Governing Board Study Session, and Regular Meeting - April 8, 2025

001Yes. Yes. Yes. That's why I wore a long j. Okay. Not there. Thanks everybody. We would like to welcome everyone tonight to our study session. We are so excited to have all of you here with us. Um I call this study session to order at 5:01. Um and we are going to go ahead and turn it over to Miss Lenov and her students. Um good evening and thank you very much. We are so excited to be here tonight. Um this is our junior high presentation of the Activate event that we held on February 14th. Um and it's kind of a summation of all the things that we were able to put together for that event. Um so we were able to bring our students together and um once again kind of follow along what we

002did with our high school students in that um engagement piece where they are discovering, studying, analyzing, presenting those solutions based on um that topic of cell phones. We formatted the junior high activate a little bit different because we do have so many of our seven eight campuses. So we were able to bring together a much larger representation um of all of our campuses that have seventh and eighth graders um plus our genius bar. So, we had quite a diverse group of um community members and students that were with us on February 14th and it was quite an exciting Valentine's Day um for our activate event. And within that, we were able to create our groups. And that day started from the beginning with our students showing up. And thank you to our principles who brought

003all of their students to our activate event. And because we had representation from all of our junior highs, we had to spend some time that morning for our students to get to know each other. Um they were in teams of representation from all of the junior highs. So they didn't know anybody in their groups. So we had to build some relational capacity. We had to spend some time defining civil discourse so that they understood what it meant for them to have their voice heard and then those guidelines for civil discourse in the inquiry process. And then we were finally able to dig into the research on cell phones. So once again, they were able to continue with that topic of cell phones like we had with our high school students. And so the morning was

004spent um looking at the research and talking to the Genius Bar and developing their presentation. Um, and they worked really hard all day and before they left that afternoon, um, not only did they finish their presentations, but they had an opportunity to practice their presentations and receive feedback, um, before they present tonight to the board. So, all of that took place between about 9:30 and 3:30. So, it was a very full day for our junior high students, but it was a very, very productive day. Each of our groups were tasked with not only analyzing the research um that we provided them with the MPS cell phone policy but also the data. We gave them very specific guidelines in how to engage in a civil discourse discussion. Um we wanted them to generate a cell phone

005contract. So what did that mean with the expectations and guidelines for cell phones on campus? and then create that presentation that they are going to present to you tonight. All right. So, with that being said, I am going to allow the students to start with their presentations and we are going to start with our first group and that is our fully charged thinkers. Okay. So, you're going to point the clicker back there. Make sure you talk into the microphone. Okay. It's going to be that button. We are the Fully Charged Thinkers. Um, hi, I'm McKenna Stoell from Fremont Junior High. Hi, I'm Bruce Dunn from Poston Junior High. I'm Ava Peterson from Smith Junior High. And then we have Jack Johnson, but he is unfortunately not. Um, the cell phone policy. We believe that schools

006should not allow phones during classroom or passing periods because they would disrupt learning time and people who use their cell phones during passing period are often late to classes. Uh, they should be allowed during lunchtime though as they are it's a nice way for people to relax. The cell phone procedure. Um, this is what would happen with consequences when found with a phone. The first offense would be the phone is taken to the office and they will pick it up at the end of the day. The second offense is the phone is taken up to the office and the parents are required to pick it up. The third offense is the phone is taken to the office and parents and students sign a contract stating that they will not bring their school phone to school.

007If again serious consequence will ensure will in so such as suspension which is most likely because if they're like using their phone a lot then suspension could something Cell phone expectations are etiquette. Teachers should have more hands-on activities to engage kids and not have them use their phones. This will get to the root of the problem and and instead of people wanting to take out their cell phones cuz they're bored in class or whatever, they actually want to learn. It should be more responsible in their work and not be on their phones because uh because it disrupts their learning time. you you've got to teach them the true value of if if and we have created a solution uh for phones in class. Um phones should be in a designated space like a phone cubby

008to indicate attendance uh and show proof that they do not have their cell phone on them. Pros and cons about having cell phones at school. Pros, you can communicate with family if there's like a school event that pops up at school and it's last minute and you need to go or if you need to know how to get to and from school. And also you can have your phone if you have medical conditions like diabetes or etc. Cons. Um, not just having phones at school, but also having phones in our daily lives. It messes up our mental health by leading to depression and anxiety and stress. And it can also be a distraction to um not just the student but to the whole class. is like if some someone's phone is ringing in the middle

009of class or if they get a notification then not just the student itself but the whole class more focus on the cell phone not the lecture that's being taught alternatives. Some alternatives instead of having a phone out is is phone pouches and phone lockers. A phone cubby is so the teacher can see who is absent or not. So if like they don't have their phone in like a locker or a cubby then the teacher will check everyone's and then that will mark them absent. Thank you for your time and thank you for letting us do this. We are so happy that we're getting to be able to make more learning opportunities and stuff to make kids safer at school. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. That was wonderful. Um, do we have another team? Are we

010How are we doing this? Each team. Do you want to do each team with a question or Let's Let's do each team while they're up there and we'll just make sure we're How many teams do you have? So, I know time wise we have six teams. Six teams. Okay. Board, any questions? If I could ask one question, how many of you have um a a campus where cell phones are banned on your campus? You are not allowed to bring a cell phone. Um, at Smith, we're not allowed to have them during passing periods, lunch, and during class, but they still kind of are used, which is like kind of a disab like uh kind of like a learning setback, I guess, cuz it's kind of hard when like their phone out, but it it's Okay.

011Okay. Any other question? May I ask a quick question? Um, under your alternatives, a phone cubby so that the teacher can see who is here or not. Um, I'd love that idea. So, they just glance quickly and see like you're assigned cubby number 18 and they're empty. Then, you know, whoever belongs to 18, they're absent. Is that is that the idea? Yeah. So um with this idea what would you do for the denters the people would that would say no either teacher or student no I don't want my phone in this place where I don't directly have my hands on it. How might you overcome that obstacle? um kind of what Ava said how um like there's like different like steps of like the disabilities like first like lunch detention or like the last step

012would be like like call parents. Any other questions? Okay, thank you guys so much. [Applause] Group two. Uh, hi. I'm Sophia Lee and I'm from Staple Junior High. Um, hello. I'm Eliza Cyros and I'm from Roads Junior High. Good afternoon. I'm Isma Gayo O and my education takes place in Kino Junior High. I'm Jackson Davis and I'm from Taylor Junior High. We also have Emmy Farry and she cannot be here today. Agreements we have to the uh board phone policy. We agree no illegal activity should be performed on technology at school. We agree there should be no plagiarism. We agree that no cyber bullying should take place on personal devices at school and no video or picture uh photography or should be taken uh of staff or peers without permission. Um we do have some

013disagreements. We do not agree that phones um having to be shut off and isolated in the backpack because that's the students personal property. So, they should have um they should be able to have their phone with them. We do not agree that they should be banned at lunch. We think that having them at lunch is a good idea. Um, one of our ideas for the policy is that students should be allowed to contact family members when needed, especially if they are um, sick or if they have something at school that popped up and they don't know about it. Um, we think that phone should be allowed because it will keep the environment calmer. For example, if you have a friend across the cafeteria, it's better to just text them rather than having to yell across

014the room to get their attention. Um, we also think that there should be a warning system that indicates the consequences of an incident of personal electronic devices, some sort of like a system. Um, we also think that a reward system would be good for those who have followed the rules and use their phones appropriately. We also think that students should be allowed to listen to music on their phones if they have headphones or AirPods or something to listen to the music where others can't hear it. This helps some students like me focus. Okay. So, the MPSAZ phone policy states that the phone like the first time it is like after like a certain amount of warning sent to the office um if it's like so many times that it's been to the office, parents are

015contacted and if the phone is confiscated to the point a lot that the parents has to come and pick it up, it can be a problem for the parents. Um, our ideas are two warnings per like classes or like daily. Um, and on the third time it should just be taken away. Um, after the phone is taken within like five times in a week, a lunch tension should be given. And if it's like 10 times or more in a month, we should be you should be given ISS. Um, we don't think OSS should ever have to be involved. And we really hope ISS just has to be the last resort. um temporary privilege of um like fun stuff might be taken away. Like let's say their team earns like extra lunch, they shouldn't be allowed

016because they've been breaking the rules so much or like um field trips, no going on the field trips because they broken the rules so much when they know the rules. Thank you. Cell phone expectations/ etiquette. First of all, personal electronic devices should not be in in use during passing periods or hallways. This would be to prevent like a distraction and then a conflict when when two um students are on their phones and for the during classes. Um wait, never mind. Um, cell phones or other personal electronic devices should not be in use during class viewers. There you go. Unless the staff granted permission to do so. This as as expected to to avoid um the divers the divers no what is the word diversion uh to avoid the focus of students to be diverted. Um

017in three inappropriate content is not permitted. example games, social media or show or movies not age appropriate for and but yeah and fourth of fourth of all if caught under unauor unauthorized use of cell phone or any other personal electronic device um excluding um your headphones um you will have you the as stated before expectation is expected to to face repercussions. All right, we would like to thank you for listening to our ideas. We really hope you guys could utilize our devices or our procedures um when it comes to making the new policy and we hope you really take into mind the students point of view. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you. And you guys are the smartphone squad. So, thank you, Smartphone Squad. Um, board members, any questions for the smartphone squad? I I have

018one. Um, I I like how you emphasized um etiquette and expectations. I'm seeing that as a major theme with the two groups and it seems that there are um there are rules of the road that you are coming up with, which I I really appreciate. um you know what is what is um proper use of a phone and what isn't and and I love that you have come up with what you believe to be those those the the proper use of a cell phone um I'm I'm was I was a little bit um taken back by um the ideas that you had if a if a kid gets caught with a cell phone um there's a lot of warnings two warnings per class third warning the student the phone is taken If a phone is

019taken five times a week, you get lunch attention. And the previous group talked about engagement. How can a teacher engage students if they have to keep track of how many times they've taken a cell phone away during a class or a week? you're you're diverting the attention of the teacher to taking away cell phones rather than engaging students in learning. So could you could you please help me um understand your reasoning behind that? So at my school you have an assigned seat and your teacher knows where you sit and I kind of we kind of took this idea from like an elementary school based thing. Um, back in elementary school, teachers always had a whiteboard marker because they was always writing on the whiteboard. And if they saw like you misbehaving, they'd walk up and

020simply just put a tally because they'd always have a whiteboard marker. And then they would keep track with the tallies. At the end of the day, that's how they would know. And so the tally method on a wipe or on like the desk cuz most of the desks at our school are whiteboard like you can wipe it off with like a wipe or a tissue. And that's like it's simple. And the teachers, all my teachers carry whiteboard markers in their pockets, I swear. Um, so they they typically have it and they just walk by and they'll be like boom and then just walk away. Great. That's really practical. Thank you. Thank you for explaining that. Any other questions? So, I had a question for clarity just uh bouncing off of um uh Mrs. Hutchinson. So,

021is this two mornings per class per day? Okay. So, a student could have their cell phone out and all you guys go to You have six periods, right? So you'd have their CLA they could have their phone out in all six of their classes get two warnings in each and still have is that how that would work? Is it per class? Because otherwise I agree like Mrs. Hutchinson said who who's who's monitoring that. Wait, I think it meant per day and I know at my school personally they have like spreadsheets that they write into. Any other questions? Okay, thank you guys so much. [Applause] Hi, my name is Na and I'm from Kino Junior High. My name is Sylvia and I I'm from Taylor Junior High. Um, my name is Lincoln and I'm from Stapley

022Junior High. Policies. The Mesa district's policy, like to our understanding, is that personal information sent to others is restricted unless under specific permission from a teacher or administrative worker. Any attempt at cheating can lead to consequences. Uh this policy has a positive effect by ensuring classrooms and schools are distraction-f free as well as ensuring that private information is kept safe. So, uh procedures teachers at our schools take our phones if we have repeated use. Teachers state that all cell phones should be silenced and out of sight from students. Sometimes it can feel restricting and harsh, but these can be effective actions that when taken can create practical learning spaces. Uh so the etiquette and expectations are that phones are to be put away in backpacks and out of student reach like against the classroom wall

023or in designated areas like cubbies. We propose that if students were allowed uh to use their cell phones during certain time periods, it is likely for them not to feel restricted or restless and have the need to use their phone so often. If phones are being used, then notifications must be silenced and volume must be limited to uh avoid distracting others. Uh during times like lunch or passing periods, phones should be allowed, but if useth becomes a problem, staff can restrict it. So some of the positive having cellular devices in classrooms can include they can provide quick and easy ways just to contact parents or guardians and like situations that might become an emergency either for the student or just the class like something were to happen at the school in general that a parent

024would need to be informed about it. Certain features like apps for collaborative collaborative work quizzes or educational purpose can help strengthen education. Students with disabilities can use tools like text to speech, magnification, or other programs to help meet their accommodations and learning needs. So, in our conclusion, to conclude, Mesa Public Schools currently has some strict policies regarding cell phones and most teachers have strict procedures and expectations for their classrooms when it comes to the devices. We believe that despite the problems that cell phones can bring in a learning environment, with proper monitoring and discipline, cell phone policies and procedures can become more flexible in a way that keeps teachers and students happy. [Applause] Do you have any questions for us? Thank you. Camera captains, board members, any questions? I I do have one question. And

025so when you talked about using your phone for apps, collaborative work, um could you use your laptops instead of your phone? [Music] Well, technically you could use your laptops instead of your phones, but we're saying that phones could be used like in places outside of school to make it more easily accessible for children to uh use those apps in a fast way to connect with their peers. Okay. Uh also I just want to add one thing. uh certain I know on computers sometimes certain websites can be blocked or maybe the computers the internet isn't working or certain you know things can happen where it's just might be a little more convenient to use cell phones. Okay. Thank you. I'd like to make a comment. I'd love on your positives that you highlighted that students with

026disabilities can use tools a variety of different tools that may be on your phone that perhaps are not on uh your laptop. But uh so I love that. I I thought that was really awesome. Can you can you give us an idea of what a flexible policy might just briefly what a flexible policy might look like that um would uh satisfy teachers as well as students because there's a dis there are disperate uh goals that each one of them have I would assume. Yeah. Yeah. So, we were just kind of thinking um students that need to use their phones like emergency contact or disabilities or something, they can ask their teacher and the teacher can provide that. But, um and also certain breaks during like lunch, students can use it if they're not using them

027in like a hazardous way or anything. So, just like that little use and making sure the workers know that they're using it, I think that would provide a good healthy way for cell phone use. Another thing too is that like if they really are visually or like hearing impaired that teachers should have that like somewhere in their files like on their student view their synergy. So just to have that to be able to use like the like I said text to speech or something and like if they need to have that like text to speech where it needs to read to them. I know some teachers would prefer them having like the wired headphones. Any other questions? Great. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. [Applause] Hi, I'm White Borath and I am from Red

028Mountain Ranch Elementary. Um, Amary um couldn't be with us today, but I am Trinity Anderson from Franklin Junior High. I'm Zoe Wilson and I'm from Shepard Junior High. And I am Addison Wells and I am from Mesa Academy. Um, for your cell phone policy, we agree to the policy like to an extent. Um, we kind of draw the line at where your policy with phones at lunch. Um, but we agree because it is a reasonable reasonable standard for high school students and um, high school students should be taught respect and like the way to responsibly care for a device because they will have a device on them for the rest of their lives. We would put three expectations on the students is one that they would know when and where to use their cell phones

029and two would be to tell an adult if a student misbehaves on their cell phones and three would be that they're responsible for their phone such as if they get broken or misplaced. We would have a warning system for the procedure which would be a three warning system. First would be just be a regular warning. A second would be that the phone would be taken for the rest of the class. And a third warning would lead to the phone being taken away by the teacher for the rest of the day and the parents would be notified about this. As stated previously, we said in our cell phone policies that cell phones should be allowed to be used during lunch. We only have two exceptions to this rule. Exception one, students must not take photos or

030videos of other staff and students without their consent. And exception two, they must only be on school appropriate apps and websites. That's that's all folks. Cell phones aren't the problem, it's the users. Thank you for your time. [Applause] Thank you so much. Um, any questions? I I have one real quick. Who would notify parents, the teacher or administrators? Um I think it would be more of the administrators since the office would have been notified during the second warning. So I believe that it would be the principal's job to um notify the parents, send a note home or anything like that. At least that's how it's done at my school. So Okay. Thank you. Any questions? I'll ask one. Um, I loved your your explanation that we need to be responsible, respectful users of cell phones.

031Do you think that that responsibility to teach kids how to use cell phones lies on parents or on teachers? Um, we do believe that it does rely on parents, but lots of the time parents don't. And so it's it's it's the it's like the like the extra mile kind of like like just ensuring that that is taught cuz there there are like other things that schools do like that. And I feel like it would be beneficial if we just taught people that this is the correct way to use a cell phone. And then if we teach that and the teachers teach that as well and they're also hearing it from home, it'll like really drill it into their brains, I guess, that um this is like not okay to do on a cell phone and

032we'll have a lot more like trust and respect between teachers and students with regarding cell phones. And I just like to add that I'm not sure if this is the case at many schools, but at least at my school and the schools that I have been to, we do take a sometimes we do take a period off to learn about mindfulness or just being kind to each other. And we could also include learning about cell phone policies into this just to enforce the rules that we are trying to enforce. and hearing it from multiple outlets might actually make a kid realize that they must be responsible and they do not need to be babysat. Can I make a quick I love the fact that you um acknowledge that the cell phone is not the problem,

033it's the user. Um and to piggy back off of u Mrs. Chaffy, how many of us know the rule but choose and regardless of what it is? Like, I know I shouldn't eat chocolate at my age at 8:30 at night, but I do it anyway. So, how I I love the we hear it multiple times, but so I that's my I love that you indicated it's actually the cell phone user. We can have as many policies as we want, right? we've got to encourage appropriate use and that lies with the person and them choosing to listen to whether it's parent or teacher. So, thank you. I want to applaud you. you're the first group that actually talked about um coming up with um rules of the road, if you will, and but also providing time

034within school to um to make sure that people know what those rules are and and how and how to properly use a cell phone and what what is cell phone etiquette. Um, I really like that. But I also heard you and I think you were the first group to mention this that um, high school students ought to have a a different set of expectations. Um, why do you think that cell phone use at the junior high ought to be more limited than cell phone use at the high school level? Um, I feel like uh it just feels like um like the older you get, like the more experience you have, the more maturity you have. Especially at my school, I remember my elementary school didn't allow us to wear shorts at all. And then when

035I got into the junior high at my school, we're allowed to wear shorts, but they have to be like to the knee because it's more of like you've proven that you will be responsible with this kind of thing. And also like I I wanted I would also like to add that um lots of the time uh I think a group before mentioned it that some teachers can be way more strict on cell phone policies than others. And I feel like like teachers not trusting their students and always thinking like the that the absolute worst is going to happen really makes well it makes me when that happens to me feel kind of dis like like that I like it makes me feel disrespected because it makes me feel like well you're thinking the absolute worst

036of me and I'm pretty sure a teacher wouldn't want people to think the absolute worst of them whenever they did something. So it's more of like you if you want respect from your students you have to like give respect back and trust and trust them I guess and like know that they are responsible. I would like to add that one of my teachers has like lost all of trust in my class to the point where one time students were getting out their notebooks and she started taking kids' phones away because she thought they were getting their phones out. And there's one girl who sits near me and she at one point she just stopped trying to like take her phone away. She uses it every day. She just stopped trying to take it cuz she

037just knows that this one girl won't get off her phone. So she just leaves her alone and lets her gets the grade she deserve. Okay. Thank you, laptop legends. [Applause] Hi, I am Serene Beal and I go to Smit Academy. Hi, I'm Cody and I go to Fremont. Uh, I'm Tason and I go to Poston. Anthony is not here. Um, cell phone policy. We think that the current fall cell phone policy is very good and would do the following. Would protect privacy, prevent cyber bullying, cheating, copying, and establish a safe learning environment. But the kids can be stubborn and um rebellious and they don't listen to the policy. So we think that the procedures could use corrections to make sure that these phones stay away and out of our learning environments. For cell phone procedures,

038we think that to deter and prevent people from using their phones during school is to use uh one of two things. Um there are some things called as a yonder pouch. I'm sure I've heard of it. And it's basically just a pad. the teachers have a pad where you can unlock uh their phone out of the pouch. And also we thought of an idea that you could we could have a programmer software that will show up on the device when entering the area and it would like say a notification um and it like really it would tell the teachers if you're using your phone or not. Um yeah. um expectations and etiquette. At arriving of the school, you would be putting your phone in the yonder pouch and be securing it. And then throughout the

039day, uh it'd be in this bag and they would keep it inside their backpack and not using it. If an emergency happens, such as you need to contact your parents or guardian at lunch or something, you could talk to a teacher and ask for permission to use your phone monitored to make sure that you're not doing anything bad. And teachers would be able to give permission and let them whenever they need it, but they need the teachers permission first. And then we came up with a list of punishments for a number of times caught without permission. So the first time it would be your phone taken away and then picked up uh after school by a kid in the office. And then the second time would be phone taken away, sent to the office and

040then phone call home or note sent home so the parent uh knows what happened. And then the third time is the same as the second but you get a school punishment form. Examples MIR, a BIF or ACL. And then the second time or the fourth time you're caught, it's the same as the second and third, but you get into the school punishment academy like Star Academy, Poston Academy, or the Sidewinder Academy, and that's enforced according to their school rules on their uh academy. Um, thank you for um letting us um present to you um so that way we can correct our procedures and policies to make our school safe and [Applause] reliable. Thank you, Wi-Fi Wizards. Uh board members, any questions? I was going to ask, so what if a student has a medical condition

041like they're use their phone for diabetic uh reasons and so would they still put theirs in a pouch or how would that work? Maybe if people have um certain needs, they could um keep their phone out of a yonder pouch. Um so that way they can monitor things, but just the average kid because the average child can or at least in my school make out of their poor decisions. I know there's uh 504s and I think the teacher is uh alerted that that student has a 504. Okay, great. Thank you. I have a quick question. Who's going to buy the yonder pouches? Um I'm aware that this is would probably be expensive. Um my school has done fundraising um such as like just last week we had 5K. We raised over $15,000 to um upgrade

042our um school equipment. Um, if these if that's what my school can do, then what could um so if this is something that concerns the school, then why couldn't they do a fundraiser or something so that way they can get the funds because like I said, we now have $15,000 to um I think that like achieve or something got cut and so we're paying for achieve and um upgraded sports equipment since most of our tennis rackets are ruined. Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Wi-Fi [Applause] Wizards. Ready? All right. Uh, hello. I'm Ezra Johnson and I'm from Mesa Academy. I'm Alex Bab from Red Mountain Ranch. I'm Lucas Silva from Shepard Junior High. And I'm Tatum Surl from Franklin Junior High. The current cell phone policy that Mesa public schools has in place

043simply put says that all cell phones cannot be used at any time without permission from the teacher and that they must be off and away at all times during the school day. It also says that any recording of any sort is not allowed without consent from the person being recorded. We believe that this policy is a good start in finding a way to control appropriate cell phone usage at Mesa public schools. And we believe in our proposed policy would be that cell phones are allowed during passing periods and when teachers give permission and for further consequences to be instated if the cell phone is used inappropriately. Um students will be given strikes or warnings for misuse and lose their phone for the remainder of the day each time when they get free three strikes. We

044believe that a detention should be given if it persists. Um and three um cell phone caused attentions um reach the student then an INS should be issued. Uh misconduct includes um misconduct using a cell phone includes recording videos or taking pictures without consent of the student and permission of the teacher and cheating/plagiarism. Um we also believe that there should be a cell phones guidelines acknowledgement in the form of a contract with students and par student and parent signature so um the student and parent both understand um the rules. Uh we also believe schools will and teachers will update students on new changes to the policies to eliminate any confusion and misconception. Um phone usage during class for academic re uh reasons only unless otherwise stated by the teacher is import uh is what we believe.

