to know we're just doing the calendars tonight those positions that will be moving calendars are coming to you at a different board board meeting once you approve the calendars so we have a basis and then we will share with you at a later meeting which jobs are moving to what calendar so with that all the discussion has occurred tonight earlier like i said with the work calendars and the changes to coincide with the school calendars that you just approved so i'll stand for any questions there's nine total calendars for all our workers madam president i also believe we have a call to public on this item i'll read the statement again this is the time for pub the public to comment members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda pursuant to ars 38-431 action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date in order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner a time limit of three minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board when you approach the podium please state your name for the record and we have uh miss janelle rodriguez good evening thank you members of the board for the dysart unified school district for giving me the opportunity to address you this evening my name is janelle rodriguez i'm currently a teacher at growing minds preschool for the pre-k level i've worked there since december of 2020.

madam president members of the board they have 42 schools thank you and just uh madam president members of the board just to on the previous question asking what our admin percent is um our auditor general calculation from 2020 is the last one from the auditor general is at 8.8 percent and the state average is ten point two five percent our projections for this year when they come out with the reports next month well that will be that we stayed eight point eight percent i guess i share personally i i guess i share miss pritchard's concerns about having multiple adding more top heavy positions you know what what if we just have one director and then we just hire a couple of um assistants support support staff to kind of help with some of those tasks that way our director you know we we don't have like multiple directors we have one director that we're paying at the director pay grade but then they've also got support staff to help them do some of those tasks is that a possibility and would that save us some money madam president miss chaffin perhaps we could look at him at option one in a little bit of a different manner so if you could reference option one in your conversations perhaps in order to meet the the conversation that's being held with the board an option could could include one director of student services an admin secretary three position and an increase to the safety and compliance specialist to a safety and compliance coordinator which would increase that salary and draw a different skill set which would be able to greatly assist with the safety aspects that are incredibly time consuming for the position if we looked at an option like that there would still be a cost to the district of approximately twenty thousand dollars but it would meet the board's conversation of having one director and providing supports to that director so that's more exactly what i was talking about is making like with what we have and that one that one position you're referencing the safety and compliance that's vacant right now right it is a vacant position as is the student services manager which we would continue to recommend become an administrative secretary iii position which would decrease the cost of that position a bit which would allow us to increase the safety specialist to a safety coordinator it would help with that salary piece but it would still come with approximately about a twenty thousand dollar cost to the district but it would meet the the request of the board of one director and supports around that director is that under the um the option one plan isn't that support services manager one that was slated to be eliminated right so technically if you look at the illuminated pieces on option one so let's let's talk based upon that so under the eliminated positions we have eliminating the the the original recommendation was to eliminate all of those three positions what what i'm talking in this conversation and and um dr kellis and cabinet have spoken about this possibility and hearing the will of the board this evening clearly if instead of eliminating that we just retain the director of student services position so we have one director that one director currently has two vacant positions in that department so ms winterstein currently has two vacant positions what we would recommend is with the support services manager position which is an administrative assistant type position to reduce that position to an administrative secretary iii and instead of having a safety and compliance specialist we would have a safety and compliance coordinator which comes at a bit of a higher salary and would attract a different skill set that would allow us to complete a lot of the safety aspects of the department in that position for example and this is just an example but it would allow us to perhaps target a retired police officer to come and assist in that with that with all of the safety components that are related to our schools reports with the state and all of our compliance efforts related to school safety so if we were to redo potentially reduce that support services manager to an admin secretary iii wouldn't that be is that what you said okay yes so wouldn't that be couldn't you take that savings and add it to the safety and compliance and coming up with something more budget neutral so madam president to answer your question yes so if we reduce the student support services manager to an admin secretary three that budget savings is approximately ten thousand dollars to increase the specialist position to a coordinator that's approximately a thirty thousand dollar increase which would be cut by the ten thousand dollars in savings resulting in approximately twenty thousand dollars cost to the district but again meeting the will of the board to have one director and prop up some supports um to assist with that madam president it's important to note too like remember chaffin said before that does not include experience so that 20 000 number could jump with levels of experience in either position where they're so i just want to note that up front so where we know what we're talking about right were there other positions though that we have vacant that could be absorbed into that madam president uh we have not done a survey of the other positions throughout the district yes there are lots of positions in the district that are currently vacant we hope to fill those okay so they're still needed it's not like there's some positions where it's like it's been open for a long time we've adjusted we can we can put that money toward another needed position correct any position that we have in the district is needed and we would um propose the this modified option one to the board for consideration hoping that this does accommodate all the the board's interests and madam president i might add that currently we have a director of student services who is operating with two vacant positions she's operating alone currently in the department and we would like to have the opportunity to know which positions that we're going to move forward with so that we could hire and get them in place so that we keep miss winterstein's sanity all the way through her retirement date of june 30th although this could be a lot of reasons why she's feeling the crunch because she doesn't have a fully staffed department correct madam president that's possible i guess if i recall back when we talked about one however many meetings ago and mrs winterstein got up i think she was here at that one or the one i don't i don't know we've talked about this a lot um we the safety and compliance specialist has been vacant for a very long time so what makes you think that adding a little adding more money you're going to be able to fill it i mean i'm very concerned that here we go again we're going to have a director and we're still not going to have a safety and compliance person for a lengthy period of time madam president mr grant that's an excellent question and i will tell you that increasing the position to a coordinator level with the salary allows us to target and and will specifically target a specific skill set and recruit differently for that position than we currently are able to do and what would that position take away from the director of student services middle school or in high school in k-4 and k-8 madam president miss grant should should you consider modified option one as described by dr kellis that position would take away all the safety aspects related to the director of student services which include assisting all of our schools with their emergency operation plans overseeing the school resource officer program overseeing all of our suspension programs our long-term suspension the the disciplined matrix the all of the state reports that are required as it for safety components um all of the suspension pieces that are required was with the state reports etc etc so it would be all safety components within the entire school system we just heard at the last board meeting about the threat assessment process and i just wonder can one person handle that because you know we want to make sure parents are informed in a very timely manner and you know and staff etc and if you have several things going on at once with some with so much going on now with social media etc i just don't know can one person really again handle all of that by themselves madame president miss grant i will tell you that in any of the options that are presented this evening those duties could be shared at any time and so if and threat assessment is a great example of something another piece that would be shared or taken by the safety coordinator if we went in that direction however should multiple pieces be coming at once the safety coordinator or two directors would share that responsibility and if that continued to grow on you know a one-time basis where we were just flooded with with aspects i would also become involved in that to assist our schools in in the threat assessment process it is a very real item that our schools deal with on a daily basis i know and that's what i'm concerned about i mean we heard about the calls at 3am in the morning and on multiple times not just once every six months so all right thank you mr dean do we dr dean do we still operate and i start under using threat assessment teams as opposed to individuals so our threat assessments are done by an entire team of people not just one one person is not tasked with doing the entire threat assessment madam president we do use threat assessment teams however triage is done initially by an individual person so for example if a safe report is filed that comes in and that's handled immediately by an as an administrator and then a team might be dispatched to deal with a threat assessment so dr dean or dr croto um if the safety and compliance person was now a coordinator um is that a 12-month employee or they're they're both 12 unemployed madam president missouri singapore that is a 12-month position and the safety specialist is currently a 12-month position and so would that bump that coordinator up to uh an exempt employee madam president yes the coordinator position is exempt thank you so if we do modified option one like you're talking about with one director and then upgrading that to safety and compliance coordinated and reducing the manager to an admin secretary three that would significantly lighten the director's load madam president miss chaffin the safety aspect is an incredibly time-consuming component to the director's current job and you are confident if we upgrade that with the salary and we open it up to a coordinator position you are confident that we could more than likely get that filled in a timely manner madam president ms chaff and i am confident in our hr department's ability to effectively recruit for positions that we have open i second that but i don't guarantee it in this day and age i am not going to guarantee you it can be filled in it i'm not going to do it publicly with this labor market i i would be lying to you if i could tell you i could fill in the week do you feel like you have a better chance of filling it upgrading it to a coordinator position absolutely okay with the modified version one are we still looking at the salary of 107 or are we looking at a salary of 99.

