4.15.25 Work Study Session and Governing Board Meeting

001Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Can you guys hear us? Okay, we're ready. like to call the Liberty Elementary Governing Board special uh work session order today, April 15, 2025, here at the Jerry Roby District Facility. We have four board members currently present, Vice President Kenyon, board member Schmidt, board member Zimmerman are present. Board member Sion will be late and will join us later. Uh our first item of business after the order will be pledge, can you please I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America to the republic. One nation under God, indivisible, and for the pledge. Okay, members, next on the agenda is item 1.3, the trust policy transition, part four of chapters four and five. Miss Amy Castanos, our board consultant. I'll turn it over to you. Thank

002you. It's a pleasure to be here with you all today. Um today we'll be reviewing chapter 4. We left off last time at 4-201. Um so as we've done in previous meetings, I'll call off each number and ask if there is any questions um or any highlighted areas that you all would like to go over. We'll open it up for discussion and then we will move forward to the next policy. So we can start if there's any questions first. No. Okay. So we'll start with uh policy 4-201 that starts on page 23. Okay. I'm on page 24 um number 21. Um it says direct criticism regarding workplace concerns to the relevant district administrator. Um I think that if there is a concern about the superintendent then it should come to the governing board because we

003are his boss. So, I just don't know if we want to just put a clarifying um you know, comma that you know if there's criticism of the superintendent that it comes to the governing board. Um and then also on um at the bottom just like I didn't know about adding a like number 26. So it would be in in addition um just something that says something like utilize education's best best practices in fulfilling their duties just you know ensuring that kind of almost that they're keeping up on their skills right and we're using best practices for education to fulfill their job. Um which number would that be? It would be a new number. It would be a suggestion. I would caution that we because what we're doing is we're taking the trust policies making sure

004they match our existing ASBA policy. So during this, correct me if I'm wrong, we're just making sure that they match and they align, not that we're changing policy here. Correct. But this is a first read. So this is our our opportunity to provide feedback. So why we can provide feedback and Clyde, I'll let you speak to this. why we can provide feedback. We can't change policy until that has to be brought up at a different meeting. So, we can provide feedback and note it um in order to bring up at a different meeting if you would like to change policy. And Clay, do you want to talk more about that? This is this is the first read, right? Right. So, we're supposed to provide feedback at a first read. Yes. And we should because it's

005not when we're adopting the policy. So, yes, you can provide feedback. No, no question about it. Okay, because we'll note all those things because we can add because otherwise the second time it comes back, we're supposed to be adopting it. So unless we're going to bring it back in an actual board meeting for a first read again, then this is our opportunity to provide feedback about the proposed. These are new policies that we're adopting. We don't they don't there are lots of things that don't match up between ASBA. There are a lot of things that have been deleted. So are we providing feedback? This is this is a first read correct? Yes. Okay. Yes. Uh for clarification though on a second read, we do not have to adopt at that time. We can provide additional

006feedback and go to a third, fourth, fifth, 10th, however many we need to do to get it right. So um I think it is okay to give feedback here. There's a lot of it. And so I think then we need to see that the red line changes. So then you can see because sometimes what happens is you make a change in one spot and you catch something else and now you have conflicting. So I would guess we're probably headed to a third read before it's said and done. But I'm okay with and you can do that giving feedback. Right. Right. So I think giving the feedback now trying to make sure they're aligned. Give the feedback once we see all the red line changes. Sometimes we realize we've forgotten something that we made a change

007previous and what do we do? So u but I I am okay with Sure. And I I agree that, you know, we may need a third read, especially since we're doing a first read in a work session and not in a public meeting where people can give public comment. We did get uh legal advice on that and a first read can't happen. There is technically no such thing as a work session. They're all special meetings, although we call it a work session because we're working here, but it is a special meeting and the first read does um technically counts. I I agree with you. I would prefer the first reading to take place in a in a general meeting. So I think we we will see that later on tonight as well. So for clarification

008um purposes, if we're providing feedback, how do we how do you want me to note what feedback is actually being adopted into the pol? It's actually for you. How do I put this? How do you want me to note the feedback if we're actually going to include it into the policy or if we are going to just hold it for notes? I think I would show the proposed change and members, please feel free to comment on this. Um, and really quick before I get much started too, I forgot in the beginning need to limit this session to 1955 acts. Um, so that we can move on with presentations later if people coming in. But back to this um make these ch make the notes uh in there so we know what they are. Then like

009I said, I think we'll end up having probably three reads in these because we'll see all those changes. That gives us a chance to see them on paper, make sure we don't have any conflicts, and then we can adjust it from there, and then probably go to a third read down the road. I I think that's going to be our easiest way to manage suggestions and then see where they're at. And after we see the suggestion, the person who made that suggestion may feel like they want to massage that a little bit more some way to meet more what they were trying to get the first time. So, um, that's that's how I would probably see this playing out. Okay. Thank you, President Okay, if there are no other comments, I'm going to move on

010to page, it's still the same policy, but on page 25, number 24, [Music] um it's about providing um private services like I read it as tutoring. So, I'm giving an example of teach like a music teacher who sees the whole school. Are we saying that they're not allowed to provide private music lessons in their free time? Um, so you know, my question would be, is it legal to to limit what they can do in their personal time? If it's using school facilities, it is. Does this does it specify school facilities using school? It just says provide private services for pay or rem re remination to uh to a student or family of the of a student who is currently in the employees class or under the employees direction or control for a district sponsored ability

011or whom the employee provides professional services through the school. So it's not saying it's on school grounds. It's just saying if they're in your class. I don't know the I don't know the legalities of it, but I know uh in my career typically if there's tutoring provided by teachers, it's been provided for students who aren't in their class. And maybe there's legal legal behind that, meaning I tutor a student, but they're not in my class on my own time, but it's like my neighbor's student. And I'm kind of I don't know, Clyde, if there's statute related to that. I know that's a practice in other districts where one of my one of my kids is uh one of my 25 students parents ask for tutoring that I don't do that because they're in my class

012on my own time but I'd have like my neighbor teacher or offer it to someone else but I don't know the legality it's creating a conflict of interest because um you're do the one's also grading that student. So that's what the concern is. It's an ethical issue. I I totally understand the one in the classroom like providing ELA math. I would because you feel like if they need tutoring, why aren't you helping them in the classroom, right? So, like I get that one. I'm I'm kind of thinking about like a music teacher, right, that sees the whole school and they want to provide guitar lessons. The problem is you have a general rule here for teachers that are tutoring students. And if they're doing tutoring it for compensation, they shouldn't be doing that with students

013that are in their classroom. Okay. For that year that they have them in their classroom. I I think for question though as a music teacher it's not a fourth grade math teacher the music teacher is going to have them from K from the first year they take music till the last and I would question that as well that some music is taught there are different theories of music. So I learned this once upon a time when I fumbled through guitar lessons. I started playing guitar a little bit and then got this great instructor who knew nothing about the form of guitar lesson I had. We realized really quick. So, if you're learning a specific way that that teacher is teaching, um, you may have some issue with that and especially in a more rural area,

014you may not find another teacher that's available. So, it is a little different than just a fourth grade math teacher. I just think let's let's do a little research on it. If I'm understanding, it's like the music teacher services all 600 kids, right? And but that music teacher offers guitar lessons outside of school. you know, maybe we look, you know, that's a unique exception that maybe could be added in here somehow, but u but the general rule, you know, so, you know, that's that's an issue where you're trying to create a a carve out an exception. Well, I'm not like I'm not trying to like carve out an exception. I'm I'm trying not to punish our teachers. And I feel like somebody that teaches music for somebody's kid for nine years, I completely agree with

015the policy in terms of like a grade level teacher, a sixth grade math teacher. I don't think it's appropriate. I would 100% agree. So, um, I'm just providing my feedback. I guess we need some language that we would need to add some language that allows for. Just for reference, the ASBA policy is GCRD. that touches that one. We can get back, we can do a little research on that and see. I would also ask in that if you had a uh athletic coach like a baseball coach who's coaching a student on the team, but they do club baseball throughout the year. A lot of those coaches do that. The AIA has some guidance as to how many students they can have, I believe, but they may coach one or two. And does that eliminate that

016person from being on a team that they may want to be on? Um, so I think we have the same issue there. Again, a little bit different than a fourth grade math. That's a good comparison though. It's a similar comparison. When when you have when there is a conflict of interest issue, there is a form, at least there was with the old policy that we might need to develop one for with these that where you can present a, you know, a potential conflict of interest and the governing board can rule on that. In other words, you make it publicly known that that's what your intent is and then everybody says, "Okay, we we agree with this one, you know, that it's not a violation of the policy." I do believe we issue that conflict of

017interest. I'm looking at you, Stephanie, that conflict of interest form to our employees every year. I think we and and you list down those things. So, this would be one where you could just identify it and let people make make everybody aware and and have them make a call whether that's okay or not. The issue is all about compensation. Not doing it just as a volunteer, but when you're compensated for it. All right. Do you have another one for this page? Because Okay, go for it. Okay. I have one for this one. Okay. Um I just for number 25, if they rent the facilities, it says, you know, use of school uh district or school facilities for purposes not directly related to the employees, but what if they rent the facilities? Is that okay? Not

018of your own class though. that the exception. You can rent the facility and arrange it through the fac, you know, the district's facility rental stuff and then uh you can tutor if that's you know if that's part of the policy for renting. You could tutor the students for compensation but still not the ones in your own classroom. Okay. Um on this page, if we go back up to 12, this is possession of a weapon on district property without this says legal authority. Um our ASBA policy is GB EB-R and that says author authorization from proper school administration. Um I would recommend we leave it as authorization from proper school administration. Can I just ask a clarifying question about this? Besides an officer, who would be allowed to carry a weapon on a school property? There

019are schools that have private security that do that? I know has private security officers u that are armed that are on their campuses. Okay. Yeah. I would like us to look at this policy as well because that seems quite concerning to me. Oh, sorry. I didn't know if you had anything else for that page. I'm on page 26, which is still this policy. Um, number 26 says, "Remove district property from the district without prior authorization of the superintendent." I I think that's a little high level. Um would they just ask their direct supervisor? I mean, I feel like I'm not sure what this policy is after, you know, what property we're moving, but seems like something that the principal could handle. Why does it need to go all the way to the superintendent? A lot

020of times in policy, and I don't know if it's this way in the trust, but uh it's the superintendent and his agents or her agents. It's like in the ASBA policy, it says the superintendent authorizes a lot of things, but I I authorize through people. And so, I don't know if that's a because, you know, Mrs. Zimmerman is right. I don't authorize all those things, but I authorize Mrs. Murray at Liberty to oversee that. So, I don't know. You know, I'm trying to think if that that language is in the trust policy because it's all over ASBA where the superintendent authorizes or the agents authorize. It's a delegable authority. Yeah, something like that. And if that's the case, do we need to clarify the wording or do we leave it as is? You could say

021superintendent or delegate or designate. Designate. Yeah, excuse me. That's the correct phrase. Okay. Cuz number 30 would be a very similar um thing. Apply for grant or outside funding including crowdfunding or solicit donations without the prior authorization of the superintendent. Um would this you know include something like an Amazon wish list that teachers create um a donor's choose? Are they not able to create those without authorization from the superintendent? Yeah, this does become a problem with a crowdfunding type things where teachers are out there doing um trying to get raise money just for their classroom. you can create a conflict with the parents of of the students and and they're I mean it's just um I have seen this become an issue with uh with classroom teachers and just trying to seek donations just for

022their particular classroom their projects. So I mean I know a lot of teachers that use an Amazon wish list. Are we telling our teachers that they cannot have that or they cannot do something with donor's choose? I have a hard time with this that we're not going to allow the community to donate to our classrooms. No, of course they can. Of course they can to do that. I think Yeah, I'm trying to read this. Apply for a grant or other outside funding, including crowdfunding. You know, maybe we need to have some clarification there. I know if a grant is applied for in this district, it needs to be signed off on because um because someone could apply for a grant and get $10,000 and then we're on the hook for the maintenance and the continuation.

023However, the Amazon or the crowdfunding, maybe there needs to be some clarification on that. Um you know, teacher wish list or you know those kind of things. um because it just says apply for a grant or other outside funding to or solicit donations without the pro uh uh prior authorization of the superintendent. So maybe we just need to have some clarifying language. I get the intent of it because you have to be careful. I can't just don't I just can't raise money and put whatever books I want in my classroom, right? The board has to approve those kind of things, right? Your materials and those kind of things. But well, not just that, but you really want some kind of control over the donation money coming in and how it's being used and uh tracking

024it. you know, if you have a PTSO or something that's involved in participating and a principal is is aware of it and supervising it, but you know, you a teacher collecting a couple of thousand dollars um from crowdfunding and then who's going to who's going to track how that money gets used? I I can understand the money. So maybe I need to be specific and say, you know, an I see an Amazon wish list as like paper towels and and Clorox wipes and certainly certainly and things like that. And donor's choose usually isn't money. The teachers are requesting a very specific thing like headphones and things like that. So, I just don't know if we could change the wording a little bit that is they can't raise like money but doesn't prevent them from using

025an Amazon wish list. We can we can give it we can give it a shot and put some clarifying language in there. Sorry, Vice President Kenyon. Yeah, I was just thinking, you know, right there if you just add the word or solicit monetary donations, I think that just makes this whole thing about finances instead of items like you're stating. I don't just a suggestion. The the one suggestion I would have for this we ran into this several years ago a couple teachers when uh one of these crowd it was donor's choose they asked for some uh cameras document cameras and when they got donated they were not compliant with our IT. So maybe we do need to say if you're requesting IT equipment it needs to be approved through the IT department because the worst

026thing to have happen is somebody come give you $1,000 of technology. And I've seen that before, too. And they end up just doors stops, that kind of thing because and that's $1,000 that we, you know, we could have just said, "Get this camera instead of this camera. Get this computer instead of this computer." So, I do think with technology, we need to make sure that we're compliant with with what's coming in to a certain point. If somebody's looking for a Bluetooth speaker, that's that's general. But, as far as document cameras, you with all the different connections and and so forth, we need to make sure those are right. I know at the time there was a concern the brand was donated had a chip in it. It could actually maybe be looking at things on

027the on the back end of a network. So I think our network guys could probably give us some it kind of comes back to that whole language about prior authorization. Um that's what that's all about is trying to get it sorted out so that it's not just random out there. Do you mind if I Oh no, go ahead. So what I'm hearing I'm sorry maybe so what I'm hearing a lot of is like if it's just for Kleenexes, if it's for pens, pencils, those types of things, then we should be able to allow that. But when it comes to the larger purchases, the bigger items, whether that be camera equipment, maybe it's computers or even books, those types of things would need prior authorization. Is that accurate? Well, and Chris adding the word monetary, I

028think I think that helps a lot. I think that gets after Yeah. I think because another thing that I've seen happen in different districts is where one teacher is more popular than other teachers and then they wind up getting you know funding from the community when we're in small and rural more rural communities where one teacher gets more um donations given whether that be Bluetooth speakers or the larger donations and so their classes are better equipped than others. So it creates an inequity among the school. So, I just want to put that out as something to consider when we're rewriting this language. I definitely agree with board member Zimmerman about the donor's choose and the the Amazon wish list. Those are just those are so current just ready. I think the technology and the money

029part may be the ones we just want to add a little more language to. Does that does that meet kind of where you're Yeah. And I again I just think superintendent or designate I think you know miss uh Dr. Monroe doesn't need to be looking at Amazon wish list. I mean and in caution with that like it because what happened in this this was years ago but the principal did sign off on the cameras. They just weren't the the principal really should sign off on that donation because it was an IT issue. So we need to make sure we get to the right person. We have our IT director here and I I would ask are we are we on the right page for it donations do you think? Or and come up grab a

030mic but just just come up close. So absolutely anything that would be joining our network or in our classroom. Okay. And I just have one last thing for this policy under investigation of alleged violations. Um I feel it's a little vague so I just have some proposed language. Um when the employee is alleged to have violated district policy, the supervising administrator or other designated individual as specified in district policy shall conduct a thorough and impartial investigation. The investigation must be based on clear evidence relevant to the allegation. The design responsible for the investigation must be clearly identified and documented. The designate will determine whether the alleged misconduct occurred and if so will recommend appropriate remedial actions. I would say just email that to us and we'll take a look. I I want to remind everybody

031that these policies that are proposed were written by a group of lawyers. So I I hear there's some good clarifications in there, but I think in a second read we could talk about whether we want to approve that or add that language or not. I just I hesitate because we have legal people writing this. So although the board has the authority to control all that. So that's a lot to write down. I would say email it to us so we can get it in there. Okay. Any other questions on that policy? 4-201. I do have a question on the investigation of alleged violations. Um, I think we need some language there perhaps that talks about more serious allegations. If there's certain crimes that are alleged, they need to be reported to the authorities right away.

032I don't want somebody look at this, say, "Well, I investigated it, see if I thought it was real, and then send it or didn't send it up higher there." So, I think there's some statute that specifies that. and I know it's there, but we should probably have it in our policy as well so nobody gets caught up with, well, I went to see if this was a real a real allegation. And lo and behold, it took me two weeks, but I found out was and now maybe that crime was continuing for two additional weeks. So maybe to clean that up with some language that specifies out more serious and that and that may be President Todd that may be coming up because I know there's statutes about mandatory reporting. So if you suspect crime has

033been committed not just against kids but against adults that you have the obligation to report it. So let's see if it's coming up if it covers up. And and that's kind of my point earlier. Sometimes first read, second read, maybe a third read. It may be here but something that's here spell it out. So there's no chance of somebody just looking at this. Maybe it is a new teacher. And yes, everybody's supposed to know the laws. But I would hate to think something happened because we went here. Maybe a link didn't work, a link got outdated. Whatever the case, we just spell it out very clear. It double protects what we're trying to do. Are we okay to move on to 4-200? Uh, sorry. 4-202. I apologize. Page 29. Yeah, I have I have a

034just a couple to mention here on number five, socializing with a student outside of the school or school activity. Um, as stated, we are kind of a rural semi-ural area and I know that there's a lot of staff who are also family members who are very close friends and there's a lot of this kind of stuff going on outside the school where families get together or they're at the ballpark or whatever's going on. So, this one kind of concerns me and I know in our ASBA policy we had talked about this previously um about our policy being used against you know staff members pulling this right out of the policy saying hey you can't be with them they're like that's my cousin right so um I I think we really need to look at that

035and see if we can specify you know get get a little more I agree. I was just going to say, could we add the word like with um without parent consent or something like that because um that's a good recommendation. I like that. Yeah, because I completely agree with Mr. Kenyon. There are so many staff that bring their children and their children have friends and and then kind of I I understand the number six giving and or receiving a personal gift. Um, that's pretty vague. You could probably add the same language, don't you think? Like if you go to a birthday party. Well, I'm thinking about like at Christmas time, we all appreciation week. We all give gifts. I give gifts to teachers. And I and I I definitely understand why it would be in

036our policy is we don't, you know, staff shouldn't be just looking for gifts, you know, because then there could be favors, there'd be conflict of interest. I get that. But there has to be a way, some way that, you know, parents show appreciation or kids shows appreciation. You know, they draw a picture and hand it to them. That's a gift, right? So, I think we got to look at that one a little bit closer. And then, uh, sorry, go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say for that one, and this gets a little tricky, too, but could we add some wording about the monetary value of the gift possibly? So, giving, you know, a coffee mug and some cookies or something at Christmas is not the same as gifting a teacher a new Nespresso

037coffee maker. Something um it gets tricky, but maybe think about it that way. You're mean, you mean to like clarify whether a student makes something and brings it in type deal like what? Yeah, the giving or receiving a gift, right? Because that is a gift, but there's no monetary value. And at Christmas time, many families send gifts to their teachers, but they're usually not hugely valuable, right? I mean, they might have gift cards. Yeah, but you're still not talking I mean, sorry, when I was a teacher, I probably got like $10, but I was a high school teacher. um we're still not talking huge amounts of money in general, but if we put a limit on it and the public knew the limit and then you expect that they would then follow our guidelines. Um

038so it's a little bit of a you know honor system, but it's a way to get around making it a black and white statement but still allowing for something. The other thing we could possibly do because I don't think any teacher if we set the value at $10 and a student brings a $25 gift card in for a teacher to reject that breaks that kid's heart because especially a young kid the parents probably wouldn't did that. So maybe we put language in here that says they accept it, but then bring it to the district's attention so we're aware of that and then at that point maybe we can give them the $10 credit or some way or there we contact the parents without the child knowing because it kind of breaks their heart and fixes

039that. But you do run into more and more with with money and students. So I don't know that that's the exact answer, but somewhere along those lines where they don't have to reject the child right away. That's that's heartbreaking. Oh, I'm sorry, Johnny. I can't take this gift. Well, you took all the other ones. They don't understand. So, they accept that and then notify the district and then we can we can work that through a better way. I just think that's honestly a lot of work for the district that, you know, is not necessary. I just I I honestly have a hard time understanding why we have the policy to be completely honest with you because I I want the the I if you could give me the bad example of like why do we

040have this? I just don't understand why we're belaboring giving teachers gifts at Christmas time. One one of my thoughts uh board member Zimmerman would be uh the trust the model trust policy is written K12 written very broad. So I think about high schoolers and when the age when they become more of a young adult sometimes those gifts, you know, you got to be careful with gifting things to teenagers uh or gifting things to teachers if you're a teenager. And so that's the only thing I can think of is a lot of these policies, it's good we're talking about this because we're a K district and a lot of these policies you really think about a teenager, you know, a 17-year-old boy giving a female teacher, you know, a a gift and u and sometimes those

041are interesting things or grooming comes up or what have you. So that's my best guess on it is maybe it's more of a high school and maybe we just add with parent consent again. Yeah. Well, that's yeah, kind of what I said at the Sorry. You know, parents are are fine at the beginning or um yeah, just so we don't run into any type of problem. That's kind of what I was thinking. But yeah, no, I I would agree. That's kind of my thought process there. But and I think it's good because sometimes I catch myself reviewing the policy and I scratch my head and then I think, "Oh, wait. They've written this for high school seniors, too." You know what I mean? Like the trust writes for K K12 districts and we're a K

042district. So that that's my best guess on that one is maybe they're thinking more high school. And that kind of leads me to number Okay. Yeah, that kind of leads me to number 12, which again, like you said, I believe that this was more focused at the the high school level where um I know my high schoolers, they can basically walk off campus at any time, go a coffee, bring it back to the teacher. That can that can be scary, right? Um, but we do have, you know, middle schoolers. So, sending a student on a personal errand, I I agree. Our our that's that could be crossing a line very very easily. Um, of course, our students shouldn't be leaving campus without their parent with them. But, uh, I don't have an issue with this.

043I just wanted to bring it up that I think, like you said, that's more of a high school thing. Number 14, transporting a student in a private vehicle without administrative approval. I think that administrative approval has to change to parental. Um, I think that parents should always be notified whenever somebody's being transporting their children in a private vehicle. So, I uh I am fine with those. I would say on 14 administrative and parental approval. Um, I was always alarmed as a principal when I found out a teacher put their put a child in a car without clearing it through the school or the parents because you never know what happens. And then the p the personal errand thing and again going back to the high school, but you know a teacher forgets something, they give

044their personal keys to the student, go back into the classroom, unlock it, can you pick that up and bring it to me? I've been burned by those things a lot before, you know, and you have to be very careful with especially at the high school level. But I I like that one as well. We want to be really careful of of what a personal errand becomes. So they are young people and I think we do it a lot of times we do it out of the goodness of our hearts but you never know if something goes missing or there's an allegation or Yeah. And as as much as some of these may sound like they're not really necessary. These are here to protect not just our staff but the kids. Right. The kids a lot

045of times don't know what they're really doing. um we would think that they would, but they're young kids and they haven't got life figured out yet. And so a personal errand for the teacher may be completely different than for the the kids. So um yeah, that's why these are here. That's all I have for this page. Um on page 30, are there any questions? Moving on to 4-202A, procedures, staff boundary, staff and student boundaries. So this is 31, correct? Page 31. Okay. Um I know we have the link here and so somebody could click on the link and open this up and read it. I would like that actually to be spelled out in here. Uh, I went on our ASBA policies and clicked on a few of our ARS links and they didn't work.

046Um, I had to go digging other ways to get to the ARS. So, just if we're going to point somebody to something, you know, we say go look at it in our policy and then there's a link and that gets broken, then it's a headache to find it. It's like a three or four page document, Amy, and it I think it has AD's logo on it. I was reviewing it, but it's a good point. In case the link ever breaks, just put it in there. I think AD adopted it like 22 2022 or something there. I believe also the governor signed language yesterday on cell phone usage on campuses. I think that okay just got signed. So I think they may have saw that. I haven't read the the language of the law but I

047heard I saw a news blip yesterday. She signed cell phone law. So once yeah once the laws and everything become official the trust will send us an update to the policy similar to what ASBA does. You know, similar pattern after every legislative session. 4-203 student supervision. 4-204 mandated reporting. Mandatory reporting. Sorry. I don't have a problem with the the language in here other than um actually I apologize my my comment is on a different page. Thought it was there. Oh. No, it's it's in a couple pages. Sorry. Okay. I think this is um back to what we were talking about before about investigating this. Maybe in the first one where I talked about more serious, we need to reference anything in this chapter. So, we tell them don't stop reading here. Flip over to this

048chapter or this section and read this as well. Reference, right? Reference it very very clear. And hopefully we can even hyperlink it straight to this reference also. They may have it. I I would agree because in our ASBA policies they link um reference lots of policies that like I don't know coordinate is the right word but I haven't noticed that now that you say that in the trust. So, I do think it's helpful. That will take us to page 364-204A, procedures for mandatory reporting. Same thing. I think we link this right back to the original one as well on page 37 of this. Um I just want to make it very clear. So we have questioning students. Um this is one of those things working with the department department of child safety for the number

049of years I have. When a kid lives through trauma, they shouldn't have to relive that trauma. And I know that the policy does state right after the questions there. second par or second sentence that says employees should not allow anyone else to question or examine the student and that's the reason for it. Um they don't, you know, they're not the investigator. They're just the firsthand witness, right? Um and so we have what happened, who did it, where were you when it happened, and when did it happen. Honestly, even those I'm scared of a saying we should be asking those. It's usually what's divulged. And I get it. Um, teachers are the number one reporters of child abuse. And so when a little Johnny walks into class and is covered in bruises, the teacher's gonna, what

050happened? I get that. That's just an honest Are you okay? Right. Um, but I just wanted I don't know, Chris, uh, member K, Vice President Kenyon, the So typically in my educational career, I don't know if it they're probably not in statute, but those are the four questions that you ask. And it is a fine line because you're not an investigator if you're a teacher. And we don't want our teachers to feel like they're going to send them to someone else or the student has to redo their story a million times. But usually the training is if something a teacher is what what happened? That's your first question already, right? Or who did it? Where were you when it happened? When did it happen? So are you so are you saying to remove the questions?

051No, no, no, no, no. I'm okay with the questions being here. I just wanted to reiterate in public that you know all of our employees and I know they go through the medical reporter training, every one of them. Um, and so just those are that's it. I've had I've had my own kid who got injured. Um, complete accident and uh there were a lot of people asking her what happened. She didn't have to say what happened every time somebody So that's that's where understood. Okay. Just getting that out that one person asked the questions. That's it. And then you turn it over to legal or to to the authorities. So Page 392 or I'm sorry 4-204B procedures mandatory reporting. Moving on to page 414-205. Drug-free alcohol-free workplace. Page 43 4-206. Prohibition of tobacco use. Page

05244 4-301, Employee Health and Welfare. Uh, I just had a clarifying word. under medical examination. Um, after an absence of more than three consecutive work days, the district may require um that employees submit a medical provider's written release. Uh, so we're just saying that's a choice. I just want to clarify that that's what we're saying. Okay. So, I I have a question there. If we do it for some and not others, then does that come back to us later that somebody says you didn't ask them but you asked me so you were harassing me. Maybe we should just make that a standard policy. So we do it everybody is treated the same because where do you draw the line? Somebody's three, somebody's four, somebody's 10. I don't know that legally you can require that. um

053okay was kind of thinking it was a policy. Okay. I just along these lines too when do we trigger somebody do FMLA leave or do they do that on their own? How does that in the same area if they're going to be out for I don't know they had a heart attack and they're going to be out for four weeks. How does Dr. Mohorn we also have HR staff here too. Jillian, do you know? Have that in here anywhere? Okay. Okay, perfect. Is is that a requirement of FMLA or is that a district requirement? Do we do that for which one? For the FMLA federal, right? But I mean, does federal say they have to do FMLA paperwork after two weeks or are we just requiring that after two weeks? Do you know, Jillian? Okay.

054Actually, can you for the minutes we Sorry, but we we typically will ask that if we're notified if an employee will be having say a surgery. Um, and it will be at least two weeks or up to that two weeks for a safeguard for us and the employee, we ask them to complete that paperwork prior to them going out. That way if it does get extended, we don't have to bother them necessarily for that paperwork while they're on leave recovering because while they're on leave, I don't think we can contact them, right? There's stipulations where we can for certain things, but they should not be working. They won't have access to their district email. Like we we do turn all that off to safeguard them. Thank you. 4-301 Procedures Employee Health and Welfare 4-301B page

0554-302 leave. Okay, I have a I have a couple questions on this policy. So, at the bottom of page 48, it says sick leave of any staff member who does not serve a full school year shall be prrated at the rate of one day per month. So, if they used more and they leave, do they have to pay that back? What? They are supposed to What does that mean? They're supposed to Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, um, so it would either be taken out of their last check if they have the money. Um, but sometimes they don't even they don't have the money. So if they've been if they've missed so many days and they don't even have a last check to get and sometimes we have to invoice them. But if we

056invoice them and they don't pay us, you know, then it has to go to collections and things like that. Um, so maybe I mean I think it's all right what the way it's written. That's fine. Doesn't happen very often. with people that aren't going to come here for two weeks of vacation and run out. Page 449. Yes. Sorry, I'm just reading my notes kind of like Mr. Canyon, give me if I could just have one second, please. Oh, okay. So, kind of towards the bottom of the page, it says personal leave um will not be granted during the following periods. Kind of gives the blackout dates. Is that true of every single employee in the district? High level cabinet employees, everybody. Sorry, where are you? I'm on page 49. Um about 34 of the way

057down. It says personal leave will not be granted during the following periods. Generally, sometimes I don't know. I I don't remember a time where cabinet has asked for that time off. Not that I can recall. Dr. Monroe, I don't know if there's any time that he's approved that. I can't remember a time where a cabinet member has asked for the first two or the last two or those holidays. Uh yeah, I mean I think as it as it's written, employees means uh all employees as it's written how I'm how I'm reading it. Okay. Yeah. Got to grab a microphone. For those members, they do also have vacation leave. So if they are gone, typically those days, especially preceding or you know following a holiday, they typically are using vacation leave during that time, not personal

058leave, which is different. Thank you for that clarification, Malia. I have one question. Um, our district has traditionally allowed um, vacation acral to go for the entire term of service of that employee. I think what maybe not be is not recognized by most is that that is unfunded. So at the end of every year, if you don't use your sick time or I'm sorry, your vacation time, we don't put that money into a magical fund that's going to pay you in 20 years when you retire. So now in 20 years, if you decide to retire and you've never used sick time or vacation time, the district is now on the hook for 20 years of vacation time at the end, which can be thousands and thousands of dollars, but it's a unfunded. There's a cap.

