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i think you'll be impressed and amazed at where we are with that building and what that building is going to look like so great opportunity if you can carve that time out of your schedule mr worthy i just want to follow up on artie's story and the the compliments to the transportation department been reading a number of reports articles about school districts particularly in central indiana and some of the more rural districts having a great deal of difficulty finding bus drivers and read one this morning about uh students waiting as much as an extra half hour for their bus because they're trying to run double routes and pick these kids up and do them with short-handed bus drivers so it's it's a real compliment that things are running smoothly thank you dr terrell and mr hoffman we can roll into that with those thoughts with this other business of the of the board um to piggyback what you just said i actually spoke to mr akiba before the meeting um you know starter school bus routes and we're fortunate to have the drivers in place and getting things done but still you know there's going to be those situations where it's not ideal for all the families you might have a quarter mile walk your bus stop you might have depending on when you're picked up or dropped off you might have a 40 minute ride on the bus and um i'm just bringing this up to mention that our leaders are well aware of any of the struggles and i think they're doing everything they can to prevent them you know if if there's a way to tweak a stop or you know help a student get off a bus as fast as possible i feel like all those rocks have been turned over and you know and we've been told in the past they are and um you know we hear we hear about a couple of the situations and i just had one uh conversation myself and you start to think about it and there might be a situation where you can move a stop instead of that quarter mile walk that it could be on your you know on the corner of your block instead but now it's five more minutes and then if you do that five more minutes to five more minutes now the kids that are on the bus for 35 minutes are posting for pushing to 45 and 50 and i'm just bringing it up to for those that are concerned obviously reach out if you really think you're an outlier nobody's trying to you know hide from the conversations if you're an outlier you know please reach out to us through an email or um i'm bringing that as i'm bringing this up today if anybody's listening please email me and i'll point you in the right direction or someone to speak to but um i really wanna as mr hoffman give our transportation department a lot of credit for you know continuously working to make sure it's all smooth uh mr key would you like to add anything to that or um yeah i'm just kind of reiterating what you're already saying a little bit but yeah we are constantly analyzing whether or not we can become more efficient as the year goes forward um everything looks decent on paper right and then you put it in play and you're starting to understand a little bit who who's riding the bus who isn't riding the bus and new enrollees and people leaving the district so um we anticipate that knock on wood and you know another week or so we we we should hopefully smooth out pretty nicely and once again just where there have been moments of delay uh as you do break into a new school year and start to feel those routes for the first time even with new drivers learning new routes um just thank you to all those families um that that were affected as as we do you know iron out those wrinkles it actually brings up a question that i've not even thought to ask in the past but what might be the uh percentage occupancy of our buses is that are we do do we have any idea are we yeah i can't give you an exact number right now but i can find out for you i mean assuming based on the travel times that we hear some of the routes you have to assume that we're pretty darn full yeah we're utilizing our you our buses yeah i would say that a big part of the first week is being out in the schools like in the mornings and the afternoons making sure what those traffic patterns look like and seeing how we're improving them intentionally sitting at the high school watching those buses come in they're full uh not all of them and obviously it changes day to day depending on who's there um but we have good ridership right now and yeah that's a good thing as far as you know management-wise right you know yeah i'm just happy that transportation is going smoothly so i don't have to come out of retirement resume driving a school bus so tom we'll take anybody if you can pass the course uh we can always use extra drivers we'll take them come on absolutely uh during this other business section doesn't anybody else have anything i'd like to talk her out i do have a few items they're simple but i want to mention him i can go first and see if he wants to jump in um i want to just uh mention the start of school this is the second year we were in the gymnasium and just an excellent event miss janssen your speech was excellent it was uh without coordinating it ms janssen actually spoke kind of based her speech on perspective and then here comes dr terrell with like referencing a book on perspective and they had no idea each one we're going to be talking about that but uh thank the thank the band thank the dance and cheerleaders and everybody and uh i think the you know the event in the gymnasium is a little different than i think we might be used to over the last 15 years and it's a good uh it's a it's a real up uplifting morning so um i think everybody did a great job i had i also want to mention that no particular order here um dr terrell is going to be joining mayor land on a podcast tomorrow no i hope not that will be coming up yeah yeah so maryland is doing a was it lay of the land podcast i think his first week was with former mayor iran um but todd is going to be joining him i think that'll be really exciting for us as a school corporation and for the relationship with uh with the city to they're just gonna basically just chat about what's going on in the school corp right yeah so you'll be able to you'll be able to gobble up that time with you should be a good time with them for sure um also uh the starter school thank everybody for that as well i wanna particularly dr terrell was sending us pictures of uh running the routes himself around the elementaries in middle school that would have been affected by the fair we knew that was we knew it was the first time we knew that we had to be on our toes we were asking the questions and they were providing the answers and doing the legwork to make sure that you know things went smooth everything was safe and that you know you sent us a message of hey here we are right now and off on the side we you know i think a message another board member said i really appreciated that you took that extra effort to get out there yourself and make sure that you know not only were you watching it but that you had the information first hand rather than relying on somebody else to do that so thank you um so sorry i had little notes here i think the oh the last thing i want to mention if i i think it's something that we want everyone to be aware of there's a new um offer to the public through if you look the answer is easy to find but it's through the blue frame technology many of the crown point sports will be available to watch for a small fee if you watch them uh one event at a time i believe it's eight dollars you can get a package for something like 77 and it'll at this point i believe it's going to give you basketball volleyball i think i heard swimming uh potentially track football i don't know if i heard soccer or not i think some of this is i think some of it is um due to where we have the cameras uh we have a i call a contract subscription with huddle who has teamed up with blueframe technology i'd i'm only mentioning it because i don't think a lot of people would be aware yet and also i think it's an unbelievable opportunity for the student athletes be able to share their experiences with extended family or you know brother goes away to school camp home for can't come home for the game and i watched the uh i watched a friday night game i wasn't able to go but i watched it uh our home football game burst lowell and it was excellent so hopefully get some more information out to the public to be able to watch when they're not able to make it to the game in person soccer is included wrestling wrestling name i'm going to that's no hopefully not other business anybody else like the conversation just add on to what you mentioned about running the routes and dr chair will be included i was informed through some of my contacts with the community that when the water main broke on the northeast side of the hospital last week affecting taft traffic and high school traffic that our own superintendent got involved in was directing traffic so kudos to him for people say you know uh what does he get paid to do well i promise you in our description it wasn't to direct traffic duties as a sign stepped up stepped up when needed to make sure that obviously our students were arriving safely and parents dropping those off at both locations were there so thank you to dr terrell for seeing the need to make sure that things were going okay when something like that obviously happens unexpected and no way to detour buses or traffic at that time when everybody's getting there in the next 20 to 20 minutes to half hours and i should i should have thanked the city their communication with us was great and they were out there one o'clock in the morning and by 7 30 had it patched up enough where we could actually let buses roll through and yeah so we appreciate the city and their work to it as well any other business to discuss now move forward to board statements of appreciation recognition how about we start with mr babrick do you have anything this evening tonight mr hoffman mr angel i would just say kudos to all involved with the not just the football team for the performance on the field friday but all those that are involved including all those that are uh working security and concession stands and everything involved based on the fact that it was just one heck of an environment on friday night and as far as i know no issue issues with a large crowd i just happen to know on the middle school level teachers there to supervise that group obviously we have police presence along with building administrators watching the incredible crowd that we had on the high school end of things too and it was just one nice it was good to see fans back in the stands and with the turnout we had and obviously the outcome is gravy and uh but you just continue moving forward with that but it was just a nice experience weather cooperated everything so beautiful just uh all those involved behind the scenes making sure that nothing or at least you can prevent things from happening and making sure that that moves smoothly as as all possible can be so thank you mr werner mr angel's comments uh reminded me of one thing i would like to extend sympathy to the jack assalam family jack was a member of the chain gang for many years at the high school football games he lost his battle with cancer thank you miss chaplin uh specifically boar safe's appreciation recognition i do not have anything this evening but i did think about when the robotics was here this morning crown point has always kind of prided themselves on student participation and extra click extracurricular activities whatever they may be football band choir orchestra theater this robotics is growing and growing and growing and what i saw while listening to all the awards be presented i was thinking about the the quantity of kids that are now it's another way to participate is another way to be involved and i think as as a community school corporation and board members we should all be really proud of continuing to you know push students to do more than you know the typical school day and in the opportunity not not push them but provide opportunities for them to do more and you know socialize and be competitive and whatever it may be so thank you for all the coaches and teachers and consultants that help provide those activities um anything else if not we'll look for a motion to adjourn second move by mr angel second by mr hoffman all in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed most carries 4-0
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here all right thank you for hanging in there with us as we start late again we're getting a little better not too late um we're joined tonight for a study session um all of our four board members are presents um we're gonna start off with the agenda number or actually i apologize to guadalupe do you mind providing the interpretation thank you announcement thank you participants [Music] thank you very much thank you guadalupe um our first agenda item is 2.1 the tntp presentation um dr lorea would you like to provide an introduction yes thank you modern vice president members of the board and everyone here uh we we do have a presentation from tntp today uh it's really gonna be an opportunity to ask questions and to get familiar with the work that we're doing uh today is two full weeks now of school actually so we're starting week three so before i pass it on to them we have a video for you just um showing a little bit of the work that we have done so monica you can put it buenos dias my name is dr carla superintendent adam city high school excellent estudiantes my name is dr carla loria superintendent of schools of adams 14 school district and i am here at adam city high school with some of our finest students starting our third week and we're having a strong start we have been working very hard this summer to make sure that we are ready for students we want our students coming in every day ready to learn and for that we the adults have been doing a lot of preparation part of our work this summer has been getting our buildings ready making sure that they are not only attractive and clean but also conducive to learning part of el trabajo este verano acido que nuestros nuevos maestros and this summer part of that work has been making sure our new teachers receive induction and orientation making sure our returning teachers are part of professional development that will prepare them to support their classroom instruction investors and also administrators being part of meetings looking at the data just making sure our teachers have the resources necessary to support our students and for students there are a lot of extracurricular activities after school so make sure that you find out what is in there for you is and one of our goals is to get better at involving parents and community members because one thing after speaking with many of you one thing i know we all want the same thing to provide a high quality education for our students and together i know we can do it gracias and as a superintendent i can only say thank you for a strong start it's going to be a great year [Applause] i don't know how they put that together so quickly because as you can tell that was today like same outfit here so um [Music] thank you for our communications team we're really one of our goal is to make sure that we are shouting out and um showcasing the great work that we're doing um enough of the you know bad media out there it's time for us to tell our own story to change the narrative for our students and that's what we're working on so um to join us in that effort in that objective we have tntp here and i'm gonna pass it on to tim and to sarah so that they can walk us through a few slides here this is a time that you have board members in community and anyone to ask questions clarifying questions and you know just give us your thoughts and feedback of where we're going thank you madam vice president members of the board we're really excited to be here um and excited to share the work that has already started uh and just have already seen a ton of traction with with our team next slide please so our first official tntp adams 14 event was the kickoff many members of the tntp team were here and just was really excited to be a part of that next slide so we wanted to talk about uh how we ground the work that we do in schools with our partners and what we're excited to to bring to adam's 14.
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ready to go okay we're gonna call this hearing this is a public hearing this is uh about the sex education curriculum that we have to implement beginning of next year we won't be doing it this year but it'll be beginning of next year and this is a state mandated thing so we have to do this we've kind of gotten away in the past with not having it for the last couple of years but uh we have to the whole state's doing the same process we are so this this afternoon we have presenters those that would be here dr wright will recognize and this this will be a public information meeting so that people can find out what the curriculums that will be brought to the board for a vote and it'll be a question and answer period we'd like to uh we don't have any answers we have just as many questions too but we'd like to keep those brief we don't want to turn this into a debate so it's uh this is just a information period we will meet again in a month at the beginning of the next school board to have another public hearing and hopefully between then and now between now and then we should be able to come up with what everybody has agreed upon so um dr wright i'm gonna let you introduce those that will be speaking to us and and how they come to us absolutely uh first of all thank you for attending in just to make sure we're we're clear on two points if if the district is to offer sex education it has to go through a series of hearings and a committee form we form the committee in may this is the second uh this is the first of uh two hearings and the other option is the board to say we're not going to offer it at all they could do that if they wish it's at the board's discretion but if the district is going to offer a program that it must be fully vetted by stakeholders and then in the end the board will make the decision which of the two programs based on recommendations from stakeholders and administration they'll make a recommendation and then we'll move forward the administration will move forward as we are instructed by the board and so we have navajo county is here again representing and i do you have the list mary for our guests the names i have this thank you and uh crystal price from the youth are you are you here from the arizona youth partnership crystal there you are okay so we have had presentations from both of these ladies earlier highlighting their curriculum the curriculum has been on display was on display for 90 days and now this this is an opportunity to ask these they're experts in their curriculum it's to ask questions and also to express either support or concern to the board about either approach and so that's the purpose of of this evening you do not need to fill out a call to the public forum this is an open meeting if you would just state your name so for the minutes we do take minutes and then you know share what you have it's at the board president's pleasure how long that goes and so i think that's how we should proceed mr president is if there are any questions or comments with either the programs that the public has reviewed to this point i i think we'll clarify time we're supposed to start a regularly scheduled board meeting uh at five o'clock but if it looks like we're into this and there's quite a bit of comment we're going to extend that we'll just put that off i think i think we have about a 30-minute window that we can run over before we start the next meeting so let's uh move forward oh and also one other thing hopefully this won't turn into a debate and hopefully you can keep your brief comments brief not brief comments comments brief so that everybody can have an opportunity to share their uh opinions or questions thank you who's first do we have mike we do have microphones if you'll if any would like to come up there we go all right thank you so much thank you to everyone that's here and i'd like to thank the principals and the board for allowing um navajo county to come up and represent my name is elena brown and i am the teen health program manager for the health program for navajo county public health i did have a powerpoint presentation oh there it is all right so just a quick overview of our program the teen health program has had the privilege of partnering with the schools throughout navajo county since 2008.
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uh miss you jetty is that you yes i i wrote copied down the number wrong thank you all right all right we will we would like to begin welcome to our regular board meeting it's tuesday august 23rd 2022 it's 6 p.m and we'll begin i'd like to call this meeting to order we will now have a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance led by mrs humphries if you'll please stand and join me if you'll join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you mrs wilson will you please call roll dr charles santa cruz here mr bill parker here miss laurie wood here ms sheila eugetti here miss jill humphries here madame president on board members are present you have a quorum thank you now that takes us to item two approval of the agenda is there a motion board members i move to approve the agenda as presented thank you mrs humphries is there a second shotgun thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we approve the agenda as presented all those in favor please vote by saying aye aye any oppose with nay thank you now we will go to the superintendent's report dr mccord thank you madam president governing board members good evening to everyone joining us online uh and those that may or may not show up here um wanted to wish congratulations to kare summerfield she's a family and consumer science teacher at highland junior high she received a ten thousand dollar grant from the maricopa county superintendent's office cara along with the help of the gilbert education foundation purchased a glow forge for her class a glow forge can cut wood fabric leather paper plexiglass mylar rubber corian foods and more a glow forge can also engrave all of the above plus glass coated metal marble aluminum titanium some phones tablets laptops and more so kara has been a long time employee and educator for us and she's extremely excited about this our maricopa county superintendent steve watson was there we kind of had an unboxing of it she'd received it earlier this summer and she's going to put it to good work and really do some exciting lessons with our students for that last week we had our gilbert education foundation business leaders breakfast it was a great showing and we want to thank all the businesses for coming out and supporting the foundation in gps we had a special guest the meeting his name was amigo amigo is a therapy dog in training at gilbert elementary school when i was over at gilbert l later on that week i got to see amigo in action he's loved by allen provides so much needed calmness and relief to some of our students and staff thanks to gilbert l for sharing who amigo is and what he is doing for all of our students and staff at their school and last saturday we had our annual v-net kickoff training and vendor expo at gilbert high school over 300 gps volunteers who make up our ptsos ptas as well as our booster clubs attended the meeting and the theme this year was superheroes unite well guess what they united and i'm not sure everyone truly understands how blessed we are in gps to have such wonderful support from our families they don't volunteer at their schools because they have to they do it because they love their school and want the best for their children and for that we are turning eternally grateful mrs wood that concludes my report for this evening thank you dr mccord that will take us to item 4 request to speak to the governing board and i did not receive any request tonight so we did have one online submission an online submission so we appreciate that as well and acknowledge that we will now move to 5.0 the reports and ask for the monthly budget report dr mccord thank you madam president company board members as always miss bonnie betts our associate zoo business services will give our monthly budget report good evening governing board members dr mccord mrs wood so this is the very first budget presentation for the new fiscal year so this is reflective of activity from july 1st through july 31st so keep in mind as it is at the very beginning of the school year there are lots of moving parts right now and so um this is as it was um as of july 31st so there have been changes as as we've gone gone through it but just keep that in mind as we go through uh the presentation this evening okay so because this is the first report we did include all of the tables that are part of the overall monthly budget report but there's only um just a few that we noted uh some specific things that we wanted to share with you so these are are all of our groupings of funds throughout gilroy public schools so the district operating funds of course the most notable ones are always maintenance and operations classroom site fund as well as understand the capital outlay if you go to the very bottom the energy and water savings that's just a reminder to let you know that that was our last energy performance contract that we engaged in back in 2009 and we made the final payment at the end of june so we will not see that transfer moving forward on the maintenance and operations note the 296.5 million dollars which is our adopted budget and the year-to-date expended encumbered is 253 million leaving a balance of 43 million this was very comparable to last year at the start of the school year a couple of things to remember due to the constant onboarding we don't have all of the benefits encumbered for all of our employees right now so that will increase that year-to-date expended encumbered column also though we worked very hard to make sure that all the first payments for the new year for all of the 12-month exempt or salaried staff that the additional pay increase that you all approved on july 12th was reflected in their first paycheck we were able to get that done but each hourly employee had to be touched manually so over two thousand employees and that two dollars per hour it has is not reflected in that year-to-date encumbrance and expenditures however the good news is that all hourly employees saw their additional two dollar increase this past pay date which was a week ago from today and they will all receive their retro pay reflective of the first three weeks of july on the next pay period which is to be paid on the 30th of august so with the work of otm and payroll that was turned around pretty fast so just wanted to have you keep that in mind in addition keep in mind that when when we adopt our budget it's based on projection and recall that we did assume a 400 student actually a 400 adm loss when we projected our budget so the good news is we have seen about a 380 enrollment loss but but that's going to translate maybe to as much as 300 adm so we will not be required to have a budget revision in december because we will we will so so to speak win we will have a greater budget capacity due to our student enrollment and average daily membership to date so you'll see that in the next presentation we will have a pending revised budget for you but you can expect the revised budget for maintenance and operations and then restricted capital to come to you probably in the january time frame just so you know and then back to the classroom site fund that's another notable fund associated with this operating fund grid and again that 16 million dollar balance and the 25 million dollar year-to-date expended encumbered is comparable to last year still we'll have some changes as we go through and then also note that that does not include the pay for performance which has now been set at 750 per employee based upon their evaluation finally the understated capital the 45.9 million dollars in the adopted budget recall that that does include that 20 million dollar transfer that we approved in the fiscal year 2022 final revised budget um accounting for that large uh adopted budget amount so those are just reminders before i go on any further is are there any questions on any of that one question real quick so the 750 dollar paper for pay per performance pay for performance is from the classroom site fund that's correct but it's not encumbered yet but it's not encumbered yet that's correct so we will see that yes you will see it yep thank you anything else okay great so this is just the notes about basically stating what i just shared with you federal grant funds just a reminder overall that these grant funds are based upon what we expected the ending balance to be as well as the new allocations for the new year so all of these budgets will be updated to reflect the approved carryover from the department of ed grants administration office so you'll see some changes in all of these and then finally note the highlighted idea high cost at least since i have been here which has been since july of 2018 we have not received this high cost grant so last year was the first time that we've received it we are optimistic that we may receive it again which is why we kept it highlighted we received 85 000 last year so if we are eligible which is possible we expect to get something comparable to that so we wanted to keep it as a placeholder so the state grant funds the most notable one here is our structured english immersion my understanding is that staff in barbara newman dr newman's office worked very hard at putting together a grant proposal that was approved for a total of three hundred and twenty thousand dollars so we will have additional resources and those monies because of the nature of the grant we are able to move maintenance and operations expenditures into that grant showing a commensurate savings in mno any questions on any of the federal or state grants okay great so our enterprise funds most notably nutrition services so note the beginning balance of 7.7 million dollars this is largely a result of the free 100 free breakfast and lunch that ended june 30 of 2022 so based upon our expectation of the balance between paid breakfast and lunch versus those that are eligible for free and reduced which means we get federal reimbursement from those we estimated our revenues based upon the 2020 school year so we calculated that looking at the amount of revenues received through december 31st of 2019 and doubled that because as you know we did not operate fully for that second half of the year so that that's very much an estimate of our revenues and then on community school we we are ramping back up to the previous success of community school and so those estimated revenues are based upon actuals from fiscal year 2022.
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i'm sorry don't we normally do roll call on them first yeah first call the roll yeah okay cindy could you please call the roll i was super confused and then i thought maybe i'm doing it backwards kathy gravel here aaron kilburg here here chris lowe present rj mathis here craig meadows present aaron meisler here all right and sue would you please lead us in the pledge yes i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right dr houston's are there any items removed from or added to the agenda for tonight there are not all right then the first item we have on our agenda is public comments and we did have someone here with public comments and i know ms deisman had already spoken to that person but i will let her go through for the record we do have a new one okay um our process here is that the speakers will be called up in order of form submission we only have one so the first one we see the first person invited to speak when your name is called please come to the podium so you can be heard comments will be limited to three minutes ladies we have pat hendricks and rosie mcvay yes thank you we're from the aauw the american association of university women and we would like to express our appreciation to the board members and the school district that are doing such a good job to educate our children and we we just wanted to to thank you and say that we support you 100 percent i just want to uh second my vote to rosie's comments i understand that this is basically an unpaid volunteer position and you put in tremendous hours and hard work and all for the the good of the district and and the community's children thank you very much we do appreciate you thank you so much thank you that's very kind all right next item on our agenda is our bps partners um todd swanson unfortunately could not be here with us tonight but he did check in and he said he didn't have any um comments for us so um he had an emergency and please no todd they were thinking about you all right committee updates everyone's got new committees i'm not sure if anybody's met with their committees yet does anyone have a committee update no no those are common fast and furious though so next month we should have new uh new board member committees and new board member committee updates so the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda which is our opportunity to approve a number of routine business items with one vote all of the details for each item in the consent agenda is in the um board book so um i will have mr pierce please go through the consent agenda yeah we're moving right along here tonight uh 4.1 and 4.2 is the approval of the july 19 2022 special and regular meeting minutes 4.3 is the approval of our august 8 2022 special meeting minutes 4.4 is the destruction of our closed session recordings from february 23rd 2021 4.5 is the review of our closed session minutes 4.6 is our monthly personnel report we did add something on there this year where we on our personal report we added our tenured staff on there and so congratulations to all of them 4.7 is our payroll and bills 4.8 is the approval of our donations to the district uh thank you to the dunham fund and the batave united way for their donations they are appreciated 4.9 is the approval of our chromebook service contract renewal 4.10 is the approval of the athletic trainer contract renewal 4.11 is policy for approval and 4.12 is the approval of the consent agenda all right are there any items to be removed from or clarified on the consent agenda all right then i would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved second move by meadow second by my sir all in favor any opposed all right i would like to say that we have a staff member in the audience whose name is on our retirement track now and that makes me very sad calling her out she'll love me for that she's not sad i might be talking about you though that's not enough time uh next item on our agenda is our report so i will hand it over to dr hitchens for the first two standard reports yes and as always i would put out there for any questions or comments the foyer request is something that we put out there monthly these are the five that we have replied to since the last board meeting and then the treasurer reports are something you see every month any questions on those all right then steve was going to take us through his hiring report yeah first of all thanks to the board i had several folks reach out to me and ask questions and with different inquiries and i appreciate that it was an interesting hiring season i would say for us um you can see that i listed um kind of our numbers for 2022 and then below that in the graphic i uh listed some comparatives uh from the last couple of years a couple of things to note that i didn't write on here was that uh 2022 we actually had 14 staff members who res we call it a reassignment position or they they took a different position um within the district we actually had 14 of those in 2022 and in the comparative years of 2019 and 2021 i think we had three or four each year so that's a big shift for us should also be noted that um these new staff that were hired some of those are staff that are covering like full year leave of absences or maybe one-year positions things like that so they may not be position staff members that are with us for the rest of their careers although a lot of times people who work for us for a leave of absence or for a year position uh they're kind of that's like the farm system if you will and they show us they do a great job and are committed to our mission and vision values we often rehire them the following year so it's a great opportunity you know a couple of interesting trends um that you can probably observe yourself is that in our comparisons we certainly continue to see that special education and student services positions are our highest turnover i would tell you that if you talk to folks in hr across the entire state and in king county they would probably tell you the same things every year the isbe asks for they do a survey for hr offices about hard to fill positions and they tend to be the same across all of our districts special ed student services english language learners and then a lot of times math and science we often times have had challenges with high school spanish believe it or not so if anyone is watching or listening and you're attending college and wondering what major you should have i definitely have some recommendations for you in those areas um what what what is what has really been most challenging for us i would say this year is that a couple of things um you know we want to improve our candidate pool of our diverse of a more diverse staff and and getting people into that candidate pool has continued to be really challenging secondly um you know in the past it was an outlier if we had staff who were hired and ready to work for the new school year like in mid-august um and it was an outlier somebody would resign in late july or early august and i would say this year we have seen more of that than we ever have we actually had a staff member in a hard to fill position resign on august 11th the day before our licensed staff members were coming back to work and even this past weekend we had a staff member in a hard to fill position who decided they were going to leave education and didn't come back worked for a week and a half and didn't come back to work on monday and these are those are very unique circumstances for us and um as you can guess they're hard to fill positions and now we have these hard to fill positions once the school year has started and those are the two positions um from a from a licensed staff member viewpoint that are not currently filled um adding to that we're still missing parapros at batavia high school at rotolo middle school and at our elementary levels um we are still looking for a uh and by the way the the positions that are currently open that we would love to fill are at the middle school we have a speech and language pathologist position and at hoover wood school we have a special education position beyond the parapro positions we have some lunch campus monitors that only work a couple hours a day needed at rotolo and at the elementary schools and lastly at the middle school we would love to have a a a a cna lpn like a nurse's assistant position that is open so those are those are open positions and when you look at it and compare ourselves to others in king county and statewide i would actually contend we've done really really well in filling those positions you probably have all read articles about various districts across our area and the state that are have you know tens if not hundreds of still missing positions in their classrooms um and so you know again so to kind of circle back again i would say our biggest challenges lack of diverse applicants in our hiring pool which then translates to a lack of diversity amongst our our current staff members secondly a lack of applicants in our hard to fill hiring pools um overall and then thirdly um we're short with parapros right that's and and i i would like to say that um with with the parapro challenge um you know again i i sent an email out to uh my counterparts in king county in late july early august and everyone replied within probably 24 hours just to i needed maybe a little bit of uh emotional support to be like are we the only ones like this and everybody um stated that they had challenges and actually when everyone shared their numbers with me we actually stacked up maybe the best in king county in terms of uh where we were at with parapros and i'm exceptionally proud of our staff and our special ed staff members in leadership positions for despite having a lack of paraprofessionals still having our kids properly supported in all of our buildings um i'm also happy to say just in the last couple of days we have been able to hire a couple of para pros but obviously there is still a need there so those are really our big challenges and and i think a legitimate question is is so how are we going to um approach these challenges right and so i'd like to share a little bit a little bit about that um with our our our lack of diverse candidate pool i would like to acknowledge that statewide that's a challenge the illinois state board of education has a ton of initiatives that are happening to try to get more people of color and diverse populations actually into collegiate programs um to uh to to get into that pipeline i actually have a relationship with a local college and they have me come out and kind of talk hr with their student teaching students and i do that usually first semester and second semester and it's been amazing since i started doing that probably in 2015 there was massive amounts of uh teacher prep students and i did it last spring and i think there was like 16 students so like the numbers have gone down and so i would like to acknowledge that that's a challenge um for a lot of us in the state uh the second acknowledgement i'd like to to make about that is it's going to take time to get there um and i think we're doing some things that will help but i also think that there's things that we can do to improve upon that and so you know we're working on our local pipeline um we've added some additional courses at batavia high school um to support our own students uh considering uh to become teachers and i appreciate the work that austin savitsky and mike theriault have done i think that they've already they sent invites like in july or august to a lot of us to come and support