asked for the increase service members were paying 8.8.25 and they're now paying 10.25 all right so that could be a possibility that they've got to change as well so if that happens it will be the employees on the server side that could get hurt with that um so maybe at some point a lot of the lobbyist group have been lobbying that the state takes care of that portion and don't give those to their boys and school districts because basically you give us money but we're paying out all these anyway so just like just take care of it and don't give up and then please take more care of it at that point so that's really because a lot of people do get hurt in it when you go from 8.25 to a 10.25 uh self-contribution that's a lot for that as well and so that's where the service thank you i anticipate what kind of questions you have so every time every now and then oh my asking gosh [Laughter] [Applause] all right we gotta do to get the potential 3.5 million if you don't have to do more i think it's basically um some auditions for example they're not transporting as much as we have our teachers are actually we transport a lot of our students most districts for example charge um a lot of students um you know and then so the idea is hopefully then they can take the money and then you do some of the cost for the families as well and really score that they prioritize the tk states as well as the um for um the free individual students i mean currently it's only for three or four years yes so you know yes so that i mean currently for example you take our bus we don't you know for our families already at this point that a lot of ships do not provide like a lot of um i know um um school district even for the high schools they don't even provide for them but we do we do do that a lot so we can definitely take a look to see what other things we can do but the issue is this we've been providing this out of the general fund we've never got funded enough so don't think about that it gave us more money it just we never got paid for it we are spending one and six million dollars already at this point so they're just basically paying us back for ultimately knocking back so paying us now to provide this service because this money had never gotten a cola since the lcs planning model went into 2013.
we have filled about that same number so we probably had 48 or 50 openings of the uh positions that are filled uh 17 of them are folks that we are awaiting a rival from from the philippines and so come we've had some arrive we have some coming next week we have some coming the following week and so it has to do with the timing of their visas and those things so all of our sites are looking forward to the arrival of those folks particularly the middle school and fox creek because they each are waiting for seven at their sites so so we we have some we have some things going on i will tell you that i'm really really pleased about the fact that our principals started in july to work on a plan for each of their sites for how we would open school with first of all with positions that we knew were going to be vacant because they were at the time as well as what are we going to do about those classrooms for which we are awaiting teachers arrival they have done a masterful plan each site has a masterful plan in place and so i suspect that parents and students and even the teachers know what the plan you know what the plan is and they're all on board with that but i suspect that very few other people would notice that we have big gaps because of the kind of planning that they did so i want to recognize them for their thoughtful and creative ways of of managing the situation and i'll answer any questions about those things if you want any questions for dr stewart all right item 2.9 board member updates do we have any updates for the board today yeah i have an update right i got my newspaper today and i wondered why i wasn't invited because i like ice cream oh she doesn't answer her phone i just wanted i just want cindy in the memo oh what i just wanted i wanted miss cochran to know that i noticed this and i was very impressed with the picture it is really it looks like a full house it must have been really important really neat we had nearly 80 families at the middle school last night it was it was super you just have to put ice cream in the headline [Laughter] anyway i appreciate thank you for doing that for the kids all right wonderful okay item three consent agenda mr browser you had a few items you wanted to pull from yes i am i'm um [Music] there's an item on personnel and one on supplemental resources 4.2 and 3.6 okay or 3.3 this personality whatever it is 3.3 excuse me 3.3 is personnel and 3.6 is supplemental resources correct so pull those two items um any other items you want to pull and have discussed all right so if we get a motion to accept the consent agenda minus three point three i lost it three point three three point three and three point six i got it now okay did you do it as well uh so i'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda uh minus 3.3 personnel and 3.6 supplemental resources anna boyd melinda oh all right second second and a third good uh all in favor aye corey burgess i'm charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sabreski okay so moved all right let's go back to item 3.3 uh personnel um i noticed on personnel what i'm concerned with is the resignations and separations part there was one that was in the middle of july that they basically went through their contract i guess and then did diamondback have a special ed teacher that just decided to quit we did have we had a special ed teacher who started was here for a new teacher workshop worked through last week and then sent a resignation on sunday do we have is are we enforcing the policy that's part of their contract that they have to pay back whatever pay back a portion when when somebody resigns in the summer i have not brought those to you as as that partly because the contract does not actually start until the first day of work in this case with the one from sunday i totally i mean i knew about it but i totally spaced the idea of bringing it to you for usually what i do is bring those to you separately for you to determine whether you want to invoke that penalty from the contract or not can i give more information on that um no thanks maggie no okay okay but we do want to see that one right um i do i yes i i want to see that one we have not paid out and we have not paid so uh if you'd like we can uh you could table that action until the next meeting and i can bring you that back as a separate action okay so my understanding is you don't do anything with the ones that are withdrawn in the summer and that would be we would have great difficulty with dealing with resignations in the summer for a number of reasons but particularly if they've never been our employee you know if they're if there's somebody who signed the contract yeah okay so uh and there are some other legal issues attached with that because contracts don't actually take effect until the first day of the contract so it would get tricky but each of the ones that happen during the school year once the school year has begun it has been my practice to bring it to you separately as an action item a new business item for you to determine as a board whether you want to invoke that part of the contract the penalty part because the contract says you may be penalized so it it you know the board can determine that individual is not on this one no i was going to say i don't think that person is not on here on this one but no next month it would be next month's anyway yeah but we want to make sure that we do that in line in case we do decide to yes move forward with that and my concern with uh 3.6 before we get to the three sets are we good with three point three then we're getting yeah so can we get a motion to approve three point three i move that we have approved three point three i'll second that motion on a boy all in favor aye corey burgess hi charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sabrasky moved all right and then the next item is 3.6 3.6 i just i think this is a transparency thing that i just want us to remain transparent there's a social studies weekly on here a case six social studies thing and this is a new addition to this list and if you'd like an explanation we could have mrs lott come up and talk about it or answer your questions if you'd like sure i'd love to i think i think my problem with this i don't have a problem with this actually i feel really strange bringing this up but it's a transparency thing um because i know that some of my neighbors are very concerned with the complete the political climate that we are in are we making sure that this studies weekly thing does not include things that could get us in trouble yes um it is based solely on the arizona state standards perfect thank you that's what i needed to hear thank you any other questions on three six okay we need a motion to approve item 3.6 i move we approved 3.6 melinda sabraski i'll second that motion charlene diaz all in favor aye corey burgess aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sabrasky so moved item 4.1 memorandum of understanding with the mohave county sheriff's office dr stewart mr president and board members i had brought this to you a couple of months ago and you all had wanted more information so we had the workshop in july about this had them hear mutual link here making the presentation and um and so i'd like to present this again for your consideration um for us to apply or invoke this memorandum of understanding so we can be part of this program so whatever discussion and ideas you all have i will remind you that initially the cost for this is covered by a grant that the county sheriff's office has gotten and then and they're hopeful because the grant has been extended that it would the expenses would be covered perhaps another year at least another year based on that grant if not or beyond that time then the cost to us would be twenty five hundred dollars per school per year which is very minimal considering the services that this could provide for us not just in in potentially active shooter situations but in other situations as well well i know corey was not here for that but i was very impressed with it yeah me too i was not here for the workshop i will be abstaining from this so any questions about the mou right and that's the case we need a motion um i'll make a motion that we approve 4.1 memorandum of understanding with the mohave county sheriff's office anna boyd i'll second that motion charlene diaz all in favor aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sobreski and i corey burgess i oh i abstain sorry all right moving on to 5.1 new positions paraprofessional position for life skills for two life skill positions mr president and board members we have 33 students in the k4 life skills program at desert valley these are students with high needs we have a teacher in each of those classrooms and two paras 33 students would ordinarily mean that we would have a third classroom we are having so much difficulty filling our special ed positions that we think it's highly unlikely that we would find another teacher to have another classroom so i'm recommending two additional para pros so that we constantly all day have at least two people in each of those rooms at all times uh you know paris get a lunch break fair you know there are things going on so if one is gone and now we have uh 16 students in a room with two adults that's that's pretty slim so i'm recommending that we add these two pair of pro positions to help with the situation i how are we on funding is this going to be a continual thing is this a well the it may be one of those things where as students move to the middle school and those numbers get big where we move a pair position i don't see it getting any less and the new funding formula for for the current budget increased special ed funding significantly so we do have the funding for this and it would be sustainable my question is are just are two just enough or is that is that minimal or should we actually be adding three actually um cassie asked for two i think and kate asked for two um yeah we started with uh two for our life skills rooms right now there's one teacher and two paraprofessionals in there but our numbers are growing pretty much daily so we want to make sure that during those lunch breaks or during recess or someone has to be escalated to the health attendant that there's enough coverage maintained in those rooms during that time because safety is what's most important to us in those classrooms and so in order to be able to do that we just need a couple more adults in there helping out so we're asking number two at this time if the numbers continue to grow we'll revisit that and kind of plan moving forward okay that makes sense okay do we have a motion for 5.1 i'll make a motion that we add um two pair pro positions for our life skills um group i'll second that all in favor aye corey bridges aye charlene diaz aye anna boyd i'm melinda sobreski it's all moved item 5.2 consideration for kindergarten request this is my mistake this is an item we actually should have for executive session but i overlooked that was brought to our attention from another board member however we do have the parents here of this child and i did speak to them before and let them know that they have the option to discuss their their child's education in public if they so wish so if you would please come forward if you could first identify yourselves for us please yes my name is joseph bellantoni and i'm emily bellantoni and we are the parents of luke anthony bellantoni um we're kind of new to this whole school thing because all of our kids are young um but luke get a couple things real quick i apologize to cut you off um just so you are clear this is something that normally we would hold in an executive session and at this point you're understanding that discussion of your child in public makes it public information um and you're okay with that and understand moving forward that this is a public public meeting yes sir okay so to to the members president superintendent secretary i've spoke to a couple of them um our son luke is really intelligent he was born on september 12 2017.
we are excited to announce that the first phase of installing acrylic in our k-8 school office windows and hardening that project was completed on monday of this week and so our first four schools are complete and production um is underway to get the rest of our schools done also uh the high school materials um are on a little bit of back order but we've got those um ready to roll as soon as they come in also and so we're excited about that piece also additionally i would like to let the board know that between mr musee our director of student services and cabinet we are already conducting school safety visits on a daily basis and we are seeing great adherence to some of the requests that we have for school safety including making sure that all of our classroom doors are locked at all times so we want to thank our folks for doing that and more importantly we want to start we want to end the superintendent report by saying that we expect a great school year and we have a little video that we'd like to show you from some first day memories [Music] so [Music] and as you can tell we had a great first day we've had a great first seven days and uh that concludes my report this evening thank you that was a great video thanks for sharing that next we'll move to governing board update i'll go ahead and start and i apologize in advance that uh it's tad lengthy only because i i missed the last meeting and definitely want to hit on a couple things um on july 15th i was contacted by lauren malone who's the national manager of school management for the be kind people project and she invited me to attend one of their school assemblies and it was amazing to see the high energy of her group geared towards spreading kindness and positivity and we obviously know we can never have too much of that it was sad we where we were sitting there were um preschoolers and kindergartners directly in front and the opening question was who has ever been made to feel bad about themselves because of the way they look or the way they speak and so many little hands went up and it was just so disheartening to see like even at that little age they're impacted by all these just negative feelings about themselves and their environments and so this group was just again so high energy and focused on spreading the goods spreading the positive and including their staff in the curriculum as well because obviously as adults we model the type of kindness and positivity that we want to see in our school communities so i really look forward to seeing more of that group and and dysart i've they were i think at our immunization event before so i've seen their work here and they're just amazing so thank you for um that invitation um on the 26th of july i was invited by sarah rivera so thank you sarah she extended an invitation for me to attend the first meeting of the new dysert special education pta and i was disappointed my work schedule didn't allow me to go that evening but um extremely thankful for the invitation special ed has always been a very been very close to my heart and i look forward to if not attending the meetings um just having other ways that i can support that amazing group so it was exciting to see that starting then unfortunately because of a family commitment on the 28th i wasn't able to attend the meeting but i did want to thank the board for approving the additional employee compensations and adjustments to the salary schedules most understand that these negotiations between the board and employee groups are months in the making and that the vote is pretty much a formality um but it does require board approval so i did want to thank my fellow board members for approving those increases for our amazing staff they definitely deserve it for all that they do and while we're on the thank yous i'd also like to take time to thank all who serve this year in the iba negotiations for years i have strongly advocated for increasing compensation for our special education staff had countless conversations with district administration site level administration teachers multiple people and i never really felt like we reached the level that i was wanting to reach in regard to feeling like it had an impact for our special education staff but this year somehow i i felt heard and i really appreciate that i don't know if it's due to dr dean and his cabinet team um dea sarah mendoza for her leadership all the teams together whatever the combination i just want to thank you for making that three thousand dollar stipend for our special ed teachers a priority this year i know they're very thankful and i know that our students and families feel it as well to see their teachers get the compensation that they um they so deserve um i also was able to visit a couple of amazing schools last week it's always a highlight when i'm able to get into the classrooms and schedule some school visits a big thank you to miss davis and her team at el mirage elementary school i am going to brag on her behalf set her second grade she was i'm sorry she was second in the district for ela growth at her school and first in the district for math growth on aasa and that is just amazing um amazing growth out of el mirage um i also want to thank the teachers who allowed me to to interrupt their classrooms you wouldn't know it though because even as dr dean and dr sai and i walked in there they were just still very focused on what was happening which speaks a lot to the classroom management there as well i also want to give a special shout out to our the art teacher at el mirage uh miss karen hinton venero i hope i spell pronounce that correctly on day three of school they were actually analyzing a piece of art that was projected on the screen and asked to write about what they observed and their observations of that picture and it was just great for me to see that cross-curricular instruction and see how writing was brought into a special area class like our arts with um with their art class so um i just really appreciate that because that's some growth i think is a district we're making that we didn't always necessarily see and it was great to see that in action so so thank you very much to her and then i also spent some time at freedom traditional academy thank you to principal connie wolford i felt very welcomed and i was loved just seeing the differences and how the school is structured compared to some of our other schools to my own fault by the time we got to freedom everyone was at lunch so i wasn't able to observe as many classrooms as i would have liked but the classrooms that i was able to see all the students were very much engaged and i appreciated being able to spend some time there i learned i want to learn more though about the postal service that's incorporated into their school community and to me it was great to see just how they were able to bring um the students in a sense of community and commitment and work that little u.s postal service piece and then also finally their patriotic wall i think i could have stared at that forever it was just so moving and inspiring but again thank you so much i always love to get into schools if you're open to it i would love to uh schedule time with dr dean to come and visit some others but um otherwise i'll be scheduling some in the near future but most importantly um just i'm glad we all got off to a great start i'm looking forward to a wonderful year and thank you for all that you that's all i have that was less than three minutes anyone else yes um i had the honor of visiting several schools on august 3rd i went around with dr croto and craig musee our new director of support services and it was awesome to actually walk around and see several students very energetic and ready to learn and the excitement energy and the level well except you get to some of the high school it was say hi hi and so you know they're looking for their classrooms and they're looking for friends and everything but it was still a great day to visit the middle schools the high schools we visited transportation and also sundown on august 5th i returned to visit a couple of four schools had to get my elementary school fix because there's nothing like visiting with the younger kiddos in the schools but i still have 11 more schools to visit and so be prepared i will be coming to see you just to say hi last night on the news there was a segment that was featured in the number of teacher vacancies across our nation and it was a little disheartening to see that there was approximately 282 000 vacancies across the united states and in this clip it featured three different states their types of vacancies and so florida had approximately eight thousand thirty one vacancies illinois 88 percent of their school districts were scrambling to fill their posted positions and then also arizona was featured and arizona had 2272 positions still needing to be filled um we know that several teachers have left the profession um we know that there's a new crop that are going through the universities and colleges and everything trying to get their degrees to come on in and teach but it is a little disheartening that so many vacancies are still out there and we need folks and we need to make sure that we show our current teachers and the ones coming on board that we do appreciate all of the work that they do i know i do and finally a small bit of info and this kind of shook me to the core um that there was a school board not in arizona that took a board action the motion and approve to no longer recite the pledge of allegiance at the start of their board meetings it brought tears to my eyes and i found it was very disheartening that they would not honor those that have made that sacrifice and so i feel that it is an honor and a privilege for us to start our board meetings with the pledge patriotism it gave it a bad name and so i appreciate everything that everyone does thank you i would just like to extend a thank you to mr hicks and our district administration for um i went over the expense reports like i normally do line by line all hundreds and hundreds of pages but i just want to say the past couple times everything's looked really good there hasn't been anything really concerning as far as purchases that have stuck out so i just want to say thank you to district administration and interim superintendent dr dean the protocols that you have put in place seem to be working so i just want to say that i really appreciate your hard work wanted to say that i also attended the be kind assembly with um with mrs pritchard and it was great just seeing all the energy um and and the kindness that that it really brought to the students there i also wanted to thank mrs sarah rivera for visiting the board last week i'm sorry that i missed that but i really appreciate her words and i really enjoyed my first meeting with the special education ptsa i just really appreciate all the hard work from both parents and district that went into making that happen and that's really an exciting thing that dysart is the first in the state to have a special education ptsa and then i was not able to visit any of the schools just with my work schedule however i did attend the meet the teacher night at freedom elementary and kudos to the leadership there for mrs wilford it really is incredible and that's it okay thank you next we'll move to motion to approve consent agenda items i moved the board approved consent agenda items as presented motion made by christine pritchard seconded by tracy sorry sinkhole motion carries next we move to information discussion items f1 information on dysart's updated covid protocol dr dean thank you madam president members of the governing board members of cabinet and our community although presented at the last board meeting under the superintendent's update we have a requirement to formally have this as an information item to meet our esser requirements and so this evening dr crota will provide an information item to the board on our covet protocols dr croto thank you dr dean madam president members of the board superintendent dean and guests cabinet and guests we are here to give you a quick update on the covet update on how our schools are operating for employees and students as dr dean mentioned we did cover this last time but we are doing a requirement right now that has to be presented in a board meeting so first of all face coverings and masks face covering and masks are not required for all staff student visitors to all schools and campuses in the dysart unified district along with vaccinations covet 19 vaccinations are not required for student staff and community members to attend school school events or to be on a school campus in dysert our isolation along with the recommendations from cdc any staff or student that tests positive for covet 19 should isolate for a minimum of five days and in isolation when symptom free it is a recommendation of wearing a mask from the cdc recommendation is not required but it is recommended that when they return when they are symptom-free and return that they should wear a mask for five days again that's a recommendation by the cdc our personal protective equipment is available to any student or staff member upon request students and staff are encouraged to continue with their frequent hand washing the good hygiene practice that they developed over this two year period of of covin additional information just a reminder to the governing board and to the community that dysert unified school district did install air scrubbers they've been installed in all our dysart unified school district facilities to assist with the air quality additional cleaning supplies are available for all staff upon request our athletic vents as they are in around the state have returned to normal