Governing Board Study Session and Regular Meeting - February 12th, 2026

001Welcome this evening to our study session. If you'll please stand for a moment of silence. Thank you. May be seated. I call the study session to order at 5:02. And we would like to welcome Dr. Eastless and Mr. Wing virtually. They are having some technical difficulties. So, they cannot talk to us, but they can hear us and they will be sending any communication through Dr. Stro. So, thank you for being virtual. Um, tonight we're getting an update on some schools that were working through a participary staffing process. Um, I believe Miss Montes will take us start us off tonight and we'll be hearing from principal about their experiences. We will have 20 minutes for the presentation and then we'll start with one question per board member and u to make sure everyone can get a

002question in. and Miss Chaffy, when we start questions, I'm going to go to my left. So, anyway, I'll turn the time over to Miss Montes. >> Okay. Can you hear me? Good evening, President Davis and members of the board and superintendency. Today, we're going to be going through participatory staffing, which um Dr. Gibbs and I have had the pleasure to be working with some amazing principles. This way. There we go. Okay. So to start exploring staffing models in a study session last year around this time, the governing board participated in a school revenue expense staffing analysis. I believe some of you were here or went through that and really understood our budget in our revenue system. Participatory really means that it's unique programming in a sense to really bring all of our stakeholders together to

003really think about our revenue and how we can think about our schools differently. And all stakeholders you'll see tonight also included some students as well. So we had students, we had community members, families, and our staff certified and classified. There we go. What this could mean, it's really thinking about the revenues that each school is taking in and seeing if they can get to a 5 to 10% output of their revenues. So thinking about that might really think look different from school to school and really think outside of the box and what staffing could look like very similar to like a Mesa Academy or Franklin because their staffings are different. So some of the things that might come up from it is really thinking about what do stakeholders prefer. So it could be thinking about

004a music academy. So on really focusing on music academy, what are the other things that we might have to put aside or think about specials differently at those schools. So the approach for the participatory staffing was really the focus was how can schools creative creatively my glasses aren't working or something staff through their schools in a time of declining revenues. So it really was a think tank for them to bring all stakeholders together and to really think outside of the box to maybe reimagine the way positions would be maybe staffing really thinking about how they could get to a 5 to 10% of their revenue that they're taking in. So through this process, Dr. Gibbs and I thought about what does this look like? So we created an acronym because you know we love acronyms.

005So we created the MESA committee thinking about how do we include all stakeholders. So really the M standing for multistakeholders really thinking about how do we bring a school's community in place so everyone has voice really engaging them in data and activities where they understand the focus and the solutions that could be coming and then any type of advisory so thinking about some recommendations or advising of their communities. So with that, I now have the amazing pleasure to introduce Holly Chang, Principal Holly Chang from Washington and she can share her experience. Okay, so we had good good evening everybody. Um good evening. Um so we had 13 approximately 13 families that we did get a response back and or participated in meetings um and that those meetings were held for about an hour and a

006half to two hours after school and they were multileveled where we worked through a ver variety of different processes and through that we also discovered that we needed to collect voices from students as well. So, we did also do a student survey for some of our older students. And what that group really landed on is is that the voice was is that we would become an arts maybe and science academy um and change some of our special offerings and we would maybe look at having some different types of specials as well as some of maybe eliminating the ones that are in the district's core right now. Um, however, with that meant that we would have to reduce some supports in some areas and also beef up some support in other areas. There would have to

007be contract changes and we could always talk about eliminating positions or reducing positions, but we knew that then we would have to ultimately fill those positions with somebody in them like for duty and playground and cafeteria. So, those were areas that might have some shifting responsibilities onto other people. Um, and then as we know we're declining every year, we would have to revisit this to ensure that we are using this staff that we have because even though we created this uh plan, we know that that necessarily won't work the next year going forward if we are declining enrollment. Thank you, Principal Chang. Our next principal is Dr. Tennich from Okconor. >> Good evening board members and superintendency. I want to thank you for allowing us to share our findings because this is something we've spent

008a great deal of time on. So it's nice to be able to share that with you. So we also took very small groups last year when we started this in February. We went ahead and initiated focus groups within our school. We brought f in family members. We brought in um teachers of course and then students to figure out you know just where we wanted to go and then we became more focused this year with looking at the exact things we're going to what are our non-negotiables what do we value which direction do we want to go that was the premise of what we were looking at um we had invited three family members from each grade level to have a very good representation we wanted to make sure we looked at the full demographics so

009we looked at um making making sure we had different race, different demographics as far as um you know who might be you know those lower income families. So we had a good representation of that. Um we wanted to recognize the fact that um with the loss of staff that we have been experiencing for the last few years, it does not take away from the jobs that still have to be done. And that's kind of the position we're in now is that um you can only you can only spread people so thin. So, for example, we have our library aid. She is also our crossing guard. She teaches tier three instruction for a great portion of her day and she monitors all of our lunchroom. This is very much like what all of our staff does

010because we wanted to get past the not my job, not my role. Um, and just said here we have these babies in front of us and we need to teach them. And so, we were wanted to provide them for that. When we started looking at this, the biggest thing we came across is we need to be equitable with what we are providing. If we want to have families continue to come to us, if we start cutting all of these different things, they're going to choose something else because they want their kids to have those opportunities. Can't blame them for that, right? They want to have those same things that their neighbors or somebody down the road might have. Um, we also wanted to take a minute to recognize the fact that there is something to

011celebrate in small schools. We actually do live by the promise. We know our kids and we know what their strengths and needs are. And so we can actually, you know, you put a baby in front of us and we could tell you where they're performing, what their what their strengths are and what kind of interventions we are providing for them. So I think that there's, you know, a lot of times we look at how do we fix this? How do we fix this? But there's also something to celebrate within that. Thank you. Okay. And last but not least, Principal Eileen >> McFarland. >> Oh, McFarland. That's right. Hello. Good evening. Other direction. >> Sorry. Sorry. So, Lehi, the first thing we wanted to do is make sure that our entire community was aware of uh

012the roles and the expenses that are included in running a school. The same activity that we did here with our governing board members, we did a parentfriendly version of that um activity and it was very insightful as well as with our teachers. It was very insightful for them as well. They were shocked about some of the expenses and costs even um running at where we are now at Lehi now. We even run it at a very um tight um with our budget. So, uh just one member not being present, one classified staff member impacts the entire campus. So, um we did classroom restaffing. We knew that in order for us to get close to that 5 10% that was going to require a larger reduction in our certified roles. Uh so we did the same

013activity that we did here with our governing board members and even after we went through the entire budget it was very stressful for my staff members and also my families. My families were concerned with um what would be available for their students if they continued uh without certain roles. Our families really needed to know the definition of each role. They weren't for sure the impact of certain roles because they had no connection to it directly. And for example, if their student wasn't receiving sped services, then they were not sure um if reducing a position in those areas how much of an impact that would be on their campus. Uh our staff demonstrated a lot of anxiety around the unknowns and what could happen from these changes and it made them think that maybe this was

014something that was just isolated for them as a campus. That caused a lot of anxiety with our uh staff as well. They thought hey we're hearing one thing about you know maintaining our enrollment at our campus and um not losing contracts. So there was some stress around what that meant for them directly and hearing about other campus changes. So they were wondering um how much that would impact our campus directly versus other campuses alto together doing the work. Um again like I shared at the beginning uh we run a very uh uh tight ship at Lehigh with our uh staffing right now. So um with filling positions so the question was how much more can we reduce our staffing and continue to function at the levels that we want to be able to perform for

015our community. It's good to be with you tonight. Um so just to kind of what are some takeaways from this process over the last couple of months. Um we'll just start with a very basic one, very practical one and that's simply that the timeline we found out even with working with just a few small schools is that we really want to start a process like this um earlier like in the prior year. Um, part of the reason for that is that you want to be able to set up and put things on the calendar so that when the new year comes in, you've already got those big pieces, those chunks set up and you're ready to go and folks can be brought made aware of that at your back to school nights. And um, and

016it makes the scheduling a lot easier because it is tough to get families out to these events. Um going a little deeper uh one of the components that I think uh one of the takeaways from this process is the need to understand um what solutions are sustainable across changes in leadership. So you have you have ideas that the community comes up with and then the question is okay we have a teacher who's really got the capa we have a leader who's really good at this who has the capacity to execute on this but is this something that's a sustainable approach a sustainable solution down the road. One of the takeaways is just understanding the leader and the capacity for sustainability. U another component that we um another piece another takeaway that we brought away from

017this process is that it's important for schools not just these three schools but all the schools that are involved in a region perhaps or the district to be going through this at a similar time. Um for a couple reasons. One if you decide as a school okay we're going to make all these cuts. We found with these communities that parents are like, "Well, we don't want to be the only school to have to make these kind of a cuts and then nobody's going to want to come to our school because there's another school down the down the street who's operating in a 10-year-old staffing model and off they go." So, it's like they're if they don't that if they make these changes, they'll be the only one in town doing it. So, there needs to

018be a larger coordination. Secondly, uh just for title one purposes and you need to have similar staffing ratios um across similar schools. So you can't take two or three schools and do it needs it needs coordination across regions and across the district. Um then um the and I guess that leads into the next step is that this coordination across the district is important because um a lot of the resources in a single school might be might be of value to other schools in the area. For instance, not all schools have a preschool and a preschools are expensive to run. But if one preschool is serving a number of other schools in the area under that's a feeder preschool for several other kindergartens, then we need to take that into account when we think about their

019staffing models and what their expenses are. Sometimes other programs like gifted programs or other programs might be built to one school, but actually other schools benefit from that. So we need to be taking that into consideration in how we um and how we measure the um the impact of the programs. Then um uh one of the one of the really interesting things that came out of this and and our principles were just talking about this is that the parents really began to kind of understand um what it takes to make schools work and the constraints that we have financially. And it was very interesting. I I when one of the conversations with the parent that I was able to watch um you could see the parent kind of at the beginning like there's no way

020no we're not going to do this we're not going to do this and as the principal began to kind of unpack it with the parent you slowly began to see the realization I I guess I guess there really isn't any way to do this we've got to we've got to be able to think differently about things and that conversation allowed that parent to kind of open up to seeing things differently so having these broader discussions about the finances um led to greater understanding and then Um, in terms of financial viability, as was just referenced, it's it's tough to go from small to a very small school and still be financially sustainable is extremely difficult, if not impossible in some cases. So, um, that is one of the things that came out of this. And if

021it's going to if we're going to prioritize neighborhood schools, then there needs to be some other some further creative ways to make that happen. Because at this point, the solutions the families came up with, a lot of them were just um some of them came up with the cuts. But now that there's a new school year coming in and in some cases enrollment is projected to be even lower, some of those models might not work next year. So, um program cuts would have to be made and those cuts are often very difficult and painful to see go. But there's there's no other way in these cases in the samples that we looked at with these three schools. There's no other way to make it work. Um so [clears throat] the parents have to wrestle with

022that in the process of doing that this year. Um there was progress made there. Then uh so at at at this I guess in summary at the district collaboration coordination regional levels um these finances cannot be done in isolation at a single school. Um each school has unique offerings and they needs to be coordinated across a region so that not all schools want to do the same kind of special programming. Um there needs to be coordination across the district across the across the regions too. And at this point like doing this again next year with individual schools and this this way we found out this year it really needs that larger level coordination. So it's not we wouldn't necessarily take this particular approach next year. We would kind of look at a way to implement

023this at a broader scale. So, um, some of the takeaways and we'll be happy to, um, have a conversation. >> And just to kind of summarize, one of the things that our humble leaders um, did not mention and as a former principal myself, it also would put strain on instructional leadership because it will pull their roles to be very different in a smaller space. So when we're thinking about our goals with achievement and ensuring that our kids are getting the best learning possible, it stretches leaders in a way that they're not in classrooms. They can't they have to be covering duties. They have to be I mean we already do things like that, but it will stretch their role. So the principal ship at a very smaller small school would even look very different and

024I don't know what do we sacrifice, right? Do we sacrifice educating and what we're known to be and what we need to be doing with kids to stretching our instructional leaders to be away from that and further away from that? So, at this time, make sure there we go. Yes. Is there any questions for our leaders or for any of us through this experience? Just I want to start by saying thank you. Thank you for being here. And um we'll start with Mrs. Chaffy. >> Yeah, thank you again. I really appreciate the work that you do for our staff and especially with our students and I've seen the work that you do on our campuses and I really appreciate it. Um, I know that this is something we did as a board was sit down

025and kind of go through the spreadsheet and how difficult it was. You know, I I remember us having conversations about well how how do we make sure that the kids get everything that they need and we recognize that every site had unique challenges. And we talked about some schools need more crossing guard coverage versus other ones just depending on bus ridership and who's biking and how students are getting there. So I recognize that we have complicated problems. Um but it was really insightful to know that just giving the autonomy to each campus doesn't solve the problem that it creates a lot of problems for principles and also financially how do we manage this across regions. So I appreciate that insight. I don't know who I'm directing this question to exactly, so I'm just going to

026throw it out there. Are there ways that we can use flexible staffing models at our sites without a full like participatory staffing model? Are there ways that we can kind of flex it and maybe still meet the needs of individual sites without doing a full participatory model? >> Um, well, I mean, anything is possible, right? Um I think the question is more could we do that but what are we going to give up right because just they talked about you know at O' Conor really stretching their staff and how much burnout right how much can we put on our people to continue to function on an everyday at a campus and so could we do it possibly but it would be very difficult and at what cost >> member Chaffy appreciate Miss [clears throat] Montaz's

027response. I also want to add uh if you know the journey of uh teaming models in the state of Arizona uh might be linked to opportunity culture. Opportunity culture started out of North Carolina back in and uh we were approached on teaming models in 2016 out of Arizona State University with the idea that you'll have one master I mean the idea the original idea was you'll have one master teacher and then several instructional assistants helping out that master teacher. So you get down and the idea was if you can run a school like that, you might be able to reduce some of your overhead of running the school and then as schools get smaller, you might be able to manage the school getting smaller through this type of model. Um what we found is that

028type of model uh doesn't really resonate with parents. They don't really want one master teacher and four instructional assistants in in a classroom of 70. And then recently in cooperation uh with a third-party uh company, we've shipped our financial data over to that third party company. Mr. Dr. Gibbs is part of this process as well. And we've gotten reports back that the teameming model is actually slightly more expensive than the traditional model of education. And so, you know, Mesa Public Schools has tried a bunch of stuff and this was just another portion of trying another element to get uh five communities involved in figuring out whether we could match the revenue side and the expense side. And here's what's happening from a bigger district level. Just so you're aware, when we had really big high

029schools and really big junior highs, the economies of scale of those big high schools and big junior highs allowed us to ensure that we could run smaller elementary schools. That's as simple as it can be stated. Well, our high schools and our junior highs that used to be 1,200 kids big after the 7th, 8th, 9th transitioned to just 7th 8th. They used to be 1,600 kids big with 7th, 8th, 9th, right? And then they became seventh eighth graders. They're,00 to,00 to,200 students big. So, our junior highs are getting smaller. Our high schools are getting smaller. They used to be 3,000 kids with three grades. Then it's 3,400 kids with four grades. And now they're starting to become 3,300, 3,200. And what that's doing is putting pressure on this model of having economies of scale at

030your secondary levels and then being able to run small schools. So, we're trying to figure out how to run these small schools. Uh the original model, one master teacher, four IAS, that's one idea. Uh that doesn't resonate with communities real well, uh and parents real well. Now, the teameming model, oh, it's a little more expensive. One of the reasons they'll tell you it's a little more expensive is the schools that opt into teeing models happen to have older teachers. That's where they work. They work with older veteran teachers who know how to make that teameming model work, right? And so this was another attempt to explore something because we know uh as much as we want to continue to attract and put great programs in front of parents in Mesa public schools and continue to

