Governing Board Study Session & Regular Board Meeting - April 22, 2025

001Welcome this evening. Will please stand for a moment of silence. Thank you. You may be seated. Welcome this evening to our study session. And we're just going to jump right in. Um Dr. Esless, I want to thank you and um your team for putting this together and this presentation. We know that's been lots of time involved in this and we appreciate it. Um we're going to go ahead and listen to the presentation and then once it's done, we'll open up for questions from the board member and I think just how we'll go so we can all make sure we get our questions. We'll just do one question at a time and go around the dis and then back around as we have time. So Dr. Eis all you. Thank you madame president, members of the

002board and superintendency. Thank you for the opportunity to provide the overview of our curriculum processes and systems in in Mesa public schools. As I'm sure you could see by all the the resources that were provided, it is a very complex process that um involves a lot of of multiple stakeholders. And so to get us started, um the story is kind of I tried to simplify in terms of we start big and go granular to the to the small. And so you'll see here um all of the multiple stakeholders that are uh that start at the the state level and the legislative level to really set the foundation through the laws and the regulations. Um and these stakeholders in establish the standards that our students are expected to meet. Um, and so you'll see, for example,

003we start with our legislators who um have all of our Arizona revised statutes, and you'll see those uh referred to throughout the presentation along with our governing board policies and procedures. um starts with the state board of education who really approves what those standards are and and sets that foundation and then directs the department of education, the Arizona Department of Education to um implement those standards which then um come down to our our local level here. Um, I also listed the um, Arizona Board of Regents because we also work with them in coordination with our um, college readiness courses, our dual enrollment and post-secary transitions. And you'll see all of, like I said, the um, legislative code and regulations that are associated with each of those stakeholders and the processes there. Come on. There we

004go. Um and then these are additional um partners that we work through and with um with our curriculum systems. And so for example in Mesa public schools we are aligned with the MCCD or the Maricopa Community College District when we offer those dual enrollment courses. Um they approve the syllabi and and the curriculum that our teachers follow. Um we ensure that those are aligned to our state standards as well. We work with EVIT is our um CATED or our career and technical education district that Mesa public schools is partnered with and then all of the stakeholders that are engaged through our our local agencies. So here in Mesa public schools, the district staff, superintendency, site leaders, special education department, etc. Um, and even our information systems and and purchasing departments, human resources are part of

005all of the curricular systems. Um, as we go through, and I'll talk about those specifically when we get to those those procedures. Um, students and families and parents are part of that. And then our community curriculum advisory panel is uni unique to Mesa Public Schools. Um, it's a boardappointed committee as well as three principles that serve and a superintendent um, designate appointed member as well. um specific to uh the community curriculum advisory panel or what we call CCAP. Um again, it's unique and it's made up of 10 members. We meet and have a uh have to have a quorum of six. We follow the um public open meeting laws and the bylaws are created by that committee. um prior I'm going to go back prior to COVID and historically that committee met when state standards

006changed or met when um new curriculum needed to be revised because it was outdated or new resources needed to be adopted and so the curriculum documents needed to be um updated. There wasn't always a need to meet because the curriculum stood where it needed to stand and teachers didn't need to um update it and those kinds of things. So a long time ago there was a a kind of a um a cycling through different areas. So for example, one year might be mathematics, the next year might be social studies, etc. And then um COVID hit and at that time prior to COVID our teachers and our parents were asking for um more clarity and more consistency around what those both those public facing documents looked like and then teachers around how do we put together

007these 200 plus standards that we're supposed to implement and thus became the conversation around the high priority standards. And we'll talk a little bit about that as we as we move forward with those competency documents. But again, specific to CCAP, um they are not an approving um committee. They provide feedback and they're another um input to the processes to those curriculum documents and then they make recommendations to our governing board for approval of the curriculum. Um our governing board policy states that they review core curriculum. Most recently, we have been bringing more than the core curriculum with the competency documents. We started with the core um resources, ELA, math, science, and social studies, but we've brought forth um physical education, the arts, and we'll continue to um bring forth as we go through that. They

008were a huge um feedback loop and input loop for us in regard to the template that was that our families and our parents had been asking for in terms of consistency across what that looked like um for each of those content areas. And so just to again level set us around some of the terminology, um standards are really what our students need to learn. They're those broad goals and and those standards are really intended for teachers. They're um not necessarily parent documents or student documents, but really for teachers to help them plan um lessons and units that um are required by us that the state board of education has has approved and AD has um tasked us with implementing. The curriculum is how our students are going to learn that uh learn those standards. So

009those are some of the structures or the content. Um those are really outlining those skills and knowledge that students need to have by the time they finish their grade level, those grade level bands and then proficiency by um the high school graduation. And then those instructional resources really are those tools that teacher you teachers use to implement the curriculum. Our governing board approves the curriculum, the instructional resources as as part of the curriculum. Um and we'll talk a little bit about those processes. But when we talk about instructional resources, those are both um a formal process that's outlined in um our legislation and our governing board policies. And so those would be uh adopted resources. So for example um in K5, our English language arts adopted resource is uh Scholastic 6 through8 uses um HMH.

010And then our 912 actually uh did not want a certain tool or one textbook. They uh went through an adoption process for a bundle of resources. And then in January of 2023 um new legislation was implemented to around the supplemental resources um processes. And so our district came up with and we had shared this with our governing board previously, but we'll talk a little bit again specifically about what that looks like step by step um around supplemental resources, the criteria used for those supplemental resources and and how we got to the list that we brought to you earlier this year and then we'll continue to ratify at the end of the year started again by annually um next year as we go through that. Um some examples of our supplemental resources there which are are

011used to fill gaps. So, for example, when we have um an adopted resource K5 and Scholastic, um we know that that tool is not going to meet the unique needs of our Arizona academic standards, which sometimes are a little bit different than the rest of the nation. And also, we know that not every student comes with the same strengths and needs. And so, we need additional resources and tools um that fill those gaps of our adopted resources. And so, those are the supplemental resources. and the examples up there. Um, for example, in secondary English language arts, um, maybe students need more um, practice with some of the decoding or the comprehension skills or those kinds of things. So, one of the resources that we use is Power Up through Lexia. Okay. And then these are

012some of our curricular systems terminology here in Mesa Public Schools. And so we have our curriculum documents. Um most recently you've seen the new template that um CCAP provided some input and feedback for us this year on what that would look like across the board. But those curriculum documents are the ones that are those public facing documents. They outline the um indicators that students need by grade band as well as by grade level. Um they have the content considerations which was the terminology that both our specialist and CCAP recommended we utilize. Another simplified term for that are the units or the topics that are covered in um that content area or that course in those curriculum documents. Um but those are again approved by our governing board. Um some examples there that were brought forth

013to CCAP and approved by you this year were those seventh and eighth grade um English language arts and math competency documents. The link the links are there. You can go to those. Um the algebra 1 course, the introduction to statistics course. All of those were brought to CCAP in that new template competency format. Um and again that work began prior to COVID. Teachers came together. Um students had input to that. Um our families had input to that. CCAP had input to to those competency documents. Um and then talking again back to those uh adopted resources in the legislation and in our governing board policy. Again, that legislation was um January of 2023. um 15-721 and 722. And that really defines um historically in the past when uh school districts would go out for an adoption,

014it typically was a textbook and it was one textbook that was supposed to cover everything in the entire world to implement those standards. And we know that um that didn't meet the needs of all of our kids. The legislation was updated to reflect that. that textbook can now be defined as courseware or other instructional material that's selected and used by the district. Um it is a formal process. It's also could be printed instructional materials. It might be digital licenses um anything that can be used um to help implement that curriculum. And those um in the legislation requires as well as our governing board policy, we have a a process for that which uh requires selection committees um our working conditions. Currently, we include members of um our associations and it the resources that are evaluated

015and selected and recommended for governing board approval um are put on 60-day public review. Um and then we have again the supplemental resources and those are purchased um or free. They are highquality um studentf facing contentbased educational materials or tools. That was the definition that our committees came up with based on that legislative um based on that legislation that was recently adopted. And we have criteria that um school teams when for example uh a teacher or a team of teachers or a department says okay this resource in HMH isn't fitting the need we need additional supplemental material such as that power up that we had. Um and so they would come together they use our criteria which is linked we'll we'll get to that process in a minute. um and then they would recommend yes,

016this is meeting the needs. We're seeing growth. They've got data. They've got evidence. It's an evidence-based um tool and it really does fit our need and it's not replicating anything in our adopted resources. And so that's what that would be the list that we brought to you um at the beginning of this year. Okay. Um make sure I didn't forget anything there. Okay, moving along. Um, additional terms here. Our course catalog um really is those secondary um courses that are offered. So, our 7th through 12th grade in Mesa Public Schools, we have course cataloges. They include um course descriptions, prerequisites, they in high school indicate what the graduation requirements are, the credits that are awarded, the type of credits that are awarded. Um and they're really a planning tool. And again, that is approved by

017our governing board. And most recently, I want to say it was two years ago, we changed the format of what the course catalog looked like. again based on feedback from our families, from our counselors, from our our school leaders and teachers. And so again, always a work in progress, but it used to be this big long hundred pages of narrative. And we tried to make it more visually appealing and easier to read with tables that show um you know what the course title is, what the type of credit is, how many credits it is, and and so forth. and continuing to to look for additional feedback um on what that tool looks like as we continue to move forward. Um course enrollment is another term that keeps being brought up um in regard to what

018does that mean? Sometimes we interchange terms as we're talking between course enrollment and registration and those kinds of things, but really this is the process for which students register for those courses. um they're driven by not only graduation requirements, but also what are the student interests when we think about those courses that go in the course catalog. Um and and then really also intersect with those other stakeholders from previous such as with human resources and the staffing. Do we have the budget for the for the tools? Do we have the budget for the staffing and the allocations? Do we even have student interest? Um are are they choosing and selecting um certain courses over others, etc. And then program requirements and teacher certifications are also aligned to the courses that we offer. The course or

019program of study is um outlined again in legislation and it's really about the district's graduation requirements. And again, the the governing board approves what those uh requirements are. And so I know I've used this example in the past. We require 22 credits. Um, Mesa Public Schools goes above and beyond in terms of what the state requires us for graduation in that we require physical education as uh a required course for graduation in in our um in our district. Um, that's not required. Um, a course is a credit or a non-bearing a nonredit bearing instructional offering. Um, again, we've put that into our table in our course catalog. it used to kind of be buried in all of those words and um so we wanted to make that a little bit easier to read. But those

020are also aligned to our Arizona academic standards um approved by the governing board. And then a course sequence, you typically will see that at the beginning of our course catalog and that is really the recommended sequence of courses um that counselors utilize when they're working with students and um building their ECAP or their their program of study. Um but they're really those district recommendations for either a traditional or an advanced pathway. Um there however are always individualized pathways. So for example, not every freshman that comes in is going to take algebra 1. They may have already taken it or they may may need some additional support on top of algebra 1. So again, those are just suggested um progressions that we communicate to our our students and parents as as we're meeting with them and

021and selecting those courses. Um, before I move on, I know there were some questions about pilot courses. And in the past, prior to the legislation, prior to COVID, we would have um teachers that would come and say, "I'd like to pilot this course. Students have an interest in this or I have an interest in this." and we would bring that forth and um talk about it, make sure that they had outcomes, make sure that they had resources aligned to it, and those would be implemented and then brought forth to the course catalog later. Now, with the changes in legislation, we're refining those processes, and I'll talk about that when we get to the flowchart. Um, and hoping to extend our course catalog process. And again, I'll I'll get to the detail in just a moment.

022Um do we have courses that are piloted right now? Um we have two courses actually no we have one course change makers that was piloted at Mountain View a couple of years ago was created by um teachers and a teacher who uh has content knowledge in social studies wanted to integrate English language arts and some service learning kind of leadership um competencies as well. And I will tell you that that should have made it into the course approval process this past year and did not. We missed it. I missed it. And so that will be um moving forward to CCAP in May in April at the next week's meeting. And then we will be bringing that to you for your approval um this uh in May. Okay. Um then I'm going to go through the

023curriculum approval process. And so again, as we talk about curriculum, um this is a governing board uh approved item. And again, curriculum is how we're going to teach the standards. And so we identify a need. And again, this is a very kind of simplistic process along the way, but it it takes anywhere depending on what the curriculum is. It would it could take a year, it could take two to three years. Um it could be really quick if it's uh a department. Um algebra 1, we don't have hundreds of algebra 1 teachers, but we would be bringing those teachers together. So it it really is dependent upon um whether it's elementary, junior high, high school, whether it's a course, etc. But a need is identified and um it's sometimes a it's sometimes new curriculum or

024sometimes it's a revision of curriculum. So, for example, back in 2016, the state board of education approved new math standards in grades K through 12. And so, at that time, we knew we needed to update our curriculum. And so, teams of teachers were brought together, they created curriculum that was brought to CCAP, and then that was approved by the board. Um, we updated some of those documents. The state updated their documents in July of 2017. So, that would be an example where a need is identified. um and we see that we either have to update our curriculum, revise our curriculum, identify any gaps. Sometimes we have new programs and we need new curriculum. Um and so again, we bring curriculum teams together which include content experts, the teachers that are are experts in their content.