operations visitor and volunteer operations have returned to normal so we do have visitors and volunteers back in our campuses and our cafeteria operations have also returned to normal so with that i will stand for any questions thank you any questions or comments from the board i just have a quick question please um so i know in the past if an employee tested positive and i know about the five days but they got paid for those five days and they did not have to use their personal time has that been eliminated so if i if in play test positive they now have to use their own sick days and or whatever vacation days madam president remember grant uh that is the case it expired on june 30th of this year where uh the kova days for uh being sick uh did expire so right now if they are out with kova that is their own days so so what's the incentive to test i don't feel good but i'm gonna go in i'm not gonna test i mean because if i'm a single parent and maybe my child gets it now i'm out for my child now i've already missed so many days what's the incentive to test i would imagine that the incentive i don't know that there's an incentive to test but we just ask like usual before covet if you're not feeling well don't come to school and if you believe you have coveted uh you should test and see if you do um but it's there's not per se an incentive well that you know what i'm saying it's not as incentive wasn't the right word but i mean if i don't have any days then what do i do we ask all people if they don't feel well to stay home not come i mean if i don't have any i've used up all of my days can can i interject isn't there an employee sick bank that employees can donate to and if they go above and beyond their pto days they can draw from that is that still the case madam madam president member chaffin yes there is an employee sick bank they do have to use all their days or our requirements in order to pull days from that but we do have a sick bank that can be utilized if they participate in that so they have to donate a day at the beginning of the year every year when they sign up for their insurance to elect to be part of that sick bank so yes if they do or if they are part of the sick bank they may utilize that also does that help no well i knew about the bank i'm just saying it's fine madam president remember grant if in any situation if an employee is out of pto days and um they're sick and can't come to school they can still take the time off it's becomes unpaid um days during that time that's what i'm concerned about is people are just struggling as it is and now that unpaid time and that's what i'm saying about oh my gosh now i've got to miss work and i'm not going to get paid i understand we understand that concern absolutely you know as dr crota stated we're we're working hard to return to pre-pandemic procedures and telling folks in general if you don't feel well please don't come to work fully understand the concern dr croto how often do we receive if any notifications from maricopa county health do we receive anything from them regarding kovit madam president member sawyer sink bill um we do not receive any notifications from maricopa county that i can recall as i sat in my previous chair i we did not receive any there and i don't i believe it's still the case i do not know of any notifications we have received thank you all right next we'll move to information discussion item two information on the supplemental resource process dr dean madam president members of governing board members of cabinet in our community dr assai will present the information on supplementary resource process this evening dr assai good evening madam president members of the board we are presenting on supplementals we went through supplementals a few meetings ago so i will try to keep it brief and try to change slides we should add that this is dr first presentation as an assistant superintendent not to add to the pressure if you push the button it will move to the next slide there'll be a test at the end right absolutely it's amazing that it just worked for dr croto okay it's a test thanks john thank you thank you you're not doing well so far well i'll go ahead and get started and there we go just like that um so supplementals just to remind everyone our resources that are chosen to complement the core materials our core materials are things like pearson hmh discovery learning uh they could come in the form of novels online resources we've also approved our tier two and tier three resources as supplemental to the core we have divided them into core supplementals and what we would call regular supplementals core supplementals are adopted at the district level you proved some tonight via consent agenda with cognitive and um with the math and amira pilot uh i guess that wasn't it would eventually be a supplement if the pilot works we also have other supplementals that can be approved at the site and 10 or less with principal approval using the vetting form that this board approved to make that process a little bit tighter the process used is defined in policy 9.22 uh when we go out for a bid for core textbooks they're placed on display for 60 days at that time we might also recommend supplementals however there is a there is permission in there that if needs are identified prior we can adopt things as we go you see this frequently happen we usually bring something to you in june we'll talk about that in a minute also there's a pot process for the 10 or less or not really in that process of course so we can put them through with the principal approval and the vetting form what happens each april is ed services puts out a call to schools and says hey tell us about the supplementals you think would work best in your classroom those resources are always reviewed by a committee uh we we vet them and then we bring the list to the board for for approval and they go on a list usually in may or june to say hey here's some things you can use next year but as we know we send teachers to trainings in summer and sometimes they come back with some great ap resources that weren't on the list so we do have the process again for the ten and under that can be approved with the principal or vetting form uh we also have the process where we bring them forth at different times like we did like we did tonight i did want to add there seems to be some confusion with some of our teachers there are things that aren't supplementals and they're not core a read aloud book would be neither uh things like maybe a small um maybe there's a song out that i want to play an appropriate song that i want to play that wouldn't be considered a supplemental we do ask our teachers that they think about the vetting form that we put out a month or two ago and say okay well this doesn't contradict any of those things so i should feel free to use that in my bell work or to in that nature any questions i do have a question thank you for your presentation a couple questions so if i'm a music teacher and i want to use a particular song that is entirely school appropriate um if i'm looking at it on monday and i want to use the song on wednesday or thursday i would just look at that vetting form and would i submit that to my administrator for approval or would just lining it up with that vetting form suffice for my classroom instruction i believe in that case with the form lining it up with your vetting form would suffice we would then take it through we would ask for a list at the end to take it through you know we really are dependent on our teachers in that case uh to make sure you know if something were to go wrong then we would probably have to tighten that up our teachers they're well educated they're well trained so giving them the parameters and saying okay here's what we need to compare it against you know that trust is professionals okay and then another quick question so um if we have a teacher who has been teaching and using the same supplements for years and years and years but they're looking at this list and going oh my supplement it's august what i've been using isn't on this list they can use that vetting form right they can contact their principal and say i would like to use this and then the principal can either kick it up if it's over 10 copies they could submit that vetting approval for district and would that teacher be able to use that supplement while they're waiting for the approval so i would i would say a couple things with that because there's a couple situations there one would be if i've been using it for years and years and years and not getting great student achievement out of it like my dinosaur unit you know as a principal i would probably say i'm glad you like it i'm glad you've been using it i don't know how you've been using it uh but you know i think that would need to go through the principle for that uh because we really are tightening up our curriculum this year with wanting to make sure we're using things that work um you know when we all use some things you know maybe a math program or a starfall you know maybe starfall works it might not work i i just pick starfall out of the air but we don't want teachers to use ineffective resources because they're comfortable with them you know so in that case if it is going to be a course supplement we would definitely want them to go through their principal their principal could bring it to us our team would review and in conclusion with that member chapman yes if a teacher wanted to use that for more than 10 or more students they could take it through the process to their principal up through our curriculum department to dr acai and we could have it board approved as well but ideally just so i'm clear the goal is to have everything submitted prior to may or june so it's approved so we're not having a lot of yeah our goal our goal president pritchard is always may or june and i guess my third question that i was going to piggyback on that as you know i've been using it for years and years we do call every april and say hey if there's anything you want i can see maybe you missed it the first year uh but you know the second year you should have said hey that that's me um so we can put it through so we can look at the research on it and look at the alignment to the to the core but just to follow up on my question in regards to the um the supplemental for 10 under 10 copies filling it out and then presenting it to the school principal so those copies and that vetting process goes to the principal as opposed to the the process that's in place for mayor june that comes before the board uh the process for 10 or under goes to the principal and then it comes through my office so i look at it as well before we purchase the 10 or under sets madam president that's been a process we've had in this district since i started i believe that if you have materials that you're using for less than 10 students they typically are intervention based um then they've been allowed to be used we put the vetting form in place to make sure that we know what they are and and that we have eyes on them prior to them using them okay and then ultimately though they're reviewed the same way yes okay yes thank you and that's the change that we made this year with the vetting form was to say if you are using something first 10 or less yes it's allowed per our process and policies however we still want to know what that resource is um and and make sure that we are aware of it it could possibly be a situation where we know that that's failed miserably other places um and we don't want to waste the time um to do that and or and or we just want to make sure that the materials are correct um if we have a second grade teacher who's has is trying to use a seventh grade resource for intervention we want to make sure that's inappropriate for the grade level as well okay thank you um just to clarify dr aside the flip side of your example um if you have a teacher that's been using something for many years that that for whatever reason was not on that approved list but they are very successful you know and they have very high scores in their classrooms year after year something like that i'm hopeful that you would oh as a principal we would we would definitely take that through i'm just i was trying to use the example i'm sorry yeah we definitely i i was walking to campus today um at el mirage actually stephanie just came in you know and they were like hey you know we would really like to use this i was like great send it up so we can take it through and get it and get it approved it was a math program so typically math programs i mean and stephanie looks at her research or rated you know yeah they're not controversial usually i know stephanie's recommending it i'll we'll still vet it but if it's green as a supplemental we would go ahead and send it through okay so there's a process where we can go and do that um but at what point though do you do you ever look at those things that are that are requested for the supplementals that they have been using maybe for quite some time and having success with and think wow maybe we want to adopt this and push this out to all of our you know schools as an option i i'm trying to think of an example where we've done that but most of the things we take forward actually come from the field uh you know what i used 16 years ago in the classroom isn't the same thing that works today okay so there's definitely a ground-up process it would depend on where that originated from and i'll give you an example i was at canyon if it was a very direct instruction science program that would have been a good fit for canyon you know just like if it's an inquiry-based science pro science curriculum or a supplement it wouldn't work well at freedom so you know when we have niche i don't know if we call them niche schools but school signature schools with a focus that's a little bit tighter but depending on where you are and how it fits okay but it would be added to where it would be an available resource for any school to use going forward should that niche change because demographics and communities change over time too yeah well the identities as uh ken used to be a math and science school it changed to stem so i mean which still includes that but it's a much broader scope okay madam president member chef and i would add that the advantage to us using a vetting forum and tracking is that now we have a record of who's using which and so if we have somebody who's being very successful we can track that back and then take a look at a broader scope with that as well thank you any questions all right thank you we'll move to information discussion item three information on student support services dr dean thank you madam president members of the governing board members of cabinet and our community this evening we have a brief presentation on services that are available to our students some through uh actually all through mr musee's office coordinated through mr muse's office and by the way um i would just like to take a second during this presentation um to thank mr musi and um the great work that he's doing with our schools and our principals and staff already so mr musi thank you very much um and uh since this is a student service support report it's appropriate for me to do this at that point in time so we just want to take a moment and publicly state some of the supports that are available to our students so that that our community continues to remain aware of the things that we have available in our schools to assist our students next slide please we've talked about safe reports in the past and safe reports are available to all of our students or parents online i should say community online when a safe report is filled out it asks specifically for information on what a cons what concern exists where the concern exists it would school and if people know who exactly who it's with as well we ask them to fill that out also and that safe report once it's submitted online feeds directly to the school administration and to mr musee's office as well and so our school administrators in real time receive those reports there have been many times in the past several years where we've had administrators get those reports in the evening time and and they picked up the phone and made calls either to have support services available to students first thing in the morning or there have been times where they've contacted parents as well um the safe report process is something that's been very helpful for us we've had students in the past who have filled out safe reports of a concern of something that may happen at a bus stop the next morning or a concern about how they're feeling about themselves and that they may be feeling like they that it's possible that they would self-harm and so that report when a student fills that out the fact that it is immediately sent to administration in mr museu's office allows us to respond in in very quick time um there's been times where we pulled together teams um in the middle you know late in the evening to be prepared first thing in the morning as well so that's been a very positive piece additionally we have our safe schools hotline available um and that is monitored by mr musee's office as well both mr musee and his administrative assistant monitor the safe schools hotline and as we stated previously with the safe schools report that hotline is monitored throughout the day and throughout the evening as well and mr musee and his team when appropriate contact school administrators to let them know of concerns so again they are prepared when a school day begins and and provide assistance to students and parents when needed additionally we have a full threat assessment process that's available on our campuses when we have issues in which various threats may occur where a student may feel threatened or they're concerned about a larger threat we have both an in a smaller process for threat assessment and an entire threat assessment team that we can pull together to create or and conduct a threat assessment for students for situations for issues in the community should they exist as well and then finally we have our social workers available for our students as well on each of our campus we have a social worker position that is available and they work with students as we've talked in in years past um you know they contact parents prior to working with um students and and are available for them as well so those are the supports some of the supports that we have available to our students we're very excited to have these pieces and we've had great success with each and we look forward to those continued success and i'd be happy to answer any questions or more importantly if they're hard we'll ask mr musee the questions thank you any questions or comments from the governing board just um i will vouch for the safe reports i have submitted one myself and got almost an immediate response from three administrators so um in follow-up through two and 3 a.m so it is very effective and people really take that stuff seriously so i appreciate it and i will say that that is a lasting legacy from mrs winterstein's work here dr dean i just want to touch on one of the last things you said in regard to social workers you commented that there's a social worker in every school madam president there is a social worker position in every school i believe that we may have a few openings at this point in time dr polling could provide specific numbers but we do have a social worker position for every school that we're our goal is to fill those positions yes absolutely because i think that there are people in our community that believe that this board cut social workers and so i'm glad that you touched on that piece of it because i think it's important to know that that's not the case um social workers have the opportunity to make very impactful meaningful relationships with students in many ways and just as you you identified them as like a layer of support although there's been board conversation in the past regarding how some of our schools were using social workers and we had to kind of make sure that that role was being used in the appropriate way a school social worker would be utilized there was never any intention to or any action to actually cut those people reiterating just that level of student support that they provide to our students has not changed despite the calendar modifications and perhaps that was one piece of it that was causing the misperception of what occurred but while the action to modify the social work calendar saved the district i'm going to say this really slow because it's important 550 so a quarter of a million dollars it did not lessen the amount of time our social workers had face-to-face contact with our students correct madam president our social workers while the calendar changed our social workers calendar has them working every day that students are in school so access to students was not minimized diminished in any way they still have access to our students to provide that valuable that would be correct resources okay do you know as far as that piece of it and how often our social workers are available to our students how does that compare to other neighboring districts madam president we looked at this information in the spring of last year when the conversation initially began i believe the spring maybe early spring our social worker calendar that is in place right now is similar to the calendar of the school districts that are around us peoria deer valley trying to remember if if it literal litchfield and alfred fall into there as well we don't really use them as a comparison but deer valley and peoria the calendars are very similar where they are on a calendar similar to our social workers that they are in place when students are on on campus um and don't have a lot of time in the summer on calendar okay thank you for clarifying that because although it's extremely fiscally responsible to save the district a quarter of a million dollars by just making sure our social workers are with our kids when our kids are present it didn't take away from the value that they provide to those students so i really appreciate you listing them not only as a student support which they truly are but having the opportunity to have that discussion to outline and clarify that misperception that's out there in the community so thank you very much i do have a quick thing um walking around with uh dr croto and mr musee uh the first day of school um i actually i have been in our schools numerous times and know to look at certain things and see from a different lens but walking around with mr musee that day i got to see it from a safe schools lens as far as him looking at different things around not only in the classroom but also on the outside versus the inside of a building and it would be really great if the rest of the board and other administration would take the opportunity to walk around with mr musi and see what he sees that we don't see on a regular basis and i just want to thank you for that mr musee it was very enlightening to see it from a different viewpoint so thank you madam president members servicing phil i would add to your conversation as well just to reiterate that we continue to work very intentionally to make sure that our students have tremendous supports available to them and that we're doing everything possible to make sure that we have the safest environment in which our student can come to school and learn and if we're doing our job well there then that takes care of a lot of the supports that our students need as well absolutely all right anybody else i'm just curious i know that this presentation and the position for mr mesi is student services as far as the safety piece goes but i am curious though if we have a staff member that is undergoing a personal threat or even a threat from someone else within the school are those things handled through the same process madam president member denta moore it's a very good question and and pertinent in this conversation those conversations would be handled through the school administration and through hr and we have layers of support there as well we actually have a service that our employees can access for assistance should they have emotional needs that that arise and so that that service is available through hr and through the school administration so but those we do have many layers of support for them also um but it's it's not handled to answer your question directly it's not handled through mr musee's office i appreciate your answer and maybe i wasn't really clear hypothetically so say we have a staff member that's being harassed by i don't know an ex-boyfriend or husband or wife or whatever that is something like that so do you [Music] do madam presidential training orders miss denzel that would uh that then would mr musee would be involved to assist um along with um local law enforcement as well safety issues absolutely yeah and and so that's where his office would become involved and we would immediately involve uh local law enforcement with that okay and and i this is a great time for me to just plug and thank both the cities of surprise and el mirage pd and all of the outstanding support that they provide us every single day and that's a part of our supports as well they are awesome partners continue to be awesome partners so but yes that would involve mr missy's office because i know adult issues can sometimes trickle down to your students and there are times mr sten's more aware not to extend the presentation but there are times where we have family disputes that don't involve our staff that occur in our front office and mr musee's office is involved with that and local law enforcement as well as unfortunate as it is at times when that happens um you know we he does work with our administrators to train and how to respond to that speaking of that is would it be would ever be relevant to do whether it be on a monday like pd um like some sort of a role play or like a mock um incident with staff like like yeah if there's a family in the front office that's causing disruption and it might start getting physical and there's children around who could you know indirectly get involved i mean how do you manage that how do you handle it because yeah you can know okay i need to call police or my administrator or whatever but it's still happening right in front of you and things can happen a matter of seconds so is that even something that you have talked about maybe doing at some point madam president not to let the cat out of the bag but we'll let the cat out of bag a little bit with mr yeager joining us is it officer yeager lieutenant jaeger king of safety yeager i'm not sure what that is but the answer is thank you okay major with major jaeger joining us um we have we are planning tabletop scenarios um to roll play exactly what you're saying and we're all happy to volunteer for various um components of that as well but that is in the plans yes okay thank you and then just curious too you mentioned the police departments did you receive any feedback as far as any takers on our offer to have them use our offices and do their reports in the in the cool air as opposed to in their car madam president i'll let dr croto let you know the conversation with the pdf the uh chief pd officer madam president great question i did talk to chief pena he is very excited about that so we are in the process of making that happen we have some signs and and so we are in the process of making all that happen he is very excited about our offer to do that and um is going to spread that around to his officers so yes he's very very glad to do that great well they're very welcome to be here so and as a part of our support for student services we want to again say thank you to surprise and el mirage pd who have been incredibly visible as we started school and they are very good at what they do to the point of the motorcycle officer today who estimated to me that car was going 31 as we were talking and hit his radar gun and the car was going 31.
