001e e e thank you next we are going to take a moment of Silent reflection e thank you next up we are going to move on to recognitions and celebrations and this will be led by executive director Nana mad basketball team and their hardfought perfect 12-0 season and the championship victory over Madison these outstanding student athletes displayed incredible hard work perseverance and teamwork epitomizing what it means to be a Lichfield learner going undefeated is no small feeds and this team's dedication discipline and determination LED them to an unforgettable season their success on the court is a testament to their commitment to Excellence both as athletes and as students thank you to our student athletes their parents for joining us uh here tonight and we honor and send a huge congratulations to our Jaguar Champions on
002this remarkable achievement your school and most of all your District are incredibly proud of you if I could have our team members come up to take a photo with us please e yeah congratulations Wigwam cre girls varsity basketball amazing all right we're going to move on to our second group to recognize and celebrate this evening we are thrilled to recognize the incredible achievements of Andrea Lewis and the Palm Valley Elementary School odys of the M team this amazing team recently took first place in their competition these outstanding Lichfield Learners demonstrated Innovation creativity and teamwork embodying the very essence of what Odyssey of the mind is all about Odyssey of the Mind teaches students how to harness their natural creativity and become Fearless problem solvers whether it's thinking outside the box developing original Solutions or presenting
003ideas with confidence Odyssey of the Mind empowers students with skills that extend far beyond competition day this international program Fosters teamwork budgeting time management public speaking and critical thinking all essential skills that will serve our students for a lifetime through their hard work and dedication our Palm belly team has not only embraced the challenges of Odyssey of the mind but has also set an inspiring example for our district we are incredibly proud of their success and look forward to seeing their create where their creativity takes them next congratulations to Penny B Evan RS Lincoln Gan Xander Gonzalez Ella tamblin and the entire Palm Valley Thunderbird family congratulations e go Thunderbirds don't go too far Dr Hill we got more for you all right and on to our last group to celebrate tonight uh this one
004always amazes me these group of uh students as a communication professional I got into this because I prefer words over numbers and so this evening it is with great pride that we recognize the incredible achievement of the Palm Valley Elementary School fifth and sixth grade Ma challenge team these amazing students emerged as champions in a fierce competition against students from all across our district these Lichfield Learners showcase their exceptional problem solving skills critical thinking and teamwork to secure the top spot mathematics is just more than numbers it's about perseverance strategy and the confidence to tackle complex challenges our Palm Valley students embraced this mindset and demonstrated remarkable dedication in representing themselves their school and the entire district with pride we celebrate Miss solder and her team members of Miles Fleming Elizabeth Nichols Emma Matthews Rowan
005McFarland Jackson George and jcece vjo for your hard work your commitment to Excellence and your passion for learning congratulations B challenge Champions you have made Palm Valley Elementary and the entire elas d79 family incredibly proud all right one more round of applause for all of our GR groups tonight and thank you to our parents and students for joining us tonight thank you guys that joined us for that we love to celebrate our students and it's great to be able to celebrate such a variety of things tonight and we appreciate you guys came out and congratulations to all our student winners and all our athletes from W Creek as well um we are going to move on to the next item on the agenda which is a public comment sorry let me pull this up really
006quick I was having some technical difficulties but okay so for public comment I'm just going to read this little thiser thing uh pursuant to Arizona revised statutes ARS 38-43 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 La the governing board cannot discuss or take any action on items not listed on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-43 response to public comment about matters not appearing on the agenda will be limited to indivual members who may ask staff to study the matter respond to any criticism or ask that the matter be put
007on a future agenda for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your comments to no more than three minutes and no more than 30 minutes will be devoted to the public comment portion of the agenda when you approach the podium please state your name for the record we only have one speaker tonight and it's uh Miss Heidi land even me hello my name is Heidi Landon and I am I have been a dedicated educ dedicated educator in this district for the 14 years and I currently teach it Elementary where I have the privil of serving our St students Community I am addressing you today very nervously on beh of actually I'm addressing you today to express my concerns about the proposed time change our school in the upcoming Academic Year um while
008I am not um formally representing all teachers I would like to share my personal perspectives and concerns that I have um heard expressed by many of my colle colleagues at Dre um as someone directly affected by these potential changes I believe it's important that my voice voices are considered in this decision um we understand that theing changes involve complex considerations and apprciate the work District however asuc of course directly disrup the family life and child care of many teachers the additional child cost this is that obviously is addressed talkers and sters the district possible career disruptions and possible professional impact is really where I'd like to specifically address it where teachers SCH relationship Coles admin have been established at scho for many many years the specialized knowledge of school culture processes and student is when
009the teers have to move curriculum planning and teaching materials being assed respons emotional and psychological impact sense of belonging to a school community Landon I'm I'm sorry I have to stop you because your time is thank you I app okay uh we are going to move on for the agenda we're actually going to jump to uh the action items and then we're going to come back to the adoption of agenda and consent agenda since that is actually after the action so four people following along on the agenda the next item is going to be uh 6.1 start times for the 2526 schol year and this is going to be by Dr Davidson and Dr right president Z members of the board and community and staff those watching online thanks for being here tonight um certainly
010uh we appreciate the voice of our Educators com out to speak to this item this item is one that we've um had conversation around all year long and have sought The Voice from numerous individuals um for a variety of reasons and govern board I did put in the attachment on the screen in particular page two spoke to the variety of of reasons for the conversation and why we wanted to bring it to the governing board tonight and in particular to honor the work of our Educators wanting to have that conversation out and if the board so approve the change we would do that prior to contract as they needed to um just some of the key things that I'd like to highlight and certainly I'll invite Dr Stone to the podium to address any questions
011as well but some of the reasons for the changes one all schools being out by 3:30 in the afternoon ensuring that we have consistent instructional time between our elementaries and our middle schools I'm trying to align some of our campuses that are in the same Community bringing them a little bit closer trying to support our transportation department our governor board knows that this is a a goal of mind that was assigned earlier this year we Contin to look for ways to opportunity for service on behal of our transportation department to our families and our students and lastly as we look at Valley transitioning into a k c trying to make that their align with our other K so that it'll certainly help us out with after school program such so those are some of the
012reasons that we wanted to bring this today and will add one of the big D behind this really is Alig that 4 minut we're not up late 3r MDES okay I will see do you have any questions or comments about this item you mention that you've done different input from the staff what has been the process of talking with principl and staff to GA how much this will so we started with our principal groups a few months ago a lot of wer ready we've G to them three times to our principles to gather feedback we also spoke to of our tonight two Elementary Valley assing so those are the two that give me the most pause but I understand the reasoning Miss Maran um I don't have any questions but my only feedback would be
013that since there are many families and staff members who will be impacted by this I would like to make sure that it is proactively communicated um communicated fast and communicated often um so that families do have some time to digest this uh and that staff have time to digest and figure out what is going to work for them um I agree with board member Wallace that the hour change is is a change and I think with the more advanced notice the easier that change will be to figure out your own family Logistics I do want to just highlight as well that we are not changing our programming we're not changing our academics we're merely changing the start time and hopefully the end result from that will be more reliable transportation as well so I think
014the pros outweigh the cons in this situation and again my only concern is that everyone be made aware of this as soon as possible so they can have time to adjust thanks Miss marand if I could also add you know the you use the term change and I just wanted to also highlight I have it written down but we also know that this conversation is one that will continue into next year knowing that Troy Gilbert Elementary School will need to have its routes established and take a look at the programming that's offered there so I just want to also make our board aware of that and our community know that this conversation will continue to be extended Mr Mike okay uh yeah thank you I that was one of the questions I had was what
015does that look like when we onboard the next school and Shi that around and I guess we'll have to kind of see see what comes with it I don't necessarily really have any other specific questions I mean I sat down and just looked at all the different time changes from each school start you know start and ending and the two that stood out to me was the Scott liby and JY dreaming sub it of a or what I thought was a 50 minute change I don't know if it's 8:15 it was 8:15 or whatnot but um so I totally recognize the uh the difficulty in in that but also I recognize the difficulty in the entire process as far as trying to align start times and getting those buses um getting our kids there you
