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oh do what [Music] okay we're gonna start the meeting call i'm gonna call this meeting to order at six o'clock uh we do have a quorum uh we have one on uh line and then mr uh delena is not going to be with us today so there's only four of us so i need a motion to adopt the agenda i move to adopt the agenda as presented i second it all in favor aye aye aye motion carries four to zero we'll go ahead and do the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay i need approval of oh actually do we have any questions on the um meeting minutes no okay so then i'll take a motion i move to approve the minutes as presented i second all in favor bye motion carries four to zero so we have the superintendent report with celebrations and recognitions the big program today yes it's that time of year we get to celebrate a lot of what everybody's doing i'll run through a couple things i'm not gonna spend time with the student enrollment what i will tell you is the the trend that's that's uh stayed in place for the whole year continues uh when it comes to uh our number of students enrolled and so we're still up slightly in comparison to last year when it comes to awards we want to recognize julie cook in the business services department they received the certificate of excellence in financial reporting for the fiscal year ending july 30 2021 [Applause] this is a national award that goes to school districts across the country that have met or exceeded the high standards for financial reporting and accountability i think that's good for the public to understand that this means that we are doing what we need to do with all the public dollars that we receive um over the course of a year in their schools we've had a lot of success in our schools we had at ranch elementary alexandria zerbinos is in fifth grade and penny basile in sixth grade who were first place winners from the from the pinal county character counts essay contest there was nearly 700 entries from across the county and they they want for their grade levels and they will be recognized at a may 17th ceremony the essay prompt was how to show kindness to someone and that fits in very nicely with our student of the month program which is based on character counts at the middle school we had carly palmer and annie johnson earn rating of superior in their duet acting scenes for the junior thespian festival we also had a paraprofessional at the middle school melissa chavez we received the outstanding instructional assistant of the year award from the council for exceptional children uh in the east valley so we received a couple awards [Applause] one of our major focuses this year was a program called major clarity which is required under state law uh to work with kids on career and college readiness and it is new program that we used both in the middle school and at the high school and the counseling teams and john scrogum have done an amazing job getting that program up and running and we were awarded um platinum power user status which basically means the majority of our kids at least 70 to 80 percent of our kids were activated and working on the program and it is just critical for us to to take a look at and let our kids know what's out there in terms of career paths and college paths and so it's it's been a real positive it's also aligned very tightly with our work for hashtag ford on the modern teacher framework so we're real pleased with that not sure how many people had a chance to see beauty and the beast uh on april 23rd through 20th 21st through 23rd i did go to the 21st presentation it was outstanding i think probably the key to make it as well as uh to make it so special is the fact that we had 90 kids involved in it so it was a musical so we had the kids uh performing uh in terms of music we also had the actors we have the stagecraft uh and mr smith made a concerted effort this year to have that production done by the kids so rather than going out and buying commercial products for what could be on the stage the decision was to let the kids really run with it and they just did an amazing job with set design with the whole show it was it was phenomenal sold out shows for all three so it was just a great performance mr barry did an outstanding job with the kids in the band orchestra so it was fantastic we also had fine arts kids in chamber orchestra at state uh concert festival receive a rating of excellence our high school wind ensemble and sophonic band received ratings and excellence of excellence also in the state concert we also had the big band and jazz combo receive excellent rating and especially congratulations to the jazz combo because out of the 40 bands that performed the high school was only one of two to bring both combos to the to the competition so that's a a pretty big deal our sports teams are doing well the tennis doubles team of jacob mcdonald and stanton sasser made it to state uh they made it through the second round of state and where they lost to the eventual state doubles champion from cat foothills and then as we speak i believe tonight the members of the track team are at state and we had approximately about a half a dozen to a dozen kids that are in a variety of different activities and we report in june some of those some of those students will become state champions so outstanding job all the way around for our kids and there will be some more awards as we move forward i'm not sure if these two individuals are here a lot of times we try to celebrate kids but they're so busy nowadays but i want to make sure i at least recognize them if they are here we do have a award for them but i got to find what i did with it we wanted to do an award for our valedictorian and salutatorian and i know the salutatorian couldn't be here and that is tinabeau she's an ap scholar she's going to attend asu and obtain a degree in engineering she's looking forward to creating a very successful life for herself and and she really strives more than anything else to make her family proud we have a lot of those apples all over there we have an apple uh for her too but she could not make it i'm not sure if claudia pinkerton was able to make it or not today i did not see her she's our valedictorian she's also an ap scholar with distinction she's been involved in arizona high school rodeo for four years she's looking to attend southern methodist university in dallas to attain a degree in computer science and she's just really looking forward to great experiences in college again two more outstanding kids that we have in our district we just want to make sure we recognize them and we will make sure we pass along our golden apples then the other thing we do is we like to go ahead and when there's national days months weeks just depends on what the recognition is each each board meeting we try to recognize um individuals in a district that work with uh our kids in a lot of different ways and this month we have two groups that we want to recognize and so we'll call you your name up and then we have a certificate for you for you and thanks so i'll have them come up first and then we will uh i'll read a little bit something it just so happens that today happens to be um school nurse day so we have representation from our school nurses if we could have jessica moffatt as the district nurse if she's here she could come up and just just go ahead and wait up here when we get the whole group of you gonna picture uh christa pacheco who's the district nurse but also she teaches cna for us at the high school jessica barrera from combs uh high school nurse sherry wells who's down at cta in the alternative school ashley gonzalez the health assistant at cones middle school amber austin at ellsworth health assistant barb cameron the harman health assistant lisa ribiero from ranch lilia ramirez from simonton and love you leon at the district uh for for our nurses i can just speak on a personal level i know for a couple of my children when they were growing up the nurse's office was a safety zone for them uh national nurses day like i said is today and if you didn't know this uh back in october 1st of 1902 was the first school nurse that that happened in the in the country uh miss linda richards and in that time since her first coming into new york and helping with schools you see that uh the health of a student is linked to the ability to learn under addressed healthcare needs it's difficult to for children to participate in the learning system these nurses go out of the way to make sure our kids are taken care of throughout the day on any number of different facets when we talk about working with our kids we work with our kids across the board for all of their needs and these people just quietly go about their job making sure that the children in our district are taken care of and so without them we'd have a lot of kids that have some needs that are not met so we just want to take a special moment and say thank you so very much for everything you do [Applause] last friday we had the second one and a different group that were recognized and we like to call up and then we'll just talk about it but last friday was school lunch hero day so if i could have darcine kishba come up please edward eastman victoria garcia [Applause] jan tisnato natalie pilato [Applause] jennifer sismanski [Applause] and melinda weigel and i will i will tell you and we'll take just an extra moment with them uh the number of kids especially as we've gone through covet and some of the issues that took place and the need for food for our families not only our families but families across the the country these people stepped up above and beyond if you remember when we first closed schools back in march of of 20 we provided food for the entire community for any child in the community didn't matter whether they attended our school or not and it was these people who showed up every single morning early in the morning to make sure that the meals were ready and they were there to hand out and they've continued that and they do it every single day with smile on their face and when they come into work many cases they make it a little extra place for our kids and and when they get to school the first thing many of them are going to do is get a meal and for some of our kids the meals they get in school are the only meals they get and so what they do for our kids is beyond important and so for that we really want to thank you and we really appreciate everything you knew so thank you very much we will do some staff recognition and here we want to take a moment i'm going to do the reverse what i told you dr deplesis because i changed my mind this is our opportunity to take just a moment to say thank you to some some special people in our district we have two sets of uh people that we want to thank the first group um there's lots of people that dedicate their entire career to working with our kids and and kids in other school districts and i know at times we forget that the job that they do and we have some people that are getting ready to retire and we just wanted to take a moment uh we just want to take a moment to thank these people they have done unbelievable work over their career to help out our kids and help out other kids it's a life of service and it's a life of knowing that you're going to dedicate yourself to children and there's no more noble function than that and so we would like to call them up one time have them stay up here we'll give them a little plaque and then we will take a group picture over there underneath the step and repeat so first with five years in this district but close to 40 years in public education in general mr bruce cox director of curriculum instruction and assessment no right here just right now we'll move over there mr max short bus driver and transportation six years with our district lori mcrae social worker for eight years in our district but another one that's dedicated her life in public education by yourself mr cox rick searles biology teacher at the high school for nine years melinda weigel food service lead down at uh the middle school for the past 10 years us special education program specialist brendan steins has been with the district for 12 years another special education program specialist with the district 14 years peggy johnson the routing coordinator and transportation cynthia silvia who's been with us 16 and a half years also a transportation bus driver patricia paul 17 years i think she might even come back to do a little bit of work on the side for us next year fourth grade teacher at ellsworth elementary for 18 years linda shively and the one that's been with us the longest a bus driver carol thorpe [Applause] so uh and we just again want to thank these employees for the dedicated service uh we hope they enjoy their retirement truly uh unsettled with lives did we miss no i i'd rather but jud in here come up yeah i read belinda mills special education teacher 11.5 did i miss her i am sorry my apologies [Applause] i i need all the help i can get but we do want to thank him again as i said this has dedicated their lives to kids in general and there's no noble profession and and i will tell you this if when people pass away if your teacher are in education and they do an autopsy they'll find a heart that's 10 times bigger than anybody else's heart because they go out of their way to make sure that we make a difference in the lives of the child so again thank you and enjoy your retirement and we will get a picture over there and now we'll ask dr duplicus come up now so we can recognize our staff excellence award winners there we go madam president governing board members dr wyman district leaders faculty and staff family and friends here this evening i stand before you a very humbled man after reading many staff excellent nominations thank you for the opportunity to share discuss and celebrate our incredible staff in our schools we are great because of you all before doing so as the executive director of the combs education foundation i'd be remiss if i was not to share what the combs education foundation does for our beloved district the combs education foundation is made up of 14 community members from business education in the service worlds these are colleagues from banner ironwood desert financial services pinal county central arizona college and canyon bus company to name a few and the mission of the combs education foundation is to support the educational opportunities of our students our staff and families by funding and developing and implementing quality programming establishing strong community partnerships and supporting the goals of the district we fulfill this mission by giving in three important ways we raise money for student scholarships and awards this year we had four donors to the combs education foundation ashton woods arizona hda architects hess roundtree civil engineer services and stifle bond council the cef is also awarding student scholarships to our combs high school seniors this will be on friday the 13th at the high school at 9 a.m and we'll be giving out 14 scholarships to our high school seniors we've also developed this year a new scholarship the ashton woods arizona scholarship and please watch for more in the future for our high school seniors we also are sponsoring this event this part of the event of the board meeting tonight which is the staff excellence awards and before sharing the finalists of the staff excellence awards i must ask you all here if you have any connections to a company or a business i'm glad to talk with them and sit down with them and see how they can connect with the district and i'd love to do so and then finally a quick plug for the foundation we are going to be having our first annual golf tournament on saturday september 10th uh with an 18 8 am start so i know there's a lot of golfers out there and we are missing some of our golf courses in the neighborhood so if you want to come out and support our students we'll be at encantara for that event at this time i'd like to start talking about our wonderful faculty and staff i'd like to first recognize our nominations our district nominations for the rookie teacher of the year i'll call your name and if you come up to the front that would be wonderful could i have alexandra robinson from the high school kara parker from cta caitlin carcidon from ellsworth nick toro from harman candice gutierrez from harman [Music] and sarah freeborn from symington we had a district-wide committee put together and we reviewed all applications in the following person has been named as the 2002 rookie of the year this award goes to alexandria robinson from the high school while we're taking pictures i'm gonna read a little thing a little bit about alexandria mrs robinson has grown the ag science program this year by building relationships with the community and parents of our students she's an advocate for our students in our school within the community mrs robinson has reached out to the community organization and members to increase the interest of her program she has solicited help from the parent organ parents and organizations to help her students compete at the local conference as well as at the state level and mrs robinson is always willing to learn she's full of questions and applies the feedback given to her she encourages constructive criticism as a tool to get better in the classroom and on the comp competition side of her job mrs robinson actively seeks others opinions and bounces ideas off of others congratulations alexandria could i have the following nominations for the non-certificated support staff member of the year could i have bernice jacobs from the high school angelique q flores from the middle school adrian nava from cta and ccs floor lara from ellsworth erica bijarano from harmon becky murphy from harman vista vista brown manrique from ranch emily mcdougall from symington and dana jewell from ranch selected for the 2002 non-certificated support staff member of the year emily mcdougall from emily has been instrumental with the successful implementation of the online registration at symington she's timely with her responses friendly and helpful throughout the enrollment process for our new stallion families she's quick to answer questions and lend support to new families who are gathering and uploading their documents that are required we have received many compliments from families and district representatives in regards to her outgoing and positive interactions personally you're a shining star at symington congratulations [Applause] could i have the following non-certificated staff members of the year oh i already read that sorry could i have the certificated licensed non-teacher of the year nominees brandon steins from ccs anne matson from the high school laureen schineldecker from the middle school aaron gomez from ellsworth get a tom thompson from harman nemisha tajani from ranch and kim kim brennan from symington [Applause] selected for the 2022 certificated licensed non-teacher of the year is yet a thompson yeta has visited the harman campus multiple times throughout the school year supporting the students and staff during all of the challenging times she has provided sel lessons for our rise students and provided support to the staff as well this has directly impacted our student population in a positive way overall yeta is an available to support all staff in the area of sel her support was appreciated by several staff members and students this year she has traveled over to harmon for the second semester to provide seo lessons to our rise team and we are incredibly thankful for all of the hard work that she has done congratulations yeah could i now have the nominees for administrator of the year and by the way this is a new award this year that we've added could i have mr bruce cox director of curriculum instruction and assessment come on in bruce [Laughter] could i have shana shafner from combs traditional academy and sue cruz from ranch [Applause] selected for the 2022 administrator of the year is sue cruz from ranch shifting the culture from teacher sended to student-centered has has been a vital way in which mrs cruz has served as a change agent since the beginning of hashtag forward she has encouraged teachers and students to take risks by innovative by being innovative in their teaching and learning the evidence of this can be seen in the classroom across campus from the preschool to sixth grade where students create their vision their code and standard operating procedures sops as a community they also participate in personalized learning through leveled choice boards personally sue amazing tenure 30 years already congratulations and the last award for this evening is the teacher of the year award could i have the following nominees come up alice goodrick from the high school ava flake from the middle school angela butler from cta carrie ecka from ellsworth lucinda griffin from harman belinda mills from ranch and and deborah willoughby from simonton [Applause] and selected for the 2022 teacher of the year is miss ava flake from the middle school a little extra there your nomination was written by the middle school team so i'm going to share parts of it okay okay when i looked up to see what makes a good teacher of the year i saw things like teachers who have the respect and admiration of their students and peers teachers who serve as role models for their students teachers who always have the best interests of their students in mind it is when i read that last sentence mrs flake came racing to the front of the containers list you see mrs flake is the kind of champion all students need ava believes that every student deserves the very best education every day even if you have a handicap or a superpower mrs flake is an amazing educator who teaches a very special student population on our campus called life skills the nominee said or the nominator said i have known ava for over 17 years at various stages throughout her career the first role as a parent our boys were in the same classes at symington elementary next as a para and finally as our special ed teacher during all these stages i have observed mrs flake radiate a passion for students staff and community she takes the time out to build a sense of community in her learning environment and when you walk into her classroom she has this type the type of student community that cannot be faked she has established norms and routines that are evident in her classroom and her vision and her code congratulations ava flake yeah i'm gonna grab it let's give everybody a one more applause i get two of the best parts of my day tonight i get to nominate or not nominate but talk about some of our students of the month now madam president board members dr wyman very blessed to be here doing this again could i have julian gerard come up from combs center of success [Applause] and you gotta smile at everybody nice to meet you you turn around and smile at everybody they want to see you all right julian amazes us at ccs every day constantly smiling and it's always in a good mood and cheerful julian makes every day a bit brighter a bit happier and a bit more positive julian is a wonderful young man who has the world at his fingertips working 40 hours a week on top of coming to school to earn a diploma is not an easy task yet julian manages to do exactly this he's kind caring compassionate hard working and an incredible scholar congratulations julian could i have ryan sapp come up from the high school could i have connor jacobs from combs middle school same thing you gotta smile turn around connor is a great student he expresses all character characteristics of citizenship when in math class this is a nomination from mrs liptich these include being helpful trustworthy fair honest and responsible he follows the classroom's sops and expectations is respectful to his peers and myself the teacher he shows responsibility for himself and has a positive attitude i am fortunate to have conor as one of my math students this year congratulations on the award connor you deserve it from mrs liptich good job could i have christian garcia come up from cones traditional academy it is with great pleasure that i'm nominating christian as a student of the month this is from mrs tapia christian is a perfect student when he comes when it comes to citizenship he participates in class with great enthusiasm he is always willing to share he promotes unity and inclusiveness inside and outside the classroom he constantly shows kindness towards his classmates and he's willing to help others without even being asked congratulations mr garcia [Applause] could i have escawell romero come on up from ellsworth [Applause] here come this is mr romero mr romero shows his citizenship through his empathy for others when someone is hurt or upset mr romero goes to them to make sure they're all right he also shows his citizenship by keeping the classroom safe through pushing chairs in so nobody trips mr romero made our classroom an inclusive safe and loving environment he embodies citizenship every day through his actions and interactions congratulations [Applause] could i have braden krieger come up from harmon [Applause] hey buddy right over here buddy you're just going over there to get that certificate you want to turn around and look at everybody and smile there you go braden has been with mrs easterday for the past two years and during these past two years braden has really grown and worked diligently on his social emotional strategies that he's been taught he works hard on work provided to him and displays progress on all his goals i have to say braden's strongest trait this year has definitely been his work on citizenship inside the classroom he's always lending a helping hand whether this is helping when a student becomes upset over a given situation or by calming them down and helping the teachers when he notices that something needs to be done congratulations brayden good job could i have axel silvio from ranch come up you got it you want to hold my hand there you go we're good i love that name axel by the way pretty cool axel is a joy to have in preschool he is the most amazing student he's kind sweet caring and a good citizen he has made many friends throughout the year he's a good role model for other students around him and he's always on task and he's always very helpful he pays attention to details and is helpful to his friends he is a great citizen after he's packed up he often goes around making sure that others have their jacket water bottles and backpacks he knows the rules and follows them and helps others by being a great role model congratulations axel could i have giddy and white from symington come up [Applause] you ready i turned and smiled there look at that look at that gideon is an outstanding example of what it means to be the student of month he's always willing to help when his teachers ask for a volunteer he's a great motivator when he works on a team he his positivity propagates through to his partners that one took me a little while his positivity propagates through to his partners he's great at keeping his partners on task and getting the project or papers turned in on time congratulations gideon good job thank you at this time it would be a good time for parents to take pictures and yeah we'll move on to the rest of the agenda in a little bit of a break here [Music] you're so pretty is oh [Music] okay [Music] uh [Music] yes um [Music] cheers okay didn't tell me [Music] oh i did go up and comfy okay we're gonna go ahead and uh move on does um any governing any governing board members have anything that they would like to highlight no okay um so do we have any public comments no we do not okay do we have any discussion on any of the action of the consent agenda any comments questions concerns no no what about does he have any okay so i'll go ahead and take a motion for the consent to for the consent agenda i move to approve the consent agenda as presented i second all in favor i i motion carries four to zero okay so now we'll start uh on 8.1 good evening madam president members of the board dr wyman members of the audience action item 8.1 presents revision number two of the annual expenditure budget for fiscal year 2022.