instead of asking for a capital override then to provide extra money to this budget you chose to prioritize the m o budget now we have a giant overage in the m o budget and we are told the roofs on schools are going to start leaking because we have no money in the capital budget if the district is to again propose a bond i'd like to see it borrow just enough to take care of the safety and technology improvements that you asked for and improve and extend the classroom availability so for the next few years when possible i would like to see you integrate a capital override to help pay for some of these capital needs in the second half of the of the decade right now i'd like to see us keep our powder dry for the future to see how the next few years pay out with the pandemic and the financial situation in the world before we make one mistake to try to fix another just because we can borrow a hundred million dollars doesn't mean we should thank you for your time thank you mr bender next i have michael simcox hope i said that correctly i'm sorry sorry about that okay my name is michael simcox i've been an employee for the school district for eight years i am on your agenda to be uh terminated from my job i do have a couple statements i'd like to make when you do go to make your decision on this final judgment i would like to ask you to take in consideration that like i said eight years with the district i've only had certain flaws which were two and right now everything is being jeopardized due to a fact that i was injured on the job um they said in the report to you guys that i consistently ask for help which is not correct i do ask for help when time is litigated to other casts that are at not my hand that need to be fixed or need to be taken care of promptly along with the absences that are going to be on there as well 15 of those were due to covid uh i was really sick and i was not able to fix that um also other issues uh with that with the five tardinesses that i have were out of my control due to car accidents as well blocking the road not being able to get to my job on time which i take at full uh consideration that i love my job i do my job to the best of my ability and also i would like it to be known that i was not shown any video of what they're discriminating on here that states that there's no proof of my injury to my left shoulder i have documentations from doctors i have a cd that i'm getting printed off friday and i'm seeing an ortho surgeon friday for my shoulder they're saying that there is no injury in a video i have not seen this video so i don't know if they're doctors and they can make a statement off that but in my final statement like i said i've been with the district for eight years i've never had a complaint from any other principal any other issues with anybody else i do my job to the best of my ability i do what i can i try to help the community i try to help people the students i even help teachers i even help other employees who need help so if you can take that in consideration i would really appreciate it and thank you board and anybody else i appreciate it thank you for your time next up i have emily anderson i'm sorry i have something if i can give it to you first just a note sheet oh you want to give us a piece of paper you can give it to mrs reach i had a speech with me but it got left on the table so i'm gonna wing it um okay so what i just gave you is a sheet about some music education facts my name is emily anderson i am a proud parent of these two right here in the front row um we moved last year from california because of the covid situation and they're unlivable restrictions in california and i've been incredibly happy with this district and thrilled that we moved to power ranch um what i wanted to speak on today was actually two things i'll start with the business the first would be um situations with substitutes um predominantly there's i know there's always a shortage but there's a even stronger shortage in like every district right now and there's one thing i can point that to i went to taco bell recently and this is 15 an hour starting pay subs don't make that i have 53 000 in loan debt to cal state long beach and i'm going to work a job that's not even 15 an hour that's kind of insulting i would love nothing more and i've been highly debating on applying to sub again because i was doing that for four years previously in huntington beach in california where they did in the recent a few years ago bump up pay to 150 a day but do i want somebody making like not even 100 take home in fact chandler was recently barely a hundred dollars before taxes teaching my kids not really that's not quality in my opinion you're not going to get you're going to get someone that's which i've ran into people in the past subbing just because they can do it with a degree and a little else um so that's kind of my stick on that but on the positive side i wanted to come and reach out to you and speak on music education recently last week there was the band bash with all the junior highs and the high school which i have my daughter ready to play her flute if you would so inclined to listen um and i just wanted to come and speak on behalf of the incredible benefits of music music ed which is what i just gave you from you know the connections to the left brain right brain cognitive benefits um discipline rates go down the graduation rates go sky high to like 90.2 percent from schools that have graduation rates there were programs in first grade with first graders that showed increase in comprehension and reading i mean the list as you can see goes on and on um i have another one here in fact um or whatever i'm running out of time but anyways um yeah so mr juaros is who my daughter has the benefit of having um and we'll be going to saseman where she will have mrs juaros and if you missed the band bash i you sorely missed out i do have a video on it and it was pretty phenomenal my daughter this is her first year in band and though as many times as i harp on her about practicing she has come i am beyond blown away how much she has learned um and so i just wanted to come and speak at you because i know music and arts is the first thing ever cut and i implore you to please think about that before any um cuts are ever made in the future if you'd like to hear her play a bit and she is prepared to do so thank you so much and have a great night thank you i'm sorry we have to get on to our next speaker but thank you so much and i know not sad thank you our next yes thank you our next speaker is john mason i am john mason i'm new to the district and and i'd like to start out by saying that i believe that the teachers and administrators are good decent people they're they're pillars of society and nevertheless good decent people make mistakes and and that is what i would like to address here today and i i don't want to point out any particular individual but i do think that there is a a problem overall that should be considered there is a problem of teacher facilitated academic dishonesty it is so common in the valley that even teachers at another district have complained to me many students in the valley seem to think that it is normal i sent an email to the administration detailing concerns about suspicious activities at the district they responded to my concerns with many statements that were not true one concern was teacher facilitated academic dishonesty in other words a teacher enabled students to cheat if the district truly investigated the teaching then they would know what happened it was obvious rather than properly investigate what happened the district responded as follows and i quote at no time are students allowed to encourage or sit or assisted on in cheating on any exam unquote this statement by the district is not even remotely plausible now sadly i must say the next thing how can higley believe that they are better than any other district in the valley given their embarrassing history of fraud we've all watched the news we know what's happened in the past is it a coincidence that i was stonewalled when i invested when i investigated suspicious activity at higley i don't think so now the next part pains me even more because we do know that teachers do not make enough money we do know that students do not have enough resources and and we do know that it that is very unfortunate to see the how teachers are are overloaded with bureaucratic requirements and administrators are always trying to follow the law and they're doing their best they can even when there's inconsistencies but i personally will not support any bond override until the district administration behaves more transparently thank you very much for your time thank you mr mason and that's all for our speakers tonight thank you very much for coming we're going to move on to our consent agenda items i move that we approve consent agenda items 6.1 through 6.8 second any questions comments or concerns all those in favor aye aye motion carries 4-0 sorry you can make a comment i just want to say um that the one of the things we improved was the arizona family surprise squad and the three thousand dollars for the higley high school um washington dc trip and how cool that is that channel three was able to come out and surprise those kids with that so yes yes i saw that on the news and then also um um amaz entertainment sorry yeah i think 12 150 for the district art festival so thank you about that yes we always want to thank our gifts and donations so thank you for pointing that out no motion carried 4-0 no problem all right information items next up we're excited to have our world language overview and foreign language immersion program update and i'm going to call on mrs sherry richards i believe president kaler members of the board cabinet and community we've been waiting for this evening for a long time so you're going to hear some exciting news today about our premier language program of choice that goes k-12 meaning that we're going to go into detail and share a little bit of our journey so before we get started i'm going to acknowledge people on the team and have them wave or stand up and wave all right so let's start with dr chris treat he is our assistant director of professional development next i want to introduce mr jeff armstrong principal of coronado you've got to stand nobody can see you all right we also have assistant principal mr brian griggs from coronado we also have mr ray mercado principal at san tan and his assistant principal at san tan lindsey reeves and i really want to give them a big hand for all of their work [Applause] all right so as we begin our story here we want you to know that in 2014 and rebecca rebecca i didn't mean to skip you is going to make a big deal out of you rebecca rodriguez is our dli world language coach i have a big to-do for her in a little bit but there's no way i can skip her she's the one holding us together and giving us direction all right so as we begin our program in 2014 at coronado we opened our doors for kindergarten and first grade students so that very first year we had kids learning mandarin in kinder and first grade these students are currently 7th and 8th graders going to cooley middle school if they followed the feeder pattern the following year in 2015 we opened doors at san tan elementary for our spanish dli program those kids are currently in fifth grade looking forward to going into sixth grade next year and then on to saw someone so it's important to understand the district has been involved and excited we've worked hard with miss martin's to ensure we have highly qualified teachers that are proficient in those target languages also to ensure we have appropriate resources in mandarin and spanish so the good news is there's more resources than there were in 2014 so that's the good news all right research tells us there are lots of benefits to acquiring a second language when dr foley joined the team again in june of 2019 on her very first day back in the job we met with this wonderful team to start planning what do we need to do to ensure our kids get language at the level that will benefit them all the way through school and all the way into the workforce so we worked carefully to create a systematic plan for professional development and support at that time we worked with miss veronica beyonce sandoval a language consultant she came in we all had input what's our mission what's our vision what do we want to make sure we communicate are the proven benefits because these are lifelong skills so it's not only important for our kids to be proficient orally proficient meaning they can speak it receptively they understand it express expressively they communicate but we also have goals that they can read and write which means you think in the other language as well so it's been very apparent to us that our kids have increased cognitive skills in a broader global awareness so we're super excited about this program and their journey that will only continue all right when we work together we know that a vision and a mission state statement define the purpose and unite us it keeps us focused on our goals and moving in the same direction and those look like