001Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us. Today is Thursday, February 19th, 2026, and this is a special meeting of the Litfield Elementary School District Governing Board. I hereby call this meeting to order. Our first item on the agenda will be the Pledge of Allegiance. If you could please stand and join us. Next, we're going to take a moment of silent reflection. Okay, next we are going to move on to our public comment section. I'm just going to read this little disclaimer first and then we will call our speakers up. Uh, pursuant to Arizona Revised Statutes ARS 38-431.01H, 01H. This agenda item provides an open call to the public, allowing individuals to address the governing board on any issue within the jurisdiction of the board. Items not listed on the agenda may be brought to the governing
002board's attention under this section of the agenda. Due to the Arizona Open Meeting Law, the governing board cannot discuss or take any action on items not listed on the agenda. Therefore, pursuant to ARS 38-431.01H, 1H response to public comment about matters not appearing on the agenda will be limited to individual board members who may ask staff to study the matter, respond to any criticism, or ask that the matter be put on a future agenda for further consideration and decision at a later date. Please limit your comments to no more than 3 minutes and no more than 30 minutes will be devoted to the public comment portion of the agenda. When you approach the podium, please state your name for the record. Our first speaker is going to be Elizabeth Espie. >> Can I start again?
003Does my timer start over? >> She will fix it. Can we start her timer over? Sorry, just give it a try. >> The mic wasn't working. We want to make sure everyone can hear that's watching at home. We know that's a lot of people. >> Good evening, governing board members. My name is Elizabeth Espie and I'm currently a seventh grade ELA teacher at Balento Elementary School. Hopefully, my name is somewhat familiar to you as I've written two letters in the past week raising concerns that I have regarding current budget reductions. I am passionate about education, educators, and students. And so when the newest slideshow was released this morning and slide 36 was brought to my attention, I had to speak up again. According to slide 36, an experienced teacher like myself makes over $90,000 a
004year as a base. The proposed raises and pay cut, because that's what a calendar change is, is a pay cut, um makes it appear to the board and to the public that we are more than adequately compensated as teachers. Well, those numbers are absolutely incorrect. I'd like to know where the numbers come from because I'm not sure even as a 21year seasoned teacher that I make even what a new teacher makes according to that pay scale. What I'm asking for is transparency and honesty. I feel that this slide and others from previous slideshows have been deceptive and skewed. Please take this into consideration as all stakeholders deserve to know the truth. Our next speaker will be Elizabeth Warren. Hello. Thank you members of the governing board. I'm Elizabeth Warren and I am also a teacher
005at Melodto. I've been teaching for 20 years with 17 of those years here in Lichfield. I love our district. I absolutely love teaching. I love coming to work every single day. I also want you to know that I was a student adviser for two years at Western Sky. Um, and I have to say the reason I went back to the classroom was because the pay did not match the responsibility and the thought of reducing pay for a student adviser is just astonishing to me. It cannot happen. Um, you cannot take a student adviser away from a middle school either. They are an intricral part of that school. Protecting teacher salaries and maintaining manageable class sizes must also be prioritized. Competitive compensation is essential for recruiting and retaining highquality educators and reasonable class sizes are critical
006to student achievement. Individualized attention and overall school climate. With that in mind, I respectfully suggest examining the district redundancies before making reductions at any school level. I did send a letter to each board member where I calculated a cost savings of over $600,000 by reducing the number of positions in district office alone. While these may not be the exact reductions you find best fit the needs of our district, I beg that you look at the structure and dollar amount being spent on district personnel before making cuts at the schools. I would also like to add that in a time of budget cuts, we should not be purchasing new curriculum, both the new history curriculum and leader and me are programs that can wait until it is financially responsible. Next, I would like to address my
007concerns of how this has all been handled by the district. First, this budget deficit should have been known about long ago. We knew that ESSER funds were going to run out and this should have been addressed at every meeting from the beginning of the year, not just brought up the last week of January. Schools need staffing numbers early to compete with nearby districts, and these types of holds put us at a disadvantage. Second, many of the proposed budget cuts are deceiving. By cutting contract days for 12-month employees, I believe would also cut the contract days by two for certified teachers. this would lower our pay. Yet, no one is addressing that. Everyone knows every teacher will still be in their classroom working on that Friday before school starts, and that is just not fair to
008us to work for free. Lastly, the survey that was sent out was deceiving. I myself read the survey wrong and answered it in the opposite direction of my teammates, even though we want the very same things. I emailed the district asking them to clarify the survey and they said it was too late to do so. I believe the data from the 21 ranked items at the bottom of the survey are now irrelevant. There is no way to know if someone wanted to keep the 2% raise, lose the 2% raise. It simply said 2% raise. >> I'm sorry, your time is up. >> Thank you. Our last speaker is going to be Marcia Hail. Hello. Good afternoon. I am uh well, good afternoon. This is the first time I do one of these talks so or
009speeches. So, where is the timer? The timer. Okay, here we go. I am the EL teacher at El Thomas Heg Troy Gilbert. I am worried about our current budget status. I am very concerned about the mentioned teacher cuts for everybody especially for the EL program that is the English language development. I have been in the ELD program for five years and I have seen the program grow extensively. Our director, Mrs. Larsson goes above and beyond with the growth and development of the program and I truly feel that our EL team gets better every year. We work so hard. I decided to come up here and speak because I would like to let you know that I understand our current budget situation but to please be careful on how you decrease staff particularly for students that
010are known to have high needs in the English language. EL students normally come from low soioeconomic families, families adapting to change in cultures and families whose children need intensive English instruction. Our EEL students are hardworking, smart, adaptable. Most are US citizens and EEL students count for various points for the letter grade of their schools. We want to keep our enrollment or increase it. You said that last on the last meeting. Some students come to us from charter schools and some of these students are e students. They love our program so much that families decides to they they decide to stay here and not go back to the charter schools. Our days are full with EL instruction minutes. We work closely with other intervention services. We participate in IEPs, whole child MTSS meetings. We work and
011co-plan with the main room teachers. We advocate for students. We work with audits. We tutor after school. We help schools with the AASA testing. And we work closely with families and students. We provide instructional services and minutes in between reading or resource specialists, whatever the schedule allows us. We help families find resources outside the school like free internet, furniture, food, vision, and dental service. And if we are bilingual like myself, we help the school and families communicate with each other. We do that and more in a full-time position and I'm very concerned that some of these services will not be fulfilled in a part-time position. I also notice that the translation program will be cut so bilingual teachers and staff will be needed even more in the schools all our schools. I thank you for
012listening to me and I understand that we have a smaller budget. I hope you take into consideration all your information and not disregard the high needs of all our student not just e students all our students and eel students their parents and their communities. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. Okay, we are going to move on to our only discussion item tonight which is going to be the fiscal year 2627 budget. This will be led by CFO vaugh and executive director Satderfield. >> Madame President, if you don't mind, I'd like to just uh start us as we >> Dr. Davidson will get us started. >> Thank you. as we get moving members of the board community that are in the house tonight or listening. Um, we meet again in regards to budget and budget
013conversation and and certainly I've shared my voice over our last many meetings around uh how I feel about it and how important the decisions we make are. So, thank you for your willingness to uh to help us make those decisions, but also to listen to the voice of our our people. So, um, want to say thank you as well as we begin to those that chose to email us, um, to those that included me as well in the in the emails because it's very important that I, um, hear from our team, not just for those that chose to take the survey. Uh, despite what we hear, maybe it wasn't as good as we had hoped, but, uh, we certainly do value the voice of our people. Um, I wanted to highlight just some some key
014things because the presentation tonight is more robust than it was the last time we met. Um, a lot of things continue to change and morph. Um uh so there's some key things that that are guiding the conversation um as we continue to move forward. One is our strategic plan. And so I want the the team our governing board to know and for those that are paying close attention that the material that you see in the presentations revolves around our mission of student success. Um that that is at the crux of our conversation. Um, we also know though because we're talking about resources, we're talking about our people, the relationship relationships. And so, um, I guess that's another, you know, very very much a, um, keystone to this work. We know people are impacted. Um, we
015know that it's difficult. Um, and, you know, to to use some of the terms that we heard tonight, all the work that we and the and the work that Michael and Sandy and team members have done impact all of us. all of us. And I'm talking about even students really. If we're talking about cuts, we know that those budgetary cuts trickle down into our kids. We get that. We know that to be true. Um we talked about and it was mentioned this evening our organizational chart, our district leadership organizational chart. Those those are things we have to look at and think about efficiencies. Um even even at this level, people don't think that's the case, but I'm I'm highlighting tonight that that is the case. Um, some other words that we've been using that I've
016been thinking about as we've been going through this work that I think are impactful to tonight. Um, uh, a term is self-preservation. I think often when you talk about change and you talk about things that need to occur, it's very easy to look internal at your that your particular environment, your lane that you're in. And I don't think that's uncommon. And some of the emails I've seen are very much focused how does this change impact me? I get that. But for in order for us to move forward, we have to evolve and get beyond our lane and try to think as big as possible. Um, another term that uh that we've been using in this conversation is around what is it we want and what are those things we need. Sometimes there's a disconnect there.
017Um because I think it's safe to say we've had great success. Um and and we all want to keep or in some cases I've heard from people we need to add other things and that's that's great. I wish we could. We're just not at a place where we can. And so tonight I think you'll see in the presentation some additional work around what do we want and what do we need to still maintain student success? And lastly, and I I'll just end on this is as we there's there's a level of discomfort here, and there will be uh we're we're willing to breathe that in and and help anybody that struggles with any changes we make. Um but I I've shared before, I don't want to be on the news as a school district for
018not being able to maintain a balanced budget. I don't want the state to come in and say, "Oh, Lichfield Elementary School District, you're now no longer in charge of your budget or your staff or your programming or your curriculum, whatever that may be." I want us to be responsible and make some hard choices at some point in time that moves us into a positive future. So, thank you again for your time and I will be quiet and turn it over to Mr. Vaughn. >> Before Mr. Vaughn starts though, I do want to make sure that we tonight as a board, we're going to be discussing this. We're going to take all the time we need, but it's very important to me that we are not going in circles. So, um I want us to just
019be cognizant of that and we're going to I know that Mr. Von over here has stop points for us to kind of ask questions and discuss. So, we'll stop at those points. But, I just want to make sure we keep moving in this conversation because I know that this is all difficult stuff that we have to talk about and hard decisions we have to make. But, it's just very important to me that we keep moving forward and make decisions that we can make. And if we need to pause on something because we're not coming to consensus and come back to it, then we can do that. So, Mr. Vaughn. >> All right. Madame President, members of the governing board, Superintendent Davidson, colleagues, and community, thank you for joining us tonight to discuss uh potential options
020being considered for the district's 2026 2027 budget year. I don't think honestly that I can state it any better than Dr. Davidson did how uh tonight's discussion and presentation uh aligns with our strategic plan. Uh truly um the decisions we make tonight and every time we meet are incredibly important to um our students, our staff, and everything we do here at Lichfield. Before we jump deep into the presentation though, we'd like to share that many of the slides in tonight's presentation are the same as we presented at last governing board meeting. I'll begin by going through the presentation and sharing the new information. We'll then spend some time at the end and allow for discussion around items that uh have not changed from the prior discussion just in case there's any of those items that
021we do uh that we do feel are pertinent to the decisions we're trying to make tonight. That's why in the presentation you'll see that I have a previous slides uh section. I don't intend to talk about those unless uh the group decides we we need to. We'd like to begin by providing some contextual budget forecasts. These will look familiar. Um they're in the same format that we always look at this information in. We'll show two versions of the forecast. one that considers historical special education revenue growth continuing and one that does not due to the challenges we experienced earlier in the year around special education revenues. In either case, we anticipate ending this year uh at this time overspending M revenues by 3.2 million. If we take into account anticipated special education revenue growth, we
022anticipate that growing to 4.2 million for next year. This slide shows that without special education revenue growth, we will be deeply spending down reserves in 2026 2027 without implementing some changes in spending or revenue. We do not uh if we do not account for historical trends in special education revenue growth, the district would be overspending M revenues by 5.4 4 million uh in 2026 2027. This slide shows where our reserves would be under this scenario, very close to the very bottom of our reserve targets set in policy. Based on these projections, we believe we should reasonably be targeting 4.5 to 5.5 million of reductions um within the next uh period of time. These next two slides explore the question of could we reduce expenses by our target amounts by not including changes to the raise
023class size andor certified staffing. To help answer that question, we've summarized all other reductions we've discussed so far. This slide begins with the subtotal from the previous slide and continues. Uh the list was simply just too long to include all on one slide. In total, if we do not include any class size, certified staffing, or raise changes, we've identified a bit over $3 million of reductions. This approaches but does not fully address the overspending we expect to see this year. In short, it does appear that we'll need to consider changes in some combination of class size raises or certified staffing before we move on. Uh are there questions around this contextual information? because all I was trying to do with these slides was to provide some context for our discussion. >> Did you have any
024questions, Miss Marian? >> Yes. Okay. So, I really just want to recap why we're having this conversation, which is what your effort was in these four slides. So, when did you first bring to our attention the double whammy that we got this year, which is declining enrollment and increased special ed expenses? When was that first brought up in a board meeting to us? >> Sure. We always begin our budget conversations in November um immediately following us closing out the prior fiscal year which occurs uh through the annual financial report uh and is due by October 15th. So we always start our budget process as soon as humanly possible uh in November. And that conversation always uh revolves around in November uh the context of the budget season that we have ahead of us. The goal
025of of that discussion with the governing board because it is all discussion at that point is really around setting our our eyes on do we need to be uh increasing our supports to schools and programs and we have the resources to do that. uh do we need to hold steady because where we are makes good sense and we have the ability to hold steady or sadly in the situation that we're in do we need to be looking at at reductions and so that conversation as normal and as typical occurred uh in November >> as I remember well but I think a lot of people either weren't paying attention uh which is not surprising normally our conversations go pretty steady state and so we don't have to then come and have these additional lengthy conversations about
026how we're going to manage cuts. So what these slides are saying is if we don't make changes we will be overspending and making unwise financial decisions. And this is something that due to the system that is set up for our budgeting is really impossible to know super far in advance because we make assumptions every year to create our next year's budget. A lot of it's based on what's happening in the current year. We had no idea that our enrollment would differ. It usually differs some, but often it differs in a positive way, which we have taken advantage of. Um, we also have no way of knowing other than now, of course, we're estimating an increase and we're looking at both sides of that if sped stays where it's at versus sped increasing. Um, so we're
027trying to look at those things, but we don't have full control over where the budget, the actual is going to turn out compared to the budget. So, as you can see on these slides that CFO von has provided, we are already overspending by over $3 million this year. We don't have enough agility and a flexibility in the way that we staff. Again, that's how the system works. We do a lot of contracts and all of that. We want to have a steady state for our employees, but we don't have enough agility and flexibility to be able to change the game enough during the school year to change that number. So, that's why we have to make those changes now in order to impact the next school year. I just want to make sure that that's
028really clear because we've gotten a lot of feedback that people think this is a rushed decision and it is rushed information. But we've been talking about this for months and we have known this is coming. None of us want to be doing this, but this is the situation that we're in. And that is what we have been elected to do is determine how the budget is allocated and how it is spent. That is one of the top three things that we do as a board. So we don't want to talk about cuts. We don't like to talk about cuts, but we do understand that that has to happen. And the reason that has to happen is because we do not want to get into dire financial situation. If we can make the cuts now, we
