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good evening at this time i'd like to call this regular meeting in the dysart unified school district governing board to order let the record reflect that all board members are present please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge under allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice for all right we'll go ahead and start tonight with uh recognitions and celebrations band performance dr kulas thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet dr dean will introduce this item good evening madam president members of the governing board dr callus members of cabinet and our community this evening under the direction of lauren's treater we present to you the ashton ranch middle school 7th and 8th grade band the mustang band recently earned a rating of excellent at the arizona music educator association junior high band festival this is the first time that any dysart middle school has participated in the festival and we are proud to have had such an extraordinary representation mistreater the floor is yours so uh [Music] um [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] what a wonderful performance thank you so much and congratulations on your excellent rating what what goes into receiving an excellent rating what would you tell another group that's preparing for the same festival what did you do i think a lot of it is music selection trying to make sure that you pick the right selection for the size of the group and their ability level um and especially if they want to work on advancing since this is advanced band we tried finding selections that were also a little bit harder to push them and a lot of it really goes with the kids and their work ethic like they make everything happen i just kind of sit there and i wave this little stick but there are endless amounts of practicing and them coming before school especially them practicing home parent support really helps and um we meet every single day and we just go and uh destroy the day every day but i can't thank them enough i can't thank their parents enough and your guys's support means absolutely the world so we thank you well you're being very modest but i think you probably had a pretty big part in it so thank you for all you do as well and you all were wonderful thanks for sharing your talent with us tonight next we'll move on to item b2 recognition and appreciation of community supporters and organization of the dysart festival of the arts dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet on march 26th a saturday morning and afternoon we had an extraordinary event at the valley vista high school where we hosted the where valley vista hosted the district festival of the arts and interestingly this was our second annual held over four years that's because we had to have a little hiatus due to covet but we were super excited to have the event happen again and it was bigger better and bolder than the first one and really sets the standard for future ones we anticipated that there were over 7 000 people who attended which made it the main event in the west valley we had students from every single school in every art division including theater dance choir 2d 3d all the arts were represented so huge kudos to all the students who performed all of as you mentioned it goes without saying that they have excellent instructors parents who supported them but for four hours there were non-stop stages performed with performances happening and a gallery of visual arts on display inside the lobby there were some notable contributors who would like to recognize mccarthy building companies surprise arts and cultural advisory commission the dysart education foundation ottawa university orca winslow saguaro screen printing core construction elevate design group sunwest credit union the hidden dojo renewal by anderson yumtum snack house and the arizona commission on the arts who provided a grant all of this was under the extraordinary supervision and leadership of denae marinelli i'd like to invite the governing board to step forward to present mrs marinelli who was the chief organizer of the entire event with a very special recognition of an extraordinary pin thank you denae right while the pictures being taken we might add that we were going to recognize the hidden dojo as well but we couldn't find them tonight madam president with your consent we'll move to item three on the agenda and that is uh high school athletic state and national champions as the board will recall at the last meeting we were very excited to present a large number of our high school winter athletic teams who were region champs and tonight were excited to recognize our winter sports teams that were state and national champs and so tonight we're going to start with the shatter ridge high school spirit line i know they're somewhere because i saw him outside hold your applause till i finish so the shadow ridge high school spirit line the cheer squad coached by coach day smalley is the 2022 arizona aia state champions give him a round of applause all right so as you go through the line then we're going to need you to scooch back up again for a picture and somebody has to get thrown up in the air to the ceiling before you leave oh hold on we've got mom's taking pictures too congratulations state champions [Applause] so continuing on this evening in the world of spirit line we'd like to recognize and say congratulations to the willow canyon high school cheer squad who is the 2022 aia state runners-up and the 2022 national champion so come on down coach felicia yeager and the team and i apologize for not uh recognizing they are back-to-back national champions [Music] [Applause] one more congratulations wildcats [Applause] and our final athletic recognition of the evening comes from the world of girls basketball and we would like to recognize valley vista high school's girls basketball team come on down coach rachel matakis and her squad have now won three consecutive aia state championships and five out of the last six years so congratulations girls and as coach matejka said to us they are loaded again next year so rydo and i always like to point out to the crowd they look like such nice girls they'll rip your face off on the basketball court if you haven't seen them play it's worth taking the time congratulations ladies [Applause] madam president that concludes our athletic recognitions for the evening oh christmas okay definitely a lot of talent in our district next we will move to item c um audience with individuals superintendent governing board updates it's my understanding we don't have a student update tonight so we'll move to superintendent update dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um last week was the national assistant principals week and would like to recognize all of our assistant principals throughout the district and the extraordinary job that they do it's a labor of love and it makes a big difference on a site when you have effective assistant principles and we have a whole district full of effective assistant principles which means we have a lot of awesome schools coming up next week is our dysert heroes event we are going to be hosting it in the vista and the board received some tickets this evening you don't have to have a ticket to get in but it's an honorary ticket so we invite all of our community to attend and recognize our dice heroes employees and volunteers it's an amazing event it's one of the highlights of the year to be able to recognize the individuals in our district who represent many in the extraordinary work that they do also had the opportunity uh recently to talk to the folks from around the country in the world of technology and it was very um nice to be able to be to proudly speak to people from around the country who are dealing with technology issues that we've already dealt with who are trying to put into place systems that we already have in place who are trying to solve problems that we have already solved and we can congratulate all of our technology employees and the supports that they provide to the schools and we extend our appreciation to dianna hawari who does an awesome job of leading that department and that concludes my report thank you next we'll move to governing board update i will go ahead and start i i know we already in a previous item talked about the arts festival but um definitely want to thank um danae marinelli and all the staff teachers students everyone who made that possible um it was just amazing especially to think that we took a year off seemed like it was longer than that but to come up two years to come up and running like as strong as we did and it just to see the students i mean not only obviously doing the performing um and displaying their art but then also saw a lot of students in the leadership roles the leadership and organizational part of the festival as well which is really nice to see so we're developing our own young leaders and i feel like it's it's not just a school function it's actually a community event it's almost like a staple i believe it's just it's just wonderful and it's amazing that it's it's um as large as it is and just so well run so again thank you so much to nay um it's you're incredible in your leadership and everyone that helped made that possible so thank you it was a wonderful day i also on the 30th of march had an opportunity to tour some schools with our ess director and a couple of fellow board members so i won't say too much about it because i'm sure someone might see some extras um but just want to say social thank you to ashton ranch kingswood countryside for allowing us to visit their classrooms and take a sneak peek into their specialized programs i'm definitely impressed about how engaged the students were in their lesson um they were sometimes i've been in classrooms in the past and you know a little stage fright you know and or you'll have to go and ask them what they're doing and and sometimes they're not necessarily able to articulate it again totally understandable they don't know who i am and some weird person in their classroom but just so impressed that in these classrooms i was just led by the hand over to and they showed me what they were doing and were totally engaged in conversation they knew their objectives which was which was wonderful and i think all of us did like our heads turned like 360 when one student meant like had a word like he he he used a word that was like literally i learned it in a communications class in college like i was just a floored and it was i can't i wish i could remember what the word was either introspection or some juicy word i don't know but it was just amazing how articulate they were and the depth of knowledge that they're learning um also uh with some of our more severe mentally fragile medically fragile students like despite their challenges i was really impressed at how our teachers and staff really included them and had specialized plans that they were still able to get their academics on a level that was meaningful for them everyone being included and then also just my experience in the past with our pbis classrooms they can be challenging at times and i'll have to say that the classroom we visited was probably in the top two best classrooms i've seen in regard to just how well run it was especially during points and when students learned that they have either chosen to earn or not chosen earn their points for the period sometimes that gets a little bit intense and it was just smooth sailing so there's just a lot of good things that are happening in our ess classrooms um and i was just very thankful to be invited in the classrooms and for miss montana to take the time out of her day to do that for us so that's my report and definitely look forward to seeing our desert heroes next week anyone else oh i will i'll beat tracy because i always end up following tracy and it looks like i'm stalking tracy but i'm not um i also attended the festival of the arts and i have to say that so many community members came up to me and said they had no idea how talented the students are in the dysart school district and that they saw so many pieces of art that they thought was better than in some of the local galleries so that's saying a lot to our teachers out there and so we're going to get them on display in some more places in the community i hope i also attended the mayor's state of the city um that was really interesting there's a lot of growth going on i mean we all live in our little areas that we travel around and i had no idea how big surprise was and is about to become and there is so much happening it was it was pretty amazing um canyon ridge stem festival was a lot of fun and very interesting i also did several cip hearings i'm sorry i couldn't do i haven't been able to do more but they're always interesting and again thank you miss pritchard talked about the tour but thank you to dr montano for the very informative tour of the ess specialized program that was that was eye eye-opening so thank you okay tracy uh okay uh my update is uh first off thank you to the assistant principals just like dr keller said for assistant principals week you guys have a hard job i wouldn't want your job but we thank you for doing uh what you do day in and day out and for the past many years i attended a barbecue at kingswood back on march 10th the kiddos enjoyed it they just ran and had a grand old time as they were eating hot dogs and hamburgers and they were just enjoying that day so thank you miss tim brooks also that day i helped out helped hand out the ib t-shirts that was over at willow canyon and so thank you dr schwartz and all the counselors and this was to get future students interested in the ib program attended and assisted with the dysarts arts festival miss marinelli you outdid yourself and everybody that helped out with that spent hours upon hours planning and getting everything off the ground so it was a great successful event so thank you to the students and the art instructors you really outdid yourselves i also attended uh the nsba conference in san diego it was an exceptional one and it was well planned especially after being not being able to have an actual conference for the past two years because of the pandemic and i am so glad i went the foundation of the conference is the most important factor we all have students who need our attention and our passion for public education and although we have differences across the nation the end goal is still the same that we have the power to make that difference in the students lives and providing them the best educational experience possible just a couple of the sessions that i attended one was really really awesome it was a career development approach to advancing literacy growth and so when i first saw this session i immediately thought of jen grace haber so i can't seem to get jim out of my my brain there but um i think he would have really enjoyed it and it was applying that literacy even to um uh different positions that you want to have our students go into so it was an awesome awesome experience and finally i had shared this with mr hicks just moments ago we had received some devastating news in the arizona education world and for those who knew nancy konitzer she was the deputy associate superintendent down at ade this woman knew title one funding like the back of her hand like we could pick up a magazine and we knew what was in it and she recently just passed away very knowledgeable and a champion for public education back when i was director of grants and compliance in another district you could literally rely upon anything that nancy had to say she was highly regarded in arizona and nationally and she even served on the board of directors for title 1 funding in washington d.c you know when you find those types of people and the knowledge that she has she always made you feel as if you knew everything about title one and she could she could share any type of experience so it is a loss for the state of arizona and for nationally but i had learned so much from her regarding grant funding and title one and everything so she is one lady that will dare to dearly be missed so thank you that's my report i also attended the dysart festival of the arts it was a lot of fun just the amount of people there there was so much energy on the campus and that was awesome there was great attendance and i just truly loved all of the performance that i was able to attend i also attended the ess specialized tour with dr montano and it was really just nice to see our incredible staff working so hard and creatively to meet the uniquely abled students needs next i attended the freedom traditional open house briefly uh just the beginning piece of that but it was so well organized a lot of interested parents and learning about freedom that was nice i also attended the state of the city at city hall there was an amazing presentation by our mayor and council highlighting as joe said the enormous growth and exciting upcoming city projects i also attended the el mirage spring fair and it was just nice to see uh meet all the families that we represent there i also volunteered each weekend for the spring training games with many dedicated parents and extraordinary dysart teachers at the surprise stadium and just want to note that while my work is in supporting the marching band boosters there are so many opportunities with the stadium that and they generously support dysart arts sports boosters and even pta funding a lot of opportunities there that's all i have to report thank you all right i'll go last um i would just like to congratulate miss marinelli on her hard work for a successful festival of the arts and all of the art teachers including you know visual arts performing arts every single one not all of those teachers get paid for their extra work teachers are those teachers show up on a saturday without getting paid because they're fallen told by some most of them just volunteer because they love what they do and i just want to point out that we have some really dedicated teachers who care about the arts who care about their students care about the community and their leadership reflects that so ms marinelli and all of our arts teachers good job well done thank you next we'll move uh to item e motion to approve consent agenda items anyone want to make a motion i move the governing board approve consent agenda items as presented second motion made by tracy search sink bill seconded by joe grant motion carries next we move to information discussion item g1 school reports el mirage elementary and shadow ridge high school dr kellis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet um dr pulling will introduce this item yes thank you madam president members of the board cabinet and community members it's my pleasure to introduce stephanie davis principal at el mirage for her school report tonight good evening madam president members of the governing board dr kellis members of cabinet and community as dr polling said i am stephanie davis i am the principal of el mirage and i have been there completion at the end of this year five years i do want to recognize i've got a cheering crew here el mirage teaching and learning specialist connie ferguson a parapro the best recruiter you could ask for um mina munoz our assistant principal rick haney and current and former students my kids who are here as well um i do want to recognize assistant principal as well that assistant principal week i could not ask for a better assistant principal so i could not be the leader i am without all these people standing behind me okay so i've got the clicker here so we are the largest k4 in the district we have almost 800 students from pre-k to 4th grade our signature program is the health and wellness academy and this was developed by a group of stakeholders that included students parents classified and certified staff they wrote the vision which is to empower our staff students and community to build strong healthy minds and bodies also i do want to note i'm from detroit and i've been a tigers fan since birth so this was pretty appropriate every school has opportunities for growth and these are a few of ours we focused on our ela and math growth and proficiency in k through three three out of four grade levels grew and the other maintained proficiency in our reading rates from beginning of year to middle of the year on the dibble's reading test in fourth grade we departmentalized we knew with the k4 switch that our third and fourth grade are the grades that will give us our report card grade so we spent a lot of time looking at how we could best do that fourth grade included departmentalizing so our teachers could focus on their content and their specialized area that they would be experts in walk through feedback is something i'm personally and professionally proud of between mr haney and i we have done more than 800 documented walkthroughs of classrooms provided feedback to teachers of celebrations and of course areas of growth like we all have on our west ad walk throughs with tammy hall we have included teachers on those walkthroughs so they can see their other colleagues in action pbis is another opportunity that we had in merging dysart elementary and el mirage we needed to make sure our expectations were consistent and in doing that we had decreased our behavior referrals as well our report card grade in the last five years we have maintained a b status we continue that but are striving for an a and would like to apply for a plus status next year we feel our school is strong and that is an area of growth for us for next year as well an opportunity we in our action plan focused on increasing community partnerships we have strong relationships with our el mirage city council mayor alexis ermoscio the el mirage fire and police department and the el mirage library i do want to include that a big portion of our outreach is our social worker who has herself delivered more than 350 bags of groceries to our families most indeed like i said i can't do this without my whole team here so they're the ones that help make us successful all of those opportunities you could see celebrations but here's some more things we are proud of for our summer learning program we have more than 170 students enrolled who will be attending all day in the morning academics and in the afternoon enrichment with stem physical activity and other enriching areas we successfully transformed from a k-8 to a k-4 we are very proud of everything that we have accomplished it's not easy to merge two schools and we feel like it has gone very well our third grade benchmarks are another area of pride we were sixth in the district for math benchmark three and on pace for a 14 growth on aasa from azmerit last year to this year we were eighth in the district for third grade for ela benchmark three and on pace for a 27 growth from azmerit to aasa this year for family engagement i cannot believe the number of families that have come out to our events this year we have completely broken all records with our costume ball literacy night spring dance and our kinder roundup was 40 families that showed up which is five times the amount we've had in the past keeping with the support of our families our dysart community coalition is the parent organization and we had our most successful fundraisers ever our bookathon raised more than 21 000 in two weeks time i accidentally posted the link early and we had five thousand dollars in the first weekend so it was pretty incredible our book fair raised almost eight thousand dollars which is more than four times what we had made in previous years all of these funds go directly back to our students for field trips and assemblies 21st century we have a grant from the state we have about 150 students that attend our 12 classes and our before and after school sports are very successful one last point of pride our celebration our maricopa county superintendent steve watson visited the school read to our second grade and highlighted them on his social media so it was pretty neat to see that well i've given you a lot of areas of celebration but we have more work to do and some of these areas are continued growth for next year continuing to increase our proficiency and especially our growth for all students increasing our student voice we have espn which is our el mirage student broadcasting network and if you have never seen it go to our webpage and take a look because you will not believe that these are third and fourth graders producing high-end announcements as well as our student council that is deep into their fundraiser as well we'd like to maintain and strengthen our community partners such as the ymca and ottawa university who has now adopted one of our hallways our family involvement will continue we'd like to we've been focusing on events but next year we'd like to recruit more volunteers and put an emphasis on an emphasis on the tax credit donations those go to our arts our pe and we would love to raise more donations from the community that way and of course arts and athletics we have the art and choir club already our choir performed at the dysart festival of the arts and our art teacher actually gets to display the art at the el mirage public library so that's pretty neat so in conclusion i would like to thank so many people that have been very supportive of our arts academics and athletics to name a few dana who has been at our school multiple times amy providing us with so much data to help our teachers move forward danae helping us enrich our arts i couldn't ask for more adriel dr polling all of them have been there so many times so thank you so much thank you i could go on forever i know i can tell that's a good thing though i'm sitting here listening to you smiling and um you make me smile i mean your energy is just so positive and i'm thinking i'm you know this is the first time i we've i've spoken with you and um this is the impact that you have you're excited about what you do and i think that's contagious um it causes people around you to be excited and then in particular your students and your families based on what you've said it sounds like you have a lot of exciting things happening at your school that's building good community and a good sense of belonging for your students and families and i'm excited for you speaking of your growth definitely on the right track and sounds like you have a lot of good plans and supports in place to continue on that path so it was great listening to you talk about your school and all the pride that came through in your voice so thank you very much for sharing all that thank you i'm glad that pride came through because that is every single day tiger pride can tell thank you anyone else just one quick thing um i know part of your celebrations was uh the partnership with the arizona cardinals oh yes and uh you didn't get really into that but that's okay i was told to keep it you know not not 20 minutes so okay you go ahead tell everybody about that um our partnership with the arizona cardinals has been pretty great we have they have been to our school four times this year as the health and wellness academy it just fits um and just to give you a little bit of background the health and wellness academy we felt was really important because our needs need our students need to be physically active and moving so they came out for play 60 which our second graders got to participate in and ryan mcginley took some incredible photos so you can go to our website and see those students got to run obstacles and drills we did cookies and milk thank you joe and tracy were able to come out to that so i appreciate that where they the cheerleaders and former super bowl champ mark maddox with the new york giants but also a former cardinal came out and mark maddox was so excited by our students how respectful and excited they were about reading that he has come out twice and would like to come out again next year multiple times for donations awesome yeah i know you you have such great um uh city support yeah with the residents and everything so i just wanted to make sure that you had the chance to tell people about that because i know you were excited about it that day yes and i will tell you that one of mr haney's biggest like assets to the school is building those relationships he's really good at that he's got some charisma so if you have anything exciting reach out to him because he'll make it come true yes wonderful thank you anybody else thank you very much thank you thank you stephanie next we would like to ask dr dean to introduce our next goal madam president members of the governing board dr killus and members of cabinet this evening for the last time we present to you mr michael hawkins principal at shadowridge to provide a brief cip presentation for shadow ridge high school have a great evening we are all reminded of mr hawkins first graduation at shadow ridge which went two hours long and we would like to remind mr hawkins that we have more things on the agenda this evening than the shadow ridge cip take it away all right well the first thing i have to say is a great day to be a stallion [Music] thank you so much madam president governor board dr kellis and district administration um my name is mike hawkins principal at shadow ridge proud principal of shadow ridge high school and and i'm honored to be here this evening to be able to speak to you about our school and give you a little insight as far as where we're at and where we're hoping to arrive at so if you didn't know i have this knowledge already inside so i was able to have to go through on wikipedia or anything to find this but um we were established in 2009 our first graduating class that mr dean or dr dean so eloquently spoke about class about 2012 was our first graduating class current enrollment right now 2236.

my virus protection is out of date i have a little message down it mine hasn't changed okay i'm going to make a motion to i'm going to call this meeting to order psych um i need a motion to adopt the agenda i move to adopt today uh tonight's agenda second all in favor aye aye do we have chad aye straight motion carries five to zero we'll go ahead and do the [Music] one pledge under god indivisible with liberty and justice all right so we need to um any questions on the meeting minutes all right i'll need a motion i move to approve the minutes for the march 2nd 2022 regular board meeting second all in favor aye aye hi motion carries um so then we need the other board in a minute so i'll move to approve the board meeting from the sp or the minutes from the special board meeting on march 30th of 2022.

more i got poop [Music] good morning i'm brandon and i'm madison with your morning announcements for april 14th upcoming events april 15th good friday no school april 29th senior trip may 7th prom may 13th and 14th musical beauty and the beast may 26th honor day june 4th commencement 9 a.m now sebastian with your weather today's high will be 67 with a low of 43. tomorrow's high will be 65 the low of 46 and saturday will be a high of 57 with a low of 31.