031make sure our market share is attracted back to this district at the same time the reality is with demography it's getting smaller and smaller. And so we we are just continuing to put ideas out there to see if something might work. And I think one of my takeaways from listening to the principles right now is it's tough. If I heard the the the really high level message right, this type of look at revenues and try to work within your staffing to make expenses work is a very tough endeavor on smaller schools to say we can get everything we need and uh within this X budget. Is that correct? So, uh, in in short, I I will tell you that, uh, I I I enjoy these learning opportunities because they allow us to collect information and

032prepare for the future much better. >> Board member Walden, any questions? >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you for coming out tonight and for the transparency that's been provided tonight. So, as I was listening to uh you you discuss uh the burnout or people having to to fill multiple roles. I'm very empathetic to that. And I know that we had set some guard rails that said that we would keep elementary schools open as long as it was financially viable. Maybe a school can still be financially viable, but what if the staff and families and everybody's miserable there, too? So what how do you know like at what point do you have to throw in the towel on a school is it is it's it's more than just finances it sounds like too. So I imagine these

033are discussions you're having. That's a really loaded question too, but that's what I was thinking during this whole presentation is like how how do we know and maybe superintendency or uh leadership wants to talk about that. >> I I can talk briefly about some things we've learned from other places because we monitor all the other districts around. I know what probably not going to work is us setting a number and saying once the schools below X, we got to think about school closure. I know what resonates a lot with us in our cabinet and I think it resonates with the board is we need to constantly evaluate whether we can live into the promise of that school you know and and not not only their mission statement but the district's mission statement every student's known

034by name served by strengthen ready for college and career and community but there certainly will become I mean and this is one of the things we're hoping the citizens budget committee will tell us it's one of the things we're we're already learning from parent council we we think these types of activities will guide us to say it's probably about time in Mesa public schools next fall, next spring uh to consider putting together a stakeholder within stakeholder group within every region and start talking really openly with every region about what does it look like to repurpose schools in this region. And it could be repurpose and open up a choice program. That could be one of the things. But we're going to need to learn how to leverage these learning communities and then say within these

035learning communities, hey, the district's getting smaller and these small schools are becoming uh problematic financially to run because our high schools are getting smaller. And then as that takes place, we need these learning communities to get stakeholders involved, scv involved, school improvement committees, sorry, PTO's involved and say, "Hey, what can work for this skyline community? What can work for this Westwood community? What can work for this Red Mountain community?" And then hopefully if these communities understand that, hey, we can't survive like this forever, they'll come up with solutions that'll bubble up to us and say, well, let's try this in this region and let's try this in this region. And so I think it's I think we're getting to the time where we need to put together a really thoughtful school optimization committee and say,

036let's work throughout our regions to figure out what stu school optimization looks like. And and so I think what I'm trying to answer your question with without giving you a hard number because we've learned from other districts, uh you know, we can't say once a school's below 300, right? Uh without giving you a hard number, I'm trying to say I think we're to the point in time where we need some serious study committees in every region and a centralized school optimization committee that those subcommittees report to. I think next year's the time to put those committees together. >> Yeah, that that makes sense and and I appreciate that. I I agree that you can't really put a number to it and I'm open to setting up choice schools or you know maybe we have some

037schools that are like a STEM academy. I think that as we go forward in effort to preserve the neighborhood schools and preserve jobs that our elementary schools won't look the same uh from each school to school then I think that's fine because you know we do have open enrollment that you can go to any school in Mesa public schools. But I I I I I appreciate that and and I think that's um definitely where where we need to go is look at it more. I certainly don't want like to have a school where everyone's burnt out and you don't have support and the kids aren't aren't learning, right? Like what's what's the point? So yeah, go ahead. >> Well, I think the bigger picture is we're all here to educate students, right? And so when

038we have stra staff that are continuously stretched, the idea becomes, is that negatively impacting students? And that's where I think the struggle happens is because we're we love kids. We're here to educate them. We're here to provide every single opportunity we can for them. But at the point that it negatively impacts the services and the educational opportunities we can provide for them, that's where I think that's where you have to start questioning those hard questions, right? And I think that we've had some of like the just that's kind of overall I think how we've had some discussions about is that we don't want kids to learn out on opportunities and the best things that we can offer because our staff are stretched too thin and or they're doing roles that they don't necessarily have the

039qualifications to do. >> Yeah, that's great. That was an excellent summation. Thank you so much. That's it. >> Thank you, Bomanson. >> [clears throat] >> Thank you for being here. Um I totally appreciate your insight and um the honesty with which you uh shared the struggles that you had in going through this process. Uh I think most people know that I am not a small school fan uh for the very reasons that all three of you mentioned. Your staff is overextended. they're doing things uh that take them away from their essential essential t task which is teaching. And those of us that are educators know that that's an art that we have to allow time to nurture. Like and so if we're doing 27,000 other things besides the art of teaching, we aren't actually fulfilling

040our ultimate mission, right? Um so I'm not a fan. Uh, and I I understand the emotional uh piece of the possibility of closing neighborhood schools. I I totally get the emotional piece of it. Um, but there is the financial piece that we have to remain financially viable because we still do um educate a majority of the students in Mesa. I do however see some opportunities uh as we go into learning communities. Um and Mrs. Chang, you are the one I think you your your staff and stakeholders said um they you know if they had a choice they'd focus on art and science. Um so my question like that's your stakeholder group. Now when we move into our learning communities next year we'll have uh vertical alignment. So, in this process, do you see um that

041you could begin meeting with your junior highs and your ultimately kind of like a using the uh backwards design process, start at your high school, like what is your high school known for and then it filters to the junior high and to the elementary school. So part of what we did in our when we met with our community and staff to get those after school meetings um part of what we did is we looked at what roads who's our feeder junior high what they offered which it we went through like their extracurriculars and what they have after school and then we also connected that back to Dobson and we found that there was a strong arts program right and we also talked about the need and the passion for science. So, we talked about how

042on the east side we have a science academy, but we are that's not represented on the west side. >> Correct. >> Um, and so we had a lot of parents that were like, that's really interesting, the STEM academy approach, but then we knew going in that we also had that strong art background to feed into. And so we had a debate over a STEM program versus arts and science. So STEM or STEAM. And so we debated that out and then we talked about how well technology can we guarantee that portion because what parents see as technology isn't necessarily what education views as technology. So we had a debate about that or can we keep up with current technology? So then we knew that from what we had, we could do something with art and science

043and build from there and that we could then have that on the west side and then to have something comparable but then also feed into that art system through roads and then Dobson. >> Yeah, Dobson has a fabulous fine arts department and a fabulous music program. So if you love music and you live on the west side, you want to go to Dobson. Um and then one last comment I would I met with um Mr. Martinez at Lincoln and he were he and I were chatting and one of one thing that he mentioned that I think is um act absolutely brilliant is uh and I can see this as a potential uh as well. What are you known for? What's your school known for? Right? Uh if it's arts, like what's your school known for?

044make sure that we're broadcasting that because in a competitive market, that's how we draw people back, right? Um, and so I I think that's an opportunity as well. And I I see with vertical alignment and again, you can use that backwards design high school down. So I appreciate that you talked to junior high and high schools as well. And I'm not making an assumption that you didn't, but Mrs. Chang spoke. So, and with that, I'll pass. >> Thank you, board member Hutchinson. want to thank you all very much for the time that you put in and the time with your community. Please thank your community as well. Um, it appears to me we have an essential question and that that question is do our parents do our stakeholders, kids too, kids matter. Um, do they

045prefer educational opportunities rather than their neighborhood school? And I I think that's the question that we're posing. Um, is it more important for kids to have the opportunities that they deserve or to remain close and local in a in a close-knit school that knows them by name and knows and can serve them by need and strength but doesn't have the academic opportunities that that kid wants or their parents want. And and I really like how member Benson talked about the regional communities because we have a model. It was Red Mountain. We had a teacher that was passionate about STEM. And from that teacher's passion that energized business communities, parents, junior high, elementary school, we now have kind of really that STEM science focus that you were mentioning, Principal Chang. Um, what I'm hoping is that

046in the regional communities, and I guess this is my my question to you as the principles with boots on the ground, would it work to activate this issue to give your stakeholders, your parents, your students the information which was budgetary in nature, But then maybe some staff ideas on how to create a regional ID, a a a school ID. This is what we do and we do it really well. I almost swore we do it really well. Um because teachers being stretched so thin, leaders being stretched so thin, classified employees being stretched so thin. It pains me that the media center specialist is doing lunch duty. That means the media center is not open during lunch. Dang, kids don't have access to the books that they want to read. So, can we as regions pose

047an issue of educational opportunities and neighborhood schools? Give people the data so that they're aware. Give our staff the data so they're aware. Give our kids the data. The And let's see what they really want. If we really want choice, then let's get people involved in that choice. I don't know if that's workable. I don't know if that's a monster in a district this size, but maybe it's an idea. I'd be willing to hear from you if you think that your communities would be amendable to to to that type of situation to create maybe a regional ID so that kids don't feel like they're missing out on opportunities that parents don't feel like they're missing out on opportunities and that teachers don't feel like they've got to be everything to every kid. Wasn't that what

048the teeming model was supposed to alleviate? So I I I wonder do you think that we could do this as regions next year posing these types of complex questions? >> Thank you for that question. So one of the things that we really stress in our building is there's so much more than a number. And so getting down to that qualitative piece, which is exactly what you're talking about, and how you want to be defined, I think is is a brilliant idea. Um, because that little body is more than just a little body. And I think that figuring out where they're going to go and not pigeon holing them in one way or another is is is good. So if you look at like we're from the Red Mountain and so if you look at where

049they're going and you br kind of branch that out, what are the different ways that you can feed that? you know, because you don't want just to send all of one kind to Red Mountain. You want [clears throat] to have a very diverse population because we do want that to um inspire our kids to think beyond themselves. And so I think if you look at all the elementary schools and how can you become specialized and then that also has to feed in to make the bigger piece of the family and I think that that is a great way but again it's getting to that qualitative >> piece that those things beyond the just the surface number that that's what it's going to take to do that >> that that and transportation. >> Yeah. >> Right.

050Right. I mean clearly there is no choice unless kids can get to that choice. So that that's that's the other quotient that would so they'd have to be in those folks have to be included too. Thank you. Thank you very much. >> Thank you board members and thank you again for being here tonight. Um, I think I think we all can see that this was tough and we appreciate all that you've done and the efforts made with families and hearing the different voices. Um, did you seem to hear the same thing I guess for each all three of you? Did you did coming from families? What was it the same message you were hearing were their feedback to you with this model or were they different? Were they all seeing different pieces of the puzzle

051as they looked at the at your campuses? >> I think we saw some common pieces. I think the commonalities we saw is that people didn't realize what everybody's job was and what their role was. A lot of times the families would connect a job to a person. And I know when I did a lot of my stuff with the families and the teachers, I I said, "We're talking about a job. We're not talking about the person. We're not talking about the connect it with the name." Cuz soon as you connect it with a name, then there's an emotional connection, right? And so I think we all dealt with that in some bit because they're like, "What do you mean we're we're getting rid of XY Z's position?" And that's not the message we wanted. we

052just wanted to talk about what the school structure would look like and how it might look differently. Does it mean that we wouldn't find places for staff or things like that? So, and again, if they didn't understand the job of that person or what that staff member does or their kid doesn't receive those services, maybe they weren't as valuable to that person just cuz they didn't have experience with them like counseling. So, some people are like, "Yep, we need counselor at my school site. Currently, we have two." Um, but some people are like, "Well, my kid never sees the counselor, so that's not I don't know why that's important." And then it's like, "Well, did you know that they do classroom lessons at my site? They do them twice a month. They meet individually. They

053do groups. They do interventions for behaviors." So, some people don't understand that. So to have that understanding I think of everybody's roles. We all saw some common issues with people not understanding that and then also some commonalities in how money and finance works and understanding that cuz you know that in itself is a full-time job figuring that out. That is like yeah I am so yes it is a difficult task right and it's like this bucket and this bucket and this bucket and this and it's like well how many buckets are there? I'm like, well, there are a lot, but they're just all for something different, right? So, I think that those are some of the commonalities we saw is just people don't always understand how school finances work and then the function of those

054jobs and then if somebody has to do and then we saw we're going to have multiple people doing two to one person doing multiple people's jobs. So, two to three roles. So, you know, like this year instead of having the library open at lunch, you know, I had to cut it to only having it three times open at lunch because I needed the coverage because of all the other stuff that's going on or people not having that a person for that position. So, >> yeah, go ahead. >> Okay. >> When I had my family focused groups, so I would bring in 24 people, right? And I would set them in groups of four, groups of four because then they can have more conversations. But I also put them in groups where I knew that they

055weren't going to necessarily think alike because they had different experiences. So that conversation was very good because if they had a special ed student and then a student who had some social emotional needs and then an academically strong, they were able to hear each other better in those small conversations where they kind of put some of those differences aside. So, I think that was very rich for them, too. And that because that's where we did see some of the differences. Well, why do why do we need a counselor? Well, because my child goes to see the counselor three times a day. Yours may not ever go see them, but my child doesn't need that. So, I think that opens some eyes. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much, President Davis and

056members of the board. >> We appreciate you all being here and for sharing and your campuses. Please relay back to them how much how grateful we are for each of them. So with that, um, do I have a motion to adjurnn the meeting? >> So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Any discussion? >> Seeing none, Miss Kirby, we please take our vote. With vote of five days, the meeting is adjourned and we will be back shortly for our regular meeting and in between we get to hear from the lovely Stapley choir. So, thank you >> [music] [music] >> For you're [singing] my friendly [music] [singing] darkness to hear your [singing and music] stories again. I wonder this [music] land from [singing] end to end to end. I will hold through the

057night [music] to sing with you again. Sing songs [singing and music] of wonder. Sing a mighty God. Fireflies [singing] [music] and sing songs of children. [music] [singing] [music] The [music] >> [music] >> with the elk [singing and music] and river on voices [singing] [music] and I have my fireflies. Now friend [music] [singing] in the sweetness of the night I will sing [music] [singing] songs of wonder. Sing [singing] songs of [music] children growing toward the sun [music] like the world of the street. [music] [music] The >> [applause] [applause] [music] >> Glory [music and singing] [singing] for [music] glory. [singing] >> [music] >> of so many [singing] [music] glory. [music] It shall see. [singing] Glory. [music] Glory. [singing] [music] [singing] [music] He [singing and music] receive in glory to [singing] receive [music] [singing] [music] [singing] [music] it

058easy. Halleluah. [music] [singing] Hallelu. [singing and music] shall see [music] [music] all [singing] the teaching. [music] Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory, [singing] glory, [music] glory, glory, glory, glory, [singing] glory. [music] [applause] >> [music] [music] >> Don't say [music] [singing] it. [singing] [music] >> [singing] [singing] >> baana. >> [singing] >> Bana [music] [singing] [music] [singing] [music] >> [singing and music] >> I I [singing] am I am I >> [singing] >> Say [music] [applause] honey. [applause] We would like to thank the Staple Junior High Choir under the direction of Mr. Isaiah Carmen for the music tonight. If we can get one more round of applause for them. They were wonderful. And we do get to hear from them one more time here in just a minute. And I know they're awkwardly standing in front, but they are

059way prettier to look at than than us. So, thank you for being there. Um, get all the pictures in right now while they stand there. So, I call this meeting to order at 603. Just a quick reminder, any citizen who wishes to speak on an agenda item must complete the sign-in sheet in the lobby prior to the public comment on the board agenda. Um, the this evening, the pledge of allegiance will be led by Mr. Tyler Moore, chief business officer. After the pledge, please remain standing for the national anthem performed by the Stley Junior High Choir. Please stand. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands nationy and justice. Oh, say [singing] can you see by the dawn early [singing] but we [singing] held