next slide shows the 2023 budget sort of how they how they plan on being there we go okay we have two funds that are supported by property tax that's the debt fund and the operations and that's going to be about that's about 12 million dollars is what we receive and the current calculation for the education budget which is supported by the state and also local income tax it will be is about 30 million 400 dollars and just to sort of a summary of the funds we have currently with the school we got about 56 different active funds the big three are about 30.2 for education 3.6 is what that should say sorry it says 3.2 for debt and then 8.5 roughly for operations that leaves remaining 13 million coming from a variety of different grants and other you know like the big ester grants part of that and things like that so you got those bigger funds in there just so you know the uh education fund went up as anticipated the per student went up and so that's why you're seeing that number go up slightly from that standpoint next slide please seth these are the four these are the four funds that will be advertised in and again this is um it's sort of an odd process i'm getting used to now since i've been here three years you basically advertise these high and then when the rubber hits the road the state figures out how much they're going to allow you to have and then you adjust things down to it so we're advertising a half million for rainy day just in case something happens 35 million for education 15 million for ops and 3.661 for debt that number's actually that's that's the only guarantee on the entire sheet at this point they will allow us that obviously because we have to pay that back so these numbers are very similar to last year i didn't change much from them because there's it's it's inflated right now from an advertisement standpoint anyway next slide please this is basically a slide explaining what the education fund expenditures are for uh no change from last year no debts paid out of this no operations are paid out obviously the education fund you've got a variety of things there between classroom supplies teachers salaries health costs for the teachers plus health service costs for nurses and things like that are all in the education fund next slide is operations fund this slide didn't change from last year's presentation either you've got the office here business office your insurance maintenance transportation all those items and plus your fix to mobile equipment and your bus different vehicles like the maintenance vehicle things like that are all paid out of operations also next slide is the debt service so these are going to be your lease your payments on all your first mortgage bonds and your common school loans both come out of here we currently have 12 bonds and four common school loans you guys just approved one or you just signed one we got the schedule for it i think last month so we may be at five on that one between four and five and that's basically what's used for technology all the computers and things like that we try to keep that fund constantly levels one drops off i pick another one up try to keep that to keep the computers fresh for all the students next slide shows the cash history history balance you see the one the glare number on there like it was last year is your drop from 17 to 18 and that's when you paid back the insurance fund 1.7 million dollars so you see that that's the main drop in that outside of that things have been pretty flat we had a slight increase this year from last year and next slide just shows the uh graph of it sort of shows you how how those cash balances are and that's a cash balance on december 31st so you know it's only a snapshot in time it's only good for that one day cash balance has changed the very next day but it's worth showing on here next up is rainy day basically i'm we've got about three million dollars in rainy day right now and that's where i was going to advertise about 500 in case something came up we had we did the same thing last year we didn't end up using any of it so far we're in august we haven't used any of the 500 allocation for that next slide shows what our debt service is going to be we already mentioned it on a previous slide but i've always had that on its own just so it sort of is out there and everybody's can see it easy next step is education and the estimate is going to be or the advertise is going to be 35 i'm anticipating it coming in around 32.5 and again i've got to make a we'll make a slight adjustment for this when i get some updated numbers on all of the um extra items like all those all of the other items that besides the basic grant so things like special ed yeah it's got a name for all of it i can't think of what it is complexity complexity yes that i'm gonna update the complexity index because we have to let school get started i got to get with that next two weeks and we'll update that part the current education fund is based off of an average of 3 900 students on an adm so it's down slightly but when you look at the calculation because of the increase in the per student we're actually up in dollars but down a little bit down in adm number next slide shows the operations and it's about 15 is what we're advertising but i'm anticipating twelve five it's probably gonna be more like 12 just it's hard to say on how that comes in that's coming in with the uh the intent here is to not raise taxes so i'm trying to dance that line which we'll show in a couple slides to keep that where our taxes stay level next slide basically just is a information slide our current overall operations rate is 0.9479 if our av was to drop which is not likely but this would go either way if our ev went up 15 if it dropped though our total value in this city or the county would go down to uh 768 million dollars and then our budget would drop by 1.2 million so it's just there from an information to know if it fluctuates so you know if it went up if it went up 15 you know we'd be looking at 1.2 extra so that's why it's just that's why it's on there um next oh i'm anticipating the av going up slightly right now we're about 905 which is that's there's the 9.467 i do the calculations shows it could go up to about 9 14.
so the thing that's a little bit difficult and we will be communicating this with parents in the next couple of days the communications ready we're just just verifying that everything is set and our website works properly um how do you communicate that meals will be free for a certain period of time we'll explain it in the communication and we will keep parents posted that if we can extend that date we will so that is kind of the update there there are a couple of other things that i would like to mention and and this again will be going out to parents the um it because of of the way the programs ran last year we did not have to run every student meal through the program that we use to check students out that is no longer allowable so even though the meals are free students will have to provide their id and they will be processed because that's how we have to submit to the usda for reimbursement the other change and i believe i mentioned that in june but i think it's important to mention that when we have early dismissal at the middle school in high school we must provide student lunches we didn't do that in the past but that is required now we also cannot do a grab-and-go meal so we cannot hand students a meal that they could take on the bus and take home with them so everything needs to be served in school and that's true elementary through high school so those are a couple of the important announcements that we have again parents will be receiving notice and then updates as we know more and as we know when we will run out of the funding when the funding runs out we will be charging whatever the set meal prices are at this point i'm recommending we do not change what the board already approved in october but if that does change we can revisit it in september so that is the update on school lunch thanks adam yeah just to get clarity on it from what i recall we were talking about uh having the price continue until like october 1st and then jump up so skip any price jump other than zero to 100 possibly november correct okay okay and then let's say december 1st we have exhausted the 687 000 and we need to charge parents and again this is parents who are not eligible for free and reduced meals because that continues yeah if we need to charge we will give parents notice and they will pay the higher food prices that were approved by the board at the end of last fiscal year sure is that yeah yeah that's i think i understand that and i just you mentioned the high school they cannot do a grab and go they have to have lunch does that mean some of the high school kids are going to be having lunch at 9am or 9 30.
that's the problem so that money has stuck there for all these years almost 10 years at this point thank you the second question is uh learning recovery emergency block crank so you have about 48 million of this at one time is that something that we can use for uh facilities i'm i'm thinking about auditory right is that something that we could take a look at i don't know how to keep watching um i think we got some jungles from there so you know um you know this is something that will have to probably you know come up with a plan and to see what we can do i know we have different ideas we know we need to fix uphook we've been there multiple times at this point um we are working hard to come up with a plan um to see for short term as well long but we do have a plan and then we just set aside some dollars um when we took the budget back in june and we do need to fix something maybe the board will have to act on it and um to someone from general budget excited when you do that we will uh we will um find every opportunity this will also be helping kids to perform as well so i'm sure we can try the best we can to make sure that you will um no absolutely not and so we are still uh making contributions to special education um i know we're looking very forward to working with our new director as well to look at different programs looking at some expenditures as well um you know we are declining enrollment overall but not in such education and so that's one of the things that we have we are looking at those numbers as a making sure that um we are looking at different things um in that program as well and i know that um it will she has already come to talk to us and wanting to learn the different areas within that as well so this is great news they gave us debates but yeah so it's it's good but it's not great because like at this point with that and and they will need to give us a lot more to make us whole at this point um so very hard [Music] from the federal government for special education we spent every single dollar of it plus more i mean so whatever that we don't have enough did the district stand the balance so that would cause the contribution but then they haven't we totally understand um and so i think the goal is for example down the road is if you're going to give us base funding plus any authentication please give a documentation for all these other programs versus just on the base funding so they just give it to you just educational budget but it is a contribution model meaning that they don't receive enough funding um for that program as well thank you thank you can i give you a swing [Music] okay um thank you very much and thank you president javar board of trustees superintendent executive cabinet i appreciate the opportunity to uh to share um i'm excited about this i've got four members of our team that i could not have done we could not have done any of what we did without the four folks behind us sharon kane from manhattan high school she's peter and anaheim performing arts conservatory director miley eisenberg director of dance at western high school in orangeview and next is carrie fenton director of dance from cypress high school and you ask how you're going to do something or can we do this and if it's good for kids they say yes and then we figure out how to do it i mean i've made a career out of that and that's you know we just just figured it's good for kids you say yes and then you figure out how to do it and these books embody that and i i'm thankful i'm grateful they've done for the summer months and for the kids in the program for the students all across the district individual conference so summer arts academy began a few years back uh 2018 2019.