on those programs and speak to our our own high school students uh to do that um i had the opportunity to be a part of a lot of several job fairs this this past spring and i to be honest with you um we for the first time ever the organization um that i'm a part of in the state of illinois it's the um all the school personnel hr people like myself across the whole state they actually did a a virtual job hiring fair and i'll be honest i was a little cynical about it at first and it actually was phenomenal it was one of the best things i've attended and i will tell you that i had the opportunity to interact in a matter of like 90 minutes with probably over 75 prospective students what i learned was i need to have another person there online besides me because i couldn't do it all myself i was having like three conversations with people simultaneously and um so beyond that one i went to a couple of other job fairs and all of those i will tell you i had plenty of conversations with uh diverse candidates and um you know like you do in any job fair the people that you interact with they're like oh yeah i'm going to apply i'm going to apply i'm going to apply and what what i learned is is i don't know that many of the diverse candidates did apply and what i need to do a better job of is coming up with a system to follow up with all those people and make sure and at least prod them and get on them to say we still want you here please apply and so that was a learning experience for me um and i'll talk a little bit more about this um in a little bit but we also need to do you know traditionally in batavia i i've had people the last i don't know five to seven years say hey steve is the job shortage really impacting batavia and my honest answer has always been no it's not really affecting us that much we have tons of applicants well i can officially say that those days for the most part are over and instead of us having just people come to us which was has been a very nice thing to have we have to shift how we do this and and we have to actually market bps 101 to our diverse populations and also to all populations because again our candidate pool was really much smaller this year than i've ever seen it um and we have to change the game a little bit with a marketing plan where we have to talk about what bps 101 is all about and why uh different stat prospective employees should come here and really just market it and so we're gonna i've already talked with holly a little bit about that and we may need some professional help to to to set things up um we're already taking like baby steps if you you don't need to do this right now but if you look at our human resources webpage um we've already made it a little bit more user-friendly um and we will continue that and we have some ideas to improve that and so um definitely some lessons learned to to increase that diverse candidate pool and i think there's a few strategies that that i can do and we can do as a school system and i'm going to rely on some others because i i believe that one of our marketing approaches we need to have stat real staff members of all different uh uh evolved in all different positions do testimonials about like what is it like to work here and so like we'll we'll be uh needing definitely some help from uh our current employees um with our hard to fill positions um again hard to fill you know i said a little bit about this especially the special ed student services and parapros you know our our state has recognized this this is not a batavia problem this is a statewide problem the isbe has made it easier to get your teaching license with all sorts of short-term um applications and even the parapro license just in the last month it's become far easier for people to get that license they've pulled back some of the restrictions and so again i believe we need to market that better to the to the to the people in our community in order to get a better better support there our local pipeline i think will help another approach that we're going to take is we have a handful of student teachers that are working this fall in all of our buildings and we have plenty we have again some staff that are our special ed and some of our other hard to fill positions and what we really need to do is get those people um engaged at bps101 and then actually get them working here potentially in the second semester because undoubtedly every year we have openings that we can't foresee right now but we have places for them and so that's something we're going to work on too and then again as i spoke uh earlier uh when i was addressing talking about uh increasing our diverse candidate pool and our our our the diversity of our staff we have to market better so you know we will say a lot of this is um you try things see if it works improve it stop doing the things maybe that didn't work do more of the things that may have worked all of these challenges are questions that i have a very close relationship with my colleagues in king county and i don't care if you work in eligen burlington west aurora east aurora you know geneva caneland saint charles batavia these challenges are very real for all of us um and we just need to continue to uh do our best to take on these challenges so kind of in conclusion um i'm very proud of the work that our staff did specifically in the area of special ed and student services at the end of the summer when we um had several resignations that were very shocking at the end you know end of july early august and i'm really really proud of the time that our special ed team put in to not only get candidates i always meet with every single new staff member who's a full-time staff member and the quality of these candidates were exceptional despite the late hour and so i think that you know we've heard some negative feedback at times about our hiring practices and of course we can get better and we can do things to improve but i'm very proud of the work our principals and our special ed staff specifically did to get our people again not only getting people to be teachers but really qualified solid candidates to uh work with these special populations with very late notice we definitely need to shift our strategy as i have spoken about and really market how great it is to work here in bps101 um and have our own people tell some of that story in order to get uh the right people applying here um you know i've todd swanson was mentioned earlier and and i've had conversations with our association leadership um we're going to be entering our bargaining season here in january february as the current contracts contract expires um on june 30th 2023 and they know that we have we have we probably have a shared interest um to use some of our our interest-based bargaining terminology uh to to uh figure out ways to uh make it um to improve ways to get our new staff in and because we've had we've struggled getting our new hires in and nurses uh specifically this summer because our um pay scale for new people hasn't been as competitive as it should be and so we have some work to do there and then again diversifying our candidate pool which ultimately leads to diversifying um our staff and our workforce is an important priority so that's kind of my report i'm certainly available here if people have questions or want to continue the conversation i first want to say welcome to all the new hires at bps101 we're excited to have you as part of the team and i also want to say thank you steve for your candor and acknowledging that it's a different world there's different challenges and if we want to attract the best the brightest diverse candidates and just feel positions almost we have to change things up we have to examine how we're doing things and how we can better position ourselves to be competitive so i think that's the first step to making a correction to be competitive in the future so thank you for that and then just for the audience if you could just talk a little bit you talked a lot about how to work short with paraprofessionals if you could just talk about who they are what they do and how we're that was your question sorry but um and how we're managing that shortage within our building yeah paraprofessionals are are a vital i mean every staff member that works in the school district has an important responsibility to support our students in their learning right paraprofessionals are are a vital component because oftentimes they're paired or working with some of our most high need students who need those supports whether it's written into their iep or whether it's just something that is a need in order to have uh provide proper educational equity for these students and so um paraprofessionals in in our school a system that they they can be as close as like a one-on-one support where you're spending a significant amount of time just with one child or they can have responsibilities for several students out in a general ed classroom or they can have responsibilities in a self-contained classroom to support the kids and oftentimes if you have spoken with a parent of a of a student who has paraprofessional supports written into their iep there's a very very close bond that is built between that child the paraprofessional and that family and so i would never want to uh underestimate the uh importance of people who fulfill those roles um and how vital they are uh for for um our students and and what is also interesting to me and you you see this all the time is that um you'll see paraprofessionals that definitely have um certain students that they may be responsible for but if you go into a classroom you'll see that these pair of pros are there to support all kids and so um it's a it's a hugely uh vital um position and and you know there's a lot of uh debate um and rightfully so about parapro compensation and things like that as my little commercial for the thousands of people who are watching this live i would just like to share that bps101 is a good place to work our pay for parapros is competitive and something that again i think we have to get the word out about is that um and and members who have been on our board for for a while will know this um several years ago and several contact contract bargainings ago with our paraprofessionals and our whole bespa staff we were struggling to maintain staff members because um the board only paid um i believe 35 percent i have that right tony of the family health insurance and we bargained it where um now our board pays 80 of family life insurance and uh the individual is only responsible for 20 and if you actually take the hsa it's 85 percent board paid and 15 paid by by uh by the individual uh or for the family and um i can't speak for all school districts i can't speak for target i can't speak for supermarkets or other places where people are seeking out jobs um but we have great insurance and family insurance is very affordable for all of our staff members and i appreciate the work that tony and his insurance committee team has done that to make that possible the paraprofessional job is nice for some people because it's a school year job you get summers you get spring break you get winter break you get paid holidays and you work a school schedule which it can be very nice for people who have school-aged children so there's a lot of positives to being a parapro here i know that the bond between parent excuse me parapro and the teaching staff that work closely with them is incredible again they're like family um and so i you know we would we would love to have you and uh reach out to us if you're interested um it's funny you asked that question about that because see i can talk forever about this stuff be careful if you ask clearly go ahead could you explain the requirements to be a parapro maybe because i don't think people understand like do you need an advanced degree i know you do not need an advantage i know you mentioned something about licensure so there's people out there that might be looking for a job but do you need it yes or i'm going to say if they were interested i wanted to know would you be able to walk them through we can walk them through it yeah i'll tell you that becca and michelle who are hr coordinators they i hear them all the time on the telephones walking people step by step to get through and and the state has uh made it a lot easier from um the standpoint of requirements and things like that in order to be a parapro so please reach out to us and we'll help you we'd love to and i would say the same for substitute teachers i was gonna that was my next question we'll talk about that a little bit is there uh is there a concern about retaining your current pair of professionals if we're short staffed right now i imagine the stress is raised for them yeah and you know it's interesting it's a pair of pro positions again and this isn't just a batavia thing this is across a lot of school districts is a pretty high turnover position um i looked back at the 2019 staffing uh report for our comparisons and i didn't go further than that but that was the last time we had a pre-pandemic like normal summer and that's why i chose that and in that august we hired and i i could have this off by a couple of people but we hired probably 17 or 18 pair pros um in that august this year we haven't hired that many um but that is a typical uh it's a it's a higher turnover position than some um and it's very typical for us pre this how the game has changed a little bit and things have changed that we would hire a lot of people in in august um and i don't know if i mentioned this along with that we also had in 2019 and i don't know if it plays out real well in that in that compare comparison chart but um we pretty much had the majority of our licensed staff positions uh filled by june maybe into early july and again that's really shifted and so it was more of a typical fact um uh back in those days rj that we would hire more of our paraprofessionals in late july early august and it's interesting too something has changed in those days there were oftentimes parapros who were being hired because they didn't get a teaching job and they wanted to build a relationship and work in a school system we don't see nearly as much of that because of the teacher shortage and so there are incredible number of factors um that impact all of this and i i you know i do a lot of reading about retention and things like that and pretty much whether it's business education in all kinds of different um jobs really the number one thing that keeps people at work is if they feel like they're making impact they're engaged they feel like what the work they put in is making a difference and so perhaps um you could make the argument um or at least this should be an area of focus of you know there is an onus on all of us to make sure that people are happy are engaged and feel like they're making a difference in their day-to-day jobs and i would say specifically i think it's been really hard you talk to any educator or any staff member who's worked in the school system in the last few years that's been really challenging for all of us for for a variety of reasons and so um this is just a very general statement but i've been in several several of our schools in the last couple you know week and a half since we've opened i've had informal conversations with a number of staff and everybody i've talked to is telling me like the vibe is different they're feeling different they're feeling like it's better and i'm excited about that and i'm hopeful from like a workforce standpoint that we can capitalize on some of that because that's a really important thing in in keeping people and retaining people those are the difference makers it's that culture the engagement the relationships and making a difference that really makes a difference any other questions for steve yeah i have a question for steve and then i have a question for the board um question for steve are we doing anything to track our success or failure as far as attracting applicants attracting diverse applicants figuring out whether or not we're making progress is making our staff more diverse are we actually tracking data figuring out whether or not we're making progress and adjusting if we aren't or increasing yeah it's a good question it's it's kind of challenging at times because um people self-report their diversity um and so when when people uh so it's it and that's when we hire them but in the application process no one we're not allowed to legally to do all those things and so um you know i would say that in in tracking it so tracking it becomes very challenging um i don't think we're making great strides what i would like to do to your point and i i spoke briefly about this is and and this i can take responsibility for this um because of my my role in my position is i need to do a better job again when i interact because i interact with them plenty of of diverse staff uh potential staff members i need to do a better job of tracking um and following up with them um meaning did they really apply right because if you talk to our principals they all want to they all want to hire um they want to have the diversity that their students represent represented in the buildings they they all want to do that and the constant problem that i hear from them is that they just have trouble finding any diverse candidates at least at first look from paper to even be a part of the interview process and so my guest chris what i can tell you is that next year i will have at least some data on how many diverse candidates that i've had the opportunity to interact with or my team has had the opportunity to interact with and if that made a difference in did they actually apply and be a part of our candidate pool because that is our biggest problem i that i can see um with that challenge that you're bringing up okay so i hope that answers or at least makes a little bit of sense and then another part of that if i could just interject as he said the um candidates self identify their diversity and we actually the candidates don't even do that it's when we hire them they do that right but even at that point they don't have the option to identify all of the different types of diversity it's also true and all of those different types of diversity are representative of our students so i just want to put that out there as well that is an excellent point because diversity is not always visible that's right exactly it's challenging i know that some people were getting concerned because they saw a picture and the picture doesn't necessarily represent what the diversity is um so that's why we need to ask these questions and the question that i have for the board is it has come to my attention that this isn't a goal of ours to increase the diversity of our staff however we have mentioned in the equity page that it is we are committed to change and i know that we ident when the strategic planning team um did their work they mentioned that that was something that was of concern to them do we want to as a board make it a higher priority provide more resources whatever it is that we want to do to enable steve to do a better job of being able to attract candidates in general but also specifically diverse candidates to make our staff more representative of our student body so i'm going to ask the question and this is more of a dialogue than anything else steve is seemingly already committed to trying to meet that goal meet a goal of his own because he recognized the importance with the staff and students and everything else so what is the benefit of the board saying that that is a goal that we want to pro like state i'm just asking that's everybody right well i mean i personally think that if the board specifies specific goals that we're trying to attain it makes it easier to track and figure out whether or not we're actually accomplishing them or going further away from them okay i think with any goal it's important that they beat smart goals and given the dialogue that we just had with steve about how we're facing challenges with staffing it at all just due to a shortage i don't know that it would fit the achievable um category at this point and although it is good and steve recognizes it i don't know that it should be a formal goal because i don't know how achievable it is and i get you to define smart goal yeah and i'm sure people understand what that means okay so smart goal timely achievable measurable and you're close enough that's specific specific thank you thank you very much i can't remember so it could be a smart goal but it just depends on what it is because you can't say hire this many people by this time but you can say attend this many job fairs um you know right the other aspects towards it that would lend you to believe that you're moving towards that diverse do we have a question chris would you be comfortable if steve came to us with some goals that would allow him to do the job that he also needs to do but also like specifically in response to this like i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this and then again like he said he can report back because he's going to start collecting that data like would you be comfortable with steve's sort of thing this is what i can do yeah i think the important thing yeah and this is what i need yeah i think the important thing is that we actually have something that is trackable so that we can actually hold them accountable to say whether or not we're making progress so that we have shared expectations and we all know where we're going or where we're trying to go so question just of clarity procedure what what's the difference do we have to have a goal to have a charge i don't think could the board have a charge as a request to go do that thing without establishing it as its own subset of a goal of the goal we kind of already have i kind of love that yeah i like the charge right yeah so one of the what chris mentioned was when we did the strategic plan check-in report we collected all that data including the equity journey continuum which does show you know the statistics that you're looking for and we gave all of the data to stakeholders staff students and community members and they identified a lot of areas for improvement they um they lumped them ming facilitated this one two three four five six seven eight they lumped them into eight different categories and those are all important things that we need to address it was just the timing of it and i know the equity team is addressing the first two and then the um they actually went through an activity where they ranked the priorities to try to figure out let's do ones that are within our control right now so they have listed that as the it's not that it's not a priority but it's number five out of the different things that they selected um so it is identified as something to get to and i guess the speed of that is on you but there are two priorities that they identified before that one that we should make sure that we consider as well related to the um diversity equity and inclusion so i guess the question is is that something that the equity team has to take on themselves or is it something else that i think they can be two parallel things me personally i think there could be a charge or a request or however we want to put it to give steve the agency to do what he needs to do and maybe to ask for more resources that agree because it puts us accountable to being able to support him on that and then second of all and then if there's a way because i even made a note of it that steve could coordinate with the equity team to find out if there's things that maybe they know reasons why people aren't coming to work here that he may not be aware of or they could facilitate that conversation with the person that applied but didn't not didn't apply like he talked to but he they could potentially help follow up because they might someone might be more comfortable talking to a fellow teacher or staff member as opposed to administrator you know so um i i don't know if i'm ready to like craft it all today but i think it's something we need to do right and i didn't expect to actually come up with a solution today it was more of hey yeah i would agree yeah what's the process yeah okay so regardless of what you come up with you're still doing it i'm still going to continue the the journey that we're on and we'll work to um get more candidates in that pool first and i guess probably steve i kind of feel i can correct me if i'm wrong board members but there's just a desire for it to be sort of concrete so we have a way to measure what you've done and compare that to okay what do we need to do next and that's why i don't know if you guys are comfortable with steve crafting sort of the initial like here are the things i'm going to do and we could assess whether or not we think those are the things we wanted to do and whether we think it's enough or whether we think i'd also like a little education steve because you hinted at it on like what you can ask and do and what you can't ask and do because that's going to craft some of the data that we can't or can't get so our expectations are realistic realistic i was going to say managed but real estate all right so see when do you think you'd be able to just share out with the board sort of a plan i mean i know we won't be hitting super high ringing until until the spring i got nothing going on so well yeah that's why i asked i mean like are you thinking like this is a winter like by winter you'd have a plan since spring is when we start really hiring yeah yeah i think that's fair i it it shouldn't take that long i mean it but sure if you'd like some help with the numbers tony's really good at crunching well you talked about some of those things the recruiting and that is needs to be in place by the next hiring season which starts in april really yeah so if you had information for us board members you'd be comfortable if like january february steve sort of lays out his plan and then he'll have a chance to work his plan and then he can report back to us again i guess is that okay makes sense to me are you comfortable with that sounds great yep all right can i ask one more question you have two other comments oh my gosh aaron yes um you mentioned way back in your comments about the pera pay is on par do you mean with neymaring districts i no i i would i don't know if it's not it's it's like it's in the mid like all of all of our pain i'll talk about this in a little bit um you know our our strong desire is to be competitive right and it depends on the school district and things like that but generally speaking we're not way off by any stretch of the imagination and it's a total compensation package well and that's why that's what people need to remember too is that everyone goes straight to hourly rate um but hourly rate looks a lot different if you're responsible for 40 to 50 percent of your insurance premium for a family so like it's and there's a story for us that i don't think we've told very well that we've worked on um with uh with vespa thank you for clarifying yeah two quick comments one um i had heard from other people that i work with in school districts i'm talking about people kind of late resignations and like the july august and one of the things that and i'm not suggesting a solution or anything i just want you to think about it is one thing i had heard from people is the challenge related to continuity of health healthcare from one job to the next and that they wait so that they can get on the new one without falling into cobra in the middle or anything else like that so that's one of the challenges i have heard so i don't know if that's fixable or not but that's what i had heard and then um secondly the um i think that's it it just lost it literally just lost i have another thought so we can yeah go ahead maybe i'll get there you can stay on the top i just might give you some time right there you can stay on the topic yeah let me think about what i was gonna say it just caught my attention when you said we want to be um what's the word you said competitive competitive when you say we who's we our school district okay is that us as well i would think so i'm just i'm just gonna i don't want to be competitive i want to be the forerunner i want to be who everyone's trying to get to i don't want to be competitive i'm just putting that out there well then you better talk with this guy right here about what that looks like well i know and that's what i was gonna say i know we're looking at the treasure reports and i know we're looking at things like that obviously we can't just say here you go here you go here you go but i like what you have to say it's on my mind but one of the questions that i have to steve is do we know like why a paraprofessional works here instead of saint charles versus geneva versus westeros do we know that like do we have good information on that why they work here and maybe like how to attract people it would only be anecdotal okay um typically uh people work like in their region for for positions like this um there's not a ton of people that are going to like live in batavia and drive to elgin to be a parapro as an example right um so it's typically regional um that's i mean i i hear what are you saying but i guess one of my questions is is throwing money at it going to solve our problem like do like i'd love to dig in if we can in any way like you are you have close ties with your with your people aren't going to like what i say but i would say not necessarily um elgin has a much maybe not much they have a higher pay rate for their starting teachers the last article i saw they were missing 100 teachers well and we've we've seen that with sub rates that we've had lower sub rates than many of our surrounding districts but we've had much higher sub fill rates again right now we have probably 14 parapro positions open when i last checked with my my other colleagues in king county they all had more than us um granted some of the school districts are larger than us um and and i think one of the major issues and challenges that we all have and it's not just education it's a lot of other places there's not the people we had just as a data point since may 1st we've had a ton of parapro positions posted right we've had 14 applications for elementary parapro's this is since may 1st that's a long time ago we had four rotolo applications filled out and we had one for batavia high school and i think rj made a good point that we'd like to at least pay competitively so people would rather come and work for us than at target and that might be something to examine you know but but i don't know if we can find trends or information or something to find out why do people work and what is it they really want right if it's pay we can talk about pay if it's work environment i mean at one time it was benefits and i think you might have made a really good point that we're not selling our story very well it's kind of a question that if you talk to anybody in just about any industry right now i know it's the question everyone's asking ever yeah somebody who had to close their restaurant one day a week because they couldn't get staff do we do exit interviews for people who leave i typically do not um and i i will tell you this um typically people communicate with me why they're leaving um so i usually know the story uh but i don't take the time to talk through every single why um generally speaking in batavia and this is a generalization but typically people leave here because they have an opportunity elsewhere that might be closer to home or is a little bit closer to the city where they may pay a little bit more or they a spouse or a family member has a change and they go elsewhere so that's been the typical um that's not but that's not the law i mean but that's typically what happens did you think of your question i did yes so uh two things one one of the things my company started doing to help people remind them you know remind staff about it's not just about the salary is they put together a total comprehensive compensation report that goes out with everything i mean it's like you're because we went through a little while ago and updated for now you get dental where for the longest time my office didn't pay for dental you know because we were looking at our competitors and we're realizing we're paying right but why aren't people still coming it was because we were lacking in other elements so they kind of put that together and it goes out at the last paycheck of the year um the second thing is i just want to appreciate and state that you you are recognizing probably a little earlier than most have run into that you got to move from a reactive stance of just fishing in a barrel to a proactive of figuring out why people are leaving you know and and then also why people aren't you know how do you market yourself as a district in an organization so i appreciate that thanks all right everyone have their questions no one has one thing remember we can keep going i could ask one more all right she says thank you steve you could talk all night uh yeah he could talk all night we've seen it happen haven't we uh next time on our agenda is building our future together i think doctor i will get us started but we'll all have a chance to chat and the purpose of this agenda item is to make sure that everyone in the community knows that the board has voted to put a referendum question on the ballot on november 8th and we had shared with you previously the do's and don'ts we cannot tell people how to vote and that's not our job our job is to say hey we're asking you your opinion you go out and vote but in order to do your due diligence you do need to learn about our referendum so your job as a board our job as a district is to say we have information how can we get that information to our public so that they can make an informed decision on november 8th so you can um i know at least one board member has been invited to a pto meeting because every board member is a liaison and they might think oh the board will come and speak um and you can always you should invite tony or myself or mark to come as well to talk about um building our future together but in general you should really know this very well you should know the highlights because even though there might not be a a very large number of people talking about this right now it will snowball between now and november so just be prepared and know that we'll have some new information coming out and when it does we'll update the website but in general you should know the high level well you do because you voted you can probably talk about the referendum question for an hour but can you talk about it for 30 seconds because most people want a 30 second version and so and no what we've been um doing as we've started this holly and tony and i have been actively working mostly highly on what that information campaign looks like she does have a six page document ready to show you of all of the it is everything is timed she has all of her communications planned between now and november but we can't just lay them all out today so she does have a plan in case you're wondering why you haven't seen something but we have there have been banners that um we put up at the corn boil tony and mark and i are will do our rounds for all the staff because we know that the community loves their teachers and a lot of time they'll say hey just tell me like i didn't read everything give me the 30 second version so we want the teachers to be able to give the 30-second version we want you to be able to give the 30-second version even though you know the hour-long version of what went behind this referendum question um so we've already done a couple of those um meetings we've met with the heads of the ptos at the elementary we do have a bic meeting coming up in september that we'll talk about it again as well where we sit on the chamber we've been to the park district we together i think we all talked about it at the city council we have rotary members so we're we're just we have a comprehensive list of all the ways that we can get this message out and it's not to sell anything it's to sell the idea of learn about this and go vote and please tell us what you think um the referendum on the right hand column there if you are going to be talking about it these are some of our the big reasons why you decided to put this on the ballot and that on the left side then right in the middle in blue is this is the sticking point here we do have a we're in a really unique opportunity we have a unique opportunity right now to make some really quality improvements to our schools without raising the bond and interest levy so we can't say we're not raising taxes because every year our operating funds do go up a little bit and it also depends on the value of your home we can't predict people's tax bills but we can tell you we will not be raising the bond and interest tax levy which is an important part of your tax bill when you look at the school district and we the bond market is changing construction costs are changing so we don't have the exact um detailed design of every project we would do that will come at a later time but we do know that the ballot question includes replacing hc storm and louise white elementary schools we would replace those buildings and tear down the other ones and we wouldn't move locations they would still be somewhere at that site so those are some of the highlights there are projects in every building that you don't have to memorize but you can direct people back to the website which we will update you know as things come more into focus with that and i that's what i wanted to share for this report and i would open it up to you guys for questions or comments or holly and i'd invite halle and tony to chime in as well for anything that i missed the only thing i'm going to say and i've seen it more lately because for those that don't know i'm in the architecture business and i put things out to bid and one of the challenges everybody's seen as a blade is you know pinning down like what the exact cost of construction is because of fuel costs supply chain issues um like even like one of the example like if you want to generate or switch gear you're going to wait 56 weeks to get it period or you can pay 25 000 more and shave about 20 weeks off of it but those are the challenges but on the other side from what i understand and tony you can confirm it is is that's construction prices squishing you on this side but then you're also looking at bond rates that are potentially going up so i i kind of personally want people to understand that that's why it's not like a here's the precise list of things we're doing we're only asking for a certain amount of money not the things to be done you know because if we go with things to be done we can we might not be able to afford it so what we're trying to do is say we're going to evaluate it and it won't even be you know us it'll be the staff members and the teachers and others and administrators that'll make the decision as to what needs to go out as well as our architects as a part of that process you're very cheery it's like hearing from tony hey i'm just i've been on this committee for a while so it kind of rubbed off you're welcome anything else i know we've been talking about this for a long time so this i love the one pager yeah yeah i think it's great any other questions thoughts concerns all right we are excited my lab super exciting we're excited to hear from the community all right next item on our agenda is the uh the preliminary proposal building improvement i'm assuming that's tony yep yeah that is and so now excuse me now that we have a master facilities plan for our schools and we know how we have a general approach to fund them uh we'd like to start tackling some of the higher priority items as you know well we've built our elementary schools the six of them in sister pairs over the years the oldest being alice gustafson and jb nelson schools which were built in 1955 and 1957 respectively or actually not irrespectively the opposite order hc storm and louise white are newer and they were built in 1978 but they need more work fortunately we don't have the money that we need to accomplish replacing jb nelson and alice customs and it's just it's not in the cards for us so it's some kind of decision that we're going to have to make probably through referendum 10 or 15 years from now is that will be in these in this same scenario when it comes to these schools but they are in need of important safety and security work and it should start sooner rather than later and we don't necessarily need to pass a referendum to make that work happen and so as we mentioned in july you'd probably incorporate some of that work into the upcoming budget that you'll adopt here in september in fiscal 23.
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i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome everyone it's good to see you all we don't have any main real revisions to the agenda so we'll just hop right into it future board meetings are september 13th and 27th and october 11th all here at 6pm under public recognition we have a recommendation to approve a 225 donation from wabash elks for northfield cross country and a recommendation to approve a 15 000 donation for the 2022-2023 year from ford meter box that is something they do for us every year and that's something that is greatly appreciated so we appreciate the voltage helps for their donation and afford me to monitor theirs but officially we have to approve those into the bolts so i'll somebody make a recommendation on a motion on that i need to improve those donations expect that motion and second to approve the uh donations from the walmart shelves out of four meter box all in favor say hi moving on to school recognition yes i just had a couple uh mr daisy first of all actually both of them are from mr martin at shark creek first of all shark creek students and staff would like to thank our custodial staff of howard washer and tim smith for the time and effort keeping our building clean and safe we also appreciate the important work of mr steve holly and his maintenance crew and also welcome to our new staff members for 2022 2023 kami ross teaching third grade jacob watkins teaching sixth grade and melissa metz working with students of various grade levels as a paraprofessional we're glad you are here so that's all i have for today okay so we will move to the uh public comment if there's anybody that would like to make any public comments okay um that was for agenda items only will open a backup period of that for all answers moving on to the consent agenda items uh first up is the approval of the minutes from our last meeting on august 9.
