Litchfield Elementary School District Board Meeting 2/10/26

001Are we good for YouTube guys? YouTube is good. Awesome. Thank you everyone for your patience. We apologize for the delay technical difficulties over here. Um uh thanks for joining us. Today is Tuesday, February 10th, 2026, and this is the regular meeting of the Lichfield Elementary School District governing board. I hereby call this meeting to order. The first item on the agenda is going to be the pledge of allegiance. If you could please stand and join us. Next, we're going to take a moment of silent reflection, but before we do, I would just like to uh we wanted to let make sure our community was aware that Miss Bellenotto Mareno passed away this week. And so we would like to keep her family and friends and loved ones, especially the whole Bellotto community in our hearts

002as we are taking that moment to just have them wish them well as they were going through this time. Thank you. Next, we are going to move on to our recognitions and celebrations and this is going to be led by executive director Nanes. Uh, Madame President, governing board members, Dr. Davidson, fellow cabinet members and guest, both president online, tonight it is with immense pride that we celebrate the outstanding achievements of our newest and reertified national board certified teachers. National board certification is one of the highest designations a teacher can achieve. This prestigious accomplishment reflects not only extraordinary professional excellence, but is an unwavering commitment to students instructional mastery and lifelong learning. It is a distinction that represents the very best of the teaching profession and the very best of Lichfield Elementary School District. Under the

003leadership of our district's candidate support providers and with the steadfast support and commitment of our governing board and executive cabinet, LED79 is creating classrooms where students consistently benefit from nationally recognized instructional excellence, ensuring every Lichfield learner experiences highquality teaching every single day. This remarkable achievement exemplifies our district's mission of providing Lichfield learners and uh with Lichfield Learners a clear path to educational success, ensuring they receive the highest quality instruction from some of the best educators in the state. So tonight, we'd like to honor our new MBCTS, Miss Jamie Schneep from Lichfield Elementary School. Norma Cora from Barbara Roby Elementary School. Come on up as I as as I call your name. Go ahead and come on up here. Miss Abby Field from Corte Sierra Elementary School. Wendy Maldonado from Balencto Elementary School. And our research

004for this year is Julie Larson, Rancho Santa Fe Elementary School. Please join us in congratulating these dedicated teachers for their hard-earned success and dedication to excellence. Your commitment strengthens our district, elevates our profession, and reaffirms our promise to every Lichfield learner and their future success. Congratulations to each of you. You are an inspiration to all of us. You guys come on up. Take a big old Three, two, one. Thank you. Congratulations. All right. So also tonight we proudly celebrate an extraordinary achievement for Lichfield Elementary School District and in particular Rancho Santa Fe Elementary School. After a There you go. Yay. Rancho the ranch. After a successful appeal process with the Arizona Department of Education, Rancho Santa Fe has officially earned its designation as an A-rated school. this powerful recognition of excellence, perseverance, and integrity. Initially,

005the school fell just 01, let me say that one more time, 0.01 points short of an A rating due to documented technical difficulties during the testing process. Rather than accepting an outcome that did not truly reflect the performance of their students and staff, Rancho Santa Fe's leadership team with the guidance of director of assessment and accountability Brian Owen engaged in a thorough and transparent appeal process, one grounded in evidence, advocacy, and accountability. That process not only corrected the record, it affirmed what this community already knows. That Rancho Santa Fe is an A-rated school in every sense of the word. This achievement speaks to the resilience of the staff, the dedication of the school leadership, the partnership of the families, and the perseverance of students who rise to high expectations every day. So tonight we also

006celebrate all of our A-rated schools across the district. Schools that whose success is the result of sustained excellence, intentional leadership, and a deep commitment to the student growth and achievement. Those schools are Balencodto Elementary School, Courtney under Principal Courtney Frasier, Dreaming Summit Elementary School, Principal Michelle Hill, Verado Heritage Elementary School, Principal Meredith Noce, Verado Elementary School Principal Sarah Fantisia, Verado Middle School Principal Christy Sartiano, Al Thomas Hec Middle School Principal Cara Fox, Lichfield Elementary School Principal Denise Lindberg and Palm Valley Elementary School Principal Dr. Kimberly Hill. Okay, I didn't miss anybody. Right. >> Thomas is principal. >> Checking. He's back there. Ry, man, I saw him. I'm just double checking him. >> I know, but we said the wrong name. It's principal Jenkee. >> All right. >> El Thomas Hec. Principal. Who's principal there? Lister

007Luke. >> Jenke. Yeah. >> All right. These schools do not achieve excellence by chance. A- ratings are not awarded. They are earned through hard work, high standards, strong leadership, dedic dedicated educators, engaged families, and an unwavering focus on student success. Each of these campuses reflect what is possible when excellence is intentional and commitment is collective. And while tonight we celebrate these A schools, this recognition in in no way diminishes the extraordinary work happening across all of our campuses in our district. Every single LED 79 school is filled with hardworking educators, dedicated leaders, and committed staff who show up each day for their students. Their work matters, their impact is real, and their commitment to the Lichfield learner is unwavering. We are confident that the day will come when every school in our district proudly stands

008as an A-rated school because the dedication, the talent, and the heart exist already in each and every one of our buildings. To our principles, leadership teams, teachers, support staff, and school communities. Thank you for your dedication to the success of our Lichfield learners. Your work is changing lives, shaping futures, and setting a standard of excellence across our district. So, congratulations to all of our A-rated schools. This is a moment of pride for our entire LED79 district community and a powerful reminder that what we can achieve together is absolutely amazing because together we can. Congratulations, Come on. >> As everyone's walking up, I do want to do a special shout out to two of our A schools, though, because they started out last year as CC schools, and they went from being CC schools to A

009schools. So, special shout out to Dreaming Summit Elementary and El Thomas. >> Yes. in the past. We'd be like in the back though. So, you're referencing All right, everybody looking at the camera. Can you see the camera? You can see the camera. It sees you. And three, two, one. >> Congratulations everybody. I'm proud to be part of this team. One more point that wasn't made also was with the change to Rancho Santa Fe being bumped up from a B school to an A school. Yay. That means that Lynchfield Elementary School District is now being an A-rated district again, which we have always deserved. So, shout out to all of our schools that help make that happen. Thank you guys for joining us. We know you're all going to sneak off now that you know the

010fun stuff is over. So, we totally understand. >> We're going to move on to the really fun conversations. Okay, everyone. Next up on the agenda is going to be public comment. I'm going to read this little disclaimer and then we just have one speaker today. Pursuant to Arizona Revised Statutes ARS 38-431.01H. 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 board'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, H response to public comment about matters not appearing on the agenda

011will 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 discussion at a later date. Please limit your comments to no more than 3 minutes and no more than 30 minutes will be devoted to public comment portion of the agenda. When you approach the podium, please state your name for the record. Our speaker today is going to be Melissa Cone. Okay. Can I speak here? Yes. Okay. Hi, I'm Melissa Cone. My kids go to Wigwam Creek Middle School and um I am born and raised here so I know all about these schools. And I've have an issue right now that I don't know if you guys are aware of, but there is

012a class that my kids are both in. It's an elective class. It's called MediaTek. And they both really enjoy it. And um my niece was in that class, my nephew was in that class. I've had many friends, kids be in this class, and it's like one of their favorite classes. Um, the teacher has things all over his room where kids have contacted him from way beyond saying the stuff that they learned in this class of has really helped them in the future. And there's even like YouTubers, influencers, and stuff like that because of the stuff they learned in this classroom. Um, so the reason I'm talking about it is because my kids right now are in in this class and they're struggling because they don't have internet. it has been addressed and it's still not

013happening and they have very old computers that don't work with a lot of things. So the teacher actually having to use their own hotspot on their own phone to get the programs to actually work for class. So he basically doesn't have a functioning class right now. So I'm just bringing this to you guys attention because I'm not sure what else to do because my kids love this class. Like they look forward to it. They tell me today is M Mr. Keel day today. So I think that's really cool. I think that's neat. Um, my daughter's actually here and she said there's a girl that used to always be late to class, but now that she's in this class, she's always on time. So, even she notices the difference. But, um, so I don't know what

014else to do. I feel like my hands are tied on this. So, this was my only option. I felt I probably could have brought a lot of crowd, but I didn't have a lot of forethought on this. So, I don't know. Is that it? Is that all I have to do? Okay. All right. Thank you. And again, Wigwam Creek Middle School. Thank you. Thank you. Maybe somebody from district can follow up with this parent. Thank you. We are going to move on now to the adoption of the agenda and consideration of the consent agenda. I'll go through and see if there are any items that anyone wishes to pull from consent. I'll start with Miss Wallace. >> None for me. Thank you, >> Mr. mics. >> Yeah. Um 6.8 and 6.12, please. >> Mr. Owens,

015>> no. No thanks, >> Miss Moran. >> No additional items to pull. Thank you. >> Okay. Uh with that, if somebody would like to make a motion minus 6.8 and 6.12. >> I move to approve the consent agenda minus 6.8 8 and 6.12 as presented. >> I second. Having a motion from Mr. Owens and a second from Miss Wallace, I'll call for the vote. Miss Wallace, >> yay. >> Mr. Mikes, >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> I am also yay. Motion passes. Okay, we will now move on to what will now be 7.1. And Mr. mics, since you pulled this off, would you like to ask a question or do you just want them to talk about it? >> Yeah, in reality, I just wanted to take an

016opportunity um because of the the size of the project and just a chance to kind of uh fill the public in a little bit more as far as what's going on u you know, with the to not exceed 1.4 million for the the restrooms at Western Sky Middle School. So, just thought this was a good chance to kind of get some stuff out and maybe if we have some questions afterwards, I'd appreciate it. >> Dan, do you mind if I start us off and then I'll hand it over to you? All right. >> So, I just wanted to share that this is part of the uh bond program from the bond that our community most recently uh passed. This is part of the uh renovations of existing facilities part of the bond program. Uh, and

017this particular item speaks to a renovation of the restrooms at Western Sky. I'll hand it over to Dan to talk more about the specifics of the project, but I just wanted to provide that funding context before we get started. Thank you, >> President Zida, members of the board. My name is Dan Enzen, director of construction for Lisville School District at Western Sky Middle School. It was built in 1991 with the addition of the 500 around 1999. the bathrooms throughout the campus are in need of repair and the cost of repair each little bit and piece um was just becoming too much. So, we're going for more of a more indepth remodel of each of those spaces. Um when I say remodel, it's more of just upgrading and updating uh each of the equip uh pieces

018of inside of each restroom. We're going to touch every single restroom throughout the entire campus. Um, focusing mostly on the student spaces, especially in the pods. So, 600, 700, 800, and 500 pod, they'll be taken all the way back down to the studs and put back together. um other restrooms that are staffed, less um things have happened to those spaces, they'll receive like paint, new fixtures, um updated fixtures, lights, toilets, um hand sinks, things like that. So, they'll all get touched, but just to different degrees. Um and that's the entire campus at Western Sky. It'll start the day school eggs uh ends this summer, and we're shooting everything to get it done before school opens. That's the schedule right now. >> We feel pretty confident with the completion by the end of the summer. >>

019We are We've selected a JC contractor that's done this kind of work before. Uh specifically, they did the same kind of work at Desert Edge and they got it all completed over there. We can't say that something might pop up, you know, we'll never say that. Um but we do plan on having them completed before the end of the summer. >> Okay. Miss Wallace, did you have any questions or comments about this item? I did not. Uh, Mr. Mike, any >> No more for me. I appreciate that. >> Mr. Owens, >> no thanks. >> Miss Moran, >> my only comment is having three children who went through Western Sky in recent and not so recent years. This is so much appreciated. This is long overdue. And so I'm glad that we are listening to the

020current and prior students and parents and hearing what they're saying about what we need to do to help make this campus better for our students. And I'm glad that we have the money through the bond program to be able to do this and prioritize this. I have no questions either. I'm just appreciative of our community that supports us when we have gone out for bonds in the past so that we are able to do this for our students and they don't have to continue having bathrooms that are less than great for them. So, uh, thank you for your work and for sharing the information. If someone would like to make a motion >> move to approve 7.1 >> I second. Having a motion from Mr. Mike and a second from Miss Wallace. I'll call for

021the vote. Miss Wallace, >> yay. >> Mr. Mikes, >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> I am a yay. Motion passes. >> Okay. Now we are going to move on to what will be 7.2. Again, Mr. Mike, you pulled this or do you want them to talk about this? Is the same thing. So, >> yeah, pretty much the same same opportunity to um kind of give you a little presentation on it and if we have any other questions. So again, I'll I'll just share the same funding context of that this is supported by uh the most recent bond program. Um and this uh construction project is truly connected to ensuring that we have enough space at Palm Valley to support the conversion into a K8 campus. I'll hand it

022over to Mr. Enson to talk more about the details of the construction project. Thank you, >> President Zimma, members of the board. Currently, if you're at Palm Valley, you'll see construction going on now, which is adding nine classrooms directly next to the original portables that are there. Um, those nine classrooms are general education classrooms. They're intended for the sixth, seventh, and eighth uh grade type students. They're modular buildings. They're built down in Tucson. Uh, you may have read my board reports in the past. They're built down in Tucson and then shipped up and placed in uh put into place. They will have concrete floors, drywall, all of the things that looks like a regular. It's not a portable, it's a modular building. What we're going for this evening is to remove the existing portable buildings

023that are there. Um, I do not have the exact date, so don't hold me on it, but I think they were built in 1995. Um, they were put into place. They were used when we got them. Um, they've been in place and served the students well throughout those years. It's time to remove them. And in their place, we're um going out to build three additional classrooms that'll be more science-based um classrooms that will serve the sixth, seventh, and eth that'll be next to it in the nine classrooms. >> Thank you, Miss Wallace. Did you have any questions? Is this looking at a similar timeline that these will be when will these come down and the new ones be put in place? >> So, they're going to follow the same schedule that we have for the

024original nine except for it's one year later. So, we currently have not started that design process with them. Um, so it's literally we're just swapping one year to the next. So, during this next year, we're going to be doing the same thing we're doing with these nine classrooms. And the intention is to remove the portables um either this summer or in the fall and then put them into place. So it'll be not this year but it'll be the following year that they will open if not sooner. But that is the current schedule. >> Mr. Mike. >> Uh no more questions for me. Thanks. >> Mr. Owens. >> None for me. Thanks. >> Miss Moran. >> Nothing for me. >> Uh no questions. If someone would like to make a motion. >> Make a motion to

025approve item 7.2. >> I second. >> Having a motion for Mr. Mics and a second from Miss Wallace. I'll call for vote. Miss Wallace. >> Yay. >> Mr. Mike, >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> I'm also a yay. Motion passes. Okay, we are going to move right into our action items. We will start with the Arizona Aspire lease agreement for El Thomas Hec. This is going to be led by uh CFO Vaughn. Madame President, members of the governing board, Superintendent Davidson, colleagues and community, thank you for joining us tonight to discuss the potential lease being considered for a portion of the El Thomas Hec campus. This lease is a strong example of good stewardship of resources. It also demonstrates a strong opportunity to build relationships with a community

026partner. We do believe approving this lease is what is in the best interest of children. This lease puts a portion of the El Thomas Hec campus to good use with a Aspire private day school. Uh it will help offset some of the cost of running the campus and not pull students away from our offerings. AZ Aspire is what's called a private day school. And what that means is they provide very specialized special education um services to students um that are uh placed there through the work of IEP teams primarily at um local school districts or um even charter schools. The terms of the lease goes through June of 2033 with a base rent of 230,000, a portion of utilities based on square footage, and a potential charge for playground usage, a meal rate charge, and

027a potential opportunity to cater meals from our food service operations to all of their locations. This lease also includes a discount for any student who may attend from Lichfield Elementary School District of 50%. There is no constituent group that will be negatively impacted by this change due to the phased approach of boundary changes and the repurposing we've instituted with El Thomas at campus. However, we do believe that this rental opportunity will support the district constituents positively by infusing resources to help offset some of the costs of operating the campus. If approved tonight, the plan would be to facilitate apire moving in on July 1st. We would then relocate some district departments to the space and determine best use of any facilities that may become vacant in that process. The team and I are available to

028answer any questions you may have on the partial lease of El Thomas Heek. >> Miss Wallace, did you have any questions? >> I do not have any questions. Thank you, >> Mr. Mike's. >> Do you happen to know roundabout? This doesn't have to be exact as far as So, I see in the in the lease it it's a leasing out about 12,800 square feet. Do you know what that leaves of usable square footage? uh that we would have left. >> Uh I could do some math. We're they're renting out approximately 14% of of the square footage of the location. Uh in initial conversations with a Aspire, they were interested in additional space beyond that as well, um but don't need it presently. And so we have structured this lease agreement to allow them to grow

029into additional space in El Thomas Heek that would be rented to them at the same square footage um rate that is presently in the lease. Um so there are a number of classrooms very close to where uh they do intend to take uh use of the facility that we will hold uh essentially uh mostly unused with the intention that that they may be able to grow into that space. And uh even further they're um helping of us uh you know pay for that campus. As far as being prepared, thank you by the way. But as far as being prepared for that July move in, what does that look like? What is that going to take from us to have that ready upon approval tonight? We'll be scheduling a kind of operations type meeting with a

030Aspire. Uh that'll include an additional walkthrough of the campus identifying what if any furniture uh that we don't have use for they would like to remain in the space as well as planning around uh how many meals for example that they might like our food service operations to provide. uh that will drive to a certain extent any food service staffing that we might think might be appropriate to to remain at that El Thomas campus. Um and then we will be working to finalize from a district perspective what departments uh make sense to move over there uh and timelines uh for that movement. >> Thank you. >> Mr. Mr. Owens, did you have any questions? >> No questions. Thank you, >> Miss Moran. >> Um, I don't have any additional questions because we've discussed and, you

031know, this is not a surprise. It's not the first time that we're seeing these numbers and and talking through this, but I do want to make a comment that this is part of a long-term thoughtful plan that is a phased approach to effectively utilizing our assets. And we're going to have to continue to talk about um different types of utilization of our spaces as time goes on. And this is all to hopefully positively impact the long-term sustainability of the district. So, um, I am all in favor of this and I appreciate the outside the box thinking and the work that went into coming up with this plan for the LTH campus once we knew Troy Gilbert was happening. And um, just being able to utilize our resources in this way, I think is really smart.