059There's a cap, but it still is pretty high. So I would just say we need to make sure we look at this to see where where we're at and if that's if that's right. because there's some people who have been around for a long time and don't get me wrong, they serve for a long time, but those are very large payouts when they retire that you just as a board we need to recognize they're unfunded. So, as we're creating budgets and you have somebody retire, there's no way to look and say, "Oh, they're going to retire at the end of next year." They may not have told us yet. They don't have to. There's a time, but when we're creating budget and if you get a few people retire, you're going to have a large

060amount of money that comes due that we've not budgeted for. So, I would just ask the board, maybe not tonight, but just think about that and we can perhaps at the next board meeting get and I'll ask for this later, but again, just uh maybe we can get a little presentation on how that really works so you understand what that liability is on a 20-year employee or 25 year, 30, however long they're here. Um, on page 50, uh, I have a real problem with us paying out vacation for firstear district employees who do not finish their contract. We are charging teachers to leave their contract and yet we are paying administrators, to your point, Mr. Todd, $5,000 of vacation time who didn't even serve one year in the district. So, I have a real problem.

061It happened twice this year. And so I Oh, sorry. I'm on page 50. Um, and I'm under months of service where you're getting um like accumulated days. I I don't think you should be able to get paid out until you've served 12 months in this district. You want to keep this Malia? Yeah. Go Malia. So if they are getting given their 20 days up front and they are only here for five months, they are prorated down for the number of months they would have earned for the I understand that. I'm still not com I'm still not comfortable. That's again my opinion. So you're asking for this? No, I'm asking 12. Oh for months. Yeah. Oh, thanks. Okay. Um, just one more second, please. Members, just a heads up, we have about four more minutes before

062we will adjourn this to move. Uh, I'm on page 51 unless somebody else had something for 50. Just sorry, just going back to what we were just talking about. If we change that 12 to 60, what is that? Look at that. Because what does that really mean? I mean, okay, I I get it. paying out but they would still acrue the vacation time and then we wouldn't be able to pay them until they've hit 12 or let me let me research and how we word that and then I will bring it back redline to you um with justification. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Um, in terms I'm on page 51 now with the sick leaf bank and to Mr. Todd's point, I think that we need to link because we do end up going into how

063the sick this is so general and the ASBA policy is GCCG which has way more information about the sick link or sink my gosh sick leave bank. Um, but I do think there is more information later in the policy. I think we need to link it here or say look at this. It's um 4-302.f because it does it this is just so general here. Okay, with two minutes left, can we move on to 4-302A? I just have one question on page 55. In the middle of the page, it says, "Eligible spouses who both work for the district may only be able to take a total of combined 12 weeks of leave for the birth of a child." Goes on, I don't need to read the whole thing. This is in our ASBA policy. Um, I

064just wonder the legality of, you know, is it their fault that both of them happen to work for the district and so they don't each get the full 12 weeks of FMLA? Can we research that and get back with you? Okay. I just I can definitely send it to you. Okay. Okay. That's just my question. It is an ASBA, so uh it just seems odd. It almost feels like a punishment, right, that both of the employees I understand the idea, well, we don't want them both to be gone for uh 24 weeks, but again, that feels like an us problem and not a them problem. Thank you for bringing that forward. Right, President Todd, with 10 seconds left to spare. Uh let's uh completed this one. I'll pick this up again at 4-03B when we

065convene again for this. Uh but for now, we've adjourned the court study session special meeting and conven [Music] Oh [Music] Hey Come [Music] on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Come [Music] on, heat. [Music] What's up? [Music] What's up? [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. Come [Music] on. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] I want you. [Music] What's up? [Music] I can't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Wonderful. [Music] What's [Music] the heat? [Music] I want you. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Wonderful. [Music] What's [Music] the heat? [Music] Come on. Come [Music] on. [Music] authority right there. Like to call the governing board meeting to order today, April 15th for Liberty Elementary School District. Here at the Jerry Roby facility district office, we have five board members present. Board member Zimmerman, board member Schmidt, Vice President

066Kenyon, board member Sinconeion, myself, Michael Todd. Also joining us tonight is Ayanna, who is an eighth grader at Westar. She is our student of the month there. Uh, student leader of the month. My apologies. And we're going to hear a little bit more from her later. Uh, actually, we're going to hear from her right now. We're going to go to the pledge of allegiance. And Ayanna, would you please lead us in that? I pledge algiance to the flag and to the [Music] republic. Welcome to the Liberty Elementary School District governing board meeting. We appreciate your interest in the district. The five elected governing board members serve without compensation and volunteer countless hours on behalf of our students and staff. The president and the vice president of the board are elected in January. Under state law,

067the governing board may only discuss and vote on matters that are on the agenda for tonight's meeting. Agendas are posted a minimum of 24 hours in advance on the Liberty Elementary School District web page and at the Jerry Roi district complex. Copies of tonight's agenda are located in the foyer and on the district web page. If you wish to make a public comment, please complete a request to address the board form and submit it to the board secretary before the meeting starts. These forms are located in the foyer prior to entering the governing boardroom. Members of the public will be given up to 3 minutes to speak at the discretion of the board president. Once recognized, please state your name and if you live inside or outside of the district during the call to the

068public, the public may speak on any item of business on the agenda that requires the board to take action. The public may also speak to the governing board about a school district matter that is not on the agenda. State law prohibits board members from commenting on or discussing the matters presented at the end of the call to the public. However, the board may ask the superintendent to review the issue or place it on a future agenda. A board member may also briefly respond to criticism of a board member or the governing board itself. We ask that all speakers show respect and courtesy to others. Comments must pertain to a matter that is within the jurisdiction of the governing board. This is not an appropriate forum to complain about an employee, student or others. We also

069ask the public who are present for the meeting to be respectful by being attentive. Avoid calling out or creating any disruption that may interfere or interrupt the meeting. Individuals who interrupt or interfere with the meeting may be asked to leave by the board president. Inappropriate language and repetition will not be permitted. Thank you for allowing this meeting to be conducted in a peaceful and productive manner. And thank you for your attendance and involvement in tonight's meeting. members, just as a matter of uh record, we have Celeste joining us as well. She's the student leader from Freedom Elementary. Celeste, you all let us in the national anthem or in the pledge of allegiance, and you weren't here, so can you sing the national an I'm only kidding. I won't ask you to do that. We just

070have to have a little fun. Okay, members. Uh, moving on to item 3.3, approval of the regular agenda. I would make one request um when we approve this if we could please move item 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 up to take place for uh public comment at 7.1. Mr. President, you said before public comment 6.1, correct? Uh, I think it's 7.1. Public comment, is it six or seven? I'm sorry, 6.1. My apologies. 6.1. Mr. President, make a motion to approve the regular agenda consistent with board policy BED and temporarily suspend governing board policy with which this agenda may be consistent as we move 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 after 6 uh prior to 6.1. Okay. Okay. Do I have a second? Either one. A second. We have a motion, a second to approve the agenda uh with

071the change to move 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 to follow uh just prior to public comment. Is there any discussion? Yes. I would not be in support of moving it. I don't think it's fair to the public to make them wait for us to go into executive session for however long it's going to take. I think we should allow public comment first. Understand? We uh have some legal representation coming in that is on the clock from the time they hit the door. So, we're trying to get them in and get them out as soon as possible. So, this is a measure to preserve taxpayer money and I'm trying to assure taxpayer voice. I'll still have it. Uh members, is there any other discussion? All right, hearing none, we'll take the vote. Uh board member Zimmerman, nay.

072Board member Schmidt, nay. Vice President Kenyon, I. Board member Sencion, I. I'm also I will show that approve three yes to no. Next will be item 4.1, superintendent update, attendance, enrollment reports, school newsletters, and discipline update. Dr. Monroe, President Todd, Vice President Kenyon, members of the board. Just a few things to mention. Um, attached are the school newsletters, uh, the int attendance enrollment reports, the discipline update. Uh, we're well underway with, uh, our last season of sports with baseball and softball for students. We're wrapping up uh, statewide testing, which is exciting. Uh, believe it or not, there's four to five weeks of school that's left for the school year. We look forward to teacher appreciation week which is coming up. I believe that's the first week in May. That's a great time of year where

073we celebrate our wonderful teachers. And then I wanted to let the board know that right now our enrollment at Loretta Zumbro Elementary School is up to 282 students which is very exciting and it's still only April. And so um myself or staff can answer any questions on any of these updates if the board has them. I'll start towards the end. Um, members Zimmerman, do you have any questions? Uh, more of a comment just about the home room lists. I just want to make sure that um, as we're preparing to staff for next year that we're not going to start with classes that are in the red and even some of these higher yellow classes that we're ensuring that we are adhering to the classroom target size that was approved by the voters with the override.

074Yeah, that's correct. It's always a careful balance. Uh, we we obviously want to do that. Uh there's a lot of unknowns when school starts and so we have to be very careful with staffing because uh budget-wise uh we want to make sure the students get here and we want to make sure that what's on paper matches who shows up the first day of school. So to answer your question, yes, we're mindful of that. Um however, we have to be very lery and we got to confirm that the kids are actually going to be here, but we do want to honor that from the override. So we will do that. Board member Schmidt. Nothing. Thank you, Vice President. Kenya, I I just think that that's great. 282 kids, you said, are already registered for our new

075schools, Loretta Zumbrell, and it's and more come in every other day, Mindy says, which is exciting. That's wonderful to hear. Thank you. Had a question about that 282. How many do you know how many of those are new enrollments to the district and how many of those are from already in the district, coming from another school? I had a feeling that I don't have that. Yeah, it's a great question. I'll I'll make sure I get that. Okay. Um for the board, how many are are returning Liberty students and how how many are new enrolles from outside the district or new kindergarteners? I I'll I'll break that down and get it to you. And then uh next question is for the behavior referrals on this discipline update. We're getting close to the end of the year.

076Can we get a graphic that shows last year versus this year? And I know it's going to be a little hard to compare because we have different discipline policy now. So there's like more stuff's being reported, but I still like to see the numbers, but I can do that for May. Thank you. Have a couple questions. Uh myself, uh just looking at the discipline, is there a way to better quantify the discipline uh based off of the school size? um it stands to reason that a school um that has three times as many students as another one may have some more discipline, but for the public to look at, they may not know the actual uh ADM of of each school. So, I'm just wondering if we can look at that and then also look

077at how many are um firsttime discipline requests and how many are multiple. So, is our are we working? If if we if every student gets in trouble once or enters the discipline system once and there's no more, that's a high number certainly, but we've solved it. But if we're seeing lots of repeat offenders, I think we need to look at what we're doing and make sure that our system is working properly, what whatever that may be. So, if we could do that. Um, also, I I just noticed um this one referrals at a couple schools are are considerably higher. one of those has a lot more students in it. But, um, if staff could report back to us what support we're giving to these campuses to assist with this, um, I I think discipline does

078take up a lot of time. Um, it's either going to take up a lot of time in a classroom where we've changed to have a a little bit more um, strict discipline plan, which I support um, because it shouldn't be taking place in a classroom, but then again, it's it's taking administrators to to deal with that situation. So, I just like to see that. And then uh um last but not least looking at the attendance. I think it's very important that we support the teachers that have over limit classes. And I was asked that staff would uh look at what we're doing to address this and and how we're working to resolve that in the future. We we we have a problem. We need to fix it. Uh so I don't expect any answers tonight,

079but I would like to definitely look at what we're doing to address this and and uh move forward with that. Next item will be item 4.2, governing board and superintendent recognitions. Dr. Monroe, President Todd, Vice President Kenyon, members of the board. This is our last board meeting where we'll actually do some recognitions of our wonderful students, our our terrific staff and volunteers. And so we'll be recognizing students of the month and then we'll also be having uh a recognition for some of the wonderful people that make the magic happen at Westar. And then we'll also do recognition for our student leaders. So, I'll pass it back to you, President Todd, and you can uh take it from here. All right, members, if you'll join me up front of the dice, we'll start from there. So

080each month we get the opportunity to recognize our students of the month from each campus and on behalf of Dr. Maro, the governing board. Uh this is truly a great honor to be able to stand before you and introduce the future leaders. Not future really. They're leaders today. They're leaders on their campus. And it's amazing to see hear the stories of what they do. It was always fun to to be here and hear the the principles tell us, the teachers tell us. They've gone through a rigorous process. They don't realize that, but they've gone through a really rigorous process to be chosen, selected to come here um and be recognized. So, uh when we call your name, we'd ask you to come up. Uh this is the one time in the boardrooms we love to

081hear lots of uh the crowd go crazy. Um but uh please support these students. They are true leaders. They are exactly what we are looking for as model students and it's it's such an honor to recognize them every every year. I I wish we could do more. Um but this is the best of the best. So with that, we'll get started and I'm going to hand these certificates over to you. They're supposed to be in order, so get ready. Hopefully they are. Make sure I call that name. Okay. I'm in trouble. All right. Uh, representing Blue Horizon is Natalie Gurgus. All right. All right. Next is from Australia Mountain, Cecilia Faren, representing Freedom Elementary. We have two this month. Natalie Navaro and Orisa Roman. are representing Losus Academy. Zoe Brandon representing Liberty Elementary. Xander Gonzalez

082representing Rainbow Elementary. Naen Romero Loredo. Looks like she wasn't able to make it. Next will be Westar Elementary's representative, Alina Yale. Okay, students, we'll get you to come up front. We'll get Miss Zumbro to line us all up. We'll take a good group photo really quick. Now, aside from those great students, the way we foster and help get those great students, first of all, it starts at home with the parents. And we can't thank you enough as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, guardians, everybody that's involved in raising these kids. Be proud of yourself as well. But also very important to our campus are our staff members. So each month we recognize a different campus and this month is going to be Westar. So we'll start off by recognizing our teacher uh Miss Rachel Hughes. Megan,

083come on up. our next represent from West Elementary, our on-site staff, Miss Karen Thomas. Okay, our next member is not present, so that means we can clap extra loud so she hears us wherever she is. But our district support staff representative, Miss Erica Daniel. Our parent representative, Miss Jennifer Twine. And our volunteer representation is Miss Linda Lion. So again, I think it's just important to recognize our staff. Um, you know, they come to school each day and we see them there, but what you don't always see is they're at home working, weekends, still working, uh, all the time. And we have some great students. We have great staff. So, please again give all of them a very loud round of applause. So, appreciation. And we'll do photos once again. If you'll join the board up

084front, we'll take another picture. Okay, while everyone's uh returning to their seats, um we want to recognize our student leaders. We took the picture first. Um but I'd like to read something a little bit about uh our student leaders. And um this was some this is something that we started doing last year where we'd invite a student leader. I have the principal and staff nominate a student leader from each um school to be up here and really represent our future. And we're we're really proud of you. Uh really proud of you girls. And uh not enough nice things can say uh can be said. If your parents are here in the room, um you should be proud. And uh I always like to call it a parent payday. When something wonderful happens with our with

085our kids, it's like a parent payday. And so uh let me read a little bit about each one of our students and then President Todd will let them have the microphone briefly and then after that we'll we'll have a we'll take a a quick recess so that uh people can leave who have been here for the recognition. So let me read about Celeste first. Celeste Mayorga. She is an eighth grader from Freedom Elementary School. She's the proud president of the student council. She's an not only an outstanding student, but also a true leader who sets a positive example for her peers. Through her dedication, hard work, and kind spirit, she consistently inspires others to get involved and make a difference in their school and community. Her leadership and commitment to excellence make her a role

086model to the students and the staff alike. We're lucky to have her as a leader at Freedom Elementary School. Can we give her a round of applause? All right. And let me read about Ayanna. Did I say that right? Ayanna Ayana. Ayana Alexander. Love the name. Ayana Alexander is also an eighth grader at Westar and she's also the student council president. Um she was elected this year by her peers. In her role, she has led with positivity and creativity. Uh she's been an integral integral part of helping uh the school plan their school dances. She's always coming up with new ways to get more students involved in campuswide events such as spirit days. She is reflective in her role as a leader and a wonderful example of how a president can lead with heart and

087respect. Westar feels fortunate to have worked with her this year and knows she will continue to thrive in leadership roles as she grows. How about a round of applause for Ayana? So, uh, we're going to give the girls the microphone and, uh, let them just speak briefly or read something briefly about why they love their school. And, um, no pressure, girls, but go ahead, Celeste. You're going to do great. So, let's let's have you sit right here so everybody can sit here. Actually, you can just use this mic. Hi. Hi everyone. Um, good evening. My name is Celeste and I want to start off by saying our school is truly exceptional because of its awesome teachers. Their dedication, passion, and commitment to fostering every student's potential to create an inspiring learning environment. They ma they

088go beyond textbooks making lessons engaging and meaningful while also providing support and encouragement. For first, for example, starting in kindergarten, Miss Burgess showed me kindness, respect, and working hard. Next, Miss Anger in fourth grade encouraged a growth mindset, which was okay to make mistakes and learning as a process. Lastly, Mr. Washington gave me constructive and honest feedback on both personal and academic behavior, helping me identify areas for improvement. Their enthusiasm not only fosters academic su success but also instills a lifelong love of learning in each student. Because of them, the rest of Freedom staffs and education values have made me a leader at school, sports, and at home. I've accomplished a lot of successes. to name a few, being president of student council, a straight A student, an outstanding debater, and recently being accepted into

089Warner honors courses for my up upcoming high school road. Thank [Applause] you. Hello everybody. Um, what I love most about Westar is the teachers who always do their hardest in teaching us. No matter how rough it gets, you know, they're always there. Um, the many extracurriculars my school offers, whether it's just sports or whether it's after school activities, including choir, the musicals that they have done. Um, and the community Westar creates that focuses on the character of the students constantly bettering us in whatever we do. At Westar, we're we focus a lot on soore, making sure our students are always the best of who they are, never less. And um that helps the students be who they are. And it's a lot thanks to our teachers. Thank you. All right, now the fun part. You

090guys have any tough questions for your parents? Superintendent Monroe, anything you you want to ask him for pizza tonight or anything? You got the microphone? No. Okay. All right. Thank you guys for all you do for leaders on our campus and we know you're going to continue forward in life because you become younger, slightly older, but still young adults. Um you you're going to do great in high school and it's amazing to have you guys in our community. So, thank you. All right, we'll take a short recess uh right now just to allow those who came for the recognition ceremony to leave if they want to. We'll start back in just about 5 minutes. Uh probably about 6:08. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I won't

091see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Number one, the monster. [Music] Come [Music] on, heat. [Music] What's up? [Music] All right, members, at 608, we'll reconvene and uh move on to item 4.3, fiscal year 26, budget reduction updates and monthly budget report for March 2025. Uh we'll have presentations from Crystal Moer, our accountant, and Rebecca Williams, consultant. Good evening, governing board members and community members. If our brave students can get in front of you and public speak, so can I. So, thank you for having me tonight. Um we would like to just present some of the budget work that's been done over the last month or so since our last meeting. Um so, thank you for bringing up the presentation. See, my clicker is working here. Okay. Um, so just to kind of recap, we

092focused on some four items as our budget strategy. Uh, right now for FY25, uh, we've been working on closing and reducing purchase orders. Um, for the remainder of this year, we've assessed the needs of exactly what needs to be open, what can be reduced, um, and what might still be needed. Uh there's also been a hiring freeze. Uh so only positions that have come before cabinet have been hired. Everything else has been put on hold for the rest of this year. Um we will be utilizing journal entries to move some of our expenses to alternative funds. Um some of those sources could be our classroom site fund, instructional improvement, civic center, indirect costs. Um just different sources we can use for different expenses. Um, and then we also will be transferring 700,000 from our DAA,

093so our capital money into M when we do our May budget revision. Um, some of the work that we've done in the last few weeks, we've identified any savings for the FY25 year. Um, most of that work has been done through our purchase orders and we've also prepared a list of what we believe were one-time purchases for FY25. Um, so I have some totals on that for you. Um, because that was a topic of discussion when we did budget priorities. So, M we've come up with about 117,000 of one-time purchases that applied to this year only for specific situations. Capital is quite a bit larger. We had about 305,000 of one-time purchases. Again, things like equipment or special projects that were a one-time purchase. Um so our next step for 25 is basically finish up

094the work on the journal entries. We'll be bringing that budget revision to the next meeting um and then we think we'll be at a good place for 25. So next um for FY26 just to give some background um after last meeting we took the budget priorities that you all had prioritized and um we did some more work to that to identify some concrete numbers. Um so we came up with our lists of memberships, our list of consulting services and our list of district subscriptions. administration combed through those lists and really decided what items we could reduce, what items um we absolutely have to keep, and what items we could eliminate that maybe weren't needed in the new year. Um, at this point, I could bring up the budget priorities list and we can kind of

095uh give you a little overview of the things that have changed since last time. Could you bring up the FY26 budget prioritization interests, please? Okay. So, last meeting we kind of put things up above that were items that you were willing to consider as reductions. Everything at the very bottom of this list was things that were not going to be considered as reductions at this time. So, anything that you see on this list that's highlighted in orange is something that we have changed since the last meeting. So, one of the biggest things is if you see our line that says reduce district memberships. Originally, that was an amount of 40,000. Um, after combing through that list, we actually think it will be about 30,000 that we can reduce. That's a pretty concrete number at this

096point. Um, the other item uh is reducing district consulting fees. So we have all kinds of consultants for all different types of projects. After going through that list, we have a pretty concrete number for reductions of about 277,000. Um so that's significantly more. That was originally 40,000 when we reviewed that last meeting. Um and then we've added a few things at the bottom. Um one of the things is uh we had about 535 originally kind of set aside for Lor Loretta Zumbro. Um, we've reduced that number to actual needs, what we can get by with, and we think it will be closer to 440,000. So, that's some savings there. Um, also moving a current LPN to that school to cover the nurse's office and then rehiring a CNA for the school where that nurse moves

097from. Um, that will save us. The difference between an LPN and a CNA is about $20,000. So, that will save us in that area. And then we looked through our list of district subscriptions and we thought we could comfortably reduce those by about 60,000. Um, and then a smaller item, our Survey Monkey subscription service, uh, that the superintendent's office uses could be reduced by about $2,000. So, um, could you go back to the presentation, please? Thank you. Um, so right now we're projecting that M carry forward would potentially be around 500,000. Um, DAA or capital carry forward would potentially be around a million dollars totaling 1.5 million. That's what we're basing off right now. Um, oh, thank you. So next steps basically we're going to continue to monitor our purchases for the remainder of the

098year very closely. We're going to hold the line on M and capital needs. Um we're going to execute the strategy we talked about. Uh identify and implement the areas of budget priorities so that we can reduce those items for next year. Um promote new student registration of course and monitor the legislature. The next couple board meetings are going to be big topics of budget. So the May meeting is going to be the final revision for FY25. So we're going to have that to present to you. So we'll have concrete numbers of what our our budget will actually be. Um proposed FY26 budget will be at the June meeting and then the July meeting will be the public hearing and the adoption of that FY26 budget. Um after that we basically want to start bringing monthly

099budget reports which I have one for this month that we'll talk about when we're done. Um, we want to be bringing that in front of the board on a monthly basis. It will basically review our budget, our expenses, our encumbrances, so you can always see where we're at. Um, and then we're also going to implement doing a December budget revision every year as an annual practice so we can get our budget cleaned up a lot sooner than waiting till the springtime. So, I can take some questions now before we move into the monthly budget report if you would like. Members, do you have any questions? Hearing none. Yes, I do. Um, are we going to be able to talk about some of these things on this sheet? Like, can we, um, I'll just share my

100things about the sheet. Um, so, um, I have a couple things. Uh so talking about Juicebox um we had you know had a lot of conversation about that and I just wanted to bring to the board's attention that Juicebox actually reached out to me personally and sent me an email um and I found it very interesting that he wrote I wanted to connect directly because I don't believe you received accurate or complete information. Um and so basically we cannot get out of the contract. That is basically what he's saying. He's saying that we could delay um the payment basically where we would pay less in the so it's 25,000 for the for four years. And so he's saying that we could pay less in the first two years, but then we'd have to make up

101the difference in the final two years. And I don't think that's a good plan. Personally, I think we need to figure out how to pay for it since we signed this contract. Um the second thing I wanted to talk about was um explore learning which was one of the curriculum things that was uh removed and I had a teacher reach out to me very concerned um that that you know really the science staff wasn't consulted about whether it was useful and that junior high science teachers are using this um every every single day and in fact they spent a ton of time creating PD and creating curriculum around this. Um, and so I'd really like the board to consider looking at um maybe bringing that uh looking at could we figure that out. And I

102asked Dr. Monroe and my questions and it's about $12,000. Um, and so if it's something that students are, you know, utilizing, especially junior high teachers, um, I feel like, you know, with the budget savings that we've been able to find, which I think is great, um, I'd like the board to consider, um, looking at that. Um, some other things, as you know, people, uh, community members and staff and stakeholders have reached out to me, um, the psychologist. So, at the last meeting, you know, I was very concerned about reducing the number of psychologists and how that would affect our special education population. And um I had some psychologists reach out to me very concerned about the case load and the ability to manage the case load with the reduction. And as of this moment, unless

103something changed in the last few days, we've had zero psychologists sign their contract. zero out of six. I think that's extremely concerning. Um, and if we have to contract for even one of those, we might as well have kept the 7.5 because the amount to contract one of those psychologists or six of them will be astronomical and a lot of this savings is going to disappear. So, I think the board should really consider whether that um is appropriate. Um, one of the other things we talked about was support staff um, increases um, our hourly employees and uh, which is I think about $120 uh,,000 which, uh, I totally understand. The concern that I have is telling one employee group that that they should have a raise over a different employee group such as our teachers.

