7.31.24 LESD#25 Work Session and Governing Board Meeting

001[Music] are you guys reporting you guys ready okay all right the time is 401 we'll call the uh work session for Liberty Elementary School District to order today July 31st at Jerry roie District facility five board members are present board member pixler board member cenon board member Kenyon vice president Parks myself Michael Todd um next item of business will be the pledge allegiance board member Shion will you please lead us I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the repblic for which stands one nation indiv members next item is item 1.3 strategic planning uh priorities and goals as you know we've been working on this for the past several weeks I'll turn the time over now to Miss Amy C onos it's great to see everybody here today keep no

002expect I appreciate that uh I expectations is just to continue the course I think uh I'm very proud of the work that the board and the the district as a whole has uh has done on this so I'd like to just continue the success that we're headed I think we're get going in a great Direction appreciate the feedback that we received from staff members and couple principls who have been in the audience in the past so we appreciate that same as last we just keep moving forward I don't want to get hung up too much on the small things just keep going well thankfully your leaders have given us some great feedback to talk about to forward we're leadership meeting todays can I can I say an expectation that I have yeah oh I'm you're

003okay you're okay okay I as a superintendent I almost want to just you know we want to get the blessing of the board that we're going in the right direction so we had some time with the leaders it ran a little short and Amy will be coming back at the end but we have some good sample ideas and I just kind of want to get a collective nod like you guys were saying to move it forward that we're in the right direction because I don't want to bring something back from the leaders that the board really wouldn't want because I want to utilize everybody's time so so I'm kind of looking for almost a a a blessing to say yes Yep this looks good let's keep going let's stay the course so that's kind of

004my my expectation because there's a lot of work to do and I want to maximize our time I don't want to get stuck in the Meer so I just want the board to say we like this we like some of the samples go forward young man you know keep going keep going that's me yes you got you got so um we said by aoll develop weion and really well yeah no I I think so again like we talked about before the mission and the vision and the core values aligned with a lot of the work that we're doing a lot of the work that the guiding Coalition had done that came from the surveys so I think it resonated it wasn't this is where we feel we're in right field and the mission and vision

005we in left field so overall I think they're they were well received they're short succinct and really capture kind of what we're about and then uh as I mentioned the core values that really mirrored almost the project that Natasha did with the leadership academy so it it lined up lined up pretty well so I don't think the leaders were adverse to it or antagonistic I think that they embraced it and they see yeah that's that's what we are that's what we represent so kind of my question is is did you see I know it's probably kind of hard at this point but did you see that they were kind of felt ownership or felt like they participated in where we got to so far what what is some of the cabinet so I'm not dominating

006everything or Natasha or Stephanie Bob Dane what did you guys see yeah I think everybody was partip everybody in feedb to give and everybody was involved in the conversation good okay all right thank you of explaining kind of the values as the roots that come Vision I'm sorry the values were down here and they were really creating the roots um the mission being kind of the soil that everything is marinating in and then talking about like what is the trunk what actually um goes into the base and into our foundations they recognize that quality instruction collaborative teams highly qualified uh teachers were all a part of it but the idea is that this child is our vision right what we have left within this child is our vision and some of the fruits that they

007get to pick from is going through the teacher or the teacher leaders Academy um the student counselor the leader in me so the idea behind this was to help them understand their ownership in this process as well and we got some really great feedback including that we had forgotten the manure and that's part of the stuff right so we need some of that to grow as well so um once we got there we show the priority the AC Excell employe Excellence effective system and safet resources and Community engagement andun this became um sure I I think um when Amy was having us categorize um current systems that we have into each of these priority areas we have so many systems that are intertwined that they were showing up in every priority area and so I

008think that's where it began to get a little bit convoluted um and and some of our leaders were and you might be taking us there now so I apologize but some of our leaders were even saying the last one uh the last number one on the slide uh family community engagement and communication should that actually be two um two priorities instead of one with a lot of things in it so family and Community engagement being one and then communication being a separate priority and cabinet members is there anything you would want to add that sounds good I mean at the end the collective group felt like instead of four four priority areas to Natasha's point maybe it's five maybe maybe communication is so important it's its own and going from four to five isn't the

009end of the world you know we could create a a few more goals but we talked about Simplicity and we talked about you know three to four goals under each priority type deal but at the end I felt like the collective voice was it was a little more clear what Natasha said breaking up that last one into two so instead of four priorities having five of them and that we've got some suggestion a little over an and developing suggestions deciding what go us so that's what we're going to show you today is what those new priority areas might look like are and what are of the goals to begin areology the integration of Technology not the infrastructure special education student services assessment and evaluation El migrant all those Library so that would enass how so

010if we were to develop some goals under Focus area one some of the goal areas would almost be those departments if you will because like Natasha said everything nothing just fits cleanly into one area there's always a lot of bleeding but for Simplicity sake we got to find almost a compartment for everyone to go so that's why Amy kind of put instructional Services up there when we were doing it as a team incompasses more Lar just think the so we're thinking about taking academic success changing that to instructional Services right that's the propos so where do we find that academic success success should be a of the entire that academic success cover in the mission it's covered in the values right Vision St but as far as like an area to focus on Focus so

011it would really be the title switch from academic success on Focus area one to instructional Services I had the same question but you clarifi it that covered for me I I do agree I think fresh eyes sometimes as we do these we get into one role and then we zoned in on academic success which is ultimately our ultimately our goal but uh it needs to be the goal of the whole thing so I I like to change I'm good with that no issue some of the examples and I won't read them out loud to you unless you really want me to but some of the examples i' like are students reason so I think that's a good thing to talk about because that'll filter throughout the whole strategic plan if if we're setting these fiveyear

012goals and they're very very higher level do we say 100% or do we say 80% like how lofty or how realistic are we going to be with the goals and so i' I'd like to know that from the board um kind of the board's thought on that so we can continue that work forward and then you know we said the Strategic plan is going to be five years obviously we're going to check on it every few months every month you know we're going to have all these key indicators and things like that is the board comfortable with by 2029 so kind of two things for me where would the board fall on some of these percentages at 2029 you know as 100% should we always shoot for that is that realistic or is it just

013a given we should do that and then is it really a five-year goal at this higher higher level so my opinion is you know we should set realistic goals but not like percentage wise but not short sell ourself at the same time like I don't think 100% is like a realistic goal I know we want 100% And that would be amazing but I don't know if that's a realistic goal I'm more concerned about how we so um whatever that ends up to be is kind of a number it but how do we get there and what that look like um I mean you could make it 100% say this is how we're going to get there almost irrelevant to a certain point but yes we have to have some sort of a standard that we

014come up with I think it might be different for different goals right so I think we're just going to have to have that discussion but again my concern is measuring it through time and making sure we're on trackr I think we align if we can line it with our Prim mins yeah I think that would work the best because we have data right yeah that makes sense I like the idea of a little more measurement on time if we just say by October 29 we're going to do this that human nature is to wait until September 30th of 2029 to get moving on it and then it's a rush if not going to make the goal we need to be seeing that ahead of time obviously the the goal is to not miss a goal

015but um but we need to be able to adjust so I think to the trimester level uh at least Le twice a year if we don't do trimester it's a little hard because we do trimester so it's probably better to do that um to look at it the other question that I have on this third goal by 2029 all teachers will integrate technology in their classrooms to enhance student learning and engagement ensuring at least 90% of students demonstr efficiency and digital literacy skills fully support learning technology but what I'm very concerned about is I feel like when we take tours we see a whole lot of videos being played and teachers more at their desk and I don't know if that's just the timing issue of when we do tours but I would like to

016see the teachers not relying so much on videos and and and this is just that's just a sample yeah but just as we write those I get what you're saying that's just a sample at this level I realize we don't want to get really specific those are drilled out right right so keeping that in mind kind of have to have an idea when we start this to to M exp Point what does it mean and where does it fit in with the rest of the curriculum of balance well also I no that wey um computers in a way well it's it's the it's the we're I think we're on the same page with this and if I'm speaking out of turn here you know but I think I'll smack you don't worry yeah thanks I

017I think we want to get but really get back when we talk about getting back to basics I think we need to really focus on writing and things of that nature on pen and paper getting back to that there's a place for computers I want to make sure we know what they are and we've defined those places for for computers um so that's a discussion we'll have at some point but you know to Mike's Point we've we're starting to get too dependent on technology and there's a skill set that we're losing on writing and you know using pen and paper something and and I don't even know if this will be a goal we had we had a ton of a ton of not 3x five cards and I told Amy just get a few

018different samples so the board can see the language so I don't even know if that would be a goal but I hear what you guys are saying but whether that works into the Strategic plan that is part of a different conversation but we wanted to put some language in front of you guys to make sure let just opens up some conversation I just want make sure like we're on the same track so back to your question though about like how far out and like what we're looking to for like realistic or like lofty goals we just want to set the goals more like Gates instead of just just one at the end right we want Gates like by this time we should be at this percent by this time we should be at this percent

019so those those would be related to but key performance indicators yeah so you put in we expect by this date this will happen if it doesn't then we have to take a look at well what do we need to do to get to the next level because we're behind if we're ahead do we need to make an adjustment down the road to move things from I I agree I'll just trying to yeah Circle back to yeah so the idea is that we're going to have this will know that TR but three yeah I said three three to five I thought we said well I think I think someone said four we were talking about three kind of sett I I was just going to uh offer an example when when you go to the goal

020uh the by October of 2029 LD will increase Ela proficiency from 40 to 80 a key performance indicator might be by the year 2025 50% by the year 2526 60 by the year 2527 25 20 27 70 right incremental by 10% % to answer and also to answer your question if you guys go back a slide I I think the board you guys set you guys set your goals and I'll just throw out two and speak speaking the obvious was Ela proficiency and math proficiency would fall under this and those are those are board goals um this year one of the board goals I want to say is K3 ma uh let's see K3 Ela and 48 math proficiencies so those are the type of goals I could see the board wanting to have an

021instr instuctional Services unless you tell us Ela and math goals aren't higher level goals than there yeah I think you always have to Circle back around with what our key points have been a long I mean we've just we've obviously discussed three or four points in kind of each area independed that's good point yeah I think it's real important that we make sure the populations that we have that are represented through say IEPs or say everybody make sure can't say just certain people need say everybody so the U uh I don't know if it needs to be a specific goal but certainly for those students an imp make sure focus on those just again go to another slide where we're talking about the October 2029 so when we talk about the level we're talking about

022State Testing right so we can have Benchmark points of trimester so I think that's correct yeah gives us a good understanding of how our progress is but ultimately it's that state test that's going to determine whether or Notre that's the only real assessment we if that's what we write into the goal yeah I mean if that's if that's what we write into the goal that we're using the state assessment that'd be correct any other questions I like that you have professional development and staff training employee retention and recruitment the board has brought that up a ton on boarding employee Wellness yeah I don't I don't know unless you guys see other areas that that's definitely Stephanie that's an HR priority area that's the Stephanie category but uh yeah do you guys see anything else when

023you think about employee Excellence supporting our employees benefit packages salary the only thing that I would like to see us look at I'm just making sure it's not in here and i' read this a few times but we have leadership development and growth opportunity so I think I think that's there but um succession just overall and and maybe that's covered there but you mean like like internal promotion internal promotions and and preparing people right preparing our staff to take the next level to take the next step if they want to do that and some of that's identifying we have some teachers who just want to be a teacher and there's nothing wrong with that we have other teachers who want to move on maybe be a coach maybe be a an assistant principal maybe a

024principal some will stop at assistant principal never want to go hire we need to identify that with each person so we can get them on kind of a a focused track of if you want to be a principal in this District we've got three or four things we need you to do we want you to work two years at a title one school and I'm just throwing out ideas you need to be at a title one school to be a principal at our district whether or not you become a principal Title One school is a different story but I think Title One schools bring from every every educator I've ever spoke to anywhere in the country they talk about there's a unique learning skill set that happens working at Title One schools I don't know

025what that is exactly but I know that's one thing that the entire education world seems to agree on so we look at those and set some a track of there's there's kind of a a skill set or a skills book and and again I just go back into the fire service a little bit if you want to be an engineer or you want to be a fire captain you got to do certain things and you got go get these signed off a little bit once your task book is completed now you're ready for that promotional spot uh but it gives you an idea of where you're at where you need to go and then you don't go to an interview later thinking you're ready for the job only to get a phone call later that

026says you're not you're not ready um and it It prepares them and it gives them training so I don't know if that's we have growth opportunities but there's and I'll add on to that um scholarship opportunities for teachers you want to explain that a little bit bring the school providing some resources to teachers to go as it quote scholarship to go get certifications move themselves up with the obvious you have to stay here so many years to can do that for you but something that we start internally pushing it making things available with teachers that normally wouldn't do it because they can't afford it right or it's not in there so within intern and that way we keep them right that's just something you know with business we do that all the time we go

027get these degrees or do these things we make that investment come back they have to stay with us five huh wish should me Embers yeah we they call I think this because we were at the teacher recognition they talked about the different schools that were doing scholarships to get those certifications it's very similar yeah so if we yeah we could set aside a budget a line item for that for that opportunity we somebody wants to become a principal there's lra stuff they have to do and unfortunately State doesn't pay teachers as much to go get all that extra training so they wi Advance there's a special a program somewhere go go learn that so yeah I think the more we can give back to our employees the the more successful they're going to be which

028is going to make us more successful which is the Full Circle I think the more OPP yeah the more opportunities we can add the more we attract too right before you move on that's my question where would statement by the board about U sponsoring or supporting the idea of every teacher being where would that well these are just areas uh Paul these are just kind of priority areas and remember highly qualified is kind of an elusive term we don't really use it anymore because certification a little different but but I mean as we set goals we can keep that in mind if that's something that's important to the board about opportunities or robust benefit packages that includes opportunities for scholarships or reimbursement or advancement on the salary schedule or what have you but I still

029think Paul it would go under employee Excellence I still think it would go here yeah keep that these were a few samples that came up from the group there was a lot of them so Amy just chose a few different ones so you guys could get a flavor so you could tell us absolutely not that one or we kind of like the direction of that one but the again these are just sample goals we would bring something back to the board that was a lot more developed than this okay I just have a a side question second exactly what I'm on bullet number two yeah it's exactly what I think Paul was speaking of 90% that was that was feedback from our staff you didn't just put 90% in there that was that a number

030that staff okay okay everybody did a few three by five cards the grp say it's very exciting they're picking 90% because that that shows that our staff is really really starting to Long stride and look good so I hope that's the case that they were choosing those numbers because that's that's great yeah they a lot of them did I asked Amy to highlight the the 90 I asked Amy to highlight a few of them because we wanted to open up that door to talk to you guys about this idea of are we shooting for a 100 are we trying to be 80 90 like what are we when we when we set the higher goal and then we have those key performance indicators I think when you when you look at like number two the

031idea of having 100% is probably unrealistic from the standpoint we're always going to want to attract new young teachers that may come in a little bit short of of being highly effective just because they're new and so but it's good to have have young so they may not all come in immediately but we're going to get them to that point so maybe this go Chang a little bit to say 90% will be there and the remaining 10 will will achieve that within two years three years whatever that realistic number is so we're always moving we're going to have some retirements we have new come in but we're not just sitting with 10% that is floating at the bottom of the sea not not growing you know it's going to be revolving kind of a revolv

032it there no I like them I just I'm thinking about conversation no I really like what I let's please syour allst so I don't know yeah and I I'll just comment on this number two feels a lot clean you know we all tease Stephanie right it's the human resources one whereas this one you got danne you got Bob you got Cindy you got John Moreno you know you got a lot of people in here as a superintendent to me it's really important that every employee has a tie there's an umbilical cord to this to the Strategic Plan and there's a reason why they they do their job even if they're just answering the phones not just but they're the district receptionist answering the phones it has to tie to our academic success and what we're

033what our mission is so even though this feels like a catchall and there's a lot of departments in here I like that we can give Bob Bob can develop a goal to get more budget uh more building renewal grants you know to double from 2 million to four million and it's part of the Strategic plan because I will tell you guys in my humble experience I look at a lot of strategic plan and it is about kids but the IT department sees no link to it food services so says SE no link to it you know it's like all of Natasha's department but our whole organization is surrounding kids so I love Focus Area 3 because I can say hey the warehouse we want a more efficient warehouse and set some goals people get their

034resources sooner they're in the teacher hands and so I kind of like this selfishly as a superintendent because every I can tie every employee to the Strategic plan and what they do kind of on a daily basis and that means that means a lot to me I want Dane's I want Dan's Department to feel the bigger to to have some goals related to their success which help our systems to be more efficient our audits coming out cleaner means that we're transparent and we have money available to buy books for kids you know so I just wanted to kind of say that commentary that's why kind of catches it's kind of a catchall in a way a little bit of a miscellanous starting to get into areas where we're going to rely a lot on your

035leadership with this stuff now we're we're starting to slowly get to we right so you know our job is the oversight and then going down but we're really going to look to you and the administration Tok I like the idea of it being this law I understand it's going to be hard you can't really break it up into other stuff but this to me makes sense would School Safety and Security would that Encompass the idea of making sure that we have health services available on campus for our kids things like I think we ought to have a nurse on every campus so would that follow under your school safety I would and that would be a good bullet point where we can put Health offices that's a good one we didn't think about Amy where

036you could almost put Health offices right in the care a child gets if they have a headache or they come off of the playground or I think that has a lot to do with School Safety and Security so realistically in my view Paul we could add another bullet that Health offices because all of our schools have a have a health office right Stephanie to me School Safety and Security is more like kind of yeah we could easily add Health Services unless you guys see it going under another priority that was very we gotta talk to we got to talk to that person see if help us crack the code's who's writing that idea who can is it is it D my question on something like this as a goal how do we fail this go

037we go I mean really maintain Financial stability it's kind of our everyday thing as long as we're staying in the green we'd probably have to pair this one back I I just think there's a lot of this is just a sample and somebody made a great Valiant effort here but I think we'd have to probably pair that back because you asked those questions what if we never pass another Bond again what if we pass another does that mean we just failed all our goals well we we we continue to limp along but we got to find other Revenue sources grants scholarships I look at is financial accountability right so um if we do get bonds that gets adjusted into our plan so basically we're in a situation this tells me we're not doing something that

