Copy of Governing Board Meeting 10/02/2025

001All right. Uh, seeing that we do have quorum present, may I please ask Mrs. Ship for a roll call for attendance, please? >> Board member Dar Roa, board member Ovay >> here. >> Board member Edmonston >> here. >> President Trill present. And with quorum present, I'd like to call this meeting to order at 5:27 p.m. Uh, I'll begin with our tribal land acknowledgement. In partnership with the tribes who called Phoenix their home first, we acknowledge and respect the land our schools are built on. We commit to being a strong partner with any and all tribal nations who entrust their children to our schools. We are grateful and honored to be partners. Uh, if you'd like to please join me for please stand to join me for the pledge of allegiance. Thank you. With that, we'll

002move on to item A3, adoption of our agenda. Dr. Gonzalez, do you have a recommendation for our agenda this evening? Madame President, I do have a recommendation. I would recommend that we move item E2, receive and discuss the presentation on the fisc year 25 PESD number one annual financial report to item G2 and have it be to receive and take possible action on the presentation of the FY25 PESD number one annual financial report. Thank you for that. Um, I'd like to move that we approve the agenda as amended, as Dr. Gonzalez mentioned, moving item B2 to item G2. Do we have a second? >> This is Erica and I second. >> Board member Ovay >> I. >> Member Edmonston >> I, >> President Trillo I. With that, our motion passes and our agenda is adopted.

003Uh, moving on, we will go to our current event summary, item B1. Dr. Gonzalez, the floor is yours. Madame President, members of the board, our cabinet members, audience, and our viewing community, I'm pleased to welcome you all this evening as we continue to review our student outcomes, seeing the progress that we're making in establishing a healthy fiscal management practice, and celebrating the terrific partnerships that are supporting our work. And speaking of partnerships, I'm really excited about the night we had last night at the Musical Instrument Museum. We had outstanding student performances from students at Herrera, Edison, Whittier, and Garfield. We were pleased to host nearly 500 Phoenix number one students, staff, and families. The museum staff absolutely loved our students and our families, and we cannot wait to have another night to celebrate together. I've

004also been meeting out in our communities, meeting with community members at a variety of different community events the past couple of months and want to extend a heartfelt thank you, excuse me, to the various groups who've welcomed us and have been willing to share their thoughts and insights with us. You'll see later on when we look at Superintendent Guardrail number two some of the recommendations that are coming out of these forums. But for those of you who have not yet had an opportunity to join, we are extending more opportunities throughout the next month as well. We have business partner lunchons, social gatherings, capacitos, PTO meetings, and I appreciate everyone's willingness to share their ideas with us so that we can learn and grow together. The input from our community is critical to helping us ensure

005that we are providing the very best for our children, staff, and families. And speaking of staff who make sure our children are getting the very best, today is also school custodians day and we were able to celebrate our custodians with cards and gift baskets going to the different school sites and surprising them with a little gift. And we know that many of our schools have also done special things to thank our school custodians. October is also school leaders month and I want to say I'm so proud of the work that we are doing collectively to improve student outcomes to be wise stewards of our taxpayers dollars and to create district environments that are welcoming and safe for everyone. Our school leaders are integral to making sure that we're able to do that every day. And

006I just want to express a heartfelt thank you to every one of the leaders who's come to our district to work and serve our families, to serve our students, and to serve our communities in all of the ways that we're working toward. We can't do this work without phenomenal leaders. And I'm very proud of every one of our school leaders. With that, Madame President, that concludes my comments. Thank you. Do we have any uh other board member reports? Oh yeah. Okay. Um I do have a few uh as Dr. Gonzalez mentioned that it is uh school leaders month but I was I had written down National Principles Month. Um so definitely wanted to thank all of our wonderful principles who choose to lead our schools. Uh I salute you and I'm grateful for all the

007work you do in service of our students and to the community. Um, I'd like to thank um I'd like to echo your comments about the event last night and thank Mrs. Sims uh and our district staff for making for creating the opportunity to accept an invite to the musical instrument museum um along with a lot of parents and students. It was a magical night of new experiences for me to to actually go to the MIM and and participate in some of the the what do they have like um exhibits I guess I'll call them. Uh it was an absolute pleasure to watch our students perform as well. Having the music teachers out there leading and the kids and seeing the buses outside was it's it always just touches my heart. So, thank you very much

008for making that possible. Uh lastly, we have an allmale election upon us and the district has three ballot measures on this November's election. So I'd like to share that the last day to register to vote is October 6th and mail mail and ballots are scheduled to go out on October the 8th. With that said, we can move on to our next agenda item. Uh C1, our community communications. This is a time for public for the public to comment. Uh members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically on the agenda. Therefore, uh actions taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter, respond to criticism or rescheduling for a further consideration at a later date. Uh we'll keep it at the normal I'm sorry,

009how many electronic comments do we have? >> We have two. Perfect. We'll keep it at the three minute mark. Do you have a timer to Perfect. Um with that, we'll begin with our inperson comments. May we please welcome Allison Gullick to the front. Thank you for being here. >> Oh, hi. I'm Alison Gullick, a parent in the district. Um, so I just want to share a little things. Um, our district is at a breaking point right now. Our the enrollment numbers are in from Herd and Dunar being closed and they're staggering. At the last 40-day count, we lost over 10% of our enrollment from last year. That loss is not just numbers on a page. It's families leaving, walking away, and children leaving our classrooms and community losing trust in this district. Year after year,

010we repeat the same cycles of divestment, threatening closures and excuses for why we have to close schools and divest in our communities. But our students cannot wait any longer. Our youngest learners were infants during the pandemic. Co is no longer an excuse for these struggles. Something deeper is broken and we must fix it. We are closing schools and and ending preschool programs to the point of making programs unattainable to the average person. Outside of Shaw, we only have maybe seven or eight fullday preschool schoolers across the entire district. That is unacceptable. Our own guard rails show major academic concerns, too. There is absolutely no reason that any school in this district should be at 0% proficiency in any subject. Consolidating resources into a few schools has not solved this problem. It's only made it worse.

011This district has a long, long history of causing irreparable harm. It has a history of Indian schools, segregation, resistance to desegregation orders, and now wave after wave of school closure, particularly in areas that serve our most vulnerable and most in need. Each time neighborhoods are weakened, families are displaced, and our most vulnerable learners are the ones who suffer. These cycles must end, and they must end now. Enough is enough. We cannot keep prioritizing construction company contracts, kickbacks, poor lease deals, and deals that benefit others while draining resources from our classrooms and from our educators. All of this is a well-known problem in Arizona. We are Arizona's first public school district. We should be the champions of public education, breaking these cycles and not being a stain a and a laughingtock in the news for a

012failed leadership or being the dumpster fire as we slowly watch public education whittle away. And yet, despite all of this, our teachers, our principles, and our staff continue to shine. My child has been lucky to learn from incredible educ educators during his three years in this district. I've been very happy with his progress, and I love every teacher and principal that he's ever had, especially at Kennallorth. Their dedication and proof is that we still have the foundation to turn this ship around if we choose to invest in them and our students and stop trying to rightsize or use buzzwords such as declining birth rates or to scare people when the reality is actually much different. We are here for one reason, the children and the educators who serve them. Closing schools and and taking away

013resources from those who need it most and funneling them to those who already benefit from those resources is not equity. It's deepening inequities. Please take this to heart and think about the direction you want things to be and the legacy that you want to leave this district. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Uh Mrs. ship. Whenever you're ready to proceed with electronic comments, we are ready as well. Our first comment is from Paul Booth. Governing board, I noticed the lease topic on the agenda, and I want to stress just how critical this issue is for our district's future. Lease agreements are one of the most powerful tools we have, not just to generate muchneeded revenue, but to ensure our properties are being used in ways that truly benefit the community. Unfortunately, our past experiences

014show we haven't always managed this well. When Herd and Dumbar were closed, we were told that leasing those properties would would help offset program costs. Yet, those those cuts still happened. Today, Dumbar sits vacant. Herd is only partially used. Meanwhile, we've heard claims that the Filillmore property could bring in millions in annual lease revenue. But if the tenant is at school is a school, how exactly does that solve our maintenance and operations funding crisis? Now, the district is ma is asking voters for permission to sell or lease virtually every property we own. And I have real concerns, especially given our track record with prior lease agreements. For example, the recent pre presentation shared price per square foot, but it didn't tell us key information. What is the actual rent being paid? Are utilities included? Who's

015responsible for maintenance or security? We know terms vary. ASU Prep's lease isn't the same as Beyond Autisms. Monterey Parks revenue streams stream needs far more transparency as well. We need a better process. We need all properties clearly listed. We need competitive bids. We need to we need to negotiate strong smart deals and we need real transparency at every stage. Leasing to schools can help generate revenue we can use for M. But we must balance that with the risk of losing student enrollment. That trade-off needs to be considered carefully. And above all, we need the community involved. If the public doesn't trust how these properties are being handled, we risk losing their support on future bond measures and overrides. And that's a risk we simply can't afford. I urge the district to take this seriously. These

016decisions are not just being about poverty. They're about the future of our schools, our programs, and our ability to serve students during incredibly difficult times. Thank you, Paul Booth. Our last comment is from April Pettit. Good evening, members of the board. My name is April Pettit and I serve as the president of PECA. I want to invite anyone who would like to join us for a canvas in support of the Phoenix Elementary School District number one override. We will meet at the Arizona Education Association, which is 3:45 East Palm Lane, on Saturday, October 4th, at 9:30 a.m. This override is not a tax increase. It is the funding that protects the very things that make our district strong. Without it, we could lose competitive salaries for teachers and staff, which you depend on to recruit

017and keep highquality educators. Arts and music programs, which give students creativity, joy, and balance in their school day, evidenced by last night's amazing student performances at the MIM. Student support services like counseling, nursing, and interventions that keep kids healthy and safe. Classroom supplies and curriculum resources, resources which directly impact daily learning. Manageable class sizes which allow teachers to give students the attention they deserve. Safe and up-to-date facilities and technology which are critical for both learning and staff working conditions. On top of this, our district is facing declining enrollment. That means we need to use the override not just to maintain what we have, but to also build and expand programs that attract families and staff to Phoenix number one. If we don't, we risk losing even more students, which creates a cycle of shrinking resources

018and opportunities. Strong schools are the heart of a strong community. This override ensures we can continue to provide the the kind of education that brings families into our district and keeps great teachers in our classrooms. If anyone has questions, please email pecta vicepresidentgmail.com or pecta [email protected]. And if you can't make it this Saturday, we will have additional opportunities to get involved throughout October. Thank you. This concludes our comments. Thank you very much, Mr. Ship. Uh with that, we'll move on to our consent agenda. uh are items D1 through items D13. Uh I move that we approve our consent agenda as presented. Uh do we have a second? >> This is Erica and I second. >> Board member Ovay >> I. >> Board member Edmonston >> I. >> President Trillo >> I. With that, our consent

