PUSD Governing Board Meeting - June 17, 2025

001started just with the uh five o'clock book session. So, super formal. So, I will wait Mr. Teddy. Great. Well, thank you. We're making good progress through the different chapters. Sorry, should probably do that. Making good progress through the chapters. The two chapters we're looking at tonight or sections, habits, whatever are number nine and number 10, I believe. Yes. Is that right? Yeah. Good. The first one is speak for the board. I just read over this today. It's pretty short, right? That don't take a lot of time. There's not I had this highlighted year ago, so I reread it today. Does anybody remember well enough the scenario to kind of summarize? Yeah, I'll summarize this one. Sounds like something I might do. So, for me. So, board member Richard Richland is at a uh some kind

002of arts event at seems like an elementary school, Grand View School, and the principal asks for him to say a few words before the production begins. He gets up there and he decides to make it into a political speech and set forth all these agenda items that he'd like to how he'd like to spend all the district's money and he got kind of a light applause and then he sat down and he said and he was speaking he was I guess the point is he was speaking behalf of the board and I would like to tell you the modest part of you is maybe overstating you know how it wasn't a big political speech a couple of sentences But as as you suggest probably kind of crossed the line not wanted to have crossed probably

003not egregious but there you go. There you go. Great. Um yeah let's see what what does he say? I'm trying to think exactly what he says. They give you really no great answers to choose from scenario. And one I want to say the next one we're going to look at, right? They said none of them were the right thing to do. I think that was kind of interesting. Yeah. One of the pieces as well, Brett, in addition to what you shared, I appreciate that. Is that there was nobody else from the district there. So the board member was tapped. Could you say a few words? Said a few words. Said I say a little bit more. Said, "We're committed to fully funding whatever making more money to go toward the arts or whatever which is

004potentially worthy goal maybe exactly what he had in his heart in his mind may have even you know had a discussion with other board members you suggest too far um so instead what what are the options that they give what anybody want to toss out there what he might have done instead no I have something to say oh please whatever whatever you got he mentioned in towards the end of the chapter that as a board member, if you say this is my opinion, not necessarily the opinion of the board, that a lot of times the community doesn't hear that. They hear that you're speaking for the board. So, I think we walk a pretty fine line. You have to be really careful if we're voicing our own opinion that people truly understand. Absolutely. You asked

005a question that might seem rhetorical. The narrator here, you may be asking yourself, do I have to watch every word I say? The answer is yes. essentially. Yes. When you're standing before the public as a representative of the district, right? If you're, you know, having drinks with friends or you're you're out on a bike ride with a buddy or you're talking with your wife or even if you're talking with, you know, another board member at a meeting of some kind, you know, whatever event of some kind, you're fine. But if if you're standing up as a representative district, probably all of us, right? That that's welcome to my world. I have to like you always representing the school district maybe even more so in some people's eyes. So there's that. The superintendent lesson from this

006first thing says part of the cause problem no one from the district was at the event. That's not my motivation for being at as many events as possible but but it it's one of the things that you know heads off you being put on the spot. It it sort of recommends that superintendent should always be there instead of the board member. I don't necessarily feel that that's the case. I'd be happy for you to stand up and thanks for being at this this cool music event or whatnot. But I think we can all agree there's certain things to to say appropriately and certain things you probably ought to hang on to until we're in a public. Yeah, I will say the district is very good about the spot unless we've been specifically asked forces that's

007a good feel that administration doesn't I appreciate whenever we know that you're in the audience. I've seen many times principles said, "Hey, we're so glad here or whatever it is." I think that's super appropriate. You guys are you do a lot of work for very little uh recognition or or certainly no remuneration. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. Every once in a while SF comes through. We have a nice of cheese and crackers, but apart from that, you probably get more views than you get positive recognition. So, I I think when we can do that, that's super nice. Putting you on the spot is something want us to shy away from. Any other thoughts or ideas around that? I would just say expectations are super high, you know, even even if we're out with friends or anywhere

008in the public. I feel like we've got you're marked, you know. So, hanging out with friends or whatever voice of experience there. Thank you for that. Did you have I'll just make one more comment. I think we could have given they could give us a scenario where we actually highlighted the students that were performing or giving recognition to principal or the teacher instead of there you go deflecting the spotlight rather than that what a great way that would be to do things right any other thoughts okay so terrible habit number 10 page 51 build coalitions now I I'm not familiar with the open meeting laws in every state but I don't know of a state where there are open meeting laws pretty specific open meeting laws around the ways that school boards have toenail conduct

009themselves certainly the scenario that that this person shared I think he's from California very parallel here in terms of opening that said if you I mean if you know how things in in Washington DC work very common for people to have you know back room conversations about hey do I have your vote on this let's talk about this what are your thoughts and said we're just not at liberty to do that so who who can kind of sum this scenario for us okay the board two board members went out for drinks after a meeting and they sat and started talking about um some upcoming business and basically saying well this board member will be in this board member will not be in let's build let's work together to get this to pass. Um, I think

010that's the gist of it. Yeah. Um, and basically you're out in public, you're drinking beers and you're discussing business, even though it's not a quorum, still not probably best, right? Another piece of this I think is probably significant is at the end of this kind of informal conversation at the pub or whatever, the the two board members, one of them decides, I'm going to call one of the other board members and why don't you call the other board member? So they're intentionally getting four people in on a decision outside of a public board meeting. The two people piece, you're starting to move toward a line that you must not cross. So it's it's you're you're exactly right, Andy. It's it's great to be thoughtful and cautious about that. But but that it really would be

011okay. You and Stan went out for drinks afterwards. You said, "Hey, there's this thing coming up. How do you feel about whatever it is?" And talk with each other. That's you're approaching the line, but you're you're not crossing that lineally at all. But the minute you loop Jane in or Jen or then you have crossed the line, I think is what suggest even though you're not necessarily crossing a line, it can look it can have an appearance as not being appropriate and it is something that happens. They said this particular couple of people. that struck me just on what you said that yeah something's something's gone sideways at that point. So there's there's four kind of options they give you for a plan B. What might you have done instead? Right. Meet at a coffee

012shop rather than a pub. That doesn't make any difference, right? Next one. Invite all the board members to come to the after the meeting get together. We've already talked about why that would not be workable, right? Next one. Continue your tradition of meeting with Zeke after meetings, but don't talk so much about schoolboard issues. That's that's, you know, there's possibility that would be okay. But as two or three of you have already pointed out, the optics on that are are not great and that you're starting to approach a line that we don't want to cross. So there's there's a couple of things there. Never. And the last one, never talk about schoolboard business to anyone outside of a schoolboard meeting. May they suggest that that's also not appropriate, not What what are your thoughts on

013that? I think there is time to there are times outside two of us have a conversation about that would be okay and I think one of the key word here never talked to anyone outside. We got 68,000 constituents. I sure hope that you're not choosing option four and just saying, "Hey, I'm not in a public meeting. I can't talk about that." That's not Well, then it would eliminate all of you as well. Sure. Question. Yeah, there you go. Definitely talk to all of you on a regular basis. Great. The the key thing, right, the key lesson learned, the phrase that you've probably heard lots of times, conduct the public's business in public. If you're conducting business, what are you doing here? If you're gathering feedback, if you're asking questions, if you're sharing your opinion with

014one single other board member, no problem there. None none of those things. Okay. Although the last one you want to be thoughtful about. And the superintendence lessons learned here. Um, one of the things I highlighted highlighted, excuse me, informal meetings with board members can help build rapport, but they should not be used to strategize about building a coalition to get a motion passed. We've gone out to lunch together to review my goals. You each of you have come by the district office at various times. Hey, I got a question about this or how's your day going? Whatever. Not only is there nothing wrong with that, there's a lot of things right about that. But it is suggesting if we sit down and say, okay, there's a meeting coming up, what's your vote on this? And

015what do you think Andy's gonna say that that's where we're not conduct we're starting to conduct the public's business in private. That's I gota say I don't I feel like more and more each on the board. It's there's less questions. Maybe it's just right now. I find that we are less Any other thoughts around either of those Mr. President? Thank you. So, a couple minute break because I do want to start on time just for the public because we'll be recording. We're going to hear a little bit to uh call to order the uh governing board uh meeting of Prescuit Unified School District starting at 5:15 on June 17th. We will welcome everybody. We'll start with the pledge of allegiance. United States of America to the stands. One nation indivisible. Item 3A, consider approving the

016agenda. Everybody had a chance to review the agenda. I'll take a motion to approve the agenda. Oh, I am so sorry. There are a couple things on this. Um, under presentation under five under five um we have a change in the presenter from Amanda Guzman to Simeon Murphy. Is that correct? All right. So, that's one change. We had a formatting error that I didn't catch after looking at it a couple of different times. The public hearing is not actually part of the consent agenda. It should be There you go. Sorry. So, we'll So, uh just so you know, we're when we get to the consent agenda. I'm going to ask to pull that item 7A18 under public hearing. It will not be part of the consent agenda. It will be a separate item. So, that

017will be pulled and when we do approve, if there's no other items that are pulled, we will approve uh the consent agenda all the way up to item 7 A17. So, those are the two changes. Can I get a motion with those changes. So moved. Motion. Do we have a second? I'll second it. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? All right. Uh, next item is the approval of minutes. Item 4 A. Consider approving the minutes from the study session meeting, book study, and regular study and voting session meeting of May 6, 2025, and the minutes from the special study and voting session meeting of May 9th, 2025. Can we get a motion? Do we have a second? Motion and seconded. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Passes. Item five, presentations. Item

0185A, Southwest food service excellence update from Simeon Murphy. There we go. I do want to say she's just not presenting. She did make the fabulous food for you guys to enjoy just as an example of what we're doing for your schools across the community. of course and thank you superintendent Tenny, Mr. President, members of the board. Thank you for your time this evening and giving me the opportunity to come in and show you guys some of the wonderful things that we have done in food service here. So just a quick introduction, my name is Simeon. I'm a district manager with SF. I'm going on my eighth year with the company. Amanda Guzman is your guys's onsite GM. She just finished her first year and she has instituted a lot of wonderful changes. really excited to

019show you guys some of the hard work she's done this year. So this year really the theme for us in elevate. I wanted to elevate what we serve to our kids in terms of food quality, in terms of presentation and just elevate our involvement with you guys. So that started with a back to school training. We brought in all of our corporate chefs from SF. We brought in our registered dietician. We brought in some operational leadership. We brought all of Unifi's hourly workers in. We showed them back from the ground up. How do you read a recipe? How do you cook rice? How do you serve a student who has diabetes or has another special dietary need and we gave them the opportunity to learn those things and just relearn what are the basics of

020our food service program. They can ex the beginning of this year just came from us going back to what we know we do best and that's fresh from scratch. not bringing in your pre-made products chili that comes in a bag that in your kitchen. We redesigned a couple serving areas in schools this year. The one that I really wanted to highlight just because I was so proud of it. I thought it was so awesome at the at Prescuit High School, you know how to build your own sandwich line. So just like walking into a Subway or Jimmy John's or whatever, if you're a student, you can get your everything you want on it, nothing you don't want on it. And that is if you are a student who qualifies for a free meal, that is

021your free meal for the day. So, it is not only a meal that is free and nutritious, but it's a meal with dignity and a meal that kids. And our third really area of focus was just on presentation. We can serve all this great food, but we walked into a restaurant here in town and it had dirty counters and the boys weren't wearing uniforms, you wouldn't want to eat there and neither do our kids. So, that was really our pushes our big improvements. So those all led into our student engagement efforts. We did a lot of work to gather feedback from your students kind of touch more in depth on that a little bit, but we really wanted them to have a say and have a voice in their food service program. And one of

022the other things that Amanda really spearheaded in partnership with your guys' farm to school coordinator was doing some really really neat farmers markets and working to get actual produce that was grown in the Prescuit Valley into our schools and in front of kids they got the opportunity to sample food from local farms and understand that carrots don't grow in Safeway in the back and then the guy brings them out front and you buy them. These are actually grown by real people in real places right here and they come to school and we We actually got students to be able to get involved with the gardens in their own schools and actually see the food that was grown in their garden in their school at Taylor into the kitchen and served on the salad bar. So

023they could see that full circle from a seed to a sprout to on their plate what that produce. So we really more in depth on the student surveys. I truly personally believe that that is 100% how we should be driving our program. Your are the ones who are I hate to use the word captive but they are our captive audience every day and we want them to have the option to eat food that they want. So we're surveying them twice a year trying to find out what drives them, what will make them make the decision to either eat lunch with us or ask mom and dad or somebody from home to pack them a lunch or give them. So we were able to gather that data. We did extensive surveys at Prescuit High and a

