001Good afternoon. We're calling to order our regular meeting. Our regular meeting is called to order at 4.32 p.m. Today is Tuesday, June 10, 2025. Item 1.2 on our agenda is decision on whether or not to consider a parent's appeal and review the teacher's decision to promote student A to the next grade level. I'll make a motion that the governing board consider the parent's appeal of the promotion decision made by the student's teacher. Is there a second to my motion? Second. I have a second by Member Satri. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes 3-0. So we will consider that appeal. Item 1.3, similarly, a decision on whether or not to consider a parent's appeal and review teacher's decision to retain student B. I'll make a motion for the board
002to consider the parent's appeal of that retention decision made by the student's teacher. Is there a second to my motion? Second. I have a second. My member, Chaitri. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 3-0. So we will consider both of those appeals. Item 1.4, we'll convene into executive session. I'll make a motion to enter into executive session. Is there a second? Second. Second by Member Davis. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 3-0. We will now meet in executive session to consider the appeals. All right. Good evening, everyone. Item 1.7, conclude executive session. I will make a motion to conclude the executive session. Is there a second to my motion? Second. Second by Member Satri. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any
003opposed? Motion passes 4-0. The executive session is concluded at 6.40 p.m. Item 2.1 is call to order our public hearing on the instructional time model. Our public hearing is called to order at 6.40 p.m. Today is June 10, 2025. Item 2.2 is the public hearing and presentation of the instructional time model. At this time, I'll invite our Director of Academic Equity and Excellence, Ms. Amy Gingell, up to the podium to address the board. Good evening. President Walsh, members of the board, Superintendent Tenias, cabinet members, and community online, welcome. This evening is our first opportunity in front of you for a public meeting addressing our instructional time model. So let's see the presentation. Oh, it's not there. I'll just talk it through. Okay. Oh, there we go. Thank you, Ms. Jengel. Please go ahead. All right.
004So the instructional time model requires two public meetings. Tonight is the first of those public meetings. It is pursuant to ARS 15808. And the instructional time model will apply to all schools in Kyrene. So instructional time model is put together to address students that are learning in a non-classroom setting. So students, for example, that are online learning will be registered. Students that would be doing instructional time model, I'm sorry, would be registered in Centennial's middle school. These are our online instruction students. So we had originally a KDA program, and that program has now shifted to the Kyrene online learning program. And those students qualify under the instructional time model. All school districts are required to adopt an instructional time model to provide flexibility for how in-person instructional hour requirements can be met. In the school
005year FY23, we were allowed as school districts to provide up to 40% of in-person instruction in a remote setting. through different models such as direct instruction, project-based learning, independent learning projects, and mastery-based learning. 40%, however, represents the entire school district, not a particular group of students at a school. So it's 40% of our time or less has to be instructional time model, which we have very little chance of reaching that particular threshold. We are required, school districts are, as I said, required to hold two public meetings, and then the board will, we request approval from the board to adopt our instructional time model. It needs to be granted, and then that instructional time model is submitted to the Department of Education. So this is the Kyrene 2005-2006 instructional model. All instructional models will be equivalent
006to the in-person instructional minutes. So the minutes that students serve in a classroom with a teacher in person will be equivalent to the time that a student serves instructional time model online. They can do that instructional time model under the following conditions. They have an option to complete their online learning asynchronously, so not with a direct instruction. Part of the model actually occurs when we have extended absences. So a student that might need to be absent for a family emergency or some other option that takes them out of the school for an extended period of time, we can approve instructional time model where they are allowed to do the instructional work that their class would be doing. They submit that in a timely manner and then they get credit for the attendance by submitting that
007work. The second option is a student may participate in asynchronous learning modules. to complete coursework. We have not fully put this into place in Kyrene, but we have had several opportunities to pilot some ideas and some things around this. So we've left this particular statement in the instructional time model to allow for that flexibility and for us to have an option should we find an opportunity for students, particularly probably our middle school students, to find coursework that they can complete asynchronously in a learning module. We also have, as I mentioned, our Kyrene online learning program, who remotely attend daily teacher-led instruction in online meetings, and they participate in asynchronous learning modules as well. That's how they complete all of their coursework. And then this is also an opportunity in very limited situations, we hope, that
008if a situation occurs at a school building, such as we're unable to have students in the building from a safety consideration, or there's an outbreak of an illness, let's hope that doesn't happen. If there's an outbreak of an illness at a particular building and we're not able to have in-person instruction, we can bring that school on to an in-person instructional time model where students submit work to get the same credit that they would for attending an in-person class. So those are the four options in our model for instructional time model. So the way that attendance is recorded. is either students attend online learning with a teacher and they are marked present when they log into the online learning session. So when they enter a Zoom class, for example, they will get credit for the attendance
009for that session. They can also complete asynchronous work and it will be reported as present when the teacher confirms that the learning activity has been completed and documented. If a student is for some reason unable to complete their learning activity within 10 days of school, sorry, 10 school days, they will be marked absent for the corresponding days. This is the slight change we've made in this year's model to account for students making sure they're getting their work turned in in a timely manner so a teacher doesn't end up with a large sum of work to grade for a student that's been absent for a period of time. So if they are attending remotely, so our online learning students, their weekly modules and assignments will be completed in order to return their attendance for the week.
010Students, this is a note, students that are attending online courses while they are in a Kyrene school building are not considered to be instructional time model students. If you are currently in a building of Kyrene, you will be an in-person student, whether you are attending an online class. We have a few options this year in the 25-26 school year where students will be attending a course online with students from other schools in Kyrene with a Kyrene instructor. So they are considered in-person learning as if they were sitting in a classroom with a teacher in front of them. It's only when they are outside of the school building. when the students are outside of the school building that we consider instructional time model. Okay. All right. That's it for our public hearing. I'll accept any questions
011that you have, any comments that need to be. Thank you, Ms. Finchell. Board members, any comments or questions regarding the public hearing? All right. Thank you, Ms. Finchell. Thank you. Because this is a public hearing, we can also open up for public comment. If anybody in the audience would like to make public comment. All right. Seeing none, thank you, Ms. Gingell. Thank you. Item 2.3 is conclude our public hearing. Our public hearing is concluded at 6.50 p.m. Board members, we have to have two of these under statute, so we will have another public hearing at our next board meeting on this topic. Item 3.1, reconvene regular meeting. Our regular meeting is called to order at 6.50 p.m. At this time, all blue cards need to be turned in to our board secretary, Ms. Nancy Moser,
012if you wish to speak to the board during the call to the public portion of the meeting. Our school board meetings are held in public to conduct the business of the district. As always, our meetings are streamed live online to watch. If you can't watch the meeting live or recording, we made available and posted online within 48 hours on our YouTube channel. Board agendas can be obtained from the district office and our website 24 hours in advance of each board meeting. Our superintendent, Ms. Lartanis, and Cedar leadership are here with us tonight. Item 3.2 is our roll call. Will board members please state their name for the record? Cedric Collins. Penny Davis. Amy Satry. And Kevin Walsh. That's the record show. We've got four board members present this evening. Item 3.3 is Pledge of Allegiance
013and Moment of Silence. I'm going to ask our Executive Director of School Effectiveness, Ms. Kelly Bruner, if you could just please lead us in a moment of silence followed by the pledge. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice. Thank you, Ms. Werner. Item 3.4 is our district land acknowledgement. The Kyrene School District acknowledges that our community of schools is located on the ancestral lands of the O'odham and Peeposh peoples who have inhabited these lands since time immemorial. 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 3.5 is our Kyrene promise. We promise to provide welcoming, inclusive learning
014environments in which every student is honored, valued, and feels a strong sense of belonging and purpose. We promise to provide rigorous, responsive learning environments in which every student is given what they need to develop knowledge, skills, confidence, and a passion for learning. 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 4.1 is Preview and Approval of Agenda. Board members, any changes to tonight's agenda? If I might make a request. Yes, Member Davis. I can't get the agenda up on my computer, which is not my computer. It's one that was provided for me tonight, and I wonder if I could get some help. Yes, please. Can we have some support for Member Davis getting her
015agenda up on her computer? Thank you. And we'll give you a hard copy as well. Thank you. Thank you. If everyone has the agenda, would anyone like to make a motion to approve the agenda and the form submitted? Aye. We have a motion by Member Collins. Is there a second to his motion? Second. Second by Member Satri. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes 4-0. Item 5.1 is our Superintendent Report. Superintendent Tennis. Thank you, President Walsh, governing board members, and those joining in this evening, either here or from afar. I am excited just to share a few updates. It's summertime, so as you know, my superintendent report gets a little bit smaller. So at our last board meeting, it was just before many of the exciting events
016of the last week of school, including our eighth grade promotions. And I believe all of you were able to attend at least one. I had a fantastic time at Pueblo's celebration, seeing the excitement on our promoting students' faces. I want to share my congratulations with all of our eighth graders who are now on their way to high school. So congratulations, Kyrene eighth graders. Also excited to share that Kyrene Middle School, the Kyrene Middle School baseball team, was recently awarded a $1,000 grant from the Diamondbacks. Give back to support the purchase of new uniforms and equipment. Thank you to the Diamondbacks for helping our student-athletes shine on and off the field. I'm also delighted to announce that Kyrene Apprende Principal Renee Corey has been selected as a finalist for the AVID Secondary Principal of the Year
017Award. This recognition from AVID's Global Achievement Awards highlights Principal Corey's exceptional leadership and unwavering commitment to advancing the AVID program at Apprende. Please join me in celebrating her achievements and wishing her the best as she advances in the national selection process. Exciting news. Also proud to share that our Kyrene Traditional Academy principal, Dr. Marianne Lesher, has officially been named the 2025 Arizona National Distinguished Principal by the National Association of Elementary School Principals. Since 1984, this program has recognized public and private school principals who make superior contributions to their schools and communities. So please join me also in congratulating Dr. Lesher on this honor. And just a reminder that Kyrene will be closed next Thursday, I believe it is, on June 19th in observance of Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when more than 250,000
018enslaved people in Texas finally learned they were free over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Communities across the country have honored this day for more than 150 years as a time of freedom. reflection, and resilience. I encourage families to explore the significance of this day at n-m-a-a-h-c dot s-i dot e-d-u slash Juneteenth. And that will also be up on our presentation on board docs if anybody's looking for that link. And that concludes my superintendent's update. Thank you, Superintendent Tanyus. Item 5.2 is board member statements. Board members, would anyone like to make a statement this evening? Member Collins. Member Davis. Yes, I'm getting organized here. I apologize. I can't. I'll have to pass. I'm glad to come back to you. Thank you. Sorry. Member Sejri. Yes, I wanted to say I had a wonderful
019time at the Apprendi promotion. So I got to see my daughter go across the stage and get an up-close picture. So it was really neat. And it was. Really heartwarming, too, to see all of our eighth graders promoting to high school. And I just want to wish all our Kyrene kids a fun rest of their summer. School's coming pretty soon, though. Thank you. Thank you, Member Chaitry. Happy report that the Tempe Union High School Governing Board invited some of us to attend the Tempe Union graduation ceremonies, our sister district. Member Collins and I had the privilege of being at Mountain Points graduation together. I think, Member Chaitry, you were at Corona's graduation. I was. And yeah, I got to see my son graduate. So it was really like. Double awesome experience. It was amazing. It
020was wonderful. And I want to thank the Tampa Union board for inviting us to participate. And I think, Member Collins, you had the great idea to reciprocate and extend the invitation. So some of our Tampa Union governing board members were able to attend the Kyrene promotions. I know board member and President Barrazo was at the Kyrene Middle School promotion, I believe. Amanda Steele, she was with Superintendent Tinnis and Aaron and I at Pueblo. We had a great time. So that was wonderful. It was a great event. So congratulations to all of our promoting KMS students and our Tempe Union graduating seniors. I also wanted to recognize that June is Pride Month, and I want to thank everybody in our district for all they do to make our school environments and district office inclusive for everyone.