045Um students should be honest regarding their cell phone usage i.e. they um they get caught and don't lie. They are to tell the truth and about what they need their device for. Um we also believe that students shall keep notifications off so their phone is not disrupt disruptive to the class because that that just distracts the class. And then um students should follow all procedures understanding the consequences of their actions. If a student uh if students see us another student mis using their phone, they are expected expected to say something like report it to a teacher or another staff member. Um reasons why we believe cell phone usage should be used this way is because cell phones cause distractions and are the main origin of cyber bullying and social pressures. Acade uh test scoring and

046mental health is impacted poorly by cell phones too. and unnecessary alarm um for parents is caused during drills because of mis information because of cell phones. And um cell phones also take away learning time and children do not need their cell phones more than is needed. And students are not entitled to their phone whenever they need it. And students do not need cell phones during lunchtime because they need to socialize with their fellow peers because they are at school more than they are at home. That is our evidence that we got from all of our previous slides. So you guys can feel free to look back and uh just go over what we had and what we based off all of our info that we got. Then thank you for your time. Please consider how

047the ideas we brought to the table impact our fellow peers and your students. [Music] Thank you, keyboard crew. Any questions, board members? Well, you're the first ones to talk about no cell phones at lunch. And so, could you explain the benefits of not being on your cell phone at lunch? Why did you include that in your presentation? Because it makes you very different from the other groups. Um, I made sure that we included this bec um and we all agreed on it because at my school we can't have cell phones at all at lunch and it is very nice because everyone is very social and talks to others and we don't like bully each other cuz we we don't spread around gossip by cell phone and also as I said before it al we spend

048more time with them than we do at home. So, it's beneficial. That way, we can do better with our schoolwork if we know who we're talking to. Awesome. Thank you. Any other questions? I just want to make a comment. I think you're also the only group that um added in some evidence and I noticed you have two links as well. if we were to uh click on that, which we don't have time to do, but uh where might those take us? You have one that says take cell phone out of the classroom link. And then cell phones are a significant issue in today's school. Uh so when we got to the activate, we uh we were given multiple links and sources for like our uh research and ideas. And so we went through those and

049we found the two main sources that we got for our evidence. And I just linked them the slide. And I also like the fact that um you included that socialization, face-to-face socialization is really important. So, thank you for that. Thank you, keyboard crew. [Applause] So you can only imagine the energy in the room with 37th and eighth graders talking about cell phone policy. Um it was a very unique experience because they did not only learn the difference between policy and procedure but dive into the data. Um look at the research and the evidence gathered um by um Dr. Foriss's question of the month. Um and so they did a lot of really deep dive in that one day and also come together as um six unique groups to put their presentations together. So it was

050a huge lift for them um in that one day and super proud of all of the hard work that they um put together and we were able to do that with of course the support of the school board and the support of the superintendency. um our Genius Bar um we always greatly appreciate. We had social workers there and we've had our SRO's come in. Um they've been a huge support um to our activate kids as well. Um thank you to the administration who drove their students um not able to actually drive around and pick up 13 of our junior high kiddos. So um greatly appreciate um that opportunity as well. and then of course all of our local community members that were able to donate um resources to help make um our activate event um

051hugely successful. And so it is one of those events that you know if you listen to their passion and their commitment hopefully they got as much out of it as we were able to enjoy the day as well. And so as we look forward um to the next steps, we learned a lot of lessons um with the way we had set up our junior high event. And so hopefully we get to continue with this next year. Um we want to continue to empower our Mesa Public School students to develop those solutions. And as we talked, we thought about, well, let's look at the schoolboard goals and have our students talk about what are some of the solutions to the goals that the school board has set forth. And so looking at next year what um

052those activate students can come forth and develop and then having our students facilitate that collaboration between both themselves and the community members to enhance both the problem solving and the decision-m um in the same format. And so being able to create that conversation and that dialogue in a very productive and positive manner with our students leading the charge because they are knowledgeable and they are articulate and they are brilliant and they are smart and they have got such amazing ideas as evident by what they presented tonight. So, um, we are just so excited by what they were able to put forth with our, um, activate in February and glad we got a chance to do it with our our junior high students. And we're hoping to be able to model what we did with our

053junior high students with our high school students next year and kind of break up our high school students and have them build some relational capacity um, with each other like our junior high kids did this year. So, um I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be able to work with our students and um kind of lead the way with this because it has been a great three times this year. So, um looking forward to being able to do that again next year, too. So, thank you. [Music] Marcy, is there anything you want to add about the Hackivate event? I I I do um I I just want to thank you, Miss Lenoff, for um establishing a process and each time we did activate, we activated a a situation. We've gone from activate as an event to

054activate as a verb. So when we have an issue, we activate it. and um and your um expertise in in working with with the students but also establishing an inquiry process um has been very valuable. And when I when I think about Hackivate, I think about not only students and the the solution to many of our issues being in the room, the students should be part of the solution. Um, but I also think about, as you said in the beginning, the civil discussion. Um, these students didn't know each other in their teams. They were thrown together, mixed all up, different schools, and the way that they deliberately went after the issue was amazing. and the way that they work together, the energy in the room. Um, I I really think that this is a process

055where students can show us the way and and frankly I wish we could take it one step further where um our why why should we regulate cell phone use? I think we heard every group explain why from their own perspective. What are the expectations? What's the etiquette for cell phone use? And what happens when you maybe fail in using your cell phone properly? Um, I would love to have students set up the expectations and the consequences. Um, because you know this situation best, you live it every day. Um, so, um, I'm hoping that maybe eventually we can go from civil discourse to consensus. and and really dive into solutions that can be brought forth that we can apply throughout the district. Thank you, Miss Hutcherson, and thank you, Miss Lenoff, for all your work in

056this and all those that participated. I have to say I'm so impressed with you to get up here and speak in the microphone and even use the clicker correctly because half the time if I ever get it, I can't figure it out. So, good job on that and um I just want to commend you. I think it's a big thing. if we can figure out junior high and how we want to handle this, it will only help us in high school. And so, we commend you for being a part of this. Um, I can only imagine how that first beginning of that meeting went, mixing all of you up from your schools and learning to to meet new people. And I hope that as you come in contact with these new friends that you've made

057in your group, that you'll make sure to reach out and say hello. Um, I think it's it is scary when we first start, but what a great thing to be able to work together across our district with students from all over. And so, thank you again for taking this time, for being here tonight, for presenting and for working on this. We really, really appreciate it. So, thank you. And can we do another round of applause for these great [Applause] students? And a big thank you to all the teachers and administrators that help get these students to and from. And parents, thank you. We know that it takes an army, so we appreciate it. Um, with that, this will conclude our study session. Do I have a motion to adjourn the study session? So moved. Do

058I have a second? I'll second it. It has been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? We five years. We have adjourned the meeting. We will begin. We have a musical performance starting at 6:15. Thank you. Why does this keep coming up? They were awesome. [Applause] Thank you. That was absolutely amazing. Miss Cross, thank you for sharing your students with us tonight. I think I'd just rather listen to them the rest of the evening, but um I hear we have some business to tend to. Thank you, Mountain View Mountain View uh Strolling Strings for starting us off with such a wonderful music. Um, we will go ahead and welcome all of you here tonight and we will call this meeting to order at We're going to go

059ahead and get started at 6:28. We're a couple minutes early. Actually, I'll wait till Cameo's in. Sorry, Cameo. We wait till 6:30. We will wait 2 minutes. So, there's Find a seat if there there's some extra seats in here up towards the front. There's a couple. Yeah. Thanks. Okay, we welcome you tonight to the board meeting. It is now 6:30, so we will go ahead and get started. There's lots of us in here, so Okay, thank you. Just a quick reminder, any citizen who wishes to speak on an agenda item must complete the sign-in sheet in the lobby prior to public comment on the board agenda. So that is in the I I did hear we were having some tech issues, but I think we're okay out there. Um we will go ahead tonight and

060start with the pledge of allegiance led by Dr. Trace East, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. Please stand and remain standing for the national anthem which is recorded tonight by Highland Art Elementary. Students, directed by Kathy Overall. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of America and to the republic for its nation and all. [Music] Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Thank you. You may be seated. We will begin tonight um by playing a video on governing board procedure procedures and 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

061state law, the governing board may only discuss and vote 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 3 minutes to speak once recognized by the governing board president. Please state your name before you speak. We ask that all speakers show

062respect and courtesy to others. During the second regular meeting 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

063express ideas or concerns to the board in accordance with the agenda. The poster in the boardroom describes positive behaviors expected and behaviors that cannot be tolerated. Please speak and act respectively and act actively listen. Be kind. Verbal harassment, abusive or foul language, intimidation, and disruption have no place in a classroom or in the boardroom. Please no side conversations or reactive comments. They can be disruptive. It is a governing board's president's responsibility to m maintain proper order so the board can conduct its business in an orderly and efficient manner. If you are 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 go ahead and continue on. Um, Dr. Forers will please review the board calendar with

064us. Thank you very much, Madam President, members of the governing board. Uh, we have I'm going to get us uh through the middle of May, which we know is a very busy time in our school system. Uh, on Friday, April 11th, we have a board planning and study session. That's from 8:00 a.m. till 2:00 p.m. The governing board members will be meeting uh with incoming superintendent uh Dr. Matt Stum and working on um what you're looking forward to as you wrap up this school year and begin the new school year. April 16th from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. is the career technical education student recognition night that is held at the Mesa Art Center. April 22nd is our next regularly scheduled uh governing board meeting. That's the second meeting of the month. Uh 5:00 we will

065have a study session where we will be hearing from our student advisory group. And then at 6:30 we will begin with our regularly scheduled governing board meeting. April 23rd is another is a great celebration from 5 to 8:00 p.m. That's our student services award that awards that will be held at Red Mountain High School. And just a couple days later, April 25th from 5 to 10 p.m. is Young at Art at Historic Irving. uh great opportunity to see so much of the talent uh of our students that display um all of the things that they've learned through the creative arts. May 7th 4 through 6:00 p.m. is the Mesa Public School retirement celebration at the Mesa Convention Center. And then May 16th uh from 5 to 8 is the Westwood International Balora Commencement Ceremony. It's

066held at Red Mountain Community Church. And every year um the the the planning committee for this amazing event requests two board members to attend. So if you are interested, please let Mrs. Kirby know and she will um RSVP for you and get you all situated with the Westwood um with their se their celebration, but it is at Red Mountain Community Church. And that concludes the calendar. Thank you, Dr. Foris. Lots and lots of great things going on this time of year. 90 days of May has begun. So, we are excited. It's a great time of year. Um, I'm going to turn it back to uh Dr. Fles for a superintendent update. Thank you again, Madam President, members of our governing board. It's always a great opportunity to celebrate the great things that are happening in

067Mesa Public Schools. It's important that we always start off with our promise to know our students by name, to serve them by strength, and need so that they graduate ready for college, career, and community. We're going to have lots of conversations about that this evening. you will see not only uh do we have a promise but we have the stair steps to deliver upon that promise that includes five strategic goals our graduation plus model uh taking a look at um our governing board's goals anchored down there at the bottom I kind of went out of order uh governing board goals on the bottom our graduation plus model five strategic goals and our portrait of a graduate you put that together and that is um how we plan to achieve and deliver upon that promise to

068our community we We have three areas of focus this year. We are focused on academic and instructional development and I'll give you some highlights. Community engagement and safety. I'll also share some high highlights there. And organizational and operational effectiveness. So taking a look at academic and instructional development. Last week we celebrated national paraprofessional appreciation day recognizing the invaluable contributions of our paraprofessionals. Those are teachers aids, instructional assistants, and pared educators. They enhance student learning and work with teachers to create nurturing classroom environments that support academic growth. Their commitment is absolutely vital to students academic success as they work alongside our teachers. Mesa Junior High Schools recently wrapped up the Mesa Academic League known as NAL season. Congratulations to this year's champion, the Poston Panthers. And if you've been with us year after year, the post

069and panthers tend to come out on top just about every year. Um, NAL helps students develop essential skills and teamwork, critical thinking, and quick decision-making. Through friendly competition, participants expand their academic knowledge across subjects while honing their communication skills and learning to think on their feet. All those skills that we see in our portrait of a graduate. Congratulations to Franklin Accelerated Academy downtown campus. Adams, Chrisman, Holmes, Lehi, Lindberg, and Patterson elementary schools, as well as Smith Junior High, who have received the 2025 Barbara Park Memorial Literacy Grant. Thank you for supporting literacy with $500 grants for each of our schools that I mentioned. And just this is hot off the press. Just this morning, Sulk Elementary held its student spaceflight experiments program mission patch ceremony. Students from grades 4 through 12 took part in a

070design competition with the winning patch, and that's a patch that you would sew onto a jacket set to travel to the International Space Station on Space X Falcon rocket this summer. The event also featured insights from Honeywell Aerospace highlighting the STEM collaboration between Red Mountain High School and all of its feeder elementary and junior high junior highs. Last week, Dobson High School hosted its second annual empty bowls fundraiser benefiting Matthews Crossing Food Bank. Each bowl is handcrafted by Dobson ceramic students, faculty, and local artists. Attendees donated $10 and chose from a diverse selection of handcrafted bowls created um locally. Each bowl came with a ticket for a meal of soup and bread prepared by the school's talented culinary students. I hear that the soup was amazing and it was incredibly well attended. So, thank all

071of you that were able to make time to be there. Later in the meeting, the board will cons consider approving a proclamation for natur public school volunteer week, making it the perfect time to recognize some of the outstanding individuals who give their time and energy to Mesa Public Schools. Veronica Via has been a dedicated Franklin parent for more than 19 years. She spends countless hours in the classroom organizing um afterchool events, supporting the front office, and preparing goodie bags for student health nights. Her commitment has made her a valued member of the Firebird family. And Emily Allen, a mother of six and former Highland Elementary teacher, now serves as PTO president at Porter Elementary and is an active member of the school and district parent council. Whether organizing events, leading fundraisers, or advocating for public

072education, she continually strengthens the school community. Emily wears a superwoman cape, says Porter Principal Kathy Ray. Melissa Spencer, PTO president at Whittier Elementary, has spent years leading with dedication and enthusiasm. As she approaches her final term in 2024-25, her impact on the school and its families will leave a lasting legacy. And lastly, Stacy Allen serves as uh Taylor Junior High's Sia Title One com on the um Taylor's SAK Title One committee and as PTO president at Madison Elementary. So, she's very busy. She supports students by donating pogo passes for Taylor's student of the month program and contributing to the Mesa Foundation's annual fundraiser. I can't thank them enough for their generosity and leadership that embodies the spirit of volunteerism making a lasting difference in our schools and communities. I want to thank all of the

073volunteers across Mesa Public Schools. We only highlighted um these four this evening, but I know there are hundreds more and we are so grateful for your investment of time in Mesa Public Schools. And that concludes my uh superintendent update. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Foris, for that update. Wonderful things happening. Um, we are excited tonight. We have an elementary school spotlight tonight. Might be a little biased. That's where I went to elementary school. We won't talk about how long ago, but we're excited to spotlight Edison Elementary School. Dr. Forz, I'm going to turn the floor to you um for recognition. And fellow board members, will you uh join me in front of the DAS? Our spotlight recognitions program is designed to provide our community with an inside look at the exceptional individuals within Mesa public

074schools. At our meetings, 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 after tonight. Recognition of a distinguished student, a certified staff member, and a classified staff member. This evening's spotlight school is Edison Elementary School. So, I would love to have Alex McDonald, principal at Edison Elementary, join me at the podium while we watch a video about your very special [Music] school, Edison. It's just a very like loving school. They really care about how you feel. There's some people that'll just like come and like be your friend, be like, "Hey, this is my name. Do you want to like hang out with

075us?" Some students know how to do art or to play soccer or to play football. It's like that's a unique thing about each student in our school. Teachers are really great. They do really well with the curriculum knowing what level we are. They like really help you finish your work and like understand and they're easy to talk to. They really help you like learn what you need to know and you know if you need a little more help than others and they have places that you can go to, you know, help you. We have a chill zone. When you need a break or you just you're tired or anything, you get to go to the chill zone. The counselors go in there. They switch back and forth and it's just a really calming place to

076be. They have a ball pit. It's like interesting. Watch movies, TV shows. You go play like any games that you love to play there. Math class is fun because we get to work in groups. We do like a bunch of math projects and we just just joke around while doing work. So, it's pretty fun. She my teacher makes math class really fun. We have um band and orchestra and then we have our regular music class. All right, it's time to hear from the principal of Edison uh elementary school, Alex McDonald. We Okay, so well thank you for being here tonight. Uh we have a special student that we're going to start with. This is JDL Rivera. JDL, would you come on up for [Applause] us? So, a little bit of about JDL. He was featured

077in the basketball video. He was playing defense on there. Uh he's on our football, basketball, and soccer teams. He had a soccer game today. How'd we do? We did really well. Right. Oh. Uh, one of the things that's great about him is if you can't you won't be able to see her unless you're really close. But he's got a little sister and he is probably one of the most patient big brothers there is. And that's just one of the the great things about him is his little sister Jasmine. She can be a handful at times. And he is just a really good brother for her. Uh he is a calming sense, a calming spirit on our campus. Uh last year in fifth grade, we had a rough fifth grade and JDL was there and he's

078just kind of with sixth grade, these kids have matured. They've done a really great job. His some of his teachers are here tonight and uh just watching him kind of get people together and focus on the right things. He's strong academically. We do awards and we call his name every time he gets to come up. His family comes and takes pictures of him. There's got to be a lot at his house up there for that. So, anything I missed about you? Girlfriend news? Anything you want to throw out there? No. Okay. All right. Well, I'm going to have some teachers join you up here at this point. Okay. All right. So, Oh, you okay? [Applause] Okay. Okay. All right. So, we had to pick a certified and a classified teacher to come. And for us,

079it was really easy because they're a team and they don't go anywhere apart. And so, we brought them here tonight. So, could I have Deb Taylor and Michelle Youngquist come up? [Applause] So, these two ladies run our reading intervention program and they have for years. Just a little detail before we started. Michelle has been at Edison for 35 years as a classified staff member. [Applause] That is roughly 5,000 mornings of crossing guard, right? Probably pretty close to that in cafeteria duty. She's worked in all of the grade levels. But when Deborah retired and came back to us as a reading teacher, Michelle decided, I'm going to find a home and I'm going to stick with her. And the two of them help any kid on our campus that comes that is struggling to get their

080reading skills. So any phonics things they need, any any uh sounds, letter recognition, anything they can do to help our young learners get to where their reading is. Michelle takes part of that. She loves a program that we use called Read Naturally. And then Deb, uh, you know, you might think you're a reader or somebody who goes after PD, but there's nobody who does more for it than Deb Taylor. She likes to take webinars just for fun. Okay? She reads giant books on things like dyslexia and tries to find ways to be able to help a student that, you know, nobody else has been able to reach. So, they are kind of our uh our heart and soul of what happens to anybody on our campus that needs that little boost, a way to feel

081good about building cuz reading skills are not always easy for everyone to come by. So, I just want to thank them for all their hard work and we figured I could get them both here if I made them feel guilty that the other one was coming. So, anything that I've missed, other family members are here tonight. They uh they donate bikes, they donate scooters to motivate kids to read. They spend a lot of their own money helping kids have motivation at school. And we just really appreciate them and know nobody else can have them. So, uh with that, I will turn over to Dr. Forless because I know she has something she wants us to do. [Applause] So, I know that our governing board would love to congratulate you. So, we'll have you um turn

082to your right and then go through do some handshakes. We'll bring you up to the center into the light and we'll take some great pictures and we'll uh have an opportunity for your family as well. You're awesome. jump in here. If any if any family members want to come up and get a photo, they can. All of you. Is she darling? Let's go to the music. Congratulations. [Applause] If you are here from Edison Elementary or to support one of these honores, will you please stand so we can recognize you? [Applause] And if you want to go celebrate with your family elsewhere, it won't hurt our feelings. We've got some people that are standing. They're probably going to run and grab your seats very quickly. So, uh, if you would like to take a break in

083the action, fine with us. Congratulations. [Applause] Thank you. Thank you, Edison Eagles. This is a time on the agenda designated for public comment on agenda items. Miss Chappie, do we have anyone signed up to speak? We do in fact have people signed up to speak tonight. We have 83 people signed up to speak. Mrs. Mrs. Kirby is sorting so you'll be able to see the chunks in just a second. And getting Yeah, the kids. Yeah, they can't wait. Sorry, we're sorting some names and information for us real quick. Um, 83 45 seconds. Okay, we have 84 speakers. Um, and we will do 45 seconds for each person to speak. And we're going to have Mrs. Chappie lead us through this agenda item. Thank you for your patience as we go through these names. I'm going

084to call the first three names and then I'm also going to call the next three on the list so that you know to be ready. Um, there will be a timer so you'll be able to see your 45 seconds and we appreciate your patience and your respect as you listen to other people. We are going to start with Noah White, Julia Gray, and Leah Casimova. On deck, we have Maline Conl, Scotland Heel, and Christina Alozzi. If you will please say if you will please say your name and how you're affiliated with Mace Public Schools when you come up, that would be great. We'll start with Noah, then Julia, then Leah, and you can line up over here along the side of the boardroom as you wait for your turn. Is Noah here? Go ahead. I'm

085Noah White. Um, thank you everyone for your time today. Um, my name is Noah. I am junior at Dton High School. I'm a transgender man and have been out to my mother for several years now. Um, when I came out, my mother and I spoke to my then principal and we were welcomed with open arms. Uh, my principal helped me to feel comfortable and safe. It is so important that students feel safe at school, but the proposed policies today aim to make students like me feel unsafe, unwelcomed, and unsupported. Transgender students need to feel safe, respected, and supported in their educational environments to thrive. Trust between students and educators is essential. School should be a place where students feel affirmed in their identities, not a source of fear or shame. Forcing educators to disclose to

086parents when a student requests to use their preferred name or pronouns can be dangerous, especially for students who may face rejection, abuse, or even homelessness. Outing a student before they are ready strips them of their agency and can be a ser and can cause serious emotional and psychological harm. protecting the privacy. Point of order. Point of order. Madame President, it is one of our um policies and one of our procedures to not have rockous uh screaming out of any issue. Mild clapping I think is appropriate, but this is not a sporting event. Thank you. So just please please be respectful this time. And also this will help us transition and go quickly as if we can just keep it moving. And if you also when you're speaking make sure you speak into the microphone so

087we can hear. Thank you so much. And it'll move. Yeah. Thank you so much. No problem. Um hello. My name is Leica and I'm a current IB senior at Westwood High School. The policy at hand claims to promote communication and positive relationships with parents. guardians and of students that promote the best outcomes for student success. While I can initially see that intent behind these proposed policies, there is a major issue in their implementation. To force parents to make a decision on the use of prefer preferred pronouns and names eliminates their rights to neutrality. A parent can no longer delegate to teachers issues that occur within the school environment. Additionally, this sets a worrying precedent of formalizing extremely personal family family issues in our schools. I worry that this blurs the separation between home life and

088education in a way that complicates and impedes learning and does not enhance it. Thank you for your [Applause] time. Hello, my name is Julia Gray. I have been at Mace Hope Schools since 2015. I won't tell you how this is going to affect me emotionally. I'm sure you will hear a lot of that tonight. But I will tell you that I'm a daughter. I'm a friend. I'm a student. And I love living here in Mesa. This policy does not feel as though it is made to bring trust between parents and faculty. It will only provide distrust between students and faculty when faculty are forced to move their hand in a way that may not align with their beliefs. Faculty's beliefs are also not relevant to their ability to teach youth. So their ability to use

089the preferred pronouns and names is not relevant. I have two parents who love me. I love all of you. I am not different from you. Thank [Applause] you. We will hear next from Maline Scotland and then Christina. On deck we have Karen Carpenter, Andy Young, and Betsy Fleetton. Hello, my name is Maline Conl. I'm a transgender student in Westwood's IB program and I'd like to briefly talk about the proposed gender dysphoria policy. The policy initially seems to only target district employees freedom of speech regarding transgender students, albeit in a bllightly blatantly hypocritical way, as employees wouldn't be allowed to use the chosen name or pronouns of a trans student who doesn't have parental approval. But employees would be allowed to use the birth name pronouns of students even when parents specifically specify the use of

090their child's chosen name and pronouns. However, the policy also includes sentence at the end of section B, which would make it so that all trans students would have to participate in activities and use facilities corresponding to birth sex, making this policy a ban on trans-inclusive sports, lockers, and bathrooms all at [Applause] once, Scotland, and then Christina [Music] I'm a freshman at Mountain View and I was supposed to talk about how um block schedule, fast teams, and pathways are. Fast teams is pretty cool cuz you get to spend like uh three class periods like you're really good friends and if you have any friends, you can make some new friends. Um block schedule is pretty good for me cuz I'm an athlete. I play football in Mountain View and it gives me some more electives. So

091like more lenient with my schedule and block schedule like gives you more time to do your homework and stuff and pathways is pretty cool because it set you up for like your career path in the rest of your life. I like there's like one biomedical that's what I'm doing cuz that would be like a sports medicine that'll be pretty helpful and also engineering and like math bunch of good stuff like that. That's it. [Applause] Good evening, members of the board. My name is Christina Loian. I'm currently a junior at Westwood High School. And I wanted to come in and offer you guys today the perspective of a student who currently undergoes the pathways and block schedule. So, I want to start off by emphasizing I'm not here to critique my school's administration or oppose the

092proposal. At Westwood, the combination of pathways and block schedule has its ups and downs. For some of us, it provides a sense of direction. Our classes are more aligned with our future goals and our interests and we're surrounded by like-minded peers. It helps reduce this schedule. It helps reduce the stress of juggling seven classes as well. And it gives us more time for hands-on activities and projects. But there's also significant challenges. Choosing a a pathway can be hard, especially for some of us who aren't sure what we want to be yet. High school is meant to be our time to explore and discover what we want. Changing a pathway is not exactly easy. And block scheduling was supposed to give us more time for meaningful learning, but we've lost instructional hours. Teachers are forced to

093either rush through curriculum or cut units entirely. Instead of deeper learning, we're [Applause] Next, we'll hear from Karen, then Andy, and then Betsy. On deck, we have Lindsay Helm, Jesse Shank, and Gabe Hagen. Hello, my name is Karen Carpenter. I am an alumnest alumni, I'm sorry, of Mesa Public Schools K through 12. I also have a child that graduated and I have two children enrolled now. Um, I'm here about the gender dysphoria bill. The biggest issue I have with the policy is the lack of clarity on protection of students regarding bullying. The policy states it will not be considered kid discrimination or bullying should any teacher, staff, student or contractor not use a preferred name. Even if a parent gives permission, it goes on to state that if a parent believes or a student believes

094they have been mistreated in any other way, then that would be considered bullying. They should speak up. Then that clearly spells out that bullies know what they are allowed to do and that transgender students must stay quiet and endure the very essence of oppression. Thank you very much. Good evening. Uh my name is Andy Young. Um I'm a therapist and I practice in Mesa and I see adolescence and adults. I'm also the parent of a transgender son and a board member for the Education Action Alliance. Um, I'm here to respectfully ask you to vote no on this policy. It puts transgender kids in danger. Um, I'm a therapist. I have clients who are Christian, Buddhist, Wiccan. I even have clients who have been racist. Um, it doesn't matter if it aligns with my beliefs or

095values because each of those clients deserves a therapeutic environment that is safe and supportive just like students in your schools. It doesn't matter the beliefs of teachers or administrators or board members. Kids deserve to feel safe and supported. Kids who don't who aren't safe and supportive have adverse outcomes when it come. [Applause] Good evening. I am Betsy Fleetton. I am a member of the East Mesa branch of the AAW, American Association of University Women. And we are here because we are concerned about our trans students and the policy that will make them again less safe, more at risk. I know because I have friends who are grandparents of trans students. One of that one of those students families was driven out of their community. And I know that kids need to feel safe. They need

096to be able not to have to come out until they're ready or to their [Applause] parent. Hi, I'm Lindsay Helm. I'm a parent of three Mesa public school kids and I would just ask anyone who is in support of keeping our current transgender policy if they would stand up and show our board that we are supporting our trans kids. I had my current student there's an effect in how they perform in their classes when a teacher is affirming and uses the words or if they misrepresent you know misgender them quickly correct themselves in the class that my child is misgendered in he hates that class he does not want to engage and it is difficult to get him to go please do not change this policy and encourage our staff to use these names and

097pronouns It would be disrespectful for Hi, I'm Jesse Shank. I'm a business owner here in Mesa. Um, and there's a lot of people here to speak tonight on the the gender dysphoria policy. It may be enough just to add my voice against the new policy proposed. Um, that was a very powerful thing to see all those people stand up. I think um, other people might stand up for it. Um, and ultimately you all have been elected to use your judgment and look into your hearts and make the right choices based on fact and based on knowledge and experience. Some of us are here today motivated to speak by our lived experience. There are parents of transgender people in here. You should listen to people like that. Thank you very much. [Applause] Good evening. Thank you

098so much for the time. Um, I had prepared remarks. Obviously, 45 seconds isn't going to be enough. My name is Gabe Hagen. I am also a business owner here in Mesa. I'm a concerned taxpayer and a person that employs these students that come out of here. Um, I was originally going to talk about the hypocrisy, but instead I think I need to share my lived experience. I was forcibly outed at 16 living in conservative Iowa. I came home to my family who beat me in the basement. This is the reality you are trying to enact through policy. So I beg you, I beg of you, please listen to these students. Please treat them with respect and please stop trying to force [Applause] We will hear next from Cynthia Alanise, Lorie Tudtor, and Sitli Viegas. On

099deck, we have Lena Austin, William Squires, and Jessica Gronberg. Good evening. My name is Cynthia Lenise. My pronouns are she, her. I'm an MPS alumni, former employee, mother of five current students that are enrolled across elementary, junior high, and high school. I serve on their school boards on their schools, PTA, and SIAK, as well as a parent council through the district. I am deeply concerned about the proposed policy forcing staff to disclose a student's gender identity without consent. This is not only dangerous, but it may violate Arizona laws as well. Under ARS15-341, the board has a legal obligation to ensure a safe and supportive environment for all students. Outing a student without their consent puts them at risk for abuse, homelessness, and even suicide. Please reject this harmful policy. Protect [Applause] our Hello, my name

100is Lori Tutor. Uh I'm the parent of an IB graduate from Westwood High School and a member of the community for over 20 years. Um I'm here to speak against the transgender policy. Um it states in the policy that uh the focus is on bridging the relationship between the district and parents. However, nothing in the policy address the risks that are faced by our most vulnerable students. Transgender and non-binary students are one-third less likely to finish high school. They are four times more likely to commit suicide. And 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. It is the job of this board and our community to protect our most vulnerable students. And I encourage you to enact a policy that looks out for their best interests. Thank [Applause] you. Hello board. I'm teacher Viegas, the art teacher

101at Roads Junior High, and my classroom would be affected by the lease that is pushing into um Roads Junior High Polaris. and it would push me and years of art resources and materials into another classroom that is frankly not equipped to hold all of these materials and also not designed to house 150 plus individual artworks. Um, I will only mention this briefly, but this news is heartbreaking. Not only because it's of its sudden nature, but because of its of the non-material things that I am losing a lived and cared for classroom that my students have helped decorate since the beginning of the school year with art that they have created and are so proud to display. One of the I have spent countless hours setting up a welcoming warm space that is set up to

102give students utmost freedom and to build their [Applause] self-sufficiency. Good evening everyone. I'm state representative Lennena Austin. I have the honor and privilege of serving legislative district number nine where we are all sitting right now. I come to you today to speak out against this gender dysphoria policy. As the first non-binary legislator in the state and the first Chan nonbinary legislator in the country, it's very important for me to be here to support our students and our families. Um, I was going to say a few other things, but I wanted to speak again from the mouths of our students. They love living here, but they live un they feel unsafe, unloved, and unsupported by this policy that is being proposed. I have been to many of our schools in the district and I'm so proud

103that we currently do not have a trans student policy because Mesa Public Schools meets our students where they are at and I will always meet our students and families where they are at. Madame President, members of the board, my name is William Squires. I uh had prepared remarks but given that 45 seconds is not enough to deliver them, I would simply like to state that this proposed document starts states a lot about trust between parents and between the district. Where are the children though? You know, where are the ch where are we taking care of children along that? Uh, I I would say so much more, but without the time I will only say that trans lives matter. Please vote no against this garbage. Uh, thank you. And I yield the rest of my time.