038does that it doesn't put us into a bad point so to speak so but yeah we can narrow this down and to but it it you know I always every it with Finance everything it's constant it's a it changes and you just have to make sure all the decisions we make as a board and as Administration and our Director of Finance is we're looking far enough ahead and we're planning well enough to never get ourselves TR right yeah right put a period there and then really talk about and again my my only feedback on this is these are all 2029 I don't think we probably need to wait till Dane sorry but I don't think we need to wait till 2029 to get uh electronic payment system that kind of started in most places about

0391965 I think so we should be able to get there sometime in the next year or so so I think we need to look at dates and not stack all this at 2029 well some of the goals even could be continue to maintain and have checks through making sure we're yeah quality assurance absolutely I know this is just example goals but I a question about that second one that's not saying we're not going to accept cash right because some people live and deal all their business by cash sorry Brian no more only coins families that trans we is this one aren't we talking about payment not not rece out got you I thought you talking about it says all we we still we still hand papers back and forth gotta 2029 days because we talked

040certainly there could be before us9 that so every one of our goals on theat 2029 all of those performance indicators or strategies ortion we want to put those will say another date me so that could be like President Todd said that could be next year the fully electronic payment system and then the goal for five years is bigger than that yeah you know we it out a ton of stuff with automation hey don't let me go down that rabbit hole few minutes ago you said you're going to rely on the leadership get out of the weed so I said I could yeah I would I said I was gonna smack you if you get out focus are number is commun engagement in talking how are we engaging with but also with Civic leaders are weally

041how our volunteer program was a big one I know the board talked about each School having a more robust volunteer program and so that I'm glad that that was up there from our leaders um but in my view you know expand not all parents have the ability to go in for 20 minutes to read to the classroom or make copies so what what does that look like can we engage a full a parent who works full-time you know how how can we do that and so I'm really open to see if the if the board has any broad ideas but I think our leaders captured some good ones and not just parents too I like that people had Civic leaders like we our Mayors are coming on the first day of school and those kind

042of things parent forums but any ideas the board may have in this area to it's not just family engagement but it's Community as well yeah I agree the Athletics should be in that but I think it also be under instruction because I think there is a a project out of Athletics does affect student performance other CL so I'm just saying that it could be under one could be two yeah I kind of saw a I I hear what you're saying athletic is it could be interpreted a lot of ways a lot of people engage with their school through their kids Athletics so that that was this one Paul but I think you're right it very well could be under number one with this idea of an instructional Services because how kids are connected to the

043school that way but along with this um we have Athletics but we don't have our other after school programs and I think we should include other clubs is that the signature no no no no I mean we have student council we have there's different clubs at each campus right right activities I think activities are more the phrase I was looking for uh both Athletics and activities yeah that's good because some I to somebody's point not every child is an athlete but if there's a chess club if there's a band if there's any any of the other number of things that's not Sports those are equally important to those students and we should definitely yeah because we've got a good honorable program we've got other programs yeah what about our um yeah that we have yeah

044we have an after school and we also have a preschool during the day preschool I think goes under more Education Services I mean that's where we're setting the foundation number after school program I feel like here it's probably more here that one's more helping the families more engaging the families help you know providing a service to them after hours that's good and over the breaks too over the braks they have to program I we did along those lines and I don't want to run away get a Runway but we also have done some I think we do some summer meal programs right yeah and it falls under it's under nutrition um back in Focus Area 3 so I guess it could continue but again that's also kind of family and Community engagement great that might

045be one that I think we were at Rainbow this summer right the summer meal program yeah right and right I don't know summer meal program and do we do it over holidays just believe so or maybe we can even look at that in the f I mean we do it over the summer because our our research and our study shows that's critical to students to be fed it might be actually I don't think there's a might I think it is it's alarming if we're not doing it over a Christmas break because the kids are struggling to get nutrition over summer they're probably there's no Merry Christmas over Christmas quity break Christmas break that changes that so maybe we need to look to expand that somehow yeah that that may fall I kind of feel like

046this might be the one where like we almost 100 every parent should be like know what's going on yeah what just says engage yeah just sayage so every parent every parent should be engaged if um make sure that if we're sending we're sending stuff out that every parents's receiving it make sure that uh they're so to me like CU my kids just left the district but there was tons of times like we get messages from other parents like hey this is going on and as a parent I never got the message so we have an issue where not everybody's getting the same message so I think that's that's a big issue issue I don't know if it was a messenger hangup or if it typo when we put people's email addresses in like I don't

047know how we would measure that like minus parents com and complaining that they're not getting messages right yeah is always because even in our surveys the other issue we had a few years ago was getting our internal systems updated with contact information getting that was a brutal night uh so there's there's caveats into this that we're out of our control we'd all like to see 100% And I think we need to visit revisit this at some point if this is ends up being one of our goals as to how we're going to measure that what is it included really what is the percentage that we really want because you know one of the things we want to do is you know it's it's particularly important the parents are involved for example with for but getting

048them engaged to do that is like pull of teeth so we're going to have to come up with some ways to be creative to get that involved so that that needs so I think that's a good way to go because it's it's critical we get them involved question is how do we do actually that might be the goal right we have a lot of parents that are really saying can't you just text me like can that's that's fast easy way of right here on my phone and I'm just wondering if it's actually the the the platform or right well we have to get this is a little more like I said it's complicated because we got to make sure it has the capacity this stuff we have a lot of people behind which goes to

049another section that we're dealing with so I I I believe this particular area is very important because it's one piece of our puzzle we're operating in a vacuum well maybe we even look at committee involvement and I don't want to restrict parents from being involved but we do have kind of our go-to parents who we can rely on but they seem to be on every committee so maybe we look at some way where we say you could serve on a maximum of of two you know maybe different levels of committee or something two per year which then kind of forces us as a district to go out find some more parents to to come in because it's really easy to get the list of involved parents let's call these folks um and by that we

050may miss one that is just waiting for a phone call doesn't there's times where people just don't know how to get involved completely so if we're reaching out to them if we force us to say or every committee must have two new members who have not served on a committee in the last year so now we're not excluding anybody who you know now we're not saying you can only serve on two a year you can serve on as many as you want but every committee must have two or three 10% whatever you know how we do that of new new parents to be engaged so then we're getting them the more we bring in then they come in they learn more um they better understand our system they better understand the process and they have

051fun with it and they want to come back and do more so we grow that grow that a little bit so maybe that would be a way we could look at the creative strategy part so my my point of bringing it up is we we have to take that into consideration on goals we produce a goal in one section and haven't supported it in another section we might get in trouble that's that was my point so Focus area isun thisis put man comp of char schools and what portion of this so that wasn't necessarily brought for by your leadership that was I don't see this as just the Derek category communication is throughout our whole organization I like that it says internal I like external no it's all top down side side but we'll put

052Derek's picture up there like Crisis communication developing that a lot better and then we always talk about telling our story The Brand telling the Liberty story out there all seem to be us broadcasting out should we not consider information coming internal internal external okay what I'm I'm for me internal communication is what we what how we communicate within the house and then external communication is how we communicate outside the house what I'm talking about is how does somebody outside the house communicate into the house so if we're taking internal communication it's not just how we communicate to our employees but how they communicate with us as well the external communication is how we communicate with the community and how they communicate with us so I think you're saying the same thing Paul it's just a

053definition of terms I think we're saying the same thing whether it's focus groups or surveys or I think you guys are saying the same thing it's just we have two different title I mean the titles are up there it's just the definition of terms how do we receive feedback from people going out receiving but if that was included in the the discussion as far as external insurance right and I do think that that's a very important point a might how can people give us feedback and what we there's another piece too communication also um whether it's Administration or the teacher use word overseed how do we manage that things can get lost I mean you can always put policies and procedures and everything in place but if nobody's watching or no there's no checks and

054balances it means not wondering about the marketing component are we missing something maybe School leaders have been doing with School tours is is that would you find that in communication or is that an additional I think it would probably be an additional bullet point here in this Focus area something about how are we marketing and telling the Liberty story and if it's a school tour you get 15 minutes where the principal loves on you to show you the school and make your child feel like a VIP so I think it would be it wouldn't even necessarily say a school tour but almost like a a school marketing like how are our principles yeah how do our principles Advance their signature programs in their own schools you know what kind of things well I think it

055I think it would be a different uh it's kind of under there but I think it'd be an additional point that we'd put on there is you know people don't people aren't attracted to school districts they're attracted to schools and they're attracted to teachers and you know the principal plays a roles role in that so yeah how is the school marketing how are they marketing their school and their programs so I think that' be an additional point I can add it here in our notes add I only have questions on measuring but we work that out yeah if we could develop some analytics or how how are we measuring those percentages but with regards to like social media and things like that we we have those analytics you know but other things I agree Brian

056what's the measurement to yeah how what's what are we measuring in here I was wondering with again going back to the marketing the purpose of marketing is to increase right so is is that a very well could be I mean if you're if you're marketing you're doing well we're hoping that more people come in our capture rate is 69% how does that 69% go to 80% I mean 70% of the kids seven out of 10 kids in our district choose our schools yeah where do the other three go and we have how can we measure that or or is enrollment measurements because we know we have we go oh we're full but reality is if we're missing 30% then we're not we're not full we're only full in our own mind we're not full what

057with the whole whole capacity is so I think we should look at I think we measure that that's good one though the other one is is we have different programs as well like gifted that we need to make sure that we're promoting properly because that could retract a lot of okay I know good truck dri no I was just waving to Clyde he just walked in sorry Clyde hey Clyde you want to call so we've got people have called the key performance indicators we've got action steps we've got strategies what is it called and that will help us move forward in how we plan these goals so common vocabulary because you got people interchanging a lot of words so if we can agree what we're going to call then we can train our minds because

058we all come from different backgrounds and we call things different things well I think we're an education institution the majority of the people within our organization are Educators so we should probably try to there's two fold we could stay directly in line with the terms that they know or we could do we talked about reaching out from the outside and do something different which might bring more interest or make people stop and think what does that really mean if they it's term they already know sometimes we get lazy and what that means lazy is a bad word we get soft we get whatever if it's a whole new phrase the first time I heard kpi when I was younger I was who what is that oh that's the same as this uh which is the

059same as this which is the same as that so if we change it up keeps everybody a little more focused and attentive to to learn I actually kind of like expected out but expected outcome is simple yeah yeah so then we have yeah I do I do okay which I think is a little different I mean that's kind of where I was going that's that's a little different than yeah I asked Amy just to kind of put a sample up you know I'm I'm married to whatever the board wants to do but this is a good sample where you could see a goal a key action step over to a timeline to an expected outcome how it's going to be measured who's responsible very simple so just a question so we have a key action

060step we have the expected outcome we don't have our expected out outcome is there a place for um we say well what what's the yeah some you know what I'm saying what's what's the there's got to be some I think there needs to be a place that says what is our change what is it we're doing yeah so if you're not going to meet the goal somewhere where it's accounted for we're not going to meet the goal we got to adjust right what if you what if you do that quarterly based off the goal so you so if your go goal is four years out once a year you're evaluating that that's your pivot point you can look at it sooner and say we're not making it sometimes things happen we're not making it because

061we're just waiting for something to kick in we see a big spike okay we made it then at that year mark so you could even break that down and then quietly kind of quarterly on a year every quarter look at how we doing but then at that one year mark we make the big we make the big pivot if we need to yeah every action step has a Time at the end of that timeline we're going to look at the expected outcome that expected outcome we either make it we don't make it or we exceed it okay what is our corrective steps moving forward if any and maybe on the launch you start it a little sooner just to make sure we are launched because sometimes you think something's happening and you get to that

062first Pivot Point oops we didn't so we never got off the ground so we evaluate when we got off the ground and then so each one of these goals could have let try a number 20 the action steps right and then so that's how you measure each one that you're so and each one may have a different timeline you could be saying I have a different timeline for this step absolutely so the only thing I'm adding is I think we need a column because we need to track what decisions are made and why we made them right yeah yeah yeah almost out of column or something any other so I do have three topics that I we talked about a lot as a board and as a district and just want to make sure they

063get included here and I'm not sure the best spot for them but one we talk a lot about customer service new focus on customer service need to be somewhere in our plan because I don't don't see it yet we want to make sure we have that where do you do you have it you have an idea well my thought was my thought on that it's kind of in every priority we to be it is my thought was almost a number two though because we're looking to train all our people and support customer service I don't know what you guys think about that I mean that's that's fine we want it as an encompassing everything we do should have a customer service orientation customer service Focus to it so first we need to get that training

064but I don't want to wait five years to implement customer service we need to be implementing it now so just wherever we get that in there and and I'm comfortable wherever you guys think it's best um you another one that I think just Falls somewhere as a focus on attendance we're learning a lot and I actually met with a science teacher today at Liberty and she attended a conference this summer from the with the Department of Education was all about attendance and they've done some really remarkable stuff I think we have it in here somewhere I didn't see it oh yeah attendance and behavior where's it at um number one okay sorry yeah oh attendance and behavior I think attendance is we talk about attendance I I think that I look at student services a

065little different than attendance attendance is on its own that needs to become a very high priority for my opinion if you're not in class you're not learning well I could still go under Focus area one but I don't I think it needs to be called out break it out let's just break out attendance and behavior okay we can make them two separate well tenants and behavior yeah I think we can break those yeah break those out that would be perfect sorry yes that would probably come through based on our data I think you can count on that you can count on that so I'm sure it's there just that and then um we we've talked a little bit before but I I think it's it's probably coming more as pilot programs how do we pilot

066a program before we implement it we get a lot of times where we've implemented something and maybe look back at later so how we pilot how we pilot program before we do full impation to make sure they're working and and get the right feedback so again wherever it goes I just those are those are item curriculum for sure curriculum any new adoptions you know we kind of let at but we pilot it after we I don't know I think there's a better process to more in depth so did we just call it curriculum adop yeah it could be other things too you know there could we could pilot different attendance programs but we can find a place in here for either one or three I mean our programs that we buy we try to buy

067the best they're expensive and we just want to make sure that we're really doing what they say they're going to do off on it Forward what I'd like what I'd like to do Amy is have you come out we'll work with the leaders again and refine some but now that we have some areas from the board and really start to put some goals not get past the samples now now that we got a flavor yeah we'll work something out offline so that'll probably be the next step where now we kind of get the direction the board is going with some of these goals and we could start some of this work next week no I mean what do you you guys have you guys have been real flexible on the timeline and I appreciate that

068we have we have school starting so we got teachers busy and principes but if you guys can continue to be flexible with the timeline we'll bring you a report in the next month or two or you know again there's just a lot happening in the next two weeks and I I need our teacher I don't think we need two weeks I would definitely say what start school we go at least a month probably yeah I mean at least end of August first of September whatever works best for that that gives you a look at the calendar I just want to be clear on expect thank you alling app enjo thanks all right it's 509 we'll show the work session adjourned [Music] governing board for the Liberty Elementary School District is called to order today July

06931st 20124 the Jerry Roy District facility five board members present vice president Parks Board member Bixler board member Kenyan board memb cenon and myself Michael Todd are present next on the agenda will be item 3.2 Pledge of Allegiance oh what's up no we're on three now oh regular meeting the Pledge of Allegiance and vice president Parks can you lead us Al to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice next item on the agenda is 3.3 approved regul agenda president I make a motion to approve the regular agenda form consistent with policy bedb and temporarily suspend governing board policy with which this agenda may be inconsistent have a second second I have a motion second is there any discussion none

070I'll call for the vote vice president Parks I board member Kenyon I board member Bixler hi board member shenon I I'm also I will show that approv 5 yes Z no next will be a governing board update I have nothing Mr President uh yeah yesterday I think um Administration many uh thank you so much for putting together um I forget what we call it but I would say it was like a rally it was a great kickoff for the year for all the staff um I want to thank DJ Vance for coming out and speaking to us I've heard numerous people tell me how wonderful an event it was and uh I think it really got us as a as a district together and I I look forward to those every year last year was

071great this year was great um the hard part's going to be topping it each year so I look forward to seeing what uh comes out of the start of the school year uh on Monday um and I just uh little quick note and I hope everybody had a chance to get out there and vote yesterday so that's it board member Bixler yeah I want to also congratulate the administration on the convocation yesterday and the opening of the of the school year it's always a great time that's one of the really good things about public education there is an end to the year but there's also a beginning and that energy level at the beginning is always just so much fun to be a part of and be involved with I unfortunately was not involved with

072it yesterday and the reason why is because for the last 12 days I've been working us at a voting poll and I'm the Marshall at the voting pole and although it sounds really like a lot of fun it's not nearly as much fun being the Marshall it was sound but I did get to open the poll and I got to close the poll every single day so it was good in that respect um so I apologize for not being last night but I was otherwise involved I didn't get out of the polling place until about N9 o'clock last night after we got everything packed up and put away and it went well uh it there's something about that's affirming about working a poll and I wish more people did it but it reaffirms for me

073every single time I've done it I've done it many many times it reaffirms to me in mankind I usually by that time I'm kind of fed up with people and working a poll reaffirms what I believe is positive about Mankind and what's positive about it is working together in a team even though we come from very different places it's structured that we are coming from different places yet we all worked together for one common goal and that was to make sure everybody got to vote and it was a great experience and I highly recommend everybody to do that in the future board member cion uh nothing to add too would like to commend the staff on the welcome back uh day it was super exciting to see a room full of everybody in our district

074I don't think we were missing anybody um it's also very exciting to announce that we're full with our employees human resources to advise us all our all our positions are full we're we're quite possibly the only District in the state that can say that and if we're not we're one of the very few um who can say that so it's an exciting time we are super excited to have our teachers that chose to return back we also have a lot of new teachers that have come and uh within organization we're going to have some who leave some who come but it's always exciting to know that we had a line of teachers wanting to come work in this District it says a lot for our community for our leadership of our cabinet staff of the

075School principles um it it was just great Transportation rally to bring people there uh Food Services had breakfast for everybody um it was a great event so to everybody that was a part of it I know Miss Minnie camarada you played a big role in putting it together so thank you for that and uh if Minnie's involved with it it's always dialed in we don't have to dress rehearsal we don't have to practice we do nothing we just show up and it's all taken care of so um had the great opportunity to stopping by Blue Horizon uh yesterday just stopped in and say hi welcome everybody again uh it was great to see everybody excited the level of excitement on the campus is fantastic uh today I stopped by Liberty in Los brius uh ospr