021Any board members have other statements? Member Davis? Thank you for your patience. Go right ahead. I have a couple of things. I attended the graduation or the promotion, rather, at Kyrene Traditional Academy, and it was absolutely delightful, just delightful, especially the students' statements. They were fantastic, and just the presence and just the feeling of family in that school was really... striking. They had a more than half of the children there had started in kindergarten, I believe, and the staff there and it just was a lovely inclusive environment. So I appreciate the opportunity to start off my time on the board with attending a promotion like that. It was lovely. I also want to, I'm going to take the opportunity to be a former teacher. I'm going to take the prerogative of having been elected to
022this office to take a minute for my statements. I'm going to do a little teaching. And tonight, I just want to read a quote from Thomas Jefferson about education. It's very short. these times that we live in, I think it's important that we remember ourselves and hopefully remind people what public education means to this country. And I'd like to focus for a minute on what Thomas Jefferson wrote to a man named William Jarvis in 1820. He said, quote, I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves. And if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional
023power. So that's my little statement for tonight. I'm channeling Mr. Jefferson. Thank you. Thank you, Member Davis. That concludes our board member statements for the evening. Item 6.1 is the request to speak to the governing board as per Board Policy 1302. We do invite the viewpoints of citizens throughout the district. I'm told we have no in-person public comments this evening. Of course, the public is welcome to submit public comments electronically at all of our meetings. You can do that by clicking on the link that's going to be included in the email notification that goes out prior to each board meeting. The board does receive the public comments that's made electronically in full. We do read them, and they're included as part of the minutes of that meeting. Item 7.1 is our consent agenda. Board members,
024any changes to the consent agenda? All right, seeing none, would someone like to make a motion to approve? I so move. I have a motion by Member Davis. Is there a second to her motion? I second. Second by Member Collins. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes 4-0. Item 8.1 is our purchasing authorization. This is the first of several purchasing authorizations this evening. Board members, this purchasing authorization would typically be a consent agenda. However, as previously established, it's been pulled from the consent agenda to allow Member Satri to abstain. Mr. Herman is here with us, our Assistant Superintendent and Chief Financial Officer, if you have any questions. This is for the... Request for proposal K25-1330 stop loss insurance to Stealth Partner Group, HCC Life Insurance Company. Any questions on
025this matter? Seeing none, I'll make a motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. Second by Member Davis. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Abstain. Member Satri abstains. The motion passes 3-0 with one abstention. Item 8.2, purchasing authorization and approval of purchase materials and services through a cooperative purchasing contract. Mr. Herman is also here with us this evening. This is a motion to approve the cooperative purchasing agreement with the State Procurement Office, Mojave Educational Services, Omnia Partners, Greater Phoenix Purchasing Consortium of Schools. Strategic Alliance of Volume Expenditures, by Board Purchasing Cooperative at the Interlocal Purchasing System, and the One Government Purchasing Alliance. That's a lot. Any questions on this item? Seeing none, I'll make a motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. I think Member Chaitry got you
026just by a hair. Second by Member Chaitry. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 4-0. Item 8.3. Purchasing authorization for the renewal of district procurement contracts. Mr. Herman, once again, is here with us. Do you have any questions? This is for the renewal of a multi-term procurement contract to previously awarded vendors for the approximate amounts on the fiscal year that are set forth on board docs. Any questions for Mr. Herman on this? None from me. All right. Seeing none, would someone like to make a motion to approve? Aye. Motion. A motion by Member Collins. Is there a second? Second. Second by Member Satri. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 4-0. Item 8.4, our last purchasing authorization. This is designation of sole source providers. This
027is a designation of sole source providers for supplies and the approximate expenditure amounts that are set forth in board docs for the board's review as well as the public's review for the 25-26 fiscal year. Any questions? Seeing none, someone like to make a motion to approve. So moved. Motion by Member Davis. Is there a second to her motion? Second. Second by Member Collins. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes four to zero. All right, Mr. Herman, you're not off the hook. Item 8.5, budget, total revenue, and expenditures. We'll invite our Associate Superintendent and Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Chris Herman, up to the podium. Thank you, President Walsh, Superintendent, board members, colleagues, and those joining us from parts unknown tonight. We're going to talk a little bit about total revenues
028and total expenditures in our budget. And as I'm waiting for the slides to pop up, I want to talk a little bit about some placeholder slides that we have in there. We talked about the budget annual report as being one of the areas that people can go to if they have questions about our budget. We're going to work for that report to be uploaded here probably in the fall for 25 and 26. But I would say that's a good place to start if people have questions. Thank you. A couple other slides that we have just as placeholders. This slide we present in each budget meeting in case someone has not been to a previous presentation. It simply establishes that our spring budget presentations follow the format and characterization of funds as defined by the USFR
029and how that aligns with other government reporting structures and entities. So that's consistency with USFR reporting. And again, this slide is a recap as well, but it does show our community that all of our fund categories and fund types have been covered throughout our spring study sessions. And finally, when you look at the overall timeline, we're at the point in our budget process where we can cover and quantify all of the district-wide expenditures and that information and compare that against the revenue amounts. across all of our fund categories and give the entire picture of our budget for next year. The state of Arizona at this time has not passed a budget for next year. So the numbers we will review in this presentation are still estimates. And it's still possible that there could be some
030changes now, between now, I should say, and when the board votes on the proposed budget on June 24th. And if that happens, I'll make sure and highlight that during the next meeting. I also want to acknowledge the work of our finance director, Brian Lockery, and Joanne Thorson, and Maribel Levis-Smith on his team. Without their hard work, there's so much work that happens to pull this together. I just want to thank them for their dedication and work. And before we discuss the numbers in next year's budget, I would like to spend some time reviewing one of Kyrene's procedures, which is 3-101C, because it explains and outlines some of the key elements that are followed as part. or as part of Kyrene's annual budgeting process. And this budget procedure was created in the spring of 2020, and
031it was done in order to provide clarity and accountability to the district's overall budget process. There are five main areas defined by this procedure. The first is to prepare and present a balanced budget. annually to the governing board, and a balanced budget means that current year revenues are equal to or greater than current year expenditures. However, there would be considerations and exclusions made for situations such as one-time expenditures, instances where expenditures would be made from prior year carry forward balances, or timing issues related to when expenditures are made versus when the revenues would be received. And as you'll see later in this presentation, these elements will play a key role in developing the budget for next year. The second area of this policy is to utilize a fiscally responsible process to maximize the resources that
032benefit students. And this practice is designed to spend the maximum amount of dollars in the classroom. Two important ways to maintain fiscal responsibility and provide transparency are to use zero-based budgeting concepts and ensure that spending decisions in our budget are aligned with the overall goals of the district. Zero-based budgeting is a concept that has been in place for the last eight budget cycles at Kyrene and means that expenditures must be reviewed and justified independently each year. And it also means that any unspent funds in the district office budgets do not roll over into the following year. However, though, we do allow school budgets to roll and them to spend any unspent balances. Kyrene has also followed the practice of aligning budget resources to goals and objectives in the strategic plan for many years now and
033will continue to be a practice that we utilize going forward. There are two other areas I included in this procedure and they relate to developing long-range capital plans for both curriculum and facilities. These plans were presented during the May 27 study session and ensure that funding is prioritized for curriculum and school-based needs and also ensures that the district has long-range visibility into all of our capital needs. And finally, every three years We do a thorough review and analysis of reserve balances versus peer districts in the state to ensure that Kyrene's balances are appropriate and also in line with bond credit rating expectations. The last time that review was done was May of 2022, so the next review and analysis will take place later this year. So now changing gears a little bit, we're going to
034talk and focus on some of the major budget assumptions and key areas. And I do want to start off those assumptions by recapping the impact on next year's maintenance and operations revenue, which is the largest funding source in our budget and supports the day-to-day operations for areas such as general education, special education. transportation and other district-wide functions. So any changes to M&O revenue has a direct impact on expenditures. This slide only shows the ongoing changes to M&O revenue compared to last year's budget. Enrollment decline represents the largest change in M&O funding next year and would be captured in the Group A portion of the state funding formula. And as we discussed back in the April study session, there is an expected decrease of 761 students next year versus last year's budget, and that equates to
035a reduction of state funding of $4.1 million. But it's important to mention that this decrease is not being driven by families leaving the district, but rather is a result of declining birth rates and a lack of housing turnover. And these factors simply mean that there are fewer kindergarten children entering our schools versus the number of eighth grade students who are promoting on to high school. The increase that you see of $1.8 million relates to state inflation funding, and that assumes the maximum amount that school districts can receive, which is equal to a 2% increase. And state statute prescribes that school districts receive an annual funding increase that's equal to the lesser of that 2% amount or the annual change in the GDP price deflator, which is a measure of annual inflation. And although the state
036has yet to pass a budget, we do feel that using that 2% increase is a safe assumption because inflation did run higher than that 2% last year. The revenue changes from other smaller factors, such as this teacher experience index and also the M&O overrider listed on this table. And you can see that the overall impact to M&O revenue is a decrease of $2.4 million versus last year. And I'm often asked questions about how the state funds increases for employee compensation. And the short answer to that question is that Arizona does not provide any specific funding in its funding formula for employee compensation. The inflation funding is the only annual funding increase that school districts receive per state statute. But that funding increase covers and is intended to cover, I should say, any and all cost
037increases for the coming year, which includes compensation increases as well as things like increases to utilities, insurance, medical costs, contract cost escalations, or increases in the Arizona state retirement contributions. So the reality is that a substantial amount of the state inflation funding increase is consumed by higher cost increases that occur at Kyrene and other school districts every year. There are other factors such as the negative funding impact from enrollment that must be considered when you determine how much funding might be available for compensation increases. And you can see, as the case is in next year, that the negative impact from enrollment loss is often substantially more than any increases in the state's inflation funding. And so this is why Kyrene has to lower or right-size its expenses each year in order to be in line
038with state M&O funding because this allows us to be or allows us to provide employees with salary increases and to provide and maintain a balanced budget. So let's talk a little bit about how we make decisions on spending. And during the 2020-21 timeframe, Tyreet developed the concept of using a timeless spending model as a guideline for how we make budget and spending decisions across the district. We've shared this with the board and the public before, but the concept of a timeless model is to look at how expenditures should ideally be spent across the different operational areas in our organization. And we developed this model in conjunction with the Auditor General's Annual Spending Report because these ratios and categories illustrate how expenditures have typically taken place across Kyrene and also serves as our district's North Star
039whenever we prioritize and prepare an upcoming budget. It also helps us to ensure that we continue to prioritize keeping our classroom spending at the highest possible level, which has always been a point of pride for our district. And this past year, Kyrene had the 10th highest classroom spending percentage in the state and typically is in that top 10 category every year. And again, that's something we don't want to change regardless of how big or how small our budget might be each year. So this graph shows the breakdown of spending categories from the Auditor General's Classroom Spending Report along with the target levels for classroom and non-classroom areas. And Kyrene spends close to 75% of our funding in the category of classroom spending, which represents instructional areas within the classrooms as well as other areas that
040support students in instruction. This is the model we use when we develop our annual budget and it helps ensure that any particular area across the district isn't overly burdened or disproportionately impacted from any expenditure reductions. And also that our budget decisions allow us to remain near that 75 percent spending level in the classroom going forward. It also means that we evaluate and right-size expenditures across the entire organization each year. And in the following slides we'll go into more detail about what that means. So this slide illustrates the expenditure reductions that were made across all district office budgets. And it's important to mention that when we talk about making expenditure reductions, we are not lowering the bar or reducing the quality of services provided out of the district office, but rather we are looking to find
041more cost-effective or more efficient ways to perform those same activities. For fiscal year 26, expenses were reduced $900,000 across district office budgets, but unfortunately we have been experiencing increases to utility costs, which are budgeted to increase $1.5 million next year. The major categories for those $900,000 of expense reductions are shown on this graph and include $339,000 in lower personnel costs, plus reduced reduces in contracted service costs of about $265,000, lower repairs and maintenance of $162,000, and $96,000 of a reduction in supplies and services. The utility cost increase that you see represented, they're a combination of increases in both water and electricity. And although Kyrene participates in programs offered by SRP to reduce demand peak energy consumption and also makes proactive investments in capital projects to provide more energy efficient equipment. We unfortunately cannot control rate
