12-02-2025 Kyrene Governing Board Study Session and Meeting

001All right. Good evening, everyone. We are calling to order our study session. Today is December 2nd, 2025. It is 5.05 p.m. We hope everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday. Item 1.2 is our proposed school closures and boundary discussions. So, board members, as you'll recall, if we go back to August, we received a recommendation from the Long Range Planning Committee. This board has had discussions along the way, including in September. when we proposed a change to that recommendation. Then that change map went out and went through seven public hearings. And along the way, we've gotten feedback from hundreds, if not over a thousand community members. We're here to now act on that feedback. We've had a chance to ask questions of our administration. They're prepared tonight to provide some responses to the questions that we asked

002at our last study session. We've got more questions we can ask them tonight as well. Here's the sort of decision that fits before us. There's no vote that's happening tonight. The earliest the vote would happen would be two weeks from today, Tuesday, December 16th. But tonight, what we could do is provide guidance to our district leadership. on what our next steps are. So the guidance might be come back to us in two weeks with the map that has been sent out for hearings with no changes. Or the guidance could be we would like to see some changes. We're not going to vote on any changes tonight, but if this board has some consensus on changes that we'd like to see on the map. We would want to give that to our superintendent tonight or very

003shortly hereafter in a public meeting so that she can work and come back with an updated map. And if we're giving her guidance, that guidance would need to be specific. So that guidance might look like we're going to change the number of schools proposed for closure. That guidance would then have to be how many schools would we like to propose for closure. And if it's going to be any schools, we want to give her criteria. My suggestion is we don't sit up here and tell her which school we like. I think in order to have transparency, we need to say, what are the criteria if we're making any changes? What are the criteria that we would like our district to go back and apply if they're going to make any changes to the map? If

004we're giving her more than one criteria, that's fine, but we've got to then prioritize those criteria because those criteria may be conflicting in some cases. So I think what we're going to do now is lead it off with a quick presentation from our superintendent and her team that's going to respond to some of the questions that we've asked to give us some more information. And then we're going to open up for conversation where the board can come together. provide their feedback. We haven't had a chance or haven't really done that yet, right? This is the opportunity to now reflect upon the comments we've gotten back. And the goal is tonight, or if not tonight, shortly hereafter, to give our superintendent guidance on what our vote is going to look like. And by that, I mean,

005is it the map that's gone out to the hearings? If it's not, what is it and what are those changes? So with that, I'm going to turn it over to our superintendent who will lead us through a presentation. Thank you, President Walsh, governing board members, community members here, either in person or watching online, and staff either here or watching online. Welcome this evening. So tonight we're just going to share some upfront information that is in response to requests by board members at either our last meeting or in response to board memos or items. The board has also requested to hear from a few educators, and so we have invited them here this evening. And they are here to share a little bit of their perspective and then to help answer some questions you may have

006as part of your discussion. The demographer is not able to be here this evening, but should we need to get him on the phone? We may do so. We also have Dr. Ostmeyer here who has been well-versed in some of the questions that you had specifically around some additional complexes that she'll be able to answer those questions for us. And he may be able to be here next week should we need him. So I just want to start a real quick overview of the agenda. We're going to talk a little bit about the process and timeline that's left between here and our enrollment period. We're going to share a little bit about and take us back and reground us in the purpose of why we are having this conversation and why we are talking about

007consolidating schools. And then really Section 3, Mr. Herman is going to get into some... tools that you may use to really start to make some decisions about the number of schools. Should it stay eight? Should it change, as President Walsh mentioned? And if it should, what might that criteria be? And then, of course, the last part of the retreat is really for you just to spend some time starting your discussions or asking any additional questions. So I'm going to jump right into the process and timeline. Whoops. There we go. So our first study session is obviously today at 5 o'clock, which will be followed by a regular meeting. If there needs to be an additional study session, we have time set aside next week possibly, or even the following would give us Monday between now

008and December 16th to add additional study sessions. So I know we reached out to the board to make sure that, you know, you had some availability should we need this next week. Also, if we needed to, we could add an additional study session on. Thursday. And that probably should say Tuesday. I apologize. Tuesday, December 16th, just caught my typo there for the regular meetings. So should we... have some revisions. I just want to share what the process would be. So should the board give the district administration guidance between now and December 16th to look at a different configuration of number of schools, then that would require the board or the demographer, I'm sorry, to do a map revision. Our goal obviously would be should We get some guidance this evening. We might be able to

009bring a map back next week for the board. Should the recommendation come back next week to make some changes, then our goal would be to have that map in place and ready for the board to review prior to the meeting on the 16th. Previously, we thought that any changes would require an additional public hearing, but after closer legal review, that may not actually be the case. So a new public hearing is not required as long as the revised scenario does not introduce closures of additional new schools. So as long as it's still the schools that we've been talking about. that we don't add anybody beyond those originally proposed. We would not need to do another public hearing. So reducing, in other words, if we were to reduce or maintain the number of school closures, we

010would not need an additional public hearing. So unless entirely new schools were affected. And then, of course, the goal is that the board would vote on either the current map or the revised maps by Tuesday, December 16th. District enrollment for the 26-27 school year opens in February 25. I'm sorry, opens in February 26. Boy, Laura had a few typos on here today. I will update this before we post it online. And the updated boundary decisions will support families as they prepare for enrollment during that window. For families to have accurate and timely information prior to the February enrollment period, the board would need to take action and vote on the attendance boundary maps at least for the 26-27 school year, no later than the January 27th board meeting. So just know that in order for

011us to have information for families that's accurate and they know exactly which schools. would be operating next year, we would really need to make a decision by the January 27th meeting. So with that, I am going to hand it over to our team to talk really about the purpose of consolidating schools. And we're going to look at a couple of the core reasons. I just want to remind everybody that the committee's purpose when the Long Range Planning Committee started was to develop a long range plan that addresses the projected enrollment trends and maximizes the effective use of schools and facilities across the district. And so now we just want to go into a little bit more in depth as to why that work is so important. You're going to hear a lot about the financials,

012but we also want to reground everybody. This is bigger than the financials, because even if we had all the money, you know. thrown at us today, that doesn't necessarily solve the problem. We still want to talk about the student experience and what our schools are experiencing when our schools are so underutilized is just as important part of this conversation, if not more. So with that, I believe I'm handing it over to Dr. Garth Cupp to talk about the student experience. I mentioned that this work is hard and we recognize the difficulty and the uncertainty that our students, our families, and our staff are feeling right now. But it is also important for us to be clear about what improves the student experience if we do consolidate. And as Superintendent Tenius had mentioned, underutilized schools do

013face real constraints such as limited staffing, reduced flexibility, and fewer programs to offer. And these challenges do make it hard to provide that full, rich experience that our students do deserve. When we operate our schools closer to an efficient utilization range, the student experience does get stronger through a wider array of academic programs and also expanded extracurricular activities as well. In addition, staffing becomes more stable and teachers have that better opportunity to collaborate through those structures. To illustrate this, we've invited a few of our amazing practitioners to... briefly share their experiences about what their challenges have been in operating schools that are in low enrollment and also about how higher enrolled schools can create those opportunities for students. So before I invite them up, I just wanted to acknowledge who we have here. We have

014Principal Renee Corey at Apprendi Middle School who is joining us. We also have Ashley Schakowsky, Principal at Pueblo Middle School. Principal... James Martin at Centennial Middle School, and we also have Holly Cook from Estrella as well. So without further ado, I'm going to invite Mrs. Holly Cook, who is a teacher over at Estrella. Hi, everybody. I'm the academic interventionist at Estrella, and I just wanted to explain a little bit about being a smaller school and how it impacts everything. The biggest factor is probably our master schedule. The master schedule is the driving force at an elementary school, and everything else is affected by it. So when you're a smaller school, the specials like your art, music, PE, those first go to larger schools. And then the smaller schools, we get what's left over from the

015full course load. I'm trying not to get too much into the weeds here. So when we get our special schedule, we can't change anything. So we have to work with what we're given. And then we have to place academic blocks in very specific spots where everything is left. So for example, my daughter, who's a second grader at my school, has 15 minutes of reading. Then she has to stop. and do science for 45 minutes, and then she goes back to 30 more minutes of reading. And then that leaves us without having home specials teachers. So in other words, like they would be at a bigger school for most of their court, their caseload, and then they would come to us for like their leftovers. So when that happens, we don't get... a specialist who can

016do music performances, PE assistance with Turkey Trot, all of those special events that as parents we absolutely love to have. So it falls on the office staff, admin, and teachers to arrange everything. Then another thing that's really close to my heart is the ELD, English Language Development and Academic Intervention. So most schools have higher populations of kids who need reading support than they do kids who need English language development. In fact, like at times I've had my entire caseload, K-5 has been about 10 kids for English language development, but I have 100 kids who need reading support. But because of specific laws, we have to provide that English language development. And so what happens is I'm working with one or two kids for first grade, one or two kids for second grade, so on and

017so forth. And there's 25 kids in first grade who need reading support and 25 kids in second grade. I don't get to help those kids because I'm working with that very small ELD population. No matter how many kids you have, you're going to have the same spread of abilities. If you have 30 kids in a grade or if you have 130 kids, you're going to have students operating from here to here. And as teachers, we have to address all of those needs. But if you only have one or two sections per grade level, you're taking that grade and you're splitting them up in half. And this teacher has to address A through M and this teacher has to address. N through Z. But if you have 130 kids at a grade level, then you have

018four or five different teachers and you can do phonemic awareness in this class and phonics in this class and vocabulary in this class. You have a gifted resource teacher who's able to be on your campus more often and can. pull the kids. Right now, our gifted resource teacher comes for one day and has to get all of those minutes met in one day. And so then our students are not getting as much time in class per day. It's such a mess. Having a part-time assistant principal is one of the biggest challenges that we feel. Our assistant principals have the same responsibilities as a full-time assistant principal would have. And so doing follow-up and consistency is almost impossible because they're doing two full-time jobs for the price of one, as I like to say sometimes. And

019then the last point that I want to bring up is class placement. When you only have one or two teachers per grade level, it's really hard to mix those personalities up. And sometimes kids need a fresh start and we need to mix them in a different way. And we can't do that if... Half of the kids are going here and half of the kids are going here. So, and then I guess the last point that I want to make, I understand why the smaller sounds better. I went to a really small high school. I went to a really small college. I taught for 10 years in a really small district. And I remember coming to Kyrene thinking, oh my gosh, it's such a big district. It's been amazing. The resources that I have in this

020large district that I didn't in my small district are amazing. But I am starting to feel each year Australia's population goes down and down and down and resource, resource, resource. Things keep getting reduced. And so I don't want to see my school close, but I'm excited at the prospect of being able to do my job to a better ability and see my daughter get more opportunities. Thank you. And now I'm introducing Ashley Schakowsky, the principal of Pueblo. Thank you. Good evening, governing board members, superintendent Teneas, and our amazing Kyrene community. I didn't remember all of mine. I'm going to have to read. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. I'd like to begin by sharing a bit of my perspective. I started in Kyrene 32 years ago as an educator and prior

021to that as a student. in Kyrene. Over the years I've had the privilege to work and lead in several schools, large and small, growing and declining. And I've seen firsthand how enrollment shifts have impacted our students and our staff and our programming. My passion for Kyrene runs deep, built from decades of living our values and seeing our community at its best. I still live in the Kyrene community. I also want to acknowledge that smaller schools do have real advantages. They are a tight-knit community where relationships form easily, communication is quick, and students feel known. As we know, these qualities matter and are part of what makes our district very special. At the same time, our reality is challenging. And we have an opportunity to move from just making it work and doing the best we

022can to building more sustainable schools where students and staff can truly thrive. At Pueblo, we've been able to make it work because of our amazing students and staff. Teachers teach multiple subjects and grade levels. We have to carefully create a master schedule each year to balance our students' needs. and offer the electives the best we can based on the staff that we have. We're extremely fortunate to have the staff that we have. We have a math teacher who's willing to teach one period of dance, or we have somebody, luckily, who can come to Pueblo and teach one period of choir each day. But just the sustainability of these things worries me for the future. As enrollment continues to decline, it becomes harder to sustain these programs, electives, and a lot of our extracurricular opportunities that

023our students deserve. Fewer teachers also make it difficult to fill coaching positions and after-school clubs. Again, this is something that the Pueblo staff, they're very dedicated, that we've been able to carry on successfully, which may not always be sustainable. Larger, well-resourced schools do offer advantages. It's more stable staffing, and in many cases, you can provide teaming models, which can be similar to a smaller school environment. Common plan time, which is something that I know our teachers have missed the past few years for either PLC or grade-level meetings. expanded electives, opportunities, clubs, sports, and other opportunities, stronger opportunities for teacher collaboration through professional learning communities rather than teachers teaching in isolation. It's difficult because we all care so much about our school communities and about public education. But I do believe that if done well, consolidating

024schools should allow us to combine the heart and the relationships of our smaller schools with the stability, programming, and opportunities of larger schools. Thank you for your time and your commitment to Kyrie. Now next up is James Martin from Centennial. Or Renee Corey. Sorry. Renee Corey from Apprendi. Good evening, Superintendent Teniez, President Walz, members of the board. I didn't write anything. I'm just going to speak from the heart because I think a lot of you have already heard from me about my perspective. This is my 11th year at Apprende, and in the 11th year as principal at Apprende, we've gone from as high as almost 1,500 to now under 900. And I can tell you there is a significant difference, and I feel fortunate. the first part of my career that I didn't have to

025deal with a lot of the challenges that my colleagues, Principal Schakowsky and Principal Martin, principals of other smaller schools have had to deal with because it is really, really difficult when you are running a smaller school, an under-resourced school, a school where you don't have... teachers who can collaborate together. That's huge. When you can have a team of teachers who are able to team together and meet together on a regular basis, not have four or five preps, not having to teach five or six different classes, that is huge for teacher morale. And what that leads to is teacher retention and teacher satisfaction. And I always say when teachers are happy, then students are happy. And when students are happy, parents are happy. I know it sounds really, really daunting and scary to some parents and

026students to think about a middle school with 1,500 kids. But I will tell you from living it day in and day out for the last 11 years, there is not much difference between 1,500 kids than 900. The only difference I'll tell you is something that's easily fixable with problem solving is hallway congestion. That's it. Everything else. in a larger school is so much more advantageous. I have such a bigger array of elective options for students, more extracurriculars, more clubs, more supervision. That's huge. Right now, it's really hard for me. And I know my colleagues have been doing it for years, but it's really hard for me to fill duty spots for supervision because I just don't have the human capital to do that. In a bigger school, you can spread that out. Teachers have less

027duties, so they have more time to plan, more time to prep. Again, that helps with teacher satisfaction. So I will tell you right now, I am a huge proponent of larger middle schools and the opportunity that it offers for students. I know that parents worry about them not being able to make athletic teams or some of the performing arts performances. But we have that opposite problem now. We can't fill a full band. We can't even... We can't even fill two full sports teams at a lot of our schools. So our bigger schools can, but our smaller schools can't. So the opportunities just... For larger schools, they're endless. And I will promise you right now and stand behind this, anybody who's nervous about coming to a large middle school, when you have more human resources, when

028you have more administrators to supervise, when you have more satisfied teachers, less teacher turnover, it creates such a more, a better environment and culture for everybody involved. And first and foremost, more opportunities for students. Any questions you have about living a large middle school, I'm happy to answer. And I just feel fortunate. Again, every year I listen to my colleagues talk about how hard it is to do a master's schedule, how hard it is to find teachers to teach one-off sections just because they don't have the staffing. So thank you for listening, and I'm happy to answer any questions when the time comes. And I will now introduce James Martin, principal of Centennial. Superintendent Tenius, President Walsh, members of the board, thank you. My name is James Byrne. I'm currently the principal at Centennial Middle

