001got them now where you don't need to jump on yeah a good like five or six inches that'll be hello everyone that working okay okay better good we'll just do like that good good yep e e e everyone ready to go holding on one second awesome if we are ready to go thank you everybody for joining us today is Tuesday February 25th 2025 and this is a special governing board meeting for the Lichfield Elementary School District I hereby call this meeting to order the first item on the agenda will be the Pledge of Allegiance if you could please stand and join us next we will take a moment of Silent reflection e okay thank you uh next we are going to move on to uh public comment I'm going to read this little disclaimer pursuant
002to Arizona revised statutes AR ARS 38-43 1.01 this agenda item provides an open call to the public allowing individuals to address the governing board on any issue within the jurisdiction of the board items not listed on the agenda may be brought to the governing board's attention under this section of the agenda due to the Arizona open meeting law the a the governing board cannot discuss or take any action on items not listed on the agenda therefore pursuant to ARS 38-43 1.01 response to public comment about matters not appearing on the agenda will be limited to individual board members who may ask the staff to study the matter respond to any criticism or ask that the matter be put on a future agenda for further consideration and decision at a later date please limit your comments
003to No More Than 3 minutes and no more than 30 minutes will be devoted to the public comment portion of the agenda when you approach the podium please state your name for the record we have two speakers tonight our first speaker will be Miss Shelley Smith push there we go my name is Shelley Smith and on behalf of a little drama theater arts and dance and color wheels I want to extend my gratitude for your recommendation to keep the facility fees for classroom rentals at $20 an hour your continued support allows us to provide quality theater and visual arts education to the students of this district and we could not do it without your generosity and commitment to the Arts I am proud to share that 64 students are currently enrolled in my production of
004The Wizard of Oz 58 whom are from lyvi elementary school district all of the students have been working very hard and they're eag eager to perform to show my appreciation I would love to invite each of you to our upcoming production of The Wizard of Oz on Saturday March 29th at Lichfield Park Art Center at the Thomas on Old Litchfield and Indian School Road the doors are going to open at 6:00 um this production is a labor of love from our students and I would be honored to have you there to witness their incredible work they have put in both Betsy and I thank you again for your dedication to our students and the Arts in in our community thank you thank you our next speaker is going to be Betsy erer good evening my
005name is Betsy etchart I am with color wheels um again I want to thank you as well for the recommendation of keeping the facility fees at $20 I'm not going to say anymore I think that Shelly said it really well thank you thank you next we're going to move on to the adoption of agenda and approval of consent agenda I'll go through and see see if anybody has anything that they would like us to pull from the consent agenda today I will start with M Moran yes I would like to pull item 5.6 the request for out ofate travel uh Mr Mike um no I'm fine Mr Owens nothing for me thanks Miss Wallace no nothing for me thank you okay if someone would like to make a motion I move to oops sorry I
006move to adopt the agenda as presented minus item 5.6 as presented I will second having a motion for Mr Owens in a second for Miss Moran I'll call for the vote Miss Moran yay Mr mikees yay Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay I'm a yay motion passes okay we will now move on to I guess this will be six .1 for out of state travel I'll let Miss Moran start with that since she's pulled it off yes I pulled this item for a couple of reasons the first is I would like to know more more information about the benefits of attending this professional development experience I'm just not familiar with the organization Madame President Miss Moran um certainly I could speak to this uh professional development opportunity but I think Mr nanas would probably be
007better to share um public relations the work they do and its connection to this nasper conference so thank you governing board Moran and fellow uh governing board members um the npra is the national school public relations Association which is the the next level of the national level of the professional development that our Communications team um goes to here at the at the state level which is the Arizona aspara um this is attended by all community ation people from Across the Nation so this is a tremendous opportunity to collaborate uh bounce ideas and really just grow in our in our processes and our strategic um Communications plans as we move forward and just to see what what other people are doing across the country uh this is the kind of the the uh the gold Chalice
008of all the professional development for communications Professionals in School PR okay thank you for that I do appreciate the opportunity to learn some tips and tricks at the national level we've obviously invested money into our enhanced communication through parent square and through expanding our PR department here in the district um I know there is another portion of this trip that is related to an award for Dr Davidson can you tell me a little bit more about that part uh yes ma'am um this the award that was uh awarded to Dr Davidson is called uh superintendant to watch for um as it was for Superintendent at at five years or less um Dr Davidson has done such an amazing job uh working with me as far as you know when we came on we wanted to
009make sure that we got him out in front of the community so that we could start building that trust level with our community they could get to know him um he has adapted to that process extremely well um whether it was you know being able to uh you know get him onto social media doing his videos and communicating not only just the the great stories that are happening here but keeping our community updated with you know the the important and pertinent issues that we deal with here in this District um I thought that this was a great opportunity so I moved forward and nominated him him and um I figured at the beginning that this he was pretty much a shoe in because he is really great at the communications um not only at helping
010uh strategize uh on them but also in participating in them and helping getting those messages across okay thank you for that additional information I don't want to get into the Weeds on this request because I know the reason that it's coming to us is strictly because we have to approve all out of state travel based on policy obviously there's money in the budget or it wouldn't have been brought to us my only word of caution and I do support this this um action so I'm not trying to say that I don't but my only word of caution is requests it we have gotten in the last year more out of state travel requests than we've ever had before again I'm not opposed to that they're going for great you know school safety ideas you know
011all sorts of things that that our teachers and our staff are getting to go to to enhance their level of knowledge that's impacting I believe positively Student Success I would just caution that um we be really selective in these um opportunities and again I'm not saying that you're not selective in this particular one I've Just Seen more of this lately and so um there there may come a point in time where we as a board or me personally may ask to to see you know how many days are staff members spending at PD versus um in our district we know that we allow a lot of time for our teachers but um and again I think there can be positives that come out of that so I'm just saying that as a caution for future
012requests because I think we've all seen the headlines where other districts have come under scrutiny for their dollar spending as well as time that they've spent potentially away from their you know everyday duties which you know there's a lot of conversation that can be had around that so um thank you for the additional explanation and um I don't have any other questions on this topic Mr Mike do you have any questions or comments about this item um no just you know to Echo some of the things uh Miss Moran said in regards to you know as far as when we look at costs and use of funds to go uh when we're going out of state however additionally I mean there's great opportunities to see you know it's kind of a A celebratory piece as
013well for the award and a chance to expand and and uh bring back some knowledge from what other what uh other districts are doing across the country um it's great with that so but you answered a bunch of the questions that I had through your explanation so I appreciate that if I could just also add real uh real quick um just with the current uh environment that's kind of uh that we're facing with a lot of our messaging um there's kind of a lot of unknowns uh of where we're headed as far as some of the things that are coming down from the federal level so there's there's a lot of uh communication and collaboration going around not only districts within the our state but uh nationally as well and this is uh going to
014be a great opportunity to see how other districts are addressing those issues Mr Owens yeah I think as we've tried to address with early release the professional de development and the um plc's with our teachers it's important that our administrators um and executive staff have those opportunities as well um I know out of travel seems fun and it can be but it's also time away from your family and so you're making a commitment to travel to experience these opportunities and learn these to bring back to our district so uh I think a healthy balance is is good and so if it's something that Dr Davidson feels is appropriate and a good use of funds then I support it Miss Wallace congratulations on being nominated for that award that's awesome and I have no other questions
015it looks I just read through um the schedule at a glance it looks like it's packed full of great things so can't wait to hear all the great things that you learn there I don't have any questions I know that our Communications team has not really done a lot of the professional development that some of our other executive directors have been able to do so I'm glad that we're going to be able to let you guys go do this conference and also celebrate our amazing superintendent which I was very happy to write a letter of recommendation for this award so it's very exciting that he's going to be able to be honored for all the work that he's doing here with your team and with everybody here in our district so I am fully in
016support of you guys doing this and I do agree with what you're saying about this unknowns of what's happening right now and trying to have a unified messaging for schools across our nation is really helpful so um I'm excited to see what you guys are able to learn at this and bring back to us with that if someone would like to make a motion I move to approve item 6.1 as presented second having a motion from Miss Moran and a second for Mr Owens I'll call for the vote Miss Moran yay Mr Mike yay Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay I'm also a gay motion passes okay we are going to move on now to our action items the first item is going to be 7.1 which is to temporarily dis suspend suspension of policy
017BBA agenda prepar preparation and dissemination this is going to be led by Dr Davidson but really it comes because of our conversation that we had last meeting meeting about how we might need more time to get the information that we need to do teacher contracts but I'll let Dr D thank you thank you president Zid members of the board um Miss Zid already did share the recommended action and to her Point um right now our policy bedba requires that we submit all of our materials to the board for review for8 hours prior to the meeting or sooner um we believe that we'll get our final um bits of information regarding our current asbit Insurance renewal roughly around March 3D um with the desire to bring that to the board on March 6th um but we
018do want to have Mr V and and Miss Outfield give them time to process that and put it all together for that sixth presentation and and potential vote around our benefits package so um that's the request tonight uh for our governor board to please uh suspend that for just the the one meeting only um and that will stand for any questions Miss Maran did you have any questions so you're saying Michael can't just wave a magic wand and like drop those numbers in there um no I don't have any questions thanks Miss Miss Moran I do believe he could but I think we need to be safe on this Mr Mike's I don't have any questions Mr Owens none from me Miss Wallace no questions I don't have any question questions either I I asked
019us to do this so we're good if somebody would like to make a motion I I move to temporarily suspend policy BBA um as presentent I will second having a motion from Mr Owens and a second from Miss Moran I'll call for the vote Miss Moran yay Mr Mike yay Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay I'm also a yay motion passes okay we are going to move on next to the approval of the master lease agreement between Lichfield Elementary School District and Apple Incorporated this will be by our CFO V Madame President members of the governing board superintendent Davidson colleagues and Community thank you for joining us tonight to discuss our opportunity to expediate our replenishment cycle of Staff laptops across our district this year we've made an effort to better Define our replenishment cycle
020for large Capital purchases such as staff laptops we're starting here for several reasons first we believe it's of strategic importance that our teachers have the resources they need to best manage their classrooms second we found that the older staff laptops on our Network are slowing down our internet connection for all devices uh we presently have many staff laptops that are older than 2017 uh this this lease with apple is a great opportunity to bring definition to our replenishment cycle for staff devices it is structured to allow full replacement of all staff devices prior to next school year but to pay for those devices over a fouryear period which will Define our replenishment cycle for staff devices the lease is at a 0% interest rate and the devices are priced in accordance with the Cooperative contract
021that the district would otherwise use to purchase devices outside of this leasing Arrangement as a result this financing is at no additional cost to the district however it does allow us to replace all staff devices at once versus gradually over several years the team and I are available to answer any questions you might have at this time Miss Maran I have two questions to start I might come up with more but the first question is how does this Arrangement compare to our previous replenishment plan so previously um and this is how a lot of the capital spending in in lynchfield works the the large departments because that's where um most of the capital spending ends up living uh puts together a capital plan each year um and bring that to a committee the capital committee
022that includes Representatives that are principes it includes a lot of the other directors to make sure everyone's on the same page because many times capital projects impact more than one area um as well as as Finance staff to make sure that we stay on track and so previously it was we were buying a certain number of devices each year to try to keep up on a replenishment cycle what we found when we uh really dug into that is that while we were um allocating funds to do that potentially we weren't always as strategic as we should have been around which devices got replaced uh which is why um I I can say to you that we have some of those devices that are older than 2017 ideally they would have been you know ideally you
023would have a a a last in first out uh model but uh that doesn't appear to be how uh it was it was implemented okay um my second question is can you tell me a little bit more about where this funding is coming from because I hear you saying we probably wouldn't have replaced all of them in a four-year time frame so how I just want to make sure that we're you know being SM about this so um our normal replenishment cycle how much money we were allocating would have actually had us replacing all devices over a fiveyear time frame so it is slightly expediated um We're offsetting The increased cost of a faster replenishment cycle by um implementing a slightly lesser but still quite good uh model of device and so the savings of
024going to not the top-of-the-line device but uh I would say upper mid tier if you will um is enough to offset the cost of of that slightly faster uh replenishment cycle okay so just to be clear on the funding because we're going to talk a lot about budget and everything tonight buying or leasing I should say leasing these devices ahead of schedule isn't going to cost us any more than it would have cost if we did it over time right and that money is capital money which is in a very different segment than any salaries and benefits and all that correct I think I answered a different question than you were actually asking but uh yes that's true uh the district receives about five and a half million dollar of unrestricted Capital outlay each year
025um and that's the the pot that that this is coming from really when you take a step back and think about it because the lease payments are equally over those that four-year period from an outflow perspective it will actually look very very similar to what it would look like if we were replacing a a fourth of the of the laptops each year is just by entering into the lease Arrangement we're able to actually rep place them all at the same time but then still have th those four equal payments uh so the outflow will actually look almost identical uh to what it would have not under the lease okay and then just a curiosity question does this change in methodology create more or less work for Our IT department I I'll try to answer it
026and then I'll let Reuben uh jump in if he think I'm misspeaking but I would say it probably changes the work a little bit because as opposed to rolling out uh a fourth of the fleet each year you're rolling out all of it and so you're going to have more implementation work that first year but then you're going to have three years where you're not really having that same work so it's it's uh timing it slightly differently okay and then from a teacher standpoint because this is an Apple product it should be a plug andplay type thing right no training needed or anything right yeah they're already used to having the Apple product and I think it will actually uh by doing this it will actually make it so it's easier to provide any training