042increases that are passed on to us. And over the last four years, our electricity rates have increased by about 20%. These rates are a combination of SRP's base rate increases and other fuel and power adjustment mechanism surcharges. So to try and help mitigate these rising costs, Kyrie invests in energy efficient and infrastructure improvements. Key projects include installation of high efficiency HVAC systems, LED lighting retrofits, roofing replacements with higher R values, which is a measure of insulation, building weatherization and upgrades to energy management systems. In addition to that, Kyrene also actively participates in SRP's demand response program, which reduces energy use during peak periods in order to lower costs. So Kyrene is also partnering with SRP's virtual commissioning team to fine-tune. system controls and optimize building performance across our campuses. And although these initiatives do generate
043meaningful savings, unfortunately, they cannot offset these higher rate increases, which are, again, are also being felt by other school districts across the state. On this slide, it explains the changes to schools and school staffing budgets for next year. And for school budgets, the situation is a little different than the district office because staffing allocations and other budget allocations for schools are based on things like staffing formulas, which make them a little bit more variable than district office budgets and naturally will adjust up or adjust down based on changes in enrollment. And because we are experiencing a decrease in enrollment of 761 students next year, this means there will be fewer teaching and support positions needed for next year. And the total budget reduction in this area is $3.2 million, and that's about 46 FTE or
044full-time equivalent employees. Although there was a change made to the library model next year, most of the FTE reductions that I mentioned were realized through natural attrition and retirements. Next year, schools will receive the same per-pupil allocation for their M&O and capital budgets as the prior year, but because of lower enrollment, there will be small reductions as you can see listed to the overall amounts budgeted versus last year. Next year, schools will also receive the same per-pupil allocation of Prop 301 money, and those funds can be used for a variety of areas to support students and teachers. And it's important to mention that unlike district office budgets, as I said earlier, the school budgets are allowed to roll over next year, which again means that schools can spend those balances into future years. So earlier
045in the presentation, I talked about the financial importance and impact of enrollment declines and that $4.1 million of reduced funding and M&O revenue. But this situation has really been happening at Kyrene for several years now. And again, it's not a new phenomenon that we've been facing at our district. And so with this slide, I want to illustrate to... both our board and community how Kyrene has been responding to this funding impact from both a budget and financial perspective. Each year when we know the impact from lower enrollment, we right-size our budgets so that they align and offset to any lost funding from enrollment. This work is necessary in order to develop a sustainable budget where our operating expenses are aligned with current year revenues. For the 2025-26 budget, the overall expenditure reductions were $4.2 million,
046which is a combination of the $900,000 of district office reductions and the $3.2 million of school reductions that we covered on the previous two slides. However, when you include the $1.5 million negative impact of the utility cost increases, the net expenditure reductions for next year are just under $2.6 million, which is shown on this graph for the 25-26 year. You can also see the amount of budget reductions that have taken place over the last nine years, which equates to a total of $24.3 million. And this amount represents permanent cost increase or cost reductions and is not related to the impact from any grants or any other one-time events. A $24 million amount. reductions is sizable and represents a 21% reduction when compared against next year's general fund expenditures. The funding loss related to enrollment over
047the same nine-year time period was just over $24 million. So this means that the amount of budget reductions have been equivalent to any funding loss, which again is why Kyrene has been able to produce and maintain a balanced budget and also provide employees with compensation increases even during these tough financial periods. This slide shows the same information as the previous graph, except it shows the specific areas that have been reduced. The largest amount of reductions were made in personnel costs, which represent almost $21 million and about 86% of the total amount. Since almost 85% of Kyrene's overall operational budget relates to personnel costs, it really isn't surprising that most of these reductions have taken place in this area. And again, you can see how sizable that is to other areas. Those are all listed as
048well as the negative impact from the utility costs. And one question I'm often asked is whether these positions were reduced because of district-wide layoffs or reductions in force, systematic eliminations of programs, or the increase in class size ranges. And the answer to that question really is no. And in fact, Kyrene has actually lowered class size ranges in its lower grades over the same time period. And when reducing personnel costs, again, hiring will always look at attrition, reorganizing departmental work, retirements, or eliminating unfilled positions first rather than implementing or implementation of a reduction in force for a particular program or area of work. And although there may have been a few occasions where a person's position might have been eliminated or restructured, there definitely would have been other opportunities within the district for that person to
049move into. I shared this slide back on the May 13th compensation presentation, but I wanted to show it again tonight because it pulls together the largest and most impactful pieces of our budget and also helps to show how employee compensation increases are incorporated as part of a balanced budget for next year. And when we are talking about employee compensation increases, I'm only referring to permanent increases, so not stipends or other one-time employee payments. So on this graph, it shows the largest components for the changes in the 2025-26 operational budget, which is broken into the factors that either create a positive or negative impact on the budget. And so what that means is things like capital funding are not included in part of this discussion. And typically, there are three large factors that influence how much
050money might be available to invest in employee compensation. One of those factors is state inflation funding. We talked about that earlier. That's for next year, about $1.8 million and listed on that positive section of this graph. There's an impact from an enrollment change. That's the second major factor. That's about $4.2 million. Again, we talked about that earlier. That's listed on the negative side. on this graph. And then the third would be reductions to expenditures. So next year we're reducing about $4.2 million. Again, that's a positive impact to our budget. And again, a couple other things that factor into next year, like utilities, and you can see that $1.5 million amount in utility cost increases listed in the negative section, along with $1.2 million for employee compensation increases. And again, that $1.2 million equates to about
051a 1% increase for all employees across the district. And next year, we are expecting to see some small increases to our Medicaid reimbursements and also income from our community educational programs. And those make up the $1.0 million that's listed as other revenue sources. So balancing the overall operating budget and keeping all revenue changes and all expense changes aligned was only possible because... of the $4.2 million of expense reductions that are taking place next year. And it also means that if we were to add additional expenditures in our budget next year, that would result in a budget that is not sustainable. So I just want to highlight a couple of key areas as part of our budget as we're pulling together all expenses. And on the earlier slide, we talked a little bit about the impact
052from Group A funding, which is funding for all students, but wanted to illustrate the impact special education has on our budget. And so this graph shows the special education funding that Kyrene receives from all sources, which would be a combination of state money from Arizona's funding formula. which is about 85% of all the money we receive for special education, as well as any grants or federal funding that we receive. So again, that's about 15%. Those amounts are listed in the blue columns. And the expenditures for special educational areas... are listed in the orange columns and include all of the corresponding costs to educate and support our population of students. And you can see that over the last nine years, the revenues received have been increasing, mostly because the population of children receiving special education services
053in our district has also been increasing. But the expenditures are also increasing and often at higher levels. So unfortunately, this data is difficult to pull together because funding and expenses are captured in many different ways. So I'm only able to provide data that's updated and accurate through the 2023-24 year. But we'll say the results for the fiscal year 26 budget will show a similar story. And this is often referred to as the gap between special education funding versus the actual expenses that districts incur across the state. Another area that's important to cover when you look at next year's budget is teacher salaries. And this slide shows 19 years of history for average teacher salaries at Kyrene. And the amounts that are shown only represent base salaries and do not include things like stipends, performance contracts,
054or any other performance pay amounts. And so you can see those amounts are listed on this slide for next year. And so for 2025-26, the budget estimates for average base teacher salaries would be just over $59,000. And a couple of things just to point out about this data in this graph. First is that the data includes salaries for all certified teachers who are represented on the certified salary schedule, whether or not they teach in a classroom. And the salary average is influenced by the overall age demographics of the teacher population. So that means that these averages could swing year over year. And this often happens if there are... are a high number of veteran teachers who might retire versus the number of newer teachers that might be hired in a given year. So when you
055see the averages drop, this is likely the case of what's happening. And specifically in year 2022-23, there was about 6.5 million dollars that Kyrene received in new state funding, and that allowed us to provide seven percent increases to teachers that year, which is why there was such a large increase during that specific time period. If you look on the graph, the 2016-2017 year, it's highlighted in orange because that was the baseline year that the state compares against for the 20 by 2020 teacher salary funding initiative. And that state provided the additional funding during fiscal years 19, 20, and 21. So when we talk about that 2020 by 2020 initiative, if you're doing the math to kind of check that percentage, you'll know. And it's important to mention that Kyrie never received enough funding to provide
056a 20% salary increase for all of our teachers, really for two main reasons. The first is that the state's funding calculation was based on the overall statewide average per teacher salaries and was not based on the average salary within each particular school district. Because Kyrene's teacher salaries were higher than the overall state average, the funding increase we received was less than what our district needed to actually provide a 20% amount. And the second area, it was because the state provided additional funding only for the number of classroom instructional teachers, which is a smaller subset of the overall population of teachers across the district. However, Kyrene, like many school districts across the state, includes more individuals in its definition of teacher than that narrower state definition. And so that meant that the state funding got spread
057over a larger number of teachers than what the state used in their calculation. So because of those two reasons, Kyrene received about $2 million less. from the state's 20 by 20 initiative than what it actually needed in order to provide that 20% increase over that three-year period. Another area that's important to review for employee pay in the budget is to compare Arizona minimum wage amounts versus Kyrene's lowest wage, lowest starting wage, which is defined by our salary schedule as the A-10 band. And this slide shows the difference between Kyrene's lowest starting wage at that A-10 band versus the Arizona minimum wage. In 2016, prior to the minimum wage laws taking effect, Kyrene paid $1.87 more than the minimum wage, but that began to change as soon as the state's minimum wage began to increase every
058year on January 1st. On January 1st of 2019, the Arizona minimum wage actually exceeded Kyrene's A-10 amount, meaning that the district had to increase its lowest wage up to that state minimum level. This also began to build wage compression as employees who were paid amounts higher or on schedules higher than that A-10 level did not see those same increases. which was an unintended consequence of raising the state minimum wage amount. And I also want to point out that Prop 206, which was the proposition that was passed to increase the state's minimum wage, that proposition did not provide any additional funding to school districts to increase any of these hourly wages. So this situation of where we were a little bit upside down for minimum wage occurred for the next three years. And in the 2022-23
059year, the district made a decision to bump its A-10 wage well above the state minimum while also decompressing the entire A band of the salary schedule. You can see that those decisions listed in the text box above that year, which pushed the district's lowest salary $1.21 above the state minimum at that time. And so today, Kyrene currently pays $0.81 above the state's current minimum wage of $14.70. And for next year, Kyrene's starting wage at that A-10 ban will be $15.51. However, we won't know the January 1, 2026. minimum wage new amount until we get closer to the end of the calendar year. If you were here or listened to the conversations about budgets from last year, you may remember that the fiscal year 25 budget contained expenditures that were considered to be one-time, meaning that
060they would not continue to recur at the same levels in future years. This year's budget has the same situation and includes $7.4 million, what we're calling one-time expenditures with those amounts shown on this slide. These amounts include $2.4 million for employee stipends, $1.8 million for special education, which represents the premium to be paid for contracted employees. There's $300,000 listed for operational costs. That represents the premium that's to be paid for contracted bus drivers. There's $100,000 listed for additional election costs, and that's needed to cover the M&O override election this November. Funding for all of these items is available because the 2024-25 current year expenses are expected to come in lower than budgeted amounts. Most of that is because of unfilled vacant positions. And so rather than build reserve or carry forward balances, we want to
061invest that money into these areas for next year. $2.8 million is also listed and included in next year's expenditure budget to support the initiatives related to the strategic plan and includes things like student and school support. professional growth and development, as well as other resources that are needed to support the schools, employees, and facilities in order to achieve the goals of the strategic plan. And funding for those areas was made available back in fiscal year 24 with the intention that this money would span across multiple years throughout the strategic planning period. So again, we're listing that in the entirety for next year's budget, but we would intend on spending that probably over the next three years. So this is the part where we get to look at all the numbers rolled up. And this slide
062shows that summarized financial picture of total revenues and expenditures for all fund categories and all fund types in a 25-26 budget. And when we talk about budgeting for the governmental and proprietary funds, typically proprietary funds are not shown or included in those consolidated financial numbers because their principal operating revenues are normally amounts related to health care benefits and other charges to district departments for goods or services. This means that the revenue and expenditures related to those internal service funds they have already been accounted for in another governmental fund category above, which is why only governmental funds are considered when you look at total revenues and expenditures for the district, because that prevents the duplication of these amounts in the overall financial statements. However, tonight I'm still going to show the proprietary fund amounts just as