025Um their representatives from across whether it's different schools or across departments, whether it's if it's high school um and those are based on those identified needs. And then we share those documents with our stakeholders. So those are site leaders, our instructional coaches, any other relevant staff. We gather feedback. We even collect feedback at the secondary level often from our our students and then our families and community partners when applicable. CCAP and Mesa Public Schools is another opportunity for our stakeholders to provide input to to those. Um and then CCAP provides uh or conducts a formal review. They often provide um commentary such as uh grammar corrections or when language isn't clear. Um most recently, for example, when we brought our mathematics documents um on their on the approved template that they really liked, um they

026wanted to change some of the content considerations at the at the bottom and our secondary math specialist was adamant and that those were the actual mathematical language terms and that's why we have content experts that um put forth those those documents. So rather than simplifying language, we do want to clarify it. So it is somewhat um friendly but we can't actually change what the what the state standards um require us to to teach. So um those are then uh issued a recommendation to be brought forth um when they feel it's kind of clear and understandable and then the governing board ultimately is the approver of that curriculum. Um and again those changes in format were based on teacher requests, parent requests in the past um around what that what those documents look like. Um I

027know there was a question around teacher facing documents and teacherfacing documents could be things like scopes and sequences, pacing guides, um those sorts of things. Our instructional resources really have a lot of that information now and those are always available at the school. We have those here in um our district office when we go through the evaluation process when we're going through an adoption. Those materials are available the entire time of the evaluation process as well as the 60-day review as well as beyond. So, for example, things that we adopted back in 2015 that we still utilize, I'm making the year up. I'm not exactly sure, but those would be um either in that room. We have a curriculum room over in building three and um digital licenses, etc. We often will get access codes

028from our vendors. So, we've had parents and um I think even um Mrs. Walton came in and and reviewed some of those digital resources in the past. So, those are always available for for review. All right, our instructional resources. Again, these are the tools that are used to implement the curriculum um and these can be from the formal adoption um to the supplemental materials. So, two different processes there. So for example, we have new standards, we have new curriculum that we have gotten approved by the board and now the teachers say these resources don't align or for example when we adopted Scholastic as our K5 English language arts curriculum and resources um we hadn't had an adoption in now I'm forgetting the years I want to say 15 Mrs. Hutchinson 2003. Um and so again,

029we are very thankful and grateful that our governing board approved these um instructional resources so that teachers could implement um to the uh to the state standards. So again, in our instructional resource approval, um who's part of the process? How do we get there? What is the connection to the stakeholders? You'll see in the table here um that when we identify a need again then we create what's called a scope of work and we put out a request for proposal which is a procurement process and we work with um not only our purchasing department but we also have to work with our information systems team because we have to ensure that in that scope of work and request for proposal that those tools are going to meet everything that we need in terms of the

030technology and the data sharing agreements and all of those other pieces. Um, our chief financial officer and our superintendency are involved because it involves budget and we want to make sure that we have a a budget that we are going to ask to say, okay, we've got the budget um, aligned to this and ask for the governing board's approval once we go through the process. Um, our associations are part of that as part of our our working conditions in Mesa public schools. not a requirement, but that's something that we um we involve all of those stakeholders on on that um team. Our steering committee is made up of the association members of teachers represented whether it's a a grade level or a district department, multiple schools, etc. And then our area superintendence is applicable whether

031it's elementary or or secondary are part of that as well. And so then um we review all of the statutes and and policies to ensure that the steering committee understands what's involved in the process that the scope of work and request for proposal aligns to all of those legislative requirements etc. And then we put together a team of evaluators and those are again our content experts made up of teachers of content specialists. Um sometimes site leaders want to be a part of that. Um and they go through uh a training and um training around the evaluation criteria, training around the legislation, training around um the 60-day public review, all of those pieces that are legislatively and and governing board um driven. um as they go through that evaluation process once they've completed the training then

032those are all rated the the products say perhaps maybe there's 10 that are are brought to um purchasing as uh vendor submit it goes through first an initial kind of um analysis to say do these products even align to what the scope of work of the request for proposal was asking for. So, for instance, if it says it's not going to work with Canvas, then it's going to be off the list because it's got to integrate. So, those it goes through that initial kind of I'll call it a scraping process. And then um once it goes through those uh teams of teachers, etc. And the committee then um evaluates and provides some recommendations to the steering committee. The steering committee then looks at all the pros and cons, looks at the comments, looks at all

033those questions. Again, those typically the um resources are are available as we're going through this if the public or community members and we've had people coming in to take a look at um for example our history book or the scholastic materials etc. Those are always available. And then once the steering committee says, "Okay, these are the this is the recommended tool or two tools in some cases um then those are put on display um at our schools and here at the district office for a 60-day public review. Once that happens, we take all that feedback. Steering committee typically will meet again and say, "Okay, here's all the feedback. We maybe haven't had any opposition. here's the scores and the ratings, etc., and we're going to recommend this product. That's brought to me for approval. And

034then I take that um tool or sometimes two tools to the superintendent for final recommendation. And then we bring that to you, the governing board to approve. And so you'll see in all of those steps kind of the summary of phases and all of the stakeholders that are involved um along the way. And typically in a formal adoption process to along the way we would um ask that our schools not only put materials on display but also involve their SCAKs at their schools to um share what the recommendations are and have them fill out community feedback etc. in addition to what we do at the district office and what we send out um via our communications department. and then the supplemental resource approval process. Um, again, as we have adopted materials, we know that they're

035not going to meet the needs of of every child or even all of the Arizona academic standards for that content area. And so, we have a supplemental resource approval process. Um, in the past, prior to the January 2023 legislation, this was simply a procurement kind of piece, um, where there was an RFP put out, there was a selection process. It was still based on, um, for example, if you're using Title One funds to purchase supplemental resources. They have to have what's called an ESSA rating. Every Student Succeeds Act has levels of evidence to show the um, impact of those resources. And so title one funds can only be spent on um the higher levels of that four-level process. Um now with the new legislation, we needed to create additional criteria, making sure that um everything

036is public and transparent and not only follows procurement laws, but also that we're ensuring that um our community is able to identify those resources, review those resources, etc. and then our governing board must approve those resources. And so we brought to you um early this year, I think it was maybe the end of last year, I can't remember now, but that was the process that our team put together to ensure that we were aligned. Um, and we went through, we had teams going through and schools submitting hundreds of things that were being used and we came up with the definitions of what is a supple, what is a core resource, what's a supplemental resource and what's an ancillary resource. So again, back to that supplemental resource being um to meet the unique needs of our

037kids. They're instructional and studentf facing resources. So, for example, um, Nearpod is not really an instructional resource. It's a tool that teachers can use. Um, it's content agnostic. So, that wouldn't be a supplemental resource, but a supplemental resource such as um, PowerUp or Hegy or those kinds of things would be filling the needs that our adopted resources don't. They're studentf facing. They're used all the time. Teachers are planning with them and they're aligned to our standards. Um so in our current process um we identified everything that teachers were using. We had committees that went through we created um rubrics and um first of all when a resource and well let me go back. So that was the initial because we had to figure out what is out there and what is out there that's free.

038what was out there that was purchased. And so we went through that, we identified the criteria and we came up with an initial list. And then we also ensured are these supplemental resources filling a gap because if they're um duplicative of things that we already have in our adopted resources, then we really shouldn't be utilizing them. Or if they're resources that are used all the time, but they're not evidence-based. are they, you know, do they have the higher levels of ESSA? Those kinds of things. Um, then those were taken off the list. And so, um, at the beginning of this year, we brought to you that initial list of supplemental resources and within the legislation, um, if something new comes along, a teacher, um, is able to use that resource, but then we've got to

039make sure that it goes through those criteria and we bring it back to the board at the end of the year for ratification. And so the process um here you'll see is that for example a teacher or team of teachers say oh I found this great resource it's filling this gap in mathematics let's say um they bring that to their principal principal takes a look at it and says okay let's take some data on it let's look through the criteria um and then a team of um experts and teachers at that school will come together and they'll go through that criter criteria um to look for standards of quality, making sure it's aligned with our standards, making sure it's got accessibility for our our varying um learners and their needs, and then is it appropriate

040um to the level of rigor and to that standard. We also ensure at the same time um that information systems is notified because we want to ensure that all of our digital tools apply with furpa or the family educational rights and privacy act as well as um copa which is the children's online pro privac uh protection act and um have data sharing agreements if there's data that's going to be shared etc all of those things. Um, and so, um, as it goes through that criteria, if it's if it's not on the list that we brought to you and they've gone through this process and they feel like, "Yep, this is a great resource. It's evidence-based, it meets all that criteria, we want to submit this." So, they will submit it to teaching and learning, we

041will then take a look at it to make sure it complies with all the criteria and look at their review of that data and then we will say, "Yep, this is a good resource. We're going to bring that to you in May for that ratification of any additional resources. And there may be even resources that were brought to you earlier. This will be a bi-annual process that we say we no longer need these. They don't meet the needs of our kids. Um or, you know, we we tried it out for a little while and maybe the data is not showing that it's working. Um so we may even remove items from that supplemental materials list at that time. That is the supplemental materials process. And then we have the secondary course approval process. And so

042again, this is um been a process that's been iterative throughout the years. Um we are currently currently and in the past few years probably the last I would say three fourish years really taking a look at all of the courses started with our high schools and we'll continue with junior high but really taking a look at all the courses and ensuring that they are meeting the needs of our kids that they are aligned to our graduation requirements and post-secary success and college readiness and and the promise um A few years back, we had hundreds and hundreds of courses in our course catalog. Many were not even being utilized anymore at any of our schools and but had never been removed from the catalog. Um, some kids just weren't signing up for anymore. The interests have

043changed and so they didn't sign up. So, we're we continue each year right now to do an audit of those courses and taking a look at the data um around student interest, student needs, post-secary, is it aligned to their ECAP, all of those pieces. And so, when we think about how does a secondary course get approved, again, we have an identified need. Um it could come from a teacher that says, "Hey, my kids are really interested in this course. Um it aligns to the standards. It's brought to the content specialist and the principal and then it's brought forth to what's called our um AP registration, the assistant principal registration meeting for which multiple stakeholders are a part of. Those are our um at the high school level. It's our assistant principles over um curriculum and

044registration and all of those. The lead counselors attend um Dr. Melorine at the secondary level um Mrs. Spock's team and um our content specialists, our directors etc. And at that time we take a look at what is the um what what are the recommendations? Is it aligned to the standards? Do we have the staffing? Do we have uh a need for the course? All of those kinds of things. Um then we have curriculum documents that align to those courses. we bring those to CCAP for review and then ultimately the governing board approves the course catalog and the courses within that. Um in terms of uh programmatic kinds of things so for example with CTE courses as shared earlier at some board meetings those are approved by the EVIT the CED um which gather AD approval.

045Um our AP courses are approved by the college board. they have very specific um documents that outline what is to be taught in an AP course. So those are some of some of the steps along the way. Um but really that AP registration meeting is kind of that review checkpoint. Um they don't make approvals but they provide feedback or in the case of a pilot course that might be uh a school may say hey we want to offer this course. We've got some draft documents and those kinds of things was the process in the past. We are now updating that process with all of the legislative changes um knowing that we are um looking to be really fiscally responsible and and again back to that are we just offering a multitude of courses that don't

046align to student um graduation needs and post-secary uh requirements. And so we're going to be extending those processes out. In the past, you could say in November when we brought you the course catalog, they could have proposed that the previous April and and then we would bring it to you and then it would be implemented. We're trying to extend that now so that we can ensure do we have appropriately certified staff? Do we have the budget in place? What resources and materials are going to be needed? And then how much time is going to be needed to create that curriculum? because um for example our arts and PE that we brought to to CCAP those documents were in process for two to two and a half years. Um the competency process that we brought in

047terms of the curriculum documents started in 2019 with our teachers. COVID hit, paused and then after COVID brought those back and then those went through a series of feedback loops with schools, with teachers, with students, with their SCAK teams in some cases um and then with CCAP. And so that was a really long process. We're a large district and it takes a long time to bring teachers together and then have those feedback loops. So, we're in in the process um of revising what that course catalog process looks like. Um it's not perfect yet. Like I said, we missed a pilot course. Um you'll see um in May, we'll be bringing to you a pilot course that's happening that uh Skyline right now, Introduction to Visual Arts. Um, and I'm going to get the name wrong.

048Social media content creation. Um, those will be going to CCAP for review. But again, back to why we need to extend the process. We want to make sure that we are um extending that and have all of the pieces in place whether it's human resources with staffing budget for instructional resources and time to not only bring teachers together to develop the curriculum but then also ensure that our stakeholders have that input. And again, back to CCAP, our governing board policy indicates core curriculum, but we have really been trying to bring back um the arts, the PE, some of those other electives. And um we have a lot of courses in our course catalog that curriculum had been approved many, many years ago or 10 years ago. And so we're working on bringing those teams of

049teachers together through a cycle over the next few years, but we just won't get it done in one year. So that's where we're at with that process. Um and again, um courses also change sometimes when those standards change. Um you'll see later, um at the board meeting this evening, we'll be um uh AD has requested that our district and other districts participate in new a new math pilot. And so they're asking for teachers to come together to get professional learning on what that looks like and then that possible implementation of that course the following year. So that may not fit the perfect um timeline for approval because AD is asking us to do that and we won't know if it moves forward until after the professional learning and the data is gathered and all those

050kinds of things. So those are all different scenarios for when um courses um get initiated to the approval. So um definitely always looking for improvement and feedback on on that process. Um I just wanted to interject. Um just wanted to draw attention to the time. Madame President, I'm afraid we're going to run out of time to ask questions. I think I only have one more, so I'll go quick. Yep. has one slide side level. One more. Okay, we we can read it and we'll just Okay. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Dr. team. I think we'll start with questions. I'm just going to go to my left, Miss Chaffy, you want to start us off and we'll just go around to Miss Walden and that work? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for talking through that with

051us. Um, I had requested some of this information. I appreciate that we could have this discussion all out in the open because there have been some confusion about terms and there's a lot of things like you said that we interchange and I really appreciate that you've identified some of the ways that the district can improve this process. I think that that's something we all want is to make things better and work together toward that and I think as a board we realize that one of the most critical responsibilities we have is through curriculum and instruction. We want to make sure that we're engaged in that process. Um, we had a a great study session where we talked about the need to have better tier one instruction. And I think as a governing board, we want

052to make sure that we are using researchbased strategies that's high quality instruction so that we can meet our board goals and and really move those student outcomes. We want to work alongside you with this. So, I really appreciate it. I want to make sure that our curriculum advisory panel is effective and meaningful that we can say to our parents before you have enrolled your child in a class, we have vetted it. We've approved it. We've looked at it as a board um and we can be sure that we're providing strong instructional foundation and tools for our teachers. As Dr. Strong always says, we need those time and tools and training. Training. There we go. We got to have all those things in place. I was like talent. I might add a fourth one there. So,

053this is my question. Um you said then this is actually a question for the board because I feel like you're always on the hot spot. So, this is a this is our time to talk as a board. Um, you said that curriculum is how we are going to teach the material and it's the course of study for content areas. So, I would like to request that when a school is teaching a new course, you talked a little bit about that pilot process, but also sometimes we pull materials from different class different that have already been approved and kind of put them together in a new in a new form that that course should go through the CCAP process and come before the board. Would my fellow board members be willing to to do that for

054for what piece of it? So, if if something has if there are already pieces that have been approved, maybe instructional materials or maybe it is it is a CTE course that's had pieces approved by AD, but there's not really like an outline of what that course is. Would we be willing as a board to have that go through the CCAP process? This is not a vote, this is a discussion. Have it go through the CCAP process and come before the board so that we can make sure it's in alignment with our board goals. Yeah, I I I mean, I'd support that. I'd support more things going to to CCAP. Yeah. Um, Mrs. Traffy, are you describing kind of like a off label use for example? Like we have this, we have this, we have this,

055but it's used for this, this, and now we want to use it for this. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So, kind of like an off label use of Yeah. So, we can be really clear with our parents like, yep, this class that you're enrolling your child in, you know, we've gone through the course catalog process, and it's like, this is a class you're signing your kid up for. Yeah. I can show, you know, this is the course spacing, these are the materials, this is the unit of study, this is the all the curriculum materials for that class. Yeah, I think that that's a board obligation to approve those things. So, I wouldn't be opposed to that at all. Okay. The more transparency the better. Um, a couple of things though. So, I I want to

056make sure that um the content specialists and those who do the work and work with our children are the ones who are um most engaged in designing and that um I I'm all for community involvement and certainly um that when we talk about um ways in which particularly with our CTE courses and now with ourmies and our pathways is we are inviting the community in um and and and we are sending our students out. So I think it I think that's really a a a very important um way in which um many caring adults are coming to um support the learning um whether it be um in the four walls of a classroom or perhaps um offsite. But I do want to make sure that um curriculum which is designed by um teachers and is

057um its purpose is to um make sure that there's a course of study that imparts knowledge and skills that we are leaving it in the hands of professional educators to design the curriculum to um figure out which tools are used to facilitate the learning. Um, it's it's our professional teachers, our professional educators, and they could be folks that have a classroom roster or who are our specialists, but that they are designing the the curriculum so that it is clear what students will know and what they will do and that it's in align with state standards. Um, and I really love that we did the competency curriculum um, document because then that imparts a communication device to make sure that parents understand and that was that was a really a critical part that we we did