029School. And I want to first thank you for your leadership and the hard work that you're putting into this. It is an incredibly difficult position that we're in, but I do appreciate the time and effort you're putting into making sound decisions here. I wanted to start by just sharing a little bit about my journey in Kyrene. I started in 1998, and I've worked in more capacities than... I think probably almost anyone in terms of community ed. I was a teacher. I became an administrator. I was an assistant principal, an athletic director, and now a principal. And I also raised three kids in Kyrene. And so I feel like I have a really unique perspective on this. A lot of the things that I want to share tonight have already been talked about, but I want

030to reiterate and echo those things. As you think about working in schools, I know Principal Corey talked about there's a perception that maybe small schools equal better schools. And I don't know that that's necessarily how the math works for a lot of reasons. I've worked in schools where we were at or near capacity. middle schools of over 1,300, close to 1,400, and then down below 600. And I can tell you that there's unique challenges to both, but the challenges that have been talked about tonight for smaller schools are way harder than I think people perceive them to be. Some examples of that, we heard some things about staffing. Electives are hit particularly hard in this because you have to come up with unique structures that fit into your master schedule. I remember a couple of

031years ago, I had an amazing teacher who taught chorus and he also taught multimedia. And when he went to move on to do something else, there's not a lot of chorus and multimedia people out there to do that work. And so we had to revise our master schedule. And that was all driven just by the fact that we had a smaller school size and therefore the master schedule challenges were impacted there. As Ashley talked about. Specific to CMS, we are really fortunate to have an incredible group of staff that are dedicated to overcoming these challenges. But as she alluded to, it's becoming harder and harder to make that work on a daily and yearly basis. There are impacts to the master schedule as it pertains to our core teachers as well. Most of my teachers

032are teaching multiple grade levels or multiple contents. There is a huge impact on our ability to plan. When you think about the work that professional learning communities can do, we don't get to do a lot of that work at CMS because most of our teachers are working in isolation and don't get to have that common plan. Again, I want to take nothing away from my team. They work incredibly hard, and we've overcome those challenges. In addition to some of those things... Renee hit on some of the impact to extracurricular extracurricular things such as athletics and you know band, orchestra, choir, those things. There are not only limited opportunities because we don't have enough people to participate. Sometimes it's a challenge to find staffing for those things because your staff are so spread thin and you

033have a smaller pool of resources to offer those experiences to kids. Going back to athletics a little bit, I'm sorry, I didn't write anything down. Ashley did. I'm more speaking from the heart like Renee did. But an example would be if you're limited in your PE sections. I know that Pueblo has been in a situation where they've had to make a choice about having, I think, just one PE teacher. And then you have to deal with locker room coverage because you might not have a male and female teacher. And so that is an impact that starts to hurt. the entire school when you're trying to overcome that challenge. In addition to that, we made a different decision. We decided that we were going to offer more PE. And so that's a, I believe in that

034as a former PE teacher. I think there's a lot of value in that, but we had some kids that didn't necessarily choose PE as one of their first electives. And so, as I mentioned, my team has done a great job of embracing that challenge. But it is a challenge, and we wish that we could offer the first or second choice to all of our kids. And when we hear Dr. Cuppa talk about the impact on student experience, that's just one example of how a small school has to overcome that challenge. And that really bleeds into all kinds of other places with student experiences. The last thing I would say is one that... Renee hit on, and it's probably something that people don't think a lot about, but the compounding effect of duties and things like

035that, when she talked about, you know, happy, happy teachers equals happy students equal. happy parents. When you think about duty, as your school shrinks, you don't have fewer duties to pass out. You have the same need of coverage and places for people to be. And when you're in a smaller school, that just means that the people have more and more duty to do. And it's not that my team is not willing to do that. And I'm sure that the professionals in Kyrene all over are willing to do that. It just becomes more and more difficult. And it would be better if that rising tide would lift all ships in that capacity. And so I guess I would just conclude by saying that the math does not necessarily work that smaller equals easier or better. I

036would echo what Renee said, that those larger schools have more people to help sustain all of the quality things that are. happening in Kyrene. And I know that this is a difficult decision, but I also believe that we will make decisions that impact the future of Kyrene. And so thank you for all the work that you're doing. I'm going to invite up Mr. Herman next. Before we jump into Mr. Herman's piece, board members, can we just take a pause? If there's any questions for our school leaders or Ms. Cook, I think now would be a great time to transition. Vice President Nelson. Yes. First, thank you for being here. I know, and speaking from your different capacities, Principal Schakowsky, Mr. Martin, I've been on your campuses and always been really impressed with the dedication that

037I see there. You talked about, you know, the scheduling and the access. I guess Principal Corey probably can chime into this as well. I'm specifically interested in the middle school perspective here. Would you say that this is a problem for retention, staff retention for you, where if I am at a smaller school and I might need to do duty, I don't know. Do you find that that is kind of a retention issue where it could be easier than for a staff member to be like, okay, I could then go to a larger campus and I will have a limited amount of duty to maybe one subject area and have kind of a more traditional educational experience? I can't speak to specifically whether it has impacted people's decisions. I don't know that. What I can say

038is that you can only rant how so much. And I do feel like you tax people when you do that. And I have seen people specifically on my campus that are pouring their heart and soul into this work. And little things like a duty could impact. their decision making and it might not just be going to a different place in Kyrene. I have seen some teachers leave the profession over the last two to three years specifically that have just watched some of these challenges continue to mount and they made decisions to move on because it's not what it used to be and obviously we want to be forward thinking and progressive in how we do things but also I think it gets back to smaller doesn't necessarily equal easier or better. I don't know if

039that answers the question. Thank you, Ms. Corey. I can kind of give you a little bit of a numbers or a more concrete example. So, for example, at Apprendi, we have about 15 full-time elected teachers. So, like, I have a full-time theater teacher. I have a full-time band. I have a full-time orchestra and full-time computer science. So what that means is that those teachers prep basically for one subject, whereas in a smaller school, they may teach two sections of theater. two sections of band, a section of choir. I'm just using performing arts, but that goes across the board even for core areas. In a larger school, I can have several teachers on my campus who only teach math seven or who only teach ELA eight because I have a larger population of students. But in

040a smaller school... they don't have enough students to fill those sections. So a teacher is teaching multiple subject areas with multiple preps, multiple PLCs. So not just prepping for multiple subjects, but having to go to multiple meetings. And then in addition, in a smaller campus, as James said, just because you have less students, it doesn't mean that there aren't areas that you have to cover. You still have to cover the same amount of campus. So on my campus, for the last 10 years, my teachers only had one duty. This year, they have two or three because we have less students. And I know for James and Ashley, in their smaller campuses, they could have three or four duties a week. So I think that does play a factor in teacher burnout, teacher turnover, teacher retention

041for sure. Vice President Nelson, any other questions? Thank you. Member Davis. Thank you. Yes, I want to thank you all for coming also. Very informative. I also have been visiting campuses, and you guys are doing a great job. I just want to thank you for that too. I have one clarification question for you. I think you mentioned that the English language program is mandated by law. Did you say that? Yeah. I'd like to know a little bit more about it because it impacts where teachers are able to. Right. So I will say we've modified things a little bit this year. The example I was given was mostly what was going on last year. Yeah, the state mandates how many hours per week a student who receives English language services, how many minutes they need. And

042so that. There's no law that says how many minutes a struggling reader needs. There's nothing that says you have to have an academic interventionist on your campus, as far as I know. We have more of a need for that than we do just in terms of numbers, I'm saying. How many students who receive English language services compared to how many students who show up read on DIBLS, for example, which would indicate how many students I would service for reading intervention. Okay, so the need for this mandated service. It has to be covered if there are five students or if there are 50 students. Correct. And if there are only five students, that same staff time is going to have to be spent. Exactly. And cannot be spent on a non-mandated support. Depending on how the

043law is interpreted and all of those things. Correct. So if you have two students who need English language services at second grade, It's hard to justify having a 1.0 full-time employee for 10 students on your campus when there's 100 students who need reading. So that's why the English language development and academic intervention was kind of merged into one role. And we've really worked hard to come up with creative solutions to avoid doing that this year. There's still a little bit of overlap, but yeah, that's the general. Okay. Thank you. My second question has to do, it's sort of directed, no, thank you, sorry, has to do with middle school. One of the issues that has sort of been there that I'm sort of curious about, do you folks, with all this experience that you've had,

044do you folks see any difference in the rate of discipline problems that you have depending on the size of middle schools. We have to review certain kinds of discipline periodically. And I've been really amazed at, quite honestly, to my mind, how few discipline incidents have come to the attention of the board. Because they have to be relatively high level. And I just wondered if the middle schools, I have any idea about how larger schools or smaller schools compare in terms of discipline problems. Is there anybody who knows or has had personal experience? There's probably not much data, but I'm talking about experience. You know, I don't know the data. I mean, obviously, if you have more students, there's. It could be a higher volume, but I think you would have to look at percentage. I

045think that what really drives behavior is culture. And so I think if you have a good culture on your campus, whether you have 500 students or 1400 students, I often talk about what I call the Roger Bannister effect. Roger Bannister was the first person to break the four minute mile barrier before he did that. they thought that the human heart would explode if you did it under that. Once he did it, 12 people ran a four-minute mile under four minutes the next year. I share that to say that that principle works in both directions. If you have good culture and kids recognize we do good things around here, good things are going to happen. If you have bad culture and kids see, oh, I guess you can do that, they're going to do bad things.

046So I don't think it's about the number of students you have. I think it's about the culture, and I feel like the reason you're not seeing a lot of that. on our campuses is because we've worked really hard specifically in our middle schools to create that positive culture where people are seeing good things happen. I don't think it correlates with the number of students at all. Okay, thank you. Anecdote. Thank you. That's it. Thank you, Member Davis. Member Shadry? Yes. Hi. Thank you so much for being here tonight and contributing to the conversation. Really appreciate it. I would like to explore a little bit more on the intervention gaps, especially at the middle school level, because just from personal experience, you know, I just want to make sure that our middle schoolers are ready for

047high school. And if the intervention sources aren't there, resources aren't there, if they're falling through those gaps because they don't have that time, I don't know who's best to. answer that, but I can start the answer to that. But if any of you would like to chime in, feel free. But what has happened over the years with academic intervention at the middle school is a number of things. Like everything else, the FTE goes down when students, when there are fewer students on a campus. And so that has happened. And again, like Trying to hire a chorus teacher that only has two periods in the day, trying to hire an academic interventionist that might only have two periods in a day also is challenging. And so a few years ago, we, with the middle school principals,

048looked at that model and looked at some different ways to do that. One of those was they could use that FTE to reduce the size of their core classroom. So with a smaller class size, the teacher had more opportunities to provide intervention. There are still a few sections of academic intervention at some of our middle schools, but each of our schools have the opportunity, especially if it's only a couple of sections of intervention, to use that in a way that works for their school and their students. But that's really where we've gotten down to in terms of FTE. is it's not a full-time person anymore at any of our campuses. And so, like I said, it becomes more challenging to staff that too. All right. Seeing no other comments, thank you to our school leaders.

049Mr. Herman, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you, President Walsh. So we're going to change gears a little bit and talk a little bit more about some of the financial questions that have come up or some of the issues that are in play. And so, you know, we definitely know there's a financial implication to operating or closing school facilities. And we also know that any decline in enrollment equates to additional loss in state funding. And for many years, Kyrene has made its financial decisions with the focus on putting a high percentage of its operational budget, and we have a goal every year of 75% to go into classroom areas that directly impact student learning. And typically, the amount of money we put in the classroom spending is in the top 10 in the state

050of Arizona when it comes to that overall percentage of its budget committed towards classroom spending areas. So just for some perspective, the last year that the Auditor General, who publishes this information for school districts, Last year they published their information. We had the 10th highest percentage in the state of Arizona, and the prior year we were the 7th highest. We've done that for many years. I just want to give a little background on that. But however, we're now at a point financially where we have to make some tough decisions if we want to allocate our limited budget resources towards keeping our 25 school facilities open or if we want to allocate those limited budget dollars to classroom areas that directly support student learning and avoid more severe or deeper cuts down the road. The next

051few slides, I feel like I'm going to go through it quickly. I'm going to try not to. Some of these things have been mentioned before, but it's really focusing more on the financial considerations and possible timelines of some decisions that could be made. And so I tried to put together a list of the financial elements or the factors that would be considered when closing a school. And the first really is the enrollment projections. And we'll go through each of these in a little bit more detail. The enrollment projections that were provided by the demographer. our best estimates over the next five years. There's a possibility of additional enrollment loss. We've talked about that from closing a school. And we've heard that's a very difficult number to pin down. Every community is different. We've heard kind

052of between that 5% and 7%, somewhere in that range. But again, I've got some numbers to help kind of put that in perspective as well. You also need to look at costs that would be reduced from closing a school. We'll talk a little bit more about what that means. And then depending on what that overall situation is, plus or minus in the budget, you know, Kyrene would do what is necessary to balance its budget, as we've done every year, and would use what we consider levers one and two, plus the what's at stake slide. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in order to close any remaining operational budget gaps. So we also want to talk a little bit about in this section projections as well as site for site capacities and occupancy

053rates. Those are also listed because those were an important part of the long range planning committee's work to look at how buildings are utilized. It doesn't necessarily have a concrete dollar number assigned to it, but just don't want to focus 100% on the financials in this section. And what we're going to do is show all the numbers for these areas separately in place of creating. an online tool that we kind of threw out there and talked about. But by putting all those scenarios on the next three slides, you can hopefully clearly see everything without going through the machinations of putting together a tool. I can certainly do that. I fear a little bit that it's a little difficult to be able to transparently show that to all six board members who may have different thoughts,

054different things they want to look at. simultaneously or in real time. So therefore, we thought a better approach was just to show all the financial elements separately. And we can help go through the math if needed and try not to make this an advanced math exercise, but certainly could put something more formal together if you wanted to down the road. So let's dig into each of those factors that I was talking about. None of these numbers are going to be new. These are all things that we've shared before. This is the five years that are projected enrollment declines. We've shared that with our long-range planning committee, with the board, in various meetings throughout the spring and the fall and the summer. And it really shows that estimated enrollment decline on an annual basis, which is

055the first row of numbers that you see, as well as what the corresponding impact on the state's base level funding would be. And that would be for each year on an annual basis. And then below that, you can see that, or I should say, first of all, over the five-year period, you can see there's an expected loss of almost 1,100 students. So, again, that's kind of what we are seeing going forward. And the corresponding... loss each year in our annual funding. So let's just kind of walk through each one of those just so it's clear what we're looking at. You know that 310 students equates to almost 1.9 million dollars in loss funding. If nothing were done that would be the gap we would have in our budget. And if you did nothing the following

056year, you would experience another 254 student loss is our projection. That would equate to about $1.5 million for that year. But again, the previous year would roll over. So the total impact on our budget would be about $3.4 million. Year three, the same thing, another 194 students, another $1.2 million. On top of that would be a cumulative impact on our budget that year of $4.6 million. You can do the math for year four and year five. You can see we've talked about by year five we need to have about $6.7 million of permanent reductions to our budget to keep everything balanced. If you were to entertain, and I would not recommend this, but if you were to entertain things like using one-time funding or reserve balances to bridge that, you would need to do $1.9

057million in year one, another $3.4 million in year two, $4.6 in year three. 5.5 in year four and 6.7 in year five. That's $22.1 million, right? So that is the magnitude of the cumulative impact that you have from an enrollment perspective. There's lots of numbers on here. And part of me wants to apologize for that. And part of me doesn't want to because I want to be real clear on what we're trying to do, right? And because each community and neighborhood is different. The exact impact on enrollment from closing a school is almost impossible to know. So we've tried to put together what that might look like, right? We've talked about a 5% to 7% range, but again, every community and every neighborhood is a little bit different. So what you're seeing here at the