and a public notice will be posted on the legislature's website I'd like to take this time to remind our testifiers that due to time restrictions on our hearings we will be limiting testimony to one minute per testifier per bill for people participating remotely please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify when I call your name un mute yourself and your time will begin after your minute is completed staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient manner thank you first on our agenda is gm7 I'm sorry let me introduce my committee I have Senator Kurt favilla here to my left and I'm sure the other committee members will be joining us shortly um a lot of them are still in other meetings sorry this is on the countdown so okay so GM 784 submitting for consideration and Confirmation to the Early Learning board gubernatorial nominee Carrie rosovich for term to expire June 30th 2025 Carrie are you there I am I'm sorry I'm sorry and I see Carrie and Bob Peters um Bob Peters is signed up to testify go ahead Bob oh thank you chair kadani and um members of the committee The Early Learning board stands in strong support of the confirmation of Carrie rosovich to continue serving on the Early Learning board as a representative of the Hawaii early intervention coordinating Council Carrie brings many years of experience in the early childhood field and her particular Sensi ity and respect for the segment of the community that early intervention is important to um keeps our Focus as a board on the needs of those children and families without losing sight of our system building efforts thank you for this opportunity to offer strong support for car's um confirmation thank you Bob and we have several other RIT and testimonies all in support of Terry's nomination thank you uh Senator Drew Cana to my left thank you for joining us and Senator Donna marado Kim my chair Carrie would you like to make a statement please I would um chair kadani Vice chair Kim and Senate committee on education members mahalan Nui for the opportunity to extend my appointment to the Early Learning board for another three years representing the Hawaii early intervention coordin Council my desire to serve stems from three main seeds the first is my own experience as a mom of three and the challenges I faced when my own Kiki were young it was extremely difficult navigating The Early Childhood system I had a very hard time finding affordable and quality child care and preschool programs specialized services for my youngest child and Community Family Support programs and I'm someone who doesn't struggle meeting basic needs for the tens of thousands of families that do struggle with meeting basic needs navigating the system is almost impossible when I worked in direct service with families helping them access resources and supports I was able to experience with them the firstand challenges of filling out government forms navigating language barriers not being able to find needed information in the sheer isolation they were experiencing secondly I believe I have skill sets that can assist the E to fulfill its Mission my background is in systems building planning policy and conflict resolution in statute the eel is charged with the complex work of coordinating the Early Childhood Early Learning System I enjoy working with in complexity and untangling systemic challenges and I've really enjoyed working with my peers on the Early Learning board to strengthen eel's capacity third and finally my North Star in all of the work that I've done over the last three decades has been focused on growing peaceful and just communities the health and well-being of our Ki and our families are at the core when our families are doing well our schools our workplaces our communities and our economies do well conceptually it's a relatively simple cause and effect Hawaii ranks seventh from the bottom nationally and its investments in children which for me is contrary to how I feel we value our Ki locally yet budgets reflect values I hope to continue to work with policy makers to ensure the state invests more in our Ki particularly in our youngest Ki so that we prevent Downstream costly and ongoing Community challenges galui for your consideration and appointing me for an additional term in serving as an early learning board member thank you carer you're welcome members are there any questions not um Carrie I I have a couple questions for you there so in your um written response and thank you for sending in your response to the questions you noted that you wanted to create a goal for eel to use the Early Childhood state plan as the eoe Strategic plan moving forward um I just wanted to note that um I think the Early Childhood state plan is you know has a lot of uh components in it that are really Department of Health and Department of Human Services so I'm I'm not sure how they would uh nailed into the Early Learning uh board and um so you're um in you're evaluating a future EO director's effectiveness of their role using the Early Childhood state plan How would how would that work what did you particularly like about state plan that you wanted to mild into the Strategic plan sure so so for me the Early Childhood state plan reflects the um the statute and what in act 178 or what the executive office of early learning is supposed to be doing in terms of coordinating the Early Childhood system so it's the most comprehensive plan that eel has currently to look at that system um and so for me they really are and should be tasked with that implementation working collaboratively with the other state department so they wouldn't be doing direct implementation probably on only certain components of that state plan but coordinating with DHS and do and the charter school commission as well as um Department of Education on making sure they're implementing their pieces so it's more of a coordination role but what comes with that is significant staffing needs to do the tracking and monitoring that's required um to demonstrate progress against the plan um making sure that we have coordination support on bringing the partners together in a really meaningful way telling the stories of success um making sure that we're advocating in the ways necessary to support the plan so it's that infrastructure that's required to meaningfully implement a strategic plan is what I feel eel needs support around thank you for that um one of the things noted in last week's hearing with the other uh nominees for the Early Learning board um I mean the EO was that um they have I was it 17 members they have 17 board members which makes it difficult not just to come to conclusions and decisions um but to even have all of them at the meeting so do you think that that there needs to be a reshuffling or reorganization of the board it's a very good question um I I can't answer that clearly because I really feel that first what has to be evaluated is the scope of the executive office of early learning um so if we continue to stay with the scope and the complexity that the office has been charged with then I do believe we need a representative board um because the system is very complicated um but if we move more towards the scope of eel being early childhood education you know child care and preschool focused then I think we need to really revisit the structure that we have in place I haven't experienced personally on the board a challenge of reaching decisions um or Forum can sometimes be a problem but reaching decisions really hasn't been the issue um it is a large board I think for a chair to to try to navigate particular clear on Communications and things like that in committees but for me if the scope is going to remain as complex and Broad as it is in act 178 that we need a representative board and I would strongly suggest that we have County representation um because e is tasked with Statewide implementation and coordination and without the counties there it makes it very difficult to understand the needs of neighbor Islands in an intentional way thank you Carrie you're welcome your response you also noted that um the executive office of early learning needs significant resources to achieve its Mission he also noted that the amount needed will depend on whether or not e continues to provide Direct Services or plays more of a systems coordination role in which direction do you believe e should go I believe they should go in the direction of of more systems building and Less Direct service um the executive office of early learning has done an exceptional job in my opinion of standing up the public prek program setting the quality standards working with the principles and the complex area superintendant to get that program up and running um and I think I I I think it's just me I'd have to consult others but I do believe that the Department of Education could run that program and executive office of early learning could really focus on the bigger systems pieces that are required around integrated Data Systems quality improvement and continuing continuing Learning Systems um the coordination pieces that are required to implement the state plan you know those bigger pieces that are Beyond just program implementation so that would be my hope moving forward okay I won't comment on the Department of Education running program but I will um ask you as a current board member have you advocated for board approved budget that increases the resources provided to the E you have we have yes so there has been prior discussion on this issue there has been I I mean they ask for incremental uh increases but again it's to implement the public program I I would hope that we would get to a point where we would understand um in real concrete terms the cost of implementing The Early Childhood state plan because for me that's the cost of coordinating and implementing The Early Childhood system in a really intentional way and if we understood that cost that would give the board more clarification of what we should be promoting and supporting um for the office of early learning thank you you very much K thank you for your service welcome your willingness to continue members any questions if not thank you very much Carrie aloha aloha okay next on the agenda is GM 801 submitting for consideration and Confirmation to the Board of Education gubernatorial Nomine Damien barari for a term to expire June 30th 2025 to testify on Zoom Malia noga olera Aloha chair kidani and members of the senate committee Aloha um I'm calling in today from Kawaii and I'm representing the moku kwaii Council of Association of Hawaiian Civic clubs and um we submitted um our testimony and strong support of this confirmation for k bakari um M manoo has worked with Mr bakari in different settings that range from general education in Hawaii Hawaiian language and culture-based education and other Civic and social issues we have witnessed his leadership and commitment to promoting excellence and equity for our Ki and our community we feel that his experience with policy formulation and ongoing work on committees like the human resources and student achievement will be a value to the work ahead for the Board of Ed Mahal aloho Aloha to you too um next Susan Picola Davis also on Zoom Susan okay I was waiting to be unmuted good afternoon Cher kadani and Bard MERS I'm testifying in strong support for kaima bar barosi to have his membership on the board of uced he is an active board member his strong knowledge of the Hawaii culture lends a perspective that is true Hawaii he adds depth to discussions and poses relevant questions he actively participates at all meeting meetings thank you for providing him the opportunity to get confirmed for an extension of his continuing service thank you thank you very much Susan members questions of Susan next to testify in person Sher Nakamura he a coalition Sher please [Music] Aloha chair kidani Vice chair Kim and members of the committee my name is Shar Nakamura director of he Coalition we stand on our written testimony in strong support of the nomination of kaim barar for a second term on the board of education Kima has been a firm but fair voice at the Boe when it comes to understanding how doe will spend State and or federal funds he consistently asks for essential information such as data which should inform good planning a plan that everyone can understand and specific timelin so that everyone knows when things are supposed to be done he is also not afraid to inform the doe when they have not provided sufficient information or information in a timely manner to go back and redo things to meet the boe's expectations kima's deep knowledge of Hawaiian language and culture also keeps the Boe and doe grounded in Havi and keeps a focus on equity and education in our system we urge the committee to support his nomination thank you for this opportunity to testify thank you Sher members any questions if not um there are about another 35 uh written testimonies in support of this nomination and I'd like to invite Carman or Cary to the seat please and would you like to make an opening statement please olaaa Aloha I really do appreciate the opportunity to be considered for another term to serve our Kiki this past three years has been very eye openening for myself I had never imagined that we would end up in a pandemic and and really having an opportunity to overhaul A system that really needs it I found a lot of solace in myself when when things got a little bit of crazy and and really tried to reenter around the students School visits for me was something that was very very important to really get to hear from our Educators but more important from our kis and our families and that is why I'm here today to to continue service in any way I can and I would thank Mahal you for that opportunity thank you very much K and also thank you for your willingness to serve another term and to be engaged in those very long meetings um in your response your response to the committee you noted the need to resume discussions with Community Partners to strengthen public support and buyin to our public education system um can you um elaborate on that com yes most certainly in in the first eight months of my my initial term I was super encouraged by a lot of progress that that was made um we had a lot of reach out from our community supporters uh one particular item was um we had a meeting at our board offices with the um white executive Roundtable education committee and then a lot of of members of our business communities and they express a huge desire to be working with our schools they express the frustration that they often have to look outside of to find worthy candidates or willing candidates to fill a lot of the jobs that we have here in Hawaii they recognize and so did we that we need to start creating a bridge not just saying we're going to do it but then putting resources towards it when I talk to to teachers and and other Educators they would love to have the support of the business Community but putting that extra kolana on them at this point in time when they have so much other things to do it is really hard they're already spending a lot of dollars out of their own personal pockets of money they're already spending more time than um a lot of us realize so we started initial talks and how do we create that bridge how how do we find those and most likely from the business community that would be willing to to take on that charge now these discussions were very um preliminary where initial we were really encouraged about that and then the pandemic hit and we had to really shift to student safety to to make sure that our our students were safe that they were fed we realized that a lot of our especially disadvantaged children they get a lot of their stability at our schools so we really had to do as much as we could to shift and get into that mode of um jumping right back into business not having a gap in waiting to see what happens even though we we really had no idea what was going to happen in the meantime a lot of our business supporters continually supported through through testimony through through phone calls but they too realize that this wasn't the time now that that the the pandemic is I wouldn't say under control but we have a better grasp on on where it may be going and how we might better adjust to it I I believe now is the time for us to pick up these conversations to reach back out to our partners and a lot of them have been waiting for that and I think by doing so we can create that that bridge and the opportunities for our students you it really breaks my heart when a lot of our a lot of our Kiki leave because they don't perceive that there's something here for them and in a way they're right but how do we make something for them and how do we Empower them to create these opportunities for themselves through our education system thank you for that P so if reconfirmed what areas do you think we need to plan to focus on First and um you you talk about the need to increase opportunities to recruit and grow our own teachers and educate and Educators is that something that you think we should start first or do you have other ideas where we should I apologize I didn't hear the last part of that the need to increase opportunities to recruit and grow our own teachers is that some place where we should start or are there other areas where we should start first to focus I think we we need to continue on that area to recruit our own teachers and to recruit more teachers but something that has become really apparent especially during the pandemic is that teacher recruitment is not enough we need to combat our our our teacher loss there's been so many people that have have retired because of the pandemic or during the pandemic for for safety reasons but we're also on on a I believe a really good track with with your folks support and and the differentials for um for sped for um heart to fill and and wine immersion that signaled the value that we put in our Educators next up with that was looking at the compression issue to make sure that it's not just those in these fields what all of our teachers are valued and and have what it takes to to make a living and that they're compensated properly unfortunately again because of the um the the co issue a lot of that had to be put in the back burner and I I do believe that those are two things that we can start looking at now with your support that will make a big difference and and and position us for success in near future thank you um you know we do have bills going through the Senate right now that um uh puts quite a bit of money into the the teachers decompression the um I think it's 93 94 million or something like that um and one of the other things that you may or may not know is part of the issue I think has been is that the classifications for teachers has been in statute and they're the only public Union so when they reach the top you know there's no more movement so um um um we have in that same bill asked that the statute be removed you know with the classif classifications in it and they just negotiate like other unions and they have agreed to do that this time so hopefully that will help and we we do have other funding for the differentials for the hardto fill areas um and hope again hopefully that will help but I do agree with you that uh during the pandemic we lost a lot of great teachers we lost a lot of tenure teachers mainly because a lot of them were not comfortable with doing virtual teaching Etc and I think that was someplace where uh the department fell short and not being able to train our teachers or provide them with I mean even students in high school who could I mean my my middle school grandkids can operate my phone better than I can and when I have problems I just hand it to them and they'll fix it so you know I think those were places that we could have done a better job um so I I hear what you're saying in the questionnaire I asked about the doe strategic plan which the doe currently does not have do you believe you believe five education achievement markers that should be part of the next strategic plan or academic achievement social emotional intelligence Readiness for Next Level ability to overcome and adapt to difficult situations and contributions to the community how do you see these five achievement markers being integrated into a strategic plan so I I think really it although they're five they have to be integrated together I I think for me one of the biggest things that I I see a lack of nowadays is giving our students the opportunity to aana giving them the opportunity to take on responsibilities to contribute back to the communities thus giving relevance to the education that they have why am I learning these things what am I going to do you know oftentimes we hear that well you know you go get an advanced degree you can make a million dollars somewhere and that that's success and that is one measure of success but what about our students that maybe not making a million dollars but but they're contributing posi positively to their communities they're helping others in their communities to elevate themselves and thus Elevate our lahu our our our communities as a whole so I think in in any strategic planning it it's not just about the great parts that we put together but the integration of these different parts and I think that in itself is key um those those five areas as well as others that will be definitely brought to a strategic planning process but really making the parts work as a whole is what I think is is really necessary to accomplish that thank you and my final question is how quickly do you believe that the Board needs to engage with a new the new superintendent to build this strategic plan I would say as quickly as possible uh I I think it all a lot of it depends on who this uh new superintendent is and how they work some some people like to get a good lay of the land a good understanding you know some people have uh plans that are you know your first 100 days your first 30 days your first 60 days um I I I believe as soon as a superintendent has a good grasp of the situation and an understanding and has talked to enough has engaged enough with um with you folks with with with our legislators our communities our staff and have that understanding and ready that is when um it'd be appropriate to start this or start engaging in a strategic planning process um exactly the sooner the better is is what I would hope for it to be thank you for that members any questions Senator K hi good afternoon I'm sorry I didn't get to meet with you Ahad of time I did meet with all the others so um going to ask you the questions I probably would have asked you if we met earlier you talked to just now about the education achievement markers and about the Strategic plan and um part of that is social social intelligence emotional intelligence Readiness for the next level and um you know I don't necessarily think we have to have a strategic plan to be able to integrate that into our schools have you being on the board notice or realize that we are are students are lacking in being socially adapt and being ready for the world whether they they go to college or not that they can interview that they are um they have social skills that they can balance a checkbook that they have financial literacy um having been on the board um have you any thoughts about that and have you folks discussed that has it been something that you folks uh have been um prioritizing so I I I I do have some context and some understanding of that but not so much from um from meetings in the boardroom more so from meeting with our students in their schools meeting in in the community forums and and and listening you know listening to our principles listening to our CES listening to to our teachers and really understanding what the Readiness factor is for for the Youth for for the children um no I don't think we we need to um have a strategic plan to start that I I think it should be core to to what we do but I do believe that it should be accounted for in a strategic plan like I mentioned earlier I think all the different parts of a strategic plan need to work together and and need to be really really um considered and and understood that it's it's it's the parts that make the whole you know it's Hawaii is such an inter interdependent Place often times we hear the the ideals u in America of of being independent right but growing up here in Hawaii I understand that it's really about caring for each other about that interdependence so being able to give our students the opportunity like I mentioned before to to Al kolana to take on some of these responsibilities I think that's part of the socio emotional um learning that's really important because they start to feel value we don't need a strategic plan specific specifically to make that happen that can and and I've I've seen some great examples of it already happening um in schools you know it's I I'm a proud graduate of wak high school and I I I will admit that I wasn't probably the best uh student there um but you know I'm the oldest in my family and I had to make my way and learn going back and visiting that school they had their ambassadors that um took us around and and and shared and it was it was really beautiful but then I went walking around afterwards to observe those that weren't given that responsibility and and I I still saw a lot of a lot of promise and so um it it's super important but giving the students this this opportunity to grow into that and guide them into a social emotional well-being it is super important so what have the board done I mean have you folks mandate anything to the to the superintendent or to the schools in this area or I mean it's one thing to talk about and say how important it is but I mean we've had to we've had bills to include financial literacy in the curriculum so why do we need a law why do we need a bill if that's so important then why isn't it part of the curriculum the normal curriculum not an not an elective but part of the everyday and teaching it from a young age as they grow so are you does the board aware of some of the measures that going through where you know we really don't need a law you folks can can AFF effectuate those important areas I I agree um I I myself am not fully aware we do have a great um uh a team that that is following building the ledge that that does keep us informed um to be honest I I I don't know that we've addressed that specifically um that that specific issue around the um financial literacy and and check rating so are are you aware that it's only an elective in some schools and and some schools don't even have it are you aware of that that's my understanding so is that acceptable you know I I I I think we can definitely improve I think it needs to be improved okay so I I guess that's what I'm driving at you know you've been on the board and um you're going to be on and so I'm hoping that there's some proactivity in in these areas of of importance and not wait for strategic plan not wait for the legislature to pass a law but that you folks are going to be proactive in in making sure that this becomes part of the curriculum um so that our students are ready um and I've shared this with the with the other nominees but I sit on the witchy board and um one of the areas in which we all agree is that our students across the nation coming out of high school lacking social skills lacking skills to interview for jobs and um lacking financial literacy they cannot can't change back they can't do some basic things and one of the things we talked about was that colleges maybe should be uh providing some of these programs and these courses at the college level which really worries me because we're going to be teaching basic things that should be taught at the high school and intermediate school and yet we're going to saddle our students with student debt at the college level for these basic courses that they should have already under their belts and so I think that's an area that's really lacking and I'd love love to see that the Board of Education take a stronger role in talking and and working with the superintendent and the area superintendent into looking at how do we Implement these things now and not wait for a law and not wait for a Str plan h on the other area I notice that you're on um the human Human Resources um committee is that correct are you familiar with the overpayments um overpayment where the state overpays uh teachers because they don't have they take they get all of their all of their sick leave and all of the vacation up front and so some of them use it up before they six months and they use it up and then they go on vacation or they go on sick leave and because it's automatic payroll they get paid and they end up owing us because we overpaid them they didn't have vacation they didn't have sick leave and it's thousands of dollars in fact there's a point where if you add it all up doe is one of the largest um violators of that of millions of dollars and half of that is uncollectible because teachers either quit or leave the system and so that and every year after year we've been after doe to do a better better collection a better way of making sure that teachers who do not have sick leave or vacation left that they go on the manual system of reporting their pay so that they're not overpaid because when they're overpaid then they take a long time to pay it back the losses we can take it a percentage but the unions you know fight it and the and the people who got it fight it but if we underpaid if we underpaid anybody boy we better make sure we make that whole the very next month or the very next week but we we overpay and these are thousands and thousands of dollars some teachers or or Personnel have gotten over payments and then will pay $25 a month and take forever and then they leave the system and you can't collect it and this is money that is could be used in our classrooms it could be used for our teachers um so you're not aware of that I'm not aware of it but Mahalo for bring into my I'll make sure that our committee does take that issue up because I bring that up every year I talk about it in meetings I talk about it with doe uh talk to the governor's office I mean this is something that's been going on for for a number of years so I hope that you guys become aware of this and that more effort is done in being able to um do something about it to collect it thank you w thank you thank you chair um kind of going back off of what Senator Kim was saying and first off for uh taking the leap and continuing on hopefully uh on the board for another term and I think you know I'm a big advocate of yours and know you do good work in the community and hopefully I'll continue to do good work advocating for our kids now and into the future but going off of what Senator Kim says you know we have bills coming through the L every year um and the department always says we can do that ourselves we can do that ourselves we don't need a law but we keep on providing these laws like whether it's financial literacy or other types of things that we feel as a legislature are important uh for our kids so one of your responses not really a response to that but in terms of uh Boe has an absolute expectation to advocate for needed resources um he noted that it was readily apparent that our lawmakers need more confidence and Clarity that the resources already allocated are being utilized appropriately and effectively by the department before we can request additional resources so how do you balance you know the expectations of the legislature and in relation to the needs of the students in the schools and the Boe and the or the department you know in terms of like us requesting some our expectations and then your expectations I I I really look forward to um the new superintendent coming in and and really level setting that we have great communication between the superintendent the board and the legislature you know we we've heard over and over um how your case in point Senator Kim with with this area that I was not aware of but I should have been um that there are inefficiencies that that need to be taken into account of we will need significant resources in in the near future um especially to combat learning loss and to you know create a better system for our students but we hear you I hear you that that there's an efficiencies that we need to address first so my response was was such because I I I I understand and my hope is that we can work with the um New superintendent not my hope my expectation is that we will work with the new superintendent whoever that may be to create the systems of accountability to understand how to create efficiencies so that when we come to you folks with a request it's clear it's concise you have confidence that it's needed and that we've already looked elsewhere and we couldn't find it elsewhere that that we've come to you so that that's what I expect to happen with our next superintendent thank jar thank you and by by the way I had an opportunity to visit your Al way here last month and um I agree it was a wonderful opportunity to meet with the students and even those that were not part of the committee were very pleasant and you know s Aloha and greeted us as we walked by it's very very nice good experience so thank you Mahal without further questions our next GM 804 so submitting for consideration and Confirmation to the Board of Education gubernatorial nominee Bruce Voss for a term to expire June 30th 2025 and to testify we have Susan Bola Davis Susan please Aloha it's my pleasure to testify for Bruce and an extens I mean confirmation for a second term he is an active board member his strong knowledge of Finance added substance to the finance committee meetings in his capacity of chairman of the finance committee he adds insight into the Department's presentations on budget for the board to be accountable there needs to be a robust finance committee led by a leader with integrity and standards he openly listens he listens to testifiers when they testify or early he reads the written testimonies he challenges when necessary and adds Clarity to the confusion he actively participates in all meetings I truly believe that this is a very necessary second term that we keep Bruce because there will not be continuity and his expertise in finances brings a lot to the table whether it's in a finance committee or even at the board once the finance committee has met and then the general business meeting occurs he provides a lot of insight for those that thank you Susan your time is up also to testify live in person shering nak for he [Music] Coalition Aloha again Cher kidani Vice chair Kim and members of the committee Sher Nakamura director of he Coalition uh we stand on our written testimony in strong support of the nomination of Bruce Foss for another term on the board of education one of he's biggest priorities is equity in education and looking out for our struggling students Bruce is a strong advocate for these students and in his actions interactions with you we make sure that they are being addressed coherence transparency and accountability is the coalition's second biggest priority we have been extremely thankful to Bruce for asking the doe tough questions to get clarity on things like how the cares and Esser funds are being spent how our CIP funds are being spent and what the doe is doing to make processes and op operations more efficient so that we can get to the outcomes we desire we look forward to working with Bruce and we urge the committee to support his nomination thank you for this opportunity to testify thank you Sher there's also a written testimony in support from David miiro of Hawaii kids can Bruce please go ahead and make an open statement Al chair kidani and members of the committee thank you very much for taking the time this afternoon when the governor asked me to consider um what would be actually my third term I thought back to the words of my father who was a math teacher at kylo intermediate for almost three decades and uh my father was a great teacher but he was a Taskmaster and my father would always say to his kids us and to his students a job half done is a job not done at all and at the board of education and the Department of Education the job is not done the pandemic has caused Great harm to our students particularly our English Learners and our financially disadvantaged students both in their learning and their social emotional well-being there's a lot of work to be done a lot of work and if confirmed by the Senate I would like to support the new superintendent whoever that is and her or his team to do the work necessary to get our students back to where they should be where they must be thank you chair thank you Bruce members questions before I start online because I'm sorry I'm gonna ask to leave for another meeting but um and I know we met and I asked you a lot of questions already okay ask away Senator no I was just reading your response and you talked about the CIP prioritizations one of the things that you push you and that you're you're part of doing and um I commend you for that every year however it seems as though the legislators of the area have CIP requests for their schools which seems to be uh not on the priority list or very low ranked on the list of cips that the doe decides they want to do and so how do we reconcile that and um you know I know are some of the older schools like parenton High School which we are both alumni I mean that campus is very old um both um Senator kadani and myself their buildings there that was there when we were there and um their master plan is really it's it's taken a long long time and a lot of the students across the island from other areas and if Senator faella was here probably would jump in and they're very envious of all the new schools and all the latest Technologies at the schools and you know the wonderful facilities and some of the old schools are are you know really bad uh luckily for Faron we fought really hard to get the field and the new stadium area you can see it from the freeway and everybody's very envious of Fon but they don't see the empty pool that's been deteriorating they don't see the gym that's terrible I mean there's all the stuff that's going on the campus so how do how do the board help to reconcile some of these no it's it's a great question senator and if I may briefly you know we're all shaped by our personal background so briefly I want to tell you how I came to this um I I I graduated from Kaho high school and I was six years there I was there in the 70s when it transitioned from an intermediate school to a high school and if you may recall if you around at the time that area of kyoo was represented by people who were unfortunately not influential in the legislature and so in this actually happened in the late 1970s when it came time to paint Kaho High School um the only thing we had they took all the leftover paint from the elementary schools the purple paint the green paint the red paint and that's how they painted Kaho high school and we laughed about it we joked about it but it it really did make all of us feel kind of like second class citizens this is paint didn't hurt anything but that always stuck with me you know and then I look at places like um and I don't mean to put anyone on the spot um ferrington is one of them nanakuli kuki High School King Intermediate School some the neighbor Islands you know WEA on the big island Kaho some of those places in my view it's just not fair I I don't want any kid to ever feel second class in a learning environment so to answer your question it has to be a balance as long as I have been paying attention to legislators uh legislators will advocate for their districts and they should and we have gotten some terrific schools as a result of that and some money um that you wouldn't already have gotten my wife teaches at mono High School I'm grateful to the legislature for um all they've done for that but we cannot let the schools that have fallen into disrepair like kamuki high school go the way they're going because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy Senator if we don't improve those schools the senator the parents don't want to send their kids and it it grindle down to nothing so the department has to work with the legislators on their priorities incorporate those into the the policy which uh commands um you know socioeconomic um equity and come up with a list that is public that's part of the conversation so that when the legislators go to fund uh the CIP projects during the session they have a list they can talk to the people at the department and facilities and that's going to be a key part of the superintendent team and try to find that balance so that they can advocate for their districts but that these students don't get left behind in second class so that's you know I often talk about balance but this is an area where balance is definitely needed well let me just share you a story about the field at farington and so while we put in the money they did up the contracts because they ran out of money or the bids came in a certain amount they cut out the lights for the field okay so we're going to have a football field with no lights and so the principal came to see me and the counselors came to see me the coaches came to see me and they said we're not going to be able to play games at night we we don't have the lights and then I was told and I said okay well you know we'll put the money in the budget and they said the contract says if you don't do it by the time the contract begins you cannot add the lights and if you go back in later and dig up the field you're GNA have what happened at at at Castle and some and some of the bad things that went on and so we we pushed for that I ended up talking with the chair of the Board of Education he found money in an account that Doe has um for when they have extra monies from a contract additional monies I guess it's a f found the money we put it in but if we didn't get involved we would have a field today at farington with no lights and then the same thing happened again when they were finishing up the field they didn't have they didn't have money for the visiting bleachers and a bathroom and we had to go and find the money again and same thing I think it came out of that fund right Senator yeah um but again I mean how how do we get so oh I'm sorry I didn't mean interrup there's there's sort of two two parts to that question uh the answer is um first is on the project management because that what you're describing at least in part is a project management failure and we just learned this I had the facilities people come and it's not not their fault but I don't know if you know this there are almost a hundred positions vacant now within facilities development and Facilities Management and they have ideas Mr Tanaka in terms of of mentorship and bringing people in but it's a huge gap there we need to get that department fully staffed with experienced people and frankly if we need to pay Market rates for that we need to do that we need to get those people second you know whether it is um you know lights at Fairington um or any of the other many issues you know I would encourage whether it's lawmakers or whatever to to communicate to the board you know I was telling this to Senator kadani when I met with her people call me all the time and a lot of times they're yelling at me you know about things that the department doesn't does it not doing and people yell at you all the time but you know what that's how I learn things you know and I particularly love it when parents call and yell at me because I learned stuff about what's happening in the schools and so that's the kind of relationship that I hope the board and the department can have the legislature going forward I mean you know what you folks have done are hopefully about to do with the um the teacher differentials and the compression issue that's a wonderful message and I hope I hope that's the beginning of kind of a little bit of a new relationship where we can talk openly and if where the department or the board screws up which we will on stuff like the lights at Fairington you know we can do what's necessary to fix it and fix it now I appreciate your response and like we I said we did go to uh don Herer who was the chair of the board at the time and he did find the money so we did I did have that relationship with him that we were able to do that so this is my last statement I'm going to make before I go um the keii school being done on Maui and I know that the doe may have had resistance to it but my understanding is that school's going to costs us in excess of $300 million to build a school which to me is is crazy because we have so many schools that could use some of that money to be upgraded and yet we're spending that money because of the rock because they were told that this is not a good area to build a school but we went ahead and built it it anyway and it's costing more and more uh as the days go by and um it's it's such a waste that we do stuff like that because again the money could be used at other schools absolutely and I know it's expensive I haven't heard the $300 million number but but it wouldn't surprise me given the the site uh constraints there in Maui the traffic as you know the land use commission had its own you know view view on that um and no doubt we need to we need to do a better job the Board needs to do a better job the department needs to do a better job of spending that money sufficiently to to their credit and I do want to defend the department here you know um some of the procedures they've put in place particularly for the repair and maintenance project and there's been some Innovative projects that's better and those are being done more efficiently and one of the things that we need to do is scale those processes up take those ideas for the larger CIP projects now remember some of that's going to be taken over by the school facilities agency but they need the school facilities agency needs to hire its good people take the priority lists take the ideas and and begin to develop uh projects more efficiently and I'll admit part of that problem is the legislators get involved and we kind of mandate and say this is where we want it but I think that in some cases the board has to stand up to the legislature and say this doesn't make sense if you put it there it's going to cost us amount and it's going to take off for other schools and you know cuz we're we're not the experts we rely on you guys to be the experts to tell us and when you guys don't then we'll dream it up understand we do we'll dream it up I mean that's our role right to try to put something there I mean In fairness to the legislators and and and and I'm I am very familiar with the background of kii school you know that's a burgeoning area a school needed an active legislator and and and good for them they're doing what they're supposed to do they're representing their constituents so I I'm I'm be the last person to criticize them um but you're right cost control has to be a factor it has to be a factor great thank you appreciate thank you um on that note um the school facilities agency bill was passed almost three years ago I think and unfortunately it took a while for uh the governor to name the executive director who has been named p f is from the Big Island um but I think the problem that was just discussed can can um somewhat be resolved with the school facilities agency to give um you know us some information and and uh for the board to get involved too as to what you you guys are hearing um and agree the 300 million price tag um is because it is Blue Rock the land should never have been purchased by the state uh it was purchased um quite a number of years ago um the other issue with that now and which is going to be make it even more expensive and the board might want to weigh in on this is the community wants um an underpass under the freeway which is going to cost a lot of money and I want to weigh in by saying this noani high school was built with an underpass of Camp Highway The Underpass gave them nothing but problems for years the kids would go there and smoke after school fight whatever it was um and now the homeless were were in it they finally closed it they closed it up it's not usable so uh what the intention was was good but that's not in today's world not not how is not how it's going to be used so I think um you know the board should should look at that and maybe weigh in with the Department I I don't know where we are and something that I might want to look at further I don't know if the money was is in this budget now to do that or not um so I can understand um why the school facilities agency was was needed and again we did pass it a while ago but you know things sometimes moves too slowly here um but I look forward for the board's you know input in some of these projects and and hopefully the school facilities agency will take the lead and let us know through the department where where the the facilities are needed um and not so much the legislators weighing in and saying this is you know what we want in our district because while it's good to have it's not always should be first on the list and and that's why at least I hope in some small way the board policy that that kenura and I put put together um will help because from the Department side the priorities you know this for decades have been kind of a black box nobody knows what's on the list or where it is and how it gets shifted and that list is made public and it's part of the overall conversation including with the legislators then we can uh get not just better projects but hopefully more efficient like cost efficient projects so thank you thank you U Bruce I wanted to ask you um what the board's timeline is to name the new superintendent we've had a couple delays and the board has moved it back yes and it's uh not doing anyone any good to you know Wonder uh when this process is going to end and so that we can you know get down to business finish the strp plan um you know it would have been nice to have more uh input on the budget I don't get me wrong uh super interim superintendent Hayashi has been uh very rigorous in um spending time with us uh he's kept us here asking questions many nights but um I I do appreciate his willingness to learn but we need to make sure that we don't delay it any further so that we can um get down to business and and start agreed and you just mentioned intentions and what's the old line I'll paraphrase it the road to heck is paved with good intentions um in terms of the amount of time it's taken there was a couple factors um that the board considered um one was it wanted to get the input of you know the community advisory committees and the superintendent it wanted to H cast the broadest net uh you know for candidates so that we could see everyone who was interested in the job who's qualified and third rightly or wrongly uh the decision was made it probably wouldn't be a good idea to change in the middle of the school year um all that being said I agree with you it probably has gone on a little longer than ideally it should and so to answer your question specifically there will be a um a committee meeting um in the first week of May uh uh uh to approve essentially the um some processes and then on May I believe it's 19th the finalists that are selected by the um the committee uh the search committee which has done an enormous amount of work will be interviewed by the full board and it is the expectation that at are about that day assuming that the candidates are acceptable to the board that a new superintendent will be selected I hope so um certainly by so a month from now we a month from now and um you know and I do commend and uh interim superintendent Hayashi for his his patience you know and his commitment to the students and his commitment to keeping the schools open he was put in a difficult if not impossible situation and um you know I think the school's benefited from you know what he's done in that extremely difficult situation yeah I think it was a difficult and impossible situation myself to not have a strap plan you can't hire a fire so you have the same people that you're working with whe you know good or bad that's you know whatever right and that I mean you're 100% right on that and that that's the whoever the new superintendent is that's job one is to assemble his or her team right a team that is um you know got not just the experience but has the ability as as Miss Nakamura likes to say to develop the internal process is necessary to change change the mindset within the department that we're here to support the schools that's what we do and and is willing to accept new procedures new ideas and um it's a difficult thing it really is the very you mentioned the Strategic plan and we need to get on that but the very first thing the Board needs to do with a new superintendent is help her or him develop the kind of team that's necessary to uh drive this forward and remediate the learning loss thank you for that and I appreciate your willingness to continue to serve Bruce thank you you've been a great asset to the board appreciate it further questions I'll just do a quick one I can M chair um hello Bruce just real quick just going off of one of your statements you made you know you spoke about the the trauma you know of the kids mental health and coming back to school how that's all going to all play out and and really um you felt strongly developing better metrics to address the student's social emotional well-being um you know and you you said it's going to take time obviously to get a a a better understand understanding of what really is going on and there was a uh you know an upfront um what is it an upfront I guess um data collection at first I handle but it didn't fully Encompass what you thought which I feel exactly the same way um but how do you see the board helping the department accomplish this in in getting B better data collection not only for a lot of this types of stuff but obviously throughout a lot of the other things you spoke about in your responses better data collection to better handle how we move forward in the future so um the the data tool that was used by the department and used by by a lot of lot of school districts you know is the Panorama tool that's given to the students and um you know again I just know from talking to teacher my own wife who teacher at mono high school that um not that the students didn't take that seriously they did um as they do all testing and there but it didn't encompass everything of what they what they what they were feeling and and in particular I mean the sense of disconnectedness and disengagement that students felt you know that the um from a learning and participation you know it was almost like an out-of-body experience and and that has uh created all kinds of disruptive and unproductive Behavior so as I mentioned there are there are tools um you know that that uh the national association's board of education Advocates there's other ones that I know that are available and we you know it's a two-prong process we need to work with the Department to to find the proper tools have the students uh you know provide the data and then work with the Department with regular reporting on on programs um you know that can address this you know as as K said and I'm so happy that he's staying on the board because he's such a great asset a lot of this is peer driven right you know um peer groups and and the kinds of opportunities to participate in in peer activities that just simply haven't been there the last two years we have plenty of money we have the Esser funds the uh the complex areas are directing those the Board needs to put all that together require regular reporting by the department and the complex area superintendence and make sure that money is available even for small things at the schools high schools intermediate schools programs activities nights food for students you wouldn't believe Senator what a big deal it is just to provide snacks for students to keep them there learning all that kind of stuff we need to pay attention to and make sure is being done and so and and that the public can um learn about and offer its ideas because you know we've heard some of them today the public has great ideas and over the last couple years uh the department you know arguably hasn't listened to all those ideas and and I want I want us as the board want the department to listen to those ideas to help those students in their social emotional learning thanks Bruce thanks chair thank you thank you much appreciate it moving along GM 802 submitting for consideration and Confirmation to the Board of Education gorial nominee Nicole mclen for turn to expire 6:30 20125 to testify Susan Picola Davis please helloha Aloha thanks for hanging in there Susan it's like a board of education I mean a depart yeah board meeting It's Gonna Last all day right so Nicole Aloha and get ready for your opportunity to participate in making our public schools great public schools for all of Hawaii's kakei be prepared for long hours prior to every meeting you will need to put aside some personal time to read the minutes and all the written testimonies during the meetings you will be actively listening to oral testimonies from your constituents it is important to know that your board membership comes with high expectations from the public part of this includes holding the Department of Education accountable be ready to ask questions for clarity from all presenters on the agenda it is a very important job you are undertaking with its ups and downs thank you for accepting the nomination I noticed in your resume that you have qualities that the board would definitely benefit from thank you Susan your time is up sorry next to testify Rick eged president Wy key Improvement Association not here in Support also Ivan lwan it's Ivan here in support and a bunch of testimonies received all in support Mak thank you for joining us please make your opening statement Aloha Cher kidani Vice chair Kim and honorable members of the senate committee on education it is an honor to be here today before you seeking confirmation of my nomination to the Hawaii state board of education this is a tremendous responsibility that if confirmed I will take very seriously I have had the pleasure of connecting with each of you um and your office staff over the past weeks as well as a number of your colleagues in the Senate and I found our conversations to be insightful and productive I'd like to Mahalo you all for sharing your most precious resource with me your time as well as the colleagues and friends of mine who took the time to support me in this endeavor I'm grateful for all that this body has done and continues to do for our Ki thank you for the opportunity to be heard before you today and I humbly ask for your support in this nomination to the Board of Education mahalo Mahal Mak I hope Susan Picola Davis didn't scare you off she did but it is true the board meetings have been very lengthy but look kimana and Bruce are back so so it can't be all that bad I mean it's a tremendous responsibility to sit on the board uh as legislators and and on this committee you feel that tremendous I'm not going to call it a burden responsibility and um so we're very happy when new faces you know come up come up and and uh are willing to take up the mantle and and serve our students our community um and you know thank you for coming to to uh sit with me and talk story and I'll ask a few questions um for the general public also because I actually have gone over these things with you already but in your response you talk about needing clear metrics to determine success for the Department of Education what are some key metrics or indicators you would like the doe to use to measure and evaluate Student Success I think many of the other Akamai folk before me had a lot of man that I think is of value K's five um sort of metrics if you will but I think if I could uh chair kidani expound um I think one of the things when we think through strategic planning and metrics is really looking at the the indicators that were already set in the 2017 through 2020 plan and ensuring that um we have some accountability in those um look at areas of opportunity for growth and Improvement um because as I understand it really with the exception of two um many of them fell short in terms of success and those indicators so I would look at um doing a a deeper dive on on how we can improve that as we move forward into strategic planning for the future um for our Kiki but I think in general the indicators that have already been laid out in the plan are spot on thank you so you in your response the written response to the committee you talk about the need for targeted and Equitable programming to fill the gaps what gaps do you believe exist in the do now what proposals do you have to fill those gaps I think access is a is a a a big thing uh equity and access um when you're when you're considering Public Schools it is a deep passion of mine to ensure access it's something that we deal with in the health care sector um and I do see as I've shared with you and others lots of synergies between Healthcare and education when we're considering the well-being of families um and Ki and so um I do think looking for ways to bridge gaps in terms of access needs to be something that the Boe and the doe partner together uh hopefully with the legislature as well but uh developing programs and uh strategies around identifying those gaps and ways to develop Partnerships to address it um is a passion of mine thank you for that um I appreciated your response that you highlighted increasing Workforce Development opportunities in the the health care field for our students how do you see the board helping build these Partnerships and Workforce Pathways with the doe and private sector Partners thank you for that uh question chair I think um as again folks before me that are Akamai have shared I definitely believe that there's an appetite in the business Community uh both for-profit and nonprofit to partner with Ki uh to ensure um a better bridge between education and career Readiness um so I think again um not to double down on the point but I do think that there's opportunity for the Boe um to consider creative and innovative solutions or to um build upon the successes that many other Boe members have have begun um in terms of developing Pathways um there are lots of private schools that have begun pathway programs for KiKi um and some doe schools that have done a phenomenal job as well I for consideration I'd only be looking uh at ways to expand that opportunity uh as as appropriate um and notably I would be one to advocate for those opportunities to the underserved Kiki thank you for that I think um the legislature has been been a strong proponent of of these Pathways um even our career technical education our uh Alternative Learning Centers and you know as many of you have talked about uh students needs um we also know that not every student can sit in the classroom for six hours a day and and you know learn and so there are other ways that we are looking at to you know to make sure that um they have the education and skills they need to move forward in life I think um uh Pathways aren't excellent example of of how they can do this and there are several schools in the state that are doing we saw when we visited the Big Island um one pathway where they were teaching um the students how to be surveyors and they were so excellent I was just so amazed we have um at white paho high school they have a health Academy and I was kind of Blown Away a couple years ago when uh first lady Biden was here to push for vaccinations um Hawaii Pacific Health rolled up in their brand new bus that was suited for the vaccination purposes and every employee on the bus that was doing vaccinations were graduates of Wahu High School the year before hired by Hawaii Pacific health and making earning a a decent uh wage and the assistance on the bus were that came onto the bus were the students that were currently at White High School in the health pathway and and this is you know how it's meant to work and I think the ideas that our educators are bringing to the table with the help of the Board of Education um is significant because I think you know in the days that when we went to school we did have what what is now called Pathways we had auto shops and you know sheet Meadow Woodworks and and whatever you know for a long time they stopped but uh we know that our um local community has a hard time finding um you know um employees to fill these jobs and I've known that some of the auto body shops have to you know bring people from the mainland because they don't have um workers here who know how to do that and and so we need to find out what the community and what the businesses in our community need and to be able to help help them you know fill those needs through our student population so I appreciate your your willingness to sit on the board and yes it is um hard work but it's interesting and you will be part of guiding the lives of of future students and I think that should give you great satisfaction and I am very thankful that you're willing to serve members any questions just quick hello Mak and again uh not only to you but to the rest who have reached out and asked for meetings um prior to this hearing you know I appreciate that and it really goes a long way to know that you guys are you know willing to reach out and and have those build those relationships with each and every one of us especially on this committee to better get to know you and better see how uh you would uh be on the board and and serve on the board so I appreciate that even though I wasn't able to meet I know you've most of youve tried multiple times but um I do appreciate that you know um my whole thing is and I know K is a huge advocate I know our neighbor Island members are hu huge advocate for um the neighbor islands and uh the rural communities and I know aahu has extremely diverse uh communities as well that are represented over here and in one of your responses you said that you know we can bring a one- siiz fits-all type of approach um to supporting our kids teachers and schools we need targeted equ Equitable programming that actually fills those gaps like how do you you know see yourself being on the board working with other members from the neighbor Islands or or representing the rural communities how do you see yourself um being able to understand and comprehend the complexities involved in you know let's say the kid the the the kids being taught in C you know have very limited resources um extremely old facilities you know 1880s I think the the school was or originally built so how you see yourself like understanding those types of issues and being able to really look and say like oh yeah these are the types of things we need to look at you know the one size doesn't fit all right that Community needs something different than that Community than that Community thank you for your question Senator kuha I think I'm going to give you a simple response but I will elaborate so bear with me I think simply put it's really just about talking story and and listening is really all that it is it's uh making a commitment to lean on expertise either on the board or in those different underserved areas which again that's similar to others that currently sit on the board that's a passion project of mine um I do strongly believe in the underserved communities and making sure that no child as Bruce pointed out you know feels like a second class citizen simply because of of circumstances that they had no power in choosing right so I think we do exist to serve all Kiki um I think relationship building asking the questions having the conversation and listening allows us and affords us the ability to make good policies that um to to some degree tailor um to different areas and we all know this growing up in Hawaii a solution on aahu is is not applicable um on Havi Island and so we really do have to approach it that way it's a Statewide system of course but but um I think we do have to be mindful of all of the different nuances even on aahu Senator kuha you know it's you know an island and different than the neighbor Islands but even on aahu different areas are far different than each other so I think having that context and being mindful of when we uh create policies and and and when we affect change that we understand impacts Beyond just our own ether and that um to your point I do think that's of value to ensure that what we're creating we check those outcomes as well thank you thank you m chair thank you for the questions couple first all thanks um to come and uh share with me a little bit about yourself and I just get one question I know we talked about um for the new school superintendent and um if you was on the board of the selection um we talked this about um the process that they're doing now um and previously and of course I mean personally I don't agree in um you know we have a lot of talent here I was reaching out and saying that to you what what you would do or what you would recommend doing differently than the previous boards that been selecting our superintendent over the years that what you what you would bring to the table doing something different I I thank you for the question Senator faella I I want to commend um those that have been on the board prior to me I don't think that that is a small task by by any measure um that effectively has impact on 170,000 Ki Plus+ um so I don't envy them however yet here I am um so to answer your question I don't know what um I would have done differently in that setting because quite frankly I wasn't there but in terms of uh should I get confirmed um and have the opportunity to select I do believe and I'll say this senator faella do believe that as local people we all have a collective kulana to be a little bit better about um as a mother let me answer it this way as a mother I tell my Kiki all the time that you can do or be anything I'm constantly telling that I will admit to this body and others tuning in that I'm not the best at modeling that kind of behavior I think there is um something to be said about ensuring that when we have local that we should uh promote local and what I mean by that is um we need to be better about modeling that behavior to Kiki we need to show an example to KI that in positions of power that they can achieve that we can't tell Ki in school that they can but we're constantly pulling from elsewhere that doesn't um comport with Ki um that aside obviously qualifications is a baseline And so you're qualified or you're not qualified for the job but I think what I would say about the super intendent is that um should I have the opportunity to select I would consider looking at uh an individual's ability to to understand the nuances it goes back to Senator kana's question a one-size fit saww and how do you really operate within hav which I think we can all agree is extremely unique so I would be looking for someone who has the capacity to understand hav for who we are um because it is it is an important position and it's a complicated space that we live in a beautiful but complicated space thank you thank you chair thank you thank you very much for your appreciate it our next nominee GM 803 submitting for consideration and Confirmation to the Board of Education gubernatorial nominee Lauren Mor arti for a term to expire 6:30 2024 um you can come forward Lauren but we do have some people waiting to testify and I'm sorry that we have gone so long but your one of the testifiers Mana white Peters had to leave she was testifying in support next is Susan Picola Davis Susan please Susan's there yes I'm here Susan I'm still here I'm not gonna go through the same the same thing that I did with M because I believe that this what I've said fits for all of them and it wasn't meant to scare them off it was meant for them to understand that sometimes it's more than what you think and I'm happy that three people are here today that will be joining the board what I wanted to say and I'm going to say it for Maka I noticed that you had some great qualities Community Building internal external communication she launched the Queen's Facebook page she just developed strategic plans and implemented them and she oversaw Hospital metrics to ensure alignment with Hospital strategic goals high qualities that our Board needs Lauren she's Community oriented she's abil she has an ability to streamline thank you very much and strategic Vision again all qualities that fit right in with what your position is on the board thank you for thank you Susan sorry to cut you off again next to testify Diane Peters Newan committee members I'm Diane Peter you have my testimony I stand in strong support of the nomination of Lauren Mor yardi as to serve on the board of education I would just um maybe summarize and um focus on the fact that as the first US ambassador of native Hawaiian ancestry Lauren brings forth not only a very strong local perspective on Educational Systems but also a Global Perspective and I also just want to highlight her personal passion for education so thank you very much for this opportunity to weigh in thank you um Diane and if they look alike I believe they are sisters it doesn't take away from any part of the testimony Dian if she looks familiar happens to be the CEO of the American Red Cross Pacific Islands region also a rotary club downtown I'm Rotary Club Milani Sunrise thank you okay next to testify Mana moriarti Alani Senators F in kuha I've known the nominee for um as long as almost everybody in the room is my mom I've learned a few things from a lifetime of observing Mom Mom's a big picture thinker but she has a grasp of the the details she's willing to ask the tough questions in a respectful manner to get things done mom gives freely of her time and talent and mom makes plans and follows through mom has given Decades of her time where she volunteered to serve on the boards of Institutions providing educational and and extracurricular programs for thousands and thousands of kids this was volunteer time while she was raising two children and in an award-winning career as a manager and a diplomat in the United States Foreign Service mom makes plans and follows through when mom retired from her Foreign Service career she spent weeks in introspection reflecting on what it was she was going to do with the next phase of her life and she decided did she came to two conclusions it would involve Hawaii education and she fallen through she had a 15year plan 15 years ago and that plan involved the Board of Education of the state of Hawaii she committed and she followed through Mahalo for your consideration she's the right person for this job that's so amazing I think this is the first time I've had a child testify for their parents [Music] oh that is so awesome thank you so much for joining us Ambassador Mor Ari and thank you for your willingness to serve please go ahead and Al um I'd like first as a citizen of Hawaii to thank you Madame chair members of this committee um for what you do to support education nothing is more important than educating our next Generation Um I'm also grateful to governor eay for having nominated me to serve on the board of education I'm really excited um to that kuliana I would bring my passionate conviction about the importance of Education uh experience in meeting at strategic levels and in large organizations uh and Lessons Learned From volunteer uh teaching and from service on nonprofit boards I come from a family that long valued public service and education um my mother who came from k um gave me the Hawaiian name kah and I was called across the waters to serve for almost three decades as a US ambassador and career Diplomat and I was called home again to serve um I served on the school board in Beijing China was a dean at the Daniel kinoi Asia Pacific Center for security studies um and hold degrees from the University of Hawaii and a master of arts and teaching from shamanite when my husband and I were diplomats and residents at the East West Center our children attended Public School in Hawaii I believe strongly that every child should have the opportunity for an excellent free public school education our Public School in Hawaii should be firmly rooted in the culture history values and many strengths of our diverse people of society um at the same time success in the 21st century requires appreciation and understanding of events and Trends beyond our Shores uh if confirmed to serve on the board of education I would listen to and seek wisdom from people with knowledge and experience um it's been really exciting to listen to this testimony today both your questions your depth of knowledge and what I've learned just listening in a few minutes to those who've already served um I would weigh my decisions and actions against the standard of how will this benefit the students is this the best way to benefit the students I would work hard to serve Hawai way make I ask that you confirm me to serve as a member of the Board of Education Mahalo thank you very much for your willingness to serve Ambassador in your response to the committee you talk about how numbers themselves cannot tell the whole story while acknowledging that benchmarks are still important to assess progress can you elaborate more on what you mean by this and how you would evaluate the success of the deal so one of my practices um has always been when I have to make a decision to seek the best possible data um to help to assess costs to help to assess options um but numbers can't tell the whole story yes we can use them both to tell objective facts we can also use them to uh get an idea of perceptions but they can't tell a whole story um so one of the things I always like to know is what's behind the numbers like what was the actual survey question so we can get an idea of well did that perhaps skew in some sense the numbers we're getting um I believe though it is important to have numbers whatever data we can have because it can help us to spot Trends see outliers and then ask additional questions to try to understand what lies behind the numbers that we do have uh perhaps to seek more data or better explanations it can also help us to um look at what's happening elsewhere and understand is there's something we can learn from there or they can learn from us obviously each situation is different with respect specifically to education numbers someone the you know maybe easier to know do kids go to school I'm a student teaching at Castle 9th grade social studies and we lost kids in the ninth grade who stopped coming to school that some important statistics they're not coming to school it's telling us something but we would need to know what's behind it and why they're not coming teachers a lot of discussion here today about teachers so are teachers ready to teach can we not just can we recruit them and retrain them but are they ready to teach in the ways that we need for going forward so those are basic kinds of things some of the things I'm most interested in and have tried to do some re research on um are hard to measure things like grip perseverance ability to overcome difficulty those are hard to measure I think we're just now starting to see more research coming in from that and some of the research that'll be available as we see the results of covid um te way different jurisdictions have reacted to covid may give us insights into what worked in some places and then we can figure out whether there's anything we can learn from um what others have learned so it's a kind of long answer and I think the bottom line in terms of exactly what I would want to see in a is if I were confirmed for the Board of Education would specifically depend on the kinds of issues that the board as a whole working with the doe decides are the things that the Strategic plan needs to focus on thank you for that you also noted that the responsibility of the board of educ ation extends Beyond just the doe system to include the charter commission and the public library system if confirmed to the board how do you anticipate interacting with the charter commission and the state librarian well of course I'd be guided also by the experience of those who've come before me and would help me to understand the important issues but the first thing I'd want to do is go meet them talk to them see what's important to them what their concerned about what keeps them awake at night what opportunities they see and then I'd want to talk to the people who use what they offer or could be using what they offer to try to understand those perspective as as well uh and finally I'd want to understand um both the history here I'm sure there's good research I here we have a great research Department in the board of education but also um what have been experiences elsewhere um with similar types of um commissions I understand though of course that for example on the public charter commission our state is way ahead most of the rest of the country in how um public charter schools have really taken off and become part the integral part of our education system what a novel idea talking to people you prioritize the formation of new of a new strategic plan as something the board must take up immediately what kinds of metrics or data would you like to see to be part of that strategic plan I would prioritize that um I think that once you have a strategic plan in place it makes other decisions easier um the exact metrics that would be used though I think need to reflect what is in the Strategic plan um no point just collecting data to collect data for me to suggest something um but I would want to collect data against whatever the Strategic targets are within that plan thank you for that very good members further questions you did a good job like your answers W thank you thank you thank you very good Senator thank you madam chair Al and you know thanks for being here and um first of all I think you know all the everybody every individual here is fantastic and it's great to see the passion in each and every one of you and you know just looking at your impressive resume it's just I don't even know if I'm you know over here you know but you know I had one question I know you spoke about earlier that um you like to build upon your own expertise in formulating uh policies that recruit develop Empower and retain effective teachers as well as uh expertise in assessment um you know can you explain some of those policies you think of you you've gained and learned throughout the years to help recruit develop Empower and retain effective teachers thank you for the question uh research has has shown that one of the most important factors to Student Success is having an Effective Teacher and when I think back um as to what made a difference for me when I really wanted to learn things it was often having a teacher who was passionate and knew both how to interest me and also to teach me um so I think teachers are absolutely um critical and really really important to learning one of the things that you see I don't know if you've heard of Shany nin in India mean the teacher teaches underneath the people tree but it's one of the it's recognized as among the best schools in the world because it's the teachers and the students who are working together um so when I look around the world I see the importance of effective teachers I also see for example in a lot of other societies they pay the teachers like you pay doctors and the teachers get the kind of respect that you would give to what we think of as these type of professionals that's what I'd like to see how you get there is harder uh this isn't a prescription this is you know I got to wait till I hear what analysis has already been done and the other things that have been tried but if you were to ask me as citizen Lauren not information already what I would do pay the teachers more sorry legislators if you were going to give me back my if you going to give me back my $300 they're talking about you're thinking to give us each for our taxes go give it to the teachers already no no there's nothing more that we would rather do than pay the teachers I'd rather give it to the teacher however we're the only state in the Union where the counties do not run education and give no money to this the state so the the education budget takes up 22 to 25% of the state's budget um and you know I I wish there was a way I mean I've tried doing a lottery for Education that didn't go um I I don't know what else we could try but you guys come up with good ideas and let's let's do something so that was a f answer manager I I am I am right there with you guys you know so that was a fast answer and I also one of the things I came away with my conversations was how much support how blessed the citizens of Hawaii are in how much support in time and effort and money that our legislators really do put the attention on on education um and I also know from my listening looking as well as today there are other needs as well facilities Health um but you're asking me about teachers and I must say I think teachers is really really important thank you I think we agree further questions M only because Senator kadani part of the lottery um because of course we want to give our teachers as much as we can give them because they word every penny um for for me I I just want to come with this this idea I'm not sure we can do it here but this is something that maybe you guys can take away so one of my great friends is a principal now in one of the schools in my community but he said where he came from um like how Senator kadani said some of the cities help out with some of the schools but he came up with an idea not sure if it can be done in districting on utilities like cable order electric and um designated to Teachers Pay it's like say every month I'm going to pay a dollar more to my water bill for teachers salary I mean I don't know if they can do that I figured since she said lottery I bring it out of my head I'm not sure we can but there's a way that we if we got to put our money where our amount is if we want the best for our kids and we of the best teachers then sometimes we got to DV up I'm not saying everybody can but if you choose to up in every month they run your bill off not to a dollar let's say your bill is $198 and they run them off to $200 or whatever every month they run off your bill and the money goes into I don't like I said we can because I knew to the teachers uh fund or money to raise for that do you think that something that you guys could consider at the Board of Education something like that thank you for the idea I think there um I wouldn't give you an opinion right off the bat because I want to see what you know what the cost of implementing and what the advantages are compared to Alternatives but um thank you for the idea and I guess your idea also in responds partially to your question as well Senator k um so I gave you a general answer and in the end the answer actually is twofold it needs to be a strategic Direction choosing where the priorities are is it teachers is it facilities is it the Health well-being where are the priorities and how I think it's Kimo was saying do they fit together but in the end it's also the implementation is in the details of okay exactly what are you going to do and how's it going to work and how are you going to measure it um and so um that would be something that if I were confirmed um I would be excited and interested to try to really you can help write the bill next year great great idea I don't I have no problems with that thank you very much Ambassador enjoyed your discussion our final GM 805 last but not least is submitting for consideration and Confirmation to the Board of Education gubernatorial nominee Ken kah for a term to expire 6:30 2024 Susan T Cola Davis helloa still with us thank you Susan of course I just want to thank Ken for bringing his expertise and background from the Department of Education to the board um I know that and I'm sure that our board member Bruce boss is excited to have you if you get confirmed which you will on board with the board you have budgetary strength and experience that will help the board understand some of the nuances of Department of education's budget process you need to have the ability to discuss and clarify aspects of the Department's budget and how it relates to students teachers complexes I'm talking about the school level the budget always needs to focus on the students the board focuses on the students so that's my last word it's all about the students nothing else thank you that's a good last word thank you Susan that's the only testifier that we have we have several uh pieces of written testimony all in support can thank you for being here thank you for your willingness to serve please go ahead thank you very much chair members of the committee um first of all thank you very much for your consideration of the nomination after well on December 31st 2021 after 42 years in the Department of Education um my wife thought I was going to do all the things on the honeydew list which didn't sit to well with me but okay fine um but there are people that came forward and asked you know if I would be willing to put in you know application to be on the board of education and I'm very very happy to have been part of the education system of hoi I had good mentors people that supported me and you know it was a situation where I felt it was time to to give back and so at this time I stand on my written testimony and await any questions that you may have thank you Ken Ken in your response to the committee you talk about using annual program reviews to determine viability of programs can you elaborate more on what these reviews would look like and how they might be implemented within the de I think um within the department you know again there's various programs you know that we fund or legislature funds um special education Alternative Learning um E I mean you know we we work the budget you know I help with those things yeah so because of that I think one of the things that needs to be done is a review of the program to see the viability one of the programs and to ensure that the money being set aside supports you know what's going on within those programs and also are the Personnel sufficient to run the program are there needs that are coming up where additional bodies need to be you know brought in as well as is there additional funding that needs to be provided and then looking at programs and determining are those programs still viable programs if they're not you know what can be done to either one beef those programs up or two to ensure that those programs possibly you know be cut or redescribe and repurpose you know to meet the needs of students thank you Ken you also talked about expanding the academy and career pathway models to the elementary schools to maximize engagement expectations of students um I do note that I know the interim uh superintendent um has someone working already on this as as part of um you know more programs of for middle and and uh elementary schools and I'm really excited to hear that and and to see more of this but how can the board help other complexes expand the academic career Pathways to the middle and elementary schools I think it's a it's a mindset you know it's within complexes having you know principles understand that those kids that are in elementary school will slowly work their way to middle school and then onto the high school so I think uh in our discussion Senator we talked about how if we look at white pahu you know complex how um interm Superintendent at the time as principal of whiteo high school was able to bring together the people within the white power complex to work together to see what kinds of needs there are because they understood that students will move their way from elementary middle to high school and I think those things need need to be communicated to to principles to start working together to decide for the complex and the community what is important you know what is the focus and how are they going to do those things thank you very much for that Senator do you have any questions for actually don't have any questions um that's fine we've we've gone beyond our time um and we've lost uh we've lost our members anyway thank you all so much for being here today um I I'm just so impressed with all of you I think Bruce and and K are excited because they can see the quality of you know next new members that will come on to the board I um just am excited uh to for all of you and just cannot thank you guys enough for being willing to serve um look forward to uh letting you guys know next when are we meeting again oh sorry when do I ever listen to you okay so we will have decision making on Monday April 25th in this room at 1:30 is that the time we've given okay and I'm so sorry you guys do not have to come back we can do this on Zoom is that correct yeah be live broadcast on YouTube as well so so I'm so sorry that we can't do decision making today thank you very much this meeting is adjourned

