03-24-2026 Kyrene Governing Board Study Session & Meeting

001All right. Good afternoon. Our study session is called to order at 5.01 p.m. Our first item tonight is our general fund revenue budget overview. And so I'd like to welcome Associate Superintendent Chris Herman to speak with us. Community know that we are committed to transparency and accountability. This budget report contains information for any and all of our financial information about Kyrene, as well as other information about our district. So if anyone has any questions or wants to know more about Kyrene's budget, This is the place that I encourage them to start first. We're only one of two school districts in Arizona who produced this type of report and have been recognized by this award. And approximately 130 school districts nationally receive ASBO International's Meritorious Budget Award for this type of budget work. And Kyrene has

002received that award for the last four years. This is the timeline information slide that I also like to show during each of our spring budget presentations to really help clarify and identify the work that is necessary to build Kyrene's budget each year. You can see that many different activities are now being worked on simultaneously during this time period in the spring, which is why information for next year's budget. will be presented during multiple study sessions and board meetings during the spring with the goal of bringing everything together in the month of June and ultimately voting on a budget in the month of June and early in July. And so when we talk about the format of how we'll work for the spring presentations, the format will be similar to what we've done in previous years

003and will ultimately cover all the funds that are defined by the Uniform System of Financial Records, otherwise known as the USFR. And for Arizona school districts, the USFR has been developed by the Office of the Auditor General and the Arizona Department of Education. And that prescribes the internal control policies and procedures to be used for the accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, and other compliance requirements that school districts follow. Our spring presentations will provide information for the various fund categories and fund types as defined in the USFR. And this approach also aligns with the same format and content reported in our annual comprehensive financial report. It's also consistent with governmental industry-wide reporting practices and also aligns with the information that is used and evaluated by bond credit agencies. So you'll hear the term fund throughout the presentation

004this evening. And that term for fund is simply terminology for an accounting method that separates and classifies the types of revenues and expenses that are incurred for different and more specific designated purposes. Different funds and different fund types are necessary in Arizona because of legal, financial, statutory, or regulatory requirements and often dictate that sources of money can only be used for specific purposes and cannot be mixed together. The USFR defines two major fund categories, governmental funds and proprietary funds, and then multiple fund types within each category as illustrated in this table. For Kyrene, the governmental fund category typically contains over 90% of all of our district-wide revenue. So it is by far the biggest fund that we have, or fund category, I should say, that we have. Tonight's presentation will focus just on general fund

005revenues, which, again, is one of four fund types that you see within the general funds category. But in subsequent board presentations throughout the spring, we will provide more updates for the remaining fund types that are listed on this slide. There are multiple individual funds that are included in the general fund type. Sometimes people think it's just maintenance and operations, but it's actually more than that. However, maintenance and operations, which is also referred to as M&O, is by far the largest fund within this category and makes up about 98% of the total general fund revenues. The M&O fund supports the day-to-day operations necessary to run a school district. which includes areas such as providing teaching and learning opportunities for our students, specialized services for students with higher needs, transportation, and other administrative and support activities. And

006besides M&O, the other funds that are included in the general fund would include, I should say, Medicaid, which relates to money received from federal Medicaid reimbursements. The school plant fund, which accounts for monies that are received from the sale or lease of school property. And this is the fund where the lease proceeds from the property off of ITIN are recorded. Indirect costs are typically funds that include money transferred from federal projects or from food service based on the indirect cost rate that is approved by the U.S. Department of Education. Insurance proceeds account for monies received from insurance claims. Unemployment insurance is related to unemployment insurance contributions. And advertising accounts for monies that's received from the sale of advertising. But because M&O is the largest fund within the general fund type, and also the largest individual

007fund in Kyrene's entire budget. It's important to understand the key assumptions for next year's budget and explain how the revenue budget is calculated. The first place to start is by explaining that Kyrene's total M&O revenue does not represent just one calculation or one amount, but it really is comprised of three main components, and we'll dive into each of these later throughout the presentation. The first is the base support level, which reflects the annual per-student state funding amount that is primarily based on weighted student counts plus additional factors that are part of that calculation. The second is the revenue control limit, which includes the base support limit plus the transportation revenue control limit. And the revenue control limit is important because it's also used to calculate our M&O override limits. and also determine our capital override

008limits as well. The third component would be the overall total M&O revenue, which would include the revenue control limit, plus amounts that are from other sources, such as district additional assistance, which is state-funded capital. that is allocated to M&O, our M&O override amounts, and other funds such as Prop 123. But we'll dive into that on each of the following slides to give you a little bit more detail about what's in those numbers. And although some of the numbers that we're going to show today might change between now and once the final budget is passed by our legislators and governor, between now and June. If any of those changes happen, then those revenue estimates that we're providing today will update them and will give the board an idea of what's changed since today. So when we

009talk about developing that revenue assumptions for M&O, it really begins with establishing student enrollment projections because the largest component of the state's base support level funding is related to the number of students enrolled for next year. Kyrene is a landlocked district that is experiencing declines in enrollment due to several factors, and it should be noted that the main drivers for any enrollment declines are not related to families just leaving the district or choosing other schools, but We've discussed that extensively this past year with the board and our community, but rather the other factors that are primarily related to declining birth rates and the lack of housing and neighborhood turnover that we experience across our district. The information related to birth rates that I'm showing on this slide was shared with the board during previous presentations

010from our demographer and really establishes the basis for estimating enrollment trends for next year's budget. We have our demographer prepare enrollment information every year, and it's the first place to start when you're developing a school district budget. This graph shows how birth rates across Arizona, and specifically Maricopa County, which is shown in the green line on the graph, fell by almost 19% between 2006 and 2011. And after several years where birth rates showed some stabilization between that 2011 and 2014 time period, there was another 20% drop in birth rates over the next nine years. Listed at the bottom of this graph is the year that those children who were born would enter kindergarten, which gives us an indication of the expected impact on our future incoming kindergarten classes and class sizes. This information simply means

011that there are fewer children born each year across Maricopa County and within our own boundaries. And as our demographer has presented previously, this situation is expected to continue into the future. Kyrene has experienced these lower birth rates for several years now as our incoming kindergarten classes have been smaller than what has been experienced in the previous year. The second major factor that has a negative impact on Kyrene's enrollment is related to housing and the lack of neighborhood turnover. And data for this graph is also prepared by our demographer and shows that the overall percentage of homeowners between the ages of 25 and 44, which is typically in the range where you would have elementary age students. has dropped from 53% to 36% over the last 20 years. Likewise, the percentage of children in our boundaries

012between the ages of 0 to 13 has dropped from 22.3% to 15.8% over that same time period. This data provides evidence that households and our boundaries over the last two decades have typically become older and therefore have fewer elementary age children living in them. And people may also point to housing and housing prices becoming more expensive in our district, which again leads to less affordable housing options for families. And this data would reflect that situation as well. So when you look at how these factors affect Kyrene from an enrollment perspective, what you see happening at Kyrene each year... as a smaller incoming class or incoming kindergarten class versus the size of the eighth grade class that's leaving and promoting on to high school. And that situation simply means that our total enrollment will naturally be

013lower than the previous year. And as an illustration, you can see that today there are 1,508 students currently enrolled in eighth grade. But only 1,052 students are projected to enroll in kindergarten next school year. And the impact of having that larger outgoing class being replaced by a smaller incoming kindergarten class equates to a drop of at least 456 students next year. just based on the number of students leaving our district and promoting on to high school versus the number of kindergarten students that would be joining. So when we talk about lower year-over-year enrollments, this is the primary driver for what those changes are. So because we are funded based on current year enrollment, Determining an accurate estimate for next year's enrollment projections is really the starting point for building the base support level components of

014the maintenance and operations revenue budget. The base support limit is calculated by multiplying the total weighted student count by the base level funding amount per pupil. and multiplying that by the teacher experience index, and then adding the amount for non-federal audit services. The estimated amounts for next year's budget are listed along on this slide along with the comparison against the previous three budget periods. And although my intent was not to make everyone an expert on school-based budgeting, I do want to break down some of those numbers in more detail tonight. So the first element in the calculation of the base support level is determining the average daily membership. You'll see the acronym ADM, that's what it relates to, and weighted student counts. Our state base level funding is based on a formula that begins with

015the average daily membership, or ADM, and then weighting those student counts. School districts receive state funding based on the number of students enrolled during the first 100 days of school in the current year. And those funding amounts are consistently adjusted throughout the year as enrollment changes occur each month until the 100th day of school is reached. So I should note that unweighted ADM is not the same thing as student enrollment. For instance... The ADM and consequently the funding that we receive for a student, or kindergarten student, I should say, is only counted at half of a full student, which means that Arizona only funds kindergarten students at half of the full funding formula amount, even though Kyrene provides a full day of kindergarten education. The weights that I mentioned earlier are predetermined by state statute,

016and then they are applied against the ADM amounts in an effort to account for additional funding that might be needed for more costly types of education. There are two categories of weights, which in the world of Arizona school finance are typically referred to as Group A and Group B. Group A refers to a general weighting that is applied to all students and is designated to support programs for students who may have mild learning and emotional conditions or possibly things like speech or language impairments. The Group B weighting is applied only to students identified in specific areas that require more services or specialized types of education, maybe language supports or other supports for students with more severe developmental needs. The weights for these categories in Group B are typically more significant in order to account for

017additional costs that are necessary to provide more comprehensive services for those students. Kyrene has seen an increase over the last several years in the number of students needing those more specialized types of educational services. And although these higher numbers... typically equate to higher funding amounts, the reality is that the funding for these types of services is often not enough to cover the absolute costs that Kyrene incurs. We're not alone in that. That happens a lot across Arizona. But Kyrene's traditional special education funding gap is typically millions of dollars when you look at the amount of money on expenses to cover those services versus the money that the state provides. You'll see for the 2026-27 column, the 11,199 unweighted ADM number shown for next year's budget represents a decrease of 582 versus last year's budgeted amount.

018And that's equivalent to an expected decline of 592 students. So again, that decline is mostly the result of having a larger number of eighth grade students who are promoting out and on to high school next year versus a much smaller incoming kindergarten or smaller kindergarten class. And so, but we've also factored in additional anticipated enrollment loss for the three schools that are closing next year, like we talked about in some of our public. discussions, and we've applied a 7% loss factor for those affected schools for next year, which was based on the guidance from our demographer. So you can see, or you can also see, I should say, the total weighted student count. for next year is 16,428, which is only 428 ADM lower than the prior year. And the reason for that is that

019this number includes both the weighted amounts for both Group A and Group B students. The fiscal year 27 budget assumptions for the Group A weighted ADM assumes a decrease of 675 students. But the Group B weighted ADM is assumed to actually increase by 247 ADM versus the prior year budget. However, even again, even though we would expect to receive more funding from that Group B amount, it's likely that our costs in special educational areas would increase proportionally as well. So therefore, the total net decrease in weighted ADM student counts for next year is 428, going from 16,856 last year to 16,428 expected for next year. And that would equate to an overall reduction in state M&O base level funding of $2.3 million versus last year's budget. The second element in this calculation is to determine

020the base level funding amount for pupil. And this is the funding amount determined annually by the legislature and equates to every 1.0 weighted ADM. And the change in the annual per pupil amount is determined by state statute, which states that school districts receive an inflation amount. or an inflation increase, I should say, based on the lesser of 2% or the annual change in the GDP price deflator, which is a measurement of inflation change. So the maximum amount that an annual increase that a school district can receive in inflation funding is 2%. And we have already received guidance that the GDP price deflator has been running above 2% for this year. So it's reasonable to expect that we would receive that 2% increase in next year's per-pupil funding once the budget is ultimately approved and signed

021by the governor, which would increase that per-pupil amount to $5,215.53 per ADM. However, it is important to point out that this increase in funding really will not be equivalent to the actual cost increases that are being experienced across the state, which means that our budgets will still continue to feel a squeeze from inflation. So that expected 2% inflation increase equates to roughly $1.7 in increased funding expected for next year's budget. I want to say the third element that we should talk about in calculating the base support level is determining the teacher experience index, or also known as TEI, as we do like our acronyms. TEI is a multiplier that provides additional funding for districts with teacher experience that exceeds the state average, but districts are not penalized if the district's experience is less than the

022state average. So this index can and will fluctuate year to year because it's a measurement relative to the overall change in the average years of experience across the state of Arizona. And you can see that the TEI ratio for next year is slightly higher than last year's amount, which would be at 1.02. And that should equate to a funding increase of approximately $440,000 more than last year's budget. So what that means is Kyrene has more years of teacher experience than the state average. The final element of the base support level is to add in any non-federal audit fees as the state of Arizona reimburses school districts for these financial and audit costs. And you can see that amount is typically around $50,000 per year. So when you multiply the weighted student counts times the base

023level funding per pupil times the teacher experience index and add the audit fees, the total base support level amount assumed for the fiscal year 27 budget is $87.4 million, which is $82,000 lower than last year's budget amount. And really it's explained by three factors. The first being the net enrollment loss of $2.3 million, the expected increase in inflation funding of $1.7 million, and then an expected increase in TEI funding of over $400,000. The second component of M&O funding is to calculate the revenue control limit. which is the base support level plus the transportation revenue control limit, or again, as we really enjoy our acronyms, you'll see it called TRCL as well, which is the funding provided by the state for transportation expenses. So the calculation for determining the TRCL is based on a formula that

024looks at the total overall miles driven. and a state reimbursement amount per mile. But according to the current funding formula, there is not a year-over-year decrease in transportation funding for school districts, even if a year-over-year mileage amount decreases. And that has been the case for Kyrene as well as other districts that typically have experienced enrollment declines across several years. So you can see in the table that the TRCL funding that Kyrene has received has been flat at $5.3 million for many years. And it would continue to be that same amount in next year's budget assumptions as well, irregardless of how many miles are actually driven. This means that the revenue control limit for next year's budget is estimated to be $92.7 million. And again, that $82,000 difference versus last year's budget being a result entirely

025from the base support level changes that we talked about on the previous slide. So the third and final component when calculating the total M&O revenue is to take the RCL. revenue control limit and add additional amounts from other sources. And the first of those areas and sources includes the allocation of district additional assistance, another acronym DAA you'll see, allocating that towards M&O. And DAA is the state funding for capital needs, but this funding is actually flexible and allowed by statute to be allocated either in whole or in part towards either maintenance and operations or towards capital funds. There is still no statutory annual inflation increase for DAA funding for school districts, even though the capital funding formula for charter schools does receive an annual inflation factor. But an annual increase in DAA funding for school

026districts is set to take place statutorily beginning in fiscal year 28. So we have assumed the same per student funding amount, which is actually $549.45 per ADM. We've assumed no increase. And although there has been some discussion about the state providing one-time money for a DAE increase in fiscal year 27, nothing has been agreed to in the state budget at this point and therefore has not been included in these numbers yet. And if there would be a change, again, we'd bring that back in a future board presentation. And beginning in 2020, when you talk about DAA allocations, I want to mention that the Auditor General developed its own indicators of financial risks for school districts. And although allocating any amount of DAA funding towards M&O is legally allowed by statute, the allocation of DAA to

027M&O is identified as a risk factor by the Auditor General. if the capital allocation to M&O is over 25% in either the current year or over a five-year average, regardless of other factors such as the ability of a school district to fund capital projects through areas like bonds and capital overrides. You can see that the $1.6 million listed on the fiscal year 27 budget column has been set. You'll see that amount, but it's been set so that Kyrene's allocation is below that 25% threshold, which is typically the amount that Kyrene needs to produce a balanced operating budget and a starting point for us and is the same assumption that has been used in previous years. However, the ultimate allocation of DEA to M&O won't be finalized until the capital plan is finalized and presented to

028the board later in May. The next area to look at would be the maintenance and operations override, which is an opportunity for school districts, or I should say overrides are an opportunity for school districts to raise additional funding beyond the amounts funded by the state. And M&O override must be voter approved and is good for five years at the full amount, and then it declines by a third over the next three years unless it is renewed by the voters. So for Kyrene, voters approved a renewal of our M&O override in November of 2025. So fiscal year 27 would actually be year one of that new override. The budgeted M&O override amounts are calculated based on 15% of the revenue control limit using prior year EDM numbers. Again, my intent is not to make you experts,

