001Good evening. Item 1.1, call to order board retreat. Our board retreat is called to order. Today is September 29th, 2025. It's 5.05 p.m. This meeting is being held virtually because we're on fall break. So for those traveling, hope you had safe travels. And it'll be live streamed for our community to watch online. And the recording, as always, will be made available on our YouTube channel. Item 1.2 is long-range planning discussion. So, board members, as you know, we had a retreat on Friday, September 19th, so two Fridays ago. And during that retreat, we heard some more information regarding the recommendations of the long-range planning discussion. We had an opportunity to ask questions and receive feedback. We also were able to give some additional guidance on parameters to our district leadership team. So this retreat is scheduled
002to be a further update on our long-range planning discussion. We've got a brief presentation from our district leadership team. followed by an opportunity for further discussion by the board. So this time I'll turn over to our superintendent, Mr. Lortenius. Thank you, President Walsh, governing board members, staff joining us either on this call this evening or remotely, and community members and families joining us remotely. We are here, obviously, as President Walsh mentioned, to bring back an updated map of both our middle school and elementary boundaries and potential closures based on some of the feedback that we heard in the last board retreat. What we'd like to do tonight is just do a very brief, I'm going to hand it off here to Mr. Herman in just a minute, a very brief overview of that financial impact.
003Mainly, we're just doing this, we won't go into great detail because we did that in September 19th, but it's really to have these slides available at the end of this presentation so that should the board want to have some further financial discussions, we can go back to those slides. The second area that we're going to cover is just a quick recap. of what those initial parameters were that the committee and the demographer considered and then what that initial committee's recommendation was along with the implementation timeline that had originally been shared. We just have that there again, not to go into great detail again for any reason, but just to give the board some reference points. And should the board want to go back and revisit any of those to look at for comparison, they will
004be available. Then we really get into the new content. We will talk about the updated recommendation, some from what the board recommended in our last retreat and some additional recommendations that came out of those discussions. We will share the updated boundary maps and closure recommendations, and then we'll share an updated timeline for implementation. that due to some of those changes has shifted our recommendation for the timeline and then of course we will just wrap up with a quick reminder of our community feedback opportunities which is through our public hearing so i'll have a slide that just has the date so everybody can be reminded when those are and then of course um you know the biggest part of this is for the board to then have an opportunity to ask any additional questions that you
005may have have a discussion and determine whether or not the closure recommendation and the boundary recommendation is ready to be published for the round of public hearings in order to prepare for the board's ultimate decision making potentially in December, should that timeline keep. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Herman first to kind of kick us off. Thank you. And again, as Superintendent Tinnius mentioned, everything that we're going to talk about tonight in some brevity was all covered during the study session that we had. I should say the board retreat and our board meetings and with the community long range planning team. I think it's important to start maybe with the first slide that talks about the financial impact or what we've estimated for the enrollment loss. So again, what you
006see here are the projected lower state funding amounts that would impact Kyrene's ongoing operational budget. And so there's two columns there that I've shown. One is the 26-27 estimate that we have for the impact of enrollment. And then also what that five-year total is. And so again, it's important to know that these amounts aren't just one year, then they're done, they're cumulative. So by the time you get to the fifth year and you've added up all the individual years, it's about $6.7 million. And these numbers are broken down by the timeless spending model percentages that we use to help me maintain a very high percentage at 75% of our total budget in the classroom. So this is the guidelines that we would use. And again, just to be kind of reminding of some of the
007important things with this information is we can't use one time funding to close that gap. That would not be fiscally responsible because these would be an ongoing recurring. financial impact each year. Similarly, using carry forward balances would not be fiscally responsible either because, again, you're just kicking that problem down the road. And then we cannot use our capital funding to close this gap. We're just not allowed based on statute and the limitations that we have. So these are all operational costs that we have in our budget. And then also I wanted to mention that Any enrollment or any impact from enrollment or funding loss from any boundary changes that we're going to talk about later are not included in these numbers. And also the impact from continuing Kyrene's maintenance and operations override, which is about
008$14.6 million in total, that's not included in these numbers either. On this slide was a little bit of the breakdown of financial scenarios and personnel savings and the day-to-day operational building costs were broken down to show what could potentially be saved. We've talked about this a lot, but I think it's still important for people to really understand what's in these numbers. The personnel savings that we have listed here relate to the positions. that would not move to another building if a school was closed. We know there's lots of positions at a school. Most of them would move with those children wherever they go to a new building. But there are some positions that would not. And that's what we've reflected here. And that's only what we've reflected here. And we explained that in more detail
009during that September 26 retreat. I think our superintendent broke those numbers down as far as what the what we call full time equivalent positions would be. And that's equivalent to 7.8 FTE for our elementary schools and 13.5 FTE per middle school. So that's how those numbers were derived. So again, it's not all of the staff. It's just the ones that would not be moving to another building with those students. The second column in the day-to-day building operational costs, that only includes things like utilities, insurance, custodial costs, and grounds to keep that building going on a day-to-day basis. And it does not include any capital expenditures or capital projects. So these amounts that we show are the amount of savings. that would depend on whether or not Kyrene owns and operates the building. And we've talked
010about that a lot because if you still own and operate a building, you're still going to incur these costs. And so that's why these amounts have been separated from the personnel costs and have also been shown in a range when you typically look at savings to give you an idea of what that total savings might be just from a personnel versus maybe a total cost or total savings when you look at the building costs. I do also want to mention that these amounts were calculated based on the actual amounts for each of our personnel and building costs across all of Kyrene's elementary and middle school amounts. So once the board provides some direction on what to take forward for the regional public hearings, we can definitely provide the exact amounts for each school location if
011that's desired. On this next slide, we talked about this. Again, it shows a range of potential savings that are broken into separate columns for personnel versus day-to-day building operational costs. Just again, to be super transparent or let people know what we talk about when we say savings and where those amounts might land. The bottom line on this graph is highlighted because it was the original recommendation from the Long Range Planning Committee. But you could really answer any what if financial questions based on the number of elementary or middle schools that might be closed. And then on the last slide that we have in the financial review is really what's at stake and what we refer to as lever three. And that lever three was discussed again during the September 16th board meeting and again on