076has had several teachers uh from across the district that were participating in in some work already uh it's it's great to see the positive attitude it's great to see staff come up and talk to us um give us their thoughts The Good the best whatever it is it's always welcome to hear that and we love we love to hear that at least I do and I can't imagine any of my fellow co-workers or anybody that's on the cabinet would not want to hear the feedback um we have lots of changes that are taking place as always as we continue to grow but the excitement is there the feeling is positive and uh um you my speech yesterday I I spoke a little bit um to the staff and compar uses to the Blue Angels if

077you haven't seen the Blue Angels movie that came out on uh Amazon Prime go see it um at the end of the day they are a high performance team and I told the staff yesterday they fly 400 miles hour 18 Ines apart Loops turns twists all sorts of stuff sounds like a typical day in the classroom we're about 18 inches apart we got Loops twists um a few tornadoes probably come through at times uh but that's where we're headed as an organization to a high performance team and what's most unique about the Blue Angels is that they um they're military but they're not appointed every other place in the military you get told where you're going you're volun told you're going here you're going to combat you're going to Food Services you're going here they

078choose to come to the Blue Angels and our staff chooses to come to us we don't choose them and tell them they have to come to us they come to us first and we select we we pick them um much like they do and there's a lot of similarities before that big high performance flight team in our school district and I hope the teachers saw that and recognized it in in the manner that it was intended we're going to high places in this District we're going to do it um adoption of electric school buses first out here in the West Valley one of the first in the country really um large order we've got a lot of stuff going on so to everybody in this room to everybody that on the board with me thank

079you for all that you've done and to the staff it's it's going to be a great year so with that we'll move to item 5.1 which is uh FCI and DLR Architects uh Transportation facility update presentation Mr Young to you Mr President Mr Vice President members of the board I'd like to call up uh DLR Kristen Taylor Foley David Schmidt and from FCI we have Michael uh kuback and Orlando casano uh to give us a presentation on the transportation and while they're getting ready I just want to voice a a thank you to Dr Monroe and president Todd they used a little muscle down at the county and within I don't know 12 14 hours we had a permit ready to go to start the construction on this thing so it worked out really well

080we appreciate that and and uh if you drive by you'll see some Earth movement equipment was already dropped off anticipating the permit will be here tomorrow and then they said there's more tomorrow more equipment coming in tomorrow and Monday you'll start seeing dirt pushed around out there so appreciate it thank you very much for your support on that thanks good thank you it's on I think it's off okay is it on is the green light on the top it is on okay so I'm Kristen Taylor Foley with DLR group and I I'm here with my team um David Schmidt um with DLR group and um Orlando ciano and Michael kou with FCI we have been working on the design um for the new Transportation expansion across the street so just to update you all on

081that project the district has procured an additional 10 and a half acres right across the street behind their existing Transportation facility and and we have been working to with the district and with FCI to design the expansion that will allow for um growth for the transportation facility as the district grows so we are planning for future up to 93 future school buses including some of the electric buses that were just mentioned um the district is in the process of procuring 13 electric school buses and so this new Transportation facility will accommodate not just their gas buses but their electric buses so we are also um redoing the whole fueling um facility itself so the existing fuel tanks are at their end of life so those we are building a new above ground fuel tank and

082canopy system and we're also Master planning the whole property for not just the buses and parking of the buses but for future um Warehouse a future f future Transportation building a building maintenance building um a building where they can service their buses space where they can wash their bus buses and we're even looking Beyond to potential future district office space and all the parking and infrastructure that would go along with that so as we worked on this master plan and working with um FCI our partner contractor partner on cost estimating we have um scaled the project so that it can be built in phases and so right now we're we're basically designing for phase one which is infrastructure so that includes all of the parking the the asphalt paving for all the buses the drive

083entrances um the pad locations for the future buildings um the fueling canopy and fueling station and um any like White Fleet parking areas and and where we're also securing the site with new fencing so that's where we're at right now um I wanted to personally thank board president Todd for really pushing behind the scenes we've been um dealing with a unique situation where the property here is both part of County part of the city of Buckeye so the the whole process has been um very complicated as far as getting the permits and who theur jurisdictions are so president Todd helped us behind the scenes trying to trying to speed things up because the process was just taking too long so as he stated we are in the process of getting permits right now construction is

084about to start um FCI has been over there getting the site ready um getting all of their people ready behind the scenes there's a lot of work that happens That You Don't See with just Earth moving um that we're still doing behind the scenes so that's where where we are now um we're just working on getting all of all of the things that are necessary to do the construction all lined up so um we have a presentation we're going to put together or go through that we've put together on what that looks like and then FCI is also going to jump in here share um an update um on the time frame of construction the what the phasing looks like where the buses will temporarily be parked um while all this construction is going on

085and some of the safety measures that they're looking at okay so can we go to the next slide or am I in charge of that okay okay so this slide this is a kind of an aerial photograph of the the the existing school campuses on the right um the area that is dashed in the red line that is the phase of con of construction that we're doing right now so again the whole 10 and a half acre site is master planned but we are only doing phase one right now which is the part that's in the red um this is um a blow up of that one part that's in the red so it's really just the northern half of that 10 and a half acre site you can see the existing on the right

086hand side is the existing um transportation building that's there right now um the the white spots with the dark bold lines are the pads for the future buildings so all of the work that we're doing will be around those pad locations so so primarily asphalt for all the bus parking all of the electrical infrastructure not just for this phase of the project but for future buildings as well so um like all of the main electric services that are coming into the build into the site will be brought in now for all of that future the septic that that is required because this is not um on any sort of city water so everything is septic and well and water and well and um and uh electric buses so that's where we're at right now um

087get ready to start seeing everything moving out there and it'll be exciting and when it's all done it's going to be an amazing new Transportation facility um we are working on an existing site with existing operations and people that come to work every day and So that obviously is the most important thing um keeping everybody safe keeping everything operational so that that's where FCI is really coordinating to with the all of their trade Partners so I'll let them talk a little more about that I do just I want to say thank you to president Todd and to Dr Monroe for going behind the scenes and helping push this permit through it's it was a big big venture and it it gets us in the right the right state so we can actually get this project

088up and moving and we're very excited to be doing that for for the district um I also uh wanted to say thank you to to um uh dandi and to Bob uh they've worked closely with us uh in the time frame that we've had to actually come up with uh different solutions to different issues that we've run into uh with potential to uh the staging of equipment and the the the moving of buses um I'm going to let Orlando kind of go through our phasing plan and how we're getting there hello everyone my name is Orlando I am the project superintendent for FCI so what we're looking at here on the presentation slide is the um coordination that we have done with the district and we went over this to come up an idea what

089we're going to do with the current buses that we have on the site and how we're going to work it through during the construction project the um so the green area is going to be our temporary fence on the south side that green is our construction axis and the blue is basically the new irrigation line that goes in there but that far right bottom um rectangle is where we're going to house the the bus for a temporary time as we're doing the construction and um yeah that's what we have and on the next slide so with that information the coordination that we've done with the district we took that information added it to our construction site plan this gives off a lot more information that we use for coordination between us the district and our

090trade contractors um so like we have area one and area two area three there's a little bit of blue red and yellow and that kind of coordinates with our master schedule which we can show you on the um the last slide so this is our Master project schedule that we'll be um um using for sequence when seeing the trades throughout the construction project now um M Michael hand some schedules to kind of show so there's a lot of information going on in here and it's very hard to depict but what we did here is we broken down this project into the three areas that we show on the map to help coordinate this whole um construction project and also coordinate the with the district on your guys' current operations and yep so that's pretty much

091it for that you have any questions we'll be happy to take those thank you for the presentation um sounds like Dr Monroe and president Tod have went above and beyond and I appreciate that for pushing uh this is something that we've been trying to get going for a while and every time I drive by there I'm wondering why hasen't hasn't dirt moved yet um but we we know there was some permitting issues and I'm glad that to hear those are getting resolved so I have two questions the first one is in regards to the irrigation ditch on here it says that's being done by others correct um that current irrigation ditch runs right through what we're planning on moving right away right the dirt and everything so how soon are they going to be working

092on getting that irrigation canal and ditch and tunnel through the road and all that stuff so it we're coordinating with with the the water district and and making sure that uh we're complying with what they have with their uh users um so they're they're going to come out uh probably in September October and run the new line the new ditch line but they can't make a connection until the dry up season which is at the end of November once they make the connection at the end of November then we're contracted to demo out that existing um ditch and we can now grade everything over and make it part of the entire site as just one hole so that was my question is if we can't touch that until say December yep how how how are

093we going to move things and and we'll be working in phases so we'll be working on one side of the site the ditches we have to stay 12 feet on either side of the ditch away we working on one side of the site and then uh the other side you can actually walk through the three phases that we have okay so what we've done is so this main area is pretty much open this yellow area are the existing irrigation canil um we can't touch that until dry out period happen November so but they can start on the new Canal or the new irrigation line here that has to be built before we can te up this old one um so main work is we're going to work on this side of this pool area then

094as we demo out this and we're going to start working on the North bu parking lot the South this South part we will probably start pretty soon um we'll probably take down some of the fencing start some of the septic system the self retention but Meanwhile we're taking care of this earlier the bus that will be will be parking down here and then later on um weate the bus on the north parking down here but yeah this would have happen okay thank you and then the second question was um when do you guys foresee us finally digging into that fuel tank that's a great question we're we're actually going under a diff a couple of different scenarios that we can run worst worst case scenario the SC is the driving factor for starting up the

095new fuel station and that's scheduled to be here at the end of February that we're looking at seeing if we can get a temporary fuel tank so that we can actually get the old fuel tank out earlier and then that driving Factor doesn't necessarily fall on that SCS being at that time so that's kind of what my thought was is if we can get some temporary something in temporary in place and then and that's what we're going through right now to see and and that should shave about three weeks off the schedule so all right that's all I have thank you anybody else's questions so I'm looking at this outline here I might be wrong but it looks like the solicitation was issued on your date is April 9th of 2024 in the GM so

096that's that's not when we issued the solicitation what is that referring to exactly Top Line on this [Music] form cuz you have the B board approval of May 13th 2024 I think that might have been think that might should have been 23 yeah the very top line it's on the very top so I don't know how accurate this timeline that you've provided us is going to be if our first dates are off um my my concerns are the delay in this project and the permitting and when I made my calls to the county to ask them to help us they were very clear to answer back say well we received a phone call from Chris and at DLR said they were looking for directions on how to submit a permit for a school concerning emailed

097the application guide and we got another call from Kristen asking about whether the total fee included the permit fee we returned the call but the phone continued ring and there was no voicemail so we were not able to leave a message we got another call from Kristen Taylor 722 asking while the plan was under review if they could start exting FR permit call was returned on 723 but there was no answer and voicemail wasn't set up to say I'm disappointed to hear that would be an understatement doesn't vode well for the project can I interject in a minute I need to know who's going to be in charge of this project moving forward we want one point of contact that will take the fall for every mistake that happens on this project every delay and

098we need better communication they have a very extensive call log we're blindsided by the delays of this and as board member Kenyan said we drive by this dirt field we broke ground before school got out and the kids are going to be back Monday and and to be quite honest it's unacceptable and speaking with the county they say well there's been a lot of unanswered phone calls and a lot of problems and that's not acceptable we're paying Millions of dollars on this project and costs are doing nothing but going up as we wait and at the end of the day this is the county stance on this and if we're having problems and we're not getting calls back CU clearly they called they didn't get a response so they quit they gave up going to

099be driving this project so whoever the project manager is on this needs to change their title really quick to become the project driver and drive this project because most of this work that was being done should have been done this summer and it's not and now it's going to interfere with our school it's going to interfere with kids it's going to interfere with bus operations as far as I'm concerned you guys can work from 5:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. for the rest of the project and absorb all the extra costs on that because we shouldn't be having all the loose dirt that's going to happen from moving that mess over there blowing through our campuses causing us extra work now what kids are in scampus and it's it's quite honestly some of the shoddiest presentation

100I've ever seen so um I can assure moving forward that as we look at Future projects we will look and remember this one just as we did some problems with another campus that was built that's all I have to say anything else members okay we'll move to item 5.2 5.2 is a Core Construction drr Architects update presentation on Loretta zumbro Elementary School uh president Todd vice president members of the board we have again DLR Christen Taylor Foley and David schmi and Core Construction Whitney bun and Jason santor to give us a presentation on the snapshot of Loretta zumro School construction please proceed well this is um School number eight the Loretta zumro Elementary School we are in the process of obtaining permits on this project right now as well we are in the city um

101of good year with this um we started an incredibly fast timeline um in November when we we first were presented with this project um the district had not procured any property but was looking at one parcel of land um we went through an entire design process of for that parcel of parcel of land and then we um got through schematic design phase um so what you're seeing now are some of the renderings that were created during that schematic design phase of the project um we are now on a different parcel of land we were able to take our design and modify it um without having to change things too much in order to keep with the design schedule that we had so we're working with Core Construction on this we have an incredibly tight not

102only design schedule but we need to be breaking ground this summer because the district wants the school open by 202 2 so we're working with core right now to come up with a phased construction on this project so that we can at least get part of the building started and constructed so that school can start in Fall of 2025 so I'm just going to go through a few slides here and then I'm going to turn it over to core um so the things that we're going to talk about from a design standpoint are the site plan the floor plans and a few of the renderings that we have put together for this um and then core is going to talk about the pricing and their their construction update as far as schedule and phasing goes

103and then our next steps on that are to present uh GMP on August 19th to the board okay so um we're going to talk about the site briefly floor plans briefly the renderings the city review process and then some of the items that the board had requested when we presented this to you last time um this first slide here is a site plan that also shows the landscape so as I let me interrupt is this the right is this the right PowerPoint that we have here am I looking at something different on the board my slides aren't following along do we have the right you want to you want to click ahead do we have the right PowerPoint here yeah this is the right side right okay because I'm following along I must have a

104different one that's uploaded a different PowerPoint I'm not sure but the one that's up on the board do well the one that's on the board dos is the one that's supposed to be presented I believe is this the right one Bob do you know because it's not matching what I see from board docs the one on the board docs is the correct one so if we can change the one to the board dog that be great okay that looks like what I see right there uh that looks up that looks like the one I see here yeah and really quick it this is also going out on the broadcast now right whatever we've updated okay I just want to make sure anybody watching it online can can see the right slides okay thank you Kristen

105that's that's good okay so going back to agenda what we just discussed plan the floor plan and the rendering um so on this slide here uh we've got two renderings these are of two of the buildings on the site the way the site is is designed right now is to have multiple buildings that are located around a central um Plaza space and so a lot of everything that we've put into this design really focuses on how people how people um are entering the site whether it's through a vehicle or a bus how the kids are then moving through the site and and moving to their classrooms and so everything is kind of focused around this Central Plaza space um the all of the ENT like the main entries to all of the building all open

106out into that Plaza space um so what you're seeing here is it's a combination of our site plan that also it shows the buildings you could see that we've got um buildings two buildings that are on the west I'm sorry the east side of the site that are on 183rd and then we've got three buildings that kind of radiate a little bit um around that Central Plaza space and then we've got playfields to the north the idea was um given um the way this so this site slopes the need for different amounts of retention um and just the way the traffic works and how we were able to come in with new driveways onto 183rd Street which is the street that runs in the north south Direction um we've got Lower Buckeye Road which runs

107in the along the bottom of the site um there are other constraints that we're working around right now as far as the de acceleration of traffic on Lower Buckeye Road so in in order to help with some of the costs we're dealing with a incredibly tight budget on the project it's almost entirely state funded so um every little thing that we can do to get the cost down that's what we're really focused on to balance that cost with um the program needs of the school but also the needs the require the minimum requirements of the state facilities board um given that they are funding it we have certain things that we have to do to meet those requirements um also another thing that we're really trying to balance is Landscaping taping on the site um

108obviously we live in heat Islands these days we need to have as much shading as we can get um we're trying to be pragmatic about that we're trying to provide shade trees where um it's absolutely necessary and I know that Dr Monroe and Bob have been working to get some grants so that the school can have as much shading as possible um so that is that is happening right now as well um simultaneous to that those Grant applications um so but anyway you can see uh how we're really trying to um shade the buildings where we can shade them on the on the southern facing sides of the buildings um we you know there's a balance that we have to do with the amount of Windows because energy requirements are requiring us to put more

109and more daylighting in our classrooms which is a great thing but in our climate and then we also deal with how do we keep the Sun from beating into these classrooms so using um high energy high efficiency glass and um shading by trees really helps um this is a a 3D and I'm gonna this is core slide I'm going to let them start to talk about um the the spacing and the and the construction time frame but I like the slide because it it shows the whole site in three dimensions it's a little easier to grasp so you can really see um how the the buses will enter onto the site at that North part so that North part is a Bus Loop so buses would come in off 183rd they would be able to

110drop kids off and then they would be able to exit right out and then we've got car traffic that would come in off 183rd we've provided a long queuing um that allows to get as many cars off the road as possible um so the queuing is single Lane as you first come in and then it's widened to double lane as you Loop around um and then and then drop the kids off and then depending on the time of day and whether or not you need all of that queuing there are ways to navigate that that would cut off some of that extra queuing um we're also again I mentioned that we're dealing with the need to retain all of the the storm water on the site so there's a lot of areas to the south

111of the site where we've got um retention basins um we're also providing um future potential future over slow parking that could happen in that Bus Loop area um and then we've got our Fields off to the north as well um another thing that we're doing with this is that that third building on the far right is shorter than all of the other buildings that's because working with the budget that we have we've come up with a design that for the for this first few phases and this whole buildout that you see right now we're meeting the the minimum requirement that the school and the sfb have as far as the number of classrooms um with the opportunity to grow that third building in the future if it needs to be so we have designed that

112building for growth um and the um the three buildings on the top of the slide those are all classroom buildings the building on the far left is um a kindergarten building classroom um opportunity to have some classroom spaces for the older kids there um we've got the admin building on this far left hand side over here and then we have the gym building gym the multi-purpose building um and some other classroom spaces in the building on the right the gym building also has space just to the north of it um which is again just thinking about the future and as funding becomes available in the future we're trying to provide much flexibility in the design so that the the um school can actually build a full gym in the future in that location um and

