05-12-2026 Kyrene Governing Board Study Session and Meeting

001Good afternoon. Item 1.1 is called to order of our study session, which is called to order at 5.01 p.m. Item 1.2 is our budget capital master plan. I'm going to turn it over to Associate Superintendent Chris Herman. Thank you, President Nelson, board members, Superintendent Tenius. and colleagues. Tonight, we want to talk a little bit more about our capital plan for our district. But before we get into that, I have a few slides I always share just before we get started in the presentation materials. So again, we've shared this before. We do a budget report, and we've done that for seven years now with Kyrene. This really helps our community know. that we're committed to transparency and accountability and how we put a budget together. And this report contains any and all financial information about Kyrene,

002as well as other information about our district. So I encourage anyone who has questions or wants to know more about our budget to really start here for fiscal year 26 information. On this slide, we've presented it again in each study session, but in case someone hasn't seen all of those or attended a previous study session, it simply explains that our spring budget presentations will follow the format and the categories of funds that are defined by the Uniform System of Financial Records and how that aligns with other reporting structures that are used for school districts and governmental reporting. On this timeline slide, I'd like to show kind of where we're at as far as the overall process and all the things that are necessary to complete our annual budget. So tonight's presentation, we will address the

003capital budget projections for next year. And you can see that it takes several months to put together the entire capital plan. And that addresses the areas of curriculum, technology, and facilities. And so for this evening's capital presentation, we'll have the curriculum component presented by Amy Gengel, our Director of Academic Equity and Excellence. Our capital override and technology plan. We'll be joined up here by Damian Nichols, our Executive Director of Information Technology and Safety. And then our capital master plan, which addresses our bond-related spending, and that will be presented by Mason Mead, our director of facilities. In this presentation, we're just going to focus on the remaining fund type that we have not covered in our spring presentations up to this point from a revenue perspective, and that would be our capital projects funds. But because

004developing a capital plan is a little bit different from developing an operating budget, And we have been able to solidify our capital objectives and priorities for next year at this time. We will also be able to discuss expenditure amounts for capital projects in this presentation and cover that in detail in addition to the revenue projections. When we talk about capital... projects. These are the funds that account for financial resources that are restricted or committed or assigned specifically for capital outlays. And this slide contains a listing of all the individual funds that would be contained in the capital projects fund type. And it's important to understand that these funds are specifically designated for capital purposes, meaning that they cannot pay for general staffing positions, things like employee compensation. or other ongoing operational expenditures for the district.

005Although there are nine funds listed within this capital projects fund type, only four of these amounts will have revenue projections for next year and budgeted. And those funds would be the district additional assistance, or sometimes referred to as DAA, the district additional assistance, or DAA capital override. And you'll also see very small amounts that are budgeted for capital gifts and donations and litigation recovery. However, if there were any unanticipated expenditures within any of these other funds that weren't projected for revenues for next year, any carry forward balances would be used to offset those expenditure amounts. When you think about our overall process for capital planning, we have worked very hard to develop a collaborative capital planning process between the curriculum, technology, transportation, and facility teams that would be both strategic and long-term in nature. And

006having a multi-year capital plan in place is critical to preparing sustainable financial plans and budgeting because they allow us to clearly see and identify any upcoming capital needs, which often have very large costs associated with them. And although there are specific requirements and restrictions for each type of capital funding, at times there might be some overlap or flexibility for how district additional assistance, the DAA override, or bond funds could be used to address any particular capital need. And this team works really hard to leverage and maximize that flexibility and has done so for many years. As part of that collaborative process, each year these capital plans are reviewed and reprioritized where necessary to ensure the identified resources are optimized to support student needs, to align to our current year financial conditions, and are consistent with

007Kyrene's strategic plan, its goals, and its initiatives. So on this slide, I wanted to share and provide some estimated revenue projections for district additional assistance, our capital override, and bond funds for next year, because those are really the three biggest areas that we receive or could receive funding for capital purposes. DAA is the capital funding provided by the state according to its funding formula and is one of the few funds that has some flexibility in it because it can be retained entirely for capital purposes or parts of it could be allocated to our maintenance and operations fund as well. The total DAA funding expected for next year is estimated to be $6.5 million. And historically, and we also talked about this in the end of March study session, Kyrene has needed to allocate a portion

008of its DAA to its M&O funds in order to maintain a balanced operational budget. So at this time for fiscal year 27, We are expecting that about $1.6 million of DAA money will need to be allocated towards M&O in order to maintain that balanced budget for next year. And that would leave about $4.9 million remaining for capital purposes. However, this amount could be adjusted up or down once we are able to see a consolidated overall budget picture for our total operating budget, both on the revenues and operational expenditure side across the district. So you'll often see that we may adjust that allocation in and out of M&O during the year, and that typically happens during our May budget revision. Kyrene's long-term strategy for DAA is to prioritize and preserve this funding for curriculum and school

009capital needs, and all of the school capital allocations and curriculum needs for next year would be funded out of DAA for the budget assumptions. When you look at the next section for the capital override, Kyrene's capital override was passed by voters in November of 2023. And the current year, 2025-26 school year would be year two of that override period. And funding for that override on the capital side continues at the same funding level for seven years, which would continue throughout the 2030-31 school year. And so that would happen unless it's renewed early. And each year, the capital override provides $8.5 million in revenue, and this funding is primarily used for technology areas. Also in November of 2023, the Kyrene community authorized the district to sell $161 million of bonds, and that first issuance of bonds...

010occurred last spring, and those proceeds that were issued should be sufficient to support all of our school construction projects in the coming year. That means that we do not anticipate having a bond sale during the upcoming 2026-27 fiscal year. And so we do want to thank our community for their continued support of bonds and overrides, because as we shared during that last election cycle, Kyrene typically spends about $27 million a year on capital and curriculum areas, but we only receive less than $7 million from the state in its funding formula. So if Kyrene had to just rely on the state capital funding portion only, there's... Absolutely no way that our facilities, our technology, or our curriculum would look the way it does for our students today. So on the revenue assumption side, I wanted to

011show on this slide that total estimated capital revenue for our fiscal year 27 budget compared against the previous two years, as well as what we had in last year's adopted budget. And you can see that the total amount for next year at $13.4 million is very similar to the amount that we had budgeted in the prior year. And you can also see that the bond amounts fluctuate and can be quite variable each year, which explains the different revenue amounts and fluctuations that you might see. Kyrene had bond sales, I should say, of $19.5 million in the 2023-24 year and $42.7 million in the 2024-25 year, but no bond sales for this current year. And again, for the 2026-27 year, you can see there are no bond sale expectations to take place as we still have

012adequate money left from the spring sale that occurred in, I believe it was March of 2025. You may also notice that the capital override amount for the last current or two current years has increased to that $8.5 million level. And that's a result of the capital override election amount that was approved by voters in November of 2023. So these are the revenue assumptions that we would expect for all of our capital areas this coming year. And next, I would like to turn it over to Amy Gingell, who can talk a little bit more in detail about our curriculum capital plan. Good evening. Thank you. Our curriculum plan, we use a five-year curriculum plan as we go through the development of that when we look at allocation of capital resources. And we look at this from

013a couple perspectives. The first perspective is keeping this five-year plan is in alignment with the state standards for education. So as those standards are revised and updated at whatever interval the ADE decides to do, We respond to those in our curriculum plan. We often can't respond within if they decide to do a new set of math standards. It takes us a year or two to go through a process to do that. So we look for them to give us updates on when we might have curriculum implications from a new set of standards. We also look at the ongoing costs of curriculum resources, what types of resources, how we can utilize those resources, is there efficiencies that we can have based on what we currently use and what we might want to adopt moving forward. We

014also look at the course of study. So when we add a new course or decide if we want to add a new course to our curriculum, we look at the costs that are associated with that. So, for example, if a middle school wishes to propose a new elective course, one of the questions in the proposal that they have to provide is what type of curriculum resources would you anticipate needing for that course? And do we have the opportunity to provide that or do we need to look at that differently? We also look at our adoptions being multi-year cycles. Sometimes we can contract with different vendors to extend out the cost because a large curriculum adoption can be very expensive, as many of you have seen with us over the last couple of years as we've

015done a couple of them. Some of them are very large, and so we try to find ways to either have multi-year contracts that give us a discount or to extend those contracts where we might pay in multiple years to help us even out the curriculum plan, the budget for the plan. a little less spike here and there. We also look at program evaluation. We're constantly looking at is our curriculum current? Is it meeting the needs of the students and the teachers that need to utilize it? And is that functioning in the way that we wish it to? So we do that program evaluation regularly from different aspects depending on the kind of curriculum. We also have a lot of curriculum currently that is blended learning, and that means there's a technology component. So there's an

016online resource for either teachers or students, as well as print or textbook versions. So we're always looking at what's the right balance for that. And do we have the right balance? Do we have the technology support that we need for a resource? And can we balance that with the type of curriculum that we want to teach for our students? So what you see here in front of you is the actual five-year curriculum plan moving forward. It's in category by content area, and we've grouped several areas together. So we have English language arts and Spanish language arts. That is for our dual language students. So some of the dual language curriculum is taught in Spanish. Some of it is taught in English. So we have accounted for those two forms of curriculum, and we've lumped them

017together. Mathematics, social studies, science, electives. This is all of our electives. and special areas. We have assessment and general resources. We have a lot of resources we use for assessment, diagnostics. You're familiar with some of those as you've seen data dives. Those types of resources would be categorized in that. And then finally, intervention and special education. This does include our gifted education, any curriculum resources that they need, as well as intervention also includes SEL. So our social emotional learning curriculums that we adopted for middle school recently, that would be categorized in this category as well. So you can see as the plan lays out over the course we're trying to reach more of a consistent level. It is about three to three and a half million dollars for us yearly to maintain the current curriculum

018that we have. If we wish to do an adoption of any kind that increases that amount. And depending on the subject area that we're choosing for adoption or potential adoption, that changes what those variables are. So we spread that out over our five-year plan so that we can have more of a stable flow of funds that are required instead of large spikes for having all the curriculum adopted in one year, for example. So a couple of considerations. These are actual considerations that we're looking at for this coming year in 26-27. So there are currently no new content area standards expected from the Department of Education. So we have no implications in which we need to change curriculum based on the standards changing. We do have two current curriculum that we are looking at putting through

019an adoption cycle next year. That is the elementary social-emotional learning and a PE health curriculum that we would like to consider for adoption next year. We also look, when our contracts expire, we also look to vendors to help us continue, have what we call a continuing contract with them. So, for example, iReady is no longer under our original adoption contract, but we've extended yearly with them, and they help us by continuing to allow us to have the resource for the same price as that original contract. So we work with vendors to do that, to keep those prices as consistent as possible. And then we look at the timelines. We have discussed this before. It's very difficult for an elementary school teacher to have multiple adoptions of materials year after year after year. So we try

020to space those out so that, for example, an ELA curriculum, if we adopted a new elementary ELA curriculum, we would not adopt to the next year a math ELA or math elementary curriculum. That's a lot on a set of teachers to try to adapt to new curriculum. So we try very hard to space those out. Middle school is a little easier because most teachers don't overlap. Or if they do overlap curriculum, we try to space those out so that nobody's having to adopt something new every single year for a period of time. All right. And last. Just as a review, kind of to give you some center on where we are with our current plan. So these are our current curriculums. The reason that we are looking at the PE health is you'll notice that