029are hopeful that we will be in a better situation going forward and hopefully a steady state. If we can get enrollment to increase, we can make more positive changes as well. >> That's all I have on that. >> I wanted to piggyback on that really quick. Uh Mr. Von, can you tell us when you first started coming to us with uh long-term budget things because not just this last November, we have been talking about losing ESSER funds for years. We've been talking about the direction we're headed for years. So, can you tell us when you first brought us like the where we'll be in three, five, 10 year? >> Sure. So, uh the entire time I've been in Lichfield, um hold on, I'm just trying to get back to this slide. Um this this slide,
030um for tonight's purposes only shows this year and next year. Typically when we have that conversation in November, it looks several years out and so we knew this was coming and we talked about that. I remember not this past November but the November before um we talked about we had pretty healthy discussion around do we want to cut for next year or do we want to try to hold steady again? And we as a collective decided that that at that time it we had the resources to hold steady. We knew that budget cuts were on the horizon, but we we thought it might be best for our system to hold off one more year. But we've been looking at long-term forecasts. Uh I'm in my fourth year and that entire time we've been having conversations
031about what the long-term um projections look like. Hopefully that answers your question. >> That does. Thank you. Um Mr. Mike, did you have any questions at this first part? >> I don't have anything additional from what we've already covered right now. Thanks, >> Mr. Owens. >> Yeah, I don't have any questions. I just on this particular slide or just in general looking at our budget, the thing that's the most frustrating is that you know we are an organization that receives money based on our student population. That's how we get funded. Unlike a company where we can go and say, "Hey, we need to increase revenue so we have more money to spend." Unfortunately, we don't have that opportunity. We are limited to our student population. And so unless we can find a way to increase
032that, we are left with what we are um dealing with currently. And so um I know I mean just like we're looking at 2027 already now, you know, last year it was 2025, 2026. And so these numbers have been kind of staring us down for a while. And now unfortunately this is the time to where the rubber meets the road and we've got to make these decisions. Can I just add one more thing? Yes. >> Um, so when we had the conversation before about knowing that we could and possibly should make budget cuts, we decided not to do that because we had the health of our reserves and rainy day funds. And so again, just reiterate what CFO Vaughn said, we have known this is coming, especially with the elimination of the ESR funds. And
033we said we want to do what is in the best interest of student success. And we all believe having all of these amazing wonderful supports that we have had is indeed in the best interest of student success. But we can no longer sustain that with a healthy reserve. And so that is why those decisions are being made now and need to be made now. >> We're ready to move on. >> All right. Thank you. I do want to pause and share that we have continued to examine the district office and department budgets and staffing to identify district level reductions. We have identified staffing reductions in almost every department made up of more than two people that we're prepared to propose. I did want to share that the state level look we have at our administrative
034spending conducted by the Arizona Auditor General's office each year. Um prior to any district level reductions that were suggesting, the auditor general has found that Lichfield Elementary administrative spending is very low and and that's what you see at the bottom of the slide. While the team can stand behind these reductions as ones that make sense and will work, it will be very difficult in future years to continue to find reductions at the district level. We've we already run a lean administrative team compared compared to peer districts. I just want to go back a slide because this slide truly shows um how those district level uh cut figures have morphed during this budget conversation. So, what this is showing is that department M budget reductions um could save us 27,470. Department staffing reductions a little bit
035over half a million. Um department stipend reductions almost 11,000 and then the 12 month uh calendar change of 102,000. Can I have one question here? Uh, just going back to that slide, I just wanted to with this department staffing reductions, the 546,000, that's uh that's changed dramatically since the prior um presentation we had. >> It was about $80,000 in the prior presentation. And when I say that uh this team has been doing a lot of deep work around finding cuts in every department of the district, um that change is the result of of that work. >> So from 80 80,000 to $546,000. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And then also the stipens were not there prior either. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. it. Those increases in reductions are slightly offset by uh uh you might
036recall that the calendar change uh proposal was twice uh what that 102 is, but we'll talk later in the presentation about why we're modifying that recommendation. and it has to do um with how it interacts with uh raises and the uh ultimate outcome for employee compensation, but we'll talk about that a little bit more later. >> Um can I also just add I think this might be an appropriate time to do that. Um, you know, I asked at the last meeting for the district office to dig deep and that 84,000 I think it was 84,000 wasn't enough. And I am really glad that you took that to heart and I know this is challenging and difficult. But I think some of the feedback that we've gotten has been even more extreme than before the last
037meeting in the us versus them in the targeting of it seems specific potential district employees. Um that I don't think people understand um just like I don't understand all the inner workings of the school staff. I don't understand all the inner workings of all the different departments. But I do trust that you know what you need and and what is working and that our principles and school staff know what they need and what is working. Um so I'm just really glad that this shows it's not an us versus them. Everyone is having to dig deep and make decisions that they don't want to make. And I hope that if everyone at the campus level can see that and perhaps let a little bit go of the elitist feedback or thoughts around the district office. Um
038because that's not helpful to anyone. We're on the same team. Like we're all in this together, which sounds extremely cliched. Um but in this case in Lynchfield, I think it's really true. And I don't want this uh these cuts to come between that culture that Dr. Davidson and the team have worked so hard to try to build. Um that's all on that. The district level and department reductions identified to date total $687,000, including calendar reductions, staff reductions, stipen reductions, and district department Mudget reductions. We'll continue to examine district level items to see if we can continue to bolster this figure as we work to prepare uh for bringing our budget process to conclusion on March 5th. Michael, can I just share real quick per that last slide, there's a comment there around um collapsing positions
039and working with our individuals. And I think to Miss Moran's point, this just a comment that needs to be made in that you don't see the fine detail to that $600 something thousand because we're dealing with actual people. the proposed cuts that we had to any type of teaching staff uh based on class size change or what have you was simply through attrition and we know that to be true. That was our plan. If you remember a few weeks back it was around we're trying to do everything we can to maintain our workforce not to jeopardize that because deep down inside 600 plus thousand dollars of change to people equates to a different type of service that is provided to the schools that we serve. And so I just want to make certain as a
040board we understand we're talking about people names, whites of eyes, whatever you want to call it. And so that it is very impactful. We've continued to work with leadership in our ELD program around uh the staffing that makes the most sense for our program. In further examination, we found that it may be best to ease into changes in the staffing of the program. And so, we're now proposing to only consider the change in the classified staff. We previously discussed ELD specialists, the certified position that provide English language development instruction instructional minutes would remain unchanged, but the threshold where an instructional assistant is provided to support that certified staff member would adjust. While this is a smaller savings than previously discussed, it does still provide $90,000 of savings and allows us to examine the impact of
041the change for future consideration. >> Can I say something here? >> This is going to make me a bad guy. Um, but it went from us saving $188,000 to $90,000 with this new proposal that you have. And um I feel like we were kind of all consensus wise on board with this change because of the fact for me anyways I'm having a hard time understanding how it is to use the word somebody said earlier equitable for a campus that has 60 kids that are needing EL services to get the one person and then there's a campus that might have 16 kids and they get to have a whole person. So, I need somebody to explain to me why we're doing this change because it's it's cut the savings drastically and it seems still not fair
042to like that doesn't seem like a fair thing and I know we've heard from a lot of people and I understand that this is a very important program and they have things that they have to do. Um, but it seems like we're not concerned about it not being fair to the teacher that has 60 kids versus the teacher that only has 16. So, if somebody could tell me why we've switched to this, I would appreciate it. >> Thank you for that question. So, we had the opportunity to meet with Director Larson earlier this week and uh we looked at the ARS code for what is required. Um it is different than resource where you can as long as the student is getting services and it is overseen by a special education teacher. It can also
043be an instructional aid in EL um the aid actually does not count for any service minutes. It has to be somebody with an SEI endorsement. So when we talked through that um what we what what we learned during that meeting is because of the standards um the EL specialists it's not really about the numbers that they serve it's about the grade levels that they serve and so what was explained to us was kindergarten has certain standards first grade has certain standards they cannot be together they have to be separate and it is required for 60 minutes per day for those students uh second and third can be together because the standards are very similar uh fourth and fifth can be together. So when we were trying to cut that to a 0.5 um it was
044not going to be effective because it was still going to require that teacher to work 4 hours plus they needed their planning time. Um so instead what we looked at doing was um there was a a technician at the district level who was supporting some of that work. And so we're looking at can those teachers help support some of that work. >> So are you saying that it's not possible to do the other option or we think it might actually still be possible? >> That's a great question. I did have a principal reach out. They looked at the schedule and um it looked for one two schools that would be combining to a K8 model. It looked like that could work. they were worried about the sustainability of the program long term. Um the other
045program that was more difficult to figure out how to support because there wasn't another campus. However, there is one student at White Tanks that uh does need those services. So, um the other idea was that that person could support White Tanks. >> I don't know if that answered your question. I I mean kind of I I I guess because I just feel like again this is like $98,000 that we're spending because we can't figure it out for one school when we're talking about potentially cutting our certified support staff. All schools will be impacted by that, right? So, um I just I would prefer us to see if we could figure out how to make that work like we talked about before because again, and I could be wrong, but it felt like everybody kind of
046was fine with that. And so this was surprising to me when I saw this in our presentation, but if anybody else had feedback on this, >> um, I do. Real quick, this is this is an example that I keep kind of thinking about with a lot of these cuts is how just how disproportionate they impact certain individuals. And you talked about this, Dr. Davidson is the um you know everybody we've gotten emails so many emails. I've probably gotten more emails this last two weeks than I have the last three years. And I love it because it gives me the feedback that I need to be up here and make these decisions. But it's one email will say do this, don't do that. The next email will literally say the exact opposite >> because it's all
047from that individual's point of reference. And so when I've been looking at all these decisions and all these levers that we have to pull, I always consider first and foremost its impact to students specifically, but also this whole premise or concept of, you know, what is equity? How are we going to make sure that we don't disproportionately impact one group of of um teachers because the decision that we're making really can only impact them versus some people who might not feel any impact from this. And that's the hardest part that I have when we do talk about knowing people's names and faces behind all these decisions that we have to make. And so this is an example where I agree with President Zida and how is it that we how can we look at this
048as more of a per school decision versus just a district-wide but at the same time if it's not possible then that's that's a sad reality unfortunately. Can I speak to that just briefly? Um, one thing that we have to to be mindful of and its origins really are in uh federal requirements around grant funding. uh is our staffing really has to be driven by staffing standards because there's several uh tests we have to be able to pass that show that uh our staffing pattern does not uh discriminate one way or another. And so that's why in the prior slide or even in uh or related to this or even in the next or even in this version of the slide in either case what you see displayed in front of you is that staffing standard.
049It it's to allow us to demonstrate that it is a systemwide approach. I'm not saying that we can't develop a staffing standard that addresses the problems at individual schools. That's one of the reasons when you look at our certified staffing or even our classified staffing, you see that it's broken up between givens and choice. Um because it's a way to have a standard that still allows you to address needs at individual campus sites. Um, so I just wanted to to share some of that background on why you'll always see Sandy and I in particular talking about staffing standards because if you start doing uh individual school uh related items in a way that isn't broadly uh applied across the system. uh you can run up against uh issues in some of those federal uh statutes
050that we have to follow. But I'm not saying that that a standard could not be designed uh that that would address that concern. It's just that it would have to be done in in a structure somewhat like that. Thank you, >> Miss Adam. I may interject as well, please. Um thank you for your comments. I think the other thing that I would add uh about this particular conversation and and those that you um have seen inside our special ed education department knowing that the um special education this the way in which we serve our students and the budget that is connected that we knew going into this year as it's now one of my goals to work with that team alongside Miss Benjamin and Mr. coin and so forth to try to look at programming
051as well as the budgetary needs. Um, we didn't spend a lot of time really digging deep with director Larson on the programming. We wanted to make certain that we were simply able to meet the demands of the law right now. And so that's why you see this kind of modified version tonight. Um, without a doubt, it's something we can continue to talk about. Um but that's um that is another thing um President Zida that is slightly different. We we just simply didn't ask for at this time changes to programming. >> Miss Moran, did you have any comments? >> No, I would just say, you know, I'm I'm happy with the proposed approach of the saving 90,000 because I'm not an all or nothing person. So I, as I've stated in the last meeting, and I'll
052state it again tonight, I think inching our way towards these changes is probably the healthiest and um most easily tolerated way to do that. I think in every one of these topics, there are additional things to look at if and when we need to make additional cuts. So I mean, this is not by any means comprehensive. And so next year we're going to have nowhere to go because Lord help us if that's where we end up. Um but yeah, I'm fine with the current approach. Um myself, >> Mr. Mike. >> Yeah, I'm the I'm kind of the same with with that piece as far as inching our way towards, you know, towards our options. Um when President Zimman was talking about, you know, hey, why, you know, we were originally at that other number before,
053now it's cut back and I piqu my interest. I'm like, oh, okay, why, you know, why is that something we kind of don't address? But as we're processing and going, okay, where can we how do we take these cuts and balancing all the other balls in the air with the with the federal aspects of it and the budget budget aspects of it? I mean, I I go back and say, um, this seems like a reasonable recommendation from the from administration and that also it seems like it's just not an all or nothing piece with it. So, um, if we're comparing any of these to a perfect scenario, then they all stink. But, um, but I think, you know, this I, you know, I think this this scenario makes, uh, the most sense uh, sense to
054me. Okay, you can go on. >> At our last board meeting, we also discussed minimum wage and the potential need to address the district's minimum wage to stay in compliance with future changes in minimum wage. Each year, Arizona's minimum wage increases by the annual change in the consumer price index, a measure of inflation. For example, for calendar year, and that is uh an important note, minimum wage is set on calendar year despite all of our budgeting uh being done on a fiscal year. Uh for example, for calendar year 2025, the minimum wage was 1470. On January 2026, the minimum wage increased to 1515. If that same change uh occurs, the minimum wage in calendar year uh 2027 will be 1561. Uh the district's current minimum wage is 1545. Based on our work with the compensation
055study, an adjustment to the district's minimum wage uh to 1573 would be appropriate and should cover us for staying above the minimum wage for the 2027 calendar year unless there's nearly 4% inflation um over the course of the year. If we implement this change for next fiscal year to avoid mid-year compensation changes for these employees and mid-year placement chart changes, it will cost an estimated $11,000 above the cost of a 2% raise. I'll pause for discussion on this one. >> Did every anybody have any comments about this part? Miss Moran, Mr. Mike, >> Mr. Owens? Oh, okay. Awesome. We're good. >> All right. Before we begin talking about class sizes, I wanted to share that the dollar figures have changed since our last discussion. This is because I've worked with our team to update the
056roll forward of student counts from this year to next year. We did this for two primary reasons. One was to allow the governing board to see how the impact changes uh the impact of how changes in student enrollment forecasts can change staffing which is one of the items we've previously discussed. Uh the second reason was to provide an updated more current uh numbers for what will be our staffing staffing process for next year. We've reran the two options that we've previously discussed with the updated student roll forward and we also have provided a new option that we believe speaks directly to some of the feedback we've had. We will go through each class size option we're presenting tonight including the new option which demonstrates a possibility of no change in class size but tightening of
057staffing practices. option one from last time, which was increasing target class sizes for every grade by one, but keeping the target for additional support the same, as well as option two from last time, which was increasing target uh class size by two in each grade but kindergarten and allowing a one student increase in the target for additional supports. This slide details what our staffing will look like at a high level if we do not change class size or staffing practice. You can see we still anticipate a savings from no change due to changes in our enrollment. This slide operates the same as those that we looked at last meeting. The first two columns show the class-siz target and a target for additional support. The next two columns show what is currently the case for comparison.