so he is currently four going on five i know the cutoff date for the school um going into kindergarten is i think august 31st if i'm not mistaken um we were told to have him tested for preschool um to possibly get him into preschool and uh he went in tested at uh coyote canyon with mrs alvarez um and he passed the test with flying colors um he's adding subtracting doing all kinds of stuff but he's never been in a school setting if you will so the social skills um he's very talkative loves talking to people when he gets the opportunity but i know there's long-term effects possibly um if they're held back a year if you if you will 12 days compared to 353 days holding back a year based on his knowledge now i think would have an effect on him that's why we're here on that i know again mrs alvarez had tested him he was doing adding and attracting in there there is a letter of appeal that we did send in um i don't know if you had the opportunity to read it along with his test and the extra comments that were put on that test so we're just here to appeal the the 12-day effect compared to a 350 three day effect on our son going into school we'd love to get him into kindergarten to expand his knowledge and him going in to kindergarten going on six years old i think would have a worse effect on him compared to where he's at now knowledge as far as his knowledge goes so um we're basically here to ask permission from the board if we can get him into kindergarten this year um despite the 12-day difference if you will i'd like to go first if i may okay i've been in your shoes my middle daughter is september 5th and she didn't start until the normal schedule with with that such a short thing um my daughter many of you know in this room my daughter she is brilliant um graduated top of her class valedictorian um nearly i mean she could have finished with an associates while in high school she's absolutely brilliant um i i've seen where you're at i understand where you're at i get why you're asking personally my feelings on that that date is for a reason we have to have a cutoff at some point now to every rule there's always an exception i get that but to me and what i've seen especially when i when i start dealing with kids that i have the fortunate i'm fortunate enough to deal with high school children and seeing where they're at in their development and honestly the kids that the best kids i've got are the older kids because they they've got it together they're they're ready to go no matter where they started at that younger age having that extra time has has been beneficial that's my feeling on this but i'll open it up to the other members of the board well i'm going to bounce off that you know and and i've had similar situations not only with my children but my grandchildren what i'm going to tell you is my biggest concern about this right now he's very bright yes that's a credit to you because he didn't go to preschool and didn't go to daycare so that's a credit to you but my concern is not today it's four years down the road when he's in fourth grade and all of a sudden his peers are a year and i know you say 12 days but it really is a year's difference in maturity and i've seen the difference that i've seen where suddenly that you know well-behaved child who loves school and whatever is suddenly hitting walls because academically in math he's starting to struggle because math is a developmental subject it's all by age and so he's going to start struggling and so i i have those are my concerns um i i mean i i get what you're saying you know and my son was august 29th so he made the cutoff but to be honest with you when he got to first grade there was no way i was going to have him move on to second grade because those kids would have chewed him up and spit him out because he was not mature enough for it and so we wanted to hold him back and made him wait that extra year which is what i should have done in the first place but i i have some real concerns you know in regards to that okay so my turn all right so i have a couple things to to say and in regards to this so the first thing is i was actually incredibly sick of my kindergarten year and i was held back because i missed six months of the year because i was in and out of the hospital and i have absolutely no recollection of school being different for me like i didn't feel bullied i didn't feel put down i didn't feel anything because i had to be in kindergarten twice and i remember seeing kids who i was in kindergarten with the first few months before i got sick in first grade and no one i don't remember anybody treating me any different and in fact i excelled and i'm currently a math teacher at mojave high school i have a degree in mathematics and i started with a degree in chemistry and so i don't feel like that beginning part was detrimental to me in any way so that's the first part of that so in my personal experience and i know it's just anecdotal but another thing is as a math teacher and someone who deals in the honors mathematics um primarily uh i have had i've had his daughter up to ap calculus and she was yes brilliant one of one of the best kids that i've ever had and um i've dealt quite heavily in kids especially when they come into geometry around their sophomore year with kids who are freshmen coming into geometry because they test it out of algebra one or i have kids who are younger who skip a grade or something like that who come in and almost unanimously they struggle much more than either the kids that are their age group or are older because geometry is very conceptual it's very hands-on and their brains a lot of times just haven't reached that developmental milestone to be able to handle geometry very well in fact i think they should probably be a year older before they get into geometry than what schools make them do but i've noticed that those kids who are younger struggle extensively in geometry versus the kids who are older and when they're older they are definitely more mature and so those are the concerns that i would definitely want you to think about that yes like my youngest is incredibly intelligent and stuff and he had they had considered for skipping him a grade and i said no he was going to go through normal because there is just as much i personally feel as a consequence to pushing them through as there is to holding them back and he's young enough now that he won't notice getting in there later but he might notice being there younger does that as he gets older does that make sense yes okay so that's where my concern is because i've seen it almost consistently i would say i've only had one student out of probably 10 that i felt survived geometry well whereas the other ones were just kind of in there by the skin of their teeth does that make sense yes and those are my honors geometry students not not just not the general but the honors and so they still struggled and that's where my concern is i don't have those concerns each child develops on its own you know and so i'm i'm assuming that you have watched this development for at least four or four years plus yes and you've seen him develop and you've seen him begin to add and subtract and multiply probably not multiplying yet but he's going to get there um i think a lot has to do with you guys you understand that in the future things are not going to be as beautiful and as rosie right i understand yes i don't know if you read my letter i did i am very in the school the whole reason the whole reason why i don't really i'm not on kind of talking their side is because of this letter because i believe that people who have done this kind of research and actually have had their child tested and and i think that you know your child very well i know you know the research very well i i personally think that he should try it and then if he doesn't pass kindergarten he gets to be in kindergarten again two times boys boys are boys are our special breed we have two of them you know some of them some of them like there are ancidal things in my it's you know i have brothers and basically one of them developed real early and the other one is still out there shaking around so yeah um basically you guys would have a lot of responsibility to make those heavy decisions come the end of kindergarten next year when the when he probably will not do well okay um but i think that he has a lot of family support i think he has two intelligent parents and i thank you for what you've done thank you just to throw i'm not against personally letting him try i just want to make sure that you are fully i am afraid of what can happen i'm fully aware either way how this can go i just hate to take the opportunity away from him and when i tell you this kid has been asking me to go to school for two years yes i wish i had more parents as a teacher as involved as you are i wish i did um that is a blessing in your child's life and it makes a huge difference in everything they're gonna do um i don't know what's gonna happen here so i can't say um but what i can say is i do agree with everything that all of them have said it all makes absolute sense i totally get what's going on um but understand that's not the end-all be-all so even if the border says no we really think you should wait there are other options your your son can wait for kindergarten test later be pulled out into separate math classes there's there's other options there it's not so i don't want you to hope i don't want you to think we're crushing your dreams and stopping everything that's going on because that's that's not what's happening we are taking into consideration the education of your child because it's very important to all of us um but we just want to make sure you understand why all this stuff is going on and you do and it's it's refreshing to to see thank you so much again with the respect to you guys i'm i'm a veteran and i've learned to use the chain of command and all that stuff and that's another reason why we're here before you guys um and hopefully get everything possibly settled depending on your guys decision and then depending on what happens here figure out a way to get him obviously trying or attempting in school did you have anything else you'd like to share did we have another questions for them no all right so at this time do we have a motion um let me think i move that we approve the a kindergarten request for luke and let him go into kindergarten early do we have a second i'll second that motion una boyd open it up for vote me charlene diaz i anna boyd i'm melinda sabrasky hi corey burgess thank you sir thoroughly appreciate all of you thank you all right moving on item 5.3 modification to club sponsor addendums dr stewart mr president and board members in some of our schools we have 21st century program and in other schools we don't and so we have a club sponsors sponsorships and during the time that we've had 21st century funding we've tried to make those clubs part of 21st century offerings for a number of reasons first of all because those clubs could meet more than more than the typical once a week or once every two weeks or that kind of thing but the other thing is that frankly the the pay to to our teachers to spend that time after school is much better from 21st century than it is from our addendums and so it benefited kids to have more opportunities and it also benefited teachers in giving their time that our 21st century programs are winding down so we get less money each year so we're in the final year for those programs right now so a couple of the programs at the middle school would not fit into the 21st century budget and that kind of thing to balance that there are some clubs that are are not active at the middle school so ms cochrane and her team asked if we would consider taking the stipend money for those clubs that are not going to function this year and divided among the three clubs that are functioning but that will not cannot be funded by 21st century so then that brings that amount of pay up for those folks to the same as they would make for 21st century and increases the number of opportunities for our students to meet in those clubs so i'm asking you all approved those stipends in in june and so i'm asking you to uh approve modifying the middle school stipends so that we can accommodate those changes this year so we're not looking at more money no removing the money from yes ones that we couldn't fill yes so with those clubs still exist right now we're removing those clubs no we're just taking the stipend away right two years now so they might want to bring that club exactly um so i just want to make sure yeah no we're not we're not uh abandoning those clubs it's just that there's not been interest in a couple of years in those clubs number one and uh and number two there is interest in those other clubs so it's just shifting the money around for this year and then we would revisit this again next year any questions you get a motion i move that we approve the modifications made for the club sponsors i'll second that motion and avoid all in favor aye corey burgess aye charlene diaz aye anna boyd i'm melinda sabrasky so i moved 5.4 club sponsored animals so this is the list of folks that have whose names have been turned in for our various sites for the various clubs and uh for the motion that you just made the three clubs that that will receive the shifted money are art club chess and drama and uh media was one of our clubs and that's the one that can still be funded with 21st century so if we take that 600 and the 600 from student newspaper and split it among the other three then it brings those up they have not given me the names for for those sponsors yet because they were waiting to see what this decision would be but you can see the names for uh the folks for all of the other club positions in the district at this time so i'm recommending approval of addendums for the individuals listed and we will bring you the names for those clubs at the middle school and any other names that we don't have now at the meeting next month any questions we get a motion on 5.4 i'll make a motion to approve 5.4 the club sponsor addendums i'll second that melinda sabroski all in favor aye corey burgess aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sabrowski at 5.5.5 at a district sponsored committee mr president and board members and again in june you approved the district committees and the stipends for those committees since school has started or since we've come back cate hall has learned from the ade exceptional students division that they have combined or blended together a couple of the programs that go on all the time so one of those is on one of those is the compliance there's a six year compliance schedule so we're in the schedule right now of self-compliance we we had actual on-site compliance review last year we're in self-compliance this year but of course they want to make sure that we are in fact monitoring our own compliance but then they've rolled into that a new initiative that has to do with the concerns that folks have about students special ed special education students particularly not making the kind of growth by third grade that they should be making to be successful and so the state department is requiring that the district have a committee to to manage a plan do some assessment about what our issues might be and to establish a plan of correction so i'm asking that you approve now an additional district committee to do that process and it's a three-year it's a three-year process so we would be approving this district committee for at least for this year and at least two more years and and i'm recommending that the stipend for the individuals it's a six-member committee that the stipend be the same as we pay for our other district committees which is 750 dollars per person per year correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't uh exceptional students always with her special education it is but the the state department changed the name to exceptional students because that includes not just special education it includes students who have 504 plans it includes gifted students it includes students who you know or we already have a committee for that one we don't have a separate committee no we don't uh no we do have some leadership positions uh in that list that you already approved for leadership positions but this is an actual committee that will need to do what they will do will be essentially establishing as our just like our sites do a school improvement plan but in this case it won't be a school improvement plan it will be a program improvement plan for special education and it's required so it's it's pretty much yeah i just want to make sure we didn't know that no and that's a good question no it's absolutely good yeah it's absolutely a great question and it's required i'll move that we approve a uh or add a district sponsored committee i'll second that motion and avoid all in favor aye corey burgess i'm charlene diaz hi anna boyd hi melinda sabrowski it's unmoved 5.6 district media addendums so in anticipation of your possible approval of that kate did find some folks who were interested in being on that committee and you could have approved this list without that you know without that committee if you had not approved the committee but um here you see the names of the folks for our district-wide commun committees and and on page two or at the bottom sorry and then it rolls over to page two are the six individuals and i see a typo now for the first time i don't think we're going to pay rex any less than we'll pay anybody else so that should be 7.50 instead of 250 right the other one up there that was 250 also was there yeah oh thank you for catching oh yes i see it up there okay from siphon yeah okay well that gets changed too so i'm sorry um but i recommend approval of addendums for all of these folks for these various committees with those two with those two changes with those two changes okay do we have a motion um i'll make a motion that we approve 5.6 district committee addendums with the changes of the 250s the two 250s to 750.
they're very good at what they do so yeah we think five mile an hour discount he wasn't interested in the final mile an hour and it wasn't my car all right thank you okay next we move to request for future agenda items anyone okay okay let's move to adjourn the meeting i move that we had during the meeting second motion made by christine prichard seconded by tracy sorry sinkville motion carries thank you
now last time i did that only got half of it so 910 is probably more realistic but you know the average is on that it's all just average of averages so i've done it last three years i've been here i've never got it right obviously because when you're dealing with averages of averages it's hard to but um i would participate somewhere with team 910 to 914 on that one next slide shows how it's trended in the last 10 years anybody has looked at their taxes already is going to realize that 2023's estimate will probably be close because all of our taxes have gone up all of our value property values have gone up not the tax rate but the property value has gone up so i can't imagine just not seeing that trend happen here county wide because i've not talked to a single person that went down like you see in that dip there in 16 that's most likely not going to happen all right next slide shows what the advertised actual our advertising actual tax rates were in 22 so i advertised 1.84 as you see there they came in at 1.2998 so they came in less than what we thought but the problem is if you don't advertise high then that's the cap so if i don't go high on it if they if i went three point if i went 1.35 and it calculated 1.38 we wouldn't get even take advantage of it so that's why it's that's why it's inflated and we know it's going to be lower so the next slide shows what i'm looking at for 2023 and obviously it's not going to be 2-0 i think it's going to be 1.135 is where i think it's going to end up based on the av going up and that will keep the rate right where we're at you know with our current debt and our current operations where i'm anticipating those will be the goal here is for that to come in where it doesn't affect the taxpayer that's that's the goal in this always so very complicated uh calculation there but in the end we're going to be we're pretty much stuck with what the state says you're going to have there all right next up just sort of explains cap levies uh we do have operations fund is capped there's something called a circuit breaker in the state of indiana and taxpayers do not have to pay more than and i don't know the guts of it that well but the bottom line is we operations fund is affected by that debt service is not affected by that but education has no levy so it's not either but operations is so just that is there to make sure everybody knows it can be affected by the circuit breaker and what the circuit breaker basically says the taxpayer if the taxpayer in our county is has certain value or number of value in total on property they can't be taxed past a certain percentage so what that means is the school loses money i mean i'll just be blunt that's that's that's the result of it taxpayer makes out better but the school does lose money with the tax cap but it's a state law so it is what it is up is the re uh a summary of what we're doing same page i think it's the same as the fourth slide so these will be the advertisements the amounts of the advertisements last year for an example we advertised 54.5 so we're advertising slightly less this year because operations was pretty good ways out of whack with uh i think we had the 15 5 and we got 10 so i decided to bring that down slightly you know because there's no way we're going to get to 15 5 so i just try to make that a little bit more realistic and brought that number down some next slide shows the property tax just sort of information from people just they know assessed values can decline after recessions probably because property values typically do because new construction reduces but the key to this whole thing is property value if the property value increase happens in 22 it will be assessed in 23 and it won't affect our taxes until 24.
