001I would like to call the school board meeting for Tuesday February 6 2024 for the De Moine public schools to order Miss Rios could you please take the role yes Miss Alo Diz here miss cell Johnson Miss compos pres Mr dicks here miss Knox here miss martarano here miss Norris here we have Kor thank you the first item of business is approval of the agenda may I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda Al moved we have a motion by uh Miss Alonzo Diaz and a second by Miss Marano board members please please cast your votes yes the vote is approved 6 nothing now we turn to I think something we're really excited about and that is our district recognitions absolutely thank you madam chair good evening everyone thank you all for
002being here uh as always at each board meeting I tend to bring forth on behalf of the executive cabinet recognitions at school board meetings about students who were doing outstanding work as in their terms of their academic Pursuit as well as really the acknowledgement of the adults who so tirelessly and fearlessly serve and support them this evening I am pleased to share with you about four different recognitions and I'll try to get through this very quickly but even if I take my time though it's because I'm enjoying every minute of it that's what recognitions are about very quickly to start with uh at East High School principal Jill Verte um versti sorry uh reached out to me and last week and shared with much excitement um the story of two of East High School's 12th
003graders Daniel zoa and iomi nimona Daniel won his 100 wrestling match as an e student and he is the eighth student athlete in the history of East High School to do so he began wrestling in the eighth grade and he has missed all but the last month of his nth grade year and that was due to the covid closure he even made it to the state wrestling tournament last year and was the only male wrestler from dmps who did this and he's hoping again to get back to the state championship which I think occurred last week Beyond that it truly speaks to the fact that he is doing exactly what we expect of our students and that is to have really strong Pursuits after their High School career and he has committed to playing football
004at Grand VI Grand View University and we are excited about Dan 's accomplishments Naomi nimona who also a senior was accepted to the University of Northern IAA after being weight listed this fall her principal shared that she has worked very very hard to get a 4.0 GPA in the first semester and plans to keep that up this time around principal vertiges shared that Naomi just ran towards her with joy in the cafeteria and shared you know I'm a first generation student I was not born born in this country English is not my first language and I did it as I think about the impact that students like Naomi and Danielle in addition to teachers and amazing School leaders there is a not a group of individuals who truly truly adds tremendous value to those students
005as we all know the mo Public Schools is the most culturally and linguistically diverse school system in the state of Iowa and one of the most diverse in the entire United States each and every day we serve students from more than a 100 different countries and where more than 83 different languages are spoken we are truly a diverse population and we do so with pride tonight I want to recognize and share special appreciation for this small but critical team working with our Global Community here in the M Public Schools our bilingual family Liaisons let me just share that 27 of our bfls as we affectionately refer to them currently work with our English language learner students and their families and there are truly a vital Link in helping them navigate school being on boarded when
006they come to this country for the first time and to make sure that they are aware and informed about important matters such as enrollment registration all as they are attempting to become acclimated in our community our bfls themselves truly truly reflect the diversity of the community joining us in the morning from around the world with their own unique and Rich experiences many of them and I've had conversations with some of them are so humble in the work they do every day but when you look at their impressive resumés you will know that the mo Public Schools truly truly truly um we are blessed to to have you some of you have been chemists lawyers chefs okay I need to talk to the chefs after this meeting um many of them have study um studied in
007areas that that truly allows them to bring those rich rich experiences to all of our students I had the Good Fortune of attending a huge bfl sponsored event at Weeks Middle School several weeks ago and and the the joy and the pleasure on the faces of every single family from countries all over the world as they interact interacted with and engag with our bfls um and their students um was certainly inspiring I even shared how when I looked at and had conversations uh with so many of those parents it reminded me about my own family my own parents who are immigrants as well but our bfls you all are rock stars your superheroes We Appreciate You all ladies and gentlemen it's my pleasure to introduce Laura Maki our bilingual family is on supervisor and several
008members of her team with who were with us this evening and I ask that you please come forward to the mic or you stand so you can be [Applause] recognized [Applause] goodness okay this is so emotional this is so amazing okay I said I wasn't going to cry get it together okay H when I start this um good afternoon Dr Roberts uh Schoolboard members it's a great honor to be here tonight and receive this great recognition we are very grateful for giving us this moment and space to shine and for people to know who we are and who we represent my name is laa mati and I have the honor to lead this amazing and talented group of people I call my bfl family but before I share a little bit more about myself I
009would like them to introduce themselves to you so please go ahead when I start this good evening my name is Cynthia I've been with the district 19 years um I'm currently in the Hoover feeder so I support Hoover Meredith Hillis and more um thank you you good evening bues um my name is Nella Blanco the chef n Blanco Chef um and I'm in the Ros theater I've been in the district for 18 years and I support 14 Schools hi ciao um my name is Jennifer sh and I'm from Vietnam I have been working for the district for 34 years and uh I'm serving District y good evening my name is maral De Jesus I've been with the district for 16 years and I serve the Lincoln feeder I serve uh weeks Middle School um love
010joy and W Elementary thank you for having us tonight evening everyone my name is Delia and amor I from originally from Burma and I was born and grew up in Thailand and I uh I serve East lean and North feeders and I've been with the district almost four years thank you good evening everybody uh my name is Vania and I've been working here at the district just for about four months and I'm very happy to join this team and I am originally from Mexico thank you good evening everyone my name is ashwak Ahmed um I haveon public school this is my sixth year I serve Northeast and Lincoln feeder I'm a Swahili [Applause] bfl holaa my name is Brenda Pas Garcia I am from Chihuahua Mexico and I have been with the district for almost
011three years love it and I am the East feeder hola my name is Brenda Lucero I've been with the district for five years and I serve Lincoln High School Park Avenue Elementary and Jefferson Elementary glad to be [Applause] here Sandra Bonia I am original from Chile I have been working in the district for almost four year but I have been working in education for more than 15 and I am work and serve the East Fe there and I said Capital view esto and Bre Baker thank you hello my name is Denise I'm from tillet to I've been working at the district for 5 years now and I serve mom's stud Baker and Morris Elementary thank [Applause] you hello my name is uh th I'm originally from Burma and I speak current um I serve Hoover
012and Ros feeder and I been with the district for 12 years thank good evening wenas noes my name is Lorena Lopez Valdez and I've been in the district for over 20 years so I'm very old and I um work for two feers um Monroe Samuelson and King and I'm from Mexico thank [Applause] you uh good evening everybody my name is fardin Amir Karimi I'm originally from Afghanistan I have been working with a district almost one year and a half and I have been in a country almost three [Applause] years bardes H good evening my name is Salvador gardo um Rodriguez G and I am from El saler I serve uh fley catel Molton and o elementary and I have been uh with mon public school since 2021 thanks for having us good evening uh my
013name is Nate Emanuel I'm from East Africa originally from Merra and I serve uho public school for district white and I serve for two languages and I located in at edman elementary school and rosville high school thank you hello my name is Francisco I'm originally from Mexico uh I support the north feeder uh primarily good Rail and Hardin Middle School MinGa hello my name is Anan I serve uh de Mo public school for about 12 years since day one and I'm from Burma nice to meet [Applause] you Jambo uh my name is salom Shabib one of the SW Bango born and raised in Tanzania East Africa speaking Swahili serving Swahili community in the uh District so thank you for having [Applause] us as I mentioned before my name is laa mati I'm originally from Mexico
014and this is my 20th year with de Mo Public Schools through thank [Applause] you throughout my journey working for the District I have both witnessed and experienced an evolution in our role as bfls when I first began working for De Moine Public Schools we were 45 native language tutors and had approximately 5,000 El students in the program fast forward to today we are 27 bfls and have almost 7600 English language Learners however our support for the families of those students that have exited the program continues our role is one of a kind as bfls we wear many hats you might ask yourself how hard can it be there are only translators well for one we are more than translators or interpreters we are the cultural Brokers for the district we serve and support almost 40%
015of the student population and their families and the growth continues this school year we have seen an influx of immigrants and refugees last year last school year new students enrolled to the district whose language was not not English was 1,600 this school year as of last week the district had enrolled 1,400 immigrant and refugees the number is staggering something we have never experienced before a vast majority of our families are arriving to the deor area with great challenges and this is where bffls intercede with their talents and skills to support them in meeting their needs bfls are a very unique group one you cannot duplicate their love and passion for the work that they do is like no other and the reason why we have so much passion in the work that we do is
016because we are immigrants and refugees and have the same experience as our families we know the adversity families have had endur to coming to the us and our goal is for them and their children to reach the American dream but we need help our team of 27 is not enough to provide families with a with a support that they deserve I would like to offer each one of you the opportunity to Shadow a bfl so you can personally experience the daily role of a bfl in closing I would like to thank and recognize Miss Maria Alonso for graciously taking the time to Shadow some of the bfls and validate their work thank you m Ma gracias again Dr Roberts Schoolboard members thank you for hearing us seeing us and now we need your support next
017I would like to invite a couple of parents who would like to share how the work of the bffls has personally impact them and their students and a couple bfls have a few words as well thank you so much [Applause] it's all right it's all right appear signed up speak oh yes com hola hola I'm speak Spanish I speak a little bit English um good afternoon my name is Tita HUD I am from El salvad I have a seven years live in Iowa it's my fa State and United States I'm so happy uh I have a four children I have a three daughter and one boys uh my four daughter is Stephanie HUD she's student in North High School [Music] and gr 11 grade 11 grade 11 grade um me lady is in the Middle
018School Hardin and seventh grade Esmeralda is in fley and f f grade and hos as preso and carber it's the big experience right now for me and I excited because uh last year my two first daddies coming for here and United State um right now I'm so happy because Stephanie and me lady is improved for the speak linguage in English yeah and I'm so happy with Salvador Francisco and I'm sorry and Francisco and Salvador is new one I'm sorry um Cesar um I'm happy with um with him and Cesar too because and they and has help me and everything right now um I'm very happy because uh the team of bfl teams have helped me a lot with the new experience of being here School mid schol because I'm happy because uh that they're there
019because he has been a a confusing and challenging experience at times I don't know what's going on in high school and middle school so it's a little confusion but they but the team has a spirit of helping helping the Latino population and this this is what we need we need people in uh with the spirit of uh to help help in within the community um that's what we need because if we work together the families the the board of the District board the uh the bilingual family Elations the community we work all together we're going to make the United States and the community in Iowa a better place to live and to [Applause] work hello good evening everyone thank you so much for the opportunity first of all I would like to congratulate in having
020this time to rec to give a recognition to bil langual family leis thank you my experience here in Iowa I arrived about four years ago Soto Ric I am from Puerto Rico my first Contact my first communication was towards C one of the most important things for me is my child's education something that I have worried a lot for so when I first had that contact with sesad one of my first fears was in being able to talk to somebody that would be able to understand me CAD has always been there available I have never heard I have no time he always made time for me a ashwag she is my neighbor and she works from the [Music] heart I also have met Lucero myself and um all of these individuals they make a differ