058in the fall. So, um, I'm all for um, the community CCAP. I I um, being involved. Um, I do worry a bit though that um that that CCAP already meets just about every other month and the the meetings are quite extensive and um and that um they're I and I know that the people that are on that committee are amazing and that they they dedicate hours and hours to making sure that the community has a voice. I I'm only worried um about um maybe tasking them with too much. Um and I because I have a follow-up question with that. I might ask a question too about the pacing guides. Um we do have some of those pace. For example, in Scholastic, we have a pacing guide that's based on the instructional resources. Teachers though may

059change those pacing guides because of the strengths and needs of their students. And so I'm not we can certainly make those publicly available. I'm not sure that they would I don't know obviously it's up to you more from a secondary a secondary course perspective than Okay. Yeah. And I think we got to we have to worry that we're talking about curriculum and not lesson plans. lesson plans are the are that that that personal interaction between the the professional educator and the students and and and and the the the professional educator determining what students strengths and needs are. So um curriculum yes but so would a syllabus suffice then which outlines the units and things like that? Well, may I interject because maybe I misunderstood your question Mr. Chappie, but I thought your your question was

060if for example with a pilot course um perhaps as I that's kind of how I I understood your question a little bit more that if you have resources that have been approved by the board uh as curriculum, but they're not being used necessarily in the uh course that they would normally be used for, but they're being used kind of like an off label. situation. That's what I heard you. And if a teacher's done that, then should we be approving? We don't want to nitpick and we're not going to approve uh lesson plans. That's that's not our job. That's a day in day out. Uh that's the building admin. That's what how I understood your question to me. Not not even pacing guides because sometimes as as people use the pacing guide, they go, "This is

061really dumb. This should come before this." which is actually what happened with the math in at the elementary level a couple years ago. So was it did I misunderstand you? Yeah. And I think I think a syllabus would suffice. I agree with all with all my fellow board members that we want to leave this in the hand of expert educators. We want to make sure that we've vetted the courses. I don't want to spend too much more time on my question so that you all get a chance to answer your question. We can revisit this. We don't approve syllabuses. That's up to building advent too, right? I mean that's a teacher saying hey this is how I'm this is what it what how I'm doing my course we wouldn't that does that's not brought to

062us teaching and learning is working on again back to consistency looking at a common format for syllabus for high school teachers across the district so that there's some um consistency but that is definitely the role of a teacher is to develop a syllabus and if they teach AP that syllabus has to be approved by the college All right. So, um I have a question about viewing content. So, I have gotten some feedback from people on CCAP. Somebody I appointed and then people I haven't appointed that have uh told me that they did not feel like that they really reviewed curriculum. And I think this could be an issue where we use different vocabulary terms. I think what people want to see, I know I want to see as a board member is content. So where

063do I see the content of the course and that's where I think we're getting stuck on themies as well is it's curriculum has one meaning and people use it as a catchall for content and I'm on the website like for the district website and it lists out okay here's the here's the resources we're using but it doesn't give you any of the content and so some of these pretty much everybody we're using they're sort of corporate conglomerates and they're providing ing educational resources for 50 states. And so if you just go to the website like Scholastic or Hardcore Mifflin, I I'm not going to see what we're using. So where do people and the board get content? So in our competency documents, there's at the bottom there's content considerations. Those would be like the topics

064or the units and those come from the state standards. There's I can statements. Those would be the indicators of what we would expect students to know and be able to do. And then the content would actually come from those instructional resources that were approved. So in Scholastic for example, you could go to the school, you could come to curriculum services, we could provide you access to those resources. Okay? Because parents technically, I mean, they have the they have the right to op their student out of anything that they don't approve of in teaching. So, and I remember the competency documents, but let's say, you know, there's a particular lesson about a particular war, you're not going to know that that's covered in in any of these resources. So, it still is not really covering like

065the full the full content and the full scope of what's being taught. And I think that's where we have a a disconnect with uh with it was you say it was standards. Yeah, that that's what we refer back to the standards. So, the standards are the driver for all of uh what is taught in the classroom. So what to what uh if parents want to see specifically what needs to be taught in that grade level and that content area that would be the academic standards that's approved by the state board of education and the competency documents also have like this is sixth grade social studies for example it has indicators of what um students would be doing. So in sixth grade for example I can create questions to explore people, places and events. I can

066identify and use appropriate sources to gather information to answer questions. I can create a timeline that sequences historical events and then you would go back to the standards to see specifically that time period which is ancient civilization for instance in sixth grade. Okay. Um not sure if that's answering your question but well I mean I I think we're I think there's still a struggle with like actually getting content and even as a board member I've approved supplemental resources. I don't really have the content for it though. So, and that's something I think and I've spoken to teaching and learning about and you know we have online resources. Maybe board members and maybe parents should just have links to those online resources. They can actually review the content of the lesson. Um, and I won't go

067on about that because I know we're really short on time. So, uh, the other question I have is who's responsible for determining counselor lessons? So, we have other things that are added that take away from our instructional time. One of which is counselor lessons, and I don't think that's a a state requirement. So, something like that where nobody ever sees what the counselor is teaching. There's no curriculum for that. It's up to the discretion of the counselor, who is responsible for determining that and improving those lessons? Yeah. So, the counselors do create those lessons based on our um not only our MTSS framework to ensure that we're addressing behavioral needs, that we're being proactive as opposed to reactive. Um, but we actually did bring our resource handbook to CCAP uh I think it was last

068year and shared all of the resources with CCAP that were available and those are based on the ASKA model. Um, and those are developed by by counselors. So we we did share those with CCAP. I think it was last year. I could go back and take a look at those were okay. Are there any other lessons like that that kind of fall outside the scope of normal curriculum? Like something that would be comparable to counselor lessons. Are there additional lessons like that? Sharon's nodding her head. Is that a yes? I'm not sure which ones. I I know that there's some schools, for example, that uh participate in outside programs like Leader and Me. Uh that would be uh that would be an example of something that's brought forth that we don't approve and I think

069there's other programs like that. I know for sure leader and me uh several se several elementary schools participate in. And so those are those are other things that are just not going through through CCAP. And I think with the supplemental too, that's where we think we start like people are comfortable with saying, "Okay, here's our state standards, but we start to we move into lessons and ideas that are outliers of the state standards and then we don't have content for them." And I think, you know, in general, that's that's become a hot topic as we saw a lot of really crazy lessons online during the shutdowns. But I think even with the academy model that we're in where a lot of the the frustration that I'm sensing from the community is is around like the

070content like what is actually being taught you know if we're bringing in the community educators what is that lesson about so I think we're getting and even with this a lot of like the highlevel overview of it or that you know in the competencies okay I can name places and times well what places and times like what's the actual content which wars are you covering what parts of history are you covering? I think that's what we're seeing with themies is is they want like the meat of that course and how can parents access that. So for example in six I'm just trying to clarify. So on our sixth grade competency documents the content considerations by grade level for sixth grade would be time period early civilizations to renaissance and reformation. Key concepts intended to support

071mastery of these include beginnings of human society such as early hommin development, peopleling of the earth, and the neolithic revolution. Yeah. So that's in there. So that's and we looked at these last year and I don't have the competencies in front of me. Um so that's is that what you're looking for? Yeah, that's what I was looking for. Like where where do I refer parents? Like would they want those specifics? And so then when we get into like our academy courses and maybe just parents are just hung up on the wordmmies like where we've tried to explain that the academy doesn't mean that they don't have those core courses that we all know from school. It's still the core courses still the state standards but you have more options in your electives. Do the elective

072courses have that kind of description like you described. Those are those are the ones that I'm talking about that it's going to take several years to continue to revise into the new format to ensure that we've got all these pieces as requested by parents um to make sure that they understand what are the content considerations, what are those indicators that students will know and be able to do. So right now we've got all the core content that and again in an academy model students are still taking English, they're still taking their mathematics course. All of those have have been created in the competency documents. Those have brought been brought to CCAP and we we brought those to you with the exception of a couple like I said are going um on Monday to to CCAP.

073So is the difference with the with themies because the electives are are we looking at because they're new electives or do electives not normally have that detail of of description? So, um, all of the PE courses, for example, um, we have searched all of our historical documents and we found spreadsheets that have the old performance indicators and those were approved years ago. That's our current curriculum and that's why we need to bring teachers back together to update those. So, we've identified a need. those documents are really old and we want to ensure that um we're aligned and to student interest, student need, the academic standards, but we've got to bring those teachers together and then we would have to bring those to CCAP and then we would have to bring those to the board and

074in the process getting stakeholder feedback, teachers, parents, etc. Okay. Um I don't want to hog all the time so I'll just email my additional questions and let uh someone else take over. Mrs. Benson. Well, um I just have a quick question for our supplemental resources in particular. Well, actually I have two quick questions. Um what is the um process if I heard you say that teachers can pilot resources? Uh they have to get approval by their administrator first. Correct. That's correct. So what is the process if we have a teacher or staff member who's using resources that have not been approved by their administrator? the if they haven't been approved by the administrator then the administrator would have to take disciplinary action. Okay. Then uh and I hope we're following up on there. And then

075the final quick question I have is if I you described the um whole process of uh doing the course catalog uh and how a course goes in there and whatever. So uh can we assume that if a course has makes it into the course catalog that the full description of what you shared earlier that has been uh followed so CCAP that if it makes it into the catalog it's met all the little check marks and it meets criteria and yes perfect thank you know you and number of your colleagues um are at CCAP meetings. Would would you mind describing a typical CCAP meeting so that folks know um we we we've we've kind of got their responsibilities here. We know that they they approve things that come to the board, but could you briefly I'm

076I'm just talking maybe even what an agenda would have looked like for a CCAP meeting because I you know I know we had volunteer week you know honoring volunteers the last board meeting but these volunteers really do an enormous amount of work for the district and I would like to honor um what they do by more people knowing what a CCAP meeting is like. Mhm. Yep. So, we follow open meeting law and again it's made up of of your boy your board appointed members. We have three principles, junior high, high school, elementary um and then Mrs. Hamilton who is in charge of learning systems and all of the curriculum processes and approvals. Um and they called the meeting to order. It is sele uh a chairperson is selected by the committee and she actually runs

077the meeting and in this case that's Kathleen Ron. um they approve the previous meeting's minutes. We bring forth what those um curriculum documents are for review. They have had those prior to the meeting um so that they have some time to to make comments and ask questions and those kinds of things. And we go through each of those curriculum documents and they provide um feedback on those whether it's grammatical, whether it's clarifying those content considerations, um the format. We got their feedback on what the the format looked like. Um and then they actually um vote on whether they feel like those are ready or ready with the changes that they've suggested to bring to the governing board for approval. Um they sometimes will have topics that they want to discuss for so for example um

078I believe it was the last meeting they want us to again talk about the college and career academy model. Um they want an update on our elementary report cards. we've made uh some of the changes there and just so some updates on those kinds of things. Um and so those are added to the agenda, but it's run by a chairperson um and they go through each of those and and make recommendations to move forward on on those action items or they simply call for information regard regarding any of the curriculum pieces. Excellent. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thank you again for all the work that's gone into this. Um, I think part of I've appreciated all the definitions of all of the terminology. I think that's super helpful because I think that's caused some

079issues. I also think as as courses change, sometimes some campuses might use a different terminology than another. And so I think consistency will be helpful also as we update the course catalog and do these things that were consistent across the district. I think sometimes that the inconsistency is what sometimes causes some issues. Um, and so I think most of my questions got answered if I think more. Um, Dr. East, I appreciate the phone calls and the help that you've provided for each of us. Um, as we're going through this, um, this will wrap up our time before we start our meeting. Do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Do I have a second? I'll second it. Any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? Mrs. Chaffy votes

080in the affirmative. and Rachel Walden votes yes. Yeah, I don't want to with vote of five years. We have adjourned this meeting. We will begin our next meeting at 6:30. Thank you. Um, a quick reminder, any citizen who wishes to speak on an agenda item or at calls to the public must complete the sign-in sheet in the lobby prior to the public comment time on the board agenda. This evening, the presentation of the colors will be led by the Skyline High School JOTC. Presenting members tonight are Cadet Cadence Revard, Cadet Honor Dulan, Cadet Caitlyn Murdoch, Cadet Levi Selby. The Pledge of Allegiance will be led by JOTC Cadet Eevee Johnson. Our national anthem is recorded and is performed by the Jefferson Elementary Choir. Please stand if you are able for the presentation of colors pledge

081and national anthem. [Music] March arms. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [Music] Oh, say can you see? Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Hey, arch. Thank you. You may be seated. Thank you again, Skyline JROTC. We appreciate you being here tonight. We will begin our meeting tonight with a video on governing board procedures. Then I will read a statement. Welcome to the Mesa Public Schools governing board meeting. We appreciate your interest in the district. The five elected governing board members serve without compensation and volunteer countless hours. The president and the clerk of the board are elected in January. Under state law, the governing board may only discuss and

082vote on matters that are on the agenda for tonight's meeting. Agendas are posted a minimum of 24 hours in advance on the Mesa Public Schools website and in the curriculum services center. Copies of tonight's agenda are located in the lobby. The public may speak on any item of business on the agenda that the board discusses or requires the board to take action. If you wish to comment on an action or discussion item, please complete a request to address the board form before the item is discussed. The form is located in the lobby. Members of the public will be given a maximum of three minutes to speak once recognized by the governing board president. Please state your name before you speak. We ask that all speakers show respect and courtesy to others. During the second regular

083meeting of each month, the agenda will include a call to the public, which is an opportunity to speak to the governing board about a school district matter that is not on the agenda. Please submit a request to address the board form to participate in the call to the public. If you would like the board to consider adding an item to a future agenda, you may submit your request in writing to the board at least five working days before that meeting. The superintendent or governing board president will consider your request. Thank you for your attendance and involvement in tonight's meeting. 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

084with the agenda. The poster the the poster in the boardroom describes positive behaviors expected and behaviors that cannot be tolerated. Please speak and act respective respectively and actively listen. Be kind. Verbal harassment, abusive or foul language, intimidation, and disruption have no place in a classroom or the boardroom. Please, no side conversations or reactive comments. They can be disruptive. It is a governing board president's responsibility to maintain proper orders so the board can conduct its business in an orderly and efficient manner. If you're disruptive or interfere with the conduct of this meeting, you will be asked to leave so the board can conduct the business of the district. We are going to move along to um our calendar. Dr. Foris, will you please review the board calendar with us? Thank you very much, Madam President, members

085of the governing board and superintendency. I'll to run us through uh the month of May. April 23rd from 5 to 8:00 p.m. is our student services awards ceremony at Red Mountain High School. It's a great opportunity um to celebrate staff and students also. And then April 25th from 5 to 10:00 p.m. is Young at Art at Historic Irving. Our students will be showcasing all kinds of their uh visual art projects and we will also have some musical performances as well. May 7th from 4 to 6 PM is the Mesa Public Schools retirement celebration at the Mesa Convention Center. On the 13th at 5:00 pm, we have a study session where we will be hearing from both our student advisory group as well as our uh parental advisory committee. They will be sharing some of their

