001foreign [Music] foreign [Music] like to call the Liberty Elementary School District number 25 work session to order here on January 30th at the Cherry Roby facility we have all board members present board member Parks Board member Aguirre board member Bixler board member Kenyon and myself Michael Todd board member aguir could you please lead us with the Pledge of Allegiance Allegiance to flag the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you for that next on the agenda will be item 1.3 the certified teacher work calendar Friday workdays discussion or actually I'll first be a presentation by Erica Daniel good evening Mr President and governing board Miss camp and I are here to discuss the work day Fridays with you
002we would like to share why workday Fridays are an integral part in our Professional Organization foreign let's start by celebrating that the calendar provides 20 Fridays off that gives teachers greater flexibility and increased work-life balance teachers will work longer days Monday through Thursday 8 hours and 20 minutes per day an increase of 40 minutes a day and work 18 out of the 38 Fridays for six hours the 38 total Fridays in our 23-24 school year do not include long weekend breaks in addition non-work Fridays were purposely scheduled to back up to three-day weekends and week-long breaks these numbers are based off of the returning teacher calendar let's take a look at the work day Fridays perfect the red highlighted dates identify the two workday Fridays for parent-teacher conferences however teachers who complete 100 percent of
003their parent-teacher conferences whether in person or on phone may not need to work that Friday August and September have two workday Fridays so that we can get teachers set up for success and make any adjustments that we need to make proactively because we value teacher input the calendar was a topic of discussion at the teacher advisory meeting last Wednesday teachers asked a couple clarifying questions and made one recommendation Dr Shuff and Mr Nuttall provided the following clarifications to their questions only work days are contracted days non-work day Fridays are just like a Saturday and a Sunday blackouts are the work days before and after a holiday which is the same as it is this year non-work day Fridays are strategically scheduled before holiday weekends and breaks school meetings may be scheduled before or after school
004during contracted time 45 minutes total before and after school bell times feedback about student they provided feedback about the student calendar and work calendar as well for what they are requesting that Wednesday before Thanksgiving be a half day instead of a full day to match Buckeye Union High School we place a high value um we place a high value making decisions based off of research and staff input so when we looked at the why behind the need for these workday Fridays teacher Effectiveness is key research has shown that teacher quality has a lasting effect on a student's performance and a larger impact on learning than any other Factor for example students who are placed with highly effective teachers for three years in a row significantly outperform average students a student who has an outstanding teacher
005for just one year will remain ahead of their peers for the next few years unfortunately the opposite is true as well a student with even one ineffective teacher may not catch up to his peers for up to three years and having one excellent teacher doesn't fully compensate for the effect of an ineffective teacher worse yet students with three consecutive ineffective teachers in a row rarely catch up at all research also concludes the impact of an Effective Teacher is the single most Factor influencing increasing learning and that there is substantial variation in quality among teachers as a learning community if we impact a teacher's pedagogy and content knowledge we impact student achievement professional learning and collaboration with highly effective teachers accelerates the learning process why our work Friday work day is important there are opportunities to
006improve teacher Effectiveness through formal professional learning and collaborative work with peers they also will utilize contracted time to prefer teacher responsibilities so our Friday work days are important because Monday through Thursday teachers are focused on facilitating learning teachers have 40 minutes a day scheduled as a prep time 40 minutes is not adequate time to analyze student data plan effective lessons construct cfas and differentiate to ensure you are meeting the needs of all the students in your class let alone participate in formal professional training there is simply not enough contracted time in a day to do the job requirements to Be an Effective Teacher what does that look like this graphic represents opportunities to improve teacher effectiveness the key factor to implementation is consistent and ongoing teacher development so at the top it starts with the
007engaging informal professional learning engaging in professional learning is one of our reasons for wanting work day Fridays the learning is then transferred and important time intensive collaborative work begins so those are all the tasks in the brave gray box that teachers do collaboratively they construct assessments they Pace out units they plan they reflect on instructional feedback they analyze student data and work and they adjust for students that did not meet the objective and students that they extend for students that did through this collaborative work Highly Effective Teacher leadership is crucial in this way our highly effective teachers have the opportunity to positively impact the practice of all teachers on their team in order to ensure all teachers in order to ensure all students sorry learn at high levels Educators must work collaboratively and take Collective
008responsibility for the success of each and every child collaboration is specifically designed to impact educator practice in ways that lead to better results how can we expect teachers to work together to do this important work constructing the assessment unit pacing planning reflecting on instructional practices analyzing student data and work and adjusting their instruction in instructional groups to meet the needs of all their kids in their class if we do not set aside contract time for teachers to do it um let me show you how those days might look typical work Fridays would be two hours of formal training and up to three and a half hours of collective work and professional responsibilities we treat our teachers professionally there is time for lunch breaks and travel okay this is just one sample of a work day
009Friday when the months allow for the two Fridays one of the work day Fridays would be differentiated for all teachers specifically focusing on implementation of our newly adopted primary resources for math K8 science 6 8 and history and social science 6-8 effective utilization of a primary resource requires consistent frequent training feedback and collaboration with peers collaborative team time to plan for the implementation of the new learning with Highly Effective Teacher leaders sites are also able to further differentiate for individual teacher needs or site needs so let's take a look at the K2 pathway so this is an opportunity because it will be district-wide PD they'll start out at their site in their grade level teams in their grade level collaborative teams then they have a break and they move into data-driven site support so their
010focus area during this time will be based off of site Administration and teacher needs then they have lunch travel and they would end with math content professional learning connected to the newly adopted hopefully primary resource this is an example of our once a month Friday work days this day would be site specific and flexible to meet the needs of each site's teachers this day provides even more time for individualization specific grade level or teacher differentiation in the former slide there was a much smaller chunk for site time on this slide or this site differentiated day they have a much they have a broader span of time in which they can utilize to meet the needs of their staff this time may be facilitated by the principal or the assistant principal the instructional coaches or the
011reading interventionists and or teachers this time provides an even more intimate support for teachers and their needs another example for utilization of this time site specific is for this day would be to support our schools that have been identified as a TSI schools schools that have an identified sub-population not making adequate progress time is needed to plan for the needs of these subgroups I wanted to conclude with these thoughts once a month is not frequent enough to make real-time decisions concerning short and long-term lesson planning and pacing responding to student progress monitoring data and cfas teaching utilizing best practice and strategies and methods still doesn't ensure student achievement learning is gray what works for most students doesn't work for all teachers are continually having to adjust instruction objectives and student groups to meet the needs
012of all their students this is time intensive work that is more effective if done collaboratively it is critical for the success of our students that we have time to develop and expand our craft as educators again our work day Fridays will provide opportunity for formal professional learning and collaborative work with peers and time to complete professional duties to meet the needs of all students foreign questions members do you have questions Mr Bixler yes um I know that our contract has a specific number of days for teachers as far as contract um does a schedule with the work Fridays does that reflect that number of work days the current calendar does the one that was approved has the number of work days in the in the contract yes can you remind me what's the number of
013teacher work days of 180 or something like that that's student student days right currently currently it's 180 or 185 depending upon the classification of the employee okay thank you Mr Parks does um is the same time required for for professional development for tenured teachers and new teachers are you requiring the same same classes or the same training is yes going into an adoption absolutely um it's all new resources K-8 for mathematics six eight for Science and six eight for social studies one of the reasons um yes we should differentiate it as well for experienced teachers and highly effective teachers but there are also key in building the capacity amongst their team okay um do you know how many hours is required for a medical doctor in the state for professional development 50 hours I'm not
014I it it concerns me we're requiring this much of teachers time um I am concerned we're we're changing up stuff too often I'm concerned that there's new stuff coming into the school uh like every two years that we completely have to retrain or retrain what we did two years ago um so we'll I'm a little concerned so thank you Parks may add on as you can see here um they're talking about two hours of formal professional learning and the remaining time is the time to do the work so doctors prep they rehash afterwards um they meet with their administrative teams in the hospitals they have a number of their professional responsibilities besides just the time props that they are in surgery or the time they're perfect not professional development these are classes they go to
015I know very well yeah so I'm not arguing that point Mr Parks I'm suggesting that the time we're talking about here on Fridays is not 100 for professional learning um if you watch what they said is two hours of formal learning and four hours dedicated to the work time that teachers need to do to meet their responsibilities so that's what it's about so I think your question would be um should that be entirely independent and not on a work day or should there be time available for principals and teachers to come together during contracted time and not expect them to do any of those types of activities outside of contract time so that's a philosophical question so I could see how there could be a difference any other questions from the board hearing none we'd
016like to we're honored first of all thank you to the staff who have come tonight this is extremely exciting for us as a board I believe I speak for all of us that to see you and hear your input is important what we would really like to do is we have two microphones and we'd like to hear from staff of their thoughts on the professional development if we're headed in the right direction if you guys have something else you would like us to consider so with that all I ask is that you stand at one of the mics and tell us your name and provide the feedback just as a note this is a work session it is only for staff any public that wants to make comment will be able to do that in
017the General Session that we will open up after this work session is is closed foreign Mr President members of the board I appreciate very much the opportunity to speak with you tonight about the work days 45 years ago I started my career in education and I know what you're thinking right now you don't look that old but I am and back then 45 years ago as a new teacher uh they put you in a classroom they gave you the keys and they said good luck and you might have materials you might have some support you might not and then for training we had to largely get it on our own but there were some grants and some of us were able to participate in those but not everybody and they didn't cover everyone and so
018the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and some people they had to get all of their training or all of their um preparation through conferences or coursework that they had to pay for on their own on their own time when I became a principal in the 80s we were looking for ways that we could train everybody and that we could get everyone involved and that we could move from private practice which is put you in your room by yourself make you responsible for your own stuff two being able to collaborate and have a team where everyone got better what could we do about that we fought for time for teachers for training and for work together it wasn't until the 90s that we finally got an hour an hour a week early release
019and then that we got some more time before school maybe during the year in order to do that in order to get people together to really plan we didn't even have common planning times you're going to say yes that was the olden days yes it was we've come a long way but we need to really invest in those teachers and what they need and they need time to work together and we need to respect that it's not going it shouldn't happen to have to happen during the school day or after school or on the weekends by giving them this this is a gift for us to be able to work together to do the collaborative work and if I was coming to you today just representing myself I'd advocate for more than we have on
020that calendar that was proposed to you but I'm not advocating for that right now because I respect the process that this District went through every single person in this District had an opportunity to give input into that some people didn't agree with me they thought there should be less some people thought there should be more and what happened is the process then came together to say this is what we need and not everybody got everything they wanted but I'm going to ask you as a board to respect that process and to give the time that has been processed through all of those people so thank you very much for your time tonight [Applause] good evening president school board members I'd like to thank Dr chuff for inviting teachers tonight it's important to hear from teachers
021perspectives I did want to touch real quick before I read what I wrote this evening to talk a little bit about the process because unlike some I got a lot of opportunity to share in the process and I was part of the committee to decide the four day week and so I excuse me for the record can you just give your name so everybody oh I'm sorry Connie Crowley thank you um and so I I did get to give a lot of that input through that process um I did give that input and I did do a lot of research around neighboring districts in order to make myself very aware of what's going on in our community there's two neighboring districts that are on the four-day school week um and have been for a long
022time along with as we know our four-day adversary here that um as a charter school in which we competed and gave away a lot of our students a long time ago too and they're a very successful charter school now and when I think of all of these things I think about what our goal was to attract and retain teachers and I fully agree with that I think we need to attract and retain teachers when I think about why some of our teachers have left and which I can tell you there's one in the South against tonight they needed more balance in life they needed that opportunity to balance the heavy workload of a teacher along with Family Life they've been closely watching our district as we've gone through this process and I think it's really
023important to listen to someone that's been watching because they want to return however if we're not competitive to what they're offering why would they come so as I speak tonight I want to tell you some very heartfelt things that I've heard and maybe some teachers might not be willing to say because it's hard it's really hard to come before um the board number one and the people that you work for number two however 30 years in education I can tell you I'm not afraid to share my opinions I'm a teacher that believes in making sure nothing but the best for our students I think my students achieve very well and always have no matter where I've gone I've taken that philosophy and I've really embedded that into children as we've made this decision to go
024to the four day school week I've listened to a lot of teachers and so out with that I will just share what I wrote so I would like to share a few things that your teachers would like you to know I'm taking the liberty of speaking for them because I know many of them won't feel free to speak about what they need to say and express some of these things even on surveys so maybe you've even heard them if they felt it was important in telling you these things this is what they may say as we look to the future of the four-day school week we consider a four days week for most people in our district except for our administrators and our teachers yet our main mission was to create this opportunity to attract
025attract and retain teachers I have several friends in the neighboring districts and they're watching they want to come back they're on those four-day schedules students will now attend 148 days and teachers will attend 170. that's 22 days or 20 as just presented days of professional development um I'm going to skip this part because our teacher advisory Council recently had a meeting with our teachers and they also let us know that um this adjustment was going to be made and the a little bit more background on the way as presented tonight the days would go for PD so I'll kind of skip through some of that um many teachers in our district feel that that second day is not needed and nor should it be mandated for them to come in if it's intended as a
026teacher work day what you should do is trust us when we say that this is needed it's a benefit to us as individuals we all know individually what we need 22 days of PD we have been required in my 20 years is more than we've ever asked our teachers in this District to do I am not sure how this will attract or retain teachers compared to our local neighboring districts the current schedule assumed eight and a quarter hours of a day Monday through Thursday currently I know myself and many of the teachers on our campus get to school at 7 00 a.m and they leave at four that's a nine hour a day this does not include planning time that many of us do over the weekend to be prepared for Monday considering we'll extend
027our work day with students by 40 minutes we can assume most teachers will now be at work until 4 40. if you are treating us as an hourly employee you now have 20 minutes per day unaccounted for unless you consider the time teachers work for over the weekend so asking our teachers to come in for PD for 22 days is like asking us to work way more than 40 hours and it's not going to attract or retain any teachers from our neighboring districts we need to treat teachers time as a precious commodity in the time teachers are not with students teachers are expected to plan engaging lessons assess student work provide meaningful feedback contact parents make photocopies collaborate with their colleagues Implement District initiatives design instructional material meet with students to provide extra help troubleshoot
028technology programs display student work maintain a tidy classroom enter grades into a grading system and complete various kinds of paper where deal with our discipline issues engage with other professionals to support struggling students and meet with coaches outside of their teaching day teachers will be doing these things before or after school because they can't wait until designated time set aside on Fridays as you can see a teacher's time is taxed and we need to be careful on how we are requesting the use of this time this happens to be the number one t reason teachers are leaving this profession the normal Baseline expectation for teachers is clearly more than any human can handle in the time allotted which I'm sure our administrators know many of them had been teachers at one time already taking homework
029these teachers are putting in evenings and weekend hours just to meet the standard expectations these expectations are not humanly possible and create stress for teachers I know many teachers who have had doctor visits over these stresses so when we make this decision to make more of that already scarce time and take away from teachers it's soul-crushing time is a finite resource that can't be recovered once it's lost and although teachers might still show up the quality of their instruction what is what is ultimately going to suffer as they will burn out if you're not giving teachers regular time alone without micromanaging that time you're destroying their ability to teach in a lot of cases what teachers need is more professional development more collaboration with peers and even more material to work with even more than
030the material to work with what they need is time alone time to digest what they've learned time to concentrate time uninterrupted they need you to trust them they are professionals differentiate differentiate for your professionals just like we do for teach for our students every teacher in our district has unique individual needs and they have different strengths and different weaknesses so they need different things allow them to seek outside professional development and even consider allowing them to skip some of the development in which they which was planned for them whichever you do to give your teachers choice in the content the process or the product just like our students will get better results please keep in mind 15 clock hours is what we are required annually to re-certify our our time if we were to just
031take one um class at a three credit hour course we'd only have to do two or three classes to recertify for the next 10 years there's also another Clause we're so strapped for teachers did you know I can just skip out for the next two years and not do a single thing let my certificate lapse and come back and re-certify and they would accept me to come back anyway they know more than anyone teachers know exactly what they need they're professionals and I know that as we look to these professionals we need to listen to what it is they need um I appreciate our our district they've worked really hard to help understand some of these things however I still don't think we're quite on the same page as what our teachers need I thank
032you for the taking the time today and listening and um up I would hope that you would take some of these things into consideration thank you Mr Crowley [Applause] good evening my name is Mary Charles and I am a new teacher to the school district I relocated from another school district in Illinois and I have a total of 25 years in education um I love where I'm at I love the district I love my building I love the fellow staff members and most of all I love teaching students and I love collaborating with parents which is what I find in these last few years the most time I'm spending doing is collaborating with parents which is not something that is always listed in a teacher's job but it is a it is a good amount
033of time that we spend in our work days I'm here to speak on behalf of some of my fellow teachers um regarding the work days and I agree with many things that were said um in the um presentation and I agree with many things that were said in opposing the work days one thing several things that my my staff colleagues would like you to be aware of are some of the basics are first of all that just to point out some Basics um the September 29th is our conference day and we will also need to work late that day um and so Thursday to accommodate the families we will be here sometimes until 8 or 8 30 at night by the time we close up the lights and lock up the doors um and then
034if September 29th is also a conference day we will also need to stay late um I only have so much steam in my you know body and I'm I could be retired right now but I didn't retire because I love teaching and I want to continue to teach but I can only do what I can humanly possibly do and I have at this point in juncture actually considered not returning that is not what my heart wants to do but I can't continue trying to carry the load and the the imbalance of work and home I have a new grandson that I would love to spend time with um so these hours of extension of the day on top of what is not counted as part of our work day is very taxing to us um
035we would also like to point out that the May 21st work day without students is very appreciated on the calendar that you have included for us also on August 4th we are there anyway preparing our classrooms um so that's a that's a given work day for us we can't do without that workday we're in there carrying boxes and putting up our posters and moving desks and cleaning walls and vacuuming and doing all sorts of of jobs so we need to be there if we want to be ready for the kids um also we would like you to consider the um Wednesday holiday um much of our holidays and our time with our family is very um on the calendar but we that Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a day of preparation for many of us and
036I need that time with my family I need that time to prepare for my family's holiday I I dedicate a lot of time to other people's families and I would like that consideration for that to be my time for with my family um I don't want to work that day and then have to scramble and be you know stressed out on the day I should be with my family enjoying that um also on some of these work Fridays um it was mentioned that they are like Saturdays and Sundays which are non-work days a Saturday and Sunday in my career has never been a non-work day so I just want us to be very like let's just be honest with the amount of hours that teachers are giving volunteering do working without pay we love it
037we're doing our 100 percent nobody's trying to cut corners you know that but we can only do what we can humanly do and I've some people referred to you know leaving um that is a risk that is is on the table if we don't have a little more balance and professional development I have I have a master's plus 30 and I have had many hours of professional development beyond that I am certified in ESL I am certified in um as a gifted teacher and I pretty much know what I'm doing and I know there's always new curriculum and I need to know that and I need to be a lifetime learner but having me sit in a room listening and to more new stuff I need time to absorb I need time to apply just
038listening to new stuff twice a month over a period of hours and then go back to my classroom and not have time to absorb that or to practice that and to apply that pretty much leaves it on a desk push to the side and I'll go back to my next professional development with the new concept or a new theme and when will I have time to sit and absorb that and read and and focus and plan for that we're just trying to keep our head above water with some of this so I appreciate you listening and taking our thoughts into your consideration and I appreciate everything we all appreciate everything you've done with the work for the new calendar these are just some options for you to think about on our behalf thank you [Applause]