027that is needed because every teacher in the district will have the exact same device as opposed to when you're replacing it over multiple years as you know technology uh changes quickly and so that same model that you replace placed to for year one may not still be available uh in year four so I actually think that this will make uh supporting the teachers probably dramatically easier um for the IT department okay I like that answer no further questions for me Mr Mike um not many I mean there was a lot of great questions about the payment for everything and that's attached to it that I had questions about originally but I I know uh I don't know if I'd want to be on the front end of transitioning 800 units is that what this is
028uh for all that when um when are we expected to have this take place after approval when everything approved so I believe we would expect to have delivery this summer for roll out to to staff in the fall okay and when you say the roll out for staff in the fall is so there's a there's a potential that on top of the transition of the laptops and I know this is just something that they'll have to you know figure out but we're going to be talking about schools up and running at the same time trying to get these these rolled out in in real time of of the school year already taking place which honestly is not all that dis similar to um the other method of of replacing um devices right except for there's
029800 of them yes right yeah yeah yeah okay all right thank you Mr Owens I did see some heads nodding in the in the audience of confirming that this is needed so I'm glad we're doing it I did have some questions also about the the Apple versus the PC but it sounds like everyone's using Apple now um any way we can get a get a uh don't have to pay taxes on this no way for us school districts are exempt from a lot of taxes but sales tax is not one of them sadly Miss Wallace I have no questions we do keep calling it a lease though and I did read that like at the end of the four years there are so it's really just basically extended payments not truly a lease because in
030a lease we return the it well it's a lease in the sense of technically speaking until we make that last payment Apple owns the devices not the district and that's why they have to carry the coverage that is also added to them yes ma'am understood I don't have any questions I'm I think it's great that everybody will have the same devices my husband works in it and I know that he would love it if his work would say yes we can just do everybody's at once and everybody has the same thing that makes it much easier on Our IT staff when they have to troubleshoot things because they're troubleshooting the same device for everybody so that sounds great and I'm very excited that we can make this work for you guys were we able to
031get a cheaper price because we're getting 800 versus you know 400 or 200 no um and the reason for that is when school districts spend over a certain amount of money on something we have a couple of different options we can either go through the RFP process that takes a couple of months or we can utilize a Cooperative contract and really what Cooperative contracts are is where someone else has already done that RFP process but put in language that says other school districts and governments can use this contract as if it was their own and so to allow for expediency this has been priced through a Cooperative contract that doesn't have that sort of um volume pricing if we wanted to do a procurement of our own that process tends to take about three months
032uh which would not put us in a good timeline for implementation into next school year okay sounds good good luck to all you guys with the 800 devices that you guys have to prepare I will say that I am not giving up my windows machines so we will uh we we will have at least a couple of other types of devices but I'm not giving on my Windows machine either so but you know good on everybody that wants the apples so so thank you guys if somebody wants to make a motion then I'll move to approve the master lease agreement between Lichfield and apple as uh presented I'll second having a motion from Mr Mike and a second for Mr Owens I'll call for the vote Miss Mor yay Mr Mike yay Mr Owens yay
033Miss Wallace yay I'm also a yay motion passes next on the agenda we are going to move on to supplemental resources and this is going to be by Miss Jennifer benman and probably some other people possibly okay possibly other people good evening Madam president members of the governing board this evening I came to talk about supplemental materials let's see if I have this correct I do um I will be presenting this however um questions may come up and it might be other departments that will help answer those questions so Katie wood our director of teaching and learning Ruben Montoya director of um technology and Laura Colmes director of educational technology may join me as well as Dr doozy the purpose of the request uh tonight to discuss this is to review policy and the requirements
034for current approval of supplemental materials we'll discuss the concerns that uh teacher pay teacher brought up I apologize for the lack of communication that came out we'll talk a little bit about that and um including from technology department and the teaching and learning Department we'll provide some possible solutions about moving forward and discuss some next steps this does align with the the keystones of Readiness resources and relationships so what is supplemental material it refers to instructional resources that are not a part of our officially adopted curriculum but are used to support or enhance um The Learning that's happening in the classroom supplemental material is required to be approved by the school board that is in policies igj and KB not only does this um make sure that we're in alignment across the district it also
035allows for Al rights so that they know exactly what's happening in the classroom um this is where the confusion and the complication came in with TPT it's not ever been an approved supplemental curriculum so when technology uh we were sitting down at a different meeting and they said hey we're having some problems with this there's the malware there's some other things happening with our texts do we need this and I said well it's not approved so that was uh the communication breakdown it did not roll out as well as it should have we should have provided additional time and talking with our teachers so I apologize that you got a lot of emails we also got a lot of emails but I think we've come up with a really good solution I wanted to take
036a minute and talk about what is currently approved so you do have the current approval of um materials that are available for our teachers I did hear that we um we've had people who have asked questions about do we have music uh curriculum do we have art we do we have University of art which is approved and all of our art teachers do have access to that we also have W music for our teachers and that also they have access um it was given at the beginning of the year if they've had turnover in that position which does happen from time to time we do ask that that be the principal's responsibility to reach out to the teaching and learning Department to um let us know so we can update that information um Discovery Education
037was another one that came up why are we not um providing that anymore it is a supplemental uh material that is approved but that was actually funded by Arizona Department of Education when they user funds they paid for the entire state to have Discovery Ed when the department of Ed no longer was paying for that we continued to allow it for supplemental we've just never paid for that so there are free versions of Discovery Ed and I know that that was a question another one was Mystery Science saying that that's no longer allowed it is still allowed it is approved on our supplemental materials list um and we used to pay for that but when we purchased new science curriculum this um we stopped paying for this to help offset the cost of our science
038curriculum so I just wanted to make sure that that was out there and if you had any questions about our current approved curriculum before I move on Miss Moran do you have any questions I do have a question so another area that we received feedback on is the special education and intervention can you talk more about what is available to them and how you think that may or may not meet their needs yes absolutely there are quite a few few different things that are approved if you look on the approval list we have special education and what is available to them they can actually use any of the Core Curriculum as well as the supplemental resources and then we also have under special education specifically news to you um there's read 180 systems 44 Math
039180 reading Horizons do the math now star program Edmark foundations and sound Handwriting Without Tears and made for me literacy um interesting enough Made For Me literacy was actually a TPT that you have approved because it had gone through the process um many years ago so one of the things that our solution will still be able to help support that if a teacher has something that really they feel is valuable um our solution would be that they still might be able to use that so we've got some possibilities the other one that we have heard is Middle School social studies and I will agree that that is an area that we need support in and funny that you talk about the capital committee because that will be going to the capital Committee in the near
040future um we do know that we need to support our Middle School social studies teachers in sixth 7th and eth that is not only a um very difficult topic to teach in our climate but it also is one that we have not had any supports for there are supplemental materials that our teachers can use new or newa depending on who you're talking to and how they pronounce it uh we also do have social studies maps that were made many years ago um and have been updated from time to time but they are starting to be outdated and we do need to do that so we are aware that um that is an area of need uh we've just rolled out curriculum every single year so this um is the time to start looking at that
041and we will be bringing it to the capital committee to ask for funding and then we'll also be creating a uh committee to work through that process Mr Mike did you have any questions at this point just really quick did I hear you right so the Teachers Pay Teachers we found some cross as far as what they offer on that that we already have as a resource available to our teachers many years ago um at the time our director of special education Melissa mome had uh found the Made For Me literacy which was found on TPT and it had been approved the correct way through the governing board it was brought to you um at the time the board members approved it and so that is something that we have Nothing More Mr Owens um
042we're g to go further right yes okay nothing right now okay Miss Wallace no questions right now thank you all right moving on then so what was the concern with TPT from the technology side um I talked with Ruben and he shared that there is the possibility of malware because you don't know who is uploading what that causes um a possible concern it's not highly likely but there are concerns still there um file uploads by sellers typically PDFs PowerPoints word doc sends it files TPT does not scan every file for viruses so a bad actor could potentially upload malicious uh files that could cost the district funding uh the other piece is there is a it's a low risk but it's not zero um the other thing that they're really struggling with is um the
043files that are being downloaded are technology doesn't necessarily like the font and so his techn or his texts are going out constantly to try and repair and fix TPT files because of the pretty fonts so it is causing um a lot more manpower because of that is that correct Ruben okay um as far as the curriculum side TPT is currently not an approved supplemental curriculum which is why it had never been brought to the governing board uh to let you know about the communication so I apologize it had just not been on on the curriculum piece before um there can be a lack of alignment with TPT so sellers are able to pretty much put whatever they want it could be standards based it might be very Loosey Goosey standards based so that can be
044very difficult the quality and accuracy um we have Arizona state standards and these aren't always Arizona state standards and they also can be at very different rigor levels when you look at most of TPT not all but most of TPT is at the lowest level of retail um um there also can be some data privacy concerns TPT can ask you to go to external platforms and if they're asking for student information and we have not vetted that then we are allowing lots of information for our students out there which should not be happening and then there's just the instructional coherence or that secret sauce so if one school is using something we should be allowed to make sure that all schools have that information to be able to support that so what could the solution
045be um this is not just a TPT issue this is a supplemental material issue because we do know that there are supplemental materials being utilized across the district that we might not even be aware of so this is TPT just kind of uh open the can of worms and then we're like wow what are other districts doing so we were able to talk with a couple of different districts um from out of state actually and they had some really great solutions that actually mimic some of what we already do with some of our curriculum uh they had committees and we do have committees that are set aside if a parent had a concern about a textbook or about a literature book we have committees already formed in our policy that say that it would go
046through a committee to determine if this is appropriate or not so we're recommending the exact same thing to be done for supplemental material however this committee would need to meet a lot more often and our teachers would need to be prepared so I was talking with a teacher today um at Corte Sierra and she said there's and she is a special education teacher and she said there's some really great things that work for our IEP goals and I said yep and hopefully they're bundled so that you're not sending one at a time but maybe it's a big bundle you're sending to the committee so that we can review that and then we would Whit list it and approve that um this would um this committee would be composed of District guiding Coalition we would also
047want teachers on it we would want a maybe a K5 or a 68 or maybe this is K2 3568 we're still vetting this process this is um only the second time we've kind of shared it out we shared it with our leaders earlier last we week uh we want to make sure that the material is aligned with the standards and the district goals we also need to make sure that we're following legal and ethical compliance and making sure that we're following furpa and technology and accessibility checks is this really um is this going to do anything with our technology is this safe for us to have on this can our digital tools um access what they're asking for and then that transparency for parents and making sure that the board is aware as well so
048that piece is really important because it is a part of the igj uh policy so what would approval look like and again this is not just TPT this would be for any supplemental material um we thought that this could be a multi-layer so we look at some material and we're like wow this is amazing this would be wonderful yes this is approved and supported by the teaching and learning Department this is approved by technology we will support training we will make sure that everybody has access to this it will be for everybody or it could be yes this is approved by District we will make sure that it is on the supplemental material list but that is without District support meaning we're not going to provide professional development with it technology is not going to
049help if there's a crash this is just you are welcome to use it but there's not resources going into it and the third one would be no it's not approved and that's likely going to be because it either does not meet that standard criteria it does not meet um the safety or the protocols that technology needs to adhere to um it goes against policy somehow some way if there are there are several things in policy about uh what can and can't be in the classroom so it could be something like that as well so we have the yes approved um with support yes approved without support and no not approved so again I shared that this is really still being vetted out with this committee work um so we need to develop this committee we
050would like to Pilot it in quarter 4 to see what we need to do to make this happen we are hoping that teachers will send us information once we get that out that they will submit maybe if they know that every year I use this piece or this is really important curriculum to me I'd like this to be approved right away um we know that this will be a big lift initially we're hoping that it will die out as we've initially gotten that big lift done there will be a review process with implementation so that we can actually have this starting um next year full-fledged after our pilot during quarter 4 we need to make sure sure that we are communicating out this plan to all of our teachers um and how that's going to
051roll out the responsibilities on our committee um and who's going to be helping to facilitate and to also communicate what's been approved or not approved we'd also like to keep a list of what's not approved so we don't have to keep going back over and over and getting the same material that maybe we've already said no to um approval timelines how long does this take we are anticipating that these meetings would be every other month so um is that immediately after the meeting is it during the meeting that the teacher notified so making sure we have that timeline and then we'd like to Pilot uh the metrics how many people are submitting to request additional supplemental materials um and what does that look like so our recommendation right now to um to solve some of
052the issues and concerns that you've heard as well as what we've heard is to um approve TPT for the remainder of the year and during that time we're asking that um teachers do get the materials that they want and that they would submit it to us so that we could go through this process and that TPT would be shut down for next year and we would whitelist the things that are approved and on our supplemental list so that way we are following all of uh the rules and the requirements um and hopefully finding a happy medium for everybody um I do want to point out that TPT does offer some very valuable resources um it can make a beautiful classroom like a lot of the things that that when we're walking through classrooms the bulletin
053boards and things like that those are TPT we also know there's some great um Behavior skill things and social stories and things like that come out of TPT and are fabulous and there are um some good academics but it's few and far between research has shown that the academic portion only about 10% of what's on TPT is actually at the standard and the rigor level so that is an area of concern for us and that is one of the reasons that we'd like to take this approach and I will stand for any additional questions that you have Miss Moran did you have any questions yes um so you just mentioned a couple of things that teachers utilize from TPT which in my world TPT is transaction privilege tax so every time I hear someone say