104And so for me personally as a board member, I get it. Um, but it's very hard for me. Um, but I just want to bring that, you know, to the board's attention for us, something to look at because if you look at the one-time purchases reduction, even if we cut that savings in half, because inevitably in FY26, we're going to have onetime per purchases. Um, could we utilize that money? Uh and then you know my question was about Dreambox. We you know the board talked a lot about Dreambox and uh parents frustration with it. Um but I just I asked Dr. Monroe if it had been communicated to teachers that we eliminated that program because a lot of teachers use that program every single day and it hasn't been communicated to staff uh totally at

105this point. And so my concern is what is what is are we going to replace it because they utilize that program every single day. So these are just some of the concerns that I have um that have occurred and I you know since we were able to find some other money I'd like the board to consider some of these things. That's all I have. Thank you board member Schmidt and nothing right now. Vice President Kenyon. Yeah, I I have just kind of looking at what what U board member Zimmerman said plus what I would like to look at. Um, right there at the bottom of the list, it has move LPN to Loretta Zumbro and hire a CNA. Our nurses on our campuses, especially ones that have been there for a long time, know the

106students and they know the medical conditions the students have. Um, and I know we it shows a difference of $20,000, especially with being able to find this. I I would much rather we leave the LPN we plan on moving at their current school and hire an LPN for Loretta Zumbro. It's another $20,000, but it's a new school, new students. Um, these these staff that are currently there, they know they know when a kid is off, and that's very very important to me. Um, same as you know, teachers. When teachers been with a kid for all year, they know when something's off. And so I think that a lot of parents and they've reached out to me as well concerned that they may lose their their nurse that knows their children's medical conditions. Um, so I

107would ask the board to consider uh making that step and leaving the current nurses where they're at and hire a brand new LPN for Loretta Zumbro. Um, so that would be my comment there. I'm glad. Thank you for finding, you know, fine-tuning this, I guess. Um, just to reiterate cuz I know there's some some chatter out outside our boardroom here. We have not overspent. Correct. That's correct. So, there's a lot of uh things going out there saying that our district has over spent, which is false. Um, the projections, obviously, every year you come and you do budget projections. So you try to figure out where we need to cut, where we need to trim, that kind of stuff. And just about every year projections are a little bit off and you have to figure it

108out. And so that's what we're doing. So um I don't believe that it's mismanagement. I don't believe it's uh intentional. I think it was just this was brought to us and that narrative that's out there is just a complete lie. So I just wanted to say that. Um, I do agree that uh the support staff they they need a hand. Um, and I I would like to see hopefully there's a way and I don't know that there is a way uh at this point, but hopefully I would like to see a way where everybody across the board gets a little bump in increase even if it's, you know, to to match the cost of living increase. Um, and so we might not be able to do that with our current budget, but hopefully it looks

109like Loretta Zumbro hopefully opens with a lot more kids than we anticipated. We only anticipated 50 ADM for this next year. Hopefully we have a lot of kids flooding in our doors and we're able to really start upping the uh increase. But I just wanted to put that out there. So that's all mine. Board member Shinion. But yeah, it's great news finding that 1.5. I just caution. I don't want us to say, "Oh, we found 1.5 and then then start spending it on all of our wish list again." Um, with that being said, telling support staff they couldn't get the raise is one of the things that bugged me the most. So, I agree with my other two bill members here that that's something we really need to look at. That would one of my

110priorities to look at first is if we can fulfill that. But then again, what I'm saying is I don't want us to get too excited and just start spending like crazy again just because we think we have the money there. I think you have more to present, but I I do want to reiterate um this district has not over spent. So, the narrative that is out there for anybody that's said it, I think the advice would be that that's incorrect information. We are not in the red. We have not been in the red. We have not overspent. And that's very important to me. So, let's make sure once again and I think you've got confirmation. We would have had we overspent, we would have had some notification from other outside agencies notifying us of a

111problem. We didn't get that. Correct. Um, we get constant monitoring from the Maricopa County Superintendent's Office. We've received no notifications that we're in any kind of trouble from them. Um, they've also implemented a new program within the last few months where they're sending us regular alerts every single time we run a voucher. um whether that's payroll items or expense items, they let us know if any of our funds that we used on that voucher um are in danger of not having enough money to cover them. They tell us and um we've been fine so far. Thank you. So, just again to clarize to to for clarity, we haven't overspent. We are not in the red. We have money to finish this year and as we look to next year, we just have to look at

112where some of that money was allocated originally. But now it can go into other some other spending buckets that are actually more appropriate. We need to bring our encumbrances down, which is projections of what we're spending. Um, we need to clean them some things up. We need to complete our endofear cleanup and then roll into the new year, you know, in a good way. Right. Absolutely. Okay. Can I add a comment? You may. So, in terms of overspending, did we spend $2.5 million of reserves in fiscal year 24? In fiscal year 24. So, I think you're talking about our financial risk analysis. Yes, our our expenses did go up in that year. Okay. And did they go up in this year again, too? They have gone up slightly. Okay. And did the auditor general identify

113us in high risk in several areas of our financials on their report? Yes. Okay. Thank you. And I think uh when we spoke about that earlier, um they take a snapshot of that as they see where this is at and we're going to we're going to readress with them some of those issues uh that are there. But there was some money that was allocated in the wrong buckets. If you think of how school finance is, there's lots of buckets to hold money. Um, there's some that are full that should be lower which pulled from the other buckets. So, it's it's a matter of how you allocate. It's kind of you got multiple checking accounts, multiple savings accounts, and they're all for they're all for different things. So, um, again though, I think the most important

114part is if we had done anything in TR bad, we would have been being notified by county and state agencies of a problem and that has not happened. Yes, their financial risk analysis is a snapshot of the district, you could say, and most of it focuses on M and capital, but we have lots of other sources of funds. So, um, we do have other cash funds where we can move things around to make our budget work for us. Um, so that's kind of the report is helpful to districts. Um, but it's just data and there's no context behind it. So then it's up to us to interpret the data and how we want the district to move forward. Thank you. I think you've got more to present too. Yes, I have one more thing. I

115have another attachment if you could bring that up for me. Um so what we'd like to do starting next year is to bring um a monthly report before the board. Kind of the way that we bring the discipline reports, the attendance reports, just have a standing item for the board to be able to review. Um can you go to the very top, please? Um I just want to explain kind of the format of this particular report and then if you have any questions for this one I can answer. Um so basically it's separated between two different types of funds. There's budget funds and cash funds. So budget funds are our money that we get from the state mostly. Um cash funds can be things like um uh basically the things we collect money for. Um

116so that's kind of how they're broken up. Uh it shows revenue that we have coming in that changes all of the time. It shows our budget. Um our carryover from last year is included for our cash funds. And then we kind of have it broken up expenses between salaries, benefits, service type items, supplies, capital um to kind of give different context. And then one of the important things to remember on here is that we include expenses but also incumbrances. So encumbrances are outstanding items that we haven't spent yet, but we have a purchase order or um a position or something like that out there holding the money. Um so that's where we have wiggle room. So if we are viewing this report and we see that there's a line item that's in the negative, well

117that gives us the potential to reduce our incumbrances to make that work. Also, um like I said, our revenue is always changing. So, this report itself is for March 2025. Um at this point in time, we've received maybe 75% of our revenue that we're due from the state. So, not all of it's come in. Um and then like grants and different programs where we're constantly doing expenses first, getting reimbursement later, those types of funds almost always are in the negative. Um, so we kind of wanted your feedback. Do you like this style? Is it enough information? Is it too much information? Um, so I am ready to take those notes. And Crystal, before you uh before we get the feedback from the board, will you just we just found out today from the county there's

118there's an agenda item later on in the agenda about uh the board signing a document. And just while we have it up, do you want to just comment on that so the board is aware of what funds are particularly correct particularly uh in danger if we don't agree to that form? So later on in the meeting um we have an agenda item. Oh 8.7 is an agenda item to discuss a new document that has been issued from the US Department of Education um that we have to sign. It's for uh title six. So they have us um agreeing to certain stipulations that the district must follow in order to to qualify for our federal funding. So what I wanted to point out on this report is the top area where there's budget funds. Any of

119our funds that are in the 100 to 399 range are federal monies. So you can see there's several grants on there. Um title one project momentum, title 2, 3, 4 IDA money. All of that comes from the federal government. So that's a couple million dollars right there. Um I just wanted to point that out because of the uh resolution that needs to be signed to go to the Department of Education. They basically said we could lose all of that money if we don't agree to the things that they hold us to. So questions. Um my question would be are we able to see the M budget without the carry forward because I feel like it would be very helpful because when we set the budget um we are hopefully the plan is to leave some

120carry forward and so I think it would be helpful to the board if we're able to see what we're trying to spend and not what is available if that makes sense. Um, and so I'm assuming at the balance end is what you think we'll have at the end of the year after incumbences. Is that what you mean by balance or is that the current balance? That balance is the end after this month. So this is only a one month report. Okay. I think it would be helpful to see some sort of percentage of like how much of the budget do we have left? Um and maybe just at the beginning of the year could you are there certain months of the year that you know certain categories are going to be more that would just

121be helpful. I realize that it will be more work upfront you know as you think about the you know the school fiscal year. But those would be my uh two kind of asks. Thank you. Board member Schmidt, do you have any questions? Uh no question, just a comment. Uh I just want to thank you for putting this together. Um I think that they should have been doing this for a long time. So I'm glad that it's starting now and then hopefully we don't end up in the same position where we're scrambling in March and April um and we can catch things much sooner. So, thank you for all the time that I know this took you to put together, Vice President Kenyon. Yeah, thank you as well for putting this together. Um, I heard a

122quote today and I'm going to just say it. So, data without context is dangerous. I wrote that down because that's very true. Um, I thank you for the data and anybody in the public who looks at this, hopefully they can digest it and understand it, but there's not a whole lot of context that comes with this, right? it's just numbers. Um, so that's why we as a board really need to be informed as well. And thank you for doing that. If we scroll over to the end, I just want to make a point. Um, just Yeah, there you go. That top line, can we go a little further? There we go. So, like the top line there, it says the balance on that top line 001. It says basically that's negative $425,000. However, those are

123the encumbrances, right? Things we haven't been paid for yet. Correct. And so once we get the state funding for that, that'll balance that out or or give us a positive number there. Um and so just just kind of little things like that, you know, if we don't understand little stuff, it it really can really throw us through a loop. Um but I do have a question. So looking at prior year this year where where did the spending the majority of the spending increase come from? Mainly um the biggest area salaries and benefits but uh function-wise among amongst the district special education maintenance and transportation were some of our biggest increases. Okay I think that's all I have right now. Thank you, board member Senion. Also, I want to say thank you. Um, one thing I

124like about it is it is kind of simple. I think like you can get lost in data very easy. Um, so I know people want to put their touches on a little bit, but I just caution against putting too much information on there at one time because then it's hard to see what you're looking at. But this is really good. This is easy to look at every month. I know it's going to be different. Um, but it's a quick thing to look at kind of where we're at. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Moer. Thank you. um for that. It was a great catchup and thank you for the time earlier today uh that you gave me to go over this. Um a a couple of things. We had talked about the autogener

125report. Were you able to get that to be able to pull up on here? Uh the classroom spending reporting. Yeah. Yes. I don't know how to get it on that screen though. Can you can we bring it up from there? Can you help them bring it up from there if you know the website or email them the link maybe? Yeah, I just want to make sure that we're staying on topic because this wasn't attached for the public to view on the agenda. It does not need to be attached for the public. The only thing required under the open meeting law is the agenda itself. Um, but I will commend the district at this time for being very transparent, always having the attachments available, most of them for the public. Um, I think there was a

126meeting a couple months ago that happened and the presenter came in with a thumb drive uh that got put in at the last second. So, we're only required under open meeting to post the agenda itself. Mr. Dangerfield, is that true? That is correct. while they're working on it. Um, what we're going to bring up on the screen is our classroom spending report from the Arizona Auditor General's Office. While we're waiting for it to pull up, Mr. Todd, as a board member in the future, if you're going to talk about something, I would like to know so that I could be prepared. We just got this information today. This is for Liberty specifically what we have on the screen. Oh, I think uh a couple things, Miss Moer, you had mentioned um some of our most

127increases were in maintenance uh pay raises. If we scroll down a couple of pages where we talk about teacher pay, let's keep scrolling. Uh keep we're getting close. Keep going. Keep going. Right there. Average teacher salary is $2,665 higher compared to state average. This is not our numbers. This is numbers from the state auditor general. You're going to use one report, you need to use all their reports. I'm very proud to say that we are for the first time ever paying teachers more than the state average. You can there think there's a graph that shows the history of that. Um and we've always been below, but we worked really hard to bring that up to continue to have a competitive uh group to continue to attract the best of the best. So, um I think

128that's one thing that's that's very important. Also, uh let's see. I think if you go let's start back up the top and we'll find it again. Um right, scroll down. Just go kind of slow. You'll see that last year we put another $1,800, right? Uh keep going. Uh total per spending. Total per student spending. We increased $1,848 total per student spending. If you look at the number of our students, that number turns out to be about $7 million that we added to the total student spending. Also, there's a spot on here. If we look at administration costs, that's I think a pie chart. Uh, no, that's where it says high risk right there. Uh, administration spending per student, very low. This district has a long history of keeping things very low. Um, as far as

129our administrative pay, uh, you can see there where the peer average is at 1,642. Those are like districts. And you can see where we're at. We're we're very low compared to others. You will see in here and kind of talking about the data um, and and the snapshot of it. Our spending per square foot is higher at the moment. We essentially have three new schools, two that were just built and a third one coming online. You're going to get some depreciation over time, but when you make those investments, that's going to skew that number a little bit and it just tags high. But if you look at what's really happening, that's going to be very normal and on par with with other districts that are experiencing the growth that we have and also the rebuild.

130Where there are districts that are shutting schools down in two and three and four at a time, we're growing our district. So, we're going to see that number be high for a little bit. I think it's important that everyone understands where that data comes from. you know, when we look at food service, we're very low. Um, again, that's a snapshot that that can be taken a couple of different ways. Honestly, if that one creeped up a little bit, it really wouldn't be a bad mark for us. Um, but I think it's important that the public really understand where we're at. Very low in administration costs. Uh, we have teachers that are paid higher than the state average now, first time ever. And we also want to talk a little bit about our ESSER funds. And

131going back on this, when this district started receiving ESRE funds was actually prior to me being on the board previously, whereas most districts used their money, um, for example, Kerr Elementary and Mesa took their eser funds and they built an a center, they built a barn, they built basically a farm on their campus. It was a one-time expense. our previous district uh superintendent and board chose to use that to hire people with an impending cliff coming because those grants were going to go away. This district in the last two years did in my opinion a great job of trying to absorb the vast majority of those positions. Yes, certainly some of those had to be changed, but we kept most of the staff there, which was an unplanned expense for us because rule number one,

132if you've ever worked with grants, is don't use it on recurring costs because that money is going to go away and then you have a a shortfall coming. And that's exactly what happened with the ESRE funds. We had the opportunity at that time to just let a bunch of people go. We didn't do that. We held on to every single one that we possibly could with the budget. that's going to that's going to make things rough for a little bit until the growth comes up. Uh we're required by the state to create a budget based off of numbers that are pie in the sky, kind of fake numbers, if you will. That that's law. That's what we have to do. Um so we look to demographers to tell us what the growth is going to

133be. Um we hire some of the very best in that. But every year they come here lately and they say, "Well, this area is a little bit different. we missed the mark because we don't know what's happening. Um you have once upon a time a very large uh battery company was coming to the area now gone away. So that's going to change our numbers but we're looking at this and just yesterday as if it's not hard enough to manage this. Our state legislature and their infinite wisdom decided to start talking about school districts creating three-year budgets. It's hard enough to forecast out one year and things change all the time. Cities across the state and country right now are all having to tighten their belt a little bit because of things that are taking place

134within the economy. Growth hasn't come quite as fast as what we think. It's still exploding out in this area, but other places it's not and they're closing schools down. So, I think again to uh to Vice President Kenyon's uh quote about data, it's very important to see the whole snapshot. And again, I want to reiterate these numbers are good. that pie chart. If we go up to the top where the pie chart is, um, let me talk about this really quick because it was up there. Our our spending of of uh, keep going up down, sorry. You're going to see right there for transportation very high. Again, that's a snapshot. Uh, we have some long bus routes. Most school districts are more in the city and our peer districts just over next door to us.

135Even in Buckeye, they're not having to make the long runs that we're making. We're making some very long runs into Deep Rainbow. uh even Australa, although as the crow flies, you might only be a mile from the school, as you take the loops around, those buses put on a lot of extra miles. Uh we've been up there in that high category for many, many years uh with with transportation. Um that's per mile uh spending per rider comparable. What I will say is we've kept um we've tried to do our very best to keep our buses on the road. We've got new buses coming to replace buses that are 22, 23 years old. We're trading in buses that haven't ran in four or 5 years. Um, I can't imagine that. I want the safest buses, most

136reliable buses for our students. And when we have buses, when our best bus, a couple years ago, Miss Kate sold her best bus was 21, I think it was 21 years old. Uh, that that means her best bus is quickly to become her worst bus because a 21-y old bus is worth zero. Um, that's depreciated out. If they were all that way, that cost would be different. But as we invest in new buses, be it electric, and I want to be very clear on that, as we're looking at this, we have a good fleet. We're going to continue to have a good fleet, but there's a cost in that. So again, to the data snapshot, I think it's important to notice um what's really taking place here. And again, to reiterate, this district is not

137overspent and is not going to overspend. Could I have an opportunity to talk about this document? You may. Okay. Um, this wasn't released today. The board talked about this document in March at our meeting. So, if you could scroll back up, please keep going. Please. Right here is fine. So, yes, our um increase in um classroom spending increased. The problem is is that if you continue to increase it, you cannot withstand it year overyear. and hence why this district, this board at the last meeting had to cut $2.3 million from the budget. So saying that we increased it and I'm, you know, we're paying our teachers more, but if we can't balance a budget, it's not helpful in the end. And so could we go to the teacher salary um part? Uh it's the other

138way. Sorry. Yeah, keep very bottom. There we go. You know, the when the AG presented this report to the board in March, they said that these numbers were self-reported. So, these are numbers coming from the district. And I questioned how are, first of all, I added all of the teacher contracts that we issued um and divided them by the number we issued. And it isn't that average. There's no teacher in our district making $67,000 on average. Most of them are significantly lower than that. And when we asked them about that, they said that's what the district told us. So again, if we're talking about data um and we report numbers that aren't correct, then you know, again, without context, um and then you look at the number of teachers in their first three years are

139making the same exact as teachers that have four or more years experience. Uh I find that very troubling. And I asked administration or I asked the auditor general and they said again it was uh reported by the district. So, I've asked the district, how is that possible? Because it certainly doesn't seem right. Um, so I think there are some major concerns that need to be looked at with this document. Any other questions? Um, Mr. President. Uh just kind of going back to uh the kind of that spreadsheet Crystal, if I don't know if you guys can pull that back up just real quick. I know we had talked about a little bit about uh things that we would support. Uh sorry, not that one, the the the budget priorities. Oh, and so I if we

140can if this is the appropriate place, if we can discuss as a board um what we're willing to support here or if the board feels like we need to do another study session on this, but I I don't know that we need to. Um, as I said, my my concern would be to bring a new LPN for Loretta Zumbro. Um, I'm also in agreeance that if we have the money, um, and not just any money, right? It's got to be reasonable. Uh, we do need to start putting money back into our reserves, our capital, but I also would like to support the explore learning as well. Um, I've heard that as well that uh that would be a good one to keep. And so since we were able to find a little bit more and

141that doesn't cost a whole lot, that might be one that the board might consider. So um, Mr. President, is this appropriate at this time to have this discussion or I I think we have the discussion um, at a later time just to get this clarified um, and give everybody time to look it over just as we did the policies a little I think we'd be best to bring this back maybe at the next uh next meeting in a work session or even as a general general topic. Okay. Thank you. Could I make a recommendation that maybe we do it at the work session on the 21st? Yeah, I think that would be fine. Okay, members. Next up will be item 5.1, the governing board update. Start uh down at the end with um board members

142Zimmerman. Okay, just have a couple things tonight. Um, I was able to attend um, AG night at Liberty um, with two of my children and it was an incredible night. Um, we had never been to AG night before. Um, and just all the different stations and experiments and I the favorite absolutely was making butter. Um, watching everybody carry around these little containers shaking to make butter all night long. It just was a really really super cool event and I was um so excited to be able to take my kids to that. Um I also was able to attend um the Jungle Book at Estrella. Um so incredible to see what our Champs teachers are able to do with students. It was a really fun night. I also wanted to um celebrate some celebrations from the

143trimester to illuminate testing um in ELA. Liberty Elementary um increased um 16% of their an a growth of 16% of students who are now proficient not 16% of students are proficient but a 16% growth from 24 to 25 and Rainbow Valley had a 10% jump in students who are prof proficient um from 24 to 25. And then just some specific grades for ELA. Fifth grade at EMS um is 67% proficient in ELA. Third grade at LBA is 74% and second grade at Liberty is 68%. Um and then in math some celebrations we had at LBA a 9% increase in students who are proficient in math from 24 to 25 and Liberty had an um 8% increase in students proficient in math from 24 to 25. Um and then some grade levels. Um third grade at

144LBA had an 81% of their students proficient in math. Um, second grade at Liberty had 76% proficient in math and second grade at West are at 79%. And if you look at some of those, um, they're the same. And so I just a shout out to those teachers who were able to see um, high proficiency numbers both in ELA and math. Um, so not one fell off. They were able to maintain those. Um as uh a couple of other notes, just as climate surveys come out for all stakeholder groups, I would just encourage you to be very honest in those um surveys. And um just a clarity point from something that was said that um sometimes the loudest voices are the majority as was evidenced in the election here in Liberty. Board member Schmidt. Yeah,

145thank you. Um, so I'm going to just take this time to uh talk about something. So during a recent board meeting, fellow board member made a call to the public for civility with their interactions with other board members on the administration in this district. They gave examples of being targeted in what they felt were disrespectful and inappropriate behaviors. And I agree that civility between board members and the community should always be a priority. Yet after last week's m meeting, a very vocal supporter of the same board member approached the deis and decided it was appropriate to call me a demon for doing nothing more than expressing my opinions and voting in opposition to other board members. So I wonder if there's going to be further calls for civility or is civility only important when it's

146being perpetrated by people who think that they like they do. I'm sorry. I've only been a board member of this bo a member of this board since January. A lot has happened since then. In this time, I've been nothing but professional and respectful to every member of this board, employee of the district, and community member I've had the opportunity to interact with, whether I agree with them or not. Before um so that's that. But before last meeting, we were given the option to use the rear entrance of the boardroom to enter and exit if we had safety concerns. I will continue to walk through the same doors as everyone sitting in this room. Um, I was elected to represent the stakeholders in this room and I feel like I should be able to and I

147probably should need to walk through the room and look you in the face on my way out when my votes affect your families. I will not be bullied, intimidated, or silenced. I will continue to ask questions, give my opinions, and vote with my conscience and do what I believe is best for the district and always put students first. Vice President Kenyon. Yeah, thank you. Um yeah, uh just a quick response to Miss Mittz. I would never condone somebody calling names, but um as for my update, so I was able to go to Liberty A Night as well. That was a great event. Lot big. It wasn't as big of a turnout as it has been in other years, but it still had a lot going on. Uh it was a lot of fun. There's people

148I agree. The butterm was it was hilarious seeing everybody with little baby jars shaking all night. Um and it was pretty good butter at the end. So I was surprised. But uh it was really really neat. There was a mock 4 show that they put on. Um we had the auction going on there and I typically don't engage in that but my kids and some staff members kind of wrote me into that. So that was fun. We ended up paying a lot for some treats and it was good. So I'm happy to support them. Um, and it was a good event. I also was able to go to the Lorz Zumbro open house. Again, that was that was a very good event. Well attended, lots of families. Um, and I know Mr. Naminsky is itching

149to get, you know, the word out in that area and trying to get more staff there. It's great. Um, we just heard a report tonight, 282 kids as of today that are already uh in, you know, in the process or enrolled for that school for this coming year. So, we're we're pretty excited about that and there was a lot of a lot of community involvement there. A lot of lot of families with young kids and so that was very exciting to engage with them. Um, and then unfortunately I didn't get to go. I was supposed to go but the Liberty had a 4H field trip to the fair this year and which is unique because in our district in the past it's been a day that there's a lot of absences um because 4 is

150very big in our a school here and there's a lot of family and friends that go and support those kids that have their 4 projects and so the board and give credit to the board and and administration we made a decision to turn that into a school activity, a field trip instead of just a whole bunch of absences. So, I know that that was really, really wellreceived. Heard a lot of really good things. Congratulations to those kids who won some awards and belt buckles and other things that they won. They worked very hard on their projects and I'm just very proud of them and uh look forward to this happening again next year. So, that's what I have. Board member, I just also want to make a comment from M. Schmidt. Uh I I and

151everybody knows it's public record, but I did email Mishmitt and I also don't condone name calling. Uh I get called names. It doesn't affect me personally. I know we're not going to agree on anything. I think my board members can agree with me. I I'm huge in civility. I won't call anybody in the audience's names. I won't call other board members names. It's not how I operate. Um I just want to put it out there. I don't own that either. And I'm sorry you had to deal with that. Thank you. Um I don't have a lot to update. I was out of town all of last week uh at a fire department conference in Indianapolis. So um that was why I was there remote. Um I will take a moment to thank the staff um

152and and everybody that was a part of it last year. We were approached by students at the county fair when I went to support them that um our baseball teams, our basketball teams, cross country, those students all have the opportunity for their family and friends, neighbors to come see their event here because they happen on our campuses. When we get into the agriculture world, which this district, if anybody doesn't realize, has a lot of agriculture going on, uh that happens down at the county fair and the kids really miss out on having their friends there to cheer them on. Um, it was asked by me last year of a student to figure out a way to get the kids to school. I went to Dr. Monroe. I said, "Dr. Monroe, we need to we need

153to make this happen somehow. How do we do this?" Uh, the initial request was to make it a day off of school for the entire district. That didn't seem quite uh perfect. Um, but taking a field trip from the A school down there, I think was great. And that's what we came back and committed to the parents, the students of that that we would do it. Uh, I'm so glad to hear that that happened. Um, I think that's opening day of the fair and that field trip I'm sure was designed around the animals and it wasn't a day uh just riding rides or doing that. So, um, I think it will good. Um, I did receive a couple emails about some name calling that took place the last board meeting. Unfortunately, I was remote, so

154I didn't see it, but I will also be on record. I don't condone that. I think it's uh there's no place for that here. Um, there's been a common theme in every email I received. We need to work together. We need to do the right thing for the students. And you have my commitment uh that we will continue to make that the number one priority in this district. And I'm excited to be back. I'm honored to be appointed. I will serve everybody well. Um couple side notes. I'm catching up on emails. My email didn't get turned on until uh several days after my appointment, so I didn't uh I didn't receive them. you um and some I'm catching up on, but uh we'll get caught to all those members. That concludes our public comment or

155sorry, our board updates. Uh per the approval of the agenda, we'll now move over to 8.1 the executive session and I'll need a motion for that. Mr. President, I'll make a motion to convene an executive session pursuant to ARS 38-431A1, discussion or consideration of assignment of a public officer and ARS uh 38-431.03 A3 discussion or con uh consultation for legal advice with the attorney or attorneys of the public the superintendent contract. Second. I have a motion and a second to convene to executive session pursuant to ARS 38431A1 and ARS 38431.03A3. Uh we have the motion second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, we'll move to the vote. Board member Zimmerman I. Board member Schmidt I. Vice President Kenyon I. Board member Spencion I. I'm also I will show the time is 7:01. We are uh

156into executive session. [Music] Oh [Music] Wonderful. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] What's [Music] the heat? [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. [Music] That was the Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] What's that? [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] I don't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey Come [Music] on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I don't see this. [Music] Come [Music] on. Come on. Come on. Come [Music] on. Come [Music] on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I don't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Come on. Come on. Come [Music] on. Come [Music] on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's the one? [Music] I don't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Wonderful. [Music] What's [Music] the heat? [Music] Oh [Music] Oh [Music]

157Wonderful. [Music] I want you. [Music] Oh [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] I want you. [Music] What's up? [Music] I can't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Come on. Come on. Come [Music] on. Come [Music] on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's the [Music] I don't see this. [Music] That was the [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] What's the [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Come on. Oh [Music] No one shoot. [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] Come [Music] on, heat. [Music] What's up? [Music] I don't see this. [Music] Come on. Come [Music] on. Come [Music] on. Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I won't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat.

158Come [Music] on. Come on. Come on. Come [Music] on. Come [Music] on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I don't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I don't see [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's the welcome? [Music] I want you. [Music] That was [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] What's the [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] that [Music] Wonderful. [Music] What's [Music] the [Music] heat? Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I don't see [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] What's up? [Music] I won't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat.

159Come [Music] on. Come on. Come on. [Music] I want you. [Music] What's up? [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's [Music] the heat? [Music] I want you. [Music] Wonderful. [Music] I want you. [Music] What's [Music] the heat? [Music] Oh [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Come on. Come on. Oh [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. What's up? [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] I won't see this. [Music] Number one, no [Music] one. Heat. Heat. [Music] What's up? [Music] I can't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come

160on. [Music] I want you. [Music] What's the [Music] I want you. [Music] Oh [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's [Music] the [Music] heat? Heat. Heat. [Music] That was the [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Come [Music] on, heat. [Music] What's up? [Music] that [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] What's up? [Music] Oh [Music] Come on. [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] I won't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Number [Music] one, Come [Music] on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] I want you. [Music] What's the [Music] I don't see this. [Music] Oh [Music] Come on. Come

161on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] What's [Music] up? Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] That was the [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh [Music] Hey [Music] Come on, come on, come on. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I won't see this. [Music] Come on. Come on. Come [Music] on. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] What's up? [Music] I won't see this. [Music] One more. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] What's up, [Music] I can't see this. [Music] Come on. Come on. I want you. [Music] Come on. Come on. [Music] What's the one? [Music] I don't see this. [Music] Power. [Music] Oh [Music] Heat.