039foreign members while the next teacher is gaining courage to speak are there any additional questions or thoughts I would just encourage any anybody's here now is the time you want to speak up um no matter where you fall on the issue this is your guys's time to let us know ma'am are you staff I just I just think of its stuff okay but this is a work session that's only for staff on the board you'll have to do that at a different time I just think it's really unfortunate that you're silencing some of the public board members I have a couple thoughts that come to mind um I certainly hear from the from everybody that professional development is needed I I think it's critical and I don't think there's anybody here on the board that
040wants to eliminate professional development I think over time we have come to a point where we have a very fine balance of work-life balance for teachers 40 hours a week which is the standard amount of full-time hours and then the number of hours that we are wanting to engage students into a classroom and I'm not sure that the math works out on that completely so what I would ask some questions and I would love to hear feedback from anybody is if we focus professional development if we and and this is just a thought I'm just thinking out loud I'm not necessarily proposing this but I'm asking the question if we had better professional development could we substitute some classroom time to balance this where teachers maybe we take um prep time out of the day
041we put that into after school at a different time we let students out a little bit early but we do some sort of a balance I'm open for ideas but I would really like to hear from teachers and staff some different ideas we've asked several times for for different ideas on professional development my other thought is to say if we're already here for Friday six hours what if we did an eight-hour day instead of six hours one Friday a month and then we balanced out another four hours of prep time extra professional development on your own grading papers and we recognize some of that because I I do believe when we hear staff say that Saturday and Sunday has never been a non-work day I I believe that my child came through this District I
042spoke with teachers all the time and I never thought twice about calling them on a Saturday because I was off so call the teacher and ask for ask a question the teachers always answer the phone they responded to email seen them I've I've been around for years and I've watched the work that they do and yes there's times where teachers maybe take a bad rap because we see them if the bell rings at 2 45 at 2 47 we see somebody running off they're probably trying to get their kid to a doctor's appointment or they've been in two hours early already so I think we really need to balance what we're looking at and I believe that's what we're hearing from the teachers that we're still taxing them a little too hard and I know
043those who have parents are very concerned about the number of hours that they're getting if we reduce hours that's a concern to them but the end of the day we only got 40 hours a week and I think we have about 120 hours that were needed to accomplish everything that all sides want so we've got to come to some sort of a balance and I would ask for staff I would ask for teachers board members this is truly a unique time to do an open session and hear and I would really like to hear from more than three free teachers so please take this opportunity and and give us some thoughts how we can balance this a little bit better so I guess a question I have for educators out in the room is how
044long does it take to be to get good at your job are you good your first year are you good your second year are you good 30 years into it because I've been doing mine for 26 years straight and it's all I know and I would say that I have a tremendous amount more to learn so I don't know that there's necessarily A one-fits all that should be looked at I often wonder if maybe it should be looked at that this is the first time that this school district is attempting to do this so you don't know what you don't know but I would possibly argue that in year two we're gonna know what we didn't know and I would imagine what we're going to see is our veteran teachers are going to need to
045be there to help our first and second year teachers with their professional development because that's what a lot of Industries do the folks who've been there for years help the folks coming in because you care about that industry and you want to see it continue to thrive because somebody took you under their wing at one point I would think I think that's how all Industries are I'd like to think that so I don't know that this is an end-all be-all I think this is the administration's first stab at this of what they see thank you um so what I've heard is that teachers don't mind professional development that's not the problem I think it's more about how we're going about implementing I've heard that they'd be willing to give a one eight hour day once
046a month and really dive deep and what that would do for us is it's not such short shoddy work okay that's what's hurting us we can't just have this short shoddy moment and then like the last teacher said Put it on our Shelf because we can't get to it so why not engage us for a good deep eight hours let us have a half hour lunch and you know learn what it is that the the district feels we need to be better at and more successful with and then let us dive deep whether it's take it back to our our um schools and then dive deep into our data and then we're doing something that's surrounding that data that is implementing what the district is asking us to do with this professional development and then
047we're diving in turn even deeper with our collaborative PLC groups I don't think a teacher in here would deny the cycle that we're going through isn't effective or efficient it's just the way we're going about implementing it and I think teachers are really looking to how can we you know quit putting it up on the side of the table and not getting to it again how can we um you know be more effective at diving deeply and I can tell you for myself as a learner I come to that table and I have lots of great ideas and but I have to work them out all in my head but that also takes quiet time and so for me I need that quiet time to be able to to turn it into my own and
048own that learning so that I can be more effective and share so I think that's not what the teachers are saying I don't think they're saying you know we're not um happy that we're getting so much professional development I think it's the way we're going to go about doing it and truly could we slide that time over and do a one deep dive eight hour once a month I I certainly think that that strategy may be more helpful because teachers would be more apt to be able to really work with the learning that they've been introduced to so some thoughts on that yeah Mr President I have a couple thoughts too and and I I understand what some of the teachers have said about there is no day off on Sunday that as a classroom
049teacher for a couple decades I yes you spend a lot of time outside the classroom getting ready for the time that you have in the classroom um I'm wondering is there some way to and recognize honor compensate for those Master Teachers who are willing to give the professional development and help their beginning teachers because we've got a significant number of inexperienced teachers on the campus we need to have that those folks brought up to speed as quickly as possible and professional development would be one way to do it learning from a mentor who is also in that building is a terrific way to do it but is there a way to honor compensate reward those Master Teachers who are willing to give up their time to do it and those teachers who are willing to
050give up their time to participate so instead of making it mandatory is there some way to make it um voluntary with recognition thank you ma'am my name is Brittany caser good evening so I just wanted to kind of piggyback off of some of the things I was hearing um of course we learned better from a mentor right but we've already heard we're taxing our Mentor teachers over and over and over again what's going to happen when you don't have any Mentor teachers what's going to happen when you just have people coming in and out of those positions over and over again because we are not respecting them as a professional so it's just something to kind of think of also I completely agree with yes we want to be here one day a month additional
051for that planning I don't need to be told when I need to get together with my team members and plan in my school because we do that I was here just this past Saturday at my school planning for our trimester three pacing guide nobody told me I had to be there to do that we did it we got together as a team so I am completely and I know that I'm speaking for other teachers as well completely okay to do a one-day professional development we also heard you learn a little bit push to the side I saw your model I really appreciate the wonderful PowerPoint slide but that's true okay we're gonna go we're gonna learn a little better about reading okay hurry up and travel put the reading over there now we're gonna go
052we're gonna learn about something else oh go to lunch oh thank God now we're trying to process during that 30 minutes of lunch right oh now go back travel somewhere else go to math like she said when are we ever going to process that we're not because then now we just added these three things onto our plate I mean this I'm living by my watch right now throughout the day I send myself 27 reminders sitting on my to-do list that I need to finish by tonight are 14 things that have to get done tonight I have three little kids at home I have a husband I mean this is driving a wedge I'm sure in lots of people's family life I love teaching but what is going to happen when you do not have anyone
053that has any of the knowledge anymore and they're brand new every time I'm looking around this room several of these people are on a committee that we're not getting contracted and paid for it for the curriculum that we're looking at for piloting I think there was 50 something people if I'm correct nobody had to tell me I had to be there it was a volunteer basis people will volunteer if you respect them by not showing the respect to your teachers you're going to lose the ones that really want to be here thank you [Applause] thank you hi governing board Dr Shuff I'm Amanda Loveless um I um agree with Connie that there are teachers here that are nervous to speak and there's been some teachers that have been sharing some ideas and I was hesitant
054to share second-hand information but I do want their voices heard so um first of all what I'm excited about about this schedule is that we're going from 30 to our PD sessions and that's from our Wednesdays If you eliminate teacher conferences and report card planning down to 20. so it's reducing PD hours from 60 to 40 for teachers so that that's a positive for teachers and I can't agree more with everything that they're saying teachers are overworked I Sunday was a work day for me always as a teacher still is as an administrator but yes we work on Sundays and it isn't fair and um but the teachers that I have heard from and I've heard please give us the Wednesday before Thanksgiving more than I've heard anything else but is they're excited to be
055fresh on that Friday and not be doing professional development after they've had kids all day and not traveling to another school at Westar we have worked diligently this year to differentiate PD and not invite anyone to something that didn't directly apply to them so when they were talking to me about it they're like if one of the Fridays is mostly ours where we can collaborate I'm looking at some of our leaders here who that's exactly what they tell me we need time to apply right they're happy to Mentor another teacher for an hour but then let me go back and lesson plan and work but there are new teachers who aren't going to ask mentors to come to school if that's an off day right but if you're there on campus together they're going to
056wander down to your room and say can I ask you a question and so I think that we definitely have to be mindful that if we have two work days that one needs to be really unstructured and we need to treat treat teachers as professionals and let them drive that day because they are going to be productive they are going to prioritize their tasks they are going to get their work done as was described earlier it isn't just professional development you're right now I have to decide how does this apply to my classroom how is it going to fit into my instruction I need to call a parent I need to do my newsletter I need to sit down and plan math tasks and all of those things they need time to do that and
057every foreign there's so many professions where that work time is built in they're going to get four long days with kids no one is going to want to do professional development or a meeting after those long days I'm thinking about teaching kindergarten for four straight days and then if my only Friday at work is I meet with my reading interventionist for two or three hours to plan my intervention groups I'm new to teaching kindergarten so now I'm gonna do new teacher Mentor I'm in a plan and then I'm going to leave I'm not going to have any of that quiet time in my classroom where I just become become a teacher I'm reminded of last year when I was in the job fair and I don't think the teachers here that we hired but in
058the chat room when we were doing it online was that year before last she was a brand new teacher and her question for me in the chat room was I am terrified what support am I going to get am I going to be mentored am I going to have help planning who's going to teach me how to write an IEP and I said to her I have just the mentor for you so I think we have to be careful it's really easy when you've taught a long time to know exactly what you need as a teacher but we have to think broadly about what does everybody need and I think Mr Aguirre was right that we're kind of you know on the bicycle and learning to write it like next year we're going to come
059back and know how we feel about a lot of things and so I just think we have to be we have to be careful not to make so many changes so quickly that then we're regretting those and and then we have to backpedal thanks [Applause] any additional comments one more courageous person more crazy I know I wait everybody go first good evening everybody Michelle Benitez um so my thought um coming into this meeting I debated whether or not to bring a little stack of sticky notes from my middle school student my son who continually sticks notes on my door reminding me Mom we're outside come to the backyard mom close your computer it's time to hang out with us mom you know yeah that's the truth so I think the biggest you know problem we
060have here is you know the passion we have for our kids and we have passion for them we have to we all know that right we have passion for them we have to we have to care about them and really feel that love for them for them to succeed and everything that we've committed to for them we really care about these kids and then on the other side we have what is most important to us our families our friends our Our Lives outside of school which quite honestly 17 years in you would think after more experience you would have be able to balance more time with your family and I'm going to be honest it's it's creeping in less and less so what I just want to say is we just need the time the
061time to bring teaching back to the art that it truly is it's an art and when we start piling and piling little bits here and there we can no longer release what that inner passion is to really reach our kids reach their goals and for them to be happy at school and feel that success over a long period of time I personally would like to see I mean I know PD is not going to go away we know that it's not going to go away so again that question is how do we find good time for PD practical time for PD and PD that where we all learn from it we are life Learners we want to show that to our kids we learn every day I learn every day for my kids from coding
062this year oh my gosh I've been in classes wow learning always learning and we're willing to do that but it's just that manage it's just that manage of time the manage of what we know we do best and that's through creativity and that's the art that goes back into the classroom and that's what really makes our kids successful when we have the time to make plans for a week to be prepared for two weeks oh my gosh right two weeks ever I think I manage that I don't know few times ever in just the last couple years I know the standards I know what to do I've had stuff for many years and we're still continually changing and making progress for ourselves to become better and better so it's not a question of us not
063wanting PD we want to get better but I think personally I don't speak for anybody else just to have that PD really effective and not just like what she mentioned earlier about all over the place right because we don't want our kids to think that way why should we if we're going to have a PD have it over a long period of time you know four or five months of okay this is our goal let's put it into practice let's reflect what strategies changed what worked how did the kids perform were data driven so why aren't we basing our PDS on something that we're learning and we come back to and come back to and come back to so we have that specific focus and we have that specific goal we're all going to be
064different grade levels schools what our goals are make it worth our while we're willing to do it we're we've proven that by the amount of time given I think the one day a month really going at it going down deep and having that longevity is really going to make a difference and that's how we're going to learn and that's how we grow as Educators and lifelong learners so thank you [Applause] thank you good evening board members higher team so I'm nervous so I'm here I'm on the preschool site so I agree with you can you give us your name please Erica Lillian though so I agree with ever points from each person um I believe that as you guys stated this is this will be the first year and when you come into something new
065you learn from the mistakes along the way so thank you for allowing teachers to come in and to hear their voice hear their experience hear anything that they need to say however for the preschool team um PD looks different for us and then on those Fridays there's only two Fridays what happens on Wednesdays is when all of you guys have your school time is the time that we have to crunch in all of our PDS as well as those IEP meetings we got annuals we got child find which I'm sure will be spoken about child fine is where we were new preschoolers come in or anyone who birthed zero to five comes in and gets evaluated and it's come that many levels those Fridays are going to be dedicated towards that now that is going
066to go to four day because that's usually on Wednesdays and then if you give or take if we're not able to do that on those on the new school year on the Fridays then it's before or after school so we're talking if you get out at three you might have to wait a little bit longer for a parent because I remember last year I was that parent I was that parent that had to have the late meeting because I had to drive all the way down from Glendale to get over here to be because I wanted to be present in that meeting with my husband to you know hear the development of my child who attended the awesome preschool that now guess what he can speak when in nonverbal came out speaking sentences every day
067it's amazing so I'm coming here as a voice for preschool to just take us into consideration into your decision making so that you know we can coincide because as of right this part of the Year this half of the year we are doing preschool transitions so maybe put into thought like um meetings where we can meet with the Kinder teams or the psychologists or whatever related service provider give us that time for professional development for that um you know so everyone will know what that looks like because I'm sure not everyone knows what a preschool transition meeting looks like and how much time it takes that's a lot of time we're writing IEPs that's time The Saturdays and Sundays huh this weekend and like not everybody but some of us are parents I have four
068youngest is one and my daughter who's more outspoken she has said when are we gonna do this can we do this and at the end of the day I'm tired and we put in so much energy to these families that sometimes when we go home we only have energy for our own children or we need at least 30 minutes of hiding from them to kind of come back so it is it's I hear you guys laughing but it's true it's true and even in any other profession you've got a high to just kind of regroup so when you're making those decisions please keep in mind what preschool looks like and if you don't know what it looks like come visit us or you know ask us questions about like how can we help and that's
069all it thank you [Applause] any more Brave folks short too um oh I'm so sorry thank you Mr President and the board my name is Christine Davidson I'm a teacher at Estrella I'm one of those resource teachers the special education teachers you guys talked about last time trying to retain and I am coming back so so far so good um [Laughter] um I'll be honest to just say that I would love to have um three Fridays off a month as a teacher who's been teaching for um about 25 years and unlike Miss Reynolds I know I look all of those years um but I um but I think more than that I want to be um just I'm just hoping that you are very cognizant of the time that we have that's without students um
070because I value our Administration very much um and but what Mr Park said earlier kind of struck me too where I think um for those of us who've been here for a while we feel like nobody's like Yay professional development days it's like we kind of sometimes dread them because we have been through a lot of different things we're going to try this method we're going to try this curriculum we're going to do this we're going to try that and it kind of gets weary after a while um feeling like we're spinning our Wheels to learn something that may or may not be around next year so um we also had been told like Wednesdays we're going to do PLC time and that's going to be valued and then sometimes it is and sometimes it's
071not we get asked to be on committees we get asked to be part of um um what would we call them like the the um like coordinators for gifted or for um CST or for so there's lots of other things that happen outside of school too in addition to meetings like IEPs or just with parents or conferences so my concern of having two Fridays is that it while it looks great right now that there's like a couple of hours of PD and then there's time to work with your group I worry that that will be um encroached upon and more and more things would be added to that and less time and now all of a sudden we're back to after school still doing things and having two Fridays which doesn't sit well with me
072when I think about returning so um I just wanted to share that thank you for your time [Applause] members we've I think heard some great feedback from many people what I would like to ask is that we take a short breakout session allow those who are staff in the room to get in some little huddles here get fresh breath outside wherever you want to go take about 10 minutes and then come back to us with what your best idea is to accomplish the four day week that works for you is it one eight hour day and four out four hours on your own is it for Fridays whatever you want whatever you think is best and then just have one person come up really quick and just report out to us but if we take
073about 10 minutes it's 6 40 if we come back at 6 50 that gives everybody a chance to kind of discuss this and then give one kind of wrap up from each group don't all move at once we'll come back at 6 50. [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign okay maybe we can just get each group's representative to line up behind the podium to present and we can go through this and move along hang on let's get everybody together we got to get video going make sure they're ready you're good okay okay we're ready to come back and
074hear from each breakout report okay just if you will start with your name again for the record and then and then move forward and um I worked with two groups um of teachers in the room and um so I'm going to give you two proposals one group said they would love to do once a month two hours of professional development followed up by one hour one hour of digesting it with their PLC teams and then the rest of the time back in their classrooms to develop lessons that would be able to be implemented for students so that's one the other team said that they would be willing to do two hours I mean two I'm sorry one Friday let me get this right one Friday and they would be willing to give you eight hours
075and they felt that it would also be two hours of professional development with one hour um working with their PLC team and then the rest of the time to develop lesson plans to implement for their students so those are the two options that were presented on those two teams thank you for this opportunity to let us speak and have a voice we appreciate it very much um the group I was talking can I stop you just get your name for the record Heather hegates thank you so one Friday six hour PD and if the feeling is that you need just time to Mentor huh not all PD no the two hour you know two hours PD and then the collaboration time which is very very valuable and where I personally get the biggest bang for
076my buck is talking to other teachers and then if the feeling is that we need another Friday a Friday on campus where we have the freedom to do what we need to do to mentor to have 504 meetings to have CST meetings to meet with our grade level teams to meet with our vertical teams to just sit and think about what we learned on the Friday that we did have that to our PD with collaboration time after time in my room is the most valuable thing that I have it is a gift that I feel like I don't get enough you talk about highly effective teachers are the best for students and if you want what's best for students if you want us to be highly effective we need to be mentally in a place
077where we can do that we need to have rest we need to have down time and if I can work on Friday and if I can have two days Saturday and Sunday which I don't have right now to just rest and be with my family and do what's important and should be a priority but not always is that would be make me a Highly Effective Teacher that would make me much happier and would make the kids much happier in turn thank you thank you [Applause] Tony Reynolds principal at Freedom one of the concerns that we hold in the group that I talked with is that the time for the collaborative teams for an intervention planning right now we're doing those for two hours every four to six weeks kindergarten through third grade and then some
078of us are having fourth through eighth grade and that's another two hours every four to six weeks to do the intervention planning the small groups and being able how to move forward I will say it Freedom that's one of the reasons we've been able to make the progress that we have so far and we have more to do if you do one Friday a month having your reading Specialists spread out to all of those K3 meetings back to back to back to back is going to be somewhat problematic and we need to be able to make sure that we're making decisions that's going to help us move forward and we need to focus on what it's going to take to move the needle I agree that teachers need time we all agree that teachers need
079to be respected and we need to put the time in to make sure we're doing the right work thank you next group is that it only three groups okay members any more questions comments before we close the session okay hearing none we will close the work session and move forward into our next General Com or general meeting one second but Mr President we might also if people want to leave the participated feel free you don't have to stick around all night it's going to be a long night and just so everybody knows we in the work session we have to address a vote or anything in a general session so it will discuss this later on in our regular agenda items but we could not do that in the in the work session but you're