032And it's a little bit scary because it's kind of a long-term agreement, right? But um, we're not going anywhere. So, um, that's really a short-term agreement in the in the long run in the in the scheme of it. So, and I really appreciate also that we're going to look at fair market value after a certain period of time to make sure that we're competitive with our rental income, which also will help with the sustainability. So, I appreciate that. I don't have any questions, but thank you guys for getting this together and making sure that we can meet our deadlines that we set for ourselves as far as when we're going to move our students to Troy Gilbert and then having this campus be available and having people ready to move in right away. So, I

033feel like that's a waiting for our district that we're not just going to have that sitting there while we're figuring it out. Um, so thank you to you guys for all the work that you put in to make sure that this happens. With that, if anybody would like to make a motion. >> I move to approve the lease between a E Aspire and LSD79 as presented. >> I will second. >> Having a motion from Mr. Owens and a second from Miss Moran, I'll call for the vote. Miss Wallace, >> yay. >> Mr. Mike, >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> I'm also a yay. Motion passes. Okay, next we are going to move on to our social studies adoption for 6th through 8th grade. And this is going to

034be presented by Mrs. Benjamin. Good evening, Madam President, members of the governing board. I'm excited to be able to bring forward a recommendation for a social studies curriculum. Uh we've had committee work happening all year long. Let's see which way. There we go. Um and so uh the purpose of the presentation is to talk about the curriculum adoption process and the committee work that we've been doing, share the timeline, and then uh present the committee's recommendation with the hope that the board will approve that. The social studies adoption is for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And it does fit all of the keystones of readiness, resources, and relationships. And so, why do we need a social studies curriculum adoption? A curriculum map was created many years ago by the Westside Impact and teachers and has

035not been consistently updated. So currently our social studies and histories teachers are using a a map that is focused around Arizona standards but those links that the websites that they might be having the articles that they might be reading have not been updated. So there could be issues or concerns with that. Primary sources vary by classroom and require significant teacher created supplementation. Um not all material on that may have been board approved. So that is another concern. A board adopted curriculum provides structured consistent scope and sequence across all of our middle school classrooms. Really making sure that no child has a lottery. If they're moving from one school to another, we know that the social studies uh what they've been learning in each classroom is going to be consistent. It also ensures instructional um instruction

036is delivered at a high rigor of the Arizona standards with inquiry, literacy, and performance tasks that match what students are expected to know and be able to do. Um, additionally, it uh provides that consistency that we just talked about between uh classes and schools and if staffing changes were to occur at the middle school as well. And then it strengthens instructional quality and efficiency, especially with um our social studies and history teachers probably have the biggest burden for trying to plan because they're pulling different things and having to search for that where not that they still wouldn't be able to do some of that, but it would already be done for them with this curriculum and then they could supplement based on what they want to dig in a little bit more. So the big

037picture, the social studies committee work we started um in September. We sent an email to all of our social studies and history teachers, our middle school instructional coaches, our principles, and our assistant principles. We had seven social studies teachers respond that they wanted to be a part of that committee. We had three instructional or district coaches and then our uh teaching and learning director was a also a part of this committee. We met six times throughout um the last several months and we also had six teachers pilot the two final products that we were looking at. Uh we did go out for an RFP. You guys approved that back in I think September. Um that RFP we then had the committee come together to align what were we looking for? What were the big ideas

038that we really needed to make sure focused with the curriculum. So I'll share that in just a second. We had four vendors respond um and submitted proposals and then our committee reviewed all four of those responses. Um and we asked the committee, do you want the top three? Do you want all four? Do you want two? Which how many of these do you want to come in? And the committee um agreed that they just wanted the top two to move forward. So those top two curriculum companies came in for um an opportunity to share all of the information and then we also provided um the pilot for those two programs. And then we also had um those two uh curriculums out for public review for the curriculum adoption. And that public review was from October

039and it's actually still out in the district office right now. So our uh committee determined that the goal for the curriculum that they were seeking and what's kind of fun is that this was unanimous. The team uh started out with they all had their own things that they were really looking for and then we narrowed it down and the top things were the same across the board. Uh they wanted up-to-date accurate social studies content that fully aligned to the Arizona social studies standards. They wanted accessible um learning uh curriculum for learners with differentiation with scaffolding. They wanted it to make sure that it had a lot of literacy and writing skills. They wanted higher level thinking. They wanted hands-on opportunities. They wanted to analyze sources, evaluate evidence, um communicate claims, a lot of that writing

040piece again. And then they also really wanted to make sure that they had opportunity for books in hands. They did not want everything to be on the computer. and they were very adamant that yes, they would like a um computer component, but they also wanted to make sure that they had workbooks and that kids could be reading out of a book. So, the top two um curriculums that the committee chose was Sengage, which is National Geographic. Uh some of the great things about the National Geographic was the visuals and storytelling. They had some really incredible hooks and videos uh that captured students interest. Um they had inquiry and critical thinking. Uh there was a middle school curriculum lens. It like really was inquirybased which was great. Um and then of course National Geographic had wonderful

041pictures and so that was super clear. They also had some really engaging um activities and the teacher um the teacher companions had different engagement activities as well. Oops, wrong way. The other curriculum that was a final was SAVIS. Um SAVS was built around inquiry uh lessons followed a repeated structure. I do want to stop and say Savis used to be Pearson. Pearson is the assessment company that we use for AASA and many other assessments. Um they stopped doing curriculum and SAV was formed out of Pearson. So just a little bit of background for you. Um the lessons in Savas was about connecting, investigating, synthesizing. They wanted uh it was very consistent from classroom to classroom. The platform for online was very teacher friendly. It was easy to merge with Google Docs. There was a lot

042of um resources that were built into it. The videos were great. So there was an easy digital management and then there was a big bank of readytouse um enrichment activities that the teachers had access to. So six of our teachers chose to pilot and the pilot requirements were that whatever you chose to do in one curriculum, you had to do something very similar in the other. So, if you were going to do an entire unit, you had to do a unit in one and then you had to do a unit in the other. If you were going to do two lessons, you had to do two lessons in one and two in the other. We wanted to try and keep that very consistent, but we also didn't want to tell teachers what they had to

043do with that because it was based on where they were at in their current maps. Um, so the teachers were very committed. They worked with the companies to make sure that they could access the online portals. Uh the company sent us the student books, the teacher books. So they had um the teacher planning, they had the student guides to be able to look at and then they also had the online platform. Um the team was unanimous with what they were agreeing to. The committee reviewed um so when they came back after the pilot, they said they really preferred Savas over Sengage. And then we chose we didn't stop. We we didn't just decide that that was where we were going to stop. Then we came back together and we looked at the standards and we

044dove into both of the curriculums to make sure that we weren't missing anything. So just because you piloted it and you liked one versus the other, did that still match the standards? And so we dug in and um we found that SAVIS hit the Arizona state standards much more thoroughly than Sgage did. um for some of the things there was only a paragraph in the National Geographic versus uh SAVIS had multiple units that you could utilize and enrichment opportunities. So then we still didn't make a full decision even though the team was unanimous twice. Now they were unanimous on the pilot and then also after we did the standards um it was right before winter break and we said hold off let's um continue to pilot let's continue to look through it and we'll come

045back together in January to make that final decision. That final decision is SAVIS. Um the social studies committee unanimously decided that for sixth grade it would be my world history interactive with world history early ages. Seventh grade would be global studies and eighth grade they had two options. So this was where it kind of got interesting. They had the I civics and then they also had um the American history. And in eighth grade both standards um are met in both books. and we looked to see which ones would be best to meet our eighth grade standards. And the teachers felt that the civics book was what they wanted in hand for the students and uh Savas worked with us and said that we could have online for the American history and we could have that

046for free if we were to purchase. So the eighth grade will be able to get both. Um but the civics will be the book in hand. So, in SAVIS, we kind of talked a little bit about the inquiry cycle. Um, students can analyze primary and secondary sources. Um, they've got a lot of reading and writing, which was what the teachers really were wanting. Um, teachers are getting ready to teach lessons that are clear with pacing. They've got some great materials with videos, with enrichment activities, with differentiation strategies and digital tools, as well as the books for students to be able to read and write in with the companions. We talked a little bit about the differentiation already. It has built-in scaffolds. It has accessible text. It has vocabulary support. This is going to be useful

047for our EL um students as well as for our students in special education. and it meets uh a diverse learner's needs because not only is there differentiation for um for those supports, there's also the enrichment as needed as well. Here's the cost. This would be for four years worth of the materials for the print, the teachers books, and the students hardback books. This is um approved out of our capital funds and has been money that has been already set aside. So, this is not M. would be capital funds to be able to provide this curriculum. So our next steps would be approval from the GR uh the board to select SAVIS for 6 through 8 social studies. We will then get busy with ordering the curriculum. We would like to have the curriculum in teachers

048hands this spring so that they can start to dabble with it, experience it. We can do some training with it and then in the fall is when it would be required to be utilized. And I just want to do a big shout out to this committee. They gave up um a lot of their own personal time. This was after school hours. We were late in the evening at support services and they were committed because they love their students and they love their content and they really came together and initially a few of them came because they were not wanting curriculum and they left pretty excited. So, um, I am here to answer any questions that you might have about the social studies curriculum, the adoption, or anything else. Miss Wallace, did you have any questions

049or comments? >> Um, I just thank you for the thoroughess of going through this and how you have had the teachers try this and really give their feedback. This seems like a really great process and I trust that this will be a a really engaging curriculum for the students. I think that science and social studies are very important in the middle school years and I look forward to them having a great curriculum to work through. Um I know you briefly mentioned it on the slide, but I have received a couple emails of people's concerns about buying curriculum with our budget issues. So, just want to reiterate that these are two different buckets of money. That just because we are approving something that's a high dollar amount here, that does not affect our M&L budget. >>

050Mr. Mike, >> uh yeah. Well, first first thing once again I appreciate the thoroughess with everything and it's um I kind of say thank you for involving the you know the teachers you know a diverse group of people to really look at it. However, that's just the norm of what Lichfield does and I I appreciate this uh that about this district willing to kind of go the extra mile to really dive into all this stuff. also do appreciate the extra time uh the teachers, the six teachers especially that really kind of took it on and and tested it out in their classroom and really put some thought and um in-depth look into that. Uh a couple uh questions and I guess this one was already answered. I was like, "Oh, when was the last social

051studies curriculum update?" It doesn't sound like >> they have some social studies books in their classrooms and I think the copyright is 1999. >> Yeah, this this will be nice. Um my next question and you did say it but I just wanted to kind of reiterate again. I just wanted to confirm what so exactly in the hands of the kids it's the it's it's uh workbooks that they have and then also textbooks. Could you just go over that really quick? >> They will have textbooks for the students. So that will be the reading piece. Then they'll also have a workbook companion where they can write in it that can go home at the end of that unit. So they'll have both of those. And then they the teacher can also print off anything online that's

052in the companion as well. Uh the companion was not required for from the company to purchase. It was something that our teachers requested. >> Okay. And then so it sounds to me like those additional online resources are available for teachers to >> to use and reproduce and stuff like that. >> Correct. >> Okay. Um, and then, um, oh yeah, the last thing is I know we just talked about the the numbers for this, but I think it's as far as the cost, but I think it's also important to understand. I was kind of curious about how many teachers and students this curriculum will probably be serving out of our out of our district. >> That's a great question and I don't remember it off the top of my head. Um, it would be every social

053studies teacher in sixth, seventh, and eth. So, in our K8s, that would be one per grade level. And in our middle schools, it's usually two um per grade level, >> right? Okay. Yeah. And that was just something I just wanted to get to because obviously it's just it's a big big portion of our our kids and teachers that are going to get a chance to take a uh taking part with us. So, Okay. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Mr. Owens, >> I do have some questions. How much of the curriculum was reviewed? I mean, as far as an entire book, every lesson, every single page, or was it just those curriculums or topics that were discussed or of part of the focus group or >> Great question. So, it was not every

054book and every page. It was um whatever the teachers piloted and then we spent several hours going through based on the standards to make sure that Arizona standards. So, we would look at the standard, we would go to the index, we would go to that part of the book to see what it said and how it said it. Uh, we also did take some time to look at some of the hot topics to see how that was laid out. Um, and uh, the committee did not see anything that was of concern from hot topics in the sixth, seventh, and eth. >> Do you have any examples of the hot topics, please? >> Yes. So, um, a hot topic might be, um, the election from 2020. So, talking about the election, whether or not it what

055had happened with that. So, they had reviewed that to see how it was laid out. >> Um, what about specific prompts of questions and how they phrase it, such as comparing certain events to other events in history? Um my point here is that a quick review um based on feedback Scottsdale Unified other districts um throughout the country feedback has been that there are certain units that are um more neutral than others. And so that's why I ask what specific units will be discussed? Is it a full adoption? Have these units been reviewed? Because just as much as um, you know, it's important to have these materials. There's there's ways where students can feel uncomfortable one way or the other. And so meeting a standard is appropriate, but how it's presented and comparisons that aren't in

056a um historical or neutral tone and setting I think can be problematic. >> I did contact Scottsdale because I did know that this had come up through them and did ask what grade level that they had had issues and concerns with. It was at the high school level. It was not at the middle school. Okay. >> Um, it doesn't mean that that's not the case, but all of their issues and concerns was at the high school level. >> Okay. >> Thank you, >> Miss Moran. While I while I appreciate board member Owen's questions, that makes me question who is the appropriate person to determine the tone of which we ask questions related to history. And was there anything that you saw that was not based in fact? I trust our teachers. I trust this process.

057I've been in this district long enough to know that our teachers have the best interest of students in mind. Um, I think that having a published nationally adopted curriculum is a better guidance than the amount of supplemental materials that we truly had less control over. Um, and I would say that one political leaning over the other should not be a part of this conversation. In addition, um, as I said, I am appreciative of this process. I am not an expert in social study, middle school social studies curriculum, but I do trust our teachers and I am glad to see that we will have more consistency going forward to your point if we have students going between one school or the other. Um, and I think that that will, as you said as well, raise the

058rigor and make sure that we are fully aligning to the Arizona standards. Um, and I love the idea of having books in hand. I mean, I'm still a book person. I know, you know, kids get to college and they don't have books anymore or whatever, but I think in middle school, that's still really important to have books in hand uh for our students. So, I appreciate all the hard work that went into this. And I'm really excited that we are going to have this another layer of improvement, right? Because if you look back at years ago, we have been able to upgrade and update so much of our curriculum in the last few years. And I think that's really making a positive impact on students. So, I appreciate all the hard work that went into

059this. >> Thank you. >> Um, I a question I have in looking at this list, and I am very appreciative of all the teachers that gave up their time to help with uh trying out some of these lessons in their classrooms and seeing which ones work for them. But we have a few schools that have no representation and we have a school that has like four teachers there. And I'm wondering if we did anything to try to make sure that we had a voice for those campuses that currently they got none because we know how important it is for buyin for this to really be successful. And so I'm a little leerary about how that will go with some of our campuses having absolutely no buyin by not being part of this process. And I

060understand you said that you emailed and people got to say whether they wanted to do it or not, but did we do anything else to try to reach out to those schools? >> Great question. So, it was open meetings and principles actually sent um at least in two meetings we had people show up and we just kind of took them in and let them look at the curriculum and got their feedback as well. Um I know that that was from Palm Valley. I don't know if we had other people. I can't remember specifically, but um Palm Valley was not on this list and they did send people to look at it and to be able to and and they also had given us the same feedback that they liked the Sabbath. >> I was actually

061thinking Way Creek mostly because they can be very opinionated at times, right? So, I just wanted to make sure that they felt like they >> got a chance to have a say. They also we've had the open public and we did let principles know that anyone like that was for teachers that was for parents that was for the community members to come in and review u material and then they also were given the exact same form that our committee was for feedback. We did not get a lot of feedback from that. Um but that has been out there and we did ask principles to share that with their staff. We also had that on the website and we also put that on social media. >> Right. And we're required to have that available for public

062to view. Can you tell uh people how long it's been sitting in the district office because I see it every week when I go in to see Dr. Davidson for our weekly meetings. So I know it's right there in the front of the office for people to look at. >> Um how long has it been there? >> It went in October and it's still there now because I have not moved it. >> Wonderful. So >> it's required to be there for 60 days and we are over those 60 days now. >> Okay. And you said you didn't have that many people that asked. Do you know how many people did ask? I want to say we had four total that came and provided feedback. Now, they may have looked at it and not provided feedback,

063but I got four forms back. Okay. Um and then I just wanted to say based on this list and knowing some of the people on here, I feel like you do have a very um varied opinions about a lot of the world on here. So, I feel like if there's people that are feeling like uncomfortable with possibly something leaning one way or the other that they should not feel that way because you definitely have varied opinions on this group of people based on what I know about these teachers, the ones that I do know on there. So, um I think that you did a good job of making sure that we're looking at it at all angles so that we're getting something that is the most neutral possible for our students. Um, I think it's

064unrealistic to think that we'll get something that is 100% neutral, as much as I wish that was possible. But I do think that based on who you have on this list, we are going to do okay. So, um, hopefully that will put some people at ease, but history curriculum and socialized curriculum is always going to be kind of touchy, right? So, um, thank you to everybody that put in the time and work though. So, we really do appreciate all of this. I think it's going to be fantastic for our sixth or eighth grade students to have this and I think our teachers, even the ones that didn't participate and might be a little cranky at first, are going to very much appreciate the time that they get back in their lives by having this ready

065for them. >> That's what we're hoping. >> Madame President, may I interject real quick? >> Yes. >> Thank you. Um, Miss Benjamin, could you please just describe for us a little bit if if the curriculum was approved? Um, we were to get that into our teachers hands. Um, and how would we support them as it relates to professional development, how to use the curriculum, but also tie it to Arizona standards. And I asked that because I understand where Mr. Owens is coming from. Um, we certainly know we want our product, the curriculum to be used, but we do have to be mindful of Arizona standards uh, and the context of those standards. So I I guess I just want you to describe how our team will support educators so that they aren't flying solo and

066and maybe um just really ensure that we teach the standards. >> So part of that cost is also professional development and that professional development will come out of title two. Uh they do have trainers that will come out. They have all been teachers. That was a big deal to the committee. They wanted to make sure that the people who are training our teachers have been teachers and have used this curriculum. And so we did get bios on all of the professional development people that will be coming out. Um, and then as far as the curriculum itself is actually written for Arizona standards and I know that that's kind of funny because we did the same thing with science and there were some issues. However, at science when we piloted uh we were using the other

067one and they said that the Arizona was coming. We actually were using the Arizona books in the classrooms this time. So we will have professional development. the the plan is the spring and then also summer when teachers come back, they'll be paid to come back through title two funds. Um and then we will be supporting the teaching and learning team will continue to support um based on what we're seeing the needs are. Typically the first year we're just kind of letting them um get the professional development and utilize and explore and figure out what's working and what's not working. And then we usually bring a team back together. it might be this exact committee um after that first year to look to see if we need to change any of the pacing um that the