012September 19th during the study session. So I won't go through all of this in great detail, but the main point is if we were not able to balance our budget from either closing schools and the other two levers that we use for. our annual budget process, which involves staffing, assignment, and our departmental budgets, then we would need to be forced to look deeper into this list in order to find additional ways to reduce budget expenses and balance our annual budget. Those first three bullets, they have an asterisk that explains that there is also a connection to those lines in the Kyrene's maintenance and operations budget override. And renewal of that override will be on the ballot again this November. And if a renewal does not happen, then changes to these areas would absolutely need to
013be considered because Kyrene uses its M&O override funding to go directly into hiring almost 200 more teachers in order to keep class sizes smaller, provide expansive special areas and electives for students, and also provide additional student services. So those are the updates that I have for the finances. I'm happy to turn it back over to our superintendent. Great. President Walsh, did you want me to pause here at all if there's any questions around finances at this point or any board comment? Yeah, absolutely. Do board members have any questions or comments on the refresher by Mr. Herman? Member Davis. I have to get back. There I am. Hello. Yes, I just, you mentioned the override election as a renewal, a continuation of the existing bonds. I just wanted to mention that there are some, there's some
014very clear misinformation being circulated in the community. And I would hope that the folks who are watching would be aware of this, that some of the signs that are going up. in opposition to a continuation have an absolute There's untruth in them. They say that it is no new taxes, that that's why they're against the continuation of the bond. And my understanding is that this will not create new taxes. Is that correct? Or am I missing something? Yeah, I would just like to clarify, Member Davis, that you had said bond. I think you meant maintenance and operations override. Yes, I'm sorry. Sorry. It is not going out for a bond. I think that is one thing that you might see on some of the signs is. It speaks to our bond and override. We are
015not going out for a bond election. It's only for a continuation of our maintenance and operations override. That has been in place since 1983. So it is absolutely not a new tax and it's definitely not an increase at all. Okay. And I apologize for my misspeaking. Thank you for correcting me. Thank you. Mr. Herman, can you guys hear me? Yeah, go ahead, Mr. Collins. Yes, Mr. Herman. If you don't mind, could you, for the people that are watching, I don't know how many people are watching, could you explain to them what the difference is? Because I don't think some people understand the difference between the two. Between Bond and an override? I think you went back on mute member, Collins. Oh, yeah, the Bond override and the MNO. So some people probably don't understand it.
016So, you know, that's why, you know, Bunny saw the signs because some people like they're putting out misinformation because they probably don't even understand what it means. Yeah, that's a great question. I actually would invite our whole community to tune in to the October 14th board meeting. We're required, every school district that has a bond or an override in place is required to report every year how much you spend. every dollar of those monies to your community. And that has to happen in September and October. So we're going to do it on October 14th. But in a quick manner, you know, a bond is really used for capital expenditures for a school district. And you have to get the community's approval to be able to sell bonds. It acts just like maybe like debt would
017be, right? So there's a cost and a borrowing cost when you borrow that money and our community helps to pay for that. So those monies can only be used for capital purposes. You can't pay for teacher salaries. You can't pay for people and more positions across the district. You can't pay for your day-to-day operational costs through that. It's only capital projects, which would be things like construction projects on a building, which might be a roof, playground equipment, parking lots, things like that. And then... on the maintenance and operations override, that allows the school district to spend monies on that day-to-day expense that happens. So that you could be, or could use that to pay for personnel costs or teacher positions, really anything that your maintenance and operations budget would cover. Now, Kyrene has specifically used
018its maintenance operations override to pay for about 200 extra teaching positions. So other districts may have used it other ways, but that's how Kyrene has committed to doing that since 1983. which is one of the reasons why we have a pretty expansive list of services for our students across the board. So those are the differences. You cannot mix the two. You're not allowed to mix capital funding and maintenance and operations funding. You are not allowed to take your bond monies and spend it on things that are outside of your capital project list that your voters approve. So some very strict regulations around how that money can be spent. Thank you, Mr. Arrington. I appreciate you sharing the informational statements. about the proposed election that's coming up. Board members, any other questions on this finance piece?
019Board member Nelson has her hand up. Yes, Vice President Nelson, please. Yes, going back to the slide that showed the estimated savings by middle school and elementary school, you mentioned... So a lot of those personnel, thank you, personnel savings would amount to 7.8 full-time employees for elementary school and 13.8 for middle school. Is that correct? Just want to make sure I understood that. 13.4 was the number. Oh, 13.4. Yes. Those were the correct FTE equivalents for those two different areas. Okay, great. Thank you. That's actually really helpful. I know a lot of people have been curious about like, well, how are you coming up with those numbers? So thank you for providing that level of detail. Any further questions? All right. I'm going to move us to this next section, which, again, is going to
020be a little repetitious. The board has already seen this numerous times, the long-range committee plans recommendation and implementation timeline. I do just want to... remind the board these were the initial parameters that the Long Range Plan Committee considered, that the demographer took into consideration with some feedback from the district leadership, such things like the shared infrastructure. That was really important that he would need to know. But really, the committee's main key focus was keeping a regional approach, meaning leaving our middle schools as anchors. and really trying to be thoughtful about increasing our school utilization so that we weren't putting so many dollars in our buildings and able to put our money where our programs and our people are. I want to call out one note here. It's highlighted in orange. When the demographer ran the
021models that the committee was considering, At that time, we didn't have our 40th day numbers for 25-26 because that just day occurred last week, the 40th day of school. 40th day is always our formal enrollment number that we use year over year to do comparisons by. So at that time, we used 24-25 data because that's all we had. The reason I share that with this board is that when you see the new models, you cannot, I caution everybody, you cannot go and try to compare utilizations from the model we're going to show you today versus the models the demographer ran because you're talking about two different data points. One is 40th day in 2425. one is 40th day in 25-26. And just so you know, which we anticipated, we already cut our budget, 573 students,
022we are down from last year's enrollment to this year's enrollment with that number, which is significant, right? That's what we keep talking about, less incoming kindergartners than our outgrowing eighth graders. I also caution, although we're not going back and using those old maps, I caution even board members, I had to kind of learn this and everybody else, when you try to compare, do not try to compare like option A, option B's utilization and try to make a comparison because there's so much nuance behind once you change a boundary and the grids and the kids that go there. it shifts all the numbers across those utilization rates. So I just wanted to say that to say when you go to look at this new utilization, you don't want to try to compare it to this one