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hey welcome everybody to uh here we go we kick it off it seems like we're just all together just recently figure out the summer is uh coming to an end i i had a chance to speak at the cranston heights pranced princeton school district today they were having their convocation and uh for my business but uh you know i gotta tell you those teachers were all pretty excited even though it was in the summer so there's a little bit of sadness i guess in that but they were pretty jazzed so i'm looking forward to our convocation and so you know how jazzed everybody is for that um so we are going to before we do the pledge of allegiance i just want to describe some changes that we're going to make to the uh to the format going forward so um in order to try and engage the public our public uh so much but hopefully we'll have more in the future we're going to move my report uh the student report and the um superintendent's report up to the beginning of the meeting and then we're going to do public forum that will give any public that may be online and or in the audience will give them a chance to hear some things that normally if they were just here for public forum it's the first thing off the right off the shelf um there may be some important things that they want to hear so the students will be giving updates on activities and events and dates as well the superintendent will leave his uh his report and then i'll follow my report and then we'll go to public forum and uh and we'll kind of describe the meeting to everybody and of course we'll we'll stay with the three-minute rule on the on the public forum as people come hiking so um so that's going to be the format going forward um we'll welcome everybody whether they be online or they'd be in the audience and then we'll go to the pledge of allegiance so that's that's the changes a little bit of the changes that we'll make so when you see when we have our meeting in january uh september you'll you'll see those on the agenda okay any questions all right with that small would you lead us in the pledge of allegiance one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all as you're all standing don't don't that's it what is it i want you to take a look at our mission statement that's now going to be behind us hanging on the wall for all the read and i want to thank claudia for getting that done for us um i'm proud that we can do that and now when we go remote somewhere that banner will travel so okay thank you thanks for standing for a few minutes tonight's gonna be a night of a lot of good things i think a lot of compliments i can't wait to hear um actually mr casey's report but um don is going to lead us into uh some very interesting things and not to steal her thunder but if you get a chance you have to go by cis and then you have to go by cherry brook primary school and see the work that's been done there it's absolutely fantastic and and really um you know we take pride in so many things here in camp we take pride in our thank you we take pride in our students we take pride in our teachers and now we can really i think taking pride in our buildings because i think they're they're presentable for the taxpayer uh uh both inside and out so that's going to be great i think someone's working right now i think yeah they are both [Laughter] she's talking to me all day long um you know yes uh kevin and i had a chance to go to a a leadership meeting for cade thursday down in westbrook and the theme for the state board of education is the sky is not the limit and and i thought about that first i said and then i really started to like the slogan because the sky is no longer the limit i mean we're sending people into space onto mars and so on and so forth our students are the same way the sky you can look at the sky but we're not we're not held back from anything and really that's going to be the theme for this board going forward we're going to get very passionate and um we're going to get very um very involved i feel uh this year on a lot of good things that are going to happen so um i'm excited i'm excited this is our first meeting i was actually looking forward to it for a couple weeks and uh you know bothering him a little bit about it because we were both excited about it and and just just as a note um i know that this has been uh publicly announced but um you know with our superintendent being here this is his last year i want to make it one of his best years something that'll always remember and this board will be with him uh as he goes forward so kevin thank you all right so having said all that and kind of set the uh the tone uh we'll go to public forum and public forum is neighbors speaking to their elected officials and um anybody online if they're going to speak you can let karen know would you like to speak for a public forum sir uh no i'm pretty new oh so welcome yeah my son is just ruling and i got this form so i just came to you to see what it's about and see what you guys are doing and your name is my name is you okay and you have one child in the uh yes he will be going into a typical primary school this year that's great that's great we're so grateful you came to the meeting thank you welcome welcome to canyon and this is our superintendent if you have any questions you can always call his office uh kevin case just so you know and this is your board of education okay nice to meet you nice to meet you nice to meet you okay public forum online we do we have one um andrea has her hand raised i'm going to go and allow andrew's squad go ahead hi andrea hi how are you great thanks for attending the meeting tonight thank you for hosting my name is andrea barber my address is 14 old mill drive in canton i am the co-president of the canton middle school pto along with julie fort and we're also members of the lobster loop 5k organizing committee and we'd like to say a huge thank you to the 386 friends families and neighbors who have already signed up for the middle school's largest fundraiser of the year which is the 30th annual canton lobster loop 5k road race and non-competitive health walk the event begins on the canton town green which is the corner of route 44 dowd avenue this sunday august 28th at 8 30 a.m we invite all to join us there's still time to register at runsignup.com we're excited to see runners walkers first-time participants absolute veterans and we encourage t can teams to register and we're going to have prizes going to the best team spirit and the highest team participation and all fundraising pro proceeds will be used in support of our mission for the educational social and emotional growth of our students and school community the registration fee is 25 and registration will be available through race day on your own device or phone in addition we'd like to thank aaron izzo who's a canton middle school parent and our lobster loop race director and our many wonderful canton middle school parent volunteers including our race committee organizing members i'd like to give them a shout out because they've worked very hard this summer rebecca briggs kim weller ali keith heather newman and carol mcconville we'd like to recognize the support of many canton and beyond businesses who have supported the school with generous sponsorships we'd like to say thank you to canton parks and rec for collaborating on a hugely successful and fun six-week lobster lube race prep course along with a big thank you to legendary kitten track coach tim o'donnell who led this class thank you to canton middle school principal jeff moore for his support of the pto and this event and rumor has it that he and maybe one of your very own canton board of ed members are signed up to run this sunday more details and up-to-date information including a full list of race sponsors can be accessed through our facebook page which is canton lobster loop 5k on the cms pto facebook page or the cms pto website so again online registration is still open at runsignup.com just search for canton lobster loop 5k um thank you for your time and we can't wait to see you at the lobster loot this sunday august 28th thank you andrea that was a great report thank you so much we we wish you a great success uh for sunday sunday correct not saturday sunday yup thank you so much andrea i wanted to let you know also for the pto and we'll get a note out to the pto presidents we're going to leave a spot open on our agenda going forward in reports we're going to actually ask the pto if they wanted to have a we'll have a standing opening for pto to give a report back to the board of education going forward so i thought maybe you guys appreciate maybe you don't have anything to say you skip it that's fine but we're going to we're going to have a standing spot in the uh in the uh agenda for you going forward thank you so much for giving us that platform that's very much appreciated thank you oh thank you anyone else here if anyone else would like to speak give their public comment you can go ahead and raise your hand and i'll allow you to i don't talk any other raised hands okay great thank you so we're going to close uh public forum then okay isabella nice to see you thank you for coming tonight great job with the pledge of allegiance thank you next time we're going to make you both sing it but that that's the next time so we we go to the student report i was mentioning by the way to uh simone going forward uh before public forum we're going to have the reports so the public can hear what's going on a little bit be a little bit more informed so we'll have you guys on a little bit earlier and then i'll just mention to you some nights go late you guys are excused whenever you need to go test homework or whatever after you give your report you're welcome to stay in the home meeting or if you have something or a ride that you need to get you go ahead and do that but i i also want to say final thing i'm going to say is i relish your input and so your input is not confined to your report so as we go through a discussion the board of ed you're more than welcome to raise your hand and say you know this is what we're thinking or this is what i think the students are thinking because your input is so valuable to us so don't ever hesitate during the meeting to give input and it doesn't matter what the topic is we'd love to hear from you okay all right so what do you have for us tonight okay so i'm gonna start yeah i'm gonna start with um past events so freshman orientation was held on august 17th where freshmen were given the opportunity to begin to develop an understanding of high school life and meet a variety of upperclassmen me and bella were both there and it went really really well a number of our school fall sports have either kicked off their season or have begun pre-season training and teachers recently began preparation for the beginning of the school year okay for upcoming events the kindergarten meet and greet will be held tomorrow on wednesday august 24th cms 7th grade orientation will also be held tomorrow uh wednesday august 24th uh the cbps grades one through three meet and greet will be held friday august 26th as previously mentioned the cms pto loss lobster loop will take place on sunday august 28th uh monday august 29th will be the district-wide first day of school uh friday september 2nd will be the cms and chs picture day and there will be no school monday september 5th due to it being labor day and ongoing events are just students are continuing to enjoy their summer as it comes to clubs any any questions for the students on their report is there is there a uh kickoff at the high school is there a cook sometimes there's a cookout right in the beginning or no do i remember that i think with code we've only really experienced like in high school during overtime so i don't think we've yeah recently all right obviously previously i mean i only entered freshman year and that was when i had orientation so i think besides that i think it's just entering this school year we're going to have to nudge we're going to have to nudge the principal to see if we can get something going for you that would be fun some kickoff we're going to get some excitement going and cis is having their meet and greet through friday [Music] any questions for the student reps okay thank you for that report thanks for coming tonight still part of your summer vacation will be appreciated so okay all right that that leads us a little bit into um really the meat of tonight's meeting which is to try to get some goals established by the board of education as we go forward this year these are not long-term goals these are short-term goals and they're not to be confused with tasks the task is you wanted to get the you want to get some plantings in the front of the building that that task is being handled the goal is beautification beautification of our buildings and then you know the action items that come down with it so um we have some of the goals um and i was i was going to use this easel i was just going to write some of the things as we go forward and felicia i hope you can see me and i don't want to block out the audience so um see how we can do this now from these goals the superintendent is going to take these goals he's going to see what we want to try to accomplish this year 20 20 23 and and then he'll come up with the action items that will get us to those goals so i want you to think um thank you i want you to think a little bit lofty but i want you to think doable i want you to think in terms of 12 months it may exceed it may exceed or extend further than that but really what we want to do is is come up with this series of goals four or five that will generally um get the superintendent us thank you so superintendent can uh kind of come up with his action items and then by november december we can measure where we are you know getting through the first half of january getting through the first half of the year where we are against those goals and what we have to do to tweak them modify them or improve them so i'll get everybody started on this um hey ryan so we were thinking in terms of excuse my back um so if you think in terms of the first you know the first big thing that we really have to uh we focus on is achievement right so i'm going to put that one up because i think it's an easy one because we always want to uh be focused on achieving it okay it's the first goal so let me let me get your thought process going a little bit so we've gone through a couple presentations by principals they come in in october and then they come in about may here's the case about and they come in about may the thing that the thing that i wanted to see or the thing that i'd like to have established is consistency and presentation so when they come in when and where they can because i understand the grade levels are different and some of the data evaluation and analysis is different but what i'd like to see is a board member and you can tell me differently and maybe you have some other ideas but i'm trying to get the thought process going here what i'd like to see is consistency in those presentations and i'd like to see consistency in data so we can evaluate it and i'd like to see year over year or trending data which i think mr bishop has offered to start doing some charting so that it's easier for you as a board of ed to see what our trajectory is where we're doing well maybe a comparison against what the state is doing and where our dirt is so that we have that data so we know are we accomplishing anything as a district and the data that we're getting how's that being compared so that would be my first part of achievement you know as part of the subheadings achievement being the first goal and then one of the things that i'd like to see so what do you think and what are you thinking about achievement because that should be a board of education's you know number one priority how are we achieving um certainly we have our mission and our vision and things like that but how are we getting our students you know academically where are they as far as learning goes thoughts i like what you said about you know the consistency and everything i agree with everything you said um and i think we did a little bit this last year looking at the data and making sure that all data we collect is like meaningful what has value and is purposeful and helps drive and move instruction forward and anything that's fluff or not necessary which i think john and kevin you already started that process making it really valuable for teachers and we talked about what was that thing with the so one of the things that threw me off this year second part is when jeff moore principal moore came in and he was he was just starting under a new program so um the data that he was providing us he wasn't using the same system as done the year before which he provided us that information and then there's new data he was using a new program going forward so it's hard really to understand where we are with the middle school is a board of education i don't i don't know about you but i and i mentioned it to kevin i came away a little bit confused from that meeting on you know how are we doing at the middle school level i understand if you're if you're changing over uh your metric uh system or uh analysis system i i can understand that and this year it'll be different because now we'll have a year or six months but that that's what i mean about consistency and data and are all the schools using the same same methodology um or does each school have a different uh system for for analyzing data because that confuses the board of education i think you know one is using this another and and i don't know if trajectory from cis if they're telling us or even cherry brook is is like this is that their data is that against so i i wasn't sure and that is a board we want to be sure that we're we're having an impact or that our curriculums have been intact so i hear what you're saying i mean data measurement is always something that can be confusing and kind of overwhelming uh and to your point earlier is that you know what they're measuring at your primary school is going to be different from what they're measuring at the high school so i think that possibly you know for this category achievement that maybe we need some some sub categories but i mean the you know the template idea of like saying like this is what we want to see you know makes a lot of sense to me but it's a little bit tricky i think because of you know because of the data because of the different age groups so maybe some maybe some overarching uh subcategories you know that kind of align with the mission i'm not sure okay yeah i think that's great input and i know kevin's taking this all in and when there's visuals i mean maybe it's just me but like when things are color coded like what color i hate the typical red green yellow but i don't know what works you know john whatever they do now but it just it's helpful at a quick glance in a meeting to be like okay so we're really good on that area we're above average but now it brings your attention to what we're doing really well and what our areas of weakness are and where they move i don't know that's just my opinion you know somebody else i appreciate it and just i'm sorry oh well i was just gonna say just one other thing i mean as far as achievement goes i mean they're you know are we talking just you know standardized testing are we talking you know social and emotional achievements you hear what i'm saying like so i think we should bring i think that's a great point yeah we should break it down i think it should be the academic but it's also it should also be the uh how are we doing against the social and emotional we should be getting a report on that because last year and we actually heard on an emotional on the students and we also heard our teachers we heard that the teachers were reaching out we heard that from our principals so and i know kevin addressed that nicely and he's going to really address it very well in the convocation uh we're really going to take a study of that but um that is a great point ryan i mean it's like you know social emotional is tough because it's so subjective yeah it is so it's like one person might feel like this is doing very well and then you might have somebody else who just has a very different perspective but i think it's also i think we do have to measure ourselves against our peers and peers who are contiguous because you know we're in theory of the same resources that they do um it's a much more even playing field um to measure ourselves right so you know i think a little competition is good too we say look we're concerned because we're behind whatever schools system right and and we want to catch up to them and surpass them so i think we should look at how they measure themselves um as well and maybe incorporate some of those so that we can say okay we know that we're doing better than a b and c but we're still behind you know e and f and z better step it you know on on the emotional side i still think we can measure that because i know kevin's thinking about a program but we'll know how many how many of our students are taking advantage of counseling that we're going to be offering and things of that nature and we'll know if that is actually if that program is working and uh maybe we'll do something for teachers but there is a way to measure some of that now it doesn't tell you how great we're doing but i think the more the more that are participating then we're doing something right right if i know that this is a board conversation but one thing i'd love to be able to jump in with this too is i think everything that we want to look at is yes the the performance and then what does the story look like what does the narrative of growth look like for kids um you might find a kid who has struggled mightily um but made immense gains to be able to get to that point where they're still under the cutoff but that opportunity to be able to celebrate what growth really looks like is something that that i know that that we internally are really really looking for all the time we're looking to see who are those kids who are growing or sliding so that we can celebrate that and keep that work moving that then you know in the end that speaks for itself and that gets to higher level performance overall but is that attention to the the forest and the trees that helps to to make a difference so you have to define that for the board so that we can follow it because it hasn't been defined yet so that i think that's a great comment and i'd love to see that so you know where we are even with the uh the folks are you know below the line but have made tremendous strides right joe i agree with a lot of what's been said i think it's important that we all agree on with the administration uh what is achieved how we're going to finance you what does it mean yeah um what are the areas involved what what is achievement i i like that which one write down and and where are we however we define it where are we succeeding in those areas and where are we not where we want to be there's the state testing there's the sats there's the ap scores there's i don't know probably 15 other things too that's going to be the starting point i think that that has to be where we start defining achievement where we are we got to get our baseline everywhere right right and are there what are the are there groups in the schools subgroups in the group that aren't achieving where we'd like them to achieve right and then we'll get to the administration and the faculty to how we're going to address those and areas build on what joe was saying lou that you know i was just saying that he said well what you know define achievement what does that look like you know it's obviously it's going to be a little bit different for each kid so like back to what john was saying you know that kid who he's still a little bit below but he works so hard to get right up to that you know that that edge and that's that's kind of the philosophy of um i'm sure some teachers or some fans i've heard of carol dweck and like fixed versus growth mindset and you know basically you know i mean if if if uh if bella here you know says oh that's it i'm done i'm never gonna grow or improve anymore i mean you know what i'm saying like you have your whole life ahead of you and the fix versus growth mindset is instills that into to kids because some kids do get stuck you know at a very young age like oh i'm never gonna do better i'm never gonna you know get that grade that i want you know and and so teaching that that difference fits versus you know the growth mindset that yeah you know everybody can grow everybody can improve that's great even us even us older that's [Music] we celebrate we celebrate a lot of things which is great i mean we give out a lot of awards i i was thinking about it um when i was looking at the goals we don't really celebrate though the academic achievements like the valedictorian um you know first time i was was at graduation and you know that's a that's a pretty um that statues yeah it's a tremendous accomplishment and never came to the board of education for us to say good job so maybe we should think about celebrating academic achievement as well as we celebrate sports and everything else but i think we we missed out on that one a little bit so a concept i heard you use in other schools um and it's it can you know there's there's pros and cons to it but of having a cut-off marker for strictly for academic achievement say it's you know eighty percent for better but to be or be average or better would be minus average and each at the end of each um you know semester or trimester we post who achieved in that group and kids might want to strive to be at that level i mean it has some more competition and feelings can be hurt and all that but yeah you know you're not saying that you're i mean you know it's it's a recognition that if you're achieving a certain level you are celebrated right um right you have an honors list right now with the high honors honors yeah okay yeah there you go but but i think what you're saying is helping to be in what you're saying too mr dean is this is understanding and being aware as a board to help celebrate those accomplishments yeah i mean because there's an honor let's say this is the honors of something this is terrific and you should all be striving for it because achievement's important okay anything more on achievement because i want to move to a couple more spots i'm trying to be cognizant of time trying to say one thing absolutely you know without publishing each order whatever you know my kid my kid's smart but she doesn't try as much but she's kind of been always been in the middle you know and it's like when she sees names that's repeating repeating repeating like you know it's like the middle child is kind of forgotten you know and she just looks at well yes them again it's them again you know so well i i don't want to lose track of the fact that we have these other things that we celebrate from um oh my goodness we did it to high school i mean all different awards for kindness and who's who's uh you know who helps out the most in the classroom we do all those things so we won't lose i mean people are going to get awards i just didn't want to lose track of the academic awards because they were kind of left out and you know they should be they should be in there as much as anything else that's all and i by the way i don't want to create more stress on our students lives by showing you know creating this intense competition but i i want to recognize performance yeah that makes sense and i think maybe like with what you're saying how it can be like you know intimidating for kids who are in the middle like i know i'm not quite tall but like getting an email maybe even i don't know that might be a hard but like individual like an individual email it feels good just to see like someone's recognizing you it doesn't have to maybe be in the public like in school but like if you get an email from the board of vet a board of member and they're saying congratulations like you did this we're so proud of you for your work um i think that would make a student feel really good and that way it wouldn't discourage others what resonates with me here a little bit that of what i'm hearing is we spoke to you last may about our our strategic drivers of student growth and and academic achievement and then school culture and climate right and so the school culture and climate really comes into that idea of positive behavior support programs within the schools to be able to build that camaraderie build that sense of school spirit and then connecting with all of our students to really encourage the the job well done that connects back with our vision affair to it as well and then from our academic program continuing to be able to boost achievement for all of our students so felicia i just wanna i don't wanna because i'm always looking at the chart is there anything you wanna add per chance okay no i'm i'm good lou good i don't want to leave you out okay just sure two seconds absolutely but you suggested ryan we do have to a degree at least seven through 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
a few years ago tntp published the opportunity myth and this is an image that comes from that research we came to this report through our work on the ground with schools and districts all across the country from this from this study we learned four very important things four key resources allow students to be successful and achieve really incredible outcomes in their schools the first is grade level assignments assignments assignments that students are interacting with that are aligned to state standards we have new research that suggests kids do just as well on state aligned tasks as they do it with remedial tasks and we're excited to share that research with you as well the second is strong instruction we know teachers are critical to the success of students and we are working to ensure that every student in atoms 14 has teachers standing in front of them who have internalized quality materials and are prepared to teach effectively deep engagement we know kids do better when they're excited about what they're learning with their teachers and they want class to be interesting and so we're encouraging all teachers to ensure that the content that they're teaching is coming from a high quality approved curriculum that they're making it their own so that their students can engage effectively and lastly we know kids do better in classrooms where teachers have high expectations for them and so we really and as we talk about the goals we've set goals very high with the intention of shooting for the moon knowing that if we get close it's going to really benefit the students here in commerce city i'm going to pause here and can we go to the next slide so it can be viewed in spanish as well any questions about where we're anchoring all right we'll come back to this next slide please so given what we've learned uh and now our partnership with atom14 we're making two commitments to you the board and to the students and families that adam's 14 serves the first is every student regardless of their identity should have access to all four of these resources that we studied every single day and are say and they should have that we let me try again every child should have access to these four resources in every single class every single day to make that true the adults in the system have to investigate what's happening and report out on their progress so we really want to make practice public and also how we're moving the data very public so that we can address it where it needs to be addressed and celebrate and elevate where there's awesome things happening which happens every single day in this district the second major commitment we're making to you and to the families of commerce city is that every student and family is an authentic partner in the work that we're doing so we're starting the work of looking at data over the last 10 years for the district we're putting together a working group to help with strategic planning we fully intend to have students and families involved in that strategic planning process so more to come on that and we can go to the slide so that folks can read it as well in spanish ah thank you okay perfect so i wanted to introduce you tonight to the work streams uh and what we have been tasked to do uh by the community here in adams 14 and the state of colorado so this year all of our support will be aligned to the colorado domains for rapid improvement including but not limited to leadership so that includes leadership at the cabinet level and and at the central office but also leadership in schools extending beyond the school leader to their instructional leadership team so we intend to support executive directors who are doing incredible work supporting their principles and also ensuring that there's a bench in our schools in case we see principals exit we have a really high quality leader that's ready to take to take over the second is talent management and jeff is crushing it right now at solving problems of vacancies i got to i got to hear a conversation where solutions are available to fill the vacancies where they're most needed particularly at central but we're going to support jeff and his team and ensuring that as we continue through the school year we have high quality teachers in every classroom we have a great bench and so next year when we return we hope to be fully hired before school starts so that the training that was really incredibly done this summer is able to impact every student because every adult is involved the third and probably most important is instructional transformation sheila and her team are working overtime all day every day and we want to provide capacity and support to improve outcomes for kids and i'll talk a little bit about about the goals in a few minutes but we're really excited to partner with the academic team we have an all-star tntp team who's presented at principal pd and at teacher pd and we've gotten great feedback already from principals and the fine the final thing is culture and climate shift both adult and student culture knowing that kids need to feel safe and adults need to feel safe if they're going to be able to engage with each other and instruction questions about the four domains that we'll work across and here they are so what do we actually mean we're going to do and i'm not going to read this slide for everyone but these are some places that we're going to push in provide capacity building and creating a sustainable plan so then in three years when our contract is over adam's 14 is running and achieving incredible outcomes for students the first is we're pushing into leader development and we're currently supporting the team and creating a scope and sequence for what principals will engage with throughout the year very much anchored in the academic excellence playbook that the academic team has worked so hard to put together it's a really great anchor for us and it will get us to the strategic plan the strategic planning process and through the school year uh the second is to support leaders in their schools and in classrooms we're excited to see the magic that's happening in classrooms and we're also excited to support on coaching teachers who need needs of pushes we're working on co-designing a strategic plan we will do that with with the district staff we would love to have board members involved in that conversation i think it's really important and as i already shared students families teachers and school leaders will be a part of that and i think most importantly we are differentiating our support based on the needs of schools we know it's not a one-size-fit-all solution for every school and every school leader so we're looking to see where we can provide capacity and showing up when we're most needed the second domain is around talent i shared this before we're working on a landscape analysis to really understand where there are gaps what teachers are looking for what leaders are looking for and putting in place practices and policies that support what it requires to get the best talent in the country to come here to adam's 14.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
the overarching goal of our program is to educate the youth in our community about how the choices they make affect their whole health as well as reduce the rates of stis and unplanned pregnancy in our county we also aim to empower our youth and teach them the skills they need to make informed decisions about their health and to support that the curricula we offer are evidence-based medically accurate age-appropriate and incorporate positive youth development strategies these curricula that we offer they're offered as a free resource to the community which means we offer our programs including workbooks and activities and all the materials that go with that to schools and the community at no cost the curricula that we offer we have a middle school level and a high school level curriculum the middle school level curricula is positive potential it's a set of curriculum tailored to be age appropriate for each grade level 6th 7th and 8th grade respectively they each contain 5 lessons the 6th grade level also also offers a lesson on puberty and adolescent development as optional and the curriculum follows a positive youth development model here we have a general overview of each level so starting in sixth grade we introduced the program and its core concept of the five parts of the whole person so the physical health mental health emotional social and spiritual which is that youth set of personal values and how the choices that the youth make affect them on those different levels this core theme is carried throughout the entire positive potential program we also discuss topics such as bullying responding to peer pressure and decision making at this level on the seventh grade level we start talking about building up self-confidence as well as the topics of cyber bullying dangers of social media as well as stis and career planning oops let me go back one in eighth grade finally students get to deepen their understanding of planning and pacing relationships setting boundaries and they get to continue practicing refusal skills there's also a strong focus on goal setting at this level so that students are prepared and set up for success as they transition into high school i do want to note um what i didn't mention the previous slide both positive potential and love notes we did select them specifically for our conservative community still on positive potential at the end of each lesson there are parent team connections which means that youth and their parents or guardians are given the opportunity to have meaningful discussion on the topics that we discuss in the class moving on to our high school curricula we offer love notes love notes is 13 lessons evidence-based curriculum that also follows a positive youth development approach and the developers of this curriculum felt that it was important to take those concepts of traditional sti and pregnancy prevention education and integrate it with healthy relationship and workforce readiness the approach to this curriculum takes its starting point from the individual so the youth will understand their personality style their strengths their challenge areas and how does that translate to how they communicate with other personality styles once that youth has that foundation they can start building out what their expectations are what their goals their boundaries are as well as understanding the difference between healthy and supportive relationships unhealthy relationships as well as how to recognize and respond to dangerous relationships these concepts apply to all teens whether or not they're currently in a relationship as the ultimate goal is to have that team gain an understanding of what their personal goals are and what they want to achieve in the future and to start thinking about the relationships that they have and if they're in alignment with those goals if they're if not those youth learn strategies on how to handle conflict resolution and how to safely end a relationship like our middle school curricula love notes also has trusted adult connections at the end of every lesson and here is my contact information at the end for those that want to reach out thank you so much thank you i think we'll have both presentations right now and then we'll open it up for questions i think they're gonna we're gonna present first and now i have questions thank you sorry all right hello good evening thank you all for being here my name is anna isa costa i am the director of youth and family programs with arizona youth partnership and we are here to present on the choosing the best curriculum i do apologize that our powerpoint didn't make it on time but we do have some handouts for everybody to look at while we are presenting so first off i want to mention that choosing the best curriculum is evidence-based as well we are funded through fsb which um we are funded through the federal um family of education i'm so sorry i am totally oh my gosh okay sorry all right so choosing the best curriculum is evidence-based and it offers a wide variety of lessons we are also doing each grade level so sixth seventh and eighth grade each have their curriculum and then there are two different ones for the high school so ninth and tenth graders get choosing the best journey and then the 11th and 12th graders will get soulmate and these are all guided and ranging in the lessons as far as doing goal setting kind of trying to see what that looks like making the best decisions for themselves avoiding pregnancies avoiding stds and also avoiding the emotional consequences that can come from becoming sexually active at a young age we do talk about their futures figuring out friendships what that looks like as well so we do mention that at all levels starting in sixth grade they are adapted so where the eighth graders will get a little bit more content on uh social media sexting those kinds of dangers the sixth graders will still get a little bit but not as much as we try to have it be age-appropriate as well for all of them there are some statistics so specifically students who received choosing the best were 25 less likely to begin having sex by the end of 9th grade and 12 less likely to begin having sex by the beginning of 10th grade compared to those in control groups for students that did not receive the choosing the best curriculum again this is an evidence-based curricula we do a different variety of classes we arrange [Music] for it to be working working with the teachers and what works best with the schedules all of that as well there are some parent involvement so after every lesson we do encourage our students to take homework homework but just a task an assignment a conversation to have with their parent or caregiver trusted adult at home to kind of wrap up the discussion of the day so if we talked about um those goal settings what would that look like they go home they talk to their parents and ask the questions like well what did you want to be when you were my age and how did that work out or what can kind of hinder my chances of becoming successful with my goals and just really encourage those conversations to happen at home as well um and yeah that's what we have for the choosing the best curriculum i do apologize our powerpoint didn't make it so it just made me a little scattered there but please i'm happy to answer any questions and yeah we'll open up [Music] okay i think the question period will be if brown elena if you would come up and ladies if you would stay and just keep a mic and and i'm gonna open this audience up to for them to ask you questions first and then we'll ask questions after they've kind of set to kind of give us a clue of how things are going to go okay if when you get a mic from an audience if you would just state your name so we can have it hi poppy russ can i get you to stand up to i don't hear so well [Music] so when you said healthy relationship where is that coming from who says what's a healthy relationship where is that information coming from i'd like to know that and is this going to be optional in the classes can the parents say no i'll handle the opt it's going to be an opt-in program rather than opt-out so children and youth will have to have a permission slip to participate that is one requirement okay all through high school from elementary middle school high school all optional and then to answer your question on the healthy relationship um so for our curricula for example love notes dibble institutes is the ones that are the developers so when it's evidence-based that means it's research based medically accurate and those that curricula had to go through a study so they take a control group with a class and then that's how they come out with the outcomes so all of the information is coming from researchers that are experts in the field of relationship-based education do we have access to all that info yes um yes you do where um so double so dibble institutes.org um also i have the digital links if you want to access it and they have all of their research information their study information available to the public too okay if we don't agree with that what's our step and we do what do i do as a parent as a parent if you don't agree with what we have in the classes again like the board said it is an opt in program so you can choose not to have your student in the class at all in the program okay so what can we do actively to disagree with your program though nothing is there anything we can do but that's the purpose of these hearings to express your opinion and there's a committee we have a committee on campus that uh post their meetings and you can actually probably be a part of that and and that debate can go on inside the committee and hopefully that's a separate meeting if i i could clarify too we've incorporated the committee inside of this meeting for purposes of convenience you can speak if you want to oppose one or either curriculum feel free to do it and we'll note that so this is that's part of the purpose okay one or both ma'am no okay thank you okay and to clarify for everybody it's opt-in meaning you have to give a permission slip to participate those that don't there'll be an alternative assignment has nothing to do with sex ed and they will not be uh lose credit or lose points by virtue of not participating so the purpose of today is to figure out are you for it or against it if you're for it which of these two curriculums do you prefer if you're against it all together please voice that and we'll record it yes dr can we also have these two curriculums posted on our site yes we we've had them open for review we still have the information at the district office anybody that would like to come to review that may and you could either sign some out or look at it at your leisure during you know what can create a space for you it is available can i ask a quick question um what is the um i'm sorry i didn't get your first name poppy okay is there any specific components of the program that you don't like or you don't like the it as a whole so if we had you know if if our school and the committee decided to take one and then remove specific portions based on the needs of our students in our program would that be beneficial or is it a no is the question right right so these programs are just too large to know exactly what's being that i would taught so much more info okay and i would like to be part of that because those are that's my child right that's not necessarily in the school classroom that i would expect him to learn some of these things and i don't know who would be teaching them i don't know what they'd be teaching i don't know enough okay good good afternoon thank you for letting me speak my mind on this my name is kate angelos i'm retired navy and what i have investigated researched on my own evidence-based is not speaking for me because the people you asked i didn't get asked so right there i'm not for anything you've said so far however i did research house bill 2476 which governor lucy did sign making it mandatory for sex ed and the loophole to that is the opt in or opt out for the parents but the curriculum is in place okay i don't agree with that either and even in your research in your your polling there isn't a study anywhere that can gather and measure what a child has [Music] registered feels or thinks about something he just heard in the classroom there's nobody that can measure that and because you don't know that child needs to speak about something and he's too ashamed and afraid to say something about it and he will go on forever with that book to me that is not healthy the next thing i have to say real quick is you have a classroom of girls and boys and you haven't once said you're going to separate them they are separated in middle school by arizona law and they have to be separated for boys and girls in high school that is up to the school what they would decide to do okay that i really wasn't too clear on and also in my research we're talking about sex sexuality unwanted pregnancies and hiv and all of that kind of stuff okay that kind of stuff to me sounds like planned parenthood okay now also i feel if the parents are in agreeance with any of this they are being derelict in their responsibility for protecting their children and they're letting the teachers the school boards teachers union do what they should be doing at home that's my two cents worth may i just add so we i understand your concerns and i really appreciate you taking the time to share that something in our curriculum that we do not talk about is sexuality so we don't talk about anything about gender or lgbtq we don't talk about that in our curricula all we talk about are sti statistics and that's very briefly in middle school very we just touch on that in high school we do have more conversations about that but again it's student-led so we do facilitate it but those conversations again are age-appropriate and the materials should be transparent because if a person can be convicted of pornography what is to say what's in those textbooks isn't of the same nature only it's under the guise of education there are 27 sex offenders in showa there are 21 in lakeside and for every residents there's one sex offender that's all i have to say so is it fair to say no on both programs okay thank you thanks i think clear to the back back here we have another hi my name is carrie brewer and i have to say i reviewed fully both curriculums page by page the entire curriculum from 6th grade through 12th grade i liked both curriculums i thought they were very conservative in nature i appreciated the fact that it did not get into gender and sexuality i would be opposed to have been the i would be opposed to have that be taught at the school level [Music] so like i said i did appreciate aspects of both curriculum i would have to say that if i had to choose i know that you're going to choose just one curriculum for the entire school and with that i would choose the positive potential love notes i felt like the love notes for the high school curriculum was a little more up-to-date 2015 i think was the date on the arizona partnership choosing the