so there will be information coming home there is information currently posted on our website we are also as i just said presenting the budget tonight on the website and the board has in your folders a copy of our budget newsletter which just kind of briefly outlines um a thank you for the support that our parents and community members have given us in the past what we've been able to do with a successful budget such as purchasing chromebooks textbooks uh providing students with things that they need to be successful in the classroom so the budget the passing of the budget obviously is very important mr alfama is going to speak to that a little bit later but we do have a copy of the newsletter posted to the website um for uh for your reading at your leisure um [Music] just a reminder to the board uh your self-evaluation if you could go to new jerseyschoolboards.org finish the self-evaluation as quickly as possible uh we'll compile that information and it'll be shared with the public and with the board at one of our june meetings okay at this point any questions from the public okay anything no so i'm going to turn it over to mr alfano at this time who's going to speak a little bit about our update up upcoming school budget uh thank you mr roman gino uh first of all i'd like to thank the board and yourself mr roman gino all our staff including the business office for everyone's support this budget doesn't get through to fruition to get approval by the county and the state without everyone's support so i want to personally thank everyone for their continued and ongoing support greatly appreciated to the taxpayers and the public april 19th is a big date we will be voting on the budget and the tax levy so please come out and vote and please vote yes obviously it's extremely important that we get a yes vote as mr romagino stated to provide a robust and efficient use of taxpayer dollars for our 2223 budget just like to go over now just a quick overview of the budget some of the key line items some of the key trends and ultimately the impact of this budget to to our taxpayers which is which is extremely important our our total budget this year is about 61.2 million for the upcoming 2223 budget that's up from about 59 million um this in 2122 the majority of the increase really comes from that we're moving forward with some additional capital projects above and beyond what we did this coming year versus last year a couple of rooms we're putting in potentially as long as the bids come in we're going to be uh updating some of our administrative offices in the high school and a variety of other capital projects we're going to be doing so that really was the bulk of the incremental increase from one year over the other our total tax levy went up from about 37 million to 37.7 million that 700 000 about is about 2 increase that's the allowable maximum increase in regard to state budget guidelines to two percent and what does that seven hundred thousand really mean what does it mean to the taxpayer in regard to the ones because that levy will be supported by our taxpayers uh it means on an average assessed home value of about 368 000 it's going to be about a 68 increase in uh per annum taxes which is about 5050 per month again any increase is onerous on certain individuals we're not trying to minimize it but for five dollars and fifty cents a month in regard to getting the 61.2 million dollar budget approved we think it's a fine and equitable uh trade-off but again if your house is valued higher than the 368 000 or lower than the 368 thousand dollars the impact will move one way or the other but on average the house assessed that 368 000 will cost taxpayer approximately 68 incremental dollars on a per on them basis i mentioned the capital projects that will hopefully be engaging in the summer of 2022 we have a bid opening for all these projects on april 26th and that will tell us if we can do some or all of these projects we have a bucket of money but in like any public bid process uh sometimes certain projects come in higher than what we assessed so at the end of the day on april 26 we'll have an idea if we can do some or all of these projects i will bring the board up to speed in regard to the outcome of that just specific line items that i just like to discuss quickly in regards to the revenues and the appropriations appropriations in another word for expenses on our revenue side as we spoke about are a tax levy i went up approximately seven hundred thousand dollars year over year that's two percent cap allowable cap increase that is allowed by the state uh our income we call miscellaneous income and the real driver of the miscellaneous income is transportation uh as folks know over the last several years we have been not only transporting our own students we're our 22 or 23 buses but we also transport other districts to out-of-district uh schools such as uh fairview palisades park in fort lee we transport our students and their students and net net uh we're gonna earn about a million dollars in revenue this year and we forecasted about a million dollars uh for next year that really helps offset salaries expenses fuel liability insurance everything it's a real win for the district and we've been fortunate that the board has been very open and transparent and really an advocate for the transportation department so to speak because now we've migrated much of our part-time drivers and uh bus drivers to a full-time where obviously it averts attrition more likely to keep folks on board with us because they are in demand if we didn't move from a part-time platform to a full-time platform we would have had significant amount of attrition we've been holding our own knockwood we've been actually gained a couple of drivers over the last six months versus the previous six months so the the movement from part-time to full-time has really helped our attrition you know net net you're paying more out but really on a on a long-term basis you're actually saving money from the drivers that you lose we won't be able to cover routes these are special needs routes there's downstream effects in regard to soft dollars so again i'd like to thank the board for their support in regard to really migrating our transportation staff from a part-time to a full-time vehicle so appreciate that uh our tuition revenue was down a tick simply for the reason we get tuition from our fairview students we have about 530 fairview students year over year we have less fair high school fairview students than we had the previous year so thusly we have slightly less tuition revenue in regard to that our state aid went down a bit this year but what we call our extraordinary aid we believe will be going up our extraordinary aid is really for our special needs population so even though our enrollment has ticked down year over year our special needs population has ticked up so even though we've got slightly less state aid our extraordinary aid which is piggybacks on our special needs population has gone up so net net is it's almost it's almost a wash we can we are fortunate enough to continue to get grants idea which is for our special needs helps us offset our outer district tuition expenses for our special needs population so we continue to get grants from not only the state and the federal government so that helps us offset things such as salaries and tuition which really helps us you know balance our budget without that it would be a real challenge to balance the budget on the expense side obviously our instructional expenses continue to go up simply for the reason is special needs population as it grows you need more resources you need more otp you need more teachers which increases salaries which increases benefits so i mean that doesn't show any signs of slowing we're up to now with special needs of what they call ieps students who are classified nearly 586 students so again that continues to be a challenge but jenna russo heads that group uh does a fine job each and every year and and her staff so we appreciate all their support uh benefits uh good news that stayed relatively flat our prescription and our medical year year-over-year stay relatively flat uh our consultant is telling us that the second half of 2223 they do project a five to potential seven percent increase in our medical and our prescription again that's a forecast but we have we factored that into our into our budget and again we talked about transportation there's a yin and yang our transportation revenue has gone up significantly and our expenses have gone up at a lesser rate than our revenues but our spencer still have gone up year over year because again as i spoke about is if you go from a part-time platform for our drivers to a full-time platform your salaries go up but net-net our salary percent increase versus our revenue increase our revenues are going up at a greater rate than our expenses which is which is always a good thing so like i said net net we had a our total budget is about 61.2 million our total tax levy is about 37.7 million and like i said to our taxpayers and our public we're going to come out and vote on april 19th uh please vote yes obviously this is really the lifeblood of the district that's getting the uh getting the budget approved and like i said i want to thank the board again the staff and our business office staff for all that for all their support that's pretty much it mr romagino on the budget side okay any questions from the board uh the public mr founder i'm just not no questions okay so at this time i'd like to um point out a couple of items in our consent agenda before we vote on it uh on page two um we are again as i've always mentioned each month uh approving staff members who are requesting professional development uh some of it now is in person some of it is still virtual uh we have three staff members this this week this month uh requesting reimbursement for professional development uh one of the resolutions on this page mackenzie doughty who's been serving as a substitute for us uh has finally received her um no fault of hers but received her official certification from department of ed so we are appointing mckenzie who's doing a nice job with us as a part-time title one teacher who's currently assigned to school number five uh top of page three um you know as i've emailed our personnel committee and as i mentioned at our last meeting we i am beginning to interview and fill positions for september 2022 uh we are approving our first resolution uh page three at the top olivia toma is serving as an interim physical physical education teacher she's currently doing that with the hope that uh we can keep olivia on for september 2022 a little further down we are um appointing sweden movani as a new high school mathematics teacher she's completing her student teaching as we speak and she will be um beginning with us in september uh 2022 as a high school math teacher uh we are also replacing you know mr jerry d'alessio who's retiring uh miranda and glacey um will be filling his spot as an elementary school music teacher doing both uh elementary school classes and instrumental music across the district uh she will begin with us in september of 2022 also um below that uh we have no noel uh stogluzio who will be a phys ed health teacher with us uh beginning in september she will be replacing amy mctestic who will be on maternity for all of next year at the middle school we are appointing uh janie hernandez as a new school psychologist she will begin actually the end of june working the last five days of the year with the child study team and then we'll begin uh in an official capacity with us as a school psychologist and a member of the child study team beginning september over to page four uh as mr pinto uh mentioned uh third resolution down this is barbara kennedy uh who has actually been with us over 27 years in the district is retiring effective june 30th barbara's done a great job for us in the high school in the business department she's developed many different courses over the years so we wish barbara the best uh donna murtagh who's been a secretary with us uh also for a number of years she's currently serving as a secretary for our middle school will be retiring effective september 1st 2022.
we won our next two playoff games by multiple touchdowns uh and we're able to secure the state title 31-10 uh and it was a little bit sweet because we got to beat chaparral the team that beat us in the state title game last year and we got to do it in a big stadium instead of in a high school stadium so uh proud of our senior class proud of our highland hawks and we aren't going anywhere we'll be right back at it again again give highland high coach brock thank you [Applause] thank you so much thanks next if i could have mr sean lynch and larry lopez from mesquite high basketball [Applause] so mesquite high did something right gentlemen they brought home the championship for 4a and uh they did it in pretty dramatic fashion going down the road and i gotta tell you what i i've known mr lynch for a little while we definitely got to know each other when we were both in mesa and uh when i heard that he was interested in becoming the head coach at mesquite high i was thrilled and it wasn't because i knew that he had some skills as it comes as it pertains to coaching basketball it was the skill he had at working with the youth and making sure that he not only produced great basketball players but great young men and so to see them bring home the championship for someone like me means a lot more than just what a scoreboard says it means that we have some gentlemen here that represent their school their school district and humanity extremely well so uh would you like to say a few words about your team and bring them up yeah we'll tell you what let's bring some guys up first let's bring a cohen j gonzalez up with the trophy he's a junior [Applause] we have a tremendous student manager brian clark come on up bro he's a senior sophomore jaylen wohling senior cason bryant senior michael eckert junior lucas lamb and uh freshman tate lucas [Applause] so uh just to be quick uh this was the first boys basketball title at mesquite so we're very proud of that we were 27 and three we beat every 4a team that we played we went into the tournament the number sixth ranked seed we upset number three um in their gym we upset number two in a dramatic fashion with the buzzer beater that went viral on sportscenter number one sportscenter player of the day and then we beat the number one ranked team in the state championship so a great group of guys great group of coaches that we have and you know proud to be at mesquite thank you [Applause] can you have the gentleman get on their knees because they're all taller than us sure [Applause] is someone here is marissa hart here by any chance hi marissa how are you is your is ben here her hunter i mean i don't know where i got ben from sometimes i just make up names are you hunter hi hunter marissa come on up come on up guys [Applause] so marissa is the coach the advisor for mesquite high school speech and debate and uh that's a job and i don't i don't really know if people quite understand that but hunter here hunter finn finished first in the big question debate which qualifies him for nationals first in prose and runner-up in impromptu and this is what marissa has to say about hunter hunter is currently the state champion in the big question to questions debate which qualified him for national speech and debate tournament louisville kentucky in june and pro's interpretation he's also the state runner-up and impromptu speaking beyond speech and debate hunter is an outstanding person he's always willing to help others and is such a positive influence on everyone around him congratulations honey do you want to say a few words about him so speech and debate has a lot of different components and it's incredible to have um even though we have a small team we have a great team and it's incredible just to have as many kids who are as dedicated as they are especially hunter who has done excellent alternative or all season rather and i'm really proud of you for going to nationals congratulations again [Applause] time congratulations is kaylee peeling here hi how are you i'm good thank you is gabriel here gabriel neff come on up [Applause] good to see you so if you can't tell they represent gilbert high kaylee is a teacher there and she is the speech and debate coach um gabriel here is the state champion he's a junior who won first in original spoken word for poetry so what does that mean like i'm quite the poet if you don't know and uh so how does that work what is what did you have to do read a poem yes i'd love to talk about it um so uh original spoken word poetry involves the student making three original poems of his own and um they're about three minutes long and so in each preliminary round i'll perform one poem and then finals i'll perform all three back to back-to-back uh it's super super fun and um all the topics range from a bunch of different things but i usually just talk about my own personal experiences yeah you want to say anything i'm just so proud of the work that gabe has done not only as a spoken word poet but also as a leader of the speech and debate team at gilbert high school this year he has really stepped up and inspired a lot of freshmen and sophomores to take part in speech and debate find their voices take some risks and i'm really really proud of what our team has accomplished this year congratulations to both of you thank you very much [Applause] fix your title there we go [Applause] next if i could have judy ingle come up [Applause] judy is currently a teacher at highland park elementary and she's retiring this year congratulations that's jealousy right now uh but she won an award and we want to tell you guys quickly about it she won the school of social work professional achievement award this award recognizes an alumni of the school of social work who graduated five or more years ago and who has accomplished achievements of distinction in the social work profession to promote the general where fell welfare of all people she is a social worker and she you're currently working on your phd you're done doctor angle ladies and gentlemen how long did it take you to finish [Applause] five that's great that's half the amount of time it took me so way to go judy has been a long time gps employee but she's much more than that she cares about people i know her very well i know her family very well and this award is just in my opinion the cherry on top of what you've done with your life and so thank you so much for everything and congratulations again [Applause] okay not so fast madam president that concludes my recognitions for this evening thank you guys appreciate it [Applause] wonderful thank you for that and congratulations again to all those that were honored tonight now we move to 5.01 with superintendent's report with dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members again good evening and welcome to our meeting i'd like to recognize one of our students real quick who is on this superintendent student council haley prus please stand wave to everybody she's a student over at campo verde high school and we asked that those uh young men and women on this superintendent's student senate to maybe attend a meeting like this or a foundation meeting and you are definitely a shining star in that group of people so thank you for everything that you do dear i hope everyone had an enjoyable spring break it seemed so long ago we are well into the fourth quarter of the school year and the last day of school will be here before you know it uh we will be knee-deep in our state standardized testing this month and and i want to thank all of our teachers support staff principals for parent for preparing our students for these tests you've put forth a ton of effort and time to fill in the gaps and move students forward and that doesn't go unnoticed and it is grace greatly appreciated to our students get lots of rest eat well and please do your very best we know you'll give it your all this thursday evening we'll hold our annual employees of the year celebration we'll be honoring support staff teachers and administrators from around the district this event will start at 5 pm at the doubletree hotel in gilbert thank you to the gilbert education foundation for helping to make this happen and thank you to all of our generous business leaders who helped support this event we are looking forward to celebrating our employees april 4th through the 6th we'll have our annual elementary art show at norwood's furniture come down to norwoods from 5 30 to 8 30 and see all of the exceptional artwork our students have constructed over the year on display thank you to all of our art teachers for your hard work love of children and for your creativity it's greatly appreciated and lastly the gilbert education foundation will hold its bi-monthly business leaders breakfast on monday april 11th at 7 a.m in the governing board come out and connect with the community of business leaders and learn about exciting new things gps and gef are doing for our students mrs wood that concludes my report for this evening great thank you we now move to 6.0 request to speak to the governing board and i would ask that we play the the admonition please the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy k-e-k-e-b and k-e-d are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert public schools website great we have 13 speakers tonight and i will call up i will call them up one at a time but i'll give a couple names at a time so you'll know who's next and we will have three minutes um on the time and we welcome your thoughts and and your respectful ideas tonight first we have kevin kevin turnage after him peyton herb and then melissa gilleris and please please pronounce your name correctly if i didn't and i apologize i want to know how to pronounce it correctly thank you yes mr target my name is kevin turnage i'm here tonight with many of the parents and students from gerber high school to discuss how the jrotc program positively impacts their lives and their children's lives it appears gps is deliberately hostile towards the united states military and that this administration has decided to phase jrotc out from the district the administration is currently in direct violation of the memorandum of agreement signed by dr mccord on december 12 2018 with united states air force and if we cannot can trust you to honor your agreements with our own government how can we trust you to educate our children on ethics and morals ghs has decided that even though students want to enroll in jrotc not to allow it administration has directed counselors not to allow any students not currently in the jury ortc program to enroll this has been relayed to me personally by several parents from incoming students both freshmen and transfers justice sandra day o'connor said we pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values principles and educations that they need to make them good citizens the goal of jrotc has always been to create good citizens and teach leadership skills and it accomplishes that task however this administration is using backhanded tactics to cut our program the loss of the program will not only negatively impact our children but future children in the entire gilbert community our instructor puts in long hours and weekends without fair and equal compensation while being subjected to a truly hostile work environment so what unites all of us we want what's best for our children and our community however without any input it appears the administration has decided for the community for the students and for the parents to get rid of the jrotc program district-wide all we ask for is the educational equity that the arizona school board association defines and that is not something that you do for us or for the community but is something you should be doing alongside us families communities and students need to be a part of the process and as one young person put it succinctly nothing about us without us for those of you who are not connected with the jrotc program if we allow this board and the administration to eliminate a program they dislike specifically on ideological grounds they will not stop with jrotc will your children be sacrificed next thank you not for now wait for a minute you must wait till the end all right we now have peyton herb and then melissa gularis and then audrey mcfarland yes please all right good evening my name is cadets chief master sergeant peyton herb from afjc unit az941 and i'm here today to speak about gilbert high school's jrc program being pushed out and honestly shut down for those of you who don't know the junior reserve officer training corps was established by the national defense act of 1916 after 50 years of the program it was made accessible for females i'm currently a second year cadet of my core and i couldn't be prouder of it unlike in other aspects of life and high school in jrotc no matter your gender everyone is on an equal field through this program i am actively participating and competing in an aia approved award-winning activity i'm part of a six-person academic team that is contending in something called j-lab or knowledgeable that gives us the opportunity to go to washington dc and compete with other jrotc teams from across the nation also i've completed over 120 hours of community service collectively in my two years i challenge you to name one other sport or activity who can give its members all the same opportunities in one additionally many cadets myself included were invited by george mason university to participate in a national youth leadership forum for national security also in washington d.c my point is if this board in our school paid more attention to the experiences students are getting out of jrotc instead of numbers and monetary figures or whatever it is you all are prioritizing over good high school learning and experiences you would realize how fruitful our program is i'll be honest the only reason i joined jrrgc last year was because i was loath to sign up for any of the other elective choices however everything happens for a reason right it was the best decision i've made in my high school