058The last three columns allow us to look at the outcome of applying the standard. Anticipated average uh is class size in that grade across the district. The beginning of the year largest class size shows the largest average class size in that grade in a school across the district at the beginning of the year. And the last column shows our current class size target as a point of comparison. Our current staffing practice is to provide additional staffing for the uh next year if average class size at this point uh is 1.5 students higher than the class target. Which is why the highest beginning of the year largest class size is in third grade if you look at the third grade row is 1.3 students higher than the target class size. That's because the model once it
059hits 1.5 adds a teacher. As we uh as we'll see and look at some of the other options, this staffing practice of only allowing classes to start or be staffed at 1.5 students above the target at the beginning of the year has a significant impact on staffing. This new option does not change class size, but does change our staffing practice related to how high within the range of acceptable class sizes we allow a grade to start. Whereas our current practice is 1.5 above board approved class size, this option moves it to 2.5. Again, you can see this most clearly demonstrated in third grade, where the beginning of the year largest class size is now 2.3 higher than the target class size. Taking this approach actually has the exact same impact on staff as option one,
060but does not require a change in the district's target cloth sizes. This new option is truly a tightening of our implementation of the current staffing standard as opposed to a change in the staffing standard. I'd like to pause here for questions uh before we go on to the other options. Just to make sure that we can address any questions on how the slides are structured that you might have. >> Did anyone have comments? Miss Moran? >> Um yeah, I will comment on the new option. So, the new option came about from a conversation that CFO Bon and I had because when we looked at the option one and option two, the anticipated averages were still below what our class sizes would be even with with moving the class sizes higher. And so I said, is
061there some way that we can tighten our practices to get closer to our maximum class size without actually changing the class size and then we came to the um you know conclusion that possibly there was a way to do that. So, it sounds to me like you're saying we can change our practice of when we add another teacher from 1.5 being the trigger to 2.5 being the trigger and still have the average class sizes that we are or very close to the average class sizes that we are experiencing today. >> Yes. And actually this option and the option one from the prior board meeting and the option one we'll talk about in a second. One of the things you'll notice is the numbers on the slides are identical. Uh and that's not accidental. Um the
062two options uh result in identical staffing. It's just a change in the application of the standard and how uh all the math kind of works out to getting you there. But it it truly uh either approach this approach or option one uh in this case result in identical staffing but actually will always uh result in identical staffing. >> Mr. mics. >> I don't have anything any additional questions on this to understand. >> Mr. Owens, just on this first part because we still have more class size stuff to talk about, but do you have any questions on this one? >> So, what just so I'm clear, so if if a grade at a school hits a number, we add a new teacher and we break up the class. >> So, I think it's important that I
063spend a little bit of time on on this. So, we've talked this whole time that our uh additional support target is three uh students above the class size. And you see that still reflected on on the slide in front of us. Uh that's that second well, it's technically the third column, but the second column of of numbers. Um and that is true and is how we work uh once the school year begins. Um, but the whole time I've been with Lichfield, there's been a concern about staffing uh classes to start the year higher than board approved class size. And so when we set the staffing for the next year, we've always used a depending on how you're looking at it, tighter or looser approach. Looser approach in the sense of it ends up with more
064staffing. tighter in the sense of you're you're more tightly focusing on that uh target class size uh of 1.5. And so when we give the initial staffing uh to the sites uh that 1.5 has always been in in effect and then once the school year starts it's three. the the real change in this new option is moving that initial staffing from a 1.5 to a 2.5 which is still to uh the point of the board uh members um it still keeps us within our our range of acceptable class sizes. >> I don't know for three board meetings I've had trouble with these slides. Um I don't just I don't know if my brain works this way because I understand we don't have 75 students, right? Um >> yeah, >> this to me again and why
065I asked for it multiple times, which is fine that I don't have it. It's fine. I get it. It might be difficult to see it at a per, you know, like a per grade level breakdown per school type. That's how I would see it, right? And so for me, um if this works, it works. If you have a school and their a fourth grade class is overpop populated um to that number where they need a new teacher, right? If they get if two class sizes do that, will they also get a new class a new teacher? >> So, we don't uh look at these figures on a classroom by classroom basis. we look at at a grade level basis. So, um I'll just use kindergarten because the numbers are simpler. Um let's say you have
066a kindergarten team of four uh teachers. Um at a class-siz target of 25, that grade level is full at four time 25, 100 students. uh three students above uh would be 112 students for the grade level. So the point at which historically we would provide a new teacher during the year is 112. >> Yeah. No, I get that. Okay. Um, so for example, if a fifth grade class size um at a school was over the cap by 12 students um and they were told that they do not qualify for an aid um because their fourth grade is over staffed. >> What does that mean? >> So there are instances where we provide principles with discretion over staffing at their sites. And so, uh, in that particular instance, uh, we provided that leader the opportunity to
067shift a teacher because that campus is appropriately staffed. Um, there just is one too many teachers in fourth grade and a one too few teachers in fifth grade. They, uh, chose not to make that movement. Did anyone else have questions just on this first part? >> Okay, >> Mr. Wong, we're good to move on. >> All right. I think it's important as we discuss targets for additional support as it relates to class sizes to talk about what the district's current procedure says about additional supports. This slide shows um that procedure with a slight modification. I've bolded and italicized the modification just so that we don't get confused about what is presently in place versus um what what we're going to talk about tonight. Um, our current procedure says that additional supports may look like an
068additional teachers aid increase in 8 hours or classified choice. As you might um hear me say, eight hours is a is a old um verbiage that we would use for classified choice, reassigning students to a different teacher, adding a teacher, creating a mixed grade classroom, or other supports is deemed appropriate. This listing since I've been in Lichfield has been viewed as a menu of options. Um, however, on reflecting on this list, it's also in the order of least disruptive to students to most disruptive to students. Adding a teacher and splitting classes or even reassigning students to a different teacher with a smaller class size are significantly disruptive to those moved students. By following this procedure as an ordered priority as opposed to a menu of options where we jump right to adding a teacher has
069the potential to be less disruptive to our students and potentially provide a cost savings as well. At our last board meeting, we had discussion around the ability to compensate teachers with large class sizes more. We've developed a potential stipen that would allow us to do just that. We would propose an excess class size stipent of $1,200 for teachers teaching in a grade level that has hit the target for extra support as one of uh one of the additional support options by having the stipen be by semester. This aligns well with the concept of a new teacher starting at the semester break if needed, but also provides teacher teams the ability to elect with their principal the option of receiving additional compensation as opposed to other supports that may require adding additional staff. This may become
070an important consideration as we try to tighten our implementation of our staffing standards as more need for additional supports may arise mid year. I'd like to pause for questions on the concept of an excess class stipen or generally um what the additional supports may mean. >> I love this idea and I have a feeling that our teachers would suddenly be much more okay with extra students. I could be wrong, but I think that if we're going to have that be a monetary benefit to them that I think they would appreciate that. Miss Marian, >> yeah, I can't say that I love this idea, but I do think that it is a a decent option. What I do want to clarify is generally a problem like this where we would have a teacher getting an excess
071class size stipen would be a shortterm just for that year. Correct? Because then when we do the staffing for that grade rolling up to the next year, we would add the teacher because we're at that 2.5 over. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. So all of this, this is not anything that would be potentially long-term in any grades at any schools. It would be the fix for that year to get us through that year and then we would staff appropriately the next year >> and e even potentially uh for the semester, right? That's why we that's why we stated >> uh the stipen is an amount per semester. >> Okay? because a couple of different things could happen, right? We we always have fluctuation in in student population. So, it's possible that that the problem self-corrects itself
072from that way. I honestly hope not because that means we're we're losing students. Um but the other thing is the teacher team could decide, you know what, we thought we could do this and it's not going to work. And if if that's the case, then to to my concept of using this as an ordered priority list, then well then you're moving on to an instructional assistant to provide that additional support. But it but if we move on to an instructional assistant, we wouldn't then also provide that stipend because additional supports have been provided in a different way. >> Okay? And all of these options are basically determined which which option is decided is determined by the principle. >> That has presently been the practice and uh has largely resulted in us jumping to what's very
073near the bottom which is adding a teacher. Which is why in my studying of this procedure, uh it was striking to me that there probably was a lot of thought um in how this is ordered because it became pretty clear to me uh after studying it that there that it really was in the order of uh least disruptive to to most disruptive. And so, um, we could move to, um, we first, uh, offer to see if the excess class stipen is agreeable to the teacher team. If it's not, then we moved to, uh, an instructional aid. Um, if for whatever reason that doesn't work, then we we move down the line. uh as opposed to doing what happens very frequently which is we jump straight to uh adding a teacher midyear which really can be
074problematic for a lot of reasons. Um they can be difficult to find midyear because of how uh staffing in school districts work. Most teachers are already under contract. But also, if you think about what's going to occur in that grade level for those students, uh you really are talking about splitting them uh and removing them from the teacher they've grown to know. >> Yes, that happened to my children more than once. Um which we lived through it. It was fine and we ended up with some great teachers. But um I can get behind this because it really is a solution to a temporary problem that we will then solve when given the opportunity in the next school year. So I I think this is um in the best interest of student success. >> Mr. Um,
075yeah, I like this as an option just because I mean it's February and we're trying to guess what the numbers are going to be in some fourth grade class in some specific school pulling from a specific area and you know it's well stat you know that's why we're talking about these things and so I I like this because it gives that option at the site level to have a discussion of going, "Oh, here's one more thing that we can use and discuss. Is it a perfect thing?" No. Is it is it just one more, you know, thing to have in the belt? Yeah, that's I think it's um I think it's great. I like the shortterm piece of it because we don't want to get into this habit of overloading classes because we all you
076know we all can agree on what eventually class size can do for student success but having it for those temporary pieces um are great and you know I I mean I've come from the high school before too where people would take on sixfifths contracts you know giving up preps to do it and and uh you talked about as far as whether something becomes overwhelming or not same thing sometimes it was just too much uh for that and having to figure out when to you know when that changes. But um as far as trying to figure out the moving and the shaking of kids throughout the year too, not only are we trying to guess what the numbers are going to be in that specific class, but then we're trying to figure out how they're going
077to hold throughout the year. You know, you know the es and flows for it. So, um that's why I appreciate all the op options, but uh specifically digging down deep to figure out some way where we can have one more um what to I think many teachers might might find some interest in some some not. I get it. But I think that's good because it's discussion between them and the principal. >> Mr. Owens. >> Yeah, I like this. um not claiming that this is a byproduct of my statements last week, but it does kind of align with the idea of, hey, if you're taking on more kids, let's give you some more money, right? Um and so my questions are, so for example, I'm a I'm a teacher. My class in February all of a
078sudden is at a point where this class stipen would kick in. I don't just get $1,200 paid. It's prorated. However many weeks, divide it up, right? So, if that does fluctuate, maybe I get it for a couple weeks. >> Absolutely. That's why we said $1,200 per semester prrated. >> And this is principal discretion. Hey, you can go to the go to the teacher, hey, do you want this or do you want an aid? >> I I will point out though, uh it would have to be a team level decision. You couldn't have, for example, one teacher in the grade level say, "I'll take the stipen," and then the others say, "No, we need that instructional aid." Because if you just think about it, there'd be no way to provide that instructional aid. Um, and not
079Exactly. >> So, yeah, this is a great question. Thanks for um thinking what I was answering what I was thinking. And uh I know you didn't want to take credit, but uh you can if you'd like. All right. This slide details uh option one from last board meeting. Just recognizing the updated student counts used to run the scenarios. If you study the results of this scenario, you will find, as I said before, that it's actually exactly the same. Uh staffing is the new option, but requires a change of class- size targets. This slide details option two from last board meeting, just recognizing the updated student counts used to run the scenarios. Similarly to the other slides, this shows the largest class sizes we would be staffing initially. I'd like to pause here for any discussion
080around class sizes. >> Okay. Are you ready for any class size discussion? >> Yes, because this is pretty much the end. >> Okay. I feel like it's very difficult for us to talk about this without talking about our support staff because I feel like they're connected and we are going to decide to do one because of what we do here or whatever vice versa. >> Absolutely. And we can if it's the uh preference of the board run through the whole presentation. >> I'm okay to talk about this. I'm just saying that like just to preface that >> my feelings about this have to do with my feelings on the next topic. >> Um but >> I I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Mr. Vaughn today about the various things because I was
081conflicted on why not changing class sizes at all saved us the same amount of money as changing it by one. So he explained all that and I get that now. Um, but one of the things that I talked to him about and we kind of ran through some numbers and I so I hope you can share this information is I don't want to see us get rid of our support staff. I really don't. I feel like we have gotten a lot of varied feedback from people, but one of the consistent things that seems to be coming from everyone is about how important our support staff is. And um before I continue, maybe Miss Benjamin can share about um or Mr. Vaughn regarding what feedback you guys have gotten about things that draw students to our
082schools and if it's class size or if it's that support staff that we have. >> Certainly can um let me uh run really quick. So, uh, last board meeting we had some discussion at the board level around the concept of, um, marketing for enrollment. And I hope what the board uh, has learned about me is I don't take a good idea for granted, similar to um, the stipen conversation that board member Owen may or may not want to take credit for. Uh and us running with that um I very quickly uh ran with the concept of marketing for uh for Lichfield. And so what we what we have done is uh there's a group of us that have met with four marketing firms. Um due to the timeline of everything, all of those meetings occurred
083um after this presentation was published. Um and what that uh feedback told us, we we talked to, as I said, four marketing firms. Uh two of them uh were focused on higher education enrollment uh campaigns, which uh from this research appear much more common. And then two of them actually had experience in K12 enrollment campaigns. And all of the conversations were very very very interesting. Um, but the conversations with the K12 firms I would I would say were much more enlightening. And we actually posed the direct question to them around class size versus uh certified support staff. And what they both independently shared with us is that class size for a K12 public school system truly cannot be the selling point. And the reason for that is in their experience they don't see that being
084a compelling uh uh proposal of value unless class sizes are between 10 and 15 students. um which the nature of of public education funding simply would just never allow that to exist across a system. >> Not to say we wouldn't love to do that if we had the magic money trees growing. >> We would love to. And so what they what they shared is is the more compelling value proposition to uh provide to families really is that uh intervention and more individualized instruction. Um because it is uh something that public school districts honestly can win at. Whereas uh no matter what we do uh sadly just by how the system is structured we'll never be able to win at class sizes. If a family if that's the primary thing a family cares about we won't
085win that that argument. Does that answer your question? >> Yes it does. So, um, that information along with the fact that whether we love it or not, all studies show that student success is not determined by the class size. By having more students in their classrooms, that doesn't mean that they're more successful. I'm not saying there's not a benefit to having the lower class sizes. I know that there is. But at the end of the day, as I've continued to say this whole time is one of the things that makes this district special and unique compared to the districts around us is all of the support that we offer our students and our staff. And so I am concerned about not wanting to increase class sizes means we have to cut our support staff because
