the last part of the report is starting on is where you get into some of the non-major funds that you don't see presented at the front and again these are the lesser funds these these are not unimportant from that perspective but more these just do not have as much activity or balances are considered non-major problems but back here is where we show the budgetary financial statements so this is where we'll we'll show or present your what you adopted or what you had as a revised budget versus the actual you can see that there's activities budget actually for each of the non-major ones in this section once again no differences than what we presented or what we've provided in past years in terms of the financial statements the system reports that traditionally continental elementary is issued i think maybe two or three years ago you guys issued like a kafir or what is now called an afro where you go out for awards with the asphalt and gfoa organizations i think stopped doing that a couple years ago but really all that is is just you know even more detail of what you're seeing here this is the bare minimum of what governments need to issue in the state of arizona and nationally the last part of this report is what we call the government auditing standards or the report of internal control this is something called this is all required under auditing standards that if you're in government and you receive uh you know government funding you we are required to issue what's called a gas letter for the report on internal control and really that's just a different set of audit requirements put out by the federal government that we have to adhere to and when we perform an audit in accordance with yellow book or gas or whatever you want to call it we have to issue this letter which essentially says we did or we did not come across issues so when you think about audit findings you can have at the top of the list if you will would be like a material weakness that is that's the most severe probably below that would be a significant deficiency below that would be some sort of controlled efficiency that we may or may not report in in a written report and then you've also got the state compliance that cynthia's going to go over with the usf so different varying levels of an audit finding it can fall anywhere in there and sometimes it can be a state compliance and it can be a state compliance issue that's so severe that it also ends up in this gas level so just competing standards on on how we perform the audit and therefore where we have to report findings that we come across so i'll let her talk about the finding that we do have in this report for fiscal 21 so if you were to turn to page 93 in this report we did come across one um material weakness in the general controls and this is due to the cash reconciliation performed against the county school superintendent there were as you can see on the context section of it several unbreakables or a few unreconciled differences that led to the district's records when we came to audit not being accurate so we had to post other adjustments for them to be able to be presented accurately on the actual financial statements which is what led to this material maintenance being presented here was it several or a few um well because it's it's um i guess relative is in different phones it's um we did identify like one expenditure one for the bond payments slot being posted to the general ledger which is a pretty big amount as you can as you can probably imagine so that what materially misdated the funds fund balance and then just one revenue posting that then when revenue received that didn't get posted and several others that we didn't identify what they were for how many that you couldn't identify that they were for i i couldn't tell you about the amount i think it's around seventy thousand dollars yeah it's the third bullet that's in there so it's not like it's like items that were imposed because we couldn't we can't tell there's many things going on it's just a balance amount that we couldn't trace back or agree to the county schools superintendent's record and it may be on the county school superintendent's records it's just the fact that it didn't get researched to the point where that either the county school superintendent caused their journal or the district posted on your knowledge and this is that letter no that's not that that that wasn't printed that's the big report that didn't get delivered this is on page 93 so it's on page 93.
in 1819 they were 234. in 1920 which was that abbreviated year due to covid they were down to 92. last year i was there from october to may and we had 25 total referrals this year we've had 12.
so that's something that's fun an innovative project that's being recognized nationwide that we'll now have available to us in this process too um but the primary thing similar like with hmos when you have somebody as a primary care advisor that's kind of making sure that you're doing what you need to do and you're looking at your holistic health that's why you always have to have referrals this clinical care advocacy is going to be operating in that capacity to where they'll be acting as like i said that liaison between the patient the doctor the insurer and assisting them with any information that they need in terms of prior authorization requests facilitating medication programs and coordinating um alternate site care and that's huge for us to have another resource because our benefits department had been assisting in that process before and we're just not staffed enough in that capacity to have this whole new resource for us will be big so in terms of our employee experience we hope and expect to see lots of big things in terms of making sure that we have dedicated service to our employees into where they're going to be able to access information better technology we're fortunate coming into this year what was the first time we actually had a platform in which employees go online and look at our insurance and also do open enrollment in that capacity so going to next year we're going to have that same level um with kairos they use thinly so we'll be taking on vimley and employees are going to be doing open enrollment through that capacity as well as being able to continuously look on vimly in regards to their products and their insurance so that's something that's wonderful we're staying within that it area as opposed to before when we did not have that option those telehealth services that clinical care advocacy and that increased focus on member health and engagement so we're going to be working with them to make sure that we have all the right technology all the right supports to help employees smooth as smooth as possible in this transition but also to make it a great experience as we move forward too and knowing with my relationship on the meet conferred team as well as the insurance committee i know they'll hold me accountable if i don't provide this i will hold kairos accountable if they don't help me provide this in that picture [Laughter] so one thing that we talked about in another session is that we know communication is going to be key so we'll make sure that we provide all sorts of different communication to our employees so they understand we're working with kairos to do videos webinars we're going to be doing road shows asking our administrators to visit their sites and so that way we can have a quick powerpoint and share the differences because as much as we communicate communicate through emails and other resources we always know we have individuals who struggle and or individuals who don't realize what impact this is in terms of change for them and like i said we're hoping it'll be minimal because we're seeing a lot of the same carriers in terms of that primary medical it's really going to be the ancillary that are going to be some changes but we're looking to mirror those same types of plan designs even though it's going to be a different vendor but we're always here to work with our employees in every capacity that we can and knowing that we have a whole other set of customer service to where employees can call kairos directly is an added benefit again an extension of our own benefits department that's only going to support us in the bigger picture and with that i'll entertain any questions president kaler mrs martens thank you for this presentation i'm excited to see it i wanted to i think the july 1st date is actually a pretty excellent thing for our employees who are getting ready to possibly change and come to higley to have that option um i know it might feel hurtful at the beginning this first year being that that out if you've already met your out-of-pocket max and i'm confident that our team will work with those people to make that as smooth and as easy as possible thank you any questions i too want to say thank you and for both kairos and your team uh benefits is important and they're always like you said there are some stragglers i've had a little time benefits here and then i worked in a hospital in human resources and um it's good to hear that you are trying to keep it the same and thinking of the employee it's not just hey it is what it is and we're just trying to save money so i appreciate you doing that for the staff have you had any feedback about the current plans of what works well and what doesn't work well as far as coverage any president kaler vice president anderson one of the biggest things that we've heard transitioning into this year was just having the availability to have access to their insurance information online and another benefit that we've heard uh one of the things that was a struggle my first few years here was that our previous short-term disability plan and the way that it covered our employees in terms of the elimination period how long as well as numbers being incorrect when they were doing payouts a large number of our demographics are women and women who are having families so short-term disability was being utilized quite intensely for that reason i will say that in conversations with kairos because we are doing weekly calls there is a difference in the short-term disability so in finance cabinet and regular cabinet my colleagues and i and dr foley have talked about there are some things that we might not look to change as a result if we aren't able to mirror them in a capacity to our benefit as well as the fact that kairos doesn't have the same critical illness and cancer insurance that we have currently and we have a number of employees just under 200 in each one of those plan designs so we're looking to keep those for them too but there's still continued dialogue to occur in the bigger picture and where we'll move to and as you said miss anderson looking to mirror as much as we can as possible so there's limited impact it is a struggle i consider myself a fairly good benefits person but i there's still a lot that i need to know and understand so i can only imagine our employees especially some of those employees where uh they might be overinsured but they do it out of fear of being underinsured so making sure that they are just paying up front versus paying later um so we want to help educate them too because although there's no premium increase this year i think ultimately mr moore and i are looking to do premium decreases knock on wood with good positive experiences and hopefully with the right education our employees can help us with that and mr schultz thank you um mrs martin um i have just one question so so uh various insurance companies offer preventative um things like through um mental and physical health and so is that one of the options is whether it might be gym or yeah so i'm going to look to ms sherman and mr ashton but i do know in our initial conversations there are some gym certainly preventative options just like other medical care in regards to doing your yearly visits we talked a little bit about and i'm losing the word off the top of my head but will you do the yearly come in and test the biometric screening yes biometric screening so yeah mr man if you want to comment on anything else we do have a full suite of preventive and wellness type opportunities of course with the affordable care act there's embedded wellness and preventive stuff in the health insurance but we also do come alongside and offer biometric screenings at no cost to the district so we'll be looking to schedule those in the near future there's a number of other solutions depending on what the need is we have an employee assistance program that might touch on the mental health piece that is available at no cost teledoc again is another thing that right now especially is available at no cost on all of our plans because of covid and the cares act legislation so we do have a number of resources but we are available we have a whole team available to answer any questions if they should come up um we would love to hear from you and provide more education so we can get the word out i just have one more sorry oh quick question you said teledoc was available now on your plans do you anticipate with because okova do you anticipate that changing in the future yeah so it's kind of a multi-pronged answer so teledoc is available through the health insurance plans on all of them but on for example the high deductible health plan you do have to pay a co-pay for it and that's an irs regulation but because of the karzak legislation that's been waived so at some point depending on the plan you might have a copay you might not it depends on the plan okay sure oh i was just gonna be silly and just say hey if you can negotiate some discounts or some free massages for these teachers that would be fantastic i know some people will work on it i think that can fall under chiropractic care somehow so um i have seen that and i know some chiropractors so hit me up you can be creative yeah board member anderson absolutely we'll also work with mr moore to build a robust wellness budget and so then we can offer these services i just want to say i'm thankful for such a healthy community overall higley's been a very healthy community so i'm thankful for teachers that you know eat well exercise and take care of themselves so um that's part of this whole plan is that we are a healthy community like you said most of our medical is pregnancy so um we're we're pretty good around here so it's good we have some teachers been around i've been around in here too i worked at human resources and the subcoordinators i don't know if you guys participate remember the wellness committee that we had way back when and we played volleyball and we had steps and we try to have like weekly or monthly prizes so whenever you say it's a healthy community like we i didn't expect the turnout in the people that participated and it was a lot of fun it'd be neat if we could start that up again you're going to bring in so we can actually be close together kind of i think there was a nail to scale it higley high all the part the district or is it the whole district that we did nail the scale every year so there's some great things that we do in higley to stay healthy so very good we appreciate your time i just have one more questions for um um you talked about the ancillary and not having the the information yet for that do you if people are hearing staffs hearing this is it something that they should worry about as far as the cost or you're you're working that out um [Music] president kayla our board member schultz uh we in through our kind of initial comparisons with kairos some of our ancillary products we're looking at they're they are a tad bit higher but they also come with better benefits some are very comparable and some of them are less so we're seeing a mix among the three so in terms of concerns i would say no overall but we just do want to we want to acknowledge that they'll be different um and make sure that that's clear that there's a differentiation between that and our primary medical thank you very much thank you will that will those be brought back to us those will you like give us some sort of information even if it's just through um superintendent report just so we know what to expect there president kayla board member wilson we certainly can provide it in the superintendent's report um in terms of specifics if that's what you would like but as we're continuing to work with kairos and getting all the information building the system for that implementation date uh we'll be communicating all of it through our open enrollment process um as well as like i said educating our employees even prior to that so that way they're making sure that they're choosing the right plan that's best for them as they move forward but we'll certainly provide all of that to you guys in advance too thank you i know that in the past the school board was was available we were available to go on certain plans too is that still the same with this so i can't speak president kayla i can't speak to during my time before my time but during my time the school board has not been part of that um i know there was some confusion at one point but it's not a classification coverage that is in it um i know that dr foley had raised that question with me last year too uh we at one point had retirees in the program but we no longer have that because we only had one individual take advantage of that and that was a number of years ago now at this point so i'm not familiar with prior to 2017 but during the time that i've been here it's not been an employee coverage group no interesting well thank you for clarifying that i think we're all good here though president kaler members of the board i want to take a second to thank our our team both our our hr and benefits team also working very closely with finance one of the themes you've heard in our presentations is we have been so thoughtful and intentional about examining what we've done how we've done it and how we continue to do it better and and one of the things that's really important is ensuring that we have the same caliber and quality of resources for insurance for our employees while not being at the whim of if we if we are not self-funded and the company we were with were to raise the rates we would have no other choice but to to to pass it along we would not want to give a raise and then turn around and have to raise our insurance for the same insurance company so this is one of the smart ways that we can ensure the quality the caliber the option the choices and financially be in control of it so that we worse we're more stable and more financially there that doesn't happen without strong leadership and teams who understand how to do this and make sure that we do this well mum martens is being um she is being kind when she says she's just understanding this mom is an expert in insurance the reason she is on it was at that conference is because they asked her because of her knowledge she's being recognized by our colleagues in this state as an expert in this area and we're fortunate to have her in this capacity to advise our team as we do as we work to do things better and differently having mr moore and his team help us make sure financially we're doing these right also makes us able to move forward with sound decisions so we thank this team in the work they've done this has been a lot of work to bring into here but we feel good about this being one more piece that we're putting in place to ensure how we do what we do better well thank you so much you're so humble miss martens thank you appreciate you appreciate everybody that worked on this to present tonight all right we have some exciting action items coming let's move on to 8.1 imove that we consider discuss amend if desired and if deemed advisable to adopt a resolution ordering and calling a special bond election to be held in and for the district and authorizing the chief financial officer to comply with certain sections of the internal revenue code second questions comments concerns mrs schultz you're looking at me would you like to say something ah i'm okay i will wait till after that's okay okay mrs anderson okay um i just wanted to address a couple things um going through the the feedback from the survey there are some some information was the concerns with some information were expressed of course you know we've all read through it and i think you addressed it in the powerpoint whenever you gave it to us the main highlights but i just wanted to speak to it um you know the one i really want to hit are for the people that are on the fence due to previous administration um they're they're worried about you know if it was mishandled before then how can i trust it's going to be handled well now well i just want to say it on record i just want it to be you know said out loud that you know there are at least two board members current um that fought against a lot of the previous administrators are superintendent's choices and um you know one was threatened and i myself being the other one you know our reputation was destroyed and it was very hurtful and and bad times but i just want to say to those to these community members that are not certain that you know we've got people serving right now that that were aware of it and were against it and have a lot of faith in the administrators that we have right now seeing a complete change in the choices that they've made the information that they convey sometimes overwhelming not sometimes all the time overwhelming but it's it's very transparent and makes it more comfortable um so i just want to touch on that that you know you've got a team of people right now that are that are have more confidence in the in the administration um i also wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that the bond doesn't cover employee salaries you know so thankfully we have something on the agenda today covering that but the bond is not for that um so whenever the expression express expressed concern about that we're talking about taking care of the buildings and getting resources in the classrooms and things like that um uh i just you know i'm not real being a teacher and to teach right now and in our district we give laptops to every uh student and i'm not really for it i really wasn't for it whenever we did it when i worked at cooley um i see why we have it but that was one of the concerns that was mentioned you know do we really need to give all the students laptops well they need the technology there's a lot of things that are online now maybe down the road we look at it again but as a teacher i appreciate that students have that technology and we are handling it a lot better now than we have before also can you speak mr moore again just because i think a lot more people are listening now than maybe previous meetings where you've already stated information we do have current bonds and overrides out there correct we're that our community is paying on and they can look at their county tax record to see right i brought mine in today but so you can see how much we are currently paying for things that are out there how much longer do we have on them and in how much so how much longer will the community be paying on them yeah president kaley remember anderson we yeah the the debt that um is incurred from from general obligation bonds we did pass a bond in 2013.