113then all of the the landscaping and everything that the sidewalks and how you move through the site is trying to also think through how those spaces could be used in the now until there's that future construction so we don't want it just to be a wasteland of dirt for the future like that that's actually usable space in some form um um does anybody have any questions on the design portion before we jump into schedule and the Contracting part I got a question for you um in terms of like Access Control to make sure people can't get on campus like how much of this is going to be gated in that's a great question all of it um like including the parking lots like well not including the parking okay so we don't have a a

114fence diagram the slide but the idea is is that dropped off here the gates will be open during bu drop off they'll be able to enter same thing at the front of the school before and after school the gates will be open will be to come but then start yeah thank you yeah I also have a question the you talked about the third build being shorter uh in anticipation of it being constructed in such a way that it can be expanded when we talk about expanding or we making making it longer or we making it taller how do that expansion work so all of the buildings are single story and will remain single story The expansion will actually happen to the end of the building and so you're able to get about four more classes

115okay so um if there are no more questions on the design part I will turn it over to our partners core we have Jason and Whitney who are our trade Partners on this project as well excuse me one second Kristen could you also explain with the expansion about where the future gym might go we're planning for a future gym on it as well and and that's where where I'm talking about the way that that's landscaped right now going be very low to be a dirt waiting for building good thank you I have a couple questions really quick um in that upper right corner what is that just to the left of the baseball field looks like a yeah okay so you can see in the slide here there's aa's okay and it looks like there's

116a basketball court okay I just didn't see it in this drawing so I wasn't sure if it was so thean okay and then another question the baseball field uh we were pretty clear early on that the field needs to face Northeast that is the absolute worst most dangerous position for the Sun for the field to be laid out it should be from home to Second Bay should be pointed Northeast it is that is on that one okay so North is not up right there okay thank you hi president Todd and distinguished members of the board my name is Jason santor with Core Construction um just uh this is the correct presentation Dr Monroe um it was up it's a PowerPoint and it was uploaded as a PDF so you could see we're missing some of

117the layers behind it it's so I was wondering if we could go back to that PowerPoint because the stuff that I'm talk about cost wise is buried behind that layer because when it's uploaded as a PDF it loses all of the the transitions that you would have in a PowerPoint so would that be appropriate can you do that and can people watching on YouTube see the PowerPoint yes perfect thank you sorry for the inconvenience there I was wondering how I was going to talk about the numbers when they were hidden behind the the site plan so I will click through um this uh as Kristen walks through it um and get to um the pricing and construction update as you can see here so you're going to see the design development estimate and that's what

118uh the progress that we put together back in mid June for this for this project um at every phase of constru uh design there's a schematic design which might be like 30% drawings design development is about 60% drawings construction documents we're getting pretty close to submit for permit at that point and then we're building off of the permit set so the information that I'm going to present on was our cost update at the design development stage um in mid June um and obviously there's been about six weeks since then so there's been a lot of progress that I'll talk through uh how this team has progressed so um we're going to walk through our current pricing and continued value engineering um that we've done uh to date we're always looking for ways to stretch the

119dollar and value engineering could have a negative context and looked at as like scope removal we're looking at it as more of scope options value added to the project um as Kristen mentioned this is uh majority of it is being funded by the sfob so we want to make sure we're meeting those guidelines but also making sure that we're we're putting all the dollars back into the classroom that we can um and being stewards of the dollars um we're going to talk through and she alluded to um we're trying to turn over every stone here in regards the funding and it's Bob Bob is taking the lead on this uh we're we're getting a $10,000 applying for a $10,000 grant for APS for some of the shading and the trees that are on the site

120so it just shows some of the strategies this team has been utilizing to to again maximize the dollars then we're going to talk through construction and Logistics um as mentioned we have a a uh 72,000 foot of this build um over five buildings um and we're going to be starting construction hopefully in the beginning of September of this year and that leaves us about 10 and a half months to get through um to to the start of school in July of 20 uh 25 so we're going to talk through what that looks like what buildings are going to be open how it phases um with a two of the additional classroom buildings and what that looks like um looking and keeping in mind the student safety and and staff safety as well so this is

121a spreadsheet with a lot of numbers on it um and I'll just kind of walk through um our approach so our approach kind of at the top here um you could see back in June of 2024 our construction was about $29.8 million for this project um and that only tells part of the story construction makes up a big portion of a construction project however we're not the whole piie we typically make up between 80 to 87% of a project budget so we've been working hand hand with Dr Monroe and and Bob to really look at the other project costs that aren't in construction uh design costs preconstruction costs permit cost um the district is going direct with audio visual um and through a vendor um FF Furniture fixture and Equipment the desk the chairs the

122table um and then the permit cost so we wanted to look at it holistically on what this project was costing um for the district so once you looked at that budget of project cost we were getting to a total of about $33.97 million project compared to the funding that we've allocated um of 33.376891 th000 over budget 1.8% over budget um and I'm going to talk through some of the strategies that we're we're we're going through right now to close that Gap so when we come back on August 19th board meeting we're within that budget that this project is funded for then you can see see here is just a breakdown of of how the funding is being brought to the project between the sfob the fer maintenance um eate um operating funds and so on

123so forth so that's a breakdown so you could see the difference of where we were and where we're at um so part of the the approach on this current pricing effort in continued value engineering we have the 100% construction documents for permit right now we are out to all the trade Partners um it's on the street so we're competitively bidding that typically you see um through the competition of bids pricing does decrease at at that point so we're hoping to see that um and also we're having continued weekly meetings with with Bob um the district and drr group to bring up those value ad options value engineering options where we're not taking away and compromising quality but we're looking at different ways that we could do this so and part of that um approach to

124to bring our cost down is really understanding our phasing and Logistics communicating that to our trade Partners so there's no surprises when they start construction and I'll let Whitney talk through our approach to our phasing and our schedule thank you Jason my name is Whitney bun so uh president Todd and his team board members Dr thank you for this opportunity to go through um our phasing plan for construction I'm I'm a Project Director at core and what we put together here is a a plan to to get us to the finish line for the opening of school in 2025 as Jason was saying if we were to start construction as you can see the timeline at the top September of 24 and taking us uh the total project would go through October of 25 but

125um I will walk through the phases of that and so that you can see the the total uh construction and completion of the job so tried to put together some diagrams so as as we get started um through the beginning of the project we'll be working on three of the buildings uh as Kristen Wasing earlier this building here is U cafeteria music art classrooms and such and that also houses the electrical equipment so that's pretty vital to have that building built as part of this first phase along with the admin building and this first classroom building so as that's going on and we're getting those built um we will start bringing in the site elements as well and the last two buildings are also classroom buildings and as we've worked closely with Dr Monroe and

126and Bob Young with the school district um the needs for for the opening of school and the classrooms that will be needed we will be opening those three buildings and then we will fence off the other two buildings as we will be finishing those through the October 2025 timeline so that kind of finishes that presentation there so can I ask one question as you're as we're pointing out where buildings are at I think we have a prek classroom plan for this school as well right correct so where's that where will that be okay is that where we that where we want it yeah we we've talked with uh preschool in fact Bob and I were just discussing that today to make sure we can move all of our preschool cuz preschool has expanded by the

127beginning of school so we we need by August instead of by October so we just have to look at that carefully of how how how many kids can we fit in there potentially at when school starts because those other two buildings will open up but we definitely preschool will eventually end up over there in that fir in that first building I don't remember the letter of it but um we just have to be real strategic about who is starting there because we're trying to alleviate blue and Las breus but I believe it's those front room rooms have Like Preschool kindergarten bathrooms right the ones closest to the parking lot they even have the smaller bathrooms for the kids so yeah the plan is to I think it's seven preschool classrooms I believe six or seven

128thank you any other questions on the construction timeline or the logistics I just had a question I know we have the multi-purpose room and the basketball court outside is there going to be a basketball court or volleyball court in for for the sports for the school or we have to wait for the gym for this so I can take that one so what we're looking at uh board member Bryan uh board member Brian board member sarion um is probably that first year next year would be a preschool sorry I talk with my hands but uh preschool to sixth grade so likely no Athletics similar I've been told this is how blue opened and then the next year would be preschool to seventh grade and then preschool to 8th grade so I don't think you'd see

129Athletics there till the second year or the third year I mean the second year I suppose we could have a younger team but yeah that first year it would just be prek to six until we uh can build out plus if you think about it if we move over some sixth graders we certainly wouldn't want them to move back to another school we don't want to jerk families around and jerk students around move them around multiple times so Athletics likely that's second or third year for the middle schoolers thank I go ahead sorry I had a couple questions um how soon I know before we get any of this going you got to do some soil samples and and stuff like that have we looked into a timeline on that yeah so um actually work

130in working with Bob Young The District had already uh hired a geotechnical engineer and Analysis firm and they've already taken we've worked closely with the property owner who's allowed us to come onto his site uh and he's still actively farming so he was kind enough to allow us to drill some holes take soil samples and those those evaluations and those reports have already been completed and they're actually a crucial part of the design of the facility because drr group will then they'll work with their structural consultants and and other Consultants that need that information to assist with the design so that that has all been completed thank you and then the other question I have well more of a comment when it comes to getting shade trees and I don't think anybody's going to fight

131on getting more shade in Arizona um just making sure we make sure they're actually shade trees I mean I know a lot of times we say we want a tree here we want a tree here and it's just a stick with a couple sticks sticking out and it doesn't provide any shade so just kind of looking at that make sure it's something that's actually going to give a shade these poly veres they're cheap they're great until there's wind they break there's so much maintenance on them and they provide no shade um I get it Desert Landscaping we're trying to minimize you know water cost and stuff like that but if we're looking for shade let's really look for shade I think a lot of times too though when you plant new trees uh and and

132we're considering a budget so a lot of them start off small but they eventually do grow into shade trees it may take a little while but y just had a question on there it says if we go back to the kind of the timeline it said about the aps tree Grant says on the slide it was received and then it was said by the speaker that it's been applied for do we have that yet or do we not and have we Bob do you want to speak to that uh we we were awarded the grant we just need to send a bill for the trees when we get them sent in and they'll send us the money okay I just wasn't sure if we were still waiting for that or not and maybe we can

133staff can start looking at some of our local nurseries and see if they'll be kind to us as a partnership to get us some better deals Okay Whitney can you go back I just wanted to piggy back on Chris's question actually go through the phases on that and go to the last one so I just want to remind everyone so if you look where the parking lot is in the front and you go to the top of that picture just want to remind you that is still the F family farm right there um so that as I've mentioned before in board meetings this is not a neighborhood school it's not surrounded by a neighborhood at this point now I drove over there today and there's going to be houses surrounding that but that's Lower Buckeye

134on the left that neighborhood to the left there is the kind of the the corner of Los prus if you will and then as we've talked about as Bob has explained if you look on top of that baseball field that's still part of the family that's still that weird Family Farm property on the top there and so so it's going to you know the school's a a little bit unique it's going to have good curb appeal um people driving by Lower Buckeye are going to see a nice beautiful school and although it may start with 300 and 350 kids you know next year very quickly I mean we got to pinch oursel in the next few years it will definitely be full and so but again the one of the main drivers of the school

135is to alleviate Los prus and blue I just want to remind the board that it will not happen in one fail swoop and one year it's going to take a few years to really lower those and equalize those schools drro real quick question U the area there where the U baseball field and all that is located was that the strip of land that the uh family was uh reluctant to sell uh no it's on that's up on the North side of that the the top top of the picture yeah how do they access that top piece of land they don't that's a good question I I don't know I think when they when they on the right side that is going to be a development that is in planning but it's still farm right now

136I think that'll be all incorporated into that as is on the if you're looking at the drawing the bottom of it there's a big uh development going in on that side of the road as well yeah there's houses at the bottom of that picture and then on the right side you'll see houses so I think 3 four five years out there'll be houses there and the bottom and on the right there but yeah that I don't know how that's accessed president Todd how they do that family okay umit if you can go right back to where we were I apologize if I missed it those blue and orange squares what is well they're not really squares I guess they're kind of squares maybe rectangle maybe something else on that orange one have outline that area

137president Todd um as we're completing those last two buildings that would that area doesn't really have any real use uh as the projects turned over so we're we're fencing off that area which is shown in the red the circles and using that as um subcontract parking and staging and lay down and so as we're completing those last two buildings that will just kind of be our area to have supplies and and our sub our trade Partners to park okay as we're completing out the the rest of will that eventually become a parking lot when we build a gym because otherwise all our parking is on the complete opposite side of the school it looks like from where the gym will go which usually attracts the most people that's a great question I I'm not sure

138how to answer that was asking this area yeah as I stated earlier the any overflow parking we have designated that's the Bus drop off and the area in the middle can be used for additional overflow parking I don't that when we build a gym there that's going to be overflow parking because that's a long walk for people to walk all the way through the campus which I'm not sure is in our best interest to come to an event at the gym when it's built so that's where the majority of people park for any event at the school outside of the day when we have basketball volleyball accessing baseball fields that's going to be a long walk from the current parking all the way through the campus to get to a baseball field a soccer soccer

139field maybe a football field eventually um and and the gym that does not maybe look as possible we let's look at that a little more in depth at our next meeting obviously all of that contingent on a bond passing to build all that but I think president Todd makes a really good point on the parking for our Athletics so um we have uh like when you go over to Blue you can pretty much access the fields pretty easily by that front parking lot however this one would be different you know uh with the gym so we can I think we can look at that a little more in depth um those are those are good problems to have again we got to convince our voters to finish the school but I think that that's that's

140really good we got a lot of parents who will want to come to those athletic events we don't want to make them walk super far I almost feel like if we flip-flop those the parking lot and the buildings almost we may we may be better off because again we kind of got jammed up at Los priest we were at the mercy of land donations and so forth we had no room uh so we were really boxed in when we wanted to expand that if we expand the gym I don't foresee that that parking lot is going to be real big if we can even make that apart you know the Overflow eventually um yeah I think we need to look at that but just to be clear we are talking about the blue and orange

141area correct correct well any here's the deal during school hours most people are going to park over there in that parking lot they're going to park in that parking lot no matter where it is but as soon as School's Out we're doing baseball games volleyball games basketball games anything that's going to take place in that future gym or on those grass fields they're going to want to park closer there and I don't think that we want to have people walking all the way through the campus for everything that they do so we need we need better parking that always seems to be a struggle it did work out really well at Blue Horizons but I think that's about the first school that parking has been been pretty good to to Dr mro's point you can

142park you can access the gym you can access the fields and so I don't know that that's going to be a big enough parking lot if we can even make that a parking lot down the road I don't know if that's going to be big enough so we may need to look at swapping the buildings in the current parking lot or something of that nature we can certainly lay out parking for you in that area so we can see like have a visual how much we can get in there and take a look at it I I just know if we do a gradu when we build a gym and we do a graduation we make everybody walk from that parking lot to the gym for graduation I'd like to have your phone number so

143you can take the gos cuz it it won't be pretty um we need to make sure we have lots of parking near our near our sport facilities and gymnasium we'll look at that thank you okay thank you any other questions all right hearing then we'll move to item 5.3 the flag football update thank you thank you Dr Mahorn flag football update president Todd vice president Parks uh here is a short presentation on some information gathered I've worked with several people including uh Dr Monroe uh Mr Young and Mr Balden to gather some information to present to you tonight um or where we're at with flag football um the first slide is just uh I talked to we are lucky enough to secure a new referee or official company and so he was able to give

144me some potential costs far as far as uh referees or officials for each game and so for game fees it' be $65 travel allowance um $15 per game assigners fees and transactions fees and again these are just um just some fees that I've just been gathering this is not a a final cost by far it's just um I'm just in the the beginning stages of gathering some information um space needed I've uh worked with Mr Young and he has been working with Steven ordz who is our leads groundkeeper on the possible space needed and what that layout would look like um as far as on the grounds and then how will we decide and talking about how we decide how We Gather input from our families and most importantly how will We Gather input for

145our students um I've been talking with other districts there are other districts such as Avendale Buckey L uh that have already started flag football programs and talk to them about what did that look like how did you get it off the ground how did you gather information from families and the kids to gauge what did it look like how did you have to take out a season what season did it work best in how long are Seasons uh different things like that yeah let me let me jump in here Stephanie yeah and that that's where we'll look for some input from the board tonight you know uh obviously there's other startup costs like uniforms and and uh we have access to flag football rules and a stien for the coach and and you know those

146kind of things but when when Stephanie talks about the timing of it you know we have we have four seasons of sports and you include flag football in one of those Seasons so does that automatically decrease the participation in another sport for example let's say you add flag football to the season where basketball happens does the the amount of people playing basketball go down because flag football is entered is is offered and so we'll have to cross that bridge with the board to see uh we certainly don't want to kill any sport we want to have the kids to have lots of choices and as well as the aspect of you know looking at co-ed flag football a lot of girls and what are the rules when you have uh girls and boys who want

147to participate in flag football and so I know Dr Mah horns reach out to various districts so um we'd also be interested in input from the board on uh on ways to gather the voice of the families uh you know do we want to run at the same time as baseball do we want to run at the same time as volleyball or basketball um and so you know every time you make a choice there's good consequences and there unintended consequences so I think overall this is going to be a really good thing but there's a lot of consideration so I just wanted to share that with you cuz Stephanie Qui L touched on it m and just lastly um I have been working with Mr Balon he's done the investigation to just ensure and our

148district is covered just like any other sport as far as liability insurance wise so that will not be an issue because he has done that checking as well and there are lots of different things I thought I included and I didn't um there are there are canned curriculums that we can use there are lots of different options for if we want to do a can curriculum if we want to have coaches do because there are coaches who have run football or flag football programs that already have what they can do so there are lots of different options um depending on the district so there's there's just lots of different things but the I think first and foremost we have to gauge the interest and again like Dr Monroe said we don't want to sacrifice any

149other sport to add this sport so that's what's in that's really what's important yeah and I think realistically budget wise we're able to do this I think it's realistic to consider this first year MH where we we do flag football may not be the long-term season where we do it so let's say this year we do it in January and February depending on the board's Direction and what families think next year it may not be January February but if the intention is to try and do it this year it may be out of season if you will until we can kind of come up with a good firm plan because we certainly don't want to create something where parents say well wow you guys put flag football here now we can't fill a volleyball team