023that you saw when the committee made their recommendation. Can I just interject with a quick question? I think you can answer this, but I wanted to confirm. The 573 students... that we were down from the 40th day enrollment of last year versus 40th enrollment of this year, which is last week. That was consistent with what we'd expected. That's reflected in our budget for the year that Mr. Herman had prepared. Is that right? That would be correct. And Mr. Herman, if you want to jump in, you know, that's a good example of, right, we were finding ourselves in a situation. Again, I go back to the library decision we had to make, kind of the best of the worst options we were at when you're trying to cut. Mr. Herman, can you remind me how much
024that was this last year? Just under a million dollars. Yeah, the total, the 573, it was about... Four point... A little over $4 million. I'll have to get the exact. So we had anticipated just due to declining enrollment from demographics, a $4 million decrease in this budget. Okay. Got it. Thank you. I know you addressed that earlier. I just wanted to make sure that we all were not a surprise. Yeah. And when we first started the first meeting we had with the long range plan, that's why you might see some updated numbers as we went along the way. We were still actively addressing this budget and what that projected enrollment decline was. So in our first model that I think we shared, we actually included 25, 26. declines, but then since we had already addressed
025it by the time the committee was going to be done with their recommendation, we took that out and we started in the 26-27 school year, which is why it goes for the five years starting then. So that just is some clarification as to why that first slide in the long-range plan did include 25-26. Got it. Thank you. Please go ahead. And then again, I'm not going to read through all of this, but this was the initial implementation timeline based on the best information we had at that time, which was the committee's recommendation. So again, these slides are here. If later on, as the board's having their discussion, they would like me to go back to look at something that the committee had done prior, we can jump back to these. So updated recommendations, which is
026of course why we're here this evening, is really, as you mentioned, President Walsh based mainly on the feedback from the September 16th board retreat. So if you recall the additional parameters that the board asked us to go back and see if the demographer could consider and if we could make happen in, you know, I think it was pretty much consensus that all of the board members pretty much gave us guidance to. do what we could to preserve a full dual language option that would be open enrollment. And then there was a few individual board member suggestions that we also tried to take into consideration where we could. And that was to try to minimize boundary splits when and if it was feasible. And I think you're going to see some nice data that does show
027that we were able to get that. So thank you to our board members that made that suggestion. And we're going to, you know, where we could try to keep additional schools open and then also having a deeper discussion about our gifted options. So I'm going to talk through a couple of these before I get to the actual map. I just want to talk a little bit about the dual language and where we are at with the dual language. So based on the board's feedback, right, if you recall in the initial retreat we had way back when we first started talking about dual language and gifted, there was discussion about should we have one full dual language school in the district and consolidate the two. Part of that recommendation came from not so much our current
028numbers, but where the projections are going. And, you know, we just go up through the next five years. But if we look even a little further out, these drop a little bit more. However, the board gave some really great feedback back then about let's try to keep one on each side of the freeway. We did that. It looked like it was going to have to be a pathway. We've all talked about some of the struggles with a pathway. It also creates some struggles with the preschool and potentially even growing dual language, which we feel like is a really strong. enrollment driver in the district. So what you're gonna see in tonight's map is a recommendation that keeps both of the dual language schools open at their existing sites. They would become boundary-less, meaning they do
029not have a school boundary, so there would be no transportation. They'd be open enrollment only. You know that open enrollment can go to any of our schools, but these would be only open enrollment. They would have no boundary. What that does is if for some reason, so one, it keeps two solid dual language programs, which we think is the best. I'm a little bit, we were a little worried that if you tried to do a pathway at Lagos and there wasn't enough non dual language students, that that would be very difficult to staff, very difficult for them to maintain. that program there. So we think this is better. They can collaborate the two schools still together as dual language schools. But what that does allow for is if if some point in the future again,
030this could be five, 10 years from now, if for some reason one of the two cannot maintain enrollment for whatever reason, then you could at that point consider consolidating and it would not mess up any of the other boundaries. in the district so this would keep it very clean and if you never needed to consolidate and they were able to function as two separate schools all along and build their enrollment then great that's a win for everybody so we think this is going to be the best option When the board asked us to consider bringing back the full dual language school, of course, we looked at minimizing disruption as that's always a top priority. What I will say is you can't, any change you make has a little bit of a domino effect on everything
031else in your map. So what you're going to see in the map tonight are some changes reflected because of this single change here by bringing Norte back online. It will have an impact. on the other boundaries and it will have an impact on which schools are recommended for closure the other was gifted and we've talked a lot about gifted i just want to reiterate the numbers again just to be really clear in kyrene we serve 549 based on our current 40th day enrollment k-5 gifted students we serve 388 middle school gifted students identified and in um And in our self-contained two schools, we serve 168 second through fifth grade gifted identified students. We do, and we shared, I know we've shared where the students are going, but we do lose our service rate about a
032thousand students every year to outside gifted or advanced schools. So service rate, just for those that don't recall. is about the number of students that live in our district that are eligible to go to Kyrene that are choosing an alternative option. So a thousand is a pretty significant number. We're very aware of that. We've been watching that for a few years. It's staying pretty consistent, which tells us. that they're not even choosing Kyrene from the very beginning because we clearly aren't offering something they're looking for. And so again, that's what sparked this conversation. So as we already previously shared, we still recommend moving forward with a gifted advisory committee that would start in the spring of 2026. So sometime after January of this year. And we think that that committee partly should be tasked with
033really helping unpack and look at what are our district-wide gifted options that focus on not only retaining, but also increasing our service rate. So how do we keep the gifted kids that want to stay in our district? How do we also bring back the gifted students that maybe are choosing another pathway? Board Member Nelson, do you want me to pause there? Yes. Very happy to see that, especially with the Gifted Advisory Committee. not to get too far ahead, but making sure if it's going to be looking at K-8, does that mean we would have representation from parents, from gifted resource pullout, would teachers and other school leaders be involved? So it'd be a more, I guess, representative advisory committee. Absolutely. And we may even want some non-gifted families on there as well. One of the
034things that we're looking at, if you recall, I know that you were heavily involved in our In our exceptional student service audit we recently did, I think we're going to suggest a very similar type audit under our gifted, which would then interview a ton of stakeholders, if you will, across the district. And I think we'll get at this a little deeper before the committee. That way they have some good starting points for the committee to consider. So we're looking at bringing in a similar type, if not the same group that did this special ed audit, to also do our gifted audit. Which is really, that's wonderful. That was a very, for the community who's watching who isn't aware, it was a very thorough audit that gave some really nice guidelines for exceptional student services as