068company has provided because just because the company's provided doesn't mean that it always works exactly the same for our district. So, we would look through that to determine if there's additional tweaks or changes that we need to make, if there are things that might be missing that um our Arizona standards cover more or cover less based on what they have in the book because we know that sometimes um even though it's written to the Arizona standards, it is not always um done in the way that we might need more in certain areas, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. So, we would bring a committee during the summer to come back and do that. that would be the following summer after they've had experience with it. >> Thank you for that. And also, Miss

069Adam, just one more comment and it's uh I do believe what Miss Moran said that this to me is a gamecher. Um one another example of continuous improvement. Miss Benjamin used the term um no longer do students win the lottery um if they happen to get a particular teacher. I think all of our social study teachers are working very hard trying to tie their instruction to our state standards. But now we can support them with a curriculum that does that and so that every child has the opportunity to win the lottery as it relates to social studies and civics instruction and and we can support them with that. Um so I think that I think it's a really good opportunity for us to keep moving us forward. So thank you. >> Thank you. If no

070one has any other questions or comments, we can make a motion. I'll move to approve the Sava social studies curriculum for sixth through 8th grade. >> I second. >> Having a motion from Mr. Mike and a second from Miss Wallace. I'll call for the vote. Miss Wallace. >> Yay. >> Mr. Mike. >> Yay. >> Mr. Owens. >> Yay. >> Miss Moran. >> Yay. >> I'm also a yay. Motion passes. Okay. Okay, we are going to move on now to the approval of educator evaluation framework and this is going to be by Dr. Davidson, Dr. Dooy and Miss Benjamin. All right. Thank you, Madam President, members of the board, community, and team. Um, this conversation is one that uh is a one of a continuous one as it relates to our cascading evaluation system and where

071we're headed um from my evaluation all the way down to our um team members who are in the classified rank. So, we're excited to be here tonight. Um you see it's a lot of individuals have weighed in um through this process. All right. So, certainly you can see the purpose of our presentation tonight. Um, and again, thank you to the team that's going to share some information with you all. But really, it's about how our teachers will be evaluated, given feedback, and then utilizing a new system that ensures that we can come to the board every year and talk about educator effectiveness. That law still does remain, and we need a system that um, not only still provides that information, but also is accurate. So, that's what we're going to share a little bit about

072that tonight. There we go. Um, as always, and I hope you would know that that's how we we work, that our efforts are tied to our strategic plan, and I think we could speak to any one of those three keystones tonight, how an evaluation tool and system, one that cascades um, really connects all three of our pieces of our strategic plan. With that said, I'll turn it over to I think Dr. Dooy as we talk about the process and the timeline of the work. Thank you. >> Oh, or Madame Jin Ben. >> All right. Well, thank you so much. We are back with the educator evaluation framework. I'll go over this very quickly because you've already seen this once. We started this um March and April was the invitation for the entire district seeking uh

073last March and last April. So, this has been almost a year. Uh seeking people to be a part of this committee work. uh we met from April 30th to June 11th with four different committees and or four different meetings with our committee. We had instructional coaches, we had teachers uh from elementary, we had middle school teachers, we had two principles and a director. This summer we brought the draft to our principles, assistant principles and educational directors during one of our admin council meetings. And then we um continued to bring draft work in October. we brought you guys some information and you provided some feedback and so we have been able to make some of those changes based on that feedback and we've also worked on the growth coefficient. Uh so we're going to be really

074focusing on that this evening. Um and then our hope is that it will be approved this evening so that we can start to work on the professional development that will be next based on all of this work. All right. Good evening, governing board members, admin, cabinet, and whoever might be tuned in listening to our presentation tonight. I'm going to share with you just a little bit of the outcome of the committee's work and thanking them for their dedication and time spent over the last year. Um, so as we met with you last last time, we presented to you the instrument and you provided feedback. Um and we sat back down and we looked at the indicators for each descript each descriptor for each indicator and we decided to shorten some things and um we were

075able to remove some redundancies. So now the instrument we have for you tonight has six domains which are Lichville learner traits. It has 11 indicators total in those six domains. Three of the 11 indicators are for classroom observation um solely. So they're the it's the instrument in domain six that principles will use to give teachers feedback on their classroom observation and then seven out of the 11 indicators are for the final evaluation and that is the other remaining domains communication continuous learner character problem solver teamwork and I think I'm forgetting one but you get the gist is the other five and then um one of the 11 indicators is that student success for the final evaluation just to remind the board and the community. There is a Arizona law that determines that we have to

076have a certain percentage of all educator and leader um educational leader evaluations that account for our outcomes with students based on their student achievement outcomes. So we completed three months of growth coefficient research sessions and um to determine the impact of student success indicator in prior years. That was our growth coefficient on our district benchmark assessment. Um, and so we spent a lot of time and I'm actually going to turn things over um to Mr. Owen just a moment to um share with you what all that means. And then um we also completed as promised in our last meeting with you the content expert for each educator role. As you can imagine, we have educators that serve multiple purposes on our campuses from our classroom teachers to our special teachers to our reading specialists to

077our EL coordinators. So there's a lot of different educators that their roles are very specific. um to what they do for us. So you will see under domain six content expert, we made sure they were all differentiated. When a principal is evaluating those teachers, only that evaluation will come up based on their specific role. But we'll talk about that a little bit later when we talk about operationalizing it in classroom mosaic. But for now, do you have the clicker? I am going to actually turn things over to Mr. Owen and he is going to explain to you all the math behind the magic. Madame President, members of the board, uh, Mr. Superintendent, we want to talk a little bit about what this growth coefficient is. I know you've heard this term, but I don't know

078how much we've been in front of you to kind of explain how it works. So, I just call this the student growth point matrix. And I'll explain what we're looking at. When you look at the rows and the labels on the left side, those are the fall proficiency categories on our district benchmark. So, math grades K through eight, reading grades 2 through eight, and then the in columns the labels at the top are the represent the spring proficiency levels. And then you can see some of these cells are split. So, we did that uh this actually has evolved over over time. It used to look a little bit different than this, but we did that to capture finer um amounts of movement within categories. And so what happens is we compare proficiency categories at the

079end of the year when we get all the data back and then we assign points to each student based on movement across and within proficiency categories. So just for example, if we look at the top row and the far left um cell, that's a zero value in there. That those are students that started minimally proficient, stayed minimally proficient, and did not grow more than the average student in that category. Those that uh showed progress at or above average would receive 2.5 points. Those that were below that would receive zero points. And then given the group of students, all of those points are averaged and the outcome is what I call the growth coefficient. And that is what we use now to differentiate uh what used to be just the point outcomes um in standard six.

080Now it's the uh highly effective, effective, developing and um ineffective. Is that any questions on that? >> Miss Wallace, any questions? >> No, no questions. Thank you, >> Mr. Mike. >> None for me, >> Mr. Owens. >> No, thank you for explaining that, >> Miss Moran. Yeah, I just want to resummarize in maybe even more layman's terms to say that this basically is a way to look at growth that more heavily rewards, if you will, movement up higher proficiency. So if you're if you are minimally proficient in the fall and you get to highly proficient, you get a you get six. You get a higher number. If you stay minimally proficient, you get zero. If you go, you know, lower than where you were earlier in the year, that's going to be a negative. So

081um yeah, just to summarize, we want growth. The more growth, the better. >> Yes, that's exactly. So now I'd like to talk about how we arrived at the different point intervals that defined the categories. So highly effective, effective, um developing and ineffective. And really we started with looking at external validators. So what indicators do we have outside of our benchmarks and that's state test data and of course school letter grades. So looking back at last year, that's the first thing we did. And we looked and we said, "Well, it's an A district. 10 A schools, twothirds of the district, three B schools about well 20% of the district, and two C schools, 13% of the district." And we said given that and those high scores, we should see very few if any ineffective ratings. So

082that was kind of the basis for what we wanted to see in terms of the distribution of those effectiveness outcomes. So we just started with um the 1.7 which is really when you look at the highest scoring in the A schools that's where they were and then we kind of worked backwards. So we started with uh the original range was 1.7 1.6 1.5 and we went back to last year ran outcomes on that and it didn't really match the distribution that we wanted to see. It was there the concordance was very low. So then we just started looking at different impacts and we settled on uh 1.7 and above 1.4 to 1.7 1.0 to 1.4 and below 1.0 zero and really across the board on I don't know we 15 or 16 different impact data

083sets we see those distributions where we want them highly effective between 1675 effective and highly effective combined 75 to 90 um developing somewhere around 20 and um below that for uh ineffective so we're looking 5% and below Yeah. >> Okay. Can I >> So, so just to simplify that, basically we wanted to select growth of co coefficients that not only show growth like we already talked about, but also show growth that also is comparable with these other data sets that we get from the state accadience I because what we were finding with our previous growth coefficient expectations is there was not a match. So we, you know, um, according to our growth coefficient that was highly effective, all of our schools should be ACE, right? To kind of simplify it. So the growth coefficient really

084should demonstrate what we're also seeing in those other measures. So what Mr. Owen just explained very brilliantly because he has a brilliant mind is that we made sure that growth coefficient made sense. So just to elaborate on that a little bit more, you're saying that we used existing data sets to back into our grades in a way because we know if those data sets actually mean success or mean that we need improvement in those things. So rather than looking at I think before it was 70% and higher or whatever was highly effective, we're actually differentiating that more because we know that 70% and higher doesn't actually mean highly effective. And so we're using the evidence that's available based on other factors and then backing into that. Is that accurate? >> Yeah. So B really that's

085exactly what we did is we wanted to see external measures so that we have something that we can align with. We wanted to see uh the highest concordance possible basically between our outcomes using the growth coefficients and what we saw statewide and so and the impact data I did I guess I didn't say that we used last year's impact data. So, um, and I mean when we looked at, I think there was a little surprise in the room, too, when we started to look the lowest scoring grades at schools and subjects were the lowest coefficients. I mean, it was, oh yeah, that makes sense. Yep, that makes sense. So, once we got the intervals that we really wanted um down from 1.4 for to 1.7 we could really see the consistency. >> So what I

086hear you saying is this evaluation tool should be night and day more effective in actually identifying the spectrum of educators. >> Exactly. We what we're hoping by balancing out the growth coefficients the way that we did in our growth coefficient research is that when we say that this growth co coefficient is highly effective the other measures also say that's a highly efficient growth coefficient. If we say it's effective it makes sense. If we say it's developing it makes sense or if we say it's ineffective it makes sense. So really spent a lot of time to make sure that our growth measures we were also seeing equal performance across these other measures. So yes, I do think the outcome will be that it will make sense when we look at the growth coefficients and where people

087are categorized based on their results with their kids. Um that you will see it makes sense. I keep saying makes sense, but hopefully that makes sense >> and this and then that it'll be tweaked every year or this is like what we're going with. >> Well, I think since this is all new, I mean, I definitely think we're going to have to look at it after the year. We'll have to monitor. Maybe we'll have to make some adjustments. I think I mean I definitely wouldn't put it off the table that we won't make any changes, but I think being brand new and we it hasn't actually been live yet, I we may see some things that we'd like to adjust yet. Miss Moran or Miss ID, I'd just like to add and and I have

088to use the term you guys stole the thunder, but you know, I I spent many many a year in human resources trying to navigate the evaluation process and then the system that gives educator effectiveness labels and it was very very hard at times to connect the work that was happening in the classrooms to the assessment to then the effectiveness label. And so really proud of the team that's standing before you that did this work. Um it's amazing work and yes Brian you do have a big brain. That's true. Um but what we're trying to do is it trying to create a system that just simply it does that it makes sense that if you're a teacher and you get a label you can realize it's not just the work you're doing. Um but it's also

089that content expert piece the way your students perform matters too. And that that hasn't always been said and and put together in a nice process that I think our team is demonstrating tonight. So, just wanted to add a little bit more insight. Thank you. >> And then I was also asked to remind the board that this is not for um performance pay anymore. This is the evaluation. You know, my last thing I'm thinking as I'm seeing all this and processing, you know, the labels and seeing the growth, which I which I appreciate the growth factor is sometimes we go, oh, you know, highly proficient, highly performing kids, that's the win. But, you know, that win is also moving every single kid. And being able to show that and speak to that, which is which is

090important. I think I appreciate that about it. But I'm looking at the student growth point matrix and I'm sitting back thinking of myself as an administrator and the teacher sitting there and we're we're sitting down and we're processing what it actually is, you know, showing as you're as you're walking the teachers through what they see there. And I'm trying to imagine what they're actually seeing. I mean, I know the I I can see a snapshot of the evaluation framework piece, but um what's in front of them? What are they looking at with when they're processing these growth these growth pieces? Does that make sense? Going on Dr. Ducey's make sense. >> Yeah, they'll have to click on it. >> Do you mean what will they see in the evaluation or when they're looking at how

091this how each student's point outcome >> came out? Is that >> Yeah, I guess I mean maybe I guess it's on both ends then. So, I mean, because I'm sitting back and and looking at this and so we're going to see they're going to see their their kids and they're going to see each individual kid with the growth >> growth point and then it's going to be averaged >> on the evaluation itself. Is that how I'm hearing it? >> Yeah. So, what I do is I I create a report in our system in illuminate now Renaissance DNA and I upload for each for all the whole district each individual student. And it has uh fall percent correct, fall proficiency level, spring percent correct, spring proficiency level, the amount of growth or point change, and then

092the point outcome based on this grid. And then um I actually just average everything for all of the teachers and I send that to the principles to input into the evals. >> Okay. Gotcha. And then and I because I appreciate the 11 indicators I mean as far as going through the evaluation piece but then if you step back is too this is going to be a lot to unpack >> with with with the teachers and the administrators. So that just in itself is going to be a little bit of a process but that that makes sense to me now I'm understanding a little bit better as far as what it look like as a teacher sitting there um and and getting these these scores and everything. Did you want to >> this this part other

093than the scores themselves is not different than what we've been doing for the last 10 12 years. So this is the part that the teachers are used to. The part that will be different is the 1.7 where before it was um a lower growth coefficient. I think we're ready to move on. >> All right. So what's next? So hopefully tonight um we'll get the board to approve so we can begin the really big work which is rolling this out. Um our district guiding coalition in collaboration with our MBCT guiding coalition is going to create the training um as part of our lead which is going to be like a train the trainer model um to provide both certified and classified employees training. Classified is coming soon. We haven't gotten there yet but certified training for

094sure. and then continue to build out the glossery evidence and artifacts um in classroom mosaic and building that framework inside classroom mosaic. So to kind of elaborate on um Jennifer's um answer to um board member Mike's question is really what the teachers will also see is this is all digitalized in classroom mosaic. So when they actually log in the principal or leader will already have selected the appropriate evaluation instrument based on their role. So they won't see everything you're seeing tonight for every single role. They will only see what's relevant to them and the growth coefficient and the areas that they are responsible for based on their role. And then we'll complete the classified framework. We're hoping to bring that well we will be bringing that in the spring of this year and um for

095further discussion as well as approval eventually. So, and then just to remind you, um, the state law requires that 33% of that student success indicator be part of the final. So, all the other domains and indicators will be averaged together as 67% and then the 33% will come from just what our conversation's been tonight, which is that growth coefficient with the new metrics, right, for what is defined as a highly effective score, what's defined as effective, developing, or ineffective. And then the definitions, just to remind you, these have not changed since last time we met. But just to define an overall score is averaged together. Then this is where a teacher will um land based on that overall score. 67% coming from the majority of the evaluation framework and 33% coming from that student achievement

096metric. And we will open for any additional questions you might have. >> Miss Wallace, did you have any questions or comments? >> I do not have any questions. I really like how this looks. I know that it may be confusing at first, but I actually think it's very simple and um once you understand how it works and you've been walk through it, I think that it's very clear and concise and I I think it's very nicely done. >> Mr. mics. >> Uh, no more questions for you, uh, for you guys, but big thank you for all the time and hard work and sleepless nights putting this stuff together. >> Mr. Owens, >> I think it's a great tool. I think it's important to have consistency and I think it's important for our educators to know

097exactly what, you know, they're held accountable to and how to meet those accountability measures. Um, since I get to go before you, board member Moran, I'm going to steal your thunder. You got to thank the last group for their participation, which I also appreciate. And so, I want to thank everyone's participation. And this this group, I know it's a lot to to, you know, get into the weeds on this stuff. It's exhausting and you could go back and forth, but to come to a consensus and your time's appreciated. So, thank you, >> Miss Mar. You will never steal my thunder, board member Owens. I will always go I will always go ahead and say that I also appreciate the many hours of hard work that have gone into uh creating this tool and the continuous

098work to improve all of our evaluation tools which came from you and all the hard work that you've done and and the vision for what this could look like. Um, I know it's been a long time coming and I believe that this will increase the student success overall by allowing more candid feedback and clear um areas for improvement without the punitive feel behind the evaluation which was one of our goals from the very beginning. So, I'm glad that this is still echoing that. And I think in the long run, this is going to really have wonderful positive outcomes, not only for our students, but also for our teacher and their own growth and them being able to see what they can do and where they can improve and then us giving them the tools to

099be able to accomplish that and do that and see their own success. I think that's going to be huge, huge for us as a district. So, thank you. >> I don't have any questions. Um, but I'd like to echo what everyone else said. Thank you for all the work that's gone into this. Um, especially myself and Ms. Moran have wanted this to be happening since probably before we got on the board. But we really appreciate all the work that you have done that you have really listened to the feedback we've given and that this is going to truly open up so many more conversations for our staff to to be better and do better for our students and that they're not having consequences or getting in trouble, right? That they can just really be open

100and vulnerable, which is something that we've really worked on trying to make sure people feel comfortable with that here in this district. Um, I know this has been a lot lot of work and that we're not done yet because we still have another one to do, but we really do appreciate all of the time and effort that you guys have put into this. So, thank you so much. >> And then if I can add just one more thing because I know the community and probably our educators are watching tonight or will watch in the future. The metrics for student achievement are not just for educators. They're for every educational leader across our cascading system. So, we're all held accountable to making sure our kids grow and achieve and do more as a result of our

101work. So, I just wanted to make sure that was known. Um, that it is all about just like Sam always says, together we can and truly it is a together we can moment. So, thank you. >> Thank you. If there's no other questions or comments, if someone would like to make a motion, >> I'll move to approve the educator evaluation framework for the 2627 school year as presented. I will second >> having a motion for Mr. Owens and a second from Miss Wallace. I'll call for the vote. Miss Wallace, >> yay. >> Mr. Mike, >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> I'm also yay. Motion passes. Okay, we are going to move on to approval of out of state travel requests to attend the AASBO ASBO spring conference. This