career easily the lessons you learn in this class go beyond anything algebra ceramics or psychology could teach you heck this goes beyond aerospace science the premise of the class you learn about friendship and the future and being a good student in person you learn about leadership and survival skills and teamwork it's important and i can't believe the school this board in our school is contemplating getting it shut down to conclude i would like to speak of vital character traits being instilled in us that are clearly lacking in today's society namely motivation motivation to do what is right for not just ourselves but for the generations after us motivation to leave behind fewer reasons to worry and more initiative to make the world a better place motivation is not something one develops not is it is something one is born with motivation is what brought me these other cadets and our parents here today motivation to save our cherish jrrtc all i'm trying to ask here is one simple thing stop trying to block afdc which is essentially a self-supporting unit not only does plenty of behind the scenes work for our school ghs and community but it's also developing bright young dedicated fit disciplined inspired motivated future leaders from flying from thriving thank you okay melissa gallieris audrey mcfarland and miracle turnage good evening board members hello my name is melissa and i have two kids in gilbert public schools one of them is a sophomore and second year cadet with jfrotc at gilbert high my son joined this program to learn about leadership make friends and to come together and help the community this program teaches these young adults to act with integrity honesty to be responsible to stand tall speak up for themselves show respect for others and be held accountable for their actions this program has helped my son in all these ways it has also set a path of who he wants to continue to be throughout life don't we need more people in our society who care for others have a love for america act with integrity help the community and become great leaders i don't understand why gilbert public schools want to remove this program that instills these values in our children do not do you not support this growth in our children or for our society why has it become your agenda to remove this program and take away this great opportunity from our kids my son personally dedicates all his extra time doing community service work with this program to help our community just a few things he has done this year alone he has helped at food banks and various sporting events held in the gilbert public schools in example he has helped at football games soccer games swim meets and even cleaning the stands after the games this program has also also has an aia sport built into it do you know how great our drill teams have been for years they have won so many trophies there are too many to count wouldn't the district or even the school be proud of this no trophies are displayed anywhere in the main building to show pride in this why are football basketball and band just to name a few displayed with pride and jfjrotc is not what kind of message does this show our children that you pick some teams over others based on what agenda you're following please reconsider removing this program my family and i are completely shocked at the fact that you would even consider taking this opportunity away from our children we moved to gilper 13 years ago because we wanted our children in a great school district we have only seen this district decline over the years do i really have to pull my kids out of gilbert public schools and rub in other districts like chandler that still support the program developing leaders for tomorrow and still values and has support for our military men and women again please reconsider and open registration for those who want to join we are being told that they are added to a secret list somewhere thank you audrey mcfarland miracle turnage and chris tony good evening i'm audrey mcfarland two years ago on a tour of gilbert high school my son inquired about rotc and i distinctly remember the counselor tour guide raving about the well-established program with its long history at gilbert high school he assured my son that he would love the program and he was absolutely right this program does not disappoint many people hold a misconception that junior rotc is simply an air force recruiting program but this is not true statistically about 20 percent of cadets will enter the military so why support an rotc program in our schools what is its purpose the mission of junior rotc is to develop citizens of character dedicated to serving their nation and community no matter what path in life they take after graduation what school wouldn't want a program with such an important mission these cadets are gilbert's future taxpayers teachers business owners leaders and community members don't we want to foster and support programs that develop citizenship character and a spirit of service if i were a school administrator this does not seem like a program i would let slip through my fingers and yet currently gilbert high school is not even allowing incoming freshmen to register for the program as if it were already gone in a survey of over 350 principals nationwide 99 percent were in agreement that the junior rotc program instilled values of service and personal responsibility and that students in the program had better school attendance were more likely to graduate earned higher grades were more active in their communities had fewer discipline problems and were a positive influence on others certainly the junior rotc program has a positive impact on the school culture and community what are we asking for improved compensation for our instructor which reflects equality with other aia instructors and coaches enhanced efforts to attract quality candidates for the currently vacant officer position a greater sense of pride in and recognition for an already successful program whose cadets are winning drill and color guard competitions completely organizing and running leadership development activities and larger scale events and earning scholarships this program is also providing a sense of purpose and belonging for our students in an economically racially and gender diverse environment we are asking that you please exert your influence on the gilbert high school administration to keep this program at gilbert high school and allow it to to flourish thank you [Applause] go ahead miracle good evening board members i'm cadet second lieutenant miracle turnage one of the many cadets who called a liar in the press last time we spoke here the issue addressed last time was a blatant twisting of legal loopholes to attempt to get rid of az941's drill team instead of addressing the issue and what our cadets stated we were told that dr mccord was taking frivolous notes even though he could very much see he was not the next day an article came out essentially calling me and my fellow cadets liars here we are a year later addressing nearly the same issue except this time it's not just our drill team it's the entirety of the jrotc program we are one of the last two programs standing in the district with students and attendance from both desert ridge and mesquite for a program that it teaches what exactly what the nation is in need of right now through our core values and mission statement it is sad to see people so adamant to get rid of it maybe it's the simple fact that the so-called leaders at ghs and the board simply have no integrity and can't manage to think of anyone other than themselves a solid 99 of the time but i digress for my my last two years in the program my character and who i am as a person has changed tremendously for the better i found confidence in myself learned how to be a leader and stand up for myself and don't you dare think just because my peers and i are students that we will let you get away with something so terribly wrong just because of your authority we aren't blind it is still so incredibly shocking to me that as a district you claim that the relationship between teachers and students is most high because that evidently must not be applied to all of us even though it should would football soccer swim and dive basketball cross country or track ever have to be here fighting for the bare minimum you aren't even giving our rotc instructor who is thanks to you having to do the job of two people a coach's stipend which she more than deserves you made working for this district so terrible toxic and mentally straining you pushed away our other instructor but then since it he had it was so hard for him to work with you and he left you said it had nothing to do with you but it had everything to do with you you're making it hard to endure for the students too dealing with your lack of understanding and refusal to understand our program it's pushed some cadets to drop because they cannot withstand it anymore then when we are on the brink of going down due to enrollment you can say it has nothing to do with you but it has everything to do with you you can try to take away our buildings uniforms equipment drill team in our program but you will never take away the spirit of az9 for one to those listening and watching i urge you to help us take a stand when they take one program they won't just stop with one and this time maybe address our concerns instead of calling us liars thank you for your time [Applause] thank you we have chris tony then anthony garrell and megan mccuchen good evening members aboard my name is chris toney and i am the proud parent of cadet staff sergeant jason toney there were two things my son wanted to do in high school soccer and jrotc imagine our surprise when we heard there was a movement to do away with the latter which this school year requires him to attend two high schools due to the previous successful elimination of jrotc at mesquite high school it seems that school boards nationwide always want to fund the sports while cutting funding for other programs like the arts and jrotc when ncaa data indicates that the probability of players going pro are so astronomically low since numbers seem to be of importance let's talk numbers football point zero nine percent will go pro baseball point five percent men's basketball point zero three percent women's basketball point zero two percent men's soccer point zero eight percent in fact once all sports are combined only one in sixteen thousand high school athletes will attain a professional career in sports a minuscule point zero zero zero zero six two five percent chance thus the bulk of funding goes to programs that have a very low potential for a career conversely according to u s news and world reports about 20 percent of all jrotc participants will go on to join the military which would indicate statistically that 14.4 of the current cadets at gilbert high will be going pro which is a far higher number than any other athletic program the cadet guide for ghs outlines the goals and expectations set forth in the program and specifically mentions character citizenship service accountability honor leadership and excellence in all they do their honor code states i will not lie cheat or steal nor tolerate anyone among us who do these are the values principles and ethics that this board has worked so hard to take out of gilbert schools i will submit that gilbert high football does have the mission to develop championship student athletes of character on and off the field however this very program yielded a student who was charged with rape as an adult last fall and has not produced a state championship since 1985.
now back to your announcements forms to purchase patches for your letter jacket are available in the athletic office any athlete wanting to purchase patches needs to turn in the completed form along with the payment to ms rigney in the athletic office by april 1st any questions see mrs rigney in the afternoons walk-in sports physicals are available for twenty dollars to athletes at the dc mh-well clinic monday through friday from 8 am to 6 pm during june and july there will be a sports physical night at dc mh tree city medical partners on thursday july 21st from 6 to 8 pm physicals are first come first served and are 20 cash or check only there will be a meeting for anyone attending the senior trip this thursday march 31st at 11 outside the auditorium fca will meet on tuesday april 5th at 11 in the auditorium now the cave with the lunch i'm kate with the lunch today's lunch is chicken smash bowl and a roll now back to your announcements after prom tickets will go on sale april 4th through the 14th in miss covington's room after school each day tickets are 10 and will be pre-sale only after prom will be a top flight this year a waiver is also required for attendance you do not need to attend prom to attend after prom see mrs cummer with any questions attention juniors and seniors tickets for prom an enchanted evening will be on sale starting for starting on monday april 4th and continuing until thursday april 14th tickets will be sold after school in mrs covington's room 514 no tickets will be sold other times during the school day unless prior approval is given by miss covington prom tickets are 15 each and can only be purchased by a junior or senior underclassmen may only attend as guest of a junior or senior guest passes are needed for any guests who are not current student of gchs and will be available when tickets are purchased be prepared to also sign up for a table assignment when tickets are purchased nadicate with the sports today there is softball at madison now back to your announcements freshman t-shirt orders are now available orders will be taken until wednesday april 6th order forms are in the main office with mrs the colby mrs peters or the health room see mrs mintz or one of your class officers for more information there is still time to enter the greensburg bicentennial pageant there is so much more opportunity to a pageant than solely winning friendship personal development interview skills public speaking and confidence boost are just a few of the many opportunities all completed application forms and sponsor money is due april 6 pageant meeting the april 6 meeting at 5 30 p.m in the greensburg junior high school auditorium please follow greensborough safety on instagram to stay up to date in your community have a great day and be sure to follow us on twitter snapchat and instagram gchs pirates
i was here about a month ago to speak on the change versus the high school and i was told that you guys were going to be voting tonight on the decision to take our mascot away and to me i think you guys are very wrong because all you five people are making a decision that i think the community community should make all the people that went to azusa high school i have never heard i've been out of school like 48 years already and not once have i ever heard anybody disrespect our aspect i think you guys should really get together and really think about what you guys are doing you guys are going to be making changes and not good ones and so far you haven't i don't think you have made any good changes at all for a long time you guys knew that our school district attendance has been going down and then you still go make um improvements for the schools that you're closing you guys need to think about what you guys are doing and i hope that some of you guys don't run again for the board because i'm going to make sure that you guys have a fight because you know who you are that are bringing everything up to change history azuza this is a high school what's wrong with you guys i don't believe that you guys would just five of you decide to change our master that's really ridiculous and i'm sorry if you guys think i'm upset of course i am upset a lot of people in this community don't even know what you're doing there's only a few people that know what's going on in the school board that's all i have to say thank you very much [Music] so at this time uh we have have reached the 20 minute mark we've surpassed the 20 minute mark and so i will uh direct um again if anyone has a has a card we've now expired the time where we would accept any additional um blue cards and so we will then vote here as a board to determine if we will continue to hear more comments for the excuse me yes and uh same thing with hands raised in zoom uh thank you uh so whether a blue card has been submitted or there are no more submissions for blue cards and also uh uh raising hands on zoom so we will now um go ahead and entertain uh uh the direction the willow board if if the board would like to continue with the remainder of the comments that have been received thus far i motion that we extend the time second and then we'll go ahead and any i imagine no discussion we'll go ahead and vote yes yeah and i am also yes and so again we will continue with all of the comments those who have have already requested a comment um we will but we will not be receiving any additional submissions uh for comments at this time uh we with that we will continue with uh linda de elia my name is lindalia i've been an azusa president and taxpayer for more than 45 years as a taxpayer i'm outraged that my tax dollars are being thrown away what is your justification for closing all the elementary schools on the east side of town i understand enrollment is down but can we pause the moment and look at the whole picture and make wise choices for our children the children on the east side of town have the right to have a school my tax dollars were used to modernize magnolia and the technology grant was just completed in december some of our students already moved when gladstone street was closed now you're going to send our children across town i walk that dangerous walk from magnolia to murray on busy street with especially dangerous frosting at center school we should be concerned about our children's safety if there is an emergency have you considered the bedlam that will exist for parents trying to reach their children many parents and caregivers don't drive and will be forced to walk to murray and back parents are looking to send their children to neighboring schools which will result in losing more students this reorganization plan makes the entire district dependent on buses from the high school to the elementary school does that make sense to anyone morning traffic will be a nightmare buses are expensive and getting more expensive every day have you figured the manpower buses and fuel costs involved in this we are continuing to throw away money throughout the district i wish all our schools could remain open but your proposal does not have our children's best interest in mind why close a modernized school and bus our students across town to a school that hasn't been modernized if our students are moved to murray and lee they will be filled to capacity leaving no room for growth i worked at magnolia for more than 30 years magnolia is my school it was modernized with my textile don't waste don't chase our students away give the east side of town the school they are entitled to people will not settle in azusa if they have to educate their children elsewhere please revoke and do what's right for our children on the east side of town and their future next we have rebecca lopez good evening i look around and i see people who all care about us is that we care about their students who care about education all this passion these feelings and emotions are all a lot so thank you board members for taking time to dive deeper into this decision we know it has not been an easy one thank you community members for advocating for your families and neighborhoods what an amazing example it is to show your children to stand up for something you believe in these are all great signs of a community that cares and let us continue to care deeply about our students the future leaders of our community ensure that they are the priority in this conversation that decisions are made through this purpose-driven and data-driven perspective that will sustain the future growth and passions of our communities the decision is bigger than just today we know the board is trying to plan for longevity and strength and sustainability all great things i encourage you to keep a few points in mind through your decision and discussions tonight first keep schools in as an accessible area of each disease that is possible second make sure each trustee area has an elementary school to support the diverse and unique needs of that community consultants and data have already helped to drive the decisions for the designated future trustee zones so why not also apply that logic to this decision third look at the enrollment projections for not only two years out but also for 10 or more years from now what combined areas will continue to grow beyond sustainable limits is achieving this 85 goal sustainable for each school including lunch lines pickups parking and school event or could some areas still function at a lower rate that fits the neighborhood needs if the district as a whole could stay fiscally responsible are there certain areas that already have a low enrollment and are projected to decrease and an even more significant percentage creating a geographically bottom heavy enrollment projection for the future let's look at these things creatively and with fresh perspective and anticipate the needs of the future as well as today board members we know you want to do the right thing we know you see the facts we've taken this as far as we can and maybe a little bit further it is in your hands now please be bold and step out and make a motion for a new proposal we are all your constituents and even though we may not all live in your future trustee zone you are voted to represent all of azusa so thank you for what you do [Music] next we have jesus carrillo good evening board members friends and family the community has come out the last few months to voice our concerns and ask the board to reconsider and reward their decision to close magnolia bye for one i'm appreciative and would like to thank the board for the many conversations and email exchanges we have had my ask is that the board please ensure that all communities of azusa are represented in tonight's conversation decision i hope that the board takes into account the many pages of information provided to make an informed decision tonight you have the ability tonight to make things right our children's education and families are counting on you thank you next we have melissa fajardo can you hear me good evening i'm a volunteer parent at lee and lee's epa president i'm here once again to speak up for all of our children families teachers and staff at lee i'd like to start by saying that i understand that as parents were put in situations in which we had to make changes and sacrifices for our children two years ago due to full enrollment i had no choice but to put my children at longfellow four times a day i walk back and forth to the streets on the north side of azusa and let me express to you it is a feeling of desperation to have to put your children to the horrible experience my children and i had walking on that side of azusa only because that was the only way i had to get my children the education they needed because for most of our families walking is their only way of transportation that is what our families will have to go through if you closely we would have to walk through the train tracks in which we all know as a hazard and walk the busy streets of foothill if buses are provided as many parents feel there is no way i will feel comfortable sending my kindergartner first grader on a bus with minimum supervision and not physically seeing if my children made it inside their school they are surrounded by many apartment buildings many of our families there are low income families those are the community members you should keep in mind and be helping you are leaving too many gaps in between schools where walking will no longer be an option and for many of our families that is their only option yet you are willing to leave three schools open on our site lee has plenty of space and empty classrooms we have the capacity to accommodate more students than other sports we already accommodate dalton students at lee which we are happy to receive of course so how do you plan to accommodate all of our students onto the smaller campus having to hear over and over from other schools having programs and getting modernized is just a constant reminder of the lack of support he has received from the district the question is why are our children and families not worthy of those opportunities thankfully for us that has not stopped our amazing teachers by implementing those skills to our kids the only difference is that it has to come out of their pockets we are leaving living in the same community all of our children should be getting the same equal opportunities are you going how are you going to close the closest school to azusa high school many of our school of our high schoolers walked past lee every day our siblings ali my oldest son being one of them what would they have to see every day and at the abandoned school at the last meeting it was asked by a board member what are we as parents teaching our children i can only speak for myself but what i am teaching my children is to respectfully speak up for what they believe is right the question is what are you teaching our children that you can make promises to them and not follow through with them or we as community members go and trust any future votes that you make board members we have waited long enough and i had worked twice as hard it is time that you start supporting our school as you have done with others you voted to keeply open keep your word and lastly i would like to thank board member sabrina who took the opportunity to voice our concerns your time is truly appreciated thank you next we have anna valdez in charleston elementary it's unfortunate to have to be here and try to defend our school i mean what can i say i'm a member of the community i actually went to for myself seeing mrs charles go up and she was heartbreaking and very emotional for me and as much as i'm trying not to let emotion like get to me right now really hard but you guys are hearing