My seventh graders are in awesome shape as well. So, it also helps a lot with like retention. Um, we have pretty huge numbers in the elementaryaries and they do their weeding process when they get to middle school it seems like. And and I've got almost the exact same numbers going into high school next year as freshman. Um, so it kind of looks like we're on this process of like 20 plus per year going up to the high school. So, it's awesome. Thank you so much. >> The countywide when can you dates times this Saturday? >> It's this Saturday. Um performances are throughout the day starting at 11:00 a.m. and we should be done by 5:30 p.m. Uh we have two stages. The big concrete slab stage uh is going to be where the bands and the orchestras perform. So we start with Crescendo Band at 11 um and do a couple band performances, switch some things around.
Um you'll see data that is assessment data from IDOE and other points from IDOE. You'll see a wide variety of census data, a lot of things about Jennings County and Jennings County schools particular, but you are going to hear a presentation this evening from a wonderful committee of people that are represented by a small group. We had about four times as many on the committee. Um but this wonderful group of administrators and teachers were willing to come tonight and represent that whole committee who dug into this work and would like to summarize the data and then discuss the action steps that are recommended from coming out of this.
>> Oh yeah, that's me. >> Thank you, Madam President. Item 4.1, no reportable action regarding existing legitigation. 4.2, no reportable action taken regarding public employee performance evaluation. Superintendent 4.3 No reportable action taken regarding personnel. 4.4 No reportable action taken regarding negotiations. 4.5 No reportable action taken regarding personnel. 4.6 The board of trustees unanimously voted to make the following appointment effective July 1st, 2026. Nancy Cortez, coordinator of inclusive practices AND STUDENT ACCESS. AND UH WE WILL HEAR uh from her in uh at our next board meeting. So, congratulations to her. >> Y >> thank you. We will now be moving on to our recognitions. We have a number of recognitions tonight. A very exciting time um as we close out the school year. Um, so just as a note, um, after you receive your recognition, you are free to leave the board meeting. We won't take offense, um, if you head out early.
Others facing layoffs entirely. These employees have built their lives around serving this district and they deserve better. This district is also asking to approve another resolution authorizing up to 25 million in short-term short-term borrowing through a tran loan with interest rates up to 12% along with transfers between district funds. I personally reached out to districts including Victor Elementary, Victor Union High, Hesperia Snowline, Lucerne, Adelanto, Silver Valley, Oro Grande, Riverside Prep and Barstow and they all confirmed they are not pursuing similar borrowing resolutions. If this borrowing is necessary, then the community deserves full transparency regarding the financial obligations being made on behalf of this board. I also want to address I know in the special board meeting my letter to the board was brought up. And yes, I did address bringing in school services to um do a financial review. Actually, it's called a budgetary analysis.
There are specific things budgeted in this budget that the board will vote on tonight that will allow us to enhance or bring back things like a DCBA in the district to bring additional mental health supports and social supports to our kids at all levels. Those are in the budget. One of the priorities was eliminating paytoplay fees. It's a financial barrier to student participation. This ensures equitable access for all of our students for not only sports but for extracurricular. It supports student engagement, belonging. It builds school culture and aligns with the district commitment to the whole child education and fiscal responsibility. And the reality of it is that the taxpayers are already paying for the districts. The tax dollars for the schools, the tax dollars pay for the sports. This budget will eliminate pay to play or pay to participate. One of the goals that we set out was to increase security by an additional a special law enforcement officer, so retired police officer who works for the police department.
And the week after, our CHS orchestra will be having their annual spring concert on Wednesday, May 20th. Lastly, this month, the CHS Distinguished Academic Awards Dinner will be on May 19th at the West Mount Country Club where CHS will be honoring high achieving students who went above and beyond last year and this year. Thank you so much. >> Thank you to our student representative, Jenn. Thank you so much for uh giving us the little shout out. We appreciate it. It was a nice night. With that being said, I'm going to turn the microphone over to the superintendent and to the BA for your presentation. >> Thank you, uh, Madame President. Going to begin tonight with the, uh, budget presentation. I'm going to kick off with a, um, some words that I have prepared and then I'm going to turn it over to our business administrator, Mr.