060at the twilight Last stripes [singing] and I saw through the perilous [singing] we were so gallently [singing] rocks [singing] through the [singing] night that our Oh, say [singing] that star spangle [singing] [music] for the [singing] land of the free and the home of the of the [singing] >> [music] [applause] >> Thank you again, Stapely Choir. That was absolutely beautiful. And thank you, families, for helping get your singers here tonight. We appreciate you. We also would like to welcome Dr. Eless and Mr. Wing. They are virtual tonight. Um we are having some technical difficulties. So if they are needing to communicate, they will let Dr. Stum know. Um before we we're going to begin tonight with the governing board procedures, a video and then I'll read a short statement. Do I have any? Oh, there is

061sound. Okay, we're going to go with the statement. All right. Sorry about that. Um, this is an official governing board meeting. The board has important business to conduct that is essential to the operation of the district. Everyone is welcome to express ideas or concerns to the board in accordance with the agenda. The posters in the boardroom describe positive behaviors expected and behaviors that cannot be tolerated. Please speak and act respectfully and actively listen. Be kind. Verbal harassment, abuse of foul language, intimidation, and disruption have no place in the classroom or the boardroom. No side conversations, please. No side conversations or reactive comments. They can be disruptive. It is the governing board president's responsibility to maintain proper order so the board can conduct its business in an orderly and efficient manner. If you are disruptive or

062interfere with the conduct of this meeting, you will be asked to leave so the board can conduct the business of the district. We will start tonight. Um Dr. Strong, will you please review the governing board calendar with us? >> President Pres President Davis, members of the board, February 16, 2026. This upcoming Monday, President's Day, no school district offices are closed. February 26, 2026, we have a study session at 5, regular meeting at 6. March 12th, we have a 5:00 pm study session, regular meeting at 6. March 16th through the 20th is spring break, no school, and there'll be limited district services during that week. Uh, no meeting on March 26th due to this time timing of spring break and we'll be back in April. >> Thank you, Dr. Stro. I'm going to now turn the

063time over to Miss Jen Snder, director of communications, and she will share with us some of what's inside Mesa Public Schools. All you right, good evening, everyone. Uh, I am thrilled to be up here again sharing some of the things that are happening around the district. So, here we go. Last, sorry, lost my spot. Four outstanding Mace Public School seniors have been named the 2025 2026 Student Community Service Award recipients by the Mesa Citizen of the Year Association. Congratulations to Davis Grounden from Red Mountain, Summer Fairbanks from Skyline, and Westwood seniors, Christina Alonzi, and Amelia Serenity Buckham, who each earned a $2,500 scholarship in recognition of their academic excellence, leadership, and commitment to serving their communities through meaningful volunteer work. Last week we celebrated National School Counseling Week. Thank you to our incredible school counselors

064for supporting, guiding, inspiring our students. We are very pleased to share that we are successful in our appeal of the Blet grade given to Mountain View and the Arizona Department of Education has accordingly updated Mountain View's grade school grade to an A. A huge thank you to Dr. Glass Meer and her team for the work through this process to ensure the Tauros were properly recognized as the A school they are. Madison Elementary students are getting their hands dirty through um through the school's garden club in part in partnership with the garden exchange stands or the sta students meet once a month to dig in, learn about gardening and take part in hands-on experiences that connect them to the outdoors from planting to harvesting their building skills that last well beyond the garden beds. The school

065also has a seed life library in the garden offering free seeds to families to take home and plant in their own yards. Eisenhower Center for Innovation hosted career day yesterday and viewed the future was on display. Students came dressed as the careers they hope to pursue from doctors and teachers to engineers, first responders, and so much more. [clears throat] All right. Last week, Red Mountain Theater brought the magic of the theater to elementaryaries across the district when they took the schoolhouse rock on the road last week and performing for students at Mendoza Km KM Academy at Red Mountain Ranch, Losendis Bush, Redbird, and Falcon Hill. Through this national program, students got the rare opportunity to design real scientific oops, sorry, I jumped ahead on something else. Apologize for that, but I hope they sang a

066conjunction junction. That was always my favorite. Students from KUR Center for Agra Science visited Westwood High School for an A field day hosted by Westwood FFA. KUR students learned from high school FFA members explored different areas of agriculture and got a firsthand look of what's waiting for them at high school. We love seeing um we love seeing our feeder patterns work together. All right, it is battle of the book season. All across the district, students are showcasing their reading skills during this year's Battle of the Books. Schools across the district are competing with final set for April 23rd and the top three advancing to regionals on May 6th at the historic Irving Auditorium. Good luck to all of our readers. And finally, congratulations to board member Walden who has been named the vice chair for

067the Arizona Corporation Commission. Uh [laughter] she was elected to the Corporation Commission on top of being elected on top of serving us in um 2024. So congratulations board member Walden. And that's it. >> Thank you, Mrs. Snder. And now I'm going to turn the time over to Dr. Strong for tonight's recognition. Tonight, uh, we have several staff members to recognize. We'll ask honores to stand from their seats when their name is called. We will then take a brief break during which honores will have the opportunity to take a photo with our governing board. First, uh, we want to recognize our five national board certified teachers for their designations. A brief story on this for my own person. I taught for 13 years. I went to one meeting on national board certification thinking I'm going to

068do it. I left the meeting, went home to my wife and said, uh, that's a little too intense for where I'm at right now in my career. So, congratulations to these five people. It's one of the most intense processes uh, in education that we have to demonstrate the high quality of educator that these five individuals are. National board certification is the most respected professional certification available in education and provides numerous benefits to teachers, students, and schools. It was designed to develop and retain and recognize accomplished teachers and generate ongoing improvement in our schools nationwide. We had three teachers maintain their certification. Can Kelly Garin from Roosevelt Elementary School please stand? Can Eliza Boyin from Edison Elementary School please stand? [applause] and Kizzy Tanner from Red Mountain High School. Please stand. [applause] Additionally, we have two

069brand new nationally boardified uh s national board certified teachers. Congratulations to Jason Newman of Mountain View High SCHOOL [applause and cheering] and a second colleague here from Red Mountain High School, Kathleen Baldwin. She was unable to make it. She had a family emergency. >> Well, we're still going to give her a round of applause. [applause] [cheering] >> Next up, we want to recognize uh Shelley Essilia. Miss Escilia w the Warren H. Lee Athletic Trainer of the Year award from the Athletic Arizona Athletic Trainers Association due to her continued dedication to improving and promoting the profession of athletic training within the state of Arizona. Congratulations and let's have a round of applause. Please stand. >> [applause] >> And finally, can coach Meg Bowman from Westwood High please stand? [applause] Coach Bowman was named the National Federation

070of State High School Association's National Coach of the Year, National Coach of the Year for Unified Sports in 24-25. Miss [applause] Miss B Miss Bowman is recognized nationally for coach for coaching going beyond just competition. She focuses on character relationships and creating meaningful opportunities for students. As unified sports coach at Westwood, leadership has had a lasting impact on the countless student athletes across multiple programs. One more round of applause for these people. [applause] Congratulations to all tonight's recognitions. We are now going to take a brief break. The board members are going to come down. We want people to come up that were recognized, take photos with the board. If your family wants a quick shot, we usually do one with a person, one with the family, and then we'll proceed on the next people. And

071uh we just want to take some time to take some photos and celebrate. Thank you. >> All right, we'll have um Shel. Of course. >> [applause] >> Can I have all the board certified recognizes tonight? Please come up. We'll do a group photo and then we'll do individual ones. Okay. And then we'll start individual. If will do any of you want ones with your family? No. You would like that? Okay. Let's have your family come up then. Do you need help? You mean No, you're good. Okay. >> Yeah. Coach Bowman. >> Yeah. Good luck. Good luck. I hear you. Have a nice week. No. Yes. I drive this facility park. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. I was like really interested in I'm so sorry. for being here. >> Awesome. They're always excited to see you. >>

072They're like part of the family. She likes to bring the dishes. >> I love it. >> I'd rather clean the outside of my room. Well, I couldn't have done it without you. >> They didn't do it. And that's okay. I'm totally okay with that. >> There you go. [clears throat] >> Yeah. or mom stepping on. >> Thank you again and congratulations to all. We will continue on with our meeting. Before we begin public comment, just a quick reminder that policy 1-302 says that public comment is not appropriate forum for persons to complain about a specific employee, student, or other person. Mrs. Mrs. Chaffy, do we have anyone signed up to speak? >> We have one person signed up to speak today. >> Okay. You will have three minutes and I will turn the time to

073uh board clerk, Mrs. Chaffy, to take us through this item. >> Yes, we will hear from Mr. Jason Smithson tonight. That is our only public speaker. Members of the board, Dr. strong. First, I want to thank Tyler for taking time to walk me through how the vendor contracts are structured and administered. I appreciate the transparency and explanation. That said, um I respectfully request that line H be removed from the consent agenda and considered as a separate action item. I believe there are several questions that warrant public discussion, not just for this contract, but for how we approach vendor agreements moving forward. First, regarding the term of the contract, is this proposed agreement for another 5-year period? If so, how are we ensuring price remains competitive throughout the full term? In the current market, a 5-year

074window is significant. Would a shorter term, perhaps two to three years, provide greater flexibility and allow the district to re-evaluate pricing and performance more frequently? Second, will this renewal involve the same vendors or will a new RFP be issued? If the intent is to continue with the same vendors, what performance metrics are being used to evaluate them? For example, some listed vendors have publicly available ratings ranging between 2.5 and 3.6 stars. While online ratings are not the sole measure of quality, they do raise reasonable questions. What internal accountability measures ensure that we are connecting with companies that deliver reliable services at a fair and competitive price? I'm also concerned about the response rate. We received seven response out responses out of 3,31 vendors, less than one quarter of 1%. That suggests either the scope is

075highly specialized or there may be barriers in the RFP process that limit participation. Have we evaluated why participation is so low and whether adjustments could attract more competitive bids? In the interest of transparency, I would also encourage the district to make vendor contracts and RFPs readily accessible to the public without requiring a formal records request. While I understand contracts operate within set terms, my understanding is that the district retains discretion regarding annual renewals based on performance. If that is correct, providing visibility into those terms and evaluation standards would strengthen public trust. Finally, the original contract amount was $750,000. Is the same amount being requested under this renewal? And how much of the previously approved amount was actually expended during the prior contract term? These are reasonable oversight questions. My goal is not to delay progress,

076but to ensure fiscal responsibility, vendor quality, and public transparency as we steward taxpayer dollars. Thank you. >> Thank you. We now Sorry. We will now review the consent agenda. All items on the consent agenda are approved with one vote with no discussion. If a board member would like to pull a consent agenda item, please do so now. >> Madam President, >> with respect to uh Mr. Smithson's request, can we pull H? >> Yes. Oh, I just I wanted to clarify because I think in the past that when an item does when when a member of the public comments on a consent agenda item, I thought procedurally it automatically was pulled as part of regular consent or I mean the regular agenda not consent like it got pulled off of consent because I we had that

077I think it was just >> the policy. Can we change that in the policy that we when we have public comment first then you can hear the comment and then as a board member decide it was request. >> Okay. Just in case people didn't hear it. She was just clarifying that when we updated our our policy was updated that uh it's not automatically pulled from consent. If a member of the public comments on it, it would still be up to a board member's discretion. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. I had the same question prior. So, thank you. All right. Right. So, we have pulled that item and that will go into our action items. Moving on to now our personnel request. Do I have a motion to approve personnel request including an addendum?

078>> So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. Board members, any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? With a vote of five yays, we have approved personnel request, including an addendum. With the approval of the personnel request, we also have one employee to recognize in memoriam. Dr. Strong, will you please tell us more? >> Yeah, Randy Hoy was our shop coordinator in vehicle maintenance. Miranda began his professional career with Mesa Public Schools on October 6, 1975, dedicating more than five decades of service to supporting our district and its mission. Randy continued his work through his passing. Randy was one of a kind and known as as a very kind and steady presence in transportation. He was solid, dependable, and a true stand-up guy. His knowledge,

079work ethic, and willingness to help others over his 50 years with us made a lasting impact on the vehicle maintenance team and all who had the privilege of working alongside him. Randy will be remembered not only for his long and faithful service, but also for the respect, trust, and friendship he earned throughout his career amongst his colleagues. He will be missed tremendously by Mesa Public Schools, by his colleagues, by his friends, by his family, and everyone in the city of Mesa. >> Thank you. and our thoughts go to the family at this time. Um with the approval of the um addendum, we welcome some new faces to Mesa Public Schools and we're excited to have you. So, thank you um for being here too tonight. And with that, we'll move into our next item. Do

080I have a motion to approve a certified reduction in force riff for the 2026 27 school year? So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> A second. >> Thank you. And Miss Jenny, I'm going to turn understand you have a short presentation to share with us. So I'm going to turn the time over to you. >> Thank you, Madame President, governing board, members of cabinet, thank you for the opportunity to share information about a reduction force. I'd like to start with some historical background to provide some context to our current reduction force. In 2023, there was a committee comprised of human resources, school leaders, and members, representatives of our MEA, Mesa Education Association. That committee recommended some updates to the reduction force policy and procedure so that it was more aligned to our Arizona

081revised statute. The governing board approved those recommendations in November of 2023. Then in 2024, the governing board approved the adoption of the trust policies. Those trust policies included a reduction of forest policy and that was policy 4106 as well as the corresponding procedures and that was approved again by the governing board. Then in 2025 there was another committee. Again the committee was comprised of human resources, school leaders and members of MEA. that committee recommended revisions to the procedure um again pro procedure 4106A um and that was shared with the governing board in superintendency um status report to the governing board on two different occasions in June of 2025. I'd also like to review the Arizona Revised Statutes that I referred to because our policies are of course aligned to law. As you can see on

082the slide, ARS 15544 gives the governing board authority to approve a reduction in force. Additionally, Arizona Revised Statute provides parameters for a reduction in force process specifically that we are not to base the process on seniority. A reduction in force is something we try to avoid. We all try to avoid it, including human resources. It is also something that raises a lot of questions. So, I'd like to start with some data. The Arizona Auditor General, this is data for Mesa Public Schools specifically. You can see on the right on that, it would be like an inset map. Our data in Mesa Public Schools, we we really prioritize a low studenttoteer ratio. That's very important. We know that the best learning happens in a class where the student teacher studenttoteer ratio is low. You can see

083that our numbers in MESA starting in 2017 our ratio is 19.5 to1 and then most recently in 2024 it's 16 to1. Reduction in force would not change our low studenttoteer ratio. Not only is this data, but I'd also like to reference our current working conditions document. Our MEA working conditions document outlines that our class size stays within certain parameters. The primary working the primary classroom, so kindergarten through third grade, that ratio is 26:1. Starting in fourth grade, actually all the way on up to high school, the ratio is 30:1. In high school, our staffing formula is this year is 24 to one, significantly below what the working conditions even outlines. And again, a reduction in force would not change this low studenttoteer ratio. some staffing timelines. Going back to the fall of 2025, this school

084year, we know that our district went through a reorganization uh reorganization of our district. With that, it was shared with the governing board. Of course, we also met with all the impacted staff. Additionally, we communicated throughout the staff who were impacted throughout the whole first semester. They had the opportunity to apply and interview for posted positions. And then I invited each of them to meet with me individually so I could provide them support, answer any questions that they might have and to provide some next steps for them so that they understood the process. We also know this is a a repeat of information that I know has already been shared, but I think it's worth mentioning that this did provide a savings of about $3.5 million to our district. Continuing on with this with the

085staffing timelines. So that happened in the fall and then in January schools received their staffing allocations. Elementary staffing is I would say less complicated. So theirs is due back to us first on January 26th followed by junior high and then in high and then the high school within that. I also want to note that we through the meet and confer process changed our retirement date. People can retire at any time, but there's some perks to re to submitting your retirement early. Historically, it has been March 1st. This year, it was February 1st. And the reason I want to bring that to your attention is that through attrition, we hope that a lot of our wonders about a reduction forest might be resolved through attrition. and retirement is one of the factors that leads to attrition.