that might have been easy to come up with but i if i asked the people on the other side of the room how long we spent on this we spent a long time so i feel like it's part of who we are so on this slide you're going to see the top of the slide talks about pre-k in elementary this is our dli dual language immersion programs and the bottom half of the slide deals with secondary world language courses so our dual language immersion program is a 50 50 model that means 50 of the day is in the target language of spanish or mandarin and the other 50 percent of the day is in english so that's important for our kids to be immersed in the language and not going back and forth in between english and their target language once they get to middle school and high school it looks more traditional their language course is the course during their day so you can tell we start with kids when they're really young because research tells you the best time to learn a language is when you're in preschool or even before so these kids at cooley have the opportunity to start in our mandarin program and if you haven't been there to see that you need to go see it last year dr foley and i went to visit and they sang to us in mandarin and it was probably one of the best experiences i've had because they they learn it they don't struggle they just get it also at sauceman early childhood center they're learning spanish and those classes fill up quickly it's sometimes hard to get in these programs feed into our elementary schools mandarin goes into coronado k-6 and spanish feeds into san tan right now it's k-5 next year they're adding sixth grade all right the exciting thing is we don't stop we don't stop when we get done with elementary school in middle school at both middle schools we offer spanish and mandarin courses however our kids that have been in dli have the opportunity to go into an immersive class that means they can take mandarin one and mandarin two and middle school and move into mandarin 3 at the high school level that will happen with spanish after this next school year we also at high school we add french so at the high school level we offer spanish mandarin and french and as we highlighted hva this evening great things are going on there i loved hearing about the spanish club because it aligns to what we're talking about this evening so we have french mandarin spanish and american sign language so we had kids this year take asl american sign language one those kids will have the opportunity to take american sign language too and we had kids in spanish this year which will have that extended opportunity as well mrs richards yes we actually had the experience to go to higley high i believe it was two fridays ago and we actually saw this in action with kiddos reading um and writing mandarin and it was absolutely fantastic they were able to tell us what they read about they knew and i don't remember what i think it was a mandarin 3-4 class combined and it was absolutely fantastic and i have seen the preschool as well so to see that move through from those little guys you know learning the mandarin and they are just very smart kiddos over there and it's just been fantastic so thank you it was an amazing experience and i think i wish i knew mandarin and i have a son that's in taiwan who just had a baby and i'm having trouble saying the baby's name in mandarin because of the tones and how the language is a difficult language but our kids are excelling as you're gonna see all right this has been a big deal for us as we've gone through professional development and how important it is to stay in that target language the bubble represents what happens when you break that target language and i learned something when we went to state level leadership training when i go in a classroom and they're speaking mandarin and i go up in english and say tell me about what are you doing what are you learning it it busts the bubble because they have to switch their little brains not that they can't do it but i didn't realize what i was doing by trying to show interest you know what i'm saying so i worked in a dli school in texas and we called that code switching no code switching do not go in and speak english and distract the kids so you'll see this little welcome to doi program and it's stating you're entering a room where we're speaking spanish so you'll see that preschool elementary all outside our dli classrooms so we're pretty proud of that so what you've been waiting for is to get a taste of what this looks like in action so thank you to our pr team for putting this together and for our amazing administrators teachers and kids [Music] m [Music] hi my name is lana logan i have been here learning mandarin for five years [Music] um [Music] learning mandarin here because i have a lot of friends and i enjoy learning mandarin and i also want to and i want to learn english and mandarin and a lot of other different languages too so i think it's kind of cool [Music] jackson my name is jackson winley i've been in the spanish program for six years that's foreign [Music] um [Music] i like the spanish program because i can speak a different language and when i go to countries that speak spanish i can communicate with them easier [Music] amazing right just amazing so now i am going to highlight the star miss rebecca rodriguez she was your higley 2021 teacher of the year it was rather difficult to convince principal tannenbaum that we needed her and she was going to impact so many children and so many teachers and he was gracious and he let us steal her but i can't there is no way i could sum up everything she's done in just a little over one semester it's been truly uh life-changing for us for somebody to support us she's got websites up she's doing professional development she's out there supporting teachers in ways that we have dreamed of so i am going to clap for you and highlight you in order for our district to become the premier language program of choice we have worked to gain insight and knowledge from the best resources available this year i have joined arizona's languages association or asla and i attended the asla fall conference and i will be attending the asla workshops in february these are giving us those insights about what's going on in arizona how we can best improve our practices here i also have joined actvol which is the american council on teaching foreign languages i attended the act full fall conference with several of our dli teachers to learn about the processes and best practices being used throughout the entire nation i have attended the monthly world language district meetings for all language district leaders in these meetings we discuss what is going on with the language learning and we work together to mitigate problems and make changes and inform one another what's going on in our state with the language programs this march i will be attending the language or sorry the dual language international convention at this convention i will have the opportunity to visit the dual language classroom in utah where dli is at the forefront of innovation i will learn from the global doi leaders about what works in dli and how we can continue to improve our amazing program we've also had the incredible opportunity to work with maria christina ladas she is a key expert in the dli world in arizona she has been on the actful board and is currently the asla board president she works with our district as a consultant we've worked with her in two capacities we worked with her as the dli leadership by going to their dli and leadership academy for days one and two this was a workshop where our district leadership learned how to best structure and organize our program we spent time working on our proficiency targets fidelity assurances and how to best support our teachers and our students through this workshop we've been able to partner with other districts and throughout the state and to develop our language program in alignment with what other districts are doing miss lavis has also come to coronado and santander to provide professional development to all of our dli teachers she demonstrates and models contemporary best practices while working with our teachers to bridge our target language and english teacher teams how to successfully teach in the target language and what we need to do to focus on proficiency language proficiency is defined as the independent use of language this means that our students are able to use what they're learning in the classroom setting to formulate new thoughts and ideas in their language that they're learning they communicate in ways that are not explicitly taught an example of this would be asking questions about a product at a store and not having a script or memorized questions and answers that they have in front of them while they're asking proficiency is focused on all facets of language reading writing listening speaking as well as cultural awareness we look at proficiency as a cone of language knowledge so you can see that in front of you when the student starts learning the language we start at the bottom of the cone they whether they learn at birth kindergarten or middle school they start at that novice level it's shown in blue this level builds the foundation of future language acquisition at the novice level level students can say only a few common words they can understand very familiar words and they can interact in only simple conversations about known topics students exit the novice level quickly once a student has mastered the most basic use of language they move into the intermediate level at the intermediate level students begin working within grammar rules and trying out unique sentences students at the intermediate level can understand basic streams of sentences and communicate about known topics they're progressing in reading and writing and speaking in their target language according to research most students will stay in the intermediate level in green on the cone for years and they improve and practice the target language even even though they're in it for years that they're not immersed so it takes longer the next proficiency level is advanced this is represented in orange on the cone at this level the students can understand complex and extended speech and can read and write extensively in the target language our ap students are beginning to demonstrate the advanced level as they prepare for college level proficiency the superior and distinguished levels of proficiency would be the university course level meaning they can report synthesize and understand the target language perfectly they are able to understand and work within the target language with ease the first the focus on proficiency is primarily because the mission of our language program is to teach students to become bilingual by literate and globally aware in another language so in order for us to meet that ability we have to focus on getting them from one level to the next also the actual standards have been adopted by arizona as our state standards so these standards are based on proficiency skills and levels within language acquisition and for us to be able to meet the state standards for language proficiency has to be our focus the arizona state world language standards are modeled after act-filled standards created to focus on language literacy real world applications and 21st century skills supporting this focus are the five c's communication cultures communities comparisons and connections within these five areas are 11 content standards that describe the knowledge and skills that our language students should acquire we have attached a video to this slide that further explains the standards this is a video that we use to inform our parents about the actual standards and how they are used to help their child reach proficiency in their target language this is also available on the website if you click on the language proficiency tab it is important to note that the standards are listed as proficiency markers and each district can set their proficiency targets for each language and level provided this enables us to accurately set goals and targets for all our language students no matter what age they enter our program this also allows us to monitor our students progress in the language and to direct our practices to best meet our students needs now we have the opportunity to hear from the principles of our elementary dual language immersion programs from coronado's mandarin dli we have principal jeff armstrong and from santan spanish dli we have principal ray mercado all right thank you we i'm going to talk a little bit about the proficiency targets that you see up on the board uh as you can see we set proficiency targets and this is just recent this all started roughly when dr foley came on board and we had started a lot of work and i'll never forget that first meeting the five of us are sitting in a room and here comes dr foley and