086I also think we're not done with our budget talks this year. I think that we're going to continue having these conversations over the next couple of years because of the long range we've looked at for the budget stuff. So, I encourage people who think we just started talking about this now to please go back and look year over year because we have talked about it. And so, whatever cuts we make now, we're going to have to make probably more later. And I hate the idea of cutting our support staff this year and then after doing that next year saying, "Oh, now we're going to increase your class sizes." So to me that's I don't want to do that ever, but I think that's backwards. So I'd rather see us if we've got to increase something
087like increase our class sizes now while we have our supports there and then if we have to make more cuts later, we have to make more cuts later. But we're still able to reach our students at a more individualized level with our supports. So that's why I feel like increasing class sizes is the better option of those things. And I know that we looked at the changing one versus not doing anything doesn't really do anything. But um what if we did change one and we didn't have it only plus two. If we had it be a three like our current practices is plus we did all of those tightening things that we talked about. what would our savings be if we did that versus the two which I still think is probably the better option
088but trying to find a middle ground. >> Yeah. Um so I'm I'm going to talk in terms of savings above uh what option one or the new option provides since they're identical. um that would uh save an additional uh $540,000 >> which happens to be almost as well actually more than what we would be saving if we cut 0.5 to our support staff. So, >> yes, ma'am. >> So, I would rather see something like that. And that's just how I feel. And like I said, all of the emails that we've gotten from staff has been all over the place, but the one consistent thing I feel like we've gotten from anybody that's talked to me, emailed me, whatever, has been that we have to keep the staff. And even looking at the surveys, which we'll
089get like the surveys that are mixed, and there's whole lots of thoughts about the survey we did, that was more important to keep than the class sizes based on that feedback. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Miss Millian, >> yes. While I of course respect your opinion, board members, I do disagree. Um, I was here, as were you, when we made the cut to class sizes, and we were told, of course, that, you know, academics would not be impacted unless you can get it down to the 10 to 15 students per class. But I have seen the positive changes and I believe that it is in the best interest of student success to keep class sizes where they are for many reasons. One of the reasons is that as CFO von says in this presentation, the class
090size savings are not concrete. We just like we were told it would cost millions of dollars to decrease the class size that never came to fruition. I am afraid that we are going to say we're saving a million dollars and we're not actually going to save anything. And then you're going to be in an even more difficult situation. So I think again the phased approach of I like the the new option myself along with a small decrease in campus supports is the most prudent way forward because the reality of the situation could very well be that you end up doing both. And I think it's shortsighted to make such a large increase to the class sizes at this point. I think it's more prudent to do some of both. >> Mr. Mike. >> Uh, so
091I don't want to get ahead of the presentation either, but I I sit back and I understand that. Of course, some of those marketing people might not have had been teaching in classes with extra kids either. I understand the perception piece as far as making decisions from that, but protecting that, you know, protecting that class size can can be important, but also and I guess kind of stealing a little bit of what uh board member Moran said, it's I mean, these are not absolutes. you know, we have um it's it's this decision of having to we're trying to make decisions on all pieces to, you know, to make the make the cuts less deep across the board. And also as far as what those guarantees are, just because we decide to do something and if
092it's absolute and then we're like, "Oh, we don't have to touch this over there." I highlight the words of potentially and more likely and may not that are throughout this presentation in the verbiage where once again we don't we don't know you know we're we're kind of trying to play play this game and so uh once again it's kind of inching our way along because we have the opportunity to do that so where I you know I see you know, the, you know, option A or the or the the new option or option A is things to have, you know, things to have discussions about. Um, knowing that regardless some of that other stuff will still be on still be on the board to make a decision on. And like I said, even if we
093say, oh, option two, I know we're not there yet, of course, so I'm getting ahead of it, but um those numbers have changed in the past couple weeks, too. Um, one option was originally was 720 or originally 500,000 and then it's 720,000. We have something that is originally 520,000. It's down to 420,000. And so it's just um and then option two, I think originally that number was 1.1, you know, or 1,120,000. Now it's down to uh 1,8000,000. So, I'm just pointing that out to say that it's hard to say, oh yeah, if we do just one big chunk over here, we don't have to touch something else. And um that's actually exactly why I updated the the um student counts for this presentation is I thought it uh gave us some good opportunity to talk
094about um really the variability uh in these estimates. Um so I'm I in a sense I'm glad um that it has served that purpose. Um, I hope I don't sound too much like an attorney when I couch all of those numbers. I just never want to make you feel like I've misled you about how certain um forecasts are. >> Yeah. And I make those points just to make sure to highlight the word forecast. Yeah. And um and when we're making decisions based on forecasts, >> I mean, you can talk to Fortune 500 companies that have paid the price on that, too. So, it's, you know, it's tough. And just to add one more thing, I don't want us to make a million-doll decision on a forecast and be wrong. I would be more comfortable making
095a $420,000 decision on a forecast and being wrong or being partially wrong. Maybe the savings is only half of that. I don't know. But when you're talking about a million dollars and being wrong, that that scares me. Mr. Owens. >> Yes, I'm definitely glad that we have found other ways to save additional funds because I remember the very first presentation the li the options all seemed very very grim and they still don't seem great. But I remember that first board meeting in my head thinking or the first time we got this presentation thinking, okay, I can increase class sizes or cut their pay, right? Those were the two big two big ones. And then the next one was, okay, increase or increase class sizes. a couple other options, less pay raises, and now cut the
096eight the coaches on each campus. And I thought, woof, based on my initial reaction to the first presentation, I am much more aligned with President Zida's opinion. I would rather keep the aid, keep as many coaches as we can in the direct impact they have to students on campus, give our teachers as much of a raise as we can, and honestly go as big as we can on class sizes. The idea that these are estimates, I understand. But if we estimate 400,000, it really only saves a couple hundred thousand when we need 400,000. If we estimate it's going to save a million, then maybe it saves six or 700,000, right? So, I think we go bigger personally on class sizes. Make sure our schools are properly staffed. We already lost an FTE last year. So
097campuses already have less support staff than they have previous years. And if we're asking these cuts or these increased class sizes now, we pay our teachers as much as we can based on what's left of the pot. And then next year if we have to scale it back or we realize that wasn't as enough of an estimate, it was wrong. Now we do something else. But I think that that's my initial reaction for this year. >> Um, another question I had for you, Mr. Vaughn, is um, can you tell me, uh, what campuses would be impacted by what I was saying by increasing all the class sizes by one and keeping our current plus three for the target stuff, >> it would impact uh, staffing at every school. So, this is the one I think
098we're going to go in circles about because I mean it's clear that people are kind of in disagreement, but I just go back to the feedback that we got from our staff, the feedback that whether we got it through the survey, which again, we're going to talk about that in a minute and how that was a whole mess, but the survey as well as we've gotten a lot of emails as well as we all are in this community and people know us and so they're just coming and talking to us wherever. Um, and the feedback has been all about how we need to protect their staff. And this cut, I feel like we did cut our support staff at some of our campuses already last year with the choice menus that we did. And the
099campuses I feel that are the most impacted by that are our smaller campuses. And so thinking about looking at one of our smaller campuses, when you have a smaller less enrollment, that means you have more space. So, when you have more space on your campus, then you're going to that's a great place to put one of our specialized programs or two or three, right? But our specialized programs don't necessarily do a whole lot for enrollment numbers. Thus, these campuses that have less enrollment numbers are also going to have less choices and less options for their FTEES for filling there. So, if you've got a school that's got, say, three labs classes and they now have to decide between a couple of different specialists, they might not be able to pick a behavior coach. And how
100can we not have a behavior coach at a school that's got three labs classes? So, and we're going to be asking these principles to decide whether they should have a reading specialist or an instructional coach or whatever. And it's I just I don't want to see us take away the supports that we have for our students. I am concerned especially about our smaller campuses, especially when they have those specialized programs at what that's going to do for us from a liability perspective if you have kids that are out of control and there's not enough staff to help with solving that problem because of the fact that we have cut all those supports. So, >> simply because the survey keeps coming up, do you mind if I just jump to I only have two slides on
101the survey. >> Can I make one comment before we get to that? Um, two things that I think um, should be highlighted. Number one, we are missing a board member who made her opinions known that she did not want to see class sizes raised. So although she is not here to vote tonight, I think we all know how she would vote. I don't think this conversation would sway her in her opinion on that. The second piece is that we're not, the administration is not proposing that we eliminate full FTE positions. They are proposing that we scale back a 0.5. What I will say about our smaller campuses and our title one schools is there is the possibility that they can make up for those.5 with title one funds. So I don't agree that the impact
102will necessarily be more detrimental to the small campuses. They do have other options for things. So I don't appreciate board member Zidama saying we are getting rid of a reading specialist or we that's not what that is one of the options but I don't believe that's what's being proposed tonight. We are asking to cut back on campus supports. >> Did you want to talk about the survey? Go ahead. >> Only if it's at the pleasure of the board. I just thought since it kept coming up. Go ahead. >> Okay. Um, we did receive uh feedback that the survey was in certain places and spaces confusing. Uh, and so we are intentionally not relying on some of the data of the survey. we instead are presenting to you one um kind of the response rates but
103then also one specific question that our team genuinely believes was one of the most clear in the survey. So, please rank our largest budget levers from most preferred for reduction one to least preferred uh for reduction. And then the options were truly our largest uh budget levers because we really wanted to see a force shranking on our most significant um options. We did think that this question was rather clear because when we received specific feedback about the survey being confusing uh frequently it was because uh certain uh individuals responding to the survey wasn't sure if preferred meant reduced or preferred meant to keep. But we do believe that this question in particular was clear in that regard that uh most preferred for reduction one and least preferred for reduction four. So the results of this
104question were that calendar changes were the most preferred, class sizes were the second most preferred, uh then certified support staff, then reduction of the race uh was the least preferred and I just wanted to provide that information since uh it it was coming up in conversation. How many certified staff do we have? >> We have um about 600 certified teachers. And do you know a full certified number? I just know that >> I don't I know the total number of staff. >> Yeah, we have about 1500 staff in total. Uh we have about uh 600. Let me check something. >> Close to 600. >> Okay. I'm just, you know, general numbers. I'm just >> So 600 must be the full certified number because in my class size spreadsheet I have all of the home room
105teachers. Um and that is 369. So I'm guessing the 600 number I have in my head is the full certified. Um, one thing I think is interesting about the survey results is that it says that 158 least preferred was the reduction of the raise from 2% to something else. But the total number of staff that completed the survey was over 340 people. So only about half of our staff even said that was their least preferred option. >> Yeah. which just surprises me because we've heard so much about we won't accept less than 2%. >> I agree. >> It is always interesting data though to just to take in. >> Yes, obviously it would be higher quality uh if there were more people who participated and obviously if it was clearer I guess um in the
106way. So, I think lessons to be learned for um next time. Um just because this survey is now we're talking about it, I I do think it warrants being said, uh I I don't know about my other board members, but I got a lot of people reaching out about the survey when it went out. They were all very confused um about the wording and how they were supposed to do it. They were doing it in groups trying to figure it out. like one of our public comments said that they did it the opposite of how their teammates did it. Um I I had a just a random person that's not here. I said, "Can you read this question and tell me how you think you're supposed to do it?" And their answer was the opposite
107of how you guys wanted them to do it. So, um I do think that this survey was confusing. So, um I even this first one I I know you guys feel like it was the clearest, but I know that from what I was hearing from staff, it was it was very confusing and they felt like it was the opposite of how they were supposed to answer it to give you guys the feedback that you were looking for. So, I would like to make sure that in the future we are being very clear when we're going to ask for feedback because it was important to me for us to hear from our staff. And so, I don't want them to feel like they're doing that for nothing because I do know they took it serious. I
108do know that they were taking time to go through it and really think about it. And I know that at the bottom with all the options they had, it was a ton of things, right? And they really wanted to weigh that all out and felt like they were having a really hard time doing that. So, um, just for our staff that did go through it and figure it out, I appreciate you. And those of you that maybe didn't because you thought it was too much, I I totally get it. But, um, we did hear you and we can make changes in the future for that. So, um, I just wanted to make sure that that was acknowledged. But, um, again, this shows here class size is like the second thing that they say that they're
109okay with changing, right? they would prefer to change class sizes over getting rid of our certified support staff. And that's again that's all the feedback we've gotten through emails. That's everybody wants to protect those people and that's what keeps our district special. So that's why I keep going back to that's why I think that this is important. No one's arguing that it isn't important, but >> this feedback is not overwhelming in one direction or the other. And I feel as though Yeah, there's just some bias coming through and I I'm I'm I'm having a struggles with that. >> Can you clarify biases for me, please? >> Yes. I fear that board member Zidama's personal relationships are biasing her ability to make a balanced decision. That's a tough accusation. That's crazy that you just said that.
110Honestly, >> uh my feelings about this have been the same the whole time. Um I very much have many teachers, I'm sure, that are upset that I'm saying we should increase their class sizes. And I I was here when we did that to begin with, and it was very important to me. But I'm trying to look at this budget as a whole picture and not I don't want to piece part everything on the budget. I don't want to take from every single place. I would rather not do that. I know that our district is looking at every area of where they can save money and I appreciate that you guys have looked at a district level at our staffing there and what we can do there. That was important to me as well that that
111happens. Um I don't appreciate that accusation because that is not accurate. I'm not making any friends by saying, "Let's increase our class sizes." So, my I have children here. They're all going to be impacted by all of these decisions we're making. We're making changes in special education that affects my child. We're making changes in classrooms that could potentially make traditional academy not be around. That affects my child. So, the thing is is that I want to see us have a budget where we're not having to continuously have to come back and do this because it gets everybody in the whole district all worked up and upset. And I don't want us to keep having to do that all the time. So, that's where I'm coming from. I would rather us do what we need to
112do now to maybe not have to make big cuts next year again because we didn't do it last year. We didn't want to do it last year. So, now here we are. There's no guarantees though on our decision as big, you know, big or small with, you know, as far as what cuts we're going to have to discuss or maybe not. I mean, once again, I you I don't know. None of us know u with with that piece, but I I just go back to the first thing I said. Just because we pull the biggest trigger on class sizes doesn't mean we still don't have to have discussions about those other things. It's not um it it might be a it might be a temporary temporary fix. It might blow up in our faces uh
113wi with it. And so, uh, that's why I'm, I guess, as far as where we make cuts and where we decide it. My conservative piece comes in of taking these little pieces from each bucket. Yes, I know every single one of them makes a big impact on um on schools. I know it. I've been there. I've seen it. Um, but uh I just need to go back to say just because the biggest options there doesn't mean that we still don't have to have like legit conversations about what's what's coming up. The other the other thing I I don't know the answer to this when it was the least preferred to um uh the most preferred as far as class sizes. Were the options even in there or was it just touched class sizes or don't
114touch class sizes? The question did not have the direct options in there, but at the top of the survey, there was a link to the slides, >> right? But of course, the slides when we talk about class sizes, once again, if if and I and I get it. It's just, you know, there's we're we're taking all these pieces of information. we all the all the emails that that we get or all the conversations that we have and everybody that's you know that's responded. It's just all these pieces of the puzzle that we're trying to kind of put together. And so my mind goes, okay, so are they okay with a little bit of class size piece or the full, you know, full pull the trigger on the class size? And honestly, I I don't know.