019agenda passes and we will move on to item E1. Uh we'll receive our presentation uh on the sale lease exchange of district real property. Welcome, Mrs. Sims. Thank you, Madame President, members of the board, my fellow cabinet members, and the community. My name is Sarah Sims. I'm the executive director of strategic initiatives and I'm here tonight at the request of the board to provide more information about the voter proposition on the November ballot in regard to sale, lease or exchange of district real estate. If you would, Randy, what does voter approval allow the district permission to do? I just wanted to briefly go over um what permission on the ballot initiative would allow us to do. Number one, it would allow us to enter into long-term leases. Those are leases that are of 21 to

02099 years of usable school property, allowing the district to responsibly manage its property to generate revenue that can be reinvested directly into student learning. What I want the board to remember about this first um item is that lease funding allows for flexible spending. It's much more flexible than sale. Item two, um, this ballot proposition would allow us the permission to sell property. Proceeds must go towards bond debt repayment and reinvest investment into buildings. This is restricted usage of the funds and at this time we have no intent to sell any of the of the uh, properties that are listed. The third um, permission would be for us to exchange property for other real estate. It's very uncommon, but sometimes it is helpful to just districts if they own a piece of property and they want

021to exchange that one someone with someone else for another piece of another parcel of property. What can lease revenue be used for? Um, this is important for us to remember. If approved, the district could use the money from leases to construct or improve buildings or classrooms, purchase school buses or other vehicles, or cover any other district expenses, including upgrading safety infrastructure, programming needs, or necessary staff. And some examples of that might be offsetting preschool costs or afterchool enrichment and sports. in this chart. Um I will allow you to read most of that on your own, but I do want to point out to you that on the left you will see our leased properties. In the middle you'll see the list the leay who is the person leasing the square footage with which they are

022obligated and the percent of the building that they've leased. Price per square foot is approximate. These are not exact numbers um but they are um very very telling when you look at the chart. I do want to point out that Booker T. Washington, the Filillmore property and Montterrey Park are voter approved long-term lease properties. Those are already allowed for 21 to 99year leases. Herd School is not. That is only allowable up to that 20-year lease mark. um utilities at the top three are paid by the leie and at the bottom Montterrey Park the district is paying those utilities. Oh yes, thank you. I almost missed that. The bottom line, if you would go back for me, Randy, I apologize. Thank you. Mterrey Park, super important. an asterisk on that line. Um the $15.54 per square

023foot is an inkind. Those are services that are provided to families and the district. So that that is inind services. Thank you very much. And examples of those would be um discounted child care for employees. Um the half-day preschool program that Mterrey Park um allows for our preschoolers to access. no other programs um daycare I should say daycare programs allow for that half day. It's a huge service that we were lacking in the district and so uh Montterrey Park Y Academy makes that up for us. Um they're also offering all children that are in after school programming free water safety, free swim lessons right now. So perks like that um are the inind services that we use to calculate that. Thank you. And then if you go to the last slide, you'll see total revenue

024generated from current leases. The amount at the top is just our long-term leases that you see in the chart. We have a variety of other short-term lease revenue, things like cell towers or the governing board room usage or things like that where we have additional income coming in. But just from our um real estate leases, we're bringing in about $1.1 million a year. And our plans for those funds are listed below. We know that we're going to need to supplement preschool until we can get our enrollment up there. Um we want to provide sports not only for our middle schoolers. We'd love to extend that from our prek through five. That's going to take some funds. Um we heard from the community that they really feel strongly about district field experiences and one of the

025most expensive parts of field experiences is the transport. So if we're not able to meet that transportation need in district we would love to provide contracted transportation if that's the only barrier to a we don't want that to happen. So we would supplement there. Uh the board is aware that we've lost some of our federal funding funding for our family and community engagement specialists. That's what FACE stands for. Um, we plan to use some of our flexible lease revenues to allow for them to have training and reimbursement for their time off the clock for um, parent education academy. We have a very robust teacher mentoring program in the summer to welcome new teachers to the fold and um, with that comes a cost and so um, our flexible lease funds allow for us to do

026that. you know that we are very ambitious about new programming and offering programming that is important to families and that will draw um enrollment to the district. For example, our DLI program um new programs take money to get off the ground and so we have aotted a quarter of a million uh into new programming for students. And then the last uh line here is Annot development and so we um we have aotted that we understand fully that these do not add up to 1.1. We're trying to build a reserve. So, um, for those of you who are calculating, we understand those don't add up to the 1.1, but we are trying to build a reserve. So, I thank you very much for your time this evening. Were you raising your hand with a question, President

027Trillo, please? >> Thank you. Thank you. Um, >> did I hear you say DOI? >> DLI, dual language immersion, which is housed at LOL. >> Perfect. And it is busting at the seams. We are so pleased. Both classrooms are full. >> Wonderful. >> Yes. >> So startup costs for that is is that something um so startup costs are things that aren't we're not able to pay um out of our regular maintenance and operations or things that we'd like to supplement. advertising, um, any kind of of modifications to the building or things that we need to do like that, supplies, transportation, hosting families, um, making sure that the face is available there if we need to pay extra hours if we have an open house, some of those kinds of things where we've we've lost some

028of that federal funding that would have offset those costs. >> Thank you very much for clearing that up for me. >> And curriculum and training for teachers if it's a new program. May I ask for clarification how many properties we already have approval for? We have approval for the items that are on the list minus herd plus and aught. >> Okay. and plant services >> on the ballot initiative. Which um schools are going to be >> every school site. Every other school site that was the um wishes of the board. >> Yep. >> And Emerson Court. So I okay I I have a um clarifying question too. So, so just to clarify when when you're talking about the leases for um these various leies um the rent and the inind services is that all clearly

029spelled out in each one of the leases what they pay. >> Yes, very clearly spelled out. So, I can give you an example at HERD if you'd like. Would that be helpful? Um, so our LEI Beyond Autism pays a base rate for the real estate, if you will, the use of the actual square footage, and then they also pay um, a dollar amount for custodial and grounds um, and utilities. So, it's all very clearly spelled out. It wouldn't be fair for us to ask the LEI at Herd to pay the entire utility bill. They're not using the entire campus. So, they're paying utilities specifically on the square footage that they're accessing in their lease. And that's all spelled out um in a lease that goes through legal and comes back um and is approved. And

030in fact, they just added square footage um this week. They added one more classroom. So, we had to amend the lease. And with that, then they're paying the additional um custodial utilities and grounds per square foot. and all of the leases are reviewed by our legal counsel. >> I've got a question. So, if all the schools are on the ballot, I wasn't here the day they made that vote. Um, but I did hear about it. Um, does that mean at any time we can put those we can close those schools and put them up for a lease? Is this is this a pathway to school closures? >> A great question. No, there are clear legal parameters for what it takes to close a school. That what this proposition would allow for us to do is

031enter into long-term leases. If you look at item number one on slide two, leases 21 to 99 years in length. What's important about that as we look forward with these properties is if someone's going to develop something, a a youth center or housing or whatever, it's very hard to secure housing for a short-term lease. No one's going to finance you if you only have a lease for four years. So, what a long-term lease allows them to do is to secure financing. So, that opens every single property that we have the ability for a long-term lease. That's really what we're we're going for on this proposition. Does that answer your question? >> Yes, it does. And I and I thank you for that. It's just my concern is like we we know the board or I

032don't know. I can't speak for everybody, but like right now we don't want to close schools, but in the future that very much could change. That power is going to be handed down to different boards who later on can change the vision, the mission, and the values. Um and so it that concerns me. uh just to be completely transparent um that it could it might not be the pathway now but it could be a pathway in the future. So I'm I'm just I thank you for that question. I think it's important to review what's required for a school closure. There's a public meeting. There has to be a public notification and then we have to follow um gathering community comment in order to do a school closure. Having an agreement like this by the voters

033has absolutely nothing to do with school closure. It's accessing the land or the building for either sell, lease, or exchange. To to close a school would be a completely different legal process and that's not on the ballot. Thank you for the question. That's important. I agree because you can if you don't know how the process works, it can still raise concerns. So, I agree. I'm grateful for the extra clarification. Um, I would like to ask for some long-term lease examples, like nothing, of course. Uh, I don't know. I don't want to screw anything up if we've got, you know, ideas, but what can we >> Absolutely. I guess a long-term lease. A perfect example would be the New Times building. That's a long-term lease. And so they took um occupancy of the building, a lease

034was written with an escalator, which just means that every so many years they're going to look at the consumer price index and they're going to determine what the the legal rate of increase on that le that lease would be. And so the new times is a perfect example. If we have a building that someone that a business wants to lease for a longer period of time, it allows them to do so. That would be one option. The other option I touched on briefly would be something like if you wanted to develop some type of housing, affordable or attainable housing or um some type of a community center or something like that. Um securing funding would be very hard if they if the uh leie was not able to secure a long-term land lease. It it

035may not even be leasing the current building that's there. It may only be leasing the land. Um and this this um ballot proposition would allow for them to lease land to to do to build. So those are some of the examples I can think of. Does that answer your question? >> Uh it does pull some ideas together. So um for work I had to go on to one of the Balt campuses and they have like a wellness >> center area. So, I'm assuming that might be like a long-term lease thing that they've got going with the with the a wellness group. I can't remember the name of it, but inside of there, there would there were different like um spaces and and we we used them to talk to parents, but I think like so

036they had small they just had different companies inside. So, that kind of >> Exactly. any kind of real estate where um someone is where you can develop um and you can you know braid funding, bring in funding from multiple sources that the school district may not be able to access but the developer could. So you know housing is near and dear to us. We want to find ways for families to live in the district. So um with a proposition like this, this would allow the land that we have to be developed by someone who does that professionally and knows about those funding sources. We literally own the land and we're leasing it to them to develop with a mutual cause that you all would have to approve prior to doing that. >> Got it. Um,

037may I ask for a little more info on the consumer price index review? >> You may. I am not an expert, but our realy team would be >> I fully I can understand it a little more. >> Yeah. every so many years it's reviewed and they look at the consumer price index, the rate of inflation against market rate rent and then it's built into your lease at the inception. Um, so that you know every so many years you run the risk of your rent being increased with whatever that rate was. It was quite healthy the last time it was reviewed which I believe was in March and so then our lease with the new times was adjusted in April to reflect that new consumer price index and it it it was a significant increase for

038us. Perfect. Thank you. Any other question? >> Um so one one other question. Um when I thank you for this chart because it's really helpful to understand the current situation. Um and when I look at it like two things right away stuck out to me. The first is, you know, to the degree that they're all paying paying rent, some rent, they are providing the service, which is in this as well as far as being able to um reinvest that in educational purposes. But I think what I'm hearing from from people and actually I think it's in our documents too that when um community members are pulled, you know, they're citing their top and we're going to talk about this later, but engaging programs, knowledgeable, caring teachers, academic excellence, positive school um culture is that people