029but that's just how the formula works. And you can see that there has been a slight decrease, a very modest decrease in the estimated, or I should say projected amount from the M&O override in next year's override funding. And then finally, the next big amount is related to Prop 123, which was the lawsuit related to the settlement of related to the lack of inflationary funding for the base support level that occurred in Arizona several years ago. I just want to give a really brief history of Prop 123. You may have heard some rumblings about this over the last few years. Some things have happened. There's been talk about new things happening. But as far as the history and the background for Prop 123 is concerned. That proposition was approved by voters in May of 2016,

030and it amended the Arizona Constitution as part of a lawsuit settlement regarding the lack of state inflation funding in prior years. The basic concept was to increase the state's land trust distributions by 4.4 percent. So it went from 2.5 percent to 6.9 percent. in the years 2016 through fiscal year 2025 over that 10-year period in order to offset the state's general budget fund requirements for increases to state basic state aid funding. And beginning with this current 2025-26 year, as was specified in the Prop 123 language, the percentage of state land distributions reverted back to their pre-fiscal year 16 levels, so going back from 6.9% back to 2.5%. But the state's general fund was required to absorb that difference in funding. And it's important to mention that that change, which I mentioned where the state absorbed

031that funding, did not result in less money for Kyrene or other public schools. It just was where the money came from. Because it's still unclear if the legislature will take any action to increase the state land trust distribution percentages. or whether it might be referred to the voters in November. We've assumed no changes from the current allocations of Prop 123 funding amounts, which means that Kyrene is expected to receive its same proportionate share of funding next year. So it's a small change, about $30,000 less than the previous year. However, if there are any new developments for additional Prop 123 funding, we talked about that with the governor's budget update. We don't know if that's going to change or not when the legislature ultimately gets a budget passed. We'll bring that back to the board if

032there is any change before we vote on a budget in June. There's an other adjustments line. It's blank. But that would be the line where you might have any year-end adjustments, mostly related to enrollment, as EDM funding is chewed up at the end of each fiscal year. Nothing's happened the last few years. We have had instances where that has been a situation for Kyrene. So at this time, the total estimate for the fiscal year 27 budgeted M&O revenue is $109.7 million. which is $200,000 less than the previous year. And you can also see that I've included the one-time state funding amounts that were included in the state's 2023-24 budget as a separate section at the bottom of this table in order to really have a true historical comparison of all the M&O revenues that were

033budgeted and projected over the last four years. So we've walked through the calculation, maybe in great detail, for M&O revenue and the assumptions for that area. But there really are other funds in this category, like I talked about. And although they're smaller, I did want to spend a little bit of time talking about what else is comprising that general fund revenue amount. And so I've shown the last two years of actual revenue amounts along with last year's adopted budget assumptions for that category as well. The $109.7 million amount that you see for fiscal year 27 represents the same number that we covered on the previous slides. But moving down the different funds, Medicaid amount relates to the amount of money received from federal Medicaid reimbursements and under the Medicaid program. Kyrene and other school districts

034are reimbursed for a portion of the costs that support the students' individualized education plan. And next year's amount of $1.4 million is expected to be slightly higher than last year's budget as a proportion, as I should say, the proportion of students needing specialized services. Like we talked about, the students who typically fall into that Group B portion in the state's funding formula. has been increasing and is expected to increase again next year. So as a side note with this category, when you look at that $2.2 million of Medicaid revenue in fiscal year 24, about $1.2 million of that was due to a one-time catch-up payment, as Medicaid reimbursements sometimes can experience up to a 24-month time lag from when the expenses were originally incurred versus when we actually get reimbursed. So that year had an

035unusually high amount because of that catch-up payment. The school plant amount of $850,000 that you see represents the expected revenues based on the land lease that was signed with BioWest years ago for the property that's leased off of Interstate 10, plus a very small amount that's anticipated for any asset auction sales that typically occur each year. The small amounts that you see listed for insurance proceeds, indirect costs, and unemployment insurance are mostly from the expected interest earned from any fund balances. And the small amount that you see for advertising would represent the estimated advertising proceeds that would be generated for next year. So this means that the total estimated fiscal year 27 budgeted general fund revenue is estimated to be just over $112 million, which is $144,000 above last year's budgeted amounts. So we are

036currently working right now to reduce our ongoing operating expenditures. and right-size our budget to align with the expected loss of state funding due to any anticipated enrollment changes for next year. And just like Kyrene has done in similar years where enrollment funding has declined, we always follow that process. And so, for instance, Kyrene reduced the expenditures in its budget by $2.6 million last year. and over $24 million over the last nine years in order to right-size its operating expenditures to any losses in funding. However, that work does take a fair amount of time to complete, which is why you saw earlier on the timeline. why that expenditure information typically isn't available until the end of May or early June. So that is a lot of math and a lot of numbers on that category for

037revenue assumptions, but I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, Mr. Herman. I'm opening it up to any board members with any questions or comments. Thank you, Mr. Herman, for your presentation. I have a question. Or maybe more like a comment, maybe you can answer this. For those who may not understand the difference of the funding and where it's coming from, you know, like people may see this money and it's like, oh, they have all this money. But can you explain the difference between the money? That's a great question. And that's actually one of the harder things to try to explain about how school district funding works. And in a business, you have. money that's just in a bank account, right? And you can use that for whatever you want. That

038is not the way it works in school finance for Arizona. So I'm going back to this slide. I didn't mention the use of the buckets on this slide, but that's typically how we kind of try to refer to the different funds or the different sources of money that we receive. And you can't mix the funding between the buckets, I'd say for almost, except for maybe the DAA, the M&O, like we talked about, might be the only time you could do that. But typically there are so many restrictions and so many legal statutory requirements of where that money and how that money is spent. You could not take, for instance, your capital monies and say, we're going to take that money from our bond sale and use it to pay for teachers. Right. Or we're not

039going to fix a roof project. We're going to go ahead and hire more staff. Like you can't mix the monies for different purposes. So operational monies, M&O monies, you know, typically is where that comes from. It has its own set of requirements of what you can spend on versus, I guess I'll go to this category real quick. Special revenue funds is where we have a lot of grants. And again, you have very specified areas for what you spend the money on. Capital projects, again, being just for brick and mortar types of projects. So even though you might have a lot of money in capital, for instance, you could not use that money to pay for your operational expenses. If one tried to do that, what would be the repercussions or ramifications from this thing? We

040would make, we would be, yeah, we would definitely be flagged in one of the many audits that takes place, right? So that's part of the work you'll see in April. We'll have our audit partners come forward with all the annual audits. They test all the transactions that are done, all the different funds and sources and according to the laws to make sure it's all done properly. And that's all. Kyrene has a very proud history of being very compliant with our audits. So you'll see that, I think, in April. We're going to bring our audit partners here to talk about the audit work that was done for this past year. But that absolutely would be flagged in one of the many audits that takes place. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Member Davis? Yes, thank you.

041Thank you, as always, for... Very comprehensive presentation. I have a couple of just very basic questions. On page six, slide six, talking about the M&O budget, something that I'm not sure that I and a fair number of people in the community understand. My understanding is that this is where teachers pay. comes from, M&O budget. Is that correct or not? Great question. There are several sources that can be used for teacher pay. M&O is probably about 90 to 95 percent of that. You are allowed to use Prop 1, 2, or I'm sorry, Prop 301 monies, which is a different fund, right? But that statutory... language allows you to use that for teacher pay. And then you can also use Fund 10, which is an instructional improvement fund for teacher pay as well. So, but those typically,

042when you talk about base pay, are typically 5 to 10 percent of a teacher's overall base salary. You can use some of the prop... 301 money for performance pay. You'll hear that sometimes at our district and other districts talking about performance pay. The funding source for that comes from Proposition 301 money. So there's a couple of different places where it can come from. I would say 90 to 95 percent of teacher pay, though, does come out of your M&O, Payments and Operations Fund. Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to underscore that because sometimes folks, when we go to them to ask them to Give us more M&O money. That's really where I think most people need to understand that that's the major part of teacher pay. Absolutely. It comes from that. Okay, thank you for that.

043Also, on page 13, I would just like you to state again, just so I understand. You talked about charters having something different than traditional public schools. In DAA? Could you go over that again? So DAA is the acronym for District Additional Assistance, which is really the funding that the state provides for capital. And so there's a formula for that. In the funding formula for school districts, there's no annual increase for the amount per student that you get funded for. Capital. For capital, correct. And capital is? Capital would be for typically brick and mortar projects. Could be curriculum as well. That counts as a capital expenditure. But think about like the building infrastructure costs, not the day-to-day operational costs for electricity and things like that. Or teacher salaries. Or teacher salaries or the people that work

044in the buildings. It's actually the building, like the construction of the building, the roofs, the furniture, the infrastructure there. So school districts don't have an inflation factor for that annual amount to increase each year, but charter schools do. So in fiscal year 28, though, the laws are set so that there would be an increase for school districts, but there just hasn't been up until this point. And maybe if I could for a second, this may be a question for Mr. Allel. Just charter schools are privately owned. Ultimately, is that so? Most, yes, are privately owned and publicly funded. Okay, so this extra money, if you will, that is currently being, thank you for that, that is currently being put into charter schools becomes privately held property ultimately after a certain amount of time? Do you

045know? That I would not know because I think that really depends on how a school is either leased or built by a charter. I mean, there could be a variety of ways that happens. Yeah, it's kind of a legal question. I'm sorry. But I just needed to understand that a little bit better. And the last thing on page 14, you talk about Medicaid. I was not aware. Medicaid helps fund special ed. Medicaid has some, again, every fund has its own requirements, but you can use that to do, pay for a lot of operational things that happen. The idea is that as a school district, we incur costs for special education, right? Of the services, whether it's the people, the resources, the, you know, assistance that's out there. And so when you get reimbursed for your...

046portion of money that you spent, you can use that money to essentially pay for the same kinds of services that you would be providing, if that makes any sense. So it helps to supplement some of the costs to provide the requirements that those students would be taking advantage of each year. Okay, so like children who have medical needs that are in schools who might be getting money from Medicaid? I'm just a little confused about how it works. Would you like me to add to, would you like some help with that? Yeah, okay. Thank you. Thank you. So, for example, a child with a speech-language impairment, that is also... a medical diagnosis. And so we oftentimes are able to additionally bill for those services under Medicaid. It might also be the service of an occupational therapist.

047If we have children with more significant disabilities in our more recent... Extended resource classrooms, then those students may also, we may also bill for Medicaid for those students, like toileting services or different things like that, mobility services across campuses. It's not everything under special ed. So a child with a learning disability that needs support in reading, we do not do anything related to that. It is truly more around the health aspect of a child's disability. Okay, thank you. So that means that it's attached to individual students? Absolutely. That Medicaid money comes? Absolutely. Okay, thank you. That's all. Any additional questions or comments? Mr. Walsh? No questions for me, Mr. Herman. I just wanted to thank you for the... nuance that you're putting into the enrollment projections. I know we talked previously about the anticipated enrollment

048declines, which are largely driven by demographic factors, but I thank you for highlighting that at least in the three schools that we anticipate being impacted by the school closures next year, there's going to be some. updated projections based on that. So I just want to commend you for taking that detailed approach. And I'm hopeful that those numbers are informative. And of course, we always hope we beat those projections. But I think your conservative approach is useful here. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Herman. I appreciate your... Again, thoughtful as we kick off our budget season. I know we will be back here again and again and again until June as we get to a budget and as we watch kind of what rolls through the legislature as far as how this will impact and appreciate

049your, in advance, I appreciate your flexibility and the way you and your team pivot as necessary to make sure that we have the information we need to be able to pass the most appropriate budget for our students. So with that. Our study session will be concluded at 546. They're connected. Hello, Matt. Are you there on Zoom? Yes, we are. Perfect. Just checking. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Welcome this evening. I'm going to go ahead and call our regular meeting to order at 6 p.m. At this time, if you have a blue card that you are wanting to submit, please submit it now to our lovely board secretary, Nancy Mosier. School board meetings are held in public to conduct the business of our district, and we believe that education is a partnership between

050schools and home, and we respect the rights of parents and guardians and value their role in our district. And we know that when... that students thrive when we all work together. As always, our board meetings are streamed live on the internet, and for those who cannot watch the meeting live, a recording will be made available and posted online within 48 hours. Board agendas may be obtained from the district office and the Kyrene website 24 hours in advance of each board meeting. Our superintendent, Laura Tenius, and senior leadership are with us this evening. Item 2.0 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 2.3 is a moment of silence and pledge

051of allegiance. And I see Dr. Kyle Ross in the back there from Kyrene Esperanza. And I'd love if he could lead us in a moment of silence. Item 2.4 is our land acknowledgement. Kyrene School District acknowledges that our community of schools is located on the ancestral lands of the O'odham and Piposh 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 allows us to be here today. And item 2.5 is our Kyrene Promise, where 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

052knowledge, 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 3.1 is our 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 moved. Second? Second. Motion by Member Davis, second by Member Collins. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 4.1 is our Superintendent Report. Superintendent Tenius. Thank you, President Walsh, Governing Board members, staff here this evening watching, also watching online, and our community and families here joining us this evening. I have a few updates to share. First, I would like to start that just before break, we announced the Kyrene finalists for

053the Tempe Diablos 2026 Excellence in Education Awards. Finalists will be honored at a dinner and award celebration at the showroom at Gila River Wild Horse Pass on May 7th. Congratulations to all of our Kyrene nominees and finalists. There we go. I also just want to take a moment to share that over spring break, one of our own, Board Member Collins was honored by Save Our Schools Arizona Network as the organization's School Board Member of the Year. This award is a testament to both to Kyrene and its community to receive recognition for our dedication to ensuring excellence in education for our Kyrene kids. So congratulations, Board Member Collins. Also excited to share that this year, Estrella Site Council made it their mission to bring enriching hands-on experiences directly to students. Through partnerships with more than 15

054community organizations, including Liberty Wildlife, the Phoenix Symphony, and the Arizona Science Center, students have had unforgettable encounters that go far beyond the classroom. Even in a year of transition, Estrella's commitment to its students never wavered. As site council member Amber Skalsky said, that spark in our kiddos remains. They carry it with them wherever they go. Also, during the last week of third quarter, I had the privilege of visiting Kyrene De Los Ninos' annual second grade wax museum. I believe I ran into a board member. there as well. I'm sure you're going to share about your trip there too. Students studied biographies of famous individuals in history and then embodied those figures and showcased what they learned by telling all who visited their booth about the individual's life. So they wear these little pins and when

055you say push them they tell you all they go into character. It is the coolest thing if you haven't experienced it and they have their little script. So I was super impressed with all of the students and each superhero that I spoke with embodied the communicator competency we highlight in our portrait of the Kyrene Kid. I was also really honored to attend the Lagos Celebration of Nations at the beginning of the month. Kyrene de los Lagos hosted their annual Celebration of Nations. This event is a special celebration that gives students the opportunity to dive deeper into the Spanish language and the cultures they study while celebrating the diversity, traditions, and global connections that make their learning so meaningful. And I also just wanted to share that Tempe's annual Geeks Night Out event is tomorrow night

056at the Tempe Community Complex from 5 to 7.30 p.m. Stop by for a night of STEM, fun, entertainment, and food trucks. Briseis Mallet Masters will be performing, and Kyrene De La Mariposa, Kyrene Apprende, Kyrene Altadena, and Kyrene Middle Schools will all have booths there. So we hope you can join us there. And then I don't have a slide, but I just wanted to give an update to the governing board is that, as you know, we recently sent out some messaging that there's going to be some shifts in our special area scheduling for how we run the model for next year. And that has been shared with the community and shared with staff. Since that time, I had a chance to meet with our special area leads. And while we know we can't go back to