021our PE health curriculum currently is, it's actually our health curriculum, is a 2007 adoption. I'll let you know we're doing a current curriculum inventory, and I've had more conversation with teachers about this particular resource because they haven't used it. They don't know where it is. They are trying to find it. It's old. So it is something that it is time to put something in front of them. What we have found is there's a lot of options for digital resources that don't require an actual textbook, which doesn't take up space. It also allows teachers to have more flexibility in planning. So we're looking into some resources like that. So we'll be bringing that back to you probably later in the fall. The other one is that we've heard a lot from teachers, and this is part

022of the reason for putting this into our curriculum plan for next year, is the elementary social-emotional learning curriculum. We've had very positive feedback from our middle school teachers about the curriculum that we chose to adopt for middle school, and elementary teachers are hearing that, and they're asking questions about, well, when will we get a new curriculum? Another way we respond in our curriculum plan is to look at where is there a need and an outreach and feedback from teachers because we do want to give them the resources that are valuable and productive in their classroom. And so we are going to be looking at an SEL adoption for elementary in the fall as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Damian for the technology. All right. I've only got two slides. I won't

023bore you too much. It's the same thing you see every year. The capital override for IT is kind of dictated by what the voters approved in the pamphlets. There's not a whole lot of leeway. So we spend it on pretty much the same things every year, just in different amounts. But just to start with, just to refresh your memory, our technology lifecycle, depending on what it is, is anywhere from five to eight years, whether it's a... computer that a student uses or a server that we use on the back end kind of dictates how long the lifespan is of that. But the vast majority of... our spending out of capital override goes directly into instructional technology or instructional licensing. So that's where over 80% of what we spend goes into those two line items. And

024you can see on the screen, I won't read it all for you, but you can see what that includes. And it's basically everything that's in the classroom, as well as the software that the students and the folks here in this building use to run the school district. And then there's a very small portion that's spent on network infrastructure. We are getting ready to revamp some of that. So you're about to see some big numbers coming in front of you during the year, but it's still within the budget that was already approved. But some of that network infrastructure gear, we stretch out actually to 10 and 12 years. So that's why you don't see it very often because it lasts quite a bit longer. And then that very bottom line are some of our ancillary systems

025that we need in order to run a business, but they don't necessarily have direct instruction on a classroom. Some of them may, but not all of them do. And they also have various life cycles. So you can see here, Mr. Herman already went over that we have, you know, the eight. eight and a half million dollars of capital override, you might ask, well, why are you spending nine? And that's because capital override is one of the funds that actually can roll from year to year. So if we have money that we didn't spend the year prior, we're able to roll it over and spend it in the next year. And we don't do that as a matter of course, but what generally happens is with best intentions, we plan to upgrade something in one fiscal

026year and we either don't get to it or the supplier is not able to get us. everything by June 30th and things roll or we strategically delay doing an upgrade for one reason or another. And so sometimes you'll see this number come in below budget, but other times you'll see it come in slightly over. But we're not overspending the budget. I want to make that really clear. This is money that was rolled over from the prior year. And now I will turn it over to Mr. Mead. Good evening. The district has always maintained a capital master plan. It is comprehensive and identifies all areas that qualify for bond spending across 25 district sites and the district complex. The process to determine the short-term and long-term facility maintenance needs came from a life cycle analysis of

027replaceable systems. performed by a third-party vendor, and also a third-party structural engineering company performs structural analysis on a rotating five-year site per five years. Preventive maintenance inspections are performed by Kyrene maintenance staff as well. Projects are prioritized based on the following criteria, safety and security, loss of instructional time, regulatory compliance, and connection to the strategic plan or other district goals. There are three main categories of the capital master plan which align with the voter approved categories in the 2023 bond pamphlet. Maintain schools, transportation, and administrative. Budgeted areas under maintain schools and administrative consist of construction projects, instruments, equipment, and furniture, and technology. Transportation includes funding for buses, other vehicles that transport children, and technology related to transporting children. As stated on the previous slide, uh-oh, did I turn us off? Here we go. As stated

028on the previous slide, the three main categories of the capital master plan that align with the voter approved categories in the 2023 bond pamphlet are maintained schools, transportation, and administrative. All projects listed under these three main categories are identified on the 10-year capital master plan. Maintained schools represents construction projects, instruments, equipment, and furniture and technology. Maintain Schools' FY27 budget includes construction projects budgeted at $20.5 million, instruments and equipment and furniture budgeted at $400,000, and technology budgeted at $2.4 million. The transportation category of the Capital Master Plan identifies voter-approved spending for school buses, white fleet vehicles that transport children, white fleet vehicles that support schools, and technology-related. to transporting children. The transportation budget for next year will include five new white fleet for facilities, grounds, and the warehouse. The administrative category of the capital master plan

029has the same areas as maintained schools, but with a much smaller dollar amount. There are no capital projects scheduled for this upcoming fiscal year for administrative. The previous slide showed the spending in the three categories, maintained schools, transportation, and administrative. This slide will take a deeper look into maintained schools, which is the largest portion of the school-related bond spending. Maintained schools consists of three areas, construction projects, instrument equipment and furniture, and technology. Looking at this table on the slide, you will see both FY26 estimated amounts and FY27 budgeted amounts. Construction projects is the largest area and for reference several major project expenses are noted in the comments column. During FY26 several significant facilities projects were completed including the roof and skylights at Sierra and new mechanical yard and service entry section at Monta Vista. Additional

030completed projects include site playfield renovations at Cerritos and Millennial, as well as replacement of track and field event areas at KMS and Apprendi. Looking ahead to FY27, facilities is budgeting for key projects at Centennial Middle School, including replacing the roof and skylights, addressing structural concerns, a new mechanical yard, including replacing all chilled water piping and classroom fan coils, and a kitchen renovation. Nortate and Murata will get new cooling towers in their mechanical yard, and the remaining $4.5 million in funding will support eight additional projects across eight school sites, which will include projects such as play court resurfacing, parking lot seal coats, and play field renovations. Instrument and equipment and furniture represent approved bond spending for classroom furniture, musical instruments, athletic equipment, special needs furniture, and... and equipment. Equipment for maintenance grounds and custodians also included.

031FY26, we completed new classroom furniture at Ultadania and Cerritos. And for FY27, we are budgeting for kitchen equipment, athletic equipment, and special needs classroom-based furniture. The final area under maintained schools is technology. This area of the Capital Master Plan is led by the District IT Department. The table highlights some of the larger areas on the Capital Master Plan due for replacement. FY26, student devices, school desktops, school AV systems for the MPR and gyms were completed. For FY27, technology of budgeting for telephone intercom systems, security systems, and additional school MPR AV systems. One last reminder, this is the fluid document. Capital Master projects are added and deferred on the Capital Master Plan as we assess and prioritize needs across the district. I will now turn back over to Mr. Harmon. Thank you. I really don't have

032a slide to speak to here other than just to kind of close. I think it's always great to have the three people that were here tonight to give you a little bit more background on what the projects are and the work that takes place to address the needs that we have in the curriculum sides of the operations here, our technology areas, and then our facilities areas as well. So I would say with that, we would be happy or my colleagues would be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, Mr. Herman. Do any board members have any questions? Mr. Walsh. Thank you for the presentation. The recent decision to consolidate schools, how is that going to impact our capital master plan? And I know that there's been no decisions made as to

033the future use of some of those buildings. And in fact, Kalina, for example, which is a school that's going to cease operating as an elementary and move over to Esperanza, will be used to house some centennial students. But I wonder... Did the decision to close some buildings impact what might have otherwise been on the capital master plan? Thank you for the question. There are lots of considerations that go into supporting the school, maintaining the school. the elements that are on the facility side or the ground side for all of our facilities. So for next year, because we really haven't even entertained or begun those discussions about what to do with those buildings, we are still continuing to maintain those facilities and we have them identified as far as projects and work to continue all of

034the six locations that have been slated for closure until we hear differently. So in our plan, we have all the things that we would continue to do for those buildings. If we were to go a different direction and make a different decision with those buildings other than operating a school, then we would absolutely adjust the capital plan. But what we have not done is pulled dollars out until we have that decision. If that were to happen in the future. It would mean there would be more flexibility for those bond dollars to be stretched a little further, if that makes sense, right? So instead of supporting 25 schools, if you supported something less than that, your dollars could be extended a little bit further or... extend the period of time you had before you had to

035spend all the authorized money. So we're still planning as if we're maintaining all of our facilities and all of our locations, keeping the buildings in that repair. And we can always, like Mr. Mead said, be fluid with that plan and document if there are different decisions down the road. I do believe, and Mr. Mead, maybe you can jump in here if I don't get this exactly right, but like an example of something that I think is Something we can do without knowing what we're doing with the buildings is we would have needed to order furniture for a site that we aren't going to need to do. So that's getting moved off the plan. And we're using furniture that was recently purchased for one of the sites that's closing. So that's an example of where we

036would have had that additional expense, but we were able to move some things around. So there have been some small adjustments, I'd say, to the plan, such as that. And that makes sense. I'm just thinking about ways that we could steward of taxpayer dollars. And if it would be unfortunate for us to, for example, put a new HVAC system in a building and decide to tear it down a year later. So I just want to make sure we're thinking about that. And even though we have made no decisions on what to do with any of these sites, just to be cognizant that we don't want to have sunk cost. Correct. Yeah. And maybe just to speak specifically to that. So thank you for the direction on some of those areas. We do not have any

037major projects slated for those schools that are closing for next year. We are still going to maintain that school and the grounds. If something were to happen, we would absolutely prepare that. But we don't have any big projects like you would be speaking of because we don't want to invest money when we might not operate in the same way down the road. So we're trying to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars and be conscious of those things. Thank you. And in the future, if there were ever any decisions made with respect to that land, and I know we've had no discussions about that whatsoever, where does that revenue fall into the budget? Is that part of the capital project? Would that be in M&O? Is it a mixed bag if there is a disposition of

038land that is currently owned by the district? Yeah, that's a good question. It would not fall into a capital category. It would actually fall into, there's a... A fund in our general fund called school plant. And that's where any proceeds would be deposited. If there were a lease or a sale, it would actually fall into a general fund revenue source, not a capital source. And any of those transactions obviously would require voter approval, correct? That's correct. Great. Thank you. Any additional questions for Mr. Herman? All right. Thank you, Mr. Herman. I appreciate your time and your team and the work that they do. With that, we are going to conclude the study session at 5.34 p.m. Call to order for the public hearing on the FY25-26 budget revision. The public hearing is called to order

039at 6.02 p.m. Item 2.2 is our presentation of the FY25-26 budget revision. At this time, we'd like to hear from Mr. Brian Lockery, our Director of Finance. President Nelson, members of the board, Superintendent Tenias, for the record, I'm Brian Lockery, Director of Finance for Kyrene School District. This presentation will provide you with an overview of the district's proposed fiscal year 26 final revised budget, which represents the maximum budget capacity allowed by law. As required by Arizona Revised Statutes Section 15905, school district governing boards must adopt a final revised budget by May 15th annually at a public hearing. The budget should represent the maximum budget capacity allowed and does not consider actual incurred expenditures as those will be completed throughout the month of August. and reported as part of the school district's annual financial report. The

040vote tonight is to ensure that Kyrene captures the allowable budget capacity as authorized by state law. On the cover page of the budget forms, you will find on the lower right-hand side the budget capacity for the district in the areas of the general budget limit, the unrestricted capital budget limit, and the federal project sections. Altogether, these represent the district's aggregate budget limit by statute. You can see that all three of these categories have changed from the adopted budget, and we will dive deeper into each of these on the next few slides. In total, the net difference from the adopted budget is an increase of approximately $5.8 million. For the general budget limit, which includes maintenance and operations and transportation funding, there were a number of changes that netted to a difference of a small decrease