it's going to mean that we do need to squeeze those those lunch waves into the day on early dismissal days so i don't know exactly what time but that is something that will be announced to the students at the high school yes okay was there a reason for that the we were advised by the um by the state the you know department of the department that runs school nutrition services that we should have been doing that all along and most districts were not doing that on early dismissal days middle and high school did not have lunch waves but there was a clarification made and the determination was that we must be providing those meals even on early dismissal days and this might be for jeff to add that in does that have any like real impact on the minimum number of hours of uh teaching in a school year uh the much bigger issue this year is the change in state law that requires teachers to have a 30-minute uninterrupted lunch so it goes from 25 to 30 minutes correct yeah um the few you know early dismissal days or whatever that's not going to really make a significant change so we were able to shift things within our schedules to accommodate that uh 30-minute lunch block across the district and you're talking about the 25 versus the 30 right okay all right thank you so uh so i just wanted to reiterate um my thoughts on the providing free lunch for the whole year coming up i know that that's not what we voted on i'm wondering if since now we are getting some state funding up that should take us up through november can we revisit this discussion when would be an appropriate time to do that um well i think vin could talk about the financial implications i mean give you ballpark idea uh that would have a substantial impact on our operating budget unless we were to ask the town for more money or something like that um that would that would be that would be okay by me but asking the town or yeah including it in our operating budget i i feel very strongly that you know this this is an issue of feeding our children and it's directly related to student learning because we all know students don't learn when they're hungry and i've just been hearing a lot about the stigmas attached to some kids getting reduced some kids getting free some paying full price and how that is visualized in the cafeterias in schools at the time um you know i i just would like to keep the discussion going about how we could possibly just provide free lunches out of our operating budget um i know it's not a popular decision to make but i believe we can do it if there is a will and um you know if we could see exactly how much that's going to impact our operating budget you know i think i would hope that it would be worth us taking another look at that so that's all i'm asking i guess i would add uh you know respond with two points one is in addition to the board's budget or asking the council the food service department does have a reserve and we we had discussed that you know back in june so we could certainly have a discussion in september if you want me to present you know what that would look like if we were to provide full free meals and funded that what the monthly cost would be and and how far the reserves would take us um and then as far as free and reduced i just want to make a point that when a student is online there's no way for any other student to know who's free or who's reduced students just you know show their id or enter their pin and even if the student is not on free or reduced and they have no balance in their lunch account that meal is processed so no one knows and no one should know that doesn't mean there isn't stigma associated for other reasons how somebody finds out but it's certainly not something that we uh really go out of our way to make sure that that doesn't happen and food service staff as they're bringing a student out they don't even know that's really great to know really really clear thank you for that information it's an important thing for us several years ago too that i remember some concerns that if students had stunning balances they weren't being served all that got nipped in the butt too so i'm glad it's uh i'm not surprised we're doing you know the best we can on that so thank you i know i was gonna say uh i think the way we did the motion in june is we're going to revisit this uh probably the end of september when you have a good when you just have at least a month under their belt the free meals with a balanced stain you start to project out and see if there's gonna be a gap or not so you're happy to revisit this you know once you get some data okay november would be great is that what you suggested september we could start talking about it at the september board meeting but curiously how uh how this takes off helping the school and it's being taken advantage of how far does funds stretch us let's thank you so much finn sorry and um i i just realized i'm like i'm not getting power school announcements i just realized my kids are no longer in school it's strange it's a strange feeling do feel left out i mean trust me there's plenty of board of ed emails but um uh is there gonna be announcement going on to parents about the upcoming increase just so they could plan ahead and be you know be i don't want people getting surprised i know we talked about in june it wasn't really reporting the papers anywhere um i don't think you'll realize the funding ran out last year and now we have the extra money but you know i would say communicate as you guys see fit so that at least you know to spend a camp people not surprised by it um and then you know plan accordingly yes and and the the communication actually i was reviewing it this morning with erica biagetti you know even though it's make very clear that school lunch will be free we still do have the meal prices there so parents you know will be aware what the prices are when they're no longer free to those non-free produce students first of all i i'm glad we made the decision that we made in june to delay this been knowing that the state was going to get us some money and hopefully extend this um i do i don't mind revisiting the conversation so if we do come back in september or november could you just give us a few hypotheticals um so that we can at least try to see understandably the cost is going to come from somewhere else we're going to give up something else so that this could be you know a possibility for our kids so thank you yeah one of those hypotheticals that sam's talking about could be and this sort of goes along also with uh tony's um discussion on not surprising uh the parents and i know that the prices will be listed in all but it seems to me that there's less surprise if that turnover takes place after the the holiday break so if that could be one of the scenarios if the reserve could last us that that last month before the holidays i'd like i wouldn't mind seeing that actually thank you vin don't mention it um so for me uh so that you said it was about 650 000 687 so is that going to help us um at the very least spread out the costs that we would have incurred throughout the other uh seven months so that potentially would not cost us as much like would it would we be able to spread that out in a way where the the per meal cost might be able to be lowered further without any additional cost to us is that a possibility that that is not that's a great question and that's when i first heard about the 687 000 i was trying to formulate what's the best can we get a full year out of it but the guidance is very clear you must use it to provide free lunch for students you can't offset some of the cost to some of the students it's there just to provide free meals for as long as we possibly can so does that mean so then there's a potential loss of revenue to us because we're not charging for those several months so it could be actually you would not be able to defray costs we because we may not have been collecting as much as we would have been even with the reimbursement is that that i'm not following uh yeah maybe i'm not following it either um so we so we let's say for example we would charge five dollars for a lunch or whatever it is right um starting in october right but right now we have so from september through no through the end of november we have to supply free lunch to all for a free meal to all right breakfast and lunch right correct that's what the six hundred eighty thirty seven thousand dollars for that let's assume it ends november 30 through whenever it will last to not necessarily the end of november right potentially so would because we've accepted that money would we have generated more money if we were to if we were to supply those meals at a cost to the children i guess is what i'm saying so like what it would the greater profit right without the right we yeah does it hurt our um yeah um no i think not necessarily the bottom line but just the the cost of operations does it cover yeah right operation right better yeah i should have prepared that a little more it's complicated i'd have to look at that my senses will probably do a little bit better with the reimbursement model the way it works good than if we were charging meals because there is some additional reimbursement per meal as part of this right now and the other thing that as you were talking one other possibility we could look at is if we can't afford to make free meals available through our budget preserve however we do it you know maybe there is a reduced price we can charge to help defray the cost increase that's another way we can analyze it so we'll we'll run a couple of different scenarios and present it um in september if that works um and uh lastly for me um this is kind of going back to the uh the budget report um just off the top of your head because i didn't ask you to prepare this ahead of time were there any coveted costs and because i know i had asked that i had asked a question at our last finance meeting or well sort of were there any covet costs uh such as cleanings porters any of the dividers that sam had mentioned were did any of that come out of our budget that was not reimbursed by the federal government already yeah it doesn't look like we qualify for any of the female no no and we charged most of the purchases to esser funds okay not all but certainly the bulk of of what we had was charged to esser okay so all right so like the the porters and stuff that was not an additional expense to us even though they i'm sure they charge us more for it that difference was made up by the ester funds yeah okay all right thank you you're welcome um any for tim okay so yeah i'm not i may have missed this but just to be clear you were talking about free lunches before going out till say november and then i just heard adam mention free breakfast as well is that right so the mandate is to do both of them yes for okay thank you and again that's for a full breakfast full lunch meal breakfast consists of milk you know cereal you know bro lunch has to include protein milk fruit vegetables so it's a full reimbursable meal someone buying anything a la carte whether it's water or a snack that is not free it has to be a usda reimbursable meal which is good it's it's a full breakfast and a full lunch vin what happens if i could picture my kid right now if she has to stay and eat at school she's not going to get the food so that there's a meal that's not used so what happens to that or is that just going to be deducted from if it's not if it's if someone doesn't take a meal then it extends how much money we have available we're not being penalized because we didn't force the kids to take it right correct can it can i riff on that uh our do we expect to have more kids taking free meals if they're being offered as free well that's a that's a great question and the answer is yes but even at the height of the period of time last year when it was should have been pretty well established that meals are free we did not have a 100 participation rate in the free meal program and i forget what it was it's somewhere in the range so yes when the meals are free it has been higher but not what i i think the average person would guess well if it's free everyone is taking meals and that is not the case some students do you know bring their own they have breakfast at home bring their own lunch not everybody eats even though it's free so but we we always try to encourage the participation rate in our meal program you know certainly when it's free but as well as when it is being paid you're welcome as usual the finance report always becomes a little more interesting with questions um but that my piece was uh looks like we're all questioned out for now so uh i conclude the finance uh report thank you mr mr grill but it has been a couple months so i'm sure pumped up with questions it's uh it's allowed uh up next is personnel do you have one item uh tim and norvin you guys wanna yeah there was no personnel meeting but i see this on the agenda so it's with jeff and ben okay i i will be glad to take it so the um before the board is uh a motion that's that's been suggested uh which is to approve the new collective bargaining agreement with the formerly known as instructional assistants now known as the power educator and lunchroom and playground aid union and i'm going to give some quick background i did provide in the board's package a summary we had a contract that ran through june 30th of 22 with the para educators so we started negotiations and this is just a summary of negotiations we started negotiating with the union back in february of 2022 we held eight negotiating sessions with the group through june 30th which was the final meeting when we were able to reach a tentative agreement the power educators are represented by csca seiu their um lead negotiator is frank pizarro so he works for csea and on the union negotiating team were two of our employees lori del cora mary and kish and on the board side i represented as the negotiating lead and along with me was angela latch our director of human resources services and robin anne carey director of pupil personnel because most of the para educators obviously are providing special education services just at a high level between both parties there were 40 different proposals some were overlapping such as wages and benefits and of the 40 we were able to negotiate down to 26 proposals that ultimately were um negotiated successfully to tentative agreement and of the 40 nine were rejected by the opposing party and and five were withdrawn so i always like to put a little bit perspective on how we got to what we actually agreed to kind of the scope of the negotiations and how many items that we settled but the negotiation sessions although you know we certainly had some differences of opinion as we worked through it everybody was very professional and cordial and we negotiated with the same group three years ago and and reached a successful agreement which is always better than trying to mediate or arbitrate as far as the proposed successor agreement the summary is as follows they we agreed on a three-year term so that would take effect assuming the board approves it as proposed from july 1st that just passed through june 30th of 2025 we um wages were a big issue as it always is however the the additional point that i want to make is that the para educators were well below the 14 and 15 dollar minimum wage so we did have to negotiate to make sure that we were able to meet the minimum wage minimum wage went to 14 per hour effective july 1 and it increases again june 30th of 23 to 15 per hour so one of the parameters as we were negotiating wages is we needed to meet the minimum wage requirement and certainly any new employee um we wouldn't want to bring a new employee in and have an existing employee being paid at a lower wage than the new employee so as we negotiated those were the things that we took into consideration so the the little grid that i have if you're able to look at the summary there are four different employees that are in this group lunchroom and playground aids of which there are 44 employees our para educators which are the largest group 134 and hall monitors the para educators are providing special education services the next group of 41 are aba dti para educators they provide for the needs of students who have more severe needs they are specially trained hence the aba dti certification they are paid a higher wage and then we have four employees that they've been here for well over 20 years we put them in what we call a red circle group because we cap their wage increases there's again there's only four employees there so the impact is not huge the the wages in order to get to the 15 per hour minimum by june what we agreed to is a wage increase as of july 1 and then a second wage increase as of january 1 2023 so all the employees in this unit will receive two wage increases in this fiscal year and then the following july 1 and then july 1 of 2024 just very quickly the the lunchroom playground aids their wage increases would be three and a half percent in june and excuse me july three and a half percent in january and then the following july two and a half percent followed by two and a half percent power educators three point seven five percent july one three and a half percent january one and then the following july three percent and then in the last year of the contract it would be 2.875 so you'll see that the wage increases are higher in euro one and then decrease over the following two years the aba dti their first year um the july 1 wage increase is 2.75 then two and a half percent followed by two and a half percent two and a half percent again these that power educator group is well above the minimum wage already so those wages did not have to meet a minimum wage standard and the red circle group two and a quarter percent uh the first two raises that followed by two percent and two percent so if you turn to the next page i've really summarized this so that it kind of from a financial point of view in 2223 which is the fiscal year that we're in the weighted average increase for this body is 4.8 percent again that enables us to make sure we meet the minimum wage and the total cost of that to the board's budget is 187 sixty five dollars and then in twenty three twenty four the second year of the contract the average wage increase is two point seven two percent and that's a hundred thirteen thousand dollar increase to the budget and then the last year of the contract it drops to two point five five percent to a hundred nine thousand two twenty seven i i supplied a grid that just validates that the new employee start rate will be lower than any existing employee pay the second component of the bargaining agreement that we're proposing is for medical benefits for employees who work 30 hours or more most of the employees are in the hsa plan already they can do a buy up to the ppo or hmo none of that's changed the deductibles for the hsa four thousand and the board's contribution towards the employee hsa deductible is seven hundred fifty dollars and fifteen hundred dollars which is lower than all our other union groups and that's because the this particular group they generally work less than 35 hours so they are paying more for their benefits and they're not quite as rich there's really the the key piece about medical benefits is in the next two bullets the hsa plan cost to the employee is currently 22 it will drop to 21 percent effective in 2223 and then stays at 20 percent for the next two years what we negotiated though is a wellness incentive in order to qualify for the incentive which would give the employee a one percent further reduction in the first year of the contract and then a two year two percent reduction in the following years employees have to do three things they have to prevent at least one preventative care screening generally this is with their doctor could be ob gyn or they can go for a mammogram or a colon cancer screening so first component is they have to have one preventative care screening the second component is they have to have a biometric screening so blood work blood pressure height weight that's the second component and then the third component is they have to complete a health risk assessment at mycigna.com which they could either do on the website or they can complete that using the my cigna app so that was certainly something that we thought was important the um certainly the bargaining unit liked it they like the idea that they can get a reduction they they like the idea that we're working to improve their health and wellness you know we would hope that all employees do these three things anyway but the reality is they don't so we do hope that this encourages the right behavior certainly good for the employees and their health and well-being and their families but it also could help us with our claims right we know that early prevention costs less because you can treat you know an illness more quickly before it becomes a larger problem cigna would administer this program so really there's not any additional burden on the district staff to to manage this cigna keeps track of employees who meet this criteria and the way it works is the employee needs to meet the criteria before the start of the new plan year if they do they get the additional reduction they do have to do this every year so if they want to keep getting the discount they have to keep completing those three components um really the the last financial component that i wanted to mention is that we're changing the longevity payments so employees that are here 10 or more years you know this is an incentive that's been in place to try and encourage employees to stay so at 10 years of service the annual payment will be 300 now it was employees at 15 years of service instead of 250 will receive 400 and then employees that are 20 years of service instead of receiving 300 they'll receive 500 um certainly something that we negotiated and and we agreed to um and then there was also a modification to the retirement severance payment that's already been in the contract the way the current payment worked is if an employee had 20 or more years of service we would pay them when they retire 15 of their unused sick days they can accumulate up to 180 to be used if they have a long-term illness so we were already paying out 15 days we modified it that now at 15 years of service upon retirement we'll pay 15 days but at 20 years of service we'll pay up to 20 unused days again days have to be unused and accrued and last thing i already mentioned that when we will no longer refer to instructional assistants they will be paraeducators which is in line with the education industry we've actually not been in line with the industry there's no financial ramification to that and they also ask that rather than refer to our lunchroom playground aides as teaching assistants they um recommended and we agreed to just call those employees lunchroom and play grenades so the recommendation um because this was uh i believe this is a a good and a fair agreement for both parties the recommendation you know is to vote to approve this the union has already voted and approved this so they're good to go if the board approves it then these changes would take effect retroactive to july one although the reality is these employees have not started work yet so there is no retroactive pay component of the recommendation so i'll stop there and i'll answer any questions so i'm thinking from the lens of the other contracts like the teacher and the administrators um and what's happening now as far as in trying to obtain qualified good candidates are there flexibility in say somebody who's who's got years of service that wants to come to cheshire with the qualifications could we pay them at the higher end no not under not with this bargaining agreement however what i i would say one of the things that we do and it's a little bit different than not all districts but many districts we do have a career path you know which is to go from a power educator to an aba dti it's a much it pays a lot more and actually the wages just to make it clear a paraeducator starting salary is 14 um excuse me will be let's use july january 1 of 23 15.38 starting pay for an aba dti power educator is 23.97 so someone has that many years of service what we would and if they don't have their aba dti certification we would help them get it part of the contract has always been and we made it a little bit easier as we will provide the training or they can get certification from outside and we'll review it and accept it so that would be the way we would handle someone that that's coming in that has a lot of experience we would look for them to be part of that group the other piece of the career path which is not exactly a job title change but we have positions for para educators that are less than 30 hours and more than 30 hours so if you're you know start work and you're a 28 hour para educator and an opening comes up for a 32 hour power educator obviously you're working more hours and getting paid for that but you also get a higher level of benefits so i understand you know if we if we could do that which you can do with teachers so teachers have steps we don't have steps in this contract we have a starting rate and then we have the wage increases but we we would work on the career path piece of this for somebody who's very experienced just to make it more attractive um and you know a tough one it's it's rough out there right now and i i think we're pretty competitive with these rates as it stands but again the the pool you know we're in my opinion we're just cannibalizing each other in a sense there's certainly some of that happening and you know we and we have had turnover in the last couple of years unlike what we've seen previously i do hope this wage improvement helps a bit um and some of the other perks within the agreement help a bit but it's you know we're competing and struggling like a lot of other industries the good news is that you know even though we've had high turnover we've had pretty good success at filling positions and just a on that um no never mind i just thank you vinnie thanks tony um i see that for the first year the raise here is 4.8 in years past i would have blocked at it i i have no problem with it right now just seeing what's happening um yeah i think everybody recognizes that uh with regard to post-retirement benefits you mentioned like a severance payment that's happening but could can you confirm that nothing changed in terms of the any benefit plans post retirement benefit plans and could you also say where it is right now like do we have a defined contribution plan a fine benefit plan which would be a contribution being a 401k to find benefit being a a pension what's commonly known as a pension so we eliminated the defined benefit plan the town pension for all our bargaining units in 2015.