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oh freeze it in arms of the united [Music] under states indivisible with liberty and justice thank you very much um i just want to have before we do roll haul i just want to have a moment of silence for a danbury employee who passed away um alchemy shipment has to she's i don't know if she's a employee anymore but she was for several several years so just a moment of silence okay thank you theresa can you roll call me teresa you say here rachel schleske michelle cowell here kate canetta kate's here okay glass cooper here lauren daley here joseph de silva here bridgette guertin ralph pietro albert russo louisa okay we have some recognitions tonight good evening everyone so we've been looking forward to this for a few months see some familiar faces in the audience good to see them with their children tonight so we have two recognitions and two awards we'd like to acknowledge and recognize some well-deserving students i'm gonna just start off with thanking those students and their families for being with us this evening so first award we're going to talk about quickly is about the cave leadership awards and then the second one is the housatonic resources recovery authority billboard contest regional award winners so first we will start with the cave leadership award this is something that happens annually they say that we have principals or leadership from the respected buildings parents it looks like all throughout the audience and then also our deserving students so if you could just give me a moment i will mention all of the cave award winners by school and then we can individually speak to all of them so we have sean jacobson from broadview middle school yes please the mandiada from broadview middle school ava morning from rogers park middle school [Applause] richard silverblade from rogers park middle school [Applause] anna talbot from west side middle school [Applause] colin sterling from westside middle school [Applause] paz moran from danbury high school scott gersten from danbury high school jennifer cedano from ace [Applause] and so if we can and first let me just say cave studentship student leadership awards program is designed to honor students who exhibit exemplary leadership skills the award recognizes students who exhibit leadership skills including willingness to take on challenges capability to make difficult decisions concern for others and the ability to work for others and willingness to commit to a project diplomacy ability to understand issues clearly and ability to honor commitment please join me in congratulating our students and cape ward winners this year and so if we can have sean come up and take a picture with the family i love your knife [Music] cool okay can you come back up pretty yes [Music] um thank you so much thank you congratulations richard [Music] um this is for you congratulations there he is congratulations [Music] pass congratulations [Music] congratulations you know congratulations [Music] i don't know exactly yeah congratulations can we go in with all the kids [Music] congratulations if all the children come back up and we'll do one with the all the children [Music] yeah make a space here put your put your right on your hips nice and straight look at that she's a photographer thank you everybody [Music] um they have to stay for the whole meeting so i just want to um for our winners and um i was working for us all of our students have been recognized this evening your principals um have a couple of wonderful things they'd like to say about you before you and your parents leave and so if you don't mind i'd like to start with broadview middle school with dr edie thomas and she has a couple of amazing things to say about her 2 students dr thomas she's gonna come up again it's hard to talk about people unless they're with you first of all thank you very much for the opportunity to be able to talk about our students i think that you only hear the negative things that are going on but this is what is really going on in our schools and we're just very proud of our kids so this is diana she is a responsible and trustworthy and honest young lady you can be along with me not only is she a bright student but she is has also proven herself as a leader in our building she volunteers regularly at her local church she also searches out to help we do this big project for veterans day and diana made 30 valentine cards to give to the veterans you know that's a lot of cards and she's just a genuine interesting in other people she cares about people and she is a well-rounded individual i can't think of a better person to receive this recognition than her and her amazing parents that are back there so if we can give them a round of applause [Applause] you know we recognize too that we can't do it by ourselves and the parents are so essential in what we do so i'm just proud to see parents here tonight representing their kids sean you can be alone too if you like to sean is also you know you know i can do this without reading about sean i've had i think every one of your brothers and sisters which is quite a bit his mom's back there she works for the school and shawn is just a well balanced student he's involved in everything he's academically um his gpa is like a 98.5 at this point and um but you got some challenges there's three other kids in the class that you guys keep going back and forth we got vets on who's going to be number one but um we're just really proud of him he's involved in everything just recently and sean this isn't on here but i know about this he happens to be a part of unified sports and he decided to create a field day for those students and um and he actually had one of the teachers sent out an email to all of us telling us we have to volunteer we have to um yeah yeah telling us i was forgetting to think who was the principal you know but asking us to volunteer he was asking us and participate if not donate and things like that and i just thought that was amazing he took this initiative on himself to do this and he's working with one of our teachers but overall he is just well-rounded he's involved in everything he's in unified sports he's a student leader um council he has uh he's in the rock band i don't know you're in a rock band that's pretty impressive and then all of a sudden he is the vice president for the national junior honor society so you can see what i'm saying he's involved in every sport that you can think of he says lacrosse football he's all over the place and i'm just very proud of him he receives awards every year we do student of month we do academic awards i can't think of a year that you haven't received award yeah i know it's been every year haven't it so we're just very proud of him he i can't think of a better person and i'm i'm saying this and i can't say it enough these are the kids that are in our buildings so all that other stuff you hear isn't it's real don't get me wrong it's real but this is what we experience and we want you guys to experience that tonight so thank you very much where's sean's mom dad's here help hey take dr thomas's lead and bring the student up with me this is gabe morning and i will stick to my script so that i don't go along because i know i can talk too much so ava is a very and i can't see either a well-rounded and very active member of our school community she's an honor student who takes advantage of many of our after-school clubs she participates in the social justice club is a member of the national junior honor society and an active member of latinos in action where she tutors newly arrived english language learners she was part of a group of our social justice club members who i spoke back spoke about a couple weeks ago who volunteered to participate in a book study and student exchange with peers from our scotts ridge middle school in ridgefield you can also find her on stage during our musical theater productions of hairspray junior where i first met her and in matilda jr our most recent one ava is just as active outside of school where she's a figure skater and takes dance classes she still finds time to give back to the community where she volunteers at hudson valley regional health center she participates in fundraisers for new fairfield community charities supported by the lions club and she also helps her grandfather who has parkinson's super excited to to celebrate her as dr thomas said we oftentimes hear so much about the negative things that are happening across education in general and i'm pleased to be here with all the families to celebrate all the good that is happening [Applause] so richard silverblade is here because along with earning honors or high honors every trimester at rpms he has also been nominated for student of the month for both math and music richard has taken our advance taken advantage of the many opportunities offered at rogers park as well as in our community he's an active participant in the math participant in the math club and national junior honor society he's a sports enthusiast who plays deo and travel lacrosse he's always willing to lend a hand in both the school and in our community at school he volunteers to record our musical theater productions and at home he helps a family friend by working in the pit crew during races another one of his passions and makes sandwiches for the dorothy day house additionally he participates in an organization called racing to save lives he has been an active member of the scouts and is now a patrol leader troop historian and troop instructor for eagle scouts his eagle scout project is painting benches for hospice center and danbury and gives and he also gives out coffee at exit 2 during the holidays so i'm excited to have also richard here with his family and i'm happy to honor him [Applause] west side middle school good evening folks i am the stand-in for dr lavanca today uh i'm the assistant principal at west side and i am really glad to be here because very often i deal with uh issues in the building and discipline and behavior and other concerns so it's really lovely to celebrate students here tonight so here we have blondie i mean colin i call him blondie that's my nickname for him this is colin sturdivant cullen is a bright well-liked hard-working young man he is a positive role model whose shows kindness and compassion toward others and demonstrates patience and strong leadership qualities when working with peers cullen excels academically and conveys a high level of understanding and learning he pays attention to detail and takes much pride in his work cullen is an active lacrosse and hockey player and he even has his own ice rink in his backyard that's pretty impressive colin will be traveling to europe this summer so jealous he's going with team danbury to travel and study the impact of sports and wellness on society the sky is the limit for colin and we wish him all the success in his future and endeavors as you know westside has two academies cohen is a member of our global studies academy and then we selected another student hannah who is from our stem academy right and so here's a little bit about hannah miss hannah talbott has consistently demonstrated an unmatched ability to be a leader teammate and role model to others in and out of the classroom hannah is an active member of her scout troop and a very committed student when faced with any sort of challenge hannah has shown a collaborative spirit amongst her peers that has led to a high level of continued academic success her leadership has been exhibited by her ability to provide meaningful feedback to her peers through a variety of mediums hannah is an invaluable member of our community and has a limitless and hannah has a poem that just got entered into the west side middle school academy school literary magazine just this week so congratulations thank you miss williams next is principal donovan nate perry high school hello scott scott may look familiar to you because he's one of our ambassadors that come and talk to you once a month about what's going on at danbury high school so you may seem familiar but that's the tip of the iceberg scott is a very dedicated hardworking student he's a student body treasurer and national honor society treasurer liaison to the board of education a peer leader peer tutor captain of the indoor and outdoor track teams and his second degree back mountain martial arts while doing that on his spare time he has achieved a 4.766 gpa at danbury high school has been the top 10 of his graduating class all four years has been on distinguished honors role 10 times high on the role four times as an ap scholar scott is also the ciac scholar athlete of the year for 2022 for danbury high school which is out of all of our athletes the top male uh highest ranking athlete uh he is also an all-american track athlete he was named all fca second team was the state open runner-up in connecticut on all-state honorable mention and holds the danvers high school record of the 1600 meter medley rely i don't know what that means scott has been uh actively involved in denver high school and has thoroughly enjoyed giving back to his school and surrounding communities he is well respected and trusted by his peers and next year we'll be attending binghamton binghamton hopefully to study computer science computer science round of applause [Applause] now i had to bang bang this one to actually show up in front of people she's very shy yeah it's not like to be in front of people she hates talking autographs later there you go hello everyone this is probably one of the best known students at danbury high school she yeah she's she is involved in everything she runs tracks holds leadership roles class president and his one of the role was one of the lead roles in the school play sister act nice job brother thank you uh what is even more impressive is paz participates in all these activities while maintaining a 4.5 gpa and taking honors and advanced placement courses a senior class president paz has worked tirelessly to provide the best experience for the class of 22 which as we know coming back in and getting everybody back into everywhere was no small task at all she's done a fabulous job her energy and willingness to put herself out there has been a needed attribute as we transformed back in from covet and she leads from the front if we're going to do something a spirit week of any kind or anything like that she is the number one model that we have for jumping on board and doing stuff uh if i'm still correct from the last time ever paz will be attending nyu nyu in the fall hoping to study being famous [Applause] i'm hoping this hook gets us some good broadway tickets because we all know she's going to end up there somewhere congratulations [Applause] so anthony's going to speak on behalf of jen at ace we have a thing called guidance which is when a student comes to ace they get into a guidance group and they really form kind of a tight relationship with that guidance teacher it's a class you have every other day the whole time you're at ace with that teacher and the same group of students so anthony's going to speak on behalf of jen so thank you um yeah i can actually speak endlessly but i'm going to read what i wrote to keep it brief uh so jen here is a shining example of someone who has made the most out of her time at ace entering our school in the fall of 2019 for her second year in high school jen was faced with the choice of how she was going to proceed thankfully for her and the rest of our community jennifer decided to face the challenges that life presented and deal with them in positive and healthy ways jennifer found the strength and the courage to grow into a young woman with tremendous character she is hardworking a good friend and a contributing member of her community she has won countless student of the month in ace of hearts and spades awards for overall achievement warmth and thoughtfulness and hard work as well as high honors during her time at ace and is celebrated as one of the best students who is a promising future ahead with a passion for creativity and the arts jennifer looks forward to pursuing a career in this area and we here at ace for certain that she will be successful in whatever endeavor she chooses [Applause] nicole's got his features in here so i'll read what nicole's guided teacher read jen's art is phenomenal my screensaver my computer is her art so nicole is an exceptionally dedicated motivated caring compassionate and hardworking student who takes pride in all that she does is quick to volunteer for any community service opportunity that she can she's been a student at ace since the second semester of the 2018-19 school year so she's like one of our pre-coveted kids which gives a totally different perspective to be able to say that in our building she's consistently been a regular attender at the school maintaining a 90-95 attendance rate each semester that she's been there while today she's also received the ace of hearts for caring award the aces fades for hard work and has been recognized as a student of the month in addition to her academics nicole maintains two part-time jobs two three two in addition to her academics she maintains those two part-time jobs and has represented ace as a member of the connecticut association of alternative schools and programs student conference planning committee she's also served as the ace board one of our two board event reps for ace another thing that we have at ace is when students come to ace they come to visit and we want to make sure they kind of get the experience before they make the decision to come a so we have students do a one day visit and the one day visit requires that an ace current student becomes a host and models the behavior that we're looking for at the school and nicole is somebody who has always been someone i've grabbed and said you know i need somebody to be a host especially if it's somebody who's coming in who maybe needs a little tlc this is the host that can show people you know how to go about their business at ace and make them feel welcome so congratulations thank you principal webber and thanks again to all of the award winners so next on the i'm going to push this one to dr selig he worked on this project with the city of danbury and because of the hard work that was put into this we now have two students who were finalists that we want to recognize thank you so this is a an award by the housatonic resources recovery authority hra as you probably know it is a regional governmental waste management recycling authority it serves 14 municipalities in western connecticut so they have a competition for students from all the different municipalities are invited to participate in a billboard contest where they're asked to submit artwork encouraging the public to recycle the theme for this year was recycle your food scraps and compost there were a total of 1300 artwork submissions to hr array from the 14 different municipalities and dan barry had two winners that received honorable mentions so there were winners in different grade categories we had a winner in the third grade category and in the sixth grade category um third grade was pranith said kumar he attends king street primary he is placed second in the regional contest in the third grade category but has also won first place in our local contest in the city of danbury for his grade uh and his participating teacher is miss jaudy it's a round of applause please [Applause] and our sixth grade winner is blake roberto who attends broadview middle school he's placed third in the regional contest for sixth grade and has also won first place in our local contest in the city of danbury for her grade her participating teacher is miss moore [Applause] and if we can we have awards for you and then of course we can't have the award without a picture with the superintendent and the vice chair so if you can over there um thank you [Applause] and thank you to our winners tonight and families i want to thank you it's great to see everyone in attendance this evening looking forward to great things from all of you children and all of our kids you guys are certainly welcome to lead you're so welcome to stay but it was great happening thank you [Applause] yes the board welcomes public participation and asks that speakers please limit their comments to three minutes speakers make walker objective comments of school operations and programs that concern them the board will not permit any expression of personal complaints from defamatory comments about board of education personnel and students nor against any person connected with the danbury public school system signed up for public speaking good evening my name is emily pardales and i am finishing up my 19th year as a teacher at danbury high school i am also a taxpayer in danbury i am here to share with you a journey that i have been on in the fall of 2018 i was moved to g-building a beautiful brand new building with a gorgeous view of the hillside and in the distance broadca middle school although the view is gorgeous the windows do not open they are welded shut preventing teachers from being able to regulate the airflow in the classrooms and causing us to be completely dependent on the hvac system this is the cornerstone of my alarm the lack of a healthy environment due to poor air quality i should tell you that i have been trying to rectify this issue through a variety of communications and collaborations but i seem to be meeting brick wall after brick wall i realize that the city owns our school buildings and is responsible for these repairs and to ensure all is in working order but our system requires that i record this to you first and my hope is that you will wield your power with the city as such i am now here asking for your help on tuesday january 25th i was out of school with kovid and realized that many teachers in g-building were also out with covet i began to question whether the hvac system in g-building was working properly so i sent an email to my union representatives this started what turned out to be a very long and upsetting process i don't want to take up your good time by standing here and orating every detail of this process but i did compose a timeline of the over 30 steps i've taken since january as well as a narrative that provides you with more details for you to review and process when you deem inappropriate mr ross is now handing them out for me my goal tonight is simply to let you know what my life has been like seeking the simple goal of fresh air in a healthy working environment there are really two issues here one air quality in term of viruses specifically coca-19 and two air quality in terms of carbon dioxide levels the first issue was attempted to be solved by the district providing air purifiers to teachers i have provided pictures to you and to the district of the air purifiers blinking green at the beginning of the day and bright red by the end of the day so while we appreciate the air purifiers we are still questioning whether they are working at a capacity great enough to provide a safe environment incidentally these self-stain machines are quite loud as we have been working with students who wear masks it is already difficult to hear them that this increase in ambient noise exasperates that issue the second issue has not been resolved at all a flow of fresh air you're reaching your treatment to order in order to keep the carbon dioxide level from going up class after class teachers have reported that the air quality in the morning seems fine the air seems to be flowing and the classrooms are definitely cooler after sitting vacant overnight i'm sorry to cut you off but that is your few minutes thank you um is there any is there anybody else who has not signed up that would like to speak okay thank you um ralph can you make a motion for the consent calendar sure i'd like to make motion of the board of education approve the items on the consent council exhibits 22 23-58 and 23-59 as recommended second second joe is there any discussion all those in favor say aye aye nay are there any educational or staff staff representatives dr selita or aaron daly student representatives good evening members cabinet and community members thank you for allowing me to represent and speak on behalf of the alternative ace will continue to host the prospective dhs students continue their most prospective dhs students until on may 17th a total of 29 students were scheduled to come in for one for one day visit to experience our progression interviews with prospective students and their families will take place on saturday june 11th with the ace staff this saturday may 14th from 1 to 4 ace will be hosting a barbecue to celebrate our founder joe pepper this the day will also include activities for kids such as a bouncy house and face painting as well as time for alumni and staff to share stories and special memories related to children and ace experience joke head and t-shirts will also be on sale on the day of the event next thursday on may 19th ace will host its annual wellness center presenters will be coming to ace to meet with students to discuss various careers how they look like healthy living lifestyles and each student will select four presenters to attend during the mornings will include culinary yoga boxing art therapy drum circles healthy relationships and mindfulness after lunch on may 19th the top floor of ace will be open for staff and students to participate in a school-wide renaissance fair the fair is organized by community students joanne smiles melissa laski daniela esposito kyle chappella ashley thank you staff and students from june 1st to the 3rd the 15a students go on the whitewater rocking trip the trip is organized by anthony holland and will be shop run by anthony kyle chicola and ashley hunter students will experience two nights of camping and a wonderful day of rock and 15 miles down the hudson bureau the ace coffee house is set for thursday june 9th from 5 30 to 7 30 at the hatter's park pavilion the night is organized by english teacher joanne foles and her poetry students the event will see eight students and staff create original pieces of work in the school performance by kyle tropos music appreciation class classes this year is the eighth graduation wait i'm so tired this year the east graduation is set for june 14th and 4 p.m and will be in the browser auditorium thank you dr thomas and broadway for being so hospitable and allowing us to reach your venue thank you for allowing us to share what's going on with our ace family dawn 26th look this afternoon stay safe and yeah [Music] good evening my name is tina mcgill and i'm this year's bg vice president i'm scott the treasurer scott and i are also officers on this chapter's national honors society and on the industrial ceremony for the 2022-2023 national honor society will be held on monday may 16th at 7 00 at the dhs auditorium so since we're both seniors we're very excited um but sad that the year is over and here are some dates for the end of the year june 6th will be senior awards at six o'clock june 8th is the last day for seniors which will also be our sixth flagstrip um june 9th is our graduate graduation rehearsal and also senior fest june 10th is early dismissal captain cam distribution june 13th um will be another early dismissal and graduation graduation starts at 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
call today is the workforce housing task force agenda i mean sorry for meeting of may 11 20 20 20 22 um how did do and um do i just call it the same way that today is housing the entire community is here so you can just sorry i have the i have the youtube going on in the live and so it's echoing so i i just say the chair um andres quintero vice uh vice chair um corinna president um sharon fontaine from csea president jocelyn immersed from area here and trevor emmett from teamsters and superintendent dr bauer present assistant superintendent clover chang president thank you for that we'll go ahead and move forward with um the atlantic acknowledgement the board of trustees islamic union elementary school district does hereby acknowledge that the district schools and facilities sit on the traditional lands of the alone people and the board of trustees further acknowledges with respect and reverence the alone people tribe of san francisco bay area for their stewardship of these lands all right we'll go ahead and proceed with the pledge of allegiance find a flag near you [Music] ready salute pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america to the republic which stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right so item 2.01 uh is there anybody that wishes that is interested in speaking an item that's not on the agenda i see no public speakers then we'll go ahead and move on to uh a review of the agenda it's pretty basic two items anybody wishing to change those two items around speak now for our older peace all right now we'll go ahead and continue on with the agenda as is moving on to item 4.01 uh dr bauer do you uh do you want to go ahead and introduce dale's cotton he can go ahead and provide us the surveys of the the results of the survey sure uh with us is mr dale scott and he functions as our municipal advisor so i'm gonna turn it over to mr scott thank you dale thanks could i get screen sharing abilities please somebody grant you access to the screen all right i got it all right uh this was a survey that at the request of the district we undertook regarding uh teacher and staff for alum rock munich school district to get a sense of what the overall uh level of support of maybe for those people that may or may not be interested in living in it of the uh of the potential project and then also uh drilling down for those people that were interested in it and how their level of support their amount of rent how far they looked away et cetera et cetera so i'm going to run you through that is very short it should only take a minute or two and i'm happy to take questions uh at any time um just to review uh the overall thinking of where we are headed assuming this all works we are now looking at the voter staff survey there is also going to be in the field probably not until june a survey of voters that is currently assuming that is uh in uh this is the board's desire we will be bringing it to the board for action on july 21st to place an item on the ballot to reauthorize the bonds that were previously passed to allow them to include teacher staff housing that's due to the county by august 12th the election is starts of course in october ends on november 8th and the funds would be available in early 2023 this survey went out to all staff members of the district it went out under the superintendent's email but it was made clear in the message that was sent that there was a it was anonymous there was no one's was going to be able to have access to the responses and even not even we didn't have access to the responses we received data raw and what i'm going to show you are the results of this survey it went for about a week at the end of april out of the sort of the invitation sent to all staff members we received roughly 300 responses and the average length of the survey response was three and a half minutes this was done by the way on surveyment now we started by asking what is the primary place of employment majority of the respondents are 51 and so i do want to just say it one more time this is not a survey in the way we think of a survey of voters where we're trying to get a balance of all voters this is whoever comes back to respond so we have 298 respondents of those 298 respondents half worked at the elementary school and then the rest were at the middle school the district office the k eight school and and other we asked what is your current position and again uh nearly half a teacher or counselor about a quarter classified staff and then of 30 30 hours or more and then the rest before uh divided up between temporary administration classified staff 30 hours or less how long have you been employed by the district pretty amazing um virtually almost three quarters more than five years these are the people that responded again and then the rest um somewhat less and also it was i was surprised to see how much uh how evenly distributed this was obviously there aren't a lot of people working for the district that are over 65 or between 18 and 24 but before all of the others it was pretty even between those age groups 25 to 34 35 to 44 etc etc a wide diversity now we get into the nitty-gritty your average one-way commute time which is a real indicator of potential interest over almost half have a commute over 20 minutes a day one way and a fair number over 45 minutes uh one way so combines fine commute of somewhere between 40 minutes and an hour and 15 minutes i was 40 of the respondents would you like to live closer to work we asked of that two-thirds said yes and then we asked those two-thirds if you said yes um why don't you look closer to work for those who said yes and this is and they could answer more than one response that's why it doesn't add to zero these were the reasons they gave home prices too high rental prices too high not enough available housing and they prefer they prefer their current location it's actually a fairly large amount of people out of that 68 percent so roughly two-thirds or roughly 70 percent of the 68 percent that said they would like to live closer to work said the reason was either they couldn't find the housing or the prices were too high of those people that continued with the survey we asked them what their current living arrangement was roughly half rent a little more than a third own and then the rest either live with family members or gave some other response for those that were renters we ask them how much they personally pay for rent personally pay for rent i'm i'm very surprised by this answer you can see it starts at in terms of a large amount two thousand dollars a month uh and goes twenty percent two thousand twenty five hundred another twenty percent up to three thousand nearly thirty percent more than three thousand dollars a month uh so really when you start getting below the twenty two thousand dollar a month uh level it's it's a small number of people that can find that rent if you're renting are you planning on buying a home um some not many and not many very soon if you look for those people are saying yes within a year or yes within two years you're at about twenty percent interestingly enough only eight percent say no um so i guess everybody would like to buy a home um or are hoping to buy a home virtually everybody except for 34 of the people said i don't know how many people including yourself make up your household um this was surprising to me uh almost half have uh more four or five or more members in their household of this group that has responded and how many bedrooms are in your apartment or house and again half have three or more bedrooms so then we ask them about the project itself and remember what we're asking here is not are you in this question is not are you interested in living in the project which is something you would be interested in yourself at the bottom as it says regardless of whether or not you would be interested in renting one of these units what is your general impression of the proposal and we've described the proposal to them that the district is exploring the possibility of constructing one two and three bedroom rental units sixty-three percent very positive eighteen percent somewhat positive um in other words uh wide among the people that responded widespread support for this project regardless of whether they're going to live in the unit or they're interested in living in one of these units or not then we ask would you be interested in living in the rental unit offered