054it I think very differently but in this context I know what it is um you mentioned like the bulletin boards and things like that I have never worked in a classroom so can you tell me what some of the things are um some of the resources are what would that look like because in my mind I'm thinking like worksheets but I have no idea if that's actually what we're talking so um it could be the birthday board it could be the Get to Know You activities they have the cute little printouts where the kid can draw their picture sometimes it's goal settings when you're walking through a classroom and you're looking on the bulletin boards a lot of times that's the TPT stuff that they have up there that they found somebody else has created
055so they didn't have to create it and we understand that that that is time consuming um but they also TPT requires you to spend your own money as well and so our teachers are spending their own money on these items as well so is that curriculum having a birthday board it's not okay so we just we can't have it all open or all closed so we are trying to find a happy medium where wouldn't have to come through the curriculum we would have to have them submit so we could whitel list it does that make sense no so if I'm a teacher and I'm at home and I find some printables that's what I want to call allow to I could do that print it at home or whatever it's just the downloading it onto
056our system is the problem they right now it is closed so they don't have access while they're at our schools do they have it on their computer if they're at home it shouldn't be on the device at all obviously yes yeah or it could get on the device so so they could do it from their home computer and however they want to do that yes that is still that is still allowed for almost anything okay so the things that we're trying to manage are the curriculum academic pieces correct and those would be the only things allowed if they're approved or through that Matrix that you talked about like you know approval without District support so all of the decorative and everything is teachers are on their own regardless with that is what you're telling me
057no we could we we would need to talk about it I don't know what that would look like from the technology standpoint um I'm envisioning that they could send it so that they would have a link however that could get very tedious for this team um and I don't know if that would impact Ruben's team with the fonts and things like that so okay I would need to we would need to work through that because it sounds like that's a separate issue from this issue but it sounds like that is potentially an issue especially as we go into the fall where you have new classroom set up and all that correct it is an issue okay my next question is kind of around that like where do we draw the line even from a curriculum
058standpoint so let's say I'm a teacher I see a clip on Tik Tok that shows me how to teach a math concept and I didn't have to buy anything didn't have to download anything but I decided to use that in my classroom where's my agency with being able to do that versus getting it from it's just the download part is what we're saying we don't correct you still have the right to do that that is the art of teaching we are not trying to say to not not be able to do that if you wanted to make a quiz and you just wanted to do a quick thing real quick and make some copies to make that happen or you're putting it in your Google Classroom all of those are absolutely acceptable um the TPT
059creates challenges because of the technology piece as well as if you're just going off of what TPT is showing you and saying that that's the standard it it might not be okay so you're really saying we want to be able to monitor the rigor and approve as much as we can and vet for any IT issues before teachers can use some of those resources that's really the goal here yes yes do you want to add to it I'm just trying to get to the prux of it like I just I know there's a lot of things that teachers are this for so I want to get to the Crux of what is our part in that and what are we trying to do other than of course we want to avoid malware and viruses and
060all that sort of thing Mr Mike go ahead and I just wanted to go off that because I'm trying to figure out if we're talking about I don't feel like we're talking about curriculum right now or any sort of well unfortunately all things so that's been the issue is that if we just said no to the curriculum but we're keeping everything else open that still causes an issue for Ruben's team so um TPT has lots of things on it teacher can I jump in because this is this is sorry because you said it again this causes a problem for Ruben's team so Ruben can you tell me how many times your team has had to deal with uh some bad file that's been downloaded or malware or whatever any of those things that not the
061fonts wrong sorry not that the font is wrong but like the other actual security risks sure Madam Pres president um to your comment on malware I'm going to say zero this time because we have things in place that are catching them so the team does get we get notified if a computer has malware I can't tell exactly where it came from but we do we probably been out maybe just in general 20 times throughout the district to just check a computer that has malware um but it could be from anything so they they do come in with malware okay so you can't pinpoint that to TPT though I could start looking if we turn it back on I could start looking more at that I just see it as malware it's a it's a it's
062a something important let's go isolate it and let's go get that computer cleaned off as quickly as we can that's been my Approach so far but to your point I probably can in the future start pinpointing it okay because all of this I mean sorry I'm jumping in front of everybody in the line but the thing is is that we say a lot that we want to allow the teachers to perform the art of teaching and we want to make sure everybody's following the science and to me this is an art form for a lot of teachers it's not the science curriculum side and I know we have some people that are using it for that but to me it feels like we should handle those people individually and we shouldn't cut off this resource
063for teachers I know that many of our elementary school teachers use TPT to do their room Transformations and all of that fun stuff and we're going to make it so much more difficult for them to provide those fun opportunities for our kids because of some teachers that are making bad choices and that seems to me like maybe those individual teachers need to be handled rather than punish everyone collectively so teacher pay teachers actually poses a very unique I guess circumstance because a lot of supplemental materials you're looking at a website or you're looking at an app or an extension and you're looking at the functionality of that and once you open it up it's opened up or once you close down it's closed down teacher pay teachers is very unique because there's such a vast
064um amount of different resources for teachers from Behavior to classroom environment to actually curriculum so we have things that are being used that are replacing the curriculum um and so um it is not currently An approved supplemental material so what we would like to just have the opportunity to have a committee review each of these supplement materials including teacher pay teachers to determine the best approach I know we don't have maybe all the nitty-gritty answers of exactly how we're going to handle it because we haven't gotten the committee together yet to say okay how are we going to tackle this um I do admit peac mealing teacher pay teachers seems like to me it would be an absorbent amount of time and would it really be the time that we want to dedicate to really
065get to the goal that we want I think really the community needs to sit down and and look at that um what we do know for a fact right now is that our teachers are using a supplement at a great great number not just a few we we see it quite frequently um and we know it's not approved right now so we want to be able to bring our recommendation to you as far as what we approve for supplemental materials with a very strategic process we don't want to just handpick things because people um say it's great or they really really want it we want to make sure we vet each supplemental material in the same strategic way so that's why we're proposing this committee because really teacher pay teachers is just a drop I
066mean there are so many supplemental materials out there when we go to conferences and we meet with different vendors that you know are selling products they're like oh do you want a list of teachers that are already using our product and I'm like really so so really making sure that we bet these because it's just blowing up since covid we have so many digital resources and nothing's really free and so we need to make sure and I know teacher pay teachers there are free components to it as well as paid components um we just need to make sure that we have a great way to vet these things because you know we're all trusted by the parents that we're ensuring the curriculum that our teachers are using is the appropriate curriculum and is going to
067you know meet the St the needs of the state standards so we just want the opportunity to do that for you and then bring our recommendation as far as what we believe should be approved or not approved I understand what you're saying and and I agree that our teachers shouldn't be using unapproved curricul but a vast majority of our teachers that use teacher pay teacher do not use it as a curriculum thing so therefore I don't feel like it's fair to make it that they have no access to that or we're saying it's fine if they do it on their own and it's their own devices at their house well they shouldn't have to use their own devices at home to print stuff to make a bulletin board that doesn't seem fair and I I
068would not endorse that either I would not say do whatever you want at home and bring it into school I that's not it but it is a it's a delicate balance between what teachers that are paid to create instructional materials for us can do right and that art of teaching and paying for an activity and not really vetting it to make sure that and I understand they might not be using it as full out curriculum but they're using it as a supplemental resource for instruction and so we just need to make sure that we vet it and um like I said teacher p teachers poses of very unique I don't think any other supplemental material is going to be as hairy as teacher pay teacher because you're not talking about one product that is designed
069in the same way with the same protocols the same processes um because they um don't really use a process like that either so um so a lot of the places that you can get supplementary materials from they have a vetting system and teacher pay teachers just doesn't have that so but maybe if anyone's listening that works for Teacher PID teachers maybe that's something they can create because that would really be helpful um I think to many schools because it's not it's not a uncommon thing for teachers um to use this product Mr Mike did you have questions yeah I guess I'm just trying to put this yeah um and you know what actually let's Kim or Miss okay no I just um so two more things on that so the thing that I definitely agree
070with is number one we have paid for curriculum that has been fully vetted and we want our teachers to use that we don't want them to spend their own money on buying supplemental materials because if that is truly needed in the classroom then we aren't doing our job to give them the resources that they need so I would like to make sure that we are doing our job and if and that obviously is going to include various sources of supplemental materials so I think you're the right path with getting this problem solved I think the non-curriculum part of TPT would be solved if we had a process of something it related before a download happens or something like that I I don't have an answer for that but um again I don't I agree with
071president zida that it shouldn't be a well you're on your own with printing stuff at home because you can't can't get to that site from from our resources so I don't have the answers to that really but I do um understand the vetting process but I do also think there's so much gray area that it's it's going to be really challenging to get to a solution that because there's the curriculum and then there's all the nuance and so I think that's going to be really hard Mr Mike okay so it's it's we have a resource to hang on our walls or you know for track you know just the you know that that art piece with that you the visual stuff that you see in a classroom and that's a download issue anytime you're downloading
072stuff I know we have to be protective as far as what is being downloaded and what's accessible so I totally understand that as you know where that where that can get but then the other pathway is then when I asked you I don't know if we're talking about curriculum or not obviously that's not curriculum or supplemental curriculum then there's other components of this that are supplemental curriculum correct that are being used as a driving piece within lessons that because it's successible it's being used as that driving Factor when it doesn't well from the percentage that you said that that other big concern is the alignment piece which is obviously not a great thing that we can that we can have so it's like you know if we could figure out a way where we don't
073have a malware or virus is or anything like that issue for you know doing the printable stuff yeah but that obviously I know you're trying to you know with the committee you're trying to figure out the that supplemental C curriculum side as well and so I just wanted to make sure I understood so that's the two avenues corre that we're talking about right now and when we're talking about the recommendation we're saying without District you're asking us to approve right now without any District supp support for that and dist no District support means what they they have to they can they have to do it at home or District support means if there's an issue with downloading something or you doing a printable or with the fonts we're not going to come help we open
074it back up and it would not be we would not send a tech if there was an issue with downloading or fonts but with keeping in mind that with the curriculum side of it we know we have to have a process for for that um if we're going to say we're using in our classrooms yes and for transparency to parents as well yes okay thank you you're welcome Mr [Music] Robins yes I'm gonna uh apologize to our teachers um because I know that this has been frustrating having this removed from them but I personally love that it happened I think that this is going to do the things that should have already been done right there shouldn't be any supplemental curriculum material in our classrooms unless it's been approved unless it's been vetted and that
075shouldn't be on the teachers that should be on us as a district so it's not on the teachers who are doing it if we have gaps in our curriculum then hopefully this committee can identify those and we can fulfill them from the top down so individual teachers are doing their best I understand that but in full transparency one of the reasons I ran for this board and I serve on this board is to Ure that the curriculum that is taught in our classrooms is vetted and that's on both ends that's not nobody should be pushing agendas or narratives and that happens when you introduce supplemental information and and curriculum and that's both from an educational standpoint a behavioral standpoint and everything in between and so unfortunately TPT was the straw that broke the camel's back
076or open Pandora's box and it sounds like we have a plan moving forward which I'm looking forward to but supplement information supplemental curriculum should not be used if it has not been approved and so we as a district we as a board we as a Administration need to make sure that any gaps in our curriculum that need to be filled by supplemental materials are identified and we provide that to our teachers as far as the other stuff the mware I'm not as worried about that like we can figure that out but I'm glad this happened I'm hopefully we can create a a quick solution to it the teachers can get what they need to you go in these classrooms and they're amazing right like when we tour these canvases it's so cool I don't remember
077all the stuff on my boards when I was in grade school some of these classes you can't even see the walls and it's really really cool and I think it makes our kids feel happy and special and I understand when I Envision TPT it's like just this huge chat room of teachers and sharing information and that's amazing but we cannot allow teachers to just pull stuff that is inveted and think that it is a meets our curriculum standards but B is sufficient um in for our district so I'm I'm again I'm glad I happened I'm glad we have a solution moving forward and I'm looking forward to um what the committee finds as far as gaps in our curriculum and what supplemental information we can push out from a district standpoint and not individual teachers
078needing to find it on their own Miss Wallace thank you I've been patiently waiting my turn um I disagree with that um I taught kindergarten in first grade and I followed my curriculum and taught my curriculum 100% but I also every Thanksgiving bought curriculum on TPT and did a little Thanksgiving unit that was not in my curriculum I also every Christmas bought holiday information about the different holidays and taught that information I bought things for bull butin boards I bought things for my behavior chart and I chose to purchase those things on my own and that did not change the authenticity of the curriculum that did not change me fulfilling my commitment to teaching the curriculum but it enhanced that and it gave a creative outlet that I didn't have to create and in my
079own personal job today it's interesting that this fell right when it fell the Friday before TPT was taken away from you guys or the day it was taken away from you guys canva was taken away from me at work and I have been using canva for four years I logged in and it said banned website I have fought for five weeks to get canva added back and my argument to them is the same argument I would have for these teachers yes I can do these things on PowerPoint and on publisher and all of those things but it's uglier and it's slower and it takes me longer to do my job and I can do my job faster and it looks better if I can have canva back and after all of that time they finally
080gave me canva back and it's the same argument yes you can do it without it absolutely you can do it without it but it might be slower it might be uglier and it might not create the same experience do I think we should not use our curriculum absolutely not we have amazing curriculum but I don't think having access to those things is going to change the use of our curriculum and if teachers like Melissa said are not using the curriculum that was given to them that's an individual basis that isn't someone that's creating a beautiful bulletin board or doing a fun little one-day unit for Thanksgiving those are completely different situations and there isn't a way like Miss Benjamin said to easily have some of those pieces and not others and that's a problem we