best program in 2018 was the date published for the navajo county program one of my questions with having actually reviewed the curriculum was that there was quite a bit that you were not able to see because there were embedded videos that obviously as a book you were not able to review does that go outside of the written curriculum that was stated that's one of my questions and what leeway does the instructor have to deviate from the written curriculum i was okay with what was taught written but i want to make sure that that is actually what will be taught in the classroom and then what oversight will you have to make sure that the written curriculum is being followed will there be instructors in the classroom i could just see how a topic such of this could veer very quickly off track so what safeguards will be in place to keep it geared towards the curriculum as written thank you and was that directed towards myself or all of us i i don't know which curriculum will be chosen that was just strictly my opinion but for both of you how what safeguards are in place to to prevent fearing off of the curriculum as written thank you for your question um so i'll speak for navajo county um so when we say evidence-based again the curricula is scripted so we cannot go off script so all of the information that you read that is what we teach as far as what safeguards are in place there's things we have to do on our end so when we report we are funded by arizona department of health services so we have to report at the end of each class if we followed fidelity meaning how close did you follow to that every day at the end of each at the end of each lesson that's what we have to report and then we also have in class um basically we're viewed as instructors so there's you typically two instructors in each class so we keep each other on task as well as someone from the state will also come up and view us as instructors to make sure that we are following the curriculum as written yes and for the arizona youth partnership choosing the best we have the same protocols we do have to do a fidelity check after every session and we also have to follow a script as well and i think uh yeah that's pretty much it so we are also following that as well just as a follow-up on that the parts of the curriculum i believe in the navajo county curriculum where there were embedded videos um those we were not able to review um like i said i did review all of all i spent hours reviewing all of the material of both curriculum is there a way to review that or is there any way to know that does it deviate from what is written no um so for the videos um is it in the preview that you weren't able to the preview on the website you weren't able to view the videos so i came in in person and reviewed the books at the district office so we have the usds that have the videos um so i don't know if there's a way that we could post them but if you ever wanted to review them as a as a parent or member of the community um you're welcome to reach out to our program and we can you know give you the we can't check you out the usd but you can come to the office and review them um and i believe you know maybe this will work i believe you left a couple we have them at the district office you'd like to view them in the district office you may okay thank you yes ma'am and then um if a child asks a question and it is not part of your script how do you answer that question so it may deviate far from the written curriculum yes so that is where we really have to be um again on task because we do get students that ask questions and it's it's it's natural for them to ask questions at this time especially during the topics that we discuss we always try to recirculate if it starts going off topic say okay guys we're getting off topic but remember going back to what we were talking about and then we go back on to the the topic at hand so it doesn't veer too far away from the the core material as well as it doesn't start going into subjects that may be offensive or outside of the scope of our program sorry and then for acyp um when we have any questions that are presented to us that year off the curriculum we redirect focus back to the curriculum and then also encourage our students to have that conversation maybe ask the question to their safe trusted adult parent caregiver thank you for answering that um one final just comment on this i know in both curriculums it did it spent the majority of the time discussing positive relationships and having safe relationships with friends before it ever gets into anything sexual and i know specifically just remembering the navajo county program it was chapter 11 before they discuss any of that so the first 10 chapters plus is 100 just building good healthy relationships with peers so hi my name is irene davis thank you for your time i appreciate everybody that's here um as a parent of blue ridge district um i was under the information of arizona state title 15 article 15 that it is my right as a parent to sit into a class or to come and volunteer in a classroom okay and i was denied twice once last year when i was trying to put my son into pre-kindergarten at the head start over here and this year when i put him into the kindergarten at the elementary school down there on penrod and i asked why and i was informed by an office personnel clerk that it's because the campus is a lock campus and they will be ushered in and out by a teacher's aide to the parent drop off and pick up access points and i asked i said that sounds kind of different to me because in the all my i have six children of all ages and i have seven grandchildren and we were always encouraged to um volunteer help read to the kids help in there you know participate whatever it is story time so when i heard this i was a little uh befuddled actually and i was also informed when the person was telling me this that even the lunch people have to bring the carts with the lunches leave it outside the door ring the bell they have their person come get the cart bring it in and then they put the empty cart out and the lunch person comes gets the cart brings it back into the kitchen so that as a parent threw a flag on the field because i didn't know what to make of that maybe somebody can help me understand what that's about ma'am i'm sorry but we were do you have a question on the sex ed program certainly could you get to that one and i'd be glad to deal with that question also arizona uh uh title 15 102 paragraphs one through six it says educators can use their professional discretion and use supplemental materials uh in instructing their curriculum okay what i wanna know is will i be able to review that curriculum before they implement it in the classroom yes and this is the curriculum that would be used educators are not able to supplement on the sex ed curriculum those curriculums are prescribed they're talking about if i'm teaching history and it's world war ii and you have something you want to add into that that would be an enrichment which is fully appropriate but what i'm suggesting is you may have a lot of questions that i can help you with but it has nothing to do with sex ed i think okay well i'm not done yet well ma'am here's the deal we have problem this is a hearing for sex ed it's not for all these other issues so it's the board's it's the board's president's decision um my request is we can table that and i'll be glad to visit with her unless it has something a sex ed i i do have something about the sex ed and given the fact that she was able to ask and answer many questions i would like my opportunity okay um i do realize this is a very sensitive subject and i do understand there's many layers like this one mom miss poppy over here addressed and i think that parents should be the main people instructing their children on these subjects because they are so sensitive if you talk to your child at home and say johnny we don't hug and kiss little girls in kindergarten first grade that's not appropriate and then johnny goes to class and somebody said whatever okay um he's getting a mixed message there so what that shows me is that makes that student awkward it makes him feel kind of out of place when he goes back into the classroom because now mommy and daddy told him something and then he goes into the classroom and hears something else okay it's gonna make that student a little awkward with whatever he is hearing possibly confused okay and then another thing too in the high school level there are students that that will have questions but because they're in amongst their peers they may be embarrassed they may be uh feeling ashamed for some some girls they have already had situations maybe out of their control and now they've got really big questions that they need to ask if we're working on a script we're taking the general population consensus i'm understanding that and you've got some heavy questions that's going on okay we're talking about real life i mean i i'm not going to get crazy graphic or none of that don't worry i'm not going to flip you out but if something happened to susie and she's trying to process that and she comes to her counselor or her her person that she's dealing with in the class and says my uncle so-and-so did abcd oh my gosh what do i do now are they going to suggest let's go to the nurse and see if maybe we can figure out like abortion alternatives or something aren't there are we going to excuse me excuse me i think that's what this is for and that's what the committee is for your concerns can be addressed directly to the committee and it'd be awesome if you would come in and sit down with the committee and the counselors and express those concerns the specifics that you're doing right here i think i think everybody's afraid of those things and appreciate your input and your passion thank you very much [Music] may i address some of the yes so from what i understood i do appreciate you taking your time um so what understood it sounds like there is a concern over maybe a conflict of values maybe um so with our educators uh we are values neutral so when we go into the classroom we don't put our personal opinion we don't our personal values [Music] the spiritual that means that person sends a personal value so a person might have a faith-based background we don't talk about faith it's just that person's sense of right and wrong their sense of personal value for them so when they're making decisions how is it impacting them are they making decisions that are in alignment with their personal values are they making decisions that are against that because they're succumbing to peer pressure that's what that means it's not talking about religion or anything like that from our from our stance does that sense because um if a child has been no make taught at home that they should stay clean before marriage because sex is designed for marriage that bonds the nationality according to the bible i thought the united states was based on christian native christian foundation and for a christian nation i'm sure most people understand that and so if johnny learns that i shouldn't have sex outside of marriage and goes into the classroom and they have a neutral zone which i appreciate that but that's gonna send a mixed message because you're gonna say it's okay if you do decide to have sex just use the ponder or if you decide to have a relationship that's of the same sex it's okay because we're gonna accept different genders the bible says that certain things are not permitted now i'm [Applause] [Music] thank you i'll make a note [Music] thanks appreciate your passion that's what we wanted to hear i think some of the specifics about getting into the school campuses can be worked out with the principals i know my wife volunteers she had to go through a process she can go in because she has a pass to do so parents just can't walk into the classroom anymore because of the society because the things that happened it's not the way it was when you raised your kids it's different so appreciate that talk to your local principal you know the principals in the in elementary the junior high and high school they can help you through that situation good evening my name is lorenzo santana good evening school board members and thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak and express our concerns and ask questions this evening a couple questions that i have kind of right off the bat is this a comprehensive sex ed both of these curriculums here so our program is comprehensive sex ed um and i'll let you like the answer the sexual risk avoidance so we are an abstinence-based program in which we will encourage our students to abstain and that is the only 100 way to guarantee that they are not going to expose themselves to stds unplanned pregnancies or emotional consequences also all of our staff are meditated mandated reporters through the state so if a situation a situation comes up that a student discloses something to us we do have to report that to the teacher and then follow the school's procedures as well if that situation were to come up just to answer that okay when i looked on your website i wasn't able to see many of the lessons for each of the curriculums i saw a couple of them and you know i know that in order to get a good understanding of it you got to really look through each lesson that's where the meat and the bones and everything that so i haven't had a chance to do it sounds like some here have but i did find a website here and on your website it also states that it meets like the national standards uh for sex ed and so forth right okay all right so um so we found this organization called family watch international i believe they're here out of gilbert arizona their website is familywatch.org you want to write that down familywatch.org and comprehensivesexualityeducation.org write those down please look those up so they actually review and evaluate and score many of the comprehensive sex ed curriculums that are being promoted in u.s public schools and also internationally and we found that in this cse harmful analysis tool that love notes 3.0 had a score of 11 out of 15.
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ms bentz just a question related to nutrition services and that do you have any clue as to one where we are in terms of the total enrollment in free and reduced is that comparable to or less than before pandemic and the real reason for my question is i'm concerned about because all kids receive free lunches for the last two years are there young people out there who are going without food so a couple of notes regarding that so first we have with all of our schools primarily our elementary schools we have we have worked very hard at getting participation having people apply we have been turning around the applications very quickly in nutrition services there is a new software called titan titan does facilitate that and that very question that you asked i'm reviewing with nutrition services staff now to determine if there are some schools that we need to further target to get their their applications in but right now it looks like it's comparable to how it was in the beginning of 2019 but i will share more of that with you in the board report this week thank you miss pets dr mccord somehow if we can outreach to families that that is available to them and if they are struggling because there may be some below that threshold that will cause them to qualify for free and reduced how it is that they need assistance so um going along with them it's best ed as well as efforts on the elementary side primarily in the spring and during the summer a lot of outreach to families and then of course as people are moving in or people just haven't paid attention to that piece of it as miss betts said that as soon as somebody applies we're trying to turn around as quickly as possible so uh i i think i think i saw some numbers a little bit ago i think we're a little bit lower than where we were before the pandemic not much but i expect that to be actually higher in the next year or two just as we move through this process of recovering from that time so in just additionally just a reminder to this body and to the public if they're listening because of our earlier start our deadline for the automatic rollover where students are eligible from the prior year that deadline deadline has historically been around the 16th of september because of the early start it's now the 6th of september we're sharing that information next week with all of our leaders so that they're aware that they that they have less time to make sure that those that were eligible last year do not see an interruption in their services thank you mr betts i i have no doubt that staff is working diligently to try to to move that process along i'm really just kind of appealing to those in our community who might be reluctant and encouraging them to to seek that assistance for food assistance for your children if and when you need it i think there's another notification that we received as well from the federal government indicating that they are going to offer what they call the pandemic employee i mean electronic benefit transfer which basically if you are an at-risk family you have a food card and last year with that food card it was worth depending upon your family up to six or seven hundred dollars of additional food assistance and that program is based upon your free and reduced lunch application so again just another advertisement of the benefits of applying and making sure that we at gilbert understand your needs thank you just one addition to that i agree with dr santa cruz sometimes we've seen the transition from elementary and uh junior high school to high school uh students don't reapply so i don't know if there's some way that we could track their applications to see you know or to remind the families that they they're still eligible or something like that if it's possible to do that yeah we have some legal constraints regarding that however the good news is if a high school student is part of a family that has an elementary school student they are automatically approved but we are in general targeting schools so that they can send out notifications to all of their families to include the siblings of those families as well so i know you've seen that as well thank you thank you okay and then the cash funds so there's nothing notable about this the activity is as expected you can see that our fingerprint fund at the top is an available balance of negative 23 000 but that's purposeful as we get new employees in we do take their fingerprints for them and then they generally pay for that fingerprint charge through payroll deductions so we're always a little bit in arrears on that fund but everything else is as you would expect and then these are the school student based funds so just note the available balance of 9.8 million dollars and then student activities of just under 1.5 million and then bond and debt service funds so fund 631 this is our 2015 authority please note that under the facilities renewal we have spent the full 48.8 million dollars almost fully spent there's an encumbrance of 321 000 there all of the money assigned to facilities renewal and a remaining balance of 4.2 million dollars to include technology as well as transportation note in technology that this was purposeful they have a seven-year plan for the 7-12 refresh when we started the device the one-to-one device initiative back in 2016 so at the end of this year that 3.7 million dollars will be totally totally spent and then note the transportation the encumbrance of 1.3 million dollars we have received three of those buses and we still have outstanding numerous vehicles that we're still waiting to get in and we will be giving you an update this week in the board report on where we are on that so the possibility exists that that additional 500 thousand dollars we will move into facilities renewal to uh make sure we have enough money to get through some some key projects under the facilities renewal bucket so in addition this is our bond fund 630 so this is the 2019 authority recall that we closed on this the second sale of that authority in february of 2022 and again note the facilities renewal bucket where there is 20.2 million dollars left over please note that that does not include the approvals of of the last board meeting so the 7 million dollars associated with the lighting project as well as a couple of other projects at some of our schools so right now with the encumbrance of those projects we expect that there will be 10 about 10 million dollars left in the facilities renewal bucket to complete projects for the 23 school year so i'm just giving you a heads up that probably in january or february we will be bringing to you a request for the final bond sale of about 18 million dollars to make sure that we can continue with our summer projects between fiscal 20 ending fiscal 23 and beginning fiscal 24.
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it would also bleed over into fiscal 24 as well certainly but we're looking at something at the on the magnitude of about five or six million dollars total or about two to three million dollars per school to basically make it so that those the entrances on those schools are secure ironically what we're looking at is moving the main office of those schools exactly to the same spot as where they were when they were built in 1955 in 1990.
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motion and second to approve the minutes from our last meeting all in favor say financials claims um [Music] a second to approve claims as presented to us nothing uh to talk about payroll that actually concludes the final payroll for the 21 21-22 school year so the august 30th pay will be a reflection then of payroll for 22-22 [Music] uh we talked about uh end of the month balances already at the last board meeting but this is just a representation of uh cash flow if you scroll down a little bit up sorry we sit at almost 8.2 million in our education fund and if you look at the progressive months you can continue to see that to be built up there so that's always a good thing when you're not losing money so we're looking in good shape when it comes to our education fund and then as far as actually go back to the education fund for a second i'm going to highlight a little bit of this when we talk about my presentation earlier but if you look at transfers out you notice that we transfer money from the education fund to the operation fund and we do that for the mere purpose because our operational fund revenue does not cover all of our operational fund expenses and so you can see you know we've been doing about 165 000 a month that puts us around 11 to 12 percent of our revenue goes into our operation fund to cover those costs so you know you're looking this is about what we typically do around 1.92 million dollars a year we're transferring money out of our education fund to cover those expenses that are not covered by the revenue that we receive in our operations fund so i just want to kind of make that point a little bit uh i think everybody understands that it's just been part of school finance now for the last few years in covering those costs um when they made those changes to the fund how much does the state allow percentage um you're not supposed to do more than and we've been historically around 12 and a half percent and right now we're actually under 12 so we're probably going to increase that a little bit more because we obviously want to make sure that we are covering our costs uh in our operation fund and not trying to absorb all of those costs in our operational fund because that takes away from things like capital projects and so forth from the operation fund side of things if you look at our fund balances you can see we're sitting at about six and a half million dollars in our operational fund uh budget but that cash flow works a little differently because you know the big thing that our major revenue source comes just twice a year and that's when the taxes are paid out and so june and december and so you see big bumps in cash flow and then you see decreases because you're spending more in those other months and then at the end you see another big increase there so you know anticipating ending around 6.8 million dollars or so when it comes to our operational fund balance any other questions with cash flow there are some salaries out of operations there are yeah there's i'd say probably 60 of that budget is for salaries and you're talking you know your bus drivers your custodians your maintenance staff uh those type of costs uh from a salary perspective sometimes that's not understood it looks so that's all i had with with that uh so then i guess that can get us into our 2023 budget review we've covered all of our estimated budgets for um 2023.
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right john but i think it's under recognized you know that okay you made the honor roll you haven't cured cancer but it's still worth recognizing by an email to the student to the parents that kind of thing i think that could be you know that could be a nice thing for kids and if you said that it's a multiple layer thing and you said standard so that it's not a joke but it's something that anybody who works can probably reach right yeah so you know 80 75 whatever the number is it's not unattainable it's not some goal and the top 10 kids get right right because the top 10 kids get their uh but it's the other youngster who struggles to get that 82 average for yeah so let me let me suggest that this is the task because this is getting into the superintendent's nitty-gritty but if we were to have board of ed little note cards that we all had and every quarter everybody had two or three they were given by the teacher recommends or and we each take two or three students to write a little note as a board of ed member and send it to them so so that's up for the superintendent decide but i'm just drawing that is there a way to get like a dis you know we probably have grids on all the field trips and a grid on events but like do we have a grid that shows pre-k through 12 what we are really doing like where do you you can look at a glance and you know that this is how cherry brook you know this is when they celebrate kids and this is how they do it and this is when it happens we don't really have like a sheet that describes but i wouldn't say that we have a one pager that would describe all that we have information from ourselves we've got our school calendars but we don't have the one page of celebration for that that might be something to do because like maybe there's stuff being done at schools that we don't know about that you kept you know and so just i guess gathering that information before we make a decision on what we're going to change sure and i also just you know i also send letters of combination to students three k through 12 throughout the school year so so many students get recognition from the superintendent not from the board of ed per se so who i like your idea of heavy note cards and having because we can touch more that's all it should be on you but anyways thank you and just oh i'm sorry i was just gonna say and then like uh what joe had said in here about revamping the canton celebrates that could and we're going to split that so it's not this marathon so people can enjoy it so we'll probably do that over two nights but thank you yeah absolutely i just want to say i think that you know like the emotional health safety safety and health of a child or a student is important you know like if you feel comfortable can you feel comfortable in the classroom can you feel comfortable to ask a dumb question can you be comfortable enough to say i don't know what you're talking about i mean to me those would be like great goals that bring everybody forward can you be a team in a classroom so that if someone doesn't understand something can someone who you know the student who does can they help that student you know i mean i think that's where all votes rise because if if you're suffering in silence as a student going i i don't want to say anything because i'm going to look like i don't know what i i don't know what's going on how do we how do we address even those things so that everybody moves forward you know and i think that's really important that's like that building i used to do a lot of building community with my kids at the very beginning because i was shocked later like mid-semester realizing some people didn't know another person's name like i'd say oh give that to janet they're like who's janna i mean they're like this isn't even a big town i'm teaching it you don't know who janet is so um yeah i i'm big on community and like trying to i don't know so you just led us into topic number two which is uh health and safety so on you those folks that uh filled out provide us with input that was the next one that seemed health and safety what should we do and you just let it off perfectly what should be the goals around health and safety and within that could be anti-bullying which we're going to talk about in the meeting later tonight but um health and safety i think the superintendent has done actually a really good job addressing health and safety i think the board has done a great job addressing health and safety are there other things that we should be doing and considering now i don't want to bring up a source subject but we were at that leadership uh meeting and quite a bit of conversation was around have an sro not have an sro who has an sro who doesn't have an sro who's having paid for so you know from a safety standpoint um and you know thankfully that hasn't been this burning bush uh platform here but you know what other things should we be thinking about safety we've improved our cameras we we've gone to that uh protected film i think did we do that yes yeah okay so we've done that uh what other things are on student safety and that like i said it could go into all different directions um and safety and health mental health for our students things of that nature have you seen things in other schools or other districts that you may have visited or i asked our student reps you know how do you feel about the mental health in school do you feel safe in school are you comfortable going to school every day and knowing you're okay or things like that you see on the news is that how upsetting is that to you what do you think about that i feel like our school takes like physical and mental health like very seriously um and i feel very safe like when i'm at school when it comes to you know what's happening on the news and in other schools i just i think you know mental health could be prioritized a little bit more not to say that we're not doing anything because i believe we're doing a lot but maybe more consequences for people who are contributing to i don't know bullying and like i just haven't seen that taken as seriously as you know someone physically threatens you that's very serious but even like cyber bullying and things like that are really detrimental to the students mental health and i would like to see more consequences taken not to sound harsh like yeah consequences could be more of a deterrent when when you know that's made more public i understand that and that's the whole idea behind you know you act improperly there's a there's retrofit punishment for that system think i mean i don't think we touch on that enough um in terms of we talk about you know being a good internet citizen and all that but you know i think there's some real issues here with with the effect that tech has on uh younger folks and um social media in particular you know it's when every the kids have phones at a younger and younger age and it's you know there's there's downsides to it and i don't think we do enough to have a we don't have to be you know the ludics over here but i think we have to have conversations like guys there is a dark side to this and it can have a really talk about social emotional health i think you know tech and social media has the worst influence right on social emotional health so where you're coming from it's more maybe review the policy on that a little deeper right but i mean also you know give parents and kids information like look you know like instagram is designed to do certain things to your brain that's what it does be more honest and real about the reality of what's going on so one of the things we're hoping to do tonight is to talk more about anti-bullying coming up in october it's anti-bullying month and can we bring in a speaker for parents maybe along those lines to educate them because sometimes parents don't know you know i'm going to sound really happy i just instagram like last year i finally you know got involved with that right i was a facebook fan so i don't know you know some of this stuff for my kids tell me i'm getting these initials and i don't understand it and so i i think that you know i mean i think even though this guy's wrong so you know look i think you can even capture kids imaginations by you know diving deeper and saying oh here's how the algorithms go right right these things are designed to do this to you almost like a smoking kind of campaign you know we explain to kids why smoking is bad but my tobacco is harmful you know on some level these things work in the same way they're addictive they're designed to be addictive the advertising is designed to capture young folks and try them i'll i'll echo that i i'm interrupting with you but i'm going with you with this that actually there are elements of that in the curriculum right now because because of that impact but being able to highlight that more and having additional uh support in that vein particularly from the social media standpoint the middle school has taken a risk but even it's just gotten down to be so much younger now i mean kevin did a great job bringing in justine ginsberg she was excellent you know the challenge is getting people there i know every parent who attended her things great he had great knowledge left there and maybe did things differently you know that's not the end all but i i agree with ryan we need to do more in that area to educate parents and students um you know it's a big influence it's a big challenge socially emotionally and friendships and community and it's i think there needs to be more work on that i i couldn't agree more with both of you it may not be a more important thing than educating kids how to make the internet work for them as opposed to work against them social media may be great but it doesn't change i think it needs to be replaced with you know more human interaction you know face-to-face interaction whether that's clubs or games or sports or i don't know fun stuff that you know play you know where's the play that kids have nowadays that's kim's point she said that for a while we're gonna sing we're missing that component a little bit that that's a culture and climate piece and i think simone was talking a little bit about about how to continue to support um and that that kind of works as the the the protective measure before bullying or some of these other things happen uh the root of a lot of those situations are are a negative sense of self or a negative feeling about the environment that you're in when you've got a positive environment that's what the research says when you've got a positive environment positive interactions from relationships if you prioritize that a lot of a lot of better things happen from that would you say that's a huge component of health and safety yes absolutely that would be the precursor that leads to everything else as well okay i think you got some good information on health and safety um across the board here there's been comments about building maintenance and infrastructure so building maintenance and infrastructure we actually started that and i were talking about it you know what we have to do to improve outside our outsider buildings to make the taxpayers proud i think when the taxpayers are proud about our buildings and the things we've done i think it helps us through a budget process in a cycle because they see that we're taking care of things they see things being improved infrastructure things what are we doing as far as technology to staff and i know john's done a great job in keeping us uh on top of that um cura jeff uh the whole roof um so what what would you say for the next 12 months might be some ideas or thoughts that we can give our superintendent as far as buildings and maintenance i know i know one thing that i hear is as i walk through the buildings by the way i haven't done this yet but if you haven't maybe mr case can get you through cis i understand they pulled that carpet the new flooring is in i understand it's beautiful so you should thank you very much so you should look at that when you get a second um but what other things should we be working on uh you know my finished thought is i i walked through jerry brooke and this is not an indictment cherry book but some of those classrooms are mounded with books and items and toys and and i said where do you put the students in here how do you get i mean so how are we cleaning inside outside how are we making it presentable to the public so when they walk by they say look at this school i'm i'm so proud of this school so what are your thoughts on that i agree i think that there needs to be time and resources or support for the classrooms that need that um cleaning out or you know sorting through and i mean teachers are working very hard and have been for years and i think pandemic added another layer especially at cherry brook because that's where the you know those classrooms are meant they should have materials right we should be having hands-on learning and i think over the years we keep adding and buying and things change and you get new stuff but there's never a time i'm a little passionate about this because i can relate i mean those teachers set up their rooms on their own time and they it's a lot of work educating young children your time is spent educating them not cleaning out your room and if you do that it's at nine o'clock at night so you know i just think that we need to shift our thinking of how we solve that challenge like you're saying there's some classrooms then there needs to be a plan in place like how are we going to support i think part of it is making the uh building managers first most part of the review and responsibility is we don't go forward but that would be something for mr casey to decide on how to get there but you hear you hear the statement um the other thing i would i would mention very important is are we ready to go through a building committee to review the the building study that we had and to review that k through two three four five six seven eight and then high school are we ready to look at that we're ready to have a committee put together and study that are we ready to roll up our sleeves and and and do the hard talking with the public uh begin to study the building and and that's something that we would lay on the superintendent to put together the format for that over the next year how we're going to start meeting on that it's going to be a couple two three year process but we have to get it started and there's a lot that can be accomplished this year and kevin's been through it and he knows how to run it so i think we use his expertise on that not to that because that's a whole other issue that's an important issue shortly after our meeting in june there was a school in the news that had fire and the first thing i noticed was the outside of the school the beautiful flowers and grass and all that stuff and only i was almost that in respect to our discussion i think we need a plan uh for who would have goals and responsibilities what do we want the grounds to look like who's responsible are we responsible for the first five feet whatever it is is the time responsible what do we want it to look like and and i don't think it can be volunteers because that group of volunteers that makes chargebook look great in 2022 is gone in 2024 and then who cleans up the mess after that that we did an ongoing plan for the exterior of the building is that it should be a budget for shocking right it should be budgeted everybody has a question for right right uh and the packrat element the teachers is well known you know and that's that's the principles yeah we need to hold administrators accountable for the condition of the inside of the schools and and also lean on them to get back to us about things that need fixed or improved or whatever you know in their buildings they're the experts on their buildings i agree so i wrote that down beautification and won't believe that mr case to help do we have like a standard you know like who's driving this decision making because obviously the environments each school are different but like the physical environment for a student is very important we're so focused on achievement sometimes which is great and that's our job but it's also you know i just think it's important to look at the environment physical environment is just as important as the emotional environment sometimes for some students um i noticed one thing and i was wondering if i could just share this about the inside of the school absolutely um so in the high school in the third floor so the bottom level in the math way there's a bathroom that is just like very it's like in the older part of the building so it's not colder i don't know the paint's like chipping so people are like writing i don't know negative things and like i'm sure you've seen i would yeah i would just consider it inappropriate yes that's clear and it's just like i don't know like you were saying like the environment and i think the love is when you're taking consideration the impression especially when you have a whole class between freshmen and any other but we have 20 new students in that just the high school um a lot of it's just on the impressions doing so i think some things like that can penetrate this meeting sort of i do think it's [Music] that's a great point the only thing i would say that if i recall on the cip and we took the tour through the high school there was some bathroom partitions that were i don't know if it's this bathroom but i know there was going to be some bathroom improvements did that make it through the cip some did but i'm so glad you're mentioning this mrs nesikowski we'll work on that tomorrow because that's something that can take place immediately yeah you know for the opening of school next week so that's something um simone bell i didn't i haven't noticed so thank you for bringing that to our attention so you're making it that's the right people yeah that's the thing kevin you like physically you can't be in every spot yeah all the time so how do you hear things and there needs to be like what is our protocol or plan like where is there a forum that's submitted you know and is it is it easy process you know if there's something breaking in cis or you know how to i don't even know that like what's the plan so i will when i talk more about these goals on september 13th i'll share with you what our procedures are so not to take time now to do that thank you i will share in more depth everything you're talking about that's why i'm quiet i'm just listening i'll share more information with you that goes back to health and safety students and teachers should feel comfortable saying there's some garbage written in the bathroom not ratting anybody out or pointing the finger just like students should be comfortable finding someone to say there's some stuff online that's scaring us we got to look into it or the student seems to be talking about uh doing harm for themselves we need a climate and atmosphere where kids feel comfortable but teachers too i think you know we have two security personnel that i know that walk the halls all day long they can also be recording where things may need to be improved or fixed or i noticed this or i noticed that and i think they can be recording it but that's again that's that's on your list not behind us okay um i want to be careful of the time here so anything else on health and safety felicia anything on your end that you want to bring up um i just want to touch upon what peggy has said in regards to um student you know feeling essentially a sense of belonging so one of the goals i had was collaborative school community which i think ties into health and safety and then mental health and just being aware of like the community that we want to foster and having students feel a sense of belonging like simone's mentioning like something's on the walls like you know being okay with mentioning that and saying that that that's not good and stepping up and you know i know it's hard for peers to kind of say something when they think one of their peer groups may be you know doing something wrong but i think that's the climate that we want to try to um start fostering within our community yeah and i think what you're saying is we have they students as well as the community as well as the board of vet we have to have pride in the things that we are responsible for and we have to step up from time to time and point out where these deficiencies are because if we don't you know i got to tell you i was walking into the library i was walking into the back parking lot and i just come over for cis and i'll tell you i was on such a high when i saw those guys planting i'm saying this is beautiful this is unbelievable and i walked to our library and granted it's not we're not responsible for this and i looked at the gardens here there are leaves from last last i mean the summer's already gone their leaves from the year before there's growth all along the side i mean we're taxpayers in this town we can demand more we should demand more these are our buildings and and then and then five years from now when somebody says well we need a new driveway because we didn't do the proper maintenance or we didn't get all those weeds that were coming up in the cracks and so on and so forth so i think it's a poor event we can be more demanding on our buildings that we we want them to look a certain way and it's happening it's happening thank you thank you um it's happening and you know i'm really pleased about that but anyways thank you felicia for that comment okay the fourth thing there's uh there's kind of a hodgepodge on the sheet and so i'm not able to come up with a fourth but is there something that you want to talk about a fourth goal that we should institute something you know where it can get done over 12 months that you're thinking about that we should have because we have achievement we have health and safety we have building and infrastructure and we want to give mr space just one more thing to do to think about his policy is on what uh joe uh submitted policy no i know there's quite a few that's why i'm asking what's important to you policies i think policy is important i think you know we we talked about uh dress code we continue to talk about the things to do in policy there's also you know if you want to talk about policy one things i mentioned is the case was maybe every policy that is uh over 10 years old which i know is a lot and it has to be done over time maybe every policy that's over 10 years old should be reviewed by the policy committee a couple at each meeting as we go forward um to update that we review policies when there's a new right right i know through our detriment or our credit i don't know which of the policy books if you printed them all out are significant so i i i don't know if that's fascinating i don't think it's possible but over over 15 years over 15 years that would be more possible what's relevant to today that's not relevant anymore i mean it's it's a big job i know that and um maybe started 15 years and see how many there are uh and maybe not every policy has to be rewritten it's just are they still relevant are they still pertinent to the day that's all or if there's areas of weakness let's say there's an area of discipline that's a problem maybe we review the policies that are most meaningful to to help some challenges now that's generally how it's finished right yeah right the important ones that the staff meant or the state mandates or the board like dress code was not a statement and they that we came up with that uh technology was not a statement that i don't think but we looked at that policy as well um technology on the buses maybe maybe leave the state mandates out because they've been they they followed the state mandate so maybe we do everything that's not a state mandate that's 15 years old can we filter to that okay no i don't know claudia good luck [Laughter] i don't know policy is important maybe we should you know we should think about that a little bit more mr case could think about how we can maybe dig into that a little bit more yeah i would say policy is one of the three most important things that a board of education does right you're in charge of making sure the policies are written so that i can implement your policy so joe is our chair and our policy committee over the years has done a great job of making sure the most recent legislation has been incorporated in the policy and i know we can work with cave also that'll help us identify our policies that are older so we'll work in partnership with them so i think um i think that is doable looking at the policies that are 15 years or older and i think that would be good for the next superintendent coming in to have that all set right i know i know it's a big task but you got to do some time i guess anything else before we close this out yeah again sure it's really one and a half things uh felicia when i read what you submitted i circled something where you wrote down a sense of belonging and if you want to improve student achievement and if you want to secure make sure that there's safety and health the more students who feel like they belong i think the more achievement they'll be and the more safety they'll be and i i think we did that and we talked about the other things i just i thought it was well he put in capital letters so i couldn't miss it and i thought it was well stated and the other area that boards are responsible for is curriculum and i think that's not on anybody's list including my own but maybe it should be or maybe it's being handled so well i mean i think our curriculum does a great job when we follow everything that the state gave us i'm not saying it shouldn't be i'm just saying that that may be one place that's really sailing i don't know erica do you want to comment on that or well i mean we address things as they come up but i mean there's always room for improvement so is there anything that comes to mind that you would like to see handle differently you view differently um no i guess i'd have to think about it well what about the state remember i don't know the outcome that the state was going to determine never colombia so i was just going to so those are things that you know i had in my so i i look at policy and curriculum as just continuing their work every year there's going to be more work to do in those areas with curriculum this year the focus really should be on the science of reading because the state is still still examining what programs will be on the acceptable list and that list should be released on or about september 10.