162[Music] Wonderful. [Music] What's up? [Music] Oh [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] What's [Music] that? Come [Music] on. Oh [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] Oh [Music] Were you guys ready to go live? Ready? Okay, it's 8:44. We'll show the governing board back in general session. Uh that's item 8.2, reconvene the general session. We'll move to item 8.3, which is a discussion consideration to possibly take action on superintendent status and contract. Anybody have a motion to make? Mr. President, I make a motion to advise legal counsel Susan Seagull to communicate with Superintendent Dr. Monroe. Do I have a second? I second. I have a motion. Excuse me, President. Okay. Can you please repeat? Yeah. And I do have it written down. So, we have a motion and a second on the floor to advise legal

163council legal counsel to communicate with Dr. Court Monroe. That's correct. Right. Is your motion? Yes, I made a motion. Yep. And we have the second. And that was made by me. Oh, Miss Schmidt. Okay. Uh, is there any discussion? Hearing none, we'll call for the vote. Board member Zimmerman, I. Board member Schmidt, I. Vice President Kenyon, I. Board member Stencion, I. I'm also an I will show that proof. Five yes, zero, no. All right, we will now go back to item six or section six, call to the public. 6.1 is our time for public comment. How many do we have tonight? 13. Okay, there's 13. Um, yes, 12. Okay, sorry, there's 12. Okay, there's 12. 12 there. So we will allow three minutes for each convers for each one. Uh members I would uh remind

164you and the public that we are very limited on any comments that can be made. Uh there should be no attacks on the board. Uh and also to stay in compliance with the open meeting law. It is critical that the audience remain quiet during board proceedings. Those can be considered as as public comments and they're only allowed during the public comment period by those who have signed on form and turn it in on time. Oh, with that said, can you please call the first speaker? And yes, we'll have a timer up there, so it'll it'll go off and your mic will be muted at three minutes. All right, our first speaker is going to be Christy Meno Mendoza. All right. Um, good evening. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Christy Mendoza. I

165work um at Liberty. I am the middle school science teacher and I'm here to um advocate for the explore learning that was talked about earlier. Um explore learning which is actually commonly referred to as gizmos. Um those are our virtual science labs and simulations and they play an important role in our middle school science classrooms. Um following the adoption of our open sed as our primary resource, Gizmos were approved as our main supplemental resource. We use Gizmos to address gaps in our units due to missing or partially aligned state standards. We use them to condense units of instruction due to pacing constraints. Um they are used for remediation when students need more specific practice with a scient content. And they're also used for enrichment um to enhance content that is within our units. um they

166are great for modeling abstract con uh like concepts like particle motion or um frictionless environments. And so they are a valuable resource for the middle school science department. And over the past two years, our department has come in over this over the summer and worked to develop scope and sequence and pacing guides for our new curriculum. And these documents are located on our district curriculum overview in the educational services share drive. In these documents, we have gone through all of the units um 6th through 8th grade and identified where we can use gizmos and which gizmos to use in order to close gaps, condense instruction for pacing needs, provide opportunities for remediation and and enrichment. And so in short, we have done a lot of work to make sure we are addressing all of our

167state standards and providing quality instruction for our students. And now we feel like we're in danger of losing this resource that all of this work was built on. So I'm I'm asking the board and I'm thanking you Mr. Kenyon and Miss Zimmerman for allowing us to possibly reconsider um this the elimination of this resource. Some questions that I have is like does this have to be an all or nothing decision? Um are there other subscription options with explore learning? Like currently we have um it for the entire kindergarten through 8th grade. Um but is there a possibility to only have it for our middle school or our fifth through 8th grade? Because I know our fifth grade teachers rely on it too because they don't have science curriculum. And so, um, also there's currently a

168math component and a science component. We're not really using the math component. Is there a way to just have the science piece? I don't know what the options are. I don't work on that side of it, but those are just questions that I have if those are something that could be explored. Thank you. Our next speaker is Megan Kenan. Kenan, sorry. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the board. My name is Megan Cananan. I reside in district and have one current and two past students. It saddens me to know next year my son is going into his last year with no familiar faces. He currently at this time, to my knowledge, only has one teacher returning next school year. as two have resigned. One commiss, one position has remained unfilled all year and will have

169a new principal as well. It saddens me that this board didn't listen to our concerns and due to that so many great teachers, leaders, and support staff are leaving this beautiful district. Some of which who have poured their hearts and souls into this district. I want to thank Kelly and Sarah for continuing to listen and advocate for our voices as staff, parents, and community members to be heard. I'm absolutely speechless that the rest of this board keeps saying our voices as staff, parents, and community members matter. Yet, they have proven over and over again that they could care less about what we think, feel, or want, which has resulted in significantly drastic resignations this year. The most recent incident is the election of Michael Todd as board president. We clearly spoke at elections in November

170that we did not want him on our board anymore. And yet, despite that, he has been reappointed out of our control to this board. But then you chose to make him president again. You clearly do not care as you state you do. Thank you. Our next speaker is going to be Mike Lion. Good evening. My name is Mike Lion. I live in the district. I do not have children in the school. However, I do sub in the schools. Um, Dr. Monroe, I just wanted to thank you for setting up the Alice program. And for the rest of the board members, um, having been a teacher in Wisconsin, that is an amazing program that you should not let drop. Um, when the teachers went through that, there were tears. There were people trembling and they learned

171a lot about what to do in the case of an armed person in in the school or near the school. It it was a true eye openener. Um like I said, I did it twice and each time I learned something different. So I would you know you brought that up a couple board meetings ago and I would encourage you to continue forward with that. It's an amazing program. The next one I have is a question to the board. When we sat through the meeting over in the gym a couple sessions ago, um there was a list of I'm going to call it a hit list of things. We saw it again tonight. On that list was uh Dr. Mahorin's name and then the next list I saw it disappeared. And I'm just curious why it

172was removed from the hit list because everybody that I've talked to has strong feelings that that's one person we don't need here. Um, and it's very expensive to keep here. If I recall right, her position was being removed and she was being replaced with two. I don't remember the title of the person that came in. Um, but there was a significant cost savings. Um, the last question I have that's I'm a little concerned about and and I'll finish quickly here is with the number of resignations uh and and non- returnturn whatever you want to call them of our teachers and staff. I'm concerned not just about opening Loretta Zumbro but are we going to need to close another school. I think we need to really watch our numbers coming in very closely or we're going

173to get it back back where we were just digging out of as far as not having enough students to fill the rooms. And this is a really a weird statement from someone who subbed this afternoon and had about 45 kids in my classroom. I was in a fourth grade classroom. I had another fourth grade classroom send students into me and then I had a fifth grade math class send kids in. That's not out of the normal. That was at Westar, but it's not out of the normal at our schools. I'll relinquish the rest of my time. Thank you. Our next speaker is going to be Vicky Johnson. Thank you. My name is Vicky Johnson. I'm a former parent and veteran teacher of this district. Please note that my words tonight are my own and do

174not represent any other organization or staff member. Miss Zimmerman and Miss Schmidt, thank you for your perseverance and steadfast determination in the face of those who would attempt to silence your voices. Reputation matters. Character matters. I said that to Mr. Todd just a few years ago in our first face-to-face conversation regarding events that had the appearance of impropriety. His response to me and the four women standing with me was, "If the rumors were true of everyone I've had sex with in this district, I'm sure some of you would be on that list." From that, it seems clear that reputation and character were not concerns of him. However, as this is the first meeting of this board, I hope that the rest of you feel differently. Do you want to be remembered as a group who

175made a valiant effort to restore the district or the ones who caused its downfall? As noted in the open meeting law violations currently being investigated, two two of you met with Turning Point, an organization that advocates for conservative politics in schools. That's not good optics for public school officials. One of you has connections to a charter school. Surely, you must recognize that your motives and the decisions you make will be closely scrutinized. Let's also make note that two of you were not even elected to the board, only appointed, and a third is facing recall efforts. On the agenda, it indicated that Dr. Monroe's employment is in question. This is the man you chose for us. We had no say. If you simply release him from his contract and pay out the remaining with money we

176cannot afford because the reserves are already wasted, that reeks of collusion and a long range plan of destroying this district. However, if you terminate with cause and go after his certificate with the state so he could never do this again to another district, that evidence of at least some semblance of ethics. In choosing his replacement, you have another choice. Once again, skirt policy and choose someone yourselves with no stakeholder input and finish the destruction. Or you can let the true stakeholders of this district choose the person to lead. Who will make the decision? the parents whose children we serve and the people who work in the schools who obviously know a hell of a lot better how to run them or your puppet masters. Will you be remembered as men of strong character who had

177the courage to protect and provide or mere pawns in someone else's game? You are truly at a turning point tonight. The irony of that is not lost on us. Please choose wisely. Thank you. All right, the next the next speaker is going to be and I apologize if I don't see your name pronounce pronounce it correctly. Uh Ga Candelara. She left. Okay. All right. Then the next one after that will be Crystal Lea. The next one after that will be Paul Bixler. Board member Hob, governing board members, my name is Paul Bixer. I have a home in Australia Mountain Ranch. I speak in opposition to agenda items 7.6 and 8.7 and in reference to agenda item 7.3. Item 7.6 advances the contractual relationship between LED and a third party vendor for guest teacher services. It

178is irresponsible for the district to enter this agreement after removing programs that have proven to improve student performance such as literacy interventionists knowing that the third party service be more expensive than the current process. In real numbers to date and recognizing there is still a month of school. The district has spent $365,000 in compensation for regular and long-term guest subs guest teachers. The district cost for the third party vendor is promised to be 5% more. This means that the LESD will spend at least $18,000 more next year than this year. This is irresponsible. I urge the governing board to vote no on item 7.6. Item 8.7 is a reminder and resolution regarding title monies received by school districts. Public law 81874 is very clear in content and tested interpretation that neither the president of the

179United States nor the state of Arizona superintendent of schools has the authority to withhold title monies given to school districts. If enacted, what would 8.7 look like at our campuses? Take a school campus that has a predominantly Hispanic parent and student population. Let's say there is a teaching position open. There are two equally qualified candidates for this open position. One candidate is a native Spanish speaker, the other is not. Now, not taking into consideration the mountain of research validating that student performance is improved when the makeup of the instructional staff mirrors the community it serves. If it could be proven that the language expertise of the one candidate influenced the hiring decision, this school and possibly the district could have its title monies withheld. Item 8.7 is an uninforcable threat to the public schools that

180disagree with actions taken by the federal executive. I ask governing board to add our voice to other Arizona public schools, declaring that LED will not be threatened and coerced into acting in a way that hurts children learning and promotes a partisan political agenda. Please vote no on item 8.7. Item 7.3. I remember the past leadership of the current governing board. leadership that was hallmarked by disrespectful, threatening, and possibly open meeting law violating behavior. A cursor rate look at the sheer number of administrative, instructional, and support staff that have decided not to continue with LED is more than proof that I am not alone in my memory. A current example of possible uh open meeting law violation occurred recently. I will allow the rest of it to be read by another. Thank you. Next speaker is

181Paula Wolfman. I'm Paul's twin sister and I feel as Paul does that something needs to be brought up and it has to do with open meeting laws and um I had uh we've watched a couple of meetings where it's obvious that at least three of the board members have been discussing not with others on the board what actions would happen, what would happen and that is just not okay. It's it's almost to the point that it's so obvious. It keeps coming up and coming up and there doesn't seem to be any respect for the open meeting laws. I agree with Paul and I'm sure I that other people in the room agree with it too. That's something that really needs to change. Thank you. Mr. President, if I would, I'd like to make a comment.

182Uh, you can make a comment at the end of all public comments. You can't do it now. Okay. The next speaker will be Amanda Hagen. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Amanda Hagen, and I'm a proud educator in this district. I'm here tonight because I care deeply about our students, our schools, and the future of public education in our community. I began as a student teacher here in 2022, and this is my third year in the classroom. In that very short time, I've been mentored and trained by incredible educators and leaders, many of whom are now gone or will be gone after this school year, removed, replaced, or pushed out under Dr. Monroe's leadership. Others have made the painful choice to resign, stating they do not align with the direction the district

183is heading. I've taught at both Westar and at Liberty and each year my students have made strong academic progress. I've consistently received positive feedback not because of luck but because I teach at a high level and I'm able to do that because I was trained at a high level by experienced passionate educators, leaders who believe every child, regardless of ability or disability deserves an excellent education. With site administrators, district leaders, and experienced teachers being replaced all at once, we are actively destabilizing the foundations of our students that our students rely on. How can we expect children to thrive when their education when their educators don't know the curriculum, the schools, or their families? Tonight's agenda reflects a ma mass exodus of experienced teachers. And while I fully support my colleagues doing what's best for themselves

184and their families, I'm choosing to stay because our students can't just walk away. This is their school. Some families have been here for generations, but now parents are grappling with the heartbreaking decision of whether to pull their kids because of the political chaos being forced into our classrooms. They deserve better. And let's be honest, politics are driving these decisions. The newly reappointed board president lost his re-election, missed the application deadline, and didn't attend the public forum. Yet somehow, he was still reinstated. That doesn't reflect the will of the community. It reflects backdoor politics. And he's not alone. He, the new vice president, and a former board member are all under investigation by the attorney general's office. One of the investigations stems from violations of open meeting laws, which have been mentioned. It's not just unethical,

185it's illegal. And more importantly, it's not about our kids, it's about control. So, when board members proudly say they've gotten rid of things like DEI, SEAL, and CRT, I have to ask, what destructive programs are they talking about? Because as someone who's been through all recent curriculum trainings, multiple professional developments, and works with students every single day, I can tell you none of these things have been a part of our curriculum. These are political buzzwords being weaponized to paint public education as dangerous and extreme to stir up fear and mistrust in our schools. But the reality, in my kindergarten classroom, in addition to the Arizona State Standards, I teach kids how to be kind, how to solve problems, how to take turns, how to recognize that everyone deserves respect. For many of my students, school's

186the first and sometimes the only place where they learn how to function in a community with others. That's not political. That's human. Our schools deserve better. They deserve stability. They deserve respect. And they deserve schools that put them first, not outside agendas. Please, let's bring the focus back to where it belongs. Members in the audience, you need to be seated. This is a board meeting. Our next speaker is Bailey Rosco. Good evening. My name is Bailey Rosco and I'm a parent of the district and I live in the community. This meeting could have been moved over to the gym tonight. Tonight I'm speaking because I'm a parent and I'm very concerned about all the recent resignations and non-renewals of contracts. You as a board can not state that this is just a few teachers like

187you have been not liking the changes that you've been making. At this point we are over a 100red openings in the district. Can you confidently state that we will be able to open our schools next year? Westar is losing almost the entire seventh grade teaching staff. What are parents supposed to do? Just accept a bunch of emergency certified teachers? Our students um are I will not accept that. I also want to discuss that you guys have 7.16 the ratification and of the purchase contract for LZEes. This is a huge oversight and should have been dealt with a long time ago. There's already been work being done and the school being built. 8.1 and 8.3 is yet again to take action on Dr. Monroe's contract. He is in charge of the district and its finances. Yet,

188we are in serious seriously over budget and have been for a while. The majority of Dr. Monroe's employee employee at this district. As a matter of fact, you're really going to sit there and approve giving him anything or or keeping him instead of putting him on a leave of absence or termination? Also, Mr. Todd, you mentioned that other districts are closing schools. Of those districts, there's Cape Creek where Mr. Monroe was previously employed and did the same thing to there as he did to our district. You also showed us numbers for Liberty. Why didn't you show us any other schools? Because they're not positive. You say that data matters and so you did. And so did you, Mr. Mr. Kenyon, but yet you cherrypick the data and try to reflect a picture that is not

189reflective of truth. Mr. Kenyon, you say you don't want condone calling people names. So, is that just okay when you're calling parents child abusers and not wanting us to be here teaching our children about civil rights, civil processes, and civil movements? Lastly, or no, sorry, I also want to say that the rules and policy for public comment must be enforced. This means speakers cannot discriminate, call persons or groups of individuals names or derogatory comments. Be sure that this is being enforced throughout the public comment section. Michael Todd, you are not my choice. Vuters clearly stated we didn't want you as a part of our board. You resigned. You lost your election, so your appointment to this board is an insult. Shelley Bogs, you said parents had a voice, but you stole our voice. Lastly, I'd

190like to read a resignation letter to whom it may concern. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for the 23 years I've spent in the Liberty Elementary District at Rainbow Valley. They feel like my family. I'm going to jump forward a little further. The manner in which Dr. Monroe cleared out the educational service department is troubling. The school board supports of his action has made me realize that our values do not align and come. Your time has expired. Next speaker is Samuel Rosco. My name is Samuel Wasco. My age is 12 and I am the sixth grade at West. I have come up here say how you underfocus on your important facts like how somebody can assault a kid with no punishment which is illegal. The mom had to take the mom had to take

191it into her own action in to her own hands to get the kid expelled. Well, somebody can have their phone out twice and just get an inday suspension. Does that mean a traffic ticket should be get the same punishment as murder? No, it should not be. This may not be directly in your hands even though it kind of is as we came up with with the behavior matrix which is a joke and is not enforced fairly. I have been bullied and yet after my parents have had multiple meetings with this the same individual continues to bully me. I also like to bring up a problem with the comment about repetition. There is nothing nothing wrong with the repetition as my teachers use it every day to teach me and my fellow classmates and to help

192us learn. Also over 100 staff members have left the district due to abuse and harassment. Most of the entire seventh grade teachers at Wester are gone. And also when I was in fifth grade and sixth grade, one of my blocks with was with my home room. In fifth grade it was my science. In sixth grade it was my social studies. And so I want you to look at me in the eyes. Does this mean we next to No, we will not. Would you want to bring your children? Would you want your children to be taught by people with no form of education in schooling, qualifications, or experience? This will most likely be the reality of my next future. Yeah. All right. Next speaker is Arya Clark. Hello. Thank you for letting me speak. I'm an

193eighth grade student at at Wester Elementary and I just want to address an issue that I deal with a lot, bullying. Personally, I have experience with this topic. I'm in a group of outcasts and we deal with this on a daily basis. The bullying extends to things such as religion, friends, and things from years ago and even more. Things like these have led to violent acts to the bully to the bully victims simply due to being different from the basic students and teens in today's day. I have been dealing with bullying due to an incident from third grade. A friend of mine reported a potential child pornography being leaked in our grade due to a breakup. No matter how many times we've reported things like these, nothing happens. We've written multiple reports on these incident

194and yet nothing changes. Just last year, a friend and I were in a potentially dangerous situation where another student was sharing the address of my home where both me and my family, including younger siblings, live. Although we have explained the situation many times, absolutely nothing has been done. I'm hoping and asking the schools board to take more attention to these topics and even giving things such as help and a little bit more protection for students such as myself and other friends. Thank you. That concludes the speakers tonight. Okay. I believe you had a comment you wanted to make. Board member. Yeah. Vice President Kenyon. Uh two actually. So um one administration if we can look into these bullying claims and especially the sharing of child porn that is critical that that's not happening. Um then

195the my other comment is just because three board members or four board members however many vote the same doesn't mean that there was open meeting law violations. I have been very very very careful with open meaning law. I've taken many different um courses in it. I've studied it myself. Uh I know what lines you can cross and what lines you cannot cross. And I can guarantee I have not crossed any of those lines. And I believe the other board members, I can't speak for them, but I believe they've all been through numerous trainings as well, and we know the consequences. So just because you can throw an allegation out there, I would like to see some facts behind allegations because anybody can make an allegation and it's just meant to destroy your public image instead

196of bringing facts. So that's what I would like to say. Any other comments? Okay. And I would uh just direct staff to fully communicate and speak to all science teachers um regarding Miss Mendoza's comments that they were not communicated with on the potential cut of the budget uh curriculum or supplementary material that they use. Uh it was my understanding and I'm just getting back in the seat here, but that staff was communicated well. And to hear a teacher say they were not communicated with is concerning to me when when I believe the messages that they from staff is that they were. So please uh please look at that and report back to us. I think it's important to talk and and she does bring up some good ideas. Can we separate that if they're not

197using the math? I don't think we need to be paying for that potentially, but let's uh let's find out exactly what they're using and and make an educated decision on that. Um, I uh also heard today a comment about 45 students and two more classes coming into uh a substitute teachers classroom. That is incredibly high. I'm sure that exceeds fire occupancy. Um, I would like to figure out what's happening there and that should automatically trigger uh some concerns. So, please validate that and let's look at a report from staff how we prohibit that from happening again. [Music] Um, couple more. I heard uh somebody say the budget was we were over budget. We listened earlier to the meeting. We heard very clearly we are not over budget. We haven't been over budget. Um, please stop

198spreading that. Point of order. We can only respond to public criticism. I believe that is criticism saying we're over budget. It's a false statement. Next, I would also tell staff or direct staff to contact the local police jurisdiction to investigate any child pornography or bullying that's taking place. We have heard bullying taking place at the West campus for many, many, many years, far more than the time I've been on this board. My daughter was a student at that school and the bullying is out of control down there. It always has been. Um, and it needs to change. So, I'd ask staff to take an aggressive look at that and report back a plan to eliminate that situation. Move on. Next, uh the approval of the consent agenda. I'd like to pull a couple things from

199the consent agenda. I'd like to pull 7.3, 7.5, 7.8. Go a little slower so we can I apologize. Keep track. Start with your first one, please. 7.3 7.3 7.5 7.5 7.8 Hang on one second. Let me get to that one. 7.8 8 7.12 7.12 76 7.16 and 7.17 7.17 Any additional ones? Yeah, I'd like to pull 7.2 7.2 7.6 Six uh 7.6. I'll if anybody has anything else to pull, I'll uh hang on. I'm going through to see which ones I had that may have already been pulled. Okay, I got the two pulled by Vice President Kenyon, 7.2 and 7.6. And I have the following pulled by board member Zimmerman. 7.17 17.6 or I'm sorry, 7.16 7.12 7 uh is that 8? I just circled right over the writing. 7.8 8 7.5 and 7.3. So

200our consent agenda motion will be to approve items 7.4, 7.7, 7.9, 7.10, 7.11, 7.13, and 7.14, 7.15. and I'll entertain a motion. I make a motion to approve the consent agenda minus 7.2, 7.3, 7.5, 7.6, 7.8, 7.12, 7.16, and 7.17. Do I have a second? Second with a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda with the items listed pulled. Is there any further discussion? Hearing none. We'll take a motion. I'm sorry. We'll take a vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon. I. Board member Shinion. I. I'm also I will show that approved on a 50 vote. Now we will move to item 7.2. Vice President Kenyon. I believe this was yours. Yes, it is. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, just this is in regards to the meeting minutes.

201If we go into the board organizational meeting minutes, can you just for clarity that the the date just for the record is for the March? This is for April 10th. April 10th. Okay. April 10th governing board. Okay. And then we go down to 1.3 which is approval election of um board president. I just would like um if the board agrees with it just for timeline's sake there's a a little bit of kind of discrepancy in here that could be interpreted. So if we if we go down to about the halfway down that big paragraph there um it doesn't quite say anywhere in here where we took a vote and then continued on with the statement. And so where it says vice president Kelly Zimmerman mentioned also having concerns as well with the nomination of Mr.

202Todd and read her statement that includes comments from the climate survey and concluded with not supporting Mr. Todd as board president period. I think then after that period there has to be vote was taken because then it moves into board vice president. Uh oh, excuse me. Yeah. Then it goes to board vice president Kelly Zimmerman explained her name vote because now she explained it. it's already been taken. So, just putting in there for timeline sake um after the vote or vote was taken, however, however we want to word that. And does anybody on the board okay with that? I'm fine with that. I think it's good for clarity purposes. Um, could I also just since we pulled this up at the time it says meeting called to order at 9:55 that um wasn't if you

203scroll up you'll see it. So I believe the meeting, you know, was five or 501, right, President Todd board members and that is correct. That's when I actually opened up the minutes to go back in there. I'll make sure to delete that. Okay. I'll take a motion for 7.2. I'll make a motion uh to approve the minutes of the March 4th, 2025 work study session and governing board meeting. March 10th, 2025 special meeting. March 24th, 2025 special meeting. March 26, 2025 special meeting and April 10th, 2025 board organizational meeting with the following changes with the proposed changes. Okay. Do I have a second? Second. Second. Got a second and a third. Um, okay. Any discussion hearing? None. We'll go to the vote. I I I did the motion and then between Kelly and it doesn't

204matter. Yeah. All right. I'm just call your name. Please specify your vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmid. I. Board member Kenyon. I. Board member Stencion. I. I'm also an I will just explain my vote. But I realized I was not on the board for uh some of these meetings. I have reviewed them uh looked at the minutes and they they do match what I saw on the video, but I was here for the uh April 10th meeting telephonically. So little tricky, but but I'm there for that. Okay, we'll move on to 7.3. Uh this one was pulled by board member Zimmerman. Approval of personnel action items. Dr. Stephanie Mahorn. Miss Zimmerman, if you could maybe give us an update of or specify the reason for the poll, maybe we could just answer your

205questions. Sure. Um, are there uh were there any more resignations that were received after this was published? Uh, no, just the one that just the one that was forwarded to you all on I don't remember if it was over the weekend or on Friday. That one will appear on the next agenda. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I just have uh you know a comment that there are 30 teachers on this resignation list that either are resigning at the end of the year or did not sign their contract. And in contrast, there were 22 in fiscal year 24 and 12 in fiscal year 23 for the same time. So everybody, the board, the administration, the public, we should all be concerned with this number because I'm not sure how we're going to staff our

206schools. And what's even more alarming in my opinion, well I shouldn't say more alarming, equally alarming is the amount of administrators and district level staff. We have no ed services team left, no special education team, and now we've lost two more principles. It is extremely concerning to me the people that are just fleeing the door from this district. And it's not because they want to. I have no further comments. I uh are there any other questions on this? Okay. I did have one um currently I believe on the same topic. I was going to pull it as well. Our uh guest teacher list I thought we were I guess it's the transition to the ESI subsource. Um I'm not exactly sure that that needs to happen. Um, that would be an ESI hire. So, I

207guess a little clarification for that. Just coming. What's your question on that? What are we What are we doing with this? They're they're being we're not authorizing their They're being hired by another another company. So, I'm not sure why we're It's just transitioning them off of our payroll onto them. That's just noting that. I'm not sure if we I think we could approve this and and table that section. I don't think we need and ask legal if we even need to do that. Um it's a personnel issue, so I think we do that in executive session, but be comfortable with approving the rest of this, but tableabling that section. Any other questions? Could I just ask a clarifying question? Yes. Um I'm just trying to understand what you want to table. We approve everything in

208the in this section except for the guest teacher list. I don't I don't know that we need to do that. Um I I just don't see a necessary need to do that. So I I would uh say we just leave that off. Mr. President, there are two resignations in that as well. So you would I I would assume you'd propose accepting the two resignations. However, the rest of the transitions is what you're looking at. Yeah, that'd be correct. I think that would fall. Yeah, the resignations we would accept, but the other ones we would we don't need to approve that. Uh Dr. Mahorn, is is there a concern because are are we terminating them in a sense because we're not going to employ subs directly any longer? We will not. ESI will take over all

209aspects of their employment starting on May 22nd. Okay. So, I don't know if Malia, she walked up to the mic, so I thought that she wanted to that's accurate since they are technically our employees at this time. Yep. As of May 23rd essentially, their last day will us will be May 22nd and effective July 1, they will all be moving. Whoever chooses to move to ESI will then be moving ESI. So, it's basically us offboarding them from us and allowing them to then move over to ESI. Again, I I think they're doing that. We we my understanding these are subs. We don't have uh it's not the same as certified teachers, so I don't think we need to I don't think we need to take action on that. But they are employees. Correct. Do they

210have their own contracts? They are not under contracts. They're on call staff. Then they then he's right that doesn't need to be there need no action needs to be taken. All right. Members then sorry can I ask another question to Dr. from Mahorn. Yes. Uh but we do employ them. We do employ them. They fill out an application and we do a background check and all of those things. Correct. That's correct. Okay. So, just because they don't have a contract doesn't mean we don't employ them. We pay them. So, so they don't they don't have a contract. So they're they're like our on call bus aids. They're a So they don't have a work agreement. They don't have a contract with us. Just like a paraprofessional in a special education classroom. Correct. That no cuz

211a parah gets a get a paycheck from us every single time. They are our employee. So a substitute is on call for us just when they when we need them. Right. But they still filled out an application. They did. They had to do the background check. They had to do an interview. um we onboard them all those different things. Yes, Mr. President, I'd like to call a question. Okay, the question's been called. Um actually, we need a we don't have a motion yet. Uh so we will need to have a motion first. I make a motion to approve 7.3. Okay. Do I have a second? I second. Have a motion. Discussion. Is there any further discussion? All right, hearing none. When I call the question, please specify your vote. Board member Zimmerman, I. Board member

212Schmidt, I. Vice President Kenyon, nay. Board member Shinion, nay. I'm also nay. We will show that failed. We will now entertain another motion. Mr. President, I make a motion to approve the personal action items with the exception of the guest teachers transition to ESI subsource. I have a a motion to approve the agenda item with the exception of the teachers list as transfer to ESI subsource. Do I have a second? President Todd Chris, can you can you please repeat that for me so I can get it? Yes. Motion to approve personnel action item with the exception of guest teachers transition to ESI subsource. Transition to ESI subsource. Correct. Got it. Second motion. Okay. Now I need a second. Second. Okay. I have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none,

213we'll call for the vote. Board member Zimmerman. Nay. And I'd like to explain my vote. At the end, you can do so. Uh board member Schmidt. I member Schmidt is an I. Uh, Vice President Kenyon, I. Board member Trenion, I. I'm also an I. We'll show that approved. Four yes, one no. Board member Zimmerman, I just like I voted nay because I do think that they need to be terminated. We do employ them and I am relying on our district staff to provide um guidance on what we should be doing and that's what they believe. So that's why I voted n. Thank you. Next up will be item 7.5, approval of memorandum of understanding between Maroba County Sheriff's Office and the Liberty Elementary School District. Dr. Mahorn and whichever member pulled this, if we can

214just have you explain it. Uh, I pulled it. Sorry, I didn't get your name down. My apologies. It's okay. If we could go um into the document and um I'm going to find the right page. So I'm on page six or excuse me page three and I want to look at a couple of the conditions. So number six it says district shall authorize MCSO to access their surveillance systems in both real time and with the ability to access older recordings for investigative purposes. And then number 10 it says district authorizes MCSO to review only that recorded video which is applicable to the collection of real-time intelligence. So my question is is does MCSO have realtime access to the cameras? Yep. I was talking with Mr. man. And my understanding is they do not have real

215time. They have to be on our campus. Correct, Mr. Man? Yeah. If they're connected to our network, then they have access to our cameras. If they're not connected to our network, they do not. Okay. So, I have some concerns about another entity and not that I don't respect law enforcement and and not that I think that they're going to be use misusing it, but it is a concern to me and it's not clear in this language that they have to be on our network. But even so, they are able to view it in real time without us authorizing them. I mean, are you considering the authorization allowing them to be on our network? Yes. Um, we would we would take all FURPA considerations and make sure that um make sure that they've met all requirements

216to access. I still think that that number six is is problematic because it doesn't specify any kind of training um that they're on our network. It just says they have access to it in real time. Um, and um, also number eight says district authorizes MCSO to access all cameras located on the property. I'm just not sure that this is protecting um, the students of the district and who else could have access to it. when we, you know, one of the concerns that came up in the audit from the AG was allowing people to have too much access. And I think this is a little bit of a a slippery slope if we don't define this a little bit better. President Todd, um, Vice President Kenyon and Can I ask you to just move the microphone

217up a little bit so the recording definitely gets it? Perfect. Okay. Distinguished board, um, I will look into that language and get back to you. Yeah, I think uh you have a question or you kind have a comment. Uh so the way the way I'm reading this is like if they have to for some reason enter the campus because some horrible crap's going on, this allows them to look at the camera so they can pinpoint what's going on where so they're not going in blind. That's how I read this. Not that they're going to come spy on the kids. Yeah. I'm not I'm not necess I'm not necessarily suggesting it. I just think there needs to be a little bit more defined language that they're they're viewing it, you know, once they're attached or um

218part of our, you know, gosh, sorry, logged into our network that they've received the proper training. I just don't think that that is clear here. But I hear what you're saying, Mr. Swinsonian, and I probably agree that is the purpose of it. I'm just not sure that this language is clear. I think that law enforcement is guided pretty pretty heavily by easy post which sets definitions of how they access video um up to including even evidentiary video. There's certain computers that they can depending on what it is is what computers they can use. They actually have what's called dirty computers and clean computers. I'm I'm not at all concerned that the sheriff's office would ever do anything that would violate uh any laws or any students uh privacy. They're well regarded and I think um

219I'm fine with this. I I have full faith in law enforcement professionals in our community. And 11 and 12 makes it a little more clear um where it says number 11 says the district reserves the right and has sole discretion to approve or disapprove the recordings and any video res re viewed by MCSO. Right. But if they have access in real time, then we're not granting them permission to view the video or not. Again, I think I think real time is a key word here. However, if there's an incident, they need real time access. They don't need delayed access. And so, I think that uh real time is necessary and we're putting faith and trust in MCSO. Um like Dr. Mahorn said, we we do have the ability to as you know the district reserves

220the right sole discretion to approve or disapprove of recording. So um I think they have to if if there's a emergency and they have to access this they do contact us. They don't just log on and start looking. Um there has to be some communication there. So are are we opposed to just adding language to number six that says that when they are um you know logged into our network and received like furpa training is the board opposed to that they get their own version of training. Yeah I'm not covers that number 12. It is understood by the district that MCSO is not a monitoring service and may not or may or may not access the cameras located at the business in the event of an alarm. So, you know, they still there's still discretion