102is going to be by CFO von >> Superintendent Davidson. Uh, Madame President, members of the governing board, this is a request um to uh send certain members of our finance and operations team to uh the spring annual conference for ASBO. The spring conference in particular is particularly focused on uh the operational areas and functions of a school district. Um there's always opportunity at ASBO conferences for for learning in those areas, but uh ASBO really goes out of its way to make certain that there's more of a focus on uh food service, transportation, technology, those those sorts of operational areas at the uh spring conference. Uh the the uh agenda for that conference has not yet been published. Uh and so as we do get closer and are able to truly see what sessions are being

103offered, uh we will re-evaluate who uh we truly want to send. But it is traditional uh that they have specific tracks for each of those areas. You'll also see some language in there around pre-conference. And in the last number of years, um, that's an area I personally have found a lot of value in because what they do at the pre-conference compared to the traditional conference, if you will, is as opposed to having many smaller sessions on various different topics, they'll offer a couple of different opportunities for half-day um, really deep dives uh, into topics ics that you really need to to know quite a bit more about. And so that's why we've also uh included the cost of one pre-conference uh for the team members. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. >>

104Miss Wallace, >> I do not have any particular questions. I I felt like the cost per person was relatively low when looking at and I don't mean low like it's incorrect but it's a very affordable conference for everything that it appears to offer and the length of the conference. >> Mr. Thanks. >> Um the first question is this uh we this uh typical group of people gone to this in the past. I mean I know you're talking from experience but you know all of our all of these areas we've we've done this uh before. I'm trying to remember for last year this was something >> so uh I think it might be slightly uh more than before. We always do have some level of pre uh presence at the uh spring conference. That's why I

105mentioned that as we get more insight into the specific uh uh items being discussed, we may decide not to send all on this list. The reason we included all on the list was that so we could have potential approval to begin the the planning process and the procuring process for for actually attending the conference. And then I know we have another one coming up that we're going to talk about, but I was and I could find where how that one was funded, but I couldn't how is this funded? Did I miss that or you you didn't miss that? Uh typically speaking, uh these are either supported by our uh maintenance and operations budget or um indirect cost. The reason that that uh professional development for this group of employees isn't uh covered by title two

106as you heard discussed tonight for other professional development is title 2 is intended to be spent on more educationally uh focused uh professional development. there's less opportunity uh for other funding sources for uh the more operational or finance side of the house as it relates to uh professional development funds. >> Okay. All right. Uh thank you, >> Mr. Owens. >> Yeah, I definitely tend to agree with what board member Wallace mentioned about the reasonable cost behind it per person. That price definitely fits the Aquarius and Laughlin. Um but you know my thing with with administrative travel and costs like this, you know, yeah, we see a dollar sign, but every person going ideally will learn something that's going to come back and impact our district and make our district better. So if uh if the

107boss man thinks it's good good to send these people, I'm fine with it, too. >> Miss Moran I agree with board member Wallace and board member Owens and uh believe this is a good use of our resources based on the quality of the conference. So I'm in support. >> And for the record, I really wish it wasn't in Laughlin. >> That's why it's affordable. >> That's right. >> I'd rather it be in town. >> Well, that's true. Us two, actually. But um yeah, I don't have any questions. Uh thanks. I appreciate that this is not in consent. Um, board member Moran did not say how we like to talk about any out ofstate travel so that we're very transparent and upfront with our community about what we're doing and why. So, I appreciate that we

108got to have that chance to discuss why this is a valuable conference for our admin people to attend and then bring back information to the district. If somebody would like to make a motion. I move to approve out of state travel request for the ASPO spring conference as presented. >> I'll second. >> Having a motion for Miss Moran and a second for Mr. Owens. I'll call for the vote. Miss Wallace. >> Yay. >> Mr. Mikkes. >> Yay. >> Mr. Owens. >> Yay. >> Miss Moran. >> Yay. >> I'm also yay. Motion passes. Next, we are going to do approval of out of state travel request to attend the National Class Link Conference. >> Good evening, Madam President, members of the governing board. Director Laura Combmes, our educational director, has been granted a scholarship to attend

109Class Link conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Uh, Class Link is um something that director um of technology brought on. Ruben brought that on this past year. It was really to help um streamline all of the different programs working together. So, this past year, we've really focused on human resources and getting that connected to the technology piece. Um and then next year we are moving into making sure that all of our curriculum is uploaded into class link and so students can access our curriculum via this platform. So that would be where uh director Combmes comes in because she will be the one required to make sure that all of our staff are online with class link that which should also be a part of the HR piece. So that should be taken care of working with all

110of our uh curriculum to make sure that they're uploaded and that students have access. So, this conference itself will be um great for her to really be able to learn how to utilize Class Link to the best of the ability, making sure that we're using all of the different pieces that it has. Uh this is out of title 2 because this is uh focused on education. So, it is not out of M. This would be title two if it's approved. And I would be happy to answer any questions. Miss Wallace, >> I do not have any questions, but I love seeing all these scholarships for all these conferences. I feel like the last few that we have seen have had scholarship and just thank you for going out for those scholarships and looking for ways

111to attend those. >> Yeah. >> And to save our funds that way. >> Mr. Mike, >> no questions for me. >> Mr. Owens, >> I have no questions. Miss Moran, >> I also have no questions. Okay, >> I don't have any questions, but based on the hotel cost, you can see not going to Laughlin costs a lot more money. So, if somebody would like to make a motion, >> I move to approve out of state travel request as presented. >> I second. >> Having a motion from Mr. Owens and a second for Mr. Mike. I'll call Mike's. I will call for the vote. Miss Wallace, >> yay. >> Mr. Mike, >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> I'm also a yay. Motion passes. And with that, I'm gonna have

112us take a quick break before we jump into this really hefty conversation coming up. Are we all ready to go? Everybody got a little bit of movement and now we can jump into this very fun conversation. I'm sure that we have a lot of people that are going to be watching and paying attention to this. So, um, we are going to move on now to our fiscal year 2627 budget discussion. This is going to be led by CFO Vaughn. >> I'd like to first allow uh Dr. Davidson to start us off with just a couple of words and then I'll take it over. >> Okay, sounds great. >> Thank you, Mr. Vaughn and Madam President, members of the board. Um here we are again to further the conversation on our um budget and uh the

113plans that potentially we want to explore as we move into next year. I just want to remind the team that that this again is discussion tonight that we um certainly appreciate the feedback from the last meeting and the different um ways in which we've captured additional feedback from his staff. Um we we appreciate that as well and and I think Mr. Vaughan will probably share some other things we're doing to further that conversation. Um, as I think we talked about last time as well, um, no stone is going unturned. Um, anything's on the table right now. And and as always, u not only for our board tonight, but for those listening, um, we talked about it today at an apple pie tour. If there's something you're thinking about that we just haven't thought about, please

114let us know. Um, we'll continue to explore those ideas until, um, we come to the board with our final administrative recommendations and, um, seek that vote. But we appreciate the board being ready for the conversation. I certainly know that Mr. Vaughn and our team are ready. So, thank you. And Mr. Von, I'll turn it back. >> All right. I know this is the part you've all been waiting for tonight. So, Madame President, members of the governing board, Superintendent Davidson, colleagues, and community, thank you for joining us tonight to discuss potential options being considered for the district's 2026 2027 budget year. Tonight's presentation aligns most closely with the resources keystone of the strategic plan, but strongly relates to all areas of our strategic plan. Before we jump deep into the presentation, we'd like to share that

115many of the slides in today's presentation are the same as we presented at the last board meeting. I'll begin by going through the presentation and sharing the new information. We'll then spend some time at the end allowing for discussion around the items that have not been changed from the prior discussion. We would like to begin by providing an update on our work around the reductions to the district office and department 12-month calendar as well as the review and restructure of district office and department positions. We would like to first start by sharing a revised option to the 12-month calendar that was driven by feedback we received since the last board meeting. This option maintains the number of days reduction, but it works to ensure hourly staff on the calendar do not lose more than one

116day of compensation in any given pay period. Salaried employees due to their compensation being spread out over the year will also not see dramatic changes in an individual paycheck uh pay period to pay period. These dates also work to extend a break already in place. So we hope the reduction of days can serve a dual purpose of also improving work life balance for our employees. These dates uh on the slide show the dates we're considering as a potential reduction. The one change from what we discussed previously is that there were previously two days in October connected to fall break. That would have impacted the same pay period for hourly employees. We instead propose that we move that date to July 1st to have it connected to the 4th of July holiday. Not only will this

117modification save hourly employees from losing two days of compensation on the same paycheck, it also moves the date to a period of the year before where only 12-month employees are on contract. So, schools will not be impacted by any uh change in district or department services. This slide details the same proposal we discussed last time connected to teachers and other employees who would otherwise start on Friday, July 24th, beginning one day later and converting April 16th to an unpaid day day off and closing on February 12th, while January 15th would become a school day. This is unchanged from the last board meeting, but we wanted to provide the opportunity for more discussion on this potential option. Moving back to the district office and department changes, we continue to review district office and department staffing for

118options for reduction. We're still working with those individual leaders and employees. The total savings identified presently related to district office and department reductions, including the 12-month calendar change proposal, is $284,000. We are continuing to look at this and look forward to sharing more details at a future board meeting. Uh the next several slides have not changed since our last discussion. Uh but I'll pause here to see if there's any comments or questions related to the calendar change option. >> Miss Wallace, >> I do not have any questions. I think that that makes the most sense to make sure that no one paycheck is affected more heavily than another. And I don't think that it drastically changes our what our parents and our students expect by moving that Friday off to February. So I think that's

119a a good plan that you have here for for the change in the 12-month calendar. >> Mr. Mike, >> I agree with board member Wallace. Also, the thing I'm just trying to I just want to verify and I maybe I'm missing something. The the details of the 12-month calendar change proposal and the other calendar changes that 579 that's the that's the combined saving or >> it is not the 579 is uh simply what's on this slide. >> Okay. >> Um the the uh changing of those couple of days. It's it's truly uh depending on the calendar, 2 or 3 days. Uh it just so happens that there are so many more employees on those school-based calendars that that it's a much higher dollar amount. >> Okay, >> Mr. Owens, >> I have no questions. Thanks,

120>> Miss Maran. >> So now I'm confused. So, you're saying if I look at slide seven, the $579,000 is only is the savings from only those employees who would normally return on Friday, July 24th. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. So, what is the dollar amount of the changes from the 12-month calendar change proposal on slide six, those six days? >> Yeah. So, that is the 284,000. Uh that $284,000 also includes about $80,000 of position changes uh in department and district office uh areas. Uh the reason we're not talking about those specifics tonight is we're still working through those individual um conversations with leaders and individual employees. >> Okay. So the 284 is approximately 200,000 of calendar changes and 84,000 of position reductions. Okay. I am in favor of the calendar changes for a number of

121reasons, but the primary one is that we're not asking anybody to do work that they're not getting paid for or even to get paid at a reduced rate for doing work. giving them the time off, which some people may look at as a blessing and some may not. We can't control that piece of it, but that seems like a fair reduction and we're we are doing that for everyone. I don't think there's anyone that's going to escape that piece of it. Correct. >> Correct. My only other comment on this section would be $84,000 in position reductions at the district level seems low compared to potentially us reducing campus position levels for a million dollars. So I would again ask that the district um dig deep. >> Yeah. and look to see what else there might

122be in the district or charts um that could be done more efficiently. And the answer to that might be nothing. Um but it seems as though we're asking a heavier lift from the campuses potentially at this point. Again, not knowing what we're actually going to decide, but I don't have any questions. Sorry. We're good. Uh, as I previously shared, the next several slides have not changed from uh, since our last discussion. So, I'll move forward and allow us to revisit those at the end. Last meeting when we discussed stipens, we discussed the option of shifting stipens to the continuous learner project. Uh since that last meeting, we were able to uh truly examine what that would look like. And this uh has the potential to save $54,000. This does not include athletic stipens due to

123the hours required and the fact that many of our athletic coaches are not otherwise district employees, so do not work under a continuous learner uh project plan. Any questions on this item before we move on, >> Miss Wallace? >> No. No questions here, Mr. Mike? >> Yeah. None. None for me. I do I do like this this as an option, >> Mr. Owens. >> No questions. Thank you, >> Miss Moran. Um, yeah, I do have a request in this area of stipens that we would continue to explore the potential to use tax credit dollars for any of the athletic or club stipens that aren't the CL continuous learner projects. Um, if there are tax credit dollars that we could utilize to pay, for example, people who aren't our employees, um, that would be would work

124in our favor, I think, as well. Uh, I'm not sure what that number would look like, but is that something that we can try to estimate? >> Uh, yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to share that we're uh actively engaging our site councils right now uh to gather some additional feedback on strategies we might employ to uh further expand tax credit and uh gifts and donations uh collections in hopes that it it could further uh support uh this work. Um the athletic stipens are probably about $150,000 um on top of this number. Um one option would be to uh shift to tax credit as we discussed. Another option might be to allow it to be part of a CLP and then um for additional hours over the 30 uh that a CLP covers that it's a

125reduced stipen. Um Sandy might kick me under the table because of how complex that would be from a HR perspective, but but um that would be one potential option to explore on top of the the tax credit um option. Okay. I want to make sure I understand. You said it's about 150,000 plus this 54 if we put athletics in there. So, if we were just talking about athletics, it'd be about 150,000. >> Most of the district paid stipens truly are um athletics. >> Okay. So we would need to figure out how to if we wanted to use tax credit money, we would need to make sure that we are getting that much money, which we have not been very great at getting tax credit money in this district. So that would require a pretty big

126lift, right? >> It certainly wouldn't uh it certainly couldn't become the default because to your point, if the money wasn't there, you you'd have to find some other opportunity. Um but yes, it would be a big lift. That's one of the reasons we're soliciting um further ideas and also why I truly didn't include it here because I don't while I want us to to consider all options and to uh dream to the point that it's practical, I also don't want uh to promise savings that you know might be unlikely to actually come to fruition. I appreciate that and I I would love to see it come out of tax credit money. Absolutely. If if we could figure that out and start having that money every year to do that, that would be amazing. So, let's

127figure out how to do that in this world. Right. But, um, just wanted to clarify like what we would really be looking for. But, thank you for the information. Well, can I just add to that as well that that is the side effects of having a conversation like this is to be able to say, okay, maybe we're not going to be able to take athletic stipens out of tax credit next year. But if we can start the conversation and educate everyone on how that can work because historically we've been very conservative in what we use tax credit monies for. And so that's been part of the issue as parents are happy. When you get to the high school level, you're maxing out that tax credit every year. No matter if your kids's in DECA or

128Yearbook or Key Club, whatever that looks like, there's so many fees. And parents are willing to do that if they can see an impact to their own child especially. And we have enough students who are in athletics that I think we could make this more successful, but we haven't been able to truly tie in. How does that impact you? What is the impact that you can make as a parent to help these programs >> to uh bolster what you're sharing? Board member Moran, our normal stipend for an athletic coach is $1,100. Um if you think about what the uh married filing jointly maximum is for a tax credit, that's $400 a year. So you would need less than three um married couples to max out their tax credit from the team to pay for um

129the coach. >> So it is something that certainly could be uh worked towards >> Oh, I agree. I I I think we can get there. I just think we haven't been good at it yet. But maybe this is how we're going to get there because people are going to see >> that we need to start doing this, right? and that this is something that benefits. It's a win-win when you do a tax credit donation and that it doesn't just have to be your family. It can be your grandparents or aunt and uncle that live by you or don't live by you but live in Arizona somewhere because you can donate to any school, right? So, um yeah, so I would like to see us move towards that for sure. And if this is the lever

130we get to push that better, I'm I'm all for it. So, >> are we ready to >> Yes. Sorry. We're ready to move. Uh we've brought to you two additional options for class sizes that have been developed based on the feedback we've received and considers target class size, the maximum class size or when additional support would be provided as well as actual class size that may result from the change. Before we go to the options, I'd like to share that our staffing process and timely issuance of our contracts on March 16th is contingent on your guidance tonight on class size and certified support staffing at our schools. It doesn't mean we have to to make a decision tonight. This certainly isn't a voting item, but if we aren't able to come to some uh level

131of guidance, uh we may not be able to issue contracts on March 16th. This slide shows one option for class size adjustments. What this slide is showing left to right is class size targets or how many students we're trying to have in each class at that grade level. the class size that would result in additional supports for the school, our current class size targets, an additional support point for comparison, and then the average class size we would actually expect to see across schools in those grades compared to our current class size target. What this option does is increase our current class size target by one, but keeps the point at which additional resources would be provided the same. Stated another way, our largest class sizes would not grow, but our smaller class sizes across the

132district would increase some. This is being accomplished by reducing the range of class size we allow prior to adding additional supports from three to two additional students. You can see that our anticipated class size by implementing this model actually follow closely our current class size targets. This proposal reduces the need for 17 teaching positions, eight from changes in enrollment and tighter staffing and nine from the change in class size. Essentially, this change reduces the range of allowable class sizes within the district. This second option is similar except that it increases the target class size for all grades but kindergarten by two and leaves kindergarten at the current 25. It also moves the range of acceptable class size from 3 to 2 so that the largest classes would be one higher than it is today. This

133option would save 1,620,000 versus the 1,20,000 from option one. This option reduces the need for 27 teachers, eight from becoming tighter on staffing and enrollment changes, and 19 from class size changes. I'd like to pause here for discussion around class sizes. >> Miss Wallace, >> I think we can all agree that no one wants class sizes to increase at all. Um, this is something that we're looking at that we don't want to do, but we have to do to get our budget where it needs to be. I still I appreciate the one student for every grade level and that the time that we would add another teacher has not changed. so that teachers don't have to worry about their class sizes getting significantly larger before another teacher would be hired. Teachers could know that while

134they may have one or two extra children, it's not going to impact them as far as not getting to hire another teacher when class sizes grow. I still, even though the savings is obviously so much more with option two, am very uncomfortable with how high that puts our middle school numbers. That puts our middle schools in our anticipated average with our eighth graders at 35 in a classroom. And that is to me way too many kids at that grade level, that size kids in those classrooms. I personally would not feel comfortable with option two with the middle school anticipated numbers. They're just way too high for what I would be comfortable with. Even being a middle school parent myself and having two middle school students in the district. I don't like those numbers. I love

135that kindergarten could stay lower because I feel like that's very important, but I don't think that the eighth graders should have to take that side of it. >> Mr. for mics. >> Could you offer uh I'm trying to figure out and I know this is not a perfect math equation for every sing you know it's not it's not a perfect uh system to for for filling the classes and when we're trying to figure out these overages and when we pull the trigger to have have to hire another teacher. But what I'm trying to look at is the the first one of course my computer turned off here um but I have it printed out. The first the first option it says it talks about the proposed size uh class sizes. Then we have the current

136class size goal and then we see anticipated average. And I noticed that the anticipated averages don't even get to our current class size goal anywhere. Anyway, and could you and sorry if this is something that was discussed before maybe I'm just seeing it. No, just just a little clarity would be appreciated on that as I figure out. >> Well, you know what I'm asking, so >> I know exactly what you're asking because I ask it to myself every year. Um, it's really a product of the fact that you have to staff grade levels at schools with full real human beings. and you can't staff it with say like a tenth of a teacher or a quarter of a teacher. Um, and so you end up in a lot of scenarios where you have two options.