057the model as it currently exists today, we do have a proposal out there that we had put out and was going to implement for next year. We are getting some additional feedback right now. So we're not going to do a presentation tonight. We're going to hold on that until we actually have that feedback. And then we'll bring what the final model will be to the district or to the board should there be any changes from the proposal that was originally put out. So I will share an update as soon as I have more to share. A message did go out to all elementary special area teachers today and to regular elementary teachers and administrators. So stay tuned. And that concludes my superintendent update. Thank you. Item 4.2 is board member statements. Do board members have

058any statements this evening? Member Collins. First of all, welcome, everybody. Thank you for coming out tonight. Over the break, and even before break, I had a chance to go and watch the JV and the varsity flag football playoff games. They were very, very exciting. I had a good time watching those. I always stand off at the distance so no one really sees me like Batman. But I also had the opportunity to attend the K-12 night. where teachers from Kyrene were honored for receiving their National Board certification or maintaining it. And I would like to just acknowledge those teachers. I don't know if they're here tonight, but maybe they're watching. So we have Kelly Nelson, Katie Anderson, Julio Contreras, Joe Sherman, and Tiffany Monteleone. I think I said that name right. So I would like to

059give them a round of applause because that's not an easy feat to do. And that is all. Thank you. I also attended the Wax Museum with our superintendent, and it was an absolute gas, I have to tell you. So much fun, very well attended. The kids were so excited and had practiced their speech. It was just wonderful. From kindergarten through fifth grade, they all performed beautifully. And we're having an absolute ball. So besides learning a lot about figures in history who are important, I believe, for everybody to know about. So that was a great day. And I want to also congratulate the principal of Ninos. Olivia Perry, who works tirelessly to give really good, fun things for her kids to do. She gets great response from her community. I also went to what they call

060the Glow Dance. I hope some of you know what that is because I had no idea until I actually went. But it was absolutely wonderful. They have a small PTO who worked their hearts out and made it really special for the kids. A lot of people there again. So I just want to give them all congratulations. And that's it for me. Well, welcome back from spring break. Parents, I don't know about you. It took a little bit longer to get people out of bed this morning. And then I kind of let bedtime slide the last two weeks. But yeah, for I think our kids, they wished it was longer than two weeks for parents, maybe the opposite. But I hope everybody had a very nice spring break and welcome back to the fourth quarter. And

061my oldest is actually in her last quarter and Kyrene. I'm going to have feels about it. But I've got lots more. So we're good. I want to do a quick shout out to the community at Kyrene de las Lomas, who hosted me right before spring break, and Principal Tika de Graffenried. Thank you for having me there. It's an amazing school. I want to give a shout out again to Board Member Collins. Congratulations on that huge honor. That's the whole state. The whole state. You didn't recognize one of the top board members. So I want to give you a shout out. I did want to encourage our... Family members here. So kids, I think you probably learned a little bit about in school about how laws are made. Right now, we're in the thick of it,

062right? So every year our legislature gets together, it makes laws that impact our schools, our teachers, our school leaders. And right now we're in the middle of it. So I encourage you, if you are not paying attention, do so. Look into what's going on with education funding in Arizona. There's lots of bills going on. One of them, HCR 2040, actually impacts the ability of our... teachers here in Kyrene to participate in their teacher association. So there's lots of things out there that I just want you to make sure you're staying aware of and making sure you're speaking your voice. Don't be afraid to call your legislator, call your governor, call whomever because they listen to you. And lastly, I want to thank speaking and listening. I want to thank everybody who's reached out to this

063board on special area outreach. Superintendent Tenius, thank you so much for acknowledging that we're getting some more feedback on that. We're looking into that. I want to thank everybody that reached out to the board and to me individually. I value your feedback. So hope everybody has a great fourth quarter. Thank you. All right. Yes. Welcome back for fourth quarter. We are. There is a. I work in higher education, so I'm always like, oh, I can see like graduation. It's like spring. It's a great time. But yes, the two week break was it was a little difficult getting everybody up and out of the out of the house this morning. But I before the break, I'd love I spent got to spend some time with our friends at Cerritos and Lagos and Brises. And it was

064such a I did it all in one day. And it was so each school is just such a tremendous community. And when I was at Lagos, I got to. spend some time in one of our kindergarten rooms. And it happened to be that teacher's birthday. And it was amazing because we were doing like story time with the kids. They were showing me their reading. And then one of the fifth grade classrooms comes down to knock on the door and to sing happy birthday to this teacher, because so many of her former students were like, Oh my gosh, I want to celebrate. It was just such a. Such a fan, like what a warm and welcoming place. And then, you know, Dr. Ely at Cerritos, you know, the care that he feels towards his community, the

065relationship with the PTO and the ways he was talking about progress that they've made at that campus. And Dr. She's maybe going to be Dr. McGovern one day. Brie says, you know, just. The care and compassion that our school leaders have, it's one of my favorite things to go and do is visit each of our sites and kind of hear about the challenges and their successes. And I just really want to thank them for welcoming me to their campuses for that day. Now for what we've all been anxiously waiting for is our Kyrene Super students. Tonight we have eight. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how this is going to work. Our Kyrene Super students, they are nominated by their school principal and they are chosen based on our portrait of a

066Kyrene kid. And we outline certain competencies like adaptable learner, self-advocate, a community contributor, a communicator, critical thinker, problem solver, or collaborator. And you, your principal has looked out at all of the kids in the school and has said, These kids, I embody one or all of these competencies. And so we want to honor you. And we are so proud of all of the work that you've done. What will happen is. One of the board members up here is going to read your name and read what your principal has written about you. And you'll come up to the front by the podium and superintendent tenants will hand you your card, but you're also going to get some token of congratulations from KTR, Jeremiah's ice, Zeke's pizza, as well as a Kyrene foundation. So you're going to

067come up, you're going to turn around, find your people smile so they can get the good angles on the photos. Um, and. Let us celebrate you. And then afterwards, we'll have all of the students. You'll stay up here, but you'll come up here and we'll take pictures with all of our teachers and our school leaders are here as well. And then parents feel free to get up out of your seats at that point of time for the group photos to really get in there and get the shots that you want. And then even afterwards, we'll have an area set up out in the hallway for you to be able to take pictures with any other family members that you've brought as well. So I'll go ahead and kick us off tonight welcoming Mr. Luke Lefebvre,

068a fourth grader at Kyrie De La Esperanza to the front. All right, Luke. Luke is being recognized as an adaptable learner, critical thinker, and problem solver. We are proud to nominate Luke as the fourth grade super student from Esperanza. Luke shows interest in many different topics and activities at school. He always asks thoughtful questions and shares valuable information with his teachers and peers. Additionally, Luke is an extremely creative thinker and problem solver. He even designs his own computer programs and games. We are proud of Luke for his academic achievements, curiosity, and problem solving skills. He has grown so much this year and we are excited. to see all he will accomplish in the future. Congratulations, Luke. And then next, we can welcome Sophia Lontok to the front. She's a fifth grader, also from Kyrie de

069la Esperanza. Sophia is being recognized as an adaptable learner, critical thinker, and problem solver. We are honored to nominate a truly exceptional student, Sophia Lontok. Sophia is not only an outstanding student in the classroom, but her character shines outside the classroom as well. She approaches school with dedication, curiosity, and a genuine love of learning. Beyond her academic achievements, Sophia demonstrates qualities that make her a role model among her peers. She is respectful, responsible, and kind. She treats teachers and classmates with courtesy and empathy, always including and encouraging everyone. Sophia also shows great perseverance. When faced with challenges, she does not give up. We are incredibly proud of Sophia and all that she has accomplished, and she is truly deserving of this recognition. Congratulations. And I am happy to welcome Aubrey Wilson, second grader from Kyrene

070De La Espresas. Aubrey is an excellent candidate for district recognition in the core competency of collaboration, consistently demonstrating a sophisticated ability to honor and leverage diverse perspectives to achieve shared goals. Whether in the classroom or on the playground, Aubrey excels at engaging with others by prioritizing inclusiveness. She goes out of her way to ensure every peer feels heard and valued. often sacrificing her own free choice time to assist with classroom tasks or support a struggling classmate. Rather than simply providing answers, Aubrey takes the initiative to guide and teach her peers, showcasing a mature understanding of how to empower other strengths. Her leadership is balanced and selfless as she frequently steps back to let others lead, ensuring a collaborative dynamic free of bossiness. As a peace walk administrator, she applies these skills to help peers navigate

071and resolve conflicts, proving that her commitment to a harmonious community is a core part of her character. Aubrey's dedication to her school community and her natural talent for fostering teamwork make her the model Kyrene kid and an outstanding representative of collaborative excellence. Congratulations. All right, please join me in welcoming one of the best of the best of the best from Kyrene De La Mariposa. She is a fourth grader. Her name is Lachelle Williams. Lachelle is being recognized tonight as a critical thinker and problem solver. Lachelle is a hardworking, kind, caring student who exemplifies all of the characteristics within the portrait of the caring kid. But one of the attributes we want to highlight is her ability to be a problem solver. Academically, Lachelle consistently uses her critical thinking skills to solve problems, answer questions, and

072gain knowledge through conversations with others and learning opportunities with her teachers. In addition, Lachelle has shown her ability to problem solve through facing adversity and overcoming it every time. Within this school year, Lachelle moved to a new school and then soon after had to move homeroom classrooms after testing into our gifted resource program. She took on those challenges with grace and wisdom. Showing kindness to others, keeping up on her work missed when pulled out for gifted resource class, and asking her teachers questions or for support when needed, and always keeping a positive attitude through it all. Lachelle's student skills shine through on a daily basis, and her light fills any room she is in. For these reasons, and so many more, we are proud to nominate this amazing super student. And I am very happy

073to introduce everyone to Riley Peterson, a fifth grader at Kyrene de la Mariposa. Riley is being recognized as an adaptable learner, communicator, and collaborator. Riley is a shining example of an adaptable learner and communicator, consistently demonstrating these traits through her academic and community involvement. As an adaptable learner, Riley embraces challenges and actively asks necessary questions to ensure her understanding of new concepts, whether in her compact math class or learning about kindness and inclusion in our No Place for Hate Club. Riley has a collaborative spirit and seamlessly blends into any learning group, bringing a positivity that is noticed by teachers and peers alike. Riley's passion for learning earned her a spot in the National Elementary Honor Society, where she adapted her musical talents to play guitar and sing holiday carols for residents at a local care

074facility. Riley is a confident communicator. As a member of Mariposa's broadcast team, she exudes the confidence required to share information effectively with her school community. Riley is a true leader who facilitates meaningful conversations while ensuring she allows others to provide valuable input. We are proud of her many accomplishments and know she will continue to be an outstanding example of a Kyrene kid throughout her schooling career, and I will add, beyond. Thank you. All right, all right, all right. You guys are going to have to bear with me because I have three super kids I will be reading on today. All right. First. We have from Kyrene De La Sierra, Mr. Case Benedict, kindergarten. Case is being recognized as a collaborator. Case can always be counted on to work well with others. He is a leader

075in the best way possible. He is respectful, considerate, and puts others' needs above his own. He is an exemplary role model, both in and out of the classroom. Let's give it up for Case, everyone. All right. Also from Kyrene De La Sierra, we have Abigail Barrett, kindergarten. Abigail is being recognized as an adaptable learner. Throughout all the changes and transitions this school year, Abigail has shown incredible flexibility, a positive attitude, and willingness to adjust to new routines with ease. Not only does she embrace change with a smile, but Abigail also sets a wonderful example for others by consistently following classroom rules and showing respect to teachers and classmates. Let's give it up for Abigail, everyone. And last but not least, from Kyrene De La Sabrisas, Mr. Finnegan Kelly, first grade. Finnegan is being recognized as

076a communicator. Finnegan, also known as Finn Kelly, is an exceptional representative of the communicator core competency, consistently demonstrating a sophisticated ability to articulate ideas and interpret the needs of others. A natural leader who leads by example. Finn uses his spoken, written, and nonverbal skills to foster an inclusive classroom environment where every peer feels heard and valued. He is an active listener who skillfully interprets meaning and intentions, allowing him to step in with kindness when a classmate is struggling and explain complex thinking with remarkable clarity. Beyond his technical communication skills, Finn's positive attitude and determination in the face of challenges model the maturity and responsibility we hope to see in all students. By combining a strong work ethic with genuine care for his community, Finn serves as a standout role model and an ideal candidate for

077district-wide super student recognition. Show your love for Finn. Okay. We're going to go have the board members come down, school leaders come up, and any teachers. And we'll take our group picture. Parents, feel free to get where you need to get. Thank you. Okay, thank you everybody. Congratulations again to all of our super students. Item 6.1 is request to speak to the governing board. Per board policy, the Kyrene Governing Board invites 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. Written comments can also be submitted electronically through the links that are out in board meeting notifications and they'll be recorded and filed online as part of the board meeting minutes after the meeting. Electronic comments typically

078need to be submitted through the online form by noon the day of the meeting. State statute prohibits the governing board from discussing an item that is not on the agenda, but we do listen and we can request that the staff follow up on any concerns. We value transparency and public input, and to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to address the governing board, we have set a time limit for individual comments based on the number of comments submitted. Tonight, I have been informed that we have a total of 10 public comments, meaning that each speaker will have three minutes to speak. A timer will be located. on either screen there and the screens will prompt you when you have 15 seconds and then again when your time is up. And then as you approach the

079dais, please state your first and last name and how you are affiliated with Kyrene. And our first speaker this evening is Nicole Buckman. Hello, everybody. Nice to see you all. It's been a while. I'm Nicole Buckman. I'm a parent at Mariposa. I wanted to shed some light and share some thoughts on the plan to consolidate preschools on the east side of the 10 over at Cielo. I'm gathering information from various sources and conversations, so I welcome any fact-checking to what I'm going to share tonight. But as I understand it, Cielo currently has four preschool classrooms and will expand to seven for the 2026-2027 school year. Families living within the boundaries of Mariposa, the current Miniatus boundaries, Murata and Ninos, who are seeking preschool, would be directed to Cielo as their in-boundary option for preschool. While

080I understand the goal of consolidating resources, I'm concerned this may create a longer-term challenge, particularly at the middle school level. So please bear with me, and I'll connect the two. From other conversations with parents, many families impacted by the closure of Pueblo are now leaning towards Aprende, even though for Mariposa, we're currently going to be zoned for KMS. So while KMS may not have had the strongest reputation in the past, I've heard very positive feedback in recent years. I personally toured both schools, Aprende and KMS, and believe they're both excellent schools, as you all know. My own children will likely go to KMS. However, bringing this back to preschool, by funneling so many students through Cielo, it seems like many of those families would choose to remain there for elementary school rather than return to

081their home boundary schools. This will gradually reduce enrollment at schools like Mariposa and Ninos, potentially creating imbalances over time. Additionally, students who remain at Cielo may be more likely to continue on to Apprendi rather than KMS, which could further widen disparities at the middle school level. Given that Ninos was not previously slated for closure and Mariposa remains open largely due to strong home boundary enrollment, I worry the shift at the preschool level may unintentionally undermine that stability. So my question is, has the district modeled these potential downstream impacts and have these scenarios been considered? And I know, too, just sitting through the budgets with Mr. Herman and the low enrollment, a lot of the things down the road and kind of, you know, pie in the sky as we're putting band-aids on things, you know,

082in the immediate, and I completely understand that. But just wanted to relay this to you guys now as it's being talked about in the community. So if reopening preschool programs in Mariposa and maintaining them in Ninos is not feasible, I would just suggest a few things to think about. One is maybe increasing marketing and community awareness around KMS. There's many positive developments happening there, as again you all know, and highlighting them can help shift perceptions and generate more interest to the elementary school parents now who could be slated to go there. And also maybe create an intentional crossover opportunities for families attending preschool at Cielo to engage them with their home boundary schools. Building those connections early could help encourage families to return and support more balanced enrollment across the schools. Thank you, Ms. Buckman.