221there. They they have their own training. I have full confidence in them. I don't know that we need to potentially um I I I would hate for an event to happen, an incident to happen on our campus and we are holding up law enforcement from entering the campus to help kids because of a technicality. Um that's that's my concern. Legal has reviewed this, correct? Yes, legal has Did Did you draft this or did this came from the sheriff's office? It came from the sheriff's office. All right. So, they're they're pushing this out to school districts all over the county that Yeah. I'll take a motion. Mr. President, I make a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding between the Marup County Sheriff's Office and the Liberty Elementary School District to pilot the Rave 911 panic

222button system. I have a second. Second and second. I'm sorry. Was Miss Zimmerman? It was me. Okay, great. Miss Zimmerman's with the second. Any discussion hearing? None. We'll call for the vote. Uh, board member Zimmerman. I And I'd like to explain my vote. Okay. B, you can. Uh, board member Schmidt. I, Vice President Kenyon, I. Board member Stencion. Hi. I'm also I will show that proof five yes, zero no. Miss everyone. Uh, you know, I voted in support because I agree that, you know, I trust law enforcement. I'm just trying to protect the district legally and our students and so I just want my concerns noted for the public, but um, you know, I trust law enforcement and I think it's a great program. All right. Item 7.8. I believe this was also you, Miss

223Zimmerman. Approval, ratification. Oh, I don't have missed one. Okay. 7.6. Let's uh I don't know where it went. 7.6. Thank you for that. Um 7.6. It's talking about the ESI program. Um this is just a question for administration. How many current um staff do we have using the ESI program? We have one one. And what position is that one? She is the administrative assistant for special education. Okay. So, just one in the district currently. In the whole district. Yep. Okay. I know in the past a couple years ago, this was a public sticking point about who was using this, why were they using this, that kind of stuff. I just want us to be very conscientious about who's using this, what this is for, and uh, you know, I I think it's good if we're

224having a hard time, you know, getting staff hard positions filled to be able to use this. It's a tool, right? Right. It is a tool, but I don't also don't want it abused. Right. So, Right. And it is it's made to be a retention tool. And where'd Karina go? There she is. U and Karina can explain it more. We don't use it much. Haven't I can't tell you the last time. I don't think in my two years here we have used it at all. Um and the person who's using it now, it's very recent since November. Okay. I want to say and it's the only one we have. Okay. Okay. If there's no other questions, we'll take a motion. I make a motion to approve 7.6. I got the motion to approve it. Do I

225have a second? Second. Okay. We have a motion, a second to approve item 7.6, the approval of the 202526 third amendment to the 2022 23 agreement for employee staffing agreement with ESI with Educational Services LLC. Uh there's no discussion. We can go to a vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I vice president Kenyon. Hi. Board member Shinion. Hi. I'm also I will show that approve five yes zero no. All right. Now I think we're on to 7.8 approval ratification of expense vouchers 2534 2535 36 37 38 39 in the amount of 6,886,352.74. Miss Zimmerman, I think this was yours also. Yes. Um, so I'm looking at the first voucher I'm looking at is 2534. Um, and the PO is 251193. Um, and it's it's a consulting PO. And so my question to staff

226is, you know, what have you looked at? You know, we've closed all the POS for schools. They're not a able to order any supplies. Um and so or through a different fund, but it's been very tricky. Um you know, this is a consulting PO. So what have we done to close some of these other things that don't directly impact our students? Is this PO closed? Not currently. This PO is still open. Um what we've left open are POS that could have an expected expense. Um, this is for the consultant from Rogers Rewards. So, is there anything upcoming? Okay. There's no upcoming services for them. Okay. So, we could close this PO. We could close it. Okay. I just think it's a good message to our public that if you know the teachers and and our

227students are feeling it that then our district office staff also, you know, realize the financial situation that we're in and we close some of these POS as well. Um the next voucher um that I'd like to look at is 2537. Um and the PO is 251226, which is the PO for the Saxon math um pilot. And I just want to call to the public's attention that the district spent $12,000 on a pilot for a program that we're not going to have that um you know companies you shouldn't be paying companies to pilot a program because they want your business and so it's very unusual to do something like this. Um, the next PO I want to look at is 2538 or excuse me, the voucher is 2538. The PO is 255041 and this is the

228down payment of the buses. So this was approved in fiscal year 24 and so it's for 277,000 and we are just now putting it through a voucher. So my question is is has this cost been accounted for in fiscal year 25 in terms of uh and I apologize I can't see the fund that it's coming out of but is it coming out of bond or is it coming out of DAA? It's coming out of bond. Um the PO was rolled at the beginning of the year so it's been an encumbered expense this whole year. Okay. And uh is it in a voucher because it was approved by the board previously? Do you mean why is it just now coming up in a voucher? Well, my question is why is it coming in a voucher? I

229guess because it's over $100,000. So when it's on a voucher, that means that's an item we've actually paid. So the PO has been out there. The approval has existed. We just created the check and made the actual payment. Okay. But if the board approved it, I mean, things that come before the board because they're over $100,000, um, typically shouldn't appear in the vouchers because the board approved it in an agenda item. Now, if I recall, we the board not we cuz I was not on the board uh in April of 24 to purchase the vouch or to purchase the buses and then in May in a consent agenda item, they approved the financing for the buses, but was the down payment ever approved in an agenda item? So, that approval was all done together. But

230when vouchers come before the board, that is every payment the district makes. Um most of those have had prior board approval long ago or um even recently, but every single item we pay through accounts payable is on that voucher list. So even if it's been prior approved, it's still on the list when we pay it. Okay. And then the last one, and I apologize, I don't have a PO, but it's for an emergency plumbing. Uh it's a PO and it says it's for emergency plumbing and the PO amount is 23,000 like what's available not what we paid and I just want to call attention to the board because we eliminated some maintenance positions and one of those was a plumber and so you know I believe that that salary would have been 47,00050,000 so if

231we anticipated the cost of emergency plumbing situations at $23,000 for this here and we don't have a plumber. I think that that number is going to grow astronomically. And I think as a board we need to look at are we going to be reactive and end up in a situation where we don't plan for these costs that we're going to and end up paying and would it be better to look at factoring that cost into our budget. So I apologize I didn't have the PO. That's all I have for this agenda item. Okay. Any other questions? All right. Hearing none, we'll take a motion. I make a motion to approve 7.8. Second. A second. Okay. Have a motion by Mrs. Zimmerman, a second by board member Schmidt to approve 7.8. If there's no further discussion,

232we'll take a vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Board member Kenyon. I. Board memberion. I. I'm also I will show that proof. Five. Yes. zero. No. On to our next item. 7.12. Approval of annexation agreement with the city of Goodyear for Loretta Zumbro Elementary School and issue a requisition for city fees. Okay. So, if if we could pull up the um agreement and go down to um uh 6.3, 6.4, 4 and 6.5. So these are uh specific things that the city is requiring that we accomplish before um they will annex the property into Goodyear. And so it's um this road that we're building and a light. And so my question for staff is when when do we expect to have these things completed? Uh Mr. President, vice president, members of the board,

233we we are actually working on those with the city right now. They verbally approved the annexation. Uh we're not paving the road. We're ready to pave, but we're not paving it. and the developer next to us is holding off on their paving because if they pave before we do, we have to cut their paving up to pave our side. Uh the traffic light signal poles and all that has been ordered. Uh we are working on the sewer water lines. They've allowed us to go up, you know, to a certain extent. They won't give us a water meter until this is signed. But once once once we get a signature and approval by the board on this uh we deliver it to the city their their board uh council, excuse me, their city council will get

234it approved, but they said they will not hold us up doing anything as long as we they get our signature over to them. They'll allow us to continue moving. So everything's ready to go. We just need it we just need a signature on the paper. Okay. So when you say that they're not going to hold anything up because the agreement says that like the the road has to be done, the light has to be done before the annexation can occur. So my question is when do you think that the road and the light will be done? If the board approves this tonight, uh Mr. President, vice president, uh members of the board, if the board approves this tonight, I'll deliver it to them tomorrow. Uh the city manager told me that as soon as he

235gets this in his hand, he'll give the green light. We can start doing whatever we need to do to make it move and then their board will formally or their council will formally approve it at their next council meeting the end of this month. Okay. So, basically, they're going to kind of let us because it it did read a little bit confusing like we can't pave the road till we're annexed, but then we can't get annexed until we pave the road. Right. So, and it's kind of been that way. They they've been good to work with. And I don't want to say they they haven't. They've been good to work with, but they're kind of sticklers for how they want things and what they want. But they've allowed us to move the sewer line in.

236The sewer line is basically connected. The water line is up there. The tap's there ready for the meter. And as soon as we get this agreed, they'll put the meter in. Uh APS is waiting for the city approval and they'll green tag us as soon as they get this and then APS can move in and do all their work. Uh and APS has a poll to move out of 183rd Avenue and that's why when that's why we're hing holding our paving up because we can't pave until the polls move and they won't pull the pole until this is signed and the city you know it's just a Okay. I just want to that you believe that we're going to be on track to to have it done and be ready to open, you know, be

237able to get the annexation to then be able to get utilities so that we can open. Yes. Uh Mr. President, vice president, members of the board, my conversations with the city manager were very positive. He, you know, he wants to see the school, you know, open on time. He wants us to work. APS is ready to get people in there right away. uh cords ready to pave and you know get the meters. We want everything set. Uh it's been kind of a back and forth on this because you know our legal would approve it and we'd send it back to their legal and they would add something to it and we'd come back and say no we're not doing that and we send it back to say you got to you know change yours and

238basically they wanted us to do some extra paving up on uh some of the other roads by and we told we're not doing that. we don't have the money. We're not allow, you know, we're not uh responsible for it. But I think they're like any other agency, they're trying to get the most out of the big bang out of their buck, but we don't have the buck to spend. We're doing the basic of of what we can do and that was it. So Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. President. If I may just make a comment. Um I thank you. I've also um spoken with CORE when I went to the Loretta Zumbro uh open house and that was a great great time. and looking at the buildings, it was like, "Okay, we got three

239months. We got to have these things ready to go." Um, and that was one of the things that that Whitney, the project manager over there, was letting me know is, hey, you know, we we really need APS to get the power, you know, we got to move that telephone pole. We got to we got to move, you know, get get their substation or their their power boxes installed and all the meters and stuff. Um, but that was my understanding is it's really all coming down to this tonight. If we can get this signed tonight, that gets everything rolling to to fast track getting things done. Correct. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'll take a motion. Make a motion to approve 7.12. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and

240a second to approve 7.12. Any discussion? Hearing none. We'll call for the vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon I. Board member Shinsion I. I'm also I will show that proof five yes zero nos. Next off our consent agenda 7.16 ratification of the attached resolution to purchase land. Miss Zimmerman. So I have many many concerns with this document. I want to read a part of the document that I find to be the most alarming. at a duly called meeting of the governing board of Liberty ESD number 25 of Maricopa County, Arizona held March 6. In accordance with all applicable legal requirements, including open meeting law, the following resolution was adopted. All four board members at this time, including Mr. Todd and Mr. Kenyan, unethically signed this resolution attesting to the

241truth of this document, and it was a falsehood. that meeting it never happened. It's not in board docs and um this is a egregious error that was made both by the administration and by the governing board. Then this administration took this false document because that's what it is. This meeting did not occur and they submitted it to another state agency. Not only that, if they realize the error, they didn't attempt to fix it. The only reason that it's come here tonight is because I found it. And that is a huge huge problem. I brought it to the attention because I found it in the in the board docs for the FSB because I went looking for it because I remember I paid attention a long time on this board and they never approved the land.

242Also, the land was approved in a voucher, $3 million. Anything over $100,000 has to come for the before this board to be approved. It didn't. Even making this a further problem is that the board violated open meeting law by taking action outside of a meeting because they signed this document attesting to its truth and it didn't happen. It's a blatant open meeting law violation. And I would like to ask administration who drafted this resolution because our legal council didn't draft it and the land attorney did not draft this resolution. Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, I take responsibility for it. I not sure what happened with it. Uh but I will take responsibility. It's my project. I I must have brought it in somehow. And uh I don't believe it was uh I mean I I

243can't say for sure. I that's what I'm going to say. But I I don't think we called four people in at once to get it signed. I don't believe that would have happened, but I can't swear to it either way. So I I'm I'm just saying it's, you know, I'll take responsibility for it. Whatever whatever we need to do for it, uh it's it's ought be. Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I will remind you that this is a public meeting and the public comment section has ended. Your chatter interferes with the board's business and can lead to things getting missed. So, please remain quiet or we'll have to ask you to go to the waiting room where you can still take part in the public meeting, but you won't be disturbing the actions of the

244board. Vice President Kenyon, go ahead. Yeah. Um, however this happened, I know we do have four board members here and I'm going just going to read who they are. Michael Todd, Brian Parks, Paul Bixler, and Chris Kenyon. We h have all signed this. Um and not sure how this came to be. But what I do know is that in previous discussions on this board with those four board members, we had agreed about purchasing the land. We had agreed um about delegating authority to the superintendent. And this is to clean this up. However, this happened, this mistake happened, whether it's clerical or what, um this is coming before us to to uh fix the problem. This this money was actually from SFB, correct? Uh Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, members of the board. Yes, that is

245correct. So, it was not even district funds. Uh realistically, it came out of SFP. So, this was wellcoordinated. This document not getting signed. I I can tell you I was never called in to sign any documents in the district office. We always signed them here after meetings. That's that's where they come to be. So this was I remember at the time a very big push because of some deadlines. We were waiting on SFB they had held up because of their meeting schedule and we had to rush to get this done. Um it it doesn't excuse it, but I take great exception to naming a couple board members and not all the board members that were on there. I also think to call this unethical is absolutely ridiculous. Yeah. I don't think anything was intentionally tried

246to push through or uh I I I have my morals, my standards that I go through and I would not try to railroad anybody or or push anything through. So I'll take responsibility for it, but I I cannot recall how it all came about. Okay. Do we have a motion? I make a motion to approve ratification of the attached resolution to purchase land. Have a second. Second. I have a motion, a second to approve 7.16. Is there any further discussion hearing? None. We'll call the vote. Board member Zimmerman. Nay. And I'd like to explain my vote. Okay. Miss Schmidt. Nay. Board member I'm sorry, Vice President Kenyon. I board member Shrenion. I I'm also an I will show that proof. Three. Yes. Two. No. Miss EMR. I will not put my name on something that

247was completely a falsehood and signing a document that said that a meeting was called that never occurred. Okay. Any other comments? We'll move to 7.17. Approval of the salary wage schedules for fiscal year 202526. Board members Zimmerman. Okay. Um I had some questions about um the salary schedules. So if we pull up um we'll start with the certified one and we might need to be able to pull some other things. Um because I'm not understanding um how the salary schedule is lower this year than it was last year. So if you look at the just use zero um actually it probably better to use one year from fiscal year uh 26 because I'm assuming you're moving it down. So it says 45,845. So if you go into board docs on April 29th, 2004 where the

248board approved um fiscal year or the salary schedules the zero year for um the certified teaching salary is 46,26. How can that be? And then the one on the website that says a certified teaching schedule for zero year, it says 45,845. So now we have two different numbers for fiscal year 25. And so I don't know which one we used to um place staff on this year. And then I don't know how we got to fiscal year 26. So, which one did we use to place staff on this year? The correct one that's on the website, they were um on April 29th, they were emailed or given to the board in person um with the adjustment because the compression was off on the ones that were posted to the board agenda. So, the 45845 is

249the correct that was done this year and then the subsequent numbers after that. This one um is for FY26 with the salary freeze. um to help with the compression again because the zero year would be staying at a zero-year salary. Um so we rolled the zero year to year one to match the experience of a teacher that's returning to the district with essentially the one year of experience that they gained this year creating a new zero year to compre give that compression factor to the salary schedule. Okay, thank you. Um, another question is it has um special assignment stipens and I noticed that the gifted stipen that the board authorized last year is not listed on there. So, are we was that a one-time stipen that we did for last year and we won't be

250doing that again? That would be up to the board to if they're going to bring that forward again. Um, that was approved I believe after the fact that these salary schedules were approved. So, I apologize I missed that with adding that to this year's to FY26. Um, it is our intention to bring that forward unless the B board changes that. So, I will make that adjustment onto the salary schedule. Okay. I I'm not in support of it. So, uh that will be up to the board to decide, but I don't believe that our gifted classroom that's not truly self-contained should be getting a stipen larger than our teachers with our special education students, but that's not on the um thing here. And then the other stipens, the doctorate one. Um are we are we it's

251only listed under uh I believe that it's only listed under certified reading interventionist um instructional coach. I think I saw it under the research director. Is it is it just for those or is it for everyone? It is for everyone. So, we did make it was not on the administrator or the assistant superintendent salary schedule listed as last year's, but it has been moved forward in previous years to that to anybody that does have a doctorate within the district. Okay. Um, and again, it's, you know, up to the board, but I think for an assistant superintendent, I think it's kind of the expectation part of the qualification. So, I'm not sure that we should be paying a stipen for that. That's again my opinion and up to the board to decide. Those are my comments

252for 17 or 7.17. Miss Zimmerman, would you uh First of all, are there any other comments? Okay. Would you maybe recommend tableabling this until our next meeting where we can get some of these adjustments made and spend a little more time going over it? Uh, I motion to table um 7.17. Second. I got a motion, a second to table item 7.17. Mr. President, for discussion. I believe she just stepped up to the mic. I apologize. I just do want to say that this will hold us from offering um certified teacher contracts for new staff for FY26. Sorry. That's okay. Thank you for telling us. Sorry, I put my papers. Okay. So, if you want, we can you can make a motion that will clear up what you want. Uh you could withdraw your motion and

253then you could uh you could then make a motion that clears it up. That would help them continue with the hiring process if that works for you. Okay. Can I have just one moment? You may. Can even take two moments if you like. Okay, Minnie, you ready? Okay. I make a motion. Actually, first you need to withdraw your motion. Oh, okay. And then we'll go from there. I withdraw my motion to table item um 7.17. I think Mr. Danger, we don't need a second for that, do we? She's just withdrawing it. Okay, we do need a second or no. Okay, so can can we get a second to withdraw the motion? I second. Okay, we got the motion in the second now. We got a vote on that. Yep. All right, so we're going to

254vote on the withdrawal. Uh I'll call your name if you're in favor of voting on the withdrawal. Board member Zimmerman. I board member. Excuse me, President Todd. So is your motion. What is your motion? Her motion. Did you have the first motion? No. The second motion is to withdraw. Okay. So, motion to table. Uh, no, it's a motion to withdraw. The motion to table. Withdraw. Okay. Hold on. Okay. Motion to withdraw her original motion to table. Original motion to table. Okay. Then we have a second. Yeah. Do I just need to amend my motion? Do that. We could have done that too. The Excuse me. But if you amend your motion, then we have to vote on that as well because of the Excuse me, President Todd. The with the withdrawal of the motion would

255be in the minutes. Yes. Okay. We just need a withdrawal of the second. We're done. Well, okay. So I think Miss Zimmerman, you were the original second, right? You're withdrawing your second. No, there I need Yeah, there was no second for the original table motion. Oh, okay. We never got that. So I just I just need Miss Zimmerman, I just need you to motion. Are you tableabling it? No. Okay. So continue your motion. Yeah, she's withdrawing it first and then she's going to create a new motion. Okay, go ahead. Okay. I motion to approve the um salary schedules as presented with the exception. Sorry, hold on please. Okay. Motion to approve the salary schedules as presented. with the exception of the doctorate stipen for the assistant superintendent schedule with the exception of the doctorate stipened

256for the assistant superintendent salary schedule. for the assistant superintendent salary schedule. Got it. Will you read that back one more time, Miss Mie? So we know we have it correct. Yep. The motion will read, "Motion to approve the salary schedule as presented with the exception of the doctorate stipen for the assistant superintendent salary schedule." Okay. Do we have a second? Second. All right. We have a second by board members uh Schmidt. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll call the vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon. I board memberion. I I'm also I would show that approve five yes, zero no. Next we're going to move into general business. We already that's section 8. We already covered 81, 82, and 83. We'll now start with 84 discussion consideration to approve of benefits

257plan summary updated agreements for fiscal year 26. Dr. Mahorn, I am act I'm actually gonna let Lisa and I don't know who you have with you, Lisa. Sherry. Sherry. Lisa and Sherry um give you their presentation. Um go ahead and take over, Lisa. Thank you, Stephanie. Good evening, President Todd, Dr. Monroe, members of the board, administrative leadership. My name is Lisa Weston. I am your account executive with Gallagher Benefit Services. It's my pleasure to present to you this evening the the employee benefit recommendations for the plan year 2526 for your employees. As I begin the presentation this evening, the first piece of um order business. I'm sorry about this. There we go. It moved. Did I am I on the first one? Yes. Do you want to do this? One of the things I would

258like to review before I go into the actual benefit reser um recommendations first is the results of the employee benefit survey that was conducted at the end of 2024 early 2025. Uh the the purpose of the benefit survey which is completed on an annual basis is to get the um feedback from your employees who are currently enrolled in and utilizing the benefits to learn their opinion of the benefits. And a couple a number of things I wanted to share regarding that survey. We did have about 250 employees that responded to that survey. The the whole goal was to determine the level of satisfaction with the benefits, gain an understanding of why employees are not enrolling in some of the benefit offerings and request employees to rank the value of the benefit programs. Now, thinking that

259that bene that survey was well-rounded, but I want to focus heavily on the medical results uh that were focused on questions relating to the medical plans that were accepted and that are currently in place this year. Um, speaking specifically about the medical, about 42.5% of the respondents stated that when they were selecting um, to work um, employ take employment with Liberty that benefit offerings were very important to them while 30 30.3% stated they were ve they were important. Respondents stated that the top three considerations when selecting medical benefits, number one were cost of health insurance, number two co-pay, and number three deductible amounts. 67.5% of respondents stated that the Liberty medical plans definitely or somewhat express a commitment to their employees. 65.38% of respondents stated they are either definitely satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the

260medical options presented by Liberty Elementary. Further, 27.7% of survey respondents um stated that they were not enrolled in the Liberty ESD medical plans um with 96.5% of them saying that they had coverage that was available through their spouse and individual policy Medicare or state coverage. Of the survey respondents enrolled in medical, 85.5% confirmed that they were enrolled in employeeonly coverage. Now, when asked why the respondents were en enrolled in employeeonly coverage, 42% of them stated they had coverage available through their spouse, domestic partner, or have other coverage. While 30% of them responded that the premiums for the spouse, children, and family were too expensive, being prohibitive for them to enroll in any other tier than employee only. 69% of respondents stated that they were aware that Liberty Elementary provides a $750 contribution to the health

261savings account for high deductible health plan enrolles. Of the respondents who said they were aware, 39% stated they didn't select the high deductible health plan for the following reasons being they didn't they like the PO option and did not want to move to a high deductible health plan. They didn't feel comfortable taking on a large deductible each year. The contribution amount while good to entice employees was just not enough to entice them to move to a highable health plan. And lastly, the high deductible health plan was too confusing and they didn't understand how the plans might be used. So the the feedback that we have have heard over a number of years is that um it's it's difficult for employees to enroll in coverage for their for their spouses and and significant others. And the

262the results of this survey explains why why that is. Either they have it available through their spouse or significant other or it's a cost prohibitive situation for them. Now, as we look into kind of change the focus away from the survey, wanted to point out um how the medical plan has been performing this year. Um, when you think about plan performance and the percentages that I'm reviewing here, one thing I I want to point out is the baseline about what you consider to be the norm of how a pro a plan is performing well. When your premiums are developed by your medical carrier, they estimate 85% of those pre premiums are going to be paid towards claims. The other 15% of those premiums are going to go towards administrative costs. So when we think about

263a loss ratio, the goal of a loss ratio to be is to be around 80 to 85%. Um that means the plan is running as it should. It's it's running based upon how the premiums were developed. So as we're thinking about these these numbers I'm going to be speaking to you know that the baseline number we're seeking when a plan is running healthful is 80 to 85%. So looking first on the first line rolling cost um the rolling 12 cost to budget ratio is 99.8% of all plans combined. That means all your medical plans put into one pot running at 99.8%. So what and then current plan year meaning from July 24 to December of 24. Now, I know that we're a couple months into the new year, but keep in mind these were were

264um expenses that were incurred between July and December. It takes a couple months for the those to go through a process that they get submitted to the carrier. It has to be adjudicated before we get the reporting. So, when we're talking we're in April, we're looking at reporting that was actually a couple months in a rears. That's typical. So, all plans combined running at 102.5% for all plans combined. So we in the industry say that this is running very hot that your your plans are running in high excess of the what the the numbers that we should we normally be seeking in that 80 to 85%. Prescription drugs your prescription drugs are accounting for 30% of total gross claims. Now this did go down which is good news compared to 2023 that was at 34.7%.

265You have nine claimants that were over 32,500 that representative 48.4 4% of total growth claims. You did have one high one high-cost claimant that uh prompted a stop-loss threshold reimbursement of about 278,164. Now, when we're looking at each plan and how each plan was performing, the one that's most alarming to us is the classic gold plan. It's running at 161.3% with 35 enrolles. So, you're you're essentially that plan is doubling where it should be performing. It means it has very high utilization, high cost claims. It's it's it's kind of like a runaway train. Unfortunately, the value silver plan running very well, 82.5% with 184 enrolles. It's doing exactly what performing the way we would want it to perform. Your highal health plan A, 1600 running hot again, also at 136% with 23 enrolles. Your highal

266health plan C um running at 31.8 8% with 19 enrolles. So you've kind of kind of across the gamut here, unfortunately. Now, as we're thinking about a mitigation strategy, one of the things that re we're recommending is to consider um the current grandfathered class gold plan. Now, grandfathered, what it means is that that current that plan currently is shut off to new enrollies. Means whoever's in it has has been allowed to stay in it. that as new hires have come of onboarded or during open enrollment last year, nobody could join the plan. So, what we what we had kind of planned in in that thought of grandfathering it was that we were going to be able to kind of maybe slow down the runaway train. It it hasn't done much. So what we're recommending is

267that that that um we offer it for the 25 26 plan year giving those employees a heads up not one more year to enjoy this plan but for 2627 the plan would be that that that plan would would would would sunset and would go away. I've know I've said a lot about claims experience before I go into the rest of the is there any any questions for clarification? I got go ahead. What is stop loss reimbursement? So it's essentially your insurance has insurance. It's a way for the medical plan to essentially stop the bleeding. So let's think in a scenario that somebody ends ends up in a hospital and had has very high cost claim, maybe their catastrophic event. um that there's a point at which the insurance company will pay up until that's about

268$35,000 and then a anything beyond that 35,000 you have a secondary insurance that will kick in. So it essentially makes sure that your your medical uh your medical carrier it doesn't have extensive outofcontrol losses. It's it's basically a way to cap the the the expenditures of your your medical carrier. Absolutely. I had a question. Um Okay. For the high deductible a um what is the reason for that running high or I mean do you have an ex an explanation because in the past uh when I was sitting in the audience I know that we always encourage our employees to take the high deductible plan. So I'm just curious what you think that you know kind of the narrative is there. Typically what what we run in into a situation and and I'm just going to

269say that the the opinion of me and working with multiple employers and districts and what we see is is is that we see a very high high utilization of medical plans still reeling from from COVID. So thinking about employees who didn't get care, members who didn't get care during 2021 and 2022 just because they were incapable of going to a doctor's office or were fearful. What we're seeing since in 24 and 25 where people are go going out getting that care, those surgeries that they had put off, whether it was needed or elective like knee replacements, things like that, we're starting to see them really sprout in 2024 now rolling into 2025. So, what I'm what I'm estimating gueststimating is that employees hit that deductible. The great part about a plan with a high deductible

270health plan, you're going to receive the money from your district to help pay that deductible. Once they hit it, then they they've got the the co- insurance that kicks in, but essentially once they've met the high the out- of- pocket max, it's it's essentially kind of a, you know, cart blanc that to go out and and maximize it. And I think that I think we're seeing more people using the plan because now they're getting the care they need. But the way that that plan works is once you meet that out of the deductible and out of pocket max, it's it's the plan the plan set up to that you can get that without get that care that you need. Yeah. I mean, I can say for myself and my family that's exactly what we do.