016know safely and on time um I definitely understand the 330 piece as far as waiting for B you know waiting for buses I know know uh at Western Sky sometimes we're waiting for buses to show up quite a bit and to alleviate that I think will relieve a a burden from the from the parents as well but um no don't have really anything else I just know there's no perfect solution um but you know looking at how everything was broken down I think um from my analysis it looks like it's the best that we really can do with what we have right now so and I appreciate uh that and taking all that into consider Mr Mike and Miss I my feudal mind um when you talk about perfect solution and I know Miss tassen
017and and some of her members are here um first of all always I appreciate the support of our board as we continue to strengthen and grow our transportation Fleet but if Jenny her standing here she would tell you the perfect solution is to continue to have more buses and more drivers to be able to manage this a little bit differently and and we're making great progress I want to just highlight her and her team's efforts but but that's we're we're not quite there yet but that that is a is a possible outcome in front of us so my only question is what feedback did you get from Middle School principles about how you're cutting out a part of their day now because they're going to have less time in their day and I know schedules
018are difficult to create that big master schedule that all those people are working on during the summer and before school even gets out probably for next year so how is this impacting them uh thank you president Z there's certainly an impact and um we had more than one um Middle School principal that also said hey how about we add a little more time instead of taking away because they do recognize that that master schedule is it can be complicated um similar to the comments from Miss Moran our desire was to get their input and give them a lot of time to begin building a schedule that would work for them um and I and I know that's happening as we speak um but that's also we wanted to bring it to the board in in
019a decent time frame but there was certainly conversation around how do we get this all to work and our academic Services team Dr dooy and her team as well are working closely with our principles okay thank you did anybody else have any comments or questions uh if I may real quick yep goad yeah when this conversation first started happening about time shifts and um you anytime we boundary changes or whatever make these decisions we know they're going to have have impacts on people's lives and whether it be our faculty and staff our teachers our parents right our students um there's no win-win everybody there's going to be sacrifices on both ends some people this might be a relief and now they know that they can get their kid easier to school others are going to
020have to make sacrifices so I I want everybody to know if that you are impacted by these changes that's not lost on us but we're trying to make the best we can to ensure that you know the big picture gets taken care of unfortunately there's going to be people that have to make some sacrifices or it's going to impact them negatively and others positively if somebody would like to make a motion I'll move to approve start times for schools for the 25 26 school year as presented I'll second having a motion from Miss Moran and a second from Mr Mike's I'll call for the vote uh Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay Miss Moran yay Mr Mike yay I an N motion passes thank next we are going to move on to the revised organizational
021chart for the 2526 school year this will be by Dr Davidson and Miss saterfield thank you president Zid and members of the board um this uh item is one that was brought to you um just as we further continue to discuss um the future of our organization the funny thing is is I could also make a comment around how this item kind of is Back to the Future and what what I mean by that is I've done some research and done some learning around titles that once were in our district and then got changed over time and wanted to bring the um possible revision of modifying both of the current positions held by executive director of operations and executive director of program and instruction to title them assistant superintendant um the rationale behind that is
022simply is that title not only did it once exist in our district but it also is very well recognized in the educational community at in most cases being a cabinet level title which both of these individuals and these positions are so it was really more so president Zam just about alignment um had some great conversation around is it just the person is it the position as a whole um one could argue it was a combination of both I just felt like it was really important though to think about our future and knowing the applicant pool that I would like to see one day if these positions were vacated with people who were also trying to take my seat one day so that's that's the rational I'll stand for any questions and certainly Human Resources alongside
023me as you saw in the agenda item there is no additional salary allocated to the use it's simply a title change so thank you Mr Owens do you have any questions or comments none for me thanks Miss Wallace no questions Miss Moran um my question and I couldn't find it anywhere is is the structure of this the same as our current org chart meaning when I look at this it looks as though executive director Jennifer Benjamin reports to Deputy superintendent Dr doozy who then reports to you and similar on the other side is that currently how it is set up or do all of the executive directors report directly to you thank you Miss Moran this is currently how our um or chart is currently organized okay um and so in Your Vision because this
024is your organization to organize as the superintendent so in Your Vision the titles of assistant superintendent would be a permanent change that's the title that you think best fits those positions now that you've had some time um with this or chart as of whatever time and date it is yes ma'am Miss Moran I do and I and I say that um only because um I do believe this title will allow us to secure an applicant pool in the future perhaps of individuals who are are um in the educational world who have trained for this job and perhaps as I said my job in the future now with that also said and your probably Carter why you Shar on both sides but really the alternative would be in some cases um there are individuals uh um
025that are also prepared from a different Walk of Life you know somewhere from a business Community perhaps a different type of organization that wasn't school-based and they potentially might be an applicant that we'd want to look at and dependent upon the job description and the title Miss mirand it's very possible I could be here or another individual could be here talking to you about the titles um but as of today and as what I foresee for our future I would want to answer the question with a yes okay and these titles are more common in other districts I believe well the answer is yes but I also know if you were to search organizational charart you will see all sorts of titles from Chief director executive director Deputy a lot of those titles are often
026interchangeable um but but yes ma'am I these two titles are certainly ones that are well represented in our education Community okay thank you yes ma'am Mr Mike yeah no nothing other than I support the the change of the the titles they they make sense to me when I was looking at it compared to what the the previous work chart looked like from from an educational standpoint uh for the flow of the so I don't have any questions um I just want to reiterate to the community that if this passes here in a minute we are not adding new positions these are just changes of title so we are not growing our admin there's no money going to it it's literally just a title change so please know that everyone in the community with that if
027somebody would like to make a motion I move to approve the revised organizational chart as presented to begin July 1st 2025 I'll second having a motion from Miss Moran and a second I think from Mr Owens I'll call for the vote Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay Miss Moran yay Mr mik yay I'm also a yay motion passes thank you okay on to the real reason that this whole big meeting is happening today um we are going to move on to the consideration of approval of the projected budget for fiscal year 2526 this is going to be by CFO V and Miss saterfield I'm sure there'll be multiple people talking yeah okay Madame President members of the governing board super superintendent Davidson colleagues and Community thank you for joining us tonight to continue discussing and
028hopefully approving budget initiatives for the 2025 2026 school year tonight's presentation aligns with the district's strategic keystones of Readiness relationship and resources we've made very few changes from our conversation on February 25th however tonight we will go through those changes as shown on the slide we'll spend most of our time tonight covering the benefits package for next year however prior to moving on to that topic I'd like to provide a brief update on a recommendation shared during our discussion related to our student Transporters and monitors previously we recommended moving student Transporters to 35 hours per week and monitors to 30 after a deeper analysis of the department we're recommending uh 33 hours for student Transporters and 28 hours for monitors so a slight uh decrease from the uh previous recommendation but still an increase from
029what they uh currently are posted at you'll REM you'll recall that when we've talked about it before I've shared that this is really a no cost change because when you look at what hours they're actually averaging um it it better aligns with those numbers so our hope is that it helps us in the recruiting process because we can be more transparent about um the hours and the the income earning potential that those jobs have this slide shows the updated recommendation for Food Service prices for next year this was based on governing board feedback to Institute a percentage increase as opposed to a flat dollar amount increase at this time the team and I are available to answer any questions you might have on the food service or Transportation changes we we are proposing Mr Owens
030did you have any questions or comments I think the um the percentage on the food was in relation to board member Wallace's point so I don't know if she was gonna ask that but what was the change then for based on a percentage versus just what you guys cited yeah so slide so we ended up uh targeting I'll go back to the slide for a second so we ended up targeting the same uh increase uh to the price of the of the lunch because that's really what we were what we were focused on and that ended up being a 7.9% increase uh it did end up being a much smaller increase dollar amount wise for the uh for the ancillary items if you will because because the percentage um just ended up being much less
031than the 25 cents per item that we were were discussing so uh it it leaves our lunch price exactly where we were previously proposing which which I think is good because it it really aligns with what we're trying to accomplish and then it makes those ancillary items uh cheaper than we were previously proposing good thank you Miss Wallace did you have questions or comments I questions but I like how this looks much better I do too so thank you Miss Maran no questions so far Mr mikees none for me none for me either or we can move on all right next we will share a slight update on the projected cost of the compensation study as we began preparing for contract issuance we noted full four additional employees that were in a position impacted by
