Litchfield Elementary School District Board Meeting 08/12/25

001Mic. Check. Check. Check. Hello everyone. Thanks for joining us. Today is Tuesday, August 12th, 2025, 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 will be the Pledge of Allegiance. If you could please stand and join us. Next up, we're going to take a moment of silent reflection. Thank you. Next we are going to move on to recognitions and celebrations and this will be by executive director Nanes. Good evening, Madame President, governing board members, Superintendent Davidson, fellow cabinet members, and community members, both present and online. Tonight, we would like to recognize and celebrate a special group of people. Over the summer, while many were enjoying a well-deserved break, our dedicated Lichfield Elementary School District coaches and teachers

002were hard at work ensuring that our students continue to receive the very best education possible. Their efforts were nothing short of extraordinary. From advancing our instructional blocks frameworks and aligning science standards pacing to preparing I ready resources for K through two second grade and developing wonders and study sync slide decks. Our educators showed an unwavering commitment to excellence. They strengthened our MBCT guiding coalition and frameworks by building mentorship opportunities. They enhanced middle school instruction, expanded strategies through Kagan training, and collaborate on sped summer curriculum maps, all to elevate the students learning across the district. This incredible summer work is a shining example of what it means to believe, to belong, and to become a Lichfield learner. We celebrate and commend our team for their passion, professionalism, and the relentless pursuit of educational excellence. Together, we

003are stronger and definitely together we can. So, tonight I applaud our amazing team. Now, I would like to in invite you all up so we could take a picture with Dr. Davidson and President Zida. Please approach through the red carpet. >> Come on. together. All right. Everybody smile. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you all. Uh we are going to move on to no public comments today. We will move on to the adoption of the agenda and approval of consent agenda. I'll go through and see if anyone has any items that they wish to remove from the consent agenda. Starting with Mr. Mike's. >> None for me. >> Mr. Owens, >> none for me. Thanks, >> Miss Moran. >> Nothing to remove. Thank you. >> Miss Wallace, >> none for me. I don't have any

004either. >> If someone wants to make a motion, >> I move to adopt the agenda as presented. as to the order of business items and approve the consent agenda. I second having a motion for Miss Moran and a second from Miss Wallace. I'll call for the vote. Mr. Mike's >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> Miss Wallace, >> yay. >> I'm also a yay. Motion passes. See really for your birthday, Mr. Owens. I'm going to have this be a super speedy meeting tonight. >> Okay, we are going to move on now to our next item, which is going to be discussion items. We'll start with 9.1 which is teaching and learning summer committee work which is for all those awesome people that we just got to celebrate. >> Miss

005Zaida, may I just interject real quick? >> Please do. >> Thank you. I just wanted to um congratulate the team that's getting ready to present to the board this evening for all of their efforts and hard work that they put in. You heard uh Mr. Nanda speak a little bit about their efforts um and just really bottom line preparing our teachers to have the best experience possible. also as Miss Benjamin begins uh again just thank you to the program and and curriculum instruction the academic service team would all of the above but just we appreciate them a lot so thank you >> good evening madam president members of the governing board I am so thrilled to be able to celebrate and acknowledge the hard work that happened over the summer this work actually begins in

006around January when we start to look at the needs of the district based on observations walkthroughs uh instructional coach coach meetings, reading specialist meetings, math specialist meetings, and what our principles are seeking as well. And then these people take what that information and they run with it. And then they build the summer work and the committees and they find teachers who are willing to come in. And so it is a um big undertaking and they do an amazing job with it every single year. So this evening we have Katie Wood, director of teaching learning, who will be presenting, Laura Cololmes, director of educational technology. She also has the science under her. uh Allison Paterno, our district reading coach, Carrie Farnsworth, district math coach, Summer Marshall, who is our district instructional coach, Lauren Bergamman, who is

007our district behavior coach, and they will be sharing some of the work that their people did this summer. >> I can give it a go. >> Good evening. Thank you so much for letting the teaching and learning team share with you some of the work that we've done to prepare for this school year. Um, we aligned our work for the summer with the keystones. So, for readiness, we focus on making sure that our teachers had professional learning opportunities that would set them up for success to meet the needs of all of our students. So, today specifically, we'll be talking about the literacy endorsement training, disciplinary literacy, and academic and social behavior training opportunities that we have for our teachers. Um, and then for resources, wanting to make sure that our teachers have everything they need

008to be able to meet the needs of our students. We're going to be talking about the instructional blocks, um, some math manipulative work and centers and then slide decks that support ELA instruction. And then a science scope and sequence and pacing. And then for relationships, our work um over the summer really centered on the mentoring framework, which is to support our early career teachers um to help with teacher retention so that they stay in the profession and stay with us here in Lichfield. Oh. Um so we started with the instructional block. So all of our schools have master schedules where they have time allotted for each content area. But we had heard some feedback that teachers wanted to make sure they were maximizing that time and they needed some guidance about what portion of the

009lesson should focus on each element. So, first we're going to talk through literacy. So, I'm going to invite Allison up to talk through how we framed the instructional blocks specifically for literacy. >> Good evening and thank you for listening to our presentation tonight. Um, what you see up on the board is uh the third through fifth grade example of the ELA instructional framework. Um, you'll notice that there are two different colors. There are some reddish hues and some gold hues. Um that designates the type of instruction that will be happening. So the reddish hues are foundational skills. So things like phmic awareness, phonics and word study, um grammar and language skills. Um the gold hues represent reading and writing about complex text. Um you'll notice that as you look at the um different grade levels

010that the amount of time that students spend in foundational skills decrease as they go up in the grade level so that the amount of time that they spend in complex text increases. You'll also notice that there are standards referenced. So in an instructional block all of our standards clusters are touched on in every single day. So t uh students are getting um consistent exposure to these ELA standards through this instructional block. Along the right hand side, you're going to see some descriptions of meaningful learning. And what's great about that is that it connects directly to our First Reach instructional resource so that not only are teachers seeing what they should be teaching, but they have their how they're teaching it right there at their disposal, too. Um, and then down at the very bottom, you're

011going to see um a link that um directs teachers to differentiated blocks. So, this would happen outside of the core instructional block, but provides several resources that will be helpful for teachers as they're implementing tier 2 and tier three instruction. Hello, good evening. So, when you're looking at the math instructional blocks, you'll notice that um we have three different frameworks. This one up here is for 25. All three of the frameworks have the same core principles. Um the idea is that every day students will engage in reasoning, discussion and problem solving. Um and we want a balance between conceptual understanding u procedural fluency and application. Um and that we want there to be built-in opportunities for differentiation during tier one. Um across all three grade bands, you'll notice that there's number sense routines. There will

012be time for that try discuss connect uh structure inside each um lesson followed by small group opportunities especially in K1 and 25 um with 68 we ask that they do small groups once or twice a week um followed by an exit ticket. You'll also notice that in 25 we added um fact fluency. Um there's spiral review also included um so that students maintain that mastery of prior learning. Um the differences are mostly in timing. K1 spends more time in number sense and counting routines to build those foundational skills. Um and in in upper grades they spend more time in that problem solving and discussion. Um, we built these frameworks mostly to ensure that students have access to that high quality, consistent math experience no matter what classroom they're in. So, I wanted to talk a

013little bit about what is the try discuss connect routine. The purpose of this is to build mathematical agency by promoting proficiency and rigor within a collaborative structure. So we want students to experience think time for individual problem solving. We want them to have time for partner talk to share that reasoning. We want them to have time for individual writing to clarify their own thinking. And then we want also to have time for that whole class discourse so they can compare and connect their ideas. Um this structure also embeds language routines to support all learners and it also includes teacher moves um to effectively guide that discourse and deepen the understanding. So this is important because it aligns to standards. So it's important that we we do that and that it also fosters student ownership of