081can't just take away all of it because there's a few issues I 100% agree with you they need to be using the curriculum but this isn't about curriculum for this site specifically do we need to be vetting what people are doing yes we also need to be providing a social studies curriculum which I understand we're going to be getting into but those teachers have been doing what they can and there are some amazing things on here for social studies so for this specifically I feel for the teachers I literally have been going through the exact same thing with canva yes I could do my job I would I will honestly tell you five different times I drove home in the middle of the day made something on canva and emailed it to myself and drove
082back to work our teachers can't do that with a classroom full of teachers or a classroom full of children but I've had I've did that five times because it literally saved me time to do that than try to create it on an old outdated system like publisher so real quick sorry are you done yes I I don't I know you I mean just because you said I disagree I don't I don't think I said anything that's different than what you said in that like I mean you you said you would want the site shut down I don't think no I didn't I didn't I said I love that it happened because now we're having this conversation right we have a remedy tpt's coming back based on this recommendation I love that so that's why I'm
083saying you know all those materials I love that so if that we can find a way to do that yes but as far as curriculum if you want to do a Halloween curriculum or something then that goes to the committee right so I don't want it shut down I want access to it I'm just saying I'm glad this happened because we're having this conversation well what I heard you say board member Owens was that teachers are introducing inappropriate materials through their supplemental materials I didn't say inappro I said there's teachers that can use supplemental information in curriculum to push personal agendas and that's both ways I'm do you have evidence that any of our teachers are doing that I don't have any no I'm saying I'm it happens and I'm saying this allows it to
084not happen I don't have information I don't have supplemental materials does not equal indoctrination you're it can and so I'm saying this helps not do that what I just yeah it can I don't have any evidence but at the same time it's pretty easy to put a you're trying to put words in my mouth and push a narrative that was not even mentioned okay I just have a completely different question has Etsy been shut down I do not know that answer because I mean ety provides very similar content I've never used it for C curriculum I've only bought arts and crafts things off of it that have gone to my house the good news is canva is still open good I can come work there okay so um obviously we all have some pretty strong
085opinions about this for me um I'm glad that we're going to talk about approving it now um I actually agree with Mr Owens in that I'm glad that this is making us have this conversation because I think that's important for us to have mostly because I think it's important to to differentiate between curriculum and the art and fun of the classrooms and I want to make sure that we don't take that away from them I agree that our teachers need to use our curriculum and the things that we approve for them to use 100% I'm in support of that um so like I said I'm glad we're doing this right now but I do think this is going to be a continuous conversation because I don't necessarily want to just have this not allowed for
086next year so I guess we'll have to talk about it again okay would you like to approve it as written or would you prefer to amend the uh recommendation Madame President yes before we answer that question because ultimately we are asking the board for a particular vote tonight uh just kind of listening and thinking about the the conversation that we've had and the the comments we've received I think uh it's really important that those that are listening out in the world or who are here tonight regarding curriculum is it is our desire to have a guaranteed and viable curriculum that our kids in our schools are getting quality resources to push them to that next level the whole concept of that Lichfield learner right creating our eighth graders to get ready for high school and
087Beyond um I think it's exciting that we are having this ation that we are creating a process to review supplemental materials I also just want to highlight the importance of the voice of our educator because as we're hearing from Miss Wallace as an example as a former educator there are some things out there that we don't know about and that are making a positive difference in their lives so we need to hear from our staff on that um I just feel like this this conversation is really important but it's important for us I also going to go back to what Mr Owen said about making certain that we're working with our curriculum team because if we do have gaps AKA social studies we need to address that and so that that's that whole idea of
088I believe who this team is here about continual Improvement and looking for areas to keep making us the best Elementary District in the West Valley this is part of it and so um just I just think there's a lot to this conversation it's not done um but certainly it is it is upon us to own this and to really support our educators thank you I agree um and again for the curriculum thing that's why I'm happy because we did become aware that maybe there are some gaps as a board that we didn't realize ourselves that existed so again this is why I agree with Mr Owens about how I'm glad that this has brought some stuff to light for us and that we're able to address it um I don't know I guess we'll see
089how they make a motion but my hope would be that we would approve teacher pay teacher for the rest of this year but the question about for next year is that mean that whole list is going to go through your committee that we've already like the list we have approved of supplemental materials none of those will be approved for next year until your committee goes through them and we'll have to approve a new list the ones that are already approved we would keep on the list it would be anything additional that maybe teachers are using currently um that they could submit was what our thought had been would it be possible to approve the first sentence of this which is related to this school year and then get an update based on what's happens between
090now in the end of the school year before we make a decision on 25 26 yes you could absolutely do that that's what I would like to see happen I agree I agree with that that's that I was concerned about the second part of it because I'm hearing the committee aspect of it and I'm trying to figure out how we can juggle that with Fidelity you know as all that information's com you know not to chop something off that we you know unint you know then we're going to get into an unintentional thing again where we're where we're denying access for some things that um really do pay off so that was um my concern with it and I just again want to make sure that we are establishing what is curriculum versus what is
091just the fun art of teaching in the classroom because I feel like that's where the Teachers Pay Teachers thing is is becoming this big discussion up here and with people in the Community is that I don't think any of us are saying that we think teachers should go and do whatever curriculum they want um I think that we want them to be able to to make learning as fun and engaging as possible for their students given what we are providing them but if they can use Teachers Pay Teachers to add some fun into their classroom make it more special for those kids then I think that's what we all want so um that was all if somebody wants to make a motion unless anybody else has any questions or comments no I will move to
092approve the request that for the remainder of the 2425 school year Teachers Pay Teachers be approved as a supplemental curriculum resource without District support I second having a motion from Miss Maran and a second from Miss Wallace I'll call for the vote Miss Moran yay Mr mikees yay Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay I'm a yay motion passes thank you very much okay now we're going to move on to some discussion items we're going to start with the fiscal year 2526 budget discussion with cfov Von because it's the CFO Von show for a while while we have this budget discussion over the next several meetings m mam president may I make a personal request to um take a small break yes let's do that thank you m e right e e there so yeah we
093need to yeah you you good I appreciate that e you okay paging Michelle Wallace gonna get in trouble not I not oh really yeah are we all ready to get back into this to talk budgets for next school year I am awesome well if we are ready to get started we will turn this over to our cfov Von to have this discussion started all right Madam president members of of the governing board superintendent Davidson colleagues and Community thank you for joining us tonight to continue discussing the items we've been exploring related to the budget for the 2025 2026 school year tonight's presentation aligns with the district's strategic keystones of Readiness relationship and resources it it really crosses all three we will start tonight's presentation with the review of our food service operations and some changes
094were recommended for next year we'll then discuss proposed facility rental fees for next year before continuing discussions of M budget initiatives this slide shows nine years of financial results of the district's food service operations in the second to last column you can see the profit or loss generated by the program the program oper operated as a at a a profit for only two of the nine years with the most recent being fiscal year 2021 2022 this was driven almost entirely by changes in the program at the federal level during the pandemic you'll also likely notice an improvement in the financial results last year this Improvement was due to changes and rules around the indirect cost that can be charged to the program and not tied to program operations this data shows us that improving the
095efficiency of our food service program has been a need for some time tonight we'll walk you through some of the steps already taken as well as proposed steps for next year based on its impact on the financial results of the Food Service program it's important to understand the concept of indirect cost indirect cost is an expense that the district uh can charge to the uh food service program and other Federal programs for items not easily accounted for directly in the program good examples of these items are utilities or Services of our departments such as Finance human resources and information technology the federal government recognizes that it would be administratively burdensome to determine the cost of services rendered to our food service department by these centralized services and so instead allow allows districts to take a
096percentage of certain costs within the program as indirect costs indirect cost then becomes an unrestricted funding source for the district that we use to support salary and benefits of many of these shared services given the figures we've already looked at for the Food Service program a reasonable question would be what should we be targeting for the financial results of the program this slide will help us gain a little more insight into that question it's important to remember that our food service program truly is running a chain of 16 restaurants and spearheading Catering opportunities within our district with the running of these separate operations come Capital needs such as ovens walk-in freezers and refrigerators Etc this slide shows the state of the Food Service Department's capital a vast majority of their capital of equipment is beyond
097it its expected useful life with an initial purchase price of these items many years ago at $3.1 million a successfully operating Food Service program should be able to support indirect costs as well as the program's own Capital replenishment cycle without needing to rely on the district's other capital resources meant to support other District programs such as curriculum and Technology presently all Food Service Capital needs are covered by District Capital funds we began taking steps to address food service operations very soon after Dr Davidson joined litfield through the district's current organizational chart by bringing all of the operational departments and those who are intended to financially support themselves under the oversight of the executive director of operations Dr Stone and me prior to this reorganization food service was overseen by a Cabinet member who also oversaw
098curriculum and many student focused initiatives which took a majority of their time we also brought in a new food Ser new food service leader who has provided A New Perspective on the operations of the program we have also minimized our summer feed opportunities to those that are most needed and utilized within our district and raised our prices for those not eligible for free or reduced priced meals allowing us to increase average revenue per meal our next steps are to finalize setting meal cost targets implementing a restructure of the department which we will talk about momentarily uh continue updating pricing and redesign the program's menu to ensure that we not only continue to serve nutritious meals but also ones that our students want to eat and that that financially support the program this slide details the
099expected impact of the proposed reorganization of the food service department it includes the collapse of five central office food service positions and the creation of two new positions for an estimated Savings of almost $156,000 per year this reorganization is designed to bring efficiency to operations and improved practices such as streamlined cash collections procedures and ensuring all positions are fully utilized our other proposed change for next year includes an adjustment to prices however before covering that proposal it's important to see the impact of the price adjustments we've already made this slide shows lunches served in each of the listed fiscal years through January as well as student count figures you can see that even as we've increased prices meals served and more importantly meals served per student enrolled have stayed stable with a slight upward Trend
100this slide also shows the price targets set by the USDA for the national school lunch program these targets are adjusted each year for various factors but are set to ensure that the revenue of school program receives from a paid meal is the same as it receives from a free or reduced priced meal considering the amounts paid by families and the amounts paid by the USDA to to support the program you can see we remained well below this Target and as a result the program receives substantially fewer resources per meal served to families in paid status versus those in reduced or free status this has a significant impact on the district due to the breakdown of the number of meals served in each category through January of this year 43% of meals served are paid meals
101based on this data we are proposing a 25 cent increase for prices in our food service program next year as a reminder this will not impact families qualifying for free or reduced price meals the proposed increase would keep the district well below the targets set by the USDA but would greatly assist in our ability to make the new cost per meal targets possible ultimately helping maintain the quality of the meals we serve at this time the team and I are available to answer any questions you might have on our proposed changes in Food Service Miss Moran any questions I do have a question just to enhance my own understanding of this funding so you mentioned that we will need to have Capital funds available to replace equipment at some point in time and that currently
102we use General District Capital funds that could be used in the classroom um or campuses other than outside you know food service is the goal that if we get to a let's say break even on our food service that our existing fund balance would go to fund the capital that we might need so we wouldn't need to use District capital or tell me because when I look at that fund balance I'm like oh $3 million okay that's not nothing not nothing uh what you'll I shouldn't say what you'll find interesting what I found interesting um is if you look at how that fund balance was trending in 2016 we ended the year with $4 million the only reason we have much fun balance at all is that $2.2 million we made the one year during
103the pandemic this is probably the one instance where the pandemic was was quite helpful right um probably the only instance I can think of um because otherwise that fund balance would be about $1 million um and when you're running a program with5 million of expenses each year and you're truly relying on Revenue that's coming in from from selling it I mean you you essentially have all the same risks as a restaurant um so you do want some level of fund balance if if we were uh having a fully successfully running Food Service program we would be breaking even to a slight uh profit even after they had paid for a recurring Capital replenishment cycle there is a uh matching requirment under USDA and so the um the support that comes from either our M fund
104or Capital fund can cannot go to zero but how that works in a lot of other districts is expenses are identified that do uh directly support the Food Service program um and are accounted for differently to show that support to meet that matching requirement versus truly providing that funding for additional spending um and if we can get to that point then um we could see more capital resources available for for other projects like a um 68 social studies curriculum or um replenishing uh you know staff devices and I think to piggy back off that for clarity the Food Service ending fund balance has to be used on food service we cannot move that out versus the capital we can spend on whatever capital things we want so we have more flexibility with money flowing out
105of capital less flexibility on taking anything out of food service I would go a little bit further in that and say we have no flexibility the the funding is restricted to to Food Service so how many years do you think it will take before we get to a break even or slightly profitable to cover replacement costs on Food Service um well if you look at how we ended last year at the program losing $175,000 and you look at the proposed savings uh of the reorganization that's covering a majority of it um so I think we could get to break even uh not considering Capital within the next year or two I do think it may require some of that work that that I talked about around redesigning the menu uh to bring it fully to
