thank you next is the teacher of the year presentation right so um we were very excited to recognize our teachers of the year from each of our schools um just a few weeks ago unfortunately our district teacher of the year was not able to attend and so we didn't get a chance to celebrate her properly even though her sister did a fabulous job of representing her and looked just like her but we really wanted to have this moment uh with her because it's very important it's one of those things you're going to remember the rest of your life and we wanted to make sure that we recreated that as much as we could and gave the board a chance to celebrate her as well so dawn turner's here and it looks like her graham creek family and her family family are here and so todd hearn is going to recreate that moment by sharing the words that he stated and then we'll introduce don's family i'm assuming and yeah your staff okay um you know whenever i get the chance to speak in front of the board and or any obviously any crowd that i'm representing the school i always brag on graham creek and i talk about how it's a place that's you know truly full of love it's truly full of passion compassion and it's just a special place to be and it's it is it's truly a team as a family and i think tonight you can kind of see why i say that you know these teammates are here to support one who has been recognized so to the rest of the staff just thank you again for being rock stars you guys are just truly amazing tonight with dawn is obviously her twin sister we met her once before that's shawn and her mom sylvia sylvia thank you for making twins her brothers dawn and shawn's brothers jeffrey and jerry are also twins so it's like they're everywhere so dawn turner let's just recreate what we did the other couple weeks ago dawn turner grew up in kaminsky and was a shy timid little girl who attended graham creek elementary you see grand creek was her sanctuary where she knew she was cared about and where she was safe her grand grand prix teachers ignited a fire for her to learn and reach beyond the limitations of her own home after graduation dawn earned a degree in computer science and worked in that field for over five years it was during this time that she became a mother and she discovered that she loved kids a whole lot more than she loved computers so at that point she realized he was not fulfilling her purpose and we talk a lot about our purpose at grand marriage so dawn went back and she wanted to make a difference in the children's lives as though she was back at gce so that became her new mission so he left she left her career began teaching at head start she then through sacrificed countless long nights and measurable grit don graduated summa laude from uh st mary's of the woods in an elementary education where she also received the outstanding graduate in early childhood education so congratulations to that you see the fire that gce ignited in dawn still burns brightly today she considers herself a lifelong learner she continually seeks opportunities to grow as an educator dawn is intended attended numerous professional developments truly across the country over the last 18 years she's learned about technology engagement high ability math reading and writing she regularly shares this knowledge with her colleagues during our monthly teachers meetings i think donald say it best and she learns a lot from the ladies and gentlemen that are around her too they truly have made an impact in her lives even at home she has bookshelves full of books that enhance her teaching practices and gives her valuable insight into the meaning and the purpose of education so dawn's efforts don't just stop at grant creek they continue throughout all of her life you know don and i are our paths crossed before and i tell people this all the time that she was actually a student of mine in the gt room at the high school in u.s history between her and her sister and their brothers they were just like twins everywhere as i said earlier but thankfully we got so fit that we were gonna have our paths cross again and the story goes is this we a couple of days before school started we had a resignation third grade teacher decided that she was going to take her talents elsewhere and thank goodness she left and went to seymour if you're any administrator no i don't like seeing you so i just said it out loud too i knew that we were in trouble because trying to find somebody that late in the game is never good suddenly she shows up dawn at our door at graham creek and says hey i heard through the grapevine that you have a position open and i'd like to interview i'm thinking oh my goodness come on in do you have a license and yeah we know who that little bird was kiana johnson don comes in and she interviews and through that interview i'm thinking this is just way too good to be true and i find out that she's been teaching third grade which is what we needed her home is what a mile or so away from the school she'd been trying to get in grand creek for years i i called it divine interventions and we've had numerous conversations since and we all we've talked about how all those pieces of that puzzle had to just fall perfectly into that arrangement that made this thing happen so divine intervention god's will whatever you want to call it all i know is don i'm so grateful that you showed up that day i think our kids our school our community is better because of that day and tonight you're being recognized not as the grand prix teacher of the year but actually as a corporation teacher of the year so that's kind of the pinnacle of the career so far so we'll see where our next adventure lays so ladies and gentlemen this is mrs dawn turner i'd like to start by giving you the hug i would have given you and congratulations um and our board has something they'd like to give you as well and amy if you want to name's our board president she will present it to you and um it's very special so congratulations thank you so much and shane you want to take a pic yeah absolutely all right we need to get to let's do this on maybe come here let's take a pic of amy getting it to her hold on it's pretty impressive right here thank you all for coming i do have a words for me to speak in front of third it is few graders first i want to thank the committee members for nominating me for this award all of your hard work it was a very difficult decision this is truly the greatest honor of my life i am incredibly grateful for my fellow educators at grand prix elementary i admire each of you and i'm inspired by you every day i would like to thank todd hearn for being the most supportive encouraging and joyful principal on the planet i would also like to sincerely thank my mother my children my brothers and my sister for supporting me throughout my career and i am certain that i would not be the teacher that i am without your support jennings county school corporation educators are like no other they are committed to a standard of excellent in everything that they do i am proud to stand alongside these amazing individuals who are making a difference in the lives of children thank you thank all of you [Applause] is [Laughter] [Music] thank you for having us okay so again i just want to i know she's gone but congratulate dawn i think i think back to my elementary school years and how [Music] my teachers really encouraged me and i could name those teachers and how they made a huge difference in my life so on behalf of the board again we congratulate don turner as the district teacher of the year and we are proud of all of our school teachers at the year and all of our staff and teachers so um glad she could be here tonight um so next on the agenda is symbio elementary presentation you thought you were gonna have a big audience we told them they could stick around and check it out it's real exciting so first of all i want to thank you for the opportunity to come here tonight to present all the wonderful things that are happening at scipio elementary we have so many so many people have responded all of our teachers everyone in the building teachers hair pros custodians cooks everybody has done a remarkable job and have been amazing the past few years to make sure that our kids get what they need um so i am so grateful to be at a school um and and all of our schools are like that but i'm so grateful to be at a school where everybody pitches in no matter what needs there is we we always respond and we always rise to the challenge to do what's best for our kiddos and to me that's the you know that's one of those things that that truly makes scipio stand out um above the rest so tonight we're going to talk a little bit about sippy elementary and give you some of the frameworks and some of the things we do along the way to make scipio so great and with me tonight i have i'm amber hook i'm the instructional coach at cpo and i'm ashley long i'm the behavioral support specialist at scipio so there were there have been quite a few things that have um taken place the past few years uh or the past year at scipio one of the big things that we were so excited at the beginning of the year we were able to have a new playground installed with the poor in place um underneath our equipment and we actually by working with roy and the and um everyone that was involved with the project we were actually able to get it underneath some existing equipment that was there as well to make it more accessible for our kids for all of our kids and the opportunity so whenever it rains we can actually get out onto the equipment and utilize the equipment with that we've had some building repairs we had part of a new roof put on last year i believe we're due to hopefully get a new you know the rest of it finished this summer so we appreciate all the upgrades and things like that that you know that's happening at our school um just to improve everything that we have there so very grateful and like i said you know um there's a lot of positive things that i can say about scipio and you're going to see some of those but the biggest thing is the hard work that our teachers and all the people in our building put in to make our kids successful um and so you know they truly they they're what makes the school successful and our kids successful in the long run so as we go through we're going to talk about some of our programs some of the things we do in the classroom some of the talks that we have some of these the data sheets that help us drive instruction in our classroom and what that looks like and some of the benefits and the improvements that our kids have made throughout the year so it's a really awesome opportunity to be here to present that so our school we are a two-section school throughout um two teachers in each grade level we have a behavioral uh specialist there that was brought into our building this year we have our reading coach who is a huge benefit to our corporation we have music art and pe in our building so we are just blessed with with lots of resources that help our kids succeed so we are uh we have about one percent english language learners um you know um so if you get on to um in view with the doe you can find out more information about our school and right now our numbers have went up we're sitting right around students there we go okay so some of our benchmark data sources there's they're probably almost the same through the corporation other than there's just a few schools that are doing um star on a monthly basis but these are our benchmark um data sources that we that really help us especially at the beginning of the year do our selection which we'll get into that data here pretty soon um just to kind of keep track of where our kids are but then the next slide shows us some of our i think our progress monitoring so um we do reading a to z quarterly our benchmarks are best and we don't want the kids necessarily getting used to those books over and over again so there's a correlation chart we use um to convert those scores so we really see their their growth early lit is monthly star reading is monthly star math is monthly um we use those as progress monitoring as well because they take about 20 minutes and we get a lot of information from the reports on those and then of course classroom assessments i didn't know if we wanted to maybe come back to that one just because for the sake of time absolutely okay okay so um of course we have the flowchart and i'm sure you guys have all seen that i did how do we click on that yes please so of course we have tier one that's first um and something that we do whenever we have our data meetings every month it's the three of us in addition to our school counselor and each individual teacher we meet with them each month during one of their prep periods and we talk about all the students and anytime that something comes up where teachers just i'm racking my brain i can't figure these things out that flow chart has built in links for it for the teachers to go in and get ideas and then of course we will share ideas and that's still in tier one um when we're having a little more trouble with the student getting them to show the progress we want we'll move them to tier two um that may be some pull outs some small group work it may be a little different for her for tier two but that's also when she kind of may start pulling out kids and i'll let you talk here in a second and then we if we're still not seeing the growth which sometimes we do and then the child will be dismissed and go back into the classroom um but if not then we move to tier three where they're getting some really intensive individual support so we can go yeah well not the next slide well actually we don't really need to go into all that probably for the sake of time but this go ahead and go to the next slide okay okay so that this kind of talks about what we do when we start those interventions so of course we start with our we do our monthly data meetings uh we always talk about whatever new data we have coming in um we've been hitting on stem a lot recently but for mtss reading tier one of course is core instruction in the classroom tier two depending on what the student needs fifteen minutes daily in a small group um decodables close reads guided reading library books heading bridge to the gap those are all those tier two interventions that we use if a child needs to move to tier three then they are doing 30 minutes of daily intervention small group or individual um getting the tier two interventions in addition to barton reading and spelling or lexile word work and some of the conversations that we have in our data meetings is so helpful to bounce ideas off of everybody you know what have you tried have you tried this yes we've tried that okay so what's our next step what can we do to help make this child successful so the the different ideas and the quality of conversation that we have about each child you know it really shows that our teachers know our kids our staff know who our kids are and we know what they need to help them succeed and to you know to advance and improve each and every time you know we have those data meetings if they haven't improved we come up with a plan immediately you know and we you know we talk about the different ideas that we have different programs that we have available and how we can advance them into a program to help them continue to be successful or hopefully get them on the right path so those conversations that we have are very valuable especially you know amongst that small team and just for the growth of each of our students i mean i'll use an example today we were in my room talking and we had a second grade teacher come in with a concern for one of our students we both knew exactly who the student was what reading level he was at the beginning of the year where he's at now and it just makes things so much nicer when there's that constant communication and all of the stakeholders are in those data meetings um okay i think we're ready um this is i just wanted i didn't include any kids in our pictures i just wanted to be safe for that but um this is the mtss room for reading each station is a different intervention and sometimes the kids are at one station for 15 minutes and they move to a different one with a different assistant it's like a well-oiled machine it's it's wonderful to see but they're all getting what they need and it's all in that room um and then we'll move on to behavior so uh i'm the behavior specialist at sipio i work with the kids from k through sixth grade i have kids in every grade level uh we do a lot of different types of skills in my classroom we do coping skills time management skills executive functioning skills social skills because we want those kids to have those skills so that they can stay in the gen ed classroom as much as possible and get the education that they need several of my students have daily scheduled breaks i have small groups with some each kid is is a little bit different which we all know we've worked with kids um and they'll have different needs i have one student who really struggles when they come in from recess we do quiet time we put on some soft music we do some puzzles and we work on coping skills then they go back to class i try to keep kids 10 to 15 minutes unless it is a greater need they're in tier 3 usually when we're longer than 15 minutes a day all of my students know that they can ask for a break if they need it if they're feeling frustrated if they need a little help getting regulated so they can ask their teachers and their teachers are always willing to work with them and make sure that they are getting what they need to be successful we do have puzzles we have quiet music we have breathing exercises that we work on i have weighted balls that we sometimes do some exercises with brain breaks and body breaks just to get them where they need to be so that they are able to concentrate focus and retain the information that they need to be successful at school can i just add i really appreciate all the ways that you guys are involving your staff and and teachers and the interventions for kids at tier two tier three and i know you involve parents too when you get to tier two and tier three as well right they're part of that team so thank you for that and this is my classroom um we have different things on each table some of them are fidgets some of them have puzzles some are play-doh just different things that we do with the kids you know some kids are more sensory motivated and we need those tools as well they are also welcome to borrow fidgets and things in the classroom as they need to we have balance boards i have several students who use those balance boards all day long and they are so much more successful in the classroom with those tools that they have available to them okay so this i just wanted to include some of the growth that we've shown this year um so if just to give you an example if i look at kindergarten what we want to see from beginning of year to december is two levels of growth in the best and so that means we want them from not reading at all to reading at level b so right now we're going we're slightly lower than we want to be we're right right now our each student has grown about an average of one and a half levels um and it it's the same thing all the way down but you can see fifth grade we've got a little more work to do but everyone is working so hard um but i'm just really proud i'm really proud of that so i wanted to include that do we have time we probably did we have a few few more minutes here to go back yeah we're going to pull up a few more of those sheets that we wanted you to see because it really does you know the things we have in place the processes we have in place really do help put the you know put things in motion to help our kids be successful so we wanted to just show some of those things that we do have in place um that we rely on some of the tools that we have you know and and that spark those conversations so you want to go back to the other yeah just keep the next slide i know okay um probably the big the newest one that i'd like to talk about is the group data and then probably the school-wide data and then i think um so this group data this is a new chart that we started this year um normally you would see kids names in the column the caller columns and that's where the student kind of is assessed or evaluated to be at at the beginning of the year and then each one as we go on and collect more data they're either going up or down or changing colors and this the teachers really like this because so far they've been using it as kind of a reflection tool for does it look like i'm putting too much focus on this group over this group or um i can tell this student probably had either a lottery day or a really bad day because they don't believe in or they don't belong in this group so it's just been kind of a nice different set of data to look at and if you scroll down it shows where they so it starts out and it shows where the students were at the beginning of the year so as you look and you see the urgent intervention students it does paint a really good picture of where they started to where they're at now so we don't move them from the group that they started in but we do update those color-coded circles um with the air with the arrow just to let us know you know the gains that they're making and that's pretty a pretty powerful tool when you sit down with the teacher in a data meeting and we're like okay here's where we were it's giving me goosebumps talking about it but here's where we were here's where we are what things are working and so when they get into that conversation and they tell you all the different interventions that they're doing in the classroom the extra support the extra reading whatever it may be and you're like oh my goodness look at everything you're doing and that's the reflection that we're seeing kids are growing they're becoming learners um and you know and so that sparks the conversation of hey have you talked to your your teaching partner so you know we encourage teachers to branch out and share the things that they do in their classroom because if it's working there you know it's going to work for someone else so we're constantly talking about that collaboration with other teachers to help because you know if we find something that works we definitely want to share it so that it helps all of our kids so those conversations and the you know some of the the data charts that we use are super important to help us see visually where our kids are at yes and the the actual the the school-wide data spreadsheet and then i think that's a problem um so if you go to if you can click on maybe the fifth grade would you mind clicking on the fifth grade there you go okay so um i put letters in instead of this student's names but this is the sheet that's shared with the teachers so they can go on and see how their students are doing on all the assessments and then their tier two paperwork their chair three paperwork their behavior intervention plans all of that is linked to the student's name they can access the group data from there they can access the reading conversations that we have from there so that's kind of a one-stop shop for them or anyone that needs to see our data everything is accessible through that so i think the reading conversations were very valuable too i wasn't planning on talking about those but they were extremely valuable so all right yeah so so thank you again i mean again this is just a brief snapshot of all the wonderful things that are going on at scipio and not only scipio because we all share the resources and we have you know some of the same procedures all the other schools are working super hard but i do like the opportunity to kind of highlight sippy elementary for the wonderful things we're doing we have wonderful students wonderful parents um you know a great support group at our school and you know you the people sitting in this room have been a have been a great support for our schools not only this year but in the past and you know we've all had kind of you know a rough couple years here but because of the people sitting in this room we've been successful and that truly you know i can't thank you enough for the support that you've shown us um you know as as we've all you know had some struggles but we've definitely come through and we're better because of it and we'll continue to move forward and get her continue to you know get her kids moving in the right direction so thank thank you thank you for all of our decodables and our guided reading library yes so thank you and thanks for the growth and all the work that you guys have put into helping those kids get better thank you and thank you thank your staff yeah our teachers are are phenomenal our whole staff not only teachers parents cooks without our cooks cooking a meal for kids sometimes that's the only meal our kids get hot meals our kids get throughout the day our parapros are there for support um custodians having the building clean maintenance men you know we bus drivers we we have the best i i truly say that we have the best and they truly do care and have the best interests of our kids and at heart so but thank you guys we appreciate it [Applause] we'll move on to new business i think there were some viola administrative guidelines but that was informational that's correct those were just given to you as an inform right great um next we'll go on to programs i think nikki i am going to share with you some updates on cairs and esser can view that clicker thank you so as part of uh coveted response and some economic stimulus money we have been lucky to be the recipients of some grants over the last couple years that have been significant grants so i'd like to update and share tonight how we've been using that money so far and the plans for that money for the future so the three largest grants that we have received have all been three esser grants the first grant was referred to as cares originally and then they decided they wanted to rename it sr1 and so that was 780 000 for us sr2 is about 3.2 million dollars that we were awarded and sr3 was 7.3 million so they progressively increased we have additional funds that are gear funds that were awarded by the state to increase connectivity for students and staff we received 1.6 million dollars for that that includes st mary's non-public school and those dollars however i would mention the majority of that grant actually is administered by ipbs public broadcasting indiana to actually install data equipment that 1.3 our portion that we use within the schools and control those dollars is 240 000.