and good evening uh members of the board superintendent staley this is jamie can you guys hear me okay just to answer uh dr kaiser's question your in-migration and out-migration at the high schools ranges from 25.7 to 33.4 of students in and out okay the whole the whole okay the whole district so the high schools have less migration there's only two choices typically right yeah it really just depends on the grade level in the individual school and how that ranges and like rob said he'll be presenting your full demographic analysis update for this year a little bit later and you can see those numbers by school okay thank you uh any other questions that any board member want to bring up uh matt okay i have a comment um is that okay yeah it's a comment no yes all right okay so um if no one has a question for our expert demographers then we can um move to discussion excuse me uh okay do we have a motion i move the green map okay we have a motion to move the green map i'll second that okay okay so that's now up for discussion i'd like to just very briefly i've made a lot of speeches about these maps and i don't want to repeat them but i want to thank the people who came out to speak on behalf of the green map obviously agree with you and i want to point out for the benefit of everyone in attendance and that the orange map has had by the standards of this conversation virtually no public support i remember clearly one email that we received a couple of months ago about it and i remember one comment here in favor of the orange map now my memory might be fuzzy and i'm biased so my recollection of the history on this could i could be mistaken probably am you know it might be two emails and one speech we have heard very consistently and not just from a a finite easily defined number of you i'm hearing at this point from a very what i would consider a broad coalition of people from different walks of life and ages and stages who don't like the orange map and what it represents you know as we are all aware democracy is having a moment in the world right now and i think that the only appropriate choice for us to uphold democracy in this school district in an unadulterated fashion is to support the green map because it was created by somebody who had no idea you know which incumbents if any would benefit from it the criteria that he used to draw the map i think was very admirable and we've got an opportunity to to do something uh and make a statement in favor of objectivity and reasonableness in the choice of this map for the district so i urge passage of green thank you [Applause] um all right clapping this is a discussion now among the board members so um that's just really slowing us down eileen thank you madam president i think this process that we've had to go through has been [Music] misunderstood misinterpreted um i'm not sure how we got where we are we did not choose we meaning the school district did not choose to move into district elections that was forced on us by a law firm that was busy suing districts that didn't do this the law that we then had to follow set up the criteria that we needed to use to allow for protection of voting strength by protected classes and in this district that's our hispanic voters with a smaller minority of african-american voters those were the criteria you are all right we did not ask when the demographers began their work to look at where each current board member lived as we were ending the process of coming together to look at the the maps the green the purple and the blue we became aware because someone asked a question of whether or not they would be able to run for election it when it got to november and when we looked at started looking at the sequencing and how that would happen we didn't know yet because it hadn't been approved and so when we looked further into that issue of sequencing we discovered that it wasn't just a clean move into the process with the green blue and purple maps that we had but the by developing the orange maps which the demographers developed each one of the current board members could be in an approved district and the community would know who was going to be up for election with the next election and no current board members if they chose to be running for reelection would be running against each other i thought that was kind of a clean way to get into this process of districting when the support for the orange map was expressed and and i'm one of the ones that it was immediately seen as the word the with the word gerrymandering came out and if you look up the definition of gerrymandering it doesn't fit but the perception was that something funny was going on and we were trying to guarantee a seat on the board if you look at the statistics of our last three elections incumbents were not reelected so if you're an incumbent on this board right now your chances of being reelected aren't good um so my my need was only to make it as smooth a transition as possible if you take a look at what district elections do yes it it appoints um a district and says you can run if you live in that area for that district once you're elected guess what you're on the board of education of the chico unified school district and you have every single student in that district to represent you don't represent that district you represent all 12 000 kids in this district and all of the actions and considerations you take are on behalf of every single one of those kids regardless of what district you lived in to get elected i want you to think about that the politicalization of this process has been okay i'm going to end and not define that because it has upset me this isn't about politics this is about kids being taught in our district and who represents that district on the board of education means absolutely zero if you're being a responsible board member you are doing what it takes to investigate all of the things we have to consider for every single one of our kiddos okay tomorrow oh i'm sorry i thought you did okay i just want to move the question oh so we don't have them on the table all right so uh if there's no further discussion and the context of this again is following the law of the california voting rights act which was explicitly structured to try to strengthen recognized minority groups and our only sizable group since the new census data came out was hispanic and they were very dispersed and so most of the districts designed were to be relatively equal in numbers um okay so we have a motion to approve the green actually what okay go ahead please i do have things to say and i was going to say it with my vote but i actually want to hit on these beforehand because i want to follow up what board member robinson said so i want to start off by saying there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these map options each of these maps all do what's best for kids and the decision to draw district lines has everything to do with a threat of lawsuit and hardly anything to do with what's best for kids except to make sure that we are elevating the vote of our hispanic population and that when we do that we are also evenly distributing the population within the confines of the law so what we're voting on tonight are maps that fall within those criteria one does those slightly better than the other um and otherwise neither map gives member robinson an advantage she's in the same situation with both maps if we talk about individuals and running for re-election and all those things board member robinson has just as much right and ability to win that seat again with the green map as she does with either orange map it's equal even she has no skin in the game with this z-ro it's actually mr tennis and i who have the most to lose in this decision in the ability to run for our seats again in 2024.
yes yeah and you know and this is you know nothing you know it's just the way it is most of these schools that have d's and f's are on the reservation um which makes it even that much less likely that there would be a entity that would want to take them over it's an arizona school so um you know cindy and i were talking about a district today that's been taken over uh they have a receiver they're in receivership that's up on the reservation uh districts you know district school so and it you know it happens some other bad bills this is the list that's the title of this page bad bills um sb1211 um i'm all about transparency i'm all about transparency but this would require teachers to post their lesson plans and all materials used in the classroom online within seven days worksheets no pages uh powerpoints websites anything that's used would have to go online within seven days after um second thing is um require let's see this would require schools to get permission from a permission form before conducting surveys that ask personal questions um one of the concerns i had is the arizona student youth survey thank you um we think that might be exempt that's the one that asks kids about their their smoking and drug use and things like that that's used by health the health department to kind of target kids and their needs we think that might be exempt because it is that survey isn't statute so it hopefully would be exempt but and then on the back this is something that came out i think two days ago the on track summer camp program provides 100 million dollars for um summer camps our summer school uh we are i'm gonna tell you right now we have no no intent of tapping into it it requires the summer camp or summer school to go eight weeks long we had trouble getting staff for four weeks and we burned them out last year so we don't we don't think that we can adequately staff this but if there is a community organization that wants to do this they are welcome to apply for the money and we would support them the best we could and and so it doesn't have to be a school district to access this money you know it could be a boys and girls club it could be a ymca um another community organization like that is more than willing or that's more than willing to do this take this on can can tap into that hundred million dollars um schools must be rated a b or c all of our just all of our schools match our meet that requirement so again if the community organization wants to tap into that he'd be more than willing to um support them any way we could questions on that that's not like set in stone yet right what's that these are all bills that are in process right now um there's still you know we've gone all the way to almost the end of june um i asked our our the lobbyist so um when do you think this could be done and she goes i just have no idea they haven't even started the budget negotiations well i'm sure there's negotiations going on but not in public the public part of the budget negotiations has not started yet so that's that could take a while [Music] uh out this week and i think i sent you guys a a link to it is the let me see if i'm skipping anything oh the june board meeting um i'm actually our the the arizona school administrators has their annual meeting that on the 13th i'm hoping to be able to move the school board meeting to the sixth uh mr livingston does that give you enough time to do the proposed budget by june sixth availability for you all is on that day [Music] okay um is it is there another day or are you okay missing the meeting or are you sure a staff of the quarter on march 1st we recognize the teachers and staff at the quarter at territorial we had louisa gamboa our teacher and leanne lopez our staff member at del rio it was requested to honor our a couple of our therapists there jane mcmanucle is our speech therapist and ann williams is our occupational therapist at hms we had ariadna mian our teacher and sherry riley our staff member and unfortunately ariana was not available hopefully she got her stuff so proud okay thank you and then at the high school was miles holder our teacher and star barns our staff member and at our district we had to i'll say i had the light to cheyenne because she's the one that keeps the list of our staff members and teachers of the the quarter so um i threw heidi under the bus and said heidi was going to get it was actually cheyenne the one that we actually honored as our district opera staff member of the quarter so yeah so thanks for taking one for the team anytime all right um as always i want to thank donna webb from jeds who has continued to support the staff of the court program providing treats um there's a misspelling there but it's treats and gift cards to each employee that is recognized so thanks to donna for what everything she does in supporting the school district now we can move on to the classroom spending report this is the report that comes out every year um it's i hated the format that i that i saw this time it was very difficult to read um compared to prior years so what i've done is kind of took it there's a chart that looks like this so that you can compare it's just on it's in there on the back of the of the one of the pages but this is a much easier way to compare year over year our classroom spending report so our classroom spending from 2020 to 2021 went from 64.9 percent to 64 while at the same time going up almost 1.1 million dollars our non-classroom spending went from 35.1 to 36 um and that went up 900 000 and i wanted i have an explanation for that that explains both of them really um if you look at our food service our food service went from 1.2 million to 1.8 million last year that's because we were feeding the you know the kids got free food we were doing our take-home meals we had buses out we had a couple days a week we were doing grab-and-go's you know our food service department our transportation department really worked their tails off to feed our kids and so that pumped a bunch of extra revenue into the district and what you got to remember is most of that revenue is passed through it's not discretionary we can't just use that money for anything the money comes in because we're buying meals from sodexo so what that does is pump up the whole um the whole amount and decreases the various things that aren't non-classroom spending but our you know our instruction went up seven hundred thousand dollars year over year our uh student support went up three hundred thousand dollars year over year um and our instructional support went up fifty thousand dollars so you know a lot of a lot more money going you know two million dollars going into i'm sorry 1.2 million dollars going into class and spending i don't think the percentages are reflective of what actually is taking place because of the food service uh and then our average teacher salary in 2019 was 44 just just under 45 000 last year just over 48 and this year in 2021 this last full school year it went up to fifty one thousand six twenty five so that we're proud of of working on getting that salary up as well questions on the classroom spending report there's an interesting article in the courier a while back about average chipper salaries in the prescott area all of them made the 20 increase that was on you know the teacher's goal and supposedly legislation to increase them so i believe the author of that article is in the room existing teachers got the 25 rate part of the problem is if you had somebody making coming from a high pay district coming here their salary actually went down because even with the the raise they were you know we couldn't match what they were paying down there so we had to go off to our salary schedule so um but everyone that was here that stayed here got a five percent raise but it's in arizona in the united states as far as teachers we're in the bottom couple probably like i've always heard 48 but not no at least we all made the 20 which is the good news yes any other questions on classroom spending report the the last thing oh principal search update uh we had i printed out the five applications that we have i was just printing out before this meeting um mrs daniels and i are going to kind of do a paper screen tomorrow make some phone calls um our date for the interviews right now are march 23rd the idea is that those that are invited to interview they'll meet with the committee and i'm going to ask cindy to talk about the communities a second uh she put the committee together we and then i'm going to basically do a uh dashboard do a tour of the of the community and that'll give me an opportunity to and some time with the candidate to kind of get in basically my interview with the candidate uh in the afternoon the candidates will take part in a staff meet and greet at del rio dinner with you so if we could is that except for five o'clock 4 45 on march 23rd which is a wednesday um all the candidates and potentially their spouses if they want their their their spouse their significant other um we'll be at the culinary arts room 4 45 on march 23rd colony arts room dinner with the candidates we will send an email and invitation out for that so that and then they go straight from there over to back to del rio for the community meet and greet at seven o'clock six o'clock that afternoon or evening and then the committee and myself will get together and are you know we'll make an offer to the candidate give them some time to think about it but the idea is to come to the april board meeting um with a candidate for your consideration all ready now the last item is end of the calendar these are some of the important dates there is a calendar in here there's a lot going on hence the small writing i apologize i need to put it on two pages but um this gives you an idea of kind of the stuff going on and again the important stuff happening include we have some choir band concerts on may 2nd and 3rd ffa banquet we have the senior awards night um i put it on here because i think it's one of the funnest things biggest things that we do is dodge ball versus the chino valley police department which involves some of these teachers here we do our district recognition which is honoring our uh retirees and our 5 10s 15s 20s and we have some 25s this year and i don't think we have any 30s right no that was last year and then we have of course graduation make sure you get that on your calendar which is wednesday may 25th at seven o'clock at philly and middle school does not do graduation they are doing a um kind of an overnight trip instead of the recognition yeah okay apparently i'm volunteered for that i hope both of you are going to we are okay we will someone who's experienced camping with eighth graders uh don't sleep in the don't sleep in the cabin sleep outside the door so they have to crawl you here yes she's here leslie you're here come on up firstly her trash [Music] good evening everyone i'm leslie and today a couple updates on student council and our events so first probably the most important we have prom um april 16th we are doing at the sam hill warehouse downtown we will begin ticket sales march 28th singles are sixty dollars and a hundred dollars for couples that's the usual price we've done the past couple years um we're gonna do senior please sound starting march 21st and then basically at shea daniels and the rest of the junior prom committee created this video you can watch it do you want to describe where this is at well it's downtown like um by the square probably you guys probably know the hotel it's like four staples in like chipotle and all those places like right across the street right there i mean we got a good deal and i guess um people i mean we were kind of concerned finally caught up [Music] the stars [Music] me that's all the information i told you right now [Music] thank you to is purple lightning the dj no so this year we're skipping out on a dj we invested it into our venue because every year they see like all the kids that's what they complain about is not having a great dj it's like so they really like our homecoming like music style so we decided to save that money because i think it was like two grand that we spent on a dj last year and like no one liked it so we were like you know what let's save ourselves the trouble this year and so we're gonna do our own music people always seem to like it and then we kind of know what we what our students here like so i think it'll be a better place for us to do that we'll see how it goes this year if not maybe next year we'll spend the money we'll see how that goes okay so next is our senior trip we are going to disneyland may 11th we leave may 11th it's the same night as our senior awards so we leave that night like at 11 pm or something like that and then we'll just come back the next day that night lately and then so we are looking for about a group of 50 people to go and so far we only have about 15 people signed up um the tickets are about 160 dollars we'll be going to both parks and councils people all the students seem really excited this year though we've got more of a turnout than we expected and then [Music] last thing is just community service our student council is looking forward to students participating in our community service project to give back to the community so far we are doing the blend chive the blood drive march 9th and the large gym from nine to five um you can sign up online from vietnam vidalante.com or you can email alexander teammate at alexandra teammate chinavalleyschools.com to do your appointment and then in the past we have contributed to jdrf the juvenile diabetes research foundation to support everyone living with type 1 diabetes and to help find your cure and then we would like to continue to support them so we're just going to do like little fundraisers before we sold little bracelets like during lunch for like five dollars and all that property to go to the foundation so we're looking to do that again yeah for leslie good job thank you [Music] so item number 7c is our preliminary 22.23 district budget so later in the meeting you guys are all going to hopefully approve or you'll be asked to approve the staff increases for next year in order to do that it's really important to kind of know where we are financially before you before you do that so that's kind of what this this does so as i mentioned mr livingston's going to bring the actual proposed budget to you all in june at the june board meeting but right now this is what we think the budget will look like and uh changes that we participate so there's really four areas that i look at when i when i'm the one that's responsible for this um probably i may not maybe i shouldn't but i like it that's why i am i'm superintendent i get to choose that so we have um increased revenue um decrease increase and decrease costs and then let's see increase revenue decrease revenue increase costs and decrease costs so our increased revenue is limited by statute to two percent or the rate of inflation whichever is lower so right now inflation's running five to seven percent whatever number you decide on um so that means we get two percent increase to that's what we have that means we'll get about 291 000 that's from the state from the states correct well and that's yeah as part of the budget the the budget process correct um our increase in decreased costs we were i was thinking we were going to be hit with an eight percent increase on insurance um we were surprised to find that it's actually closer to five but the way we do insurance is going to be six um so uh i'm i'm pretty happy with a six percent increase to insurance when historically we've seen as high as 20.