by the district at below market rents um pretty large amount of over 50 say they're very interested or somewhat interested remember we had about 300 uh respondents so roughly 150 of those respondents said they were very interested somewhat interested 20 said they weren't sure another 70 or so uh 18 and 7 either said they were not interested if they had some other response that was not in one of those categories if the units were limited to five years would you still be interested in living and that did not have a huge impact it dropped it down a little bit fifty percent i'll go back to remind you we had uh what 55 percent um saying they were either very interested or somewhat interested in this it dropped to 50 so really no real impact on those two how long do you anticipate continuing to work for alan rock's school district so we had 110 people respond to this question we reminded them that the answer was confidential and for those that um so those that said it was going to be less than five years or they were unsure uh that is to say everybody that's not in the orange part the five years or more there was a follow-up question that was asking them to respond to as to why you can see 60 people said they plan to relocate these are people that are saying they don't know if they're going to stay here for five years or they're going to be here for less than five years 60 say they plan to relocate 32 to retire 15 plan to stay in the current area and change professions and nine plan to relocate change professions so very stable and those people that are leaving the vast number are planning to retire i shouldn't say that the vastness are going to relocate but stay in the profession and then the second is to retire about that last slide i i'm a little confused in that it's asking if they anticipate continuing to work for alum rock but then this 60 people plan to relocate but stay in current profession those people not necessarily plan to stay in alum rock is that correct i mean they may stay teaching or doing whatever they're doing um no those are people that again we've asked how long do you anticipate continuing to work for alan rock um about 60 said five years or more those that said either less than five years or were they were unsure um they were asked a second question just to try to figure out why what do you what do you plan on doing if you're not going to be here for five years uh and so about a third of those said i'm going to retire about half of those said i'm going to relocate but i want to stay in i'm going to take a job someplace else a teaching job and then the rest for various answers thank you okay and then we ask them what is the primary reason that they would want to relocate those that said they were going to relocate um and you can see um you know some said a new job opportunity but you know the majority were saying they can't find talent they can't afford to live here or they can't find available or affordable housing that so the takeaway on that for me is you have um a very stable group of employees that want us there you saw the vast majorities and they believe they want to stay here for at least five years or longer um and for and strong support for the project both as a initiative of the district and also for personal use and for those that want to relocate uh it's pretty overwhelming they're saying the reason they want to relocate is the housing house not about the district not about getting out of the profession but they can't find acceptable housing so with that i'm happy to answer any questions you might have all right any questions from members of the committee comments i just have one real quick how many employees do we have in the district because i assume this went to everyone correct correct um claire yeah we have about a thousand a thousand and only 298 responded that's interesting thank you third yeah it's about a third and that's not too bad sharon and any surveys when you have 30 the 35 it's pretty valid okay all right thank you thank you uh dr bauer that's gonna be my next question and i just want to ask dale since he's done these type of uh um [Music] yes surveys um with several districts i'm assuming um is that typically the response that we get initially i guess on the first one because i'm sure it won't be the first one um you know when we go forward with this project uh the in terms of the number of respondents that's a little on the look i would say that is on the low side they range from 30 to what i've seen i think you have to assume i mean there's some people that just aren't going to respond regardless you know they're just not interested um i think a number of people read it and say well this doesn't affect me i'm not going to respond then they drop out so i agree with the superintendent that's a good strong showing um i was expecting somewhere between 30 and 45 and this came on on the low end and also i'm thinking the time frame right like that we had that quick turnaround um in getting the information uh by this meeting um yeah i don't think uh i don't think giving it more time makes much of a difference maybe we caught people at a bad time that's possible but we time it so it goes out on a wednesday i believe it is um under the theory that nobody reads their email on monday or tuesday and it came out on the afternoon and then we get went through the weekend gave him a reminder i'll cut it off at the end of monday got it thank you are there comments questions well i'll provide my comments i see a pretty it's a strong solid number um we can go out there and wait to drag in every last person and at that point you might even wind up changing the numbers people just answering the survey for the sake of answering and to get it done um we do have a good interested group of people that were thoughtful went through the survey and provided their perspective and they give us a good uh sense of what the needs are so i'm very appreciative for those who did participate because he gave us very invaluable information and so based upon that he sees what 81 uh who are interested in pro and it's a vast majority strongly supporting the others supporting and um we also clearly see a significant need amongst those who've responded so i think the numbers are there um had we had a lopsided response all right we absolutely don't need this i'm living it up you know very wealthy and i don't need any support and clearly there's no reason to proceed um but that doesn't seem to be the case here in elm rock anecdotally i got a sense of that um and uh from the comments we hear at every single board meeting we anecdotally we've gotten a lot of strong feedback from our our our our various units here in elm rock and now we have the actual data so i'm appreciative of the work that uh dale scott and you and your team did and i think it's good good data to bring back to the board so that we can the board can take a make a more important well-informed decision uh yeah if i can make just one more comment and i think tina from uh john from jefferson high will um uh second this at this stage it's it's difficult i think for many people to conceptualize what it means what a teacher staff housing project is um i know in jefferson there was a lot of comment in the survey that was done of um well i don't want to live in a dorm i don't want to live in a i'm not interested in a place where i'm living with a bunch of teachers in you know what single rooms as the plans began to progress and people began to see really how really extraordinary the project was then the level of interest began to grow and then i'll let tina respond to that with her remarks sure uh good afternoon everyone thank you for inviting me to your meeting my name is tina van raphorst and i am the deputy superintendent of business for the jefferson union high school district and we just opened our housing at the beginning of this month we're having our official ribbon cutting this friday so it's very exciting um and i would second what dale said uh at the beginning we did have less interest and it grew over time and that we had people who needed to be convinced why this was good for the district even though it wouldn't be good for them and i i feel like you guys might have already passed that hurdle with having this overwhelming support uh even from people who won't be living there so i think good on you thank you and uh well i guess we'll move on to item 4.02 which was uh comments from your introduction um before we do formally move on to 4.02 i think we we saw that in the results of the survey deal where when you initially asked hey would you live there people were like i'm not sure and i think that that that clearly is a valid point you're right um how can people commit to something that they've never actually seen people may have heard about the the situation the the teacher housing at santa clara probably never driven by it or have ever seen it i mean that's probably the closest thing they've they've heard of probably teacher workforce housing so you know we shouldn't expect people to jump on and say oh sign me up for something that they absolutely have no idea so as this kind of as jefferson uh union high school district's model is uh becomes more clear people probably will get a better sense and will be more um able to to you know make a clear determination as to what their their interest is so um if there's no other questions regarding the staff survey uh from members of the committee then i'll jump over to 4.02 and if there is we can always jump back it's just two items so we can keep it not super formal at this point uh let's jump over to 4.02 and we've already been introduced um and so the intention was to get a little bit more knowledge about uh the project any highlights or dale go ahead kick it off yeah let me just give a brief introduction um as tina mentioned she is the businessman and the cbo for jefferson union high school district i will tell you right now that tina knows more about teacher staff housing programs than anyone else certainly in the state of california and probably in the united states they are they were absolutely at the forefront of this they have gone from and tina was there from the beginning not only the financing which was uh completely new and unusual uh to the construction and then equally important probably the most difficult at all the management of how you put these projects together with the competing interests of who wants to live there what the rules are going to be who's going to manage that and so this is a play a great place for you to ask your questions of some of those how they how jefferson handled it and i think school districts around the state that are pursuing this are just really fortunate to have someone like tina and also have the district of jefferson to have gone through this and actually set up a template that others can follow as much as they wish so so no pressure tina but beside with that i will turn it over to you well thank you dale and um i didn't obviously do it alone or and i also didn't start from zero uh we have a community college in our district san mateo union i'm sorry san mateo county community college district that already has employee housing and has had it for a number of years and we used a lot of their templates uh so yeah that i would recommend that you beg borrow and steal um that this is a collaborative effort and that's why i'm here you know because i want to help other districts achieve this goal if that's something that works for them so i don't really have anything prepared so i thought i would just answer any questions that you might have uh anybody have any questions uh if not i'll start it off dr bauer go for it i just wanted oh i know that codina had her hand up i mean i think you know just at the high level because obviously we're going to have you back i mean if you are the one i trust dale um but like at a high level what were some of the challenges that you had you know and some of the things that um you think would help minimize those uh challenges now that you know what you know now versus then um so that would be my first question yeah sure i mean the hardest part i think for me was the fact that we don't have anyone with expertise in our organization with expertise around building residential uh and so finding a strong partner to help you with that process and to work through the city requirements for permitting and if you need to do zoning changes and all of that that again none of us in education have expertise in that would be that was the the hardest part for me was learning all of that and not only do you have to find a good partner but you also have to identify someone in your organization that's going to be the point person for that partner because you know as much as you want to just hand it off to them and say okay do it they can't and they won't um they i met with them at least every other week for i'm sorry at least twice a week um for about three years uh is so it it is an intense amount of work um for whoever it is your staff member that you that you point um and you know part of how we got that work done was by having a board subcommittee it seems like you guys are already on track with this subcommittee um i think that if that's going to be your vehicle but having a decision making body so for us it was just two board members me and some some representatives from the labor unions and we had that core group that met regularly so when there were questions that needed to be answered like you know how many um laundries do we need and if it was something that wasn't obvious or something we couldn't figure out just um just me and the consultants then we would go to this committee periodically to get those questions answered quickly because every delay costs money like you really need to just streamline things and and be on it um [Music] yeah i think that would would uh be the the toughest part is the the shift to residential working with the city uh and making sure you have a not only just a strong partner to help you with that but a system in your organization that allows questions to get answered quickly thank you um anybody else have questions no i'll jump in let me just add one let me just add one comment in my way with the tina just said i was with a similar committee to yours the other day like group down in los angeles and they were trying to get their feasibility study going they already have the funding and one of the members of the committee said well you know we're probably going to have to get the city to give us some permits and some some zoning changes maybe we should maybe we should go to the city first and get them to do that before we go to start the feasibility study i said that's gonna take you forever i mean you'll get the feasibility study and still be working on it before you ever get the city to make any decisions on this so you know there's just there are a lot of places you can get bogged down tina is so correct i think dr bauer was uh wanting to ask something you had your hand up earlier dr barney oh i was just wondering it's sort of in my mind it's like the a linear process right the from the moment that the board took action to kind of say okay okay committee go for it let's let's assume right that the committee is done because you see it here right right bring it to the board the board says go for it i'm just trying to envision you know kind of the milestones of setting up the process itself for a school district right because to your point we're we're educators accountants right we're not developers we're not uh people who live in that world right of designing complexes and things like that so i'm just trying to i think that's your first milestone once you decide to move forward your first milestone is identifying that partner the um and that isn't the person who's going to build it it's it's your uh it's like a a development partner um a consultant so you don't necessarily have to go out to bid you can what we did was a like kind of a soft bid process because they're consultants you don't have to go through a formal bid process so we we asked people to give us proposals and um that that subcommittee that i mentioned with the two board members and we called it our facility subcommittee um they vetted those uh proposals met with the we had three people that that submitted proposals and came and interviewed with us and then we brought one recommendation to the board and they made a presentation to the full board about what they would be um what kind of help they would be providing us so that would be that would be the first milestone in my opinion and then that's when the work um they're the ones that help you figure out what needs to be provided to the city they're the ones that help you figure out uh you know how many units you can afford to build with how much money you have i mean they they help you with everything from soup to nuts in my experience so tina you went through two different groups right wasn't there a first and then a second and maybe you can describe what the uh what the process was there yeah so ehp educational housing partners is who we used for i believe what dale's doing for you which is the feasibility feasibility study so they helped us identify which plot of land made the most sense they helped us identify the need and you know whether or not we could afford you know whether or not it made sense to move forward with the project so what we found was that if we just contributed the land and we didn't have any money to subsidize it we would have to charge rents that were upwards of 70 of market rate and that didn't make any sense so we kind of stalled there until you know in our conversations back and forth with dale we decided to go out for a bond so the bond then allowed us to identify the subsidy that you need in order to make the rents as low as they would make an impact we were aiming for 50 of market rate um we ended up when we opened up at 58 percent of market rates so i feel like that was pretty good um we were hoping it would be a little bit lower but the combination of factors you know cost overruns as well as rent not going up as quick during the pandemic as we had thought it would um but yeah so that was um what ehp did for us and then we asked them if they wanted to be involved in the next phase but they thought they might want to be the builder so you can't have your consultant that you use as the developer typically you would not have them be the builder because they're going to help you write your rfp for construction and um you know that would be a conflict right if they were writing the rfp and then responding to the rfp so that's why ehp did not continue with us to the next phase because they thought they might want to be the builder and that's that's why they did not submit a proposal in our informal bid process for a partner to help us through the development process so they did the feasibility yep and then you have the developer stage right to kind of conceptualize the the concept and then the builder correct got it thank you that's very beautiful that that's very helpful and then tina what about the management after the people move in right so uh also we don't want to be managing an apartment building we don't know how to do that either so we uh we did hire a third party um property management company but even before that we established a non-profit organization called the educational housing corporation the jefferson union high school district educational housing corporation ehc is what we call it for short and that is a non-profit authorized by the ju husty school board kind of to put a buffer between the school board and the management of the housing because we don't want tenants of the building our employees who are tenants coming to the school board to complain about you know the water doesn't get hot enough or or my neighbor's too loud um so we have this other organization that acts as a buffer and that group is authorized to make decisions for the housing so that that's the group that actually hired the third party um property management company and it's only i believe we have it set up as um bi-annually twice a year that a report will be made to the school board uh on the operations of the the housing and these the people in this non-profit how how do you get they were appointed by the school board so they are appointees but by the school board yep two two of them um our school board members so it's kind of like a subcommittee um two of them we have a five person board so two people uh make a subcommittee so two of them are board members two of them are employees that do not want to live in the housing because we learned from legal that they felt like if they were employees who lived in the housing it would be a conflict of interest so two of them are employees that don't live in the housing and then three of them are community members with some kind of expertise in property management or real estate or you know something like that so it's a seven person ehc and it was a they're appointed by the school board and our county council helped us tons with establishing that uh as well as like writing the bylaws um yeah and that's the group that then did all of the hard work in deciding the eligibility criteria the the rules um what what the least documents look like they worked with uh they made the rfp for the property management company and then assessed which property management company would be the best once the property management company was on board that they report to the ehc and so when they were developing developing all of the lease documents it was the ehc that gave them feedback on what was should be included what shouldn't be included do we let them have dogs do we have to charge extra for pets you know all of that stuff that you never think of when you're running a school district of course yeah when was i'm sorry in terms of the timeline when was that committee established question i would have done it much sooner we were coming down to the wire uh it was only established i think i have it in an email but it was established maybe like six months before we planned to open and then of course opening got a little away from us so maybe it was like eight minutes eight months before opening it was too late i would do it i don't know uh you know aim for a year and a half before opening maybe would be about the right time maybe even two years like i don't i don't think two years would be too far out just make sure that you're actually have some sense of when it will open like before you establish it does that require a like a a board resolution or a board what what kind of action the board needs to take in order to establish that group it was a series of resolutions um and i'd be happy to share them with you through dale yeah there was a you know a resolution to establish uh and maybe it doesn't have to be on this way but but we had a resolution um to authorize the recruitment of members and then a second one to establish the organization and then another one to you know um to appoint the members and it was a series of them in a quick question on uh from the committee initial committee to then that formal group that's to stay for the long term um did one of the board members did they transfer over to the other or were they completely different no we did have one that uh that stayed with both groups that was in the initial group and then a different so one stayed one didn't and then actually the facility subcommittee lives on it it was something that was established uh for this as well as to figure out what are the best ways to be utilizing all of our property so it it actually continues and lives on and then the ehc has one one member that's the same versions um you got you answer a lot of my questions already so i appreciate that great information one of the things that uh in the past has gotten in the way of teacher housing locally was uh lack of a i guess there wasn't consensus as to how to move ahead um did you feel that um you were able to deal with that because you had the bargaining units already as part of the committee and everybody was at the table already being able to to deal with some of those issues up front did that help quite a bit or yeah i think that definitely helped um you know the whole thing actually started with our board uh they they did a tour and and held uh many board meetings at every single school site because morale was down and they were feeling it and they wanted to do something about it so they went to every school site to you know hear all of the the issues that were happening at each school site and the biggest issue that kept coming up was low pay and staff turnover so the people that stay are like you know i'm having to retrain somebody every year i have a new collaborative you know teacher with me every you know every year so it's those two things and so the board came up with a plan a three-pronged approach um to try to address that one was we passed a parcel tax and a hundred percent put that to raises and then um we started building employer you know going down the path of employ employee housing and then the third one was that we said we would start looking at our other properties uh to see if we could generate more revenue and so it was kind of like you know this group of people who will benefit from the housing are going to get something but we're also trying to get something for everybody if that kind of makes sense i feel like because it was a whole approach to how are we going to improve salaries and working conditions for the district that that helped it move forward also you know talking to staff about how much our turnover impacts the people who stay and if we could just stem that turnover how much that would improve your working conditions um kind of shifting that mindset so so that it's not saying well these teachers that live in the housing are gonna get more stuff uh that that they're not gonna leave and then i'm not gonna have to train somebody new and i'm not gonna have to have a new partner every year and so um so kind of having the conversations in that way i would say another thing that really helped um not have so much resistance or not have roadblocks was that we had our board members were 100 behind it and we had two board members that were champions like everywhere they went this is what they talked about if someone um you know had a concern or said something even maybe on social media that was negative they would reach out to that person and say you know can i help you understand more do you want to talk you know it was um they really you know spent a lot of their own time making sure that this moved forward great thank you uh jessalyn thank you um i'm just curious i know you said that the ribbon cutting was this week how people already started moving in yeah and how is it going uh really well you know um knock on wood yeah we have um i think 22 apartments out of the 122 that are um occupied now let's see there were you know some minor things i think leasing up a 122 units all at once is a lot so a couple of you know little glitches like somebody showed up to move out in last saturday and they were scheduled for sunday and their room wasn't quite ready and you know like little things like that um but the property management company i mean they're they're experts they do this for a living uh that was the main thing we looked for when we were finding the property management company was somebody with a proven track record of opening new buildings um they've been amazing they've helped us with the punch list you know like you're going through and making sure that everything is uh up to code and is uh you know so that is is perfect for the tenants they helped us with that they they've just been amazing um are they being rented um does the rent include the most of the utilities as well i'm trying no we did not have it include utilities um it's and they have to get their own wireless and cable if they want it and i believe they have to get their i can't remember if they have to get their own electric or not we went back and forth with that and that's why i can't remember if we landed on where they each have their own electric service um but i know that water and sewage and and trash is all combined and so they'll they get a separate bill um based on the size of their unit for that yeah do you know the answer to that i don't know i don't know the answer about the electorate but i do know that there is a great story that has just been run by a local tv station and if you want to go to my my site on linkedin just put in my name i just posted it it's about a one to two minute uh news story and it it gives you a sense of it's a great story i'll just put it there it's really really hard for me so talking about the you know the first weekend then when people started moving in uh me the superintendent a couple of board members were all there we brought um donuts and balloons and like welcomed people it was uh just so really amazing to hear their stories um we have a married couple where they both work for us one is a our mechanic and the other works in one of the offices and they have two kids and they've been living with in an in-law unit where they don't they they all are in the same space and nobody has their own room and now they have a three-bedroom apartment for less than what they were paying for that in-law unit and just to see how happy they are and um so many people that are living with family and and this will be their first time getting the place on their own and they're all in their 20s and 30s and they you know they feel like they should have been out long time ago or whatever and they just they're they're just so happy we have um one of our i.t technicians says that he lives he shares a house with nine people uh in san francisco he has you know no space of his own and for the same price he's gonna have a one-bedroom unit it's so yeah people are really thrilled i i strongly recommend that yeah just taking a view of this article i posted dr barry had your hand up so how many staff are in your district good question yeah we only have 500 staff and we built 122 units so you might wonder why we did that uh our our feasibility study showed interest um for i don't know i think it was around 70 people that were interested and we were going to build about 80 units that's what we were aiming for uh and then when we passed the bond you know we just tried to decide do we we don't want to make any money on this we want to attract and retain as many people as possible and so in that committee and then a recommendation to the board was the discussion of you know what's the most we could possibly build with the subsidy we've gotten from the taxpayers and that's the way that our board decided to go uh right now we don't have all of them least um we don't have a waiting list we with our 500 employees we have 90 people or 90 units that went in the first round um and then since then because there's such a buzz we've gotten i think four more employees that are now in the queue and we'll be getting a unit but we have uh what does that leave 20-ish units um 30 somewhere between you know 28 i don't know um but we have units that are open and so we decided that we're going to go through a whole season a whole year and see if we did over build and we have a contingency plan if we over built um we will be able to open up the units to our uh feeder districts because we're a high school district we have the same voting block as our elementary theater districts and so we can it won't be against the bond to allow those teachers and staff to move in so if we but we still think you know all of the hiring we're doing this summer um as well as other uh people who will just you know you have life changes right you get divorced or you um you know decide that you don't like your roommate anymore and you decide you want to move to a different living situation so we think it'll fill up and can i ask a couple of more questions andres um how did you know about how many like i'm thinking in terms of how much the cost per unit or how much was the bond or you know just give us a sense yeah well like i said we thought we were going to build fewer units so we set the bond at a level that we thought we could pass i mean really i think that's where we decided to set it was at a level where we thought it could pass and um where it would build a set number of units but after it passed we we decided to increase the number of units um to make it to where we were just breaking even and we took out a loan for the rest of the money well you know for school districts that's a cop um for the rest of the money uh how we decided um how much per unit was was from our developer partner they're the ones that have those those numbers and ours you know it's a 75.5 million dollar project for 122 units and my last two questions who who was your developer in the management like who are those those brookwood group is the name of the um developer partner brookwood group and then uh we hired boulevard it's actually just blvd uh is the name of the property management company we call them boulevard i don't i i think that's what they call themselves but first word they're the developer yes and who who built the oh uh j.h fitzmaurice thank you okay any other questions all right well thank you for that information i think it's very invaluable and allows us to start trying to visualize uh what this might look like uh with regards to next steps uh dr bavaro or dale um we're gonna take this information to the board um i'm feeling it's pretty positive and i'm liking what i've seen um i don't see why uh our colleagues wouldn't support but you know it's ultimately the board's decision um but what what comes after that can you provide a you know a broad timeline um i'm sure dr brown would you like me to run through yeah because we still have one more survey correct bill so if you want to pick it up from there sure we're going to um we're going to hold off on doing the survey of voters until after the june election date this district has a parcel tax on the ballot and i think the superintendent's inclusion is correct that we don't want to confuse people that are in the middle of the voting process that there's something else going on so we will be bringing back the results of that survey to the second board meeting in june if if we are with our fingers crossed um and then uh if the board wants to go forward would we we would be bringing back a resolution to place a reauthorization bond on the on the ballot in november that would be at your meeting in july those are the steps in the puzzle right now for that gives us some ideas to what we should look for is a as a committee um all right thank you for that information um further comments if there's none then i'll uh jump over to well 4.03 next steps we kind of went through them now correct and just yeah just just wanted to reassure and if there are any questions i uh dale was ready to start uh polling the voters uh as part of that big you know as part of the package to inform the board before they make a decision but i i really felt that it would be a little confusing for our community to have a parcel tax and then we're asking them about bonds right and so give us a little bit of time so i asked him to start polling right after june 7th so that we can have all the data the prelim you know the preliminary data for the board um to be presented for the board on the 23rd of june that gives the board also another month or so for any further questions or anything like that before we ask the board to have you know to consider supporting uh the item for the july meeting and to put it on the ballot for the november elections all right for the questions uh jocelyn go for it and this might not even be the right time to ask but at what point is it after the um the november election where or has it already been talked about where where the location would be i mean is that still too premature that's part of the feasibility study i believe so that's that's something we are not able to determine and they'll jump in but that when i tina was very informative for me jocelyn in terms of that process because that was where i'm like i'm like you right it's like you know and just so that you know i i'm thinking that if there's some something that ala morock has it's space right and even without really affecting any schools and that was also why i asked the question around how what how many you know how many staff and now how many units right because that that also determines the space right and so those are the kinds of things that i'm pretty sure go once and if i i guess the feasibility study won't come until after november am i if i could i could jump in the feasibility study takes about i mean ideally it takes about 90 days to do um and so you have the district has to make a decision well should we be doing the feasibility study prior to the election or should we do the feasibility study after the election well the downside of doing it before the election is they have to pay that money out of pocket um they can be reimbursed at the election succeed but if not then that's just money they've spent so i i i don't know what the board's uh inclination is but that's what they're going to have to decide uh whether we do we want to speed it up speed up the process uh given what's going on with costs and sink some money into doing the feasibility study during the summer as we're doing the campaign or do we want to wait and see what happens until after the election and then have the feasibility study done that's kind of the simple solution question uh according you had your end up earlier yeah how much for the feasibility more or less you know i'm sure depending on the uh district that they're dealing with but how much are we looking at just uh to have an idea remember do you remember this i was like just looking i just looked at this the other day we spent about 80 000 on ours but that was in 2018 so i don't know if it's changed a lot since then i think i think it's i think it's actually gone down a little bit uh because they're coming they've reduced the scope of the feasibility study and put more of that into the next step and to a certain extent it depends on how much you want to do but if you want to strip it down to like okay we really want to know does the site work what are the permits that we need are there environmental factors i think you can get it less these days cool and so we went ahead and in lieu of full-on feasibility studied for the benefit of the public and anybody who might watch the recording we went with the survey so that we wouldn't be on the hook for a larger amount uh if in fact there wasn't uh the will or the desire to move forward with this from from the district so correct cool thank you all great questions um any other questions all right well we went through the next steps uh is there anything else you want to discuss dr brower or dale with regard to the next steps i would like to ask if this committee wants to have in other words if we set up a june meeting once the uh voter results so similar to this meeting today if you wanted to see the the results before the they are presented to the entire board yeah i would think that it would be important to sunshine those and allow everybody to see them so i personally would uh does the committee have an interest in getting together to see the results in advance before we forward them to the board i would like to um and dr barbara you should you said that the special board meeting we're looking at uh june 23rd we have two regularly scheduled board meetings in june because of the el cap so yeah one on june 9 and then the 23rd so if uh and i does something that i would have to ask dale if you start polling after june 7th you know i don't know how long do you mean well i'm sure you all all remember the trash compactor in star wars where it was you know coming to people from both sides so um as long as we can get that presentation to the committee as close as possible to the june 23rd date we might have tentative results we might have just what are called top line results and not have it completely done but we'll be able to give you a good sense then but it's not something you can just kind of started on the 8th and had the results on the 9th correct and that's why i'm asking you to give a sort of like a sense of time i think the week of june 20th would be the most appropriate okay so 21st the 21st uh is a tuesday yeah all right 4 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