115So it just goes back into this gray vague this vague area for me. Um I would like to ask for Dr. Davidson's comments on this in the recommend in the administrative recommendations. You are recommending the new option. So we obviously kind of up here or you know at a two and two. So I'd like to hear why uh you would recommend the new option and what the thought process was behind that. >> Sure. And just to be clear because I don't want us to get into a in a weird situation. We're not at a point of voting. Just making certain we know that this is just conversation around um both class size and the FTE connected to certified supports. Um Miss Miranda, if if possible, can I come back with a response? Maybe we can
116let Mr. Vaughn go through the the other slides because I think that'll help you understand um some of the team's rationale. Is that okay? >> Okay. Okay. If you want >> Thank you. >> May I make a small personal request of a small recess? >> Yes, let's do that. Is everyone ready for us to get back to this >> pleasant conversation? >> Great discussion is what I'd like to call it. All right. The next several slides review the same potential certified support staffing changes we've been discussing with more detail related to different sized schools. I'll briefly go through each to explain what that may look like. As a reminder, all schools, regardless of enrollment, receive an instructional coach, behavior coach, and EL coordinator to support on the campus in our current staffing model. Our smallest
117schools under 600 students also receive a 1.0 FTE that the principal can use to provide additional supports on the campus. Our practice involves true datadriven decisionmaking where the site leader works with our deputy superintendent of academic uh success, Dr. Dooy, using data to jointly determine what the campus most needs as additional supports. The changes we're discussing tonight as potential options expands that site level control by removing instructional coaches and behavior coaches as given positions but increasing the amount of FTE the site level administrator has to provide focused supports on their campus. For example, this slide shows that in one option, a school with under 600 students would have two FTE versus one to make choices with or the other option of having two and a half full-time equivalent uh positions to make choices with versus
118one. This puts the control in the site leaders hands to make datadriven decisions around what their specific campus and students need most while also helping us balance uh the budget situation. This slide shows that same concept for a school with 600 to 799 students. Certified choice in one option moves from one and a half to two and a half and in the other option to from one and a half to three. Again, this provides the site the ability to make the choices that best support their campus while assisting in balancing the budget. This slide shows the same concept for schools between 800 and 999 students with the certified choice moving from two to three or three and a half depending on which option we are discussing. This slide shows the same change for schools with
119over a thousand students. certified choice moves from three to four or four and a half depending on which option we're discussing. When you think about this shift, it truly is keeping as a given only the position that is driven in part by statute while providing the most flexibility possible for our site level leaders in the remaining of the staffing as we work together to balance spending. Uh, I'd like to pause here to pro uh allow uh Miss Jennifer Benjamin some opportunity to provide some insight on what this might actually look like on a campus. >> So, I would start with looking at the smallest school sample where you would have the 2.5 certified choice in this situation. Um, as board member Moran already shared, if it is a title one school, they could use some
120of their funding to make that a full 3.0. However, if it is not a title one school, what that could look like would be an instructional coach, um, a behavior coach and a.5 reading specialist along with, um, another position if they had something available on their campus that was also a.5. or you could make the instructional coach and the reading specialist the same person. Um, and then a full-time behavior coach. So, it would be a 0.5 and the behavior coach. So, there's just different ways to do this. Um, there's definitely it would it takes creativity when you're looking at the staffing to make it work. Um, so if you're looking at the 3.5, you would have three and a half positions. If you're a title one school, you could use your title one funding. Um,
121other campuses have also been able to get creative with um, possibly looking at M if that were feasible on their own campus. Um, if there is a 0.5 resource teacher, we've seen that as well where there's a 0.5 resource teacher and a 0.5 math specialist. We have that at a campus this year. Um, so you're looking at just everything that you've been given and you look at all of the different components to see if you can put them together. It's a big Go ahead. >> We also have on one campus a.5 behavior coach and a.5 instructional coach. They got creative with that as well. Any questions on that? on your campus that has a 0.5 behavior and a 0.5 instructional. Do they is that like in addition to having an instructional coach and a behavior
122coach already? >> That is one of our larger camp larger K8. >> So they already have a full-time instructional coach and a full-time behavior coach and then they have somebody that's doing half >> not a full-time behavior coach. They've chosen to do a.5 behavior coach. >> Okay. How many schools is this? >> I'm sorry, I just didn't quite hear the >> Sorry. How many schools are under 600? >> That's a good question. Um, do you mind if we come back to that and I'll look it up real quick. It's it's a it's a number of them, but >> I'm gonna I'm gonna ask this question for all of them. >> Okay. >> If we can find out how many each number in each category. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> I mean, are you just going
123to run the numbers based off of what we have right now? I'm going to pull up uh our class size >> um spreadsheet. >> I mean I I mean I did that but of course you know maybe the only thing I didn't have was the Palm Valley numbers and Troy Gilbert numbers for it. But with with Palm Valley and Troy Gilbert off to the side I have seven schools that are under 600. I had three schools I'm sorry two schools under 799. three schools under 999 and one school in the thousand plus. But I was just >> that sounds roughly correct for this year. >> But like and but like I said that's that's those numbers are without Palm Valley or Troy Gilbert because I wasn't sure what those numbers are. So >> those figures
124sound roughly uh correct for this year. Uh, one of the things to keep in mind which is uh uh challenging for Lichfield's current situation is our eighth grade cohort is quite a a bit larger than our kindergarten cohort. Um, and what we do each year is we roll forward the the students. Um, and we always assume uh even when we don't particularly like that assumption that the kindergarten class will look similar to the prior year. And the reason we do that is there's really not any other data to help support a different assumption. Um, whereas we we know how many first graders we have. So, so we can make a pretty good guess at how many second graders we have. uh we really uh don't know how many kindergarteners will come and so we always
125just assume that the same number of kindergarteners that came to us this year will come to us next year. And because of that and how small our kindergarten cohort uh has been, there's quite a bit more uh schools that uh may be under 600 next year. Um I'm counting seven. Uh there is still one uh at or above a thousand. Um there is two I'm sorry 3 over 800 and I'm seeing two in the 700 range. So, I'm sorry. The number for under 600 was seven. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> When you rolled those over, um, are there campuses that are going to be falling into that that were not this year? >> I do believe so. >> Okay. Well, I was saying we have seven schools that'll next year be under 600, and I
126want to know how many of those are going to be falling to under 600 that would have been this higher number this year. >> Uh, that's a different spreadsheet. So, give me just one moment. >> You don't have to be sorry. You just have to be patient. I guess while while you're finding that, I would like to just comment that these decisions should be made based on the long-term strategy and planning, not on the impacts to one particular school or one particular community in any given period of time. Um to provide a quick answer, I'm not uh studying which schools it is uh presently, but there are presently seven schools that are under 600 now. So >> it it might be the same schools. It might be a slightly different mix. Can can you elaborate
127on how you said if they're title one schools we can fund it that way and maybe why we aren't doing that now and if we did do that >> where would those title funds come from would they move someplace and then fund that position >> so Jen do you mind if I okay you can do it um the only reason I wanted to take that question is because it actually speaks to what I was talking about earlier around the importance of staffing standards um one of of those places in the federal law that you have to uh ensure that you have staffing standards that don't uh discriminate is in the area of title one. And so you cannot have staffing standards that uh differ in a negative way uh against title one schools. And so
128what happens is the federal government uh gets a pot of money that then based on uh student populations that are reported through the state uh to the feds, that money is allocated to to each state. And then the allocations from the state to individual districts rely on the proportion of free and reduced lunch students that are in that district of the whole state uh pod. Uh within a district um it just keeps cascading, right? So, so uh per pupil or per student uh amount is calculated uh that dictates how much each title one school uh gets from that overall district budget. And schools go through a process called the uh comprehensive needs assessment where they are asked to truly deeply review and consider their needs um uh as a school. Uh honestly, if you think
129about it, it's fairly similar to what we asked them to do to make decisions around how they use their certified uh and classified choice. Anyway, um they then make decisions around is that need additional staffing? Is it um is it additional supplies? Is it addition? It it's a wide range. what h what makes something become eligible uh in title one funding is the fact that it uh isn't something that should be given to that school already um that's given to other non-title one schools in that district and that it connects directly with that comprehensive needs assessment and so the eligibility of title one funds is actually quite broad there's just uh some hoops you have to jump through uh to make it work Uh right now our title one funding is largely already um focused
130on on additional staff at our school. And so largely what would happen um is if a principal decided similar to their certified and classified choice already that a different decision best served the um needs of their campus, they could choose through the development of their next year's title one plan to shift that spending from one position to another or uh one priority to another. I do think it's important to note uh that there is nothing that gives us great hope that uh title one allocations will increase in total dollar amount but it does provide uh site leaders at those campuses additional resources um to make choices with if that makes sense >> for um context purposes what qualifies a school to be title one. >> Yeah. So, um, Lichfield takes an approach that's that's, uh,
131taken at many, many districts, uh, and it relates to a rule in the federal, um, statutes around what qualifies a school to be a sitewide versus targeted, uh, title one program. And that threshold for free and reduced lunch is 40%. We do uh, make sure each year that, uh, that's a stable number. And what I mean by that is if it's the first year that a a school pops over 40%, we do pause for a moment um before adding and to see if for a second year it remains. And the reason we do that is actually to provide stability for our campuses because when you gain a title one school um you don't gain additional title one resources. You just spread the same resources thinner. And so it wouldn't be advantageous for our campuses to
132be um switching their title one status frequently yeartoear if that makes sense. >> No totally. Um and so we have title one schools campuses based on those metrics and we get a certain amount of dollars per pupil that qualifies per district as title one based on free and reduced. Does that money that we get say we have 700 free and reduced easy number they get a certain amount of number say they got a hundred extra dollars that $100 per pupil times seven do the math 700 does that go is that distributed to those title one schools or does it follow the student and therefore if you are a campus that has 20 free and reduced you get that money too. >> Yeah, >> it all goes towards those campuses. >> It goes towards those campuses.