083Superintendent, can you have someone follow up with Ms. Buckman? Thank you. Our next speaker is Michelle Fay. Good evening, Superintendent and Tenuous President Nelson, members of the board. My name is Michelle Fay. I'm a community member, a previous board member, and educator for 37 years. I'm here to talk with you tonight about three things, special areas, integrated preschool, and special ed. I understand that significant changes are being made to all of these programs, which surprise me, given you are already in the midst of closing schools. I will tell you I don't know all the details about any of these changes. I read the email sent today. But people are reaching out to me with concern. What people share with me is that they're being told that changes were made and kind of presenting it like

084this is what is happening. Is there a problem you're trying to solve? If so, what is it? We know that people do better when they know why a change has to be made. What I thought we did during the committee about facilities was we started with the why. Then we started with the finances. We made it very clear what the problem was, and then we talked about the solution. I don't think that's happened this time, at least certainly not publicly and certainly not with our staff. I know it takes more time and thoughtful planning to include your stakeholders in these discussions, but it's critical that you do so. In fact, when I was on the board, we created a policy that requires you to do so. I encourage you to pause. You can't unring the

085bell. Damage has been done. Trust is lost. But you can try to improve the situation by talking to stakeholders to plan before executing any of these changes. Do you really, do they really need to happen now? Aren't you already overburdened with closing three schools? First, I'd like to talk about special areas. This change was presented... Just not going to make it. That this was great. You've always wanted this, one school. But the reality is that's not what's going to happen for some people. So you're going to create this incredible inequity across the same position, across different schools. It's going to have impact on kids and staff and our community by creating those haves and those have-nots. How are you going to decide who gets the haves? And if I'm wrong, you're going to tell me,

086okay? Because I don't know. In the past, our special area teachers have been so great about helping with scheduling and really looking at it in a personal way to try to educate and make sure that people had balanced workloads from year to year. And I don't think that's happening. If it is, I would love to hear that. I'm also concerned about special education, which has been not prioritized for many years. It gets moved around all the time. Our most needy, our most vulnerable kids get moved here, now you're here, now you're here, two years here. And they're the ones that need the most consistency. So I have a problem when you're moving them again, both preschool and CCD and CCB. I just ask you to stop and communicate the why. Do you really need to

087repurpose these classrooms? Please consider pausing to say, ask teachers how they feel. Transparency is essential. Caring values should not be a tagline. It should be a guiding principle that you work to uphold every day. Thank you. I'll send you the whole text. There's a lot more. Thank you. Next is Allison Holtman, and she'll be followed by Cassidy Parker. Hi, I'm Allison Holtman. I am a mom and a PTO member at Cerritos. We are one of the schools that is going to be impacted by the change to specials. And I just wanted to come tonight and offer some encouragement. First, I wanted to say thank you to the district. I understand that you met with the special leads yesterday to talk about the changes to how they're going to be conducted last year. And I really

088appreciate that. Our teachers bridge the space between educational theory, subject matter expertise, and being the boots on the ground who implement it in the classroom. Their feedback is invaluable, and I'm grateful to hear that you are going to collaborate with them on the proposal. To our teachers, as a parent, I just want you to know that I stand with you. And it's not just me, but many of the parents who I have spoken with about this topic. I know that there's a number of teachers who plan to speak tonight or who have submitted in writing what they wanted to their comments for this topic. And I know that that can be awkward because you are sharing your feedback publicly with your employers and their stakeholders. But I want you to know that we love and

089we appreciate you so much. If it's a problem for you, it's a problem for your parents. And we value your opinion and we're thankful that the district is discussing this topic with you. And we hope that they value your feedback as much as the parents. of the students do. As Trini said at the beginning, the students thrive when we all work together. And so I would love to encourage you for starting the ball rolling on working together and hope that it continues for the proposal outcome next month. Thank you. Next is Ms. Parker followed by Jennifer Pooler. Good evening, Superintendent Tenius and President Nelson and members of the board. My name is Cassidy Parker-Anders. This is my 30th year teaching visual arts, and 26 of those years have been in Kyrene. I have been honored

090to teach in a district that offers quality programs and values art education. Throughout the years, I've been on many district committees and held a variety of leadership roles. I am currently the lead art teacher along with Jen Pooler. In my experience, when Kyrene has faced challenges in the past, there has been a clear and comprehensive understanding of why changes need to be made. A programming committee usually was formed and typically consisted of teachers and administrators that could give input from everyone being impacted, which is... extremely valuable when you're making changes that are going to affect a lot of people. Consideration was given to multiple schedules and changes before a final recommendation was offered to the board. This year, neither of the special area leads or any of the specialists were aware that a major programming

091change was potentially happening. When the announcement was made, it was unexpected and a shock to pretty much everyone. While I can understand the benefits for many schools and specialists with this model, I'm extremely concerned about the schools and teachers that would potentially implement a semester schedule. This would create a very inequitable model. While most specialists would get to stay at one school for all of their classes, which is the best hope for all of us, the art teacher, the art and music teachers at smaller schools would be expected to basically have double the load. Without fully considering the scope of how this schedule would affect both staff and students, I think it would be a mistake for the district to move forward with the plan that has been announced. As an art teacher who has

092experienced many schedules and models throughout my career, I urge you to reconsider this decision. and pause the implementation of this plan until there has been an adequate process to make a decision that's best for all of our students and our entire Kyrene community, not just some. These decisions should not be rushed as they will make a lasting impact on the future of Kyrene. Thank you so much. Ms. Pooler, followed by Ashley, what? What? I don't know if I... All right, good evening governing board members and Superintendent Tanez. I'm the art teacher at Paloma and this is my 25th year teaching in Kylene. And I'm here tonight with some of my special area colleagues, art and music, because we were concerned with the sudden change that was proposed to our elementary music and art programs. This

093change was not expected and it felt hurried. without input from the music and art teachers. We were told that it was a district decision, but it was a surprise to us. I want to thank Superintendent Tenyes for meeting with the special area lead teachers yesterday and being open to other scheduling ideas. This shows us that you truly value our programs and our voice, and I thank you for that. There are many of us that feel that a year-long experience for kids rather than a semester is best for our students. They build their skills by practicing over time throughout the year. And we want to be with our students all year long. So we value the opportunity to look at other ideas and scheduling models. So I just wanted to thank you for listening to us

094and providing us some time to meet with our teams and get feedback on other ideas. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Wettich. And then we'll be followed by Michelle Kay. Good evening, board members and Superintendent Tenyes. My name is Ashley Woodich, and I'm the proud art teacher at Monta Vista. And I'm here tonight to talk to you about the proposed special area schedule change for next year. I'm sure you are aware of the incredible amount of research and data proving how much music and art education helps students emotionally, academically, and interpersonally. The arts are fundamental to critical thinking and creativity, and they improve performance across all disciplines. We know our students need this critical part of their education. However, the proposed schedule change has schools with fewer than 20 classes on a semester plan in which

095students will receive art and music for only half of a school year. This will literally create an educational gap of seven months for students at those smaller schools. We would never accept a seven-month gap in math or reading education. Art and music programs build a strong community by having events like art shows, musical performances, and more. They bring families together in joyful ways that celebrate our students. The proposed plan may destroy many, if not all, of those events. We are a district that prioritizes and promotes equity, but this is a fundamentally inequitable plan. Teachers on a semester schedule will nearly double the number of students they teach and have to set up two classrooms, essentially starting another school year in January. But more importantly, it's unfair to our students. There are so many students who

096need our classes, for whom their skill in music or art is what motivates them, gets them excited to come to school, and makes them feel seen, valued, and successful. The decision to change the schedule was made without input from important stakeholders. No special area teachers, administration, classroom teachers, or parents were consulted, which has always been the norm in the past. I acknowledge the challenging situation the district is in, but I don't believe we should try to solve it by diluting the programming that makes Kyrene so great. Superintendent Tenyez, I am very grateful that you have heard our concerns and are giving us some time to come up with better solutions. While I wish we had been brought in to the decision-making earlier, I know we can find a plan that better meets the needs of

097Kailin teachers and students. In the meantime, please pause the current inequitable plan until we can do so, even if that means waiting another school year, because our students deserve our best. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Michelle Kay, followed by Kristen Bierling. Good evening. I'm Michelle Kay, a Kalina parent, Kalina PTO president, and former employee. Thank you for taking a pause and reconsidering the special situation for our kids and teachers. Our district is going through some huge changes next year, and this is not the time to be throwing more at our staff and kids. Special area teachers are the consistent people in our kids' lives at the schools. Each year they get a new classroom teacher, but most years they are lucky to have returning special area teachers who know them and build incredible relationships

098with our kids. From the data that you have shared from the district social emotional surveys, for our kids to feel safe, for our kids to feel like someone is there for them, the consistency of our teachers matter. We support our art and music teachers and hope you can start to see the stability and enrichment they provide to a campus throughout the year. We understand changes need to be made, but we encourage you to continue to work with the teachers to come up with an equitable solution that works for everyone. When you send out a survey to staff or families, I urge you to please include those affected by the decisions in the discussions prior to decisions being made to ensure that we are all doing what's best for our kids and teachers, because overall, we

099want to be working with you to make Kyrene the best that we can for all. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Beerling, followed by Allison Jenkins. Hello. I'm Kristen Beerling. I'm at Kyrene Del Norte. And we will be having more than 20 classes, I believe. We have our fifth grade growing and our preschool. We should be good, but that doesn't mean everyone else shouldn't be impacted. So I'm here to talk about specials as well. And I was just really surprised by it because I thought with all of our consolidations and all the change going on, we didn't really need to take on more. Mr. Herman, you can kind of correct me, but from my understanding during all the consolidations, a five-year plan that we're starting to put things in place to prevent us from being financially

100irresponsible in five years. But we kind of have that time to be making those changes before we're really impacted. So in my opinion or in that understanding, I would think. Why not utilize some, we're having so much change go on right now with all the consolidations. And we obviously are still where you only chose six, not eight. So there's still some financial gap there. But why do we need to start doing it now? We're already changing so much at the schools. I think compounding that change just extends that whole storming, forming, performing. We're going to be in that storming stage a little bit longer and take longer to get to that performing. I think it also takes away some of the trust that we've talked about. Another thing, too, is we've put all this effort

101into our M&O override, which was specifically for staff salaries and staff positions. So I worry that the community perspective can kind of be impacted negatively if we just have this giant M&O override benefit and then we're still showing decreased staffing if we're going to be going. It seems like that would be the way we'd be going if we're going to be having. less of those specials there. But I did email Superintendent Tonias over spring break and got back to her and understand that some of what went into the decision making has to do with benefits to our kids and trying to increase the amount of specials times that they get. She let me know. I think we get about 800. deficiency of about 800 minutes for the year right now in specials, the way it's

102laid out, and the new model is supposed to get us down to about 300. So I do see that there is a perspective looking at the students here, but I really think that we want to gain those benefits for the time that the kids have with the specials, but maybe not this year or next year. The kids are already used to how much time they have, and we've liked that, so why do we need to solve that problem right now? Thank you. Thank you. So next is Allison Jenkins followed by Evan Tobias. Hello, I'm Allison. I have multiple kids that attend Cerritos, and I came here today to beg the board and the district to reconsider their decisions about specials for next year. And I wrote my speech before I knew that they were thinking

103of that, so I'm very happy to hear that, but I'm here, so I'm going to just keep it going. This fall, I watched and spoke at board meetings, and I was very aware that the number of school closed directly affected our kids' experience. And when I saw the board was going to close less schools than was recommended, I knew deep down it could hurt our kids. So I'm here to beg you to not make decisions and cuts that affect our kids' day-to-day learning experiences, specifically their specials and their class sizes. Last year, we lost our certified librarians. And as a parent who has kids that love to read, that was heartbreaking. This year we're losing some of our art and music specials for next year. I now have to tell my son who loves art

104that he has to go an entire semester without it. And then when he does get it, he might not get the same amount of time, which after listening to speeches might be wrong. So I might be misinformed. But I do know that when you love a special, that kind of makes you want to go to school. And I think if you ask kids what their favorite part of school is, Often it's recess, it's art, it's music, it's PE. Those specials are really important. So please stop and continue reconsidering this change. Last year, I came to many board meetings and advocated for our third grade classes at Cerritos that were being consolidated into two classes for fourth grade. And ultimately, the district got what they wanted and they consolidated. We eliminated a highly qualified teachers and

105we have two fourth grade classes that have fluctuated but are very large. I just want to make sure that while on paper, this looks like a major win for the district and cost savings, that the district lost roughly eight Kyrene families when they chose that because those families didn't want that environment. In a district that talks about enrollment and wanting to grow, I think it's important to look at the decisions we're making and how it affects enrollment. It's really hard to advocate for your schools when you're seeing changes that are being made that aren't what you want. And we want specials and we want small class sizes. I have a little more time. And I also, I was shocked to hear how little people were informed about this big change in specials before it came

106out. And I think that's... Overall, more concerning than anything I said, because when we make big district decisions, it needs to involve the whole community. And I hope going forward that other big decisions do involve the whole community. Thank you. And finally, we have Evan Tobias. Thank you, Superintendent Tenius and Board. My name is Evan Tobias. I'm a parent of two children of Anita's, and I'm here speaking as a parent. I also happen to be an associate professor of music learning and teaching at ASU. I specialize in curriculum design and development, writing a book on curriculum design and development for Oxford University Press. So I'm here to emphasize that the proposed change to the art and music education of young people moving to half a year of instruction is ill-informed and it's inequitable. and you

107now have an opportunity to correct this mistake, board and superintendent, I urge you to pause as you are doing it seems and spend the time needed with your arts educators, your fine arts coordinator, who are experts in arts education to ensure that all elementary school students receive a year-long of music and arts education and by year-long I mean continuous year-long from highly qualified and certified arts educators. You have excellent arts educators here at Kyrene. They're some of the most respected in the state. You have an excellent fine arts coordinator. You also have the largest design and arts institute in the entire country, nearby ASU, and have lots of resources available to you to help you out with this. Students need a holistic education. The proposed change is a disruption. And it's discontinuity because of the

108gap in time where you would have an entire semester plus the summer on either end that would affect students' learning. So it would create a deficit in their growth and deny them access to ongoing skills and development. The National Association for Music Education and their Opportunity to Learn Standards proposes 90 minutes every week of the year of instruction. And the reason that they are encouraging every week is because young people need distributed practice of the skills and continual application of conceptual development over time. Music as a discipline is integrated and is cumulative. So you don't study a unit of something and then move on to something else. It is continual development and application. Having some youth receive arts education for the entire year, and some youth have a half-year gap. plus the summer creates cascading

109inequities because for those students who have the gap, they will need to catch up with all the other students who have access full year-round. It's cascading by the time that students get to middle school or high school. They have all those years of catching up to do. a situation where you have some students who have access to things like private lessons and ongoing development and other students not having access. You have many students who will encounter learning loss and will need to catch up to the students who do have access. It's creating further inequities because of these issues. So with the cumulative discontinuity over several years, we're having a severe deficit of education for the students who don't have that access. I'm asking you to pause and speak with your arts educators because they know

110what's best for students. And you also have heard time after time at these meetings that families respect and appreciate arts educators and want arts education. You had at least four different mentions of either music educators or music education tonight at this meeting. It is very much woven into the fabric of Kyrene, and this proposed plan as is would create a deficit and discontinuity. So I urge you to reconsider and spend some time thinking through this. Thank you very much. And that concludes our public comment. Item 7.1 is our consent agenda. Are there any changes to the consent agenda? Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Motion by Member Davis, a second by Member Walsh. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0.