086So our retirement date moving to February 1st, we're expecting to be most most helpful. So continuing on, we are here today on February 12th for the approval of a reduction in force by the governing board. Okay. So, I'm talking about this staffing process and I want to make sure that you're understanding what that staffing process looks like. Um, in my history, uh, some of you know that I was a teacher and an instructional coach and a principal. So, when I became a principal, I became more aware of this process, but it wasn't until I joined human resources that this process became very clear. So, I'd also like to share that process with you to help you understand what staffing means because it's a term that we use and it's really important for the the possibility

087of a reduction in force to understand the staffing process. So, this is an example of a staffing allocation that was sent to a school this year. We of course left the name off. Human resources determines the FTE allocations for each school based on projections not just from one year or two years but multiple years. It's really important that we consider multiple sets of data before we determining an allocation for a site. So then sites receive something like this where they are given an allocation. The special education allocations come from the special education department and that is determined by procedure um 5 to 11A which outlines specific ratios for our specialized programs and that outlines for for all the special ed programs what the ratio needs to be so that those allocations are determined by that

088procedure. This year in particular, because of some budget cuts, which leads to staffing, um Courtney, Miss Hall, had an open office hour to answer any questions that people had about their staffing allocations. And she also listened to some feedback that principles gave her in regard to the staffing allocations. So that's elementary, much smaller staff sizes at each school. So going on to high school which of course has greater numbers as you can see by the FTE allocated to this school. Again, human resources allocates a bulk FTE based on enrollment projections. And so in this case, you can see it was 116. So then the principal determines how to allocate those FTE. So what do they look at? Well, we really want to ensure that the programs unique to each school are honored and so those

089staffing decisions are made by the principal. We also want to honor our students because we as a district are very proud that we put students first with every decision that we make. And so student interest leads to student registration. And of course, we know student electives are also part of that formula as principles look at what classes are needed. Sometimes classes need to be added based on student interest. Was talking with a principal who said their jewelry making for example is out the door. So that was something that they might need to increase based on student interest. We also know that sometimes classes need to be eliminated if there are five and this isn't outlined by human resources but we know for best practice we've looked at the ratios if the student numbers are very

090small should we have a class of five so the principles make those decisions looking at what's best for student needs school needs and district needs and they've determined where their bulk FTE is then allocated for each class along the way. They also talk to their staff. Of course, whether it's an elementary principal or a high school principal, they talk to their staff and seek staff input, asking, "Is anyone thinking to retire? Is anyone thinking they might move out of state? Is anyone thinking they're going to have a life change?" And again, I referenced attrition. All of those questions and those conversations by principles with staff, that's some prediction for how this might work out for attrition because our hope is to not have a reduction in force, but we do know that is possibly a

091possibility. And so the conversations are happening at the site level. And then once the high schools make the determination of what classes they need and how to utilize their FTE, then they share their staffing sheets back with human resources. And at this point, I also want to remind us again of some data. Last year, we staffed based on 1,800 um students, but we lost that. we we didn't end up with as many students as we had projected. So this year our projections were higher than our reality and next year we're looking at a reduction or a decline of enrollment of about 2400 students. So just those reductions, we know that that impacts our budget and that of course impacts our staffing because 88% of our budget is staffing. So I've shared a lot of information

092so I want to encapsulate it in this diagram where it shows the FTE aotment is from human resources to the principles. Principles review student registration make determinations of how to allocate the FTE that has been assigned to them by human resources. They complete their staffing sheets which I've shown you a couple examples of. I showed you a simplified version. And it is a bit more complicated for especially our high school leaders. And then we meet to have a conversation. So you can see there's a lot of conversations between human resources and schools. So then the high school principles meet with HR. Each high school meets with us separately. And then once everything has been determined and staffing sheets have been completed, then HR I share that with cabinet for final approval. So those are the

093steps so far. I also reference law and so I always want to go back to that as well because I'm giving you a lot of information. A certified reduction in force is outlined in Arizona revised statute. Again, that was 15544, sorry, 15544 and 15502. Certified involuntary transfer process is not outlined in state law, nor is classified reduction in force. Only certified reduction in force is outlined in the Arizona Reute. So I just mentioned something called an involuntary transfer process. These processes are confusing and so I separated them out here. A reduction in force is a is an elimination of positions. I'm going to use a silly example of um basket weaving. We don't have basket weaving in our schools. So, an elimination is if I had a class of basket weaving and I only had

094two students in it, the principal might decide that's not a class that has high enough interest, so I'm going to eliminate that position. If there's no other basket weaving class in our district, then there's nowhere that I could place this teacher. So, that's where it would be an elimination and a reduction in force versus involuntary transfer. Let's say I have, and again, this is a pretend example, four social studies teachers. With student registration, I only need three. So, I'm going to have an extra social studies teacher. Do I have another social studies class somewhere in the district? Quite likely. So, this in this teacher could become an involuntary transfer and transfer to a different school. There's also possibilities of again because we try to maximize our staffing that maybe the social studies teacher is dual

095certified and has an English certification. That happens. And so maybe there's not another social studies position but there is an English position. And so this social studies teacher who has been teaching social studies but has a dual certificate could go over and be placed in an English teaching position if they're dual certified. So that explains hopefully the difference between reduction force and involuntary transfer. Reduction force is an elimination. An involuntary transfer is what the second part of the name is. They transfer to either a different position within their school or to a different location. Okay. Thank you for letting me talk with my hands. Then we move on to um there's three processes. I know I just touched on the riff the reduction force process, but this outlines now our our process for it. How

096is it determined? If the governing board approves a reduction in force, then how do we determine who would be reduced in force? Because those are two things. Tonight is just approving a possibility of a reduction in force because the governing board has that authority, but it's not specific people. So then how would we determine specific people? First, we analyze all the staffing sheets that are given to us from the schools and we create a preliminary list. Then we look at district discipline. I want to be clear that this is not site level discipline. We know that sometimes mistakes are made and that would be called our uh non-disciplinary discipline process and that is not a that is something that sometimes people have missteps. This is a district level discipline from either this year or the

097prior year. And then we look at their evaluation and we see scores. Now anyone ineffective already goes through a preliminary notice of of inadequacy process. So these are not our our teachers who who rate ineffective. There's a different process for that. But we do review our evaluation scores. We base it first on our current evaluation and then we go to the prior year evaluation. And then the two other portions are are because this was shared with our principles as well that the governing board has the authority today to approve or not approve a reduction of force. And then that is simply the process and then if it were approved specific people would then come back to the board for your approval on the 26th. So then involuntary I spoke briefly of that. I mentioned a

098lot of conversations between principles and staff. That's critical. We have to have open communication with our staff because no one likes surprises when it comes to our employment. And so first we ask for volunteers. If we have an involuntary process, the principal would ask, for example, we are losing two FTE this year. Is anybody interested in being a volunteer? And having spent over 13 years in the classroom, I can tell you I enjoy change. And so, I might have been one of those. Oh, yeah. I would actually not mind trying a different school because they have some different unique programming that I haven't experienced and maybe I'd like to try it. And so we offer the opportunity for teachers to volunteer. Then we look at those hired on or after October 1st because um they

099are still quite new to our district. Then again we look at evaluation district reprimand and then seniority and that is more of a tiebreaker because we know by law we do not focus on seniority for the for RIFF and then we honor that with our involuntary process as well. And then we have voluntary transfer which is something that um people are very familiar with. This is where teachers have the opportunity to change schools and it's simply by choice. They apply and they and they're guaranteed an interview. So those are our three processes. We're not here tonight for voluntary transfer. So I won't expand on that any further. I do want to remind though through these processes we really focus on maximizing staff. as I shared the example of if I was a social studies teacher

100with dual certification. So that is the conclusion of my presentation and I'm just going to guess that there might be a couple questions because there's a lot to this. >> Thank you Miss Jenny. I am guessing we do have some questions and I'm going to start going to my right this time. So I'll start with board member Hudson. Any question? >> Thank you very much for the for the presentation. Um when we take a look at board policy 4-106 um it outlines um some things that we need to take a look at as a board. Um what are the reasons for the reduction in force? What's the scope of the reduction in force? Um what are the number of teachers and positions? Um and um and then any other additional information that you can provide.

101I I really want to thank you for talking about the process like you did in in slides five, 6, 7, 8. It was very thorough. Um it it made us quite aware that the sites were involved in this quite heavily and and so heavily that um we really don't have any elementary teachers um as a classification except for our special area teachers. um that are in this um this reduction in force because elementary schools have the ability to know how many kids they've got um and they know what grade they're going to primarily where with secondary folks we didn't have that luxury because registration is later. they just got their their their um um registrations, what kids are signing up for, what they're interested in at the example that you gave. Um so I'm I'm

102heartened by taking a look at the um leave of absence, the resignations, and the retirements that we approved and the personnel requests. Um, and I know that many of our teachers were very aware that they could save a job of a colleague and I want to thank them for that. Um, I know that that people talked and people were encouraged to do this early if they were considering it and I want to thank them for that. But if as I take a look at the numbers, um it it is my hope that that through attrition that we won't really be losing um many of our employees. However, I looked at some of the names on that list of the people that are retiring or that or that are resigning and they're not show horses, they're

103workh horses. They're they're they're worth 1.6 six teachers as far as I'm concerned. Um, and um, Brandy Kloff from Westwood just kind of popped in my mind. Um, they they go above and beyond. They've got expertise. Um, they've built relationships with kids and with families and they provide continuity. People know what they're going to get and there's there's some stability in that. Um, so I I I know that we're talking numbers, but we're also talking people here. And the I guess the question that I have two questions. The question that I have relating to certified staff is how can the board be assured that specialized classes like CTE, DE, AP, highly specialized classes particularly at the secondary level, how will they be impacted by the reduction in force? um particularly since we are losing veteran

104teachers either to resignation or retirement. And then my second question is will classified employees be afforded the same process? I know legally we don't have to do it but as a district what kind of asurances, what kind of commitment can we give our classified employees? I am so glad you asked both of those questions. First, thank you for the opportunity to recognize our wonderful CTE classes. We know that we need kids in school and we know that CTE is a high level interest because it's specific and and we know that that program has [clears throat] grown. CTE is a is a great opportunity for our students to have a specialized skill. So just today uh human resources met with our leaders of CTE to talk specifically about what opportunities um if there was any type

105of reduction of CT because tonight I don't want to speak specifically of our staffing sheets of course we're looking at the process and the authorization of reduction force in general but I can tell you that I met with our leaders of CTE today to try to figure out if there was a type of reduction how could we maximize their certification ations. Um, what opportunities might there be that human resources would not be aware of, that the current principal might not be aware of? Um, and we brainstormed to just today actually of what can we do to try to find a home for them because I agree with you, these are people, they need to buy groceries. They have families. I take that very seriously. And so, we are doing everything we can to find people

106a home. So, that I hope satisfies your question. I I I guess I don't have a specific uh anything beyond that other than we're doing everything we can to meet with people to make sure that we're doing our best to find homes for for our teachers. Secondly, our reduction of force process for all of our classified folks, our classified hourly as well as our classified supervisors. I'm happy to share um it might be in an upcoming status update that we are working with the presidents of those working groups and updating their reduction of force practices and procedures so that they well I won't give it away. We are working with them very closely and we're all very excited about um updating their processes so that they are also guaranteed uh very similar processes so that

107they um are honored in their work as well because we know that classified folks give it back to our kids and our students rely on our classified folks as much as certified. Okay, because I'm looking at slide it looks like the number eight and um that that seemed to be the a nice flow of information that was going back and forth between the a lotment the staffing needs and and the principal and HR and and um and then the cabinet having the final final review. So, >> um I'm I'm I'm hoping that um we will make sure that those employees are taken care of as well and we're doing everything that we can to maximize their expertise because I'm I'm really getting worried about um staffing and I know that the staffing distribution is not

108going to change that we're going to keep it at 50% certified, 48% classified, and 2% % administrative, but I'm I'm really worried because a major theme I'm hearing tonight is asking folks to do more and more >> and and are are we as effective when we just keep piling things on folks and expecting them to do it? And I really I really want us to make sure we're focusing on student outcomes and classified employees have just as much impact on our kids, keeping them here, keeping them well fed, cared for, clean, healthy. So, um I'm hoping that we we take that into consideration. >> Thank you, >> President Davis. briefly just from the experiences of of past jobs. Uh I I want to make it real clear that part of the high I'm I'm a

109high school teacher. I was 13 years in the classroom. And part of the high school process when you're running any sort of elective class, non non general requirement class is making sure you recruit. And uh I will tell you a brief story about Strut. Fixing computers used to be a class and the demand at one of the high schools I was at uh waned in Strut and the teacher was a full-time five-fifths football coach teacher and they went to three-fifths. Well, then you've got to reinvent yourself as a teacher at that point because there's not enough kids to offer five classes of strut. And we have perfect programs in Mesa public schools to do that. Uh, for instance, I was I at a point in my career, I was an AP stats teacher. If I

110couldn't AP Stats was non-required and if I couldn't recruit enough kids in and that was my primary area of certification right now in Mesa public schools, I'd go to Path to Teach and I'd ask Path to Teach, where else can you help me get certified? Because we certainly have a demand for jobs in other areas. Like for instance, we always need special education teachers and resource teachers. And so I want people to hear that there are places we can help you land and we have programs in Mesa public schools to help you land if the demand for your subject or and or content is starting to to wayne with kids. But on top of that, the other thing I'll tell you is the most the most the easiest thing to do is is make sure

111that kids sign up for your class. And the way to do that is make your class interesting and intriguing and make sure that kids sign up for that class so that they can learn the material that you're supposed to be teaching in that class. So, I just want that's why the process is so unique in high school staffing and way different than elementary and junior high staffing is we tell the principles here's what we think your enrollment is going to be that results in this many contracts and then they have to go back and look at the registrations for each individual class and content area. And one of the things that I think we can get you to help with uh certain element of this policy manual in uh 5106 is this week we'll work

112on getting you what were the programs on each high school campus last year and are they still going to run that program this year. Does that make sense to you? And I think that'll help with policy 50106 so you know that hey this program still exists. It might not be four sections big. It might be two sections big. that teacher may have to use another certification or go get another certification to be in another area at the school. But that's one way that we can help them is through our path to teach program and maintaining malleable with the certifications they have on their on their teaching cert. >> Thank you. Any other questions? Board member Vincent. Um, [clears throat] so you mentioned our staffing ratios are low, but that's an average, right? >> So, uh,

113there are some classes that have those staffing ratios. Then there are others that are going to have some classes that have 34 37 kids in them um, at the high school potentially, right? Is that a likelihood >> if are you are you asking? Is my >> That is a possibility. Correct. >> Uh so it's a little bit longer of an answer. There might be one class that is um 34, but it's we look at the average. So if one class is 34, yes, that is possible. And then if a class was 30, but then there was a class of 24, we would look at the average throughout the day to ensure that it's 30 to 1. And there is in working conditions a 10% leeway. So if the average is beyond 33, then that's grievable.