014their own learning. So it provo it promotes that meaningful math discourse um while also giving students experiences with challenging problems. We want them to have exposure to multiple valid solution paths um understanding that it's not just one correct method. Um so we want them to build their mathematical confidence. We want them to deepen their their conceptual understanding. We want them to stay engaged and focused in their math lessons and we really want to cultivate those habits of mind um in that standards of mathematical practice. So thinking back to the ELA instructional framework, remember we had those two different shades. Um so we had two different committees over the past two summers that were working on supporting documents and supporting re resources for those two areas. So the first um summer committee worked on the red

015issues, those foundational skills. Um and what they really focused on was taking our um high quality instructional resource, our core program, and pairing it with effective instructional routines that will make sure that students are getting a lot of practice in developing skills like phmic awareness, phonics, spelling, word study, grammar. Um so what you're seeing on this screen is you're seeing a few slides from a first grade example. And what you'll notice is that it starts by just introducing the sound spelling concept and then it's giving kids the opportunity to practice reading those types of words um in text and then they're reading them. I'm sorry, they're writing them doing some spelling work with them and then they're also practicing things like um high frequency words. Um and so those of course the the concepts change

016as they go up in the in the grades, but those are similar in all grades K through five. Um the reason that we're investing time and resources in um foundational skills is because the research is pretty clear that um students learn to speak naturally, but they don't learn to read naturally. So we have to provide them with explicit systematic instruction that connects speech to print. And that's exactly what these slide decks help our teachers do for students every day. The second committee then worked on those yellowish hues, the comprehension pieces. And um what we were working on here um is uh students ability to really dive deep into understanding complex text. Um so what we've done is we've taken again our core resource, our our um wonders resource, and we've um matched that to what

017the science of reading says are the best ways for students to gain deep meaning from the text that they're reading. And it's structured in before reading activities, during reading activities, and after reading activities. Before during reading activities include things like establishing the purpose. So things like what is the essential question that we're studying? Why this text? Um and then they'll understand the nuances of the genre. How is this fictional text different than a non-fiction text or than a a how-to text? Um they'll build some background knowledge so that we they can be sure that they have something to anchor what they're reading about to. And then they'll also develop um uh understanding of the vocabulary that's going to be critical to understanding that text. So those things all happen before they actually read the text.

018As they're reading the text, they're going to use their close reading procedure. And what that looks like is that they'll spend time reading the text to really just see what does the text say. Then they'll go back and reread the text to understand how does the text work. So what did the author do to make the text work? Things like the word choice and the text structure. And then they go back a third time and they start to integrate that to make connections that they're really understanding deeply what that text means in in um the scope of their life. Um teachers are doing this through asking a lot of text dependent questions that students are talking about and writing about. And then they also use graphic organizers to help students organize the information in the

019text. And then after reading, students have a chance to go back and revisit the purpose. What do they now know about that essential question that they didn't know before? they get ample opportunities to write about what they've read and to talk about what they've read. And then middle school did something very similar where they took this close reading routine that's part of their um core program and they really enhanced that core routine um or the core um program by doing things like building more background knowledge for students. um having them giving them more opportunities to interact with the vocabulary, having them talk and write more about the texts that they're reading. Um giving them more opportunities to make connections, especially by reading additional texts that connect to the main topic. So things like pulling newella

020articles and things like that. And then giving the teachers more opportunities to check for students understanding. So just a lot of enhancements that the teachers did. And the other big rock from the middle school summer work was that they developed consistent annotation procedures so that no matter what classroom they're in, the students will know that they're reading this text and annotating it in the same way. So that will happen in science, in history, and in ELA classrooms. for our K1 math summer work. Our purpose really was to prepare this the materials needed for the hands-on mathematics that is where that is available in our 2024 version of I Ready. So we a group of K1 teachers got together to print um and prepare the materials you'll see on the slides. And really the purpose there

021was to save teachers valuable time on on prepping all these materials and really to provide that consistent hands-on um um math lesson to kids across the grade levels or across the district. Sorry. and our science committee. And I just wanted to say, you know, this group that came together really embodies that content expert of being that Lichfield learner because the people that we brought in really truly knew their content, their teaching, um their science, and uh all of their different standards. So they really exemplified what that content expert looks like. And so with a K5 science with it being brand new, we literally rolled it out last year. What we realized that there were a lot of components and teachers had to go to a lot of different places to find those. So we kind

022of pivoted in the middle of the year and in April when we had all of our science teachers together during one of those Wednesday professional development days, we actually did this work then. So what was really nice is all of the teachers from across the district had a hand in developing these and also some input into what that looked like. And the purpose was to kind of give them a one-stop shop that was aligned to the standards, the learning objectives, and the grade level expectation. Um, and it serves to develop that logical progression of science instruction and some scaffolding. Um, it's we wanted it to be a document that as they're planning that's really their main document that they could use. So move is that okay there. Um so you can see over here each

023unit that we did was based on a 30 minute lesson three times a week and we also included the lesson the uh essential question that it was asking how many days the lesson was and then we really wanted to make sure that they included some of those inquirybased uh activities or the hands-on activities. ities and so how many days it would be to incorporate those but also what materials they might need outside of what was already provided. One of the nice things is is each teacher has their own materials which is a lot of the consumables and non-consumables. But there are some teacher source materials and they're usually like markers, crayons, scissors. Um sometimes it's like a toilet paper rolls and those were just things that you know could be supplied. So we wanted to

024make sure that they had those items that they needed for planning ahead of time. And then with science, we did this one over the summer. We put together an entire document that was um based on the centrally purchased tier one instruction for Amplify, but then also took into some considerations about how the national version of the science standards doesn't completely align with the Arizona science standards and making sure that we addressed any of those gaps um and looking at ways that if there were addition lessons that that could be skipped um to also fill in gaps with other things what that might look like. And we really wanted to make sure that we included the three dimensions of science instruction. So if you look on the next slide, um these were our outcomes. We were

025able to give a full overview of science of the amplified science. We included many resources and you heard Carrie talk about discourse strategies and this is actually something that across all of our contents we've been really talking about and what that means is giving kids the opportunity to talk. asking a question that's probably open-ended and then just kind of leaving it and creating that back and forth banter between students expressing their own ideas and thoughts about the learning and letting the teacher kind of sit back. So giving teachers those um those multim modal approaches to having kids really doing all the work and that talk. And so then we were able to also do a scope and sequence and then a full unit guide for each unit. And each grade level has between six and

026eight units. So we were able to do all of them. So on the next slide you'll see an example of the first part. What I love about this document too is I talked about the three dimensions of science which within the the content we include science and engineering practices. We include the core disciplinary um ideas of science and then we also include the crosscutting concepts um within science. So we colorcoded each of those so that as teachers were doing that instruction they could see how that activity was meeting those three dimensions of science instruction. And then the the next part of the document is really just that ineing process and also um the different types of activities that were involved and the phenomena that's involved because each unit starts with something that naturally occurs in

027the world which we is the phenomena and we introduce it to students and throughout the unit they're they're exploring why is that happening? what what's going on that's creating that. So, it talks about that that and um gives teachers all of those different resources all in their unit planning. I think that was mine. Yes. >> Well, and this is not actually a summer update, but it's part of our teaching and learning team's work, and so we just wanted to give you a quick update on this. So, um, with the literacy endorsement, um, as a reminder, all, um, K5 teachers in the state of Arizona are required to earn their literacy endorsement, um, by 2028. And so, Lichfield is very proud to be the only school district in the entire state that developed our own coursework

028that's met the rigorous demands of, um, the AD's rubric. And so, we're able to provide this coursework for free and during our professional days. And so, just wanted to provide a quick update on where we are with this coursework. Last year we finished up part A and part A focused on the science of reading in tier one instruction. This year we're beginning part B and part B focuses on intensification of instruction um for students who are struggling readers. So uh that includes students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties. So we'll um do four sessions of part B this year, four sessions of part B next year, and that will conclude our coursework. We're also offering part A makeups to any teachers who are new to our district or who may have missed any sessions um