all these facts and all these other points i don't feel like you're listening to the parents who are actually having to struggle if you close these schools for me personally i struggle finding a job just to make sure i can get my kids to school and pick them back because my mother does not drive which is my only help right now we're just getting by i have to literally be out of work to be able to be with my kids take them to school or do their homework any sort of activity while i at the same time and struggling too have a financial stability and you guys are literally not taking in account stress you are putting on parents and family as if the kids didn't suffer enough profit it has been traumatizing for them and then to take a school away from them knowing they're not going to see their friends they're not going to see their teacher that is even more heartbreaking to me because i mean i've been at the school personally and not my kids who lose teachers friends principal an amazing principal that we have that's just not just that and i don't know how to explain that to my daughters if they're about to lose that that they're about to lose their friends their teachers their principal or even any other possibility of knowing what even i got to go through as an experience growing up i mean i don't have much to say but thank you for everything for what i did next my name is jennifer ferrone and i'm a sixth grade teacher at dalton i want to thank the board very much the cabinet for the time allowing us to speak hear our opinions all of the school sites can tell you stories that will pull on your heartstrings are extremely passionate about where we were in our school you know and we know that they be our family however we really need to look at what is going to make azusa great in the future dalton is one of the few schools in the past five years that has increased enrollment in fact speaking with um one of our gals in the office today she's telling me that weekly we turn families away from dolph i think that we need to make some changes we need to make sure that we the families that are in azusa we need to look for recruiting new families for possible growth because we all love azusa families love dalton because it's a safe beautiful campus and the teachers have hearts the staff has heart laura clark and greg cahill together as a dynamic dynamic team have created a very supportive and safe environment for kids when parents drop their kids off there they walk their kids there the dog pulls them to school they love their they know that they're in a safe place the issues that we've been hearing about with walking families are true but you've got walking families every um i know directly from speaking with stacy that tk's where but too long fellow and therefore they got their little selves on their buses they felt safe we believe in our business bus drivers they're loving they're kind they're wonderful we know that if four-year-olds can take a bus so can other other agents i want to thank you tonight for taking very seriously and so much to heart your decision we understand it's not an easy one and you can see from your schools are very well represented thank you so much for considering thank you mr um next we have greg cahill good evening i'm here to share some facts that i hope you will consider if you decide to make changes to the decision that you made in three months ago i want to begin first by honoring the work the reorganization team did they work together for a year and a half to two years i believe they met 15 times and often times for several hours they grappled with the tough questions and did the research needed to gather information that would be required to make sound evidence-based decision so thank you to all of you that work so diligently on this committee at the december meeting a board member mentioned population density as a reason why they would not consider closing a particular school i ask that the board look at enrollment at the school that they were speaking about if a vote is being reserved for the purposes of population density i would expect student enrollment in this school to mirror this density in case that information is not readily available i can tell you that it doesn't matter traffic is a big concern once azusa high school is home for all high school students in azusa traffic in the in that area will be drastically different this will not only be an issue for the high school but everything in the area including other schools modernization it makes sense to me that when choosing schools to remain open one would seriously consider the cost to finish modernization at the school there is quite a difference between two of the schools you may be discussing tonight money saved here will allow the district to rebrand other properties and update campuses that have already been through the modernization process some 20 years ago the figures i was given today by the district regarding modernization cannot be accurate it showed that both dalton and lee each require five million two hundred thousand dollars to finish modernization this can't be true since dalton has one final phase to be completed location i encourage you to seriously think about closing schools along the azusa's border currently you have chosen to close three elementary schools that share a border with neighboring district if declining enrollment is the reason we're in this situation to begin with why would all the schools we are closing be border schools we know many of the families that attend these schools will eventually leave zeus unified and cause our enrollment to decline even further if you consider reversing your decision regarding one of the three schools you voted to close it doesn't make sense to replace it your time is expired on the border thank you thank you next we have guadalupe castregon um la [Music] next we have veronica good evening um some information shared with the board at the meeting in early march was misleading or not accurate when the school closes the population of that school does not automatically transfer to the closest school some information you received indicated that murray and lee will be extremely close to if not over their capacity when they re closed this isn't accurate when a final decision is made to close schools the district is going to redefine who enrollment boundaries so for instance if power is still slated to close lease new enrollment boundaries will likely extend to include what is currently power attendance area while at the same time some of the lead boundaries will likely change to expand dalton's attendance boundaries to include more of what is currently at least in this area school attendance enrollment areas will be adjusted across the district there has been a lot of talk about families that walk to schools and how school closures were effective on several occasions lee elementary has been referred as the walk-in school i understand this to indicate that lee has many school students that walk to school perhaps more than other schools nessusa i'm not sure if this data has been documented throughout the district but i would guess that some families decided to walk to school for a variety of reasons some have no no other transportation some live close enough to the school that it doesn't make sense to drive especially when considering traffic signals and overall traffic to the area no matter what school close some families are going to be forced to walk further and across busy street this is a fact and it is a fact that pertains to all schools that have been identified as schools that are um closing the single ones who out over others may be convenient for argument's sake but it applies to all [Music] next we have danny johnson thank you board for allowing us to speak uh i'm here not to talk to the board since not a two-way dialogue i'm here to talk to the community now one of the things i think we all have to understand is that not all the schools can be saved if it's a budget cut i think the first question we need to look at is the budget and i'm looking at the general fund from 2020 and 2021 which is posted on the internet you'll find that there's some 93 million dollars appropriated to the budget for the salaries alone okay and or for the general budget or fund half of that was for salary and so if we have some supposed budget cut i find it dubious if not outrageous that some two people got raises last meeting so one of the things that i want you guys to all understand is not all of the schools can be saved but they can be repurposed if you don't have a plan if they don't have a plan you need to insist on one otherwise it's going to be a hell hole is going to be graffiti ridden it's going to have a lot of loitering and undesirables that will decline your neighborhood most of the schools that we all attend or we purchase near all are in the center of our neighborhoods are they not all right so if you don't speak up and ask what is the repurposed plan are you just going to close it while giving yourselves a raise and telling us that it's a budget cut or are you entitled to a fair answer you have at least a year before they're going to do something and i think if you speak loud enough they'll listen thank you mr johnson next we have the ellington community by the next we have alicia rodriguez good evening ausd board members parents students and community members my name is alicia rodriguez a parent of two children enrolled at lee elementary first i want to applaud every person that's here tonight advocating for their child advocating for their school i'm so proud that our community got together for this i'm also here because a lot of parents don't have the leisure like some of the board members think to be present at these meetings to express their feelings or ideas let alone to stay through hours just to hear you continue to ping-pong the reorganization decision of the school's closing on that note i'd like to share with you that lee had an online and written petition where 634 families and community members expressed their concerns and signed the petition in hopes that this would touch your heart to keep our school open many of us have already brought to you countless concerns and facts about our school like capacity demographic density and distance don't base your decision tonight solely on money make a decision that will truly impact our children in a positive way show us that you care about our community and our children you claim that asusa unified is working to maximize programs and facilities but only some facilities have seen your generosity and others like lee have not we've had to deal on countless locations with your false promises not only from the board but the superintendent where are the programs you speak about how are you enriching our children at the elementary level why haven't you built up our community you have already spent so much money on the high schools it's time we see some of the money go towards our elementary school so we can see our kids thrive lastly don't patronize us and tell us that to reach out to you that you fear for us when we do we're met by many of you with excuses as to why you can't meet with us except for you mr renaud we are so thankful for the time that you took to meet with lee parents it's time for you as our board to set the bar for our district thank you next we have diana adkins hi hi i'm a dalton parent i bought a house in a souza because i wanted my children to go to dalton the school was close enough to walk and the school was beautiful and clean i'm an anxious person and dalton made me feel safe the principal learns every child's name in the whole school what principle does that i can email her and get a response the same day and i've done that multiple times and she has always bonded and made me feel safe the teachers go above and beyond the material that they eat my daughter's tk teacher even taught her sign language [Music] when we went to virtual we all cried on the last day of school because we felt robbed sorry we felt robbed of our time with that wonderful teacher and next year hopefully if the school continues to stay open my son will also have the same teacher the time that i got robbed the time that my daughter got robbed she's gonna get that with my son [Music] if you decide to close down dalton you are closing down our safe place i will remove both my children from the sousa unified school district if dalton's closed down and i voted for you so i hope that you listen thank you next we have christine wagner hi board i know most of you know my face i've been to so many of things i worked with arturo on especially one thing that i'm sorry to say this but we did not keep it and that was being transparent with our community i live in an area at ellington that none of the homeowners have received any notification of what was going on in this district i've heard you guys say that it has been available online but you got to remember some of those don't have kids in our district that's the hard thing it is so heartening to know what you guys are doing behind the community if we are supposed to be transparent where is that where is the flyers i live in that area and i gotta tell you i received two flyers from covina valley unified school district inviting my child to come and join their school and their open house i have going to have an 8th grader at ellington and i'll tell you right now she does not want to come back she is hating her school how do you have a child who hates their school when ellington has become a family of a community have no answer for her how do you do that as a parent and you got to remember my child is the third generation at this school at ellington and that's not the purpose for me education is it doesn't matter about this curricular activities of sports what are they going to use that in life to be a team player maybe but isn't that what our teachers do to help our kids communicate i pulled my oldest out of the district she will be 21.
uh theresa andres siglio who is a teacher aide at school number four teresa's also served as a teacher aide a health aide uh during her many years i believe she's completing her 25th year with the klitschko park school district so i wish barbara donner and teresa good health and the best of luck in their uh upcoming retirements uh the last resolution on page four uh wanda parent who is currently a teacher aide at the high school uh we're transferring to a 12-month secretary position initially wanda will be taking over for claudia and my office will be going on a maternity leave at the end of may on page five i'm not going to read through all of them but we have a number of teachers that are requesting maternity leave uh aliki at school number four will be uh leaving in may coming back in december or january i believe no i'm sorry december amy mctestic will be out all of the next year maternity leave yvette molinado will be out beginning in june returning in january daniela vino special ed teacher at school 6 middle school will be leaving september 1st returning april 3rd leotoro at the high school social studies teacher will be leaving this april and returning in september and joanna carnell esl teacher number three will be leaving or has left and she'll be returning september 1st 2023.
it seems the football program has not held up its end of the bargain and yes i know that a jrotc instructor was charged similarly at highland high in 2014 but i'm not here to save the program at highland high bear in mind that the nfl nba mlb nhl mls etc aren't sharing the cost of coaching with the district but the military does share the cost for jrotc instructors it should be abundantly clear why this program is not a disposable commodity to the district it fosters a sense of family amongst the cadets and service to the community whose representatives are willing to discard those bonds and the values that jrotc teaches i leave you with that thought with this thought what does that say about those representatives thank you for your time [Applause] thank you anthony garrell megan mccutchen and denise hanks hi my name is anthony catrell and i'm an az941 drill commander i'm here tonight to speak with you all on behalf of saving this hrcc program at gilbert high school even though i'm a senior this year i'd like to give you a breakdown on when this program has done for me within the past four years first off this program has taught me my leadership i have been the drill commander for the past school year being able to be in command of this portion has taught me how to excel outside of school within sports work and social life with the skill set i have been able to exceed with my workforce and unbelievable rate also take charge within my sports and still have the same respect on and off the field second is discipline knowing all this program has a huge amount of disciplinary actions by following not only the aia guidelines but also the air force guidelines as well this program has taught me to not only to excel in school with these guidelines but also have the gain respect of those around me finally this program within these last four years has guided me to the next chapter outside of high school now we all know this program does not encourage you to join the military branch after high school but i only proudly to say uh that with this program i have dedicated these last four years to i'll be joining the marines once i graduate to serve my country now i can only speak for everyone in this core but i can proudly say that i have technical sergeant shanny to thank for all her hard work dedication respect and encouragement for my decisions to join the military uh if it wasn't for technical sergeant shanny i have no idea where i would be today let alone where my future will be going after high school so for that i want to say thank you technical sergeant shanny for always being in me believing in me and pushing me to be the best i can be so therefore modern president the board members please do not eliminate this program through our school there are many students like me out there in the world community that needs this supportive program to help them get on the right path as it did for me thank you megan mccutchen denise hanks and nathan cineo good evening my name is megan mccutcheon and i'm a proud parent of an az941 cadet as you just heard i would like to speak with you on behalf of the positive outcomes this program at gilbert high school has done not only for my son but also for my family first of all this program has shaped my son into the man he's becoming he's always been a great person but this program has helped him realize what his purpose is in life after high school as of last year which is the end of his junior year he was still up in the air on where his path was going to lead him this current school year he has decided to become a future leader within our military by joining the marines without this program's leadership skill set disciplinary actions who knows where he would have ended up after high school these past four years have made a huge impact on his life not only in and outside of school but work like he has mentioned and at home our cadet has two little brothers six and two that look up to him by marching spinning their toys up in the air and giving commands as he does to the armed team our son enjoys watching his younger siblings do this because he hopes one day that they will join the az-941 program and get the greatest outcome of their futures like he has also this program teaches the students on what it means to to have and to be in an extended family when one student is struggling they're all struggling when one student's having a bad day they're all having a bad day these students learn that this huge family that they have is not only supportive with them within their peers themselves but also from the families and the parents as well like their motto states integrity first service before self and excellence in all we do we as parents also speak so highly of this program as it what it has done or is doing for our students this program shapes them give them gives them the life skills that they will need to excel in their bright futures we as parents including myself especially can only say or do so much to help our students excel but there's always that one teacher that one instructor or in this case that one technical sergeant or tech sergeant to push them in the right direction with that being said i would like to personally thank technical sergeant amy shanti for being that person my son can count on to help him excel with his future look up to and give thanks to for his bright upcoming future within the marines so therefore board members by possibly eliminating this program the district would not only be eliminating survival skill sets on these students impacted in the program now but also within the incoming future cadets of az941 thank you thank you denise hanks nathan senio and kevin douglas good evening my name is denise hanks and i don't have a speech prepared like the rest of our family um you know i can only go off of my son as a first year cadet he's a freshman at gilbert i live in pinal county and we purposely drive to gilbert because it's an amazing school district i was just as upset and concerned when i heard that az-941 was going to be shut down my son has always wanted to do was learn military and i mean he loves history and he wanted to join our that was the first thing he said is rotc and i heard that gilbert had the best rotc program that's one of the reasons why we drive so far and i'm married to a military vet that all he does is teach our son the best of what the military is and i understand that it doesn't it promotes military but it doesn't it promotes diversity as well i mean it promotes everything that our students need and i'm i'm not the best public speaker i'm just a concerned mom and i want my son to go four years he wants to go four years he wants to go to an rotc college he would i can't remember the name of it but but he does he also my son is a type one diabetic the medical that has happened with him being in rotc over just this this year i mean his a1c over the summer was a nine and now it's down to a seven he works hard and he works hard in school just so he can be a part of it please don't take it away these cadets are the most amazing as kids that you could ever be around they're respectful they're loving they are a family these boys come over and we have barbecues and we all hang out together that's what we want to teach our children just listen to them listen to us we do know what's best for our children and there are good parents that work hard for our children and i'm one of them and so are they just help us out please thank you nathan senio kevin douglas and priscilla ledesma good evening board my name is nathan cenio and i'm a proud air force uni reserve officer training corps alumni from 2011 to 2015.
and that's because that time they failed our disability students they weren't helping her or supporting her i fought all the way and i will do it again because my kids education comes number one and if there's not a district that will support that then i'm ready to do it on my own i've done it for eight years with her from junior high all the way to high school because at that time there was no business for my child to walk from where ellington is all the way to center and i am hopefully invite every single one of you to come and visit the school sites that you're going to close thank you ms wagner thank you [Applause] next up we have richard covington all right hello hi thank you for hearing me um i've been listening tonight and from all the families here and everyone i hear a lot of the same concerns we all have for our schools the distance the closing of our schools our communities and i just wanted to throw in that i hope you guys please when you vote do the right thing don't leave the east side of azusa without a school we just want one you know what i mean thank you that's all [Music] next we have daniel carrillo [Music] good evening uh parents grandparents moms staff thank you very much for being here my name is janel carrillo i attended dalton elementary back in 1999.
a lot of baby showers going on across the district uh krystal merkovic who's been on a maternity leave is asking that her maternity be extended until january 3rd 2023 and we have amy again and we just have some cash waivers for staff members who are opted out of our health prescription benefits page seven i gave you a copy of our homework policy some minor revisions uh in the policy it's now posted to the website uh we are approving our nurses report for the month we are approving our custodial calendar for next year we're also approving the school calendar for next year 2022-23 which i had shared with you previously and if the public is watching tonight uh it will be posted to our website uh sometime tomorrow during the day so parents who are interested in the calendar for next year can can look that up we're also uh recommending the confirmation of two bullying incidents uh that took place over the last uh month on page seven and uh requests for buildings and grounds you know those are mostly due to fundraiser drama club practices pto meetings talent show at the high school battle of the bands at the high school a number of activities that we're now seeing come back after uh we're coming out of the darkness of colvin so it's nice to see that uh our students are now having the opportunity to do a lot of things in person that they haven't been able to do uh for the last two years so uh that that's a positive for the whole district uh mr i found or anything additional on finance we're approving obviously the question tonight okay and then i reiterated before that on april 26th that i could have the big opening for multiple capital projects and keep everyone posted on those results that's pretty much it online okay uh before i call for a motion on the to accept the consent agenda as mr uh alfano uh mentioned just a reminder to the public that on tuesday april 19th that's actually our first day back from the spring break uh spring break begins on friday april 8th and it runs through monday april 18th and on april 19th the polls will be open to the public to vote for our budget and support our budget between the hours of 2 and 8.