063a reference in the interest of transparency and also to show that these budgets are balanced for next year. In order to see if the district has a structural balanced budget for next year, it's really necessary to separate those ongoing revenues and expenditures versus any one-time amounts. And if you remember from earlier in the presentation, that discussion on Procedure 3-101C, that a balanced budget means ongoing current year revenues are equal to or greater than ongoing current year expenditures. And then... any exclusions should be made for any situations such as one-time balances or when expenditures are made from prior year carry forward balances. And this is exactly what we're talking about and what's happening in next year's budget. So like last year, I've separated out the total revenue and expenditure amounts into one-time versus ongoing. Would there
064be no one-time revenue amounts next year? There have been one-time revenues from the state. This happens next year. There aren't any. But there would be $7.4 million of one-time expenditures that were covered in the previous slide. And all of those one-time expenditures would exist within the general fund. In that total governmental funds amount... You can see that the overall ongoing revenues are projected to be almost $191 million next year versus the total ongoing expenditures of almost $225 million, which on the surface would appear to be unbalanced. However, most of the operational funding is contained in the general fund, so focusing on that fund type is the best indication of whether the ongoing operational budget is balanced or not. So within just the general fund, you can see that the ongoing revenues of $112.2 million are
065essentially the same as and equal to the ongoing expenditures of $112.3 million. And so that means that next year's budget will be balanced from an ongoing structural perspective. And although there's a small difference of $160,000, these numbers still are not final as there still are a few calculations that still need to be performed. If those amounts do become final and are what is presented during the June 24th vote on the proposed budget, there would be enough ongoing funding in some of the smaller special revenue fund accounts, such as instructional improvement, to account for that difference. When you look at that line for special revenue funds, the expenditures of $41.3 million are greater than the $40.3 million of revenue by just over a million dollars. However, that difference is caused mainly from timing issues with grants
066or other cash funds when the spending actually occurs, looking at that time period versus when the funding is actually received. Or you could have that timing difference from expenditures occurring next year from prior year carry forward balances. And so there's a little bit of both going on there. That's not unusual to see that happening in those funds. And if you look at capital projects, the large $33 million difference between total revenues and expenditures, again, is also due to timing issues. with when spending is anticipated to occur versus when the funding is actually received. So next year, there's about $3 million in capital override fund balances that are expected to be spent on projects that we were not able to complete over the last year or so. And the remaining $30 million difference in capital projects
067is a result of incurring almost $31 million of capital project expenses. but using funding that was generated from the $43 million bond sale that occurred this past spring. And finally, just for the sake of mentioning, you know, the debt service funds would be expected, the revenues expenses would be expected to be balanced for next year. So this is our last spring budget presentation. And the next step would be to call for a public hearing during the June 24th board meeting and also vote to approve the proposed budget. We are not allowed to make any changes between the proposed budget that would be presented and voted on on June 24th and the adopted budget, which would be voted on during July 8th. And we would hold a public hearing first to discuss that adopted budget and
068then vote on the adopted budget during the normal portion of the governing board meeting. And that must all be done and submitted to the state by July 15th. This timeline assumes the legislature will pass and the governor will sign a budget before the June 24th timeline. We're hopeful that that will happen, but if for some reason that does not happen, it has happened before and we will need some additional instructions on what those next steps and timelines might look like. So that's a lot of numbers to talk about tonight. I'm happy to answer any questions or address any comments that you might have. Thank you, Mr. Herman. A very thorough, comprehensive presentation as always. You remain more hopeful than I on the budget getting passed at the state level in the next 14 days. Good
069for you. Board members, any comments or questions? Member Davis. Thank you very much. I first of all want to just comment on slide number five. Just a personal point of... observation, I'm giving all us new board members a yay because we've actually got to the end of one of your charts that we've been looking at. And I'm feeling really good about that. So thank you for your report. I also have a question on slide nine. Can you kind of, or can someone kind of just give me a quick definition of student support? Yeah, that's a great question. Student support would be areas that support students but aren't necessarily supporting them in a classroom environment. So those could be areas like health assistance. counselors, psychologists, nurses. So there are people who are supporting students and student
070needs, but they're not really instructing them in a classroom environment like a classroom teacher. So those are probably the biggest areas that fall into that category. Okay, perfect. Thank you. And the other one was instruction support. Yep. So again, these are generally certified coordinators. that again are supporting teachers but not in students but not in the classroom environment. They're developing curriculum materials. They're coaching teachers on how to instruct but not necessarily doing it with a student in a classroom. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Page 10 or slide 10. Do you know, I'm just curious, I think I know the answer, but I'm just curious. Are schools, are the schools' utility rates the same as for everybody else? SRP has a relatively... difficult rate schedule to figure out, right? They do charge different rates based on time
071of use, consumption. I would have to have our director of facilities kind of dig into that. I don't think it's the same as your home rate, I guess is what I'm saying. But is it the same for all schools? That I don't know the answer to, but we can do a little bit of digging and find out. I would really appreciate that. Thank you. I'd like to know that. And then... Lastly, on page 15 or slide 15, thank you. Did you say during this that federal funding at this moment in time is 15%? of specialized funding? It represents about 15% of our funding. But that is substantially less than it was a number of years ago. So it's gone down, down, down. I'm not sure if it's gone down as much as, you know, I
072would maybe need some other background on that. But the funding formula for education in Arizona provides more funding for our students than we get through. Typically, that's through the IDEA. 6B. I could do a little digging, get some history of that and show what those numbers are. I just don't have it broken out for tonight. Okay. Thank you. I'd like that. And thanks for your report. Thank you, Member Davis. Any other questions? Mr. Herman, not a question on a particular slide, but as I know you're aware, our state superintendent of public instruction recently announced that school districts should be expecting to receive only about 60% of their monthly state basic aid. I know that you plan for these contingencies, but could you just speak to how we're going to be navigating the uncertainty around our
073monthly funding in that interim period? Yeah. And so anytime there's funding that's held back for timing reasons, or maybe if there's a state budget issue, schools are always legally. able to spend as much as their budget capacity is regardless of how much cash they may have on hand. So there may be times where the state may not actually provide the cash to a school district. We're fortunate because we do carry enough reserves both in our cash balances and our fund balances to be able to absorb something like that if it were to happen. So it would not put us in a situation where we couldn't pay the bills or we would not be able to move forward with. programs or supports that we would want to put in place for next school year. So it
074would just be a timing issue of when we would have that outlay of cash versus when the state would ultimately get it back to us. Thank you for all your leadership and making sure we can handle that. I know not every district in Arizona is as fortunate and this delay could really impact a lot of our smaller and rural districts as well. Yeah, so in this case, we would not need to issue warrants or do things like that to be able to. essentially be front of the money in a different way. So our cash and balances would allow us to do that. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? All right, Mr. Herman, we'll see you at our next meeting. Thank you. Item 8.6 is our fiscal year 2025 strategic plan progress update. At this time,
075I'm happy to turn it over to our superintendent, Ms. Laura Tenius. Thank you. Thank you, President Walsh. Governing Board members, I am excited to share an update and my team is going to join in this update. And instead of having them come up to the podium because they're going to be bouncing around between each other, I'm going to ask them to go ahead and stay in their seats. They'll also be available to answer any questions at the end. But we're excited. We're just wrapping up year two of our hiring strategic plan, Thrive Ready for the Future. You know, you hear our promise every meeting that we speak about. I just want to remind our governing board of our four goals. These goals, of course, are for the 27-28 school year. We do have three more
076years, but we want to show you progress and some leading indicators of how we're doing. along the way and if we're on track to make those goals after two years. So our first goals around early literacy, we started this goal with really focusing in on our kindergarten class first and slowly building up to our other grade levels. So you're going to see some data in how we're doing in early literacy, specifically with kinder. Our academic progress, of course, is looking at how we're doing on our state assessments, specifically in ELA and math. And if you recall, We don't just use straight proficiency. We look at student growth and our students making growth. Are they on track and proficiency? And then really for our sense of belonging, we really, really honed in on our middle schoolers
077specifically because our data, as we were building the strategic plan, let us know that there was really a need for us to think about how do we increase sense of belonging in middle school that really came up as an issue. And so you're going to see some data there. And then, of course, our equity goal is an interesting goal. It's not as simple as a single statement. And so we're going to talk about areas specifically around our gifted identification, our advanced coursework, our discipline referrals, and our suspensions, both in and out of school, looking at it from a proportionality lens. So you're going to see, are we getting... In areas that were not proportionate, are we doing better and becoming more proportionate, which is what really our goal was. So the team's going to share
078some progress on each of those. The other thing that I think is really important and one of the reasons I kind of said they're going to sit and you're going to see a lot of bouncing around. You know, traditional strategic plans, a lot of times you had a curriculum area, you had a finance area, and they're very siloed. And our team, if you recall, when we built this strategic plan, developed this theory of action. And I just think it's really important to touch base and not forget our theory of action, which is that, you know, we said that if we empower our district and our school leaders to create interconnected. equitable systems that foster collaboration, support, accountability, and transformation, then we will ensure that every teacher provides rigorous and responsive instruction for all students. based
079on their individual needs, which increases the likelihood that students will develop the knowledge, skills, confidence, and a passion for learning, so that every Kyrene student is growing and on track at each grade level to ultimately advance from grade eight, ready to thrive in high school, college, career, and life. And I kind of want to go back to that beginning part that I said, the word interconnected. That has been a really strong theme of our teams this year in that It is not department in a silo. It really is an interconnected system. We all work together. And so you're going to see initiatives that cross over multiple departments throughout this whole strategic plan. You know, it's not just a school initiative. It really is focused on the entire district. How do the decisions we're making when
080you talk about our budget? You kind of heard that in Mr. Herman's update tonight, right? When he talked about. money being very intentional about the strategic plan and how do we put our money where our where our initiatives are and what's important and what we've prioritized. So I'm going to hand it off to the team. They're going to take you through the initiatives that we really focused on this year. So you can get an highlight of these are the things we focused on. Then you're going to get an update on how we did on the progress. And then we're going to follow that up with where are we headed? What are going to be those priority initiatives for year three of the strategic plan? So I believe I am handing it off to Dr. Sandra
081Lane to kick us off. Thank you, Superintendent. Tanya's good evening, Governing Board. We are excited to share the work that we have done this year. So I am going to kick that off. I do not have a clicker. Are we advancing our slides? I'm going to start with the initiatives within Future Ready Schools. You will notice up there at the corner there is an amount of money, $1.9 million. That is the amount that we have expended in order to achieve these goals. The great majority of that $1.9 million is approximately $1.4 million to reduce K-2 class sizes. but is also some of the other work that we have done. So, oh, thank you very much. Okay. So one of the big initiatives that we have worked through over the last two years is the letters
082training. Letters is language essentials for teachers of reading and spelling. And we received a grant to fund letters for all of our K-5 teachers that allowed them to have the coursework and complete the coursework in district for the upcoming required early literacy endorsement. And we have to date had 392 of our staff members complete letters training. And it's an intense amount of training. It's at least 90 hours, eight full units. But they are ready to now take the assessment that is required and then become certified with a literacy endorsement. We will continue to support. the completion of letters with our new staff and we will continue to support our district facilitators with additional professional learning as well. And then as far as our K-2 literacy focus, each school has developed a leadership team that is
083focused on the review of K-2. early literacy data. These leadership teams meet monthly to review school-level literacy data for K-2 teams. The goal of the team is to have conversations about that data and next steps for instruction of students. Additionally, the goal is to develop that link between the school team and the grade-level PLC, so both are functioning at the highest level. We have been able to use some of that very small amount of that $1.9 million to provide some additional planning sessions for our classroom teachers in kindergarten. So our ELA facilitator... brought teams of kindergarten teachers together over the last seven months, and they walked through a protocol of really reviewing skills assessment data, identifying those students that are struggling to acquire skills, and then planning for the upcoming unit of instruction and the