she goes you guys ready to get to work we're like yep and it was it was work but the proficiency targets that you're seeing please note that these weren't just set based on how we feel these are guidance by other districts that we looked at throughout the state we looked at utah's proficiency targets we consulted with other consultants with ms lattis and from mesa public we had we took a lot of time to go ahead and dive into what where do we want our students as you heard from rebecca please know that the proficiency targets can be adjusted according to the needs of our students so just because we have it this year set at if you look at fourth grade in spanish it's a four mandarin it's a three which means it represents an intermediate low and novice high please know that those are adjustable and also take a look and if you have that question you're looking and you'll see that spanish and mandarin have two various proficiency targets please understand that that's due to the difficulty of the language put it in perspective students at coronado elementary in our dli program are learning a language in which a professor in china who is born and raised understands 200 000 characters that's someone who is speaking fluently every day that is distinguished on the if you go back to the cone that's a distinguished component we're asking our students to leave us in sixth grade at an intermediate low while santan is going to be asking them to leave at an intermediate mid and i also want to reiterate each individual student's comb is their own individual cone if you think back to where they're at everyone has to start somewhere okay and it's all through the hard work and through all of the efforts of the students and the teachers that are going to get them to where they need to be just because a student leaves a leaves third grade and may not be at the in the novice mid it doesn't mean that they're gonna they will never get beyond that it's just gonna take a little bit of additional time and that's where our rockstar teachers come into play um as we move on next slide please we're going to talk about proficiency and and uh i want to i want to brag a little bit about proficiency and performance i i i spoke at one of our family gatherings where we had families coming in and having a good old time learning about our program so proficiency versus performance put it into perspective mr marcotto and i we say this to all of our families it's okay if your kid doesn't perform on the spot and what i mean by that is this performance is when students are able to go ahead and speak to someone using contextual evidence context around them in school be able to elaborate and discuss with their classmates and the proficiency is what you saw in the video by one of our well two of our amazing students but one of our amazing students at coronado nothing to my job against the spanish program but our student at coronado please hear me that is true proficiency this is how that this is how it went i walked into her classroom and recorded her i pulled her out of the classroom and i said i want you to tell me your name how long you've been in the program and why do you like the program why do you want to learn language she had no script she had no frame of reference she was cold called to go ahead and describe and what you heard is that of someone who is definitely proficient in the partner language that she is learning and it was absolutely amazing so the concept that we use proficiency versus performance is this is we tell every parent when you're at home and you're there for thanksgiving and you're excited that your child is learning mandarin and you say jeff say something and they freeze that is perfectly okay that's the performance piece where they're oh my goodness what do we do the proficiency is when they say whatever they can and lay down make fun of mom and dad whoever it is you'll hear a little bit of reference later on in that but that is true proficiency is when they're able to articulate and speak in the target language without anything and how we measure proficiency is going to i'll elaborate on but mr macaulay wants to point something out in this slide so the proficiency just like any classroom teachers do it masterfully in daily curriculum daily interactions with students inside and outside the classroom just like on the general side on the dli side both in the mandarin program and our program at san tan we have the i can statements that are reflected of the standards so in spanish what you'll see in the classroom is your i can we want kids to be part of the journey of learning as well so when kids come in they know what the learning target is for the day so for this classroom yo puedo identification completed so i can i not all of us i can i have the responsibility as the student as a learner to identify a complete and an incomplete sentence so when i have forced four uh children and various grade levels mrs anderson i think you have one of my kids and so um i apologize for them uh so i can tell you that one of my frustrating things that i deal with at my household is i'll ask my kids what did you learn for the day oh nothing you're at school for eight hours what do you mean no nothing so creating an opportunity in a learning environment that is simple for students whether in kindergarten or fifth grade they can recite an i can statement and so that i can statement is tied to the academic standard that us as educators know and we are trying to obviously get to a proficiency level there so it starts as a student comes into class they can see this board that has the i can statement for these areas of learning and so we measure that through exit tickets in the classroom we measure that with interactions with the teacher whether in a whole group setting or a small group setting kids at san tan part of being a leader in me school they have their wigs wildly important goals and so they have these written in their leadership binders and so they're able to take the learning that's happening in class and then take it home to have these conversations so everyone's in the journey of learning together for language proficiency as well as other assessments that are happening with the curriculum common format assessments that teachers are doing together as teams or as a program and the stamp assessment that we'll talk about as well so we are consistently measuring proficiency in multiple ways whether it's informal or formal in the classroom in both sides proficiency it's ultimately where we want to go and i just want to share a quick email i received from a community member kids don't go to my school but i had two students that were at the gilbert regional park and this individual walked up and heard them speaking mandarin she speaks mandarin and she engaged in a conversation with my students and saw that they had a coronado shirts on and she sent me an email saying how impressed she was with our students and being able to have a conversation out in public with an individual learning it so when we talk about proficiency that's proficiency so we'll talk about how we measure it and that is on the next slide the stamp assessment as you see the stamp assessment is it stands for standards-based measurement of proficiency and what this is this is a nationally recognized assessment that measures language proficiency overall and it's aligned directly to the act full proficiency guidelines and it is a computer it's a computer adaptive assessment so it assesses students on reading speaking listening and writing and it measures where they're at and goes ahead and provides them the opportunity to show what they know on that the great thing about it is this year well last year we were able to have the the opportunity to assess all third through sixth grade and i'll show you that coming up but this year it's going to be awesome because every student third and up is going to be assessed using the stamp assessment and we're going to be able to have a really strong baseline data on how students are performing at both the li campuses as well as our world language courses that are happening in the middle school and the high school and it really is going to provide schools teachers administration and district personnel the opportunity to see how well our programs are are performing and make the adjustments needed and provide teachers with that pd so we're super excited about that next slide please i think you all know that i have no problem bragging about about my campus um and i'm gonna brag a little bit before before we even start all of this what you guys see up here uh please know that this is this is really due to the hard work of our students our teachers and the parents trying their best to help kids learn mandarin at home okay what you see is just a culmination of the strong dedication by teachers working extra hours putting in time to find resources putting in time to translate materials they are working to ensure that students meet the proficiency targets that are needed so what you're looking at is the stamp results from our from last school year you can read third and across you see grade level going vertically subject going across what we look at is that composite score so the proficiency targets that you saw earlier are based on the composite score and something i want to highlight in this is really pretty awesome so my current sixth graders were fifth grade last year and so if you take a look at that fifth grade line which some people in the room have students in my sixth grade but they're like i said fifth grade last year when they were in third grade when the last time they took the assessment follow with me if you look at the reading score when they're in third graders out of 1.2 and we're currently at a 2.25 and reading huge jumps writing was at a 2.7 and our students are at our 4.44 lane the listening component they were at a 2.1 when they're in third grade and i just want to highlight they're at a 4.07 and overall speaking they're at a 3.04 and they're at a 4.57 so when we talk about what our students are learning and how they're performing and and the hard work our teachers are going through and sitting on dual lingo and just mandarin matrix for hours this is this is a representation of the hard work of our students because we're asking them to learn a class 4 language and let me remind you that a professor in china who speaks and was born and raised in those 200 000 characters remember mandarin is stroke and tonal based that is how they learn that it's there it's very limited yes we have opinion but that is introduced periodically this is this is a true testament to to the students and i can't wait to see how how our fifth graders perform this upcoming school year um or this this school year in the assessment later on and really our our teachers i will tell you when you talk about a group of teachers who are learning how to teach in in a different country and with students they come to me we have monthly meetings and they sit down and i will tell you they're okay mr armstrong this is where we're at they're pulling assessment data yct vocabulary assessments i mean they're doing whatever they can to keep continue measuring where those students are so we're very excited and we're very proud of our of our teachers and our and our students within our program next side please some celebrations again i can brag all day for four points thanks mr mercado gotta remind him uh as you can see there's there's four four points i will highlight here but we're going to talk quickly parent university that's a pilot program this school year and i will tell you li xi zhao our fourth grade mandarin teacher and i we sat down and towards the end of last year beginning audition we said something that i've heard since i've come on campus is parents going hey we need help we're trying to help our kid we don't we don't know what we're doing so not that they know what they're doing in regards to the language but we sat down and we said let's develop a parent university and so miss zhao has graciously graciously given up two nights out of her month to go ahead and teach our parents language culture competency she has dual lingo they have assignments they have to complete we have 28 people who are showing up last night was absolutely awesome and there's a couple of people that can attest to it they learned how to make dumplings last night she showed them the region of china and the different foods that come from i mean yes it's not we can't teach them a second language we can't we're not we're not professors but i will tell you that the little bit is going to help and what was really what's been really awesome is the very first night we asked what what is why are you here why do you want this you know what's going on and i can guarantee you i'm not gonna don't quote me on the number but a high amount of people were saying we're tired of our kids being able to talk in a language when