now i think i can speak for a lot of us that we say what's the first thing that comes to mind when we think of air force junior reserve officer training corps that award to me is service it's service to our community service to our school and to some including myself proud six-year air force veteran service to our nation from the hundreds of hours that my jrotc unit did during my school's football games from our drill competitions from our model rocketry to our pt competitions and even to our local parades i know that the thousands of hours that the gilbert afjrotc cadets do and have volunteered for for the community have made the school and the community a better place than it was before which is the main reason why jrotc is within our communities to promote citizenship and grow more characters it is not to directly promote military service but it does infuse those values those proud values i should say even after all these years almost a decade later i still remember my instructors names and the impact they made on me to the school and also the local community jrotc for me and my friends was a place of tranquility during my high school trepidation days well i didn't know what i wanted to do before i joined high school i think a lot of us here today see a lot of kids going through those times in their life where they don't know what they want to do with their life they wake up they put on whatever clothes they want to wear they go to school they put c's get degrees they do whatever they can and then they leave and go home and then do whatever they want us jrotc cadets are built differently and have a different mindset of service we don't care where you come from we don't care what your background is but we do care about this we care about why you're here and what service you want to bring to your community and how much better of a person you want to be when you go home at the end of the day what impact do you leave on your community and all the values and everything that you incorporate your last name your loved ones your school your nation everything that you stand for is represented when you serve your community now for me personally i have a quick statement for me jrotc actually got me my first high school job as a high school usher now it was a very competitive uh job after all who doesn't love free movies and popcorn and going out with your buddies on the weekend out of 31 people i received that job and i actually remember the quote that my general manager gave me he said because you have jrotc i can rely on kids like you i know that you have learned leadership dedication and will put in the effort day in and day out you're a breath of fresh air and i wish i had more people like you at this movie theater that same mentality is what others in this local community see and taking away this program will be a great disservice to this local community and to our nation of those that want to serve thank you very much for your time and please enjoy the rest of your night thank you thank you kevin douglas priscilla ledesma and gibson galores as parents we all resp we all preach honor respect integrity to our kids this program does nothing but teach that i know the military taught me that my parents taught me that i didn't have to go to rotc growing up because i had military family and by teaching the honor respect integrity that i have and into my son he shows it every single day amongst his peers rotc or not amongst his other siblings amongst his family everybody he meets he just shows that honor integrity discipline respect and that is what i see gilbert with your show of the football the basketball and all that tonight that's what you guys look like you guys strive for this program does nothing but teach that does nothing but hone that and preach that to these kids which all of us parents teach to our kids ourselves by teaching these respects and values in kids not only are we creating leaders just as parents but the schools also preaching leaders people who take over your guys's positions when you guys retire presidents all of that that's all i got to say i don't speak a lot sorry thank you thank you good evening i am priscilla ledesma so i'm here just simply to support the program so i came here and was immediately welcomed by passionate cadets and passionate parents and there's reason for that we have full jobs and we still came here because we wanted to support the program and i know how good of a school district gilbert is because i went through gilbert high school myself i was a junior rotc cadet myself a while ago i was here at the same time that dr santa cruz is here so good to see you again i was here for his retirement time there were 17 years of ledesmas that went through so i do have a little bit of a bias a little bit of a personal connection to gilbert high school specifically through my time in junior rotc and through my time in uh in high school alone i was varsity cheer captain i was varsity track captain i was an nhs i was an orchestra i did all everything you could possibly do so i didn't need another program to for more social mental health but a lot of students truthfully do and i continuously chose junior rotc for three years because i know how much it benefited me during it i was fortunate enough to have tremendous support of the parents as you see here during my time in rotc as well and i'm hard-pressed to think that there are a lot of programs who do provide that same amount of support some of the main things that i learned in rotc or excuse me in junior rotc was different kind of communication skills definitely that value of service you've heard that over and over again here that leadership and that camaraderie is like no other again i went through so many sports i went through college been active duty military and this was something that i truly can look back on as one of the highlights of truly my life one of the other things that i that i saw that you can't really truthfully teach was i saw the value of a relationship so my instructor and his wife had such a strong relationship they just celebrated their 50th anniversary and no they didn't talk about that and that wasn't they advertised but they invited me to their actual ceremony not too long ago that's how close that we got to be with them and so many people like i was fortunate enough to grow up in an incredibly stable home in an incredibly stable environment but realistically a lot of students don't get that and a lot of students in gilbert alone and so junior rotc can become that stable environment for a lot of the cadets and what i loved about watching my instructor was i saw that that positive relationship between them but also you got to see that those who are not in a relationship are successful they're not still successful they are successful with the person or without a person i really enjoy that aspect of rotc that you don't get to just see so at the risk of sounding overly confident i think that i am one of the many success stories i did junior rotc myself for three years i went through college rotc and i came back just to support this program in my year group alone we had three academy graduates we had six individuals who went through junior rotc and who got to go to senior rotc all six of us were able to receive scholarships because junior rotc is able to provide direct scholarships to college so um i absolutely 100 percent would not be where i am if it was not for gilbert high school junior rotc thank you very much thank you and then gibson galore's [Music] good afternoon board members i'm cadet senior mass sergeant gibson galliard from az941 i'm here to talk about the afj rotc at gilbert high school and what it means to me i joined this program last year because i thought it would be a good way to to learn leadership i joined this program last year because i thought it would be a good way to learn leadership how to act with integrity and make new friends i've continued with this program for all the friends and opportunities i get i was sad to hear that gilbert public schools are shutting down this program and i want to do something about it this program has grown to be a family for me and to see it go down and be horrible you get so many things out of this program like leadership skills and life skills this program isn't just a class it's turned more into a family i'm making friendships to last a lifetime easy nine for one also has amazing scholarship opportunities and would be sad to see people not get it because the program is shutting down lots of my friends want to join due to all the benefits you gained from this program afghan rotc is providing me with the skills i need to become a better person i now act with integrity and i feel i show more respect and hold myself more accountable for my actions please reconsider shutting down this program thank you [Applause] thank you that is that concludes our speakers our open call yes go ahead mr parker i'd like to can you hear me yep thank you all for coming out tonight it's very rare that uh that you get this much support uh for any program particularly parents and students and i wanna thank you for for doing that i would also like to address a few things i'm a retired marine corps officer and i spent my last 18 years as a senior jrtc instructor so if anybody understands the program i think i do and i understand the benefit of program i've seen what it does for kids and how it turns them around i was one of those kids because i took jrtc in high school air force actually my dad's retired was a retired army officer my daughter went in the air force so we're definitely a military family uh a couple of things here and i would be thrilled to meet with any of you guys anytime anyplace just let me know the district uh and i i don't know what exactly what's going on here but i i do know a few things dr mccord i can assure you is not opposed to jrotc i don't know a senior board member a single board member here as opposed to jrotc uh some of the things that need to happen though to keep the program alive need enrollment 10 or 100 kids in the program need to have instructors and right now there's a real difficult time nationwide getting instructors but i am with you and i don't think anyone here wants to see the program go down uh there's about a 10 20 year waiting list to get a program nationwide it's a very popular program so uh like i said i'll be glad to talk to anyone anywhere so thank you and thank you for coming tonight thank you mr parker dr mccord thank you mr parker governing board members uh rotc gilbert high couple things and and just to reiterate what mr parker said nobody's trying to get rid of a program whether you believe that or not but you're hearing it right here from me directly secondly there will be an rotc program at gilbert high next year save one thing if we don't have instructors then obviously that makes it difficult to have a program uh i hope that shanti wants to stay and if she does we'll welcome her staying with open arms but no one here on this diocese has had a conversation about shutting down rotc programs if there's going if there's an issue with registration marcy taylor will address that tomorrow but also know that when kids are signing up for electives no matter what it is they're always asking for backups like mr parker said you have to have at least 100 students in your program and now i know during the pandemic they have backed off that a little bit they haven't been hammering us with those types of things we've lost programs in the past because of that and nothing else i was an assistant principal at gilbert high back in 1999 to 2001 with dr santa cruz love the program i have not one negative thing to say about it and i never will i i liken it to those leaders on our campus that are getting some excellent instruction and outside of the core academics and so i i don't know again where some of your information is coming from i'm sorry that you're getting misinformation or you're perceiving it that way which if you are i could understand that trust me but you're hearing it right here tonight that we are not trying to shut down gilbert high rotc at any length and we'll have a conversation tomorrow with mr winter just to make sure that those that have registered are locked into that position and again if we have instructors or we have an instructor and the rotc will let us go forward with the setup that we have or if we find an officer to be able to come around because we haven't stopped looking like mr parker said there's a lot of opportunities for these instructors to teach anywhere throughout the country and they do and if there's a compensation issue in terms of stipends we'll actually address that as well but again nobody's trying to push out a program and it would just do great things for gilbert high school if it remains so again you're hearing it straight from me if you hear it from somewhere else something different then i'm sorry but you're being misinformed so thank you guys for uh more than anything standing up for your program standing here for what you believe in and thank you for that yes i i would also like to add that to the programs that have been shut down in the district in the past have been shut down by the military services not the district so um generally those were enrollment issues but to my knowledge the district has never actually shut a program down but when the uh when the school didn't meet their uh the service requirement they mandated it being shut down my kids went to mesquite they were in jrotc there and that's what happened thank you thank you for coming tonight and for those comments we will now move on to 7.0 reports and 7.01 the monthly budget report dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members we have our monthly budget report presented by our assistant superintendent ms bonnie betts [Music] thank you dr dr mccord ms wood governing board members this is our regularly presented monthly financial report so i'll just get right into it normally we share the operating funds federal funds state funds other funds and we are going to spend a little bit of time on the bond funds today so this is our main group of funds our operating funds really wanted to bring your attention to the yellow bar which is our maintenance operations fund this will come up later this evening as we talk about the compensation increases and the preliminary budget but note that the year to date expended in cumbered is 239 million and note that the available balance is 48.7 that changes every single month we have a lot of spend that's not encumbered so we don't really know exactly how it's going to turn out but at this point in time we are assuming at least an additional 7 million dollars of spend on top of that 239 million that 48 million dollars of available balance has gone down by 1.3 million dollars or conversely our spend has increased by 1.3 million dollars month over month i'd also like to bring your attention to the row right below it the fun 10 which is not highlighted i apologize for that but i wanted to note i wanted you to note the available balance on the third as the 13.6 million dollars under classroom site fund that will become clear as to why that's important as we get into the preliminary budget later and then finally the other two highlighted funds show a negative available balance those were just errors that were occurred that occurred when we revised our budget number two and those will be corrected in revised number three so before i go any further are there any questions on any of that on our operating funds great so this is just um showing what i've just shared with you these are our federal funds again i wanted to point out the a-r-p-i-d-e-a this is a new fund that came as part of the rescue plan giving additional resources for idea preschool and regular idea so we are working with the special education department right now on how to spend those additional funds a note sr3 and the educational plus up grant the educational plus up grant is part of our compensation proposal this evening so keep that in mind you can see that there's no encumbrance nor spend there yet and then please note the sr3 the fact that that to date we have year-to-date expended encumbered about 10.6 million dollars that does include both payments of the three percent uh one-time stipend so the first payment did occur in december and the second payment is scheduled to go out in june so moving on to the state funds instructional improvement we wanted to share here the year-to-date expended encumbrant of 1.4 million dollars as we're deliberating and deciding on how we're going to balance the budget for next year we thought it was prudent to show the fact that every year we take 900 000 to a million dollars of maintenance and operations expense and charge it to instructional improvement for class size reduction so these are primarily our instructional assistants throughout the school district so we do that annually freeing up a million dollars of ongoing resources in mno the other point is on the results-based funding those payments have been made to date to those 10 schools that were eligible okay so other fun details just quickly i wanted to present to you the fact that we are recording the employee benefit trust activity now on our monthly financials due to the fact that we are now accounting for our employee benefit trust revenue and spend within our general ledger so this is just a snapshot to give you an idea of where we are to date remember that when you look at an available balance of 19.3 million dollars there's lots of details in there which msugetti probably can tell you all about um but that would be the just know that that's rolling and it's not annual and so you will see that that available available balance will change monthly okay so finally the bond fund details wanted to show this is this is bond fund 631 this is the 2015 authority just to be clear so note that we still have a remaining balance of 4.8 million dollars it was part of the design to allow that money to go through the end of 2023 so the encumbrance and the spend to date is primarily in technology services associated with the refresh of the cabling throughout gilbert public schools okay and then finally the bond fund 630 again a reminder this is the 2019 authority as you all know we did close in february on the most recent bond sale of 50 million dollars you can see in the column that is highlighted that we have assigned that 50 million dollars to each of the categories that were part of the bond pamphlet in 2019 i wanted to show at the bottom the total against authority is 82 million remember it was an authority of 100 million so we still have 18 million dollars to spend and then you can see tonight as well on the consensus agenda there are many bond projects out there indicating that we are planning to get those encumbered and we have a lot of projects and activities planned for this summer and that's all i have if there are any specific questions board members thank you miss butts we appreciate that you bet all right we will now move to 8.0 the consent agenda items and i wanted to add um that on 8.10 when we consider the consent agenda tonight 8.10 replacing and upgrading roofing system at south ferry junior south valley junior high we needed to add some information it is awarded to sun valley construction utilizing mojave cooperative contract 18r pro-0418 so if we could include that in a motion um may i ask for 8.01 the approval of consent agenda items is there a motion so moved as amended thank you thank you miss humphries second thank you mr yeti it's been moved and seconded that we approve the consent agenda items as amended all those in favor please vote by saying aye those opposed by nay it is past 5-0 thank you we now move to 9.0 action items and we'll begin with 9.01 the appointment of jody smith as the principal of greenfield junior high for the 2022-2023 school year i'm good i move that we appoint jody smith as the principal of greenfield junior high school for the 22-23 school year thank you mr yeti it's been moved is there second by second thank you mrs humphries it's been moved and seconded that we appoint jody smith as the principal of greenfield junior high school for the 2022-2023 school year i will ask for a vote all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye those opposed by nay it passes and we'd like to congratulate jody smith as our principal of greenfield junior high [Applause] come on up congratulations thank you board president board members superintendent mccord thank you so much it's such an honor to be joining gilbert public schools and specifically greenfield junior high i've had the opportunity to talk to some people in the district and in the community and consistently i hear how great and even special greenfield junior high is and i know that's a true testament to their staff and leadership and partnership with parents so i'm so excited to meet the staff and start our journey together i did want to take a moment to thank my family my husband and grandson are with us and especially my parents that are visiting from oregon so thank you yeah family raise your hand there you go congratulations to you as well so again i look forward to this journey in working with and for you and hope to see you on our greenfield junior high campus thank you we'd like to take a couple minutes recess and offer our congratulations to mrs smith so you did a good job i didn't say anything inappropriate so yes right now okay so i can tell you my funny story right so all right board members and those joining us thank you for indulging us in that we would like to get back to our 9.02 entity profile change with arizona department of education and school facilities board gilbert high dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members um we're asking for your approval for any pro entity profile change as we've done in the past for certain schools changes in addition to basic school information entity profile posted on the arizona department of education ade must be approved by the governing board currently gilbert high is a 9 through 12 campus with the addition of an accelerated middle school there will be some 7th and 8th grade students who will attend and receive instruction at the school within at the school and within the school for this reason there is a need to modify gilbert high school to be a 712 campus and i have a resolution that i'd like to read if please give me a moment it says um resolution requesting approval from the arizona state facilities board oversight board for reduction of square footage uh pursuant to ars 15-3 41g to reconfigure the gilbert high school 9 through 12 square footage to include 7th and 8th grade spaces whereas students will gain access to the instructional expertise of high school slash college level faculty they will be immersed in an honors and accelerated curriculum with access to all resources of a comprehensive high school while in a supportive cohort cohort of other 7th and 8th grade students this edition will also allow students to engage in coursework and staff that will prepare them for honors advanced placement and international baccalaureate opportunities at the campus number two it is anticipated that gilbert high school middle years program will increase enrollment allowing fully utilization of gilbert high school educational facility now therefore be a result that the governing board of gilbert public schools respectfully requests the arizona state facility school facilities board to approve the reallocation of a proportionate share of the educational square footage to 7th and 8th grade students at 1101 east elliott road gilbert arizona effective at the end of the current school year in accordance with ars 15-3 41g dr mccord if i'm sorry excuse me if i could if i could add this resolution is specific to the arizona school facilities board so this is a two-part agenda item it's recent statute changes that require whenever we're reconfiguring an existing bricks and mortar school that we have to request permission from school facilities board because we're actually reallocating instructional space by grade level so this is in addition to the entity change and the recommendation to the department of ed so it's really a two-parter i just wanted to make sure that that was clear thank you board members may have a motion i move that we approve the um profile change with the arizona department of education and school facilities board for gilbert high school thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded is there discussion i i do have a couple of comments i this idea has been put forward um before and i have to say i i had to have some conversations to understand the desire um and i think this is a move forward that will be good for gilbert high school and for the students who choose to attend i i think it's a really great opportunity for those who want something a little different than our traditional junior high schools any anything else see none i will ask for the vote all those in favor of approving the entity profile change with arizona department of education and school facilities board at gilbert high school please vote by saying aye aye was opposed by nay all right it's approved 5-0 thank you 9.03 compensation increase for certified employees non-administ non-administrative dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members ms betts will give a little presentation related to this item and the items that follow as it pertains to budget um good evening again so um mr mackintosh and i are going to tag team this one this evening i'll go through the preliminary budget as it's related to the funding of the compensation increases that he will be recommending to you so first as we shared in the retreat about a month ago now i think we have the 2023 adopted budget timeline really wanted to make sure that all of you were aware that the budget still is very much aligned to the strategic operating plan sharing student counts and enrollment information with you as you know our budget capacity is based upon our average daily membership or student count and then finally de-balancing the 2023 budget giving you year-over-year budget capacity comparisons giving you the recommended budgetary increases budgetary savings and then how we plan to balance the budget for fiscal 2023.
so i'm going to learn upon learning about the possible closure of dalton came as a complete another shot dalton has been a staple in our community for decades the hard work and dedication of past and current staff members not only embodies who this community is it transcends in our youth and standard in me and my friends and family i have attended adults dalton will continue to [Music] the future that we continue to strive and improve and protect closing dalton will be turning the backs on this very community's eastward of curve dalton is and always will be the heartbeat of this community we cannot give up on our youth and our community adding additional workload to already overworked and underpaid teachers is wrong and downright fell in closing um got a poem to read to you fifth grade room two miss vigil was the teacher that helped me out this poem 30 years ago about two months back in january in my quest to achieve my goals i stumble and crumble and lose my soul those that knew me would easily co-sign there was no life as hard as mine no money no father no chance no guy i only followed my voice inside if it guides me wrong and i do not win i'll learn from my mistakes and try to achieve again don't make that mistake and close dalton's mailman thank you mr next we have sarah serrano is sarah serrano present or is that online is that a blue card okay we will we'll revisit and see if sarah's here uh we'll move on then to april artechi me and my brother started at magnolia since he is now in high school and i am in fifth grade with one more year at magnolia my little sister is in preschool and we want her to continue at magnolia like we'd the teachers and staff are great and always there to help when we need th that is mainly because they are not overworked imagine how much one-on-one time we would get with our teachers if our schools were weren't overcrowded with students imagine the stress on both the teachers students and parents if we had to adjust to a new school don't mess with our education and don't overcrowd the schools be magnolia approach the podium [Music] hello okay thank you sorry i had to run through the crowd i'm glad to see how many people made it out tonight i'm a little out of breath so i'll try to make this not so bad um i'm here advocating for magnolia elementary a school with a completely modernized campus on the east side of azusa over the past months community members have given more than enough reasons as to why magnolia should stay open dozens of logic based reasons you should all consider when making your decision if any board member feels strongly about the closure of magnolia i hope i hope at the very least you give your reasoning i would like to know why you think magnolia campus should close by campuses that require millions of dollars dollars for updates to remain open i would like to know the research you did to make this decision because it's a drastic change and changes like this should not happen without reasoning research facts statistics and transparency i want transparency from you board members i want to hear your reasoning your logic and i want to hear it clearly i don't want difficult language or jargon i want you to say own up to your word and say it in complete sentences that we can all understand because if it's personal i want to know i want you to own up to your choices so your constituents understand so we can clearly understand why these decisions are being made because you owe us that more importantly the students of magnolia deserve a board member to advocate for them to fight for their education and an advocate to say their campus is completely updated i want somebody to talk about the gladstone street school students being forced to move to magnolia and now possibly facing another move the list goes on i want to hear from sabrina beau for the past few meetings i've called out and has said she would not like to speak afterwards i want to hear about your charter school if the people of rosedale are coming to azusa schools i want to hear from all of you so we all understand and we want to know why we should continue to vote for you or not vote for you i want to remind you all that we're the reason we're up here we vote them into these positions and we can easily vote them out thank you miss serrano next we have jessica garcia hi i'm really thrilled to be considered a parent with these amazing people um i am a parent of a tk student at dalton um our teachers right here and when i moved to azusa i tried to get out of the zoo i did not want my child going to schools with twos and threes i said get me out of here i decided to go to glendora i tried to go to covina and at the end of the day i am beyond thankful that we landed at dalton um every single day i feel safe dropping my child off i'm in constant communication with my child teacher like