um yeah another before i saw the contract with the 16 22 so you can change the motion including that age just put the age instead of the secondary the recommendation and also with the ages from 16 16 to 22. and they can be here after 22 they're going to be charged because 22's provide services for students so i amend my motion to accept this with the addition of the 16 to 22 year old age group and the line of this will be to help secondary students and students 16 and 22 years old successfully graduated from high school who may be in jeopardy of not graduating did you get a second half a second okay mr hopkins miss duncan hi i'm mr guthrie hey as far as motion pacifier over the years but they're good at athletics maybe they know the next item of this that we have is adoption of asthma political goals for the on 2022-2020 um we could uh the ones that stood out to me were like we talked about all about finances and fun to realize the school finance formula particularly the third bullet to ensure it addresses the unique financial needs of schools serving students in poverty and rural remote schools the top one for maximizing funding funding so we can remain so we can become competitive in attracting recruiting talented teachers that one stood out the one on infrastructure and fully funding exceptional student services those were the ones that jumped out to me but well stuff rodney honestly if you wanted to put together a list of that too i like this the first ones you were touching base on here with all the points that entire thing i think the first and foremost adequate nickel before district school to at least the national median perfect funding you know so basically that won't be like number one oh sure um i guess i i have these four categories um aren't except right yeah for me that's that's the main one that i'm concerned about right now the top heading or the individual business oh i would say it's number two preserve the strength remote control that's kind of breaking it down because they haven't yeah one small topic well yeah go on yeah i know so um this might this is just me that should be our number one and that would be a number two you know unless we want to break it down even more it could be anything it could be just our top five we don't necessarily have the whole companies i don't i don't think no they just want to know what our top five i mean we could say already we want to have a bill pass that's going to legislate to give all much more advantage in the funding of schools than anybody else for charter school teachers to eliminate some kind of competition in the public schools that they have with them okay okay do we have more or less put three um the infrastructure the this is funding for for existing schools prior to exceeding maximum capacity and then including the placement of buildings that have exceeded their useful life just to throw out the number here the average per people funding for the country is 12 624 dollars to have anybody else have a fifth priority that they would like seems like more and more we have larger numbers of students with ieps so that was one that jumped out to me as well um uh conduct exceptional student services study to ensure the students in rural and remote areas receive adequate funding for the actual cost of their services this is what i didn't see before but no this is okay um i would love to see this one personally uh provide funding for preschool programs and the k-12 funding promo now the last one has two more [Music] so i guess when i read the motion and make the motion i'll read out each of these priorities that we have [Music] i am making the notion that our top priorities are increased in spending per student in the state increase in teacher page and make it more competitive nationwide requiring certification for charter school teachers funding adequately funding infrastructure building changes and other innovations additionally um more fun and more adequate funding for exceptional students and more funding increased funding for preschool pre-k i'll the next island is the adoption ratification of certified working conditions the 20 22 to 23 certified working conditions agreement was brought to the board for ratification the board voted to review discuss a table of documents during the meeting multiple questions and changes were brought up to the administration these questions and changes were taken back to the future and they have approved those changes and questions a couple comments as i um monday night targeting a couple things that we would like to do but technically we're pushing the envelope on what's legal is we're trying to stop extension holidays with sick leave it happened before people probably have one again because policy allows us to say after three days of absence we can request a doctor's excuse what we said to confer was that after one day at the extended holiday if they didn't have a doctor's note we could doctor pay um that that's vague so we took that out and i talked to the community about that everything else is pretty much what we talked about the other night i'd like to defer to dr connolly she's been on the committee for the last two years and then you run several years ago right right after you came here i've actually been on this committee four times go ahead yes i wanted to have it's easy for lancer i sit here and talk about these things but i want someone's perspective that is more directly impacted than that right so um like i said i've been here seven years and i have served on this committee and i'm kind of in a unique position within the school to serve on this committee because i teach elementary students and so i work with the elementary teachers a lot and i hear their concerns and also i work with high school because i teach cte course and understand the students concerns which the students are also affected by this policy um so i understand the student's concern and the high school teacher's concern as well and so i feel like i'm just in a really unique position in this school to serve on a community like that because i i have a very broad view of what goes on in our school and i have to say in my time this year i'm believing this has been the very hardest one the team members gave up every single we started working on this beginning of the year because last year when we worked on it it felt like there was a lot of contention over the book and i couldn't understand because i i thought that the book was an agreement between teachers and administration to um to help us operate smoothly and help teachers feel protected in lieu of uh of the teachers union we don't have a local teachers union here and so it was my understanding this document was our agreement with the administration to help protect this and some of the questions that came up it just seemed like only the people that are trying to break the rules have problems with these these things that are in this book so that that has been my opinion and we had trouble getting it passed last year and since we had that trouble and we amended we accepted it with amendments to be made and the following year dr dooley asked the same people to serve again so that's why the fourth time and we started at the very beginning of the year working on this one of my biggest and most important things as a teacher here is my time i don't have a lot of it and i gave up every single independent planning time that we get on a wednesday to serve on this committee and then we got down to the final issue we signed it we were happy and it was rejected and so we were very frustrated and that's why we said we're not making any more changes we've done we've done this and we we need our plan and on that because i wasn't the only one affected by this and i just wanted to talk for a minute and tell you that this year has been the absolute hardest year i have served in awkward i would have thought in my mind starting this year that it would be better back to normal and it's not true because something happened to us in copenhagen and i mean us as in the world three teachers broke contract this year that those breaking contracts caused other teachers to be without planning one of our teachers has been without planning the entire year and with the most she had just gotten her her planning back and with the most recent contract break um she lost her planning again there was no place else for those students to go so when these things happen that this book addresses it's important because it affects everybody in a very negative way and i also have lost my planning due to the last um the last contract break and like in addition to taking on two periods of teaching math i've tried to keep the library open and going during that time so i feel like this year i've had so many things coming at me in so many directions and there's no way to handle it when i talk to teachers from my position the issues in this book are not what's on their mind what's on their mind is that there doesn't seem to be any support from our principal and and dr shaboltz i'm not being disrespectful here but he spent more time in the classroom than they had a principle and it's not his fault when three teachers break contract and we have no substitutes what is he supposed to do it's not his fault it's not a criticism of him that i'm pleased that he stepped up to the plate to take that role but that's what concerns teachers so when you're you're saying you want to address that as a board that does make me happy um i've several times when teachers have been absent i've had to have two classes i know that when i am absent there are three teachers who will go without planning who probably already win an entire quarter without planning when you don't have planning during a day you don't get a bathroom break you you don't get a moment to just stop and think and in the library that's really challenging my day goes from teaching fifth grade math to teaching kindergarten library which is basically just writing and listening skills to sixth grade and they're learning coding to third grade and they're learning arizona history and then i finished my day with high school photography so i'm all over the place and not getting planning just is very stressful like for me so the reason that we said no we don't want to make any more changes when we did was because it was just so much time that we'd already put into it and it feels like the real issues are can how can we get more teachers to come that aren't going to break contract how can we make sure that we have enough people including substitutes to work in our school how can we make our school a better place and fussing over what this document says about you're coming back from break or how you're going to use your your um sick leave passing over that seems like a waste of time and these are just my comments and my opinions um but for me i would hope that we could just quickly get this resolved and just quickly pass this because this isn't really the issue there are bigger issues that we really need to address do you mind if i respond first thing for your awesome teacher we're really lucky to have you i've seen you in the library and and i've seen your dedication to the kids and we've had discussions and i think that i wish we had a whole school full of teachers like you the teachers breaking contract sport doesn't have a lot of control of that i mean we really don't have a lot of control of that teachers leave for whatever reasons they leave and we we can't stop them from dating right we really can't stop them from david as for getting enough teachers i think that they try as hard as they can to find teachers in whatever sources they can find them right and work my comments are not in so our refusal of accepting this document has been on one page one payton and it has to do with the legalities of paid sick time which the state mandates right if you want to go to utah and play in the snow huh we don't have the right of the they don't have the right administration to ask you to bring a doctor's note if you say i was that as a um it's not if you do that as a paramedic administration you do that as a paramedic it's the same thing right are you doing a circle okay it's the same thing everybody you know put the state managers that are here doing their job that are the ones if we can fix it one time if we can get a peer document that addresses these issues and gets it get it where is legal from all points of view this doesn't have to be readdressed every year we now have a other than if we have uh policy changes it's it's a written book and so it's not you don't have to spend all next year going through this right so all that we've asked to the board is that this one page reflect the law reflect what's going on and that's all we've asked for is that one page we haven't gone through every paragraph in the book and said we don't accept this we don't accept this it's all been on on paid time off on sick days and whatever and all the assets for that to be changed not for us it's not for us at all it's for you so that you have a policy that that a book that a policy or a book that reflects the law and and how things are supposed to be done and so so that you know and whenever we have been told that this is what the law says we have made those changes okay um wendy came with the policy on this from tucson school unified school district right we are not tucson that's part of the problem and no no i want to miss robertson we did invite you in the very beginning to go over the book with us and help us make the changes that you were seeing we asked you to do that and you said at the time i don't want to dictate to you what you need to do and so that's when we went and did the amendments it was way last year at the beginning of the that trouble over the book and we did invite you yes so and i i did my best to help during that meeting the um what i was trying to express at the time was that it is not my role to be involved in negotiations i had supplied all of the policy and legal issues as a list two years ago and they're still they're still in here no they're still in here and it's not your fault you need to be supplied a legal document that complies with policy and is clear and you're not getting that and that's not your fault and i'm sorry that you and the other teachers have spent so much time with us but it affects us too we have spent so much time with this we're here again on this and it's not our fault either you need to be supplied with a legal document that you can negotiate with the administration and that is not happening and i'm sorry for that but it hasn't happened and we can't approve a document that contains language that doesn't comply with the law and we've sent it back yes many times and it keeps not getting fixed what i was saying i couldn't do was negotiate like that's not my role asking you to negotiate we were asking you to show us what you were seeing we weren't asking you to negotiate right and and i i did i answered questions for the best that i that i could and i also applied documents like multiple times on multiple occasions that made it all out doctor when a teacher breaks the contract do you put the money back into the budget it goes back to him so i would love to approve this tonight as well i i want to um what if we table this for tonight and have an executive session with our attorney to go over some of these issues that keep coming up and try and get a final answer to this um that's the only thing i can think of to is to have the attorney involved real real quick dr conlon we all appreciate all the power and teachers that put in on this and this is an important document for the staff and we feel that it's important that these eyes may be dotted and t's need to be crossed i understand you dedicate a lot of your prep time a lot i know i've i've sat in negotiations with this g-1 kind of things it takes a lot of and we just want to be sure that all the language is legal follows policy and state law that's it we're not saying you guys didn't do a good job on this i mean we put a lot hours in we just want to make sure it's a solid document for the staff because this one also is going to affect the other agreement with the rest of the staff that's all it's we don't want to feel like anyone's being picked on or making it personal to anybody but when we receive this for approval we expect that it's gone by the administration that make sure that it follows policy follows law state law because you can't have a superseding state of law and we're just worried there might be something that could be a violation of that that's all and i mean i know everyone spent a lot of time on this and we appreciate that but and it seems to be like a sticky point everybody you know and we're just ready to approve this but we also have to make sure it follows policy and state of law okay i i know you've got you're tired of dealing with it it's gonna be done but so i i think having that look at it might be a good idea see if he sees anything you recommend i want us to vote on the final revision where everybody's comfortable where we don't have to readdress this next year and next year next year next year i just like to get this done get it done right get it done legal and then it would be very very seldom would it have any changes right it could just be a pass-through unless the state launches or right district and so it takes a little more time to do that then i think we need to do what we need to do and that's what we said last year okay it wasn't like that we just suddenly came out and said we are not trying to hurt the teachers we're trying to help the teachers we're trying to make this policy so that you have rights with your paid time off with your paid sick time and that it all falls under under government law the voters of arizona mandated that you get 40 hours of paid sick time a year right that was a voter mandated deal and and how you use that is pretty much up to you you know and so there's not a whole lot we can do there's not a lot i can do the ambulance right somebody takes their 40 hours of sick time they take the 40 hours of sick time so so kind of what it is you have 200 days of sickness lives what eight hours per base on 1600 hours so basically out of that 1600 the first 40 hours your that has different rules to it according to the earned paid stake time of the state so basically if you call in someone called in within a certain time frame i'm using my paid sick time so once that first 40 hours is gone the remaining 1560 you know that that's that's it right there some of the policies that we have here kind of protect the teachers who are left behind when the teacher does what teachers sometimes do and just kind of saying i'm done with this i'm not doing it anymore there's teachers that come that are here for the right reasons that don't understand what it's like to work in a rural district like this some of them it feel like they were protecting us the ones that are here because of the kids that are here working all the time i don't know if you know what it's like to try and manage two classrooms full of people but what happens when somebody extends a vacation and then there's pictures of themselves online doing something that's not sick some teacher back here in school had to have their class in with without any advance notice without any plans without any ability to prepare for that okay i just want to say something we didn't vote for that the vote the the voters of arizona voted for that we're just complying with that but what i'm saying is i want this document to protect those of us who are here doing our job and it it feels like we take away all those things it's teachers who are doing what they're supposed to do that end up getting the punishment for the few that are gonna create the problems so i understand but how can we make our policy protect the teachers who are here because the teachers who are here who want to be here one of the teachers i spoke with one of the teachers that you'll hear how can we attract those people that are going to love all those and that aren't going to treat us that way and still protect the teachers do you understand what i'm saying because i feel like i feel like some of the changes give all the advantage to the teachers who are going to break the contract who are going to abuse this system i know that the state gives me those hours and i know that it's up to you how i use them and i know that not everybody has the same scruples that i have but how can we protect the teachers who are doing what they're supposed to do and i feel like this document is the way that we do that because we don't have professional negotiators in tucson there would be professional negotiators that go to the school district and deal with that teachers are going to be asked to do that that's why they pay their union i think part of the concern of us is that the document doesn't actually reflect policy if it's not if so any issue that is illegal issue is fine but you have to change it into the law but at the same time i would like to feel that that you care about protecting the teachers and sometimes it doesn't always feel that way i think that foreign that this board is really teacher friendly we i don't think we turned down anything that benefits the teachers and on the hours and i i know this is a passive idea you know any extra hours i have to work every month to cover for people that are taking 40 hours of sick time i work tons and tons just like the school room can't leave the downloads shut down right so i end up so i i know gekko you're talking when they passed that legislation it was a vein that every every company in the in the state right we all we all took in the shorts because of it and he basically gave everybody 40 hours of free time and so you would hope that people had have ethics but they don't they're going to take that time anyone watch our guys take it december just get ready to run out right so then suddenly they have they're sick so they can they could take off so there's nothing we can do as a board about paid sick time it's the law it's the law of the land and um so until the voters change it or the legislature changes it that's just the way it is and so all we're trying to do is make sure the document is legal that it follows policy that every document that we have here matches and uh if it takes another month or two it takes another month or two but we don't forget visit it again that's all we're doing walking around circles right now but but that's that's been our feelings on it and it's not a not meant negative towards you or the people that have been on it it's just we have to get a good document done so i have served on the school break for nine years and we have cut this every year and the board has just approved it because we feel that this is what the teachers want not what the board wants to be in this can be a i've served here when uh it's supposed to be something that was mandated by the state and we voted against that so there is an opportunity to do that i also been in school districts where the teachers had so much sick time but they have to have a doctor's certificate for doing that after so many days i think it's two or three days and if there is anything left at may right after graduation then that money is given as a bonus to those teachers and it's worked very very well people stay there because they want that money and um i i don't agree with all this squabbling and that's what it is and i if it has worked in the past i don't know why it can't work in the future you surprised the economy um policy that passed down the 40 hours i've heard before i don't know how that is impacting public schools the policy i didn't attach the whole policy but um talked about how much people could a couple things that may be different from the private sector i've not worked in private sector since i was in college but our employees earned sick leave at i don't have confidence 10.4 hours a day 1.4 hours per month i thought that was big i'm sorry and i thought initially when i came here aho has some acquaintances to it and i thought that one point of a four minutes they had a number they wanted so they tend to divide together well that's part of the policy now when we talk about law and policy we're not talking about the same thing but we're trying to adhere to what the teachers on this committee have tried to adhere to is policy um asba isn't going to support a policy that's not supported by law and to buy back we have a provision that people can sell sick leave after so many years here but also they can accumulate for 200 days a year and a lot of privacy yeah you know two or three days total a lot of sick a lot of private companies probably don't have that provision it's the best possible disability insurance i could think of because you keep your full solid when i was out several years ago because of an injury except my check kept coming in because i missed a couple weeks of work but i had sick leave um two things that i don't agree with but we took out and dealt with statutes our policy i should say policy on three days required to extend the holiday or even if you're gone that maintains administration you can request that um we have we once more superintendent taking that down to one or two days because people were abusing them like you're talking about what you're frustrated about which i understand i'm frustrated nice i got to kind of make the point of seeing my teachers call in sick playing in the states on facebook um that's not technically violent law but certainly violations of district ethics and so we can take some action associate that that's another issue but we took out any statement that is punitive to an employee or to a teacher to a teacher that talks about holding a person accountable when they're absent regardless of when they're for less than three days we had one probation and talked about one day after a holiday we took that out because teachers wanted when we started negotiating years ago that was something that came from the teachers and i supported other people in the administration support because um people were taking the next day on the holiday or they're starting the holiday early and it impacts kids negatively um so the things you're talking about never say never never say always um to the best of the work we've done we're not aware of any policies that are immortal now legislature sensation [Music] public education is never safe from their recession and they don't know this um the constitution talks for 90 day session i can't remember they've had a 90-day session and they're still going i'm not paying as much attention to it this year as i have in the past because i'll have different knowledge and it won't impact me directly to the profession as much so i just found other things to consume my time but um when you say let's do something you don't have to do this again every year that would be i think that'd be unfortunate for staff because things come up maybe lance deride did something just really tick them off they have a chance to talk to us about that and that's a good vehicle for it um it's not the only vehicle that's a good vehicle where we can talk about those things that people have been on the committee not just uh dr conley and the other two ladies this year but other people um those meetings have been for me professionally been very beneficial because i could kind of hear people's frustrations and there's some things i could change that easy and i did if there wasn't a big financial problem wasn't something i need your your your support on and on the vote didn't affect my effect uh personnel so i think it's going to be important regardless um i hope i hope that in future years that you continue the the process of having i call it working conditions um we called it when i came here to meet you for i don't care what we call it but we need to have time for leadership and administrative leadership to sit down and talk to teachers about these things and let me give you a second now what i've done in the past i didn't do it this year that's my fault folks i should have done this um let's have an executive session with boards before we started meeting with the teacher team and that's something i think for years i've done that we've had less of this type of frustration i don't think anyone was suggesting that you don't um what we're trying to say is that we need a baseline that is legal and compliance with all of that so the what caused a lot of these problems is i believe was it in 2017 that the sickly law changed and changed dramatically but this document didn't so these years that we have been doing that we have been approving things that were not legal and so we have to fix that we can't approve things that are not legal so that's what we're doing on the other hand policy can be changed as long as it as that piece of policy isn't something that's required by law it can be changed so there may be things that we can do to address these concerns that you have to protect the teachers because that's what we're trying to do we're trying to protect the teachers and we also have a responsibility to protect the district well and and i can understand all those things and i i hope you understand i'm not coming here in a disrespectful church and it's very frustrating to me when i like when i was in third grade as a teacher or fourth grade my students didn't have um specials today because somebody was absent because with the two substitutes that we have if a special teacher is gone that's what's happening special for cancer so i have it was an easy solution i'd have to plan i could handle it but it's not easy to go that whole day sometimes and some of our teachers this year because we've operated with too few teachers and music teacher an art teacher um we've been down like which arts teachers some of our teachers might not bring and gets particularly hard on elementary teachers because every moment of every day has to be planned you have to know where your resources are what you're going to do how you're going to say it and what if this kid does this again and what am i going to do when and you have to have all that find out every day and when you don't have a minute to just sit and think about it during the day that's really hard and this this like teaching the math i'm actually enjoying teaching the math that part of the day is is fine but when i when i get to the part of the day where it's my 30-minute lunch and third grade is being third grade and i have to line them up ten times to get what i'm looking for all i can think is through lunch okay i have a condition here i know we've discussed having been with this which i agree with um i have no problem asking for a special session after the lawyer looks at it if he has any recommendations and they can go directly to you and the teachers so you can look at it and say hey okay we can do this and i would have no problem personally ask for a special session just to ratify it and be done with it after it's done how would how how would you and the teachers feel about that [Music] because normally he gets on this stuff pretty quick i would i really want to see this done before the school year kicks off july 1.