086recommendations with the governing board. At 6:30, our regular meeting will start. May 16th from 5 to 8:00 PM is the Westwood International Balorate Commencement Ceremony at the Red Mountain Community Church. May 21st is 700 p.m. is the East Valley Academy commencement ceremony that will be held at Dobson this year. And May 22nd with times varying uh to celebrate our high school graduations at our six comprehensive high schools. May 27th is our regularly scheduled governing board meeting. I want to make the community aware that in the summer we start our governing board meetings at 5:00 pm and we generally don't do study sessions. So 5:00 on May 27th starts the summer schedule. And that concludes uh the calendar. Thank you Dr. Fles. Lots of great things. Um might I just put a plug for this Friday

087night for the young at art. It is a wonderful event. So if you need a date, go go to the historic Irving. It is a great event. So um lots of great talent seeing. I'm going to turn it back to Dr. before this for a superintendent's update. I have one here. Thank you very much, Madam President, members of the governing board. I'm going to walk us through some celebrations in Mesa Public Schools. We know that the work that we do is uh directly aligned to our promise to know our students by name, serve them by strength and need so that they graduate ready for college, career, and community. Tonight's celebrations will do just that is uh celebrate our students and staff. When we put our promise together, supported by our portrait of a graduate, our

088five strategic goals, and our graduation plus model, and our governing board goals, um we believe that we are delivering upon that promise, and you're going to see some examples of that coming to life in my um update with you this evening. This year, we're focusing on three high priority areas: academic and instructional development, community engagement and safety, as well as organizational and operational efficiencies. So you'll see that my uh report is organized into those three categories. Starting with academic and instructional uh achievement, Red Mountain STEM Institute engineering students partnered with the K8 STEM Academy at Red Mountain Ranch to design a real world community project that won three top awards at the EPICS at ASU showcase. As part of the ASU EPICS program, students handled every aspect of the project from design to budgeting to

089grant writing, gaining valuable real world experience with mentorship from Honeywell Aerospace Technologies. The students work exemplified innovation, collaboration, as well as community impact. I'm proud to announce that Anna Gonzalez Willis of special education at Webster Elementary was surprised to learn that she is one of four recipients of the Espironza Latino Teacher Award. Nominated by her school, Anna was recognized for creating a classroom environment rooted in understanding, support, and empowerment. She received a $5,000 cash award and a $2,500 stipen for her school. We know that it there's a very special day in Mesa public schools tomorrow and that is administrative professionals day. A perfect time to recognize the dedication and contributions of the incredible administrative professionals across our district. These team members are the backbone of our offices and departments, ensuring everything runs efficiently and effectively.

090Their behindthescenes work helps create a supportive environment for students, staff, and family every day. I genuinely thank each and every one of them for all that they do. And today, as the celebration of Earth Day, kindergarteners at Adams Elementary celebrated with a fun morning of planting flowers in their school garden and singing What a Wonderful World together. This morning, many of us had an opportunity to celebrate our bus drivers because this week is bus driver appreciation week, a time to honor the dedicated work of our bus drivers, bus aids, and transportation staff. Their commitment ensures the safety and well-being of our students and they travel as they travel to and from school. This morning, the Mesa Foundation sponsored the annual bus driver appreciation breakfast, giving us a chance to show our gratitude for their exceptional

091service. We are deeply appreciative of their vital role that they play in Mesa public schools. Turning back to our students, four outstanding seniors from Mesa Public Schools received student community service awards from the Mesa Citizen of the Year Association. Jeremi Jeene Louie, Regina Herrera Marquees, Satie Christie, and Alexis Gronden from those students are from the Jeremia is from Mountain View, Regina is from Mountain View, Satie is from Red Mountain, and Alexis Gronden is also from Red Mountain. Each was awarded a $2,500 scholarship for their commitment to community service. students completed at least 150 hours serving high school and demonst during their high school and demonstrated a strong dedication to ongoing community involvement. The Mesa Citizen of the Year Association emphasizes the importance of recognizing Mesa Public Schools students impactful volunteer efforts which contribute actively to

092city programs, nonprofits, and other community initiatives. We've already given some shoutouts about Young at Art. That gayla is February 25th again from 5 to 10 p.m. at Historic Eing Irving. This will be our 37th annual Mesa Public Schools Young at Art Show. Please come join us. I would like to thank our staff and families for completing the survey on uh early release Wednesdays. As you know, this is time dedicated to professional learning and planning for our teachers. I've reviewed the results of the survey. 70% of survey respondents indicated they do not want to move from Wednesdays to Mondays and 62% would like to keep the 2-hour release time instead of reducing it to 1 hour. So, in summary, there will be no changes to our Wednesday early release for professional learning for the 202526 school

093year. Additional communication will come out in insight my newsletter um the first Friday in May and then our principles will be sharing uh at their school sites as well as through the Mesa agenda for staff. So lots of ways that we're making sure everybody knows that there will be no changes to our early release Wednesdays for next year. and taking a look at special days and things to celebrate. In May, we have a month-long recognitions of National Fitness Month, AsianPacific American Heritage Month, Jewish American Heritage Month. And then we have some special weeks, National Music Week, Teacher Appreciation Week, and Educational Bosses Week. So, wow, that's a lot to celebrate and important days. National School Lunch Hero Day. Now, if you've been to a school on May 2nd and you see the cafeteria staff dressed

094like heroes, it's because they are special people serving our children. May 6th, teacher appreciation day, May 7th, school nurses day, and May 22nd, the last day of school and our high school graduations. That concludes a very lengthy update on all the things happening um most recently. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Foris. Lots of fun things in May. Um, tonight we have exciting I see some great guests in the audience. Tonight we get to recognize NS elementary school as our spotlight school and several high school students who won state CTE awards. So Dr. Foris, will you um get us started with this and fellow board members, will you join me in front of our DAS for tonight's recognition? Our spotlight recognitions it program is designed to provide our community with an inside look at the exceptional

095individuals within Mesa public schools. At every meeting, we celebrate remarkable students and staff members who positively impact our schools, inviting everyone to find out what's inside and honor their contributions. The school spotlights will feature a video showcasing each school which will also be available on the school's website. Recognition of a distinguished student, a certified staff member, and a classified staff member. And this evening, we get to celebrate NS Elementary School. So, I saw her. Callie Persley, come on up. Principal at Ants Elementary School. Please join me at the podium and we get to watch a special video of your school. L is a great place to learn because all the teachers are nice and funny and they always like encourage you to do stuff that would help you learn. They have a great personality and

096help us kids a lot. Love those fingers. Well done. Everyone here is so kind and like happy and always joyful. All the kids here are very welcoming, very nice, and you get to make a lot of new friends. When I was new here last year, um they all just welcomed me and they just made me feel welcome here, and I like that. An activity that I enjoy is art because you get to use your imagination. The music, I like all the bands and stuff like that. It's really fun and you get to play instruments. Favorite subject is math because because my teacher makes it fun for um us to learn and so then we can get like the subject better. I like the den because we earn e tickets for being respectful, responsible, and proud.

097And then we get to add them all up and then we go then we go to the den and there's all these different prizes that we get to pick. Something special that I like about ants is there's a wall and it's painted and it looks really cool. There's like the ants and it has like a rainbow on it and it has like and the stairs are rainbow and it has like cactuses and trees and stuff when like we're just like driving by the school. I can just like see it and just like popping right when I look at it and I feel like it just like shows like we are like a great school and you would want to come here. [Music] So, Principal Persley is here this evening and she's going to inter uh

098introduce us to her spotlight honores. All yours. Well, first of all, thank you for this opportunity. I am very lucky, feel very blessed to be at such an amazing school with such amazing people. Thank you all for being here. I also want to recognize um really quickly someone very special to our school who is going to be retiring this year and that's Miss Greta in our PAUSE program and she is wonderful and she's done so much. So I just want to thank the board and Mesa Public Schools for allowing um this PAUSE program to be something that we have access to because it's very important to all of us. So thank you [Applause] Gre. Thank you, Serena. So, the first person tonight we want to um from our ants community, we are excited to recognize

099someone who has truly been a pillar of strength and consistency at Ants from the very beginning. Miss Dina Jolly, come on up. Come here. The mic is yours, Miss Jolly. I'm just kidding. [Laughter] I I'll read quickly. Dana's impact on our school community cannot be overstated. Over the years, she has poured her heart and expertise into helping students grow academically, emotionally, and personally. She's not just a teacher. She's a catalyst for transformation. Dena has taken students who were significantly below grade level and guided them patiently and persistently until they were ready to graduate out of the resource and thrive in their general education classrooms. Students walk away with real skills, confidence, and the tools they need for long-term successes. What makes Dena stand out is her unwavering commitment to excellence. She sees every student not

100just for who they are, but who they can become. She meets them where they are and then motivates them to exceed even their own expectations. Her dedication is evident in everything she does. From the lessons she plans to the relationships she builds. Dena sets high expectations and more importantly she helps her students believe they can meet them. Her classroom is a place of encouragement, growth, and determination. It's where challenges become opportunities and progress is always the goal. Dana, thank you for your tireless dedication to our students and to the school. Your work has changed lives and your legacy continues to grow with each student you support and inspire. We are so grateful for you, Dina. Thank you. gonna call you back up. Don't go. All right. Tonight, and this is so perfect timing because of

101um the celebration for administrative um professionals day tomorrow. Tonight we have the incredible honor of recognizing someone who is truly the heart of ants. Our very own Cindy Fast. Cindy, turn around and look at all of the people that you impact that are sneaking in through the door. Cindy, look who showed up. If you've ever walked through the doors of ENS, chances are the first face you saw was Cindy's greeting you with a smile, a kind word, and that signature warmth that sets the tone for our entire school day. For over two decades, Cindy has been the welcoming spirit not only for our students and staff, but for the entire neighborhood. Cindy makes ants go around. From the moment she arrives, she brings positivity, help helpfulness, and a deep dedication to making the school not

102just run smoothly, but feel like home. There's not a problem she won't try to solve, or a person she won't try to help. Whether she's sweeping the courtyard, decorating the front office with cheerful seasonal touches, making sure the pesky weeds are picked out of all of our planters, or lending a listening ear to someone who needs it. Cindy goes above and beyond in every way. She is the glue that holds us together, literally and figuratively. She keeps the office running like clockwork, knows every face and every name, and somehow always has the answer to any question that comes her way. Need help with something? Cindy's already on it. Probably with a smile and a friendly joke to make your day a little brighter. She is a problem solver, a decorator, a listener, an organizer, a

103mother, a grandmother, a partner, a teammate, and a friend. She makes our school more beautiful, more cheerful, and more welcoming every single day. Quite simply, ants wouldn't be the same without her. Cindy, thank you for everything you do, for your consistency, your joy, your generosity of spirit, and the way you love this community so deeply. You embody what makes Ants so special. We appreciate you more than words can say. [Applause] Okay. On to our fabulous student. Tonight we have the absolute pleasure of recognizing an extraordinary student, someone who quietly and consistently makes our school a better place just by being herself. That student is Stella Levit. From the moment you meet her, you can't help but be struck by her warmth. Stella is the type of person who radiates kindness, intelligence, and positivity. She's always

104smiling and uplifting those around her. Whether it's through her patience and kindness with her first grade buddy, playing our school song on the piano for one of our PBIS assemblies, or by offering support and encouragement as she tackles challenging concepts. She consistently shows up and approaches every challenge with determination and positive grit. She never looks for shortcuts. She puts in the time, the thought, and the heart. Stella is not only an exceptional student, she's an exceptional person that doesn't ask for re recognition, volunteers her time and talents, and sets a quiet but powerful example of what it means to lead with integrity and kindness. The subtlety she carries may lead her to believe these acts and her hard work go unnoticed, but we are grateful to honor these traits, recognize and celebrate who she shows

105up to be each and every day. She may be a student, but she has taught peers and teachers alike by the example she sets each and every day. Stella, you are ever so humble regardless of the lengths you go, inspiring not only your classmates, but also your teachers and the entire school community. Your light shines bright and we are all better for having you here at ENS. Thank you for being you, genuine, generous, and truly remarkable. And never forget yes you Canada. [Laughter] [Applause] How are you? [Applause] [Music] Do you want the black? A note. Thank you. It was good to see you. Heels and stairs didn't work out. Well, it's great to be able to celebrate ants and we are going to move into some more celebrations because celebrating success is just one of

106the ways that we ignite a culture of learning and well-being in Mesa public schools. We're committed to recognizing students, teachers, staff, and administrators for their achievements. So tonight we get to celebrate some of our outstanding career and technical education students. Each student won first place in a state competition for their respective category for their student organization. Arizona has eight career and technical student organizations designed to develop success through applied academics, promote career options, and foster skills in teamwork, communication, and collaboration. These student-driven organizations also encourage excellence in scholarship, build character, advance citizenship, volunteerism and patriotism, endorse cooperation among all people, and provide opportunities for state, national, and international travel through internships, camps, and leadership conferences. As CTSO students explore pathways to careers, they also discover leadership opportunities and experiences to propel them forward in life.

107And how appropriate for tonight's celebration because it's National Student Leadership Week. We recognize student leaders for their hard work, determination, and commitment to making a change in their school community and the world. So, first up, we have Dobson High School's FAA and the Forest Career Development Team who secured first place in their competition. So, I'm going to call up names of all of you. You're sitting right here up front. I'm so glad. So, we're going to have you step forward right into the light. You kind of saw how that worked and we'll get some quick pictures and you'll do the handshake with our governing board members. So, Abigail Hurst, come on up. Andrew Striker, come on up. Sophia Wong. And James Samura. And we really want their teacher Ellie Robbins to come up and Rollins

108to come up and join. [Applause] All right, Tim, where are we going to get a quick picture? Governing board, you want to jump in because we're going to move on to We've got uh three other categories. in the middle. [Applause] Well done and congratulations to all of you. We're so appreciate. [Applause] Next, we will recognize Dobson High School's future health professionals. We call that HOSA. Sponsored by Britney Tossy and her HOSA student, Connor Clayton. Can I have you come on up and to be celebrated and get a picture with our governing board? [Applause] Yeah, I can do. [Laughter] Oh yeah, jump in. All right, we're sticking with the theme of health. [Applause] Next, we will recognize Red Mountain's Future Health Professionals, which is the acronmen acronym of H O SA, HOSTA, their sponsor, Jennifer Klene,

109and her hosta student, um, Madison Killian, who placed first in epidemiology. Will you please come on up? [Applause] Come on up. Honor. [Applause] Yay. Congratulations to both of [Applause] you. Continuing with Red Mountain celebr celebrations go to uh Chef Shane Murray and his student Molly Mirs. Will you please come on up to be recognized? Where's Chef Shane? Come on up. There we go. [Applause] Right into right into the the spotlight. Oh, I I know. Molly placed first in the state proficiency for appetizers display black tai event at the Arizona Family Career and Community Leaders of America State Proficiency Test. Say all of that in one sentence. Holy cow. Nicole goes by Ivy Smith, also Chef Shane's student, is not able to join us this evening, but would like to acknowledge her first place finish in