okay [Music] good evening everyone wow good evening everyone here we go time to wake up thank you for joining us tonight in person and also we are streaming live right now i will tell you you're going to be able to hear us just fine but taking a look we will have this presentation posted um i know people here are gonna be able to see it it's just hard to see uh from the streaming perspective but we'll make sure everyone gets it as i said i'm mike woods i'm the principal here at dot my assistant principal john paracino and i will be going through an orientation this evening the purpose of this evening is really just to give you guys just a 10 000 foot view basics of what dot is about first and foremost we're here to support your kids john and i both parents as well we treat our kids here at school as we treat them as our own that's one of the things about god that we take a lot of pride we consider ourselves a family um between john and i might you know ourselves uh we really don't take ourselves very serious but we do take the work that we do here extremely serious so it's the middle school years um i can tell you i'm a middle school parent as well i have a daughter who's in eighth grade anyone else have middle school children right now this is all pretty much your first first going through okay so pretty much anything we say tonight they're totally gonna believe us it's gonna be great um you're in for it i can tell you we're gonna talk about just a developing adolescent and those types of things over all the years that i've been here i know you're saying way too long yes um as much as i preached about having a middle school child having a middle school child the words i say tonight i'm like oh you guys have no idea what you're in for but um but most of all uh we want you guys to be able to ask us some questions tonight any curiosities you have about dodge the program those types of things i'm going on the uh thought that next year um obviously my hope is that we're back to pre-code conditions so we're going to be talking about that tonight pre-code conditions that we had including lunch ways bell schedules all those types of things if things change we'll make the changes okay so to kind of start us off this is our mission in vision this was something that was highlighted right actually right before the shutdown we were going through a process talking about our mission statement and what our vision is for dive middle school so most importantly we want to provide that diverse and challenging educational experience that addresses the needs of every student not just our high excelling students not our middle of the road students not our struggling supporting students every single student so i'm going to talk a little bit about that in some of the professional development that we've been doing and some of the exercises that we've been doing over the last couple of years uh we strive to be a community that values and promotes respect and lifelong learning that word respect i tell you right now is just telling my team leaders today we're dealing with you know kids and adolescents who have been obviously altered throughout this entire covet experience and we are seeing some of those effects we are seeing some kids who you know maturity wise i think just for the teachers this is not scientific but just teachers themselves saying the kids seem not as mature as they had in the past and so we're working on that we're reiterating some school rules we're not having these all out like one thing i can tell you we have more kids that spring in our hallways that we're trying to get a touch of trying to uh get a wrap on that was something we never dealt with the kids really understood obviously we're not sprinting in the hallways okay our lunches are not that good they're good not that good okay our vision and this is really something that you know as we started going through our division this is a this is a tall challenge but in order for us to empower all of our students with the academic social emotional skills to lead the world tomorrow how do we get that independence towards our student what does the gradual release model look like from us standing in front of the classroom with us doing some collaborative activities together for students to then independently start making some choices about their education and i'll go through a couple of things with that in a moment we also have our core values we call them our five c's you know these are the values that we promote not only to our students but i promote to teachers and i promote to our parents um so caring and collaboration our community that we're building being consistent in the communication all five are vital during the adolescent years not just here in the classrooms not just here at dot but also at home when we start talking about what is it that's going to be positive for our students what is it that's going to be positive to help our children grow some of this more than ever right now has got to not only happen at school but also we take a look at consistency what does it look like at home we talk about and give us the recommendations about homework um about structuring homework what that should look like at home how it has never really been an issue from before now we're seeing an issue where we really have to tell parents based upon what they're saying to us of how can i get my kids to do the homework your kids just all of our kids went through that independence period during the shutdown and then that following year of really kind of not having that really strong strong base for us to develop some of that organization uh at home when doing homework and those types of things so those are things we're going to partner with you on how we can best support all of our kids all right so as mike said i'm john paraceno i'm the assistant principal um just a little bit about myself and mike as well uniquely both of us are graduates from dad um john graduated way before i did yeah and it's actually pretty unique i was just asking mike about it he's at the tail end of seeing parents in uh in the crowd that he went to school with uh now i'm starting to see parents who went to school my brothers because i had other brothers in town and starting to see parents that that went to school with me i also live in town so i have two two children at highland and one hopefully getting ready to start at darcy and also as mike said really tonight we want to use as the opening of that that start of parent school and student relationship and starting that communication so really starting that dialogue tonight because that's probably the most vital thing making sure that that partnership is working to support your children and and making sure that they're successful we often will hear from a parent later on that you guys are so busy i didn't want to bother you with that we kind of let it go we let it go for a little bit too long we know how much you guys are doing that's what we do we take great pride in that it's having that communication and nipping things in the bud before they become the bigger issue is when we have the most success so please don't ever hesitate to get on the computer and send the email um don't ever hesitate to pick up the phone and call us i think like we love the phone call we love the fact that now we're getting to have that face-to-face interaction with parents and be able to have meetings again something that we completely lost with kobit but it's great we said the parents parents are seeing our face for the first time this is the first time other than our music concerts that we've had parents able to come into our building and so we're just really excited to re-establish that in terms of academics obviously our teachers are using powerschool as a means of communicating academic success they're also using google classroom on the day-to-day stuff and that's how they're communicating with our students and later in the month i'll give a plug to what we call preps for success we invite our sixth and seventh grade parents to come in and it's kind of a workshop model 20 minute workshops led by our school counseling department and they'll talk about how to navigate power school how to navigate google classroom other topics are building the resilient child so again another means of us being able to come together and open that line of communication as mike kind of made light of a little bit we are dealing with with middle school kids in the adolescent and so yes sometimes we have to throw logic and common sense out the window because it's we're never going to be able to to kind of explain that in some of their decision making they're a little bit more influenced by peers and so obviously as parents that's why we're always uh kind of impressing upon our kids the importance of who we hang around with who we surround ourselves with um and sometimes the values that we're teaching at home and the morals we teach at home sometimes with kids they take a back seat to those influences and so that's where it's our responsibility and where we want to be able to intervene and impress upon kids the importance of those high values those high morals that we know are being instilled at home and we know are valued in our community the parent and child relationship it really goes i feel like right now that my wife and i are the son and and everything is is revolving around us as the parents that love hanging out with us they are doing that for us but they come here and that that starts to change and that's you know that's difficult for parents but it's it's common they're kind of feeling their way around around the world and kind of discovering who they are and that's also a really cool stage some people think we're crazy for enjoying this stage but but it really is fun getting to see that mature development and really turn into young men and young ladies the consequences part some of the decisions they are making we want to prevent the lifelong consequences and that's things that we worry about i'll be a hundred percent honest that where we see that the most is social media usage and tele and phone usage cell phone usage you almost feel like parents are in a difficult spot we always say and i it's funny before my daughter got to middle school i've never given my daughter a cell phone i've never given my daughter a cell phone all of a sudden christmas is coming along his daughter's getting ready to go to middle school and complete cave at the woods house because you want to uh you don't want to ostracize your kid either and so you want them you know to have them parents either very valuable communication tools you'll see later on we offer so many clubs and activities and you want to know where your child is it's great for safety and they could really be great as long as we're we're putting in some kind of guidelines and rules surrounding them to make sure they don't have those those lifelong consequences the only addition i would add here is that please know that we understand kids are going to make poor choices those poor choices we know it didn't come from you we know you didn't instill these poor choices at the dinner table we know what people are about because we get on the phone with parents to say hey so-and-so did this gasps oh my i never thought they would do that i never it's okay we both know that this is a great community of parents parents are teaching their kids the right thing they're going to make some poor choices and guess what we want to make it a learning opportunity for them to make sure that they make the better choice on the next time except those of you that we didn't go to school with you by the way i saw a couple familiar faces attributes of a successful middle school student i would say these are attributes that we are working on developing and and this will not be something that is that they're fully there and developmentally understanding the adolescent brain and where they are their brain isn't fully developed to master these things so probably the biggest frustration that we'll hear from a parent or a kid that might be struggling is really executive functioning skills their backpack is such a mess there's there's some there's papers from september and we're now in march uh and that's typical especially if you have a boy time management sometimes for them so it's we build in things throughout the school day we have supports to try to help them work on building their executive functioning skills and then obviously at home helping provide those supports is definitely helpful i would say being in the district the elementary schools really do a great job of kind of instilling those habits and not much changes when you come to that it's pretty much that same we're emphasizing about 20 to 25 minutes of math practice and then also the 20 to 25 minutes of reading when they're at home and homework are there some more project-based learning things that they're working on and and things that might be going on in the classroom that they're also taking home short but we are not uh thinking we know their lives are busy we are not overloading them and overwhelming them with academic work uh at home middle school kid is still a kid and they should have that that time at home to to decompress and do some other things outside of school the most important thing that we can build in any of our children from an early age we know all that all the kindness campaigns that we do throughout the school district is obviously empathy as well and getting our kids to be empathetic learning teaching them to be good people i always say to my kids i could care less how they did on the math test and as true or not true as that is but the most important thing is i want my kid to be a good person and i want them to be empathetic and sympathetic protectors and we'll do those empty things throughout the year this past monday um at our win which i know is the next slide it's kind of our advisory program um um we had an empathy lesson in there and our empathy lesson really came around just so you know you know what we're going to be kind of still talking about next year are the masks i talk to the kids just like this in the cafeteria while they're eating the lunches just about masks are related to circumstances and we're using the term circumstances you might have a circumstance where you don't have to wear your mask you might have a circumstance where you have to wear your mask and guess what both are fine and so we're talking about empathy even when it starts coming out we would never want a kid looking at another kid like really you're still in a mass because that's middle school and kids will be curious about that so we're taking you know we took that piece i coached our teachers into if that you know we see that type of thing happening let's move the kids on because we wanted we wanted monday to be like any other day at god middle school and i can tell you talking with teachers and those types of things we've had some pretty good success so i've talked to some parents who i know who want their kids in math still i wanted to make sure we check in that no one will say anything to them we talked to parents who didn't have masks checked in with them to make sure kids weren't saying anything about that um and i think we did a good job so everyone had said you know that they kind of moved on um and we uh i thought we had a pretty good success bar on that um some of the things that we're working on as a community with our teachers our uh instructional assistants and those types of things just up here i wanted you guys to kind of see tying back to our mission statement tying back to our core values and our vision this is how we go through this so these past couple of years through the pandemic we've been working with the connecticut center for school change those who are in education i know they've been working with a lot of districts in this area as well and something that they call accelerated learning does it mean that we teach them faster it just means we have to get learning itself not pacing long-wise but learning we have to make sure kids are staying on top with how are they learning we worked with developing some deep learning tasks and scaffolding those supports as well to make sure that we're not leaving any students behind all of our students in our classes want to make sure that they understand what the task is what the goals are and they're meeting those standards we've talked a lot about probably over the past four years now social emotional learning for academic success has been one of our district goals we took the opportunity for the last two and a half years to really focus in to ensure that we have success for the kids socially emotionally to be ready to learn social emotional i know it has been kind of a term that we're throwing around pretty broad we're not turning our teachers into counselors or anything like that but when kids start having those issues we want to make sure we're supporting them with counseling and those types of things this year is really the next two bullets and that's really about creating choice for engagement and scholarships so that when we develop these deep learning paths we're offering choice in there we want our kids to be able to connect to the content that they're learning how does it relate to them how does it relate to today how will relate to them tomorrow so we really work hard at making sure we get those choices that's a challenge i'm not saying that we're teaching this in one year and all of our teachers are masters at it this will be some long-term learning goals at the time period uh we have also we're taking a look at reflection on learning and choosing an academic pathway that choice instead of the teachers providing those choices kids are making choices so we take a look at i'll use our math department they have what they call what they call an oil sheet that is blue on one side and pink on the other and they have different levels of problems within that pink and blue what our what we're trying to do is trying to get kids to understand where their learning is so that they can start taking a look at you know what i really want to challenge myself and do some of these problems on the more pink side of the page or i want to you know i really need to get support a little bit more on some of these problems so i'm going to kind of take a look at these um problems on the blue side of the page our hope is that you get that student who says you know what probably was me always thinking the easy way out okay but how can we possibly take kids and say hey listen you know what i think you're ready for this and we're doing a lot of this type of teaching a lot of this type of really intentional design we're using language as well we're using motivational