we don't know what they're saying and we can't help them or they're talking about us and that's that's concerning so it was really awesome to go ahead and hear that and the parents who are involved i've been with them for three meetings now and it it it's just amazing they walk in they're excited they're learning they they do retrieval practices it's basically being in school for an hour at the end of the evening so kudos to the parents who are involved but bigger kudos to miss lee ji zhao who has graciously done that parent school night that's different from our parent university night parent school night we open it up to everyone pre-covered we had them quarterly and then this year we were able to restart restart that so we're we have them we have two sessions this year we just had one so we went over the abcs of learning a language um we went over tones we went over strokes they ate food our teachers went out and purchased food thanks to our pto who supported us they went out and bought snacks and allowed parents to try traditional snacks from china and get involved with that and that was absolutely awesome so it's great we offer that we will be offering a quarterly we had to get through our covid our cova component right now we're going through it but we are we're going to be offering more of those so that parents get involved as well and annually our chinese new year celebration that's held at the school as well as at the district level and i believe that everyone you guys should have your invitations i'm gonna tell you you should go you can hear myself talking even more if that if you guys really wanna know you're gonna see a lot of great performances by our kiddos that chinese new year celebration is amazing and our pto they really support our teachers in fact they're going to be starting this friday afternoon we have parent volunteers who are coming in to decorate our hallway back to have to go ahead and start the chinese new year celebration off right next week so that's absolutely awesome and our yearly mid-autumn moon festival is absolutely amazing and a huge shout out to miss brookhun who's my pto president this year she was she was a little worried but they were able to bring it together and it was one of the best best events that we start i mean it was amazing we had families sitting outside under the moon we had activities going it it was awesome i couldn't go because i had a previous engagement but great job there and there's a couple of other things that aren't on there that i want to highlight we still are very much involved with our sister school and she says just recently my assistant principal brian griggs was able to participate in the international consortium for language schools from across the world so 14 countries were involved 31 professors and principals were in this event and they asked us to go ahead and participate in that and that is absolutely huge and one of the big things that i also want to highlight is gilbert says gilbert has sisters gilbert sisters city schools and what they're going to do is they are opening up a little section over here at the gilbert regional park it's it's by greg tilke he's part of he's the president he works for the chamber he's done a lot with the town of gilbert and he came by and toured our campus and has asked that when the ceremony begins to open that he's asked our campus to be able to perform at that ceremony as well so it's been it's been really awesome and then there's just there's so much i need to stop talking so that mr marcotte has some time but just know that i i the hard work of everyone the hard work of teachers the hard work of students you know you guys mentioned something miss wilson you mentioned something and you said it was amazing to see the high school students going at it and i'm just going to say just wait a couple years because when our students go from coronado to cooley and they get to that high school when they walk in it's not it's going to be eight times better just because of the foundation they already are going to have and the amount of work that they've already put in it's going to be awesome so just huge highlights and celebrations i guess you can thank you for some time here to share um as you see our program started after the mandarin program so we have one data point uh these students are my current fifth grade student so this was the cohort what you see in both assessments is a national norm of stamp assessment and the apple assessment that's also out there students testing at the end of third grade ish if not fourth grade so that's a national norm for this kind of assessment because if you remember the visual of the the um basically the uh cone that the expectation is that students k3 if not going into fourth grade are at the novice level so that's why you see data from coronado and at san tan starting at third obviously coming out of kovid we decided not to test the kiddos at that point and third but we tested them in may for that original cohort of students i was extremely impressed with these scores here i really expected that these students at the time in fourth grade in may that they would be scoring at about a three the expectation was stamp was at a four a level four four fourth grade so um i was really expecting threes across the board i would have been content with threes if not some twos one hundred percent appropriate due to covid and some loss of learning i saw these results and immediately i got goosebumps i got goosebumps right now because when you look at the the opportunity to assess these kids in an experience that they've never had before in a language that's not their home language for them to get these scores were absolutely just eye-opening to what can be done with the brain with these little ones and so i want to share with you because the data right here doesn't dive deep and i think that you all know as educators and supporting education we dive deep into data so when you look at this cohort there were 28 students that took the assessment three of them 28 three of them scored a three solid perfect i'm happy four or six of them scored um a four ten scored a five and nine scored a six that is huge in reading a second language and remember they're still in in fourth grade still learning academic language in their own language of english so that was absolutely amazing to see that data in listening five kids scored a three seven scored a four ten scored a five and six a six that was a huge celebration for language acquisition for these kiddos and so i wanted to share that with you and dive in deeper into that stamp result so i can tell you as we spoke about proficiency and we spoke about performance kids are performing kids are becoming proficient based on the actual standards and so it's really fun really exciting to see santan celebrations i didn't put bullet points because i have a million of them that's so hang tight we'll be here until tomorrow morning so is there like a friendly loving rival here i see i'm i'm beginning to see it very clearly all night president kaler this is this is the norm with these two and it's a good thing because they team well together and that's why we all love working with them one family encounter saying hey i had five i had five so i won't share those right now but if you want to talk we'll talk but family engagement we are supporting our families throughout the year we always invite families into the classrooms just like at coronado when we started the program there were a lot of family complaints that the spanish teachers did not want the families in the spanish side so we had to clarify that and so we dug dig we dug into those comments talked to a lot of families the challenge with that comment was the traditional way of supporting the classroom as a parent is you're reading in a small group you're assessing you're doing those things that require you to speak the language and so majority of our parents do not speak spanish so we had to explain to them that can you read this book in spanish can you go over these spelling words in spanish and the answer was no no no so we talked about ways they can support the spanish classroom and so um that when we have new families we constantly talk to them about come in and sit listen if you need to sit and listen for a full day listen for a full day but you got to come and experience um the language in the classroom so we are constantly inviting families uh to come and sit and listen parent-teacher conferences are very engaging with both teachers so these poor teachers are speaking to all families both teachers so they have 50 parent teacher conferences that they are doing when we have our parent teacher conferences so they want to make sure that both teachers are in that setting to support um the the learning that's happening uh so families are well aware volunteering as i said in the classroom so we don't at this point have uh which i absolutely love a parent university something of that nature so i will definitely talk to jeff and his team about that because it is something that for the most part there's some basic knowledge that our families know most of it's not good but they know um so there's some key words that they're able to for the most part understand i will tell you that i do require weekly newsletters from both teachers to the families and so they're able to see the learning and the activities that are happening on a weekly basis on the english side and the spanish side so that's another way that they can engage as far as the student engagement piece throughout the year the teachers are planning together to support soldering plcs they're planning instruction obviously as well as activities like hispanic heritage month so for the month between september 15th and october 15 they had multiple activities throughout the grade levels for presentation so students would go between each grade level there's one hallway where i have my k through four and then i have my fifth grade on the other side of campus not too far away but there was a lot of presentations that month from each grade level in each classroom pre-covered really excited and then when covet hit us really hard we had a folklorico club and so we had about 25 students that were literally twice a week practicing on the stage and it was a beautiful thing and they were ready to present and then covet hit so we had to take a step back and the presenter or the person that was in charge of the studio also got sick and so she had to step away but that's something that we want to bring back because it was it was definitely something that was a rich experience um december celebrations so we celebrated in once again the program with all of the latin american countries in regards to what they do to celebrate in the month of december so once again students were roaming between grade levels um in we found herberger theater that had a spanish play so we were able to take the kids at that time i believe it was k3 to watch and listen and chateau's kitchen was the play and so they were able to go experience that uh so that was really fun um leader in me spanish as you know we're a leader in me lighthouse school and we're able to utilize all of that language that business model and and academic model in spanish as well so what you'll see in the classrooms are the habits in spanish on the spanish side and then on the english side english and so were able to have that as a visual display and then something i need to celebrate between both programs we um we have to celebrate at the end of the year and it was i don't know what it was called but celebration of learning basically we got so big at coronado celebrating the awesome things that were happening and at santen that 2019-20 we were planning on presenting and having a huge celebration at hcpa and so we had walked the facility planned it and unfortunately coveted so we had to put that on pause but we have outgrown our gyms to have our year-end celebration so i'm excited for that to come back at some point because there's a lot to celebrate between both schools and so a lot of celebrations and we can continue to brag about the amazing things that are happening at both campuses but i just want to say thank you to you all i want to say thank you to dr foley sherry dr treat rebecca this is hard that's why you don't see a lot of districts choosing to bring dli programs to their their districts this is a choice and i believe that we have the numbers to show that parents want language acquisition and so i believe in about 15 years of experience running a dli school that we are set up perfectly regionally to support our areas and so i'm proud of the work that that's happened at coronado and at san tan and so i can tell you that these folks have really supported day one when they took their roles that made a tremendous difference in supporting the program i had the opportunity to start the program after but i was part of the decision