021difference in our experience all of you meaning all of us work with our hearts I feel that we need more people to represent us so bilingual famili are the voice of those students that do not speak the language without this team we would feel completely excluded from the system I want to thank every single one of the members of this team not only those that are Latinos but everybody for being here and providing support for all of all of us who do not speak English as our first language and once again thank you so much to all the hard work that bilingual famili aons give each and every day and I hope that for the state of Iowa to make a difference and continue to make a difference for All Families thank you [Applause] graci
022[Applause] thank you ladies and gentlemen oh we have a few more come on up want to cut out a Swahili piece huh yeah no uh I was just told to uh close it up for uh ourselves uh as bfl I I prepped something to say from the paper but I'll just speak from the heart right they say we just going to have to connect um this is the thing that our community luck it's it's a we have de Mo public school it's a community school are we bringing Community to school or we're bringing ourselves to the community a lot of our families come from different different struggle background and hustling to come and be here and they sacrifice a lot for their family to succeed each and every member of the family that are Ser
023the only thing that you're going to hear from each one of them is just like I came here for the better education of my kids I sacrif rrific everything and left everyone back home for seven kids 10 kids 11 kids there's two of us who speak so right there is now influx of immigrants and refugees coming in this country are we ready to serve them all are we justifying them to come here and become here are they really going to become somebody if they don't get the support that they do or we just going to let the bfls be somebody who just translate just like you guys see this is our job we do every day she said what she said and we interpret in English but we are the Liaisons we stand up for
024the community we represent the cultures that is not really heard or spoken off we come with our own uh Traditions beliefs and different background from different places hear us see our difference know our difference and understand our difference we need to be taken very responsibly not delicately we are the bridge connecting the community to the schools if you're don't taking care of those bridges they'll break off all those roads they're not going to connect justifiably please take care of those bridges which is us we are here for you representing you in the funerals and birthdays in those graduation that you're not there Jennifer just told me last week one of the student passed away who graduated two years ago she was there one of the mother who just lost a kid we are there to
025show them you just came five weeks ago you don't know where to bury your kids we're going to show you where to bury the kid we're going to take you to the Hamilton funeral we're going to take care of everything else we're going to fund raise for you we're going to show you around a kid who just missed a bus on this day that's negative outside the hand was close to get frostbite we sit down with the parent and explain why the weather is very crucial don't miss a bus be out there we're not just educating the kids on how to be the students we're educating parents how to be good citizen in this country we need more of us we need to be out there educating people we want to save the community better
026because we have hunger not because we have hunger to succeed we have we are hungry to make sure we support the families that they came here for the first time I'm just asking you I know Dr ER you're going to be this is going to hit home because you one of us you're one of our students before your parents were immigrants a lot of families coming in as immigrants and refugees please meet them they want to meet you when the board of director they were looking for the pr uh superintendent they came to us and ask questions in our community We Gather them around and say say which person would you like to see they say we want to see somebody who can see us you can see us we know you can join us
027in this move movement to make sure that the parent going to be successful in school the student going to graduate happily and know where they're going to head to you talk about Naomi North School student that's a swah student we're proud of her we cherish her we cheer for her the there is a lot more 4.0 we just need to support them please join us and thank [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you [Applause] now I like to think of myself as a intellectually inclined but the pressure to learn 83 different languages I'm feeling it but I'm committed to doing as much as I can and I will be there that's my commitment and I plan to Shadow as many of you as possible um so I take of that offer I appreciate it based on my calculation
028of what you've shared l ladies and gentlemen we have sitting in this room 196 years of experience serving our English language Learners community and so for that we are immensely grateful for you cultural Brokers known as bilingual family is on thank you the next [Applause] yeah the next recognition truly Echoes a sentiment that we have continuously shared here in the mo public schools and that is our recognition that there is so much power in Community Partnerships Poke County and Prairie Meadows are both strong partners and supporters of the mo public schools in so many different ways over the years they have stepped up to help all of our schools our teachers and our students from educational programming to technology to a wide range of school projects to the opening of of major undertaking such as
029Mediacom stadium and many many more and we are grateful for their partnership and friendship over so many years I have had the Good Fortune of meeting many of them and I have to tell you their Spirit surely is anchored to success in the mo public schools and for that I'm immensely grateful here on tonight we are thankful to have both po County and PR Meadows in the house for a very special and annual presentation without further Ado it is my honor to introduce not only your partners but some friends Angela Connelly and Matt McCoy from the PO County Board of Supervisors and Julie stort who is a senior vice president for PS and she also have a number of PTO friends with her to visit them tonight want to ask all of you representing po
030County or PTO to just come up to the podium let's welcome them well thank you for the nice introduction um we have met you on several occasions and uh I am just pleased that you're here in our community I know you're doing great things and thank you to the school board welcome Mr dicks still weird to see you sitting there H without you know the hand here um we are pleased once again to be this collaborative partner with De Moine public schools and you guys tears in my eyes for all of you and the great work that you're doing it's amazing how many languages that we do have in Deb Public Schools so thank you for all the good work that you do and allowing them to do the work that they need to do
031for our community we have a lot of immigrants and refugees and they need all the help that we can get so maybe with this $65,000 plus uh whatever you need to do with this we're happy that we can do it and our [Applause] we couldn't do this without our partners with Prairie Meadows and Julie Stewart maybe you want to say a few words also yes um thank you for allowing us to be here tonight Brian um and I are proud of our partnership with the Poke County Supervisors and this profit sharing um that we have allows us to give back to the community and this $65,000 65 ,000 is unrestricted funds so that what that means is the school district is allowed to utilize the dollars on um however you choose fit to benefit um
032our children so thank you for all you do and thank you for having us here tonight thank you let's just [Applause] get where would you like us to stand okay Center is Mr McCoy were you going to say something though no that's okay I I was just going to say keep up the great work we we're so proud of De Mo public schools and all the wonderful things they're doing in our community grateful to see good things happen in public education [Applause] that concludes this evening's recognitions Madam chair and for all of you who are here in the audience if you haven't already listened to the latest edition of the podcast that is fastly becoming one of the best educational podcasts in the land please listen to the become here project it is our own
033the mo Public Schools podcast be sure to download it for great interviews with teammates and students and I know that we are going to have a number of bfls on the podcast very very soon we probably have had some already so make sure uh you are in touch with Phil we want to hear you on the podcast as becoming the best in the land Madam chair that concludes this evening's recognitions thank you and I'm turn it to Mr dicks who will open up the public forum next on the agenda is the public forum followed by the consent and regular agenda we provide speakers at The Forum an opportunity to address the board for up to three minutes regarding items that are not on the board agenda we also allow any person the opportunity to speak
034to the board for up to five minutes following the Pres presentation of an agenda item if anyone wishes to speak during any portion of the business meeting please email rosa. Ros DM schools.org the same speaking protocols apply to all individuals who wish to address the board speakers will be called individually and we ask that they State their name and their address prior to providing comments students and minors do not have to provide their addresses guests of the board are encouraged to speak to matters related to the programs services and operations of dmps please remember that Iowa law prohibits us from discussing specific employees or their job performance we ask all speakers to avoid references to personalities or character attacks as those types of comments do not contribute to the purpose for which this public form
035exists the use of inappropriate language will not be tolerated and individuals choosing to do so will be GED out of order and asked to excuse themselves from the premises or escorted out by District security as a reminder to the board in public the board will not engage in discussion with public forum speakers as it is Our obligation to discuss only matters posted in the public agenda for the sake of transparency and the opportunity afforded to all Community stakeholders matters requiring attention will receive appropriate staff and or board followup at a time after the meeting thank you for your participation and we appreciate your feedback and input Miss Rios do we have any speakers for the public forum yes we do first up I'd like to call Jonah O'Neal hello board members my name is Jonah
036O'Neal I'm a junior at North High School right now the topic I wish to discuss today is the role of Community School coordinators what I really want to emphasize is the impact and importance they have on our school and any school they really go to for North our school coordinator is Tu we Cardoza this man runs so many activities and things that North it it'd be all night to list them all just an example of some of the things that he runs is polar bear crew project live inclusion week silver cord and Latino's in action I would keep going but I think that the other speakers would be angry if we were here all night so for time sake I would like to talk about the impact that chewy has had on me personally as
037a student at North High School I first met chewy Sumer of my eighth grade year playing baseball Chewy was always there giving me support for That season and he even gave me my first shot on VAR even if I didn't do so well uh chewy has always kept in touch with me even after he stopped being a baseball coach he's always been there for me and he really helped shape me into the man that I am today and why I'm there to talk to you guys I know that everything that I am talking about today is not only felt by me but all of my family and friends at North High School I really want chewy to be keep being a part of North High School and the community around it Che cordoza is simply
038Irreplaceable to the community culture and life around North High School thank you for listening to me speak thank you thank [Applause] you next up is Amanda McCurley I'm going to set my timer thank you I practice but you okay yeah good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Amanda McCurley and I'm the proud to be a mother of two students at Mo Elementary and more importantly I'm a proud member of the Moore Community I love our school and I'm part of the small But Mighty of parents and friends and more uh program with five other active members I live and support Public Schools especially dmps I could go on and on and on and on about how much I love the community staff and teachers at more but that
039is not why I'm here tonight I'm here because I'm frustrated discouraged and disappointed with a decision that was recently made about completely eliminating the community school coordinator position at Moore it feels like a slap in the face especially after we have had sent letters earlier this fall to tell you all of the wonderful things our coordinator has done the most frustrating part part is that this is not surprising and that should be concerning to you our school has made tremendous progress in attendance in other areas mostly due in part to her work and it is now being taken away from us and that feels like a punishment for the progress that's been made the students at more deserve to have the same opportunities as everyone else at every other school at dmps as well as
040the kids going to schools and neighboring districts and throughout Iowa they um their education should be shaped not just by what they learn in a classroom but with opportunities that are presented to them outside of the classroom after school and through um their connection to their Community I'm am not willing to sacrifice my child's education because of my devotion to Public Schools if I have to look elsewhere um for them to have opportunities I will do it the recent changes with State vouchers have made some options more accessible and tempting and luckily I'm privileged enough to be able to make these decisions for my families but as you are well aware and have we heard tonight not everyone has those Privileges and that's why I'm here tonight we know that the school and families Thrive