104Hi, my name is uh Jessica Groonberg and I'm the stepparent of a transgender uh youth who graduated from Westwood High School in 2023 as part of the IB program. I want to emphasize that my son is transgender because that's who he is. No one turned him transgender. There was no agenda. And I'm re extremely grateful that he was able to use his pronouns that he wanted to use and his name that he wanted to use and go into the bathrooms that he wanted to use while he was a student. Because if he wasn't able to do that, his experience would have been very negative and he would not have been supported and he would have had a much different [Applause] Next we will have Graham Corp, Marley Valenuela, and Naen Hathway. On deck we have

105Gloria Chavez, Zack Gamza, and Anna Cordova. Hi there, my name is Graeme Corp. I'm a special education teacher within the city. Don't really need this. Tom Horn says that absenteeism is the biggest crisis facing Arizona public schools. And your idea is, "Oh, I'm going to invent a policy that ensures these students are never going to show up to school again. That's insane. This is garbage policy." I don't want you guys to feel bad when they try to generate discussions say, "Oh, we can amend it like this," or, "Oh, we could change that." Or, "Oh, if we could just tweak this." No. Do not feel bad about rejecting garbage policy. This belongs in the trash. It is dumb. It is bad. There are ways to approach this conversation. This policy that was not consulted by anybody

106is terrible. Throw it away. Thank you. [Applause] Hello, I'm Marley Valenuela. I am class of 2022 Mesa Public School alumni, graduated from Skyline High School where I was student body president. Um, I am here today to speak against the anti-transgender policy titled the gender dysphoria policy. 300,000 out of 25.8 8 million children aged 13 through 17 in of the United States are transgender, meaning that they make up only about 12% of that age group's population. Typically, of these 12%, 41% of them are likely to commit suicide in Arizona. Across the country, this number has shot up to as much as 72% when anti-transgender policies like this one are enacted. Do not be the reason why these suicide rates shoot up from 41% to 72%. This is not political. These are children. do not move forward

107with this policy. Thank you. [Applause] My name is Naen Hathaway. I'm a mother of five children who all of which I'm not quite sure what identity they will choose. Um, and that's why they also don't go to school in this district even though I live here, I worship here, and I work as a church secretary. But I don't trust my children with you. and neither do a lot of other parents. And that's why your schools are on the verge of closing. It's not safe here when your headline need is pushing families away from a city built by faith. Not one time Sharon, I came to talk to you, not to convince you, but I'm here to remind you of what God's been telling you. Before this meeting, we heard music that moved us to tears,

108and that was spirit. Now imagine if the devil had won years ago. Thank you. Sorry, our time is Thank [Applause] you. My name is Gloria Chavez. I have been part of this district for 30 years as a mother, a grandmother, and 23 years as an educator. This policy targets a percentage uh a portion of our students that need our support don't need to be ostracized. The wording of this policy actually sanctions bullying. Just because the wording may say certain actions cannot be considered bullying or harassment, bullying is bullying. One of my adult children is a member of the LGBTQ plus community. I will tell you that what they endured in this district during their early years was horrific. From their early elementary years through junior high, the same kids tormented my child to a very

109dangerous point. High school was their exception where they were accepted unconditionally. Over the years, there has been [Applause] tremendous Hello, my name is Anna Cordova. a physician and community member. Uh we know that LGBTQ youth are at least who do not have one supportive adult are 40% more likely to commit suicide. You are removing potentially the last safe space in these young people's lives. Nobody keep in mind that being supportive does not mean that you want your child to be uh trans. You don't want your child to go through what our society has made an incredibly difficult process of discovery. Um, your intentions also fail to mention the trust that that you build with our children and our children need in our schools. Misgendering is bullying. Would a student's first amendment's rights be upheld if

110they chose Hello board? My name is Zach MS. I'm a business owner in Mesa who serves a lot of the community here. I am voicing my opposition to this policy. Obviously, people have talked about the harm this will do to the community, so I'm not going to speak on that because they've done such a good job already. But I'm just talking about the legal issues here. Uh this is clearly a violation of both first and 14th amendment uh rights. Section B explicitly states that staff and students cannot be compelled to use a student's preferred name or pronoun to violate their first amendment right. At the same time, section A prohibits teachers from using the preferred pronouns unless they provide consent. That's a direct con conflict. And there's actually two Supreme Court cases. We have Rosenberger

111versus University of Virginia, Mattel versus Tom. Both have made it clear the government may not regulate speech in a way that favors one viewpoint over another. And I got to say, I'm kind of getting sick and tired of people in power who claim to love this country. [Applause] Our next speakers are Britney Campbell, Paige Carroll, and Jeff Thompson. On deck, we have Mary Mayeno, Jaliss Whis, and Ed Steel. Hi, I'll try not to ramble. Hi, my name is Britney Campbell and I am an alumni of also Skyline High School and all of me and my brother and sister were um Skyline alum as well. Um I just wrote down parents seeing the board prioritize anti-Dei initiatives like this instead of investment in quality teachers. More classroom support for their kids or incentivizing programs will deter

112them from choosing at Mesa Public Schools. um we've uh they've been recipients of IEPs and other individualized help and we know in education that each student cannot be helped by prescribing one-sizefits-all instruction and administration. And also I want to be an art teacher in Mesa public schools, but I've been having a very hard time finding work in really any nearby district just simply because like sometimes initiatives like this take precedent over like getting quality teachers. Thank you. Hello, my name is Paige Carroll and I am an educator at Bush Elementary. Um, I am also a mother of a non-bionary child. Um, I'm deeply concerned that this policy will force schools to out students without regard for their safety. For some, home isn't a safe place to be open about identity. Um, this policy undermines the

113trusted relationships that we specifically as educators take a lot of time to build with our students. And if we are not able to treat them with compassion and respect that they deserve as children and as human beings, there is going to be much more harm than good coming out of this. All stu students deserve dignity, privacy, and support. And we must prioritize safety, inclusion, and student well-being [Applause] over. I'm Jeff Thompson. Everybody up here knows me too well. I don't really speak on this too often. Anybody in here that wants to say I'm homophobic, you guys are lying to yourself. I've got I've got gay family members. I've been taught by gay teachers, still friends with them and uh gay students, but we're all born with the same with a name. This pronoun stuff, it's

114just senseless. It's not bullying. You guys already have code of conduct for every student. The student the teacher there and the parents last month, they don't trust you guys. We need to get back to just teaching the kids. You you already proved you can't do that at 32% proficiency rate. You guys need to teach the kids. The Declaration of Independence. All men have certain rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Children are a liberty interest. Do you know what that means? That means parents who are responsible for their children have the liberty to raise them in their beliefs, to care for them, and to know what's going on with them. The family is the basic unit of society. The unit of society is not between teachers and a child. It's between parents and a

115child, which supersedes any relationship a teacher may have with a child. If parents want to accommodate a child's belief they are not a boy or girl, that's their choice. The other side of that coin is also true. If parents hold Judeo-Christian values and do not want their kids confused in this regard, they have the parental right and obligation to know their child is experiencing these emotion. [Applause] Good evening. My name is Jalice Wuest and I'm a resident in the Mesa Public School District and my children went to the Mesa public schools. I'm very concerned about this gender dysphoria policy. Um, echoing what many people said, the transgender students really deserve our respect and they're in a very sensitive area anyway. They're high risk for suicide. So, I feel like this policy is harmful to them.

116I don't think we need a bathroom policy. Um there's a studies show that um there's no evidence showing that bathroom uh going to the bathroom and your um uh gender identification causes any kind of adverse effects in terms of violence or anything like that. But there is evidence that doing it the other way around. The way this this U policy says is um there. My name is Ed Steel. I'm a concerned citizen here in Mesa. Um, the folks who are opposing this policy are giving you a choice between hiding a students mental health issues from their parents or kids dying. That's a ridiculous choice. That's a ridiculous comparison. They're also telling you that schools know better about how to raise a child than the child's parents. Another absurd claim. You guys know better. This policy

117is just trying to to tell the parents when the child has emotional distress. I've been asking for this for 3 years. We could have avoided all this if you put two sentences. [Applause] Next we have Leco, Brandon Vik, Gregory Freeman, and Sarah Meanie. On deck we have Lee, Dr. Castanza Lee. Sorry, we're I think we might have first and last names here. Stephanie Wayan, and Bernard Arthur. My name is Greg Freeman. I am the stepfather of a trans student, and about a year ago, he came to us wanting to transfer to Red Mountain. My first concern was that he wouldn't be able to wake up in time to get there. But my second concern was that he would be loved and accepted for who he's choosing to be. And I can tell you that he

118has experienced that. He is loved and accepted. His academic performance has excelled. He is looking at colleges that would have been a pipe dream a year ago. And that is the result of the hard work of your staff and your teachers and your administrators. And I ask you to vote no on this policy. Don't take that away from him. He has come here and thrived, which is the goal of any school system. You've done your job. Just keep doing it. Thank you very [Applause] much. My name is Stephanie Wan. I am a former Mesa Public Schools teacher. I am a parent in this community, although my children do not attend Mesa Public Schools. Mesa's promise begins, "Every student is known by name, served by strength and need." And that is because a person needs their

119name. They need to go by the name that suits them. Not a name that somebody else decides is correct. The name that suits them. That is their need. Calling a child by a name other than that is harassment. And as you said, harassment does not belong in the boardroom and it does not belong in the classroom. Please vote no on this. It's wrong. It's wrong for kids. It's wrong for families. It's wrong for Mesa. [Applause] My name is Sarah Hernandez Meanie. I'm the mother of two kids that have attended public school here in Mesa. Uh, one still currently attending, one that has graduated uh, and at NAU studying education. She is one way uh, one year away from being a teacher and she would rather move out of state than teach here in Arizona because

120of policies like this. So, we are currently driving away teachers with things like this. Nothing in this policy moves the board any closer to its stated 2020 2425 goals. Uh, it's an insult to students. It's a waste of everybody's time to be down here to speak against policies like this. The board member that presented this policy should be embarrassed for wasting all of our time. I would just like to thank before I leave, uh, Dr. Dr. Andy Forless, I've noticed an improvement in the amount of communication from the district because of your presence and I hope sorry we're out of time. I'm ma'am accountability. Thank you. Just a reminder, we are trying Just a reminder, it is once that bell rings, we would ask you to please stop and be respectful and also keep the

121comments and different things at a minimum. Thank you. Hi, my name is Dr. Lean Castanzo. I'm a family physician. I'm also a resident of this city and I'm just dismayed by a couple of things that I've been hearing here because the statistics that have been thrown out are wildly unsubstantiated. First of all, we need to change the name of this policy because gender dysphoria is a diagnosis under the DSM5. If you don't know what that is, that's a psychology book that identifies all of the psychological disorders. And there's a reason why because it needs to be evaluated by a physician. If the parents don't know that the child is in distress with their gender, how can they get them the appropriate health? And socially transitioning a child is a treatment of gender dysphoria. So doing

122that without parental advice or physician. [Applause] Hello, my name is Bernard Arthur, NPS parent. Meeting after meeting, I keep hearing complaints about low birth rates. Let me be clear, LGBTQ people are not the reason for fewer or why people are having fewer children. Gay and lesbian co couples adopt at a higher rates than straight couples. And the families that I have had the privilege to know their homes are full of life, joy, and most importantly, love. If we really want to address these issues, tax the rich. Stop voting for policies rooted in fear and selfishness. talk to real people and not Twitter Twitter echo chambers. The problem is the system, not gay people. And if you are wondering why I'm so passionate about this, it's because no family is ever pure enough for people like

123that. Once they are done attacking our families, they will come for mine next. [Applause] Next we have Colton Kaggel, Wendy Kaggel, and Elaine Ryan. On deck we have Jez Putnham, Key King, and Jaylen Woodward. Hi, my name is Colton Kaggel. I grew up here in Mesa and received my entire K through2 education in Mesa public schools, even graduating from Westwood High School with my international balora diploma. I'm here to speak out against the hateful and extremist gender dysphoria policy. This policy would actively harm students, especially those already in vulnerable situations. People like Sharon Benson want you to believe that gender non-conforming students are committing harm in schools. But in reality, these are fear-mongering tactics that use hateful rhetoric to spread lies. The reason I know this is because when I was in high school a

124few years ago, I had a classmate who was gender non-conforming. This student went by their preferred name and pronouns. And you want to know what happened? Nothing. We were all fine. All of us were able to contribute to a productive. Good evening. Uh my name is Wendy Kaggel and I'm here to ask that you not support the gender dysphoria policy. My connection to Mesa public schools is I have four children who attended K through2 and I also worked as a certified teacher and substitute for over 10 years in Mesa. The struggles in this district are still real with academic challenges such as low scores, behaviors, teacher support, low student enrollment, layoffs, the list is endless, which leads me to say how unfortunate it is that this is even become um is even sorry how unfortunate

125it is because of a small group of people's biases that this is even on the agenda. I would think that there is much bigger issues on the agenda than putting trans students in harm's way in a district of this size would not only support equity but also fully focus focus on academic support rather than creating a policy that will harm innocent children. Thank you. Hi, my name is Elaine. I've lived in Mesa for 32 years and my children went through K through 12 as well. I am here tonight to advocate for my niece who is transgender. She's a freshman. Beautiful young lady. Should not be having to use a different bathroom or be singled out. She is a freshman. They have enough issues. She does not need to be bothered. She's trying to live her

126life. She's not bothering anybody. She's high performing. She wants to have a good life. She has support at home. And I expect that she should get support and love and acceptance at school. Thank you. Hi, my name is Key King and I'm the parent of a transgender daughter that attends a Mesa Public Ele School. If I have anything I want to say today, it's that I would give anything to protect her. But no matter how fiercely I try to protect my daughter, I can't protect her from policies like this. Before she came out as transgender, she was suicidal. And I came face to face with my worst fear of losing a child. Not because she wasn't loved or supported at home, but because she was afraid of how her school, her teachers, and her peers

127would respond if they knew the truth about who she is. We are not talking about ideology. We are talking about children, about my child, and whether or not she feels safe walking into her classroom. She's not making anyone unsafe by asking to be called by her name to be treated with basic respect. The only thing she's asking for is the same chance every other student has to grow up. [Applause] Good evening. Thank you board members. I come here this evening as the parent also of a trans student. My daughter has been the recipient of an affirming school where she attends. And I want to share concerns pertaining to the suggested gender dysphoria policy. The proposed policy lacks any substantial legal or medical language which aligns with current national or internationally recognized better practices relating to

128policy of students with the medical condition of gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is an internationally recognized medical condition which is both real and treatable. Appropriate care for this condition is actually reflected in the current Mesa school district's guidelines for support of transgender and non-conforming students. I would like to thank everyone who has courageously followed current guide. Next on my list, I have Jaylen Woodward, Carlos Fernandez, and Beth Buckman. On deck, we have Jared Hiker, Chris Hamlet, and Michael Sodto. Hello, my name is Jaylen Woodward. I'm a member of the party for socialism and liberation and I work here in Mesa as an engineer. I find it disturbing that students here in Mesa are being targeted by such a discriminatory policy. It should be everyone's choice how they choose to present themselves. Whether you want to look

129at research or just listen to the people in this room, um, transgender and LGBTQ students have better health and educational outcomes when their gender identity is accepted and supported. 20 schools in the past few years have closed due to a lack of funding. I think that this is a greater concern in in our in our uh community than trans kids just being trans kids. It should be our focus as a community [Applause] to Hello, I'm Carlos from the PSLER, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. From the voices I've heard and the people I know who will be affected by policies similar to this across the nation, I can say for anyone to consider this policy alone is an objective moral failure. Children of all identities deserve a dignified way of life so they can live

130and learn in a safe environment. How can any institution dare to say that they care about the children when you implement policies that tell trans children that who they are doesn't matter and when you put them in danger? If the people here who look after these school after these schools claim to do so, then I I implore you object this gross [Applause] policy. Hello, my name is Beth Buckman. I've been a MPS employee at Westwood for the past 17 years. Some years ago, some years ago, a student uh in my class was very upset uh to the point where she could barely move. Um, I got her to step out of the classroom into the hallway and I asked her what happened and she recovered herself enough to show me her phone which said, "You

131are an abomination. Don't come home." I spent the [Applause] Here we go. Another three- ring circus sponsored by the teachers union in Glisten. It's clear that this is a that this is a coordinated effort to to stop a policy that 90% of the people that spoke out against it have no idea what's in it. You can tell they didn't read it because their speeches pertain to everything in the Glisten call to action. Somebody came up here and said a little while ago that trans students or or or queer students are 40% more likely to commit suicide. And that is correct. They are cuz they're miserable cuz they're being taught a lie. And these adults around them are feeding of the lie. It's not love to accept them as who who they believe they are. They

132were not born in the wrong bodies. They were not born gay. This is a war between good and evil. And if you are allowing your kid to believe this lie and condoning this lie, you are an agent of the devil. That is not love. Teach them the truth. teach them that please be respectful. Please be respectful. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. Go ahead, please. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Michael Sodto. uh and I attended kindergarten uh in Ma public schools all the way until the day I graduated from Red Mountain High School in 1998. Today I am the CEO and president of Equality Arizona and I'm a trans man. I did not hear the word transgender until I was an adult. Yet I knew that I was a boy who would grow up

133to be a man at 3 years old. Um I just want you to know that there is no policy in the world that will make someone trans who is not trans. And likewise, there's no policy that will stop someone who's trans from being trans. Um, it's just not how it works. Trans people have always existed, and we will always exist. Your choice and the policy that you should create is how to create schools that create a respectful environment where all students can thrive and succeed and grow up to be happy. [Applause] Next we will hear from Julie Sessions, Cristiana Hammond, and Jennifer Ayala. On deck we have Maddie Stalard, Alyssa Weston, and St. Lii Viegas. In 2024, Dr. Castle, a highly respected leader of pediatrics and child health in the UK, finalized an evidence-based study

134on children with gender dysphoria. The findings cause the UK to stop social transitioning of children. Stated without informed consent, it is patently unethical to encourage treatment. Showed suicide is not lowered through treatment. And according to Stro, suicide attempts postgender affirming surgery rose 12fold. For the health and safety of the children with gender dysphoria, the parents need to be placed back in the driver's seat. They need to know what's going on with their kids. Second, an NEA article stated, "Student on student sexual assault happens with alarming frequency in school bathrooms." My heart goes [Applause] out. Um, hello Cristiana Hammond. Two kids in the district. Um, I believe it is inappropriate for members of the board who have no experience with gender dysphoria, no real knowledge of it, or any relationship to anyone who may to be

135introducing policy changes that are built on pure ignorance and naked disdain for a population they know nothing about. The metas the metastasis of this strange right-wing obsession with trans people has become a huge stain on our society. And it is disgusting that they are working so hard to bully children and infect our schools with it. I get it. It's easy to make up stories and spread fear about people that make up only 6% of the population. You could say that horns grow out of their kneecaps and people can't really know for sure if that is actually true because most people don't actually know a real life trans person. Sadly, in this current media environment, the people that make the most noise and court the most controversy. [Applause] Good evening, members of the board. Thank you

136for your ongoing commitment to Mesa Public Schools. My name is Jennifer Ayala Medina and I'm a teacher here in Mesa Public Schools. I'm here tonight because I believe in protecting the dignity, safety, and mental well-being of every student who walks into our classrooms. Mesa Palmus and our and our district's portrait of a graduate calls us to know every student by name, serve them by strength and need, and ensure they are seen and valued. When a student shares their pronouns or name with us, they're communicating a core part of their identity. Denying them that respect goes against our promise and puts their well-being at risk. We are not asking to replace parents. We are asking to respect our students and we are asking you to trust us to do what we've always done. care for our

137kids with compassion, professionalism, and integrity. Thank [Applause] you. Hi, my name is Maddie Stallard. I'm an eighth grade teacher at Road Junior High and I'm actually not here tonight to speak on the new transgender policy. However, I will very adamantly say that I'm against it and I want to applaud every family member, student, community member who has come up and shared their experiences because it's important. Um, I am here though to talk about the Polaris Academy lease agreement that's being proposed later on tonight. And I just have a couple questions that I want to go through very quickly. Um, I looked as much as I could, but I did not find any specific plans regarding how that money would be spent and exactly what expenses will be addressed. All I could see is that it's

138a financial benefit for the district, which I understand, but I urge you to consider Road Junior High in those plans as well. If [Applause] we're Hello, board, my name is Alyssa Weston. I'm a teacher at Roads Junior High and I'm also asking you to consider the um lease agreement with Polaris. Um before you vote on it, I ask you to pause and seek community feedback. We have actually not had any communication go out to our families whatsoever, which I find very problematic as a title one school with primarily Latinx student body. So, I'm wondering how you will ensure that my students access to educational opportunities will continue despite the disruption that you are throwing at our campus. I want you to understand what we are losing in this deal. It's not just schematics on paper.

139It's our art room. It's our science building. It's our maker space. It's an entire eighth grade hallway which are all filled with teachers and students. And I don't think that we're going to have the space to house them next year. Hi again. I'm so glad I get to come back. Um again, I'm teacher Viegas. I work at Rose Junior High as the art teacher and I'm probably going to get booted out of my classroom, but that's okay. I'm back to say that trans lives matter and that I am a trans person myself and that this policy matters so much. I grew up with point of order. Uh, you are not allowed to sign up to speak twice. Oh, but they called me. Thank you. a board policy that says you get three minutes total. It

140our I would like to apologize for calling your name twice. We have some confusion over what our procedure is. We will tighten that up and make sure that we have that clear for meetings going forward. Thank you for your patience. We have a policy that that I will take fault on that. I apologize. We because of the length we usually catch double names and because of the length of the amount of names we did not catch that. So I do apologize and I will take take the responsibility on that. Next we have Mark Kimble, Mandy Heel and Daniel Vas. On deck we have Darren Zinc, Nick Maldonado and Stacy Mashian Martian Jello. My name is Mark Kimell. Um, it's kind of a tough deal. I I have a a trans niece, a gay nephew. I

141love them both very much. I'm saddened by the confusion that's going on here tonight. this policy. If you debate the importance of having parents in the lives of their kids and the requirement that they be in the driver's seat, if situations like this happen, we're we're messing up big time. Now, I'd like to have a pronoun of the best looking grandfather in Mesa. And it's a joke, but where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line? And and it's it we have to remember that there's other rights as well. I know for a fact there's a lot of girls Mountain View I am Mandy Hill. I'm a biology teacher and teach one teach on one of the fast teams at Mountain View. I love this model of teaching. In fact, I move

142schools to be part of it. Students learn at a deeper level as cu cross-curricular connections are made. Students practice collaboration, creativity, and other 21st century skills as they create cross-curricular projects that invoke higher level thinking. The block format gives us time more time to do this. As a science teacher, we will be able to complete a whole entire lab and discuss results all in the same day. Actually, our district bought curriculum is written for 90-minute classes. On the on the practice block days, my students were startled by the bell and marveled that class was already over. Um, change is hard. Anytime there is change, there's push back. For many students at Mountain View, this [Applause] current Hello, my name is Daniel Vay and I'm an English teacher at Mountain View. I would like to share

143my enthusiasm for next year's academyy's program and yes, I'm here of my own accord. So, next year I will be teaching English as part of the entrepreneurship and business academy, also known as marketing and management on our site. I truly believe that the approach we've taken to developing thesemies has been both thoughtful and intentional ensuring that our students and colleagues can thrive in this new learning environment. While I recognize that there will be some growing pains throughout this process, I want to assure any skeptics or naysayers that our colleagues and myself are passionate and fully committed to the work ahead. This new approach to learning embodies career and college readiness, preparing our students to become active and engaged members of our community. With themmies, we are creating opportunities for students to explore their interests, develop

144new skills, and connect with both professional and academic partners. Thank [Applause] you. Hi board. My name is Darren Zinc. I'm a teacher at uh Mountain View. I've been teaching math for 23 years and I'm excited to be able to next year teach freshman seminar in a fast team. Uh there are some reports that there's some concerning fires going on at Mountain View and I'm here to say it's just not true. So for some clarity, there's four kinds of teachers at Mountain View right now when it comes to fast teams. So there's those who think they're incapable. They truly don't understand and so therefore they're not willing to try. There's the resistant. They understand, but they refuse to innovate. So they just want to be taught. They want to be left to be uh to teach

145their own way. There's the deceived. They think my way works, so just let me be. And yet fear of failure has become their god. There's the willing but the weary. Uh and there are fast teams that are doing an amazing job. Uh but the weariness comes [Applause] from Hello board. My name is Nick Maldonado. I'm a teacher of students at Mountain View. Um I spent the past year helping to create the expansion of our fast teams model into what will be our sophomoremies. Uh, as a two-year veteran of the FAST teams, uh, our freshman academic success teams, I have witnessed the power of building community and student ownership in this kind of model for our kids. The block schedule plan for next year has been a, uh, a building block that we built our plans

146on for the past year. We are so excited to use this extended class period time to focus on guiding our students to make uninterrupt uninterrupted dives into learning. Creating an environment where students current interest and passion gives them initial peak at the opportunities in college and career that align to what they are already excited about right now. Our goals make students want to be there and want to stay in our classes. Thank you. [Applause] So, my name is Stacy Masangelo. I'm a marketing teacher at Mountain View. I just wanted to let you know that I've been part of uh creating thesemies uh not only at our school level, but also at the CTE district level uh working with Marlo to figure out how these are going to mesh together. I have been teaching a long

147time and I initially had hesitation. There was no way about it. But since then, I have learned what thesemies truly are, and I'm very excited to be part of what's coming. I've also had my belief shifted on the block scheduling. I truly believe that through my conversations with admin, my counterparts at Dobson and Westwood, um I think this is actually going to be good for our students. It's going to give them more flexibility, access to higher level classes, um and the ability to take more electives. So, I can see kids in my marketing program. Thank you. [Applause] Next, we'll hear from Vicky Shoemaker, Amanda Maldo, and Sarah Rubin. On deck, we have Robin Maldo, Robert Kaufman, and Courtney Porter. Good evening, board. I'm Vicky Shoemaker, and I teach economics at Mountain View High School. And

148I'm here tonight to share with you two of the biggest reasons I believe our students and staff will flourish next year with a block schedule inmies. First and for most important to me is our culture. Our administrators are true culture creators. They've taught us to loosen the reinss let students co-create with us and my students blew me away with their excitement and agency in designing what in the world Wednesdays a studentled talk show featuring classroom peers and parents. And just as powerful is our professional development. From 88 minute lesson plan templates to practicing the block schedule to having the most boots on the ground instructional coaches you could even imagine. They surround themselves with new teachers to provide new ideas to dream big and plan boldly. So we are really inspired and excited [Applause] about

149my name is Amanda Meldo. I'm an instructional coach at Mountain View and I want you to know that significant preparation has gone into preparing for block schedule andmies next year. I was on the team that met last summer to build out ouries and we worked really hard to designmies that are targeted to our unique community. Mount Viewmies are completely teacherdigned and also informed by the parent and student conversations that Dr. Oliver has been leading since he became principal. All the professional development I've helped lead this year has been targeted to preparing teachers for block schedule. The teachers that are actively engaged in this learning are seeing great results. As you've seen, our academy teacher teams are already planning their curriculum next year, and they're so excited. Teaming is so beneficial for teacher satisfaction and success.