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so ultimately it decreases the overall amount we also are changing line seven which is the unexpended budget balance we estimated the carryover was a hundred and ninety five thousand three o seven but actually to carry over is a hundred and ninety six thousand seven hundred and forty five dollars so overall the new unrestricted capital budget limit which is basically our capital budget limit for fiscal year 22 is one million thirty three thousand one hundred and fifteen dollars an overall increase to capital from revision number one to revision number two of five thousand eight hundred and twenty nine dollars and then the last page is the budget limit for the classroom site fund which is prop 301 the first three lines is basically your carryover from fy21 it takes your budget limit for fiscal year 21 it subtracts your actual expenditures line 12 is your carryover of 51 286 dollars the state allows you to spend any interest earned in classroom site fund which is 1 401 and then it adds in the new allocation for 22.
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can you tell us why dr kellis has done to deserve to be forcibly removed ethically you should be informed about current educational issues by individual study and through participation in programs needed for information such as sponsored by the state and national school board associations based on the questions asked during some of these meetings you are clearly not doing your own [Applause] she got here tina molika good evening madam president members of the board cabinet and guests my name is tina molica and i have a parent of two students in the dysert school district i'm here tonight to address the governing board oath violations which i have witnessed at board meetings i'll keep this little short since our time has been shortened you have violated the district goals by creating a hostile environment towards dr kellis social workers administrators and anyone who supports them that at that hostile environment does not accurately reflect the goals of dysart on february 9th you cut hours for social workers at an 8 000 pay cut forcing many to leave the district including the one at my own son's school you have also violated code 2.0 on 4 13 april 13th you accused the district of sneaking crt into the curriculum the book was not a curriculum book and it was very misrepresented to the public i purchased it i read it cover to cover the board stated that it was promoting a shift from individual behavior to everyone's fault saying that there's no more right and wrong suggesting that it was getting rid of behavior management and saying that students acting out were students of victims of injustice none of those words were in the book instead of basing decisions on facts you have chosen to support a personal political narrative i have other violations but i'm going to skip to the end the greatest issue facing dysart is not crt sel the contents of the books on its shelves false claims of brainwashing indoctrination or an effective superintendent who is well respected by the community in a state where 70 of our classrooms do not have certified teachers the issue the greatest issue is attracting and retaining teachers in our classrooms by demonstrating a culture of respect and cooperation you have created an environment of hostility and distrust that does not serve the students of our district only the desires of a small community of politically driven individuals all right kathleen honey next up we have kathleen honey my name is kathleen o'neil i served dysart for over 10 years under different health circumstances it would be my honor to still serve alongside these educators here tonight and under the direction of dr quinn kellis my primary responsibilities was to reduce barriers to learning i did that through the implementation of programs like character counts a social emotional learning program and by reducing bullying my prime alveos defines bullying as ongoing such as accusations without foundation at multiple public meetings unwelcome and most importantly involving an imbalance of power like a group of elected officials threatening the livelihood of employees they directly supervise the most effective recourse for bullying is for bystanders to step in and stop the negative behavior as governing board members duly elected to serve all of your constituents i was prepared to utilize a democratic process to vote you out of office at the appropriate time until last week during the past five months i have observed you systematically attempt to dismantle the fact fantastic work of educators across this district for example one of the schools was flooded with complaints after several administrators brought to your attention actual concerns and social workers are leaving this district in droves because they have a choice between a clear message of you're not valued here or feeding their families so i'm here to inform you miss pritchard and miss chafin that i will recall you and miss densmore i will remove you in november thank you for your time next we have janet leblanc good evening my name is janet leblanc a tax paying dysart school resident and i'd like to address dr kellis's my request that i made twice not once but twice to post a draft agenda one week prior to the meeting his first response was that it would be too confusing or frustration for the public that was an insult to the public and i once again asked that the agenda be posted one week prior and justification as to why if not so for the third time i am asking once again that the agenda be posted one week prior to the meeting and if not justification as to why you see according to chapter 7 section 765 of the arizona attorney general's handbook the general rule is for no less than 24-hour notice but that the best practice is for the public bodies to give as much notice as possible therefore my request stands whether it be with dr kellis or the interim superintendent and lastly i'd like to thank the board for the direction they are taking with the future of our children's education as a concerned grandma i applaud this is my time i applaud the board for eliminating our ties with nsba and asba thank you for visiting classrooms only to find out that the pledge of allegiance was not properly recited or respected thank you from the bottom of my heart for catching several curriculum approval requests that were a definite form of crt teaching by the way are you aware of this thank you for taking the time to read through these materials and monitoring what is being placed into the minds of our children thank you for turning this ship in the right direction god bless you and may god bless america [Applause] before we move to the next speaker i want to again ask for your courtesy and respect as people speak not everyone in this room shares the same viewpoints but if we can all remain respectful because if we continue to yell out i mean no one would like that if that was done to them and i want to make sure that again it is a peaceful respectful environment if we can't adhere to those requests then we're going to have to ask people to leave or conclude public comment we need to make sure we're peaceful and respectful thank you miss chatham can we also see who is leaning up against the lights and flicking them off and on thank you i don't know [Music] our next our next comment comes from larry leblanc good evening my name is larry leblanc and i'd like you i missed the national anthem i guess we didn't do it but i'd like everybody to note that the national anthem takes about 13 seconds to pledge allegiance to our nation what an honor mr kellis during these meetings when asked why we cannot pledge allegiance by standing and pledging in a high school his response was simply it takes too much time out of the curriculum 13 seconds thank you governing board for questioning the absence of our duty in this matter and your willingness to follow resolution to the end of this to the end of this i wish to help in any way i can turn it up to quote kathleen hohn thank you dysart students parents and educators deserved governing board members that support the mission of the public education i couldn't agree more with that i would like to acknowledge this governing board for their consistent collective efforts in flagging unusual behavior being performed within the dysart school district management departments just recently 1.3 million dollars was spent to purchase school curriculum this governing board taken by surprise asked to authorize this these gentlemen right here excuse me these gentlemen right here transacted the purchase without the government's approval further on this because of the sharp awareness of our board members items within this purchase qualified as crt teachings again thank you board for removing such damaging materials from our children's access mr kellis's response to this matter mr leblanc i'm sorry sorry mr leblanc we're gonna we're gonna have to move forward i'm sorry thank you mr leblanc yes sir thank you all right our next speaker is mr ryan eldridge good evening my name is ryan aldridge and i'm a resident of el mirage i'm here today as a concerned parent and citizen i'd like to thank the strong board members of this board for not being a rubber stamp to this administration and placing students and their families first it's clear the schools of this district are dangerously below average and they have dropped dangerously over the last few years some of the worst in the state that we've seen it's refreshing to see board members holding people accountable for both action and inaction we need to hold our leadership accountable for the success and failures we've seen within our district and when leadership fails the only option is to find somebody who'll take the reins and get the job done i'd also like to express my gratitude for some of the courageous members of this board that stand up to the trend and creating ideal of ideal obviously such as crt seo and restorative justice that do nothing but harm our children and set them up for failure in their future i applaud you for standing up to the national and arizona school board associations for their damning language and calling for the dog to investigate parents who attend school board meetings calling concerned parents like myself domestic terrorists our children are our future we need to teach the facts historical facts along with life skills so that they can be successful and prosper in our country without quality education they are doomed thank you thank you our next comment comes from jennifer drake so good evening president pritchard board my name is jennifer drake i am a community member of 20 years here in surprise and a taxpayer i'm calling i'm coming here because i want to support the board i have been attending board meetings now for over a year and i've noticed a lot of issues that have been brought to the board's attention from a lot of the schools that are attending at least each board meeting two schools attend and a lot of the issues are gaps between math and reading we even have one elementary school where the principal expressed concerns about they have over 575 students that are in the red yellow zone for reading we have a lot of issues in this district and i'm glad that you guys are stepping up and and reviewing issues that are brought to your attention especially the title one the last meeting where they had the title one a lot of the schools are underperforming this is a huge issue our students deserve so much better and i'm glad that you guys are are questioning issues i'm glad you're bringing issues to the surface this is what we need to do to to rectify issues in the district and i just want to applaud you thank you thank you that concludes our call to the public thank you we have more if you signed in to speak to a specific agenda item then you will have a chance to speak for that agenda item later in the board meeting next we'll move to superintendent governing board update uh starting with superintendent update dr dean good evening madam president members of the governing board members of cabinet and our community we are excited this is one week away from our high school graduation ceremonies we're excited to celebrate with our seniors next week graduation is scheduled for wednesday may 18th at the state farm stadium dicer high school will graduate at 10 a.m shadow ridge high school at 12 30 willow canyon high school at three and valley vista high school graduates will have their ceremony at 5 30 p.m so we're excited to celebrate with our seniors as they conclude their time with us and move on into other adventures and that concludes the superintendent's report this evening thank you next we move to governing board update go ahead and start first i we had teacher appreciation week last week and i just want to give a special thank you to our dedicated teachers that put students first and provide them with the tools they need to excel academically i truly appreciate you and support the invaluable work that you're all doing this week happens to be nurses week just thank you to for bandaging up the bumps and bruises of our students and going above and beyond during the pandemic and all the other things that you do to make student wellness a priority in our district again definitely very appreciative of all that you do for us um and then on april 28th i had the opportunity to attend the valley vista high school choir concert it was an amazing performance i felt like i was in one of the california competitions as far as our choreography our costuming and i just want to take a minute to recognize our vvhs choir director preston mcdonald he has done amazing work to transform this choir program and his efforts are truly commendable i also want to thank our fine arts director danae whose hard work and support extends i thought i saw her in the audience somewhere yes extends beyond the walls of valley vista and the work she does benefits all of our students in dysart and again it was just amazing to see the kids and their energy and he really did step in at a time of transition and has just done a phenomenal job so thank you very much to mr preston mcdonald and then on may 4th i had an amazing afternoon with our el mirage mayor hermeso and vice mayor dorsey brave members of our air force as well as proud members of our el mirage police and fire department while i attended the leadership day at riverview elementary school it was an amazing day to watch our little student leaders facilitate tours through our school beaming with school pride i think they told me like at every turn welcome to riverview welcome to riverview it was just wonderful to see their faces and the pride that they had and for their school their presentations were driven by the leader in me program and they were great reminders of how good leadership is defined what it takes to get there these students demonstrated what it takes to be a strong leader and it was just i was so fortunate to be a part of that day and was definitely inspired by all of them and i know um gail miller is going to do an amazing job helping that group just blossom even more than they already are so looking forward to that um and that concludes my board update see you all at graduation very excited about that so anyone else yes um i attended several events i attended the end of the year band concert for shadow ridge i forgot to mention that thank you mr forrest for combining the sonoran heights band with the shadow ridge band and especially for the star wars number that you had i also attempt accompanied state representative joanne osborne as she toured four of our schools she was thir she thoroughly enjoyed uh the cte programs that we offer to our students so she really loved her time here with dysart i also attended the city of surprise council meeting in which dr kellis was acknowledged as the first recipient of the mayor's community leader quarterly award and the proclamation and the proclamation for his contributions to this community and dysart i accompanied dr dean to valley vista to present some extraordinary pins to four of our stuco students that have done an awesome job being student council representatives i also attended the leader leadership day at riverview and just like ms pritchard said it was an awesome day the students did a phenomenal job talking about the seven habits of what a leader should be and uh honestly it was a great day especially when the principal ms lawrence sang the national anthem and she belted it out really well so congratulations there i was also asked to serve as a panel member for the napa it's the national aspiring principles academy explaining the role of the board member and of a school board member and the responsibilities this and how a school board fits into the districts and an organization this was with other leadership personnel a superintendent a central office person and a principal and this was for national aspiring principals and them finishing up their academy i was also asked to participate in marley park's shark tank experience where the 8th grade students presented their business ideas in a shark tank fashion just like the tv tv show awesome job thank you to miss k smith for the experience it was awesome and i am too looking forward to graduation next wednesday this is the great highlight of our year for our students and the acknowledgement of their hard work and their future endeavors and thank you teachers for the last week for your teacher appreciation you do a lot and we thank you for that [Applause] i also attended the city of surprise marin council meeting where they read a proclamation of honoring dr kellis it was very moving um i also attended the dsb live awards and congratulations to all the students that received those awesome um awards that that's an amazing program and then thank you to all your school nurses for what you do you're a value to our district and to our students so that's it [Applause] all right well next we'll move to item h motion to approve the consent agenda items i move the board approve the consent agenda items as presented second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by tracy sorry sink bill motion carries next we're moving to information and discussion items j1 summary of meet and confer sessions dr dean thank you madam president members of the governing board mr hicks is here this evening to provide a summary of the meet and confer sessions which is conducted each year through our interest-based approach or iba mr hicks will present the recommendations from the iba team colleagues and community members thank you very much it's my pleasure to be presenting our iba recommendations for the 2223 fiscal year first i'd like to just start with all the people that dedicated their time and efforts to make sure that we have the best process and best recommendations possible so thank you very much to everybody that stepped up and put in their time this time started over eight months ago so it's a long process as we're going through and as you can see the process is dynamic not linear so it's not a very step step we really do a lot of talking in there and one reminder is is that as we're going through the process and those at least two times that we did we'll stop and just double check to make sure that we're going through the standards that the board has adopted and this is something that's approved annually and we look at legal affordable affordable is normally what drives it from that standpoint can we afford it and ends with judicious and equitable is it fair and impartial it doesn't always mean equal and then necessity this year was a big thing as well too it starts with telling the story so each group representative group shares their side of the story how the year is going what they're looking at moves on into interests what are their interests for this year we look at common ground this is all done with all groups in the same room at the same time and then after we're finding common interest we move into options which is the brainstorming process where we start identifying all the areas we do as you're well aware we come in to the governing board and talk about what your direction is and so we do try to layer and make sure that our governing board proc voices are heard as well as well as everybody in the process we then evaluate again before we finish with the evaluating against all of our standards as i've mentioned previously and everything is consensus based so one person can hold up the whole process and they just have to make sure they're asking good clarifying questions and asking and drilling down more just as a reminder the governing board has already approved a retention stipend so five percent uh went to our certified and classified and four percent went to our administrators that was back in february in march the governing board has already approved our benefits package um so there was a cost related to that there were some changes to our rates tier structures hsa contributions and then for next year we have a decrease in our arizona state retirement system so that also that with a decrease provides a little bit of savings that's allowed to be used in the process this unfortunately was not part of the iba process so i want to be very clear iba did not talk about this but this is something that's been in place for the last couple years which because of kovid and other challenges has made it very difficult for certain exempt an hourly staff to use their vacations because normally it would have to be used by june 30th we a couple years just ago started giving a little extension so they could go a little bit longer and since we did not talk about it i wanted to make sure it's added into this because uh if we went back to the june 30th there could be some penalties because we have not communicated to our staff that they would have to use them by june 30th and i'm afraid there could be some people it's a casualty of not knowing and not scheduling vacation they would lose those days so um although this is in the iba presentation this was not talked about in iba and this is something that i put in just for continued operations continuity of operations the resolutions that we came up with um as we all discussed um we looked at a one percent increase to all of our certified positions one percent to our administrative positions and a six percent increase to all of our hourly and exempt positions so this goes into the necessity the equitable looking at where the greatest needs are and some of our challenges and a lot of our vacant positions and so that shaped and formed our recommendation the next is also for new hire so that was for existing staff for new hires is we're recruiting and bringing in we for the last couple years we have had a model that whatever is given to the group half would go to the new higher placement schedules that recommendation continues for this recommendation as we were also looking there were still additional funds left over and as we were going through all the different options from it we landed on increasing the teaching and tutoring rate from twenty three dollars an hour to thirty dollars an hour and increasing the additional hours for homebound rate from 23 to 30 as well so there was lots of different options that were looked at we looked at those where our teachers were interacting directly with students and prioritize that over other options just so you know this is an assumption so school districts years ago moved to current year funding which no longer meant that we knew exactly what our budget minimum would be there is assumptions in here and so we're looking at our demographic with a increase of about 110 students that did actually when we put in our staffing formulas did have a slight reduction in staff um just how it how it lands out our group b which is our special ed categories that generate revenue we assume that we have the same number of students for next year that we do this year so that we're holding that flat we increased our base support level that we know is in law that we will get the two percent um and so we put that into our increase and we know that our federal funds are supporting capital spending which is mainly our technology component of it and there's the retention stipend that i spoke earlier of that is funded from our federal funds that we received other budget considerations this was not part of iba but just as our budget consideration is that our classroom site fund our estimate our budget amount comes out from the arizona jlbc at the end of march and they came out with i think it was 708 per student and so that calculated out that we had an increase and so there's a thousand dollar increase for our certified staff that are eligible for 301 funds 400 increase in the pay performance from 45 up to 4 900 and a 600 increase in our other funds from uh 60 six thousand to sixty six hundred here's just a cut sheet of our summary our tracking document to make sure that we're um that it is affordable it does show a slight overspent so you can see the net revenues projected revenues so it is current your funding so we are doing projections and then our projected expenses going forward and so we're within eighteen hundred dollars um although it does show a little bit over um one special ed student um or just a couple more students and will exceed that in that sense and so we believe that that was um that we came to agreement on that just to show this is the capital side and although the iba does not really deal with capital i'd like to show this slide all the time because as you can see we transfer some of our capital 1.7 million from capital into our mmo to support our emino budget and so this shows that transfer future consideration so we lived with a very what is on the books right now we know that the legislature and the state is sitting on 5 billion cash surplus from last year for next year we know there's lots of discussions i think i heard that they're working a budget right now there could be one that's presented in the next week or so i don't know what it looks like this is probably the tight most tight-lipped there is going on that i've heard in the last years last few years so we know there could be some additional funds we know from the boyer grand compromise that could mean 800 million more to schools which could be uh 8 to 10 million for our district we don't know all the details of that and so we didn't spend a lot of time talking about what could be in in the past we knew exactly maybe there was a gifted or a special ed weight increase that we could put a recommendation on in lieu of uh if the legislature approves it because we have no idea what the legislature could be doing with that five billion dollars we made no recommendation um no priorities and were the group uh requested that the governing board utilize the iba team to come back at that time to make a recommendation then there were still a lot of brainstorming ideas and options that were on the table and those would be probably re-looked at and readdressed at that time and this is an informational item so this is not a voting item but as you saw on the agenda there's lots of items already embedding all of these recommendations in there so dr croto will be going over some and so we are make we're going forward with um embedding all of this recommendations into the next few uh agenda items and as well as our proposed budget unless we hear any comments or concerns from the governing board tell us otherwise so i'll stand for any questions thank you any questions or comments from the board just had a quick one mr hicks and it wasn't a question it was more of a comment to the iba team thank you for wanting to increase the tutor rate from 23 to 30 and also the homebound instruction to 30.
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we'll use those same estimates that we tentatively approved at the march board meeting and then by june 22nd we we hope the state has approved a state budget is looking iffy right now there's still there's a lot of money on the table in terms of excess cash and so when you have a lot of money on the table defining priorities is where they're at right now in terms of where they want to prioritize those funds k-12 is the biggest budget number in the in the state budget but our state has not historically prioritized k-12 education funding so we hope there are some um initiatives out there some house bills and senate bills that um do have a lot of support for k-12 education and providing some additional funding going into 2023 so those are what we'll base some of our estimates on and we'll bring those on june 8.
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ars 15 905 requires that districts submit the final budget revisions to the governing board for approval no later than may 15th and we must upload to the superintendent of public instruction no later than may 18th the revision reflects an increase in our adm of 199.57 students additional add-on funds received for the k-3 reading programs and the gifted programs as well as some of the latest adjustments provided to us by ade on our budget report 25.
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um june 14th will be another early dismissal rain date um june 15th is a the early dismissal alternative date for our graduation um and june 17th will be the early dismissal last day of school uh junior promise is this friday tickets are being sold this week um and it's being held at the portuguese club senior prom is two fridays from this week uh it'll be in the amber room and we'll be selling tickets for it next week and lastly community change projects for period leadership class are either kicked off we'll be kicking off the next couple of weeks a lot of projects are kickball dodgeball portal tournaments bingo knights and other fundraisers that's thank you guys thank you thank you scott okay moving on to the superintendent's report thank you thank you so we have quite a few updates and also some amazing news to announce but we'll start with a city council budget update we had the mayor's budget proposed and approved by the council so john has trump mr spain has some updates regarding next steps for us as a cabinet but also as board get some other news thank you so as you know last week when the city council adopted all the department of budgets they followed their ad hoc committee's recommendation which was to endorse the mayor's budget of for us of 141 million dollars you'll remember our uh our board budget was 152 million and so after that uh we've we're going to we've gone to work uh the administration the cabinet uh we're putting together some ideas we're going to come in front of you uh with some recommendations at your first june meeting it's neat that's the same time last year the budget was brought to you to make some decisions um well just to be a little more specific what we're doing now is we're taking a second look at what we put together you know it was back in december and uh we know a lot more now than we did then uh taking a fresh look at enrollments with better information now we know more about some of our costs as we get closer to july 1st uh some of the labor contracts that we uh estimated and probably knew how they come in uh we now we have them in so we'll put all that together and as i said bring you something at your first june meeting if i may well while i'm here i'd like to also just say word on the audit and some of the publicity that received this week as it was connected to our budget and um a few things briefly if anything you know there isn't there's not a school audit what was going on um the city is putting together its annual uh financial statements it's a 204 page that covers all of their financial results of last year and um hey i would just cr i'd like to preface things this way some of you may know this i myself started my career in business as an auditor i was an auditor for uh two years a corporate fortune 500 owner and after that i became an internal control coordinator for the anaconda company in waterbury uh dealing with all their audits writing accounting policy and procedures and things like that so i say that because i understand i've always understood what auditors do and what they need to do and have always been able to talk with them about the tasks they're trying to do it was either late february or early march we've been having some regular zoo meetings with the audit comedians city finance officials and we were led to believe that we were finished with all the requirements that were necessary in fact the only item the auditors were looking to have finished at that time was a thing called compensating balances it's a section in here it's something the city puts together and at that point the auditors were discouraged from finishing they were told that we needed the city needed to finish the mayor's budget it would take about a month and they could come back that and um so we didn't think we had much of a role at that point in the year we had to do anything and about a month later when they came back we received a list of what was then 18 items to finish things like coffee bank reconciliation or you know typical normal kinds of things they need to put their statements together so uh on may 6 that this uh turned into 21 items from 18 items and i can report to you tonight that of the 21 items 20 of those have been completed we've submitted them to a we've engaged a municipal auditor ourselves to look over our work and make sure those items put together pass muster are correct and policies importantly don't need to be done a second time i expect all those to go over to the auditor's portal it's all remote this week the one item that's not done we had a telephone conversation today had to do some paycheck sampling that they asked to do back in september we asked them if we could have uh could have the request again they didn't have it they couldn't find it they said they would give us a new one as soon as they put one together so that's the only item we think we have to finish now um but i think just as importantly we're doing the self-assessment ourselves we're looking inwards and gonna determine what what went wrong and why how did we get to this point and um with what happened what are we gonna do differently next year what type of steps i'll call them corrective actions so that everything's done on time we don't get here and with that plan we want to share that and sit down with the audience and see here's what we think we need to do differently what do you think will this work will this make it better because you know it's always been my experience i i've been on it for 30 years at least by some of the top firms in connecticut um and it's always been collaborative they they really are our partners of us they're there to help us and i i want to make sure we have that relationship that they could help usually they welcome uh things like that but i think we'll put together uh something that works certainly share it with you when we have it and so that's that's what's going on thank you john thank you thank you a quick question so we have a finance committee meeting coming up yes are you going to go over the stuff that we're that you're proposing to present to the board after yes yes we'll have an update number one on the audit but then secondly we will walk the finance committee through anything that we're going to propose to the board on june 8th uh that first board meeting in june yes but that's what you're asking right we're going to welcome community first absolutely yes that one item that's not completed do you have any idea when that's going to be complete the issue ups are good yeah we're waiting for what they do is they'll they'll come in and they'll sample some payrolls and they'll just randomly take some paychecks they'll they'll trace that through to everything let's say they'll look at the labor contract and see if they're paid on the right step they'll look at in their personnel files and see if they have their w-4 filled out and uh you know was the direct deposit right they traced things up and down the continuum and so then as we said could we have that request again and they couldn't find it we'll give you another one to help us in the next couple days because until we get it what they want us to do is um because now every everything's remote they'll want us to make copies of their appointment letter or their w-4 or something else that's in their file if i'm out of order please stop me it happened to me the communication and what came out as far as statements from the city side making it board to me look like we didn't know what we were doing and leadership and to me i feel like it should have been some type of communication and understanding if you guys have been working so long together and putting the budget together to have some type of discussion before that type of information came up so you're telling me you start off with 18 items they found them to 21.