024few of our elementary schools. We we were able to make actionable change. One of the notable changes that we saw was the high school students wanted grab and go stuff. Teenagers do not want to wait in a line. They do not want to spend more than 10 minutes not talking to their friends. And so we instituted along with that build your own sandwich bar a bar where you can come up and grab our power pack concept. And it is a readymade meal. It has hummus. It has vegetables. It has hardboiled eggs. And it's all ready to go for you packaged up. You can put your number in and be at the door and go back. So we're excited to continue doing those surveys and continue gathering feedback and growing with our students. So our second

025group that we really really question from this but the feedback from our principles they are the ones who are in our schools every day. They are the ones who if parents are not happy about food service are unfortunately feeling fielding calls from those unhappy parents. These four questions revolving around the taste of the food, the variety of menus, consistency of the menus and redies. So we were just really excited to see that principles are happy with what we're doing. They are questioned. Now not everybody rated us excellent and that is our goal. So we are not that we are resting on our laurels and ready to count our successes and go home. But we think that we have driven to a really positive place for our food service program and we're ready to continue. So

026one of the other things that we were really proud to do was just get back involved in our school communities. We felt since co a lot has been lacking in our school communities and that's not just in Prescuit, that's in all the and so we offered just as a thank you for our 12 year long partnership with Prescuit. We offered school complimentary catering for their entire staff, teachers, anybody who works in that school building, whatever the principal chose to schedule it. Some of them did it for the beginning of school year for those back to school training. Some of them did it around the holidays. And it was just so nice to be able to see teachers and staff coming together and enjoying a meal, not having to worry about who paid for it or

027where it's coming or who they have to send a thank you note to on the PTO. It just came from the food service department and really just highlighted that we appreciate the partnership that they do and everything they do for the kids and we wanted to give back. So all of these wonderful things and participation, everybody feeling great about the program is nice. But the true bottom line is is your school food service fund viable? Is it funding itself? And the answer is yes. We have seen more growth outside of a co year in Prescuit than we have in any other year since SF has been in partnership with Pres. See our total revenue went up 17.7% compared to last year. So that is a huge increase and that is the vote of the students.

028The students every single day they tell us whether they think we're doing a good job just by coming in and eating with us or choosing to eat some other food. So that those numbers speak for themselves and those numbers are going to to continue to drive our program. The state of Arizona will not let you carry unlimited cash in your food service fund. They make you invest it back. So, we have been working with or I should say Amanda has been working with Chris Moody and your guys' maintenance department to help make these investments count. Just a few examples of what equipment we're purchasing. Some bread proofers so that your guys your cafeteria staff can continue to make that fresh that the kids love. some new register so we can continue to make our service

029areas more efficient, more appealing and many other items. We are really excited to continue investing in our program and continue growing program. And so looking forward into the future, we're going to continue to focus on that student feedback, allowing students to drive their food service program and tell us what they want to see. We're going to continue focusing on food quality, customer service, and presentation. And now that Amanda has had a full year in Prescuit and she's gotten the chance to get her seat legs under her, we are really excited to roll out some of our awesome value added programs. Our roing chef program, which gives students the opportunity to come in the kitchen and learn about safe food handlings, why do we wash our hands, how do we read a recipe, and then she's

030also going to be continuing that farmers market piece and those cafeteria education pieces being able to offer nutrition education pieces so students can learn where their food comes from and what the food we eat affects their bodies. So, thank you guys. Thank you for your 12 years of partnership and thank you for your partnership in the future. And if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to answer. I have one question and then one comment. Where are we on pizza? on pizza. Are you still doing it every week in the elementary schools? Yes. Okay. Every Friday is pizza day. And how how is the quality of pizza compared to 30 years ago? When I when I ate it out of a So, it's all 100% made in the cafeteria. It's all made from scratch. I would

031say next year you pick a Friday. I will do that. I will do that. And the other comment I had was your quote about meals with dignity. I had never really thought about it that way and I think that's a a pretty high bar to reach and I think it sounds like we're getting there and I really appreciate the words meals with dignity. Pizza Friday. Absolutely. Barbecue chicken. I used to love Thanksgiving. still we still do Thanksgiving too as a teacher. So you had mentioned something about u students or teachers with special dietary needs. What can you kind of go over if you can kind of the approach that you take if somebody comes in and says I have this I'm allergic to this type of what what can I get? Absolutely. So, our requirement

032from the USDA first is we have to ask for a doctor's note, right? And we have a specific dietary form that the doctor will fill out and say, "Little Andy, he can't eat nuts, and here's what an acceptable replacement is." And so, once we have that note, we can go outside of what the USDA calls a meal pattern. So, the meal pattern says, "I have to give you cow's milk. I have to give you a certain amount of meat and grain." But if you give me a doctor's note that says you can't drink milk, and your doctor would like you to drink juice, that's exactly what we So, If a child or a parent came to you and said, "I don't want my child eating gluten." What type of are there options for them at

033every meal so that they don't have to miss something that you offer? Yes. So, if it's like a documented allergy where it's noted, so if it's not documented, that becomes more complicated because the USDA does require that we serve grains with every meal. But we do have meals that are definitely gluten sensitive. You can remove that fairly easily, whether it be a salad where the grain is a roll and you can remove that dinner roll. And our online menu system actually allows parents to go and filter out allergens. So if your child is or you don't wish your child to eat soy, you can filter out and it will put a strike through through every menu item that contains. Okay. So there's tools out there for our parents. All right. Thank you. has come a

034long way. I would say how good it is. Visit a cafeteria. I mean Amanda is just fantastic and service completes the team. She does all of the kind of interaction with the federal government used to work with a direct employee of great this year was really really and and the survey the feedback that we get from principles suggest that our satisfaction with our partnership with SF is at an alltime high and I would also commend commend on that. She's a huge part of that. A lot of things on the corporate level they're doing just you know you heard from Sime they do every place to try to just make it better and better all the time but having the right person working with us makes a huge difference. She may be a little bashful to

035stand up here and talk, but she is amazing. Simeon's okay. Doesn't bring her down too much. Well, thank you guys. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the food. [Applause] All right, moving on to information items only. Item 6A, summary of current events. Mr. Tenny. Okay, so it's been about a month and a half. Thank you, S. Thanks, Amanda. About a month and a half since we've met together. We've had a handful of of really neat things go on. One is that, you know, sports seasons for spring sports wrapped up. A lot of success across the board. And I think I've shared with you in board meetings, but one thing we wanted to highlight was another state championship and the first one ever from our girls track team at High School. So, pretty pretty

036exciting. was the group right there that brought all the points home. So, real proud of that. I was at uh Granite Mountain that I'm frequently in schools. I noticed a couple of things. I was in an ELA class, fifth grade ELA class. Kids are 10 years old, 11 years old, and they were reading it Midsummer Night Stream by Shakespeare. There's a lot of, you know, front loading with what here's here's the the context. Here's what you're going to hear. Here's why people say things certain way. And it was delineated, you know, better old Shakespeare book might have been, but I was like, "Holy smokes, we have our 10-year-olds reading Shakespeare. This is this is pretty high level stuff." And it was cool to to see their comprehension of it and they were exposed to that

037type of language that has, you know, been foundational to the way that we see things today in many respects. Another thing that I saw in a hallway that I thought, "This is cool. I'm going to take a picture was a whole range of essays that I think maybe the same class or maybe a different ELA class, English language arts class." uh had written and here's just one example of of they clearly make given a range of topics that they could choose from and and were requested to do some research and then make an argument around one point or another. Here's here's one example of a student who said we shouldn't have cell phones in school like as is the case at Granite Mountain and pretty much all of our schools and classes all of our

038schools during class time and made some some pretty wellformed arguments about. So I want to share that with you. Then, as you know, we had a terrific uh graduation season and event. Adam and his team pulled off another fantastic series of events and ceremonies ceremonies for our kids this year. Couple of different things. In the upper right hand corner is a picture of the um the tour of schools that our kids do go back through and it's it's super cool for many of them. Say, "Hey, this is where I went to school. There's Mrs. So and so or Mr. So and so that's still there. It's a really neat thing for our young ones as well. Get so excited and it gives them something they kind of point to that Japanese word. I don't know

039what it is English kind of aspire. There you go. Something to aspire to. That is pretty cool. And they do that every year. Senior celebration tour we call that. And at the end of that, the kids who participated, this is not our entire graduating class, but Adam, what 85 90% maybe of the kids who who uh walked with us just to come that day. There they are on the courthouse steps. And then we did something I'm not sure if we've done before. Uh Adam asked if if the kids who had been with us K through 12 in PSD could gather on the steps and we took a picture there and I counted earlier and man I think I counted 57 kids in that picture who had been with us K through 12. That's pretty remarkable

040out of about 330ish graduates. So I thought that was pretty neat. And then actually if I can I'll dish this off to Kelsey. Every year we we have a district leadership team retreat over the summer where we get together. We try to be in a in a venue that we're not typically in. We don't usually hang hang out in bars at, you know, 8:30 in the morning, but this Yeah, it sort of looks like we all just came out. There you go. Okay. Okay. Any this is part of our our DT team. One of the things that we did um all we had, I don't know, six or seven agenda items. We had some substantive things that we dug into and looked at together and whatnot, but a lot of it was was intentionally lighthearted

041and fun kind of team building. Kelsey, would you maybe kind of share with us what we're seeing here and talk about your role in that? It was not a bar event that way. Um, so our first our first activity that we did for our retreat on Monday was yesterday um was a scavenger hunt and it was called campus courthouse admins on the We let them all go in teams. We had three different teams happening downtown. They had nine different tasks they had to complete and they had to do photo evidence and then they got text challenges along the way. And I have to say every team completed everything that they were required to do. So um this first one on the on the left they were admiring art. Um there's a better one of that

042out there somewhere too that I can show you later. Um they had to the bottom bottom left they had to create a bright PD. So that's what they're doing there. Um the or the top right they had to take a picture with a local business and have somebody hold a sign saying that they loved. So that's what that's what's there. Um and on the bottom as well actually it owns hike shack. She was two of our things. So she was a local business owner who loves us and she's lived in more than 40 years. Um, so we had another team who actually met a gentleman downtown walking on the square who was um, class of Oh, he's on there. He's so cute. But class of 67. He was one of the first classes to be

043in the high school on street and that was just by chance. They just so they completed all of their tasks, had a lot of fun along the way. We've got some good pictures of all of our admin just being kind of silly and goofy and um I think they represented our district pretty well downtown yesterday. That's my summary of current events. Awesome. All right. Item 62. Yes. my current events. So on May 27th, the committee that I'm involved with, the distinguished alumni had a press release and we identified eight people that were induct into the first class of distinguished alumni. So you probably all seen the list most of those people on there. So I will That was fun to be a part of and you like me to read it to you. Okay, you

044can read the courier as well. Abby did a feature article on it for us. Um, so in alphabetical order, Ken Bennett, Robert, Michael, how do you say his first name? The Little flower, Ernest Love, Chris May, Patty Rumage, and Kathy. Really neat individuals that are all very deserving. So, that was fantastic. Um, May 20th, there was an awards ceremony for uh the seniors who were receiving scholarships. I think I saw all of you there. Very impressive. $12 million in scholarships. Is that is that the number that that I wrote down? And 20 or 200 grads receive some kind of recognition or award that night. It was great to see students being recognized. I love to see the community coming together and and excellence USD. And then in May 18th, I attended the Balorat with many

045of you which was inspiring. Did a fantastic job again this year. And I love We have a senior classled religious event that is non-enom. Warms my heart every year to attend that. The music was fantastic. The messages were inspiring. I really appreciate that event. I'll let somebody else review the graduation. I was apologize for that. I figured nobody chair. Nobody pointed it out. These guys are giving you a hard time. We're giving you a hard time. And then I visited Granite Mountain Upper Elementary School and checked in on the summer school. There was about 70 76 staff probably knows all these numbers, but about 76 students registered for summer school. And about 52 of them attend on a daily basis and they're in their last two days of two days of their experience there and