084necessary scaffolds for all learners and intervention. we believe really has been very supportive for our school teams. This spring, we also worked with kindergarten to... Kind of reimagine the way kindergarten looks at the last, at the end of the year to make sure that all of our students were getting the additional instruction that they needed. So they worked across classrooms to group children to make sure that all children were getting that extra dose of instruction if they needed it in order to achieve the goals that we had set. Now. On to social-emotional wellness. This year we adopted Character Strong. It was a new adoption this year. The program was implemented at each of our middle schools and our K-8 schools. All middle school staff were trained to implement the program. The district team and principals
085conducted walkthroughs to determine additional training needs, and then teacher professional development continued with... additional professional development on SEL in the content areas of instruction as well. So I'm now going to pass this on to Damian Nichols, our Executive Director of Information Technology and School Safety. Thanks, Dr. Lane. I'll be brief, but some of the work that we've been working on in the educational technology portion, we're really excited about. Primarily what this is, is ensuring that we're embedding technology and integration into professional development, instruction, and teaching throughout the district. The ed techs and the AEE department as a whole have been working together on this. This is not a technology department initiative. This works across pretty much all of our instructional departments within Future Ready Schools. The primary work that's been going on this year with
086that integration, we've been working with all of the AEE facilitators and coordinators as well as the technology facilitators. to integrate lessons and projects directly into the content area and implementation guides that teachers use. So it actually puts it right in front of them. We've also been working really close with the facilitators and coordinators and site leads to make sure that we're providing the PD that's necessary and modeling that for them for when they get in front of teachers. And so that's another big piece they've been working on. Another pretty big lift that has been happening. around the edtech protocols. As you know, we've been developing the new Kyrene Online and how that looks. And Dr. Ross has been a huge part of that, working with us in addition with AEE and technology together. And so
087that's really the stuff that we've been focusing on now. We've started putting together the long-term district technology committee. If you remember when we started this work way back when, we had a technology committee which consisted of really everybody you can think of, teachers, community members, people throughout the district, technology experts. They helped us develop the initial plan. Now we need the long-range committee that's actually going to help us execute the stuff that we're doing and help guide the work. So that has started a little, and we'll continue to work on this coming year and years to come. But that's a little bit about what we've done up to this point for right now. And I think it's now going to Ms. Lisa Gibson. So good evening. I have the pleasure tonight to start out the
088presentation by talking about initiatives and highly engaged people and culture. And I'm going to start off by talking about three different initiatives. So tonight I'm going to talk about teacher and leader portraits, employee wellness, and modernizing and recruitment and retention practices. So for... The teacher portraits in the fall of 2024, talent management and professional development, began the work of creating a portrait of a teacher. And our strategic plan goal was to create a portrait that reflects the knowledge, skills, and beliefs that teachers must have in order to carry out the whole Kyrene promise. And last spring, our team brought... a draft forward to the governing board of the portrait of a teacher and after some direction from the governing board we created a portrait of a teacher committee to get additional teacher input and to
089align our work with the evaluation tool to the portrait. And teachers and committee and administrators on the committee made connections to how the words chosen for the portrait were aligned with teachers and Kyrene. And as a committee, we made the decision to keep the indicators that were originally created, which are aware, compassionate, impactful, knowledgeable, optimistic, and visionary. But as a result of this review, we revised the teacher evaluation and growth system handbook to show that alignment. of the portrait and the teacher certified evaluation. The portrait of the teacher has been finalized and after the portrait was presented to administrators, we've seen evidence of how teachers and administrators are using the portrait at their school site. Employee Wellness, a really nice update is in January we added another layer of support for employees through the Calm
090app and all employees now have access to what is called Calm Health and this additional support provides all employees with mental health screenings and personalized mental health plans which are tailored to the needs of the individual. So employees... can receive personalized action plans with recommendations for benefits and resources at all, no cost to the employee. We also received a report from AmeriBen, which is our insurance carrier, which recently reported that Kyrene was above the norm in the number of employees taking advantage of health screenings or pre-screenings, such as mammograms and flu shots. So that is also really good news for our employees. And recently, the governing board approved the social and emotional wellness policy for all Kyrene employees. So we're looking forward to carrying out that policy this next school year. And next we have
091modernizing recruitment and retention practices, which is a lot of work around compensation and salary structures. And so one of our strategic plan goals was to initiate a compensation study, which we did do. This started last July. So we started collaborating with Annette Hafer from Logic Compensation Group. to understand how compensation and salary structures compare with other districts with a similar size to Kyrene. And the compensation study was completed this year and the data used to, that we are using to analyze, we are going through all the surveys and analyzing the data. Matter of fact, we have a meeting at the end of this month with Annette in person to kind of start our planning process for next year. We also modernized our recruiting efforts and updated our job fairs. We now conduct virtual interviews and
092virtual interviews, screening interviews with candidates and then invite them into in-person interviews if they score high on their virtual screening. And this allows employees from like around the nation to interview. But it also allows evaluators the luxury of reviewing those interviews at any time that they. that fits into their schedule. So I am now going to pass this on to Kari. Good evening. An additional initiative within the area of highly engaged people and culture are our innovative staffing models. This year we have had eight schools engage in planning for and implementing innovative staffing models at their site. These models are being built at various school sites around Kyrene. Not only do our innovative staffing models provide the opportunity to look at teaching and learning in different and more flexible ways, they also provide options for
093our teachers who have a strong desire to work with children but do not feel that the one teacher, one classroom model is a fit for them. It allows them to teach in teams of teachers. Our schools that have teaming models either across the entire school, like Benitez, Esperanza, and Apprendi, or just in certain grade levels or with certain teams, have learned a great deal this year, and it will continue to evolve this approach moving forward. Good evening. I get to talk to you a little bit about the High Leverage Partners initiative. This initiative is aimed at maximizing partnerships with businesses, families, and the community. Although this year we were just a little bit more business focused, we launched the Kyrene Partnership Portal. which is something that has, there's an entry point for businesses to say,
094here's what we have to offer, and here's why we want to be part of the schools, and for school principals to say, here are our needs and goals. So our goal in communications is to kind of play matchmaker and facilitate those partnerships so that ultimately we can see which ones are leading or impacting student outcomes, and it's going to allow us to track those outcomes a little bit better. Also this year, we hosted the first ever joint session of the Kyrene Business Alliance and the Parent Organization Roundtable because our PTOs are already some of our best school partners. So to help facilitate their partnerships with businesses and a really cool outcome of that meeting was we actually had one of our principals come because she doesn't have an active PTO this year. And she shared
095her pitch and a bunch of the PTOs that are really fortunate stepped up. to offer to help that school. So that was a partnership we didn't even intend, but it was a really cool outcome of that. So now I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the areas in optimal operations and resources. And when you look across the entirety of the three areas that we worked on, we invested about $300,000 into this area. And when you first start with the long-range facilities plan, that work really involved two main areas. The first was to develop a recommendation to the Kyrene Governing Board for a long-range plan that addresses projected enrollment trends to maximize the use of schools and facilities. And a series of meetings have been held and were held with a representation of
096committee members this past year during the months of February, March, April, and May. Topics such as enrollment, general educational funding, and budget information were discussed and shared with that committee. The second area of that... Committee work and planning work involved making a recommendation to the governing board about whether to call for a continuation of the maintenance and operations override on the November 2025 ballot. And the committee recommended that Kyrene should continue its M&O override and also recommended to the governing board that it should call for the election this November. Second area in optimal operations and resources is around program evaluation. And that work really included an expansion of the work around academic return on investment. And this year, the entire strategic leadership team received training for this discipline. The strategic leadership team is comprised of
097directors, assistant directors, and supervisors at the district office. along with a representation of school principals. And training occurred throughout the entire year in a partnership with the DM group. And as part of that eight ROI training and project evaluation, there were four teams created, and each team was assigned with a project and a focus area. And that included class size, innovative staffing models, character strong implementation, and online Spanish. And the goals of performing an ARLY analysis are really simply to determine what is working, which students is it working for, and at what cost. And so in addition to those four areas, work also continued in the area of academic intervention to review and evaluate data from year two of this initiative. And I believe I'm going to turn it back to Dr. Lane. Yes, thank
098you. Okay, I'm going to talk about the last initiative here, which is teaching and learning conditions. And when we think about teaching and learning conditions, those are the conditions that our staff, our teachers, our school leaders, our other support staff need. in order to achieve outcomes for students. So the first step in that process is something that I talked to you about just at the last meeting, which was the special education opportunity review. And so our goal there was really to determine what was working in special education and what were some areas where we needed to... put some new things in place or support some things further. And what we did through support from the district management group, we analyzed our entire special education program. We reviewed district data on student achievement, staffing, schedules, our
099finances. Also including qualitative data such as focus groups, surveys, and interviews. And they analyzed all of that information to determine recommendations. And those recommendations we are planning to implement over the next two years are collaboration and co-planning between general and special education teachers and onboarding and professional development of instructional assistance. But there is... This is just the start of the work on this initiative. There is much more to come. Thank you. So as you can see, it's been a very busy year for this team. And you can see a lot of the work that's been done. And now let's talk about what results we're seeing from all of that work. Dr. Osmeyer, do you have a... Okay, perfect. Hi, thank you. Good evening. As I begin, I would like to share that we have a
100lot to celebrate tonight. And I would be remiss if I didn't share a shout out to our Kyrene students, our staff, and our families. While I have the privilege to showcase your performance, you did the work, and we are so very proud of each of you. Let's peek in on our progress toward these goals. As we move through the years, we will share a scorecard that documents our annual performance for each goal area. The annual reporting is sandwiched between a baseline or the beginning score and our five-year goal so that our community can see performance over time. Early literacy results report the percentage of students demonstrating benchmark or above of their early reading skills. And here you see we continue to improve. Kindergarten performance shows a three percentage point gain from last year with a
101multi-year improvement of seven percentage points. Nicely done. As a reminder, however, our overall goal includes grades K through 3. This table shows the success highlighted previously, but also the status of the other three grades. As we progress, we will combine grades to calculate the composite percentage, combining and concluding with all grades showcased in 27-28. Continuing to unwrap the overall results, this view highlights school-level performance with both previous and current year results. Overall gains were made across the district with 10 schools meeting our 85% threshold this year alone. As these students promote, they will favorably influence the larger population, raising the tide for all ships, so to speak. I'll let you look at that a little bit. There's a lot of celebration on that slide. The hash marks on each one of those columns is previous
102year score. Any column that is overshadowing that hashtag is really showing improvement. Lots of success for our kindergarten students. And lastly, when we change our lens to growth, our teams are also able to measure progress over time. This is a nice visual that, one, exemplifies the growth of our youngest students, our kindergartners, moving from 31% at benchmark at the beginning of the year to 81% by year's end, and two, shows the change in later years. While indicating that they are a little bit higher in their performance at the beginning of the year, it also shows that change is a little bit more difficult as our children matriculate through the grades, further emphasizing the need for early intervention. For our next measure, academic progress, we again focus on learning outcomes, but this time we use state
103assessment results in English language arts and math for grades 3 through 8. This measure was developed a few years back in collaboration with teachers and leaders. We wanted to continue to use pass rates, but we also wanted to emphasize growth. In this way, results are reported in three different ways. Passing is the most familiar to all of us. It's defined by the percentage of students who passed. Growth is a little bit more complex. It's actually the change in the student status as related to the pass rate. So any student who's performing below pass, if their second year score is a little bit closer to the pass rate, we give them points for growing. If they were above the pass rate in year one, but grew a little bit taller from that distance in year two,
104we also give them credit for growing. The third metric is our favorite. It balances the two, between the percent pass and the percent growth. Here we're holding on to the expectation that students are going to perform at grade level. However, we give it three years' time. So in the three years, looking at your current rate of progress and the grade level benchmark that we want students to perform at, will students be on track to meet those expectations? When we calculate the overall academic progress score, we then weigh each one of these and you see those percentages at the top. So we take half of the 12% to calculate the math, we add the other half of ELA, and we continue that calculation across all three of those columns. Here we celebrated another year of success.