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i'll work for everyone else or is that somehow it doesn't work i'm gone that whole week it's our annual tahoe trip with the fam um but i can either ask someone to come in my place or feel free please to go ahead and i can find out the results after all right cool um is anybody else not able to make it given the fact that that's when they'll have it ready yeah also i will be in virginia um at that time um i may be able to connect on you know just my phone i'm not taking my laptop but um and be a part of it because as long as i have the link i don't see why i couldn't except for their three hours later there so 7 30 instead of 4 30. yeah yeah all right and it should be pretty simple one item to hear the presentation of the results and then you know we'll take them to the board on the 23rd so cool um all right uh enjoy tahoe we'll we'll uh we'll be jealous of you over here if i had internet i would i would attempt to sign on but we're pretty remote up when we're up there but thanks cool um all right anything else so the 20 30 days so all right cool that's a 5.01 we've scheduled the next meeting 23rd same same bad channel same time 21st right so what's that 21st oh yeah 21st uh 4 30 and we'll all get uh the link um via the agenda all right cool um all right so we'll go ahead and if there's nothing else anything else going once going twice uh we'll go ahead and enjoy this meeting at 5 30 thank you everyone for attending looking forward to the results on the 21
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so i think we can because overall the document looks really good just a few little areas that we were concerned about and that was it so and i thought we made the changes today is that true yes for your information bands looked at the whole portion of this that deals with so so what i would suggest is what you're saying but that we do it in the executive session and then so we can all be on the same page we can ask the questions that any of us have and we can make sure that we're all clear on all of the legal requirements you can also invite the teachers on the committee so they're going to get straight from that yep absolutely because if this is the document between teachers and administration and shouldn't the teachers be involved because because what you were saying is you didn't want to dictate to us what we put in this document and i at the time i thought that was the right thing to say i thought it was right because it is our agreement right and so that's why we just finally said no because of the time right so i would be willing to make a motion right now to table this we can schedule an executive session with the staff that's involved with this administration and the attorney for the district as soon as we can so you can get it hammered out knocked out that you think that'll be okay with the rest of the teachers if they can all be here great if some can make it that'd be it's knowing you have some input at the executive session may i ask a question this is going to sound inconsiderate all of you that have jobs because they have jobs yeah um two wins is left there are well yes there are only two wednesdays left and um i believe both of the other teachers are leaving yes well no rom's going on vacation yeah i'm just leaving the league's taking sessions um [Music] okay and pending is giving a special session an executive session for this on the 18th at 1 30.
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the fy 22 allocation is 733 dollars per weighted student count the revision number one had it estimated at one million five hundred and ninety three thousand 887 the actual allocation after the state re re-totaled everything is one million eight hundred dollars three hundred one million five hundred and eighty dollars 377.72 which is an actual decrease overall to the classroom site fund of thirteen thousand five hundred and nine dollars so the actual new classroom site fund budget limit is one million six hundred and thirty three thousand fifty sixty four dollars and seventy two cents so that is what we have to spend remember how classroom site fund used to be divided into three funds o eleven o twelve and o thirteen now it's all in under fund 10 so this is just all in fund 10 from now on so are there any specific questions and what i sent out to the board yesterday in regards to the budget package i didn't have any questions i just wanted is it easier to take care of it when it's just under one category or the three categories that we previously had to break out when prop 301 first came out in 2001.
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it is appreciated okay thank you very much thank you next we move to information discussion item j2 staffing update dr dean thank you madam president members of the governing board this evening dr crota will present an update in terms of our staffing thank you dr dean madam president uh members of the board cabinet and guests uh tonight we'll give you a quick update on our staffing and where we're at um as many of you know there's a lot of opportunities for employment not only in our district but in every state in the united states and unfortunately our school districts were not immune to what they're calling the great resignation so i'm going to share some numbers with you and then take so many questions so on march 11 2021 we had all our contracts turned back in we issued 1298 contracts for our administrative and certificated employees of that 1181 employees returned or on the flip side if you want that 117 employees did not return their contract so did not renew their contracts as of today this afternoon we currently have the following openings we have 55 certificated regular ed teaching positions open we have 35 certified special ed teacher openings we have 10 what i call student support positions certificated people and then 13 ess department positions slps ots and those things so with that just a quick overview of where we're at in the positions we have open and i'll stand if you have any questions so in regard to retention rates how are we in regard to in comparison to last year and i know it's it's hard with kovid but um madame president i believe i have that here last year we had uh hold on just a second last year we had 1428 turned in and contracts issued and of that we had rejected 67 i believe on here so last year i have percentages last year we were at 95 return rate this year we're at 92 percent so we did drop a little bit this year um but we are still in the 90s so we are working hard to search for those employees and advertising everywhere we can and advertising to this group so please go out there and tell people to come work for this awesome district so so then just for clarity um there's been recent community concern about staff like leaving in droves would you say 92 percent return i mean how would you respond to that um i do not think they're leaving in droves i think we are not immune as i said to the great resignation and people are finding other opportunities and there are a lot of opportunities out there um and not only in our community but in this state so there are a lot of jobs and and people are leaving for all various reasons they're not um i would say leaving in droves thank you for clarifying that any other questions from the board all right we'll move to action discussion items uh k-1 recommendation to approve the appointment of assistant principal dr dean thank you madam president members of the governing board this evening administration is proud to recommend miss aaron burgess for the position of assistant principal at willow canyon high school for the 22-23 school year miss burgess received a master's degree in educational administration from eastern new mexico university she has 19 years of teaching experience as a math teacher someone after my own heart and one year as a teaching and learning specialist in the discharge school district miss burgess will is recommended to take the position of assistant principal at willow canyon high school and ms burgess is with us this evening [Laughter] any questions or comments from the board i move the board approve the appointment of aaron burgess as high school assistant principal for the 2022-2023 school year do i have a second second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by dawn densmore motion carries welcome next we moved to item k2 recommendation for approval of employee referral program dr dean thank you madam president members of governing board dr croto will present information to the board regarding our con our recommendation for continuation of the employee referral program dr croto thank you dr dean madam president uh members of the board cabinet guests last year about this time you instituted an employee referral program in that current employees that recommend people for full-time employees full-time positions in this district after three months they received 250 and after six months of continuous employment that employee who referred them also received another 250 so there was a 500 incentive if that employee came to us was referred by the employee and stayed with us we said we would discuss it in a year bring it back so i'm bringing back to you we've had in that program 64 total referrals right now of that the 35 have received the first the employees 35 of those people received the first 250 and 12 of them have received the additional second 12 of those 35 have received the 250 for that so that's a total of eleven thousand seven hundred fifty dollars uh we did gain 64 employee referrals which is excellent so i am here tonight to ask you to continue this program um where if an employee recommends an employee for this district then we ask right up the front on the application and we also ask them on onboarding to make sure that we have that clear that if they stay for three consecutive months we reward that employee with 250 and then if they stay for another additional three months or six months total that they get another 250.
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so with that if there's any questions i'll be yes thank you it's good for all of us we get the asba updates on the legislators legislative uh information so we're watching lots of bills anybody from the audience don't all russia once thank you very much thank you i appreciate you and we've eaten and slept and drank and all kinds of things of this budget so i almost haven't memorized numbers no i'm kidding it's a lot of numbers i'm kidding it's a lot of numbers okay we are going to reconvene in open session and move on to our superintendents report president kaler members of the board tonight we want to celebrate and acknowledge some of the individuals in in the boardroom tonight who were amazing in making our car art fest what it was and we all i know enjoyed being part of this and both sherry and chris are going to introduce our committee who was here tonight so that we can acknowledge and thank them for all the work that they did this was quite a beautiful celebration of our fine rights festival and our students in our district so thank you dr foley president kaler members of the board our amazing committee and our community at this time i want to do a special shout out to williamsfield high school we changed our location due to scheduling conflicts and they bent over backwards miss heidi zellner drove around on her golf cart lickety-split what do you need let me help you that whole administrative team along with the plant foreman jack morrison couldn't have been more accommodating so if you were able to attend i think it's easy to say we had close to 2 000 people in attendance so it's a big celebration and at this time i want mr watson hazard to come up because he's going to help hand out certificates and chris and i are going to call committee members up so when we call you up here please stay up here don't run away because you're going to get a picture with our amazing school board all right let's start with katie atkins [Applause] and i can go on and on about everybody but come this way either way you want to go okay heather bogus [Applause] my chesmar [Applause] rachel koblentz [Applause] janelle coda [Applause] bob edgar [Applause] pam edgar [Applause] elizabeth habib [Applause] jenny huddle nicole johnson [Applause] teresa joseph [Applause] david lotzenheiser [Applause] jack morrison [Applause] thomas murphy [Applause] kim ohanian [Applause] chantel parene curtis care reuben sherry richards thank you alexis sanchez [Applause] andrea zebo [Applause] chris treat [Applause] rudy trujillo [Applause] mandy verville [Applause] angie walker [Applause] vanessa weaver jonathan williard [Applause] heidi zellner [Applause] bob zucker as you can tell there were a lot of people on this committee and people are like how do you have that many people on the committee it took all of us right every single person millions of hours thank you i celebrate all of you the talent and your work ethic every day so how do we want to do this picture and who's going to take the picture teresa mandy is oh mike chismar was that your phone i knew it thank you for being here tonight we appreciate you and all that you do um we will continue with the superintendent's report um i just truncated a few of the big events we have as you know we literally have multiple events every night over the next several weeks and we're doing our best to get to what we can get to but as you can see we have a few more very important celebrations and we're looking forward to our retirement celebration tomorrow while we celebrate some of those who have been with higley who are getting ready to enjoy their retirement so thank you for your support on all of the events and activities that we have had thank you dr foley uh next up we have board comments mrs wilson thank you um we've been busy the last i think two and a half weeks three weeks um i was able to go to gateway point they had a stay trip and wild adventure came and that was fabulous saucemen had a law enforcement day with mrs kaler we both attended which was fabulous they invited queen creek to queen creek police station it's still kind of different to say police over and had a lunch for them chaparral had leadership day we also had teacher of the year which i think we may have overlooked that how great and fabulous that was we had the arts fest of course higley high school senior awards we also had a drug talk that we were able to do here a superintendent's visit and last night hta had a night of excellence that was fabulous and honestly everything i've been to has just been remarkable from our school so thank you to all the admin and all the teachers who are staying late and getting up early to make these events possible because without you guys we would not be doing this so thank you go ahead mrs anderson um i was on my way to um target to just background to get something at target and i was driving by williamsfield high school and saw a bunch of beautiful cars a couple of weekends ago and drooped and came back around and they were having a car show the band was having a car show there and it was great to see all different ages there showing off their cars young and old and i just wanted to give a shout out to the sponsors that made that possible they had awards for the people that went there and donated money and helped to support the ban i just wanted to make sure everybody got recognized for that mr kaler i missed one i'm so sorry um i also missed bridges i went i was able to go to williamsfield high school hosted bridges um willy wonka and it was a the cutest little play with the kids doing it so i'm sorry i forgot i wrote it i wrote all my things on their flyer and forgot them so i want to make sure that they're shout out as well yes there's been dance and shows and just every night of the week there's another event in higley that we could attend and um so we we do appreciate being invited not that we can always all attend um but please know that we we appreciate the extra efforts that go in this time of year to make all that happen not to mention preparation for finals and graduations and everything else so go ahead i just want to say i'm glad they're all happening and they're all back that's awesome so it's great even though our calendars are give me anxiety then it's still great that it's happening for sure all right we're going to move on to request to speak we value input from our constituents this time has been set aside for anyone from the audience who wishes to address the board please remember this is not an appropriate venue to evaluate discuss or criticize district personnel policy keb provides a process for complaints about personnel speakers should be aware that false statements about individuals may result in civil liability members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda therefore pursuant to ars 38-431-01h action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing the staff to study the matter responding to any criticism or scheduling the matter for further consideration and decision at a later date please make sure you keep your remarks to three minutes we're going to start off with rob lander you thank you um good evening again higley schools governing board members amy kaler michelle anderson jill wilson and tiffany schultz good evening also dr don foley my name is rob landrieu i'm here once again with my wife uh and i'm choosing to speak my wife last time uh in regards to the importance of teamwork and how it's not just a useful concept but rather a necessity i go further to say that for success throughout life's journey for each and every person regardless of age we need to learn how to be a team player this begins being mentored repetitively by adults our young lives parents grandparents aunts uncles teachers and yes those adults that become part of our world through extracurriculars like sports and coaches that lead one's that's right team regrettably it's in reference to violations and policy they that i know the district is committed to investigating thoroughly even when it supports staff related like all coaching positions are i submit staff conduct gbeb that cites make the well-being of students the fundamental value of all decision making and action and maintain just courteous proper relationships with students parents staff members and others in addition staff conduct with students code gbebb as it states at all times teachers and other staff members will accord students the dignity and respect they deserve and avoid embarrassing any student unnecessarily lastly staff conduct of cooperation gveb-eb that reads higley employees are honest open and truthful admit mistakes and move forward err on the side of compassion strive to keep team members there's that word again informed with timely accurate and relevant information problem solved directly with those involved with concern whenever possible lead by example and encouragement listen value and respect team members input my wife and i are as active stakeholders in the community in williamsfield can with all respectable truth and integrity tell you these policies are not being upheld administration may say that that is the case with them but we assure you that it has not been the case with multiple players and families which has led to six school transfers we have submitted 14 pages of statements documenting events to three administrators that support that we are saying here tonight leslie and i are here again as invested supporters of the williams seal basketball program and are committed to achieving excellent excellence in every way to support every single youth involved is priority one we choose to mentor doing hard things for our children just they say they can be inspired to impact the world for others sake and not just their own thank you thank you very much we are going to move on to krista baccavi did i say that right kristen it's uh kristen mcafee okay christian mcavee thank you so first of all i want to thank you all for having me um so about me uh so i'm a new substitute and i'm super excited about that um so i'm coming to check you all out see how you all do it behind the scenes um and i'm also an author now i come from humble beginnings robbins which is what dwyane wade is from three-time nba champion it's very rough there right and growing up in school i was a slacker but i want to thank people like you all the superintendent the board right who were behind the scenes fighting for me but i didn't when i didn't even know you all existed right the teachers the principals um and i ended up going to asu because of my aunt who was from chicago but she moved a good year and she had a beautiful house up in the mountains right and uh and i just loved it i was like you know what when i get a chance i'm gonna go to school in arizona and i got the chance to do it and i became an author because while i was here in arizona i had a child who was eight and she changed my life and i was reading books to her right and i couldn't help but think like what does these books got to do with what i want to teach you right so tony morrison says uh if it's the if there's a book out there that you want to read that hasn't been written guess who has to write you right so um this led me i've been going to board meetings and i was at one board meeting in particular where the superintendent was like i don't have all the answers we need more community engagement we need more parents kids business on us right and i'm just like wow i feel like she talking to me right i got to do something about this so um so i wrote superintendents take the best selfies writing this whole school series write attention about superintendents right and i want to give it up to ms foley right dr foley because i haven't been too many board meetings and seen her not seen people not sitting with the board right the superintendent so i would say that's some humility there um but i believe i solved the 200 year problem that's how long education has been around about 201 years public education and matt maxwell he has a book called 21 irrefutable laws of leadership and in the book it talks about the law of the lead right the kids and everyone else would only rise to level of leadership as the leader right so we have to raise the law of the lead and that's why i believe my books are so important um because it's raising the law of the lid and teaching them the different levels of superintendents which i believe a lot of people don't know right above district right regional or county state national and i believe it's important because we want to empower them to know these levels to um help them become these levels so yeah so i'm excited and i'll share my books with you all and you know education is going to be fun with my help or without it but more importantly so thank you all thank you and our last speaker is demarius johnson demarius did i say it right demarius johnson how you guys doing thank you for having me so my son is demaryius johnson jr and we moved from texas and i bought a house here in gilbert thinking that williamsfield was the school for him he's a 6'5 200 pounds so he's a big kid and he wanted to play for williamsfield and i thought williamsville was the greatest program for him until i got there and things was different my wife can't be here because she's at work but i can't get deep into everything but i think he was robbed of opportunity and now he has to go to perry and we live literally right across the street and it's just a lack of coaching just the lack of everything communication just everything and he beats himself up every day because he wants to be at williamsfield but it's deeper than that and now he's at perry and i want him to be at williamsfield because i think he's a great kid straight a student and i just think he got robbed of his opportunity and i don't think that's fair for a 9th grader and i'm here for my wife i'm here for him and i mean i don't know what it where to go from here i don't know where to start i mean that's where he wants to be i bought a house in gilbert for that and now he has to drive eight miles or so because of the program there i mean it's corrupted i mean i'm being honest you know coming all the way from texas and trying to get him back there and now he has to sit out his 10th year for that so another waste a year that's it thank you and know that dr foley will and her team will follow up with these um speakers tonight thank you all right we have to move on uh i move that we approve consent agent item 7.1 to 7.17 second any questions or comments um i do have a quick comment just knowing when we look at make sure it's on here 7.9 gifts and donations that there's definitely been some improvement to our policy our process in our procedure when it comes to gifts and donations we are following those better and we have them in place and so you'll see more here the buffalo wild wings chase building team centennial ptos all of our ptos are following the process when they go to donate items to our schools and frank garola from gilbert now for the fine arts so we thank them for their generosity but also knowing that we too on our end are doing everything a little bit better a little more fine-tuned so i appreciate that any other questions or comments notice that i appreciate the donations yes very much they're very generous all those in favor aye aye motion carries 4-0 all right we are on to something very exciting and you everybody was given a qr code so have that handy and i'm going to pass it off to tyler moore for an update on our higley high school project yes good evening again president kaley remembers the board i'm very excited to present this presentation tonight it's an update of the higley high school project which is a culmination of numerous hours from input from stakeholder groups which you'll see throughout this presentation i believe you know this project is a representation of what our current administration is doing to be more collaborative and transparent with our taxpayer dollars in terms of having input and us being more transparent with how our money is being spent so mr mark and i just stopped you right there for just a second and i just want to echo again this process was done so well if anybody had anything to say whether it was agree to disagree no matter what it was we welcomed that not just one night not just two nights we had three we added one we had four nights of meetings to go over this with input from students as well as staff as well as the community so well done higley as far as bringing everybody together to make sure everybody had a voice in this process so thank you there's also numerous surveys so if you're sorry i was at three of the four and it was fabulously some more attended than others but it was a good time discussion um lots of good discussion lots of good ideas yeah well yeah there's also numerous surveys and throughout this presentation you'll see the level of input that went into the design of this project and will continue to be collaborative in the remaining design and build of this project so the next slide here there we go so our agenda we have uh we'll talk a little bit how this project was identified a little bit about our decision process i'll discuss the procurement process in which enabled us to gather the stakeholder input it was a different procurement process in which we procured a contractor in the process in which we're going through right now which allows for this initial preliminary input and feedback and back and forth to come up with a project that is both a culmination of something that's going to represent that site or sit on that site and be able to be used for a number of years going forward we'll talk about the master schedule i'll invite our architect up from dlr ms carmen wykoff to talk about the master schedule as well as the stakeholder input process which you kind of alluded to there was a four-part process to that we listened we presented options and what we thought we heard we then went back revised those options we came with options with cost and then we shared out those options so over the course of those four community meetings we we went through that process well also the qr code that you mentioned is also going to be in our presentation so if anybody online wants to follow along they can also scan in but we'll look at some of the schematic designs of the higley high school building edition and then we'll talk about about upcoming dates so first how did this project get identified a little a little background last fiscal year during the 2021 bond proposal the district adopted a new internal process for identifying and prioritizing major maintenance major projects the process looks at three main priorities which include safety and compliance school capacity needs and long-term capital planning priority one states that the district will prioritize all safety and compliance projects first this goes without saying but we absolutely should have our school on campus say for our students and staff and so any capital maintenance or a major or major project obviously our first priority with budget goes to those meeting that priority priority number two states that the district will prioritize school capacity needs after safety and compliance projects are met and completed so priority two is where the higley high school project fits in last fiscal year when conducting our internal site capacity studies and reviewing demographic reports it was clear higley high school was out of room and that trend was going to continue in the future the district was optimistically hoping to fund this project from the 2021 bond proposal however that unfortunately did not pass so therefore the district moved forward with utilizing the remaining 2013 bond to procure an architect um and then we're using um as attentively approved in the capital outlay plan our capital outlay budget to cover the building cost priority number three party number three states that the district will prioritize our long-term capital plan after both priority one and priority two were met so again i would like to say most of the most of the time our maintenance department's budget is allocated towards priority three but as you know emergencies new compliance standards and all those unknowns um have us constantly uh revising and re-prioritizing our major prior projects and maintenance budgets so we're constantly ebbing and flowing through this as as things come up um but we can't we this is our our guiding compass so to speak and how higly was funded or not funded but chosen to be the next project so a little bit about the procurement process first we have a current rfq from 2018 that is under a five-year window so that will be eligible for renewal in 23 next fiscal year for architectural services on that rfq there are three firms adm group dlr group and orcott winslow since we have that rfq we could have just selected a firm and chose to for this project but we actually went through another evaluation process we submitted out um to each of these firms a criteria of what we were looking to do we then evaluated each of those firms the architect committee consisted of interim associate superintendent cherry richards interim director of support services rich dobson purchasing manager wendy garriton and myself and through that's that evaluation process we recommend a dlr to the governing board on december 8th the governing board awarded dlr the contract amount that is up on the slide and that included all anticipated expenses related to architectural and engineering services for phase one and preliminary planning for the potential of phase two so we got narcotic on board so fast forward to the the construction um procuring a contractor so what is different from the williamsfield field house project in this process was the process we used to procure a contractor the request for qualification for construction manager at risk is a is a much different process so in summary the cmr process is a more collaborative