029in the previous two years. Okay. So, while the K5 teachers are going to get their literacy endorsement, our 68 teachers are going to be participating in um professional development for disciplinary literacy. And the goal of this PD series is to really get the 68 teachers to use their contra content expertise with specific reading and writing strategies to help all students in every content read, write, and communicate across the grade levels. Um, we're all reading and writing teachers, so we just need to give everybody the strategies and the confidence to become so. Um, one strategy to highlight will be talk moves. um talk moves will get students to move from just that basic answering of questions to really extending their thinking and conversation and bringing about that discourse that you heard about. So also sixth um

030through eighth grade teachers will in history, science and math use the annotations expectations. Um and we'll also focus on specific reading strategies um like building prior knowledge and posing discipline relevant questions that's going to help us move the needle with reading and writing as well. The other training our sixth through eighth grade teachers will have opposite when K5 is working on their literacy endorsement is academic and social behaviors. So Lichfield has long had a universal behavior support tier one checklist, but we got feedback from some of our middle school principles, assistant principles, and student adviserss that it was geared more toward K5. So we did some revisions to update it so that it's more appropriate for our middle school students. Um, so we want to make sure that all of our teachers are trained explicitly

031on the changes that were made to make this more middle school friendly. So these will all be strategies that help our students be successful in a positive learning climate with a respectful culture. And so the professional development our teachers get will be about how how do you do that in the classroom? What does that look like? What are concrete strategies for building trust, for building relationships, for that dialogue to happen between students? And our last big project we're very excited about, we just kicked it off yesterday with our mentors. So this is alive and well. Um it's our um mentoring framework. So we developed um our mentoring framework with a team of our national board certified teachers. And this mentoring program is designed to serve Lichfield's early career educators who are in their first or

032second years in the profession. Um the framework was designed to provide consistent support to those early career educators in the areas that typically align to what we would expect a new teacher would need. Um mentors receive compensation through the continuous learner project and for the first time teachers new to the profession are able to receive compensation through the CL as well by participating in mentoring. Um there are two major aspects of the mentoring framework. one is monthly professional learning sessions and the other aspect are monthly mentoring conversations. Um so for the monthly professional learning sessions we're we're grounding our work in this book welcome to teaching. In year one the professional learning topics will focus on um learning climate planning and engagement. And in year two we're going to shift the focus to assessments data

033advanced instructional strategies and differentiation. The second aspect is one-to-one mentoring. Um, early career educators will have a mentorship log that will help them organize the monthly professional learning topics, um, reflect on those monthly topics, and also document those one-on-one conversations that they're having with their mentor as they celebrate successes and work through challenges that they're experiencing. So, our hope is that this comprehensive support um, will really promote our teachers sense of efficacy and satisfaction in their work, will increase our teacher satisfaction, and ultimately benefit our students. All of these amazing frameworks and guides that you have heard about tonight, plus all of the existing ones, our scope and sequences, our pacing guides, our tier 2 resources, can all be found under our curriculum website embedded within our new beautiful website. Um, and they're at the

034teachers hands to peruse as needed. And we also embed them in all of our PDs when we do meet with the teachers. As you can see, these brilliant people that I get to surround myself with have um incredible ideas and they really make all of this work come to life. So, we are here to answer any questions that you may have and thank you for listening to the update for teaching and learning. >> Thank you, Mr. Mike. Did you have any questions or comments? >> Uh no questions, but uh wow. I mean, it really is incredible. We are lucky, Dr. Davidson. You're very lucky to have these amazing people um part of our district and the stuff that I see here, all the parts, all the things that are moving and shaking. Uh it really

035is amazing. There is no sleep in the summer um clearly, but I really look forward to see how the alignment works and the common language that's being used and the common assessment pieces and and um excited to see when a teacher says annotate in sixth grade, the same kid is annotating across the board and all the different subject areas and really um you know putting that to use. So um no, it's just it really just is blows my mind. It is amazing the amount of work that was completed during this time. So, thank you very very much, >> Mr. Owens. >> Yeah, same for me. Wow. Um, I have no questions. Just high praise. Thank you so much. Um, you could have told me that you were just working on that presentation since January and

036I would have believed it. So, um, really looking forward to having this. I think one of the big things we talk about are wanting is just uniformity across the district in every classroom. So, I think with that and then just making sure that um our teachers are prepared and talking about doing those extra things this summer so that way it's not hanging over their head that it needs to be prepared before class. So, thank you for all that extra work. Thank you for your attention to detail and um yeah, appreciate it so much. Miss Moran, >> I also do not have any questions, but I do have some feedback and I like to write my thoughts down so that I don't forget anything that I want to say. So, I am going to provide my

037feedback. So when I was going through the presentation and looking at the teaching and learning summer work, the main thing that kept coming back to me was that this is exactly what our district is aiming to do as a district of continuous improvement. Right? We're looking at where have we been, where do we want to go, how do we help our teachers get there. So, I appreciate the evidence that we are using feedback from our teachers and our parents as well as behavior and academic data to make changes with the intention of student success and our students becoming the Lichfield learners that we know that they can be. I'm also grateful that we have the capacity and capability of your team and committee members to proactively analyze and create these best practices. To board member

038Mike's point, not everyone has this and I'm super grateful that we do. How lucky are we? Fantastic. The other big piece for me having been here a while is the mentoring. Love, love, love. So this piece has been inconsistent at best across our district because it depend on on what campus you ended up at as a new teacher what kind of supports you got. Some were blowing it out of the water, some not so much. So I appreciate that this has been needed and that it is now actually happening and is in action to help develop our staff, attract and retain um teachers. And I liken it to the college experience. So, if any of you have had students that go into college, every college is trying to get your child into the culture, right?

039They want to get that and you they want you as parents to get you in. Hey, you're now a Sunundevil. Sparky is amazing. You know, come meet people, come, you know, make form relationships so that you will want to come back so that it will be a place that you want to be. And I love that we're formalizing that. So again, this is another example of living our values as a district and straight up be to the three as my son says, believe, belong, become. It's not just for students, but it's also for our teachers and our staff. So love it. So thank you to all of you and all of your committee members for pouring your knowledge and experience into this district. You really are making a positive change. Thank you, >> Miss Wallace.

040I have said so many times I don't want to go after her because I'm never that organized. But what she said and um I also love the literacy endorsement piece that I'm sure that took a lot of work to be the only district in the state that can offer that. So congratulations for that and that is such a huge gift to the teachers that they get that here and don't have to go on Saturdays or other places to do that. So thank you for your work with that specifically. Um also the mentor program seems amazing and I was not personally aware of what was in place before but I love that the new teachers are being supported there. Obviously, all the work over the math and science and reading is also amazing and fundamental. So,

041thank you for all of your hard work and even this beautiful presentation. I don't have any questions either, but um I I really do not think anybody in this district ever sleeps ever. I feel like you guys take on more and more and more all the time and everything you do is amazing and that's great. Uh, thank you to everybody that worked on this because it was a whole village of people that did it. Your team right here, all the teachers and people that helped over the summer. Thank you so much for giving up your time and doing this. And um, this is only going to benefit our students. So, I say all the time that we have the best district and that this the reason our district is so great is because of the

042people that are here that put in the work to make it great. And this is just more evidence of that. I'm very excited to see this and what that looks like later for our students and how successful that they're going to be, how our teachers are going to feel more valued and like they have more time now because we took a lot of really little things off their plate, but those little things add up over time. So, thank you to those people that put together little, you know, manipulatives and sets for the teachers because I know that that's something that they are all doing all summer long and you helped to take a lot of time off their hands for that. So, um, kudos to your team. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much.

043Okay. We are going to move on now to our school safety updates, which I don't know if it can be as like exciting as this last one, but we'll see. President Zida, members of the board, u thank you for giving us the opportunity tonight to discuss the many, many facets of our district safety program to include our title N and legal compliance efforts. Um, you can definitely see by this presenter slide that I am not Dr. Bridget Duzy. Um, so with that said, I wanted to just give her a shout out and to her son. Her son is graduating from the nursing department uh through UOVA and she was uh had the opportunity to be there tonight with him on I believe likely some type of student award. So, we'll find out more about that.