046Michelle welcome I think there was a new addition to her family since I saw her last congratulations and then we also uh spoke about the name on the agenda today I'll save that for that discussion Um, also a lot of the same events. I was at Balorate as well and echo Brett's thoughts about just how great it is that we still have that tradition here. It's not super common throughout our state or country. So, it was really great. Um, I really enjoyed senior scholarship night. some of us were were there for the graduate distinction and it was really impressive just to see. I think what was really neat was to see the diversity of the students and the things that you know I think everybody thinks it's a certain kind of student or maybe there's

047not as many kids who are in the CTE programs or I mean it was just all across the board at PHS big successes academically across all different all different types of kids and different things they're involved in. Um, and then graduation was super impressive and I have to say one of my favorite things about graduation was when you asked people to stand who were alumni of PHS and it's crazy in our little town when the whole like there was a lot of people there. I mean I'm always shocked to all of us you know that are alumni but also just the parents of our kids you know and it's really impressive. I just think it speaks a lot about our community and how much people love our community because they either stay here or come

048back and want to raise their own kids in our school district. So, it was pretty cool. And this summer I my son is playing football, so we're at PHS every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. And I have to say it feels like dropping kids off on a school day. It is so busy at this summer. I'm like, what is happening that I wait in line to drop off my on summer in the summertime. It was crazy. Like, wow, we have a lot going on in our high school this summer. So, it's been fun, though. All right. Um, a lot of the same things, so I won't rehash a lot of that, but I I just want to take a moment to recognize again the state track champions. And if you didn't, I mean, track generally requires a

049lot of participants to score enough points to win. You're going to I think they did it with five students and that's five or six and that's pretty amazing. Um, you know, that means that they succeeded at a high level in the events that they entered. I attended as well. I also was able to attend the ASBA summer leadership institute just a couple weekends ago. Um and we held a Yapai County meeting at that which was attended by three of the board members from Mink Union School District as well as the superintendent and nobody else. But um it was fine. Um I do want to one quote um that I think we can look at. I think this really sums up what PD is. Social prosperity is where people work together courageously. When people work together

050courageously, their potential that kind of summarizes all the challenges we face, the money issues we have, people work very well. Stan and I have our same I would like to make one comment about scholarship night though. When my kids went to PHS it was street theater and I liked it. It was wonderful. But what I like about the way we do it now is that kids have a chance to speak to the people who gave them the scholarship and not just shake their hand. They can talk about it. They can talk about what their dreams and goals are as they get older. And it's also a wonderful opportunity for board members to walk around be able to thank the supporters that they're supporting our school districts and often times we didn't have a chance to

051do that. So I appreciate that. I was the only member on the stage graduation night who was not a PH alumni. So and I'll never be part of the distinguished alumni group because so little left out but not that bad because my kids all went to it. I thought it was pretty amazing again the number of alumni parents that have come back and then all of us on the stage with the exception were phs alumni that's amazing amazing our faculty section a lot yeah our faculty we've all stuck with it throughout the years that says a lot about the community that you live in and that you represent I'm just proud to be member honorary member even there there's another school Brett suggests that can claim you as a distinguished alumni. We can't your your

052uh relationship with the district is far from tenuous having talked with us. I think you're in the end club for sure. Yeah. Not much. Um I really was impressed with Mr. David and I appreciate most people don't know that there's a book we all have up front and everything that he wrote was was pre-written and if you know what he said if you were to listen to it you would think that boy did he go off script he didn't amazing story brought It was biblical and I I just appreciate that everybody that even looked at it there was nothing too great speech all the time in the country. and represent the largest group of graduating. Um, and even my son, I brought TJ, my eight-year-old there, and all he wanted to do is high five

053the basketball players. I mean, and to me that's like these kids are great represent, you know, great citizens, great representations of our school district, but just amazing human beings that, you know, they they've always included the kids in the community and what a amazing thing for my son and our kids to aspire to be and that's what she produced. So anyway, great great um think that's it. Uh we'll move on to item Community comments shared by the governing board. You know, this is an important part of the agenda for me and I need to do a better job of recording these. I missed a couple last meeting and I I have two here. One was from a PE teacher at the high school who felt like we needed a female PE teacher to foster self-esteem

054and fitness female students. She said often times the male teachers focus on athletics and she thinks that there needs to be something for something greater for the young women students. Then I got another email from a a dad who was disgruntled about some bias in in his teaching about political leaders in our country and was concerned that the grades weren't getting in on time. And I followed up with Mr. Tenny and I felt like handled it well on the school level and on the district level. Those were the two main comments that I had a few different people talk to me mostly about calendar. You know, we're starting in July. It's very upsetting to a lot of people in our community. Um, and so I I it's interesting because we were it got into some

055discussions just theoretically about why our school calendar is the way that it is and why what the dates are like and and um Then some additional concern in relationship to the same thing about what happens if we go to a 4 day week and how will we you know how will that even take more away from our summers and families feeling a little like they don't have quite the summer they used to have and so that those were most of the comments I received were around either 40 week or calendar but kind of all combined but I think July's throwing people a little bit I know it's July 31st but nonetheless they see July Nothing really other than the same kind of feedback that mentioned and as a former P never teacher but educated teacher.

056Um, you know, I I I tend to agree. I believe that the women need a specific role model. So it was hard not to get too caught up in that and responding back to as a board member situations. It may be worth noting that every other PE teacher in the district is female for whatever that's worth. Like literally there there aren't any in our district other than the two high school who are not female. We skew heavily that direction. That's important people. It didn't tell me a little bit. I hear you. Absolutely. Absolutely. Same thing. I talked to this teacher as well. The ex the female I guess she's retired. Is that correct? I talked to her about the same situation. And then I also had a constituent want to discuss test scores in depth.

057So we met for two hours at the porch and I took my little list of numbers. She brought her little list of numbers and was a very interesting conversation. I think it was I think when we were finished that she truly understood what the district's trying to do with test scores and how we're managing that and bringing in beyond textbooks and how just that one number doesn't necessarily define you as a student or as a school district. So I was pretty happy with the outcome of it. She gave me even her cell phone number. So I think that's a good thing to talk. So it was an interesting conversation some of the that she was talking about as far as test scores go. They she did not have accurate information and I thought it was

058pretty important for me to show her direct information that I had that maybe she wasn't privy to. So it was a good good outcome. I think we'll find out. Thanks for that. Um also had the uh the PE teacher reach out. I think that we may have a little more discussion on it. Um, but good reply, great response back and forth, but she what she said obviously made sense and we got a lot more information prior to that. So, that was good to have. um on the 4 day. The one thing that I kind of heard um just uh just from parents is, you know, we're we've changed kind of some of the times um for next year. And the one comment that kind of stuck to me was well, they're just getting us ready

059for the 4 day, you know, 4 day week. We're all about that. We wake up in the morning, how can I slip this in without people wanting it? And I tell you, I mean, it it shocked me because that's not the intent. It's not at all. But but I see where the perception is. They married the two and but it's I can assure everybody that's not at all my intent or anything else. So I just want to say that publicly. Um and then um today I received a pretty unique phone call. Um if you recall last year um we had a pretty tumultuous uh board meeting and uh and it was uh we had a former board member that made some public comments and we we wanted to reaffirm uh that we are a district

060that does not um treat anybody poorly and uh regardless of where they come from, the language they use, whatever it might be. And uh she just want to thank us for being bold uh in that moment. Um and it was a refreshing phone call because in light of what's kind of happening in the country, we are political um we are on the political spectrum and you don't know what may you know people's intentions are and that's a horrible place to be um whether locally nationally and uh and she wanted to make a point that she appreciates anybody that does stand up for something um that you know as you know we don't paid for this. We believe in this school district and and uh for her to kind of say that and she was very

061vocal last year about where she stood and she just wanted us to know that. So, and I want to relate that to all of you as well. Um all right, so we'll move on to item seven. So, consent agenda. Are there any items we like to highlight or pull before I talk about the last? I would like to pull temporarily 7.8.2. about donations. We can recognize them individually. Any other ones? Okay. And then I'm going to pull item 7 A18 public hearing. I'll pull that from the consent agenda. So I'll let uh Jane highlight yours first. All right. Donations this month. I think it's always important that we recognize donations from the community because we wouldn't be able to do what we do without them. So, Matt Force gave a check in the amount of

062$60 for child care. We had a donation from the Herald James Family Trust in the amount of $10,000 for fifth grade camp. We had a donation from the PUSD Education Foundation, a check for $500 for outdoor education. We had a donation from the Lutheran Women's Missionary League, a check for $500 for the Family Resource Center. We had a donation from the Frontier Rotary Charitable Fund, a check in the amount of $7,200 for Discovery Gardens tuition. Another donation from the Rotary Charitable Fund. This check was in the amount of $14,000 for our elementary summer school, which I can suggest we wouldn't be able to do without them. Absolutely would not happen. And finally, a donation from the Kanas Club of Prescuit in the amount of $300 for our fabulous PHC Junior ROC. So, thank you donators.

063We also couldn't do it without you. All right. Um, if there's no other items, I'd like to Um, I'll make the motion uh to approve the consent agenda items 7 A1 through item 7 A17. Uh, can I get a second? I'll second. Um, motion seconded. All in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? All right. Consent agenda through those items pass. Uh we're going to a separate agenda item item 7 A18 public hearing. Do we have any um public? Okay. So we're not going to go into public hearing. So we'll move on to item 7B and that's uh study and voting session. First item is 7B1. Consider approving proposed budget for 2025 2026. Mr. Moore. All right. Uh you got to have time to look at the budget document which is, you know, clear as

064mud. So, I know there's no questions. That's our easy reading time. Uh there are a few things. I really when it comes down to the proposed budget, um it allows the the public and the community to view it. And then the next governing board meeting, which has to be 10 days after this, more than 10 days after this one, uh but before July 15th, have you vote on adopted budget. um they don't change, but it allows on July 1st when we have a meeting for folks to come and speak to it if they want to. Um really what this document does is it really sets the thresholds for all of our different types of funds when it comes to potential spending capacity next year. Um really what I do is I look at for a

065lot of the pages I look at what we spent this year um for a lot of our funds. I asked the grants department what do you what are we seeing our allocations going to be? uh let's say title one next year and how much carry forward do you uh think that you'll have um at the end of what our incumbrance period we can we can pay bills all the way up to August 30th for this year. So anyway, they give me the number and that's what I put in and so it shows what our spending capacity in title one which is fund 110 is and we have like 46 different funds in that document in front of you. Uh the big ones are our maintenance and operation budget. Um, I'll speak a little bit to

066that because our maintenance and operation budget, our district additional assistance, which is our capital money. Um, and then some transportation is what our our taxpayers uh pay for. And this document actually really will set our tax rates for this upcoming school year based on an absolutely educated What word do you want? It's not a guess. It's estimates of how many kids are going to show up on July 31st and actually continue to stay enrolled through the 100th day which is like January, you know, 17th. So the the crystal ball says this and then we input the numbers goes through a formula. It sets how big our M budget is. District additional assistance, the capital money is actually based on the prior year's ADM, which is what our M used to be, but then they made

067it current year funing. You put all that into a lovely calculator and it says it really shows our tax rates. And if you're wondering when it comes to the comparison is our tax rate actually went down approximately 34,000 of a percent for our taxpayers. Now unfortunately or fortunate for our taxpayers our press gets assessed value went up 7% last year. It is now, I think, going on seven years straight of a 6% or higher uh increase to our assessed value within our property of our boundaries. So, yeah. And really what that difference is is if you had a house that was assessed for $350,000 and it was assessed the same last year, apples to apples, they would pay about $11.80 less on their their tax for for PUD. So, that's what's on the cover page.

068And then you get into all of the pages. There is if and Jen if if you notice actually on page two, four, and five they compare the previous budget year to the current budget year. Page two is our MO budget. Page four is our 301 or they call it the classroom site fund. It's the money that goes to teachers. Page five is our DAA, our capital. Something different happened this year. They actually had us guess, estimate what our carry forward will be in 14 months from now and had us pull out that prediction and then distributes the money. Prior to this year, you actually distributed all of the money that you believe that you would have throughout the year, including your carry forward at the end of the year. So, it actually inflated the numbers.