and there's a lot of that because the county is so far behind and the timing that they might be on we'll make this up november and here we are in early march and maybe in part because of that because yes uh the past reconciliation has to be performed once the county has their records ready and sometimes that is delayed by a couple months so it's always we're always trying to catch up with the county and identify stuff that or transactions that they might not have sent to you or you might not have sent to them so it's very various reasons but yes the county being like the timeliness of that definitely but you couldn't do the adjusting entries until you get caught up is that correct correct but so you so we must be caught up because you did the adjusting entries correct yes so we are caught up it's not a lag time as of june 30th correct which is what we were editing so they were already caught up in order for us to do the adjusting entries for the items that we identified yes but that was seventy thousand dollars that we don't know what it is so we're just kind of writing that off often well i don't know i don't know that our recommendation would be to write it off i think our recommendation would be for management to research that further and find out if it's your records or county school office who is off by that amount and it could be a combination of goals as your auditors we don't have the ability or the resources to go in and you know audit to the dollar to the single dollar value and i don't think you want to pay us to do that so um what we state is we get it to a number that we say okay we're okay with that we can still issue an opinion even though we think that there could be a statement here but we don't have enough information it's going to require some more investigation on the management side we're telling you we're reporting it to you to let you decide how you want to look into that and part of the difficulty with the monthly reconciliations is here's an example just today i'm posting revenues today that the county received in december so i do my monthly reconciliations with accounting based off of a trial balance that they have and now i've got to go back once they finally issue a final copy which could be two three four months in the past and re-reconciled so i'm having to reconcile to the county twice for a month that could have been two to three four months and that is the way the state of arizona works county by county they all have their own county directors obviously they all have their own county school offices and some counties are more proactive they're faster at this process than others and right now and sometimes counties are really good and then they have a changeover in personnel and they develop a lag time and eventually they become good again so this is it's kind of a cyclical thing and now you're not the only one of people counting dealing with you others are also given as well they may not always result in findings they may identify other controls or other ways to perform the reconciliation um but they're all in the same boat because you're all dealing with the same county treasurer county and also within this one it simply correctly went wrong when i was doing that reconciliation i did reconciliation and not definitely yes so and and we noted that once you get a chance to break this we didn't know that the reconciliations were performed fundamentally that management was performing those reconciliations on a monthly basis and they were timely as far as how timely the county was providing the trial balance is just taking it a step further and analyzing the reconciling differences and identifying whose records needed to be adjusted to them for a while i think that's what that first bullet is i think that's what we're talking about up from the bottom of this number it's the first bullet under the contact section of this finding that's that's the aspect of this finding that we're referring to you're doing the reconciliations that's just the mechanism but unless there are any other questions on the financial statements and this gas letter i was going to move on to the u.s parking plans questionnaire so i know mr hillary just got here so i know you're coming from tucson i don't want anybody to reiterate what's already going on and i don't know exactly where we are so the the attack was since you don't have the balance copy report yet and we did send it electronically you have preliminary questions on the finance report that you saw that you wanted to ask but between now and our board meeting on the 21st if you have specifics you could email greg and i and we'll forward it to the team and then they can respond prior to the 21st board meeting but if there's anything right now that stands out because we haven't released sheldon asked for conclusions right now but the plan was it to go through the entire financial report well i do have some questions on on the biannual report itself uh i i don't know that they're going to affect in any way if they're the answers as far as our acceptance right right um i've got i've got a few questions um that uh i've especially got some long-term questions and concerns about our burgeoning pension liabilities and i know that we are not alone i'm sure every school district that belongs to the ar the retirement system for public employees is in the same situation but we had an 834 000 increase in pension liabilities in one year and it's already up to 5 million which is 158 of our covered payroll and this during probably one of the greatest bull markets we've had we've got three hundredths of a percent or something there or three percent of the total statewide uh proportion of the of the pension fund and and i mean a simple division is going to tell you how big the overall unfunded liability is of the statement but no matter how you look at it this board and this school district is responsible for paying out the benefits to our teachers and our administrators anybody in continental so if the whole fund goes south we still have to pay those benefits out of this school district as far as i understand and um i just don't understand are you getting these kinds of questions from other school districts from other public entities that you audit and you see any movement on the part of the arizona retirement system to either change the discount rate so it it more reflects what true returns are which would unfortunately cause higher retirement contributions on the part of the school district and impact our own year-to-year budget could you just walk me through that just a little bit i mean i will to the extent that i can i don't work for the srs i don't know exactly what they're thinking um they do various presentations at different industry conferences that we attend and i guess to your point about the discount rate um and really any any of the variables because there are so many variables that go into it the different actuarial studies that they perform they're legally required to perform under state statute every five years they have an actuarial study performed where they look at discount rates they look at um benefit terms they everything that goes into the actuarial calculation they're required to get five year study every year it's disposed of your financials it's not disclosed they choose whether or not they want to increase or decrease the discount rate investing the expected investment return rate i'm not speaking on their behalf but i think that there is a lot of work that goes into that for them to decide whether or not they're comfortable with the factors that they're using the end result is this little continental owes five million if they were wrong that yeah that's that's a concern that every school district in the state has i don't know what you do about it though there some some governmental entities will issue pension obligation bonds because they don't want it but that that fiscally probably does not make sense especially with csrs because it's a cost-sharing plan and a cost-sharing plan just means that they don't have an individual account for you you're just part of the overall goal which is the 0.03 that you're talking about even that number changes from year to year because it's all driven by the amount of contributions that every school district and you know it's not just school districts it's governmental entities so it can be cities it can be towns it can be counting so there's so many factors there's so many variables in it um you can't throw cash at this number it's not going to make a difference because it's a pulled count does that make sense like they don't they don't they don't have a number up there it says continental is 4.99 they've got a number up there that says the state of arizona owes billions and billions to fund this life so if you had five million playing around and you you gave it to them you would probably still have a four million dollar liability because that they it's just not treated that way um for those who might be familiar with the public safety retirement system the retirement system at the state level for the police officers that is an individual plan so every city has their own plan if they had a five million dollar liability and they had fund nothing in cash they could shoot it up to the state and that would wipe out their liability but it's it's because it's just it's structurally completely different the way asrs is structured now there's some benefits of the pool though too you know you when there's good investment returns everybody gets the good investment returns whereas psprs some entities may get a good investment return and some may not depend on how their goals are invested so i don't know if i'm answering your question i don't know why i guess the ability to i guess my only my only statement is that you know if all of their actuarial assumptions were solid we wouldn't have a pension liability that grew by 20 percent um and my question is did you address that at all in the report address address the issue that we had a pension liability that grew 20 percent well it's standard numbers it's in there every year yeah number eight changes in long-term liabilities your statement in that position that we talked about when i said that's your government-wide financials it's like a full approval basis the number is right there on the finances that's required under gasb auditing standard accounting standards if you include that liability look at any school district in the state they will have which is a change number about five or six years ago that did not have to be reflected that was a government county standard towards change and there was a lot of of course i have another question just um i'm not so sure i understand the difference between committed funds and assigned funds this is on page 38 of the audit report [Music] it says you know the committed funds can only be used for purposes imposed by governing board actions and we don't have any so-called committed funds assigned funds it also says uh none reported um i'm not so sure could you define for me the difference between committed and assigned so this is another gazmia area something that came out probably eight nine years ago you can see it there on that page it's up there the fund balances so at the fun level you can have non-spendable which is something that it's just not even cash you can't even spend it below that is restricted most of your federal grants your state grants are restricted which means an entity outside of the school district says you must spend it in this way below that is committed so these kind of go in a certain hierarchy here below that is committed this is going to be something that requires a formal action like this this room you as governing board members you would have to designate certain funds and certain monies as committed that's what makes something compelling assigned might be something where you've given her responsibility you give her the ability to assign fund balances so it's a hierarchy committed is it's just it's a stronger word than a side i guess it's not as strong as a restriction but restriction you guys can't change it's coming from outside but a committed you can and then what this is saying is that under the gatsby standings the commitment can only occur if you have a policy that says you will make commitments to our knowledge you do not have such a policy you first need to adopt a policy that says we want to commit funds and then you would have to pass an action that said this dollar amount this one is what we need to connect for this purpose don't ever spend it until the audit also said that we have unassigned bonds of around 1.6 million dollars so any of this money could be committed or assigned by action of this governing board if we so desire is that correct correct yes in simplest terms if we adopt a policy pardon if we adopted the policy yes yeah we don't have a policy to do that right okay um and i guess the last question i have on page 44 talks about contingent liabilities did you make any evaluation on the expenditure of government funds whether they be grants or whether they be hesser funds as far as the proper reviews of those funds we do sample we do a sampling transaction sort of transaction for that but the district did not reach the level of federal expenditures it would have needed to need a federal audit so we didn't specifically test against like the essa requirements because in fy 21 you weren't there yet i do believe for fy22 we will need a third audit which would be that federal audit to ensure the expenses are being incurred for those purposes and just for your record so you know it reaches that level when the district spends 750 dollars in bed almonds and an important distinction there is that not that you receive 750 000 but you actually expect because you can receive three million and not spend any of that if you hold on to it for another year but that year that you got three million it still would not trigger that federal audit i'm ready so i think if there's no further questions on the financial statements we can move on to the state audit which is the usf compliance questionnaire that you do have in front of you um i'm like i mentioned um this is a document put out every year by the um arizona auditor general's office they put out this document based on different statutes or the usf compliance or the usfr manual i'm just asking to make sure districts are following these statutes and the manual they have about 175 questions in the questionnaire but each question covers several different requirements which were calculated to be about 400 different requirements that we're looking for whether it be a statute or a manual policy that we need to look at um so if you started at page two you can see them and i i apologize it's so small it's just the way the uh other general releases is it's an online form that we can't enlarge or make small i wouldn't want to make it smaller but we can't enlarge it um so if you were to look at the format there's several different sections we start off with a section of governing board and management procedures but it moves on to other sections such as budgeting accounting records student activities i won't go over all of them i just want you to get fam familiar with it um you'll see like a list number of questions like on this page we have seven questions until each of these questions we have to be answered either yes the district complied with the requirements of these questions or know the district didn't comply and then you'll see a comment right below it um specifying what we ran into where the district didn't comply with follow-up specific procedure so i wasn't going to go over any of the yeses but um i am going to point out the notes as we go through so the first and these aren't page numbered either so we'll just have to follow along here but the first note that we have is for government governing board and management procedures number eight and this was due to when we had a change in management the student activities treasurer had to be reappointed by the governing board which didn't happen over the last year but i believe this already went to the war right after the audit so i already got fixed for the next year but we still still have to record it during the year that we were auditing um if you keep scrolling down we move on to budgeting we had one budget that didn't have a notice for public meeting in the december revision um and these are all just requirements like this specific question has over 20 i believe over 20 requirements that we have to look into and this is just one of them that we there was no notice and didn't have any question so then moving on within accounting records this is a very broad question uh that the other general has put out is there they just want to make sure that districts are following the usfr chart of accounts to ensure there's districts within this they are following the same sort of coding and for a for comparability for them uh we didn't know um federal revenues that were recorded as state revenues uh we noted one transaction where an expenditure for food was coded to a different code rather than what the usfr chart of accounts has food at and then lastly we noted um just a liability that was on the general ledger that was adjusted improperly and hit a liability rather than cash within accounting records we also look at other areas such as adjusting journal entries and we want to make sure that there is a segregation of duties between who's posting adjusting journal entries out of the sample that we selected six of the journal entries that we looked at were reviewed or there was any notation that someone other than the preparer reviewed it or looked at it before it went into the academic system and the district's general ledger did you re review the entire general ledger pretty much we looked at the trial balance first so just like the broad picture of the figures at the end of the year but we do request the general ledger and sample specific transactions from there but then just depending on some of our test work if there were variances or um any other items that required it would then go into a general ledger and look at it okay what was your sample size sample size for expenditures we looked at i mean 40 but we also look at like five student activities disbursements we look at other cash receipts for other um yeah credit cards we also look sample five to ten transactions for credit cards it's just a various sample throughout if this is a question well in number two you sample 15 of 82 items yes i'm questioning item number one oh item number one the accounting records is that you're talking about the coding issues yes yeah so i mean that can come about from different ways that's not just that you know like she said we're scanning the trial balance we vouch revenues so like that 130 000 that's probably um we saw the trial balancing you had state revenue 130 000 so then we said give us the support for that we looked at it we said you know this is actually a federal so like that's not really a sample that's really just substantive audits so like cynthia said there's a very broad question so we're bringing in the results of what you see here that's the results of various different types of tests it's it's impossible to say it's all from this so on that one i said it correctly if i'm misspeaking we coded it exact same way that we received it from the counties not knowing that it was a pass-through payment from the federal from the state so that's why it was how it was coded as a state revenue versus a federal right so it came it's one of the kelvin martins received um it came from the federal government they gave it to the governor's office who acted just as a pass-through so um ultimately it didn't end up being fed all but it's just the way it was coded when the accounting passed it on to you guys um we also look at the transfers so there's specific transfers that the usfr chart of accounts allows for just so that the district's not moving money between funds where it shouldn't be moving or if the money is restricted for something you're not moving it to a different one where there's no restrictions and and this was probably just a misunderstanding of when management was trying to clean up those uh cash reconciliations uh to write it off a mechanism was used to utilize transfers as that rather than maybe researching it or reaching a point where it could hit a different account code so the transverse accounts codes were used and that's why we have noted here that those two answers weren't allowable as the use of our chart of accounts before and that goes back to if you remember we talked about beginning how we could tell you when the last time we balanced the county treasurer and then i was waiting on the auditors to show up to have that discussion with them so when i did talk to cynthia so she knew it was coming for this audit and we did a transfer in the transfer out to balance with the account where instead we should use a function called the fund balance to do that instead and that's where we know like there was a sample of 28 we actually looked at the 28 transactions and this the remaining of this section is all related to those cash reconciliations that we've already discussed um so if you were to look at four we noted that the reconciling differences were researched and resolved number five we know where the unreconciled differences that we could identify where in number five we know the um the 72 or it's just a refrigeration just based on how the ps4 is asking the question sometimes we have to have the same answer for two questions just because they're basically asking the same thing but this was also a material weakness since identified this was part of that year before 20 or 1920 on it yes and this is a part of the attempt to get that clear so it wasn't it wasn't uh cleaned up in the 20 of it we didn't fix it after the 20 audit and you're recording it again now in 21.
and i well thank you thank you it is just a testament to the team the teamwork and what they what they are willing to do our students did not participate in those little what were they tick tock thank you tick tock challenges we did not have any issues in our restrooms we did not have any graffiti we didn't have any problems with that and that is a testament to our students and our staff so i i couldn't be more proud of that statistic it shocked me to be honest and then our increase in communication with schools thank you again dr kels for the wrap it's in the front office i know a few of you have been there to visit and i appreciate that that wrap in the front office was just instrumental to those kids i think i'm probably going to get emotional talking about it they walked in the next day and they stopped wow and they would just stand there and look at it and then what it helped do was bridge that gap because on this wall it's sunday mountain and on this wall it's their four schools and we just combined so that they understood i'm still a dicer high school senior but i belong this on that mountain right now and we did that with each of the schools and that communication across the board i just sent an email last week to the other administrators and counselors thanking them for the teamwork i use the cliche teamwork makes a dream work but it really does and it it's just a it's a tremendous effort from across the district our focus for the year was the streamline process for sundown um it was my first full year we established the timelines we calendar and communicate and hold everyone to it and working with personnel at all of the high schools to ensure adherence to those timelines it's very critical because we are on a quarter system so if those students are not enrolled and their intake is not completed on day one of the quarter they just start behind the eight ball and we just couldn't allow that to happen anymore so communication celebration consistency to increase the attendance rate which i think is every school in america's goal since 2020 the awareness of academic progress tracking self-advocacy progressing completing and then ultimately graduating and then establishing post-secondary pathways like i said the picture there represents um asvab and all of our seniors took the asvab which goes back to their home schools ccri points we also do civics and cpr and 100 of our students make that as well so firm fair and consistent procedures and i'll stand for any questions thank you mrs lockhart just had one quick thing um if folks have not had the opportunity to attend a completion ceremony at sundown it's one of the brightest things you could ever see and um the students those that give um a little speech you know that planned and give a little speech you could tell that their time at sundown meant the world to them and a lot of those students even though that their technically would be graduating with their home school that completion ceremony and everybody that has helped them get to that point today it seems like all of their relatives all of their friends are there to cheer them on it's one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen and so it is a testament to miss lockhart um who else was there mr capuano mr greece haber a lot of people were there at different times but the staff make the students there and i am very thankful for that so thank you member sourcing phil we we are always amazed that they come back for that because they are walking with their home schools but they still come to celebrate with us with the seniors that they worked with i just want to say that i know you got a little emotional but i got a little emotional too and um i i'm just so grateful that they have you and i can't even think of what i wanted to ask you now um but i i know that you say it's a testament to the to the students and and to your staff but i think a lot of this is a is a in big part because you are there and i am just so grateful that they have your leadership so again thank you thank you so much thank you i do have a question so you mentioned that there's only 12 referrals this year that's incredible and i know at sundown it's structured entirely different and for some reason students tend to respond really well to that and i think it's amazing can can you tell me what is the most what is the most common reason students get referrals at sundown vaping they really and and we um we limit you know the restroom use and we've only had eight incidents this year but that's eight too many um they'll still sneak it you know but that's the number one and then defiance would be would be second and we've only had three incidences wow so do you guys have somebody who like does bathroom sweeps goes in and kind of checks every so often we do we have um he's technically ocr but i use them more like security because we haven't had to use the ocr which is wonderful and then i also have a job coach who goes out in between with me every hour so we're definitely keeping eyes on the restrooms and and we're very limited space so it's a small area to much easier than a valley vista and do you have security on your campus just the ocr security cocr but last year for summer school we did not have security and we did not have any issues wow that's incredible and just a quick rundown kind of what is the model what is different about sundown that makes it so successful for these students well i think it's many things it's a 20 to 1 ratio so 20 students one teacher it's also a blended learning we use we use the florida virtual i almost just blew up drew a blank on that i went back to the a plus in my head i would have had to call jim to help me out um the florida virtual learning systems but also blended so teachers doing direct destruction small group work and i think that i really think the structure small learning community is what makes a difference as well as the staff madam chair i would i would add to this miss lockhart as being a bit modest but miss lockhart regularly meets with every student on campus to review their progress um to assure that they continue to stay on track to graduate and encourage those who may lose their way for a bit of time and so between miss lockhart and her counselor they do a wonderful job of continuing to keep students on track motivated and the ability and keep them having the ability to see the long-term goal of graduation and it's really a testament to um to the program um but additionally as as member densmore stated it's a testament to ms lockhart's leadership and she does a tremendous job with our program that's incredible and i've heard amazing things about you ms lockhart thank you so much i've heard a lot of and i do have a question i don't know is it possible for us to do more of a to take do we have the capacity to do something similar to this structure at our high schools madam chair we continue to look for opportunities to expand what we're doing at sundown ms lockhart expanded the program by about 50 students when when she took back over last year we would like to continue to expand they're a bit landlocked in terms of their campus however we continue to explore opportunities to look for the smaller community model anywhere we can implement that as well we potentially could bring some portables to the sundown campus to make that campus a little bigger and that's something that we always have in the back of our mind as well they do a great job thank you so much and thank you miss lockhart thank you very much [Applause] okay now we're on to h1 right i i was just trying to speed things up you know i know i know um all right so h1 dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam chair members of the board superintendent kelly's cabinet and guests uh tonight administration is proud to recommend to you mr matthew gilbert for the posit for the position of assistant principal at kingswood elementary a little bit about mr gilbert he received a master's degree and and that leadership from nau i has three years with dysart two years uh with peoria and seven years in the agua freya district uh he's currently at valley vista for us so he went through a very comprehensive process to get to this uh piece and we are happy to recommend him to you tonight he is here with us in the front stand up please mr gilbert there he is and with that we'll stand for any questions thank you dr croto do we have any questions just the fact that you have a concentration in cte business and marketing yay that's all but congratulations all right thank you then i will move to approve the appointment of matthew gilbert as assistant principal second motion carries thank you congratulations [Applause] next we have h2 dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam chair members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet guest in our second recommendation this evening administration is proud to present to you a recommendation for our director of student services and we are proud to bring to the table mr craig musee for that position mr musee has a masters and ed leadership from arizona state university he did his undergraduate at u of a so he has self-conflict depending on what sports season it is i think but he has 27 years of extensive educational experience as well as 21 of those 27 in administration so he brings a wealth of knowledge we're excited to have him on board he did go through an extensive process to get to this and he is joining us tonight if you can stand up but he's already standing already so with that i stand for any questions or you're it's yours for the motion thank you dr croto do we have any questions no i just feel sorry for glendale union high school district and i know a couple of board members that i'm going to rub it into so congratulations we welcome you yes he comes highly recommended from yes employees of the glendale district they're no longer taking our calls that's okay i got i got a name i got an n all right i will move to uh appoint craig musee as director of student services second it was a tie it was a tie for scissors congratulations mr music welcome to both of you motion carries thank you all right next we have h3 dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board and members of cabinet mr hicks will introduce this item good evening madam president pro tem members of the board superintendent dr kellis colleagues and community members tonight i am presenting our employee benefits plan for the twenty 22 2023 school year first we'll um we'll begin with our main aspect which is our medical plan and we we our provider is blue cross blue shield of arizona and for this year through december our claims are running at 96 percent of um our premiums um the revenue coming in so it's running a little bit high as just a quick reminder we did carve out our pharmacy a couple years ago out of this process so previously it was paired with blue cross we carved it out and it's now with magellan they are a pharmacy benefit manager and this has been a very good decision that we've had over the last two years in our last 12 months rolling 12 months we've had in excess of a million dollars of rebates it's a good deal because in general those rebates were going back to blue cross before and so blue cross did charge us more for collecting our own rebates and so that's the gross amount not the net amount so that amount is uh around 900 000 in that sense but it is still a very good decision that we've made the benefits costs keep rising around eight to ten percent and so that is just medical inflation going on uh one of the things we look at is we look at benefit plan changes to try to look at and address either better more efficient plans or to mitigate any cost increases and so this year we do have a plan design change and so we are looking at adding a tier and so before we had an employee plus one option and now we have an employee plus spouse and an employee plus children so we split that one up into two so we now have a total of four tiers this creates a benefit to the single family with children option and it's creating an opportunity for our family coverage as sometimes we had employees that chose family and they either added the spouse because it was no additional cost or that was the only option and now they have a better option because a lot of times we've already heard from multiple staff members about oh well now my spouse will go back onto their work plan we were only on yours because it was no additional cost and so that will actually have a savings in their plan so i'll go through that a little bit more on a few other slides just as a reminder there was a presentation made to our iba team it was a little bit earlier in the process and so there were general ideas talked about creating a tier not talked about in detail last week we had an employee benefits trust board meeting and this is the recommendation there was extensive conversation around this as the employee benefits trust board is constantly looking to make sure we're doing right for employees and seeing where we can save costs and so i have some follow-ups to do with them but we had an extensive conversation about this presentation here and they approved it and fully supported it going forward for tonight's presentation oh i did the same thing okay sorry here is our total plan overview currently we're scheduled as you can see under the current to have 15.6 million dollars in this fiscal year next year the plan is to go up to 17 million that's a 1.3 million dollar increase so that's about 8.8 percent um with this i have budgeted in the 600 000 for pharmacy rebates as i said it netted out to almost 900 000 i really you can't predict exactly what pharmacy and what everybody will use and sometimes specialties come on and off so i don't like to budget high on that i like to be conservative and hopefully it over performs and we do see greater benefits but i don't like to bake that into our rates and take a savings that might not be there and then the plan hurts one thing in the total cost we've also one other change increased our matching amount in our hsa plan from 500 to 750 for family only so we'll have two differentiated hsa matching amounts and i'll say that i'll show that again later and then here's the split of the cost share of the increase for the district and then the employees increase premium is also going to have an impact on them as well as they'll have to pay those and so that's split out and shared between the two the next one is just to show this page is just to hear a summary of the total rates and the participation planned um on each of those tiers and where we are and what we're expecting and so this really just shows overall what the total costs are on a monthly rate premium total so this is not the employees i'll show that in a second this is just the grand total and then just the participation in each one of them here is as i referenced before so one the district covers the 592 for every single plan for every single employee um that's on it um and so that's our district contribution contribution we also on just the regular hsas this is where you can see the differentiation between family only and we're added the 250 to help them with some of their costs and then we also it's just maintaining so the first hsa base with the 500 match we incentivize if you get a physical we'll give you 250 and if you meet the wellness incentive we'll give another those two are the same for routine physical and wellness on the hsa family only it is a matching so it's the employee has to put in 750 and then we'll match up to 750 to encourage them to put more money aside for their hsa plans to cover their medical costs here is uh sorry for the smallness on this but we just try to show a history of the actual employee premiums that are going to be coming out and so the very far right so we do show a sixth year but the really far right is the premiums that are projected for next year that we'll be implementing and you can see that first under the hsa our employee only cost is zero so that is a foundation principle that we have that we try to always provide uh for an employee only a no-cost option for medical and dental and so this continues that and this is where you see the two the tears breaking apart from the spouse and the children so the spouse is going up the children's going down probably uh makes sense because when you take kids to the doctors you're probably only playing a co-pay when an adult goes uh my i could use myself in his example of none of mine have been co-pays and i've already hit my out-of-pocket maximum already it really quickly happened so their costs are greater for adults and so this is more representation of an actuarial cost-effectiveness plan of plans or paying for what their costs are so you could see um and then a family where they were paying 584 before we'll be going we'll have a lot of well not a lot i don't want to overstate it we have employees that will be moving to employee plus children where before they were in the family and so they'll be saving a couple hundred dollars a month you will have some that will be going up that is the opportunity to say do i really need that spouse on there and and look at their plans and we've had um a number of employees that have already said now i'm doing this why am i doing this why have i been doing this with the cost going up before it was so cheap i'll do it now i won't and so there are people are making some good decisions and our benefit manager and our benefits team works with every single employee and walks through all these so that they're making the best most informed decision and just the bottom is our ppo plan obviously a lot less participation but you can see the same increases that i talked about in the top are rolling through on the ppo plan down below and our benefit financial position so this is so we do have an employee benefit trust it has a separate uh fund uh where the money is accounted for and that so we set up premium rates it generates revenue coming in we deposit into our employee benefit trust and we make all the payments out of there so we are self-insured and so this is uh we need to have reserves in there to cover uh unexpended costs or if our actuarial gets it wrong in the projections when they're looking at all the numbers and tables and make their projections for us so we do have to have a reserve we do and so you can see we've been using some of that reserve as a high back in 2016-17 from 10 million going down so it continues to go down and it went down a little bit harder because covid expenses where they were not charging co-pays or doing any of those expense but the plan was covering 100 of all the costs as that was going and so that has had a dramatic impact on our plan the medical plan this is just the detail of those plan designs there is no changes so even though they're in red that was changed from the previous year there are no changes we really just add the tiers and the hsa change is the only changes for our medical plans so that was medical in general so i know that's a lot going forward and i talked to it really quick now we're jumping to our other parts of the plan which is our we'll start with our dental but most of this is supplementary or voluntary but even in our dental our prepaid dental program with tda we do still provide that zero cost for the employee only option and then with everything else as you can see from current to next year's rates everything is exactly the same with no increases we do have a buy up voluntary dental and that's through delta dental of arizona and uh this isn't because we offer the no cost option this is a cost it's a buy up but as you can see all the rates are exactly the same all of our additional supplemental voluntary programs just looking at health equity for our flex spending and our health savings account no rate increase no annual renewal fee increase or no rate admin rate increase our pna which is our cobra administration that is no rate increase but just as a note that only goes through 1231 that was our i believe that was our when we bid it last time and so we're looking at other options we might re-bid it again we do have some time or we might look at other pools or consortiums and the main one we're looking at is the valley schools pool to see if we can grab their pricing and program they have just went out to bid and have just now selecting i have not heard who they selected and so we'll look at how that works to see if that would benefit us not only in cost but in operation there's a lot of time and effort that goes into our cobra administration and so we'll want to see that it's seamless and easy to transfer as there's been some hiccups and other things when people are leaving us and we want to smooth that out and look for improved operations our teledoc and our annual reserve also have no rate changes and continue to stay exactly the same from this year our visas our vision no rate changes our life insurance so symmetra from basic involuntary accidental death and dismemberment no change current rate no change sun life financial our voluntary short-term disability which we do access through valley schools also has no increase our interface eap that has no rate we did have extension extensive conversation at our employee benefit trust about that as we are seeing a lot of usage in that so we saw a usage report for the last six months and then also we didn't see the usage report from last year but our valley schools benefit consultant mentioned that of all the schools in there that i think there's around 25 we have the highest utilization rate and they attribute that to our increased communication our administrators know about this we really push this hard as there's been a lot of stress anxiety challenges we push this out as a first option we do still have when certain things have crisis teams that not only help students but we work with ms winterstein to help our own employees when that's a need in certain situations and so we have a good wraparound coverage in that and so they just gave us a lot of accolades for it's something we pay for no matter if they use it or not so it's something we really would like them to lean on it's just hard to get the word out for people to make that phone call and it is um confidential and then last is our colonial accident insurance it is also voluntary and still no rate change with that as well too so that is the um presentation so the summary just eight percent eight point eight percent increases it's a split uh share of that increase we always uh work to make sure that we have a zero cost option for employees on mental and on mental on medical and dental that was not a freudian slip that was a blending of two words we have our continued participation in our hsa plan of our contributions but we added that family so we're increasing that matching to 250.
um that debt by statute can be leveraged out for 20 years we do that on purpose to one not put such a tax burden on residents um and putting that in a five-year payment period or ten year payment period and then two um we we utilize the assessed valuation of our district that we are continuing to grow we've scheduled debt out to longer periods of time and then to incur lower tax lower tax implications in terms of to the resident to the property owners commercial business all those who live and own within our 24 square miles do right now currently pay on our general obligation bonds off top my head i don't not know when that tails off but we have about 90 million in outstanding debt but that is just a sliver of what we have and what we have grown to need and so i mean i can allude to that a little more on our website with some of our bond information where you can go and see the tax impact of this proposal and what our current tax impact is so um and there will be no tax increase they'll just see an additional amount on their tax our american book county tax forms correct that would be paying attention there'd be no tax rate increase right you will continue to pay on the same rate um we are able to because of our assessed valuation the the property values in within our district are continuing to grow the tax rate will not be increased with this proposal that is presented tonight we did that purposely because of the feedback um that we did there was residents in our community that have felt the impact of inflation um and everything that is going on in the world and so um we were conscious of that and we purposely reduced this proposal to take that and consider into consideration president kaler i was able to watch the friends of asba presentation on bonds and overrides that they put on and i do think it's awesome for our community if that's possible for that i don't know dr foley if you know if the community can watch that at all but it was interesting to hear why the business partners are excited to help public schools they want to make our public schools stronger they want arizona to be the place that their people want to come and live and they understand the implications of good schools and how good schools will bring people from different parts of the country to arizona and it was just a really good eye-opening thing to hear these business partners be so excited to help public schools because we don't always hear that a lot of times it's always put off you know from our governor sometimes and it was good to hear these business partners so excited that our schools are growing and that we're getting people especially construction partners because they are having a hard time getting people attracted to arizona based on our schools and our 49th funded so to me this was a very it was very enlightening and i just want to mention that thank the friends of aspa for putting that on and i'm excited to see where it goes i also read every single one of the comments from the survey i thank our community for sharing their feedback and giving us some insight on what we could change this time thank you president kayla one of the things i want to just touch on board member anderson said this wasn't for salaries and you know we're voting on that tonight but the bond is essentially for students and for our students and education and in higley and wanting to move forward and wanting to have the finances to be able to do the best for students and for our community um so that we can have successful workforce in the future so we need these things and it's not that they're just wants or anything like that or they're they're things that we need and um i want to make sure that when we do if we decide tonight to to call for the bond that we are communicating with the community that i think we weren't able to do previously and that we're you know we're on social media and that we're out there you know that we're we're dispelling any of the rumors and things like that or the half information you know some people get half information and they run with it throughout the community um and that doesn't do anyone any just good injustice and so i just want to make sure that you know we're able to do that we're able to meet people where they are and be able to communicate with them so that they know that this bond is for our students and thank you oh were you wanting to speak president i'm so sorry okay and thank you for thank you for bringing that up um that touches on a couple of things i have the results up here and if i'm reading this correctly it shows that total votes were only 12 100 right so that's out of how many yeah so if this passes and we're gonna spend the money to do this and people are going to volunteer to commit to it then we definitely need to to reach more people and do a little bit better and i think that's already been brought up before and i'm not going to tell you that's not my thing but i do want to one additional comment that really stood out actually a lot of comments hit the fact of tell us what you're spending the money on and i know this has been discussed before i love that idea i've seen district websites where they'll or even maybe it's the school's websites where they will they'll say we spent this much today and i know we've already talked about this as other board meetings but i i can't support that enough of giving the community that feel that we've listened and this is what we're spending our money on we're not wasting it we're not wasting anybody's time either um and then there was another wonderful idea um a lady from texas i remember her her recommendation that they have like an ambassador group where they brought the parents in and and they were able to you know work with administration and it wasn't just like oh hey let's let's get input it was her big the work she kept repeating over and over was the relationship it built between the community the parents the administration um i don't know if that's possible i thought it was a wonderful idea i know i said this before many times in the past i've been a part of so many committees that were wonderful ideas and fizzled out um and it's meeting schedules and it's it's time but if that's something that we could consider us assuming that this passes or not i don't know it is just something to consider president keller members of the board one of the interesting things about one of the reasons we've been talking about this earlier is we talked about how important it would be for calling for this election earlier so that it provides time one of the things that having it obviously there are constraints legal constraints about what a district can do once you call for an election we then follow the code which we work with political action committees one of the things that we've learned an awful lot of this process when we revised our proposal from our survey information is we also are looking at when you start earlier it provides more time to bring pac members on it also provides us an insight on how we might want to work with our communities within the confines of what districts are legally able to do we're talking about working with pto groups getting others involved other mechanisms that we have discussed include expanding the opportunity what's interesting is when you look at our results you see that that um we you know narrowly didn't pass this was 50 50 you also didn't have very many people who turned out for this election this coming year is a little bit different while it's not a presidential election there will be greater traction in it because you're looking at you're looking at the governor you're looking at senators you're looking at an election that's going to bring people out having the time allows us to work with those network groups to get people involved in the appropriate proper ways that we can legally do that and have a time but it also allows more time for other action committees who may have concerns about it to address it one of the feedback you'll see in the website that we showed with you was visually how is the money being spent we brought it down to an infographic for each one and we have categories per spending in each one that becomes part of our information that we share when we go to these so our road shows are going to evolve and look a little bit differently we're looking at creating videos and snapshots so again time the element of time on our side also helps and the specificity of additional work that has been done between the time we initially called for our previous to now has been extensive so a lot of work has been done a lot has been learned we have more feedback and perspective than we ever had before and our team has adapted accordingly so there's a lot of work to be done hence one of the reasons why we're saying we're looking at this sooner rather than later as we did in the previous selection and to clarify it now the transparency piece wasn't the before it was the after okay okay thank you i'm so sorry i agree with many of the sentiments that have been spoken up here tonight and i personally will always support wherever i live wherever i go every bond and every override for every public education and until our state starts to see the value that sits in this room with me today and values what we do in education we are going to be facing bonds and overrides in the state of arizona and i can't say it enough and i've said it before but shame on them 49th in arizona in the culture and this country that we live in and this i mean the housing that we the way we live here in south gilbert arizona um i understand we have outliers and we have different populations in the state of arizona but we should not be 49th period so i will always say yes i concur everything he said and with that said all those in favor aye aye motion carries four zero moving on to our tentative 8.2 i move that the governing board approves the tentative 2022-2023 mno budget to allow for the issuance of contracts to all employees for the 2022-2023 school year wait a second any comments questions i just one thing i know that this is voting just on the tentative budget 8.3 is what many of uh people spoke about tonight i just want to clarify that yes absolutely all those in favor aye aye motion carries four zero okay we're going to move on to 8.3 are you making the motion or would you like to no i am i was just making sure i'm sorry but i'm saying i didn't want to i moved that the governing board approves the issuance of contracts and work agreements with the percent increase listed on the table to the base salary or base hourly rate for the 2022-2023 school year second whoa sorry i got it i already had my mic on and for all those that are not seeing what we see this is for a seven percent raise across the board to every employee tonight we are just voting for a certain part of our staff this is coming back again for our classified but for tonight you can list all the certified returning teachers certified returning preschool teachers school counselors district office instructional coaches tosas educational professionals psychologists speech language pathologist therapist social worker occupational therapist our classified exempt and non-exempt staff community ed classified exempt and non-exempt and our administrators president kaler yes i read every single name that was provided and i just want to thank every single person who is on the list except for bob zucker because he got put on last but he must have been on an extra sheet so mr zucker as well i thank every one of you um it was an extensive list and reading those names i've met many of you and i just want to thank every one of you because you make higley higley [Laughter] i just want to echo uh boardman where wilson said thank you um very much and thank you for everyone that came and spoke tonight and let us hear um everything you had to say and your passion for teaching as well just thank you teachers it's been a heck of a couple years and teaching alone is very difficult without everything else you had to deal with thank you for the your patience with us as we made decisions that you may or may not have agreed with earlier on and thank you for staying and teaching these children um and being a huge part of their their life and their future thank you okay i echo the sentiments anytime that we can give our teachers a raise we are blessed by you so thank you for coming out tonight thank you for sharing our hearts thank you for the longevity of so many of you 20 years i these numbers are awesome to hear up here but also we're grateful for all the new teachers that will be coming on board as well and we hope that they make higley a very long-term place to work as well so with that said all those in favor aye aye motion carries for zero [Music] you guys make us want to cry up here thank you we like the thank yous we really do it warms our heart to hear from you all truly president keller members of the board please know that we will do what we have historically done and the classified work agreements will be coming to you in april with the exact same recommendation for you to approve at that time yes absolutely and our final recommendation for the night is a move that is recommended the governing board approves the fiscal year 2021 audit reports as presented any questions mr moore thank you for providing this wonderful reading material for us we appreciate all that you do and you keep us very well informed thank you any other questions or comments all those in favor aye aye motion carries 4-0 anything for our future board meetings that my board would like to see presentations on i think we're good we have a lot coming up i think our through summer we are booked so thank you so much and i'm very excited to see um the strategic planning update coming up uh dr foley have had some conversations about that and there's been a lot of hard work by a lot of people so we're excited to see that in-house strategic plan with that i move that we adjourn second all those in favor hi motion carries 4-0 have a wonderful evening and a fabulous spring break [Music] thank you [Music] you
so i don't understand why this has become so politicized and people have become so angry and have been bullies and have harassed board members in front of kids in front of other community members it's pretty disgusting to see adults act this way i watched on youtube when i was stuck where i was stuck last wednesday i missed a flight and i watched i was disgusted absolutely disgusted at the behavior of the adults in this community shame on all of you who acted that way now the decision for maps tonight is not political no matter how much you want it to be no matter how much you yell about it being political it's absolutely not this has been political grandstanding at its finest in our little tiny community who should just get along fine and yet we've been allowing ourselves to become more and more divided for what for what benefit because it's what's best for kids no we all up here represent our students all of us and we all up here represent our communities i just went off i just went off script got a little emotional there sick of it so i want to touch on a couple points um i don't think it's going to make a difference for uh somebody said i don't think it's gonna make a difference our public comments not when they not when they come off the way that they do not when they're you know accusing people of being a certain way without making actual points about the data about the evidence um i got called out in a public comment about um the purple map and pulling that i pulled the purple map because it's split forest ranch from cohasset madam president i'm sorry i'm going to call the orders of the day i'd like to get this back on the topic of which map we're going to choose i actually just have a point to make and that is the the map that i'm voting for tonight has nothing to do with the harassment and the bullying that's been going on by our community zero so that was the that's the take home message i'll be done all right thank you with that we will take a roll call vote and i want to start with matt tennis i all right caitlin so it's my concern that that an endorsement of the green map is an endorsement of the behavior of this community that have that have spoken the way that they that i've addressed but i do vote for the green map okay and it's not because of okay those experiences all right i'm gonna vote nay everything caitlyn said including the eye okay robinson i okay so it's four to one so the green map is selected and now we need to uh look at the resolution 1570.