032the compensation study we've updated our estimated costs to include these employees the total of the uh the total cost of the inclusion of these four employees is $5,700 due to this change we have included updated slides showing the multi-year forecast and I'll present them uh if there is a question uh this slide remains unchanged from our last discussion it shows an EST estimate of the resources we will generate from state and local sources based on our projected student counts and the characteristics of those students for the 2025 2026 school year this slide also remains unchanged and shows the size of the total M budget for the 2025 2026 year including one-time resources such as budget carryover this slide is is updated to reflect the additional cost from the compensation study we've previously discussed this is
033the multi-year projection from the last board meeting we've included it simply to allow you to see that the only change made was to update the cost of the compensation study uh we've done this same activity for the reserve fund slide to Aid in answering any questions you might have the small adjustment to the cost of the compensation study does not significantly change the financial context of the budget proposal the administration remains comfortable with this recommendation based on the reserves the district has in place and where we anticipate the uh ending the fiscal year we're currently in at this time the team and I are available to answer any questions you you might have on our proposed changes and their financial implications before moving on to our benefits discussion Mr Owens none for me thanks Miss
034Wallace no questions thank you Miss Moran no questions Mr Mike none no questions for me either we can move on all right now we get into the exciting stuff uh we're very happy to share with you the work the team has done on employee benefits this year we know benefits are a significant part of an employees compensation package similar to the work that we conduct each year on wages with our compensation study practice it is important to periodically ensure our benefits packages are as strong as possible we did this this year by releasing a request for proposal to insurance companies for our Medical Dental life and vision insurance offerings to lead this work a committee was selected that included two certified staff members two classified staff members two District administrators and representatives from the human
035resources and finance teams some of the committee has been able to join us tonight and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of the committee members that put so much time and effort into this process so thank you the committee met three or four times and conducted three rounds of scoring the most recent of which was Monday evening I'm happy to have the opportunity to share the committee's recommendation with you tonight when we released the request for proposal we had the opportunity to share with insurance companies what we were looking for in doing this work we requested that the providers build plans that are similar or richer than the ones we currently offer due to asate being our present provider they were able to provide their renewal to us outside of the RFP
036process however their renewal was rated and considered by the committee in the same way as all the other responses to the RFP process it is important to understand that as an insurance pool asate provides the same insurance plans to all of its districts the only item that differs between asate districts is the price charged this differs District to District based on the claims each individual district is experiencing however there are benefits to being in the pooled arrangement asbit looks at the performance of the entire pool meaning all of their districts and provides rate changes within a range if you are a district that has had a lot of claims you will be at the top of that range and if you are a district with fewer claims you will be at the low end of
037the range however those with high claims benefit from being in the pool with districts with low claims and receive a lower rate increase than they would outside of a pool pool this slide shows the committee's recommendation for insurance coverage for the 2025 2026 fiscal year asate Remains the recommendation for medical and life coverage as a reminder this will mean the district will have to remain an asba member district however dental and vision include a vendor change in the last two columns you can see the district's contribution strategy to the cost of benefits the first item I'd like to bring to your attention is that the committee has selected offerings for dental vision and life insurance that the that reduced the cost to our employees you can see that by comparing the last two columns the
038second thing I'd like to bring your attention to is the total District contribution Remains the Same both for the current year and the 2025 2026 fiscal year this means all of the savings are being passed on to our employees I would also like to share that not only is the dental Envision coverage less expensive for our employees the coverage is richer than our current offerings we have passed on this savings to employees by increasing how much the district contributes to the cost of the medical coverage and by maintaining the total contribution towards the cost of all benefits we've structured the cost of the plans for our employees in such a way that the high deductible healthcare plan remains free with a $475 44 HSA contribution from the district however there are plan changes that asate
039has instituted at all of their covered districts for next year that make the medical package slightly less robust with increased co-pays deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums they have also shared that the 2025 2026 fiscal year will be the last year they offer the copay gold commonly known or referred to in Lichfield as the grandfathered plan I'd like to make it clear that the district and the committee had no ability to influence this decision the plan will be in place with modifications for the 2025 2026 plan year but will no longer be offered after that partially supported by these plan changes instituted by asate their renewal offer uh came in at 2 and A2 % and made remaining with asbit for medical coverage the most costeffective option for our employees and the committee felt strongly that forcing
040a change in network and paying more to retain richer plans was not in the best interest of our employees at this time we're happy to answer any questions you have on the benefits packages the next several slides go into significantly more detail on the benefits packages we're happy to present them or simp L have them included for review and approval Mr Owens did you have any questions or comments on this section yes I also would like to thank everybody who was involved in going through this I know this was an intense process something that we hadn't done in a long time and so I think that this process was fruitful and while we are still with asbit and we didn't change it it reassures us that we know we have the best coverage and so
041I'm happy that no pencils needed sharpened and we didn't have to go back and I'm grateful to asate for providing this number to us and um that we're able to keep the number the same so and I'm good I don't think we need to go into the rest of the slides but if the rest of the board wants to we can miss Wallace did you have any questions comments and did you want them to go through the rest of the slides you could add that in there too yes it's a good thing to add in there um I do not have any questions I also thank the team for all of their hard work um I said last time I know we were hoping that we could find that diamond in the rough that would
042save everyone all the money but it doesn't exist and I appreciate very much that we were able to pass on any savings to the staff through the dental and vision coverage and any savings that we can offer as long as it's not an increase is a win so congratulations thank you for all of your hard work I have have reviewed all of the slides coming forward and they seem pretty straightforward we don't need to go through them uh line by line if everyone else doesn't miss Moran um yeah I agree we don't have to go through all the slides but I do have some questions um on some of that information my first comment is on uh slide 22 which is um where it states that the gold plan is going away which is no
043surprise because obviously the way that health insurance is modeled and popularize these days is not this way and so one of the questions that I asked that um I believe was shared with all board members is how many participants we have in each of the plans to see what that impact is going to be and based on the information provided there are 77 out of 1,117 employees who currently are under the grandfathered plan so while it will impact those 77 people it will not impact the majority that's 7% of our employees so um and same thing there we've got lots of time to let them know that this will no longer be offered obviously to CFO of Von's point we don't have a choice in the matter either way so um this is happening and
044um hopefully those folks can find some good providers under the classic gold or um hdhp plan um and since I said that I will also go ahead and give the rest of the information about the other plans that are on the upcoming slides but we offer three plans a for health insurance and then we have some employees who don't have uh we don't take our health insurance coverage and as the previous slide shows we contribute for medical or we will contribute next year for medical $747 per employee that elects the coverage but we have 230 employees 21% of our Workforce that is eligible but doesn't elect the insurance and so I would like us and as a board we have brought this up in the past but I would like us to consider a uh
045a different way of offering coverage because I feel like those 230 people are not getting the same total compensation that the people who elect health insurance are they're getting $747 Less in compensation and that doesn't seem right to me so um I'm not proposing any changes for next year but I would like us to start considering shifting that into people's paychecks who are not electing our insurance coverage and shifting more of the cost along with the money in the paycheck for those who do because I don't feel that it's Equitable for those 21% of our employees who choose not to have coverage um and I think that number would actually go up if we started doing that um that's just my feedback for the future no other questions on this partic well the only other
046thing I will say is 7% of our employees are in the co-pay gold the grandfathered plan 33% are in classic gold and 39% do the high deductible plan and I'm glad to see that many doing the high deductible plan because that's the plan where we also contribute to their HSA health savings account and they get to keep that money if they don't spend it on Healthcare so that is definitely a win-win I know we just instituted that during my time on the board and it was we had some Skeptics as to if people would really want to go to that plan and I'm glad to see that almost 40% of our employees have opted to do that so thank you um if if I if I may um I don't I I mean I know
047we're going to hopefully or ideally put up for future discussion but um um I have never and maybe I'm wrong but I've never heard of declining insurance from a company than getting paid that in cash I've worked I declin coverage because I go through my wife I don't get that from my company um I've worked for state government I've declined coverage for my wife didn't get that money I think that's a slippery slope to go down that opens a lot of things open um it's incentivizing people to decline HealthCare coverage as well so um that I think that might need to be included in that is I think we're trying to invent a wheel that doesn't need invented personally I think that that's a conversation for another time definitely not part of what we're doing