035far as staffing and other things to pay attention to. I would love to see something similar in this area. Yeah. So what we've done is we've changed it to just say anticipated, and it may end up being, you know, more than a gifted academy. It could be a gifted and talented. It could be, right, do we look at bringing in just high achieving? I mean, there's a whole lot of opportunities here. So I do want to be clear if we haven't been as clear as we should, that just saying gifted academy has kind of been the short way to say it, but it really could be expansive in what we're able to offer there. So we still anticipate this work's going to take some time. An audit will take take some time, as you know,
036with the special ed audit that we did, and then pulling the committee together and then making recommendations. And we'd be okay if it wasn't ready by 27 and we needed it to be 28. It would really be good in either way, either year. So what I want to be clear to our community is what that would mean is our current gifted services would stay as they are for now. while we're going through this audit and advisory committee and then whatever the ultimate decision and transition is. But I do need to be also really clear in that. And again, we've already been doing this in some cases, but I just need our self-contained would require us when we don't meet the staff size, the class size targets that we would be guesting in other children. We
037can't afford to be running much smaller class sizes. when we don't have enough students to fill. So we would still have to consider guesting in. Yeah, Superintendent Tanyus, I appreciate your commitment to minimizing that disruption here while we're doing this. I think it's great to have. the committee forum to get the community feedback, to get engagement from all parts of our gifted and non-gifted communities. I'd also actually love, and I'd be happy to try to help with this, get some families who have gifted children in our community who've chosen not to send their kids to Kyrene. And I'd love to get their feedback on that committee as well. Yes. So in the meantime, keeping the gifted self-contained options at our two locations on the east side and the west side for our K5, I think
038is great while we're working this out. And yeah, I understand the guesting piece. We simply cannot afford to have class sizes that are dramatically less than what our budget allows us to do. And that is not denying an opportunity and a gifted student. It just simply means that we might just have to guest in some kids that might be, you know, academically talented, but maybe not identified as gifted by statute. Is that right? Correct. I do want to clarify. It could mean a student who is identified later in the year that doesn't start the year in that class may not have space to move in in the middle of the year. If we are ongoing gifted families. Right. So, oh, yes, definitely. Third grader at a gifted program at one of our sites. You'll know
039that next year you're going to continue to have a gifted self-contained program for your. Correct. I believe board member Davis might have her hand up if I'm. Yes, thank you. How do I get it down? There we go. Two things. First of all, the gifted committee that's going to be formed, the advisory committee, I would hope maybe that some families that do not choose an academy. Are included in that as well. People who who have gifted kids who are in other programs. Yes. And I think that's what for Vice President Nelson was referring to what we call gifted resource would be those students you'd have self in in our own district. We have gifted resource and we have self contained and we have gate classes in our in our. Middle school, we do also offer
040compact math, which in some ways is considered part of that whole gifted package. So we could look at that. And then I think what, if I understood President Walsh correctly, also looking at families that are choosing outside the district. So that way we can get both, how do we address the service rate and how do we address our own internal families in order to meet the needs? Okay, very good. And I am not going to ask my other question. So just one thing. Any other questions from the board on this slide? All right. Thank you all. Superintendent Penance, please go ahead. Yeah. And then I just want to bring back, you know, it's this whole idea of we use the word choice schools a lot in Arizona and, you know, even in Kyrene and other
041schools. And so I just want to go back to when we started this conversation and I brought forward at that first retreat, the idea of what would be our choice opportunities in Kyrene. I was really focused on. open in what we call open enrollment boundary list schools. So meaning the school would not have a boundary. It is open enrollment only. I mean, technically all of our schools in the state are open enrollment. Anybody can enroll, but with no boundary. And so our recommendation was only gifted and only dual language would be the no boundary. Traditional is unique in that it is a choice school. Absolutely. Again, we also have the Computer Science Immersion, we have Arts Academy, we have International Baccalaureate. We have a lot of choice opportunities in Kyrene. Traditional is a little bit
042unique and so I just wanted to bring some data forward and I think this just warrants a conversation with the board and really some representation from the Traditional Academy for us to dig deeper into what our options are. So I want to just share the data and then I'll just share my recommendation there. In Kyrene right now at KTA, the traditional school, I've broken it out by K-5, 6-8, and then total. The reason I broke that out, as you know, is we had already made the decision to not continue with the 6-8 portion of the program as the numbers are getting so small. It's getting very difficult to staff as a middle school. We're not going to be able to offer electives here soon. And this is just current day enrollment. So if we look
043at the projections. At some point, this number gets close to 100 kids. That is almost impossible to maintain a middle school program with 100 children. So I just want to show the six state numbers, but I really want to focus on the K-5 because I think that will be the gist of our, you know, the big part of our discussion. In K-5, there's 343 traditional students. 214 of those students of the 343 live within the Kyrene traditional boundary. So their current boundary as of today. 35 students come to Kyrene Traditional from another Kyrene school. So they're what we call in-resident or in-district transfer students. So they're coming from another Kyrene school. There's 35 students. Putting that into context, like when we talked about dual language, Lagos brings in 191, I believe it is, in-district transfer
044students. Out of district, Kyrene Traditional is bringing in 94 students from outside the district. And again, we saw with dual language, Norte is a good example, bringing in 298 out of district. So again, when we look at it from whether it should be a boundaryless school, open enrollment, I think that would be a little bit of a risk to go with no boundary. So I think we need to have a further discussion. The other really important data point here is that 263 students that live in Kyrene Traditional's boundaries are not choosing traditional. They're choosing another Kyrene school. And most of them are choosing Bresas or Paloma. And as you saw in the committee's recommendation, and I think you'll see again tonight. KTA is one of our schools that's split. They are split between those two
045schools, but that seems to be where most of the kids that live in those areas that aren't choosing KTA are already going. So it should be a little less disruptive. So my recommendation is just based on this data, I think what we need to do is come together as a board and representation from the traditional academy for sure, families and staff. and have a deeper discussion about what are our options if we would like to continue some level of traditional curriculum education in K-5 in the district. And so my recommendation would be that we wouldn't do this though until after the first of the year, similar to the Gifted Academy, that until the board actually takes action on these maps, it doesn't make much sense to start the conversation right now. So I think we