now those are districts that have seven or eight hundred thousand students that's still a high percentage uh my granddaughter is in a school district in a neighborhood in the valley where everybody think wow these are nice houses everybody's going to be young oh she was frustrated because half of her class did nothing but last quarter of 2020 so it's happening everywhere and if we could get a hub here i think perhaps it's one more set of services for students that are marching to a different drummer pardon me i think it's also a way they can have someone kind of hovering over them if they're challenged they wouldn't be in this situation if they felt successful in their life and hopefully if they had someone there that might help there's a lady who's done a lot of research on poverty and ruby pain and her primary book is understanding a framework of poverty and that book she uses a phrase i don't like the phrase but we use it a lot it calls students at risk well students at risk is one of those vessel words that hold different meanings from our people she says the research shows that if a child has a significant adult in their life that talks to him five to ten minutes a week it doubles your chances for success that's that's so simple and i think this type of thing if we add another is a way some kids could do that i know in my family tree my dad had a ninth grade education because his family he's a teenager during the depression they had other values in him getting an education so i thought when i was and i said well i'll pull the same thing i'll tell them i'm gonna quit it didn't work but people if people families that may not understand the value of education may not be able or may not understand the importance of supporting that kid in some type of educational environment so you knew about i didn't know if everybody else did not so um did they give us any sort of timeline on when they might be putting the hub in that's my recollection we have like i said i was i was very uh disappointed with the way i saw things going but it seemed um i didn't see a whole lot of the support for students that were struggling more students that weren't logging in and i had one student who came in to do her school work there in the learning center with me in the moon and she started off doing great um you know she was doing over 10 hours a week and then slowly kept cutting it back and then just stopped all together one young man was just did great with it um he never and i was there as a resource for them he never ever contacted me i contacted him to see if he had questions he never got back but i saw him graduating there passing his classes and i thought i'll stay out of his way but i do think having that hook there would make it more successful i just there were so many students that weren't succeeding and i know it was my understanding at the time of league mercy and said that if any student is if the student transfers from here to bad solutions instead of dropping out that if they later drop out it doesn't count against our correct numbers it counts against bad solutions number right um and i see the benefit for the district in that but the way i saw it running with those students i saw it was a detriment to those students and those students still live here in this community and they're still a part of it and we want them to succeed for themselves and also to be a successful part of the community as well so i'm hoping if they can do the hub that that will alleviate the issues that i was seeing it's a completely different thing when they finish that program they have a high school diploma they simply um like the young man who left halfway through his junior year they basically said oh you've got this many credits to finish your finish so he took the classes did those credits and then graduated with a full high school diploma that could be used to get into the military or college or anything else so it's it's definitely a step up from a gdp program um but for somebody who had seen it happen where they left school tenth grade or only ninth grade credits like you would say they start to realize oh i've got years of work to get done with this and then they think well ged is quicker i just have to pass these five tests but they're not in their head making the connection that it's a graduation equivalency you still need the same knowledge and it's not like dvd is a shortcut to get there it still takes most students years to complete their gpd depending on when they come in so i'm going to ask a question that may be off the subject and i may not be able to bring up right now just tell me no okay so i've just seen in the past that kids that got stuck in the in-school suspension with miss garcia just suddenly bloomed right they one kid went from a sophomore to a senior and one semester in there are we identifying kids that are having issues and putting them in there with her or maybe it's just that one kid with special or or i i lance probably knows more about the definitely knows more about this than i do but we the case you're describing is not uncommon um but they've got someone there i hate to say the word hovering but they're hungry and there's no change and the students have to be a place a certain time and go for lunch but they got to be back there and there's not a lot else to do we had a case some time ago where uh school was analyzed over christmas break i'm talking about the same incident okay kid yes that kid he did it faster than that but he was a good kid he was sharp and he just had really followed the wrong friend that time and uh he did well i don't know what he's doing now he's living in phoenix but he great ready yes he yes because it was like nothing else to do it's what worked right and i think one of the things that also they can do a lot is that for example if a student from baba kibri wants to come here they can enroll in the program as a student of awhile high school so the thing about this i asked the money question because i couldn't remember the answer honestly but we if that happened or if a child child if a student came to peel a bend or polished anywhere and they enrolled in our in the in the yahoo hub we would get the adm for that kid and then we'd pay them after the kid graduated we paid um grant solutions uh a portion of that we'd get i think at least 50 percent so it also works with expel students too right yes so the question i had right now and is if we have a kid that is way behind in his high school him or her in their high school credits is it a consideration even though they're not a disciplinary problem to put them in that computer lab with ms garcia until they recover those credits yes and a lot of times they request okay realized and but we're starting to see more and more which is frightening um i have students within the last month come in say their junior coming with guardian want to enroll here in lojo their junior and uh open up the packet three credits well you're only a junior according to the state because you're in that code or you're not a junior right or to be a freshman so if you step so if we enroll in and he stays in here maybe at 24 years old he would graduate um i doubt that would happen i mean this this program i was already 17 right so you know they're just um at least with their grad solutions whether he did it on campus or off campus it would be better paced and hopefully they're better than they were when you work with them i know not like if you read about they have things that we don't have the life coaches the academic counselors they have more support than what we can give here um you know but they would also include that they would get to keep that if we did have the hub here whether they chose to do it outside or pop in and out of the hub again it's kind of self-paced but they would have more support but we will have um three possibly it looks like four students graduate early this year and without ingenuity wouldn't happen but you know just like you know some succeeded like you know just skyrocket during the covet where others are coming in they're so far away right a couple eighth graders are you know didn't hurt me do anything again this year on campus they didn't do it off campus well at what age are they going to just figure out i can't i'm not going to hang out with these kids i'm i'm in a class i'm three years older than the students you know my peers they're not even here though yes so so any resource like this i think we can try to utilize especially when it's not coming out of our pockets i think we just give as many opportunities as possible because as you know we all learn differently and want different surroundings and sometimes just spark is better than others hopefully work though thanks i think when i agree with you i think one of the things we have done for a century at least maybe more in public education is we use the skin schenerian model on placement by replacement rewards and we've used a grade or promotion or high school graduation as an award for if you do what i tell you to do we're going to give you this reward well some kids aren't motivated by that at all they need more depth they need more personalized touch they need whatever and so i think that i think i don't have any research folks i think a high perceived kids that walk away from high school before the visions on are in that degree that feels that way and so they have some value they have some freedom they have some choice and the younger it seems like kids are getting younger and younger and say they want choice they want more control their choice than the adults did when i was 15 or 16.