Um so we have on stage here we have Harley, Diana, Ava, Kim, Alyssa, Grayson, Chris, and Morgan who are seniors and orchestra. a round of applause for [applause] them. [applause] Um, so I've had the pleasure of working with these students since they were in sixth grade and like in a weird way they're like stuck as sixth graders in my mind. Like um just they all kind of look the same. I don't know. Um but just um it's been really actually amazing to see them grow as musicians, as people um over all this time. And I whenever we get to this point, I try to think of like what makes me um think like what makes each senior class like really unique. Um and for this class um we had unfortunately we had co in the middle of our time together. Um was like seventh grade and came back in eighth grade.
Let's go. Good evening. I'm Steve Hillman. I do know some of you. There are some that I do not know. Um I'm talking to the entire board here as members of the GPS board and as public servants and I emphasize public servants, not partisan servants, but public servants you're collectively responsible for providing staff administration, and facilities to support a world-class education for all GPS students and ensure that educational attainment improves every day. And I got to emphasize every day, it's a changing world. If you lose one day, you're going to die. So, you got to keep that in focus. It's Every decision that you make individually and collectively should be based on one premise. Does this improve GPS educational growth and culture? You don't need to think about anything else. And by the way, you were not elected to cut the taxes. That's not your job here.
choir is going on the city stage across the park and uh we follow through and orchestras will end the day. >> We do have um there's going to be two performances that include one performance will have every band hit from the county and one performance will have every orchestra from the county. The band performance is at noon at 3:30. >> Okay. >> I know there's between 150 and 200 kids per >> 195. Yeah. >> So, Saturday 11:30 or 11 to 5:30 >> Tton. >> Yes. >> And we will have also food trucks and things there. It's it's a make a day. >> A couple of the art teachers are also leading crafts for and chalk art and stuff for people to move around. >> Great. Thank you. Sixth grade seven. >> Um, our second part of the middle school performance uh comes from the band department.
So they are going to just have an opportunity to present um open floor for us to have Q&A to ask them any questions or clarification you would like and then um that will be the close out of this evening is just presenting those overall action steps. So the process they took to get through um from where we started with this being collected by central office staff uh to having goals set today was an entire day meeting. We have a committee of teachers and a committee of administrators together who came together. We presented the data for about four four and a half hours that morning. Um so an hour presentation tonight is quite a condensed version. Um and then they had time to process that information in a variety of ways and we divided into groups that had multiple perspectives. So each group that was processing the information had different voices at the table.
Um, but I'm going to start with our student representative to the board of trustees, uh, Miss Leah Garcia. Um, so do you want to do your statement from here? You can go up there. Up to you from the small. Let's Oh, I was I was going to do a Bible. YEAH. OH YEAH, I was going to open uh with on behalf of the board of trustees, we would like to thank Leah Garcia for her service as a student representative to the board during the 2025 through 2026 school year. It's been an honor to work alongside you and um all the passion that you have for student voice and purpose and we really appreciate everything you've done. Um >> thank you. Well, good evening once again, board members, Superintendent Freed, Cabinet, and AHC community. My name is Leah Garcia, and as has been previously stated, and it has been a profound honor to serve as a student representative to the board of trustees through monthly ECAT meetings, through monthly board meetings, through going to so many school sites and meeting so many people.
I made sure to go back and watch and listen to Superintendent Nelson and she wanted to bring in an outside fiscal expert to conduct a budgetary analysis. And I want to be clear, we are not suggesting any allegations of misappropriation of funds or anything like that. We just want to make it clear that we do not support them coming in if they're going to do a budgetary analysis because that is who came against us in schools in um fact-finding and brought in like I sent you all the 23-24 data instead of current data. Um that has nothing to do with someone coming in to do the budget training in our negotiations. And I'm still confused because in the special board meeting Superintendent Nelson, you then said budget training for the board. So, I'm not quite sure what you all were voting on if it's budget analysis or budget training.
We are in currently we are in deep discussions with the city uh on adding a SLO to make ouro total of three which would give us coverage at all of our campuses. If you think of CBS and MIS as one campus and the middle school as one campus and the high school and mutual as one campus, we will be fully covered from a security perspective as continue the negotiations with the city as they finalize their budget. But we do believe we have budgeted for that and are prepared to do that. And I do believe that the city is budgeting and is prepared to do that as well. From the time that I came to the district, one of the things that I heard in my superintendent meet and greets, one of the things I've heard from the board, one of the things I've heard from families in communication is we need to be more transparent in the way that we communicate as a district with families.