058top of the table is a percentage estimate of what additional enrollment loss might be based on the numbers of schools that are closed. So you can see I've gone anywhere from 1 to 10%. I mean, the math is the math on that. That percentage is then multiplied by the average current enrollment for the six elementary schools, and then below that for the two middle schools that are currently proposed for closure. So the average of those six elementary schools that are proposed to be closed is 383 students per school. And the average of the two middle schools that are being proposed is 692 students. So then you can see, you know, again, simple math says if you were going to close one school and you felt like 1% enrollment loss would be the case, it's 1%

059times 383 students. I left the decimals in for ultimate transparency. That would be about 3.8 students that you would expect to be lost from a 1% enrollment decline. And the same with middle school. The average middle school enrollment is 692 students. If you believe there was a 1% enrollment loss, then you would see about almost seven students less from that loss. Those numbers then need to be converted to what's called average daily membership amounts because Arizona State funding formula is based on what we call ADM, not enrollment. And there is 1.158 ADM per student. So at the bottom of this same table, Those estimated dollar impacts are shown from that enrollment loss above. So that is simply multiplying that ADM conversion times an estimate for next year's state budget level funding amount, which we don't

060know at this time. So I've estimated it to be about 1.5% above the current 24, 25, or 25, 26 level. So I won't know that until the spring. So that's the best we can do at this point. Again, if you were to walk down that 1% column, we kind of talked about how the enrollment numbers were calculated based on the average enrollment per school. And the math works the same way with converting that to dollars. You would take and multiply that by the 1.158 and then times the average. base level funding per ADM, which we're estimating next year. And again, this is an estimate of just under $5,189. So that's how you convert that to dollars. This next slide, we've shared this before. It's the same table that we showed back to the board and

061the public in September. And that gives us the ability to look at some what-if scenarios for how much you might save in operational expenditures depending on the number of elementary or middle schools that might be closed. And also we've talked about those building day-to-day operational costs might or might not be realized based on whether the district still owns and operates the building. I just want to pause here real quickly because I want to mention that all the things we're talking about are operational costs in nature. We're not talking about capital expenses, right? So we're not talking about things that we use bonds and capital overrides for. These are the day-to-day what we would consider maintenance and operations costs, which are the biggest piece that gets impacted from your state funding from enrollment loss. So we

062also believe that any operational and again non-capital costs that would be related to closing a school facility would not be material and also would be covered by any one-time funding that we've held in this year's approved budget for possible changes related to long-range planning or school consolidation. So, again, just to kind of walk through how this slide works or how this table works, again, the proposal that we've talked about in the regional public hearings has been six elementary schools and two middle schools. If you go all the way down on this table, that's where that line is. And then over to the right would be the personnel costs that would be realized from closing those schools. And then the building day-to-day operational costs, that would be closed. if the district were not operating that building.

063And so that's how you would estimate how much money would be saved potentially from closing the school. So just to walk through how you could look at some different scenarios, because I can't read the minds of all the board members to know kind of where you might want to look at different numbers. But if you were going to go back to what was presented during the public regional hearings, that was six elementaries and two middle schools. And so the things that are a little easier to kind of point to on a slide here would be the savings from the personnel side from those schools. And so it's proposed for year one, the 26-27 school year, to have four elementary schools closed. If you go to four elementary, zero middle schools, you'll see that's in the

064top section. That would equate to about $2 million of personnel savings, right, regardless of what happened with the buildings. So if you work backwards here on this slide, we think next year we would experience almost $1.9 million of loss funding. If we close those four schools, that would generate about $2 million of savings from personnel costs only. That would be a little bit of a positive element to the budget. Now, you might say, what if there's additional enrollment loss? That's where this table comes into play. You can decide what level you feel is appropriate for enrollment loss. If you pick the 5% level, then that would equate for the five or the four, I should say, sorry, elementary schools, that would be almost 77 students if you kind of followed that line for the four

065elementaries across, which would equate to about $460,000, right? So you would... subtract or have a negative impact from that of about $460,000, that would be a little bit of a budget gap that year, right? That's what we would have to look at to use levers one or levers two and possibly lever three, which we'll talk about to balance our budget. You can do the same thing for what's proposed for the second year of closures. That would be two elementaries and two middle schools. You can find those same numbers on these columns. Again, if you wanted to look at potential loss, that would be the slide that you would go back to to say what that impact would be. And you can kind of roll that forward each year. So we can look at this year

066by year. We can look at it in the totality of all five years. You know, I would always say that if you can't get to $6.7 million of permanent savings. during that time period, then that's where we're going to have to use levers one, two, we'll talk a bit more about that, or lever three to balance our budget. I do want to talk just a little bit and remind, though, the board that, you know, when you look at how many schools might be closed, we shared this with our long-range committee and publicly with our board and community. This just kind of recaps what would be the impact from a capacity standpoint as far as our elementary schools. how many students we have currently in our current enrollment and projected enrollments from the 26, 27 to

067the 20, 30, 31 year, and then how many seats would be available on the gray bars if no schools were closed, if one school was closed, two schools, three schools, all the way through six. So you can kind of see the impact of how many, what the capacity is and how many students would be. in those seats, how many seats would still be available, depending on how many schools would be closed under any of those scenarios. And then similarly on the middle school side, it's the same information. The committee looked at closing two schools, but again, we wanted to show if zero schools were closed, what the impact on that occupancy would be, how many seats are available, how many seats would be occupied. In our middle schools, again, if no sites were closed, if

068one site was closed, or if two sites were closed. So these don't necessarily have a dollar impact associated with them, but I think it's just part of the equation that's just good to keep in mind when you're doing those financial scenarios. And I also wanted to share this slide because it really helps, I think, illustrate what Kyrene has done over the last nine years to reduce its annual operating budget as enrollments have decreased. We haven't closed any schools in nine years, right? But we have balanced our budget. And when we talk about the levers one and two, this slide really shows the magnitude and the impact of what has been happening in those areas over the last almost decade in order to balance our budget. However, it gets more difficult each year to do that

069as our district gets a little bit smaller and as we continue to see costs increasing each year. And again, as we operate our schools under capacity, it means we just have to put our dollars into different places. So when we talk about levers one and two, these are the impacts that we've achieved through those areas. But it gets a little harder every year as you get a little bit smaller to achieve those same kind of savings. We've talked a little bit about lever three, what's at stake, what would potentially happen. I'm not going to go through all these line items in here. We've talked about this with the board. The board asked us to come back with some recommendations on what things might be in play, what the magnitudes of those things might be in

070play if we're not able to balance our budget, either through the combinations of school closure or levers one, levers two, or one and two, which are... right-sizing our staff and other district reductions that we make every year to right-size our budgets. And really, that's what this slide shows. So again, every year we always look at levers one and two in the budget season. We start out there. And again, that's how we've saved over $24 million over the past nine years. Lever one has been accomplished largely through attrition. We really haven't had any reductions in forces. over that time period, but that's getting more difficult to do again as the smaller we become as a district. And moving forward, it might require a reduction in force depending on what the decisions are. Lever 2 will continue,

071but again, we have fewer opportunities to have larger financial impacts on that area. We always look for low-hanging fruit, but we're reaching towards the top of the tree at this point over the last nine years. Lever 3, that's what we're talking about on this slide. Really the things that we've gotten some feedback on internally on what we would potentially bring back as far as programs and school supports. These are the things that we've been trying to protect. But as we saw with library last year, this is getting harder to protect all of those programs and areas across that slide. So you can see there are seven, I'm sorry, six different items that from that previous slide of what's at stake. These are the things that we would consider or would look at doing as far

072as using level three if we were needing to use any of these areas to help balance our budget. if we couldn't get there through levers one and two, or the combinations of closing schools and not operating the facilities. So that's a lot of numbers and information. At this point, I think that's all we had prepared to present, and myself or anyone else is happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, Mr. Herman. Board members, opportunities for questions now for Mr. Herman, and then we can lead into discussion. Yes. Question for Mr. Herman on the last slide around the what's at stake possible impacts for FY27. You mentioned, can you talk a little bit about how... This, I'm imagining that these are categories and within each category, there are different line items, correct?

073Yeah, that's a great question. We could spend probably an hour talking about each, not each of these, but this list. I'm going to let our superintendent maybe touch on maybe highlights or how to best characterize some of those. I think I just wanted to provide that because if I were a community member and looking at this, I would just see eliminate or reduce positions. People are going to wonder what positions. And I think if it correlates with the what's at stake slide, I mean, we have a few things that are have asterisks by them. I mean, I for purposes of this discussion, this is fine to see for me. I don't want to speak for anybody else. It's fine to see, you know, the categories that you would be selecting items from. I am curious

074how you determine these categories and what input you got from our site leaders to determine this process. So. We did take, you are correct, the what's at stake list and have grouped the items. So the positions you see on here. So for example, in the eliminate or reduce positions, you are talking about assistant principals. You are talking about counselors. You are talking about academic behavior specialists. You are talking about our certified coordinators and facilitators. So it is a large. group right now. We have started preliminary conversations talking with school leaders and district leaders about should we have to get to the place where we have to have a discussion, just say about those positions and the things in that line item, how would we prioritize this? And it might not just be a full elimination

075of a position, but it could be, for example, right now we have assistant principals at every middle school, but maybe we have to go to a model should Should the district continue to be operating middle schools that are less than, you know, 600? Maybe they have to have a part time assistant principal as well. Do our elementaries. We have some with full time. We have some with part time. But should we have? elementaries that have, you know, three or 400 students without an assistant principal? Or do we remove the counselor or go to limited counseling, maybe a 0.5? Same thing with academic behavior specialists. So we may have to look at changing some of our formulas. And so those are the conversations we're having right now. And it may not end up being the same

076for middle school as it is for elementary because the reality is they have very different needs. And so we're listening to our middle school principals in regards to if we have to choose between one of those positions up there, whether we eliminate or reduce, or we have to lean into increasing your class sizes in middle school, or we have to lean into only offering one elective in middle school versus. two electives in middle school, they're going to help us prioritize what's the next thing we're going to have to take, similar to how we had the conversation with library last year. So that's the process we're in right now that we go through during the budget season. But until we know exactly what the gap is, it's hard to pin down exactly which one of those

077would be chosen. But it will definitely come from this group. So to follow up, because You know, Kyrene being a K-8 district, I think it's great to, I like to hear that you are looking at this and making sure at least our middle school leaders have an equal voice because if you were just taking, you know, all 25 site leaders, there are six of them versus, you know, the other 19. And I think sometimes those, those needs, which are very. different. I would hate for those to get lost, but I think it also speaks to what some of our principals were talking about earlier and some of the impacts of operating. schools at a lower capacity. And what this doesn't account for, but of course, there's no way for us to really know the impact.

078But if you think about the slide that Mr. Herman presented that shows, you know, here's some potential of one to 10 percent, you could see a loss in enrollment from closing schools. We don't know what that same model might look like should you apply it to say saying we're no longer going to have, you know. counselors or we're only going to have one middle school elective instead of two. I anticipate there's also an impact to our enrollment. We definitely, the feedback we heard from our school leaders was, you know, that last category, all-day kindergarten, we're not required to offer all-day kindergarten. We are required to offer half-day kindergarten. That's what we receive funding for. The districts invest about $3.8 to $4 million into being able to offer all-day kindergarten. Should we not do that? there's

079a strong consensus from our leaders that that has a huge impact on our enrollment. And that was across the board. All 25 leaders weighed in on that and said, no, do not, let's not stop that. That's really important because that's our enrollment pipeline, right? And if we aren't offering all-day kindergarten, that has a huge impact on our potential enrollment as well. So while we don't have a chart to show the one to 10% here, you can anticipate, should we, should we, go deep enough here that it is going to have an impact also on enrollment. And now we're talking potentially all of our schools, not just six and two. So we talked about how to try to capture that. And I just don't think there's a good way for us to do that. But I

080do think the board should be aware that there is a risk with that as well. I do want to clarify what eliminate or charge more for extracurricular. That does include all of our athletic expenses. The district invests in athletics to be able to offer athletics. You could not offer athletics in a K-8 district. There's nothing that says we have to. We also feel very strongly, I believe our middle school leaders weighed in quite heavily on how important that is for an enrollment driver as well. But we also offer a lot of great programs, Leader in Me, International Baccalaureate. AVID, all of those things cost money at our middle schools, and we could stop funding some of those types of things. That's also caught up into that number that you see there. There is nothing on

081this list that is not painful to some degree to our schools, whether it's elementary or middle school. And I think it's worth emphasizing, as so many of our community members have, that a lot of these levers... are in play because we get insufficient funding from our state government. We used to have funding for all-day kindergarten. The state used to pay for all-day kindergarten, and then the state took it away. And this district, like most districts, stepped in and said, rather than take away that experience from our kids, we'll just pay for it out of our own pockets. These are the sort of challenges we're having to make. Thank you. Member Davis. Yes, thank you very much. I appreciate this report very much. And I think I'd just like to highlight that these subjects are being,

082have been, and will continue to be discussed by the people who are responsible for... running the school district, I have gotten the feeling that there are some folks out there who think because we haven't been directly talking about what you're working on, that there may not be work going on. But it's clear to me from everything that's been said tonight that And also knowing, because I know that people are showing up and working very hard on all the contingencies that are possible. And these are professional folks who spent their life in education and understand all aspects of it and work their butts off, pardon me, to... keep the quality and the commitment and the community involvement that this school district has worked to maintain for many, many years against really strong headwinds. So I just

083want to thank you, Superintendent Tenyes, and our whole cabinet and all the folks who spend every day coming to their jobs and trying to make plans without any guidelines at this point about how what the parameters are. So we're tasked, that's what we signed up for, making this decision. But I just want to say thanks a lot for all of you who continue to keep your heads down and work as hard as you can. That's all. Any other questions on the presentation? All right, seeing no questions, now we can open for discussion. So we've had extensive feedback from our community. We've had a lot of time to think about this proposal. At our next regularly scheduled board meeting two weeks from today, we will have the opportunity, should we wish, to vote on a proposed

084school consolidation and boundary change. That vote could be what's been presented. That vote could be on something that's different. If it's going to be something different, we have to give our superintendents some level of guidance on at least another option to come back with between now and then. Vice President Nelson. Okay. So this is supposed to be a discussion and I happy to discuss because it's been a long time, folks. Hi, friends. A lot of our favorite frequent flyers here. So thank you for hanging in here with us. But I do think it is the first time you actually hear us discuss our thoughts on the months and months and hours and hours of comment and presentations. And the one thing that sticks with me is, you know, when you are an elected official running

085for government, you have a few jobs. Proving policy for the district, overseeing, selecting a superintendent, and really kind of shepherding taxpayer dollars. And one of the things that I've been kind of... struck with during this process is part of our policy is, and many other boards do this, we delegate so much of the operation and the day-to-day work to your team and the cabinet's team. And so a lot of times it feels like you just pour information into us, but that is at our direction. That is at our ask. This isn't a task that you just... popped up one night and we're like, this is what we're going to do. It's going to be, it's right. Like this has been years in the making. Um, and so I take that really, really seriously, especially with.