so especially with the inflation that we're looking at a six percent increase to insurance is not bad at all so that's going to be about 103 thousand dollars to mno and i put in this in here in the first time in recent memory and there's been some people that have been in the district a while uh asrs contributions are going down there's a state retirement contributions are decreasing this year after going up significantly over several years so that should save the district about 24 000 so additional increase expenses are salary increases that i'm talking about that'll be about 485 000 so the net change to mno is about a increased expense of about 273 000. based on where we're at now with the budget our anticipated carry forward um we really believe that that is something that we can manage as part of the budget uh going forward so that 273 with 273 we can absorb as part of the um budget overall budget these numbers are kind of summarized on the next page you have kind of things put together it also it talks a little bit about here how much a salary increase costs for example one percent to certified is about fifty eight thousand dollars uh one percent to admit about ten and so forth so all those numbers are on there and then what we have to remember is all of these increased costs and decrease for asrs also impact grants but that's something that the grant managers cindy and nicole and and brandy has quite a few grants and on the high school with cte um tend to create they manage that so questions on that thank you all right item 71 is our financial reports for activity for february 28th mr livingston great so for the month ended february 28th let's see members of the board administration staff ladies and gentlemen this is a report of the financial situation the district is in at the end of february i'll highlight four or five things overall i think the district is quite healthy our fund balance compared to last year at this time is significantly higher i did have some audit reports for you i will send you some emails it's completely done now and there's a federal audit clearinghouse that we send reports to and all those documents are done so i will email you some summary documents for the year end the 30th 2021.
thank you um the next note we have within the cash and revenues section is on question number three and the district also has not just the the cash at the county treasurer but they're the districts are also allowed to have cash in deposited and several bank accounts um one of them being the miscellaneous receipts clearing account which is where the district is receiving all those electronic payments from parents whether it be for extracurricular or student activities um just at various um just from various sources these accounts or this account does have to be deposited with accounting pressure on a monthly basis just to make sure that the revenue is recorded in the current year which we know that wasn't done until later in the year or wasn't done monthly during the fiscal year that we're auditing um and then on number four there's also the district also holds a bank account for food service um so this would be for any payments that the students are doing at the school site or parents are depositing online for them this account only allows for checks to be written to the county treasurer however we didn't know um several checks that were written out to parents to brief on them for money now that that that the the food was free pretty much last year and however that the district wasn't allowed to do that on that bank account they would have needed to clear it out of the bank account move it to the county treasurer and then write checks from the accounting treasurer so just to be clear on that if if a refund has to be made i'm assuming this to a supplier for example no so what these are um parents had cash on their student accounts for food service right and either they were leaving the district or they had put money in knowing that their students were to have to pay for food but then it became free they wanted their money back so the proper procedure would be to transfer that money to the county treasury and ask the county treasurer to cut a chat to the parents okay so you know you guys decide if you can justify that if you kind of it's required to be reported here because it's a question that we have to specifically look for doesn't necessarily mean that it was a sound or unsound management because um within cash and revenues we also look at several different deposits whether it be into those different bank accounts that the district holds or for different restricted activities we sampled five deposits for axillary we couldn't completely reconcile it this deposited actually more than what the support uh provided for so we were almost assumed that it was a donation that just didn't get written down or um just didn't agree at the end received so then that question was specifically for auxiliary operations but if you go to question number 23 that's broader and that actually includes the whole sample that we did so we did have to re um repeat that one in addition to two of five student activities deposits that we reviewed that we couldn't find or we're gonna find any support for or the support wasn't or the support wasn't issued when the clubs collected the money is that one of the ones where they do a fundraiser selling popcorn and the teacher probably didn't have an adequate vlog the easiest thing for this one is when we get a check from the student that the parent wrote a month ago if we don't put on there the date that we received the actual check that's how you get this money so now we're making sure you put receipt dates on every single chapter yes so it's when uh they have a fundraiser and they sold 20 lollipops so they should have gotten 20 but they just did it right but they sold money they just gave you guys them so that's what sort of totally looked for and like the club sponsor signing it and ensuring that it's proper and then on 24 that's where the timeliness comes in the auditor general wants school districts to be districts to be timely deposited depositing any cash that they receive just because it is um a very it's very easy to just misplace cash or for for it to be misappropriated so we test for that to make sure the process are made timely uh for two of the ones we reviewed we couldn't determine if it was a positive timely just because it wasn't stamped like and your sample there was 20 out of how many would they have a thousand they don't ask us for that but we could get you that yeah because we're just going there to the band statements and so let's select deposit from the bank statements or go to the general ledger and just randomly select mine items within different deposits but since so the auditor general the ones that's asking for samples and populations this is not a population that they ask for so we don't have it written down here was there any reason why you selected 20 we just sell it from different accounts so we had we do a standard of five so five student activities five and the clearing account five in the food service account i find it the other account i can't remember exactly and then number 25 is that repeat question of one of the ones in the accounting records section for that material because of the reconciliation that we've already gone through um the last question that we have as a no in the cash and revenue section is related to that i get the bank the the bank accounts and those were being reconciled up until february 2021 so when we came for the audit last year we noticed that um and we pointed that out and that and that got corrected after beyond it last year but they still have six months in the current uh um the next section is property control fixed assets stewardship items we have to go through these and ensure the district's maintaining an accurate list so on question number one you'll see that we are saying that the district included additions that did not meet the district's capitalization threshold when we reviewed the kappa asset listing we noted that there were a few items under 5000 that were included in the capital asset listing however the capital asset listing is for those assets that are worth over five thousand dollars there's a stewardship listing where those go to um reviews after so [Music] and then within capital assets as well we made sure that um any purchases that the district made for fixed assets during the year are included in those fixed asset listings uh through review of the capital outlay expenditures we noted that the of an initial review of the fixed asset listing two vehicles were not included in it um which got corrected after our interview were those advanced we've missed clicking the button and then within fixed assets for number five we also go out to the school site and from those listings we select different items randomly and go look for them and find them on the school sites and then we also once we're in on the school set grounds we just if we see a tag number we grab that tag number and go type back into the listing to ensure well um it's correct both ways for one of the five assets that we looked at we found the asset however let's just move to a different location to what was uh specified on the listing and that was a foreigner and then for another asset we noted that we identified it i believe based on maybe serial numbers however there was no timeline tab on it the next question number eight whenever the district disposes of any uh assets we have to see board approval of the disposals there was one item that got disposed in the fiscal year that we were reviewing which we didn't see on google for then we move on to the expenditure cycle we review different we sampled 46 different transactions we reviewed just different requirements for purchase orders approvals receiving reports and the one thing we have to notice is just for one of the for three of the purchase orders that we reviewed the purchase orders was approved after the the invoices were received and then for two of those the purchase service was approved after the services were performed or received in the district and that's just to ensure budget just for approvals and budget capacities there before you actually get the expenses number five is related to student activities we noted two student clubs who have negative cash balances at year end and we also sampled five transactions where we couldn't and for one of them we couldn't with it see it student approval for the expenditure moving on um so there's different requirements that are needed to be followed for procurement one of them being receive and written quotes for any expenditures between ten thousand dollars and ninety nine thousand dollars uh for one of five of the purchases that we reviewed we couldn't um there were three quotes in file for the purchase and then we also looked at the sealed procurement or our biz rfps now for this we we look at several different requirements one of the requirements being that when you whether just receives the bids from the vendors that they're staffing when they received it to make sure it was before the deadline um and we noted that a few of the envelopes received weren't stamped or were kept so we just didn't have that support to be able to answer that question i'll say yes and then within this these bits as well anyone who's evaluating the bids who's reviewing it to make sure everything's received who's on the evaluation committee should have a conflict of interest statement for that specific bit in the bid file uh we didn't see those signed conflict of interest forms for these two bits that were issued last year another one was the reveal math because we weren't aware that they needed to sign the disclosure form so that's why when we did the ela reviews everybody's signs signed up and they were the district for procurement districts are also allowed to use those contracts issued by others through a co-op um as mohave or like a state contract that you guys use however you do have to perform some sort of due diligence which is uh typically a checklist that you go through to ensure that if other requirements are being followed we didn't see any support for that so we have to answer no to this question we'll look at them next year and then within those due diligence forms as well the district has two in writing say why they're using the [Music] a co-op instead of going out to them themselves which most of the time is just a statement at the bottom of the due diligence forms that's being signed by the appropriate employee and then moving on i don't think there was anything else within procurement or classroom site cable was also pretty clean financial reporting so this is for the afr submitted to the 280p um and we have to make sure we we agree all the records on the usfr i mean on the afr and comparing them to the district's records to make sure that they agree we just noted that transfers didn't agree for a couple of few of the funds while all the revenues and expenditures and cash are consistent and then that we also have to make sure that it's submitted timely to both the county school superintendent and the county treasurer we we couldn't get any support for the submittal of the um to the county school superintendent i mean i did talk to them we were on the phone with the county school superintendents they they knew they had received that they just didn't have any support for it and it wasn't kept on the district side either so we just couldn't answer yes because we didn't have the physical proof for that within the financial records section we also look at what's called the sdr report so the school district employee report that's submitted to ade and this is not for financial figures but for employee figures in this report the district reports however many ftes they have in the different departments so we selected five positions and agreed back to district support for but for two of them we couldn't agree it took the supporting documentation the next section is student attendance this is a pretty big section the first note that we'll see is on question number three which is where for when students are leaving early or coming in late the auditor general wants to make sure that the district is reporting those half absences properly we selected five students and for one of them the absence wasn't recorded correctly to ade and then you'll see a couple of nodes there but it's just saying that the district is strict but the next number you'll see is not until special numbered um and i think this relates to the same as the earlier question um for absence information does this drink is it synergy so within synergy we could see that the absence was proper and correct however the way it made it to ada's website or 2808 it just it it was different so i think albert was looking into it and they were going to do a little bit more research to see why he wasn't reconciling with the absence information was transferring over properly to ade that's all within student attendance and we've moved on to information technology which is also a pretty big section for which we have nothing to report on there's one question on transportation support every year the district is required to submit what's called the trans55 report which is where the district is reporting the miles up to the 100th day so the actual miles that they traveled on the the bus ride routes as well as the students that they transported we couldn't agree what was reported on that report to the district's support can you also explain how it wasn't from last year oh correct so this is not for last year we're always a year behind on this because the transportation information is used in the budget for the year that we're auditing so we looked at the transportation before that was submitted for 1920.