069So, if you compare last year to this year, you're going to see - 7% budgeted, minus 11% budgeted, minus 14% budgeted. It's because our carry forward is no longer distributed within the table. Any any questions on that? I don't know if I explained that really well, Andy. I saw the budget carried forward on page one. Yes. So you're saying on page seven of this document, if you look at page two, which is our M um distribution, um in the lower leftand corner, you'll see where it says you see carry forward and I think I put 2.2 million or something like that. Yeah. Do you see that? Previously that 2.2 million would be distributed in the table above essentially inflating those numbers. And so and on page uh four which is our 301 money I put

070something I think it was 700 or 800,000 as the carry forward. Before they would have us distribute that in the table above which actually inflates those numbers because last year they had us distribute it. This year they had us pull it out. It looks like we're budgeting less but we're really we're really not. And I wanted to make sure that you guys were aware of that. Okay. The last These are preliminary forms because the legislature has not passed the budget yet. There is a 2% 2% statutory increase to what a child is worth. But there are provisions in which the legislators don't have to give that and it al it has to do with what percent of education is of the general funds percentage. Um, and so the auditor general said, "We're not putting that

071in these forms." For Prescuit, that that's problematic because a 100% of our M DAA and transportation comes from our taxpayers. If we don't have that 2% in there, we're under taxing. And then when the legislators do pass a budget and they do have the 2%, we've already passed their budget and the tax rate set. So, I did have to inflate how many students were saying next year um to match what that 2% increase would be for our M. And and when we get our final forms, we'll have to do a budget revision in September and I'll have to pull out those students that I inflated. For 200 districts, this is not an issue. For about eight of us, 100% of our t our money comes in those funs from our base because the legislators haven't

072gotten their budget passed. It impacts us significantly and so I did have to say that we were having more kids come to compensate for the 2% increase that is not part of these this template. Does that make sense? That was a mouthful land on the appropriate tax rate that we assume that we'll be at. Yeah. once the legislature pulls their stuff together and gets things and essentially really what I did was I usually budget about 30 students more than the previous year because we don't get money from the general funds. If we don't tax enough, we better have it in the treasures office from prior years. Um, and so what I really did is I took what a child was worth, I increased it by 2%. I put those 30 kids more, saw what the

073bottom line of our our revenue was, changed it back, and then increased the students. so that the number matched and then when we do it on the the the official forms it'll be really close. That's really the comments on the budget. If you have any individual ones from anything that you saw, Annie would love to answer the questions. The allocations overall, I think Brian mentioned this, but they match the conceptual budget that you approved back a couple of months ago. Yeah, the conceptual budget is really looking at, you know, how we're going to spend the money. This budget really just shows how much we can spend. Uh we'll take a motion to approve the bud proposed budget for 202526. So moved. Motion. Do we have a second? Second that motion second. All in favor say

074I. I. Any opposed? Budget passes. Item 7B2. consider adopting the Prescuit High School uh 9 10 11 12th grade math curriculum. Kelsey, so good evening. We're back with another math adoption. Um so tonight I just want to do a quick reminder of what it was that we're asking you to vote on tonight. So what our process is. Um just as a reminder, we do have seven different high school courses that we were looking at curriculum for. Um and two of them are courses. So, they're higher level math courses, but this covers all of the courses that are offered at Prescuit High School except for some dual enrollment courses that use a text aligned to whatever happens in the college setting. Um, so again, why are we adopting math this year? Why were we looking at

075high school math? Um, it was because the last adoption that we had was in 2017, and the only thing that was available to us at that time were free curriculum options. And we did was great and got us into at least the common core era. Um what we're using before that was not aligned with common core standards. Um but there were some pieces that were missing particularly around instructional strategies and instructional routine. So it's that support for teachers and then the alignment between courses. So between algebra, geometry, algebra 2 and then setting students up for future levels of math courses. So our timeline here, we began this work last July and August by looking at deciding which curriculum we were going to review. We had two different meetings in August to look at what are

076our options, what do we want to narrow it down to so that we could decide what we were going to pilot. Then in October, we had our final meeting where we made our decision around which curriculum we were going to pilot and then piloted one curriculum for quarter two and then one for quarter three. And then March 27th and April 2nd, we actually had two of our last meetings because on the 27th of March came together and there wasn't a definitive answer. Not everybody felt comfortable one way or the other. There were some gaps. So we went back to one of the curriculums we had looked at originally. And after they had spent a lot of time working with standards and analyzing curriculum, they landed on especially for algebra, geometry, algebra 2 in vision. And

077the reason that they had eliminated that originally is because did think it was a little too tough. Um, but once they went back to it, they decided the level of rigor is right and it's easier to adjust down than it is to adjust to make things more challenging. Um, so just a reminder also, our committee was comprised of 12 different members. So we had teachers, administrators, three parents and community members who all were in the math field in some sort of way. So they had a good solid understanding of math. And then we had our instructional coach at the high school who was there as well as well. So after almost a year's worth of work to review curriculum pilot and analyze that pilot, um these are our final recommendations for you. It has spent

078the last 65 days on display here at the district office and there was an online option as well and we did not have any community members or parents review that not online or in Do you know if anybody looked at the materials? Yeah, we ask people to at least sign in if they come to look and nobody has. If they looked at it online, I'm not able to see that part but definitely nobody gave feedback and then nobody came in person. But again for a year all those meetings had a lot and all of the meetings are open to the public. They're posted just like the board meetings. So they're great community members that were Kelsey. I should have probably asked this the other day when last month when they were here, but I was

079wondering when you guys went back to Envision, do you feel like you had an opportunity to pilot it pretty well in that last little bit of time? I know it wasn't a lot of time left in the school year. So, what did you guys feel about the piloting of that program? They ended right at youing at you, but they they had about a month to pilot these materials and then they looked forward and backward as far as what they missed. What I will tell you is we've also had groups of math teachers working this summer um to really look at that alignment in their pacing for next year and they've been looking at particularly in vision and some of these other texts as well during that time and all of the feedback that I've gotten

080is they're really excited about what they're seeing and what they're able to put together. Um so they're they're even more confident now that they're looking at planning and piecing their entire year out. So great question. Did we have an opportunity to talk with other districts that have adopted Envision for example? How it's going with them? I have not. Envision has been around a very long time. Very long time. I taught it decades ago. Yes. It looks different a little bit different than it does. They've just really updated it. Um and a lot of really relevant opportunities for students embedded in there now, which is a part of what our high school teachers like so much about that content. Any other questions? All right. Um, take a motion to adopt the PHS 9th through 12th grade

081math curriculum. I would like to make that motion. Have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Motion second. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Curriculum passes. Thanks, Kelsey. Um, item 7B3, consider approving the proposed name change for for Granite Mountain Middle School. Brian, we've sort of been calling it Grant Mountain Upper Elementary School unofficially and it's time to make it official. I mean, really, that's what this is. There is a specific process which includes gathering folks together to look at names and propose to the board two um names that we would feel is better for Grand Mountain and um I believe are both of them and presented in front of them to have them vote on one or is there both that we were and we're recommending one? We're recommending the Grand

082Mountain Upper Elementary School. It's really the vision of Mrs. to have that be a transition to middle school officially at at middle school at mile high. And so this would make it official and then we can start changing it at the state level because everything still says Grand Mountain Middle School. Yeah, I sat down with Mrs. and her reasoning for changing it to upper elementary school was significant to me. She talked a little about culture and about expectations and how fourth or fifth and sixth grade need by changing the name officially helps helps with the culture helps with parents helps with other faculty members who may have when it was a middle school and might have greed. I I really appreciated our uh our discussion and and she even had some comments she sent to

083me from parents when they surveyed the parents and here's one it says amazing amazing job I like elementary school together's Well, years ago, we our elementary schools went K six through sixth grade by a Jud open with the sixth grade class. That's still pretty typical statewide, but we correct. So, we've always considered them as part of the elementary, but at the same time part of the middle and I think this makes more sense because So it gives them that little boost in their own confidence and abilities but at the same time we're not we're not setting them loose and saying okay I think it sets it's like the name of a book I mean it really sets the tone you know even when you're just looking at press schools and see the grade bands you

084know where big kids are no longer elementary but at the same time it's protection for the parents because they're not yet middle school so being a former teacher at middle school and an assistant principal at Granite Mountain Middle School. Sixth graders were not middle schoolers yet. They almost got inducted as middle schoolers by fire from the seventh and eighth graders to be ready to be a middle schooler by seventh grade. So it's a good school probably too big school. That that was the name that we adopted de facto as as we initially in grade bands and whatnot after we had to close schools from basis open for the last couple of years again has been leaning into just what you've talked about just the reasons you've talked about but we do need to make it

085official on the the state level for paperwork purposes etc. So doing exactly what Brian said, presenting you with a couple of options and if you feel like this is a bad move, great. Okay, open to that as well, but otherwise it's more of a ministerial duty than anything else. Can you remind us of kind of the evolution of that? How we we came to have Grand Mountain be fifth and six because we initially had it was previous um closed down Right. And then but the original plan was not to have the parents got together and really to get through that. Jane was part of a couple of different committees on that. I think Oh, there you go. So yeah, maybe Jen and I'm happy to speak, but I'd love to hear other people. I just

086remember at the time we were I was a buy Jud mom and we had one of the ideas was to have just a buy Jud move their fifth grade up to Granite Mountain and the other elementary schools stay K5 and a lot of parents throughout the community from all different schools felt like that wasn't a great idea like to have unification among the schools was better um because then kids may not feel like may feel like they're left out or they're missing out orever whatever might the case. And so there was a lot of discussion around different options, but where they ended up landing was moving all fifth graders. Um, one of the things I liked about it as a parent, because I'd had, I don't know, three kids, I guess, by then, go to

087Granite as a sixth grader, was it did keep them younger, just like we were talking about that sense of they aren't really middle schoolers, but man, they started wearing makeup and dressing like middle schoolers and looking very much like seventh and eighth graders when they went to sixth grade. and this has allowed them to stay younger longer. That was one of the kind of side bonuses to me. Ally, my fourth daughter, is the first class to be a fifth grader at Granite Mountain. So, she was the first one that went through all of her years from fifth grade on with her full class, which is another consideration was it keeps all the kids together. That's what I was going to say. We we back before we made this move, the we have the two middle

088schools and there was friction involved. There was was always us against granted against mile high. It was always that friction that wasn't necessarily always healthy. And then I was a PJ kid. The other thing that was scared of you. Yeah. The other thing that was very important for us at the time was if we have a school that's just devoted to five fifth and sixth graders and teachers who are really interested in the development of fifth and sixth graders and how that would look different if they were the only ones at that school. That was a big plus for me. I thought that was very exciting to have all of our fifth and sixth graders together with the faculty that cares about that age of development and then when they're they're ready to go on

089to mile high then by the time they're in seventh and eighth grade. So, I I think it's a win-win. I don't I don't know if we have too many complaints out in the community about that. Feedback that we get pretty regularly um from folks is having four different schools that have go through, particularly for families have multiple children in our school district, drop off, pick up, keeping track of things, whatot. That's a different scenario than you'll find in most school districts. But given the capacity of our schools and the number of buildings that we can afford to keep open, that's the reality. And I feel like the community um committees that looked at that, we're making recommendations to administration, the board planned on something that's been generally pretty successful. I would also like to thank

090Karen because I think you've done a great job of grant and I think you have that age of kid in your heart too and it's pretty exciting to watch what's happening there now. She's got a pretty spectacular assistant principal as well. I think it's a unique age and it does require some different some different ways of working with them than elementary kids and also different than middle school kids. So, it's kind of neat. But I also understand the challenges that we can face with a two-year move. That's a quick move for a student to only be on a campus for two years and certainly our and things of that nature can be challenging. But but at the time that was the thinking was attempting not to have imbalance between this between the elementary schools because

091could not take more. It couldn't bring anybody in and then we didn't have enough room for everybody from Hiller Valley and Washington at the other two schools. So it was a real challenge to figure out where we were going to put all of those kids and moving fifth grade at a buya would have solved it but it just created a lot more confusion. would have been short term as well. Right. Exactly. No, I just appreciate all that and how I remember that was a a big deal the time. I mean, and I I really felt like it was parent led that uh that made that happen. So, to me, the name change really aligns with what those parents even at the time were trying to accomplish and really to keep their kids young and that

092it is an elementary school. at that level. Obviously, I'm partial to Karen just coming from Lincoln and you know and how amazing she is with elementary school level kids and teachers and you know to keep her there and still fostering that just really align for me. So I' I'd move to change. Well, it also makes an interesting brag for a second. I got myself a t-shirt today. Wait, what if we say no? I mean, we're still grizzlies. That has been a fun thing for us. School board member assigned to the G news. That is adorable. You can get those at your bookstore, right? Yes. Fil. [Laughter] Awesome. All right. We'll uh we'll um can we get a motion to approve the proposed name change uh for Granite Mountain Middle School to Granite Mountain Upper Elementary