teamwork oriented solution to a construction project it gets contractors out early which is chase has been on board early to the project to provide input and work through the design to ensure the building starts and goes according to plan once the gmp is approved that is one of the main differences in this project and we are already finding the benefit of that um as we proceed through this project um just to highlight there are ten firms so good um yes this is different but then it was having the the building team on the committee helping us to design and get the feedback instead of the other way around correct so that's the benefit of having it this way is that we had their input along the way they they just weren't given the end product and say here so they were part of those conversations and they were able to hear and listen to what the stakeholders had to say correct yeah and they're still involved in that process and whereas the williams field house project was a hard bid so there was no there was no they weren't involved in that process they were bidding off of what the architecture design so just to highlight um the interest level on this so 10 firms submitted for this proposal for this higley high school project the evaluation committee was a little different we it consisted of and it is required to be different by statute very consistent of executive director of secondary david lotzenheiser principal of higley high allen fields interim director rich of support services rich dobson purchasing manager wendy garrettson and by statute it needs to have an architect so a representative from dlr keith wong sat on the firm and then we also had a registered contractor and of course myself and that evaluation committee reviewed all the proposals and we shortlisted um 2-3 we then conducted 45-minute interviews for those three short-lifted firms and that same evaluation committee recommended chase building as the contractor for this project which you approve that pre-construction amount which then allows them to come out and be involved in that design process on february 9th and so we're still working through the guaranteed maximum price which is the culmination of all the design work and all the input and feedback we look to potentially bring that june 22nd with another information item to talk about budget and price for that new building so i'd like to invite miss carmen wyckoff from dlr architect to talk a little bit on how we develop the master schedule and where we are in the process thank you tyler and hello madam president board members um super excited to be here so as you may know we did kick off our steering committee which is most of the folks in front of you and a few others in december with kind of a vision what's the the master plan big idea um as tyler mentioned we did sit on the seymar selection committee and i have to give props to my partners here in the crowd because they have been really involved we keep bouncing ideas off of them like this metal panel versus that metal panel which is cheaper which lasts longer and they just hit it back at us so it's a really collaborative process i think it gets you a far better value in the end because we have somebody we can ask questions of we did go through those four meetings that tyler mentioned one of them was heavily attended and you have uh some pretty smart cookies in your high school i think some might be running for governor soon um but they were they had really really great questions and now uh we're in front of you with the schematic design so in the architecture process schematic design is kind of where are the rooms where are the walls where are the windows now we've just gone through a little bit called design development which is working with your staff on what goes inside the rooms and then finally we go to construction documents which is getting ready for permit so we put our heads down and do all of our engineering and our calcs and more boring stuff but necessary um and that is chase will be out pending all these approvals out over the summer making things safe so that when students come back there's a secure perimeter and they can get started staying out of everybody's way so the stakeholder input as as we mentioned after that steering committee we did sort of organize it into listen options and then share out um the listen was fantastic we worked directly with a student group as well as the community group in the evening the options as well we did a student group a community group and that was the really well attended one where we got feedback to do a broader survey so i have never sent out a survey and gotten nearly a thousand results this is phenomenal it shows how excited people are with those and with chase as our partner with construction cost estimating they came back and put some round numbers especially to the phase two options that are now in your your board vote and having them on board especially during this time of crazy escalation was really really helpful um we got some voting and some feedback both physical like actual votes but a lot of intangible comments back and then we did our share out and after our share i haven't personally seen any um other comments other than a positive go forward so that's pretty exciting i do want to add too in the stakeholder input process i mean there were some several governing boards attended some of these community meetings and and really this helped vet out um several things that we overlooked right the fine arts was a big one we completely kind of overlooked that as a steering committee and that is the value that i knew from previous experience having these community meetings and having that stuff input provides because it brings everybody to the table that you may have overlooked and not not purposely but just overlooked in the process of this being such a big project so uh fine arts was one of those that came out um we helped talk about some initiatives for a potential phase two um to give knowing that that that site is growing we are gonna so are other those programs and so how do we accommodate not only their growing student population but our growing population for all our groups and all our clubs and so that is something that we added to that face to initiative and our potential future bond and there were several other things dr foley did you want to add yeah one of the things i think that was one of the powerful pieces that was at one of the community meetings that was also some of the work that they did with students was everyone has ideas and they had suggestions and thoughts and there are more ideas suggestions and thoughts than there is even a potential budget to address but when we empowered them with figures and numbers of what those costs were all of a sudden people then were also empowered to prioritize and consensus building was happening and it wasn't just give out your ideas and then then a district group or somebody comes back and says no this was empowering you with ideas to prioritize it with facts and figures for us to get a true sense of priorities so i have to complement this team for setting up setting up people to actually have a voice and be empowered and hearing it and listening it but also allowing us for prioritization which was huge huge because all of a sudden all of the wants and wishes became not as important and additional priorities came out so one of the things we're proud of is the involvement but also the quality of the involvement in the decision making dr foley i think it's important to mention here that we will have teachers who do not have classrooms next year at higley high that was one of my questions that i asked mr fields and he said that there will be teachers who have to have a cart and we'll be using a cart and going in so i think it's important for our community to know that um it's important to know that they'll be traveling yeah they will be traveling they will not have a home a home room that teacher will not have her or him or her will not have their own room and that's a big deal to build community for that teacher to have some stability so i think it's important for our community to know that that next year is still going to be a struggle for us because phase one will not be done and we will have teachers who will have to because we will have too many classes happening so yeah thank you miss wilson again it goes back to the decision process too and us identifying that early and unfortunately we have the funding source to make this phase one happen but um in the future that's why bonds and stuff are so important because the district is not funded um for a lot of these initiatives that require large capital dollars so now the fun part so we we do have a qr code i believe we hand it out to each governing remember um and i believe like i said online you should be able to scan this qr code and jump into an interactive view of the higley high school building we have three sides that are screen shots and ms carmen wifekoff can talk through some of the design and how this final design came about thank you tyler so this is a view if you're standing um just off of the left off of the page is the um the the amphitheater and the statue to the right is the gymnasium so the feedback we got from both your students and your community and your administration was pretty consistent make this building look like parker higley high but make it a little more modern and what you want higley high to be so you don't want it to stand out like a sore thumb but don't just match higley high and so we took some inspiration from pieces that we thought worked really well like the entryway to your cafeteria with the broad big canopy as you see there we've got a canopy to the south and the west of the main entry which also saves you on energy because you have that nice shade overhang and then the classroom building itself being a pretty simple box for economy but bringing in the slope that you see elsewhere on campus as well as the metal panel that you see elsewhere and then of course we've got a touch of color which if you looked at the phase two renderings that we did the idea is if the bond were to pass to kind of bring that touch of color throughout the campus so that would help tie in the new and the old energize it a little bit so i hope the qr code is working you always cross your fingers with technology can you talk a little bit about the the larger windows and the the voting and the feel for natural light that the students kind of aspired to have i i appreciate the um yeah the prompt there so actually dlr group is the only architect that i know of that has done primary research so anybody who got their doctorate in the room primary research with a peer reviewed and some of that research was into what engages students and engages teachers because that means less absenteeism and better graduation rates all good a lot of it's no brainers but it's really cool the studies actually show that up to 16 percent of a student's engagement can be helped or hindered by the space they're in which is stunning to and me way we can support teachers is amazing so one of those things is natural light view to outside and nature is a big one when you see the inside flexibility and the ability to individualize your learning space can really help your engagement and picture i mean when we were all working at home sitting on our kitchen chairs and fidgeting all day because we're uncomfortable i'm sure our work productivity went down a little bit students are very different so those are the sorts of things that we like to bring into our design such as the large windows newer windows also block a lot of sunlight and glare so i wouldn't worry about the heat from you know your super old windows that you're used to some places so this is upstairs the railing you see there is actually a little overlook to the downstairs collaborative area and in order to every step of the way our discussions were how do you get those breakout spaces that collaboration that all the good project-based learning and all the supervision you need in high school so part of our design and the way it angles is to have no hidey holes no no weird crevices right but at the same time get that view out from the classroom so that you could send a kid out to do a retest or a reteach or a project without worrying and so what you see there is kind of the collaborative area a connection to downstairs the superintendent or the i'm sorry the principal is planning to put a staff member like a career counselor downstairs so outside of the classrooms there is an adult eyes and ears on the area even when class is going on any questions okay a few of us are super excited about this this is the upstairs lecture hall so this is the size of about a double classroom it has some good storage so that you can take away tables and tuck them away if you're using it in a very different capacity it also has an amazing connection to the football field that we're looking forward to so this could be a really cool after-school space as well as a full-blown educational space during the day and the feedback we got from teachers is a double room like this that is acoustically separated from you know the rest of the school is a great place to do a collaborative um let's say a project between math and science where you need to get two classrooms together or a club activity or student government all those sorts of things where one classroom is a little tight for everybody and moving it upstairs the balcony you see out there is actually an exit pathway so everything does double duty to stretch our budget but certainly it would provide kind of a nice overlook during sporting events any questions about anything so far dr foley was this this campus that had a teacher um volunteered to teach two classes in the same time was there a teacher yeah i thought it was higley high who had yeah she had to um we had a substitute issue in january and she decided to teach two classes at the same time and had to move into a big classroom and i think this classroom would be really ideal for something like that just for our community members who maybe don't realize that we have sometimes that happening so president kaler board member wilson one of the things we know from an instructional standpoint is that having multi-purpose space that can be used for multiple for multiple factors for multiple reasons as an essential component and when you're tight on space and don't have flexible space like this it limits options so this allows multiple flexible options for various scenarios and situations that might arise more proactive than reactive is the situation you're responding to but in most cases having the space to be utilized for instructional purposes in this capacity before during and after school will be a great asset for us at higley high school because there are very limited spaces with that potential at this time and dr foley this would look similar to williams field in some capacity this classroom with their one big classroom correct they have that one classroom that we built a few years ago 199.
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the changes increased our revenue control limit by 1 million three hundred and sixty two thousand six hundred and sixty four dollars this final revision to the fy 22 expenditure budget will be in effect through the encumbrance period as per the ars 15 905 governing board policy dbj and your approval on july 14th of 2021 the revision is subject to the authorization of the expenditure of monies budgeted within the mno section of the budget for any subsection within the section in excess of amounts specified in the budget however the total expenditures of the m o budget may not exceed the total budgeted for the physical year yes that's statute language and not mine are there any questions in regards to any of the information on the budget or i have no no and i know bob got this before wonderful i will get your signatures at the end of the meeting thank you all right um we'll need a motion then i move to approve the budget as the previous budget as it presented i second all in favor aye aye aye sorry chad i have an eye okay motion carries four to zero so we have 8.2 yes ma'am president uh you're aware of uh and the board's aware of the sale of some land north of germain between ironwood and what would be the kenworthy alignment that's recently taken place the district has a taxing authority has been asked to consider a letter of concurrence for the creation of a foreign trade zone for that particular area what that foreign trade zone does is is for those uh portions of that property that are activated as a foreign trade zone it re reduced the assessed valuation ratio from 17.5 to 5 currently that state trust lands and we receive no tax revenue on that the land has been sold to es america uh llc an international advanced manufacturing company with uh the notion of developing advanced manufacturing uh generating uh over two hundred two thousand thousand jobs in a 1 million square foot building my recommendation is to provide a letter of non-opposition to the project the rationale for this position reflects potential concerns about student safety they have been initially addressed but i think we're waiting on some more addressing of those from the town of queen creek but also acknowledgement of the benefits of the tax revenues and job creations within the school district boundaries the track tax revenues from this project will provide tax relief to all the residents in our uh community so it's a balancing act between several concerns as we deal with many issues in society today so i would recommend providing a letter of non-opposition to the project as presented all right i moved to approve a lot of ram opposition for the foreign trade zone within the district boundaries as presented i second it all in favor aye aye aye aye aye motion carries 4-0 8.3 what we're doing in the next several board agenda items is dealing with the budget a couple things before i present this item this is representing a conservative budget so what we have dealt with within this budget is the presentation that was done i believe in march it represents what would happen if the district were to go ahead and only receive a 1.89 percent inflation growth the rest of the dollars that are coming within the budget would be coming from student growth very similar to what ms cook just talked about relative to the the growth from this year and that would be reflected in next year we built the budget based on this year's hundred day count so we were seeing some growth over last year's hundredth day count and so as we present these ideas please understand these all of these uh recommendations and the subsequent agenda items can be covered in the most conservative budget that we have presented to us we will use uh both the funding source from mno as well as funding source from classroom site funds and so it will be if you do that math it's going to come up with more than what you think we're receiving but it's important to understand that it's a mixture of of several different fund sources that will allow for this and i can get into some of the specifics for it in just a second um if uh state well i shouldn't say that when a state budget is passed which right now is looking like it could be mid-june there may be additional dollars that com would come to us and we would look and address other issues the recommendation going through ccc this has been run through ccc twice it's been run through 301 twice and has been run through the leadership team on several occasions but the recommendation overwhelming was that we needed to remain competitive with our neighboring districts therefore the total amount of dollars in this conservative budget that are coming into the district we are placing into salary issues and there and if we talk about any new positions or anything like that those would be dependent upon any additional dollars received after the state budget is was formed so this is a case where all the money was taken and decided to be distributed to staff in order to increase um our competitiveness with our neighboring districts and so there's a lot of different moving parts to this so i'll explain it and then please ask questions if you have them for our certified staff we are recommending a nine percent increase to each individual that means though it is based on the amount of money they currently make this would add for clarity for you an additional three thousand eight hundred and seventy dollars to the base and our new base would bump up to 46 870.
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so now you have everything all taken care of except that one item and then to me it should be a clear statement that the board is in compliance that's the word i want to use you know that there have been hundreds i'm not exaggerating hundreds of documents that we had provided to them you know when when things are done remotely as they decided to do um they came you know it used to be they come in and say you know let us see the labor contracts and handling the books that keep as long as you operate back before you go along now they want to see things or if there's a bank reconciliation you email it to them they'll email you a question of something they don't understand you email back and the whole thing is just much slower when it's remotely than when it's here questions take longer the explanations take longer but throughout really in september and october there were many many documents that we sent but normally they asked for nothing unusual nothing um you know they have they put these statements together the same way every year and their uh their audit requirements they have to have certain backups and documents in their files thank you okay i agree with your remote some things some things are great remote some things are not who made the decision to do this remote i don't have the answer and perhaps that was an escape and i'm guessing it wasn't us that decided to do it remotely no it's a it's a city contract honestly i think they weren't the only front and i think a lot of audit firms when they found like most businesses they have to try and do things differently um it seemed like a good idea at the time and it was the best awesome thing but just as you got further into it there were things you learned that everything remote takes longer yeah thank you that's it theresa michelle um connection with the last part how many people employment records do they look through i mean is it one two is it a dozen i mean they have a sample size i'm not sure how many they take to satisfy themselves um you know i i don't really pay that much attention to them we just say you know here's our stuff tell us what you need if it were um a dozen or two dozen kids [Music] like i said they have um requirements to do the work the aicpa says you have to do this this and this and you have to have this and that so um i i think they were i don't have any reason to think they were doing more or less than they normally do but it just it was different you know and a lot of the um what i'm learning is you know we changed systems uh during the middle of the year i don't think that honestly was that project was led properly some decisions were made that we're not trying to piece together they're asking for the data and we've done it but they've asked for details from one system that agree with the total from the other you can do that but it's a step-by-step process they asked us just this week to demonstrate how the two systems were brought together in uh july of 2020.
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i think that's going to be our best bet yeah it doesn't work for us but we'll shoot for that pending not set in stone depending on the attorney's schedule i'll call then i don't know okay so that's you okay so uh i'm gonna be an eye on that mr hopkins miss duncan hi mr guthrie aye ms robertson all right and that motion for instance because they get out they're not done with less than 115 then they give little time and next saturday this is tobias agenda congratulations she's walking through graduation to get officially officially we need a [Music] thank you okay uh these are gonna be topics for student dance reports um but manual update um as far as the policy advisory has no outstanding policy advisors that the uh high school district has not participated so that they've taken the nationals yet at time time is an issue they're still we haven't ignored them it's still going to happen but they have two policies outstanding and one of the deals with uh board or more member contributions i can't have the other laptop um but they're both we're both trying to use that and they've changed the process um so they're more complicated [Music] but also the ones on policy policy bridge page still states that we require everybody on campus yeah i can't yeah that's i i just haven't changed it in policy bridge i i will i promise it hasn't anything that came from asba when i talked about policy advisory and where direct take action is so that's that's the status of that student handbook so you're saying that the aspia policy advisories have been updated but last i checked the first level of several the masks the residency one the immunization one and then just personally we changed the bereavement of policy over a year ago and it's still sitting there and it's old form okay then we got a phone yeah i talked to asb in march they say i talked to my husband i talked to him i talked to renee watson she's in charge please don't call her she's in charge of uh policy updates and she said well i'll be okay i said there's no worry i'm talking about stella i don't remember that's been two months ago um and she didn't you're all caught up she looked at it we spent half hour what time was that yeah the day after the board meeting which we talked about these initially recently um you know when it's hand student handbook update question there as i recall and it came about because we're students that was taken off the football team for vaping practice or maybe between the field and the locker rooms i recall um and i supported uh in that city not to have a person arrested uh because we just didn't want to get arrested um all the handbooks had arrested and kicked out of school we took an action that a lot of the other districts and members of cah took any type of kids off the team not just a caa but i think the naia as well now i don't know um the big the big schools in january championship but they did or not but that's what we were told by our leadership so what's done so far on that is gone through policy books and every every except one or two titles within the student handbook is addressed in some capacity in policy and those policies have been identified now they haven't been paraphrased to put on there that's going to double the size of the student handbook i'm worried that no one would read it i thought about just putting those policies in the back of the student handbook it's still going to look like a faint cylinder in 1980 and i don't think people read them but this if time is time works for us uh i will try to paraphrase those things now there's a problem paraphrasing you deviate a little bit from policy that's where that is that they've been identified as having policy at least that they they're under policy adopt adoption certified working agreement i don't think we'll go there right now we've been talking about that for a little while i'm sorry i'm sorry guys so i looked up and looked looking down um title four uh coordinator possible that i have done some research on the blogs edd's website is kind of frustrating to me these days i've done some research on the uh the blogs and they're very interesting they're very informative um i i don't have i don't feel comfortable um naming someone yet i have someone under consideration for that and i've talked to the person and i need to talk some more but no it hasn't been ignored i'm going to jump over to the other column real quick music and our teacher search as you recall we hired both of those ones already left because um they had a friend working people and so we're back to drawing work one of the problems this is music yes man yes sir one of one of the frustrations that i have i was talking to you today about her we had a band music teacher that was phenomenal her husband was in charge of the border patrol station she was equally good with vocal for the k-sixers and for band at any level and i've learned as long as i've been doing this not to say that's the best principle i've ever had so i've done my own life i've got issue ones well this person definitely fits in this section this version fits down here this music teacher i don't know i should say she's the best i've ever had but she wasn't she was close i'd watch her teach i'm off subject a little bit it wasn't she'd say uh the trumpet section is out of culture somehow she'd say bob on on measure eight you finger it d with the first and third finger and not the first two fingers she was that specific the music teachers i talked to when i've been recruiting in state as well as out of state as well as online are all local music there's nothing wrong with that i think uh choir is a good thing to have but i would be shocked as to why i was doing still the k-6 program that's mostly vocal at 7 12 we're going to be hard-pressed to have an instrumental program it's probably going to be vocal because the instruments that people have are not the skills that one teacher i'm writing about uh and so we think we're gonna have a program guys because i believe strongly i don't want to live in a world without art music i don't want our kids to sometimes this is very important um the school alarm pa system um if you've tried to do any construction lately um even in the city you're talking about seven or eight months out um other acquaintances having is having a new house built in a larger community than otto it's taking two to three times as long to build that as it did five years ago the cost of these um the last two days we've had our alarm companies call fire security electronic corporation on campus they've got two trucks here they charge an exorbitant amount of money they charge us 300 some dollars to drive down here from scottsdale and we've had a request in they've been here to fix we've not been happy as you recall the whole problem started with the contractor cutting fiber and they claimed fiber's okay so jose and i worked with him we found some features in the gymnasium that could stop the circuit from being successful i haven't checked with jose they were supposed to replace those their last visits and one of the problems is when we initially did the alarm system in about 2010.
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we were required to tie teachers salaries to the first and third pot which is 0-11 and 0-13 so every teacher's salary had three funding sources their primary funding source the second funding source of 011 and o13 so every year when the allocation amounts change like for example that 733 dollars this year so every every year when the allocation amount changed i was able to adjust the salaries for o11 and o13 so it was easier to adjust now it's a little bit more difficult because i have to go back in and i have to figure out how much i can adjust for the salaries that are tied to each teacher to find out how much is going to be set aside for performance pay so it actually is harder to do yes it is it is i thought they would never give you anything yeah i said i thought maybe it was streamlining it just no it doesn't it doesn't it never does anybody have any questions any comments from the audience i had a question in regards to our impact aid we weren't sure exactly how much we were getting is this the accurate amount is how much we received that 500 something thousand that currently is just an estimate because we still have not received any allocation for the application we submitted in january of 21.