137You either uh reduce a section and then have class sizes dramatically higher than what we're targeting or you give the section and uh have class sizes um closer to but lower than what we're targeting it. And it truly just depends on how the number of children in the grade uh fall. And so what you're seeing is uh we do uh because of the feedback that we uh receive from not just the governing board but everywhere that uh large class sizes are viewed as problematic. uh we tend to not well I won't even say that our board regulation or procedure as it presently is says that when you're three above you get more staffing and the result of that is that you end up with smaller class sizes because you hit that three and then when

138you add the teacher the resulting class size of the of the four classes or the five classes, however many teachers you have in that grade, are just mathematically uh lower than the target. I know that's it's hard to No, I I'm I understand that that piece. It's not like it's not like when there's an overage all of a sudden it's you know 25 kids over and then you know voila we have a class of 28 you know 25 or 28 kids again with right with with hiring a new teacher. I was just trying to figure out as you know as people are looking at these and we're seeing these projections and just trying to understand how that um that comes into play. That's that's uh that's all the questions I have right now for this.

139I'll just sorry can I just uh provide a quick example? >> We'll use kindergarten because the present numbers are easy because it's 25 in a class. So if you're running a school with four um four uh kindergarten teachers uh at a your your perfect uh grade level size would be a 100 students, right? The the current procedure says that at 112 students, we would add additional staffing. That's three more per per grade. That would then mean you have 112 students. But now you would have five teachers. If you divide 112 students by five, you now have an average class size of 22 and a half. And so you see how because we truly don't allow it to grow much higher than the target, you you regularly end up with class sizes that are below the

140target. >> Well, you stole my thunder because I have an example using 33 students. >> Perfect. Go ahead. >> So, >> I think I brought this up. I I did bring this up last time um because in my head that's what I see right is yes we can have some consolidation but realistically what's going to happen is the campuses that are full because we have a lot of class campuses that aren't and there's no there's no issue right they have we've t to them and it's 24 26 it's way less than some of these other school campuses we see this is going to impact certain campuses is um and so the idea of saying okay if we get to a certain level then we'll open it up. I would love and and have you have

141you done this to where you've taken our current student population, right? And I know I don't know how long this would take. It seems like you could probably do it and say, "Okay, if we're going to transfer and you say every school or every kindergartener is going to first grade, every first grader is going to second all the way up at every grade to see what that would look like the next year." Have you done that? >> I I hate to to steal your thunder again, but you did. >> Um, good. But this is that's where the 1,ion20,000 comes from. >> Correct. That's why I'm saying you've actually done this. This isn't an estimate. This isn't a okay 2.7 kids. >> Now, what still is an estimate, right? Um board member only is right. Is

142that that rollover, >> correct? >> So, this is because I asked it last night. >> It's actually the spreadsheet that executive director Satderfield and I use every year uh to do staffing with our schools. Um, at some point I must have uh been feeling very excited to build a spreadsheet because the class sizes are just an input. So I can put in any class size target um to see. >> Yes. So I think one of my other points was um we've heard a lot of public comment. We've heard a lot of people that are fearful all of a sudden my campus, my kids class, my students classroom. What would be, you know, how do we message or communicate like, hey, this is this is only going to be of certain classes or certain campuses. So

143that way most people honestly most people are going to be okay, it's not going to affect my ch my child. I think honestly you start that at the site level uh with the individual principles. Um and that'll be most easily seen by them uh when we feel comfortable enough to provide them the normal staffing documents that that they get every year as far as um you know what staffing they can expect to see on their campus next year. I do think this model of how we're presenting it tonight does lend to um potentially an easier narrative around we're both looking at target class size but we're also looking at maximum class size. the even in scenario two, even in option two, the the maximum class size before you get additional support has only increased by

144one. So even though the target has increased by two, we're it what I personally heard in a lot of the feedback were there was concern around the largest classes and this either option option one does not change the largest classes at all and option two only changes the largest classes by one And I think that uh becomes the message along with some school specific um information that I think our site leaders can help us um address to specific communities. At least that's um where my mind goes. >> Cool. Thanks, >> Miss Moran. >> Okay. I have kind of a lot in this section. So, okay. I I I'm not a fan of option two. I'll just tell you that right now. Um being that I I understand what you're saying that, you know, it would

145only be the largest classes that would be impacted by that, but the feedback that we got during the last meeting was really feedback on a larger increase. So like the option number one here that we're saying one student per class is clearly not the increases we were presented with in the first. So I think that alone is going to help to quell some fears about a negative impact that this might happen. That being said, let me ask a couple of clarifying questions before I give my opinion on this. So when I look at the at slide 15 which is an explanation of the gen ed class size reduction and I see that it would reduce by 17 teaching positions. Eight of those are from tightening of staff and nine are from the change in class

146sizes. Is that saying that the eight positions will be eliminated regardless of if we change class sizes? >> Yes. >> Okay. So if we don't change class sizes at all, what is that impact? I'm assuming it's approximately 500,000 which is half of what that is if we're looking at eight versus nine. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, what you're saying there is we could not change class sizes and still save $500,000. >> Yes. >> Okay, that seems like a win-win. The other thing on on that specifically is when you were talking about the rule we have in place now for the additional classroom support. My understanding is that when we decide we need another section or when the classes get to the max number that we allow a choice between hiring a teacher and getting additional

147instructional assistant hours. Is that correct? uh it typically doesn't come in the form of instructional assistant hours, but but there is typically an option between a class uh one or two classroom assistants or a teacher. The only reason I I make the point that it's not uh the classified hours is classified hours provide a principal the opportunity to use it in whatever way they see fit. That's not the option we give them. we give them the choice of either a teacher or classroom aids. So they could not um not that they would but they could not in how we give it to them choose to uh provide that additional classified support in for example the front office >> a different grade >> I don't think they would but but that option is not given historically

148speaking uh where we see that aid option being uh taken advantage of is our schools that don't have a classroom to put an additional teacher into it. >> Okay. So, I guess my question then becomes, have we considered or do we think we should consider tightening those rules so that we can better utilize larger classes within our guidelines. Instead of lower adding a teacher and lowering that average, having the first trigger be additional classroom aid. >> I do think you could do that. Um, you could then, for example, and I'm not proposing this, but just to give an example, you could say at two or three additional students in average in a class, that gets you an instructional aid, and then at some other number, it gets you a a teacher. >> Yeah. Another number

149that would get us closer to the average of what we actually want it to be, our targets, right? what what would end up happening and maybe this is something we're okay with that can be part of the discussion is you would have a larger range of class sizes. >> Yeah. >> Uh you would still have small class sizes just by how the numbers kind of work. Um you would also have much larger class sizes but with additional aid support. Um, but that certainly broadening that that band of acceptable class sizes as opposed to shrinking it would allow you to more closely align actual class sizes uh with what the target is. In fact, mathematically, it's about the only way uh to more closely target um the the class sizes. executive director uh Satderfield and I

150uh really spent a lot of time on looking at why in the world when you look at this option does the anticipated average even though it's increasing the target class size really align fairly closely with our current class size and so we we went in that model that I just described to board member Owens went grade by grade level, school by school, and identified um the the grade levels that would be clo really very close to needing a new teacher. And it was kind of an entertaining process because what we ended up doing was making a list of those eight positions that this class that this slide talks about and seeing that they're one student away, two students away, three students away uh from triggering that thought process of needing additional support. And that's the

151hard part when uh HR and finance are looking at how do we staff schools in the in the coming year because you really are sitting there thinking, okay, this grade level is one student away from hitting that trigger where I'm expected to give more supports. Do I just give it now because it's literally one student and this is based on estimates or do we not give it uh but then potentially find ourselves in a scenario where we're trying to hire a teacher uh midy year or after the season when that one student comes. Now if we move to a model where you get that one student, you get that second student, you get that third student and what's being added is an instructional aid. That does become a slightly different conversation. um simply because instructional

152aids by and large are easier to hire midstream than our certified teachers because of the nature of certified teachers being on contract. It can be very difficult to find a certified teacher after the school year has begun because frankly we're in a teacher shortage and the good teachers are already under contract somewhere. >> Um, can I pause you just a moment? Mr. Owens, you had a question. Go ahead. >> I just had a follow. What is the student, you know, like, oh, we're one over, so we need it just kind of like you were alluding to, oh, now we're back under, we're over, we're under type stuff, right? Like I feel like we'd constantly be oh you need an aid this week but this student withdrew now you don't right like >> right and that

153is one of the challenges uh enrollment is constantly fluctuating um day to day week to week um it is one of the reasons from time to time executive director Satderfield and I for lack of a better word slow play um slow play staffing changes because we want to see that that number is going to stick um before we provide it. Uh it's not always perfect. Um and that's another reason why uh having that gap uh too small can be problematic because it can be much more likely that you get two students over than than even three. the the the bigger that gap is, the more likelihood that it really is is real. >> Understood. So to me, the other piece of this coin is we are talking about raising class sizes, which will only impact

154some of our schools. We know we have schools that are pretty much across the board under and some relatively significantly under our current class size goals. So this entire presentation is positioned around reducing expenses and what we're not talking about is increasing revenue which can only be done by increasing our enrollment. So I had a meeting with Dr. Davidson yesterday and um pitched an idea that uh I would like to at least put on the table tonight as well, which is to do a recruitment campaign to hire an outside service to do a targeted campaign to students either in the area of our district um perhaps in our district who have gone to other schools. just reminding them of the quality education that we do offer based on we're a-rated district based on potentially the

155school uh that's in the area that that they might they might live in. I don't I'm not a marketing or PR expert. I know we have some people on staff who do that as well, but I think this would be worth an investment to put some time and effort into to see if we could move the needle back to filling our classes rather than trying to increase class size to vary the number really only in those schools that are already at capacity are overcrowded. So, um, if we can bring in some revenue, meaning bring in more students to fill the classrooms that are less efficient than they could be, that is another solution to this problem that we're having. Um, I don't know what the results of that would be. Obviously, none of us do.

156We haven't done that before. But I do think um that the reward or the payback from that could be really significant because one of the reasons that we're even having this conversation or started this conversation months ago was because we saw we lost a hundred students. Our enrollment was down 100 students and what the dollar impact to that was. And it seems to me that we should easily be able to toot our own horns and get a 100red or 200 more students. Now, that might not be the case, but I think that's worth putting some time, effort, and money behind to get a return on investment um on that. I don't know what that looks like. I have no idea. But I think that's one of the things that's missing from these conversations is we

157are doing this based on what our current enrollment is and what we estimate it will be next year, which is really based on this year, but we don't know that. And I don't want to have to continue to have budget cut conversations without talking about another solution to this, which is filling the seats in our classrooms. And so for me personally, when it comes to the class sizes, if you're telling me we don't have to change class sizes and still we can still save $500,000 based on a tightening and really lining up with what our policies and procedures already say from a classroom um size with those eight teacher positions. And I don't think that if we are going to try to recruit families to come back to us or to come from surrounding districts

158because we are the best elementary district in the West Valley. There is no arguing that. If we're trying to get those people to come to us, I don't think increasing class sizes goes along with that message. So, I would prefer to see a class-size change happen if it has to happen and budget cuts continue to have to happen. I would rather see class size increases happen in a year or two and reserve that change for a different point in time. That is my personal opinion on that. >> Can I share a couple of things? >> Yes. >> Okay. So the first thing I want to um share is I think there might be confusion around where you might see impacts. So, one of the places and spaces um executive director Sat Satderfield and I saw

159when we were digging deep into the nitty-gritty of the data was a school where in one model uh you might have three teachers in a grade level and then it drops to two. Um so that's obviously already in one of our smaller schools. So, I don't like I don't want it to to seem like it's only going to impact big schools or it will only impact small schools. What what really drives if it impacts is just the number of students in that grade level and how it relates to that target class size, what that division problem ends up looking like. And so, yes, it does end up impacting some schools differently than others, but it really truly isn't because of it's a full school or it's a or or it's a a less attended school.

160It really is driven by what that math problem does. So, that that's one thing. The the second thing is I do think that there's some opportunity um to look at enrollment. Um I also think there's some opportunity to interpret the procedure we have in place um slightly differently than we historically have been. So what the procedure shares is if you are at three above board approved class size in every class in the grade level that additional supports will be added and there's a list of things that we say could meet that requirement. Historically we've leaned towards adding a teacher. um that is the most expensive uh way to address that problem, but to be frank, it's also the most direct way to address that problem. It it truly reduces the class size you're experiencing down

161to a level that's below uh the class- size target. you could uh to this conversation have a first stop be an IIA or even one of the other um potential solutions that would be cheaper. What would result in from that is you would not see a reduction in class size but what you would see is a reduction in adult to student ratio. um which is slightly different than adult to certified teacher ratio. Um but that certainly is an option without a change in current policy. We could take a very aggressive stance on on class size. And what I mean by that is those decisions that I was sharing that finance and HR have to make around this is this is one or two students away from needing another teacher. The default answer could be we're

162not giving that teacher because the data doesn't say we'll have the need for it. And then when it comes you're still not necessarily getting that teacher, you're getting other supports. That's certainly an option. It it takes a more it takes a broader view of class size and looks more at like I said adult to student ratio as opposed to um teacher to student ratio. So that that is an option um for us to consider. I guess I would say on that I I would like to get some feedback you know on pros and cons from that because as every decision that we make you know we try to do what's in the best interest of student success. So I don't know I don't know historically what the context is of how many times do we

163go ahead and hire a teacher and come to find out yeah we could have done without them or you know what is the quality of the education then if we're not adding a teacher and then you know is that part of why we're successful because we do have lower than than really what we're allowed to have class sizes in with a certified teacher you know leading the helm there. So just I need more information on that I would say. >> Did you have more questions about this section, Miss Marine? >> Before I No, I don't think I have any more questions on this section. I believe I >> Okay, Mr. Owens, go ahead. >> Did you if you had something go ahead >> I can't remember last I think it was last asked last question.

164Do we do some type of exit survey for anybody who withdraws their students, right? Do we do that >> or do they give a reason? >> We do. And mo do they all fill it out or some don't? Most don't. >> Some some don't. It's hard, you know, when a family is uh leaving us, it's hard to >> force that, right? >> But we certainly solicit that information. >> Okay. Uh Mr. Mike, >> you can go ahead. I just want to actually I want to piggyback off of one thing board member Moran said, you know, as far as understanding all those options, of course, and when we have to pull those triggers. I mean, that's that's good information to have. I want to go back to the, you know, thing where with the with the

165students and not to oversimplify this, but we always talk about trying to find reoccurring revenue or ways to pay for things. And, you know, nothing is more important than the students that, you know, bringing in students into the into the school district. And when you look, you know, if you run numbers and you see our total capacity for what school, what you know, what we have available in our schools as opposed to what's filled right now and it's just like an average number is probably around a thousand openings or you know based off of capac and that's full capacity. I understand the math doesn't work exactly for every single grade level, but when I look at those the capacity numbers with the graph and it's like, you know, there's there's 90, you know, there's 90

166grade sections within all the schools, you know, 16 of them don't have openings. The rest of the 74 do have openings. And and then I sit back and go, "Oh, what is, you know, what is, you know, Miss uh Moran brought up a a 100 kids and what that means to a number and I'm just like, oh, okay, what does 50 kids mean just on the weighted piece when you talk about 50 more kids? That's 736,000 if if they're all that same thing." And just so I guess what I'm just trying to say is for us to additionally really think outside of the box of ways on where you know where these where these kids are, how we can pull them in because we know we have the product and um you know there's there's

167maybe there's something out there that we could be doing better to recapture some of that to where um we can limit the amount of conversations And and I know that might, you know, that statement is kind of like maybe a no duh as far as of course we'd want more kids, but all the time and effort we put into trying to figure out what to do with Thomas Hec and all the manpower we put into figure those pieces out. I wonder how much, you know, time, effort, energy, money, or whatever that looks like to um to attack those stu those student numbers as well. So, that's my long- winded way of agreeing with uh what board member said about uh with the with the numbers as well. >> Okay. Um I have a question and

168then I'm going to give my opinion that's probably not going to match anyone's up here actually, but um first of all, you mentioned a school where it's going to go from three teachers to two and how our smaller schools will be impacted. Tell me what that means for traditional academy at those schools. If you only have two classes, how can you have one of them be traditional academy and only one classroom be your gened students? >> So, um, the the specific example I was talking about was actually a kindergarten grade level. And I could be wrong on this. This isn't the world I live in every day. But I don't think we have TA at the kindergarten. >> We do not have TA. >> Okay. >> Um, >> but it's a good question. But if

169that were to happen, you said that specifically for kindergarten, but I could see how that could happen potentially in a different grade. What does that mean for TA if that happens? We haven't really talked about this specific situation coming up. Um, I can tell you when we moved to Troy Gilbert to LTH, we um they only had two classes and we did not do uh TA at that school specifically because of the two. We did do cluster gifted. So, gifted students were clustered together in the same class, but it isn't something that we have talked about at this point. But that is not the same because TA while I understand it's how we service our gifted kids here in this district and that's a whole different conversation. TA is not just for kids that are

170gifted. It is correct. It's >> high just a high achieving >> students and that are looking for something different. >> Correct. >> So we're not sure how we would handle that then at this point. >> It just has not been brought up. It isn't something that we've talked about. >> Okay. So looking at the big picture, us as a board, we sit up here and we have to make some very hard decisions and they're going to be decisions that none of us want to make. And that's what we got elected to do is to make these hard decisions. And I've really been thinking about this a lot because of the fact that the class changes happened right when I got on the board. And I was really proud of the work we did to do

171that. Um, but looking at the whole big picture of ways that we can save this money that we need to save because we have law students and I agree. Let's start figuring out how we can bring them back. But I'm also realistic that we can't avoid dealing with this budget deficit that we're basically dealing with of how we need to cut some money in order to keep our budget balanced. That that's very important. We have to be responsible to our stakeholders in the community that pay those taxes to us to use it responsibly. Um there are lots of different options that we can look at of making cuts. What I do not want to see us do is make a small cut here, like add one student in every class and then also still have