039really seem to be asking for educational um enrichment programs, education focused uses. Um, and so, you know, personally, um, that's that's really what I would like to see. Um, and I'm interested to know because also when I look at this list, I I don't see that being equal as far as the educational um value as far as what they are contributing directly and how is that um weighed in this process, you know, like like looking at what what the needs are and if this this um potential lei can provide something that's needed. >> You teed me up perfectly. I'll take that one. Um, Dunbar, we have a review committee at Dunbar and when we when anyone contacts me and says, "I'm really interested. I'd like to lease space." You know, I get a ton of

040these calls every week. It's amazing to me how many people are reaching out to us about space. So, um, I put together a a list of items that we need from anyone who's interested. And there's a review committee that's been gathered and there are community members, there are staff, myself, procurement department, and we review those. And the list of items that we ask for is what do you know about our community? How are you going to benefit our community? How can our students access whatever it is that you want to do with the property? And how will this help us with our mission? And here is our mission. And you can see that clearly on our website and all of our items. And so the review committee takes that into consideration. And we have had

041a lot who have said, well, I'd like to use the property for free, which we can't do because that's a gift of public funds. absolutely nothing that they wanted to do in that building was going to benefit our students or our staff. And so we said, you know, we're not able to do that. But the review committee is asking those exact questions. How are you going to give back to the community? What's your history in the community? And what are you going to give back? And we are taking a really serious look at those when we get those applicants. I say applicants, but they're really inquiries. >> Just one followup on that. >> Yes. um giving back to the community in an educational sense that directly will benefit the students of this district. >> Absolutely.

042Is it programming? Is it supports? Is it benefits for teachers? We're looking at all of that and not not every LEI can provide check all of those boxes, but we are trying to find some that that meet the We really have big dreams for programming and if we can find partners that can help us do that, those would be our priority. >> Thank you. >> Educational programming. You're welcome. >> Hearing no further questions. >> Um, thank you very much, Mrs. Sims. >> You're good, Dr. G. All right, with that, we can move on to item E2. Uh, adjourning to our executive session. Um, I move that we adjourn to executive session at 6:02 p.m. Uh, do we have a second? >> This is Erica and I second. >> Thank you. May we please have a

043a vote, Mrs. Ship. >> Board member Oay >> I. >> Board member Epson >> I. >> President Jill >> I. With that, we will move on to uh we will journ into executive session for the purpose of receiving and discussing legal advice from our attorney um for the public body regarding the g the board's options uh with respect to the superintendent's performance based comments compensation pay plan for the 2526 school year. We should be back within an hour. See you guys soon. Thank you. I think I'm going to switch it up here and say all in favor say I. >> I. With that, our motion passes. Um or I guess I'll give the option. All oppose say nay or no. Hearing that. Hearing none. Our our motion passes and we will move on to item

044G2 uh which is our received discuss and possibly uh take action on the pres presentation of our fiscal year 20 2025 for our annual financial report. So welcome Mr. Whittle. Thank you. The floor is yours. >> Dr. Gonzalez, fellow cabinet members, thank you for allowing me to speak here tonight on behalf of the fiscal year 25 Phoenix Elementary School District. Number one, annual financial report. So when we are preparing the AFR, we have to understand what is the AFR. So the AFR is called the annual financial report. It is required by statute 19-904 that must be presented and approved every year. and it is basically the expenses of goods services that are received during the fiscal year which our fiscal year is July 1 to June 30th. It represents the M the capital fund, our

045grants and our special revenue funds which is mainly our cash accounts. Um it also represents our district revenues and all of our total expenditures in all funds. It also encompasses the food service annual financial report and our school level AFR as well as our classroom site fund annual financial report that is due by November 15th. So how do we prepare for the AFR? AFR we verify through our accounting uh software infinite visions and making sure that that the records meet the USFR compliance questionnaire. USFR stands for uniform standards of financial records. It's everything. It's uh basically every school uses the USFR to meet compliance from the state of Arizona. We also verify cash controlled funds and state aid through the Maricopa Superintendent Office, Maropa County Superintendent's Office. Then we file our AD completion reports for

046federal and state grants. Federal grants are due September 30th and state grants are due by June 30th. We also test test for our exceptional student services maintenance of effort. How we do this is by prior year uh exceptional student services expenses over the current year expenditures and districts must ensure that combined fiscal effort on a per student or aggregate basis is not less than 10% of the preceding fiscal year. So what we spent on our ESS population must meet the what we spent on the prior year no more than 10%. So again, how do we what else are we looking for? We're looking for to make sure that we're verifying financial details within our general ledger. We're reconciling our M revenues. We're reconciling our M expenditures by program, function, and object. We're reconciling our Prop

047301, which is also our classroom site fund through revenues and expenditures. Our capital expenditures, our grant, state and federal, both revenue and also expenditures, and also our special revenue fund revenue and expenditures, making sure that all the expenditures meet compliance within the USFR for our state funds and also through our Edgar for uh compliance through Edgar for our federal funds. So we actually have two law books that we have to follow. USFR for the state of Arizona and Edgar for federal. So as we get into the M I want to break it down by the function type. So the the AFR is mainly about the the three funds. Um mainly about the M fund, the capital fund that also goes over bonds. uh but mainly M and capital are the are the two major funds

048that we really want to focus on here in the AFR. So as you can see through our M functions we spend about 50% of our M uh we spent about 54 total almost 55 total million dollars in our M fund. 50% of that is going directly to the kids through instruction. 12 and 8% are going to instru in instructional support. The in instructional support students, these are like our psychologists. These are our nurses. They're also our um attendance clerk. So, whenever we are calling when students are absent, we're calling the kids to make sure that they're in school. our instructional support. This is our our curriculum department that directly supports our teachers to make sure that they have the resources needed to educate our students. So total on our M account 70% is going directly

049to the students. We have 3% in our general admission sorry general administration principles consume about 5% central services 5% plant services this is our maintenance department 11% transportation 5% and nutrition services 1%. Now, through our nutrition services, we do have what's called um a match, a food service match where we because they do food service is a federally funded program. We have to spend a certain amount of money from our M account on food service. That's why it's it's the 1% it's not going to consume very much. So, this is our M expenditures by function. This is our M expenditures by category. category is our salaries and benefits is going to eat up most of our um M expenditures. You can see there 66% of our $54 million budget or sorry 54 million expenditures are

050coming directly from salaries and benefits. Sorry, 66 for salaries, 22% for benefits. So 88% of our M budget is coming directly to salaries and benefits. Now the goal for this is to to get this around 75 to 80%. Purchase services about 7% purchase property services about 1% other purchase services about 2% supplies about 2% and dues just under 0% so about uh 7%. our purchase service professional that is directly tied to um could be our substitutes where we're hiring we're we're hiring a vendor to come in and satisfy a need of the district. Um purchase property services. This is our utilities like our our our trash, our water, our sewers. Other purchase services, this could be other um items that aren't identified through either the purchase professional services or the purchase property services. and then

051about 2% in supplies. This is going to be mainly our fuel for our transportation department. So when we look at the expenditures, we can break it down by fund. So our maintenance and operations, let me go back here. I want to do want to pull this uh pull this out bottom right. So our fiscal year 25 budget was 56.157 million and we had fiscal year 25 expenditures of 54.84 84 million which left us with a budget balance carry forward of 1.3 million. Um when I presented the proposed and adopted budget back in June, I projected we would have a budget balance carry forward of about a million dollars. So our our county records were pretty right on. Um we're about 300,000 off, but I'd rather go up than go down. So um that just goes

052to show you that we are on track with our county records. So our expenditures by fund our maintenance and operation as you saw we spent 54.84 84 million. Our capital outlay. This is our our 610. It's also also called the district additional assistance, the unrestricted capital outlay, and also the capital. So, it has three names. Uh 2.7 million, our classroom site fund, 5 million, our grants. So, grants are any funds that start with a 100 through 499. We spent 21.6 million. I do have an asterisk on this one because I want to identify that this does include 8.1 million in SR3 funding. So I want to bring that to the board's attention. SR3 funding is no longer available through the district. So next year we're not going to see or that that column will not

053be 21 million. It's more likely going to be around 12 or 13 million. Now also with the reduction in our federal funding, we might even see that a lot a lot less. So I want to bring that to the board's attention. Our special our special revenue accounts these are our cash accounts about 12.7 million. And then our bond we spent 11 million. So the total taken from the total expenditures for the district 107 almost $108 million for fiscal year 25. Again this is from July 1, 2024 to June 30th of 2025. I want to thank you and we'll take any questions. I think if we could just kind of have a moment to look through a few things um that would be helpful in case any questions come to mind. >> Absolutely. >> I have

054I have a quick question on the expenses for the special revenue cash accounts. What does that mean exactly? >> So, special revenue cash accounts, this is going to be mostly our indirect costs. All of our 500 funds which are cash or cash controlled. Uh, another special revenue is our food service account that is eating up most of this expenditures is um food service I believe had about 5.7 million in expenditures. And the other ones are going to be our when we do lease our properties, we get that revenue in. That's going to be in in these accounts. Got a quick um question. I was you mentioned that we had you presented a budget already earlier this year. So I just kind of wondered what if any differences uh between that budget and this one that

055it might be off the top of your head that you could you could share with us. >> Yeah abs absolutely great question. So there is two there is we present the budget and then we have the annual financial report. So, the budget, we talk about what the district where we think we're going to spend the money and and it we're able to to generate what is our our GBL or our um general budget limit and then we create the budget based off of the needs of the district. So, our budget this year was 56 56.1 uh 56.157 million. That's what we approved at at the um May revision budget. So, um the budget is our projections. Where do we think we're going to be? The annual financial report is actually showing where did we spend

056our money. So, the budget we this is where we think we're going to spend it. And the annual financial report, where did we actually spend the money? >> And the budget that we got in May um or that we approved the last time this was presented um that was like a revised budget that we had had a presentation on prior to that before, I'm assuming. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, the budget is is a moving target. Every single year, it's a moving target. As we know, enrollment, it can it's it's a roller coaster. It gets it goes up and down all year. So, when we're presenting the proposed and adopted budget, and we have to have the adopted budget presented to the board and submitted no no later than July 15th. Well, school doesn't start until

057the end of July. So, we're taking projections of historical data and and we're building this budget. And then when in December, statute allows us to revise a budget if we're if we budgeted way too way way down or if we budgeted way too high, we can bring it down. So, in December, we're able to do a revision based on our current because we do current year funding, we're able to take it to the board and revise either up or down. Right now, I think our our current year budget um as as I mentioned, we brought in I projected a million dollar budget balance carry forward and we saw it's $1.3 million. So, actually, when we do a revision, we're going to increase our budget balance carry forward by $300,000. So, that's why we would do