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like i said jeff is crushing it so much of this work is already happening we just want to provide support where we can instructional transformation this is where we're leaning in pretty heavily to provide coherence not only are we working to support the team in designing leader pd but we're aligning what we're teaching teachers to what leaders are getting better at so that everyone is speaking the same language top to bottom in the district we're also supporting sheila and her team and developing her folks to use the same language that we're teaching principals and teachers so that again it does not feel like principals are being asked to do a million things by lots of different folks who want to align it across the district we're working on enhancing instructional systems and implementing in implementation what that looks like this year the district is folks focused on lesson internalization and so we're going to support school leaders in helping their teachers doing that more effectively and the last domain is around culture and climate this is where we're really going to lean into community engagement to understand what parents want in the schools where they're sending their children we know parents vote with their feet one of our goals is that we keep 90 percent of adam's 14 students and adam's 14 schools between this year and next year we know we're going to need to do that with community engagement and having parents be part of the solution and we know parents are very involved so we're excited to partner with them and in making magic for their kids and lastly we don't want to do amazing work for some kids we want our work to improve things for all kids excuse me and what this means is when we're looking at data we're looking to close gaps in subgroups and ensure that levers we're pulling to improve things for some kids improve things for all kids and we're expecting that our goals will be achieved by all kids not just some kids so that was a lot four domains of the of colorado domains for rapid improvement plus focus on equity and efficiency and making sure we're doing right by all kids any questions about any of those things so i was going to ask about where equity lived in your plan but the fact that it's separate um is interesting to me because you would think that equity would be something that's interweaved into everything that we yeah you read our minds all right take a look so we see equity as living across all four domains it's not called out in the same way in the colorado domains for rapid improvement but we're operating knowing that it is a part of all four of the domains we called it out separately to name it but we're not operating that way any other questions about the work streams less of a question but more of a statement i just want to thank you all for how collaboratively you're working with our team and with the board i know we're set to meet with you about what kind of data we want to see when we want to see it so this really helps to lay the landscape as to what the areas are so we can start digging into that so thank you you're welcome and we are excited to share our progress monitoring dashboard with you because it will be for you to use to help us better serve kids here i wanted to give you a sense of the size of the team that's here supporting and understand better how we're supporting the district so i'm working directly with superintendent and and the cio and that's really where i'm pushing in we have two leadership coaches soon to be three leadership coaches that will support the executive directors and the executive principal they will also be working with principals as requested we have a talent team of three that will support jeff and making all of his dreams come true in the talent world our instructional leader our instructional transformation team is a team of four lindsay will be working directly with sheila and then she will have a team that she will deploy as needed to support the priorities of the academic team help develop professional development and support in creating coaching cycles for all teachers and lastly although it lives in all four domains we have a very large team ensuring we do right by all kids in the equity bucket and they're driving our strategic planning process and our data analysis so we are looking at all the data planning a strategic plan with equity at the heart and then we have a data expert who's going to help us progress monitor and also support the district and student level analysis as requested i just want to add one thing here um that i think it's important to note this is fluid so we're going to be and we already have a series of meetings in which we're going to be evaluating the the um things they're delivering right based on the contract and then making the changes as needed because we know sometimes for example talent management they're going to be individuals supporting jeff we know the need we have um you know finding teachers that in in all colorado right this is not only us this is one of the areas that we know when we started negotiating a contract it was a great need uh not so much now things have changed very quickly um based on the hiring excellent hiring that we have done and in that department so it doesn't mean that they're going to stay supporting that department um the three years right so it's very fluid we're looking and evaluating and assessing the needs because we know they're going to be changing as time goes by and as we improve in one areas we may need some support in others so i just want to make that note so that it's it doesn't feel that he's going to be static for three years i really appreciate that and i i think the one wondering for me would be um i mean now we have a superintendent that can communicate that to us because that was one of my frustrations previously was we had no idea what was happening on a day-to-day or like even within the schools one person would be there one day and then when it the next or it would be you know weeks so i just making sure we have that continued communication about what's happening it was helpful as we started to roll this out to the district team to to map back who our people were working directly with maybe a little bit less important here but as you can see we have point people under each domain and they're they're working directly and collaboratively with the leader for the district all right so let's talk goals because i know when i i came before you before you we we had some feedback about the goals and we really want to dive into that with you tonight so the first major goal is that we have 80 retention of teachers and leaders who are meeting or exceeding expectations i really want to draw your attention to meeting or exceeding expectations we want to retain the best folks in the district because that's what kids and families deserve and we want to work to hire folks that are able to meet and or exceed those expectations for those folks who are not this will be a significant increase from school year 22 and we believe if people understand the vision they believe they're being developed in that vision they feel supported and acknowledged their work is acknowledged they'll stick around regardless of what they read in the newspapers the second major goal and this is one that adults really have a lot of control over so it's why it's number two we want 90 to 100 percent of assignments that students are interacting with to be coming from an approved curriculum and be aligned with the colorado state standards teachers have so much work to do every single day we should not be asking them to chase down materials for kids or print things off the internet the district has spent a ton of money on high quality curricular materials we want to get those in the teachers hands we want to teach them to use them and be effective with them and the way we're going to track on this is when we're in classrooms we're looking for what kids are working on and we're looking for them to be working on core content that is approved from the approved curriculum and aligned to standards we expect that if that is true and we support teachers and leaders in being great we're going to see 1.5 years growth on star in ela sla and math sla is not on this but we are going to measure it there as well for older students we're looking for 40 percent of students to meet or exceed on cmas in ela sla and math we know this is an audacious target we believe that if we do write and put the right tasks in front of kids we can see significant movement from where the cmas scores are right now and finally and these two these two goals are very important in terms of kids access and acquisition of knowledge and the district being able to support kids most effectively we're looking for 95 percent average daily attendance we believe if kids feel safe and welcomed at school they're being challenged in their classrooms families understand the importance of sending their kids to school every day and so we want to encourage them to be there and then finally i already talked to spoke about this one parents vote with their feet so we're looking to retain 90 of kids who start the year with us this year to have them come back next year i'm going to pause there questions comments thoughts when you hear the six major goals would you be sharing a road map as to how you're planning to get to these goals with us as well i'm just curious to see what supports teachers will receive for goal two um how you'll be progress monitoring goal three um so just kind of get more information about how and what that road looks like to meet these yeah we can lay out a very clear map for you we're working on it right now with these three goals in particular we're working with dr lauria and sheila's team to start with we're making sure that every teacher has access to curriculum and having principals elevate if they if they do not so that we can get them what they need and i see you ready yes because i also want to add actually we had a great meeting today because this is a passion of everybody on the team uh to make sure that our teachers and in that we are providing everything that our schools our administrators and teachers need the one thing however i want us to you know keep in you know the top of our thinking is we need to prioritize where to start because there are a lot of things that we could be doing or should be doing but we cannot do everything at once uh and in one year right so i was pushing the team to say what is it that we need our leaders and our teachers to get really good at right now this year where are we going to start we've heard the saying you know sometimes less is more we want to get good at what we need to get good at this year with a sense of urgency and we are prioritizing or identifying what is that one or two things that is going to be of the highest leverage and once we build from there then we go to the other turnaround work i've said it many times is very difficult because there are a lot of areas in which we need to improve but we need to be very strategic in identifying where those are in narrow focus in our efforts to ensure that we are not burning out our teachers or administrators or ourselves we we are prioritizing in the monitoring of our students in how our students are reacting to instruction so we're not doing a top-down model of you know let's prepare and and give all this pd to teachers and and principals just just so that it will trickle down at some point we're doing a balanced one where when we are you know learning and getting better at uh doing x we're going to go in and immediately observe how the students are reacting to that something different that we're doing or um yeah to whatever we're doing and that what we learned so that we can quickly tweak it and then um the key piece is going to be the monitoring like it was mentioned the monitoring and we can and we will be providing updates on on those monitoring um [Music] big rocks that we have selected so i have a question for you guys just thinking with the vacancies that we have open predominantly in our middle school where we have a lot of long-term subs for grade levels how are we going to make sure that they're following that curriculum and that our subs are providing those kids that curriculum we have i mean there's schools where we have one or two teachers throughout the whole grade level that are the core teachers and we're missing english math social studies you know like how are we ensuring that those kids where they don't have a full-time teacher is getting that same education that another school may be getting so i can address that and i'm gonna also pass it on to hr because they have been supporting us with academics on that so the big picture that i would like to share is today we just finished 10th day of school so we were projecting x many of students uh you will probably recall that last year particularly at the middle schools we did not cut positions um you know following the projections that we had because we were projected like most of the districts in colorado we have been projected to have less students our colorado kids are simply not having children as quick as we were in our generations i guess so so we started classes particularly at the middle school with very few kids per section so we have some classrooms that are you know probably sitting 10 12 kids after day 10 so today was the count day and we have been meeting with principals there have been several meetings specifically with the middle school the two middle schools we have been looking at those students that are not showing up actually later on this week cabinet and members of registration and schools we're going to go out looking for children who are still registered but have not shown up so we need to know where they are so we're going to start with juniors and seniors and then we're going to go down the following week to middle and elementary but we're looking at who is a true no show the schools in the east actually are just starting school so we are expecting to receive requests for records so those students are not showing up so we will know that they're no longer with us we're looking also at by section in by subject area where do we need to start combining classrooms so that we still have one teacher with one classroom that is still manageable rather than a teacher and a staff with two small groups so actually we had a meeting today about that looking at um some of the projections and i'm gonna pass it on to uh to dr mckenna to talk a little bit more in detail on that in as far as the curriculum i need to add we had quite a few of our substitute teachers that we hired before the beginning of the school year as long-term subs that went through the entire training that teachers went through so we paid them you know to come in so they went through those processes we have every certified licensed with a with a teaching license and every certified individual in central office out supporting schools they have been basically teaching lessons in at the school level as well if they have instructional coaches or if they have certified individuals that have been hired to support outside right now we want to make sure that every child has teachers despite all that we still have substitutes so in classrooms with subs we're making sure we have two substitutes to support each other and they're receiving lesson planning from the team so that they are following in pairs is not going to be one teacher so they are following a lesson plan that has been prepared by teachers but i'm going to pass it on to talk a little bit more in detail of the specific plans for the high school for the middle schools thank you dr luria madam vice president members of the board cabinet those at home watching so um a heavy lift was done on the front side we knew going into the school year that we were going to have vacancies so like our superintendent said we wanted to get as many qualified long-term subs front loaded with training as much as possible knowing that we also started early on visiting with those principals talking about what plans could we put in place to support the learning that's going on so the only other few things i would add in addition to what dr lorea said is in most cases even going through all of that we would try to get a master teacher in there to demonstrate the exemplar lesson on the front side so they would see the lesson by a highly qualified teacher so that when they took over second third fourth fifth period they not only got the lesson plans they not only went to pd in a lot of cases on the front side but they could see the lesson actually being implemented uh by a master teacher so that they could work through that lesson in following periods now that's what the goal was not every situation we were fortunate enough to have that in place but what we did do is dr cochran dr schneider myself we were at those campuses we still are at those campuses working on collapsing campus classes when when we know that the classes may be a little bit larger but we're going to support them with a long-term sub in that classroom to help co-teach to do small groups to do pull up to do flexible grouping while we continue to look for a vacancy our goal is by this week early next week that our kiddos in as many situations as possible if not every situation are with a highly qualified teacher even if the classes are larger with support from staff at ess and the substitute team all while we're looking to hire for those positions the sell on that is when we are continuing to look for teachers it's much easier sell knowing that a teacher is going to walk into a classroom that's been supported by a teacher than a classroom that has been supported the entire time by a sub and we love our subs right i want to echo what our chief legal attorney said earlier last week we love our subs but there is no rep replacement for a highly qualified teacher that knows pedagogy and so these two gentlemen have uh been relentless in supporting the work that we're doing to ensure that our kiddos get the best support they get anything else yeah and and just one more thing um for our substitutes we also held training during the evenings uh if they were not um here or were not able to be present for the teacher during the teacher training so we provided additional supports as well in the evening so definitely what we and our goal is to have a certified teacher in every classroom we are at the elementary level actually we are working really hard to staff central but in the other schools we only have three teaching vacancies all together so we're doing great um strives the high school is looking also well it's mostly one of our middle schools in one of our elementaries that we're working really hard to to make sure that we have staffing also the the group at the elementary level was tasked to go and look at the classrooms we're starting to balance classrooms in the past uh we have waited probably until october that's too late because you know teachers build relationship with the students so we are balancing classrooms so that when we have extra teachers for example based on student teacher ratio in one classroom and we can merge classrooms or you know just balance the classrooms different that will free up a teacher and then we're going to be able to move that teacher to another campus with with a greater need quick question comment i appreciate all the work that's being done and i know we filled it a lot of parent questions which is probably what prompted this i guess my question is around the other end of that as we talk towards climate and and cultured shifts it i would really appreciate it if we could put some directed communication on flyer and at those particular schools where that's happening because as a parent i always got frustrated when my son would come home and say you know these three teachers are now different and i always have questions why or even to have like a number if you have questions or concerns this is who you contact because it it it creates a a big shift in the lives of the students and the parents yes and we do not only want to share that that is coming but also anticipating the work and letting them know we are working you know doing this this is day 10 so this is the first day that we're actually uh that we met with okay so let's see what the numbers are because after day 10 those no shows um you know are moved to another um area in our registration for lack of a better term not another area just like another classroom of only no shows so that we can start really looking at true numbers because even when we go in and we just count you know heads of students in the classroom sometimes we have a couple of students who may be absent on that particular day or during that particular period so today was the day after 10th day we moved the no shows and now we get through pictures so we started looking at that today but to your point um absolutely but not only when this teacher is going to be new uh just letting teachers i mean uh parents know we're looking at this this is the the process we're following so in the next week or two you're going to see some changes we'll be communicating some some heads up yeah okay i have a few questions um the first one being going back to you know the concern of the the lack of staff or teachers in the classroom and i guess we anticipated that we would be short but was there an anticipation that we would be this short at those particular schools i mean there had to have been something that happened between you know may and now because you know the last i heard we had asked about the shortage and were assured that you know with um our new folks that wasn't going to be such an issue that you know it was going but what we're hearing from parents is a big difference to what i'm hearing here so i just want to make sure that like renee said that there's communication coming out but i think that moving forward there has to be something in place i know you can't anticipate how many teachers are coming back how many are not but there's a way that um i think that this could have been taken care of ahead of time instead of you know right when school started because i think that's what really happened um and not all the schools i get that but at least in a few of them um because those are the ones that are um you know having more of the issues that we're hearing from from parents about so i i just wondering if there's uh i'm hoping and assuming there's going to be a plan in place for moving forward so that that doesn't happen again yeah certainly in between may and now because we were actually getting quite some traction especially when hr started in may april and may to be quite frank the state order when they just decided to gank the accreditation in in may and uh and then start having discussions and moved us to the dissolution and then you know the discussions that were happening that creates internal bleeding and i think um that has you know for any school in colorado it has been difficult i was looking at a report today from caspy no not from caspy from the finance the finance project there are only 11 districts in colorado that said that they did not have any staffing needs and those are all 11 are districts with less than 500 kids so that is a reality that we are living but to put that on and on top of this challenge put a a couple of um state orders from the state board of education that they're janking our accreditation and that they are going to throw us into the dissolution process impacts individuals not only people who are here and left starting that day that night we received resignations uh but also made it made it much more difficult to attract people to come or teachers to come because many conversations were well how do i know you're going to be there by december because people you know may not understand the process so we did a lot of explanation and a lot of you know trying to understand but that definitely hurts us so um so yes we're having a strong plan recruitment and retention plan in place but to answer to your question between may and now the state orders created chaos that terrorized our community and our teachers and you know has created great harm and if i may add one thing a big challenge that was kind of sleeping under the bed in this whole time was positions that we did have hired for through letters of intent who said they were coming and then they well over close to 27 all of a sudden don't show up and so you know and that wasn't a big advertisement hey we're not coming we're assuming they're coming and so when you hire a person you assume that they're going to follow through and take the job so you stop looking right but but apparently they didn't and so even with engagement initiatives in place and you know our goal next year is to be overstaffed to be honest with you the superintendent is supportive of that so that we can look at our areas of most need and you know our staffing really needs to be done in january february march even if you're going to get concerned about it right like i think there'll be times where hopefully if things go to plan we'll be overstaffed and then the superintendent will have to call me in and say now give me a reprimand because we have too many people that aren't going to align with the cfo's budget uh but but that's the goal and uh and honest and part of the reason is we didn't know what we didn't know we assumed people are going to come and you know when 27 people are going to come and then they don't that sneaks up and gets you and it's a lesson learned that and that's not considering those who actually told us we're not coming back because of the order so um well yeah thank you it's good to call it out so people understand that it's not um well not what it's not but what it is let's just say um let's call it out it is what it is um and we know that um that order hurt and here's the consequence to that is the fact that we are short-staffed um but thank you thank you for all your work and getting you know as many people that are trained to to be in these classrooms i guess that brings me to the next question about um you keep talking about the approved curriculum but um being here for a while i thought all our curriculums were approved is there something i'm missing um because i keep hearing well you know they're all going to be teaching to the approved i just want to make sure that that's called out as well and the last thing i wanted to ask is there a timeline i know you talked about not all of these happen at the same time do you guys have a timeline or an idea of a timeline as to when you're reaching these or starting on these goals i think some will be evergreen 96 average daily attendance 95 average daily attendance is always going to be the goal persistence will always look like that our hope is we can get 1.5 years growth for our youngest scholars this year we set the goal at 40 meets or exceeds because we have an audacious three-year goal of 70 percent so we've got to start someplace knowing that that's a pretty that's a pretty hard target to hit but we feel like if we're moving in the right direction it's going to benefit all students and for retention we would hope it goes up as things settle down politically we hope that we are keeping significant more than 80 each year and one last question about the dual language um i didn't see that up here but i'm assuming it's interweaved as part of our equity work yeah my clicker's not working could you could you advance a slide please so we wanted to call out for our dual language students that we have the same expectation across all of our goals so you'll see our our equity goals have lots of words so we wanted to show you the goals and fewer words and just want to recognize that all of them speak to what you're talking about so if we go one more slide you can take a look at the academic goals oh it works again all right okay you can see here we call out uh subgroups and we anticipate seeing growth from students regardless of whether or not they're exceptional and dual language students and sla we also are looking for no major subgroup gaps for our adults as well we want to make sure that the adults who are teaching students represent the population that they serve and we're looking to hire wonderful teachers of color who represent the community as well so i'm not going to spend a ton of time here because we know that everyone in this room is anchored here that we believe if we proactively center the experience of the students who've been furthest from opportunity it's going to benefit every student but did want to call that out as part of our strategic planning process and then give you a sense of what you can expect from tntp in the first six months there's a reason i'm not talking about year two or year three goals yet because we have not yet created a strategic plan to get us through the next three to five years and we haven't had a chance to really dig into the 10 years worth of data that we're collecting right now so in july and august we are working hard to collect data we're doing landscape analysis for both talent and academics and we're understanding better what the community wants both teachers school leaders families and kids we're shadowing students in their classes to understand what it's like to be a student in adam's because none of us spend all day in second grade anymore but we want to know what it's like to be a second grader what's exciting to them and where we have gaps that we have and opportunities to improve and we want to know what people think we want to know what kids think families think what teachers and leaders think and what central office staff think so we'll be giving surveys and having conversations with folks across the district in the community we are currently working on finalizing an assessment strategy that allows us to progress monitor effectively and move quickly so we'll be excited to present that to you when we get to final we're working on that a lot today with the academic team and the executive team we are setting a vision so we have three retreats on the on the calendar one in september for all of us to come together and really norm in the language we're using with children with teachers and with each other and really make sure we're all clear on what the bar is and when we're talking about excellent instruction this is what we actually mean that will drive the work to support teachers and tier one instruction um in their classrooms and get us to the place where we have a strategic plan we anticipate being able to share a strategic plan with this group in december and january is our hope to have it finalized and that will drive the work for the remaining part of the school year and also for for years to come what i will say is it's not going to derail our focus on the academic excellence playbook on the ambassador model there are some things that really matter that adams14 has been doing and we want to continue to do those practices and as part of that work in per the direction of the board we're going to have a board retreat once we have a full board again in those this work and division in the revision the revisiting of the board goals will be covered yes and so that we can continue that work so just for you to know an anticipation that's coming your way as well i wanted to share a few key dates because i know you care deeply about the work that we're doing so we have launched the opportunity scorecard what that is is our data analysis that's going to inform our strategic planning it's low stakes for schools but it's going to give us a lot of information to work from our student experience audit site visit sounds really scary it's not it means tntp will be in classrooms in all schools in adam's 14.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so 11 of the harmful effects comprehensive sex ed were listed on there in this curriculum and i actually forwarded that pdf on that analysis tool to score some of the school board members so when you look at your email you'll probably be able to see that there so some of the things that were listed on here some of the harmful elements of like normalizing sex watching music videos with graphic scenes teen conversations about having constant casual sex pushing girlfriends to have sex all the time being a throwaway girl faking orgasms role-playing scenarios about graphic sex scenes i'll give you consent to sex talking about giving consent to sex children actually do not have the legal right to give consent to sex the law does not recognize that right and in most cases it's illegal and it's a crime so csc actually teaches them about consent but it doesn't teach them about pedophilia it doesn't teach him about statutory rape he doesn't teach him about grooming and that's what most of the csd programs are doing comprehensive sexuality education it also normalizes and promotes homosexual bisexual behavior um discussions on sexual pleasures and orgasms that promotes premature sexual autonomy planning how to get it how to get her to give it to you how to cultivate your north star for sexuality and these are these are excerpts that are taken out of the love notes 3.0 um your time for you to choose your own time for when you want to have sex so you know because of these findings we don't approve the love note 3.0 and we don't approve the other one either and just real quick for those that don't know who com comprehensive sexual education is it's it's really not a curriculum it's not an education it's an indoctrination that's what it is it's a trojan horse it presents itself as something good and safe and needed when on the outside but an insight is something nefarious and harmful to our children to our families to our schools and to our society as a whole and it's a radical social ideology it's being forced upon our children and our schools and there's well-funded um international pressure groups including planned parenthood that have been really successful in pushing this csc into a lot of american public schools and attempting schools and other countries to use it as well but it's an agenda-driven curriculum it sexualizes children it is beyond just teaching about stds and pregnancy and the biology of sex reproduction which is fine kids should learn that at the appropriate ages but it becomes very progressive radical ideas that most people are really naturally repulsed by and it teaches children there are sexual beings from birth it teaches children that they have sexual rights and freedoms it teaches children that they can have sex with anyone wherever they want at any age as long as there's two things present consent and a condom and that is wrong that is wrong to teach children even teenagers and it teaches children to question their gender promotes gender dysphoria and planned parenthood is one of the biggest writers of this um csc and it distributes a lot of propaganda around the world and it's commodifying our children and making our children the product and the reason they want to sexualize children is because there's billions and billions of dollars in it when they become sexually active as early as possible there's billions of dollars in the abortion industry billions of dollars in the gender transition industry most of those that regret that after they go through those gender transitions and it grooms them for sexual abuse by perverts in many of these industries and so i mean there's many more things that i want to say here where there's only a couple minutes left but i think that we as parents should be given time to thoroughly review these curriculums so we can decide whether we think they're good for the children for our kids for our community for our society and you know there are several um laws here in arizona that that have been passed that you know classes have to be separated by boys and girls and sex ed must stress abstinence and sex ed should be opt-in not opt-out and must be age-appropriate stress stds and so forth and so forth um and as far as the national standards there really aren't any congress hasn't passed any law that in that regard the federal government doesn't get involved in sex ed it's a lie there is no national standards required for the state board or local boards to adopt it's organizations like planned parenthood and their partners that create these standards and then call them national standards but on a national level state legislators aren't passing these comprehensive sex ed bills yet yet and that's the key because we as families we need to ensure that our our schools are not promoting harmful messages about human sexuality to our children or any child and we need to let the schools know that we're present we're informed we're watching and we're prepared to act and we need to work together to protect our children against these things so we are against both these curriculums and my wife actually um wanted to mention a couple of things from that pdf that compares those documents um yes the love notes 3.0 i see you shaking your head like the curriculum doesn't actually say things like this but one of the harmful ones is it sexualizes children they give a relationship scenario page 104 it says when we're in public or around his friends he treats me like i'm nothing the only time he really is kind and considerate is when he wants sex if i'm not going to be his or anybody's booty call i deserve better on breaking up with him and then it tells the student to go to consider playing the optional music video till it happens to you by lady gaga found at the end of the slideshow it's important to warn there are graphic scenes in this video that some may not wish to view and that's on page 155 of the curriculum of love notes and then also you had mentioned that it does not promote homosexual or bisexual behavior but it actually normalizes and promotes acceptance or exploration of diverse sexual orientations sometimes in violation of state education laws and page six all youth oh my goodness but just did it happen to me sorry okay i'll just read this one here's another one that um it breaks promotes tran transden trans gender ideology it promotes affirmation and or exploration of diverse gender identities may teach children they can change their gender identity as multiple genders or may present other unscientific and medically inaccurate theories fails to teach that most gender confused children resolve their confusion by adulthood and that extreme gender confusion is a mental health disorder which is known as gender dysphoria that can be helped with mental health intervention on page six um the same page as the other statement i was trying to make and i got cut off but all youth regardless of sexual orientation have attractions emotions and desires for healthy relationships all youth needs skills and knowledge to navigate the relationship and make y sexual choices this is an lgbtq inclusive curriculum page 180 states marriage is a legal and social commitment between two people regardless of gender identity or orientation page 251 points out that ann and cj are a boy girl relationship but their situation can apply to a couple of any identity or orientation page 255 but there are other emotional and social risks that can affect anyone any gender identity orientation that hear less about if you go into like my husband was saying the harmful elements of cse.org you will find all these curriculums and all of the elements that they break and what they're teaching trying to teach are children and you know i have children and i i am a love for children and i am not gonna just stand here and be okay with what they are trying to promote this propaganda that's shoving down their throats at the very early tender age of preschool it's not going to happen it's not going to happen with me thank you miss santana this is only for sixth grade and up and and my own personal comment is this whatever curriculum the board decides to choose if we choose to choose a curriculum it's not going to be an advertisement or a a recruitment for a different lifestyle or anything like that that's that's not the purpose of sex education and i hope we can get the bottom line with some parent input so that we get what we need and not what society would force on us that's that's the key that's what we want to do mr antenna one more question one more comment yeah right may i comment all right no this is not a debate actually you have to stand sit and hold my hands well all right thank you everybody else had to okay all right first of all i wanted to thank you for making it an opt in and not opt out that makes it um as a parent i just really appreciate that having the option to see if this is something i want and if i don't we just won't do it but i did want to know on the opt in philosophy is there going to be an option to opt in for certain lessons and out of other lessons for example in your guys's model very first lesson sixth grade what is a god obviously to a person of faith calling god a um you know not referring to him as a proper noun but merely a noun is super offensive than a faith-based um just in a faith-based culture so would they have the option so it's a typo okay so so the copy you gave me is really fuzzy so that actually helps because that was super alarming i'm like lesson one what's a god okay good glad we could clear that one up um so statistically speaking does your career or how much of your curriculum actually i'll ask this question first does your curriculum cover comprehensive biology anatomy and physiology specific to human reproduction so for the positive potential there's an optional lesson for that on puberty in sixth grade that's up to the schools if they want to have that and then in love notes um i believe at the end towards the end of chapters 11 through 13 um there is discussion on again it's nothing that you wouldn't see in a doctor's office but it is biology of the human anatomy for our curriculum we do not offer any of the comprehensive or biology aspects of that okay so as a parent i find that alarming that when we're talking about a comprehensive sexual education curriculum where we're trying to teach our children what sex is what their body is their changing body what's happening i find it alarming that it's covered in one short optional paragraph in your curriculum and then three more intensive lessons or not paragraphs but but lessons but not clear to 11th or 12th grade so i know things are different than when i went to school i did go to a community that sex education was very like it was common i had it in fourth grade sixth grade seventh grade and it continued through high school but it was a curriculum that covered biology anatomy and physiology so i find it concerning that we're calling this a sexual education curriculum while not covering sexual education so um what is the overall message or theme for avoiding unplanned pregnancy in the curriculums so the overall message for avoiding it in what like can you expand a bit on that what do you mean so you're obviously trying to avoid an unplanned pregnancy both of you guys said that that was the point of the program in what way are you are you teaching the students to avoid unplanned