150right you know even going down to sixth seventh and eighth so I think all the intentions are good we just want to really slow walk this get the board's input and figure out how to get parent input and students input onto this questions not so much question just a a comment I I agree I think it needs to be slow walk that that was my vision of it to begin with um because not only do we start looking at sacrifices made when we open the sport as far as the other sports we're also talking about money and so uh i' I'd like to know pretty firm cost of what it would cost to run a season and and get that together as well so yeah I think slow walking take a real good look that's

151a great way to do it yeah I think um the same kind of slow walk in it do some surveys especially with those who have participated in sports before um see what the parents thoughts are see what the kids thoughts are see what the officials thoughts are and just kind of go from there um in my mind I was envisioning more of a fall sport um but see see where that might fall um I'm not in favor of co-ed any contact sport I don't think it's fair um and so that's just my opinion and where I stand but uh I would like to see what we can do to get this going I really would like to see this going I have SP spoken with a few individuals in the district um families uh who

152are very excited to hear that this is something we're looking at so I think the interest is there but let's define what that is so thank you any additional comments questions all right thank you move on to item 6.1 consent agenda members I'm going to ask that we pull the Personnel action item and that's 6.3 anything else to be pulled hearing none I'll take a motion uh Mr President I'll make a motion to pull 6.3 and to approve the rest of the consent agenda a second second I have a motion a second hearing no further discussion we'll call for a vote vice president Parks hi board member Kenyon hi board member Bixler hi board member shenon hi I'm also I will show that proof 5 yes Z no members I proof 6.3 uh just there's

153been some additional additions added those are highlighted in yellow I believe it was on your seat at the Das when you arrived um so uh those are um can spoke about by Dr Mahorn if you'd like that but uh there were some additional hires that were made and uh last minute so it's exciting times um mostly all support staff but uh but we got it done so I just wanted to point that out if you hadn't had a chance to review it I'd like to jump in really quick and just say again you pointed it out but all of our classrooms um do have teachers we have one open teaching position it's a halftime uh resource uh teacher position a halftime rainbow halftime Westar and that is our only open teaching position in our district

154right now but all of our classroom positions are filled it's fantastic thank you members any other questions and those are certified teachers correct thank you just a comment great job great job starting off the year and having pretty much everything filled is amazing so thank you for all your hard work and your staff I'm glad that we uh are attracting a lot of people got eyes on Liberty for sure and staff in the building as well the STA it's our principles it's it's everybody it is definitely a team effort yeah I I just wanted to say that thank you member Kenyan and president Todd for for uh pointing that out want to just publicly thank Dr Mahorn her Department our principles who are marketing and on the hunt all summer um to hire the right

155people and it definitely takes a team effort so I appreciate everyone who it's been a hard drive and schools coming in 72 hours the kids are coming but it's it's a good position to be in and talking to superintendent colleagues I feel very grateful that uh that are that we have teacher positions and we're not having to go into a lot of other services that other districts are doing members if if I can just add a little bit more to that it's it's been so exciting these last couple days talking to some of our new hirers um kind of focused on that when you saw a new face and they're so excited to be a part of us they they chose us which is a true Testament to our staff um it's it's them who

156deserve the recognition and and uh they're very excited there's sometimes where you find a new person and they came for a paycheck I don't think that's the case with the people that we've hired every new hire I met was so excited and uh and a lot of them have been in the area we heard comments we've been watching what's going on in your District we're excited um and it was also kind of relieving just to know that it wasn't just the 4day it was other substance in their decision to to come here um so again can't thank all of you enough and I know every single person in the district has been working for that so citing times otherwise I'll no further comment we'll take a motion uh motion to approve the personal action items

157I'll second I have a motion in a second if there's no further discussion I'll call the vote vice president Parks I board member Kenyon I board member Bixler hi board member Shion hi I'm also I would show that proov five yes zero no next up will be item 7.1 third read and approval of policy regulation GBE f-r staff use of digital communication and electronic devices Mr President I have one public speaker Kelly Zimmerman okay we'll take one speaker just a reminder you have three minutes it should be on topic of just 7.1 no personal tax and the board most likely is not legally allowed to comment on any of your statements under the state open meeting law and the timer will start when you start good evening um I wanted to talk about the new

158social media policy I know this is the third read um but I think it's important to note and make public comment about it um you know the reason I haven't made public comment about it prior to the third read is that this policy was done in the summer when staff members and families are on vacation and doing their own things and so I think it's very interesting that this board chose to bring about this policy in the summer not really giving staff and families and community members time to comment about a very significant change that you're making um I think that uh you know it's also very coincidential that this policy is being done right before an election when four board members are up for reelection and there are more people running in this election

159for this board than probably ever before and and I think this board is nervous frankly because why are you trying to silence staff members I think the new social social media policies are in an effort to scare staff into not speaking publicly about the election and concerns that are widespread across this District about the current direction of the that the board is taking speaking up is a key part of democracy so important that the founding fathers made the freedom of speech the in the First Amendment or the bill of rights as a human you have the right to speak and use your voice I think these policies really come into question and whether they infringe on staff's First Amendment right to freedom of speech even so in the policy it says it's not meant to

160infringe well if it's not meant to then why does it appear that way what people do say post on their own time on their own devices on their own social media is their right and this board should focus more on making decisions that have students best interest in mind and then they wouldn't have to worry about what staff is saying about them on social media Dr Mahorn do you want to further present any information on this Yep this is the third read and the main point of the third read was just the addition of adding um phones because our phones are digital now so that was the the main difference why and we went to a third read and our legal has also read over and approved members any discussion just real quick um as

161was mentioned this is our third read there's been plenty of time for people to look at this and and uh you know let their board know as your representatives and uh this is our third read I'm glad to see this language in here especially the new language we've added um and so I just wanted to make that known thank you m board member Kenyan I uh too would agree our our third read um often times policies don't work long before they come to a read uh just like a law they typically start months before anything uh comes to be read um I want to be very clear to all staff this is absolutely not an tend to silence anybody what this does is it protects our district and maintains professionalism um I had a conversation

162today with Miss Camp who also said as government employees we public servants we need to always be looking at how we're acting how we're behaving and what we're doing to represent our organization the same thing is very much true in in any job uh that's that's what this policy is is set for more to remind people um it is clear that we're looking for input from teachers from staff there's a reason that I walk Three campuses this week uh there were probably some could argue better things to do I don't personally think there was uh it was designed to hear them I met today with stff at two campuses heard them out loud and clear on on a mad of different topics so again um I think this policy strengthens our professionalism It is Well

163written it's been looked at by legal if legal thought that there was any attempt to silence I'm I'm quite sure they would raise a flag on that and uh and steer us away from that I I can't imagine anybody not doing it so um I do like this policy it's in line with many many other government organizations that are all being looked at this um there are a number of incidents that are going around the country on social media and the second you mention your employment with a government entity the courts are now finding that that is no longer private it now becomes public record so this is more of an attempt to protect staff to keep their personal Pages personal and to keep their um their public comments available to make it happen but

164to protect and don't know if you people realize what happens when a hard drive gets seized on a public records request but it's not a very fun event um and and again I don't know that everybody realizes where the law has changed um you know just at our law conference last year there was discussion that emojis are now considered forms of communication uh which they weren't in the past but they at the legal conference last year were very clear to tell board members don't put an emoji on somebody else's Facebook page because you're now communicating with them um starting to see the courts recognize um I don't even know what you call it cuz I don't so much do it but uh what the kids do when they short text and they use three letters

165to mean something much different um it used to be uninterpreted nobody knew what that meant now they know what it means and they're using that in cases so um this was really a recommendation from from many um outside organizations as well that this was a protection for the district and I uh I support this uh but again I want to drive home the fact and I will ask staff to make sure that they communicate to all employees quickly this absolutely is not any attempt to silence staff as long as I serve on this board I will always be an advocate to hear from the staff there should never be any reprimanding for a staff who professionally comes forward and expresses a concern expresses something positive expresses something neutral it is absolutely not designed for that

166and that's why it's set in here specifically it's not intended to infringe on rights to communicate so I don't know how anybody can argue with the writing when it specifically says that it's clear it's clear as can be so if that's not clear enough maybe an ie Doctor Is In in order but otherwise um I think this is much needed and we'll continue to protect our staff and give them the ability to properly communicate with with all levels of of government here in the district any other comments we'll hear them otherwise we can call for the motion take a motion um Mr President I make a motion to approve policy regulation GBE f-r staff use of digital Communications and electronic devices do I have a second second right I have a motion a second is

167any further discussion please speak up otherwise we'll go for the vote and call vice president Parks I board member Kenyan hi board member Bixler hi board member cion I I'm also I will show that approved unanimous 5 yes Zer no next on our docket is 7.2 first read and discussion of policies I G and IG g d Dr Monroe president Todd vice president Parks members of the board just want to remind you this is a first read and a review of the following policies that I'd like to step the board through a little bit there's no vote needed tonight but comment and discussion and review from from the board and potentially brought back at a future board me meeting for a second read and approval policy a IGA has to do with curriculum development so

168as you can see the uh should be the um uh the other attachment uh the red is added language and anything that's struck through would be to remove from the policy as the board knows what the revision in IGA does and lays out why it's important for the board to consider is it it lays out a little more when you're adopting or developing a curriculum for an area in Liberty what should take take place as far as parental involvement um the committee looking at multiple multiple textbooks the uh in materials the idea of piloting materials uh even uh even before it's considered by the board as well as kind of digital online considerations and so this policy by adding this language it it adds a little more to the steps if you will and kind

169of clarifies uh what the direction would be when staff would bring forth curriculum materials for the board to consider and parental involvement and how that goes about under the open meeting law so that is IGA and let me speak to igd and then I can take any any questions potentially the board may have igd um also deals with curriculum in particular the the spots that have been added deals with um instruction that should not happen in a school district and so a lot of school districts will have uh uh areas in this that says this type of instruction shouldn't happen and so uh as you can see on letter A it says critical race Theory so that change would basically say that critical race theory is not taught is not considered in the Liberty Elementary

170School District B promote Equity of outcome over equality of opportunity so let me explain that to you that means that it wouldn't be taught in the Liberty Elementary School District this idea of in a community or in an economy every should everyone should have the same exact material wealth or income what it does say is that the American dream is alive and that everyone has opportunity everybody has opportunity to make these gains so that's kind of what B says um C talks about racist theories that we certainly don't want to be involved in teaching anything that could be acknowledged as a racist Theory so and it kind of tells you he Concepts that any one race has special rights and privileges over any others for any reason uh D is promote a victimhood mentality so

171there's kind of a definition there um about what a victimhood mentality is and then if you keep scrolling down you'll see uh social emotional learning I wanted to touch on that a little bit because there's some clarifying language that I know Dr Mahorn and our counselors have worked on exactly what social emotional learning is and what it isn't and there's continued work that we will do however if you look at the policy language this does not include things like emotional stability like a student who needs to time out and go and talk to the the to the counselor about you know timing themselves out and taking a deep breath and and getting them elves together character education okay we know about like the six pillars of character education that um you know the Arizona Department

172of Education puts forth trust uh and respect or responsibility and then the last part of that um social emotional learning is um recently the board has identified core values in our strategic plan so these would not be included as quote unquote social emotional learning but classroom lessons that have to deal with respect Integrity accountability High stand standards and and you know being student centered and finally F would be we would not teach anything that promotes a political ideology um our teachers don't campaign they don't they don't tell the kids which party to join or who to vote for obviously as public education we're nonpartisan and so the changes to ig would elaborate on some of those areas that would be prohibited instruction in our district so I appreciate you listen to listening to me I'll

173answer any questions but again this is just a first read for the board excuse me Members I'll start down at the end vice president Parks you have any questions or comments not at this point board member Kenyan um looking over these quite intensively over the last you know period of time that I've had this available to me I'm very pleased to see a lot of this in here I know that a lot of what concerns I've had over the you know last Almost two years have been on the board but previous to that of parents who don't send their kids to our Public Schools is they don't trust them and a lot of that trust is coming from some of these um ideas that we have here and letting the public know that you know

174we don't have curriculum that teaches on you know uh racism or you know CRT or whatever that we have here that's going to give them hopefully allow them to send their kids back to our Public School SCH a lot of these families are sending them to the our competition the charter schools private schools because of these issues so I do hope that implementing this letting the public know that this is a stance um we're taking because we're we're in this for the kids we're in this for the education seeing academic Excellence um a lot of these things that we've seen in the past just kind of take up the time of educating on Reading Writing arithmetic um and so seeing the focus being driven more to the base I think is really really going to

175help our children succeed in the future so I'm very proud to see this board member Bixler yeah I worry a lot about some of this that's in here um specific example would be critical race Theory no one teaches critical race Theory critical race theory is a theory at a higher level Academia it's a discussion by history teachers at the college and university level when I was uh first learning to teach history we had the uh Jackson's theory of um of Frontiers there's always theories in history you don't teach them uh so I worry that some of this terminology is being used here is inflammatory and it's inflammatory because it's been promoted to something that it's not and so I'm I'm worried that there are some things in here that will be used that way if

176we can be solid and really understand what these words mean then sure there's no problem with it but I just foresee a whole bunch of attacks occurring because of it so I'm I'm worried about this I think there's some terminology in here that that is not helpful to our kids board member s yeah my comment's actually about the some of the other the what is this one IG uh I'm glad to see in there a lot of the the points in there have the community involved that we want parents to buy in and get the approval before we just make a decision up here and what it's not I mean what I don't see in here is when we go to um kind of choose one is there anything how the teachers what are the

177teachers say like when when is where in this process is their input going to come in yeah the we can certainly work that into the language teachers are part of the Committees that Mrs Camp has worked with in the past and parents if anything the struggle has been to find that parental voice and get people involved and so I and again to even to member Bixler if you guys have recommendations on wording we can certainly go back and change things and include things but uh but yeah that's we can bring out the teachers a little more if needs be in there but they're usually the main part because a lot of times at our own fault it's just hard to get parents to really engage and come in and review those materials and and uh

178but we're committed to making sure that we do and that parents play a majority role you know and that the teachers are present there as well Mr President can I have the floor you may um I thought I'd just add something the big part of this that had to do with the piloting is the teacher feedback that's where we get the feedback directly from the teachers about the diff the different programs and how they feel about it so we're actually putting a lot more a lot more emphasis on parents and teachers through this process so we're getting as a board a broader and a much more robust feedback um so that that was kind of the intention of am I right having the the yeah then there's pilot language and again I've been here a

179year and two or three months and Mrs Camp can speak more specifically to this but this idea of piloting is a powerful one whether you have a teacher pilot it for you know not just a week or a month but like a semester and then you have a really good valued you know opinion and then parents have time with that too so you'll notice that there is that piloting language I think at the bottom of e that is in there it's kind of that last line or two so I um just really quick I I would concur we always want teachers involved um in the process and as we look at some other topics down the road we were building a matrix on some discipline and I guess sometimes you look at something if you've

180got the silver and the gold and the Platinum plan Silver List out some stuff and then gold says everything that silver had plus these and I said instead of doing it that way let's spell it out so I don't think it hurts us at all and I think it makes it more positive just make sure we specify in here that teachers are involved in this process as well I think what is really important at the end of the day is we are accountable to the taxpayer within our district you're not accountable to the taxpayer in daart Buckeye Riverside California Phoenix it's here and so we need to have the accountability to that person that is ultimately the one person who is who is looking uh who funds us who has the ultimate say with that

181said I think every taxpayer in our district has Trust of our teachers uh I know as a board we absolutely have trust in the teachers we have single-handedly voted for every single contract that's been issued and approved it if we didn't have that trust we wouldn't be doing that so hearing them is important we have said that for as long as I've been on this board um we go to Great Links I believe to hear that we will go I you know I've had a couple principls who have called me and asked me to come speak with their staff and those principles I'm 100% confident can say I made time quickly uh within that week I think within about 48 hours to get up to meet with their staff to talk about any questions or

182concerns they had so we will continue to do that and I know every other board member would do the same uh so uh I think it just is always good to call it out so that there's no misinterpretation Miss Camp was talking a couple days ago I'm sorry I don't mean to pick on you I think you said something about complete read was that what you said and uh what was the phrase close reading close reading reading all the details and sometimes we see the first thing that we might misinterpret and we don't like and we blow it up and we're done with it and the next sentence says congratulations if you made it this far you get a million dollars a year they never make it that far because they saw something else that

183said they got to run a mile or they got to do two miles and and they stop so if we put it in there it doesn't hurt anything uh otherwise I like the policy uh as is and and um you know if something isn't being taught then having it in there is a preventative as a as a language to say it's not there it it it has no effect if it's already not being taught then it doesn't it doesn't really matter so I would finish my comments with that all right members next up is item 7.3 perhaps our most favorite topic of the year I say that in just quasm resolution for state aid recalculation member memo Mr Balden president Todd vice president Parks members of the board uh this is just a followup from

184our last board meeting regarding the Quasi Meyer lawsuit uh we requested a memo from the county stating that the liability resulting from the lawsuit is no fault of our own um so the county provided us with M MMO and it's attached for your approval uh once approved we can upload this Mumble to our website for the public to see um also we're going to be adding a description in our district newsletter um it's recommended that you approve the quasim Meer resolution for State 8 greo memo I'll take any questions members any questions hearing none take a motion motion to approve approve the quasm resolution for state aid recalculation memo second all right there's no discussion we'll call for the vote vice president Parks hi board member Kenyan hi board member Bixler hi board member shenon

185I I'm also I will show that approv five yes Zer no next item is 7.4 resolution related at low math proficiency I think we have some public comments yeah Mr President we have five uh first one is Maria Goins hello thank you for allowing me to speak um I got my handy danding notes here okay so hello my name is Maria gugan and um this will be my third year teaching at okay thank you okay hello my name I'm not going to start um let me stop you for one second we started the timer and she had some counsel let's just reset the timer to give her her full three minutes thank you it'll start when you start oh okay um hello my name is Maria gugin and this will be my third year teaching

186for the Liberty um 25 School District specifically I'm at L breus Academy um I do appreciate this opportunity to come before you and speak on the subject of our math curriculum um known um as the openup curriculum resources in my first year of teaching math at LBA um a math curriculum was not provided for teachers um I also had no experience in teaching math using the ledc method at the end of the year my proficiency scores were at 36% according to asaa in my second year of teaching math we implemented the open up resources to teach math um this curriculum coupled with training better prepared me I believe better prepared me to execute lessons that were um engaging to the students and they were able to score higher than the previous year in contrast um