110pastry arts technical decorating skills. Congratulations. Did we get all the pictures we needed? If you are here to celebrate our students from Dobson and Red Mountain, will you please stand so we can celebrate [Applause] you? And if you are here from Ants Elementary to celebrate the spotlight um program with Ants Elementary, will you all please stand? There was a big crowd. [Applause] like to thank you all for joining us for these recognitions. We're going to continue on with our business meeting this evening. So, if you would like to um celebrate with your family and friends elsewhere, you won't hurt our feelings. Okay. Minute and 30. Okay. We are now on to the time of their meeting for public comment and call the public. First, we will watch a short video on the procedures. The governing

111board welcomes comments from the public on non-aggenda items during the call to the public. Please remember, as a general rule, public comments will be limited to minutes and the duration of an open call to the public will be 15 minutes. The president may set specific time limits for speakers and the duration of the call to the public to maximize the opportunity for individuals to offer their viewpoints. Comments must pertain to a matter that is within the jurisdiction of the governing board. This is not an appropriate forum to complain about an employee, student, or others. Please use the procedures established in policy 1-302 for this purpose. State law prohibits board members from commenting on or discussing the matters presented at the end of the call to the public. The board may ask the superintendent to review

112the issue or place it on a future agenda. A board member may also briefly respond to criticism of a board member or the governing board. Thank you for allowing this meeting to be conducted in a peaceful and productive manner. Before we begin, just a quick reminder that policy 1-302 says that call to the public is limited to issues within the jurisdiction of the board. Mrs. Chaffy, how many speakers do we have signed up tonight? We have 14 speakers signed up tonight. Okay, we have 14 speakers, so each person will have a minute and 30 seconds to speak. Uh, Mrs. Chaffy, I would like to thank you for serving as a clerk and would like you to ask us to lead us through this agenda item, please. Thank you, President Davis. Just a reminder, when you

113come up to the podium, please state your name and your relationship to Mesa Public Schools. If you have signed up to speak on more than one agenda item, you cannot speak more than once, but you can use your full 1 minute and 30 seconds to speak to more than one agenda item. I will call the first three names on the list, and then I I will also call the next three that are up on deck, and you can line up over here on the side of the room. Our first three public comments will be by Michael Kasmik, Amelia Parrot, and Leah Arthur. On deck, we have Aaron Parrot, William Squires, and Jeff Thompson. I'm Michael Kasmarak. I'm a student of Skyline High School and I'm here to discuss uh marching band at Skyline. Mainly the

114fact that the job is being put into a part-time and it needs it kind of needs to be a full-time for us to get the full beneficial teaching of it. because it's kind of difficult when we only can have half the time with the teacher with like competitions and everything. And it's not just in marching band, it's all the bands consecutively. We're only going to have a teacher for like half the time, which is going to put stress on us as students because it's kind of difficult to learn everything we need to learn. So, I'm mainly just here to ask what's going on with that. We can thank you for your comment and we will um send that to superintendency. Thank you. Hello, my name is Mila Pere and I'm a freshman at Skyland High

115School. Uh this year, in addition to basically all honors classes, I've been a member of Skyland marching band, honor band, and jazz band, as well as advanced honor choir. Yes, while these are all extremely fun, I have still been able to maintain my 4.3 GPA. I have learned so much in performing arts, but specifically in band. I can collaborate and communicate with my section and across my ensemble to ensure strong performance for football games and competitions. We are resilient, especially through band camp where I saw my bandmates work hard through pain and exhaustion and then back and then get back up again and continue on with the same amounts of effort. We are community contributors through bringing so much joy and energy to our school events and that the community attends. I have learned to

116think critically and creatively to solve problems in the classroom and on the field during our performances. This is why marching band placed fourth in state. This is also why the honor band is also going to state again on Thursday. We talk pride we take pride in representing Skyline and wearing our green and gold. I'm proud to be Coyote. I was disappointed to hear that Miss Trouy is leaving and frustrated to learn that her position was being cut to parttime. She along with many other band directors give themselves not only during school hours but beyond to ensure we have all the tools to be successful. High school band is not a part-time position. It requires full attention to so many things and I don't think that principles understand the real effort. Sometimes I think that it's

117easy to cut the arts, but what they're really cutting is a program that guarantees students a gain of uh guaranteed attributes. I'm worried for the program that I, as only a freshman, have already given so much of myself to. Just a reminder that the football team isn't the only one. [Applause] I have Leah Arthur listed next. Okay, then we will proceed gen. Yeah, that's fine. Generally, we have our students speak first, but yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's Hello, my name is Bernard. I'm an NPS parent. As a veterin, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution, not any one administration. That oath exists because when an administration or a state official gives an order that contradicts our founding values, we are obligated to refuse because you do not comply with fascism in advance. and to make

118no mistake, threatening to withhold funding from smaller school districts unless they submit. That is textbook authoritarianism. That is not leadership. That is coercion. And as a parent, and yes, as someone who shares Judeo-Christian values, I understand the difference between political beliefs and public duty. My faith teaches me to treat others the way that I want to be treated. But our founders in their wisdom separated church and state because those same Judeo-Christian values once justified slavery and fascism. And today those same Jewial Christian values are used by some even um people in this room to abandon their children when they become out as trans or queer to add them to the 3060,000 kids already in foster care or worse. I won't gaslight you. I know that most parents or all parents may not have their best

119children in uh children's interest in heart even when they think they do. And as a Judeo-Christian, I know that fascists also hide under this flag as well. That's why we keep our Judeo-Christian values in the church and legislate with American values. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Anything less is fascism. These are the values that every American shares, not just Judeo-Christians. Because elected officials don't just represent Judeo-Christians. They represent all of us. They represent America. [Applause] Hi, I'm Leah Arthur and I'm an MPS student. I'd like to talk about how not using students preferred name and/or pronouns will not be protective for schools and students. Not using a student's preferred identity is actively disrespecting them and will scare them away from going to school and in the long run will boost suicide rates and

120student by a lot. This may come as a shock, but disrespect does not just come from a student to a teacher, but can also come from a teacher to a student. Thank you. Next, we will hear from Aaron Parrot, William Squires, and Jeff Thompson. On deck, we have Robin Mesner, Casey Baxter, and Corbin Hood. Hi, I'm Aaron Parrot. I'm a band mom at a Skyline band. Kids are the best. They give up their last week of freedom every summer for band camp. They're in multiple ensembles. They play at football games in all kinds of weather competitions the morning after games and this year they rocked. They swept NA band day taking first place and all captions. They took fourth in state. We were the only school in the state to have students in the Macy's

121All-American Band. They play countless pep assemblies and Thursday they're competing at state again. Band kids are collaborators, community contributors, and they are resilient. They communicate and are inclusive. They are definitely creative thinkers and problem solvers. They are the portrait of a graduate. They've learned to be this way through hard work and discipline, but also because of the d their director. Having her at Skyline full-time has been essential to their success because of the access to her at all hours and many beyond. She's available to them on days they aren't even scheduled because of block. She and most other band directors are available um for their students, but also to collaborate with theaters, recruit, and attend school events even on days they're not teaching band. As a former performing arts teacher, department chair, and current school

122administrator, I understand the need for a strong relationship between arts teachers and administrators. I also have a working understanding of FTE allocation and the puzzle that is the master schedule. Admin has to make an effort to know the needs of the students. The teachers have to advocate for the kids' needs and both parties have to work together for the kids. Taking away a full-time band position is going to end a band program at the high school level. Quality candidates don't want a part-time job and they're not going to come in on off time because the stipend is inadequate. I urge superintendency to work with the leadership at Skyline to restore the position to full-time. Thank you. [Applause] I'm Jeff Thompson. I'm a taxpayer and a concerned citizen about the mismanagement that's been going on. I

123want to do a recap. You guys probably remember, I don't know, two and a half years ago when I said, "How can you walk down the hallways and look these kids in the eye and know you're stealing their future from them?" that's kind of come to paration. Last month, we had a board member and at least I think two homeowners that were uh ask a question, a yes no question. Was there any study done on this trial that we were going to have our kids do? And they were asked by one of the superintendents and the incoming doctorate and all they got was word salads filibustered. No wonder your teachers are confused when they try to roll out a new plan like the block scheduling and stuff. Then the other thing I said, you guys

124were stuck here because your resumes are all over the internet and we've got proof right here turned down twice trying to get out of this place. It ain't going to happen. As long as we got the same board that we have and we had we only had three board members last month that actually listened to what the people what the people were saying. Nobody was in favor. Pardon me just a second. I have my comments are prepared. Madame President, members of the board, I'm William Squires. I'm a parent of a student in this district. I was here April 8th regarding your proposed gender dysphoria policy. With only 45 seconds to give remarks, my thoughts were scattered. I apologize for that. But having watched your discussion regarding this proposed policy and being in agreement with the

125board's decision to seek legal counsel, I'd still like to provide feedback on some specific points that were made. Mrs. Benson, I would like to draw attention to your statement on the April 8th board meeting that quote, "Our girls do not want to be in the bathroom and quote with what you to call a gender confused male. I'd like to say the quiet part of this out loud." This framing of all transgender women as predators or sexual deviants must stop. This is dehumanizing. It is transphobic. This line of thinking is what encourages bullying. I'd like to remind you all that as members of this board, you have an obligation to provide responsible governance. Regardless of what you campaign for for office, what mandate you may think you have, your job as a board member is to

126craft policy that supports and uplifts all students. The gender dysphoria policy does not do that as written. On the contrary, it is openly transphobic and as Mrs. Hutchinson stated on the ETH, it is disrespectful to the community you serve. If you are making your policy goals to harm or disrespect any of our students, you should not be a board member. You should immediately resign. Thank you. I yield the rest of my time. Next, we have Robin Mesner, Casey Baxter, and Corbin Hood. On deck, we have Mark Kimble, Nick Kasmik, Rachel Bostock, and Ed Steel. Good evening. My name is Robin Mesner. Um I am a mom of a high school um freshman at the Skyline Band. Um as you've heard from a couple of us and you'll hear from a couple more, the band program

127is very important to all of us and very essential to all of our kids. Um and I'm here because I want to see it not only succeed, but I want to see it flourish. Um Cody's first experience with the Skyline Band was when he was in seventh grade. They had step-up night and they invited the junior high students to become uh to come to be a part of one of their games. Since then, it was all that he talked about moving into high school. He had friends from junior high that chose to go to Red Mountain, but a big reason he chose to stay in Boundary was because of that first experience and the band director's dedication to keeping the program at its best. Have any of you ever had a project you just didn't

128have time you needed to do what you wanted for it? Most of the time it doesn't come out right. It's not the right quality. It's okay. it'll pass, but you're kind of disappointed, wishing you could have been what you want, what what you wanted. These kids and their current band director have dedicated so much time and effort into creating a quality program that, as you've heard, has gotten them into state and members into the Macy's parade. But even if the kids pour the same energy as they did this year when they only have a director that can give half of that time, it won't be the same. These kids deserve the same opportunity that the kids at the other Mesa schools that have a robust music program have get. Not everyone has the fam the

129option of going elsewhere. I know Skyline's enrollment is down, but and budgets a consideration, but we can't increase enrollment at a school by cutting the performing [Applause] art. Good evening, Madame President, Dr. Furless, members of the board, superintendency. My name is Casey Baxter, and I have the honor of being the principal at Franklin Accelerated Academy East Campus. And as you know, I am on a mission because I believe if you look for the good, you'll find it. So today, in recognition of National Bus Driver Appreciation Day, I want to take a moment and shine a light on some of the most essential yet often unsung members of our school community, our incredible bus drivers and bus monitors. At my school, we are fortunate we have five dedicated drivers who serve our regular education students each

130day. But because our campus also hosts a self-contained district special education program, we are also supported by another team of 17 special education bus drivers and 12 bus monitors. So these individuals go above and beyond to ensure our students with disabilities receive the support, care, and attention that they need starting from the moment they step on that bus. Our transportation team does so much more than drive. They're the first friendly faces that many of our students see each morning and the last before they head home. They greet students by name, notice when someone's having a bad day, provide a steady, caring presence that helps our students feel safe and seen. Their commitment to excellence and student safety lays the foundation for learning that happens in our classrooms every day. Among this incredible team at my

131school is a husband and wife duo, Jen and Bruce, who both drive for us. Not only do they serve our students with pride and dedication, but they're also proud former Franklin parents themselves. Their son attended our school many years ago, and he now works for the district. and they continue to invest in our students and our community community. They are a powerful example of deep connections that make our school special. Our drivers and monitors are caregivers, problem solvers, and role models. They build relationships, create routines, and support our students in a way that truly make a difference. Good evening. My name is Corbin Hood. I am a sophomore at Skyline High School and I am a member of the Skyline Marching Band, honor band, jazz band, and concert band. The Skyline Marching Band has been

132to two state championships two years in a row. We have traveled to NA to compete these last two years where we have recently swept two competitions. Our jazz band has scored an excellent rating last week, and we have marched in parades, school pep rallies, and halftimes during our home football games. I have grandparents who have driven 30 minutes out just to hear the Skyline marching bands. We are underdogs for sure, but we stay humble. I need this program to thrive. Band has had a huge impact on my high school years. I have personally grown an interest in playing guitar because of a guitar class at Skyline. And I have purchased five guitars this year because of my teacher there. My goals and hard work are devoted to the music program. I make sure my GPA

133is above average so I can participate in concerts and competitions. My favorite part of the summer is our band camp where we work on leadership, communication, teamwork, motivation, and friendship in 115°ree weather. A full-time position for a band director is needed to keep the program alive. All of our success is dependent on having a band director on campus every day to help the students and offer a place where band students can approach the band director with any questions or any concerns. Reducing this pion to a part uh to a part-time status is not going to improve our our high school band. The board, the the high schools, and the teachers all need to constantly improve for the students. Thank you for your time. [Applause] My name is Mark Kimell. Um, thank you for this opportunity.