105I don't know if you remember, but last year at this time, I reported that we didn't make any change. This year, we have five percentage points of change, which is a really big lift for our schools when you look at unwrapping all three of those metrics. So here, too, we want to be able to do a shout out across our campuses, along the district lines, showing much growth in this area, really emphasizing our work in our upper grade levels, three through eight as compared. to our early literacy goals. So again, nicely done. Sense of belonging focuses on our middle school grades and is measured by student feedback on our survey tools. Our results simply keep getting better. Here we see an overall percentage change of seven percentage points, eight total across both of those years.
106And once again, I'll show you composite results across the district from 2023 to 2025 to really highlight that change in our performance for our middle school students. And once again, you also see the results across each one of our schools that serve those grade levels of students. The hash marks again represent previous year scores. The columns, of course, are the current year that we are celebrating. And as we move into our equity goal measures, where we take a look at whether or not groups of children are proportionately represented in advanced coursework, gifted identification, referrals, and suspensions. We see the largest gain in our strategic plan outcomes with an overall change by 15 percentage points in the group performance. So here I'd like to offer a moment to reflect on the grid in front of you.
107We have all sorts of little areas of measurement going on here. If you move down the table, you have our student groups defined. And if you move across the table, you're looking at the areas of interest that we are making measurement. The words proportionate under and over define where the group's performance is. And then the shading of blue marks whether or not we made the metric being proportionate or whether or not if a group was under or overrepresented in the original state, did we make progress that decreased that percentage over time? We take a look at all those blue cells and we divide it by the total number that are in front of you. 73% are either at proportionality or we are making progress toward it. That's a huge celebration as we look at the
108final measure of our strategic plan. So in closing, our goal this evening is to summarize performance at a fairly high level. But I also anticipate that you, like I, are very interested to dig a little bit deeper. We have time set aside for us to look at this in a study session this fall when we get the school year started. I simply wanted to whet your appetite and give you a little glance as to what the overall summaries look like today. And with that, I'm going to transition back to Superintendent Tenius to get us started in work for next year. Thank you, Dr. Ostmeyer. And as Dr. Mossmeyer mentioned, we'll have our data retreat. I think you guys came in in the middle of one. After the year had started, you'll get a beginning of
109your data retreat that looks at all of the end of your data from this year. And we'll schedule that sometime when we're back in school. So we'd like to just end with giving you a little highlight. We're not going to go into every detail of every action step we're taking next year in the strategic plan. But what are some of those priority initiatives that will be focused on next year as we roll into year three of the plan? And I believe, Dr. Lane, you're also starting. Yes, thank you. Okay. We obviously, for early literacy, continue. We plan to continue to build on the momentum of the work we've done this school year, such as the early literacy planning, our school leadership teams. Next year, though, we will expand our planning sessions to include also grade
110one as our goal next year goes to first grade. And our goal is for them to also achieve the 85 percent. One of the other things, though, we're going to work on next year is a program called Breakthrough. And Breakthrough Results is also an opportunity for us to participate with the DM group. And we are going to target five schools that did not quite achieve that early literacy goal. And they will have... Their K-1 or 2 grade teacher teams will participate in a 10-week coaching cycle with a coach to focus on an early literacy skill and work to improve outcomes on that skill for the ultimate goal of students achieving an apt benchmark on DIBELS at the end of the school year. The teams are going to progress monitor students every two weeks. and through
111team conversations determine those next steps. So we're excited about that work and we're excited to bring those additional teams on board of achieving that 85%. Social-emotional learning, we will obviously continue with Character Strong, and that was a five-year adoption, as well as support the implementation of Harmony and continue the focus of SEL to achieve that growth in... all children, but also in our panorama scores. But another new initiative next year is the anonymous reporting system. An anonymous reporting system enhances school safety by enabling the early detection of threats of violence, self-harm, bullying, etc. And it really is a prevention program. Tips can lead to that pre-intervention, pre-incident intervention. So if we find out about an event or a threat to a school, we can provide pre- We could provide that intervention to the child before
112an event happens instead of, so we can intervene instead of discipline. And this system also supports mental health by providing a way for students to report their own or others' depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation. So this has really been a whole or something we have. wanted and needed to implement in our support for students' social-emotional wellness, and we're excited to implement that next school year. So now I'm going to pass it off to Dr. Kupp to talk about... Thank you. Another initiative that we are really excited to be launching is the expansion of dynamic teaching and learning environments. Learning environments that truly empower our learners to co-author their educational journeys. While much of this work really does lie ahead in the next school year and beyond, we have already begun to lay the foundation for
113this. Some examples include our Spanish online programs as well as our ELD model that we are undergoing right now and other opportunities to supplement our coursework with online opportunities for flexible student-centered learning, but also building a deeper understanding through professional development coursework to support responsive and inclusive instruction, allowing us to better meet our students' needs while reimagining how we deliver instruction. This initiative is more than about programs. It's about transforming student experiences to reflect the skills, choices, and the adaptability that they are going to need in today's world. And we're also excited to jump into our whole learner focus initiative as well. We will be supporting this initiative centered on the whole learner, ensuring that our entire learning system is designed to meet the students' core needs, from physical and emotional safety to literacy, numeracy,
114and critical thinking. This work is about creating culture that promotes... social, emotional, academic, and cognitive growth for every one of our students from pre-K to eighth grade, which reflects our values that have long been important to all of our schools. Now I'm going to turn it over to Carrie, I believe. You'll see that integrated educational technology shows up on this slide as well. Dr. Lane, thank you. And one of the things that we want to mention is you will see as we move forward into the strategic plan, less and less of integrated educational technology as a standalone item. So as Dr. Cupp talks about dynamic teaching and learning environments, as well as being whole learner focused. the integrated educational technology pieces are integral in order to make those two initiatives move forward. And so I'm
115not going to speak separately about integrated educational technology, but I want to recognize that those pieces and the moving forward of the plan that Mr. Nichols shared is integral in our dynamic teaching and learning environments, as well as being whole learner focused. And with that, I'm going to turn it back to Ms. Gibson. All right, so now our work with the teacher portraits has been finalized. We're going to start our work with the portrait of a leader. And so that work will begin this year. And we are going to use the competencies from the behavior event interviews to help create that portrait. So that work will start this year. And then along the lines of the compensation study, we are going to develop a salary structure and a plan that can be implemented given our
116financial constraints. So like I said earlier, at the end of this month, we are going to meet with Annette and the Logic Compensation Group to begin our next step of this work and to help create a retention and recruiting strategy for the following school year. So I'm going to pass it back over to Garth. And continuing with a theme that Assistant Superintendent Gibson just had mentioned with behavior event interview competency development, a team of district leaders in the area of support and accountability initiative, a team of district leaders and I are engaging in some. really good work in terms of developing the competencies of our school leaders. Nearly all of our school leaders have now participated in what we call a BEI, Behavior Event Interview, which helps us understand the behaviors that drive their leadership
117decisions. These insights allow us to really individualize a support plan. target coaching, and foster a culture of reflection and growth for our school leaders. And at the same time, this work provides clear behavior-based framework that helps us to strengthen how we define and uphold accountability for effective leadership. And we are excited to continue this work into next year and see it translate into stronger outcomes for our schools and our students. As we circle back to innovative staffing models, these models will continue to evolve and refine their practices, and we will continue to have more schools explore the possibilities of designing a model that is specific to their context. We will continue this work in upcoming years by both evolving and expanding programs at sites that are already engaged in teaming and by adding additional sites
118where the school leader feels that utilizing a teaming model would create a positive impact for their students. and for their staff. And with that, I'll turn it over to Ms. Helm. Within the High Leverage Partners initiative, our focus now is on the development of a customer service model because we know that great partnerships start with welcoming environments and great customer service. Part of that's going to be defining what does that mean in Kyrene. This work's actually already underway with the launch of our Let's Talk platform. You might have seen it on our website. AI-powered chatbot giving 24-7 information to customers, and it's part of a funnel for incoming communications to streamline responses for faster, more accurate responses, and it provides two-way language translation for more inclusive communications. We're currently using it at the district office
119with plans to expand to schools next year with the rollout of the customer service model, and we'll be also developing some training around what is the Kyrene customer experience. When you think about the next year's work in optimal operations and resources, when it comes to the long-range facilities plan, that area really will include holding additional foundation and informational meetings with the committee that's been formed, with the ultimate recommendation being a committee making a recommendation to the board. And depending on that recommendation, this could result in public hearings or town hall meetings. And those probably would be held regionally across the district to collect feedback from community members and other stakeholders. And again, ultimately, there would be a board vote on a final plan. But as soon as any changes from implementing that final plan would
120not take place, would not be in the 26-27 year. When you talk about program evaluation for next year, that really will continue the work that we've done with the five ARY projects and focus areas that we talked about earlier. And I'm going to pass it back behind me for discussion about teaching and learning conditions. Okay. Thank you. So the work around teaching and learning conditions is still focused around the special ed opportunity review. So I let you know those recommendations and we will be implementing those recommendations in the 25-26 school year. But there's really more work to do on this initiative in regard to the review of our entire system. But that work will, we plan to continue that work. after we have begun the implementation of the work from the Special Ed Opportunity Review.