133There are there is a part of Title One that's called uh set aides. Um I'll try not to bore you with too many details. I just love grants. But um uh district set aides in title one are uh items that uh the statute allows uh districts to set aside first, which is why they're called set aides before distributing what remains after set aides to the title one schools. And so you might you might ask yourself, well, why in the world would you do that? Just give it all to the schools. And there's actually some strategic reasons to do it. Um the first is if you have a district-wide approach that you're um trying to implement at your title one schools, doing it at a district-wide level can support the schools by not um so in
134in a prior district for example we had uh instructional coaches at title one schools in title one and that was a district set aside and what that allowed uh that to do was individual schools with maybe more experienced uh instructional coaches weren't penalized more for the increased salary of the more experienced uh staff member. The it was all evened out across all the title one schools. Another very common uh item that's in um title one set aides and it's true here in Lichfield as well is our summer school program. And so, um, by setting that aside, uh, at a district level, that allows the burden, if you will, of summer school to be, um, equally distributed across the the title one campuses. It's not disproportionately impacting any title one campus. So after you set aside
135um monies for those things, uh the remainder is allocated through that per people process that I described and then can be utilized by that principal to meet the needs uh as documented in their comprehensive needs assessment. >> So then the title one campuses, those principles have for the most part the discretion on where they spend those funds or is there >> they do obviously They do work with uh Jen Ben. I'm I'm tempted to already call her doctor, so if I do that accidentally tonight, I'm sorry. Um >> just add one more. Um and and uh we also have a grants team that includes our director of federal programs uh that works with Jen and then there's a grant manager uh that that is on the finance side that helps us manage the uh compliance
136and financial pieces of the grant. So, there's certainly um a process and guidelines, but I would say I I've never experienced us getting in the way of reasonable ideas to meet the needs of of the campus. >> Great. And that's for background and context. I appreciate that. I think it would be beneficial to look at that title one funding as an option um for campuses that need the support um in lie of reducing if we can >> well the only way that we can free up title one funding is to reduce the staffing so that it's not set across the board. We can't just shift title one funds to things that we are giving to all the campuses. It has to be specific supports to title one campuses that are different and that in that
137way non-discriminatory toward other campuses >> it would be different. It would be an it would be a support >> but we would have to cut the current support for it to be an additional >> well that's what I asked what other thing what resources if you mentioned it as an option to look into it what would be those possible cuts >> when I was giving those suggestions or ideas it was if we were to go to the reducing by.5 then that is the staffing standard across the district and that would be how they could utilize those title one funds. Right now they're also utilizing. So if we don't change anything and they've got the 2.0 certified choice, then they can use their title one funds to add additional resources. So um on a title one
138campus, you might have well you're given the instructional coach, you're given the behavior coach, you're given the EL coordinator. Um they have chosen a reading specialist. um maybe they're choosing a math specialist and maybe they're adding an additional behavior coach if they needed that from their title one funds. So it has to be above and beyond what the district is allocating. >> And so if we just for conversation's sake moved to reducing certified supports by 0.5, they could uh look at uh using their title one uh funds to add back that.5 we cut, >> which is great. That's all I wanted to get to. >> Right. So, that's great for our title one schools, but that does not in any way help our non-title one schools, which are some of our bigger campuses. >> Sorry,
139I realized I went away from my talking points because I was pulling up spreadsheets. My next slides go to classified staffing. I just want to make sure before I move to a different topic that we're comfortable with that movement to a different topic. >> Yes. >> Okay. Our classified staffing looks similar to uh our certified staffing in that schools receive certain positions such as school office supervisors, registars, attendance clerks, and classified specials instructors and then also receive an amount of full-time equivalent positions they can utilize to support their campus the best way possible given the data at the school. As we examine these, the only position we could recommend a change to is the attendance clerk at the schools under 700 students. I'd like to pause here for any discussion on classified staffing. >> Did
140anybody have any discussion on this item? >> I think we're good. >> All right. Our last significant individual lever we've not fully discussed tonight is raises. Since our last board meeting, we were able to calculate the cost of moving the district's minimum wage to$1573 as of July 1st um at $101,000 as we had discussed. However, we also wanted to provide for the governing board some information that would allow us to to discuss how the work calendar adjustment proposals interact with different raise levels. This slide shows an example of three different teachers as well as a 12-month employee. As you can see, a raise of 2% or one and a half percent still results in an employee seeing an increase in compensation year-over-year. A 1% raise results in employees seeing a decline in compensation year-over-year. As
141a result of this analysis, we are recommending a change to the decrease of 12 month calendar to align with the teacher calendar of reducing 3 days. This aligns the reduction across calendars but also ensures that similar to school-based staff that 12-month employees would see a pay increase for any raise above our 1% option. With our initial 6day cut, uh this slide looked like uh at every level of raise 12-month employees were taking a pay cut. This slide shows >> the three day. Oh, sorry. Sorry. >> Can you give an example of that 12-month employee at that position? >> Um, >> that dollar amount. >> Yeah. So, I'm trying to think of how to answer that question without saying who it is. >> No, no, no. I mean, this this seems like one of the lower
142lower >> this is an hourly classified employee um that assists in our district office. >> Okay. But this isn't you guys obviously, >> right? So, um >> but the proportions would are are similar. That's what that's one of the reasons we showed so many examples is we we wanted to to show that um it was similar proportions across. >> Yeah. I think what um what level of when you say experienced teacher, what level? We had public comment today. >> Yeah. So that um Mrs. Satderfield selected our highest paid teacher in the district. Um >> so that's not that's not inexperienced teacher. That's the highest paid teacher. >> That is the highest paid teacher in the district. >> So most people are going to fall in that midcareer range then. >> That is why we showed
143both beginning, mid, and then just to show the full range. We >> So that's like a median or an average. >> Uh I do believe I directed Miss Satderfield to calculate a median. We actually had a nice discussion about the difference between averages and medians. >> I'm going to have to hurt him >> because it's definitely not an average, right? I mean depend if it was bottom heavy. So okay, it's not an average. >> Miss Satderfield, am I wrong about that? Didn't you do the median? >> I did the median. Yes. >> Yeah. Are we wanting me to move on? Okay. I just don't want to get in the way of the discussion. This is as much your discussion as it is mine, obviously. Uh this slide shows the three days we would recommend continuing
144to cut. Uh this is because the dates uh these are the dates that are also impacting the other calendars. So uh if we removed one of these, it would also impact the $500,000 um forecast on the other calendars. >> I'm sorry. I do want to make one comment on the raises. Sorry. >> Yeah. >> Um >> in our previous conversation, you mentioned that 2% raises are not sustainable long term. So, I just want to reiterate again the fact that something lower than 2%, perhaps 1.5, is potentially going to be on the table at some point. This year, obviously, um the administration is recommending we stay at 2%. I'm not opposed to that, but in the long term, 1.5 is likely to become the norm. So, I hope people hear those words and don't continue to
145assume that 2% is the increase they will get because they've gotten that historically. Obviously, things are changing with our budget in the district and we're going to make compromises this year and likely every year to come. And I think uh it's just important to note one of the reasons we felt it was so important to make this slide for discussion purposes is uh the public comment we heard around calendar changes truly being a reduction in pay uh is true. is just that um at raise levels uh higher than that 1% uh the raise offsets that reduction enough that the that the true gross wage uh would not go down. Um but we tr we because both were impacting compensation of employees, we didn't feel like we could fully have the conversation without showing the interaction
146between the two. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is a 2% raise with a calendar reduction may honestly feel closer to a 1.5% raise. That's right. Yeah. And I I do think that uh Dr. Dr. Dy made a point that I'll I'll say into a microphone. Um that um while calendar changes do result in a reduction of pay, they also result in the opportunity to work less days. Um, and I do think we've been mindful around what days uh we're talking about in the hopes that it extends a break or or otherwise um makes sense in terms of trying to support some level of work life balance in the process of making a not all that fun decision. Right. >> Okay. But I'm going to ask a question. Um you people here
147at the table, you're all going to be impacted by this. you all aren't working on your weekends and on your days off because we know that that's true that you are just like our teachers are, just like our everyone is all working. I'm not saying I don't agree with this, but realistically that means they're just not going to get paid for those days of work. >> You're not wrong. I've certainly had some work days till two in the morning recently. So, >> Oh, yeah. And then I guess the choice becomes would you rather make less per hour and have more hours or would you rather make more per hour and have fewer hours because we cannot have it all. That is the whole crux of this conversation. We cannot have it all. We wish that
148we could but we can't. I don't disagree with the calendar changes. I'm just saying that I'm just saying the truth is that they are definitely going to be working for no money on those days because they're going to be working. I think we've heard that from several teachers. I we we know that from our admin team all the time. So that's just the way it is. And yes, we can't have it all. That's why we're having to figure it out. But I do agree that this is this was the top option for people. So I'm fine with calendar changes. I do think from a legal perspective I just need to say that uh employees are on contract for the full year. Absolutely. And so they would not be working without compensation. Um but the >>
149point that you're making still stands. I just feel the need to uh be a bit of an attorney for a moment. Thank you. And I just want to say I mean this is a this is a point where we have to combine both of what you guys are saying of course we can't have everything and also yes to be clear um coming from somebody who probably had a terrible work life balance when he was in the classroom as well. I always felt like I was, you know, working. And so I just want to make sure totally get that point whether it's like, oh, we don't start at this day, you know, for, you know, we take off this uh starting day. Um, you know, I was getting ready for my classroom a month ahead. I
150mean, and that's, you know, that's that's really where it comes in into with uh with that. But just for yeah, that clarification of Yeah, we still we still get it. we still will still understand what this uh career brings as far as when you know somebody says it's a day off or or whatnot. So >> can can you remind me I'm sorry I'm trying do math over here on a calculator. Um teachers is two days 12 months is three days. Teachers is how many less days? >> Uh I I believe at this point they would both be aligned at three days is my recollection. >> So based on this right here. Right. >> I'm trying to fly to your >> Yep. So, we're going to go median teacher. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you
151were wanting the total. >> 36. Yep. So, so based on a median teacher, right, you're a 2% raise is going to give you $56012. A one and a half raise is going to give you $24247. which is a difference of $317.65 and they're getting three days off still. So, I mean, yeah, I think 1% is off the table obviously. Um, I don't think anybody wants to do that, but in my opinion, still getting one and a half and getting three days as opposed to having to work three more days for $317. You have to work three more days to make $317.65 or you don't work those days and don't make it. >> But to be fair, you guys are recommending both the calendar and the 2%. >> But that's that's counting the calendar and that's
152that's what this says, right? Raise and reduction and change in calendar. Yeah, we were just wanting to allow you to see how the being paid for less number of days intersected with different levels of raises. >> And that's why 1% puts you in the red because you're Yes. >> Exactly. So even though the hourly rate or the daily rate is increasing by 1% because you're losing a certain number of days, it still results in a decline in compensation. >> So I I believe my math is correct. is at one and a half% raise, you would make $24,247 as opposed to $560, which is a $317 difference less than you would with 2%, but you get three days off. >> And in that aggregate, um, that's $385,000. That's the the difference between that 2% and the
153one and a half%. And that would be in the terms of our conversation uh a reduction because uh the 2% raise uh number is built into uh the forecasts we saw at the beginning as has been our just historical norm. Dr. Davidson, are you wanting to say something? >> No, I'm just getting >> getting prepared. Okay, >> no response yet. I'm just preparing my response to Miss Moran's question that I have to come back to. So, didn't forget that. >> All right, I'll stop uh trying to coordinate conversations. Um the next slides are the survey which we've already talked about. So unless there's desire by the governing board to revisit these slides, I can skip past them. Okay. And I'll change the slide as soon as it allows me. Um this slide summarizes the uh
154administrative recommendation. I don't mean to belabor this point uh but with uh how much work is being done, new information has come to us uh since this administrative recommendation was decided and published. Uh I'm not necessarily saying that changes the administrative recommendation. Uh but we had not uh discussed um with the marketing firms yet uh what that looked like. Um uh as it stands in the presentation, the administrative recommendation is to maintain class sizes with a tightening of initial allocation practice. That's the quote unquote new option. Reduce certified support staffing at each school by half anime equivalent position. maintain 2% raise with minimum wage adjustment, maintain full day kindergarten, and implement all other cuts as previously discussed. President Ze Moran, now I think I could share at least some of the conversation that led us
155to this. Um, again, first of all, thank you to Sandy and Michael who have put a tremendous amount of effort to get us numbers whether it's projected or actual. Um, and so thank you again you guys because it's it's what's bringing us to this conversation today. Um, just so the board knows and those listening, this conversation that we've had mirrored that of our cabinet team as as we sought the voice of so many people and and to the conversation we've been having these conversations with our administrative team members, our principles, our our leaders um probably starting in November as well. So just continually revising the conversation and trying to come up to something. What I wrote down, Miss Moran, is just a solution, a recommendation that makes sense. Um I I believe there's a variety
156of ways we could look at as we've talked tonight. Um I think someone and maybe you it was you, Miss Ryan, used the term um phased. I' I've kind of seen it as a balance um because um what I know to be true is is We would like to do everything. I'd like to continue to give and give and give. We just can't. Um when we you know the the thing around the the class size um and many of you join us in our classroom walkthroughs and our visits um for a variety of reasons, the whites of eyes, the student bodies we would anticipate aren't there sometimes and and we ask questions about them. Um we know that um there's variables that depend on any given day, but over a period of time it just
157seems to be that that is a lever that we could adjust um and at least to this point make a difference but not completely destroy a student teacher ratio. Um the board has talked about how that number and those numbers still really are projection. I mean, we know we will see a savings just by simply not allocating a body to that classroom, but we don't know really truly how that'll play out yet from a balance perspective going to the certified support staff. And you saw us tonight, we didn't talk about the classified additional staff that was given. Um, I think as a team, we recognize those supports were done with funding that just doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't mean those positions aren't important. It's just that funding is not there. So, we again talked about,
158well, how can we find that balance to try to get to a number that was reasonable according to Mr. Vaughn's you overall projections with, as you heard, everybody weighing in um on on something that just simply makes sense. And lastly, um the 2% raise using the data we had, it seemed that at least uh and I know it wasn't a lot of people, but those that did respond, there was a majority that said, "Leave us at 2%, give us the maximum raise possible." And so we thought that that would be at least where we would stand as of today. But I think overall, I would just end it with just trying to find a balance. Um and and I understand as I said earlier around district office cuts when you talk about the certified support
159staff that are out helping our kids at schools. There are names attached to those jobs as well which which complicates matters. So I understand the principal voice in in this conversation those emails we've seen. Um but again I it was just simply knowing as Miss Benjamin and others presented there are some resources for some of our smaller schools and or our title schools that can be used and I also know that we as a team were prepared to utilize those resources that are still available such as any type of district content coach any type of um other staff members uh resources through title two and professional development that could be used. to me I everything's on the table to not jeopardize what exists. So kind of a long-winded answer, Miss Moran, but hope that helps.