048right now but I I and I think that's a longer conversation we'd have to have and if we can even do anything like that I don't know so because we are obligated to provide an insurance option for our staff so um we can talk about that in the future for sure when we're getting move on to that subject Mr Mike did you have any questions or comments on this section um I don't have anything else other than what's what's been said but uh I do appreciate going through all the stuff I went through or for the committee that went through everything um I dove deep into what was what was on the presentation and uh I can't imagine sitting through and trying to do all this stuff and look at all the different plans I
049appreciate you guys taking care of that I appreciate the fact that you know these days uh for us to hear that something is is not increasing you know the the year after anything is a nice thing to be able to to say so um I appreciate all work hard work with everything I don't have any questions either again I Echo what everybody else has said Thank you to the people that were on the committee and helped to go through all this information it was a lot of stuff and then committing to make sure you got to it this week right when you guys got the information so that we could approve whatever we're going to approve tonight and we can get our contracts out on time so thank you to everybody that did that it
050was a lot of work and I am glad we went through this process as well because of the fact that we haven't done it before it helps us to feel better in what we are offering our staff and knowing that we are doing the best we can with the money that we are given um and I was sad to see a lot of the changes they're making I understand that has nothing to do with us but it's still kind of hard to see that that's happening everywhere though you know we're all dealing with that who aren't working for this district and have to look at Insurance stuff every year so it's kind of an unfortunate thing we have to deal with but thank you guys for the work um with that I'm done with this
051so so if you would just give me a moment because I'm going to have to advance through quite a number of slides take your time as long as it's not taking your time telling us what's everything because we I do not also need us to go through that oh I'm sorry I didn't mean to assume your answer you know me Michael I love 117 slide presentations my favorite and I love putting them together for you I think it is important an important question to ask with this process whether the request for for proposal um and review of our benefits package was really worth the effort and I would say that it definitely is uh we estimate that the RFP process saved our employees between 232,000 and 335,000 and we're happy to pass on that entire
052savings to our staff you may Wonder with the increased cost to our employees uh how we could still be saving them money before we went into this process we anticipated a 5% rate increase based on what had been shared with us and our claims experience when we look at the rate increases the pool as a whole saw it shares a similar story the lowest rate increase seen by an asate District outside of an RFP process was 3.75% with an average of 5% the RFP process also allowed us to enrich our offerings at a lower cost for dental and vision our next steps for employee benefits include implementing these plan changes for our employees next year we plan to run a similar process for voluntary benefits to ensure that we're providing providing the most robust options
053we can for our employees we'll also be working to implement additional support to help to try to reduce our claims this is beneficial for a number of reasons it would mean we have a healthier Workforce and the possibility of lower uh renewals for our employees going forward we are also proposing to continue the adoption of the employee Employee Appreciation uh benefit for the 2025 2026 fiscal year while we plan not to provide a budget allocation for this benefit by having the governing board consider approving it as part of the benefits package it does allow our leaders within the district to utilize other available resources for these purposes we also are working on some other changes for next year that we'd like to take a moment to share we are in the process of simplifying how
054our compensation appears on the employees contracts and paychecks for many years the compensation has been shown broken up into various accounting buckets that support the overall compensation for next year these amounts will largely be rolled into a base pay line associated with the employees position however there will still be a separate line for the compensation where the employee will be able to elect the timing of the pay this separation is required to allow that election to occur and to be processed by our payroll department this slide shows what it may look like for an employee when employees receive their contracts on March 17th they will have some additional decisions to make compared to Prior years we are going to be providing employees the opportunity to go pay list for their tax forms elect the timing
055of the compensation being shifted to the base as well as the standard of election of how many pay periods they would prefer to be paid over we hope that the opportunity to go paperless will bring some efficiencies to our processes as well as increased security over sensitive tax documents for our employees as promised we also worked on re on the rebranding of the new performance pay system we would like to call the plan itself the leadership development plan with the expanded TLP we've discussed in the case of teachers or the scorecard process in the case of Administrators The Continuous learner project these changes align well with our Lichfield learner we also met with representatives from the related service providers special education leadership and other District leaders to discuss what to do with performance pay per
056related service providers as we've talked about before their performance pay is entirely connected to their performance evaluation as we work to separate the evaluation instrument from compensation consensus was that it made most sense to shift their performance pay to base compensation in the same way we are doing for other groups this proposal is reflected on the placement charts that are on the consent agenda tonight the remaining slides remain unchanged from last time other than to reflect changes we've discussed tonight they have been included for discussion and potential approval at this time the team and I are available to answer any questions you may have Mr Owens no questions thank you Miss Wallace no questions thank you Miss Maran I only have one comment which is I cannot believe that you have been doing all not
057you personally but that we have only been offered bring paper W2s to people that is insanity so thank you for bringing relief to these people and their CPAs everywhere and my payroll team thank you Mr Mike no questions for me uh no questions for me either thank you so much so are we yes I guess we're ready to since we're not going to go go through the rest of the stuff right you don't there's nothing else you need to share with us not unless there's other questions does anybody have any other questions about any of the things otherwise someone is welcome to make a motion I move to approve the projected budget for fiscal year 2025 2026 I second having a motion from Mr Owens and a second from Miss Wallace I'll call for the
058vote Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay Miss Moran yay Mr Mike yay I'm also a yay motion pass woohoo have a f day thank you can I ask one follow-up question that's not related to the actual approval that we just did but it is related to this topic which is can I get a high level overview of what the communication plan is for these changes yeah so we plan to put out an all staff email tomorrow uh with the changes and then um over the next week or so uh we plan to uh record a video uh that we hope to push out at uh right around the same time of issuance of contracts just trying to make uh some of these things more digestible um as as you know we've done a lot of
059work this year in this budget uh changing a lot of things uh in a positive way but it is important that we try our very best to help people understand these changes as we move move forward agreed thank you okay with that we are going to move on to the next item which is uh the approval of guaranteed maximum price number two contract for Troy Gibler Elementary this is going to be by cfov Von Madame President members of the governing board superintendent Davidson colleagues and Community thank you for joining us tonight to discuss and consider approving the second GMP or guaranteed maximum price for work for Troy Gilbert Elementary School this is an exciting one almost as exciting as the last one our first GMP was designed simply to allow ordering of long lead time
060items uh this GMP includes temporary fencing and clearing the site and ordering of additional long lead uh time items in preparation for actual construction of the school we're very happy to ask for approval to begin early construction work on the buildout of our new school we anticipate bringing the third and likely final GMP for the project at our next board meeting the team and I are available to answer any questions you may have Mr Owens no questions thanks Miss Wallace no questions Miss Moran no questions Mr Mike no questions I don't have any questions either I think this is way more exciting than the last one to be honest but if someone would like to make a motion I'll motion to approve the guaranteed maximum price number two with Core Construction for the Troy Gilbert
061Elementary school project and authorize the Chief Financial Officer to execute the contract agreements I'll second having a motion from Mr Mike and a second from Mr Owens I'll call vote Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay Miss Moran yay Mr mikees yay I'm also yay motion passes this is my favorite vote of the night everybody okay next we are going to go back to the adoption of agenda and consideration of consent agenda I'll go through and see if anybody has any items that they wish to pull off of the consent agenda uh Mr Owens did you have any items I do not miss Wallace I do not miss Moran no I do not Mr mikees none for me I don't either somebody would like to make a motion I move to approve the consent agenda as
062presented I second having a motion from Miss Mir in a second for Mr Owens I'll call for the vote Mr Owens yay M Wallace yay M Moran yay Mr mikees yay I am also yay motion passes okay we are going to move on to our next item on the agenda which is discussion items this is going to be discussion of the volunteer training process and this will be by our director nanas executive director nanas sorry okay uh Madam president governing board members here tonight toh give you an update on our volunteer program um as we had previous discussions on uh some questions from the governing board on where were we at with that uh we've had some uh updates and conversations within our team so uh the objective of this is we want to ensure