080welcome to stay we like having a we like having people okay let me find my okay call the January 30th Liberty Elementary School District regular board meeting to order at 6 56. we've already gone over our attendance we have all board members present including board member Parks Board member Aguirre board member Bixler board member Kenyon and myself we will need to approve our regular agenda Mr President I move that we approve the regular agenda consistent with board policy bedb and temporarily suspend governing board policy with which this agenda may be inconsistent oh second have a motion in a second to approve the regular agenda when I call your name please specify your vote board member Parks aye board member Aguirre yes board member Bixler aye board member Kenyon aye I'm also and I we will
081show that approved unanimously next on our agendas item 4.1 the west star school report by Mr Dave Bogart principal all right good evening wow how do we get this night [Music] full crowd all right Dr Chef president Todd and the school board we appreciate the opportunity to share the work that we are doing this year at West Star Elementary School next slide you can click this all right Loretta I heard you laughing over there okay as you'll notice uh in our triangle that we've chosen student growth is at the center of all that we do at Westar in today's presentation tonight's presentation we'll be sharing with you the work we are doing in these three areas teacher competency school goals culture and climate and how all of these areas impacts our student growth intentional goals
082plus intentional PD seems to be the theme this evening and elevated teacher competency is what happens when you know what you know and it is aimed at what you do you will provide the necessary training to get this accomplished so that the end result is elevated competency so our intentional goals this year is Elevate mathematical and instructional teacher competency Ela increase proficiency and reading for information and intentional feedback you know setting our goals requires some deep thought some careful planning it's also important to be in alignment with the district's goals therefore we set these goals in our committed efforts to increase the outcomes of our students oh so last year you got to hear me talk about our long-range mathematical goal to build excellence in mathematical instruction K-8 to ensure Equitable instruction within a grade
083level so kids in a grade level are getting Equitable experiences through that strong teacher collaboration and also on the vertical continuum so this year our instructional coach Alicia namkina has taken on math and before I turn it over to her for her to talk to you about um what we accomplished our first year and our intentional work this year I just wanted to talk a little bit about her because she won't so um Alicia is a highly effective teacher and she became a standout at Westar in mathematics um she is a diligent planner and spends a lot of time planning for instructions so her students were really successful in a structured classroom with lots of procedure and they really learned to persevere through problem solving building concrete to abstract and um you know you could
084walk in her room on any given day at any time and it was obvious through observation that she was killing it but to solidify the deal 80 of her kids were proficient or highly proficient not just on the benchmark test but on um the state test as well so this being said she is a um you know just she has just torn open her toolbox as a coach this year for our teachers she is literally in classrooms every single day so now I'm going to turn it over to her to talk to you about the great work we're doing in mathematics so okay so last year you were introduced to our two-year plan to elevate our math instruction through implementing a concrete to abstract approach to ensure our students had a deep understanding of mathematical
085Concepts we began with our 4 8 team myself included and moved to a hundred percent implementation on a research-based approach to mathematical instruction within each grade band we elevated teacher leaders and provided opportunities for peer observations and targeted feedback teacher leaders attended trainings on building thinking classrooms and learned the value of mathematical instruction using vertical whiteboards Mr Bogart listened to the needs of his teachers and provided them with the tools necessary for success our end of the year second goal end of second year goals for all k-3 teachers to be trained on the concrete to abstract approach to mathematics which would lead to a hundred percent implementation K-8 we elevated a teacher leader for every K-8 grade band or level and provided systematic peer observations we are striving towards the goal that every three through
086eight math teacher is instructing at a proficient or distinguished level and that every k-3 teacher shows growth in their instructional practice moving students from concrete to abstract mathematical comprehension one of our short terms goals is to elevate teacher leaders our proficient and distinguished leaders are utilized for peer observations and they are leading professional development within their grade level bands our 8th grade teacher Miss padawano is a mentor to our new 7th grade math teacher in aiding with lesson planning Miss Bagley has planned an essential role has played an essential role in providing Hands-On opportunities to allow our four or five grade math teachers to deepen their content knowledge using the new manipulatives that were provided to all teachers last year our teachers who are developing and approaching have provide have been provided with all-day planning
087targeted professional development co-teaching sessions and instructional planning time with myself along with timely feedback our commitment to this work will ensure our developing and approaching teachers will move to proficiency as for our next steps they are to implement math workstations that will allow students to engage in spiral review fluency practice Target intervention and front loading of Concepts on a continuous basis on a personal level I'm highly invested in the concrete to abstract approach to mathematic mathematical instruction I have seen the positive changes within our students and their attitudes towards math more than ever students are engaged and striving due to their deeper understanding and Hands-On experiences I am so proud of our teachers commitment to deepen their contact knowledge and the mathematical comprehension of our students so I'm gonna whoops talk a little bit about
088our progress and our towards our Ela goal so again we mimic the district's goal by may we hope that the percent of our students scoring at Mastery and above will increase from third from 31 oh I'm sorry we'll increase by 31 sorry from 34 to 65 in the area of reading for information as measured by the ELA Arizona academic standards so um we knew that at the district level that Dr Shuff and her team was planning on providing us with front loaded professional development and supports to elevate our teachers they provided us with a Continuum so we knew how to be targeted around the skills for modeling an Ela direct modeling so we're we're like why not build on what we know they're going to be assisting us with and we all know that reading
089for information is at the core of almost all learning so our action around this was we were committed to direct modeling students in text every day K-8 systematic use of Achieve 3000 teacher leader mentoring through vertical PLC so our plc's assure for ELA are we have a leader leading a vertical team instead of a grade level cross-curricular team we're seizing every opportunity aligned to ELA so we're highly invested in the read better be better program we have more leaders and more readers than ever this trimester we're super excited we actually have a wait list for leaders so that's super exciting our next move is planning days like Alicia talked about the math planning um we're going to Institute planning days for ELA teachers and then we participated in the training with the Chief 3000 and
090are committed to the five-step lesson plan so um we also when we're working towards a goal right we're constantly and analyzing data so if you click on the learn to read picture that's linked to one of the reports oh no so I'll just talk about it where is candy no um so um anyway it was just it's the frequency report which is really cool it's my favorite report so what it allows you to see is you can put in a standard so for um reading for information it's our ri2 ri3 ri5 and we can pull up how our students did on the specific questions on our benchmark test for that specific standard and then we can look at it and say hey 70 of my kids killed uh you know number eight but only 30
091percent did well on number five and we can dig into the why is it a test taking strategy we need to work on is it rigor uh what is it and that helps us so we're excited to say that as of November um we were across the board at 50 proficiency so we're confident that by may we are going to make our goal so here's our gender update so last time when the board we had some data presented we were concerned about our Kinder growth scores so I have to say um we were already concerned so before the board even noted the concern I had already met with Natasha camp and Erica Daniels on what can we do right to support and I know she said we have new teach we had new teachers at
092that grade level we do and new to us but their dedicated hard-working ladies that will do anything asked of them and they dug in Erica came over and did a full day with them and they were in it to win it they've implemented her feedback and we're continuing to support them and giving them observational feedback but we wanted to give you another dip in our data so if you look at our first sound fluency at the beginning of the year for 10 sounds we were at 36 percent grade level so mid-year was The Benchmark 82 percent of our Kinders met 30 sounds so we did progress monitor ring on the 26th they grew to 86 percent so for phoneme seg mid-year 20 sounds 66 percent on the 26th we did another dip they jumped to
09374 but here's the super exciting part so if you look at the end of the year they jump from 20 sounds to 40 right so 55 of our kindergarteners already meet the end of your benchmark so way to go Kindergarten that's in the cry room up in the front of the good job Candor and then on the nonsense words um mid-year Benchmark 17 um they are at 57 percent then our nonsense words on the 26th we went from 57 to 90 percent and then our percent of students already at end of your benchmark is 77 so I we are super proud of our kindergarten teachers so we were very intentional about doing that and we do appreciate Erica coming over and helping us with that we had already planned on doing some of that work
094so given the teachers the time to do that during the school day and providing substitute teachers is a is a stretch and at West start we're we're happy that we're able to do that because we have two permanent Subs on our campus and we utilize those permanent Subs to do this kind of work anyway intentional feedback plus intentional teacher actions will also Elevate instruction okay as our leadership team meets weekly the three of us we meet each week we analyze the data to determine the next steps that we work on in our plan and we provide initial feedback to teachers and then we follow up to witness those strategies as they're in action the goal is to increasing the instruction of the classroom as that's done by taking a look at the data that's where
095we start we provide some areas Mrs Loveless missing them Keane and I are using quick look electronic feedback forms and instructional conferences to provide feedback directly aligned with our goals as our coach Mrs numkina meets with multiple teachers a week to provide feedback and support through co-teaching planning support and peer observation on campus as well as with our partner schools if you were to ask Mrs numkina how many times she substituted this school year she would tell you one hour since the beginning of the school year not weekly one hour total I'm gonna sub before she does okay so the data we collect is uh is a direct impact on the work that we're doing professional development and teacher leaders equal intentional differentiated instruction if you were to ask teachers at Westar we um sorry
096we give them time on Wednesdays because we have vertical teams all content across that so we give them time on Wednesday and then we really hone in on the work that we're doing so we impact our our team by elevating others to do that training we continue to reach out to our staff to intentionally seek those who can help us out in providing that small group on professional development which is vertically aligned to that content specific that I spoke of yes so um I think elevating teacher leaders is the my favorite part of my job and so um being a part of the climate of mentorship here at Liberty you know has meant a lot to me now I'm gonna cry um I've been afforded with this leadership the best mentoring I've ever had and
097coming up as a teacher leader and then an instructional coach and now an assistant principal I'm proud to be a part of mentoring other leaders and it is in doing this that we expand our impact and our teacher leaders are rock stars like they step up they're running small group PD so that on our campus they are only attending PD that is intentionally aligned to their instruction and we are very proud of that OS star they are working on creating cfas vertical alignment mentoring as Alicia mentioned and we're very proud of the work that they are doing whoops so our leaders lead professional development and Mentor peers this allows for targeted objectives directly tied to instruction gives new teachers access to mentoring increased alignment for every teacher and more planning time due to less staff
098professional development so they aren't sitting waiting for it to apply to them we have teachers leading an example was today I was in a fifth grade classroom and Mrs Merkel was the kids were writing an opinion piece and she was using a rubric that she had worked on and developed with our fifth or sixth and seventh grade ELA teachers and they had built direct alignment that stair-step from grade level to grade level and she was talking to the kids today about how this is where your writing goals live and this is how it's going to look in seventh grade or in sixth grade and then in seventh grade and it was just amazing to see the work they were doing end up in the classroom so I was really proud of them for that so
099our teacher leaders Embrace opportunities so the teachers at Westar are a little crazy about going after their grants and we had some really crazy teachers who just jumped into coding right before school started just like hey that's what's best for kids we don't care how hard it is on us we don't care that we only have a week to do these trainings we're doing it because that's what's best for kids and it's super cool and we're really proud of them for doing that so with us today is our science lead Shauna Madison and she's going to come up and talk to you about the cool science grant foreign good evening Dr chef and president Todd and members of the governing board so I'm Shawna Madison and myself along with my colleagues Joshua colapanis and Janelle
100Moran we decided in our PLC meeting that we were going to apply for this really lofty Grant and we thought well if all three of us apply maybe one of us will get it and uh the most exciting thing happened we all got the Grant and so just this is a quick brief kind of intro about what it is and I thought they'd do it better than me so have you ever wanted to expand stem education opportunities at your school the Arizona stem acceleration project is looking for teachers to team with us to expand stem opportunities for students in Arizona by participating in the ASAP project teachers can receive a forty five hundred dollar stipend and two thousand dollars in stem supplies for their projects teachers who team with ASAP sign up to complete 30
101hours of stem professional development of their choice teachers agreed to share four lesson activities that can help other teachers Statewide and lastly teachers create and Implement a stem project of their choice with their students have you always wanted to do a cool stem project with your students now is the chance to do it and you don't have to be a stem teacher to apply you just need to be a classroom teacher who is interested in bringing stem to your students what are you waiting for apply to be a ASAP stem fellow today the Arizona stem acceleration project looking to reimagine what stem education looks like in Arizona schools [Music] so without we were really excited something that's kind of great that we just learned was the professional development that we've been doing with I believe
102her name's Rebecca gorelli hopefully I'm not butchering that but she's from the Department of Ed and she's actually training Us in this 3D model of Science and it actually counts towards that PD and then Mr Bogart is sending us to Camp plug and play this summer and we're really excited about that in Tucson so getting the professional development hours is no big deal um and so now we get to kind of scheme and dream about how to spend the money when we get it and so we're super excited about it and here's kind of our preliminary plans of how we're going to implement the funds hi my name is Josh kolpanis I teach 7th and 8th grade science here at Westar Elementary with my stem Grant I'm going to be starting an after-school drone Club
103where we teach the students about flying and coding drones great and I'm Shawna Madison I teach the 7 8 mag class here at Westar as well as an 8th grade section of Science and with my stem Grant I'm going to use it to help us fund our annual steam camp and hoping to buy some Edison robots for the kids to program and learn how to use hi I'm Janelle Moran and I teach fifth and sixth grade science with my stem Grant I will be looking at gearing towards third through sixth grade and we're going to be putting on a stem parade with spheros and Edison robots with Lego foreign so we're excited I put going Beyond paper clips straws and cardboard um so we're excited to expand our stem resources Beyond like the everyday consumables
104that we're typically using for our stem challenges um and looking forward to leveling up our stem tasks with the implementation of these robots we plan to launch them at our steam camp this summer and I kind of foresee them living in junior high but I'm excited we have buddy classes and my kids love getting together with their buddy classes and teaching them how to use them we also have been partnering with Estrella Foothills High School with the robotics team my husband I kind of have a little connection he runs the robotics team in engineering there so they helped us at our steam Camp it just feels like something that's really crucial to our students as they move forward that coding seems almost like a language they have to learn and so it's been great that
105they've been learning it this year and we get to kind of further that so we're looking forward to that and then Mr Bogart kind of just asked okay what does steam look like or stem look like at Western we kind of add the art because it's important to us we kind of the steam so um at Westar stem is really like the heart of all of our lessons as we attempt to end uh kind of emphasize Innovation problem solving this critical thinking like in everything so we're not only interested in making certain that like content standards are driven but we want them to have those 21st century skills they need moving forward so what we've got here is just a little clip of our Kids In Action so this was right before Christmas break um
106we were thinking what are we going to do engage our kids in these days before Christmas is coming and so um you'll see a little video clip of Mrs Moran's class her sixth grade class and then um my eighth grade science class so the project we were doing was making a makeshift catapult showing the transfer between potential energy to kinetic energy yes uh we constructed them with popsicle sticks bottle caps um cotton balls and rubber bands we were basically learning what potential kinetic energy are and how to use them in a sense of a engineering project basically we just set up our catapults and we um had a cotton ball and we um did three full launches and three middle launches and record our data and [Music] those of you that are ready you have
107all your stuff you can begin engineering so is there a specific design you're going for um uh gingerbread gingerbread okay what about you what are you doing I want to see this back design too Christmas nice and I'm gonna put this out he's gonna send to the image oh I see I was looking at it upside down Christmas lights wrapped around sweater but right in the front in the very middle okay now Okay add like a little bit of uniqueness to it color coordinated uh Christmas tree sweater looking for the perfect fluff ball s so stem looks different in every space every grade level every content area in Mrs Moran's class you see a very like a typical undeniably stem task at work in my classroom what you what you may have seen in this
108ugly sweater task is a bunch of boisterous children sort of attaching stuff to a sweater but what I see are students engaged in a relevant Hands-On challenge which harvests creativity and Innovation I see students persevering through a task when their design doesn't work out how they thought it would on paper and I see students collaborating and helping one another through a challenge so this was the first time that I had tried this I definitely my risk taker I'm like this sounds really fun let's try to do ugly sweaters and thankfully I have a very supportive parent group that sent in sweaters and supplies and they're like okay Miss Madison have fun um and they they did they were amazing so I all ready though as a teacher an innovator myself I'm going okay what could
109I do with this so next year so I foresee a challenge of creating a design that's marketable to my students to like to the students peers I see them having like a hypothetical budget for supplies maybe learning about supply and demand through this I foresee my students creating a digital model of their design prior to engineering it I foresee my students maybe determining the cost of production maybe conducting like an analysis on how to sell their sweaters in order to make a profit so I see all of these sort of interdisciplinary ties that I can really draw upon and and build into this amazing stem unit so maybe a marketing proposal or a fashion show maybe at the end but projects such as these bottom line they cost money um it's a different experience to
110draw and design something but then actually to see your work come to fruition and build it is a whole other level of learning so this is where grants such as the one that we've just received are going to help make those experiences come to life and so I'm anxious to see the opportunities that will be provided to our kids next year as those funds come to fruition and and we get to spend them and see what the kids do with it so thank you so most of you already know that every summer we get together with our staff and we invite them to come and participate in a Leadership Retreat over the summer time we take them off site to do a Leadership Retreat last year we took I think 21 teachers who went last
111year to a Leadership Retreat so we're constantly looking for ways to increase the leaders that we have on our campus so we're working on having some of those folks do some more of that training that we're going to do this summer train more teachers to lead small group professional development tied exactly to the goals that we're shooting for at Westar and the district okay so engaging our teachers our students and our parents plus our community has positive climate culture it's something that I work on all the time or next we actually all work on all the time we have lots of parents who are on our campus some of them are in this meeting this evening um and so we're we're proud of the work that we do um we recently redid our gem thanks
112to Mr nuttall's work on getting that secured um the steam Camp you'll see the logo on the right hand side so if you have small children all the way up through fifth grade and you want them to come we're gonna it's gonna grow we've had as many as 85 kids participate in a week-long event so I just recently met with a gentleman that's going to actually kick off to do some work with bringing another recreational League up here it'll be an NFL program through NFL um and then we're going to do some work around cheerleaders street hockey and then eventually we'll expand that into the gym where we'll be doing some basketball as well so with that I'm going to leave you with a small video a little bit about our goals for this year
113[Music] I close my eyes and I can see a world that's waiting up for me that I call my own [Music] Through The Dark Through the Door through where no one's been before but it feels like home they could say they can say it all sounds crazy [Music] they can say they can say I've lost my mind I don't care I don't care if they call me crazy [Music] keeping me [Music] there's a house we can build every room inside is filled with things from far away special things I compile each one there to make you smile on a rainy day say it can say it all sounds crazy they could say they can say we've lost our minds see I don't care I don't care if they call us crazy run away to a
114world that we desire every night the brightest colors [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh a million dreams about the world we're gonna make however big however small let me be part of it all share your dreams with me we may be right we may be wrong but I will not bring you along [Music] the brightest colors fill my head a million dreams are keeping me [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] so what I can tell you is that we are a proud Public School in the Liberty school district and we're I'm proud of the work that we do at Westar so if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer okay looks like lots go ahead Canyon first of all thank you so much that was a lot of information there
115awesome to see what's happening over at Westar you guys put a lot of you can tell everybody in this room can probably feel the energy you guys put in these kids and we appreciate it so much um just looking at that last part about stem I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and almost every one of them say my first business was when I was 11 I started mowing lawns or whatever that is just awesome that you guys put that energy into these kids getting them to think about the future getting them to think about taking taking that personal that's how we get to these kids is that they take it personal and make it their own so thank you for that um I'm going to say this is for the public but it's also
116for me can you please explain to me what the uh talking about the math concrete to abstract approach is maybe Miss come on Wallace love lesser I I know that's a big one but I just I really would like to understand that more so as we had mentioned last year um our with teachers have gone through training and our um Mr Bogart did Supply this with manipulatives so that would be an example of a concrete so the kids are learning to add and if we're trying to get to abstract if I tell you three plus two is five that's pretty abstract but concrete if I give you three tiles plus two tiles having you put it on a time frame and then explaining that's five and five more is ten and if I take a
117certain amount away all of that just a hands-on experience not and moving away from Strictly procedural does that help yeah it helps me I hope it helps the public thank you I appreciate that board member Bixler yeah Mr bow guy I really appreciate the the word intentional that you have in in your plans uh I think that carries exactly the right message so well done I do have another math question so I don't know he might be coming up um I do answer math questions you talk about looking for um evidence of student learning in systemic in a systemic way uh could you explain that a little bit for me what what does that look like what does student learning in a systemic way look like basic going to the more abstract so you're going
118to go from um more of a the concrete piece that comes to there into a more Global Market more Global piece of you know how they're processing math so being able to move that particular skill into unex unexpected areas and be successful in using that skill yeah I was in a a younger grade classroom where we talked about it they were talking about abstract where they had different shapes that represented different numbers and what do I notice and what do I wonder and so they were able to take those numbers and determine which one met the criteria that they were looking at and then they all got to talk about it so what I did was I purchased whiteboards for all of the classrooms in the math departments to use so the kids actually stand