our first year we probably had about 550 students on our campus so huge numbers there um you can see our school colors mascots the stallions and our signature program is engineering so opportunities um i think you would be able to go to any high school um but especially now and look at the challenges that there lies with attendance and tardies um it has been one of those things that we continue to brainstorm about with our staff along with our students i truly believe that the attendance piece is so important when you look at that being the first step as far as with lifelong success and we're constantly working on that so that's a work in progress another thing you would not think that um it would be a challenge but it's a again opportunity for us to ensure that our plcs are working um constantly striving as far as i'm having those teachers work with each other on an everyday basis also with that it's being able to help and support our students our students have lots of needs when you look at what dr kellis has laid out for us with the three a's we constantly strive to be perfect in those areas and and to get better and then last but not least if you hurt haven't heard of rti which is response to intervention it is so important that that is taking place within the classroom i know a lot of times our teachers are working very hard out there as far as delivering instruction for the students but when you ask them to maybe come in let's say for after school tutoring or whatever once you have them as an audience within your classroom it's hard to get those students back and so we're really working with our teachers um to be able to further develop them with response to intervention within the classroom so tier one tier two tier three instruction celebrations um you know again i i'm gonna point out my assistant principles um after the ceremony i mean after after i speak after the ceremony uh after i speak but i really am proud of our dual enrollment numbers um we we have the most students that are enrolled in dual enrollment in the district but we also rival some of those other high schools in the west valley as far as our students and their um want wanting to take those classes and i truly believe when you start to look at what shadow ridge is all about um when we talk about home high expectations opportunities meaningful relationships and empowerment dual enrollment opens doors it's opportunities for everyone within our community um especially when you look at the high cost of college and university it helps really um decrease those costs and what parents have to pay significantly so that is a huge uh piece right there as far as with our our um students really being able to have that opportunity also um positive schools culture we always talk about stallion strong when there's a va when there's adversity we come together as a community to be stallion strong this year when we started to look at our students and some of the struggles that they had um again just being there you just try to think creatively what other opportunities can we provide for students to be able to be successful in their classes and so one of the things we we started this year was saturday academy um there were pictures that were taken we had our entire um commons um filled with students we had teachers that were there helping and really being able to get them on the right path again we're in an another we're in the technology age and so we need to make sure that we provide that access we're a community school so we need to be able to make sure that we provide all opportunities and access for our community you just met the young ladies tonight or the the students that were here as far as our chair state champions um we're so honored that's our first team championship um so hopefully um when um they come up next year back to back it'd be nice to buy those shirts for back-to-back champions with that and then um probably the programs that i am most um proud of has to be our cte computers and what our students are doing on the cte end mr greensaber has been a big support um and we really i appreciate him being a cheerleader for our teachers to again provide other opportunities for our students so focus for the year this is just information straight from our cip our first goal was to make sure that there's instruction that meets the needs of every student every single student in the school goal number two increase student achievement goal number three excellent customer service and last but not least goal number four implement stride advisory period um i would tell you when we start to look at our advisory period it was one of those things that we wanted to set the foundation because it has an opportunity to really be much more especially when we start to talk about remediation and intervention and i know speaking to our administrators our feature admin our future principal that's going to be there he's a believer in the advisory period and really making it work as far as providing that as an intervention for our students out there and before i finish up i just want i work with the best team um and i'm sure any principal that would come up would say the same thing but i truly feel i have the the best and so um my assistant principals um mr greenway um mr centeno miss logan and mr couple who's not here he's supporting his family they are truly the best and then i look at our tls april is just truly involved she just um breathes stallion pride every day and then um shantae wood sweeney who's our es ell special ess specialist sorry ess specialist i'm helping out so i'm blessed and proud to be able to be a part of this group and um shadow ridge is going to continue to soar even higher after i leave so i'm proud to be able to serve the district and have this opportunity with shadow ridge so thank you so much questions comments wow i i was sitting here listening to you and it's like you i was here when you came on came into dysart and and and now you're leaving us so but we're not old we don't age i think time just stood still and you did all these great things and here we are um it's really hard i mean you say questions i mean shadow ridge has always set the bar high and and been a standard um for us and i started academically the the home i've always loved home and that whole culture you've built there so you've done a lot of great things a lot of things work for your your culture your school your staff and i don't know it's going to be i don't think there's going to be a dry eye at graduation especially the last time you say it's a great day to be a stallion i mean it's just um appreciate all that you've contributed to our district and i'm not going to make this a goodbye thing right now um so as far as the cip i mean but truly i you guys have found found the secret you guys are doing a lot of good things and i'd say continue on that path and we're thankful for all that you've done there i appreciate those congress thank you so much madam president i'm not gonna cry please i'm not gonna cry um mr hawkins you and your team have done so much for shadow ridge and for the students and the teachers that have come into the school and i know one of the things that is your number two goal is to increase student achievement and you and your staff have done that and i know the students are reaping the rewards from everything that you guys have done we can't tear up the retirement papers dr croto can we we can okay no it's not going to work it's not going to work no um it's a great day to be a stallion every day every day every single day and just like i said i'm going to finish up um just saying every single day that i know with our team i still have time right i know every single day um i can truly save with myself and with my team we are the we carry the torch um i had dr waltman dr dean will know who that person is where he spoke about us especially administrators being those servant leaders but also along with that we carry that torch and the last two years have not been easy they have been very hard but i knew that i had people alongside me behind me all the way around and i couldn't have done what i was able to do we couldn't have moved our school and and really um serve our community without these individuals behind me so i'm thankful blessed and um again it's just it's been a great ride and um yeah always a great day to be a stallion thank you so much thank you [Applause] all right next we move to information information item g2 school monitoring of adopted policies section 11 school community relations dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board and members of cabinet dr croto will introduce this item thank you dr kellis madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet guest tonight we continue with our monitoring of board policy and we bring before you policy or sorry policy section 11 0.1 through 11.21 so um we stand for any questions we do not recommend any changes at this time but we will be glad actually dr dean will be glad to answer any questions on section 11.