language for kids saying you know what i know you can do this we did this here and being able to tell kids that you have the ability to do it again we want to make sure kids are in that learning mindset we're doing a lot of this work in collaboration with an author consultant mike anderson he's an author from ascd he has three books uh learning to choose choosing to learn tackling the motivation prices and then what we say and how we say it matter how many people in here are educators any educators anyone been absolutely mind blown with some of their professional development or did we just kind of muddle through i'll tell you in all my years of teaching i've been doing this for over 20 years mike anderson is the first guy who i can tell you has taken my staff and really kind of elevated he is engaged with them he is energized with them i have teachers of the first time here knocking on the door hey listen i i had an appointment with mike anderson was here uh i cancelled it so i don't need coverage people are really starving for a lot of things that he's doing he's really been a great uh i would say a godsend for our teachers to make sure that they're supported through this time as well this is a hard time for teaching uh we wanted to make sure we have the right supports we're gonna have a few transition process and i know you just mentioned one piece but i forgot to so this is going to be a year-round process not only for students but also for parents so obviously this is our first engagement with all of you but we are still going to have discover daddy that's a pta sponsored event that we're going to have in may pretty much it's a massive i would call it almost like a a massive park event that we have out there with food trucks and kind of community uh based uh elements we're gonna have some tours inside the building to take people around it's really an exciting day not just because it's food trucks but it's really a nice day for us to celebrate we have all of our sports and activities out there with tables and booths we have community people coming in that really focus on the adolescent age student so that we can say hey listen this is not just about that this is also about the cheshire community and other supports and activities that kids can get involved in so it's a really great activity as well i leave the link one out this afternoon for the online course selection am i correct on that not yet then it might go out at midnight tonight then so um so tomorrow there should be a link to everyone's email that's in our system if you check that email there will be an online course selection students are going to register for the unified arts which we'll talk about that in a second those are your your music choices world language choices and then we'll put kids in our career in technical education choices as well in april um our curating group leads tours of our building to the sixth grade students so for the first time in two years we're actually going to have the kids come up here like we used to do so they'll come up here they get a nice little presentation and then off they go with our pure advocates it's a student-led uh tour of our building it's really an exciting time and then we also have a summer orientation usually happens the week before school we also use that opportunity as well every student who's coming up to us gets a brand new chromebook so we do our chromebook distribution and then we have another summer orientation where we have some of our staff and also our peer advocates um will also be around for a kind of a part two so that kids understand they'll have their schedule with them and then walk them through uh dot the school itself and you'll kind of get more of a detail but we kind of have compartmentalized um where kids are supposed to be soldiers seventh grade students are upstairs on the second floor eighth grade students are downstairs on the first floor and then we have our unified arts classes that are kind of tied pretty much all the way around the school mainly on the first floor with world language on the second floor um so that's our transition process and um oh god wasn't even just said prep for success i'm sorry practically success which we'll be putting out an email as well that's coming up pretty soon i'll do more on sports um i want to talk a little bit more just kind of some individual pieces that we have so obviously our biggest resource and supports are our teachers um teachers have well when i say i was talking about our team leaders today you know teachers have been breaking their backs all across here at don as well to make sure our kids are supported i could not be more proud of the group of professionals that we have here at dodd we have really a great crew this is my fourth middle school i've worked in um and i can easily say that this is one of this is probably the most dedicated staff i've worked with so i'm really proud of that um we do have a couple of supports in systems so uh we do have just like the elementary schools have we have a response to intervention system which when kids are not meeting benchmark or not meeting goals um we kind of put some we formalized some paperwork with some goals to track students and track data and also have some supports there as well that happens in the regular education world we also have two other areas that deal with students that have disabilities one is i'll stick to the bottom one special education students with individualized education plans those students who have ieps in sixth grade those automatically get carried up to seventh grade okay you should be starting to have some of your transition meetings at this time uh to transition up here to the middle school same with section 504 plans those four plans excuse me those support plans will also be transferring uh up here to seventh grade those students in those two areas qualify under the individuals with disability act um and they also have certain protections and those types of things if you don't understand what those are means your child doesn't have one okay you would have it would be announced you have meetings and those types of things so just wanted to give you those level supports some people have questions about that just know that your plans will carry on here social emotional supports we have our school counselors we have two school counselors we have um one counselor lindsay deangelo who's moving up to cheshire high school but we just had jessica tressel who will be this class's uh school counselor she started today did fantastic through the interview process we're all really excited to have her we have social workers and school psychologists those are really targeted supports mainly working working with kids with ieps and then we have chewie chewie is is our little guinea pig that we have um he's taken care of by staff down at pps uh and we sent chewie probably to our most sensitive cases it's amazing to see kids when they want to come down and see a rather large short-term rat as i call but really it's it's really an amazing thing to see how kids interact with pets um i will tell you when kids are really in crisis it's almost like you know um and really how kids are just you know working with um working with our pets um i will say chewy is the last of our pets that we had we also had two therapy dogs so we're look we're still in the market and taking a look at um um so for people that aren't in education or aren't in a middle school environment what we do is we use what's called a teaming model and so i'll just explain a little bit about what achieving model does our kids are coming to us right now uh kind of all over the place socially so some kids are navigating their social world and are very successful and come some kids struggle with them and i would say that they're you know kids that's very natural their social compass is all over the place i joke with parents some kids don't have a social compass some kids bought them at the dollar store some kids have some really good ones what we do to try to make that big environment these kids coming together now for the first time as a class of over 300 we use a teaming model to make it a little smaller so we have three teams and now we take that and essentially we divide the teams into three groups of one hundred and i'll explain this team c in a minute because we do something a little bit different because we've also probably heard a lot of the community about enrollment going up and that our enrollment is going up with your son and daughter's classes they are larger than the eighth grade that's going out so what happens is those hundred kids will share the same language arts teacher the same social studies teacher the same science teacher and the same math teacher so all 100 kids will have the same teacher and we pod them in the building so those four classrooms are near each other the kids don't have to navigate an entire building when mike was a student here when i was a student here it was called dodge junior high school and it operated almost like a high school your math department would be in one wing your history department and another and you're trying to navigate an entire building and it makes things feel really big so we try to shrink that down for the kids by using the teaming model and what it does is we allow time for our teachers to collaborate and they can say you know i've really noticed this out of johnny is anybody noticing something different out of him in their class and they can work together the four teachers that share the same student to come up with support so it's a it's kind of another safety net for kids that being said we want them to have a middle school experience where they are meeting new kids and they are meeting everyone in their class so when they're off team which are the unified arts classes like the musics the pe's the tech heads we we mix the teams together and we allow them to kind of interact with all the kids within their class so it's it's kind of a nice blend of pull and and it allows us to still try to make for some kids what seems like an enormous change make that feel a little bit small we have a six-person team and what that simply means is in order to keep class sizes down we have two teachers one teacher will teach two sections of math and two sections of science and the other teacher will teach two seconds two sections of language arts in two sections of social studies if we made them a team on their own your child would only have two teachers and wouldn't get the opportunity to experience what it's like to have four different teachers so we put six teachers on one team and we just divide more than a hundred for that team that team might get 130 kids on it and we divide the 130 amongst the six teachers so it does two things that allows us to shrink class sizes for kids down um and it it does save instead of creating a fourth team it saves money on having to have two more teachers so i won't lie in that regard but what it will do then is it kind of offsets that and allows for the smaller environment and by putting them as a group of six it still allows the kids to have four different teachers so we try to assure that a kid won't if they have a teacher for science they won't have that same teacher for math they'll go to the other math teacher and i know that for some people it may sound like i'm speaking in a different language i'd be more than happy to go into further teaching people they're thoroughly confused i'll just say now we do not have the big team upstairs in seventh grade it's currently in eighth grade so i know there are people who have been here before we get sometimes you know they are familiar with the teachers on what team color and those types of things we have yellow seal of a room upstairs when i put this probably looks like we're putting the team upstairs in seventh grade just taking a look at projection numbers um there is going to be a little bit of a shuffle with some of the teachers so it's not you know for those uh you know who may be watching who said oh i remember that that maroon team those teachers were unbelievable i might have to start kind of uh reshuffling the deck here a little bit so um just to give you a heads up on that that's probably one other thing i should emphasize in teaming the only classes where we use homogeneous grouping for is matt and mike will talk a little bit about math after after that social studies english language arts and science are kids are heterogeneously grouped there is not a smart team in a not programming all the teams will have the same programming on them so we we divide the kids up the kids that are heterogeneously grouped for math each team will offer that math track on it so we've done a lot in that regard we don't call them team a b and c because people naturally oh that's thc that must be that team must be the double team you get a lot of that back in the day they used to call them by jewels they were the rubies diamonds all the diamonds must be this much so we go like colors now to try to get rid of any of any of that line itself our daily schedule basically a student's schedule will consist of homeroom the four core classes that are on team that we talked about and they'll have three different ua classes their core classes are 52 minutes in a day and all this i can tell you our teachers can't wait to get back to this exact schedule because this is not our focus schedule but they uh you'll notice there's no last breaks in there or uh anything like that so we really get to utilize the academic time in the classroom you'll also notice that there is like an offset of a 56 minute class there and that's generally that's hidden during lunch time for the kids and like john said i mean i'll tell you right now we're running six lunch waves the reason why we have to run six launch ways i can't fit more than one team in here i've worked in places where you can fit an entire grade in here which makes life beautiful uh but that said um six launch waves we go from nine just before 10 o'clock before 10 o'clock in the morning we call that brunch goes all the way to 1 30.
well good evening everyone and welcome to uh the regularly scheduled board meeting for the azusa unified school district board of education on march 1st 2022. uh do apologize coming back from closed session a little late and so we are opening our open session meeting at 703 pm and we will begin with our flag salute let's stand we'll move to item 4.2 which is roll call board member arianes present board member cruz gonzalez here board member bo here board member rodriguez pena president and i board member greer m also here which moves us to item 4.3 approval of the agenda is there a motion on the floor moved by board member adianas second second by board member rodriguez pena any discussion hearing none let's move to a vote we'll go ahead and take a hand vote uh number adianas yes board member cruz gonzalez yes board member beau yes board member rodriguez pena yes and i board member greer i'm also yes so the motion passes five to zero remember audience are you able to join in is it letting you i mean log out login so that moves us to item 5.0 report action of closed session items and 5.1 approval of resolution 21 2220 release or reassignment of an administrator number 21 22 10 59 is there a motion on the floor 5.1 second moved by board member rodriguez pena second by board member ariana's any discussion then we'll move to a vote and the motion passes three to two moving on to item 5.2 approval of resolution 21 22 21 release from employment of temporary certificated employee motion two approved 5.2 moved by board member ajanis second second by board member rodriguez pena any discussion and we will move to a vote and the motion passes five to zero moving to item 5.3 approval of a resolution 21 22 22 reduction or discontinuance of particular kinds of services is there a motion on the floor make a motion to approve 5.3 moved by board member rodriguez pena second by board member adianas any discussion then we move to a vote and the motion pass is 5-0 moving on then to item 6.0 items from the floor public comment on agenda or non-agenda items and specifically 6.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board of education on agenda or non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education on any agenda or non-agenda items when the public wishes to address the board on an agenda item they may fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise their hand while in zoom attendance the board will take blue card requests first followed in order by speakers at the podium and then those in zoom attendant and again i do want to remind everyone that there to please keep your eye on the three minute marker because if you surpass the three minutes i will need to stop you to allow for uh equity for all of our speakers to have no more than three minutes so if you keep an eye on that timer and stop then i don't have to stop you and i apologize in advance if if i'm needing to interrupt you um with that we'll go ahead and begin with rebecca lopez i have some pronouns i don't know if you'll get them now or later a visual aid thank you good evening school board members and district staff opinions don't affect facts but facts should affect opinions so here tonight i remind us of the fact these have all been shared at the district website and with the school board members i share these facts and ask you to listen reflect and then reconsider it is within your power and you can still make a motion to amend your previous vote regarding the elementary school closures in the district as a representative of our entire city your constituents are requesting your attention we are voicing our concerns facts should affect opinions facts should affect your vote here are the facts dalton and lee elementary schools are 0.8 miles apart they are both within the new trustee area 4.
um the only the only measurement so i know you can't see it but you can see the yellow and the blue um yeah from there so the um currently with the 60 foot minimum lot width 39 comply with that 60 feet or greater and 61 are not um don't comply are non-conforming they are less than 60 feet so it adds up to 100. so there's no like missing piece no no no i know so like if you we have the existing and then we have the like proposed right so like it was one of the next charts where the like the yellow i think it's much okay the blue my question is like oh how low do you have to go what is that like how do you eat away at the blue there you go thank you okay yeah so a bunch of them yeah or is it a bunch of different random things got it yeah yeah that's yes then i'll just leave you with um because you can't see but um going down to 40 feet from 60 to 40 will go from 31 percent to 13.