086you know, the decades of experience you, your team, our site leaders have. And I kind of, when you talk to me about your experiences, I really do take that to heart because what happens on your sites, in your classrooms is what affects our children and our community. And I want that to be. the best working environment it can possibly be. I want you to have the resources you have. We, and I'm struck by so much about, you know, how we are placed in this situation by a lot of the other leadership in our state, where we are forced to compete with niche charter schools. So we have to be everything to everybody. I have to have. I'm going to throw out some things here. I'm not making comments on these, but I want to use

087examples. I need to have two dual language academies. I need to have a gifted academy. I need to have, I need to have, I need to have, I need to have because I have to appeal to as many people as possible. And that is not what public education was ever set up to do. We weren't built for that. And now we're having to compete with that. And it just breaks my heart that what that has done. There have been a lot of benefits to that. I won't say that there aren't. But it's untenable when we aren't funded in the same way and we are held accountable in so many different ways. And that is something that keeps me up at night as we have to make this decision, as I rail against how unfair it

088is. But this is the seat that we're in and this is the circumstances that we're in. And, you know, it's been a lot. And I know we've all heard the stories of the communities. We have been to the schools. We have walked the halls. We've seen kids at recess. We've seen them hug their school leaders. We know that this is really special. And I appreciate the focus today on the student experience, because I think out of all of the comments, that is something. I think it kind of brings everything together for me, where yes, we have this financial burden, but it also goes back to what impacts the student experience and our employee experience. And how do we create that positive, best environment, not just for the kids in the current seats, but kids to

089come. And I don't know how that looks in a state that honestly is very hostile to public education right now. But that's kind of the frame that I'm taking with this is looking at the student experience. What does our lack of financing do? One thing that struck me today, Ms. Cook, you used a lot of language. She talked about leftovers, making do with what is had because you're not big enough. And so our resources trickle down. And the idea that we have heard from the community is we don't want to create haves and have-nots, but I would argue we already have them. And it's very, very disheartening to see that and go to a lot of these campuses that would be classified possibly as a have-not. and watch them struggle with how to deploy their

090academic interventionists. And then to see them on that list again, that we might cut those, just devastates me. It, it just, I'm not actually crying. My voice is just waffling because I am cold. I am always cold. Um, yeah, I'm always cold if you're a folks, but, but the, and I also have some right over here too. I'm good. Um, but yeah, so those are some of the things that I think about is, are we going to create more have nots as we continue to spend our resources? among all of these sites because that does impact the student experience. I know a lot of us may, I know I'm not in questions, I'm just talking now. We can discuss. I don't know how you want to run this. Like, you know, going to the different

091middle schools. And it was so interesting watching, you know, a really great mom of a PTO. She comes and runs a fashion club at one of the middle schools because she teaches the kids all about upside. I was so excited as a thrifter. I was like, oh, can I join the club? But I can't because I'm an adult. But like. the opportunities there when you have the larger school communities, but then the same thing is. At the smaller campuses, there are a lot of great things happening there. But again, they might just be able to pull together, you know, the incredible band program, the incredible theater program, because that's where their resources can be consolidated. But what more could they do if we were able to spread things out a little bit more equitably? And

092I'm not sure. I'm not sure how that looks. But to say... I guess all that to say is I think haves and have nots already exist currently in Kyrie. And it's something that is really, it unsettles me. I don't know how to work within that to make it better, given our financial constraints. I'm going to stop talking for a minute. Someone else can jump in. I can jump in. Please. A little bit. I do have to say it was very sobering to see that one slide with Kyrie. what's at stake. I'm actually, so my child went to Kyrene. I've actually experienced this what's at stake. My daughter was in an intervention program and couldn't get the help that she needed because there weren't enough teachers. They graduated her out of intervention because She, I guess

093she qualified to graduate out, but actually she did worse when she did. But there weren't enough staff to keep that going. And so her high school readiness suffered. She's doing better now, though. So having experienced that as a parent, I wouldn't want other parents to have to go through something like that with their kids or not having all day kindergarten or. not having the amazing extracurricular opportunities, you know, I can't imagine going from two to one, but that did actually happen to my daughter because she had to use the intervention hour. So, and that was very painful for her. So for all students to have to go from that, this is when they find out what, what they're good at and cutting an elective. I can't even imagine. Not to mention all of our arts

094and music. And I know, is music the only elective that we have to offer? I think you mentioned one time. PE as well. Music and PE. I couldn't imagine losing all the other electives. Because that's what contributes to our children being a whole child, is those experiences. It really hurts. It's a really hard decision. I know we've all kind of been through a lot and been there for each other as we've gone to these meetings and listened to our community and gotten that feedback. But I really do want everyone to know we're struggling, too, with this. It's tough. And we want to leave Kyrene better. You know, when we leave Kyrene, we want to leave it better than when we first joined up. I think taking away or risking these things that make hiring great

095and keep our enrollment where it is, because like you said, our enrollment could suffer. I think that's important. Okay, my turn. I underline what you both have said so far. I just want to take a moment to, my struggle with this, after spending more than 55 years in public education work, mostly in Arizona. Public schools are so important to our culture and to our democracy. And as a former school lawyer and teacher and administrator, actually, it just breaks my heart for all of us. In this country, I mean, that may sound grandiose, but that's the truth. In this country and in this, we need to think about our local community. The reason that I ran for this job at my advanced stage in life, when my daughter said, you're what? Was because... This is where

096it all starts. And this is where we, if you think about democracy and the United States and being American and all those things that are so important to all of us, it's a ladder. The first rung is public education. And our founders knew that. That was what built our democracy and that is what will keep it. It is under significant attack by people who, in my opinion, and I'm speaking just for me with everything that I say, so that's out there. In my opinion, it's become something that they're forcing parents to monetize their kids and convince us that public education is a business. And that if we don't have data to prove everything, we are not doing anything legitimate. And what happened in my view and in my life experience is that the great deference

097and well-deserved, in my opinion, trust that was put in professional educators from classroom teachers up to superintendents and boards has been eroded. So that where courts actually for many, many years in this country deferred educational decision making because they didn't think that they really knew enough about it. So education was not a thing of law in terms of being challenged very often. Anyway, I don't want to go on forever about this. But the bottom line is that this. We are at ground level, ground zero here. And there are things that can be measured about schools. And certainly we have a very important financial function. But there's a lot that really can't be measured. You can't have real data about how people feel about things, about how good citizens we're. We're or participants in our greater

098culture that we're producing. It used to be that the classroom teacher decided if a kid was doing well. and what a child needed. Now it's somebody who is in Princeton, New Jersey, making up a test that has no relevance to kids' lived experience in places. So anyway, all that having been said, this is a very, very difficult decision, and I don't want folks to feel, although I'm sure some of them will, that... Any of their comments have not been heard if we don't do or come to a decision that they really have advocated for. And conversely, if we do come to a decision ultimately, and we haven't talked, you know, that has some elements of people who've said things, doesn't mean that just because They made a lot of noise. We are reacting to them.

099There is going to have to be some really strong educational purpose based on the criteria that we've been given by people who work very, very hard to make them apply to our situation. There won't be, but it may not, it's hard to make decisions when you... can't measure if people require data to make their decision about how something is valuable or true. We can't do that completely with our decision because we're talking about human behavior and your children and what their future is going to look like and whether they're going to be the old, it used to be a contributing member of society, you know. A contributing member of society doesn't have to be someone who is actually a citizen. It can be someone who's here. We have law that says any child who shows

100up gets a public education, just like any other child. Any child who shows up. So we're in a bad situation right now. We all care deeply about your kids. We know you care deeply about your kids. We also understand how serious this is. But Kyrene's the place to be because we've got a great community to work with and great professional people. So let's do it the right way, which we will. So thank you. I think as we look at kind of where we started out, you know, we came and there was the change to, I think, A lesson to learn from our September study session when we presented different criteria is just being really clear around potential ripple effects that the discussions that we have can have downstream. I think one thing that I took

101away from our discussion in September was really the importance around being very deliberate in creating and supporting specialized programs. So I know the very, go back to August, you know, we talked a lot. Well, not, we didn't actually talk a lot about this, but like there was a lot of talk around a gifted Academy, but during our study session on the 29th or 20, I don't remember the September 19th, they were the nine in it, uh, you know, talking around, I think that's a little bit putting the cart before the horse. And then how do we go through and actually take a look at. all of the gifted services we are offering in the district as a whole. As I believe, Ms. Woods, did you mention how you're with our gifted resource teachers, you know,

102for the smaller schools, instead of having one just specifically at their site, they are sharing. And so those come like one day a week and what that does to the master schedule and pieces like that. So until we look at, and I still, I still. stand both feet solidly behind this, you know, taking a look at, you know, using the, I know the DM group, you know, looked at special education only, but part of the strategic plan is to also have them look at gifted, pushing that up to, as we kind of go through. Understanding, yes, we do need to attract and maybe reclaim some students that have lost. Maybe we have lost in that area with for those specific services. specific services, but where are our gaps that we can improve and then bringing

103in the community to help us come up with strategies around that before making decisions around, yes, we need a specified gifted academy. I'm not saying that that is good or it is bad, but I do think there is a process to follow where we bring community members together. And I think that's one of the reasons the Long Range Planning Committee was so successful. is we came with a specific charge for them rather than getting a group of people together and say, let's just talk about X. we owe our community a little bit more directive as a cabinet, as educational professionals to talk about, hey, here are our areas. You understand our community. How do we then implement some of those things? And does that eventually get us to a gifted academy? I don't know. But

104I think that's probably the way to go about building consensus to what do gifted services look like for all students. whether they are staying at their homeschools, whether they are choosing to go to a current self-contained model, or do we need to incorporate something different? I don't know, but using that as an opportunity. But seeing a process like that, as we look at how do we grow the district, we've seen this in other... in other districts around, you know, early childhood. And this is something, what does that re-imagining look like? And I would love to see like a deliberation. In that, as we bring community members in, as we work to then, if we are implementing and then coming up with a strategy to grow and support until they reach a point. I mean, new

105schools, new programming doesn't just spring into existence and they suddenly become successful. They have to have plans involved as far as marketing, support, hiring the right personnel, et cetera. It's a very long process. Again, we are stewards of taxpayer money. If we are going to do something, we need to be very methodical about it. So that is something I feel has been a positive from a lot of the community feedback that I've received, is just making sure that carries through in a way that there's still order and collaboration involved. I'm not sure President Walsh... around where you want to take the discussion around next? I'll offer my reflections and my feedback for what it's worth. I'm just one of five board members. But sadly, we are not alone in having these conversations by a state

106that categorically ranks at the bottom of funding per pupil students. We've seen many of our neighboring school districts have to go through this process. Tempe Elementary, our sister district just north, has closed several schools. But even more recently, Phoenix Elementary, Scottsdale, Gilbert, Glendale, Paradise Valley, Roosevelt, Isaac, Cave Creek and Amphitheater, all of these schools in a state that continues to grow. But yet we are having these issues with funding and demographic challenges. What I think is unique here is the level of engagement we've gotten from our community. I've been watching some of these processes play out in other districts, and I don't think any of them have gotten the amount of engagement. And that's a gift that we have because I feel like our community is coming with the spirit of collaboration and trying to

107find solutions. But that's also to say that we've got a lot of different feedback. We've gotten some people that say, Close no schools. We've gotten some people that say close the schools in their entirety as they've been recommended. We've gotten some people that said start the process over. The process is not working. We've heard some people say go back to the recommendation of the committee and disregard the change that you made back in September. We've heard some people say pause. We've heard some people say do it now. We've heard from some people say we love our small schools. And we heard tonight. about the challenges of running some small schools and the benefits of having larger schools. I think that just gives us a position of trying to find balance. And I do hope that

108once this process is over, we continue to channel the energy of our community and that engagement. And I'd like to talk about that in the coming weeks. But for tonight, I'm thinking about some of the things I talked about our September 16th meeting, where I think I emphasized two things. One was that it would be irresponsible, in my belief, for us to do nothing based on the information that's presented to us. Doing nothing I've heard and seen can undermine the learning experience of our students. Ms. Cook did a beautiful job articulating that. You know, my kiddos had to do counseling services throughout the years. there is a .5 FTE counselor. And wouldn't you know it that kids' need for counseling doesn't fit into a master's schedule. Discipline issues that need support from assistant principals don't

109neatly fit into a .5 FTE. School leaders who should be out there supporting their teachers with their learning are being pulled away to deal with things that are not their highest and best use. And that ultimately impacts the student experience, and it undermines our teachers' ability to be the best teachers that they can be. I know it puts strain on our staff, and it's not a good use of our taxpayer dollars. We've talked about that. So I don't think doing nothing should be an option. Feedback I've also gotten from the community has also resonated with me about the risks of doing too much all at once. I appreciated what Mr. Herman shared with us today and throughout this whole process about the financial impact. Because ultimately, if we don't have the resources to provide the

110student experience, that I think goes to the core of the issue. My interpretation of what I heard from you tonight, Mr. Herman, was closing the eight schools that are currently proposed would address the anticipated budget gap for the next five years. It's not... The only way that we can address the anticipated budget gap for the next five years. So said a different way, we could close fewer than eight. We'd still go a long way for addressing that budget gap. And there might be some work we need to do. So I look at the recommendations from the Long Range Planning Committee. I do believe that they did exactly what we asked them to do. To look at the long-range future of Kyrene, look at the utilization of our buildings at an aggregate level, not at a

111site-by-site, and come up with a proposal. They did a beautiful job with that. We have the current reality that not every school is an average. Every school is different. And I think that our mandate could include looking at more than what the committee did. I do think that hard choices are necessary. I do think that we need to recommend and go forward with closing some schools right now. If we can do it in a way that still preserves our student experience and maintains fiscal responsibility, but keep a few more schools open, I personally would like to do that. And I would like to give guidance to our superintendent tonight. on how many schools we could keep open beyond the eight that have been recommended for closure, and if so, what criteria specifically we would use.

112We've never closed the school before in Kyrene. There's studies, there's white papers. We can look at them, but we don't know how our community is going to respond. Mr. Herman, I want to thank you for the slide you put in tonight that showed the range. of potential student enrollment loss and the financial impact of that. Because it could be 1%, it could be 10%, it could be somewhere in between. We have no way of knowing. And we're modeling the best we can. And if we close eight schools all at once, and it ends up being more of a loss than we anticipated, that would be a very disruptive financial impact. And I worry. We're gonna have it's the same budget gap that we're now trying to address and it's a bit of a self-proclaimed prophecy

113I also think because no schools we're gonna end up having to cut resources Our community is mobile My kids go to the neighborhood school, but they're actually in the minority as I understand it of our school students about a third of them attend their neighborhood school about a third of them are Kyrene students that attend another school in Kyrene, and about a third of them are outside of Kyrene, which is a beautiful thing because we have students from all across the community. It also shows to me that our families are discerning, that they have choice and they exercise it, that they travel, and they won't necessarily go to the next school over if that's where they've been rebounded to. They might, and I think that all of our schools are wonderful, and I hope they

114all do, but we certainly don't know that. And I think looking at other schools where maybe you don't have as much mobility in the community may not be as instructive of a guiding post. I understand the motivation of trying to do it all now because this has been an extraordinarily taxing situation for everybody involved. For our district leadership, for our school leaders, for our teachers, for our staff, for our families, and for our students. I do not want to draw this process out. So I understand that. I also don't want to go big at the expense of getting it right. So I do think having an approach where we are closing schools based on a recommendation, but potentially keeping a few more open, will allow us to see the impact in this community of school

115closure and what that looks like. for our financials, for our resources, for our students. If that means that we need to revisit years down the line, potentially in connection with the next census or some new demographic inspiration, that might be the decision we have to make. And that's the approach that other districts have taken. I mean, I mentioned probably a dozen districts earlier that have closed schools. None of them have closed the third of their schools in one fell swoop. We would be the first if we did it at that scale. It might achieve the efficiencies we're hoping for. It might not. And I have deep concern about the uncertainty. I do think that we should think about the demographic trends and how to be responsive to it. What we've seen from our presentations over

116the several months is that this is largely a factor of there are fewer school-age kids in our community. Our eighth grade class every year is bigger than our incoming kindergarten class. Year after year after year. Every year we get to become a smaller district. Part of that means that our elementary schools are feeling the impact of this more acutely right now. Our middle schools, we heard tonight, are feeling it as well. They're not immune to it. And they're going to continue to feel the impact. It may be a few years down the road as compared to elementary schools. You know, having two sections in a first grade class is very difficult right now. I would like to bring some recommendations to our superintendent about keeping more schools open if this board has some level of