a second all in favor aye aye aye she can't explain to you okay she's not really voting we have our other board member online so she's telling me what he's saying um okay uh we have current events so our uh superintendent uh report okay thank you man present a couple different things first and foremost and we'll get something out on this i just wanted to make you aware that congress recently released the what's called the omnibus appropriations bill and it did not include language to expand the pandemic child nutrition waivers for school meals and so what that meant is in the for the past year and a half two years we've had all children who who wanted it wasn't based on uh free and reduced lunch counts being less if you're free if you're a student that qualifies for free or reduced you get less so what it means is beginning in july the district will have to go back to the traditional meals and those kids that do not qualify would pay full amount and then the other should pay lesser amounts and we're reviewing the pricing structure of the meals right now it's been a couple years obviously with inflation and some issues related to commodities it may result in a request for higher priced meals we'll be bringing that to you guys in may or june we'll also make sure we get out of communication to the to the families as we get closer probably in june and july as we get closer to the start of the year this is an issue that's affecting um school districts across the country it's not unique to us there was something in the arizona republic asking about this concerning and asking if parents had any thoughts or comments on that so uh it is a bit of a change some of what's happened last couple years so we just want to get out in front and let people be aware of that in terms of our student enrollment uh following the same patterns we follow all year long we're still up the numbers have decreased a little bit only because last year at this time coming out of spring break we started to get more and more kids back in person or coming back to the district who may have left the district so there's a slight decrease but overall our pattern is is pretty much the way it's been throughout the entire year nothing out of the ordinary there then we have it's that time of year with lots of things that are going on so there's any number of recognitions that i want to make you aware of the rise program at harman was notified this past week that the east valley council for exceptional children's cec had selected the program for the outstanding collaborative team there was a little presentation made to them uh the team the team which is made up of teachers paraprofessionals and related service providers will re receive their formal award uh on april 25th so again just a a good program for a lot of kids and a lot of people working real hard to make a difference you may be aware of the 80 teacher thousand dollar mini grants that were announced over um spring break by superintendent hoffman at arizona department of ed and that program was distributing 14 million dollars in funding across the state to teachers that applied for a variety of different uh stuff that they could use for their classrooms in the consent agenda there is a list of all that will receive but just a very high level we had 54 teachers receive grants that totaled forty six thousand nine hundred twenty four dollars and eighty eighty three cents and there's any number of different things there was library uh books there was uh materials for classrooms there was uh some seating uh there was computer there was a printer so just a lot of different things that were used uh by teachers that was it was a very popular program and and ad went through the 14 million dollars in in approximately three weeks and that was for again teachers from around the state so our teachers were able to get it i believe every single school received something uh uh very in schools uh got more than others because their individuals put in for uh for the for the stuff um it was a little bit more difficult for some of us just because we were on the two weeks of spring break when it was announced and so it was announced in the middle of the first week so other districts were in school and they may have jumped on a book quicker than we did we also want to recognize four students at simonton elementary uh they recently took place in a contest by the daughters of the american revolution and the contest was to create a banner by about the tomb of the unknown soldier and the students michaela bowell alisa garcia nixon heller and liliana mcallister uh they're all in renee ames class and they won uh not only the southwest division but they also took the national level and so we will get some more information out on that we've released uh it already and and we want to get the banner and take a look at the banner i believe they're going to get some recognition in may uh and and we will try to make sure we get pictures there but again our kids competing not only at the local state but also at the national level uh our rush dance company up at uh the high school uh had a great deal of success the tail end of march at the inferno dance competition uh their pieces were awarded uh uh overdrive was choreographed by lissa bortano uh they got the platinum award like real people do corey up by ariana mondrick uh platinum award showcase performance and recognition and the workout uh was choreographed by adriana garcia gonzalez platinum ward first place in the category and entered into an online art artistry award contest and recognized for uh artistic merit they've just been doing a super super job this year and i know that that high school is very proud of all the work that they have done and the amount of work they they did to get this recognition this is the second or the third time they've been recognized for success in dance competitions uh probably most successful year in quite a while uh we'll let you know we did hold the prom uh this past saturday i see miss dr nelson back there and he is recovered um he's awake so we appreciate that kids did a great job we had i believe it was 374 kids show up so that's always good to see that many uh show up and that's probably an increase of probably about 100 compared to what we normally do so very very successful evening i am not sure if they were going to come and they didn't get the name so they're going to have to do something for me but is the student council here members of student council okay that is fine but we did if they were here we're going to have them stand up and introduce themselves because they were recently earned a top national award um from the national student council for exemplary record of leadership service and activities that served to improve the school and the community they were awarded the 2022 national gold council of excellence by national by the national student council program receiving the national gold council excellence award shows the most dedication schools students leaders and staff have made to make their community a better place at nassp ceo ron nozzo the combs high school has gone above and beyond an elevating student voice to ensure that they are establishing a positive climate and culture as well as fostering academic and social group growth for all and dr nelson is there as their advisor and indicated that they had set that goal several years back cobit kind of messed that up a little bit and so they had to rework and commit themselves but they've been able to show leadership and go ahead and create an environment that is so positive for our school they would be the ones that helped to run the prom and so again i can't stress enough that our kids are achieving at the local level at the state level and at the national level and getting recognized and it is in in large degree due to our staff like dr nelson and working with the kids to make sure they're excelling we have i'm not going to go through all of the awards because there's several pages but we had the most of our cte programs uh have what's called ctso programs where they go ahead and do competitions for the program that they're in and they're in that stage where they go to state and potentially nationals nationals if they qualify generally are held in the summer and so they will go there but ffcla which is involved with teaching we had kaylee kampa earn a gold medal sierra barnum mitz earned a gold medal zohan davis earned a gold medal sierra and zoe had qualified to represent combs at san diego this summer and then even more impressive was zohad was elected as a state fcla officer so she's one of eight that served the state and they represent over three thousand ffc fccla students in the state again it's a leadership skill and it's back to competing at the national level the state level uh and the local level so they did great business management fbla they had fourth place in business calculations aiden lewis uh fifth place in business law annabelle chapman fourth place uh giselle lewis in parliamentary procedures um and then uh they had several students that qualify for nationals that will take place in chicago aidan lewis trinity lucas annabelle chapman xavier pelham tristan pelham bradley lanier and diana valdez so again you're taking a half dozen kids that are going to nationals in chicago that will represent us extremely well there at a journalism conference again success quentin kelton kendall earned excellence in sports action photography tony elrod earned honorable mention for news package editing and madison lamb this is impressive uh became the first three-time national award winner in our program's history having already earned awards and sports action in sports feature photography madison wanted to compete in photo journalism uh portfolio category which is a more challenging one and sharing an honorable mention for this entry the arizona interscholastic press association i'm not going to read those because i believe i re read them at a previous board meeting but again you're starting to see digital communication do well our ffa program got a silver ranking for for the national chapter of ffa stagecraft i read this a couple weeks ago or a month ago they also are excelling at their at their level and it's just again testimony to it doesn't matter whether it's elementary middle school high school we go ahead and recognize kids and teachers every single month and it's because they're showing success and so uh it is something proud of as a district a couple upcoming events i know i know i did not realize this even though i set the calendar i just kept wondering why my friday was so open and that would be because we have spring holiday and there's no school so i have a pretty open friday right now which is nice and then on next the next board meeting is on the 11th of may and that will be where we'll recognize staff excellence and teacher appreciation so there will be and our retirees so there'll be a a fairly large group of recognitions at that board meeting today next week which is why we do the next part which is we're going to recognize a number of different employee groups every month we try to take a look at those employee groups that have been recognized throughout the month either previously or the upcoming month with a national day or national week or national month and so we just try to take some representative individuals from the different groups and just take a moment to say thank you um as we bring these groups up and we have several this this uh month again this is just recognition of of the outstanding job that the staff does every single day to make sure that our kids get the best education every single day so want to call up and if you'll come up we'll give you a certificate and and uh speak a little bit but we have some the pair pros on wednesday april 6th was national parapro appreciation day so that's why we're calling them up so from with a high school we had a number that could not make it because there's a unified which is a special education basketball game i believe it was and so they are that competition watching and supporting their kids but from the middle school we have deborah lynn duncan who works in our resource and if she's here she can come up i'm not sure who's all here we have jenny ortiz from the middle school who's also in resource if she could come up at cta we have cheryl tapia who works in the sped department at ellsworth we have cheryl campton from leap and the leap program and mckenna carnes from the leap program at harmon we have erica bejarano from the rise program and becky murphy from the rise program that would be the individuals who helped get the award from the east valley group at ranch we have vitza brown uh manrique in resource and gender uh jenny swanky at early young coyotes and from simonton we have kathy kelly our resource para before they leave i do want to read something as i said wednesday the 6th of april was parapro pre appreciation day a national day to celebrate our parapros and highlight the contributions of paraprofessionals to their students and schools these individuals work it's not quite sure how this program came about but they think maybe the missouri governor did it but they perform teacher-related tasks and often assist teachers in the groups or individually they may work with students on enrichment activities in small groups or individually they can also help students complete assignments or practice reading they often work students with special needs and a variety of disabilities they can also supervise students outside the classroom and help teachers with clerical work the requirements for becoming a para professional very from state to state but needless to say these individuals work with our kids who have highest need every single day and work with them daily and just do an absolutely phenomenal job with them and help our teachers and so we can't thank them enough for everything they do so thank you so very much we also have another group there's only a couple of them here we only have two or three in the district and i know one of them was out sick but if i could have mr sheldon and mr hill come up um the week of the fourth through the eighth which was last week is national assistant principals week and the assistant principals they get to do all the work that the principal doesn't want to do it's called delegation it's a skill and so they do do they do they make such a difference for our high school campus they're connected with uh school management or student activities or athletics they're involved in personnel and curricular instruction and so they just do pretty much all of the duties as assigned and they do it very quietly without a whole lot of notice in many cases but i will tell you the one group that notices the system principles as much as anybody and that would be the students because they interface with the students on a daily basis and so the students know who these gentlemen are and they are they end up making a difference in the lives of our students every single day so thank you gentlemen for everything you do they're lucky enough to see me all the time too [Laughter] we also have on the on april 4th of each year is national school librarian day i think we only have one here but is wendy blackfeather here that can come up we can give her a reward they spend hours and hours keeping the library organized they provide guidance and exposure are used to not only text print but print media and literature but digital resources and technology very much a different prospect than maybe once some of us were in school and what a traditional library would do they connect with libraries around the world because we can do that through technology their ability to manage the scores of the media and the school full of students with numerous projects and schedules again it's just a way for them to make a difference they vary whether you're at the elementary the middle of the high school but when you go in the library it's a hub in the center of most of our schools and they make a tremendous difference so thank you very much for all you do now we get a group of people that although the title does not suggest it we know they run the school so we wanted to take an opportunity because uh uh and on april 27th is national administrative professionals days so we've asked the administrative assistants at our schools to come and and if you've worked in a school system that's who you go to find out anything i know everybody thinks it's a principal but actually you start with administrative assistant they tell you exactly what's going on and then they direct it to the principal so if we could have martha mora from harman come on up again i don't know if they're all here debbie mertens from ranch elementary debbie mertens from ranch lisa mcdonald of the district office priscilla amanza from the district office angelique flores from the middle school shauna strago from cta resha evans from the high school kimberly kelly from the high school and jill miller from the high school and again we could go on and i could give read you what's in the in the presentation but truly they are the right hand uh of the administrators and the principles and they do such a an amazing job every single day many of these individuals if your parents you're going to run into them every day as you come in and bring your kids to school teachers they know exactly who they need to go to to get the help they need and it's again many times this kind of position is an unsung position but we could not operate our schools without them and whether you come in or you call they're the individuals that you're more likely going to talk to you they do an amazing job so we just want to thank you very much for what you do and then the last group we want to recognize we do not start school every single day without this group of people um uh back in 2009 california recognized april 26 as national school bus driver day versus as opposed to bus driver day so we want to take an opportunity to recognize people from transportation we'll do it twice today for a variety of different reasons but if i could get adriana harales to come on up alan bingham jack lolly john quinn walt bradshaw these are our bus drivers we also asked the mechanics peter alexander and jorge arou aravalo to come on up and again just want to take a moment to there the children of our district are entrusted to them every single day twice a day they get on a bus and they drive these kids around and a bus is really just a moving classroom i in a previous life i drove for ups and i can tell you when you get on the road there are some days that are amazing and then there are some days that you just hope to survive and to have 50 or 60 kids behind you as you're doing that and to do it safe safely to know the number of kids in america today that ride a bus every single day yet the number of accidents is minuscule and it's because they're trained they're professionals and they do an absolute amazing job and so we just wanted to take a moment to thank them in in advance a national school bus driver day thank you for everything you do and now we're into school recognition that's not really school this month it is our transportation and maintenance department so i'll ask mr anderson to come on up thank you dr wyman madam president members of the board um i would like to recognize um first um mr bill adolf is bill here today he didn't show up but i'd like to at least talk about him bill adolf started with the district in 2003 as the lead custodian has worked his way up to maintenance district maintenance technician in the short time that i've had the opportunity to work with bill he's shown the dedication and excellence in providing the best service to our schools this past year has been very difficult with all the vacant positions and absences bill has stepped up to do whatever is necessary to sub for these positions and to provide the necessary support to the sites and i will make sure that he gets his award the second person that i'd like to recognize uh it is my honor and joan could you come up here yeah she didn't know this so good job joan uh joan i'm going to slaughter your last name janeagle for outstanding service to our district jonas started with the district in 1995 she was only 12 then as a bus driver and has worked her way up to the transportation supervisor she is well respected not only in our district but the surrounding districts joan is always there to provide whatever support is needed the district is truly blessed to have somebody with her caliber running the transportation department you can tell by your staff that they love to work with her as a leader i am proud to be that she is a part of the support services division and i'd like to present the apple award to you thank you [Applause] joan you're not done you need to present yours [Laughter] so good evening everybody thank you for be let me be here and um make this resignation um the resignation is going to go to mr jay galentine um he recipients the cream of the crop in our transportation department his dedication to safety his students and his peers is outstanding he is reliable dependable positive and very professional jay is always willing to help when needed we all know when we had the cdc guidelines we had to spray our buses every morning and every afternoon jay galentine was offering to come way early in the morning before even the buses go out at six o'clock so he was here at four o'clock in the morning to spray down all the buses to make sure that they were ready to go out he helps with the mail run helps in the warehouse takes buses to the missions on a yearly basis she goes above and beyond thank you jay yeah missions is not fine coming up here we have student of the month madam president board members online and in person and dr wyman once again thank you for allowing me to be here this evening to do the students of the month my best part of my day every day first i'd like to have anthony maron come up from combs center for success we will celebrate anthony at another date could i have ariel gallon come up from the high school we will celebrate ariel at another date could i have peyton hoover come up from combs middle school all right peyton way to represent there you go there you go there you go there you go peyton is a really sweet and respectful young lady she always does her her work quickly and efficiently and she is a a model student that was from mrs baldanagro payton is a type of student a teacher feels more than comfortable asking to help another student i ever listed as a student that the substitute can ask for any clarifying questions if they were in need i know her work ethic both in school and after school activities require her to be hard working and a trustworthy person she's more than deserving of this award and we are proud of her and honored to be her teacher and that was from mr contreras congratulations peyton [Applause] could i have a adelia ochoa come up from chrome's traditional academy there she is [Applause] adelia is a model student and displays many character traits important to be successful she's kind and respectful with everyone i've seen her in contact with and maintains a great attitude while learning new things what this teacher loves the most is that she's happy to talk at any time with other students i can count on adelia to always be doing the right thing even if i have my back turned to to other students tending to their needs she's a gentle leader in the classroom and deserves to be cta's student of the month that was by mr winters congratulations adalia could i have london jones come up from ellsworth ready this is london london was nominated by mrs eckoff mrs zekkov said that i feel so blessed to have london as part of our classroom community this year she always has such a positive attitude london is helpful to others in the classroom and the teacher can always count on london to help new students find their way around i also can trust her to be honest and helpful when we have a guest teacher or when she when we're in specials london is such a wonderful and responsible young lady i cannot wait to see what she will be like when she moves on to second grade congratulations london [Applause] could i have evangeline garcia come up from harman [Applause] harman's student of the month for the character trait of trustworthiness is miss garcia she exemplifies the trait by constantly demonstrating that she will make the best choices possible in a variety of situations she's consistent in being prepared to learn putting her best foot forward and turning in her work completed and on time additionally she's a good friend to others and is always willing to lend a helping hand it has been our pleasure to have her in class this year and we know she will be successful as she continues into middle school and beyond that was from mrs christensen congratulations miss garcia could i have cash newman come up from ranch [Applause] this is cash cash is a trusted friend to all whether his peers need help with their tasks or a friend to play with cash is ready to respond with a i can be their buddy even a year and a half ago when cash attended the program at three years old he already had the sensitivity for special needs children and could be trusted to be their friend and still contr continues to exhibit these qualities today congratulations cash [Applause] could i have sawyer minochitch come up from symington sawyer was nominated by mrs lewis katie lewis i've been sawyer's teacher in the eyc preschool program for the past two years and during this time i've watched her grow and work really hard to reach her full potential sawyer has even graduated out of the eyc program to be a peer student in the class she's a role model for all the other students in the classroom daily sawyer is honest kind dependable and considerate to all around her she's patient with others and gently guides her friends to appropriate choices she can advocate for herself and has even demonstrated to her friends how they can regulate their behaviors by teaching them to take deep breaths when they are upset sawyer encourages her friends to be the best and praises them when they do when whenever they do great things congratulations to sawyer thank you we're going to go ahead and give you time to take pictures if you want my congratulations all right come with me sure it's very nice yes okay you're stuck up okay we're gonna go ahead and continue all right do i have any um anything from the board members that they would like to share perfect um public comments so we have some today do i have any others than just these three okay so dr wyman and his and being for trying to keep us out of trouble i'm going to read this novel that he wrote so here we go [Laughter] the board invites the point of views of citizens throughout the district and considers the responsible responsible presentations of these viewpoints vital to the to the efficient operation of the district the board also recognizes its responsibility for the proper governance of the school and therefore the need to conduct the business in an orderly and efficient manner the board therefore establishes the following procedures to receive input from the citizens of the district the first one you need to complete the form good job you did that so the second one the board the board president shall be responsible for recognizing speakers maintaining proper order and adhering to the three-minute time limit which bob so nicely does uh questions re requiring investigation shall be referred to the superintendent or the district administration for a later report back to the board questions or comments on matters that are currently under legal review will not receive a response we are also unable to comment as a board on anything brought to us that is not on our agenda so we will not be giving you a response but rest assured that we are listening and we'll follow up with administration um personal attacks upon board members please don't staff personnel or other persons in attendance are absent by individuals who address the bore or just are discouraged policies k e k e b k e c k e d are provided by the board for uh disposition disposition and legitimate complaints including those involving individuals upon conclusion of all of the open call to public individual members of the board may respond to any criticism made by an individual who has addressed the board the board is aware that there are many issues in our country that are polarized and are highly emotional for people the board also recognizes that many of these issues can create a great deal of disagreement the expectation of the governing board in the district is that everyone treats one another with respect and that the speaker pre presents their point of view in a civil manner speakers are expected to adhere to these expectation or the call of public portion of the agenda may be halted okay so our first one is oh dear um is it jackie okay sure all right you can come on up we're gonna go ahead and start your three minutes okay and i'll let you he'll let us know when your three minutes are up okay i'll try to talk fast okay okay children in foster care are disrupted bounced from home to home mostly due to disabilities behaviors and parents not feeling supported managing those disabilities and behaviors forty percent of school-aged children in foster care have educational difficulties less than three percent graduate nationwide and only about half of the youth raised in foster care end up finishing high school i am a foster mom soon to be an adoptive mom and my son has both disabilities and behaviors and he has been disrupted and bounced already in the foster system and i am determined not to make my son another statistical disruption in the foster system not only having a child come to my home who has experienced extreme neglect who has yet again moved foster homes with post discharge from a mental hospital i'm very determined to navigate any public system to get my son the supports he needs from the beginning in october 2020 i was notified ranch elementary of the child who had just entered my home having been recently discharged from the hospital that he would need evaluations maybe a five a four to start off after much red tape 45 day screeners continual meltdowns on april 24th i reached out to rancho elementary in writing requesting evaluations i was again quickly dismissed by my son's needs after no response nor prior written notices i filed a state complaint it wasn't until then that i was made aware that i as a foster parent did not have educational rights and that my state complaint wouldn't be taken into consideration however out of good faith appearances the school agrees to hold a red meeting where my concerns were quickly dismissed i was told my son's behaviors were an isolated incident and i felt like i was in a judge and jury my word and evidence against the panel of educators teachers didn't speak up social worker played neutral documentation was cherry picked william decided case dismissed and who was i to do to disagree i didn't have educational rights the team decided that a 504 would be more appropriate in place with an ot this is when i find out i'm parenting enough of a 504 meeting but not parenting enough for an iep if a foster parent isn't willing isn't going to be considered as having educational rights yet the school needs to fulfill the responsibility of child fine through idea it is the school district's responsibility to make effort attempts to get a hold of that who has educational rights and after failed attempts the school has a responsibility to appoint a surrogate parent and identify who has those educational rights this important crucial step was overlooked from my son dragging out the process to support him our current struggles evaluations ies modifications and the pathways to support my son are different than the message i want to leave today which is my son and who knows how many other children was overlooked the steps to identify a surrogate parent didn't happen my son had team decisions held without a person identifying as having educational rights the entire process was drawn out because of these failed attempts and my son is the one who suffers out of all the the vulnerable which are our children we have the vulnerable the vulnerable the children with disabilities and i like to add another level of vulnerable children with disabilities in foster care these are they who need the most support for some reason have the least amount of voice okay i'm sorry three minutes are up no oh okay i just would like to see more training done thank you okay our next one is um orianna gazzo so he will start your three minutes okay all right thank you so much my name is orianna gazzo my son is lane johnson right here as you can see on his face he does have a marking this is not the first incident my son has epilepsy my son cannot hit be hit in specific places he goes to ranch elementary he is in mrs flagle's class mrs flagel is an amazing teacher i have nothing bad to say about mrs flagle she's an amazing teacher i can say she does not get the help she deserves there are certain students within the class that make life in school unbearable for my son my son has missed a lot of schooling this year because he is afraid to go to school he is afraid of the students in his class specifically one student that has bullied him and hurt him mentally physically i have reached out only disciplinary action i ever hear about is oh they get a couple minutes in the office they get sent to the office nothing's ever done i'm to my wits end with it like i said this mrs flagel miss debbie miss loretta they're always in contact with me they're amazing i can't speak any higher of them but what point is it going to come to that my son is permanently injured what point is it going to come to where they hit him in the wrong spot and he has a seizure and something bad happens to him and i don't think it's fair for a kindergartener to cry and beg to not go to school and that's all i have to say on the mirror i would just like ranch elementary to address it more than oh send them to the office for five minutes send them to the office for ten minutes and then send the children back the child who is abusing not only my child but other children back into the classroom it it's not solving anything and i can honestly say i'm very disappointed in what's happened to him and the steps that have been taken to do nothing about the matter thank you thank you okay and then i have a jennifer cochran hi my name is jennifer cochran wyatt newby is my son he goes to ranch elementary we've dealt with a bunch of bullying this year um he's in kindergarten too miss legal's class miss legal is an amazing teacher i've been trying to get parents rallied up to try to get back in the classroom to volunteer to help out because they don't seem to be giving the teacher enough help so that's why we came today i would like to see either parents allowed back in to volunteer to help out give her an extra set of hands extra pair of eyes something so that because same thing crying not wanting to go to school he's had his shirt cut up he had his back stomped on he's been called names like in kindergarten i tried to address parents in the blooms app which blew up in my face because the bully parents started bullying other parents and just being nasty and mean and then they shut the app down so now we can't even communicate with one another but i would like to see the school do something about bullying i would like a physical hard copy of your bullying plan because what you have on your website is not a bullying plan it's like tips and stuff to look for there's no physical plan and the school district is supposed to have a plan so i would like a hard copy of that sent to me handed to me but i'd also like to see either the teacher get help or to let the parents back in the classrooms i know we don't have much left of the school year but i want to do whatever i can to help my child and all the other children in his class succeed so thank you thank you okay all right we're gonna move on does anybody have any um questions about your consent agenda the consent agenda nothing kind of answered no no all right i will take a motion to approve of the consent agenda a second wait a minute we need a motion you want to motion it you can do it as presented if you'd like as presented emotion the contention the consent agenda a second okay let me hold on just a minute i'm getting this down now i confused you it's all right nope all in favor hi hi aye okay motion carries five to zero so we are on to our 8.1 um discussion and consideration of approval of the new director of curriculum instruction and assessment um go ahead yes uh with mr cox retiring that he would be the gentleman in the back room with a big smile on his face um we went ahead and uh advertised a position and had a number of qualified candidates that we interviewed for the process there was a committee of individuals uh principals as well as district office personnel that that interviewed individuals we had three finalists uh and then i did a second interview with those three finalists and we are uh pleased to announce that the recommendation for uh the new director of curriculum instruction and assessment is dr tim fountain he started his career in the gilbert school district as a teacher and moved his way up into assistant principal athletic director dean of students and assistant principal athletic director also moved into the principal position in washington elementary and in higley and is currently in the scottsdale uh unified school district as director of curriculum instruction professional development uh very eminently qualified for the position uh we're excited that he will be able to join us so i would move to approve dr fountain as the new director of quick construction assessments and if you do so after that he'll be more than happy to stand up and say a few words anybody have any questions comments concerns no okay i'll take a motion i move to approve dr tim fountain as the new director of curriculum instruction and assessment second all in favor aye hi hi okay motion carries five to zero so um dr fountain do you have a um we assume that you have like some lengthy like acceptance speech or something i don't know i i gave him something to read that was longer than what you read for call of duty goodness i have to be careful of the acceptance speech but there's nobody that's going to come up and slap me right the oscars well we'll see it's not over yet well i just want to say uh thank you dr wyman madam president members of the board i'm really excited to be joining the district i'm a lifelong educator i'm the child of two educators i'm married to an educator so uh this is my passion and one of the things that was really exciting to me was how much the board has a background in education and really knows the business that we do and why it's so important to us so i see that passion you as well i'm really excited to join a district that i see as being very student focused and forward thinking um i think the folks bruce and others have done an amazing job building some foundational pieces and i look forward to being that next chapter for combs so thank you and i look forward to getting to know and work with all of you thank you thank you welcome [Applause] okay now we have um 8.2 a discussion consideration of approval for changes for the 2223 calendar there's just a couple minor changes but since you approved a specific calendar last year we want to bring it to you the two changes are we would add to the calendar the hashtag for professional development days which is the three normally uh our uh staff would come back four days early we'll use our esther's funds to bring them back an additional three days early uh to give them training so those are reflected that does push back the the start for our new teachers a couple days before that and then uh the old calendar had open house on friday went thursday and friday and we've moved those to wednesday and thursday because friday's not a great day to do open houses so i just recommend the changes as presented and if it is uh if you approve it then we'll put it up on the uh website tomorrow with the changes i have one question um the high school that is there they're they're doing days off oh i guess that doesn't matter never mind forget it answered your own disregard yep all right anybody have any questions no and chad all right so i'll take a motion i move to approve the changes to the 2020 or to the 22 23 district calendar as presented second all in favor aye aye motion carries five to zero okay discussing in consideration of approval of the new curriculum of agriscience yeah i'll go ahead and give us overview and then uh mr scroggins here if you have specific questions but this is just supplemental curriculum for the agri-science program uh it's recommended the recommended curriculum supplemental curriculum is the case curriculum uh it has met the requirements to be posted in the district office for 60 days we did not have anybody that reviewed the uh that came in and reviewed and had any concerns the six day period ended on march 31st so uh based on that we would recommend uh approval of the curriculum if there's some specific questions about the curriculum mr chrogam would be more than happy to answer them i have mr scrogham have you um who who uh who actually in the district reviewed this i could have answered from back there i realized you could everybody likes their microphones that's right whatever so we did not put together a committee this is this is a um a supplemental piece to our ad curriculum um it's uh commonly used i think the gilbert school district uses it and a few others it's uh there's different components of the case curriculum we have a an instructor who is currently certified in one of the areas and this would only add to her skill set in one of the others so there's an animal science portion of it and there's a plant science portion of it she's certified in one we want to get her certified in the other okay and part of that her getting certified gives her access to the curriculum so it's kind of an all-in-one piece so that this is miss pettit we're talking about correct okay okay you guys have any other questions i came all the way up here for you and you know what i'll throw i'll throw a quick question out i don't want you to waste your energy so will it be wrapped into maybe the curriculum mapping yet as a supplemental piece so it will be added to you exactly and we're very fortunate our current instructor is or did revamp the the scope and sequence this last summer which made it a little bit i guess coherent for our students so they were concentrating a specific area each year that they're in the program for the three years so this will allow her really to focus in on some of those rather than uh pulling a lot of different resources to try to meet the the standards this is i know that they don't do a whole lot on the land lab are they is this going to help with that oh yeah and they do um uh if you haven't been out to the land lab lately do so there's been a lot of improvements um i heard there's gonna be chickens there are chickens and there are ducks and there's gonna be but she's got some in the incubator or something like that in the classroom right yes so she's got ducks and chickens out and we have duck eggs and chicken eggs if you're ever interested um next year she will have uh we believe she'll have goats um so i have three that she can have i'm just teasing yeah okay anybody but they are out there um on their black block days because that that's the best time for them to go up 32 hours they've been doing a lot of plants and and some raised gardens and things like that so they spent a lot more time out there i like it yep okay good any other questions comments he likes them all of them okay um so then i will take a motion i move to approve the new supplemental case curriculum for the ivor science program at the high school as presented i didn't have my microphone on i'm sorry that's okay all right lisa in seconds um all in favor aye aye aye okay motion carries five to zero so now we will move on to 8.4 discussion approval playground equipment for head start at cta yes uh with our changes down at cta during the first year of the covet we used some fencing to provide a head start with a bigger playground area they also had a playground area to the side and working with them over the last couple of years they would like to put playground equipment in so this is approval so you're aware of the equipment that will be coming onto our our property it is 249 200.