041of around $1.5 million. $600,000 in budget capacity. These changes can be found on page 7 of the budget forms. The base support level, which is the statutory revenue control limit minus the transportation revenue control limit, is higher from the adopted budget by approximately $1.8 million. This is the net change due to a smaller student count loss than projected at the beginning of the year, as well as increases in other areas of the Group B special education weights. Earlier this evening, during a presentation on the capital budget, we heard a little bit about the district additional funds transfer. The district is authorized to transfer capital district additional assistance funds to the maintenance and operations portion of the budget annually. However, the revised budget retains those funds in district additional assistance for capital purposes. Each year, the

042district adopts a budget that transfers a portion of the district's additional assistance to cover potential expenditures and maintenance and operations to ensure a balanced budget. This decision to move monies into maintenance and operations is reviewed each year to determine whether those funds can remain in the capital budget or if they should continue to be transferred to the maintenance and operations budget as one-time transfers. This budget revision that you have before you today returns these funds back to the capital portion of the budget as it is anticipated that these funds will not be needed to cover maintenance and operations expenditures in fiscal 26. When proposing the budget annually in June, district staff estimate the override amount based on previous year ADM, which is not finalized at that point in time. This is a true-up of that

043amount and allows the district to capture the higher budget capacity of ADM changes after the proposed budget in June. For fiscal 26, this difference is lower by approximately $5,000. Also, the district projects an estimated budget balance carry-forward amount when presenting a new year budget in June. Only after final expenditures are completed and the district's annual financial report is prepared each October will the final actual budget balance carry-forward amounts be known. This is a true-up of those balances. For fiscal 26, this results in a decrease of approximately $1.8 million in budget capacity. This is mostly due to higher actual maintenance and operations expenditures than were projected when proposing and adopting a fiscal 26 budget. Finally, the district's portion of the supplemental state aid funding is based on the district's percentage of student population compared to the

044entire total state student population. As the district's enrollment drops and the state's enrollment changes, the portion of this funding is adjusted throughout the year from the proposed budget estimate. This is a true-up of that amount, to the best of our knowledge at this point in the year, and a final true-up will occur at the end of the fiscal year through budgeting. Additionally, a one-time maintenance and operations funding amount was appropriated in fiscal year 26 for the increased free and reduced price lunch student count weight. This was a weight that was increased a number of years ago by the legislature and then put on pause for three fiscal years. Each year, the legislature proposes with the governor's office a funding of that one-time amount, and this funds that amount this year. In total, these changes include,

045generate over about a million dollars in additional budget capacity, as you can see on the screen. I would like to add that the expenditure budget forms that you have before you today and that are available on the agenda have changed this fiscal year. Prior to this fiscal year, Kyrene kept its carry-forwards, or reserves as they're sometimes referred to, budgeted across a number of different budget categories. With the new forms, the carry-forwards must be pulled out separately and reported in a different line of the budget. This makes a comparison of budgeted values. across fiscal 25 and fiscal 26 reflect a significant change in each of these lines. For example, on page one of the forms of the maintenance and operations fund, the new forms do not consider the $14.1 million in carry forward value when comparing

046the individual rows of the categories for the expenditures above. The changes to the unrestricted capital budget limit are reflected on page 8 of the budget forms. The district expended less in fiscal 25 than projected when this revision was done in the prior year, thus increasing the actual budget balance carried forward from the projected amount by $1.9 million. Each year, large construction projects continue across fiscal years, and this impacts the projected carry-forward amounts available based upon which fiscal year the expenses actually occurred. Additionally, as shown in the previous slide, retaining funds in the district additional assistance bucket, instead of moving them to maintenance and operations, results in an increase of about $1.7 million in the capital or DAA balance. The Arizona Legislature authorized a one-time allocation of about $300,000 for Kyrene into district additional assistance for

047fiscal year 26. This is the second of the two one-time funding formulas that the legislature has been funding as one-time, including the free and reduced price lunch that I referenced just a moment ago. The Arizona Department of Education places these funds into the district's maintenance and operations during the year, and this moves these funds correctly into the capital portion of the budget for capital planning purposes. Finally, the district is allowed to capture and utilize earned interest from the previous fiscal year as budget capacity in the capital budget. That amount is not known until the close of the fiscal year and the completion of the annual financial report. As a result of all of these changes, the unrestricted capital budget limit is higher from the adopted budget by almost $4 million. A combination of changes to

048actual final allocations for grant budgets and true-ups of prior year carry-forward balances for federal and state grants, as well as a handful of very small new grants, are the reasons for these changes as noted on this slide. You will note that these changes can be found on page 6 of the budget forms. This budget revision captures final allocations of federal grants. which changes throughout the year, as well as previous year budget balance carry-forwards for the federal grant awards including Title I and Title VI-B. These are only known after the completion of the grant budget cycle, which is generally around September 30th annually for Kyrene. The net result of these changes for federal and state grants is an increase of approximately $2.5 million from the adopted budget. Finally, the classroom site fund budget limit. The classroom

049site fund budget limit reflects an increase of about $127,000 due to slightly higher than projected expenditures in fiscal year 25, earned interest from fiscal year 25, and slight corrections to final fiscal year 26 funding from projected when final numbers are not ready at the state level for budgeting. These changes are found on page three of the budget forms. One item of note is that the Governing Board recommended action this evening has been updated to reflect language changes from both statute and the Office of the Auditor General to ensure compliance with state statutes that allows the district to continue expending funds across different budget categories to complete the fiscal year as long as it does not overexpend the district's entire budget limit. This allows the district to budget for the carry-forwards on the forms new this

050year, separately from the other expenditures, while also maintaining statutory compliance with the new budget forms. President Nelson, members of the Governing Board, Superintendent Tenias, I am happy to answer any questions you may have at this time. Do board members have any questions at this time? All right. Thank you, Mr. Lockery. We'll be voting on this later in our agenda in our regular meeting. The public hearing for the budget... Revision is adjourned at 6.12 p.m. Item 3.1 is a call to order for the public hearing on the instructional time model. The public hearing is called to order at 6.12 p.m. And I'd like to welcome item 3.2, Director of Academic Excellence and Equity is Ms. Amy Gingell. We have a hard time with it, too. Good evening, President Nelson, Governing Board members, Superintendent Tenius. It is

051my opportunity to stand in front of you tonight to discuss our instructional time model for the 26-27 school year. It is required by State Statute 15-808 that we adopt an instructional time model to accommodate for remote learning within our district and to receive appropriate attendance and funding resulting from that. We are allowed as a school district to provide some flexibility in the in-person learning instruction hour requirements through an instructional time model. Starting in FY23, it was determined that instructional time model could be applied, but could not exceed more than 40% of the district's instructional time. So this is across the entire district, not a specific student or school. We are required by this statute to hold two public hearings. Tonight is the first of those public hearings to solicit feedback and questions from both the

052board and the public regarding this model we propose. So the 26-27 instructional time model will look very similar to our model from last year. It has four components to it. The first is the option of students to complete learning activities asynchronously if they are deemed to be absent for a week or more and they're either determined by the school setting or their parents' family has requested that based on conditions. It could be something as similar to a family member being ill and needing to be out of state for a period of time. It could be... other examples of opportunities that families have that they need to have their children out of school for a period of time. The second scenario of this currently does not happen in Kyrene, but we leave this as a possibility.

053It is students may participate in asynchronous modules to complete work. We have had several ideas around this as independent study work where students have an opportunity to create. do projects and do work that is asynchronous and still get credit for being there. We again do not currently have a program like this, but we leave this in our instructional time model so that if that opportunity arises and we have a great idea of how to do that, we are able to put that into place. The third option is our Kyrene Online Learning Program. This is formally our KBA program. We have students that are still matriculating through middle school, and we are honoring their opportunity to participate in online learning. So they also will participate in an instructional time model where their work is there online

054with teacher instruction, and then they complete asynchronous modules to complete their work. The last of the scenarios is if we have an emergency situation of public health or other concerns, something if a school building were to lose air conditioning for a period of time and couldn't be repaired, we might choose to put students in the instructional time model, assign them work, and then collect that work to receive attendance for participation when they're not able to attend the school building. So the attendance that is recorded as a result of a student being put into the instructional time model, if students are attending a teacher-led online instruction, they are marked present when they log into the online system and for that session they are given credit. If a student is completing asynchronous work, they are reported present

055when the teacher confirms that the work has been submitted and completed for the instructional time that they have missed. If a student, for some reason, is unable to complete their learning activities within 10 school days, they are marked absent for those corresponding days. When a student is attending remotely, each week's modules and assignments must be completed in order to receive attendance credit for that time frame. But please note that any student is attending an online course while they are attending a Kyrene school building. For example, if they are attending a middle school and they are taking an online Spanish course, they are not considered instructional time model because they are still present in a school, Kyrene school building. So those are an exception to the instructional time model. This is our proposed instructional time model

056for the 26-27 school year. And at this time, I can take any questions that you have. Board Member Davis. Thank you. Just out of curiosity, what is a single... Asynchronous? Yes. It is a completion of a work, a sample of work. It could be an online assignment. It could be continuing the work. that they're doing in their classroom. For example, if it's a younger student, they might have a reader that they would use in class, and they've been given that reader to take home with them, and they are completing assignments that would correspond with that work. So asynchronous just means they're not in class attending at the time that their classmates are attending. Okay. Thank you. Does this, I may have missed this in your presentation, but Is there an upper limit of how long

057a student can... do asynchronous learning? Technically, there is no limit. It is usually determined by the school and the family in those circumstances of what is the appropriate time. There are situations where they may start an instructional time model and then it's determined. I know we've had situations where, for example, a family member is ill and the child... The child needs to go with the family to take care of that. And they determine that they're not going to be able to return in a reason. You know, it's not going to be two weeks. It's going to be a couple of months. And so sometimes at that point, the family will decide to withdraw the student and then return when they're able to come back to the. So it's usually a case by case basis, but

058there is no specified upper limit. Is there any social emotional learning curriculum that's delivered? asynchronously. Did I say that right? You did say that right. Typically, it is assignments that are determined by the teacher, what is available for the child to do. It really depends on the age of the child and what available resources the child has. For example, if they have internet access and they're going somewhere where they can log on and complete assignments, say in a Google Classroom or other options. it is possible that that curriculum could be presented to them. Sometimes that's not possible just because, for example, our middle school SEL curriculum is online and it's class discussion. So there's not a lot to substitute for that. So it really just kind of depends on what the time frame is and

059what the student needs. We try to definitely give as much as possible. And it's supposed to be equivalent time that they would spend on those asynchronous modules to what they would spend doing assignments and work within their class. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? At this time, I'd like to open it up also for public comment. And we have one blue card regarding this. Ms. Corinne Inhofe. I hope I said it right. I don't think that I did. So I apologize. No problem. Yes. Thanks for... Do I have a time limit? Okay. I'll keep it short. Yeah, I just learned about the instructional time model. I just want to tell you guys a story. I'm highly in supportive of this model. So I'm super excited when I heard that we had it. I have those

060three boys and they are very active. And we do sometimes go to California and they do commercials or some sort of acting or something like that. And when we do that, California labor laws requires a set teacher. So our kids are actually going to school while they're on set. And so we work with our teacher. The teachers give our kids homework. They are there doing their homework. Certain amount of hours they have to complete depending on how long their shoot is. So I do turn in my pink slips every time, but Arizona does not obviously recognize our time that we're doing that. So when I learned about this, one of my kids... I don't know how he does it, but he was offered, he's offered right now an opportunity next year, August for one week,