150This instructional shift will make amazing programs like we've seen tonight activate even better, even richer. Um, we already have business partners and guest lecturers lined up. We need trust and support to succeed, and we need you to see Hi, I'm Sarah Rubin. I'm a parent of children who will attend Mountain View High School when they're older. Um I grew up in Washington DC area and I attended Fairfax County Public Schools um which is a a highly ranked um public school system um throughout the country. Um and we had a block schedule and it worked very well. Um we en I enjoyed longer class times um with more thorough lessons. I um took band classes throughout my um high school years and we had time for proper warm-ups and rehearsing together and even um sectionals uh

151with professionals that would come in and help us. I later went to Brigham Young University and got my degree in clarinet. And um with all the rehearsals there in bands and orchestras, they also use every other day [Applause] [Music] Hello members of the board. My name is Robbie Melddout and I am the proud principal of Eisenhower Center for Innovation and of two students in the district. Also a block schedule graduate, class of 2005. Life's going great. Um I'm speaking in support of the vision and character of my friend and mentor, Dr. Mike Oliver, and his team's work at Mountain View High School. Uh I am only employee of this district thanks to Mike's invitation and example. I want you all to know that. I also want you to remember that I'm not alone in my

152admiration of Dr. Oliver. He's received both national and international renown for his pioneering work in promoting student joy and success in schools. Uh in addition, just a reminder uh that there's a charter or out east that would like nothing better to poach Dr. Oliver away. They've done so repeatedly, made attempts, and would pay him handsomely to implement these ideas in their schools. But he stays. Why? He does so because he cares about our students. And why is he [Applause] Honorable school board, I'm Bob Kaufman. I've come to talk to you on behalf of my wife who wasn't able to attend. Uh we have recently found out about the opposition that some have expressed. I feel it's the minority, not the majority. My son will be attending Mountain View soon for a couple years. After taking

153uh a tour of Mountain View, we've come to know of what an extraordinary school it is. Uh due to doc Dr. Oliver's wonderful changes he's implemented. Uh he is encouraging teachers to teach in ways that empower students to be innovative thinkers and learners. They are engaging more than I've ever seen in any other school. Students are thriving and are very happy. Everywhere on campus you see how meaningful learning has become for the students and staff. Dr. however is encouraging teachers to become the best they can be and it is evident uh he has a deep love for the helping students to uh fully achieve their best uh by interacting uh with learning. [Applause] Hi, my name is Courtney Porter. I'm the special education site lead at Mountain View High School here to talk about themies

154and fast teaming model. The district special education shared last year three specific words discover, thrive, and explore with goals on inclusive practices and transition to which I have a sticker proudly supporting these on my computer. I can't think of a better way for students to discover, thrive, and explore than through ourmies and fast teaming models. My special education team and myself have been fully involved with the development of these models. My first year at Mountain View, starting in December of 2021, we had a few co-taught sections around English. Next year we will have grown to 24 co-taught sections providing all four levels of math and English and other core content areas. This is no doubt due to the Fastian model, the AC the academy model and the culture shift at Mountain View which supports and

155[Applause] incl. Next we will hear from Tara Holiday, Kevin Walters, and Chad Gundry. On deck we have Tyler Big Bigler, Julie Stler, and Craig Alstrom. Hi, I'm a Mountain View parent. I'm here to speak about them, Teens, and Block scheduling. I'm super excited about it. Like, I'm really, really excited about it. High five to the district. Um, change is hard. I totally get that. But the world is already changed and I want my kids to be ready for it. Block schedules give time and space to dive deeper. Um, thesemmies aren't rigid funnels into narrow careers. They're just a structure that's needed to actually practice critical thinking and wire your brains towards curiosity and problem solving and encompassing wisdom in the real world. It's just a bonus that they get to choose a career pathway for

156it. That's not the point. Um, it's necessary. These problems in the world don't show up in math and history prepackaged little boxes, right? [Applause] There's Hello, I am Kevin Walzers. I'm currently the cabinet making and architect drafting teacher at Mountain View High School. So, um you've heard a lot of concerns about the block scheduling inmies. I'm here to show my support for that. I have one of the best jobs in the district as the only wood shop teacher out of all the six high schools and I'm voluntarily giving that up to teach the academy class in design and engineering and production cuz I think it can make the difference that the kids need. So, um I've been part of the development for the last two years trying to figure out the best ways to do

157it, thinking about awesome projects that the kids can do. Um and then with the block scheduling we've gone from four sections of wood shop. So, next year we're going to have eight classes and we're going to reach over a hundred more students in Woodro because it allows for more electives to choose [Applause] from. Hello everybody. Um, my name is Chad Gundry. I'm a parent of three boys at Mountain View High School. You've all heard it all. We've been talking about Mountain View and so uh I'm a fan of uh the fast teams and and the academy, but I would say this. So, I moved here with my family of six from Houston and we came from a a very reputable school district, KDISD, one of the top in the country. And, uh, when we moved

158into the Mountain View area, I didn't know what we'd find, but I will say that I'm completely impressed by Dr. Oliver, by his staff, uh, his innovative approach to, uh, helping the kids learn in teams. Uh, I I have my kids are [Applause] in tall people. My name is Julie Steore. I'm a retired Mesa public school teacher. My children attended Mountain View and now my grandchildren are coming um very soon. Um I have a great um I've heard of great changes in the last few years um that have been changed that for the better in play and put in place by Dr. Oliver. Not only the atmosphere but the students positive demeanor and attitude. Students feel more invested and excited to have a voice in their learning and future success. These changes are preparing students

159better for their college and their career choices. Because of Dr. Oliver's mindset of what's best for kids or students. These changes were made possible. Thank you. [Applause] Hi, my name is Craig Olstrom and I have a daughter. I have four kids, but my daughter's currently a sophomore at Mountain View right now. And I just wanted to come and show support tonight for Dr. Oliver, the faculty at Mountain View, and so many of the awesome and innovative ways that Dr. Oliver is pushing to like raise the bar on excellent education here. My daughter had a rough junior high experience. She came into Mountain View and immediately went into a fast team's program and she actually quoted, she said, "It actually brought meaning to education for me in a way that I've never experienced that before." And

160I thought that was a pretty deep comment coming from my daughter. So, I just appreciate Dr. for Oliver, his team, and and everybody that's pushing for just a higher bar at Mountain View. And uh just wanted to be here in [Applause] support. Next, we have Sarah Nickel, Gretchen Ael, and Heather Austin. On deck we have Bonnie Drain, Christopher Woolly, and Steven Miner. Hi, my name is Sarah Nickel and I'm a mother of a freshman at Mountain View High School. I just want to um have the board I want to draw your attention to the information that Mountain View has presented to you tonight under their scheduling and operations readiness. The data presented shows high percentages almost 100% of all junior or all sophomores and freshmen enrolled in bothmies and fast teams. I wonder how this

161is a a point of readiness when teachers I'm sorry when parents and students were repeatedly told by counselors and the administration that these were required classes. Since you the board have not changed have not voted to change graduation requirements. These are not required classes and are not appoint Hi, my name is Gretchen Ael. I'm a parent to four current Mesa public schools students. Next year it will be three and the year after that too. and slowly my kids will all be going to charter schools if you proceed with the changes that are happening. I'm not afraid of change but believe change should be data driven and teacher and parent led fiscally responsible and and implemented carefully. My son is currently a in a fast team of one of the teachers who spoke tonight and he

162hates it. I'm also a proud product of block schedule um and I hated block schedule. The classes are too long. It's impossible for a student who has ADD to thrive in a 90minute class. Um, for every teacher who is here speaking in favor of these changes, I guarantee there's at least one teacher for every teacher that's in [Applause] favor. Good evening. I had a March 26th meeting with district superintendency as a result of threatening legal action because I believe my parental rights have been violated by not knowing what my freshmen will learn inmies next year. While I appreciate their time, I was disappointed that promises made in that meeting haven't been kept. The documents shared with me weren't created until 2 days prior under legal duress and that we still do not have specific details

163on key components, including the internship portion promised to parents as a major selling point. The district has 31 businesses listed on their education industry council. How many internships can they provide when our students will be competing for spots against more qualified college and EVIT students? Banner is on that list and already struggling to provide internships for current ASU nursing students. When asked, Dr. Forless said they don't plan to have meaningful internships for all 3,000 seniors at the five participating high schools. But how many internships do they have? How many have they currently secured? 10, 100? My name's Bonnie Drain. I am a teacher at Mountain View High School. Um, I'm retiring this this year and so I'm speaking for teachers who don't feel like they can re they can speak up. Clearly, there's a lot

164of teachers at Mountain View who I'm not speaking for, but I have had teachers from all across curriculums um email and text me and come by and talk to me and ask me to speak again about the fast teams. Um I know there's a lot of there's out of the eight fast teams that are in Mountain View, only four of them have been successful. Of over 24 teachers that have been involved in fast teams, only five teachers chose to come back as fast teams and be a part of the fast teams again. one ended up crying and is leaving teaching altogether because it was so um detrimental board. My name is Chris Woolly and I'm a parent of five children all in the Mesa public schools um including three that have or are attending the

165Mountain View High School. I just uh and one of our amazing teachers was Mrs. Bonnie Drain who spoke right before me. Um, I am here tonight in support of our principal, Mike Oliver, and the the changes that I believe are um headed in a great direction for our youth and our children um at Mountain View High School. Um, these are creative new approaches that I believe we should get behind. The world, as has mentioned, the world is changing and um I'm I'm in support. I I one thing about Dr. for Oliver is he cares and puts the children and the and the students first. And I love that about him. I appreciate that about him and I fully support him in this [Applause] endeavor. Hi. Um this is really hard to get up here. Uh

166my name is Steve Miner. Uh I'm a teacher at Mountain View. I'm a graduate of Mountain View. I have kids in the district. Um, some have spoken about the teachers who are opposed to some of the changes and I will agree that there are uh quite a few who have hesitations and I have my own hesitations but overall after a lot of time thinking about it. I am supportive as um somebody who spent a year on a fast team and took a year off. I'm going back and helping with themies next year and I love teaching as part of a team. It makes a huge difference for me. Um, I think the block scheduling, um, it allows more prep time for me to develop intentional lessons and allows more time in a single class period

167to delve into those lessons without our final three speakers will be Rachel Brostock, Cindy Magcguire, and Meg Howell. board members. Is it on? Board members, thanks for representing us at the Deis. We really appreciate it. We know your job's difficult. We appreciate your time that you put in. I really just am not appreciative right now of feeling like the district is undermining your authority as the board. Um, I'm a member of CCAP. I've been a member of CCAP for a long time. I feel like you guys keep saying that we voted on a lot of this block inmies and we haven't. We are voting on front-facing documents, not even pacing guides. We're we're voting on basic class descriptions that are in the um manual. They're not laid out as block inmies. Superintendency told you guys

168a month ago at the last meeting that everything was running up and well and it was great. Then last meeting they told you guys that we weren't running block inmies at these schools and then they've taken that back. We also were told in SCAK that you [Applause] guys even members of the board. I'm Cindy Magcguire. I've been a teacher for 23 years. This year I am new to Mountain View and it has been great. I have felt safe to ask questions, try innovative approaches um and when hiccups have occurred as they always do uh I have felt supported from colleagues, instructional coaches and leadership to find solutions that work. As an education professions teacher, it is my job to help students explore a path of working with students and inspiring future educators. I'm looking forward

169to implementing next year at Mountain View and being part of the necessary changes in education that is best for today's students. Thank you for your time and considering all voices on this [Applause] matter. Did you save the best for last? My name is Meg Howell and I've taught for 42 years. Uh 30 here in Arizona and 29 at Mountain View. I've loved my time in Mountain View and I thank the administration and the board for giving us this opportunity to speak tonight. The one thing that I come with you tonight as I'm ending my career is that we've gotten away from rigor and that comes partly from parents. Parents complaining that classes are too hard. Administrating administrators telling teachers to ease off and to back down. And I'm going to tell you right now, you're

170losing students to charter schools. The basis schools are strong because they are rigorous and they're killing us. We need to get back to rigor in the [Applause] classroom. My apologies. We have one more speaker. We have Darren Smith. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Darren Smith, class of uh 97 Mountain View. And uh my wife and I, Rebecca, have three daughters that have or are attending Mountain View currently. Uh and I'm here to talk comment on themies. The administration has not kept the parents informed ahead of these changes. Mountain View administration has said repeatedly that that the decisions uh to implement is based on studies they performed but I haven't seen the results of any studies. Board members I believe asked in previous sessions about about reports uh about uh the studies but I haven't seen

171anything so I'm not sure what what this is all based on. Um, we've been asking also for curriculum um, since freshman orientation when our daughter started attending. [Applause] Madame President, that is the end of our public comment. Thank you. Thank you all for your uh, comments tonight. We will go ahead and move on with our uh next item on our agenda will be on um this is the first reading of a policy requested by board member Benson. As a reminder, first reads of policy are for discussion only and do not include a vote on the policy. Mrs. Benson, since this is your agenda item, you requested you start the discussion. Thank you, Madam President. Um, I'd like to start with uh perhaps a better name for this policy would be um the parental rights policy

172or parental notification policy. Um, courts have substantially over time um affirmed that parents are assumed to be the best caretakers for their children unless they are proven to be unfit. So, we heard this evening during public comment that there are homes which are unsafe for students who are outed to their parents. That is not our call to make as teachers. If a parent has not been deemed to be unfit, it is not our call in a classroom to make that determination. Now, we can work on wording. I heard a couple of comments today at at public comment, a couple of um court cases for which I was unfamiliar that um I'd love for uh clarification. I'm not quite sure what um what those pol or I don't remember because 45 seconds went so fast and

173he spoke really quickly. I did not gather um or jot down I was not able to jot down the two uh cases he cited. So, We had parents that spoke. The whole notion of this policy is that parents have a right to raise their children the way that they see fit without interference from any government entity. We as American citizens also have a right to speak freely. When a government entity compels the speech of their citizens, uh that is actually a fundamental violation of first amendment rights. I am not advocating for mistreatment of anybody. Uh I believe our bullying policy takes care of that if it is followed with fidelity. And quite frankly, that's one of the biggest issues with our anti-bullying policy is that it is not followed with fidelity. Um, second or third,

174we can work on wording if that is the issue. Um, but I'd like to point you to subsection A. An employee or independent contractor of Mesa Public Schools may not knowingly address, identify, or refer to a student who is under the age of 18 by either of the following unless the school district receives written permission from the students parent or guardian. Why is under the age of 18 an important thing for me to point out? That's because they're a minor child. if they have not um exercised or attempted to uh sever the rights of their parents for themselves. They are under the authority of a parent. When I campaigned, this was my fundamental core issue, parental rights. This is the hot topic of the day. But my parental right, this parental rights um notion applies

175to anything. We as teachers, we as uh as uh people who are not directly related to these children do not have a right to interfere with the way a family wants to raise their f their children. We don't have that right. I uh as a Christian do not have the right to impose my Christian views on a Muslim let's say and if I prostilitize to them in uh in the core function of my duties as a teacher or even as a board member that would be inappropriate. Parents have a right to raise their children with their values and with their um love and concern. Courts have consistently upheld that right. This is a hot topic also from a federal um federal situation in the number of uh EOS and different potential uh codifications of law

176of of title 9 changes that are are uh administration is attempting to push through or actually a revert a reverting to title 9 as it was originally written in 1972 which was to protect girls and women and broaden their abilities and their access to scholarships, the ability to play sports. Um all of those all of those features are undermined when we do not protect uh parents' rights and we do not protect the rights of our girls who want to use a bathroom without the presence of a person who is a male by birth who walks into a bathroom because he thinks she he's a female. Now, uh those girls have a right to privacy and protection. Uh our our individual sex segregated spaces are there for a reason. So that's my intent in this policy.

177My intent in this policy is not that any student on any of our campuses be harmed, belittled, berated. Um but it is also to to push the notion that or or to establish the notion that um that one person's right quote unquote cannot infringe on the rights of another. So, I can appreciate a gender confused student who would prefer to be called by a name or a pronoun. And if you choose to to um to acquies with that, there's nothing against this that in this policy. You as an an individual uh assuming that our our parents are informed and kept in the loop as to what's happening on our campuses. uh if you feel it's respectful to use pronouns, nothing in this policy says you can't do it as long as parents are informed and

178they know what's happening on our campuses. So that is the intent of this policy. Thank you, Mrs. Vincent. Any other discussion on this policy? I have a number of um concerns. Um many of the um concerns that I have are of a legal nature. Um we have a number of um definitions in the um policy which are not accurate or factual or even medically sound. Um it's a it's a um a a real concern that it was the policy was called gender dysphoria and that trans folks are confused, desparing while, as we've seen tonight, many people have embraced their identity and many love them for it. One of the things that I'm I'm I'm really worried about is that of free speech and seemingly a first amendment right to bullying. Um I don't believe that

179that is ever our intention as Mesa Public Schools. I have problems in that the policy defines bullying when we already have policy 5-49 which would be in conflict with this definition. I believe our current policy is one of respect and clearly it is working. We've had many parents, many of our former students talk about how they have felt supported and respected because not just of a policy, but because of the people of Mesa Public Schools, because of staff, bus drivers, janitors, food nutrition workers, teachers, Having been a teacher and having known staff in Mesa public schools for 28 years, this district is about respect. And when we lose the respect for kids and their families, I I I really worry about us being able to keep our promise to this community to know kids by

180their name and to serve them by strength and need. Now, now I understand that there's some political issues here, but I think that's that's the core of what we're at. I'm I'm concerned that there are legal issues in this policy that we are going to need to deal with before we would even have a second read. And I'm not sure if everyone knows that not only do I believe it's in the best interest of the district, but also our kids and our families to get legal advice before we proceed. I think that's just a smart thing to do. But we also have an active lawsuit. Um, and that summary judgement has been now appealed. So, I don't know if it is really prudent for us to be even engaging in a discussion on the policy

181while we are um involved in a lawsuit. Bless you. You're welcome, sir. Um, so I'm with with fluid executive orders that are being challenged in the courts with a with with an appeal of a lawsuit with definitions that I'm not quite sure are are legal. I would I would request that we before we have a second read on this policy get legal advice because I I I would hate to put the district in a poor position, but more importantly, I'd hate to disrespect and not follow the rights of our kids and their families. So I I would request that before future discussion take place, we get legal advice. I'm afraid for the liability that the district would be under. Thank you, Miss Hutchinson. I hear that she is requesting legal advice. Is there any other

182discussion? Is there any others that would share that that we would to see legal advice on this? Yeah, I think that that seems like a wise move as a governing board. We have an obligation to make sure that any policies we create are in alignment with state statutes. Don't open us to lawsuits. And I think that we are in in danger of being discriminatory to say that we're only contacting parents of trans kids about their names and pronouns. We want to make sure that we're not treating students differently, that we're treating them with dignity and respect. And I I would also like to ask for legal advice. You know, none of us are policy writers. We've said that before. It's tricky when you bring a policy before the board. So I think that relying on

183our legal counsel would be a good move. Okay. And Madame President, I would not be in objection to that. Um I would request that our outside legal counsel, Udal Shremway, be the um entity from which we get legal counsel advice. Um I and I am aware that it would be at a cost. Yeah, I I actually was going to um I agree with that. I was going to make that suggestion, too. I think that like because the to explain everybody the board has their own legal counsel on retainer where sometimes the you know the district represents the district. Uh as board members we're entitled to receive our our own legal advice. So I I I also would be on board with getting you know some way for that. Um and I know that they already

184have that retainer too. So we're not taking funds away from other spending although legal funds can't be used for education. I just want to throw that out there. Uh and then on the case that um Mrs. Hut, board member Hutchinson referenced, there was no summary judgement on that case. So just wanted to clarify that. Uh summary judgement is when uh there's a a a motion uh granted without having a trial. That's that's not the correct legal term. Um there was a a a case but did not reach the merits of the case. So, um there were some other issues with standing, but I want to just want to clarify that so we don't have incorrect information floating around. And um I just can I uh have like just a a point of privilege just to

185say that I do appreciate everybody for coming tonight uh to the public comment and even if I don't agree with you, I will fight for your right to say what you want to say in the public meeting. I respect the first amendment. I respect our rights. I think that everybody should be able to uh peacefully make their opinions known to the board and I just want to commend Madame President for uh your conduct of the meeting. I think you did a really good job tonight with the number of speakers that we had. So, thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Chaffy, for keeping that going. Um all right. As this discussion has come, I think what I am hearing is we are requesting legal counsel with our outside legal source. So I will

186get with Dr. Foris and we will plan an executive session to have that meeting with UD Doll. Madame President, can I have a clarification? Um, do we we don't have to use UD Doll Shamway? I mean, I'm thinking if they're if they're just because we we know and we've used them in the past, are they are they going to be available? I I don't want to I I this is a a matter of urgency and I and I would hate to think I know that they know us and but if they're not available, we should be able to get legal counsel maybe from another firm. Is that is that agreeable? Do we have other attorney firms on retainer? Yes, we do. Okay. We'll leave that open-ended. We will plan an executive session with an outside

187legal and I will not specify um and because I've not done that before. Um and again with we all I love that uh we were reminded that we are not policy writers. Um when we get outside legal counsel do it it is strictly 100% in exec session. Correct. So like uh any Okay, never mind. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all for that. Oh, sorry, turn my mic off. Thank you for that discussion. We will continue on the uh review of the agenda. We'll now review the consent agenda. All items on the consent agenda are approved with one vote with no discussion. If a board member would like to pull a consent agenda item, please do so now. Seeing none, thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel request, including

188the addendum? So move, Madam President. Do I have a second? I'll second it. Any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? I I need to take some Tylenol off. Yeah, I have a headache. Can I um just add a comment on the point of privilege on the consent agenda? Um so, we haven't voted yet. Oh, the votes when the vote is done. Sorry. No, you're good. Wait a minute. With a vote of 50, we have approved the personnel request including the addendum. So, um on these items, I feel like that uh we've kind of strayed away from previously when our consent agenda items had a more information. And so I'd just like to make a request to the district that uh we kind of go back to adding uh additional details

189into the consent agenda items where we'd say, you know, what what it's for, what happens if we don't approve it, you know, why why this change. I I feel like uh some of these items I was comfortable with them and and they're kind of basic, but I feel like we're lacking in some of the details that we were trying to get before. So, I just want to make sure all the superintendency knows that that's still I think what what we're looking for in these items so that we don't have to pull them to ask questions. Okay. All items listed will be considered as a group and will be approved with one motion. If board member would like to spotlight or comment on a consent agenda item, please do so after the vote. Do I have

190a 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. Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? It's okay. We're going to take a break. Right. With a vote of five to vote five to zero, we've approved the consent agenda items according to the recommended action for each item. Before we move into our proclamations, we're going to take a five minute break. Um we will meet back here at we'll say 8:41. I know we all love visiting and believe me, I would love to visit, but I think we probably should continue on with our meeting. like I will get back to you. Bring back [Music] Okay. I hate to break up the party, but we have business to do, but

191we don't want to be here till midnight. Yeah, please. Does everyone have I was kind of wait. We're going to go ahead and continue on with our meeting. We're up to you, right? Hold on. Let me let me get to that. Hold on. Oh, no. This isations. Yeah. Thank you. We are continuing on. We're at um agenda item number 10, proclamations. Do I have a motion to approve the proclamation recognizing April 21st through 25th, 2025 as bus driver appreciation week? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. It has moved moved and seconded. Any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, please take our vote. The vote of five yays. You have approved the proclamation recognizing April 21st through the 25th, 2025 as bus driver appreciation week. Mrs. Chaffy, as board clerk, will you please read the

192proclamation for us? Yes. I always tell my kids, this is why you have to go to school, so you can be a board member and read complicated numbers efficiently in front of people. Whereas each year, Mesa Public Schools bus drivers transport more than 14,099 students between home and school safely. And whereas each year 528 school buses and 27 student transportation vans driven by dedicated drivers travel 24,341 daily and more than 4,381,431 miles overall. And whereas without school buses and school bus drivers, many students would not have safe, reliable transportation to and from school. And whereas this responsibility is great in comparison to the available compensation. And whereas Mesa Public Schools believes it is important to salute and appreciate school bus drivers and recognize the invaluable contributions they make to education and safety. Now therefore, we

193do hereby proclaim April 21st through 25th bus driver appreciation week. We encourage everyone to join us in celebrating the contributions of our bus drivers, aids, and transportation staff. Thank you so much. We do love our bus drivers. Um, moving on. Do I have a motion to approve the proclamation recognizing April 21st through 20 25th, 2025 as public school volunteer week? So moved. Do I have a second? Second. Any discussion? Seeing none, Miss Kirby, will you please take our vote? The vote of 5 to zero. You have approved the proclamation recognizing April 21st through the 25th, 2025 as public school volunteer week. Mrs. Strappy, will you please read the second proclamation for us? Whereas parent and community involvement is a significant factor in the quality of our schools and the success of our students. And whereas

194we appreciate the dedicated volunteers who help teachers, administrators, and support staff in countless ways. And whereas volunteers reflect the highest values of our democratic society by representing people of all ages and all walks of life. And whereas volunteers reap the rich rewards that come from helping others. Now, therefore, we do hereby proclaim April 21st through 25th Public School volunteer week. We encourage everyone to join us in celebrating the vital work of our volunteers. We invite others to join our volunteer team to support our students and staff. Thank you so much. And we again are thankful for our volunteers and thank you Mrs. Chaffy for reading those for us. Moving on to our action items. Do I have a motion to approve the lease agreement with Polaris Academy at Roads Junior High School campus? So moved.