111Item 8.1 is our purchasing authorization. Superintendant Chris Herman. So thank you, President Nelson. This is a... project that we're bringing to the board for approval. Myself and Mr. Mason Mead, our director of facilities, is here to talk about this project because it's over the $1 million project threshold. Our board typically has asked for these to be voted on separately rather than being on the consent agenda. Our board has also asked if we could provide a little bit of an update on what some of our safety and testing protocols are because this is a roof project. And so I'm not going to steal any of Mr. Meade's thunder, but I'm going to let him speak to those areas. And then again, we're happy to answer any questions that the board might have. Good evening. So this

112slide is the roofing and skylight compliance protocol slide. The purpose of the roof and skylight protocol is to ensure safe roofing operations while maintaining full compliance with asbestos and air quality requirements, regulations before, during, and after construction. Pre-project meeting with Maricopa County Air Quality Department. A month before the work begins, we will meet directly with the Maricopa County Air Quality Department. During that meeting, we will walk them through the full scope of the project, confirm inspection expectations, and provide the asbestos survey completed by a licensed third-party consultant. They would advise us on whether a National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants or NESHAP notification is required. In general, if materials are confirmed as non-detect for asbestos and the inspection is fully compliant, a NESHAP notification is not required. However, if asbestos containing material is identified,

113we will follow NEADSHAP requirements including proper notification, handling and regulated work practices prior to any work starting. We will conduct both pre-project and post-project air quality testing through a licensed third-party consultant. This includes baseline testing before work begins and clearance testing after completion, ensuring that air quality is safe prior to reoccupancy. We will ensure that all safety data sheets for roofing and skylight materials are current, available on-site, and also posted online to support proper hazard communication. Finally, quality control walks. Throughout the project, we will conduct regular site inspections in coordination with the roofing vendor. These walks will verify that all skylights and roof openings are properly covered, fresh air intakes are protected, and charcoal filtration systems are installed and maintained. In conclusion, these steps ensure not only compliance, but also a proactive approach to protecting

114students, staff, and the district. They help reduce risk while ensuring the appropriate safety measures are in place. Thank you. Do any board members have any questions at this point in time? Member Davis. Thank you. Thank you for that. It just occurred to me, and I just feel the need to say something, that What you're talking about is compliance with governmental regulations, essentially, correct? Correct. So I think it's in view of how the world is today, I'd like to point out that that's a really good governmental regulation to protect our kids and us, our health and safety. And I appreciate your being compliant with that. And I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Member Walsh. Just on the air quality testing, I appreciate you taking the feedback from the board from past experiences and adopting

115this as our standard practice going forward. Thank you. You're welcome. I echo what Board Member Walsh said. I did have one question. Even though we are doing, like, will the baseline testing information and all of those pieces of, like, walkthrough be available for... parents or the public to look at prior. Yes, we'll be transparent with those results. Okay, perfect. Perfect. Thank you. Again, I really appreciate you taking the feedback, making sure that information is accessible for the community. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the utilization of cooperative contracts awarded by 1GP to Narcon Interestories and Progressive Roofing? So moved. I will go ahead and second that. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 8.2 is our Auditor General Classroom Spending Report. Superintendent, Associate Superintendent, not yet. It's

116the Krisha. Associate Superintendent, Chris Herman. Thank you, President Nelson, board members, and Superintendent Tenias. Just want to spend a few minutes tonight talking about the Auditor General's School District Spending Report. And a little bit about what is it and what does it do and who does the work. So the Auditor General's School District Spending Report was prepared. and issued on February the 26th of this year. It's something they've done every year, I believe since 2001. So it's nothing new. That group independently puts this information together. The Arizona Auditor General's Office works under the legislative branch and at their direction. So that's the group that prepares this information. They use data based on our annual financial report and also from other information, financial and accounting submissions that we make to the state. And state statute does

117require the percentage of every dollar spent in the classroom to be calculated for each school district. And each school district is also required to post this information on its website homepage, which we are always compliant with that requirement. This report that we're going to talk about a little bit provides financial and school performance overviews for all public school districts across the state of Arizona, as well as peer district comparisons. But this information is not provided or required for charter schools or any other entities that receive public money for ESA vouchers. The Auditor General also produces a separate financial risk analysis report at the beginning of the year, but that is based on their definitions of risk, 10 different risk measurements that they put out. That report is not connected or not affiliated with the school

118district spending report. So this information is something that we refer to quite often. Our budget that goes into classroom areas. And we actually talk about it quite often. It's actually part of, I don't always bring this book up here, but I did reference it earlier, our budget and report. Actually, we feature that information in here every year. So again, it's something we always talk about and always have as a point of pride for our district. But you can find that in both the executive summary and the informational sections, again, if you're curious to see how that's presented. But this is a slide where I've taken the tables directly from the Auditor General's report. And that really shows the amounts for operational areas and operational spending that include both classroom and non-classroom areas. I should mention

119that when they do calculations, like you'll see a per student amount listed, that is using their average daily membership. We talked a lot about average daily membership in our study session. Not the same thing as enrollment, but that's the measurement that they use for that. So just a point of clarification on what that means. And operational spending. includes the costs incurred for the day-to-day operations of a school district and includes the categories that are listed. So it's instruction, state support, instructional support, and then on the non-classroom side, it's administration. We'll talk a little bit about that in a second. Plan operations, food service, and transportation. So the non-operational spending, which is not included in these numbers, would be related to things like the costs incurred to acquire capital assets. like purchasing, leasing land, buildings, equipment,

120furniture, interest expense, or other programs that might be outside the scope of preschool through grade 12 for educational purposes. So all of those non-classroom areas are not included here. It's just the areas that you see listed on this display. The amounts that you see displayed by the Auditor General and calculated by that group are shown both as a percentage of the total spend, And also on a per student basis, again, on a per EDM, I should say, basis, which you can see on the slide that both presented there, classroom percentages have always been a point of pride for Kyrene. And each year we intentionally make budget decisions to keep a high percentage of our overall budget spent on those classroom areas. In fact, the 73% Number that is shown for, this is last year's 24-25

121information, would be the, it is, I shouldn't say would be, it is the fifth highest classroom percentage amount in the state of Arizona. That's not something new. Again, I'll show you some other numbers here in a second. That's a point of pride for our district. The prior year, we were the 10th highest percentage in the state of Arizona and the seventh highest in the state the year prior to that. So when we look at the percentages, you know, that 73% is a pretty high number. Again, fifth highest in the state of Arizona. It includes both instructional areas, student support areas, and instructional support. On the non-classroom side, I do want to mention that there's a category called administration. And a lot of times that gets misinterpreted just as administrators. And that's not what that number

122represents. Unfortunately, it's not really clear. But I do want to make sure that we mention that administration costs, as it's defined and listed in this report, includes more than just the cost of administrators. And so the definition of administration that's used by the Auditor General includes the spending for the salaries and benefits for superintendents, principals, business managers, clerical, and other staff who perform accounting, payroll, purchasing, warehousing, printing, human resource activities. and administrative technology services. So you can see there's a lot more staff involved in that category that they're calculating here, not just administrators. A lot of people that are included in this category would be referred to as educational support professionals, ESP is an acronym we use for that often. Sometimes that's referred to as a classified employee as well. So I just want to

123make sure that distinction's very, very clear. The other thing that's not always highlighted is that you'll see a very low rate in that category, but the state of Arizona actually has the lowest administration costs in the country. It has for many years. So that's often lost in this narrative as well, but I did want to highlight that information. And Chris, where are we in comparison to the state average? We're well below it. I don't have that actual number. Actually, I might. Just hang in there for a couple slides. So this is a little bit more of a historical view of classroom spending. So over the last five years, again, we put this in our budget report, so it's not new information. But it is something, again, we look at. We sometimes talk about our timeless

124spending model, and that really refers to how we look at spending money as a district going forward, regardless of how big or small our budget might be, and keeping those very high percentages and targeting around a 75% range for classroom spending going forward. And so we always look at our classroom spending percentages. You can see on this slide, we are the blue bar compared to our peer comparison group that the auditor general groups us in. We are, if you're interested, we are in group eight. Group eight is very large in elementary school districts that are located in cities and suburbs. There's 12. school districts that are included in our peer group. So in the peer group, they are the gray bar and the state average is in the orange bar. So you can see for

125many years we've outperformed both the state and consistently outpaced our peer group as far as how much money we put of our budget in the classroom areas. So this slide. This slide, I've taken the report information directly off of the Auditor General's websites. Again, they talk about a lot of different information. I'm just focusing mostly on the cost and the spending side. But they show some efficiency measures that look at peer and state comparisons. So Superintendent Tinnish, when you asked about this number, we're going to talk about that because it's one of the things that they've compiled some comparisons for. administration areas both on a spending per student you can see our amount relative to the state average which the state average is a very low number to begin with, but we're far less than

126both our peers in the state. There's also a students per administrative position metric that they calculate as well. It's shown there. On the plan operation side, they calculate a square footage per student and also a spending, I'm sorry, a square footage per student and a spending per square foot amount. For food service, they calculate two metrics, spending amount per meal. and then the number of meals per student, and then on the transportation side, two metrics, a spending amount per mile and a spending amount per rider. So for all these categories on our ratings or the evaluation that the Auditor General performs for us, we're rated as very low versus our peers on administration. Plant operations is also rated as very low. Food service rated as low and transportation rated as very low versus our peer

127areas. If you're wondering what constitutes low versus very low versus comparable. Their definition of comparable is within five percentage points of your peer group. A very low rating would be lower than your peer average by more than 15%, and then a low rating would be lower than your peer average by between 5% and 15%. So the areas that were rated very low were at least 15% below what our peer districts would be. So that's a pretty significant number. So just wanted to highlight some of the main things that come out with this report every year. Again, it compares the information for all school districts and happy to answer any questions that our board may have. Do any board members have any questions? Yes. Thank you. On page three, I may have written this down wrong.

128You talked about student support under administration. Student support. So the way the groups are broken down in their classroom versus non-classroom area, they have three areas that are in their classroom spending, which would be instruction. Most of that is teacher and classroom instruction. It could be instructional assistance, IEs in there as well. Support that students get in the classroom areas and then instructional support would be the three areas in their classroom spending. The administration piece would be part of their non-classroom spending. So that would be inclusive of administration costs, plant operations, food service, and transportation. So the administration piece is not in the classroom spending area. It would be in the non-classroom area. Student supports would be things like your counselors. It's interventionists. Things that are helping, well, interventionists would actually be direct instruction, but

129it would be things that are helping support student learning. So think about that. Instructional support are those that are helping the instructors. Thank you. Member Walsh. Mr. Herman, I think you touched on this, but just to confirm, recipients of our ESA voucher program, which this year is expected to exceed $1 billion in expenses to the state of Arizona, do not have to provide this level of reporting to the state of Arizona. Is that right? That's correct. And our Arizona public charter schools, which also receive public funding, they don't have to provide this level of information to the state auditor general. Is that right? That's correct as well. We could not answer questions on how money is spent in those two categories. It's good to know, though, that I think they do have some reporting requirements

130to the auditor general because I think 12 News put out a report last year that compared charter school spending to district school spending. And you won't be surprised to know that although... Our admin expense is about 9%. The average charter school expense on admin is 22%, more than twice. So I just want to call that out, that when we hear narratives about putting money into the classroom, this district is among the best in the state, which is among the lowest in terms of admin spending. And I think we do an exceptional job. And I wish that we had more transparency to where our public taxpayer dollars go outside of public district schools. But I'm glad you're here to do it for us. So thank you. Yes, Member Davis. Hear, hear. Okay. Any other? comments. Mr.

131Herman, thank you very much. I did have one question. You mentioned by statute, it is required for all public school districts to list what our percentages are. At this current point in time, there is no required percentage that they need to meet. Is that correct? That is correct. There is no required percentage. Okay. At this time, however, there is legislation, I believe. that is being proposed that would require public school districts to meet a 60% classroom spending threshold that would not be applicable to our friends in charter schools or private schools. And I thought it was really interesting if you go to, is it slide four? And I think it stood out to me because looking at slide four with the historical information, it seems as though, you know, most of these districts, we operate

132under local control, whatever, you know, with input from our taxpayers, duly elected governing boards. And so looking at even just this state, you know, we're well above that 60% threshold. And so the concerns here are, you know, for me, Watching public school districts operate with a level of transparency and care to their communities and having people who aren't informed about the different nuances of particular school districts get involved with that spending while they choose to ignore others. But appreciate you and all you do. President Nelson, if I may, the legislation is actually more nefarious than you said, Chris, if you could go to the next slide. Well, I'm glad I brought it up then. This one? No, previous slide. Sorry. What they've actually proposed is not classroom spending. It's the instruction spending percent. Oh, so

133we're even getting even more granular. Okay, perfect. Wonderful. Based on the analysis of the state's report, I believe, because I did this at the Tempe Union meeting the other week, I believe there are six districts in the entire state over the 60%. They are all very small rural districts. So if I'm just going to explain it because you're explaining something new to me here. So looking at this slide, we spend 57.9% of ours going to direct instruction. We would be legally then required to bump that up to 60 at a minimum and then figure out there from the rest. But all instruction, 60% of all of our operational spending would need to go to classroom instruction. And then the remainder, 40% of our budget would go. wherever. And for those of you who don't come

134to our study sessions, I invite you to join us over the next few months as Mr. Herman takes us through the wonderful world of school finance, and you would see why that is truly alarming. So thank you. It's also my understanding that there's some discussion about needing to define what operational spending would be and which dollars can go towards that. 60%. So that also is not very clear in the legislation at this point. That's some of the clarification we're trying to get. So there were two bills out there related to this, each worded a little differently. I only believe at this point one of them's moving forward, but we're watching that pretty closely because it will have an impact. Thank you, Mr. Herman. Item 8.3 is student enrollment. Executive Director Dr. Ostmeyer, thank you for

135joining us. Good evening, President Nelson, members of the board, superintendent, tenuous, families and colleagues here and online. I am pleased to introduce our next presentation, facilitated by remote partners who share a deep interest in the public school landscape and family choice. This introduction is personally heartwarming. One of our facilitators found his way into my and Dr. Boltnick's inboxes years ago while he was working on his dissertation, which also focused on school choice in Arizona. True to that mission, he continued this work and picked up a partner along the way and has made data available to school districts offering a more detailed view of public school attendance patterns and helping identify factors that inform the degree of risk a family presents for withdrawal. The timing of this team's emergence is perfectly paired with our interest as

136a leadership team and with the priorities that you yourselves have expressed. How do we leverage the marketplace to understand family interest in the differences that school programming presents? And how do we learn more from our families to ensure student retention as we move forward with school consolidation? Without further ado, I believe our remote team is ready to share their gifts with you this evening. Thank you so much for that warm introduction, Dr. Ostmeyer. Would folks in the room let us know if you can hear us okay? It's hard for us to see folks' faces, but we do really want to hear from you. We can hear you. Perfect. Thank you so much. Good evening, Superintendent Tenyes, members of the governing board and the public. Thank you so much for having us. Before getting into the

137data tonight, I want to briefly share a little bit about who we are and why we built the tools that we're about to share with you tonight. My name is Matthew Hom. This is my partner, Patrick Cizek. We're both graduates of Arizona Public Schools. I went to university high school in TUSD. Patrick attended Chaparral in Scottsdale Unified. And we both went on after graduating from public schools to earn our doctorates in economics. So I went to Yale and Patrick went to the U of A. While we were writing our dissertation, our focus was on school choice. We wanted to understand how families make decisions, why they choose to stay or to leave the schools that they attend. And while working on our dissertations, we collaborated with Kyrene, the Department of Education, and a dozen other

138Arizona school districts. So it's very nice for us to be back here, and we're very grateful to Kyrene for supporting us along that way and helping us to graduate. So after graduating, we both went into tech. We're joining you both tonight from the Bay Area in San Francisco, but we've never lost our connection to Arizona public education. And so the work that we're going to show you tonight through our company, Bespoke Economics, is really informed by our experiences, both as growing up in Arizona, going through the public education system, but also studying it for our doctoral dissertations and also through our professional work. And I believe that the timing really matters right now because districts across the state, including Kyrene, are under real enrollment pressure. And at its core, the challenge is very simple to