117consensus on that. It would be a question of how many elementary or middle. and what criteria we need to have. But before we get into that, and I do agree completely with Vice President Nelson, that if we were to give any direction, we have to be very clear and purposeful on the criteria so that it's transparent and objective. So that's a lot of me talking. I'll open it up. I've had a lot of those same thoughts. I would say One of the things I've noticed that we've started to do, we've started to talk about our plans almost in two separate pods. I kind of talked about this a little bit earlier. We talked about middle schools being very unique, having different needs, those kind of issues versus our friends in elementary. And what you mentioned

118about the demographics, I work in higher education. We always call, you know. the kids born in 2008, they're our enrollment cliff. So that's when we start to feel, you know, the effects of lower birth rates across the nation. And yes, you know, incoming kinders much smaller than our exiting eighth graders. And I almost wonder if part of the approach, if the board is amenable to considering less, is still breaking these up into two separate groups. K-5, 6-8. You're looking at me like confused. I will say it. I think, look, because when we presented the maps in each of the public hearings, we kind of talked about here is the K-5 recommendation, here is the 6-8 recommendation. And I almost wonder if part of the discussion we have when considering President Walsh's statement is having the

119discussion framed in that way. Because to me... Those are two very different populations and very different needs. And I want to make sure that we're giving each of them their due versus lumping everybody all in. If the board, if there is consensus to look at something different, if there isn't, there isn't. But that, that would be, that would be my, I would feel more comfortable with that than taking a broader brush. to this issue? I think that's responsible and operationally it's probably responsive to the reality. The issues of running middle schools with the electives and the resources that have to be provided there are quite different than at a K-5 elementary school. So if we're going to consider keeping one or both middle schools open, that would be the question. Are we going to consider

120keeping one additional middle school open, or do we take the approach that says we're going to keep both open because of the issues that we talked about, because of operational? If we're going to be choosing less than both, we would have to give criteria, and that criteria would be specific to the middle schools. President Walsh, I don't know if this is helpful or not, but when we're talking just middle school, You're choosing between, right, closing two, keeping one open, closing none. One of the discussions when you give guidance that will be important for us, should you say bring one back on and close one, is do you just leave the boundaries as they are then and just the one new boundary that had been, depending on which one you keep open, we keep as the

121demographer's maps or? The guidance needs to be as clear as if you're going to say keep five middle schools, re-boundary all five across the district, knowing that that would require a pretty big revision and would look at. a lot changing from what was shared in the public hearings for all of our middle schools. So you could go either way. I just want to be sure that, you know, we would need that direction if the board was anticipating that you wanted us to have the demographer go back and rebound all of the middle school. I'm just going to keep it on for now. I don't, we don't really. clear it i'm sure this looks so strange from the audience perspective it's like we don't actually speak to one another like we can't see the first time

122we're having this conversation we don't typically have we have more formalized discussions here um Do we want to take the approach that way? Do we want, should we, is there consensus to look at K-5? What kind of recommendation, like how do we feel about going? Then breaking it and then looking at K-6. And are there any recommendations or criteria? 6-8. Thank you. Where would our K-8 fall in that? Right. That's a great question. That is a good question. What's the question? She was asking how we would categorize like KTA as a K8. K8. K8, sorry. Our K-8s were already split into the K-6, or K-5 model. No, I said K-6. I'm sorry. K-5 model. So they're in the K-5. Yeah, so they are part of the elementary conversation. For the proposed model. So thank you

123for that question. There's only the six middle schools on the list proposed two to close right now. That are strictly 6-8 schools. That are strictly 6-8. And then anything that is K-8, including our K-5s, were part of the elementary package. That's how it was done in the proposed maps was they had been because of the committee's recommendation to go to K-5 and 6-8 schools and not have any K-8 schools. They're part of the elementary discussion. So you just want to talk, like basically have the discussion. I think right now it's probably to start at the aggregate level about do we want to consider keeping more open? And if so, how many and at what level? You know, I will posit right now that I think. Given the information that Mr. Herman has suggested, again, closing

124eight would fully address the gap. I think closing anything fewer than five would probably result in pulling levers that I could not support. So for me personally, I would not want to go anywhere lower than that number because I think it would impact the student experience and staff. That doesn't mean I'm suggesting that. I'm just saying that somewhere between that range. My only concern is that if there is a risk to taking that approach, where later on down the line, another board or another time, who knows, another might have to say, this didn't work. We were, because I mean, we are working with estimates, right? So we don't. As best to our ability and best of our professional ability. But if this doesn't work and we decide now and vote now to take that approach

125where, you know, we reduce the amount of schools that we're considering for closure. Later on down the line, it could be, whoa, that wasn't that didn't, you know, the enrollment keeps going lower and lower and lower. Now we're going to start from square one again. I'm just throwing that out as a potential risk. Yeah. And that so that brings me back to the discussion that I had asked about before, which was if we voted to consolidate. or, you know, as the map stands now and we go, oh, look, we were off by the numbers in a positive way. Can we then backtrack and say, actually, I mean, again, this is, I don't know if this will ever happen, but can we change our mind for year two, year three? Or is it better to... consolidate

126less schools, close less schools now, and then have to take that risk that in the future we might be having these same discussions again. Those are the two choices, I think. I think there's a risk there both ways. There is, yeah. But my concern is that once you've identified a school for closure, even if you're not doing immediately, it's going to have a significant impact on its enrollment. I've already heard from families that said, I'm in boundary for Pueblo. I know it's going to be open next year, but I don't think my kid's going to go there next year because it's slated for closure. And if we close it and say, but we might change our mind next year, I don't know that's going to give the comfort to our students, our families, and our

127staff about that result. And now to be clear, if we were to take the approach that said, let's do a staggered approach. let's wait on doing anything with middle schools right now. I'm not suggesting that some version of this board will have to come back and have a tough decision about middle school enrollment down the road. Because if you look at our demographic trends, it's all but certain that that conversation is going to happen. For me, the question is, are we doing it all at once? Or are we going to say, let's tackle elementary now? look at middle school after we've seen what we've done at the elementary level. I would also say that is probably a more reflective process of what we have seen. And I think Tempe Elementary, Phoenix Elementary, those are ones

128I'm comfortable with because apples and apples. Kind of take that approach. But that is, again, like I mentioned before, that's the job of an elected official to... This board will do the best that they can with the information that we have. That is not to say that other boards will not be immune to demographic changes. Maybe we will experience a political miracle and suddenly have so much funding rain down on us. We won't know what to do. But that will be another board's work. You know, and if that is something if you wanted to. I think about it a lot like when we do our deep data dives. Every few times a year, we look at all of the data for all of the testing and things like that because we want to know, as

129a board, student achievement is important. If we, as a board, wanted to, to the best of our ability, ensure that this isn't something we are just, if we're using middle schools as an example. kicking a can down the road, there is a way for us to add something around school consolidation, enrollment, reimagining as a policy, again, one of our roles to ensure the work isn't just lost until it becomes a, you know, a crisis again. So, I mean, I think there are ways to address that without going, all, all, all, all, you know, all eight kind of addressing your, your situation. So I think there are ways we can put some fail safes in there just to make sure it doesn't disappear. Um, but. I just remember that being a topic of conversation with the

130Long-Range Planning Committee is that we wanted to do it all at once and not have to do this. We're changing the conversation, and that's the only reason I brought that up. No, I know. Because that was the initial conversation. That was. That was the initial directive. Yeah, exactly. That's what the committee was asked to do. Right. And I think the committee did what we asked them to do. As I've heard and reflected on feedback. I worry about doing too much all at once without knowing how it's going to be implemented and what the consequences will be. And if the projection ends up being at the worst end of the spectrum, on the slide that Mr. Herman showed, that creates a big problem for us that is potentially avoidable if we do this potentially more deliberately.

131President Walsh, I do just want to point out, so, you know, many of the districts, because I asked the demographer, you know, what's the number that you typically see a district do? And as you said, right, it's typically around three or four a year, which is technically what the board, right, should they vote for the plan as it is, is four and four. And that is kind of what we talked about. And so what you've seen with a lot of those districts that you mentioned is, yes, while they don't vote for them all at once, many of those districts you named, have been back multiple times having this conversation. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong. That's okay. It's just, again, as you said, Board Member Satri, that's why the committee took the approach

132they did is they were trying to look at it from a different lens of let's try not to have to keep doing that. But even closing eight doesn't guarantee you're not back here in five years. Let's be realistic. The state does the opposite of what board member Nelson said or vice president Nelson said and continues to take funding from us. And and we start to see enrollment decline even more or the impact is, you know, more than we anticipated. You a new board could potentially be having this conversation. And again, we've seen that happen in multiple districts where they start with a whatever number it is, one, two, three, four schools in a year. And they're back within a year. to five years. So, you know, I think in order to see the impact, one

133of the things that I, again, Kyrene took a very different approach. Typically, one of the reasons you see it happen that way in other districts is there's no long range plan committee. I mean, you know, board member or president Walsh, you mentioned, right, how wonderful the community engagement's been. That wasn't by accident. That was a very intentional process we put in place to ensure that our community could have a voice. And so when you look at some of the way these other processes have folded out, one of the things that happens is district administration shows up, says, here's the financials, here's the numbers, here's the utilization, here's our recommendation, close these three schools. They do their public hearing, they get the feedback, and then the board has to vote. And it's a very fairly quick

134process compared to what we've done. Should the board take a more, let's go slow down a little bit in so many in one year and wait to see the impact, or maybe it takes two years to still roll it out, whatever the number is that you give us. My recommendation is you wouldn't then just rush to do another long range committee right away and go through this whole process again. That is where you would actually, you want to be intentional enough that you slow down enough to actually see the impact. before you start a process because I do not think our community and our staff and our students that that's in their best interest from a wellness standpoint, if you will. So I think you would need to be way that of how many, even

135if it still takes two years to roll it out, that's fine. But then getting you closer to the census, like you said, or new data point to use to start to evaluate when is it time to start this process again? Should it be time? So I agree. I would not support a model that closed one or two this year and then we'll come back and discuss one or two next year and they'll come back and discuss one or two. That's I think that creates a malaise on our staff and our students and our families. I don't want to do that. But I think we can. do a significant financially responsible decision now, reflect on the data, and then come back and revisit what that looks like. Yes. Thank you for that. You kind of took

136the words out of my mouth. I think the fact that Kyrene has handled this completely differently than virtually anyone I've read about or... seen or heard about, I think is a testimony, a testament to our community. And the fact that we all felt it important to hear from them. I think my hope is that they will continue to work. for their kids and for us as a community going forward. And that's why I really like the idea of the involvement of the community going forward in terms of programs. I wrote down exactly what it was, but you know what I'm talking about. After we make our decision about closures, I want folks to understand we still want your input. And just talking to people about where you send your kids to school and why and

137all that kind of thing. So I appreciate this community very much. And it is very different than almost any place else. So that's Kyrene again, you know. So here we are. So in terms of moving this conversation forward, if the board would like to discuss keeping more schools open, then we need to give our superintendent direction. Currently, there are proposed to close six elementary schools, two middle schools. For Vice President Nelson's direction, we can give her guidance on closing fewer elementary, fewer middle school, or both. Mr. Herman, would it be possible to go back to some of the financial slides? There we go. If the board has any questions on that. That might be useful, and we can flip back to any other slides as the board would like. As I mentioned earlier, closing the

138full initial proposal covers the gap. Potentially. Closing fewer would cover not all the gap, but some. Member Collins. I've sat here and listened to everyone speak. This is a risk, regardless. I believe I've mentioned that several times in past meetings. But, you know, that's neither here nor there. I even mentioned in that September 19th meeting that we should look at less schools, but I don't think anyone was paying attention. That's neither here nor there. So anyway, looking at the map, I mean, not the map, but looking at the numbers I've been drawing on it all night during my configurations, as I said in the September 19th meeting, I'll be the bad guy. So I'm looking at five elementary, zero middle. All right. Thank you, Member Collins. Can I ask? why you're drawn to that specific

139one other than being a bad guy, which I don't think you are. Well, in the earlier meeting, I mentioned the two and two. If anybody remember that when I said, let's look at the two and two, because even before we started doing community feedback, I was already talking to people who've been through this situation. And so they were saying, man, eight schools. That's a lot. Granted, what, it's 25 schools? Scottsdale has 30 schools. They're looking at two. For whatever reason, their reason is their reason. Totally different demographic than what we're dealing with. So that's why I looked at it, because we're talking about how much the junior high, the programs and things of that nature. And to me, it's not just programs, it's people. People over the programs as an educator, as a union leader.

140These are things that I look at. And it may not be a popular opinion. That doesn't concern me. I'm looking at what could potentially be the best option for everybody. I brought up a four-day school week to see if we could save money. I didn't see if I, and no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, I didn't really see a lot of, oh, yeah, let's look into that. Not from the cabinet, but, you know, other entities. So, you know, let's, so I'll just say, hey, why not? You know, because the junior highs, their needs are different than the elementary. You know, their busing needs may be different as well. And so we also, you know, want to make sure that we're trying to keep because I remember it was a mom. She came in

141here and I can't remember a name of so many people had spoken. But she mentioned about her kids being split across like three schools. And so that's something that stuck out to me because I know what that's like. I played Uncle Daddy for my brother when he was fighting in the war in Iraq. So I had to pick up all the kids from different schools. So I remember that struggle. So, you know, and that's pretty much all I have to say. You know, y'all can add what y'all want at this point. So there's a 5-0 option that could be on the table. That's five elementary schools being closed, zero middle schools being closed at this time. Any other board members have some thoughts on that? Please. After hearing the discussion about and agreeing with the

142differentiation between the middle schools and the elementary schools, I would like to know if it would be possible to do five elementary schools and one middle school. That sounds like, it looks like to me, might be, I'd like to know if it's doable. I think Superintendent Fenshe can speak to that. It is doable. Then the direction we would have to give is whether we are going to keep the boundaries of the five. schools as is or whether we would be changing the boundaries of all the middle schools to try to achieve sort of a relatively even allocation? And the reason that's important is, you know, again, you could give us either guidance 5051 from an operational standpoint, unless you're going to re boundary all the middle schools, if you're just going to pick one of

143them to take off the closure list and keep everything the same. depending on which one you take off, you unintentionally leave a imbalance in our middle school. So what you do, if you bring five back on and we don't rebound the whole middle school, you potentially have one middle school that's very small compared to the rest of the middle schools. You also have one side of the freeway that's got a much higher utilization rate, which happens to be our side. Potentially, if it's on one side, be the side that has more kids. in there, depending on, again, which one you would close or bring back open. On the other side, if you did that, you also then either way create, you know, so if you choose the one on the other side of the freeway,

144what you've done is unintentionally left a very small school open. So the risk of. bringing one middle school back at a time instead of both of them is potentially leaving one middle school with these challenges. I see. Right now we have two, which I mean, not that that's better to have two, but it is very difficult if it's the only middle school that has to deal with some of these challenges. So when I think about, you know, your comments, Vice President Nelson, about some of the inequities, I do worry unless you read. balance all of the enrollment across the five middle schools, you're going to for sure have at least one that has very low enrollment. And I would not recommend that from a student experience and an operational standpoint. So again, if it's about

145waiting, what I heard you say, President Walsh, if it's about waiting to see the impact from the middle schools and what impact that has on middle school enrollment. then I would recommend you stay with the closed two or keep the two open and don't close any yet and wait on middle school. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for clarifying. So five elementary schools is what I would like to know more about. That's absolutely doable for us, yes. And I by no means want to disrespect the long-range planning committee's work. So that's why I keep saying I'll be the bad guy. Because I know they put a lot of work into that. And I don't want to disrespect their work because I know some of them are watching. I really appreciate the effort they put in

146for Free 99, just like we've put in this work for Free 99. You know, my beard has turned into Obama hair. Remember when Obama first got in office, he was dark and then he was gray when he left. Like, my beard has really changed. I noticed that the other morning looking at pictures. So, hey, you know, this is where we're at. Anyway, I agree. I agree with the esteemed. Board member to my left. Thank you. Vice President Nelson? Sure. Again, I'm the one that suggested separating them. I feel really acutely about the middle schools. One of the things I think it would be much easier for us to come up with a very transparent criteria if we were to look at the elementary schools, because there are more of them. So I think it could