172to cut our re like our support services that we offer to our classrooms because one of the things that our district has always had and one of the things that I feel sets us apart from districts around us is we have so many options as far as reading intervention and math intervention and all the stuff that we do and all the c all the supports that we offer our teachers. And one of the reasons that I feel like that was done before we made the class cuts in the past was because we did have some higher class numbers than some of the districts around us. But our schools all had supports to help those teachers to do what they needed to do and to be able to reach our kids and target our kids more

173individually. So, if we don't find a way to cut money somewhere, we're looking at potentially also having to cut some of the supports we offer our students. And that is unacceptable to me because I think that will be more detrimental than having one or two extra kids in a classroom. And my other question actually is, well, I guess a comment is wouldn't this actually help some of our schools that are bigger because we already don't have enough classrooms. So, this might make it so that we're not trying to find another classroom for these kiddos in some of those really full schools. >> It certainly does have the possibility of um that impact where with a larger class size potentially you need one less student somewhere on that campus, right? And then you have uh a

174tiny bit more space um on our most full campuses. I'm also realizing one of the things I've not shared um tonight and I have shared it with the governing board. The governing board has this context and we've we've talked about it in prior board meetings, but I do think it's just important context to share tonight is really uh what level of cut uh we we likely should be targeting. And that that figure is between three and a half and four and a half uh million uh I would say. And so when you think about how how one gets there um there's truly two significant budget levers that get us there. it's class size and it's the certified support positions uh that uh you just mentioned, right? It's just simply um the largest budget levers when

175you think about uh school district spending because it is staffing, it is at the school level. The reason it being at the school level is significant is any cut at the school level happens times 15 times 16 and so it scales very quickly. Um, so when you talk about if we're going to get to a reduction of 3 and 1/2 to 4 and a half, um, I truly just don't know how you do that without touching either class size or certified support uh, staff or some combination of the both. Uh, I will share just personally I have some concerns about doing both in the same year. uh simply because if enrollment does not turn around, you may end up having to have continued uh efforts to balance the budget. And I just don't know that

176uh impacting both and then continuing conversations about how to balance the budget will leave you uh in a in a very good spot. >> Right. That's my that's my concern too is it's not just this year. It's what is we what do we have to do next year and the next year because we've looked at this budget forecast over the next several years and we know what we're dealing with and I sincerely hope that Miss Moran's idea and we can figure out how to make that happen and we bring students back in and we can fill our seats and we can undo some of these things but at the same time we can't turn a blind blind eye to them. That's what we're up here to do and that's we need to trust you guys

177to bring us the right information. And so I know that makes me like the bad guy up here to say that class size is an easy way to do it, but that is an easier way to do it. Especially if we can keep all our supports in place for those students. I feel like our students are still going to get what they need. Our teachers are going to still have people that are helping them to be able to educate our students to the best of their abilities. And that is what I'd like to see. Another lever you didn't mention, we talk about later, but another big one is all day kindergarten. Talk about an unfunded thing that we do in our district. And I would never say we should have we should not have all

178day kindergarten, but that is a huge expense to our district that we pay because we know that's what's best for students, but it is a very big expense that is not covered by the funding that we get from the state. So, we have to look at where we can get there. And I I want to do what is best for students. I just also don't want to take away I don't want to increase our class sizes a little and also take away supports. That's just not something that I want to see happen. I do think um the commentary we're hearing tonight really speaks to at least in my mind a decision that um both the governance of Litzfield Elementary District and the administration of Litzfield Elementary District um need to make in terms of what

179is our strategy. And what I mean by that is our strategy having the smaller class sizes but less certified supports, less intervention, less supports in that way or is it larger class sizes with more supports? Um, I just don't know that the Arizona school funding formula supports a model of lower class sizes and more supports. And I don't, as a non-educator, I don't know the answer to that. Um, but I think that that is the broad strategic level question that we're wrestling with tonight that ultimately at the end of the day we have to decide. Um, and it's not it's not completely an eitheror. It's a spectrum for sure, but we do have to decide what our strategy is and where we're going to fall on that spectrum. What I would say about that is

180I actually think we can do some of all of it with the caveat that yes, potentially more budget cuts will come and eventually we may end up in a spot where we have larger class sizes and no supports. That may be the reality of the situation. But I think we can inch towards that with a little bit of both and not have to choose one or the other. Because if we inch towards that and we are successful with increasing our enrollment, we can inch right back. It's much it will be much easier to go back to that. and and we're going to get to this obviously, but I I also think there's some potential ways of looking at the increase in a different way as well, but we'll save that conversation for later. So, I

181I did want to know uh President Zida, are you saying you are in favor of option one or option two? I am in favor of option two because I feel that that is the best one of those options to get us closer to where we need to be. And I know that that now makes me like evil to all the teachers watching and I'm sorry. I love you all. I promise. But at the end of the day, we're going to have to make hard decisions. And I feel like that's a decision that I would be comfortable with making knowing that we got to keep our supports in place for them. Like if it was increase our class sizes by two, keep our kindergarten the same because that is important to me for our littles. Those

182are the ones that are like babies still, right? Um and then we don't touch our supports for now. That is what I would rather see happen. Does anybody else have any other >> I'm I'm going to agree with Miss Moran that I think that if our goal is to increase enrollment, putting our middle schools at that level would very drastically change enrollment. I think that that is very important to parents. And I think personally that parents care more about their class size than some of that support staff that they don't see. And maybe my student in middle school, and I I don't mean me personally, I'm just being a hypothetical middle school parent doesn't use support services. So now they're in a class of 35 kids because we want to keep more support services. I

183don't think that's fair either. >> I would say to that that we heard from schools that didn't want us to change their student numbers that they didn't care about the class sizes. Those parents didn't care at Verado Heritage that they were going to have high class numbers because they wanted their kids to be at their school. So, I don't know that every parent is as concerned about the class size as you may think because again, we had a whole community come out here and tell us that that did not matter to them. I think the one thing that we have been able to um that's been apparent the last two discussions is that there is no consensus on any of this, right? There's nobody going to be not no decision is going to make everybody

184happy. that unfortunately like you alluded to or said um President Zida was that we got we volunteered we worked to get signatures and get elected to have to make these decisions and we are using the information that we have now and I would love to see our enrollment increase. I would love to have more students in our seats because I think that the quality education that they can get from this district from our administr from our administrators down to our teachers and our support staff is the best in the West Valley. That's unquestionable. But until that happens, we have the reality of finding three and a half to four million dollars in our budget because we don't have that money anymore. And so there's a lot of things that bled us to this point too,

185right? We had err funds. We made we had additional revenue. We reduced class sizes previously and staff was added and now we have extra staff based on our current student population. If we can not change any staff or not change any classroom sizes and and lose eight positions, right? Like that right there shows we're overstaffed, which is a nice luxury to have, but we're what we're saying is we don't have these luxuries anymore. And I hate that every one of those eight is a human being. Every one of these 19 is a human being. like that's that's not lost. But at the end of the day, we have we have to make a a budgetary decision. And I think the points that President Zida made were were very um valid. I think that they're all

186unfortunate circumstances of our current situation and I'm glad that we don't have to necessarily make a decision right now, but we will. And so hopefully from this we can turn over some more stones, but to get this big of a chunk of money, this is looking like a a sad reality. Either option one or option two. Um what I would like to add to that is um we're you're going to go back based on this feedback and then we will get another iteration of this presentation. we will uh one of the things I wanted to readress is if we still want to target a March 16th issuance of contracts, uh we will need to build consensus incredibly soon. And so because I feel like that may not happen tonight, um I might recommend that we

187work with Dr. Davidson and Miss Contra to explore what an additional board meeting next week looks like. Um truly if we don't land on where we want to be uh on class size and uh certified support staff uh HR will not be able to publish to schools what staffing for next year will be and that entire process will be pushed back. I don't want us to rush that decision. I want us to be able to make the right decision for our district. Um, but I also think we need to protect uh what the hiring season looks like for next year because regardless of what decision we make, if we're not able to uh fulfill that decision because of of hiring delays, um I I don't think that's what's in the best interest of students. And

188so to support uh this administration and and the governing board uh making that decision in a way that we can all be comfortable, I would potentially recommend that we consider exploring um with Dr. Davidson and Miss Contra uh additional time to discuss this topic. And just because of uh the timeline of staffing, I I would strongly suggest it be next week. >> Okay. One suggestion I have on the the the gen ed ratios, option one and option two, I would like to see the eight positions removed from here and just put separately because it sounds to me like no matter what option we choose, which would be no class size changes, option one or option two, we're going to get that $500,000 in savings. So, I would like that removed from here so that we're

189not seeing a $1.6 million decision when it's really a $1.1 million decision. That's again where I go back to when I do the math. I think we can get there without this. The other thing I want to add on the remaining part of that which is the potential nine positions um in the option one is that that is an estimate and when we look at the changes in support staff, we know exactly what those positions are and we know exactly what the impact of those positions are going to be. We could say we're going to save a million dollars doing on on option one and only end up saving if we remove half again um half of that. I mean this is not set in we're not definitely going to save this. So I I

190even look at that as saying this it to me it's too set in estimates to know that we're actually going to save the money and we have got to save the money. So I feel more inclined to make decisions based on changes that we know are going to result in actual budgetary changes and savings, not what we think may result in budgetary changes. >> Can I just add add to that? So um that's true. Uh and the reason it's so true is despite us looking at every single grade, every single school and modeling that change in that way, it's still based on estimates of the number of students that come in each grade. Um the reason that that's not as true uh for certified support staff is we provide a number of those to our

191schools which we'll talk about here in a minute how that really looks and there's significantly less risk of trigger being hit um to increase that. And so um it's it's it is more concrete in that way. Um I don't think that that's something we can avoid in terms of I don't think there is a a better way to to estimate uh the impact of class sizes. I think sadly just by the nebulous nature of the inputs into the process it it it is an estimate and it uh is a little bit more uh uneasy than than the others. But I I just wanted to share that that there's truth to to that statement. >> I am not opposed to us having to try and get a meeting next week because I think that we're not

192going to come to consensus tonight. Um, as much as I'm 100% not available next week, >> just throwing that out there. >> I I have a question on um I know we got to move on too, but sorry, I've totally lost my um so if we Okay, so here's here's my question. If we have, we know what class would class sizes would look like next year based on if everybody moved up, right? How many students, right? So, say my seventh grader right now is in a class and next year he's in in an eighth grade class and there's what's the max 36 students in there? 30 35, right? Is that the maximum that we could have? >> That is the current maximum. So 32 the target >> anticipated average current class. Okay. Proposed. So say

193so so say now right now they're in a class with 35. Next year they're in a 36. And I'm like this is too much. I want to disenroll my student from from this elementary school. I guess okay. So I guess my question is how many students total in this school district will be in larger classrooms next year than they are this year? Does that make sense? It does make sense. I don't have the answer. >> If every single kid, every single student who now is in a larger class next year than they were this year decided to leave our district, how many kids is that? >> I don't know, but I can know. Um, >> yeah, >> after tonight, >> is it 17? Is it 52? Right. like that. I think and I'm not trying

194to say let's gamble and say these kids aren't going to leave or we're okay with five of them because we don't want any of them to leave. But again, I feel like a lot of this is perception and I want it to be reality. I want that's why I asked that number. you know, Bell & Sodto. Okay, if my kid's in seventh grade right now and ne or I don't know, I'm just an example. In eighth grade next year, his we're gonna know his estimated class size based on right verdict classroom size going to be like we can get those numbers now. >> Yeah. >> So, that gives parents either peace of mind or an understanding, okay, this is the reality that we have. That's where I think right now everything right now we're fa

195like looking at is guessing and estimates like we mentioned but we have actually more >> well they're estimates based on that work you're describing we're just talking about it at a higher level um >> and so with a decision like this I think we need to actually get more granular in my opinion >> for transparency and for less perception and more reality. So, um, sorry, I'm just thinking. Um, so we have two options that we presented tonight. Um, we certainly can get more granular on one of them. We certainly can get more granular on both of them. We certainly also can uh develop a a third option. Uh technically speaking, option one and option two really are option two and option three because we talked about an option last time that that isn't presented here.

196Um, I I don't want to pull the board, but are there any um additional options we'd like to see or would we like to just see granular detail on both of these or would we like to see granular detail on one of these? I guess can I ask a question on what board member Owens is going to do with the granular detail? Because that's still going to be an estimate. It's still going to be okay. If everything is the same as this year and it's rolled forward to next year, let's say half the the kids are impacted by a higher class size. Do you have a number in mind where you're like that's going to be too much or you just want to know that? I just don't know how that's going to help with

197like the decision-making process and it and it is not there is work that needs to be involved to to kind of boil that down and and do those scenarios. >> Well, how much work I mean like the number we we should know. I mean you have the numbers right there. You should know, right? Like >> it's honestly not much work. Um so the way the spreadsheet is structured um the top has the current number of teachers, the middle has the number of teachers the forecast would suggest and the bottom of it has the average class size in each grade in each school um with an average calculated for the grade level across the board. That's where the anticipated average column uh column from these tables comes from. >> Yeah. And so I don't I don't

198necessarily think and I don't need this and I don't think we need to put up a slide of okay this is what Verado L looks like. This is what Verado Heritage Right. I don't I don't that's that was an example of right but that overall number of how many more students how many students are going to be in larger classrooms next year than they are this year. >> Sure. And by that I mean larger than our current standard. So if you're in a class of 22 and next year you're going to be in 24 that's still that's not interested. I want that number and for my own knowledge and whether I use that >> so we can figure that number um and what I also might suggest just because I think it will help in

199the interpretation of it is the percentage. So taking that number but also turning it into a percentage of our student body. um which is which is great. I'm all for having more information. I guess my uh final thought on that is our class sizes are a policy and we should not make policy decisions based on fluctuations year-to-year. needs to be what is our theory in general which CFO von brought up you know what is the philosophy and the governance behind the way that we are choosing to manage our classroom sizes do we want them to remain small are we okay with them being slightly larger um it's more than just looking at the budget this year to next year and who's impacted this year to next year and our current students we've had these classroom

200sizes in place for many years at this point and it's not something that you want to change regularly. You want to get a number and and stick with that um for consistency. >> Yeah. But we don't always have the same size square to put in the different size hole for the next year, right? Like you guys got the opportunity to decrease classroom sizes based on the student population, based on the funds right now moving forward. That's going to be a reality. And so where we that's that's just the biggest opportunity for us to save money that needs to be saved. And so I think having that number of and percentage of students affected is going to give our parents, you know, a a better idea of this impact that it's going to have on our

201overall district and possibly to their children's. But also we have to do something. So >> I agree that we have to do something but I do feel like we need to inch our way there. And I don't think that we should be making jumps where we are increasing any particular grade number level significantly more than the others. And option two does still significantly impact our 6 through 8 more than any other grade level. There's there's the numbers show that there's no other way around that. And I don't think that that is the way to go about this. I think it should be consistent across grade levels and we should inch our way there. And I understand that we have to make hard decisions and I think increasing the class sizes at all is a hard

202decision, but I am personally not still not in favor of option two. And what I would add to board member Wallace's comments, which I agree with, is when we look at student success and we look at academic achievement, our middle schoolers struggle the most. So why would we penalize them by increasing their class sizes more when we know our eighth graders in particular have benefited from smaller class sizes? >> Okay. To throw another thing at you, Mr. Vaughn, since we're going to have to talk about this again, can you bring us what it would look like if we only increased middle school by one? >> I certainly can. Uh may I ask a clarifying question? >> Yes. >> So are you saying take option two which increases um kindergarten by zero? What I would call

203which is probably confusing the middle grades um by two and the middle school grades by one. >> Yeah. And you know what? If we need to increase kindergarten by one to make that a little more feasible, then do that. >> Okay. >> Sorry, another wrench wrinkle. I'm not sorry. I mean, I'm This is what >> I'm not sorry either. >> And this this might be a non non um it's something I haven't heard yet about is variances. If you have a if we have an eighth grade and it's at 35 students and it's maxed out in four classes are any of them on variances or is there possibility that some of them are on variances? >> It is possible that some of them are variances. How that works? >> I know we have the tiered

204of priority and teachers and we went through that. Um, but how it works as far as um deciding whether to to let them in or not depends on the time of year. So, at the beginning, uh, executive director Satderfield and I, uh, essentially apply the staffing model. It makes it sound like we're making a lot of decisions, but most of it is math. Um, and so based on the standards, we decide how many teachers make sense in each grade in the same way that I've described, right? And then uh we look at with our open enrollment analyst um what it looks like if we allow every student who is in the grades currently to remain. Um, we always staff as if that's going to be the case because we roll forward the numbers. And if

205you think about what rolling forward the numbers means, it means you're staffing as if as if they're going to remain because those numbers, our current enrollment numbers include both variant students and non-variant students. But um around the end of March, we sit down and it last year it truly did take two days and we went grade level by grade level and we said it can we comfortably let all of the open enrollment students back in or would it be safer? Is this grade level two on the edge? Do we want to slowplay letting some of them in? And so we might decide that we let in um you know five of them and we leave uh three or four of them on the wait list so that we can monitor the enrollment as we get

206closer to the school year and then we decide how many uh to let back in. And so, um, I really do view open enrollment as a strategic, um, both staffing and class- size lever that we get to, um, utilize, but I and so I just don't want I just don't want it to make it seem like open enrollment uh, is the reason for some of these problems. I actually think in a lot of cases it ends up being more of a solution than than a problem if that makes sense. >> No, it makes total sense and I totally understand it where certain grade levels we need we need open enrollment. My point and and this is again the number you know it could be four, it could be seven. I just for my own edification

207and for transparency and just all that stuff, you know, you made a good point and that's an answer, right? If nope, variances don't impact class sizes and so if your child is in an overfilled class, it's not because anybody else is here on a variance and so it's just because we have that many students in our district, right? Like that's my point of asking the question. So, we're not able to give you an answer and Miss Wallace cannot be here next week. So, I'm not really sure how we want to proceed about this class size thing because I don't think there's consensus for you, which is what you're trying to figure out right now. Um, well, as long as we have four or more board members, we can have a board meeting. Actually, actually, three

208or more board members, we can have a board meeting. No offense to board member Wallace, but if this is a time crunch, and it sounds like it obviously is, and this is a big decision that needs to be made, um, >> and we wouldn't be voting on the budget next week. That's we're just trying to come to some kind of >> a point of clarity just on that point. Uh, President Zida is class sizes are actually not in policy, they're in procedure. Okay. Um, why that's helpful is it doesn't take a two read process to to change them. And so the governing board could come to some level of consensus uh obviously without a vote because um it's not a voting item um and we would be able to move forward. But I just wanted

209to provide that clarity that that it really um cl the class-size component does not need to be a voting item. It continue being a discussion, but we do to your point need to come to some level of consensus to allow us to implement staffing for next year. >> Well, I feel pretty strongly that option two is the best option for us as far as being financially responsible, but I do not believe that you have consensus from the board on that one. So, um, >> can I just get a one point of clarity on on this is when we're talking about, you know, whether we want option one, whether we want option two or some, you know, mashup of, you know, that and dropping, you know, dropping the the highest level down on option two um,

210for the middle for the middle school. It's not I'm not I feel like I'm hearing this, but that's not the case. is if we were to say option two that it's not like a it's not like an all or nothing thing is if we don't have to look at support staff and services and stuff like that as well by us choosing this doesn't mean it takes off you know takes that off the table as as well and I felt like I I heard that it's like you know we have to decide which way we're going to go it's it's you know here or there and it's not here there. It's it's all of those pieces. And so when I hear uh board member Wallace and board member Moran talk about you know inching our way

211there I see you know if you're forced to make and of course there's a number of slides that we haven't gotten to yet which have some other additional big numbers uh to talk about and and and as we're trying to get to that three and a half and four and a half million dollar mark or whatever also as we're moving along doing the math you know you Slides 6 through 11 gets us to 950,000, right? Class size, if we just go to option one, that's another million. Um, if we just stuck with that, if that actually turns out to be the case, and of course, you know, it's projected. I mean, I do like teasing out that $500,000 because, you know, that's just it. So, technically option one is option one just 500,000 and option

212two is 1.1 million is what I'm what I'm hearing. But um that's just what I wanted to maybe say out loud or maybe I'm missing something. But I I regard option even if we went with option two it doesn't mean that other stuff is not on on the on the field as well. So it's almost like >> leveling out that pull from all of these different areas. you know, as you know, as rough as that that is, it um it's not going to completely be free and clear of other stuff. Correct. Um there's a lot of ways to add up numbers to three and a half to four and a half million. Um there's only so many options here. The largest options that I'm comfortable truly considering are the class sizes and the certified supports.