058a revision is because we're going to increase our budget based on our projects. >> Thank you. I just wanted to kind of talk about the process a little bit more. >> Mhm. Absolutely. >> Um, regarding the the bigger one, this one, um, is there like a top line on here that show the like the whole all the expenses together and, um, Oh, yeah. total spending. Is that on this one? >> Yes. Yes. It has all their expenditures by fund. That one is very detailed. >> Okay. But it's it's by fund. It's not it doesn't show everything all together. >> Yeah. The slide that we showed the 107,000 we took and condensed that in for the board. So we took all those funds. There is about 150 different funds in Arizona. Uh we broke it down

059by the categories, the M, the capital classroom site fund, and then the grants and then also the special revenue funds. and we broke them down for you to show the board this is the 107,000 is all in there. >> And just a clarifying point on that. So um when when you have the total funds all the funds all together and the expense minus the expenses is there a number associated with that that's reflected here? >> What do what do you mean? um like income minus expenses and if that's a positive or a negative number. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, if I can get you all those funds added up and show it to you, but it is in there detailed. I believe it's on page seven or eight where it has uh federal funds on the

060top and those are any funds with a 100 through 399 and then right below it is a section for state grants which starts with a 400 and it shows you the the beginning balance, shows you the revenue, shows you the expenditure and then it shows you the ending balance. Now, what we get audited off of is the ending balance based on these numbers that we present to the governing board and also send to the Arizona Department of Education. >> Thank you. It's a lot of numbers on there. So this year they actually did include the food service AFR. You guys will see that in your packet. The food service AFR was always separate of the annual financial report. This year they actually include it in the annual financial report document. So, in the past, we

061always had to do two. We had to do annual financial report and then we had to do a separate um food service annual financial report. This year was a little bit easier where they u the Arizona auditor general's office put it all into one one package. So, did I hear that correctly that we'll probably get the numbers that she was asking for like in a board update or something like that? Or maybe you could schedule time to >> We can get the the all the numbers in a board update. That's right. Awesome. >> Yeah, we'll do um How would you like that board member Edmonson? Would you like it just a column of beginning balances, revenues, and then expenditures and then ending balance? I think it would be most helpful if if it's possible um

062to reflect the total the total revenues what that number looks like and the total expenses what that number looks like and where where the current level is at if that makes sense. So, um, revenues minus expenses then >> with the beginning balance, right? So, beginning balance plus your revenues minus your expenditures equals your ending balance. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> I appreciate how fast your brain breaks down what those numbers are going to look like. And great question. Thank you very much. I'm looking forward to either hearing about that or receiving it. um if it's in a board update or if you two talk about it and it's shared afterwards. >> I don't have any further questions. >> Board board member uh Edmonson to to come to your point, you bring up a really good

063point. The the key when we're going through the audit is making sure that our June 30th balances with the county match our accounting records. That is that's a huge audit. Um, and this year and and and I'm not can't speak on past years, but this year that is one thing that we focused on heavily and our ending balances do match our um general ledger. So, very proud about that with our team. Any further questions? Do we want to take some more time with this or we ready to move on? point of inquiry. Um I I'm not sure if this the right time to ask this, but when we vote on this, are we voting um to the accuracy of the report? >> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Integrity is is definitely huge. >> Okay. And I

064do Okay. How many just just because I don't know who all has reviewed this? How many people for the for the actual accuracy of the document that all the numbers add up and >> Yeah, absolutely. So, we've had about three people review it in our department. I am the final approver. So, it goes through our budget team, then it goes to our director of finance, then it comes to me. I do believe our director of finance did have a consultant help on our cash balances. So, it it has gone through several eyes. Thank you. >> And we shared it with cabinet as well. >> And just for my own sanity, I'll the one that we are going to sign and the one we have presented and given to us. I kind of go through each

065page like they're all the same things. They're not two different documents and all of our everything else kind of matches on top. So it's >> Yeah, absolutely. So the blue folder that is a personal u I like to keep and if you can definitely look to it has all it has our proposed budget from 25. It has our adopted budget from 25 and then it also has our revision from 25. I do like to keep them together so that we can always reference where were we at the adopted at the proposed at the revised and then also the final which is the AFR. So uh do want to mention this as well this gets audited. Um we are about 75% complete with our audit once the reason the the remaining 25% is going to be

066dependent really on these documents that really finishes our audit which our our audit is scheduled to finish at the end of this month. So these documents do get audited and and to ensure accuracy and then the audit the audit is presented to the board and the our auditors actually come in and tell and will explain to the board hey these are the findings we had. Um and then the board must accept the audit. So you'll be able to the auditors not it's total external they'll come in and say yes their cash balances were were accurate or this document was was not accurate. Um those are the auditors who will come in and do that and present to the board. >> Yeah. They'll give us a rundown of any findings um compliance issues, corrections and things

067like that. just because you mentioned the audit and I'm glad you brought it up because it is a huge uh part of this process. Um if we're on schedule to finish next month, that sounds early. Are we are we ahead of the game? So we are currently way ahead of the game. Uh last year if uh the board remembers we had the auditors come in May to present and the the audit is due by March 30th. However because we do take in bond funding. We have to do what's called a ACER which is an annual comprehensive financial report. It's basically gives the district our credit score. So when we do go out to sell bonds we're able to get either a lower interest rate. Um, so our our ACT for is actually due by December

06830th and we are well on schedule to finish before then. Hopefully the auditors are are here in December to present our audit uh in December. So >> that's really great news. I'm trying to compose myself. I'm really really really excited to hear that. Thank you very much. And that that question about that that's the normal process. The normal process is to submit it and then they do the audit. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because um they don't the auditors if they need to see what are we submitting to the county superintendent's office or what are we submitting to Arizona Department of Education. It's not set in stone until we actually submit it and it becomes a public document that people can go in and say, "Hey, what is this?" So once we submit it, then the

069auditors will will pull will pull from the Arizona Department of Education's website, pull or Arizona school finance and they'll pull that document and say, "Okay, this is what you're you're presenting to the community, to the public. We're going to audit it for accuracy and for integrity." So, >> and I want to thank you for every time you do send us an update, you do include all the links for where these numbers come from, um, where these get submitted to and everything. So, I do appreciate it. It can be daunting, but I I'm really happy to have to access it and >> yeah, absolutely. >> Ask you a million questions. Bless you. >> Try to be as transparent as I can. Are you ready to make a motion to accept? >> I was just going to

070um ask for to see if we needed more time or if we were able to move on. Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Whittle. I appreciate your time and all the information. Uh, with that, I move that we approve our annual financial report for the 2425 school year or fiscal year, my apologies. Do we have a second? >> This is Erica and I second. >> Thank you. Uh, with that, um, is there any further discussion? All in favor say I. I. All oppose say no. hearing. None. Our motion passes and we will move on to our next item, G3. Uh we'll do our we'll go over our progress monitoring report for board goal number two. Dr. Gonzalez, the floor is yours. Thank you, Madame President. Um tonight we're going to be looking at two of

071our goals that have been set. Um, last week we looked at literacy or last month I keep saying last month we looked at our literacy goals. This month we're looking at our mathematics goals. And so goal number two that was established by the governing board says that we want to get the percentage of third grade students with a pass rate on math as per the AASA to increase from 29% on the August 2023 AASA to 54% by 2028 on the same measure. So, um, if you look at the next slide, you can see this is our detailed data tracker that's helping us to see where we are with this. Um, we have shown growth. You can see from on this chart from 28, we've gone up to 32. And this is about the kind of

072growth that you would reasonably expect students to make annually. However, we have a a stretch goal of trying to get to 41 by 2026. So, when you look at this, the percentage of third grade students with a pass rate on math, we started at 29%, we are up to 32%. And we want to continue to show that growth. On the right hand side of the chart, you can see the breakdowns for our demographic groups. And we have them broken down by demographic racial um aspects, but also federal program or um cohorts with federal programs such as title one for your reduced lunch um exceptional student services and our emergent bilingual students. So, as we set this goal up, one of the areas that we wanted to make sure that we were focusing in all of

073the work that we're doing, and you'll hear from Drs. Galleti and Dr. Lloyd, that we are really focusing in this in the use of vocabulary and scaffolding. And you might be thinking, what? I thought this was a math goal. It is a math goal, but we know how important it is to use mathematical terminology and to help students structure their learning and that they have discourse or conversation with one another about what they're learning in mathematics. This requires a lot of training for teachers who maybe have not had that aspect taught to them in their training programs. We also know that we need to have really purposeful um what we call intervention in tier 2. and what that is. Think of tier one, everyone is getting grade level content, but for some students, we might

074be struggling a little bit with what is um I don't understand the concept of bringing numbers together. So, I might have to have a tier 2 intervention. It means I'm in a smaller group. I'm working with a specialist or I'm getting additional assistance from my teacher to be able to accelerate my learning. And then the small group instruction is something that we know we can use more purposefully to make sure that every child regardless of where they are on their grade level content is getting something that is challenging them and moving them appropriately. So as we look at that, that sets us up to look at the interim goals that we're going to talk about today. The interim goal is goal 2.1. And with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Lloyd, who's going

075to talk a little bit more about this. >> Thank you, Dr. Gonzalez. Members of the board, thank you for having me again. It's good to see you. Um, so for this goal, we're trying to improve the percentage of our students in first grade at our two focus schools of Emerson and Lowel. Uh in the past in the fall uh we've been at 2% of students on grade when they start and we wouldn't expect many to be on grade but we are trying to have more be on grade at the start of the year. Um and that can be early on right like right at the beginning of those those skill levels. Um and then by winter we're hoping to well our goal is to get to more than 19%. This was a two-year target. And

076so for this year, we're trying to get to that 20% mark. On average, uh, over the last three years, I did some averaging. We had about a 13% increase across the entire district over the last three years. So, I do think this is within reach for us this year, especially with a strong focus at those schools. The other piece that can either help or hinder is that these are small schools or or schools with a small number of students in their grade levels. You'll see overall for the fall it was only 44 students, you know. So, if you divide that in two, it's it's really one class at each one of those schools that we're talking about um that we're trying to to get to help to to reach this target. Uh yeah, and we'll

077go to the next slide. This slide is showing the breakdown by schools. And now you can see our two target schools or our two focus schools, Emerson and Lowel. And Emerson has had um improvement from last fall to this fall. Last or fall 2425 to this fall um going from 8% to 10%. So, we do think they can have, you know, that 15% improvement and meet that target of um more than 19%. Low, we're not as sure about being able to meet the target, but again, we're aggregating these two schools. So, we think with the two together that we can meet the target. low over the last couple years has not had a student perform on grade level on this initial um diagnostic and you'll see that trend continue with uh second grade. So if