061and then December for one week. And we're going overseas if we accept. So it'd be a week of him missing school, which then means our whole family goes, which means the other two have to come too. So that's a lot of time to miss out of school. So I was just asking because we see. We're not going to homeschool. But a lot of these kids end up going to homeschool or they have Google Classroom that they work with their school districts on. And so that was my ask was, do we have anything that we could accommodate if my kids are away for that long? A week is a long time. So like I said, there's a set teacher. They are going to school. Mariposa does a great job giving my kids a lot of homework

062to do. And we do it, but we get the absences. So it was. Not that I don't love the emails telling me how many absences my kids get, but it would be great if that was counted and excused for flexibility for what my family has to go through sometimes. We don't want to turn down these opportunities. I think it's great for my kids to have it. We love our school. We love being able to be supported in this way. They are learning. Like I said, they are doing it, and we will work very closely with the school. So I hope this model continues and that we all vote in support of it. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Board members, this is our first of two public hearings on this topic. The next

063one will be May 27, which will require a vote, but we are not voting on this this evening. That being said, I'm going to conclude the public hearing at 6.23 p.m. Item 4.1, now we are going to convene our regular meeting. The regular meeting is convened at 6.24 p.m. School board meetings are held in public to conduct the business of the district and that we believe in Kyrene School District that education is a partnership between school and home and we respect the rights of parents and guardians and value their role in our district. As always, our board meetings are streamed live on the internet. For those who cannot watch the meeting live, a recording will be made available and posted usually within 48 hours. Board agendas can be obtained from the district office and the

064Kyrene website 24 hours in advance of each board meeting. Our superintendent Laura Tenias and senior leadership are here with us tonight. Item 4.2 is roll call. Will board members state their name for the record? Cedric Collins. Bunny Davis. Kevin Walsh. Amy Satry. Trina Nelson. Let the record show that five board members are present. Item 4.3 is a moment of silence and Pledge of Allegiance. I'd love to invite our Director of Exceptional Student Services, Zippy Turner, to lead us in the pledge. Item 4.4 is our land acknowledgement. Kyrene School District acknowledges that our community of schools is located on the ancestral lands of the O'odham and Peeposh peoples who have inhabited these lands since time immemorial. With this land acknowledgement, the district formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by Native peoples

065allows us to be here today. Item 4.5 is the Kyrene Promise. We promise to provide welcoming, inclusive learning environments in which every student is honored, valued, and feels a strong sense of belonging and purpose. We promise to provide rigorous, responsive learning environments in which every student is given what they need to develop knowledge, skills, confidence, and a passion for learning. We promise to provide vibrant world-class learning environments in which every student believes they are empowered and prepared to make a meaningful impact on a rapidly changing world. Item 5.1 is a preview and approval of agenda. Are there any changes for tonight's agenda? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve tonight's agenda? So move. Is there a second? Second. A motion by Member Davis, a second by Member Walsh. All in favor say aye.

066Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 6.1 is our Superintendent Report. Superintendent Tenias. Thank you, President Nelson, Governing Board members, those here in person this evening and watching. I have a... Pretty brief superintendent update. We are, as you know, in quarter four, and we were super lucky last week. The members of my team and I had an opportunity to go visit our fourth quarter Kyrene Values Educators Award winners. That's a mouthful throughout the district. So check out our district social media accounts this week as we spotlight each of our winners. It was another very successful year for this program. Our Kyrene Values Committee. received over 200 peer nominations for the year. So thank you for all of you that are out there recognizing and turning in those nominations and recognizing your peers. Also, a big shout out

067to our Kyrene Value sponsor, Core Construction, for their support of this program over the last several years. With their generosity, all of our award winners get the chance to get to take home a $100 Amazon gift card. So we greatly appreciate it and looking forward to kicking off the year with our Kyrene values for quarter one. Also, again, as you're going to see the theme here, this time of year seems to be the theme of celebrations. Last week, and I know many board members were able to join me, I had the privilege of celebrating excellence in education in Kyrene, specifically at the Tempe Diablo's Excellence in Education Awards Ceremony. Finalists were nominated by staff. students and community members for their impact in our district. So congratulations to all of our district winners and to all

068of those who were nominated. If you were there and you saw the pamphlet that was handed out, Kyrene gets a lot of nominations, so that's really exciting to see. Also last week, a pretty important week, it was Teacher Appreciation Week. So we want to just share a little bit about what was going on around the district. So it was so heartwarming to see our school communities come together to celebrate our world-class educators. We are so lucky to have such supportive parent organizations that go above and beyond to ensure that our teachers feel taken care of and that they know just how much they are appreciated. So thank you to our passionate parent organizations. organizations for all they did to make sure that last week was a success at every campus. And this spring, the Kyrene

069Community Education piloted Botvin Life Skills Training at four campuses with funding from the Tempe Coalition. Building on that success, we are expanding the program in the 26-27 school year with nine community education employees and additional gifted teachers completing full-day certification training this summer. Life Skills is an evidence-based prevention program for students in grades 3-8 that teaches goal-setting, decision-making, and healthy communication, helping protect young people against alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use. Parent and guardian consent is required to participate, and we encourage families to get involved. Also excited to share that on their close-up trip to Washington, D.C. to learn more about government and U.S. history, our Kyrene Middle School students had an unexpected close-up moment with Senator Mark Kelly at the airport. Our students were so glad to meet Senator Kelly, who was gracious with

070his time in meeting and taking pictures with our Scorpions. So thank you for taking time out of your day, Senator Kelly, to speak with some of our students. And finally, I'd like to take a moment and share with you a short video spotlighting Kyrene's dual language program. Bilingualism is one of the most powerful tools we have for preparing students to thrive in a connected world. Our dual language students are so impressive, and tonight I'm excited for you to hear from some of the students themselves what they believe makes this program so special. My parents decided that maybe it would be a good fit to go to a dual language school. I really enjoyed it and it's something that I've liked from an early age. I'm glad I've been able to get this far. The coolest

071thing is like if you know anyone else that speaks Spanish you can have like a secret language. You should come to this school because we learn two languages, we learn math, we have technology, and And it's very fun. In the north, one part of our day is in Spanish and the other part of our day is in English. So it was a good challenge for us to... Since Spanish was my first language, it really helped a lot to have half English and half Spanish so I could improve in both ways. I think it made like a good path for me to like succeed in middle school and in high school. It was very important so I could talk to my family members that live in Mexico and that it was important. for me to like

072know the culture and learn more about it so I can be part of both sides of my family. que puede sentirse más cómodo en su comunidad. So if people want to try out at this school, I think that they would definitely need to know that ellos pueden saber que haces unas cosas diferentes en español e inglés. Por ejemplo, en español aprendes ciencias y matemáticas y en... English, you learn things like LASL and yeah, this is very important. This is a great opportunity to learn a new language and you can inspire all students. Join the dual language program today. Sign up for the dual language program today. And that concludes my superintendent update. Thank you. Item 6.2 is board member statements. Do board members have any statements tonight? Member Collins. Yes, I would just like to

073congratulate our Tempe Diablos Excellence of Education Award winners again. We have one in the audience right now, too. Mary Jane. Go ahead, stand up. Get your flowers. I was actually sitting at the table with her, so I was like, I hope she wins. I hope she wins. And she did. But we had a great time there, and I look forward to next year and have more Kyrene people nominated and representing the district. My second announcement is I'm also on the Operation Back to School Chandler Committee, and we are having our annual Operation Back to School. And we're going to be looking for some volunteers. So if anybody want to volunteer, we actually let you bring eight-year-olds. So our volunteer list goes all the way down to eight years old to 16, as long as the

074parent and the guardian is there with them. So I will get with Ms. Helm with more information if anybody's interested. We could put it on the website. I mean, if I can do that, I don't know. I might be breaking rules or something. I don't know. But that's it. Thank you. Any other statements? Member Walsh. Just wanted to thank our amazing art, music, and specialist teachers. I had the privilege of going to many performances in this busy time of year. Matilda at Apprende was fantastic. I got, it was really good, right? It was good. The orchestra and symphony concerts, I saw Kyrie Middle School, and then Estrella did a school-wide music performance. Can you imagine coordinating hundreds of kids with xylophone? It was a whole thing. It was amazing. So I just want to thank

075all of our teachers and also to our staff members who are here today. I am so happy to see you here. Thank you so much for being here, for coming to speak the truth, and we're looking forward to addressing that item later on the agenda. Thank you. I just want to add what Member Walsh said. I forgot about the Matilda thing because it was a few weeks ago and I have so much going on in my life. But yeah, that was, I actually hadn't seen Matilda, believe it or not. So I went home that weekend and watched the movie because the kids did such a great job, especially the young lady who played, what's her name? Tretchenberg, Trenchburg or whatever. Trench Bull. She was phenomenal. I was like, dang, she really played that role well.

076So good job to all those kids and the director of that. That was really nice. Vice President Satri. Yeah, I also had the pleasure of attending the Apprende Matilda production. And I just want to give a little shout out to the crew, too, because I know they definitely deserve a bravo. But I was smiling that entire production. And I think by the end of the night, my jaw was hurting a bit. So I know my daughter certainly was excited to see it, too, because she went back to her old school. And she's like, everything's so small here. And she's only been in high school for like a year and like now everything's shrunk, you know. But yeah, the Diablo's event was amazing. They do a really good job. So, but yeah. And thank you everybody

077for coming tonight. It's nice seeing all your nice little faces out there. Thank you. Wonderful. Item 7.1 is request to speak to the governing board. Per board policy 1-302, the governing board invites the viewpoints of citizens throughout the district. In-person members of the audience may address the governing board by filling out a blue card provided at the sign-in table. And then written comments may also be submitted electronically through a link set out in our board meeting notifications. For those who submit electronic comments, those will be recorded and filed online as part of our board meeting minutes. And then... State statute prohibits the governing board from discussing an item that is not on the agenda, but we do listen and request that staff follow up on any concerns. We value transparency and public input and to

078ensure that everyone has an opportunity to address the governing board. We've set a time limit depending on the number of comments, and that is going to go as follows. For 1 to 15 speakers, it's 3 minutes. For 16 to 30, it's 2 minutes. And for over 31, we'll go to 1 minute. Ms. Tenias is in for me tonight. We have this. I believe six public comments. So each member of the audience will have six, three, sorry, double your time here, three minutes to speak. There will be a timer located on either one of these screens and will prompt you when you have about 15 seconds left. Again, when your time is up. When you come to the podium, for the record, please state your first and last name and how you're affiliated with Kyrene before

079beginning your comment. We're going to be starting tonight with Miss Sarah. Schullhauser, who is an employee with the district. My name is Sarah Schullhauser. I'm the speech-language pathologist. I have to start with good evening to everyone in the dedicated Kyrene community, my fellow speech department staff, and esteemed board members. Like I said, I'm a speech-language pathologist at Kyrene Traditional Academy. I'm also a former Kyrene kid. Shout out all to Dania. been a speech-language pathologist in the Kyrene-Sulgich School District for five of my 13 years in this career, and my hope is to be with Team Kyrene as long as it's feasibly possible. These five years have been the best of my career. The Kyrene teachers are collaborative, the students are motivated, the parents are supportive, and the speech department staff are each other's biggest cheerleaders.