271Um, so I just was curious because I know that the classic gold has always been a concern. I feel like for years um and it has such a small number, but I know those employees feel like really strongly about that. But um the the value silver is performing where we want it. So I think it's interesting to look at it because it's not necessarily what I was expecting, you know, prior to listening to the presentation. So yep, absolutely. Okay, Mr. President, if I may, sorry, still on that same same uh screen. I think what you said is probably pretty accurate. I've seen it in in family. I've seen it in friends where a lot of people just weren't going to the hospital just for whatever reason um and for for years right after CO and

272now they're like okay things have kind of calmed down I think it's time we make those appointments um and so that could be a good reason indicator why some of these have have jumped however with that being said if we for do a little foreshadowing these should come up and then come back down and stabilize um if we're using that logic, right? Uh and so just personally, I the people who are on the classic gold, I'm I'm okay with I'm okay with grandfathering them in. I'm not necessarily okay at this moment to say I want to eliminate that um for our employees, but that's just my opinion on that. Okay. Okay. Ne next slide. Please continue. So um the good news is is based because of the the negotiations with asbait maritane last year. I'm

273glad to say that we are at a 0% renewal for the 2526 plan year. Last year when we negotiated that we were able to get a 2-year rate guarantee. So we're delighted that there are no additional costs for the the medical plans this year um based upon the four current medical plans that you have in place. Uh, the one thing I did want to point out is that in the trust this year, the average renewal was between 3.75 and 7.75%. And there were only a handful of districts, only a couple of my districts in particular that work with Meritane that I'm aware of that receive that multi-year rate guarantee. So, I'm I'm delighted that that to say that that we're we're happy to see that that that savings. Um, we're also saying that that uh

274your retirey rate did go up 5% because the retirey rate was not included in that bucket of that rate guarantee. Um, but what I did want to mention is that there have been substantial increase to deductibles, out-ofpocket maximums, and co-pays for all plans. I do have the Asbait meitane team member here to speak to what those what the reasoning for that was. Um but essentially I did want to mention that Gallagher was unaware that there were going to be forthcoming changes to the plan designs. Um at no point during the plan year were we advised by as maintain that that was even on the docket to be considered. Um the renewal was released the last day of February and that and that was this the day that we were notified as your benefit consultant that

275there were plan changes that were coming down the pike and the plan changes essentially were across the board for every single plan and the what I'm understanding and what I've been told and of course certainly we can get questions from mayor Tain is that three reasons for this you know the number one uh no plan design changes have been made to the asbait trust plans for over 10 years. Uh the changes were designed to align align with plans in the current market what the market is currently offering for benefit plans and the adjustments were made to ensure long-term financial stability of the trust. Uh the good news is is there's no change in the network so your employees get to see the same doctors but they are um having the impact of the adjustment to

276those plan designs. Now, as we go to the next slide, the and we're actually presenting two options for considerations. Um, and both options that I'm presenting is going to be a nocost uh impact to the district. Now, number one, the first option is going to be to retain. What that means is retaining the same current plans that plan names that you currently have in place, meaning the high deductible health plan A, high health plan C, value silver, and classic gold, um, and grandfather plan. Um and we can certainly discuss where you'd like to go of recommendation but recommending here to be eliminating that go classic gold. The other option is to revise the plan options. That means keeping re hydroal health plan A value silver and classic gold but replacing the hydroal health plan C

277with a new value gold plan. I'm going to show you in just a moment what that looks like. The goal behind doing that would be to lessen the impact of the deductible increase and give employees a little bit more opportunities for PO plans that they can elect versus giving them really essentially one open PO plan and two high deductible health plans that you currently have in place. So that's why we're presenting a re retain or excuse me retain or revise option. So, as you u move to the next screen, um I do want to point out the way that we have this this these slides presented is at the top is where your current plan how your current plans are currently designed. Um you can see what the current deductibles out of pocket max and

278co- insuranceances are. Now, down in the bottom of the slide in the orange is those same plan names, but everything that is in blue font is the adjustments to the deductible out-of- pocket max and co-pays. Um, I do want to mention that the average increase on a your, for example, your value silver is between $3 and $600 for tier one deductible. Um, your Hydroville Health Plan is between $1,000 and $2,000 for tier one deductible. Hydroville Health Plan C is between $1,500 and $3,000. And on the classic gold is between $300 and $360 a deductible adjustment. The co- insurance did say the same across all plans, but there is a a $30 across the board uh sweep uh increase to all co-pays. Uh they did maintain the current co-pays for preventative to see your primary care

279physician. Um but essentially all other lines uh all other co-pays did increase $30. This the other as we move I'm sorry. Go ahead. Sorry if I ask a question before we move on. Please. Yes. So, the way I'm looking at this, and please correct me, is with the new one, they're going to be paying more. The the employees will be paying more with the new employees paying more. Yes, there's no increase to the premium. So, the premiums are exactly the same. There's no increase to the premium as they're what's coming out of their check and what the district is paying. But when the employee gets care, it's a point of care that they're going to be paying more to the doctor's offices, the facilities, the prescriptions. So what's the benefit of changing to the new

280one if that's an option you're talking about? It's like so this is this is what is that is this is this is what this is to retain. This is exact there is no this is no choice. This is the plans as newly presented this year by meritain and asbait. So this is the top is what you currently have. This is what the new plans are going to look like if you maintain the current plans you currently have in place. So what did you mean by the 0% increase on the last slide? Then what I meant by the zeroing is that it's all all about premium. It's how much they're paying in medical premium. So if we go to the next slide, um you can see here what the rates are currently. they those rates that

281are being are are for every tier and every plan remain exactly the same. There is no plan to the rates that this is all about how it is impacting at time of care costs. So when I'm saying that there's a 0% it's about when I mentioned that there was a 3.7 to 7.5% increase in premium that was given to all other districts within the asbait maritane you don't have that your premiums are staying exactly the same that make sense okay so so as we're showing here basically essentially that that the premiums are the same but yes there's there's some sub substantial changes Now this is under the retain option which is option one. Um as we move to the next slide, the replace option um or revise option essentially kind of takes the top four

282plans and it adjusts the plan offering. So we would eliminate the first high deductible health plan C. We would maintain high deductible health plan A as you can see down at the bottom. We would maintain that value silver but we would offer a new value gold plan. And the benefit of this is is essentially if you look at the value silver plan as it currently sits as an $800 deductible for employee only or $1,600. Now when we look at the new value silver which is a second column from the left it's going to go to $1,100 and 2200. So that's a big hit for an employee. However, if employees like I'm not comfortable taking on that higher deductible. What are my options? That's why we're recommending putting the value gold in place, which is a

283little bit closer to what their current value silver is. It it would be this would be a we the new new plan that we would put in place be considered a buy up option for the employee. They could pay a little bit more in premium, but it would allow them the opportunity to not have such dramatic increases to deductible out-ofpocket max that they're that they're going to be seeing on that current value silver plan. So as we're presenting now as I go to the next slide the one thing I do want to point out is where we're looking at it regarding rates. Now your plan your under this revised option the rates stay exactly for the hydro health plan the value silver and the classic gold they stay exactly the same. The value gold is

284the value gold plan is not replacing uh you know a like benefit. So I can't say what current rates are to new rates. We can show we can see what the value gold would cost an employee if they choose that over the value silver. So there's roughly $30 more for an employee only to to take on that that buy up plan if they so desired. Any questions about this? So this is in year this is our year two of this. It is. Okay. Yep. This is your year two. I mean, I'm going to be honest. When we said we had a rate lock, I I commend you for taking great pride in saying no additional cost to the district. The reason that I pushed so hard previously was to go out and bid was to

285protect our employees and make sure they're not having to pay more. And honestly, to come back to me now and say, "Well, we're going to make the employee pay more." Because they're going to pay more if they use it, which seems strange. I'm uh I'm I'm pretty bothered by that. I think that's a little bit of a shady tactic. Um that, you know, it's insurance, but we have to do everything we can to make sure our employees have the best benefit package at the lowest cost to them in our district. I'm I'm concerned that prices go up because at the end of the day, I you've seen the budget, you've seen what our teachers make. Um regardless of whether we're above state average, state average isn't very good. So, I'm I'm going to tell you

286I'm very concerned and I think we probably need to just to put it out there. We probably need to speak with legal and figure out what we can do about this. Can I make a comment? You may. Um, you know, when I looked at these two options, um, I had, you know, kind of like a sinking feeling in my stomach. um because we are not at this time offering our employees a raise and to look at these plans and feel like we're asking them to pay more like it's not affecting us as a district it's really hard um and when I look at the significant number um of the increases in the deductible and um you know they are significant um and so you know my question to staff was have we asked our employees,

287have we asked our teacher advisory committee about what they, you know, would kind of prefer because this directly impacts them. Um, and that answer was no. And so I would really love the board, I don't know what our timetable is, but to give our employees the option or the ability to to look at the plans and to see what, you know, they're not going to like either of them, but we're going to have to make a decision. We have to provide health care. And so I'd really love to hear from our employees about um what they feel is the best option. And if I may, I'm going to tag on. I'm a little concerned that you guys are so late notifying us and I know it comes from excuse me from Meritane. It's unacceptable. This

288this wasn't a surprise to them. Feel like they sat on this trying to push us into a corner and I'm not going to change my opinion on that most likely. Um I can't stress that we have to do everything we can to protect our teachers and their benefits. And for people who are sick, medical bills are probably one of the most devastating things that happens to to people. I understand why they don't do the high deductible because it's kind of like going up to Las Vegas and gambling. You can be healthy for your whole life and one day cat uh catastrophe hits and you've got your entire retirement is gone. You you've lost your house. Um you know, there's supposed to be laws that protect this. Now, I see people all the time seems like

289in financial ruin from medical, but I mean, go on with your presentation, but I think it's important. This is concerning that this comes so late to the board and it's just not it's just not acceptable. And whoever needs to hear that, I'm more than happy to share it with them. But I would ask that you take that back. And and this I will be very honest, I will be asking staff to be bidding this out. If we can't get out of it this year, we would definitely get out of it in the future years. That's this is not this is not acceptable. Mr. President, if I may, you may. Um I would like to ask staff and I know you're not done with your presentation and I apologize, but um where does this put us

290timelinewise? I know we're looking at contracts. This is part of the contracts is what we're providing as benefits. Unfortunately, open enrollment starts in like two weeks. That's another part of the problem. Yep. The turnaround is tight. That's my point. And so, thank you. Um, we understand we understand that I understand that obviously insuranceances they have to make money and but at the same time I I agree with my four uh fellow board members that we need to be protecting our staff and I've I've sat here and I've kind of bragged on how we do provide some of the best medical packages that that I've seen. Um, but to see it coming up this late in the game with these kind of deductible changes is a hard pill to swallow and it's very, you know, my

291my question is did this was just moving right into this, right? I mean, you just found out February. I found out the day that that they were releasing rates that this was happening. Yeah. So, and we're in year two. for for the two-year contract, right? One of the biggest challenges want to mention when we think about the loss ratio that would if we were to take this to market because of how you're running at 102%. The likelihood of us getting less than a twodigit increase from a carrier is exceptionally low. Um, I would expect that based upon 102% loss ratio for current plan year, you could be seeing in excess of 12 to 15%. Medical trend is at 10 and a half. That was one of my first thoughts. What what are our considerations? What

292do we have as far as an additional option besides just taking what we have and the option if we went out to market, we could be looking at an ex a very high until until you do the temperature for sure. But based upon my experience and how what your loss ratio is, you would be considered a very high risk for a carrier to take you on based upon how your plan designs are currently performing. And I guess I I I don't disagree with that. I think that, you know, with where we're at and the like we talked about earlier, a lot of people are making the decision to go into the hospital. There's a lot of pe a lot of probably districts that are in the same seeing similar stats. Um but this being brought

293to us two weeks before you know we really need to make this decision is it's just kind of it hurts. So I also have the meitane team member here if you'd like to ask her questions. I think she's heard the you guys have questions. She's heard our concerns. I this I'm just going to say it seems like every year there's something with insurance that there's a gotcha that comes back and it's it's getting frustrating. Uh as a board we want to have good partnerships with everybody that we do business with and I don't feel like we have a partnership with this organization at all either Gallagher or Meritane. I I don't think the partnership is there. I I think this is uh this is a typical insurance game and it's concerning and I'll be making

294some requests to staff at the end of this May. I'm disappointed to hear that. I really did walk into this year so excited the fact that I did navigate a 0% increase with a 2-year rate guarantee and that I only did that for one was able to navigate that for one other district last year of the 10 of the 10 districts that I worked with. So, I'm heartbroken that you feel this way because I feel I feel connected to your staff. I've been a a consultant with your organization for a very long time and I feel highly committed and I'm equally as disgusted as you are that I'm having to sit here and explain this this bad ex this this bad news. And it's it is a hard situation to be the messenger, but I

295feel like I'm I've been an extension of your of your your HR team. So, I can continue with this. I'm not trying to kill the message. I understand. Sorry. Could I make a comment? You may. Okay. I just want to say that um you know, it's important that we all speak for ourselves as board members and that uh up here we do have our individual voices. So, I do appreciate everything you do. I realize that this was not your choice to bring us to us and that the fact that you were able to save us between 3 and 7% basically this year. You know, I'm personally as a board member super grateful for that because um we are in a very difficult financial position to begin with. Um and so that would be, you know,

296detrimental right now. So I am grateful for the services that you do provide. Um and for me it's just a heartbreaking thing for our staff. Um and um and that's that's where my you know my pain comes from is that you know we as a board have to go back to our staff and and tell them you know that the cost to them not only are we not giving them a raise but the cost to them is going to go up for healthcare. Um, and I would really, I know we only have two weeks, but I really feel like our employees deserve the opportunity to look at these plans and tell us what they feel like is the best option because I have a hard time sticking with the current the current plan to retain.

297The numbers for the high deductible plan are such an increase. And if we want people on the high deductible plan, I feel like now we're discouraging them personally from the way that this looks. Um but then also if we go to the the change um option two, then we only have one high deductible plan. And so are we going to perform even worse in the future year? Um and I just feel like our employees deserve to have a voice in this. And so that's my opinion. Okay. Can can I Ben I I I would suggest maybe that we could work maybe with Dr. Slope and Lisa on doing a survey. I would hate to just take it to tag because that's only seven people. So that's to me that's just not a representative enough group

298because it's only one per building. Um, so I maybe if we could turn around a survey quick enough, um, it have to be really quick. Yeah, I'm I'm just afraid to be honest with you that our employees aren't necessarily going to understand looking at these two plans. I don't know if there's a better way. And I don't know I know this is I don't know if this is inappropriate for me to ask, but like could our principles have a staff meeting like a 15minute staff meeting? I don't know that they'd be able to explain it either. I don't know. I'm not saying that they wouldn't. Can we do like a team's call or a Google Meets call with Meritane and and Gallagher to explain this to the to the staff? Then they can answer the

299questions and there I don't I don't think any in the district, no offense, but I don't think anyone in the district is going to be able to answer all the questions and be prepared. Oh, I agree. So, it's it's their choices. I think they they should deliver that and we probably need to help do a couple or something. Four or five, I'm guessing of times where people can come in, see a presentation, and understand it. Maybe we'll meet tomorrow and just try to come up with that like do a few days or a few afternoons or something, right? And then have a survey afterwards or something. I don't know. Do we have a PD coming up in the next two weeks? No, just last, but maybe we something that make it work. You know, for

300the board, we'd probably have to meet again before open enrollment starts to approve one of these plans or if we let them pick. I don't know. I don't have a great idea, you know. Oh, no. I think the board has to approve the plan. When does open enrollment start? Exactly. What day? Like the first week of May. May 1st. Oh, soon. All right. I I think you have more in your presentation. Um, and I do want to say thank you for for getting that locked in 0% for the district and for the premiums because that that does mean a lot. It is it is a big accomplishment. It just obviously the increases hurt but I agree. Thank you. So the remainder of this presentation is is taking a look at the non-medical benefits. So I

301do have some some good news. Um Blue Cross Blue Shield your dental uh no change to rate plan or network to your rate guarantee. Vision solstice stays the same. No change change to plan rate or network one-year rate guarantee. Uh we do have a 4% rate cap for 2027 but that's down the road. Uh, your basic life, Minnesota life, no change to plan or rates to to your rate guarantee. Met life, no change to rates to your rate guarantee. We are requesting or recommending to increase your election limit to $3,300 to align with the new IRS guidelines. And also recommend that continued $250 annual minimum contribution limit, your voluntary short-term disability, accident, critical illness, hospital, and dimmnity renew with Lincoln. No change to rates or benefits. And then regarding the um additional services that are

302included with your asbait medical, your EAP, your health savings account administration, COBRA and tele medicine, all costs, no no administration costs for the district. Renewing all of those plans as current. Um I am delighted to say that there is an increase of benefit in tele medicine. This is really great news for employees to access care. They're increasing their service to include now primary 360 as well as behavioral health. So what this means is that an employee can actually become be have a relationship with a primary care provider that they can see um through TEDOC that will allow them to to speak with that one provider for future care. They can get their their um maintenance medications. They can get orders for preventative medicine. Basically everything done over the phone which is fantastic. Uh and cost

303for PO members is $10. Yes, there is a co co consult fee until the deductible's met. But what greater way to see a provider is that you don't even have to go to their office. You can get that care right from your phone. And then behavioral health actually is connecting with a counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, seeing that same person over and over again. You get to devel develop that relationship. So this is give increasing access to care uh reducing and there's a cost savings to employees as well. And then um lastly regarding contributions recommending that Liberty maintain the current contribution of $726 a month. Employees enrolled in the high deductible health plan without dependence would receive a contribution or continue receive that contribution of $53 towards other coverage either dental or vision. And employees enrolled in

304the high deductible health plan would continue to receive a district contribution of $750 paying annually into their HSA with half of it being given in July 1st and half January 1st. district maintain the contribution level of $34.65. That's the rate for employee only for dental. Uh maintain the district contribution of8 $3.83 for vision. That is the uh premium for employee only for vision. And then the HSA contribution again that 750 uh providing in January and as well as July. And that actually concludes my presentation. Any other questions? Just want to say thank you. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to item 8.5, discussion, consideration of the second reading and approval of the trust policy chapters one and two. President Todd, it's an action item. Sorry. On uh sorry I did not see it action

305item. Uh make a motion to table 8.4. for my only question is when would we when would you all vote on it again my only well we'd have to call a special meeting I guess I think we have a meeting on Monday I don't I don't know if that's going to be enough time but we're going to be after that we're going to be right into contract time so can we push to try to get something by Monday and survey the staff that probably means we need to start having meetings right away. As far as the agenda goes, we just need to post that we're going to talk about it and you might be ringing the bell at the meeting to bring us findings of the survey or or meetings. If we don't get it,

306there's no fault. If we don't have it by then, we can push it to another meeting. But we do have one coming Monday that we could look at. Yeah, I don't think we'd have the meeting set up by Monday. I don't think we could. I mean the the first is not till um I don't know if this is appropriate to talk about at the agenda. Oh no either if you're tableabling it. Okay, you want to table it to a certain point. So I think you're okay. Okay. Um the first is a Thursday. You know that's two weeks. I don't know if we could, you know, have a meeting on the 28th or the 29th. I don't know what your timetable is to, you know, to be able to implement, I guess, the plans. Lisa, too.

307So, here's the good news. I have a silver lining. The good news is is that we're not changing carriers. um all of your non-medical plans. It's a simple process for us to renew with those carriers. Asbaitane already has the SBC's in place that they can immediately provide us once the document is signed and approved. So, the good news is is it's a little it's a little bit it's it's going to push, right? The things that's going to be pushing us is to try to get make sure that we have the the brain sharks, the benefit website, have the open moment presentations going. Gallagher's committed. We can do that. If it does need to go out two weeks, it's uncomfortable, but it's not impossible. So, if you were changing carriers completely, I would say, "Wow, this

308is going to be a really heavy lift." But if you're staying with the same carriers, we have the capability. We can do it. Okay. And Gallagher, one is the thing as well is I have talked to your team about the level of commitment with from Gallagher in rolling out open enrollment this year. Um, live webinars wanting to to, you know, do recorded presentations. We have a benefit guide, have a full benefit website. So, we're here to help do the heavy lifting, too, to communicate it. So, and we can immediately begin the process tomorrow of this benefit survey, these questionnaires tomorrow morning. So, I'd like to see us do it the 28th or the, you know, 29th or or something to give the team to time. And I really want our employees to have time to

309really kind of digest um you know what is happening and you know if they feel like they want to email us and you know provide other feedback. I just want to give them if if you're comfortable um again for the board it could be a quick meeting and I know we're been meeting a lot but you know we need to meet the need of our employees too. So I'm fine with that. Yeah I'm I'm good with the 28th. I think that would work. It gives us plenty of time hopefully. What day is the 28th? It's a Monday. It's a Monday. Yeah. So, your motion would be to table it till the 28th for a special meeting. Well, yeah, she's going to have to formulate your motion. Um, you want me to lock it into that

310date just in case something comes up or you want me to just um I mean I guess you could say no later than the 28th and then we would have a meeting on the 28th. That would be it would give us room but we've got to get something done before the 1st, right? Yeah. Okay. That's as far as we can go. Um I make a motion to table 8.4 to uh no later than April 28th. I'll second. Our members have a motion for uh tableabling item 8.4 for to no later than April 28th. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none, we'll take the vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon. I. Board member Shinion. I. I'm also an I. Will show that approved. Five. Yes. Zero. No. All right.

311Next up, members, is item 8.5 discussion consideration of second reading and approval of the trust policy chapters 1 and two effective July 1st, 2025. Uh, President uh Todd, Vice President Kenyon, members of the board, I'll invite Mrs. Castanos to the microphone. This is a uh as the board is aware and the community can uh be aware that we're transitioning our policy services and we've been spending a lot of time on our policies from ASBA to the trust since about November, I believe. And so this is a second read and potential approval. If the board uh would want to do that tonight of chapters one and two, if it has to come back for a third read as was mentioned in the work study, we can certainly do that. So Mrs. Castianos, good evening. I'm sorry.

312Good evening. Um I'm just here to ask if you have any considerations or questions about the chapters one and two uh of the transition. I'll just open it up for questions as always. Any questions? Go ahead. So, um, this is the first time we're bringing it back for a second, Re, so I I'm not sure if you want me to list the different ones that I have some suggestions on. Do you want me to go through the whole Yeah, we'll need to take that because then we'll either have to approve it or or have it brought back for a third read. If there's a lot, it's probably going to be easier to have it brought back for a third read. Okay. So, the first one I have is 1-102. [Music] Um, I don't know if

313it's helpful for me to tell you the page. Page three. It's on actually page five. It's like several pages. Um, and it's about the communication protocols. Um it says communication from community members or employees directly to the board shall be directed to district administration for processing. Um I'm not sure what the intent of that is because we always as board members encourage the community and stakeholders to email us. And so I don't necessarily find it appropriate to forward every email I get to the superintendent. Now, if it has something to do with the day-to-day running or a a specific concern about an event or a situation, then certainly I have forwarded those concerns on to Dr. Monroe. But the way that I read this is that we're forwarding every email we get. And I'm not

314sure that that's something I'm comfortable doing. So, I just want to cl I'm just clarifying that we're not going to discuss like as as I bring something out, we're not going to discuss it. You want me to just keep going? Each item, if we're going to have change, we'll need to discuss it. Um, I might suggest as I'm looking at these, I have a bunch of questions as well. And I I think approving these one by one um sets us up for potential problems. Ass we talked about earlier. There may be something that comes up in three that we want to reference back to two. And if we adopt these, then we're going to have to go back through a first read, a second read again. So maybe we table these until we have them

315all done and we'll do one blanket approval at the end. Gives us time in our future work sessions to go back and ask questions. We can agendaize to come back and and catch up. Okay. I mean, we did that. I mean, we gave our I know you weren't on the board, so I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't give any. I'm just saying that we did that. So, could I could I give my suggestions? I'm just afraid that if we table it. I think that approving all five um sections I don't know what to call this now. Chapters. Thank you, sir. Um chapters at once is a lot. I mean, we're talking about 600 pages of policy. And so, I think it's easier to break it down personally for me to like reread, you know, 600

316pages prior to a board meeting. Um, if we could at least talk about our concerns tonight, we we we can certainly talk. We're we're here until we go home. So, we can do that. I'm not opposed to it. I'm just suggesting if you have a bunch, it may your changes may result in other board members wanting changes and this may take an extensive amount of time to go through. I whether we adopt it all at once or we break it down. I understand your concern there of rereading 600 pages, but if you've got a bunch of changes and you make those changes, it might create one of us to think something else needs to get changed and we may be here for a very long time. It's a I I understand if if when I

317bring or anybody I don't mean just me, if anybody brings up a policy, if we could discuss whether we agree or not, it is the majority of the board decision. You know what I mean? Like I it's it's just a suggestion. And so otherwise if we don't at some point, you know, say yes, I agree to that change or no, I don't, I'm not saying we have to approve them tonight if you have like lots of things, but if we don't start discussing them and say whether we agree to the changes or not, I'm not sure how we're ever going to be able to move it forward. Okay, go ahead, Mr. President. Yes. Could we have this in a work study session again uh where we can discuss this? Um, personally, I think that's the

318best idea is to bring it to a work session where everybody's eyes are a little fresher. Um, and we can go over them because I think there's a number of changes. I also want to respect you coming, you know, back onto the board this this late in the process on this and so give you the time, you know, that you need in order to digest some of this stuff as well. There's been a lot you've had to work on getting caught up on. Um, and so, uh, with respect to what other board members, you know, want to address, I I just think for the sake of time, for the public, for our staff, for ourselves, uh, it behooves us probably just to table this and then bring it back at a work study session or

319we can sit down and really digest all of our ideas on this. You're welcome to make a motion for it if you'd like to do that. I would just like to ask that you know at the end of the meeting that we then discuss and all come to a common agreeance on a day on day since we already previously have some days you know and if I may um you all had mentioned you wanted to move over to the policy or to the trust policy services by July 1 when your current contract with ASBA um is finalized. And so if we are to move by July 1 over to the trust policies and we're intending on doing third and fourth reads, we've got a really tight timeline. So I just want to make sure that

320that's at the forefront of your minds as well. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So at this time, I'll just make a motion to uh table item 8.5. Have a second. Second. I have a motion, a second to table item 8.5. Is there any further discussion? All right. Hearing none. Uh we'll take a vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon. I. Board member Sinion. I. I also I will show that proof. Five yes. Zero no. Thank you. Next up is item 8.6 discussion consideration to approve governing board meeting calendars and possible update to governing board policy be members. We did ask uh for this to be put onto uh the agenda. We uh I understand the board previously voted to move meetings to once a month and on a Tuesday. Uh

321our current board policy spells out very clearly that meeting shall take place um a minimum once a month. It should be on the second Monday of the month. So I have some concerns that the the calendar that was voted on by the board is in violation of the policy. Secondly, just as we've heard many times tonight, we've got a lot of work to do on this board and having one meeting a month and then scheduling a bunch of special meetings is very challenging. Uh, additionally having Tuesday meetings and and I I uh I I think I probably understand some of the reason that it was moved to there. At the end of the day, we got the same amount of time between each meeting date. Um, if we go back to two, but I think

322we're better to go back to two meetings a month on Mondays. And for the short term, we're running into a problem by having a a work session or a special meeting right ahead of a general meeting because we're trying to get that done. And as we saw tonight, we we covered a very small amount. So I would even propose for a short term that we look at having work sessions on a third Monday so that we can spend two or three hours at a time to get through this policy. To Miss Castiano's point, we got a lot of work to do. Um, we also have budgets, uh, budget things to still talk about and that's going to require more than a 1-hour work session before before meetings start and also to try to get some

323folks out of here prior to midnight or 1:00 in the morning unless we can sell some hotel space here and fix the budget. Uh, I don't think anybody wants to sleep here, but uh, um, but but we're getting close to that point. So, I think uh I would like to propose that, but most importantly, we would have to have a first read and a second read to change the board policy. I recognize that every meeting we vote in there that says we're going to we have the right to basically suspend rules, but it's a really dicey deal having a lot of special meetings and it makes it really hard for the public to keep track of the schedule. If we have them every two weeks, we sometimes will eliminate our special meetings. that'll be a

324lot easier for for folks to plan. Um Mr. Todd, if I could just bring up that um doesn't seem to be working, but um the reason it was changed to Tuesday was to allow for more digestion of by the board of the um proposed agenda, right, rather than Monday. So that's why it was moved to Tuesday. Not a proposed agenda, but for us to get um information. So when we're getting the agendas on Thursday and staff is not working on Friday and then they're not working on the weekend, you know, to get information, the questions answered and then get that information at 3 or 4 right before a board meeting just isn't really working. And I also want us to consider staff and parents that we move the sports schedule this year to Mondays and

325Wednesdays. And so, you know, all of our staff and parents are, you know, trying to attend games, but really, and this wasn't just my request, Mr. Kenyon asked to change the day as well. Um, but for me personally, it has to do with getting the information um and having the opportunity to have everything I need prior to a board meeting. Right. And I, Miss Eman, I I completely understand that. I've I've expressed frustration before in the past getting it late. Um, at the end of the day, if we're doing meetings every once a month, every two weeks, um, the trick to that is if we're having a special meeting, we might be getting the agendas 24 hours ahead and we're right back to the same issue. I think what this does, if we go back

326to Mondays, we do two a month. Um, at the end of the day, staff's just going to have to get things up a little bit sooner um to us, they're going to have to get it out to us on Wednesday instead of Thursday. But if you're looking at a twoe schedule, it's it's essentially 14 days between each one. Um if we get it on Friday, we now have Monday. If we stay with the Tuesday meeting, we have Monday to work on it. So now we just need to get the information on Wednesday and then we'll have Thursday to to talk to staff and and then get the information. So um again, I think there's a lot of other community meetings that happen on Tuesdays. I think it uh um Mondays Mondays have been a better

327time and I would just like the board to consider that. But most importantly, our policy does say that it's to be on the second Tuesday of the month or second, I'm sorry, second Monday of the month, which means until we change that policy, we're going to I think it's a bad precedent to violate this policy every single meeting. That's why it's on the That's why it's on the agenda now. So you can change the policy. You don't have to. But we'd need to do a first read and a second read to change a policy. Policy does not require that you do second read. I think the law does as it was told by me. Yes. Requires a I believe it requires a second read. Show it to me. Well, again, why do we do it?