195Do I have a second? I'll second it. So we can move into discussion. Thank you. It's been moved and seconded to dis um and we can move into discussion. Uh any questions? Madame President, let me try to address some of the concerns that were shared tonight. Um, I want to first apologize. Um, and I really appreciate the the teachers who took their time to come and speak with us. Um, the timing of this didn't end up being ideal and communications is always a challenge when we're kind of in the process of something. So, um, this evening, uh, we were able to come to an agreement on a lease that we're bringing forward to you this evening. Um, and we didn't have a lot of time to get that communication out to the teachers and we

196apologize for that. But I want to assure you that um if you were to approve the the lease this evening, we have every intention of addressing some of the teacher concerns that you heard tonight. Uh we'll need to go in and do some renovations to uh Roads Junior High to make the student areas that they're concerned about acceptable, hopefully improved beyond their their current situation. So we understand that some folks are being displaced. Um we have quite a bit of square footage at roads and some of it will need to be addressed to accommodate the particularly the teachers that you heard from the art teacher, the science teachers, uh the maker space. We have every intention of of uh in fact we have a a walk scheduled if approved this evening uh to start that

197construction uh discussion and try to figure out what that renovation might look like. Um but we would not uh want to move these teachers into an inappropriate situation. Um so rest assured there is a plan to have uh an improvement to the campus so that both uh the roads uh junior high side is improved as well as uh the least space that Polar intends Polaris intends to inhabit. What is our capacity at roads? How many students do we have? Dr. We we can talk off the off the top of my head. I think roads sits around a capacity of 1300 kids. I will tell you that's for full capacity of the whole entire site. And I can tell you right now they were in our phase one cohort for portable removal because their utilization rate

198on the campus was uh well below 70% in terms of the space utilization that's available uh for for them on that campus. And I will also tell you cohorts in that region of students uh are not getting larger, they're getting smaller. So it it is very unlikely um while I can't predict the future. We try to predict that one three years out, it's very unlikely that roads is going to get larger uh at any near future point uh for the next couple decades. Thank you. We have very very I we've just very guesstimated at the cost of those renovations but uh rest assured that the lease would recover those costs plus uh additional funds. Um there there has not been a designation for the use of those funds. We typically don't do that with a

199school plant because that affords us the flexibility because it's actually that fund that we would use to maybe do some of the renovations to prepare the campus for the lease. Um but that wouldn't have been anticipated until the lease became something that was possible. So it I understand the sentiment of what are these monies designated for? They have to be used in some type of facilities nature. um for the most part they they tend to we tend to focus them on back onto the um uh upkeep of our facilities but they don't always go back directly to the site that so like a cell tower might be generating revenue on a particular campus that doesn't mean that campus is always benefiting um but um certainly it may benefit but we just don't guarantee it. We

200need some flexibility cuz sometimes the needs outweigh uh on a different campus that maybe cell phones uh cell phone towers aren't interested in and why why do they not get the money when somebody else does? All those kind of inequities come in place. So we try to keep it flexible and then bring forward to you a plan as to how we might use it at the time we need it. Mr. Thompson, we had a good conversation today and I appreciate your time. um you were able to answer a lot of my question um and Dr. Strom um I was worried about the impact uh on roads um and that this is a 10-year lease. So um uh I was one of my questions was that you know should uh roads need to reclaim space um

201if the need arises but apparently that probably is at least projections are that that's not going to be the case. Um I I am very concerned um hearing from the teachers. Um but I understand this the situation. Um but I would I would hope that um though you are an honorable man, Mr. Thompson, rest assured is not necessarily going to assure those teachers. So, what I'm going to what I'm going to suggest is is um that certainly I've been on the roads campus um quite a few times and it it it it could use some refresh and modernization and if if roads can um get the renovations needed, that would be great. But those teachers that came to us tonight, they ought to be apprised of of the possibilities and they ought to be included

202in the planning. Um it's their classroom, their space. It's obviously um a space that um they've created a great learning environment and um I would hope that um um that we make sure that the staff is included in that planning so that they're getting the facilities that would support the learning environment and the learning that's going on at roads. Madame President, uh member Hutchinson, I spoke to the principal this uh today and actually suggested that the walkthrough that we have tomorrow, if those uh teachers are available, that we get them included. This is very preliminary. We absolutely will include them in the planning and um I think you have the administration's uh public declaration that we will address this space uh so that those teachers have the appropriate learning environment. It'll be new. It'll be

203different. It won't be the same, but it will be uh renovated appropriately for the work environment that they expect for their students and for themselves. Okay. Thank you. May I follow up and just ask if we know um when the tenant is is supposed to occupy this space and then what do we have an estimate on the scope for time of the renovations? Madame President, uh, member Walden, I I don't have all those details. We will do the walkth through. Our intention is to get going quickly. That's one of the reasons we pressed for the lease to be on this agenda because the sooner we had the approval of the lease, the sooner we knew we were ready to move forward on considering the renovations. And so, um, we've got a little opportunity here to

204get started here in April to do that planning. not knowing the full scope, don't know exactly the timing, but we'd like to have uh the space um ready for the beginning of school, if not shortly thereafter. So, I'm hesitant to say we'll make the first day of school, but I think within a few weeks, we'll have a a full available solution. And uh we've already talked with Polaris about uh could could they help us accommodate um maybe some existing space for those teachers? There might be some transitional issues that I can't avoid in construction. Summer's too short. Yeah. And two months is just never enough to get everything done that needs to get done. But we'll do our best. And our operations and construction department has worked miracles before. So we're going to we're going

205to press on them. Hopefully we can get started in May, get through June and July. Uh we renovated uh Mountain View High School in one summer. Uh 8 80,000 square feet. So it is possible. Yeah. No, it's and I don't hold you to it. Like I understand, you know, we continue to have supply chain management issues. We'll probably still have supply chain management issues. We have a concrete shortage. We have construction worker shortages. We have all this building in Arizona that's hogging all of the contractors anyway. So, it's even hard to find people. That's why my concern about not committing to a Yeah. So, I mean I I hope people understand too that like if something you know is misses a deadline, it's it's not for lack of trying, but we have continue to have

206resource issues and we had that I remember in the beginning of the school year. I mean, we dealt with that all last summer and a lot of schools open with ongoing construction projects that was no one's fault was supposed to be done over the summer, but those were the issues that we had. Thank you. I have a quick question. Um is the rent um abated for the first year because they are doing the renovations? Yeah, they won't be able to open and have students. So we're we're kind of working with them to give them a a ramp up to operation operational time. Okay. Okay. So then if they choose the um to uh option after May of 2035 um the or and then option two if there were renovations necessarily necessary pardon me at that

207point um with the space that they are renting or leasing from us are they responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of that or would that fall on uh on the district? So, Madame President, uh member Benson, I want to say yes, but I want to uh maybe put that in a little bit context. Um so if they were to continue to make um capital improvements for their program within the facility, that's completely on them and up to them to finance and and take care of. We are um responsible for the systems that connect to that like the HVAC and the fire alarm and stuff like that. That's still on us because there's just simply no way for us to separate. This is not all separate buildings. So we can't pull all that apart. Now, they

208will be paying for utilities. They will, but any capital improvement needs to stay within their square footage and they're responsible for that work. Thank you. I know that these these partnerships pose challenges and opportunities and I appreciate you coming with information willing being willing to come back with more information as we explore these. I know that we are just in a situation in Mesa public schools where we have a lot of real estate and we need to explore unique ways to bring in funding and I know that that will help our schools going forward. Um, so thank you for coming with some unique opportunities and I just appreciate my board members asking great questions because I think that that's how we're going to make sure that we have the right partnerships and that we continue

209to look for opportunities while still preserving the uniqueness of our campuses and the things that our our teachers and our students really want in those communities. I'm sorry Madam President, I have one more question uh glancing through. So Polaris is an educational organization. Uh they are private though, correct? They are private. So do they follow the same um requirements for screening teachers, staff members? Do they have to um file or um be fingerprint clearanced as a private organization? And if they're not as a private organization because they're going to be on campus with our students on roads, are we going to make that a requirement? So, I know private entities don't necessarily follow the same guidelines or practices that are mandated for public schools. Madame President, member Benson, we have Polaris here this evening. I

210think I'd be more comfortable letting them answer that question this evening. if you'd like to come up to the mic. Thank you. Please introduce yourself. Uh good evening. Uh my name is Nathan Palmer. I'm a co-founder and CEO for Polaris Academy. I guess my son kind of started it all. U to answer your question, um yeah, we do we I don't know if we're required to follow those same same standards, but we do. Um and I would have no objection to that being a stipulation if you wanted that to be included. Um, we we hold that safety of our children to the highest level I can because my my boy is there. So, that's not a concern of ours at all. Perfect. I would like that as a stipulation. Uh, I don't know if it

211needs to be added into this lease agreement and I don't know if my fellow board members are, but I I would like to make it's always better if it's in writing. Madam President, I would suggest that um we approve the lease this evening and if we uh we can look at whether we need to amend or add some additional language, we can bring that back. You've already heard that they're willing to to agree to that. But in the interest of moving forward on timing, correct? Um I'd appreciate that. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you so much, Dr. Stum. Yeah. me. Um, President Davis, members of the board, I I want to make sure you know, I just looked up 1178 is the capacity of road. So, I was close to 1300. They currently are at about

212600 students. So, that you can put the utilization in in perspective there. I I want to be clear with the community as I step into this new role. We're going to use every opportunity in Mesa Public Schools to attempt to keep all these local community hubs of learning open as long as we possibly can. And I want everyone to hear, we're going to try to find every opportunity to partner with organizations that make sense for Mesa Public Schools to partner with so that we can continue to provide learning experiences for kids in the neighborhoods in which they are born and raised. And and so I just I want everyone to rest easy on the fact that we're even at the district level going to look at the utilization of our space at the district level

213over the course of the next year. And you're going to see adjustments at the district level on how we use space. So we can also on top of it look at our district space and how we lease district space to outside educ educational institutions and non-educational institutions. In short, the same sacrifice we're asking of our teachers, we're going to ask of ourselves. And you will see product of that over the course of the next year real quickly out of superintendency members out of the fourth floor R&D department. you will see us at the district level making a distinct move so that you can know that we are making every move possible at the district level and also trying to explore all opportunities at the school level for these types of partnerships. I think that's so

214admirable. I just have to have to add that if I may just, you know, there's a lot of schools closing right now and and it's not just public schools. It's it's charter schools too. A big charter chain closed schools. They they fired teachers at spring break. Teachers were told that they weren't going to come back after spring break. We saw schools close at spring break. And the last thing anybody wants is disrupted education. Like I think I told you about how mad I was that I'm like, why can't you just stay open till the end of the year? Like really? You're going to shut down in spring break? And and so I just appreciate all the work that's going into that. And I know that last year the board set those guard rails that, you

215know, if if school closures come, it's going to be the last resort, but I really appreciate this outside the box thinking and the extra work that the district is doing to find ways to not disrupt those schools and and also for the homeowners. I mean, the school closure impacts property values, too. It impacts the the spirit and the direction of that community. So I I think it's great that we're doing looking at all these other avenues and and also I uh u Polaris is serving autistic and neurode divergent kids. This is a this is an amazing benefit to um Mesa. It's being led by one of our great former principles, Aaron Casmik, whom we trust, we know. Um this is I think this is a really great educational opportunity as well. Um where we serve

216the needs of as we say of all kids. Um so um I think maybe we're ready for a vote. Madam President, real quick um I because I read it a lot of times that sometimes you come fingerprints are included. There is a statement, tenant shall comply with the administrative code 9-5-203 fingerprinting and background check or such other applicable laws as may exist relating to fingerprinting and background checking of its employees, contractors and vendors. It's in the agreement. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. And thank you board for and supery discussion. I think we're good. Um, Miss Ker, will you please take our vote? with a vote of five to zero. You have approved the lease agreement with Polaris Academy at Roads Junior High School campus. And thank you for Players for being here tonight to answer questions.

217We appreciate you. Um we are going to move on to our discussion items. Uh Dr. Christy Glassmire will start the discussion items tonight with a presentation on the progress towards Mesa public schools college and career readiness indicators which is CCRI as part of the progress monitoring toward the B board goal of each comprehensive high school achieving a score of 18 points out of 20 on the Arizona Department of Education's college and career readiness indicator. Dr. Glassmire, it's all you. Thank you so much for that introduction. That was like perfect. That covered like my first several slides. So, let's keep on moving. Okay. Good evening everyone. I'm going to skip the long version of that. I apologize. I'm not trying to be disrespectful on that. Um just so we can get into things if I can

218hit this. So college career and readiness indicators are part of our accountability. Um they we are going to focus tonight on the 9th through 12. So the traditional model for accountability of which CCRI counts for 20% or 20 points of that 100 point pie. So, I'm going to try and simplify this only because we use points and scores and red and blue and purple, all these different codes. Um, so basically this piece, every single student that falls as being part of a cohort, so they are enrolled from October to May at a single school in their senior year. they can get points for pretty much a whole bunch of different things that are lined up with college and career during the course of their four years in high school or three if they graduate early.

219Um, so this score here that they're going to get, the CCRI score is either a zero, a 10, a 20, or a 22. So yes, you get 20. You could get 22 points for the school, but they cap it at 20. There's a little bonus point in there. The bonus point actually aligns with our mission, which is that students represent that they're a college and career ready. So, how do they line these up with the indicators? There are different categories that they score points in. So, the college points are blue points, the career points are red points, and the purple points can count for either. And your goal is to get at least one point in college or career or two points total. Or the bonus point comes in when you get at least one

220in college and at least one in career. And then you get you become a student that has a score of 22. That's the context to begin with. I know it's a lot. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Okay. So in our college points, we have the options of several different categories. So basically, a lot of them line up with your high stakes testing, your ACT, um your APs, your IBS, KIPP is another one for foreign languages. Um we also do ACUPPLACER and Ed Ready, which is one of the ones that our community colleges use. So that's a great opportunity for our students. Um the other one is college level courses. So we obviously offer college level courses in this district. So that is a great opportunity as well for our students. So we fulfill quite a

221few of these different categories as far as opportunities and access for our students within Mesa Public Schools. Each one has a varying amount of points associated with it. Um courses individually they're a half a point and then you can get a total of a maximum of two points. So obviously for students who are drastically headed in the direction of college, they rack up the points in this category. You'll see students with over seven points in this category. No problem. In our career points or our red points, this is where our CTE classes come in. This is where our TSA certifications come in. This is where our credentials come in. This is where out of sequence CTE courses come in. Uh ASVAB which is a military test comes in and the ACT work keys which are

222also a measurement that we actually get from the students taking the ACT they get an ACT works work keys score as well. And then the workbased learning. So this pulls in all of those career pieces. So obviously if a student gets more than one point here or one or more points here and one or more points in college then they're that bonus 22 score for their CCRI. Our purple points include FASA and diploma seals. There's four diploma seals that are offered at the state level and then we also have taking FASA and completing the FASA. So these characteristically, just for a little bit of context, typically fall, they do sometimes count for blue points for students because it's on the student level, but sometimes most times they count for the red points and they offset

223that. Okay. So now we're going to get into some of the trends and the data with all of that information. And please keep in mind, last year we did presentations out to all of our high schools with their information and walked through this and we took like an hour to do it. So please be aware there's a lot of little pieces in here. So we'll have questions at the end. That's fine. Okay. So now starting with the average CCR CCRI score. So basically takes every single student gets a score of 0, 10, 20 or 22 and you get the average for the school and that's what they get for their CCRI. Over the past three years, we have been d we have been increasing over time. So our range is a little bit wider now.

224However, in that last 2024 year, however, we're in this incline. So we're headed exactly in alignment with where the governing board is looking for us to head. Okay. So we have ranges. Last year we had 3,761 students and the scores of the schools range between 17.4 and 20. So we had a school that maxed out. It's important to realize also what's happening with our students. Remember they can fall in one of four buckets. zero point zero score student a 10 score student 20 and 22. So you'll see from this graph we're really declining the number of zero point kids which is awesome. And then we're getting them not just out of zero points but we're getting them to 10 points which means they have to have one point across any of those categories which some

225of them it's like a 0.25. So they have to do it four times like like get get it four times in order to get one. So that is an achievement. Do we need to move them maybe up a little bit more in order to hit the governing board goal? Yeah, probably. And does that create more opportunity and represent more access and opportunity for our kids? Absolutely. So we see a decline in 20, but we see this increase in 22. So there's a combination of offerings as well as how we're pulling in and centralizing our data because remember our goal this year has been to streamline data and we started working on this process last year and this was one of the big ones that we hit last year in trying to pull all of those

226pieces together through our collaborations. So looking at them specifically broken down by our college points and our career points. This is our trend for our college points. So students earning zero points in college has declined drastically. Our students earning between 0.1 and 0.9 points has increased one point which is remember that's the important one if you want to get that bonus 22 points. That's gone up to 29% of our students. And then two or more points. We still have over 50% of our students gaining two or more points within the college listed indicators. That then is also combined with our career points. So once again, we're declining our zero point students, which means students are all having access and opportunity to fulfill one of these. Again, all of them are helping with that trajectory later

227on in life. 0.1 to 0.9 points. We're declining that. They're shifting up to one point and two points. And now we've got two or more points at 46%. And remember that one point in red combined with that one point in blue gets us that 22 score for that student. So we're seeing an increase there as well. So we're headed in the right direction definitely. Our big highlights since there's all these indicators listed out ACUPPLACER and Ed Ready scores. We went from 105 students to 3969 96 students who had scores that qualified them because there's a cut score. A lot of these tests have cut scores. So, they have a minimum score that you have to hit in order to get the point. It's not just you walked in the door, put your name on a

228paper, and you got the point. You actually have to hit a minimum score. CTE completions with the technical skills assessment and you have to pass with a certain score on the TSA is also increasing. Armed services vocational aptitude battery or what we call ASVAB which is that military test has increased from 29 to 370 students. And that is one of the ones that that one's a little tricky. The principles can probably vouch for that. That one's a little tricky to schedule. Um, so getting your students that access to that one has a career piece with it. So just like the ACT, they use that career piece as well as the ASVAT, they can go ahead and learn more about their career opportunities and the direction they're heading. So great opportunity. FASA stayed mostly the same.

229it only changed by about 2% and that's also very very important to note because it opened later and it was more complicated it was different etc. Um Arizona diploma seals has grown to 213 students earning that diploma seal and that is the end of my presentation I am ready for questions. Thank you Dr. Glassmire board. Uh any questions? I have a quick one. Um is there um a lot of overlap between the one point earning in the college readiness and the one point earning in the career? Those are the kids who get 22 points. Yes, correct. So is there so is is there overlap in the 30% that are earning one point for the career? How much of an overlap I guess is my question. So is it so are they only getting one point

230or are they are they the kids that end up with 10 or 20 points or are they the kids that end up with the 22? Yeah. So the the 22 would be a direct overlap of you've earned one point for career, you've earned one point for college. So career is 30%. Y uh I'm assuming that was last year and college was 29%. So, how much of an overlap is it like is there 15% overlap that I have to go look. I didn't I didn't pull that out. Okay. So, but I can look that up. And then is the uh this is kind of a a pretty I think it's a fairly dramatic drop from 70% of students who are earning two points um to for college readiness going from 70 down to 56. Do we

231know what that is attributed to? So, we do have several within the college end. We do have remember that they're more of the high stakes tests. Keep that in mind. Um, so they're a little bit here, there, and the other place. Um, so there are drops across what we already know are ACT proficiency or highly proficient. Again, those are cut scores. Um, so those play a role. they're they probably play the biggest role because you have a smaller sampling of population that take the SAT. You have a smaller population that takes the AP and you have a smaller even smaller population that takes the IB because we offer it at one campus. So when you look at those pieces, one of the things that we're going to be focusing on this year is also looking

232at the opportunities for ed ready because that high stakes testing environment of the ACT isn't necessarily the best fit for all of our students. So we're going to be looking at what are the other pieces that we can offer our students that would qualify them and give them something that's less of a high stakes piece in order to get those points in there. Does that Okay. So, are we are we having fewer kids uh take college level courses, dual enrollment or AP? Uh, no, not significantly. 16 fewer over the course of three years for AP. And remember, there's a cut score with that. They have to pass three or higher. Um well well that's for AP but down here for college level courses um passes a college level we have an increase in those students

233pardon me we have an increase in those students but are they not getting an AB and C therefore they're not potentially earning their half point per we don't have a decline in that category at all so that's not that's not where we're losing okay anything if that makes sense. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you. I I just wanted to clarify. I couldn't tell if Dr. Stum was going to push the button or not. He looked like he was ready to. I I I will proceed with my comment after you get done. I knew you were. Um I just wanted some clarification on the cohort. So the 2024 these are students who graduated in 2024. We're comparing graduating classes in those cohorts based yes it's based on it's based on that cohort and the students who

234so you can if they graduate their junior year they still count in that cohort 2024 but the other stipulation is that they have to be enrolled in that school from October 1 to May 1 without more than a 10day gap. So there's it's not everybody who comes in your door. It's more aligned with full academic year studentsish, but there's there are stipulations on that. I love the details. I love that you know all the nitty-gritty details. I love it. Great. President Davis, members of the board, I just two brief comments. You know, the college and career readiness indicators index was designed a decade ago primarily by Cal Baker who was on the state board at the time. He's the superintendent, longtime superintendent in Vale. And and one of the things that we wish we had

235had at that time when we were designing that because I was part of the ATAC team that helped design it is we wish we had had all the research that subsequently has come out that has suggested really clearly that college readiness and career readiness are kind of identically the same thing. In other words, the predictors on ACT that predict kids ready for college are the exact same predictors that predict kids ready for the work workforce. And so when you're working across a system to help kids prepare for post-secary education or post-secary careers or uh post-secary vocational education, the fact of the matter is the same predictors predict readiness across a variety of those things. And that would have been helpful because we could have avoided the terminology college and career and just talked about how

236about getting ready for life, right? So, so that's that's the first thing I want to say. The second thing I want to say is when we talk students in this district, we're going to have to start and and I hate to do this from a terminology point of view, but we're going to have to be really careful because a decrease of 16 students in AP can actually be a per capita increase because we're declining in enrollment across our cohorts right now. So, we're going to have to start really thinking. This is April 11th. We have board retreat. We'll talk about these ideas. Uh, but we're going to have to start strategically thinking about what is an increase and what is a decrease cuz counts could go down, but really they the access and opportunity for

237kids on campus has gone up. Um, because we're dealing with just maybe fewer students. I looked at Skyline, fewer students at Skyline. So, we'll work through all those details and those are kind of the two things that were going through my going through my mind as I was thinking about what Dr. Glass Meer was saying. Yeah. And they are broken down by school. So, overall that's across the entire district. So we have some schools that went up, some schools that went down and overall with those 16, it's a 0.05%. So it's small ins. Well, I'm not comparing it to anything, so I'm not going to say that. Thank you. Thank you. Any other discussion? Go ahead. I just had a couple of other questions. You mentioned that Sorry. No worries. You mentioned that one of

238our schools had maxed out their score. Which one of our schools had maxed out their score? Mountain View. Okay. And this is not really a question, but I would love, well, maybe it's a question, it's a request. We had mentioned at a few board meetings ago that we would love to start tracking dual enrollment credit earned, not just students enrolled in dual enrollment. So, as we go through these data systems, that's something I'd love to see in the future is are they not just taking the classes, are they earning the credit, are they paying the fees, doing all those things? Because I know we're really working hard to provide more access. We are actually we just had a very great meeting with MCC today um to break down some of those silos and barriers um

239so that we can look at access to that information um and what those conversations would look like and how we can better serve our students with that kind of information. So we are we are breaking down barriers left and right and looking to streamline these data systems in order to be have more information so we can make some better informed decisions. Thank you so much. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you so much Dr. Appreciate it. We will move on to our next discussion item. Um next Dr. Foris will give the board an update and clarification of current college and career academy implementation. My bad. Thank you very much, Madam President, members of the board. Uh on March 25th, we had a conversation about college and career uhmies and it was

240getting late into the evening and we had lots of really great questions and um we had we'd shared some misinformation or not all of the information. So this is an opportunity to a graphically show where we are with our college and careermies across Mesa public schools and also to take a peek into the work that is happening this year at Skyline and Westwood. So our two principles are here. Dr. uh Mendes and Dr. Gilmore are going to u share some stories about those data points that you're looking for on how is this working and what is what what is success. So I'd like to start as I always do uh talking about our promise. We've talked a lot about our promise this evening and in 2017 our governing board adopted this promise. That was the

241same year that I came to Mesa Public Schools as the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. One of the data points that I took a look at when I started um preparing for this new role was our graduation rate was uh 75.3%. That meant that we were leaving 25% of our kids behind and we were not delivering. We had we had a long way to deliver upon the promise of all kids being ready for college, career and community. So that promise prompted us to engage stakeholders and ask what does it mean to be college, career, and community ready? Because I was really worried about that 75.3% graduation rate. So we had a large stakeholder engagement that came back with a portrait of the graduate. All of that was driven by the need to increase our