078we can go to the next. So here's second grade. Now again we're looking at percent of students being on grade level. And this is just for our focus schools. They're still Emerson and Lel going from we we started at 6% uh in 2324 to trying to improve to more than 15% by winter of 2526. And when I say winter, just to clarify, that will be in December for this um math measure. We're going to give that in December. Um so ball was given mid August and we're trying to by December have at least 10% more of our students be on grade level. Uh just to give you an idea again uh our trends or patterns over the last uh three years we've had a 7% increase but again with the right focus and support we

079believe these schools can have that 10% increase from 6% in the fall to 16% um by our winter uh benchmark. You can go to the next. You'll see again here good news is Emerson is improved from the prior year and already has 13% of their students who are um on grade level. So we're pretty confident that they're going to have more than 15% by winter. Uh we really have to support and provide some additional resources for low to be able to meet that target um to to also get to 15% by winter. And if you can go the next I'll turn over to Dr. Alshshire and Dr. Gleti. >> Thank you Dr. Lloyd. Madame President, to our esteemed board, uh, cabinet and colleagues and every in our community watching, uh, thank you so much for

080having us to to review some of this data. I want to emphasize a couple of key points. Um, when we are looking at this data, we our goal to the board is to provide not only an overview of how the schools are doing, but obviously how those focus schools are doing. And as a reminder to this to the board, those focus schools were chosen for a reason. So, LOL and Emerson were chosen specifically because we know historically those are two campuses uh that serve communities that struggle in this particular area. So, it is it's not s it's not surprising necessarily that LOL is a school that continues to struggle or that Emerson is a school that continues because that's why we chose them as focus schools. And the reason why that's really important is Dr.

081Lloyd sort of outlined is we want to be able to see where those schools are the struggling the most, what is working well and then deploy the resources that we need to going back to our conversation earlier this evening regarding the resources for educational outcomes to those campuses specifically. So when we talk about what is working and what is not working, this is a really uh we this is uh something that we take very very seriously. We sat down with principal Ramos over at LOL, uh, Principal Gaponia, over at Emerson to really kind of get down to the nitty-gritty of what are the things that are working really well, but what are the things that you're struggling with? And so, I'm going to outline really briefly for you the sort of the the highlights of

082what is working really well. Um but that feedback goes directly to our CNI uh department because that then shapes our approach to what are the things that we need to be doing for these schools knowing that if it works for these schools because these are the schools that are struggling that that those same practices should be able to replicate and focus and support other campuses as well. So uh upon having these conversations with these leaders and then also taking the information that we have our uh academic leaders and our academic support team spend a lot of time on these campuses observing their math instruction observing what's going on in there to really get a sense of where does the professional needs where are the resources and what is working well. Um when we combining those

083observational pieces and our conversations with the uh the leaders that are there monitoring and supporting teachers. to consistently use the curricular resources. So this is a really really uh important part for us in terms of ensuring consistency. If you have one classroom that is using teachers pay teachers and you have another classroom that is using the district adopted curriculum, you're going to have very different outcomes of what's going on between those two classrooms. So really the first step of making sure that we have a strong taught uh curriculum is that they are all adhering to a very strong written and assessed curriculum. So we want to make sure that that's something and that is something that has been requires a lot of training and focus and that's something that we believe is going really well

084on both of those campuses and the leaders have identified those as a area of strength. Another one is increasing teacher effect efficacy sorry challenging word for Seth with math instruction through coaching and feedback. Uh Dr. Dr. Glenny will talk a little bit about how we have sort of revamped the role of what our instructional coaches are doing on those campuses and the outcomes that we're beginning to see using that revamped role of those instructional coaches and the coaching cycles that they are using with their teachers um using intervention programs purposefully and appropriately. This has been a huge push both from last year and especially this year. We did an extensive training just last week with our principles. uh they told us it was a little bit like drinking out of a fire hose because the

085amount of resources that we have been able to develop over the course of the summer and provide to them uh in this area is now coming to the classrooms both in our early grades and especially towards our later grades which we'll talk about in our other goals. And so the beginning of using those programs but that will be a continual focus for us for the remainder of the year. It's not just a one shot. We'll be continually coming back to those with our principal leaderships teams and capacity building. And finally, collaboration and data analysis to improve instruction through the use of those CTMS. And again, those those collaborative team meetings. Um, this has been a huge point of pride, especially for principal Ramos. She has finally using the data and her teachers are seeing the

086need of using that data and how to plan for instruction. They're doing it outside the contractual day. They are really making the time to be intentional and collaborate with each other in those vertical teams. Again, LOL's one of those campuses where it's really only one teacher per grade level, so we got to keep that in consideration as well. It's one of our smaller campuses. So is Emerson. And so we really want to make sure those campuses, they don't necessarily have a colleague that they are collaborating with across it. The data you're seeing is a result of what's going on perhaps in one classroom. And so we want to make sure that they're having the opportunity to collaborate across second grade, collaborating with third grade, third grade, collaborating with fourth grade, so on and so forth.

087And they've made tens of progress in that area of getting the teachers understand the value of that collaboration. So those were all areas of success right now for those leaders that they are going to be eager to speak to in the spring when we see some more of this data on this goal. And I'm going to turn over to Dr. Gleti to talk a little bit about the things that we're focusing on based on the feedback and based on our observations. >> Thank you. So some of the things that uh we've identified in response to some of what Dr. Alshar has outlined um some of the things we're doing currently and he mentioned the coaching piece and how we've revamped the coaching role. So, we had master teachers last year. This year, what we have

088are we've we we've revised the role to be instructional coaches. And we've done some extensive training to support them in not only their coaching practices, meaning the way that they're working with teachers, the way they're helping them plan, the way they're working with them during CTMS, the way they're working with them to understand the data that their students are generating. um but we're really having them work with the teachers directly and with the leaders at the sites and with one another as well. So even going back to the training on the interventions for example that we had talked to that Dr. Dr. Elshshire mentioned that we' done a fire hose type of a training with our with our uh leaders last week. Yesterday as an example, we were able to bring in those coaches to

089provide them a deeper level of training on the data analysis piece and how to connect the student needs directly with particular resources that they can use for their small groups that Dr. Gonzalez had mentioned and to really meet those exact needs that students might have. Um, so the coaching and the professional development piece has been really important for us in helping to also just increase their understanding of math and how to teach math. Susan Brown, our district uh math coach, um, has done some work with them. In fact, she's pulling a a group next week to do during fall break to do a math boot camp to really work on planning and lesson design. So, really helping them to understand not just their curricular resource, but how to plan with that aligned to the grade

090level standards and in support of all of our students. I should also mention with our coaching, the other piece that's been really really wonderful is when we talk about the access for all learners, which is um at the bottom, that last bullet point there. Um and and also in the coaching piece, uh our ESS department, um led by Alicia Zelves, we have coaches, she she has a coach there who's also been learning and working alongside all of our coaches so that we are really truly using consistent curriculum resources and using those appropriately to meet the variety of needs that our students have. So, we've been really working to be more intentional about ensuring that all of our teachers have access to the curriculum materials and they all understand the data to to be selective about

091the pieces that they're using and how they're using those with their with the students. Um, the other piece on here is in that third bullet using the student data to plan for the scaffolding and the vocabulary development. What we're what we know is that in addition to that small group instruction, we need to also understand the student data. Our teachers need to understand that student data so that they can help our students to learn those concepts while they're receiving their instruction. So clarifying vocabulary words for our students, for example, that's going to be something we've been working really closely with our um our English language development uh program here within the district district to ensure that we have consistent vocabulary routines. So whether it's in math, whether it's in English, whether it's in social studies

092or any any content across the school day that our teachers are trained in, how do you introduce vocabulary so that they understand and they're and they're they're used to that um process. So we're using some some really solid research there and working with Mary Louu and her team to to to support that as well. So those are some of the things that we are doing currently to to support math instruction at these younger grade levels. May we ask a few questions? Um I'm going to jump in and go first. Uh, one of the things that comes to mind for second grade is I um, as far as the engagement part, the discussion, I just think back to um, I know things are very different than when I went to school, but like getting out of

093that culture of you got to be quiet and listen to the teacher and not talk. So, I just wonder like what that what the engagement pieces look like when we're um trying to get our kids to have our students to have those discussions and participate and engage. So, I was wondering if you could touch a little bit on what that looks like. >> Absolutely. That's a really great question and something that we are also working toward. Um I think it mentioned the student discussion piece in there specifically. So, our teachers are utilizing it's called a try, discuss, connect routine when they're when they're engaging in that math instruction, which means that they're giving a little bit of time after their initial instruction to have students try. During that time, they're walking around and they're kind

094of seeing um and and doing a little bit of informal assessment of where students may be struggling, where where they may be needing a little bit more support. Um and and so that's just about five minutes. So they're trying it to see so this teacher has a better understanding of of what that is. Um then they're discussing so that and well I should say after that trying piece that might identify some things where the teacher might want to go back and clarify and support a little bit and then let them try a little bit more. But then they have that discussion piece and so that's where the students are really engaged in discussing ma about math. How did you do this? How did I do this? where where are we how are you getting that

095how am I getting that so there's this whole discussion piece where they're really encouraged and that goes back to that vocabulary use making sure that they really understand the math vocabulary so that they can use that in their discussions with one another. So that discussion piece is really really important in math. Sometimes we don't think about it being so important. We think it's just numbers, but there's so much vocabulary with math that and we know that there's so many word problems that we want to make sure that our students understand what the problems are asking so that they can engage in that and have those discussions. So discuss discussion in the math class is something that is part of the regular math routine across all of our grade levels K through eight. Um, another question

096that pops up and um, if this has to come later in a board update, I completely understand. Um, I you mentioned uh the collaboration, the data analysis and and time taken to focus on a student's exact needs. Um, could you elaborate on that a little bit more as far as what what that part looks like? Um that's it. Thank you. >> Yes. Uh I can I I can we can do a board update. I can elaborate briefly just to give you kind of the because it is a it is a process but essentially uh looking at their I Ready data. Um making sure that they understand that looking at the assessments that they're giving from their math instruction and understand and and and see how those work together to help meet those needs. Okay. When

097you when that was mentioned, my my mind uh went to like tutoring and those kind of like different other needs. Um >> so, and I know I didn't send my questions in early enough. So, that's the only reason I >> And we can send some scenario examples for all the board members to understand some of the examples of what that would look like. >> Only if it's helpful. I just wanted to be considerate that like if we don't have the information here that I'm I completely own my responsibility and not sending my question in earlier. Thank you. >> We're all educators and we can talk about this forever. So, we want to be cognizant of um everyone's time. >> I have a question. I'm seeing right here on interterm goal 2.1 um you know it