187at the end of my second year proficiency scores went from 59% to 71% as a school according to asaa with this data we can see that utilizing openup resources worked for me in increasing our math scores it is my personal belief that um new and experienced teachers both alike need time and they need the practice to elevate their um craft in closing I humbly ask that we give all teachers the opportunity to elevate Elevate their craft by giving them more time to delve into any new curriculum we don't want to change that so quickly before we really have a chance to really cuz we're all really good teachers I believe that um so thank you again for the opportunity to speak before you and if you have any further questions you know we're all open

188up for that discussion thank you so much okay our next speaker Mr our next uh speaker is Cecilia Gambia Lopez good evening I've been teaching for 25 years 14 of those years have been here at Liberty um Elementary School District um I used open up last year and I had 86% proficiency on the state assessment um I have been through five curriculum changes in my career here at Liberty and particularly for math and proficiency increases uh your first year of implementation it never increases it takes time uh teachers have to learn how to use the curriculum how to make changes based on the standards and also the fact that we implemented it in a for school day I could see why the scores dropped for um our average uh the openup curriculum should be given

189more time to show its Effectiveness this Proclamation is causing stress in teach taking away the focus in growing proficiency if you want higher levels research says to put money into professional development in order to grow teachers knowledge teachers need to feel supported in order to perform at high levels thank you for your time and consideration uh the next speaker is Pauline Pell p this is going to be my 15th year teaching I grew up in the Isaac School District in Phoenix and was the youngest of 11 siblings but decided to become an educator because it was our teachers who believed in us and provided us with a great education therefore I strive to provide my students with a high level of education so that they have the opportunity to succeed in college like I did

190over the last 13 years in the district I have participated in math 2020 trainings Ryan Kagel probably solving PDS and Melissa Hon's trainings trainings to help prepare me to teach at high levels this past year I had 90% of my students score proficient or distinguished on their math asaa and 71% of the third grade third graders at LBA scored proficient or distinguished I owe it to the trainings that were offered by our district those are the highest scores I've ever had but I believe one of the main reasons it occurred it was due to open up as a curriculum as it starts at a low ceiling and goes High I am here to ask you today where is there a proposal for a change in the curriculum in the first year we taught engageed New

191York in Liberty we didn't finish the whole curriculum before testing or the school year teachers needed time to adjust the new curriculum and revise the curriculum as not one curriculum curriculum aligns to all of the Arizona State Standards last year we also TR transitioned to our 4-day work week I didn't teach all all the standards before testing like previous years this so this year I'm going to use our station time to use some of the centers provided by openup to help with pacing I find myself asking what can we do to improve our district scores because at the end of the day we want all students to learn at high levels not just mine Amy cubbins from West Westar and I will be providing our teachers with the fast 5pd so that teachers know how

192to assess and monitor student progress at LBA we will now plan across grade level so that we can discuss teaching strategies that are working the ones that we need to adjust and discuss gaps we are noticing in order to help our students achieve academic success I just ask that you give us an opportunity to adjust our pacing guides curriculum and assessing without the Ultima of of getting rid of open up I ask that you believe in us just like my elementary teachers did when I was a kid thank you uh the next speaker is Kelly Zimmerman as I looked over the resolution related to low math proficiency written by board member Parks a couple of things set out to me number one the current math curriculum which was adopted in May of 2023 as stated

193in his resolution was AB approved by the current board leadership one that is now questioning it so I find it confusing that they are fighting against the curriculum that they approve themselves just over a year ago frankly I believe it is irresponsible of this board to approve a curriculum which is a huge undertaking for the district which includes both a financial commitment as well as a time commitment to implement it with Fidelity and just and then just to threaten to take it away a year later it is unfair to teachers as they work to learn a new curriculum which includes new resources pacing a lot of the things that those teachers just um laid out for you and force them to learn a new one two years later they cannot become experts and teach to

194the best of their ability if this board continues to change the curriculum on them also at the end of the resolution it states that unless significant Improvement is shown this year the current curriculum must be removed when of the most important parts of setting a goal is that it must be attainable which we talked about earlier in the study session and of course it must be measurable in order to determine whether the goal has been met what does significant Improvement mean and who determines what significant Improvement is I would highly encourage this board to make to make a sustainable and attainable and most importantly a measurable goal not just make lofty statements which does not help measure success or failure uh the next speaker is Jean Herman good evening U my name is Jean Herman

195uh Dr Monroe president Todd and board um I hope your summer was what restful but I don't think it was with all this work you've been doing doing so I don't think you got a whole lot done um it has been very exciting um not only to hear that the teaching positions have been filled but I also worked um at Westar uh for the um polling um uh the last few days and uh a week before that I met a lot of super excited teachers and super excited students and a lot of people that came into the polls uh brought their I met a lot of second and fourth graders which was really a lot of fun I don't know who was more excited the teachers or the kids so um they are excited to

196start their year and it was really fun to see that um I know that uh the excitement of that upcoming year is is just um uh it just renews everything so I was really excited to see that um I've heard the um the teachers speak about the math curriculum and I think the success of that program is because the teachers are so awesome and I think they would probably grasp anything and really do a good job um teaching it but if a a program is failing overall I think um it's wonderful that you're keeping such a close watch on everything and that if it is not performing why would you keep it so I'm not sure about that but they are all awesome at their jobs and uh anything you put before them I'm sure

197would be absorbed but if if you find it's it's not working then why waste time and and money and energy and um uh not get rid of it so the emphasis should be back on which you have in a lot of the the documents that you've put out uh getting back to basic education math history and science again and that's what um I'm dating myself but that's what we all grew up on and getting back to kind of basic things and throwing out things that don't work uh as part of that growth process as well so I fully support the board in any decision they make as as far as curriculum and uh being at the gate and I feel like you have really been at the gate watching over what is important for our

198students and they are our most valuable resource and uh the teachers also you know um to fill all of those slots to fill all of those positions is just a testimony to uh what a wonderful uh place it is to work and that their voices are heard and their concerns are addressed and that you uh move forward in that direction it's been such a delight to listen to how things are progressing and how things are moving forward so I think um you know it's always a struggle everything's a struggle we just uh live in that type of world so uh we're just going to um pray for everybody in the upcoming year pray for the teachers the students The Faculty all of you um on the board and uh thank you there's no more public

199comment Mr President members I'll start at the end Mr Parks this was your agenda item uh you have any comments for this yeah I just want to start by this this was a long process process this didn't happen overnight I've spent the year in classrooms I've spent the year uh talking to teachers um but probably the biggest thing in the time I've spent is talking to our parents our constituents you know it's it's one thing to have a few classrooms that are doing fairly well in the math program the problem is is 90% of our classrooms are failing terribly um one of the biggest issues is is you know the question is if it takes 2 three years to bring teachers up to speed what parent what what chance do parents have to be brought

200up to speed they can't help their children at home and that's a big barrier it drives a wedge between the parents and their their kids and I can't sit back and watch this continue to happen our number one job here as a board is is curriculum and education uh the data does not lie we continue to go down a path that's not going well we you know I I heard some good news in here but I have the data sheets it's not good um if you look at the resolution it gives us an opportunity over the year to take a look at some other programs and those programs will be put into piloted into classrooms for teachers to review and approve and give feedback so and then also gives us the opportunity and the extra

201time this year to be able to look at what proficiencies are doing look if proficiencies are coming up 10 15 20% we may take another look at this I need a plan B this Board needs a plan B so we don't we we don't jeopardize these kids education another year so we're this is the difference between being proactive and reactive we're you know the New Direction the school we're going to be proactive we're going to look ahead we're going to have B we're going to have things put in order so if something isn't working we have something in hand that we can replace it with so that's why this resolution was put together board member keny yeah looking at these looking at the scores I have in front of me um Los bcus and Westar

202are by far in our district outperforming from what I see in the data um however as a district as a whole our our math scores are not good our our proficiency is not good and we do have some comparative data with districts around us and they're not far off from what we are but that doesn't mean we should settle for met Archy I mean Lichfield is doing much better than us and they're still an F in my book for their proficiencies so that means not just our district but as a state we really should be looking at what can we do to help our kids succeed get them the curriculum get them the instruction get the parents involved there's many times my kids come back and they show me their homework and I don't know

203how to do the math they're doing because they're taught a completely different way than I was taught and so I I commend the teachers who are getting 90% proficiency that is wonderful um great teaching great staff however that's an anomaly in the district it's very very low and so uh that's something that we just need to look at and as vice president Park said having a plan B is not a bad option so this gives us the opportunity to evaluate this and look at this so I'm I'm on board with this resolution board member Bixler thank you I do have a couple questions first um as I understand this and Miss Camp I'm sorry I'm going to kind of on you here a little bit um this adoption was uh uh recommended To Us by

204a committee is that correct could you kind of tell us who made up that committee to to make this recommendation uh sure we had approximately 40 teachers um on the committee uh last year um we did have a couple of parents um also on the committee okay and as you look through this and I know there were multiple things different vendors looked at as far as the curriculum did any of them address every single uh Arizona standard in math um I think we had a total of five programs that we started with the committee started with five they narrowed it down to two um of the five I I will say that Arizona state standards are very wild wild west um and I I will say that to anyone um we we don't have the

205adopted Common Core um we've actually changed those standards um slightly in the state of Arizona for um for mathematics and so no not all of them would have covered all of the standards in in complete complexity right which is why we use supplemental materials right and that that's pretty common unless you're in Texas or California where the state actually owns the textbook textbook manufacturers not going to write uh uh textbook for our standard they're going to go California and Texas so I understand that that makes sense and that that's consistent with all other subject areas as well so as you mentioned it's supplemental materials brought in so one of the the comments made by this resolution is not doing a foundation skills my understanding of this curriculum is wasn't set up to the foundation skills

206none of them do do all the standards so my understanding of this one is that it allows for that extension the the standards do call for higher level thinking skills it's not uh can I add and subtract it's higher level can you think can you create can you evaluate and that's a life skill uh I had this conversation with the math department chair was when I was in charge of instruction and curriculum up in Prescot and I had to really tell them that life is not an equation no one is going to ask you to sit down and solve a quadratic equation what they're going to ask you to do is solve a problem and that requires critical thinking it doesn't require the ability to know that 2 + 4 is six or that when

207you add four to some unknown number it's six that's still an abstract idea the curriculums as I understand it are set up to be appropriate for the developmental age of the students correct that is correct it does build from concrete to abstract correct so it accounts for the fact that they are developmentally not ready for the more abstract skills and they teach towards that that's what it does so to say that it doesn't have foundational skills that's not true you can't do the higher level thinking skills without the foundation skills we do teach that it just may not be in this curriculum or this vendor now actually the speakers did say what I was wondering my experien is that it takes some startup time to get comfortable with and uh fluent with the delivery of

208a new U curriculum a new Adoption and I've heard it's anywhere from 3 to 5 years I think it's ridiculous to expect us in a year to get this in place and running properly yes we're going to make it better and better every year I cannot support this resolution this this is just complete wrong I don't think it's right um I can't support it board member S I have a couple things um I was want to clarify VI vice president far Sarah this resolution just saying we're going to look right uh and if if we can't find something better that the staff doesn't think's better that the teachers don't think's better that the this Committee of parents we're saying we don't think better doesn't mean we have to move forward with changing it correct okay

209and then so that's what I'm understanding of this and I also have some questions about number or number five about what significant growth was going to mean uh that kind of hung up with me so I understand that um and to the teachers that come and spoke to came and spoke tonight thank you very much and I think it just shows how great teachers you are uh because any subject is going to be difficult and really is the teachers and how they present it to their children or to the students I'm sorry um I'm not going to pretend to be teacher and know what you guys go through on on a daily basis trying to teach these uh our kids you know how how to know this and I know change is scary at the

210same time and and learning something new is difficult and not to take anything away from you so don't take it this way but we ask our students to learn something new every year also so I think we need to look at that and um but I think it really comes back down to just cuz we're signing this resolution doesn't mean we have to go forward with changing the curriculum it's just saying we're going to look if there's not something better out there if the test scores do increase then there's no reason it's not saying we are going to change it is that correct thank you members I appreciate all your thoughtful comments um I too recognize we have some success in in certain areas um but it seems like the successes first of all let

211me start by saying experiments belong in the science classroom and we've been doing experiments with our students at this district for far too long we did Eureka Math for a while it's going to get there it's going to get there never got there um we've been hearing about some other ideas it's going to get there it's going to get there it hasn't got there going to take a bold move that I didn't want to do but I'm going to share some proficiency I'm going to ask everybody in this audience ask every board member if these are the numbers you want to take hire your cardiologist that has this proficiency rate third grade blue Horizons 29% of the kids are proficient in math stray a mountain an a-rated school or at least was 36% proficiency Freedom

212Elementary School 6% proficiency lost priest's third grade this is one grade only 70% Liberty 15% Rainbow Valley nine Westar 71 District ravage 38% anybody wants to come to this Podium and tell me they'll go to a Cardiologist has a 38% proficiency rate let's hear it we'll move on to the next grade level fourth grade blue Horizons 20% stray Mountain 55 Freedom Elementary 15 Los brices 51 Liberty 14 Rainbow Valley 13 Westar 37 District average 30% still not see anybody at that Podium looking for a cardiologist with that kind of review fifth grade blue Horizons 21% Australia Mountain 57 Freedom six Los brius 31 Liberty 16 Rainbow Valley 6 Westar 35 District average 25 sixth grade blue Horizons 11 stray Mountain 27 Freedom six Los pra 17 Liberty 19 Rainbow Valley three three Westar 30 District

213average 177% still nobody at that Podium 7th grade blue Horizons 8% stray Mountain 52 Freedom Elementary 14 Los prus 31 Liberty Elementary 41 Rainbow Valley 11 Westar 30 District average 24 I'm still not seeing anybody there 8th grade blue Horizon's 11 Str Mountain 32 Freedom Elementary 23 Los brices 15 Liberty Elementary 45 Rainbow Valley 10 Westar 52 District average of 25 ladies and gentlemen the numbers don't line up and we can no longer continue to experiment with our kids because if it takes 5 years to get them up to par in the new program we've lost them by that point they're moving on to sixth grade maybe seventh grade maybe they started here and we started this in their second grade and now they're out of the school and we failed them the entire time

214we have people here tonight who are campaigning on hold on to this because this is acceptable we hear all the time well compare us to the other districts I don't know somebody lives next to the prison they got a bunch of felony neighbors so should we all go live next to the prison neighbors pool is green come swim in mine it's green it's not acceptable to compare ourselves to neighboring districts that are as bad or worse there's a few anomalies in here but overall if this is working it should be working across the board and we're struggling with this and to vice president Park's point we hear time and time again from the parents I can't help my students I don't understand this they're not able to help we've got to do something to Upright

215the ship and bring the numbers to a percentage that we would feel comfortable with our cardiologist success rate of surgery that's just the bottom line I spoke last night or yesterday to the teachers and I said it's about proficiency it's about success it's the same mission criticality that the Blue Angels have if we fly into the ground we all die we're in the ground right here and what we're doing is we're killing kids because we're not setting for success in the future and that's a harsh statement to make but it's a reality when they're moving on to high school and they have numbers like this District average of 8th grade 25% means 75% of our kids are not ready to go so what I would say to the teachers who are concerned about this take

216bold steps and fix this and show us that this program works but what this does is it sends notice to our taxpayers again who we are most accountable to to our parents who are calling us all the time saying there's a problem and to those poor kids that are walking across 8th grade graduation we're going congratulations you you you may have made 25% proficiency um we have to change this and I would ask staff to start having weekly meetings and I mean weekly to hear from all the experts in the district about what it's going to take to move these up the answer is simply not but we're on par with our neighboring districts because again we got a list of doctors that are heading up to the board of medical examiners from practice and

217those are our comparable doctors those aren't the ones we go to we seek out the very best and I'm going to caution everybody that you see a grade oh it's an a grade school well you just heard the percentages we have some a grade schools that I mentioned and the highest district average is uh third grade 38% that's the highest average that's an embarrassment and anybody who can sit in this room and say that this is acceptable at any time in a child's career probably should think about a different career path um we have to make changes and we're not making the change to say we're going to do this but what we're saying is we're going to take a long hard look and thankfully to Dr Monroe who has come in who has ripped

218off some scabs that previous administrations would never be bold enough to do and show us real raw data numbers we're able to see this now as a board and we're able to recognize where all the problems were in the past we get celebrations and you know what some of the teachers who have had great success it's fantastic and I have full belief that you're going to have great success in any curriculum that comes your way because you're going to be that teacher but again when 38% is the best and we hear we hear how great it's working the numbers don't lie and we can't stand wait another 5 years to see what's going to happen four years ago I got on this board there was a program that was being started and everyone said oh

219just give it a few years it's going to be great we're going to see numbers through the roof as I went back and I looked at our goals that teachers and campuses let me rephrase that campuses set for last year and then I saw where their Benchmark where they hit at the end we missed our goals by a long shot because what we're doing is not working and it's just real whether we like it whether we don't you just got to realize that this outfit doesn't look so good on us and we can change it we can spice it up we can Spruce it up we can do whatever we need to do but we need to do it and this board is absolutely dedicated to making sure that this proficiency goes higher now along

220some of the lines of the board memb comments about defining what substantial increase is I think that's fair we've got to give we have to have some deliverables and we need to say what what that growth is what what we expect for it um we took advice from a committee we've taken advice from committees before who have this previous this board and previous boards and we're recognizing it's not working so well so again we've got to do something to be very clear nothing is being decided in this we're simply sending a message that if you like this program and you truly believe it works then show your students you don't have to show us you need to show your students where it is but if you're happy as a teacher graduating a class that's got

221a 25% proficiency rate or let's let's talk about the 6% the 3% that's that's scary and I don't know how you go to a taxpayer and ask them for a bond I don't know how you ask them for an override I don't know how you ask them for a paycheck a single paycheck I I couldn't even ask them for a free ride to the unemployment line so we've got to make some changes as a district as a whole this is not just on the teachers this is not just on Administration as I look back and I see these kind of numbers for the first time ever I want to just ask what the heck has been going on for years in this District where after all the time certain leaders have been in a position