242graduation rate and we knew that we had to change instruction. That's where we see the attitudes and skills within our portrait of a graduate. From there, we um from there we said, "All right, so here we go. We've got a plan. We've got to get going on this." So, I will tell you that last year, our graduation rate was 81.7%. Still not we're far from done. 81.7% is not meeting the governing board goals and we've got a lot of work to do. So the redesign of our high schools actually in my mind began in 2017 when we were said what are we going to do to increase that graduation rate from 75.3%. And it is not just an easy one-time pick a curriculum. We can't professionally learn our way to increased graduation rates. We had

243to redesign our systems to deliver upon our promise because our current systems weren't getting us there. So you are going to hear from um Dr. useless in just a moment around where we are with our college and careermies block scheduling as well as um I'll just click to the next slide as well as what our grading practices look like by each high school. So I'm going to run the clicker over to Tracy and this uh chart is our um is the reaction Oh, thank you Courtney. Um our reaction of let's make this very clear to our community so that we can eliminate misinformation. And the one thing that I want I know that uh Dr. Eless will talk about but I want to be very clear that on this chart you will see as we

244have schools that that are working through a redesign we are focusing on teaming in 9th grade and we're focusing on college and careermies for next year in 10th grade. Only 10th graders will be in college and careermies next year. So, I think that's part of a misconception that we need to um continue to work through and make sure that not only our governing board members, but our uh community understands that. So, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Eastless who's going to walk us through this chart and more. Thank you, Dr. Foris. Madam President, members of the board, um as you can see, I'll be clicking through a couple of slides to show you where we are right now at school by school, our six comprehensive high schools, and then where we're headed to

245um next year. And as Dr. before mentioned um there have been some misconceptions about um you might have heard wall-to-wall academyy's implementation this year implementation next year and you'll see very clearly from this chart um Dobson m Dobson Mountain View and Red Mountain on this chart in particular um have no college and career academy implementation at the 10th grade. Um, Mountain View has a little bit of uh working with that teameing in terms of the activate in the English um language arts um academic standards, but you'll see as I continue to go through these charts that this year we have some intentional phased in um modeling of what those look like. Um, every every high school in our district has freshman teams with the um exception of Mesa High. And most of those freshman teams

246have been working with our career exploration curriculum and resources. And you'll see also on this chart here with these four particular schools, we've outlined specifically which schools are in block scheduling. Um what that grading practice looks like in terms of whether they're using the standardsbased learning and reporting system or if they're using a traditional gradebook as a reporting grades. Um we're all measuring progress of students and their proficiency on state standards. Um but you'll see exactly how they're being reported in this chart. And then which schools again are in that block schedule. There we go. Um Skyline and Westwood are our furthest along this year in terms of where they are. And you'll see themies that they have, I guess, piloted because again, they're not our full implementation of what that college and career academy

247model looks like, which are based around those small practice, those small learning communities, the teaming, the cohorting, um, and what those core academy courses and those themedmies look like. But you'll see here in this chart, Skyline and Westwood are implementing some form of that at 10th and 11th grade. And you'll hear from them later today, later tonight. So, um I'm not going to go into detail with that. And then you'll see that um in their grading practices, Skyline is using a traditional grade book, but their teachers are still looking at standardsbased reporting and collection of evidence around that. But again, the implementation this year, all of our high schools have really taken a look at what their community needs were, where their teachers readiness skills were, and these two schools were the ones that were

248most forward. And then the other schools took more time um to develop that plan. All schools their focus was around that teaming and that cohorting of students and really helping teachers understand how to work together and collaborate and start working towards um this model. So, this is what next year will look like. And um you'll see that we've linked all of the schools communications and what their map roadmap looks like for next year as they move into again at these sites um the 10th grade academy models. continuing with the freshman teams, that freshman seminar class where teachers have been coming together to work on revising what that curriculum looks like. That will be ready for CCAP review at the end of this month. And um you'll see then also in terms of the schoolwide grade

249books, they will all be moving back to or currently will maintain what that traditional grade book looks like. And then you'll see the block schedules there. Dr. Teresus, can I just make a quick statement? Moving to a traditional grade book means that they they might still be using standardsbased learning, but they might be reporting in a traditional grade book. Absolutely. Yes. And then again, here is Skyline and Westwood. Further along, they'll be expanding to the 11th grade. And you'll again hear from those principles this evening around um what that looks like and continuing with those freshman teams. And now I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Gilmore. Man, that's an added pressure, that clicker. Hopefully I could do it. So, uh, thank you all for inviting us here, uh, this evening to talk about

250our Westwood journey. And this isn't just a journey, I would say, for uh, Westwood, but it's included our community. It's included our sister schools that I'm just so proud to work aside. U it's working beside our superintendency. But where are we right now? Because um you know, as you can see, we're a little bit further along the line. But I'm going to talk about uh where we're going next year and just a little bit about our journey. I want to start off with our teaming evolution timeline and that really began with what Dr. Fora said in 2017 when she came here and the the the promise that was made and developed. And I got to give credit to the administrative team uh that was before me, you know, with Mr. Lynch and I know uh

251Mr. Long was there at the time and they started in uh 2018-19 when I first began at Westwood. They start started the success team launches and I have everything in orange there. Um and you can see there's orange throughout it and that's just to show the progress that we've made and the changes that we've made and developed as we have learned on this teaming evolution that we have done. And this learning is not just by the administrative team. It's the from the input of the staff, um, our teachers, it's from our community and our students on how to make this better. So to get to where we're at right now. So that's why everything's in orange in 2018. Started real small. You know, we had three teams, 90 students, and uh, uh, you know, it

252grew from there. We had success teams, and you see DPL up up there, that's deeper and personalized learning. We were starting to look at problem based learning, inquiry, project based learning on those teams so that you could do those cross-curricular units so that students could see meaning in their learning. They could see meaning what of math to science and English to uh uh world history. U so we started that real big journey there. But you can see in March of 2020 um you know the the the pandemic began. And one of the small little um success stories that I like to see that I like to talk about that we don't hear about a lot is that we know that there is that isolation uh problem that was going on. You know, teachers were isolated,

253students were isolated. Uh we saw different stories coming out of those teams that went online, they still felt like a community, the teachers still had a community. U they knew they had a system of support when they went online. And so that's just a a great story that's out there. And then in year three we have DPL department uh deeper and personalized learning. We had interest based. We thought of doing an art academy. We had Miss Cole and I think that's when uh Miss Hutcherson you came over and you're really interested in what she was doing. Uh we had athletics, we had AVID, we had agriculture. So we were trying to get that the interest of our students into um interestbasedmies there. And um again we were going through the pandemic online and in person.

254Um it was you know a pretty rocky uh uh year for us and I think some of themies actually had to dispand because um I was talking to Miss Campbell our AP of registration and I believe we did a master schedule two or three times that year and just to do it once is a monumental feat but to do it three times and so we had to change some of the things that were going through it but we stuck with it. We knew that our students needed that system of support uh while they're going through the pandemic. And then coming out of it, you know, we just knew that we had so many students that had the loss of learning u that haven't been in school. They needed to be part of a community. Uh

255we didn't want to just plop them onto a campus of 65 acres and 3,300 students and say good luck your freshman year because we know there's so much uh uh um success indicators through the freshman year through going through algebra. um you know we want them to uh to to pass the class and understand the standards that gives us a good predictor of what's going to happen in four years. Um you see uh that we've done wallto-wall deeper and personalized learning freshmanies. Uh we started strengthening it. Uh we had split schedules. Uh we weren't just doing an AM and PM schedule. But you can see this journey that's going on and and so I could say that that's where we are um you know a little bit for a little bit forward uh than other

256schools is because we've been on this journey for a little bit longer and we're involving as uh many multiple stakeholders as possible and uh we know what it's like to be in the rooms, you know, with parents and going through this. I'm looking at Miss Davis here because there is multiple, you know, parent group meetings that we are in that we know that other schools are going through right now just to understand what's going on. But, you know, we value the the input that we've had of our parents and of our students and our staff going through this because it is different. But the ultimate goal is that we succeed in our AMA public schools promise and that we get the kids ready for uh they graduate and they're ready for college and career and

257be in our community. So, we're that's just our journey. I know there's we could talk about it for for for hours, but I don't think you're ready for that. So, we've landed on this and this is through the input of uh many stakeholders and our students. Uh three out of the four uhmies that we have at Westwood are basically in need uh with the Arizona economy. So, this is what they're telling us that uh is needed when uh uh students graduate from high school, they go to college. We need kids in engineering, manufacturing, uh the STEM academy uh that we have. We have the Academy of Digital Media and Creative Arts, uh, Health and Human Services. We know that's a big need. Those are the three out of the four that I would say that

258are all aligning to Arizona's, uh, economy. The fourth one there, you're probably saying, well, what about public service and leadership academy? We know many in our in our community want to serve. They want to do nonprofits. We know the city of Mesa has wonderful jobs, police and fire, nonprofits, child crisis center that just opened down the street from Westwood. many great careers that are there and through this it's all aligned through the Arizona State University public service and next generation service corps and if you're accepted into it that's a full free tuition waiver at Arizona State University. So while you might say yeah three out of four align to the economy of Arizona the fourth one aligned to you know the college at ASU and if kids get u accepted into that next generation they

259could get that full tuition waiver. So that's a pretty exciting thing for our students. So, here they are. I'm not going to show all these videos, but what's been great is that this digital media uh um um academy, they put together all four videos there. They went out to the differentmies. They did the work. These are 10th graders work. All right? And they I think they did a great job. They got the voices of the students and they got the voices of the teachers just to talk about and give a high level overview for our for our families and for our staff and for the community of what's going on. So, hopefully you guys all take the time to watch those videos. want to talk about a little some of the success rates um um

260that we are seeing you know at Westwood. Um this is our uh semester 1 data for algebra 1 and we know that this is one of our key indicators that uh we want to see so that uh we can maybe give some predictions for our four-year graduation rate but we had an 88% algebra 1 passing rate and the data that you're starting to see here is uh the voices of the students that failed. So, I have a couple uh we're fortunate to have the ASU MPS uh interns. So, we have future leaders that are on our campus that are as our teachers. And I said, go find those other students and get their thoughts of what's going on, you know, on these teams. And this is their this is their answers that are going out

261there um from those students that failed the class. And I think one of the ones that I like to highlight with our teachers is that piraphph right in the middle. Students supported by their teachers. This is what they're telling them. 93% okay of the students that failed algebra 1 said hey do you still feel like you're supported by your teachers in this academy model and that's their answer and yes so that's a testimony to the power of our educators that we have at at Westwood High School but others that are you know going through this journey as well I also want to show English right there uh 93% pass rate right there um with that and again they went through and uh collected the data from our uh uh uh the students that failed uh

262English and um I just wanted to talk about how successful this we have seen. So of theundred let's see here 224 students failed first semester English 8. Okay, let me read that again. 224 students that came to us failed English 8 in their first semester at Westwood with the this uh academy model. We had 75 that failed. All right, that's where we're at the 93%. Okay. Now, with algebra 1, we had 91 students that failed algebra 1 at semester 1. 194 of them failed in in in uh in the eighth grade. Okay. So, we're seeing drastic decrease of the failure rates. The kids feel like they're successful and they're getting the help that they need. So, that's something I just really want to highlight with the data that we have collected um from our students

263and I really appreciate our interns for going out there and uh collecting this data for us. Dr. Strong, talk about attendance a little bit. We we we constantly get asked questions of what data systems we're developing at the district to monitor school and student outcomes and uh we are currently developing in uh PowerBI PowerBI a Microsoft product. There's other products you can develop in like Tableau and and our data engineering and our data architecture is getting better and better as a district. We're still not where I'd like to be. Uh but uh it's getting better. And so all we're trying to show you here is we are have been we want the community to know we have monitored attendance rates all year long. Uh there's a difference between chronic absenteeism and daily attendance rates. And

264so if you look at the far right, what we notice in Westwood this year, I think that's an 84% up to 88%. So their daily attendance rates up 4% this year. So we want the public to know we do monitor these data sets. We have them built in PowerBI. We then deploy these dashboards out to schools so they can ma they can measure what we call the ABCs of of education, attendance, behavior, content mastery. Onto the next one. This brings up the per capita comment earlier. So on the behavior side we have you know the ability to ma uh monitor all incidents major incidents and so what we know at west westwood this year is as of third quarter in a third quarter there are 469 incidents this is all incidents and when you put

265that on a per capita level but there's 22 incidents per student in 2324 and20 incidents per student in 2425. This is all incidents. There's another measurement with majors uh that is even more drastic than this but that's about a 10 10% decline in behaviors when you look at it a per capita basis. So I would like to talk about some of those other indicators that were drastic. Uh Dr. Stum semester one uh 2023 to semester 1 of 2024 with aggression we saw a 31% decrease. Okay. Semester 1 of last year to semester 1 of this year. alcohol and drugs uh we saw a decrease of 48% and defiance a 27% decrease semester 1 to seme from 23 to 24. So that's just uh you know we have a lot of things that are going on

266board you know um you could talk about block schedule you could talk about vape sensors the security you know uh this the teams th those are all the things that are um contributing to this so just something that we need to celebrate attendance video here now I might need some help with this one Chad okay Chad and you've taught in a one teacher one classroom model prior to teaching being on a team. Um, how do you is there any difference in chronic absenteeism? Um, like we do have students that do miss um for our teams, but uh I I yeah, I can't really I I didn't know the metrics back then cuz I was just so focused on my own personal class. I would know whether they missed my class, but I wouldn't know if

267they missed others. As a team, we know whether a student is missing a singular class or if it's like a thing between classes. um are they just missing, you know, this day or are they missing multiple days over time? And that's something that we can sus out really really quick together um when we start discussing students where their learning is at and where the data is and be like, "Oh yeah, I haven't seen them in three class periods either." Um and so then it allows us to identify those kids sooner. Um and also in addition with the teaming before I would know whether they were just missing math class and I would just know them on that math level. I think knowing them in various scenarios when we do our crosscurricular projects or we work

268on transferable skills that are relating to an upcoming learning uh cycle that we're going to do. I know them more than just them for math. Um and I think that also contributes to like their feeling in the class and then the relationships that we can build. So that's just uh you know one testimony of one of our teachers on the freshman level you know from a math teacher you know I know them more than just math and that's what we want to do and you know I know there was some uh discussion earlier about higher rigor courses I want to just talk about you know with the block schedule the opportunities because we've opened it up it used to be a private kind of like a private school on our campus with IB program now

269we've opened it up and we want to give students more access especially um our students that we need to have it so we have the career program now at Westwood High school. Uh that is that started in uh class of 2022. We had 26 candidates. We had 23 certificates awarded. Um I just got to let you know that the class of 2026. We're up to 68 candidates. So that's growing really fast and I could only see that growing even more. Uh all 9th and 10th grade teachers have started the IB framework uh training to increase academic rigor. Beginning next year, uh we're going to have a lot of uh all courses will carry an IB designation with separate IB honors courses. This year's DP junior courses, so that's the diploma program students that are in

270the junior year, was our smallest in many years at only 36 students. The rising junior DP course is doubled to 61 students. So those are some early indicator wins with our master schedule. We also only had uh 20 HOD students on average. That's history of the America, American history in the junior year. Next year we have 200 students that have selected to take that. So just shows that the academic rigor is also coming with it on top of the college and careermies that are going. So we're really excited about that. We could talk about the growth of interns um that's happening. Uh but it goes down to this last slide. But before I say that I just want to keep on emphasizing when I first got here we were a school that just operated just

271as Westwood. And it was no offense. We didn't talk much to Mesa High, to Mountain View, to Skyline, Red Mountain, to Dobson. We're a team now, you know, and you know, we see Mountain View here tonight. We see Skyline, Red Mountain, Dobson. I know that we're all cheering each other on. We're all working together. And that's what I'm really proud of working in Mesa Public Schools is that we're working as a team. I worked in isolation up in Northern Arizona. It's not fun being the only high school principal for 80 miles. And now I got some of the best thought partners in Mesa that are trying to reimagine and do better for our community and I'm just very proud to work alongside them. But this is something that we've been doing with our professional learning

272with our staff is that we want high expectations, impactful learning experiences, period. And at the end of it, those are that's that's the call that we go out with. So um thank you for letting us talk about our journey at Westwood High School. [Applause] Hi, good evening members of the board. Uh, not much to add. I think Dr. Gilmore said it all, so I'll I'll kind of save my time here, but I think the the one thing we can emphasize here at Skyline and want to talk about is how we work together as a high school team. Um, it's been nice to to step into this role with some tremendous thought partners and help us uh redesign high school that Dr. Fors had mentioned that started back in 2017. So, where are we now, Scott?

273So right now Skyline, we are uh freshman teams. All of our freshmen are on a team right now. Uh we're in the second year of that model. Uh we have our 10th and 11th graders in college and careermies right now. U emphasize the word college there. We are really trying to push our rigorous courses. Uh our health and medical science, all of our students are taking human anatomy and physiology. It's a dual enrollment course. So we're really trying to access uh all of our students to high level courses uh in our college of care academy. So right now uh grade 10, they are all in them. Uh grade 11 they are as well. We've got a registration set for next year. I can tell you our most popular academy is the engineering and design. Uh

274a lot of students are really interested in that. We've got some uh some great people and I think and I I regret saying this if I didn't is we would not be where we're at without like I said the high school team that we work with and more importantly the teachers that are on our campus. They have gone through a lot in in in two to three years of a redesign and they have stuck with us every sense of the way and uh couldn't be more proud to work with a group of teachers that that I'm lucky enough to get to work with. So, but where are we going? Um, next year that model will continue. Uh, we're going to continue with nth grade teams. We've got our 10th grademies that our college and careermies

275will be there. Our 11th graders will be in the college careermies. Our 12th graders um are are not in a college and career academy. There's a lot of pathways to postsecary. Once you hit that senior year, we want to make sure that we honor every senior's path to graduation, whatever they choose after high school. Uh cuz if we've done things right, we have prepared them uh for their senior year to what they choose to do. and uh we're happy to support them across the finish line uh into the workforce or into university or college or or vocational school, whatever they choose to do. And uh we believe we will set them up for that. So on the data front, we'll be real quick on this. I is there one before that on attendance? Did we

276skip over? Did I skip one, Dr. Strong? It's the next one. It's backwards. Backwards. So behaviors at Skyline this year, we've been monitoring it all year long. We had 087 incidents last year 61 incidents. So in overall instance at Skyline we're down about 30%. And yes we do it says in the very first sentence I skipped over that with uh with Westwood uh that 925 is only through the third quarter. So we do prorate that for the the rate that we expect to have happen in the fourth quarter prior to con comparing those per per student incident events. We know that 925 is going to get higher. We know the exact rate it's going to get higher at. And so we think this is the actual at the end of fourth quarter, we think that

277will be a 30% reduction in incidents. Next slide. And then on the attendance side, the daily attendance at Skyline is up. It's up by about 2% this year. I think the whole point of bringing up this data is one of one of the key callings that I think uh we'll be able to bring to the leadership team, not only at the district level, but throughout our school sites is, you know, it's it's one thing to run any sort of learning model. It's another thing to run a learning model, then have expected outcomes from the learning model. on. We're going to have to dial in and make sure that our outcomes for students follow from any learning model, whether it's the Franklin model running at at our Franklin schools or whether it's a college and career

278model running at Westwood Skyline, as you see right now, outcomes for kids have to follow and we know that and we're trying to set up data systems to monitor those at all at all turns of the corner. So, right here in the chat, obviously, I'll need your help as well on this one so I don't mess it up, but uh we've just put together a couple videos here. Uh, you'll hear two of our students and their experiences so far. My name is Payton Sims and I'm in the engineering and design academy at Skyline. Hi, I'm Satie Johnson and I'm in the health and medical science academy. Well, overall themies have only like furthered my understanding of like what I really want to get into. Um, mainly since I'm looking into engineering, there's a huge like

279broad field of stuff I could do. But really being into the academy has like refined where I want to go and looking at colleges. I was always looking at instate, but since ASU is such a good engineering school, being within the engineering world, it kind of just helped me like set set my eyes on ASU only. Being in my academy has helped just shift the focus of all the students that I'm with because we all have the same interest which means I'm dealing with a lot more students who are kind of along the same path as me and it's so it's just easier to be a student here and have that tiny community. comparing it from ninth grade to now in freshman year I feel like all my classes were pretty spread out like I

280was at a different I felt like I was at a different school each class but with the communities or not the communities themies now um it's a lot more like centered and being in all these classes that help complement each other is really nice um I feel like all my teachers and all my class kind of helps aid the same goal and then with all my friends we're able to work together and build bigger bonds enhances the experience to know that all your teachers um they get get more of that personal sense of who you are. I know that I have some teachers who um like I've been told that I wear my emotions on my face and so I have some teachers who are very much aware of that and they're they're able to

281talk to me more and I feel like it's a lot easier knowing that um you have that group of teachers where they all are able to sit down and be like this student like I need to know how to help them and this one other teacher can go well I've realized that maybe they're more of a hands-on learner. So try something. Give them something to do hands-on. And it helps to be able to know that they can sit down in a room and say your name and they can picture your face and know exactly what to do to help enhance your learning. Yeah. There we go. Right. Okay. Short and concise. So appreciate it. You got questions, you email me, call me or catch me after and we'll go from there. So deal. I think

282that there are a few questions for you or or or Dr. Gilmore. So, thank you both for your presentation. Um, are you guys ready to answer some questions? Always. All right. Here we Anyway, questions. Yeah. Well, a couple questions and comments. So, uh, first off with the block scheduling. So, we've had a a you know number of students that have contacted the board that have concerns about moving to a a schedule where their coursework might be longer. Um, but the first first part of it is like a student that has ADD or something, we still have to accommodate students that have uh special learning plans, special needs and and if you could uh you know help just sort of uh address that for some of our parents that have commented about their concerns with uh

283the length of time in class. And then you know the other part of that is that and I've looked at some schools locally that do block scheduling and you know while a class is going to be longer than the 50 minutes you're not being lectured to the whole time either like now you have a 50-minute class you might just be lectured to the whole time but my understanding is in these longer classes you have that time to work on projects. Um, I actually have nieces and nephews in a different school district that do block scheduling and and I was talking to them about it and they love it because they said they have less homework because they have more time to get work done during the day. I don't know if that's applicable here, but

284so I'd like to hear a little bit more about like, you know, what does a longer course look like? Well, I think I think you said it perfectly there. We we don't want somebody lecturing to a kid uh for 90 minutes. Uh, it's not a good teaching practice. We don't want to see it. Um, our teachers are going through the professional learning right now to to get better at that. Um, so our goal is always to provide a good learning experience for our kids. Um, they walk into class whether it's 50 minutes, 90 minutes, 60, 70. Um, we want that to be engaging. We want that to be something that's meaningful for them so they have a reason to come to school. Um, our teachers right now working hard on that. We're working hard. We're

285listening to our students, uh, talk as teams. I think that is the power of it as a team. They can lean on each other's strengths to develop those learning lessons and those learning experiences for our kids. Um, so I think it's only been a positive uh to this point. and we'll continue to get better at it uh with each generation as we go from there. In regards to the uh students who uh ADHD or whatever it may be um once again is the power of a team uh multiple adults wrapped around that student will provide a better opportunity to provide support for that student um and especially in terms of um what accommodations may be needed uh in a class period to make sure that those students uh needs are being met, the accommodations are

286being met. And I will say this, watching our co-t talk classes and our in our even our teams and work in a block schedule. The amount of um we're starting to see more and more small group instruction more pull out more one-on- ones where we see teachers working with students because they actually have the time to do it as opposed to just teach broad cover as fast as they can assign homework and move on. Uh we're actually trying to engage our kids in the learning process. So positive so far. Um we've always got work to do and we're going to continue to work better at it. I'll turn over to Dr. Gilmore. He can kind of add to that as well. Thank you. Well, thank you. That's a great question and I want to uh

287speak to the power of our special education teachers that are on the team. In the past, we would have a a case manager and they would be responsible for finding the kid again on that uh on our big campuses uh making sure that the services are being met and it was exhausting. They get to the class and find a sub there. The kid wasn't there and they've walked across, you know, imagine in August from the 600 building to the main academic building. It's hot. They're they're wearing out their shoes now. They're on a team and they are co-planning. They're collaborating. They're the instructional strategist on the team to not make sure that the students with special needs are being met, but all students and giving that intentional instructional design to our um high school teachers.

288Uh one of the things we're we're very good in our content. We're great and we've learned the pedagogy, but these special ed teachers are instructional strategist. That's how I like to refer them at. So, they're in there. They're co-planning with our educators on a meaningful experience. We have our instructional coaches that are meeting with our teams and they're designing these beautiful seminars that are out there so that we have impactful learning experiences. It goes back to that slide. That's what we want to have. And so, those students with the ADD, that's going to be discussed. Um, one of the successes we've always had a hard time with gened teachers showing up to IP meetings. Now you got four teachers that are supporting that sped teacher that are calling and working with the family. So the

289families feel supported. Um each other are feeling supported when they're talking to that family so that they are making um sure that that students needs are being taken care of. That's great. Thank you. How are you managing the requirements of EL students requiring 250 minutes a week of English language instruction? Are they taking two courses to meet that requirement in block schedule? Yes. Okay. And I just have another followup for Skyline. Um, will the SkylineMies be teameing next year and are they teeing this year? Themies? Yes. To both? To both? They are teaming this year. There's some confusion with parents as parents are sometimes. Okay. Thank you. Gentlemen, I want to thank you. You've given a lot of your time to explain to the board and you spent time a morning with me and I

290really appreciated the the the information that you provided. And what I'm seeing, I think I'm seeing a um three themes. And I'm going to suggest that they're the three new three Rs because when I've visited your campuses and the other campuses that are starting to implement, but de yours in particular, I'm seeing rigor, I'm seeing relevance, and I'm seeing relations. Would could you maybe provide some Westwood and Skyline examples of what I think are are the major three themes of of what you're trying to do by redesigning high school. Maybe that's the fourth R. Yeah, that's like Dr. Gilmore's got half his dissertation over here that he might get to you. So, we'll uh we'll see what happens. But um no, I uh we're teammates. we can we can we can work with each other

291like that. I think uh a quick a quick scenario would be um you know we've uh I know our 10th grade um our 10th grade business team uh was working on some stuff like during the Super Bowl era they were talking about uh geometric dimensions of the field. Uh they were talking about the business aspect of commercial marketing all those kind of things. Uh science was working on um I think they were in the physics unit there was ball flight and speed and all those kind of things. So watching those kids and those teachers actually co-plan together to kind of give that learning experience to kids that could cross um disciplines uh was something that I we wouldn't have in the past if we didn't have that model. And it's a it's a start. We've

292got a long ways to go. We uh a lot of professional learning is in the works uh to provide our teachers that opportunity to really to dig into their passions. So I hope that answers your question. All right. On page 10 of my dissertation. No, but uh uh I have all these notes here because we I I I just want to honor the the the great work that our teachers are doing and uh they're just working really hard in this. They know they're under the the microscope and I want to make sure I honor them when I talk up here. So, well, we asked some of these questions to our uh uh academy teachers and I'm going to uh pick on our health and human services pathway just because it's on the top of my

293paper clip right here. So uh we will complete projects that are both crosscurricular and focused on some aspect of health and human services. An example of a project that they're working on in their venture is into the respiratory system where world history and physical science talked about different biological agents of war. English read about vaping and we studied class 6 inhalation hazards in CTE. We have looked at many body systems through the lens of physical science, world history, math and English. Learning outcomes will be relatively equivalent across different pathways with respect to core classes. Aside from the pathway specific CTE classes, students are also working towards additional certifications in health and human services. They will finish the year certified in OSHA 10 healthcare as well as the stop to bleed um at the end of

294the 10th grade. So to answer the question about relevancy, rigor and relationships, that's just one example of a project or seminar that our health and human services team is doing. And you know the this is in year one. Our focus that we told our teachers just this for this year one is work on being teammates, collaborators, that's it. If you start doing crosscurricular stuff, that's bonus. And this is where they're heading towards already because intentionally we just want them to learn each other, learn their values, set up a culture on their team, come up with a vision and from that you know they could uh uh start talking about what does it mean when the team comes into conflict uh with one another. That's something that educators that we haven't had in the past because

295we went into the classroom and then we left at the end of the day and you didn't rely upon a team and that's only what we wanted as a focus this year. And uh I know Dr. Malerine will probably cringe when I say this. It's teammateship that we're working on because it's a madeup word that we just came up with. We want them to work on that teammate and developing that culture um as educators because if they have that positive culture that's going to seep into the to the academy as well. I just have one quick quick clarifying question about Westwood's freshman algebra 1 and English passing rates. Those freshmen are doing teameming notmies correct? It's yeah ninth grade it's ninth grade. They're they're doing teething. That's it. That's correct. Okay. Awesome. Mhm. And Mr.