on starting coronado first and then santan second and i can tell you that dr dr foley and and the support from the district has been amazing and that's why we're excited to celebrate the things that are happening in our program right now thank you dr pete thank you yes president kaler members of the board i want to continue the celebrations that we're talking a little bit about here not just what's happening at the dli elementary levels but also what's happening across uh our secondary schools as well in what you might consider to be a more traditional world language type of class and mr mercado used the word program uh you know as rebecca rodriguez and i talk about the best ways to support our schools whether dli or the secondary schools with their language classes we talk about wanting to have not just classes not just levels not just something that happens in one place or another but an overall concept a program of what world language instruction can be and all of these different components fit into that and so some of the things that you see happening at the secondary level we as you heard earlier we add in american sign language at hva right now we add in french as a language that we're able to study as well as spanish and mandarin and when we get into those secondary schools you uh see that 48 students accepted the challenge of taking an apa exam in a world language class last year it's a tremendous number and and to be commended because that's that's no small feat you see eight different students earn seals of bi-literacy and i'll talk a little bit about that more but it's that distinction that goes on that student's diploma that says that they went above and beyond in world language study when we think about our higley students whether they're world language students or not we think about our vision as what do we hope for for those students when they graduate what is what is that that student capable of when they walk across that stage when they get that diploma and i'm excited that this program that we're talking about this world language idea it aligns perfectly with this concept that we have this portrait of a graduate if you will when i look at the elements that are up there and i see things like an innovative learner well that just brings me back to some of the things our world language leaders learn with that mental flexibility as they develop that cognitive kind of strength that happens when you take on the challenge of another language when i see things like socially responsible citizens i know that our language programs align to this as well because we're not just studying language we're studying culture we're developing empathy through these processes and when i see things about like college and career ready that we have and hope for all of our higley graduates well when we start talking about limitless possibilities it's hard to imagine what what is more limitless than the ability to communicate with literally billions of people around the world who might not otherwise be able to do so so it's very exciting to see that while we have a vision of all higley graduates this world language vision that we have in mind aligns perfectly with that and helps kind of feed into that concept i mentioned earlier about the seals of bi-literacy we know the arizona department of education in a few areas allows the opportunity for students who want to strengthen their study deepen their knowledge in a subject area to go that extra mile to be recognized with a distinction on that diploma something that carries forward with them into the job market into the world and beyond and we happen to have that seal of bi-literacy here in higley unified school district as i mentioned eight students last year were able to get that seal but i have to tell you one of the challenges we always face with anything like this is how do you promote these sorts of ideas these opportunities for students because let's face it there are so many different opportunities for young people when they get particularly into secondary education it's easy to get lost in the middle of their day with all the types of things that young people want to achieve and so one of the things that we've done and really credit to rebecca rodriguez for creating this you're seeing here a poster which is in all of our schools it's in all of our world language classes it's in all of the dli classrooms and if you take a look on here not only does it spell out exactly what those requirements are so even if you're a young student you can begin thinking about this as an aspirational goal for yourself but it talks a little bit about why a seal of bi-literacy might matter why is it worthy of that that work that little bit of extra to get that distinction and if you'll notice that qr code there at the bottom that that's a handy tool so that a student can instantly in the moment now on their personal device have an ability to refer back to that particular program and get further information about that i have to tell you having been a high school teacher myself it's difficult sometimes to support students with all the different choices that they have and for even the person who is teaching them to keep up with the changes and programs because this is offered by the arizona department of education so we try to align to it but we want to make sure we're current having this type of information here that makes it possible for both the teacher and the student to know exactly what it is they need to do to be able to pursue something like this mr treat i'm sorry to interrupt um is this ever sent out to our parents in an email form because this would be fantastic for our parents to see like either in our weekly email or and i i'm opening it up to anyone who wants to answer either in the weekly email or directed directly to those kiddos who are in those ap honors classes now president kaler board member wilson i think that's a wonderful idea it was just developed recently so that is something that i think we ought to do for sure because again we go through this idea of promotion of possibilities and that's that that's that concept that's behind this and in fact i've asked all of our instructional coaches in all the areas that have their various seals that go along with their different academic disciplines to follow suit so that teachers in maybe history social studies or in some of the areas business finance and so on they can also not just promote but educate and point students into the right direction with this so i love the idea i think if our parents know about it sometimes they give a nice nudge to their student that the student may not think about doing and the parent might say this is really good and give some explanation so i just think it'd be nice if the parents also knew i couldn't agree more and that's that's a fantastic idea and we'll be certain to do that thank you one of the things that we want to highlight here if you've had a moment to hear a little bit about the work that happened in the dli and the world languages one of the things i want to take a moment to highlight and to share is you know the last two and a half years we had world language programs we had dli programs but you've heard from you had an entire team dedicated to defining it refining it and aligning it to the new standards proficiency targets professional development resources systems that take that take long times to put in place and your team this amazing dedicated team of administrators and their teachers and our curriculum did this in two years two and a half years in the middle of a pandemic which is one of the things when you look at we have grown exponentially because higley could say they had a program we now can say we have a model program and we're looking at one of the things that model programs have is and it takes vision of the leadership is it's not just the immediate but it's the long term so where does this go and how do we get there and how do we make sure that pathways and opportunities are there for students and and it looks it means looking beyond your own borders even in your own state are what are those uh dynamic model programs that exist out there affiliation with world language uh where languages either in the immersion model or in our classes is essential we're going to talk here in a minute about pathways forward you know one of the things we know is that immersion programs are immersion programs exist in a model in the elementary grades at the secondary remember you're dealing with you're dealing with two things you're dealing with you're dealing with highly qualified and you're dealing with level of proficiency remember at the secondary level as we're building their proficiency to continue that language and develop it the content expertise teachers have in that is that world language and making sure that teachers are performing and at that very level that's a challenge you will not find a a secondary immersion model in the fact that you're not going to find someone who's proficient in that level of language and highly qualified in all the content areas plus students now also have to begin to expand into other options you'll notice that's one of the things we have is multiple options so courses and offerings for students are huge one of the things that this team has been dedicated to is beginning to not only build our pathway build it stronger build it better but think ahead and you're going to begin to hear in just a little bit about this team is is leading in world languages now as we talk about what's potential what are we working on on the next front because um there's a need and and and our leadership is is trying to be part of leading that rather than lagging behind and ensure we have pathways and opportunities for our students at all grade levels so kind of keeping that in mind we're going to transition into uh the work of where are we going right yeah thank you dr foley that that's that's 100 correct that we are really doing everything we can to see that pre-k through 12 vision here to help make certain that well we just don't kind of end something prematurely and this is what this slide kind of demonstrates for you when we start thinking about those dli kids in particular but really any student that is able to achieve at high levels what happens is they start to kind of top out early we have some students that are able to sit for that ap exam in ninth grade and some that are able to get there in 11th grade but there's this idea that we don't want to let their language exploration their growth stop there if you think about it learning a language is a perishable skill it's something that must be practiced over and over you must be always moving forward to continue to grow and develop it's not something where you can say i have it and then i put it away and i pull it out every once in a while it has to be utilized and so what we want to make certain is that with our students who are excelling at these levels and when you hear the success stories from coronado and from san tan here comes a wave of students who are excelling at high levels combining that with our current high school kids we want to make sure that we carry them on through and don't just leave them off in ninth grade and so what we're doing right now is we're exploring some different options as to how we can bridge to this upper kind of levels of learning we start talking about higher education beyond 12th grade and so there are different models in different parts of the country that we're looking at we're in conversations with institutions of higher learning to see what are some ways that we can help maybe bridge the experience of a k-12 student in that with some university coursework just as you might find with dual language or excuse me dual credit courses where they can earn college credit while as a high school student well similar sorts of partnerships are things we're exploring right now with colleges and universities to see if we can't get students further down the road toward potentially a minor in their language by spending through the majority of the study that they're able to do with us right here in higley and so that next slide kind of shows the role that that bridge program can play again this is a model that we see in other states and something that we're exploring also with regional peer districts to try to figure out what's a way that we can make this work how can we get through the logistical hurdles to see that we have students that are able to carry on their study all the way through 12th grade and beyond to bridge them to the future in the next two slides i have our pathway plan that we have under construction we are hopeful to put this plan into action in the near future with help from other districts in the valley and moving forward with what we learned from utah and delaware this is our working plan for a bridge pathway for the mandarin program students can start at the pre-k level at