080I love them so much. Kyrene is where I felt like I belong as an educator and can grow as a professional. This is where I want to be. But the number one hurdle to staying in Kyrene is the pay. We are simply not competitive with surrounding school districts, leaving many incredibly talented SLPs and SLPAs to seek other employment. I have been lucky to mentor eight different graduate student interns from ASU, AT Still University, and Eastern New Mexico University. It is so important to me to give back to the field and foster new talent, encouraging them to join our wonderful district. While many of these interns have loved their Kyrene experience and gone on to work in the school setting, not one has chosen to work directly for Kyrene. They have been frank that the salary

081is what takes Kyrene off the table for them. It is also disheartening to see some of them work for contract agencies making tens of thousand dollars more in their first year out of grad school than many of our veteran speech staff. We are losing out on recruiting the next generation of talent to join our speech department staff, not to mention the ballooning cost of our contract budget that could be spent on recruitment and retention of district employees in it for the long run. Seeing the proposed new scullery schedule and retention schedule for speech-language pathologists gives me hope that I can stay in Kyrene. It shows that Kyrene values its speech-language pathologists as much as Tempe or Chandler school districts do. I implore you to approve this new salary schedule to retain our exemplary Kyrene speech-language

082pathologists and show them how valued they are. I also encourage you to revisit this salary schedule discussion at a future meeting to include our speech-language pathology assistants. We cannot do our jobs to the hiring standard without their time, expertise, and dedication, and they deserve a review of their compensation as well. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jamie Emmert. Good evening, President Nelson, members of the board, Dr. Tenius. My name is Jamie Emmert, and this is my 15th year as a speech-language pathologist in the Kyrene School District. Tonight, you will be voting on a proposed increase to the salary for speech-language pathologists, and I wanted to share to you just how important this is for our district's ability to retain and recruit quality SLPs. Over the last three years,

083part of my role has been the lead SLP for our district. And in that position, I have been involved in interviewing and hiring and training of new staff. So I've seen firsthand the impact that it has that we are not competitive in pay with being able to recruit new SLPs. As a matter of fact, over the last two years, we have not been able to successfully hire an employee candidate and instead have had to fill these open positions with contract companies. And it's largely due to the compensation. Four years ago, kind of similar to what Sarah had shared, I had an ASU intern. She was getting ready to graduate. She was looking at open positions and she was phenomenal. And I had suggested she applies in Kyrene. And she said she would love to work

084here. But based on the research she had done on salary schedules posted online, she realized we were not competitive and she did not apply with us. And I share this to illustrate that we don't know how many people we are missing, how many applicants we're not even getting to the table to apply and interview based on the research they can do by posted salary schedules. Over the last few years, I have interviewed many SLP applicants that want to come to Kyrene. And we go through the process. We give an offer to hire. They get the quote from talent management and they discover that we are not competitive with offers they're receiving from other districts. In fact, I've had SLPs share that they would be taking a pay cut to come to Kyrene. So the bottom

085line is we are not appealing to new graduates because they can go to surrounding districts and make significantly more. And we're not able to sign employees that want to come here because we're not competitive. I also want to share my concern. With the existing staff that we have in my role, I've had several of our SLPs reach out to me to share their discontent. They realize that we are not competitive and we haven't been for several years now. And as much as they want to stay in Kyrene and believe in Kyrene, it's getting harder and harder to justify them staying, knowing that we're not competitive. At the end of this month, we will have three amazing long-term SLPs retiring from Kyrene. As of now, we have not been able to fill those positions with employee

086applicants. Going into next year, 43% of our SLP staff will be contractors. That's nearly half. So I want to implore you as you are voting tonight to please consider this and to invest in our employees so we can retain the quality staff that we have. Sorry. And so we can retain the quality staff that we have and that we can recruit SLPs that want to put down roots and grow with our district. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Emmerich. Our next speaker is Jackie Breckow. Good evening. My name is Jackie Breckow, and I am a proud Kyrene speech-language pathologist. This is also my 15th year working for Kyrene. I am here along with my amazing fellow Kyrene speech-language pathologists and speech-language pathologists assistants that are employees, and I'm happy to be here in support of all

087of us. During my career in Kyrene, I've been a braces gecko. I've been a media dolphin and an Australia star, working with preschool, elementary, and middle school students. Seven years ago, I started in my role as the district augmentative alternative communications specialist. So I support all of our students that need an alternate way to communicate outside of just verbal speech. So that can look like low tech supports like a printed communication board all the way up to a touchscreen communication device with a communication app or something as high tech as a device accessed by eye gaze that our students use. I also heavily support our speech staff with training and coaching on how to evaluate, provide therapy for, and write appropriate IEP goals for our students with complex communication needs. I now support a total

088of 245 students in Kyrene that utilize AAC. Just me, 245. I also collaborate with our lead SLP, lead CCD teacher, preschool teacher, and ESS leadership to provide training and support to all of our staff. I was previously our lead SLP for three years and served in that role during the COVID pandemic. During that time, I was in charge of interviewing and hiring speech staff, and at that time, we had only one position filled by a contractor. By the time I left that role, that number had started to grow. It was also during that time that our surrounding school districts began to significantly increase their pay for SLPs, while our pay stayed stagnant in Kyrene. We lost out on candidates we had interviewed who would accept positions in other districts for better pay and lost out

089on hiring many of our graduate school applicants who you heard about earlier. Let's see. I encourage you to please pass the new proposed salary schedule for SLPs. When I first saw this new salary schedule, I actually shed real tears because this is something that I've been trying to advocate for for a really long time. These are happy tears. This has been a long time coming and something that we are all very happy about, obviously. it will go a long way in retaining our current staff of amazing employees, and it will allow us to recruit new qualified SLP employee staff for the future. Thank you all for considering this, for doing the salary study to begin with, and for hopefully passing this tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sam Couch. All right. Hello.

090I'm Sam Couch. I'm also a speech-language pathologist in this district, and I am also a parent in the district. I have two kids who are Kyrene kids, and I also was a Kyrene kid myself, so pretty invested in this school district. I personally chose to join Kyrene a few years ago when my daughter started kindergarten because I wanted to work in the same district that she was going to attend. It just made sense for us, and I took a pay cut to do that. It made the most sense for my family, and I've never regretted it, but It's not something that we could really market to other speech language pathologists in the community unless they also happen to have children who live in the district, which is probably not super likely. So I, sorry, I

091thought I got cut off there. So as a result, because of the pay differences we've had to rely on contract SLPs, I've known these SLPs to be. to provide excellent services. But there's just a difference in the long-term consistency that can be provided by a district employee. And it ends up costing the district money anyways to do that. So when this was... When we found out that this was going to be on the discussion for tonight, it made me feel like the gamble that I took taking a pay cut coming into this district was finally going to pay off. It's paid off in a lot of other ways. I really do enjoy my job, but it's encouraging to see that this could also be something that I could do long-term beyond just while my children

092are attending these schools as well. And I also agree with the idea that I would like for our speech-language pathology assistants to also be considered for something like this in the future as well. because they are also very equally invested in our school communities and really provide a lot of services for our children. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Holly Neal. Good evening, Superintendent Tenius, President Nelson, and members of the board. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Holly Neal. I'm a former, be former, CASPA president for the last 20 years. I served as president, co-president, and vice president. Today I'm speaking as a long-time and proud ESP member in my 26th year. before you tonight is a compensation recommendation for all three employee groups. I'm here to

093express my disappointment with the proposals being presented for compensation. The recommendation before you tonight provides an approximate 2% increase for ESP and administrative employees, while teachers are proposed to receive what the agenda describes as slightly higher increase of approximately 4%. Respectfully describing a 4% increase as slightly higher than 2% is misleading when it is, in fact, double the amount being proposed for all other employees. Approving this recommendation will send a clear message to ESP employees that our contributions are viewed as less than valuable than those of our certified colleagues. While we have not yet seen the full presentation, and explaining the rationale behind the inequitable proposal, I have already heard several justifications, including concerns regarding teachers approaching minimum wage thresholds. teacher salaries not being competitive with neighboring districts and the assertion that this proposal offsets

094the $2 increase ESP employees previously received when teachers did not. I urge the board to examine whether ESP compensation is competitive with neighboring districts as well, or even with entry-level positions outside public education, including jobs such as flipping burgers across the street at Wendy's. I would also like to clarify the context surrounding the $2 ESP increase, if that is in fact a consideration, which was approved at the July 19, 2022 board meeting. During that same fiscal year, certified and administrative employees received an approximate 4% increase following an approximate 3% increase that was granted to all employee groups earlier that same year. While the increases were not identical in structure, they were similar in outcome. Historically, excluding the Red for Ed movement and the state mandated minimum wage increases, compensation increases in Kyrene have generally been

095applied equitably across employee groups, even when groups chose to apply those increases in a different manner. Those of us in public education are not here because of the high salaries or the private sector benefits. We are here because we are committed to students. I urge you to examine the disparity before making a decision on your vote tonight. A new teacher entry-level salary is going to receive an approximate $1.18 per cent increase, while an entry-level attendance clerk receives $0.31. Thank you. Thank you. Our final speaker tonight is Sophie Stella. Hi, my name is Sophie Ciadella. I'm a speech-language pathology assistant. This is my fourth year in Kyrene. I have loved it so far. I work with an amazing speech therapy staff. I have worked at six schools in my four years here, the self-contained rooms all

096the way to the articulation kids working on their speech sounds. I firstly want to thank the board for all the work you guys do and the hard decisions you have had to make, especially in recent times. I'm here today to support the speech-language pathologists and other service providers that are being offered a potential salary increase, but I'm also here to advocate for myself and my fellow speech-language pathology assistants that have been excluded from this proposal. The amazing SLPs I have the privilege of working with are very much deserving of a significant pay increase to not only honor their hard work, but also to close the gap between their pay and those of therapists in the neighboring districts. At the same time, it is quite a hard pill to swallow when your direct teammates get recognized

097for the value they bring to the Kyrene team, but you are overshadowed and left to internalize an implicit message along the lines of, we still need you, but we can't give you an equitable salary at this time. SLPAs are a critical member of the speech and language therapy team and the special education team as a whole. We too have specialized degrees and are completing 20 plus hours of professional development every two years to maintain our licensure and provide students the best therapy. Many of us provide therapy to nearly 100 students at a time. We design our own lessons, run our own sessions, collect data that we bill for, and this Medicaid billing also helps the district recoup funds. And we report on this data. While those are the key aspects of our role, that list

098barely scratches the surface. We also collaborate on our students' individualized education programs, attend before and after school meetings with families to discuss these IEPs, train colleagues on strategies for promoting speech and language skills across the board, and administer speech and language screeners to potential service candidates. We also regularly meet with teachers to problem solve for the kids we love. I could also share some absurd yet hilarious stories of tiny fires I'm constantly putting out in a day's work, as we all do, but those are probably best saved for now. I will admit I'm not a math person, hence my career choice, but I do know that the district continues to hemorrhage money hiring contract speech staff, even SLPAs, due to non-competitive employee pay. I'm also proud to work for Kyrene, but I need everyone to

099recognize that while a salary study may show one thing quantitatively, There is a level of morale and camaraderie to be lost when a loyal employee group is explicitly excluded and made to feel unappreciated. Lastly, our students thrive off consistency in staff, which we may stand to lose in the coming years if these affirmation trends continue. Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Thank you. I'd just like to thank everybody for their comments tonight. I know it can be a little daunting to come out and speak to the board under any circumstances, but I appreciate you being here. Item 8.1 is our consent agenda. Are there any changes to tonight's consent agenda? All right. Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Motion to approve. Is there a second? Second.