121I'm now going to pass it on to Dr. Cutt. And we are also going to continue our work to build a tiered system of support for our schools, which provides differentiated resources and varying levels of support based on school performance and also the individual needs of the school as well. This approach ensures that we are not taking a one-size-fits-all approach or stance, but instead targeting our support where it can make the greatest impact. Many of you know our partnership with the University of Virginia's partners in... for leaders in education has played a key role in this effort, as has our support from our school leader or our district leaders to provide our schools with that support to help accelerate that improvement. And this initiative reflects our commitment to continuous growth across all of our Kyrene
122schools. And with that, I will turn it back over to Superintendent Tenius. Thank you. And with that, we can take any questions that you may have. But we just thought it would be nice at the end of each year to give you a highlight of where we're at for the year, what we've accomplished, are we making progress, and where are we headed the following year. So that wraps up year two and where we're headed in year three. Thank you so much. Fantastic presentation by you and the whole team. Board members, comments or questions on this presentation? Members, stay true. Yes, fantastic results. Thank you for sharing. I do have a question on slide three. You know what my question was? The theory of action. Yay. We did it. No. No. Yeah, so what stood out
123to me was. The final theory of action where every Kyrene student is growing and on track at each grade level to ultimately advance from grade eight, ready to thrive in high school, college, career, and life. And I was wondering if you could tie in what measures specifically are checking to see if eighth graders are on track. What are we using as that measure to say we've accomplished that final theory of action? didn't realize it wasn't on. It's really all of our goal metrics along the way. So that is why we started with early literacy, right? So that's our first checkpoint to say, are you going to be on track in eighth grade? If you're leaving kindergarten first, second, third, not on track in reading, you're not going to be on track in eighth grade. So
124it's really taking all of our strategic plan goals and then breaking those down by the different grade levels along the way. And then we'll check in eighth grade. If we do our job right, that academic progress score that you saw, right, will be elevated for all of our schools and all of our students. And so we can look at that by the individual student level as well. Okay. So understanding that, you know, we set the baseline a year or two ago. Yep. Right. Yep. We set the baseline two years ago when we first launched the strategic plan, and then we'll measure each year along the way, and then at the end of year five. we will see where we're at. Okay. And so when we measure academic progress, we're looking at grades three through eight,
125even though they weren't necessarily part of that strategic plan, right? That individual student per se, it's by, let me get to academic progress. Maybe Dr. Ostmeyer, you might jump in. There we go. So it won't be the same cohort of students each year because obviously your eighth graders will end up leaving and then you'll get new third graders. And you also have to have in order to look at growth and on track, you have to have at least two years worth of data. Right. Yeah. Because I was looking at slide 15 and how I know we're looking across third grade through eighth. Right. So all elementary, all the middle schools. My concern is that if we're looking to make sure those eighth graders are on track, can we set a goal for just the middle
126school students? Because separately, they're not meeting that. Their average for just middle schools is way below that. Dr. Esme, you want to help me with that one? I'm going to try to unwrap it. When you're looking at an academic progress score, you're looking at an individual student result. So a sixth grade student, in order to measure academic progress in this way, we would look at their percent pass. We would look at each one of their growth rates. So that sixth grade student, did they show growth from fifth grade and sixth grade because they have two years of data? And then their on track is also the idea of, hmm, if we look at what their current rate of progress is and we project it forward, will they continue to be on track to pass or
127will they be at a moment of passing? So each one of your percentages is localized down to the individual student looking at their level. And then we, of course, aggregate it up to a school of assignment. And I want to kind of look at that academic progress score separate from the theory of action as you're looking at whether or not students are on track for high school or career, because that's much bigger than academic progress related to this measure in and of itself. And that's what I think I was trying to say. Thank you for saying it a little more eloquently, is that it's not just academic progress is just one indicator. of whether our students are ready to thrive, it is looking at that whole picture. That's where all those goals come in. So
128when the strategic plan was originally developed, those were the conversations that occurred. Just to give you some background on. how that theory was developed and why those goals were chosen. But as part of the data retreat that we'll have, that we look at the year, it might be possible for Dr. Ostmeyer to give membership tree and the board some level around like the eighth grade in particular. Is that? And we do that by grade level during our data review. Absolutely. We do. We go into deep into each grade level at this, at this moment, we just do a very high 50,000 foot view of the progress. Right. Yeah. I would just like to see specifically what measures we are taking to so that we can ensure that our eighth graders are on track. And I
129know it's the entire picture, but looking like I said, looking specifically at academic progress, there's some improvement we can make there. Absolutely. Specifically, because I don't know that those students based on that just academic performance alone meet that that that. action, that theory of action? They do not. I will tell you just because, again, it was about a two year process of building this plan. This is where we had a lot of conversation that we don't have the luxury and enough resources to put everything into everything, if that makes sense. And so we went all in on early literacy, knowing that if we're going to have an impact on our eighth grade scores at some point. We have to get it right here first. And so that's why you see a little bit more towards
130the early literacy, because we know that if our kids are reading and on track, by the time they get to sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, their academic progress score is absolutely going to go up if their DIBL scores have gone up at the early literacy. So it is a five-year plan. And so, again, we're only in year two. And so to be at that percent yet, we didn't expect that. I mean, we saw some growth. We are hopeful that we could get there quicker, but it usually takes at least five years. And we also know with the early literacy that it may take a little bit longer for it to actually catch up to our middle school students because you've got to figure kinders are, you know, we still have five more years before they're
131even in fifth grade or sixth grade. But like I said, my concern is making sure that those middle school students. are on track for high school. And if we can, I don't know, maybe at the next round of, yeah, we dig into all that data by grade level. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you, Member Seatree. Member Davis. Yes, thank you. I have a bunch of questions, but am I correct in understanding we're going to get what you were just referring to as a more granular report about this at some other point? So we do two data retreats a year, the governing board does, and we take all of these measures. Well, we've been doing two because we just do a high-level overview, but we do two where we dig in deep. Some years we have done
132three. So the first data retreat, we look at all of the end-of-year data. for this year at the beginning of next year, because that's what our schools are looking at. And then we take this even granular for you so that you can start to look at all of these measures by grade level, by school. We start really digging into the data. Then in the mid-year retreat, what we've done in January, when you came in, this is where we combined it into one retreat because instead of doing a middle of the year and then an end again, we took the middle of the year and we compare it to... beginning of year so you can see growth within that year. So then you start getting into real time data. So we combine the beginning of year
133and middle of year into that middle retreat. I know this sounds so crazy, all these words. And then we look at end of year again, but we wait until the beginning of the next year to look at the end of the year of the previous year. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. It's a little bit messy, but it makes more sense in that you want the summative data. And we don't necessarily, like we just got state assessment in the House about a week ago, maybe, a week and a half. The end of May, but most of the data that you have with you this evening is hot off the presses. We literally just finished our school year, reconciled our records, and we're able to summarize them for the community at large and you
134specifically to be able to really celebrate the end of year successes where we have them. But I can promise you when we go to our data retreat in early fall, that's your opportunity. It's a little bit more informal. where you really can dialogue with us, ask questions. The rest of our team is here in the audience with Dr. McDougall and Dr. Bultnick. If you set us up for some of your questions and your curiosities, we can, of course, set the data up for you for lively conversations to get the year started. Happy to do so. Thank you very much. So I won't go into my granular questions now. I'll save them. Member Collins. All right. I'm only going to ask you to go three slides. Can you go to slide 18, please? I just want
135to commend this team's work. That's fantastic. We've got work to do, obviously. We're not at our end-of-year goals yet. But it's a five-year plan. And I remember when we were having this conversation last year, and, you know, we looked around the room and we affirmed to ourselves that we really do believe that what we are doing is going to pay dividends and show results, and we have to stick with it. And I remember nobody was happy about our academic progress growth last year. Nobody. And to come back and look and see, having two years, sticking with it, committing to it, funding our resources behind it to see growth over these last two years of 7%, 5%, 9%, 15% is really fantastic. And we still have some time to get to those goals, but I've been
136really encouraged to see that when we stick to it and we allocate our limited resources, as what you said, Superintendent Tenius, we can't put everything everywhere. But when we are putting our resources to these things that we committed to as a district and we committed to our community. to do these things and that we are coming here every year and publicly measuring and reporting out on how we're doing. I'm just really proud of the work that the team of course has done but every single staff member that supports student education and learning in this district has done to help get us here so thank you for that. That was a wonderful presentation. Thank you. All right board how are we doing? Do we need a break? Do you want to keep on pushing? Keep on
137pushing, I'm told. All right. Item 8.7 is our superintendent annual performance goals and performance pay. I'll turn it over to Superintendent Tenius. Thank you, President Walsh. Governing board members, as was shared with you, I shared in some board prep documents the annual addendum to my contract, that statute ARS 15341A39. There's some very... legal language around a superintendent's performance-based compensation plan. And so back in September of this past school year, your previous board approved the criteria for this plan for this year. So you're coming in at the second half of this. And by statute, they have to approve that criteria every September. So I bring that forward. Just to give you an overview of the plan, 75% was the conversation we had in December, and that is based off of my performance evaluation, which occurred in
138December of 2024. Another one will occur in December of 2025 in the next school year. And 25% of the performance plan is based on... our progress towards our strategic plan, which is one of the reasons we pair that in the same evening so you can see the progress on the strategic plan. So specifically, I just wanted to talk about these four goals. The employee wellness, as you know, and was shared, that goal has definitely been completed. The board adopted the social emotional wellness policy on May 27th, 2025. The modernizing recruitment and retention, which was specifically around the compensation study. The study was completed this spring. Due to the long-range plan, committees work not yet being completed. Compensation strategies that impact employee recruitment and retention will be finalized once the board has approved any boundary or
139facility changes, as these will have an effect on the compensation strategy moving forward. Although it's not 100% done as far as the plan bringing forward, we believe there's some other pieces that need to occur before we actually bring you a final recommendation for a compensation strategy. Long-range facility plan you heard about tonight that the demographer presentation had already occurred. I think I completed this goal mid-year, but I wanted to add a little bit more to this. So the board has been provided with a comprehensive review of all of our projected enrollment and district capacity as well as the budget. The committee has completed four meetings and has at least two more meetings scheduled for July and August, and we are hopeful that an initial recommendation from the long-range plan will be shared with the governing
140board. early in the fall semester when we come back. And of course, you heard quite a bit from Dr. Lane about our teaching and learning conditions, specifically around special education. And that summary and presentation was shared with the governing board. And highlights of the report were shared in our governing board meeting on May 27th, 2025. And so I'm happy to report that progress was made on all four goals of mine. My final goal is really around the collaboration with the governing board goals. And those were discussed previous to this new board coming. on, we will establish some new goals probably in the fall, but all of those goals were met as well as was shared out in the last governing board presentation. I think back in December we did that. With that, I am happy
141to share. And, you know, I always want to do a really big shout out. As you are aware, you heard my entire team speaking tonight. This plan is not just me. The statute is written that it is a superintendent's performance pay plan, but I could not do this by myself. And so I just want to thank my team publicly for the work that they do to keep this strategic plan alive, keep it going. to, you know, really celebrate the progress that we made in that plan is because of this group sitting here. So thank you. And with that, I'll hand it over back to you, President Walsh. Thank you, Superintendent Tennis. Appreciate the update and the progress. Board members, any questions on Superintendent Tennis' annual performance goals? Yes, I just want to thank you. And
142everyone for an incredible amount of really detailed hard work and dedication. I know how much work this stuff takes. And I just, I'm very impressed. You did a great job. And congratulations. Well said. Thank you. Any other feedback? Seeing none, I will make a motion to approve the end-of-year performance plan payout. Is there a second to the motion? I second. I have a second by Member Collins. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion passes 4-2-0. All right, Board members, item 9.1. This is a chance for Board Committee and Conference Reports. If any Board member wishes to report out on any activity they had on conferences they've attended or committee meetings they've been a part of, now's an opportunity. Member Davis. Thank you very much, President Walsh. I have the opportunity.