pregnancy um so teaching them to avoid implying pregnancy by letting them know first of all we start off with them setting their goals so what are things that they want to achieve in life and we do talk about how it can make things difficult to finish your goals and reach your goals when you have a child at a young age so so if i understand your curriculum is focused more at an unplanned birth not at avoiding an unplanned pregnancy well no unplanned pregnancy in general okay for our curriculum we do abstinence-based so we do encourage the abstaining of any sexual activity um until a life-committed relationship like marriage um and then also we i'm sorry could you repeat the second part of that question i just wanted to know what was your overall message for avoiding unplanned pregnancy what are you teaching the students to do to avoid an unplanned pregnancy right so the avoiding the unplanned pregnancy is the abstinence pace um at the beginning and then uh there is a lesson in there that talks about choices and that will then be in turn discussed with the the parents as well like what choices would they have but no lenience towards one way or another but it is mentioned in our curriculum so is it safe to say that the message that you're sending is one avoid sex before you're ready to become pregnant and two if you don't make that choice are you trying to prevent pregnancy or end pregnancy we would be trying to prevent pregnancy however our main message is the sexual risk avoidance of 100 abstaining then means 100 reduction or 100 chance of not getting an std unplanned pregnancy or any emotional consequences okay and can you answer the same question yes so since we're comprehensive so we still offer obstinance as the number one choice to 100 percent not guaranteed not get pregnant but we do talk about contraception options we do not discuss abortion as that by arizona law that's illegal we're not allowed to discuss that in the class okay does your curriculum cover sexual harassment which seems to be an ongoing issue in our schools yes so in the high school levels in love notes is a healthy relationship based education so we just do discuss unhealthy relationships and dating violence and so within those pieces there are segments we do discuss sexual harassment what that looks like and if a student is experiencing that what can they do so what avenues they can go to which we always encourage talk to a trusted adult and trusted adult can be a parent caregiver someone on campus that's a teacher counselor and have them aware of the situation so that they can get the help that they need if they're experiencing sexual harassment or assault okay same there are lessons that will cover that as well and then we do the same process if the student needs to disclose to anybody that they are experienced something then they what are the steps to go through so we do also cover that in our curriculum all right do either of your curriculums discuss the the pitfalls and harms of pornography yes in seventh grade in positive potential in the dangers of social media it talks about dangers of pornography and how it impacts the adolescent brain how in pornography does not show healthy relationships how it's often violent and it perpetuates unrealistic expectations and actually how it has the same effect on the adolescent brain as drugs and alcohol and how it impacts the relationship so we do talk about the pitfalls of pornography just a minute another question for you in that teaching does it include instructing the students that showing pornography to other students is a form of sexual abuse in the curriculum it does not cover that okay so our curriculum will cover that as well in the eighth grade and the high school levels um as far as you know what that means what that looks like but the same it does not cover that last piece that you mentioned so so neither curriculum teaches children that's spreading the pornography about in the school is actually a crime and that it's a form of sexual abuse written curriculum however the thing with the developers especially if there are parents that are saying hey this is more of what i want to see or this is what i don't want to see we don't have the authority to change the curriculum however we can always reach out to the developers and say hey based on our community these are the things that parents are saying that they'd like to see or they'd like to be taken out of the curricula and then that would be up to the developers to incorporate that into a future update okay um sorry our one of our lessons does actually cover sexting and the dangers of sexting and then the legal consequences that can come from that yeah which would cover the individual or the individuals involved potentially appear involved which could be terrible i'm just talking about pornography in general um the students do spread it about somewhat in the school and it is you know it's a form of sexual abuse and so i'm just wondering if in this comprehensive sexual education they will be taught that um does your curriculum thoroughly cover st sdis stds other harmful diseases yes so again in positive potential so the middle school level in seventh grade and eighth grade levels we do talk about stis stds and then in love notes again those last chapters 11 chapter 11 i believe we discussed stis and the reason that love notes has all of those components at the end is because we're building it from the foundation up if we they just introduce stis right off the first lesson a lot of students would be uncomfortable with that topic so it gives them time to understand us understand the class get comfortable with the material but then also have a background to build off of once we get to that section on stis so we do cover that okay what are the required credentials and the education level for the instructors we must be trained by the developers of these curricula and so what that means is we go down to the arizona department of health services we are trained from those specific developers and it's usually a three-day training and we must teach back and they evaluate us and they determine if we have passed their criteria in order to be considered yes you can teach this or no you don't have the skill set that we're looking for to teach this so we have to have certification in each curriculum in order to teach it and what level of education do you have to have to qualify for certification so it's open for our program our educators have bachelors in their they have bachelor's myself i do have a high school level education so yes so most of our educators have bachelor's degrees but they do also have high school education there's continued education opportunities as well and same we have to be certified through our curriculum as well to be able to present and implement the program to fidelity okay so i guess that my last comments and this is just quick it's not prepared i just got all this information and i'm trying to formulate a response for the board i really think that um sexual education can be an important component in and in a school's education especially if it's an opt-in approach where parents are choosing the things that best support their needs at home however i am very concerned that neither of these particular curriculums seem to be covering sexual education their focus seems to be primarily on relationships um and so if we're going to call it sexual education we need to actually have it be what it what you know we're saying it is we wouldn't tell a student that they're going to a biology class and then talk about nasa the whole time um so we definitely need to use the correct labels for transparency purposes also i i think that we need to consider like how this is being presented sexual education is predominantly a biological topic obviously there's other components to that but again that should be the focus and if we have um and we have well-qualified teachers at blue ridge many many teachers holding master's degrees and above i think that it's important that as our students are being taught these subjects we should think about what their background in counseling is especially when we say we've heard the term age-appropriate over and over and over who determines age-appropriate i would hope that somebody who studied child development would be the ones determining what's age-appropriate and would be leading those discussions so like for example we have counselors here at the school that are very good at working with the children and they understand age-appropriate um so i don't really like the idea of leaving it on a curriculum alone to determine age appropriate sure somebody created that curriculum and maybe it made sense for their area where they were writing it but our kids might ask different questions or they might have a different focus and it would be nice to know that those moderating these very sensitive topics have a lot of experience in this area so another idea would be like whether they would be a health professional perhaps they have a background in nursing or their doctor or something like that so that's just my feedback um i i'm not necessarily against a comprehensive sexual education program on campus um especially for an opt-in but let's make sure that's what it is thank you i think we need to limit maybe one or two more we have to start this next meeting but i do think we will probably have a follow-up meeting before our next hearing with the committees so people can come and there won't be a time limit on it if that's all right and get more questions answered and perhaps help the family put together a comprehensive group of ideas to give to the board so thank you we'll have two more okay my name is gail told i'm a new parent to the district i am a retired educator of 30 years in high school i have a couple of questions about the curriculum i had no idea any of this was going on until i got the email whenever that came out so i have a lot of questions and i want to know first of all how many different programs were considered until you came down to two different programs what those other programs might have been and this could be something that would be at your committee meeting um yes i'd like to know that yes to those questions yeah that would be something the committee has put together and they would like to know when the committees yeah i don't know who's who's [Music] who is spurring out the committee head who's who's in charge of that committee and when they meet dr wright that would be that to be dr right that's me so it's evident there's a lot of questions and there's still information that's needed so what i would i propose is we will have a date and we'll post it 14 days in advance and one of the reasons there's a lot of people here we've made it because we've made a concerted effort to make sure people know this is not something we're trying to you know pass through into the guys of night or midnight so we can have well i'll get with the administration team i'll get with our facilities i'll see where when this room is open and we'll give 14 days advance i'll ask these ladies to come back and we'd be glad to have a meeting for as long as you want to talk and so i would say we'd probably start it to give people that are working a chance at 5 30 till the cows come home i do have another question the materials are on display at this point in time and how how long will they stay available to us to review they've been on display since may and they're on display now in the district office that will will remain on display until after june excuse me september well it could be the october board meeting when the board decides okay so this is scheduled maybe for october for a decision by the board is that october would be the decision point making for the board would we get an email saying when this committee would meet so that we could yes plan ahead if and if you want to if you'd like to do that make sure you leave your contact information with mary ford and we're glad to include you in that and what we'll do is as the president is directed we'll have a separate committee meeting before the next hearing which is september 22nd bless you okay thank you very much i appreciate your time yes ma'am could we have somebody other than the same person speak i know it's nice you get a thought you want to give it so let's have i hope so we have we have about six minutes for two more questions two more questions um i have a master's degree in health education and just retired from teaching 7th and 9th grade health in alaska which um and i just wanted to say wholeheartedly support abstinence until marriage um however i really strongly feel that having discussions in school is a really good idea i think that the more we can have conversations about this the better off we are our students are bombarded by the media 24 7 and they have maybe one or two conversations with their parents in their lifetime and we need to have more conversations about it with them and i know some parents do a lot better job than that but i don't think the majority of parents do a lot better job than that and so um i would suggest actually opt out if i was choosing because the most at-risk parents often don't fill out the permission slips and those are the kids who don't have conversations with their parents at home and um i just for the record promote or i would i would support either one of these um programs and i would encourage parents to go to the school and listen to the presentations and then go home and have a conversation with your kids about your values i don't think that them hearing something that you disagree with at school is necessarily bad if you have a follow-up conversation with them and say hey this is what do you think about this this is what i think about this this is what we believe is our family thinks about this that it opens up a lot of conversation opportunities for you to have with your kid um that should be should be happening and it it allows them to know what their peers are saying what other people are saying and it just provides a lot of opportunity for families to think about it i had kids in my class literally after the end of some of these discussions that were like wow i think i'm going to wait now i mean they'd never even the idea of waiting hadn't even ever crossed their mind before and after these presentations they were like these are really good ideas these are really good reasons to wait and so um they were actually committed to weight after having the the lessons in schools um so i think not discussing is is a disservice to our community and we need to give them some reasons to wait some skills to stand up to peer pressure and some skills to set boundaries thank you one more thank you i my name is lenny hoover and i came maybe to offer a solution i'm a retired principal uh they used to work for you guys as a vice principal at the high school i moved on and i've actually taught sex ed of course it was in a baptist church so i guess that doesn't count or remember leviticus and numbers deuteronomy but i as a principal in phoenix at an inner city school i had six pregnancies in one year in my brand new sixth grade that was added with six teachers and that's six teachers that were self-contained units that means you know 35 38 kids to each teacher rather large and we had six pregnancies and there were canned curriculums that type of thing and i'm not going to comment because i've only looked at your curriculums for about an hour and a half and talk to people i'm not going to comment on the advisability of either one i do believe in opt out but what do you do with those kids that are opting out sometimes they're stigmatized do they really have meaningful work to do so what i did was i had islamic folks i had 19 different languages in my school i had catholics i had baptist bless the mormons heart they're the only a really large group of people that i had from my parent council that wanted to serve on it and we started recruiting all of those people from different backgrounds and we had them sit down with the teachers and i would start the meetings but i kind of got out of it and i let those mothers and i let the teachers work on what sixth grade is a young grade on what they would talk about what they wish covered and then where there needed to be professional biological that type of thing components added i had my professional staff to it and the parents okayed that we turned that school around i want you to know it was in federal improvement when we took it it was a b-plus school when i left seven years later there were seven fights a day when i started there were about seven fights a year when i left it took time i'm not saying it didn't but anything worth doing and our children are really worth teaching and teaching well and i am not happy with the way things are going federally in our government of course since ducey's recommended it i almost don't know what to say about that that we have to have sex ed curriculum but there are other options you could even pick and go through have parent councils go through a curriculum with selected and then do an opt-in opt-out by the unit and make sure all materials are specifically stated what is going to be in that unit so people that are teaching you can't bring stuff in optionally that they wish i hope i've not insulted anybody thank you for listening to me thank you i appreciate it appreciate your wisdom your guidance and your knowledge when it comes to that touchy subject we're having to deal with right now so man wouldn't be great if you were part of the committee hey we want your name and address and email so you can be a part of that and give give some information appreciate your your background okay i think we're probably gonna have to call this right now so that we can uh gear up for the next school board meeting where the the regular schedule meeting we invite you all to stay we'll take a brief pause because we have to stop the feed right now and we'll have to start the feed up again so we can broadcast the regular school board meeting so that will conclude this hearing we'll have information sent out as to when the next interim hearing will be and then we will have another one the 22nd i guess isn't it 22nd have a committee meeting to be announced the date next year the next hearing i'm sorry will be the 22nd all right thank you thank you very much
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so are there any questions on the bonds okay great then finally the debt service funds so this top grid where we show the adopted budget and the year-to-date balance the adopted budget is based on the the principal and interest payment schedule reflected after that final bond sale or that last bond sale in february of 2022 so that's where the budget comes from but note at the bottom you can see the the table at the bottom which is a cash representation of what's happening in the bond debt service so note the beginning balance of 780 thousand dollars so that is after we made the principal and interest payment on july 1st so that 780 thousand dollars will be used to offset the current year's tax rate which we have already approved with the county superintendent's office the year-to-date revenue of 105 000 includes a little bit of interest as well as some receipts associated with some late property tax payments and then finally the year-to-date spend is about a net of 600 due to primarily to fees so you can see our cash balance is 884 thousand dollars note that we have an interest payment uh january 1st which we will receive enough tax receipts by that time to make that payment and then the final big big payment is due next july 1 july 1 of 2023.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so the irony isn't lost on us but that is the best location in terms of particularly of cost and disruption to other aspects of the school the work there would not be complete with this you know there's a lot more work to do in these schools and this is just the preliminary phases and if the referendum passes there would be more work that needs to be done but this is the stuff that is important that we've identified as urgent and we want to get started with as soon as realistically possible so the proposal is preliminary and it's just conceptual as to what will happen in those schools we're just identifying the areas as to where things would be located here we're looking at alice gustafson school and its parking lot and so the area highlighted in red is where we would propose to move the office to it takes the strain off of the early childhood center which is on the north side of the building right now which is where the main office is at el augustus and it happens to be secure but that space was never designed to handle the car traffic and the pedestrian traffic that goes through that area of the building worse is the pedestrian car and bus traffic that goes through that neighborhood is very congested and convoluted and so we would make some adjustments to the site plan particularly how traffic flows and put changed how the the u-shaped kind of car drop-off area moves through the site and make traffic come only from the east toward the west so that we wouldn't have traffic crisscrossing each other so um these are like i said conceptual we're working with the city of batavia we're working with our architects we're working with our civil engineers and then working with our teachers and our and our neighbors to talk about the impacts of these changes moving forward but this is the concept and if so long as the board approves of the idea we'll incorporate it into the fiscal 23 budget and it will require a commitment in the fiscal 24 budget and then we would move forward with these plans in earnest ideally bidding them in november because anything later than that would cause us to probably not be able to order all the things that we need and get all the plans in place to get this stuff done next summer i'd be happy to entertain any questions that you might have yes sue the fence that it references at gustafson in particular that's the first one i looked at um is that the red line or the black line that is it's very hard to see here but it is the red line and the rationale behind that fence is just to prevent pedestrian traffic from crossing in that area it's not intended to actually keep people out but we don't want but because of the traffic yes we don't want pedestrian pedestrians crisscrossing traffic and and basically at any point that they choose we want to control where that happens because the cars will park because people park on the side of the street where four is where number four is people would still be able to park they parked there so you don't want to walk across the okay the bus line and that main sidewalk that's that sidewalk that runs east west on carlisle we don't want people to choose to walk across that lawn and then cross the the car lane and then walk into another entrance we want them to follow the sidewalks so is one the primary drop off is that going to be car and bus or is bus still going to be on the other side there a bus would be on the other side of the building but this may change so like i said it's conceptual and it really depends on what the city of batavia tells us in terms of what obviously buses and cars are going through here and how that works and how that fits together is going to be contingent on cars going through there now yes what do you need from us tonight tony just a general commitment that we this is something that you the board wants to accomplish in the current fiscal year and the next fiscal year and this will actually bleed over to the next conversation that we have about the budget and i was going to say and you're the one that we would actually have the money do we have that's actually voting on it at a later point but you don't want to move ahead until we've all said yes this is what we're technically you'll have two opportunities to vote on it one when you adopt the budget in september and two when you approve the bids in november but today is effectively to give you some level of comfort to engage the architects and tell them to go do their job exactly which is spending money just so everybody's aware there's no work for free no architecture really came up with this are architects and civilians okay so oh it was dlr yeah it's on the corner that's right there yeah it's too tiny i know you gotta like six times all right so i guess my question is we know that this could change but in um in theory do we support this plan if it's for safety yes okay because you do or you do i do i just i know what's involved in these and just knowing that the current environment situation is an environment and where the main office is and how to even get to screening anyone at both of these schools you got to basically walk into the middle of the building which is like the worst way to handle anybody from a visitor coming into the building right so to provide more detail on that and i mentioned in the report but essentially what needs to happen is it's not just a door that's a secure vestibule it does include that uh it includes moving where the main office where the where mostly the school secretary sits giving them visibility to the rest of the site so that they have situational awareness as to what's happening around the school moving the principal's office to be adjacent to that location and then moving the nurse's office because that must be adjacent to the main office as well of course that creates other dominoes and dynamics that began to fall throughout the rest of the building but that's what we're concentrated on in phase one and there will be other adjustments that will need to be made throughout the rest of the building and moving things around because we're not increasing the building's footprint we're just moving around what's inside it and so it's rather complex is this going to take up all of our capital improvement money or and then some and then some so what is the impact if the referendum passes versus if it doesn't pass so this is the work that we've identified that must happen well right i mean i'm just saying it's going to have a domino effect because we're taking up all of our money that we normally use for maintenance and there's still much more that needs to be done in these schools too to make them usable for the next 10 or 15 years until we make a decision as to what maybe come of these buildings as their age yeah that's why i'm bringing it up because yes we need this for the other two students yes we have to do this regardless but it's going to put us in a situation i'm saying we need it for four schools if the referendum doesn't pass right is there security issues at uh ac storm and louise white yes there are yeah we'll have to figure that out okay but we're gonna work on that right for the time being we'll work on the optimistic assumption that the referendum because we wouldn't pay for that or we wouldn't approve the payment until after that referendum is voted on right are you no this would this is not associated with this i'm saying but we wouldn't be voting for final approval until after we probably would because the referendum wouldn't be till april or the date you gave no reference in november november but bids would be awarded in the meeting ideally in the meeting in november yeah so we would know you probably would know but i'm afraid to pass because voting would occur oh because we've been meeting but we're doing the second week in november you're right we wouldn't know but at that point they're not related they're not on the same no but i think argus is saying that would inform us yeah before we went to the vote with the results of the referendum which may change one's perspective of right i think that it was that your point rj that we may need to look at aaron's point is is what we the assumption that we're operating on is this is the minimum amount of work that needs to be done irrespective of whether or not the referendum passes or not if the referendum doesn't pass we're going to have to come up with a plan b for hc storm and louise white yeah and we're going to need some time to come up with a plan b but right now we're hoping for plan a i mean tony i had a conversation with you and the way i understand it is this is of like the highest priority because for me personally as a board member the one thing that really keeps me up at night is the safety security of our student staff and everyone that we're in charge of during that day and so um yes you know this is going to maybe put a strain on the budget slightly but i feel that we're being fiscally responsible with taxpayer money to do this because this is work that needs to be done we're doing a good job of what we have we have an opportunity to do much better right and i really can't think of anything more important than the security of our community i may follow on to that comment thank you um two things one the reason why we ended up hiring dlr to do that master facilities plan is we realized that we could relatively easily build a secure vestibule on storm and louise however there was so much more work that we knew that needed to be done and so many interdependencies and intricacies that if we went and did that we would probably tear down a two million dollar vestibule within five to seven years and having wasted that kind of money and we just don't have that kind of money to waste frankly right and so we needed to have the plan to see how all the pieces fit together before we move forward we now have that plan and that's why we're here talking about this for ags and jbn unfortunately cost effective wise those schools really should be torn down but the amount of work that needs to be done there and rebuilt but that's just not in the cards for us right now but i would say too it isn't as though these schools are unsafe it's not that they're they're not unsafe places we would never bring kids to an unsafe place but the security and um especially perimeter security is not ideal in any way sensor form and we have to make adjustments to keep it secure and this is just not best practice and so it's not unsafe but we can do a lot better and that's why we're making these improvements agreed you know tony safety has always been a major concern of mine and so i think anything we can do to secure the buildings is a priority so we're good you want to talk about how this impacts our budget next i'm ready when you are you ready to hear about how it's going to impact our budget guy yeah so this is our opportunity for a public hearing so we do have to declare that we're opening the hearing i'll give some um background on the budget but then we'll give the public an opportunity to comment or ask questions if if they choose so i have the verbiage are we ready yup all right tonight we'll conduct a hearing on the bps101 budget we'll begin the hearing with a brief presentation from cfo tony and glacey after excuse me presentation the public can comment there will be no action at tonight's meeting for any of our agenda items just that one yeah all right tony tell us about the budget right so in terms of our process we the board placed a tentative budget on display at its meeting in july this evening we're conducting the public hearing to hear from members of the community in terms of their concerns or thoughts or questions about the budget we will adopt the final budget in september at the meeting on the 20th and the last day to adopt a budget for our for a public school district in illinois is september 31st if you wouldn't mind holly if you would open up the tentative budget summary i have updated this tentative budget summary as of today so if you looked at it in the prior few days that this agenda item was available it has changed i apologize for that there are a lot of moving pieces with this particular budget um and i want to give you the best information that i have but it continues to move page number five i believe it's is a summary i keep going holly i'll tell you when to stop might be more than five keep going we're gonna go right to the numbers which intimidates many folks keep going one more page i believe right here of those numbers okay so take a little different approach here in explaining the budget if you'd scroll up and just blow that up as best you could i'd appreciate it this is a total summary of the fiscal 23 budget both in terms of operating funds and non-operating funds what are operating funds operating funds include the education fund the operations and maintenance fund the transportation fund the imrf retirement fund and the working cash fund and those that group together is what our district needs to operate on a daily basis there are non-operating funds which includes our debt service fund which pays kind of our mortgage if you will kind of our in our debt and then our capital projects fund we move money every year our practice is to move money from some of our operating funds to our capital a lot of our capital projects span multiple fiscal years or they are in the occur in the summer time which depending on when a contractor bills us may fall in one fiscal year or the next and make can make our budget look like we're spending more or into deficit in a given year or excessive surplus and so that's why we make these distinctions and move that money over to them now in the operating fund at present this current version of the budget we're showing a surplus of 170 which out of 120 million dollars is not much is a razor thin margin for a surplus and so i do anticipate that we will have a surplus at the end of this fiscal year but a lot has to go right for that to happen we are showing at present an almost one million dollar surplus in the non-operating funds and the primary reason for that is all the not all the money that we're transferring over to capital projects or spending out of capital projects in the in this fiscal year will be spent because i don't know exactly if we do this work at jb nelson and alex gustafson i don't know exactly when we'll get the bills for that work but we have to have the money there to pay them so that we can pay it when the time comes so it's really close we're moving about four million dollars out of our operating funds and into our non-operating funds so that we can pay for this project if this is what the board chooses to do there's a lot going on in this budget um salaries are going up not as much as you would otherwise expect um uh we are hiring a lot of newer staff that make less so it's pulling down some of those averages it's a kind of a hold over from the pandemic a lot of positions went unfilled during the pandemic and now that we're actually filling them we still have vacancies but now that we are filling them it's pulling down some of the the salary increases in terms of its averages benefits are doing well our new benefits plan is being is contained and is is much less than inflation so we're seeing we're reaping those benefits however we rely very heavily on purchase services contractual services we outsource custodial we outsource transportation we outsource source food service and those are seeing massive increases as you would expect in this economy everything is increasing in excess of our revenue new revenue is coming in at five percent i anticipate to come in at five percent this year expenses are going up eight point seven percent as of today so we're spending more this year than we're taking in and that is a dangerous position to be in over time and so we must be careful i'm saying that this guy's falling here but we just need to be prudent with our finances and we always do and we've got some additional pressures that we're not accustomed to um i think that's about it when it comes to the budget unless there are any specific questions that you would like me to answer oh a couple of other things sorry i'm running off the top right and wrong about this all night yeah enrollment we have more students at present enroll in our schools than we would otherwise anticipated so our enrollment trends have been going down for the last probably eight years expected to have about 5150 students here this year in fact we have about and so more than than we would otherwise expect which is good um as you well know birth rates continue to decline not just in illinois in the king in the collar counties but nationwide it's an issue declining enrollments are an issue in schools nationwide and will continue to be an issue um so we have more folks moving into town than we have than that are moving out at present which is good news but the birth rates can will continue to decline we graduated last spring of 550 seniors and in this incoming kindergarten class is about 325 so there's a big difference between seniors who are graduating kindergartners coming in and our staffing is staying roughly nor the same as it was in the prior year down about 1.9 fte and so that's good news for class sizes in general although there are class size issues around the district and there always will be depending on where how old kids are and what neighborhood they live in but class sizes have on average have never been smaller in batavia so that's good news and that is now i'm done all right keep board members have any questions for tony with that enrollment decline is it just it declined less than expected or was it actually a bump up it declined less than expected and it's close to okay obama close which kind of just highlights that the enrollment is really kind of like reading tea leaves yes the good news is my projections have never been more wrong on enrollment in in the positive direction [Laughter] tony uh one of the numbers that stood out to me as you said revenues um are increasing five percent expenditure is 8.1 but you said we're not saying the sky is falling so why do you say that because uh to a you know common person well you're not taking in as much as your expenses going that's not the right trend but there could be some factors that could change in the future that right so as with the board was talking earlier about hiring and then making sure that we remain competitive and have salaries that are attractive to employees or potential employees when we do that we need to make sure that we can sustain those salaries over time and the challenge there is it might work in a given year and it could work this year but being able to sustain that or with the expected revenue that we're going to get in two three four five years it has to remain within that ban otherwise we'll be forced due to money reasons to lay people off because we just won't have the staff here to do so now the question that we're assuming in our financial projections is that with our declining enrollment we can theoretically reduce the amount of staff that are available because we if we don't have as many kids we shouldn't need as many teachers the challenge is that's never really worked for us we should have eight fewer fte in this fiscal year than we did last year based on enrollment although it's higher than we otherwise anticipated but we only have negative 1.9 so tony reminds brad and i have this all the time this is we talk about this constantly we do yes uh and so if we're not careful we could put ourselves in a more precarious position especially with the pressure that we see to increase wages so we just need to be mindful of that and i'm saying that we can't do things or that we should do things but it's going to take active management and prudent action so that we live within our means and we need to take care of our schools too as as chris has been saying for years and years serving on the capital projects committee we need more money to actually take care of our buildings yet we need more money to hire the right staff we need more money to make sure that kids are getting the best instruction that we can possible but all this stuff comes to roost at once we want to have small class sizes too but you're juggling 17 different priorities that all compete with each other simultaneously it's just like your house you're making the same amount of money but cost of living is going up all right any other questions comments from board members is there anybody from the public who'd like to comment or on the presentation the budget presentation thanks to him you got a thumbs up from me thanks ming thanks next item on our agenda is um our action items uh the first action item is the approval of the transportation contract amendment again tony and so as i said we rely very heavily on purchase services and service contracts to provide um our support services to students to remain competitive for bus drivers uh first student who provides regular education transportation services for the school district has requested an increase in their contract essentially it's a three-year contract we are currently in the second year and they would like to implement the third year's rates so that they can increase the starting wages for bus drivers and attract more bus drivers last year was not a good year for bus drivers and having buses arrive to school on time luckily we have almost as many drivers as we need to have right now with our current routes and we want to keep it that way so that we remain competitive and so we're recommending that we increase these rates to the year three and that will cost the board of education about forty thousand dollars more than they would have otherwise expected questions for trial and transportation contract you you said that it wasn't a good year for buses how does the rates help that is it more bus drivers is it how does that help offset that concern more bus drivers okay essentially at the end of the day better planned routes because you have more options that sort of stuff potentially yeah if we don't have enough drivers or essentially excess drivers because you know there's somebody sick every day calls in sick and if there aren't is there isn't a bus driver to actually pick up that route then that route is often very late because they have to scramble to make coverage needs work any other questions all right i would entertain a motion to approve the contract amendment with first student for regular education people transportation and adjust the daily rates as presented we'll move second move by meinsler second by lock all in favor all right any opposed right next item on our action agenda is the approval to increase substitute teaching rates i'm going to hand that over to steve yeah i've said plenty tonight but again this the approval we're seeking is to help bps 101 um not pay the least in our area but to be competitive um and i will say that uh that i i i came up with a couple of different scenarios for uh these different rates um i met with tony to make sure that the budgeting is appropriate and the finances are there to do this and um we as we worked on that we went with the the best rates that we could i'm actually happy very happy with uh the recommendation we're uh bringing forth so any questions i have a question yeah it could be just that i'm getting old but when did we last do this i would swear that we just recently okay so it's not that last year we did it last uh you approved it last september for october 1st previous to that we did it in january of previous to