296Gilmore, um another clarifying question because I met one of your nth grade teams. Um your teams are not specifically um you actually have a math teacher, an English teacher, a sped teacher, history teach, like all on your team. Correct. Yes. like your teams are are broader than just a three uh discipline that might be at the academy, right? Yes. That that's what I observed. Um can you speak because you guys have been on the teaming pathway longer. Um, what are the characteristics in your mind that make a quality effective team so that your madeup word of teammateship occurs and therefore transfers into that uh positive interactive environment for students? That's a really good question. That's uh what we've been on the journey about. We've been doing a lot of work through uh Daniel Coyle and

297the culture code. Uh we're doing a lot of work around Amy Edmonson and the uh psychological safety. Uh I know Dr. Malerwine has come in and talked to the teams around psychological safety so that we can uh bring up uh uh concerns. We could bring up what our values are. We're talking a lot about the shared values that we have as a team. Uh uh what are our norms and what are our vision? Those are the big things. I know uh I could feel the power of our instructional coaches right now that I'm probably missing out on some other things. Uh but uh you know just creating that culture on the team and what the culture needs to be. Uh what is our shared vision? What happens if we come in conflict with one another

298and how are we going to uh um um basically uh get through that. Those are the things that we are working with uh with our new teams. But we have a lot of support through the district office. Uh we've had uh uh uh teaming uh meetings in the summer throughout the school year. Um I could look at a list in my dissertation over here um of all the other opportunities that u I know our teaching and learning office is uh uh creating for us um and also through uh Arizona State University with their teaming uh experts as well so that our teachers feel supported going into the next school year. Hear your term psychological safety. I I'm old school, so it's vulnerability. Vulnerability. There you go. Oh, I have one more question. The um pass

299rate and fail rate um of your algebra one and um English uh freshman English. Um can you separate how much of that is due to teameing and engagement potentially versus having used standardsbased grading? Um, I don't know if I could know how to answer that because all of our students are on a team. Um, so and there all of our algebra 1 students are on a team. Uh, so these are from the high expectations that we have of our algebra one teachers and making sure that their rigor is the same across the different teams that are out there and their expectations. And so we have a lot of those conversations. So it's not just the conversations within the team, but the content area to making sure that we have the the same expectations. What is

300a level one? What is a level two? level three and four. And I know Dr. Stum's been he's heard a couple of those conversations of what they are through I can statements that our our teachers are developing so that the students can talk about what is a level four, what is a level three and they could demonstrate what that knowledge is based on that rubric that the teachers have developed. So are we still going to be using rubrics next year versus the traditional? Yes. Well, we we want to have clear learning targets for our students. We want them to have rubrics so that they know what an AB CD or an F is. Uh so we have to have clear learning targets. Also a requirement. I mean we're a little bit different being an IB

301school. And so they want to make sure that we have those clear learning targets for our students and that they're conveyed to our families as well. And that was done through an audit that we had in August or September by the IB uh world team. uh IB is on an eightoint scale. Um that was because a lot you know this I know Dr. Stum has a lot more knowledge about IB than I do but you know with the amount of kids that were just transferring from military bases and and the schools so that they could make sure that the the learning targets were the same wherever they went if they happened to transfer from one military base to another. And at 1020, I don't want you to go into it personally. Any other questions? Yeah,

302I'd like to ask another question, and I'm sorry for the It's so late in the night again. Um, but I wondered if you could um help me understand for the next school year, 2526. So, I know your seniors are not going to be in anymies or 11th graders, or is it just going to be ninth and tth grade for next year, too? Yeah, at Skyline 10th and 11th will be in college and careermies. The green might go to green. Oh, is it in here? Yes. And okay, I'm so sorry. Are your 12th graders? Okay, I just missed that. We already had that in the slide. You know, it's a whole bunch of information in here. It's 10:15. And are your 12th graders just not going to be inmies? Can you explain that again real quick

303for me? because I did have a question about that at why are your 11th graders inmies but your 12th graders not and is that how the academy model is going to go forward with the other campuses that we don't do an academy model in at Skyline? Yes. Right now we uh we want to make sure that we as we get to 12th grade we expand all opportunity for kids because at at 12th grade uh we have students that are on individual path to graduation. We have some that are university bound u some that are vocational bound, some that are community collegebound. So, we want to make sure that their post-secary plan uh we can execute. We want to make sure that we are preparing them 9 through 11 uh for that seniors that can transition

304out to life and be ready to succeed in the world. Did it nailed it. Okay. So then, sorry for the late hour, but is that how each of our campuses are going to be approaching it? So we'll have uh the introduction n 9th grade academy and an open no academy in 12th grade. Is that what I'm hearing? Cuz that's not what has been messaged before. we that that's the reason for this presentation in the chart is to shore up some of the misinformation um that has been shared. Yeah. Our messaging at Westwood is 12th grade. It's open. We want kids to take opportunities in internships. You know, we know students are going to be in EVIT. We know students are going to be in jobs. They're going to be taking some class at MCC. So,

305it's open and the two-year pathway is complete. Um there there are going to be completers. So, I know like with Dr. Glassmire, you know, we could get that CCRI point with them, but they might want to finish another U CTE class or they might want to take other dual enrollment classes uh their senior year. But our message is and I know uh many of the schools is this is just 9 through 11 and then 12th grade it's more uh wide open but with the intentionality that they're going to take a uh opportunities and internships or finish in EVIT, continue in EVIT or uh take other classes so that they could get their graduation requirements done for wherever they're going. Any other Thank you. Thank you, Westwood and Skyline, Dr. Mendes and Dr. Gilmore. Thank you

306so much. We appreciate [Applause] it. We're almost there. We are into our last discussion item. Um, we've just heard about Western Skyline and with their implementation of block and college and careermies. The next agenda item is a discussion about the planning and preparation for college and careermies and block schedule at Mountain View High School. We've received a lot of community interest on this topic. Um, so Dr. Foris, I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you very much, Madam President, members of the governing board. Uh I know that you're in your email inboxes have been full of uh lots of information around the implementation of college and careermies uh and block scheduling at Mountain View High School. So what I would like to do is um share with you I have been I I

307know that uh I have been asked multiple times and I know the governing board has been asked multiple times what has Mountain View done to prepare for the implementation of college and careermies and block schedule. So this slide shares a just an overview of a timeline of what Mountain View has done when they began the work and what it looked like. You heard a little bit about the journey at um Skyline and even more of the journey visually that you saw at Westwood. It takes time. So these are small steps leading to bigger steps. The second slide that I'm going to share with you um is the next piece of this that is what are the readiness indicators that Mountain View is ready to implement block schedule and college and careermies because it's been specifically

308asked of me to say Dr. Flores do you believe that they are ready to implement? So I'm going to walk you through this timeline and then also going to go on the sec the second slide that talks about readiness indicators and in my status report to all of you last Friday I included a 28page report and this is just I'm lifting out the same information so it's going to look very familiar to you but this is just I think it's better for the community to see a condensed version. So in the 2122 uh school year what I would like to highlight here is that Dr. Oliver came into uh to Mountain View as their new principal and he did conduct listening sessions and there was lots of topics. I've read the transcripts that were all

309the notes that were taken. I think what's most important to know about those listening sessions is it um led to Mountain View developing a a vision and a mission prior to any of the concepts coming about for the college and careermies and block scheduling. So was focused on what what are the opportunities and I talked with the team at Mountain View and say those listening sessions said you know bring back the glory of the campus of champions that's what we're ready for and so um that required them to do some work on their mission. Then taking a look at um planning for change network building and pilots I will tell you that Dr. Oliver and his team at Mountain View wanted to be on the same path as Skyline and Westwood but Dr. Dr. Oliver

310came to me and to Dr. Malerwine and said I think we need another year. So this has been their additional year this year. So that would be the 20 um move. It slowed them down a bit because they were not they said you know what we need to slow down. So when we go into design and implementation that's where teachers were more teacher uh development happened with creating courses. The freshman teams grew from three to five. So we now know that at Mountain View all nth graders are on a team. And then when we think about um this current school year, I think some significant indicators were their trial run of the block schedule where they said, "Okay, what worked, what didn't work, and what refinements do we need to make?" And they have an

311ongoing uh professional development plan and they have a very long list of parent engagement. I'm also going to say that I've gotten lots of feedback that parents want to be spoken with and not to. And so that is a focus that the Mountain View team is going to have to put a system around to make sure that there is two-way conversation that is happening and they are they have re received that information uh loudly and clearly. So moving on to the next slide. Uh my screen is not doing the thing. Taking a look at readiness data one when I'm going to walk you through just big ideas within three categories. And the first one is scheduling and operations. the second stakeholder readiness and then curriculum and instruction. And so when we think about the operations

312um putting together a master schedule at a high school is a laborious and complicated task. And so what happens in um working with a a master schedule that it's generally our assistant principles of registration who are in charge of that big task of getting that done. And so as a principal, principles are always running in and asking that assistant principal, what's our run rate? What's our run rate? So, if we put the schedule together, we hit the button, how many kids did we schedule? And it is really impressive that at this point at Mountain View High School, 97% of their incoming 9th graders have been scheduled into freshman teams and 92% of the incoming 10th graders have been scheduled into college and careermies. So, a readiness indicator is will this schedule work? And not only

313is it the schedule that will work, there's another indicator around staff. So when you build a schedule, you have we are we're an industry of people. So behind that schedule are teachers and children. And so right now they have two vacancies in their academy positions. So they have the staff and they have the the the students that are scheduled into the freshman teams and college and careermies. As I mentioned before, they did the block schedule trial run. They have survey data that they've collected and they are committed to working through refinements of what worked and what didn't. What do we want more of? what do we want less of and putting um plans in place. Looking at stakeholder readiness, I think the most important indicator here is what our kids are telling us. So 94%

314of our students are placed into an academy that they were excited or happy to join. 6% placed in an academy that they said, "Eh, it's going to be all right." And only four students selected not my favorite for all of themies. And so I um and behind all of that I know our families because families sit with their their kids and they help to identify and select courses and in this case themies that they are going to be a part of. So when we take a look at that student data there's also families that are behind that saying this is what I think is best for you. And then we've had teachers actively engaged in instructional planning and the academy model development. Now, to say it would be disingenuous if I told you that every

315teacher at Mountain View is wildly excited about moving to this model and that they've all been um kneedeep into the planning, but you will see evidence and in the report that I shared with you, design teams uh they now have students. In fact, uh the this picture on the front page um is the design team. They were working together last at the end of March and they have students on that design team. Uh moving on to curriculum and instruction. One of the things as a teacher you never have enough planning time and especially if you're going to work through a change. So there have been 590 hours of compensated summer work to design the college and careermies. What they designed in those hours working together may never see the light of day because they were

316going to do so many different iterations as they continue to work on this. So what they designed then they're continuing to improve as they learn more and and learn new tools that they can include. Um we know that the college and careermies are developed and they are aligned to standards. Those are all on our website. We have five ummies and all of them have um the state academic standards that are being taught within those courses. And that uh Mountain View has professional learning plans created to support ongoing coaching. Uh new teacher onboarding. What does it look like when you're hiring new teachers into your school and making sure that they understand this work? As Dr. Gilmore talked about working on a team, we know the research about forming, norming, storming, and performing. You got to

317get through all of those things as a team, and it's not always easy. We're not always taught. We just say you're on a team. But to really work through what does that look like? Um, and then there's academy specific instructional development that is happening. And you heard from one of the CTE specialists earlier today that is helping teachers um continue to refine what that curriculum looks like. So those of us that have been teachers in classrooms for quite some time um nothing ever feels like it's done because we don't know exactly who our kids are next year. And if we're not making adjustments to meet the needs and interests of of our incoming students and the students that we have, um there's no cookie cutter model of curriculum and instruction and assessment development. um when

318you are focused on a model that is focused on um personalized learning for kids. So these are the readiness indicators that we see. Um I will tell you as I mentioned in my status report on Friday, I believe that uh Mountain View is ready to implement next year. They have done some very thoughtful planning and they also understand where their bumps and bruises are and they are going to have we will put together a support team to work them through those bumps and bruises around communication and um having thoughtful two-way communication with uh their stakeholders. I'd also like to mention that we have heard from families from the Mountain View community that um and there this is an opportunity to clarify miscommunication as well. in our original plan um that the uh academy core is

319a rec is a required course but listening to um many of the families at Mountain View our teaching and learning team working with our legal department has developed an opt- out process and so that is something that will be available to families uh in very unique situations we know that kids are not and they all don't come in perfect cookie cutter boxes there's a unique situation there will be an opt- out process and that will be communicated We wanted to um make sure that it's absolutely perfect before it um is communicated and we get it over to the Mountain View team. So, with that, I'm ready for questions. And I'm sure if you've got some detailed questions, we have the Mountain View team if they're still awake. They are um here. I cannot answer many

320of the in the detail questions, but I certainly know that we've got um a willing, able, and highly talented team that w is able to answer those questions. Thank you, Dr. Forless. Um members of the board, um any questions, Madam President? I think it's really easy when you're in the middle of a big exciting project to forget that not everyone knows about the project. And I think that often that's what happens when we're in education. We get really excited about all the moving pieces. And I think that may have been part of what happened here. There are so many great con concepts and principles and principals behind these these changes and I trust that everyone really has the best interests of students and and families and outcomes in mind and they want the best things

321for these kids. I know that they are partners with us. I know that asking questions can feel like an attack and I just want to remind our community that as board members we have a responsibility to ask questions and to make sure that the district and the board has done their due diligence when we roll out new things. Almost exactly a year ago on April 9th, 2024, the board was presented withmies and block schedule in this kind of instructional model form that a few of the schools would be rolling out. It wasn't clear which schools would be rolling them out or when. And in that meeting, two very wellrespected educators in our district asked the superintendency and the governing board to do these things. Plan for the loss of learning time in the block schedule.

322Protect class sizes. Address the attention span needed for 90minute classes. adequately prepare teachers, parents, and students for these changes, provide highquality training and lesson plan strategies. At that meeting last year, board member Walden said she had more questions than there was time for and asked that the board revisit this topic to address concerns. At that meeting, there was not public information shared about how the district was going to move forward. There were there were great principles who shared how all these exciting things, a lot of these things that we heard tonight. Um, but I feel that a commitment was made by the district and the governing board to meet those requests in spring 2024 that hasn't been met. In that presentation, the district stated that our community wanted parents and teachers informed and engaged in

323this process. So, I really think that we can work together to move this forward. District has said that parents have been communicated with since 2021. And I really appreciated Dr. before's clarification that the great community engagement and parent meetings were all about this incredible incoming principal and the wonderful changes that were coming to Mount View. And I do agree that Mount View administration has done a great job connecting with the community through events and tours and and engaging opportunities. They constantly work to showcase the incredible things that our fabulous educators are doing and the the work going on in classrooms. Um, and I think that when we as a board don't provide clarity on what the guidelines are, what the metrics are, what the rubrics are, that we we miss things, you heard tonight, it's

324taken some time for our staff to get on board with these changes. And I think it's taking our parents even longer because it wasn't until fall 2024, this beginning of this academic year, that Mountain View parents had any idea that themies and block schedule would be coming to Mountain View in fall of 2025. I know those conversations were had beha be behind the scenes to hold, but parents didn't really know. It was at a September 2024 SIK meeting that was publicized by parents, not the district or administrators when many parents started bringing these questions, reasonable questions. When you change, you know, re when you reimagine high school and education, a lot of parents didn't even understand what an academy was. We saw tonight we still have confusion. You know, as board members, what happens in

325nth grade? What happens sophomore year, junior year? So much of the work done by our incredible Mountain View staff. Those 590 hours didn't show up in the Mountain Viewmies. And I think that that was really hard for parents and staff. Uh the presentation tonight shows that three pathways were piloted at Mountain View, but there's really only been one academy type instructional model, the changemakers class. It only has 15 students in that class. It's an incredible class. Highly recommend it. Um but I think it was an indicator that maybe parents didn't really understand what these types of classes could offer to their kids. they really hadn't caught this vision of this transformation and how it moves intomies. Uh a month later at a town hall that was publicized, there were still a lot of questions that

326were unanswered. How does this work with sports teams? Do kids take one class or two with sports? How do we feed everyone in one lunch? What about release time? Is there an opportunity for a traditional path? Um we brought this back as a board in February because of these questions and we had very limited time to address questions and concerns as a board. This is another time we're bringing back those questions and concerns. And it's 10:40 at night and this is hard on our board to do the work that it needs to do when we have these conversations so late. It's hard on our administrators who are going to wake up early tomorrow morning and deal with our naughty high school children. Um I I really appreciate that people are trying to answer these questions.

327Administrators at Mountain View have met one-on-one with so many parents trying to answer these questions. People in the district have met one-on-one with parents trying to answer these questions. There is still a great deal of confusion. In February, we learned that block schedule comes at a financial cost and potentially a staffing cost. There was also misinformation presented about whether students could opt out. Um, even as recently as the last board meeting, there was a lack of clarity about which schools in the district were even doingmies and block schedule. I think it really indicates we have to do better with our communication. It's why we needed a presentation now to clarify those things. I spoke with teachers yesterday at Mountain View who are wildly enthusiastic about these changes. They are so excited to be on these

328teams. They have big ideas and big dreams and they want great things for our kids. And they still had so many questions. What does the bell scale schedule look like this fall? Will honor students be in separate classes or combined? What does a curriculum map for my course look like? What certificates can I offer in my class that don't duplicate the ones we already offer in CTE courses on campus? As we said a year ago, our teachers deserve proven, effective strategies with highquality training to meet the challenges of these changes. We've been told that we're going to have curriculum maps, opt out processes, and bell schedules ready by the end of May. But I worry that we haven't met that commitment from a year ago, that it's too late for teachers to effectively make their

329lesson plans and for parents to make informed decisions. We heard tonight par teachers are experiencing a burnout. We're lo losing teachers in these incredible teamings. They do make a difference in kids' lives and I want them to be successful. We have enrolled our current freshman students in themies without information in place. And I really want to put this burden on the governing board that we have a duty to ensure that parents are appropriately informed and that they are engaged in their children's education that our teachers are prepared to teach that we are requiring positive student outcomes that we are being fiscally responsible and we've set the district up for a positive future and that we can provide the outcome the outcomes that we promise that we are providing. I have a lot of questions. I

330worry that we leave things late and I want to leave time for other board members, but I appreciate the board granting me the time to kind of explain this journey that we've been on as a district and the number of questions that we still have. Member Chaffy, I would I want to um go back to the courses. Changemakers is an elective and then the class that is physical science and ELA are two separate standalone classes but those teachers are planning together for interdisciplinary instruction. So it's not a separate class that's not a class that students would enroll in that they're already combined. It's two separate teachers. So, um I asked that this be put back on the um agenda for an open frank discussion just with the board. Um, I asked specifically that we not

331have a presentation so that we had time to bring forth the questions that our community has brought to us. So, yet again, it's quarter to 11 at night. Um, and none of the questions I don't think that our community has um, the Mountain View community in particular has voiced uh, are I'm I mean, unless we're ready to be here until midnight, I'm not sure how we actually give legitimate time to concerns that parents have brought forth. Um, I actually like to use the term shareholder for parents rather than a stakeholder because they are uniquely invested in the success of their children. We teachers are as well, but parents share the larger investment in that. None of the parents that have um voiced concerned or shared um concerns are even I I don't get the sense

332that they are fearful of change. That that is not the sense that I get at all. Um one of them she's here tonight. Uh CTE loves CTE and the opportunity that it provides for students. That's not the issue. The issue is the messaging. And quite frankly, what I find interesting is we have six campuses. Uh, one of which is and was allowed to stay on a traditional model. Um, so that leaves five. None of the other four campuses have this level of unease going into this model. None of them. I have had a handful, one or two concerns from parents from any of the other campuses. This is a uniquely Mountain View issue. Um, and I'm concerned about that. I'm also concerned when I hear teachers who say, "We spent hours developing what we believe

333to be um what our Mountain View community would want and it was cast aside." And I will tell you that my personal experience working within the district, I do not find that hard to believe at all. Uh I my personal experience with the district is that leadership starts with the end goal in mind. uh and they provide opportunity for teachers to uh be able to put in uh give input. Um and then it's well yeah but let's just do it this way anyway. That is the Mesa way from my experience uh and that's my lived experience and so I'm sure it's the same lived experience of a lot of other educators in this district. So what our parents want is answers to these questions. Why was it not clearly stated that a a core class

334um for the academy? Why was it not clearly stated to parents? Your child does not have to take this. It is now what two months into registration. I don't I don't have a high school student anymore. So, oh, so let's see. Huh? We moved up registration and that's why schedules are done at by this time of the year. Okay. So, do you see the frustration of parents? So, I can answer Miss Hold on one second. I'm gonna answer the question. Uhuh. I can answer your question. Okay. Because I was the one that gave the I gave the answer. No. And then it was just coin. It was just phrased as misinformation and it wasn't. So, if you let me clarify, I'll tell you kind of what happened. At Skyline and Westwood, we didn't have an

335opt out. We scheduled kids in and we moved forward and we had one-on-one conversations with parents like we do every year when we build a master schedule. Parent shows up, kid wants multiple different types of classes that doesn't fit because we have sometimes we only have one section of one class and it it it conflicts with an art or a band. And so at the time because I look I'm going to answer the questions truthfully. We didn't have one and my answer was no. But then we had listened to the families and we had listened that that's what that families wanted. So the information wasn't misinformation at the time I gave you the correct answer but because we listened and we heard there needed to be out op pro an out an opt out process.

336We brought the teaching learning together team together with the Mountain View and we created a structure to honor those parent voices and that's what we're trying to do as we learn and we're being asked to do something else. When you asked the question earlier, what is the key ingredient that a team needs to be successful? It's the same thing as adults uh that are leading things as teachers that are leading is is home humility. And what I what I try to do is offer that by listening for understanding. And that was the that's what I heard. So I pulled a team together and we created an opt- out process and it's pretty much ready now. And we we want first of all we wanted to create the right process and we wanted to create the

337right messaging so the families know exactly how to go through the process and so that's where we're at right now. So just for clarity on that that at the time I answered it correctly but then we pivoted because we had heard voices from the community and and I'm correct in believing that that's the kind of leadership our board wants. Correct. I absolutely appreciate that we're able to pivot and make changes when we hear things. I think it's really unfortunate for our staff that have done all that scheduling. We heard Westwood would say they did their their scheduling two and three times. I've talked to these counselors who are at their wits end joyfully working hard but it is taken a huge toll on them and then to be told in April now there's an opt

338out process go back to the drawing board. I think we as a board had a responsibility to ask those questions earlier so that those things could be heard. I I think that indicates we didn't talk to our community enough. We didn't know until April that we needed or February that we didn't opt out process that we didn't provide till April when we enrolled students in November. And all of those changes having had a high school student were dramatically different from Mace Public Schools. A November enrollment was much earlier than before. So it doesn't feel like an indicator to me that we were ready if we started 2 months sooner. Like I'm glad we were ready and we needed to because it was a huge change, but I don't think we can use that as a

339metrics of success. And again, is it a metrics of success if we have to go back to the drawing board because we don't even know how many students are going to opt out and we're not widely publicizing and we're not sending it in an email, you know, because it it poses a huge problem. And I I don't want those problems for our teachers and our staff. I want these things to be successful. I want them to be done in the right way. That's our job as a board is to make sure that these things are successful. We want to set these ideas and these students up for success. Did you have something you want to say, Marcy? Yeah. So, would you like to tag on to um Miss Chaffy's comment? No. I I I also

340do not want overworked teachers, overwork counselors. And that to me is the the um most frustrating thing about this is that it need it did not need to happen. Other schools apparently were able to message to their communities in such a way uh that there was not this confusion. So, um, I'm going to let you, but I there are multiple questions that still to this day are left unanswered that our community has mentioned. I think when you've got change like this, there's going to be a lot of uncertainty. And I I think we clearly heard that in the Westwood journey, the Skyline journey, um and the Dobson journey. Um things were rolled out differently at the different schools because the leadership of each school was meeting the needs of their students and their communities. And

341I and I and I really think that we ought to honor the leadership in the district that recognized that a cookie cutter approach was not the way for this to be rolled out. And and maybe maybe it's because I have uh I'm the historical memory now on the board. Um but these concepts and this intention has been around for a very long time. And each principle approached their communities knowing those communities and I and I have to honor the principles for doing that. They they they really engaged in communication like I've never seen in the district before. Was were there missteps? Of course. We are human beings and and one of the things about working with kids and and I'm a 31y year career educator. you you you it's very difficult working with young adults,

342working with human beings to say we're going to hit this measure and this measure and this measure and this measure. We can we can try and we can strive but I really believe that this board and the administrations of all the high schools have really listened to parents. There has been more communication on this issue than any issue that I have experienced on this governing board. Was that communication always effective? Was it always thoughtful? Was it always two-way? Maybe not. But I really believe that the superintendency as well as the administration at Mountain View have really tried to make up for missteps that occurred along the way. They're coming up with individual plans. They've met numerous times with parents. They've there yes, there's a level of unease, but they've met individually. They've made phone calls.