134Board members, superintendency. Um, wow, three minutes. I don't know what to do. Um, joking. So, uh, the last meeting, the policy that was re that that was, um, presented by board member Benson, I'm not sure if we were reading from the same script, many that were here. I I'm at a loss. Uh fundamentally to have a policy that supports the parents and puts the parents in a position where they have to be required to be notified in the event that their son or daughter is seeking counseling or from staff or uh teachers regarding um their gender, regarding depression, those kind of things. How could you deny a policy that would put the parents at the, you know, at the forefront of being notified? uh the consequences. This gentleman that spoke, let me tell you a

135little bit about the girls restrooms over a year ago. I stood before you and others expressing what was going on that there were dozens and it was presented through email and interviews of girls that didn't feel safe using the restrooms at Mountain View. Now, this was just Mountain View. You know, it's happening at other schools. It wasn't the trans students causing the problem. It was a lot of it boys trying to be funny. Oh, I I identify as a woman today, so I'm going to go in the girls' room. Hello, my name is Net Casmarak. My son, Michael. I'm a parent Skyland High School. My son's in the marching band. I'm not going to really touch on that too much. Um, the grading system now is very difficult to understand. I may be a simple

136person, but grading it on a zero to four scale makes it increasingly difficult when you get updates about your students grades and you're getting they got zero out of zero, zero out of four, zero out of this. That doesn't help us help our kids. Uh, the block scheduling, the alternating of days. I remember personally I had block scheduling when I first came to Arizona. We did four classes from August to Christmas. Our next four was Christmas to the end of the school year. So, it wasn't a flip-flop schedule. It was you did four, then you did four more. Same amount of credits. Just a suggestion moving forward. Um, the marching band position needs to be full-time. Just my opinion. You guys can take it with a grain of salt if you want. The current band

137director spends a lot of time with these kids. Weeks, hours. These kids have gone to state the last three years in a row. I drive their truck. Actually, I and one of the parents out there do. We switch off. Oh, well, there's my time. Thank [Applause] you. I'm Rachel Bosto. I'm a Mesa Public Schools parent. Um, I'm just going to make a quick request. If students come, they should get there full-time cuz it's really hard for them to come up here and I think that they should be able to. They're the ones living this. Um, last board meeting, we were here till I left here at 11:40 p.m. Was told you guys would have another meeting to discuss Mountain View. I've yet to see that anywhere on an agenda. Anyone speak about it? We've been

138asked to take a leap of faith as as one of the board members asked us to do. our CTE programs at the EVIT uh meeting were just told that they're one of the lowest in the state and yet we are putting our whole faith into that and I that's really hard for me to want to put a leap of faith in that. We still haven't been able to have a discussion about this. Um, I'm concerned for the verbiage after reading the frequently asked questions page that our superintendent asked us to read about policy 21101 that the governing board has designated our superintendent as the chief administrative officer of the district with the responsibility among other things to oversee the day-to-day operations of the district to ensure that the district operates in accordance with governing board

139policy and applicable law and regulations. This includes responsibility to administer development, coordination, maintenance, evaluation of the educational program. Accordingly, scheduling structures, creating programs such as college and careermies is within their authority. I didn't vote for the superintendent. I voted for you guys to oversee the superintendent. This sounds like a lot of responsibility for one person. Where are the checks and balances? Members of the board, superintendency. My name is Ed Steel. I'm a concerned citizen community member here. Um I want to speak to you tonight about two agenda items. Um 9A 9D. But first, um the Mesa Promise is every student is served by strength and need. I hear students here coming having the courage to come address the superintendent saying they need a full-time band director. So now's your chance to prove that this promise

140is not just a bunch of hollow empty words. Serve them by their need. They're telling you what their need is. Um let's go on 9A. Um this is a memorandum of understanding with West Ed which is uh a project funded by the Gates Foundation. Um it's a it's another experiment, education experiment to see if we can find a new statistical program that'll work for the kids. Let's let's work with the statistical programs we have. Let's not go out on a limb. Let's not help people develop other programs that we may or may not work for our students. Use what you have. Do it better than what you're doing. 9D. Um, these social studies things, there are a lot of really woke companies here, for lack of a better word. I mean, one of these these

141uh groups, Close-up Foundation, is is promoting DEI and [Applause] Madame President, that concludes our public comment. Thank you. Thank you for those that uh spoke tonight. We will now move um 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. Thank you. I don't see any there. Um, moving on. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel request, including the addendum? So moved. Do I have a second? I'll second it. Any discussion? Madam President, um I don't have any concern about um the hieries, the res resignations or the uh retirements. My concern is that this document is 63 pages long and is consistently every meeting that we have and it

142has been for the time period that I've been uh attending board meetings. So I I I'm interested in perhaps streamlining this. We're approving hiring. We're approving retirements and resignations. I'm not sure why we have the uh teachers who are giving up their prep time for sub pay. I don't know that that's necessary on this document. That's the only qu I mean perhaps we can be given that information in a different way. I don't think we it's already been done. So it's not that we are approving paying it. So it's 63 pages long. can't possibly with any degree of fidelity be able to understand or determine am I should I be approving this? So, I'd like to see it streamlined if possible. That's my only comment. Mr. W, not sure if you'd like me to respond.

143Good evening, board president, governing board. Uh he we're intending on human resources intending on bringing recommendations to the governing board in June for the new school year as far as personal action items. Uh we're the one district that has multiple multiple pages and we can streamline things. Also a reminder, we plan on bringing to uh forth our stipen and temporary salary schedule and all other salary schedules which the board will approve annually which will assist on some of the changes we're recommending. So do I hear you saying it won't be 63 pages starting next year? My recommendations will be to avoid a 63 page. Hallelujah. Can I take a point of privilege and just thank uh Justin Wing for his work because that is something that I talked about when I first joined the board

144too. I I I completely feel your pain and it's frustrating because because how could we possibly verify all the information on the personnel request? So, I know that there was a lot that needed to be sort of cleaned up and streamlined, and I want to thank uh Dustin for doing all of that work, and now we're at this point where we can streamline it even even more. So, I'm excited to hear that, and I'm really glad that member Benson asked that question because I'm wondering the same thing, but I know it was a long time coming, too. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? Is yours coming? I think I did. If that was your with a vote of five yays, you've approved the personnel request, including

145the addendum. Moving on to consent agenda. All items 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? I'll second it. Thank you. Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? With a vote of five years, we have approved the consent agenda items according to the recommended action for each item. Madam President, yes. Um, I'd like to highlight the minutes. I had I believe the whole board got an email um requesting access to the minutes when they're when the agenda is presented. I know we have access

146to it with that little icon that's there. Um but the community member said uh they were not able to access the minutes to look them over. So I'd like to make sure that that gets fixed. Thank you. Moving on to our proclamations. Do I have a motion to approve the proclamation recognizing May 6, 2025 as National Teacher Day and May 5th through 9th, 2025 as teacher appreciation week? So moved. Do I have a second? Seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, we please take our vote. vote of five yays. You have approved We have approved the proclamation recognizing May 6th, 2025 as National Teacher Day and May 5th through 9th, 2025 as teacher appreciation week. Mrs. Chaffy, as board clerk, will you read the proclamation for us? Whereas teachers open students minds to ideas, knowledge,

147and dreams. And whereas teachers keep democracy alive by laying a foundation for good citizenship. And whereas teachers are listeners, explorers, role models, motivators, and mentors. And whereas teachers continue to influence us long after our school days are only memories. The governing board and superintendent of Mesa Public Schools do hereby proclaim May 5th through 9th as teacher appreciation week, May 6th as National Teacher Day. Join us in acknowledging the lasting contributions of teachers to our lives, our community, and our country. Let's celebrate and thank our amazing teachers. Thank you. And yes, we are so so grateful for our amazing teachers. Um we are going to move now into action items. Action item A. Do I have a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding isqr early exploration project? So moved. Do I have a second? seconded.

148Thank you. Any discussion? So I have some questions on this. So uh the funding so it says the work of the early exploration project funded by the Gates Foundation West Ed will partner with the small number of districts to help project leaders design materials understand um the statistics with this funding. So this is um Gates Foundation is obviously a private organization. How long is that funding expected to last? Madame President, member Walden, um thisou has initiated out of the Arizona Department of Education. Um they're exploring right now changes to not only the way that algebra 2 is taught in Arizona but also uh exploration of fourthyear math credit math courses and alternative pathways for math. So this funding is in partnership with AD to provide professional learning to our teachers um to explore those opportunities.

149So it it's a one-year um professional learning plan and then they would be exploring the different pathways So the funding goes is going because this is a non-financial agreement, the funding is going through the Department of Education. So they're are they receiving funding? Um I know that the funding would come to us to be able to participate in paying teachers off contract to to participate and receive the professional learning and those opportunities. I'm not exactly sure how it how it streams through, but that's what it's provided for. Okay. So they would get stipens or extra money for the additional time and it would pay for travel opportunities like down to the department of ed or other places where they're working with other professional educators across the state. So is the uh the impact on creating

150the statist because this I'm say statistics because it says pilot a new integrated statistics and quantitative reasoning course. Maybe I should start there with that question. And could you explain a little more about what that looks like because you mentioned algebra 2 and this sounds like it's a statistics course. Yeah. So in Arizona, algebra 2 is a is a required course for graduation. And right now the concepts in algebra 2 are nearly double those of algebra 1 and geometry. And so we find that many students and teachers are unable to really dig deep into that content. And then the fourth year of math is a requirement for graduation, but it's left up to local control in terms of what that fourth math course is. And so right now, the work is initiating around algebra 2

151and what that would look like, but then also progressively then what are the learning progressions into that fourth year of math that would help set up students for um success for post-secary success and align to to their career pathways, etc. And so this is um coming out of the AD, but it's part of that entire four-year series. And this specific course would be one of the pathways that they're looking at as a as an option for a fourth year course. Okay. I see. So So it's not it could impact how algebra 2 is taught, but really what we're looking at as a new course is that fourth year requirement where it's up to the student which math course they want to take. Correct. So, is this just going to be the teachers that volunteer for

152this that have extra time to participate in this pilot or are students going to be participating too? Right now, this is um strictly stipens for educators to participate in the professional learning. So, they participate and then something where they I guess they're going to give feedback or whatever to try to develop or see if this course is worthwhile. Yeah, it's really the professional learning around the concepts, training, what content would be covered, how it aligns to our standards, post-secary readiness, etc. So, a course wouldn't be implemented through thisou next year. It would be just for the funding for the for the training for teachers and the networking opportunities and all of that align to that. And is there uh any student data collecting that will go on as part of this agreement? So the data

153sharing is completely voluntary and we we don't have to share any data. And what what would that look like? Is there an opt out exist? I'm not sure if this falls under the the guidelines on student sharing. So is it something where parents don't know their child's data is being shared? Like what what is um what kind of data do you think we we're looking at for student? we would have our regular data privacy agreement if we were looking at sharing data with um this project. Okay. We can say we don't want to do that. So the parents have to sign off on it before any data gets shared. Is that correct? Uh via furpa uh when we have third party organizations that we agree to uh those third party organizations are considered an extension

154of the school district and so there's no parent sign off for that data being shared. But I will tell you that our research department will anonymize the data prior prior to sharing it with the bill uh with any uh organization that's going to analyze the data. So in other words, it's not that student X will be known by their organization and this are the these are the grades and outputs. It's that we send a unique identifier to them that they say that's this student. They never know who that student is and we're the only ones that that have the key to associate that student back to an actual student name. It's an it's an anonymized process. Okay. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. But I'm trying to figure out where we would if if

155if this is a pilot for teachers where the student data would come in or where that would be relevant. C certainly in any pilot uh foundation that sponsors uh the grant will want to understand the outcomes on students at the point in time in which they ask us for that type of data. We will a explore them getting into our traditional DSA, our data sharing agreement that our legal department has drawn up and that has specific standards for third party people to meet. Um so that's the first thing and we'll have to analyze whether we want to get into that type of of agreement. So that's the first step. Uh and then the second step is we take uh really high regards for safe safety of student information and student data in the uh uh

156process of anomalizing the data. Does that make sense? So out of the gate this is a teacher project. What may happen is there may be a follow-up on the foundation one to understand student impacts on their learning of quantitative analysis, statistical reasoning concepts of that sort. And if they want to get into that, we will certainly likely have interim formative and summitive assessment data. At that point, they will not know that John Smith took this interim assessment. they will know whatever unique ID student A247363 is has these scores on this type of assessment and we will be the only entity in our district that associates that key with an actual student. So it's not just it's it it's not just teachers participating in a pilot. They're going to use this in the classroom. The initial

157phase of this is the teacher helping the ad design the from my understanding Tracy will speak to this better than I will my current understanding is the initial phase is the teacher working on the content design of the course then the next year after is a pilot phase for the course is a so it's not this next year this next year they're working on designing the course and understanding the professional development that needs to go in the course the year after the AD intends on working with school districts that are interested in piling the course that's when student generation of data would occur would be in 2062 27. So are we just approving the first year like is what what part are we approving of this? What parts getting approved tonight? Yeah. So under the

158project activities it outlines what those projects are in the memorandum of understanding and that would be virtual district team meetings for those for those teachers collaboration meetings with the project staff course developers as Dr. Straw mentioned they would be working on what are the outcomes of that course, what is the content of that course. Um and then for districts that decide to participate in the pilot, that would happen towards the end of the year where we would be looking at that opportunity. But it's really thisou would expire um from a year from now in terms of right now the project is solely on the professional development and and course feedback and if the district wanted to pilot Oh, I'm sorry. You're trying to ask a question. No, I just want to just if it um

159President Davis, I just want to draw your attention to appendex A which identifies the data elements that would be provided uh in the first year and that's just the district profile data. How many high schools do we have? How many kids, number of students or ethnicity, gender, student demographics of the participating high schools and then you'll see that uh letter B is the demographic data would be collected um on participants and the optional student and family activities. So, it's pretty well laid out, but all of this year one is developing the teachers and getting input from teachers to see if this is even anything that we think that would be great in year two for our students. Yeah. And this appendix A I noticed you can get all of that on the Arizona Department of

160Education website today. So, this is already publicly available data. I I did notice that and that's where I was a little bit confused about, you know, when we talked about, you know, the data sharing because that is a a big concern for people today in this world where we're all a product to a tech company nowadays. So, um and and I I appreciate wanting to look at like the possibility of developing a new course for fourth year students or can we teach algebra 2 better. So, I feel supportive of that. I just want to make sure I understand what I'm approving and what the repercussions are that there's not unintended consequences from my vote tonight. And um with that then if there's the district decides to that we want a pilot of course would that

161come back to the board for approval? Okay. Yes, that would come back to you of course for approval. All right. Thank you. That's all my questions. Any other questions? Well, I have a real quick because now I'm a bit confused as to the time period. So, um, in section two, term and termination, it says theou is effective on the date first set forth and expires June 30th of 2025, which would be two months from now. Yep. I do believe that's a typo. It probably should say 2026. All right. So then so then is the pilot if we choose to have I I think it's a great opportunity for teachers to be able to participate in developing um curriculum and act uh really conceptual math. Are we going to need to get this retyped because this

162is says this we can send it back uh to Westad. So then as Dr. Stum said the if we were to choose to have our students do the pilot project that would be school year 2627. Um we will take a look at what comes out of this project this year in terms of the curriculum, how far they are, what their recommendations are. So we'll keep you updated along the way on on the work of the committees that are involved in this. And then if it's proposal for a course, that's when we we would bring that to you with all the curriculum, all the outcomes, etc. before it would go into the course catalog. Um, and do you have does do you have any uh knowledge of the level of support that the Gates Foundation is

163providing? I believe they are just the funders of the stipens and the travel. Um but Westad is really working with AD in the professional learning opportunities and and is AD overseeing uh the uh development of the course and making sure it aligns with state standards and all of that. Yes. Rather than Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? With a vote of five yays, you've approved the memorandum of understanding isqr early exploration project. Moving on to letter B. Do I have a motion to approve a contract award for 1,195,658 to convert the former metals lab into a new welding shop? So move. Do I have a second? I'll second. Any discussion? I just wanted to add this is at Dobson High School. Any other discussion? And

164this is award. Where's the funding? What where's the funding source of this CTE? The CT. Okay. Thank you. Oh, there it is. It's on there. I see. I'm assuming that uh Dobson the it as I read this I was like, "Wow, they really need if it only serves eight students, I think is what I read, right? Eight carols or whatever." I don't I don't know anything about welding, but I don't know anything about welding. Uh for over a million bucks, it seems like they need massive improvement. So, any other discussion? Miss Kirby? I think we're ready for a vote. I'm cold. Embrace it. The vote of five years, you've approved a contract award for 1,195,658 to convert the former metals lab into a new welding shop. Moving on to C. Do I have a motion