139state. You have to bring in enough students and you have to keep the ones that you have. And so tonight, our presentation is going to touch on both of those points. The tool that we're about to share with you tonight is already available to public schools through a partnership with the Arizona School Administrators Association. Dr. Tenias is the president, so if you would like to play with this tool further, please chat with her afterwards. And tonight, our goal is not to just show a bunch of data and throw that at you. It's to help inform the way that you think about enrollment decisions and what's happening directly in your district right now. So before we get into it, let me just lay out what we want you to take away from tonight. There's three simple

140goals that we want you to understand. The first is to reframe the conversation around enrollment and why enrollment trends are not just about demographics, because there's a component that's also, there's a component of market share, there's also a component of market size, and that distinction matters a lot. The second thing that we want to show you tonight is allow you to see where Kyphoenian families go when they choose to opt out of the district. So we will be able to tell you who directly is gaining from your losses, which specific schools. And finally, we'll show you a preview of what's possible if you can actually identify the students that are most likely to leave before they do. And so we invite you to think through a question right now. If you think about the families

141that have left Kyrene in the last few years or have opted out, how confident are you that you know why they left and who they left you for? And so by the end of tonight's presentation, we hope you'll have a better understanding on both fronts. And please ask us questions. If you'd like to interrupt us, we really do want your engagement. So it should go without saying that it's been a very, very tough year for school districts around Arizona. This Arizona Republic article was pulled in January, January 14th. And at that point in time, six districts had announced in the valley that they were doing school closures for the 2025-2026 school year. Simultaneously, there have been at least 20 documented charter closures, according to the state charter board. And this number is actually out of

142date. Earlier this week, Tucson Unified, my alma mater, announced that they're thinking about shutting down 17 schools. So the common theme in all the school closure decisions comes down to attribution of declining birth rates and also school choice. But what we're seeing from the data is that declining birth rates do not fully explain everything that's happening. And so the reason is because families are making active choices. And that's what we want to get through tonight. So here's what that looks like in data. So beginning three years ago, the Department of Education began releasing information about how students use open enrollment in the state of Arizona. I invite you at your own time to go look at the ADE's website, but you can think of gigantic Excel spreadsheets that break out for every zip code and

143for every boundary district, every single school that's attended by students living in those particular areas. Now, the headline for this chart is the following. In 2022, about 72.7% of public school students in Arizona attended their resident district. By 2025, that number has fallen to 68.4%. So that is a 4.3 percentage point drop in just a three-year time period. So this goes beyond just peer demographics. This is actively public school families voting with their feet. The next chart here. shows you what that looks like when you break it out at the district level. And this is the most important chart. If you don't take anything else away from the rest of tonight, please pay attention to this one here. Enrollment is a function of two things. It's market size, which is the number of school-aged children

144living in your boundaries. And it's also market share. Sometimes people call this the service rate or the catch rate. And that's the share of the school-aged children living in your boundary that choose you. Now the numbers that I'm showing you tonight are focused on public school families, so they're going to omit some of the ESA data, but we also have leads on that as well. But right now, let's anchor on public school families because they've chosen to remain in either traditional public schools or charter schools. Now, the chart that you see on this can be broken up into four different quadrants. Let me walk you through how to read it. The vertical axis captures the size of the market. And so what we've done is we've normalized the data so that if you're above the

145zero line, what that's saying is that you're growing in terms of the number of students that live in your boundary. And if you're below that line, it means that you're shrinking. So those are demographic headwinds. Those are outside of any district's control. However, there's also... a vertical, there's a horizontal axis now. And so if you're to the right of the zero line, what that means is that you are capturing or serving a greater share of the population that lives inside your district's boundaries. And so when we looked at the data, what we found is that there's about 56% of districts operating in markets where there's growing number of public school students. And yet at the same time, they're receiving a smaller share. Kyrene unfortunately falls into the bottom left quadrant. So there's about 31% of

146districts where there are demographic headwinds and simultaneously districts are servicing a smaller share of students. Now. We focus on the left side of that chart. I do want to point out that there is the other quadrants, the green quadrants, and these reflect districts that are managing to increase their service rate regardless of their demographic circumstances. And so the question that I would pose to the board tonight is, what are those districts doing differently to grow their share? Any questions about what I've shared so far? So if not, I'm going to quickly show you a demo of the tool, SignalEd, which is available to school districts through the Arizona School Administrators Association. Right now, this website is live, but it will be password protected starting in May. And so the version that we're going to show

147you tonight is actually a special customized version that we built just for tonight's presentation because we got feedback that sometimes it was a little hard to see things on the screen. So you should now see on your screen a map that is centered around Kyrene. And so you should see a bunch of dots, blue dots, as well as orange diamonds. Each dot or diamond represents a school that is receiving Kyrene resident students. And so the size of the school indicates the number of students that are attending. So, for example, I'm going to click on this particular dot right here. This is Knox Gifted Academy, which is located in your neighbor, Chandler Unified. And so you can see from this data. that there are 96 students that live in Kyrene that are choosing to attend Knox

148Gifted Academy. And with this tool, you can see how those trends have changed over time. So if you rewind the clock to 2022, there were about 53 resident families in Kyrene that were attending Knox Gifted Academy. That has now almost doubled to 96. Now, I won't go through and click on every single school, but I just want to point, yeah, I just want to show you some of the capabilities of what we can see. I want to direct your attention first to, I'm going to expand this chart here. And this chart here is going to show you, the green line tells you how many students are currently enrolled throughout the district. And what you can see is that starting in 2022, that number was about 14,000 students. it has now fallen over time to about

14912,375. So that's the green line. The blue line shows you the number of public school families that live inside of Kaiming. And so in 2022, that number was about 13,560. If you fast forward to today, that number is now 12,545. Now the green line mixes two different types of families. Families that live inside Kyrene and also families that live outside Kyrene and that choose to attend. But what you should notice is that starting in 2025 there was an inversion. The blue line is now above the green line and what this is what this indicates this wedge indicates is that there's a gap that's being created through school choice. Now, I'm going to expand now and direct your attention to this chart here. And the line I want you to direct your attention to right now

150is the purple one. And this would be the public school student service rate. So the way to read this is that in 2022, 81% of families that lived in public school families that lived inside Kyrene chose to attend a Kyrene school. In the last 3 years, that number has now fallen to 77%. And so this is data as of fiscal year 2025. When the data for fiscal year 2026 becomes available, we will update that. Any questions about what I've shown so far? One natural thing that you might be wondering next is what are the schools or the districts that are receiving families in the area? And to do that, I'm going to expand this chart here. I'm just going to break out for you for public school families that live inside Kyrene, what's the relative

151split? So we've already established that about 77% of families living in Kyrene attend a Kyrene school. Where are the rest going? The orange line, those are charter schools. And in aggregate, about 16% of the public school families that live in Kyrene wind up in a charter school. And that translates into about 2,020 students. And then the green line, that's out of district. Those are other districts like Chandler or Tempe. And that represents about 6.9% of the population, equivalent to about 862 students. What we can do... is we can break this out even further and establish where the destination districts are and their exact identity. And so by far, in a way, the top competitor for Kyrene right now is Horizon Community Learning Center. And in 2022, they were receiving about 758 students living in the

152district. That number's ticked up slightly to about 791. The next top competitor would be BASIS. In 2025, they pulled roughly about 342 students, followed by Tempe and Chandler. And what I want you to notice is, you know, the identities of the top five competitors have stayed fairly stable over time. But what's changed is look at the trajectory that Chandler's on right now. So starting in 2022, they had fewer than 182 students. And now, as of today, it's up to 342. You can go even deeper and look at the identities of the exact top schools. I won't belabor the point, but this will just give you a sense for who some of the top competitors are at the actual school level. So now that we've shown you some of this data, the question that we invite

153you to think through is, what is it about these alternative programs that's drawing families to them? And is there something that Kyrene could offer potentially to compete against some of these schools? I won't go into all the exact details, but it's in this tool, and you can actually see the relative grade breakdowns of the types of schools that folks are leaving Kyrene to attend. Majority of them are A-rated schools. We also break out in this the proficiency levels, so we can tell you what the kind of education that they're getting, both in Kyrene and also outside of Kyrene. Why does this matter at the end of the day? Because if you look at the demographics of Kyrene, this chart here shows the number of families, number of babies that have been born in Kyrene going

154all the way back to 2010. And so you can see that in 2010, the number of births associated with Kyrene was about 1,500 students or future students. You scroll forward to 2024, that number is now 1,300. And so if the share of public school families that Kyrene serves is shrinking and simultaneously the feeder crop of families, the babies that are being born is also going down, that presents real enrollment challenges for the district. I'll pause there if there's any questions. Member Statry. Yes, I wonder if your dashboard shows the reverse of that as well, where we show that in other districts. Coming to Kyrene. So it's kind of the reverse of that. And is that kind of even things out as far as X amount is going outside the district, however, X amount is coming

155in the district. So I wonder if that's okay. That is a great question. And yes, in the dashboard, we have broken that out. So we can tell you that the top district that you're pulling students from right now is Tempe School District. You're getting about 591 students. That's down 17 students from last year. Roosevelt, you're pulling 490 students. Chandler, 457. Mesa, 404. It's in the dashboard. We chose just to not overwhelm you with numbers. And so does that... Sorry. Does it end up being kind of even where we're losing as many as we have from other districts or is it? Yeah. Historically, you have drawn more students into the district than you have lost to open enrollment. But that trend changed, I want to say, two years ago. And so one way that you can

156look at that is focus on the red line. The red line is take the total enrollment in Kyrene schools as the numerator and then divide that by the number of resident families in the district. And so what you can see is that you are above 100% in 2022. That number has dipped below to 98.6%. So on net, turns out that Kyrene is losing about 170 students on net to school choice. And this, I also want to just emphasize that this data right now is focused on public school families. So we have not factored in ESA data into that equation. If you want to see the ESA data, the legislature puts out two different flavors of data. The one that I'm highlighting here is directly speaking to students that were formerly enrolled in Kyrene and then

157withdrew to take up an ESA. So in 2024, that number was about 325. As of the... Q1 2026, that number sits at about 438. And so this would be separate and distinct from the number of families that live in the area and are using ESAs because they may never have actually enrolled in Kyrene to begin with. Can I just ask a question, please? You mentioned something about the reasons that people are leaving, and you mentioned very briefly A-rated schools. Could you just say a little bit more about that? I mean, is that the main reason or is that how does that play into things? That's a great question. Let me show that to you. So right now, the purple box, so what I've done is I've taken the data and I've assigned every school the

158latest letter grade that's available from the ADE. So the purple line, those represent Kyrene families that stay inside Kyrene. The majority of families that are Kyrene residents and stay inside Kyrene attend an A-rated school. So that's about 63.2% of that population. Among the families that leave, 76.8% of them choose to attend an A-rated school. If you look at, say, B-rated schools, 26.9% of families that live in Kairin attend a B-rated school. If you look at the folks that are choosing to go elsewhere, only about 14.8% of them choose to go to a B-rated school. Based on the factors that we're observing, it does appear that folks that choose to leave do care a lot about academic quality. One way that you can make that very concrete is to look at this chart right here. So

159what we've done is the Department of Education releases information about the number of students that score at different proficiency levels. And so we focused in this dashboard on English language arts and math. So the red line. So let's just take it slow. Let me start with the left panel here. So these are students that are living and staying inside Kyrene. And so what you'll find is that about 49 percent of students are scoring below proficiency. about 51% that remain are scoring at proficiency levels or above. If you look at those that choose to leave, most of them are attending schools that are 65% proficient in English language arts. And you can do the same. Proficient. Proficient and above. There's like four different levels. We've chosen to collapse it into two just to keep things simple.

160But you know what? If you were to, there's a lot of information that gets abstracted inside of a letter grade. But you know, this is just one metric that you can use to help understand what is it that the families that are leaving are leaving for. I won't say that this completely explains the entire decision. And you also have to factor in, for example, the availability of specialized programming. So earlier I mentioned, for example, Knox Gifted Academy. That is a, you know, this is not like a self-contained gay program. The entire school is a gifted academy. And earlier I mentioned that their trends were such that they were only pulling 53 students in 2022, and that's doubled to nearly 96. So that's an example of a school that started off maybe modestly pulling students away

161from the district and now has grown and almost doubled in size. And so if you just look at the geography of where students leave, and based off of my own personal research back in the day, parents consider academics, but they also factor in convenience, the commute, etc. And so some schools that you'll see are very close to the border of Kyrene and other districts. And so it might make sense that perhaps this school might be closer to that family than perhaps their Kyrene neighborhood option. But then if you start looking at schools that are further away from the border and more landlocked, if you will, those represent true choice decisions in the sense that it could be quite a trek to actually make it out to those particular places. And so, you know, Kyrene operates

162in an educational market just like every other school district. There is no one specific factor that will appeal to every single family, but understanding and taking stock of, you know, these are the revealed actions of families that live inside Kyrene. And it's clear from that example, for example, that at least for those hundred families, that is something that they really value. Thank you. So far, so from this here, what we want to take away for you is that there's a difference between just demographics, right? Demographics must also be viewed through the lens of service rates. And so I want to focus on this orange line right here because these are students that were formerly enrolled in Kyrene and chose to withdraw to take up an ESA because that dovetails into our next topic. But before

163I do that, any last questions on this? Okay, so... One, beyond just recruiting new students, you also have to think about the students that you have. And what we found in our work and talking to school districts is that it's easier to keep students than to win them back. And so a large East Valley district, for example, revealed in one of their governing board presentations that their retention rate, the number of kids that came back one year to the next, varied between 82% to 96%. And so if you look at the reasons why people leave a district, it really boils down to two different categories. First, you have movers. Those are families that relocate because of housing, because of jobs, or other circumstances. This is largely outside of a district's control. That's one bucket. The

164other bucket, those are choosers. Those are families who stay in your boundaries. They remain in their house, but they leave anyways. And the research is clear. Nationally, only about half of school moves actually involve a residential move. And there are similar statistics from a very, very large school district in Pima County that echo those same figures. And so with that, I'm going to pass the baton to Patrick. So just to reiterate, what are we talking about when we're discussing churn? Churn occurs when a student who's enrolled in your district enrolls an alternative educational provider the next year. And what we know from the academic literature and from our past research is that not all student types re-enroll at the same rate. So knowing that, I'll turn your attention to this chart on the right here.