098was at 2% 4% 5% and then there's ex this expectation that we're supposed to jump to 20%. Is that a realistic goal and why did you come up with that? >> Great question. So one thing to notice the two four and 5% are from our fall benchmarks. So this kind of help you see what our starting point has been the last several years. I ran the numbers. On average over the last three years, we've gone up from the fall to the winter 13%. So the 15% was meant to help these schools grow a little closer to the district average or be higher than the district average um in terms of their overall percent of students on. And so we do think this is feasible especially these schools where we are trying to dedicate additional resources

099and and again I think because of their size really we're influencing you know one or two students more at their school in a way to to be able to meet beyond grade than than some of the other schools and that will show that little bit of extra difference of improvement you know above that 13% that's been the the average improvement from fall to winter. So I I I that's why that that is a feasible target for them. >> Thank you. That was a great answer and I appreciate that. >> Yeah. >> I have a question. Um and and I will preface it as well is that this might be something that you know maybe is going to take some more um information to be compiled. Um, but one of the things that I'm thinking about

100when I look at this is I was thinking somebody mentioned the dual um, language immersion before that is at location and I'm not 100% sure about how that works, but that was sort of my conceptual idea as far as you have a school where you're focusing on one subject to really h create an immersive experience. And I have personally benefited from that many times in my life. So I know how important that is. Like when you need to learn a large quantity of information fast, it's a very different experience than just kind of you know every day 40 minutes learning. Um, but when this was something that hadn't like gone into the analysis system ahead about it, but when it's a a school that's also a classroom of 44 and you're looking at concrete subject

101areas like this with with math, um, is is is it happening where maybe math specialists are coming in to try to create that immersive environment to, you know, basically specialize in in that sense rather than you know one teacher covering a lot of subjects is is is a gift. But math is is also very it's a very particular subject and the idea of like bringing somebody into the classroom who truly just has that gift to to kind of you know shake things up. So I do think that um in the dual language model there is a a portion of the day that is taught in Spanish, another portion of the day that's taught in English to create that immersion experience. But the teachers who are teaching the content are being trained in the specific content

102knowledge regardless of the language used. What's nice is that in the dual language model there's a lot of cognit. So looking at words that have similar structure, similar sounds that are that mean the same thing in both languages and mathematics is one of those areas where that really helps to strengthen the understanding. The vocabulary instruction is really critical. And so especially in the early years, a lot of the instruction that's occurring is teaching students the vocabulary. when we go back to the discuss it or try it, discuss it, solve it, getting the kids to talk about it in either language so that they're able to use that vocabulary, apply that vocabulary. And in the early grades, it's even making models, you know, like drawing the dots or making grids and showing those things. It's that

103skill set of building the concrete understanding of the math concept that they can then apply in a novel situation. And so the math teachers that we're we do have math experts. Um Ms. Brown, Mrs. Brown who had to leave earlier, she is our um STEM specialist. She has a a passion for mathematics and for science and she goes in and she actually works with the teachers and helps to provide that. We've also got teams of teachers across the district who are coming together to strengthen their math knowledge and understanding how we can apply it in middle years specifically. So there are lots of different strategies that we're employing to try to understand how we help both of these schools understand how to um firm up that basic math concept. And the dual language model has

104just started this year. So we've seen from the prior years that lower start. We believe next year we'll see a higher start. I'd like to ask for a clarifying question just so I understand. So fall data is more like our I ready things like that and then our winter benchmarks are different. I I just want to understand the difference between having fall 2425 on here and then what um our >> yeah every sorry >> winter data sorry just want to understand both of those. >> Yeah. So the the the benchmarks that we give in math uh throughout the year are all from I Ready and we've used it for I think this is our fifth or sixth year actually because we started using it when I uh started. So, happy sixth anniversary to me. Um,

105and so, yeah, we've we've used it for math and we use it in the fall and the winter and in the spring, what we've uh moved to for the spring because most of our grades are taking like a state assessment in the spring in math already, we've made it an optional for schools that want to to also do the I Ready in the spring, they can do it then. So for fall and winter every year uh we're using I ready the I Ready diagnostic as our benchmarking tool. >> May I understand the months that are fall and winter is that? >> Yeah. Yeah. So so fall is usually the beginning of the year. It's usually within the first three weeks of school. This year we did it in the was August 10th. Second week I

106think. Yeah. Second full week. And then we will do it again in the second week of December. And I Ready recommends at least a 14-week uh instructional period in between. So we make sure that we follow that guidance. >> Thank you for the added clarity. I appreciate it. >> Yeah. My last question would be what um what can we expect as far as any as far as the next 10 months to our target goals? like what what do um may we have a few examples of what we expect to see maybe or just more I I just want to fully understand if we're going to see anything different that might be happening or just more of the same things that um we're noticing are working like the collaborative team meetings all that data analysis just

107I guess I I want to understand where we're coming where we're starting at and where we're we're planning to be to hit our target. So, I'll let Dr. El Shaw jump in as well if he'd like, but I think he he mentioned at the at the beginning when he was speaking about the work that we're doing around really supporting tier 2 and that intervention uh time during the day. That is going to be something that we we we've put more focus on that and it will continue to be a strong focus for us so that we are both providing that strong tier one instruction which is what everybody gets but also supplementing that with additional math instruction to support those individualized student needs. So helping our um teachers, our coaches, all of everyone who's working

108on a school campus to really understand that is going to be something we'll continue to be building um over the course of the year. >> Beautifully said, Dr. Glenny and the only thing I'll add to that is just really building the capacity of those teachers. Um as as I noted in the two focus schools, but in general, those two focus schools, it's one or two teachers at that grade level. And so as we emphasize the two different inputs that have had the greatest impact that they're we're beginning to see is the uh the coaching models which again that is a new model for this year. Uh and then the fact that the in both of these cases the leaders have really gained momentum and having the teachers meet in their collaborative team meetings and beginning

109now to have those vertical team meetings where they're actually analyzing the data and then using the data not just for the tier 2. uh really want to emphasize tier 2 is great but unless we are doing things every day in the classroom with all of the kids and that's that goes back to the scaffolding making sure our students are able to access the grade level content making sure our ESS students our EL students have access to the content and the expectation of every teacher needs to be all kids can access the grade level content we just have to provide the scaffolds and the art of teaching to make sure they do that is a that is a guiding light for our department and we want to make sure that's going to be something that we're

110going to be really emphasizing through the coaching models, through the professional development and through the CTMS and I believe that we'll see additional impact as far as impact is is goes for our students. Um I would like to understand a little clearer what how that does impact our students like what what would we see once that starts? Um I guess in the classroom like what what does that look like? Um as students develop their confidence and their understanding, you see more um more risktaking uh in terms of trying problems on their own before they say I can't teacher will you come help me? So what you start to see is that as students are starting to understand it and they're getting all of these experiences that they're actually trying it and in seeing success and

111that success continues to feed that that positive sense of I can do this this I know how to do this. It also you also see students identifying when they don't understand something and asking a question and understanding how to ask the question so that they can get the help. So, um, what's important in all of this is that in terms of what it looks like, we want our students to become independent learners, but they have to start by depending on people to help them learn. And that's depending on their teachers, depending on their classmates, and understanding when they don't have the knowledge or they're not getting it to raise their hand and say, "Can you help me with I don't I'm I don't know why this two is here." And now let's okay let's take

112a look why is that two here what did you do here and just getting them to that process of understanding. So in terms of what the impact of these coaches the stronger the teacher is in the classroom the stronger the teacher is to create those environments where students can do that >> and that leads us to the student discussions and that engagement and those conversations the reciprocity. Okay, >> that's what this feels like. Thank you very much. Are there any further questions? Right. Hearing none, uh, I move that we approve our progress monitoring report for board goal number two. Do we have a second? Does Erica and I second? >> Thank you. All in favor say I. I. >> I. Sorry. >> I. >> Uh. All oppose say no. Hearing none. Our motion passes and

113we will move on to item G4. Uh receive discuss and consider approval of our monitoring report for board goal number five. Madame President B. um this is our middle year's math goal. This is a goal set for eighth graders. Members of the board, um this is the percentage of eighth grade students with a pass rate on the AASA hap at they were at 13% in 2023 and our goal is to get them to 2028 by um or excuse me, our goal is to get them to 38% by 2028. It's been a long day. um the percentage of eighth grade. So on the next page, we're looking at where we've gone and you can see this is a group where we really have struggled and our our data is not consistently going up. It's not consistently

114going down. It's really a mixed bag here. And so again, we're focusing on trying to get our eighth grade students to have a better understanding of math concepts. And honestly, this is this is particularly where having a strong math teacher who has the math background is critically important for us. And unfortunately, we just don't get a lot of people going into mathematics as a a profession to teach elementary school because many graduates, in fact, I was at a university event recruitment event one time and the person said, "Any of you who are taking math, you can get tons of jobs anywhere you want and you're going to make a ton of money." And I had to say, but if you wanted to teach in a school, you can get tons of rewards from knowing that

115you're making a difference in the lives of children. Unfortunately, we didn't get any math teachers from that conference. But that is an issue that we have in terms of thinking about the fact that we need people who are skilled at mathematics and skilled at working with middle school students teaching this. So, one of the nice things that we're starting to see is that when you look at the plans for focus, ensuring that all students have access to grade level content, that is really important. And in our I Ready um curriculum, our teachers, it's taken a long time for them to really adopt it and embrace it, but they're starting to use it. And more importantly, they're starting to use the tools that help them differentiate. So when you think about that idea of doing scaffolding

116and targeted instruction about everyone's getting grade level content, but some students are getting a little extra support with this, some students are ready to push into higher level understandings with this. The data that they're able to use from the program is starting to help the stu the teachers better differentiate for their students. So that's something that is showing promise right now, but it's something we have to continue to focus on. And then in the devel the other plan for focus is developing our teachers through coaching and professional learning. I spoke earlier about the group of middle school math teachers who are coming together and doing um lesson studies. So really breaking down what are the components of the lesson? What is the student going to know and be able to do when they're done? What

117questions do I need to ask to see if they're actually getting it? what are the experiences my students need to get to be able to demonstrate that they are in fact getting it. So, it's a really robust process in terms of how I present the material, the questioning that I use, and how am I assessing and monitoring when students don't get it. And so, we've got teachers who have devoted their time, as as Dr. Alshshire said earlier, off the clock. They're doing this outside of their regular school day, working together to kind of unlock what do we need to do differently to get more of our students to succeed. And with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Lloyd. >> Thank you. Good to see you again. Um, so here we're talking about interim

118goal 5.1 on the next slide. And this is our cohort of year 2028 which means this year they are sixth graders and our focus schools are Capital and Herrera. So we started in 232 24% were on grade level in the winter and by this year we're supposed to have 26% of those students in the same cohort um on grade level by winter. So you can see in our line graph comparing the falls, we are 3% better. We've been 3% better each year and we're in our starting point. Um and to hit our target for this year, we'd have to go up by 14% from that 13 and 27. Now member Oay's question from our last report, is that feasible? Is that a good target? Well, this target, just so you know, member was set two