160The next two slides show uh what that administrative recommendation looks like financially. Truly, it's the slides from the beginning of the presentation with the addition at the bottom of the second slide of the administrative recommendation. This shows a potential reduction of 3.9 million, which is close to the middle point of our target of 3 and a half to four and a half million. Uh I'd like to pause for further discussion. Um our future or our following slides are simply the uh ones from prior discussions in case um there's any desire of the board to um talk about those items. uh as has been shared tonight and certainly as we experienced in our cabinet meeting as well, it is hard to talk about any of these decisions in isolation because of the larger context in the
161budget picture, but also the larger context of how it may look in a implementation of that of that cut. Miss Maran. >> Yeah. When I um was studying the presentation yesterday to prepare for tonight's meeting, um when I looked at the at the administrative recommendation and the slides that detail out what that is going to look like and what the recommendation is for the 3.9 million, I was pleased because it does appear to me that it is thoughtful, it is balanced, and it is measured. to impact everyone. I don't think anyone is going to escape these budget cuts and I think that's how it should be. I wish that we didn't have to make them. Um, of course, but and I'll say it again, the department staffing reductions at the district office I'm particularly pleased
162with from where we started with that and where that is now. I'm not pleased of what that actually looks like in reality, but I'm pleased that everyone is doing their part or it seems as though everyone is doing their part to make this work and be reasonable overall. What I also like about this recommendation is because the 420,000 from the new option is not concrete, even without that, we still end up with 3.5 million in concrete savings. So, we're at least hitting our minimum target with those savings. >> The only thing I would add to that, and this is just because the the forecast does um it is an estimate, right? um $720,000 of that dollar amount is uh still coming not from class size changes but changes in our projected staffing based on the
163roll forward of the students. So I I just your point well taken uh but I just wanted to point out that there's not the entire remainder of those numbers are are solid if you will. Mr. Mike. >> Um, yeah. Overall, I mean, with the I mean, if we're specifically looking at all these recommendations that we have, and you said, you know, to look at the big picture of the numbers, um, we just got done looking at every single small picture along the way to get to the big number. So we um you know months and then you know crunched in in these past you this past month a massive amount of shifts and changes and conversations of uh this can't this can't be it there there's got to be more options. There's got to be
164more options. And every time uh we come back with more options, which I and and I'm just I'm saying that in a positive sense to how we've tried to whittle this down in a whole, you know, a bunch of line items of tough decisions that add up to this this number, you know, of 3.9 at the bottom, which we're not once again 100% sure on that. And also just to reiterate as well that 3.9 is even with that we are still overspending. Correct. >> Yes. Okay. That's that's the other thing I just need to um make make sure it's you know loud and clear on. And so I do like and I said it throughout my comments and I just I you know I didn't want to beat a dead horse but the uh systematic
165look at each thing making taking little chunks of where we know there can be some some are big chunks I get it but um overall trying to level out every every decision that we have you know across the board and I you know I sit back and I I look at these and I I appreciate where we got where we got to. And um the bottom line is at some point we are so far in the weeds with it. And we have administration in front of us that we have to trust at some point of saying who's even gone further in the weeds with it. uh to come out and you know what is your recommendation and I see this and um you know all the stuff I see I I just I'd like eventually
166where we we finally got to with it. So I probably just rambled there but anyways >> Mr. Owens. >> Yeah I I really do appreciate Slide 42, the administrative recommendation. I think that means a lot for um you to say this is what you know this is what we feel or this is what we think's right because because right I don't know now I'm going to ramble because like board member Moran mentioned earlier like this is one of our main responsibilities is passing the budget And I've always I'll tell anybody I'm not here to micromanage day-to-day decisions that are happen on a campus level in a classroom. Um big picture is where we sit. We need to know enough but this is one of our main responsibilities. I hate to question because I understand that
167this is again administrative recommendation based on feedback that I've received based on where I feel personally I am and I mentioned earlier what in my opinion directly impacts students the most and that is the support staff. And so in my opinion, I would I'm struggling very much so with the idea of reducing support staff, even if it's a half of an FTE. I would much rather see option one at the $720,000 estimate with a 1.5% raise as opposed to the reduced staffing. So, um, Mr. Von mentioned that you guys have gotten some new information in even in the last 24 hours since this stuff all got posted. And so, I'd be really interested in knowing if the new information that you guys have gotten in any way impacts what you like because you had to
168put this out yesterday, so that's fine. But now you have new information. Does that change anything for you guys at all? I know. Sorry to put you guys on the spot, but I mean, we're trying to make hard decisions. We got to know. >> Are you wanting uh each person to respond in the same way board members do or Dr. David? >> Honestly, I would, but um >> I I don't understand why we're talking in code. So, it sounds to me like conversations have been had with board members that were not had with the rest of the board and she has additional information that we are not all privileged to know. I >> I find that to be a very unfair comment. That's not true. He said earlier that they got new information since this
169happened. So that this administration, this administrative recommendation was posted yesterday and since then they've gotten new information. I'm asking if that changes anything. >> Michael, if you could please just uh revisit again with our board the information you received from the those consultants that you were speaking on in regards to uh enrollment and uh specific marketing, please. >> Yeah. So, so that really is the new information we received is from those conversations with those enrollment marketing consultants. Um, and and we we addressed questions to them very very directed to this conversation. Um, because there was previous uh board level discussion around how these decisions and it's a very valid question to ask. So, we wanted to gather the information how these decisions may impact the district's ability to market to potential uh families. And what
170those marketing firms shared is that class size is not a uh not a value proposition, if you will, that public schools can win on. And it's because what they've found in their experience is you don't attract students and families based on class size unless class sizes are incredibly small to the point that uh it's just not something that the system would would be able to sustain. Um, so, so really the conversations with the marketing firms were around and it's honestly a lot of the same discussion we've had tonight around what makes Lichfield unique. What is the I know we don't always like to talk about schools in terms of a product, but what is the product that we're offering to families? What is that value proposition that we're saying come to us because this is
171what we can do better than um other organizations that you might rely on to educate your children. Um and so I do think by and large that is part of a question that we need to uh ask ourselves. Personally, do I honestly think adjusting anything minorly like a a halftime position will will completely take away our ability to still uh tell what I think is the very true narrative that what makes Lichfield Elementary School District unique, not just in the K12 space, but even uh against other public school districts, is our interventions and tiered support systems. No, I think that's still going to be true regardless if we uh modify certified staffing supports by half a position uh or not. Um but I do think it really is a question that we need to wrestle
172with a little bit. What is our strategy to market? What what are what is our message of what we're going to provide to families? Because one thing we all know to be true, we can't be everything to everyone. So what do we want to be? I I I truly do think that that question gets gets to the crux of a lot of the discussion we we've had tonight. I hope that I kind of rambled a little bit to to um the board members points but I hope that addresses the question and miss it per your question and I'll just speak on unfortunately on the team's behalf even though I I know everyone has their own thoughts. Um that information is certainly helpful. Um Michael talks about what is it we you know where do we
173stand? What do we offer? our our product is fantastic. Um, having worked in other locations, I I can stand behind what we do, what our leaders do in our schools, what our leaders do in our departments to help our schools. Um, and that is because of who currently works with us. Um, but also um just the the people that they are. Um, what I know to be true is people are impacted by the choices we make. Um, is it safe to say that Michael's comments around still offering a quality intervention program, maybe potentially an extension program can still happen minus a.5 FTE? I I 100% agree. So, I I don't think necessarily that changes my perspective on a balanced budget. What do we promise to our community is not just quality service, but a balanced
174budget and and transparency. And I think all of that is playing out in in the public space. um that idea of believing and belonging and becoming you you all those things are working together here tonight. Um I do think that there's opportunity for shift though and I say that because um what Mr. Owens presented as his belief and uh something to consider um might be an option for the board to consider because it still allows us to get to a dollar figure that might be workable not having to touch the intervention as currently. I can say that because I also believe this conversation is going to continue and I think some of you have stayed that tonight. This is this isn't a oneanddone budget conversation. We're going to be and now I would love to
175hope we have a lot more kids next year. So maybe it would be done, but we'll see. Public education right now is in a unique spot. Um, so a long-winded answer to say my stance really doesn't change. However, knowing there's an maybe some other alternatives, I I can stand behind that. Um, I'm I'm proud of what we do. Um, and and if we can keep the the people, that's great. But as I've already stated, no matter what, people are impacted by the by the choices we make. Right. So, um the thing is is that we're up here and we have to make decisions that are going to lead ultimately we want to be thinking about what we're here for, which is student success, right? What's in the best interest of students? So, that's the only
176thing that's driven me through this whole conversation is if there is one or two more students in a classroom, are those students going to be more impacted and not be able to be successful because of that? I don't believe so. Do I think that if we remove some of our supports that we have in our schools, will those students be worse off? I do think so. I think that our supports are what allow our students to be as successful as they are. I also believe that when we changed our enrollment or when we changed our class sizes, we would hopefully have been able to use data to show that that made our students be more successful or not successful. But our data would not show that they are more successful because we lowered class sizes.
177Because unfortunately, we did that right when COVID happened. And so really, our data would show that our kids did worse because all kids everywhere did worse. Now, can you say that's because of class sizes? No, of course not. But that's the unfortunate reality that we're in is that the class size number, we don't have data to say that that help that that made our students be more successful. But we do have data to show that our students did do better after we added all those resources in and all those supports in for our students with the ESSER money. We do know that our students did start improving because of that. So that is data that we have. So if we want to make decisions based on data, that's the data that we have to look
178at. This isn't a biased decision of mine when I say what I feel. This is about looking at the whole picture of what is best for students. And this is just what I feel is what is best for students and it's not based on my relationships with anyone. So I very much resent the fact that you would make a comment like that when you have known me a long time and I have never sat up here on this board and said anything that wasn't about what is best for students. And that has made me have many people be angry at me over the years because I will say things that goes directly against what teachers or staff members would want because I will always say what I think is best for students. But that's the
179last thing I have for that. I appreciate you telling us that you would keep this. Um, and I don't think we have to go through any I don't know. Did anybody else need to go through any of the other stuff that we've already talked about before? >> Yes, I have a comment to make. >> Okay. Um, thank you for the clarification, President Zidama. I don't discount your passion and your honesty about what you believe is in the best interest of student success, but not every board member might agree with that opinion. And that's where we have to have compromise to come up with the consensus to be able to pass or at least we should be able to come up with compromises. And I don't think we should make a knee-jerk decision based on an
180outside marketing firm's casual opinion at the ninth hour in a budget discussion. I think we should be making these decisions based on our strategic plan, based on the recommendations of the people who know best, which really would be the administrative staff. And again, that's where it for me personally, if it's unclear, I like to go to the middle ground and I feel like this recommendation is the middle ground. And I have my own opinions on what I think is in the best interest of student success. And it's okay that we have different opinions on that. >> We don't all have to agree. I mean, we're obviously we don't, right? And that's the point of having a board. Um, if we don't need to talk about any of the other stuff and we are going to
181move on to voting, I would recommend that we table that till the next meeting when we have five board members present. >> Board member Moran, I just wanted to to clarify. I I believe you said, but I might have misheard that there was something in the further slide you wanted to comment on. I just didn't want to take that um I didn't want to take that opportunity away from you, but I might have misheard your comment. I don't think I don't have anything in my notes. Okay. >> No, I I I meant in in what you just said. I thought you might >> meant to comment back to what I said. No, I just wanted to comment back to >> I apologize. I just wanted to make certain. Thank you. >> So, was there anything
182else in the further stuff you wanted to revisit like stuff we've already gone over before? >> Are we are we done? Are we like are we going to vote? Are we going to take >> We're not voting on the budget tonight. We have possible action items to vote on class size and on the certified support staff. Um but I really believe that we should table that till our meeting on Tuesday. Um because we'll have five board members then. >> Okay. So since um class size and staffing standards um I've already made my opinion on that. I um it was mentioned earlier that um historically we have given 2% raises every year. I've got more information on why we did that, how we did that. That was in my opinion the smart thing to do. I
183love that we've did done that. It was also mentioned earlier by a board member that that may not always be the case. In my opinion, unfortunately that might not be the case is right now. So when compromise is discussed, I find it interesting lots of times that the compromise needs to be not compromised but my way. And that's historically the way I feel like it's been. And I think that and I don't mean my way, I mean somebody's way. And so I think honestly a pay decrease or a less of a raise in my opinion is the smarter decision for right now but also long term because this might be a decision that we have to stick with or make next year when four three or four of us are still here and I'm not
184scared to do it now unfortunately. But I also think that making it in conjunction with three days off so that they're not asked to work the same for less is a fair compromise and an increased class size. While yes, we're getting information about these this outside marketing or whatever firms feedback, President Zid and I have had this conversation since the very first presentation and her opinion has not changed. She's made it very clear that she felt like class sizes weren't an issue and I feel the same way. So this isn't a snap decision in the ninth hour, the 11th hour, whatever it is based on somebody else's feedback. This is something that I have felt strongly about. This is something that really hasn't been a key issue in any of the feedback I've gotten via
185all my emails is the class size. I would love to keep class sizes small. I wish we had that luxury, but we have no data showing that lower class sizes has improved numbers. And so I'm confident that the teachers that we have with the support services we have can continue to to critically touch the kids that need it. and academically prepare our students as opposed to red removing those from our classrooms, our campuses. I mean, well, about the class sizes, I mean, I remember when we first started talking about increasing class sizes, I do recall having a ton, well, don't use the word ton, but quite a few emails and public comment about how terrible raising the the class sizes were. And so I mean so I mean I know or I I thought I
186heard you say we didn't hear anything about that but I mean we we did and but also I you know in our pursuit of the impossible of trying to make everybody happy you know here we you know here we sit with it when and we're all I think all of our philosophies are off are are based in the fact of we're we're feeling that we are making the right choice for the students. Um they could be differing. One of my big things with the uh with the raises and the 2% in my in my experience and my thought is anytime you can continue to get those bases raised and get them to that point and the second we start taking and of course I'm like I'm saying I'm I'm not saying this can continue forever
187but if if we can maintain and keep on growing those bases for for those teachers as we operate when we do have the opportunity. I would rather um put that money in in that um as opposed, you know, as opposed to the other way, you know, the the opposite side of of what you kind of presented. >> Okay. So, I think we've kind of gone through all of the budget stuff that we're going to talk about. We're going to not do the extra slides we've already gone through. Um, which means that we would move into action items. Again, I think that we should table these action items until our meeting on Tuesday so that we can have all five board members present to vote on this. I I I don't know. I'm not assuming I
188realize how people are going to vote. However, um, Ms. Moran made a good point that we have a board member not here tonight that has strong feelings. She was not able to I'm not sure I didn't get anything to share with anybody to share with the board. I'm not sure if if our admin got anything to share. So if we were to table this till our meeting next Tuesday, what does that does that mess up your guys' timeline for contracts? I'm going to allow uh executive director Satderfield to speak to that since it will most directly impact her area of the organization. >> Um yes, it will impact our ability to produce the contracts and the notices of appointment by the 16th. Um, the first piece that it will impact is allowing our principles the
189opportunity to review and make recommended changes to their staffing uh, based on their staffing allocation, excuse me. And so, you know, had we been able to come or if we're able to come to a resolution tonight, our plan was to work tomorrow to get the staffing sheets out to our administrators, allow them the time to work through those um Monday and Tuesday, begin our staffing meetings, and then uh once we brought forward the information for your approval for the rehires, then we would spend the week, you know, of spring break. That would be when we would get the work done so that when the 16th arrives, we would just push the button, so to speak. But it's doing the work so that we make sure that we have the accuracy to bring forward the list
190of classified employees, certified and administrative, that we would like you to consider for approval. So, we are not able to hit that if we do not decide that tonight. We can't like it's >> I think we vote on it. >> I didn't. >> We have a quorum. We have a quorum. >> We do have a quorum. But what happens >> if we tie two? Let's see if we >> That means it doesn't pass. So, that's what happens, right? So, whatever motion is made, it would not pass. And then there's I I don't you'd have to explain the rule about bringing it back because only the people that you'd have to explain that. >> Thank you, President Zida. Yes, that is correct. If uh it was a two two split, it would fail because we don't
191have one board member here tonight. That board member could request to bring it back. and also uh a dissenting vote could also request to bring it back to be reconsidered. President Zima and to add to the conversation tonight if um a board member also wanted to propose an alternative motion, they are more than welcome to do that as well if that would support us getting to resolution. I mean, the alternative motion that I'd like to make, I don't think is supported by everyone either. So, >> let's give it a shot >> because I I'm a big fan of increasing by one, which is I know we have an option of that, but it's increasing by one. And also, we are going to m with maintaining our current plus three and doing the tightening up of
192our stuff so that we wouldn't jump as quickly at the beginning of the school year. I feel like that is a compromise from no increase and two um which I actually support more but I feel like the one is the compromise but I do feel we have to do it with the tightening up of stuff which means we have to make it the plus three not plus two because they have to be able to have that space to do the tightening up >> and if we did that that saves us enough money to not have to get rid of our but that for me That's about maintaining our our support staff. >> Make a motion. >> I'm not following. So I need a clarification before you make a motion. Please. >> So uh president's item.