063that all of our students are protected as as we always promote that safety of our students and staff is our top priority uh bringing people volunteers and or visitors into our school is something that we want to make sure that we are vetting properly and making sure that so we want to ensure that all volunteers all volunteers uh are required to complete the online training volunteer application before engaging with any students the volunteer groups that we currently deal with right now are parents and Guardians those parents and Guardians when they do fill out that process the the online training and the packet then they go directly with their school of choice and coordinate with them uh front office people and we have designated uh front office people that uh handle those coord uh those volunteers
064uh for those opportunities within their individual schools the second group that we do deal with is the non-custodial relatives and the community members what we do with them is they also go through the training packet the the application process which brings us brings them into a a spreadsheet and it's all done digitally previous in the Years be couple of years before it was all done by paper um uh thanks to uh communication generalist yard zirano she has digitized that all and now it all feeds in as they as they as they fill it in they fall into the into the spreadsheet they get into their individual tabs of their schools of choice and we have a way to to recall any of the volunteers through their phone numbers emails and their uh required um copies
065of their IDs uh we also too with those non-custodial um right now in our current process we go through and we do a highlevel background check which consists of running them through the national sex offenders database uh to see if there's any hits on that and then we also o do a uh Maricopa County courts check just to make sure that there is nothing um going on within the courts or within the recent past that have any kind of uh red flags concerning any children um or any kind of questionable behaviors that might be rise a red flag of that you know we're not sure if we want this individual being exposed to our children now the one things that um we did find is um that we are currently not working but we are
066moving towards is our non-paid volunteer coaches as we know we have our paid volunteer coaches that come on and technically become an employee and have certain expectations well they have been bringing on you know there's a parent a relative a friend that comes on and says hey I want to help you coach the basketball team volleyball team and then they just kind of step right onto the field or on the court and we don't know who those are up so that's where we're going to start to fill those gaps uh one of the other things now that we want to bring uh forward also is in what is the difference between a volunteer and a visitor our volunteers are those will you know will be vetted they come through they go through the process and
067they come and they're repeated they're exposed they come in to help a teacher with a class help office staff with any kind of procedures in that so those will be the the regular recurrences as obviously the visitors is where we categorize the mom the dad the Grandma comes in wants to have lunch with their children come in to read to a class things like that that are more kind of like the one-offs and coming in just for those individual U contacts and typically those ones are done with a specific student and not necessarily with a group of students unless it's like like I said coming in to read Volunteers in the Strategic plan how does this all tie into our strategic plan um with the relationships you know building the robot Network it's really essential
068uh to building the Lichfield learner it's there's uh gives Aid to the teachers gives Aid and just kind of an extra set of hands extra set of eyes um to help within you know sometimes our very stretched out resources that we have within our classrooms uh we just want to make sure um that we're also part of that in that relationship thing is building trust right we want to make sure that we're creating that safe environment for our students which creates a trust within our community showing that we are doing the taking these steps to create that trust but it also goes in the in the other angle we want to make sure that we're able to trust the people that we are bringing into our schools and exposing our children to as well the
069Readiness factor it's um you know we're using the preventative measures and the intentional practices to create that safe and positive school and work environments as for resources and it just increases with those additional um people to help out in a classroom or in the front offices we're increasing opportunities for the staff and the students to enhance and be enhanced as a Lichfield learner so in our current process as we dis uh you know previously touched on the parent and custodial volunteers they complete this online and this is just a quick representation of the of the digital form that they fill out um once it's approved you they go to the directly to School of Choice the non-custodial once again will go through the training application and we will run those background checks now now where
070we're changing kind of course now is we want to make sure that we're keeping track of the non paid coaches that come volunteers that come on so as we discussed before all all volunteers are going to be required to go through the same process through the uh training packet and through the uh application form as well we want to make sure um we're also in in discussions um with HR to revise the um the uh job descriptions for pay coaches and we want to make sure that they understand that they are responsible for any volunteer coaches that come on to ensure that they are filling out their their process that they're going through the process we're getting them into the system and then as you'll see for as we're coming up on the next few
071slides we'll see how we start to integrate the CICS um platform into that as well now as a volunteer right now um it is extremely simple right now um you'll look in the bottom bar there you'll see a volunteer box and and you'll see kind of like a a map of how it goes through you click on volunteers or you can click down on there it takes you directly to this it is bilingual so it makes it easy for our Hispanic Community as well it gives you step by step process of how to go through this who can volunteer what is the signin procedures the cell phone use it is a very comprehensive training packet that goes through I'm not going to run it all the way through for you but as you can see
072it it touches on really all the things that we need and want our volunteers to know and then it takes them from there very simple takes them to the volunteer application form where they fill it out and it goes into our system automatically okay so now the updates to our volunteer process once again all anybody that is going to have any interaction with any of our students will need to go through this process any volunteer uh so they will do the online volunteer training they will do the on online volunteer application now the new step to this is that all volunteers must complete a school checkin through sendic right and that's um where we we want to make sure that they're going through now what is that going to do that's also going to help
073the resources in our Communications Department because there's a certain time of year usually at the beginning of the year when we get an influx of uh non-custodial and it takes it takes some time to go through and type in names and date of births and run that uh national sex offender database and then go into the court systems so I mean where we could be doing other communication things that cix will will run that uh database check background check for us the non non-paid volunteer coaches uh they're initial they will also be required as just with everybody in that process to do the cic scan and that so they won't have to do it every time they come to do a coaching session or stuff we just want to make sure that we're getting them
074on the books we've run them through the system and then they're they will be good for that season uh let me backtrack uh once again real quick too is in the fact that um our current process and that what we will continue is that we require all volunteers to resubmit every year so basically it's from through the school year the end of May is your volunteer once you get approved uh then if you plan on uh volunteering the next year you have to go through the whole process again we don't know what has transpired with this individual you know from the time they've left one school year to the time that they've come onto a new schools year so we want to make sure that we're we're being very very um uh precise with all
075the information that we're seeking out of them the mandatory ID upload ensures that the that we have complete applications uh now what we're looking on here now is with that cix um where we have that digital automated uh application form that comes in into a spreadsheet the plan is and uh uh director ma uh Foster diduro I always just want to call him MOS director Moss um uh we're working right now on um integrating the systems so basically um if they come in to do a their volunteer and eventually we're going to get to the point that once we get those systems integrated a person comes in to um to do a volunteer and CICS will read it and say uh well you you have you don't have a red flag on on a sex
076offender thing or anything else but you haven't completed the training so you're still not approved right so that that'll help us that'll that'll just be an extra stop gap for that process so as you'll see a little video here I mean it's very simple process here they come in quick scan you're in uh the ID's checkins at the school offices real-time volunteer activity tracking and support support data collections for improved reporting or we can put out uh print out reports and search specific individuals if any kind of red flags or questionable uh questionable Behavior happens with any individual the next steps through uh the cic check-in requirement and volunteer compliance once again just to reemphasize all volunteers anybody that will have any contact with our students must go through this process uh regardless of the
077role and they need to check in at uh the front office through the Sanic system the principles will ensure that all that vendors are also included in this process right so like I mean we we really like I said when we use the word all we mean all we want to make sure that we're we're being comprehensive across the board here the volunteer training and documentation once again they will all have to go through this that's just going to be basically the double check of the CICS and once we marry those systems together it is really I am very confident that it's going to be a very very solid checking on each other we'll be able to check have they done the volunteer training and are they clearing the national databases now we have instances
078where we do have the after school programs and activities where the volunteers um do not have won't be coming in during school office opening the requirement and the expectation is going to be that if you are volunteer that participates in an after school hours or something when the office is closed you're going to have to at some point come in during the school hours and get that strategics run so you know we're going to be uh very strict and making sure that all these boxes get checked before we allow them to engage with our students um you'll see there um this also applies but is not limited to just the volunteers in the steam robotics Sports and other after school activities um open to take any questions you may have we also have um um