those are not those aren't just alternative certification but those are our teachers new to the district so we know that we have the supports and will be able to do that the job embedded training and coaching besides miss longing we're also going to have a coach that assists and so the teachers will be able to during the day be provided embedded coaching we're going to have one day a month where we're going to pull them and provide a substitute in their classroom so that they're able to work with their cohort it's nice you know when you're kind of off on your own you might be the only one on your school they can go together and talk and so we'll be doing that as well we also want to make sure that we're providing evidence-based professional development so we know what professional development [Music] yields great teachers and we want to be sure that we are providing that from the very beginning and they're not just learning something again on the side or in theory but they're learning as they're actually doing i also want to extend the calendar and i'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide but what we'll want to do is teachers won't start the first day when kids start we'll be able to embed professional development and get them prepared before the kids arrive on that campus or before the other teachers do and then again at the end we'll be able to provide with institutional recommendation a 12-year certificate now that is a certificate that allows them to teach in the state of arizona so that's what we'll be able to provide for them upon successful completion so that's not reciprocal to other states correct okay we are not an accredited you know university so yes we are only allowed within the state so again um the teachers are going to teach while they're in the program if we have a need for teachers and we have classrooms where we are looking for quality candidates we want to invest in the teachers and the staff right now that we have and provide opportunities for them so they will again as i mentioned have that extended work calendar it's hard to teach all day go home and plan for the day do all your grading and then still have to do all of your university coursework this will eliminate that because we will have it all embedded throughout so while our teacher is on the half days or on wednesdays or before school starts when they're with the rest of the staff providing and receiving professional development our teachers will be able to do it then um when the coach is visiting and when mary's visiting they'll be able to do some additional job embedded professional development so we're excited about that for them that takes a lot of load off they can focus in on the teaching and on the kids for sure the as they the compensation they're going to be hired as a beginning year teacher so they will have a beginning year teacher salary they will have health insurance and all other teacher benefits so what they'll do is they will start two weeks before the school year begins before kids arrive on the campus and they will work with all members with the special education we'll have special education involved we will have our professional growth and development specialists involved we'll have our curriculum instruction and assessment coordinators and coaches and mary and team will also be there as well and any of the rest of us that need to but we'll provide that for them ahead of time when we have fall break and spring break we are now at the two week period so we will have them come in two days in fall break and two days in spring break to to be able to take a break sometimes in a breather and kind of get them ready for the next quarter which i think will be extremely important for them and then they will extend their contract three year three days after the end of the school year so they will go through our study that will be part of their day their work day instead of them having to go you know on their own time they're just doing it as part of their contract and then one additional one the best part of all no tuition so it will be free of charge for them and you know we um are looking for um individuals that already are invested in gilbert like what better people what better individuals so when we spoke at superintendent council and we um you know asked you know how many for example of our support staff have a college degree and many of them do we had one individual raise his hand and like wants more information and then when we spoke to the teacher counsel a teacher raises their hand she's asking for this professional that's in her classroom and we're like what school do you go to he's our we got him we have his name already so um up to 30 30 participants um in the program we're going to as uh mr mcintosh mentioned there will be three types of certificates so we will have 30 participants in this first year in cohort a or cohort one however we want to say it and again that number will be based on what the district and school needs are if we don't have an opening we're not going to hire 30 participants it's going to be based on what our openings are well just so people know usually how many openings do we have in a school year as we're finishing one year and beginning the next so a normal average summer we probably hired close to 200 teachers okay so so so these 30 participants we should be easily be able to find a slot for them a place oh yeah okay so the pathway program what is what does the coursework look like what does the structure itself look like we know that we have to provide the pedagogy and the training that teachers would receive at a university or at a community college the beauty for us is we're going to be able to embed it all completely through the instructional framework and so teachers will be provided the knowledge and skills and also the support to be able to connect what does it mean to connect with kids what does it mean to connect with colleagues what does it mean to design meaningful learning opportunities for students what does it mean to instruct you know and get students engaged in the learning and then again that our um assess how do we know that students have learned and how are we reflecting upon our practice so that will be completely embedded with their learning as well so the certification requirements are that they have to participate and complete all of the requirements within the application in our program they have to receive a satisfactory performance evaluation by their administrator and also by the program administrator mary and then they have to show that they have achieved at least one year of academic growth at a rate equivalent to the state average for the students associated with that so the expectation is still the same for these teachers as it is for all of our teachers with the growth within the student growth while they're teaching and then we will provide an institutional recommendation to each teacher upon sex successful completion of the pro pathway program then they'll be certified with the with the state and then next steps right now we have completed the application with a lot of work from mary especially pulling everything together for us we will submit submit that application to ade ad has a committee that then reviews and any quality program they move that forward to the state board of education and submit that so that they would approve it as well at that point once we know that we're approved we'll begin recruiting staff and meaning looking for a coach and then also recruiting the participants which are students slash teachers depending on how you look at that um when we were looking at who we started thinking about we have flex subs they're amazing they're so dedicated that are so invested in the community what a great way to see so we'll be taking recommendations from principals and also from individuals that are um interested we know that we have paras that are um interested and we know that you know like i mentioned the one in this uh superintendent council he has a different kind of degree but he so loves being in the spice classroom that's the kind of teacher that we want right that already knows what they what the environment is and what they're going to be able to do so that's pretty exciting and that was really it was pretty interesting because that was in the support staff council which comes before the teacher council the teacher that he works with is in the teacher council and she brought him up and it was this is how it's supposed to work i guess the best way to put it yeah we'll also have an application um and also interview process and that will as once we are approved we'll be able to post and and have people express their interest through application and then we'll interview and see which candidates will of course involve the principles like we principals aren't the ones that choose their teachers always so um well it would be lovely if there's an opening on a campus where someone has already perhaps been a black sub or a para we'll do our best to try to match them if that's you know what the two parties want to do that would be ideal but that's not all we're going to we still want more we think bigger right than that so that would be year one it's a two-year program so we will implement next school year the for our first cohort at the same time we'll be planning and submitting an application for a fourth certification and that for certification is seventh through twelfth grade so our secondary so that we're able to begin with them in the 23-24 school year so as our first cohort is finishing up and going into year two we'll begin a new cohort for that year one and we're hoping to grow and if there's an interest and a need we'll definitely want to continue with that so a couple questions um how many staff do we anticipate we're going to need for this program specifically we have right now um miss lonyan mary and then also um a a program coach okay so um and that that's a reasonable size for 30 um for them to be able to support them regularly like someone in their classroom at least once a week someone going through and giving them the support in any way they can i did a similar program in a different place and i remember the teachers like texting saying are you going to come today and so it's really nice to be able to develop a bond 30 is a really nice number to develop that bond and provide that support if because their special education is the certification for two of the areas if there is a need mrs grossenbacker in special education right now we have coaches that support our tir program teachers and so we're hoping that they see the advantage of working within our pathway instead so it would just be a matter of shifting what we already have for staffing because they would not necessarily be needed as much in the tir because those numbers are lower and so that's what we'll look at too when we see what it's um the need is okay and how long will it take a participant to go through the program it will take two years for them to complete the program okay and are there certain a number of hours that they have to put in and just for example having an instructional coach come in or mrs longin come in does that count towards their hours that they would need for whatever ade recommends i can um so the law is written very vaguely actually and and that is maybe to the benefit of um homegrown programs you know when we've talked with the ade folks in this department um and so it can be very much fitting what gilbert needs um so there's no hour or day requirement whatsoever and right now what we have laid out is about 150 and yes that includes those embedded hours where either myself or coach would be going in and working with them on that campus um those are counted into because i'm presuming that if they're just teaching their classroom that doesn't count but if you're in there with them for an hour um it could be it could be modeling it could be reciprocal teaching it could be um giving some feedback on something that's going on it could be during their prep it could be during their lunch and we have you know some local lunch i bring in too and we chat you know so that there could be all different ways but um however that's managed is is built into the number of hours that we were looking okay thank you dr sanchez you have any questions not question necessarily but a couple of comments and one is appreciation for miss long and for wanting to direct this internship program for us in whatever manner that came to you but we appreciate it yes we did we appreciate that i i would imagine that you did ask nicely the other is kind of a housekeeping thing and i'm i know it is something you've already concerned yourselves with and considered and that is we know we know of the teacher shortage we're very very cognizant of that and we also have a need to do something about it and so the pro-activity on this particular uh program format is absolutely critical and appreciated at the same time we have folks who already are devoted to us who are putting lots and lots of hours into their work who have gone through the typical traditional teacher preparation program as a life mission and i want us to make sure that we always consider the parity and that one program format or certificate does not overshadow the other uh because i think that would show a lack of appreciation for those who have been devoted to us as a district and i want to make sure that we're we're really concerned about that as well so as we look at bringing in new folks into the profession let's appreciate the old folks too and there's we have a lot of plans our administrators have been working um with creating continuous improvement plans um and through that continuous improvement process in ways to support teachers we will continue with the normal induction process that will support our teachers in year zero through three depending we will also continue to provide all the professional development campus and district-wide too so yes thank you yeah great i i'm excited about this too and i think it's a great investment both with needing teachers and also in people who are here working with us and excited to be part of gilbert and willing to to take this extra training to be full-fledged teachers i think that's a great idea a great way to attract great people again i guess i i heard so we needed basically one more position i guess i just am interested in what it will cost the district i think it's an investment and i'm glad that the applicants and participants i think it's a huge benefit for them that it's tuition free i think that gives a huge thing but what do you think as far as other costs that you see for us as a district the other costs that i would see it would be the sub cost the one day a month substitute cost whether in professional training coach position and there's any other staffing-wise we also wanted to be to provide and not just for this program but what we've learned with induction while we have a great induction program all throughout gps um we want to be sure that we have site support for them as well so as a support and a cost that we'll have is we will have a site mentor on the campuses and we will be providing a small stipend to them so but that won't be specifically for this program it will be across the board but that's just something that we've decided is important just to have someone you know a lot of teachers invest in new teachers and that just adds sometimes to their workload so we want to be sure that we're supporting them we'll provide training for them too so that they're able to feel good about what they're doing and they're it's really clear for them about how they can support the teachers too will there be additional costs in perhaps providing that time before school or after school is out or during the holidays with for those that come in and teach perhaps no we've worked the calendar our coordinator switched it off sorry um our staff whether it be special education cia or professional growth specialist um we're able to they have an extended calendar our coordinators are 12 month and the others we can extend or flex their time and during the fall and spring break that's the time when they are already back on contract so they don't have both weeks off anyways okay and so that'll be there too all right thank you and mary can't take off ever no vacation for you gal great that sounds good so do you think there's a minimum participants that would make it a worthwhile investment yeah i don't i don't think we're gonna i think we're gonna get 30.
so i'm going to go into detail on each of those grants and the overall so these grants came through then they follow our title grant guidelines so those same type of guidelines that we follow every day for rules within title grants are mirrored in these grants as well such as like not using uh for food purchase unless it's pre-approved there's a five thousand dollar equipment threshold for approval some things of that nature in the first grant sr1 or cares was completely geared towards covid relief and then as sr2 and 3 came along other categories and choices were available to us and then finally esser two and three include something new that we've not had before which is a maintenance of equity requirement and that is intended to make sure that our highest poverty schools get the exact same resources as all of our schools the state does have a new transparency dashboard for how school corporations are spending this money available and if you don't mind clicking on that dashboard link for me i'd appreciate it this is what the dashboard looks like each school corporation is listed and what my funding they received and said that the very top it says school corporation all if you'll hit the drop down menu and turn off select all and just type a j then you'll see jenny's county pop up and you'll be able to click on it and so this shows is a quick snapshot of what funds we received you'll see that it matches what i shared on that first slide it's a visual and seth right by that 4015 is a drop down there's a plus uh the line that says 4015 yeah thank you this updates you on how much money we originally allocated how much that we had reimbursed so far and how much is remaining and then it shows the percentages of the money available to us that's left and so we'll go through that in detail in further slides i will mention if you look at this it's always going to be um behind about a month from what we've actually submitted it takes that long for the state paperwork to go through so the numbers i'm giving you are the exact up-to-date numbers right now and if you'll just go back to those slides thank you okay so cares cares itself we received 781 thousand dollars it has to be encumbered by september 22nd of this year and so we are down to you saw on the state side about 12 of that left so we have done a good job budgeting that responsibly along the life of the grant um it will need to be spent and by september of this year the allocations and cares or sr1 have to be in response to the covet emergency so it's very specific usage that has to be in response to covet and doing something to make our classrooms prepared it was approved for us in september of 2020.
so it's a band-aid fix we had massive tents out here that we had better you know better lunch ways we had four lunch waves in that um but without the tent without disturbing um pe classes and those types of things we went to this six lunch week schedule which hopefully we're gonna need soon we also have a altered schedule on mondays where we shrink those class times by about three four minutes in each class and we provide 45 minutes of the day that's something we call win and we do this on mondays to try to set kids up for success for the week so win stands for what i need other schools may call it an advisory program we've kind of shifted advisory takes place here but that's not what it all is so kids are hurt about about 10 to 11 students per adult we use pretty much every adult in the school to meet with the kids during that time we are our teachers meet and have one-on-one mentoring meetings with students they'll call power school they'll call google classroom with the kids they'll talk about where the kids might be missing assignments and they will walk kids through emailing a teacher that they're missing an assignment school assignment for we have obviously a great deal of kids that are very academically successful so we may sit with them and start having goal-setting conversations with them what are you involved in here at that are you involved in a club are you involved in a sport and trying to make that next connection for that kid to push themselves maybe socially if academically they're all set within that as well we take care of state mandated digital citizenship so we'll go over digital citizenship lessons with the students and talk about responsible use of technology the you know technology that's in their hands social media and also the technology we provide that uh here at school and then obviously mike had talked earlier about the empathy lesson so we'll have advisory lessons surrounded by empathy and kindness for students as well during that time all right so this is where the interest starts tightening up a little bit so two years ago uh canadian state legislation passed that if students took two full years of a world language it counts as a high school credit so in turn instead of starting cheshire high school or other high school well actually just goes to cheshire high school you would start with spanish 2 rather than starting in spanish 1.
this new voting area currently has a board member living there both dalton and lee elementary schools are being scheduled to remain open now let's look at magnolia and powell um elementary schools they are 0.9 miles apart they are both in the new trustee area 3.
so just again and then for the lot area um going to um 27 non-conforming but um 73 but i hear yes i'm on it i think we all understand okay quantification of what is remains in the blue pie wedges yes other questions or clarification that might be helpful for when we discuss this again go ahead commissioner weich just on the marijuana licenses if i uh one of the comment i was following and then i got a comment and now i'm confused um and i'm not sure if it was just because of how the attorney talked about it but it appeared that we were going to resolve the issue of the commenter is that correct yes that was my interpretation he was um it was my opinion was as if he only was was aware that we were deleting the table with a number of licenses per lot but we also were deleting the other paragraph that regulated the types of licenses okay because i got confused because i was like everything you're asking for is in there but you're commenting as if it's not in there so maybe it's not in there and you understand it better than i did okay so that was the first one thank you the second question which i tried to read everything and it's probably there and i just missed it are we changing the total number of licensable marijuana facilities within the city from 28.
okay but a minimum would probably be in the 20s mid-20s if it didn't make then we'd have to re consider some stuff that's interesting but i think we're going to be well into 2530 pretty easy just based on the excellent i mean talking to principals the flex subs that we have out there that are already working basically year-round right um this will give them an opportunity to have their own classrooms those pairs that have have a degree in some other form that have been here for a number of years that are excellent pair of excellent teachers are already ahead of the game so i and then we have also i think if that didn't fill it in and of itself parents i mean we have a lot of community members who may have a degree in something else that's not teaching but have been volunteering in the classrooms or working in the schools and they want to give it a you know a shot and come in and get trained and be in the classroom so it's just a another way to recruit and get people into into the classroom that we feel are high caliber will make excellent teachers and through the program and the training will be ahead of the game and those in that current so i guess that brings up two more questions for me real quick is one so how are you going to again get this information out i know that we said recruit participants but again like how would parents know you know if they're interested about it are you just are we just going to post it on websites and let principals know we're going to send direct emails out to all employees and all families okay not not wrapped up in something else it'll just be about this this is a new program and then my my final thing was so we're submitting it we're submitting our application to the ade and you've been working with them to make sure that we're approved what is when is when do we anticipate that approval coming we're hoping in the next couple weeks it's based on this state board of education's calendar and their agenda um and also ade has to go through their review process first so i would i would hope that it would be april okay and that's why we're proceeding as if we're going to be approved right but we won't be able to recruit we don't want to recruit till we're sure okay so april possibly may but hopefully hopefully really that time like okay okay thank you so much and it would start when when would the at the beginning of before next school year is when we'll be starting so july 11th is day one for their contract yes okay but that's what i want to know thank you all very much we really appreciate this thank you guys for putting this together i'm excited all right that takes us to 5.02 usfr compliance questionnaire fy2021 dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members i believe we have bonnie betts coming up anybody else oh yeah jackie madden director of finance assistant soup of business services we're going to talk about you suffer [Laughter] that is an apt word for it i'm sure yeah so um this is uh ms matinen's presentation and i'm just here to take responsibility for one of the findings so it's all yours jackie thank you miss vets dr mccord madam president members of the governing board thank you for having me tonight we are here to talk about the final fy 2021 uniform system of financial records or usfr compliance questionnaire this is the final document from our external or independent audit firm for the fy 2021.
we have three thousand dollars um remaining the projected spending activities will be uh student staff connectivity making sure that we're prepared with hot spots uh online programs that we use for learning credit recovery program support and then ongoing cleaning supply costs which increased due to coven since we've spent the majority of that grant i wanted to share with you the percentages of what we've spent so far grouped into categories so approximately 37 of our spending on that grant was for student and staff connectivity hot spots recording equipment for teachers online programs software and pla platforms for students 38 was related to covet relating supplies and equipment like masks cleaning supplies some electrostatic cleaners and water bottle filling stations seven percent was on staffing specifically to help support an additional technology technician uh covet testing staff and covent planning and then finally 18 was on classroom supplies and student support needed for covid which increased social distancing so we'd have some additional desks plexiglas barriers uh additional equipment and supplies for each kid to have an individual set then sr2 is our next grant uh approximately 3.2 million dollars it must be encumbered by september of next year so september of 2023 this same allowable cost as sr1 but it also opened up anything that we needed to support school being in session and in person so operational cost and address academic gaps that were created by covid it was approved for us in may of 2021.