119up and do the math collectively as a group so if you were to walk into Mrs paduano's classroom you would see groups of two three in their groups working through the concepts as they move through that right now I had a little different interpretation I thought it meant that you were able to see the student learning over over the entire population and that for me would be systemic I I like your answer better board member require I just appreciate the recognition that Administration and your team specifically to the Kinder kids of that there was a recognition that we had some newer teachers and that Erica you and your team recognize that also and from what I see that rather than I think as it was put let them do it on their own that we
120took more of a team approach and we lifted each other up so thank you for that you're welcome um I'll kind of segue off of that a little bit um as far as the um I see significant scores in ela and Kinder I know that the bringing the teachers up to speed was a big part of that um is that a new program we've introduced this last year a year before is it is a new phonics program what's the what is the program we're using that's working so much better we're using reading Horizons so that started uh went last year yeah and so we're training all the teachers on how to do that and over time that's gotten better so we actually our leadership team meets weekly and each week we're each responsible for bringing
121a set of data so we only talk about one set of data each time right so reading Horizons or acadians data would come forth Amanda and I and Mrs Lamkin would talk about that so yeah that training is happening and getting all those teachers into the right place it takes time I love to see this progress with reading and writing it's just awesome so thank you that's it you're welcome Mr Bogart a couple more questions how do I get to get yours it's okay um first of all one of the distinct honors of getting to sit over here is I get to say ditto to my fellow board members um I I would like to also just congratulate the science team uh getting that Grant um as we've seen time and time again budgets are
122are brutal so to be able to get grants and bring that extra work in fantastic um second I just had a question as we were talking you talk about the Leadership Retreat I know you've done that for I'm not going to say how long because I might date you but um do the teachers get paid for that are they doing that voluntary voluntary yeah voluntary so that's time that we're they're getting it and they're still coming so they're giving of their time in the summer for that so kudos to your team for that um last but not least that same team sent me a list it was five questions Mr Bogart doesn't want to be asked I'm just kidding I'm done thank you very much I've answered your questions for a long time Mr Todd
123I'd be happy to answer some of those five years probably so but thank you it was a great presentation we appreciate all you do foreign next up on our agenda I'm having a hard time following this one here governing board reports I believe correct yes um Miss Hamrick is going to provide the board with a special education update she has a lot of background information here and she's going to focus primarily on some of the areas that the board was interested in hearing more about that we've heard a couple of times you know in different pieces in particular she'll emphasize um the process you know if you have identification thank you um to receiving special education services and she will also provide an update on where our students are with any IEP minutes for compensatory
124time um and how that because we've had some concerns about staff turnover and vacancies with special education and then because all that information is there she's also going to be available for questions about any of that so those would be areas she'll emphasize with a short introduction on where we're at with our growing special education population thank you well good evening governing board president governing board members and Dr Shuff um yeah there's about 42 slides in this presentation I don't think you want me to go over every single one of them but I did want to give you that background information so that you can actually look at it and if you ever have any questions about it I'd be more than happy to go over it with you all right so we're going to
125look at um first of all I want to talk about missed minutes right now on Blue Horizon Las Brisas and Liberty have zero missed minute so I want to say basically a congratulations to Blue Horizons because they did actually make up the minutes they worked hard to get that done freedom and Westar have very few minutes they have assured me that they will be made up by the end of the year so we're really good with that rainbow is a little bit different because we've been lacking teachers throughout the year so we're we're getting into it and cutting into those missed minutes and getting that done but we're hoping we can get them done by the end of the year but I'm not we're not totally sure since we've been down so many teachers at
126Rainbow right now Estrella we're working on estrella's minutes we had a teacher leave and so there's two weeks of missed minutes but um I've talked to Miss Boris and she said that there is a substitute ready to go to actually help with those minutes so we're gonna work through that so that they won't have any minutes uh for the summer time so we're doing really good with that okay so let's look at um let's look at the the growth so I I gave you a little um a little bit of the year's growth and you can see right there um starting from 2019 how we've moved up to let's look at 2023 we're at 670 students that was October one so when I pulled numbers 2019 20 21 22 that's the October 1st count that
127we have to give to the state department so this year our numbers were 670 for the October 1st count and now on 119 we're at 702. okay so we're we're seeing that growth that growth is there looking at the current the current percentage of special ed students were where we're supposed to be right now we're 13 the average um is 10 to 15 percent and the average for Arizona is about 12 percent so we're right where we need to go need to be because at some time I don't know if they're still looking at but Ade before the pandemic discussed how it would affect our funding if we were under identified or over identified so hopefully they're not looking at that as they were before the pandemic so um you can see that the general
128ed students that is the the current number from but that was from 119. okay and as we look at the growth um we're at 702 that orange bar is 859 that means that the students that are in the CST process if they were to be identified as special education um by October 1 of next year it would be 859 students so the CSD process um they they may or may not push through but they may be identified so we don't know that until they go through the process of CST and then the 917 would be the five percent growth increase so that's just a little bit of where we could be next year on 10 1. and again that would take us to that would be our percentage if that were to occur we'd just
129be a little bit over we'd be 16 over um what the average is is 12 to 15 percent so let's talk about the current special education services right now we have psychologists we have five campuses that have a psychologist and then we have a psychologist that is shared between two campuses and you can see that that's our site staff this is our resource programming everything in yellow is the new additions that we made this year so those are unfilled but they are positions that are open and we added them this year and you can see that last year you can see the this the teachers or the the positions we had last year compared to this year 's our program our self-contained program we actually added a moderate to severe classroom but it was in
130place of the classroom that we no longer have at Blue Horizon that one hopefully will be filled next year so that would add another self-contained we're hoping that will happen because the number of self-contained students we have quite a few preschool we of course we have the inclusion preschool and then we have the two special ed preschools our hope next year is to actually make one of those developmental classrooms and inclusion preschool as well possibly too okay let's look at the new special education teachers in the district for special ed there's one that's first year of teaching totally we have two that have first year of teaching just in special ed so they've taught before but this is their first year in Special Ed we have first year teaching in the district so they've taught
131before special ed but now they're new to the district and then our first year in the district and teaching special ed so you can see that a lot of our special ed teachers are veteran teachers so we've we've actually kept a lot of our veteran teachers which we're very proud of um this is our related service health staff and behavioral staff so you can see a list of what that looks like and we practiced it so it would work this is all of those folks that fall under my department from behavior from otpt speech counseling and so that's just an idea of all the folks that we have supporting our programs okay so let's look at what we call a Continuum of services and we have the push in resource model pull out resource model
132and it's identified in their IEP whether it's push in or pull out this is usually what we call an ARB level of service sometimes it's a C Level of service but that is a lot of minutes for a resource teacher to carry our self-contained has a C Level of services so we have a cross-categorical academic across cross-categorical behavior and we also have an academic class for medically fragile students and that would be our moderate to severe students and this is a level a level C Service we also have we in a private Day School which is a contract um it is a Level D placement and it is a placement only because these students do not have access to their typical peers and we currently have two 22 students in our d-level placements which is
133outside of the district levels of services this is for you to see how many minutes what a level a is what a level B level C Level D it has a lot to do with the actual amount of a minute students are getting and also where they're getting the minutes um this is just a graph so that you can actually see it um this is the Continuum of services and every District follows it and they have to have those different services for the needs of different students okay foreign let's talk a little bit about identification so how does a child become um what's a process for them to become special ed students uh they're identified by a staff member or staff members or a parent however there's a process so if a staff member or
134a parent identify their child is may have a disability then that always goes to the psychologist if it's a parent or to go right to the psychologist he'll look at the data that the staff has and then they'll make a decision he'll make that decision whether we need to collect more data or do we need to go on with the process when it is a staff that actually refers the student then that's then that goes to the CST process and we talked a little bit about the CSD process that's not a special ed process that's a general Ed process and so this child study team goes through collects all the data um and they're they're given the proper intervention so we talked about tier one tier two tier three last week I won't go into
135that there there is some links that you can look at that as well look at information so in Ida 2004 research was State there was State stated that research-based interventions need to happen before identification is special and after as well so it doesn't change so those intervention interventions that are given at the beginning the IEP is the document that allows them to continue and plus the special ed services because we know especially for students with specific learning disabilities and that is the majority of our students that they need those interventions beforehand because they have the ability to learn they're just for some reason not learning to their best capability same thing with the behavior sometimes we see students with specific learning learning disabilities start to act out because of their inability to to understand the
136concepts [Music] um and then here oops am I going backwards where am I going from oops let me go the right way okay and so um this is our process for identification so once the interventions have been done the team will go ahead after about 12 weeks of or more sometimes it's longer they'll do their interventions and they're not seeing any growth so they decide that we need to move further further and go into what um the special ed portal is what I call it so that they go into it and that's when we take over so we have the psychologists will have a meeting with the whole entire team and that is called a met1 and that is just a permission to test so the whole team will talk about all the interventions they
137did all the data they collected and now it is time for the parent to say yes I would like to have my child test it and sign a permission to test and once they do that then the 60 calendar days not school days calendar days start and so from that signature page to 60 days all the testing that is needed will be done whether it's cognitive whether it's behavioral whether it's speech and language otpt then that that actually starts the process and they start to test after the 60 days but most of our psychologists are pretty good about getting it done before 60 days because they want to try to get those services to those kids if they need it so um once that is finished they call the team together it's a met 2
138meeting and then the team discusses what the findings were so the special ed teacher would discuss the academic part the site would discuss the cognitive speech would discuss their um findings and then they would make a determination of whether the child is eligible or not and that is a team in some cases a team agreement some of it is for sld it's it's pretty pretty standard discrepancy because we use the discrepancy model okay and then um in most cases the IEP comes right after that meeting so it's a right immediately after that meeting so we could get that IEP in place we have up to 30 days but most of our teams don't want to wait and they want to get it done at that meeting so that those Services can start right away if
139we find that the child does not qualify for special ed services but maybe they have a medical diagnose a diagnosis of attention deficit then we can refer them to the 504 process and so the site would usually say I I think of 504 because the child may not need specialized instruction but they may need some accommodations so then that would go to the 504 pipeline okay and um a little bit about freaking appropriate public education um that's from Ida in Section 504 there's some links down there if you want to learn more and least restrict environment as we look at the least restricted environment for that student where they will best meet the needs to get the um General Ed curriculum as best as they can okay the rest of it is all yours to
140read I know you have questions for me I'm ready board member Kenyan you have questions board member Bixler yes thank you very much for a very complete report uh I've actually I'm married to a special ed director and I have a child that's on it that was on an IEP so I'm fairly familiar with the process it has changed quite a bit over the years and just so I can understand if my understanding is correct there was a time where there was a numerical discrepancy that really identified students as special ed eligible that has gone away now and it's now how the student responds to interventions that are tried response to intervention um it appears to me that because of you need to have an intervention try to see what the response is and then
141decide meet to decide whether or not that intervention needs to a different one or if it's working and so on that takes more time than the numerical discrepancy of the old ways is my impression that does take more time because you're having to see response yeah well we we look at about 12 weeks so um and I've talked to other my other co-workers in other districts and it's pretty much similar we do four weeks we say that you know four weeks in tier one we see that the child comes in that you know we're doing some interventions in the core it's not working then we go to the second tier which is four weeks of that we have to collect the data and look at it and come together as a team and then that
142third tier then is another four weeks if that if we're not seeing any growth or if we're seeing limited growth and the team thinks well it's very limited I I think we need to go on to special ed that is the team's decision after they've you know done their tier one you know tier one is the core and then tier two and tier three and then if that team decides that they're going to move on to testing then they do once they get in a special ed they still need those interventions they don't ever go away you know it's just another layer on top of those interventions what I've seen is that the the best thing about uh having an IEP is that that is a guarantee that the student gets for the rest of
143their life and so as obviously as they move on in in school uh those interventions and the IEP and the planning process would follow but it also follows into college and university so for me I think that's one of the most important things of an IEP is that it does follow you later so you can use it to get so the playing fields the level for you just like it is for all the other students one last thing and again uh this is for I think mostly the crowd a number of the slides reference something called CST that's child study team correct that's where the teachers sit they look they talk about the student performance what works what doesn't work and establish interventions absolutely yes thank you remember Gore so tonight we heard a lot
144about teacher fatigue and thank you for sharing that overwhelmingly the majority of your staff is veteran teachers and they're fatigued and that was going to be my question of are they feeling fatigued due to lack of additional seat resources support or just additional Personnel help S I believe okay it really depends on the school and you know what they have and what they don't have especially staff and not having teachers and I I really want to say that my special the special ed Team all at every school they've worked really hard this year to fill those holes in those gaps and they've done an outstanding job okay um I notice obviously over it seems like over a year there's a steady increase of recognition of students yes so that's obviously a concern of you all
145need more staff more help and then lastly I thought it was interesting that you said and I guess this is something that I've never recognized or just don't know because I don't know of some children act up their in Behavior bad they get in trouble at school and what I heard was simply because they're frustrated that sometimes they're having a hard time learning sometimes and it really depends that's when that team will get together and they'll make like they'll figure that out so that that's what they need to do is it is it due to um learning or is it due to emotional or is it due to trauma so those teams get together and and they through those interventions they they try to find it takes so much time yeah when I say that
146I'm being like honest of 12 weeks is that part of that of truly making sure that if you will the diagnosis from the CST is accurate yeah absolutely um an emotional disability label um will stop a if it continues all the way to high school those students will not get into the military or not get into a police academy and and need need to be if they have an emotional disability but that's why we try to make sure that they don't get labeled when that's not the label so you'll see a lot of ohis because that will do the attention deficit that will allow those behaviors to be addressed without giving them that label thank you so much for everything you do a problem I'm gonna follow that up just a little bit because I'm
147I'm with Mark on this um you know one of the things I see and of course I know this because of my own experience you know a lot of behavior problems is disability related and you know one of the things I'm very sensitive about is how do we get these children recognized quicker and how do we get them the help they need quicker I'll leave that up to you but I think that you know we're dealing with a lot of different issues in the classroom I just like to see a way that we could kind of put our heads together and say how do we do this better how do we do it more efficiently and how do we start getting the help we need because I think it'll relieve the teachers up a little
148bit too and then the other question I have a question here it's tier one tier two tier three do you are you required to go through each one of those independently or can you identify a child as somebody that might bypass one and go let's go to tier three that happens um sometimes I mean like uh there's been examples where if students come in um for an example there's in in the past there's been a student that came in that did not parents did not want to test and then as a foster parent took them and then we could go through and we're not going to do do that if we have some background and we have a lot of you know data saying hey this this needs to go further now but um the
149law says that if a child even if we don't get the paperwork and and sometimes this is bothersome but when we don't get the paperwork that child starts at General Ed no matter what just because of the laws that say least restrict environment but um yeah you know I mean there are those times when kids you know are we we may skip tier one because we already see it doesn't work but we're gonna try tier two and tier three and I think that's why the behavioralists were put in place so that they can get those interventions done however her behavioralist has about I don't know 890 on her her list right now to to give those interventions but as we talked about before it is working she's giving some interventions to kids that are are
150now doing better it was just not you know they the teacher wasn't sure what to do great sounds like we're on the right track trying if I ask one more question yes sir so I guess one other question I have is would a special education Coordinator would that also help in identifying those students a little bit quicker um in a more timely manner to also help relieve some of the workload that's been discussed this evening [Music] coordinator but we still need the Coach position the Coach position is the the one that helps with working with teachers with um with that so um how does it work now she well the coach does both she does compliance and she does um the coaching and the special ed she hasn't been doing a lot of coaching like
151physical coaching she's doing more of a compliance coaching at this point and hopefully we'll get that taken care of squared away so she can do more out there okay thank you any other questions yeah sorry that's okay come past me because I knew that a lot of the questions I had would probably be asked no problem um thank you for all the work you're doing and putting this together so I'm reluctant to just slap labels on kids especially if it's something they're going to carry with them for a long time and I know we use label as a label right but a lot of kids do actually need this some may not so there may be some things that are just behavioral because of at home um I have a lot of experience at the
152department child safety and seeing what happens in kids life sometimes it's just a situational thing so yes if there's somebody we know a child who needs that help we ought to get that as soon as possible I agree with everything that Brian Mark is saying um but I'm also very reluctant to just you know somebody's disturbing one time and we automatically flag them so over in Rainbow Valley in Australia these are our two schools right now that we we need some help and working on um getting caught up with IEP minutes right and I know looking at the chart there's still the vacancies a couple vacancies at a couple schools what um I know that was very recent we haven't given you a lot of time to get those positions filled but what is the
153district currently doing or the administration currently doing to fill those positions I mean the the ones for for qualified teachers or for temporary I apologize that would be for blue Horizons in Australia the vacancies there that it showed on those so um Blue Horizon we do have people in those places right now um I'm sorry uh Rainbow Valley blue Horizons golden they they have an empty slot but they are they are they've somehow managed to get all their minutes caught up okay um Rainbow Valley we do have people in place now um making up those minutes but because there wasn't teachers at the beginning of the year they were the farthest behind so uh right now uh they have 13 515 minutes to make up and um however they they've come a long way because
154they had much more at that point um Australia only has uh 6600 and that's for two weeks because there's a teacher missing there's a teacher she's been missing for two weeks how however there is now a substitute to help with giving that giving those minutes now on Monday she'll be starting on Monday Wednesday and Friday okay and then um Freedom they'll be they'll be finished they just had missed minutes because of coverage of absent teachers scheduling conflicts at the beginning of the year and they logged their minutes so they knew that they were missed and she's she'll have them done within probably the next couple months okay so 1705 minutes Mr Tom Marion so when she says they're golden that means how hard those teachers have done to make up those minutes that doesn't mean
155that doesn't mean they're in a golden situation by what the workload that they are carrying right now because our self-contained classrooms have the highest number of students in those self-contained classrooms that I've seen since I've been here and so that means they've got that many more IEPs that many more parents and that's a large number of kids with specialized needs in that environment and that makes their job harder so next year we have in the budget that you approved or you know prioritized budget we do have four additional positions for special education that will help to support that um and frankly as we find these people now if they were available to start now to just lock them in we would probably be bringing them back to you for approval and giving our teachers some
156relief early so just know that how hard they've worked and what is it it's it's we are nowhere close to a perfect situation we are hanging on um her team has done a great job with um she talked about compliance four and a half years ago we had some very very serious compliance issues the former special education director had started to Target and Tackle those um frankly Arizona Department of Education gave us some breaks in those first year because of how kind of abysmal that was in our district and didn't bring It Forward then covet happened and the special education director did nothing nothing but cobit and Maricopa County health related type of efforts so it didn't make progress also with our teachers and compliance and our special education teachers um and I will say
157that Kay and her instructional coach have been in the unhappy position now of trying to get six seven eight years of ongoing compliance issues for special education underway in a time when there's been a massive shortage of teachers and particularly special education teachers so I would just say it's just it's just a compounding difficult situation and I'm particularly um saddened and worried for our teachers they just are over the edge and exhausted in special education Stephanie church back there God bless her she has been picking up doing some of these IEPs so they can move along and keep us in compliance but also keep our children accessing the level of Education they deserve a need with their services so it's just uh it's just a shortchanged program all the way around from teachers to instructional