other parents have mentioned um mrs clark knows their name literally my tk child showed up to school on the very first day and the principal knew her name with the mask like it was mind-blowing how for someone who was so reluctant to join the azusa school district to then be welcomed with such open arms and so obviously we all have these amazing stories that pull on our heartstrings right um we're all shaking while we're up here because it's intimidating you you're you know voted into office you're sitting here you're taking notes they've got you know the public access channel happening i think that guy's a reporter taking notes on his phone like we all want to make our voices heard and i feel like the best thing that we can do is just continue to echo and mirror all of the things you know there are teachers retired my best friend her mom was a teacher adult for over 35 years and knowing the legacy that she leaves behind some of these other amazing teachers who've gotten up and spoken the legacy that they leave behind regardless of what school closes we really need to make sure that we ensure the students that are here and as you said now stay in azusa because similarly if i don't get my soon to be you know tk students in the same classroom i might try and leave again and it's not because it's close to me it's not because it's something that you know i have against the city now it's just that i really like where we're at and i like what azusa has chosen to offer our students so if i can offer any solace or positive words that already haven't been spoken by the league of parents and teachers here today i just really again encourage you to think with your vote about what is going to further enrich our students and keeping people in azusa unified and how can we continue to build on the confidence that i received by sticking around in azusa um you know we can't expect change with our students unless we actually invest in our students and so again i'm so thrilled to be a parent with all the rest of these people and thank you so much for your time thank you ms garcia next we have haley johnson dear azusa unified school board my name is haley johnson and i am extremely saddened to hear about the potential closing of ellington school i have lived down the street for 30 years and i personally attended ellington school along with my brother as a resident and former alumni i am disappointed that i was not informed about the potential and crucial decision for years ellington has served not only as a pillar of education but a center point for community interaction and neighborhood support i'm concerned for the future of our neighborhood if ellington closes our safe and small community would be at stake if the building goes vacant unused or torn down ellington is the heart and soul of our neighborhood and serves so many people in a variety of ways because of ellington elementary and our probable teacher-to-student ratio i was able to prioritize my own education i went on to receive a full academic and athletic scholarship i competed in the big 12 conference as a division one gymnast i hope the same opportunities are available for the next generation please consider the impact this will make on our little community when making your decision please vote to keep ellington open at active thank you thank you miss johnson next we have nancy saving hello um my name is nancy sabin i'm a homeowner who didn't know anything about this uh there were no notifications no flyers uh directly to our homes uh but when voting time comes we get uh about five flyers to a home for all of you that want to be voted in uh we have uh three voters in our house each one gets a fire from every single person that wants to be voted but notifications weren't sent so we were caught off guard and i'm wondering you know why we were caught up hard so uh also i'm concerned with the amount of schools that are being closed all at once we've already closed three schools right and there's going to be a potential of i don't know four to six schools what's gonna happen with all that abandoned property uh have you decided what's gonna happen uh how what is the total amount of square footage that's going to be abandoned and are we guaranteed that those properties are not going to be sold to developers to add more population in our area that can't be supported by the infrastructure can you guarantee us that that property won't be sold to developers uh has there been a decision have you looked that far i believe you have i believe the fact that there hasn't been transparency uh transparency is because you don't want us to know uh zeus is a small city havana is going to be affected how could you close so many schools at once i i don't understand that and next time i would like to be informed of these things we are we pay our property tax we support the schools to do what what have you guys been doing for two years what justifies you staying in your positions when you make decisions like this first order of business last week everybody voted to give themselves a raise all of you whoever got all those raises 200 000 a year and more to do what to ruin our cities to close our schools to i don't know what's going to happen with all their property who knows the total square footage of all this abandoned property who knows it i don't i wasn't notified i'm a property owner another woman talked about transparency let us know or don't let us know and try to you know get these things done uh behind our backs is all i can tell that's all i can surmise is that it was done uh notifying the least amount of people that needed to be notified and now you're going to vote on it thank you thank you seven your time is expired next up we have amber fish hello thank you all for having me tonight um i'm listening to all the parent comments and i want you to know my heart goes out to each and every one of you supporting your schools we're fighting for our children's education here it's important they need to see we are the example we set for our children they need to see us fighting for what we believe but we also have to think about the future and what our future holds um i was a part of the reorganization committee and knowing that the school board was coming back to look at these decisions i took the time to go over the reorganization notes available on azusa.org i look through my notes which are pages and pages of notes i appreciate the the board members who took the time to sit down with me and fellow parents previously you guys are doing a great job listening to the community and i appreciate that but i want to share some things currently our school districts our school district has nine elementary schools open putting our elementary schools at 58.25 capacity we were told we needed to have 20 or sorry 75 capacity in order to be fiscally responsible but having 75 capacity means that in a couple years we will be under that 75 capacity and we will no longer be fiscally responsible we need to close schools in order for our community or for our school district to be sustainable we took two high schools and merged them into one and now students don't have to choose between which school they want to go to based on programs they're going to have all of that opportunity in one location we took three middle schools that were running at approximately 30 capacity each and we're merging them into one high school gladstone high school which will now be the middle school it's a fantastic idea giving our students our middle school students the best that they they can offer they're going to get a gym they're going to get a full-on track we need to close elementary schools in order to make our student our elementary schools the best to not be spreading our resources then everybody's asking for programs we want programs too but we can't have them if our funds are spread thin across nine schools um comparable cities cities of our comparable size have fewer elementary schools in azusa they're looking at five to six city uh schools per city we're running nine we need to close at least three and this is a hard decision nobody is taking this decision lightly i can tell you i played with numbers looking at closing all the different schools and what would be the best i can't tell you that it's a tough decision and our board is not taking this decision lightly and i appreciate you guys coming back to the table and looking at this again thank you miss fish next we have lisa serrano can you hear me yes we can hear you okay thank you um nobody wants their schools to close i don't want to see dalton lee ellington powell or magnolia close but unfortunately unfortunately the district is saying that three schools will close so sad as this is this district needs to make their decisions in a logical manner research was gathered years of decision making and planning and within this planning magnolia was not one of the schools that was chosen to close why because it doesn't make sense to close it it is modernized it doesn't need any money to continue it is great and ready to go it is also serving the east side of azusa thank you gabi arianis for speaking up and putting magnolias closer back on the agenda i hope the board votes on these closures with logical decision making thank you thank you miss serrano next we have violet hello can you help me can you hear me okay thank you okay um good evening this is the board members and this is a community i come here yet again this evening again on the matter of the revisit of school closures to keep lee's school open my two boys go to lee one is in kindergarten and the other is in first grade lee's school is a great serving elementary school to the community of azusa residents that live north of first slash baseline south of foothill west of citrus and east of azusa avenue lee is right in the center of our city surrounded by large density of apartment conflicts condos and multi-general housing which means it has a large community of walkers lee is also the closest elementary school to what now will be our only high school azuza high lee has the capacity to accommodate more students lee also has room for additions if needed for future expansions um i just wanted to tell the board to please make the right decision and to keep that center of our city in mind and i know you guys have a big decision today of what to do but just please keep in mind of our community that lives right in the center of azusa thank you so much for all your time that you guys have had for listening to all our parents and all of our concerns thank you so much have a good night thank you violet next we have anna good evening board members i am a big part of ellington school i was just recognized for parent of the year and parent of the district i have a lot to say at first um but uh one main thing i want for ellington is for miss sabrina beau said on the last meeting that if we needed anything we can contact you guys i did several emails did not receive anything back all i want is for every single board member to come to ellington and meet with me let me see let me show you what ellington has to offer i'm excuse me because i'm a little nervous right now because i had just had so much to say and i'm not going to drag it on because parents are just everyone is concerned about their own school my main concern is ellington and what we have to offer and we never get a board member out there all together in one group you guys come out individually i would just like for you to all come and meet with me you can get my email from mr adrian acosta our principal and see what our wonderful school has to offer so that's i'll leave it with that and i appreciate the good work you guys are doing i don't wish anyone to be voted off the board because you're all very wonderful people so have a good night thank you anna next we have george ingle what do you mean can you hear me yes we can good evening board members i come to you once again i'm a parent of the six-year-old who attends lee elementary uh we moved to israel two years ago and at the time we had many choices and one of our deciding factors um was being in the middle of azusa having an elementary school and the high school right next to it why because i have a son attending lee elementary right now and also have a son attending azusa high school right next to the middle school we are in the middle of the city close to the high school where my son currently attends an elementary where my other son is in first grade we are not the only parents that have a son or daughter at azusa and a son or daughter at lee there are also other parents that drop off their children at azusa high and then drop off their younger children at lee i've also brought up to you the following facts based on all groups in census blocks 40 4301 and 4042.01 there is a higher density of population surroundingly based on that census data there are approximately 2 000 kids under 5 to 14 years old that may attend elementary lee elementary just like us many parents walk their kids to school and we do not want to have to cross major or potentially assertive streets and if you closely the possibility to also cross a very busy metro track we are also taxpayers and parents of lee students again a school that is located in the middle of azusa superintendent ortega where we are also taxpayer when is lee's turn to get modernized when do you plan to invest in our school you and every member of the board know that lee can accommodate more students and it has a lot of potential most importantly room for growth you're closing schools now because of enrollment numbers what will you do when all schools are at capacity in in the future and you close the schools that have room to build for potential growth lee has a lot of potential keep it open you have to make we understand you have to make choices you need to close you needed to close a high school and decided to keep a souza high located in the middle of azusa we hope that you as elected members of the board will keep lee elementary school open and invest in our school keep your word and keep lee elementary open thank you thank you mr ingle next we have james fuentes lika do we see james fuentes oh can you hear me uh yes oh thank you yes my apologies um hi um uh my name is molly fuentes and my husband and i are parents of a daughter who attends dalton elementary school and we just wanted to thank everyone for the opportunity to share a few words tonight we greatly appreciate the comments from other parents and listening because it is very evident that we all greatly care about our schools and where our children attend i also appreciate the board's transparency in making um the the videos on the school reorganization the reading summaries and the viewing slides available and posted on the district website we have definitely reviewed all of them and read them and appreciate having that information accessible and it is apparent that you know just due to the sheer numbers and the enrollment that schools do need to close so based on that i just wanted to share a couple of comments about dalton elementary and our experiences there i've worked over 10 years in public education and i must say when we moved into azusa i didn't have any intention of our daughter attending school here our intention was to put her in private school due to concerns we had about overcrowding about declining enrollment and about low ratings on public education rating sites about this district however during the pandemic our daughter showed a strong desire to learn and we thought well you know what we'll enroll her in virtual tk i honestly didn't think that anybody could pull off virtual tk quite as well as dalton elementary school did my daughter was so engaged she learned phenomenally well she was reading before she ever entered kindergarten the culture at dalton truly caused my husband and i to really rethink our educational plans for her and pulling her out of the district and i must say that that was one of the best decisions that we have made thus far the quality of her education at dalton has been superior to some of the schools that i've worked in over the last 10 years this school shows great promise one of the top schools in azusa a stem school a pbis school and i can't emphasize much how important it is that you have a school that uses positive intervention behavior supports and looks at a child's social emotional intelligence and learning with the same veracity as they do their academic progress i really really encourage you to keep dalton open and i encourage other parents to get to know dalton and get to know the community and perhaps you'll want your child to attend dalton as much as we do thank you so much thank you miss fuentes next we have annette escobar hi um good evening as adult and parent i'd like to express my support for henry dalton and that i am completely against the possible closure our children teachers and staff will suffer families need henry dalton because of location some even go out of their way and out of district so their children can attend i ask that the board members be reasonable and not close our wonderful school thank you mr escobar and next up we have mike siofi please correct me if i said your name incorrectly sorry but president i don't see him online any longer he may have gotten knocked off okay we'll we'll check back in at the end of our list next we have alicia godinez he is also no longer in zoom attendance okay we will check back in um when we get to the end of the list although we're drawing down next we have john cogan hello hi hi my name is john cogan um i'm the father of two daughters who just recently started their schooling at dalton elementary school i can only say i mean we brought our kids from uh private school we all had the same concerns that i believe a person two two speakers before had um azusa has low ratings azusa is terrible whatever you want try to get out of there but um i mean we've only been here like i said less than a month with our oldest daughter and i mean she's thriving she is she came from you know um foothill christian school and um the teachers there immediately recognized how you know how to how to i don't know how to push your buttons how to get her going and um she hate she did not like reading she was i i don't know how else to say it but um within two weeks uh her teacher had her uh reading maybe two or three levels above what she had been doing she now reads for hours um at a time without provocation or without um requests um and i can only say that that sounds like magic as a as a parent who struggled with some of these kids and um i'm sorry i didn't get to attend inside i mean i'm actually outside in the parking lot but um it's pretty crowded in there so i know the support and i see the support that all these uh parents and educators have for their students and i know i i only recently became aware of what was going on in the azusa school district and i realize you guys have a difficult task and i don't wish anything upon any of the other um fellow my fellow residents and parents of other schools and i only hope that whatever decision is made takes into account everybody and is expressed clearly to those especially those who feel like they weren't informed of time thank you mr cogan next we have lisa bisgard can you hear me okay sorry good morning or good evening sorry thank you for letting me speak via zoom tonight i've read and listened to so much regarding these issues right now i'm the pto president at arlington tk8 my family has been with ellington since 2004 my siblings and now my own children who are eighth six and tk so ellington is our family i've heard capacity as well as money being the reason for closures yet last meeting i do recall superintendent and others getting a four to five percent raise tell me how that makes sense to close schools due to money what will you do with the closed schools because you already have some that are vacant ones just sitting there especially when you get off the freeway to enter azusa and you just have a school with weeds growing in a vacant building if wellington closes i understand kids would go to valley dell have any of you actually walk from ellington to valley dale in the middle of a median between the busy street where they speed most the time it is unsafe ellington is inside a community of homes whom residents watch out for our students the same residents who weren't told about any of these possible changes with the closure our teachers will have to go to different schools if they even get that opportunity because i'm sure there will be pink slips with these closures it's kind of saddening at ellington we have an amazing tk teacher mrs dyer who came from gladstone and now i'm afraid she will have to move again if we close which isn't fair our tk students who are already excited to move on to ms rodon's class for next year with their friends yet they might not even have that possibility of even having a kinder at ellington next year all of our teachers are made for ellington they bring our community together as one as parents we must advocate for our students teachers as well the staff we don't want them to move you all need to be transparent with us because we ask questions and our questions aren't answered and our emails are ignored i do recall about three to four years ago meeting with president adrian with the group of us ellington parents and you promising to help ellington with programs and opportunities not just with the school but the whole district now all of a sudden you want to close this down please no more empty promises i'm asking to keep our ellington eagles sorry at our school with an amazing opportunity surrounding commun amazing communities surrounding it think about what you're doing because i've had multiple families come up to me at the school asking me how to do an out of district transfer in case ellington closes thank you miss ms garden well circle back uh lika do you see mike siofi online i do not see mike online but we do have alicia beck okay alicia you're invited to unmutant speak uh hi my name is felicia i'm a parent of a lee student like many of those parents who've spoken before i've you know it took me a long time to transfer my son here even after buying our house in azusa so we've lived here about five years and i barely transferred him this year granted it was zoom the previous two years but um it's kind of amazing to hear how great lee is being that it's one of the least you know updated schools within the district and how how amazing they're doing miss lopez has really done a number with my son and getting him engaged in school and getting excited him excited to be there so just advocating for him and having some consistency with just changing schools i you know urge you guys to keep lee open as well um that's all thank you miss godinez and so lika before we conclude and close this time i'll ask one more time if we see mike siofi on there i do not see him online okay in that case we will conclude with this item 3.1 and and here in a moment we will move to the only item on our agenda for discussion which is 4.1 discussion and decision on school b organization elementary schools before we go there i do want to once again just remind all who are in attendance that again the format of these meetings uh themselves do not allow for back and forth dialogue and so that was the opportunity that we had to receive comments and and i i know that i can safely speak on behalf of the board and thanking all those who came to share their comments and and share their perspectives with the the board of education um with that said as we move forward um there is there again the format for the meeting does not allow back and forth dialogue so i i will ask um and invite everyone to listen um but ask that you uh not not participate verbally um throughout the course of the meeting um as we move on to item 4.1 we will we will begin with uh uh superintendent ortega uh who will make a somewhat of a presentation um understanding that there are different people who are joining the conversation at different points and we're wanting to make sure that while we have uh ears here listening and and eyes here watching uh that that we can do our best to kind of summarize um some of the work that has taken place over the course of the past couple years when evaluating this decision as well as some of the data points and and rationale be behind where we find ourselves in the position that we're in at this time board member president um i would like to take this time to actually i have to use the restroom so board president let me excuse myself but i don't want to miss any of this so okay let's uh we'll we'll go ahead and take we'll go and take a a five minute recess here we will give it one more minute until we return so heads up okay thank you for your patience uh allowing for that pause uh both those who are joining us online and those who are here in person again just to pick up where we left off from from uh superintendent ortega will be sharing with us a a presentation that will help to um summarize it and and bring as best we can everyone up to speed as far as as far as the rationale some data points around how we are seeing us at the place we are now where we're looking to to make some of these uh school consolidations uh superintendent or ticket thank you uh so thank you board president greer um as you stated tonight we want to try to recap why we are going through school reorganization since november 2020 which is when the school reorganization team met for the very first time we have been communicating that our school reorganization is about the ability to increase and improve the programs and facilities that we offer our students staff and community want to kind of paint the picture uh about uh school reorganization as well as you can see from this table in the 2003-2004 school year azusa unified school district had 12 thousand 134 students this school year we have 7084 students that is a drop of 42 percent in four short years after this year in the 25 26 school year we are projected to have 6 3227 students yes this is just a projection but the projection would put us at a 48 drop or almost 50 percent of our student population compared to 2003 2004.
reminders will be going out uh through a swift reach call instagram and other social media uh outlets um okay so at this time i'd like to call for a motion to accept i'll make them off that was mr shelley and then the second was mr tabakia yeah sure okay very good thank you okay i'd like to take the vote now for may uh mrs abreu yes mrs fredo yes mr raincourt yes mr shelley yes mr tarabaki yes mr yanuzzi yes okay mr okay just before i call for a motion to close just to remind you that our next open board meeting will be wednesday april 27th that's our reorganization and our regular board meeting as you know each year we we do the both board meetings the same night but 7 pm stop time so that's april 27th and i'm sure mr alfano will be sending out some reminders once again to the board just a reminder to do your self-evaluation um so i wish everyone and the students uh we're looking forward to a spring break with great weather motion to close okay thank you mr marine corps thank you very much okay thank you
so first this is just our timeline please know that there's information we still don't have at this point we do have the governor's proposed budget but we do not have legislative action yet we hope to get that at the end of may uh we a little bit anticipate that we will be proposing possibly again without legislative approval and then we're still waiting to date on the classroom site fun dollar amount per student which we should be getting in the next day or two i believe it is normally transmitted to us by jlbc the joint legislative budget committee by the end of march so again april the april and may time frame is extremely important so the 2023 budget alignment to the strategic plan again just as i indicated this this budget plan is fully aligned to the strategic operating plan as well as to the override commitments made in november of 2019.
this declining enrollment uh has a lot of uh things attributed to it uh but some of the some of the factors are low birth rates in the state and particularly our area and the rise in housing costs this declining enrollment that you see here is not affecting only azusa unified school district this is a statewide issue in 2018 2019 the state lost about 23 000 students two years later the straight the state dropped nearly seven times that figure losing more than 160 000 students by 2031 it is projected that in the state of california we will be losing 703 000 students this right here is a graphical representation of the table we were just looking at it that we were just looking at just again just to give you a different view of our declining enrollment in azusa if we took our declining enrollment and mapped it to our facilities you will see that in 2003 2004 we had 18 school sites for 12 134 students this school year 2122 we have 16 school sites for 7 00 84 students so while our student enrollment has dropped drastically and is projected to continue to decline our facilities have only seen a decrease of two elementary sites if we look at the our enrollment and our facilities and we look at it and we look at it in a different way we look at it in capacity which is how many students we can serve at our sites if we take our current 16 sites so not the 18 sites that we had in 2003 our current 16 sites which can serve 15 201 students and we calculate the number of students that we actually had in 2003 2004 which was 12 134 we would be using 80 of our total capacity of our current facilities that's taking our current facilities and taking the students from 2003 2004.
specifically increases in compensation this will include the mini compensation study that otm completed comparing our starting salaries with some of our professional staff along with moving some of our other resources into the base for teachers along with making the three percent pay increase i'm going and then adding two percent to that increasing instructional coach fte directly related to student success expansion of instructional choice we had talked earlier in the year about the acceleration campuses the international baccalaureate as well as the the approval you just made for the entity change at gilbert high allowing 7th and 8th grade to begin in an accelerated middle school at gilbert high and then finally as is true last year or the current year we've made a commitment to allocate out the unrestricted capital based upon a zero zero-based budgeting process which means prior to allocation all of our schools and departments are indicating how they expect to spend it and then we will monitor the spend and if they need to make a change they're absolutely willing able to do that it just needs to go through an additional approval process so fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2023 student accounts we've done this span because this is the span of cobit and you can see how the pandemic has impacted our student counts here in gilbert so note in 2020 our final was 33 000 just under 33 124.