our stop-loss claim is continuing at 3 20 we were happy with although they charged us more for it and so that is always something that districts and organizations can look at to lower their costs on self-funded plan that just means when you have those high costs you pay more of it and so we're happy with it but the cost is getting higher and higher we might start looking and right now it's through blue cross we might be looking outside that is another way to save some money and as i said our employee benefit trust board approved of this and also continues to fund uh employee contributions as well so they subsidized a little bit is also part of the plan so i know that was a lot in total but uh i didn't mean to talk so fast if there's any questions i'll be happy to turn off the presentation happy to answer thank you mr hicks do we have any questions just a couple of things but you did answer one of them one of my questions for me um and i was just wondering if the employee assistance program had increased if there was usage and because of the things that have been going on for the past two years i was just wondering if there was an increase but yeah you asked you answered that so thank you very much and also with the hsa contribution um as far as the district are we we're not front loading that entire 750 are we splitting up we do split it up i don't know the exact dates of when we pay it up but yes okay it might be monthly or it might be every six months paying okay i know some places will do the entire thing some will split it up in two different place two different places during the year okay thank you you're welcome any other questions all right i will motion to approve the employee health benefit plan for the 2022-2023 school year that's correct motion carries thank you all right next we move on to h4 dr kellis thank you madam chair members of the board and members of cabinet this item is the uh request from the board for the board to approve an award of contract for an assessment and instructional improvement system and i will defer this back to miss chaffett all right thank you my concerns with the illuminate education is as i've discussed with dr dean and dr pauling and dr kellis the sel data that it wants to collect and acquire amongst other data with our students and i've been assured that we are only purchasing questions from the banks for math ela science and social studies to replace the galileo that is correct ms chapman yes that is correct currently we have a database company basically when we say a database an item bank these are all the questions that we can select there's over 80 000 questions and the four core content areas that you mentioned and this allows us to create our own benchmark exams any common formative assessments or any other if a teacher wants to create tests all of these questions which in the assessment world are called items so when you have an item bank it's a repository of questions that can be used in tests and each of these items or questions have been aligned to the arizona state standards so that when we select the the questions from this item bank we know that the students will be experiencing the same types of questions that they would see on the on the state assessment so we are switching from one company to another interestingly the company that we currently have for this year that we are moving away from has a contract with the company that we are proposing and the company we currently use gets their questions from the company that we are proposing we go to um if that makes sense so the company illuminate that we are proposing like many companies has multiple products that they offer we are not purchasing any other products except for the item bank for the content areas that you named okay because my my concern about the item itself it just says award contract assessment and instructional improvement system so it's not very specific my concern is if we approve this motion as presented it would leave it open to purchase those things that raises concern thank you for that feedback we can certainly be more specific in the future i think one option if if you made a motion to include only those things and that would certainly uh be clear but we certainly have clear guidance from the board on on on that item as well thank you i apologize if i missed this part but you mentioned it was replacing an existing curriculum that we have i'm chair miss densmore it's not replacing any curriculum these are test questions and we use these test questions which there's over 80 000 questions or items in this item bank that we are basically buying access to the questions and these are made available to students all over the country who are preparing for assessments but these particular questions would be aligned to arizona state standards so that we know that when we're preparing for our benchmark exams that the questions that we pull from the the bank are questions the students will basically be measuring themselves against the state assessment so did you say that it was replacing something maybe maybe i had the terminology wrong was it vendor uh my president does correct the the vendors are changing the current vendor is galileo oh okay and the new vendor is um illuminate and as i was just mentioning that interestingly galileo is subletting the questions from illuminate in our current contract so it's the same item we're accessing the same item bank just through it through the the host vendor and not through a sub vendor and what other companies are out there did they share similar setups if i could call dr asaya she led that rfp committee okay and she did it no she also had a suggestion regarding the course good evening thank you so much we had two vendors respond and we went through the rfp process looking at the different things they offer one of the great things about illuminate is they have an act predictor that we can that we can also add on they also have a custom assessment package where we can give them the blueprint with the standards and they'll give the test right back to us that'll save us a lot of money with curriculum writing and teachers vetting those items i would propose members of the board we have no intention to use the sel screeners i would propose that the item be passed for an assessment vendor excluding the purchase of any sel any sel items i think that makes it very clear that if there's anything to do with sel that we will not purchase it my department has no intention to dabble in sel or crt um anything like that we we are about standards in my department uh we're about teaching standards and aligning to standards um the purpose of the assessment system is to serve as predictors as ati currently does um ati galileo is you've all had your kids probably come home and complain about benchmarks or heard someone do that i know mine never have um but our benchmarks are within about five percent prediction rate of the state test every year and when schools use them well and some schools use them better than others i can speak to when i was at canyon ridge we grew every year about four to five percent because we would look at our benchmarks and we would say what does tracy know what does joe know we need to work with tracy on rl1 we need to work with joe on rl1 and rl2 that's the intent of the benchmark is to be able to make that up between times and the items that our teachers write we haven't had enough assessments classes to really do good predictors and so that's why we do ask to purchase assessment systems thank you all right do we have any other questions all right then i will make the motion to approve the award of contract number 22-1818 assessment an instructional approvement system for math ela science and social studies second wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait does that limit this does that is that what she i i'm so sorry i i would respectfully request because there is a chance that we can partner on cte items and other assessment items if the state puts something out for it if there's any way it could be approved without any sel because with just those four contents i'm afraid is it it might narrow that scope too much i understand that but i also want to guard against other content not just sel anything that could be used um how does the rest of the board feel i don't want to limit what the district is going to do because we never if they do have like you said other things come along then they can use it so if you just make it specific that excluding any sel items that should um in the item itself on bullet number nine the committee's recommendation is based on the evaluation criteria set forth in the solicitation document is the solicitation document does that is that limited to everything except for fcl it was a really long document i i i want to say there's no sel in it i would have to go back and double check um but my concern is cte so there's had the product available we might be able to share test sets with other districts which increases the the reliability when you have two thousand kids taking it versus a hundred um and if they have something that comes out gym grease shapers kids take the tsa so if they have something that they can practice for the tsa we would want to use those items they're not associated with anything like that i don't know if you could include i mean cte is the big one that we looked at when we talked about it so cte and i mean if there does become an art assessment i don't know if there's going to be with the seal of the arts will that ever come into play i don't know it it has and it hasn't in the past standardized testing for electives and arts typically comes in and then they realize that you cannot assess a performance-based class with pencil and paper so you and i are on the same page with that they should be performance-based i personally think science should all be performance-based as well if not social studies i just want to be prepared because the state does change back and forth so i guess that would be my concern is usually the bids for five years or a period of years and to go through the rfp process is a lengthy process um so is this a contract for five years or is this contract just for one year you're approving the purchase typically they give us a one year and a three year price i believe dr pauline yes yeah it's typical it could um the rfp is good for a certain number of years but we typically we go to year to year or it is possible if they offered a three year we could do that and it's always our desire not to change systems uh these changes can be really big for our teachers because to use learn to use galileo our teachers have been with galileo so long and one thing we do hear from our teachers is that we don't like to keep changing because i want to get good at what i'm doing so that would be i guess my concern i still share my concerns about having just awarding the contract in general um i would be okay adding cte but i i want to be specific because i want to make sure that what we are getting is exactly what you are describing to me so yep thank you at some point we're going to have to trust our administrators i'm i'm okay with it um i understand your concern but i don't want to limit ourselves and by putting roadblocks in the way i certainly don't want to do that i think the cores and cte um we would like to get act predictors but that aligns to act as in the science english and math so the cte was the big one and we don't even know if that's going to work out for sure but i wouldn't want to limit it i don't think currently they have world language i'm trying to think of all in my mind going through what's tested we would put do we put world language we have world language but typically we build them out in galileo but usually we put our own items in there so i don't think that would prevent us because we're not using their items button but this is not but to dr kelly's point this is not curriculum this is just the assessment it's an assessment so stitch marks huh benchmarks it's for benchmarks is we do our unit test in them because we pull our unit data currently out of galileo so we've been able to put all our world language tests in galileo we're using their items but you also use their system to do the testing i guess my my question is if we excluded sel like you suggested what's what's the point of that if it's not curriculum-based um i just think it's a safeguard for the board i know it's a concern of the board and on the board's mind i have no intention of ever ever putting it but i think it's good i mean you know i voters elected the board it's the boards doing the will of the voters if that's a if that's a concern to the voters then to pass it without the sel i think is be you know in line with what your constituents are concerned your constituents have i i'm i have no problem the way it's been presented i i don't i understand what you're what you're saying um dr assad but i i guess um and i i appreciate that the thought you put into that um but if i'm understanding it correctly that if it's not curriculum if this is not something that's going to be taught to our students if it's something that's just being used for assessing them then i i don't understand why we need to to limit it maybe but i i but i'm going to give miss chaffin an opportunity to speak to that i'm chairman miss densmore you're correct these were again we're we're purchasing permission to access an item bank the sel component is what miss dr sai was suggesting there's an sel screener that and they have a whole plethora a whole catalog of assessments that you can you can access if you purchase those those pieces and parts and so if you say that you want to exclude these items from the bank um these accounts if you're using the bank analogy um then we would not access those accounts those those those items the ones that dr is mentioning is there's plenty others that we can find value in and so if we were to say we're going to purchase access to the bank and through the motion directing administration not to access anything that's related to sel or crt and that would give us the clear direction but still allow us the access to those other items in the bank that would be very valuable to potentially provide assessment data for non-core content areas and my concern with the motion as presented is is it just leaves it open to purchasing the whole system and when you go on their website and you look at the different things that you can purchase i have not given a clear answer on what exactly we are going to purchase i've been told what we are not going to purchase i'm sorry i can't i can provide that so we will directly be purchasing um hopefully the ac the act package i believe it's 11 000. i included an email to dr dean earlier this week um we would like to buy custom assessments with custom assessments so with ati and galileo currently dr kellis mentioned the inspect item bank is going away which means if i have a 30 item test i only have 10 items left right now when i ask ati galileo what are you going to do for us the answer was basically nothing it was not a great example of extraordinary customer service uh thus we went out for rfp um so with that with the custom assessments to get them up to speed and make sure we have good good unit tests and good finals what we can do with custom assessment packages is i can say i want a unit one reading assessment with three three questions on ri one three questions on ri2 three questions on ri3 they'll turn around and make that test versus teachers digging through countless items to find them so that's the custom assessment package that we would want to add on for a year or two and then we have the item bank which is the bulk of the which is the bulk of it and it's one it's in the hundred thousands i know that sounds a lot but for an assessment system it's about run of the mill um so with that with those items they come based on standards i do believe there's items in english math social studies science i do believe they have some they're piloting with cte um i don't have a list of all the items i could go back and look and that's the reason if they have some for foreign language they talked about going out with foreign language for some that i would request that it not be limited to just the four cores okay can you list those again i got the act package custom assessments custom assessments and then what is there um oh i wish i had the name it's on my email um it's just the regular just regular item bank really i mean it's tons of items for different for different standards i think what you're referring to that you see when you go into their landing page membership is um they talk about fastbridge a program called fastbridge that has reading screeners math screeners and sel screeners why i do feel the reading screeners and math screeners would be useful for us to screen kids when they come into high school or the seventh grade or third grade we can't detangle that from the sel screeners so we would not be requesting to use any of the screeners or purchase the fast bridge thank you for that so i guess you could exclude fastbridge from it i mean that kind of is where the where that would be found i guess my concern is that things of the seo nature would show up in other products that we purchased to or could purchase i think it's very hard in education today to say any book i mean you know the vendors you've seen conferences you've seen vendors i think it's very important that the staff understands the wish of the board i mean my understanding is the wish of the board is sel is something that's better left in the home and that's our directive that's been our directive to our you know to my coordinators to my teachers to to the and so i mean i we're not going to purchase it but like i said if you want to put that safeguard in place i think it's a reasonable thing to do in other words to say the assessment and instructional improvement system um minus the seo that's what excu x minus excluding the sel component i mean with that and fast bridge and fast and fast i think that would take care of it is excluding fast bridge and chair miss uh sourcing bill fastbridge is where the sel is located okay the the sel screener okay to my knowledge my understanding is that those scl questions are located within the sel screener which is located within fastbridge and fastbridge as as dr hassai mentioned has several screeners within the fastbridge module that includes reading screeners reading screeners mouse screeners and the sel screener it's kind of like when you get a tesla and then you can add on the self-driving part except we don't we want to say we want the tesla without the self-driving part okay because we don't want to get in an accident no one wants that and the only reason i was saying that yeah yeah and the only reason i was saying that was because miss chaffin was talking about that sel being possibly found in other components i think that's what i was understanding you right okay but i would like to get a tesla too could we exclude fastbridge and sel just to make sure we have our basis my department would be thrilled with that recommendation yes and then can we also put a time limit on as in one contract one year and then take another look in a year doesn't mean we have to change anything could it say we bring it back to the board of the year instead of having to go through the entire rfp process again yes that would be like number 10 kind of says that though um which would give us the option to renew annually for up to five years we just need to understand that the price might be a little bit higher um sometimes for an example with um defined learning that we use for our gifted kids a stem-based product it is 50 like 52 000 a year but if you package it you can get it for 80 000 let's say sometimes sometimes you get that multi-year discount however i think so the board feels more at peace it would be worth it to say okay we'll pay a little bit more and we'll come back in a year madam president pro tem uh members of the board all of our rfps are year to year we we always check in with them to make sure that we're still this is what we want so it's never a five-year commitment thank you you're welcome i would feel good about moving forward with the two exclusions we have a motion so i can make a substitute motion well we already have a motion on the floor right now substitute well she needs to approve the board for math ela science and social studies do we have an amendment to that motion yes that we would improve so just uh maybe we're getting chair point of order that the motion is yours to withdraw or to amend it would not be appropriate for somebody else to amend your emotion if you'd like to call the question or if it's not seconded if you could call for a second if there's no second then the motion dies and then a second motion can be presented thank you very much dr kellis i will amend the motion to award the contract number 22-1818-009 assessment and instructional improvement system to exclude sel any components with sel fast bridge or crt for one year second um i seconded it and not but i had already seconded it um i approved the amendment my second amendment excuse me that should work i didn't realize your second still stood sorry this still does okay and this is for one year correct within the as presented or do we need to include that in the motion um madam president pro-tem members of the board our rfp's awarded for five years we bring them back to the board every year for renewals so this will come back on a yearly basis with the renewal process so does it come back in consent or does it come back consent madam chair we're going to re-post the vote um with the we missed your your motion was complete we failed to include the one-year component so do we exit out of this okay thank you madam president for clarification was that just a one-year award so we're doing a new rfp next year or was this this was a revisit after a year but are you wanting to go through a full rfp again no i just want it back brought back to the board for approval which every next year all of our annual come back to the board every single year i'm sheriff my understanding is that you'd like if not in consent you'd like it as a board discussion yes please [Laughter] i know good job information i'll try this so does this mean it's going to show up as an information item i'm chair yes this is an information item as actually if it was brought to the board for approval every year through consent then it would be an action but it can be presented as a action discussion because we'll have to vote on it right just like if it was in consent if it was an action i'm yes it would require an active vote but we could move it from information to action but then we'd go home before nine o'clock yes i'm fine with that okay not present what they're not you guys weren't present you're not here present did you vote i did i did vote it was a ghost vote it shows you guys weren't here okay that's interesting oh okay okay we're redoing it you're back okay yeah now i'll be out okay action discussion okay perfect for sure i voted three times yes hey it's verbage gotta make sure it's right it's getting scary motion carries all right that moves us to i1 does anyone dr kellis madam president members of the chair members of the board if there's anybody who has requests for future agenda items we'd be happy to to receive those and just as a reminder from the last board meeting there are several requests for gen items if you haven't yet submitted your generate request form please do so so that we know the specifics of what you're requesting and the administration can prepare those items thank you dr kellis do we have any requests all right i'll move to j1 i move that we adjourn the meeting second second second take you
madam president i believe we need to have a discussion about sequencing before we get to the resolution right okay yes so and uh get that let me get the green map up here so we can uh for what purpose because we're going to talk about election district and election um now and i'd like to be able to see where's what rob you gonna come up okay thank you rob yeah and so with this green map we do have a suggested sequence that's been printed uh we believe yeah we are assuming that uh given that all of the current members of the board including the three whose terms will expire in reside between areas four and five that those two areas will hold elections in 20 or so in 2022 i misspoke that leaves the other three areas numbers one two and three with no current board members residing one of which uh because you need to have three seats elected in this coming november election uh to hold its election in 2022 with the other two waiting until 2024.
so back to february 28th of 2022 a couple things i'd like to just highlight and i put some summaries here is a percentage of our operating year gone at the end of february it was almost 67 the day is gone it's really handy if at this point of the year you haven't already spent 80 percent of your budget 67 which is a nice healthy six percent and those of you that looked at the classroom or the budget overall you see that six percent on our operating fund is a cushion now there's still bills to pay but that's after encumbrances so we have that nice uh almost seven percent cushion um if we were again 75 or 80 percent well at this point in the year capital like at 1.1 million 33.9 percent span and yes we have over 500 000 covered there to be spent some of those will not be spent at all we know they're encumbered just in case things happen and the cash funds we've looked at this before and we have just a little information and superintendent joe can add to this i'd like to just focus on two funds there first of all is our food service fund and all i can say is the selection of contractors worked out really well there's over 400 thousand dollars cash in there right now they're able to claim meals that they're still serving grab and go and other things so participation is extremely high and our reimbursements are extremely high so that's that's just a real hats off to them because that's not easy to do that most districts in the state subsidize food service they're in the red right now they have to take operating funds just to break even and need those funds in a good service so that's a trend that we like to have fund 691 on our cash balances or is our school facilities board fund and you see current expenses and print activity in there are is it 140 156 000 received and spent as of today we spent another 272 thousand so total activity in there right on 435 000 and that's basically emc our architects that have been really looking at our roofs and and we're to a point in fact we had four esteemed visitors here last week uh mr let's see if i can get this right dave cannon from the school facilities board are liaison tasha webster adams in addition to jack smith and andy tobin from the department of administration actually walked our roofs all four of them and now we're kind of at a crossroads i haven't talked a lot with the mcr architects because they haven't given us reports yet we've just invoiced and as their invoices come in but it seems like we're going two directions and they were here to get some more insights some more first-hand knowledge and the options seem to be option one open up all the classrooms and reinforce the classroom roof structures the structural steel with more structural steel close the roofs back up and then put the units on top and use the existing ducting as much as possible from our evap coolers that's one option the other option is kind of novel but it's used a lot different places and it's put like many splits they're called brf's out in the open on the ground level and then just like a mini split or a heat pump take it into the classroom from the ground level and that seems to be where we're at we haven't heard any more than that but that's that's kind of the two choices that i've heard them discuss yes well both most mr tobin and mr smith are from yamcha county uh jack smith was a former county supervisor i believe yeah so and then andy tobin uh lived in in paulden but um and with the vrs i want to mention they don't have to be on the ground because what i think that they're looking at is i'm not putting them on roofs but putting them on overhangs so for example and that's actually what they did outside the high school is there's an overhang on the north side of the gym at the um at the big gym are the big air conditioning units are on that so they're still up off the ground just not on the roof where you need you know engineering done to make sure that it was strong enough well and i have to admit john and john every time you talk about doing roof mounted new units it scares me because these roof structures are 20 30 40 years old and that's no matter how much you engineer and try to strengthen those things it's a danger personal opinion but i've just heard too many bad stories with the city of phoenix about those things not going well and having to come back in and redo stuff where systems failed where they didn't think they were going to fail so the second just from a personal standpoint to me that sounds like far and away the better solution with the outside units the outside units yeah right yeah yeah whether it's on the intermediate ledge or or ground mounted either one of those personally to me sound like a better solution i wish we had some proposals from our architect engineer team for you we don't quite yet but they're coming and the next steps will be to run them by you and give feedback and then put a bid package together for general contractors to bid on and then get in whatever units we are going to receive get them bid and as we've been taking five months to get capital items received with replace orders in january of last year and it took until august to get here and so we know there's a big delay on commodities being shipped and so that'll probably be at least into the vehicle before this analysis is done and then we're ready to put a big package together probably into the pay before we close on this and get them all received so that's just an update so are we looking at possibly doing the work next fiscal year exclusive i would say that's a really good possibility that even if we go to a shorter quicker option the units won't be here it's probably realistic to say at least six months out of time and we haven't even got the bid package yet so yeah i'm thinking if we can have some of these done by by thanksgiving that would be really optimistic okay at least they know where gina valley is now you're very very passionate about turning some things around that's wonderful thank you for that student activity fund and student activity fund year-to-date revenues 6250 and forty expenditures dollars and uh this is kind of right where we need to be 135 000 cash in there things are going well with with those funds and being managed well and uh they're not being used as much as they were pre-copa days but it's a moving on to item 8 a through g our consent agenda do we have a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda we'll make a motion to approach next concept all in favor aye all right thank you item 9a moving right along secretary 2 for our preschool mrs good evening um i'm coming to you tonight to ask for an edition of a secretary choose position for preschool alone um we have grant funding that we can fund this position so it's not an evident cost but preschool is cumbersome to say the least with all the paperwork i love preschool but there's a lot involved in paperwork and so this will take some stress off the office step and a lot of stress off of me to have this position we could totally fund it with a grant we have received that's great and this is a full-time decision yes thank you it's somebody that i have to be able to work with pretty closely um because i really want to push over all of the grants that i'm overseeing right now so that person that is their sole job and collecting all the tuition and yes i make a motion we approve the position of secretary teacher preschool so um right now we have a position in the business office that is food service and facility secretarial um and really it's the position is beyond just the secretary but that's how it worked out um the john has is making a proposal to do what's called mips which is medicare reimbursement they would need additional hours to do that and it would bring in two to three hundred thousand dollars is the estimate right now by basically some of the medical procedures that we do um through our therapists and our nurses and things like that could actually be reimbursed by medicare and so we need uh somebody to kind of manage that and that's with this that would be the half that john has in his office would move from facilities to that and then that was that half position really didn't meet the needs of facilities anyway and so this would this position would actually be instead of the business office would be down in facilities um they have room for this person to do it pos work orders time sheets uh all that stuff that that is taking up the director's time that this really more clerical this position would take that this is actually a 12 month position because facilities works 12 months full-time as a secretary too any questions another action item i'll make the motion to approve at one point i will have technician larry i'll take care of it [Applause] this position is really meant to start next school year or probably july 1.