now back to the desk walk-in sports physicals are available for twenty dollars to athletes at dcmh well clinic monday through friday from 8 a.m to 6 p.m during june and july there will be a sports physical night at dc mh tree city medical partners on thursday july 21st from 6 pm to 8 pm physicals are first come first serve and our 20 cash or check only please follow greensburg safety on instagram to stay up to date in your community now sebastian to lunch for lunch today we have crispy chicken bites cooked carrots and cheese filled bread sticks now back to the desk after prom tickets will go on sale april 4th through the 14th in mrs covington's room after school each day tickets are 10 and will be pre-sale only after prom will be at top flight this year and a waiver is also required for admittance you do not have to attend prom to attend after prom see mrs calmer for any questions attention juniors and seniors tickets for prom 2022 an enhanced evening will be on sale starting monday april 4th and continuing until thursday april 14th tickets will be sold after school in mrs covington's room 5 14.

so um with i just wrote myself a note with questions with conversation i'm hearing unless i hear something from you folks i will try to do an agenda item from the may board meeting to talk about maybe improving the location of the hub here if they continue to be interested and i met with them for a couple hours one day and i was more excited than i thought it would um it's not traditional which i tend with that sometimes but i i want these kids to have a successful life and uh i i'm one who believes you've got to have a high school performance that may not get you alone but it's a ticket to the game and there's no risk for the school the crop outbreak goes against them not as we get if the kids are enrolled in it we get money from that and these are kids that aren't going to go to school anyway here because they've already dropped out or whatever they issue so way i see it there's no no negative to us is that's the way i see it mr guthrie and i i tend to i'm going to try and believe in something i i worry that i look for a simple solution sometimes as h.l mankin says simple solution is always wrong but i think i agree with exactly what you said i think there's a way that this would make it okay which is not what it's about but bottom line is to help kids in arizona be successful i want them to pay my social security someday so we need to have those kids and another thing you think about is multi-generational items when if my dad would let me walk away from high school then my kids would like i made it you can make it without it and some people do that makes for more challenges and out the other way it's child abuse or whether it's substance abuse multiple poverty multi-generational dealing with that is harder to overcome than in my case one person brought that out of school and so one generation dropped out not not all of us got two questions one what does service be available to students from they're coming through lootfield if they dropped out we've got solutions and options am i i believe it is if they're if they have a presidency in arizona that's the key they've got to have regarding our residency and then the other question is i know from when i was working with them before that if you turn 21 it's 90 a month if you access it out of pocket from the students is that still the case i definitely had some students who had worked with it for years and weren't making rapid progress but then all of a sudden they couldn't afford ninety dollars a month to pay for the class right i think it's in there i remember reading something i just don't know what it was but there's a there's a certain age to where they join another program i don't remember though if they were charged with that or not i did like the reimbursement partner here at gcu yeah get a senior letter to reverse the tuition i do know if we have that hub or call like auto academy but those students that those students who graduate grad solutions has a graduation of their own but they're also involved in our graduation they get to graduate with their students there's still part of ottawa academy they were just doing it as you know through grad solutions kind of like edge annuity will just support their grad grad solutions um but they're still they're still our kids and they still get to graduate with their friends whether it's grade level up or down or something like that so they got a little high school diploma when they graduated yes that's where i would understand it and they would get a great solution yeah it took over like a mall with that old mall uh crystal metro no i think christopher okay one thing i don't see in the information that i'd really like to see is what their graduation is yeah what's and especially well i mean if they get the hub here that changes their situation but if they're not able to i'd like to know what that rate is for ajo and other rural areas because if it's computer based and we don't have something like the hub we've got a lot of dropouts that don't have computers at home don't have internet access and it's not an option other than like the one student did where he was coming into the learning center and using my computers to do the sport library but i think um who is the library neter encoded in excited i don't know if they have a limit on how long you can use the public computers without cover going on this so would the hub be stopped would have its own person my memory is yes i don't want to check on that monitoring what's happening because i think you're looking a lot like roommate is that our credit recovery if i recall that it is uh that they are paid for and i think it and so it would give another person here in a community or maybe even like miss garcia there would be an income coming into somewhere else fully buying graduate recovery and alternative program and that's almost all my educational experiences and alternative programs i just from the way it was running in 2018 and 2019 i know there are more successful ways to run the same program and hopefully like you said hopefully over those interviewing years it changed how they're doing it i i felt bad i felt like we had students that left this school transferred there and then dropped out it was nobody was there to encourage them not to drop out it was just all remote phone calls too very instructor which was impersonal and i said if the student is already motivationally challenged in a regular school setting and they're kind of cut loose with just a computer on their own so most of them it's it's more than enough to succeed when they said the hub well um down to the bottom it said there's a safe place for students to come and get additional educational support meet with teachers and mentors i cannot hear that but receive food do their laundry attend fund social activities and access even more resources so their hub is different from what we're talking i think so a person's support like we have our credit recovery it could blend in that we already have it we just name it and then we have this is another solution as well uh our option as well and we do have some rooms that we could we could use and utilize but yeah so the hub is different that's okay that's where yeah there's just a few of those throughout the state where a lot of people get together ours would be more of a an academy a school within school you know to me it sounded as if they could get in there and do all these things they didn't have much time to do my best in the inner city they have a number of students that are homeless and need need access to those resources too so we're going to um i mean i definitely the one student who did successfully he graduated early that's to me that's the one great thing about the self-directed program if the student is motivated they can get out and they can finish up school ahead of schedule and this this one young man did but yeah that was one success i would have had over a dozen students that i was getting reports on well thank you good discussion guys what i'll do is if you have questions please don't be shy uh call anything leave a message and in the next week and a half or so i will try to call chris or your name uh kimberly and good answers to some of your questions so if you have us on the agenda and hopefully be better informed and they may be willing to come back on and do a zoom if we put there are also other educational programs under their umbrella i believe the one i work with with pima community college the odysseyware i believe that's also an engineering program and it's later because i've had students who hated grad solutions but then i was oh i love it i love this obviously it's a different software but um and i don't know i don't recall on theirs but the one i'm using with my students is a button right on every question and every page where they can send a question straight to me i don't understand this problem can you help me message right back to them in that program so i'm hoping if they see successes like that in some of their other programs that they can expand that into their services into the event solutions i would love to see it work but like i said it was it needed a lot of tweaking when i was working with them yes uh [Music] 976 that needs to be disposed of asset has been salvaged the replacement fund is received from the insurance trust it is the recommendation that the governing board approve disposal of asset five seven six would you like to have me fill you in on this assuming this card it was a white malibu school card uh on saturday the 19th of uh april no before spring break on march um one of our employees was using the school car on school business to go to the phoenix area uh two employees were in the car around mead road um they're rear-ended by a jack jacked up but that's a relative term uh a big tall ford pickup pulling about a 35-40 foot trailer with two side-by-sides uh he had a bumper they call them bush buffers like nothing with solid steels like a blade almost on the front of the truck no skid marks so apparently the person driving the truck did not see the car i wish i had my engine and i forgot i've got a photo of the car on my phone i don't see how people looked uh the car was destroyed uh it broke the back seats back to the bucket seats in front and forward the eventually didn't move both both passengers those employees were injured they were taken by ambulance to the hospital um they're still not a total recovery we're trying to work with trust to get more work on american disability we use disability insurance as well as osha on this issue uh thank you the car was towed was hauled to napa uh they came and picked it up they the insurance company uh called me and uh asked we spent half a saturday working on this on the 19th of the accident and i'd seen the picture they went in my opinion i think they said we don't think it's solved what's your opinion i'm not a body man i'm not a i'm a cardinal i like cars but i said i believe it's a total and these they supported that we received a check this week uh i'm sorry yeah yeah this week uh for the uh that's a fellow salvation the check was less than half what we paid for the car we get a pretty good deal on school vehicles because we get on a government purchase list and uh but this car had 100 over 1000 miles on it i didn't like that many miles on it in good shape really good shape but i'm thankful that the employees were not injured the check regardless i would be shocked if the trust doesn't go after that insurance company i sent an email yesterday morning i said is there because i want more money you know i'm not always worried about money and i said i is there a way for the district or the trust to sue the driver's insurance company to get i was worried about us get more money to settle they haven't responded but when i've had personal accidents initially my insurance covers me and gets my vehicle repair started but then they get their money from the other insurance agent so another insurance company so i'm sure that's what's gonna happen so technically the car has been taken out of napa uh but this all happened during work after spring break so technically we need to have your approval disposal car is already gone and the car was disposed of by the big truck it was not drivable um one one of the one of the passengers in the car had a significant injury to the head and i think it's the plastic under the rear window of the car that you put something on if you need to like show that broke loose and apparently hit the person in the back of the head so there was inside that car was toast uh it's sad scary [Music] mr hopkins robinson all right this is duncan passport now that's going all the way to the bottom under gummy board items that's orange jennifer oh yeah i just i started one that was listed in business okay so the first order of business and personnel vacant certified position for jennifer keller jennifer keller has abandoned her position as an elementary teacher a physician is now being vacant the administration is recommending ms keller's position to be declared um so dr dooley it looks like you're asking us to acknowledge um the abandonment of position correct um and and i understand that there were liquidated damages were applied correct or what liquidated damages so the employee had to pay the district somewhere and so can you tell us what what the sanctions were um there were no sanctions prior to the resignation uh to the breaking of contract all teacher contracts carried a liberty damage laws that's been there or it's coming up right here i've got pulled up on a random blank where are you pulling up just that close to the liquidating liquidated damages basically the cost that the person bringing contract costs the district um for example a substitute teacher if we had one for that classroom 100 a day that would be roughly three thousand dollars just there we have a limited liquidated damages we had um the person is already living out of state um person is not here so i don't know what else to do so we have to abide by our contract just like you expect an employee to buy that contract and so when we issue a contract we have to if it says xyz we gotta buy the contract invite uh requiring liquidate damages payment that's fighting by the employee contract i i communicated with the teacher i also sent a letter in writing asking to reconsider and stay until the 26th to 25th 26th to the 26th of may um not a guy i need to leave on the eighth so it was not it was amicable i didn't yell scream and run about at all i don't do that much except with rodney um so it it was unfortunate for for our kids this is about conduct those people for 40 minutes about their education for kids this is about breaking a teacher's contract that is going to impact many ratios teachers teachers staff everybody i think yes especially yes did we have her in the last meeting too i don't know if my dad rings the bell so that was the liquidation damages typically we haven't done this there's been two different ade administrations since this happened but they used to put a note on the person's lap certification which is a person never came back there was one certification in many issues i didn't know that we're not going to notify them it's an i think there should be some sort of penalty for somebody leaving especially with very little notice walking out the door maybe disagree with you maybe that's fine but oh no i'm not at all i just want to get clara ohio right now and just leave her class you know and she won't do that but i think there has to be some reason for you to finish up the semester you know and or it should cost you a little bit of money or something so so my kind of uh reluctance about the way the the motion is worded is it it only speaks to the position it doesn't speak to the contract at all it just says declaration position is vegas so if i found someone tomorrow i can't hire someone for that job unless you folks declare experience so right we had a teacher one year that what she came down with like asthma or or and had to leave and it was serious and helped she was in sixth grade she had to leave and it was halfway through the year we still had it's no fault of her own we still had to declare her position vacant to refill that position you're carrying declining vacant simply isn't is better than saying the person was fired the person walked off the person you know things like that so it's the least offensive living i can find it i really like the question because i didn't know about this liquidation thing until right now so i'm glad by asking the question it informed me of what was you know of the situation and this happens all over the state it's not even an interview for downtown ottawa i remember jim servants used to get frustrated in the valley because many districts have thought one that my last school there are three districts a half mile away our distributed two other districts at one intersection so the young teachers but not rookies with people less than five years if they got a 300 raise they go across the street worth that district and so the district started to liquidate them the number of years we've had this in the contract for years i don't know how many years but they had to put something like that and try to protect themselves from types of kids okay so may i have a question in this i saw yes the administration is requesting the board approval for the issuance of the 2022-23 contract to our attendion i recommend approval of the insurance of the contract to mr hart for the 2223 student as an arts and math teacher we have a tendency shortage of math teachers he has been on site for about a week and a half two weeks a great young man kids to talk to me about him seemed to be they talked about mr archer that's fine and he seemed to appreciate him i am not a kid so i don't know what he did and what's he teaching math or what we know he's doing some recovery for high school students and then he has middle school he's doing that he also has a class just because of the the movement and our vacancies that we're already having he's got a couple classes this year that probably make sure he won't have he's got a seo class right now and um stem class which is math to engineering mathematics based guy so you've got motion mr robinson hi mr hopkins mr kathryn hi passport thank you thank you my next personal item is to certify the employment for the 23 22 23 teacher for roger that's close enough roger papanov has been interviewed in relationship competing for the position of certified teacher the recommendation of the superintendent is the employment of roger kaplan as a teacher of he's not here he's still yeah so he's into next year early elementary like first grade third or sixth it also has a sped um you know endorsement degrees so some of these some of these are um very fluent because it's kind of like you know deciding on how many applicants we're going to have for certain positions with some of the teachers okay you're certified you know k through 5 let's say i can't tell you if it's going to be third fourth or fifth are you willing to during the interview are you willing to teach either one of those because we may get somebody else's ela this person is fed then there and you'll be third grade so but we just need numbers right now we need qualified people that we're going to have in the classroom to pinpoint exactly where they're going to be there's kind of a little window that we have to share with them so is he ever taught the united states or just in thailand just in the philippines because i saw where he's from well he's teaching in thailand right now there's several dialects that's the main one in the philippines i guess the main one with uh tagalog [Music] we do a lot of these interviews via skype um we interview someone at the seven o'clock in the morning 11 o'clock at night we did that this morning we did that yesterday maybe tomorrow morning um this this teacher uh rare for me to say yeah i want to hire you while i'm talking because i don't want to kill my handling to see the reference text first and this lady was so strong that the first thing asked me for anything you still want to teach with us and she was affirmative yesterday and i offered the job right there i said this will depend on having a good reference check of course and she was she was extremely strong i i would like to see her teach and what does she teach she does she get primary grades in english yeah strong english background very articulate um very artistic english was like near perfect i mean unbelievable and very confident like in her skills very really present yes one of those after 15 minutes is like this camera chat [Music] was teaching school in the philippines if i was the philippines i'd be nervous because i'd be nervous no no okay next personal item is classified reassignment school secretary the sierra marines the administration has advertised in-house for the position of school secretary crazy nunez a paraprofessional was interviewed for this position being recommended to become a data usd school secretary this reassignment is a move from a part-time paraprofessional to a full-time 12-month salary position it is the recommendation of the superintendent that missed manuals with the yes and so she graduated about 2009 i can't figure that out crazy to be in there because lance is charming is that what it is whatever it takes and she's a parent yes i'll second it mr huffman mr duck and i mr guthrie all right miss robinson all right the next person i'll matter is classical deployment for i.t coordinator george simon when simon has been interviewed and referenced his check completed for the position of information technology coordinator he will work full-time and consult when necessary with our iat consulting the recommendation of the superintendent is important the superintendent's recommendation is that we've approved the employment of george simon as it coordinator for all schools how do we advertise for these technical positions we had four applicants i don't know i don't remember we had one from the districts between here in phoenix since i called for a reference check uh super john refused to call me back and the person called the next day and we drew their office because i'm assuming they'd give him more money we had this person where they found them i i do usually do at aaeb it's a arizona education board but we can do classified like secretary maintenance that kind of stuff we get advertised best drivers on there you'll never get anybody like that but that the educational um the aav we advertise on those we do our website we do on on our facebook page and then for other teachers we have a place called handshake and and that gets advertised too to like colleges and stuff like that i don't know where he saw our our advertisement but those are the four big ones that i have thank you where does he live he lives here in town he has a child in school he's a fairly new arrival to all hank in the last year um eric curtis knows him um we won't hold that against him though i'm known for you he in a way and i'm not techy enough to know what he doesn't know except his his strength is not servers but when eric passed away we uh president rock in a hard place and so i talked to arizona school business officials i need a couple of companies and there's a company called microsoft micro no safari microsoft and they have a person i talked to his name is chris uh they have a gentleman that comes out they're very expensive but they're extremely good and so here yeah so when i thought about this young man i called them and said you know i told him i said i don't want to spend this kind of money every hour for the rest of history and i said i'm thinking about hiring this young man he's he's got the injuries he's had experience he's got some experience but he needs work on these areas i said if we hire him will you continue to work to help like coach him alone they said of course we do that with a lot of small districts as i mentioned someone maybe you earlier when eric schultz came to work for us he was i think he's probably a little more uh knowledgeable than george but he was with another company and he and his boss did a small company they'd come down to work and work and they really totally redid our uit system and it was good what they did and so after about a year a year and a half the boss and i had a good report he came to me and i can't remember what he said he was looking at changing the focus of this company they want to take care of eric and he said would you be interested in essence and we work and we saved money by hiring eric and he spent 15 16 years of this and eric's work area kind of looked like a tornado's gone through it but he if i had a problem in the morning on his way to work he drove down four days a week for something like 17 years from glendale and uh he would pull over and he would he would boot our system on his telephone and well that seemed ridiculous but he we had a problem he called her he would contact one of the weekends he was excited on sunday mornings but in colin murray the other time he was always on the dots so eric was chained trained also by his boss so we're hoping that works was with uh i want to say one thing so i have i've had the opportunity to interface with him a little bit because he works in the j-10 room where the program is based out of um and so far the place was really in really bad shape after a few years of the covenant and they're of course leaving unexpectedly um he has done this amazing cleanup already it looks amazing yeah so i'm going to go there i've been over there for a while yeah i was afraid to walk into what might be good yeah no it was not it was not pretty good it's good to know that you had some experience working with them with what's struck me and i looked at it resume i said okay none of the work experience is in the team and more as the education that's using computers and i realize that a lot of people that are really good at it that don't have that degree because they're just that much into the computers like i said i was a little bit hesitant because i've not met the man and this didn't going to be an i.t guy that doesn't have i.t but the fact that you said this company is willing to help support him also helps us we had an issue last week there was a worry about testing the test we want to make sure our system is operational and so when i was out of state i called in we had income we had the gentleman from the company come for two days i told him i said i want to make sure that this young man challenge you so he learns what you're doing as far as i know the system was fine uh i didn't hear you i didn't need those kind of calls and yeah they're still putting in some long hours mr casey was in charge of our assessments at the member side lead this was the first time before nine o'clock i've seen probably even a week because you have to make sure that before you leave every computer is ready to go so all the assessments except for a couple right now on the computer and uh and you can do that until the next morning fire them up there'll be a handful not ready you know their time tests so 20 kids can't start where there's five of them not ready and so having like mr simon here to bounce around and where we were even texting and then at the store last weekend knocked all the i.t out of our elementary school he was on the roof earlier so um yeah so even just with without all the i.t um degrees and all those things just being a jack of all trades and get a good handyman and uh just takes so much pressure off everybody else that keeps the wheelchair a little bit yeah there's some overlap overlapping with some of those experiences young man one second mr robinson hi mr catherine mr hopkins here's the recommendation of the superintendent this is just it throws me off the way this sentence is written dramatically it is the superintendent's recommendation that people employ jose espinoza as a teacher's aide for home schools thank you and miss robinson hi personal items classified employment professional teacher's aide for victoria espinosa victoria espinosa has an interview the reference check completed for the position of paraprofessional slash teachers eddie it is the superintendent's recommendation that the district employed the party espionage as the teachers aid for all the schools one second miss robinson hi mr duffy um next personnel item is hiring of staff for spring intersection deputy house an extra teacher's aide was needed during spring intercession on march 21 24 the administration is asking for an after-the-fact hiring of debbie house who was not on the original list given at the march the administration is recommending the approval of the employment of debbie house during the spring intercession from march 21st to 24th of 2017.