106fruition fruition but I do think simply the price adjustment and this reorganization could do a vast majority of the work to at least break even um I think all of the steps may be needed to get to where they can also fully support their Capital um replenishment cycle um the last thing that I will say about this segment is that to me the price increase seems reasonable anyone that's buying food these days know that things have gotten more expensive um and again we're not in this for profit but we do need to be able to sustain the program so no further questions for me Mr Mike um one of I was looking at slide uh side slide 12 when I was looking at the numbers what I was trying to figure out is is there
107a percentage of kids that we have an idea as far as what actually use as far as using our services am I reading this right so I see estimated student count of you know 10 10,43 kids based off of the lunches lunches served but is there a perc uh do we have a percentage districtwide as far as what kids actually are typically eating in our cafeteria we do uh it's not a percentage I know off the top of my head uh so if you don't mind i' I'd love to provide that in a Friday update yeah and I was just the curiosity is just the US you know the usability as far as um as far as that's concerned with kids bringing their lunch versus the availability because to your point I mean there's there's
108not going to be an instance where 100% of kids eat 100% of the days um but as we as we look at that redesign of the menu the goal really is to ensure that we're serving meals that kids want to eat obviously we have nutritional requirements that we have to follow uh that are put on us by the program but there's still uh things that we can do to make sure that the meals we're serving are are intriguing and that there's enough various options so that even even though they might be may not be interested in one of the options were serving that day they might be interested in another and so I know our food service team is is is looking at how to to redesign those meals in that way and that may
109involve uh taste testing opportunities where we you know where we really engage with students to to get their feedback on on new menu items those sorts of those sorts of activities um that will take some time which is why I'm not telling you that we'll necessarily have a completely redesigned menu for next year along with these changes um but I I do think that that's the longer term vision of of the team okay thank you Mr Owens yeah I don't have any questions um totally understand the need and the reason behind the price increase anytime we talk about increase in costs to the students whether it be for activities um but especially for lunches I always want to reiterate to our communities and our family members that if you need assistance with free and reduced
110um apply right these these increases will not impact you whatsoever so I know as an Administration when we roll these out we're going to reinforce that and make sure that any child who's eligible um can make sure that they they get that and so this doesn't burden them in any way on a a personal note I do want to just give a Kudos out to Food Service Department um my kindergartener we used to ask her we go over the menu every week okay do you want to take your lunch this day this day this day and now we don't even ask her she just buys a school lunch every day and loves it Miss Wallace uh my only question is when I look at the increase slide on slide 13 it's showing a 25 cent
111increase across the board I feel like it would make more sense to have a percentage increase because our lunches are going up 25 cents our breakfast are going up 25 cents and our individual milks are going up 25 cents it doesn't seem very well balanced like if we increased everything by 10% you know our lunches would be 3.95 they'd be you know a or that's the second lunch I'm sorry 345 but our milks would be if that's something 75 cents if that's something the board is interested in uh what I can do is calculate what the percent increase would be to where we want to be for lunch and then apply that percent to the other items the other items are very infrequently um purchased honestly but um that would be a reasonable approach to
112to modify the The Proposal yeah I mean I just think as a parent if my kid is only buying milk that is a a big increase as opposed to lunch sure Miss Maria I already asked my questions I'm sorry well losing my mind um I uh actually would like to get those numbers possibly if we looked at a percentage thing to get our lunches where we want them to be because I do agree that's a lot if somebody just wants to get a milk um but otherwise I also agree with Mr Owens my daughter loves buying lunch now and none of my other kids ever wanted to buy lunch ever but the little one oh yeah all the time she's like do I have to take a lunch today today Mom I want to buy
113a school lunch I'm okay so um yeah if we can just get those numbers in the future to see that as an option am I okay to move on okay yep we are good to move on now we will spend some time talking about facility rentals before transitioning to maintenance and operation budget considerations you may recall that the district recalibrated it fee structure for facility rentals for the current year this allowed us to feel comfortable adding a second grounds crew to help maintain fields in better condition and to add two facilities positions entirely focused on facility rental groups due to the hiring process these positions were not in place for all of this year however as we continue to look at the operations of this program we have some proposed fee changes for next year
114we are proposing a small inflation adjustment on hourly rental rates with the exception of rental of classroom space and Fields we would recommend holding classroom rental rates at the same price uh as this year and we would recommend increasing field rental rates by $5 per hour these recommendations are the results of an analysis of the cost to maintain these spaces after facility rentals this slide shows the results of that proposal as well as the increase from the current rate all bolded figures are unchanged my next slide is a question slide but given the content of the material I'm just going to stay here to address any questions you might have Miss Maran no questions Mr Mike this might be a newbie question here but but what's and just kind of high level are we do
115we get a lot of usage out of our facilities we really do uh we have a lot of uh Community groups that use our fields for um sports activities uh quite extensively we have um programs uh like the ones you heard public comment from tonight that use our uh classrooms after hours um and you have other other groups that use our media centers and cafeterias and gyms you know similar to how you have athletic events happening on our Fields you have basketball programs and volleyball programs Etc using our our gyms and so it is a a fairly robust um program Mr Owens I really like that we didn't change the difference between a for-profit and a go and a nonprofit I think that's important um um that delineation to me doesn't mean much especially when
116you hear from the speakers that we had today can you um I believe this an this was answered last time we spoke about it but certain organizations have different maybe contracts right or agreements it's not broken down per field so but a per field right $5 more per hour looking outside we've got two baseball three or you know three four is that one field right out side here verado middle is that the football field soccer field or how much does it entail it really depends on the site so um if I'm thinking of the correct school I think verado is broken up into four different fields um um so it really just depends on how each individual site uh is structured got it cool thanks Miss Wallace I don't have any questions I do feel
117like we our Fields could use some work and I'm all for supporting people that are going to be maintaining those and the additional cost of that I just think that we definitely need to be able to see that happening I think if people are paying more and we're saying that's what we're doing and I understand we maybe haven't hired these people yet or they haven't been working long but I think that the community the renters the the parents need to see an improvement in some of our Fields when we're saying over the last year that that is our Focus U I don't have any questions on this section all right our maintenance and operation revenues which support a majority of our people in programs is driven primarily by weighted student count of our enrollment the
118formula is a process by which the state provides different levels of funding per student based on varying student characteristics based on our demographic forecast by applied economics we anticipate slight growth next year I'm also anticipating ating that the 2% legislatively supported inflation adjustment is provided on the base support level per student this results in an in estimates of $ 75.4 million in revenue from the standard funding formula and 11.7 million from our 15% override these components are then complemented with funding for transportation provided by the state and smaller adjustments at this point I estimate that we will have 88 million of recurring M revenues next year by looking at a multi-year m forecast we can better put these figures into context for decision-making we presently believe M will end the year utilizing some amount of
119fund balance current estimates are that these funds will be supporting our M operations by 200,000 to 2 million uh this year the slide shows a figure in the middle of that range at 1,100 70,000 as we go forward through the years a 2% raise is assumed this results in a little over 4 million annual deficit by the end of the forecast period but we'll come back to that in a moment this slide shows a similar forecast for our Reserve funds the projection shows that we will have reserves available to spend going into next year and even forecast it at the end of next year we we forecasted to First dip below our top reserves Target in 2026 2027 if no additional cuts are made these two slides combined tell a story that we still need
120to continue looking at spending next year and that we need to Target having a balanced budget going into 2026 2027 to help ensure we protect our financial position if you've been watching our budget process for a couple of years you will know that there's a decent bit of uncertainty and that many times at the end of the year spending is less than we anticipated this is largely because of incumbrances or holds on funds in our system for spending that our schools and departments tell us that they intend to incur but do not end up coming to fruition in many cases for example for contracted staff a purchase order is put in place for the whole fiscal year and not reduced as much as it should be as we get closer to the end of the
121year I also think it's important to note one major influence on these projections I'm actually going to go back a couple of slides to better allow you to see it as I talk you through it if you look 12 rows down and I'll pause for a moment so you can count on the table you'll see a row labeled sped and elll changes and then in parenthesis it says enrollment for 2026 we're adjusting expected spending by 1.4 million and in 2027 by 1.7 million this is not planned spending this is calculated by looking at Trends in our special education enrollment and spending if you take this adjustment out it shows a much different Financial picture for example if the special education spending does not come to fruition in fiscal year 2026 we would instead be utilizing
1221.3 million in reserves at the end of 2026 depending on where this fiscal year lands with incumbrances we previously discussed this could make fiscal year 2026 close to balanced most of the 1.3 million uh overspending that would remain after removing the special education adjustment is coming from the assumption that we end this year overspending our recurring Resources by 1.1 million if If instead this year ends with the district over spending recurring M Resources by 200,000 it would move the estimated overspending at the end of 2026 to 400,000 as we continue tonight's presentation you should also see some familiar numbers from this Slide the costs for all budget proposals being discussed tonight are included in the 2026 column and and that's not an assumption that you approve it it's to give you the information that you
123would need to make a reasonable decision on if you want to approve it I walked you through the multi-year forecast in such detail for a couple of reasons first to really bring home why the team is comfortable with these recommendations but also to bring attention to why going into next year it will be a strategic initiative to get a better handle on special education spending and how we can remove some of the uncertainty it brings to our planning process before we move on I'm going to pause for questions on the financial context before handing it off to Sandy to begin our discussion on specific budget priorities Miss Maran I don't have any questions but I have two comments the first is that even under a really worst case scenario I'm comfortable of 25 and 26
124knowing that there are many unknowns in this scenario but I love the fact that you're saying there's a chance that we might come out even better than that so um I hope that's where we end up me too but obviously yeah the special ed um is a massive unknown because so much of what we do for that is non-funded so um yeah any ideas folks have for lowering that is fantastic Mr Mike I don't have any questions Mr Owens yeah I agree with board member Moran it's nice to see that you know those things have been considered or the possibility um you know there's other things and I don't want to jump ahead or get too far ahead of myself or just the school district but you know as we look at other opportunities such
125as El Thomas heck and repurposing that campus and additional Revenue that we we don't have factored in it might be beneficial down the road so where you know 05 or 25 26 look good we might be in a better position even in 27 too Miss Wallace no questions I'm loving how it's looking I have any questions I like how it's looking too I don't like where you want to take our special education conversation later but we'll get to that later well I I don't want that comment to be misconstrued it's not that we're talking about cutting anything it's that we're trying to wrap our heads around the spending to be able to remove some of the uncertainty I totally understand that I'm not trying to say that we're trying to like get rid of anything
126at all I just know that it will be whatever we're doing it's still going to be difficult conversation and it's going to take a lot of handholding for a lot of people to understand that so yes we can move on of the governing boards we cannot hear you I'm sorry Madame President members of the governing board superintendent Davidson colleagues and Community we will now move into our proposal for base level increase for those individuals hired after January 88th 2025 in addition to the 2% increase you will note recommended changes that allowed us to bring 16 positions and 31 employees in alignment with the compensation study findings these changes reflect the research we did on each individual employee to ensure employees impacted by the compensation study findings were either replaced on the placement chart honoring their
127years of experience or the proposed 2% raise whichever was in the best interest of the employee in further pursuit of providing the best possible compensation package to our employees we requested proposals to examine our insurance benefits we are currently completing the best and final offer review with the insurance Committee in preparation to bring forward their recommendation for your consideration it is important to note that when we requested the proposals we asked that insurance providers match our existing benefits as best possible or even enrich them if they would on the next two slides you will see the plan structures for asate our current carrier and sigma the two firms being considered as part of the best and final process for our medical coverage for the 2526 school year as you can see the expected ASB plan
128structures for next year remain unchanged with one exception exception excuse me when you look at the hdhp you will notice the two figures in red and those that exception is deductible is the deductible to the high deductible health plan which is changed each year by the Internal Revenue Service so and that's a piece that we have to comply with moving to the signal proposal you will note that the C- gold classic gold and high deductible Health Plan remain with an additional change in the classic gold plan stating that the deductible of 240 for an individual or 720 for family must be met prior to the insurance covering impatient hospital stays in summary the plan designs are nearly identical with both providers we reviewed the providers we reviewed the providers using specifically by our employees and
129found that there was 90% overlap of the pro for the providers most frequently seen by our employees so we were trying to ensure that they would have access to their same Physicians we anticipate a pure renewal with no change in carrier to reflect a 4.7% cost increase in scenarios where there are changes in medical or anciliary cover providers next year's benefits would reflect an increase of 2.8% to 3.76% we hope this demonstrates a value of this review that we have done after so many years we anticipate the actual renewal information from asate this Friday the 28th and have scheduled a meeting with the insurance committee for Monday March 3rd to review that data and work with the committee to prepare our final information for your consideration on Thursday March 6 prior to Mr Von continuing
130our discussion we're happy to respond to any questions you may have at this time Miss Maran I don't have any questions but I am appreciative of the thoughtful consideration that went into this process and that we're looking not only at the costs which we need to do as good stewards but also not only the costs to the district which we need to do as board members but costs to our employees as well and looking at what's going to impact them which is do you have to change doctors because that's a really big deal so I'm glad that we took some of those things into consideration thank you Mr Mike yeah to Echo um Miss Moran as far as what she said as far as making sure we're taking care of our employees as with as
131far as H being able to stay with their doctors and taking all that into consideration is appreciated so thank you thank you Mr Owens yeah appreciate the continued efforts looking forward to the uh final result great on Thursday Miss Wallace I just thank you for looking into catching the teachers up that need to be brought up and while we were hopeful that we would find some unicorn insurance that would be cheaper and provide better benefits I thank you for doing the work and figuring out um that we may just have it as good as it can be for now so thank you for that we appreciate it yeah this is a lot of work and definitely something that needed to be done since we have pretty much not done it ever so um I'm I