that it was a long time ago okay because it seems like we're doing it more often yeah we're in the midst of what you could call it an arms race um i i have a meeting tomorrow with my king county hr colleagues and it won't shock me if one of them chimes in and says well we're raising our sub rates again and i'll be saying yes we are too okay hopefully okay no i i just but yeah i don't want to say we go higher even this is another they're based on comparatives with uh mike again i'm really lucky i have a great team in king county that do the job i do we're transparent we're honest we share ideas we share spreadsheets with numbers and this these numbers all came from comparisons to our cane uh because we were unfortunately substantially lower substantially than our other districts right we raised and then everyone else in some of the categories yeah yeah it's like that okay and some are still higher right yeah some are still lower and and you know this is just anecdotal but for somebody who spends her day in a high school building and talks to subs that are there most of the time what some say is they pick a school district or a school that they like they just don't want to leave ridiculous money on the table right so if they can go to school districts over and make a substantially larger amount of money they'll consider making the change most of them don't want to they just want to make the going rate yes i don't think five ten dollars yeah is going to make it yeah yeah so uh if no one has any other questions i would entertain a motion to increase the pay rates as presented so moved second who's by lock second by meadows all in favor aye any opposed all right tell us about nurses steve i'm surprised similarly we were turned down many times um in many times and i'm not exaggerating that at all we were very concerned we weren't going to find nurses um we we scrambled and again the uh brad v brad two worked tirelessly over the months of july and august to find folks and we we've gotten there but we are uh significantly lower than where we should be in the current market uh for these positions this impacts not a ton of people um but it's the right thing to do to keep us competitive and i think that the world has seen how important the registered nurse position is in our school buildings i got to see our one of our new hot new nurses in action on the very first day of school and she was absolutely fantastic um and so this is a good faith effort to pay them the right the correct wage again staying competitive questions we heard time all right steve talked a lot tonight so he pre-sold us i would entertain a motion to approve the rate increase as presented so moved second move my lock second by meadows all in favor any post all right i do have a quick question on that that has nothing to do sure do we know why we had such a strong turnover with the nursing staff uh we have not had a ton of turnover in that department um some people moved some people retired um it was kind of like the perfect storm school nursing looks different than it did or at least the last two and a half years has looked a lot different than it did preceding that um so okay last item on our agenda is approval of the equity team consultant i'm going to hand that over to dr hitchens and i'm going to hand it over to ming shelby this is a really exciting part of the night um so there's three updates from the equity committee and the first one is that we met several times over the summer and one of the tasks that the committee um wanted to focus on was the welcome and inclusive environment and crafting that safe space messaging to not only staff but also to students so i have some cute props here that are displayed in our elementary schools and these were designed by our student intern but the message and the vision behind it was with equity team and then here's one of our secondary schools and you'll notice there's a qr code that goes straight straight to student resources so that's one thing that the team worked on um the second is that implicit bias training is something that the team felt that they really wanted to focus on and so on september 2nd sherry jones from the iea will be leading two breakout sessions with our with our staff and what's really great is that it's not just our certified staff but all staff are invited our campus monitors paraprofessionals everybody are welcome to be a part of this event and then the equity team also met with sherry jones over the summer to discuss what are some pre-activities some post activities that we need to complete to make sure that we're ready to go and prepared for sherry and then our final one is that we interviewed four consultants to help us with our equity action plan and it was unanimously decided that dr rikita leaks would be the person that would help us with this charge and the team overall felt really really excited for to meet with her and help us continue this really great work and one of our members is in the audience today kara shuster and she was a really big part of the summer as well so that's the quick update talk way less than stephen tony you did thank you um any questions for me no all right thanks for coming kara um i would entertain a motion to um i'm sorry i lost track of to approve dr rakita leaks of unlimited opportunities llc to consult with the equity team in the amount of thirteen thousand five hundred dollars seven move my mindset second by was that you rd yeah uh all in favor any opposed all right that passes thank you guys so much lots of good stuff on this agenda tonight um and lots of really good discussion so that's really awesome uh we'll go next to administration comments great i have several first back in august we had a special meeting to discuss board communications and i know that meeting was definitely needed there's many people the community staff board that sometimes get frustrated with communications a lot can go wrong um including like you want transparency and you want to be able to connect with the community so we decided to sit together and meet and try to problem solve and from your perspective what i heard at the meeting is you guys really want transparency you need to follow the open meetings act which brings some challenges to communications you need to follow your policy which is very specific about how you communicate with each other and the public um and you definitely also want people's problems to be solved and you want people to be heard um and there is that desire to follow the chain of command so that people could get their problem solved in the place that they should be solved at our workshop we identified issues related to communications we talked about concerns that people have shared and some of the emails that you've gotten we shared our frustrations as well i know something positive will definitely come out of that meeting for example we decided that we would like somebody to facilitate future sessions so i'm going to pass these out not now because as a former teacher i know that if i pass this out you'll read it but i'm even sending you giving you a pen because what we heard what we decided after this meeting is this is a hot topic and we need somebody here who has the expertise so the illinois association of school boards could help you your attorney can help you or luda as a statewide organization could also come in and facilitate it but i started with iesb so i have um laura martinez is your representative and she's a parent in the district so how great is that so i there's four dates here that you're going to tell me whether or not you can make them and what time you can start and then i'll see if magic happens and we're all able to pick the same night also in the packet that i'm going to hand out is we talked through like what happens when an individual contacts you what happens when somebody emails you what happens when somebody comes and speaks it public comment how do you respond to that because it's in your policy and it is the you know that you don't engage with people during public comment and that's not because we don't care about them but that is policy um and so we need to all be on the same page with that um and so what happens if um somebody sends an email to the entire board who's going to reply that kind of thing so we wrote this with the help of the attorney he looked at it he he advised us on it we wrote it he looked at it again so you're going to see a couple three comments in pink that he added but other than that attorney approved here um and so those are some of the positive things that have come out of that not um you know knowing that we're we're all on the same page as far as wanting to be heard and wanting to really hear what people are saying and and make sure that they know that their opinion matters and then all right my next comments are about the see i talked too long my computer shut down that's the theme of the night gotta log back in um no offense steve [Laughter] you just put those there so who's going to help me pass up so i wanted to talk about the back to school this year it has been an amazing year i had my caps lock on ah that's the thing it has been an amazing year so far and i'm not just saying that in 10 years i have not felt the energy steve talked about other people are talking about other superintendents are talking about it but let's talk about hearing batavia i get the the best part about being a superintendent and i know it's really hard to be a board member because you don't get to get out i get to go to all the schools so for sure on the first day and last day i put my schedule together and i wear comfortable shoes and i go visit every school on the first and last day just to just make sure everybody's where they need to be and it was great and then i obviously visit in between and so i have been asking teachers i've been asking students how's everything going i've met tony and i met with the pto um officers we're asking them asking and it has been amazing we had a meeting with all the district administrators zoom meeting today and we asked them how can we do better and all of these things that i'm hearing buses are mostly on time buses are never 100 on time but almost like there were there were almost as little issues as you can related to buses i'm hearing the words calm everything's so calm that's what i'm hearing so i've been writing down some words that i'm hearing smooth i heard sunshine and rainbows everything is sunshine and rainbows and then a lot another theme is that students i don't know if you know this but they take a little while to get back into the groove of learning when they've been home for the summer and everybody's commenting on how it's happening quicker this year than it has obviously the last two years but even in prior years so people are talking about kids being in the groove and students being in the groove a lot sooner than usual and as a matter of fact i was in a first grade room just um yesterday and they were all first grade they were all counting and it was like music to my ears i just went in they were so happy they were counting to 185 yesterday but then they were bragging that they had counted out loud together and in a chorus to 120 and this is on like day five of school they're counting to 12 120 they were so happy i know that's their target i know but it was just they were so proud so thank you to the teachers and the student services staff nurses paraprofessionals campus monitors administrators everybody who's there with the kids every day it makes a difference and then for the 12-month staff buildings and grounds the buildings look great business office they continue to get people paid despite the new people josh is here we're still getting our bills paid and people paid that's amazing technology thank you so much the kids have what they need teachers have what they need and then let's talk about sending the rjac staff who have registered 146 new students that's not even kindergarten and preschool so kindergarten preschool we had to register all of them and on top of that 146 new families so thank you [Applause] um summer she was never alone she always had many friends many friends many in the lobby and then we all take turns covering cindy's lunch every day so all of us um have a special we each get a week everybody in this building to be cindy for an hour and wow when she comes back i'm like where's cindy is it is it time yet like the phone's ringing and pretty stressful i don't know how to answer this question and she just she does a great job so does everyone here helping out to get those families registered like tony said 5 250 students which is actually pretty close to last year and a lot more than we were expecting so thank you to everybody that helped make that happen and now that we are students supposedly are in the groove staff are in the groove so now it's time to recommit to our roles and this year we're going to talk with all the staff when they come back together for our district-wide institute day on september 2nd about just hoping everybody reflects on what their role is and how are you supporting student learning including the board what do you do that's supporting student learning because they're already so what is it that we're doing um and there is that popular nasa legend that story that we've heard before about when john f kennedy was touring the headquarters in um 1961 the story goes that he encountered a custodian mopping the floors late at night when he was getting his behind the scenes tours and he said why are you working so late and the the employee responded mr president i'm helping put a man on the moon so um i know that we're not putting kids on the moon this year even though how fun would that be but we are helping them to prepare for whatever comes their way and everybody has a role and i can't wait to continue those conversations with the staff about what is it that you're doing that's helping put our students on the moon so that is my pep talk for the start of the year and thank you everybody to make who made this a great start lisa you're welcome wow that was very positive i know because that's that's what's happening in the building just reflecting that all right board member comments erin i'm going to start down there i am wanting to welcome everyone back to a great school year lisa and i had a conversation this morning about how this school year just feels different and it's delightful and i'm glad everyone's back this is a very busy time of year it's an exciting time of year and everyone feels just invigorated and fresh and i'm glad to hear the students are ramping up faster and i can't help but think that you know that might have been one of those hitting coveted blessings they're just a little bit more agile so that's it for me rj um i'm really happy that you're enjoying this lisa your last start of the school year so i'm really happy to hear it yeah so uh as we know elise is leaving so um i was talking with lisa and she said she's not counting down the days i thought that she would be so yeah i like that you're you know you're really busy so congratulations on such a good start um the other thing uh i'm really happy to be back in school if i could say anything to any parents out especially new parents uh in their schools please consider volunteering for events i know you've already seen emails from your ptos and you're and they're not going to stop they they need volunteers as much as they can and even if it's just three hours on one day of the entire school year it'll go a long way to help them so that's it thanks good um i i just want to say i struck me the other day and more as of being on a board member i'm starting to see like all it takes to like get the beginning of the year to work i mean teachers and communications and everything else and previous to being a board member i just tried to make sure my kid's alarm went off at the right time so that he got out the door and he missed the bus and then i had to drive him to school right that was about the biggest worry i kind of had you know as a first start of school i can see what everybody has to do from like custodial staff i mean it's you make the kind of allegory of the i'm putting a man on the moon but it is everybody you know there's massive amounts of efforts of waxing the floors and getting the furniture moved and even a little story i had with um mark anderson talking about we're marching band stuff so i'm gonna apologize for that and eventually but um you know we were talking about how we could get that process started and he was like oh do you need this thing the trailer and i said no not yet oh good because it's perfect for us to move desks all over the school district because we can just load it right up and get them quickly where they need to be i'm like great perfect no i don't need it you know so i'm just excited to have everybody kind of you know back in the groove faster feeling positive about things as i appreciate you bringing that to us um on the marching band front i am going to apologize because it's starting to be marching band season and we're in the thick of it um but i want to echo and i appreciate your comment about volunteers it's you know i don't know and i know other groups need a lot of volunteers from sports and otherwise and and please get out even if it's a couple hours it helps immensely and and you know we it just we on the march marching band with what we're doing this year we need about 40 volunteers for every competition this year wow and just getting people out there for and that's an eight-hour stint on average so now you're losing it yeah but we have fun and everything's good so there we go some days something else yeah no we don't do that but it's a lot of fun you get to hang out with kids you get to you know see your kids grow and and and become you know better versions of themselves and that's one of the things that i got from being a volunteer so i want everybody to encourage them to get out there to do that too awesome i'm good thanks craig sue have a great year everybody thank you i echo what my colleagues have said i will maybe take the volunteering a different spin so despite my gray hair i do have a child that's in grade school i was at a barbecue talking to some parents that had a second grader and i was asking about their experience you know they've been their kids have been in the covet area and they have even if they wanted to really couldn't engage and they were saying how it can be a little bit intimidating because uh you know something's never changed and you're the new kid at the table and so i would encourage parents that have been involved and have relationships to reach out to those new faces to make them feel welcome we need them they're the future leaders of our community and they're kind of thirsting for it right now so i would ask you to do that and um yeah i'm just happy to hear that everything's off to a good start so i'm looking forward to a student-focused year where we can do our important work that needs to be done together with everyone in the room what do you want me to talk about yeah okay you said you were this was your idea all right this is my idea this is i didn't know lisa talked about the the moon landing and uh this was my idea because uh i love the space program and i'm a little corny but uh she's got pins here that have little astronauts in it and you know i've heard that story before about how everyone had a common goal and for me really what tied it together was uh i had an opportunity this year to participate in commencement as a school board member up close and personal and i get emotionally thinking about this is that our students i mean that we had a challenging year we were talking about a lot of things and students weren't always at the top of the list in my opinion and you know to be there and listen to these kids speak with eloquence and poise you've never been to commencement it's like a rock concert they fill up the niu i i've never spoken to a crowd and these kids got up there and killed it amazing the way they talked about their experience i remember the last speaker the gentleman said you know we're bulldogs i'm getting choked up thinking about that but uh but what that means to me is that unity of purpose that's what we're here for that's what everybody in this room in the audience is for those kids those families and so i wrote this down but you know we do you know we're not going to the moon but we do have a mission and it's on our website and it says to help students learn and grow in all aspects of their development we have dedicated ourselves to ensuring that our learning environments are productive safe and supportive and what's encouraging to me is we had a pretty full agenda i think we touched on every one of those with our agenda which is encouraging and then we actually have five strategic goals and so i know lisa's talked about this but you know when kennedy said we're going to go to the moon that was an impossibility we all have more technology in our cell phones and our watches probably than there was in the collective world at that time and yet they made it happen and so when you have a goal you know they had 400 000 people at one time with the mission to get three men on the moon we have 350 teachers 735 staff approximately working with 500 5 250 students so our goal is a little bit more manageable but these are our goals and i feel like for me with these people helping represent us every day getting up and working on these goals which i'll just read them out loud strategic gold one is student learning ensuring maximum development growth and achievement for all students strategic gold tools a learning environment provide a productive safe and supportive learning environment strategic goal three is quality staff cultivate a positive and productive working environment that attracts develops retains a high quality staff we spend a lot of time talking about that strategic goal for partners and achievement engage families in the community as vital partners in the education practice we're working on our communication every day strategic goal 5 resource responsibility demonstrate effective and efficient business operations ensure excellent stewardship of our public resources we talked about the budget so i'm encouraged that we are focused on these goals and we're doing the work that we should be doing that's all i have thank you aaron i love it kathy can i just say one thing yeah i would just i love this kennedy thing so much but i would challenge us to look at it a little bit different and you know what we might be educating a student that is the next president that is the next person on the moon and if we look at each one of our students in that way i mean that just blows my mind the possibilities so this is a reality we could have that next person in one of our classrooms and that's just so exciting to me thanks yarn i am going to be long-winded tonight i have a prepared statement um it's kind of shows the struggles of what we go through as a board and we're always learning always growing so i've said from the very beginning that this is a marathon not a spread we knew this work wouldn't be easy or quick we acknowledge we would make mistakes at our last meeting we had a discussion on how the board communicates with staff in the community we as a board allowed that discussion to get away from being strategic instead we got very specific we allowed the discussion to be focused on how the district communicates in regard to equity issues we were emotional and frustrations were elevated how we communicate should be consistent regard regardless of topic communicating regarding equity should be no different than any other topic while we have acknowledged that we were off topic and apologies were made to those present at the meeting we have not had a conversation about the potential harm that was caused or why this specific topic generates such frustration i believe it is our responsibility to acknowledge our mistakes and make amends to those we harm as individuals i personally have struggled with what uh what is my responsibility when such mistakes are made to navigate this problem i have tried reviewing what experts have told us on the subject this spring the board engaged in a training session titled equity and educational imperative in reviewing my notes one portion stood out as especially relevant the urgency and the urgency of moving from unconscious exclusion to conscious inclusive behaviors this was illustrated with a diagram that indicated exclusive and inclusive behaviors i'm afraid we've fallen victim to some of the exclusive behaviors and must make an effort to focus on our inclusive on their inclusive counterparts according to our training exclusive behaviors are colluding avoiding contact denying differences blaming others and becoming defensive on the other hand their counterparts are taking a stand on her hurtful behaviors making mutual contact valuing individual differences accepting responsibility and giving seeking and receiving feedback it is our responsibility to identify when we are being exclusive and intentionally make efforts to be more inclusive i believe we have avoided contact with those who have raised equity concerns we have implied we can represent those who are not present we have blamed those who raised concerns and who have raised concerns and have been divisive um according to our training we should be reaching out to those who have concerns we should value their uh diverse perspectives and encourage their feedback we should accept responsibility for our decisions and stand up when we see hurtful behaviors this past week lost my spot ming shelby who's president sent out two readings one an implicit bias and another on multicultural competence in preparation for implicit bias training which he mentioned earlier for training and staff i don't believe it could be more timely in the first reading i was reminded everyone has implicit or unconscious bias and we must make a conscious effort to mitigate it the second reading really dove into what our approach should be let me share a few portions with you multiple multicultural competence is having respect respect for the ways others live in and organize the world in an openness to learn from them our goal should be to be an ally for all students according to the material an ally is an advocate a person who supports other people's rights to speak for themselves who resist the temptations to speak as an expert on their behalf if we do not defer to the leadership of people of color and defend their ability to speak for themselves we will end up using our expertise to promote ourselves part of being multiculturally competent is realizing the limits of your understanding the goals of multicultural multicultural competency are increased understanding respectful communication and full inclusion of all people to participate effectively we need at least a minimal understanding of cultural competency and an openness to learning from other people's cultures the easy part is attending the trainings listening to lectures or doing the readings the difficult portion is implementing what we learned into our everyday actions it is difficult to tell someone you know well and respect that they made a mistake it is difficult to prioritize the feelings of people you don't know or have a difficulty relating to over those we over those we do that is how we grow i know and understand the frustration of making an effort to correct a wrong while feeling those you're trying to help don't appreciate it i understand the process takes time and we need to be patient before we'll see significant changes we can measure that said we need to recognize recognize there are folks living with problems we are likely never to understand or appreciate we need to understand that while we ask folks to be patient we're asking them to continue to continue suffering while we rectify the system while we may tire of being overwhelmed by one topic it is much more tiring living with the oppression on a daily basis any frustration we feel trying to solve the problem pills in comparison with those living with it i can only speak for myself but let me tell you i'm exhausted i'm stressed i feel alone way too often i have self-doubt and i'm afraid of being labeled as the angry back black guy that only wants to talk about equity i've read many books listen to podcasts and attend trainings i understand that race racism and bigotry are intertwined in everything we do whether we recognize it or not i know it is our obligation to stand up for those who can't defend themselves and call out our friends co-workers and acquaintances when they contribute to oppressive systems but like i said doing the right thing is often difficult because our systems were designed to prevent such changes from happening however i'm committed to doing this work i will continue doing this work when it's difficult and i will continue doing it when it causes me stress sadness and pain i recognize i have a position of both power and privilege and it is my responsibility to do what i can to make batavia a welcoming place so while sometimes i may feel like i'm doing this work alone i know there are many out there who will stand beside me and behind me as we continue on this journey i hope there are board members and administrators who agree thanks thanks chris all right that's all on our agenda tonight so i would entertain a motion to adjourn so moved by my sir taken by lock all in favor all right any opposed nobody wants to stay later all right please tell me before you fill out the workshop when you're available it'll just take you like 30 seconds i even gave you a pen full service you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
i want to talk to you tonight tonight a little bit about what they call the form 4 review which basically entails our tax rates and how that is determined for our 2023 budget so um we all understand how taxes are used and created and so if we go through the slides here some things that you always want to look at when we talk about tax rates uh is the first thing is assessed valuation okay so assess valuation uh when it comes to your property that determines uh how much of that tax rate then that is your paid in your property taxes from a school standpoint it's similar in the fact that it controls the tax rate that the school entity puts out is is affected or determined by the assessed valuation that's one component school districts have no control of what the district assessed valuation is but it is a factor in what helps determine tax rates for the school district the other factor that is a big deterrent in in tax rates is the levy and that's schools do have a control over that they don't have total control over it because there's things put in place that caps those so that you can't you can only tax so much but we do have control over the levy and the levy is the amount of money that we're asking for to cover our budget and the two budgets that depend on uh taxes are our operation fund and our debt service fund okay and so those two funds we determine an amount that we need to fund our budget for all right and then that levy along with the assessed valuation will determine the tax phrase so the higher the assessed valuation if the levy stays the same then the rate can go down right so it works like on a sea salt right and so um i just want to clarify yeah i understood that but i just want to make sure that we were yeah so the assessed valuation and to your point today the next slide you can see that the higher the assessed valuation as long as as long as the levy remains the same okay so if we ask for a 5 million levy for example the higher that assessed value is the lower that tax rate is going to be okay if we ask for five million dollars and the assessed value is lower then that tax rate is going to increase so that covers that amount that you're needed to fund your budget next time can we add pictures like different people so we always want to look at our assessed valuation and the history of our assessed valuation because that's a determining factor on when we build our budget you know if assessed valuations are going up that's a good thing when it comes to the tax impact so we look at our assessed valuation over time and we can see that it's increasing it's sometimes easier to look on a graph so if you look at the next slide this is a graph historically what our assessed evaluation has been over the past 10 years or so we're actually a little bit more than that 12 13 years okay and you can see dips in it you can see a time frame from 2009 to 2015 where it was on the increase you can see a time between 2015 and 2021 where there was some ups and downs and you can see now we're in a position where that is increasing okay from a business manager standpoint if i look at this i would be suggesting that in those times that assessed valuation is increasing are times that we want to consider i don't say spending money but looking at what projects we have what our debt sits at so that we can do things that maybe not be so much of a tax impact on our taxpayers right so that time between 2009 2014 15 might have been a good time okay i would have suggested that's a good time to really look at our debt see what we have see what we need to do from our from our building standpoints so that we can do things and maybe have very limited impact on the taxpayers and so as you can see i feel like we're getting into that kind of window there where we're seeing an increase in assessed valuation where it's very important for us to look at where our debt is at and look at what projects we need to do so that we can make a just a conscious good decision on how we want to improve our facilities all right that anticipated 2023 or some of the numbers in the formula already how was that projection done so that comes from our county auditor of what our assessed valuations are most likely to be that doesn't mean that they're going to exactly be that but that comes from the county auditor okay and so that's what we use then when we're building out our budget percentage that's going to be a significant percent increase yes i didn't know the farmland component coming in will drive that even further probably well that that i would assume that that would have factored that in that 857 million would have land value component there's also some kind of other numbers besides just real estate value is there an audience [Music] jim probably knows it's a gross trial or kind of thing there's some production and problem the calculation's much more common but then it impacts that and we're also seeing that like you i think you're suggesting is that the real the farm base value has started to climb again and then ultimately that you know will be going into next year and so on but this year that number reflects the start of that process because there's a short lag time yeah is there not yeah there's a lighting and so if you go to the next slide this was the [Music] study that we had policy analytics work on us as we were looking at the future um and this were this was their projections uh based off of all the information that you're talking about there and what assessed values may look like in in the future for the for the corporation and you can see they have it increasing as well and this projection actually is not increased as quickly as what the actual may end up being from what we got from the county auditor so that's good when it comes to like we said higher assessed valuation lower taxes when it comes to our calculations to fund our budgets that's all i have for that as far as our corporation assessed value is concerned we can compare it uh we've done this in the past we compare it to our border schools that's usually the easiest to do and you can see huntington county has the highest assessed valuation uh and then follow down there through that and then you can see even there's a little dot there those dots represent what the corporation assessed value is per adm so per student you can see that from assessed valuation standpoint our district is pretty strong when it comes to the number of students that we have for assessed valuation yeah i personally found that interesting and enlightening so go to the next slide this is a historical view of our tax rates since 2012 the different bar charts represent different things because of different funds that were around during that time but the two funds that we deal with now that are related to taxes are the debt service and the operational fund some districts have a school pension debt we no longer have a school pension debt we paid that off it looks like in 2017 so we didn't have any pension debt in 2018 so we only have the debt from any money that we borrow for projects and then rates for money needed to fund our operation fund this is kind of hot off the press uh i uh i always like to listen to larry devore i don't know if you guys are familiar with that name he's an economist from purdue he doesn't work for purdue anymore he's retired but he comes and talks and i hadn't been to a presentation in a while so i asked if they had this information so he shared it with us but this just kind of shows property tax rate percentiles for 2022 and it just kind of shows you know counties cities counts and schools would be more to my interest and then it just kind of shows our 2022 tax rate was 83 cents and where that falls in the state from attack property tax rate uh comparison you can see we've fallen that lower uh 25th percentile locally we can compare from our border schools again using the same comparison for 2022 you can see locally then our district has been or is the lowest and historically has been one of the lowest in the areas i just throw this up there as a comparison i just kind of like to look at it if what this comparison does is it shows what the tax rate is and then what the levy amount that is generated from that tax levy so like for example if you use us msd wabash county we sit at 80 um 83 cents and we generate a little over six million dollars six to seven million dollars in revenue uh with that tax rate and then you can look at another school corporation that may have a higher tax rate but their levy doesn't generate as much and again that's a lot to do with assessed valuations and those types of things so i mentioned debt service operations our local tax support funds so we look at those comparisons and then we also want to look at what type of impacts we may see that may cause us to not generate all of that revenue some examples would be like tax caps okay those taxpayers that hit the tax caps those monies don't we don't collect those monies so those are considered revenue losses for us and so we factor that into the amount of revenue that we potentially may or may not get our tax cap impact for this coming year is estimated at 243 000 again that comes from the dlgf site that comes from the county portion on the dlgf that kind of estimates those and and that's pretty accurate uh i think we lost close to 180 000 last year and it goes up every year as our assessed valuation grows that also leads to more individuals reaching that tax cap so the goal when we build the budget for the operation and debt service is to advertise a high rate and a high levy so that we can ensure that we collect the full amount of levy that is needed to fund our budget so to do that we advertise a low assessed valuation which creates a higher tax rate but that all gets factored out and evened out balanced out once the true assessed valuation is determined okay so some things to keep in mind along with that for debt service there's really no max so it's just dependent on the money that you borrow for the operations fund there is a max that's determined through what they call the max levy growth quotient so for example our max levy for 2022 was 4.4 million dollars our max levy for 2023 is 4.6 million dollars okay and that is determined like i said by the max levy growth quotient so it went up five percent so how do they figure that if you go to the next slide they use the indiana non-farm personal income six-year average to determine that okay and so as you can see in 2021 we had a high non-farm personal income increase and in 2015 we had a much lower one so that's going to come off of that equation that average calculation to get to that five percent so you can see it was four point three percent it moved up to five percent you can see how it's dipped uh and ebbed over time since 1995.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
they're starting to dictate what curriculum you can cancer that's correct so that's that'll be a focus i know the committee john will be reporting out that information you know achievement is also going to dictate curriculum because if we're failing somewhere in achievement then then we're failing somewhere in curriculum and that that goes hand in hand to some extent so achievement will kind of dictate back to curriculum i just wanted to add on to the conversation about curriculum yeah i think um what you were saying like the columbia's teacher college uh stuff i think that's part of um you know the science of reading and all that that's for the younger grades right well we it actually the program that we partner with with um the units of study through teachers college that actually goes up through sixth grade okay but the science of reading legislation and the implementation efforts with that right now are in that k-2 range okay so there's that's where the conversation is right now yeah so so in addition to that so when you're talking curriculum at the high school level it's going to look a little bit different because you know you've got five teachers or you know maybe you have two teachers or three teachers i know the departments aren't that big and high school isn't that big but you know um if bella's taking you know english 11 honors and simone is taking english 11 honors with a different teacher there should be alignment and equity in within those two classrooms um and there should be common rubric rubrics and that sort of thing is is there not right now yeah there's not i mean as far as i know i i mean that was saying that would be important that that that to me should be a goal right there yeah i couldn't agree with you more we call it fidelity you want that fidelity of instruction no matter who the teacher is the curriculum is the same yes absolutely yeah k through 12.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