213We'll talk about some other large ones that I think for various reasons aren't um a good idea. Um, but you know, I have a spreadsheet open on my computer right now that that totals a lot of these options up uh to include option one. Um, many of the other options and potentially going to a 1 and a.5% raise and those figures just for an example add up to 3.4 million. Um, so there there are a lot of different ways to add up to three and a half to$4.5 million. I don't know that you would be able to get to three and a half and $4.5 million if you say we don't want to do class size and we don't want to touch certified supports at all. I I I haven't tried if I'm just being

214completely honest, but I don't think the I don't think the numbers work. >> I have never one time seen our teachers say, "I'll take less of a raise if it means I get to have a lower class size." Not one time. They have always picked their raise as number one. Anytime we've ever surveyed them about potential cuts or things we're doing, their raise has always been the number one thing to keep. So, I I guess it would be good for us possibly to have a spreadsheet in front of us where we can kind of play with these numbers too of the various things and put them in. I maybe that would help people to visualize what that looks like if I picked this option and this option and put them together. Um, but I I

215don't feel like you're getting a consensus that you want tonight. So, I am wondering if other board members would be able to make a meeting next week work potentially so that we can try to get to some consensus that people are okay with so that they can plan for staffing because I do not also want to see our contracts not be able to go out on time. that next week. >> Well, contracts are in March, but they have to be able to know now to start preparing them. >> So, what the staffing process looks like and um executive director Satderfield can speak to it uh more in detail, but essentially what happens is we take the inputs of class size and certified and classified support staff staffing models at the sites. We publish that to

216principles. our normal timeline. Um, in a normal year, we would have published that last week. Um, we then began working school by school, leader by leader, identifying how to actually implement those changes, meaning um, who isn't going to return, what that truly looks like. That work ends up culminating in uh an item that comes to the governing board for approval on March 6th or 5th this year. I'm sorry. March 6th was last year's date. Um which is the the names of the folks that we plan to issue contracts to. Uh the process ends up taking quite a bit of time both for our leaders and our HR staff. uh partially because of just the nature of how many schools we have to get through. And so if we can't come to some consensus on class

217size and certified and classified support staffing, what that does is it delays the start of that process and so it pushes everything um everything back. So, I I gave my personal opinion earlier, which is I I would like to see us not change class size. Um, but I would be willing to compromise and potentially agree to a consensus on option one. I am not in agreement for option two. I know we're not polling, but I agree with that. I can come to option one. Even though I would love to not increase class sizes, I don't know that anything will convince me into option two. I know that this will potentially make me unpopular with the teachers, but I taught for nine years and received one 2% raise in nine years. As a teacher, it would

218be more important for me to have lower class size. I also think that again while this may not be popular, student success is our number one focus and I think that it is more important to have lower class sizes than to offer a 0.5% raise. I don't think the difference between one and a half% and 2% is worth going up that high in class size. Mr. Mike, what is your thoughts about class size? >> You know, I I um I agree with the option option one piece. And as far as looking at that, I agree with board member Wallace with just the num the numbers for option two are just just too too high for those uh for the middle middle school um kids. So I mean so my pollnon poll is you know for

219the option one I do >> we are not polling. Yes, >> we are not polling anyone. We're just giving our opinions about the options that have been presented to us. >> President Za, can I interject just uh on behalf of time and knowing that >> Yes, please. >> I think you guys are all very wise um to know there's additional slides that have other things for us to consider. Um I I do agree we we >> we hear the board um individual voices of the board. So I think it'll be our job to take that information that you've shared on this topic as well as the others and come back um either a with additional conversation or b with an actual administrative recommendation and and at that point in the administrative recommendation you can tear

220it apart say yes to this no to that depending upon how it's um how it comes from the board right uh the particular action to vote on and we can continue that conversation but I think if you're comfortable Well, let's I I hear it. We hear it. Let's keep moving and then we will bring back more information um per some of the requests this evening. >> I would like to know if everybody is else can try to make a meeting next week work. Miss Maran, >> I can do every night, but Wednesday we got Kinder Experience. >> Okay. Are we talking during the day in the evening? Well, I mean, >> would it be more uh timehonoring to to have Miss Contra um work with the governing board to see what that >> Yeah, I

221just wanted to make sure that we could make something work. >> I see. >> So that we could figure out if maybe some of these things we don't need to keep talking about tonight and maybe just move to next week. I'm open. >> Okay. So, um if we think that we can get three to four board members, Miss Contra will work with figuring that out. Um that being said, is there anything that you really want to address today on this or do we just want to come back to this? Is there anything, Miss Wallace, you're not here at all next week that we didn't talk about that you have very strong feelings about? I mean, I think my last statement would be my strongest feeling about how passionate I am about not increasing class sizes

222that much. I guess I would be curious to know your thoughts, board member Wallace, on the um what are we calling it on the certified staffing changes, the instructional coaches and behavior coaches >> reducing by one FTE or.5 FTE. Would the board be okay with at least having discussion tonight on the new items, the ones that we have not previously discussed? >> Yes, please. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Sorry, we totally threw you off. I'm very sorry. >> I just want to give the opportunity for the board to at least see the new content. Um, similar to uh how we looked at resource ratios and self-contained ratios, these are EL ratios which were developed uh with our director of English language development and do align um exactly honestly with the uh state statutes around the

223minutes requirements for certified staff. Um, any questions on EL staffing ratios, >> Miss Wallace? >> So, are these our current ratios? >> Our current ratios for certified staff, uh, it'd be easier if I presented the next slide first. Are uh, the certified EL position is a given in our staffing standard. What that means is for existing as a school, you're given an EL specialist. What we've found in our work is that doesn't always make sense. You can have a school with a very low EL student population uh receiving a full-time certified position to provide EL services uh in a world where uh it's simply not needed. And so what this new standard would allow is in the few places and spaces in our district that that is occurring, it it would it would address that.

224>> So >> the other change is our current standard for EL aids is at 35 versus 45. >> Okay. So the the places that don't support a full person would then share someone. Is that correct? Yeah, that school would be assigned a 0.5 or a half-time position. Uh, and if we had other half-time positions either at that campus um, you know, so for example, it could in theory be a a half-time reading specialist, halftime EL coordinator or EL specialist or if there's multiple half-time uh EL specialist positions at various schools, then it could be shared. But but how it would be assigned is a half-time position and then how that halftime got connected to another halfime would be up to the site leader or uh HR to help coordinate or there are times it is

225uh less common but there are times where you find an employee actually looking for a part-time position and so it might also just make as much sense to uh allow that position to be part-time. Okay. I have no other questions, >> Mr. Mike. >> Uh, no other questions on that, >> Mr. Owens. >> Yeah, I I had one um EL specialist reach out with some information that's kind of way over my head. I forwarded on to you just as points to consider. Um, one of them was, I guess, the idea that they have low minutes because of the success they've had previously getting people, you know, getting students out of it. So, they're working their way out of it themselves out of a job, I guess, right? So, this is way out of my wheelhouse,

226but just things to consider. I forwarded you. >> Thank you. And honestly, if you look at this slide that shows the savings from implementing this this ratio change, it's it's honestly very minimal a change that we would see um from implementing this. Uh truly uh similar to class sizes, we had developed a more extreme uh example and then through feedback had worked to what you see today. Um so um the work around the EL ratio has uh had some iterations as well. >> Miss Maran, no questions. I don't have any questions about this one. >> All right. At our last board meeting, the board asked us to provide some options around changing school staffing other than class sizes. We'll cover options for both certified and classified school supports tonight. Our schools are staffed with certain

227certified support positions as givens simply for running as a school and then a certain amount of full-time equivalent positions based on the size of the school enrollment that the principal can use based on site level data to address the needs most prevalent on their specific campus. Presently, schools uh receive an instructional coach, a behavior coach or student advisor, and an EL specialist as certified support givens. The way we could modify this approach is to have instructional coaches and behavior coaches not be a given, but instead roles that have to be selected from the certified choice options and then increase the amount of choice our principles have. I'm going to go to the next slide where we can see an illustrative example. This slide shows an example of our smallest schools. They're presently given an instructional

228coach, a behavior coach, and an EL coordinator, and then one full-time equivalent position to infuse the supports most needed on their campus. You can see that on the farthest uh left hand column. We could move to a model where they're given an EL coordinator based on the ratios we previously discussed and two certified choice FTE. This would result in a one FTE reduction. But which specific position would be reduced would be decided using the data on that particular campus. This same model could result in a half-time uh reduction by instead providing two and a half certified choice FTE. I'll pause for discussion on certified support position staffing at our campuses. >> Miss Wallace, >> I'm curious how feasible it would be to have a 2.5 like who who is going to have that part-time position

229or again is this going to be able to be combined? >> So, it would be able to be combined. It just would be a matter of um where, right? So, if you're a school to our previous conversation that might receive a half-time EL coordinator, you might get the other.5 from here. So, you might make that role a.5 e coordinator and a 0.5 reading specialist. I it would depend probably on what the school needs and and the skills of the person. Um the other the other place in space you could see that halfime being used is uh we do have a number of title one schools. So they could supplement the half-time position they receive through this staffing uh with a half-time position that they pay for out of their title one. You could also see

230where uh two schools that are geographically close together having halftime positions that are are combined into one full-time role >> and do we think that's feasible? >> We used to do that actually pretty often where we would have point fives and they would share you know if you're at Corte and Rancho or whatever. So that used to be very common practice in this district >> and I've certainly seen it in other districts. >> Again, I'm not saying it's not. I'm just asking the reality of this where >> where that would work out. As a former principal and having experienced this um we started with behavior coaches as 0.5 and they would share with different campuses. It was complicated and it was a big workload for those people but it was done. We also our EL

231specialists back in the day sometimes had three campuses that they supported. It was a completely different model back then and the state has changed that model. So, it would not work today to be able to make that happen and still align with the requirements. Um, it is something that we have done. The reason we're actually choosing to do the 0.5 instead of saying they're going to share is because it is much easier to have one person on one campus doing two different jobs on that campus instead of trying to split from campus to campus. >> Then you don't lose time for travel and things of that nature. Right. Yeah, I I was just thinking I mean just because the math works out on it doesn't mean it's effective and we have to make sure we

232keep that in mind as well or how you know the bang for buck on on that piece but that was I I was going to have that question of going oh okay so is that 1.0 I know a combination of two different spots, but and and that's something that's happening now with it. Is that correct that we have we have that going on now? >> We do have people doing that right now. We've had some very creative principles who have um a 0.5 behavior coach and a 0.5 instructional coach or um a 0.5 math and a 0.5 instructional coach. So that is currently happening. Uh we also do have teachers who are sharing specifically resource that tends to be one that they might have two different campuses currently. >> Yeah. And this is and this

233is one that's you know tough too. Of course you're talking about people but when you look at you know where where these happen. I mean, I do like the fact that when we're looking at these as examples and options, there's still, you know, there's still some choice, you know, involved with that as far as where that where that where that goes um with everything. And once again, it gets down and there's there's big numbers attached to that. >> Mr. Owens, >> yeah, I remember when we I pretty sure I was on the board. I was in the audience, but I think it was on the board when we made the decision to give the the schools the choice. And so, um, that was my only question was, can you have a half and half, right?

234And I don't love the model of one day you're this school, especially if you're a behavioral coach, right? One day you're or teach. Yeah. One day you're this school, next day you're this. But wearing a couple hats, finding somebody who's willing to do the position and can do both jobs. I think that you if you get to that level of administration, you should be able to ideally handle behavior. Um I could be wrong, but um these are just brutal decisions. >> I mean, I feel like some of them are already doing that anyways, just saying some of them wear many hats even with just one job title. Miss man. >> Yeah. So I am in favor of doing something with this primarily because for me I was on this board when we made the decision

235to give these additional supports and that funding was really based in ESR funds and we knew that we knew we wanted to put extra campus support positions in to help with teacher burnout to help with all of the things that we were combating at that point in time and in lessening that academic gap that we were experiencing at that point in time. And we knew that as a board we went into it saying we are going to hire these people knowing that this is not sustainable and that is what we're seeing here. So I am not afraid to say yes this is the result of the decisions that we made before. We knew that going into it. So again, I'm in more for a compromise of let's do it, you know, inch by inch. So

236I would definitely be for the 0.5 reduction option. Um depending on how everything else shakes out, I could potentially be for the the one FTE option reduction because again, this is concrete numbers. We're still giving campuses a choice to board member Owen's um point. We're not dictating to them what their campus needs or doesn't need. We're saying we knew these positions were going to end. And unfortunately, this is the year or this is the year that we're doing half and maybe next year ends up being another half. I don't know um what that's going to look like, but um I think this is a natural progression to the choices that we made in the past. And I don't regret those choices, but we knew this was going to happen. and to and if we're saying

237that we didn't know that, we are burying our head in the sand. I already said that I'd rather not pull these supports from our schools. So, um I I feel like we do need these people. And again, this is what I think makes Lichfield different from the districts around us. But we have to make hard decisions. I I'm This one again, I don't want to do this one. This one I would be less willing to do, but I can go with consensus a board on whatever works out. Knowing that we're going to attempt a conversation uh next week, is the board okay if I move forward in the presentation? I mean, >> yes, go ahead. >> Okay. The way we uh Sorry, wrong slide. Uh in many ways our classified staffing at our school looks

238very similar to our certified staffing. Schools are provided certain positions as givens a school office supervisor, a registar, an attendance clerk and classified specialist instructors based on set ratios and then a certain amount of full-time equivalent positions are provided to our principles based on enrollment to provide additional supports as the campus may need. As we think about each of these uh positions and options, the one that seems most feasible to change is the attendance clerk. If we were to shift attendance clerks to only being a given at schools with an enrollment of 700 or more, we could save $230,000. I'd like to pause here for discussion on classified staffing at our schools before we move on. Miss Wallace, >> I don't love that I have to go first for all of these tonight, but >>

239um >> I won't make you go first next time. >> I No, it's okay. I do I do think that this is reasonable. I think that a larger campus should have a larger front office staff. If all of our campuses of different sizes have the same amount of staff, that's not really equitable. Um, I think that if you have a larger campus, you should have a larger staff in this area. So again, while I know all of these people are people and I don't want anyone to lose their job, I do feel like this is a fair and equitable change. >> Mr. Mike, >> um, just two quick questions then. I was just curious. I mean, if it's 700 or more, if I look at it, that means eight school. I mean that's half the

240half the schools is that correct for attendance clerks >> roughly. Yeah. Okay. What it >> what it truly boils down to is uh our very largest K5 would remain having an attendance clerk. Your middle schools would remain having an attendance clerk. Um and and most of the K8s. >> Okay. I was just wondering where that 700 number came from or you know with that and and is that >> is that from discussions as far as what might be manageable compared to not? >> We really were trying to gauge um in Lichfield a large school versus a small school. We were also being mindful of where we have period attendance occurring uh which is at our middle schools that happen to be larger. So this would help ensure that uh everywhere we have period attendance going

241on they do have that uh support to implement that procedure. >> Yeah. But it really was discussion around um what a what a large uh Lichfield campus uh looks like compared to a small >> Yeah. And this I mean this is an unfortunate option. I think >> Mr. Owens >> I have nothing on this >> miss. >> Yeah, I agree with the other board members. I think it it makes sense. Um I'm not opposed to this. Yeah, I don't have a problem with this one either. I mean, I do for the people. Again, we don't want to get rid of anybody's jobs. While this is an option uh moving from full day kinder to half-day Kinder, we did want to share uh while this is not an option we'd recommend. We did want to share

242that the state of Arizona only funds school districts for providing a half day of instruction to kindergarten students. If we moved to only providing a half day of instruction, we estimate it would save about $900,000 in staffing costs. We do not recommend this approach because it would likely disincentivize families from sending their kindergarten students to our schools, which would have long ranging impact uh on our enrollment for years to come. Questions or comments on full day kinder? I'm going to start so she doesn't have to go first. I asked for this to be put in there not because I want us to do this. I do not. This is a very terrible idea. But to show that we are looking at every single thing and what it's costing us because I think it's important for

243people to see where we are putting our money. We as a district have said that we know full day kindergarten is what is best for students. So we are investing money in there that we do not get from the state to cover that. So I just I do not think we should do this. I just wanted everybody to see what the cost is to us to do it. Miss Wallace, >> this is a slightly out of the box idea, but what if No, what if we offered halfday kindergarten for the families that maybe do want halfday kindergarten? And what I mean by that is maybe five of our schools offer an AM PM model and that would potentially be five teaching positions. And I say that because I do know many people personally that have