041when surrounding Community is involved with act an active in our school when students feel as though they are part of something great they want to go to school our parent group has tried really strong to do this and we have not been successful we cannot keep Community involved this takes a person dedicated to doing that the coordinator at our school has been able to build relationships and connections with businesses neighborhood association financial institutions faith-based organizations I could go on and on and on there the coordinat has recruited and retained amazing volunteers who have volunteered over 150 hours each month the coordinator has brought in around $27,000 to our school in Grants and funding commitments um and also has connected us to the other Hoover feeder schools we have not I've not felt that part of
042a community before um without someone in this position that's going to weather and it's probably going to die um especially since our school is not a 21st century Community Learning Center we need all the support we can get to offer our students accessible opportunities and experiences I ask that you re-evaluate your decision as I know more is one of 10 schools that did not get a community school coordinator all schools deserve the support all students at the MPS deserve to come here and become the best you here it is your job and elected duty to ensure that happens thank you thank you thank [Music] you next up is Kate Davis Davies hello um my name is Kate Davies and I live at 4808 Fleming Avenue I think we were supposed to say your address um
043like Amanda my son I have children at Mo Elementary I have a second grader and my daughter is very excited to join her brother at more um next year I am extremely upset with the fact we are losing our community school coordinator completely um when we first started looking at schools here in De Moine I we considered going private school like holy trinity but we ended up deciding to go to dmps and more Elementary specifically because we wanted our kids to go to a school that was within their community and with their Community families and we wanted any time and resources that we had to give as a family to go to our community and our community schools with State money going to vouchers and the increasing need of our Public Schools it's absolutely imperative
044to have someone who can bring in money from all available sources like Amanda mentioned our CSC has done incredible work um and it cannot be AB feasibly absorbed by uh any staff current staff or parent um our parents are hardworking individuals a lot of them don't have time to volunteer to this um I am privileged enough to have time but our uh pfm which is parents and Friends of more which is our PTA um we have five members that come to meetings and we have tried and we are giving all we can and um there's just no way even the even the programs that our CSC has set up she's still working like telling us things she's got set up for next year she she's telling us she wants to set us up for Success
045because she knows we're not going to have someone next year and um she's doing that knowing that she may not have a job and she's still doing all that for us and it's sad because even though she's doing all that work we can't sustain it we're not going to be able to have the time and resources to continue to keep those connections and set up all these activities and um yeah so the school is the community it is what joins young people and their parents together with others the after school programs that our CSA has set up has opened up new ways of communication among families and their school and it strengthens the social bonds between the families in our communities um there needs to be someone in charge of these programs that has time
046to research and two grants and set up the programs um I understand that with the cuts that have been made there was a point system and we happened to not we we landed in one of the 10 schools that did not and I have to say that whatever that I don't I know nothing about the scoring but any improvements we've made that kept us out of getting a csse is because we had a csse um and when students make connections like with after school activities which again are all set set up by our CSC they start to think of school as not just a school but a place that they can belong a place of community and a place to share their lives um these programs can cut down on bullying and and conflict during
047the school day uh and rcsc has done just an absolutely incredible job of helping us feel like our school is our community and it's going to be a huge loss to our students our families and the entire dmps Community if not not every school gets a CSC so thank you thank you thank [Applause] you those are all the speakers that I have signed up for the public forum tonight thank you Miss Rios We will now move to the consent agenda as a reminder to the board and public the board will not engage in discussion or deliberation with a speaker regarding comments made to agenda items discussion and deliberation will remain among board members at the board table with speakers comments informing the board's discussion deliberation and determinations as deemed necessary M Rios do we have
048any speakers no speakers for consent thank you Mr Dix I believe you have the consent motion I do I move that the board approve the consent items in accordance with the recommended action for each item on the consent agenda including bills previously authorized certified and approved for the payment by the board secretary in the amount of 4,810 5744 and procurement transactions in the amount of $355,900 want to point out just um to flag that there was an adjustment to one of the items on the consent agenda item and we did not notify the board this was the Prairie Meadows Grant and so I'm flagging that for people um hopefully you notice that um but apologies on our part because we did not let you know that there were some amendments to that form with that
049being said are there is there any discussion or questions on that topic okay board members please cast your votes Miss CN yes C yes uh the vote is the consent agenda is approved 7 to nothing next on the agenda we have one other item item is E1 request for a hearing with the sbrc otherwise known as the school budget Review Committee for modified supplemental amount for asbestos abatement projects superintendent Roberts would you please introduce the matter certainly Madam chair I recommend that the school board approve the request and Exhibits as presented for a hearing with the sbrc for modified supplemental amount of $ 35,320 19 for asbestos abatement projects During the period of July 1 2022 through June 30th 2023 that were paid for using general fund dollars may have a motion and a second
050to accept the superintendent's recommendation Dix so moved alono second we have a motion by Dix and a second by Alonso any discussion or questions board members please cast your votes Miss yes Miss cell johnon Johnson yes the vote is approved 7 to Z next we have one information only item item is F1 updated board members conflict of interest forms next on the agenda we have items of privilege I would like to ask if our board members would like to share anything I'd like to just say thank you again to our bfls that made it out here tonight I know that there were some that were not able to be here um know that we value the work that you do every day and hopefully the invitation that you shared with us uh will be taken
051very seriously by every one of us thank you for all that you do muchas much graas thanks Miss Alonzo other board members um I just wanted to do a quick follow up on team frostback fight in case people had not seen they were they're going to present at Nasa so they're one of 10 teams that was selected and uh I don't know if there's any other details that I you anyone wants to add but pretty huge accomplishment uh again for our North High students our dmps students and Iowa it's so amazing so congratulations to team frostbite great thank you Miss Knox I just oh sorry go ahead I just want to um since I'm not present you guys probably didn't see me but I was tearing up a little bit ago when listening to our
052families talk about the difference that our um Bilal liaison have helped their families um they're not just interpreters they are a major part of our community and helping immigrants feel welcomed in the community and also dmps and um Miss La I will take it up on you so um send me an email and I would love to Shadow a couple of your um of your bilinga on um and I'm just glad that um just listen to those stories because that just makes my heart happy as a um third generation my grandpa came in to the United States at 19 uh 1902 I think it was and um just to see how much we have changed and especially de Mo public schools and how we are welcoming and it just makes me so happy but thanks
053guys and I'll see you next time thanks Miss Campos Other Board member items of privilege I do want to lift up a couple of things um just a reminder and to everybody watching state of the schools is February 13th in the morning at Hoover um it's an opportunity for Dr Roberts and uh myself and the full board and some young um students uh to to talk a little bit about um the future of De Moine public schools and all the wonderful things that we're doing um for board colleagues I do want to remind you that we do have a work session on February 27th so please make sure that you are continuing to hold that day and then finally um we're getting into the session where we will talk about Community engagement but I would
054be if we did not as board members call out um some of the board members but also staff that were really helpful and so I just want to say Rosie thank you very much and Phil and team you're over there so we have a little something for you um Josie who is probably not here but really helped us with the survey and then last but not least um Pat Jenna and Maria um we couldn't have done it without all of the hard work and hustle that you did um I think some sacrifice away from your families and I just wanted to say how much we appreciate it so thank you very [Applause] much Dr Roberts uh superintendence report thank you madam chair like many of you and certainly uh Miss Campos Express this sentiment my
055heart is full it is not too often that we have an opportunity to truly hear about the depths of the work that so many caring adults amongst almost 5,000 who work for the m the schools are doing every single day and you do it with so much love and joy and sometimes really at the risk of being incredibly incredibly selfless and for that for all of you certainly for our bfls who are here and I'm going to actually start referring to you all as uh cultural Brokers I like that better um we're grateful so thank you often times when we sit in this position that of superintendent district leaders or certain even the board there are some really tough decisions that we have to make but I believe that we to the best of our
056abilities attempt to make those decisions by always anchoring them in what is best for children the 30,000 plus children we serve you know there one such decision that has been made lately and I I wanted to bring it into this space Madam chair as a part of my report is the fact that we have made a decision to make an adjustment to the music offerings for f fifth grade students beginning the next school year the mo public schools and certainly based in my experiences as an educator and research that I've looked at we understand that the Visual and Performing Arts they're critical they contribute in a significant way to well-rounded students it adds tremendous value to their academic journey and certainly it improves how they're able to socialize amongst others the the mon Public Schools
057continue to be proud to provide all of our students with opportunities to really benefit from The Talented Cadre of music educators we have in the district it's important to knowe that that we are not exempt from the teacher shortage that is impacting so many schools and districts around the state and Country particularly for those High need positions such as a band and Orchestra teacher the decision to be made recently truly is anchored in the fact that we want to make sure that we are thinking longterm but also finding alternative ways to support those fifth grade students who next year will have music education but they will no longer have band and Orchestra to give you quick context we have eight band and Orchestra teachers who while they're serving all our middle schools also hop into
058their cars each week driving around the city try trying to provide Banner orchestral lessons to elementary students in 38 elementary schools and while we have a significant number of students in the fifth grade who are interested in the ban their parents are committed to supporting them we made the decision to ensure that we show up a robust Middle School band program which will eventually lead into high school and then just to focus in offering our fifth graders next year continue strong music program except for band and Orchestra during the school day theond public schools has Partnerships with more than 180 different partners in central Iowa and some of those Partnerships are focused on providing the Arts and so what we've decided to do as a result of the generosity of the city as well as
059some of our partners including Bravo who focuses on the Arts we are committed to offering those fifth graders next year who will not have ban an orchestra within the school day an opportunity to attend band camp during the summer as well as after school program with band and Orchestra several days a week rest assured that this decision has caused many of us to stay up at night because it impacts those who we here to serve children and we will continue to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to provide him with additional resources two points to note one we are not eliminating or reducing any teaching position and then two we want to make sure that music instruction will continue to be an important part of our elementary curriculum next school year and
060we recognize that yes our middle Elementary School students will have to wait one additional year until they get to the sixth grade before they can get back into band and Orchestra and we're looking forward to support in them throughout this process thank you for your support parents your voice and your advocacy will always be welcome because you are a critical partner in the work that we're doing and when we make these decisions and reach out to you and you give us feedback please know that it is well received we looking forward to strong continuing Partnerships we at dmps support the Arts throughout Madam chair that concludes this evening's superintendent report thanks Dr Roberts um thank you for join joing us this evening we appreciate all of you being here tonight to celebrate with us and