165to approve a contract increase for $350,000 for MacBook laptops? So moved. Do I have a second? I'll second it. Any discussion? Um, I just want to I noticed on this uh request for funding as well as a couple of uh the ones that are on um consent agenda that the original request is 290 295,000 that the director of procurement uh requested and I know that the board approved uh 300,000 limit last year. I just want to make sure we're not abusing that. It seems like this is a way to enter into a into a um funding agreement and then we come and ask for more money. So I'm a little worried about that. Also are I I personally love Max because they're pretty idiot proof. Is this the best device for our CTE students? I

166can say as someone who does this for a job that absolutely a MacBook is vital for all of those Ad Adobe Suite things and you fight that battle at ASU all the time saying like it it's really the industry standard to make sure those students are prepared for that. They're idiot proof. That's why I like them. I just wondered similar to Dobson where we knew kind of where those funds were being spent. Do we know where these computers are going? I do not. But I could get that information for you. Thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? With a vote of five days, you have approved a contract increase for $350,000 for MacBook laptops. Moving to D. Do I have a motion to approve a contract renew

167renewal for $500,000 for social studies, supplemental software, and resources? So moved. Do I have a second? Oh, sorry. Oh, my fault. So similar. Yeah. Yeah, it's real similar. Where am I at? It's the technology solutions products and service. Okay, maybe I missed a sheet. All right, I'll go to my technology. It might pull through through. Okay, I'm on technology solutions. 3 million. Do I have a motion to approve a contract increase for $3 million for laptops? So moved. Do I have a second? I'll second it. Any discussion? So how just to help explain and for people that are paying attention, we have two different laptop requests. So can we get a little bit more information about about this request? Madame President, uh, Member Walden, um, both those increases, as indicated in the memos, are due

168to the threat of tariffs and the fact that we've been contacted by these companies and indicated that the price is going up. We know that those tariffs have been paused and maybe that pricing won't happen, but we do have the funding available to us and we need to move forward so that we can guarantee pricing at this time. That also addresses why the 295 went to 300 because these weren't planned expenses at this time. But because we have the funds available and because the prices from both these companies been indicated that they will increase soon and some have already, we thought it would be prudent to spend the taxpayers money wisely and take advantage of the pricing we have available today. And Mr. Thompson, the second the one we're voting on now is for onetoone

169devices for students. Correct. That's correct. The laptops that they'll use uh to do their work. And it is also, I'm assuming, a use of uh finish finishing up the amount of the bond that we have left from 2018. Yes, member Benson is that that is absolutely correct. This is the last piece of the funding left from the 2018. Uh we have spent the transportation, we have spent the construction and this is the last piece that is left is the technology which mostly supports the one to one. Yes. Thank you Mr. Thompson. Just clarifying too this is like you said bond money and the prior agenda item was CTE funding. Correct. Correct. But they were what I want to indicate is these are separate funds from like our capital budget or M budget. These are specific

170funds set aside for these specific types of expenditures. Again, can't be used for like salaries or anything like that. And we have the dollars available today. So, we thought it prudent to move forward. Uh our our CIO uh David Sanders was looking at the pricing increases and we talked about it and thought we could save a lot of money if we act now basically. Yeah. No, that makes sense. there was a you know that tariffs or no tariffs that laptops are supposed to be exempt doesn't matter because prices are going up like we're seeing that across all industries that there's things that other factors that are driving up prices inflation is still one of them so I part makes sense to me and then I just wanted to clarify the the Apple computer products it

171looks like those are more for the Adobe cloud software there's specific software that works best on the Apple ones and then these are I I think member Benson, you said the one to one student laptops, correct? Absolutely. They just happen to be in the same kind of category of industry uh or and purchases that we we're seeing a lot of price fluctuation, I guess, for lack of a better term right now. Volatility and volatility. And so, um we don't know. Maybe the prices won't increase, but we have a locked in price right now we want to take advantage of. Yeah. No, that makes sense. They don't increase mean inflation is going to make the value of the dollar worth less. So, it's going to be more expensive down the road no matter what. Thank you.

172Any other discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? With a vote of five yays, you've approved a contract increase for $3 million for laptops. Now, we'll get to social studies. Sorry, I don't know where I lost that in my papers. Um, do I have a motion to approve a contract renewal for $500,000 for social studies, supplemental software, and resources? So moved. Do I have a second? Seconded. Any discussion? Yeah. Um, I would like to see our supplemental resources for sub for uh social studies expanded. Um, as one of our public commenters, Mr. Steel indicated, several of these are um some of or several of these have more of a um liberal or left-leaning bent. We need to make sure that we are providing both viewpoints when in anything and everything that

173we do. So, for example, Prageru videos are and their materials are state approved. So, I would love to see them on our list. I don't know if they cost anything, but they are a supplemental. I love their videos. So, um expanding the use um and access to our teachers, I think, is important so that uh multiple viewpoints are guaranteed. Thank you. Any other discussion, Mrs. Waldman? Uh yeah. So I I have some questions too and um well to answer uh board member Benson's comments, the videos are free. The those supplemental resources that were approved by the Arizona Department of Education, the Prageru videos are are at no cost. So yeah, so we can add that. Um I just wanted to comment too. So there's seven different vendors for social studies and I see that it

174it ranges from grade six to grade 12. And could you explain with the state standards for teaching social studies? Is that what's leading to having seven different vendors for this? Yes, madame president, member Walden. Um, back in September of 2022, we initiated an adoption process for the social studies standards for grades 6 through 12. And throughout that process, as described in the study session, um there were evaluators, there was a steering committee, um and the final recommendation at that point in um January of 2023 after they had gone through the entire process, there were several evaluators that did not complete their evaluations. Um and the evaluators that did weren't didn't like the the products that were submitted. they just felt that they weren't reasonably aligned to the standards or could provide um the resources to

175implement that the curriculum for those standards. And so at that point they um deviated from adopting a resource or one or two resources and they went through the request for proposal for supplemental resources. And so then at that time um there were again a group of stakeholders to brought together to evaluate based on that criteria for evidence-based resources aligned to our social studies standards and world history. And these seven vendors were selected um for the various um standards by grade level. And so our content specialists go out to school sites and and work with teachers on how to implement various tools aligned to those standards and those those units and um content. Um this is year this request is asking for year three of a renewal of a 5-year contract. So this was all part

176of that process that was initiated back in um I believe it was April or May of of 23 that we purchased those resources. And just to confirm, so the the resources are only being used to teach the state standards for social studies. I understand there's not any vendor that just makes something for Arizona and we have unique state standards. So we have to piece it together from sometimes multiple sources. So I just want to confirm that that's what's happening here with these supplemental. That's correct. Yes, that's correct. So for example, in sixth grade, as we talked about earlier, ancient civilizations is that period of time. And so they might use the DBQ resources which are inquiry based questions that curates um articles and um images and graphs and primary source material to study that topic

177or study you know the units in in sixth grade. So the again the content specialists work with all the coaches and the teachers um on how the various tools and resources could be utilized for each appropriate grade level state standard. And and I think those competencies that were the new competencies that were approved last year will kind of help are sort of those guard rails on keeping them on on track to teaching the state standards. Correct. Absolutely. Yep. Okay. Thank you. I'd also like to um this is one area that I've got some expertise in. Um um one of the things well I think we also have to remember that social studies is government econ world history US history. So um it's going we're going to have a lot of of of uh resources that

178will uh be needed to cover this um these these standards. Um and um and as we're talking about coursework, um the DBQ is essential in AP history classes and um primary sources are essential to doing the document-based questions. So um it it would align with um the college level courses that we are we are teaching and and um the whole aspect of inquiry which is um essential in history education. Um particularly when it comes to student projects but also we have a number of um extracurricular activities that our history students do and government students do like we the people. We are we are state champions. We are national champions and we the people and these are the types of resources that the kids need in order to do the preparation of their essays and their

179their presentations. um, National History Day. Um, if you're if you're um, a student, and I worked with a lot of Westwood students, as a matter of fact, um, these databases were essential in making sure that they had the resources on campus, that they didn't necessarily have to go off campus to ASU to get the resources that they needed. Um uh I I really um can't emphasize enough how important these resources are, particularly because of current events. If if we're trying to get history to be relevant to students, um them being able to take past events and and see how they impacted the the the thinking of today or the events of today. Um you you can't just get it from a textbook. So um these are really essential tools to um really provide high quality

180history, government and economics education. Thank you. Any other discussion? I think the concern is making sure that all viewpoints are covered and that's and that would that's what history is about multiple perspectives as well as the social studies. So, um I can um you know, when you do a DBQ, you're looking at multiple perspectives and coming up with um an essay which which explains those perspectives. That's what history education is. It's multiple perspectives. Um another resource that I think is great is ground news that's current. You could look into that, too. I only get the free thing because I'm cheap. I have no idea how much it costs. Any other discussion? Thank you, Miss Kirby. Will you please take our vote? With a vote of five yays, you've approved a contract renewal for $500,000 for

181social studies, supplemental software, and resources. Moving on to um do I have a motion to approve the authorization of payment of warrants for services, materials, and payroll for periods ending April 11th, 2025 through April 18th, 2025, fiscal year 2024 through 25? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? Yes, Madame President. This was um originally a consent agenda item and I had it pulled primarily because when I look at our executive content that it tells us who we're paying, it doesn't tell us why we're paying. So, I I would like to be able to um I I I know the first the one of the first meetings I I asked for some clarification on a payment, but I would like to see a line item added as to why the payment is being

182made. Uh that way I am confident that what I'm voting on is actually a good use of of uh taxpayer money and it shouldn't be difficult. It's think treasury department that uh that was their ask as well. They wanted a line a line item description. I'm pretty sure before you pay it, they have to tell you why you're why they want to why it needs to be paid. Correct. Like some are self-explanatory. SRP, I know that's for elector, but there's a lot of others that are not. So, I would just like to see that so that I am making good solid decisions. That's why I pulled it. Thank you. Mr. Felson, did you have anything to add on that? Um, we understand the request and are researching what options um we can provide you. Thank

183you. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Any other discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, would we please take our vote? [Applause] With a vote of 5 days, you've approved the authorization of payment for warrant of warrants for services, materials, and payroll for periods ending April 11th, 2025 through April 18th, 2025, fiscal year 2024 2025. All right. Next up, do I have a motion to approve naming the disc golf course at Poston Junior High, the Purscell North Course, and the Purscell South Course? So moved. Do I have a second? I'll second it. Any discussion? Uh, are we going to go play disc golf with the Davis family? It's pretty cool. I, as a Poston Panther myself, I'm pretty excited about this. I think this is a great opportunity to um to honor educators in our community. Agreed.

184It was a I was we were there for the unveiling and it was a great great event out there at Poston. Any other discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, please take our vote. her cells to a future meeting if they were unable to be here tonight. You bet. They Yes, they were not able to be here. So, we will make sure we can have them here another night. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. With a vote of five yays, you have approved naming the disc golf course at Poston and Junior High, the the PCEL North course, and the PCEL South course. Do I have a motion to approve a mill price increase for the 2025 20226 school year of 15 cents for staff and student breakfast and 25 cents for staff and student lunch? So moved. Do

185I have a second? I'll second. Any discussion? We were just talking about prices going up. This is case in point. Um I don't have I don't have any questions. We uh received information on this and and status uh you know explaining the need for the cost increase the do we know if the company that um processes lunch payments is that fee going to be going up for families as well? Many of them use that I know and like I personally if I had to find change I would have preferred a quarter increase across the board because that's easier than 15 cents. Um, I I can look into that, but I couldn't address that tonight. Thank you. Any other discussion? Just probably add for people who may be watching that the USDA sets the uh income

186limits for free and reduced lunch and not the district or the board. Thank you. All right, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? With a vote of 5 years, you've approved a mill price increase for the 2025 2026 school year of 15 cents for staff and student breakfast and 25 cents for staff and student lunch. Do I have a motion to delegate authority to the superintendent to sign the request for certification and assurances issued by the Arizona Department of Education pertaining to compliance with requirements of title six of the Civil Rights Act, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and the protection of pupil rights amendment in order to preserve eligibility for federal gr grant funding. So moved. Do I have a second? Seconded. Any discussion? Could we get a little bit more information

187from superintendency about the requirement or the request that is coming uh for this attestation? Tag on it. Okay. President Davis and board members. Um, we received information from the Arizona Department of Education in early April that we needed to submit this to the AD uh by April 24th uh to secure our uh federal funds. So you're when this is signed, what specifically are is the district attesting to? So attached you will see the uh title six certification letter that on behalf of in our school district I acknowledge that I've received and uh reviewed the reminder of legal obligation undertaken in exchange for receiving federal financial assistance and request for certification under title six and SFFA versus Harvard. I further acknowledge that compliance with the below and the asurances referred to as well as a certification

188constitute a material condition for the continued receipt of federal financial assistance and therefore certify our compliance with uh the the below legal obligations and you will see all of those that are outlined. Title six of the uh Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that no person in the United States shall on the ground of race, color, or national origin be excluded from participating in, be denied the benefits of, or be uh subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. And then additional um details follow up. So, what I guess what I'm asking is um what measures have you taken to make sure that the district is actually in compliance and is this a result of the um I believe it's the I believe this is the result of an executive order

189by this administration correct to eliminate DEI. Yes, this is connected to the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so this is our compliant. This is our signature that we are complying. Um and we need to be able to do that in order to receive our federal funds. So your question about what do we do in Mesa public schools? We have the expect we have the expectation, sorry my mic was off. We uh have the expectation that our teachers are teaching the Arizona academic standards and using the materials as we've talked about this evening. Dr. Eless all of the things that she outlined um during the study session. And we also have um policies for uh those who are not following uh those expectations and rules and all of our employees sign a statement of

190assurance uh throughout the year or during every year that they understand what our policies are. So we have an HR process if uh our teachers are not teaching the Arizona standards and choosing to teach something different that is it that would be a violation of this particular um document. So as part of our portrait of graduate we have an ensure equity goal. So is this not in violation of DEI? Ensuring equity means more opportunities for more students more of the time a document that from before. So, I want to I want to clarify whether or not this has been uh changed. It's not currently on the website that I could find, but I did uh pull it from when the insure equity goal for was first uh first developed. So, one of it says one

191of the um one of the bullet points says rates of student disciplinary referrals and consequences reflect the demographics of the school. That would be um that would be disciplinary uh actions being based on on the race of a child. So if it's 55% uh white, 45% Hispanic, then 45% of discipline would be it better be from Hispanic kids. That's the way I read that initially. So when it when we have terms that it needs to represent the demographics that is an equity issue in and of it or it's a uh it's a perceived to be a violation of uh title six and civil rights because we're actually basing decisions on how somebody looks rather than the actions that they take. Another that we that was listed is um district district employees reflect the demographics of

192our students and the community. So if those are still alive and well and what what's interesting is on the website is we don't actually have a an indicator for the equity goal any longer. We have achieve we have a night uh I didn't see it for insure equity. Uh and if you look at our rubric for ensuring equity under uh equitable systems, there's a lot of uh questionable language as to whether or not we are looking at providing equal opportunity. That's really what we should be doing, not equity. Um because we actually use the term uh disperate outcomes that frequently is based on groups of people and trying to make sure that each group of people has the same outcome. So that's one of the reasons that the this administration issued that that executive order