343They've called in favors to try to make this work for kids. And I don't think we ought I don't think any of us doubt that this team of people, any team of people, whether it's Gilmore's team or Mendes's team or Oliver's team, they're trying to do what's best for kids because the needle ain't moving, folks. We have got to do things differently. And there's going to be an unlevel of a level of uncertainty. And I know my kids went through Mesa public schools. And when changes occur, I think we just got to take that leap of faith. We got good people. We got really good people. And they're sitting here at 5 minutes to 11 knowing that they got to face a town of kids tomorrow. I really think we need to take that leap

344of faith. We as a board can't know every aspect of this plan. We've tried to educate ourselves. We've asked the right questions, but I I I really think that this community is engaged. We heard tonight that there are parents who want this, who think it's great for their kids. and teachers who are willing to do the job. So, I really think we've got to take that leap of faith and and honor the work that these folks have done to make this happen for kids. So, um could you explain again what students are going to be inmies? Was it just freshmen that that you said or Mountain View? Just Mountain View only. So Mountain View only right now they have fast teams. Next year would be 10th grademies. Okay. Only 10th grade. So the ninth graders

345that are in a team this year will go to academy to an academy. And they've selected that. That's the scheduling dated. Okay. So currently your 10th graders, your 11th graders, your 12th graders will never be in an academy out of the current Mountain View students. Correct. Current 10th and 11th graders will not be in an academy model at Mountain View. Correct. And they never current 12th grade. Yeah. They never will be because they'll just continue that till they graduate. It's current 9th graders current graders will be inmies next year. And then your incoming freshmen are going to be in a team be in a team. So, but the whole campus is moving to block scheduling. Yes. And so, and I and I saw that with the schools Westwood and Skyline that some of your grades

346will not will have the block schedule but not be in an academy. So, what does that look like for the students that aren't in an academy? Is it still like it's a block schedule but they're just not having do they have less electives? Like what is it what does it look like for them that's different in than themies? Does that make sense? I Well, I can I have a I have an 11th grader right now that's not in the academy. Awesome. So, he just has more opportunity for um electives. Okay. So, he's just taking different classes along with his, you know, core classes that he has to take. So, he's just has more options. Okay. And so I'm assuming but for any student though academy or not that if they want to they probably still

347have options for that in the class to be more flexible with the deeper and more personalized learning if there's you know more creativity in the assignments. It seems like overall I feel like is the message from our high schools is we're trying to allow more options for students uh in in focusing on things that interest them. Okay. So it's just 10th grade and then um and I know it's late. I I don't I don't think my questions are long questions and I I had asked this to actually be on the Friday agenda too for that meeting. We may want to add it, you know, since it's so late. Um Mountain View has and and we are getting a lot of emails from parents. I'm getting stuff that people are happy about it and then stuff

348people are really angry about it. So, it's like I'm trying to balance these different voices in the community and we want everyone to to be happy. Um, but one of the things I'm hearing is the the sports that students that and it's only at Mountain View. They're required to take two sports classes if they want to do sports. Can someone help explain that? There's Kathy. Kathy Burden is the assistant principal of registration. So, she is master queen. And I'm really short, so sorry I had to bring that all down. So, um, at Mountain View, athletics is something that's really important to our community and, um, maintaining a high level of athletics was something that we wanted to keep in mind as we move to a block schedule. So, um, we have one sports class for

349our onampus coaches. Um, that is one period in the schedule. For juniors and seniors, it's optional that they can take a weightlifting class. those classes are at the end of the day um to help with uh transportation and going to games. Um but that second class is not mandatory. If it fits in their schedule, we would like them to have that um but it's not mandatory. Okay. Um can I just clarify something real fast? Because the paper that went out to all Mountain View parents does indicate that several of our varsity sports are asking students to do two courses. And we all know Toro Pride, if your coach asks you to take two periods to play on the team, there's a good likelihood you're going to want to take two classes so that you can

350play. And there wasn't anywhere that said these are not required. So, it was very confusing to parents registering their kids. And Cath and I had that conversation that like she sent me to me and I was like, but it still looks like two. If I'm a parent getting this, I'm like, I'm going to sign up for both football so my kid can play football. Has there been any clarifying communication since then? We created an FAQ page after that conversation to make sure that it was clearer that um that it was an optional class for juniors and seniors. Our freshman and sophomores were not giving them that option um because they do have other classes and other uh credits that they have to get. So um we did come up with a a a frequently asked

351question page that had all the coaches. It had their contact information, who they should contact. Um, and I think that came out of one of our parent council meetings as a concern and that's how we addressed it. So, those freshman and sophomores will just have their athletics after school. Is that correct? They'll have the one athletics class um and then they would practice after school. Okay. Um, one of the things I'd like to make mention is when you're talking about um um not having um 11th grademies, I I was talking with a um uh Red Mountain music teacher. The enrollment in music is going through the roof. They've got so many guitar classes and if I'm not mistaken, so does so does Mountain View that you've got a ton of guitar classes. There's new te

352music technology classes and and they're they're almost at the point where they're going to have to turn kids away. And I'm thinking what what a great growth in the arts. Something that I know that many of us in the board, you know, it's kind of the three A's. It's academics, the arts, and athletics. And and we're seeing just this explosion in um interest in in music, at least entrylevel music opportunities for kids that you didn't have to be in music when you were in junior high to experience the music. So something like guitar is something that I can do. And you we're giving kids the opportunity, the space to do that. And one of the things that um we're seeing in the schedule is that students who our athletic schedule is as mirrored as absolutely

353possible in a block that it is to this year we had 7th hour sports. Um but what ended up happening too is that students who are interested in athletics and sports I'm sorry athletics and music or performing arts they are having opportunities to take those classes. Um, so that's really that's something that we're finding that's actually exciting. That brings me up to a quick staffing question. Um, because I know at Mountain View, this was in one of the documents that was provided by district. 26 certified staff members are not returning to work at Mountain View for a variety of reasons, retirements, career changes, and they're being replaced by 12 teachers and seven of them are elective teachers. And I think like like board member Hutchinson says, this is an opportunity because we do have access

354to more electives. Also poses some problems. We have kids in choir who don't want to sing and that's always rough. Um we have we have a lot more elective teachers and I worry I would like to know how our schools are planning to meet like we talked about the English language learner requirement that now those kids have to take two classes. Do we have enough academic core academic teachers to meet the needs of our students, to keep our class sizes small, to meet the needs of our English language learners, and to keep our our high academic expectations to improve our our literacy and and proficiency rates? Um, so one of the things that we found is that any time in in my two years at Mountain View, we've always looked at staffing and we've uh

355we've planned accordingly. So, we've it whatever our students are interested in is where our staffing has gone. We look at our core teachers first to make sure that we have enough core teachers um to to keep our class sizes. We don't want class sizes of 35 36. That's something that um we're we're working to combat. We have some of those classes this year and it's really rough on the teachers and the students and it's something that we definitely don't want moving forward. Um, so we carefully look at what are those class sizes and how many of those core teachers do we need for each subject based on our course requests. Um, then we have the great job of looking at all of the student needs and wants through their elective choices. And so this year

356what because we're moving to a block because students will need more electives in their schedule, we did have to hire more elective teachers. We are now going to have two culinary teachers, which is not something that we had in previous years. I can't staff um as many auto or welding teachers as uh our students want. We I think we had uh over 300 kids want auto and 500 kids wanted welding or some crazy number. We don't have the space for that. So, we are now hiring a second cabinetry uh teacher. And that's something that's a program that grew. Um, our engineering program grew, our audio production, uh, we have a full-time, we're going to have a full-time audio production teacher next year, which is not something we had in the past. So, um, we had

357to make decisions about staffing based on what our students are requesting. I love that we're we're meeting the the desires of our students. I would really like as a board that we put some metrics in place that we're going to measure the success of these programs that align with our board goals that align with ACT scores that align with making sure that our students are prepared for life as Dr. Stro said that we are looking at actual metrics. I want our kids to enjoy school and we all know that they're going to school for these fun electives and these things. We know that that creates senses of belonging in our campuses and places where they find joy and and they're it's why they're coming, you know. Um, but as a board member, we have a

358responsibility to our parents, to our to our community to make sure that we have metrics in place and that we hold our district accountable for those metrics because at the end of the day, it's our job. And I as as one board member would like to have that discussion like board member Walden said, maybe this is something that we talk about on Friday. What are the metrics we want in place to make sure that we are measuring the student outcomes from these programs? all this work that's going in that we can actually be accountable to people for well and that's what our board goals are our our board goals our proficiency scores in ELA and math and if we can keep kids in school some kids wake up and go to school just for band

359we know that if a kid will go to band they'll go to math class they'll go to ELA class I we've got metrics and they are our board goals And the problem has been is that the metrics have not improved and this is this is our shot to improve them. Marcy, I would love to see numbers that show that these programs do improve those cuz I want our kids to have these shots. And so I think that this is the kind of research our parents have been asking for and that we as board members need to ask for. We know that there's not a lot of information out there. I'm sure we will. But this is that leap of faith. We are not taking a model that was used in St. Louis. We are not

360taking a model that was used in San Diego. These are Mesa creations. And yeah, we we would love to have the data, but this creation is made for our community. We're starting to get data from Westwood, and we saw that data from Westwood on attendance. We saw it on changes in in ELA scores and in math scores. That's the Mesa data that's going to make the difference. We can't take data from other communities and apply it and say it's going to work here in Mesa. That's disingenuous. These are Mesa models created for our community and our various this is a this is a district the size of a congressional district. We got six different high schools, six different regions and we've tailored thesemies to those communities. We're going to get the data, but it's and

361I I I know that it's going to be better than what we've got now because kids are going to be engaged. Kids are going to be excited. May I? So, if we had actually tailored this to each individual high school, uh the work that the Mountain View teachers did over the course of time to develop stuff that they felt uh Mountain View would be uh in line with their community um would not have been uh discarded. And I love I mean we we can use the term iteration all we want. Um the the belief out there is that the work those teachers did was cast aside. The career and the the college and career academy model really is a cookie cutter model. Aside from our high schools which have smaller student populations. They have, excuse

362me, they have uh threemmies I believe that are uh a theme, but they are not the samemies that Red Mountain has, for example. And Red Mountain, I got to tell you, their layout on their and describing their college and careermies, phenomenal. It's probably why their parents aren't confused, why their parents aren't frustrated. Um, but I'm going to go back to the one of the reasons I asked about the teameing model and um, Dr. Maler Wine and I talked about this uh, as well. Teams are only as good as the weakest member of the team. And I've heard from many uh community members for Mountain View that have expressed that the teachers there are teachers on the Mountain View campus that do not feel honored, appreciated, or uh that their voices are heard. They And you

363had a teacher that spoke earlier about the four different types of teachers that are on your campus. And I don't remember the four that he talked about. Uh but many of the the two of them for sure were negative. Um and those are going to be members of your teams that are going to be your weakest link and therefore the academy roll out your teaming isn't going to be. It isn't it it's not it's going to be your teams are only going to be as good as your weakest link. And when you have staff that do not feel honored and valued for uh the strengths and abilities that they have and that they bring and the talent that they have um that has been on I and I you know what I didn't go to

364Mountain View. I went to Westwood. So um I don't know what the community I don't know what the feel of Mountain View is. And quite frankly I was at Westwood a couple of years ago. I don't even really know what the feel of it. Uh although I'd loved being on Westwood's campus again. So that's my concern. One concern and a concern I think that your your families have. Your families are a critical member of your team and if they do not feel heard and they do not feel valued because it's their children that we're taking a leap of faith with. Uh and our last meeting we discussed um calendars and I was quite intrigued that um Mrs. Hutchinson realized that waiting for being able to have a potential for a modified year- round calendar. Well,

365wait a minute. We have we're with this current the way that it was presented before. It would be three years before we had the opportunity for a modified calendar. That's a long time. Guess what? These this is their high school experience. So, that is the the thing that is frustrating to me. And again, because it's 11:15 at night, the questions your Mountain View community has have not yet been answered. They haven't been answered by district administration in such a way that they feel they have been answered truthfully or transparently. They have um sat in meeting after meeting and obuscation has happened. We use language so that we I call it edi um that's not acceptable. One last point, actually two last points. Attitude reflects leadership. If you have teachers that are not excited aboutmies, it

366is a reflection of the leadership. Mr. Gilmore has been successful at Westwood because he heard his teachers. He's allowed them space. Um, I know Gabby Buckley over at Dobson has listened to their teachers or her teachers and granted them space for the leaning into these things. They've listened to parents. They've been honest with parents about, oh yeah, you don't want to the core academy class from the beginning of registration. Okay. Back in November. No, I'm not going to. We don't force our students to have to take a c a class that's not required for graduation. So, I'm going to guess that the Mountain View parents still that have reached out to us still do not feel heard. Their questions have not been answered. One critical one is about finances and especially with uh seniors being

367able to kind of do whatever they want. What's the financial viability? None of these questions have been answered to I I'm just going to guess to the satisfaction of the parents that have reached out. They're still frustrated. So, I'm going to I'm going to close my comments and I would like to see this added on to Friday um so that we can actually get answers to the questions that have been asked uh completely, fully, and transparently. But my question is, how many families are you willing to lose over this? because we're not just talking about a couple of high school kids next year. These are families that have children uh younger children, younger siblings, many of them that will potentially walk. So that is an that is also a question that we as a board

368need to take seriously. You as a district leadership need to take seriously. How many families are you willing to lose? And with that, I'll close. So, I didn't get to finish asking my questions and I wondered if I could just We don't have to answer them, but if this is going to be added to Friday's agenda, I would like to get some information out for people to prepare. Um, I do appreciate the comments from my fellow board members as well because it's it's been really difficult and I think everybody can tell from the comments tonight that it's it's been difficult for us and trying to meet with the community and and try to satisfy all these different answers. And I don't think it's just parents that feel like they don't have answers. I I don't

369have the answers either. Um and I and I want to read just real fast some feedback that I got that uh I think is worded well but it it sums up some of the a lot of the emails but just with themies again where I think part of the reason this roll out is more difficult is that they said that uh in SCAK meetings uh other meetings with Mountain View administrators all these various meetings that had happenedmies were never discussed And so the parents have all said that that you know that's part of the problem. So they had meetings and there were loads of meetings but not understanding themies it does feel like that that did come out really late. Um so getting into some questions then what are we doing about the electives? So

370I board member Chaffy mentioned kids in choir who can't sing. So it's my understanding that choir enrollment is up because it's the only elective left. So, while students that have block schedules and we heard that they have more electives, but if the electives are full and there's nothing left and then we have the students enrolling in whatever is left, I don't think that's like the intention of this. So, if we can address that either tonight or on Friday, I think she Do you have Yeah, go ahead. Um, we don't have students in choir that don't want to be in choir. um our elective choices right now, like I said, the the ones that have facilities that are um that have a lot of equipment like our auto or welding, um those are full. Um but

371our other electives on campus are open. So, we do have art openings, we have music openings, and we have like non-s singing or non-performative music classes that students who are excited about music but don't necessarily want to perform. We have those, too. Okay. Because that that is part of the feedback we're hearing, right? Said, I I don't know that I can answer these because that's the again what people are telling us is that the electives are full. There's not there's nothing left, but we've got got room. Is it just maybe that the elective doesn't fit their schedule because they have other other classes they want to take and then it just doesn't line up right. Yes, but that happens regardless of a block schedule. Um, students request a lot and we do our best to

372try to create a schedule that um allows for the least amount of conflicts possible, but um students can't get everything and that's why we ask them for alternatives um and we do the best that we can. Our counselors meet with every single student one-on-one. Um and that's something that I'm I'm not sure every school does. I don't I'm not saying they don't do it, but I know for our school, it's important that our counselors meet with students one-on-one to clarify what their graduation goals are, what their ECAP goals are, what uh classes they want to take. Um so we try really hard and we really strive to make sure that students aren't placed in an elective that they hate. Um it we do our best and then we do have an issue like with curriculum.

373Obviously, everyone knows it's it's state law that you can you can re review curriculum. Um, and when that was brought up tonight in the public comment, too, is that parents are saying, "I don't know what my child's going to be learning." I think we, you know, we need to address that too, either now or on another another date. And maybe that involves the communication to parents again to show them how and where they can access curriculum if they can. that that is a big problem because like they have the right by state law to access everything their child's learning. Um the other one is um parents are telling me that when they did the sample block schedule their kids missed uh some EVIT time. They were late to EVIT. So we want to make sure

374that that's tightened up. And I think we need to consider open campus for lunch for some of maybe 11th and 12th grade because we're hearing that kids are sitting in the hallway and there's no room for lunch. I don't feel like I've gotten any good like asurances that that's not going to happen. I I I like what board member Benson said because one of my concerns is that if we move forward and we roll this out and it goes badly that we're going to do irreparable irreparable harm to the community. I don't know that we can recover from it if it doesn't go well. Like it could really hurt the district. And um and so I I mean I think we need to see like more assurances that this is like we've got all these

375these answers for everybody and we and it's concrete. Um and as you brought up there's lots of questions still that haven't been answered. It's like late. I feel bad for the principles. I'm I don't even want to talk cuz it's like I we got to answer these things and I want to talk but then I don't cuz I'm looking at you like you got to get up in probably 5:00 a.m. or something. My goodness. So, um, but this is the I mean, again, this is, you know, this was put, you know, it was a long night. I I don't want to have to kick the can down the road again. I think we've got to we've got to talk about this stuff on Friday. I don't think we can wait any any longer. Miss Walden,

376there were some questions that were asked before that I wrote down in my notebook that I I can address. So, one of the questions was about honors classes and whether or not they would be what we call doublecoded, which means you would have honors uh students and uh general students in the same class. We are not doing that model next year. So, in freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, there will be separate honors classes. So, that was one question. Um and we have that I think it's Skyline, right? Aren't we Is that at Skyline 2 already? Aren't you doing separate honors? Yeah. 12th grade for 11th grade. Okay, good. Um, one of the other questions that was asked was about our registration process at Mountain View. Uh, our registration process and the dates were the same as

377they were last year. I was on maternity leave last year, so we did it as soon as I was able to. Um, but we uh did not move our process to in into November. We did start requesting uh students preferences formies in November but they did not start the registration process until December which was the same timeline as we had a year ago. Uh we felt like we needed the time too to wrap our head around we don't want to get this wrong. Um we want to do our best by by our kids and by our families. So um that starting in November was not a process that I felt comfortable with. And what's nice about the registration process is that uh we we were given that autonomy to start when we felt we were

378ready and we did. Okay. And um and then I think just to add uh you know we definitely need to revisit uh the financial issues if there's the loss in ADM. Some parents are telling us that they looked at districts that have done these models or done something similar what Mesa did and then it was funded by something like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and then when the money ran out they couldn't do thosemies anymore. So, um, that's something I think we need to talk about and provide as assurances to, uh, to our parents that we're like we're not going to run out of money or or have to undo everything in a decade because that's another concern that's coming up from some other districts. And uh, and then the loss of instructional time,

379like we we've never had a good discussion about about that. So, we'll we'll keep going. Not not tonight. I mean, on Friday, we'll uh hopefully on Friday we've got room for that because I I think we have to squeeze that in there and we can keep going. And you know, maybe this just needs to be first on the agenda so it's not like we don't run out of time. Before we close, can I ask one question, please? Yeah. Um because I I talked to Miss Benson the other day for quite a while and I appreciated her time and she did bring up that question of she had said that she had gotten feedback that teachers had done work over the summer and then that work had been cast aside and I I dug back in

380to the work that was done and tried to figure out what specifically was cast aside and I couldn't locate anything. Um, and then tonight I heard I heard a number of teachers come up and and talk about being involved in that work. If if you could maybe provide some clarity, I I'll get those answers for you and and find out exactly what was cast aside because we don't want to put we don't want to ask our teachers do a bunch of work and then honor it. And if that happened, then I would need to explain to you why because I want to honor your question. So, I I just need some specifics on what was cast aside because I I did some digging. I I really couldn't locate anything specifically. So, I would I would

381just ask for some clarity and then I'll get an answer for that. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Eis, do you mind answering the curriculum that's come up a lot? Yes. So, all of our curriculum documents are posted on our teaching and learning website. What teachers are going through right now in terms of professional learning for that core academy course which are based five of them or four of the fivemmies are CTE courses with the approved curriculum the state standards EV programs etc um and then public service academy has the changemakers curriculum so the work that we started back in 2022 23 with our teachers around the high priority standards and the competencies and looking at those documents ments we then brought to CCAP um two years ago I believe it was in terms of the

382templates and what feedback from the community and the parents would be in terms of those templates and providing that information and so the past couple of years we started with our core our English social studies math and science to um have the teachers work on those curriculum documents that would be in that approved format and so since then we've continued to work on all of those pieces to get the curriculum revised and into that format. And so, uh, currently we're working, the past couple years we've been working on the arts and PE and those will be coming to you soon. Those were just brought to CCAP over the past couple of months. And these are documents that have been teachers coming in and getting iterations and feedback over the past couple of years. So, it

383takes a lot of time. We also have our CTE teachers that are working right now in collaboration with others and that's the design teams that you've heard and they're working on putting those what the approved curriculum documents that are already posted on our website and taking those courses and working in those interdisciplinary teams to get that model into those new template formats as well. And so for example, I talked about freshman's seminar this earlier. We will be bringing that to CCAP in that new format where they've taken the career exploration curriculum and then added those pieces with that broader lens. And so that will be brought to you as well. Um but we have cycles where we if new standards are approved or a contract runs out on our um instructional resources and so we

384go out for an adoption process for new resources. Those curriculum documents are always under iteration and revision depending on what's happening whether it's the standards the resources or teachers just say this is outdated and we want to we want to revise those. So because we have so many courses at the high school level, we will continue to work on those in that newly approved format that our CCAP has gotten information, gotten feedback from parents. Teachers have come forth and they were part of that work back in 2022, but it's taken this long just to get all of the English, the science, the math, the social studies, the arts, the PE, and now we're working on all those elective courses as well. Um, in fact, oops, go ahead. Yeah, President Davis, I have requested that we

385have a governing board discussion about what our standard operating procedures are over curriculum review because the forward- facing documents are the only ones listed on the website and I think that that's some clarity. I requested that of Dr. Forless. Let's define those terms. Let's make this that really easy to understand and a lot of those documents, the competency documents that have been reviewed by CCAP make it really hard for parents to see what is actually taught. it it breaks all of the standards into like five topics and it it really doesn't provide course pacing or like the detailed teacher facing things. So that's something I'd like to provide when we have a little more time that we Yeah. And I will just mentioned though that looks different from teacher to teacher because teachers plan their

386lessons based around the kids that are in their classroom. So they look at where kids are, they look at what they need, they look at their strengths, they look at their interests, and then they plan those lessons. So those wouldn't be something that's posted, for example, on our website. Those would be documents or lesson plans that parents could request syllabi from from the actual individual teacher. So that's you know those are teacher facing documents and and can be shared with parents at any time. Thank you Dr. Strom. Did you have President Davis to uh wrap up this conversation maybe a little Friday uh becomes problematic on several fronts. uh front one is that the timing of the material is such that it's 8:00 a.m. in the morning and the right stakeholders shareholders uh from a

387stakeholder internal stakeholder perspective shareholder perspective may not be able to be there. I know we can make the argument for tonight at 11:30 at night the same way. Uh but uh the invitees to the board retreat are not the same invitees that uh I would want at a study session on Mountain View if that makes sense to everyone. Uh we can certainly scramble and figure out uh how to make that work on Friday. Uh but we still then would need to move board retreat to another date probably because with the amount of questions I think what we'd probably ask for is there's some really viable questions here. And one of the things we try to get our hands around is the questions that are being asked, providing as many answers as we possibly can with

388the correct information, understanding that everything's malleable right now as we continue to learn and and then we provide those and then more questions come about and we want to be respectful that process. That's a process that happens. This is how things naturally evolve. But if we could get the questions if it's going to be Friday and we'll we don't want to take a vote in public on whether it should be Friday or not. So, you're going to have to give your feedback to member Davis and we probably got to have it by tomorrow so that we can organize the right people in the room from 8 to 11. But with the amount of questions I've heard already, I think we then need to move board retreat, which is which is fine, but it's just more

389days out of an unpaid governing board. And I we want we honor your commitment and we love that you guys uh do this for Mesa Public Schools and our families. But I just needed to add those two cents that we just have to be considered of the fact that some of the people that we would invite to Friday are not people that are currently invited to Friday. And if I may, um, President Davis, I just sent um to all board members again the um, college and career website that is linked on every high school's uh, web page and the teaching and learning website that um, Dr. Eless referred to. And so if you see that there's questions that that are not already been answered, that might be a really great way to vet what the

390topics would be and send those to um to you, President Davis. So I just wanted to make sure that you've got the resources of we have kept frequently asked questions, we continue to add to that website. So if there's something that is missing or if it's too ed as you speak, please give us that feedback because that is a place as Dr. Stum said we have one place to capture the information so it's consistent and the agenda for Friday hasn't been posted. So if we could get like a potential agenda and then that could help us decide if you know about how to uh prioritize. I can't think of anything more pressing than this. So I think whatever is going to be in the agenda could probably wait. Yeah. And and the agenda is pretty

391much fully developed. We're still making a few tweaks to the slide deck. moving it would give us some more time to make tweaks to the slide deck, but the engine is pretty easy to get to. We'll get it to you tomorrow morning. Well, or might I make a suggestion because this is pretty much a Mountain View issue, we could call an additional shorter special meeting like next Monday or Tuesday evening. um that just deals I mean any other parents could come of course any other uh people interested uh but it does not seem to be as contentious at any other on any other campus so I think those questions um I hear what you're saying getting people uh but again I don't want another presentation I I just want to be able to ask questions

392and get answers and I would just ask that you please look at frequently asked questions on the website to see if they've already been answered there so that the time is more efficient and we could make more time to answer additional questions that are not yet on that website. Yes. And I think it would be very important to have the Mountain View staff that are part of that conversation because they're the ones that with the detailed answers. So if it's at 8:00 in the morning, they need to be taking care of kids. Okay. I think um our families might be wondering where we're at. So, we're going to wrap this up. Um, I appreciate the discussion. I do think we need to get our questions in and we will chat in the morning in our

393meeting um that we have on this our other meeting to to figure this out. I do think that there is a lot of information and as questions get asked then it's a tumbling of more questions and so if we can get these figured out we will um we want to make sure everyone has the right information and so uh we will we will do our best and with that do I have a motion to adjurnn the meeting so moved I have a second second any discussion Kirby seeing none please take our vote Miss Chaffy votes in the affirmative Everyone have a chance to sign Sharon. I really don't understand you guys still have the proclamation. Why? I sent them to I lost the confirmation. I with about a five years the meeting is dismissed. Thank

394you all for being here. Bad experience with the district.