165And what this depicts is the idea that you can use a predictive model to predict which students that are currently enrolled are at risk of churn and which ones are unlikely to churn. And what you might find is that if you look at the students who you predicted are unlikely to churn, who would be on the left side of this plot at the beginning of the year, at the end of the year, you might find that this group of students churns at a rate of something like four to 6%. Alternatively, those students that you had predicted would be at high risk of churn, who are depicted on the right side of the plot, you might find that at the end of the year, they're turning in something like a 25 to 30% rate. And this

166might be against the district average of something like 11 or 12%. And so what this suggests is that you can use this information to look at these at-risk students and ensure that they're receiving district resources to ensure that their needs are being met in order to help minimize the risk that these students will leave. And so why is this important? If you look on the left here, we'll talk about some current practices that districts use when thinking about churn. One is exit surveys. So sending out a survey to students that have left. And these can be very useful, but you're never going to get 100% response rate on these surveys as to why did somebody leave. Some districts have run them and gotten something like a 14 to 20% response rate. So that can be

167a challenge. Doing this sort of modeling can provide some additional insights on why people are moving. Additionally, another district did an email campaign where they sent out 42,000 emails to students who left and retained about 42. of those students that left. And what this suggests is that you might want to use a sort of predictive model like we've seen here on the right, which requires some statistical modeling and some professional expertise to try to get ahead of this re-enrollment problem and use it as a sort of early warning system to try to reach out to these students while you still have greater access to them as opposed to after they already leave. So what do we do with this information? We know that a fair number of the factors that are driving churn are maybe

168outside of the control of the district. Matt was talking about housing relocation decisions. Alternatively, there are some factors, maybe a student's connectedness to their school community that a district might have some control over, and they might be able to exert control, some sort of influence over these students while they're still enrolled. So we'll talk more about this on the next slide. So we'll talk just very broadly about some of the risk factors that predict whether a student is likely to churn or not churn based off of the academic literature and some of our past research. Recent enrollment, the shorter that a student has been enrolled in the district, the more likely they are to churn. This could be because they have a weaker attachment to their school community. The further that a student lives from

169their enrolled school, the more likely they are to turn. This could be because of higher transportation costs. Also, the closer proximity to competitors is a predictor of churn. A student might be more likely to exercise school choice if they have more options available to them. Low attendance, if you have previous year low attendance rates, that's an important predictor of whether or not a student will churn. And also socioeconomic instability is an important predictor as well. So what comes next? Districts run these exit surveys, outreach, sometimes counseling or home visit programs. And the question really becomes, how do you efficiently allocate resources to these interventions and personalize them in order to make sure that they're being used most efficiently? Part of this process is determining if churn was due to relocation versus choice. through residential relocation

170records. And another part of that is also using the district's withdrawal records that they receive from districts that are enrolling former Kyrene District students to help better understand where students are going and why. So the question really becomes, how do you effectively deploy these limited resources through... careful consideration of the deployment of these resources and personalization of the resources. And that's something that we've experienced with and can help prioritize the deployment of these resources. So I'm happy to take any sort of questions when it comes to this churn question as opposed to the opt-out question that we were discussing before. Member Davis. Yes, thank you. What's churn mean? To me, it's making butter. So I just need a little direction on that. Sure. No, churn is a term that's used in tech and business to

171refer to an existing customer that then leaves to maybe receive services from an alternative provider. So in this case, it would be a student that's enrolled in Kyrene and then chooses to leave in a following year to enroll at an alternative district, charter school, or ESA. perhaps even move upstate, but that's how we think about churn. So it's not an acronym, it's actually the word churn. And it's for people who choose to go somewhere else. That's exactly right, yeah. Okay, thank you. Yes. And the reason why that matters is because, as we showed you in the previous slide, only about 80% of the kids that were sitting in that large East Valley School District came back the following year. So that means that 20% of the students currently enrolled in that district didn't come back.

172And if it's the case that only half of them relocated because of, you know, they moved houses, that means that 10% are still there and just not coming back. And so if you think about it with enrollment, there's only only two ways that you can get enrollment. You have to recruit new students and you have to hang on to the ones that you have. And so that's the realization that I think, you know, in these very trying times right now, those are the sorts of strategies that districts are leaning into now. Thank you. Are there any further questions? If not, remember, Walsh has questions. Just a couple of things to reflect on. I appreciate you highlighting Mr. Holm. The I think it was the orange line where you showed the number of families who were

173with Kyrene and then had chosen to leave. In this case, I think you said taking ESA voucher money, because I think for a long time in this community, we understood that there were some families who, for whatever reason. Public school was not the choice they made, and that's fine. Arizona has wonderful choices. Not everybody chooses Kyrene. We want you to choose Kyrene, but not everybody does. But once you're in Kyrene, we kept you. And this shows a concerning trend. And I really hope that we can, as a district... hone in on the reason why I appreciate you talking about the exit surveys as one tool but I also acknowledge as you pointed out the efficacy of that whether that's responsiveness candor whatever the case may be but I this is the sort of number that

174I hope we hone in on because you know, being in that bottom left quadrant is not a fun place to be. And I recognize we cannot control the demographics, but the service rate is something that we can work on. So I appreciate you bringing this very detailed data approach here, Dr. Osmar, I'm sure having a great amount of fun with this. But I just think that this is a... This is very instructive. And I look forward in the next few months hearing plans for addressing this dynamic. And I think for us, one of the biggest ahas was now I can tell you where those kids are going. I couldn't tell you that if they weren't filling out the exit survey. I didn't have the data behind this to tell me, even if I knew there

175were 400 leaving. Now I know where they're going, which might help me identify the why they're leaving. So, for example, I'm going to go back to the Knox Academy example you gave. If they are doubling their numbers of students that are leaving us, and I get they're not leaving us for ESAs because that's another public. school, but you know, that's an example of why, why are that many students? Why does that number keep doubling? Those are kids that live in our boundary that are choosing that's almost a hundred students we're sending to another school. Um, and so can we identify, and I know we've mentioned this when we were doing long range plan that I think it was well over a hundred students are leaving us for other gifted programs, which led us to, of

176course, the opportunity review and gifted to find out. What do we not offer that our gifted families are looking for? That's just one example. Yeah, I think it's important to get the feedback from our families where we can. You know, it touches on some of the public comment we heard from today about how some of our community members very much value the arts and music. And whether or not you agree with the programmatic changes, we want to make sure our communities feel that we are supporting those programs in Kyrene. And if they don't feel like or believe like we're doing that. do we see numbers like this? So getting that feedback to make sure that our programmatic needs align with our family's needs, I think is huge. I think what's really exciting for me and

177looking at this data is. A parallel conversation that we have all enjoyed over the years is looking at the retention rate for our teachers. And by offering exit surveys and facilitating and administrating surveys with our staff throughout the year, we're able to better understand what programmatic goods are available to them as employees that enrich their experiences and want them to say yes to the next contract that comes out in their inbox. What's exciting with the churn rate available through the work that Patrick has facilitated is we now can double up on our efforts looking at our families. So historically, we have facilitated exit surveys. But at that point, it's too late to retain the family. What we've been able to garner from the responses of the choosers is, were there programmatic goods that invited them

178away from us that we then use strategically? We're like, hey, these families have left. Here's some of the information that they shared. They are interested in this. But the response rate is, you know, cautious. If we could actually predict. from our families today if they are presenting risk factors that they might leave before they leave. We don't have to do an exit survey. and try to entertain participation on the family who's walking out the back door. We can actually talk to the family who's sitting in front of us and really hunker down and really stay true to the impressive retention rate that we have right now, but also continue to enchant the families who might be looking at some other choices that they have in their backyard. So I would like to be proactive about

179it and the type of research and data that's coming forward in the conversations that we are. sharing offers us the ability to build strategic plans and priorities that really focus on maybe some of that information we can glean from our current population of interest. I think that's wonderful. And, you know, I think predicting what could drive families out is so key. Sometimes we hear it very clearly. We heard from Ms. Jenkins today during a public comment about things that she perceived to be driving families out of her school community. But not everybody is going to come in blue carding Kyrene. So to be able to... one, hear when the people do raise their hand and validate that and respond to that as great, but to also use this data to respond and anticipate for people

180who are not necessarily going to come to a board meeting and tell you why they're leaving. I think we have to do both. And now we can see where they landed, which we haven't been able to see before. And that's a nice little fact check on were you a mover or were you a chooser? Because we can see if you're still living in the same house and what school are you actually attending? And when you chose a different school, what type of programming were they offering that maybe enticed you to go over and play so that we can bring it back home and make certain we're offering the similar types of opportunities that our families want to participate. The service rate is that second. Matt actually used public service rate, which was key. We're going

181to continue to do the standard service rate in Kyrene, which is the number of school-age children that we serve out of the total number of school-age children in Kyrene. But what's lovely about now having data that actually shows us a change in that denominator of our public school attendees. we can really flip that filter and leverage that information because we know these families are interested in public school settings. So if that's still a core value for those families, then we want every opportunity to serve them and continue to lead other districts in the state with our student outcomes. If I may. Thank you very much for that. And Mr. Holm and friend, I forgot his name. It's very useful information. I want you to know that I worked at Tucson Unified School District for a

182lot of years, so I'm very proud of you, sir. It's good to see a product of our school district doing good work to help this school district and all the school districts in Arizona. Yeah, I think that this is great information and data-driven, and data and me don't necessarily, what I'm, don't necessarily jibe sometimes. I personally am very satisfied and love this. I understand it. It was explained beautifully. And what I like most about it is... If I can congratulate myself and those who I speak to about this, this confirms what the sense of people who are in education and who are around educators and families know. I mean, we can have all the numbers in the world, but if we aren't capturing the humanity of community and creating opportunities for community around public schools,

183in my belief, and I speak only for myself here, you know, that's the crucial thing that we have to be working on. And this bears it out. The interesting thing is we're getting pushed back into a corner here. If one of the main reasons people leave is because they want to go to a... schools. We've just finished a consolidation, which is going to move principals around. And there are going to be schools that have been A-rated for a long time who won't be able to get A-rating now for three years, right? It's a different A-rating that you're talking about. That's the A-plus rating that comes out through AEF. The A-rating that they are talking about in this presentation has to do with letter grades. So one of the things that you if you probably noticed,

184most of the Kyrene students that stayed in Kyrene were also at A schools because the majority of our schools are A schools. Right. So it it I don't know if you. Yeah, there we go. So you can also see, again, even the staying, the majority of our schools are A or B. Yes. Again, this was 24 data. Is that correct? Letter grade data or 25? It's the latest vintage. Maybe Dr. Ostenmeier, you know better than me, but I think it's 24. I think it says, yeah, 25. I think it says 25 at the top. I can't see that small. I apologize. I can see nothing. So it's not the A-plus that you're referring to. That is a different label. Thank you for that clarification because I was having a little bit of a clutch over

185here. No, we're good. So in influencing our students, we talk about influencing our students. What I'm most... concerned, not in a bad way, just thinking about, is influence our parents, building our Kyrene community, which I feel has been fractured by events way beyond our control, just like other... areas, especially in Arizona, seem to have been, in my opinion. So I am very much committed to looking at ways that parents can get involved and have more of a conversation with the board rather than just when we, you know, talk to them. And they talk to us and we can't talk back to them. So I'm hoping that. Maybe we can talk about that at some point and figure out a plan. Yeah, yeah. I'm excited. You know, what Patrick shares is some meat and potato factors

186that you would see in most districts. You can look at your attendance rates. Students attending school and not attending school, they're telling us something. That they either can't get there and there's a family dynamic that needs support or that they're not interested and the school experience doesn't feel good. So if we can start to look at some of these factors that are here and present, we can start to build the strategies and the bridges to actually build that community. Many of our school leaders right now, as we're leaning into Kyrie Ford, are already starting to create bridges because you have a host of families who are going to be at new schools next year. And they may not have been the schools that they started at. So as we really prioritize that community feeling and

187the school culture, I want to remind you, we have things like our school climate survey. We have our social emotional survey that we provide to our children. We have our academic. performance indicators that tell us a little bit more about how they're experiencing their learner. And we're going to continue to look at the mass pieces to the puzzle to better understand. But what we really want to do is get to them before they get to the door. Yes. I am so pleased about all of the things that you just listed. I also have a really strong drive and preference myself for actually talking to people. And we as a board, I've always felt, you know, that I, as a board member, I don't want to speak for anybody else, but I, as a board member,

188am elected by people who want to have access to me and I want to have access to them. So I know what's on their mind and that helps build our school community and have a commitment by the parents and by the community members, the business community, and who are also parents. relatives and friends of kids, you know, that we're all working together. And to me, that takes direct, I see that personally as part of my job to actually talk face to face with people. And I'm not disparaging any of this because it's incredibly helpful. But that's just what I think. It's a value add. Absolutely. This presentation was very, it's a lot to digest. And I think it's a really great continuation of the conversation that we've been having over the past year. And really

189look forward, I mean, Dr. Hom, Patrick, Dr. Ostmeyer, for bringing this to us and seeing what we're able to do with this as far as, you know, moving Kyrene forward. creating greater connectivity for our families. So thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. I want to also just shout out a thank you for our remote presenters and say welcome home. Thanks for joining the team at Kyrene and offering us another tool or two to add to our toolbox so that we can continue to do right by our families. I appreciate your time this evening and the continued conversations I anticipate that we'll enjoy. Thank you. Thank you so much. And so just in closing statements, we'd like to invite you to reflect on things that surprised you or confirmed in tonight's presentation. We do encourage

190you to talk to Dr. Ostmeyer, Superintendent Tenyes, Dr. Bolnick, if you'd like to dig into more specific numbers related to Kyrene. We're also just one email away. If you wouldn't mind filling out the QR code survey, if you have a few spare minutes or a few, like half a minute, we'd very much appreciate your feedback. Ultimately, we want to leave you with, you know, a closing question. If you could see which students were most likely to leave and which families living inside Kenreen weren't choosing you and you could actually communicate with them, what would your message be? What would you consider doing differently? Do you think that you know what it takes to keep them and to bring them back? That's the question we'd like you to think about. Thank you. Thank you very much.

191Item 8.4 is our Arizona School Board Association. It's time to start working on the 2027 political agenda. So for those of you who aren't aware, we as members of ASBA... As each board has an opportunity to discuss what potential priorities we would like to see ASBA focus on for the part of their political agenda. Board Member Davis currently represents us on that board. So I'll turn a little bit of this time over to her. Thank you very much. I hope my fellow board members will bear with me as I attempt to lead this discussion. I hope that you all got this handout that I just received late this afternoon before we sat down. And I know that President Nelson and my friend over here to my right have seen this before. This is the priorities

192or the proposals that this board came up with to turn over to the Arizona School Board Association as their proposed 2026 political agenda. And this is the first I had seen this. There are quite a few of them. And what we actually, you should have also received the at-a-glance ASBA 2026 legislative priorities, of which there are four. the political agenda priority issues of which there are lots. So in going over this, I hope you all have had a chance to go over at least the things that you got before late this afternoon. I hadn't planned to say this, but after... listening to everything that we were listening to tonight. I wonder if it would be possible or appropriate, or you'll have to help me with this, to perhaps have an opportunity to really discuss this

193after we, I don't know how many folks have really had time to go through this. So right now, we aren't going to be voting on anything this evening. We also have time scheduled next month in order to figure out what our top five priorities are and then vote from there. If we want to have a general discussion right now of things that we feel are priorities or things that we... aren't seeing maybe or taking some time after kind of looking over, I think, the current priorities that are before us. If we want to take some time and when we come back to the next meeting, if there are any things additional that we want to add, then we can have the real robust discussion about what we want our top five priorities to be at

194that point. But yeah, this is just discussion. Then I would ask that, and in whatever way I have to do that formally, that we do that. You don't even have to do it because it's already discussion. So I don't know if anybody, if there's anything that has stood out on the political agenda that ASB is currently before us that kind of stands out or just some of your thoughts as we head into this next year. Member Walsh. One that's on there every year is eliminate unfunded mandates. I think that's key. We are continually asked to do more with no funding. Do it with. But one that jumped out to me just because I've seen it, I think, get a little bit more traction in our legislature is efforts to make school board elections partisan, which

195I find to be very concerning. I've had the great privilege of working with many school board members over the years of various political perspectives. And the one thing that unites them is their care for kids. And I think that infusing partisan politics into school board elections is going to be bad for kids. I fully believe that. And I feel like that's something that's been becoming proposed with more regularity in the legislature. So I see that under preserve, respect and strengthen local control. That might just be one that jumps out to me as something to highlight. I'm sorry. I also agree. The things that and I talked about this earlier in the meeting is really ensuring local control and flexibility and managing funds as well as programs within a district. I think. With a lot of

196talk about school choice and what we provide others, there is this desire to micromanage and really get in and be very prescriptive with what public school districts are doing, where I think, again, not infusing partisan politics into what that is for each of these individual communities. What we do here in Kyrene might not be what they are going to go do down in Yuba or other rural communities in our area. And I think that's very, very important. Anybody else have any comments? Yes, I agree about the partisan politics in school boards. I mean, everyone's entitled, in my opinion, to a quality education, regardless of political affiliation. I'm also looking at, this is something I've been fighting for years, free meals for all students all year. I actually think that's criminal that we force kids to

197pay for food in an environment that they're forced to be in when we have prisoners who committed crimes eating three meals a day. I mean, I'm just saying. Let's, you know, maximizing our state funding to provide competitive salaries. You know, that's something I've been on for a long time. Throughout the state, many teachers can't even afford to buy a home in the area that they teach in. And, you know, a lot of teachers leave the profession because they cannot afford to adequately live. And, of course, with that maximized state funding to provide competitive salaries, of course, that kind of go hand in hand with, you know, the funding. And of course, repeal any program that gives funds for private school vouchers, because why are we in the situation we're in across the state in public