193to ensure that we are looking at each one of our students and each one of our staff members as individual unique people. So what are we doing to make sure that that's actually happening when I have paperwork that says we have we're looking at disparate outcomes and equal representation. You will know that notice that our KPI work um aligned to the goal that you're mentioning and all of our goals uh sunseted when our governing board adopted goals focusing on increasing proficiency and growth in English language arts as well as proficiency college and career readiness index points and service learning. So we have been focusing on those and we've not put any al we've not aligned any metrics to any of those and that's why that is off the website. It's not something that we're focusing

194on. But I do want you to know that we all also are following the federal uh government's respons our responsibilities to the federal government for school improvement that make sure that we do look at subgroups of our students and we categorize those in ATSI and um CSI and it is focused on um Native American black white special education students. So that is something that we also have to to pay very close attention to to making sure that the gaps are not widening between groups of children that we are focusing our time and attention and federal dollars to close achievement gaps. What was the second one? So before you led into like the categories to close achievement gaps that there's a federal you' mentioned ATSI. So there's the category of ATSI and CSI. Could you and

195remind me of the letters Tracy? Uh CSI is continuous school improvement and ATSI. ATSI is additional targeted support and CSI is comprehensive support and improvement. And those are categories that um the Arizona Department of Education provides us with schools that are in those categories based on their outcomes for specific subgroups. Yeah. because I mean we' already mentioned earlier those like different those kind of different categories are on the ade website. So you're saying that you do have to categorize students by race or ethnicity based on state requirements. We receive uh data back from the Arizona Department of Education on how a subpopuls or subgroups of students are performing. And so if we have a if our students are not performing where they should be, the AD gives us a category and labels a school. If

196they are in um comprehensive school improvement, CSI or ATSI, again, Tracy, A is the additional targeted support. That's right. And then there's additional targeted support. And so we have to write school improvement plans related to that specific data. So I want to be very clear that we are required to do that by the Arizona Department of Education. Okay. Thank you. Mhm. Those ATS SI and CSI, those are labels of a school population. Correct. Oftent times high poverty. So there are different a variety of subgroups that we're measured on to ensure that those subgroups are performing at the same levels um as all sub as all population of of students in a school. So ATSI um is the lowest performing 5% of title one schools. And then the CSI are schools that don't meet that criteria

197over several years. Well, in our title one schools primarily the issue is poverty, not uh race or ethnicity. Um most I know I know they want I I know that the the AD uh wants sub demographic data uh probably to make sure that we're attempting to comply with Title Six and making sure opportunities are available to all people. And that's my concern is that we're making sure um I mean when I see documentation that equity is a word it's it's different than equal opportunity which is what we should be providing to every single student in Mesa. Whether they take the opportunity is up to them. Equity is a total it's it's got a totally different uh meaning in this current uh culture. So, that's what I'm concerned about is making sure that when we attest

198to this, we're actually attesting to um we are not looking to make um uh we're not looking we're we're looking to make sure that we're providing equal opportunity that we're not looking to have equity in the the current meaning of it and the intent of the federal order, the executive order. I I think if we take a look at our website um and we you you look at the strategic goal I'm reading right from the website right from the Mesa Public Schools website to ensure equity. We provide equitable access to opportunities, resources, and support so all learners can engage in and contribute to meaningful learning. That is our definition of equity. Well, I have the rubric. Are we no longer using that? Because it's still available on the website. I'm reading right from the website.

199The rubric is on the website as well, Mrs. Hutchinson. Stakeholders within I I'm I'm not talking about a cultural definition of equity. The district on the website has defined equity and and it is access to opportunities, equal equitable access to opportunities. Okay. As long and it is to ensure our promise. Well, and as long as we are doing that and we aren't looking at uh that the rates of student discipline, referrals and consequences reflect the demographics and the same with our hiring that we can we can with 100% certainty say we're not hiring a person based on how they look. We're not sending a student to the principal's office or for discipline based on the way they look but rather on their actions or in in the case of discipline and rather on their merit

200and their achievement and their ability when it comes to hiring. That's what I want to make sure that we have uh done our due diligence before we sign the addestation that yes in fact that is what we are doing. uh and that the document currently that I have that says we're can you assure me that this is not our practice that district employees reflect the demographics of our students and community. We are not currently focusing on that rubric or collecting data to those data points. We've set those aside to focus on the board's goals. Madame President, I feel like the superintendency has answered our questions at this point. I'd like to call for the vote. Okay, we'll move forward. Uh Miss Kirby, please take our vote. about a three. one nay and one abstain. Um

201we have approved the delegating authority to the superintendent to sign the request for certification and assurances issued by the Arizona Department of Education pertaining to compliance with requirements of title six of the Civil Rights Act, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, and the Protection of People Rights Amendment in order to preserve eligibility for federal grant funding. Permission to explain my vote? Yes. So, um, I thought about abstaining from a vote because we didn't get to I didn't get to finish asking all my questions, but ultimately I did vote no because of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the testimony that we have heard here that students privacy has not been protected. Thank you. Thank you. We are now moving into our discussion items. This presentation is towards governing board goal of increasing

202graduation rates and Dr. Glass me, it's all you. Oh, clicker. Right here. My hands are freezing. Good evening, President Davis, Superintendent Forless, members of the board, me members of superintendency. This is our quarter three. Can you believe we're almost like the year is almost gone. Um, so we're at quarter three of grades. And again, this is focusing just on quarter 3, 9th and 10th graders. So, looking at our we're going to start with 9th graders and then we're going to continue into 10th graders. I went ahead and also looked a little bit at quarter 1, semester 1, quarter 3 because we take them all individually from one another. Um, there are similar patterns and trends across many of them just to make you aware. So, um, that's you're not being presented with over time in

203these presentations, but I know you have access to those, but to take that burden off of you, they are similar patterns and trends that we are seeing over time over these past three years. So, overall with our quarter 3 freshman English for 9th graders, again, these are 9th graders. This is their freshman English class. Um, this is the first time they're taking it. There's no credit recovery going on here. So, we have an increase in A's and we have a decrease in Fs. We have a slight decrease in D's over the past three years as well. Remember, when we have that one percentage point, we're looking for trends a little bit bigger than that because they're going to be natural flux fluctuations. And then there's also rounding. We also have algebra 1. Remember, algebra 1

204is really important for us because it's really that gateway math piece because we discussed earlier four years of math for graduation. So, algebra 1 is very, very important for those 9th graders. We see pretty consistent in our A, little bit of a decrease in our B's. You do see that decrease in the Fs. Overall, these are a little bit higher um than our semester 1 disproportionately sort of in the F area. So there's there's more there's a higher percentage of students in that F category for quarter 3 than there was for semester 2. So please keep in mind though we're at one of the progress monitoring pieces for the semester grade. We're not at the semester grade yet. So the teachers can still take action and work with those students. So, it's not a bad

205thing that we're seeing a higher percentage when we compare them to the semester 1 as long as we get them across the finish line and we make sure that we're doing those implementations and interventions during the course of the semester. So, it's not any big red flag and there is a decline over those past three years. Looking at our grades for biology, we have that big decrease in our Fs. We do have an increase in our A's. We've stayed pretty consistent across the three different measurements here for the past year. Looking at world history, we also have a decrease in our D's and our Fs, which is the direction we're looking to head. We also have an increase in our A's for world history. Um, and remember, world history is one of those subject areas

206that there's a there's a lot of external pieces that can come in and really ignite some of the kids, too. Looking into our 10th graders, we start over again in our sophomore English. We have a decline, a very slight decline in the 10th graders for the the F. We have a slight decline, you'll notice, in the A category as well. So, we're seeing some slight fluctuations, not anything that is too large to be of worry. There are natural fluctuations in these grade distributions over time anyway. Looking at our geometry, big one to highlight here is that big decrease in our um Fs, which is really good because geometry is more of that spatial piece that comes in. So students working in your algebra, it's a very different skill set when you get into geometry. So

207moving them in that direction is usually a very very good sign. Looking at our physical science for our students, we have a decrease in our Fs. Distribution was similar. Um, between last year and this year for quarter 3, we have a very big increase or decent increase in our A's, which is also very promising. Um, some of those fluctuations can be a single program at a school. Um, so just please be aware that while these populations shift, you know, you can the excitement of a teacher can have an amazing impact on students grades, especially for teenagers, having had them for my self as a teacher. Um, social studies, we see it's sort of consistent across that A category. you'll notice an increase in our C's, which we didn't see in any of other our other

208subject areas like that, and a decrease in our Fs um over time. And so we're seeing again across quarter 1, semester 1, and here they're they're remaining pretty consistent as far as except for the one discrepancy that I mentioned. Any questions? I know you guys have been become pros at watching these. And remember, they're progress monitoring pieces. They are not where we end up for credit or aggregate credits. Um they are merely a touch point and they are one part of a much broader picture. So please keep that in mind as well. Thank you Dr. Gossmire. Any questions? Yeah, I do. Um it's one of the reasons why we we ask for data is not just to to take a look at the scores. we we want to know what's working and what's not. So,

209what I'm hoping is that at the beginning of next year when we actually do have the semester grades and we can take a look at at at trends um not as they're moving or or as they're fluid, but as they're as they are now, did we get them over the finish line? Okay. That we know more than just was it was it a teacher's personality? What what was it? What type of programming? What resources? We have talked about resources, curriculum tonight from the beginning to the end. We need to get information from teachers. What is working, what is not working, and what's working, let's keep accentuating it. What's not working, let's revise. Um I think we're seeing that with the with the program that we um um uh approved with revision of algebra 2 the

210fourth year math but we need to know why behind this data and I'm hoping that by the beginning of next year maybe even our first meeting at when we establish again our goals that we understand what's going on in the classroom that's making these improvements so that we can stay the course and or alter the course. I want to point out, thank you so much for bringing that up. Uh Dr. Yeis, if our team and your team can get together to go ahead and make sure we pull a comprehensive picture together moving forward for following up with that. Um, but I also want to point out that when we look back three years, one of the reasons why we're not looking back 5 years is because we're not too far away from CO and and

211them coming into high school. So, our first year on this is 2223 and that would be they were in junior high when COVID hit. Um, and so that's not to say that there's not possibly some additional reasons. Um but we also have been able to breathe a little bit I think in the past 3 years since we've been out of CO um and had a little bit more consistency. So, while there are going to be definitely probably some insights across our district of what's going on, we also have to be mindful of the impact a pandemic can have and remote instruction can have on families and where they live and their students as well or their children, our students. Be clear. Go ahead, MVY. Yeah, I really appreciate this focus that we have on information,

212on data so that we can make informed decisions. Like board member Hutchinson said, we want to figure out what's working, what's not working. We want to make those decisions. I think that we really can make an impact as a board and working together with superintendency to move these students forward and really to make progress on our board goals. Um, I really appreciate that you mentioned like this isn't credits earned and that information is still coming. There's a lot of information we don't have and I'm looking forward to having that information on credits earned and our standardized test scores, how our students did on the ACTs. And I'd also like to to look at maybe some of our students success um when they move on to like ASU. I know that Helios has that information. So

213just, you know, as we continue to move forward, not tomorrow, but I just really appreciate this focus on data because I think we need the information to be able to make smart decisions on our curriculum and our instruction. I do know having been at the Decision Theater, our welding students do exceptionally well in continued programming that they do. So, did you say the welding students? Mhm. Yes. Yes. So, the four categories primarily we're looking those are core classes that they have to have in order to graduate. Correct. That's in alignment with the course catalog that is approved. Yes. Um and the English uh we want to see an increase uh an average increase across the district of 2%. So it's 9th graders that take the what's it called? The ACT Aspire and then 11th graders

214that take the ACT. Correct. So will you be bringing us data on ACT and Aspire? That is that is part of the governing board goals. Yes. Okay. And I'm I'm hoping that there will be a correlation between the A's and B's uh and the numbers of students that are um actually proficient or highly proficient on those two measures. Um I'm not personally a huge huge fan of standardized testing. I do understand the need for it. We do have to have some way of measuring whether or not our students have learned what we want them to learn. Uh I think there are other ways that we can also I mean it's a glimpse in time. However, we should if we have if we have for example third grade or in algebra 1 um 38% of our

215kids our students at um A or B. I'm hoping that correlates into at least that percentage on the uh when they take either the Aspire or the ACT that that correlates and that we're not seeing great inflation of any kind uh in order to get a graduation rate. Not that we are, but Dr. President Davis, members of the board, uh being at the research and evaluation game for probably 15 years between multiple school districts, one of the things that you constantly analyze in this type of data is type one and type two errors. a type one error being the kids that the teacher seems from for for whatever reason exhibits enough information in the classroom to get an A or a B, but then the merit-based exam that follows suggests that they're not at the

216level of mastery that the teacher thinks they are. And those types of errors occur, right? There's the kids that get the A and B and they're not able to demonstrate for whatever reason. uh you know stress due to testing. Um uh you know not not not necessarily having the reciprocal and spiraled knowledge uh that you need to be able to be show your competencies of what you've learned all year long on that moment in time which the test occurred. That's another thing that occurs. Spiraling doesn't occur enough and then you you hit by a concept you learned in August and it's all of a sudden April. And so that's why spiraling in education is so important and interle practice. So that's type one error. The other type of error, which is significantly uh problematic, is

217the kid that because grades tend to be more behaviorally based than they are merit-based, the kid that gets the D or the F in a subject and then comes out and swings a five on an AP exam. And that happens as well. And so these errors occur in both directions. And these cross tabs to check oursel and check our systems are extremely important. And the reason they're extremely important is because the fact of the matter is we all know in the high school experience, let's say in an algebra one classroom that when you have five algebra 1 teachers uh in in a school and those five algebra 1 teachers are are not calibrated to the same level of understanding of what an A, B, and C are. You can have an algebra one teacher that

218grades a kid at an A and is deemed by an exam to be developing. And then you can have an algebra one teacher that grades a kid at a C and is deemed by an exam to be excelling. And so those are all unique practices of every educational system I've ever been in and always problems to look at and solve is how do you calibrate grades? How do you ensure that grades are related to knowledge? That's why the standards based grading movement happen and not related to behaviors. And so examining this type of data across ACT, Aspire and ACT are extremely important to understand that you know where do the type one and type error occur uh type two errors occur. And and the fact of the matter is I I will be hardressed to

219ever promise this school district that we'll get rid of type one and type two errors. But what you do is you dig into the data. You understand the context and you try to get better at the issues like calibrating like at the issues like understanding what standards the kids are competent in through the behaviors that through the through the uh methods in which they demonstrate their learning in a classroom and you just try to get better on an annual basis so that that competent and proficient kids move through and out of the system. That is one facet of the standardsbased grading that is important that we maintain. right? Is is the grade reflecting what the student has learned so that we can carry it over to to an area that that we have a goal

220for which is to ensure that they understand the English language and they have numeracy skills that will make them successful citizens. Right? So that's the one component of standard based grading that I think needs to be maintained is that the grade reflects what they're supposed to learn, not if they brought in two Kleenex boxes for the teacher. Any other questions? Thank you, Dr. Glassmire. Appreciate that. We're at adjournment. Do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Do I have a second? I'll second it even though it's not 11:30 yet. Any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? today. Benj with a vote of five yays. We have adjourned the meeting.