079Communications General y zirano who actually uh does all all of our volunteer input and background checks and director Foster de here for to answer any questions you may have as well Mr [Music] Owens I'm 100% positive the answer is yes but this includes like all our Community Partners right the absolutely yes like I said when we say all not just volunteers or guests but exactly if you if you if you are going to be exposed to any of our students this is the process just wanted to clarify that um no I think this is great I think you you started off with saying safety is our priority of these children right um we don't want to make it overly burdensome for parents and custodians or whoever to volunteer on campus we want that involvement but
080these steps are very easy to to the process is very easy for them to get access to our schools and uh we know that they're um good people and they're the people that we want on campus so I applaud your efforts and thank you Miss Wallace Miss Z can I interject real quick yes thank you and I just want to comment as Mr Owens was speaking of that you know we our conversation was around um the the Optics and when um vendors come into our schools and have access to our students they certainly go through the the process of you know gaining access but we also know if something negative were to occur that we no even if it wasn't our own fault would certainly be uh there' be a certain level of liability there
081that we are trying to diminish so that's why we really have that conversation around no matter who you are if you have access to our children we're going to do our best to ensure that you at least have a certain level of clearance before you have access to working with our students yeah and I know firsthand I was a assistant baseball coach for a middle school baseball and I just showed up on campus and coached and nobody even knew I was there so I think this is good Miss wall I don't know if you mentioned and I missed it but what is the time frame between a parent filling this out and being cleared to go into the classroom and then what is the process if they are not if something does show up that
082maybe even they're not aware of of working through notifying them about their inability to volunteer right would have uh uh Miss amarano come up and answer that question since she's the one that actually U processes those requests yeah good evening so on our website we state that the current process from the time that application is submitted the turnaround um we ask for a minimum of two weeks but usually we're able to turn that around much quicker um our volunteers are really good at reaching out too and um asking any questions and then our coordinator at our school sites Who oversee that volunteer process to do check-ins um but like I mentioned usually the turnaround is much quicker um and then I think there was an additional question can you repeat that please so if the
083volunteer process is a little bit lengthy or say they they did they found out about it the night before we can still run them through as visitors the visitor is still going to do the National Database sexual offenders check uh it's not going to do the background check but do the sexual offenders database and we can still have them on our campus as a visitor it'll still run that preliminary Baseline check so if something does come up like they are on a list where they shouldn't be on our campus then I think that's oh yeah that's that's fine uh part part of that that spreadsheet that that we compile the last column is approved and says yes or no so the the coordinators on the specific sites uh as they come on they check that
084and they say well you filled it out but you're not approved there's a flag and it's actually we color coded if it's not approved there it shows up as a red box so you can fly by those really quick and do that and it's just like with any spreadsheet you can control f it and go directly to this person and find them rather uh pretty quickly so um but what the new process is um with the with the digital application and all of that and us not having to do that manual typing in that's going to like as Miss amono stated uh we ask for two weeks uh because sometimes there's a lot of them but typically it's done much quicker but also once now with this automated process that'll compress that time as well
085so we should be able to do them you know quickly Pro hopefully within a week if not even less thank you Miss yeah can you just summarize for me you got to break it down so when you're just a visitor and they scan your driver's license what does that do and then when you're a volunteer and you fill out the packet what does that do yeah tell me the difference between those things that's very easy so when you do come on site as a visitor uh pretty much just takes your name likeness and information on your driver's license runs your date of birth name and likeness against the sexual offenders database and it does five years previous and ahead or in advance and behind the date of birth so it's a 10year search of that
086person uh for volunteer it's pretty much the same except we also once it goes through the system we add them on a pre-approved list so if you're not on a pre-approved list like a packet didn't go through the district your name did not make the list you cannot get a visitor uh a volunteer badge you can get a visitor one but a volunteer which we would give a little more unrestricted access to the campus their badge would not say volunteer so that's just the big disparity right there there's an approved list which goes through the district that we create for the volunteers visitor vendors anybody on site that comes to wants to visit they'll get that rudimentary background check and also to add to miss Wallace's question or a question of like if somebody pops
087up on the offender database like say a visitor comes on their name matches it automatically gets notified to the site administrator and the front office that their name date of birth or something in their characterization of their driver's license matches an offender and so we'll have their picture we'll have their name because you know we we use the generic it's for all the examples I use Lisa Jacobs or Lisa Jones there was a gentleman that used AKA his Lisa Jones as his Alias so when you put in Lisa Jones it's going to come up as a sexual offender but it's a it's a gentleman and is also known as Lisa Jones but you'll look yep that's Lisa Jones that's not her then you can approve it then the badge will print out um if they
088do match likeness name date of birth then that's a conversation where the administrator will come out and have that conversation we like hey I'm not sure if you orware but uh you are on our sex offenders database uh it's listed here um if you feel this is done an error please contact local law enforcement to get that cleared up and generally if they do they are aware they're on this list they'll be like all right and then they'll leave and that's kind of a no harm no foul because they didn't get any gain access to our students but if it was one where they were trying to maliciously like if they didn't have kids on our campus and they were trying to get access we could also call law enforcement have them come out say
089this gentleman tried to gain access to our site thank you um my only other follow-up question is and I could be wrong on this so president Zid you might know more and or Mr Mike um I believe the high school district requires a print clearance card to do volunteering um at their campuses and so what is the difference there between a fingerprint fingerprint clearance card versus this rudimentary CICS background check that you're referring to fingerprint cards are like more thorough uh thorough background checks where the cix is sexual offender database it's specifically to that National list okay thank you Mr Mike um one one question I have is in regards to the the non-paid volunteer coaches which I appreciate you us having a system and a process for that the the end piece of as
090far as who's in charge of making sure that person has the official pass you know hey are they allowed out on the field is it is there a backside to it where Okay um here's to the administrator here's all the the the coaches volunteer coaches that are approved for the season is that what that would look like um or to the coach or is that just going to be site specific as far as that's handled okay so keep in mind um we're you know we're basically starting from scratch here with with that with that part of it right so um we're so initially there's still there's going to be some fluidity to this right now but for initially like I said we discussed earlier um we're going to uh work on the uh job description
091for for paid the paid coaches and put the responsibility on them for the volunteers that they bring on to their team we're also going to be incorporating um the ads at the school sites to Aid with that right so that we have multi-tiered oversight on on helping you know so we have our district ad and then we'll have our our site specific ads that will Aid in that process as well okay great and then just to reiterate what uh board member Owen said to I appreciate the streamlined piece of it to for people that want to volunteer or be part of our schools um sometimes or districts if we don't have this clean clear process for people it'll just keep good people out of our schools from being you know wanting to be a part
092of the process and so having this place getting rid of as many gray areas as possible streamlining it from the paperwork side as well I mean it it's a it's a great use of sunic of what I'm seeing too so I appreciate you guys handling all these aspects president zma might might I add real quick yes um to the conversation on the fingerprint clearance card right now uh if parents custodian custodial parents want to volunteer and shoer on an overnight field trip we do require the fingerprint clearance card um there's also another level of fingerprint clearance card which many of us in this room have which is the IV P card um which is connected to the Department of Public Safety and would um throw up a red flag of for a variety of crimes
093that any one of us may commit so that's that's the probably the ultimate fingerprint clearance card that could exist there's a cost to both of those type that I mentioned right now of course we have access to the sexual offender database is where we're starting you know also just to probably include in that is the fact that since we are a district of continuous improvements like I said we're this is our this is our starting block you know we we will I'm sure we will have you know much larger conversations on how do we once we get this started you know it's like you know we plan we do we check and we act and then we repeat that process again and see with the what we initially start out with find those gaps fill
094those gaps run it again and then just continuous until we fill all the gaps that we potentially could have I uh am curious if our expectation is and I'm pretty sure I understand this answer but um anybody that comes on our campus will scan their license ID to be able to get on campus because they're GNA have access to our students but um is it the expectation that any parents or people that are going to come on campus with our students should have to go through the full volunteer process or do we feel like that they should not have to do like the full volunteer application thing just to be on campus to say have lunch with their students yeah no that that's that's uh maybe was not clear enough at least at the beginning