you can start spanish 2 sophomore year so there's print elements in which we take a look at but we start taking a look at our 7th grade offerings we have spanish french latin and german we have the same exact ones offered uh in eighth grade the difference in seventh grade you take a world language every other day in eighth grade you take a world language every day it's still in the unified arts block so those are still 42 minute classes um but from there students will then have a choice this will be up on the website so i see cameras coming out taking pictures we'll have this up there so you can kind of take a look and see uh grade nine offerings um you have spanish two cp stands for college prep ccp stands for competitive college prep those are the those are the uh levels of the high school so you have these choices here same exact languages and also there was an italian one like i said before two years of a language here at dot counts for a high school credit the next place where high school credit is also counted is in math now this gets a little more complicated so right now and again this will be posted tomorrow you can really take a look at it looks like that's schematic for train station um that said students right now in grade six are heterogeneously grouped okay teachers are accelerating kids based upon their performance based upon uh standardized assessments and just based upon uh their interest in math as well their ability to take on uh some accelerated paces in math so from those groupings what we get is i'll kind of start from this perspective here students who are being already advanced and accelerated your teachers have already been in touch with you that is our highest track it's also our smallest collection of students i can tell you our algebra one for high school credit and seventh grade um we probably have one section of about 25 to 26 kids those are kids who are not only showing aptitude and math or showing a passion for math math comes very natural to them very easy to them and those are the um those are the kids that go in those sections the next section is pre-algebra pre-algebra probably takes up um a little bit of i would say we're about a 60-40 split right now uh 60 of the kids are in that three algebra track and all forty percent of the kids are in the grade level uh math track the biggest difference content wise it's all three algebra the accelerated pace is the difference between the two okay so where they might not get through the entire uh areas in grade seven excuse me grade level math they will have grade level three algebra in eighth grade and as you can see they can still go on to competitive prep college student college prep courses at cheshire high school pre-algebra uh they finished through that to take the high school credit algebra one um and then move to they have the option to take competitive college prep and then geometry competitive college and uh excuse me competitive college prep and college prep i can never live at the high school that said you're not set in stone kids when we start taking a look at by october kids who are sinking and swimming on this there's probably about a five percent move between some of these levels we want to make sure the kids you know our elementary teachers have done a fantastic job in accelerating the kids and preparing them and those types of things sometimes kids might be interested in something else they just don't have that math interest as much anymore so there is some movement in the beginning of the year probably by thanksgiving we hopefully have moved kids where we feel they need to be so there is some movement there okay if your child is not in the math you know the math component that they're interested in they want to be higher or want to be lower we talk with parents we work with parents but we also tell parents sometimes it happens a little bit later in the year so a student who's you know getting a b in the algebra one and parents want their child to have a uh more robust options of advanced math at the high school there is a way in which kids can take trigonometry and geometry um simultaneously at the high school sophomore year and then they're on the same track as everyone believe it or not in this track so even though you might be at a grade level you can kind of advance going through there's also a way you can double up and you're exactly back to the same path i would vision visualize this as everyone's together in sixth grade we're trying to take a look and see what kids are really performing well in math and then it kind of molds together back at the high school when some kids get math sooner than others other kids might get mad a little bit later in life i am still waiting for my opportunity in that we do take a look at some data points on this we do take a look at the sbac assessments we take a look at their grade six sopers map uh math scores we take a look at something called the map inventory that's a new one for us this year that replaced the ulsa test and then we take a look at student performance as well how not just you know my kid got a straight a or straight you know they mastered every concept and those types of things it's also about how they are performing there how are they organized what's their you know what's the pacing like for that we just want to set any student up for failure going forward okay i will at the end just say i will send out an email to our math department chair tom toscano um if anyone has any math questions all right so our offerings we talked about our uas or our unified arts offering obviously i talked about our core classes but um we really value the arts around here and i would say if you talk to mr kuner who's the head of the music department for the district uh and we know about all the great successes that our bands have had at cheshire high school and i bet he would attribute at least part of it we know how hard they work at the high school as well but to the great foundation that's established at the elementary school and also here at that so we have a great band program great orchestra and chorus program in our visual arts as well in the career and tech ed fields we have kids that get opportunities in digital design and working on computers designing things and then they get to actually see with 3d printers and some of the stuff in the wood shop actually bringing that vision to light we work in robotics multimedia communications we offer an economics class uh in the second economics class in eighth grade as well engineering and design for seventh graders we have a research skills class that takes place in the library we obviously have our state mandated pe and health we know that in one of the things coming from the elementary school kids lose recess we also know you know through studies this is the age group where kids stop playing as much stop going outside and doing things so for while we lose the recess we offer pe here every other day for students so they're still staying physically active and we find a great benefit sometimes some of our kids that are a little over active we will schedule them daily we're not kidding i will say our pe offering too is way above the state standard so what the state offers for um what the mandate is for pe we are far exceeding that standard because like john said there is no recess and then the last thing we take great pride in is typically middle schools and people that work in middle schools will offer spanish and maybe french in other districts we pride ourselves that we're able to offer german spanish french and latin and that's something that we've and i know historically our board of education have really taken great pride that we prioritize that and are able to have those different offerings for our students yeah okay sports activities and clubs again i think um we offer a great deal of sports programming here at dot from our fall winter and spring sports and you know usually the ones that are missing here people will ask can we start a middle school hockey team or when we start a middle school lacrosse team or a middle school football team to truth be told there wouldn't be anybody to play because there's not other middle schools kind of offering those sports the other thing is we have incredible youth programs in those areas and uh kids are playing plenty of lacrosse and plenty of football in those sports to wear it really would not be great for a kid's health to be playing on a middle school lacrosse team and playing in the town wide lacrosse program which we know has so much success so those are our sports offerings it's so small it's very difficult to see and i'm not going to read your every club that we offer it is on our school website as well the thing that we try to impress upon kids is to get involved i think that's probably the most important message from this slide is we know a kid that is involved that feels connected to their school is also academically going to do better so we want kids to find something to push your kid to stay involved and get connected to the school it could be the culinary club it could be we'll make a plug for our our theater group and our play matilda that's going to be coming in in a few weeks it's always very popular in town but making sure kids feel connected and get involved and it also it helps them to get around like-minded students and to connect socially so if if your son or daughter are coming home and they are not feeling connected i think this would be the first page that i would go to and try to identify an interest for your child and let a school counselor let one of us know and we'll connect them with the advisor the adult advisor of that club and try to help make that connection for your child then i know what everyone's thinking these two guys have got to be to help the advisors for the health and fitness club but there really is a wide variety of clubs if we don't have something up here if there's something that another student is interested in right now i have two kids that are one of those fingerboard skateboards yeah they want to have a bigger board skateboard skateboard club i don't know what's going to happen in that club but they found themselves they found themselves an adult advisor they're going to make some half pipes and they're going to be fingerboarding we'll do it so some of the student ideas for clubs are fantastic but then it's amazing you put out an email to staff we're going to we have kids interested in a fingerboarding club and people run and volunteer the kids are interested in it and it's something safe and keeping them involved after school our staff is always willing to support it mr woods you created a pretty popular i did i uh we created the rc club and drone club yeah so fantastic idea it sounded really good i was thinking about it but then you start seeing these drums crashing so just wanted to show you really quick our web page all of our resources our tabs across the top and along the side um we're going to be putting up a couple more um additions to this that deals with tonight uh transition process and those types of things so with that all said john i would like to open it up to some questions from the crowd all right i got that yes so you said so we will offset it with the team to say that it's uh enormously larger it wouldn't be true yeah no but it's funny because this class we're starting to see that arrow going up a little bit it's not until yeah we started so when that class starts coming through we start seeing that you know 13 is not my threshold to start adding teachers to start making the teams bigger so we can kind of go with our uh six person team and we can still get it so we're probably roughly just over 300 uh probably about three to forty i believe is the current uh sixth grade number so any answer to your question on class sizes i would say math is the one that we obviously improved by but if you're taking all of them and averaging it right now they're probably sitting between 22s and 25s and if we shift that half team that's in the eighth grade right now up it's going to dramatically drop it in probably closer to the 20s and low 20s yes is the student along with an adult for the entire year yes yep so all of our ua teachers all of our core teachers um we have our pps staff all our school counselors and those types of things we have every adult possible um so that we can make those class sizes smaller we share staff with the high school a lot of uh we have four or five world language teachers um that are shared with the high school they teach at the high school in the morning they come here in the afternoon um that was a group of teachers that was like we have to schedule this in the afternoon so we have it on monday afternoon so that we can get those cool kids the class size is really low and we we still keep that by team as well so we'll take the let's say it's the three world language teachers and we'll add them to the team and so when you're in the win class you're in with kids on your team those teachers have a better idea of what's going on on team and to be able to help guide kids yes can they study two world languages or just don't have that capacity at the middle school um we had looked into that pre-coping um it takes away from it depends upon what the interest is we can tell you that if you are selecting music for your child that runs the schedule a lot when it comes to unified arts so if they are taking music because they have an ensemble section and then they have their individual lesson sections so it does kind of take up a couple of different sections for the students um but we do have a schedule that makes it work out so that students can still explore uh our career and technical education courses as well but they could start german first time here so first time the other thing with if we did offer two world languages when they get to eighth grade it's daily and in their schedule they only have three blocks where they could take the unified arts offerings and so would it be daily that would take two of them state mandated pe and health would take the other one so they would never be able to take any kind of music classes any kind of tech classes or things of that nature and whatever language they choose are they supposed to do that for the whole time we carry for the two years you can take two years of german and say you know what i don't like this i want to try french or vice versa um and kids can make that change up to high school yeah thank you it's all kind of a there we go yes um [Music] it's an online the really when you click on um the link for it it's going to walk you through what you need to do it's a google form so i will say scott conway who who develops the form for us really does a nice job walking people through so it's going to be done at home the kids aren't going to do it at school yeah we can take a look at that i'm also that's one of the things we typically tonight would also have some of those offerings and the teachers here we're just trying to limit some of the exposure so we're going to put that on our uh on a website for people coming down here to our you know robotics and engineering and those types of things don't hold me to that because transportation is the driver for when we start in the middle because we have high school buses that come and then we have elementary buses that come so right now we're at like 807 we're running it right now so but i'm trying to go back to that previous schedule all right yes how does health work is that every semester both like or is it every other day yeah so it kind of it varies for for the two grade levels for seventh grade health is offered for a half a year every other day and once uh kids are in eighth grade it's once every four days for the entire year but it's required both years what criteria is used to split up the class of 300 students is it a brand new lottery or it's not even really random we do have constraints that go in so we do have uh from teaching to administration at the sixth grade level we have kids who might have certain classes that they have to take according to their iep um so there's different special ed classes so we load everything into constraints that need to be loaded so kids have any special requests for anything and that type of stuff then the schedule the scheduler pretty much randomizes from there it will make sure that we have requests in so that we kind of block off those kids first and then we fill the kids based upon that you have match levels in there you have music options in there you have a lot of things so it tries to balance it out as best we can and then you know taking a look over the summertime we'll go through those schedules individually and then making sure that kids have that balance okay yes yep it's going to be randomized there as well it is going to ask what your highest preferences are it's going to do that for world language as well what is your first choice second choice third choice um and then also with the uh career in tech yet now career and tech ed you might have engineering as your first choice but you don't get that until the third marking period you're still gonna get engineering you may not just get it day one school so i think in a couple of things just to clarify on the unified arts selection process is we are trying to get kids their top choices right there are also times where a kid may not have chose something but there's an opportunity in their schedule to fit it and they will get that offering in their schedule as well so we try to fill out their schedules if they're not in bed if they're not you know in orchestra something like that then we will fill out their schedule and give them another ui but we try to honor those choices that they have and like mike said we try to honor the world language one as well but there's obviously so many seats but again it's randomized right anyone where i was uh yeah so how many ui once they choose that it's just for seventh grade because we'll be going through the same exact process for eighth grade as well so those choices is is more or less preferences but what we do is just to fill the sections but you can we offer engineering which is only a one-quarter class so that same class is offered four times in a year so you may not get it in the first marking period but you'll get it maybe in the second third or fourth part okay so for the those career and technical education classes most of the kids get all the offerings of that okay have you seen the link i've never seen how many they have them puts all of them oh yeah over here yes um so if you're part of the club or uh um it varies but anywhere from you know some of them might be a little bit quicker than others so anywhere from like 3 45 to like 4 30.
this new voting area currently does not have a voting member living there both magnolia and powell elementary schools are scheduled to close this area also just closed gladstone elementary two years ago according to the approved trustee scenario map the population difference in these areas for zeros ages 0 to 17 years old is only 1.7 that's the variance between the two districts while the population density is a valid concern this data shows that essentially the same amount of students need access to schools yet one area has two schools and the other area has none if these elementary schools closures in the southeast side of azusa don't change there will be a major traffic jam to the west magnolia students will go to the closest school at murray bringing the capacity to 99 full powell students can't go to magnolia so we'll look to lee which would bring that capacity to 100 this would leave a lopsided influx of students assuming that they don't just try to leave the district altogether and if families look to the east for other school options this will continue to bring down the azusa school district enrollment number this could cause additional school closures and then what closely then after spending millions to improve it widening the geographic gap of available schools to the entire east side of azusa board members i urge you to reconsider and make a motion to revoke save the schools that are keeping azusa relevant in the region thank you for your time thank you miss lopez next we have jesus carrillo good evening board members board president i'm going to come to you um you guys know all the facts uh that they're posted everywhere everyone keeps talking about facts um i don't i don't think your decisions are based on fox so i'm going to come to you as a parent and as a member of the community as of the last two weeks we've voiced our concerns as a community we've spoken to several community members parents teachers not only of magnolia but of the other schools that we will be transferring to no one really knew which leads me to believe that i don't think enough is being done to notify right when your terms are up they're everywhere right signs everywhere vote for me i'm up i'm doing this i can do this i can do that when impactful decisions about closing schools for the rest of your child's basically you know education are being done i think more needs to be done to make communities aware that's one another one is um i've reached out to every single one of you board members thank you president grier for getting back to us man of your word you spoke to us you let us present you with our opinions facts very candid very open discussion superintendent ortega thank you very much another you you met with me met with several other um parents um board member rodriguez pena thank you very much for your call that that's the type of i guess board members we would like to continue to have um for the ones i did not mention i sent numerous emails haven't gone back i know you've reached out to other families but i think if if you say hey reach out to me and there's three emails i would expect you know some level of response so with that being said the magnolia community did a walk-in talk which i think every board member was invited to we had a great uh showing of families and we had our little ones as well as our parents and caretakers walk with us that video will be posted online for everyone to see i will be sending you the unedited version that's an hour and 15 minutes long so you can see the type of environment we're gonna have to walk through because that was the main focus was the walking community and that's what we're showing thank you thank you mr crew next we have christian career good evening board members first and foremost thank you president greer for meeting with me and a few other parents you're as transparent as to be with some difficult conversations that we had i hope you thought about what and who we represent president greer when we spoke you talked about various players such as district capacity levels allocated funds full distances and dense populations when making the closure decision however if you look at these data points nothing really moves the needle enough to justify closing magnolia you also made it clear you were speaking up for the league community since you felt that they are the disenfranchised as you called it in the past years i'm having a hard time understand what the real goal is with the recent closure is it your tie to the league community help us understand the real reason we are losing all elementaries on the east side let me make one thing clear i have no intentions through lee or dalton community i appreciate a walking community however i'm struggling with the fact that both communities now have dedicated schools less than a mile from one another but the new trustee area won't even have one we each have roles in this community relationship as parents and as board members we both have expectations of one another and from my point of view are not that hard to understand you as elected members are expected to be unbiased and responsible decision makers for the whole community in return you ask us to raise responsible children children that understand the importance of education and most importantly you expect parents to be involved in our children's education well this is what it looks like we are fighting to give our children a fair chance of an education that is defined as an impartial and honest hand we are showing them what fair really looks like now will you president greer speak up for all communities that are disemprised and unrepresented