114and we work very closely with MEA to ensure that numbers are not exceeding those limits otherwise that is a staffing consideration. >> So what is the teachers recourse then Miss Jenny if in fact that is uh ends up happening and especially I >> I've never taught high school. I I teach elementary. Um, but I would imagine that the student that is in a class that has only 20 students >> versus [clears throat] use the same teacher >> uh uh compared to the the class that has 34 students in it. >> Same teacher can be an absolutely great teacher. Still a substantially different dynamic in that room. >> Fewer students means more opportunity for direct interaction student teacher. So, uh, if in in, um, lower FTEES, we have high school teachers that end up with those

115higher 37 kids in a classroom. What's their recourse? if their average is over that I I call it a grievable number. if they're over that 33 on average because again they might have a 36 and they might have a 20. But if the average if on average they're over 33 then they could contact their first they should go their principal and make sure their principal is aware and then try to resolve it with the principal first and then the principal typically contacts human resources or their supervisor and we work to resolve it. >> Okay, thank you for that. Um, and this might be a more of a district leadership question. Um, member Hutchinson mentioned the allocations 50% certified, 48% classified, 2% um, admin. I I believe I made the same comment last year. Uh, that

116might be the goal of the district leadership, but it's not the goal of our community. Our community wants our classroom and our on the ground people who are interacting day in and day out with our students to be the least impacted. So, uh, in our redesign, how many of those positions, uh, perhaps they're the ancillary ones that are over in the matrix, like they're not directly in the matrix, but they're matrix adjacent. Uh, how many of those position have those all of those positions been filled? >> No, we still have some openings we're working on filling. >> I was going to answer that as well. I see you looking at me that the interviews are I believe still occurring now and they have not been um finalized. So is it possible that uh we can

117maintain certified people if the if we say you know what this position okay clearly nobody wants it can we have it uh uh integrated into a different or another position they might have to do a little bit more but we've been asking our building people to do that for well over a decade more with less more with less more with less and they're the people that day day in day out impact our students. >> I think what I'm hearing you ask is if if there'sund and I think it's 105 or 108 positions in that redesign. We went from about 150 to 108 uh jobs and if one of those jobs isn't filled and only 107 get filled. Can we do something with that contract? Is that what I'm hearing you ask? Like can we can

118we put that contract to a school site, school A, school B? >> Yeah. Can we reallocate that FTE to >> I mean that reallocation is always under consideration. Uh right now we have $800,000 in the redesign that we're supposed to go to is and we have that on hold right now because we want to see what happens in August with student enrollment numbers. So it's all about timing and then understanding like we're on current year funding and we want to see August numbers before we start to deploy stuff and commit because if we start to commit too many staff to too many places then you're just looking at a larger cut the next year understanding where demography is headed. But your the answer is not no. The answer is it's the timing of when you

119reassign that position. So it's it's a yes. It's just about timing and when you do that. >> Okay. Um then additionally, so Miss Jenny, you um mentioned the fact that we had a higher uh decline in enrollment this year. >> Um since I've been attending board meetings in 2020, that's actually been the historical trend. uh we project one number and generally speaking I didn't have time to go back and look from 2020 forward but it's generally at least 50% more that we lose uh this year in particular at our high schools we lost by far more students than was anticipated last year when we created the budget. Mhm. >> It is my belief that that was due to the fact that with the implementation of block schedule across the district and with the imple implementation

120of careermies that parents clearly vocalized that they did not want. Um we pushed forward through it anyway and my consistent question last spring was how many families are you willing to lose? Well, we lost quite a few. We were able to recoup and modify our budget uh this year in order to uh kind of fill that gap. That is not going to be consistently a possibility. So now we're in a position that uh we have a relatively high suggested amount of uh reduction in force at our high school level because our high school has numbers have substantially declined. I went back and looked from um August 1st our enrollment data through February 6th and our high schools are down um over a thousand kids. >> Right. That's a lot of money in our district budget.

121So now those high schools are still being going to be they're still being asked to do block schedule which loses us loses us a substantial sum of money and they're still going going to be asked to do college and careermies and yet they're going to have fewer certified staff in order to do those things. Each student has the opportunity of earning eight credits. That means they have more electives that they're going to be able to take. However, we're not going to have potentially the staff to cover the electives that students want to take and we're going to pigeon hole them into things that they don't want to take. I would argue that is contrary to our promise that we know every student by name and serve them by strength and need. So how can we

122but I I see if we if we are not responsive to our community this is just going to get worse because we are in the business of education and parents are the primary consumer their children are the primary recipient of what their parents choose. So I agree with member Hutchinson our students are incredibly important. So, we're asking and I guess my question is how is a high school uh going to be able to provide all that [snorts] uh we were told and promised with careermies and block schedule when the resulting decline of our high school numbers says we don't have enough teachers to actually do that. >> Yeah. I mean, the issues you bring up are are complex and what I'll what I'll tell you is there's there's a lot of themes that run through

123that. I've been meeting with teachers from a variety of different high schools. They'll email, I say, "Let's go out to coffee. Let's go out to lunch." And uh let's meet after school for tea. And uh in those meetings uh you know one thing's clear that the pace of change in this district is causing a lot of uncertainty and they're asking please less change less change for let us live into what we're trying to live. So I'm sitting here and we just implemented at five of our six schools. We when I got the superendency tendency here I I made a decision to let's not do it at Mesa High, right? We we halted at Mesa High and they're living into the traditional schedule there right now and now we have it at five or six schools

124and some of the requests out of the teachers is are let us live into this for a while and I don't want to like be be the agent in leadership that just changes and then changes again and then changes again. You got to let have people have time to live into things. But some of the elements you're bringing up with finances are absolutely true and we're working through that with our team of educators uh at the high school level. And you know, if you want me to tell you from my vantage point, what might may occur as schools get smaller is it might be a move from four college and careermies at a school to three college and careermies at a school or two. And then it might be that we run two college and

125careermies at a school and maybe only half the juniors participate, but the other half are running on a traditional eight period type schedule uh uh block schedule. So there's options out there to remain flexible. Let's take this up to the 40,000 foot view. When you're growing, growing growing, you can increase increase program. And then when you're declining, like this is something well known at the university level and the community college level. When you're declining, you it's really hard to increase program. You do naturally at the high school level have to examine what the demand for certain classes are and go, okay, what program do we want to run here? What educational programs do we want to have for kids? And that's certainly something that that people are going to have to consider at the high

126school level uh across the variety of sites that have implemented college and careermies is what is the program? And every year it's going to have to be analyzed because as you reduce in staff, you're going to have to constantly consider like what can we manage in terms of the educational program of the kids. In terms of the elective classes, we've worked hard this year to get as many of the elective options for kids that that can be filled with teachers that want to teach those elective classes. And then there are times where logistically in the master schedule, it just doesn't work out to offer every every elective class. And then then that's when you hear from parents saying, "Hey, my kid got pushed into this elective." And that's a natural consequence of high school scheduling,

127whether you're on a block schedule or whether you're not on a block schedule. Uh that h that happens in a traditional sixth period day as well as is kids there just, you know, 180 kids registered for this class, only 10 registered for that class, and those 10 have to go take these the the class with these other 180 because this 10 size elective did not make. So, I just want you to hear we're examining data at every turn of the corner. We're working with the principles who are really determining how to allocate their staff at the schools. That's not a district level decision. That's a that's a in that's a site level decision. And in ter I want to loop this back a little that class size question you asked. Often times, it's not the

128district telling the principal to run a class at 37. The principal, they're the school leader. They're making choices. They're making choices to run academic intervention hour, which then increases a class to 37 38. they're making a a choice to run, you know, athletic classes for their varsity sports and that then offsets against certain things. Every one of those choices, whenever you as a math former math department chair, if I wanted to run an algebra 1 class at 18, I knew I was going to run a calculus class at 40. That was the trade-off. I was going to run a smaller class in my algebra 1 sequence so kids could get that smaller class ratio, and I'd have to run my C class and my stats classes at 35 to 40. and and we do work

129with employees who tell us those things are happening on their campus, but we also want to be respectful that the ultimate decision maker in that is the principal making decisions on how they allocate FTE into certain arenas within their their principal level uh decisions. So, uh we hear you and I we're examining the data and uh it is going to be a journey uh to understand how this works out over the next three to four years. [snorts] Well, I'm not sure that our So, I mentioned it when we had our um enrollment presentation. I am really concerned with the steep decline because that is not connected to birth rate. Is birth rate a part a part of the issue? Yes, that's something we can't control. Are home prices potentially part of the issue? Yep. That's

130something we cannot control though. However, we can control what we um what programs we put in place and whether or not we're listening to parents who again are the I would argue that they are the experts for the way their children learn and for what they want for their children. Uh and they know the passions that their children have. when we refuse to listen to them. That is why I will wager a guess the the survey that you put forth, that's why we've had a by far larger decline um since the beginning of school, if our numbers are right, I calculated that we're close to 3,000 students. That's not ADM, but just as Whoopy Goldberg said, butts in the seat, almost 3,000. That's not sustainable because as Miss Jenny said, as member Hutchinson said, every

131single one of the people that that um potentially aren't going to have a job next year, they are people who have bills to pay. So, um, I'm really concerned that district leadership needs to be listening to parents. The decisions that are made at the at the district um level that impact our buildings, that impact our students and families, put those or put our employees in those in the positions where they have to lose a job. uh they're our bosses, the taxpayers are. We've got to listen to them. So, now back to 15-544. Can you, Miss Jenny, it says um in section A, a governing board may reduce salaries or eliminate certifi certificated teachers in a school district in order to effectuate economies um in the operation of their district or to improve the efficient conduct

132and administration of the school and the school district. So um is it only salaries of certificated teachers, classroom teachers that would are have the possibility of being reduced? Can other salaries be reduced? >> Per this statute, this one is referring to teachers. >> So do you know of a statute that would allow for other salaries to be reduced? >> Off the top of my head, I don't. No. >> I might refer to Miss King. So very >> unless >> very very few districts have ever dealt with reduction of salary that I can't remember one in the east valley that has done so. You can reduce classified salary. You can reduce administrative salary as a budget solution for a district. It's actually written into our contracts. They write into every employees contract that the board can

133consider salary reductions if they need to make that work. Uh I will tell you some of the statutory authority given for certified staff is because certified teachers do have in statute more uh rights than administrative staff or classified staff who are considered at will staff by Arizona state statute. So but the answer to your question is yes you can reduce salary. It's in our contracts actually. >> Okay. So, I want to end with this then. Um, I could go on um quite a bit because this is an area that just really frustrates me. Uh, that if we were responsive to parents and I just want to remind everyone what parents wanted last year. They did not want college and careermies to go away. They were really concerned about block schedule. They brought up the uh

134concern regarding um how it was going to impact our budget, but what they wanted for their kids is an opportunity for them to maintain a traditional track on a high school. And they were never given good reasons or answers as to why that couldn't happen. They were not saying bail on college and careermies. And I'm not saying that either. I think a lot of our kids benefit from CTE courses. Uh nobody's saying that we should bail on it. However, we do have to be responsive to our our community and the people that we serve. So, uh back in the 80s, there was a movie called Mr. Mom. Um and Terry Garp played the wife and um what was his Michael Katon uh he lost his job at the whatever factory, the car factory. So Terry

135Gar when she she goes into marketing and uh it's a in a time of financial difficulty across the nation and she is developing a ad campaign for schooner tuna and what she suggests to the leaders of scooter schooner tuna is that they reduce their price because we're all in this together. So, I guess I'm going to also suggest to help balance our budget that if we're looking to eliminate some certified teachers salaries or teacher positions that perhaps our administration because we're all in this together, look at possibly a reduction of salary of 5 or 10%. Is it going to totally solve our our budget problem? No. But it shows that we honor certified teachers and the hard work that they do and that they are day in day out in front of our students who

136are the most important. Actually, they're the only reason we're here. So, with that, I'll >> thank you board member Walden. >> Yes, thank you. Um, thank you for being here and for putting together the presentation. I know it's really difficult and a lot of hours and hours have been spent and I want to thank Dr. Stum and uh Mr. Moore and Mr. Winks, I know that you've been working really long hours uh starting with 2025 uh and trying to get these these jobs done as quickly as possible. And the sooner people can know if they don't have a job, the sooner they can set themselves up for a job in the future when it didn't have to be done as as early as it's been done. So, I I appreciate that. And uh we only

137meet as a board in our board meetings, but individually we have been able to meet with uh Dr. Strom and any anyone else. And so I appreciate the transparency that we've had in that. And there's been hours of meetings that board members have had the option to take advantage of, which I have, and going over the budget and looking at where we are. And I think it's really important that we are staffing into the future and trying to minimize more staffing shocks down the road. So I think it's been it's been very smart and just going back to our study session, there's been a lot of transparency uh with Dr. Stum and I'm really grateful for that. I think it's really important that the public can see that our employees can see that we're we're

138doing this together. We're in this together. they have the same information that we have. Um, uh, going going to the college and careermies, it's really not gerine to the discussion. So, I I'm going to have a follow-up question that I'm just going to throw out there because I want to see if this is something that Dr. Strong would be comfortable asking on our question spreadsheet, but in terms of high school students being down by a thousand, we we do some exit interviews or exit polling. Correct. >> Correct. So would you be comfortable if I if I just put that out there on the spreadsheet and then you could follow up with with some information about that or is that information confidential? >> Um so we do withdrawal surveys for every student that not every sorry

139we randomly sample out of the kids that withdraw from the district and we do a district withdrawal survey. We also have just ended and gotten our first draft back from the West Ed survey that you guys uh discussed in the fall and we then discussed in individual check-in meetings. And so we're we're very interested in having West Ed out to talk about their findings as well and we're uh circling back with them again next week. So we can do two things. one give you a summary of withdrawal data uh as analyzed by our R&D department uh and then also circle back with you on the west end stuff. >> That'd be great. I think that would be something we could definitely look at in the future because while we're down students, we don't know all

140the reasons we're down students because we don't have have that data yet. There's also some new competition too in the heart of Mesa with a a big K through2 school that opens. So I I would venture to guess that there's there's a lot of reasons. I I don't think it's it's fair to say that it's college and careermies because we don't know. We have five schools that did go to college and careermies. I will say that as a as as a board member and of course my emails are public record and people can request those emails. I did only hear from parents at one of the five high schools about it. So, I know there's been some parents that were were vocal about the college and careermy's move, but I didn't hear from parents at

141four other high schools other than a couple emails where people were supportive. I did go to some of the community meetings. I had people thank the board uh come up and thank me for what we're doing. And we didn't actually vote on that. the we were told the the bell schedule and the packaging of classes as the college and careermies were presented with the block and with themies was not a board vote. Um but you know can say yeah I'll pass it along. So I do think we have that on on both sides like we have people that are happy about the changes and then we have people that don't like the changes. So, I don't think we can just blanketly say that people didn't want it because there were there are people that that

142do want it and I've gotten some emails from other parents like at Red Mountain that that were happy with it. So, I think it's important that we we look at the data. I think at the same time, you know, we we rolled programs out to to five high schools or the district did, not not the board, and that happened quickly. And so, I do appreciate and Dr. Sh saying we have to pace out our changes where we don't want to undo something quickly either, especially in places where there's there's positive feedback about that. Uh I I think that we do have uh listening that's going on under Dr. Stro's cabinet where they're looking at opting intomies rather than you just get assigned. There's there's some changes like that that are happening, but because we do

143have to staff now for 26 27, uh we can't undo anything very quickly because we've already planned staffing models around around that year. But I I just kind of want to throw out there with some of the comments that I I think that we are seeing listening that is happening. Um, we've got the the parent councils, the committee budget meetings, and I think that's going and that's going to continue where we can work work with that feedback because we've got to balance out the work that the principles and the teachers put into piloting these programs so they could roll those programs out and they're very uh protective of those programs where they feel like this this is the way to modern modernize and move education forward. and also the parents that want a more traditional