um one of my favorite quotes kind of describes what we do leonard bernstein conductor or conductor and composer to achieve great things two things are needed a plan and not quite enough time and uh that's what we do we're gonna do what now it's time um it's it's it's true in the performing arts you get folks toward a goal and you get them unified toward it you help them um and you structure that so that they learn how to work together whether it's a team of teachers or if it's a team of students and it's a self magnifying thing right the power is magnified the folks move faster and faster and faster the more bought into it they are these folks behind me and are experts at that so we began in 2018 2019 um we wrote and received the 700 000 title four grant for vision performing arts my thanks to former director of special programs susan sucks and to former graduate program special programs joe carmona for the work that they did together on that uh it was incredible one of the project goals was expanded summer opportunities we as a district have a pretty significant gap in terms of workforce development in and around creative industries and this was a program that was designed to help address that issue in california we have a 650 billion dollar creative economy it employs more than 2.7 million people uh and we wanted to bridge the gap between our a or just these students and those opportunities in creative industries this is a great graphic and we see that it's pretty small on the screen from a california state pta but if you think you have a print out of it you can see that there are all of these careers in and around these uh these curricular areas within the arts that are viable career options these are things that pay the bills and put roofs over families heads and we need to make sure that we're connected to these things and that's one of the things that summer's academy has done so in 2018 2019 uh we had the funding from this grant so we built a very robust program it was in two phases phase one was a two-week workshop series for multiple curricular areas um we did junior high band junior high jazz band high school band high school jazz band a 7th through 12th grade stream orchestra a digital photo class that was photo one was a two week enrichment program capped off with a band concert at pearson park um and then phase two was the first indication that that the team was as crazy as i was and we decided we're going to put together a five-way production of the broadway musical anything goes completely the live orchestra in a district that hadn't done that in 25 years um so i wrote a new course titled professional musical theater against enrolled students 10 baptized elective credits and also confers career credit for high school graduation so there's certain opportunities that students have in the summer program uh that they don't necessarily have during the school year but the caveat was they had to be they had to be enrolled in the faculty at their so they couldn't they couldn't take the place of those summer performances during the school year programs uh it was incredible it was an amazing thing we got through we couldn't believe it uh there's the set we built and um you see kids up there and the set of the prof and the boat but um one of the things some of the things that we learned was in talking to the students there was a shift from i me to we us they began to talk about district visual formulas they began to see each other at events they began to go across town to support each other at their you know at their at their events we created different collaborative events across the district there's a collaborative nutcracker performance it's several dance programs put on and the music is played live by an orchestra from oxford [Music] that in um it's pretty incredible um there was capacity building students there was capacity built in staff those 2019 kids they still had a group text and they were at the show in july this this past summer and among them were students that are studying music theater technical theater uh dance in college in preparation for careers in the visual corners so we had big plans for 2020 huge we were going to go big uh we had ongoing fun uh funding built in using uh formula title four funding thank you to joe carmona again for figuring out how to make that work because it's a brilliant way to use that ssa funds the whole creative team was returning we had multiple options for shows we did this huge audition workshop on march 7th all these kids showed up we were going to have people could dance they could sing they could act and they were triple friends and then we closed the canvases and that was march 13th and it was a week later and uh best way to plant some ice in that right so in um it's actually there's a 30 drop district-wide investment enrollment 30 um bands of 100 turning into 70 but when you're a band of 50 and you turn into a band of 30 uh 35 that's you know it was pretty significant so standard dance was the same theater uh forty percent drop in performing arts um our most engaged students didn't they were it was like everything else even those best students were ghosting us in our classes it was it was a real challenge because trying to teach the arts give a screen boy that was the hardest thing i think any of us have ever done [Music] in arts but they didn't want to get out there on stage they just didn't want to do it in april of 2021 orange county healthcare agency said that we could perform together outdoors and we move forward with plans to have a summer performing arts program so faced with no venue no students no show no plans i did the most reasonable thing possible i announced a huge one-night-only broadway review show with performers from across the district 16 campuses doing a two-hour performance at pearson park with music from like musicals i think that's what we did and [Music] it was pretty incredible um we did a google form sign up there were no auditions required um we spent the first two days in shock nobody the kids didn't know how to interact eventually they felt safe and fell in love with performing again um we rehearsed outdoors under academies um for coach killer calls there was no show music there was no orchestra there was no anything so the team had to write it they had to write everything because we weren't doing a musical that you bought the music for and it just showed up they had to do it all and we'd find a music arrangement for an orchestra oh this is good it's the wrong key for the choir good to change all the music for the orchestra so it fits into the right key for the requirements and it was really tough um we ran a professional sound wireless microphone and the whole crew we had no idea what to expect the first day of rehearsals at pearson park before the show was the first day to give you a timeline of like where we were in life at that point that was the first day that masses were no longer required outdoors for performance nobody had attended an event in 16 months we wondered if we would even see 200 people in the audience and 1250 people show up to watch the arts come back when this was 2021 it was incredible our takeaways from that the initial student hesitation mirrored what happened in the performing arts programs at the school sites when we started school in august they were hesitant they were but you know what those kids from the summer arts academy they went out to they were in those programs and they were helping they were bringing those kids along they were ambassadors of the arts and they helped rebuild the arts across our district and that was a huge the most important thing that we did in 2021 was all about making sure we were addressing student social emotional welfare and the means and we put together a good show but you know i mean it was it was uh it was all about that there's three students that after graduating that the next year entered apprenticeships and to uh tech industry they're going to be they're going to work through they're going to be lighting in town that's what they're going to do for their life and they're going to be really good at it and we figured out the students were ready for a full musical for the next year so that's brings us to planning for this year we built the team that was represented all the curricular areas we added visual art we added a technical theater teacher we we really when we went to try to address all the things that we had in depth um the uh we we had 50 cast members audition we did an audition workshop where students learned they were in the dance so that they were prepared coming into the auditions uh the auditions were amazing we had 50 cast members and 50 orchestra students we had 12 tech and design kids show up um only eight students in the entire cast of an entire company had ever missed a good musical though um we had actors that didn't ever saw her dance with the dancers that had never acted their son i mean it was it was we didn't know what was gonna happen uh day two of rehearsals we lost a bead she figured out she her counselor called her and said uh looks like you're gonna have to take summer school and so we lost the lead in the show on the day on day two of rehearsals and more on that uh here's the set being delivered [Music] and now build it um so there's four pictures from them from this summer the top left that next day after the after we lost that lead those are the five girls that stepped in ready to audition for that role uh the top right that was our first our first uh dance rehearsal in the dance room at western high school all the kids if you're looking close they're all like on their phone trying to figure out where they're at in the script them and how the show works and like nobody knows anything um and it was kind of a beautiful moment of bottom left you're seeing these visual art piece art students from across the district that are hand painting a 20 foot by 80-foot backdrop and hung in the back of the stage and created the scene of new york and the bottom right is our first reversal on stage thanks to the team at mastermind productions they do the oscars and the grammys and help john when he's in town for providing a professional level audio experience for our performers and for taking the time to walk our students through the technology of what was being used how the things work together how all the pieces connect to create an audio palette for the audience the person doing the audio mixing was mixing 104 channels live at the mixing board during the show the students learned an awful lot jump onto that and the show was incredible the show was it was an incredible show you see on that on the top there's this reversing at western high school outside on the bottom here's all of that was done by the students all the the design was done by john hoganson the set design uh who's teaching theater at kennedy he designed these beautiful beautiful set pieces to open and close and create exteriors and interiors all from single pieces because we couldn't move things in we couldn't fly it couldn't change sets you could change the scenes didn't do anything in the back you see that that that set piece that they that they painted from nothing we did two shows an audience to about 750 people each night thank you trustee smith for being there and being such a wonderful audience member i really enjoyed our conversation and the students appreciate the support anytime they see any you see any of your faces at the shows [Music] [Laughter] incredible uh connections that they've made the students john's team did this great video and they interviewed students and they didn't prompt them with the questions and they asked them what their um what their takeaways were um what their takeaways were and you know secretly while we're doing all this stuff what we learned from the student feedback was they began to see themselves in the industry whether as a performer as a lighting designer as somebody who's doing costume or makeup repair they begin to see themselves in the industry in in and around the creative arts whether it's the performer on stage or the person who puts the light on the person on stage so students are making connections these careers in the arts um you know if you're an audio engineer you start with 60 000 and if you're a one audio tech then in seven eight years you're making six figures it's a it's a viable career option um and those careers in the arts they're fulfilling they're available um and they're you know they'll they'll support a family they will even even in southern california um but you know the arts are important to us as human beings um they give us the opportunity to learn what it means to be more like ourselves and less like everyone else and to learn what that means um and our students are getting a world-class experience thank you for your support and my whole team there in that picture our little family photo um it's uh it really has been an incredible experience and it has been my pleasure so um i have a unique experience this year that i've never had before directly due to the summer arts academy i don't think you know about this so i just wanted to bring it up so you know um i have uh there's some schools that don't have theater um so we're very fortunate in anaheim to have the performing arts conservatory theater this year i was asked if i would take some students from savannah that they do not have theater and so they're doing a concurrent enrollment they're at savannah that they're coming over in the afternoon to take my theater class i didn't even know that was possible so i want to thank you for concurrent enrollment because students need the arts and they're wanting to come because of the arts and that's how we keep our students enrolled and we draw more students by having more arts programs available to our students thank you may i speak mr absolutely speed and i asked him if he would come and make a presentation for the school board and sharon i saw you reading from there i understand why because i can't even find the words to express my feelings about your production you are nothing but gods and goddesses and don't laugh because i i can't even begin to think of the whole process of how you pull that together in a short period of time with cognitive changes and music it was beyond anything that you could have imagined you would think that someone you told someone in psychology they said i think you want to be locked up because don't try this you can't do it in that short time and my husband and i walked in and i was feeling very weak and my husband had to get into the queue and there was a family sitting on the bench and um there was one seat on the bench left and i asked do you mind if i sit next to you and so i started chatting with them and miguel believed she played and i remembered that correctly it was your family and we didn't know who i was and so we chatted and then when i was trying to go in and my husband and i sat down the front row and mr belsky introduced us and stood it up and thanked everyone so the place started and then the great came halftime and i went into the restroom and when i came out of the skull bruce mug i don't remember her real name but her mother henry and her sister were standing there and they looked at me and she knew that who i was and i said i'm just so blown away by your daughter her performance and i don't even want to feel like i'm singling her out but it was beyond my imagination with this young girl i think she goes to kennedy high school and i think to her younger sister he was very very proud to have an older sister like this and her mother said to me she is planning to go to new york and there is no doubt in my mind that she will be the next person we will be reading about that came from this community and sharon i know why do we because this story tonight had to be told to people it starts with one person over here who leads this band and those good things that emanate from what this gentleman has done i done it because i'm here and i have lived it and i saw it and the thanks that i have to say to you the kudos this is not enough in the language to say you are all miracle workers and from the bottom of my heart thank you one and all and i understand why you crosshair thank you so much [Music] um now because it sounds it's just phenomenal and i will make sure next summer i will try to make it you know very very hard if i can tell i'll be there so that is great that is really great i mean and i am our supporter you know that and i just think that's phenomenal what you guys have been able to accomplish and what a benefit to those kids every one of them i mean i know that that type of experience will stay for forever so thank you again for all your work um [Music] but i know i and so i really thank you for a lot of people don't really think that you know a career and that's not a career it's choice it's a you know fun thing that they do they don't understand how hard it is um much and you know what um i want to thank this board um [Music] um every day over 20 years presentations and i've just seen the growth throughout the district and i'm very pleased as this about the district and how we have supported the arts it's been so beneficial for thousands upon thousands of students that have gone through our schools and had the opportunity to be part of it so we look forward to many more years of the same and now that you have told us really how great it how easy it is to do things okay all right well thank you for i wanted to hope one of the things that i loved was that english as he had even during the tough times um we as a district did not take a scalpel to the budget for visual arts and performing arts so that was unprecedented i think in orange county and that is something that i always echo so i'm glad that you know that's the history that has to a certain extent has allowed us to do what we're doing right now so i want to thank all not the board members here but the board members in the past and i always love the performance you know my daughter is looking forward to coming to high school and performing so hopefully you will still be very sure but uh yeah no i and you have some really you know i know brian useful but everybody or behind you are you know cheerleaders of the program so i thank you on behalf of the hsp students and parents as a future parent as well because this is going to keep it going but i have a couple of questions as well dr nian probably didn't tell you that you know to do the necessary uh research start with the enrollment aspect of it right have we seen um value students increase in numbers uh yeah as a matter of fact we have um um last year we came up about 11 from that low uh we're i just ran the numbers today even despite uh despite a slight decline in overall enrollment we are up about 1600 students across the district in digital performing arts so it's about another 12 and a half percent uh district-wide performing arts still lagging behind visual art a little bit but very encouraging so i mean you mentioned while performing arts lagging right i mean that's part of what i always see as good training ground for students as well i'm glad that we're bringing savannah student stand behind but what can we do as a board of cabinet to kind of strategically invest in i know we're doing it but i want to see futuristic go to the show let's get people there as much as you can i know that this board cabinet have shown a commitment to do that for many years continuing that it's really important continuing to fund visual performing arts and our district-wide events both using lcff and title 4 and grants to be able to do that in the fall i don't know if i can talk about this but in the fall there's a ballot proposition ballot that is a music and arts funding initiative that will increase music and arts only funding for all school districts and it will be one percent of lcff so it's like an 800 million to one billion dollar ongoing not single year not two three years of ongoing funding for music and arts without raising taxes um there's no tax increase according to that so that would be a getting the community aware of at least that's out there supporting elective alignment between the junior highs and high schools making sure that just continuing that process of making sure that if we're creating something here at the junior highs those students have somewhere to go as we're building those programs because the master schedule drives everything that we need so just continuing to support good magical schedule work and the mindset i think the last thing is to be just making sure we all have the mindset that it's not about talent it's all about a sequential set of discrete skills that are taught over years and hung by folks who are just tremendous educators because like we said we did that show with folks there was one person i think who could activate all at the same time and we had a cast of 50 and the show was incredible because it's a set of skills and it's a lever for equity our students can their every bit is good as students who have more training more private lessons more studying all of that kind of stuff and we've shown that year after year so just continue to support that mindset um so i know mike wants to say something but i also want to kind of pinpoint that yesterday at our opinion we were talking about the importance of kind of talking about our programs and doing our own homes in terms of not only saying what a great program we have but also that attracts students who might want to come to our district right so i hope i know we do a great job with rpio john does a tremendous job of being there and putting together but i think i would encourage everybody who has social media to kind of take that opportunity to share it because i think that's another important aspect of it i know one of the reasons that my boss we decided to do the funding for some of our archival programs in our school districts is because of that right because we saw the need of our programs and we decided you know what we have some extra funding let's go ahead and do that so you get those type of opportunities once when we have the opportunity to go out there and roll out our district you can think about this kennedy it used to be a wasteland like about four years ago i think there were four high schools kennedy just started cyprus just started to uh they're both second year programs now magnolia has a program savannah does not um junior high high school strategically you guys got to do what you got to do i know we have to decide on those uh but my god especially performing marks and it is traumatizing what we've been through and what the adults have been teachers and this is the story of renewal from trauma um and i i really commend you i know you represent your colleagues there's a lot of other unsung heroes out there and i i really want to also thank the board for supporting the arts and health and recognizing that this is more than ever most the arts and performing arts are so vital to healing our young people including our adults so we have with all the teachers out there thank you thank you thank you very much uh if i'm not mistaken we have the support already supporting that [Music] thank you thank you very much all right so we are going to move on to our items of business start off with resolutions 9.1 resolution number 2022-23-81 annual certification of the course-based independent study for the 20-22-23 year it's one of their parents came up to me and she said my son took cva and he is so happy she says he has found his name you know and it's just like when i said you know that is so good to hear because we are trying to you know supply unique opportunities for students and everybody's different and so here's a young man who was never really happy in the comprehensive high school and he's taking cba and he absolutely loves it and he's just been you know really succeeding well and she was just so happy and so thanking me for my district you know putting forth and giving that type of opportunity so i just have to let you know that i heard that there was a parent who's very very happy and her son is very very happy because we're offering some students who just don't feel comfortable in a comprehensive school cycle and yet they want to learn the right situation services 9.2 consulting agreement with their fall and associates scene then i will warrant 9.3 transportation agreement orange japanese 9.4 award request for proposals 2022-24 full service human resources software solution action is second any [Music] our questions [Laughter] please i understand the combinations [Music] hi [Music] any questions you know this is such a neat opportunity for our kids you know um this is you know the grant that uh the map has utilized and when i went to [Music] jobs they came through and this was such a a rapidly executed thing that we got and we've got these kids actually working and you know they're getting paid and working and learning and loving it and they've done such a good job i mean i really enjoyed listening to them talk about what they've been on which they have learned and a personal regard so i love the fact that these kids are learning all that and getting back to nature you know they took us on a tour and we're pointing out what vegetables these were and all that 50 strength you know and so i thought oh we've got to keep working with them they get even more of that grant billion um grant and funded grant that has come out of so far this is only 60 thousand dollars additional money because of this experience students this summer it wasn't just what which is what we're trying to communicate approach if there's an instructional aspect because you know the learning part that they did in the iowa they developed these little uh information sheets and they did all those [Music] finding places to donate a lot of the produce and that that sometimes proved to be very difficult finding an organization that could handle all the stuff that is coming out of the market so it's just a phenomenal learning it was great these are opportunities to purchase those boxes too right because it was on social media i had a friend that actually posted but he was from lahore apparently he actually purchased it and he posted it on his community uh feed and then uh next thing you know it was kind of everybody was supposed to be posting it back so that's great all right so we have a motion in a second all my favorite cyprus got activated united states superintendent's office survives four policy 6203.1 okay uh second for the balance all in favor all right the opposed motion carries unanimously i will take that independent motion for 10.