not only the ones that you have ties to board member cruz gonzalez before the vote was final you made mention that brand new or district would be left without a school and then silence in the room you even followed up with maybe that doesn't matter your vote wasn't enough and you knew that board member beau it's very clear that you care more about charter schools and the rosedale community than what's truly right for the azusa district board member rodriguez kenya i appreciate your vote but i would have expected a bit more discussion knowing this motion was an afterthought board member gabriella you stated regardless of where a board member lives or the district that they live in you service all the elementaries well it's time to walk the walk you show you should all be ashamed of yourselves for letting this take place whether it's personal agendas or loyalty to a sole community the decision to keep lee and dalton open was not just closing magnolia was a quick win for some of you president greer you mentioned that there have been mistakes in the past board has made well this is one of them but it's not too late open the conversation again we are asking you to re-vote and represent all azusa communities thank you for your time next up we have daisy cervantes hello hello good evening ausd board parents and staff my name is daisy cervantes barron and i have been a student at magnolia elementary school for eight years my eight remarkable years at magnolia have been amazing because of what i have learned and what i have accomplished with the help of all my teachers the teachers at magnolia are amazing and i would like to thank all the teachers i have had and miss wright my current teacher because they have all wanted me to do my best i really like magnolia and the staff here because they try to help us as much as they can when we don't understand something i also really appreciate the books we have read like esperanza rising because it was surprising that we were reading a book that i had something in common with since it had sentences in spanish and place in mexico i wasn't born in mexico but spanish was my first language since i speak it at home every day i want to thank dr mitchell for providing us with these books that people in our class could really connect with you should reconsider your decision on closing magnolia because it would be a waste of money since they just remodeled it and they added advanced technology in the classroom they had just remodeled the basketball courts the playground and the fences in the classroom they added built-in speakers that are attached to the ceiling which allows us to hear our teachers better when they used the microphone that they were provided with in the classrooms they improved the whiteboards by putting in new advanced projectors with a smart screen and pen i have seen the other elementary schools and magnolia is one of the most modern schools i've seen reconciled is i think you guys should also reconsider your decision because i have some friends whose parents don't drive or don't have time to take them to school because they work the students would have to walk every day farther to school that isn't close to their home and that would be hard for them if you guys close down magnolia there will be no more elementary schools on the east side i also think you guys should reconsider your decision on closing down magnolia since it's like my second home to me since half my day is spent at magnolia with my teachers and my friends i also accomplished other stuff that i never thought i would accomplish there thank you mr montes [Applause] next we have crystal raymundo good evening board superintendent i'm here once again to speak on behalf of my children and all the children in the community we have been left without schools here elementary we are urging the board to reconsider the decision to close magnolia elementary we are asking you to have compassion on our children on the side we are asking you to fight for our kids as well we are urging you to open your eyes and look at all the kids that are being displaced that are being asked at such a young and crucial age to make these moves and start fresh as a parent of a child with adhd i am torn and hurt from my child knowing that this change will only affect him negatively not only at school but at home which will then put him in a position where his learning experience will be affected not to mention how hard of a time my child has making friends i would hate for my son to be pushed into a negative mental state i am asking you as a mother to please please reconsider we have been left without an elementary school close enough to home in case of an emergency what are we do what are we to do when schools are placed on lockdown as it happened to simply close magnolia to the lack of density and type of community that we are in does not mean that we do not come from the same background that we also have the same difficult difficulties and struggle by taking our only school in reach you are taking those opportunities now forcing the community my community my children what you're taking away from them what you are fighting so hard for to give other children better opportunities and a school close to home we are asking we are not asking you to close any other school we are asking you to keep our school open we are pleading with you to reconsider and think about the consequences of your decision i am simply torn with the decision and feel like we are being pushed out by the poor and their personality thank you next we have lisa serrano i believe the mic is off good evening i'm here once again asking that all of you reconsider the closure of magnolia elementary at the december 21st school board meeting sabrina both stated that she wanted to be fiscally responsible to this district something something i find completely contradicting because she was the one to bring up closing magnolia elementary a completely modernized campus and instead keep open to campuses that require millions of dollars to update and stay open this decision was rushed and since then no clear transparent reasoning has been given to the azusa community this past weekend myself and other advocates for magnolia did the 2.4 mile walk from magnolia elementary to murray elementary and back a walk many students will have to do alone on hot days on cold days even rainy days they will walk alongside the heavy traffic of gladstone street they will walk on the harsh sidewalk full of crack which we saw they will walk past the line a semi truck parked on gladstone where no cars passing can see them which we saw they will cross busy intersections like citrus and gladstone cerritos and glaston they will have to make their way through the heavy traffic the murray neighborhood house twice a day they will go through these struggles with heavy backpacks on carrying their lunches and projects we cannot put students through these conditions it is not fair and it is not right when i was in front of murray i spoke to neighbors they had no knowledge of magnolia's closure and the hundreds of students that would now be coming to their school they were extremely upset they explained that their neighborhood is a mad house during school drop off and pick up they said the congestion is horrible and having more students will only make it worse they were more appalled when i brought up the financial aspect of this decision they felt like the school board was taking away money from their students watching past meetings it is clear that there are no school board members advocating for magnolia none of you spoke up about the modernized campus none of you mentioned the students that come to magnolia after the closure of gladstone street school none of you mentioned the students that are at magnolia through open enrollment there were members fighting for dalton and lee but none for magnolia it is completely unfair that students are being left behind by their school board i vote for some of you i'm sorry i voted for some of you for school board members because i thought you would do a good job it has become apparent that you have let personal agendas get in the way of doing what is logically correct it is logical to keep magnolia open i came here today to ask you all to reconsider your decision to close magnolia because although my children have graduated and i am past this district i can clearly see toronto thank you next we have sarah toronto hello a month ago the azusa community came out to the school board meeting asking that the board listened to its constituents we were fighting for the aztec we gave personal testimony as well as evidence and examples of how the aztec can live on respectfully since then the board has remained quiet about this i will mine i will remind you that the truth of the matter is is that there is more than 5 000 signatures on a petition from the community asking that you keep the aztec each and every one of you has chosen to ignore the constituents that voted you into this position you are showing the people of azusa that you believe in council culture not allowing azusa high school to do better to learn from the situation according to the board of education handbook your vision is that each student will be a problem solver critical critical thinker and effective communicator yet you were not allowing the people of azusa to problem solve this issue you were not allowing you are now allowing gentrification to continue in azusa by cutting history and culture and connection to latino roots and worst of all you are not doing your job you are supposed to represent the whole district each school and all the students and listen to their wants and needs beyond the aztec there has been another horrible decision which is to close magnolia elementary a decision that was brought up by sabrina beau a decision a decision that will cost the district millions of dollars to keep schools like liam dalton open and a decision that will put students lives at risk as they will not have to make the harsh walk to murray elementary but most importantly a decision that was brought up with no logical reasoning mongolia is a completely modernized school families have moved to the city to send their children to magnolia these are points i wish the school board would bring up i wish one of you was willing to fight for these students that you claim to represent sabrina beau i wish this was a case where you could answer me back and give me reason to why you suggested magnolia i would like to hear answers to all my questions like have you ever visited magnolia's campus why do you have a website dedicated to a charter school in rosedale are you advocating for rosedale parents to send their children to azusa schools this whole setup where i speak at the board is honestly ridiculous we need an open dialogue where we can have our questions answered and we need transparency getting emails after the fact and meeting outside of the setting where others can't hear and gain more knowledge is not enough i do appreciate the school board members that reached out to me and want to meet and hopefully we can discuss getting this type of dialogue at meetings i will end with what i said at last meeting and the meeting before that um which is to the people here tonight and the people at home i would like to remind you that we vote for our school board we are the reason these individuals are up here they're supposed to represent us and what we want if you feel like they're not doing their job vote them out three school board members gabriella ariana looney cruz gonzalez and adrian greer all have terms that end this year sabrina beau and yolanda pena have terms that end in 2024 they are quick to make changes and we have the power to do the same when we vote thank you [Applause] thank you miss toronto at at this time due to board policy uh there's a requirement for us to take board action in order to continue with uh public comment since we've surpassed 21 minutes and so is there a is there a motion to um well let me just pull the board on the floor to continue my second uh some and then we'll go ahead and we'll go and vote just by hand vote yes yes yes yes and i am also yes um mr richard covington hello board uh thank you for hearing me out uh i'll keep it short today uh i heard a lot of good things a lot about fact when i took the walk from magnolia to that school there's facts some of these families are not going to feel some of the families that go to the school in the community there's no way they could that prick that that it is ridiculous how far it is and the streets and the things we have to pass through to get there i i mean i i see i know for a fact my sister and her kids she couldn't be here today she's working but there's no way that they could continue their lives and still have to run back and forth that's um we need a school in our community one that's safe what magnolia seems like a great choice i i just don't understand why we would close the entire area of the east side of azusa we we need something for our community and another thing is what if something happens during the date where parents had to pick up their children from the pool a lot of folks aren't going to be able to just run a mile and a half you know oh well that's all thank you next we have louis pedraza good evening board members i spoke here about a month ago on the aztec name chain um i believe it's on your agenda today to discuss a new name for the school i believe changing the name is wrong how many of you here have heard the term if it's not broke why fix it that name is not broken it is not wrong it does not need to be fixed say that name is wrong to want to change it you're saying that every person that's worked at that school principal teacher assistant principal everyone that swore that aztec name on their shirt you're saying that they're wrong or they don't know the difference between right or wrong that name is not wrong what is wrong is i've reached out to every one of you because i echo what sarah has said you know we can't ask you questions and we can't really discuss this with you i've reached out to every one of you and only adrian has reached back to me he said we were going to talk and i have yet to hear from you i've reached out plenty of times no response what makes a great city what what makes a city great it's the community right we have overwhelming majority of the people that want that name i'm sorry they want that name to stay we want it to stay let's compromise my proposal you keep the name drop the aztec headdress people are offended by it okay most of us aren't let's compromise right meet in the middle the name stays maybe drop the headdress right on the football helmets now a lot of the stuff has the a with the spear or the arrow or however you want to call it there's got to be a compromise get back with us talk to us we want to i want to express more on why it's very important and i want to hear why you think it's important to change we ask to hear from you but we don't thank you next we have tamara meza our lives begin to end the day i'm silent about the things that that matter that was said by martin luther king jr and what he meant by this was that if we don't say anything or do anything things will put things could potentially get worse or stay the same good evening board president grier honorable school board superintendent superintendent ortega cabinet and everyone here watching at home i am here tonight to talk about the decision to close that magnolia element magnolia is widely ac accessible by everybody there are many types of transportation people used to get walking biking car etc therefore closing the school down would be harder due to traffic closing down magnolia is a disadvantage because of traffic fans closing down magnolia is a disadvantage of social isolation schools are the core of social activity and human interaction when schools close many children and youth will miss out on social contact that is essential to learning and development and some find it harder trying to fit into the new school moreover many parents unprepared for distance and home moreover many parents are unprepared for distance and homeschooling when schools close parents are often asked to facilitate the learning of their children at home and can struggle to perform this task this is this is especially true for parents with limited limited education and resources i've always heard the same things with people that hold power or want to gain power and that is that our opinions matter and that they want the best of us well this is a huge need for our community so why not we reconsider this decision for once thank you miss mesa next we have mitchell lawyer hello good evening it's my first time in front of a school board the reason i'm here is going to be because of the rebranding of the azusa high school i'm an alumni of azusa high i graduated in 09 my all my siblings went to zusa high i'm currently a coach at azusa high and um i just want to say that i am not for the changing of the name i am not for the changing of the colors um going to uh big sporting events like uh cross country races we're there with dozens of schools schools from across the country um the baby blue the light blue of azusa high is something so unique that a lot of schools don't have and um changing that would be like a huge mistake in my opinion um as for the name i mean there's landora high school there's san dimas high school there's 40 high school there should be an azusa high school i've heard these names uh thrown about like mountain view or some weird names but it's like there should be keep it azusa hi it just makes sense like why would you as the previous uh speaker spoke like why would you change something that's not broken like it's fine um as for the mascot i do agree with my fellow speaker that you know changes can be made to make it more culturally appropriate um however i do think having the mascot uh being aztec is almost a sense of pride um you know the demographics of azusa are mostly latino and hispanic primarily mexican and i'm mexican myself and when i would see the aztec you know would go against you know the other surrounding schools and it was like a sense of pride like where the asset um but i think would be a huge mistake change uh to change the mass spots change the colors change the name um but yeah i don't know i just i really hope you reconsider uh changing that i think it's really a huge part of azusa's history and uh and yeah just please reconsider thank you hello good evening board president adrian greer and fellow board members parents and students my name is francisco duran and i've lived here my entire life i'm azusa high alumni class of 2009 my sisters graduated from azusa in 1999 and 1997.
no okay so it will still be 28 it's just the type of license that they are obtaining from the state that will allow them to move from just a dis a distributor to a grower but then be in the same lot space where that previously had to be in different lot spaces right okay great then i if that is true and it remains true then i'm good on that and that one seemed to make sense yeah okay thank you for the clarification of anyone so the restriction of 28 maximum provisioning center slash retailers remains the cap for 28 designated consumption facilities remains and the requirement um for 600 feet separation between certain facilities one specific is provisioning center retailers remains and the provisions for a thousand foot separation from k-12 schools remains the only things that are changing is you can have more than one license on a lot but you have to be eligible in the first place but you can have more than one and if you have more than one they now can be multiples of the same they don't have to be different i have a follow-up question on that and i and and i don't think it has to be done now um for some of the other types so like just um delivery facilities grower grow facilities my understanding or my recollection is that there's not caps on the total number there are not okay um so this could have an impact on that the other question and i think that this kind of comes to one of the other commenters um comments uh is about um both uh kind of dispensaries um and consumption facilities largely when though when we put those in place or when when those special exception uses were granted my recollection is that there's in almost all situations a cap on the square footage of the for that particular facility and i'm curious well first of all um a dispenser uh uh i think that's what it's called right dispensaries um can't because of the separation between individual dispensaries those ones could not stack is that fair um that is fair yeah you can't um we you they you can't be 600 feet apart and um stacked so that that is um remains and we're saying yes and and any expansion would they would still be capped by the square footage limitation in the special exception use yes most if not all i know that most are very specific they're in this tenant space or they are this amount of square feet um so any if if the one provisioning center wanted to expand they most likely it would depend on the specific conditions but most likely they'll need to come back and amend their special exception use and if something has been approved if a special exception use has been approved for a provisioning center and maybe grow facilities not the right example but like the process the micro micro business that's one of the categories or um kind of a secure transport thing was not envisioned it's going to take some you know space in a building and it was not envisioned at the time of that special exception you they would have to come back and apply for a separate approval for that is that right well they would need to follow whatever rules are there okay um so off the top of my head if there was a provisioning center and they wanted now to take advantage and have an upstairs downstairs provisioning center and designated consumption facility the designated consumption facility needs a special exception use so they're going to have to get that approval go through the process for that but if they wanted for some reason to be a um the provisioning center on the bottom and they've already got that approval and they wanted a use upstairs that was permitted a primary use they wouldn't need to amend the special exception use this would allow them to have so two licenses would be on the same lot but each facility would follow the regulations of that district got it so that so i'm just looking at the table like a secure transport or what i'm what you're saying is that because that is a permitted use in c2b c3 and m1 and m1a it's a p on the table if they wanted to do that right now and there's already let's say a uh dispensary on the place right now because of the stacking that may not be allowed or there would be limitations on that but this would say you could come back and add that as long as you're in there as long as it was permitted anyway okay got it thank you for those clarifications other questions or clarifications okay good do you want to postpone it to a date certain i think so although do you have well we know that there are two things on our next agenda um but i think postponing it to the next meeting seems reasonable having three honey okay would someone like to make a motion commissioner weich is making a motion i move that we postponed this vote until our next meeting which is march 15th march 15th okay seconded by commissioner sovay any discussion of the postponement all in favor of postponement please raise a hand that all of the hands the motion carries thank you all right um we have nothing under item nine other business so we're on to item 10 which is our last opportunity for public comment um this is for an opportunity to speak for any issue um uh for up to three minutes again we'll first call on those who are present here and then move to remote participants to speak if you're uh listening in remotely uh you can dial eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven and then enter meeting id nine seven seven sixty six thirty four twelve twenty six uh if you've dialed in by phone you can press star nine on your phone you can use the raised hand feature of viewing through the web link um either way please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments jeff