144experience. So I think we're going to see that continue to be worked out and then continue to have those options for our for our community. And so I know that isn't really gerine to the rift discussion and we'll get more followup on looking at like what why are we losing students because obviously being down 2400 students understand that's not birth rate. There's probably some demographics. Some families have moved out, but we don't know that 2400 kids have moved out of the districts. I think there'll be more to come on on this riff. It is, it really boils down to we have less students. We're going to have less staff. And that's hard, but that's the reality. And other districts haven't faced that reality. and and this district was ahead in planning ahead and making sure

145that we staffed appropriately which is why we haven't closed schools yet and other districts other districts are and I think as as board member Hutchinson said like we are here for the student outcomes and making sure that we can keep schools open as as long as possible as long as that makes sense is putting the student outcomes first but less students is is going to require the riff so I don't have any questions, but wanted to kind of just add that additional perspective of of where we are and what we're seeing and uh what we're seeing from our our our new leadership in the district. >> Thank you, member Chaffy. >> Miss Jenny, I hope you wear your comfortable shoes today. We're um I do think this is really important though because we've said like

146this is about people and it and it weighs heavy on us and I do have concerns about being able to run programs at our secondary schools when we're voting to eliminate positions at those schools. So I appreciate um the feedback and knowing that we'll get some followup from superintendency because the master schedule is complicated and we've put a lot of pressure on it by allowing students to take more electives and whether it's college and careermies or AP music theory we continue to navigate through those things. So, I appreciate the followup because I think that that will be important to all of us. >> Um, and I agree with board member Hutchinson that good people are really what makes Mesa great. And in looking at that list, like my heart was a little broken today because

147I saw names of teachers who have made a huge impact in my own children's lives. And so, I I think that's one thing we learned from our study session is people matter and they matter to families. And really, when you talk to a kid and they think about their school, it's their teacher, their principal, the crossing guard. These are the people that make a difference in our kids' lives every single day. And so, um, this is feeling difficult and big for me this week. I've felt a lot of stress and anxiety over this vote. And I appreciate your transparency on this is part of the process that we as a board can say yes, let's look forward and see what comes next. So, um, it's difficult and I appreciate the the transparency communication. I also

148think it's really important that we look at all of our options to make sure that we keep student facing positions like in the classroom as much as possible. Um I appreciate the district has looked at health insurance costs and we've eliminated positions of the district. I think those are things that people have been asking for. Um Mr. Moore, will we be looking at other things like class fees or positions who are not in the classroom or other ways to alleviate some pressure on the budget? Yeah, member Chaffy, we're um as we've alluded to several times tonight, we're on a current budget cycle process. So, we um it's very difficult to get ahead of next year and make changes into 27 at this time, but um several of those items including course fees and other items

149that we uh as cabinet have talked about. We have a a laundry list of things that we want to bring forth to you and make you aware of uh and make you aware of opportunities or potential savings to our budget. Um we want to get ahead of those in spring and fall to make um active for fiscal year 28. So, um, unfortunately, a lot of times with the the budget process, we have to be cyclical in this timeline, um, and just the way the state has kind of pigeon holed us into, um, the the current process. But, um, we do, to your point, we we have several items that we plan on bringing forth to you in the spring and fall um to implement into school year 28 as potential budget continued um, opportunities for

150budget savings. Thank you all for your questions and input. Um, I think probably one of my questions just because it's on the memo when we see elementary special area teachers. I know that there's been discussion of redesigning, but is are we redesigning anything or is that just because of the ATR because we're losing students in those areas? >> Again, thank you for that question. We are not redesigning any program. That is just because there is a reduction of teachers. So this year there was for elementary because it's an elementary specials um area that's on the memo. There was a reduction of 44 elementary teachers this year which is more than last year. So with a reduction of elementary teachers of course that means a reduction of elementary classrooms and therefore then the next is elementary

151specials. >> Thank you. Um, I I echo my board members when we say it's hard when we look at this because there are people and I happened to one of those teachers was my teacher that is on this retirement list and I actually visited with him last week and he said it's time for me to go to leave my spot for somebody else. And so I echo member all of our board members when we you know thank them those that have it's are retiring to save some positions for our other staff. And so I just that's what makes me so special are these are our people. And so all these kind of decisions make it really hard and heavy and like member Chaffy said, it's been a rough week. It's been heavy on us because

152these are people that we care about and they have families and so we want to do the best for our community. And so I thank everyone for the input. Um do I have any other questions? >> Yeah. I had just one more thing. thinking of what you said um President um last year just a reminder we were looking at a reduction of 151 a little bit over that of FTE and there was really just ending up a reduction of about 42 and so we really are hoping that through attrition that the numbers that were presented in the memo don't come to fruition that is on the outset and so tonight is again of course the the process itself a reduction force But the numbers that were in the memo that is on the on this

153end where that's before considering attrition and we're really hoping that attrition resolves a lot of this. >> Thank you. Any other questions? >> Can I make one clarification? >> Um I did not intend to imply that the only reason we have a decline at high school is college and careermies. However, um I do believe it is a strong one based on the conversations I've had with parents and thank you. Seeing no other questions, Miss Kirby, please take our vote. [snorts] With a vote of four yays and one nay, we have approved certified reduction in force for the 202627 school year. We will now move um to our consent agenda. All items listed will be considered as a group and will be approved with one motion. And we have already it maybe refresh sorry before we

154start. refresh your screens because we did pull that >> H >> everyone refresh. Did it refresh? >> Sorry. >> You good? >> Yes. >> Okay, there we go. Sorry. Make sure that got moved. All items list will be considered as a group and will be approved with one motion. If a board member would like to spotlight or comment on a consent agenda item, please do so after the vote. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda according to the recommended action for each item? >> So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> Seconded. >> Thank you. Miss Kirby will please take our vote. >> [snorts] >> With the vote of five yays, we have approved the consent agenda items according to the recommended action for each item. Now moving to our action

155items, those have changed. So action A, do I have a motion to approve contract renewal of $750,000 for electrical contractor [clears throat] services? >> So moved. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. Any discussion? >> Um, Dr. STM, would you please review um for um the sake of uh reminding the board as well as um informing the public as to how we ensure vendor quality as well as price and how vendors um become vendors in Mesa Public Schools. >> Uh yes, we will. I'm going to I while I led procurement in another district, I'm going to let Mr. Moore, who leads procurement here, respond to that. >> Yeah, me. >> Sorry, Mr. Moore. I was should have I should have referred to you. >> That's okay. U Oh, yeah. I'm going to

156give you a high level overview of kind of Mesa's process and why we have so many RFPs in our district and why they're advantageous uh to Mesa Public Schools. So, this particular contractual contractor services, we have um for context, we have over 140 uh RFPs, requests for proposal. So there's an individualized bids that our buyer teams have done to procure certain services throughout um our district and those are services that we need um across the across our district with different departments and teams. Um this particular contract and like most of our contracts are um five-year awards with annual renewals. Um so we bring those back annually. Uh we evaluate those contracts annually and modify the the spend amount um on a on a a need basis. And so for context, this electrical contract services award

157is year five of five. The first year the board did authorize 750,000. We spent 633. Year two, we brought 1.9 million because during that year we had higher electrical needs. Uh the board approved that. We spent 1.7. Year three board authorized 1 million, we spent 560,000. And just last year, the board authorized 750,000. We spent 347,000. So um annually we adjust and and recommend to the board uh an approximate amount in which we wish to spend um on these particular services uh for that fiscal year. Um, now every time we approach that to that total amount, right, we bring back an authorization to the board if we need to increase and so we have transparency in that fact and that that pricing fact. The contract itself um the reason we do um RFPs is a

158district most districts utilize cooperative um agreements, right? Um the cooperative uh agreement we we also are members of that. One example is one GPA. uh they do multiple procurement bids and they do they do procurement bids in uh a general sense that they list general services that apply to multiple districts that are members of that. So sometimes that not doesn't exactly meet our needs when we want to call an electrical vendor. We want to ensure they have the services that we need at that time. Like some of those services in this bid include high voltage that they're able to handle handle high voltage, low voltage. Um even things down to like they they able to bring in a scissor lift and they have pricings for scissor lifts. So when we call an electrical vendor, we

159want to make sure they have all these things that we expect from Mesa Public Schools and pricing for those. And oftentimes the [clears throat] general cooperative contracts like 1GBA offers are very broad and and their pricing uh doesn't reflect some of the the needs that we have as Mesa Public Schools. So us being the largest district in the state, we do a lot of these internally because we get more often better pricing and services that we need when we want to call an electrical vendor. Uh and we know that they're going to have those services available. So uh each of these vendors again are um annually monitored and we have methods in which we can put vendors on performance plans if they're not meeting our um our needs. Uh I know right now there are

160several vendors on performance plans because they are not meeting our needs. And so we actively monitor that and hold these vendors accountable to the services in which they um bid on and were awarded for. So, kind of the 10,000 foot level with a little bit of detail um on this process, but it is uh I would say coming to Mace Public Schools is very advantageous that we have this and we have a very good buying team uh that monitors and and uh uh authorizes these RFPs because we get one better pricing and then services uh that we need on a on a basically a phone call basis. So, >> thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Benson. >> So, Mr. Moore, if um I know that there are a few um comm community members who have asked

161for um done PRRS, public records requests for contracts uh for work done like in redesign or not redesign, remodels or whatever. So, um we don't the RFP is our contract, correct? So, if they wanted to have a um do a public record records request for the quote unquote contract, they really need to be asking for the RFP for Is that accurate? >> That's correct, M. >> Okay. And then one of the other questions Mr. Smithson had was um that he saw this was presented to I don't know 3,000, let's just say 3,000 vendors, but only seven um replied. Can you explain that process just a tad bit because I had the same question last year. So, um I think it would be beneficial to know >> me 3,000. How come only how come we only

162looked at seven? >> Yeah. Member it alludes back to the the specific ask that we have in our RFP. Again, when we call an electrical vendor, we would have a certain number of expectations that they can service um you know, high voltage, low voltage, they have a sigil. We don't want to um call a vendor and then they all of a sudden they have to subcontract out something else. And so we do um in our contracts [clears throat] list specifics for what we uh intend to need when we do have to contract out our trade guys cannot do it and we have to call a contract. We want to ensure that they can do that job. And so it's it is specific and so um the reason seven respond is because only seven can meet

163our qualifications. So, >> any other questions? >> Thank you. >> I don't think so. >> Any other questions? All right. Seeing none, Miss Kirby, would you please take our vote? With a vote of five yays, we have approved the contract renewal of $750,000 for the electrical contractor services. Do I have a motion to approve the audits and compliance questionnaire? >> So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> I'll second it. >> Thank you. Mr. Moore, can you please tell us more about this action item before passing it over to Miss Shields from Heinfield to meet for the presentation? Yeah, President Davis, members of the board, annually um um Mesa Public Schools as well as um all public entities have to have uh now required uh an annual vote uh in approval of the audit.

164Uh since 2021 when the legislature enacted this new uh requirement, um tonight before you approve the audit, uh we invited our independent auditor um from Heinfield, Miss Jennifer Shields, uh to present uh the audit and uh give you a summary of the results. So, Miss Shields, >> thank you. Um, President um Davis, members of the board, Dr. Stum, thank you um for allowing me a few minutes of time this evening to um present the results of the audit. So, um is this just do I There we go. Thank you. Um [clears throat] uh so I just want to um cover a couple of things. So, this is um I've been here presenting a few years now. Um but this particular presentation is regarding the financial statement audit that is conducted by our firm Heinfeld Meech.

165So we're independent external auditors. And so what we do is we pro um perform the audit itself and then it um you know we come before you at after the audit is all completed in order to give you kind of like the results of the audit. So the presentation will cover um a few different items. Um there are certain communications that are required to occur between the auditor and um you all as a governing board and one of those things is the audit timeline. As you can see from the timeline on the screen, there is quite a lengthy lapse of time from when we start the audit until tonight when we're here. That is um in fact very common for audits uh most audits but especially audits of school districts um and other governmental entities

166here in the state. So, we start the process back in April when we issue the engagement letter. Um, you guys just got done talking about procurement. And so, this this would be after the procurement process is all followed and all of that kind of stuff. We actually just for our professional standards issue an engagement letter in addition to the RFP and the contract itself. So, just a point of clarification there. Um, and then we perform um what we call fieldwork over several different um instances of time. You can see several different dates there. Well, May and Octo October are the primary dates, although we do work periodically throughout the summer months as well. And then after the audit procedures are completed, we draft the audit rep um the financial statements themselves and then we provide

167that to management for management to review and approve. And then the financial statements themselves were dated in um December which is when the audit report itself was actually issued. In terms of the actual scope of services that were provided, these all get outlined in the engagement letter but were hired by your district um to perform audits in accordance with a variety of different standards which are listed on the screen. In addition to the um the financial audit itself and the single audit, we also do procedures that are required so that we can issue the USFR, the uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire. And that report is um what is put out by the auditor general's office that the school districts have to have an audit performed to answer questions. So that that report goes

168to the auditor general for them to evaluate your compliance with a variety of different items. Um in terms of um responsibilities, there's a lot of responsibilities the district has and then there are a few responsibilities that the auditor has. So in particular, we highlight that you know we do um in fact I've talked to a few of you as board members um you know to ask questions about fraud and procedures and internal controls at the district. We ask a variety of individuals throughout that um throughout the audit, you know, including Mr. Moore and others. Um but we we have um we make inquiries regarding whether or not there's any known fraud or suspected fraud, what the controls are that are in place at the district. Um ultimately the fraud responsibility for making sure that there

169are good internal controls to prevent and um either deter or detect fraud should it occur rests with you all as board members and as management. And then our job is to just make sure that we um design our audit procedures such that if there is something um significant that it would likely be uncovered through the audit. So um it our audit doesn't provide 100% assurance. It is only um reasonable assurance, but it's it's not absolute because um and I'm sure Mr. Moore appreciates the fact that we don't look at every single transaction because we would never leave the district. But um you know we do um we do audit based on sample. So um there's always um there's always possibilities that things are either non-compliant or um don't follow the appropriate protocol in terms of

170your internal control processes. So those are risks that um exist in any audit. Um in terms of um there's also um accounting standards that the district has to follow. So there was a very large one that you all implemented this year. it was required and it's um related to compensated absences and I just want to give a big um shout out to your entire team um in particularly I think it was um payroll who took um a heavy uh they did a heavy lift in um making sure that the work related to this accounting standard was implemented and what this what compensated absences are are essentially um leave balances that you um offer your employees. So things like sick leave, medical leave, vacation leave, etc. and there is a liability that is um that the

171district has related to those benefit programs that you offer your employees. And so there was a change in the way that the accounting standard um required the liability to be calculated and it's it's very um complicated. Um but your team did a great job and um especially with the number of employees that you have here at the district. Um the there there was really quite a lot of work that had to be done. And so um kudos to the team for making sure that they had good processes in place to make sure that the work was done in a timely fashion in order to to make sure that the audit was not delayed for the implementation of the standard. Other required um communications include the fact that there are significant estimates that are in the

172financial statements. Um there are estimates in every set of financial statements. However, here at Mesa Public Schools, the um three that you see on your screen there, those are the three most significant estimates. And those um what happens is management makes a series of assumptions and um historical um like look backs and things like that in order to make those estimates. Um in the case of like say actuary evaluations or estimates of claims for medical and um insurance reasons um you also use third-party um individuals who assist with the um development of of those um estimates. So those are the three most significant estimates. And then um [clears throat] in terms of required communications, we're supposed to as auditors according to our prof professional standards let um the governing body know whether or not there