i'll suck at that motion charlene diaz all in favor aye corey burgess aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sabrasky thank you and i do see a couple of other typos i see a misspelled name and and i also saw will you bring that back up cassie please thank that again thank you and scroll down a bit and then in the meet and confer classified next to stephanie barnett's name it should also say pending election these folks these three folks have all volunteered to serve again representing their specific employee group however policy requires that they be elected by those folks so we will get the election in place i suspect they will be re-elected because everybody likes to elect people who volunteer thank you moving on 5.7 you need a motion to enter into executive session i'll make a motion for us to enter into executive session i'll second that before we take the vote this executive session is pursuant to ars 38 43103 discussion or consultation for legal advice that attorney are attorneys of a public body and ars a4 discussion and consult and consultation with attorney of the public body in order to consider its position and instruct an attorney regarding the public body's position regarding contracts that are subject to negotiation impending or contemplating litigation or in settling discussions conducted in order to avoid or resolve litigation so if we get a vote on 5.7 hi corey burgess hi charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sabrowski salmo we are in executive session [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] my [Music] [Laughter] [Music] um [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] done [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] um [Music] [Laughter] [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] hmm [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] we need a motion to reconvene to end executive session and reconvene our new meeting okay i'll make a motion to close the executive session and to reconvene into public session and avoid i'll second that motion charlene diaz all in favor aye corey burgess aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sabrasky okay item 7.2 at this time i'd like to move that we direct superintendent stewart to give 30-day notice of deficiency and intent to terminate our contract with abm industry groups i'll second that motion all in favor aye corey burgess aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sobrowski so moved item 8.1 future topics do we have any future topics anyone would like on the future meetings if anything does come up please let us know and we'll get it put on the agenda upcoming board events nothing other than our future meeting and just so you know melinda and i are both going to the arizona rural schools association conference in flagstaff middle of next month all right awesome enjoy that okay we need to set a time for our future meeting right now we have down for september 8th um i cannot be here september 8th could we make it the week after isn't that the week we're going to be in flagstaff oh is it um yeah i think i cannot be here though on the 8th [Music] yeah we're going to be we're going to be in flagstaff on the well you were coming on the 16th so but i was going i was going to go on the 15th the conference is 15 16 17.
so what we're seeing right now affecting taxes was the value change that happened in 2020 just so you know another element of the property tax is the maximum levy growth quotient and that went from 4.3 last year to 5.00 this year so that's i'm not sure what the 2020 yeah probably that's the wrong that's a wrong number it's actually from is what that's from because we're looking at the 2023 max maximum growth quotient so i'll fix that for the next presentation and just to note if the levy rises more than assessed value tax rates rise local units in districts with rates above two are more vulnerable to tax cap losses now we're at 1.3 so we are vulnerable we're just not more vulnerable people that are at two right there they really get hammered um with the tax cap quotient or with the with the tax cap that's in place in the state of indiana and with that the last slide basically says you know we want to make sure we advertise high advertise a low av and adopt the operations fund at the maximum possible rate we can even though you know may not be spent we're still going to try to adopt as high as we can is there any questions about this this is eerily similar to last year basically with updated numbers and like i say i will most likely we'll probably have a we may have a slight adm adjustment in two weeks if we once we see that we've got an idea what it is now but if that settles and changes a little bit we'll have that adjustment plus we'll have the potential complexity update changing the next one so this was a first reading first reading first reading for the budget does anyone have any questions for phillip okay no questions we'll move to the next agenda item this is a resolution for approval yes uh this is a resolution to allow treasury deputy treasurer of james county schools to make transfers of appropriations within education debt service and operation between august 11th and august 25th in order to balance major account classifications the purpose of this is we normally have this in there when we're going to be more than two weeks apart in meetings it's thrown in there along with paying bills the reason i need it in here this time is we've got um when i when i set the budget up i have to pick numbers for every account well the reality is i picked let's say i picked ten thousand dollars for school for technical equipment well if the school assesses they need instructional supplies more than they do technical equipment it allows me to move money there so we don't overspend but we're not going to overspend in total school because they know within their school they can jockey some of these numbers around so that's basically what this is and then you guys will sign off on the changes i make at the two meetings from then it'd be like the meeting in september or something like that okay so this is um a request for approval um so do i have a motion to approve that request i have a motion by pat do i have a second second by travis any discussion no discussion susan we call the roll chelsea yeah tony yes yes yes amy yes yes moving down under operations we have a school safety review and update just want to share with the board some updates we've been really focused on school safety and making sure that we have all of our processes and procedures in place and our staff fully informed so some things that we've been doing over the course of the summer we had some training for staff members we actually had a tabletop exercise at the local library with local law enforcement and first responders all attending to talk about the response of a mock scenario and how all those multiple agencies would respond in cohort together to make sure that we're taking care of everyone as quickly and efficiently as possible we also have had active shooter training at graham creek elementary over the summer with local law enforcement enforcement officers receiving training and talking about the coordination of efforts and responses um in addition to that we've really worked on our building security checklist to start the school year every principal has had a meeting with every single staff member by the start of school to talk about all the pieces of school security within the building and who is responsible to make sure there's no confusion on whose role is what both in daily preparation and unfortunately if there had been any response to a crisis so that includes things like door checks lock checks and making sure that all of our staff members have the badges that are appropriate within the building along a variety of about 54 other items but those are some examples our facilities we have new things that we've added over the last few years to help increase security meaning security cameras fencing around different buildings multiple other facility improvements they're in place making sure that those are all up and working properly and then finally just asking for the public's patience and willingness to work with uh with us keeping kids safe as they arrive to our schools they'll notice there is a buzzer system and they will be asked for their business on property and asked to have an id available to be checked so we appreciate their willingness to be very open and help be partners in keeping our kids safe every day so just want to share some of those updates of what we've been working on question i'd like to discuss backpacks one of these days and i checked with noblesville and they did have a shooting there at the middle school with a handgun brought in a backpack and that was what two years ago i believe so why don't we see about adding that to one of our future agendas let's do a little bit of investigation there's some information yep and gather some information um i think that's important to do our due diligence to take a look at that and then we'll go from there i just want to share that i appreciate the update i know this is on everyone's mind every magazine or journal i mean even this one that was in my packet tonight talks about school safety so it is a hot topic extremely important when we put our kids and our um team members first that's a huge part of it so i thank you for the work that's been done to get the school year started and make sure that we keep everyone safe any other discussion okay so we'll move down under relations so we have um nikki i think you go ahead asking for approval of an annual mou with vincennes university it's for our dual credit program for tv production at the high school same annual um mou is typical so ask him for approval okay asking for approval for the mou for vincennes do i have a motion a motion by travis i have a second my pat any discussion no discussion susan would you call the role chelsea yes tony asking for another annual mou this is approval for southeastern career center to use our buses in the case of an emergency where they need to transport students so asking for approval of that annual mou okay do i have a motion motion motion by susan pat second any discussion excuse when you call the roll chelsea yes tony yes yes travis yes amy yes yes okay um next yeah so peggy summer was our teacher for students with hearing impairments she retired this past year and we would like to contract with her for three days a month for her to come in and provide those services we do uh we are exploring sending a few of our teachers there's because it's a hard to fill position there's actually free classes right now to become an uh a deaf hard hearing teacher so we're actually exploring to get two of our teachers to go take those trainings so that they can provide those supports and not have to contract out of district anymore i've been asking permission to to enter into that contract with peggy summer okay so this request right now is only to enter into the contract with peggy summer yes three days yes all right great um do i have a motion emotion by tony do i have a second second my susan any discussion okay no discussion susan when you call the role chelsea tony yes yes amy yes yes yes asking for approval for an mou with ball state to allow us to host principal preparation students who are finishing their internship within our school system so asking for approval do i have a motion motion my travis do i have a second second by tony any discussion hearing none susan chelsea yes tony yes yes amy yes yes yes looks like we're down under other and it looks like we do have an update is that correct about an essential service committee meeting [Music] are the notes in their packet i believe okay okay and we have no other okay no weather um hearing um nothing else for the agenda i'll entertain a motion to adjourn a motion by pat second by travis i'm sure there's no discussions chelsea yes
what we offer to this group instead is a 403 b plan so it's a defined contribution plan the board's responsibility is to contribute five percent of the employee's salary to that plan that's we haven't changed that that's the way it's been the last three contracts if the employee puts one percent of their own contribution towards that 403 b will match that one additional percent so the board's maximum contribution is 6 of the employees pay to the 403 b plan that's their retirement benefit the severance you know we call it severance but it's just it's really a payout of unused sick days the one last point you had mentioned that there were you originally started out with 40 proposals and 14 of them got pushed to the side do you expect without getting into any details do you expect any of those 14 to come back in the future no okay now when they're resolved they're they're resolved so okay if you mean in the future and the next bargain in the next contract do you have a reasonable expectation today that it'll come back in three years or are they probably gone now some will come back okay okay that's all i was curious about on both sides sure sure okay thank you okay yeah your turn yeah um i'm just wondering is anybody at the state maybe the state department of education um going to be studying the effects of this minimum wage increase i think it would be really interesting to see if there are real uh differences when people are making more of a living wage for for their work that they do and um i wonder if that will have any real effects in the quality of the job that people are performing i'm just wondering i'm not suggesting that we do that kind of research i think it would be really difficult but i do think on a statewide level since this is you know this is a state decision um that honestly i think all all schools districts should be looked at to see you know what the effects are uh actually paying people for their for their work just wondering if anyone knows anything about that i'd be really interested um in hearing about it and maybe i'll maybe i'll write a letter to the state department and see if they have plans to uh look into that i i can say this i've not read or or heard of anything specific that's being studied but it's it's a fair question you know to ask i'd be surprised if there's not some kind of false study being that's you know statement in which wage law i'm sure i i trigger out the representatives and see if they're playing it but it'd be nice to i know the focus on education as sam mentioned um there it you know there's a shortage of qualified educators and professionals out there so i'll be curious to see how this helps at all before we go on we do have a motion on this so i recommend that we make a motion and dive into a further discussion so does anyone make emotions we've got the background now something real so ann must make the motion please do i move that the cheshire board of education approved the collective bargaining agreement with csea s-e-i-u local two zero zero one slash 760 for the cheshire para educators lunchroom and playground aids hall monitors and study hall monitors for the period from july 1st 2022 through june 30th further that the board of education authorizes the superintendent of schools to sign the contract on its behalf thank you man is there a second mr crippled seconds discussion um i just had a quick question uh van i know we had mentioned this during our uh budget uh discussions um waiting for or accounting for the the wage increase to 15 um so is this uh the 2023 2022-23 um impact for this particular contract has this sort of been accounted or in line with what we were expecting um when you put the budget together just slightly higher but not nothing material that would impact our budget negatively so yeah we obviously knew that the minimum wage was going to 15 not only for this group but there are other groups that are in this this category as well so that it was accounted for in the budget thank you welcome any other questions comments on this motion okay the motion is the cheshire board education approved the collective bargaining agreement with with csea s-e-i-u local two zero zero one seven sixty four chess repair educators lunch room and playground aids paul monitors and study hall monitors for a period from july first 2022 through june 30th 2025 further that the board of education authorizes superintendent schools to sign the contract on its behalf all those in favor please raise your hands all those opposed or abstaining one abstention motion passes thank you thank you no meetings right i know vincent has an update on some school projects i will i will i have no pictures a few of those during the summer i have no pictures i will just tell you some of the highlights i'll start with technology um just a couple of things to say that the one-to-one computing devices all the chromebooks and then the lower grades we do provide ipads they're ready for students upon their return including the students entering dodd seventh grade they get a new chromebook and they keep that through grade 12.
uh motion second and a second superintendent and i also did attend the leadership advantage in the morning okay then i did attend the cypress mine parent meeting on tuesday the 26th of july about the field in other words we've had a lot of complaints about the condition of fields and so to remedy a situation that has been kind of bad for a long time um we had a meeting and nancy pakkering was there to present along with uh to the secretary principal this morning science she had an idea you know she's going to have to project about that field maybe we can move it a little bit north and then put a softball field before so the girls could have two softball fields so there's an idea okay we have other ideas i have other ideas for okay um [Music] oh magnolia high school's uh accelerated white caps certainly for the cyber security thing again we have another cold board this new freshman class is charlie right so we've got charlie and alpha and beta so alpha will be graduating this year right with 10 years okay and then [Music] attended the coffee with the principal at lexington he did an excellent job good turnout i think we had almost we must have over 45 parents there if not 50 and then another 30 some are more online so very good turnout i was really really impressed with his presentation and he gave them the opportunity to ask questions and all so it was very good we had a human relations gal that was on campus she did a presentation as well and so i was just i really think so congratulations to a fantastic opening um i felt like no news was good news and but we did hear uh alan and i went to our [Music] rop meeting yesterday everybody was just congratulations um um and i attended the um national conference on the does a fabulous job describing that wonderful conference and um it really was you know we had fabulous speakers very aggressive people but again it's those students who were highlighted at the last the last night we all thought as a group that you know they should have students the first day you know maybe they bring back their graduates or something and kind of start and kick off the event first first i know the things they needed to be cultivated but they tackled some really amazing subjects and just told us what they wanted with their education and always as i have been saying for years when they go to conferences workshops we were doing it um you know were always um and it was again um um and putting students first and founders first in education giving the students what they want we heard it from their house exactly what abhsc is feeling and that was very [Music] district has done and um i felt such a cohesiveness and you know the caps know how really captivated it was really amazing to just in my mind just to learn why wow this is this this is amazing and i i don't i don't take that forward lightly um it's it's we need to maybe you know i think that limit is we are giving students um an unlimited source of you know their carpet is just being rolled out for them they they really can't tackle anything to them you know if we're doing our work right so anyway congratulations um you know on that conference wrapping everything up and tying it in the flow and work just it's hard um we always say it but um so um thank you for that um i attended the welcome back luncheon for uh um that um training that we were doing um um the um back to school in service they always do a fabulous wonderful job in celebrating and giving a great kickoff [Music] and he had a wonderful speaker but again um this was really um innovative and they haven't had a student speaker before but this time made it a student piano and again ask the students you know what do you want in your education or how have our programs helped you and really they honestly answered you know questions and what do you want um [Music] articulate that in different areas one was a family which asl another one are students within um [Music] um and in my other capacity um i did some professional development of restorative practices um which is always wonderful and i've also got to revisit or take another course with fern on hazard with cashier cars which is always a wonderful trusted program that we um and i've always enjoy reading what the trade unions do and um there's a really sad story in here commissioned folks to sing the story and done the um and um psychology social work i spoke about a hospital that i became aware of here and it used to be a general hospital that was closed and nurse an addiction and because we are so impacted in our society with mental illness and addiction problems and homelessness it just seemed like a wonderful thing that we this is now offering and they take all insurance so that was the key so on the 22nd i went over there because they were opening up and guess what they were not opened and i asked to speak to the founders and behind the um said he wasn't available and i said well where are you and i didn't have an answer but when i reported this initially i said i asked for the young nurse is this is the funding from this hospital private or public any of this and that to me was such a key because who needs his chat gains their chance and that just put a great big question mark in my head and it made me work with what is going on so i pick up the register on august 7th and the front page we have riviera addiction care providers and i think really our insurance committee mental health here and this article is putting them in jeopardy uh apparently john wasn't able to pull it up on the website so i felt it for in society for the type of care that they take faith and guess what's happening and i have been very suspect because i watched dr phil and many of the people that are on his program he says almost in youtube and you'll mention in the strong picture of the front of the care and i think that this is an opening to what noticed is he has not offered those pure places for people that are at this program so maybe there's no way to be there i don't know how this was all about this so at least you all are aware of what apparently is going on and it's a reality so that place is never open we don't know and it sounded like one of these places okay so they so it's things that i want to both with you all that over the years these entities have what they call strangers and they go to different communities for example they might go to an airport in boston and find something and then they flep out to their facility and then they run out of insurance and when the insurances cut off they take their person to a park and they prepare and i've been aware of this for a number of years but and so this article actually found it just only filtered into what i've been thinking so anyway it's true [Music] because we do have some control over what we need to do in our district and forgiveness [Music] you graciously put together every year for our homeless families it's not something we advertise it's invitation only for our families and she does a tremendous job and external partners that you work with and they get together every year selfishly selflessly and they provide um and i can't even explain how elated the students were um there was an organization getting backpacks for our students and it wasn't just like you know navy or black these were beautiful backpacks so the kids were so happy to get them and they were showing them off um haircuts provided by a top branch organization you know coming from um um but i mean that really want to do good in the world and um several of them and then of course we had a lot of agencies there to provide a lot of resources for our families we had several students out there helping out um you know just providing a really fun celebratory atmosphere um there's um an organization is going to be using oxford academy and they'll be giving away 500 main brand shoes and a special need two specialty students at hope school on the 26th and a student at uh at oxford academy is coordinating this organization i support so when that happens i'll report back because i'm sure a little bit of leadership advance which from what i saw was well worthwhile and i wasn't it was i tend to balance it but it looked great what was going on so kudos to the leaders up there and then um yesterday i got to all the two schools and the only way to get to those two schools because the it was time for the schools two years to get out and the line down the street for the cars because i asked your mom and i said well i'm gonna go sorry i'm not gonna go to these two schools so um it was just i guess they were there to pick up their students so i made it off so but i got to all the other ones and i have to agree with what grant schuster said earlier and that was the advice on the campus the enthusiasm from the students to the teachers administration everybody was excited and they were saying it was running so smoothly and all the students and teachers were so excited to be back in the classroom that they were really excluding for a great year so i'm hoping the rest here will continue on that way as it did yesterday and i haven't heard anything happening today so i think the second year we're running the right direction so uh thank you for all the education out to our students so i attended that on my high school pta breakfast uh on monday actually on tuesday we did a wonderful job opening up the spread for our teachers and staff i also attended a kids expo which i spoke to this afternoon about uh we had we had anaheim students actually participated in it was a six-month course for students who actually had to teach them about starting a business stating and there were students who actually set up tables and showing us what they are going to do so we had a lower student who actually was going to start up at martial arts academy or class and then he also was a rop student who happened to get a certification to fly drones and he was going to do a business for realtors on uh you know exposing their real estate company or real estate for their business and also weddings so it's great to see our students are really taking that with english elementary school students participate great to hear um i also went to the community schools uh retreat which was a great turnout and i loved hearing everything that our teachers had to say about why they're there so i know it's going to be a successful event for us um attended the magnolia high school cider security white cap ceremony it was uh great to see our students really enthusiastic about it and then i attended the leadership academy that was great and i also attended our anaheim high school registration process just to check out it's great to see there um washington dc are europe europe i i just love i think i want to encourage all board members if they have an opportunity to go sit down it's not only about the conference but it's also actually sitting out with your administrators or walking with the administrators and talking about issues right and talking about how we as board members could be impactful so i think that's a great opportunity for us to um i mean i know we can do that here but i think it's always great to be in a different setting so that we don't have these guys watching over again they didn't share any secrets don't worry uh no but it was great and that was one of the opportunities i the ability or the kudos and the appreciation that we received from all other school districts i know nationally our superintendent was recognized for the work that he does so that was great to see but every presentation that we attended i think you saw people just literally after the presentation so thank you for that i also want to talk about rob uh yesterday we were at the rp meeting um you know our new superintendent there is all about making sure that we get an impact that's the word of the day or year and they also wanted to talk a lot about the program so i just wanted to kind of highlight some of that i know we have uh gail who actually presented really well for us yesterday but i want to talk about the programs that they have during the summer i want to highlight this the medical assistants uh students hired as of 8 11 22.