061share information the meeting is adjourned at 6:34 and we're going to take a brief B break a bathroom break and we're going to move quickly into our work session the first will be on community engagement and Outreach which will share the findings from the board listening sessions and the second will be a presentation on the fy2 budget this meeting is adjourned AR e AJ and Rodney you are both online correct yes ma'am yes okay and Terry and um Anna are you both online yes yes okay um we are going to go ahead and get started I know we're still um Jenna is on her way back in but I think it's for the sake of timing we want to keep the meeting moving forward um this is our opportunity to um learn more and hear
062more about the results of the board listening session um M Alonzo I'm going to turn it over to you um obviously um we just thanked you for your hard work but we want to turn it over to you and to the committee um if there's anything you'd like you you'd like to say before we um turn it over to um to Rodney and AJ sure yes thank you we have something that we'd like to share on behalf of the committee so I'm going to go just I'm just going to go ahead and read that and then we'll go on to Rodney and and AJ over a period of 42 days the community outreach committee and members of the school board as a whole conducted 31 virtual or in-person listening sessions let me just say that
063again the community outreach committee and members of the school board as a whole conducted 31 virtual or in-person listening sessions in some cases these sessions were hosted by the board with invitations extended to the entire community in other instances the committee with direction from the full board s sat out groups who have historically been underrepresented in providing feedback about dmps the dmps experience these in-person sessions were combined with an online survey open to any member of the community who wanted to give feedback about dmps the resulting report which will be made public includes more than 16,000 pieces of raw data gathered from the online survey and in-person listening sessions in gathering this information the committee with the support of the full board has tried to be intentional about who we include and how we are
064reaching out to specific segments of our community the goal was to gather information in an equitable way while this process wasn't perfect we feel this set of listening sessions was an improvement from the last and we will take lessons learned this time forward when we seek feedback from the community again we also believe that delivery of the data to the public can and should be improved from its original presentation tonight the board and this committee would like to thank everyone who participated in the survey and all those who took time in person to share thoughts about how how we improve dmps we'd also like to thank our partners at this at the Council of GRA City schools for their guidance throughout the process we will use the data to confirm evaluate and possibly even change
065the goals and guards this board uses as guiding principles the committee recommends the board receive and accept the data from our community listening session or sessions as sufficient for the purpose of evaluating in and determining goals and guardrails we further recommend that the board continue to work with the Council of great City Schools to verify and digest the outputs of the listening sessions and Survey thank you thanks Maria and thanks to Patrick and to Jenna as well um at this point I think we're going to turn it over to Rodney and AJ um to take us through the conversation I do want to point out and I apologize because I haven't checked my email we were having some technological um issues with the spreadsheet and so um Miss Rios have we resolved that okay so
066AJ and Rodney I'll turn it over to you to um to take us through this next part I've shared my screen are you able to see that I can see it all right what we want to do is we want to just briefly walk you through the process that you've gone through and theing document and then describe what typically happens next in this process so first as your committee chair to describe you all went out engage in listening and engage in surveying your community the resulting data from that you provided to us and we created a large spreadsheet we provided that spreadsheet back to you um in that spreadsheet has all of the feedback that you all captured as board members conducting your listening and all the feedback that was brought in Via survey U
067that feedback centered around six main questions you ask and so what we did is analyzed it in that form you see on the screen right now is just a word cloud just takes all of the words that were spoken um the board members captured and were shared VI surveys and then presents them visually just give you a sense of what are some of the high level things what are the things that were repeated most frequently um and not surprisingly things about school and students and Community um understanding and reading math and critical thinking were at very very very high on the list of words that showed up most frequently in listen the next page of the docent gives a brief overview of the process listen again theard comme chair already walk through some of that
068so I won't repeat it butless is say you all made decisions around um the importance of going out and pro and listening um in this in case that you all did that to get to the heart of the summary what we looked at was for all of the feedback that came in around a particular question what we were looking for how do we group those into themes and then which of those themes was repeated most frequently and so taking the very first question says what is the most important thing our students should know be able to do in elementary school and of all the feedback that came back um when we organized it thematically what we found is just over 36% of the comments thematically had something to do with the topic of literacy and
069what you see on the screen is shared three different examples of just items that I grabbed from the raw data that are examples of things that were coded as falling on the literacy topic uh the next most most frequently referenced topic was math that showed up 11.4% of the time 11.4% of all of the comments came back were coded to the topic of math and then the third was social emotional uh which has a variety things in it around what do people want students don't able to do in the social emotional domain as well as what is the quality of uh the schooling environment the community wants and those showed up almost 11% of the time as well uh we share some of the other ones all the way down to anything that showed up
0702% of the time or more there a lot of other subtopics I think all told there were 70 different uh things but these are the three that showed up the most and then the others that showed up more than % of the time and so that is the approach that we took with each item under analysis we did it for Middle Elementary School we did it from middle school literacy social emotional and math were the most prominent items that were described by your community we did it for high school here it's a little bit different not surprisingly literacy is still at the top of career Readiness and life skills made a significant showing um we also did it for things that try to describe what what were the community's values and so you ask question
071around what do you want the school system to keep doing um items around diversity inclusivity by far showed up the most consistently there followed by curriculum and social emotional related issues you ask the community what should we start doing issues around safety security uh came out um at the top of that followed by issu around Staffing how are we taking care of teachers and is special how are we addressing the needs of our students with special needs and then finally ask question what should we stop doing what are things we were doing maybe we shouldn't still be doing at the top of that were a lot of issues related to curriculum followed by things related generally to expectations around academics and then fin followed by a lot of significant concerns around Behavior so that is
072the analysis that we wanted to share with you what questions do you have again after we talk through this then I'll briefly share a little bit about the next steps might be but before we get that what questions do you have this is just the data from our listening sessions that was entered into the form by board members correct this does not include the survey results that were given from the district this is this is both both oh okay thank you AJ this is Pat um can you talk me through how words like um social if they show up whether it's like social studies versus when you feed that through the machine how does it differentiate between topics of social emotional learning versus social studies or like how are those differentiated so all the topics
073around social studies uh got coded separately to things related to social studies for example there a lot of things about around history was a subtopic that was fairly popular obvious didn't make it to the very top of these came up frequently also there was a lot around uh Civic um engagement and citizenship um and uh community and a lot of the things around social activities and social Endeavors as well as social studies and social participation were all coded into those thematic topics rather than anything about social social was really just around what is the culture and cl issues that we want for our students as well as what are the skill sets we want for our students such that they are able to be effective in interacting social environment and then I guess my other
074question would be were any of the results weighted differently than any other was an inperson weighted differently than a than a an online survey or was it all given the same weight we um pose that as a question for you all to consider but whenever given any direction regarding waiting so we did not add any waiting to data this is just a strict frequency analysis and then I guess last I'd ask about grouping of words and and topics here there seem to be some topics that might lend themselves to be to in be included in safety or be to be included um was there and I I could I guess point out a specific for you but um but was there are do you see things on there that could be grouped together and and
075then what's what's best practice around that uh that you have seen other school boards do so the thing about a thematic analysis is that there is no perfect thematic analysis as you're trying to group things together by theme certainly we could say a topic around um social studies maybe that goes into history maybe that goes into Civics maybe that goes into citizenship um so which of those three do you put it in that is a that is imperfect um there is no def definitive it will always be this way um and so what I don't submit to is that this is the perfect representation U that being said we do seek to minimize um we do see to minimize human interpretation as much as possible and so we try to standardize using software uh that
076conducts the bulk of the analysis rather than it being a matter of my particular judgment or's particular judgment well I think it belongs in this um we use software it um looks at these things tries to use AI SK to analyze what makes most sense in context in places like that we certainly fact check that we certainly go back and it looks like it made a really dumb call then we'll certainly look to adjust that but realistically these tools just gotten really sophisticated over the last several years that doesn't make them perfect it doesn't make them human um but it is one way of offering you all an analysis of a otherwise unbelievably voluminous amount of information that is hard for bers to digest otherwise other questions from board members I know we've just gotten
077this and so part of this is taking the time to process it um and AJ talking through it are there any areas that the board would like us to dig deeper and talk through are there questions that we want to surface I have one question I have one question um under the when dmps when you think about how dmps is educating students is there anything that you think we should stop doing listed is diversity and inclusivity and I'm wondering about that because it would seem to me that that would be somewhere else and not under the things that we need to stop doing or at least that's the message that in the sessions that I participated in or LED or co- facilitated it seemed like that was pretty common that we needed to enhance that
078we needed to better that AJ I'm goingon to jump in for just a second this is Pat I I was surprised I think that was one of the ones I ended up writing down in a in a listening session because it did come up and it was surprising that it came up in that section but that person was very intentional about so so I know I did hear it once but there were at least a small amount of people in the community that um did not appreciate efforts around diversity equity and inclusion so um so I think that's the sentiment there uh but I think much more pronounced on the positive side than it is on the negative if if I'm reading this right yeah so what happens is it's actually you wind up um
079and I'm looking at the um at the I'm looking into the raw data you have a spreadsheet that I email all of you that has the raw uh data in it and so I'm looking uh at a example of what is something that would have been coded is that so let me give you um two different examples that both got coded under stop related diversity inclus inclusivity one is um stop leg willing the district is anti-racist um and another one is stop hiring racist people so it's fairly clear that those two messages um um probably came from different folks um one says stop Dei the other says um stop um you know please remove all rainbow flags and parelia um another says stop you know abusing highly qualified African-American employees and so all of these
080were coded as being related to diversity and inclusion inclusivity but yes to your point they um are looking at it from two very different directions um that at least that's my interpretation of it when I'm reading through the volume of data that you all collected and so what it tells you is something that shouldn't be particular surprising to you you live in a very large and diverse community and there are people with very different perspectives and so for any given topic um it would be inappropriate for you all to assume that there is a completely um shared set of views on a particular topic um as you read through the volumes and volumes of dat you'll quickly see the same I saw is there's a lot of competitions and sotic Analysis those contradictory items both