044But uh we'll uh we'll just wish Dr. Dooine and her son well tonight. >> She's got to be so bummed. like we totally planned for it to be tonight so she could be here. But >> she is she is but uh certainly we gave her that permission to go celebrate and be there. >> Absolutely. We are very happy for her. So yes, >> uh I'm just glad she trusted me to be up here to to get this this baby going. So um before I introduce our our fellow team members, um just to go back to the the conversation we just had and and it really applies to this presentation as well. Um for me personally, proud. I I think I heard the term maybe lucky, but also honored to serve um alongside these these professionals.

045I think what you heard earlier and what you'll hear now is just just shining examples of our efforts to be proactive um all around that continuous improvement piece. So, thank you for recognizing that and wow, here we are. We're we're moving forward. So, tonight you'll have a chance to hear from Mr. Thomas Foster Deoro, our director of school safety, and Miss Maria Fletcher, our title N coordinator. Um, I guess I've already talked about what we're going to do there. We're going to talk a little bit about what's been happening, but also where we're headed for our future in those areas. Certainly, all the work um that you hear about tonight are aligned to the three core pillars or keystones of our strategic plan. And with that said, I'll turn it over to Moss. >> Good

046evening, board. Uh thank you for the opportunity to share a lot of the great things that we did last year and then what we're going to what we're looking forward to this year. Uh I'm pretty excited about a lot of stuff we did. We did a lot of stuff. So I'm going to try to be focused brief. If you have any questions, let me know. So we're going to review uh the six goals that we set at the beginning of the year that we we said we're going to try to execute throughout the year. Um and we did really well. So for the first goal uh by the end of 2025, we wanted to establish school safety teams. We wanted to do this to make not only the schools more resilient in solving a lot

047of the issues they have because the fact is there's one of me and 16 sites and only so many leaders to be able to assist with all those issues. But if we can make the sites more resilient that makes them uh better to support their students and create a safe work environment. So by the end of the school year or over the summer, we at least established a safety team on each site and we had at least two safety team meetings. And within those safety team meetings, we integrated the AD uh Arizona Department of Education's uh school safety program template for the structure for this team. The purpose of that was to set us up for the next school safety program grant that allows us to have SSOs and SRO's on our site. We wanted

048each school to be using that template so that we're doing the work that helps us apply for that grant to say we're doing the stuff that's required to heat to keep these grants. So that was the purpose behind that and uh we executed on that. Uh also within those school safety uh um school safety team meetings, we wanted uh the school to identify the top three priorities. Not me walking the site or district leadership saying these are the things you need to work on. They're the ones on the site, boots on the ground doing the work. So they know where their vulnerabilities are. They know where they need help. This is for them to self uh self assess, identify where they're having problems, see that for us to help them uh show up some of

049those problems if they can and if it's something out of their control, then we'll work with uh district operations uh Mr. Danson for projects coming up on the summer. Maybe this is something that the district would have to take on and help them solve the wrong way. Under goal two, by the end of 2025, we wanted to uh create and implement a district emergency operating plan based on the newly revised AD minimum standard. We did do that. So, every school site has done section one completed under the new AD template. Part of uh the purpose behind this was when we had the audit last year uh by the auditor general, they went out to all the school uh numerous school districts and said, "Yep, our schools are failing. they're not even they're not prepared for

050these worst case contingencies. And it was because there was no guidance. It didn't say there wasn't like a there was this template since 2019, but everybody was allowed to do their own thing. Um, and if you have a third party coming into your school district and they're they're used to seeing the AD template, but you have this, it may meet the requirements, but as far as these auditor generals know, yeah, these don't align. So the purpose of creating these AD template emergency operating procedures is so that they would align that we're talking apples and apples. So as of the start of this year everybody is on this AD template of 2024 which is going to be being revised within the next year or so. But for now we are on the same page as everybody

051else. We did have numerous trainings at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year on this the expected changes um and we still doing work. We still have sections two and three, the functional annexes of those that will I'll be working with each of the school sites on creating those. Goal three, by the end of 2025, the district team will revise, create, and implement specific standard operating procedures around issues that impact the school and workplace safety. This was uh to the ends of standardizing our response to numerous things. One of the big things we did over the summer is we went through uh our school health, our school nurses uh in partnership with Miss Joe Smith, our lead nurse for the district. We rewrote all the standard operating procedures of how

052to administer EpiPens, how to administer over-the-counter medications. We wanted to make sure that there was a standard response for every single one of our nurse. Not that their training and their certifications don't make them capable. We wanted that standard of response that a nurse at Western Sky is going to respond the same way they would at Wigwam Creek. So to that end, we created that and then the district had a brilliant idea of posting that online. So that way even if it's not the school nurse that needs those resources that it's a teacher that's on a field trip or principal, a new principal that's subbing in, they can just go to our website. Our standard operating procedures are right there. And we plan to do that for many other areas like for strategics, operations, issuing

053of badges, how do we respond uh and and other aspects. So this is good work that has been done and we're going to continue to do the same. Under goal four, we wanted to inform, engage, and enlist staff, families, students, and community to strengthen school and workplace safety. So along the same lines as the school safety teams and making uh getting that feedback to create uh safer environments for the school, we wanted to hear from our community, our parents, our partners. Uh so we established a community safety committee uh with representation from every site. We asked every principal, please, you know, reach out to your parent groups and uh nominate one or two so that way we can invite them together. We can share all the good things that we're doing uh as a school

054district and then get some feedback. What are their priorities? because our priorities may be different. Just like my priorities are different from our school site administrators, our parents have different priorities. So, we wanted to be able to create that avenue of conversation. We did meet in May of this year. Um they helped us build the agendas for the upcoming. So, this year we plan on meeting once a month up until winter break. It's just because they requested a lot of information. They want to know about our drills, our drill procedures, our emergency operating procedures, all the projects we did over the summer and we wanted to get their feedback. So, we felt all right, we'll do one meeting a month, August, September, October, November, and then we'll go from there. We initially plan to meet

055once a quarter, but based on the information they want and the participation they wanted to give, we were like, all right, we can make this happen once a month until winter break. Uh, aside from that, we did do we did start doing our safety road shows last year where we wanted to get ahead on the preventive measures of title N issues. Uh, so in partnership myself, Miss Marie Fletcher, she'll she'll be talking more about it. We wanted to do some preventive training with our students to give them expectations like you can't issue consequences without them knowing you know what the expectation is especially when it comes to our little ones and and you know what is consent what is appropriate uh contact and stuff and then also at the beginning of last year we had

056this whole slew of school threats not specifically with our district but our our surrounding areas and then we had Georgia. So we wanted to get ahead and let them know their consequences for their actions. They think they're just on TikTok and they're sending emojis so they can get out of school like we used to do for the bomb threats, but there are serious consequences for those. And so we wanted to let them know this is what's happening. You don't think it's a big idea, but these are the consequences that follow. So in partnership with Touchstone and local law enforcement for the different schools we went to, we helped convey these expectations and I think it was wellreceived. One of the bigger things we also did is we went out for the SSO uh the AD

057school safety officer mini grant and we did get awarded those 11 positions and then this will be continuing for this school year. So we're continuing all those positions into this school year and we will be applying for the same grant uh this fall. So a lot of the work we did last year and a lot of work we're going to be doing this year is going to help us uh put us in good standings for this grant going into the next threeear cycle. Under goal five, we wanted to use top priorities for bond dollar spending to make district-wide safety improvements. I am blessed to have come into a position where we already started the work. Everybody did the footwork that you guys had strategics on deck. The only thing I had to do was help

058roll it out. So that was great having a crisis platform. Um so that was one of the first things we did is we rolled out uh strategic crisis alert and visitor management and we had it for majority of the year. Uh on top of that we already had it and district operations starting the project for the securing the front uh front offices the cameras secured entries that was off and rolling and and the and the school district adopted that very well. my previous district that was a really, you know, parents are used to just coming on campus when they want, gates are open to go to a closed campus and then also a secured front office where they couldn't just walk in, you had to buzz in. I think the district uh accepted that really