095on the difference between a visitor and a volunteer so the volunteers anytime if you are coming in in a volunteer status that process must be followed if you're just like you say if you're just coming in if you're coming in to have lunch with your student quarterly or what is once a month or whatever it may be you're coming in as a visitor you run that cursory check strictly off of your license but if you're coming in to be repeatedly weekly twice a week or whatever it may be to help in a classroom or whatever it is then that's the volunteer status which you do have to do the process so do we expect that all our schools are going to follow the same rules about this because right now we have different campuses that
096have different procedures in place for how they handle visitors and volunteers and some make it more cumbersome than others and so I just want to know if we're trying to make it be the streamlined same process on every campus or if we're going to allow schools to decide on their own um we haven't dipped that but my my where where I stand on that is that we should have a consistency we try to achieve consistency with all the other things we do in this District I believe that we and then if there is any kind of specific issues we will take those on on a Case by case you know like I said as we go through that continuous Improvement process uh but I the expectation would be that we're doing things the same across
097the board okay I have one other question about that too so I know a lot of campuses kind of what Melissa was saying um hold like their student assemblies and their rallies like in the gym and so they're setting up a table outside of there not near their centc system to Usher all the parents in are are we going to continue to allow the parents to you know fill out forms at gym doors because that's a pretty common practice so we're working on how does how is that advantageous for our district so like uh we can set up remote stations just your laptop take a scanner plug in it and we can start scanning them in and then just give them the visitor badge you know instead of having to print out the expensive thermal
098tape ones to put on because they're only going to be in there for an hour and then they're just going to leave right away but we want to be able to account for those adults that are coming on to the campus in those large assemblies and we also want to make it timely so the idea right now is to be able to set up a remote station on a laptop just scan driver's license as they come in this will sign them into the system we will give them once they pass we'll just give them the visitor badge so we know they're authorized to be here for the assembly and then when we leave we can bulk uh check them out uh as a group so we're building out that tab assembly tab so that way
099it's easier for all the sites because we all we know we get sometimes 100 200 parents in one assembly and it's going to be very cumbersome if they're sitting there even for one minute to go through and scan wait get authorization so we're working on building that out so that we have that ready to go for next year and then to the question about the standard across the district I think this summer we're going to be writing a lot of standard operating procedures Sops and this is going to be one of them that we want to be able to start the year off with clear concise instructions uh good to you know good Sops that they look all the office managers could say this is what is expected from the district this is how we'll
100do it so we're gonna be busy president zma I just can't help but add as well that what you're hearing tonight is the the floor right the foundation the basics um to your point around consistency we know there are some principles that engage with their volunteers differently um they request that they come and have you know occasional meeting with them an an extra type of training and I I certainly would support that I think that's a the connection the families and the principal but that certainly uh probably does differ a little bit depending upon who the leader is but what we're speaking about tonight is the the foundational practices right and I understand that it's just I want to make sure that we're being consistent with everybody and that we're not putting cumbersome things on
101families who want to just come and have a lunch with their kid versus I want to come and volunteer in a classroom because that could just put some deterrence if there's stuff where teachers want to invite families to come in one day for some presentation but they can only come if they've done volunteer training even though they're not really volunteering so I just want to make sure I like the idea of consistency I'm very happy with having the standard operating procedures for everybody I love that idea um but I also do like the idea of the communication with people I'm not saying we should discontinue that I'm just it should be streamlined and easy for people to be at our campus if they are able to be there so does anybody else have any other
102questions for our volunteer presentation people no thank you very much for putting together and thank you for keeping it into 12 slides we just were discussing recently that we were gonna have a 12 slide Max as a joke but then you did it so it was great see it is possible to do Michael was challenging me but uh yeah thank you does that mean I can break up my presentations into about 35 presentations or it's getting us closer I suppose small smaller font God thank you for the advice okay we are ready to move on to reports uh we are going to start with our report from Dr Davidson all right thank you president Zina members of the board um first and foremost I just appreciate all of you giving time to our governing board
103showcases and certainly to team members out here in the audience going to our Apple Pi tours it's it's always fun to to get into our schools and see the the staff working and and see the children and and just take a look at everything that they're learning U most recently uh just wanted to give a couple of shout outs as we move forward to our Lichfield learner committee um some of those members are still here in the audience but uh you heard uh you heard about that work last year and about the work that we're doing this year around creating what is called the I can statements across our different grade bands we look forward to sharing uh that work with you soon but saw some of that work this evening it looks great and
104it's going to make a lot of sense so I'm excited about that uh also a shout out and I gave this shout out a while ago to many of our school leaders our principles who have self-contained programs for students with disabilities on their on their um sites I had a chance this week to read as did Mr Owens to um some of our self-contained programs for students with autism and uh what an experience um amazing opportunity and uh a very eye-opening experience as well on behalf of students that we serve and and so I just wanted to throw a a um a public challenge to anybody listening tonight that if you really want to come and see what we do here and you really want to see all of the students that we serve please
105call my office I gladly take you for a tour to visit any of our classrooms because the work our staff does incredible um with that said we have spring break coming and I want to uh just encourage everybody to to get uh rested and get ready for the final nine weeks of our school year and um Eric and Michael spoke to it a little bit tonight the um work on Troy Gilbert Elementary be on the lookout save the date sometime in April um some clearing going to happen and we look forward to sticking some shovels in the ground on behalf of um our opening ceremony for groundbreaking so thank you govern any board thank you next we will do reports from the board and we'll start with Mr Owens tonight thank you since our last
106board meeting we I attended the Rancho Santa Fe showcase unfortunately missed the student welcome that's always a highlight but uh I did get there and amazed and impressed by um what principal Zuniga is doing on campus there her team we got to hear from faculty staff teachers students get a full tour and it was very impressive then we had the special board meeting last week and then on Monday of this week we had a showcase at Palm Valley um principal Hill and her team did an excellent job of showing the transition they're currently making as having recently just added sixth grade this year and what they're going to do next year to when they had seventh um I was lucky enough to get a tour by my boy Ro Rowan who was here earlier getting
107celebrated he did a great job so that was cool to see that during the day we were talking about the things he was so excited because he was about to leave for the math ch Challenge and he was explaining where it was and it was like it's really long I think it's like a 30 minute bus ride and I was like I'm pretty sure it's you know over at the um Services building so uh he he thought it was really far away but it was it was pretty close um but congratulations to that team and then right after that I headed over to Mabel pageant where I read um for the young author's week thanks to the second grade teacher Melissa O'Neal appreciate that um had two really good tour guides Cole and Marcus couple
108of fifth grade baseball players um I got to visit three classes and read to them answered some Schoolboard questions some random questions from some fifth graders no I don't know the president um just I I can't even remember all the random questions but um Dr Davidson did touch on this and I read to two of the self-contained classrooms and your heart goes out to the students and and this you just are so appreciative of the teachers and the staff that are in those classrooms every day and I thank I'm so thankful that we have them um because the students need them we need them as a district and so I reiterate Dr Davidson's challenge if you want to see what happens on our campus from a day-to-day basis um in any of our classrooms do
109it and then uh finally this is my first spring break since 2009 because my kindergarten got spring break next week so we'll see I don't think it's going to be quite the same as my last spring break but um hopefully all the students have a have a nice fun spring break and be safe and be back in school on Monday Miss Wallace um thank you I was able since our last meeting to go to Scott Libby Elementary and Palm Valley Elementary which are both very near and dear to my heart uh my kids attended Scott liby Elementary for the last six years and are at Palm Valley for the first time this year so um I was able to see um the in the inside workings of the two schools that I feel the closest
110to and know the most about personally so um both were as expected fantastic schools doing fantastic things um and had a really nice time at both of those hearing from the different students I really enjoyed hearing from the El students at uh Scott Libby Elementary that was a really nice uh presentation from them on the importance of our of our El programs and everything that they're learning there um and then at Scott or and then at Palm Valley it was really nice having a tour from the students that wasn't something I've I've seen before and I really enjoyed having that one-on-one time with a student to show me around the school and it was a really nice experience as well um that is all I have to share this time so missar yes for my
111board report tonight I have two items the first um that I was able to attend was the Scott Libby School showcase which I will Echo was an excellent uh time one of the things one of the highlights for me was learning more about uh the efforts that they are putting into their implementation of leader and me this is their first year as a leader in me school and so it was very encouraging to see and hear the positive impact that um that is having on their campus culture the staff and the students both in and out of the classroom the second item that I would like to talk about tonight is the Arizona auditor general spending reports that recently came out for the fiscal year 2024 so since I'm a numbers person I couldn't wait