081show up in the exact same spot diversity inity even though they're pointing in very different directions so AJ so going forward then um we probably will have to make our decisions using both the raw data to verify what was said or what was written down versus what we see in here just like the instance of the stop doing says diversity and um inclus so we probably have to use both this form that you made up plus the raw data correct so certainly you can as a practical matter I don't think you will um the the spreadsheet with all ra that is obviously available to you all and certainly you can of it and make it available to your public and so so on and so forth um what I find is that it's just simply
082there's simply too much and so what I generally encourage you all to do is take the the highlights and the highlights would be the what are the three topics that were most frequently referenced um throughout the process for each question that you asked and for each of those three I actually provided you um the most common exemplars of topics that came up of comments that were made in that particular theme and so if you're wondering what would I encourage you to rely on most I I wouldn't try to go a thousand pages into all of this to identify cherry pick an item that agrees with you um like that that's just not going to be helpful practice what I encourage you do is focus on what are the top three response gets in each of
083the sections look at the example statements are included um and most heavily rely on that as your understanding of what were the things that most commonly came up that being said obviously you more than welcome toore that and dive into the document um I am s not be entirely fruitful what it will almost certainly do at least other districts people into that full document you will definitely find something that you agree with cherry picking that and pulling out and then waving that around is just not a useful part of this process hey AJ I have a question how do you decide on special education over behavior and what's what is one thing we're not yet doing for students that you think dmps should start doing if they're the same percentage where there a lot of
084zeros after there that made be special education just that much higher just out of curiosity no actually I um thank you I should um I should have both of those iion that that does so um I missed that those were perfectly tied for some reason I was thinking that both of those were 3.32 but you're correct behavior is also 384 under what to start doing and so that is a Miss on my part I will correct that and provide youd version doc thank you for that thank you I do want to share for those that are following along either online or here that the documents are posted the two that are up right now is the summary document and then the raw data from the listening sessions and we are in the process of posting
085the raw data from the surveys so those can be found on the website um if you um search for the board listening sessions and the I provided you has both in it but there're just in two separate tabs one tab is the Ling and the other tab is the surve data great thanks AJ other questions I want to make sure we do questions and then AJ I think you and or Rodney want to talk about uh a little bit of process um Miss cwell Johnson any questions not at this time thank you AJ and Rodney Dr Roberts do you have any questions nothing at this time nothing at this time so I think AJ maybe do you want to move us to because I'm think people are still processing the document do you want to
086move us to the next discussion yes so finally the the last piece of this what do you do with all of this and so there are two major pieces of information that the Board needs when being a discernment around the community priorities you need the community's voice and you need the current reality for students this gives you a summary of The community's Voice your superintendent needs to provide you them with a summary of what are the areas of highest need highest leverage regarding student performance and it's with those two pieces of information at hand this brief summary of student listening and then equally brief summary uh brief summary of community listening and then an equally brief summary of student performance uh and with High what the are of highest need and highest leverage with those
087two documents at hand both of them should be fewer than five pages with those two documents in hand the board then should go through the process of digesting those which is what we're doing in part tonight and then using that to ask yourself a question are these goals still um appropriate representation of the Comm highest priority of the community's vision what students should be able to do are these G the highest priority of the community's values the non-negotiables that should be honored in the G and whatever the board comes to as a result of that then you cify that and then you use the the resulting document whether a modified an unmodified version or wholly redesigned version is what you use going forward for everything you use it for discern around what to put on
088the agenda and what not put on the agenda for how to evaluate the superintendent how to evaluate the uh efficacy of the budget and so on and so forth and so that's the next step that you should really really meditate on this document meditate on the summary about student performance and then when we come together um on the 19th I believe it is um then it's really um immersed in these two documents that you should make your decision and if you look at these documents and you look at your existing goals they te the match then generally our coaching is don't change them if you look at them and they close to match with they're just slightly off then that's complete if you look at the two there's absolutely no l whatsoever then the appropriate
089move is probably to resign and gos more wholesale that's the next step in this process is to read through the D from your superintendent read through the voice of your community and then come prepared on 19th to have conversation and the and the more well versed the board is in this information the quicker we can move through the conversation on the 19th just I just want to confirm with Dr Roberts and I think the deadline you're working towards the 12th is that right the Su student performance data so just so board members know on the 12th is the expected date for that so we'll have that to review for a week ahead of time um AJ in thinking of preparation for that you said be well-versed so just obviously read them are there any other
090like questions or anything that we should think about coming having thought through and really just ensure we're digesting it appropriately so we can be as efficient as possible with that time since we only have two evenings yeah absolutely um I really appreciate that inquiry um the probably the best homework that you do is once you have those two documents side by side you're looking at them um if I waso I do is while reading through them I would probably have a notepad and write down based on what I'm taking away from this what is the thing that is jumping off the page should be a goal of the school system what's the thing jumping off the page should be guard of the school system and use that as your note taking device and then at
091the end of it then you can pull up the notes you took in your current okay yeah these are pretty similar no these are pretty far apart but I think that level of intentionality when you're studying the documents will help have you be the most prepared for the 19th thank you I just have one more question Dr Roberts or AJ and team what is the direction given for the data that's going to be provided like is this just a snapshot of all across data or kind of how are you approaching trying to put all the data that that exists in De Mo public schools into five pages so so I can say something about the process and obviously your superintendent about the coaching we provide your superintendent can say something about the process what they're
092up to the the coaching that we offer is that the superintendent team should be looking at the areas of highest need highest leverage what we mean by highest need is that he needs to reveal for you here U are areas of student performance where if we don't signant if we don't really get it right for this group of students that the most likely thing is they will fail and our system as a whole having failed them will fail as well these are areas you highest need that we've got to get this right that this is the dmps the final safety net um for this group of students so that's what we mean we're talking about highest need but also leverage oh where are what is the group of students where if we get it right
093for this group of students it has a largest net impact what is the the ti that raises All Ships so to speak and so if the superintendent and they're connecting their analysis identify areas of high leverage like hey if we really you know knock this particular area of student performance out of the park we're going to see big Ripple effects throughout the entire organization then it makes good sense to to consider that as an area for the board Focus attention because you're going to get a much larger return for students for the investment that you make in an organization and so those are the two areas of coaching that we offer your Administration really try to see out what areas High need or students really far behind and if we don't attend that um it's
094almost certain that and what are the areas of highest leverage the areas that if we win for these groups of students it's going to have the biggest net impact across all our student GRS so it's a little more of a recommendation per se than an analysis so it's kind of their recommendation to us on where to focus is that fair uh it is absolutely the case that this is not a um this is not an analysis that is without a voice um what we're recommending is the voice be about where the highest need and where the highest leverage as opposed to just being here's here's all the data what currently says because to your point that document could fill 500 pages and so we think it makes sense for the superintendent to have a perspective
095this is a perspective that we recommend the superintendent bring to the board of high need and high leverage but certainly the board could look at that and make the decision understand these are areas of we understand ofage and we choose Go a different direction I have a question just to to maybe ask the obvious when we talk about highest need and highest Leverage is this solely academic um yeah I think that's my question right so is it just math English science right it's just or is it levers right that can influence academic outcomes um so definitely neither of those are the coach we offer we do not we do not at all on which area of student outcomes but we do specifically say it need to be an area of student outcomes so it has
096to be in the domain of what is the students known or able to do um but within any school system there are academic and nonacademic indicators which students don't able to do so for example uh right now today I am uh in the middle of today Workshop uh training uh teachers and I'll be back next month training students on how to leave restore practice um I train students to to demonstrate and practice empathy and I can measure to what extent have students mastered the practice of empathy that is a measure of what those students able to do I explicitly train them we explicitly measure are they that I would not describe that however as an description what students able to do the reason I mention that is because that's student outcome meure what students able
097to do however normally when people talk about oh we want students to learn in a um in in a school culture you know that is full of empathy that is not a student outcome what that's normally talking about is what is the culture that adult are created that but that's not a student outcome an adult outcome result of the adult action and so we're talking about uh empathy in the form of what adults are created for students that does not meet um this description if we talk about empathy that students are demonstrating the practice of themselves that would be so that's the distinction is it's not about is it academic we don't say anything on that say the of high high leverage of able to do look and where the only actually what students know
098are able to do not what adults know are able to do great thank you for that um explanation can I ask one more question where um AJ where does uh attainability come into the equation so like when is it that we you make a smart goal right and or or achievable is that part of the is that team toct data that they is Achieva a gap or you know what I'm saying like where where does that analysis take place so so we say goals are smart specific measurable attainable to your inquiry results focus is high bound however we would generally describe that as a process that we go to at the very end of it we would not encourage you to start by looking for what isable we encourage you to start by looking for
099what is a reflection of the community's vision for what students should be able to do and that should be your guiding Focus as you're developing goals and then at the very end of the process we'll be working your superintendent uh to try to identify okay so the board wants a goal in the area of uh juggling the board has decided like the job of the future all going to be able to rolve being able to jug five things simultaneously so that's that's what our community wants children to know be able to do and it's only at the end of the process that we sit down with superintendent okay is you're trying to put numbers to these what your Baseline what perc students can already items and where try to get to um if currently zero
100of your students can do that um then it's probably not attainable to say we're gonna have every s kid juggling five items by the end of the week but that is an analysis that's done all the way at the back end so for right now I wouldn't encourage you all to worry about attainability at all I'd Focus all my energy on what is the vision of the community for what students should be able to do and know that as part of this process on the back end once you all have said thematically here's what our goal should be about we'll work with the superintendent to make sure that it does match reality and it's aable it doesn't work to adopt goals for the board to adopt goals that are entirely unattainable that we we find