059well. And then over the summer, uh, partnership with, uh, Mr. Michael Vaughn and his grant writing team, we did apply for a cops federal grant so that way we can kind of optimize bond funding for a one asset. We we think is were severely lacking uh cameras on campuses. Uh many different opinion but that was a highly requested by all school sites that you know if they had cameras it'd help them do discipline and you know keep the kids safer. So we went out and hopefully uh we hear good word in the fall about it. And then we're also going to continue working with vendors about our district radio communication needs. That was one of the top priorities that was given to me by Dr. Davidson and we're going to continue that work. Last goal

060six, establish uh standard operating procedures for assessing school sites and facilities. So we did complete we did uh complete two septit assessments of the support services center and Western skaya middle school. And in the process of doing that that helped us establish how we want to execute these assessments um and be more efficient. a process of identifying faults, how do we get into the FMX work order system for correction and then following up with those things. So, we have all our schools scheduled for this uh to be completed by the end of this year. That's the end of the first portion. Now, Miss Maria Fletcher, >> any questions on that portion? >> Uh Mr. Mike, sorry. actually might just out of curiosity, do you know when uh we'll hear I know you said for fall

061for the grant for the you know potential grant >> for the for the cameras. Is there more of a hard date that we're hoping for? >> We're expecting around October 30th. >> I'm sorry. >> October 30th. Okay. All right. >> Mr. Owens, Miss Moran, >> no questions. Miss Wallace, >> No questions so far. >> Good evening, board. Thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to go ahead and talk about everything that um I've accomplished in the last school year and going into the new school year and um future um um overview of what we're doing here. So, I'm going to overview what Title 9 is and the reporting process. compare data from uh school year 2324 and share this last school's year's data. Um also safety road show update and progress also what's

062new for this new school year and next steps and beyond. So title 9 um is a federal law that is that prohibits sexbased discrimination and education programs and activity receiving federal funding. It covers discrimination, harassment, sexual misconduct and retaliation. Its goal is to ensure a safe, equitable learning environment for all students and staff. Uh the reporting process is that if any uh staff member or student believes that their own title n rights or title nine rights of a student or staff member have been violated, they promptly report it to me and then from there I review to determine if the incident falls within the title N scope. Um if it does, then I go ahead and begin a formal investigative process. If it does not, the matter is referred back to the school for investigative

063uh process and uh will be addressed under the students handbook or relevant employee policies including any necessary disciplinary measures. So last time we were here with you uh Dr. Judy and I um went ahead and um uh gave a grade level distribution of actual knowledge reports which actual knowledge under title 9 occurs when a school official or the title N coordinator is informed of sexual harassment or allegations of sexual harassments. Um and then this coming school at least last school year um we kind of see um trending that we had still um some actual knowledge reports um that were still very similar um in uh ratio to the school year before and kind of seeing that it looks like the higher grades up fifth and sixth and seventh tend to be a little bit higher

064in some of these actual knowledge reports. We also kind of went through about the types of incidents that were being reported. Um the school year 2324 that incidents were grouped into three categories at that time which were physical and verbal, digital and social media and other. Last school year we refined our tracking um to capture more specific combinations of incident types. Um and this was so the purpose would be so we could better understand uh what types of incidents were truly happening and also targeted prevention education. Um so we did go ahead and expand it. Um and that way the combined categories were more visible. So you'll see on the second um pi graph uh we did go ahead and do just a physical only um selection verbal verbal and digital social media physical and

065verbal verbal digital and physical and we still have other which we are still refining every single school year to determine what the trends are as far as incidents that are being reported. And this matters because better categorization is a clearer picture of what's happening in our school environments. I also wanted to bring um to attention that majority of the incidents that are reported once I go ahead and review them um majority of the time they don't reach the title N scope. So they are uh returned back to the school for further investigation. And then the ones that do, I go ahead and um take ownership of that to go ahead and start that formal investigative process. And so I wanted to share an overview data of last year's um numbers that I collected. So overall

066the complaint volume that I received was 333 total number of possible title 9 complaints. out of the 333, 145 met the Title N threshold. Um, so what that meant is that I would go ahead and have uh meetings with parents to kind of go over their rights, discuss the situation at hand, and determine what they wanted to do, whether they wanted to turn the case back to the school or file Title 9. 188 of those did not meet the threshold. So, they went back to the school and the school went ahead and um continued as normal. Out of those 145 that did meet the threshold, uh, nine title N um, complaints were filed, one was an informal resolution. Informal resolutions are where both parties um, instead of going through the whole uh, formal investigation. They

067want to sit down as parties and try to mediate the situation and maybe find some supportive measures where both students can um, move forward from the situation at hand. and then seven of the nine were dismissed during the process. Um, dismissals occur when either the complainant decides they no longer want to uh pursue that formal claim or um at times the respondent is withdrawn for the district and so the um claim is then dismissed. So based on all this data um last school year, knowing um what was going on in school year 2324 um and due to the volume of the potential Title 9 related complaints, the safety road show was developed as a proactive initiative to address the reduced behaviors um to reduce behaviors that may lead to Title 9 violations or concerns. The

068first safety road show was held in January of 2025 and Bellisota Elementary was our first school. Uh we went ahead along with Touchstone uh members of the district and law enforcement uh went in and um presented topics on consent, boundaries, how to be a good friend and having healthy relationships. And then following its success, we went ahead and took the presentation to three other schools um across the district which I have listed there was Barbara Roby uh Dreaming Summit and Cortisier Elementary School. The safety road show as mentioned was facil facilitated by Touchstone the uh police department and members of the school district and it's to help students understand the important of healthy boundaries, consent, important skills and how to maintain healthy relationships in their lives. Schools that received the presentation saw a decrease in

069inappropriate behaviors and saw their students respecting one another more. This indicates that more trainings like this are essential to ensure students success and safety and minimizes inappropriate behaviors. So we have a couple of photos just kind of showing about the safety road show. This was at Bellinsa. Um this was our first safety road show and then taking it to other schools. It was very well uh received. I did receive calls from parents um you know stating that this was a great preventative initiative and they were very excited that we had uh a program like this. So the safety road shows future and beyond um we have updated the format where it will be a part one and part two. So part one is starting with presentations for sixth and seventh graders on boundaries, consent, and

070healthy relationships. And these are led by Touchstone. And they are actually ongoing right now in the first two weeks of school. So I've been busy going to all of the middle schools and all the sixth and seventh graders um are bringing Touchstone to go ahead and lead these important uh presentations. Uh part one is also promoting that afterchool teen outreach programs TOPS which meets twice a week for one semester. I think this is also a great um afterchool program. Additionally because it focus on positive youth development through lessons on communication, decision- making, emotional regulation and healthy relationships and students are also completing um community service projects to build leadership and connection. Um, so I think this supports, you know, middle school success and builds lifelong skills as students grow. And then as far as part

071one, we also wanted to continue supporting the elementary grade levels. Last year we did third grade and we are going to continue um with third grade. And this is going to be presented by our school site behavior coaches. Um, so we definitely uh want to continue the topics of boundary, consent, and healthy friendships at an age appropriate uh delivery. And it's also uh great to have our um behavior coaches involved because this could potentially expand to other grade levels and parent consent forms are still required for these presentations. So parents have the options to opt in or opt out their students. We're also doing a part two of the safety road show and the part two will only be presented by the safety team which would consist of uh me the title 9 coordinator the

072director of safety and um collaborating with local law enforcement so any of our SSOs or SRO's and um there we want to focus on other for other inappropriate behaviors um such as intimidation, bullying, social media threats and then also Alo just looking at our discipline data that we've collected. Aggression and inappropriate language um has been one of the top referrals in the last school year. So we kind of want to address those as well. Uh we want to focus on those talking more about um decision making the discipline aspect of our student handbook and also legal consequences so our students are aware um if these um uh behaviors are being expressed what could happen and parent consent would be um required. So, I'm really looking forward um to seeing how the full implementation of the