046could come together sometime after the first of the year. have a board retreat first, and then decide if there's any more information we need to gather, whether that's surveys, whether that's doing some level of an audit. It's not quite the same in this case because it's a single school, but maybe just really digging in deeper into that data and what it means. So I just wanted to be clear. I think there's just been some confusion. It's not that we do not recognize the traditional academy as an option that many families want. But we do not recommend that this become an open enrollment school. So you will see that reflected. And when I say open enrollment, that it becomes a boundaryless open enrollment school. You will not see that reflected in the maps that you're going
047to see. Any questions about that or comments? One question and one comment. I'll start with my comment first. First, thank you for recognizing. Kyron Traditional Academy as a choice program. We've heard from families and staff saying, hey, we chose this school for that reason. This model really appeals to us. And I've heard that. And I thank you for recognizing that. I also want to thank you for having this recommendation to further discuss it, because I think it does merit further discussion. Regardless of where it happens, I think I'd like to be part of a conversation about whether it could happen to continue the traditional offerings and get feedback from our KTA families and school leaders. So thank you for that recommendation. I agree with it. Similar to what we said with our... gifted self-contained, which
048was, hey, while we are still looking into this, we're going to continue to offer our gifted self-contained. As I understand it, Kyron Traditional Academy is set to still remain open next year, and they'll continue to offer traditional, it'll still continue to be a traditional program next year as well, while these discussions are happening. Is that right? That would be correct. And you'll see the updated, although there is an updated implementation timeline and it has condensed the timeline, KTA would still be operating next year as a traditional academy. So that is true. So next year there will be a traditional offering in Kyrene. It will be at KTA. And then we as a board will have a retreat to think about what the future looks like beyond that. Yes, which would be the 20, not the
04926, 27, but the 27, 28 school year. So we have a little time, which is nice. Thank you. All right, so now I'm going to get into what does all this mean and how did all those different decisions impact the actual map that we're putting forward. I want to be clear in the previous version that the committee recommended, you got to see a single map that showed both middle school and elementary on one. We've actually split the maps this time. We think they're much easier to read. You're also going to see there's a situation where we are going to have to have a split. elementary going to a middle school, which is similar to what we do today. Mariposa does that today. Some of Mariposa goes to KMS and some of Mariposa kids go to
050Pueblo. So you're going to see a similar situation. And so we think just for the ease of understanding the maps and walking people through them, we kept elementary and then middle school. So I'm going to take you through elementary first and I'm going to take you through a full bullet, a few bullet points first, and then I'll go to the map and I'll walk you through it again, just because it's a little bit complicated. So on the west side, it will keep Lagos as an open enrollment dual language school, meaning no boundaries or transportation. What we call, for those that are familiar with the term super boundary, the Estrella-Lagos super boundary will be split between Monta Vista and Sierra. If you're east of 32nd, which is basically the Lakewood neighborhood for those that know the
051neighborhood, you would go to Monta Vista. If you live in the... west of 32nd and you were in the super boundary you would now go to sierra so you'll see that reflected i'll show you that here in the map if you recall i believe it was board member satry that had said i'd really like to see us keep whole schools together where possible we were able to do that in quite a few incidences when we had to move some other things around so we were able to get all of kalina in delomas so that is a shift from the other map Already, all of Millennial was slated to go to Esperanza. Based on the committee's recommendation, that stays the same. So it's not a significant change here on the west side. On the east side,
052it becomes a little bit more of a domino effect. So there really was not a lot of options, and you'll see when I show you the actual map. If we are keeping Norte open as an open enrollment dual language school, again, no boundaries or transportation. Kyrene Traditional would still be split between Paloma and Brises. All of Mariposa is now able to fit into Wagner. So without Norte being in Wagner, we were able to move and keep all of Mariposa. So that's two more schools right there that we were able to all get into one. It does keep means that Murata would stay open and we would close Menides and then all of Menides would move into Murata. And so let me show you the map and why those changes had to occur. So again, if
053you recall, the initial recommendation closed seven elementaries, six if we brought Millennial back on, but really seven. The updated recommendation closes six because you bring Norte back on. So we left Millennial closed for now until we decide if we want to repurpose because again, the Gifted Academy doesn't, it could be at any of the closed schools for that matter. So I'm going to start on this east or west side and then I'll walk you through over to the west side. So again, all of Kalina gets to go to Lomas. So it's the whole school gets to go together, which is nice. All of Millenio will feed into Esperanza. What happens here is Monta Vista keeps its current boundaries here, but it picks up the students that are non-dual language students that live here. So if
054you live in Lakewood and you aren't going to dual language, you would go to Monta Vista. The rest of this, this was what the old super boundary was. This part of the boundary, super boundary Estrella, will go to Sierra. It does keep Cerritos as is, but if you remember the note, Cerritos is expecting an influx of about 250 to 350 new students. Demographer is fairly certain those students will start showing up next year at some point, not all at once. It could take a couple years, obviously, but based on the homes that are being built, that is what we are able to predict. So this number right now looks rather low. We will update that once we actually, you know, we have 40th day next year, which does. Just to interject that Cerritos number. It's
055because there is a development going in. It is a yes. And it is slated to bring in. And again, originally the home builder that was my understanding is the original home builder that was going in there. They've now identified another home builder, which is a little bit more cost effective, I guess, is the best word I can think of to bring in maybe some younger families. And so it could help bring in a little bit more enrollment than what we had originally anticipated a few years ago. So the demographer has updated those numbers to about 250 to 350 students. But it is K-8, so some of those will be middle. And you can see it mostly balances your dual language. Anything open enrollment will still be at a lower percentage for a while. And so
056until and if you're able to build that program up. On the west east side, I don't know why I get my east and west mixed up. Sorry. On the west east side, starting up here because this is kind of where the domino starts, bringing Norte back online. does mean that obviously you've not, Wagner would be very low if we didn't backfill Wagner with some students. And so based again on that recommendation about trying to keep whole schools, when we moved Norte out of Wagner, it left enough space that all of current Mariposa can fit. So we're able to take all of Mariposa and merge them into Wagner. which means this little section up here that's always been a little bit odd for Mariposa as far as you know it's a it has always been this
057little piece here is Ninos and this piece was Mariposa it probably has something to do with back in the day the way the enrollment was to fit everybody but instead of just disrupting this small little section and moving them to Ninos we left all of Mariposa together and moved them into Wagner to follow that principle What that did, though, is if you recall in the committee's recommendation, Menides would have stayed open and Menides was taking a portion of Murata. and a large portion of Mariposa with just a small portion going up to Ninos. When we move Mariposa out of there, and the reason it was Menides is because Menides had the biggest footprint of the three. So when you're going to merge that many kids together, you really wanted to be in the biggest footprint.