143I actually have two reports. The good news, the really good news, is my meeting with the Kyrene Employee Benefit Trust that I attended on June 3rd. And I just want to give a shout out before I read my statement to you to Deb Spergen, who helped me to develop this statement. I understood. I was very proud of myself with my... predilection for ignoring all things insurance. This actually caught my attention and was very, very interesting. But reporting in a coherent way was something that I thought someone who really knows what she's doing would be helpful. So this was a collaboration between the two of us. As the appointed voting governing board member for the Kyrene Employee Benefit Trust, I attended their meeting on June 3rd. 2025. A lot of good news. KEBT reviews the financial
144status of the trust at each meeting by reviewing financial and claims reports prepared by outside consultants. And it's really exciting to report. that during 2024-25 school year, the trust fund has stayed in a favorable position with claims and expenses staying in very close alignment with the amount that was budgeted for the year. The trust fund balance remains strong, which resulted in the district being able to keep the health plan premium costs from increasing for the employees for the 2025-26 school year, which is terrific. The medical claim provider, Ameriben, as Ms. Gibson reported, Also, she shared statistics related to wellness screenings that show that Kyrene employees are taking advantage of the free wellness programs offered by Kyrene for flu shots, mammograms, and other preventive screenings, which has placed Kyrene above other clients in the AmeriBens benchmark
145groups. So, very, very good news, very unusual. KEBT voted on stop-loss insurance coverage through the procurement process, which is on consent agenda tonight. It was on consent agenda tonight. Good news to share in this area that there will actually be a reduction of stop-loss premium cost for the district next year. KEBT's next meeting will be in August of 2025, and I'm actually looking forward to it very much. So that's my report on the Kyrene Employee Benefit Trust. The second is a more informal statement that I want to make. I had the pleasure of being able to attend the Arizona School Board Association Conference in Flagstaff this past weekend. And it was very interesting, informative. I had the opportunity to represent our best interests. to some very talented and dedicated people. I met a lot of
146school board members from around the state, had the opportunity to interface with them and have some fun with them. And I found the mood to be serious, but not defeated. There's a lot of positive energy and a lot of challenges. And so I look forward to going to their September meeting, their advocacy meeting. And I'll report back on that. But it was altogether a very good learning experience, a very positive social experience, and a great educational experience. I think it really helped me understand the role of school boards in this state and some of the history of what's developed and what's going on now. Very helpful. So if anyone has any specific questions at some point, I'd be more than happy to talk about it more. Thank you, Member Davis. Any questions? Great news on
147KEBT. Wonderful. And Deb Spurgeon's fantastic. So I'm glad that she's there to help. And then I want to thank you for going to the conference as well and Flagstaff and just investing your time and energy in just being the best board member you can be. So thank you for that. Item 10.1 is our first of six policy reads. So board members, we have six policy reads this evening. As is our normal practice, we will often do a first read of a policy, and then we'll come back for a second read. Sometimes we have a third read, as we did with our staff social emotional wellness policy. Here, this bucket of six policies is all... prompted by recent changes by the legislature to Arizona law. The laws don't take effect until a certain period of time
148after shiny dye happens. Who knows when that will occur? But because we know these laws have been adopted and signed, we know that we want to have them in effect by the start of our school year, which is going to be coming up sooner than we know it. The district's suggestion and recommendation is that for each of these six policies, because it's just complying with law, that we do a first read and adopt unless anyone has any concerns. So we're going to take it over. Our first of. Four policies are all going to be with our Associate Superintendent, Ms. Carrie Feherty. So this is 8.1, sorry, 10.1, Policy 1-401, Parents, Legal Guardians, Rights in Education, First Read. Ms. Feherty. Good evening, President Walsh. I want to thank you for covering the whole first section of
149comments that I had this evening about these four policies. So I will dive right into Policy 1-401, Parents' Legal Rights in Education. This specifically addresses the amendment made to Arizona Revised Statute. 15-102 as well as 15-542. The law requires districts to adopt a policy regarding how parents will receive information mandated by ARS 15-102 and provide that policy to parents annually. The changes in this policy are specific changes related to the change to the law and we are recommending adopting the trust policy language. There are no additional changes. Thank you, Ms. Fierty. Board members, any comments or questions on this? Member Davis. Will we get to see that? Did we have that language somewhere? Yeah. So on your board docs for your review and the public, each policy has a document you can click on that
150will show the changes. They've also been included in the last two weeks, Board Member. Perfect. Any other feedback? All right. Seeing none, would someone like to make a motion to approve the first read and adopt Policy 1-401? Aye. Motion. We have a motion by Member Collins. I will second his motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 4-0. Item 10.2 is Policy 5-303, Student Records First Read. Ms. Fierty. Again, this has to do with the changes to Arizona Rights Statute 15-102 as well as 15-542. This law also changes how districts disclose directory information about students, requiring both more specific notification of the right to opt out and requiring consent in writing prior to the disclosure of a student's address, telephone numbers, or email addresses of a student, and less specifically...
151unless a specific exception applies as noted in policy 5-303. Again, we have made no additional changes. The recommendation of the change to language is what was proposed by the trust and simply brings our policy in alignment with state law. Thank you, Ms. Fierty. Board members, any comments or questions on this policy? Great. I'm going to give Member Dayton. Sorry, go ahead, Member Collins. Oh, I like where it talks about the parents have access to the counseling records. And I remember we mentioned that with the situation that happened in Texas when we had that conversation. So I think that's good that that's included so parents can have access to that. Thank you, Member Collins. Any other feedback on Policy 5303? All right. Hearing none, I'll make a motion to approve the first read and adopt policy
1525303. Is there a second to the motion? I second. Second by Member Collins. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 4-0. Item 10.3 is policy 3403, technology, first read. Ms. Fuerty. Thank you. House Bill 2484 will add ARS 15-120.05, which requires that school districts develop policies and procedures to establish restrictions on student use of wireless communication devices, such as cellular telephones. District protocols must restrict access to social media networks except for instructional purposes. Procedures must permit use for parent, legal guardian, and student communication, emergencies, medical needs, and education. educational purposes. Tonight, we are bringing forward to you only the policy language. There is additional work that needs to be done to our procedures. That will be shared with the governing board through board memo as we move forward. But this
153information is specific. What we're bringing forward tonight is just the change to the policy language. Again, this language is in alignment with the trust recommendation. And the only changes that we have made is to bring our policy in alignment with state law. Thank you, Ms. Fioritti. And when those procedures are developed and rolled out, do you anticipate that'll be done in connection with the upcoming school year? Yes. And I also believe that we will need to do some communication to our parents and families, specifically with regards to our discipline matrix and the consequences that will be imposed with regards to a student's use of cell phone during times that are not permitted. And so there will definitely be some pretty significant information shared with parents and families, similar to, for example, when we made the
154change. to the dress code of really getting in front of that and letting them know these are the rules that exist around your cell phone at school. They will be followed by every Kyrene school, so we're going to bring ourselves more into alignment across all campuses. And these are the types of consequences that can happen if you're using your cellular device. It's one of the reasons why it's important for you to approve this policy this evening, because it allows us to move forward with the other work that needs to be done related to this policy. Very good. Thank you. Member Davis. Thank you. When I was reviewing this, and I realized I have reviewed them, sorry about that. Is there any thought being given to the method of storage of these phones on an individual
155basis? So we have had a lot of conversation, and I encourage Mr. Nichols to join in as well. We've had a lot of conversation about this and about... different ways that school districts have approached the storage of cell phones. One of the concerns that we have is, one, this language is very clear about that students should have access to their phone for emergency communication, for medical purposes, those kind of things. Additionally, when we take possession of the phone, we become liable for the phone. And that is something that we do not feel as a district is really the best method for us. And so while we explored a lot of different techniques, in the end we landed on, we are going to encourage students to have their phones turned off and in their backpacks. And
156truthfully, that's probably the safest place for their phones to be. It is the most cost effective way for us to implement this policy. And truthfully, Truthfully, that has really been our policy. We've had some schools that have made some exceptions to that. But this... When we talk about the changes policy, we're not changing a whole lot in terms of this is what we expect with regards to phones. And that has been working in our buildings. We have not really had issues. This is really about us bringing all of our schools into alignment with that policy and making sure that we're all moving forward in the same way. Mr. Nichols, would you add anything? Does in the event, I'm just picturing this, in the event that turned off in the backpack. Has there been any discussion
157about compliance with the law when that doesn't happen? And that's what's going to come out in the procedure. So when I talk about the procedure information, as well as the discipline matrix, we will probably follow. We're doing some work right now with particularly our middle school leaders, because that's the area where this tends to become more of an issue. There are more cell phones. Students are more interested in that cell phone during the day. You know, we, up until now, have used a pretty standard. The first time that you see it, you're asked very politely and kindly and reminded of what our district policy and procedure is. The second time that someone has to speak to you, oftentimes that phone is confiscated until the end of the day. And at the end of the day,
158it is returned to the student. It's kept in the front office. The third offense tends to become we keep the cell phone and we invite a parent to come and we'll return the cell phone to a parent. I'm not exactly sure that's what it's going to look like, but those are structures that we have used previously that have been fairly successful for us. We do have kiddos where we have gotten to a point with parents where we've had to have a conversation about the phone not coming to school. Again, this law is very explicit about if we were to ask that to happen with a family that... the family would need to be in agreement with that because the law specifically calls out that we will allow children to have cell phones for the opportunity
159for emergency communication with their families. So we would definitely, if we got to a point like that, want to involve a family in that conversation. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Member Davis. Any other feedback? All right. Member Sadri, any comments? All right. Seeing none, I will make a motion to approve the first reading of the DOT Policy 3403. Is there a second to the motion? Second. Second by Member Davis. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 4-0. Item 10.4 is Policy 4204, Mandatory Reporting First Read. Ms. Fierdy. Recent action in the Arizona legislature will amend Arizona Revised Statute 13-3620 and Arizona Revised Statute 15-514. The law clarifies that governing board members as well as substitute teachers are considered mandatory reporters. It also specifies that reporting to the school resource officer
160or school safety officer is insufficient. Mandatory reports must be made directly to law enforcement or to the Department of Child Safety, and also that child abuse investigations must occur pursuant to county protocols. We are moving forward the trust's recommended language. There are no changes to this policy other than to bring it in alignment with new state law. Thank you, Ms. Fierty. Member Davis. So there are criminal penalties for not doing the right thing. I mean, Section 13 is criminal law, isn't it? Unless I've forgotten completely. That's the reportable, yes. It's not. The reportable offense is defined in ARS 133620. So if what your, I'm trying to think of the right word I want to use, not accused, but. There are mandatory penalties for failing to report. It's generally a misdemeanor. If you fail to make
161a mandatory report, if it's a serious crime, it can be a felony. But the reference of 13. 3620 is the definition of reportable offenses, not the actual mandatory reporting. So there are some in the criminal code. Correct. Okay. That's all I wanted to know. Thank you. Thank you, Member Davis. Any other questions? Seeing none, would someone like to make a motion to approve the first read and adopt policy 4204? Aye motion. Motion by Member Collins. Is there a second to his motion? Second. Second by Member Davis. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 4-0. Thank you, Ms. Fioriti. Thank you. Our next two policies, we'll be hearing from our Executive Director of Academic Equity and Excellence, Dr. Sandra Lane. We'll start with Policy 1005. That's Policy 5-203, Students with Disabilities
162and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. This is a first read. Dr. Lane. Okay, you can hear me now. Good. Okay, this policy actually is not based on any updates to Arizona Revised Statute. It is based on an update of rules from the State Board of Education regarding transition planning for students with disabilities. Transition planning is that required activity that happens for students typically. in high school that starts their planning to transition to post-school outcomes. We are keeping that in our policy as we have had. Very rare instances, but we have had a couple of instances in which a child has had, we've had to go through the transition planning process for a student that has either been retained or something like that. The other and the vast majority of the changes are just
163formatting changes. When this change around transition planning came, I think they took an opportunity to clean up the rest of the policy. So you will see quite a bit of changes, but they are not actual content changes with the exception of the transition planning. Thank you, Dr. Lane. Any questions on this one? Seeing no, would someone like to make a motion to approve the first read and adopt Policy 5-203? Motion. Motion by Member Satri. Is there a second to her motion? I second. Second by Member Collins. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 5-0. And our last policy of the night, board members. 10.6, Policy 5-204, Students with Disabilities Procedural Safeguards. Dr. Lane. Okay, this policy really has no content changes. There are no updates to rules or statute.
164It is just formatting changes and style changes. Very good. Thank you, Dr. Lane. Any questions? Seeing none, I'll make one. Member Collins. With this, with the presidential changes that have happened, how will this, you know, the changes up there affect the IDEA with the Department of Ed? I think it's too soon to know. I really don't have any information about that. I really don't. I have heard some things around funding that would continue. But again, no bill has been passed. So we just don't know. Yeah, because we keep hearing different things like, yes. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Good question. Any other feedback? Seeing none, I'll make a motion to approve the first read and adopt policy 5204. Is there a second to the motion? Second. Second by Member Davis. All those in favor,
165please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes 4-0. Thank you, Dr. Lane. All right, we're on the home stretch. Board members, item 11.1, item is for future consideration. Would any board member wish to list an item for future consideration? All right. Seeing none, item 12.1, meeting dates. Our next regularly scheduled meeting is two weeks from tonight, June 24th, 2025. Item 13.1, adjournment. May I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Motion by Member Davis. Is there a second to her motion? I second. Second by Member Collins. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes four to zero. The meeting is adjourned at 9.12 p.m. Have a good night.