100Motion by Vice President Satri, second by Member Davis. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 9.1 is the FY27 budget revision. Mr. Brian Lockery. Madam President, members of the board, Serenity Tenias, I stand here to answer any questions you have for the 26th budget revision. I'm so sorry. Thank you for correcting me. Do any board members have any questions? All right. Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve the presented revised 2526 budget as presented in the public hearing in accordance with Arizona revised statute section 15-9.905.G. The governing board authorizes the district administration to overspend any functional area line item within the maintenance and operation section of the budget without exceeding the total budgeted expenditures. So moved. Is there a second? Second. A motion by Member Walsh, a second by Member

101Davis. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 9.2 is Employee Compensation, Educational Supports Professionals, Assistant Superintendent Lisa Gibson and Associate Superintendent Chris Harmon. Thank you. Good evening, President Nelson, Superintendent Tanez, members of the governing board, and community members. Tonight, I have the pleasure of bringing forward compensation for all three employee groups for the 2026-27 school year, a revised stipend schedule for annualized market stipends, a proposal for a new therapist salary schedule, a new salary schedule for psychologists and psychologist interns, and a proposal for a retention stipend for all employees. But before beginning my part of the presentation, I'm going to invite Mr. Chris Herman to talk about compensation, the budget, and how we were able to propose each item tonight. Thank you. So I just have a couple of elements I think

102it's really important for the board to understand. You know, we have not brought a total expenditure budget here yet. It takes time. We've talked about our schedule and timeline to do that. We're going to bring that to the board in early in June. But we're at the point where we put a lot of the budget pieces together for this year. and are confident that we know how we have a sustainable budget with the numbers that we're going to talk about. And Mrs. Gibson will walk you through here shortly. So there's really two things that I wanted to talk about. First is a retention stipend, and then the second would be the ongoing increases for compensation for employees. And there's really a difference in how we fund both of those. So let's start with the retention

103stipend that we're going to recommend for next year and how that impacts our budget. And so the most important thing to understand, is retention stipends really are year-to-year decisions, and they're not really guaranteed into the future because the funding for a retention stipend comes from either one-time events or situations where actual spending may come in less than overall budgeted amounts. Years ago, we were given some federal grants during the pandemic period to help provide some stipends for employees. years have long since passed and those funds are long since gone. So we've been able to do that mostly in the recent years from unfilled positions that we've budgeted money for, but we don't have a body or role or person to take that position. So you can either spend that money in the form of a

104stipend or you can put it into your reserve balances and not spend it. And so what Kyrene has chosen to do in recent years is look for areas that we might need to have that money invested in for strategic purposes. And that often happens in areas that might have higher expenses, I should say, in a given year or areas that are related to supporting our strategic plan. But beyond that, we've chosen to put that money in the form of a stipend. So we're at the point for this year where we've seen enough. unfilled positions. Unfortunately, we'd love to fill those positions, but we would rather put that money back for employees in the form of a stipend for next year where we can. And so the total cost of that would be about $2.4 million.

105But again, we're confident that we've saved enough money through vacant positions this year to be able to reinvest that for next year. So that's the stipend equation on how that works with the budget. And now I want to change gears a little bit and talk about the ongoing compensation for employees. And so this is different in the form of a stipend because compensation increases can't be funded from savings from one-time events. They're ongoing expenses in nature. You have to make that part of your ongoing operational budget. And so in order to have a balanced operational budget that's sustainable, any cost increases that you're adding to your budget in the form of compensation must be offset by either cost reductions or additional funding sources. So what I've tried to do is give you a little bit

106of a... representation of what we see in the big picture for our budget this year. And there are dozens of things that impact your budget every year, both on the cost and on the revenue side. But I'm trying to just distill it down to how we're able to make this commitment for next year. So as I mentioned, to have a balanced and sustainable budget, any impact from areas that have a negative impact on your budget must be balanced or offset by areas that have a positive impact on your budget. So in this graphic, you can see in the top part are the things that would be negatively impacting our budget for next year. We've talked about the first item, the $3.5 million as the anticipated funding loss because of enrollment changes. That's not new. That's

107not something that's just happening for next year. That's been happening for many years at Kyrene over the last seven or eight years. We've seen numbers similar to this. And we've talked about that on how that funding is anticipated to be reduced for next year. The second piece that's a big negative impact to the budget is the compensation amounts that Mrs. Gibson is going to talk about. It's $4 million. And so you might be thinking, how can you have $7.5 million of bad things happening in your budget and be able to have something that's sustainable and fiscally responsible? So that's the bottom section of this graphic. These are the things that have a positive impact on our budget for next year. So the first amount is $3.5 million of... expenditure reductions that are not related at

108all to school closures. So I didn't put the slide in that I shared in previous board meetings that talk about our timeless spending model. The concept of that is to look at how to right size your budget every year, no matter how big or how much your budget might shrink each year. And so we set goals to mitigate the impact of decreased funding loss from enrollment with reduced costs in our operations. That is 100% what we're doing. And the timeless model is reducing our expenditures by the same amount that we're seeing our budget being reduced from enrollment losses next year. We've done that every year. That's not new. That's not something new that Kyrene's just done this year. But that's exactly what we try to do when we talk about a timeless spending model and

109doing right size adjustments. The second number, the $1.3 million that you see on the bottom, is the amount of money that we're expecting to reduce our budget related to school closures. These are the same numbers that we presented during public board meetings and during discussions with our long-range committee on amounts that we feel and expected would materialize into savings into reductions for next year. So that's $1.3 million. I'm going to skip the next million dollars and go right to the $1.7 million on the far right. That's the money we talked about in the March study session about how much we should expect our state to provide for additional funding next year. That is the maximum amount that our state can give us according to the funding formulas. That is not equal to the amount of

110money we're investing in compensation for next year. It's not even close. that would equate to about a 1.7% increase for all of our employees, just to put that in perspective. So we're able to do more because we've reduced our expenses in a couple of different ways. There's about a million dollars from additional funding that we're anticipating for next year. We talked about this in our March study session. Mr. Lockery alluded to it earlier in the budget revision. We've seen some changes in the Group B funding. But because we have really good financial controls over how we do staffing and make decisions, we're able to invest as much of that as we can towards compensation for next year. So when you add up all the positive things to the budget, it equates to $7.5 million, which

111is equal to the negative, so to speak, areas in the budget. That's how I can stand here before you now, before we've asked you to approve a budget and know that we've committed to putting something together that's sustainable. fiscally responsible. So I always want to preface these kind of numbers that this is the process we go through every year. But the numbers and the things and the situations can change every year. So it's not guaranteed we're going to stand up here next year with these same exact numbers and these same exact situations happening. But it can be very different year to year. But this is the situation that we see for this year. And I just want to make sure the board knows how we're able to commit to that for next year. And with

112that, I'm going to let Mrs. Gibson talk about each of the different areas for the three different employee groups. So tonight, I would like to begin my part of the presentation by sharing an overview of compensation information for all three employee groups, which will then require three separate votes from the governing board. For the past three years, talent management has brought compensation proposals at the same percentage rate for all employees. This evening we are bringing forward a 2% increase for education support professionals and all administrative employees and a 4% increase for certified employees. Back in July of the 22-23 school year, we did receive additional money from the state and invested more money in the ESP salary schedule in order to ensure our state starting pay rose above minimum wage. When increases were applied that

113year, the administrative and certified employees groups had an increase of 7% and the ESP group had an average of a 14% increase. A 4% increase is being proposed tonight for the certified employee group. We recognize that our base pay for teachers is falling behind our neighboring districts, which reduces our ability to stay competitive and attractive to new certified staff. If by chance we receive additional money from the state this summer, our meet and confer groups will reconvene to determine how to apply the increase of the salary schedule. So beginning with the ESP salary schedule, the cost to lift the schedule by 2% is approximately $650,000. The ESP meet and confer group voted on Monday, May 4th. to approve this 2% increase in order to keep starting pay above minimum wage and to ensure that all

114ESP employees benefit from a salary increase. Currently, the starting pay for an ESP employee on the A10 band is $15.67 per hour. With the 2% lift, the starting rate will increase to $15.98 per hour, which then will be $0.83 above the current minimum wage. In addition, there are currently three ESP employees whose pay exceeds the salary schedule, and these employees will receive the 2% increase as well. The ESP meet and confer team unanimously voted on the 2% lift to ensure our employees receive the full increase and to ensure our base pay was above minimum wage. At this time, I am happy to answer any questions about the proposed 2% lift to the ESP salary schedule. Do any board members have any questions? Yes, I do. Member Collins. I'm trying to phrase what I'm going to

115say here or how I'm going to say it, given that I'm the local president for my union in my district and I go through these meetings. So you say, and I get it in the summer because that's when you get the total numbers of the money. For those of you who don't know that, they don't really get the total money until the summer budgets when the ledge does their stuff. So if you guys get enough money, will there be money to increase this pay for ESPs and give extra money to the SLPAs? I'm going to address the SLP when we get to the new therapist schedule, so please know that I'm going to address that piece as well. Okay. But as far as ESP, we would meet in a wall-to-wall meeting, so it would be

116the certified administrative and ESP group that we would come together as a team and to determine how to apply that money. So if you're asking if we would apply it to ESP, we would decide as a team how to best apply that increase. Okay. And while the likelihood is small that we'll receive additional, this is money that we know is already budgeted. Right. That we're able to do this regardless of what the state does with new monies. So we're able to, we are able to do this through our balanced budget. Should, and I believe it was, I'm looking to. Board Member Walsh and maybe President Nelson, I don't recall exactly the year. Was it 22? That we had already approved compensation, and I think we came back in late June, maybe early July, and we

117called a special meeting even for it. We did receive some additional dollars, and we were able to take that, as Ms. Gibson shared, to the wall-to-wall meeting. Should a very specific... amount of money come down from the state that says, like, sometimes they're as specific as the 20 by 20, this money can only be used for certified or this money can only be used in this way, then we would have to obviously follow whatever that recommendation or guidelines from the state were. But at this point, our updates and based on what we understand about the budget negotiations, there does not seem to be a path forward that we're going to get. an increase of money towards to be able to put towards compensation from the state. For this particular group, then? For any group. I

118do not believe that right now my understanding is one, two, three has quieted down and is not on the table. And so at this point, I have no indication based on any of the updates I've been getting in the legislative committees that I sit on that there is going to be any new money for schools. In addition to, you know, other than the inflationary funding that we're already getting. OK, well, I mean, because I mean, I get it. You guys are much bigger district than we are out there at the Casa Grande Union High School district. But I me personally, I just don't feel comfortable voting on monies when everybody's not getting extra money. Everybody's getting extra money. Even SPLAs? Yes. And we'll talk directly about everybody. So the ESLPAs are... So we separated the

119different salary schedules for the items that were addressed in the compensation study. And we're going to talk specifically about those. That's the SLPs. But ESP includes... SLPAs, there's a lot of acronyms there, I apologize. So they will also still get the 2% increase applied to their salary schedule the same way their salary schedule lifts up. So every ESP, Education Support Professional, salary schedule is increased by the 2% across the district. So they're classified as ESPs then? Yes. SLPA is classified as an ESP. So I know that's a little bit confusing because there's multiple items here this evening. If I may, I would just like to make one comment about the additional funding for the state. That has not been approved by the state. So but we feel very confident based on what the inflation projections.