coulee ecdc we have our kindergarten through sixth grade mandarin dual enrollment at coronado elementary way there where they can enter the program in kinder or first grade this feeds into our immersive classes for seventh and eighth grade at cooley middle school these classes are taught at a higher proficiency level than the 1a and 1b courses offered for our beginning mandarin students this immersive class is taught entirely in mandarin middle school beginning mandarin students will take level 1a and then 1b at either middle school they move into high school and have courses offered through their senior year next year it is expected that our 8th grade immersive mandarin students will feed into our honors mandarin level 3 class at williamsfield high school we will look at the 8th grade results from the stamp test to verify that students have reached the proficiency level to take that honors level three class if not they will be placed in the best class for their proficiency level then they will continue on with mandarin mandarin four and then the ap course this is where our courses would end for them if we don't bridge the gap i am working with other districts in conversation with local universities to grant the capabilities to then add an upper level mandarin course that they offer called third year chinese or chinese 301 302 as of right now this course is not offered at our high schools anywhere but at our high schools i just want to be clear it's not available yet so next slide this is our working plan for a bridge pathway for the spanish program students can start at the pre-k level at soseman ecdc we have our kindergarten through fifth grade spanish dual enrollment at san tan and next year our fifth graders will move into sixth grade where we will then have all of our grade levels with the spanish dual language this will then feed into our spanish immersive classes for seventh and eighth grade at soseman middle school these classes will be taught at the higher proficiency level than one or one a and they are offered that are offered for our spanish students that are beginning spanish in middle school the immersive classes will be taught entirely in spanish students who have never spoken spanish have the opportunity to start with spanish 1a or 1 in 7th grade and then they move into 1b or 2 at either middle school it is expected that our immersive spanish classes will then feed into our ap spanish class at higley high school students will take the stamp test in eighth grade again to verify that they have reached the best proficiency level to take that ap course if not they'll be placed in the best spanish class for their proficiency level this would be the last available class for our most spanish students if we don't offer anything beyond the ap course we do have the literature ap course but this is not ideal because this would duplicate their spanish college credits and we would rather have something better for those students so again i'm working with other districts in the valley to con in conversations with the local university to give us three upper level spanish courses spanish conversation and composition or spanish 314 for 10th grade introduction to spanish lit or spanish 325 in 11th grade and then the advanced conversation and composition course or spanish 412 in their senior year as of right now again these courses are not offered in arizona um a student would need to score well on their ap test in order to meet the prerequisites to enter the next level for chinese or spanish because that's the prerequisite for these courses at the university level these specific courses are on the bridge plan because they are required courses toward a minor in the language at the arizona universities if our students finished either the spanish or the mandarin bridge pathway they would be on course for a short sorry one course short of a minor in that language and well on their way to a major in it another exciting development this year has been the production of our dli website it's found on the husd webpage under departments and then you can also reach it through the link on this slide the goal of the website is to inform the community using current research and information on what we're doing in dual language what it is where it's located and how they can become involved thank you so much for your time attention and most especially for your support of our amazing language programs uh thank you so much for this very comprehensive um work study that i think we just endured um that's not the right word endured it's this is just that it came out endured it was all jeff's fault mr armstrong right um no all these things are exciting for our district and so thankful that we do have a world language coach i know that these were this was um a request by several um teachers throughout the years that we would have this position in the district office and what a difference it's made thank you to the principles that you invest your time energy into all these extracurricular activities that go along with this immersion program because i know there's many so thank you for that um i don't have any specific questions at the moment so i'm going to pass it over i know mrs schultz has some and mrs wilson have some so we'll start with mrs schultz i told mrs keller i have two pages of questions but i really don't i'll just so i will save all of my i am a parent of a dli two students so but i'll save all my personal questions for coronado next week but um one of the things i wanted to ask is what are we doing to promote the program to help grow the program right now i know that there's lots of parents that aren't we look at the numbers i know their mandarin is lower right now i know that kindergarten has a wait list with one student next year but what are we doing to promote that to the community i mean specifically it's i'm just going to be truthful being in the business being in this this business it really is the the marketing specifically is what is the program producing and what is the district doing overall and how are what are the goals moving forward that are going to continue to bring students into the campus you are right that spanish does have a waiting list and at san tan and we are we are working on doing that our our program is is being articulated by parents that are already in the program that feel that it it's doing their child a due diligence in terms of making sure that they're meeting the requirements and the needs of the of the dual language and i will tell you that out of all the marketing in the past we did flyers and we put things on websites that's all great but it really is that word of mouth and whether or not it's meeting that need of the parent that's going to be able to continue to articulate that so it's one of those showa show i believe show that we are doing it and show what's going on that's going to continue to bring it in i will say that out of it to really highlight the marketing component and i believe it's the same at san tan when we talk about inbounds and out of bound enrollment we have 72 students who are out of district open enrollments and that at each school is absolutely huge in terms of that and within the district i have 90 plus who are open enrollment in district as well so that's those are numbers yes we can always improve and we're always going to continue to try to grow but it's one of those you need to show in my eyes and i really do think that both programs are speaking for themselves and i'll say in years past we've also done a great job of posting on social media but as well as that on buses we've also had advertisement on buses as well so i think the biggest component though is the word of mouth our families do share um i have and i'm sure coronado as well i have every year several when i say several at least five parents that are seeking out dli programs for their currently third three-year-old for the future and i can tell you that's something that um i get emails just random emails hey i'm looking for kindergarten and i have a three-year-old awesome and and i'm able to promote the preschool program and so um that's something that you don't see nationally is that pre-k through that 12 experience and so really excited about that opportunity here but over the years we've done it several ways um but as well capacity to to host the program um and in the limited space like for me it would it would be very difficult to add a third section in kindergarten when in the past i've had the numbers but the capacity to have it is is a struggle for the space the teacher the resources it really throws a kink having three sections versus two sections in kindergarten it does not flow well for the program when it comes to the management of it but traditionally because majority of the kids are on open enrollment in the program we don't provide and it's we don't provide transportation for families and so various reasons families will choose to keep their kid at their home school because and so um we're able to go through that wait list most of the time throughout the year and so i can say that overall though the district has done a good job of promoting it on social media and other places as well uh president caleb schultz one of the things so promotional things obviously help but reputation helps and one of the things higley didn't have a presence at the state level as being a model program in the involvement like we have had in the last year year and a half i mean truly it is word of mouth and when you are working with a state representative who's known as the state when people go to and say where are the best programs i don't know that our name would have come up until our reputation again if you build it they will come i think the work that we're talking about you you can see some pride tonight in the work of the individuals truly the amount of work that's been done from building the curriculum to aligning the proficiencies to doing the professional development to taking what we were doing to another level systemically has been a massive process and we have brought in people to help us get there and i think we are now we are now going oh do you know what they're doing in higley which is really cool when i go to superintendent meetings with superintendents across the state who don't know about the east valley go oh i heard about your program i just beam with pride because it means what we're doing is making a difference so i think promotional is more promotion obviously happens but word of mouth and quality program matters and i think we're getting we're getting better awesome dr foley oh sorry you go how is this going to add to that and that we have more kids in the mandarin preschool program dli than we've ever had which typically or a lot of those kids will funnel into our elementaries we also promote these programs during kindergarten roundup and i have a funny story that happened today a parent called ed services and said how do i get my kid into the dli program do i just need to hold them back in preschool a year so they have an open slot and i thought well we've never had a call like that before that i think our pr department is great and social media seems seems to be the way to go so and i'm going to say also i think it goes into just like we're doing with if if mr telkien can get that sister cities those are the events that we were never never mentioned of and for him to come and walk on campus and say hey i want you to go ahead and have your students perform that's absolutely huge and so those are the types of things that people will start seeing when they're wearing their coronado gear and when they're wearing their santan gear and people are talking that's going to be the component that really is going to start grasping and hearing those conversations i think that's going to be the number one marketing course i have more thank you okay um so i we didn't see any numbers on stamp tests for seventh and eighth graders i know spanish isn't there yet but mandarin isn't there yet are those numbers there and how are we tracking those kids to make sure they're on track and supporting them i'm appreciative that there's kindergarten through six then you're here and this team but it doesn't seem to be involvement from the upper level grades in this program board member schultz i think we briefly mentioned that we're going to stamp test every student in a language course currently whether it's dli or our world language courses that's that's to help us understand you know how do we support our teachers do we need to do something differently that data is not a gotcha that data is to help us improve our practice and i think it is important for those mandarin kids that are currently at cooley to have a snapshot of where are you are you ready for mandarin so currently they're not having that right they haven't the kids that are in eighth grade haven't had a stamp test so they will this year like i mentioned