101that largely serve to demoralize your staff and they feel like they being asked to do something that's not possible that being said I'd be remissed to not mention while we're suggesting that they must be attainable we also coach that your goals must challenge the organization required they Behavior change so it's really pulling in two different directions on one end goals have to be attainable but on the other end if you can accomplish goals doing the exact same thing you've always done then we say it's not goal is just a shallow way for adults to congratulate themselves the the the the goals must challenge the oration require be change it's just they can't do so to such an extreme that the ultimate goal is unattainable so I'm gonna try and bring this session to a close
102I feel like we've had a chance to ask questions and AJ is always available um to ask questions by email I want to say out loud what I think our job is as board members between now and the 19th so our job is to review and digest this data it is to review and digest the information that Dr Roberts will be providing on the 12th and then it is to kind of look at both and look for themes see what's jumping off the page and then compare that and look to see if they're similar or dissimilar to our existing goals and guardrail so I'll try and write that up but hopefully that is um ample Framing and I'll also resend I think we had sent it a couple of weeks ago the handout on the
103goals and guard rails just the setting the the the the process just so we can ground oursel in the process heading into the 19th um AJ Rodney is there anything else you want to add before we move to the next topic one thing I just want to add is just a word of gratitude for your committee I don't know who all was involved in leading this process um but the fact that you uh taxed Rodney and I's abilities by giving us 16,000 pieces of feedback to code um really says a lot about you all's commitment to trying to get out into as broad Ling as possible um It Is frequent that we'll be coding something more in the range of you know 4 to 5,000 uh pieces of feedback and so to be well to
104the double digits um was not only a real challenge for us but speaks to the thess of your effort so Bravo great thank you thanks to everybody thanks to to you as well thank you Jenna okay I think um we are going to Pivot to the next session does anybody need a break or can we keep going can keep going okay great so um our next work session topic is our first presentation on the FY 2025 budget and while Shashank is getting us set up I I want to just highlight a couple of things that I think he'll touch on but um there's a lot of information and so I just want everybody to remember that this is a multi-part process so there'll be a couple of different sessions and um I think Shashank will
105do his best if there are questions to either say we're going to cover that in a later session and I'm also going to keep a kind of a parking lot so because I don't I think we want to be really respectful of everybody's time and so I'm going to do my best to try and balance that and take notes if anybody wants to be a second note taker with me just to make sure I don't miss anything um I'd appreciate the help um the only other thing I I I want to say is this is a this is a tough process and um there probably is no easy easy answer and so um it's all very emotional and hard and so I just ask all of us as we're walking into this to really understand
106that at the end of the day what we're all really focusing on is how best to dedicate resources to our highest priorities um I hope we'll be creative um and um that we'll identify gaps and look for ways to think about how to fill those caps different gaps differently so um I think if everybody is okay with that framing it looks like there's a budget book that has been provided so everybody should have one of those if how how did we get it to our virtual they have it okay great that's right thank you it's on board dos and for those of you that are following along it's on board dos as well okay with that I'm going to turn it over to you Shashank and do we have some time what is presentation is
107about how long I would say 45 minutes to an hour probably okay 45 minutes to to an hour and so um I'd really encourage people to write your questions down so we you know and maybe what we'll do is we'll go around the room so when shank's done we'll just see what board members what questions we have and at some point we're just going to move to parking lot and um making sure we answer the questions but we not might we are not going to get to all of them tonight thank you good evening so thank you so what we are trying to cover today is basically the review of the budget timelines which have changed significantly overall 25 budget overview and a review of some of our 24 strategic goal Investments so the new
108change is that two hearings are required and on the next slide I'll be showing the timelines uh for the whole budget process and the two hearings that will happen is on March 26th and April 16th these are the new additional steps for the compliance the deadline for the budget certification is April 30th it used to be historically April 15th so that is a change as well so this slide looks kind of busy I will not go in every date item but I will speak about a few highlighted ones so one of the first dates I would request you to see is the March 15th that is when we have to submit the proposed tax notice to the state department of management what that means is that we send a property tax rate and an amount
109to Doom prior to this we will be having two board sessions one is on February 6th which is today and the other is on March 5th in March 5th uh we would also request the board to approve the rate which we send to do for what it would be for fi25 we would also cover in the uh March 5th board session the Strategic Investments as aligned to the smart goals and the universal te teer levers March 26th is when we have the public hearing that is the time when the community or anyone who has any questions can come so 15th we send it to this to do it gets published uh they send it to the county the county will mail out property tax notices to the residents the residents have an opportunity between 20th
110and 25th to go through it we have the hearing at 26th so they may come over here to ask us questions the next hearing for the I mean the next board work session will be April 2nd in where we intend to cover the Strategic investment aligned to the foundational tier any inputs that we receive from the board we would cover in that session plus the cost of doing business and April 16th is when the board will adopt the budget and certify for the fiscal year fi25 I know there's a lot of information on this slide any questions sir the next slide that I wanted to cover is community discussions so we have historically been doing this thing for a period of time we started during the pandemic and that time it used to be only
111virtual last year we did five sessions at the five high schools we had the bfl team in case any of the community persons had any questions which was other than English this year we decided to extend it to 7 and there'll be one in Swahili and another in Spanish these are the two large spoken languages within our district and as usual we'll also have a virtual session for anyone who cannot come and attend in person so in reality there'll be eight sessions that we'll be doing the community discussions here so what exactly is the requirements of budget adoption and certification and this is something which the members who've been here with us for a period of time are aware of but basically it is revenue plus fund balance should be greater than or equal to
112annual expenditure and what is fund balance so the most critical thing for us is spending Authority fund balance means a spending Authority not just of the current year but of the previous years as well so if we have had any positive spending Authority that would also be taken into account and if there's a negative one that will obviously deplete the the current year spending Authority so Revenue plus funding fund balance is greater than annual expenditures and then we have to set the property tax rate the components of which are the four listed below so what has been our property tax rate for the last few years I would say fairly steady the intention this year is not to increase the property tax rate but what we have to be mindful of is the amount property
113tax amount the property tax valuation has increased for our residents so because of which more likely than not the rate would come down but the dollar amount would go up because some of the competents like pep and Pearl and others are rate driven and not amount driven so what are the unknowns Shan I just want to clarify go back so are you recommending that the discussion the potential recommendation might be continue with the FY 24 funding levels did I understand that correctly no so what is happening Jackie is every two years the city does the valuation of the property so we are going to be using for fi25 the fi23 property valuations and those valuations have gone up so some the items over here like PE and pearl are actually rate driven so if the
114valuation goes up the dollar amount goes up some of the items are driven by the calculations like dop that dollar amount is set which is coming from General uh bucket that will drop down the property tax rate So based on our earlier assessment what I'm suggesting what I'm thinking will finally happen is instead of 1515 which is an fi 24 it could be somewhere between1 14.5 to $15 so your rate is coming down because the valuation is going up even though the dollars that the district will get would be higher than what we got last fiscal year great thank you absolutely so what are the unknowns High inflation we know is still a problem the cost are increasing there's still uncertainty in the financial markets the way we were discussing last year we were talking
115about potential soft Landing recession those things are still is not such a big concern at this point in time but there's still uncertainty the feds are thinking of reducing at least 3 to four rates between the SE uh third quarter to the fourth quarter of this calendar year based on how the economy is doing they still have not really said with certainty but it's very likely enrollment Trend we know has been a challenge continued employee shortage has been a challenge we are going to be meet meeting as as a team to discuss whether we want to have an early retirement plan at all this year or not whether it's for this year or for next year we have not made a decision and that's the reason why it's being listed as unknown with the financial
116impact for some of the board members I may want to clarify that early retir plan does not impact general fund the money is coming from management fund legis legislative actions I think all of you are very well clued into that one is the the long-term supplemental State a that continues to be a challenge the governor has proposed 2 and a half% the rest of the legislators have said we will come up with a response before the end of the session the session is 100 days historically they had to come up with a proposal within 30 days so not knowing we won't know what is going to be happening with that SSA and that SSA not only impacts the way we budget for next year but in all fairness even the union negotiations because a component
117of that goes into the calculating of what exactly it is State vouchers we finally know that we have around 1,381 students who from our residence area who will be getting the state vouchers unfortunately we have not been able to find out how many of them were existing students and how many of them are new students changes to AA yes just a question on that so of the 1,381 the financial investment is it for those new enroles or the total 1,381 is uh part portion of that funding would come to dmps the entire 1381 so whether they are New or Old existing students we will get that money which is around $ 12230 to $1,250 for every student got it thank you yeah absolutely changes to AA so we currently receive around 15.4 million from AA
118the single largest bucket is special education which is around $1 million then we have Education Services and Media Services there was a lot of debate going on whether one of the two will go away but as of now the way we understand that all three components will continue the only change in media service would be that if we want to continue we have to apply through AA the Director of Education will approve it and if it gets approved we can either Source it out with a third party or continue with AA but a lot of moving Parts the the other thing is teacher compensation which we know the governor has proposed 50,000 for a new teacher 62 at 12 years of education we don't know where it will go what will happen for between year
1192 to year 11 a lot of moving Parts let me add additional context if you may and so while it has not yet been finalized uh the the government team has certainly graciously uh allowed uh the uen superintendent's voice to be a part of these conversations and I believe what we're likely to see is uh maintaining status quo in terms of aea decisions and so I think what is being proposed right now is for fiscal year 20 25 we are going to maintain status quo in for the media Services we're going to move towards a 50% for fiscal year 2026 reduction and then 25% for fiscal year 2027 then the following year at zero so as we we having these budget conversations that those are really key points for us to be thinking about and
120shashan Al more details with the team as we bring it back to the board thank you Dr Roberts the other challenge with teacher compensation is we have not seen the definition of teacher is it just the classroom teacher or Does it include counselors interventionists the whole gamut of support which is provided at the building level the other bill which is under discussion is selling of buildings so if tomorrow the district decides Ides that we have to sell the building the roofer or the right of first refusal is from a nonpublic school and we have to keep it open for I think a period of 1 year and if no non-public school is interested in purchasing the building that is when we can go outside and sell it to a third party this is under discussion
121I don't know which direction it'll go let's just see if anybody has any clarifying questions around the unknowns with financial impact only that there was a really good analysis of the esas today in the De Moine register and the numbers those were I thought Illuminating great thanks so enrollment Trend we are you going to be using the RSP and Associates their projections they are the demographer they have St studied about the community the population growth the demographics growth and all those kinds of things for fi 2324 we had an actual growth of 28 students which is positive so some of the discussion items that I had I have mentioned about the the teacher pay already AA and the governor's proposal so I've already mentioned these items as I was talking before so I'm not going