158coach I think to your question Mr gwyer Stephanie Church's position is isn't in coach but she's been asked to do other things she is filling in so she's not actually doing the job she was hired to do it we're just we're just short so would would the team actually need a coach and a coordinator and some additional special education teachers a hundred percent but we are trying to do it in a responsible way with the budget we have available into your point really what ends up happening is just it's just compound interest it just gets worse and we fall farther behind and a little bit farther and then that compounds and it just continues just worried about the people right for sure that's all I'm just worried about the people Stephanie Stephanie worked with um
159the staff members to to help get those IEPs and compliance and I can um probably say with her support and the teachers that we are out of our cap we're out of our corrective action plan which is a nice thing although however they're going to monitor US every year we you never get out um and I did put in the compliance part so you can see the cycle it's one through six Cycles so they'll come in Monitor and if they see we're doing well then we won't get into a cap on the fifth year so next year we'll be on six year six and they'll come and give us tax technical support cut look at a couple IEPs okay this is great and then it starts the process over again just kudos to the team
160for you know the entire Special Education team down to the paraprofessionals for the the work they've done with the you know making it all stretched to make it happen so we're proud of them yeah very much so you have I just have a couple questions um kind of reiterate what I think I've heard from others I'm concerned the 12-week intervention that just seems like a long time 12 weeks is three months and that's a third of the school year almost yeah um so you you made a comment later it says most of our teams don't want to wait the whole time and I think the response back is none of our teams should ever be waiting and I think it would be very prudent of our district to look at a report and see if
161we have certain teams that are dragging this out longer and identify why and what the root causes so that we can provide some assistance to those teams these are truly special kids and we need to do everything we can and get them the services as soon as possible so I don't think we should ever be writing State Maximum State minimums however you want to call it we should be as fast as possible getting this getting us through so um with that I'm just curious with the psychologist on each campus are they on each campus every day yeah and what's up for Australia and um Liberty okay or I'm sorry Estrella and Las Brisas Liberty does because there is a preschool there what's their caseload like in overall whoo um for reevaluations it really depends when
162they go to the CST if they go into that portal so last year when we were short the psych they were up there at about 100 100 cases which is is is a lot um for three years so a three year they did a hundred evaluations in the year right now we're at a good place um right now we're at a good place they're probably going to end up doing 50 or 60 a year okay so my last question in regards to compliance um right now it sounds like we're doing some double duty but could we not have somebody else in our district help with compliance maybe a non-certified employee with a I think some other districts utilize that and it seems like that would be a great fit to get that element off of
163our our employees back get it somewhere else to get them back into the classroom and and with the kids more and not not worried about well we do have a compliance technician and she looks at um the IEP Pro Part to see if everything's in place but because she doesn't have that background she does not know what a good present level of performances if the present level is relating to the goal that is somebody that would need to be um you know special ed certified because they know that where our um where our compliance technicians she just makes sure that things are transportation is done that IEPs are enforced and locked so she does the technical part of it which is needed but to teach her everything that I've known or my bachelors and or
164Masters in special ed would take a great deal because there's a lot of um there's just a lot of certified things that need to be done I wish we could do that that would be great okay thank you are we done all done I think we're done was there just for a clarifying statement was made teams dragging their feet was that with evaluations I I don't think it was dragging their feet just said most of our teams don't want to wait but some of them are closer some of them wait a little longer so I just said none of our teams should be waiting that's well the reason that they wait is because they see progress if they're going in at tier two they're seeing there's some progress so they're going to say wait we're
165not going to go to tier three or to an evaluation because we do see progress those that are they're not seeing progress or they're seeing very little progress then they're going to jump to tier three sooner than you know 12 weeks they're not gonna go 16 they're four weeks they're not going to go six weeks they're going to go just take those four weeks so we do have um teams that do do longer than 12 weeks because they're seeing kids make progress so there's a lot that you won't see because they never go into the portal and they never need to so thank you and that that's that goes with all the districts the same yeah it's that's what the purpose is done with questions okay we're done thanks up is item 5.1 our governing
166board updates start down at the end Mr aguir I'm sorry Mr Parks I don't have anything thank you board member Aguirre thank you board member Bixler yes I had the opportunity on the 20th to uh to uh be a witness to The District spelling bee very exciting uh well done right here in this room uh I want to congratulate all of the Champions that were a part of the district-wide spelling bee they did a spectacular job and and the Poise that they showed uh was amazing uh all the way from fifth graders up through eighth graders they they handled the pressure of being in front of a crowd and trying to spell something correctly very poised very very well done I want to uh especially call out the uh the people that will be representing
167us to the next level of competition uh the runner-up uh Piper Johnston from uh Estrella Mountain congratulations to her she's a sixth grader uh she'll be coming back I hope uh Miss Boris I saw you here earlier I I hope you keep recruiting her to be a part of that uh competition again the future she really did an excellent job and our champion at the district level is Mateo Garcia and wow it was spectacular he was so laid back that I just didn't believe that that he was going to win it and I'll be darn if he didn't he nailed it till end and did a great job so uh Mateo from uh Liberty or for me from Las Brisas congratulations outstanding job on all the champions it was a blue Horizons champ I'm sorry
168congratulations they're first I wrote the wrong one down oops board member Canyon um I was actually also there and that was quite a spectacular thing to watch those kids um Miss Hamrick had the the probably the best or worst job I don't know how you would declassify it she had to tell them if they spelled it incorrectly or not and so it was very uh incredible to listen to the or after she rang the bell for incorrect or said correct and uh some of those words were pretty tough I've seen uh myself included some people are kind of looking at each other and some of the even Administration principles are like I didn't know that word so the good job kids um Piper awesome job I I'm gonna correct yeah I think it was Flaviano
169Concepcion from Blue Horizons is that correct okay it was the champion um so just wanted to make sure that that was right yep um but we're very very proud of these kids and just I encourage you guys the public if you ever get a chance to come watch these kids please do it is very incredible okay I'll I'll Echo uh what some of my uh co-board members have said I also attended the spelling bee I realized I'm spending a lot of money on Microsoft spell check I should just probably send some money over to a couple campuses who truly Superstars even the child that was first eliminated still was spelling some pretty pretty good words so um that was great I also had a chance to attend the math curriculum uh committee they're starting to
170look at the new curriculum here and uh um it was a great I it was great to sit in the back and just watch and see what happens uh this room was packed this is a small crowd I think compared to what we had from teachers who were engaged in being a part of that um some of their questions and where they were coming from just the first night as they're kind of setting up their process was was spectacular so that continues on for several more nights um I encourage the public to come watch that so you know by the time it gets to our level for approval there's some real hard work that's gone into that and uh Miss zumbro she could think she is a former PE coach because she ran the microphone
171all around and uh it was great I think I think Denise in the back played a game of not me as you guys all grabbed your nose when that tough question came up I'm not answering um which I thought was just great it was it was fantastic also I just got to stop by Estrella um probably the game of the the week was Westar over at uh at Estrella for basketball and soccer so I was able to stop by there and again another packed house so it's great to see the community out supporting see the parents getting out there and supporting the kids and and uh it was loud there was not an empty seat I actually sat back in the hallway for a while at the gym because it was that full so it's
172just it's great strong work from our community and we certainly appreciate it and uh concludes my report next up will be public comment or call to the public we'll move into that just uh um a bit of information for that the Arizona revised statutes really limits how much the board can respond to these comments so I just want anybody that doesn't understand that there's some very finite laws of how we respond so if you say something to the board and there's no response back don't take that personally we're just following the law with that we've got a stack of them so I'm just going to take them in the order they were given to me first up will be Paula Hoffman and just as a reminder you have three minutes it'll be on your screen
173there and when your three minutes is done we'll turn off the microphone we'll ask that you uh return to your seat that's for anybody I'm not addressing just you with that thank you Paula Hoffman I'm Paul bixler's sister and just to remind you quickly Paul in her adult life um as an educator was a teacher assistant principal principal coach mentor of new teachers and administrators evaluator of Educators and always as an advocate of children she has given more than 30 years of her life to public education and in her well-earned entire retirement she is sharing her extremely valuable educational knowledge with Liberty Elementary School District to the benefit of our kids um I wanted to let you know that um when you intimidate Paul and lie about Paul and our family you're not changing the
174opinions of many people who know and respect Paul you're showing yourselves to be the bullies that you are and if you don't like Paul you just don't know Paul if you somehow feel afraid of Paul Bixler because she doesn't look like you then you need to grow up and I want to end on a positive note I've just seen some incredible things in our neighborhood from the West our kids that we live with they are courteous they are kind they're wonderful to live around and I give all that credit to the schools and their parents you're doing a really great job thank you thank you our next speaker will be Byford Hoffman thank you my name is Byford Hoffman uh I just want to make two short points for the board uh the first point
175I want to make is that uh I have gone through the minutes and I've watched the videos of the all of the board meetings for the past year and in no time in the minutes or in the videos did I see Paul Bixler do anything related to sexual orientation uh the first and all the first time that I saw anything come up like that it came from a representative of the Australia Republican conservative Club and they were saying some things that I thought were uh bullying and some things that I know to not be true the second thing that I would like to speak of is to to during the videos I saw some references by some armchair attorneys to what was constitutional and what was not constitutional and I would just like to point
176out and refer the board to the U.S Supreme Court's decision in Bostic versus versus Clayton County it was the majority opinion was written by that flaming liberal Neil Gorsuch and the essence of the uh decision was that transgender status specifically is included under the protections based on race sex national origin Etc so if you are a an armchair attorney there trying to uh draft a resolution to bring to this board about the constitutionality of an individual's personal sexual orientation I urge the board to look into it a little further and not just rely on the word of the armchair attorney that you have thank you thank your help I have one here that has no name on it so I'm not sure who that is somebody at P.O box 664 . oh I'm sorry I
177see your name I just can't couldn't read it my Lindsey Graham okay my apologies go ahead ma'am dear board members specifically Brian Parks Michael Todd Chris Kenyon I want to thank you on behalf of any parent that cares deeply about their child being educated and not indoctrinated we thank you don't you dare give up don't you dare stop fighting for these children as hard as their parents do the future lies in these precious and innocent kids thank you for what it takes to sit up there and take punches and fight cancel culture and do what's right at every cost publics are at one point I suppose was an asset to this board an asset and positive influence to the community now it is clear that he only cares about himself and here's why when you
178use the women's locker room at my gym and you saw me undressing in a place that I as a woman should have had privacy and security your response was vile instead of apologizing for being out of place apologizing for compromising women's rights apologizing for stepping into a role that you have no place in you despicably chose to come after me attacked me and attempt to threaten and silence me with legal action just now at this meeting outside I was served by Paul Bixler attempting to keep me from speaking here as a public citizen with First Amendment rights how appalling especially of an elected official any level-headed mentally stable man upon hearing that the females he wants to share a locker room with feels insecure about his presence would graciously look for an alternative not to
179continue to put women and girls In Harm's Way or make them terrified for his own a benefit imagine how these little girls at the schools must feel when you Tower over them wearing high heels thundering your voice to them and simultaneously forcing them to call you a woman they must be so scared and confused it must distract them from their schoolwork now if none of that were bad enough I know firsthand that the board members on this board are receiving threats because they are not forcing you off the board because they can't their lives are being threatened their safety is being threatened and now tax dollars are being spent for security to defend them it seems like you sit on the board narcissistically and refuse to step down at everyone else's expense you only care
180about yourself you're not a female I'm sorry if that's called bullying I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings but I'm speaking truth I'm speaking it loudly you're not a woman and your mental illness is becoming a distraction to this board and if you cared about the kids if you cared about their education if you cared about focusing on those children and their education and letting the board Focus you would step down We the People demand that you step down thank you our next speaker will be Julie helped Julie help okay next up will be Leah Cola tarella hope I got that right yes oh good good evening my name is Leah colatrella I do not have children in the school system but I am the mother of a 37 year old lesbian woman who came
181out at the age of 19. I would like to preface my plea with the assurance that this is not a personal attack against Mr Paul Bixler contrary how it was portrayed what happened with him at the last meeting at the at his media interview I was at that meeting and I witnessed nothing but opposition to what was he was proposing not toward any Life Choices my initial impression of him was he's an intelligent credentialed and experienced asset to the board and acting on what he felt was in the best interest of children I agree with Mr Bixler that a safe haven an open Outlet is integral for a quote fragile and questioning child what I vehemently oppose is how Paul Bixler proposes to achieve that goal secretive counseling and guidance appears combative to me and
182could be interpreted as an indoctrination and that makes me very uncomfortable would it not be more beneficial to work as a unit with whomever this minor child chooses their safe Outlet to chooses as their safe Outlet I understand other parents may not be as open as I was while my daughter was developing her identity I'm not naive to the various extremes that some parents can go to however couldn't working as a team with appropriate and guidance benefit everyone's development um in in in sight or in light of his opposition to the legislative bills concerning parental rights and biological sects in school sports it kind of makes sense to me why parents are asking Mr Bixler to step down from his position my child is not a ward of the state my child is my financial
183emotional and physical responsibility from conception to the legal age of 18. and I love her through the years I have imparted my faith values and beliefs as the right as is my right and every family unit's right I do not feel it is the right of any board or any board member to adopt those rights as their own therefore I implore that the legislative Bill remain as written and is not amended to forcibly sever a parent's responsibility and relationship with their child thank you for letting me share [Applause] Kelly Zimmerman [Music] I'm disappointed in the board and limiting comments during the work session it seems unfortunate that you only elevated one voice in the conversation it feels like you're looking for the voice that supports your ideas and not listening to find the right solution
184the big voice you're missing is students who is speaking for them and they should be the center of this discussion and every decision that you make this board already voted sorry this board already voted to do four days which you already know I don't agree with but now you're questioning the district's plan for PD it was made very clear during public sessions during the discussion of the four day week that districts that eliminated PD or greatly reduced it regretted it and saw student achievement decrees we have hired incredible professionals Dr Shuff her team with lots of years of experience with lots of schooling and yet we're not allowing them to use their voice that we've hired them to guide us in a big decision why do we hire them if we're not going to follow
185their guidance they've spent so much time of their lives in this profession I trust them as a parent because they have the schooling and the experience to back it up and they have students best interests in mind I know that they do things can be adjusted in the following year but let's not make any big changes okay you already voted to drastically change a student's education next year by going to four days let's not try another new thing by decreasing PD which has a direct correlation research shows to student achievement I know that teachers are extremely valuable and I value that and you can ask my kids teachers I support teachers 100 percent but you've already made changes to support them by going to the four day week you you said that very loud and
186clear that you did this to support them so please do not make another decision that doesn't have kids at the Forefront I already feel like my kids are losing a little different Heather Finn hello governing board I stand before you today to ask for one last time for Paul Bixler to step down Paul you would you overstepped not only once not twice but three times by going to the education committee opposing Bill SB 2161 parental rights regarding medical school and educational records and Bill sb1165 biological sex intermediate Athletics and interscholastics and for that reason and that reason only I'm asking you to step down no board member should be sitting on the on a board that opposes parental rights I am not sure what planet you're living on but going to the media to complain
187about us bullying you is absolutely absurd just because we disagree with you and support parental rights doesn't mean we're bullying you any grown adult can understand that we are the parents the grandparents and the community members that care about protecting our children from groomers and making sure our District's first priority is educating our children and supporting our teachers so Paul I ask you again before I start the recall to please step down [Applause] Claudine peace win Ginter got it two for two great um hi thank you so much for letting me speak I'm a member of the community and I'm a friend of Paul's and as long as I've known Paul she's always been very focused on making our community better my first time meeting Paul was when she was registering people to vote in
188front of our local library around the same time Paul joined our church Saint Peter's in Litchfield Park and for years Paul has been a very faithful member very beloved member of our congregation and she often leads the prayers of the faithful at worship Services I'm here tonight because I understand that there's been a backlash against Paul we've heard several speakers talk about that despite her Decades of experience as a professional educator in several different capacities let me first pause to point out that I think it's safe to say that every single person in this room is here tonight because we care about children that is the reason and we're here and we want them to grow up in a happy and healthy fashion and we want them to have an education that empowers them to
189follow their dreams and be productive members of society I encourage those of you who may not welcome Paul's presence on the governing board to put principles above Personalities in other words I incurred all tonight to focus on actual issues like the other ones we've heard this evening actually she's facing Liberty Elementary School District and to not let us be divided because America is always at its best when we are united and we utilize the talents of all of our citizens to those who may be uncomfortable with a person who is transgender encourage you to have an open face-to-face discussion and get to know Paul on a personal level and sometimes a third party facilitating in sort of a mediation sort of a way can be helpful in a process like that at our church Saint
190Peter's our Pastor James rodenheiser is willing to facilitate uh a meeting like that and sort of a discussion focused on reconciliation and for those of you who may uh feel antagonistic towards Paul please reach out to Saint Peter's in Litchfield Park ask for our Pastor James he would be happy to meet with you I have a few more moments and let me just say I am so proud and in awe of Educators in this room I'm going to get a little overclumped but my youngest daughter is graduating from high school this year and she is going to go to college next year and she's going to be majoring in elementary education and the reason the reasons to do that is not because she comes from a long line of teachers which she does but because
191the classroom teachers that she has been with on a day-to-day basis have made such a difference in her life and she wants to pay it forward to thank all of you I really appreciate everything you do thank you board for your time next speaker is Tiffany Benson [Music] president Todd members of the board parents and community members I'm Tiffany Benson my comments are in regards to gender ideologies and student safety especially in school bathrooms locker rooms Etc when I viewed the Arizona School Board database I didn't find any policies on gender identity or transgender bathroom usage for LASD um if I if that's existing I didn't see it so I'm calling on this board to proactively uh establish policies that will prohibit biological males from using female spaces and vice versa the male board member
192here who identifies as a female was recently confronted while using a women's locker room at a local gym and while this didn't happen on school grounds this member remains active here on the board and the door is wide open for these ideas and behaviors to infiltrate the district for newly elected board members you succeeded in convincing this community to put their trust in you bathroom policies may not have been a priority before assuming office but your highest goal should be keeping children safe during school board excuse me during school hours it's not too much to ask that you strive to maintain transparency and keep every promise you made to your constituents only those with two X chromosomes are female only those with X Y are male gender is not fluid it is a physical and
193biological reality that never changes regardless of how anyone attempts to disguise themselves if we want Society to thrive we need women to be women we need men to be men overtly overtly drawing attention to gender is equivalent to drawing attention to sex and sexuality when this involves children we call it pedophilia I'm calling on this board to proactively ban all gender ideology practices and discussions with students not only from the curricular but also from hallways offices playgrounds cafeterias sports teams events and celebrations this includes forcing people to use preferred pronouns and cross-dressing discussing gender and sex are the parents responsibility lastly I'm just joining the chorus to call on Paul Bixler to Tender his resignation effective immediately gross expressions of gender and sexuality are not appropriate in any school district with all due respect this
194is not about you this is not about any individual in this room this is about the safety excuse me hello president and board I am here tonight on behalf of the children and the parents and the grandparents to speak out for the protection of the children and to protect parental rights this is not about diversity or opinion it's about stopping the agenda of the indoctrination of our children there's been enough utilization and sterilization and abuse of our children this is not a Witch Hunt or hatred towards any person I am not afraid I am not afraid of Mr Bixler I am just not deceived a couple weeks ago I was there when Mr Bixler addressed the senate committee of Education where a bill was presented for parental rights it was a simple bill that wants
195a written note from the parents giving permission of the name of their child that they wanted to be called Mr Bixler was there and spoke in opposition to this bill Mr Bixler dresses as a man when he wants to he has no breasts no earrings no makeup no fingernails or heels but other times he dresses as a woman and he's been addressed on this board mostly by Mr McGuire as Miss Bixler or Paul in the same meeting and when addressed a man's voice comes booming out but you don't want to confuse the children Mr Bixler has been using the little girl's bathroom and I can't imagine being a little girl seeing a man dressed as a woman in the bathroom in such a vulnerable place that would be absolutely horrifying and the church has been
196silent for way too long and that's why we're here right now today and I'm gonna bottom line it right here I am very sad for Mr bigsler because he and many others have been robbed the Bible says the enemy comes to steal kill and destroy and that's what he has been doing to you and to others there have been countless lives destroyed and it needs to stop Eli has been Unleashed into this nation and is robbing people of their purpose and their true identity here on this Earth in short the Bible teaches that God made us male or female and no matter our own feelings are confusion we should act in accordance with the biological reality of God's good design God created male and female and that's it I was born a biological female Mr