244said, I can't imagine my kindergartenner going to school full day. And there may be parents, again I don't think it will be all parents, and I don't think it would even be most, but I do think there is potentially a group of parents that would be okay with a half day or prefer a half-day model. I am in an interesting position that I was a kindergarten teacher and I have taught AMM kindergarten in the state of Michigan and I have taught full day kindergarten here and I can tell you as a kindergarten teacher there is so much enhancement and enrichment in the full day program but you can truly cover the core in a half-day program because I did it and I think that it's an option to consider. Even though again, as a teacher

245that has taught both, I fully support a full day kindergarten program, but it may be a possibility to decrease money where some parents may actually prefer the option. I think what might be hard with that uh but we certainly can explore it for further discussion is if you were going to have both be an option at a campus I think what would end up happening is you'd end up having to staff more not less. Um, and I would be a little concerned about shifting an entire campus uh to half-day options only because I think for the same reason I would be nervous about it at a district-wide level. I think you'd see that in microcosms at the schools that you chose to do that at. I think you'd see families that were boundaried for those

246schools that didn't want a half-day option um go go elsewhere. But we certainly can dig deeper. >> I don't I don't suggest that we make an entire campus half day. I'm saying if we had three campuses that we offered a half day that if parents wanted that option that these are the three campuses that maybe >> or so like if if a school had four kindergarten classes, three would be full day, one would be >> one would be half day. >> So one class at each one kindergarten class at each school would be a half day. >> That doesn't seem like it'd be much significant. If the whole district going is 900,000, one class at each campus would probably be 80 grand, 90 grand maybe. >> I'd have to think about it because one class

247at each campus, I think I don't know that you'd actually be reducing staffing maybe by a.5. Um I I'm thinking off the cuff here, but >> Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I'm thinking if it was four, you'd have to basically make two of them. >> What I liked about this and why I like that you had this on here, President Zimma, was because it does show that we are investing dollars where we're not getting funded. Right. So, if you're a parent in this district and now unfortunately the reality is, oh wow, okay, my child is in seventh grade and they're going to have one more student in their class. You know, way to go schoolboard. We can also kind of say, well, you're we invested in your child when they were in kindergarten

248to make sure they got a full day. So, I don't know if that's a great example, but I do think that it's a it's a sign that we understand the value of certain things and we don't take for granted the hard decisions that we have to make. >> Mr. Mike, did you >> Yeah, I don't like this. Um, but I totally appreciate the I mean the out of the box conversations to have because and you know once again this might not be on the docket and at some point might have to be on the docket but just to investigate and you know talk about those uh those things but um I I'm just saying for right now for this moment I I definitely uh don't like this as an option. However, I totally appreciate um

249you know trying to go down some different avenues of what it could look like just always pushing those questions. >> Miss Maran, >> um yeah, I agree with the conversation. Um what I would say is that maybe unbeknownst to parents, there is an option for half day kindergarten, which is you come and pick your child up early. And I know one family in all of my years who did that. So if we had a more formal program, maybe more people would take that up. But if it's a parent who's passionate about that and they ask the principal and they ask the teacher, they're going to make that happen and be feasible under the current model and we're going to get, you know, funded the same amount that we would otherwise. So, um I don't know

250if there's a way that we could somehow figure out if there is interest in that or not, but um yeah, agreed. I I think it's a interesting conversation. I think yeah I I think general consensus is nobody likes that. So >> based on feedback from the office supervisor employee group our site leader and our site leaders we are working with legal counsel to restructure our current office supervisor positions to office manager positions that are salaried and exempt from overtime in accordance with the fair fair labor standards act. We believe that this will better recognize the work that they are doing at our schools, allow these employees to not be watching the clock as they work, and save the organization from some overtime costs. We anticipate this change would save $105,000. I'd like to pause for

251discussion on this item before we move forward. >> Miss Wallace, >> I have no questions about this. Mr. mics. >> Is this something that would just be an efficiency piece anyways? >> Yes. >> All right then, >> Mr. Owens. >> So, what you're saying is we're moving them from hourly to salary so we don't have to pay their overtime. >> Yes, sir. But also restructuring the position so that that uh makes sense under the Fair Labor Standards Act. I don't honestly believe that in practice you would see uh change in their position. More so uh recognizing the role they're actually serving and updating job descriptions to reflect what they actually are doing on our campuses. >> Yeah. I just don't want to I just want to make sure we're not trying to say, hey, we're

252going to take advantage of your you know because I've worked salary positions. I worked hourly positions. you guys are salary and you're here at 10:13, right? So, there's people that are going to say, "I used to work overtime and get paid for it. Now I'm salary and I'm still going to be here because this is just what needs to be done." There's got other people be like, "I'm I'm out of here." Right? There's that's just different people. But I don't want to put these people in a position where there was an expectation of them last year and moving forward they feel like they're under pressure to perform the same and they're not getting paid for I can't speak to every single uh office supervisor, but by and large the feedback we've received from this group

253is this is a change that they would appreciate. >> They didn't want to make this change last year when we made it and I knew it was going to be a problem then when we talked about it, right? That overtime was going to be a problem and then it was. So, I'm very glad. Sorry, Miss Marine. You go ahead. >> No, I don't have any questions or issues. I'm I'm in support of this. I was in support of this before we made the change last time to not change to what we did. So, >> all right. As we've continued to examine current practice, we've begun considering changing student adviserss to be behavior coaches. Presently, we have behavior coaches largely at our K5 schools and student adviserss in our middle schools. They function the same as

254behavior supports on campus, but are on different placement charts. Our intention here would be to hold everyone's compensation as is, but have this uh align our behavior support positions across the district. This would save us money in the long run as we have student adviserss retire or move on and their replacements be placed on the teacher behavior coach chart instead. Um but I didn't model that because there wouldn't be a an immediate change. I'd like to pause for discussion on this before we move forward. >> Miss Wallace, >> I'm fine with that. I don't have any questions with that. >> Mr. Mike, >> it sounds fine to me. Is there anything I'm missing with that piece? >> I I don't think so. >> Yeah. >> I guess we'll find out when they show up next

255year and they're very met. >> Yeah. Okay, >> Mr. Owens. Miss Moran. >> Yeah. No questions on this. I support it. We're good. >> This slide shows the cost of various percentage of raises. However, these figures do not consider the cost of implementing the results of the compensation study. I'd like to pause here for discussion on raises. However, I would also like to discuss if it makes sense at this point in time to continue down the path of potential implementation of the compensation study. It would result in the need to make even further cuts than we have been discussing. What is built in to the three and a half to four and a half million dollar uh cut estimate uh is that dollar amount for a 2% raise because that's been our historical practice. Um

256so a reduction from that would if you're mentally calculating to the three and a half or four and a half would count as a uh reduction. Um it may make sense to look at some smaller groups of employees for the compensation study as opposed to the entire group. for example, those most closely connected to the state's minimum wage which raises every year. The reason this goo group of employees brings particular interest is that if minimum wage raises by 3% next January in the same way it did this January, we will have to make a mid-year adjustment to compensation to be in compliance. With that said, I'd like to pause for discussion around raises and the compensation study. So, with raises, um, like I said, every time we've ever done any surveys for our staff, and

257I do not disagree with what board member Wallace said, I too would choose to have a smaller class size than my raise. However, that has not been ever the feedback we've gotten from our staff. So, based on that, um, I think that we should try to keep our 2% raises. And I also think we need to put a pin in the compensation study for now and come back to that later. Even if that means we have to make an adjustment mid year, um I'd rather deal with that than than right now. Miss Wallace, >> I'll go first again. Um um I as I said earlier, I obviously would always love to give everyone a raise. I'd love to give everyone a 5% raise every year. That is obviously our desire. It's also not maybe our

258current reality. And I again am more comfortable taking the 1.5% raise, which again, while I realize is not what I want to do, I still think that student success and student achievement has to come first. And I think that if it's this or the class sizes, that's where I choose. >> Mr. Mike Um, well, number one, I don't what you said about the minimum minimum wage piece as far as being one of those options to look at. I don't know what that might even mean as for a monetary piece, but I mean, I understand what you said. I've just >> um I mean, if that's something to explore, I feel like that's nothing that's something you just don't want to take off the table for it. as far as the as far as the raises

259and not you know you know with board member Wallace of course you know I never want to decrease anything but also I'm looking at these numbers and if I say oh one and a half% you know if we have to do it right now it's just kind of a little bit of an arbitrary number for me because I'm trying to process and see really where and unfortunately this is going to roll into a next week thing to maybe give me a little bit more information. What I do know is these are very pretty hard numbers that we have here, right? I mean, where it's where it's tiered out. But if if we run a bunch of these other options and we have our class size piece and we come down and we say, "Hey, where's

260you know where's an additional gap we have to make up?" If this happens to be coming on on, you know, as far as something we have to choose, then I guess we have to see what that percent might be. And so if it has to be if it if we can keep it at 2% awesome. If we have to go to the one and a half or or even a you know or in between 2% and one and a half do you know what I mean? I just I just feel that um I I think this I agree with this having to be on the the table to do and that's I don't like that at all but it has to be on there to look at. I just don't know uh what we what

261we need to to steal from that as well to make things work. >> Mr. Owens, >> yeah, I think all of you can agree and most of you have been witness to the dumb questions I've asked over the last three years that I know I'm going to continue to ask more. Um, but so I mean I've gotten two messages that teachers would from teachers they would prefer smaller classrooms to a pay increase, right? Like but again that's two people. We've talked about some people are going to want smaller classrooms, some people are going to want bigger classrooms. This decision also isn't going to affect everybody, right? Like if you if you have a big classroom and you don't get a pay increase, that's going to make you more angry than the teacher that didn't get

262a pay increase but has 24 students. Um that's the thing when you talk about equitable and all that stuff, right? Like yes, this is a pay increase or or a smaller increase affects everybody, but increased class size only affects certain certain ad certain teachers. So, I don't know. Is there a way to tie uh raises to glass size? >> If you want a lawsuit, sure. >> So, there's a dumb question, right? Exactly. >> Um, never mind. No, I'm just I'm literally I'm legit saying like >> I think it would be difficult because of how >> arbit that's actually the most equitable if you think about it >> because of how arbitrary um >> class it would end up being. >> Correct. Yes, I >> know. That's why. But that's my point in all of it

263is that some people aren't going to get a raise because we don't raise class sizes as much as we could or some people are going to get a raise and they their classroom sides didn't get changed at all. It's just the crux of the whole situation we're in. Mr. Drones, if I can add, and um certainly I'd have to rely on Miss Satderfield's expertise from our past, but there was a period of time uh when class sizes in a in a former district I was in got to a certain amount and instead of uh the team choosing to add additional staff, the teacher did receive additional compensation to have a larger class size for the remainder of the year. So, to your point, there is a way to tie compensation to to a class size.

264Um, >> but it would be it would be certainly supplementary in nature, not necessarily a base salary. So, >> and honestly, I don't I think that's the point to board member Wallace's point where some people like it's not worth the whatever you're going to pay me extra is not worth the extra two or two or three students. So, I get that. Um, I did have one final point and I totally forgot it. So, if I Oh. Oh, one of the things I remember when I first learned about the 2% that like it happens every year. That like actually was shocking to me. Um, and knowing that it's because the funding per pupil goes up 2%. Correct. Right. So, the state does the calculations. >> I I do like to tie it to that. um when

265you think about it, it it will eventually become unsustainable because um >> from a budgetary perspective, it's a good narrative. It's a good way to describe why we do something, but it does have the potential to become unsustainable because it it ignores a couple of different things. It ignores uh changes in enrollment. It also ignores changes in other costs. You know, we've talked about APS, for example, wants to consider raising rates 14%. Um, when we talk about the budget being 90% salaries and benefits and the state gives us a 2% increase each year and we're passing that along, it doesn't give a lot of space to absorb those other cost increases that frankly we have very little influence over. Um but but that is why we've uh at least since I've been here tied to

266that 2%. Um when when we get the feedback that uh you know it's not enough to uh cover the inflation costs and things of that nature. Um we can at least share that we're sharing the same inflation adjustment that we as an organization receive from the state. >> Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's important to to address or at least you know reiterize that reemphasize that you know we've as a business as an organization have gotten 2% more from the state for funding every year and we have passed that on directly to our staff for raises and that was a luxury that we were so happy to do. And now we're in a situation where that might not be a luxury anymore. And I think that and we do know yes, 100% inflation 2% doesn't

267match inflation. Historically, that's been the case for a while, but recently, so I I personally am in favor of one of these options of reducing the the the pay raise based on our limited budget. >> Miss Marian, >> yes. So, I first want to address your point on the compensation study piece about the minimum wage. So, as a board a few years ago, we decided we wanted to pay our hourly folks more than the minimum wage to try to fill better fill those positions, but at that point in time, it was $15 an hour we decided on. Well, minimum wage has caught up to that now, but it sounds as though we have not kept up with the increase in minimum wage. So, I would like us to look at that to make sure that

268we have a differential from minimum wage um in the starting next school year to make sure that we at least can have something to say over any other hourly position that might be out there again based on the fact that that was a decision that we made before and I think it was a good decision and it did help with our hourly employees. Um, my thoughts on the raises are that um I agree that while I would love to give 2% because historically that's what we've done, the numbers don't add up to me. And so I think um I would love to see 1.5. But I also agree with um board member Mike's that if we get everything else to shuffle out and we're aiming at $4 million reduction and we can get that to

2691.75, great. You know, I don't think it has to be set in stone. My other point with the raises is would it be possible for us to put in the contracts, you know, a 1.5 increase and then if our enrollment were to increase and our budget looked better than we expected to at some point in the year say, "Oh, we can now give you that differential or would that need to be potentially next year give a two and a half% if we give a one to kind average it out to the to the 2% per year. >> There's various uh legalities around uh changing compensation once the year began due to the gift of public funds clause in the constitution. Given that it's 10:30, I my brain's not working well enough to fully give you

270an answer tonight. But what I would recommend is that uh executive director Satderfield and I be given the opportunity to chat with legal around that concept. I do think there'd be a way to structure it. I don't know that it would be to Dr. Davidson's earlier point around class sizes. You can do a lot of things with supplementary pay that you can't necessarily do with uh pure base level changes. >> Okay. But I do think in the long run because the pay amount and the percentage is impactful to retirement and things like that, if we went with the 1.5% let's say and we ended up with enrollment increases and our budget was healthier than we expected, then it would be in our employees best interest to then give them potentially a higher raise the next

271year if we would see that being sustainable. So, um, ASRS payouts are really truly based on total compensation. Uh, it really doesn't matter if it's based payments included pay. Yeah. Uh, where it does matter is yeartoyear. uh as we've chatted about through this budget process, supplementary pay is quite a bit easier to uh remove in the future, whereas base pay is quite a bit harder to remove in the future. But where I if the thought process is around what that ultimate uh retirement compensation would be, uh that truly does consider full compensation uh with the exception of uh leave payouts when you retire um not just base pay. >> Okay. So that piece wouldn't be detrimental. Okay. Um interesting. just trying to determine how we could make this pill potentially easier to swallow in that,

272you know, this might be a decision that we have to make based on what we're estimating for next year, but that's not to say that things won't end up being better than we think and that this is the way it will end either. So, I'd like to be able to somehow keep that door or window open. um for discussion. >> I am not opposed to that idea of some kind of we do a stipen for our staff if our enrollment numbers are better than we were planning for. Um that is definitely something I would be open for doing. In the fact that it's 10:30, is there anything else that you absolutely want to get from us today or else can we move everything else to next? Well, in this >> the only thing I'll add

273and it can be 10 seconds is uh similar to in prior years, we will receive the asbait renewal information on March 1st. So, the first time we'll be able to chat about that is when we bring it for approval on March 5th. We're actively working with Valley schools to move back our dental um coverage to them based on the feedback we've received. Same with vision. Uh the vision plan we were on in the prior year is no longer being offered by Valley schools, but uh from what we've gathered, the program that they've moved to is even better than the program we were on last year. So, we are actively working to take uh take that feedback into account. >> But but we moved from them because of a cost reason last year. >> We moved

274from them because of the cost and the feedback that we received from staff based on the cost. Um >> is they don't like it. >> They don't like it. Uh and so we moved based on feedback and we're looking at moving back based on feedback. >> Okay. What I hope our staff takes from it is we do listen to feedback um even when it changes year to year >> and that they need to remember that when the cost goes up that they wanted us to move it because costs will be going up. >> That would be very kind of them. Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. Anybody else any feedback on the benefits really quick? No. Mr. Owens? No. Okay. Okay. So, we're going to work out a meeting next week and Miss Wallace, if she has

275any extra feedback, is going to send it to Dr. Davidson, to Miss Condra, since she won't be able to be here whenever that is. Are you good for your stuff, though? >> I am. Um, >> my laptop died so I don't know how >> if I can uh beg for a little bit further discussion, it would be that we don't table the uh community education rates just because I do know it's timesensitive for Dr. Stair. >> Um, Mr. Vaughn, we will table that conversation and Mr. Stair and I have been in communications. Thank you. Well, I shouldn't say that. >> I will rely on President Zida to make that decision, but Mr. Stair is open for that. So, >> Okay. Dr. Stair, yeah, is good with us tableabling his stuff. So, I would like us

276to to table all the rest of the agenda and we'll have a budget meeting next week. >> Is there a process that we have to go from? Hold on, Miss Contra. >> Board member Miran's going to sing first. She can sing for us at the next meeting. But Miss Contra, I want to make sure we do this right because we're going to like all the things. We're going to be done here. So, hold on. I have to figure out what we have to do. She's going to tell me. >> So, I think we need to vote to table the remaining items. And we can do it in one. And I will fill in the others. We just need to all in agreement that we're tableling. >> I move to table the rest of the agenda.

277to a later date. >> Is that good enough? Then we can like piece part them. Wonderful. >> I'll second that. >> Okay. So, motion for Mr. Owens, second for Mr. Mike's, Miss Wallace. >> Yay. We voting now. >> Mr. Mike >> to table the rest of the agenda and adjourn the meeting >> and adjourn the meeting. >> Oh, can we do them both? Okay. No, we can't. No, no, no. >> Come on. A motion. A motion's been made. >> Yay. Yay. >> Yay. to table the rest of the agenda. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> I'm a yay. Okay, now >> I move to adjourn the meeting. >> I second. >> Motion for Mr. Owens, seconds for Miss Wallace. Uh, all those in favor, please say I. >> I. Anybody

278post? No, we're done. Good. >> Thank you everybody that joined us. We're very sorry that it was so long. And thank you all to you guys. I'm so sorry that you all have to be here so early again tomorrow. >> And for those of you who are new around here, we used to have meetings that went this late all the time. And I never want to do it again.