173were a audit adjustments that are were required to tell you about. Um and we had no significant audit adjustments that were required to disclose. There are audit adjustments of course, but nothing nothing out of the ordinary. Um [clears throat] there's also non- audit services that our firm provides to the district in addition to the audit. Um most people kind of like lump them all together, but the non- audit services include the assistance with the preparation of the actual financial statements themselves, the notes to the financial statements, and then also the um what's called the SIFA, the schedule of expenditures of federal awards, which that's what's required for the single audit. And then of course there's a related federal um document called the data collection form that we also assist with a preparation of. So they

174they look and feel a little bit like audit services but they're really um they're sort of like attached to the audit and that's also part of the proposal and contracting process. Um and again a very common um a common thing for uh school districts to have the auditors do these services. Um other required communications. We are pleased to report that we had no disagreements with management about financial accounting reporting or other audit related matters. Um at the end of the audit we always ask management to sign a letter that gives us um it's it's sort of a summary of you know we gave you everything you asked for. We told you everything that we felt was pertinent to the audit. So management did um provide those required um uh representations to us and then as

175your external independent auditors, we are required to of course maintain our independence and our professional standards require us to follow like our standards so that we are um follow like all of our our own professional standards, make sure that our ethical um requirements are adhered to. And so we continually assess those relationships and our own practices. and we don't have any, pardon me, we don't have any violations of those to report to you this evening. So, I'm happy to report that. Um, and then in terms of the actual audit reports that were provided to you, you were provided an annual comprehensive financial report. If you look at the the Adobe PDF file of them, that's going to be the largest file that is your financial statements. You're also presented with a single audit report. That

176one's a lot smaller, maybe only like 10 to 15 pages. And then you also have that uniform system of compliance um uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire. And that one's usually about like 30 pages long. And I just have a few um pages to highlight. I'll highlight page 20 in what we call the ACT for the annual comprehensive financial report. Um, page 20 are um starts the three pages in that entire 140ish page um document that I'm responsible for, which is the independence auditor's opinion. And um the district received an unmodified opinion on those financial statements. So this is again for the year ended June 30th of 25. So that's what we kind of refer to um as a clean opinion. So no material misstatements were noted. There's also a few other um because

177it's quite a lengthy document. There's a few other page numbers that I would draw your attention to if you want to do some late night reading, maybe you can't sleep. Um you know, if you read um the management's discussion and analysis, that's a really good recap. It's about 10 or so pages where it talks about kind of like the highlights of what the district did financially through the year and there's a prior year comparison. Or conversely, [clears throat] if you look at the statistical section, the statistical section will pri provide information on sort of um a lot of financial data over a 10-year period. So, you can look at various um you know key points of um like pieces of statistical information. So, that's in that report. If you switch gears to the single audit

178reporting package, the single audit is required because the district district spends well over um in this particular year, the requirement is $750,000 of of expenditures for federal awards. Your district spent over $90 million. So, you're well in excess of that threshold. Um there is a change coming to the threshold for the next fiscal year, but you will still as a district be well over that because the threshold is only going up to a million. So, I predict you'll still be um significantly above a million dollars of federal expense. Um and so what the single audit does is that's what what we call our uniform guidance. That's where we look at um a lot of your um internal controls related to your federal programs and make sure that you you are as a district using the

179federal programs that you're awarded for the purposes for which you were received the award for. We had no deficiencies to report, no material weaknesses related to your internal controls um for both financial reporting and for the compliance with the federal requirements. So that's highlighted on page 10. And then each year we look at different federal programs the last couple years that I've presented before you. We have um predominantly looked at the um ESSER funding. So, with the ESSER funding sunsetting with the last fiscal year, um we ended up looking at your child nutrition cluster, which is basically your food and nutrition, um your free um free and reduced breakfast, lunch programs, and that accounted for 34% of the district's federal expenditures. So, 34% of that $90 million was related to the food food and nutrition

180program. So, no findings to report there. And then um with the USFR, we have talked about this before in the past, but there's about 30 pages of a a smattering of different um compliance areas that the auditor general's office um puts out this questionnaire. They involve things like the first first item that I put on the screen for you is governing board management procedures. So we do um we look at things like did you properly notice your um your board meetings? Did you have your agendas? did you follow proper protocol and and those types of things. We also do test work over a variety of other areas including procurement. Are you following the rules that are set out um you know that you do those requests for proposals or invitations for bid and that you

181award appropriately based on those responses. So test procurement and then um you know even you can see student attendance is up there. So, we we track where the where the students are and whether or not you're reporting your students appropriately um at the high school level, making sure that their their full-time equivalency is reported properly based on the number of classes they have. Um if you know a student left early to go to a doctor's appointment, were they signed out properly, etc. So, we look at a lot of different areas that are not just fina financial in nature. Um so, just a last couple of comments. Um, looking forward to next year, there are more, sorry, sorry, Tyler, there are more accounting standards that will have to be implemented. Um, Gazby 103, um, it changes

182a little bit of the financial reporting model, but I will say the heavy lift, um, of what we what we saw with the the vacation and sick leave policies. Um, that is behind us. And these next couple of standards have what we call maybe a medium level of of lift for the district. Um, so the district will have to implement both of those. And then of course, as always, last but certainly not least, um, all of your staff that we encounter here throughout the audit. Um, everybody is just really helpful and cooperative and they are able to get us what we need in a in a very timely fashion so that we can finish our audit procedures and issue the reports on time. And so with that, that concludes my remarks and I'm happy to

183stand for questions. >> Thank you, Miss Shields, for your presentation. I understand this is a long process for both your staff and ours. And so I just want everyone to know how much we appreciate everyone's diligent work and effort. And so with that, I will start with questions. I'm going to go to my left this time. Board member Chaffy, will you start? We'll start with you. >> Yes. I echo President Davis's remarks. Thank you for this thorough and audit of the district and it is really helpful as a board member to know that we have independent eyes on this and I've always been really intrigued as we go through this to like learn things and learn about how um different areas work and see that things are found and it's also really nice to get

184good news up here sometimes. So, thank you. Um this audit has me thinking a little bit about the auditor general's report that came out recently and while I recognize that that is separate from this report, I would love to get your professional perspective. Um, Mesa was not identified as one of the state's highest risk districts, but it was identified as high risk for the change in weighted student count. >> What are some things affecting our ADM in your opinion and weighted student count? >> Um, thank you board member. Um, you know, I think that's a great question and I think um the the presentation before me regarding um you know the the reduction in force um you guys talked a lot as a board about that um and the the changing um or the declining

185enrollment essentially is what this is related to. So the auditor general has about 10 different um points that they look at um with respect to that financial risk analysis and I think that just was released sometime within the last I I can't remember a few few weeks maybe. Um so there's [clears throat] a couple of different reports that the auditor general's office um issues. One of them is um like classroom dollar spending. I don't know the official title of that, but they put a lot of effort and energy into evaluating how much districts across the state are spending um that are directly related to um instruction. The other um report that they put out is this um financial risk analysis. So, I think there's like 10 different areas that they evaluate districts on. And really

186it's just to um to be able to to make sure that the public and the board members and district management are informed as to where are pos possible pain points. So while our audit looks at things like you know we take your your accounting records and and all of your spend whether it be for your salaries um your benefits your paying your vendors etc. We look at all of your spend and we determine whether or not the accounting records are properly stated. So that's what that's what my job is is to basically design audit procedures to make sure that the samples that we choose are representative and that that the financial statements are fairly stated. Then the auditor general takes a different look at that. they they too also care about your accounting records but

187but they are saying okay as a board what are the things that maybe you need to be aware of you have declining enrollment um there are over 200 school districts in Arizona and I think there's only like I can count on one hand or less the number of districts that are growing um and so that speaks to an overall societal issue population um maybe it's birth rates Maybe it's demographics, you know, what's going on in the nation in terms of like are people moving into Arizona? Are people leaving Arizona? So that that gets into a bigger um you know, maybe uh those are bigger societal issues. And then they look at the weighted count is that's a that's a particular um calculation that they do. It's not necessarily a a student, but the weighted count

188is certain students get more weight than others. Um, typically we see those in our special populations, um, where, you know, you need, um, like lower, um, lower class sizes because you have a student who needs more, um, one-on-one attention for their for their particular situation. And so, that's that would be a higher weighted student. So when the auditor general looks at the financial risk analysis, student population is the number one driver because student population is what drives your budget and it and and your budget drives your spending and your spending drives your you know state equalization and your property tax and all of that kind of stuff. So, um I wish I could answer for you um really succinctly why your Mesa public schools is experiencing decline, but I don't know that I think that's

189the that's the mirror ball or the you know the yeah the the eight magic eightball question. Um and it's it's it's a combination of a lot of things. Some of it school choice, some of it's just demographics um and those types of things. when I I actually looked at your financial risk analysis and and like I said there are 10 different elements you only were rated um higher risk in that particular category all other nine you were you didn't like really you know bump the needle as a district and so that's where I feel like yes you pay attention and you make decisions and you you you have a tough job before you um you know to make sure that those other needles such as if we're losing students, are we reducing our budget, are

190we, you know, spending within our constraints and those types of things. If you start not being um cognizant of those budgetary restraints, then you might have another uh element that maybe next year you would end up being, you know, protect potentially high risk for or something like that. So, um long-winded answer to say I I I don't have the magic eightball answer. I'm sorry, board member Chaffy. Thank you, board member Walden. Any questions? >> Uh, thank you. And yeah, this is this is another thing that's hours and hours of work that just gets condensed into into a presentation for the board and then we get to selling the experts forgetting to ask the questions. But I I appreciate it. I had to do audits in my previous line of work. I audited my clients. My

191clients got audited and the company I worked for was audited by the by the federal government on an annual basis. So I understand understand the the work of audits and so some of the things that you know I look for is to see that you know we have cooperation from management that we have adherence to procedures and so it is really good news as uh board member Chavi brought up we get to have good news that that that's happening that we have uh we have compliance we have adherence to our own procedures uh you know looking for things like okay well are there are there errors are there uncorrected errors and uh other disagreements or are there exceptions to our practices and you know we're not we're not seeing that. So all all very good

192things so we just want to thank the district for that and I don't have any questions. Thank you. >> Thank you board member Benson. >> Yes, Mrs. Shields. A massive amount of work goes into an audit so I can appreciate that as well. Um I pardon me. I only [clears throat] have one question. Um because you do a sampling, >> right? Yes. So h um how do you decide uh where those samples come from? Like is it random or do you look at do you try and pull something from each different fund that we're looking at? And so h how how do you determine your samples? >> Yeah, thank you board member Benson. That's a great question. Um uh it depend the the general my favorite auditor answer is it depends. Um and so when

193we are testing say the child nutrition program we are like very much looking at expense and transactions that are occurring within that particular um funding source. So you have one fund in your accounting records where all food nutrition um resides. So we look at that when we look at different areas. So there are um throughout that USFR compliance questionnaire there are questions that are related to student activities. There are questions that are related to auxiliary operations. There are questions that are related to um specifically like bond transactions if you have a bond program. Um and so to answer those questions, we would choose our samples from those particular um funding sources. Um and so the district um per the auditor general um chart of accounts, you know, if you have a bond program, you have

194a fund or series of funds within a certain number string where you would put all of those transactions. Um similarly, same thing with student clubs. Those are all in one area. Auxiliary operations are things like your gate receipts and class fees and some of that kind of stuff. So we would do samples from those particular things. And then when we look at the district overall as a whole, then that's where we sort of take off the the limiting factors of the fund and we look at the district as a whole. And so um sample sizes are um there we don't actually employ statistical sampling. We use statist we use um random sampling have hazard sampling. We do um a number of different things. We'll use um a Benford's analysis where that's a that's a regression

195analysis kind of a thing. We'll look at transactions maybe that are spiking as like well this could be an anomaly or this could not be an anomaly. Um so we'll look at just a lot of different things. Um we use a data extraction software system for random number um sampling. And so it's it's a lot of different um methods that we use in order to pull the samples depending on the type of thing that we're looking at. >> So your company is the one pulling the samples. So you're not saying hey Mr. Alexander give me some samples of whatever. >> That is correct. No. Um I I will say that we do have clients that will say like oh hey maybe I don't like how this transaction was coded. Could you could you choose it?

196So we may in fact do something like that and that's always a possibility. Um so you know pe people people confess to us a lot. Um and um so sometimes we pull transactions maybe if there's a particular area that you want us to look at but then those are usually in addition to whatever else we would pick on our own. So those are done by us independently. Thank you. Now, one of the things that I've noticed, um, this is the second, uh, audit that, um, I've been able to see and and, uh, um, and I'm very impressed with the level of precision and accuracy of our financial team. Uh, so I'm hoping that whoever fills Mr. Alexander shoes, uh, actually fills his shoes along with Mr. Moore and Mr. Wing. So, thank you for your

197hard work and thank you team for your hard work. you >> board member Hutchinson. >> Well, in my faith, confession is good for the soul. So, um uh this is my eighth audit I've sat [laughter] through and I music to my ears are words like no audit adjustments, no disagreements, no deficiencies, no material weaknesses, cooperative, helpful, high, clean. This is this is terrific. And and what I want everyone to understand is is that you are an external auditor who works in collaboration with our team that tries to be watchful for any risk so that the board can be made aware and and that this shows that we are mindful of our hardearned taxpayer dollars and we are trying to be the best stewards that we can and an external audit like this where we win

198awards for our audits and we have consecutively. Um it's it's it's really um a testament to the hard work of our employees but also yours as well that you can collaborate with school districts because as our principal said that the buckets of money are you know and it's it's it's very very complicated and I thank you and I and I thank the staff. Well, thank you, Miss Shields, and thank you everyone and echo all the board members and all the effort that's gone into this. So, thank you so much. Any other questions? All right. Um, thank you all for your discussion. We're ready to vote since we do use electronic voting, which includes each board member's name with their vote. This satisfies the roll call vote requirements. So, Miss Kirby, will you please take our

199vote? With a vote of five years, we've approved the audits and compliance questionnaire. Do I have a motion to approve the age discre age discrepancy students listed? >> So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. Thank you. Any discussion? >> Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? With a vote of five yays, we have approved the age discrepancy students listed. We are now into our information items. U Mr. Moore, I'm going to turn the time over to you for the fiscal year 2027 budget projects. You'll have 10 minutes to present and then we'll have 10 minutes for questions since Mr. Wings uh virtual and can't keep us on time. Um I'm going to leave that to Dr. Strong. >> Perfect. Uh tonight um I'll be well under 10 minutes. Um

200tonight's goal is to uh bring the board the second kind of review of the FY27 M budget projections. And so tonight's objective is continuing to bring the board along in our uh 27 budget u conversation. So we are actively um working through our 27 budget. Again, this is for next fiscal year. Uh as we've alluded to tonight, we we work on current year funding. So, we have to have all our ducks in a row prior to the start of next year uh to ensure we get off on the right foot. Um I'll highlight a couple of the um legislative conversations that are going on. Um not a lot of um I would say answers that I have right now, but I can fill you in on the conversations that are taking place. And then um

201we plan on continuing to bring forth uh reviews of the budget as we work towards uh the board's ultimate approval of the 27 budget in June um of the proposed and then the adopted in July. And so I did provide the timeline. We're kind of right in the mix of uh planning and preparing for 27. Um I thought getting here I can move this budget along like I've done in other districts and this is a much larger task. [laughter] Um plus with a lot of the reorganization that we have going on uh we're taking our time uh going through our ZBB right our zerobased budgeting process with all our departments and our new department leaders uh going into next year. um that process is um comprehensive and it's taking an extensive amount of time as

202we look to consolidate budgets and look for opportunities of savings within within our own team. So that process is ongoing right now. We plan on um kind of wrapping that up in March uh as we work towards again um bringing forth the board the proposed and adopted budget in June and July. So, some legislative updates. Like I've said, um not a lot of concrete information that is uh inked to pen. We have conversations out there on the K12 uh budget. Um right now, again, a lot of uncertainty. There's no enacted budget yet. And then, uh we expect kind of a lot of key decisions to be made late in the process. Um several of the past years, the Kato budget has been approved well past the legislative cycle. Um so we may be approving or