147be applied a little bit more. I don't know how I want to say. I just think it's easier to apply a criteria to more schools. Right now we have two middle schools. And the concern I have, again, like I mentioned before, especially in the middle school area, they have such unique needs. I do feel very strongly that we're already existing in a have versus have not situation there. And to just say one stays and one goes, I don't feel comfortable with that at all. To me, they are a package deal. And something to look at our middle school processes overall, especially as we get into, if we do come to different financial difficulties, having to have conversations about going to one elective or things like that. I would like to see all of our six,

148eight schools together in that discussion and talking about how to strengthen some of our smaller schools. because there are wonderful things happening there. And again, browning this back in the demographics, you know, yes, they are feeling the impacts of declining enrollment, but it's not like that is happening at our elementary schools. So I think hearing from Member Collins, Vice President Nelson, Member Davis, myself, there seems to be a general support for waiting on the middle schools. Member Satri, anything you want to add to that? I appreciate trying to find a balance between the maximum and the minimum. I feel like we could go too far into the minimum as well. And so we need to be careful about, and again, I know there are estimates, but just looking at those total costs, like a 5-0,

149it's coming up to only a little bit, you know, $4 million. So it's not, huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So I don't want to go too far. I don't know. Board Member Satri, I don't know if this helps you at all, but, you know, one of the things, if you go back to Mr. Herman, let me go back to your slide, and maybe you can jump into Mr. Herman on this. You know, we talked about that. So I think the five was around the one point. I have too many charts here. You know, a 2.5 up to about a 4 million, depending on how long it takes to see the operational expenses are, you know, saved. You may not see them all in the first year, but you might by the second and third

150year. And so you do have to remember, we will always lean into levers one, two, for sure, every year as part of our budget annual process. So for example, just the simple fact that you have less students every year, we've had a few less teachers that we're able to cover through attrition. So some of that still will happen and will offset that a little bit. So just, I want you to feel comfortable in knowing that, you know, I... Five is a really nice balance if you were to go with five total as far as the budget. Does it get us all five years? I don't think any of us know 100% for certain because, again, there's some unknown variables. Does the enrollment drop more than we anticipated? Is it closer to the 10% versus the

1515% that we've seen in districts similar to ours? Does something happen with the state that changes in the funding formula? I mean, those are just things that we can't predict, but I do feel... confident that it would be enough to get us the next few years to be able to revisit the conversation should we need to. And I, Mr. Herman, I don't know if you want to weigh in on that. I know you and I've kind of tried to play out every scenario, but there's probably 300 scenarios when you start playing them out. But we feel if we were to make a decision for the upcoming school year. it would allow the district to start thinking about ways to bring down additional cost savings on unoccupied facilities, correct? And those numbers are not necessarily reflected

152in here, correct? That is correct. I had one other question. Please. I wasn't interrupting, was I? No. Oh, okay. I'm assuming that costs are rising as well. So has that been taken into account as enrollment declines, costs are rising? I could have a lot of people here talk about the costs that increased every year. As citizens experience this all day long, it's no different for school districts or businesses. So, yes, our costs are rising every year. It's difficult to. balance your budget when that happens and you have a maximum increase in your funding of 2% from the state, right? We all know that we have not experienced on a personal basis a 2% inflation factor for many, many years, but that's the maximum monies that we receive from the state. Okay. Thank you. And again,

153we don't need to make a vote tonight. So we do not need to have unanimity. We do not have finality, but if we have at least enough consensus to give superintendent guidance, To have a potential alternative proposal at the 16th, we can do that. On the topic of elementary schools, again, there's six that are currently proposed for closing. I'm including Kyrene Traditional Academy in that number. The direction we would need to give to our superintendent is whether we are going to continue forward with closing all six or whether we'd like to see an option that has fewer than six. I know you would think it said five just now. You'd be comfortable with from a fiscal perspective. That doesn't mean we need to go with five, but I'd be welcome the thoughts here. So, Kyrene,

154traditional academies six through eight program is being counted in the middle school. It's yes or no. When we talk about the charts, if you could go back, Superintendent Tenius. Whoops, sorry, went too far. There you go. Kyrene Traditional is classified as an elementary on this for cost savings. Now, the information that's publicly available on the website breaks it down on a school-by-school basis, and you won't be shocked to learn that KTA is at the higher end of those costs because it is a K-8, because it has a larger footprint. But in terms of these management here, it's considered an elementary school. Separate, I think maybe this might help, separate from this conversation about proposed closures and boundary changes, the district had already made the recommendation or was making the recommendation. The committee looked at that

155data, too, to see did we want to go to all K-8 schools because that was one of their options. The recommendation and the decision was we're going to go to K-5 and 6-8 only schools. So operationally, we can't continue to operate these one-off K-8 schools. There's just not enough students at the middle school level to continue that and be sustainable. So that decision is happening regardless. So, for example, say that was the school that came back on, they still would only be a K-5 at some point. The enrollment just declined too much there in the six eights that for that to be sustainable. OK, thank you. On the subject of hiring traditional, I'll offer my thoughts on this. We spent a lot of time as a board talking about certain specialized programs like dual language,

156like gifted. I've heard a lot. from our KTA community that speaks about the program. They love their campus. The building's beautiful. We've invested a lot of money in it. But above all, I think it's the traditional program that I've heard is so important. And regardless of what happens with Kyrene Traditional Academy, I think we owe it to our KTA families to provide them with a traditional option in Kyrene. I'd like that to be clear. I'd like that to be, where is it? What does it look like? As Superintendent Tenius mentioned earlier, our enrollment and registration process for the next school year starts in February. So if we are asking our Kyrene Traditional Academy families about whether they'd like to continue on as Kyrene families, but we haven't given them the specific details about where the

157program is, what it looks like, how it will be integrated with potentially a non-traditional community if it's moved to another school, I don't think that's fair to our KTA families. If Kyrene Traditional is chosen as one of the schools that would be consolidated, my recommendation would be that it does not happen next year. Keep it on the timeline that it's currently on so that we can give, so that, again, we are saying KTA will be open regardless next year. And if this board chooses to close KTA as a building. We'll have time to put in together a detailed plan about what the traditional programming Kyrene will look like, where it looks like, and we'll be able to transition that over. And President Walsh, one of the other things. I've asked the team to do similar

158to the guidance I believe board member Satri gave about, you know, trying to keep the cohorts together. Currently under the model with the six elementary schools that are on the proposed list, other than the super boundary, which is already two schools. KTA is our only school right now that's being split. So we're I've asked. Dr. Ostmeyer to work with the demographer to see is there any possible way to not split the cohort of K-5 students from KTA into one of the two schools that they were slated. It may not come back that we can get 100% of the students in, but it may come out that we can get the majority of the students in the neighborhoods in. And if that is the case, that will make this idea of having the program somewhere else.

159much easier than if we split the kids. So we are, based on that guidance the board had given back in September, going back to revisit that now that there has been some other changes. No, I appreciate that because I think this program, we need to set it up for success. Right. And if you're splitting the KTA community 50-50. It's going to be hard to maintain that program. So the more of our KTA families we can keep at one site and offer that experience, I think the more likely it will have a success at maintaining traditional in Kyrene, regardless of what building it exists in. Correct. It's a discussion. All right. I think that's a really good idea, but I think this is one of those pieces, and I just want to call it out for

160the community. This is one of those domino effect decisions that does impact any kind of criteria we would create. I just want to throw that out there because I think. A lot. And this was a learning from September. You know, the discussion about, well, dual language, wanting to make sure, you know, that that was available as an open enrollment, making sure Bienvenido was able to kind of still stay paired with that was really important. But that decision then had a ripple effect impacting, you know. the Menides community. And so just being really clear about that. And then also the guidance, trying to keep those school communities together. So just being aware of any kind of directive we give, like I would want to make sure the criteria that we prioritize, what is most important, because

161if it gets to, we can't have both. I think it's really important to give. the district or demographer how we would want to weigh those pieces. I want to make sure I have clarity. Well, I want to make sure I have some clarity on that. I think there's two different conversations here. There's the criteria. and the clarity around potentially reducing an elementary. That's different criteria. You're, if I understood correctly, talking about should we try to keep the cohort together and it unintentionally create another domino effect you would want. So we were only looking at it as if it didn't create another domino effect because we had already kind of done that analysis before. So Dr. Ostmeyer is looking, can we? Again, separate from reducing an elementary, just looking at can we keep the cohort of

162KTA together? We are looking at doing that. That would not or should not have a domino effect on any other school. But we could, should for some reason when we try it and model it a couple different ways and there's one option that gets them to keep them together but does have a domino effect, then we would bring that to the board to discuss before we would ever recommend that. Okay, thank you. Thank you. So going back to potential models that we could look at, we said five and zero for one of them. Five elementary, zero middle school would be a potential model, yes. Yeah, can I suggest another one? Only because I know we've said we wanted the middle schools to be. All or nothing? I said that. I don't know that anything. Okay,

163well, keeping... Operationally, we would prefer that, too. Okay, so keeping in that spirit, can we look at five and two or four and two? Just because it gets us closer to, you know, filling that gap. Not all the way. It's still a medium spot. But it's not too minimal that we're... So five elementaries. Let me write down the different options here. Five and two, I think, or four and two. even four and two. But then, of course, we'd have to look at what criteria that what that would mean. But I'm just concerned. Well, you wouldn't need you still either way. We're going to need criteria for elementary. If you keep middle school zero or two, we do not need to talk about criteria for middle school, which I think President just to have another thing

164to look at, get as close as closer to our our the gap, because, again, we don't want to we don't want to pull the levers. And it's just and it's still like an in-between spot. So I, Dr. Offsmeyer, do we believe that we could run both scenarios of 5.0 and a 4.2 model along with our current 6.2? Yeah. So we could bring back all three scenarios for the board to look at. Should that be the direction you want to go? Unless, again, unanimously, you guys would prefer to just bring back one other one. I, you know, do you want, are you thinking you want that for the meeting or you want to have a discussion on that before you get into the meeting to decide? voting? I think if we could get a 5-0 and

165either we can talk now about whether it's a 4-2 or a 5-2. My recommendation would be a 5-2 as opposed to a 4-2, if we're going to consider that. But we could have both of those ready for the board's review potentially next week. So that we would have that information in advance of a vote on the 16th. Oh, yeah, I agree. I think if there isn't, if we aren't unanimous in the direction we would like to, I would want to see both options just out of respect for us to continue having a discussion. I would agree with that. I think if you're going to do that, I'd like to get them to you ahead of time. So we're looking at... So we have the current map. We would have a five elementary, zero middle school

166and a five elementary, two middle school. It means close to. So it'd be close five elementaries, close zero middle is one model, close five elementaries, close two middle schools is model. I like the four, two model better. You like what? The four, two better. Just because again, it's more of a medium spot. I'm fine supporting that. with the 4-2. And that's my reasoning. It feels more not too much this way and not too much that way, just somewhere in the middle, and it's still getting us at least a little closer to hitting that gap. So we could have three that we look at. We could do 5-0, 5... No, 4-2. 4-2. It sounds like would be the second one. And then the current. Mm-hmm. Can we say it again? What are we going to be

167looking at? The three options would be the current recommendation that we did the hearings with. The second option would be closing five elementary and zero middle school. The third option would be closing four elementary and two middle school. We do not need to give criteria for the middle school because it's either both are closed or both are open. But we would need to give our superintendent direction on the criteria for the elementary school because there are six recommended right now for closure. So they will need to go back and determine which ones would be proposed to stay open. Okay. Well, yeah, we had the criteria discussion, though. I know we've been sitting here for an hour and a half. Do we want to keep going? Do you want to take a quick break? Let's take

168a quick break. All right. We'll do a quick break, and then we'll come back to this conversation in a few minutes. All right, we are going to reconvene our study session. It is 7.46 p.m. So I think just to recap where we left off, our superintendent is going to work with the team to come back with some alternative models for the board's consideration, which will be presented next week. One would be a model that keeps both middle schools open. closes five elementary schools. The other would be a model that closes both middle schools and keeps and closes four elementary schools. As I mentioned earlier, criteria is not relevant then for middle school because it's either both or none. Elementary school, we will need to give our superintendent criteria on what we would want to look

169at. And this is, again, on a school-by-school basis. So this has been the subject of some discussion and public comment. The Long Range Planning Committee had criteria that was applied at a district-wide level. It was not applied on a school-by-school basis. We would be now asking the district to take a criteria and apply it against the six elementary schools that are proposed for closure and basically rank them based on that criteria. And I would exact that that list would be shared. Sorry, Superintendent Tenney. I just want to be clear. We're only taking the eight proposed schools and ranking. We're not going back and looking at the entire district. Really only the six because we're not talking about the middle schools. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I meant to say six. We will be looking at the

170six elementary schools, and I'd expect that you would share that with the board and publicly. So whatever criteria the board would give you, you'd be able to share publicly. Here's how these six elementaries rank on these criteria. Yes, you would see it on the map. as well. When we, the demographer would use that criteria to determine in the model that's five elementary schools closing, which of the six comes back on and in the four, which of the two come back on, he would use the criteria that you're giving us to make those decisions and then have to move the boundaries a little bit. I will tell you it's similar to what I mentioned in the middle school. What we would not do is have the domino effect of changing everybody's boundaries in elementary, for example.

171I'm just going to use school A and B as my example. School A was supposed to close and merge into school B. Should that not happen, schools B's boundaries stay as they currently are. Schools A boundary would go back to what they are and we would make no other changes. They might just be smaller schools for a little while. So that is one of the, by not closing as many, we know that their utilization will probably stay a little bit lower. That's just one of the... effects, I guess, of closing less. So I just, I do want to be clear, we would not recommend going back and redoing all of the elementary boundaries either. So in terms of criteria that we could look at, I think the recommendation would be that they're objective and measurable,

172right? Every school is special and amazing and has wonderful programs. But if we need to compare on an apples to apples basis, we need to have measurable criteria. Those could include various things that we've heard from the community, like neighborhood enrollment, neighborhood utilization, total enrollment. All of these things could be factors. that you weigh when considering which schools make the most sense to keep open. So open up for discussion. We can talk about what that might look like and what criteria we'd like to see. Member Shadry. I think it would be important to also consider the, how do I put this, the utilization and the capacity of the schools nearby and how they're going to change as well. Because like you said, it would. school A would not be going into school B, but then

173is that school B have really low enrollment as a result or does that make sense? No, I completely understand. I think it's a different approach than looking at each school on its own because what I think I'd be hearing you say is a school that on its own might meet the criteria, we would still suggest to close because another school would be left impacted disparately. Is that what I'm hearing? I think that's what I heard, too. I think at least if that is what. is correct. I think we'd be better off just looking at the individual schools and not trying to compare where they were going. Yeah, I would caution using that. I'm not sure that that's as clear cut of a criteria. But if you do what you just on the front end of

174what you said, I think that's really important. Use the word neighborhood. Sometimes you see us use the word home boundary. That means the same thing. You could look at the number or percent of home boundary. percent of students at the school or home boundary utilization. Those are two different numbers, but we could look at both of those. Those are both very important numbers. And that impacts transportation as well, right? Correct. It does help. So if you have a higher percent of your home boundary students being served by a neighborhood school, if you will, or the home boundary utilization is the same type of number as that, that does decrease. Meaning if you're no longer going to move that school to another campus and close that school. it's less students that would be impacted by the

175need of transportation. Because most of those kiddos currently don't need transportation because they're neighborhood kids. And if you are closing that school with a high neighborhood kid utilization or enrollment. you're increasing the strain on transportation because now all those kids that previously didn't need it will now need to be required transportation. And it may not be. The transportation is a very small piece of that puzzle. But the reality is what it's telling you is because overall enrollment can be off by one or two students at each. So if you just look at overall enrollment, you might just be off by one or two students. And I don't know that that's a big enough differentiator for that criteria. And that could, you know, vary. Last year, that school was higher. This year, that school is higher