093School? I'll make that motion motion. Do we have a second? That's okay. But so all in favor say I. I. Any opposed? All right. G Moose it is. I think one of our first uh fundraising efforts we ever did for the education foundation was also to get get a playground at Granite Mountain because it did not have a playground because we were a middle school and that cost. The education foundation one of our first goals was to work on getting a playground up there. So that was pretty fun. Yeah. It was fun. Brett and I played a lot of walls on the gym. That's all we had to do. Seventh and eighth grade. All right. Um, so item 7B4, consider approving an amendment to the 202526 PUSD academic calendar. uh 133 moving or not 133

094moving the spring holiday from Monday, April 6, 2026 to Friday, April 3rd, 2026. Mr. Tenny. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. So, yeah, we occasionally get feedback about about the calendar. Jen, you mentioned earlier the the Friday the 30, excuse me, Thursday the 31st of July starting date is making some people lose their minds for some reason. I want to clarify a couple of things that we we've tried to share with people. It's starting at literally the exact same time of year that it has started for for a decade or more than a decade. The the the funky parts of the calendar. We're going to look at our next um agenda item at the calendar that we're proposing to you for two years from now. Um we'll show that you know the calendar's kind of

095swung back the other way. We're starting I can't remember the day. Yeah. Six. There you go. Of August. Starting literally the same time. It's the whatever it is Thursday in that part of the year. Um because we our board has chosen for the last couple of decades to have a fall break. It is true that our uh our summer break is one week shorter than some other places, but we get exactly the same number of days as every other place as we have for literally decades. People are saying the school year is getting longer or the school year is getting shorter. There there is no data to support that. for whatever it's worth. But this this is a different piece. Um you know, we've had some community feedback around around the the spring holiday that

096we have. Uh the board has chosen for the last several years to have a spring holiday during the fourth quarter to kind of break up the fourth quarter for for families and teachers and students and whatnot. Uh the the flow of our calendar allows for one last holiday. And so we fit that in there. Some years Easter as you know bounces all over the place based on the phases of the moon or something like that. Um uh many years where where we can we and and this upcoming one that we'll look at again in our next agenda item Easter is in a different place. We're not going to be able to recommend to you that we have our our spring holiday uh in conjunction with with Easter which is important to to a lot of

097people. But for we had feedback from the community three or four or five five years ago when we uh recommended to the board last year's calendar, this year's calendar, next year's calendar that that we shift that we excuse me when as we have our final holiday of the year, the spring holiday in whenever we can have it in conjunction with Easter, have it the day after Easter so that people who travel to be with family uh for Easter would have that day to be So they could they could have said the day before Easter, Easter itself and the day after Easter, we did that. Uh last school year and the total amount of negative feedback we got about that was zero. No, nobody at all said that's a bad idea. This year as we approached

098it, as you know, a couple of people said, "Hey, why why don't you move the the the calendar from what it used to be?" Well, we got feedback that people preferred that this year as we had the spring holiday again. in conjunction with Easter had it on Monday. We found a couple of different things. First of all, we had some feedback from people um that they preferred Friday instead. And of of our 3,900 students families, I think we had six four four or five or six people get with us. So, the sample size is is exceptionally small for whatever that's worth. But we had a couple of people say um that they rely on child care after school and after school hours from from the YMCA or from the Boys and Girls Club. The Boys

099and Girls Club YMCA had chosen to not be operating on Good Friday on the Friday holiday. So when our kids went to school on Friday, there was no after school care for those families. That was that was a concern for them. That's legitimate. We want to be responsive to that if we can. Um and That was the main piece as well. Though we didn't get this feedback from principles two years ago. This year we got feedback that our absentee rate spiked on Friday on Good Friday. Um much higher than than other years at Taylor Hicks and Prescuit High School is about 25% higher than a typical Friday. So what what that meant at Taylor Hicks is there were there were 12 more kids etc than usual. So it's not like oh my gosh the whole

100school is not here. you know, statistically significant. At Discovery Gardens, their absentee rate was actually far less than usual. They were the anomaly. At Lincoln, Mrs. Brusso shared with us it was about their absentee rate was about double normal and at mile high it was it was close close to 40% higher than usual. So, we had significantly more families who chose to take good Friday off. That's the case whenever we've got a three-day weekend that we whichever if it's the Monday or the Friday, particularly if we have a Monday holiday and there's a Friday that's not uh already scheduled to be a holiday, we're going to have increased absenteeism on that day anyway, but it was clearly more than we would have anticipated. So based on the absentee rate being much higher, that's obviously not

101good for for continuity of instruction, not good for those those kids in terms of their learning. And then the couple of of legitimate I feel uh pieces of feedback that we got that were not aligning with what child care after school child care is available in the community. Um our recommendation for you is for this coming school year where we you've already approved to have the spring holiday in conjunction with the Easter weekend on Monday that we shift that to Friday. You have questions what you just said. We'll probably have a higher absenteeism on the Monday. We probably will, but my nature my expectation is it'll be lower than this Friday, this this Good Friday this year. But you're you're you're not wrong about that. What I see is it's really it's not even a

102a holiday for most people that work on that Monday. Sure. And so people choose to take a four day weekend. They don't have to work. But now it's a double whammy for those families that on the Monday. Yeah. That's the way I see it. Whereas certain we have a lot more likelihood of businesses and this childare being closed on Friday. I've always pulled my kids on Good Friday for religious purposes. Um that we always attend a service as they're in high school. I don't pull them for the whole day necessarily, but I depends on how many absences they have and all the things. But um but I I think a lot of families would have more use of the day of Good Friday than they necessarily would for Monday. Sometimes referred to as Easter. I

103know for us that's that's always been important to us to have Good Friday. So we in the years we've had school, I just have chosen to take them out of school. So I'm one of those absences. Great. Or seven of those absences some years. I don't know. Lots of lot. It's an important day for our family religiously as well. We've not pulled our kids from school as a result of that. But you know, we observe that as a family, etc. Just to clarify, anytime that a family for religious reasons, regardless of their religion, wants to have their child out of school is automatically excused. For sure. So, same with staff members as well. So, that's never been a barrier, but it does interrupt the continuity of learning if large number of students are gone a

104certain day, not going on with with instruction. So yeah, to to mitigate against that, our recommendation is that you consider shifting for this already approved, otherwise already approved 2526 calendar. I think families also, even though some of the schools it's only an hour difference in a day, I think families still think, well, I can pull them on a Friday easier than a Monday because it's a short day. You know, it's a a half day even though at the high school it's like one hour is the difference. But I think people see it as a short day. So it's easier to pull them. Any other discussion? All right. We'll take a motion to approve an amendment to the 202526 PSD academic calendar, moving the spring holiday from Monday, April 6, 2026 to Friday, April 3rd, 2026.

105I'll make that motion. Motion second. I'll second it. Motion second. All in favor say I. Any opposed? is passed. Um item 7B5, consider approving the 26 27 PSD academic calendar, Mr. T. Okay, super. So, as you know, there's parameters in state statute for for school calendars. Uh we have to have a minimum number of hours. The minimum number of days as well number of days is 180. There's a small handful of school districts around the state that exceed that 180 days for whatever works for their calendar, but % of districts have 180 days. We have 180 days this year. We're recommending the same next year. The same was the case 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So again, for those folks who feel like the school year is changing in length or whatnot, it's not.

106It's up to the board how we how we set things up. The feedback that we've gotten for years and years and years is that families appreciate that fall holiday that's following the lead of nearly every other school district in Arizona. It's not necessarily standard nationwide, it's fairly standard statewide. Um, spring spring break as well is is an important thing for people in a winter break or Christmas break is important thing for people. There is a limited number of days that schools can have off for Christmas break. That's in statute more than 10. So that's that's a parameter that we've got. Um, we we always try to start the school year right around the same time. July. Yeah. Some sometimes that ends up being July 31st and people lose their minds. I get it. I I

107totally get it. I mean, it sound it just sounds like things are really different and and I I get react people reacting to things sounding really different. This proposed calendar, we're we're proposing that we start on the very same day, very same part of the year. It happens to be August 6th this year, whatever that's worth. Um, I'm afraid we're not going to have enough if we start on August 6. Well, fair enough. Fair enough. And to be clear, to be clear, there there's nothing that says we have to start on on August six. We could start earlier, later or whatnot. That's really up to the board. Another piece of this of this calendar, something that's proven to be very popular uh from from uh feedback we get from families, which is to give us

108two days of school in the first week, then have the weekend, then come back. When we did five days, we just found everybody was exhausted. were exhausted and teachers were exhausted, administrators were exhausted, parents picking up their kids and going through the line at a buy Jed were exhausted and it was it was just tough. And since we've moved to two days, we've not only had a bunch of parents tell us that's brilliant, but we've had other districts that's brilliant that they shifted as well in many cases. So, that's something we wanted to preserve. And then you can see the the green days on the calendar if you have it in front of you. I don't know if you do. I think it's attached to your packet. But at any rate, there's a a handful

109of days that are uh set aside for scheduled professional development days and it's roughly the same parts of the year as before. Kelsey, are there any significant differences to the timing of the profession as we talked to I could be I could be making that question and are those work days? Are they not work days? Good question. Yeah, we need to we need to amend that. They are work days for sure for for our staff. They're pre-ervice days first contract for will some of those come off the week of July 20th then because it's a lot more days before than this year. So that's interesting because not all teachers work those days. So July 20th through the 24th we do have some teachers reporting. So any who's enrolled in our Keystone program. That's the week

110they report. They report even a week before our new teachers. Then the week of the 27th, that's when all of our new staff report. And then if you're looking at August the 3 is when all of our returning staff report. It's a great question and I appreciate the clarification. We probably should code it, color code it differently as we do. verbal confirmation of st all all returning staff members like Kelsey said to clarify on the third just like you asked about Andy all new staff members are required on the 27th those yeah great question I was going to point out you see the graduation date the last day of school and graduation date are in the same part of the year as usual it's it's calendar wise several numbers later than this year just because

111of the way the calendar shifts back and forth that summer is is no shorter than it's ever been. Just want to clarify that. So, Kelsey, just a quick question. I'm looking at the the actual below the calendar itself. Returning teachers said they start the 27th of July. You scroll down, keep going down, down that we need to correct that. The returning teachers return on August 3rd. The 27th is for new teachers who like to submit. Yes, thank you for catching that. Absolutely. We we used a previous template to do this. There were 58 things to shift. It looks like we changed 55. So, I really appreciate catching. Yeah. Can I ask on our professional development day on August 28th, a couple of them, the one in February and the one in April, tie in with

112creating a 4-day weekend? Is there a reason that one's in August versus like September 4th where it would create a 4-day weekend versus I'm just curious. I mean, it feels like we often try to create a 4-day weekend with them. Typically, we do. I see that November doesn't really have much of an option, which I get where it is, but usually I feel like you lean into that. I just didn't know if there was a reason to like we had to have it in August or something like that. Did we do this? changed conferences. That might have been we might have created more. Yeah, because you moved conferences late so that we could switch to Friday, September 4th to I I believe we could do that and not have a problem because it would create

113that four day weekend for I think that's a better idea personally if if a majority of the board feels that way. If if it doesn't ever impact your teacher attendance to a a professional development day, right? I mean, they just consider it a day they have to be at anyway, right? Like I think Some families might have the impression that if it's 4 day week, then teachers are going to skip their professional development. And I've been pretty that that probably doesn't happen. We really ask our staff not to miss those PD dates unless it's something out of the norm. Um just because we do so much and you know, our staff by now know that they're going to miss out on some great opportunities if they're gone those days. So they really try not to

114be gone. There there's a demand to be there. I think you're right. Among those people where there's not empasizing on the HR level and on the instruction level for many years. These are days that you never want to miss, but if you're going to miss some other day that you need to be here. The other piece that's that's worth noting that we don't have as much flexibility around as we might like otherwise is the spring break week. And as far as that co coincides with you by college, that works well for our students in CTE courses and there's there's a couple couple hundred at the high school. If we don't match up with that, it really makes things pretty on those kids having to entirely miss spring break or miss a handful of classes in

115a row. So our recommendation for spring break will line up with college and therefore with other districts in the area. We also kind of set the tone for other districts. We've had three or four districts reach out to us and say hey vote on your 27 figure out what we're doing. Do we need to approve this calendar tonight or can we table it for the next meeting until the corrections are made? My recommendation would be if you're comfortable with what we talked about verbally to to vote to approve it tonight with the following. I think what happened there, Kelsey, is if you look at last year's I mean this upcoming year calendar, the one we're about to enter, right? It was it's just that Labor Day moved out week and so it that's where it

116kind of threw you off I think. But that would be one recommendation I would make is just to move that to the fourth if there's not any reason and the teacher report the teacher report date to what we've talked about verbally we can I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do this but we have two principles here. Does that make sense to them that day? That's what I can't I can't think of one. I know. to clarify when Karen says we we we developed this based on our our longstanding draft that we've gotten a lot of good positive community input feedback on for years then tried to make the shifts on our uh on the DAT the district admin team level and then brought it to our district leadership team as well. So we got

11715. We missed a couple of detail pieces, but yeah, we can we can either do what you said, which is table it, fix it up entirely, and then vote on it. Maybe we should do that before voting to approve something than having to change it when we find out there has been conversation. So, we come back together in just a few days. So, yeah, we do. We're back to live. There's not very much. Another little trivial thing about why I think this change might be a good idea is because parents are going to look our kids start on the sixth and my gosh they already have a day off in three weeks and it's just if you can at least they're going to be in school for August before we have a professional development day.