222this is the best it is and nobody's come to the board and said help us we're screaming for help because we've got 3% proficiency sixth grade as a whole in this district is 177% 177% is proficient we got to do better and that's all this Proclamation as I read it and and vice president Park put this together but as I read it that's what this is saying and I'm I'm comtable with saying I'm not going to stand by these numbers and I've known about these numbers I didn't really want to share them too openly because it's not a proud moment but as an elected official transparency is critical and owning this is critical and we've done the right steps to get the right people in on board this campus or on board this District to

223start looking at the truth of what's really happening president I would like would be to say I think we need to clarify uh some of the substantial growth and and what that is because that could be that could be different for everybody um I will say there's no room but up from these numbers so um it would be good Mr President you had made a comment that I would like to address right yes you had said that the uh uh the objection to this resolution was a campaigning issue and I I don't agree with that not I don't I am not campaigning on my my uh my response to this I believe we should really trust not s you gave me you gave I did but I'm going to correct you and I'm going to

224stop you from that your floor has been taken away you've done this before why why don't you let me your floor is done your floor is done it's not a campaign on you it's anybody that's campaigning to keep this along why why you not doing that because your thought is not in line with my comment well what you said you can go back and look at you said people are campaigning on and people aren't camp on this I just don't agree with that's enough I believe that you Mr President 7.4 was an action item sorry 7.4 is an action item my apologies all right um Mr President I'll make a motion I believe we should trust our staff and go with this adoption go with your point of order we're on we're at a point

225where we're ready to make a motion we are 7.4 we'll take the motion motion to approve the resolution related to low math proficiency do I have a second I will second what's your you can ask your question uh Mr President uh just a question how do I say we need to change that wording for number five before we go to a motion you can offer a Amendment we will then take a vote to approve the amendment and then we will take a vote to approve the motion I offer amendment to look I guess look at number five to readwrite to see what the substantial growth means before we uh take a vote to adopt it as it is is that good procedurally you to amend it uh I'll amend it I'll amend my motion to

226approve the resolation related to low math proficiency with at least a 20% Improvement across the board okay Mr Dangerfield are you okay with that Amendment okay all right so we have a motion to approve item 7.4 with the modification to item five which would signify that significant growth uh let's look at this specifically significant growth is defined as a 20% increase across the board so president Todd and and Clyde just some clarification so is that just an inclusion of like some parentheses there after significant growth that says 20% is that how you're reading that Clyde where it says unless significant growth do we put parentheses like minimum of 20% to match with that on number on number V on number five I I have a question also you're saying growth of 20% or we're say

227are you saying proficiency Mr Parks can you clarify what your motion is uh motion to approve resolution related to low math proficiency with a proficiency increase of 20% okay and you're looking at that per School per grade or per per per District average per per School average okay Mr Dangerfield are you comfortable with that language I am yeah okay so I have proficiency increase of 20% per School average so to clarify for a school that's currently at 6% well we don't really have the school averages completely on here on this sheet that I was given so I can't really specify that um so we would have yeah we would just have to have the school well we would have to have school average so we' have to we have that Miss Camp can you share

228that with us yes I can okay please do just let me know when you're ready we're ready uh Blue Horizon School average 17 australa School average 4 3 Freedom School average 12 Los brices School average 36 Liberty school average 24 Rainbow Valley School average eight Westar School average 42 okay so we need to see a 20% grow growth on top of each of those numbers is that is that right yeah and if I may add something one of the reasons that I left that open was because I thought it would be a better idea that the board would evaluate it and make a decision at that point to look at the growth because they're going to be different at schools I was having a very hard time coming up with a number right so if

229you had one school that saw 25% and another one 10 that would be substantial for the different schools that's why I left it open you know kind of to board getting together and making a judgment call on it he members we have a motion with the amendment the amended motion of 20% growth we have a second on that motion or a second on it I I'm just going to check the motion again you are saying 20% growth no proficiency 20% be yeah they've got to grow their proficiency by 20% okay we have a motion the amended motion from the original the original motion made by the original motion or vice president parks to do it with the 20% proficiency increase across campuses we can take a second and then Advance this or we can let

230the amendment die and go back to the original the original motion without a second the amendment will die we will go back to the original motion I got a question if it's all right you so you well actually we got to have a second before we can discuss it last call for a second on the amended motion hearing none we'll hear that the we will say that the amendment died we're back to the original motion which is to approve uh to approve the proclamation as written and presented to the board we have a motion we have a second we can discuss and then if need be amendment can be offered I ask a question no you you may so if we accept this as it is are we can we go and look at the

231what growth in uh proficiency increased means at a later time and change it or are we stuck and not being able to put a percentage on this what I as I understand in vice president Parks you can jump in if you need to I think with his open with the more open approach approach to just saying significant growth in a year we can look at the numbers and determine based off of any variables we see if that's enough growth to continue or to look at something different understood if we set it specifically back to where the amendment was which we'd have to bring that back up then we'd be hard pressed right at that at that 20 if I may you may um just doing the numbers if we were set a percentage right now

232looking at the numbers some schools would have to grow you know I know we're going by percentage but like Rainbow Valley their average is eight if that went up to nine that would meet their percentage right so that's that's kind of he's looking for for proficiency so he wants to see that eight go to a 28 yeah go up okay I gotta I got you I'm still I'm still rather it be open right now just to see what this year brings and we readdress this and look at it as as we go through the year so I'm okay with leaving it open-ended and if I could make a point uh legally this is a resolution of the board you can amend this resolution anytime the board wants to and has a majority to amend it

233right y okay okay thank you all right memb so we have a motion we have a second on the floor to approve Proclamation or the resolution sorry as written and presented to the board if there's no further discussion we'll take a vote vice president Parks I board member Kenyan I board member Bixler Nate board member shinion hi I'm also an I we will show that proof four yes one no item 7.5 Liberty Elementary School District number 25 customer service standards Dr Monroe president Todd uh vice president Parks members of the board get my bearings here uh last uh last spring classified support staff some of some of our certified staff attended three-hour customer service training that focused on creating a welcome environment using a customer focused approach for all our school front office staff as

234well as our departments um throughout lab Elementary School District it was a it was a good training we talked about developing customer service standards over the phone uh face to face we talked about First Impressions we talked about responding an email and and what should be the Liberty Way and what should be those Liberty standards of being nice of agreeing to disagree or greeting people you know respectfully so what the board has in front of you is a uh uh let's see on the uh is just a graphic a simple graphic that sh illustrates some of that work that I brought to the board tonight nothing revolutionary but when you set a standard you strive to live the standard so as you look at when you answer a phone what a first impression should look

235like and how we should respond in email and face to face and when I talk about customer service standards the one thing that if the board approves us we'll train our staff on is this idea of customers aren't simply our students or our parents there are co-workers and there are departments and this really gets into how what is the standard we want to set for how we treat each other in an organization face to face through email or on the phone so as I mentioned as you look over the graphic here uh you'll see it says like always smile greet people with a smile first impressions answer phones within two rings answer the phone with a smile on your face I firmly believe when someone answers the phone and they have a smile you can

236tell and they're voice and that's just a personal opinion so I thought it was a very productive training I apologize I probably should have brought this to the board uh last month but with the board's approval we'll move forward with our ed services department developing a professional development training uh where we train every single employee of of how we expect our customer service to roll out and being nice if you will a second part of this that I'm very interested in as a superintendent I would tell the board would be the idea of a secret shopper of uh having people email our organization or walk in to register a student or call so that we have some data on how how do people feel when they leave our offices or are we answering the phone

237within one or two readings so we have some measurements so Administration would recommend that the board approve our customer service standards these can always change and be fluid but I'd even like to see these kind of creep in not creep in but be a part of our strategic plan as far as what standard do I hold myself and how I should I should treat others um no one is perfect we all have bad days and those kind of things but overall these would be the standards that we would ask of our employees our students you know so on and so forth so Administration would recommend approval of these standards members do you have any questions not a question per se but um thank you for bringing this up because you know it means a lot

238it means a lot when somebody's touring our schools somebody comes to a a campus event a parent teacher night or just a parent coming to K pick up a sick child at the nurse station right um especially a front office staff you know everybody that's the first Contact for most of the people that come to our schools is right there at the front office um and I've been in somewhere I would rather wait outside than wait in the office because there's something going on uh and that was before being on the board but I I really applaud this I hope that uh this helps us not just present to the community and our parents a great place but inside the district you know staff to staff uh admin to staff who whatever it is and

239uh I I really look forward to seeing how this the training of this the implementation and seeing the the the culture change and Rise so thank you I have a brief uh comment um I want to thank Dr Monroe and the administration for for getting on this um kind of to put the board is working on a five-year strategic plan and part of our strategic plan is culture part of our and how we work as an organization and this is just one of the many steps we're putting in place to make it a better place for everybody to work this isn't just for outside for parents and kids this is how we treat each other inside and the courtesy we give each other and how we how we operate within with each other and I

240think it's a critical part of creating the positive culture we want in this organization so again thank you very much for uh getting this handled for us Dr Monroe any other comments questions I just have one uh on phone says answer phone within two rings we currently have a what I think is a horrible Auto Answer system um um are you proposing which I hope you are that people physically answer the phone with a smile and and be there we have quite a few office staff members larger organizations are able to do it I think we probably can too yeah you know I'll have to get back to that's a good point on our Auto auto dialer system excuse me our auto dialer system of how that would impact that first bullet point so yeah

241I I may have to come back with some different language on that and invest more uh what the two rings means and who's answering as a physical person and I I'm all for getting rid of the auto dial or the auto answer it just is not a professional just doesn't sound good it doesn't it routes around I think we can it's always nicer to talk to a human you hit the wrong button you're off to the wrong place you got to hang up call back so I would encourage us to look at a human being answering the phone just some common skills also I have a question on email respond with acknowledgement of receipt by end of the day or next day at least I think we just need to choose one or the other

242for that um because we're kind of saying well today or tomorrow if you're going to say by next day then let's just say next day um okay I can I can clarify that language you know I would see that if you know somebody gets an email at 3:00 they don't check their email before they leave and then they respond by the next day that's fine but we can just for clarification yeah we can clarify some language we've just seen that before where it's stretched so um so why so why don't you let me work on that wording and I'll bring it back and if there's any others that the board sees I'm open to that President Todd if you don't mind in in regards to that point exactly um getting back to emails one thing

243I when dealing with the state it was I always got the emails talking about work day so 24 hours on a work day 48 Hours on a work day that way we're not expecting them to you know think get an email on Friday night at 8:00 p.m. you know they can respond on Monday I would agree something like that okay thank you I think um Clyde can we approve this with the recommendations we've made and and let Dr Monroe wordss Smith it from there or do we need to put this off because I'd like to get this going before the you could do it either way okay Dr Mon if you're comfortable I'm comfortable with approving this with the suggestions we've made to you and it's it's not changing any content it's just cleaning up

244a I don't think there's any massive changes we're just cleaning up a few things that sir so the the phone answering within two rings the acknowledgement in 24 hours or the next day and then the acknowledgement on a weekend or a weekday yes oh work day right okay yeah I got it yeah we I'll be happy to do that okay and then even the formal signature I think it has the ability to put a formal signature on so they're all standard and the same and they have the right the same it would be nice to have matching on under email make sure to have a formal signature we can standardize that school or whatever make it look nice and professional I can look into that I I I think some of the schools may have

245standard ones and others do not but I don't want to misspeak but I'll look into that okay also with that I don't know if we have an automatic disclaimer on uh public records requests on email but it's probably a good idea to have that as a standard on all of our email through this user shouldn't have to do that it should be automated on the yeah the statement like at the bottom yes okay so I have those three that I mentioned to you I have the um formal signature and also um the disclaimer on the public records that a lot of people have yes right like this this email is only intended for you or please do not reply all that sort of stuff so we don't get any anything in violation but lets people

246know okay yeah I have those five things okay all right members with that uh we can take a motion to approve 7.5 with the suggested uh clarifications Mr President I make a motion that we approve the Liberty Elementary School District number 25 customer service standards with the discussed clarifications second I have a motion a second to approve 7.5 the customer service standards with the suggested modifications if there's no further discussion we'll call for the vote vice president Parks I board member Kenyon I board member pixler hi board member shinion hi I'm also and I will show that approve five yes Zer no item 7.6 resolution related to Title 9 expansion Mr Parks um I brought together this resolution actually it was based on a resolution recently passed by daart School District uh the intention here

247was not to make any changes to our policies having to wrap around Title 9 until a final Court decision has been made do you need to expand on that don't know if any board members need further expansion or not Clyde do you want to suggest anymore um again this is a resolution of the governing board um as an attorney in ethics following legal ethics I can't advise the district to do something that would violate federal law um but uh as a position for the governing board to make through a resolution based on the politics and the confusion that is currently out there even in the courts on this particular issue the board certainly has the authority to make a resolution and uh adopt a resolution regarding this matter Clyde just a question any idea when

248this could play out I mean I've heard six months a year that's a good question I can't I can't even try to answer to that one yeah there's a lot of change and a lot of influx and there's a lot of resistance see what happens my understanding is the courts have currently issued a stay on on the federal government's Title 9 updated regulations correct on the ones there's a stay on those that are in place I mean on those that have objected for those that have listed their objections my understanding is that the Liberty may show up on that list it is on that list okay can I ask for just a clarification um that is because of the moms for Liberty Group suit correct those who are involved or who are members of the

249moms for Liberty Group that is correct those districts have the stay that is correct okay thank you okay members I'll take a motion well before we do that we're discussing this is that correct well you can discuss if you'd like and then we'll take the motion okay so I'm not clear on what you're saying you would like to have a question or statement please go ahead all right the um this is obviously a a political agenda that's going on here um I don't agree with a great deal of what's in here uh I think we should go with what the federal law says I think that's a pretty good idea um it even talks about 240,000 people responding to this and yet this is still how it comes down as far as the executive order

250um there are cultures in this world that don't even address the idea of gender they don't have words for it so when you talk about and here uh uh spec specificity on the uh uh uh the access and the use of the of gender what do you do for those kids that don't even have a culture that has that uh then we talk about uh uh the uh um Christian ethic what about the non-christians in our school they're just so much wrong with this I I I don't know why we're trying to do this I do have a suggestion we have a neighbor that has done a lot of work on this and we ought to look at what they've done I don't think we should even look at this until we look at what

251some other folks are doing I know you talked about daer but tolison has a very proactive stance on this why don't you look at what toison has done in both policy and in their expectations of student Behavior that's a more enlightened way to do this this does not protect the safety privacy and access of all students it protects some of the students but not all I can't support this this I just don't believe this I can't do this any other comments this resolution into my understanding is saying we're keeping Title 9 as is we're not accepting the adoption of the changes that is coming out of the federal government correct so the current protections for those that title 9 touches still remain outside of whatever the the outside of the additions so I just wanted

252to clarify that yeah so member Kenyon it's basically a resolution or a statement by the board against the expansion of Title 9 that's kind of hung up in the courts right now and is being debated with no end in sight and so the board is simply making a stance if if I felt like there was some resolution in the next month or two or we got some clarity cly I'd certainly bring Clyde back and we'd give the board legal advice but this is just the board saying a statement that we're we're not for the expansion until there's a decision or some sort of clarity moving forward on what this is going to mean in the meanwhile we have a presidential election happening and it's been my experience that title 9 swings back and forth every

253election about every six months or year it expands it retracts it expands retracts so a lot of districts are doing this there's i' I've seen that list that one of you mentioned um and there's a lot of school districts and a lot of schools in Arizona so this would be a board resolution saying we are against the expansion and as I mentioned as the superintendent if it ever played out I would bring something to the board to say hey the court in Texas ruled this um or ruled that or ruled that with federal law but right now there's just a lot of confusion and Clarity with what's going on so we would not expand if the board voted this anything we do with Title 9 we would follow the law as it is right now

254any other questions or comments for clarification Mr Dangerfield was this enacted by Congress or this was a rule coming out of federal doe these are regulations through the Department of Education so it's not a federal law it's not statutory correct regulation all right so that clarifies the didn't the Chevron ruling going to probably challenge a lot of these things anyway if it did move forward it's certainly possible yeah right so this is not federal law to clarify a statement that was made previous okay take a motion in a second Mr President motion to approve the resolution related to Title Nine expansion second I have a motion a second there's no further discussion we'll call for the vote vice president Parks hi board member Kenyan I board member Bixler Nate board member cenon I I'm also

255I we show that approved four yes one no item 7.7 student parent handbook for 2024 25 school year Dr Mahorn president Todd vice president Parks uh members of the board uh each year the uh parent student handbook is brought before the board to be approved um some specific changes that have been made that are made every year updates such as Staffing for school sites District administration updated superintendent message that's done updated board member um members and titles updated mission statement that you all worked in and talked about earlier um but the the biggest change this year was by far the discipline SL Behavior Matrix um that was been that's been worked on um when I started in the district approximately a year ago I received a lot of feedback um from board members from principals

256um from parents I get calls about the discipline Matrix um it is something that I inherited and so I've just been looking at it um since this uh handbook is done every year during the summer I thought about doing a meeting to collect I did my first meeting it I believe it was like May 6 for the spring and didn't have anyone show up so I put out a survey to parents because by statute parents uh the board and teachers have to have input when it comes to uh discipline and so I put out a survey a couple of times I think two or three times to all of the parents and teachers in the district asking for their feedback on our discipline Matrix and it is on page and it has to be from

257a link because it just does not print well at all so if you click on the link on page CU I have tried to print it several times and the font is about a three it is on page 26 click on that link on page 26 and bring it up and it's titled LED discipline Matrix updated 731 and if you look at the tab at the bottom it has has it's broken down by K2 35 and 68 and so it is different and some things that I want to highlight is it also is Progressive so it's not just a you know on your first referral you're out so it starts at one end and as the you get two referrals or three referrals it is Progressive so I'll go back I did send out um

258the survey and I was pleasantly surprised that um we had 194 responses from the Google survey I sent out 136 of those responses were parents and 56 uh were teachers and so what I went I read every single comment I separated uh the comments I separated from k235 and 68 and the qu one of the questions was do you think the the discipline Matrix as proposed is okay is it too harsh or is it too soft and I and so what it said overall is 79.3% of the K2 so right now we're just talking about K2 thought uh that it was okay it's fine like 79.3 10.4% and this is overall said it was too harsh and 10.4 said it was too too soft so now going to 35 76.7 % said it was okay