176by one or two kids. But when you start to look at home boundary students that are being served by the school and you look at the percent and the raw number, especially of those that are utilizing the school as well, because that does both of those numbers account for the footprint of the school. So if you're too small of a footprint or too large of a footprint by just looking at the percent served, you you account for that so that you actually. aren't skewing it just because you happen to be in a smaller or a larger school. You wouldn't want to penalize a school or hurt us, you know, either way. And so, again, it's saying our neighborhood families are choosing this school, whereas some of your schools that have a lower home boundary are

177having more out of district or out of resident, what we call, they may live in Kyrene, but they aren't necessarily in that neighborhood. Lumber Davis. Yes, I don't quite know how to verbalize this, so you'll help me out. I think it's important if a school is chosen for closure, if we can move the entire cohort. into a receiving school, I think that's important to take into consideration. And we agree with you on that. We're going to do, we have one school left right now that's slated for closure. So depending on once we apply this criteria, if any of the schools that are left, whether it's the five or the four model. are not moving as a whole cohort, we're going, that would be the one criteria that we're going to try to adjust for. It's

178not always 100% possible, but we may be able to get it as many of the students as possible. Thank you for that. What other criteria would there be beside that? Because I know that we already looked at, or the Long Range Planning Committee first looked at, what was boundaries, right? And utilization. What's what other than neighborhood enrollment utilization? What what would be other criteria we might consider? Or does that feel like the most, you know, can I just want to clarify something about that? Just just to be really clear. So the Long Range Planning Committee in taking a regional approach, they were purposefully not looking at utilization at specific schools. They were telling the demographer, take each region. Act as though there are no, like, you can play with the boundaries within this region, irregardless

179of capacity. We just wanted to reduce by a certain amount and bring them up. So he never looked like, it was more, here is region one. here's the capacity for region one. We want to get it up to X. And here's the way we configure schools to do X. So what we are asking them to do is something very different. So that is how the original schools on the recommendation came because, again, Schools were never named. We gave an approach agnostic of school and said, look at a region, look at the capacity within a region and bring it up to that. And I would say the only other thing I'd add to that, Vice President Nelson, is that geography played a big role in that conversation as well. Absolutely. What I would say that's nice

180about this proposed criteria is that now that you're at a model where you're at and we're trying to get down more granular. you're using a criteria that makes more sense at the granular level. So I actually think it's a really lovely criteria for us to be able to apply. It's very objective and would be easy for us to run those numbers. Okay, then I would agree with using that criteria then. Very good. Any other feedback on the proposed criteria? All right. So Superintendent Tenius, I think you have the direction to come back next week with some options. You understand the two options on the number of schools to be closed. And then when it comes to the elementary, you've got some guidance on the criteria to be applied on the six schools that are proposed

181for closure. That is true. May I recap just to be sure we're all on the same page? Please. Okay. So I have, we are coming back with our current model. Just, you'll have that 6-2 model already. No changes there. I will be coming back with a 5-0 model, meaning no middle schools close, five elementary schools close, meaning one of the six comes back on. And then on the other model, it would be... four elementaries closed, two middle schools closed. So we'd just be taking two elementaries off the list. The criteria would include the number and percent of home boundary students served would be the first criteria. The second criteria would be the number and percent of home boundary at the utilization level. Should we need to go to the second? And then if we need

182to go to a third, we could use overall enrollment at that time, depending on if there's any schools once we run these numbers that are really close. That could be the third. I do not know that we'll have to get down that low, but should we, are we comfortable, is the board comfortable using overall enrollment as the final? Again, I don't think we're going to have to get to that level, but I do want to have enough wiggle room if for some reason we say we're taking two schools off and they're tied in every percent. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you, board. It's been a good, engaging discussion, and we will be back next week, the date to be determined, based on when we think we'll be able to get updated maps from our demographer.

183And that conversation will happen publicly here in this boardroom. Correct. And that will be a similar study session for the board to see and hear and talk about and have further discussion about which maps they would like to bring forward on the 16th, should it be one, two, or three maps. And I will reach out to the board in the next day or so and make sure, confirm which day we'll be ready to have the maps. Any other feedback? All right. With that, item 1.3, conclude study session. Our study session is concluded at 8 p.m. A little bit longer than normal. All right. Item 2.1, we're convening our regular meeting. Our regular meeting is called to order at 8 p.m. At this time, all blue cards do need to be turned in to our board

184secretary, Ms. Nancy Mosier, if you wish to speak to the board during the call to the public portion of the meeting. As always, our board meetings are held in public for you to come watch and participate. It'll be streamed live online on the Internet. If you can't watch it live, a recording will be made available on our YouTube channel within 24 hours after the meeting. Board agendas are going to be posted on our website and at our district office prior to the meeting at least 24 hours in advance. I have a 2.2 roll call. We all know who's here, but we've got to do it. Board members, will you please state your name for the record? Cedric Collins. Bunny Davis. Amy Seatree. Trina Nelson. And Kevin Walsh. Let the record show we have five board

185members present. Item 2.3 is a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance. I do see our dear Principal Spencer Fahlgetter, who is there in the back. Mr. Fahlgetter, would you please lead us in the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for one nation. Item 2.4 is our district land acknowledgement. The Kyron School District acknowledges our community of schools is located on the ancestral lands of the Otho and Peeposh peoples and inhabited these lands since time immemorial. And with this land acknowledgement, the district formally recognizes the traditional care and keeping of these lands by Native peoples allows us to be here today. Item 2.5 is our Kyrene Promise. We promise to provide welcoming, inclusive learning environments in which every student is honored, valued, and

186feels a strong sense of belonging and purpose. We promise to provide rigorous, responsive learning environments in which every student is given what they need to develop knowledge, skills, confidence, and a passion for learning. And 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. Board members, if there are no changes, would someone like to make a motion to approve? Motion to approve. I have a motion by Vice President Nelson. Is there a second? Second. Second by Member Davis. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 5-0. Item 4.1 is our superintendent report. Superintendent Tenius. Thank you, President Walsh. Governing board members, staff, and community

187here with us this evening. I am excited to share a little bit about what's going on in Kyrene. My last meeting, we didn't have a chance to do a really in-depth superintendent report, so I do want to share a few things that happened that you may have already heard about. Kyrene is proud to share that several members of our community were recognized at the Tempe Coalition's 9th Annual Champions for Youth Awards, an event that honors individuals who uplift and empower local youth. This year's recognitions highlighted Ryan, a Kyrene Del Pueblo student who has shown resilience in the face of hardship and tragedy, Richard, a Kyrene Apprende student who transformed personal growth into peer mentorship, and Officer Pete Walters, our school resource officer from Kyrene Middle School, who builds meaningful connections with students every day. We

188also celebrated alongside Zoe. While she was recognized for her achievements at Corona del Sol, she is also a former Kyrene kid and proud club leader with community education. You can read more about the event and watch the recap on our website. Kyrene Schools also honored Native American Heritage Month through a variety of meaningful celebrations across our campuses. Outside of school-based projects, Kyrene's Native American program helped bring the Kyrene community together by supporting our very own Rock Your Mocs Day, encouraging students to wear their traditional moccasins to school. I want to extend my gratitude to our Native American programming team, whose dedication to students and families reflects Kyrene's year-round commitment to celebrating culture, fostering belonging, and strengthening partnerships across our diverse community. Last month, Kyrene Middle School students participated in their inaugural IB Day of Service,

189taking part in nearly 20 projects that supported both their local community and causes around the world. From addressing food insecurity and animal welfare to social-emotional needs and campus beautification, students put the values of the International Baccalaureate Program into action. Their efforts demonstrated empathy, collaboration, and global citizenship. qualities that will continue to shape their time in Kyrene and beyond. And Kyrene continues to strengthen pathways between our middle schools and our neighboring high schools. Recently, Kyrene Del Pueblo Art Students partnered with Mountain Point High School Ceramics Program to create bowls benefiting the Empty Bowls Nonprofit, an experience that expanded students' skills while contributing to the community. Altadena Middle School Choir students also visited Desert Vista High School, where they watched them perform and experience what future music opportunities looks like. These collaborations help Kyrene students build confidence,

190explore their passions, and envision their next steps beyond middle school. And that concludes my superintendent update. Thank you, Superintendent Tenius. I saw one of my kids in there. I didn't know they were going to be in the slideshow. I was like, I know them. Item 4.2 is board member statements. Do any board members have statements this evening? Member Collins? Okay. All right. Next week is the day. December 8th. Okay. For those of you who care to join me at the Capitol, 9 a.m. in front of the executive tower because they meet on the third floor. So if you care for that information, there it is. You can rewatch the video in case you missed it. But I'll be there at 830. Well, 8 o'clock because I have to scout the area first. But yeah. So

191show up. Show out. Let's try to see if we can get Tom Horn and his crew. Highly unlikely. But let's at least make some noise, make it uncomfortable for them. Like I said, it might cost you a couple hours of freedom, but I'm about that life, so let's get it. Thank you, Madam Collins. Madam Davis. Yes, thank you. First of all, I just want to give some props to our president, who I think has done just a remarkable, competent, terrific job in steering us through this very difficult process. So I just publicly want to thank you for that, Kevin, because, and I'll call you Kevin, because I'm sitting up here too. So I wanted to do that. And also, I just feel like I'm going to say this again, but our staff, our superintendent, our

192attorney, everybody who is involved in this, it's a very difficult process. And to our teachers and those of you hanging on to our every word, parents, you know, the beautiful thing about this to me is that I see a community coming together. after a long, dry spell of not being involved. And I just hope we can take the energy that has been generated, both positive and negative. I'm not just talking about people who are, you know, agreeing with each other, but all this energy. I think Kyrene is really special. I think we have the ability to become even more special in hard times. And we have an opportunity here for our community to continue to be with us and help us plan going forward so that all of our kids can really get the kind

193of quality education from the kind of quality educators that we have working in this district. So it's an honor to be here. And I just want to give props to everybody because it's been an amazing experience. Thank you, Member Davis. Appreciate the kind words as well. Any other statements this evening? All right. Items 5.1 is consent agenda. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda? Motion to approve. I have a motion by Member Satri. Is there a second? Second. Second by Vice President Nelson. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 5-0. Item 6.1 is our request to speak to the Governing Board. As per our Board Policy 1302, the Cargill Governing Board invites the viewpoints of citizens throughout the district. In-person members of the community

194can address the Board by filling out a blue card, which is available at our sign-in table. We also have the opportunity for electronic public comment. That goes out with the link sent before a meeting. We get those comments in their entirety, and they are read into the minutes of the meeting. Because we want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to participate, we do set a time limit on the number of public comments that have been submitted for in-person speakers. If we have 1 to 15 speakers, each speaker will be given 3 minutes. If we have 16 to 30 speakers... Each person will have two minutes. And if 31 or more in-person speakers... one minute. Our superintendent has informed me that we have 12 in-person public comments tonight. That means that everyone will have three

195minutes each to address the board. If this is your first time speaking, when you get your name called, you come on up to the podium. There's going to be a timer on the right and on the left, and it'll show you when your time is up. I will start us off with our very first in-person public comment, and that is from Ms. Angela Fautnola, who will be followed by Elizabeth Bolton. Hello. Good evening, board. Good evening, everyone. I hate being here. So I'm at one of my last opportunities to speak. So I'm just going to be frank in my very short amount of time. And that is to say, you've gotten a lot of recommendations. And what I'm going to keep coming back to is that Kyrene has not done its job. We are here

196talking about school closures because you've not done your job. Your responsibility is to stabilize and grow enrollment. Yet instead of doing the work, you've relied almost entirely on closing schools. And that's a death spiral for public education, in which I believe. in dearly. I believe we all believe in it dearly, but we are being very short-sighted here. We're blaming the state, making them a boogeyman, and yeah, it's not great, but instead of taking responsibility for what you haven't done, you haven't reached out to families who leave Kyrene, you haven't seriously invested and put money behind marketing and communication, you haven't used your reserves strategically to grow this enrollment, you're bragging that you're holding on to it. But you're not actually using it. And this is the pull the lever moment. If your pull the lever

197moment is to close eight schools, this is the time to use your reserves. And although I believe that they don't need to be used to float the district to cover debt, now is exactly the moment to use them to grow with this changing school choice landscape. I hate as much as you do, Member Davis, that this has now become a business model. It's horrible. But that's the way it is. And if public education is going to survive, and that is your charge, we have to evolve. We have to adapt. Families are choosing schools. Districts that invest and involve survive. If you don't, you will disappear, and public education will go with it. And I'm terrified to know what this aggressive school closure plan has done in the last months alone to next year's enrollment, just

198out of fear. You've scared them away. Let me be very clear. Small schools are absolutely necessary for mainstream special needs students. To say overcrowded hallways are no big deal is ableist. To claim that big schools are not noticeable tells me that you have not lived in a special needs family's shoes. You are dismissing lived experiences of kids who struggle every minute of every day with sensory overload, mobility, anxiety, transitions, and safety. Small environments are not a luxury. Invest in this population because, damn it, they matter. Okay? They matter. And they don't have a voice for you to hear them. But their heavily-weighting funding should give you pause. My son? gets $40,000 a year in funding. A typical student, closer to $7,500. Two autistic students pay one full-time salary. And you don't listen to them and

199you don't prioritize them. Closing schools doesn't fix enrollment. It harms neighborhoods. You're stealing from our pockets 10% of our home equity when you close a neighborhood school. You're taking from everyone. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Elizabeth Bolton, who will be followed by Carly Flieg. Hi there. I want to address this proposal through a formal risk assessment lens because this decision carries structural risks that cannot be mitigated without complete validated information. And right now, I believe we do not have the detailed information needed to operationalize this transition smoothly once executed. When a district makes closure decisions without fully validated projections or community alignment, what happens next is that families begin leaving the system immediately. And the result is multi-year funding loss and deeper instability. This is exactly what happened in Denver, St. Paul, and

200Arlington. Three strong districts where enrollment dropped because of the closure process itself. When receiving schools are not fully prepared, traffic flow, facilities capacity, special education rooms, staffing, class size modeling, what happens next is overcrowding, safety issues, and service disruptions. And the result is academic decline, teacher burnout, and families withdrawing from the district. Chicago and Philadelphia lived through this for years because operational details were not complete before the vote. When special education programs are moved without verified space, staffing, or continuity plans, what happens next is that students do not receive the services they are legally entitled to. And the result is due process complaints, Office of Civil Rights investigations, compensatory education costs, and serious equity concerns. New York City, Chicago, and L.A. all faced these consequences despite having greater resources than Kyrie. When a district moves

201forward before the full data model and operational plan are transparent to the public, what happens next is an immediate loss of trust and community backlash. And the result is governance instability, difficult passing future bonds or overrides, and higher voluntary withdrawals. This is precisely what unfolded in St. Paul, Arlington, and Oakland. Across all these examples, the pattern is consistent and undeniable. High-performing districts with strong reputations still suffered significant harm when closures were executed without complete, validated operational planning. Kyrene does not yet have that readiness. Before taking on irreversible action that will reshape this district for decades, we must ensure the assumptions impacts and operational plans are accurate, complete, and publicly validated. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Fulton. Our next speaker is Carly Fleeg, who will be followed by Matthew Sparks. Good evening. I'm refreshed and hopeful

202to hear President Walsh's comments tonight. His concerns are precisely what keeps me up at night. I'm still, however, very concerned that it will be too much too fast. I understand the desire for long-term stability and efficient use of resources. I'm deeply concerned that closures of this magnitude, even closing only five elementary schools and no middle schools, will have long-term negative consequences for the entire district. In particular, I'm deeply fearful that we risk accelerating attrition and deepening financial strain. I think closures of this size will become a self-fulfilling prophecy of decline. Recent local history tells us this is true. We are hearing from parents in Phoenix Elementary School districts that recently went through closures. And the estimated attrition was magnitudes greater than the demographer suggested. You've heard our friends Allison and Paul show up to warn