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so continue the program in the same manner for 500 500 so with that i'll stand for any questions any questions from the board that sounds like it's been successful we're getting a lot of individuals working we have and we need that at this time that's for sure wonderful okay i moved to approve the employee referral program as presented second motion made by christine pritchard seconded by tracy sorry sinkville first motion carries next move to k-3 recommendation to approve an employee salary increase and saw replacement schedules for the 2022-2023 school year dr dean thank you madam president members of the governing board administration is recommending that the governing board approve the salary increase for dysert's current certified licensed classified and administrative employees as part of the iba recommendations presented by mr hicks earlier for the 2020 2022-2023 school year that's a tongue twister i have to say this recommendation reflects a monetary improvement in base pay for current employees of one percent for certified licensed and administrative employees and six percent for classified employees additionally this item addresses the placement salary schedules by half of each of those amounts increasing the base salary to the placement schedules as discussed by mr hicks i'd be happy to answer any questions or refer them to mr hicks as well administration recommends approval of this item any questions or comments from the board um can we talk about hang on i'm so sorry classified hourly salary schedule and specifically the employees that are called paraprofessionals in special ed the f's and h's um are these and are the are the f and h's and we might as well throw in the u's are these hard to fill positions dr croto um asm president member grant when we speak of hard to fill we have compensation for hard to fill so compensation wise they are not considered hard to fill however we do have a lot of openings and they're very hard to fill so depending on what context you're taking that in the answer is yes or no yes um in the paraprofessional area of special ed how many do you know about how many of those positions are unfilled we looked at that for next year our noes go out this tomorrow actually um but currently we're looking we have a need of paraprofessionals for about 90 positions district-wide right now 9-0 for just the classified and these are people that support our kids in special ed with academics behavior daily living skills and mobility type is my understanding that is correct are any of the paraprofessionals and do we contract outside for any of these positions madam president member grant using outside contractors yes we try to obviously fill those positions so we try to go anywhere we can to get those positions so currently we do contract some of those positions outside so if we contract for f and h the range for f and f is 1422 to 24.57 and h is 1491-2580 what would be the rate we pay a contract agency for these employees um so the contract agencies obviously and anything that we contract with ess is a considerable more amount so off the top of my head with that we would pay them upwards of 30 to 40 dollars somewhere in that range to contract them they charge more because they are service so it costs us more to go to these contracting agencies if that's what you're asking yeah it costs we pay more than that rate that you're asking because of their service that we're using and we pay that service to get them to come work they're working for a temporary employment agency per se madam president member grant i i would add to that piece that the contracted employee does not receive that hourly rate right but that's the hourly rate that the the contracting agency charges the school district it's anywhere from 28 to 32.
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is that the lecture hall it would mirror 199. yes isn't it 199 i'm like i think it's called 199 but i can't really remember so this would be very similar to that correct and trying to mirror our campuses thank you so as we look to some of the upcoming dates for this project i believe i want to invite up our contractor with chase building or project manager excuse me mr patrick shepard yeah so president kaler members of the board appreciate the opportunity to represent chase building team tonight a couple of my colleagues are here in the audience and we certainly have a very robust team back that is absent that has helped us through this process tyler touched on a lot of the how carmen touched on the what i get to touch on the when of what's happening now with your new classroom edition so i know that those questions are probably out there like okay this is really cool this building's going to be awesome when are we going to see it so what we see here above us are the upcoming dates that we're targeting for this construction and as we wrap up pre-construction and ultimately get going out here on your campus so that june 22nd date is what we are targeting for the gmp-1 approval a process that we have been doing here over the past couple years as we've seen this construction industry be faced with challenges as it regards to procurement and also price escalations we have been recommending an early gmp which really captures a lot of those long lead material items and the other benefit to that is it also locks in those prices so it takes away the uncertainty and the volatility of what those materials could potentially bring within the upcoming months as this design continues to involve with the input that we've been talking about here this evening across the board with the community and the rest of our teammates so it's been very successful and we're we're working very diligently right now dlr has been great to work with their designs are always top notch and they're always very receptive to the input that we're able to provide as far as constructability availability of materials and everything else so the process has been great the community involvement's been amazing i've been a part of i think four community meetings now and it's just been it's been a lot of fun carmen mentioned there are some students out there that have very sharp and bright futures because they had great questions and it was fun to watch so that's looking uh so june 22nd is what we're targeting there that september date is what we are targeting for vertical uh actually let me rewind a little bit the other component of that gmp-1 for this summer is the potential for some of that make safe utility work as well so as we you know begin construction on that site we do have existing utilities that are in that area so one of the things that we would entertain doing is making sure that those are capped those are made safe it eliminates all the utility disruptions during the course of the school year that become very problem so we do like to propose taking care of those as well if possible so that really allows us to roll into that september date where the gmp-2 which would be the balance of work as that design is completed and we move into the final construction documents we would ultimately present that final gmp which will also be presented as a conceptual estimate detail as a part of that gmp one just to make sure that we all understand that we are aligned in alignment with that overall project budget so pending those approvals september 22nd would be our first event that we like to have which is that groundbreaking it's just the excitement it's really kicking that project off and then ultimately going vertical with that classroom building there is one date that we don't see up here that we are excited for the potential passing of a bond in november which could lead to some additional work that we would love to partner and complete concurrent with this classroom edition as we move through into that potential phase two again hopeful that happens but we will see how that goes and then finally we would target next summer for the completion of that project and ready to turn over for the fall of 2023 school year and that's where we stand today are there any questions perfect thank you and just to add gmp means guaranteed maximum price so um again through this procurement process we would um both uh our architect with carmen wyckoff and chase are working diligently to stay within our 10 million budget and you know once those gmps are approved they're hardly rarely talking about any change orders um because of this process we vet out all those potential issues so um i can tell you right now we are still within budget of that 10 million dollars so it is progressing nicely so very excited to get the groundbreaking underway and move forward with this project so mr moore a quick question this would include furniture as well the 10 million includes furniture that does yeah so that includes all soft costs we're looking at tentative building costs of seven million with a soft cost of um or 7.5 excuse me i think we've done some revisions and with soft costs coming in as well in there so that timely includes everything to make that building operational great i know mrs reece would probably want me to ask that if she were here or if she since she isn't here she would want me to ask that so i feel like i should uphold her mr moore i i want to articulate this very carefully um this 10 million is left over bond money that we were able to re-reallocate correct so this project is being funded partially from the 2013 bond allocation so we have approximately yeah um after we're still waiting on the final payment for the field house um but after that payment we would approximately have 2.5 million left so the remainder of that would be funded from our capital budget so that would exhaust all our bond funds all our bond funds yes exactly and so when we're looking forward to our next bond um monies find a way to be used at all times when it comes to school districts and bonds no matter what i find that there's a lot of miscommunication out there and it it's it's upsetting to me because people need to understand what a bond does for a school district and over time what it does i'm grateful that dr foley has done her due diligence in planning for the future of higley because we didn't plan for this for higley high we did not look past our noses that higley high might actually really have a burst of growth in this area and it has and i mean i've been in the district a long time and it was always that williamsfield had a higher enrollment rate than higley and now we're here and it is let's scramble let's make this happen and we we cannot do this again we cannot count on that there will be something in our future so i'm just thankful for this team that we were able to do this now just being so fiscally responsible that we were able to have these funds available to take care of higley's needs today but i'm also thankful as we move forward that we articulate why this next bond is so crucial to higley because there's so many more needs that are coming our way and we cannot wait to the last minute so um thank you and i hope i articulated that the way i meant that to sound but it's important and i know you guys have done some very hard work i thank you for all of our partners this didn't come like oh we just picked somebody these are processes and procedures of procurement that we follow to the t and i know that because i've sat in multiple meetings with dr foley about the very thing so i'm grateful for this entire process and how it's gone and i'm very excited my children graduate this year from higley so it would be a very sad day happy for them but sad that they won't see the fruition of this building but i'm so thankful for the future and what can happen with the with the needs of higley high school so thank you thank you anything else okay she said to do all right thank you we're going to move on to 8.2 in the strategic plan update president members of the board we are excited to show uh show some a video here about the process that we have engaged in as you know we have been talking about this for over a year we have had two study sessions and where we've deeply gone about where are we and what are we doing and how are we going to get there you have been reading along this year our progress and journey as we summarize the work we've been learning and doing we are so proud of the work we've accomplished as a team to update thank you our strategic plan um we have involved students just like you heard earlier tonight when we talked about empowering student voices in construction conversations and discussions we did a true research methodology sound design in which we replicated work that allowed us to bring students and their voices to life what we've done is we put together a video that is actually a modification of what we shared with you at the retreat so that you can actually see some of the footage as well not only from what we did with students but also what we did with adult stakeholders in addition to all the work that was done with surveys and we'd like to show that just so that everyone has a chance to see the extent of the work that was done every month this entire year to get us to a conversation that we'll have later tonight and the action items where we are asking you to approve the documents in which we've already begun to outline and and define the work that we will do as a team together as you know in education and and and president keller you you eloquently stated it if you are not six months ahead you're already a year behind in the world of curriculum and in just when you're thinking about long-term planning for facilities if you aren't thinking five years into the future you're already you're already behind so all of this work that you lay the groundwork for is the foundation you build from and we're excited i i would be remiss if i did not think uh the pr team particularly uh curtis kerbin who is a talented storyteller in video and one of the things he was capturing data from us from multiple levels but he also captured footage that allowed us to better tell this story because we could try and summarize in words for you the work we did with individuals but seeing it in the footage really truly captures the extent and so i'll ask curtis to share the video and we'll go from there [Music] hi i'm dr dawn foley i'm the superintendent of the haley unified school district hello i'm sheri richards i'm the interim associate superintendent hi i'm dr chris treat i'm the assistant director of professional development and we are excited to share with you the process that we have been on this year as we update our strategic plan for the hingley unified school district this past year we did a lot of work with the process of updating our strategic plan from having important dialogue with our governing board to determining a grounded theory methodology we work closely with our admin team to define and outline our district core values to identify how we were going to capture various stakeholder feedback from a representative sample across the district to us our priority was making sure that our student voices were heard when we updated our strategic plan so the fun begins with working with our stakeholder groups and we started with our most important group we started with our student stakeholders beginning in december we began bringing in our elementary student group and this started on a day where we had a whole group in our room with us in the governing board for a day of dialogue and an interaction and a student started off by saying dr foley i took school districts are nothing without their students and it's a good thing you asked us here today because we can tell you what needs to be done the power of those little voices that we work to capture over the course of the next several months has been probably the most meaningful part of this journey so let us tell you a little bit about what we did to hear from our student voices one of the things that we pride ourselves on in the haley district is we are a pre-k-12 district so obviously these voices could not not be captured and one of the joys that we had that day was when we went to visit with these students we had a preschool student who had also her her two-year-old sibling and so after she sang to us and and shared her voice in perspective with us she also outlined for us the things that would be essential for us to ensure her two-year-old sister would know and be able to do by the time she came to preschool this may have been one of the highlights of the whole year is going to the preschool and hearing from these students what they love about school dr foley participated in discussions that included rock paper scissors what are your favorite things and also can i hear your voice one of our students actually began to sing to her they had great input for us and we thoroughly enjoyed hearing from them this is where it all starts in our preschools and it goes all the way up through our secondary one of the strategies that we use with our students was thinking maps this is an instructional strategy that we've used district-wide and our students are very familiar with this our principals were really instrumental in helping us we wanted representation from every program group across the district and they helped ensure that we had those students in the room and the students are familiar with this thinking map approach where we frame an idea for them these strategic anchors and provide the opportunity for them to share information with us the each student is empowered with a pen a red pen and a blue pen and when they would rotate around the room they were given the opportunity to share experiences or thoughts that they had about this and they color coded it the blue showed us opportunity for this was a positive experience that they had or something that they wanted to highlight or keep that they wanted us to know they had experienced the red was something they felt we needed to do differently or an example of something that needed to change and when you watched this room happen you saw everybody engaged everyone had a pin and they were working and they were writing we also saw validation of thoughts and ideas when someone read something someone else had written and if they agreed they accentuated it started for us to know that they agreed with this this way their thoughts and ideas were being generated and not and not limited to only the voice who was speaking at the time and you can see very clearly our students were not shy about sharing with us their thoughts and opinions we also found though that after this silent discussion it allowed us to get all ideas down we then evolved this into a whole group discussion where we had the opportunity to engage our students with thought-provoking questions around our our portrait of a graduate what have we done to prepare you where are you wanting to go what do you feel about these words in these terms what do they mean to you and obviously we were able to capture some very meaningful dialogue and conversations at that time so we've gone from silent discussion to whole group discussion we then engaged students in inter interviews where we would pull them out and have conversations with them when they were engaged in interviews they were also engaged in a flipgrid activity where they were using devices to engage with each other and share more information from their perspective about the strategic plan while bonding with their with their peer groups from across the district who came to provide this information we were now able to capture data from them verbally written through video so that we had an opportunity in individual small group and whole group settings to capture everyone's thoughts and voices around the themes of our strategic plan from their perspective and experiences as a student and so here we see the process of students using the thinking map to define the particular goal in context based off of their own experiences read meaning things that they felt needed improvement or changing and comments that they wrote in blue were positive experiences that they had surrounding that particular goal as you can see kids were thoroughly engaged in this opportunity to provide feedback we saw amazing things from the elementary students and our secondary students as they work through this process as we know there is nothing more powerful than hearing from the mouths of babes and so for this at this point we want to share with you a couple things our students have to say i like how the teachers interact with the students and how they create different activities that aren't just like fun but also are creative as well i've grown up in higley unified school district i've been here since kindergarten and i really love the atmosphere it brings i know compared to my friends who are in other districts they don't have some of the opportunities that we have and so i think the community the teachers the staff the students all have just been so amazing my 12 years in the district i think this is a really good opportunity for students to come and share their opinions and thoughts so thank you husd is a great place to be man honestly i can't really think of a better district right now so after we had collected all of this rich data in the form of feedback from our students our employees and our representative parents and community members we took the information that we had learned thus far back to our admin team and together we explored what were the essential elements of a successful mission and a vision to help us update our current mission and vision to align with the information we had captured we then brought in a focus group of individuals to once again look at the work that we have done thus far but to capture more conversation around the work of our portrait of a graduate and engage in discussions about what are the desired skills abilities and attributes that we want for our students in the higley district we then took all of this feedback and updated our drafts we then shared these drafts with our governing board at a retreat in april to once again garner feedback and to share the journey that the of the process that we've been on this entire year we now have updated our documents and we have our higley core values our district's updated strategic plan for the 2022 to the 2027 school year that reflects our updated mission vision core values we also have updated our strategic anchors and the goals and indicators of the essential work that we will do collectively over the next several years to help us ensure that we meet our district's portrait of a graduate that now has identified a who a what and a how we are excited about the work we have done and are looking forward to implementing this important work together over the next several years [Laughter] we are proud of this work we had an opportunity to share this with university professors we had an opportunity to share this at the state level as part of an aasa national superintendent project in which part of our video was selected as a highlight because it truly does show an ideal research-based design in process as well as empowering student voices so this is something we're proud of and we're excited about the work we're going to do dr foley oh sorry president kayla if you want to know dr foley i just want to thank you i was unable to make it to the saturday retreat due to a family emergency and you were able to meet with me separately and go over everything so i just want to thank you and your team who were able to meet with me last week and just go over this so i had all my questions answered and i can see how much work the whole higgly district down to our youngest learners have done to make this successful so thank you yes i think that our retreat was so instrumental in kind of breaking this down piece by piece for us if if anybody would like to say higley doesn't reach out and ask and include those valuable stakeholders i would absolutely disagree with them 100 percent this was a collaborative um i don't even know what you call it massive effort massive effort um most a lot of school districts not all a lot of school districts hire this out we did it within our district we did this to make it higley's strategic plan and i know that we even talked about at a retreat how this is not just going to be a document that sits on a desk this is going to be a document that is going to be passed on to our administrators and through our administrators down to our staff we want everybody to have because they've had a buy into it it will be far easier now to implement because everybody's had a voice so good works very good work very hard work a lot of time and all this through a pandemic let's just put that out there because this has been really trying times and then to put a strategic plan together on top of it it was very well done president kaler said a lot of the things i was going to say about no about ownership which was the main theme of everything i heard is everybody being involved one of the things um the questions that i asked that was important is that this isn't just a piece of paper and it's something that we make sure we're doing and um uh dr pulley and dr treat said i asked if we would following up with our stakeholders with our students to make sure we're doing what we're saying and they both said yes that that was something that we'll continue to do so we're not just putting this on a piece of paper coming up with ideas but following up later to make sure it's happening and the kids and teachers and the community feel like we're really um doing our strategy the strategic plan so that was great to me president cabler board member schultz one of the other things that we talked quite a bit at our retreat was how we are also looking at taking our our board strategic initiatives and evolving them into actual action steps from our strategic plan and what i'm excited to share with you is that in june we have been meeting as a team to we came to you at the retreat with focus areas in each one of our strategic anchors as well as how we wanted to define the work around our portrait of a graduate we are excited to share at the june 8th meeting i would go into a deep dive of our goals that we had progress made this year as well as the ones that we've identified for next year and the work that we are excited to do and to begin to launch for next year we have taken a huge bite but we are excited about the work and progress we're going to do so that throughout the year you will also see evidence and progress toward the work of accomplishing our strategic plan because they're going to be part of your strategic initiatives and goals with myself and the district one of the things we talked about is that we're not a traditional business but you can't move forward and you can't continue to grow unless we're all on the same page and so it feels like it should always have been that way that the governing board initiative should be strategically aligned with the strategic plan so i'm very happy to see that that's happening because it's the only way we can move forward looks great thank you and congratulations on that video i know that it was very it's recognized nationally which is a big deal for little higley hat it helps when you have a talented pr team and a beautiful videographer editor and cute kids it's a skill it's nice to have those skills and and precious kids precious they were definitely okay thank you dr foley we are going to move on to 8.3 and this is just a little update that dr foley wanted us to see today president kaler members of the board tonight one of the things you're going to be that we have up for an action item is as you know we've been working really hard on our policies as well and updating information that comes to us from asba but also making sure that any policies we have are aligned with appropriate definitions practices and policies that we have in place we actually had a very detailed work study at our last meeting on the first two policies as you see here as well as two additional policies that were a part of the policy work we've been doing in updating both the student discipline and child reporting child abuse protection would be making sure our policy is now reflective of the asba's policy recommendation and updates which come various times as legislation is updated and those policies are revised so again this is moving forward with more of our work on updating our processes and procedures and again this goes back to following closely what's happening at our state level can affect what happens at our level and unless we have all of our ducks in a row and making sure that our policies are in place um yeah it's super important that's that's the that's the job of this board is to make sure that our policies are up-to-date and um a big part of our job is to make sure our policies are up to date so appreciate the time that went into our work study just a few weeks ago and [Music] yeah it was a lot of information that you shared with us so we appreciate that all right moving on we're going to go on to 9.1 i move that the governing board approves the 2022-2027 higley unified school district strategic plan second all those or any questions concerns comments i think we've that's what i love about our our whole process now to dr foley that we have been implementing and following is that we have already by the time things come to our action we have already reviewed them we have talked about them in a work study we have seen them multiple times this is not brand new information make a vote we have had this information for weeks and weeks to chew on and we're able to contact you if we have questions about things so thank you for that and so with that all those in favor aye motion carries 3-0 but i know without a doubt that if mrs anderson and mrs reese were here they also would give their full 100 support okay next one i move this is going to be 9.2 i move that the governing board approves the policy revisions as presented second again we have chewed on this for a few weeks now if there was any questions or concerns although i just want to see yeah go um there's some talk about uh curriculum and what's happening and this and what's cool teach but this was open to the public for a month right over a month to come what what oh sorry she's moving ahead sorry that's okay been there all those in favor aye aye aye motion carries 3-0 now we're going to move on to the purchase it is recommended that the governing board approves the expenditure of one million seven hundred ninety eight thousand six hundred and twenty three dollars and twenty four cents for the purchase of the science adoption curriculum as presented second now can i can i make money now let me make some comments okay go ahead mrs wilson uh i actually had a chance to come in and look at the curriculum i think i may have been one of the only people to come in and mr treated am i correct still i checked last week but i was laughing you are correct okay um i did get i'm sure others have been able to check it out uh teachers did come in before me but as a parent i was a parent who got to check it out i was excited to see that we didn't go with just one and had to stay in that box of just one book for the whole k-12 curriculum and i really did enjoy that the teachers got to pick what they wanted since they got to look at it since they have to look at it every day and as a parent i get to look at it like hopefully very little so i just want to thank the teachers who did come in and look and who did the surveys and who scan the little qr codes and i want to thank you mr dr treat for setting up the room and making it look fantastic so thank you go ahead mrs schultz sorry i took your thunder i think i saw your name on there twice you came back the first day it wasn't quite ready for me so i came back the second day i came in one day and it wasn't quite ready they didn't know that you were just taking the school yeah i looked at like all of it i looked at all the different ones and the second time i looked at just the one they picked so i know that's funny because like when i came in the first day it wasn't quite ready and i was like um i think i need to come back so we talk about transparency and being open and everything with curriculum and in higley we left it open for a month over a month right as far as um being able to have the public come in and look at all the curriculum and teachers were on board with it so there's no um surprises on what's being taught and jill was the only one that came but oh sorry mrs wilson was the only one that came but um it was open it was available and you can come and see what is being taught and how it was decided and asked questions and everything and so um while other districts across the country might have an issue with that we don't have an issue with that in higley and i appreciate that very much president cable board member schultz thank you for that we absolutely followed the 60-day process that was open and one of the things that was nice is that because we did this so long and involved so many people even as you heard at our last at our last meeting when you had the committee com present to you about the entire committee um there were even suggestions that um every school put into their newsletter about the fact that this was happening so that in case they hadn't seen the documents or information um over the 60 days that there was still plenty of time to come and see and all of our teachers have been well aware and are involved and so that's one of the things we're proud of so you saw again the processes and procedures that align to state statutes that are connected with the policies that we've just even updated tonight are alive and well and happening in higley and so we're proud of the work here um and you'll notice that from from what you're proving tonight the only one that isn't there is the conceptual physics which will come back after that committee goes through again to be able to be sure that what they want is what they're purchasing so a lot of work went into it by this entire team and our our group to make sure that we not only did this but we did this really well so we're excited i'm sorry i know i kept saying 30 days but 60 days i need more coffee so board member schultz it's actually been open for longer than 60 days we chose to keep it um from the last board meeting open until now too so because of spring break right we kept it open because of spring break to adopt okay right but i'm just saying we've had it out there and this goes back to um again i feel there's just miscommunication out there and any chance i get from here on out we need to be correcting and letting people know this again was a by the t process nothing was hidden along the way every teacher in higley unified was involved in this process and invited to this process parents were invited to this process in our district so and again one of the jobs as a school board is to adopt the curriculum and it's up to the district and the teachers to present the state standards in the classroom it is not our job as a school board to dictate what is taught in the classroom we we help approve this curriculum so that our state standards are what are taught in our classrooms so i'm excited for this it's been a long time needed and we are grateful president taylor if i can add two to get into the party you can add whatever you need mr mark this this actually came in under budget we set a budget last fiscal year of 2.5 million um you'll see you're approving an expenditure amount of 1.7 so um even with the addition of conceptual physics we are still going to be way below well under budget way below budget yes and we appreciate always a below budget estimate president keller i remember the question was asked when we adopted our last science curriculum and i went to a school last week and i happened to be in their library and they were collecting the old books to send to the warehouse and i opened the book and got and i can't remember what the date was it was either 2012 or 20 2008 it was a very long time do you remember did you look that somebody else looked okay i'm like it's prior to 2012.
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