have any questions comments i do i have a question um so in policy 11.10 um it discusses that we will not con the board will not consider or act on anonymous complaints or complaints that have been not been explored at the appropriate administrative level so sometimes when we bring forth complaints to some administrators and they're not anonymous to us but they're anonymous to administrators so do we have a policy saying administration will not deal with anonymous complaints madam president miss chaffin the intent here is perhaps not described in the language here i think the intent is that if there are anonymous complaints that we don't act on those but that we truly have a desire to resolve any complaints and in order to do that in the most effective manner we need to know where the source of the complaint is and if the complaint is brought at the board level and the board has all the information but administration doesn't the administration is at the disadvantage of being able to resolve the complaint satisfactorily without that information so while you your question is i don't believe that there's a policy that differentiates the board from administration on the anonymity of complaints i would hope that the board would allow administration that information that answers my question okay um just to clarify though i mean there'd be some instances where let's say maybe it's an anonymous complaint or concern um but if we forward it to you if it's a to a level of concern you would still follow up if there was a concern regarding obviously safety or possible you know harm to anyone or anything egregious at all that would whether or not there's a name attached to it or not if administration is able to make a phone call visit a school just to ensure like i said either the safety of a staff or a child we would do that without that goes without saying madam president yes and just to exemplify your your comment there we have in place opportunities for what used to be called silent witness but if there are students or employees or community members who know of threats against student staff or a school that they can report those some of the high schools specifically have an app where a student can just text a potential threat to to the administration um so yes when those are situations are present we will take those seriously we take all threats seriously well what about not just threats but what if somebody says hey so we've got a situation where somebody called dcs and so dcs is going into investigate but dcs is saying that our staff is calling parents and letting them know that there's an investigation going on but that particular dcs worker that caseworker doesn't feel comfortable addressing it themselves if we were to bring that forward would it be within policy scope like wouldn't it be prudent to at least just look into it and say um i understand this is an anonymous complaint but it might there it might have merit it might not but it's a safety issue so maybe we should look into it just for a few minutes mata president chaffin um hypothetically if there was such a situation with a dcs co employee who had a complaint there are processes where dcs has in place for those kinds of conversations to be directed through appropriate channels to the school district and we have and will contact the appropriate administrative level if there are concerns to the level that it needs to be brought to a governing board member obviously that's very serious if dcs administration has no knowledge of that that's concerned to both dcs and the dysart school district that there is somebody who has information that's not willing to identify themselves to be able to allow us to have communication with that person and get the details necessary or that the dcs leadership would be able to appropriately follow their protocols when they have concerns or an employee of theirs has concerns are you is there something about the policy that you want to change i mean do you have a um no i don't know that i want to change i don't know that i want to change a policy i just wanted to ask for clarification because it says the board will not act on anonymous complaints but if we forward complaints and i understand that you want to know more details whoever it is whether it's cabinet or superintendent technically they're not anonymous to the board but they're anonymous to the administration i just wanted to clarify because sometimes we're told that hey somebody has reached out to this concern um you know and sometimes they haven't gone through the proper channels sometimes they have and so when i or anybody forwards a complaint it might be anonymous to cabinet but it's not anonymous to the board so i was just kind of clarifying i would say if the person's identified their name they're not anonymous so then that then forwarding it would not be in my opinion the way i would interpret it is it's not it's not an anonymous complaint because the person has identified themselves with whatever whoever board member that they forwarded it to right madam president if you're suggesting that if a person identifies themselves to the board member but the board member withholds that person's identity to administration it goes back to my first statement that that puts administration at a severe disadvantage to be able to appropriately address the concern okay so do you want to i guess i would just i would just ask us what we can do to make our employees feel more confident in identifying themselves to administration that they don't feel retaliated against because there are employees that have reached out to me and in the past couple of months i have referred them to dr croto and you know cc'd dr code on an email and saying i've been 100 guaranteed that there will be no retaliation on this and you know it's just trust is earned so i guess maybe for a later conversation what can we do to make sure our employees know that if they do have a valid complaint or a grievance that just bringing it forward they will be protected because most of them feel like they're going to get retaliated against and if there really is an issue then i feel like we need to take care of that because we don't want our teachers showing up every day just dreading making themselves sick with anxiety for um situation a or situation b we don't want our teachers showing up to work being completely miserable but yet afraid to say anything so maybe for a future conversation we can kind of think about those things sorry i don't mean to ignore you okay okay that's it for that okay thank you any other comments all right and i sorry i got one i think dr kells had something but um i just want to point out 11.11 eleven and eleven point eleven two um there is what uh it says i'm not sure if it's eleven eleven or eleven two but it quotes it says citizens request for reconsideration of instructional material so we have it into policy that if a parent it's on 11.12 if a parent comes across some materials that they deem object objectionable or questionable we have a policy to where they can fill this form out correct madam president chaplin if you refer to 11.12 there are procedures and yes there is a form that would be available for parents okay i just kind of wanted to highlight that because that might alleviate some some of the middle people that way if parents are aware of that whenever things do come then they can submit that and they've got an avenue can you clarify what the difference is between submitting the form about questionable you know material versus opting out or is that one and are we talking one and the same here madam president miss densmore any parent anytime can have access to the materials that are being taught in a classroom it's made available in multiple mediums if a parent has objection to what is planned to be taught or what is being taught then the parent can directly talk to that teacher and opt out of of that lesson and be provided with an alternative assignment or an alternative unit or to be excused from the class and be provided with an alternative place to to go during that particular lesson this form formalizes it and provides an opportunity for the parent to get into more specifics the assistance with the form it obviously would go to more more ears right okay and so that would allow more eyes on the problem and but at any time any parent can talk to the teacher about an objection interested thank you okay that's all i just wanted to highlight those things thank you all right then we'll move to g3 edition of policy 7.69 phased return retirement dr kalis thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet dr curtis will introduce this item thank you dr kellis uh madam president members of the board superintendent kellis cabinet and guests uh tonight we bring to you a policy on phase retirement under the discussion that was had in the february governing board meeting about phase retirement so tonight we present to you the brand new policy 7.69 along with a copy of the procedures that go with that 7.69 p1 and the phase retirement request form uh which is a form which will all be attached that anybody going on phase retirement would need to complete in order to do that i will mention too as we discussed we have eight individuals currently that are on phase retirement and and are coming back off phase retirement it is um the suggestion by our attorney that we continue uh with those eight under the rules that they came in under and the form and anybody moving forward tonight or when we finalize this this is the first read tonight but we can certainly move from tonight we have people waiting waiting right now we've told them to wait until we're done with this before the process starts so we're not accepting anymore right now but there are some out there that are ready to go so with that i want to bring that up and then any discussions you had about the new policy this has run by our legal team and they have approved it to bring to you tonight as a first read thank you very much for all your work on this i really appreciate it i know you put a lot of time into it um so just to clarify what you just said there's eight individuals who are already on page retirement this would not impact obviously right that is correct yeah okay i think they would be grandfathered in a sense in a sense correct because they went in under the old one they're coming back in the next few months makes sense okay any questions from the board thanks again for all your work appreciate it next we move to information discussion item four information on 2021 2022 academic data dr kellis thank you madam president thank you madam president members of the board of members of cabinet our research team has been very busy over the last several months collecting data on the student achievement specifically with our benchmark assessments and with dibbles and amy harchen director of research will present this information to the board good evening let's see oh good it works good evening madam president president sorry members of the board dr kellis and cabinet i'm here to share um dibbles and benchmark data from this year and kind of give you um our schools are kind of right in the middle of testing right now so this kind of gives you a summary of what was accomplished this year and hopefully um kind of gives us a good picture of where we will um kind of land for state testing um for this next year so i'm going to start with dibbles which is um of course our k-3 um reading indicators um for the um past couple of years you can see there are bands um 1920 of course was the year that we were here three quarters of the year and then left and went to covid last year um the students were online at the start and then of course this year we were able to um start and um so far this year hopefully and um have a full academic year in person so you can see that our um kindergarteners their grade level measure is first sound fluency so their ability to recognize those first letter sounds um they started the year below where they did both in 1920 and 2021 but they have recovered very well they're actually at a higher rate um middle of year which is december they don't actually start their end of year testing until may so we don't have that data for you right now but you can see their middle middle of the year scores are actually um above pre-coded levels first second and third grade are obviously great areas of concern because those are students who either didn't get preschool didn't get a full year of kinder didn't get a full year of first grade so you can see those students are above where they were in first grade they're above where they were at the start of last year um but they have not quite recovered all the way to the level of where they were um pre pandemic um second grade are is oral reading fluency for both second and third grade and so that is their ability to read a passage and retell you information about that passage second grade is where that really starts to come together for the students it's really the first time they they fully embrace the all putting all together their foundational reading skills this year their start and middle of the year scores are the same um above where they were last year in both beginning and middle of the year but there hasn't been any progress um over the course of the year so hopefully our end of the year scores will be higher and we'll see progress there um the last one is third grade and of course um they are we're middle of the year where they were beginning of the year um but they did at least see some good growth between the start of the year and um the middle of the year so like i said they will do their um end of the year test in may so benchmarking um i'm going to give some context before we start this as we know we reconfigured schools this year so you're going to see the way i've presented benchmark is in the bands of the schools because that impacted how growth was measured by the different schools because of what grade levels test on those schools for each of the benchmark results we're going to see for reading and math there's really three measures of comparison there is last year's azm 2 scores so we can compare benchmark 3 to azm 2 last year because benchmark 3 is normally our predictor for azm2 there is benchmark 1 to benchmark three comparison and then that last column is growth and i'm going to explain because you look at it and you go 25 to 36 isn't 47.

however that will be picked up by head start uh so the approval is more just that because it is our property and it's gonna be installed there's gonna be a playground area a sand pit uh some uh uh curbing uh we wanted to make you aware of it i know we have some guests here if there's any particular questions you you would like to ask but but it's good for the kids it puts them right in front of the classroom instead of having to go out to the side uh and it'll be it's got some shade coverage out there just from the trees and i think it's best for the kids and it'll be better for the experience so i would recommend approval for as president but if you have a specific question they may be able to help you out but i just want to clarify we're just approving that they bring it onto our campus we are not purchasing this no we are not purchasing in this side it's out of their budget but i wanted to make sure the board was aware of that it was coming onto a property uh obviously it becomes part even though it's they're purchasing it because we host them uh any liability issues and stuff like that or any equipment as part of the trust becomes uh our responsibility from that standpoint um if an accident occurred then you'd actually get in discussion as much with a head start as that as us but i just want to make sure the board was aware of that uh just because all of some there's going to be a structure there and and people may be asking questions and i just one quick question and that was one of the questions i had the other one is i know this sounds odd but if for some reason they no longer were not we're not part of our campus does that equipment stay with us good evening i'm the ceo of pinelhala community child services and thank you m chair and the board and dr wyman um so we are a federally funded program and so what we typically do is we sign a 15-year lease is what they like to see however with you guys we have a five-year lease and so what i could say to you is that we would if you did not sign a longer lease with us then we would have to go to them and we would have to say how much it would cost to move it is it worth the cost of moving do we disposition it do we leave it with you um but i could not tell you that yes we would leave it like we have to get permission to disposition it to leave it there but we hope to have a long lasting relationship with you we know that there's a need here in san tan valley a need for even more than we're providing currently and you've been at that site for how long a really long time i want to say 12 15.

no tickets will be sold at other times during the school day unless prior approval is given by mrs covington prom tickets are 15 each and can only be purchased by junior senior underclassmen may only attend as guests or a junior or a senior guest passes are needed for any guests who are not current students at gchs and will be available when tickets are purchased be prepared to also sign up for a table assignment when tickets are purchased junior and seniors attending after prom and would like to sign up for the trampoline dodgeball tournament please check your email and fill out the google form sent to you team entry is due april 29th see mrs comer with any questions juniors and seniors after prom dodgeball tournament signups will be open through this week don't forget to sign up your team now does fashion with the sports for sports today we have bait spot rushville we have golf at lawrenceburg tennis and track are both at madison and softball in jennings county now back to the desk there are summer employment opportunities at the alamo swimming pool for full and part-time possessions including lifeguards pool cashiers and pool concessions anyone 15 and who is interested in becoming a certified lifeguard is encouraged to reach out to teresa kovac as the parks department as soon as possible to take advantage of class being held april 9th and 10th in columbus call 812-663-8284 for more information the greensburg public library is offering some free teen programs grades 6 to 12 on april 12 from 3 15 to 5 30. there will be a board game night and a nacho bar on april 24th 4th from 4 30 to 7 p.m there will be they will have a team movie night showing spider-man no way home snacks and drinks will be provided have a great day and be sure to follow us on twitter snapchat and instagram at gch pirates also be sure to listen to gtv radio on live 365

i apologize for this this is embarrassing when this happens we had more special ed students at in the spring session which is good than we anticipated and she she's a one-on-one pair of flow with special mentions and we needed her so we would like to hit your blessing you know robin says hi passport okay and final personnel item is personal extra paid position funded due to the resignation of kayla leon as softball head coach on 311 mr kevin wolfgram the high school math teacher agreed to health coach softball team with lonnie alvarez as of march 14th 2015. it is recommended that the board approve mr walker in the position of co-ed i i kind of the one that popped him into it because i knew kayla was leaving and he was he was talking to me through the dead god at one of my home games and i kind of battled him until he agreed i don't go on the away games just because i'm i would be out of the office constantly and juani is in his early 80s mid 80s so i'm 14 or 15 you know uh teenagers all on the same field just made me really nervous because there's days that like today they were out there practicing and i couldn't be there because we had board meetings i was after monday either um so he's an extra hand that he goes out there and he hits balls to them he knows about baseball i think he played in college so i i really i came around the corner and i saw him and i'm like so how do you feel about coaching softball today and then he kind of smile and not add to me and walk away so um i'm on a volunteer basis just because don't go on away games i don't go to every single practice so i don't think that it would be fair so the pay goes to him because kayla left and lonnie was just kind of left out in the dirt so and um bonnie was gone for the last three four days on um and mr wolfman just kind of took over practice which i appreciated then i don't have to worry about doing things like that so it works out yeah and he told me the other day he was like only for next year can we get these and i was like yes if that means that you're going to coach next year then of course i will get you anything that you want to get to build up with my coach this is the first year he hasn't coached so um he was doing it for a long time so we still have to get into the regular use of of having a regular head coach or girl softball hopefully mr robinson and mrs duncan he's not here okay no i'm sorry [Music] yes okay and this is a discussion item on board procedures board members will continue discussion on more creation and placing titles so i i asked for this as a continuation of this procedure discussion that we've been having did but there's a lot of editions all in green i don't expect us to go over all that now you can do it in your own time you have already looked at it and you have comments um i'm happy to take them down um what i'm hoping is that in um i have it i have it for july but that's you know negotiable that we can ratify it essentially that we can adopt it um so there's time to look through it and um let me know if you have anything you'd like to change anything you'd like to see in here that's not in here um oh a lot of this is stuff that i wish i knew like when i first joined the board and it took me a long time to to learn some of it um so i put it in there i'm sure everyone has a different experience that way so if there's anything that you think is important that should be in here thank you very much so the work part of that for tonight is at the very end the last last three pages um those the first two page 15 those are notes taken directly from the training we did in december with nikki bailey we went over this with her but we didn't really make any decisions can you have what erickson say now or on yeah right um so i was hoping with more board members we could come to some agreements we're not voting on them tonight but it would be more like agreements that i can put in there and then when it comes time to adopt it hopefully hopefully it will just be adopted because we've already agreed on it but there'll be an opportunity to to vote on individual if if there's something in particular that seems like it should be pulled out and changed we should vote on that so this section is all about a lot about meeting scheduling and how the agenda is created um if you go to the last page i made this this isn't um it's just like a worksheet to um i took out all of the things in here that she suggested we come to agreement on in what seemed to me chronological order um so we can decide how we want to do it for example first thing after effective meetings on page 15 it's current board of john items and she writes the board president will meet with the superintendent seven days in advance of the meeting to review and part of the draft agenda so and then there are um there are events like that throughout these notes that she that she created and gave to us so we can remember what we all talked about so then on the last page i have those blanks there the only thing i've filled in is 24 hours before the meeting the agenda has to be posted that's the last blessing that happens i know that typically lately we've been getting our um agenda delivered to the board often on thursdays it's not always thursdays but it's pretty pretty regular sometimes it's before that um so the idea is to set us expectations like do we do we want to always get the agenda not always but as much as possible have the agenda delivered on tuesday on thursdays so we have one full business day and weekend if you can if you can do that on the weekend before the first meeting comes up on monday the things that are to be scheduled are um when the gender requests should be submitted we have a policy that sent so that it should be five days in advance in the meeting um but we can really make it what we want and what works for us romney involved is gonna be a lot huge um and uh the next thing is uh the president and superintendent need to improve the draft agenda if there's a certain data that that you've been doing that and that works we can put that in there um or a certain certain time frame ahead of the meeting um where you're doing it at least whatever you want it to be at least seven days ahead of the meeting you meet um and then the next is agenda and support materials on the board so legally the agenda we can get it up until 24 hours ahead of time but practically that makes it really difficult to actually go through all the materials in time um so we can decide what we want to do there um and the next is questions on jenna and some important materials to the spring so that is once we've received the agendas um questions always come up um and we can we can define an expectation that if you're gonna have questions get them in by this time so they can be addressed so you're not getting last-minute questions or demands based on agenda you received five days ago um and then the request to move items out of the consent agenda we don't do that a lot but it does happen that actually can happen even during the meeting um but it's nice to get a heads up like if i knew actually i did this tonight i um i noticed that this was at the start and i didn't want to start the meeting this discussion i wanted to get all the business done um and so i asked that if you move to the end so we could take whatever time we all want to take with this um so that's it so those are the things i've pulled out that that nikki had had notes on for this is the board focus on their agenda setting process discuss protocols these should be reviewed discussed and adopted now she's writing we don't have to do this but she's suggesting that we do i have a new recovery i think it's a good idea it sets expectations we'll know when we're getting getting the materials that we need and we'll open that and the administration angelina will also know when to expect questions and things like that from us so i don't i don't know how how can we go line by line through nicki's notes and and discuss those um clocks anyone or you could jump in and say i like to have my meetings on this day bob and i generally unless like this meeting you were scheduling things it's generally the week before the monday meeting that we get together and set the agenda so it's a little bit odd to me then that policy requires five days notice you have agenda items because if they do it at day five or day six we've already met the thanks page fifteen uh current board has been the items board president will meet the superintendent seven days in advance which we usually do but then the note policy requires five days advanced notice for a gender request five days advancement of the meeting or the pre-meeting that mom and dad um before it's before the meeting isn't it that's what i'm thinking that's where the obvious if we're meeting monday to start the agenda and then we get requests up until we get requests on tuesday next week but generally it is right um and granted we i think we also could have a you know basically a safety gap something came up that needed to address we can add it in five days before we can change the agenda up until the day before right so i think i think if we move that to is recommended they get up to us eight days before the meeting that gives us a day to sit with them before we set the agenda but then also have some wording in there that you know the agenda can still be modified if it's you know if a serious need comes up for that okay it's kind of like the 24 hours for general change right in the case of emergency and who's going to define industry you can call you can call me so the next thing is uh the consent agenda will be used for items not requiring discussion we do that so yeah that's just established um any board member may ask to have an item pulled from the consent agenda to allow for discussion or individual consideration the board member will notify the superintendent and this is one to two days in advance of the meeting of the intent to pull an item off and what additional information you require so this is more of like a courtesy um because you can you can pull things out of the consent agenda during the meeting you can do it at the last minute but it's nice to have a heads up about it if if it's asked for so um she suggests one to two days any any preference it'd be nice that morning but this is the first board i've ever seen that gives you a heads up when i was in a larger district i see at that point reported not a lot but maybe a couple times a year is that do you feel like one or two days is enough for them i think okay and it takes angelina a little while one day enough you need two days it was a consent agenda you wouldn't have to redo it though it's just knowing that it oh you're moving something to another position no it's part of the consent agenda that it doesn't have to have any information any voting on it so when you ask to move the disposal from the consent agenda to the to an actual action item the agenda item has to be retyped redone reprinted the agenda has to be changed and then i have to come in and rearrange everybody's books okay so that's so isn't that something i thought you just said we can do that during the meeting too yeah yeah if you enjoyed the at all we can just say that we're going to be doing that right but you can't if you do it during the meeting the requesting additional items can't be done at that time because yeah just but just moving from a consent to vote yeah how does not work for me right after the rest of the consent agenda has been approved that's what she says that seems reasonable you do that after um additional meeting agreements i don't understand how that's legal if you're pulling something off the consent agenda you're making an accident we have to approve the accidents before 24 hours before because it's already an action item that's good you're going to vote you're going to approve and disapprove the whole package yeah so you're they're just going to approve the package finance item g and then you vote on g alone or something and that mg was already on the agenda i just happened to be in consent so we're not illegally adding something to the agenda right inside that 24-hour window um the superintendent board secretary secretary will get the agenda and support materials to the board at least two working days before the meeting i feel like you mostly do this and and it is important um any thoughts on that so i'm not trying to make excuses nikki wade comes from a huge district but they're superintendent they're superintendent secretary that's all she is she did she's a superintendent secretary she supports everything and that's it that's all she does all day long every day all day this is this of what my job is so we go from a monday or tuesday where they meet together they get an agenda item together he writes them all up i have to type them all out i put them while i print the ball put them in the book all the basics takes you about two days not to mention we're doing interviews we're doing bank statements we're doing minutes we're doing phone calls the coffee machine breaks down the coffee machine this is anything you could possibly throw at us think about so we're asking we need to get full board books for eight people done in two days by thursday because that's two working days that's only one working day that friday and then the meeting is monday so what's your point right i'm just saying it doesn't really matter what you guys agree on you're gonna agree on it i'm gonna try my best to do it but it's it's not gonna happen all the time yeah no i don't think there's that expectation if it's not possible i i would like to see the two days because if you're getting it if i'm getting it um thursday afternoon that gives you friday to do it and if maybe i can at all during the weekend so it gives you time with the with the agenda and all the materials so if they hadn't gone over this before then there would have been interviews all last week that we have been doing yeah and then when wherever they meet we can't move tuesdays and thursdays so i have to be either a monday or wednesday before or after and then that's two days to get the thing together so what if this happens or he's gone and then he has to be the principal i'm just saying it's not always going to be extremely vital letter by the book we're going to approve this it's going to say this is what has to be done and then next month we're going to say like well you didn't make the two days before we didn't have a full two days to do it because now meetings are monday instead of tuesdays and wednesdays so it works for me to get it either thursday or friday the only the only issue i can see there so it doesn't matter to me i'm going to work as hard as i can to get it out i'm not just sitting at my desk swiddling with them the only issue i can see by getting it on friday is if there's there's something that was left off of the agenda and that means if i you know if i get it friday depending on what time friday it's i'm calling or um over the weekend to get it added to the agenda because it needs to be on there 24 hours before the monday meeting right and can't mean you having to do something on saturday which is not great all that matters means i do it 30 minutes before the meeting and and if it's an agenda item that's left off of what me it stuck up the wednesday meeting i saw it done if we're talking about the monday meeting then i don't know what to do like i said to me it works together friday it works fine with i just with that one and i don't i can't think of it having happened but it's something i can see potentially and the online posting has to happen six hours in advance at least or at least four hours in advance of them to post it there's a window they don't do it immediately i send it to them and then they get it so if i'm posting it saturday at nine o'clock then they need a four hour window now i can email one of the heads up and say hey i need this posted in the next hour it's an emergency but after i do that seven times two months in a row they're gonna get kind of tired of me are you talking about the website it's easy to come out here and post yeah um so what about wording it so for me there's been many occasions where i'm scrambling to get it my comment to you or i mean this this particular agenda is an example of that um so it would be very helpful to have it on thursday what if we have it like sound more flexible like when possible yes it's incredible i better go with whatever you guys tell me to do okay um okay can we get more comfortable chairs you got it i'll talk to the board about putting in your budget agenda items or support items or support materials at least two days before the scheduled board meeting um does that seem reasonable too good an idea i would notify my half of your gmail identify the green so there are things but same sort of standard um board members will come to the university to discuss science on agenda members will notify the superintendent before meeting about positive and negative comments received from the community on specific agenda items um that's just giving giving the sprint a heads up about what's going on or board members will give us some time to research clarifying questions about agenda items future dead items while the board president and superintendent work together to create board agendas all board members are reporting the opportunity to request agenda items and we've recently changed our policy to do this when requesting agenda items the focus of board meetings will be board work and not administrative staff work and these are the questions that you would ask when asking for yourself when asking for an item is the item to celebrate a success is the item of policy decision is the item something that requires board action is the item needed to ensure accountability three how to whom and when will requests for future agenda items be made and i think we all understand this now uh requests for future jenna items can be made during the meeting or via email president superintendent and and we had board secretary because we have been doing that um any i have a little bit of a concern by having people suit the ford president and the secretary on there if you put too much information it might be an open meeting law issue that's okay he's not the secretary mr clerk um yeah that doesn't mean the clark i think that means she means she means angelina that makes sense okay sorry um requested now the items will be tracked by board secretary and kept in a spreadsheet that lists data requests requester's name items requested type of request if it's a report discussion or action item and the resolution and i think you have more more categories than that but you do all those things i think right um and let's see if the board president superintendent decided not to add requested they will inform the requester in writing as to why if there is a concern about the timeliness or relevancy of a requested item the superintendent or member of the board may request to have the item come before the board for a vote regarding its inclusion on a future agenda so this is this is what we've talked about before where maybe i ask for um i want to change the school colors to green and white and dr julie is strongly opposed poses sure she's been having the conversation green raiders from the green ranch my request to have this have this um this agenda item added but then i would have the option to come before the board and say for i want to have this discussion and then it would be a vote and you would all vote no right but at the same time if you if that motion if that was on there we could you know somebody said instantly say this is ridiculous we're not doing that i make a motion in the table changing definitely and if it's voted it could happen that way too and that's why i think in general you want to be generous this way unless someone's asking for something that's wildly inappropriate um we can either discuss it or not it's always up to us that's it um so i'll add these in um and i'll ask for another one of these discussions um and you'll still have opportunities to change anything if you look at any of this like later and you think that doesn't make sense um let me know um and then yeah i'll bring it i'll bring it again next month that's it and last out of the business is a board requests to add agenda items to future meetings any board members have agenda items requested i have one i am so happy that we have an i.t person because i want to get back to getting a working email system our email is still bad always has been and uh i wanna i don't wanna i wanna figure it out try and get something that works that's not that's not something that we can at the table type issues okay anyway