197bigsler you were born as a biological male we are created as a gift from God I will recall it my friends set up here a few months ago she said wearing a dress does not make you a woman and I will add what a person has removed or added to their body does not make does not change their biological biological identity I'm sure Mr Bixler is a nice man like others have said but if he truly cared about the children and supported rights of the parents who will stop promoting his own personal agenda and resign thank you [Applause] Elwood councilor hello board superintendent Chef Mr President uh I've been here many times uh you've known me you've heard me before and the main reason I'm here tonight is to vacate the LIE Mr Mark Aguirre
198is a liar Paul's relatives that are in this room tonight are a liar okay I went back and reviewed tapes also there's not one tape from this school board meeting where anyone from we the parents from the Protectors of their children that use the word hate we didn't use any such language and they keep saying it and they keep saying it I've been coming to these school board meetings since 2020. Mr bickler's been on this board for two years this is his third year and he's got another year coming for the first year he wore dresses high heels earrings necklaces I didn't care it didn't matter to me okay but when you go to the State education board and I have the tapes sir and you tell the State education board that in your heart
199and mind you believe that you should be able to talk to Children about gender in elementary schools without parental permission that's over the line sir I'm sorry it's just over the line okay it's called grooming and we're tired of it and we're tired of what's happening to our children I've had two meetings this week already one of them was with gays opposed to transsexual grooming so this is not even a gay issue okay personally I don't think there's a person in this room or on this board that cares what you wear I don't care if your hair is long or short I don't care if you wear makeup or not makes no difference to me but it makes a difference when we have children coming home discussing with their parents that they're afraid to go
200to school they're afraid at events and every time you walk into a classroom it gets worse there are kids that want to totally avoid you now that that may not be all but there's some alls we're asking is you be whoever you want to be you have every right but stop with the kids already you don't belong in those classrooms with those kids you don't belong at those kids events okay so please if you really love the kids as much as you say you do resign get out of here and let the parents feel at ease with their children thank you our next speaker is Meg galante reading a letter for Terry Smith I'm Meg galante reading this statement from Terry Smith who's a parent good afternoon unfortunately I am unable to attend this afternoon's
201board meeting but would very much like for my support to be noted during the call to the public as the parent of three children who attend school within the lesd number 25. I am very grateful for Ms bixler's thoughtful and educated input during board meetings she's the only board member with a background in public school education and her experience is evident when updates are given or new ideas are put forth Ms Bixler along with Mr of wire also knows how public education is funded in Arizona this means that she doesn't waste time during meetings arguing about things that require changes at the state level before being implemented at the local level if we lose Ms Bixler because a few members of the public most of whom don't even have children in the school district are
202opposed to her otherness then we not only lose her expertise we also risk allowing children within the district to be othered and to be othered and ostracized children do not have the same Poise and elegance that Ms Bixler has shown these past two years when they are attacked in such a manner and neither do their parents thank you for the time and the attention Terry Smith [Applause] thank you board members any comments hearing none okay yes I'd like to make three Corrections first of all um I did not talk to the State education committee I spoke to hearing committees they are made up of senators and representatives from a variety of different committees so it was not a the State education committee I did speak to two well three now because I did speak a
203couple weeks ago three hearing committees second correction uh I have never ever required anybody to call me by any kind of specific pronoun I leave that to them when people ask me what I prefer I'll tell you but I don't hold them accountable or require any of that that is just flat out a lie and finally um just for a correction I did speak to three committees I never spoke about transgender students athletic participation you're lying about that too I've never spoken publicly to anybody about that thank you any other comments from the board okay hearing none we will now move to our consent agenda I'd like to pull item 7.5 thank you let's see I have it because it says okay well they can speak in public comment so they're still allowed to speak
204in public comment they're members of the public they didn't need it for the work session but if they wanted to speak in the session and okay we have a few more uh Miss Kim Hansen hi thank you for letting me speak um I'm not a teacher in the district I used to be a teacher in the district about five years ago and I am currently the past five years I've been in a district that does a four-day work week so I do have experience with um having that three-day weekend and having that extra day of a Brain Break um it doesn't mean that I take Mondays off and do nothing I still do you know two to three hours of work but it's on my time at my pace which I really enjoy and it
205gives me the chance to soak up what do I need to do for the kids and what's best for them um I appreciate that you guys have brought that four day work week to Liberty School District because okay yeah you guys you know you're looking you're looking pretty good to me again you know thinking about uh coming back and and um you know uh doing my best back over here again you uh I hope that you can do what's right for teachers for that four day work week um I know that at my school district our scores did not go down um contrary to popular relief people think that if you go to a four day work week your kid is not going to have as many hours in the classroom they do they get
206a little bit more during the day which they actually get more um attention it seems because they're there for that longer period of time in the classroom instead of spreading it out over five days the teacher is fresher and the students refresher too because the students like having that extra day to do sports or go to the doctors or you know get all that stuff that they would get pulled out of school for it gives them that extra time to do that and we have not seen in my school district scores that are um that have gone backwards we've actually seen better scores at my school district so I just wanted to let you know that I will be watching to see what you guys say about the four day work week and and look
207forward to hearing what you guys do thank you next speaker will be Mary Charles I just got the form so all right so is that just hearing that open session or did she want to speak Mr Charles did you want to speak here she left okay uh last speaker Connie Crowley thank you I apologize for the confusion members are there any further comments or questions to close public comment okay hearing none let's start over with our consent agenda uh Boardman burguar you had requested something to be pulled anything else members to be pulled okay hearing now I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda with the exception of item 7.5 Mr President I move we accept the consent agenda with the exception of item 7.5 a second have a motion and a second to
208approve uh consent agenda minus 7.5 I also have a second from board member Parks aye okay uh I want to call your name please take your vote Mr Parks aye board member Aguirre yes board member Bixler aye board member Kenyon aye I'm an also and I will show that proved unanimously move on to item 7.5 board member Aguirre please go ahead just I just had a question about the paraprofessional at Liberty resignation uh whereas Miss K yet there she is on 126 did I say Liberty I apologize Rainbow Valley just the question I had is because we heard earlier I believe correct me if I'm wrong we heard that there was was it thirteen thousand minutes yeah yeah professional is in the self-contained classroom um the behavior classroom and I think she's moving on to
209um maybe do teaching what have you she is qualified to teach well the question I have is does that is that one of those compounding yeah no I mean it is but um it isn't that person isn't delivering minutes she's supporting the classroom so we will go ahead and look for another person to take that place but um currently the classrooms are split up and we we have we have enough support until we can find another paraprofessional and will another paraprofessional be that support or will it end yeah in the self-contained classroom so in the self-contained Behavior classroom the teachers give the minutes and the um paraprofessionals are the support right but what I'm saying is will it be another paraprofessional or will it end up being a teacher offering that support paraprofessional um oh
210clarify say where I'm going in other words what I'm asking is is as it stands right now we lost somebody paraprofessional that person was performing a duty so now how many people is it going to take to pick that up and is that going to be a combination of a paraprofessional and certified staff which then again takes away from what the person who's helping with I just that was the only question I just wanted there to be recognition that we talked about special ed quite a bit over the last couple meetings and well current ly can I I just want to be careful we stay on the agenda topic of so that's all thank you board members any more questions hearing none I will take a motion to approve item 7.5 the approval of personnel
211action items Mr President I'll make a motion to approve uh uh 7.5 uh personal action items second okay I have a motion and a second to approve item 7.5 the Personnel action items police state vote when I call your name board member Parks aye board member Aguirre yes board member Bixler aye board member Kenyon hi I'm also and I we will show that item 7.5 was approved 5-0 moving to item 8 section 8 on our agenda 8.1 will be a discussion consideration to approve Udall Shumway as the district legal counsel and members I have a handout that they've asked me to pass down to you and Miss Denise come on up good evening for president Todd and governing board members superintendent um I'm Denise Lowell Britt I am an equity shareholder at Udall Shumway I
212have made you you know show me my work home for the last 35 years and the entirety of that time I've been working with our education law clients and I've loved it and really appreciate uh the work that I do and the people I get to work with um board members superintendents Administration cabinets teachers Etc so we appreciate the invitation to join you tonight to introduce ourselves as a potential legal provider for your District um I am the the head of our education law team and in the folder that I provided tonight I've tried to give you some information about the team of attorneys that do work on a day-to-day basis with our educational clients and we travel the state um and have been doing so for many years to support the needs of our
213educational clients and um so you can certainly take your time but I think the main things that I want to share with you tonight are that we have a lot of expertise in The Firm that education law is an area of specialty in and of itself but because as you all know um you are landowners you lease property you are big employers you work with students you have Personnel it's very broad-based what you do you may construct schools you may so so within our firm we have what I'll call utility players and I'll count myself as one of them who really do lots of that day-to-day legal advice we know that our clients when they pick up the phone and call us they usually need help right now and so we really try to be
214available we are available and if one of us is not available then we make sure another lawyer is available because we do recognize how timely you often need support and then we utilize other lawyers in The Firm so about 28 29 lawyers in The Firm term to do more specialized work even in the area of special education so that when we need to we count on Roger to do procurement or construction law we actually utilize our family law attorneys because sometimes as school districts you're in the middle of family law issues and so we utilize those attorneys we have attorneys that do real estate and Leasing and cell phone tower contracts we do contract work etc so we we really do provide just about all the services that our clients need in the area of
215Education law with the exception that we do not do Bond work and so um I will welcome any you know questions that you have certainly uh for me or the firm uh if we are privileged enough to work with your District I can commit you know to being there when you need us and providing quality Legal Services I'm happy again to answer any questions that you have or to highlight any of the particular attorney practice areas qualifications Etc does anybody have any board member Parks how many questions oh go ahead board member aguir I know I was just going to say that a question came up about our work through the Arizona schools retention trust and we we actually our firm was one of the law firms that helped uh at the time of the
216Inception of the trust to get basically some of those trust programs up and running and of course the Arizona disclosed to retention trust has a lot of programs that provide wonderful services to the school districts and so we have been continually um a large provider of Legal Services through the trust so It's Quickly uh how much experience have had years of experience in education law in my yes you would probably be more likely be our turn to uh uh representative right sure I have been at Utah for 35 years I actually been there as a law clerk two years prior and got pulled into the area of Education law as soon as I joined the firm and so as a lawyer for 35 years I do a lot of special education law we do a
217lot of just I do a lot of disabilities law personnel and then pretty much everything in between and then we've just got a really strong wonderful team of attorneys who also have devoted their many years of practice to working with public educational institutions as well we do besides K-12 we do do some Community College work as well thank you um so go ahead I had sent in some questions did those questions make it to you at all Shumway well I did I I believe that's why I did address the one question about the trust and our history with the trust I think that was one of the questions you asked it was there was a couple others in there too did they get those and have a chance to prepare for them Dr chef so
218I can say that the um let me just read off the questions for the public um one uh the question was I'm sorry let me just find my place here one was uh this it was Administration recommending a change in legal services I would say that this was a a request by one or two governing board members for a change um then this next question is um I'm sorry I'm reading from three different emails so let me just catch catch myself um is Udall somebody part of a trust a little Brit um did explain that um and then the current contract Services provided by the trust um that's part of essentially you know you get three hundred thousand dollars of uh prepaid legal um of which um you know we have a smaller amount that
219we actually are paying up to so I don't want that answers your question in terms of the specific Services it's really simply prepaid legal we are able to use one more than one attorney at a time if we were to choose to do so or we could choose to just use one of the educational attorney groups that they have offered our from our firm does uh provide services both through the prepaid legal program that your District participates in as well as there's a 6A endorsement that the trust offers that I believe your District also has which provides coverage basically attorney support representation and advice in things like office for civil rights complaints any kind of administrative procedures it deals with student disciplinary proceedings complaints filed with federal or state agencies like open meeting law complaints
220public records complaints State complaints special I do process complaints and then we also our firm also does Defense work for school districts through the trust which would mean you know when you get a notice of claim uh someone trying to making a state law claim against you that turns into litigation our firm also does Defense work through the trust okay Mr strickler can you speak to um the costs um with one attorney firm versus another I believe those are all um stated stated prices up front that there's no difference between um the firms that's the cost to the district there is no additional cost at the beginning of the year about March or April we get a proposal acceptance form from the trust uh laying out what our um prior Services have been through the
221trust and if we want to change any of those up if we want to add anything or take anything away it's a flat amount no matter which firm we use okay um I guess the other question that kind of you answered one and it led into another question of District administration isn't did this recommendation didn't come who contacted Udall Shumway Administration was it a board member Administration did not contact I contacted them so board member contacted a vendor that might be an obvious answer but I'd like to hear it a board member contacted a vendor the board president contacted Legal Services which is ability it has the ability on behalf of the board nope I hold and asked for them and as the chairman was that on behalf of the board okay are you familiar
222with our policy of what the roles are for board members I'm very familiar with AMD policies I was just wondering in our policy does that give the purview of board members to contact vendors to come and present you've already purchased the program students and trust that would not be an additional need to to any kind of procurement of any kind we're just one of and it's not a new and utilizing more than more than what it could be but work which really is only done by there are also other reasons why districts might use more than one Law Firm so it's not that unusual and it doesn't seem impact for Americans understood and you keep using school districts and I'd like to point that out rather than actually using the term board members because it's
223my understanding that a board member all board members actually share No More Authority than anyone else all right so um just a question sure no it's a good question and it's one actually I talked to when I talk about board roles and responsibilities and in terms of uh board members I think in general that's a correct statement but there are times when by board policy the board actually has delegated to an individual board member specific Authority and there are times of course as a board you may also choose to assign a particular board member board members to you know attend functions or committees so while each of you of course is one individual and has no Authority when you're not acting as a quorum on this Deus there are times by policy or by vote
224that the board does delegate to an individual board member or more than one board member some specific Authority I think examples of that in your board policy would be the board president has the role and has been delegated the role by the board as a whole to conduct these meetings and preside over them another example would be legal counsel that board policy does typically and I believe your District also provides the board president with the authority to contact legal counsel on behalf of the board um there is a uh there is a provision I believe in that policy as well that does say that if you know there is a request for a legal uh legal opinion that that legal opinion certainly would go the board as a whole but I'm I believe that you
225by board policy have delegated to the board president that authority to reach out to legal counsel if needed I mean there are there are other examples of that and I appreciate that you're saying that because I do agree 100 with what you just said is that the board president does have the authority to seek legal counsel but see Shumway Udall doesn't provide legal counsel to Liberty Elementary School District number 25 so therefore your statement what you're saying and what you're attesting to right now in public is that the board president actually went against policy of Liberty Elementary School District because we haven't actually entered into a contract with Udall Shumway we are actually with Gus Rosenfeld thank you Mr President I appreciate it so I might clarify I have not provided legal advice to the
226district I was just invited to come here to make a presentation and the board of course will need to vote as to whether or not it would like to retain The Firm but I have not provided any legal advice to the district foreign members are there any other questions quick um first of all thank you for coming we appreciate you being here and representing your firm um I appreciate Mr aguirre's uh questions I guess directed towards you shows that you are knowledgeable and these matters and I do appreciate it but that's all I have thank you I'll take a motion to approve you at all some way as legal counsel for the district Mr President I make a motion to approve you at all Shumway is District legal counsel have a motion do I have
227a second I'll second have a motion and a second to approve Udall Shumway as District legal counsel I call your name please specify your vote board member Parks aye board member Aguirre nay board member Bixler nay board member Kenyon aye I'm also and I we'll show that past three to two and if I could I'd like to explain my vote Please Mr President you may I voted nay because the board sole responsibility within a school district is to create and enforce board policy and it's really hard for me to swallow that as a board it's okay for us to break policy that is why I voted nay not on any of the qualifications that Udall Shumway has because I want to be on record and say I know that your firm is a very fantastic
228and upstanding firm ma'am and thank you for coming and presenting I know that's all I do explain my vote I agree with Mr Aguirre that it's not something my no vote was not about Udall Shumway my no vote was about the process I believe that this should have followed a much different process I believe it should have been an agenda item where we talk about do we want to change representation and so it's the process that I question on this not not the quality of representation Udall Chevrolet would offer members I appreciate your comments next up will be item number 8.2 discussion consideration to revise employee work calendars for school year 2024. president um Todd members of the governing board we have heard um quite heartfelt messages from our teachers this evening I have not
229forgotten what it's like to carry that workload home and the the balance of that so just know that we hear that and we appreciate our teachers and our administrators for their hard work I would share with you that in the committee work with a four-day school week we originally had a schedule a proposed schedule for Fridays that had you know approximately two ever all the months had two Fridays we did listen and hear more of that feedback and just look to say all right how could we come back with a compromise and have less so I believe it is August September and then um and then in April and May there are two um and the others would either be one time a month that would be used for the actual work day and yes
230there are two days in that schedule that are for parent-teacher conferences and really just to make up for the time that they work so hard Monday through Thursday not expected to be there on Friday because they are working those long hours so just tell you that this does represent a compromise Administration thought that go always go with a compromise see how this goes this next this year if we need to pull back from that or add to it the following year we could look at that I recognize that if the the board is fairly committed to making a change away from what it is I would propose yet another compromise I would propose that you look at reducing April and May and I would just give you a and ask to maintain August and September
231there is quite a bit that goes into launching a school year launching the new initiatives at the school and the district level there are a number of one-time things that have to happen at the start of the year with performance schools for teachers just a number of things that have to happen at the start of the year that I would say that it is it is important to have that time I would say out of all the the teachers who spoke the one who came the closest to really what we were actually proposing to you is um when Heather hecatus spoke to the two days and having one of the days be very much school driven and while some of the activities as lined out showed some examples of how to go deeper as she
232said and some others that said about the initial formal training and then time to apply it time to plan with what you just learned time to design assessments for what you just learned time to analyze the data for how that's been implemented to date that is exactly what was intended for those two times and you know I heard from I don't know if Christy Mendoza is still in the audience you know she spoke at uh teacher Advisory Group about how it's a little bit different when you're a middle school teacher and you don't have a third grade team so that sometimes does cause call for more District collaborative time together and perhaps less School collaborative time together and maybe more independent time just to work because she's a standalone teacher a Singleton teacher for what
233she teaches so I guess I would just say there is no set structure that we are proposing because we wanted to have all the flexibility to be relevant to be what each School needs to implement a signature program to perhaps adjust what's happening with behaviors in classroom management on their campus some of those things just simply require people coming together to do the work um I think my biggest concern is that the teaching practice no longer is maybe how when I first started teaching an isolated independent activity I go into my classroom I could start my day and end my day and never need to interact with anyone else to be able to do my job productively that's where the education profession has changed so I think my concern is if we are asking teachers
234to do things like spend time in a professional learning community and collaborate on things if we're asking them to meet together to come up with better interventions for for our students with behaviors if we're asking them to plan different interventions I'll take your kids and your kids and work on this and you take my kids and his kids to work on that that requires cooperation collaboration to plan those things if we ask teachers to do that I feel we have a responsibility to give them contract time to do that work I do hear from other teachers that would like to be able to do that but their colleagues say hey um I I've got something else to do you know I can't come in at this time to work on this I can't stay after
235school to work on that so the only time they have for that collaborative work is when it is actually in contracted time and frankly that's the only fair time to ask teachers to do it I also heard I think Miss Daniels spoke about this how Fridays that are off that are not contracted would be like Saturdays and Sundays that's not meant to minimize the efforts of what teachers do on Saturdays and Sundays not in any respect other than to say to reassure them that those Friday non-work days would never be asked to require them to come in and do something it would always if it was to happen on that day instead of let's say a Saturday session it might happen on a Friday instead but it still would be a choice and it still