073safety road show this year will make an impact and seeing if that will reduce the numbers and potential um possible complaints. Along with student uh preventative education, there's also preventative education for staff. All staff is provided mandatory Title 9 training as required by Title 9 regulation. Right now, all staff are taking the Title N training. um through our vector um program. I'm also have created and developedformational materials uh for staff to enhance awareness and guidelines. So, I have created handouts, also some talking points to help behavior coaches when calling parents home, letting them know that um a complaint that they receive from their student may fall in title nine that could possibly be a very um you know, uh confusing or maybe it could be um a scary, you know, call to get. So, just

074kind of making sure that parents know a couple of things and make them at ease knowing that I will follow up with a call um to go ahead and meet with them. And then I've also been scheduling times with schools to provide staffwide trainings mostly at PLC days. Tomorrow I do have a staffwide training at Wigwam Creek. So I'm really excited um to go ahead and bring some of that preventative education to staff. On top of Title 9, there is a legal compliance aspect as the title is Title N and legal compliance coordinator. Um so um we have um been seeing a more high volume in orders of protections, parent custody orders, anything that's court related. My expertise is in a court background, so I am able to interpret um some of these um uh

075orders and go ahead and add alerts to our synergy database just to ensure student safety um ensuring that our students are safe. We know when they are allowed to leave campuses and um that they are safe with the adult that they are leaving with. And then also I am forming relationships with our front office staffs uh with the registars as they are the ones who are the front line that receive these orders. So we work hand in hand to ensure that students are always safe. Now I'm going to turn it over to Moss. Uh before I do that, do you have any questions, >> Mr. Mike? >> None for me. Thank you. >> Mr. Owens, >> no questions. Thank you. Miss Maran, >> my only question is, can we, the board, get an invite to

076one or more of the safety road shows? >> Absolutely. >> Awesome. Please. >> Yes, we have plenty happening in those. >> Give us that info and we'd love to come and see for ourselves. >> Yes, absolutely. >> Miss Wallace, no questions. Thank you. Okay, >> Kim stole my questions, so I look forward to the invitation. >> Absolutely. Thank you. All right, we're going over uh what we have to look forward to in 2025 2026. Uh under resources, uh we want to continue to expand the phase of implementation for Cintiix. Right now we have everyone checking in under visitors. We want to expand that to the staff check-in. We're working with their soft uh software developers so that way we can utilize the CICS badges itself as a uni unique identifier. Since we require all staff

077members, it's pretty cumbersome to pull out your wallet out of your purse or your back pocket every single time. Driver's license check in as a district staff member or a staff member from another site. So, we're working to come up with creative ways for them to be able to just use their strategics badge, which they should have already to check in at a site and also to account for our our visitors, uh our volunteers. They do great work on our campus and we want to be able to aggregate them out so we can see which volunteers we're getting a lot of work out of and so hopefully we can celebrate them in the future. So we're working on those parts right there. Uh we have utilized action steps uh completed in 2024 to build out

078a application for school safety grants. Um like I said, we did all the work. We're going to get together as a team in the fall and hopefully build strong applications to get all our SSOs and our SRO back. uh we want to complete our SEPTAD site visits and uh refine that process so that way we have actionable items to present to you like based on our SEPTA assessments of sites these are the things we recommend these are things we're doing good and this is where we go next we want to establish effective communications on school sites via radios hopefully we have a good uh recommendation to present to district leadership by the end of the year on how we can acquire some new radios or if not make them more effective on site uh pending

079the cops grant outcome, uh begin building out plan for districtwide camera infrastructure. There are a lot of things in in technology that would help us uh be force multipliers to assist uh you know our staff on sites on vaping issues, bullying, fights and things like that. And if we can get the infrastructure of cameras on then we can start talking about AI integration. How can we leverage that in the future to kind of help assist our administrators? Because same thing, we can have all these cameras, but we don't have somebody to sit there and watch those cameras 247, but if we have these technologies out there that would assist us with that, we can start talking about that in future. Uh lastly, districtwide analysis of PA system. Uh this goes to our crisis communications. We

080know we are we have some shortfalls. We didn't get a complete assessment completed this summer, but we are going to continue that this year. That way we uh see what the full status of our district is on on PA systems and which ones need improvement which is a lot of them. And then how do we proceed? What's the best system for us to go as a standard and how do we acquire it. I also one of the things we I did not mention in my things we did last year. Uh I want to give a shout out to Mr. Samuanas with helping me with the safety time with Thomas that a lot I felt uncomfortable with them, but I thought it was an effective way of getting out like some of our hot topics of

081school threats, traffic issues. So, it did spur like partnerships with other uh like Buckeye traffic safety, our SRO's that I have a slew of ideas that we can put on into videos and format for information for our parents and our community. So, we want to continue that. We want to do more of those. So >> then looking at our readiness, uh next steps is um create new um scorecard goals and um and the following action steps. Utilize school safety teams uh to expand out the site level EDPs to the new AD standards. uh continue to visit sites and implement trainings around school safety SOPs. Continue to create SOPs to establish clear communication with all staff around all safety needs. Uh plan and implement tabletop exercisings for reunification work. Continue safety road shows for preventative education

082with sixth and seventh grade in partnership with Touchstone and local law enforcement. um expand uh TOPS programming for middle schools um through Touchstone and also expand safety road show in other grades through uh train the trainer method model to allow um our district staff to implement the road show for third grade. um expand the safety road show into two parts for third and sixth grade to include harassment, bullying, intimidation, aggression, inappropriate language, threats, and other top priorities um as determined by the school site. So, something we also tell school sites if they see any specific behaviors they want us to address at these part two uh road shows, we're happy to go ahead and address it at that time. uh continue to train staff on Title 9 through in-person training handouts and quarterly newsletters. Uh

083provide additional training with school safety uh meeting and community safety committee meetings and continue to support legal compliance including recent laws changes. All right. So I'm also going to do relationships. Uh our next steps is uh complete focus topics for community safety committee and establish any other applicable measured measurable goals with future action steps. Enhance parent meeting process through the title 9 experience. Continue um safety time with Thomas and send out family videos on meaningful safety topics. Continue visibility through site visits including community education program. uh continue to build partnerships with local police and fire to include uh preparing for the AD safety grant. >> Any questions? >> Miss Ida, may I interject real quick? >> Yes, please. >> Thank you. I um you know, when we are dealing with crisis communications, we often begin

084with uh the line that safety and security of our staff and students is our top priority. Um I just want to say thank you to the board, the the two individuals presenting tonight. um their positions uh have been with Lichfield L for roughly four years or less and it was uh because of you know previous administration certainly but um our governing board that said yes to allowing us to have some human capital to do much of this work that you heard about tonight. So just wanted to say thank you for also embracing that student success can't happen if our environments aren't safe. So um just thank you and then really pleased to hear about all the work that we're doing. So, thank you, Maria and Thomas. >> Thank you. And before I let them comment,

085I am going to say for the why I think that their positions are important because students can't learn if they don't feel safe. And so, you guys being here makes our students and our staff feel safe, which means that they are going to have a better experience here at school. So, Mr. Mike, did you have any questions or comments? >> Uh, no, no questions. Just another outstanding thing to see is how purposeful focused we are with what we we know. We can look right up there and we know what we want to do this year and the year uh previous and what to build off of. And so I appreciate all the hard work and all that all that stuff with it. I'm excited for the continuation of the road shows to see the impact

086of the data. You know, fingers crossed for, you know, we just we'll just move forward with it. We know it's a good it's a good thing. It's good. to get out to kids. Appreciate that. And then and the last thing, I'll just kind of tease off what was said um uh by both people before me. It's just fitting that we talked about the teaching and learning piece and on top of it, we have the the school safety um presentation as well because of how important those those go in. It's a great process to see how kids we want to teach the kids and how we want them to learn, but if they can't walk onto school campus, like we said, and just feel safe, that's all for not. So, we appreciate I appreciate all the

087hard work that you you do to make uh make our kids safe at school. So, thank you, >> Mr. Owens. >> Yeah, I just want to reemphasize the importance of safety along with education, right? As parents, we entrust our students to teachers and principles and you know, they're out of our control and so we want to know that they're being educated and that they're safe. And so I know as a parent I feel safe and this presentation helped um to reiterate that. I do um like the road show idea. You know, you you touched on the idea that kids we don't all get the same lessons in life as they grow up. And so just sometimes just reinforcing or knowing what is expected of you and saying, "Hey, this is not okay." And it has

088consequences. And as we grow up, unfortunately, we learn our actions have consequences. And if we can kind of minimize some of those consequences through proactive lessons, then that's great. Um, I do love the safety time with Thomas. I think that face needs as much camera time as possible. So, keep those up. Miss Moran. >> Yeah, I just want to reiterate a couple of things that Dr. Davidson said earlier and added some of my own. So, the main thing that jumps out at me when I read this presentation and even thinking here while listening to it as well is that this again is an example of continuous improvement. It's clearly illustrated in this uh presentation and in our safety and title n work. Things that stand out to me uh that describe this are consistency training.