132appreciate that you guys took the time and have been doing this and I'm excited to see what the results of all this is at our meeting next week and I too want to thank you for looking into the doctors because a lot of places don't care they're like oh this is cheaper for us so oh well for you guys I know we've had to change doctors multiple times through my husband's work so um thank you we checking that and trying to make sure that that works for our teachers because that is a pain so we can move on to the next item this slide and the next are repeats from our last time together but we believe it's important uh context to our work on the performance pay system the research on performance pay in
133cage 12 education shows that it is mixed results on teacher performance and retention in fact it most frequently causes those who do not receive all eligible performance pay to leave the organization based on a review of This research we set three goals for a restructure of our performance Pace systems the first being to develop a cascading performance pay structure to align with the cascading evaluation system being developed the second to separate qualitative performance evaluation from compensation to allow for a focus on employee growth and development and the third to better align our compensation structures to those more frequently seen in our industry to Aid in both Recruitment and Retention as we begin delving deeper into the research on educator development we found several studies which broke a teacher's career into distinct periods of growth and
134development within the first two years new educators are focused on learning the profession and developing survival skills that allow them to be successful and I put that in quotes because I I truly did pull that directly from the research survival skills um by the third year those educators are more comfortable in their role and begin to look begin looking for growth opportunities beyond their individual classrooms in the district's present performance pay structures there is a teacher leader project introduced in the fourth year of teaching this already aligns well with the research on the different stages of teacher development however we believe we have an opportunity to expand this concept to teachers at all stages of development is part of a systematic way to Aid in their development in in this expanded teacher leader project model
135we would propose having the teacher leader project focused on different aspects of development at different stages in an Educator's career in the first two the teacher leader project would be compensating the employee for spending time taking advantage of resources the district provides to help them to develop those survival skills uh discussed in the research such as self-guided professional development for new teachers engaging with The Mentor in like content or observing Master teachers teach in the third year of teaching the expectation would become the development of leadership skills by engaging in student-driven opportunities on campus such as tutoring or Club sponsorship at the fourth level Educators would work with their site administrators to either continue development through engaging in further student-driven opportunities or begin to take on sitewide leadership roles much like the current teacher leader
136project model Beyond these programmatic changes we're also proposing a financial restructure of the plan to better align our compensation with the industry norms and provide flexibility and options for our employees the next several slides are all structured in the same way with the left hand side of the slide reflecting our current reality and the right hand side representing our proposal this this slide represents a restructuring of our M based performance pay for educators on the next slide we will also discuss a restructure of our classroom site fund based performance pay the first item I'd like you to notice on this slide is that totals in both areas are the same this is not a budget balancing initiative instead it is simply a restructure of the comp compensation being provided the next is setting the compensation
137for evaluation and student growth coefficients to zero this is needed to complete the separation of the evaluation instrument from the performance pay structures you'll also see the expansion of the TLP to all levels uh the compensation for completion of the teacher leader project is also increasing under our current model the TP is worth $1,100 under the proposed model a level one TLP would be worth $1,100 and the value of a TLP would increase until level four when it's just shy of 2,000 the remaining funds would be shifted to base compensation and would allow employees an option on when they receive this compensation either at the end of the year like they're used to or in their bi-weekly paycheck this slide shows the current structure of our classroom site fund based performance pay and the proposed
138restructure of that compensation we are recommending removing the professional development requirement and limiting the professional contribution to 15 hours of community engagement contributions outside of the contracted day these could be engagements in family nights or attending school athletic events is a couple of examples we do not believe that this will result in any additional work from our employees but simply the opportunity to document and be compensated for the work that the employees are already doing we are also recommending that no compensation be tied to standard six the current student achievement metrics in the existing evaluation instrument we will discuss this further on an upcoming slide we are also recommending a shift of the majority of the classroom site fund performance pay to base compensation this slide shows a summary of the prior two slides showing
139that almost $5,000 to $7,000 would be shifted to base pay compensation with no change in total compensation this slide shows the increase in bi-weekly gross pay if an educator at each level were to elect to receive this base pay on a bi-weekly basis versus at the end of the year Our intention is to have this be an option not a requirement if the employee better appreciates receiving the large payout at the end of the year they can elect to do so and would see no change in the timing of their compensation throughout this discussion we've mentioned several structural changes to the program to summarize employees would have the option to receive the pay shifted to base in their bi-weekly paycheck or at the end of the year the evaluation instrument would be completely separated from
140compensation allowing the evaluation process to be truly focused on development the student growth reflection process would be eliminated and the 30-hour requirement for professional contribution would be reduced to 15 hours but be required to be focused on community engagement outside of the contractual day and standard six would no longer have an impact on performance pay the removal of standard six from the performance pay system removes student achievement as a consideration this is important for a couple of reasons first student achievement will remain a focus of the evaluation process and will allow for the critical conversations that are necessary to support the growth of our teachers while not depriving them of a potential increase in income second is that we would like to better align uh student achievement expectations found in standard six with our overall
141student achievement goals and outcomes this would require the expectations to become much more challenging than presently included in standard six by removing standard six from the performance Pace structures the district can raise these expectations without triggering a need to receive 70% approval of teachers and doing so a requirement that's included in the statutes related to classroom site Fund performance pay we believe that the 70% approval threshold would be very difficult to achieve while making a portion of the performance pay structures much harder to accomplish we plan to meet with our lead related service providers um in this week or early next week to discuss also redesigning their performance pay considering the same goals and those implemented for teachers we would also like to Rebrand the program with different language to help the employees distinguish between
142the existing program and this restructure if approved by the governing board we will also record a video to help our impacted employees better understand the new compensation structures being implemented for the new year we'll pause here for questions and our proposed changes for educator performance pay before discussing our proposal for administrative performance pay Miss Maria I really like this and the reason that I really like this is because for years as a board we have said that the way we Define and distribute performance pay was not in align with what we were saying we wanted out of performance pay instead of just Distributing the performance pay we tried to tie it to an evaluation and then the evaluation became less effective because we didn't want to penalize anyone that wouldn't get the full amount so
143under this Innovative idea we are saying we want to be truthful in our evaluation of you so that you can be a better teacher and you can learn how where your weaknesses are because we all have them but we're not going to tie that to your compensation so that is really examining our current system and being able to wrap our heads around where we wanted to be and then now this is a way for us to actually get there so I really appreciate this because it makes a lot of sense to me um I don't love that we still have to call it performance pay for some other the parts but I will get over that my question what I would like to clarify or just kind of point out is on slide 43 and
144you say this on slide 44 still at the end of the year but for any teachers that might be watching um I just want to point out that the TLP and the community engagement piece are still tenative on them doing something to earn that and that's why that will be paid out at the end of the year regardless of what off they choose but the shift to base for everything else is really theirs now turn this off uh which is what allows us to give that option of when to receive it because if it were to remain performance pay I couldn't give the option to receive it in the bi-weekly paycheck because I can't pay it before they've earned it so by shifting uh an amount to the base that's really what allows us to
145give that option okay um I love it no further questions Mr mikees I I like this a lot and one of the reasons is because if you can tell me to um get a chance to get more money in the pockets of teachers straightforward here you're teaching come to it for this you know here's here's the amount we're going to pay you um also with this in regards to Performance pay being a part of revamping an entire evaluation system myself and being a part of numerous evaluations and observations and performance discussions um to truly use this to understand the purpose of all that to help Drive instruction to help Drive achievement in the classroom I know sometimes you think that performance piece is what's going to actually drive that achievement but it really does have
146that opposite effect and then this this blows open the opportunity to have true dialogue um and discussions towards Improvement and takes those handcuffs handcuffs off because there is no matter what the growth is and where the kids where the kids are that you get you know where you get them and where you take them to those are obviously ly important things but um if you just don't hit that number but you've done a ton of other stuff to uh to get those kids to that to that point um there shouldn't be a penalty there shouldn't be you know hey sorry you didn't make it there how do we have this discussion about what we label you uh something in the evaluation tool or anything like that so I like that it's straightforward I like that
147it opens like I said and the evaluation tool can truly be used for what I think it should be used for so that's what I have to say about Mr Owens yeah I totally agree with the previous two board members comments um and like the fan fact that there is still some type of actual performance pay tied to student achievement Miss Wallace no questions I love that this would be base pay that we could tell our teachers much simply much more simply this is what we're going to pay you it looks better in writing um in their contracts that it's going to look at like an increase because it is now a guaranteed amount not a amount set by performance um I love the 15 hours still outside of that we all know that our
148teachers are participating in a lot of out of contract time so keeping some funds held back to reward them or compensate them for their outof contract time is important um so I love that aspect of it and I love that we're simplifying this and making their pay easier to understand and to see in one bucket um I like that we took away the professional development part and made it all Community because we offer a lot of professional development so nobody should ever not have had that before ever just during their cont cont hours um and this requires them to do stuff which most of our staff is already doing anyways so it's just rewarding them for things are already doing but maybe it might incentify some a little bit more that aren't doing it as
149much to make sure that they do it because I bet we had some people that just did all 30 hours of develop of professional development before and didn't have really any Community stuff so now they're going to have to and I'm okay with that because those are the extra enhanced things that make school a great place to be right is those extra outside of campus and or outside of the school hours things that happen on our schools so um thank you guys for really taking the feedback from us of what we've been looking for in this process for a while a long time basically the whole time I've been on the board I feel like we're finally making progress and it's super great um but I think this is a good movement forward in what
150we're doing and I feel like I'm excited for the conversations that will be able to happen with our staff with the evaluations going forward and the idea that that's going to help us to make them more accountable but in a way that's not penalizing all the time so thank you with that I think we can move on to next section I just want to say I'm glad to hear you're as excited about this as I am so all right uh to truly build a cascading performance pay system we recommend similar changes to our administrator performance pay we would recommend shifting all but $2,480 of performance pay to base compensation this amount aligns with the proposed performance pay for uh the highest level in the teacher program I just uh described to you we would also
151recommend Shifting the performance pay away from an alliance a Reliance on the evaluation instrument instead have it connected to our scorecard structures our administrators use a scorecard system to set goals that align with the Strategic plan identify action steps to accomplish those goals and utilize key performance indicators to track progress this progress or this process is very similar to the work done at the superintendent level with the governing board for superintendent performance pay the goals and implementation of action steps designed in the scorecard process also aligns well with the teacher leader project structures in the educator performance Pace system as a result this change would align performance pay structures from the superintendency to administrators and ultimately our Educators it would allow us it would allow us to have a valuation process that's focused on employee
152development for all employee groups including our administrators we would recommend allowing administrators the same option of receiving the pay shifted to the base either in their bi-weekly paycheck or at the end of the year this slide shows what this might look like for those administ traders who elect to receive the pay in their bi-weekly paychecks we'll pause here for questions uh on our proposal for administrator performance pay prior to Sandy leading Us in the rest of our discussion Miss Maran um just for clarification because I I'm not as familiar with the administrative um evaluation so for teachers we're saying TLP and Community engagement results in this balance at the end of the year that you can earn for administrators we're saying you earn that yearend balance if you're executing the scorecard that that would be
153the proposal yes but that's not part of the evaluation langage there's there's elements uh of the evaluation that would speak to the implementation of the scorecard um because of language around strategic planning and and and those sorts of items but the scorecard process I believe is much newer than our current administrator evaluation and so there is not a direct tie um to the scorecard process in the evaluation so would we try to develop a rubric like we use for Dr Davidson where it's here are these things these are the weights this is the dollar amounts or it'll just be much simpler than that or I'm just trying to make sure that we're being fair about we have for this we would the proposal is to have it fairly simplified more around actually engaging in the
154process and implementing it with Fidelity than um than focused on the actual outcomes the and that's truly similar to the TL in the sense that we're compensating for the effort of of of pushing us forward strategically um and recognizing the fact that we can do a lot of work that's well intentioned and track data to to see if it's getting us to where we need to be but we can't always control the ultimate outcome and so what this is encouraging and compensating for is the process of setting strategic goals of identifying action steps to allow us to meet those strategic goals implementing those action steps with Fidelity and and tracking data to see if it worked um this the scorecard process is truly the way we operationalize our strategic plan in the sense that how
155the scorecard is structured is truly with the keystones and we look at the success criteria to set more specific goals that then uh result in action steps and uh to meet those goals uh and keep performance indicators to track this process so uh very similar to Dr Davidson's performance pay this is really um compensating for the oper operationalizing of the Strategic plan Miss Miss Maran may I add to that real quick yes um what we see as part of the performance of the teacher that idea of you know the TP as such is is you're performing you're adding value you're doing something for your respective campus and Community um we felt like with that in mind at the administrative level the scorecard that's created with goals with with metrics that we'll use and so forth
156is is very similar in that it's a it's it's action that is required to add value to that site or to that department for that matter whereas your question was do do they coincide that evaluation and the scorecard the answer is still it does remain yes but it is separate in that the outcome of performance pay is around the work and the scorecard whereas really the outcomes of all that tied to the evaluation because they do have to coincide but we can solely focus in on the evaluation and either you're you're rocking the scorecard or you aren't and and go through that process versus hey you you gave 110% into Mr Von's point maybe you didn't hit all the metrics but we still recognize you you put it above and beyond there here's the the