118I think the optics of that are a little better. Adam or Karen, are you none of us we we've been part of the process on two levels. None of us are remembering that that that was intentional to have it on the 28th. Are you attention for some reason. I think from a board perspective, I think we're better off tableling this for two weeks. letting you figure out what needs to be. The other piece to keep in mind is even if we were adamant that it be on the 28, that's not up to us. That's up to you. Nice recommendation. Makes more sense to us. You don't have to go with what we say, but I think you're probably in terms of I don't want somebody that's not here to come back and say, "Oh, wait

119a minute. Here's the reason we did this. Oh, now we need to change this." So, we'll double check with our principles and see if anybody in their recruits. If another school gets with me in the meantime says we're desperate for your calendar, take a deep breath in a couple. Right. So, sorry, I just had one more thing. So, when we were talking about spring holiday, the Easter is the 28th of March. So you're not doing it in March because we just got off screen. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. Easter is March 28. The previous It's an early Easter. There is there is no good way to to attach the spring holiday to Easter because Easter's happening so early and spring break has to happen so late. So getting being off for essentially

120seven days because well nine days because weekends coming back to school for four days and getting off again from that doesn't provide the break to the fourth quarter. That's really helpful for teachers. Thanks for pointing that. All right. Um so just noting the changes we have. Um we want to block out August 3rd through the 5th. Code those as staff work days. Um returning teachers due date change. That's in the notes third page or second page I believe. And then uh PD you'll get back to us on whe It should be the 2026 27 PSD academic calendar. Go ahead. So motion and second it. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? We'll table to next. We'll clarify, clean it up, bring it back in two weeks. Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Item 7B6, consider approving

121this the SF or school facilities divisions terms and conditions for acceptance of monies from the building renewal grant fund for PSD school sites. Another month more HVAC. So we have three at granite five tunners that were I've submitted to the school facilities division uh that they have an issue. they've accepted that, then the terms and conditions go in front of the governing board. But there's no funding left in the school facilities division. So hopefully when the new money after July 1st comes around, these will be replaced. But this is at least uh saying that we will abide by the terms and conditions if we receive school facilities division money. And with your vote, we can go to the next step. All right. Take a motion to approve the school facility division's terms and conditions for

122acceptance of monies from the building renewal grant fund for PSD school sites. I'll make that motion. Motion. Do we have a second? Second. Motion second. All in favor say I. Any opposed? Passes. Moving on to item 7B7. considering consider approving students recommended for early entrance into kindergarten for 2025 26 school year. Kelsey, so with enrollment every year, we do allow families who have children who will turn five anytime after August 31st but before January 1st to apply for early enrollment into kindergarten. So they do have to go through a process. Part of that is emailing me information on why they believe child should be enrolled in kindergarten early, that they know kind of pros and cons, what that looks like for their child, both short-term and long term, any recommendations from preschool staff if they've

123attended preschool. Um, and then we do kindergarten screenings with them with a bance test. It's a nationally assessment. And what we're looking for with that assessment is for students to perform at or above a 5-year-old level in academic and cognitive abilities, language development, and physical development. And so if these children can meet that requirement for all three and they're above that 5-year-old mark, we do allow them to apply for early entrance and enroll in kindergarten if they so choose to. So this year we did have four families who were interested. Um, one of them did not complete the process and we weren't able to get them screened. We did have three who completed the screening and out of the three we had one who met the requirements for early enrollment. Now, there is a possibility

124that when we come back in July that we do have more who we missed the enrollment deadline that we might bring back to you in early August, but as of now, we only have one who qualifies. Questions about that. All right. We'll take a motion to approve students recommended for the early entrance into kindergarten for the 202526 school year. I will make that motion. Motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Motion seconded. All in favor say I. I. I. Motion passes. Um item 7 C information discussion items. Mr. Moore has prepared the school board summary budget for as presented. I have a quick question. I knew you would. I haven't even So sorry. So sorry. Earlier in the year, you added your asterisk to this report for us so that we would know when

125if if something wasn't renewing. Um I just had a question on a few of them that are not renewing. I saw the stronger connections one is of course the biggest, but it does indicate that it's for three years. So that is continuing obviously on it's not re it's not like it's not a not renewing. I'm using the wrong word, but like if we don't use it, we lose it. Um yes. So the three asterisks indicated that it does not allow carry for right unless the grant is for more than one year in which the whole which is the stronger connections one but there's a couple others like the one for after school clubs at VA Taylor Hicks and Granite Mountain the 21st century. Yes. Did we Is that not do we not get that 103,000

126that's on that line? Am I understanding that right? No, because that doesn't include summer school, which does, which is happening now. Yes. Um, great. And so that still has payroll to go. And once again, we can we can pay for services rendered before June 30th or items received before June 30th all the way up to August 30th. So we'll be we'll be paying bills on these balances for another another about 10 months actually. 10 weeks actually. So Okay. So, no, we um they're pretty good at spending it. Um but at the same time, if there isn't money to be spent, they don't also spend it for frivolously without cost. So, right. The other bigger one is the preschool development grant. Is that the same? Are we offering preschool summer? Uh the preschool development grant actually

127goes this year and through December. So it is also a multi-year and so that allocation will will move into the first semester. Those good eye great questions. That's that's why we do this. Yes. I just like money all the money we can keep. You may have chosen to get involved in education in the wrong state. If you like I know that's why we have to be like so cautious. No. And and I have to say we're so careful of not leaving any money on the table. I mean we're at this point right now we're appealing to the state because we found discrepancies in our student information data from the 2324 school year and we're asking for that to be rectified and it's 19,000 but it's 19,000 right? So yes every penny. All right, moving on

128to item 7 C2 emergency procurement discussion. Three times in my career within this position, this has been presented to the board. Uh we have pretty specific procurement uh protocols that we have to follow. Um there are circum circumstances that those protocols would be extremely detrimental to the district. Um, and in this case, we did get two letters from the city that our service center meters were showing high. Um, the first letter, we couldn't identify where the ground was still solid. They couldn't do the, you know, searching where that leak was, but we found out it was actually between the um the street underneath the creek to the main junction box or whatever. Um, and it was it was free flowing and uh and we we believe we probably had about 900,000 gallons of water that

129um that went from that leak. So in this case, we I called our auditors, described the situation and they said absolutely this would um this would qualify for u emergency procurement because we initially um had a company come and that works closely with the city and had them identify the leak and then they identified the leak, you know, how big it was um and and they so they dug the trench that's actually in that picture and at that time the cost was under 10,000 which what we can um we can pay a vendor without getting quotes. But then once we f found the extent of it and the whole pipe to be replaced and the estimate was 36,000 for the whole project um I asked Clark if he was comfortable enacting the emergency procurement protocol

130which actually you just voted on in the consent um agenda. Clark, myself and our purchasing director can do can can go forward with it. So any the documentation um is in front of you if it's possible to go to the governing govern governing board before entering into the contract with the company it is advised but if it's not feasible then a letter like this goes in front of the board summarizing why it was important why we chose the company and in this case it wasn't 36,000 it was only 34,000 uh because it is now fixed and it was 2,000 less than quoted but it's in front interview for discussion and this is really mainly procedural. So just a question what was our charge for water? I mean if we add that to the [Music] I

131actually I can look I can email the government you know actually what the the the bigger thing is is is it because we're we're charged by of water usage and really what this could have done was put us in another tier for the next, you know, 18 months for being charged more. Um, so I'll I'll I'll have to isolate because we have, I think, eight meters on that campus and obviously it's going to be the one that spikes, but I don't have exactly if we've not done this already. We'll certainly take the the option to appeal to the city. The city's main cost in dealing with water water treatment sewage and if if there's a homeowner or a business owner in this case that has a leak that they've identified they didn't actually use the

132water wasn't going through the sewage system etc the cost to the city is actually pretty low for that it's no fun that a bunch of water just leaked into but ultimately all that's going back into the aquifer anyway which is you know something that we probably all be in favor of and so the the city will consider a discount on the charge for So, if we haven't already applied for that, we'll certainly do that. What the total cost was, that's a great question. Yeah, you can do that. Appeal to the city once every 60 months. Um, we did do what? 60 months. Yes, every five years. Um, we did do that with the leak at Mile High, I think, in 2017. But I do believe that our facilities administ the city for that this exact

133thing I think a year and a half ago on another leak. So, a different meter. I think we're we're okay. Although I can I can contact folks at the city and they may say no nothing doing. I think by owners we've got some pretty good um phone call. Yeah, we've got some good relationships with them. And again, the what we get charged for is the sewage piece. So if we can show that we didn't like moving to a new tier, we'll absolutely look into that. I'll keep you updated on that. I have one question. I might be reading too much into this, but we hired a leak locator to start who did not find the leak where the leak was and then we hired a new leak locator. Am I reading into this that the

134first one? It was due to the timing. It was we hired the first leak locator after the first letter and because the ground was still frozen, they had a hard they they had a hard time okay finding it. That makes sense. And so the time passed and we got a second a second letter which was in the packet for transparency purposes. And so did we choose to go with a new leak locator because we weren't happy with the previous one or I I am unsure of the answer. And that's all right. I accept that as an answer. It's just I just thought it was interesting to new loc and it could have been unavailability at that time, you know. So that's fine. No problem. Right. Um, moving on to 7C3 4 day week template. If

135it's all right, I'm gonna ask the board's permission to to let Brian go. It's his 25th wedding anniversary and uh he was suggesting he might not have as much to contribute directly to the rest of the conversation. So rather than keep them here a minute longer away from his wife like fun. Oh, I just made it up on the bars. Just like the picture. Did you notice I wasn't in the picture? So no, just spend a little time before you know my bedtime's like 7:50. I know. Thank you for all you do. Thanks, Brian. Great. So, I'll start off this discussion by um you want to pass that. Thank you. By reminding the board, we're not making a recommendation for a 4 day week and and there's no voting occurring today possibly ever. Totally up

136to the board. Again, the re the administration is not recommending we move to a 4 day week. are not recommending that we don't move to a 4 day week. We're responding to your directive I think two months ago to give you more information about what it would look like. Right. We talked conceptually. We talked about pros and cons, what other districts have found and whatnot. And you're if I recall your direction correctly from from minutes and whatnot and said, "Hey, flesh this out for us and tell us really what we would be looking at in terms of start times, stop times, uh staff work hours, kids work hours, um what what we could could and would offer in terms of child care, how it would impact interventions, etc., etc., etc. So, Andy and Kelsey and

137I spent um a good part of a day coming up with this uh ran it by our district leadership team and said, "Hey, give us your feedback." They had some good feedback on a couple of pieces, so we made some adjustments. So, this is our this is our template of what it would look like if in the future you decide you want to do this. But once again, to clarify, we're not saying we really need to do this. We got to move forward. That's completely up to you. you've had uh survey feedback and whatnot. One recommendation we might have is if you know whatever a year from now or at some point you decide do you want to look into this if the timing is right in terms of how it fits with a potential

138um request in the community for a budget override etc. There's a lot of dynamics you want to think about in the future if you come back to it. You probably want to have a survey. My guess is you want to have a survey or community again with these specifics. You recall one of the most significant concerns that people with concerns have was what do I do for childare addresses that to certain extent. So um there's different sections here and I've asked Kelsey and Andy if they address some of the sections. I've got a couple so maybe talk you through it and at any point ask questions. You don't have to wait till the end. Just whatever. All right, we'll start um by looking at student schedules. And again, this is a draft. We have the