excuse me could you please repeat that um how many students you said 15 000 201 201. and those current sites if we were to keep it open is that what you're saying correct so could you please explain it in a simpler term sure the 16 schools that we have right now we can house we can have 15 201 students across the 16 schools with the with the facilities that we currently have right now that's not building anything or adding new rooms that's just currently what we have right now if we project this out um i'm sorry in 2122 this school year with the 16 sites that we have and the amount of students that we have um this school year you will see that we are using 47 of the capacity of our facilities by 2526 when we are projecting uh another decline we will be projected to be using 40 of the capacity of our current facilities flip the other way around that means that sixty percent of our facilities uh would not be in full use to um have classrooms uh for student as this data has been unfolding in azusa right we've been talking about since 2003 2004 to now that's a long span our neighboring and local districts are also have also been seeing the same type of data for their enrollment and their facilities as well some of these districts have very early on began to respond to this data by closing schools other districts just recently closed schools this school year others are closing schools next school year and others are beginning now to have these conversations in our district in january 2020 the board of education directed the superintendent that was the superintendent at that time to begin the work of making the tough decisions on how to reorganize our schools again that was january 2020 in october 2020 we created a school reorganization team that was made up of 50 parents and 50 staff to look at school reorganization to begin working on this and we launched the team in november in september 2021 the board received the official recommendations from the school reorganization team and the board of education at that time began their process to make a final decision through this process the board of education has been asking for data they have had robust conversations they have been listening to public input they have taken all of that into consideration as they have worked on what has rightfully been said tonight making these tough decisions and to end i just want to loop us back to how we began school reorganization is going to allow azusa unified school district to increase and improve the program offerings that it offers its students at our schools this means that our secondary schools this means more course offerings more access more choice activities extracurriculars robust and rounded curriculum in our elementaries they don't have courses per se but the same thing a robust and rounded curriculum extracurriculars and activities as well in terms of our facilities school reorganization is going to allow us to concentrate our existing funds for facility improvements it's going to also allow us to increase and improve the maintenance of our sites and the facility and the safety of our sites as well thank you superintendent ortega so uh ford as as we now take on this this next part of our meeting this endeavor of discussing and making this decision there are uh a few things that i i want to communicate and keep in front of us to keep in mind as we move forward um the the first one is it's it's going to be imperative um that as we look at making these decisions that we that we take the time this evening and and that we use uh this this time and space that we have to render what will be a final decision um again that's going to be extremely important and um to everyone uh hearing and listening uh as we hear the diverse perspectives and and uh thoughts that people have what that means is there is zero percent chance that by the end of our our discussion today that everyone in this room will be will be happy or pleased um and yet uh board where we're tasked with doing the hard work of making uh a final decision this evening uh the second thing i'll point out is as we are making decisions i i would ask i would encourage um as it has been stated that as as we vote that that we do take the time to also express and articulate some of our reasoning and our thinking behind decisions that that we're making um just that there is is uh an added layer of clarity and transparency the third and final thing that i'll add before we begin this conversation is that due to the the ways in which there already was a vote that took place on december 21st uh 2021 there are going to be some specific ways in which we will need to make motions uh and move certain certain motions forward and so let's uh be mindful of that uh as as we are making the the motions and we have our our legal counsel uh carlos here to to assist us with that if if we find ourselves in any any kind of a pickle with that said we will go ahead and open up the the discussion around discussion and decision around reorganization regarding elementary schools so so you want to know my views and my vote or what is it you want to hear from me i i would say as as we have the discussion uh so it could be that on the front end of this discussion that there are questions that we have whether it's for staff or or just conversation and that's the and there's room for that i would say when we get to the portion of our of our conversation where we are looking to make uh motions and and votes that that i would encourage us to to articulate our thinking and reasoning behind uh the the votes the motions and the the seconds and the votes that that we're going to be taking okay um then i will start so i want to say good evening to everyone and i want to thank my colleagues for tabling this very important item until i returned regarding the school closures um i would like to start by saying thank you for all of you voicing your opinions through all these board meetings and virtually and in person and i want to um thank also the reorganization committee for putting spending so many hours and days on putting together a plan that we needed to look at they also did the research i have been on your side i have been and the other side will put it this way i'm retired for the years of the garvey school district as a classified employee i was a csa union job steward and i am a community advocate and i stick my mind when i feel i need to be heard so i do appreciate it that you all come out and speak on what your concerns are and you know what you want to see different because that's really important um uh i became always before i became a school board member so my platform i always use this i was a voice just like you now i'm a vote so i recommend that if you want to make a difference in your community or in your schools then you should run for offices you know join the superintendent's wrong table join the pta pto committees where you can make a difference and you can be that vote on the presentation today that mr ortega gave superintendent ortega is the reason why we're reaching this point superintendent and cabinet will give us data regarding budgets on three year projection declining enrollment that uh status due to low birth rates high rents property values and programs and facilities the cunning enrollment is not only happening here that is this unified school district everyone is stacy declining in rome and i have very many um fellow school board members that are talking about the same thing declining enrollment and school closures in their district in the san gabriel valley i have another scenario you know i have four children who are grandchildren all attended azusa unified school district they're all grown i'm still here i have no kids but i'm still in my house so of course i'm not giving any more kids to murray or gladstone or center where my kids attend it so um so the job of the school board member is what do we need to do about all this they give us data they we hear people okay us what are we gonna do about it that is our job three years ago the scooper voted on school organization due to the declining enrollment and capacity in our schools looking into school capacities enrollment and facilities a school reorganization committee was formed that included parents management administration classified certificated and personnel union representation they met countless hours which i appreciate 10 days they all went over the budget the data's information on the schools from elementary to the high schools that would bring them back bring them recommendations to the board of education this is the hardest decision that i have to make as a school board member how to make our jobs to keep but our job also as many is the budget ausd's budget fiscally solvent 85 percent of our base funds is used for our staff salaries health benefits we do want to and we also don't want the state to take over our district so that can possibly happen if they know that we are not managing managing our funds property properly i have read every email heard public speaking spoke to parents did my own research and did my own data on top of what is given to me uh school closures at ausd is inevitable at this time that being said um i have not changed my mind i am still in favor of model 3 the proximity map for the following reasons anyone everyone wants to hear the reasons why we're voting the way we want to vote or where our minds our mind is at well first of all i cannot see spending three to five million dollars on remodeling a school campus when we have schools that have already been remodeled with measure k funds the funds can be used on other projects within the district where schools that are going to remain open location traffic is horrible i was on the morning walking with the azusa walks committee through the city and we went to just different areas this is the you know do they need crosswalks here do they need more crossing guards you know how can we make it safe for the students and the public well there was a parent walking put in your child's hand walking across the street on the west side of slauson park right in the middle of the i don't know what you call it the island i guess you want to put guardian you know to get to the school and did not want to walk to the corner where there was a crossing guard so i'm imagining more students well i i think it's it's going to be a safety issue and um also the um the parking lot is very small they have two parking lots in there where it's very small azusa high campus will be adding approximately another 900 students from gladstone high school to me it's a real it's a big going to be a big safety issue benefits of merging programs at a school site can continue at a new campus in 2019 we closed glaston elementary school and they went to magnolia only to be moved again i myself was a parent would not appreciate that not to mention i know people keep speaking about the east side the east side but i'm talking about the south side it's also the 210 freeway they closed magnolia last excuse me uh mountain view then they closed glaston street school now they want to close magnolia so i i do not agree with that i think that we need to be fair and make it equal in different parts of the town as you look at the map i wish we would have been able to put the proximity map up there please and the end the map and you could see how it's equal and different parts of town where our students go so i feel that we need to make this decision today the community has been waiting since december 21st three months ago it is not fair the parents to the staff of our elementary schools to continue this conversation any longer thank you thank you board member rodriguez uh any other in the thoughts comments questions from the board so i think for my part um and i will say i just differ slightly from from yolanda and i think i made it clear at the last meeting that i wanted to well at least talk to the magnolia community uh i do believe i mean i think we had a set intention set out of this whole process um but i do think that there has to be some balance in terms of continuity of community and um and where the school closures happen i still strongly believe that you can't leave that southeast quadrant without a school right and so that's why i think magnolia should stay open um um but i i heard very um i think that there's compelling reasons to both be able to maybe not close three schools but just close to schools right so i would i actually just wanted to be in favor of having a conversation about do we keep magnolia school open or not and not read not talk about all the other decisions that we made and so that's what i was hoping that we would talk about tonight can you please clarify that so what schools exactly are you i'm just talking about taking a vote on whether or not on on reversing the decision on closing magnolia and not address not taking the full motion that was done last time and discussed it all that's what i'm proposing and yes it's true that does it means that we only close two schools and not three um but i do think um i'm okay with that at this point any questions or comments from the board i need to disagree on that and the reason why is because okay so then the same thing would happen another two years we'll be sitting in the same place talking to other parents regarding their schools because we look at the capacity we look at the budget we're looking at all these items we will not survive just closing two schools we would have to be doing this i mean if you want to keep it just fine but that means another couple of years we'll be sitting here again mr ball i know that you're joining us on on zoom um do you do you have a are are you able to kind of do a sense or or a rough assessment around that that question or conversation around um two campuses versus three remaining uh only only closing two as opposed to three um yes as far as if we would have to be doing this again in two years and just yeah what that what that the potential that that has for our capacity and and the potential impact of our uh the future into the future um yes so um with the goal just using the goal that we set as a target of 75 percent if we only close two schools we'll be drafting um below that market that um goal that we've already set for ourselves so we will already be uh having schools that would i will say in the words um not physical sound hi it's marina um mr mall can you can you um help me remember i think i was the one that asked the question about the capacity and what would what percentage capacity we would need to reach or maintain to be fiscally sound and i i thought you told us 85 was that did i remember that incorrectly or was that 75 85 is always our goal um 75 is the percentage that we were using with the school reorganization team that we did not want any schools to be or less our goal was to not have any schools below 75 percent but as far as we're talking financial um being physically solvent 85 is the goal so i'm hearing you say that the reorganization committee was given the criteria of looking at individual sites being 75 or more but overall as a district 85 or more was that 85 uh threshold shared or discussed among the reorganization committee we did discuss it um but every model that um when we were looking at it the target goal was to ensure that nothing was below 75 percent thank you you're welcome any other questions comments can we get a minute to process all this okay i i didn't prepare something to speak but i do want to thank everybody that spoke today and i i apologize for those individuals that i have not been able to get back to uh there's been plenty of emails and i appreciate them actually and i should probably have like a i don't know like a automatic response or something but i didn't i gave my phone number out and only two people called me and i did speak to them um but everyone that spoke today [Music] you guys are speaking with passion i feel it everything makes sense what you're saying like i'm trying to reason i'm trying to like in my head i you know i'm trying to process all this and this decision of what school i mean we clearly now see that you know uh miss latasha jamal just said the target goal is 85 the reconfiguration team settled at 75 one thing is clear and what is clear is that we need to close schools and that's painful and i'm speaking for myself i'm trying to take emotion out of this and think rationally think logically look at the data we're looking at the data we've been going through this and you're right we're back at square one like right why are we here i'll tell you why i'm here tonight why i asked for this boat for us to have this discussion because some of you guys needed to be hurt some of you guys needed to speak and i'm so grateful that you took the time to come in person or on zoom to address your concerns you may think that and i'm gonna again speak for myself because i can't i'm only 20 but i'm not listening but i am listening and we are being pulled here there there here but what is our objective that is what i need to think about working for the district for 20 and i'm gonna say i worked for the district for 20 years when the decline in enrollment started happening we needed to close a school every year and we didn't do that now we're here faced we're about you know we're closing seven schools or so for middle schools three elementaries right and one high school this is not an easy decision for anybody to be sitting in this seat right now i made the decision to run i quit my job as an employee here understanding and knowing what was coming again i've been in this district since i was five years old and there's no right choice but the right choice is that we have to look at what's really happening within our community with you know our declining enrollment you know i heard some of you guys and i've heard you know we're taking our kids out we're taking our kids out you know it makes me sad of course that anybody would want to leave a souza district i'm a product of a souza district my mother-in-law's a product my father-in-law my brothers and sisters went to isuzu high my kids as much as i would like to keep every single school open we cannot and like board member um adrian greer said some of you guys going to walk out of here not liking our decision i i get that but please understand this is not personal i promised you this for me this is not my political agenda but i'm gonna vote on something because i want you to vote for me again this is not on my platform my main concern are how are we going to make this district comparable to other districts because i'll tell you right now i've been here for gosh 40 something years 41 years and we're far behind we're far behind compared to other districts look for those of you that want to stay roll up your sleeves with us and make this work please i welcome you for those that want to leave our district you know thank you for being here with us and sharing the space with us when you're here let me share something what what my son said to me he's he's uh 19 years old and he's at layola maryland right now he graduated from gladstone high school and there was a point i was a i was in grad school and i needed help with my children because between my husband's job and and in grad school and my internship and work and i i just i didn't know how my kids were gonna get to school and so of course i said you know for one year your your auntie lives across the street like from san dimas high school like for one year can you just do this for me i need to do so many hours and i don't know how i'm gonna do it and on top of that i was president of the booster club for the football team at gladstone high school i don't know how he did it but i said i need help and i told my son i said can i move you can i move you guys real quick like just one year honestly i thought about it because of you know child care and i said to my son can i please move you to bonita high school you can walk from your auntie's house like i don't have to worry about picking you guys dropping you guys off you know because i have to be on the road at six o'clock to get you know pasadena and you know what he said to me it's a good school maybe you know you'll get something you'll bring it back to asusa he sat me and my husband down and he said mom dad the school district and the school doesn't make me i make the school district so figure out how you're going to get me to gladstone and how we're going to stay here in asusa my son challenged my husband and i i was like oh my god what am i gonna do how are we going to like i've asked neighbors i've asked people like how am i gonna do i have to hire somebody you know these are struggles that i as a parent have also gone through how am i going to get my child to school how am i going to make this work because i have so much on my plate and my children are part of that plate and juggling too much what am i going to draw so we need a village right and that's what my son challenged me to do so i found my village parents parents here in asusa are amazing teachers hey i got your child after school don't worry i got like i you know other parents hey i'll take your kids to school another parent was like hey i'll pick them up i'll keep them you know until you're until your husband gets out of work how much do i pay you nothing what i mean we're a village for those of us that want to stay here for those of us that want to make this district better for our students i invite you look you may not like the decision that i make tonight and i know some of you are not but i invite you for a cup of coffee to have a conversation even after you know why because there's so much history memories excuse me i want to remind everyone here in attendance that uh there is no dialogue and so i will ask that you please refrain from speaking at this time i'd like to just i'm not i'm sorry i'm not done sorry we're here and now i'm i'm gonna say it i invite you guys for a cup of coffee i may not get to you right away but i will get back to you one thing i stand on what i said before and you know what you guys have every right be angry i can't take that from you that's that's your emotion that's your feeling but i'm human too and i have emotions and i'll tell you when we made the vote right to close gladstone high school to go all the school i don't want to close any of them again but i have to put emotion to the side i have to look at the data i have to think of what's best for our students and i have to put my own emotion to the side and can't take it personal whatever you say to me whatever you guys i can't i can't take it because i understand you're coming from a place of love you love your school absolutely and i would be that parent too i was that parent right but again all that i ask is for respect again you may not like my decision but please respect it and know that i'm not making the decision for because somebody's thinking about their property tax how it's going to affect them right i'm so sorry i have to think of the programs i have to think of the sustainability i have to think of being fiscal responsible i have to think of kind of what board member uh rodriguez penguin said if we let the state come and take over they close whatever schools they want and we have no say nothing they can close more than those and and we could be at 95 percent i mean it could be ridiculous so at this time all that i ask again i'm gonna give you guys my number six oh gosh i can't remember it right now sorry six two six six nine one five three three eight please call me text me i work better that way i can't access my email at work i just can't please reach out to me let's have a conversation and again respectfully i thank all of you guys and i can keep going on and on about how much i love this community and i know you love this community too and that's what we have in common so let's work together to move forward thank you for remember cruz gonzalez did you have something to add i just want us to be able to focus on the agenda item at order which is to make a decision about reorganization um are there any other comments to add in regards specifically to the discussion and decision for reorganization for elementary schools thank you board president greer um for superintendent ortega and uh miss jamal can you because we're here well all of us are here together now um can you go into a little bit more detail about how our enrollment projections are formulated i know we had asked for the we have at least a 10-year enrollment projection and i know we had asked to see if we could get a longer term but at least for the tenure can you walk us through the process of how those enrollment projections are calculated and secondarily do those projections include any population growth due to any new housing developments in the area mr ortega would you like me to start yes yes oh okay so far for projections we look at projected birth rates we look at property development productions and the type of housing that are actually to be developed we contract with a company called decision insight that does those type of assessments for us in addition we do our internal calculation to see if we're coming in in um within a material amount of uh of accounting i would say um this year with those accounts i'm confident with those numbers because we were actually 15 students above our projection um so i know our calculations are hitting those marks and with the considerat considerations and recommendations we take in consideration um mr taket we've heard here tonight and also um from members of the community about grades maybe being oversubscribed or wait listed at certain campuses is that accurate so meaning if my home school is dalton which because of where i live currently my home school is dalton and i'm enrolling a third grader am i able to enroll in third grade or is third grade full that that's a very specific example so could you talk about capacity overall at school sites which i think we've heard about but what is the the insight into capacities at certain grade level [Music] i'm not going to be able to speak to certain grade levels but i could speak to um currently when we talk about capacity uh of our schools when it comes to like as a parent wants to enroll somebody or is we're not really talking about the capacity of the school we're talking about the capacity of their staff so if just using as an example an easy number the school has 10 teachers and in december we have three new students that's going to require like it's going to push us over um we're not hiring a teacher at that point in time to we have the rooms there's a lot of empty rooms at the school sites so when we talk about those kind of scenarios again depending on what what time of the year that we're talking about it's really about the current staff at that at that school and where their whether their class sizes are at and so if uh if a class size is already full and there is no room then that's that's locked right there and so then we would offer a different school site uh to to uh to enroll a student and so that's the school of choice program that you could enroll outside of your home attendance boundary yeah we're very proud of the fact that uh we are very fluid and open in our community and so we allow our community to go to whatever school that they want to go to barring space and our our numbers show that our school our school community definitely takes advantage of that so i have a follow-up question on that so i did make the i was the board member that made the request for the uh the table that shows um where students are coming from would you be able to pull that up and and walk us through what that says and what it may indicate to us sure so while mr ortega is is doing that um the the request for data that i submitted was looking at each of our elementary campuses how many students are in that school's attendance boundary and how many are coming from other parts of the city or other parts of the district that attend those schools um because we're looking at the heart of what we're trying to do and that we we do in many areas but we need to make it overall for the district is to become a destination a destination for the students and families who live here and ideally a destination for the area as other other districts have been and i know we have the potential to do that so i'd like to maybe offer my comments around instead of looking at deficits and what we don't have or how many students we don't have or how much space we have what is our potential to activate and expand the programs that are working and the programs that will best serve the students we have now as well as students that may be moving into the area as demographics change over time and i'm not a demographer i'm not a statistician but i am a resident and i shared at a previous board meeting so i wanted to provide some follow-up my oldest daughter is at a public school in a different district and the reason we transferred out of the district was because zoos unified at the time didn't have the program that would serve our family and now this fall i have two kids i'm bringing them to the district because now with where we are with my students my kids education and their development this use unified does have the right fit for them so for as many families at and education is highly personal i'm a public school administrator and i know that there are pockets of excellence that we don't see necessarily as board members or as principals or at superintendents but i know it's very visible to families and teachers in your classroom and one of the things that i'd like to see us is to be able to amplify those stories of success because it doesn't mean it's not there so ten years ago or five years ago if you looked on great schools maybe the numbers didn't tell the story or maybe the api scores didn't tell the story that doesn't mean it doesn't exist it means that the narrative that we've shared them that we've been promoting doesn't tell the whole picture and so i really believe that as we increase our communication around what we're doing and what we're offering i know everyone many people drive or commute throughout the city you see our banners out advertising enrollment and our different programs throughout the city or that we offer at the district and so i hope that this can be the beginning of a focus on the things that we are doing really well and expanding on those programs i hope that gave you enough time to put up this table yes dr bo um i'm assuming this is the one you were referring to yes any chance you could make it slightly bigger i probably can't but we're going to lose we'll just have to slide it over yeah we just have to slide it over i believe yeah can you please explain that graphic how it works mr taylor yes so we'll take the first uh column uh you have here at the top you have a dalton and so what it does is just going across it just tells you how many students attend dalton from dalton that'd be 244.