236most likely would be a paid opportunity just like it is now on a Saturday or Sunday so just want to know that Administration is coming from this from a deep respect for teachers and what they do and recognizing that there is more than one way to do this I would um just Echo one comment tonight is that we have made this decision for the purpose of recruiting retaining our teachers so I understand why our teachers have made these comments I understand why the governing board is is really wanting to make sure that this decision ends up getting the results you wanted it to get to but I would also say that there is a cost for the learning for kids when we've reduced from five days to four days maybe not with instructional hours but
237yes with that fresh learning time for children and so my concern with making sure that we start at maybe a compromise level on this is because that time we have with our Educators is our only opportunity to have things be better than simply just maintaining we want to improve student learning that's our mission and so that's why it's been proposed the way it is I'm not going to block that in any way other than say perhaps there's still yet another compromise without eliminating it all together down to one time per month in all months so thank you for letting me respond to some of the comments I heard tonight questions or comments from the board I have a comment um I like what Paul said earlier about it you know looking at the option of
238utilizing our experienced teachers who are you know 15 20 years you know been doing this have a lot of knowledge and we we have to appreciate them so much and and their all that they've put into it all over the years which it's a long time working with kids um not just working with kids working with parents working with other staff working in administration working with everybody and that knowledge that they have is so valuable um if there was a way we could figure some kind of a stipend or something to get them more into the mentorship program when it comes to PD and getting their knowledge and stuff and I know that I I have a lot to learn about professional development so forgive me if I butcher some things but um you know
239that would be one option another one would be I I get it the district does want to try to put two professional development days per month um for some of the months for some of the months there's another month where there's three so just looking at the calendar here so just making sure that you know what if what if a compromise would be we have two for every month but one's mandatory one's optional um there's a lot of new new teachers new staff that may feel like they need the additional time um there's other staff that feel like they don't need so much um and so my concern is the burnout effect we've heard it from teachers tonight I've gotten emails I've spoken with teachers myself I don't want this to be something that we
240end up burning our staff out and we lose a lot of really good experienced teachers um over this I just want to really take the time and consider these options so [Music] yeah I also have heard what the the staff has said and I I agree I I did enter into a four-day week with the anticipation that would have a positive impact on our Recruitment and our our continuation of quality teachers that being said having a five-day week when we add that professional development they really doesn't make it a four day week um I'd be more interested in a compromise I could understand more fully maybe once a month at PD day maybe eight hours so you can really get that that professional development delivered and then just like in the classrooms I think one
241of the strengths that we're going to find with the extended school day is that we're going to have a lot more time for guided practice kids who are struggling are going to get a lot more help than they've gotten in the past so I'm really a supporter of the extended day I think that's a great idea I'm a supporter of an extended year I like year round nonetheless um four day week as close to an actual four-day week as we can get is what I'd like remember Aguirre yeah one thing that I haven't heard yet and well I take that back I did we heard it from a Community member uh that stated we hired people professionals to help us make these decisions because folks that sit up here with the exception of Miss Bixler
242of course um we're not educators I'm a pipefitter welder I turn on a weld machine and I can do all kinds of things with liquid metal but I can't teach the things that you all teach I just can't um so I'd be I'd really like to let the supervisors who we entrust to um supervise the education of our children I'd like them to be able to make these decisions because that's what we as a board were supposed to do I thought is delegate the authority to the professionals and what I'd like to possibly see is I hear the one day and that seems I could but everyone's really likes is at least one day of PD but also I'd like to see if whether it be an assistant principal whether it's an instructional coach whether
243it's a principal that on that level that maybe it's those three folks getting together and saying hey teacher a needs a second day or you don't need a second day you're doing great you're killing it but I'd like to delegate that Authority to the supervisors because the last thing that I want is that we implement this and student achievement doesn't climb to the level that the board in their opinion thinks it needs to climb to then what happens then the board which we're tasked to do comes down on educators but yet the board's delegating Authority to only have one day and it's been stated that it's absolutely correct that um for me as a board member last year was the four day when we talked about it was two things retention student achievement not in
244that order same level because my thought was is if I'm able to retain folks who work for me and that they become better educated slash I call it better at your job I apologize for the bluntness that that automatically translates into student achievement because an educator is that much better at their discipline whether it's math or science or whatever it may be that was my decision that's what I based everything on and I don't know that I just last thing I want to do is I want to have I don't want to have the board coming down on administration because student achievement isn't where we wanted it to be this time next year and then we're going to ask the question why and I can just see us I can just see us plug in
245our ears closing our mouth or closing our eyes and saying we don't want to hear it that it was our decision because we didn't want to listen to the professionals that we hired that's just the way I see it thank you board member Park Swift questions or comments yeah I address one thing with all due respect I've spent my life teaching that's what I do so um I've got a little background in it um I I kept hearing a number of things here respect micromanage Trust it gets back into trusting our teachers to do what they need to do in their professionalism um I think that it's not I think I wrote down every proposal it all comes down to one thing one day a month eight hours two hours professional development one hour PLC
246and the rest is Dev time I think that's where we should go and I think to Mark's Point earlier we're talking about a starting point I don't typically start at the other end of the spectrum I start at the point where I know we can be effective and then we build if we need to so I that's what I'm proposing I think it's a good way to go I think moving forward you know I trust the teachers if they need to spend more time in the you know development time whatever they'll do it on their own can I also add that there was an interest to change the student calendar the Wednesday before Thanksgiving so just want to give you a little more information on that um Administration or any committee ever really looked at
247the days on the calendar to make it really anything different than what Buckeye Union High School District's calendar and certainly Buckeye Elementary does the same thing so we worked always within the confines or the parameters of their schedule We Now understand or now it's more published is it the Wednesday before Thanksgiving on the high school calendar is an early release day one of the high schools we feed into um dismissals at 11 20. the other is an 11 30 dismissal so just say that we definitely did hear from teachers that a strong preference to have that Wednesday off so as we were counting up the instructional hours and all of that just know that that just wasn't a consideration because we thought we needed to match um you know match the high school there so
248that could be also a consideration tonight all of the calendars are on here inclusive of the student calendar so when you're making the proposals for or for your actions will just have to be really specific about the calendar and what the change would be over what it is now if it's um simple enough and we're able to track it we'll be able to move into some of the contract language agenda items that will follow and still be able to have those move forward so I just want to um I want to support you as a board now with you know what it is the direction you wanted us to take and um I'll be here to help you with any language that would be helpful to you foreign when we started this process we looked
249at retention recruitment student achievement um and I agree I think that's a triangle and there's no no top or bottom there um I'm recognize this as new and I would have to agree with with board member parks that would only start at the top if we lose our teachers which we heard tonight most all teachers saying they were burned out they were tired they don't want to come for two Fridays a month they're willing to give us one we lose student achievement completely if we lose those teachers we know how hard it is to fill these spots right now I think we need to give our teachers the opportunity to give us they are also experts in there in the classroom um not removed from it but they are in there every day and they
250understand what it is I think we need to trust our teachers I think we need to give a a very Stern message to them that all eyes are on this and we're willing to give one year of trying this out we heard from Miss Ainsworth she's married now she's got a different last name but she was one of my daughter's teachers for a number of years and is an excellent teacher and just the idea of her saying she's interested in coming back if we equal that I think that's what we get if we equal the boards but if we do two Fridays right now I don't see that as being the best success what I do think is if we do an eight-hour day and we really really delve into professional development we are then
251able to get teachers who are not burned out who truly come in fresh once a month and they get a lot better professional development which then they're going to be able to pass on to their their students we also heard some comments about the travel time moving around if we do an eight-hour day they're gonna absorb some of that a little bit better and and move forward so I too agree that we need to look at one eight hour day I'm not opposed to still I've tossed out maybe having four extra hours built in of of committee time our teachers give so much of their time for free it's it's almost criminal what we ask teachers to do I would tend to believe in any other line of work we'd be in some pretty significant
252hot water um so that's that's where I feel um I do want to tag on to what Dr Shuff said and I'd like to just I have some questions on the 12-month support staff administrator calendar but I'd like to yield that to the rest of the board members first if they have any questions on other calendars all right I just have a quick question about the the day before Thanksgiving if we were to agree as a board to make that a non-work day what would that do for hours would we have to extend the year the calendar year another day instead of getting out on the 23rd it would be getting out May 24th or what what options I guess are there we were trying to um remember one of the goals of moving to
253four day week was to try to minimize a reduction in instructional hours for students so some of the other considerations you had like early release before the winter break or early release before uh the last on the last day of school the board had opted to keep those full days and try to minimize the early releases to maintain those instructional hours so I would say in terms of the instructional hours meeting the minimum requirement for the state which is incredibly low standard um we aren't we would not be at risk with that um we just simply would be having less instructional hours than um already that we already were less than to begin with and forgive me I'm forgetting what it was but it really wasn't that much different than what we are currently this
254year I want to say it was about five hours difference so frankly you know if you wanted to reduce it you know another three three and a half hours if you wanted to have a you know certain dismissal time um I don't know that that is gonna I wouldn't be advocating that that's a big difference if you wanted to make that change okay um to I can hear most of you saying you really are leaning in towards um uh one day of time per month um so I would ask to clarify that on the months where we have parent-teacher conferences that would be to essentially essentially I don't really expect really any of our teachers to be working the Friday because they tend to spread out their conferences throughout the week they are working a
255lot longer hours Monday through Thursday the expectation while it would be in the work calendar that is not the expectation that they are on campus or signing in signing out and putting in you know the full hours in any way so just would say we're giving our teachers flexibility during that week full flexibility as professionals and that that would still be maintaining at least one eight hour day per month for all the things that need to happen in school I mean I know this a lot of words used around professional development but there's a lot that goes on in school that we work on together Mr President I do have a question as I look at the calendar um and I am a fan of making Wednesday a non-work day and I look at the
256calendar and how we could get back that instructional day um I know a number of districts that they don't start with a full week they'll start with a Wednesday and a Thursday and then the next week will be a full week so you have kids for two days kind of get your feet on the ground and then roll into a full week that would actually put us One Day More of instructional days than what we currently have in this calendar so starting on the uh with kids on the 26th of July I realize that does create a problem as far as the PD that we do at the start of the school year there's always things that we have to get communicate to the teachers and so on so we we do have a number
257of days at the beginning before the kids come on campus so it would also change that but I'm just wondering if that would be worth exploring actually adding two days to our instructional calendar by starting on the 26th do two days then come back to a full week hey Paul I just not to interrupt your my family and everybody I know takes that week off before school and I've already scheduled our vacations again another District do that already may I just clarify typically um just for the calendar purpose just for clarification we typically start um in our in our school calendar for next year if you'll recall each each of our prior years we started on a Wednesday to your point we started middle of the week to get those additional days back in to
258meet that 148 day we had to add two days on where we're starting on a Monday remember we were looking to try to ensure that we had as much parallel to um those surrounding districts as possible if you were to start on July 26th just in your hypothetical that adds actually eight school days because we're scheduled to currently start on August 7th um not a hundred not sure which is where they start oh okay I misunderstood the calendar then but it's still my point being that I understand yeah I just wanted to make sure that that was that was clear that's even better yeah the other thing was to to we we schedule new teacher orientation so anytime you you back up those days you have to also back up new teacher orientation and then
259we're getting into you know the essentially the third week in July when we talk about the additional off day the Wednesday before it does not impact instructional minutes but four hours so right now our Gap in instructional minutes and the comparison studies that we did was that we have a reduced overall annual uh of instructional minutes of five hours so the way that we essentially would model an early release would be an additional two and a half hours two hours and 40 minutes so it's really about eight hours we're okay on the instructional minutes part for that um and so you know that was just new information that we hadn't heard prior to which I I think District administration certainly can support yeah I was I understand I was actually looking at instructional dates for
260the teachers as opposed to the students and the day the hours early release if the board wanted you an earlier release that day versus just maybe what our typical one is we could do that as well so to I maybe to your point is how the work calendars work out um the board really can simply decide what the number of days are by shortening that day by a day or half a day without needing to make up anything from a teacher work Calendar's perspective the other calendars if we don't have teachers on that day or the day is shorter that does impact the hours worked for some support staff members and so we would be contributing to a a slight shortfall of funds not not a lot you know we're talking you know could be
261three or four hours or it could be eight hours if it was the entire day let's say so just know that you know whatever we decide here he's going to be working real fast on the other end to see if we can support with what um what the change would be on those other work calendars to approve them so if we could first agree on with your permission if we could first agree on what is the teacher work calendar um because if we reduce that those hours some but not all will be affected on the work calendars there there's a few that would be affected are you speaking about support stuff yes is there anybody who who which I'm tired sorry um which work calendars would be impacted if when we change the work days
262for teachers the original work calendars that I had with support staff let's take an example of our office managers or our school secretaries and health office professionals when we drafted those work calendars those work calendars are most closely associated with the teachers and the reason is because their job is dependent upon students being there so when we did those calendars the initial direct Direction provided by the governing board was to find methods by which we could right-size them the support staff so when we're talking specifically about those three employee groups I had calendared in one of the two initial Fridays from the teacher work calendar right so we initially had two Fridays on the teacher work calendar when we came back and we said hey here's some feedback that we've received for these particular months
263the support staff calendars already had one work Friday in there because in talking with the support staff they said yes one Friday a month we could bring our health office staff in for professional learning or one Friday a month we could bring our whole front office staff office managers and school secretaries in to do some additional professional learning they they also have professional learning and to answer doc that was a long answer to Dr shuff's question but I want to make sure I'm really really clear the model that I have drafted in anticipation of going to one Friday does not impact any support staff it doesn't act administrators it impact would impact administrators yes that's why they're on a separate calendar but not any support staff so if we could just agree to what you
264want to do and we can understand that then we can then move to the next pieces of is there any change that would come about as a result of the any decision you would want to make on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving so is it was mentioned Pre-K so I don't know where that falls what calendar does that fall they are on the teacher calendar so what they do they right now they have all Wednesday off so in their minds they're going to switch to all Fridays off so where she was speaking to this shortfall of time is they they'll use up to maybe say up to three hours of time to do the child child find work with a zero to five year old kids and needing to be evaluated so that's work they were
265going to schedule in on those Fridays so part of her point I think was advocating for one Friday and part of her point was we need the two Fridays to be able to do all this extra work on work time and I'll just clarify they don't have a a Wednesday off it is a working Wednesday every Wednesday is a working Wednesday for our Preschool teachers they just do not have children I would be fine if you'd like to provide some input thank you so yes right now currently Wednesdays we don't have students however that is a working day that's a day where we do like for me for example I'm one of the self-contained special education preschool teachers that's where we work with our paraprofessionals to talk about like how the week is going what
266we need to change that's mainly a day that we have our meetings our met ones will the psychologists do met ones we're invited to met twos um or we have um the initial um meetings where the parents come in Via video and we tell them yes okay they have an IEP no they have an IEP the change that you guys are talking about is going to not it's going to add more time for us because Wednesdays are those days and then like for example let's see if I can give a relive example so we're in our four day week that for those Fridays if you guys chose to do the one day I mean everybody else will be okay but the preschool team and anybody who's involved with us will still have to work more
267Fridays because that's that's where those annual IEPs those transition IEPs come in like this time of year is where we're starting for our morning class like all of those kids have to go through a transition process that's where we're gonna have to build in more Mets because we have child fine where it's not just the preschool kids it's the outside families like if a parent comes in has a question I'm worried about my child that's where those meetings come in so we're still going to be working on those Fridays that everyone else is you know resting we're still going to be working and I mean that's no fault to anybody that's just life like we don't have any other times and even if we did it after school I mean even if we did it
268after the kids are gone we still got to make time for those meetings like I am I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to create a meeting on one of those Thursdays or Monday through Friday it's it's gonna happen so that's where preschool is at man you can't I'm sorry you can't speak unless you're in invited and into the microphone so the board president will say if you'd like to address please come to the microphone in addition to what she said about the preschool stuff there are the mandated timelines so those screenings for preschoolers have to be available every 45 days so automatically it's going to run into more than one Friday a month we in between then have to evaluate all of the students that camp with the teams that have to put together that
269will have to be Fridays as well we can have eight to ten students to evaluate in a month um so it's it's going it cannot the preschool that end of the preschool work cannot be done one Friday a month so related service Preschool teachers psychologists are going to have to work more than one Friday a month whenever if everyone else is working one I just wanted to sorry thank you just real quick but the what I'm hearing though is you'll you'll do the work anyway whether it's designated on a calendar or not there's work to do and you'll do it it has to be federally it has to be done yeah thank you so again I guess and I appreciate that this was brought up because I think possibly it may have been overlooked of
270of letting the supervisors on that second Friday determine does somebody need to come in for additional professional development or whatever that may look like their professional development whether it's them at home doing a course whatever that may be or you're doing you're doing fine we don't see that you need that second day and I I wonder if that actually alleviates getting into the weeds of here's the Mandate this works for this group but it doesn't work for this group and this group here is going to feel left out whereas this group here is going to feel all good and it just doesn't seem like it doesn't seem Community like actually to be quite honest with you so I'm wondering thank you very much for that in the back very appreciated I'm wondering if we need
271another calendar and we have plenty but some job functions require different hours and different times our school bus drivers get here before everybody and our maintenance guy whose name slips me at the Mr Moser he's out here starting up buses I think he's waking up the Roosters on the way there are job functions that require different different scenarios so is it something we have to do where we create a separate Works calendar for the the preschool and it I I we're at this point where we hear teachers saying we're not coming back if we have more than one Friday then we hear kindergarten saying we've got to have a couple Fridays so it sounds to me like but we gotta have another calendar which there's a bunch of them so that that could work for
272preschool being different so they they don't have the need to be there that long because they're not going to make their school day preschool longer Monday through Thursday and go as long as the other teachers are and therefore in the additional 45 minutes you know be there 15 before 30 after um so I mean that could work um but we're also talking School psychologists OTP speech there's unintended consequences that's what I'm hearing there's it's not just this little this bucket of individuals because this bucket of individuals has this bucket of individuals are also involved which is again why it brings me back to what I'm trying to say of let the supervisors be supervisors so I think we've talked about it sounds like most the boards in agreeance of one eight hour professional development day
273a month but I know Mr Todd has also stated you know with that would there still be flexible time that the staff would be able to do what they feel they need to do whether that be going to their room and close the door and prep or go you know on their own go out and and touch bases with their Mentor teachers and and collaborate with them that kind of time which would also help I would think preschool where you know I just throwing it out there and I'll make just a quick comment and I think we're going in circles a little bit we heard today teachers work on Saturday Sunday whatever days off there are there's a you know we're just a finite ideology here I trust the teachers to get their work done
274I don't need to make a calendar day for them well let's do one professional development day and they if they need to finish their work or they need to come in they'll do it or they'll put the team together to do it I trust them to do it I think that's where we start no okay members we have to this is all agenda is this one motion so I think we've heard from that if we could look at certified staff work calendar and I just have a question in December the 25th through the 29th as I understand that shows as paid time off for the District staff I'm looking for a clarification on that Mr Todd which calendar are you referencing it would be the certified staff work calendar 2023-2024 maybe we could bring it
275up on the screen and but the entire week of December 25th through the 29th is is that time off with no pay or no work no pay for certified teachers who okay hang on let me look at here it's the same thing on the December for I'm sorry for the Liberty Elementary 12 month support staff and administrator that's a different color what is the proposal for changing the certified staff work calendar and we we can put that into language of of specific dates or for approval purposes I see what Michael's seeing here so on the administration calendar admin exempt and support staff that week of Christmas the 25th through the 29th is highlighted there as a paid holiday however on the certified staff the teachers it's a non-paid holiday break I think we would hopefully