112to dig into these but I did resist the temptation of putting my own deck together to present to you all but what I am going to do is just highlight two things in particular so what the auditor general does is they look at how each of our districts as well as the state are spending our funds and two of the primary buckets that I think are the most indicative of success for a school district are the percentage of money that's going to the classroom and the percentage of money that's going to administrative costs and the administration of the classroom so you want to have more money going in the classroom because that's really why we're all here although you need to have some money going to administration because they need to be organizing um and
113leading the district as well so I'm going to start by talking about classroom spending so um in the state of Arizona the average classroom spend is 68.6% so keep that in mind and then I'm going to talk about some of our neighboring districts so in the Avendale Elementary School District classroom spending is 67.5% so a little bit less than the state average Buckeye Elementary School District 67.8 pretty much on par with Avendale Liberty actually spends a little bit more they're at 70.8% and just for comparison because this is a close District to us I also threw in the High School District a Frey high school now they really do have a different model so it's not exactly Apples to Apples but they spend 65.1% in the classro Lichfield Elementary School District number 79 I am
114proud to report spends 72.8% of our funds in the classroom which is 4% higher than the Arizona average and 2% more than 2% higher than our peers on our neighboring districts so I'm really proud of that the flip side of that coin is your non-classroom spending and one thing that's in that non-classroom spending is the administration costs so I'll go through that same comparison in the state of Arizona the average Administration spend is 10.3% Avendale 12.5 Buckeye 12. 1 Liberty 11% Al Frey High School District 11.4% Lichfield Elementary School Districts Administration spend is 88.9% 2% lower than the average and over 1% lower than the state average so what this tells me is that this is a clear illustration as published by the auditor general of the great state of Arizona of the s fiscal
115policy and decisions made by this board as well as the administration of this District I'm hopeful that we can continue to respectfully and professionally collaborate to make decisions in the best interest of Student Success while being fiscally responsible so on that note I will close with lyrics from gusterson right can we miss the storm that sucked the whole world in so far away from everyone and everything starts today keep it together thank you Mr Mike um so my first first thing I am a representative of the Lichfield uh board for the the the Elementary uh Foundation that we have that helps raise money and give back to the teachers and students of the district and I just wanted to kind of give a shout out because they just got done a approving over $1,000 in
116teacher many teacher grants that teachers could apply for um and that's just for the spring um and it was a total of 15 grants and they were at uh nine different sites so um that's some great um money getting straight into the teachers hands and so we appreciate them that for them uh as far as um some other stuff that I did guest I was a guest reader at um Lichfield Elementary Dreaming Summit Mabel padet I had a great time reading uh to the kids you know fifth grade kindergarten first grade had a third grade class in there I'll tell you if you're ever having a bad day go ahead and uh schedule a reading with a Kindergarten class and it will it will uh change things around for you really quick and so I
117appreciate being invited into that and um it's a smooth operation no matter what school I go to to visit for it um everybody's so wonderful when I when I go um for the for the site visits had a chance to see Scott Libby on valent you know for Valentine's and yes Mr Owens was there too Palm uh Palm Valley and Rancho Santa Fe and um it's just it's just incredible it really is uh to see to see what happens at the schools you know there's good work but to actually see what's happening and see how they take the data and see how the kids are involved in their learning process and see the buyin from the teachers and the communication from the administrators um it's it's remarkable and going off of what Dr Davidson said
118as well I mean you know I welcome anybody to go visit these schools to see really what's happening um if you have any doubt I'm sure one visit will um will will impact you greatly on that um and then the last thing it was I had a great opportunity to uh visit um Dr Stone got a chance to go over and see the the facilities uh for Support Services you know um kind of all the behind the- scenes stuff Transportation maintenance Food Service purchasing Etc all the stuff there and it was um it it's it was just kind of it was extremely impressive the whole process of everything how it's laid out how everything's streamlined The Continuous uh conversations and thoughts as far as how to con constantly make things better uh I really appreciated
119that and so I appreciate everybody in that area too that kind of is in the background that helps make things you know operate within our school so that was a great experience as well and so that's it for me okay um I this was kind of a busy month actually uh I since our last regular meeting I volunteered all day long at Ranch Santa Fe for their spring pictures which I I have to tell you it's like the best day to volunteer to see what the kids want to wear for picture day it it's so funny because you have the super fancy fancy kid and the kid that just rolled out of bed and everywhere in between right so it's just super fun to see them and what they choose to wear and how they
120show their different personalities and you're not doing anything serious it's just fun time with the kids so I really like doing that and spending the day doing that with all the kids and that you really get to see everyone that day so it's really fun thing to do um I also was able to read at litfield elementary school and at Mabel and Dreaming Summit I really appreciate the schools that invite us to come do that it's super fun it it's a reminder to us that are on the board like this is why we're here these kids here these are the reason that we do this job and they matter more than anybody so we need to make sure that we are doing the best we can to make sure that they have what they need
121um I enjoyed getting specific specifically I'm going to give a shout out to miss Landon who actually spoke earlier today uh I got to read to her class mostly she was my daughter's second grade teacher when we moved to Corte Sierra and so it was fun to go and read she's at a new campus now and getting to read in her classroom she posted a picture of my daughter in second grade and I was like wow she's so little there but the kids were so excited to get to hear from somebody like I my daughter had had this teacher and so they were all excited to be like oh that's so neat and they were very excited to see a picture of my daughter so and her classroom was super purple so apparently she stayed
122with the purple thing um but it was just a fun thing to do uh School showcases I also attended Scott Libby Rancho and Palm Valley Scott Libby also near and dear to my heart my kids went there for many years so um I like going to see what's happening there and how that's evolved and changed over time I appreciate the conversations that we had with principal Fox there I think that that was one of the best conversations we had in a while actually with principal I think it was good for all of us to be able to sit down and kind of hear what's happening on that campus and be able to work together on some stuff I also appreciated our visit at Rancho always they know how to bring the celebration and the fun
123and get you excited to be there and that's not just a show for us board members I promise you they do that like every week on Friday when you come they've got all the kids out there every day with little signs getting them excited and spe specifically on Fridays they've got their whole big kids out there that are on their Spirit team getting everybody pumped to be there so that is just an all the time thing they are everybody that comes there loves to be there and is excited to be there and you can't help but be infected with that positivity and spirit when you walk on that campus so uh as well as when we went to Palm Valley I appreciated that as well um thank you to principal Hill for having not just
124the regular kids that we talk to it was nice to have our our kids from the uh self-contained class that was there as well as our kids that are in Jed and our TA kids and we got to hear from a lot of different students and it was just not your typical kids that we talked to and I like that because it's real and it's honest when you have a kid say I'm sorry I didn't actually do that it's like oh but see that's real that's a real kid here not just your kid that does everything all the time and they're going to always have the right answer um so I appreciated that thank you to those sixth graders that came and shared with us their experiences of what it's like to be having this
125school become a K8 that was not before uh they were very honest with us about their thoughts about it and I appreciate that uh I also had multiple meetings with Dr Davidson we're you know always working to plan the future meetings and what we're trying to keep up with and know and he's very good at staying in contact with all of us board members and making sure that we know what we need to know and I appreciate that as well um yeah that's pretty much it but it was a lot I felt like it was a lot of things I will not be at our next board meeting and so I have asked uh board member Moran to run the meeting because she has been a president before so she can make sure it goes
126smoothly um in my absence but I will make sure the agenda is not crazy full of stuff before you have to do that um she says it's going me a 30- minute meeting when Danielle ran it for me last time it was like 17 minutes or something so you you've got a like time to beat now apparently so with that yeah that's all I've got but thank you very much guys for everything that you've done and thank you for all the schools who let us come see them this month it was a lot uh as far as the reports from the administrators again I recommend people to read them they are great ways to know what's going on in our schools and and as everybody has said today please go see our schools go get
127a tour her go take Dr Davidson up on it and go see our schools you will not be disappointed you will have a new found respect for everything that our staff goes through every day and uh if you talk to our students you will be blown away by what they are doing so uh thank you to the administrators for the reports that you gave us uh with that if Mr Owens wants to make a motion motion to adjourn the meeting oh never mind I'll second though with a motion from Mr mik and second from Mr Owens I'll call for the vote Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay Miss Moran yay Mr Mike yay I'm also yay motion passes thank you guys for joining us this meeting is