penco 213 west madison um i just want to say thank you to all the commissioners and city planner brett leonard all the communications through him has been very responsive and you know it's uh anyway i would say that you guys are real class act and do very well managing these difficult scenarios so thank you for your time and energy thank you and thanks for your patience tonight waiting us out here yes seriously any others that have uh indicated through zoom that they would like to speak no again if you've joined star 9 to raise your hand or you can use the raised hand feature all right uh item 11 is commission proposed business go ahead commissioner lee oh there we go um hey just just to be perfectly clear i plan to recuse myself from the vote with respect to the m1 religious assembly and the r2a just to err on the side of caution of things so um i i don't have any actual or current knowledge that oxford owns r2a but i just want to be safe and i know that we manage a thousand units so um to be perfectly clear and i'll bring this up again at the next vote but i just want to let you guys know um thank you thank you any go ahead commissioner weich uh wondering about uh some of the comments that we got uh regarding parking maximums and how we would bring that to an agenda so for i think that's my first question is what's your preference as chair to have that conversation should that go through orc should i work with staff to bring a motion to the whole planning commission for consideration and debate um do you have a do you have a preference for that conversation so i would suggest that typically typically ordinance amendments start in orc and in the one of the key limitations is often get you know there's only so many staff so this is why we have our work plan prioritizing kind of what's next and this particular issue came up as some one of the top things that we thought that we would add to the work plan um so the prioritization process is the next thing um i what i would also say and we talked about this a little bit at orc is that there's more things on our work plan than we know that staff can handle that we the orc can handle that we honestly can take on and so if there are if there are issues that others committees you know if there's something that's an energy commission thing um we put that out there there have also been like the the lighting ordinance i would say um uh citizen initiated rezonings and responding to language is a little bit easier though it takes still like putting the polish on like how does it fit with udc um so i uh the next plan for the work plan discussion is i think can you help me remember what we discussed what is it work is it are we discussing it at our working session is that what we talked about yeah we're going to discuss at work session but we're also bringing a first round of parking or amendments to the commission for vote maximums is not part of it but can be part of that discussion as well so i think there are two kind of opportunities both in work plan and with the first round of ordinance changes coming to a vote that we can have both of those discussions and can i ask a clarifying question and would that be a city-wide maximum or is it just within specific um zoning areas that's what's up for discussion okay all right and we can yes that yeah and so again that's next week that we thought we would look at the work plan okay so we so we're having our work plan meeting next week that's the full commission not just the sub okay great and so then that's where we can talk about it and then potentially propose some language for that or is that too quickly so i'm seeing some heads shaking in opposite directions i mean i think it depends on how much work we think it will take into it i think well talking about work plan is talking about what to prioritize not working on the work plan yeah okay so because i'm just trying to understand the context of how deliberate this will be so it sounds like the first stage of the conversation is we have the whole list we prioritize and then we will figure out what kind of work ethic excuse me effort it's going to take to take on the things we have prioritized and then from that prioritization we will begin the process of working through that that does not specifically it does not well it does not say how specific we can get between those two points because if in the working plan conversation this doesn't come up then my next question just to telegraph is how can we get it higher and it's not to say to to do away with the work plan process it's just to understand like is it because it requires so much staff time and it's something we could ask the university like or a planning class to do as a project for us and bring back that language so i'm just trying to understand how to approach it and because we're a slow moving body it just takes weeks to process some of that and since we're all here and i feel like some of you have answers you could just say it's not likely that this is going to come up in the next three months but we will put it on the list we will talk about it and then we'll see where we are does that make am i yeah i think we should all look at the many things that we've put before that have been proffered for that work plan the whole goal of that as a as so that we as a we can discuss what the priorities are and rank though because this is this is my sense is to direct both it's it's really to help staff understand what our priorities are for their assistance in this so if there's something that doesn't make the hyatt you know higher priority there can be other avenues though ultimately at the end of the day all of the things no matter where they come like if it's an ordinance change it comes to our whole body right and so um so i would say next week we'll have a better sense of how all of us feel about what the collective priorities are because there's a bunch of things okay thank you yep other questions uh commission proposed business that's what the section is almost entertain a motion to adjourn move by commissioner silvay seconded by commissioner gbrandal all in favor please raise your hand that is all the hands have a good night you
so today's report will include the fy 2021 uniform system of financial records or usfr compliance questionnaire cq i kind of like to think of this as our playbook if you will it's kind of our rule book the auditors examine thousands of records pertaining to all of the audits but this document in particular they process an audit processes probably hundreds of them so it's always fun to see the results and then we'll talk about best practices fun to see the results uh the usfr compliance questionnaire this year had 175 yes or no questions those are the only two answers that the auditors have to choose from this year we had 10 no answers we are down from prior years we had 17 last year and 21 the year before we'll talk a little bit about some of the no answers we had some after the fact expenditures which is a finding that happens when there is not a purchase order in place and somebody makes a commits district funds basically for goods or services we had a couple no answers in student attendance one of them is directly related to training and that has been implemented and we've seen some incredible positive results there the other is a nuance with our student attendance and our software system so the team has been working collaboratively with the software vendor so we're hoping that we will come to some kind of resolution here in the next year or two on that technology and transportation we'll talk a little bit more about in another slide also not listed here i wanted to bring up we had a conflict of interest finding where in 2021 we paid two employees as vendors the dollar amount was very low it was under five thousand dollars certainly but we have implemented a new process now so that that doesn't happen and we'll talk a little bit more about that any questions so we do have some areas of one hundred percent compliance and this is always exciting at least for those of us in the finance office exciting good thank you we had no findings in cash and revenue and procurement typically a lot of arizona districts will have findings there as well as um after the fact and student attendance so we're we're um not uh out of the out of the ordinary as far as districts go but we didn't have any findings in cash revenue or procurement so we're very happy about that so we wanted to share some best practices with you all financial processes are consistently reviewed and updated as needed as you know we are reconciled monthly we've even expanded that reconciliation to the employee benefit trust and we're very excited about that we do have an ongoing review of expenditures and the general ledger and this is performed by all the staff all the staff in finance really we want to make sure that everything is coded correctly as per the usfr we do have an annual conflict of interest disclosure that employees are required to complete and we are in the process of implementing an after the fact process this is not a this is not a gotcha it starts with training a notice of non-compliance and it will help us hold the end users accountable and then additional best practices as far as technology um i just wanted to give a little bit of background here the the information technology section of the usfr compliance questionnaire um audits all areas of technology in the district it's not it's not a direct reflection on the technology department although mr costellano is here if you have any specific questions but one example i wanted to provide the audit access we did have a no finding because some of our payroll specialists had access to the hr module we will now do periodic audits to make sure that everybody has the correct and appropriate access to their financial modules in that in our financial software data sharing agreements we will certainly look into that please keep in mind that this usfr compliance questionnaire was provided to us just a month ago our audit firm received it just a couple weeks before that so we've already engaged with all of our vendors for the fiscal year well 21 first certainly and 22 so that is something that we will look into moving forward most of our software has audit or change logs that we can review the one that they chose for this was a new software from nutrition services so we did not have a chance to pull an audit log there and then they are recommending screen locks for the overall system any questions as far as technology goes i will turn the transportation piece over to ms betts so on transportation recall that the transportation route report used for both 2020 as well as 2021 was from fiscal year 2019 due to the pandemic and the issues surrounding the fact that at the end of we were not or not at the end of 20 we were not transporting kids so therefore they opted the state opted to allow us to use the route miles from 2019 for both 2020 and 2021 so an additional year during that time that was the very first year in which i had arrived and we did not have very positive processes for determining what our route miles were so we couldn't verify what was submitted to the department of ed for 19.
of that grant we have 1.7 million remaining the projected spending that's approved within the grant is continuing staffing support so within this grant it is where we staffed six behavior support specialists for two years for our elementary schools and then it continues the funding for that same technology technician that we added within cares paraprofessional pd for certification this is actually really exciting one it was the program that was recognized by the state through adult ed where we are training our own paraprofessionals so that we can get them certified in classrooms quicker that's what allowed us to hire so many s repairs at once is because we could train our own and didn't have to wait for them to obtain that separate training it also is supplies to increase student engagement such as stem and pbl and online program support and then a big portion is also for increasing air quality that was an approved part of ester grants and we are working on some hvac program projects at sand creek and the high school and then other approved needs of the portion we've already spent of sr2 about 40 percent of it went to those operational costs created due to kovitz so additional staff days because because of covin additional substitutes that were needed the transportation costs during shutdown and then our online teachers for elementary that were added 20 for the 21 22 school year then you see the behavior support specialist at the elementary schools examples some of those online programs has been supporting freckle ixcel screencastify cami canvas stem and pbl classroom supplies summer school curriculum support and student snacks and then coveted related supplies like additional carpet cleaners milk coolers and those individual throwaway mill containers which are shockingly expensive sr3 we received about 7.3 million it is encumbered a year later than sr2 so we have quite a bit of time still to spend this one and about 90 of it left um it has to be uncovered by september of 2024.
um i know the play stays really late um that's more of a little bit of a later one uh board game club gets a little pretty quickly so [Music] and there's no penalty if we don't do it tomorrow but is there a cut off there is okay and it's going to be on that google form i wonder if it gave you guys two weeks or was it just uh just the one week yesterday [Music] interested or band interested or orchestra interested once you select that the form will actually go to three different versions based upon that so it will tell you what you can so then so then the door has a pendant there is in the cycle of lessons that we do every other day lessons and we will compile that with our uh tech ed courses as well okay will they have every single tech ed course not every single one so if you live in a little bit yeah but you will have at least one section where you can fit for those classes so i think how it works out in the scenario you're proposing it would be for the kids i think it works up to four electives throughout the year they're banned or in seven well that's in eighth grade in seventh grade they'll get a few more they'll probably get like five or six offers but once they get to eighth grade if they continue with the band it comes it comes out to four that's how and then we offset two world language is only every other day so on those off days as well there's an opportunity potentially for some uh career tech ed choices as well yes absolutely they can take art those types of things as well again it's going to depend upon you know what their preferences are so the if i took a look at when the randomizer does it and you don't have art as like a top choice it'll probably put you in something else other than art if you are taking a paper class does that answer your question when you see the form you get so what i would say though is like if you didn't select r but there's an opening in your schedule at some point in the year we want well-rounded students and we're not penalizing kids for not being picasso so we'll we'll put them in an art class because there's an opportunity for them to to kind of engage with that course yes are kids with 504s pre-placed no no preference given all other than the fact that their accommodations have to be met about the language and did you say it might be that they not everyone gets the language that's their first preference or i can tell you i would say 99 of our kids are taking a language i can say that the kids who don't take a language um are typically students with ieps if it's in their iep not to take a language yeah but they should get get what that selected as your first choice oh if you don't get what you select for the first choice yeah that's that's a possibility i would say we're pretty good at uh placing kids in their first choice um i will i mean i'll be upfront and tell you spanish is the most popular with a french latin kind of close neck and neck second place german has given some great numbers as well but i can tell you like when you have spanish i have three spanish teachers but i only have one german teacher okay so that section for german is you know so there's four sections she has four sections in seventh grade um to fill because it's every other day um and then she has the same amount of sections going to eighth grade whereas i have multiple spanish teachers multiple more seats for kids to take um spanish if something like that if you're in that scenario typically what we say we can never guarantee a schedule change right so yeah you want it sounds like german i don't want to make the assumption but it sounds like if all of a sudden your child got spanish and not german then we say reach out to us because what we'll do is we'll house that and we may have someone else in the room where his child got german and they they wanted spanish somehow that's the way it went and we'll just make the swap one for one and make a win-win okay sounds good thank you we'll start in front of our way to the background when they get their schedule you'll see uh q1 2 2 2 3 q4 for those classes um schedules are typically around august 15th um yes there are scheduling uh scheduling parties that kids have um we have you know parents that will say you know if there was one story the classic story that girl was playing soccer uh yelling to her mother on the side like pull up my schedule what team am i on you know it's the big team reveal um so uh it's around on or about august 15th is when we uh we'll have the schedules so if the student is not interested in music and they have more time to be able to choose between two languages than all languages or we are tied with so even though your child may not be interested in art or music they still might have an art class the music one if you're not interested in music there's other pathways in that but they still might have an art class because that's that class may get tossed in the mix for your child to have something we cannot use this time you said that you may have a card to do it and use it for another language or timeline no it's just it's just the one line the one world language okay and then we're good um and then it's going to have what the options are for uh courses and art that we include in that as well okay yes man yeah we have parent teacher conferences um we typically are about the end of september beginning of october we have three sessions so we have a half day session for people to come in the afternoon and then two nightly sessions yeah so they meet so they'll do it as a team with four or five teachers in the room so now understanding that there's a hundred kids and so not not enough time slots within the night that we have them so if you requested a parent conference if you didn't get it we pride ourselves on then we will have a conference with you and scheduling during the school day at on another date so if you want a parent conference for your child you will certainly have a prepared conference for each other yes i had heard that i thought that you have a study hall or i walk as one period right is that just like yeah so iblock is um so we don't use the word study hall it's like the taboo in education so we just call it eyeblock it's a little bit more of a controlled study uh controlled study hall in which we encourage our teachers to make sure like it's it's typically a student that they have on their team so similar to wind if they have you know in the afternoons our eye block sections are a little bit smaller so you might have seven or eight kids uh we do some independent reading time during that time kids can go visit another teacher during that time teachers can also collaborate with students taking a look at same thing they do and win missing work let me take with your power school how are things going and those types of things so it's a little bit more controlled do i have to talk to teachers about you know this is not a frat party absolutely um but you know for the most part um it is a controlled time for academics for kids yep it'll be built into their schedule sometimes when you start taking a look at all the options that you have sections might be full so eye block is kind of that filler where other forces could not be filled for that child so not every kid not every student has an eye block either but if you're if your child is really struggling and we're thinking that that might be an intervention to have one of those for your job then we may take a look at the ua offers that they're having at that point in time it may look to add an intervention block instead of the the school counselor myself and the team of teachers and obviously as parents we'll have that conversation and yes and thanks for asking the question because usually the statement i heard that so generally that would be worked out with um i would talk to the elementary teacher and they would work that out with the our director of our band as well and kind of have a conversation around the student um to say that it's not been done before it would be a lie there there are multiple times where we have done that for students there will be some questions about you know them coming in our kids aren't coming in playing instruments at the ground level so it would be what's their experience with the instrument they're changing to kind of seeing that crossover and if the child who doesn't want to play the instrument anymore you're sick of the drums other questions back there regarding that because in the first half on youtube sure so regarding the registration and you know choosing the languages of all these things i think you're going to get the link at midnight tonight so tomorrow the link opens all right i'll double check with that and here's the thing i usually am emailing you guys directly as sixth grade parents just with parent square i don't have that access so i'm gonna start emailing like your elementary principal sent out my message i'm gonna send out another message probably tomorrow the next day just to make sure that the link has gone out okay any other questions no sorry one more time you can put them on the same team so if you you know you have some choices with other questions about twins can you some people want them separated on two different teams some of them want them on the same team that's one of the things that we talked about when i said before constraints so you just have to email you can email me and just let me know um and then what we'll do is we'll put that in the constraints to make sure whatever your wishes okay on the google form well i have descriptions there yes it really prompts you about the descriptions that will instruct you what you have to do and again hopefully within the next day or so i'll have something up on our website it's our pretty much our uh uh handbook that'll have descriptions of all the classes all right i think the number one thing they all learned tonight we are so much better right so again if there's anything else i'm going to send out a couple of emails that's going to have the math department coordinators email address if you have any more specific questions about math and math pathways and those types of things uh if there's anything else please feel free to email me or if there's anything that we can do to help support you guys through this transition process so thank you very much for your time everyone tonight um [Laughter] okay [Applause]