089We have the equipment and the physical improvements that have to go along with this as well as looking at the feedback and including the compliance work which is the boring part but that's what has to be done. So all of these things are critical to having a safe environment for our students and our staff. And I remember when we didn't have a director of school safety and we didn't have a title n compliance um coordinator. So I am again very grateful that we have not only the capacity but also the capability to make these goals and improvements a reality. So thank you for your hard work. Appreciate it. >> Miss Wallace. Um, I also am a big fan of the safety road shows. I think it is so vital that our kids are hearing from

090you guys and from law enforcement in like what Mr. Owen said, giving them the same lesson that maybe they haven't gotten at home and realizing what those consequences are and how serious some of these things are. And it's so important that the kids are are getting that message. Um, I just personally signed the permission slip for my son's safety road show yesterday, so I'm excited for to hear what he has to say about it and the feedback from the students, but I think it's a excellent program. Um, I also know that safety is just at the forefront of all parents minds in our day and age and everything in our media. And I was welcoming students on the first day of school. And I had two kindergarten moms at two different campuses stop and ask

091me about the police officers on campus. And one of them was literally tearing up. And she said, "I've been so scared and this makes me feel so much better." So, thank you for writing those grants. Thank you for the work that is going to go into rewriting them and all of the work that you're doing to make the teachers, the students, and the parents all feel safe in our district. Uh yeah, again, no questions. I echo what all of my fellow board members said in that this work that you're doing is very important and it is making our students safe. It's making our staff safe. It's making our parents feel comfortable sending their kids to school every day. And so we appreciate all that you do every day. Uh it's not just having these positions,

092but having the right people in these positions. And so we have the right people. So thank you to the two of you for the work that you're doing because if it wasn't you two and it was just some random other people, I don't know that other people would feel as safe. So thank you for all the work that you're doing. I know that you both care very deeply about our students and making sure that we are doing everything we can to keep them where they need to be. So I greatly appreciate that. Um, I will say that I think part of the road show being successful though is you guys doing it. I know you want to do the train the trainer model and we have a big district and it's not easy to go

093to every campus and teach all the kids, but I do think there's something about Moss coming in and talking to students, right? And having the police officers come in and talk to the students. So, I hope that we continue having that or finding a way to make sure that we are having these important people come and talk to the kids because it's just hits them a little different than, oh, my principal talks to us all the time or my teacher talks to us all the time, right? They're important, but it just hits a little different when it comes from somebody they're not used to that's in this position of authority. So, how we can figure that out, I don't know. But, thank you guys for all the work that you did. >> Thank you. Okay,

094we are going to move on now to reports which I think is going to be super speedy so that we can get out of here so Mr. Owens can go home and celebrate his birthday not here at a board meeting. Um, we'll start with uh Dr. Davidson. >> I think President Zyl would just put boundaries around my speech. I have to go really fast, but uh want to uh just certainly uh celebrate President Zida and Mr. for Ryan Owens from a belated birthday perspective, but also happy birthday, Ryan. Today is your big day. So, thanks for giving of your time for being here. We also uh celebrated tonight uh I don't think we're going to do it at every board meeting, but with a red carpet. So, that was a that was fun and had

095a little fun in the office today around uh just making certain that not only do you work hard, but you play hard a little bit, too. And so, that was a it was a great day. um as we start this school year, wow, 10,200 plus students right now in our classrooms being cared for and being educated by um just amazing certified staff, classified staff, and and being led by our administrative team. I was going to ask Sandy real quick just to highlight a little bit about our staffing. We've had a as you already saw a very busy summer, but also some some great information regarding staffing. So Sandy, would you mind adding to that real quick? >> Thank you, Dr. Davidson. and I have really appreciate the opportunity. We're so thrilled that all of our

096classrooms were filled when we started with students. We do still need two speech language pathologists. So, we're working to secure those and we continue to work to any positions that we have filled with contractors. We're working to fill those with our own employees even though we have them filled for now. And I think it's very exciting to share that when we look at the classified staff, we have just over 20 vacancies. Um, eight of those are crossing guards and you may recall that when we did some work and increase the hours for the registars. We had in mind that they would support through that. So, um, we may fill those positions or we may not. but very excited that we have just over 20 classified physicians remaining. So, thank you, Dr. Davidson. >> Yeah, thank

097you, Miss Hatterfield. Um, you know, as you saw this evening, a lot of work was being done over the summer to prepare us for that opening on July 31st. And so I'd also be remiss if I didn't say thank you to all of our operations teams and and our administrators who even worked outside of contract um to prepare for the opening of schools and um it just it's been an amazing opening um also being led by our governing board. I know many of you had a chance to join us those first few days and I just again thank you for pushing us for continuous improvement. that um I would uh I wrote on this paper right here pushing us to be the premier district not just in the West Valley but in the state and

098I welcome anybody who wants to come compete with the work that we're doing right now. Um as I close just highlight a few things. Um number one if you haven't had a chance to drive up Perville Road to near Glendale you'll see the development and the work being done on Troy Gilbert Elementary School. It's awesome to see. There's a lot of signage now and there's some legitimate um effort being done there on those uh on those grounds. Um the second piece is uh Mr. Nana's and team are working closely with uh with me. We're going to have our um I don't know I'm going to call it a a field trip for our community coming out here in the in the fall. And I just want to throw that out as a I don't have

099a date established yet, but um want our community to realize we value them and we certainly welcome them. And so if they haven't had a chance to volunteer or take advantage of those um those offerings I always throw out in the in the communications um there will be something coming soon to get get our people in our classrooms and see all the good work that we're doing. And lastly also want to just say thank you to our elected officials. I reached out uh with Miss Contra's help uh just offering an opportunity to brag and boast about our district uh during a time of coffee or lunch and I've had a few positive responses. So, I look forward to continuing to really share the Lichfield Elementary story with our with those that are out there serving

100in our community and helping us be the best we can be. So, uh thank you again, Governor Board, and I'll close for with that. >> Okay, we will move on to boards, Mr. Mike's. Um, just by the way, congratulations on the start of school on on everything that you guys have done and getting a chance to kind of reflecting uh going back to the kickoff breakfast that we got to attend with the uh with the leadership team that you guys did all all the time and effort you guys poured into that. Um, going into the back back to school celebration that was fortunate enough to attend as well. That was a great chance to kind of celebrate the beginning of something of something great. Um, um the guest speaker's name eludes me, but uh she

101she was she was excellent. A great message she delivered for that. So I appreciate you bringing her in for that. Um and then kind of the last thing I had just a little side note, uh went and had uh had to get uh a computer fixed up and so I went to this infamous technology building. We have uh hidden hiddens in the back corners uh of of our uh of our district map. And uh it was uh the reason I'm bringing this up is because I walked in there and from the get-go it's just first class customer service re regardless. I mean wherever you go in the district um there's somebody there smiling face willing to help. Um and they're running around getting all the boards set up getting all the technology set up. And