276propose that that would be a paid break for certified teachers for certified no certified teachers or no work no pay on spring break fall break Christmas break their pay is equalized so their salary is equalized over that period of time they still get they still get paid over equalized pays even though those days are non-paid on work if you were to add those days you would have to add days to the contract that makes sense so the certified administrators 12-month their calendar currently existing right now all of our 12-month administrators are 260 days with 14 paid holidays in there okay that's why that is the difference so it's because there's celery with both groups or salary one group is on 185 day based off of your proposal that that calendar will go down in days
277it's already proposed at 170. I'm keeping math on what that would look like if we went to one Friday and then the Wednesday so I'm keeping track of that as we talk but there would be no change for the 12-month exempt support now the 12-month site admin there has been a recommended change so I'm also following that as you're making these recommendations as well thank you it's my ignorance Sean no ignorance it's a good question I think it's a it's just a fine question no problem so so for our administrators and 12 months support they just get an extra week of paid vacation that we don't give anybody else they're on a 260-day contract so built into their contract is these paid vacation days okay because this says 256 days correct I'm saying currently so
278if we make those changes the proposed calendars that were approved prior was 256 days I can provide an explanation as to the reason why we went from 260 to 256 if you would like I'm okay happy to happy to do that and we did have and I'm trying to find it here in these calendars and my board doctors have a note we had one other calendar that had in the middle of a week where we were off we had one day where everybody was looked like they needed to come back and I don't know if any teachers in the room saw that might be able to help that specifically Mr Todd was not for any certified stuff that was for our office management staff based off of two factors that was also school secretaries in
279health office staff there were two factors that contributed to that because their two jobs their jobs the the school secretaries and health office staff are hourly and contingent upon kids being there there's some additional need for them to be there on Fridays however they have these gigantic gaps where there's nobody at the campus in school when it starts up on the following Monday from a break they all of a sudden start with nobody there over the over the course of the break so the recommendation from the office staff and the principals was to say we'd like to have them there one day throughout that week that we have off so as an example spring break if we take 10 consecutive days off because the Friday before that's a non-work we don't have any office operations
280whatsoever for 10 days so their recommendation was to add one Wednesday in there so that they could have some additional support on those breaks but are they really going to come in are they going to take a vacation day they reserve the right to take a vacation day so we don't accomplish anything because that would be we may not accomplish anything I don't know that I could say for sure that we wouldn't it was just the directive to right-size them with the opportunity to not be hit so much financially we could place a side bet but I'm pretty sure we will see very little attendance that day so the board's direction is to not minimize the the impact of them financially and avoid doing that we can certainly do that it was simply trying to
281follow what the board's Direction was okay I just surfaced it for the board if if they want more it was a question I had any other questions or somebody brave enough to try to motion this I don't know what I'll get emotion but I'm gonna try it um I'm looking at the well I guess I gotta say it I make a motion to approve the fiscal year 24. I'm looking at the certified staff work calendar [Music] um with the changes of the Friday one Friday a month for eight hours and I know you'll need more than that for the other calendars but that's the one you said you can base a lot of this off of correct and are you leaving an administrative discretion to select the date and then publish the calendar afterwards or
282are you wanting to specify the actual dates in this meeting I think we probably need to have you draft that up and then we can all have a discussion again does that affect us with contract language later tonight are we okay if we get the count right on the dates it doesn't affect us with contract language because that's a fillable field based off of what you recommend okay so we're prepared to take whatever recommendation for those days we're ready for that okay along with that action um I would like to see well the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as a half day early release I think that proposal would just what time the early release would be you guys Administration can look at that can I ask for clarification on the parent-teacher conference dates those just separate
283dates besides the one professional development day work day it would be a separate day yes yes okay we have a motion Miss Rodriguez do you have that clear can you repeat it back so everybody knows what it is we're gonna need you on a microphone as well sacrificed a microphone for her tonight for our public so Mr uh parks would you share your microphone for a minute a work day hmm stuff okay and do we leave the office stat that one day which day Mr nuttle can you advise which day that is so we can they can see it on the counter sure which calendar we referencing I think it's the school secretary in health it's that one sure that one hop back day yes we have um January 3rd over the winter break was
284the was one day adventurously gonna come in okay okay so we have a motion we need a second oh second how about no have a motion and a second it's been red to call your name please specify your vote board member Parks aye board member Aguirre no board member Bixler aye board member Kenyon aye I am also and I will show that pass four to one if I could I'd like to explain my vote you may know vote is based off of not all groups are being treated equitably and there's going to be groups that are going to be hurt and those groups are really hard to replace and the last thing that I want to do as a board member is come back here next year and add another day to the employees of
285this school district because student achievement is not where we want it I would much rather have taken a date away and reward you all rather than punish thank you next on the agenda and members may be legally you can help us I know you've got a long ride home should can we substitute agendas and go to our executive session so that we can free you up the agenda members I would just think our legal counsel has a drive home much farther than the rest of us I think but uh if it's the board's desire to reshuffle the agenda to hear the executive sessions uh we can do that or we can continue on uh Mr President I'll make a motion to move 8.8 up to um current eight uh to replace or above 8.3 uh
286for executive testing okay and I think we have a second executive as well do you want to follow it behind with that one uh including 8.9 okay so we'd reshuffle 8.8 and 8.9 to above 8.3 and 8.10 it looks like needs to come up as well uh I'm gonna try to get make a motion to uh move 8.8 8.98.10 up to uh or below 8.2 uh let's go into executive session I'll second is there any discussion hearing none call for the vote hang on one second Point um 0.2 you you oh I'm sorry above 8.2 below or is it below I can't even see it so late okay so we're below 8.2 below 8.2 your order yes sir final order can we please get clarification on exactly what the motion is take a minute that
287way that everyone's clear so if it gets reviewed the action is clear in what's happening yes Mr Parks can you clarify um Mr President I'll make a motion to move 8.88.98.10 to move the executive session up under 8.2 second okay I have a motion and a second to move 8.8 8.9 and 810 to be above 8 below I'm sorry below 8.2 I have a second so when I call your name please State your vote board member Parks aye wardenburg wire yes board member Bixler aye board member Kenyon aye I am also and I we will show that that has been moved up next I will need a motion to convene into executive session pursuant to ars38431.03 A3 and 4 for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the governing board's attorney and to consider its
288position and instruct its attorneys regarding its position on the superintendent's contract and related performance pay goals where do you need I need a motion to go to Executive session um Mr President make a motion uh on item 8.8 to go into executive session have a motion do I have a second I'll second have a motion and a second to convene to Executive session for item 8.8 call your name please specify your vote board member Parks aye board member Aguirre yes board member Bixler aye board member Kenyon aye I'm also and I we will show that we've recessed into executive session [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music]
289foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]
290foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] let me show that we are back into open General Session at 11 36 pm the next item on our agenda will be 8.9 possible action to convene an executive session pursuant to ARS 38431.03
291A1 for discussion or consideration of the superintendent's contract and related performance pay goals not hearing a motion we will show that item as dead for the time and move to item 8.10 possible action to approve the direction given to the governing board's attorney in the executive session identified as item 8.8 above Mr President I make a motion to approve the direction given to the governing board's attorney in the executive session identified as item 8.8 above all second I have a motion and a second to approve the direction given to the governing board's attorney and executive session identified as item 8.8 above call your name please specify your vote board member Parks aye board member Aguirre no board member pixler aye board member Kenyon aye I'm also and I will show that past four to one
292thank you very much now we will pick back up with item 8.3 which is the discussion consideration to approve the school year 2024 school start and end times Mr President members of the board before you are the recommended school start and end times to reflect the addition edition of the 40 minutes um in talking with Transportation as long as we kept it consistent we would still be able to transport our students without any Interruption to the routes and so the recommendation is to add 10 minutes prior to their current start time in 30 minutes after the end of their current end time as you see here posted in the executive summary members any questions or comments so this is based on school bus availability everything has to go based off us current drivers current Fleet
293and the way that we exist so you realize you're asking a big ask for for Daddy over here who now has to get up at six do you realize that however the bus drivers have to get up at probably four now I I understand I just want to wanted some clarity so thank you sure yeah my only question is that in it's more Global than this I understand why we're starting time 720 seems awfully early but um I would be very happy if we could ever get into a spot where we had enough buses and drivers where we didn't have to think about starting because of availability of buses at a certain time research is real clear little kids need to start school later than we do it and I'd sure like to have a
294opportunity to start school at a time it's really educationally more supportive of the kids I understand I understand why we're doing this I just wish we had it different any other comments I too would would echo my fellow board members I think 7 20 and 7 30 is really really tough if we were to move those 7 30 start times to 7 40. and stagger accordingly uh would that be possible I I just boy 720 for a kindergartner um 720 for a board member who's at a meeting till 11 39 at night still going um I think 7 30 is early and I've heard from some parents that they have a tough time with even 7 40. so even college classes start early in the morning don't start till 7 40. so is it is
295it possible to look at sliding this schedule I don't know which schools are tied together I'm guessing all the 730s are go round one and then the eight o'clock or eight twenties but could we just stagger that back to 740 and and push accordingly so Mr Todd there was some consideration to add more to the back end of the day um and with the um bringing back of all of the Athletics uh for next year what what we run into if we were to get schools out at say 4 30 in the afternoon and then transport students are our Outdoor Sports would not have enough light to have the sports and if we're bringing the full Sports back that's two games a week at all these schools that don't have lights and so when we've
296met with the principals and talked with them about it that was their main concern of trying to add the just the 30 minutes to the end of the day and 10 minutes before the day there was some consideration for you know a 20 and a 20 stagger to make that somewhat even but we did feel like adding more to the end of the day to minimize that start time was was the best approach uh for all of those other factors considered to answer your question yes that's consideration Athletics so just imagine if you wanted to adjust something by timid you can adjust all of them by 10 minutes wouldn't just be just the early starts because that starts to infringe on again you would have to push the hole so the 820s would start at
2978 30 or or so if it was 10 minutes later then our latest school would dismiss at 4 10 instead of four o'clock I just think that 10 minutes in the morning is a little more precious than the 10 minutes a night as far as our Sports in the in the winter are we not playing mostly indoor sports with maybe the exception of soccer well yes the the way that it's designed is to have one basketball one indoor and one outdoor just based off of our availability with facilities so whatever outdoor sport starts in November and ends you know in say this time of the year they would have minimal light in the outdoor sports I know when I was in junior high which mostly is what the sports are we we got out of
298school out of our classes a little bit early to travel for our games because it was kind of the same issue that there was no there were no lights is that we're out of buses is that feasibility or is it strictly buses well that is possible except all of our buses are needing to be on routes to transport kids at regular dismissal so it would it would have to be a scenario where you'd have to dismiss kids an hour and a half potentially early to get those drivers back on on route so that this was the best scenario that we came up with principles um and transportation supervisor is what it is 10 minutes isn't going to kill me what time does liberties currently start they currently start at 7 30. at 7 30. okay
299I would also add that the other exception here is we've got the conference early release dates and times we'd be adding the November Wednesday early release time I thought I heard somebody's talk about an 11 20 or 11 30 time matching the high school or do you want to just make it match this time for an early release so just point that out as the only exception to what's listed here I'll be happy to accept the motion uh Mr President a move to approve the school year 202-4 our school start and end times second okay I have a motion a second Dr Chef does that clarify your question on the conference time it does not okay so I think that was just leaving it as the same time same early release ending time I think
300so that does not line up with high school I think I think perhaps if you wanted to add on the November 22nd to that early release date we have that on the calendar so I feel like we're okay on the date it's probably just the time if the time is going to be the same as what you will have listed here you don't have to make any adjustment is that the time okay all right we have a motion in a second to approve the calendars presented by stuff I'll call for the vote board member Parks all right board member aguir yes board member Bixler aye board member Kenyon aye I'm also and I will show that approved 5-0 next up is item 8.4 discussion consideration to approve certified contract language for initial returning non-continuing continuing
301terminating and psychologist contracts for school year 2023-24. board members Mr President before you we have the certified teacher contract language for initial returning non-continuing continuing and terminating contracts as well as psychologists each year we have a legal review they make some additions based off of uh you know recommended changes across the state those are included in a black line for you as well as the new contracts um before you this evening for your approval foreign members if you have questions or comments um I guess my only question is I kind of looked through these and I didn't really see between the black line and the actual document any difference I can summarize the the recommended changes um for you so there there are three primary recommendations from um from the attorney's office number one is
302uh to more clearly Define uh our work day so that is in the very top section uh under duties so that is adding the con contract which is not clearly defined in our existing ones the other two components are uh many districts have offered retention stipends and this provides some language around if folks are provided a retention stipend and do not fulfill their total contract as a district we have grounds to seek retribution for what they received up front in terms of retention just worthy of no we we currently don't offer retention stipend but I felt like it was important to keep that in there in the event that we at some point in time do because I do think that it's of the interest of the board to continue to try and push that
303and I I also wanted that Safeguard in as a contract component for us the third and final component is the state has provided opportunities and Alternate Pathways for certification for Arizona Educators through alternate programs we are also one of those districts that provide internship certificate certificated programs the clause in the contract states that teachers who are on this track must maintain progress towards their certification process and if they do not at any point in time meaning continue coursework continue progress in whichever program that they've been accepted we as a school district reserve the right to take action against those folks potentially if they don't continue to maintain that progress towards their certification process those are the those are the three you're welcome Mr President I'll make a motion to approve certified contract language for initial
304returning non-continuing continuing terminating and psychologist contracts for school year 2023 and 2024 second I have a motion in a second I do have a slight bit of discussion um in the contract if you can just tell me quickly do we have anything in the public safety World they call it the good of the department that says we can move somebody out of class if we need to we can we can move a coach to a classroom we can move a teacher from one campus to the other campus to teach a different subject or whatever based off of our our critical needs right now there's nothing in our policy or in our contracts that specify directly that however we do have in policy that um decisions can be made on the best interest of the of
305the school district first and foremost in terms of Staffing so it does allow for us to make Staffing changes as appropriate but there's nothing specifically in policy or this these particular contracts that that state that directly so with our current staffing issues and hopefully they get better with with a closer to a four day work week is that something that we should consider including um tightening up that language a little bit secondly I'm not sure that we we as a board heard teachers loud and clear um with their requirements I don't want to hear excuses from teachers not showing up for professional development I think we should have some contract language in there that talks specifically about missing professional development um or we black those days out but I think we need to make it
306very well known from the get-go that there to be a professional development we've all established it's critical we gave a bunch but in giving that back I feel that we need to make sure we're guaranteed that the teachers are going to take professional development serious and I've heard one too many times about somebody who has accidentally scheduled a Wednesday afternoon doctor's appointment when we have professional development every Wednesday currently it should not be allowed unless it's extremely critical like an ER visit so I would just uh we're changing this if we go to once a month they're not getting it every Wednesday anymore they're getting it once a month they need to be there for that so is their proposed language is that contract language or potential policy language the board would consider at a
307later Point um and um I won't make a comment about how old is somebody um policy or contract so there's I think there's a couple of options just as I as I see it existing right now um number one is there could be a recommended policy change if you wanted to be real specific about that particular piece there are safeguards within our policy about professional expectation and professional components right there are there are uh several different categories within policy GCO that specifically describe the professional expectations there are generalized statements I think intentionally um to allow that freedom to interpret that within the contract in terms of the duties and responsibilities as well so it doesn't get that specific but there are still safeguards within both the contracts and the policies to talk about the importance
308of that if there is some further interest of the board to drill down on some of those things in particular in the future there could be some recommended addendums to the contract specific to that and we could work with um the attorney on how to incorporate that as an addendum if that's of the interest of the board I think in the interest of time I would support that we can get this through and get contracts out but probably let staff know I I think we'll have some strong consideration to tighten that language up so that we definitely don't have any of absent case we should have good attendance noted so with that board members I have a motion and a second I call your name if you'll please so just to be clear the motion
309and the second is to approve it as it's red that's correct I'm gonna change anything okay call for your vote board member parks aye board member aguir yes board member Pixlr aye board member Kenyan no I'm also and I will show that approved in ms50 next is item 8.5 discussion of first readings of policy Dr Shuff did advise me that if we'd like to table this for the next meeting there would be no damage to the district or or setbacks it's the board's decision what they'd like to do I'm fine we might have you read it have you gone through it at all it looks fine to me if nobody has any feedback then yeah right okay for a second yeah thank you all right next up will be item 8.6 discussion discussion consideration to
310approve fiscal year 24 salary and placement schedules for certified teachers reading interventionalists instructional coaches psychologists related Services exempt support support staff administrators and assistant superintendents members of the board I've provided a pretty lengthy um explanation in the executive summary essentially the intent here is two things number one is to ensure that when we lead into our a teacher hiring Fair on February 11th we can accurately represent all of the budget items that you all had approved prior and all of those are incorporated into these salary schedules and I've bulleted those for you and those individual employee groups I'm happy to answer any questions but essentially they represent exactly what you see here in my explanation so those are for fy24 to be effective July 1 2023. foreign post about teachers that'll change the world that
311the that's cute I like it I think this will go a long way thank you okay members I will take you their questions comments or emotion Mr President I move that we approve the physical year 24 salary and placement schedules for certified teachers reading interventionists instructional coaches psychologists related Services exempt support support staff administrators and assistant superintendents second I have a motion and a second I call your name please specify your vote board member Parks aye board member Aguirre yes board member Pixlr aye board member Kenyon aye I'm also and I we will show that that approved unanimous next on the agenda is item 8.7 discussion consideration to approve leap extended day care annual registration fee and tuition rates for school year 2024. Mr President and governing board members I'm presenting tonight the new tuition
312rates effective for August and I've included lots of information in your executive summary stand ready for questions any question members just for the public I would also say this is a model that we believe will break even but no cost to the district I just want that clarification and that's really my question that the costs are going down how are we doing that more peace so the costs for Monday Monday through Thursday yeah um are going down um however the cost for Friday is right it's different it's pretty costly I like the fact that it went down have we looked at how our Friday rates compare against other day cares also I think it's important for the public to know that this has to be self-sustaining this cannot be funded through tax base at all
313so the cost of this is is a hundred percent unfunded and is funded by that by the tuition that the parents pay but how is our prices on this compared to uh daycares in the area or any other programs that we looked I don't think you can beat 3.86 an hour I just wanted to make sure we we looked at that so um so all in all it's extremely competitive okay yeah it's that's the hourly rate if if a family took advantage of all 12 hours if they come in and use it for two hours then obviously it's a higher hourly rate for them all right still a great deal Mr President I'll make the motion to uh approve the leap extended day program annual resignation or sorry uh registration fee it's late and tuition
314rates for uh school year 24. oh second I have a motion and a second all those in actually I'll call for your name and your roll call vote board member Parks aye board member Aguirre yes board member Bixler aye board member Kenyon aye I'm also and I we will show that that approved 5-0 remember that brings us to section 9 on the agenda board comments or agenda topic requests Mr Kenyon would you like to start us yeah I have just one um I don't know if this would be better as an admin report or just I would like to have a discussion and kind of know the process um that we utilize short and long-term Subs kind of how they pick up work and how that process looks I just I'm not familiar with it
315and I've talked to a couple subs and they tried to explain to me but I would like something official that I can wrap my head around in a board update or in an agenda item um board update I think would be fine thank you or remember acquire anything important Forks um I just have one thing I would like to surface I uh this past couple weeks I've been in a couple conferences and um there's been a strong emphasis at both which are government related conferences to establish a social media policy I don't think we currently have one but it's uh apparently quite the thing now to to have to protect the district and our employees so I'd like to surface that that we we adopt the social media policy or at least consider it good
316with that okay anything else okay members uh we have some upcoming meetings scheduled for February 13th February 27th March 13th and March 27th there any known problems of attendance for those dates nope as long as they're done before midnight next up is everyone's uh favorite at 1201 in the morning support member Aguirre would you help us out with the German motion to adjourn second I have a motion and a second to adjourn the meeting all those in favor please say aye aye aye I'm sure that approved five zero meeting is adjourned [Music] foreign [Music]