my wife is is a high class of 2007 and currently works as an ssa aide at the gladstone high school helping you know the students with special need i'd like to first comment on the rebranding of azusa high school it has been azusa high school since the 1950s and has a history tied closely to the modern history of azusa it saw the orchards turned into tract homes and has been a symbol of the city's commitment to education i think the entire rebranding is a wildly silly endeavor when we are literally in the middle of picking and choosing what community members will lose local schools and what classified staff will be let go because of budget cuts and in the midst of this you decide to waste close to a million dollars i hope lining the pockets of private industry is worth it i understand the poland valley indigenous community came to my poor working class and mostly picano barrio and convinced you to waste money we don't have to change the mascot i've given up on that point but allow me to plead to keep the colors allow us to have what memories and heritage we've always had a lot of the sports teams have baby blue and black uniforms with only azusa across the chest or back it'll be easy to keep those and only change the mascot uh it'll be easier to change just the mascot of murals instead of colors i'd also like to bring up the fact that gladstone middle school will keep its colors name and mascot they will lose almost nothing also board member gabriela arellano you did not bring up indigenous rights at all the first time you spoke in favor of the rebrand and suddenly you were the most woke individual in the room the second time who do you work for what's your interest in this rebrand you said we can find the money for our students when fighting for the rebrand i hope you're willing to fight to find money to supply our students with the tools and supplies they need to succeed in the future i want to see it lastly i grew up in the citrus islands the unincorporated community that is right here right next to the school district offices and i walked one mile to gladstone street elementary even though i lived point three miles away from magnolia back when you guys had closed boundaries uh i was carrying a saxophone one mile as an eight-year-old and i was grooming now both those schools are gone and the citrus islands are losing their representative feet we're not gonna have a vote you're silencing us because we're a poor and unincorporated community we i wrote azuza on all of the forms that i ever filled out where i live azuza is on my driver's license azusa was on there when i applied for my first jobs when i applied for universities i live in azusa as far as i know just because politics don't haven't absorbed us into the community doesn't mean i'm not part of the community thank you for serving my mom's community and helping to alienate us and the armandos that live around here thank you do we have additional speakers next we have joanna lemos okay hi good evening for president grier members of the board superintendent and other members in attendance my name is joanna lemmons i'm here to speak on behalf of hundreds of families on the east side of asusa that are losing access to elementary schools i believe the board's decision to close magnolia powell was inequitable and done without justification you have yet to prove to us how this is a good decision from every angle that we see it it makes no sense we have families that live on the east area borderline asusa and glendora some even in glendora who come to magnolia elementary we have many that have already been displaced with the closure of gladstone school just a few years ago and now once again our east community is being targeted with you deciding to close our only two remaining elementary schools you are creating an unnecessary burden on families limiting opportunities for us magnolia is a great visible location a great visible location accessible convenient for parents that use public transportation has a capacity to accommodate growth and has been upgraded all we are asking is that you keep open a school for our community especially since our community um you know has already been displaced so much we have an online growing petition with over 800 signatures of people who all support the families of magnolia elementary and see that this is unreasonable and want to see magnolia remain open our community got together held a walk and talk event as you have already heard you all had been invited not one of you showed up which tells us that you don't care about our community the arguments that were made to keep lee and dalton open were that they were too far from each other and so instead he left a bigger gap for the east community families on the east side of asusa that already used to travel to get to magnolia will now face an even longer distance to get to other schools how do you expect to attract families from neighboring cities if you keep eliminating the schools that would expand opportunities and invite families in our schools are no longer accessible for families on the east side of asusa even families right now that have preschool or tkh children are being left without a school beginning this next school year so parents like myself are already feeling the negative impact of this closure and feel forced to leave the district even before the official close of magnolia there are so many families that were blindsided by this decision some are non-english speakers and i believe that there has not been enough public notification to communicate this information to families we ask that you stop targeting the east area of asusa please reconsider before it's too late i believe that you must be seeing by now how closing magnolia was not the right decision so again we asked please keep magnolia open thank you i'm mrs and then we have christina castaneda hi good evening board members i just wanted to be an additional voice tonight for and and plead for your reconsideration of um on changing the aztec name i've already spoken before i've written my formal um letter and have spoken out have have submitted questions um i don't know if those were actually posted um on the last meeting that i attended but i i do i just i really do just want to be um i want to i want to say thank you to sarah louie mitchell francisco all of you guys for for um voicing your just your your thoughts on this and and and board members i just i know you know how much this means to our community and i hope that you really do hear our pleas for this because it is so important to us um i i've said it a million times um i'm not just an alumni i'm a parent um i'm a coach and i just please you guys please listen please hear us when we're trying to give you all of these facts all of i mean i don't know how many times we have to repeat ourselves where we're i i'm going to pray for change and i just really hope that you guys um reconsider the branding because i mean we're such a tight-knit community and i know some of you have attended our fundraisers um uh miss pena we love you we are always there for us you're always supporting us and and i just i really hope that you guys you guys see that how much this means to us and if you could just maybe what louis said maybe we can go and do without the headdress um but please let us keep our aztec name our colors um we spoke with um our future um uh principal and he mentioned that you know art was super important and you know the murals i mean just thinking about all of that you know and maybe maybe he put out put it out there that maybe we could bring something from gladstone and keep the murals i'm really hoping that that we can really just i mean obviously i'm like i'm fumbling over my words right now because i'm just really scared that that this is actually going to change and i'm scared that we're not going to be heard um but i really do hope that you guys listen to us and and just take take us into consideration before you vote for this change um and and uh miss arianes you know you're close to us too and i know that you know what it's like to be a coach what it's like to to believe in these guys that's all i can say um thank you guys everyone else who spoke on this and i just hope that that um it goes in our favor and all the facts and all of the you know that outpouring from our community is hitting you guys and you guys are really like taking it in i also agree with the powell and the magnolia um i just don't understand how how that's going to work either but you know i'm praying for a better outcome thank you miss casino it does appear we have no more uh commenters and so we will move on to item 7.0 and specifically 7.1 comments reports and requests by the board of education remember are you honest i have none for today or member cruz gonzalez um i i do i do want to say i i think we do need to find some way to have a some kind of conversation with the magnolia school community i feel like we've had them come now for several months now and i i know if i was a parent there i'd be very frustrated that in an official setting they're not able to have we're not able to have a discussion about this um so i'm not sure how that can happen i but i think we need to figure out like that's my request is we need to figure out how to have that have a more formal conversation about this in a formal setting um i would like to make the motion to put it on the next agenda well i don't think they were able to do that just because of the way brown act works but i i that's that's a request that i'm putting and i would like to go ahead and bring it up to the board right now i mean you know what what is gonna i mean can we bring it back as an agenda item to discuss it to be able to look at the possibilities of yes looking at all of this and i'm i'm i'm upset i have to say this i'm upset but you guys i'm upset because that's exactly what i was trying to state when i did say we need a school on the east side i i don't know how to you know i would like us to you know i would like to bring this item back i would like for us to look at everything that you know the reconfiguration team took the time to do all this for us you know i i think i i feel really strongly that we we should reconsider this for magnolia and i'm asking the board right now i would like to bring this item back i need i i would like to a board president i'm asking you formally yeah so just for just for clarity there's there's two different uh requests that hurt someone with some board member bruce gonzalez which is to allow for a formal conversations to take place where there can be dialogue between the board and the community around this around the magnolia conversation and and what i if i'm hearing you correctly there's a second request which is not the same which is to have to bring this item back for reconsideration uh absolutely why are we going to go excuse me why are we going to go back and forth so you know i would like to bring you back as an item for us to discuss it and reconsider that i would like to vote on it again okay so that will require i'm sorry hold on president no so we actually you know excuse me i'm not excuse me hold on i'm still speaking remember audience are you interrupted board board member cruz gonzalez we just can't discuss rationale right so we can't so you can make a request but we can't you can we can't talk about why we want to do something i understand that but what what i'm asking right now is to bring this back right and i'm seeking board direction now so there's two requests that were that were here one is from one is from board member cruz gonzalez to have a conversation around the item and another one is to bring the item back so i'm looking to the board for for direction so i prefer what gabriella suggested i mean i think my vote well yes so if she wants to bring it back for reconsideration that that's even better than having a conversation and i'm the one that voted no because i was confused but i want to talk about it more i'm not i'm not comfortable with my vote so um i'll look to the other two board members yes okay then we will we will bring this back at a future at a future meeting [Music] i mean that was just the one thing that i was going to say um yeah the other one's on the agenda i can wait board member bo uh no comments this evening board member rodriguez pena yes uh good evening everyone and thank you everyone for being here today and voicing your opinion that's the most important thing if you have want to make a change and you want to make a change or have something done is to come up and speak in front of the community or the board of the city council wherever you need to go um so kudos for that everybody i just want to announce that the um ama the azusa management association association oriented contest i wanted to congratulate all the students that participated they did a great job the theme was to ride the wave and they had such great speeches all these students i wanted to congratulate first place winner emily ruiz from azusa high school she will now move on to the original competition i also um attended i'm a rotarian also so the zuzia rotary we had a luncheon and the guest speaker was uh dr gomez from azusa high and he spoke about all the great programs that they have with zuzia high and all the sports programs that some of the rotarians were not aware because they did not live in our community um i also attended the city of azusa and the zuzia unified school district ad hoc committee meeting the discussions were regarding the school reorganization updates traffic safety um for the school year 23 and 24. partly partnering with them to purchase lawn signs for our high school seniors we did that for the last three years and um we spoke about the uh sequa document for the old school house that's located at the slauson middle school campus and i want to call i'm calling out to all high school seniors azusa leadership learning educational foundation and azusa sister city are giving one thousand dollar scholarship to each high school the contact person at azusa high is miss hernandez at the career center miss madden at glaston high school in the career center also and miss d davis at fiera high school she's a teacher so if you go in the main office you can get an application and the deadline date for that is march 25th i also like to close in memory of alexis romero she was an employee at azusa high school that passed away thank you and i would like to say thank you to the to the parents and community members who who reached out and who i had the opportunity to sit with to talk with on the phone thank you for for that space i know that there are a couple other who we either play phone tag or email tag a little bit and so um i'll be following up and still looking to to have those conversations with those who have not yet had the opportunity um to connect with either over the phone or or in person um with that in mind i did state that at this meeting i would communicate out something that i that i that i've done some semi-regularly but though haven't done in a while is to hold an online coffee where there's space for um just a number of conversations to be able to come up and allow for some for some dialogue and so i will be scheduling this next one on march 24th um and so that is it will be on zoom and that's something that i will make available i typically shared out on on social media channels it's also something that i share out to anybody who has ever been to a previous one uh you'll get an email if that's something that you would like the information on to to be able to come and and really the it's wide open to speak about i'd say almost anything some some things are we're not able to speak yet but but most most things and some of most of the things that are discussed here there is space to be able to discuss those but that will be happening on march 24th at 6 00 p.m and so i'll send that information out and again it's open to anyone in the community to be able to to join in and uh and be part of that conversation with that we move on to item uh 8.0 comments and 8.1 comments and reports by the superintendent cabinet student and student school board members and i do believe that we have our student school board members on crystal flamino hello can you hear me yes we can hear you gladstone would like to congratulate monique juanita monique medina for being named the montview league mvp for girls soccer gladstone will be having a sadie's hawkins dance on friday march 11th from 7 to 11 pm on the outdoor stage the art show for abigail sanchez will continue in the art gallery through march 11th the dates are march 1st 3rd 8th 10th and 11th from 3 to 5 pm spring sports baseball and softball have began badminton swimming and track and field will begin on the week of march 14th softball and base will have a non-league game on friday softball home and baseball away against baldwin park girls playing home at 3 15.
fast forward again couldn't still couldn't verify the miles from 2019 for the 2021 school year over the last year i've been working very closely with transportation staff and this audit finding will go away for the current year 2022 and the transportation route miles used for 2022 are from fiscal 2021 and we did already implement the processes for 2021 and are following up and continuing to improve those for the current fiscal year 2022 which will inform the transportation route miles for fiscal 2023.
it is identical in spending possibilities as sr2 with the exception that it has a requirement that we must spend at least 20 on closing coveted learning gaps so working with students individually or in small groups our balance remaining is 6.5 million and the projected plan spending is continuing staffing support for the inter additional paras in each building that are supporting intervention the behavior support specialists are also at the secondary buildings and they are covered with an sr3 and then that same technology technician that was written in the grant before it also will be helped support hot spots and online programs that we have money towards those hvac projects at sand creek and the high school stem supplies and curriculum and other approved costs and i did note that 20 of this grant for us is 1.4 million that will have to be highlighted towards student programs so a quick summary on what we've already spent in sr3 hotspot hotspots for students and staff summer school cost after the summer school grant from the state we had summer school last year available for first through 12th grade and after everything was said and done and amount that we got from the state for summer school we spent about 194 000 on that program um the five additional pairs in each building we've paid for google enterprise some support for the jag program the meeting recording pro equipment that we can use for board meetings in pd cafeteria tables for sand creek and then cleaning supplies and a floor scrubber the hvac projects that i've mentioned to increase indoor cat air quality i put them all into one page for a quick overview uh sr3 is support is providing 2.3 million of that funding and sr2 is providing 785 000 there is an additional 700 earmarked through sr3 that's our proportionate share of that same project for air quality over at the career center that is a projected amount they don't have final estimates yet for that one gear briefly ipbs that is using the 1.3 million that they have allocated to put equipment out for data casting to make it available the money that's available to us within the school district was 240 000 which we have exclusively used for hotspot contracts we have a balance of 66 000 remaining on that and it will be used for that same amount that same thing any questions or requests for any additional details on any of those categories thank you i was going to say the same thing i i think that they're um i have seen on social media and other areas that there are a lot of questions about this money and i think this was a very thorough and well thought out presentation that explains where these funds are going to and i agree i think this is going to be very appreciated the link for the online where you clicked for the ido dashboard i don't know if that would be because while they'll be able to see online through the live stream all of your presentation they won't be able to click on that link is there a website where they can go or how if they want to go the community members want to go and actually see that dashboard how can they get to that so we have posted already our overview of sr3 funds on our website right underneath that i will just post this same presentation and it'll be a live link great um so this presentation then will be posted for community members who are streaming or catching us on the replay again i can very well put together thank you for that any other questions for nikki before we move on so i think we're down um to professional staff on our recommendations teresa yes i do have a recommendation uh for the board tonight um a the principal has recommended that the teaching contract of lee alcorn should be canceled for multiple reasons stated by the principal and a preliminary written decision that was provided to ms alcorn i provided the board with a copy of the principal's preliminary decision after receiving the principal's notice miss alcorn asked to have a private conference with me i met with miss alcorn and have decided to uphold the principal's preliminary decision to cancel her contract i notified ms alcorn in writing my decision and informed her that she had the right to request a private conference with the board ms alcorn has not requested a private conference with the board and her deadline under the law to make that request has expired therefore i am recommending to the board tonight that you approve the administrative recommendation and cancel the teaching contract of lee alcorn for the reasons stated and the principal's preliminary notice um so theresa brown superintendent has recommended that the board cancel the teaching contract for lee alcorn for the reasons stated in the principal's written preliminary decision do i have a motion i move that the board approve the superintendent's recommendation and cancel the teaching contract of lee alcorn for the reasons stated in the principal's written preliminary decision and i second the motion okay we have a motion by susan a second by earl is there any um discussion has been moved and seconded um and that the board approved the superintendent's recommendation and canceled the teaching contract of lee alcorn for the reasons stated in the principles written preliminary decision susan would you call the rule pat yes tony yes amy yes chelsea yes earl yes myself yes motion passes um so now we'll move down under support staff recommendations we have dakota bland county middle school parapro maya board trigger a jennings county high school assistant girls soccer coach amy gibruller for a jennings county bus aide andy gudgel for scipio elementary para beth hamilton for the united track coach at the high school the unified track coach my apologies shanna lovett as the nve um sub parapro doug mills as the jennings county high school assistant baseball coach chelsea ragsdale lascipio elementary ssr parapro and jason smith for graham creek elementary parapart i think asking for a motion to accept those recommendations i make emotionally proof as read okay pat tony seconds is there any discussion no susan will you call the role yeah tony yes yes chelsea yes earl yes myself um next under finances um donations yes we have two donations i bring to the board and asking them to accept tonight sarah sports corporation 435 dollars to sibio and the jennings church of christ 200 to the high school panther pantry asking the board to accept those donations okay do we have a motion tony second chelsea any discussion susan i do have one thing um so i'm going to ask the board to consider joining a suit for litigation there are 41 school districts in indiana um and many in the nation who have entered into litigation with jewel labs due to marketing vaping products to our children we have had real concerns with vaping in our jennings county schools i'd like to recommend that our board consider joining this lawsuit there's no upfront cost to our district in any way shape or form but we would be adding our name to the suit if the board approves that so i'd like you to consider that okay now we have a motion from earl is there a second second second from pat any discussion just want to say from a healthcare perspective vaping is extremely dangerous not only to our children but also to adults so i appreciate you bringing this forward and allowing us to participate in this and making a statement um for the health and well-being of our children so thank you for that um susan when you call the role pat yeah tony yes amy yes chelsea yes earl yes yes um i think we're to the end of our um agenda is there any other items that need to be brought no then i'll entertain a motion to adjourn motion from chelsea do we have a second second from um tony susan you want to call the role that yes amy yes chelsea yes earl yes yes all right