139ability to adjust this as needed, but it gives you an idea of what a day would look like um in each one of our schools. So, this was built off of staying with the number of instructional hours that we're going to have next year. So, if you remember, we actually are increasing our instructional minutes next year um because we're adding some time even though we're taking some time on Fridays from a couple schools, we are increasing our instructional hours overall. So, we were sticking with that time frame. Um so, you can see our K4 would have I mean their daily hours is the important component to look at. Again, you can adjust start and top stop times however you would choose to, but roughly we're looking at anywhere from a 50 to a 60 minute

140increase in time each day, Monday through Thursday, with a total number of school days at 144. So, you do have to in a 4 day week have 144 instructional days. That's different from our 180 that we have currently. Um, that's by state statute. It's not like a preference or something. Correct. Yeah. And so with this again, the daily hours you could adjust a little bit because we are well over the state number of instructional hours. So, There is some wiggle room in all of this, but if we wanted to stick with the number of instructional hours we're going to have next year, this would be a place to start. Um, ultimately, when you look at instructional time, so we're talking about students in seats actually learning um or involved in educational with a 4 day

141week adding 50 to 60 minutes, you're actually increasing the amount of instruction time because you're decreasing a lunch period every week. You're decreasing some of those transitions like passing periods or from subject to subject. Um so on each level you're increasing by some even though you know we're sticking with the same number of actual total school hours the actual instructional minutes are are increasing. Um one of the other benefits as we look at these schedules is that Monday through Thursday those schedules do line up a little bit better with parent work hours where two um dismissal right now is sometimes right in the middle of an afternoon for a parent. So that's just one of the pieces to consider even though you're going to see pros and cons both ways throughout this. Our schools would

142still offer after school programs as well, right? To get us to that five 5:30 time frame, correct? Where parents are picking up. Yeah. And as we talk more about um Friday intervention coming up in a little bit, you know, for example, our schools who are doing 21st century clubs right now, which are our K4 schools and Granite Mountain, um they're required to do two hours in some cases of after school clubs. That would be a lot for this schedule. So one hour of afterchool clubs, but then that gives us four additional hours a week to add to that Friday. So we'll talk about that more in a bit, but yes, they would have the opportunity for clubs and sports and all the things still. There would be no recommendation start or in some cases the

143same time that they're finishing right now if they have the two hours of after school. All right. Looking at uh some of the staff schedules again reemphasize that this is just a draft uh based on both some ideas that we had and also looking pretty mostly what Chino Valley has done and what they've what they've shared with us in terms of what's worked and what hasn't worked. Uh obviously I don't have every employee group here but we looked at some of the bigger ones. So you know specifically the teachers one of the things that you know Val shared was compared to the typical you know you think five days at 8 hours or four days at 10 hours we're recommending four days and a half hours. Uh with that extra half an hour, saving that

144time up, they would use for PDS or additional time on Fridays. Um and also recognizing that there's not a teacher in America that's not spending a lot of time outside of, you know, weekends, evenings, grading, all those types of things. So kind of recognizing some of those hours for those types of things. But for the most part, building up those extra hours uh to be utilized on those Fridays. And that's that second bullet there. There be at least one Friday per quarter for staff development that built into the schedule. In terms of classified staff, uh again don't have every group here, but as pair of professionals, one of the potential savings here, we have uh currently we have a lot of our pair professionals anywhere from 30 hours to 32 to 35. Uh I would

145say majority are in that 32 to 35. We probably recommend having most of them be around 32 hours a week. So potentially a reduction with a little bit of savings there, but at the same time having uh we'll get to it in just a little bit here, but having opportunities on Friday for enrichment that they could uh also be a part of and earn some additional hours if they were interested for for our pair of professionals. Uh again, some of these other ones depend on what the position is, but for example, if there was an admin assistant who was a 40hour employee. Um, it would really be based on what the needs are of the position of the site. Could vary from week to week. Those 40 hours could be built in Monday through Thursday

146or they could also include Friday. We're going to need certainly some people on some of the campuses uh on that Friday during that intervention time. So, that would be kind of based on supervisor uh need for the most part. Maintenance and grounds would Monday through Friday since a lot of those uh and grounds projects will be taking place on Friday when there's not students around and not uh interrupting class. Uh kind of like I said earlier, it uh positions would most likely be based on the needs. So again, if certain projects be done Monday through Thursday, that could work. But also there's probably times when um projects would uh make more sense to do on Friday. So they would have those as well. Uh same with uh the office staff here at the district office.

147For the most part, we recommend a Monday through Thursday with those full-time positions. Transportation is one that currently our bus drivers are at 30 hours a week and uh obviously taking one of those days away uh would be reducing their number of hours. So most likely would be reduced to 24 hours a week. Uh however, talking to our transportation director. Uh we know a lot of our bus drivers are really in position for the benefits for the insurance. Uh currently uh if they we have an employee who has 20 to 30 hours, we ask them to pay half of their insurance premium. The proposal here would be we'd be reducing them to 24 hours a week, but we would continue to offer full insurance. drivers in that situation to ensure that they don't lose that

148insurance benefit. Again, talking to Chino Valley, they said u they really heard a mix but from their bus drivers, but a lot of them really preferred that Monday through Thursday schedule rather than the Monday through Friday schedule. Is that already a position we struggle to recruit to bus drivers? It is absolutely do we have any concerns it would be fewer hours. One one I believe it was at the job fair and I was speaking with the director of transportation because I was at the job fair for my own life but they were talking about I think she was mentioning to me that a lot of our bus drivers don't live in the prescuit area they live further out and that our prolonged day some of them with their routes would be getting home quietly into

149the evening you know like well past dark in our winter time because are already pulling into the bus barn at 5 after driving since 2:45, you know. So, is that going to be detrimental for hiring, I guess, or does that I think it's a consideration we want to think about? I I think it is. I I think it's a consideration. I don't know if it would be where we would land. I think for some bus drivers it would be a deterrent and others they prefer this. It's one less day of making that trip, right? And uh again the idea similar to the pair professionals there's still going to be a lot of events happening on Fridays whether that's busing to the intervention classes field trips athletic events. So there would be plenty of opportunities to

150you know add on to the hours. So those were those were the biggest groups and how we kind of thought we would address their hours but every situation a little bit unique look at it closely. Can I um talk I talked at length with John Sch was the longterm superintendent valley and then again Cindy Daniels who's been there assistant superend for years before this transition during this transition the current superintendent two of my concerns I brought up with how did you provide child care and what touch on that turned out to be a nonissue was surprised by that I thought that would be a major issue you saw in our survey people were predicting major issue long story short I told you before they really heavily leaned into let's provide a lot of child care

151for folks after two years it was so used was one piece that was surprising. Another piece that was surprising I thought this is going to kill us in terms of recruiting retaining that's already hard just like you said. What did that do? They said really no difference. There were so many people that preferred four days over five days even with getting home an hour later. start during the middle of the day for all the things that I thought that's got to be a negative. Will that be the exact same for us? That's good to know. I think if they're there for the insurance might have better opportunity recruiting bus drivers for the insurance like Andy pointed out for everybody's so Friday intervention and enrichment. I know you just heard from Clark that Valley did more

152of a daycare option. Our recommendation would to be to make this academic based. Um, and after our last conversation when we talked about four day week, I know Fridays were probably the biggest concern um that we had as a as a whole. I will tell you after really thinking through and planning out what could Fridays look like, this is the piece that intrigues me the most about a 4 day week. Um, so again, recommendations. This has lots of potential be tweaked and adjusted. But just on first first round, um our recommendation would be to eliminate summer school. Um I know that sounds a little scary, but it is 11 days of instruction right in the middle of the summer. Um yes, it's effective long-term. Is it the most effective use of our time and our

153money? Maybe not. Um we could take the funds that are used for that and use that to supplement Friday intervention. Um in a very similar format, it could be kind of like our Friday 8 to noon, 8 to 1 um for those schools, but it would be intensive intervention or enrichment. We wouldn't want it to just be an intervention. We want to open it up to any family who would like to be part of that. Um yeah. Yes. Going from 11 intervention days to 35. Um so again, you're able to immediately intervene with students that not falling behind where sometimes summer school feels like we're playing catchup from a whole year's work which is why yes it's bittersweet that we would get rid of summer school however the impact that that could have throughout the

154year to to continue with momentum could be pretty powerful um because a lot of this could be grant funded we talked about that 21st century grant there's a number of hours per week that you have to provide clubs we could do one hour clubs after school and then four at a minimum on a Friday that would be paid for from 21st century which is some of our summer school funding and some of our um we could use tax credit and other accounts similar to that but we would need a quarterly commitment from families because there are specific requirements in 21st century around attendance that you have to meet in order to continue to qualify for that grant. Um, one of our other recommendations would be to not hold Fridays at every campus, but to limit

155that to one or two to help implement cost savings, not only from staffing, but utilities, transportation, food service, all of those components are not open at every site. We're just condensing that, similar to what we do for summer school. Right now, that's only held at one site. Um, right now, Mile High and the high school are not part of 21st century. We're hoping my high can apply next year. We're hoping that that's going to change. Um, but for those school sites to enable able to offer this on a Friday, we would use tax credit. We could use some of the savings from um going to a 4 day week. And then we do have additional summer school funds that could be used to help fund those two grade levels. Um, one of the other benefits

156to this, I know if you talk to a lot of teachers and you talk to a lot of pair professionals, there are many who are having to work a second job. So, Fridays would allow them the opportunity to not only do after school clubs um and provide that additional income but then that Friday component which is could be a big deal for some of our staff to earn extra income because that would all be additional and on top of their their salary because it is supplemental. Um so I think that is covered most of the Friday intervention components but again the thing that excites me the most is that immediate consistent intentional intervention. that happens every week involved which would be on Friday. Yes. Then we would hire. So this is one of this is

157one of the pieces that would have to be ironed out. We could either do it two ways. One is to get a substitute who could fill in for those days or we do it how we do professional development days now and it's one Friday a quarter that we would not Yeah. So there's two ways when they have their quarterly PD on Friday. Um yeah, maybe I missed this but what's the what's the site administrators like principles, assistant principles, counselors, what's their schedule on Friday? Essentially the same as teachers. Okay. We would have to have an administrator on duty. Yeah, for the Friday and Rich's about 10 of us need that people are talking about right now. Kids are in school. Friday there's something up to age pretty much. What do I do with my kids

158on Friday? I think my biggest concern and I had mentioned this with you all before is that I'm not concerned about the parents that were in favor of I was about the parents who work because and now I can see that this would they would still be able to have something going on which might be better than just childare especially piece. That makes me feel a little bit better. Going to the YMCA at Chino Valley. And you know what we do with summer school right now is we specifically target students who could benefit from intervention. Um they're the first ones that invitations go out to. They get priority and then we open it up to anybody and everybody which is why you have enrichment and intervention opportunities. But we would I mean at least would

159be my recommendation to continue to really try and target those students who need that intensive academic support. I don't think or we talked about instead of ending all of the intervention into 11 days of the summer, right? 35 days. It's the piece that really is the most interesting to me about all of what's on here. So, later discussions presentation, ask Kelsey to share what she found. So, professional development, collaboration, that is an essential part of the culture that we've created within our schools. Um, it is something that we really need to continue to happen. So, we would um have one Friday at least that's our recommendation now um per quarter for staff development. So, that's very similar to what Um our current schedule is um we have three half days annually for data review and

160planning meetings that would happen in there. So we would ask teachers or teams to come in for those half days. Um in addition to that Friday and again these are just initial recommendations we could we could adjust. Um, one of the pieces that also is intriguing is right now our Keystone staff, so our teachers who are working towards certification, they're coming in one afternoon every week and they're here until 5:30 or 6 on that afternoon. So, that's a really long day for them. Um, we'd be able to move those Keystone cohorts to a Friday. So, they would have their class on Friday. They would have time and space to use afterwards to plan and prepare for the upcoming week. But for those teachers, it would really make their week a little bit more manageable. Um,

161IEP meetings. So, IEP meetings are they were a big consideration for us because typically we have anywhere from 1 to three happening at a campus per afternoon and that's that's the normal that's pretty regular. So, we'd be eliminating some of that time that we'd be able to do that. So, there'd be some really creative ways to accomplish all of those requirements. Um, we could I mean typically we haven't Friday just because of scheduling purposes. Most people don't want a meeting on a Friday afternoon. Um so that in a day depending on are they you know a shorter IEP or they longer you'd have to take and then we would get creative with making sure that we have all of the time that we need to make sure that all of those meetings are happening just