328Why do we do it every time if we don't need to? I I think we need to continue with that practice. Can I um make a comment? You may. Um I just also, you know, in order to go through an agenda um in the depth that I like to, it it's not feasible for me to do that in one night. I have other obligations. Um and I think that the four board members agre Do you have a personal conflict on a Tuesday? because the four of us did agree to meet on Tuesdays and I think that the policy can be changed. Um, and you know, you could have attached a proposed policy change so it would have been a first read tonight. So just because it's always been on a Monday doesn't mean it has

329to be. Mr. President, if I may, you may. I'm I'm okay with it being on Mondays. Um, I'm okay with it being on Tuesdays. I right now my job is to make sure that the district work needs to be done. Uh right now in our district there's a lot of work to do. You know policy says Mondays we were in violation of the policy when we routinely met on Tuesdays. I will admit I was in violation of that policy. Uh that should have been changed when when the calendar was changed but it wasn't. And so I'm okay with it being Mondays. Um, and I'm okay with it being every other week for the for the sake of the community, us staff know when the meeting is going to be. Right now, we just have meetings

330popping up all over the place because we're trying to put out fires. And it would be much more advantageous I think and much more transparent to the community to everybody that we say the every month we have these two meetings scheduled. Everybody would then would know. Um, and so I I would be okay with it moving to Mondays, back to Mondays in line with policy, and I would be okay with our general meetings being twice a month at least until some of this stuff dies down and we can then move it back to once a month if we need be. Commit comment. You may. So, I also voted obviously for it to be Tuesdays and I really hope Tuesday work better for me, but it doesn't. Monday works better, but I understand the frustration that

331Miss Zimmer is speaking about. So, if we do move it to Mondays, excluding special meetings, can we also pass a resolution or whatever saying we need the agenda by Tuesday for the next regular scheduled meeting. I know we can't do that when we have these special meetings, but hopefully that'll alleviate some of the gap of not being able to talk to staff right away for a day or two and on the weekend. Do you mean Wednesdays or you you mean Tuesday? The following the the prior Tuesday. Okay. Because that gives us Wednesday and Thursday to talk to staff before they go on break if we're going to do it on Monday. Yeah. Uh board that that's a again we'll do whatever the board wants. We'll step up to the plate. That's a quick turnaround, especially

332when you have two meetings uh every other week. It feels like uh the meeting ends and you're starting to get ready for the next one. I understand there's a lot of work to do and we'll step up um if if we have to do it early or we we'll certainly do our best, but that's a that's a real quick turnaround for staff, but but we'll we'll step up to the plate and make sure it gets done. We still give you a week after the meeting, right? We have meeting on Monday that next Tuesday you give us the agenda for that following Monday. Yeah, I would give us Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then the Monday. So, four work days. That's just one. Yeah. Again, we'll we'll do it. I'm just expressing on behalf of staff, it's

333it's just a quick turnaround, but we'll we'll make sure we step up to the plate and do it. It's just Sorry. And it's just a suggestion to try to accommodate because I understand what Miss Zimmer was saying because I was concerned I was having also with the short turnaround. Um but Mondays were working better than me on Tuesday. Understood. Uh you know speaking for myself and uh you know Tuesdays as a superintendent works really well um you know because it gives us some time on a Monday but if Monday works better for the board again we can change that. And I think this I think we voted on this in February and we had discussed it but um uh but again things change and and whatever the will of the board is we'll make sure

334that it happens. Can I comment? You may. Um Mondays or Tuesdays either day really works or doesn't work well for me. I have to readjust my schedule anyways but it's fine. Um, and as somebody who lives by my schedule, like I definitely appreciate having things on a calendar in advance because my life is crazy. Um, I will say that I don't think our special meetings really would have uh not had to happen recently because we were meeting a lot and in short turnarounds to get teacher contracts out. So even if we were meeting twice, we still would have had many of those special meetings. Uh hopefully in the future we won't have to do that. But as uh Miss Zimmerman said, it makes me sad to have it on a night when we know parents

335aren't going to be able to attend or not easily attend. They're going to have to choose between their children's sports and attending the schoolboard meeting. Um and it it doesn't feel great to me to put them in that position. All right, members. Um, we can take a motion. I make a motion. Uh, I guess how would we do this? Make a motion to You know, one thing, sorry to interrupt your thought process. Yeah, go for us. President Kenyon. Well, a few things we've done in the past when we've dealt with board meeting schedules is we we've drafted and brought some back for the board to look at and we can certainly do that. Minnie, I'm kind of looking at you, Mrs. camarada to see if that way the board can see the dates like what

336Mrs. Schmidt is saying. I know summer vacations have been planned and um I I mean we we can certainly if we have the meeting on Monday which is already scheduled a work study or we can make it a regular meeting but we could bring back a schedule uh for the board to look at. Um I'd hate to just jump in right now and do something every other Monday when we in February we talked about summer you know your vacation schedules and things like that. So that it's just a suggestion. We could bring back something based on what President Todd is saying for two Mondays a month or every other Monday and then the board can take a look at it and compare compare the schedule. I think that would probably be be more appropriate. Um

337that way we have something we can look at and we can motion to approve that instead of just uh Mr. President, what do you think? No, I'm fine. I just wanted to surface this to uh to start really discussion on it and uh we put it in availability uh for an action item but uh didn't have to be um but you know it gives us the gives us the ability. So there's never a harm in having action on an agenda item if if we need to do something. So that's just my deal. And I think right now with the with certain situations going on, staffing, I know we always get into a rush once we start hiring teachers. The closer we get to day one, the more special meetings we started having. But I know

338there were times where like, well, we have a meeting in two days. We can wait, you know, we'll hold two days. There were a couple times we didn't. But uh um I do know in the past in some attorney general trainings, they've really said that you should if you're routinely having special meetings, you need to have more regularly scheduled meetings. That's always been um advice out of the attorney general's office and we're having a lot of special meetings. So, I think getting back to more formality and uh doing that would be good. I I do recognize that staff will have to turn stuff faster, but we just work that has to be done um for this. So, we can look at schedules and you know just bring it back to what we used to have

339I think would be pretty good. Can I make a comment? May um I would just ask if we could meet at 5:30 so that if people want to attend um a game at the beginning that they could and that when we do work sessions that they're on a different day. I'm I've always been a supporter actually of having work sessions on different days from regular meetings because we're just too compressed to try to get any work done unless we start them at 2:30 in the afternoon which is not going to work for most everybody. Um so no I mean on a different day not we do them on a totally different we could do a different time. Um, we can look at those and yeah, depending on the the input we're hearing from the board,

340we we can take a stab at it and bring bring some calendars with those considerations. 5:30 start time, work study on a different day or regular board meeting twice a month on Monday. Great. Thank you. So then no action on that one. Correct. I think uh we can we can table it until the next meeting and then have and ask staff to bring back some recommendations. Make a motion to table item 8.6. Second. I have a motion to second. Any discussion? All right. Hearing none. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon. I. Board member Spencion. I. I'm also I will show that approved. I have zero. Next up will be item 8.7 discussion consideration to approve the United States Department of Education reminder of legal obligation undertaken in exchange for receiving

341federal financial assistance in request for certification under title 9 and I'm sorry title six and SSFA verse Harvard and the resolution regarding equal education opportunities and guidance from the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. Dr. Monroe, President Todd, Vice President Kenyon, members of the board, as the board is aware from the board updates and seeing the agenda item, we were received communication, I want to say two weeks ago, um, from the United States Department of Education through the Arizona uh, Department of Education, uh, basically informing us of, um, if, uh, in order to continue to be eligible or not have your federal government federal several monies uh uh in danger of being withheld that you had to sign this document and be able to return it within a certain amount of time.

342And uh I think I think the due date was like this week and then they pushed it back another week or two. So um this includes uh the prohibition of the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which we do not have any in our district. Um however, we do have uh funds that are considered title six, if you will. Uh Mrs. Moer mentioned those. I don't know what the total was uh Chris. It was like one one point 1 1.4 million. Um you know for for next year in some of those title monies. So the the email language is included here in the in the board item and then the attachments are there for the board to consider to sign. Um you know administration obviously recommends that we would play it safe. If we

343don't have those programs anyway, I would hate to see any of our uh uh monies be in um danger of potentially being withheld. Will they be? I I'm not really sure. However, all school districts in Arizona are dealing with this right now. Some have even been in the news and so we have that for the board to consider uh to discuss and potentially approve tonight. Thank you, members. Uh any questions uh before we take a motion, have discussion? Uh I have a couple questions. Okay. Um so the uh LAP program that was identified by Superintendent Bogs as a DEI program um you know we do have that in our district currently cuz she um talked about it about how it's successful and she identified that President Trump has identified it as DEI but that she's

344appealing that and paying for it from the county. So, is it considered a DEI program? Uh, I don't know, Michelle, if you want to speak, come up and speak to that at the microphone. Uh, that I've been notified that we will not be receiving the learning acceleration grant any longer. Uh, we've been signing documents for it to be concluded and that it won't be funded um next year. So, are we signing this that it's that we won't have any of those programs next year? I just want to make sure that what we're signing is the truth. I'm just asking. Um, you know what? I would have to look to see at what point are we agreeing moving forward that we don't have those programs. But I know maybe that's why we've been signing all the

345documents that the LAP is going away. Maybe that's why they've been coming in in the last in the last two weeks. I can certainly confirm that. But outside of that and asking our principles and talking to ed services, I don't know of any other program that we have in our district that's considered DEI. And it's hard to know uh what someone says is and what someone isn't. But I would have to look at the language to see is it effective now or is it for the next school year? Did you see anything in there, Mrs. Moer, with regards to to that uh when you were reading it? So, I I would have to look a little more carefully, but I do know the learning acceleration grant, we were notified a couple months back that it's

346ending. And so, we're kind of wrapping that up right now. That's all being wrapped up. I know there was an appeal by Superintendent Bogs, I think, to keep the funding from her office for the rest of this year or something, uh, the rest of the school year. Um, but, uh, I had someone come and meet with me a couple times in my office about kind of the termination and the ending of that grant. Um my second question is is um it's about inclusion and so um you know we do have inclusion in in our um preschool you know we have typical peers and non-typical peers um and we have special education students that push into regular classrooms. So is that considered I mean that is inclusion. So is that considered part of this? I don't

347believe so. And I don't believe that that is the definition of their in of I'm not sure if that even meets the definition of the federal government's idea of inclusion. And speaking to Tara Cook, our preschool, as she's looked at their programs and their curriculum, there's nothing in there that would be considered DEI, if you will. Um, but I I don't know if it's a play on words or if we have the same definition of inclusion or not when we use it in the special ed sense. And so I don't in my view in my opinion it doesn't fit what this what DEI would qualify as inclusion. Okay. That inclusion is actually under the um IDEIDA the special ed law the federal law that inclusion provision is is a federal require for special education. I

348don't know if that's the inclusion that they talk about with DEI. Believe it is at all. No. Those are my questions for right now. Okay, any other questions? Um, sorry, I was just reading through these again and it appears that we're signing that we currently do not have any DEI programs. So, that would be something for sure to clarify. Um, and yeah, I don't I don't have any other questions at this time. Any other questions? Um, I have a comment real quick and and uh I just want to thank administration and this board and some president or previous board members for kind of seeing, you know, seeing what was going on in our nation and uh taking steps in order to protect us as a district because um the 1 million that's a lot of

349money that our district absolutely needs. Um, and so and and this is this is stuff it's not it's not new, right? It seems like every presidential administration has their own take on how they're going to run this the the title monies and so it's it's not anything new, but um just making sure we we aren't taking that big hit at this point is very important. So, and I will clarify the question and make sure I report back to the board. All right. If there's no other questions, we can take a motion, a second, and then discuss more if we need to. Motion to approve the United States Department of Education reminder of legal obligation undertaken in exchange for receiving federal financial assistance and request for certification under title six and SFA verse Harvard and the

350resolution regarding equal education opportunities and guidance from the United States Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. I'll second All right, we have a motion, a second to approve, make sure I have this right, to approve the title six assurance and the resolution regarding equal education opportunities. Absolutely. We have a second. Is there any further discussion? All right, hearing none, we'll take the vote. Board member Zimmerman, I and I'd like to explain my vote. And you can do so. Board member Schmidt, I and I would also like to explain. Okay. Uh, board member Kenyon. I I'm sorry that was Vice President Kenyon. My apologies. Board member FRion. I. I'm also I will show that proof. Five. Yes. Zero no. And M Zimmerman, please explain. I voted I because it is being required of us. And

351I'm not risk uh willing to risk the funds that um this school desperately needs. And um and I'm not going to bring politics into the school board. So, I'm voting because it's brought before us and we need it to keep our funding. Board member Schmidt, I would like to echo what board members Zimmerman just said. I'm voting high because we need this money. Um I it hurts my soul a little bit to vote I for this to be perfectly honest. Um but you know it is what is being required of us. All right, members. Next on the agenda is 8.8, discussion consideration for approval of second reading of liquidated damages policy presented by Dr. Stephanie Mahorn. I'm going to use the mic that actually works. Um, President Todd, Vice President Kenyan, governing board, uh, before

352you, you will see the red line, uh, and clean version of the liquidated damages policy. Um, it is updated to reflect the suggestions um that you recommended. So, I'm open to any questions suggestions that you may have. Anybody have questions? Uh, I do. Miss Zimmerman, go ahead. Um, I would like it to say for C, I would like it to say, um, advancement in position with a documented increase in pay or benefits. Um, that would be my suggestion. And then at the bottom, the red line, all decisions to wave or not wave the liquidated damage fee will be made by cabinet. I would just like it to be added um of at least three members or something so that it's not being made by a singular person because as I had said when we proposed

353this um policy that it was previously the decision was previously made by a fivep person board and so in order to avoid a conflict of interest um I just think that more than one person needs to make the decision and I just think it needs to be outlined in policy. Um, so I'm using three, but just to not tie administration up with five people. Mr. President, if I may, you may. I actually um agree with board member Zimmerman. Uh, in in a sense, I've done some research and just kind of digging into this a little bit and thinking about it. Um, you know, we had a conversation about who really should be the one waving or non-waving uh the liquidated damages. And as a board, we had just kind of, you know, we could could

354go one way or the other, but whoever whoever has that uh ability in the policy needs to take control of it. However, looking at contracts, um the board approves a contract and so any deviation from the contract, I think should be brought back to the board. Um, and I agree. I think it's probably better if the five board members can look at the liquidated damages instead of the cabinet just because I think everybody should be held to the same accountability um when it comes to you know uh staff whether they violate their contract, they leave midyear, whatever the case may be. And I I have a little bit of concern and I'm not speaking necessarily in regards to this administration, but future proofing this decision. Um, you know, who knows what the next administration or

355the administration after that may do with this. If we're allowing allowing their cabinet, it could be just, no, yeah, we'll wave that one, we'll wave that one, we'll wave that one, and then it doesn't really come before the board. I I kind of just thinking foreshadowing what could happen. I think it would be probably better that this does come back. It's still could be a recommendation from administration, but then the board would ultimately give their stamp of approval of liquidated damages or not. And then the the staff member who thinks that they're unfairly been given liquidated damages, they can present their case to the board. I think that that's probably the right way to go. Um, after I did a lot of thinking about this and and research. So, um, that's kind of where where

356I think and not only that, but it does make everything more transparent, right? Uh, instead of the cabinet behind closed doors deciding on somebody's liquidated damages, it's brought before the public, before the board, um, and then we can make a decision. And so I think with that laid out there, um I would propose that change be made to the to the board um if they're willing to go along with that. Make a comment. You may. I don't agree. Um because I think there's times where the public doesn't need to know why that person needs liqualated damages. And I think that's one of the points we talked about with it being with the cabinet in HR because not everything needs to be public knowledge in my opinion when we're talking about a person's reason for moving

357or having their medical illness. Like I don't think we should everybody should know that this person's getting waiver because they're sick. It's not I think I don't know if that violates their their rights. Actually, I think we could also address that in an executive session because it's personnel related. So it would every time we haven't looked at any damages when we go to executive session. I if they're requesting a waiver. It's not every time. It's if they're requesting a waiver. If I may, um in the past when we have done this and there had been certain waiverss um that staff had requested, it wasn't necessarily kind of we didn't air out the dirty laundry, right? We didn't we didn't tell the public exactly what's happening because you're right that is an HR issue. Um but

358ultimately I guess the board's decision the fiveperson board hopefully it's a fivep person board can make the decision on whether we're waving that individuals or not because it would be a recommendation from administration. Um because I just like I said thinking about futurep proofing this. I I have a I have a concern that behind closed doors without even the board knowledge there could be some abuse of this. [Music] Um with a cabinet down the road who might just say, you know, yeah, you're my buddy. I'll just wave it. And I I just I want to make sure we're very clear about protecting everybody. So I just have a question is and I don't know I don't know the answer so it's truly a question. Is there a way that the person that's asking for a

359waiver that their letter could be only seen by you as the board because sometimes they share very confidential information with HR. That's my only concern. If it's executive session it would be that Mr. Dangerfield this would be concern I have my I have two questions. One exactly what Dr. Mahorn is asking uh this would be a a employee situation with a contract. So that would be covered under executive session if need be. Secondly, um I think you can answer both these fairly easily. Secondly, I'm not sure the cabinet has the legal authority to modify a contract, which is ultimately what they would be doing if you authorize it in your in your policy. Okay. But then we're delegating authority which which becomes hard down the road later to to Vice President Kenyan's point it could

360be. So I think we should definitely do it in executive session. I don't think everyone wants this out. Can I can I make a comment? You may. You know, we had all talked about this and now like I feel like we made a compromise to allow cabinet to do it. I feel like I was originally the one that was like, "No, we shouldn't. Like, it should come before the board, but we need all the information." And Mrs. Fenion was like, "I don't think we should have it all." And I'm like, "Okay." like this is a compromise that we came to as a board and now we're backtracking on several things that we agreed to as a board, this being one of them. And if the board decides to go back on this, then my request

361is going to be what it was prior to it when the board has the authority is that we have to be given all of the information. I don't think it should have a recommendation on the on the personal action items to wave or not wave if it's the board's discretion. It shouldn't come as a recommendation then we should have the knowledge. But to Mr. Serenion's point, I don't think it it is a good use of our time to go into executive session every single board meeting um about potential liquidated damages. And the way that this year went, you know, I lost count, but at least 20 people have left in the middle of the year. And you know, if you want to talk about moving a board meeting along, I just I'm fine with leaving

362it with cabinet. This is why we're writing the policy because it is our job to write the policy. And that's why I asked when the discussion came up that there is no explanation in the contract about liquidated damages and how to weave them. and that's why I asked to have a policy written so that the board is in control of it. Um, so those are my thoughts. I'll take a motion. I make a motion to approve. Sorry, I'm not sure what agenda item we're on. 8.8 8 with the addition to the last sentence saying all decisions to wave or not wave the liquidated damages fee will be made by cabinet of at least three members. Board member Zimmerman, can you please repeat that again? Yes. I make a motion to approve 8.8 8 with the

363change to the last sentence to say all decisions to wave or not wave the liquidated damages fee will be made by cabinet by at least three members and you want to change C too. Well, the board didn't discuss that. So, okay. So, I have the motion to motion to approve 8.8 with the addition of the last sentence to wave or not wave liquidated damages that will be made by cabinet of at least three members of at least three members I Second. Okay. Is there any discussion? All right. Hearing none. I'll take a vote. Board members Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon. Oh, I'd like to explain my Oops. No. And I'd like to explain my vote. You can do that at the end. Board memberion. I. I'm also a no. We'll show

364that it did pass three to two. Um, Mr. president. I just I I still have the feeling that this could be used in a negative way and uh you know I future proofing thing is very important to me and so uh that's why I need to excuse me. No, this is the last words out of your mouth please. This is not a time for you to make comments. You're interfering with the board business. Mr. Dangerfield, I believe these are political signs that are taking place in the government building. Are those legal at this time? It says recall somebody. Okay. Then they need to be removed. All right. Members, number 8.9, discussion consideration to approve executive director of special education services, Dr. Mahorn. Yes, we that uh yes, we have uh someone that we would like

365to recommend uh for the exe or executive director of uh special education services, but I'm open if there's questions or I had heard that there might be some questions on this one. Yeah, Dr. Mahorn. Um, at this time with what's going on in our with our budgets and just kind of trying to wrap my head around a few things, I'm I would like to table this really get some more information. Um, and so at this point, I think I I would rather table it, but I would be willing to hear what other board members have. Um, this is this is a position for next year, right? Okay. Um, and so it's already been uh budgeted and I would just really caution the board based on what has already happened of people withdrawing their names. And

366for me personally, the director, executive director of special, that is an extremely important position legally if we do not want to get ourselves into any kind of lawsuits. Um, and so I would highly recommend that we hire this person. I would just like to make comment. Uh, so I am in favor of tableabling items when a board member requested. I'd like to give that uh courtesy. Okay. Uh, do we have a motion? Okay. Yeah, I'll make a motion to table item sorry, item 8.9. I have a motion to have a second. Second. Have a motion, a second. Any discussion? Can I Can I ask why you want to table it? Because I need to do some more research on it. Okay. All right. Any further discussion? I will take the vote. Board member Zimmerman. Nay.

367Board member Schmidt. Nay. And I'd like to explain. You may at the end. Vice President Kenyon. I. Board member Senion. I. I'm also an I. We will show that the motion is or the motion, I'm sorry, the agenda item is tabled with a vote of 3 to2. Miss Schmidt, I believe you wanted to explain. Yeah, I would I just want to explain that I voted against tableabling it um for many of the reasons that board member Zimmerman mentioned. You know, we've had people that we that were going to be put forward for positions that have then pulled their names at the pretty much very last minute. Um this she appears to be an excellent candidate. for trusting administration that they're bringing forth good candidates and if we table this for too long and don't get

368back to her, she's going to go work somewhere else and then we're going to be struggling to find somebody to fill this position. We have so many open positions and we have a great candidate who's willing to come and work here. It just doesn't make sense to me. Okay, members. Next up is item uh 8.10. 10 discussion consideration of student extracurricular activity fees for fiscal year 2025-26. Dr. Mahorn. Uh yes, this one um uh President Todd, Vice President Kenyon, members of the board. This one uh Crystal and I are going to tag team this one. Um the motion um we're asking you to approve the student activity extracurricular fees for fiscal year 2526 and to authorize a distribution of the parent letter as presented. This is something uh that we bring to you every year.

369We are not asking to increase any of the um the fees if you'll see on that that we're not asking to. So, the extracurriculars still 50, science olympiad 50, student council yearbooks uh $10. One of the things that you will see that is new um if you flip to the next page is that we are proposing a family maximum of $150 per family per school. If I could speak and that is something um that we're new, but we're open that is new, but we're open to feedback on that as well. Um, I would just like to point out that I I think that this needs to be a discussion item because according to statute, the fees must be adopted by the governing board after the notice has been sent to parents. So, I think that

370we can have a discussion about the letter, but we cannot approve these tonight according to statute. Just miss I'm not questioning you. I know you do a lot of research. Can you just maybe help out with which statute it is so that legal can Can I make a comment on that? Sure. Of course. Um this what we're bringing tonight is just to send out the letter. We give um our parents time to give us feedback on the letter. The next meeting is when we'll actually bring this back, let you know if there was any feedback for actually adopting the fees. So this is just discussion and the approval to distribute the letter not actually approving the fee schedule at this time. Okay. It just the motion says to approve the student activity extracurricular fees and

371the authorize the distribution of the letter. So I think yeah I think I think our wording wasn't real clear. I see what you're getting at there. So I would just unless Crystal you're saying something I would just change the language of the motion. Yeah. I just I what you see Crystal. I think just our wording isn't real clear because it looks like they're next one. We'll say motion to adopt the student activity fee schedule. Okay. Um in terms of my feedback, my question is um the family maximum $150 per family. Is that just for extracurriculars or is that sports as well? Like if a if a child plays um four seasons, you know, of sports, um would they are you counting that as the family limit is my question. Sports, clubs, everything except field trips.

372Field trips would still be full cost to the parent. Okay. Um I agree with not raising them um because we raised them in in 22. So, um I still think uh I think I brought this up during the budget study session, but I'd still like to see administration see where our costs are, like figure out, you know, between the refs and the um coaches stipend and the athletic stipens, like how close are we to breaking even? Because as we, you know, continue in the budget discussion, I think it's important just to know what it's costing us. Not I'm not saying I want to get rid of it or um or raise the prices. I just would like as a board member and I don't know if that maybe needs that would require quite a bit

373from staff so I can ask for an agenda item. But um you know I'm happy to see it and I'm happy honestly to see the umund and 50 uh you know per family. I I think that's a great addition. Um I have a couple thoughts here. I think our I I like keeping this value low to show you how low this is. I was speaking to a family from a charter school, seventh and eighth grade sports at their charter school. 200 I think it was right around $249 somewhere close to $250 per student for one season uh spring sports with a very small family discount. Um, so to cap it at 150 for a family, we're actually capping it at about almost half the price of what a lot of the charter schools are charging

374for for sports. Um, I do have a question about field trips and there's different opportunities that come up. [Music] Um there may come a time as our performing arts departments get better and better um and bands continue to get better that they're invited to a parade somewhere out of state. If we lock this at this amount that may not be enough to especially over a holiday I can just see the time where where we get invited to maybe the Macy's Day parade and all of a sudden we've got a policy that now we're trying to alter at the last second. I would like to see if we could put some language in there that says um field trip fees can be approved for higher amount with a parental vote or approval uh where we don't

375exclude. So basically if we pull the parents of that group and it's going to be a little bit more money than what we have. We then have to say well we're not going to leave somebody behind who can't afford it. The cost of the other students will will come up a little bit to to make that um happen. If it gets to a point where nobody can afford that, then we have to make a harder decision. But um as we've seen recently prices continue to escalate on field trips, airfare, buses, hotels, everything is changing and I think it's really hard few years ago we got caught where the number we had which at one point this board never thought we'd hit that number. We were we were exceeding it. So, I would just put that

376out to the board to consider that with with a parental vote um or approval that they can exceed that. President Todd, let me jump in and ask you that do you think the language of the six bullet meets what you're saying or are you thinking it the language needs to be where it says other fees may be charged or or are we off? Yeah, I just think we have a a Yes, I do think in a way, but we have all these rules that say this is our price and then we've got this other um this other situation and I looked at that more like some schools uh for example, some of the charter schools now in junior high are doing tackle football. There's considerably more cost putting helmets and shoulder pads on kids. So,

377that sport has additional fees for all the extra padding. That's kind of how I read this to be, but we specifically talk about field trips. um extracurricular field trips, one to $550 and these days, especially if we're looking at food. I mean, if you have a a seventh or eighth grader, these these I'm going to pick on the boys a little bit, but they eat a large pepperoni pizza on their own, and these days that's not super cheap. There was a time it was a little less, but um so I think we could get past that. And I just hate to be in a in a situation down the road. Again, I think a lot of policy that we develop is for the future, not for today. Um, so I would just like to see

378that we consider that to give give a little more opportunity with your direction. Um, as you mentioned, we did do that two years ago. I believe we still approved the distribution of the letter with the note being changed of the field trips to go up to 550. So, that is something you could consider. Give us the direction and we can still distribute the letter with your changes. Or maybe we just make a note in special circumstances and with parental permission or a parental vote um field trip fees could be increased. Um and and we may even run into sometimes in sports uh where there is a considerable cost that jumps up for whatever reason. uh you know the cost of baseballs has gone up considerably in the last couple of years that as we look

379at what per per sport costs are. It's expensive uh to get quality officials. They're not cheap anymore. Um there was a time where you could get these guys for$25 $35. Those days are long gone. They're I mean I think a minimum of 75 maybe $80. And there's a big push in Arizona. most all the officials are starting to talk about minimum of $100. Um and and I will be very honest when we're playing baseball um especially a sport that I officiate at at some higher levels um on the size fields we have we currently have one umpire and to be perfectly honest that's not enough. That's dangerous. There's a lot that's happening on the field. You need to um at a minimum two. So there's two. That changes our cost again for that. Again, I

380I think we've got to ride this a little bit and and have one, but a lot of things that get missed. There's a lot of opportunity for additional injury when you're looking that way and something's happening behind you. As as a single official on any sport, it's very difficult to do. Basketball gets two. Soccer, I think, has a couple. Baseball has two. Baseball does have two now. I think we have two of us. I 100% went to a game. They have two. Okay. Well, then then that's good. I'm sorry. I didn't President, can I just quickly ask you? So what you're describing is so let's say a robotics team gets an invite to nationals. Sure. So you're you're just saying like the the the parents of those kids vote to say they're going to pay

381more and you and you're okay with that. Is that kind of what you're describing? Right. Right. I just don't want them to be I don't want that invite to come in and a teacher go it's going to cost more than 550. Sorry we can't go. I want them to have the option to take that forward and and just wanted to make sure I understood. Okay. Right. And if we ever get into a problem with sports, like if we went to tackle football, I don't think we're going to, but in the future we may. Now we're having to do a bunch of policy revision where we might be able to just look at it and say this sport costs more. It's just the just the bottom line. And I do think at 150 a family um

382that's that's a very um very very large discount I think overall when you're seeing what the cost of supports are and officials and field maintenance and everything else that goes into it. It's it's not cheap. Correct. So, would it be okay to make a motion to [Music] approve the authorized uh distribution of the letter as presented with the noted changes? Yeah, go ahead. Legal says that's good. That's good. All right, then I do that. I make a motion to approve the uh the student activity extracurricular uh letter parent letter for fiscal year 2526 and authorized distribution of said letter with the proposed changes. Do I have a second? Sorry Minnie, you might have to Okay, so are you approving the extracurricular fee? No. No. So the motion is to approve the authorized distribution of the

383parent letter as presented with the noted changes. Yes, but we have to add that year fiscal year 2526 in there as well for the fiscal year 2526. Second. Thank you. All right, we have a motion to second. Any discussion hearing? None. We'll move to the vote. Board member Zimmerman. I. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon I. Board member Fencion I. I'm also I will show that that approved five yes zero no. Next will be item 8.11 discussion consideration of revised job descriptions for executive director of school effectiveness administrative assistant to cabinet assessment coordinator executive director of business services curriculum and instructional coordinator. Executive director of operations executive director of information systems and technology. Early Childhood Preschool Coordinator, Research Director, Special Education Services Coordinator, Student Management System Analyst, and Student Registration Specialist. Dr. Mahorn, can

384I just have a point of order? It's 11:59. Can we continue the meeting because it hasn't been agendaized for the next day? Yes. Yes, you can still have the meeting. You can continue. Dr. Horn, President Todd, Vice President Kenyon, members of the board. Um, I did not print all these out, but I have them up on my computer. Um, if there are any questions on any specific ones, I'm glad you read them all off. The attached are all the red lines and cleans uh for each of the job descriptions that are listed. I have a question um for the executive director of business services. Yes. Um sorry, under minimum minimum qualifications, we have removed the master's degree in a related field or a CPA preferred and it now just says a bachelor's degree in a

385related field or progress towards completion. that seems incredibly low in terms of uh requirement for a position such as that. What's the reasoning behind that? I can speak to that. I I called um Karen, what's Karen's last name? Karen Smith, expert, you know, from Heinfeld and Meech, and showed her our job description because this job is posted all over Arizona and there's very few candidates that superintendents are getting. And uh I had her review our job description and say, "What what are what are we doing wrong here?" And uh she thought our qualifications were way too high, especially now, um when there's not many people applying for those jobs and there's so many available. She thought the master's degree was although very honorable, uh that was pretty outdated by 15 or 20 years. And uh

386we're trying to capture as many candidates as we can. So, I I don't disagree with your concern, but we recommend that that change to see who are the candidates that are out there in the hopper. There's a there is an ASBO um the Arizona Association of School Business Officials uh program, year-long program. In fact, Crystal's finishing it um that was recently started a couple of years ago just to train people to be ready for a job like this. And so it is a very frustrating thing to me because there's not a lot of these people that are applying for these jobs when they can get them from the private sector. So that was after talking uh board member Schmidt with Karen about it and uh there's a lot of these jobs posted. So she she