193Was this uh the scenario that you asked about earlier? >> Yeah. So we talked about the class like where you gave us the the numbers of how much that would save us in addition. Um, so if we were to increase our class sizes by one while maintaining our current targets for additional support at a plus three with the tightening that the district had talked about. >> Yeah, give me just one moment. And I >> But it's not that >> There's not a slide. This is like me because the thing is is that if we just increased it by one versus the no changes, it was the same amount of savings. >> Can we bring up my slides just so I can go to the format of it to help us talk through what this what
194this is? All right. Boy, I have a lot of slides. Okay. So, um the scenario that President Zidama asked about earlier in the meeting would put um kindergarten and first grade at 26. Um uh se uh second grade and third grade at 27. Uh fourth grade and fifth grade at 28. and um middle school at 33. Uh when we talk about the additional support target, uh what she's referring to is uh maintaining a three student spread. So for example, in kindergarten, your additional support target would be 29. So 26 + 3. In uh first grade it would be 29 26 + 3 uh it would be uh 30 in second grade and third grade 31 in fourth and fifth and then 36 in middle school. Is that is that higher than so that puts those
195those higher than option C or the third third option? >> So um if I just keep going down like over on the the columns um the resulting average for kindergarten still remains 25. The uh beginning of the year largest class size is 28 and a3. Uh those numbers are the same for first grade. So average of 25, highest of 28 and a3. Um in second grade it's an average of 25 with the highest of 27 and a3. Uh, in third grade it's an average of 26 with a highest of 29 and a third. In fourth grade it's an average of 26 with uh a highest of 29.8. Uh, in fifth grade it's 26 as an average with a highest of 28.75. Uh, in sixth grade it's an average of 33 with the highest of 35
196and a half. In seventh grade it's an average of 32 with the highest of 35 and a quarter. Uh, in eighth grade it's an average of 34 with the highest of 35 and a quarter. >> Okay. I'm sorry. I'm still confused. So, can you can you just recreate the slide for me and I'll just write it down as you're as you're saying it because I am extremely visual and so I'm having a difficult time digesting this without it being >> Kim or Dr. Davidson, am I allowed to create the slide and then just provide it to the board or or No, I just No. Okay. All right. So, Mr. Von, real quick though, a question came up. How dissimilar is that to the option two we once discussed where class sizes were bigger? Is there
197is there a lot of difference or is that because it was addition of two? Is that the difference? >> Yeah, the the primary difference is uh having the range be three versus two. >> Uh the range being three is what allows us to um do that tightening that we see in the new option. Um because what that tightening really is is allowing classes to start at 2 and 1/2 above the target as opposed to one and a half which has been our practice. Uh >> obviously if you only have a range of two you can't uh allow it to start two and a half higher because that truly would trigger uh an additional team member. >> Right. But to seek clarification, Miss Adma, you would say continue that tightening strategy, but go ahead and increase
198by one is what you're proposing. >> Yeah. So I was basically saying we increase by one from where we are right now and we maintain our plus three for the target and we do the tightening strategy that he talked about that could save us the $420,000 because between those two things it gets us to almost a million dollars. um >> or maybe over. Yes, >> if it is the board board's pleasure, I can go down each column and and and read out the numbers, but um >> I do. >> All right. So, truly, if we're starting at proposed class size goal, um it would be 26 26. And please just raise your hand if I'm going too fast. 27 33. So that's the the total of the first column. You should have a proposed class
199size goal for all grades. Are we good? All right. Seeing nods, I'll move on to the next column. Um, it would be 29 36. You should now have uh a additional support target for all grades. Are we all good? Okay, I have to switch tabs, so give me just a moment. Um, actually the next two columns don't change because that's our current state just for comparison purposes. Would you like me to give you time to copy those down? >> Well, >> but then I can move on to anticipated average and and the other columns. I just I don't want to rush you on the third and fourth column. Okay, go ahead. >> Do you need me to clarify any numbers? I'm happy to. >> Okay, so I just want to be clear about what column
200I'm jumping to. I'm jumping to anticipated average. Okay. So, 25 26. That should be your third grade number. Just to make sure we're on track. Uh 26. That's a fourth grade number. 26. That's also a fifth grade number. 33. 32. 34. That should give you a anticipated average column all filled out. Now I will move to the beginning of the year largest class size. Are we ready for that? Okay. 30 30 Oh, I'm so sorry. That's the maximum for the model. Scratch those. >> I know. I'm sorry I didn't bring white out. >> Okay. Um 28.3. I was wondering why they were all even numbers. I'm like, "This is nice. Why is that?" >> I'm hoping the Coast Guard is not coming for us. >> Okay. So, kindergarten uh uh beginning of the year largest
201class size is 28.3. First grade is also 28.3. Second grade is 27.3. Third grade is 29.3. Fourth grade is 29.8. Fifth grade is 28.75. Sixth grade is 35 and a half. 7th grade is 35 and a4 and eighth grade is 35 and a quarter. That should give you an entirely filled out um slide similar to the one you see uh presented but different numbers because it is a different scenario and I do want to share on Tuesday um I certainly can have this slide actually in the slide deck. I mean >> yeah I mean my concern on that is if you look at the new option in the presentation let's call the new option and well let's call that new option one and then we look at this current that we just built the table
202for and let's call that new option two I mean and I look at the averages for middle school the projected beginning of the year largest class size in sixth grade is 32.375 now it's 35.5th grade 33.9 now it's 35.25 25 and 8th grade 34 up to 35.25. So again, the conversation we had before about wanting to protect the middle school class sizes goes out the window with this new option two scenario. And I know that board member Wallace was that was one of her very strong opinions. I can also I I wouldn't necessarily recommend we go through the numbers tonight like we just did, although I'm happy to if that's the desire of the board. I can uh also run a scenario um that doesn't increase the the middle school class sizes, so keeps those
203at 32 32 32. Um, honestly, I'm happy to uh show any um scenario that's of the desire of the board. >> I don't think the lack of scenarios is the problem. >> That might be true. >> Yeah. I mean, I I don't know why if if the middle school's the hangup because every other class based on the the go to the option two, the big one, right? Like even that one you see. Well, I I mean I was comparing it to to two, but some of these go down still from this model or the same. It's middle school that's the biggest issue. So, what would be a hybrid of those ch or not hybrid but yeah >> well if we didn't move middle school basically we would be looking at the like new option one
204right for middle school those numbers would be the accurate numbers then if we just said we're going to keep middle school the way it is >> if we kept middle school the way it is I I just plugged it in to to see um it would save an additional $180,000 um compared to the new option or option one since they're mathematically equivalent. Um what that means uh in terms of home home room teaching positions is it reduces an additional three um teaching positions in the model. >> What about the chart on slide 24? >> I apologize. >> What about the chart on slide 24 to do >> I I don't have the slides numbered. Oh, okay. >> To do the middle school. That's what you just did. >> So, what I just did was one
205increase in every grade but middle school. And that's what resulted in $180,000 savings above the $420,000 savings that we discussed. >> I'm sorry, say that again. 420 plus 180. >> Right. So, >> how would we save more money? Just to try to be clear, if it was a slide in this presentation, the number that would be uh next to the colon would actually be 600. I'm just trying to share how much additional over what we're talking about it would save. >> Okay. So you're saying if we raise class size in K through five by one student per grade leave sixth, 7th, and eighth at the current class size and have the additional support target at three, we would save $600,000. If we along with having the additional support target at three implement the same tightening
206measures that uh allow the new option in the presentation uh to exist. >> I mean I could get behind that but to board member Mike's point earlier that doesn't get us where we need to get to if we're really trying to compromise on something. >> No ma'am. >> How much shorter are we then? pull out the handy dandy calculator. >> And I just I just want to say really quick, I mean, >> I'm I'm looking at the shift being okay, assuming we're going down right the right path to something that is going to you know, that would work. That's the that's the other thing is as we're um you know throwing out these numbers in thin air and plugging them in and seeing you know you know hopefully it operates like that. But bottom line,
207okay, I'm interested in this, but once, you know, once again, so to board member Owen's question then, okay, so how much? >> Yeah. So I think um >> I think to answer the crux of the question uh what I'll say is if you uh went to that model and also combined it with going to a 1.5% raise uh the combination of those two changes would be $565,000 of savings. And so would get you if the goal, and I'm not saying the goal is, but if the goal is to avoid touching uh certified support staffing allocations, that would get you in a similar uh scenario dollar amount wise. >> My my struggle with that is that the 1.5% raise impacts every single employee, >> which makes it the most equitable. But I don't feel like that
208is in the best interest of student success. I feel like the 0.5 reduction on the campus is less impactful to every student and every classroom than the decrease in the raise. That's my personal opinion on that. >> I respect your opinion. I respectfully disagree. Yeah, I I respectfully disagree as well. I think that when you lose a 0.5, it's it it's so much more complicated than that, right? Because you're trying to then mesh two different jobs together probably to keep the staff person because working half a job is not really going to happen. So really, we're going to ask a person to do two full-time jobs at the end of the day. It's going to that's what it's going to be like, right? because they're going to be taking on two different roles and they're
209not going to really be able to just do it half time. >> But there are many campuses that already have that in place. We've heard from many principles that already have a 0.5 this a.5 that. This is not a new concept to this district >> and those people are doing two full jobs. So I I I just So you would rather double whammy everyone in our employee with fewer days that they are getting paid for and a pay and less of an increase because that will be a double whammy. I think based on the math that I did earlier, I can justify saying, "I'm sorry, we're not giving you $560. We're giving you $247 based on the average median princip and saying, take your three days and please do not work." I know that that's
210going to be difficult. I know that that's not everybody's case. I know PE teachers work more than they need to than they're paid to do. But if we put the days on certain days where it falls in line with okay, now I can do my vacation or I'm not going to work. And if they still work, I'm sorry, but the difference of $317 to keep I feel like if you I feel like if you pulled a lot of the staff and again, I'm not going to speak for him because I in my opinion I think staff would say I will pay $317 to keep this these aids to keep these coaches at our campus. That's my opinion. I again that's just my opinion. >> I I don't want to complicate the conversation, but I do
211just want to make sure the governing board has all the information possible when making these very important decisions. The one piece we've not been able to talk about uh with any level of detail, and it's because that level of detail has not yet been provided to the district, is the benefits renewal. um we aren't provided that by our insurance provider until March 1st, which is why when we uh set the governing board schedule, um the March 5th date is a very strange Thursday for us. Although I granted I recognize I'm saying that on a Thursday at a governing board meeting. Um but that's to allow us to actually get the numbers in presentation format to share with you. Um we have already assumed based on previous governing board conversation that whatever increase uh is presented
212in that benefits renewal will be passed on to employees. That isn't a a decision we have to maintain. But if we move away from that decision, it will further increase the amount we need to cut. And so the only reason I I share that um is to ensure you have all the information on the um influences, you will on how our employees feel about their compensation because there can be a very distinct difference between what happens to an employes's gross wages and what happens to their take-home wages. >> I >> and I'm not trying to complicate it. But I just want to make sure the governing board has um all the information that I can provide um when trying to make these very difficult decisions. >> I have kept that in my mind the entire
213time. I I knew that was coming and I feel comfortable to say that everyone has insurance increases every year and I'm sorry that we can't continue to keep covering that. That's something we've been talking about for years and I know that it's it seems like it's all at once, but this is where we are. And our insurance personally goes up more than I would like to pay every year as well. Every single year we have that happen. And there have been many years when my husband has gotten no raise, right? And it's it's a pay freeze. So, everybody is dealing with that everywhere. And so I feel like yes, that's going to happen, but that's something that everybody has to deal with. That doesn't have to do with our students being successful in school. So
214So you're saying you want you're okay with the triple whammy with a we're going to take days away from you that impacts your total compensation. We're going to give you a 1.5% raise when you're expecting a 2% raise and we're going to pass along a insurance increase to you. You're saying you want that for our staff? >> Uh, no. I didn't say I want that for our staff. I said, >> but that's the decision that you want us to make. That's what you're recommending. >> That's that's the decision that I am comfortable with making. Yes. >> And you want to give our kids less resources at our campuses. So that's the way that's the crux of >> 0.5 a.5. I think you guys are blowing this out of perspective. So as president Zidama said that
215as far as she was expecting this same thing within my mind the one constant we know is um you know insurance goes up and to me in the balance that's why I'm like if we can you know to continue those 2% pieces to offset whatever we can within the grand scheme of everything um that that's where I additionally sit with it. So the the thing that's tough is that statement might have strengthened your thought on it and then that statement strengthens my thought on on the two on the 2% piece as far as uh you know keeping it. I mean, I was listening to, you know, figuring out the class size piece and we just keep on getting to, well, okay, here comes one more hit on hit on everything. And of course, in the
216end, um, I think I think, you know, taking care of taking care of teachers, taking care of staff also has significant impact on student success as well. Um, I believe that and I'm not trying to parse words with everybody here, but it's that's additionally it makes it harder for me to say, okay, let's just hit into that 2%. And I'm not saying it like it's an easy thing to go to one one and a half percent, you know, with that with that statement, but it just reaffirms I feel like where I just I keep on coming back to the district recommendations. I I really did and I've been I you know I we've all been through it numerous times and talking about what we thought what we feel um and uh but the and when
217we talk about the compromise piece I'm like okay I was starting to compromise on on the on that numbers part but then we started getting we start getting into another bad situation on the on the other side which then I brings me back to maybe this is our best uh scenario with it. So, I'm trying to keep an open mind, trying to figure out a compromise, trying to get this done because uh time is of the essence uh as well. And whatever the decision is, I I'm going to walk away and probably just be like, "Oh, you know, this stinks. This stinks. This, you know, all all this stuff." But, um I think the plan we have in front of us is is is the is the absolute best um plan. I really I really
218do. Um and me saying really do I know doesn't maybe change your uh change your guys' thoughts on that, but um this this little exercise has brought me back further to understanding in a snapshot that I I feel then what we have in front of us is the best decision. >> Mr. Mike, thank you. And governing board members, thank you for the conversation. Miss, I'm going to I'll just bring us back to the agenda. Um certainly we we know where we are. Uh each member has certain belief, some strong and some other proposals. I didn't hear any additional motions yet and so I guess I would tell you this. If there is a motion that someone wants to make and seconded and we vote, that's great. If we aren't able to do that, um certainly
219you had made a possible recommendation of tableabling these until Tuesday. I I know Miss Satderfield answered appropriately. And I guess what I would say is if the governing board feels that we need to wait till all five are present on Tuesday, Miss Satderfield has the full team here to do whatever it takes, bring principles together to get those decisions done quickly so that Sandy and her team can build out contracts. And I know she's going to probably smack me later, but I I want to make certain because this is not easy. I want to make certain our membership feels comfortable with their their votes and that no one is left out. So that's my commentary. >> That's just it's important to me that we are not having anybody vote a certain way just so we
220can get contracts out. So I I really I I mean I would like to hear from the rest of the board about the tableling it versus voting tonight. But um that's just my thoughts about tableling. So >> um my suggestion would be would it be possible do we have enough time to do a special Zoom meeting Monday morning so that really Mrs. Satderfield and her team would only lose one day of work on this. And hopefully board member Wallace would be available. Hopefully we could all make ourselves available in order to strictly vote on these two topics. We have a showcase, but also I have work, so I'm unavailable. If if the district, the administration is saying that yes, all the other stuff and if we table if we table this and I heard of,
221you know, the delays with it, but if if somebody's saying we can delay it and do it on Tuesday and we can still meet our time time frame, Sandy, I'm sorry, but I I'm I'm just saying if that is if that's a possibility, I you know, I'm for that. If it's not, then I guess we're in for a little bit longer of a night. >> Thank you very much. I will say to you that we'll get it done. I have a team that will get it done. not only the folks sitting around the table with me, but the team that we have in our department. Um, we have experience uh at producing them and the team is really actually ready to go. We're just, you know, waiting for the the final decision. So, we will
222get it done. >> Then, can we make a motion? Then I move to table action items 5.1 and 5.2 2 until the next board meeting on Tuesday. >> I will second. Having a motion for Mr. Mike and a second for myself, I'll call for the vote. Miss Moran. >> Yay. >> Mr. Mike's. >> Yay. >> Mr. Owens. >> Can I explain my vote? >> Yes. >> Um I feel there's not a consensus. I understand I and I value board member Wallace's opinion and I want her to be able to um give that. So that being said, everybody who's heard this meeting tonight, you know what we've discussed. You know what we're going to discuss on Tuesday. If you have an opinion, if you feel like your voice was not heard through the survey, if your
223voice was not heard through email, all of our emails are on the website. Send us everything you can. And here's what I do not want. I'm sorry. Don't say don't do this. That helps us know. Not in no way, shape, or form because we have to make a decision. So, if you email us, please say no because of this, and this is what you should do instead. Please, I'm asking you that because that's going to allow us to have insight. That's going to have us to ideally find consensus and that's what we're here to do. So, with that, I vote yay. >> I'm also a yay. Motion passes. >> I move to adjourn the meeting. >> Yeah, I second. >> Um, having a motion for Mr. Owens, second for Mr. Mike. I'll call for vote.
224Miss Moran, >> yay. >> Mr. Mes, >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> I'm a yay. Motion passes. Thank you guys for joining us.