058However, pulling Mariposa out of that equation and moving them up here meant... you have two schools now left to merge. Well, when we looked at the numbers, there's only about 100 in-resident, what we call in-resident students in the Monitas boundary, and a little over 300 in the Murata. So it doesn't make sense now that you're not moving another school in there to... shift 100 kids. It makes more sense to move 100 kids than it does to move the 300 kids. So that leaves us the ability to move all of Menidis over to Murata and there is still space at Murata to do that. So I just, again, that also comes down to some transportation routes that 300 kids versus 100 causes, you know, some issues for transportation. And so it's a little bit easier. Two
059thirds of Monitas' current enrollment is out of boundary. So it's either coming from another Kyrene school or out of district. So they only have about 100 in resident. So really that's just the domino effect of... emptying Wagner out, moving Mariposa, just created this whole area became very different with numbers. And so the demographer looked at the different options. And again, it came down to... Why would you, you know, from a transportation standpoint, from a boundary standpoint, move 300 kids versus 100? So that does do that shift. Just so for those that aren't aware, that aren't part of the Menides community, they were already changing a big portion of their program next year. They had already said they were not going to have middle. And they had also announced that some of the teaming was going
060to go away as they were merging schools because it was merging three communities. And so they were going to reimagine what that looked like. So that, you know, won't have an impact on that part of it. KTA is still split between Breesus and Paloma. And that is all of our elementaries. Do you want me to pause on elementary before I go to middle? Or do you want to see middle and then I'll leave it to you guys. We'll open up now. Questions on this before we move on to middle? I have a quick question. I just wanted, again, how many schools before had cohorts that had splits? And now what does it look like? How many schools still have those splits? Great question. In the committee's recommendation that we did, that we originally shared, Kalina,
061I'm going to give you all the splits first and then we can count. Kalina would have been split. Astraea would have been split. Well, the super boundary was already split. And Mariposa would have been split. Murata would have been split. And KTA would have been split. So five. And in the new one. You have one over here. You have two. So we went from five to two, which is really nice. Now there's only two. It's the super boundary is still split and KTA is split. And so, yeah, that was a nice piece of feedback that you guys shared last time. And we shared that with the demographer and he was able to do that where he could. Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, I think Vice President Nelson is that? Yeah, we
062do. Talking about transportation and having two open enrollment schools that previously weren't without transportation, I guess boundaryless if we don't want to say open enrollment. Do we know what the impact there will be for those two particular schools? From a transportation perspective. Basically, how many buses historically went to Norte and Lagos that will no longer have to go to Norte and Lagos? Right. So at Lagos, there's about 15 kids on an in-district bus and about 30 coming from open enrollment. Okay, thank you. Total. And Norte is a little harder for me to tell because it's not broken up by, it's in district, is also open enrollment combined. It's about 57. Okay, thank you. Yeah. And all elementary schools, with some exception, presently, if you live within a mile of your elementary school, you don't have
063transportation currently, correct? Correct. So for families that live in the Lagos community and in the Norte community, and by live, I mean within a mile of it, there's actually no change. Right. There is no change. Got it. Thank you. And again, you know, we can look at, depending on how open enrollment goes in transportation, we're going to be back for a conversation in October about what are some other options down the road for us. Yep. So middle school, you know, the recommendation stayed the same. There was no feedback. Recording in progress. So what it does on the west side is it does keep Altadena and Centennial open. Monta Vista, however, becomes what we call a split middle school feeder. That's a mouthful tonight. Split middle school feeder. The current Monta Vista boundaries in the other
064model that we just had proposed, you know, in the committee's recommendation, we're going to go to Centennial. In this model, it does allow us to maintain the current Monta Vista boundaries at Altadena. that little area of lakewood that we are talking about east of 32nd would go to centennial so that's what we call a split middle school feeder again we already have one of those it's not uncommon to have happen we try not to do it where we don't have to um but we really needed to do that in this case um so that our existing amount of this the boundary families they will see no change they will see no change the existing only they're new The Lagos dual language students would then, instead of feeding into Altadena, had we had originally planned, will
065feed into Centennial. On the east side, Aprende and Kyrene stay open. Cielo, Brisas, and Paloma all feed to Aprende. Murata, Wagner, and Ninos all feed to Kyrene. And then Norte continues to feed into KMS. So I can walk you through this. This is the one that gets a little bit messy over here. So again, this is our current Monta Vista. They will continue to go to Altadena. They will not be shifted up here to Centennial. But the Lagos new part here that we're talking about, which really isn't Lagos anymore because it's the non-dual language kids, this Lakewood community that is not dual language will go to Centennial. All of Lomas, all of Esperanza would go to Centennial. we decide to move forward with a gifted academy at some point and we do place it here
066those students would also go into centennial if they chose to they can go to any middle school we author gate but you know depending on what the committee comes up with and what our model looks like there would be space um at centennial then um all of the students back here in the gold will go to Altadena. What this number doesn't count for up here is obviously there won't be that many students at middle school, but you probably will see a little bit of increase at middle school at Altadena based on the new neighborhood. On the east side, all of the students in the pink, if you will, would go to KMS. All of the students in the green will go to Apprende. So already, Cielo already goes to Aprende. KTA, if they don't go
067to KTA, they go to Aprende. Obviously, Paloma goes to Pueblo, but with Pueblo closing, they'll now go to Aprende. Murata went to Pueblo. They will now go to KMS. And Mariposa mostly went to KMS. As I said, they were a split feeder before. Some of them went to Pueblo. They'll now all go to KMS. And I think that's everything on the middle school. So I'll pause there for a minute too before I go over the implementation timeline. Questions or feedback from the board? Board member Davis might be trying to get her. Member Davis, please. She's recording in progress. Um, Kylene Middle School. Again, I'm the relative newbie in town. I've learned a lot, a lot, but not everything. It is my understanding, and tell me if I'm wrong, that KMS has an international baccalaureate program.