122to repeat myself so achieving a balanced budget what does that mean so we said what was the FY 24 general fund budget and we removed Sr funds which were a one-time item so the total general fund was 462 million if we want to continue flat how are we going to do that salaries around $271 million benefits 115 and other expenses 76 so that's a breakdown of 462 here million dollar so when we were first evaluating we were saying a scenario a and we'll keep adding scenarios as we keep progressing but scenario a when we were first thinking we said salaries would increase by 2.4% benefits by 6% and other expenses by one and that would mean we have to reduce by $14 million to stay flat with f24 scenario B we had to change the
123salaries amount and the benefits amount and that comes to around almost $17 million so that is what we see would have to reduce between 14 to17 million just to stay flat so what is the impact of the funding formula SSA we are assuming 2% I know the governor has said 2 and a half% but 2% is the average of the last 10 years we are apprehensive at this point in time to take anything higher than that certified enrollment 28 student decre increase is a reduction of offset but we have 470 students who have enrolled out which is an impact of almost $3.5 million the esa categorical with Jackie you were asking about 1381 so we are trying to dial that in now this is a categorical and that's where there's an asterisk so I'll be
124working with the team to see is there an offset from general fund that we can do for these categoricals because if we are successful 100% it's a saving of 1% 67 million if you can do 50 then it's only half of that and flex fund so there is state code that if money is sitting in certain funds if the board approves it we can transfer that money from that particular account to general fund and this Flex fund that we are trying to talk about is for homeschooling so we are sitting on a homeschooling Surplus fund at this point in time so the the board approves that they're comfortable which we will do at the end of the year June 30th after that so it happen sometime in the August September timeline then that is also
125going to help us offset that amount so if we knock off this $ 3.91 million above from the previous slide of $14 million to $17 million it comes into the range of10 to13 million what are some of the items which are new which we are working on increased planning time this was an amount that we had historically paid from s and as all of you know Sr funds are not going to be available post June 30th so if we are if you're going to continue with this amount that will be coming from general fund we are working on a strategic plan and we are thinking somewhere between $1 $200,000 will be a cost for that uh we have hired a philanthropy director the cost is indicated over over there and we in the process of
126hiring a chief Academy academic officer which will be $275,000 there's obviously approximations the total amount comes to around a million5 so if we add that then scenario a scenario B is 11 to $14 million so what we have decided as a team is that we will Target $14 million so far we have got 10 FTE from high school which was driven largely through enrollment allocation work with talent and personel does and then 4% FTE which translates to approximately 25 FTE to be very precise 24.7 FTE which will contribute to another $2 million so we will be working on the Gap that we have today which is $11 million to fill between now and when we'll be coming to the board in the next session so we'll continue to find Opportunities is and keep coming to
127the board on that soor we just pause here this is we're digesting this to say does anybody have any questions on this section can you give us the dollar amount between what is the difference between 2% on allowable growth and two and a half what's that dollar amount and what if it would to be 3% sure so if we go to this slide over here 2% is $4.7 million so 1% is 2.35 so it becomes that5 it'll be approximately $6 to $700,000 okay I just have a quick question just a clarification sure the can you give context to the increased planning time um maybe in minutes or just some contextual understanding of of what that is I I I will let Susie speak to it but I'll give you a general flavor okay as we
128are unable to hire Subs we are asking teachers to do that additional work and we are paying them for the time to do the planning work so that is what the pay is for does it more or less capture it yeah it's not um increased planning time but if someone is subbing to shank's point and they lose their planning time because they have to sub for a period they're getting compensated for that great thank you and then one other question which is in the place where you um had the benefits you had the two scenarios sure where benefits might be at a 7% increase I think I'm just trying to understand is that in our control so maybe because the way I think about it is it's really in the providers to tell us so
129are we is this anticipating we don't know yet what kind of increases we might be getting or What's the diff how how did you get to those six and 7% so 6% is what I had taken as an average of last three years that is how I came to 6% we had a preliminary discussion with our provider which is uh Blue Cross Blue Shield and they are saying it could be more in the range of 7% they typically look at a calendar year but we are based on a fiscal year so it's taking them some time they typically share the rates sometimes around February March timeline that is when the true actual numbers will be known great thank you absolutely anybody have other questions in this section hey Jackie this is Terry and I want
130to confirm I think we discussed this briefly last week but the reduction in high school FTE is largely driven by uh enrollment at the high school level and how that translates to how we staff each of our buildings is that correct yes that is accurate is it completely dependent on enrollment or largerly yeah so the 10 FTE from high school actually 9.5 came out of the Staffing formula So based on enrollment and course requests in buildings some buildings go up and some buildings go down from year to year in better times if we can take that ft that we get you might repurpose it for gaps that you see in Staffing maybe in other areas but in this case it was captured as a reduction and actually it was to be reduced last year but
131some categorical funds um helped to support it for a year and so we're really kind of making up for last year but we can capture it as a savings for this year and then the other0 five was um a counseling position that was regular funded point5 thanks thanks thanks hey one other one another quick question with regard to um what I heard Dr Robert say earlier this evening was that there will be no reduction in force to uh address the changes that are being proposed for the uh Middle School uh I'm sorry the elementary the fifth grade music program um however I also heard him say that there were additional costs that we were absorbing relative to 38 individuals who were going from building to building and I have to assume that we were doing
132some reimbursement for uh mileage and related things so are any of those shifts or changes captured in these numbers as well as the reduction of the 24 if I'm recalling correctly FTE associated with uh Community Schools uh thank you Terry so um yes certainly there is some cost to be incurred uh for travel but I believe that that is minimal and not necessarily significant enough for us to even um code that as a part of a reduction correct maybe just to follow follow up though to Terry's question so where is that reduction that you have recommended for Community School coordinators where is that in this scenario so Community School coordinators are being paid from all kinds of different areas it is being paid from dop a few from Esser and Esser which is going away
133so that that is where it is not coming directly to the general fund as such there are very very few positions that are coming from general fund because with Esser going away I think almost 15 to 16 positions are being paid from Esser alone so just to restate there's no General funding cost Savings in the recommendations that is correct okay thank you hey this is here would it be possible and I'm not asking for extra work on behalf of the finance team it would certainly be helpful to be able to see sort of money in Money out as an opportunity for us to better understand the sources and uses of funds that are being applied either to positions that have been eliminated or other shifts or changes that are being proposed so maybe at your
134convenience um not to suggest that it has to be immediate but before we conclude the budget process being able to see sort of those ins and outs what's being covered by a grant uh or S dollars versus those things that historically absent any of those other funding sources would have been covered by general fund Terry if I can if I understand your question you're talking related to Community School coordinators only or you're talking in general about all positions sir I think in general because that will certainly come into play as we get through the entire budget and just understanding those ins and outs from a revenue and expense perspective would just be helpful just in terms of paining a really nice picture about sources and uses of funds absolutely we can we can look into
135that Terry absolutely and we can provide something to the board any other comments on this or questions I should say on this section okay so I think that's a great segue to 24 budget so here we wanted to share what did we plan last year and where are we on that so we had proposed that we would be working with our health provider Wellmark that we would have a voucher program for high cost specialty drug Dr and that had to have a minimum impact to the covered members and provide a saving to the district so we were in a position to year toate save 600,000 against a budget of $750,000 to the best of my knowledge there is no other District in the state of Iowa which has implemented this program to get get any
136savings Shashank can you remind me you're today so that would put us with the end of our fiscal year is the end of is it June 30 so this is like as of December December so about a halfway mark is that what you're saying that is true okay but not all these are clearly we would anticipate a double if you think we're going to meet 75 but we already have saved 6 so personally I will not be surprised if you're closer to a million dollar number okay but it all depends on the usage by the cover members it got it okay so you're conservative I see okay just trying to analyze thank you that's fair so sh just a real quick question on that um I'm learning more and more about insurance and Specialty providers
137and all kinds of RX plans these days and to that point um is this lied to a certain kind and type of drug so will we identify for the purpose of our employees which which drugs would apply for the specialty drug program or would we is it open-ended I'm just trying to sort of better understand how we're applying the program as it relates to our employees and if it is um identified to specific drugs how we would have gone about either recognizing or recommending those versus others so that's a very valid question Tera so these are specified group of drugs and the way the whole discussion started was Kathy from my team whom you know she and me started sitting down with Wellmark and said our health costs are very expensive how is it that
138we can really reduce the cost cost and both of us were meeting almost every 30 to 45 days and they came up with a suggestion that if the PBM which is the pharmacy benefit manager works with the pharmacies with the pharmaceutical sorry with the pharmaceutical they can get a voucher on behalf of the covered member from the for pharmaceutical and the pharmaceutical will then extend that rebate to the pharmacy which the pharmacy will pass on to the covered member so these are only in those cases where our PBM has been able to work with the Pharmaceuticals to get those discounts and this is a that covered small group of uh medicines but it was done based on also the research which are the high cost drugs in our health plan does that help Terry it
139it it does it helps greatly and I guess the question is um is this a Nimble and flexible uh evaluative process that we would utilize for our employees based on the current drugs that are most in demand that are cost or would we allow ourselves some flexibility to adjust sort of given employee need you know either during the course of the year or from year to year in other words how much flexibility do we have built into how we would go about determining which drugs are are covered so that is purely dependent on the arrangement which the pharmacy PBM has got with the pharmaceutical firm so unfortunately that is not much that we can influence but other positive I must mention over there for the high cause drugs where the co-pay for the covered member
140is $100 the pharmaceutical is covering that as well so the co-pay for the covered member instead of $100 is zero for the covered member he or she does not even realize what is happening behind the closed doors once that prescription is submitted yeah so it has been a fairly smooth process and neither me nor anyone in my team has heard any any push backs on this plan that that's really uh helpful um thank you for the explanation I appreciate it sorry going upward with the rest of my colleagues but this is something that's very intriguing to me these days and certainly given my personal experience understanding the Nuance nature of drugs that are or are not covered um is going to be extremely impactful for employees especially when we begin to think through and talk
141about the notion of equity and how we equitably distribute access to these resources to our employee groups so we're not getting ourselves in trouble thanks Terry thank thank you so we had planned for a million dollar savings in general fund through operational reductions year to date we have already done $650,000 so we are again on target to achieve the million dollar goal that we had the other was the plan reductions and here what we had shared with the board was that we would have minimum impact to the teach teaching staff so we basically were reducing 2% on teaching staff which was based on the declining enrollment support staff was 5% and central office was 5% and the target was $9 million and we should be meeting that Target as well so I just wanted to