120That is the minimum the state has to fund according to the state funding formula. So they haven't approved it yet, but we are highly confident it has to be passed based on what the legislative laws are. So sometimes, though, you might hear, this is new money coming in. It is new money, but we are already appropriating that towards compensation increases for our employees. I just want to make sure the board is aware of that. When a state budget is passed, that will be part of their state budget. And as shared, I believe Ms. Gibson shared, when we last, it wasn't last, I apologize, the year that we brought forward, it was about a 14% increase. It was on average. On average, we did a 14% increase for ESP staff. Please know that I will address

121SLPs when we get to 9.05. Are there any additional questions or comments? Board Member Walsh. Ms. Gibson, I know you will address this when you get to item 9.07, which is the stipend, but since I'd just like to make sure the board has an understanding of the full compensation being proposed for ESP, both salary and stipend. The stipend is for all employees certified and ESP, correct? Correct. Yes, for all employees. And it is a flat amount. based on full FTE or half FTE. It's not tied to a percentage of your base salary, correct? Correct. It would be $1,000 divided twice per year, $500 in December, $500 in June. And that's for full-time employees, $250 between each semester for anyone working less than a 0.5. Thank you. And I know you'll speak to that later in

122the agenda, but it does impact the total compensation package. Yes, you are correct. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay. May I have a motion to approve a 2% lift to the support staff salary schedule and apply it to all education support professional salary schedules for an approximate 2% compensation increase for the 26-27 school year? I'll make that motion. Okay. All right. I will second that motion. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Opposed. Motion passes 4-1. Item 9.3 is employee compensation administrative. Ms. Gibson. Thank you. On Friday, May 8th, the Kyrie Administrative Council met and voted on how to apply a 2% increase to all administrators on and off the salary schedule. The cost to lift the administrative salary, including administrators on the salary schedule and off the salary schedule, is approximately

123$200,000. Since the vote was to lift the schedule, any administrators that exceeded the last cell of the salary schedule will receive the 2% increase as well. At this time, I'm happy to answer any questions about the proposed 2% lift to administrative salary. for any administrators on the salary schedule and off the salary schedule. Any questions at this time? Seeing, yes, Member Davis. Yes, thank you. I'm sorry, I was a little slow there. It says the rows do not equal years of experience. What do they equal? So a percent of the cell, so each cell is 1%, an approximate 1%, because they've been kind of moved around because of compression, but it's about 1%. So if they move down the cell, they move down one cell percentage. If it's a lift, it's a lift to the

124entire schedule by that 2%. So for administrators, if it's a 2% lift to the schedule, then the 2% is applied to the entire salary schedule. if they voted on a 1% lift and a one cell movement down, it's a 1% lift to the salary schedule and then it's a cell movement down. But anybody that was on the last cell can't go down any further. So they would only get a 1% increase instead of a 2% increase, if that makes sense. They're basically not using the going down this year. So what it's saying is if you were on row, I'm making a letter up G, you're going to stay on row G. The entire scale went up by 2%. So whatever GMA that you're in, whatever that number is, it's going to go up by 2%.

125If they had said one and one, as Ms. Gibson just described, you would go from your G column. You would get your 2%. there, and then you would also move down the next letter, and then the 2%, or the 1%, I'm sorry. So it ends up being still approximately 2%, although the cells, as you've talked about over the years, because depending on how the groups have applied it, aren't an exact 1% difference. What determines movement? The meet and confer teams come together and decide they get this much money, how they want to apply it to their schedule. So if they would have said, we'd like to apply a 1% lift and a 1% sell movement, then there's movement. If they say we want to apply a 2% lift, then there's no movement for your letter

126down, just the 2% overall increase. So the employees make that decision when we take it to their meet and confer teams to talk about. Thank you. So one person that I didn't think that I had in my head to thank as soon as I stood up here was Carla Cova Rubius. She works in talent management and she is. amazing. She is somebody that helps me every year when we meet with our ESP meet and confer groups. She creates the scenarios. So for example, Certify has a 4% lift. That's what they're proposing. But they can apply that in any way. So that group had different scenarios where they could apply a 1% lift. four cell movements down, a 2% lift, two cell movements down, a 4% movement down, or a 3% lift and one cell movement

127down. And so the meet and confer groups, when we meet, they have different scenarios that they can decide on and that they vote on, on how they want to apply the money. Thank you. That makes sense. It's actually very interesting. I like it. Thank you. You're welcome. Any additional questions for Ms. Gibson? All right. Seeing none, I will make a motion to approve a 2% lift to all administrative salary schedules for an approximate 2% compensation increase for the 26-27 school year and improve a 2% compensation increase for all administrative positions not on a salary schedule. Is there a second? Second. Second by Vice President Satri. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? I abstain. Motion passes 4 to 0 with one abstention. All right. There we go. Item 9.4 is employee compensation for a

128certified staff. I'm going to also address certified salary schedule, but I'm also going to address annualized market stipends as well in the same presentation. So at the end, you can ask questions about either how they apply the salary, the increase, or the annualized market stipends. Okay. The Certified Meet and Confer Group voted unanimously on May 6th to lift the certified salary schedule by 4%. The total cost of this increase is approximately $2.5 million. The 4% adjustment positively impacts our base pay and helps keep the districts competitive with surrounding districts. Currently, the starting base pay for a new teacher is $50,436.50. With the 4% increase, base pay will increase by approximately $2,000, bringing the new starting base salary to $52,453.96 for next year. In addition, a new teacher may earn up to $57,653.96, when including the

129$5,200 available through performance pay and the teaching and learning stipend. This information, so all of that information about the teaching and learning stipend and performance pay will be included on the salary schedule for new teachers when it's published on the website. Surrounding districts currently offer starting salaries ranging from approximately $55,000 to $59,000, making this 4% lift to the salary schedule an important step in remaining competitive in attracting and retaining teachers. To lift the salary schedule for three employee groups is approximately $3 million. If approved tonight, talent management will send salary addendums to certified and administrative employees before the last day of school for school staff, and contracts and compensation notices for ESP staff will be issued as soon as possible. I'm also going to take a moment to address the annualized market stipends since they

130are also included in compensation. And for the past several years, the current schedule for the annualized market stipend has been on hold, which allowed us to have the stipend schedule reviewed as part of the compensation study. During this time, eligible employees continued to receive their stipend, but did not advance in the tiers identified on the stipend schedule. A new tiered structure for annualized market stipends is being proposed for governing board approval tonight. This revised structure is designed to attract and retain employees by offering higher compensation earlier in the employee's career. It also streamlines the stipend schedule by combining the dual language and resource stipends, reducing the number of tiers, and eliminating the differentiated amounts for holding a master's degree. Employees who receive an annualized market stipend and hold a master's degree are already compensated on

131the salary schedule. Employees who are currently receiving an annualized stipend that exceeds the maximum amount on the new schedule will continue to receive their existing higher stipend amount. The cost to update the annualized market stipend is approximately $200,000, and if approved tonight, a new stipend schedule will be published on the Kyrene website on May 13th. At this time, I'm happy to answer any questions about the proposed 4% lift to the certified schedule and to the new annualized market stipend schedule. Do any board members have any questions or comments? I would like to just make a comment around the market stipends. I think this is much clearer than it's been. in years past. So thank you for that. It is attached in board docs if you are looking for a copy of it. And the reason

132that it is one voting item and not two separate is because it's one salary schedule. So when you approve the certified salary schedule, you would be approving the market stipends at the same time. That's why it's so if you open your first document there, that is the schedule that the board would be approving. And the blue and the green boxes. Any questions? I'm going to ask a generalized question, if that's okay. I'm a little confused about how different districts, they all get the same amount of money from the state per pupil expenditure, correct? Not necessarily. No? Not really. Not necessarily. High school districts get different amounts of money. There's weighted groups that get different amounts of money and depending on your weight. So it can vary by district. Mr. Herman, I don't know if you

133want to jump in there, but there's a lot of variance. And then you start adding in federal funding sources and you start adding in all these other sources. No, it is not necessarily the same. So the number, this is just a very basic question. The number that is the average per pupil contribution from the state, which is oftentimes we're told that Arizona is 49th or 50th or 48th in per pupil spending, right? Is that the same number for all districts? I'm going to pass that question. We're going to let Mr. Herman give you a little information there. Just a couple of clarifying points to what you said. You're talking about the funding amount from the state, not the expenditure amount from the state. Correct. So everyone receives the same base level funding amount from the

134state. Correct. Our superintendent's absolutely correct. There are different weights based on high school, based on what we call group B students. There's other factors that contribute as well, but the base amount is the same for every school district. That's from a funding perspective, yes. So differences in the amount that a certain school district gets may be attributed to the fact that they have, for instance, more special needs kids. Do they get more per pupil for a special need child than they do for... There are different weights applied. They vary. So there are increases applied, yes, for the group B students, correct. Oftentimes, those students, though, require very expensive levels of service. So even though you may get more money for that funding, oftentimes the expenses to provide those services for those students exceed the money

135that you receive. So, for instance, Kyrene spends millions of dollars more. in services for those who are referred to as Group B students that need more specialized services than what we actually receive in funding from the state. And the, I'm just trying to figure out why neighboring districts, where does this differential come from that we pay less as our... Wonderful employees here were reminding us that we don't have competitive salaries. One of the biggest issues would be whether you're a declining enrollment district or a rapidly growing district can have a huge impact on what you're able to do. So you'll notice that districts that are growing more quickly have the ability to offer a lot more in compensation, typically. Districts that are considered declining districts do not have that same opportunity, because if you think

136about Mr. Herman's slide, I might be able to go there. Districts that are, I might not be able to get there. You might have to get us there. Districts that are growing where it says negative budget impact 3.5, they don't have to address that. They might actually see a bigger number down below in the positive impact. So it could be what would be a good example of a growing district. Usually West Valley. Yeah, like a West Valley. Levine is a great one. Levine is growing. Great one. Thank you. Maricopa is another big one. So as they're growing, they're getting, because remember your funding is coming in based on your current students that are in the seats. And so they don't have to start the year with a 3.5 million negative impact. They're probably not making

137any cuts and they're actually seeing more growth. So more growth in the base formula means more money for them. So they have more staff and they have more everything. Probably. Well, it depends. They may not be as big as we are. But if they're growing, they're still seeing more funds. That's the other thing. They could be a smaller district, but because they're seeing positive impacts to their budget every year, not negative impacts, they start at a different place. We think about it, if you think about zero-based budgeting, we start the year negative $3.5 million before we ever do a thing, just simply because of enrollment loss. Makes it very difficult. If we didn't start the year with that negative 3.5, we would have had another 3.5 million. If our enrollment just stayed stable, we would

138have had another $3.5 million to put towards compensation. So if you're a stable district and you're not seeing declining enrollment or you're a growing district, you're not seeing the declining enrollment, you have more money to put towards those items. Okay. I get it sort of. I'll leave it for now. Thank you. say, and I don't know if this is where you were headed with this, there are states that do a statewide compensation for certified teachers, and there are places that look at it more holistically than Arizona does. So if that's kind of what you were thinking is why isn't it a level playing field across the state, Arizona does not approach it that way where they have a statewide system for compensation for educators. Yeah, thank you. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, may

139I have a motion to approve a 4% lift to the certified staff salary schedule for an approximate 4% compensation increase along with the new tiered certified annualized market stipends for the 26-27 school year? So moved. Is there a second? I'll second that. Teachers? A motion by Member Walsh, a second by Member Collins. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 9.5 is the new allied. I was going to give daily aligning. Oh, yeah. Sorry. That's okay. A moment to speak. Thank you. If I can just address the vote you took just now for certified compensation, I would really appreciate it. I sit as facilitator to the certified meet and confer team. And so when we go through the budget and we look at compensation in our very last meeting, no one on the

140certified team thought we would get more than 1%. We know what the numbers are. We know what the budget looks like. We know that we are in dire straits in this state because they don't fund us. appropriately. So when we came back to a 4%, we were overjoyed. And so we had different scenarios brought to the table on what this could look like. We went unanimously, I think to the surprise of the administration team, we said 4% lift to the entire salary schedule because we also have two things in mind when we talk compensation. attracting new teachers and retaining the teachers that we have. 4% lift addresses both of those things in a way that gives value to your certified staff. And I know that we're not looking at the same percentage for all three

141employee groups and that hurts. It really does. We know how valuable our ESPs are. I am hoping that as we go through. further budgets as we're looking, we can readdress that. And I'm hoping that those that are at home watching this know that we work really hard to bring care compensation to the table when we can. So I thank you for your vote. Thank you. Item 9.5 is the new allied health salary schedule. The compensation study identified positions that are significantly misaligned with the current market. And this year, we are able to address positions with the greatest market misalignment, including SLPs, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and school psychologists. Other allied health employees not on the therapist, the new therapist schedule, or the psychologist salary schedule. such as nurses, counselors, social workers, and SLPAs were part

142of the compensation study, but they were not identified as significantly misaligned. And those employee groups, they will receive the same percent increase for whatever their employee group is. For example, SLPAs would get the 2% increase. Nurses, as they are considered certified staff, they would receive the 4% increase. And Skipson, if I may jump in, just for reference for the board, as said, the SLPs were significantly significantly misaligned from the market, meaning our peer, what the compensation study looked at, peer districts, surrounding areas. Our SLPAs were what was called significantly over. So we are actually paying more for our SLPAs than our surrounding or the peer districts that were included in the compensation study. And so there was, you know, one was significantly misaligned, one was significantly over, which is why the SLPAs were not addressed.