157connection to that performance pay aspect okay so what I think I hear you saying is we as District leadership have decided that we are going to utilize this scorecard to help everyone at their respective level implement the Strategic plan and so we need to give them the opportunities to learn how that's done and we need to evaluate them to make sure they're doing it effectively and one of the things we're tying to that then is this additional potential pay for doing it effectively is that right that would be a fair summary yes ma'am okay no further questions Mr mik I don't have any questions Mr Owens uh thank you board member rant because that help clarify what all you said thank you um I think my thing also is just we don't want to create
158a perception of a double standard right for teachers and administrators and so I think with that explanation that helps Miss Wallace I agree I'm all for it being aligned from the top all the way down so I think this puts it in alignment and I think it looks great thank you for your question because I I you explained it and it was pretty much what I was thinking but I'm glad we explained it to everybody in that when I think of the scorecard I think of our goals that we come up with for Dr Davidson and then that's performance or whatever end of the year money versus when we do the evaluation side it's a separate piece so um I I like that we are making it consistent across all levels it will make it
159much easier for everyone and we can just make sure everything aligns all the way down so thank you guys again for all of the work that's happening to get this put together I'm going to now hand it over to Sandy for uh our continued discussion thank you each year we update Staffing at our schools based on defined Staffing standards and formulas we would like to share a summary of proposed changes that resulted from this process this year as shown we would see a reduction of 1.0 certified staff funded through M for a total reduction of $26,000 the reduction of a 0.5 related services provider so those are our psychologist speech language Etc uh and a reduction of .125 full-time equivalent from our classified staff the related services provider and the classified reductions actually result in
160a cost increase the basis for this for the related the basis for this for the related services provider is the reduction of two psychology interns uh but the increase of a trained psychologist by 1.5 FTE in our classified changes positions collapsed were primarily general education instructional AIDS based on changes in projected enrollments these collapses were offset and caused by increases in special education self-contained assistants who are more highly compensated due to additional hourly stiens these positions receive the position requests and position modifications presented at our last budget discussion will result in an increased cost to the m budget M fund excuse me of a little more than $26,000 this slide shows the cost of other budget initiatives we discussed last meeting the longevity stiens are expected to cost the M fund of 189,000 the compression
161adjustments for those on the teacher placement chart are expected to cost $91,000 and the improvements to the district's return to work program are expected to cost $47,000 for a total of $ 327,00 we have also included our slides from the last board meeting in case there are additional questions on those topics at this point we are prepared to answer questions on any item we've discussed tonight or in our previous discussion Miss Maran I don't have any questions on this section but I just want to say I appreciate the transparency of you bringing and highlighting to us like a $10,000 change because that's really immaterial for the whole budget but I appreciate that um it just illustrates to us the level of detail that you and your departments are willing to go to to Really scour
162and make sure that we are including everything we need to include and excluding everything that we can thank you Mr Mike yeah I was maybe had a question about um as far as when the analysis is analysis was done if you could maybe a higher level idea because it's kind of new to me the what what uh where you went out to kind of find that information in order to figure out where those levels would be would be set when you went out and assessed other districts I'm assuming and are you talking about the compensation study adjustments okay so uh I'm super excited to talk about that because I love I jump the gun but uh okay um so each year we engage with uh outside party to help us look at placement charts of
163other surrounding districts and we do tend to look at geographically close districts because when you think about um what our compens what our compensation needs to allow us to compete in it's is in the geographic area for for employees so for example we're not competing much with Mesa Public Schools because we're so far far apart from Mesa and so we look at at districts that are geographically close to us and we look at the starting pay on the placement chart we can we take an average of those districts um and what we've set our goal to be is to be at least average so we uh look at what our placement chart is uh versus that average and then uh the very fun part is looking at each individual employee that is impacted uh at
164Higher by that placement chart it is important to understand that once an employee is hired in the district future compensation is not driven by the placement chart it's driven by the raises that the governing board approves through the through the process but the reason we look at existing employees as it relates to the placement chart is we're trying to avoid void compression or the situation when existing employees are paid less than what a very similar employee would make if they came to us uh new because what you can what you experience in districts that don't do that review is it can actually be in an employees best interest to leave us for a year and then come back I don't want employees in a position where they can make more money leaving us for a
165year and then coming back so what we do is after we determine what that new placement chart would look like to make sure that we're at that average starting pay we look at the years of experience that employee has and then replace them on the chart We compare that to what the proposed raise uh would mean and so we look at which is more beneficial to the employee being replaced based on the chart honoring all of their years of experience just like we would a new hire or the 2% raise that's being proposed uh for all employees and so you can have instances where for some employees uh in in an employee group The 2% is more advantageous or you can and some employees being replaced is more advantageous that's why that additional work of
166comparing which is more advantageous to the employee is important because we're not trying to take compensation away from employees we're trying to ensure that we're as competitive as we can be does that help answer the question yeah thanks for jumping ahead for me yeah Mr Owens no questions Miss Wallace no questions but as I said last meeting thank you for your work in that that's very important and I'm glad that you do that I don't have any questions either thank you guys for all of this information it has been very helpful for us as we move forward in this budget discussion thank you okay we are going to move on now to the next item which is the middle of year assessment and achievement update and this is going to be by Dr doozy and
167Mr Owen not to be confused with Mr Owens that's sitting up here with us they have very similar names and haircuts and haircuts that's true good evening Madame President board members my fellow abinet cabinet members and the community if you're still tuned in and we're going to talk about some achievement um so hopefully we're all still awake um so um I have some great um staff here to help me present um today um Brian Owen our director of assessment accountability Allison Paterno our district literacy coach um Carrie Farnsworth District math coach and then myself um Dr Bridget dooy Deputy superintendent of academic success all right so the purpose of why here with you today is that we would like to provide the board and our community an update on our most recent student achievement data
168um based on our midyear assessment in our Benchmark assessment I ready and um our aadience data this is aligned this is all about our kids um in the way that we prepare them to be ready the relationships that we build the connections that we make and how we're using our resources so definitely um you know our overall mission is Student Success so I will turn things over to U Mr Owens and he will get us started good evening Madame President members of the board don't have my contacts in so I actually have to read it from my computer I just want to give a quick overview of our district Benchmark Assessment program they are standards based assessments currently we administer math reading science in in August December uh and aprilay these are standards based tests
169that are aligned to the state blueprints uh in those three subject areas of the math reading and science components and state test I want to show you what the winter data point looks like this year this is in math and reading this takes the winter from the current school year winter 2024 and I'm comparing percent correct to the percent correct on winter last year in 2023 and of course there is a one foot note um the winter test last year was given at a later time in the year we tested after winter break last year and then and we tested before winter break this year so that could have an impact but I don't have a way to assess the extent of any impact but what I see when I look at these percentages I
170do want to say also these are the same tests so these are comparable data points with maybe a slight um caveat that they were given at a slightly different time I see a lot of consistency about this time of year last year uh students are scoring right about the same place uh this year as they were last year and then we'll see that in the next two slides as well I just the key uh student groups that we look at I see a lot of consistency this is math and in Reading let's take a look at science this is a new science benchmark this year so we have not given it uh we did not give it last year so I don't have any context to interpret what this increase means but I will say
171I was surprised to see a nine and 10 percentage Point increase from August to December so in my mind even though I don't have any data to support that yet I do believe looking at this that we're going to see increases in our state Science assessment this year I didn't expect to see quite that large of a jump um in those four short months the other thing I like to do is look at the indicators of proficiency so what we see here is the spring 2024 aasa proficiency that's the the left most blue bar for each of the grade levels so it's math and Ela for the state assessment and then math and reading for a district assessment and then we have the a proficiency indicator or our best prediction given current scores in the
172fall of this year and in the winter of this year these are the same tests I went over the summer I went back and aligned last year's benchmarks to the state assessment to realign cut points the cut points this year are different than they were last year and this is this is what we're looking at the fall does look a little bit off here in some of the reading distributions and really that's just because so the fall is the the the weakest predictor of performance in April once we hit winter we start to get a little closer to the state assessment time and also what we see too is more variation in the distribution some of these fall data points because they're first week of school second week of school they're low distributions they have
173low means and they have low standard deviations which means we have a lot of students scoring the same score and so setting cut points around blocks of students at the same RW score can get a little bit tricky and then by the winter we start to see more variation in the distributions and we can start to then separate groups of performers across the proficiency categories and these are just the summary of the key observations that I've that I talked about and then I want to introduce one one last thing uh for the second year we administered a Civics assessment this is a high school graduation requirement for the class of 2027 and this we pass let's see 1,200 students were uh took the test more than 84% of them met the passing requirement and then
174in May we're going to administer a makeup assessment or for any new students for students that either didn't pass or didn't get the opportunity to take the test can I ask a question really quick about the Civics test just because I have a senior obviously we didn't do it before then and they do it now um when they take this test they have to take this with no like help of any kind when the test yes during the live test session right we run it just like a secure test session where they can't get help or use their notes just just to point out at the high school level that is not the case so just checking well what I would like to point out about the Civics assessment results is the fact that we
175clearly have a high success rate despite not having social studies curriculum in middle school yeah we do uh give out a study guide so materials are distributed to the the schools to distribute to students for this test sorry didn't AR you and I'd like to turn it over to Alison Paterno to talk about Acadian data acadians is our Universal literacy screener that meets the move on when reading requirements in Arizona revised Statute 15704 Acadian Universal screening is administered one-on-one in the fall winter and spring the Acadian subtests measure early reading skills from kindergarten through fifth grade these measures are different from and complimentary to the district benchmark assessments that director Owen just spoke about aadience measures the foundational subskills that it takes to read skillfully whereas our district benchmarks assess reading comprehension which is the
176outcome of those subskills the main role of aadience like all Universal literacy screeners is to identify students who are at risk for reading difficulties students who fall below or well below the Acadian Benchmark targets participate in additional diagnostic assessments to determine their specific needs when looking at aadience data the subskill scores are calculated into a composite score that represents the students overall proficiency the composite score is the most predictive um of a student's likelihood to achieve future reading outcomes when looking at a Cadian state of this evening we'll be looking at the percentage of students who have met the winter Benchmark Targets in their composite scores this slide is here so you can see the early literacy skills that are assessed on a cadians in each grade one important thing to point out is that
177the Benchmark targets increase throughout the year so when we see even small gains in the percent of students at Benchmark that represents very significant growth in these reading subskills the moving targets is the reason that it's often helpful to compare year-over-year data from the same reporting period which is what we'll do this evening here you'll see our midyear Cadian data this winter compared to last winter in each grade level we see that all grades EX kindergarten grew in the percentage of students at are above Benchmark this winter compared to last winter the percentage of third grade students at our above Benchmark is the same as last year the largest growth growth from last winter is seen in first grade with a 5% increase of students at or above Benchmark this data indicates that we are
178steadily increasing reading subskill proficiency and that students are retaining and applying foundational skills over time and these are the key obervations we just discussed as a summary for your reference I reading is a computer-based adaptive assessment administered to all middle school students in the fall winter and spring data is reported on the main reading domains pheic awareness phonics vocabulary and comprehension of informational and literary text this slide presents beginning of year to middle of year I ready Ela diagnostic data for all students I'll pause for just a moment for you to look at the data presented on this slide this slide presents the same data as the last slide but it's broken down by grade in all grade levels we see decreases in the number of students two to three grade levels below and increases
179in students at or above grade level and now I'll turn it over to Carrie forworth to present math data I guess I have to push the right button apologize all right next we will review the I ready math diagnostic which is an Adaptive assessment administered to all K8 students in the fall winter and spring by adjusting question difficulty based on student responses it efficiently pinpoints the students ability level the assessment measures understanding across four key mathematical domains number and operations algebra and algebraic thinking measurement and data and geometry growth goals are set based on National averages with the aim of exceeding 100% of typ of typical growth each year ensuring mean meaningful progress toward grade level proficiency this data helps teachers personalized instruction provide targeted support and monitor student growth When comparing our districtwide fall
180performance to National and state benchmarks our initial placement data closely aligned with national Norms as we examine our fall to winter relative placement change we see meaningful shifts in student performance reflecting both individual placement changes or individual progress and Collective growth these insights allow us to refine instruction provide timely support and stay focused on our year-end growth goal of exceeding 100% of typical growth as we analyze fall to winter growth we see shifts in student placements indicating progress ac across all grade levels this slide helps move helps highlight movement between proficiency levels showcasing the impact of instruction and our targeted interventions notably we see an increase in the percentage of students performing at or above grade level and a decrease in those performing two or more grade levels below a significant portion of our student
181population remains in that one grade level below category we see similar trends in our Middle School grades with students making progress across proficiency levels this slide shows the median growth across all placement levels within each grade level where the median represents that middle student sitting between the least growth and the most growth in our data at this point in the year the expected growth was 56% toward that typical annual growth there are notable celebrations in both first and fifth grade across all grade levels the data shows that students in that two and three or more grade levels below have demonstrated the most growth an area of opportunity is supporting the growth of students who are ready for grade level instruction and Beyond and here is a summary of the key observations we talked about and