142highlight that when we came up to the board and said these are the things that we will deliver towards reducing the costs we are actually working on it and we are on track to do that the last slide that I have is on investment on smart goals so these are the three smart goals where we had highlighted to the board saying what is it that we plan to invest or plan to invest in each of the three goals are given but the total was 9 and a half million we have already spent $5.1 million and the impact is also highlighted on the slide so we are on track and I think we'll be spending the entire amount that we have budgeted which is $9.59 million before the year is over to work towards a smart
143goals any questions um obviously uh we're what about 34 of the way through the year not quite and would any savings that Ur from our plan Investments versus our action to date would those roll back into the general fund and create a surplus for us to utilize moving forward to the extent that that could happen yes it would ter it definitely would but I think these Investments that we have taken are up to December even though we are sitting in start of February because we have not even closed our January books so far so these are all up to December timeline and and I've been talking to Tim and Shelly and both of them are over here and based on their assessments we would been we would be spending the entire amount okay but I
144just want to um clarify the question that Terry asked if we didn't spend the entire amount we can roll that over for utilization in the next fiscal year so so just to I'll take you back to the slide so I think that will help uh so so if you remember and and I know School Finance is complicated so please ask me as many questions as you want if I if you remember I said Revenue plus fund balance and that fund balance is not just for the year but cumulative of previous years so even though we may not have a line item to say savings from smart goals is x million it does roll over and become part of our spending Authority is it restricted in any way you can repurpose it yes yes it's not
145restricted because that is an internal discuss uh decision to earmark these dollars for smart goals it is not dictated by the board I mean by the state thank you absolutely is there any analysis of how much our spending is contractually obligated and how much of it is we actually have discretion over so in other words for personnel how much of our Personnel costs are contractually obligated how much of our are we in a five-year contract with a vendor that kind of thing so 80 to 82% of our costs are payroll related in that ballpark range we typically do not sign multi-year agreements unless it is required so to give you an idea we when we have an auditor who is hired it is not not practical to change the auditor every year so we have
146a 5-year audit agreement with them there is a contract in curriculum which is a multi-year contract as well I think it's a three-year contract because based on our discussions the benefit would not be visible unless you do it over multi multiple years but typically the contracts are for a year thank you absolutely can I can I ask something I'm gonna as to go back to the this is bad I know but I'm just stuck on this and I I need to I I just need to ask um the plan reduction the teaching staff I know that you said you have a 2% reduction and you justify that by the declining enrollment um we then have support staff by 5% and then central office staff 5% reduction what are you that's based on what this was
147last year this was last year the last year this was last year this is fi4 never mind never mind correct no that's fine thank you so we had planed for this thing and I what I was sharing is that we are on track to achieve that Savings in dollar so but I think maybe a good follow-up question is are there based on what you've outlined so far if you go to the planned or some of the recommended potential reductions the one that has the 4% of Select departments yes within that dep maybe across those departments at some point better understanding support staff kind of the same categorization understanding how that fits um will be helpful absolutely we can do that I don't I don't know if this is even possible but is there a way
148that we can understand and I'm sorry for my ignorance here but um is there a way we can understand Personnel from a geographic standpoint So when you say um someone is a teacher or under the teaching contract even can we have a breakout of understanding where those positions are it is important to me anyway to understand who is physically in front of kids on a day-to-day basis and who is not that's that's important for me and and yes it is part of the process which suszie and team do as part of the school building level allocations based on enrollment they get the data from Josie's team and then they sit down and they do that analysis and they have that information is that accurate yes clarifying question um Patrick is that by content area and
149grade level you want to know which teacher how many teachers I think I'd like to know who has a desk at central campus or who has who has a desk at the district offices and who is in a classroom so there might be two or three support staff that are in classrooms all day long one position may go from one to one to one classroom but they're at Hubble Elementary all day long versus a position who is counted maybe as a teaching staff because they are under a contract but their desk and their daily routine is at the central offices it would help me to understand the classification of because I as I understand it not everybody that is under the teaching contract is I think Terry made that point last last meeting that not
150everyone who's under the teaching contract is in a building is in a is in a school building so would I just want to I think what I'm hearing not everyone who's under the DME contract is that it it's a teacher in yes yes yeah just helping clarify those roles so that when we call them something we're not assuming that that's a student facing teacher when they're actually not yes Fair yeah we can get that breakdown we have that information yeah and I might just suggest and I we can break down this question a little bit more because last year we got into a little bit of there's a lot of semantics around roles and administrator versus building leader versus contract staff and so I think it might be helpful if maybe we try and put
151together a glossery so we know we're all using the same vocabulary when we're talking about um positions and impacts well in that glossery change those curriculum coordinators were sorry those curriculum coordinators weren't always represented by dmea and now they are right right is that that is true that is true there are some positions which have which have changed between bargain and non bargain to Point yeah and I think to give to your point just a a broader understanding so when we talk about you know you you've set some priorities around um certain positions you know that directly impact kids but just all being on the same language and understanding I think will be helpful as we go through the process we're not going to get there tonight but that's probably an area that we need
152to dig into a little bit but the majority of employees that are on a 279 contract are building based I think there 279 contract can you help me out with that teachers okay thank you yeah I guess maybe a question and we might want to say this when we actually cover the broader conversation on Personnel is building based doesn't necessarily mean student facing does it and so that's I think the type of nuance that will be helpful to understand a coach for instance would be on a 279 contract that is in buildings yeah working with teachers okay so when you know Shashank bulleted out on this slide and he put 2% of teaching staff that it was actually looking at when we made the overall reductions and all the FTE that we reduced building based
153and primarily these were building based out of the reductions if employee groups 2% of the teaching staff were impacted 5% of support positions does that make sense yeah yeah I think we're just hoping to look at the same translation for this year got it and then just really getting specific around where the the cuts are impacting yeah noted yes this may come in a future um presentation but I know that we made a significant investment this year in our guard rails so will a similar slide on investments in guard rails be forthcoming yes so So the plan is again in the timeline slide and I know it was it's a very busy slide so it and I'm going back to that slide over there so if you see came on March 5th board work session
154Strategic investment aligned to smart goals and Universal LS and then again when we go to April 2nd same thing in uh Investments aligned to the foundational tier L over levers over there so yes to your point absolutely we do plan to cover those things you're welcome so that's possible I think we keep going anybody have any questions so far that was my last slide that was my last slide um so maybe um let's just go around the board table actually before you do that let me read what I wrote down as kind of I'll say action items but things for further inquiry and then you can all hold me accountable um this is actually a question I have which is what is the benefit of an early retirement plan so you can maybe speak to
155that in a second but the the the outstanding things are um Miss CA Johnson requested a better understanding of the shifts or changes in funding the ins and outs and these are more grant funding philanthropic funding Esser dollars that are no longer here um Miss cwell Johnson asked for us to continue to understand how the Specialty Pharmacy provider is meeting staff needs and what what the court how how that's working I think and again you can all correct me if I'm getting this wrong um the there's an outstanding question I think around the balance of 9 million for student outcomes and while it's stated to be um all spent is there anything that maybe isn't critical to be spending this year that could be rolled over um I just I wrote can we get additional
156information on the select departments where there may be a 4% cut um really need to dig in on all of the employee groups understanding the different employee groups uh and the semantics around them building based student facing and um Miss Marano's request was a um a discussion just like we'll do with goals to see Investments um in guardrails is there anything that I did not bring up and I'm kind of putting this on the Shashank and Dr Roberts and I can go back and see where these things fit and how we address them whether it's by email or in um future sessions absolutely is it possible oh sorry go ahead Terry go ahead go ahead Patrick um is it possible to get a best case scenario from the governor's proposal from you mean the SSA
157you mean yeah I mean and the teacher salary I I heard worst case scenario but I didn't hear a best case scenario so from the teachers this thing the latest thing that I have heard from the Grave Point there's nothing official is there has been a push back and it is possible they may step a few things back they're not going to not give it sure but they would they could dialate back a little bit sure that is what I've heard but there's so much of things floating around I don't know how how much credibility to give to understood yeah good excellent question when I offer that we not make any assumptions about what is possible and even the best case um we are still certainly having lots of discussions right now the U representatives
158and and the governor's team but um uh so we should probably refrain from the G Vine discussions no but I do want to encourage everybody that's listening to not hesitate to encourage your legislature and your Governor to fully fund public education um other C so how did I do on that list are there things that I missed this is Terry and um I might add I know historically shank uh and Susie there has been sort of a matrix that we've utilized that shows some historical perspective about administrators teach teachers number of FTE that are associated with each of those that has really been helpful just in terms of level setting around where we're funding and positions we're funding Across The District Administrative versus uh teach positions and that might also be helpful in terms of
159eliminating uh Patrick's question as well relative to historically sort of how weed I know we've made some shifts over course of the last several years but I think having that historical perspective will give people a sense in time about what either has or hasn't happened across the district with um our representative um either employee groups or individual uh employee areas thanks Terry so I think you are alluding to the last year that we had shared a tenure kind of a slide showing what is happening in different subgroups across the district district and we were internally discussing and we will layer enrollment on top of that so that'll give us an idea as to what is happening with the different groups and what is happening to the enrollment so yes we would definitely share that hopefully
160in the next session itself yeah I think adding that enrollment perspective will also put it into some context so thanks for offering that absolutely we really want to you and team and we know it's not just you it's everybody else that's participating in the process um I think um Matt Smith last year I think you set a really good precedent the two of you and how you're laying this out and walking us through it and so I think we'll continue to have questions but this was a good first meeting to to get an overview any less comments from from the board um Miss cwell Johnson miss good Miss Campos as of right now I am um I have no questions right now I'm just going to look through it a little bit more and see
161why I could pick out great um Sno no questions thank you is Marano just one thing and just clarifying and I hope that this is what my colleagues thought and anybody else that was listening in the room everything is an impact to kids and everything is going to be is will it would impact kids we have tough choices to make but um but I do think it's about choices and priorities and so that's where my thinking was I don't want anyone to think I didn't think a cut would affect kids it all affects our kids so uh Miss Alonzo no great nothing okay well thanks thanks everybody appreciate your time thank you thank you that is the end of our two work sessions bye Terry thanks bye Terry bye Anna bye bye bye