203you and this community about what is to come if Kyrene takes these very drastic measures and closes nearly a third or a quarter or a fifth or whatever it ends up being. They've already seen accelerated enrollment loss. And guess what these closures didn't prevent? Pulling other levers. The demographer estimated enrollment loss there of about 200, but the reality is that they lost about 560 students. I'm deeply afraid the enrollment loss projection coming from this process is an irresponsible estimate. ASBA recently posted on Facebook and their website an article about how applied economics can help with addressing district enrollment decline. It acknowledged that population is projected to grow in Arizona by 37% by 2050 and that while the under-18 growth has certainly slowed, it's expected to rebound after 2030. So in a mere four years. While

204there is no data in this article to understand the scale of this rebound, it also recognized that state public school enrollment has remained flat since 2014-2015, and the public schools statewide have seen a decline of 93,000 students, while charter enrollment has grown by 130. This tells us an important story that needs to be better understood because it does not seem the problem is merely birth rate or housing costs, and we must address enrollment through a true root cause analysis. And I don't believe reducing choice in a choice state will have that desired effect for the district. shifts, I urge the board to look closely at how other districts, charters, and private schools both across Arizona and in other states are approaching community engagement and marketing and why families are leaving. If it's true that more

205closures may come in neighboring districts, we may only get one chance to change our enrollment trajectory to retain current families, bring old ones back, and invite new ones in. How can we do that in an effort to rip the bandage off if we eliminate the very choices families value in a choice state? Thank you, Ms. Fleek. Our next speaker is Matthew Sparks. He'll be followed by Claudia Hernandez. Hey, guys. I had a whole speech laid out, honestly. I'm just going to throw it by the wayside with kind of the decisions that were made today. Throughout this whole process, to me, it's really felt like the loudest voices have been heard and listened to the most, showing us and our children that affluence and pitchforks really make it easy to get what you want. So I

206just want to say thank you for all of the time that you guys do spend in doing this. Obviously, you're unpaid to do so, which, you know, the community appreciates. If that's something that you don't want to do, please don't run. Right. If that payment amount is not adequate for what you're hoping for, please don't run for a public office. Thanks so much. Thank you, Mr. Sparks. Our next speaker is Claudia Hernandez, who will be followed by Veronica Fonner. Yeah, as long as you're not planning to speak later as well. Oh, can we get somebody else to read Claudia's comments? Let's see. Yeah, Ms. Wolf-Dahne, if you wouldn't mind reading Claudia's comments, that'd be great. Yeah, absolutely. So you can read those. Claudia will come next. So our next speaker will be Veronica Fodder, who

207will then be followed by Karen Seelock. Okay. First, I want to say thank you guys for everybody that has come to KTA and checked us out. Just for saying that you guys are going to keep the KTA model, which means a lot to a lot of our families. We truly appreciate the commitment of all of you here today. Our school is uniquely positioned to support the vision. We already have the culture, the staff experience, family buy-in, and daily routines required to run a successful traditional model. This is not something that can be recreated overnight. The foundation is here, the interest is here, and the results are here. Because of that, we ask the board to strongly consider using our school as part of the solution, either by continuing the full traditional model here at KT.

208the actual campus, or by using our school as a dual pathway campus. For those of you who went and visited the campus, you can tell that there's plenty of room for different pathways to move there. You can use it for plenty of other uses. That was one of the reasons Kyrene KTA was on the repurpose because there is such a use of that facility. So we just ask that you really consider thinking about, instead of closing that campus, using it as a dual campus, because KTA already has a footprint there. Our families know that we're there. We're close to the 101. We bring the Chandler families into the KTA traditional model. We also encourage the district to communicate the timeline and decisions clearly and quickly. Families are scared. Families are worried not knowing what's going

209to happen. We have several families who have already started looking for other traditional models. We hear daily of teachers whose students are telling them they don't want to leave, but their families are ready to leave and have already started beginning tours of other traditional models. On the other hand, we still have plenty of families that are not in Kyrene School District that come to do tours at KTA, knowing that when Dr. Lester starts the tour, she forewarns them that we might not be open in the next two years because we're on the list to be closed. But families still are choosing to continue with the tours, and we've had several families still register at KTA because they're hopeful. that we'll still be open. And if we can't keep the traditional actual KT open, please just

210keep the model open for our families. And don't wait till the spring to give us answers. Open enrollment at other schools are already happening. And I just wanted to also say thanks to Cedric for being a voice for the employees and just making sure that our employee voices are heard. So thank you. Thank you, Ms. Foner. Our next speaker is Karen Seawalk, who will be followed by Catherine Peters. Good evening, everyone. I am going to completely ignore my speech at this point because the conversation that's taken place tonight doesn't reflect what I had written down. So much of our focus was to reiterate how important the traditional model is to the families, to our district. We did a survey. We pulled the data of how many families were planning to leave the entire Kyrene district

211based on the fact that the traditional model was about to be removed. It was 70%. There were 59% that said they were going to go to another district, and there was another 15% that said they were going to go to a charter or a private school where they could secure those models. So the fact that this conversation has taken place tonight, thank you very much. This is a very, very important piece for us. The uniforms are important. Every aspect of the traditional model, Spalding, cursive, all of these traditional things that kids are just not learning anymore. are so important. I would reiterate what Veronica said that keeping it on our campus is important. The socioeconomics of our neighborhood as you're talking about the criteria that you're going to be looking at moving forward. Those are

212a really big impact for us. Busing, having uniforms, having that be accessible for families. Those are all really important components for our families. We're an out-of-district family. And before I came to the meeting tonight, my husband said, I feel like we should leave Kyrene. This just feels like a fire drill. And it broke my heart because all my kids want is to continue along this same path. I would really ask that we do look, like Veronica said, how do we make our campus? We invested millions of dollars in this building. Let's use it for something. If we're going to use it for gifted, if we're going to use it for dual language, if we're going to use it for special needs, there are so many options to utilize our facilities. We have state-of-the-art facilities that

213were designed. to help advance our students. I realize we may be a little more expensive because of that, but that's because of the money that was invested. So instead of just looking at the number of operating, what the operating cost looks like, let's take a look at the big picture from that perspective and really look at what are those facilities? What can we bring in to our campus that you couldn't? put somewhere else? How much is it going to cost to put that somewhere else? There are so many aspects of our building that are such an important piece of this equation that I would really, really ask that we don't just look at moving the traditional model, that we look at focusing on keeping it there and bringing something else to us because we have

214the capability. We have the capacity. Just take advantage. It's a beautiful campus and I really think that it can be used for good. Thank you guys. I really appreciate all of your time. Thank you, Ms. Seaworth. Our next speaker is Catherine Peters, who will be followed by Mark Wolf. Good evening. Excuse me. My name is Catherine Peters, and I'm here representing the fabulous flying falcons of Kyrene Down Millennial. Don't cry. This is my daughter, Athena. She is soon to be six years old and is a kindergartner at Millennial. She has a smile that lights up a room and a heart of gold. Her hobbies include dancing, singing, drawing, and hanging out with her friends. She loves K-pop Demon Hunters, the movie Ghostbusters, both the old and the new version, and shouting 6-7 like all the

215kids her age group. She adores being a big sister and always watches what she says and does because little sister is watching. She even drew me a little leaf. which I brought here tonight because she said, Mommy, I want to be with you at your meeting tonight. This is my younger daughter, Anastasia. She's soon to be one year old and is a hopeful millennial falcon. She's a little tough around the edges compared to her big sister, but is definitely going to be the protector of our family. She loves to dance just like her big sister. and follows Athena around all day learning just to be just like her. She is hoping to also follow in her sister's footsteps to millennial and have the same experience as her role model. So why am I telling you

216all this? Because I want to highlight that our children are living, breathing little humans with big personalities and not just dots on a map to show enrollment trends and numbers. Please make sure you keep that in mind when voting and making decisions. I think with all the discussion and data, we've lost sight of the real reason why we are here. Again, I want to echo and I want to thank Vice President Nelson for saying that we don't need a gifted academy. It's not something that we want nor need. I promise you it will not work out and we will be right back here again as we discussed other situations. Please consider the potential of what a campus like Millennial can offer the students right now and not trying to force something on the community that

217the students of the community just don't want. Like I said in the last meeting, we have already tried our boundary stuff at the proposed school 25 years ago, and it did not work. Been there, done that. I won't be able to attend the December 16th meeting, as that is the same day as Athena's sixth birthday. So please don't let her present be a closure of her favorite thing in the world, her school. And again, I just want to thank you guys for the discussions tonight and the comments that you guys made. I echoed a lot of them again, like President Nelson said about the gifted community. So please keep that in mind. And I want to ask you one final time to please don't clip our rings and let our falcons soar high. Go Kyrene

218and go Falcons. Thank you, Ms. Peters. Our next speaker is Mark Wolf, who will be followed by Jackie Wallace. I would like to thank the board for giving the Kyrene community many opportunities to share our opinions. As Vice President Nelson indicated, the demographer used a regional approach. This resulted in a plan that would address the budget shortfall, but not declining enrollment. In fact, it ignored declining enrollment. During the study session, there was acknowledgement that schools need to be closed because schools are underutilized. This is not true for Mariposa. Mariposa is thriving with the highest utilization rate among elementary schools at 75%. Two-thirds are in boundary. These are families moving into the school boundary to attend Mariposa. Families moving into the Kyrene District. Staffing is stable. In fact, Mariposa excels at teacher and principal retention. Parents

219are already telling you what schools are thriving, as you've recognized by looking at the utilization rate and percentage of neighborhood or in-boundary students for selecting schools to keep. In other words, keep the schools that are thriving. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wolf. Our next speaker is Jackie Wallace, who will be followed by Bailey Eisenberg. Good evening. I'm Jackie Wallace, and I do want to say thank you for all the time and effort you guys have put in and all the hours you've lost in your own lives. School closures don't just move students from one building to another. They unsettle entire communities. When families face that uncertainty, they respond in different ways. Some accept reassignment, but many explore every option available to them. Neighboring districts, charters, private schools, and Arizona's ESAs. That loss of students as

220stated tonight is unpredictable and depends heavily on context. That's why districts normally use leakage models. They don't rely on a single guess. They test a range of scenarios to understand the real financial and enrollment risk. We have local data to guide us. Cape Creek, Isaac, Phoenix, and Paradise Valley school districts all point to the same pattern. When closures are announced, districts see a 7 to 10 percent student loss. There's no reason to assume Kyrene will be different. Right now, however, Kyrene's planning treats leakage far too narrowly. The district is only counting the students who attend the school slated for closure, but that's not how families behave. Closure announcements create district-wide instability. Even families who are not directly affected by boundary changes start reevaluating their options. Many leave because they're uncertain, they sense decline, or they

221lose confidence in leadership. That baseline loss happens before you even add the leakage from school closures or the overcrowding and program disruption that can follow. A realistic model must capture both layers, the district-wide baseline loss and the additional school-specific leakage caused by closures. As we've already seen what happens when a governing board underestimates this, Phoenix Elementary School voted on its closures earlier this year and projected a loss of 200 students. Tonight, they announced the real number. That's a 10% loss. Because of that impact, they are now considering closing even more schools. Based on the numbers shown tonight, a 10% loss of enrollment here in Kyrene would result in a $6 million revenue loss. That would wipe out the 5.9 potential cost savings of closing all the schools. It would be irresponsible for this board to

222assume Kyrene will somehow avoid similar consequences as our neighboring districts, especially in a district with such high levels of open enrollment. Families have options, and they will use them. Thank you again. Thank you, Ms. Wallace. Our next speaker is Bailey Eisenberg, who will be followed by Dylan Foner. Good evening, superintendents, members of the board and the Kyrene community. First, I do want to sincerely thank you all for your time, dedication, and commitment. I deeply appreciate all that you have done during this very difficult time. My name is Bailey Eisenberg. I'm a fifth grade teacher at Estrella. I've spent 13 proud years in a Kyrene classroom, which is why I can confidently say that the challenges we are facing as educators is not new. Teachers have carried the weight of limited resources, rising expectations, and shrinking

223support for years to come and from years before. We've seen this coming long before today's conversation. We have experienced firsthand struggles in the classroom, specifically since COVID. This is why I am urging you to please not delay the vote because... Delaying the vote only extends uncertainty for both staff and students. Consolidation isn't just about saving money. It's also about creating opportunities for students, as you have heard some other staff members share earlier tonight. At my site, we haven't had consistent specials teachers for many years, which has caused us to lose out on special events and deep connections with our students. We cannot afford more cuts to these special areas. Our students have significant academic needs, but we have fewer teachers and fewer specialists to be able to support them. We shouldn't have to choose saving

224a building in order to lose out on saving educated, knowledgeable staff members. We operate with only a half-time assistant principal, yet are expected to meet the same demands as schools with full-time leadership. Every school deserves the resources and staff to fully support their students. Consolidation will allow us to provide more support and strengthen programs district-wide because we have more students and more staff that we can use to expand those things. At our site, we still have the same amount of committees as other sites, but less teachers to sit on those committees. So some teachers sit on many committees, which means they're attending multiple meetings. What the staff want is clarity at this point and what is going to happen as we move forward. Delaying the vote will not help retain teachers because we will continue

225to operate with fewer and fewer resources. This is not because I want my school to close. In fact, far from that. But I want my staff and all the staff here in Kyrene to feel like they're working in a sustainable environment. So I urge you, please, to continue moving forward. Our students, families, and staff deserve the chance to begin planning for a stronger, more sustainable school experience. Thank you all. Thank you, Ms. Eisenberg. Our next speaker is Dylan Foner. Is Dylan here? Oh, all right. Then we have not Claudia Hernandez because she's not here, but Ms. Wolf-Dane, who will be reading for Ms. Claudia Hernandez. Good evening, superintendent, board members. So again, I'm talking here today as Claudia Hernandez, a parent from Kyrene Traditional Academy. So we live in Chandler and the traditional model is

226what brought us to KTA. If KTA is closed, we will probably look at Chandler Unified moving forward or a charter school, but not Kyrene. My daughter was going to Kyrene de los Lagos because it was a dual language school and Chandler at the time did not offer dual language. We moved to KTA two years ago and it's been a total change. where before she was on academic performance. She is now a part of GIFTED. She participated in CATS slugs, been a part of the spelling bee, both fourth and fifth grade. She's made great friends and loves her teacher. She's no longer surviving. She is thriving. And she'd be devastated if she loses her school and friends. Again, Claudia Hernandez. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Hernandez and Ms. Wolf-Dawney. That concludes all of our in-person public

227comments for the evening. Thank you again all for speaking tonight and for those who submitted electronic comments as well. Item 7.1 is Board Committee and Conference Reports. Do board members have any updates? All right. Seeing none, item 8.1, Item for Future Consideration. Do any board members wish to list items for future consideration? I'll have one. Superintendent Tenius, we've talked a little bit about community engagement. It doesn't need to be at our next meeting, but in early 2026. Could you or your team give a presentation on ways for community to stay engaged, remain engaged with the district? Some examples I'm thinking about are our site councils that exist at every single one of our schools, the citizen budget committee, which we do when we have bonds and overrides elections. There's other ways that I know that

228we can channel some of this community engagement to ongoing energy. Absolutely. Thank you. Item 9.1, meeting dates. Our next regularly scheduled meeting will be December 16th, 2025, which is two weeks from today. However, we will be meeting next week at a date TBD. That will be publicly announced and shared with you, of course, in this room. Item 10.1 is adjournment. I'll make a motion to adjourn the evening's meeting. Is there a second to the motion? Second. Second by Vice President Nelson. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 5-0. We're adjourned at 8.41 p.m. Have a good night, everyone.