162as needed. I'll take the next one just advantages in the annual calendar wouldn't have the half day Fridays that for some people choose that right now people don't get to choose you want to come to send your kids to school on halfway during the day. Some people love that extra time. It doesn't work well with their work. The other piece of course right now we've got three or four days that eliminating those standardized fors There's no school today. How come you guys concerned exact same time exact Uh just a couple other uh HR considerations. Currently all our staff full-time staff I should say receive 80 hours PTO 10 days how they view it but uh so it would still be 80 hours if they take a day off they would have 10 hours. So that

163really wouldn't change much, but we just clarify that. And the second bullet there's really I mean reality is we do see higher uh staff absences on Fridays and often that's due to scheduling appointments and things like that. And so we believe that with that Friday off we see better attendance Monday through Thursday which of course savings our substitute costs. That's the most part as we start to flesh this out. I'm on the fence about this probably some other options making teachers lives better. I think trying to push this initiative forward plus the same personal thought is probably try to do the first talk about any lush recommends it more and more at some point here's something Friday it is true you look Monday or Tuesdays or Fridays, but it doesn't depending on what activity you're

164in. If you're in football or if you're in drama or whatever, probably miss less school. But if you're in any of the other activities, if you're in volleyball or baseball or softball or something, tennis, something like that, you're likely sports start at the same time. School is an hour longer for us, you're miss total number of kids Friday sports plus other activities balances out athletes. One other possibility right now it's pretty much in our main sports league justino. Our main schools our school for middle school. Exactly. So right now most of the schools in the future most say when that's possible as far as that's possible. We did hear from public elementary I know as far as looking at the overall pros and parallels with sports. It's not massively different, but it is different. I

165don't know how matches better. Those are all pieces that you'll get at some point. As far as the temp CTE impacts, I think I mentioned this to you before as far as positive. Our CTE schools are in our western county area four day week schools right now. And so mountain district leans into that. A lot of their programs are Friday. high school classes four or five days a week five hour class on Friday. A lot of those programs are available to most of the kids in the region, but not to our kids because of our open have your early dismissal whatever thing the next piece really quickly last budget imped's only 80% of the days so there's going to be 20% subavings we don't anticipate increase our sub Monday through Thursday. So, it's really just

166Friday savings, etc. Happy to answer any questions on the table. Long story short of $45,000 that's not $45,000 every year. Is it a huge part of our budget? And I asked what would that mean if we have that available every year in terms of that chose to take that savings all about it and of itself a reason absolutely custodial savings. I think you mentioned you would keep maintating 20% there. You wouldn't have any food serviceavilard how you do it. Water savings. Most of it shut down with maintenance. Part of the benefit of them being on a fiveday contract is they can do things on Friday that they cannot do during the school day. I mean, right now there's times where they're coming in on Saturdays or they're waiting until, you know, four o'clock in the

167evening in order to do things so they're not disrupting the classroom or they'll do something they didn't think was going to disrupt the It turns out that's really disrupting. Will you please stop breaking tile off the girls bathroom in the 300 hallway because we're trying to have biology class right next door. So really to wrap this up um you know you can see that there's some pros and cons throughout here. But one of the factors we had to put a little more emphasis in was looking at would a 4 day week impact academic achievement? We cannot afford to lose the momentum that we have with academic achievement. And so there are quite a few studies out there around 4 day week um and academic achievement. There's also some around, you know, satisfaction of those who

168work in a 4 day week and that's a little bit separate, but um really from everything that I've read in the research that that I could compile um it really said that if you can implement a 4 day week with very careful and purposeful planning with no loss of academic time, you can do you can kind of maintain status quo or you can make academic gains. Those are the two trends. They're not there's a decrease in academic achievement as long as there's lots of careful thoughtful planning that goes in. And when I read those really right now, especially with the work that we've done over the last few years to kind of revamp our processes and our procedures, most of our heavy instructional components are happening Monday through Thursday. We're doing some additional intervention on

169Fridays. We're doing catchup on Fridays. We're doing some of our assessment components on Fridays. um the majority of our core instruction is not going to change. Um we we've done a lot of work that a lot of what we doing right now can carry over into a 4 day week without losing any sort of momentum. Um the other piece that was interesting again why I said it was so intriguing that Friday component is those students who need additional support get it immediately and because it's so long you have a four to five hour day that's intensive inter that we're not able to provide. We're providing intervention during the day, but that's five additional hours targeted at what those children need all of the time. So, if you're leveraging that time um and really continuing to

170support teacher collaboration, you can be really successful in this model. And again, we said collaboration is an essential part of what we do in this district right now. Um the other thing I thought was interesting was that well structured 4 day weeks can maintain or slightly test scores particularly in older grades. So more of an impact on our older grades which again is where you start to see some of those declines in state assessment data. So if we could we could help there that would be a benefit. Um the other like the last piece really is if you think about it if you have Fridays where teachers know that they are not working that day they can schedule appointments that day. they can take vacations that day. You're minimizing or reducing the number of substitute

171teachers that are needed because teachers are carefully planning. There is a reduction in absentee rate for teachers with these models. That's something that they see consistently, which means you have a certified qualified teacher in front of kids more than you might right now. Um, and we know the biggest impact on student achievement is the teacher in the classroom. Um, make it or break it for for those kids. So to me, again, that's another piece that's worth considering as well is how often and how frequently we have the best teachers in front of our kids. We have some spectacular guest teachers. Absolutely. Yes, we do. But not every not every guest teacher is spectacular. Say that honestly. Thank you for stating that. Yes, Kelsey is right. That continuity though teachers regular teacher or substitute teacher just

172th so bottom line there if you structure it well and you train teachers you offer that collaboration time you have opportunities for intervention, you will not see academic declines. My personal takeways after we fleshed out this template for you. But again, I think more week in the next five years. pushing for one or the other first. lots of people. Those are just a few. This is implementing intervention. [Music] I don't know if they're insec. Thank you for and thank you for giving us some resources and being thorough and I thought that was excellent summary there. So, thank you for taking the time to do that. Appreciate that. Um, I have a I have a question for Jane. Um, one of my concerns is a first grader, second grader having a longer day or kindergarten or

173a kindergartener. Me too. Um my experience is I my sample size is five but picking them up from school after after first grade from your perspective. That's something we had nap time in Mrs. at Miller Valley and we had we all had a little towel and we put our towel down on the ground. I think we fell asleep. I don't remember. It is something to consider. Um I know our K1 teachers do an incredible job of building in what they call brain breaks, of taking an additional recess if they need to. Um but we have a lot of kindergarteners who are currently on our campuses until at least 3:30, if not 4:30, because of clubs. So it is is doable. Um, yes, they're tired, but we also have a lot of kids who go to

174YMCA or Boys and Girls Club or things like that after school as well. Um, this would just be a little bit more structured and have an academic. Yeah, that's one of my concerns. But I think would take as Kelsey just said if I was going back to teach starting to get goosebumps there I would have to reook at the whole way I would have to do a lot of it yeah and you're very intentional with what your afternoon looks like mornings are easier it's the afternoon with those young ones so oftent times we would schedule specials in the afternoon we would put some of more light topics in the afternoon and really do your heavy academics in the morning. I think but they're absolutely and there are districts doing this for decades so close by.

175I mean and they've got kindergarteners They do things like that. So, we just this last spring kind of revamped our homework policy um with some different expectations. It wouldn't to make some even bigger adjustments there to say the less is more in those cases because they are doing so much heavy lifting. If they're at school from 7:45 to 320 I think most would land there. For me, the rigor was a big part of it. That's we discussed that's a main focus of of our school district of the board. And it went from a negative column maybe over to a positive column. Family hours and work and that was a big negative for me, but I I see some positives. Maybe moving that to the positive column. I still have um two things in my negative

176colum that I'm struggling with one is sleep. I feel like I feel like our schools probably start earlier than they should anyway. I mean, if you look at the data and you look at sleep data, the importance of sleep, you know, we're going to take away, you know, we don't get to choose when kids go to sleep and when they wake up. I guess we choose when they wake up, but we don't go to sleep. So, um, so you know, I'm still a little concerned about the early start time for that. My biggest concern is your concerns about sleep. I don't mind at all this starting at 7:45 because little kids actually look better earlier. It's the high school. Well, Mr. Neely had some thoughts about that originally, right? shortening that early bird class a

177little bit. But again, there's some adjustments that can be made there. We could swing high school differently and we could even decrease their daily hours by 10 minutes without overall losing a ton of instructional time. So, there are still some adjustments that I don't have to drag in. Well, and like Sam was saying, the later they go to school, the further out it pushes their So now your dancers are getting home at 8 n instead of seven or eight and then they have homework and then they have to get up an hour earlier to get to school earlier. You know that's just harder and I'm all Yeah. Whether you're a kid or a teacher or most parents Monday through Thursday there is some surrounding CT I I almost think that regardless we're not we're not

178doing this or anything I wouldn't even mind just even entertaining what does that look like to recruit more honestly students there's a big push right now you see the college you see the CTE people like they feel like that's these are very that's what's you ask what is their goal for their most can you can get the come out and they start welding,000 starting a kid that was in my second grade class. Yeah. So, I mean, and just really, you know, money aside, whatever. I just there's something to like But I am with you financially. We're not in a minds just I'm right now piece big piece for me. We wanted to give you something to chew on this future consideration. I'm so full. I do think the idea of looking at bond over first

179is a better approach. I think political aspect of this could really hurt us going forward if we are looking to try to get a bond over and and that doesn't say that this can't be something but maybe we just need to take that year discuss those options first if we're going forward with that get it in place and then we can come back to this or we could if it's possible to do a hybrid type thing this is a specific specific targeted approach we want to take with one school. Not not for not for anything that's built on something misconrue as oh you just want to give teachers more time or just we just don't want to make that what we have to fight on. Yeah. I you know I know last time we asked

180what's the feedback and they're asking obviously rightfully answer but there we are I'm concerned for public Anyway, it's not it's not fair, you know, but that's what's going to happen. Perception matters, you know. And one thing, Stan, you just said a few minutes ago like we're not in a dire situation where we need that. And I almost argue the opposite. Like our situation is so dire that this doesn't solve it. Like we need a much bigger solution that is more permanent and and a longer term solution. Not that a bond and override are permanent, but you know, they're a much longer term solution in the sense that yeah, we could save $400,000 potentially, but we also that's not enough. Like it's not really a drop in the bucket compared to what we actually need in

181order to really really accomplish what we want to accomplish as a school district. So, it just isn't it's just not financially enough of an impact to say, "Wow, that's going to make a big difference." The last thing I I want to bring up too is just kind of this impression. It's again, impressions that are out there is, you know, no matter all the great work that you put into this, how much positive there is with it, there's going to be the view out there that some families are going to say, "Well, I have to have my school on Fridays and that 75% that wants a four day week that's a nice to have that 25% that's a need to have and so you might have to kind of adjust your expectations and go with what

182the majority is telling you because a nice to have a need to have that's different in my I feel like you solved it well for the and the only the only reason I say that because this is going to take a lot of explanation to understand that we're going to meet your needs. It's okay. But initially they're not. I think also, you know, we need to be able to answer the teachers that really want and to explain to them that we our bigger picture is to give them more pay, more benefits, try to try to pass the override first. All of us have limited resources and they're always time and money and if we can solve the money thing first. Would you like us then to on our next agenda discussion initial discussion? Probably don't

183want to go too deeply into that tonight. We want to give ourselves lots of successful direct prepity. No, this is this is very good though. I loved it. Yes. Thank you for just an initial conceptual start asking questions that you'd like us to get data right. Well, that's a great future. So, let's do we'll put it in. I know we calendar no other recommendations alterations. I have a thought for agenda item and I don't know the agenda. I'd love to hear from staff and other board members of you know maybe each board meeting or minute presentation on why public schools. There's a lot of there's a lot of pressure on you know in our community about different options for education and just I just think it would be every got a little different perspective and

184I don't know we and maybe we could do it after we're done with the with the book we could we could add that to the agenda and that way we're not adding stacking because our meetings are longer than we all want but we're getting a lot And maybe that is why I've seen what I'm asking for something. Maybe All right. Um then moving on for future. So our next meeting is July 1st right here. So thank you all for