119years ago. So, at this point, it isn't feasible most likely. Um, about to say that it's completely out of the question, but on average, we've only gone up uh 8%. Uh, from fall to winter in our sixth grade over the last three years. So, it is outside of that range. Um and so we we don't expect to be able to hit hit it at least at both sites um this year, but we're going to do our darnest. So I just want to bring that up up front. And if you go to the next slide, you'll see I did try I I do think a feasible target for them is 10% a 10% improvement from fall to winter for those schools, especially with again with extra resources and that special focus. And so you'll see their

120targets are to go in the fall at capital from 13% to 23% and from Herrera from 13% to 23%. So they're not super far off where we're what our target is. Um but that's with a 10% increase. Um and so we will I said we'll do our best to hit to hit that target. Um and and there is good news there right in terms of our students like at Herrera for example that cohort in 2425 when they're in fifth grade only 6% were on grade when they started the year and this year as sixth graders 13% are on grade. So that's more than double the the number of students who are on grade this fall starting and capital went up slightly too from 12% to 13%. That is good news for our starting point and

121where we're trying to move our students with their math. You can go to the next Randy. The interim goal 5.2 is seventh grade students. This is cohort 2027 again at Capitol and Herrera. Uh you can see our line is stagnated. Uh well dropped and then stagnated. Right? So we were at um 11% on grade level in the fall when they were in uh fifth grade and then last year as sixth graders there was 8% and now as seventh graders there's 8% on grade level. And again the target that we set two years ago now is out of reach to be over 24%. We do uh to give you uh some context on average our seventh graders over the last three years have improved 7% on grade. So going from 8 to 15% would be normal

122or typical and we're trying to get to a 25% uh target. So it is it is out of reach. It's not impossible, but I I'm going to project that we will come in below that uh this year. And go to the next stranded. Thanks. Uh again, we have uh some good news in terms of our starting point for capital. Uh their percent of students doubled just like Herrera did in and with the sixth graders. uh capitals has doubled their starting point from 6% to 13% uh on grade on the fall benchmark. So that is good news. And with a 10% increase, they're really close to that 20, you know, more than 24%. Um Herrera, however, has stagnated and stayed 4%, you know, last year and 4% this year. So we would expect them to get

123to around 14 15% and uh so that is why we wouldn't be able to hit that target for this year. We'll go to the next turn it back over to my fellow sharers. Thank you Dr. Lloyd to talk about what is working. I want to kind of give you guys an a non-example. I want to provide you with a sort of an image of what it would look like walking into a middle school classroom two years ago. uh you walk into a middle school classroom two years ago, you have a teacher who is doing their best. They are not necessarily a math certified teacher as you point out uh and they're in a room with students who on average are three years below grade level or more in math. That teacher looks at their students

124and believes these students can't access the curriculum that the district gave me because that's an eighth grade curriculum. So, I'm going to find something different that these kids maybe should be able to access. And so now what we are doing instead of teaching the grade level content that the students need because that's what they're going to be assessed at the end, the teacher is going out for other resources and doing what we call remediation. They're teaching fifth grade concepts, third grade concepts because they believe that's what their eighth grade students can master and feel good about. That would not be uncommon to see walking into a middle school classroom in many places in the United States. And it was certainly a place that we were at about 2 years ago. So when we talk about

125what is working really well, it's changing that dynamic. So now what we see when we walk into classrooms is teachers are not using those teacher paid teacher resources. They are picking up the actual curriculum that is a research adopted curriculum and working to provide that grade level access to all the students in the classroom. They are looking at ways in which they are working with a coach or a support person who is showing them how they can scaffold or provide supports in their daily teaching that the students yes they need those basic you know foundational skills that they might have missed in fifth grade. But there's ways to, this is the art of teaching that we like to talk about a way to provide the grade level content in a scaffolded way that the students

126can still access it without just teaching to we're just going to be talking about multiplication, right? We want to make sure that they're still doing it. So providing the scaffolding, but you're going to need a coach. You're going to need somebody to show you how to do those things because otherwise I'm just got out of I'm a teach I'm a Teach for America or I, you know, majored this is my second career as a teacher. I'm not a mathematician as we talked about. And so having that coach is what is something that we find to be extremely effective because it's supporting that teacher in how to do daily instruction in a meaningful way so that the kids can access the curriculum that we know will be effective in them accessing the grade level content. So

127it's a very different type of image of what we were walking into two years ago where the kids were not getting the curriculum because the teachers did not believe they could access it and the teachers didn't know how to provide the curriculum every day so the kids could. Now we have coaches that are in the classroom that are supporting the teachers in doing that. The teachers are beginning to now get experience using the curriculum and so now they're actually using the curriculum and the students are have now finally being exposed to the eighth grade content in a scaffolded way. So um and so that that kind of gives an idea of what we mean by what is working well. And I just want to kind of provide that image of where we were just two

128years ago in into math middle school. that visual image of what you'd walk into versus what you're seeing in some of those classrooms. Now, that doesn't mean we're where we need to be. Obviously, the data shows that and so Dr. Glet is going to kindate how we now build upon those strengths. Just because they're picking up the curriculum, right, that doesn't mean that they're planning with it. It doesn't mean that they are versed in it as well as they can be. And that's the role of our department. And to what you had mentioned earlier as well, in addition, using some of those grant funds that um we heard about earlier from the 21st century grant to help support some of those outside of the school day, the tutoring and those additional supports that's also happening.

129But um one thing one thing and that has already been mentioned is uh we need to recruit more secondary teachers with that math experience with the math endorsements at our middle grades. Um the coaching has been very very helpful to our teachers. What that looks like is they are helping them with planning. Also, it might look like they're co-eing with them on occasion or modeling what what a lesson might look like so that they can see how that how that should or how that might look within a classroom with students so that they're not left to their own to figure it out, but they have someone alongside to kind of help them out and support them with with with the curriculum and with supporting their students. Um, also just understanding and planning effective lessons. So,

130Dr. Gonzalez mentioned the lesson study team. We have a middle school math task force that are we have teachers that are very involved and our and leaders as well that are involved and they're and they've they've just they've come up with that on on their own. Um this idea of bringing teachers together to plan together and to collaborate and really study the math so that they understand how to how to best teach and support their students with it. ensuring that all of the students are provided the effective math interventions. We were talking about that earlier based on data. Our coaches and our leaders are also helping to support that. And then finally, pro providing that targeted professional development for our middle school math educators in math instruction and planning. So, Mrs. Brown, Susan Brown, our

131district math coach, is is bringing together our middle school math educators multiple times throughout this year to support them with not only the the planning and the use of the curriculum, but she's also infusing within that some of the things that we had discussed earlier such as those vocabulary routines, how to help support students in engaging in those discussions about math, how to support or h help students students understand the concepts of math at the upper grade levels by using manipulatives or or or different strategies that might that might be needed uh for various students. And so um professional development for our math educators at those middle grades is something else that we are really working to to provide targeted support around. And if I could I provided a very bad example when I was

132talking about uh our partners at TFA. Those are actually pretty much sometimes the only math experienced teachers that we have put in the classroom. They come from math backgrounds. Dr. Bowman is very specific in making sure that that happens. It is one of his professional goals to make sure we have highly certified teachers in our classroom. So that was a bad example on my part. Uh they are oftentimes some of the best qualified individuals to go in those classrooms. >> Thank you for the clarification, but it went really well with the where we were back two years ago and where we are now. So, I really appreciate the breakdown and the vision. It helps put things uh in order. So, I appreciate the example nonetheless. Uh hearing no further discussion, my heart is with our

133middle schoolers. I know I remember how hard it could be a middle to be a middle schooler. So I I don't take any of this lightly and I really can see how much hard work is going into this. So I really appreciate you sharing the information. Uh but with that, uh if there are no further questions, I would like to move that we um approve our progress monitoring report for board goal number five. Do we have a second? >> This is Erica and I second. Thank you. Kindly all in favor say I. I. I. >> All oppose say no. With that our motion passes and we will move on to item G5. Uh receive discuss and consider approval of our progress monitoring report for superintendent guardrail number two. This evening. Superintendent guardrail number two is

134the guardrail that the superintendent shall not allow the district to operate without a human organizational customer service plan to foster trust and collaboration. And on the next slide you'll see we've broken this down into three different sections. Each of these is an interim goal that we're working toward. And this year we'll be able to measure this. Guardrail number one is or interim guardrail number 2.1 is a goal to enhance a a culture of customer care. And one of the things that we're doing with that is really trying to emphasize the importance of taking careful recordkeeping of enrollment and attendance because what we continue to see is that these are audit fightings findings that cause us to lose money and it also is not giving the care and attention that we need to make sure that

135we have students getting what they need based on where they are. So this is important information for us to gather. We've started a process that I'll outline in a little bit, but um our goal is that we're going to decrease the number of audit errors annually by 5% going from the baseline that was established last year of 60% audit errors. Interim goal 2.2 two um by May of 2026 we want to enhance that c that culture of customer care and systems efficiency but this is more about how we are interacting with our families and so one of the things that we've added this year is the QR code in the offices so that families after they have an interaction they can click the QR code and let us know how they're doing we are also

136using um surveys days with our family members during the uh caregiver conferences so that when they come to conferences they can leave and give us a quarterly rating in terms of how they think things are going for themselves and for their children. So again we're getting regular feedback at intervals throughout the year to help us know are we getting stronger and what can we do differently. And then interim guardrail 2.3 is that we will have our family and community engagement specialists who will begin to work with us on the academic engagement portion helping our families and our caregivers to be partners in strengthening the academics uh at home. So if we look at the next slide interim guardrail 2.1 this actually breaks this down and here's the internal audit system. So, in our training with

137our front office staff, we've been working on helping them understand very specifically the types of errors that we're finding in our audit feedback. And these are the highest um miscues that we make when we're working with attendance and withdrawals and with um enrollments. Proof of residency. So what happens is our internal MIS team is pulling random records at all of the schools in September, January, and April to check how many records that we pull have this error in them. The other errors that we look at are home language surveys. These are the surveys that families have to fill out identifying what the language at home that is spoken by the families. withdrawal forms. There are specific criteria we have to look at when students are withdrawing from the school. Then we're also needing to check

138attendance minutes. If I arrive 10 minutes late versus 45 minutes late, I have to have it coded differently. And then absences. Am I therefore the whole am I absent the whole day or am I absent only half the day? So this table shows how we're going to do these internal audits. What happens with the internal audits? Then the uh front office staff get immediate feedback to say, "Here are the records that we pulled. Great job. You only had one error in all of the records that we checked. Here's the error that we found. Please make sure that this is corrected and this is how you correct it." Or they get um here are the records that we found. Here are the mistakes that were found. We're going to come over and work with you to

139help correct these or here are the directions for how to correct these. Please correct these and um we'll get back to getting a higher return on these. So we are working to go from 75% of these kinds of errors in this checking to only having we're going to reduce it by 15%. Did I say that backwards, Aaron? We're we're going to reduce it to 15%. not from on the next um part of this. It's helping this is helping us not only monitor and track our school performance um with frequency of audit errors. It's also helping us understand from the perspective of the front office staff and principles. Are the office staff being supported to be able to complete these tasks? Have they been set up for something that's not really realistic? And then how do

140we help to provide better training, provide better support, and allocate the time that's necessary for them to make sure that they're not making these errors? Because what happens when you're constantly having to go back and backtrack, you're not able to pay attention when somebody comes to the front um window to talk to you. But we do want to celebrate those staff that are reaching the accuracy goal of 75% without having errors. And we also want to plan to reduce errors for staff that are not reaching that so that we can continue to work with them and their principles to get the support to erase those errors and keep us from losing those funds. Interim goal uh guardrail 2.2 is the customer efficiency and this is the one that we talked about a little bit earlier.