Usi. Mike, will you be presenting from there or >> Yeah, I'm gonna read my speech here, but feel free to um anytime. >> Good evening, President Bassford, Vice President Santiago, board commissioners, faculty in attendance tonight, staff, parents, students, and esteemed members of the one Clifton community who are present and watching virtually. We stand tonight at a critical moment for the fiscal stability and educational commitment of our district. Tonight, you're not going to see a flashy presentation. To the extent that I can control myself, I will not be incorporating my usual sense of humor into my statements regarding the budget because tonight's vote on the 2627 district budget is the most critical vote of my six-year tenure as the superintendent of this great school district. And this vote tonight will impact the one Clifton community for many, many years to come. Our goal tonight is complete transparency, not alarmism.
Um and I just really appreciate how when they came back from that weird year, it was like just ready to go. Let's try everything. Let's get back to it. Um and they're just really ready to make the most of their eighth grade experience, their high school experience. Try a bunch of new things. Um Um, you know, there was like we were like had to do orchestra outside. They were like, "Sure, okay." Um, I was like, "Do you guys want to go play Christmas music at the mall?" They're like, "Yeah, okay." Um, so all these crazy things it was on board with and I appreciate it. Um, I really also appreciate their patients and all their patients. Um, when I was on leave last year, um, their subs loved them, just loved them so much. Um, so appreciate their patience, you know, during that big life transition for me.
Your job is to take care of the public school system. Recently, it appears that one of the board members somewhat unilaterally chose to change the existing GPS vacation schedule. Fortunately, it was tabled for future input as the reason we're here tonight. I don't know if Ms. Murray doesn't care about school board protocols or just assumes that she could dictate a policy change regarding the input disregarding the input from parents and staff. I think that's a big problem. You're here to serve us. You work for me as representative of the public. As a major teacher, I understand that her personal desire was to align her schedule with those of her children. Who I believe you said she's attending GPS public public school program tonight. Um we don't need dictatorships or what one of the other board members reportedly have said we don't need to pay attention to what parents want.
Hello, my name is Mrs. Chadwick. Um, I'm the band director at Jennings County Middle School as well as at Jennings County High School. Um, and um, this is Mason Foist uh, playing the trombone for us today. Um, he is one of six students um, from the middle school who went to the solo and ensemble competition at Columbus East back in January. Um, I think a couple of those orchestra kids out there went to solo and ensemble too, right? >> Yes. if they if they if they want to give away the the ones of them who are here, >> they could do that. >> Midst putting things up. >> I had seven or eight, I think. >> And all of them won gold from the middle school. >> Uh almost. I think I had one silver. >> Okay. Yeah. So, uh gold medals for uh most of our performers there at the uh solo ensemble competition.
Then similar to if you were on the board when we did this four years ago, uh what we did, they had a sticky dot. So as we looked at the information and priorities seemed to bubble up that we saw that were needs in our data, they could prioritize all of the data choices on the wall with a sticky choice sticky dot that was an affinity grouping of what the priorities they felt were most important were. From that that was grouped into words and then we did we started with calling it buckets, didn't we? Instead of action areas, we grouped into five action areas. We originally called them buckets and that's where we got today. So, they're just going to like walk backwards from that, deconstruct the work we did to show how the data matched up to where these action areas are you have in front of you.
It has truly been a profound honor for me to genuinely make connections. And I want to thank AHUHSD and everyone who has helped me be here so that I can now go on to UC Berkeley to study biology hopefully become a phys physician assistant and continue to advocate for those in need by you know going through policy work and also through healthcare. Thank you. And then we'll go to the center for a photo. >> Absolutely. >> You're back. Thank you. All right. The board of trustees uh is now going to honor our full 2025 through 2026 AUHSD student ambassadors. The board of trustees honors the district student ambassadors for their service and important contribution to the district during the 2025 through 2026 school year. The ambassadors serve as official spokespersons for all district students at special ceremonies, events, and functions. The student leaders are also deeply embedded in the district's governance structure and actively provide the student voice wherever possible.
But that's neither here nor there. That's not our concern because it would not put things to rest if school services came in to do a budgetary analysis. Okay. At my first very at my very for first board meeting I shared a quote that meant a great deal to me. It says teamwork. Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress and working together is success. After that meeting I framed it and put it in my office because I truly believed that what we were working towards in AVUSD was this. A district where board members district leadership, educators, classified staff and families were working together for students. And I still believe that vision. But we cannot continue down this path of division, dismissiveness, or deflection. We cannot continue making decisions that hurt classrooms while ignoring bigger financial concerns in front of us. Quite honestly, we cannot we cannot afford any more failures.