we're going to be looking at what students are working on taking a look at what instruction looks like both with permanent teachers and in classrooms that that have permanent subs we're going to be in meetings to understand better how instructional leaders on campus are being supported and also how operationally the schools are operating uh tnt peers are in schools every day uh and that is happening already uh folks understand now who they can expect to see what the expectations are for folks when they are in classrooms we are never going to be in classrooms without a leader it's important that we're building capacity so that this work lives on long long after we're gone we have tntp folks joining cabinet meetings we have a special operational structure that got put into place today where the first 90 minutes of cabinet is actually spent on making sure we have coherence across the academic team the executive directors and my team so that we're all rolling in one direction the worst thing we can do to our principal is tell them three different things so we're spending time weekly to make sure that we're aligned before we say anything to a principal and lastly we've already started to launch cycles of learning with leaders and teachers just to give you a quick sense of what that will look like let's say week one of the month we teach principals how to do something we will immediately teach aps and instructional leaders and academic coaches how to do the same thing we just work with principals on and then then we will teach teachers what to expect from their leaders and how to meet the bar that the new bar that the leader may bring into their classroom so we have these cycles that will happen bi-weekly uh so that we will all be getting better at a very few things which was already shared with you so we can really move the needle by going deep rather than trying to do a million things sort of okay questions i'm excited to see this work happen it looks promising and so yeah thank you if you want to come on a school visit with us uh please do we're going to get dates set and would love to have you join our learning walks to see what's happening in classrooms and the support principles in in making magic happen and this is where we started our work uh it's been my favorite moment so far i just wanna to make sure we stamp we are really excited to collaborate we are not here to tell anybody what to do we want to be a part of the solution we know the solution is in the classrooms and in the schools in commerce city we are here to elevate when it's going really well and support closing gaps where those those happen to be and we plan to do it joyfully and be part of the team thank you so excited for all the work that's already been done so quickly so i commend you all but just for the work moving forward and i can't even begin to tell you how i appreciate the way you work not only collaboratively but what really impressed me when we first started meeting with you was about how you dig into the root cause of things so we're not just perpetuating things that have continued to happen so thank you thank you awesome sorry my board docks is messed up i got it now thank you and uh dr lauria i don't know um do we need to talk about the adjustment in the title of the next agenda i know it was it was um it's done it's done okay we're incorrectly posted so thank you for that um agenda item 2.2 is cogniza's presentation would you like to start with an intro or go ahead yes with a short intro cogna is an organization that has been providing support to school districts as far as accreditation so this is a conversation that i brought up and presented to you listen to your vision i want to say in march maybe sometime in the spring they we i had a meeting i shared with the board the meeting we had and we at that time you know the conversation that we had is like we're gonna wait we have a lot of on our plate as far as um the dealings that we were having with the state um never in my wildest dreams never i actually thought we were gonna explore or you will going to explore the need to engage with a company because the accreditation had been jerked by the state never in my wildest dreams um especially for reasons other than performance of students coming after a pandemic tragic but we have a plan and um so here with us is barbara jane paris dr paris uh served um has served students educators policy makers and governmental agencies in careers in a career spanning three decades in more than 40 states in countries around the globe a recognized advocate for school safety dr paris has testified before congress served on multiple white house panels the juvenile justice division center for disease control office of national drug control the department of health and social services in the united nations task force dr paris has appeared in multiple media sources including cnn headline news usa today in a national television she is the recipient of the u.s commander's award for public safety the ascd leader of learners and the school safety council awards as a former president of both the texas principals association and the national principals association dr paris is currently serving as the mountain region vice president for cochnea a a global leader in school improvement and accreditation residing in austin texas where she is recognized by official state resolutions from both the senate and the house of representatives dr paris holds a singular belief schools are living organisms either growing or dying there's no status quo so i am excited to say that we are on the side of the living organism that is growing organization that is growing and definitely wanting to disrupt the status quo the status quo and the belief that atoms 14 students cannot achieve cannot grow or that the adults cannot take care of the problems within our boundaries that has been a narrative that has been going out there for way too long hurting only one group of individuals our students so we are very excited of having you here we are excited that the board will be able to ask questions and explore if this is something that will work for our district as we move towards changing the narrative of our of our district and the story of our for our students so thank you dr paris do i have a green light yes superintendent lauria madame vice president members of the board members of the community and students i know there's lots of students watching tonight right i want to thank you for allowing me to spend a little time with you today and i think i want to just start by saying it gave me goosebumps when you were speaking um because everything that i am going to share with you this evening is not what every educator fears which is oh my goodness another thing right another thing i have to understand another vocabulary i have to embrace another expectation not at all what is so exciting about this is it's you're like the boots on the ground for the accreditation process that cognia uses i mean it is it's sort of magical nothing that we share with you regarding accreditation is contrary to what you've said it's not in opposition absolutely supports everything that you have shared to almost to the point where i have to wonder if you've been in my head sometimes so that to me is a huge relief because i know that the last thing adams14 wants right now is one more thing right the other last thing you want me to do and i say this with great shame is to read the slide up on the screen in spanish because i am very ashamed to admit i don't speak spanish it doesn't please me to admit that um [Music] but if you heard me try to read that you would ask me not to it has always fascinated me my last principalship in texas um we have a lot of english language learners right and it fascinated me when teachers would come and make comments about our english language learners and i would look and say are you kidding me these children already function in more languages than anybody else at this table so it's to be celebrated and we don't do that often enough um so congratulations on being a district that embraces that i truly mean that that just uh thrills me there is a very nifty looking brochure that we will pass out which has everything in english at the moment excuse me um and so i have shared some of the slides that have the the most important information up there in spanish there's a reason i didn't put up an i love me slide with my email and my phone number it's because i'm not important in this right i'm just a vehicle what's important is this that your teachers show up every day every single day your principals your custodians and the work they do is noble and if i don't thank the school board members here this evening i would be very remiss because that is incredibly noble work um that you do for the good of the district and that is never to be underestimated so thank you for the work that you do um most of you probably have no clue who we are and and we're okay with that we don't tend to advertise what we do we don't really need to schools work with us as our partners we're not trying to sell you a product or anything but it is interesting that we are the world's largest accreditation um and improvement network and that we've been around 125 years i've been around for about 120 of those judging by my uh bio there but there you go didn't mean i was good at anything it just meant i'm old um we work with over 36 000 schools in districts and we work in 85 different countries currently this changes all the time so um i'm going to beg your forgiveness if i'm off by a country or two this evening um and it's interesting to know is we are the largest um the other reason you may not know our name is we have changed it time or two in the last hundred years there's an awful lot of acronyms up there um we've been everything from the southern association nca commission on accreditation and school improvement the whole map is up there for you to see and just a few years ago we switched to cognier we're like everybody else we are in continuous improvement so we are constantly reinventing ourselves to better serve students in your classrooms so we're non-profit we're not trying to sell you anything um our role is to just help you discover and change outcomes for all learners which is exactly what your colleagues over here have alluded to um and i think it's important to understand that we do actually know schools because we're in them all the time um every day we serve such an array of people um it's mind-boggling when i think about it just state partnerships as you'll see on that slide those are just states that actually where the governmental agencies have said okay we we don't want to do this by ourselves anymore so we would like to work with an organization that will take on a large piece of this accreditation and school improvement task and those are a few of them we accredit schools in all of those states in fact we have over 160 here in colorado that we accredit um and it's a choice for schools in colorado right so if it wasn't a viable valuable proposition that brings value to the schools they wouldn't do it so the schools that we work with in colorado do it because it has brought value to what you're trying to get accomplished um we hope to serve i have no idea who this lovely person is but i saw this individual on your website and this is who we want to serve we want to support what you're doing and serve people like this i sometimes feel that when we do these presentations they get a bit um full of edgy babble it is really easy to forget why you're even sitting here on this tuesday evening so i just thought found that picture to be absolutely adorable um just so you understand a little more of the background the partnerships that we have take on so many formats we work with early learning schools we work with stem certification we work with digital schools we work with faith-based schools we work with students in therapy-based situations we work with students who are incarcerated so you name it we work with schools and we find a way to better support what it is that you are trying to do and how as that last statement says take what you're doing to a new level change this narrative that has been wearing this amazing district down and lift these people up lift these teachers up because you've already said it all that matters really is what happens when that door closes and that teacher interacts with those children right that's the penultimate goal and i i have to say this i applaud all of what you're doing regarding your staffing because the problem you explained is universal with all 36 000 schools that we work with and what nobody said which was so interesting is you had this trifecta around losing uh the hemorrhaging of educators first started because of covet teachers just stopped and said i this is too hard i'm not doing it anymore so you had that you had your concerns with state expectations um and then you just had that normal attrition that comes with teaching and so what you have already been able to accomplish i find phenomenal when i asked about your attrition rate i went that is not unusual at all especially right now so your agony is universal but the things you have put in place to fix that should be applauded also so hang in there we're so excited for for what you're doing to make sure there's somebody in a classroom who cares about kids every day because that's where it starts right okay here we go this is my best spanish here it comes help me here cognia is that close enough i could do french french is my other language but i don't think that's going to further our mission is it but so why why on earth would you even partner with us why are you even sitting having this conversation well remember i said we know schools because we're in them which is why we embrace accreditation for continuous improvement that's just a sample right there right of just a handful of years of 30 000 hours of observation we've been in more than 87 000 classrooms in way over more than 5 000 schools it's much higher now so we do know what you're doing we do know what the challenges are which is why schools and districts engage with our accreditation process it's because we're not trying to dictate to anything to you we're here to help you achieve your goals it's not our goals it's not our school and i believe those are your staff members aren't they out there that's a wild and woolly bunch i would love to be in any one of their classrooms look at that don't ever lose that enthusiasm i mean that i pulled that picture up it just made me smile and it i always judge schools and districts by what i want my children and now my grandchildren to be in that class or with that teacher and i say unequivocally yes when i look at this picture um so that's our vision is that we're dedicated to your goals not our goals right and we have experts everybody who works for cognia has been where you are most of you pretty much okay i i was explaining earlier that when i retired as a principal and left from working at the national principals association i was called to take on this role and i said i'll give it three months and that was over eight years ago i believe that what we do makes a difference for children every day just as your partners over here do the boots on the ground i'm just going to keep calling you the boots on the ground i won't remember your names at the end of the evening but i'm going to go you know those boots on the ground people um the data that we look on and this depends on what country i'm in whether it's data data or data so whichever one you want feel free do you all know this gentleman that was a trick question i just pulled him off the internet i don't know him either um [Music] we know that you have a ton of data right it's so evident and the way that you've already said that you're going to work with them on their data is important but what is what is so much more important is helping you turn that data into information into something that's completely actionable right that changes behavior i don't mean that in a disciplinary sense but changes what we do to narrow that gap in student achievement for every child that sounds edgy babbly again but date is useless unless we do anything with it and i'm not just talking about um that very all of those spreadsheets with quantitative data i'm talking about qualitative data i'm talking about experiences perceptions that data cannot be underestimated so it's very embedded in the accreditation process for us ours is a very global outreach so we have a very wide perspective we have a clear understanding of what the expectations are out there in the world when students leave i know one of the studies i read of yours was about how children do exactly what they're supposed to do they're very compliant they have bought into as as teachers have that if we get them in the classroom pay attention do what's expected of them they'll go out in the world and be successful and what your studies have shown is that's not always the case so how do we embed that understanding into the accreditation process and i think you'll see it's it's absolutely fundamental to how we approach this um any trainer some of these things you you don't have to know the more you raise them but you should know that we offer them we do a lot of professional development and i will tell you i'm the world's worst i have the attention span of a net i can't sit in pd for more than 20 minutes without having to go do something it's just not in my nature and teachers let's be honest we're the worst well actually that's not true principles of the worst right the sense of being able to pay attention so we have we have a really amazing team that does professional development for schools when they see a need sounds like you have a lot of that under control but it's good to know that it's out there for you if you should want to avail yourselves of it it's everything from growth mindsets to progress monitoring and feedback instructional strategies you name it whatever the district needs we have a team that is there ready to do that for you another reason uh that we would want you to engage with us is we've got a hundred years i'm sorry i'm looking at that image and that's supposed to be an image of oxford university which is my alma mater and i have just looked and realized it's actually harry potter i know i recognize i'm like wow thank you dr loria this was intentional because you can all make magic happen that was cheesy but it was a great recovery thank you for that oh my goodness and you you sold this you already called me out i thought it was intentional too no you could have told me before i sat down i could have changed the slide oh my goodness but there you go that's what's what a hundred years of a magic looks like in education um but it is important we just don't we didn't just appear to yesterday and say we can make this stuff up um sorry i'm never going to get over that um so we believe that we can work with your institution with our boots on the ground here to make accreditation something that is viable that is voluntary that changes outcomes for children it is not compliance driven by any stretch of the imagination because we know that doesn't work this is about absolutely 100 percent respect for your reality that's what we do first and foremost we get to know the communities we serve okay that's critical to doing any kind of accreditation with us yes we offer these other things and i'm going to whiz through this a little bit because i know some of you are you've had a long day um but i do want to point out what the other pathways of support are that we offer uh the professional learning i have already kind of indicated that we have a lot of professional lining out there that's available for you and it is oftentimes teacher driven we have a program called my voice where teachers can go into learning libraries and literally build themselves a playlist of things that they are inspired to learn about to improve their own instructional strategies in the classroom so we have all sorts of manner of in that particular pillar or pathway for you um we get asked a lot about assessments we do have a lot of assessment contracts with different states formative interim and summative assessments for those states that wish to avail themselves of it in no way shape or form is it required but it's there for the states that want it and districts our improvement services again you will hear all sorts of things that cognia does some districts ask for a diagnostic review they do want to be told they say will you come in here and evaluate and and give us a to-do list i mean that's very simplified but that is the part of the process other districts will say will you come in here and do sweeps and a sweep it's what we call an elliot sweep i'll show you that in just a second but that's where we come in and we do hundreds of quick evaluations of the learning environment and then we hand the data over to the schools and the districts to look at so our improvement services take on many different forms in addition to accreditation but this is where we are landing right here at accreditation and certification it's 100 a collaborative process we know that because that's how we do it and we want to make sure that you see how important it is because if you look up here our whole accreditation standards uh there is 30 standards and they fall into one of these categories and what is the the word that strikes you that is universal to all four of those it's learning focus everything about it is learning the culture of learning is first how do you create that culture of learning um how do we embrace the leadership of learning and the engagement is huge right um and then that growth in learning so everything again is not another thing it's exactly what this team is talking about with regard to what they are trying to do with the strategic plan okay we offer strategic planning for districts often they call us and say okay we don't like our plan um well how are you going to know if you've arrived if you don't know where you're going and so we do offer that as an option for districts that need it we have a tool actually a platform you can actually put the plan into again we know schools because we're in schools what have we learned okay you're gonna like this this is so attuned to everything you just said take a look now by the way this is not this is a disclaimer here this is not adam's 14 but this is just a glimpse at evidence of how we know what's going on this is how a hundred and four 000 teachers described what students do in classes right so just kind of just do that photo moment there notice work with others teachers say that students work with others completing worksheet sheets is teeny tiny but here's what those same students say is going on in those classrooms let me go back a second so you can see where we're going with this look at complete worksheets that one just makes me smile isn't it priceless this is the teachers i love it and here is what the students say isn't that great so here's another variation on this this is another data set or set of data points rather oh wait is this the same one slightly different slightly different high school that's right but you see a common theme here right look at this memorize i like memorization complete worksheets tape tests now of course we recognize yeah we recognize this as perception right but it's their reality it's how they a lot of our surveys and things that we offer the school districts they engage in accreditation it's their perception we measure both their perceptions and we measure their experiences so not only do we offer surveys that say you know how do you feel about your teachers or your classroom but we also do more quantitative pieces where we say things like how many times have you had a one-on-one interaction with a teacher in the last two weeks is it zero to one two to five so we actually are able to get you some quantitative data to support how they feel they are experiencing their education we don't tell you what to do with this what we hope will happen is you will take your data data data and turn it into action that helps improve instruction so that that disparity becomes less so yes we have a lot of tools that support that so as part of accreditation we do this effective learning environment tool it's it's what we use in our schools and what sets this apart from from all the observation tools you see is we're not going in and looking at teachers we are not sitting in the back of the room staring at what a teacher is doing our tool measures what students are doing right so you know how when you're a new teacher you always think oh my goodness when somebody comes to watch me i need to talk a lot to show how a i'm in control of the classroom and b that i could show them what we know it's the complete opposite here we really don't want teachers to talk we want to see what students are doing with the learning and one of the the things that just i like you can tell it's one of my favorite tools i'm getting all animated now but one of the things i love about it is you can run data reports on things like the beginning of a lesson right so you look to see what all what kinds of things are happening in a classroom at the beginning of a lesson and if you find when you examine 30 of these that there's they're still doing warm-ups at 45 minutes that tells you they don't really understand what a warm-up is or likewise if you run a report on what's happening in a classroom for the last 20 minutes and all of your reports show that students are reading a book drawing on their cell phones that tells you that we might need a little help around how to close a lesson right so this effective learning environment is not judging the teacher it's saying here's what works in the classroom and here's what your data is telling you we have the diagnostics that come as part of accreditation but we don't throw you under the bus we give you a workbook that you can literally follow page by page as part of the accreditation preparation and i can guarantee you that everything i heard your team say this evening a hundred percent evidence um that you are meeting those standards so again it's not another thing you've already done the work and when it comes to uploading evidence is everything you've talked about our surveys are actually offered as surveys and inventories i said both qualitative and quantitative are offered in multiple languages because i know you serve gosh students that speak is it bashkir korean navajo swahili vietnamese urdu ukrainian i don't know that we have all of those surveys in all of those language but don't ask don't get right so just ask um and as i said we do do strategic planning ours process is around up to four phases where you have to envision envision i cannot say that word i want us to change this so i don't have to say envision envisioning phase one of the most fascinating experiences i had in a district in arizona a few years ago we were doing strategic planning and we were going through the envisioning phase and on a good strategic planning team you have a couple of students right to represent student voice and one of the challenges was they had to look at what are the technological challenges economical challenges cultural challenges that are going to impact how you conduct school and when it came to the breakout an 8th grade girl she stood up and she said well our table discussed what would happen to schools if suddenly they couldn't come to school anymore and they had to work from home until this day i remember somebody in the team going that's silly that'll never happen and that was probably two weeks before covent so there you go never say never so that's part of the planning process and all of the support that we offer in training is both online and i thought i was very modern when i learned the acronym f2f face-to-face so i'm very proud of that my grandchildren were really impressed they were even more impressed when i talked about schools had to go from briquette to click it that's about as modern as i'm going to get so moving on some of the other things that you can avail yourself of as members of cognia everything from our cognier learning community we have leadership chats we have think tanks we do these fabulous solution circles where principals can get together and um dissect a problem with like-minded people from other districts so you can kind of get your head outside where you are and get some other input we're very proud of those those are going very very well and as i mentioned before we have my voice which is a teacher driven process for improving classrooms it's not top-down so those are all going swimmingly here's what we don't do we don't dictate we do not come in with a laundry list of you must do this we 100 percent respect your current reality and for all of our collective expertise what we see is just a peek through a window into your world right it's your world so we respect that reality we do not oh there's a typo in there did you notice that one earlier too yes thank you thank you that was the test and you passed actually i think i added this at four o'clock this morning you know how you do that i must remember to say here's what we don't do we don't we don't critique you we invite your reflection on the evidence that you gather and we certainly do not see accreditation as an event we're not gonna we don't measure schools based on some some standardized achievement tests that will make you all break you this is a process and it's a continual growth growth process right and we certainly don't sell you any programs what we ask you to do is just commit to one another and to the work that you're doing um i i have always said programs don't improve education people improve education and you have them you have the right people leading these schools that's going to be the change we don't have to sell you a program oh that was the so what don't we do shared commitment that's it it's not a program it's a commitment and it is not anything in addition or different or deviant from what you already know to be the right things for kids so porque cognia here's some quotes from other people um elliot was that learning observation tool and if you notice these quotes are all just how it's helped districts reflect this is out of kentucky i almost said versailles but i don't think they say it like that in kentucky this is a quote from the state department in oklahoma again it's all about reflecting on your data your improvement journey not some outside mandate this one i love because he talked about how the process was inspiring again remember nobody's required to do this it's all through choice and the last one i put one in there that represented your own state validating what you already know about your own community is hugely important so i know you've heard enough to me so i'm going to wrap it up and take questions here's what we believe cognia plus adams 14 equals improved outcomes for more than 6 000 students you have 45 english language learners i think that's spectacular that they function is it higher now that's impressive i mean really that's impressive that 62 of the people in your community already speak another language i was learning absolutely i remember you saying that dr laurier when we met yes oh so it wasn't your idea you borrowed it from her i remember it that's right that's beautiful we we so respect that and honor it um the process of accreditation is about caring for your students right we know if you said they feel safe they feel fed these are important pieces about nurturing them when you look at that and you see one percent what does that make you think that's a small number but you know what it's not that means even with my limited math that you have about 60 students in any given moment that come through your district and you're it for them you are in their moment you are their reality and they are so dependent on you in order to be able to move on to wherever they're moving on to so so these are pieces that you have to to nurture them and hold on to them we can't dictate that to you there isn't an accreditation uh system in the world that can measure that and go these students were not successful right you have what it takes to get this done let's not forget we have to collaborate you have talented and gifted students they shouldn't have to sit around and teach themselves so what do we do as part of the accreditation process that makes sure that they reach their full potential okay and you have 14 on individual education plans you know what i have always thought seriously and you kept mentioning you mentioned it at least six times about progress monitoring we wouldn't have to spend so much time on assessing any of these children if we spent more time monitoring their progress and giving them feedback in the classroom i can remember a teacher telling me i spent four hours a night grading papers and i said well you are misunderstanding the process i'd rather you spend four hours a night planning engaging lessons and then you wouldn't need to be grading papers for four hours a night right so that was the slide i didn't share at the beginning because i am not important in this process so before you ask me questions i've got one for you here it is that's not rhetorical you have to answer that's your ticket out the door this evening bright i heard bright what else self-determination equitable i heard two at the same time oh joyful what did i hear from over here differentiated student yeah student driven student driven thank you for that student voice the place to be yes and absolutely the place to be and cheesy as this sounds i want for uh this to be the place that cognia helps you with all of that also so at this point i'll take questions actually that's a very valid question um the next step would be for the district to fill out the simplest application in your lives and immediately get access to all of those tools it's a very simplistic process to get going and the process itself the first step is candidacy that's where we give you the information we give you the standards we give you a workbook and what we're trying to say is does this district have the capacity to meet the standards that's the whole purpose of candidacy it's not a got you it's does this district have the capacity not do they have a perfect strategic plan or brilliant campus improvement plans right now but is that part of their thinking and do they have the capacity to make it and you move i stole this from doing department of defense reviews in europe but we let you move as quickly as you want to but as slowly as you need to it's brilliant isn't it i want to steal that saying as quickly as you want to but as slowly as you need to to do the right thing for students so that was actually a great question that was a very long answer wasn't it sorry other questions that either means i did okay or i bored you all to death yes so my real question um how does what you do compare with what the state does or how do you work along with what the state mandates because i see what you do is not it doesn't come from a penalty point of view right it doesn't penalize you for not meeting certain things which you know at the end of the day we don't want the students to be penalized because that's pretty much what happens um when you're looking at things from the perspective from the state accreditation process versus your accreditation process but is there a time when or is there a process where you guys have to mingle and figure things out or is it how does that work the answer to that question is no there is not a point at which we have to mix or mingle um it is a separate process we hold ourselves to a very high standard um and and i will say this you know what you have children that are walking in the door tomorrow you know they can't wait for everybody else to figure out what should and shouldn't be happening you've got children needing you tomorrow and that's entirely what our process is about is the path forward that gains the most traction for your students but it is globally recognized it's not you know it's a globally recognized accreditation process so it doesn't impact the colleges or universities on the contrary it helps it it helps immensely where we're highly regarded um even as a state director i got calls all day long regarding students going to colleges that weren't even in public schools but they were called near accredited institutions around the world and i touchwood have never seen a problem so i um i looked at your list of many many schools and districts that you accredited and i noticed mapleton westminster and um there were on there um but i really appreciated that there was such a mix you had community schools you had public private um so i think it would be not only helpful like regardless of what happens with the state like i would love for us to pursue this for our students thank you and i i looked at your rubric i'm i'm very i love quantitative data but i love yeah i need the numbers yeah but i i just um compared and contrasted it to our um state review panel and to see that it's based on information and not like a biased uh this is what i think kind of process i just wanted to give you kudos for that because it's very impressive to see the rubrics and thank the steps that are there you know we're very realistic with with the team that does evaluate the schools because we we would be naive to think that we as part of this process we know everything about you we don't and we never will because that's evolving so we really do see this as any information that we give you back as part of accreditation it's just a glimpse through the window into your world and we're very mindful of that um so thank you for that any other questions comments yes sir do you need mike sorry thank you so how does being accredited through cognia if it does at all does that change assessments and having to do standardized tests cmass things of that nature through the state that's a great question and no again that is we do not dictate how you evaluate we have districts that are standards based grading project based we do not dictate how you determine whether children have mastered the essential knowledge and skills that you set out for them to master right and again things qualitative things like what do what you mentioned so many of them the things that you want your students to be when they leave your schools you want them to be resilient for them to be innovative creative all of those things and yet how many of those things are measured by a an assessment that comes from it we don't we don't and those are important qualities that you measure through your internal metrics so we do not require or dictate what types of um metrics you use to measure progress we just want to know that you have taken the data from those metrics and used it to improve those outcomes for your children any more questions for the good of the order jolly good thank you thank you so much yes very exciting work so excited great our last um item for this evening is 3.1 regarding board vacancy next steps we did have one applicant thank you for stepping up and i believe on our resolution we did decide that tomorrow we would have a community forum so i just wanted to open it up for discussion on what the board how we would like to move forward if we i mean we have to weigh what we promised to our community i don't want to cut them out and i i very much value i know we all do their their input on this decision um but i don't know that we've prepared anything for a forum tomorrow for one person so um ideas on how to proceed could we just uh take some of the questions we've had for the previous ones like mine i mean we have we've had it we've done it before so um we have the practice i think now that maybe just taking some of those same questions and asking the candidate or the applicant um those questions and then um you know if people will call in maybe and then they if they can chime in if they have other questions i don't see it as being anything major because we only have one so we have like a conversation with the applicant's conversation with you yeah okay any other thoughts well and i personally wouldn't want to skip it i think it would it would be wonderful to do it virtually just so we can open it up to more people um given we didn't put a time or location or um i don't know if that's possible too late but you have to post it did we have to post it has not been noticed okay but it's not a meeting either when you make a decision another option also is we can engage that in the process as well because that you see the community that will that represents the larger community school community so that's also an option for you and i think we should post it so that we give our community a chance to be there because not last minute that's the biggest thing about communication yeah so if we can that would be post it and then pick a time and date so that they know and we can get it out through flyer get it out through the schools for everyone that will be involved okay so it unfortunately puts more work back on monica if you don't mind reaching out to the board and the applicant to um find a date that we could do this um do we need to adjust our resolution mr salazar because we did state in there that we would have um yeah we did also add additional special meeting dates would be scheduled but we didn't we didn't fluff on the dates so i think that uh the resolution to talk about having special meetings based off of the discretion of the of the board and i would recommend that we notice you having that discussion so that way you're not making any decisions here but that that we notice in another meeting so that way you can all come to terms with the process and make any adjustments that um that you believe are important i think dr lauria's point about having the candidate meet dak is important to get that that community feedback and also to uh director amadors to his point is that providing notice also provides notice to the to the community so i think that maybe we can get something up and running by by this week and then of course um you know outreach to the candidate to let them know that uh there might be an adjustment um and so um but that that should probably be done after you meet next um so that way um you know you you all aren't being accused of making decisions without providing that notice yeah this is just ideas that you can start tossing so that when you need to discuss then you have a plethora of ideas or options yeah okay are you gonna say something all right i [Music] would recommend for you to consider we can have a special meeting through monica we can find out what a good time for a special meeting is and during that time then with this ideas you can sleep on it and maybe think of additional ideas that you in speaking individually with constituents then you can come and discuss and then you can set up time for a meeting at that during that special meeting set up time and date and then we'll move forward and and post it and invite the community okay that sounds perfect yeah and madame madam vice president um the beauty of it is you still have time you know through the resolution as you still have time to uh to work this process through okay thank you yeah thank you that sounds good we just want to make sure we reach out to the individual we'll let him know and as soon as we through monica find out what time works for a special meeting he will will communicate with monica will communicate with the candidate and then from there will go great well we have no further business tonight or we didn't have business it was a study session we are adjourned yes thank you all for joining us this evening thank you thank you for having me appreciate it do you want me to leave some of these in case somebody else or are they
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above