the last column is all about the kids scale score it's each individual students scale score growth from benchmark one to benchmark two or benchmark three um for elementary school and it has to do with um the psychometrics of when we have 30 items they're weighted and you get this large scale score number so the scale score actually moves over the course of the year so for example fourth grade reading this year um the scale score for benchmark one to be proficient was 9.35 they've learned new information so the benchmark the scale score for benchmark three was 959 so for fourth grade the growth score the expected growth was 24 points regardless of where you were that was i just gave you the indicator for proficiency so that's why these are each in different places because for k4 the reading growth was 36 but in our middle schools it was only 21.

yeah right so so even when we talk about this has been there for a long long long time uh the law only allows us five year uh agreements and that's why there's a five-year agreement but this is an ongoing commitment between our district and head start and so there will be no indication that that commitment is not going to continue thank you well i have a question um is there currently playground equipment in the old location and then what's going to happen to that equipment when we get this new equipment yes and can you go ahead and come up this is our data and planning manager and she will tell you they are going to move the equipment we have specialists that will come in and take our previous equipment we do have equipment there though but we will disposition of it so included with that budget that we gave you it does include demoing that existing playground we the paperwork that i did submit was just requesting to use that as additional storage space because there is a shed there with their playground equipment okay okay thanks thank you just show you where the renovation back there with the with the solar and the um uh paving uh have left has left that area you know it was figured into when we did the paving in the parking lot back there so it fits in to have them store stuff there without a problem any other questions chad have anything okay all right i'll take a motion i move to approve the placement of the playground equipment for the head start program at cta as presented motion carries five to zero okay um employee medical insurance plan so this is the beginning of some of the stuff that we'll bring forward to you uh regarding the budget and ms cook apologizes she came down ill during the day and so she she was not able to attend as a reminder we remember the school medical insurance trust which is called smith and the vote of that trust was to accept the offer for the medical coverage uh from blue cross blue shield and the increase this year was 9.42 that would be indicative of what's occurring in the industry just based on issues related to covet and other things like that and so we would go ahead and continue to have the same plans that we've had in the past the lion silver the alliance gold the valley gold and the classic gold the district pays 100 percent of the lion silver so that's our base plan and then a foreign employee if an employee wants to buy up they can buy up to the other levels likewise if they want to insure their dependents then they would go ahead and pay for the the cost of the insurance this year we will be offering a high deductible health plan it's a 2 800 deductible i have it's been part of schmidt for a number of years but the district has not opted to use it given the increase the high deductible is approximately at the same price and it just gives an option we have a fairly young staff where a high deductible plan is probably beneficial quite frankly to any number of individuals and so that is going to be um uh the new portion um of the plan just to give employees one more option uh we'll continue with basic life uh accidental death dismemberment um uh but well there's no rate increase on that and delta that we use delta dental death division short-term disability again no rate increases there so the only rate increase we're seeing is nine point four two percent uh as uh if you remember from our budget discussion a couple weeks ago the anticipated cost of that nine point four two percent based on uh current number of employees enrolled is a little over two hundred thousand we have budgeted four hundred thousand because we fill all the positions that we have had open in the past the total cost of that increase would be the 400 000.

so i couldn't put them together because then the growth scores would look weird um for you so you'll see the on regular k8s on the next slide but you can see as our k-4s are um just only test for third and fourth grade they had great growth all of them exceeded the um reading growth score was el mirage was at 35 five so rounds to 36 all of them had growth between benchmark one and benchmark three and all of them are at or above where they were on azm2 last year so our k our k4s are doing a really great job in reading um we're seeing good growth and um the nice thing about the growth factor is it tells us although um for example countryside went from 25 of their students being proficient to 36. um where the growth helps us see the kids who are moving out of minimally proficient so maybe i'm still minimally proficient or i move from minimally to partially so i'm not showing as a proficient on the college two and three i'm not showing as a proficiency student but i've made great growth because they had 47 points of growth they're moving kids so that and that's what we want we want students to make growth from the beginning of the year to the end so that yes so i can understand a little better while you're explaining rather than absolutely so um so thank you for explaining how growth is is calculated but in general are you able to give us any idea of how much growth is expected or typical or comparative to maybe like state or how the test is designed where you would expect to see this much growth so we even know like even though all growth is great right um but are we accelerating and as at the speed that we should be correct so if you up on the top where it says reading growth k4 36 points 36 points is what the average for our k-4s should have been from benchmark one to benchmark um three and you can see the average growth at countryside was 47 so they exceeded that 36 points they had more growth than was was expected um el mirage was right at that 36.

if we do not fill positions and obviously that becomes a savings for us we will also be using american fidelity and they will be expanding our benefit portfolio with flex spending accounts critical illness cancer and hospital accident coverage the reason for conversations with american fidelity is because of some concerns with the fsa the flex spending account so we looked at other options we were not satisfied the option that submit occurred and so they will go ahead and provide those while it's voluntary coverage but the other piece that we're excited for american fidelity is they will come out to all of our sites and meet with all of our employees and go over all of the options they have available to them within our plan network now they will do some after school if needed or at night because in some cases uh individuals want spouses to be part of the conversation not everybody we're going to try to get to everybody there might be someone that doesn't show up but this way we're sure that they're aware of what their options are especially with the high deductible health plan that can get confusing they'll have experts that will explain that to individuals that they're aware so i would recommend that we approve the rates as presented questions no chad all right um i need a motion bob you're gonna stop a good thing you want me to do it again go ahead your turn i moved to wreck i moved to approve the employee insurance benefit plan as for 22 23 as presented a second oh lisa got the one all right all in favor aye aye aye aye all right motion carries five to zero you gotta give me a warning and change direction [Music] [Laughter] okay um approval free schedules for 22 23 kinder testing uh it's very simple i'll explain it but if there's more particulars about the screening you can talk to ask mr berkshire you can decide after talking to mr scroggin whether he wants to come up or just answer from back there but we'll wait and see i'm really all this is is you have approved the um uh the course fees uh a couple period uh uh meetings ago and we just realized we missed an early kinder screening this day or the 45 dollars per child for the screening is set uh it happens in june so this approval is actually going to take place this year as well as for next year we missed it last year when we did the course fee approval it covers the cost of the of the screening uh for those kids that may qualify for uh the early kindergarten and so that's why we're bringing it forward um uh if there's more specifics again uh mr berkshire then answer them but i would recommend approval as presented so it's really just that one edition and no one changes it everything else is the same questions i'll take a motion all right i move to approve the amendment 22 23 fee schedules for the kinder testing fee for 21 22 and 22 23 unauthorized principles to await the assessment of all are part of the fee assessment if it creates an economic hardship as presented just to show you where madam president that is the law and we're required to read it that way that is why that's why bob didn't do it because he had to read all of it i'll second okay all in favor aye aye aye i shouldn't care he's five to zero okay again uh mr rutko can decide whether he wants to come up with any specific questions but in essence what we have and and this is given the dollars that are available out there it's we've been informed by the fcc uh that if you remember earlier this year we bought computers using the emergency connectivity fund and because we had an increase in students uh we now qualify for more computers uh and so our our choice would be to go ahead and move uh forward with the new application window when it opens up here at the end of the month and order some more computers um we're looking to add these computers um in large part because if you remember with our one to one initiative we want to get on a cycle where we replace about 500 computers each year rather than buying all the computers and then at the at the end of five years having to play it replace two or three thousand computers this is an opportunity that just came to us recently and so the thought process is we might as well move forward and get these um because it can free up budget capacity in essers or in the uh bond money or the daa and we wouldn't have to spend it uh the cost of the computers is 260 267 403 dollars and 60 cents 66 cents however please understand that the way this is set up is if it is approved then the efc program and the fcc will will pay for the whole thing so there's no cost associated to us if they do not approve us for some reason then we just won't purchase the computers so there's a no cost but even though there's no cost we still have to cut a po and has to go through us and we will build directly we just got a letter today that uh the f's fcc or excuse me dell indicated that it's okay for us to to go ahead and build directly to from the fcc program to dell but we still have to open up a po for that to occur and so we will let you know if we're approved but if we are approved then we would go ahead and purchase those computers and again the entire cost would be picked up by this efc and i don't know mr rutko if we remember what the amount of money that was the first time the efc how many computers we bought how much we we got out of that so you're going to see that we've been able to purchase 1100 computers from a a a revenue stream that's not normally available to us but because of things going on with covet it was made available to us and so it's a great way to continue our one-to-one initiative without dipping into some of the other budget categories that we have i have a question i see in the information we have the what the application window is after the application window is closed when can we expect decisions to be made take that long stroll up here so what happens you notice that you're like the new kid on the block because all of them the cool kids are sitting in the back if we're approved for it then as soon as we're approved in that window then we'll cut the po and we'll send that to dell so it just depends on the lead time for the devices so we should get them fairly quickly okay i guess i didn't ask the question correctly is the approval process an ongoing rotating or does it wait until the window to be closed and then there's like an approval meeting or something like that no i think it's you can you apply within the window we've already sent our information to our nicely consulting and they'll take care of putting that through uh you know the application for us and as soon as it's approved it'll probably be improved you have to apply within that window and hopefully i don't know when they'll approve everything hopefully but as soon as they do then we'll be able to buy the devices and then this is a federal program across the country so there's a chance they may close the window and then go through and review all at one time and make the decisions based on uh the dollar amounts that are available because there's a restriction on the total amount of dollars and so they they probably take that into consideration uh prior to providing approvals across the country okay thank you thank you any other questions all right i will take a motion see i move to approve the purchase of 700 chromebooks through the ecf program as presented all second all in favor motion carries five to zero okay so we just have um that's the end of our uh motions uh we have dis information and discussion items mr berkshire good evening madam president members of the board dr wyman i'm here today to talk about student achievement data updates um so today we're going to look at our um high school second or actually should that should have said third quarter um benchmark results um just a reminder that we're looking at a comprehensive assessment system and so we're looking at those district standards based benchmarks that that we administer and of high utility to us at the district level but also useful for our teachers proficiency bands just a reminder in order to be proficient they had to score a 75 or higher on the assessment and so for third quarter benchmarks again they are end-of-quarter standards-based assessments that are based on our district curriculum maps they are technology enhanced it's an online administration window is from february 14th to march 4th we administered an ela 9th through 11th grades we also we do not do our ap courses or 12th grade um due to the the the items and and aps being a little bit different from everything else math we administered in algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2 again those that's where the standards that uh the items types that we have available are our most predominant so for uh ela and 9th through 11th grade you can see we actually saw an improvement in the percent of students passing significantly in 11th grade that that grade level team has improved every quarter um that we've administered the assessments um and then ninth grade we saw a good jump as well average percent correct um just to give you an idea of on those proficiency bands where we're looking at 11th grade it doesn't look like it went up much so what that tells me is we had a lot of students scoring really high but we also had a lot of students scoring really low so while those students that scored high push the percentage passing up those students that scored low pulled the average down so math continues to be a challenge and when you look at our average percent correct pretty much the same students i believe are are being as successful as they have been on the previous uh two quarters in math um so some next steps again where we go back we look at this we talk about it we we dive into it um i'll be following up the new principal team to start planning for 2022 and 20 20 2023 our content coaches continue to work with site plc data teams to deconstruct the standards line instruction to assessment again our pl days continue to focus on providing support for staff on standards literacy and transparency for students one of the things that we are now starting to talk about is possible rfp for new math curriculum resources next year our elementary was adopted eight years ago middle school seven years ago and and high school six six years ago so we're at the end of the the life on the high school materials and then finally i need to do a correlation study to to look at how accurate our proficiency scales are we we set them pretty high and so once we get our act and act aspire data back then i can do a correlation to see kids that scored that passed a ct based on the the state cut scores where did they come in on on our um benchmarks and then it i will be doing the same thing for aasa for third through eighth grades so this was our first year administering with uh dna and again because they don't have a norm based way for us to to look at their scores we set those proficiency scales and i just want to make sure that we're actually reporting it accurately based on actual student performance on state and national assessments any questions yeah are we providing teachers and content coaches all the resources that they need to have their students be successful or are there other things that we can be doing well as i said it the the math resources that we currently have are nearing the end of their useful life elementary was adopted when the new standards came out and we know that there are a ton of gaps in that elementary middle school significantly high school as well and the biggest challenges is i think continuing to work with our teachers and understanding what those standards mean and how do they engage students in understand truly understanding those standards so so moving away from that stand to deliver model especially in math where i do and i expect you to do the algorithm to a much more conceptual basis and at the lower grades some of the intervention resources that we've purchased using with title 1 funds i believe that those will have a long-term impact as those kids continue to move up and so in the the near term uh we're still continuing to work with them do we have all the financial resources we need i know you mentioned title one and whatever comes out of our mno do we have the financial resources to make all this happen i'm gonna yes as part of our budget i mean we're taking a look at a couple different things within the budget um and that's part of that conversation so whether what we're trying to do is maximize all the different funding sources we can use so we had talked about the notion of the science curriculum this year which we're in process of doing and next year do we mod do we move from social studies curriculum to a math curriculum which should be funded out of essers we also have some replacement of the current uh materials that that we're taking a look at and because we were successful in getting the money for the 100-day in school grant or in-person grant the district uh the information i shared with you on that grant actually had made a error where we're actually over half a million i think it was 542 000 that we got there so we're looking at curricular issues right now to provide more for them and then we have other curricular issues that are part of our daa and bond so we have several uh funding sources available to us and now we're just trying to take a look at how what's the best way to maximize the use of of those dollars to get it so yes i believe we'll have plenty of dollars to do it and that'll be coming to you guys over the next couple months as we as we look to move forward the math curriculum adoption however will not be till next year so what we would look to is to make sure that that anything that's outdated in terms of consumable we will get for this next year and then we go through the same process with math that we're doing through science and then we would purchase the whole whole new set that would then actually be implemented a year from from this july for for math so there's one more year that we have to get through and during that year we'll be updating through a math curriculum adoption thanks marcus any other question what about tutoring after school i know that i know that we have the paper tutoring thing but how much is that being used for math i know the high school has a tutoring program in the past when they when they had the 21st century grant right when they shared the data what we saw was that kids that were already being successful in math see through an a grade those were the ones that were participating in the tutoring and the kids that were significantly far behind we're not and so the challenge with tutoring is after school it's voluntary yeah well i have i beg to differ there well because i have one that he will go but it is only tuesdays and thursdays and if they coach those days are out and so he can go for the 20 quick 20 minutes and get his questions answered and then he's out the door and i know he doesn't want to do the online tutoring because it confuses or whatever and i just think math is harder to do online than it is in person and i just think that we need something for these kids and he is not a see-through a so and i will drive him there and drop him off because i don't know the answers what i would say with the paper product is that that yes they are using the using it for the math right now the the highest usage based on what we've looked at is uh essay writing and review of essay writing but the next highest we don't move into uh we move into the math right away um how many are using it and you're right and i've i actually uh uh met with the ceo of paper just this past week and i you know talk to him about it the real issue that's out there is kind of like spell check you got to be a good bad speller and so even with paper you have to understand the concepts enough to to understand what it is you have going to ask the tutor and so so we're still working on that piece in terms of of after-school tutoring again it becomes a case of of the numbers and is it is it feasible do we have people that are willing to to teach and so we continue to work on that we had success this year and we'll continue working it but it's there are some limitations i'll just put it that way unfortunately he has a long term sub so that doesn't help either so and that is still an issue within several of our schools uh the inability to fill positions especially in math we haven't had middle schools had it too yeah but as this one i'm saying if like if we have those issues then can we not get them some help after school at some point i don't know but i think it's a bigger issue i think as we start to see moving forward i'm excited about i think there's a lot of things going on okay i have a question so are any of the algebra 1 teachers doing forward or is it do we know that information yes all of them are all of them are doing it implement which leads into the high school and so the high school teachers are planning to catch up so we've got to look at some of those is my other question is i don't know if anybody would know this but do we know what our enrollment our numbers are in those algebra one classes how high they are i was just curiou because i know in the past it's it could be pretty high so same thing for ela so i was just curious if that had changed or if we're still having high 30s that would be really great i'd appreciate it but i would concur they're not in the height they're not in the high 30s they're they're in the lower 30s that's great um and then just a couple more um when looking at the next steps and looking at what the content coaches are doing working with site plc data teams to deconstruct do the coaches um help facilitate any of the data discussions when especially at the middle school and high school level those data discussions through the plc process or is that just up to department chairs or how what does that look like so currently what we've been doing has been working with our site leadership and instructional coach teams on how to work with their staff on disaggregating data analyzing data because i think it's extremely important that that leadership comes from the site rather than from the district because if it comes from us then it's something that we're doing to them rather than this is an expectation for what i expect on my site so we've done a lot of work with the site leadership on how to facilitate those discussions with their plcs and then we've also i know that our content coaches after those meetings have gone out and actually sat down with those teams and done some work as well we started this year with you're talking about substitute long term sub qualified highly qualified certified look at thank you any other questions does chad have any questions oh okay are we are we good yeah all right thank you thank you so um now we're down to request for future agenda items so do we have any requests for future agenda items uh i have two uh one is at the last meeting i had asked for a presentation or information about our performing arts center when i was still working on okay if i can request that you not do it at the next meeting because i will be missing the may meeting so if you could at the earliest do it at the june meeting i'd appreciate that wait a minute what is that our short meeting i don't know you knew i was gonna miss it uh and the second thing is has to do with the uh some of the support that we provide for our students i know we've had a presentation on paper and how effective it seems to be i'm curious as to whether footsteps for brilliance is doing what it's supposed to be doing i know we had a presentation i don't remember the gentleman's name who's the head of the of the group came and talked to us and right after that as he explained how to log in i actually set up accounts for my two older grandchildren and showed them and they didn't seem very interested to be honest with you it seems like you know they were more concerned with what their friends were doing and what their particular schools were asking them to do than going into this extra program and i know we're spending money for it and i want to be sure our money is being well spent and if we want to even continue with it for another year so i'd like to get a lot more information about the footsteps for brilliance how many students are using it how effective it is and what the cost for continuing it would be and you want that in the june meeting as well well i'd like to be here for it okay okay any other those are the two i had thank you perfect do you have anything chad okay all right i will make a motion to adjourn at 7 28.

rancho gabriella was at 45 so well above that 36 and then western peaks also was at 44 well above that 36. and is this uh who do who determines that as far as ati galileo okay and it's based on how many instructional days we have from benchmark one to benchmark three um there's a formula they use and so we do the same thing from benchmark one to two i didn't include benchmark two because it was optional for all of our middle grades because of the new um they're doing final exams now so a lot of schools opted out so their data looks very different it wasn't consistent data to share with you okay thank you for explaining that yep um so you can see in the middle schools their growth is at 21. the average obviously third and fourth grade lots of more new learning by the time we get to middle school standards in reading they spiral a little bit more so the growth score actually drops as you get increasing grades um the higher the grade level the lower the expected growth is from one benchmark to the next um so the middle school one was 21.

second all in favor aye

um they were all except for sonoran heights very close to that or above it um sonoran heights you can see from benchmark one to benchmark um three went backwards a little bit in their proficiency um and didn't have the growth that the other scores did everybody else was at or um very close to their proficiency from the other benchmarks all right and then our k eights so sorry i couldn't fit this all on one page for you but on the k8 so that would have been third fourth fifth sixth seventh and eighth grade testing their average growth score was 26 and um seven of the twelve schools met their growth um three more of them were within two points and then seven of them had benchmark scores that were higher than um their benchmark three proficiency was higher than benchmark one and many of the schools had really focused when they did goals this year on moving kids out of minimally proficient so that was one of the things we looked at is did we move kids out of that minimally proficient category to partially or proficient so um there was great growth from several schools and you've heard some of that during their presentations this year so for math um going back to our k4 middle school structures you can see the growth for math was 67 for the k-4s and everybody exceeded that some significantly exceeded that and all of them had significant um growth from benchmark one to benchmark three um and then for the middle schools the growth expectation was 45.