198schools? Because of those vouchers. People always say, what does the data say? What does the data say? Well, the data states that we are one billion dollars in debt to school vouchers. No matter how you want to flip it, whether you want to acknowledge it, the data states that. So I guess that makes it a fact. Right. So those are the things that I took from this and some things that I want to look at, if possible. Vice President Seidry. The one that stood out to me was preserving and protecting the voters' original intent for Props 123 and 301. We are given this wonderful... freedom of voting on things. And when those votes and how people vote is flipped over like it was for ESAs in the first place, I think it's just really important

199to respect the will of the voters. And because that's tied to our funding, it needs to be respected and left alone. Thank you. I have a couple things. Yes, of course. Number two on the legislative priorities, invest in student performance. I think that's really important for the Arizona School Boards Association. But I think as school board members, I would appreciate focusing also on teachers. that we have strategies. If we want strategies that improve academic outcomes for all students, I certainly agree with that. But to me, the most direct way to get that is to support our teachers and have our teachers be the ones who are evaluating our children rather than some test that's made up in Princeton, New Jersey. So I'm all for the school board association. remembering who's really supposed to be, in

200my mind, in charge of our children's educations. And I'm not quite sure how to word that, but maybe that's something we can talk about. I just wanted to say, because of the way the law works in this state, strengthening school facilities funding is a big deal because it's one of the areas that are legislature seems to feel fulfills their commitment to our children to give them a positive educational experience. So they make it easier for us to improve our facilities, which is very important. I'm not saying it's not important. But when it comes to the people who are really in charge of improving academic outcomes, that's our teachers. And somehow I want them to make that link so that it helps us advocate for our kids through our teachers. I think evidence-based instruction, and that's

201one of those places where I sometimes have a little trouble with the data approach, because I think... Improving academic outcomes involves supporting kids in certain things that, for some kids, can't really be measured accurately and put on a grid. It has to do with humanity, human behavior, empathy, creativity, those kinds of things that professional teachers are trained to support and help bring positive educational experiences to our kids. I'd like this organization to be, they say, guiding advocacy for Arizona's public schools. I don't know how much actual advocacy is going on. That's another point I have about them. There's a lot of talking about advocacy, but I don't know how much actual advocacy is going on. And investing in student performance, I think, should have been number one. And number two could be strengthening school facilities

202funding. But I would like to try and have that organization be more focused on our stakeholders. Is that what students are? Am I saying it right? Because I have trouble with that. But anyway, so that's one thing I wanted to say. We were talking about the why. When we had all that data, why are people leaving? And I think ASBA is in a unique position to be able to help educate folks about why do we even have public schools. And I don't see a statement anywhere. We're all being asked to support our public schools, but why? I mean, I don't know. I've been accused of saying I don't know too much, but I actually don't know. why we don't talk about what are public schools supposed to be doing? And ASBA would be a perfect

203place for them to have some sort of public school mission statement or statement of purpose, or they have this one about guiding advocacy, but for what? For public schools. Well, why? How do we make that argument? And I just would like to focus the leaders of the school, public schools and the school boards and this organization on making a case for why we even exist. I mean, what's the point? I think they do that through the second one about preserving and respecting and strengthening local control. They're very much about providing tools to each individual area in order to. excel and meet the needs of their specific public schools. So I think to broadly, I mean, and they do. have advocacy on like a federal level. And I think they speak to that around, you know,

204what Vice President Satri brought up around preserving and protecting the voters' original intent and purpose. I think it's all tied to the greater thing that you're talking about. But what they've done is how do you make that actionable? And I think they have found ways that they might be able to make change through these five broader bullet points is how I look at it. Okay. So that's how I, that's how I see it. Okay. That could be. Yeah, I didn't quite get that. I also think where you see their mission down there on the bottom of that first page, right, it's about locally governed school districts. So Arizona School Boards Association is, while you're saying the word public schools in Arizona, our charters are also considered public schools. And so I think maybe just being

205more clear. Yeah, our charters are considered public schools, but they have a completely different set of rules, right? Well, they're not locally governed. Well, they're different locally governed. Yeah, and there's some... They don't go through the same election process. Right, and they also have a different way of handling money. Correct. And so, yeah, I would think, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Like their focus is on governance and how do we apply the statutes that the Arizona legislature has brought to us and work within that framework. And our friends in like our public charter schools don't necessarily have a lot of those constraints. But I think there's that's something to play around with if there's a way we want to talk about that a little bit more for our next. next time to kind of

206flesh that out a little bit. But I think we've got, I've circled one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And then I've written a couple of yours down member Davis. So we have about 10 themes. for us to sit with over the next little bit. I mean, I don't think anybody feels ready to take a vote tonight, do they? No. I didn't think so. Okay. So I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. Thank you. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. So I really think, you know, take some time, review the political agenda some more with the 10 that we've kind of identified here and we'll be able to move forward when it's agendized next. So. All right. Item 8.5, governing board goals for 2026, folks. Um, we sent these were sent out in board

207memo before the break over just to get everybody else up to speed on March 3rd, we had a board retreat where we talked about what our goals could be for the upcoming year and had a few broad themes. And I tried to distill them down into three different goals. Um, I. Should I read them out for, for the general public right now? I, I, I, I will, you know, I will. It's 830. Okay. So. Goal number one. By the final governing board meeting in December 2026, the board will adopt policy and collaborate with the superintendent to establish procedures for regular review and analysis of enrollment and demographic projections, facility utilization, and long-range facility needs. The board will use this information to guide data, inform decisions, and ensure students and staff have access to safe, appropriately

208sized learning environments, as well as the resources necessary for effective teaching and learning. Goal two, by the final governing board meeting in June 2026, the board will collaborate with the superintendent to develop a framework for sharing updates on current and future school consolidation considerations with the board staff and community. And the final goal is by the final governing meeting in June 2026, we will review and revise the board communication handbook to clearly define the process. for items listed for future consideration with criteria distinguishing discussion items from items requiring formal presentations. The board will make changes necessary to improve decision-making efficiency and organizational alignment, allowing district leadership to remain focused on initiatives that directly support student achievement and staff effectiveness. And I will open it up for discussion or any questions, anything that needs to be

209changed or not captured what we talked about in the retreat. I'll let you sit with us. I think you did a nice job taking the feedback from our board retreat and putting this into an actionable and measurable goal. So thank you. So we're going to have a chance. Is this the chance to discuss them now? Okay. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. How do we revise the communication handbook? What do we have to do to make that happen? So what this... Please step in here if I'm about to speak for you. So reviewing and revising, it's not anything that we have to vote upon, but I think this would be like an extra board retreat where we sit down with the handbook. There were several things that we brought up. Throughout the meeting, however, in order to

210make this an actionable item that I think we can actually accomplish, I really did focus in on how are we bringing items for future consideration and then how are we then communicating that to the cabinet so that there are things that are discussion amongst us here on the dais. There are things that might need extra presentation just to really make sure that we are not losing focus on what. the work of the district is, but then what the work that we need to do from these seats. So I also want to clarify. So the governing board handbook, governing board superintendent handbook is board adopted. So I think a June. date, you may have to think about it. It was adopted by the board some time ago, and we've never made any revisions to it. Well,

211we did readopt it when you first came on, President Nelson. And so we just haven't had a revision since that time when we've brought it to the board for that discussion. Whether we wanted to make a revision, the answer has always been no. We were happy with it at that point. So should the board review it and choose to make any recommended revisions, then that would need to come to the board. And I think we did it similar to like almost a policy read where the board brought it to the meeting. So I do, I do want to recommend that that June date might not be doable. If you want to have time to have enough retreats discussion and bring something adopted. So it could be that, you know, that's, you might want to just

212think about that date. If that's the date that you actually want to have it already board adopted, just because of the number of board meetings there are and timing that may not work, but. What would happen is we had a study session. The board reviewed it, just like you kind of did your political agenda tonight prior to coming to the meeting, and then came and recommended any recommended changes. And then typically. Erin and team do the wordsmithing. We don't ask the board to do all that. She'll go back and wordsmith it similar to like we did the goals. And then the draft goes back in your board memo. And then you come when you're ready for the final meeting to discuss. Yes, we vote on it and adopt it. So it is an adopted, agreed

213upon procedures. And then it gets posted on the website. Okay. Is there, yeah, thank you for explaining that to me. Is there an opportunity, would it be a study session for us to sit and just really get into discussing whatever issues we have with it? Yep. We've had study sessions, I think, like we did at the beginning of the show when you first came on. We had the study session that at the time, President Walsh. ran and had asked, was there any recommended changes to the handbook? And at that time, no board members had any recommended changes. So anytime we have a change in board members, we bring it forward within that first month. I always give it. In fact, I'll be meeting with our prospective board members that will be running, and I share

214those documents with them because that's really a training manual. And then... the new board has an opportunity to weigh in and decide if they'd like to make any changes. But there's nothing to say. Again, it's been a year. And although you didn't want changes when you first came on, if you want some changes now, then it's up for discussion. How little I knew. The reason we vote on that, though, is because one board member may want changes and other may not. And we need to have a common agreement, some some agreements in order for me to be able to implement that. Because, as you know. Yes. Our direction for administration is based on the board as a collective whole. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So in that case, I mean, we can update the

215June meeting and maybe. You know, you could just, it wouldn't, it doesn't, I don't know how long, because I don't know how long the study session. So I don't know what is reasonable, but you. have quite a few study sessions that are filled between now and the budget season. So I know you're not going to be able to use any existing. And so making sure that board members have time. So I don't know if you want to give yourselves a little more wiggle room. If you put December and you accomplish it before the end of this year, that's great too. If you want to put it, that it's in place. Yeah. Let's change the date. I. I think we've done that in the past where we weren't sure what the date would be. And so

216we just used the calendar year and then we accomplished the goal. The board accomplished the goal sooner. I think that's how we've addressed that in the past. Yeah, I would like to accomplish it much sooner. I think this board definitely has expressed in a desire to see this happen and occur. But I do know that we have limited amount of study session time. Got to got a budget to approve. We've also done the opposite where we set a goal. we had to postpone it. So I think just setting things achievable is fine by me. If you want to do August, that might be a happy meeting. I know I was thinking, I honestly, in my mind, I was like October. I don't know. Have it just in time for there to be a new board.

217Honestly, that's really what I was thinking. I was like before November. Well, and in all likelihood, right? The new board's going to come on and you're going to have the same discussion because you have new people that need to agree to, let's say August. Okay. Is there any other feedback on the other two, the first two goals? So we're amending the third goal for August 26. They look good to me. Okay. Well, there's no more discussion to be had. May I have a motion to approve the 2026 governing board goals? So moved as modified. Thank you. Second? Second. Second motion by board member Walsh. Second by member Davis. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes five to zero. Item 9.1 is board committee and conference reports. Do any members have any committee or conference

218reports? I don't think so. All right. Policy reads item 10.1 policy 3-0 3-303 business and personal transportation services. This is the first read. I'll turn it over to executive director Demian Nichols. Thank you, President Nelson. Board members, this is just a policy that we realized did not get adopted when we cut over to the new policy manual at the beginning of the year. This is simply a policy. Nothing has been changed in it from prior. This is simply a policy that governs the use of district vehicles. Great. Thank you. Okay. Do any board members have any questions? Great. Seeing none, may I have a motion to approve the first read, or we can approve and adopt Policy 303 for Business and Personnel Transportation Services? So move. You move just to approve the first read or

219to approve and adopt? Approve and adopt. Okay. Sorry. Is there a second? Oh, I'll second. All right. Motion by Member Davis, second by Member Collins. All in favor, say aye. Aye. A motion passes 5-0. Next is Policy 4108, Telework First Read. Thank you, President Nelson. This policy is simply a update to the term telework. We're changing it to remote work just to match a lot of other documents in the industry. Other than that, nothing has been changed with this policy either. Do any board members have any questions? I do. Yes. Just why the change? I'm being like, you know, really? It's just an outdated term. Telework used to refer to and used to have to dial up over a telephone line to get into a system like mainframe computers. And our policy was just simply

220outdated in the title. But like I said, no content change. It's just the telework is now being replaced with the term remote work. Thank you. Motion to move and adopt. Is there a second? Second. Motion by Member Collins, second by Board Member Walsh. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 10.3 is Policy 5-203, Students with Disabilities. First read, Dr. Lane. Good evening. Yes, this policy has, it's a 27-page policy. I think you probably saw that it was quite lengthy. But there were really minimal changes, and those changes were around updates in state statute. One of the main ones was around when a child is identified as having a disability. mainly a specific learning disability, we need to include in the report whether that child was also diagnosed with dyslexia by another provider

221or us. And so that's really the main crux of it. There is also an update from a state board rule around the number of days before. an evaluation that we could wait in order to evaluate or not wait in order to evaluate. So those are the only two changes. Other than that, a few formatting changes. You may notice the way it is organized, but those are minimal changes. I do want to point out one other change that, again, it's minor, but for our newer board members some time ago, and Mr. Allel, maybe you can help me. I don't know how long ago it was. Our board agreed that all of our policies, instead of how the ASBA or the trust used to send them, used to say parents, I think. legal guardians. Is that what

222it was? And we changed everything to say parents slash guardians is my understanding. And so we've been doing that. So sometimes when we get policy, there's just some small formatting change to fix that to make sure it matches the rest of our policies, Kyrene. Thank you. I have a question for Mr. LL. Why dyslexia? Has to be, do you have any idea? Is it a legal requirement that? The legislature added it to statute last year. The state legislature? The state legislature. Do we have any idea why? Dyslexia is very, is very legislated at the legislature over the last 10 years. There's been a lot of requirements for testing, training, inclusion. They have a very good lobby. Okay, so when I was reading the, I almost finished actually reading that section, it tracks the statute, I

223would guess. Yes, okay, thank you. President Nelson, unless there's a time sensitivity, given the length and substantive changes, would you be okay with just doing a first read as opposed to a read and adopt? I absolutely agree. Unless superintendent tells me. I'm actually going to request that maybe if you are comfortable that we do a first read and adopt because this was actually a finding that ADE. As part of the audit. It's part of the audit that we did not have this language in our policy because the legislation has been in place. So at a minimum, if we could at least make sure that language gets adopted tonight, I'd be, I don't know, Mr. Lowe, if they can adopt a first read with just that language and then look at the other changes and we

224come back with the rest. But I feel it might be important to get that in sooner rather than later. I appreciate it. There's a time sensitivity to it by all means. I just know it's fine. I just, I like having. first and second reading unless there's an urgency, but there seems to be an urgency. We're going to have a few coming in the next few meetings that are going to have a little bit more urgency because of statute, and then we should be back to being able to do our first and second read. Sometimes the statute goes into effect. If it's not going into effect for the 90 days, we have a little bit more wiggle room. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. May I have a motion to approve and adopt policy 5-230?

225So moved. And I will go ahead and second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. Item 11.1, items for future consideration. Do any board members want to list any items for future consideration? Yes, Member Davis. I would like to know if the board would like to explore. Well, actually, I'd like to know the status of our hiring drivers. Do we still have that problem? School bus drivers. Drivers. So you'd like an update on transportation and transportation staffing? Okay. Yes. I'd like an update on that and what we may be thinking or feeling we need to think about increasing the numbers and possible solutions if we have any creative ideas. Yeah. So just adding transportation staffing? Yes. Do you want that just in a board memo item? However you want to send it. Okay.

226Thank you. You mentioned one earlier to me. Do you still want? No, I'm going to reserve that. Thank you. Thank you. And Superintendent Tenya, she'll keep us updated on the discussions with the special area changes. I know those are ongoing. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Item 12.1, meeting dates. Our next regular meeting is scheduled for April 14th. And item 13.1 may have a motion to adjourn this evening's meeting. Oh, no. Aye. Motion. All right. Motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion by Member Collins. Second by Member Davis. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion passes 5-0. This meeting is adjourned at 8.45 p.m. Have a good night. Good night.