that particular year if you recall represented an actual increase that we hadn't seen in a few years we increased over 100 enrollees and student counts in that year but in 2021 the final you can see um was you know almost over 2 000 less this is student count now not enrollment and then we fortunately did receive about a thousand a little bit more than a thousand of those students back in the current year reflective of revised number two and then our projection as we have been doing the last four years is assuming a 400 student loss just to make sure that we're accounting for a potential decline in enrollment uh mrs batts can you just for the community define the difference between student count and enrollment you bet so average daily membership adm is equal to our student counts but the average daily membership and student counts are reflective of the proportionate amount of time that each child receives in instruction in a day the best example is kindergarten students so kindergarten students are one enrollee but they're only worth 0.5 student counts or 0.5 adm okay thank you you bet so maybe just clarify that it's not that they're there in school for the day but according to the state that's the funding is for 0.5 that's why that's correct average daily membership is a funding count yes that's correct thank you so the 2023 mno budget capacity projection so again this is the governor's budget base level amount increased by inflation of 2 percent i think you all know that inflation is has been identified as more closer to 7 percent the base level amount though by statute is to shall be the higher of inflation or two percent um so you can see that the new base level amount which is the dollar amount that we use multiplied by our students to get our budget capacity oh we'll go up to thirty four 4 and forty four cents or about eighty nine dollars per student component uh classroom site fund you can see fiscal year 2022 amount per student was 733 dollars per student 198 dollars per student was considered one time so in somewhere in the neighborhood of 533 dollars per student is considered considered ongoing that's what i shared is we're expecting to hear that in the next day or two everything that we've been that we've heard to date indicates that our sales tax revenues are up we do expect that the dollar amount will go up a little bit from that 533 and there is some talk that the glbc may award additional one-time money in classroom site fund as well so again this is a summary going into our budget capacity projections so pk12 adm average daily membership reduced by 400 students again arizona online full time and part time is set equal to what we know to be today in fiscal year 2022 and then the total add-on weighted counts are based upon 2022 revised number two so base level amount again increased teacher experience index decreased to 1.0145 from 1.0196 this resulted in a loss of 1.03 million in funding now that was due to the retirement of more experienced teachers that's correct it's not something that the state took away from us that's correct teachers who retired and hired new teachers without as much experience that's correct okay thank you and then the transportation revenue control limit right now is set equal to fiscal year 2022 we have just completed the current year's 100th day report we do anticipate that there could be an increase in the transportation revenue control limit year over year we've seen a lot more miles traveled because we are out of the the pandemic right now and we are in full we are fully operating as a school district which includes our transportation routes so here's the emino budget capacity calculation so you can see the on the top you have the unweighted adm with the arizona online the total weighted count you can see that looking at revised number two in 2022 in comparison to 2023 projected the unweighted adm you can see the 400 student decrease but note that when you look at the total weighted count it's actually a little bit more than that 400.
how many students attend dalton from ellington zero how many students attend dalton from hodge 23 from lee 28 from magnolia 10 from 36 from powell from valley dale from center from foothill the reason we have center foothill and slots in here is because we do have ellington um and so we wanted to capture those uh how many students attend from outside the district so at dalton how many students are at dalton that don't belong to dalton or don't reside in the area of dalton would be 98 and so that's how the table the table works yep mr ortega what stood out to me from this table and there are there's some there are many things to digest and i'm not making a calculation for each but what stood out to me were that roughly our schools about 30 percent more or less are coming from out of the area meaning out of from another um school district area so school a and approximately 30 percent of the students enrolled at school a are coming from the attendance area from school b right and the other thing that stood out to me looking at this and making some generalizations about the data is that our two dual immersion programs those it seems to me from this looking at this data that those are draws that at um [Music] hodge and at valley dale there's a higher percentage of students coming from outside the those schools attendance boundaries and i am assuming that most or some of that at least the majority is because of the dual immersion program you have any um and further analysis on that in terms of percentages of students and the draws of specialized programs definitely uh to circle back to the um the pride that we have in our district to be able to allow parents a lot of mobility and choice i think the numbers to your point speaks to that right when you have almost all of our sites have a large percentage of students that don't reside in their area i think that speaks to that mobility for whatever reason that may be might be a program we heard earlier uh from public and remember ariana sometimes it's maybe because it's a about daycare you know whatever those those reasons are i think it speaks to that our dual immersion programs have been uh growing uh we do know that they are an attractor we are very proud to begin our doula immersion programs at preschool and so i think that that's uh that's also a big draw as well and also my my last question for this round is can you tell us about um where and how preschool is offered throughout the district and at which sites and what our plans are for expansion i bring this up because we know that preschool is an entry point to the district at as well as their other key points like middle school and high school but preschool certainly is the major entry point into uh public school enrollment yep currently uh at the sites that we currently have we have a preschool program at every single elementary site with the exception of ellington and hodge um and some at some of our sites we have multiple sections because of demand from the community and so we have been growing in our programs in a very short period of time we've actually exponentially grown that program we are very happy uh to be working on a grant right now to be able to offer a full day full year programs in our community for for preschool and so we're looking uh at that and we're also looking at expanding to make sure that every single site uh has a preschool program on site i have a question um regarding one of the i'm going to follow up the programs so one of the concerns that um i heard was um from parents this this last week and and today um will the programs be moved from the schools that are going to be closed or are the programs going to be eliminated thank you for that question i believe it was a week and a half ago maybe two weeks ago we did hold an 8th grade virtual parent expo for all students who are going to be 9th graders next year and we did announce at that expo that we are working on ensuring that the programs that exist at glaston high school are going to have a life and a space at azusa high school that that particular expo was virtual but we are also having one in may i believe that's going to be in person so that our students our parents our community have the opportunity to go to azusa high school i'm very very proud of both glasgow high school and azusa high school not only the staff and the students but they are working collaboratively to make sure that this expo that happens in may uh is something that we're coming together to really highlight the programs that we have and so right now the idea uh is that uh for the reorganization uh that uh the programs would be moved uh to to um to new locations depending on the decisions thank you for that i guess if i could also if i may put a plug um next week is spring break i believe i'm losing track of trying but the week after spring break i believe it's the 12th we're going to dedicate quite a bit of time here at the at the board level to really dive deep into programs and some of the possibilities that we have regarding programs moving forward another thing that i would like to just um also suggest and uh i agree with them board member beau i i don't think that we we publicize all the great programs that we have and all the great things that happen here in asusa so moving forward with this reconfiguration i i would like to see more cheerleading on the you know on the website and you know our amazing teachers here our amazing parents our programs that we have you know we have kids going to berkeley we have kids going to stamp stafford i mean we have kids going to great league schools let's publicize that you know it's not only the other city that gets to we have great kids that go you know and it's all the teachers too i would like to see that and if any of you guys i do want to just share one more thing any of you guys ever decide to run for school board do it yes because you know what let me tell you when you have like right i'm being real with you and if somebody doesn't want me to be real with you i'm sorry it's not my problem it's their problem and i'm going to sit here and be real until the end and that's it i give you my number and i'm going to sit here and you want the truth i will give you the truth so with that being said i want to go ahead and uh move to move this forward there's no more discussion i think there's a motion for what i would like to go ahead and motion to do what i would like to go ahead in motion and motion for model 3 proximity okay so a couple couple things i'll say uh so there's a motion on the floor we do need to and uh carlos correct me from wrong we will need to be mindful of how we make motions due to the way that the that motions uh took place uh last uh on the 21st um and so carlos could you speak to that i think if you look at the actions at december 2021 board meeting there's really two layers to the action there was a layer that left certain schools open and then there's a second action that impacted the transition plan for grades and what grades would remain open in what period of time i think for clarity for the board amongst itself for clarity to the public i think we should start fleshing out the motion itself so that it's very clear if you're going to make a motion for the proximity model which tools will be closing and which schools will be remaining open there is another alternative i want to put this to the entire board and to board member ariana as well you also have that pre-existing action that took place in december 2021 so the board could vote to rescind that action in its entirety and that would make a very clean model if you rescind that previous action then you have a an adoption of the new action that would make it clear which schools are closing which was a reopening i think board member cruz gonzalez closed another alternative which is to only have a narrow motion that applies to once i want to throw that all out there's for the board members consideration and um i'll leave it back to the workforce so then can i motion to rescind the vote for december 21st is that what you're saying you can move to rescind the the vote now there were several votes that took place in december 2021.
based upon our assumptions so we we made the assumption that 300 students would come from elementary and 100 would come from high school high school have a higher weight and so that impacts that calculation so you can see that our revenue control limit which is our base budget capacity calculation is up from 212.8 million to 213.6 million so about a million dollar increase there and then you can see from the 15 override we have a 31 million dollar budget capacity in the current year and we are calculating that it will go up about a million 1.3 million going into next year remember again that the mno override is based upon the prior year student counts so the 31 million is reflective of that low year in 2021 where we had fewer students than we did the year prior we got over a thousand students back in reflecting the higher emino override amount projected for 2023 before i go any further are there any questions on that okay great the biggest thing i wanted to point out today is the budget balance carry forward so note that in revised number two we shared that our budget balance carry forward which is calculated and it is truly 42.1 million the 35 million dollar projection for fiscal year 2023 is truly a projection so note i shared with you the available fund balance today which is 48 million not 30 35 million so this number is going to fluctuate between now and the rest of the school year so bottom line is if you look at the bottom the budget increase or decrease note that 2022 revised number two in comparison to the fiscal year 2023 projected indicates a loss of five million dollars in budget capacity okay where's my [Music] oops there it is sorry my animations weren't working so note that we're anticipating nearly a million dollars more and then another million dollars in emino override and yet because of the drop of seven million dollars in the budget balance carry forward it's showing a decline of five million dollars so based upon this in speaking with finance staff we wanted to remove the impact of the budget balance carry forward so on the next slide we stripped it out so now we're looking at pure budget capacity year over year in comparison to the prior year so you can see that that we we had 245.6 million in 2022 and we are projecting 247.8 there's that 2.3 million dollars that i shared with you okay it's actually an increase so now though as you saw budget balance carry forward had a big impact on our budget capacity in the current year so we wanted to strip it down further and let's go with how much are we expected to spend next year that we're already spending in the current year and let's compare that to our budget capacity expectation for next year so looking at the next slide maybe it's not working because of that there we go so anyway so that 240 247 million point nine million roughly is our basis for this next comparison or budget balancing strategy so again this is just the reminder and my peers are going to kill me because i'm going to go backwards but no to that um so the projected budget capacity is 247.8 and remember that i took away the budget balance carry forward this is just a reminder of what i shared with you earlier note our year-to-date expended encumbered is 240 million our available balance is 48 million but i shared with you that we're expecting to spend maybe seven to eight million dollars more so at this point in time our available balance could be as high as 40 million however in the retreat we projected 35 million so we're going to continue with that 35 million and we believe that that's very conservative we believe it will be more so here is our projected fiscal year 2023 budget capacity without the budget balance carry forward bbcf is the budget balance carry forward so 247.8 expected final fiscal year 22 spend maintained so we spent it in the current year we're expecting to spend that same amount in the new year is 247 million so in comparing those two we have eight hundred thousand dollars of available budget capacity to fund the paying the all the increases that we're recommending to you tonight in addition i shared with you 35 to 40 million dollars worth of budget balance carry forward based upon all of the things that we've done over the last couple of years we believe that five at least five million of that we could consider ongoing remember you just talked about ms humphries about the fact that the tei went down so that's an indicator that our years of experience on our teacher side has declined which also indicates that more of our years of experienced teachers have retired and so we're replacing them with with newer teachers so you could anticipate that some of that five million dollars is turnover savings which would be um continual turnover savings a teacher that costs 75 000 last year could cost 50 000 this year realizing a 25 000 savings for each individual teacher so that's our assumption about the five million dollars but we've gone through it a couple of times and we believe that's conservative it's probably more than that so the bottom the bottom line is the total new money not really new money but the total money available to meet any ongoing increases is 5.8 million dollars so before i go on are there any other if you have any questions or concerns about any of this at this point it's kind of complicated so i want to make sure to give you guys some time okay great so let's talk about our budgetary savings we've already shared with you and you've already approved the premium holiday again we're expecting to have that premium holiday in october during the fall break so that will credit back to ml about 750 there's an arizona state retirement rate reduction a small one should save us about sixty thousand dollars interesting that the tei has that large impact of reducing our funding by over a million but the arizona state retirement decrease is just a tiny little help of sixty thousand dollars and then of course you all know that we've always anticipated a 400 student loss year-over-year so that we if the loss occurs we um we would expect that we would have 20 fte less which would give us 1.5 million dollars of savings and that 20 fte is easily absorbed in our normal attrition thank you for i was just gonna i know you reminded me when you talked to me today thank you for that so our total budgetary savings is 2.31 million so now we have non-discretionary budgetary increases so in our minds these are increases that we do not have any choice we have to account for these so the medical insurance premium increase we you did approve a one percent premium increase so that is expected to cost our m o budget three hundred thousand dollars in addition and i believe that you approve these tonight as well the other insurance increases those in a group only increased about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars year-over-year general inflationary increases i shared with you that the base level amount was increased by two percent but true inflation was closer to seven percent so we took all of the supplies utilities fuel and we increased those by seven percent and that's how we uh calculated the one million dollars and then finally special education increases are always ongoing and so we are budgeting two million dollars for special education increases so a total of 3.42 million dollars in non-discretionary budgetary increases so discretionary budgetary increases these are recommendations from from the leadership team regarding new new resources to be funded next year programmatic increases this includes instructional coaches behavior coaches they were added mid-year in the current year so there's about a half of a year of cost that will will need to be included for next year fte for acceleration campuses and all of these increases are directly related to the strategic operating plan salary starting salary increases again we shared that we did a mini that otm completed a mini compensation study where they made recommendations to the leadership team regarding starting salaries for slps psychs otpts and nurses and all of these also considered equity adjustments so that we are not due to due to the starting salaries being higher we are not going to allow the leapfrogging of new new individuals coming in and leap frogging those that have been here for uh one or two or one or more years we expect that to be a total cost of about 250 000 and then hourly increase by by 10 cents per hour buying back two sick days this was through the ibbt recommendation and we expect that to be about a 500 000 cost so total discretionary budgetary increases of 3.75 and that's just page one so page two are the additional so pay increase at three percent ongoing certified and exempt please know that we did spend that three percent on a stipend in the current year but that funding source was sr3 as i shared before so now we are absorbing that three percent increase into our maintenance and operations fund and any other funds that actually pay our teachers so that total cost to include the payroll benefits is estimated to be 5.7 million that 2 percent pay increase we've calculated that for all hourly staff after the 10 cents per hour was added to their base rates so giving them the benefit the 2 on top of the 10 cents that is projected to be 1.3 million a two percent pay increase certified exempt professional on top of the three percent above and after the 200 or 250 dollars for sick leave buyback for exempt and professional we're doing the same thing for exempt and professional that we did with hourly and we did all those things with certified staff a year ago we put 200 on the base of all certified staff for the current year to buy back their two sick days so now we're equalizing out the sick leave accrual across all employee groups here in gilbert and then finally expansion of the pay for performance to professional employees we believe that eight hundred thousand dollars is overstated it's probably uh in calculating it it's probably closer to two hundred thousand dollars i wanted to leave it here because um because it was already here but that's overstated i also wanted to share that the expansion of pay for performance will be a hundred percent paid out of classroom site funds so it is not an impact on the m o budget okay so 11.8 million dollars total uh yes ms wood yes i if you're finished with this i wanted to go back to in your discretionary this slide before yes i just wanted wanted if you could speak to um specifically the first line with the programmatic increases to include instructional coaches behavior coaches and the acceleration campuses fte again how are those a priority and how will those impact our student learning the learning loss that's happened through kovid some of those things that we need to address so that's a little bit out of my realm so i'm gonna punch to dr mccord thank you miss wood um so as you know and as has been stated here this is something we've had in our strategic plan for the last three years in terms of the addition of instructional coaches as the role the principal their job is to be the instructional leader on their campus and as each year rolls on that becomes more and more challenging and they need they need support themselves and this is something that i've contemplated years ago um and because their job is so taxing there is discipline there's other things that they have to do and then again being that instructional leader on their campus having an instructional coach on each campus and we already have part-time instructional coaches now at the elementary level primarily is to give them the ability to work hand in hand with that teacher leader on their campus who will be able to go into classrooms and coach them in the past that are reading coaches and we've changed those to instructional coaches over the last few years because we believe good instruction is important as important as the content that they're teaching and so having that instructional coach working in tandem with that principal who's their instructional leader there's a shared understanding of the standards and curriculum there'll be embedded professional development regarding implementation of high-yield strategies that focus on learning goals and daily learning targets to improve student proficiency and growth classroom observations and immediate and support instructional coaches are not administrators i want to make that clear to everybody their their feedback is truly for help and support it's not evaluated and facilitating collaborating dialogue and learning that builds of course the teacher efficacy and coordinate learning walks directly tied to instructional framework that has been provided this year and the facilitation of professional learning communities to identify strengths and replicate those strengths as well as opportunities to grow and for improvement again the job is to make sure you can go in and help coach whether it's a brand new teacher whether it's a veteran teacher anybody who needs help with instruction but the expectation always is making sure that those that are new to education there is someone there for them to go to on the ready to be able to give them that helping hand and so instead of having one individual on a campus as an administrator you will have two and in the past and what we've done is we've had mentors that have been there for teachers and and that's been great but it hasn't been in any kind of official capacity this makes that a little more well greatly more direct in terms of the resources that are available to them because in the end all of that help and support will be directly related to the success of those students and so for us being able to provide this for all of our schools and in having conversations with our principals as well this is something we believe will benefit our students in the long run can i just ask one other question about this particular budget item the full-time equal equivalent for acceleration campuses what are the additional needs there because we're we're in the process of figuring that out we're going to budget for that and i don't know exactly how many we've budgeted for could be up to seven or eight teachers but we could need as little as two or three so we just have to see in in terms of how many people have uh wanted to be in that program and then we will uh look at the numbers then and if we have to add additional staff we will okay so this would be if there are enough enrollment in that acceleration class that it creates an additional class if there is yes okay i wouldn't say enough you're wrong because that might imply that it won't make and we don't necessarily want that to happen but if depending on the number of students that um are in that accelerated program will determine it's just like a regular class if we're at capacity uh and we believe that's beneficial to everyone to split that then we will and that's how that'll be handled okay that's that's what i needed to understand thank you you bet thanks so um in addition that three million dollar amount there is the what we consider the worst case scenario so um jackie matin and i are going through available other funding sources such as results-based funding that the statute does allow for results-based funding dollars to be used for expansion of successful programs so we are looking to see if there is an opportunity to place some of these fte into results-based funding or instructional improvement or cceip related to ap and then we will have all that ferreted out for you on the proposed budget conversation okay so um now just doing the math so the ongoing available budget so going back this is from slide 14 remember that that's the 800 000 of additional budget capacity for the 2023 year 2023 year in comparison to what we're expecting to spend again in 2023 and then in addition the 5 million dollars of budget balance carry forward that we are we are projecting is ongoing the projected ongoing savings from slide 15 so that's a plus of 2.3 million dollars then you have the total non-discretionary increases from slide 16 of 3.4 million dollars and then total discretionary increases from 17 and 18 or 15.6 so doing the math that leaves us with a budget deficit of 10.9 million dollars so of course the question is okay so what are we going to do to bridge that gap so budget balance carry forward the ongoing we've already considered again the one time that we've thrown out there is 30 million we've shared 35 million so 5 million we consider ongoing so 30 million dollars is one time again that's extraordinarily conservative we we already believe that that will be higher than 30 million dollars a reallocation of emino expense to other funds let me just give you an example jted does have capacity to move some teachers that are presently funded out of m o into jted realizing ongoing repeatable savings over time out of emino there are other examples of that i shared with you the instructional improvement fund which we showed the encumbrance on the instructional improvement side knowing that we are going to move some class size reduction expense out of mno into instructional improvement we have not accounted for the savings on mno so right away i've come up with nearly two million dollars of that three million dollars in those two examples we'll be easily able to um to achieve the three million dollars in uh moving ongoing expense out of mno to ongoing resources and other funds and then the largest contribution is from classroom site fund so and then in addition one time is pay for performance for the new professional staff eligible so that's that eight hundred thousand dollars that i had on the prior slide uh showing that a hundred percent of that increase in cost will be borne by classroom site fund the classroom cycling contribution of six million dollars so staff finance staff jackie mattinen myself ashley miranda pat donahue have gone through the classroom site fund monies and the carryover and have analyzed it in probably four or five different ways and we're always coming up with the same conclusion which indicates that the six million dollars is available and that six million dollars will will be used to fund um the pay increases primarily so we have a total of nine million dollars of ongoing and then one time of 30.8 we know the 800 000 or so is already spent so 30 million dollars of one time so total additional resource need as you saw from the prior slide was 10.9 million 9.8 million dollars is available so that that leaves 1.1 million dollars to to be funded by one-time budget balance carry forward funds we're looking at 30 to 35 million dollars of budget balance carry forward funds which we are certain that if we had to continue using 1.1 million dollars every year it could last us 20 years so we feel that this budget proposal is sustainable minimally for the next two or three years here in gilbert public schools so at this point i'm going to hand it over to my peer mr macintosh to go through the compensation increase details thank you good evening madam president governing board members dr mccourt the next six slides are related to compensation each of them are looked slightly different because we've divided them out by employee groups and i'll hit the highlights and then if you have any questions as to what's on the slides i'll be happy and prepared to answer any of them come on come on oh there we go sorry okay first one is the certified non-administrator this includes teachers counselors librarians instructional coaches we have taken the fourteen hundred and ninety five dollars of the former professional learning communities and added that to the employees base um and then we are adding the increases of the three percent and that would be a their new adjusted salary in addition to that we would then add the two percent as the new pay increase for the 2023 school year teachers this employee group would also still be eligible for the 750 pay for performance um that we would send out and have ratified here in april to all of the now eligible employees that would be able to have the 750 pay for performance this is professional staff these are psychologists social workers behavior health counselors slps ots pt's rotc they will also be receiving the three percent and the share stipend added to their base and then the new additional two percent as the pay increase for next year in addition we are going to buy back two of the six days two of the sick days at two hundred dollars total this is in line with the ibbt recommend recommendation that last year we did with certified teachers that also ms betts spoke to we are trying to get all of our employees in in alignment with each other and by lowering these this will be applicable to all the slides but by buying back these days it puts us more in line with the accrual rates of our surrounding areas while adding an additional amount of money to the base salaries that can continue to grow with any percentage increases so this is our exempt support staff um they'll be eligible for any equity adjustments we are buying two and a half days at 250 for them pursuant to our ibbt recommendation and again this group is eligible for the three percent and the two percent pay increase for 2023.