143in this compensation recommendation is because... they are already in line with the market. And then they'll also get an additional 2% increase as part of the ESP increase. So that is why. So not every position was addressed because as Ms. Gibson said, I want to be really clear, we only, there's not enough funds, right? You saw that slide with the budget. We had to be really thoughtful and had to go for positions that are significantly misaligned with the market, meaning we're falling so far behind the market. That we are, as you heard many of our public comments, forced to hire either a contracted service provider or leave a position unfilled or have a long-term sub in there. We do not have contracted. I do not believe Dr. Lane can check me on this. Right now,

144we currently have no SLPA contracted service providers. We are able to hire SLPAs and we are, again, significantly above the market. And so we need to be thoughtful about that. Thanks, Lisa. I'm going to just go ahead and talk about some of the contracted vendors, which I know was talked about earlier today. And currently, some of these roles, the SLPs, OTs, PTs, and psychologists, they are filled with contracted vendors. And our goal is that updated compensation structures will help attract and retain Kyrie employees in his hard-to-fill positions. Relying on contracted staff can create instability for school sites, as vendor employees may resign with only two weeks' notice. In addition, some contracted providers are unable to lead IEP meetings, which places additional responsibility on existing staff to prepare for and facilitate those meetings. Our long-term goal

145is to fully staff these positions with Kyrene employees in order to provide greater consistency and continuity of services for students and communities. To support this goal, a new allied health salary schedule for SLPs, OTs, and PTs is being proposed for the governing board approval to bring compensation for these roles more in line with current market rates. A separate salary schedule will be proposed for school psychologists as those positions are classified as administrative employees. To lift the cost of the therapist's schedule is approximately $400,000. With that, I am happy to answer any questions. before a vote. Do any board members have any questions or comments? Member Walsh. Not a question, but a comment. I am grateful to see this on the agenda. It's regrettable that we've lost opportunities having some talented SLPs, but I'm grateful for

146those that have stayed with us. I've had a kid that needed speech therapy. He was struggling. He couldn't engage with his teacher, his friends. He had a hard time engaging with his family. And the speech language services that he received from the hiring team were, to not overstate it, life-changing. So I want to thank you for all that you're doing. I want to thank you for staying with us. And I, for one, would encourage my fellow board members to vote in favor of this item. Thank you. Tampering. I'm just kidding. I would like to give a shout out to you guys as well. One snapple fact about myself is I was a stutterer growing up and I had to go to speech therapy from kindergarten all the way to like seventh grade. Now, when I

147get really mad, it comes out when I get really mad, like the Hulk. But thank you for what you do. And as Member Wall said, you know, and if it comes off, if I'm coming off emotionally, it's because as a union leader, I respect everybody who works in these schools and I wish everyone could get compensated what they deserve. And that's real, you know, you know, especially when I look around and I see certain entities being paid so much money, you know, I'm doing a project with my students and they were like, coach, you find it funny that a guy playing a firefighter on TV get paid more than an actual firefighter. And I looked at him and I said, wow, that's a great point. And so, you know, thank you for what you do.

148And I would like to motion if there are no other comments to approve the pay for this. There is another comment. So you're going to have to wait. I guess I'll just have to wait then. I don't know. Okay. I have a comment. So. Thank you for this. I am so happy to see our occupational therapists included in this as well. In our family, we have made great use of speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists over the years. And it's a, they're very difficult fields of work. And I think the key here, at least something that has been successful in our family, is when your child makes a connection with a provider. And that's when the real magic happens in the work that they're able to do and the strides they're able to make. And if we

149aren't able to retain these really valuable, not that everybody isn't valuable, but when you're not able to retain these employees, it's really difficult for our children to make the progress that they need to be able to successfully interact with their peers or in my son's case, like learn to hold a pencil, you know. you know, working with his dysgraphia, it's very difficult. And I just am so happy to see this. And hopefully we will be able to attract and retain these employees because they are such a valuable part of our school community. I hope that we... If I'm looking at a glass half full, hopefully we'll be able to come back and maybe revisit what compensation looks like for some of our other groups that we're not able to do as much for at this

150point in time. But again, I'm really happy to see this. I know it's difficult when you have people coming in and out or contracted providers. It just having people be a part of our community is really important. So thank you. With that said, may I have a motion to propose the new allied health therapist salary schedule for the 26-27 school year? I motion with enthusiasm. Is there a second? Second. Motion by Member Collins, second by Vice President Satri. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes five to zero. Thank you. Item 9.6 is the new psychologist salary schedule. Because school psychologists are considered administrators, a separate salary schedule was developed rather than placing them on the new allied health therapist salary schedule. A new salary schedule is being proposed for governing board approval to bring

151compensation for these roles more in line with the current market rates and to support recruitment and retention efforts. While the psychologist intern position was not identified as significantly misaligned, it is included with this structure because we are contracted with other universities that that amount for a psychologist intern needs to be at 75% of the psychologist's pay. The cost to lift the psychologist's schedule is approximately $300,000. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions about the psychologist's schedule. Any questions? All right. Seeing none, I will make a motion to approve the proposed new psychologist and psychologist intern scallery schedule for the 26-27 school year. Is there a second? Second. Second, my member Walsh. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. 9.7 is all-employee retention stipend for the 26-27 school year. Talent Management is

152proposing a $1,000 retention stipend to be paid to all full-time employees in two separate increments next school year. One payout of $500 will occur in December and the second payout of $500 next June. Employees who work then less than half-time will receive $250 per semester. The total cost for the retention stipend is $2.4 million, and money for this stipend is mostly from vacant positions. The district was unable to fill the school year. Before the governing board takes a vote on the retention stipend, I am happy to answer any questions. Member Walsh? No, thank you. Oh, okay. I don't have a question, but I'll just make a comment. $1,000. I know some people are like, $1,000? Trust me, guys. In my district. I, and we're a much smaller district than you guys are here. That's the

153most I was able to negotiate for my staff to was a thousand dollars. So that seems to be the general number across the state, unfortunately. So I don't want people thinking they're being, well, I'm not going to say what I'm going to say, but yeah, thousand dollars is pretty much what everybody's getting across the state, just so you know, so you don't think you're being shortchanged, so to speak. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? May I have a motion to approve a $1,000 FY27 retention stipend for all 0.5 FTE or greater employees and a $500 FY retention stipend for employees less than 0.5 FTE. Motion to approve. Motion by Vice President Satri. Is there a second? Second. Second by Member Davis. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 9.8 is superintendent

154contract extension. Last week, we met to review superintendent's superintendent tenure contract renewal, and I want to open it up if any board members have any questions or comments they'd like to make at this point in time. All right. Seeing none, I would like to say, you know, just for the community's awareness, Superintendent Tenius, we're happy that you're wanting to extend your contract. We know your leadership is really valued. I know we recently did your... Your board evaluation and looking forward to seeing the progress you're able to make on your goals, especially as we're setting, you know, I think we look at the Kyrene forward, how we're setting the district up for greater long-term success. So with that, may I have a motion to approve the superintendent's contract extension? So moved. Is there a second? I'll

155second. All right. Motion by Member Walsh, second by Member Collins. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 10.1 is Board Committee and Conference Reports. Do any board members have any committee or conference reports? Member Davis. Thank you very much. I sit on the Curriculum Committee for the district, and we had our meeting, the last meeting of the year. the other day. It was very interesting, very well done, I thought. And the one thing that I would appreciate some help on is a little explanation about a question that I asked that was, the answer was given very clearly to me. And I don't think that I could state it better than you. So I had questioned the new adoption of a, help me say it right, the special, it's a special support. So

156what, are you ready for me to speak? Not yet. I just wanted to see before we get to Dr. Lane, if any other board members had any conference or committee reports. Nope. Okay. Then we're going to go to item 10.2, which is our curriculum council update. Dr. Lane. Once again, I jump ahead. Sorry. Okay. So yes, member Davis is correct. Last week we had our last curriculum council meeting of the year. We had one supplemental curriculum proposal and it was for a. A phonics, an intensive reading intervention program that is used by a limited number of staff within the district, which is why it's a supplemental. Something that's used district-wide would go through a curriculum adoption, what Mrs. Gengel spoke about earlier. But our supplemental adoptions go through our curriculum council. And so the question

157that Member Davis asked was, how are we going to train the staff that are going to use this program? And so this is a small group of staff. It's about 12 academic interventionists and also the elementary resource teachers at our elementary campuses, which is maybe one to two per campus that would be trained. And they will be trained during the school day. It's a four-hour training. Our staff in Academic Equity and Excellence would train those staff. but it is job embedded training. We would not expect these staff to come in either before the school year starts or after school to do that training. It would be during their school and during their work day. And am I correct in understanding that these staffs don't have... They don't have classrooms that they're assigned. They're not setting

158up classrooms. They're not. Their responsibility is to work with small groups of children throughout the school day. They do not run a, they're not a general education teacher that runs a classroom from, you know, bell to bell. So they are pulling students during the school day, during our instructional focus group time that's set aside throughout the school day. Okay. So it doesn't, it's not putting another burden on. On a classroom teacher. No. Okay. Thank you. And thanks for your help. You're welcome. Thank you, Dr. Lee. Item 11.1 is items for future consideration. Do any board members want to list any items for future consideration? Member Walsh. This item was actually prompted by the comment from Ms. Inouye during the public hearing portion of the instructional time model. I'm really grateful that Ms. Inouye was able

159to learn about this. I know she follows this board. I'm not sure that all of our community members are aware of it. So I wonder when Ms. Chinjel makes the... next presentation at the second hearing, if she might touch on how our school leaders or our district are making families aware that these instructional time models exist. Absolutely. Thank you, Member Walsh. Thank you. Any other items for future consideration? All right. Item 12.1 is meeting dates. The next regular meeting is scheduled for May 26, which at times we will discuss the instructional time model. And then item 13.1 is adjournment. May I have a motion to adjourn this evening's meeting? Oh, aye. Motion. Is there a second? Second. All right. A motion by Member Collins, second by Member Davis. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion

160passes 5-0. The meeting is adjourned at 7.54 p.m.