[Music] would we be okay moving it to wednesday the 7th there's nothing on the city no i'm teaching class on the set so this is um i have a math class that night how about tuesday the bullhead city council is on the 6th city council meeting yeah um anything on we could have it on the monday because that's the rolling stones concert no it's that's awesome after the road it's a holiday that's also holiday yeah oh yeah that's about the first and i won't be here on the i won't i'm i will first be here on well the first or the 22nd i won't be here first second or fifth or sixth actually i probably won't be back on the sixth well let's is the sixth good for everybody i know that is bullied city council but we need to make sure we're gonna have enough for quorum uh okay i won't be back oh you won't be back yet i'm sorry what about the 13th all that seems to be is ribbon cuttings that take place earlier that won't affect any vouchers or anything going that late no it shouldn't it's before the 15th so we should be good with the 13th 13th i don't get i'm good all right let's hold it up for the 13th of week or something comes uh please let us know so we can get that scheduled 13th it is huh we may just have to be we may just have to be tardy melinda so the 13th is good yes it works for me all right so let's set it up for september 13th same thing workshop 530 meeting at six all right uh all right with that just need a motion to adjourn you don't even need a motion i move that we adjourn melinda sobrowski i'll second that motion okay all in favor aye corey burgess hi charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda subraski thank you all thank you [Music] you
so all those are prepped and ready to go for the students i did want to also let the board know that over the summer we did replace some of the old smart boards projector mounted with more of the flat panel smart board models so as of right now the district has 128 of those flat panel boards installed which is roughly a third of the total population we have been funding those you know through the operating budget the computer capital equipment line so that is a good place we feel good about where we are we've really replaced a lot of the old failing equipment and we'll continue you know to do that as as we have funds to do so um and then this is something behind the scenes but there were improvements made so that we can monitor the wi-fi productivity and use and troubleshoot wi-fi issues before the users even know it's happening so this is some an upgrade that was important and that we use aruba which is really excellent technology as far as providing wi-fi service it's been very reliable and we want to keep it that way we are also upgrading munis which is our financial and accounting platform both the board and the town uses that it's kind of a big deal again it's it's an internal project and we expect that upgrade to happen on october 7th so that's the technology update bus routes are all the regular ed bus routes are ready the final work is being done on a special education bus routes so those will be ready and announced to parents um and and some some parents are already advised we're in good shape with bus drivers for next year so we expect to start the year smoothly we're a little tight with the sports charters because those runs occur some occur at the same time that we're completing our elementary school runs so we don't have quite enough drivers to cover all the sports charters but we have a you know very talented transportation department so they've already been you know working with vendors outside of daco to make sure that we provide the sports charters and i know that steve truffone our athletic director has been trying to work with other school districts to have some later start times for some of the athletic events which would allow those bus drivers returning from the elementary runs to cover the sports charters small detail but it's kind of a big deal so we're on top of that as far as maintenance projects i just want to mention a couple some are visible some not so visible but we um have been working on improving the east gym floor so if you go into the east gym you're going to see it it looks great we had to replace part of the floor but it's being repainted as we speak and it'll be refinished it's going to look sharp it'll look like a new floor even though it's it's not new so very visible project we made some improvements to the dodd boiler rooms they're dramatic but you probably won't see those so um the one you will see is the new high school scoreboard it's been replaced if you haven't seen it it's hard to miss when you go down to the field it's it's bigger um it's not it's not hooked up yet but it won't blow down in a windstorm anytime soon the the mounts are just incredible so we're happy about that one we um do expect to have it online right at the same time as the first game of the season it's just the electrical that needs to be connected the dodd roof replacement we had this scheduled for the summer it was a major project not only did we complete the project on schedule but we also were able to add another 3 000 square feet of of roof over the library that we're happy we were able to get done within the budget the highland cafeteria that floor is in the process of being replaced was much needed and there's a logo being added we will get that project done right for the start of school so that one's a little tight but we'll be okay um and then the last major project that is visible is the doolittle parking lot and driveway uh is being repaved this week you know it'll be striped it's it'll look really really good and we made some improvements so that we can fit additional cars in that too little parking lot the cleaning across the school district is just about done highland because we had summer school just ended last week that is in the process of being cleaned so there are no show stoppers we will open school on time as i sit here and report out so that is always good news and that is the summer project update i have so far and don't bring up the m word the what word mine's quick so can we expect photos for the opening of school meetings great that's all i need okay okay vin this might not connect but um and i didn't read everything thoroughly but since the governor just gave us some money for the um emergency yeah so remember we discussed about the generator does this help in some way with well the money is specifically for this building to set an emergency operation center but it doesn't affect the schools because i know we had plans to especially at highland in the in the high school it's well i'm just trying to remember i believe we did get um funding approved for generator at highland as part of the capital budget i'll double check that um and then we did ask for funding so that we could power the back of the high school if that fails because we needed to make some switch upgrades so um so that doesn't connect to no not to that block of mine not in any way no just trying to see if we can say no that was purposely requested and allocated to have it done here it's a good ask though um just a quick question sorry out of practice um so 3 000 square feet additional to the dodd roof is that because they not only got it done uh on schedule but under budget so you had the money to do the extra thing so going forward how does this help with the re-roofing project how far along are we and um is this going to save us money on that project well it the dodd-roof sections that were leaking are now repaired and we had done everything we could to maintain the roof and kept replacing the seams so now it's essentially a brand new roof with 20-year warranty so the fact that we were able to get an additional 3 000 square feet done under this this allocation was about 450 000 and it was because the contractor did find some savings as they they tore up the old roof there were things that they didn't need to do that was anticipated so right now i i want to say that about 60 of the dodd roof has been replaced certainly all the concerning leaking areas are now not leaking and we've had some significant rain the last you know 10 days so it's been kind of tested so um will it save us money as we go forward you know to the extent we did 3 000 square feet now that we won't have to do at a later date that probably is going to cost more because of inflation it does save us you know from any inflation cost but we're in good shape you know after this summer project that died now okay thanks you're welcome um i missed anne's question before what was your question because i just want to make sure i didn't i just wanted to make sure we were going to have photos of all of these great things that have happened in our schools for the opening of school all right that definitely was not my question okay thank you um so i won't use the m word that you were alluding to so i'll just ask has a walk-through been done of our facilities to ensure the quality of services and such yes yeah and that's that's ongoing thanks tony yeah i apologize if i missed this did you say that the generator at highland i believe that was approved as part of the capital budget request yeah that's what i recall for year one so i was thinking it would be happening this summer no well so year one would be next summer i know the capital budget shifted a couple in the past year okay yeah so next summer would be it yes okay thank you i will just confirm that because as i sit here it's it's a little bit foggy but i will confirm that that in fact was approved yeah i'm assuming that i mean if you have if you have the ability you can move stuff around i mean well fast track stuff slow walk stuff depending on the particular circumstances yeah we can't change what the money was allocated for but you know we can sure try and change timing yeah yeah that's what i mean yeah but that has to be engineered you know so sure it's it'll take us till next summer to get that done i think you know what i'm concerned with that's what i wanted to make sure thank you thank you any other questions on planning report from mr massiana what's the m word don't say it can you can you just cancel it's m-o-l-d we want school opening on time for all schools we all do we all do so we do i mean we have fans running where we don't have air conditioning and you know making sure that we try and keep the place well ventilated you know the the fact that the humidity is down now it's helpful let's hope it stays down but it is summer and we'll keep checking i just want to say jeff s is so conditioned we thought it was modernization thank you fate we're going to move on to policy committee mr grippo uh thank you mr chair um although we have not met in a while our last meeting uh a lot had occurred um i'm gonna do i'm gonna do a high level summary uh if you wish to learn more about the details this was recorded and is on youtube and the six pages of minutes are also on file um so uh but basically so this occurred when was this june 14th um we had our presentation from cla about the i guess the audit that was done of our student activity accounts um there were let's see six findings um mostly um uh i guess kind of that had to do with um the policy which was of course one of the main drivers for the audit in the first place um that it had not been updated since 96 there were some training and reporting issues with some of the systems that we were using um and that a new system was coming online that mr maciana had uh mentioned um and that there would be more adequate training for staff um efficiencies some inefficiencies yes many efficiencies would be resolved um let me see here um the schools that were examined during the audit were dodd middle school highland elementary school and cheshire high school those because those had the largest activity accounts the management's response um was that um they had already begun a review of the activity uh the activity school activity fund policy um they gave they showed us a draft of that policy where um i believe let's see miss figueroa is that her name vin did an excellent job at least uh upon an initial review of really trimming down the really massive policy that we had to i think it was only two or three pages um because we you know it was really quite large and wielding and she kind of really uh pared it down for us so that'll be uh something that we will be reviewing i think at our next policy meeting or in the near future um and that um uh van and miss figueroa who is also part of training right yes is going to be uh training staff on the new accounting system uh so that all the findings in reporting can be um fixed in a nutshell um this uh the actual conversation uh probably took about 45 minutes or so so um if you'd like to see it again it's on youtube um we did a uh an initial reading of the food service charging policy um miss uh is it spaghetti but a presentation on the uh policy and uh we did an initial uh reading of that or at least what an initial overview i don't think we advanced it for a reading um we also uh did a uh let's try and see here which policy did we do okay all right um we also did an overview of the school activity fund policy and monies in school buildings policy we did move forward to a first rating yes the first reading of 3542.43 which was the food services charging policy um we moved uh to a second reading uh policies uh 1140 61 41.51 61 41.52 and 6172 for a second reading and those are regarding distribution of materials to students instruction advanced courses programs eligibility criteria for enrollment um instruction challenging curriculum uh challenging curriculum policy criteria for identification of eligible grade 8 and 9 students and instruction gifted and talent gifted and talented students program i believe all of these were statutory changes and our meeting concluded at 8 15.
there was an anaheim high school student cypress high school student catalan high school student a seminar high school student all of them got jobs offered during the summer and there were also students who are offering jobs but they declined and that was from anaheim high school in community security because they were going to uc berkeley rn program another one to john johns hopkins university for pre-med so our students are doing really great and love the partnership with rop i want to talk a little bit more about it i know that we invite you to make a presentation to us every cycle i want to highlight that because that's now that you want to so thank you very much for all the work that you're doing here appreciate it all right and having said that [Music] all um that's fine future meeting dates um export meeting is 7 30 to 6 pm any suggested 10 items we asked for our leaders in our schools to remind our students about the aid of water and how important it is in this state and to our community and i called manguya high school district office the other day and i spoke to dr nyan's counterpart and i saw 10 sprinklers in front of the school for three hours and when i spoke to him um i explained to him if we don't show respect for water and you are doing what you're doing and it's gone on for two weeks you're talking about magnolia school district in front of walt disney elementary and i think that's something that we need to be aware of who is responsible for our sprinklers and how long they run because i think that until we become aware of this issue of water we are going to be in downstream if we don't take this seriously you know it's not in general but [Music] okay all right all right all right so jeremiah
are there any questions again details on the audit and our discussion are on youtube and the uh the minutes are on file mr guerpo can i have one thing i i just wanted to give an update as far as the training which we said that we would do prior to the start of the school year we did we completed student activity fund training this was for all the bookkeepers and all the administrators so we did the first two sessions the first one was just a student activity fund overview review of the policy and and more importantly the regulation that i know that the policy committee will review and take up um and then that was held on august 4th august 10th earlier this week we did a second training and these trainings are mandatory on my school bucks which is the online payment method that's used as part of the training that we did one of the comments and was that the forms needed to be standardized that are used across the district for disbursement requests and other things those have been standardized so we built into the training the use of those forms so of the items that were highlighted and recommended for change we've completed all the items that we committed to complete the only item that's left is to finalize the change in policy regulation which i don't believe the policy needs any change it's just the regulation that we're still making some tweaks to um so that's one thing that's that's not done and the second item that still remains is training on epees which is the student activity accounting system so that training is in development we will roll that out right after the new school year begins so we are on track to comply with this and again i want to reiterate that you know as part of the review there were no financial concerns that were identified this is more related to policy and procedure and how we administer the funds and you know one of the deficiencies was that staff felt that they needed more training so we've completed the training and the good thing about what we did is we have it added to vector training which is our online training platform so any new employee that's hired into a bookkeeping or administrator role can be assigned those videos to watch and be trained so i i did want to add that as an update to what you just covered thank you thank you mr masiana that is a um a great addendum to the report appreciate that um and it is good to know that there was no actual um financial problems found it was just all in basically training or perhaps uh double reporting or something like that that was found you know regular accounting type errors and that the system is being improved and that obviously uh the training is being much improved so that's that's great to hear it's yeah again so the the background for this was back in 2019 i believe it was 2019.
it's part of the positive revisions so that one policy was back in 96 is one of the things when i do and you know we talked about hey why not just review the process is because the policy is that oh old there's got to be some inefficiencies somewhere so this would have been done soon or had not been for covet because i know that's what was upon that year 2020.