182I'm going to hand it over to Dr so as with any other data that we use um really it's about how we use this data in the cycle of continuous Improvement and so we really need to make decisions on how we take this data and move our ourselves into action oops so the first action step I'd like to share is how the scorecard work is applied um into that continuous Improvement cycle each site leader um we we've we've provided this to the community and to the board as an overarching as a district each school is able to look at this data based on their site specifically and based on that data um they were able to do a reflection with their scorecard and I've just shown a sample up here on what the process looked
183like with their guiding Coalition or their leadership team where they reviewed each of their achievement goals and their other goals for their other keystones and really tracked it to say are we on target are we above Target are we on target are we still in progress um do we still need to address some areas and then also looking at those action steps on the scorecard to say okay what action steps have we completed what action steps are still in progress what action steps have we not started yet that maybe we do need to get started on or maybe we need to abandon that action step because we found it not to be as relevant or meaningful and then what action steps we do we need to add to our scorecard um to get to the
184results that we seek and then as you can see I've put a model in what one of the scorecards look like from one of our leaders in that process thank you so I want to talk about some of my action steps with this data that um that I share I've created more data reports for this winter Administration than I think I have for any other District administration um but the thing is just looking at a data report isn't going to solve anything so what I focus on is going out to schools and training what reports do we have available what are they telling us how to find them I've created a number of custom reports also and uh I also do other trainings like searching through the item Banks to create their own assessments for
185uh cfas and knowledge checks and of course this is the the main one that I do so that to help them create their own assessments is creating publishing and administering assessments at the school sites I'll turn it over to Alis immediately following winter testing window each sit's reading specialist worked with grade level teams to analyze aadience and diagnostic data they group students according to similar needs and have been providing targeted interventions and enrichment this slide shows an example of the Sorting grids used here at Lichfield Elementary School this example is from a second grade um class and you can see how it guides teachers through collaborative databased decision-making using Universal screening and diagnostic data a similar process happened at all campuses that serve kindergarten through fifth grade students students director wood and I also met
186with each Elementary principal to look at their Acadian data we identified Trends and planned action and support in any areas that were concerning together we also looked at the move on when reading student watch list that director Owen creates for us we made sure that interventions and instructional supports are being provided to each student on this list whose data is flagged as consistently low as a reminder mower legislation from ARS 15710 requires that an Arona student not be promoted from third grade if the student does not demonstrate sufficient reading skills on the reading portion of aasa this action step is an extra layer of protection in supporting students who are at risk of falling into that category our team of reading specialist is continuing to provide intensive professional development on the science of reading which
187directly influences our teachers instructional practice in teaching the basic reading skills reflected in this data our reading specialist and I develop this PD series to meet the legislative requirements of ARS 15501 which mandates that all K5 teachers who teach literacy in any capacity earn their literacy endorsement by 2028 we're very proud to be the only District in the entire State of Arizona to have our own coursework on ad's list of approved trainings this offers the benefit of providing our teachers not only in-depth training on the science of reading for free and during their professional day but also allows us to contextualize that knowledge so that our students our programs and our systems and our curriculum are reflected in that we'll complete part A in April and we'll begin Part B next year I'd be happy
188to work with Dr dooy executive director Benjamin and director wood to provide more information about this initiative if you'd be interested sorry I forgot to advance to that slide a committee has been working on a framework to guide Ela databased decision- making at the middle school level as as well our goal is to increase consistency in how to use the data to group students and provide targeted support at all tiers of instruction you can see in the draft presented that it uses I ready data and our district Benchmark data to sort students into four main groups and for each of these groups instructional adaptations and resources are recommended to scaffold and support students at each tier this is in draft form it's been introduced to some teacher teams who are providing feedback and will also
189be taken to our instructional coaches and Middle School princip to make revisions and with that I'll turn it over to Carrie BR all right tonight I will be highlighting four key action steps currently underway to strengthen mathematics instruction and student learning first each school has hosted an I ready professional learning specialist for a full day session by selecting a topic and a date that best fits their needs these sessions provided targeted professional development to strengthen math instruction and support student achievement topics have included making math accessible through purposeful questioning supporting productive struggle and differentiate differentiated strategies and scaffolds the goal was to deepen teacher content knowledge and ensure students receive the support they need to succeed second site-based math Specialists have worked with grade level teams to identify students and provide targeted support by bridging
190by bridging prerequisite skill gaps to ensure those students have access to grade level tier one instruction additionally instructional coaches have explored effective teaching practices routines and strategic teacher moves to enh to enhance student learning in grade level mathematics they then collaborated to create teacher training that was aimed to strengthen instruction and increase student engagement lastly each quarter during districtwide professional development a teacher from each team has met in grade level bands to strengthen tier one instruction these sessions have focused on engaging students in the standards for mathematical practice and planning routines that Foster meaningful student discourse do you guys have any questions for us miss marand do you have questions I don't have a question but I have a comment which is to say that this is not you know figuring out the action steps
191is not my area of expertise I definitely rely on you know all of you to to know what you're doing when it comes to that but what I can appreciate out of this presentation is that I have felt the shift from being primarily reactive to the data to now reacting but also taking proactive steps to get us where we need to be and that reaction piece seems more agile to me than it ever has been before and I think part of that is because of the way we are gathering and disseminating the data and the information and I think Brian always knew the power of the data but now more of our teachers and our administrators and campus site leaders and all that understand the power of that also because you all have helped to
192explain how it can be applied better so I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor and all these action steps um being put into place um but I appreciate again just the what's strikes me about this entire board meeting tonight is the thoughtful action that this team is putting into the work that we're doing and I really appreciate that Mr thank you Mr Mike um just a curiosity question I don't know the answer how long have we how long have we used I ready and then the same with the with um the acadians so this is our third year using I ready and then aadience has been around a very long time or we're previously it was called Dibbles okay I just kind of curious on on the implementation I can say Dibbles
193has probably been around since 2000 like 2002 2003 we're guessing okay all right that was my curiosity question um when I this is insane the on the data breakdown to me and what you guys uh are doing with it so often we have all this data and we're swimming around in it and then we don't have a so what piece it's like oh hey thanks you know this is not going well with reading or this is you know we're making growth here but if somebody said oh how do you use these assessments I mean you could show them this PowerPoint with the comparison of the data and then linking the action steps to it and how it's actually being implemented in the classroom is is amazing to me to see how fine-tuned it is and
194so I appreciate how it's how you um attacked it and um I guess I guess my one question after that is as it finally gets back down into hopefully we can get back into the tier one instructional pieces how is how are these conversations evolving and helping with the impact of what's going on in the classrooms then after all of this maybe just a kind of a generalized kind of high level thought high level thought on that so just to clarify your question as far as how does this data impact tier one instruction yeah um yes so as as all the principles are working on their scorecard and raising student achievement tier one practices those best practices definitely is an action step to enhance um we've been doing a lot of work around our high
195impact teams and what we call lift form which is feedback on those tier one best practices so really drilling down by team by grade what are the practices that are well established what are the practices that we need to increase to get better results so really it's up to the principal and their guiding coalition to take this data and then apply it to the relevant teams based on what they need so because each grade level team and A lot of times right now the teachers even wasn't a requirement this year but a lot of the principles not only did grade level goals for reading and math but each of their teachers also did goals based on their class so so really it's very individualized on what they need to do to impact their tier one
196instruction thank you Mr Owens definitely want to reiterate the work that was done and the power of the numbers and the data and how also I'm not an expert on trying to micromanage on how to you know increase the numbers that's on that's on you and that's I get paid the big bucks but um I do have a couple things that I would like to see um as far as the data I understand that we're using the data to um identify students where they need to move you know where they need uh extra instruction and whatnot but you have it on one slide where you compare us to the national average and the state average I personally would really like to see as many metrics as possible where we Stack Up against a national state
197average and even maybe a couple of the top performing districts in the state where we again use this data at our district level and on an individual basis for our students I think it's important for our community members I think it's important for our students to know and there there might be some that's not right if it's if it's District assessment but if it's a standardized test wherever there's opportunity I I would appreciate get the opportunity to see that because I think that paints a bigger picture especially when we are outperforming um where a 43% looks dismal but compared to a 37 or 38 average wow okay you know we're dealing we're we're performing better than everybody else or a majority of people absolutely and for our ASA data we'll definitely have that prepared for
198you because we are able to compare um ourselves against um our comparable districts our peer groups correct Brian our peer groups as well as you know the top performers in the state so we'll definitely have that prepared for you when we do our final outcome report um you are correct The Benchmark assessment is our own internal test so we don't really have a comparison but I ready um they share with us um National with other schools that are using I ready um and then acadians I'm not sure there okay yeah so definitely we can that's something we can bring back um to the board um maybe for the year end to to see how we compare um nationally to other schools that use a cadians as an assessment tool for that Reading Readiness okay and
199maybe you can ask them why we can't bring back dible I like that more um one last question and uh so if we have students that are performing at three grade levels below in both math and reading why are they still why are they in a higher grade right if you have a second grader or a fourth grader who in third grade was reading at two at two or three grade levels behind and it math at two or three grade levels behind why did they is there is there a statute a law what is the reasoning for advancing them the next grade at least the district policy or or state standards or whatever it is just have an understanding because now that kids further students further behind and they never mastered it again so big
200picture if you can explain that and I know it's outside the data but it is a a more so what I'm able to share with you this evening is there's a lot of variables that that we look at when we are looking at retention or promotion of a student um and so promotion or retention is a type of intervention it's not the answer for all interventions um by State statue we do look at under the law we do look at their academic performance their attendance um I will say that some students are two to three grade levels below it's not uncommon that they also are identified as a student with a disability um and so the IEP team their individual education program team would determine if retention or promoting them whichever way they decide which
201one is the best intervention based on their category of disability because if you're if you have a disability that that might not be an intervention strategy that will really benefit you as a student because you're disability is not going to change by your grade level you're in and you might continuously need um personalized individualized instruction throughout your entire education um to get you to be where you are a successful adult um so um so typically when students are that far below um there's other things other factors um it could also be our students that are um showing less proficiency as English language Learners so taking those taking those tests um does require skills in language and so sometimes we see that and so again same same consideration the teacher team will have to decide the
202teachers actually by Statute are the ones that decide on promotion or retention and so they'll use their data to determine if it's the right intervention for that student so yeah and those those um the reason I asked that question is just to reinforce how important the data is because then that data allows us to identify those individual students and give them the assessment or or then figure out and identify them in whether it be an IEP or you know unfortunately a retention or not but regardless we have that data so yes sir yes Miss Wallace I don't have any questions I am always Lov data as much as a kindergarden first grade teacher hates doing those tests because that grade level is very time intensive um I always loved getting the data back and and
203seeing that grow so I love seeing the data here and then um I know the slide kind of jumped or missed on 30 slide 30 there um but I absolutely love that we are teaching the science of reading reading is such a complicated thing to teach comparatively to math math is very black and white reading is very great area and very hard to understand the science behind and I love the action step there of continuing to provide that professional development so I know you said you were really excited about that and that is that is my favorite slide as far as the different steps that we're doing so thank you for that uh I don't have any questions thank you guys for this information it's a lot of information but it's really helpful for us
204to kind of see where we're at where we've been where we're headed for the end of the year I'm excited too to see where our science goes because that science looked really awesome I know we don't have anything to compare it to in the past but it looks really good for this year so I'm going to have fingers crossed that that means really good things for us at the end of the year when we do our end of year assessments um and thank you guys for just continuously trying to improve our processes so that our kids can keep doing better and learning more so thank you thank you and president Zid if you don't mind if make one more comment just about our team here behind me um they're all members of our district guiding
205Coalition that was started um about about six months after I started in my position and I can just tell you that just how much support and a foundation of love and empowerment and those action steps that are happening at schools um wouldn't be possible without our district guiding Coalition and they're in the background they don't really get a lot of attention or kudos for the hard work they do so I just wanted to just thank them is only part of our team here tonight but definitely appreciate their hard work and efforts um in helping support our schools yes thank you and thank you to the three of you that have hung out with us to this very long meeting tonight to come share your stuff at the very end we really do appreciate it and
206it was engaging enough that we're all still awake and paying attention and we really love the information thank you guys so much again Madam president before they leave as well if you don't mind I just like to make a comment I do think Miss uh Miss Moran was kind of reading my mind that's happened the last few meetings um but often I I get accused of stealing people Thunder but Bridget just stole mine um and I also just want to add Mr Owens Ryan your comment cracked me up because we do look at data we do ask for what probably feels like random or strange requests as relates to numbers but I but I think many of you nailed it it's it's what do we do with that and so I to Bridges point on
207applauding our team our team is working really hard to support our staff those in the trenches but but doing in a way that's teaching them not just giving them information but teaching them how to use that information to make gains on behalf of our students and so I just wanted to you know highlight overall the work that you all are doing and thank you and thanks for bearing with us with our our Auto request sometimes so thank you Miss Ida okay that wraps up all of the items on our agenda so Mr Owens this is your cue move to adj the meeting I second having a motion from Mr Owens and a second for Miss Wallace I'll call for the vote Miss Moran yay Mr Mike yay Mr Owens yay Miss Wallace yay I'm also
208yay motion passes good night everybody thanks for joining us