i i hate to use the covet excuse but it threw off a couple of things last year honestly sure so but they are scheduled just like everybody else okay awesome um and where are we with the bridge program i know you've mentioned it is it reasonable to say it could happen in i don't know three years or is there a timeline or [Music] we've worked with the universities around here they have expressed interest we've actually gone to meetings with their dean of students and they are currently in talks the thing that's kind of holding us back right now is do we house the instruction or does the university house the instruction and so that's kind of where we're just in the talks with how does it look and who's in charge we're hoping that by the time our coronado kids get to that that final year that it will be ready for them because it's our desire president current eighth graders the coronado eighth graders will have leaders hopefully by the time they get to that senior year and why do you want to stay so you know we've looked at the different stuff as far as secondary schools go why would someone want to continue in the pathway as far as coronado de cooley to i mean if it's offered at saseman and offered it higley and we see the kids last week at um higley high already in ap what's the support or extra support or is there anything for them in the secondary schools okay let me make sure i'm understanding so did i ask that mandarin class is only offered at cooley right and so they have mandarin classes that saw someone but they don't have that immersive course so they wouldn't be getting higher levels i understand but you can still get there yes you can still get if you don't stay on the path you can still get there like through like we saw the kids that are in mandarin ap already at higley high school yes so this would be another entry point for students like if you were in 10th grade and you were in the ap class at higley high school and you got a five on that ap test you would be able to then move into those courses as well so it is for any student who is able to pass that ap test to move forward so this is going to benefit all of our students who are excelling in the language okay and then as far as the emerging immersion program and way we grow is it is it along the same lines as other districts as far as the continuation between kindergarten to we are very comparable to what's happening around here and we are actually very comparable to what's happening in the in utah and delaware those are kind of like the ones that everyone looks at because they started first and they have legislation that backs up their programs and we have actually been very closely aligned with what they are doing and moving forward we will be on that same pathway okay um mr mccarthy just what was the i just tried to ask but um what was the um the club that you mentioned that you were doing twice a week it was folklorico so dance oh okay okay awesome i just didn't hear what you said and so i wondered what the club asked me to do it awesome um i have some more but i'll let mrs wilson answer it thank you like i got my list come on mrs schultz i'll let you go ahead for now president taylor porter schultz i just wanted to expand upon one of the questions you had that also is important we talked about the funding of the resources the addition of the stamp that is an expensive component historically the stamp is a it's a standardized assessment not all of our world languages were utilizing that as a semester exam one of the things that ed services had to do was expand the budget and and to plan for it to expand it to all of our second world tour to our world languages as the secondary level one of the key pieces there is having a content coach who can work with the teachers to align the maps to use the tool for this purpose prior to this year we didn't have someone dedicated in that capacity which we do now which allows for that work to happen so hence the assessment component now is far more solid when we're saying pre-k-12 we're talking about the immersion program up to the secondary level the other component i wanted to hit on is it's important to remember that that bridge program requires us to work through the university system to grant the credit having been a previous university administrator both chris street and i have experienced in that area it can take a few years to get it through one of the challenges historically has been their their concern about whether or not um the elementary or the the high schools can teach it at the same level think dual enrollment credit the beautiful thing is because we have stamp and it's an international test it takes out the argument that we can't teach it at the proficiency level students would have so hence our ability to be able to offer it as long as we have the highly qualified person that that that that argument is going to make it easier it can take up to two years to work through the university system hence why it's important to get ahead of it the nice thing is is that when we talk about this this is happening with great momentum and speed because there's a desire for this so our hope the the some of this is outside of our control and some of this is mentally in our control and we're working through the right channels to get it there yeah i didn't expect like i didn't i just wondered if there was a timeline as far as that goes i understand working at the universities and all of that and dealing with it so i just wanted to see if there was if you had a timeline for it um um i just want to say i know sorry i just she brought so i didn't want to forget so 2019 is when this committee was formed and everything in the groups and and dual dli started in 2014 2015.

uh the highlights of the spending plan included free summer school for the next two years in elementary councillors and retention stipends for staff as a reminder next we have been closely monitoring and working with our legislative representatives as well as possibly advocates regarding the 1.1 billion and potential cuts to education funding due to the aggregate expenditure limit for context the aggregate expenditure limit was passed in 1980 to limit how much k-12 schools can spend in a school year the cap fluctuates each year depending on enrollment in short the formula takes the previous year's enrollment uh plus inflation where this goes wrong well and also to note charter schools are not uh included in the spending limits since they did not exist in 1980. most schools are funded funds are accounts most school funds count towards the limit with the exception of federal funds much like esther and ida grants as well as title grants fast forward to today and the reason this is now an issue is due to a few factors first is prop 301 or classroom site fund that is now do added to the calculation to the aggregate expenditure limit um due to the original proposition expiring in 2018 that was voter approved as if you remember in 2018 the legislation extended prop 301 or classroom site fund without provisions exempting it from this aggregate expense limit so that's around 600 million that's adding into this into this budget limit which is a major factor second the state has worked to restore uh funds such as the district judicial assistance from recession error cuts which is a good thing but those research funds are counting towards this limit which are now at risk of being cut higley if this does not be if this is not exempt at the legislature by two-thirds vote higley's um at risk of potentially 16 million in budget cuts to this current year the budget estimates presented in this next slide we'll assume an exemption is will be passed by the legislature but i do have a slide that will present some contingency plans if this does indeed come to fruition on a good note higley is realizing some growth this year as we talked about in the bond um first review we are realizing a 2.2 increase in average daily membership that equates to about 250 students that is a positive impact to this budget as we'll discuss in the previous next slides and lastly due in part to the bond not being successful last year the district will be forced to revert back um to the uh to funding its capital leases through the eminent transfer so as a reminder we transfer operational budget um to pay for that lease payment due in part to our capital budget not being enough to support that payment mr tyler were you mr tyler mr talking more tyler moore mr moore will you please explain to as we talked last week that um that 16 million if indeed this passes which god forbid for every school district across arizona um that money just sits in our account but we are not able to spend it can you explain that yeah so by law we are the way school district budgets work um we are funded on a per-pupil basis uh it doesn't matter how much inflation increases doesn't matter how much property um rates rise uh we are capped at a per people spending limit and we establish budgets like we present in may and june and those budgets are our limits so if this aggregate expenditure limit comes to fruition what it states essentially we will have to reduce our budget by 16 million that does not mean the property taxes will decrease likewise that just means we have to decrease our budget and we are obligated to reduce it for 16 million but the way the cash and all the funds will still flow in through property taxes but we will not be allowed to spend that money per legislation like i said this is a 1980s uh state funding formula that is clearly outdated but it has not been addressed and fortunately or unfortunately this is being brought up and being more so in the news and so we hope through our conversations with our policy advocates and our legislators within higley that this funding formula not only gets exempted this year but there's a long-term solution for the funding formula where we do not have to have conversations such as this that would negatively impact education and all the programs that we've currently fund through our operational budget so as a just a reminder this is the the general budget timeline for arizona school districts our fiscal year runs from july 1st to june 30th the adopted budget the board approved backed in june 2021 is the current budget the district is currently operating under as required in state statute arizona schools are required to do a budget revision in december if they are in a shortcoming of one percent of their adopted budget higley was not required to do a budget revision as we were realizing a budget surplus as noted because we had two percent growth the reason we did not bring a budget revision to you you may be asking why is because that december increase would have counted against us against the aggregate expenditure limit someone else is if we increase our budget by the adm growth our aggregate expenditure limit cut potentially cut would have increased proportionately so um with that being said there was no benefit to bring a revision in december which is why we did not this brings us to today and explains why we're discussing both the 2022 budget which is for the may revision as well as the 2023 budget which is for the june adoption hopefully this timeline provides a little clarity about the budget cycle as we proceed to this presentation so looking at the 2022 estimated budget revision uh this is a projected may revision that we do for current year revision as i discussed the board adopted the current year budget back in june of 2021 that budget number is represented at the top which is 106 million that budget includes the carry forwarder from last fiscal year which is 16 million as noted during our annual financial report for the fiscal year 2021 that 16 million was higher than projected due in part to the district's inability to fill positions which resulted in vacancy savings as well as several one-time expenses being funded from our sr funds uh we anticipate um those one-time savings coming back into the mno budget for fiscal 23 as it was just a one-year relief next we'll look at what we're projecting for a may revision mostly due in part to growth we are looking at revising our current budget up to 110 million the increase takes in consideration the 2.2 growth in adm this year um but again this is not taking consideration the aggregate the potential aggregate expenditure limit reductions this is best-case scenario uh doing the math the difference um the district will look to increase its budget capacity by 3.3 million so i'll go over a little bit on the next slides on what that means going forward but first though that's our may our current may revision that we'd have to do that plays right into our 2023 budget that we'd be adopting in june so first and again we don't anticipate nor are we budging for any additional covert release funding one item that has already been budgeted for from our cover to release funds is the second retention stipend for fiscal year 23.