102so I just want to have have a little bit of shout out uh to the technology uh team as well because uh it's it's really amazing all the the uh the background of things that are happening too. So >> Mr. Owens, >> thank you. Yeah, since the last regular board meeting um attended the admin council. So thanks for CC CCV for hosting that. Um that was cool. We participated in some games and Sandy, you were awesome during that. um learned about all the different generations, right? Um I'm not a millennial or a Gen X or I'm a Zenial. Look those up. Okay. And is my birthday today. I'm a Leo. Um we did a special governing board meeting. Um we did the back to school bash. That was pretty cool. Um board member Mike's mentioned

103the guest speaker. I'm not a big speaker fan, but she was awesome. I think her message kind of applied regardless of whether you're a teacher or administrator. um just overall the value that you can bring to the children's lives every day. And then um we did the Goodyear High School hosted some of us in the ribbon cutting on beautiful campus. Really excited. The growth in the West Valley is incredible and obviously we're um part of that growth and with the the new school breaking ground is very exciting. and I haven't been up there to drive by it, but I seen some pictures and that's pretty cool as you know once the walls start going up, I think it's going to get a little more real, but it's it's exciting. And then I was uh lucky

104enough to welcome students on the first day of school at Verado L and Vto Middle as I dropped off my first grader and that was exciting. all the fun, all the the parents some tears every year, the kids crying, happy um some let's say state nine some tears still in the morning when I drop them off. But um one of the things that's happening on a lot of campuses right now, you know, there's still some construction going on with our project through Very. And um it's unfortunate, but it's it's it's such a big picture. I think people need to focus on what we're doing as far as the projects on campuses. And you know, we have multiple teams working on multiple campuses. So, it's just unfortunate that there are some campuses that still have some

105construction going on, but big picture-wise, it's all going to be worth it. So, please have some patience. If you're on a campus and you're, you know, drop off's a little bit slower or not as as easy as it used to be, have a little patience, please. you know, these children are seeing your behaviors in the morning. Um whether you're honking or or yelling things out your car, remember that, you know, these kids these kids are looking at at your at you as an adult to to emulate and to act better, please. So, that's all I have for me, >> Miss Maran. Yes, I was able to attend the back to school celebration with all the departments and campuses which was a fun entertaining thank you Mr. Noanes um and energizing time together as a district.

106I learned some things which I always appreciate and I walked away with a real feeling of belonging which was precisely the point. So, thank you for time well spent and a job well done to the admin team for putting that celebration together. It was great. But overall, I missed the last board meeting in person and there were some really important things that were reviewed during that meeting. And so I wanted to give some feedback on that tonight because overall lately I've been noticing our culture as a district has been developing into a more solid yet still pliable form. So what were once merely ideas or concepts are now developing into actual practices. And these practices are working together in ways I have not experienced before. So as some of you who know me on a

107personal level know, I can be both cynical and skeptical. So I like to see evidence for things. So when the vision of the Lichfield learner and the Lichfield leader was presented to me, it was not clear. I was not grasping it. But with the introduction of the I can statements along with the revised evaluation for the Lichfield leader which is going to then trickle down to the cascading effect of everyone. I can see that this is revolutionary, nothing short of revolutionary to our district. the positive impact on student success, not only academic, but also in their lifetime, from learning emotional maturity and healthy relationship skills from the I can statements is incredibly powerful in building a culture of understanding, accountability, and once again belonging not only in our students but also in our staff. So,

108I am feeling inspired and I am so excited to see the impact of our strategic plan as it continues to guide our course now that I can grasp the full vision. So, thank you for enlightening me and I am going to close with lyrics from Jewels song hands. We will fight not out of spite for someone must stand up for what's right. Because where there's a man who has no voice, there hours shall go singing. In the end, only kindness matters. >> Miss Wallace, sorry, you have to go after her again. Um, so I was not able to attend the kickoff on Monday, but I did watch the entire thing on the Friday board report. And I would like to say the speaker was great, but the song and the crowd participation and the performance

109like wow and I was very shocked and it was it was very fun and very well done. So, thank you for that. Um, and I the first day of school ran around to three different schools and greeted students, which was a lot of fun. I started at Mabel and then went to Palm Valley and finished at Western Sky. And all three were completely different experiences. And I was telling my family later that night, it was so great to see like what each school did. and kind of what their niche was and how the community went around whatever that was. Um, so it was just really fun to see the different things they were doing. It was really nice to see the parents that were both excited and sad. It's like two polar opposites. It's like,

110yay, they're back in school or like crying that they're back in school. So, there was very few people in the middle and it was it was just a funny experience, but it was a lot of fun to welcome them back. We're already nine days into the school year, which seems crazy that we're that far in, but thank you for everyone's hard work getting ready for the school year and for having a wonderful start for the students. Okay. Um, so in the last I think we didn't do board reports actually in July. I think we also skipped them then. But um, we've done a lot of things actually considering it was summer. We had I was able to attend the admin council kickoff which was really great event to have all of our admin team come

111together before all the staff came back to get them all excited to be there. And um, it was a fun event. I agree with Mr. Owens about Sandy. Sandy is like literally I think my favorite person ever. She's so fun. Um, and then I also attended the back to school celebration. Her name is Jessica Kabin. Uh, she was a great speaker. I thought that she did speak to everyone and she had stuff that could be implemented in everybody's lives whether you work for us or you don't. Like it was it was a great uh discussion that was had then. I also was able to attend meet the teacher night at two different campuses. And I will say that a shout out to Wigon Creek for doing a special meet the teacher night just for their

112students that are in the stride program. It was amazing that they did that for them because it's such a hectic chaotic night. And when you have like 150 plus kids that are in your stride program, that's just overwhelming for them and it's very challenging to make that work. But by offering a special night just for those kids to come in and have a calm, quiet environment where they aren't running into 2500 people potentially, it was just a really great thing to have that and I appreciate Principal Rosal for coming up with that idea and making that happen and for the stride team for being willing to do that a second night since they had to be there two nights in a row. Um, so thank you to those teachers and staff members that made that

113happen. I also was able to attend uh to do greeting students at Rancho Santa Fe and Wong Creek Middle School. And I agree, every campus is different, right? And every principal is different and you just see a totally different experience depending on what campus you're at. But it's still a fun and exciting morning when all the kids are getting there, whether they're crying or they're happy. Um most of the kids seemed like they were pretty happy and you get to see them in their best outfits because they all want to wear their cutest first day of school outfits. So it's super fun to see that. Um, Principal Rosenthal would like to have PE teacher for the day as the first day of school so that they can be in more comfortable attire while they're all

114running around like a chicken with their head cut off. So, just throwing that out there as an idea. Um, I also was able to attend the Goodyear High School ribbon cutting. That was a really nice celebration. Um, I'm excited to see what we decide, what we want to take from that when we have our own ribbon cutting next year for our Troy Gilbert campus that will be opening. Um, yeah. I will say that is my favorite thing that happened was Mr. Owens being covered in glitter by the confetti ball at the the Goodyear ribbon cutting ceremony. But, um, welcome everybody back to school. We're back to school and we're doing great. And thank you to everybody that's just made this a great nine days for our students so far. Uh, it's only going to get

115better. We heard some great presentations. we know what's to come and I'm just excited to see how all of these things play out. Uh thank you so much. With that, I want to thank everybody that turned in their reports uh from the administrators that we got. Special shout out to Mr. Enson who's back there in the back. I love your random facts. Thanks for all the stuff about Scott Libby. Scott Libbyy's got a special place in my heart always. So, I love learning new things about it. So, uh thank you for that and your reports. They are always holding my attention. Uh with that though, uh if somebody wants to make a motion, we will be done. I'll move to adjourn the meeting. >> I'll second. >> Having a motion for Mr. Owens and a

116second for Mr. Mike. I'll call for the vote. Mr. Mike, >> yay. >> Mr. Owens, >> yay. >> Miss Moran, >> yay. >> Miss Wallace, >> yay. >> I'm also a yay. Motion passes. This meeting is adjourned. Thanks for joining us, everyone.