um that's all we had to know uh if you have any questions i'm more than happy to answer any of them so the findings that you have for us how many of these are pumped throughout they're all coming to summit some extent we didn't know i mean you know that the material weakness is what we focused on the most and that's what holds a heavier weight i guess but student attendance are pretty common um a lot of times procurement just because there's very many different requirements within procurement as well procurement it's also something we see out there like that accounting records especially like that broad question i think about it's also a pretty common question i have a kind of cash receiving that's a common amount yeah sometimes districts want to know how many findings they have and sometimes it's more important to talk about qualitative aspects of it how serious are the finances you can have a hundred very small findings and that may not be as bad as one very large serious fundraiser sometimes you don't get too counting the number of things especially when you're talking about state compliance that was a long discussion that cynthia just went through and that's probably only 25 of what we looked at because of how thick the usmr is and how much we deal with to answer these questions i mean you saw there's a bunch of yeses in there too if you want to quantify it very so what level would you give us as a great sincere school i guess just keep in mind that there's competing sets of audit requirements there's a financial statement on it the grade there is did you get an unmodified opinion and you did you got a clean audit opinion meeting these financial statements based on our on procedures there were non-material statements these are reliable financial statements that's that's what it means so that's your brain if you will for financial for the state compliance audit this is your grant you you decide what what you think of that where you want to focus your efforts in the coming year to take care of those issues just note that this is reported to the auditor general the auditor general really is the one who decides grades right to answer your question our our mechanism is to report the information their role was to make decisions you our responsibility then now is to not only discuss internally what we need to do to change this but also do we have a report to the auditor general a response to this audit no i mean unless they just they ask for listen to come to you and ask for information um but no that isn't good this like i said like cynthia said it's small it's tiny because this is an auditor general website this information already went to them this is in their hands they get it from every school district company has to file this they decide if they want to contact you afterwards i'm sure you've heard of like the 90-day letters or in the worst worst case scenarios it's a receivership where they take over history obviously it's not anything what we're talking about here but a 90-day letter would be they see your compliance questionnaire they also get a copy of your financial statements you're required to file that with them so they will see that material weakness as well but what they do is they evaluate the seriousness of the situation and a lot of times they look at it over a multiple year period it's not just about one point in time they look and see if you're making improvements or if you're going the wrong direction i believe i can speak for them but that is our understanding if they if they don't like or they want to know more about it occasionally they will issue the call and then you get better which is you know show us we want you to give us a corrective action plan for these items and you've got 90 days to do it and in 90 days we're going to come down we're going to see if you've done something but that that is something that they they start they start that process so if you don't hear anything from them that's not something and of course greg and i have already sat down and gone through these items that we did with cynthia as well even as the audit was occurring okay what is you know what does this look like what do we need what do we have to do how is it done in other districts how did we get to this point how were we doing it before and like we talked about the change in um in business managers and you know what we have done in transportation with the work we've done in paid role like all of that um the work we've done in the past is reflected also in those other areas where we worked hard to clean those areas up so now it's just going to happen and what do we have to do now and who's going to do that one other thing to keep in mind of course one of the faults if you will with an audit is we're performing our audit in january so you're already seven months into this fiscal year so any finding you see reported here potentially could be reported in fiscal year 22 but not due to a lack of care from management it's because they weren't notified themselves now this this is what we came across and you can see the way the question is written it's a yes or no it's not a yeah they were they had an issue for seven months but they were good for the other five sometimes it takes two or three years for it to cycle out before there you go so next steps would be we have time like we mentioned you know 13 days before our board meeting so as you go back and look at now that we've um had a little bit more conversation and explanation from cynthia mike then we can continue to ask questions and um maybe we can have you on the phone the day of the board meeting sydney and mike if you want to call in to the board meeting but definitely we can get the questions answered prior to the 21st as you have been able to bring them to our attention and as soon as you get the bound copy it should be straight it should be here okay so as soon as we get them we will let you know board members and if we can have you come pick them up or we'll but we'll make sure you have them because i know that you want to mark them under the bills on the actual document might help guide questions thank you appreciate it guess what that word thank you so much
uh so this uh suggested sequence picks area one to be to join four and five in this november's election uh but that is something that could be you could select area two or area three uh if you had some reason for a preference but your suggested sequence that's been published so far as the default uh does have areas 1 4 and 5 in 2022 all right any reactions to that from the board or ideas rob why why area one as a was it just random that i would have it was fairly arbitrary for me i think really uh you know just because it's first in line uh just because it balances out a little bit with the east to west but uh it is again it is fairly arbitrary and i don't think any harm or benefit would particularly occur if you picked either of those any of those three districts to be the first one to hold its election all right maybe recognized does anyone up here have any reason not to like that sequence or want to do something different i'm considering whether or not here we go i'm considering whether um how much of the geography matters it's possible for everyone to be on the the far south side of town with this uh so i'm considering moving for but you're you're kind of talking about the more urban center it's possible for someone for all three of the uh seats to be won by people who are who are very far south of town with one four and five i don't think it's the end of the world if we pick one four and five i just two guarantees as someone from the other side of town i just am surprised because five goes has a very large physical area one has a very large physical area so the two small smallest physical areas are two and three um i think geographic size is um i guess if we're going to discuss changing sequencing would we want to have a motion or for unless we're asking questions i mean i guess we should be asking clarifying questions before we get into any kind of discussion i guess i do have a question and do we have and forgive me for not having this in front of me um ideas about the population density within say um area one in particular uh i mean i've never run it by density in terms of the actual i mean each of them has approximately the same population within the trustee area have not done the calculation of people per square mile right i think you mean just the number right not the density no i meant the density really yeah but that's not an illegal issue rob on the sequencing with two of our member positions not the expiring in 2024 correct in order to serve beyond 2024 would they have to run in 2022 that's i'm sorry that's that's my question okay yes the so for members tennis and dalby uh as was referenced a bit ago uh with those two uh areas four and five uh scheduled to hold their election in uh they are currently hold at-large seats on the board but those uh terms expire in 2024 and given that they live in areas four and five which would not be scheduled to hold another election for the trustee area seat until 2026 if they did not want to have that two-year interruption they would need to go ahead and run for the trustee area seat and then should they win that they vacate the at-large seat they start a new term that runs from 22 to 26 and then it sounds like from when i've heard another conversation it would be more likely to have an appointment to then fill the thou vacant at large seat for the remain for the remainder of its term until 2024.
um with the number of devices that we have added because of the influx of stimulus money through esser we need another ittech to fix devices clean devices update devices and all those things so right now we have a one we have a uh we'll say half an i.t tech at territorial we have one it tech that operates between heritage and del rio and we have one here at the high school larry's kind of a floater network guy that kind of thing that supervises that department what the proposal is is to uh move the existing person that's between heritage and del rio to heritage and this position would serve davio and and really what we need what i want to mention is that even though they're housed at a certain place when something needs to happen they're all over the place so for example one of the things that's happening now is is hanging interactive tvs and it takes a couple guys and the team gets together and they'll go and do the job and move on from school to school hanging those devices so just because that's where their house doesn't mean that's where they're gonna um slowly serve but it would be just an additional additional body to the i.t department makes sense to me i mean everything's going on technology once again we have an action item so if we can get a motion to approve item 9c full-time fte 12-month iet technician second all in favor all right this is the secretary position just checking english language development ms daniels so um you can see what increased avm half like what happens when we're up students and a lot of the positions that we're coming to you with our positions that were in existence of the district a long time ago before the economy dipped and our enrollment dipped and now that enrollment's up and exploding we need some of those back so one of them is our an sei teacher and i'm asking for this position to be housed at del rio fourth fifth of the day and one fifth of the day at heritage we talked last month in our meeting about the increased numbers and language learner students that we have everywhere and this will help address that that need that we have so this person we have 300 minutes a week that we're supposed to deliver english language learner instruction for the purpose of language acquisition having trouble meeting that minimum you know those those minimum number of minutes with the quantity of staff we have right now so this will enable us to not only meet the you know the letter of the law but also meet the needs of our language learners to try to help them become as proficient in english as quickly as possible so it's a certified position okay i just want to make a comment please um yes okay don't talk and that's okay um cindy briefed me on our english language situation which i was stunned at the number of kids coming into the district all the way through the high school i was it was unbelievable in the lack of english because they were coming from many times mexico staying with family that are already here was it four kids in high school that did not speak english that you mentioned we actually have 29 language learner students at the high school this year all but four are new yeah so it is i didn't realize the situation was as great as it is and so anything we could do to help in that program to me is long-needed i agree too well then not all making the purple we can follow through the approval of the english language development structured english emerson teacher position uh second second all in favor aye aye thank you you are welcome item nine e for proposed 2223 classified salary schedule mr schulte um staff is proposing to add a dollar an hour to the base pay for all classifications on the classified salary schedule this hopefully hopefully will get us through the minimum wage increase that's set to take place in january if we when we raised it i think 50 cents last year it did not get us through the minimum wage increase last year and i think inflation's increased since then so if we anticipate a higher minimum wage increase than we did last year i think it was 65 cents last year this hopefully will get us through our minimum wage in the district would now be 14 an hour and then this will be reflected in the classified raises i that will come to you in just a few minutes but um so i basically there's the old salary schedule the new salary schedule all i did was add an hour to all the classifications or a dollar an hour any questions on the classified salary schedule just one more thing i want to add for the public the the minimum wage is increased annually based off of inflation is out of our control this is this is across the state it's a i think it's in um state statute or maybe it was it was a voter elected referendum that this took place so it's annually adjusted for inflation six years ago we were at 8 20 something like that and you know our the district's minimum wage at that time was nine dollars an hour we got to keep it above minimum wage because we are competing against mcdonald's you know all these places that can offer minimum wage and they don't have asrs taken out of their salary so the the net after asrs out of retirement which is a benefit but a lot of people that are making that wage they'd rather have the money in their pocket than in a retirement system so we are competing and we need to stay a little bit higher than the minimum age and logistics will this uh also help with some of the bus driver salaries absolutely so this this will help across all classifications really you know if you look at what the bus driver salary will become um so starting bus drivers we'll start at i need to get there uh it looks like 16 bucks an hour for a bus driver and i think we if i recall we made a correction to that a couple years ago or a couple maybe last year we bumped it up a little bit to try to attract more subscribers how are we doing our bus drivers we uh there's one of the resonation today that we got for two weeks it's still a struggle still unable to serve the robert road route in prescott valley that we typically pick up kids on um struggle with van drivers it's just it's difficult but you know that's not the only industry where they're having trouble finding workers it's all over the place uh this is an action item please make a motion to approve the proposed 2022-23 classified salary schedule second second helen pager all right so then we'll do the 22-23 certified staff in freestyle salary schedule so one thing that has been my goal and and that you know over time the board has really um tasked me with is increasing certified salaries um the classified salaries have kind of been taken care of with the minimum wage increase so we really want to push those certified salaries up in order to do that i am proposing adding a thousand dollars to the base for the certified salary schedule that will be reflected in the certified raise later and i'll talk about that but this would this all i did was add a thousand dollars to the base so our base would go from 33 to 34.