068Is that correct? I do. Can you say a little bit more about that since there are new schools going to be going there? Yeah, an International Baccalaureate Program, remember Davis, means that unlike some of our other middle schools, there's a bit more of an emphasis on foreign language. So although not every student there is in the dual language, every student there is required to take a foreign language. So there's an additional foreign language requirement. So there's an additional special there at KMS. That works out nicely because all of the dual language from our existing Norte students also get a KMS. where they have the dual language track at middle school, much like Akimol currently has the dual language track in Ahwatukee. But yeah, the international baccalaureate largely has to do with some additional specials and
069emphasis on foreign language electives. Okay, and... Yes, that's what I wanted to know. I knew there was something special about it. They do some really cool service projects too, I must say. Oh, well tell me. I'm always impressed about their different service projects they do. So you'll see, they'll make a big deal of it. You'll get to see them this year, but definitely every year they've done, they've raised, do you even remember President Walsh, what they've raised? Quite a lot of money. Yeah. Different social projects. Okay. And I would encourage anyone who is watching and whose kids may be going to KMS to take a good hard look at what they're offering because it sounds pretty interesting to me. Yeah. And I think the International Baccalaureate is like some of the programs that lots of
070our schools have. So for example, Apprende is an avid school. In fact, I would venture the best avid school in the state of Arizona. And that's not to say that other schools can't do it, but that's part of what sets Apprendate apart. The International Baccalaureate Program is something like that at Kyrie Middle School. Thank you. So these changes do have a change to our implementation timeline that we would like to propose as well. You know, it does have impacts. There's some other things that, you know, we consider each time one of these dominoes changes directions or falls that we have to bring in transportation to look at the routes. We do look at the facilities and what can we actually, you know, the movement that has to occur. And then, of course, the enrollment disruptions.
071And so. We have condensed the timeline into two years instead of three. I think, you know, just hearing some of the feedback about the potential loss of enrollment and some of the disruptions as difficult as two years may be, we think that if we can pull it off in two, it would be better. So what we are proposing is that in 26-27, Estrella, Kalina, and Millennial and Menides would close. And in 2728, I've listed the anticipated gifted academy, but again, it could be in 2829 and it doesn't necessarily have to be millennial. There are other options that we could consider if we decide to move forward. But Akimal, Mariposa, KTA, and Pueblo would close in 2728. And to President Walsh's point, any school that's offering, whether it's You know, the anticipated gifted, keeping the self-contained
072while we're doing that with the caveat that there will be students guested in. And then also keeping KTA through the 26-27 school year until we decide where or what that traditional curriculum might look like in the district. And, you know, I would say the same thing I'd say about KTA. I think that same discussion is going to need to happen for Mariposa when you think about what they offer as a choice school, because they offer some really strong. computer science immersion programs. And I, you know, would like for us to consider how might we keep some of those things going as well. So I think it's just a good example of, you know, Kalina does a lot around STEM. And so how do we consider some of those things continuing as the schools merge? We
073should be having those conversations for all of our choice opportunities. So. I'll pause here for a minute. Yes. Yeah, I have another question, please. I'd like to understand a little bit more about Akimel. and how the decision was made that it would close. I may have missed some of the more granular discussions and I would appreciate hearing it again, if you would, please. Yeah, I can do that or I don't know. It'd be great to hear from a committee member. That's what I was just going to suggest would either... a board member or board member say to your vice president nelson would you like to share from the committee's perspective the conversation around why there was why the model closed occi mall i think it became really the five middle school option was always the
074long range planning committees second choice, but we thought out of consideration, whatever models we bring back, you know, the district and the demographer brought that to them. What those showcased is what we would have in the five middle school option is you would have students from, I believe it was Mariposa and Murata going to centennial middle school. So you'd have two elementary schools driving over the 10. And I, I know it sounds so people don't really like that level of transportation when it comes to a day-to-day commute for their kids. So once the long range planning committee saw that, it was kind of a non-starter. Nobody voted for it. And then they focused on the four middle school model, which in each one of those, Aki Mall was not kept open. And the reason for
075that. is it really goes to thinking bigger than just what our enrollment looks like today. It's really about thinking about the future and the landscape of Kyrene because what you have to consider is, you know, we have a very odd setup here if you think about the way this side of the freeway even is structured with a big mountain right in the middle. And so again, this is part of Kyrene. This is not open enrollment students up here. This is actually our district. And so if you were to close Centennial, say, and leave Altadena and Aki Mall open, you are leaving a huge chunk of your district. And let's just say we even were okay crossing I-10. You're now leaving. that much of your district with no middle school to serve the community. So if
076at some point communities start to, you know, turnover and we start to see an influx of families in these areas, you've got no middle school for them. The transportation would be really difficult. And so it really just comes down to being strategic. If you're only going to have four middle schools and you're going to have four anchor points for your region, you need to spread them out best you can across your district. So that's really... my understanding that was shared with the committee and from the demographer as to why Centennial versus Aki Mall. Again, you know, once you start moving all the students around, schools are going to get completely rebranded and you're going to have very different scenarios going on at each school, different programs. You know, it's just... but it really makes sense
077from spreading the schools out across the district. Okay. I also want to just ask, since I am not familiar with the special ed audit that was done, and by the way, I'd like to see that at some point soon, if that's possible. How will this, I know there's a fairly big group of special ed kids at Occumel. I'd like to know how they've been taken into consideration and what the movement of special ed kids, has it been included in the thoughts going into this? Great question. I'm going to have Dr. Lane speak to that. Good evening, everyone. Yes, it is a great question, and we've received some of those questions ourselves. We are actually, as the models have been proposed, changed, etc., we are looking at the capacity at each one of those proposed buildings
078and ensuring that we have capacity for students with disabilities in programs that include CCD, CCB, preschool, etc. We have not communicated any of those things because obviously the board does not vote on this until December, but know that behind the scenes, we are ensuring that we have capacity for each one of our current programs to continue in whatever buildings are recommended for continuation. Okay, that's terrific. Thank you. Appreciate it. You're welcome. Any other questions about the new recommendation on the table or the implementation timeline? I just want to back up one minute to our financials to show that what this new recommendation does, as I shared, is still keep us at the 6-2. Just so the board's aware, that's where that landed when it was all said and done. And we would be keeping closing