203the board may be adopting a budget um with some uncertainties in the in the K12 uh arena in terms of legislative approval. Um but we plan to bring you along that process. So, one of the items that we do know is approved because it was approved um last year is the aggregate expensure limit. The exemption of that um I don't know how much the board has been um informed on that um limit that is in place. Again, that aggregate expensure limit or AEL is is part of the 1980s formula that we're currently running on. Um it's an kind of in my opinion arbitrary limit that was set in the 1980s that we're still trying to uh fit our 2026 budgets into. Um but uh that has been exempted for 27. So we do not have

204to worry about that into next year. So I'm going to move on to the one-time appropriations which uh do have a major impact into our budget conversation. So, uh, over the past couple years, the legislative have legislature has approved one-time appropriations, and these onetime appropriations mimic what has to come in place into until fiscal 28. So, I believe under the juicy administration, there was um some budget decisions made uh that impact fiscal year 28. They're supposed to be enacted in 28. each year of the last couple years, the legislature has approved onetime appropriations um basically matching what that 28 funding enacted funding is supposed to be. So, they're they're um using one-time monies um to to kind of bring us up to what is going to be going in place in 28. Um the big

205impacts um the free and reduced um one-time appropriation that is about $2 million for the district. Um there has been uh the governor has proposed her budget that is included in her budget and then I also recently saw that in the JB um joint legislative budget um projection. So there is some hope that that does get appropriated again in 27. Um and then state aid uh the state aid supplement now is the former Prop 123 uh conversation. And so the state has picked up the uh formerly obligated uh Prop 123 that was being paid from the trust or the state um excuse me state land trust. And now the state has been picking that up because that is legislator leave their obligation. Now there's several bills out there regarding the to bring back Prop 123

206and move that appropriation back into the state trust land. That won't affect that state aid supplement. going to be getting that money whether it's from the state budget or whether it's from the state trust land. It's just advantageous for the uh the state budget to move that back to the state trust land to free up more money for them in future years. Um so those are the two really want big ones that we're we're watching. There's not a lot of new money um projected for um not the state's budget um but K12 as well. So, with not a lot of new money and it being an election year, um there there we hope for a quick process because there's not a lot to negotiate um within the the state budget, but we'll continue to monitor

207this and bring the board along uh as this progresses. Um as a reminder, this is we've already reviewed this. This is our current budget projection for M for next year and our deficit. So the revenue control limit, right? That's our um uh calculated maintenance and operations budget limit and it's used on average daily membership. The board uh most recently approved in December. That's our our our most recent revised budget that 43 million. We are projecting in 27 um as we highlighted in the enrollment presentation a 2400 student loss for next year. Right? We're projecting for worst case scenario based on uh demographic reports and several internal enrollment projections that we utilize. That alone that 2400 student projection is equivalent to $18.2 million in in budget capacity. Um now some positives that we have um kind

208of known um the annual inflation adjustment 2% we are assuming that into 27 uh inflation's hovering about 2.6% 6% I believe at the state level. So uh annually they have to if it's above 2% they have to at minimum appropriate us a 2% inflation adjustment. Um so we are assuming that into 27. So it's 7.6 million. Our budget balance carry forward. Uh that number we are planning on holding that flat. um as the the board has been aware in the financial risk report um having a a contingency conservative contingency and not having fluctuations in that budget balance carry forward is one of the metrics analyzed in the financial risk report. And so um with the um unpredictable um nature of enrollment right now, having uh that budget balance carry forward stay flat into next year

209will give us that um latitude to uh make adjustments in the current year uh if we do miss our projections. So uh we are planning to hold that flat. Our override is also formula based. So we currently have a maintenance operations override um that is formula based and so as our enrollment declines so does that calculation of our override and that uh we are anticipating um a reduction about a million dollars in the override formula. As I mentioned, state aid supplement, that's the former Prop 123. We are pretty confident again the state has to pick that obligation up whether it's funded from the state trust land or it's from from the state budget. And so we are projecting that for 27 at this time. Um because there is no approved K12 budget. Um the free

210and reduced percentage again being proposed in the legislature and the J you know from the governor and the JB um joint legislative budget committee. Um it's being proposed but it hasn't been approved. And so, uh, in a conservative nature, we are not budgeting for that at this time. Uh, albeit it's $2 million, but we do want to be conservative and not have to come back to the board and say, uh, you know, this was not approved. We have to cut an additional 2 million. And so, right now, we are not including that in the projections. If by some chance that changes before June, we'll add that back in. Um, but right now, we are not including that into the budget. So, our total deficit projected going into next year from our maintenance and operations budget

211is 13.7 million. And as we've alluded to before, we have um we believe the first three bullets um in in in large part are going to be our resolutions to solve that 13.7 million budget deficit. So, that means that organizational redesign, we're still calculating out uh the total monetary impact on that, but we believe it's about 3.5 million. the stipen audit. Uh we did get the results, preliminary results back on that. We're analyzing that and seeing where those savings can be quantified throughout the fiscal year. We anticipate about 2 million in potential savings and the the teacher staffing allocations um goes handinhand with the RIFF process. We still are evaluating our staffing as those are being turned in and and uh calculating out the total impact of us u uh um adjusting our teacher staffing

212allocations to meet our um staffing standards based on enrollment. Some other items that I'm I'm looking at um and that have kind of important large implications into our conversation with ML districtwide utilities. Unfortunately, oh looks like I'm out of time. I was just doing I was just doing that because I'm subbing for Mr. Wing. >> Can I buy Can I buy two more minutes? >> Okay. Two minutes. Okay. Districtw utilities. Um these play uh these these are I would say outside of salaries and benefits, utilities are probably our next biggest line item uh to the tune about $22 million across all our utilities that we pay. Um we are uh we work with several um we work with the city um and in several of our SRP we're mostly an SRP district and um a

213contractor called Fusebox to help us analys analyze and look at utility savings. The city has proposed increases. We know we're realizing some SRP increases. Um but at the same time, the board did approve an IGA with the the city of Mesa with the pools. And so we're also slowly reducing our utility um obligation with the with in regards to the pools. Um but in general, we'll look to probably see an increase in districtwide utilities. Uh and I'll bring forth that that calculation. Department budgets, as I alluded to, I'm working diligently on our uh zerobased budgeting approach with all our departments and our newly formed departments. So, we're collapsing a lot of departments and we anticipate seeing some savings here um as we kind of streamline some of our departments and and uh kind of um

214adjust our budgets accordingly. Our school budgets are mostly formula based and so as enrollment declines, we'll see um in large part a decrease in our school allocated budgets and those are for supplies and annual school needs. Included in those school budgets though is course fees. And so um based on this year's analysis, we the board allocated um 360,000 for to supplement the course fees that um were not being paid by families. Now um after analysis this year and based on use um we believe it's the board's intention to continue uh as we don't have course fees in place right now, continue to um provide the level of funding if the fees were in place um to meet those needs. And so in short, what that means is we're looking at about a $200,000 increase um

215based on the amount of uh needs in these courses like the the the expenditures that took place. Um we'll need to increase that M um budget line up to 500,000 uh to meet the the needs of pro of offsetting these course fees that are so more to come on that. I'll have an actual dollar amount for that. And then uh the lastly compensation benefits. We're working through our meet and confer process uh in evaluating um those two items there. With that, just in summary, um our 27 budget um projections reflect a large part in enrollment decline, right? That's going to be a major factor not only in our 27 budget, but um for the next foreseeable future until we kind of level off. Uh we're again I think this budget represents a conservative budgeting approach.

216Um as we go into these years and being on current year funding we are trying to take uh every possible step to um have reserves in place to make adjustments in current year. uh if we miss budget projections um if something comes up um the volatility with school level funding right now is is is at probably at its highest point and so having a conservative or higher budget balance carry forward gives us that flexibility on a year-to-year basis to make adjustments and then targeted expenditure adjustments um again the organizational redesign um we anticipate uh quantifying those savings for the board um in a future presentation but again streamlining some of those department budget budgets. Um, we hope to realize some savings there in our 27 budget. So, with that, I'll take any questions. >> Thank

217you, Mr. Moore. All right, board. I'm going to open up to if everyone can ask one question at first, so we make sure everyone has there's time for everyone to ask. And there is a spreadsheet with additional questions. So, I'll go to my right. Board member Hudson, any questions? >> Um, I want to thank you for um really explaining this very well. Um, and um, I was wondering about the course fees and how that was going to factor in because I know kids are taking a lot more courses and those and they are those fees that provide supplemental materials and and so I'm just glad to um hear that information. And with that, I have no further questions. Thank you. >> Thank you, board member Benson. Um, I just want to thank you for taking

218a conservative conservative approach because it is by far easier to add additional staff should we see um that next year we actually don't decline by 2400 students. It's going to be easier to add FTE than it will be to take FTE away. Um, and so [clears throat] geez, sorry. Um, since we have such a great partnership with Ma the city of Mesa, why is it that they don't swing us a deal when it comes to utilities? I I assume we are one of their largest maybe not the largest but I assume we're probably one of the largest utility consumers. >> So when you take in the holistic v view of any municipality's relationship with their school district there's so many backs and forths along the ways but their utility department is going to function on

219its own. So it's not part of the calculation in our agreements. In other words, what what we do for them for facility use and what they do for us for facility use, that's part of the whole holistic view, but they their utility department runs on its own. And it's not something that we really consider in portions of deals because, you know, there's just a certain amount of expense to production of energy, kilowatt hours, all that that they have to incur and then we got to pay pay back those expenses for them. The good news is it is run through the city of Mesa program for a lot of our schools and and therefore we think we're getting a a relatively consumerfriendly deal uh from the city of Mesa. Uh but I've never seen utilities wound

220into municipality school district deals in in my experience. >> It would be nice though, wouldn't it? >> Uh I just I I do appreciate the um conservative approach. Um and the other zerobased I would know that as balanced budget correct is that what a zerobased budget. >> Yeah. So member events zero based um zerobased budgeting is is budgeting down to the dollar, right? Zero. Yeah. >> I have $100. I can spend $100. >> Yeah. And we know exactly where that $100 is is being either budgeted for or expended to. So >> thank you. Thank you, board member Walden. >> Yeah, thank you. And we had mentioned municipalities. Uh the city of Mesa, the city council votes on their rates. Then SRP has a board that votes on their rates. I feel like I need to

221make sure people understand that. Um uh the I really like uh I wanted to add for the budget that uh this district did implement salary caps and uh that was I don't I don't know, Dr. Chararma, are there other districts that have salary caps? I think we might be the only one. Yeah. And I think our superintendent is the only one that has a salary cap, too. Uh but that's, you know, very conservative. And the stipen audit, I really appreciate that. Uh started started last year and there's going to be some savings for that. Uh the only question I have and and board member Hutchinson mentioned mentioned this that we have more students taking courses because I was surprised that the the course fees amount that needs to be allocated is increasing because I know

222there's some courses that are being eliminated. So we have shrinking shrinking schools but then we have an increase in course fees. So do you mind elaborating on that a little bit more Mr. Mr. Moore? I'll I'll start maybe Dr. Sham can pick up where I left off. Um so so my understanding of the increase is the expanded options that we've um provided now with our college and careermies. >> Expanded electives. So there so there's more courses that are being offered for electives. So that's increasing the students in them thereby increasing the amount needed to support the programs. >> Exactly. Correct. >> Okay. Just want to make sure I understand. I'll give you one more component. In course fee systems where course fees from parents are getting paid for certain elective courses beyond the general requirements.

223Typically what would happen is those course fees were never in any system I've been a part of able to generate enough to where you get the supplies for the system. And usually what would happen then is the principal has a principal budget and the principal would backfill and go I I'll cover the differential. Right? Well, now that the district's covering course fees, there is kind of a common expectation across the district that, you know, the district's covering course fees. And so that's another portion of it is that there's just the ask isn't going to the principal. The ask is going to the district covering the course fees which is is part of the process but something that the board really probably I mean the way I I've equated this before with a governing board and

224that you know if they increase to 56 $600,000 next year out of the M budget you I mean the equation you got to go through every single time is that's five to six FTE that's 5 to six teachers. And I'm not telling you everything's about trade-offs. So, I'm not telling you what's worth it or not worth it as a board. That's what you're going to have to consider. We can't implement course fees for next year. If you're going to ever want to change in that process, it's got to be done in the summer so we can prepare for registration and it's got to be done by October so we can have our registration books ready to go. Does that make sense to everyone? Uh, so there's another explanation is I think the ask is not

225going to the principal now because the district's covering course fees and that's helping us rise as well. And and as someone that was here when we eliminated the course fees, one of the things that did surprise me about it is that like half the people don't pay it. So it wasn't really a very fair system to to families where a lot of families didn't know it wasn't an option to just never pay the course fees. So I think with this process, there's there's more funding that they do get for supplies. But and in mentioning the principles covering it, I I want to ask about it, but I'll just I'll follow up later about that because I I think there's more there we can we can talk about, but I'll do that at another time. >>

226Board member Chaffy. >> Yeah, I'm just going to piggyback off of that because I noticed that we we put other items we put including course fees under school budgets and I know in talking with arts teachers, it has been a struggle this year. There are a lot of more there are a lot more students taking classes like choir and dance because we can put students in those classes. We can we can fill those classes um when we need to put them in an elective because students have the opportunity to take more electives this year. Um and I know that some of those teachers have gone to their principles and they've needed like $3,000 for their course for their materials and then that adds up for those principles budgets where in the past we were meeting

227it on more of a case-byase basis. um where if a student needed it, there was a process and then the principles were using their budget to make sure that every student had access to those opportunities. So, I would love to revisit this as a board because I think it's something that wasn't fully fleshed out with all the changes happening at the same time like the the change to course fees happened, but then we also added block schedule and the opportunity for more students to take classes. So I think in order to alleviate some of the pressure on our sites and also on our teachers who are really working hard, we we invite them to come to our board meetings. They do so much for our district in recruitment and retention and providing things that our

228students want and need. I think that if we can talk as a board about the ways that we can make sure that we are supporting those teachers and providing those opportunities for students who are often coming to school for those amazing experiences with their teachers. So, I would love to to re-evaluate that conversation and maybe we can look at re-evaluating the way that we've worded it in our policy that like students may pay a course fee so that if there are families who would like to pay a course fee, they could opt into that. Right now, the way it's worded, they don't have that option. So, I would love to maybe see if there's ways we can re-evaluate our policy and and look at ways that the numbers can meet the needs because I know

229that those teachers were operating on last year's budget and they were like, "Oh, this isn't even close. I'm teaching seven sections of a class and last year I was teaching five and you know, it's it's been a lot. I totally would be up for that looking exploring that if that's an option and the legalities and all the all the details about that like is there can people opt into the fee. Yeah, >> thank you. I think I agree and I I think the timing is sometimes hard for us to understand that we can't implement it for next year. Everyone's like why aren't you doing it next year? Well, because everything's printed and of course our elect is already chosen, right? our kids have already picked their schedule and so sometimes it's tricky to understand that

230we can't just move on a dime sometimes what it board member Hudson the ship doesn't just turn on a dime like it takes a while and yeah so it takes a while you know so thinking ahead so I think if we put this in our notes for the summer to readress um and go over it then um that will be helpful and so thank you Mr. more for your presentation. Board members, there is a spreadsheet for follow-up questions as you think of those. Um, but I think that we are to the end of our meeting. Do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? >> So moved. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. See uh any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? With a vote

231of five years, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you for joining us tonight. Have a good evening and a happy Valentine's Day.