141We're adding the quarterly surveys that are administered at the reporting periods. These are the questions that are asked on here. It's how would you rate your interactions with the school? Please tell us why you rated it as you did. How would you rate your interactions with the district? Please tell us why you rate it as you did. And what ideas or suggestions would you like to offer to improve education in our district? These are um open-ended questions coupled with liquor scale questions, meaning there's a range that they use to rate this. And then the other tool that we're using to gather this information is through the roundt surveys that I was talking about going to schools and doing roundts. And it truly is just tell us what is going well. What are things you would

142like to see changed? How can we better support you? And then we've got the front office checks that are posted at the at the across the district and in the district office as well. And these data are re being reviewed monthly. So here's an example from the interim guardrail 2.2 to the roundts that we've had thus far. um roundt at LOL we had eight families total who attended and some of the things that came out of that roundt um there was an issue around safe communities when um they just mentioned that the the children are having to communic or to commute to school through some really dangerous terrain at times and there are a lot of social service agencies that are serving unhoused people, people with drug addictions and they're and students are having to

143encounter that on the way. Another thing that came up was um the need to have more social workers or school safety officers at the school to help mitigate that impact when students are coming. They love music and arts classes and want to make sure that students are continuing to get those. They also want more afterschool enrichment and so LOL for example has the tiger club and they were waiting for tiger club to get started and so they were very excited when they found out it was starting the very next week and then another that came out of this was training for parents on working with middle school students and you're going to see this came up also at the cafesito at Herrera so at the um Indian parent advisory committee their round table um some

144of the Common comments were more programs around STEM and enrichments. And this goes back to Suann's comment earlier, making sure that as we're talking about programs, we're investing in putting those programs in place. And then an honest teaching about history, the cafesito at Herrera, and the numbers in parenthesis are the numbers of families who attended. Um, they feel like there's better food now, but they want larger portions for middle school. They want sports programs after school and something more than the competitive that they were disappointed that if you didn't make a competitive sport, there wasn't something for you. And then training for parents on working with middle school students. And at Herrera, they were specifically worried about um talking to students about drug use and um getting mixed up with the wrong crowd. And then

145the PTA at Faith North, they had 85 families there. Uh security was an issue for those families as well as transportation. They were hoping they could get more transportation and longer preschool days. So interim guardrail 2.2, we also asked what are the reasons that you attend? And some of the feedback, the most common was, I have a child who's currently enrolled in Phoenix number one. That's the reason I attended this meeting. Other frequent reasons were that they wanted to learn more about Phoenix number one. They were considering enrollment. They um wanted to share experiences and opportunities for students and families and that they like supporting local education. Um these are the top school choice factors are in the order of importance. School safety was one of the highest factors that they rated in terms of

146why they choose the school, engaging programs, knowledgeable and caring teachers, academic excellence in school rating, a positive school culture, afterchool enrichment, the quality of meal programs, location and transportation items. Those were all at the very bottom. And then suggestions for improving the enrollment process. Many reported absolutely no issues. One person said nothing. It's easy and fast. Another said it has been easy for me. Some noted that they felt that teachers needed more support and um for children that that we needed to have more supports for children and for teachers. So on interim guardrail 2.3, this is the one that is about our family engagement and working specifically with our family and community engagement specialists to have our family members trained. So we've got a parent educator academy that's coming up very very soon. We have

147our family and ac or family and community engagement specialists and a caregiver 18 total who are signing up. We have a spring cohort and a fall cohort. They go for three hours twice a week or once a week, three hours once a week for 12 weeks and they're working on strategies that are tied directly back to literacy. So the things that we've been talking about in terms of vocabulary, in terms of questioning, those are the strategies that the families are working on. And then the new teacher project is one of our partnerships that's been working with our teachers and developing the understanding of how to teach with consistency and coherence and creating classrooms where everyone feels they belong. They have a component in their work for caregivers. And so after working with them for a

148little bit, we said we'd love to go ahead and add this now rather than wait. So they are also working with us so that our family and community engagement specialists are going through components of the training beside the teachers and families are as well. And so the fa this faces will be able to support families and have these special workshops designed for the parents and they'll be put on by our faces. And that takes us to the end of the monitoring of superintendent guardrail number two. >> Thank you for all that information. Dr. Gonzalez, do we have any questions? >> I do. Um, who runs the internal audit when it comes to the front office stuff? Um MIS pulls records randomly. We use the same process that the AD and the audit companies use. So

149what they do is they go in and they just randomly pull so many files and then they look at those files to make sure that they are correct. >> But that's done internally. We're not hiring somebody. >> No, we're doing it internally. Um it will be done though. I I I want to be clear about this. We're doing it internally to catch errors first so that we can make corrections and teach proper processes. But when we're audited, AD and our auditors will do that process externally. >> Um, another question I ask and I ask it all the time is like I'm super confused why this is a guardrail and why these these aren't written into like someone's job description. And then I guess that leads me to if it's an internal a well you said

150it's explain that because I'm I'm worried that if it's an internal audit, how do we know that it's accurate? But you're saying it's done electronically or something? >> No, the the our MIS team is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of all of our records. They depend on the front office staff to put the records in correctly. There hasn't always been a system to check it other than waiting until an auditor from outside comes to do it. So, we've started putting in the internal audit to make sure that it's happening correctly and why this is a guard rail um because it was a need that was identified. >> Yeah, I'm I I've been think I mean you've heard me talk about that quite a bit cuz I definitely don't think it should be a guardrail. Um

151but yeah, those were my questions. Um again, I think it should be in an internal it should be part of a job description. people should be doing that on their own. And um you know, again, the accuracy is kind of like where I'm at, but I think that's that's it for now. I'm I'm glad you raised that point. Um it's it's telling now this at this part of the I don't know at this level um at this section of like from where we started to where we're at now. Um, we are finding it's it's helping us put processes in place so that we don't lose funding when we when we're not um logging attendance correctly, when we're not doing certain things. So, without this guardrail, we wouldn't have found these, I don't think. But you're

152right. I think we are at a point where we we can make some changes to these. Um, but I do appreciate where we started and where we're we're coming from. But back we uh from the data that we got in 2022 and 23. Um, it was put in place because there were problems like going to front offices where staff weren't very welcoming or didn't really take time to help through help parents through certain either enrollment processes or or just connecting really with the with the community. So, I feel like it's it's been a long time coming, but we've we've made a lot of progress. And I can even tell a difference when I visit schools now. The the difference in the interaction. And not to say it was it was bad. It just wasn't it

153was kind of non-existent. Like, you literally waited until somebody stopped what they were doing to come acknowledge you. And now it's like we have protocols in place where we were greeted. um you're logged in, you get to visit, like there's just a lot more engagement and that you didn't used to be. >> Yeah. I just feel like it's a lot of handholding like where we have to hold their hands to make sure that they're being accurate and checking attendance and stuff like that where we could be prioritizing other things. But I do want to say that I do appreciate that we do have some community feedback and seeing what it is that people need and want. Like that is my my biggest thing that I love. And so seeing it in there, you know, I

154see that, you know, we're getting some numbers up there and they're coming and they're cuz cuz all the feedback on the things that we're doing, it needs to be led by them and then them putting their perspective on the things that they want. That is so important to me. So good job on getting all that information on that. So thank you. Any further questions? All right. Hearing none, I move that we uh approve our progress monitoring report for superintendent guardrail number two. Do we have a second? >> This is Erica and I second. >> Thank you. All in favor say I. >> I. >> All oppose say no. Hearing that. Hearing none. The motion passes and we will move on to item G6 uh regarding board selfguard rail number two. This guardrail is in place

155to um ensure that the board is focusing we have a loted time to focus on our student achievement. Um so we do have I believe it was uh printed printed out. We have our time use evaluation and the most recent one we have um calculated for meetings is from August 14th meeting and then our study session that we had in August. So that's where a lot of our minutes went. So we're not we're not hitting our our target of at least 50%. We only hit 2% with 9 minutes this go around. So we're working on it. September's meeting um minutes will will be included in the next time we look at this guard rail. Um and this minute this meeting we've got some minutes aotted to our student to our student achievement goals. So that

156number will increase. Um but this guardrail is in place again just to make sure that we are focusing on student achievement and and we prioritize that um and don't get distracted by other other things where we spend all of our time focusing on finances and things like that which are equally um as important but we've just got to balance it out. So with that, um, are there any questions regarding the time use evaluation? >> Um, yeah, actually I I just saw this from before. I didn't see it before the meeting, but um I I feel like these numbers are low, like really low. Um, and obviously I didn't calculate it, but I I I'd be interested in seeing a little bit more about that because the two meetings I've been here for, I feel like

157we spent definitely more than 2% of the time on this, but I could be wrong. Agreed. Agreed. And so, um, our coach, our governance coach helps us monitor these. And so it is um I would like to get to the point where one of us is is able to to calculate all these minutes but I think uh that's a great question. So we will get together and spend some time on that. Um so I appreciate the the reach out. Um I will I guess work with to connect with you to make some time to do that with our coach. I think it'd be wouldn't take us too much time. So I'll reach out to connect us regarding that. Um any further questions on the tool? Okay, with that we'll move on to our final well

158almost final item um H1 are future agenda items. Do we have any future agenda items this evening from the board? Hearing none, I will move on to item I no I1 adjourn adjournment and move that we adjourn at 8:10 p.m. Do we have a second? >> This is Erica and I second. >> Thank you. All in favor say I. >> I. >> All oppose say no. Hearing that, our motion passes and we will adjourn uh at 8:10 p.m. Our next meeting is November the 13th here at the here in the governing boardroom. Thank you to all who participated online and in person this evening. We'll see you next month. [Music]