079six elementaries and closing two middle schools, just so that you have that back in your information. And the very last thing for us to share from the district is just a reminder that we will be going into public hearings. We will have regional public hearings. They will not be town halls. They're public hearings. They're not a Q&A. They'll just be an opportunity to collect more feedback for the board to have for when they do get into deciding to make a decision or not. And then November 18th right now is the expected additional hearing that meets the statute requirements that will be publicly noticed. So that November 18th, depending on the board's feedback or any more guidance tonight. Could either happen on November 18th, but if there's any other recommended changes, that would probably get pushed
080to December 2nd. Just a reminder, you have to have 10 days in between your statute public hearing so that that last public or the public hearing that either happens in November or December and when the board takes action. Just to remind everybody. So with that, President Walsh, I'll hand it back to you for discussion. Yeah, quick question, Superintendent Tenius. When you said it keeps it at the 6-2, is that presuming that Millennial remains closed? Yes, because you bring Norte back on. So what that means, yeah. Got it. Is three elementaries over here, three elementaries on this side, one middle school, one middle school. So if any building gets repurposed, this would assume no buildings are repurposed, but we haven't talked, right? The next phase is to kind of talk about what we're going to do
081with the buildings and what some options are. So if the district was to repurpose or repurpose in a way that we still own the building, but maybe somebody's leasing the building or we're using it for a purpose outside of K-12. Those are all the conversations that would happen in the next phase. Very good. All right, board. The main purpose of today is to discuss. Member Davis. Yes. I'd like to second what Member Satri just said. I'm very happy that the kids are going to get to stay together to the extent that we've managed to do. And I want to commend everybody for their flexibility. in being willing to check this idea out and for the work that everyone's done, including us, but some of us more than others. But certainly it was a very clear
082presentation to me tonight. And I feel really, really good about keeping the kids together. I think that makes a big difference. So it really is true that it's not the building. You know, it's the people in the building. And to keep the people who were in the buildings together moving to a new building, that's terrific. So thank you for your work and, as I say, your flexibility to entertain some new ideas. And to the committee, too, you know, for their understanding that we're all just trying to make this work. So. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. This is a nice result to see a reduction in the number of schools with split cohorts by 60%. And that is a budget neutral change. There was no additional cost. So we're going to keep the same amount of
083money in the classrooms, but keep 60% more of those families together that were previously on a school that had a split cohort. So thank you for that. I also do appreciate. the consideration into transportation. You know, I know that all the models that were presented to the committee were feasible. I think I understand from a transfer stations perspective, but perhaps not all equal in terms of implementation. So hearing you superintendent talk about looking into making sure that we can continue to provide transportation because we know how hard it is to get drivers and looking into that, I understand why we While we made some decisions to try to make sure that that our transportation is not being strained more than it already is. So thank you for that. Thank you. Again, very happy to see
084so much of the feedback provided incorporated, especially the clarifications around implementation and really taking a deeper look into some of the offerings that we have. maybe their feasibility, their scalability in a more thoughtful way. The other things I just want to voice my support for are the additional consideration and feedback on our gifted programs and on some of our choice programs like traditional. So I know those are your recommendations. I fully support them. And I appreciate you keeping those options in place while we're having those additional conversations. Thank you. I just want to, Josh, did we have a technical difficulty that we cut out for a second? Okay. Board member Satri, I don't know if you want to repeat what you said, but I believe that's when the glitch happened. I just got that it
085cut out while you were talking. And so when we do the, when we go back and do the live stream, they will be able to put it together. But if you wanted to repeat, I wanted to give you a chance to repeat your comment. Oh yeah. Thank you. I didn't know that happened. Yeah, what I had said was I was just thanking the district for taking our thoughts and our feedback and that we had collected for on our own and from the community and pulling that all together to come up with this new plan that I think is going to really be an improvement and and that it was very important to me that we saw that, like President Walsh said, a 60 percent change in the cohort. So. that we're keeping more students together
086with their teachers and their best friends. So thank you. Robert Davis. Yes, I'd just like to clarify. When I said that some people were working harder than others, I was talking about myself only. No one else, because all, you know, I have the fortune. to be able to have time to go all over this place and meet with families and parents and interested parties because I don't work. But I am in awe of all of you who have jobs. And my fellow board members, I want to commend every one of you because you Give well above and beyond. And I'm very, very impressed with all of you. And I don't mean to have inadvertently insulted anyone because I was talking about me. I was saying that some people have worked harder than everyone, actually. So
087thank you all for your dedication and your work. Any other feedback? So I will. State just for Superintendent Tanyas and her direction, we need to give her sort of the green light to go forward with the hearings and what maps to present. So as it stands right now, we have updated maps that reflect the feedback from our most recent board retreat. Right now, we could give her direction to move forward the hearings based on those maps. As I mentioned, our last retreat does not mean we are approving these maps. That does not mean that we can revisit these maps. It simply means that these are the maps that are going forward for the hearings that are listed on the screen. I would like to continue having conversations along the way. as a board publicly. Once
088we get back from fall break, they'll all be in person and continue to discuss because I think we're going to continue to get some feedback from our community. As we've heard from board members today, I think the feedback we've gotten today to date has really helped us refine what was a really thoughtful recommendation from the committee. And we may hear some more feedback. So I'd like to keep those conversations going. You know, I mentioned at the last retreat, I'd love to see another middle school online. I know that that impacts utilization. I know that impacts finances. So maybe one of those things that I can talk about with you all and Mr. Herman in the meantime is what that looks like. But I, for one, think that we need to give our superintendent at least
089direction on what maps to go forward with. for the hearings. So at this point, any further feedback? Otherwise, we will at least give her the green light to use these maps for the public hearings. Hearing none, Superintendent Tannis, I think these are the maps you can use for the public hearings that are listed here on the screen. And then we can plan to continue to have conversations. I know we already have retreat or discussion on transportation coming up. We can discuss gifted. We can discuss traditional. So all these things will be happening during this window and beyond because some of these conversations are going to continue to happen after this process is done. Correct. Thank you. Okay. If there's no other items, item 3.1 is adjourned. Our board retreat is adjourned. It is 626 p.m.
090Hope everyone has a good night and continues to enjoy a restful and safe fall break. Amen.