259so again a high 70s 10.9% thought it was too harsh and 12.4% thought it was too soft now when we get to the 6.8 the six sl8 that's the last one this is where we had the lowest the 69.9% so only barely 70% said it was okay 10.4% said it was too harsh but only almost 20% 19.7 uh said it was too soft so what I did with the comments and I read every single comment that anybody um that anybody wrote I wrote every single I read every single comment and I tried to categorize them into themes what were the themes under K2 what were the themes under 35 what were the themes under 68 one theme that stood out overall in K2 clearly was that people want parents to be notified they felt like

260parents are were not notified enough when it comes to discipline in K2 that showed loud loud loud and clear that was the one theme that throughout stuck out 35 there were two themes that um stood out clearly one again was parents must be involved SL notified that clearly stuck out in that one and another one that stuck out was that people were appreciative of the changes they were appreciative to see that there are changes happening 6 through eight um the two that were that stuck out here was please please please have follow through on this no matter what's written on this the big point was please have follow through on this and the same other one really stood out was parents have to be informed parents have to be informed at every step of discipline

261so no matter what the grade level and I think that's very fair that parents have to be informed so one of the biggest changes of the discipline Matrix the first not the red but the ne the first box used to see just is used to say automatic office referral now every time that says automatic office referral and parent notification so every time parents will be notified because I I do agree parents have to be notified and it's every single I mean the com it came out very very clear and the reason this happened over the summer I wanted to have a meeting but it clearly having 194 people responding to this I know we'd never have 194 people at a meeting so I was very very happy that um we had that many people uh

262give us give input on this something else I want to say this is not a oneandone this is final never to be changed um our students Services committee meetings that we had last year we started with really good attendance and it trickled off to the last meeting um only President Todd attended he was the only one it was him and I so um what I am changing for this year for those meetings is actually all of the meetings will focus on discipline they will all be open meetings they will be on board docks and I'm really going to advertise them cuz I really want feedback focusing on this what's going well what's going less well um I we know that there going to be some refinements that are going to have to be made and

263that's okay that's okay we can make refinements we're going to start here knowing that there are going to be refinements and Corrections that need to be made so that's the biggest thing I wanted to talk I mean we can talk about anything in the the parent uh student handbook but that was the probably the most robust change of the whole handbook but if you have any questions about anything I can answer those but president Tod may I you may uh as a superintendent I'm really proud of the work that's been done and I want to tell you I'm a former principal and I was a principal eight years and wasn't a great principal I think it was a fair principle but I want to tell you some things that are important to me I believe

264in structure I believe in accountability I believe in teaching appropriate behaviors to school I believe in reinforcing positive behavior but I believe in applying cont consequences the negative behavior as well I believe in discipline that's firm fair and Progressive and I believe that we need to contact law enforcement when it's appropriate which I'm glad that principles can see when they need to contact law enforcement and I'm working we're working really hard to know that the principle so the principles know that we support them because sometimes when you talk to parents it can be very challenging I believe in parent notification I'm a parent if my daughter goes up to the office for any reason I better get a call I don't want any secret packs between my daughter and the principal or anything I better

265know like I'm the parent and when I was a principal I I ran my school that way too it certainly wasn't with an iron fist but I expect that teachers can manage their class and their learning and when a teacher cried foul or there was a referral written I was there to support the teacher and to recorrect that behavior remove the student or help the student or meet with the parents um so we are we're looking for more reinforced discipline and support and safety at our schools and to support our principles and our assistant principles in that effort I appreciate this work and I know that the board appreciates that as well I just wanted to share that because as as a superintendent I believe students learn best in a safe environment emotionally and physically

266and when the classroom is managed well there's good learning and when there's inappropriate behaviors sometimes those have to be addressed and so um I just wanted to share that with the board I applaud the work I hope it gives us some teeth and some structure and helps our principles feel supported in dealing with these things I'm certainly not saying off with their heads or get kids out of the classroom but um uh sometimes I think accountabil accountability is lacking and certainly parent uh contact can be lacking and those two things can make a huge difference in the life of a child I want to just say thank you very much for the time that you spent on this I know it was at least two months of work hard work um couple things the takeaways

267when I went through this was taking the behavior problems out of the classroom meaning let's we're taking uh the behavior issues off the teacher's back like kind of like you get one warning and after that you go you go to the principal's office so this really also helps support the teachers in my opinion um disruption is always a huge part of of the education you you can't have a disruptor causing you know 29 of the 30 kids not being able to do their work so I saw a big change in how the the process works and I I think that's a that's a great way to go I also saw that it was much more quicker accountability meaning the steps were more succinct in you know look we'll give you a warning but the next

268time there's a consequence behind it and you that's the way I raise my kids that's the way I think most people do I think that that's what's expected um you know making sure parents understand the consequences of their kids' behavior is critical um you know there's you know the parents need to have an opportunity to work with their child right and I think we've missed that before the other piece that became clear to me is our previous Matrix didn't even align with the statute did not so we are violating laws all over the place so that's correct it is correct okay so we're in perfect alignment now with the statute and this the state requirements and we're following it to a te so thank you very much yeah I like make comment as well I

269also have experience as a principal working with discipline and a key issue is is having that Matrix in place um it changes completely the discussion you have with a child then you talk about decision making you don't talk about them being a bad person and so on and it's really kind of an interesting discussion because at some point once it has been taught and we need to make sure that the kids are taught this Matrix the parents need to be informed as well but the kids need to know this Matrix because then the discussion becomes okay you've done this we agree what is the outcome going to be and then the other followup is if you do it again what will the outcome be it's a whole different discussion and it it really is better

270I I applaud this as well any other questions comments I have one on the K2 line 21 dangerous items local law enforcement Ada mandate notification report um then it say Case by case basis I don't know how comfortable I am with caseby case bases because I don't know that we have a a equal idea or a consistent idea across the district as to what triggers some of those things so I think if we're in a case-by case basis it needs to come up to Administration or somewhere else to look at to make sure that we're making the right decision because just to the past and I hope it's not the future we've had some interesting things I think there was also a case earlier or last year that was an assault that I think some

271people are still looking for a police report on that by law is required um I think we need to go back and look at all those and and if we're not forwarding those on to law enforcement for reports then those staff members are in technical violation of Law and it probably needs to be referred to the Department of Education for them to look at their certifications but with that I'll bring that up later more um however Case by case is just dangerous because I don't know that that's consistent that only comes to me that a case by case basis only so let's and let's specify that somewhere that you're the decider so if it's a case by case any of those I could do that need to come forward to you or your position I

272would say your position my position y um or your design and your absence it's got to go to yes y so so that we're there because Case by case just is interpreted compl completely different and it could be interpreted differently between a principal and vice principal depending on so um and I don't know where it's a couple times here in K2 I don't know if it's in I think it's only K two if I remember correctly but I I'll go back and look and I think I understand the spirit that it is K2 so it's a little bit different but if we're notifying law enforcement um that case-by casee basis has been decided we're getting law enforcement involved we need to know we need to make sure we're we're looking at that um I do

273as well applaud you for looking into this one of the nice things now again as we have a very solid staff here is to be able to start reviewing policies and as previously stated the the previous Matrix which was adopted under a different Administration and a totally different board was actually in violation of the the law um so it's concerning but we need to make sure we're following up on these I think also along with this Matrix you're tracking all those now there's no ability to delete out of the system or anything of that nature so if they make a mistake think our law enforcement Partners can also agree when they write a report that stays they start over they they it never goes away so and just as a matter of public record we

274need to make sure that stays we can't delete anything can't delete okay and just just one other thing president Todd law enforcement contact just so the board knows we we contact called law enforcement so the principal will or the principal may say hey Dr Mahorn should I call the police and the answer is yes and then it's up to the PD it's up to the police to to follow up sometimes they take it more serious and than others but we've we've met the the law like President Todd said and the and the law carries forward we still have our Avenue for school discipline okay but we've we always want to call law enforcement we always want to protect kids and error on the side of the child so but you know sometimes if they just

275take a report we can get a report number or sometimes they'll follow up or knock on a parents door or they'll be to the school in five minutes so but yeah we take that really serious and my advice is always we air on the side the safety of the child I mean you know the trick to this too I think and and we got a law enforcement professional in the back room thank you for being here um put you on the spot maybe a bit but even if they don't take a report they're still going to be able to give you a number and any notification to them might tie together something else that's going on if they start seeing the same thing around maybe we got a new Tik Tok game that's going you

276that's how a lot of that stuff has happened so um but they're always going to give us some sort of a number that we can we can tag back and if they don't take a report that's on them they don't take the report but they're going to give us a number and say at least they were notified that's our that's where our duty ends notify law enforcement so okay members I'll take a motion I guess for this one Mr President I make a motion to approve the student parent handbook for the 2425 school year have a second second a motion a second if there's no further discussion call for the vote vice president Parks I board member Kenyan hi board member Bixler hi board member cenon hi I'm also I will show that approved 5

277yes Zer no next is item 7.8 certified staff handbook 2024 2025 school year Dr Mahorn uh president Todd vice president Parks governing board this is a another item that we bring every year um and recommended that you approve again this is updated thanks like our staff for School site District administrator superintendence message um our certified work calendar which does include blackout days which is important to know to note that um all of our teachers know what the blackout days are which does include our PD days we hold them sacred so all teachers know what the blackout days are and then our updated staff ethics policy and our updated uh staff uh use of digital communication and El ronic devices policy again you could ask any questions about anything in here but those are the highlighted

278changes um from LA from last year to this year members any questions I have I think uh maybe two first of all congratulations to miss Wier she's going to be having a baby soon and I think we're going to have somebody in there for a little while as a as a principal covering for her is it appropriate to put that person's name in there since we're starting off the school year should we include them with a with a notation I I would I would recommend uh no um I would recommend we keep it as Holly I know Mrs rner is going to do an introduction to the staff and hopefully Holly's back after a few months I'm not just replacer but just in the interim if people are calling do we need to if there's

279a letter that goes out I guess that's fine as yeah I we have we'll have an introduction yeah okay yeah the letter great and again it's an exciting time we got a new member of the Liberty family coming very soon so I was at the campus today and Miss Wier said she wanted to show me around don't walk too much Miss Murray sorry it says oh then it says Holly Wier in here yeah uh oh I thought the same but I saw this so I uh okay good thing you we've had lots of eyes on this so thank you perfect I thought I was losing my mind but I'm glad I maybe but no read what for me no perfect now we're we're excited for that so okay um then I think uh I think

280that's great is there any other questions comments All hearing now we'll take the motion Mr President motion to approve certified handbook for the 2425 school year second anyone second all right motion second if there's no further discussion we'll go for the vote vice president Parks I board member Kenyon I I was going to say something I'll clarify afterwards okay board member Bixler I board member cenon I I'm also an i we show that approved five yes zero no board member Kenyan I think you wanted to yeah just uh it as we're voting I thought we're voting to approve this but we need to make that change so that doesn't get us in trouble correct they make a change after we voted it they can make they can make that change thank you just making sure

281all right Perfect all right we're on to item 8.1 this is public comment for anything that was not on the agenda do we have anyone we have two first UPS Kelly zimman earlier in the meeting there was a presentation about potentially introducing flag football into Middle School sports and one of the next steps that um was talked about was gathering information from the community I think it's really interesting that the district and the board thinks it's worth asking the community about a sport but did not think it was important to spend time engaging with the community or staff about the mission and vision of the district a few short survey question certainly doesn't Encompass the magnitude of the vision the mission and vision for the district which guides the direction of the entire District affecting

282every single staff member and student you serve Additionally the results of that parent or staff climate survey have not been shared as they were previously shared with admin uh previous administrations lastly done at the August 8th 2022 board meeting in order to demonstrate transparency I think it's concerning that in the last two years the survey results have not been shared publicly in a meeting and therefore the public cannot know if the board is actually listening to their feedback and their and that their voices are valued as an important part of this District I also think by not sharing the results of these surveys it does not help hold the district slbo accountable for their actions and decisions as they are not transparent to show what the public and staff believe are the successes and the

283things that need Improvement in the district I think it's very telling of this board that they did not seek Community input for one of the most important decisions that reflects the direction of this District it is clear they have their own agenda and will make decisions that they want regardless of community input or guidance of the educational experts they have hired earlier in the meeting we also talked about Community um customer service I apologize and I just want to question does that customer service uh extend to board members because Mr Todd was completely unprofessional to company that the board ired to do a job during earlier in the study session Mr Todd talked about the importance of customer service over and over and over and it should be driving everything we do and how the

284district and how we represent the district and yet he doesn't seem that to apply to him the way he treated DLR was completely unprofessional in such a public setting all he showed as the leader of this board is he doesn't understand how to handle himself professionally and it makes any company any staff member any family any Community member question his leadership and whether they will be treated with respect and dignity in this district and he continues to make passive aggressive comments I don't think that's good customer service I'm a taxpayer I certainly have good eyes I don't need an eye exam and there's no need for passive aggressive comments if you want to talk about customer service I think it applies to the board too the next speaker will be Elwood Kutner Mr President Michael

285Todd vice president Mr Clarks superintendent God bless youall thank you all for being here everything the last speaker just said is absolutely garbage uh none of it's true and that type of foul garbage comes out of her mouth every time she hits the microphone uh and she's running for the school board so yeah okay uh listen a lot of people in this room don't like Mr Todd lot of people in this room don't like me okay we understand that Mr Todd was not unprofessional Mr Todd called out a company that's going to cost this District us the taxpayers millions of dollars possibly in delays and everything else see people like that call call call him rude okay I call that being honest and transparent and that's exactly what he was and that's the way the

286rest of this board is I want to tell you all something I've been following the school district for 5 years this is the first time ever that we had a board that was transparent had a plan got a go and they're going for it and they're going to get it the other thing they talked about tonight this IG and this igd these are excellent excellent papers and they need to be voted in okay they need to be put in place Title Nine needs to get straightened out until it does we shouldn't touch it that was a great call by the board I'm just sick and tired of of all this negative stuff and and and and people that can't come to the microphone with one positive thing to say and I guarantee you I've been

287in politics for 40 years and I guarantee you that that last speaker never touches that board thank you next up will be item 9.1 board comments and agenda topics U Mr President I got a comment you may go ahead all going back is there back to uh is there we can look at the what we're going to say is the Prof the proficiency growth can we actually look at that and decide what we're going to require as what we're going to say is the growth threshold so with board support we can agendize that for the future can't do it I suppose in Theory actually we could do it now if we want to bring that back we haven't closed the meeting or we could bring it back future day okay you need be looked at

288all right I'm okay with that okay we got two we good okay uh anything else all right um I have a couple I'd like to add um along with the transportation facility that we got an update on today um I would like to have a very clear plan on the electric bus plan we've got buses coming and we have no facility uh we need to have a plan secondly I don't want to take a delay in buses necessarily to have them arrive next year March of 2025 by the time we do in service and ready to go it'll be summertime and those buses will sit and burn warranty during that time so I would ask that we expedite a plan of how these buses are really coming and there seems to be some um mismatch

289of going on I I think the sales manager is overstepping the sales representative that we have and we need to have a single focus of who we're talking to it should be our sales representative that's who we need to talk to so I would kindly tell the sales manager to let the sales rep do the job or figure something where we're getting the same story um we need to have a very detailed plan on this before we put these these are not regular diesel buses that we can pretty much slide into service we're going to need to do a lot of training with our Public Safety Partners I am not at all comfortable with putting electric buses on the road until every first responder in the area is well trained in in how these buses

290are operate they are different they're high voltage um there's none of them around this area yet so um I'm more than happy Mr Young I think you'll be overseeing this to help orchestrate I have all three Fire Chiefs in the area's cell phone numbers speak to them all the time we could certainly engage them but it's not going to be a one day Ur ra now everybody's blessed and trained on these things I I foresee this taking a few weeks to get all their Crews through so I'd like to get that process started and see what we can do sooner than later and uh we can work later on coming up with a plan but it should be ready um also uh I did get invited again um hearing from the Transportation Department they've attended

291some safety training uh with DPS and uh they're very concerned over their current communication systems on their buses uh I think their communication system was put in place about the year we built the one room Schoolhouse um it does not cover our entire district and we need to as a board look at that um as what we're doing and especially as we're bringing 13 new buses in there's no reason to put old old radios in the bus but there are places where the bus is not able to communicate back to the district uh the commercial driver laws and school bus operator laws they're not allowed to use cell phones at any time we're in that bus so they're they're kind of stuck if they have a problem now hopefully obviously they have their phone and

292I we can address it with DPS if there's ever a problem of a school bus driver making an emergency cell phone call but um the radio is a good way to go and it lets everybody know what's happening so um there's some different options out there but I think we should we should look at I shared some of those with with Donnie that you know I'm aware of of radios and I live that life for a long time so um we should look at that but even now as it stands if our buses take a field trip outside of this immediate area they're on their own nobody they're not able to communicate there systems now that will allow them to communicate all the way to California um and vice versa so I'd like to look

293at that quickly especially as these these new buses are coming but then really nail down a true timeline my concern about extending the buses and I know there's a push here quickly um if we extend the delivery of the buses we run the risk of something going on back order and those buses getting pushed out longer and longer so we may try to extend 3 months that could turn into a 9 10 12 month delay if if we miss a part cuz they're not going to build those buses and have them sit until we're ready for them so please let's let's work on that and and get that uh resolved and I'm very appreciative of Donnie and the transportation department for reaching out to me they uh actually ran into a a radio person who

294recognized Liberty and said reach out to Mike CU he knows radio so they they called me right away and we talked about so I I I promise him we'd get that on the we get that on the agenda um one more thing I would like to uh speak about is um today while I was at uh Liberty Science teacher uh approached me as we know she's uh an excellent teacher and she attended an ADA uh training this summer one of the topics one of the breakouts was on attendance and she's got some great ideas that she learned I would really like for us to look at attendance and uh and see where we're really at I think we're working on some chronic absent reports that this should not be difficult to get um but maybe

295working at on some campaigns to increase attendance and if if whatever that is we can talk offline about it and then bring something back for the board but um attendance is huge and we want to make sure we're doing everything we can to keep our keep our kids in school and attending as well all right if there's nothing else we will move to 11.1 which is the adjournment of the meeting it's 8:38 show the meeting adjourned [Music]