that was what i thought answered my question i'll move the staff proposal or the proposal so if i can clarify that you're moving that the order of sequencing would be one four and five yes okay and then two and three and twenty-four okay do we have a second i'll second that motion okay did you want to continue discussion i think you were i think you were making a good point actually um about how area two is more densely populated um and so it could be that there are um just a different opportunity for voters i appreciate that i also tend not to think that it's a huge deal i pretend to agree with member robinson that whoever gets elected is going to represent everybody regardless of where they reside so i'm happy to go with the staff recommendation we're doing a loop around the center and then you know mr tennis and i will be at large the other the other aspect which nobody has brought up is the this does change the act of somebody running and these are our three biggest areas so it would be you know the na the nature of the outreach in terms of getting that going so we have a motion and a second that the sequence of voting be areas 1 4 and 5 and 2022 of the green map and then in 2024 it would be areas two and three correct okay all right so any further discussion all right if i can have another roll call vote please robinson i landed y kaiser eye dolby a tennis eye okay five zero all right so that's the order of sequencing that's that and that's the green map and then um for the do we have to vote separately on the resolution correct okay so the resolution is and this just codifies the green map and the sequence of elections okay so recognizing the green map and the sequence of elections do we have legal advice here okay just want to make sure um no i'm waiting to see what he okay so um the resolution 1570 1570-22 notes both the selection of the green map and the sequencing that we just passed and so we need to vote on that uh may i ask a quick question to staff first yes thank you um because it was brought up last time have we heard anything or had any communication with the county regarding the timeline the county the county board of education will not schedule their meeting until we have a map and a sequence selected okay so we didn't miss out on anything by putting it up thank you all right so we have a motion and a second on the resolution um do we have a motion i thought we did oh we didn't i'm sorry i'll move the resolution okay okay now we have okay katelyn and dolby all right i mean tom katelyn oh man okay all right so uh take a roll call vote robinson robinson aye okay kaiser eye dolby aye tennis eye okay five to nothing the resolution so we got that i know all right so uh madam superintendent do you want to have a moment of silence and now that this is this process is over i just want to thank jamie and rob and paul for bearing with us through this whole process thank you all for your professionalism and your knowledge and your thoroughness yeah absolutely thank you thank you um so uh yeah jamie's in the corner there okay so uh superintendent staley did you have a sense that we needed to go to a little out of order here or no i think we need to move on i just want to make sure we continue okay all right so the next thing up is uh discussion action on our covet update and michelle bunch thank you good evening i'm michelle bunch your coveted lead for chico unified school district who's advancing slides for me okay thank you [Laughter] perfect with declining case rates and hospitalizations across california and the west mass guidance is being updated for k-12 schools on february 28th governor newsome and the california department of public health announced the mask requirements and k-12 schools would shift to recommendations beginning on march 12th california data trends have improved significantly there's been a 66 drop in cases over the last two weeks of february hospitalizations have dropped statewide admissions and test positivity rates have also dropped this is our butte county health department cases by week from their dashboard and you can see the case rates have dropped significantly from the peak of omicron in january and this is our chico unified data trend and you can see we tend to follow the county trend and you can see our case rates have dropped significantly from our peak in january as well state why the projections for hospitalizations show a continuous decline so moving through march they expect them to continue to drop and they've been following that trend and you can see endless hospitals numbers peaked and also are on a decline locally on february 28 the california department of public health issued updated guidance after they reassessed and affirmed safe in-person instruction is essential and schools should contin continue to provide mitigation resources like test testing and mask availability chico unified offers many mitigation resources we have 22 employee and student testing centers across our district we test employees students and parent volunteers in january we responded to the need to provide a symptomatic testing center and with the help of maintenance and operations moved a mobile testing center into the parking lot of the district office with the help of the butte county office of education we secured 12 000 home test thousand kits over five adult masks and over fourteen thousand and ninety five child masks we've distributed hand sanitizer as well as mounted dispensers in our classrooms across the district cusd worked with safeway to offer voluntary vaccination clinics for the primary series of the covid19 vaccine as well as a voluntary booster clinic as a result of declining cases rates and hospitalizations beginning march 12th we will move into a mass recommendation in california following spring break from march 14th through march 18th chica unified plans to make masks optional when we return to school on monday march 21st 2022 we respect the diversity of our population and recognize that our families take different positions regarding masking and mitigation we ask staff students and families to be kind accepting and respectful as people make decisions that best meet their needs regarding masks and i'll end on our cal osha requirements they are still in effect on february 28th governor newsome signed an executive order extending the emergency temporary standards through may 5th these standards require unvaccinated staff and volunteers to continue to test weekly in chico unified coveted site leads on all 22 sites track weekly testing compliance and we currently have more than 84 percent of employees vaccinated with the primary vaccine series and i wanted to take any questions that you might have i just want to give you and your staff accommodation since i've had to take my little ones for testing several times they're always there and they're extremely caring and uh a lot of people have used it and i think it's really a wonderful resource so thank you thank you they like it that it's outside too that's our bonus especially when the weather is wonderful okay anything else all right thank you michelle i have one thing so just to clarify yes chico unified is mask optional for all intents and purposes at the end of this week i mean after the end of this week after the end of this week yes we will we will be on spring break next week um but when we return to full session will be mask optional but yes it begins march 12th what's our plan for communicating that to families we have sent out aries communication to families already explaining the changes and also sent a communication to all staff through staff announcements it's been communicated through our principles at our different school sites um it's it's on our web page and so what is the impact to staff exactly as far as changes for masking for masking yeah um we will continue to offer masks that's something that we can offer staff and students um there really isn't a huge change other than students will make the choice whether they want to mask or not and staff will respect that choice in their classrooms and staff will have they have the choice also staff will have a choice as well all right thank you regardless of vaccination status thank you i just realized i made a big mistake because i didn't go through the list of speakers on the covet update oh i thought we were doing the covet update all right okay i guess i didn't make a giant mistake [Laughter] all right thank you thank you now we get to do it okay so i have two students i have jacob pianapina is that correct all right jacob [Applause] do you mind telling us how old you are in what school i am 11 and i go to marsh all right thank you hello i am jacob pena today i will speak on mask also thank you for those who think kids should have a choice i would like you to know about how i've been asked if or why i am an anti-master and even friends got asked if they are my friends because of it i also would like you to know that i've been interrupted by staff for choosing to sit outside after being asked why why i want to make it harder on myself by taking off my mask division is all this mandate has created allowing a choice is the right thing to do thank you for listening and have a good day thank you jacob all right very good okay what about andrew pena kenya i don't know so andrew can you do the same your how old you are in your school yes okay um good evening my name is andrew pena i am in fifth grade at little chico creek three weeks ago i decided to stop wearing my face mask at school the face mask has affected me in many ways i find it hard to breathe comfortably and this distracts distracts me so i tend to touch and mess around with my mask a lot i even get headaches often and feel tired more i i believe this is due to the mask so three weeks ago i decided this is enough since making it since making the choice i cannot attend class so i sit outside with my chromebook as a teacher it's still it is still winter but i can't go into the library or cafeteria so i i so what plans do you have for kids like me okay all right so andrew it will be your choice uh when we come back from spring break okay deanna lindstrom hi i'm deanna lindstrom in an experiment conducted by dr harold wallich a research letter for his 2021 clinical trial labeled experimental assessment of carbon dioxide content and inhaled air with or without face masks and healthy children found that the normal content of carbon dioxide in the open is about 400 ppm or parts per million a level of 2000 ppm is the limit for closed rooms without mass children's carbon dioxide levels for just three minutes were found to be between thirteen thousand one hundred and twenty and thirteen thousand nine hundred and ten ppm of carbon dioxide and inhaled air under surgical and n95 mass this explains the headaches our children are having from the continued force use of masks in a different study conducted on children by pediatricians authors of the book highlights in general pediatrics and pediatric emergency care dr martin chalamet and dr jeremy cohen found that out of 3617 participants more than two-thirds of the children had functional problems related to mask wearing these functional problems include mood disorders anxiety sadness anguish and we're present in half the children parents are not forcing their children to wear masks you are we are not coercing them to rebellion not to wear them what we are doing is asking our children at the end of the day how it went just as parents always have our children are coming to us telling us about their headaches and their sadness and their struggles they are coming to us in tears filled with anxiety and turmoil because they are being bullied bullied by the adults who are allowing themselves to feel better with false comfort by justifying keeping the mess the district states that bullying will not be tolerated yet you are the biggest bullies of them all you should be applauding these kids for standing up for their rights not keeping them out in the freezing temperatures not segregating them and definitely not ignoring them day after day history has repeatedly shown us that the majority doesn't always make the right choice and you should be supporting them not suppressing them look at oscar schindler and irena sandler from the holocaust they knew that what the nazi regime was doing was wrong they took a stand against the majority to protect many innocent lives durham roseville and placerville schools districts are just a few who have taken after such great leadership examples of how to stand up against the majority to protect the children there's a list filled with people such as heinrich himmler and heinrich mueller who set up and oversaw the camps and genocidal programs of the jews these people went along with whatever adolf hitler wanted some chico unified board members fall into the same category by following what they're told with zero consideration for the children and these conditions by their unwillingness to stand up for them by repeatedly saying we will not go above or below the law parents and children are like are watching you and we will not forget any of this this is far from over i do not care if the mask mandate ends at midnight on on the 12th unmask our children now and just in case you can't see my son's side that he made on his own without any coercion it estates unmask all kids including me thank you all right julie treat hi everyone okay so a couple things um i hope you could take this to heart as we're moving forward to a lot of decisions coming down from us on this vaccine mandate and whatever happens is is irrelevant to kind of what i'm going to talk about i really would love to see us create a vaccine-free zone let our school districts our school properties be vaccine-free meaning even if there's a vaccine mandate even if there's a vaccine choice nobody talks about vaccine there's no mobile mobile clinics coming into the school property to give vaccines there's no celebrating kids that get vaccinated there's no charts that show this high school is this much vaccinated and this high school's low vaccinated vaccine is like a drug it's like a bad word we should eliminate it like we do anything else with that's drug-related it's nobody's business it's a health issue the mask if we learn nothing from the mask issue we don't want these kids divided and we keep doing it doing this is one thing we can't control just eliminate this word it's a swear word there's a swear jar something like that it's got to be eliminated there's no talking about vaccine at school in our our public health organizations driving the public schools i want to flip it upside down public schools should be driving public health and trying to figure out a way to pressure them to come up with programs and come up with ways to make this you know more manageable down to the little level to our school level to our little kids and i would love to get some information how that's organized is it are you guys getting your information from the state to the county through the education line and public health is getting it from nih to the state to the county line or is there work together i think that's always where we have an opportunity for some things to fall through the cracks somebody over here is thinking somebody over here is talking is our county head talking to the public health person to net york or you know where do we get the information from um and yeah i just there's ways you can operate within the law the gray zones get some really smart people together and come up with some ideas brainstorm throw them up on the on the on the board and don't have to leave it all too i'm poor michelle who's got i can't even imagine doing that person's job so but thank you for your time tonight all right okay our next speaker is roof sarnoff ruth sarnoff okay you want to clear the aisles people of your bag so that she okay okay good good i know you got it and and i do have some documents that i will like to put in the public record at the end of this okay time that i speak and in regard it's regarding volcanic action that's taking place all over the planet and i am one of those people who thinks that we are and i think i have enough proof to show that we are in the midst of climate change already oh yes and as such i think it's important to look at the some of the little things that we can do in the coming period to make people safer i don't know if the fixtures in all of the gyms which uh at least for those children that go in that are part of the prep end of the society here have fluorescent lighting but it's very poisonous and i don't know about the newer type of of lighting but every building every sports arena every everything is going to be challenged in this very close period the the volcanic action's been going on for a long time that's that's why you remember all those movies with the with the fog lights if you were in london and in the city and in poor communities if you didn't ever watch the movie my left foot you ought to watch it and maybe watch some of this the what's going on in the ocean like chasing corals or my octopus teacher so those are things that we could start doing now to help educate each other and to help look at more than one thing i i hope that what happens in the short run is is beneficial with the way the um division here on the on the uh planning it should never have ever gotten to this point because there's a whole history of times when uh the supreme court like within citizens united said corporations are people so now we have a privatized country and so i just want to say that it's just difficult and i'm through so thank you very much and i'll give my my documents to the yeah the person over here thank you yeah ted yeah ted will take it okay all right thank you ruth so our last speaker is sasha a sasha a she left okay thank you all right so we move now to the discussion of the new course proposal and adoption of the three-course model supporting the next generation science standards and we're going to have you instead of j huh that is correct all right and i'm going to turn this over quickly i probably need to raise this up a little bit phil is that better so i'm going to invite mark kessler a current science teacher at chico high school to join me here at the podium because he's much more aware of the nuances of what we're going to propose tonight so as he's coming up to the podium to join me come on up mark we do want to first thank the board in engaging in this conversation it's been a long time coming yes as you'll see in the presentation we are significantly encouraging the board to understand we might be close to 10 years behind this conversation in relation to the state so our goal tonight is is for mark to walk you through a presentation we think will provide the rationale to move to a three-course model which will be a significant shift from what we currently do however we plan to implement implement that shift over the course of three years so it would be very similar to what we did with the shift to an integrated math model and as as i said before i i appreciate mark's willingness to walk you through it board meetings are not his favorite um how he's he's willing to join us tonight um before i turn it over to him i do want to recognize we do have other staff from our science departments here we have tom george we have barbara bertipelli from pleasant valley high school we have admin from chico high we have um lucas kennedy from chico high school here as well i do want to recognize too that it has been a challenge to gain consensus in the pandemic environment to try to bring everybody together for them to completely understand all the nuances of these shifts and i want to applaud the efforts of the folks who have been engaged in that we we started this conversation a couple of years ago and as i um as we as we go through the presentation presentation tonight i think mr kessler is going to provide a strong rationale um through for a shift to a three-course model all right thank you all right thank you mr shepherd and um thank you to the board of education for making time on the agenda for this my name is mark kessler i am science teacher chico high i'm the chair of the department and a member of the district leadership council for science and i thought that one place to start would be and by the way i being a science teacher i have a lot of evidence to back up this claim for these course models so if it gets too long let me know or if you want more information please let me know um i don't want to take up too much your time but i do want to be thorough and and make a good case for these standards so the next generation science standards were developed they were developed around 2008 there were a group of of there were a group of scientists and industry leaders and the the science teachers associations and they all got together at universities and they all got together and said uh one of the problems was they were looking at data and they were going uh-oh the united states has always led in sciences we've always led the world in science and innovation and other countries were starting to uh start to gain on us and that we're going to lose our lead in that and they started to look at what we needed to do and one of the things they discovered is that we spent a lot of time we spent a lot of time on knowledge and information but not enough time on skills scientific skills and so the old model of science education is more information lecture textbook a student writes down repeats the information and maybe does a lab that then demonstrates what the teacher told them and they said well that's not how science works with inquiry science works with argumentation and critical thinking science works with data analysis and using that data to back back claims and being able to look at data with integrity so there are some of the original goals are listed up there i'm not going to read them all it also was during the the no child left behind era and there was a real interest in getting away from the rote memorization of the multiple choice tests and to move towards a more comprehensive thorough testing process and the new cast test does just that it's very different from the old star test and so this was adopted by 44 states in the u.s and the framework was adopted by 44 states which is incredible when you think about it we get 44 states agree about anything and that's that's good news and it was it was adopted by the california department of education in 2013.
um with nine thousand dollars pretty much i don't want to say guaranteed but that's what we anticipate for the classroom site fund a brand new teacher coming out of college would make uh no zero experience zero above a bachelor's degree would make forty three thousand dollars that's a combination of contract amount plus classroom site fund which is formerly 301. any other questions or comments staff let's now do the administrative and classified directors contract with fiscal year 2223. so i want to make sure this does make clear that this does not apply to me you guys do my raise uh may or june so i'm i'm not proposing my own raise here um i am proposing that uh directors get a four percent increase and we'll compare we can compare that a little bit to the other uh other classifications but this would be a four percent increase there's a couple i want to mention um the real school principal is open so that's not on there and mr livingston is not on there because he currently is a uh esi employee so he will get the benefit next year at this time and he'll benefit there but otherwise i'm proposing a four percent increase to the base salary of all of our administrators and classified directors okay and you'll explain kind of where that four percent yeah it's with the other with the other classifications absolutely and we can afford this this is part of that budget that i talked about earlier that was part that was included in that yeah okay any additional questions or comments okay i'll make the approval of administrator and director of contracts a second place all in favor item 9h certified staff and therapists contracts renewals so um we talked about how the uh for admin it would be a four percent increase what i'm proposing for our certified staff and therapists for certified staff it's our teachers and teachers on assignment is that they would get a thousand dollars added to their base and for some team and that's for those that teach instead of work 1424 hours it's prorated if if you're on a 158-day contract or there's different contracts so it's prorated for some but a thousand dollars to the base and a two percent increase for therapists it'd be fourteen hundred dollars and two percent increase for teachers that thousand dollars and two percent averages out to be four point four percent for therapists that fourteen hundred dollars and two percent averages out to be four percent so where admin was at four percent teachers would be 4.4 on average and therapists would be okay the cost would be about 210 000 um in mno 21 000 just over 21 000 in grants one thing i'd like to add to the motion so whoever does make it um is we are going to be proposing in addition to this a return to work stipend that may be the next board meeting where certified and therapists certified staff and therapists would receive a thousand dollars in their first paycheck when they come back in while they come back in july the pay would be in august okay that would come out of the classroom site fund um and a little bit would have to come out of mmo for those teachers or those staff that weren't eligible but that would add a thousand dollars to their to that salary right now in our contracts for our certified staff and our therapists there's what's called liquidated damages and we've talked about this sometimes when a teacher tries to gather a contract it costs 750 to get your contract so if you think about it a teacher could sign their contract show up for one day of work get that thousand dollars and cancel their contract and still be 250 to deposit so as part of the action requested i would like to add um that they increase the liquidated damages to 2 000 from 750.
and the california department of education adopted it in whole and they also put their own twist on it which uh is on the next slide and these are the appendices a2m that were added by the state of california and they addressed some things that they saw that were really important and missing and a few of them i've quoted there and i'll see if i can read from this distance one uh one of note is appendices of appendix d all standards all students and there was an understanding that the way that we traditionally teach science students weren't getting all the science standards and every other subject students get all the standards but in science we were putting our developing students in in earth science classes and we weren't putting our our the ones that were on the fast track or the university bound students weren't getting earth science so we and then the students that were in earth science weren't getting physical science or chemistry to a large degree and they noticed there were real gaps in this we weren't teaching all standards to all students we were teaching some standards to some students in some groups and some standards other groups and so there was a recognition that that that needed to be addressed so that's uh conveyed heavily in the california version of the next generation science standards and then the other thing they provided was appendix k was a course models and mapping for the middle and high schools and so what we're bringing to you today is one of those models for the high schools which is an integrated model which blends our science in with uh with with life science physical science and chemistry so this list if you could click on a blue link i might have a chance of reading this that's going to be hard can we no the board does have access to these documents it's my understanding that you were i can i can cover these without reading them um okay so first the first uh we have a list of dilemmas that that this addresses and and uh i i do want to point out that this process has been going on a long time every single district district-wide staff development meeting since i've been a teacher here we've had a separate session to go over this it's been discussed at length of both high schools it's been a topic of the of the science dlc for for three years and at least at chico high it's been a topic of every department meeting and it's been something that as a dlc member i've provided either written or verbal updates at each of those department meetings so it's something we've discussed a lot as with any change there's been there's a variety of takes on this and not everyone agrees 100 percent but there's a general understanding that we we need to move towards ngss and that's what the state's asking us to do so the dilemmas we have first is college readiness and the universities have already moved towards the uc academic senate has passed a resolution to move the to change the d designation in a through g to match the ngss the adoption of ngss the uh second is if we could go back to that we were that was good we had before click on that link uh the main one there that one okay i can read the title so that's good the other is uh test scores and now the science is on uh the science test is now on the dashboard it's on the district dashboard so this is another indication of the emphasis that the state of california is putting on science and so we need to make sure that our students are getting all the standards so that they can perform well on these tests currently with our current model many of our students aren't getting earth science standards or physical science standards that are necessary so they're taking a test they aren't prepared for they're seeing information on the test that they've never seen before and so they're at a real disadvantage and so is our our score as a district our scores at the i i can't quite read it but i believe it was 67 percent we're not uh i'm doing this by memory but 67 were not considered and not that standard in our 2019 cast test so there's a real need there you could scroll down in the next one all standards all students which is one i mentioned and so that's again this idea that's emphasized heavily in appendix d and mentions the need to make sure that there's equity and that all of our students are have the opportunity to learn all the standards the next is our wasc accreditation and in that there are two highlighted statements here from the chico high wasc that indicate that we're supposed to demonstrate and we're in wasp right now we're supposed to demonstrate that we've done this so those uh those quotes pulled out of wasp show that this was something we committed to in 2016.