387thought our ask was way too high and uh that this might allow us to find a better pool of individuals. So it is I don't disagree with you. um just struggling finding this position as we struggled to find it last year as well. Thank you. Um I have uh several things, but I would absolutely echo Mrs. Schmidt's concerns. Um at the very least, I think it should say bachelor's degree, not or in progress. Um but I I would prefer not to change it. Um I think you know we do approve people that don't meet the qualifications as we did with the principal who um you know didn't have the three years experience that is listed um on the job description. So I think it you know I think that we want to seek out the

388best candidates and if we lower the qualifications then I'm not sure that we're going to attract those people. Um, some other concerns. I have uh quite a few. I've I did print out all of the different uh job descriptions. And you know, from kind of a bird's eyee view, the concern that I have is that we didn't change the assistant either assistant superintendent job. So the people that are making the most amount of money of our district, we didn't add any um duties or responsibilities to them. we added them all to the lower level people and I I I find that concerning personally and in regards to um the assistant superintendent of HR that uh student services director of student services job that we eliminated that used to fall under that position um we didn't

389change that job description so none of those duties went back to that position and one of the things that I had brought up during the study session was that I not sure that that position requires the title of assistant superintendent since we've removed all of the basically job duties except for human resources. Um, so if we're not going to be giving those job duties back to the assistant superintendent of HR, then I think the board should revisit um, you know, lowering that classification down because they don't they're not they're not supervising the director of operations, which they used to fully control, um, food service, all kinds of things. So I think that's something we should look at. Um the chief safety officer is now divided between um the director of operation and the director of

390IT. I'm shortening that name. Um for and the assistant superintendent over HR and student services. It is. Yeah. All those duties in the director of student services, they're already reflected in the assistant superintendent. Is that correct, Dr. Mohorn? They're already reflected in that job description. So there was no need to add them because they're already in there. Well, when I looked at the director of student services job, when I looked at the different numbers, I saw one, like I'm just referencing the numbers on the paper. 1 3 4 5 6 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16. I didn't see those reflected in job descriptions. A lot of times we don't copy and paste the exact sentence. So when we did this activity, we looked at all the job descriptions. the uh we had

391committee meeting with all the people involved in these jobs, but we don't copy and paste the exact line. Sometimes it's just the wording that's embedded in. So, if you're looking for the exact number one, it may or may not be in there. We may have embedded it because we certainly don't want to make a job description that's job descriptions are specific yet they're not specific. And so, we didn't want to make this laundry list of items. And so, a lot of times we didn't copy and paste. We just adjusted the wording of the item. Um and so but a lot of the director of student services which that job is we're not going to fill my understanding when we did it was a lot of those are reflected already in that job description. So but

392it may not look word for word like you said 1 7 8 we may not have copied and pasted all of them. Okay. Um, if we can go back to the chief safety officer, I uh find it a little bit concerning that it's divided among three people because in an emergency, um, we want to be able to look to one concrete person. Um, that is, you know, going to direct, you know, the response time, I guess. And I think if you're not sure who's in charge, I think that could create some confusion in an emergency. So, um, the fact that it was split two ways concerned me. And so, if it's split three ways, it does say that they serve, um, as a member of a I think crisis response team. Sorry, I just have

393my nose. I don't in incident command team. I think that's fine. But I do think having a chief um, safety officer that, you know, everybody knows who that is in the district and they are making the calls in an emergency. Yeah. The incident commander would be myself in that. We did have that in a director of student services role um because safety is an emphasis but in it is now divided between the three but in the case of a a situation like that with our ICS training I would be the incident commander in in a situation like that. If it was techn uh technology based like a cyber attack then it would be lane or something like that. But uh but no it's a good point. We put the safety in between the three jobs,

394but if there was a crisis and we had to call the team, that would be me, the incident commander, with fire, with police or hazmat or what have you. Okay. Just clarification, where is that chief safety officer? Where's that? I don't see that job title. Oh, no. It's a it's a job duty. Oh, okay. Sorry. I was looking for a title. I apologize. It's listed. If you are looking at the executive director of information systems and technology, it's number 20. It's the chief security officer. I apologize. And Lane and I were just talking about this today. He would be the incident command. If there was a cyber attack type of situation, if there was another type of crisis, the incident command would come, you know, with our team through me, you know, with police and

395fire and hazmat and other services. So, okay. Um, yeah, I definitely agree with what board member Zimmerman's saying about this. We also need to have a backup because the problem is if you put this on one one person, which I certainly think we need one person coordinating. I think that's what you're kind of talking about, too. Um, if that person's sick on vacation, we have layers of this. So, there's there's a assistant probably three layers deep. Um, also, if you have something catastrophic happen, you may have two campuses involved. So, you're going to need to split that. Um, last but not least, as part of these duties, they need to complete some ICS classes, which are spelled out in the National Incident Management System for for schools. Uh, we're to the point that, um, tow

396truck drivers take these ICS classes because they respond to incidents out along the roadways, obviously. Um, so I think at a bare minimum, IC 100 and 200 need to take place because in these safety roles, you're going to be interfacing directly with police and fire departments. And as the liaison from the school district to them, you're going to need to be able to speak their language, which is all based on that. So I I think 100 and 200 for sure, possibly seven and eight. And to be perfectly honest, the chief safety off I let me go back. I think every supervisor in the district needs to have those classes. The chief safety officer probably needs to attend an IC 300 class as well so that they understand exactly what's going to happen when police and

397fire show up. Um it's it's just a standard. It's it's been around for a long time. And I brought this up previously under different administration. I I still firmly believe in it and I quite sure you won't find any public safety leaders that tell you it's not a good idea to take those classes. They're free. The first two are video classes that are online through FEMA. Uh I think seven and eight, actually seven and eight as well. 700 800. It's just the 300 and 400 that are a three-day class. Um and they may have condensed that. It's been a while since I took that one, but uh I think we should include that principal should have that talks about span control. It lets you know what what's happening. It's also going to help them create

398better uh safety emergency response plans at their schools. Okay. Can I continue? You may. Um so under the director of school effectiveness, um one of the duties that was added was um supervising and evaluating principles. Um, and so I was just curious why that was added to uh a director position. It seems like it should either fall to the to the superintendent or the assistant superintendent. And if we're going to agree to that change, then I think the organizational chart would need to change as well. It's in the assistant superintendent of ed services job description to supervise and evaluate the principal and the executive director would just simply assist them with that. Okay. Um, so some things that I saw missing duties from people that from jobs that we eliminated, the biggest one from the

399ED services coordinator is to coordinate a cadence assessment, planning and implementation throughout the year. Um, I think that is a really big responsibility um and uh for our K3 learners and our teachers to have that important data for our cadence. Um, can I can I quickly comment on that? We didn't want to name the assessment specifically because assessments come and go. So, there are lines in there for the assessment coordinator uh to plan assessments, but we didn't want to name one specifically because like if a cadence goes away in two years or the company's bought out, then they change it and then we'd have to bring back the job description. So, we tried to be non-specific. Okay. Um the communications director I saw that uh in the executive director of IT um it said uh

400assist superintendent's office with comprehensive communication plan elements including marketing, branding, public relations and internal and external communication including social media. So, are you saying basically all of the communications jobs are going to fall between kind of the superintendent's office and the director or executive director of IT? Is that your kind of idea? Correct. Looking at the communications director job description, number one more more than anything would be the executive director of IT, meaning him and through his department. Number two would be the superintendent's office as well as number three. Number four would be the superintendent's office and and IT. And then uh let's see, letter C would involve the assistant superintendent of HR and support. And so we went through all of them and I have the job description here to make sure that we

401hit on those as best as possible, but your statement is accurate. It would mostly be be between uh Lane department and Minnie and I in our office. Okay. Um just another comment about the changing of the qualifications for the business services. you know, we talked about all the money that we've spent on consulting this year. And so, again, my concern would be if we did not hire someone with the proper qualifications that we'd spend a lot of money on consulting, which we don't want to do again. Um, the admin to cabinet, I think that they should also support the assistant superintendent of ED services. We removed the secretary that supported the district secretary which supported ED services. So other all other high level cabinet um positions have the administrative support with that particular person except

402ED services and and specifically the assistant superintendent um on the executive director of operations. Uh we just need to clarify. It's just like a clerical error I think. Um it says salary. It doesn't say which schedule we'd place them on. All the other um job description said like on the administrative, you know, salary schedule or on the assistant superintendent. That one just says salary. I just I don't have it pulled up. And then the research director um the FTE is changing um because before it said 0.5 to one um and we had a discussion about you know it being grant funded and so why are we increasing the FTE? I don't think it was. Unless we made a mistake. I I thought we put 0 five to one. Maybe you can pull that up. I'm

403pretty sure it says 7. It says 75 to one. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. That was a miss. I thought I could have swore we put five to 1.0 just to give us a range. 75. Yeah, I think that must be a typo. It should be. Yeah, because it should be 0.5. We wanted to give ourselves a range. So we'll we'll correct that. There was a there was a lot of work done and so Brenda did a good job and she may have missed that one. So but yeah, that should be 0.5 to 1.0 just so we have that. And then um under the assessment coordinator under uh I believe it's under salary it says uh performance compensation stipened as determined annually by the governing board. did not think that we uh did that and so

404I would suggest that we remove that. It it didn't seem to be under any other job description. Um I don't think it was a red line. Um but uh you know what number is it? It's it's at the very bottom with salary compensation all the way at the bottom. Oh, compensation. I apologize. Yeah. I didn't see that on any other salary schedule. So, yeah, I I think you're right. Let's make sure that we get that scratched out, Dr. Mahorn, that that's taken off. Yeah, I don't even know the history in Liberty if there was ever performance compensation like that. So, I'm not sure where that came from, but that needs to be removed. Okay, those are my thoughts for these job descriptions. Any other members wish to comment? Yeah. Um, in regards to timeline again,

405um, you know, looking at I I understand we made some revisions to our budget, eliminated some positions. We're moving some of those responsibilities into some of these. Um, you know, I I still think that some of these duties I don't know. A lot of the questions that I had were were asked and and answered, but I just I'm kind of really what I'm looking for is I would like to see a an org chart from a past or chart, a present or chart, and a proposed future or chart. Um because I want to see what what's been created. um where where we've gone like as an organization with with all the staffing uh especially at the administrative level um just because I I I know sorry it's getting late my brain's slowing down but um

406you know I really do think that some of these some of these positions probably could merge even but but uh I don't want want to speak out of line and and it's late. So, um what's our timeline for approving these again? Is it the two weeks again? What exactly? These are job We're approving the job descriptions, right? Yeah. So, the idea was to approve the job descriptions to get them posted, right, and account for the jobs that were uh discontinued or not filled, those job duties. And so, yeah, I mean, we'd like to post these as soon as possible. I mean, some of them we already have them filled like Lane Lane's position or what have you, Bob's position, but some of these other ones, yeah, we wanted to just have an accurate posting so

407when people were applying, they they could see what they were applying for. Uh, so that, you know, the sooner the better. I mean, um, I've heard what board member Zimmerman, we can definitely account for some of those changes. However, if you're thinking about other changes where it's going to delay it, it would just delay the posting and and that does hurt us to lose time and finding those leaders. Yeah. And may I ask a question? Comment. Um, are we planning on hiring an executive director of school effectiveness? Yes, that was the plan. I just I think we got to remember we're a small district and how many peer districts do we have has that position and I just going to ask a hard question but we've had that position for a long time and our

408proficiency is not great. So, either the title doesn't match the job or but I I just I I would just be curious to see what other districts really have the executive director of school effectiveness at this I know that position was created under the previous superintendent and and those are my questions. I I think um along the lines of an org chart uh Vice President Kenya mentioned we do need an org chart to see how this follows out. Um secondly, um I think it would be important to look at these descriptions and see which ones were created Dr. Monroe or Yeah. Um Dr. Monroe under your leadership and which ones were created previously. Um I think that's important to know. Um I have a note here. Do we need all of these positions when we're

409This to me, some of this looks heavy. Um the executive director of school effectiveness really weighs heavy on me right now. Um but I would rather see two or three more reading interventionists uh brought in two one whatever we can get um for that. Um and then again I have a note we we need to remember we are not a big district and and everybody I've talked to when they hear about this position goes wow budgets must be great. Um I don't I don't know that they're so great. In fact, I I do know they're not so great. So, um you know, there's a lot of contributing factors to that that that are there as far as maintenance and and so forth that affect budgets, but um but I think we need to take a

410long hard look at all of these and and I would like to see a true org chart. It's going to be big. It's going to take up most that screen probably and then we can break it down into into each group so we better understand the flow of this because it's hard to look at this list and really identify what everybody's doing and and uh or charts are are critical. But I do think it would be important to see past like uh you know maybe maybe prior to your arrival here. I know there was an org chart that went around then and then see which ones you've put together. I know you worked on one when you first started. I don't know if that's been updated. I don't remember seeing it, but uh that would

411be uh I think that would be something that would really help with this. And I understand the purpose of of getting some positions posted. I'm I'm a little concerned that we're racing now to do that. Uh but our chart's going to be good and let's start looking at positions. But that executive director of school effectiveness, I I don't think it's been very effective. I think the person that held it is is fantastic. I just don't know that we have the rest of the resources to support that arm of of what they're trying to do right now. Maybe you could tell us which ones for sure on this list that we need that you think are most critical. We could get those cleared up um and then we could move. I don't know that we need

412to belabor the executive director of school effectiveness right now when when there's probably other ones that are higher priority. Um, let's see. Sorry, let me I just want to point out that we're not discussing the budget right now and and eliminating positions, right? But what I'm saying is we don't probably need to even focus on an executive director of school effectiveness. But you're making an assumption and the board has not taken action on that at this time. Okay. So then I think we should probably again it's hard to have positions if we don't have budget. We got to figure this out. But we we need to narrow down a budget a little bit better to see if we can afford all of these positions because once we approve them, you post them and then what

413happens? We hire somebody then get to the end of the line and realize we can't afford that. Now we're now we're trapped. We we did do a budget. We talked about a budget yet. We have not approved a budget. No, I know we have not approved one, but that's why that whole spreadsheet was there and and the amount of money of that we needed to cut to balance the budget and to have a carry forward. So, I realize that you weren't on the board. I'm just stating that we did make some cuts to positions. And if you'd like to continue talking about the budget, then I think we should add it onto an agenda. We can do that. I'm simply asking some questions here. I would I would just say for for the sake of

414this agenda item, if there was job description approvals, I would say the assessment coordinator, the executive director of business services, and the curriculum and instruction coordinator would be And do are the peer districts all have those positions? Uh I would say yes. An assessment coordinator is pretty typical in a school district. That's a really vital function. Obviously the executive director of business services kind of the elephant in the room and most uh if not all have some sort of curriculum and instruction coordinator someone over over curriculum and instruction and and that wouldn't be the assistant superintendent of of education services. that would oversee that. Well, it could. I mean, the assistant superintendent of ed services works through all of those, so it it certainly could. I think I'd like to see that moved into merged

415in. Are we on the agenda item, Mr. Dangerfield, talking about moving positions into one and cutting them? Well, um, you can certainly we can certainly eliminate ones and approve it the agenda item without people that are on the list. These are just job descriptions. We're not approving or disapproving jobs right now. These are jobs that exist and if we're going to cut them, then they need to be considered in the budget. So, are we having a budget discussion right now? No, it's not. That's not the agenda item. I'm not having a budget discussion. I'm looking at how we merge some of these and how we bring these into a more manageable role for our district. So for the sake of this agenda item, then I would say the executive director of business services would be

416a job description that would be very helpful for us to approve the assessment coordinator and then the administrative assistant to cabinet. But I mean we already have that one, Stephanie. I we I mean we have that position. Someone's leaving that position. So those would be the three job descriptions that um to answer your question for approval. Is it possible that if we get those approved we can agendaize for our Monday meeting some deeper discussion on on these positions? Yeah, I mean we we have that meeting on Monday. We could certainly make an agenda item to have more of a thorough um conversation about it or or especially like uh the ones that are related to ED services certainly the executive director of business services to me that's pretty clear although there may be disagreements on

417the qualifications but um your discussion about combining things that might be more of an ED services type discussion but we could do that on Monday. I think I'd be in favor of doing that. So, can we have a discussion about the business services qualification if we need to move that job description forward? Sure, no problem with that. I would feel most comfortable with what board member Zimmerman suggested earlier and have it be a bachelor's degree as the minimum qualification at the minimum obviously and maybe master's preferred is how it's listed. Um those are just you know minimum qualifications. I know people all the time apply for things that they don't meet every single qualification for and if they show up and they have a bachelor's degree but a great amount of work history then you

418know or have it stated somehow like that like in in my field it's like a minimum of a master's degree or a master's degree or and a PhD is preferred but if you have a master's degree and so many years of experience then they consider that sort of like having the extra. So, if we phrase it something like that, yeah, it's a good point. In my career, I've worked with a lot of really really proficient people in the business office who don't have a degree to be honest. They've just been in the field for so long. So, I I hear what you're saying. I'd want to find some wording to reflect that because again, I don't want to say the cupboard is bare, but it's it's getting empty out there. And the when you look

419at districts, a lot of districts are hiring this position right now. And uh I don't want to disregard those people. So maybe we we play with the wording. You know, sometimes you have someone who's just a a few classes away from their degree or a semester away from that degree. And so I would love some wiggle room because I'm trying to throw the net out there to find a really good person. I don't want to don't want Liberty to go through what we've gone through the last year and a half to find a person have a great person we can rely on and who's going to be really good dependable leader for us. Yeah. I I and I fully acknowledge there are lots of great people who do not have degrees or who maybe were

420really close to finishing but didn't quite make it there. So adding some wording because we don't currently have anything in there about um years of experience, you know, can count if you don't have the degree that your years of experience can count toward that qualification. I know other fields definitely phrase things that way. Um, my husband is an IT supervisor and a lot of their job descriptions are that way because a lot of those guys don't have degrees necessarily. They've just worked in the field for a long time. I'm I'm okay with leaving it as it is. However, I do agree with board member Schmidt. If we can say bachelor's degree in related field or progress towards completion with x number of years experience right I would prefer just to say bachelor's degree and then

421x number of years of experience um because again I I think we've shown that people apply that don't have the full qualifications and then it would be up to the administration to vet that person um and and whether to bring it to the board or not. But I think when you lower the qualifications then you're not attracting the same level of people um than if you have a master's you know a master's or a bachelor's degree. I I think we're safe. I I agree with board members Zimmerman that this is an executive director position. I think if we start with a bachelor's degree, well, we started with a master's degree, it's not working out. We're not getting the candidate pool, we go to a bachelor's degree. If that doesn't work, we we obviously have to

422do something. So then we look look to other language but for the time being it is a de direct executive director position. The pay on that position is how much? Oo putting me on the spot over a h 100,000. Yeah. Yeah. Most in the business world which this is with the carve out of it because they have a lot of I think any good IT person may not have a some have degrees some don't but if they don't they have so many classes in it. It's the same thing. it's just their Microsoft systems classes or or whatever. But I think as an executive director making over a h 100,000, it's a pretty safe bet that we should probably look at doing a a bachelor's degree. The caveat to that is we've already identified if somebody's,

423you know, started in this field a while ago, oh, they've got lots of experience and they're close, they're probably going to apply anyway. And if that's the right person, you can bring that forward to us. But I I do agree that sometimes, you know, I once upon a time was trying to sell a car and it wasn't selling, wasn't selling. So I said, "Raise the price." I raised the price and it sold because I had it too low and people just thought it, you know, wasn't any good. Um raised it up a couple thousand dollars and lo and behold, it sold the next day. So, um I I do agree with with board member Zimmerman on on the bachelor's degree. I think that's uh I think that's a good compromise for now. Did I understand

424you correctly, Miss Zimmerman, on your ideas for that? Yes. Okay. All right. Um, I I'll just make a motion. I'll make a motion to approve, let me get there real quick, the revised job description for the administrative assistant to cabinet executive director of business services with the change discussed with qualifications and the assessment coordinator. One more. This is so tiny. Hold on. Motion to approve the revised job description for administrative assistant to cabinet. Yep. Assessment coordinator. Okay, hold. I need to find that. um assessment coordinator, an executive director of business services. Mhm. Okay. With the proposed uh change to job qualifications. So the motion will read, "Motion to approve the revised job descriptions for administrative assistant to cabinet assessment coordinator, executive director of business services with the proposed change of job qualifications. Yes. Second. Any

425further discussion? This is just with the understanding that the rest of them will come later at a future meeting that we can discuss. Right. Okay. Hearing no discussion, I'll take the vote. Board member Zimmerman. Nay. And I'd like to explain my vote. You may do so at the end. Board member Schmidt. I. Vice President Kenyon. I. Board member Stencion. I. I'm also I will show that proof for yes, one no. Miss Zimmerman, um I think that we should have added some admin support to um the ED services team and I'm not comfortable not approving other job descriptions and changing the idea of what we've already approved in the budget. All right, members. Next on the agenda, item 9.1, board comments on agenda topics and items for future consideration. And Mr. President, I um would like

426to just address something that uh maybe administration can look into. So, in regards to one of our ASBA policies, it's GBI. Um, and that's tied to our trust policy or-201. And then that's also tied to the ARS statute 15-511 M3. And what this is all talking about is how district property cannot be used to influence an election. Um we've heard time and time again about certain things happening on our district property that needs to be addressed um or statute. So I'm going to leave it at that and if you can find some clarif clarification in there so we can make sure all of our administration is on the same page. Okay. Anything else? Yeah, just real quick. Uh there's a couple things that we talked about I want to make sure you guys are still

427going to look into. Um it was how many new enrollments of that 282 were actually new students. Um let's see what did we say about the exploring learning. I think President Todd also brought that brought that up about seeing how we could look at possibly cutting the math out of it or Yeah. Right. Thank you. And and please reach out to the staff, the science staff. I think they indicated they hadn't really heard from the district. Oh, sorry. Just uh and then uh when we do get back on the budget here shortly, I like to see the support staff raises put back on there just to see how that affects it. Uh and then I noticed this when we were going over the auto general's report. Did we ever resubmit our transportation mileage? We did.

428Do you know off the top of your head like how much we ended up getting back for the resubmission? If not, it's fine, Mr. President. No, Mr. Vice President, not off top of my head, but we I can uh we get that information to you. That That's it. Thank you. Can I ask a question about your uh raises for support staff? Do you mean the the step increases that we discussed or full raises? the this it was the step that we were talking about in the gym the other day. I think that all of that, you know, could be brought forward in an agenda item about the budget and looking at that spreadsheet again and having the opportunity. So, I'd like to see us do that to, you know, to Mr. Senion's point originally is

429that we don't, you know, see that money and overspend it, but look at a couple of things that, you know, different people have brought forward tonight. And I just add that, you know, uh, all of us have made agenda items requests in the past that we've kind of put off because of the budget. So if there, you know, if administration is just mindful of the things that have been requested in the past, we'll do there's a lot on there. All right, everybody got theirs in? Okay, a couple things I um I think we need to look at. [Music] Um I think the district needs to look at a marketing plan for a attracting students, attracting staff. Um I'm concerned we didn't have a recruitment fair and I'd like to know what the plans of that

430are moving forward. Um we're we're way late on that. I already asked for the organizational chart. Um, and I think it would be great to have the current one proposal for next year. And then I'd like to go back, Dr. Monroe, before you were here to see how that organizational chart was, just so we have some comparison and transparency. Um, also um I don't want anybody to take this as a direct quote because I'm not sure of of my direct or exact proposal, but since we're limited on giving raises this year, um, I think we need to get creative. reduce workloads of staff, which is a little bit of an oxymoron as we look at combining staff, but talking especially about the teachers. Um, and I'd like to talk to the staff um, quickly about

431professional development. Um, one idea that I would like to explore, um, would be to do it more the way, um, fire departments do that where we will host a PD once a month like we always do, but if a teacher but but at the end of the year, we should just set a standard that a teacher should have x amount of continuing education. Um, if they want to go take a weekend class on their own, that's great. That's I don't know that we need to make them sit through our PD. There may be one or two that are mandatory at the beginning of the year um that are there but but to look at that and see how we can decrease their lo workload on on the in-house PDS when many of them take other

432other events. I know Miss Mendoza is if she's not in the classroom, she's at some PD somewhere. Uh but look at that. So we set a defined number that you need to have x amount of professional development in a year. We can even break that down to say he needs so much in a specific subject matter, whatever uh that is. and then uh um go from there. I know like if you're a paramedic or an EMT, the state will tell you have to have x amount of hours of continuing education, three hours has to be in pediatrics, four hours has to be in trauma, whatever it might be for that time. And it changes from time to time. Um but look at that to let let our teachers um get some other PD in. Um,

433I think it needs to be well documented with with a certificate. Just like when we turn in our um, EMT or paramedic certifications, you have to show paperwork that you went to this validated class. You can't just have your friend sign it off. It's a it's a legitimate um, proof that you attended the class. But I would like to talk to teachers and see if that's something of of interest to them. Um, obviously we would still provide some PD because it's important. Um, and some teachers may not want to go outside. they may they may like doing it here. Um I would also like to quickly look at making TAG a board committee. Um I think this will help eliminate some of the last minute cancellations that happen which I would be remiss to say

434I'm concerned that those cancellations happen. That's an important meeting and if whoever from the district office is not able to handle it, that's what we talked about with the chief safety officer. You need to have a a backup plan so those meetings can continue. Um, so I'd like to look at bringing that back as a board committee. I also think it opens up some dialogue with the board a little bit differently. Um, and and the teachers, which we've heard over and over, um, that they would like. So, um, we'll look at that. I think that meeting should be in person and not electronic as well. Um, I've heard from the community some issues about the IB program. So, I'm not sure uh exactly what that is, but if we could get an update on the

435IB program. There was some rumors that there was some non-compliance issues. Um, I don't want to further that rumor, but I'd like to to get some information on that. And uh um let me look through this. Also, I'd like to devise a policy for the future that mandates that we have our contracts out by the first day that the state statute allows them to be issued. This district in previous years was very good about getting contracts out early and over the last two years, it's slid to a later point. Along with that, I think we should also have a job fair in policy that uh is somebody's job description should organize that job fair and have it ready to go early on, not at the end of the school year uh when when people have

436signed contracts. And unfortunately, that hasn't happened and it needs to. So, when things don't happen, we have to create policy to ensure it doesn't happen that way again. Um, can I interrupt really quickly? I'm taking notes on all these. I I'm Did we not get our We got our contracts out on the first day that they could be sent out, right? March 15th. So, we got them out. In fact, I think Malia was in Lake Havsu when we pushed the button. And then I just did want to we can certainly make tag uh a board committee. We do do it in person and I know you you've been gone for a while. We do do them in person and we haven't canceled a meeting yet this week uh this year or we haven't meet but

437we can certainly make it a board committee. I just wanted to clarify that. Okay. And I appreciate the clarification. I've been out just long enough, so there are there are a few changes. I just know in the past that was happening. Um I think automatically with insurance, this is our second year, but we need to start planning that we're going out to RFP again last year, next this year for the future. Um the only way we're going to keep these insurance companies from from doing this is by keeping them on their toes. And I think we got the two-year lock. I think we got a lot of things we got because we finally put competition to them. And Dr. Mahorn, I know when we you you heard me beat this drum for as long as

438I've been on the board. Um benefits is critical to our teachers. And I'm thankful that they work to keep it from in in uh affecting the district's budget, but it's still affecting our district's budget in the standpoint that every one of our teachers is part of our district. They're a key part. And that's essentially a little bit of a pay cut to them. Uh what happens and if you have a man, you know, you get a a young child and you're at the ER three times in a week because of an ear infection or first time you go it's not infected yet. So they send you home and then you go again and every parent probably has experienced that. It takes three trips. Um that becomes very expensive and and the last minute notification is

439just to me irresponsible. So, I think we just put that on the radar that we need to have a plan to to RFP. Um, that kind of wraps up uh my request for this meeting. Oh, sorry. I did have a note there. The bullying. We've heard about bullying at Westar for far too long. And I think we need to take a long hard look at this. It It keeps coming up and it keeps coming up. So th this needs to be aggressive. I I think that we should uh agenda is to create a task force, get our local law enforcement partners involved in this and anybody else that that brings these specialties to look at a bullying campaign and and perhaps look at our discipline plan where we have a zero tolerance and it's a

440very severe uh a very severe punishment for bullying. I'm not not a fan of removing kids out of school, expelling them, and kicking them out forever. But we need to make this stop. And we've heard this bullying thing for years. When my daughter went to West Star, she's now 21, but there was bullying back then. And when I hear I don't see students as outcasts, I see them as all they're all great students. And when you hear a student say, "I'm an outcast," that's because they've been bullied. Um, and they they've been told that she's not an outcast. She's a great She's the the pride of our district, but we have to look at that so we can aggressively create a plan and a task force to to get that moving forward. Be great. I

441think that's enough. You guys want to go another hour or so? Um, joking. We're at 10.1 upcoming board meetings. Uh, we have one scheduled for Monday, April 21st, which is a work study session. I think that's quickly morphing more into a special meeting with some additional agenda topics. In fact, really, really quickly for Monday's meeting because it's right around the corner, I have from tonight budget that we were going to look at that list and refine some of those items or or consider uh reinstating some of those. I had budget down. Uh we originally had talked about continuing policy if we want to continue and finish chapter 4. Uh was benefits on there or that was the 28th, right? 28th. Yes. And then also the Okay, so scratch the benefits. Sorry. And then the last

442one was the job descriptions for Monday. Yeah. And my only question is we talked about an April 28th meeting, but I don't see that listed as future board meetings. Did we just make that one? Is that We just made it. Okay. I just Sorry. Sorry, it's late, guys. Okay. Um, so then our next meeting is Tuesday, May 13th, which is a work study session and regular governing board meeting. May 19th is another work study session. June 10th is a regular board meeting. Can I just um say I know that we're going to vote to change it back to Mondays, but could we honor the meeting the week of the June 10th, not on the Tuesday? I'm not asking you to do that, but just not move it back to the third because I already made

443plans. Sure. No, we can always that's why we bring this up. So, there's there's an opportunity to flex some some times out. So, we can definitely be flexible from from time to time. That's prudent for all of us. Okay, that finishes 10.1. Now, we're on to the one we'll all agree on the meeting. 11.1 will show the meeting adjourned at 12:50 a.m. on uh April 16th, 2025. [Music]