so i would i would suggest that you identify specifically which board action and and keep in mind i'll just throw this out there you rescind that entire action then it's going to have to be replaced by something and i imagine we'll look at the district administration for that so do we need the exact wording to be able to rescind the action and who has that i think any board member can move to rescind the board's action and i would just say that which which board action on that december 21st meeting so remember adianas you currently have a motion uh do you want to i actually want to i would like to go ahead um just like uh our lawyer said that's fine that's what my family called um actually i would like to go ahead and retract this motion to make it cleaner and i would like to go ahead and move to rescind the action of um number 20 i can't remember that the emotion what was it uh the motion was to i have it right here you find it really quick i apologize i have it in front of me okay perfect thank you even better the the board action was to keep hodge valley dale paramount murray lee and dalton open which by implication was to close magnolia ellington and everybody in agreement that okay excuse me so you mentioned how how did how was the vote what was the outcome of this vote that you just mentioned right now that that particular action passed three to two with board members beau arianes and greer in favor and board members gonzalez and rodriguez kenya opposing thank you so i would like to a motion to move to rescind the action of the vote that we took place on december 21st and now is to keep hajj paramountly dalton murray open and to close magnolia ellington and powell did i say that correctly mr did you say valley dale in there as well the valley dell i have it as ours yes valley dale thank you so that's the motion on the floor is there a second second any discussion bringing this is rescinding the action and then clearly we need to do something we'll have to do something subsequent to this no discussion at this time i i will i will anyone else i will add um i i recognize that we are at this place that we're at now uh and so there's a motion there's a second in front of us and in order i think to give space to the conversation and to discussion and ultimately a final discussion um i'm i'm comfortable moving forward with this i'm concerned though uh and and not not convinced that um we reached the threshold that would that would have supported bringing this matter back or rediscussion i'm i'm not i'm personally not satisfied with with that but i but again recognizing for a number of reasons uh precedent that it that it sets among among other things but again recognizing that we are where we are now and that this isn't a final vote but on the other side of this weekend we can vote and make a decision on on um what model we see um i i'm comfortable moving forward but but i'm i'm uncomfortable again not believing that we reached the full threshold uh to to bring this item back from december 21st and board for president agree i just want to reiterate for clarification for the entire board board has an alternative which is to have a more narrow motion it does not just wanted to make sure i was clear correct and uh the board has that has that option and that is not the option that's in front that's not the motion that's on the on the floor at the time right okay then we will do a we will do a hand vote therefore um to and this is just the motion to rescind the action that took place on december uh 21st if you need me to repeat the school sites i can do my best to do that but assuming that everyone has an understanding of what that is this will be a vote just for that particular action uh board member arianes yes what remember cruz gonzalez no board member beau yes board member rodriguez pena yes and i am also a yes so that resends that particular that resends that particular item um which which means that the the action that took place that night will need we will need to replace that action with um the action that we take tonight and i just want to clarify because i think our practice right our dorms is that if someone's going to vote no on something they articulate why and so just to clarify why i voted no um as i stated earlier my preference is not to have a fuller conversation but i really was hoping that we could just have a conversation and an action directly related to magnolia school and so that's why i voted now thank you so as as we move forward i know we need to have discussion and board member audience i know that there was a particular model that you were looking to to to move forward i have a discussion i'm sorry but let's have it yeah yeah yeah right um so because i want to express i've not yet shared any any thoughts or or rational reasons that i myself have um and so i'll say one of one of the things that we have looked at over the course of these past couple years is not well there is a responsibility that we have as as the board to look at the fiscal solvency and fiscal being fiscally responsible that that is that is real and that is accurate but there's there's more than that more than more than merely being fiscally responsible i do believe that we also have a responsibility to maximize our resources for the purposes of our student so how do we do that we were able to do that through the programs that we offer we're able to do that through the opportunities that we offer um students across the district so so for me as i am evaluating some of some of these pieces what is what is chiefly among them yes the the fiscal responsibility is a component of this but even more than that it is just a matter of of resources allocation of resources and how do we allocate those resources in such a way that it maximizes what we what we have to offer our student um second to that i do think that it is it's important for us to to weigh and look at um yeah access to to campuses across across the district and so as we as we look at at models again i'll reiterate there is i have not heard from one parent i haven't heard from from one person from the community who has said my school is horrible please close my school down because of how is because of how bad it is instead every person who i've spoken to who comes from a particular school are all here fighting every person has talked about the great teachers and the the friendships and the the relationships the instruction the school culture um and again i think that that's just indicative of uh contrary to to what some may unfortunately believe um it's indicative of of how great our school our schools really are and i think it speaks to that um and so with that being said we didn't have to look beyond i mean we have to consider but we have to look beyond um how great any particular individual feels about their particular school because again everybody feels feels great about their particular school um with that um i had i stated this uh on on the december 21st and i want to be clear and reiterate it um i i myself i have a daughter who attends lee elementary school she is currently in fifth grade she's in fifth grade and as we're looking at making some of these these decisions uh the the decisions that we render today will have no impact on her because by the time these decisions are rendered she will be beyond and out of out of the elementary school she will not be there also i want to clearly communicate that i do not where i currently live is not in the lee uh jurisdiction and so so to be clear about about those pieces with that being said i did also communicate at the last on december 21st and my stance still holds that i do not see personally as 20 percent of this of this body i do not see a viable option where we exclude lee elementary school's campus from our from our menu and repertoire of school campuses and i understand what that speaks to about the uh the potential controversy around uh the need for added expenses for lee elementary schools uh campus um where i'm concerned is just being somebody who grew up here in azusa and understanding recognizing fully some of the stigmas that are attached to particular areas within uh within this city there there are areas that i knew growing up that you kind of stay away from and you and you and you or or i i i believed that it was not you know that that you should not go into or go around um now being still remaining here in this community i'm grateful for the for the tremendous growth that our our community has had for the record i myself the way that i look my my ethnicity there literally would have been some of these areas that we're talking about that would have been unsafe for me to be able to walk through and anybody who's been here long enough knows what i'm referring to um and just just some of the history that exists but again my my continuing to live here serve here speaks to the tremendous growth that has happened and even though there has been tremendous growth that has taken place unfortunately some of those same same stigmas are attached and we see that there are communities um and some of the most vulnerable communities in in neighborhoods within our community that that are still viewed in a certain way and i think that when we come to decisions like allocation of resources it becomes easiest for us to look at some of those communities and say let's not invest there let's let's as we project ahead we see that if there is a school uh site that needs to be eliminated it's easiest to consider some of the the school sites in some of the most vulnerable areas um and parts of town um and so again an analogy for that would be if if we were to go around and say that we were going to not water a particular plant in one corner of the of the community and then as time goes on we look and we assess and we say look at how this this plant here is doing it's not doing uh well as compared to the other other plants but that's due to conscious decisions that we've made to water some plants and not water and so as a result of that i mean just looking at uh what i believe are our under-resourced areas and higher density areas also my concern about how the split took place around the the communities surrounding lee elementary school and the trustee areas as we look to create continuous and uh and similar demographics within uh uh those voting trust trustee areas again i see that as another example where where uh the the community surrounding lee um was was was split and and i i would say got the raw end of that particular deal so um with that said i'll say i i stand by what i said on the 21st for a number of reasons that i'd be happy to continue to elaborate uh but i'll but i'll refrain um uh and i i don't see a viable option um where we would take what we already recognized as an under-resourced area and community and can and and continue to remove resources that we've not not poured into i'm sorry i just want to add but but i think that we can say that about every school i mean every community you know every school community i i can apply the same thing to to ellington i can apply the same thing to magnolia or you know or murray i mean but i i'm just throwing that out there because i understand that the resources right we're stretching are we're stretching our dollars with 16 schools and but what's most important is i think we need to take in consideration you know what the reconfiguration team has done and the the time that they've taken you know to analyze this you know to the hours that they've invested um and not and not clearly have you know any emotional or political agenda attached to this simple as that i i i'm just throwing that out yeah and so i'll i'll i will add um that that would be an area where you and i disagree i don't think that it's something that applies across the board i think that there are i think that there is actual data we could look at as far as investment and and even i i think that there is actual data with uh if we look at census blocks if we look at population density if we look at a number of factors i i would disagree that that what i'm saying is we evaluate what are the most vulnerable uh communities neighborhoods within this city i would disagree that it applies across the board so i would say we can agree to disagree because i agree i believe and i know because i visited every single school they're all vulnerable communities are you done tonight so i i just want to add something and continue just to um maybe um advocate again for only um keeping magnolia just adding magnolia to the list of schools we open and that's um you know i may be taking a pollyanna a view of this right but i think hearing some of the parents that came tonight hearing about them choosing to come to our community when in fact you know maybe even a couple years ago they would have chosen to go to a private school or try to do district transfer makes me feel thinking about the enrollment that we do have and the large new area that was was just built right and thinking about even even you know yolanda you talking about how old you're not your age but you know the fact that you're a grandparent thinking about when our community was built right because most of these many of many of these houses were built in the in the 50s right many of our families and so we do have an aging community and there is at some point going to be regeneration i hate to say it that way right but we're but you know we will have young families moving into the community i and i appreciate that the demographers took that into account but i do think i do think that with very very very intentional outreach um thinking about how do we turn these parents that that are so eloquent about our schools into ambassadors to our communities right so that people enroll their students so that people are choosing to go to our schools um i do think that there's there is a pathway to having just adding magnolia and not and not closing and keeping six elementary schools open and not and not just five so i just want to put that out there to your point adrian all thank you board member chris gonzalez i'm also in support of that model and again something has to happen we we know this the data shows this we know that we we have enrollment projections not particular or specific only to azusa but to our great the greater san gabriel valley and to the entire state we also know that as wide as we pass the lens there's always going to be new data there's going to be new data in two years and five years and 10 years to the extent that we increase and elevate the profile of what we're doing in azusa that more people know about it i say this i live in rosedale i've lived for five years and i've never received a promote a strictly promotional piece of male for the district and this is an idea that i've shared before and i think we're all generally behind that telling more people in different ways mailing out to families who don't yet have school age kids mailing out to older residents who might have grandkids coming up in the community they're all many other level communication levers i think we need to press really hard and simultaneously on i think about uh you know we talked we've heard it here and we've talked about it not discuss it as a as an agenda item but what are we thinking about in terms of the disposition of closed campuses no one wants to have a vacant campus with weeds and trash and and vagrant of course no one wants that it's not safe for our community it will tank our property values all of those things are true so how can we quickly again all the mr taka of course all of these have to happen now right so there is certainly needs to be a sequence and followed by an extreme sense of urgency to get things implemented so again you know our lens is here but we know that there's going to be something that changes how can we factor in or even leave space to consider the use of our or the disposition of the unused of the school campuses that close what what are the goals right of you know to um identify the highest and best use if not a school what could that be i would venture to say it would be a site that we may that we maintain within the district that we don't dispose of that asset but that we find a very creative and engaging way to establish community partnerships and that they are they become at some level revenue generating site because we've talked about fiscal responsibility right no one wants vacant campuses but we also don't want to go into receivership with the state right um so what can we do to start thinking quickly about how we use any number of these closed campuses as spaces that the community can access that can continue to provide green space that a non-profit partner can come in and provide services that are appropriate for our residential community i'd like us to entertain that idea because we when we mr mall when you make budget projections i know you can only go based on you know three to five years on the multi-year projections but there's another unknown that if we do nothing we'll have zero dollars but if we really really work hard i know that we can find partners that want to come into azusa our district is very attractive for a number of reasons and i think with more pr more targeted pr both internally and externally to the greater san gabriel valley i think that those partnerships can come and i know we have very strong relationships with our local legislators that can help open those doors for us so all of that to say is that i board member cruz gonzalez i am also in support of um only closing so adding magnolia to the list adding magnolia to the list of schools that would remain so and to say it very clearly closing ellington and powell and those are schools that were part of the reorganization committees on one of the recommendations and the recommendations have come in various permutations right in model 3 it was these two schools or these two schools or these two schools um i've had the opportunity to talk to more community members to look at the proximity map i've thought about if we landed on mars right and we had a geographical area the size of our district and we knew we were going to serve about 7 000 kids where would we how many high schools would we have well if we had about 2 000 high schoolers we'd probably have one high school okay so we we got there how many middle schools would we have one or two and where would we put them we wouldn't put them next to each other they might be spread out now of course we have to layer the reality but i'm trying to think about the criteria by which we would create this never-before-seen never-before-seen district how many elementaries would we have we have five or six or seven right and so what does that mean would our mother's colony ever grow it might not grow initially but it probably would grow to some extent i don't see us getting to 10 000 students overnight but i think that there is a way for us to build toward that and if we can build in you know if our goal is to attract 200 more students a year that makes a difference and it's it is a concrete goal that we can start holding ourselves accountable to in terms of all of our recruitment efforts all of our communications are all of those things the banners the mailers the ads are they resulting in increased enrollment are they resulting in increased teacher applications coming to azusa we talked about our budget and salaries and benefits we need to be competitive we want to not only keep the teachers we have but attract teachers because we're all fighting for teachers across the state i would like to add one of the things that was just mentioned was we are going to have empty lots and i i would agree this is a conversation that needs to be had like yesterday but i i do i do want to also um share that the history of this district has been to put a band-aid on things you know and then here we are um when we were closing glastonbury and mountain view sorry you know i suggested that we we look at other schools my concern with not closing three elementaries is that we're going to be in the same predicament again sooner than later one of the things that we as a board two years ago decided on was to look at a ten-year projection right five-year tenure and yes what we're doing is is is drastic it it needs to be done we have uh actually some other board members from other school districts actually calling or superintendents calling our district like hey we're going to have to close like six schools like how did you guys do this can we they've called our school district so i i would say um i would have to disagree with only closing two schools because the reality of it it it's it's there and yes new denim makeup but you know what though i i've seen it too many times in this district that we take the most conservative approach to things and then it falls apart or it doesn't go through and i'm a little weary and i'm gonna say this out loud of when we say we have friends that can help us i'm sorry but i would not like any of us to bring friends to the table when we are doing the real estate or leasing no kickbacks none of us should be receiving any money or having our friends come over here open a charter you know try to no fair game this is for our kids so i i disagree with that i think it's very important that we do close three schools and that we do it tonight and we'd be bold about it because this is for our students for the future of our students and i again i you know what i i disagree we need to close three schools let me let me just add i i would i would agree with board member audience and that it's important that we look at three schools um and and not to uh personally um but but i that's why i agree i want to say i don't know if i'd say i disagree because because i don't know if you're you're uh but but i do want to be careful um again there's um no no reason to believe if we're talking about friends or kickbacks i just want to be careful with that like i'm not saying or insinuating that this is happening right now i'm just saying future okay that's it thank you i think it is important to my question please yeah thank you um so closing only two schools i i may have missed it but what would the capacity be at that time uh compared to i'm looking at we'll just say the proximity map three it's 78 um point thirty percent capacity what would be if they only close two what are we looking at then um i can do that calculation if i know what schools are we what schools would you like me to use is leave and open oh oh it depends on the schools yes ma'am oh okay okay well like they just mentioned um closing we'll say paul in in ellington okay give me one second okay and and okay and then just a second question i mean will we honestly be sitting at this table in two years if we only close to a school my professional opinion yes thank you for that answer but if you give me the capacity i appreciate it yes ma'am give me one second thank you yes and and while you're pulling that up mr mall i'll i'll say yeah i think i think that the there has been somewhat of a the can has been somewhat kicked down the road for some time and i do think that yes this is difficult um but but that's that's why i i do think that we need to to consider three as difficult as as that is it's it's it's tremendously difficult but we need to consider three and not two so as to do the the most we can to not find ourselves in this um situation again so then what happens adrian if you don't come to consensus on what those which those three are because i've heard both yolanda and gabriela say they they want to do proximity three three and you've you've made a um you made a very good argument for why we could stay open so i don't yeah so what happens when you don't have consensus on what those three schools are i i suppose uh there's a couple things we could do um some of it is we you know i know it's 1005.
administrators this is all of our 10 11 and 12 month administrators whether they're certified or non-certified and they are each getting the three percent and the two percent pay increases for 20 22 23.