001all right good evening everyone and welcome to the May 8th meeting of the Ames Community School District Board of Directors I will call the meeting to order and entertain a motion to approve the agenda so moved second moved by Becker seconded by beerbaum all those in favor say aye aye opposene passes 6-0 and we will now read our purpose statement and would ask anyone in the room um to feel free to join along with us potential thank you our first item on the agenda this evening is our celebrations and recognitions and we will start with uh Jonas Michael for the Iowa band Masters Association outstanding administrator award and I will turn it over to Amy De lashman thank you good evening good evening Jonas would you please stand up for a minute not that that
002anybody doesn't know who Jonas is each year the Iowa band Masters Association recognizes administrators who exhibit leadership traits that support the growth and success of the band programs students directors and school communities we are excited to announce that Ames Middle School principal Jonas Michael has been awarded the Iowa band Masters Association 2023 outstanding administrator award for elementary and middle school Michael was nominated by the middle school band directors with an additional reference from associate principal Nicole Coronado band directors wrote in their nomination letter Mr Michael is a leader who steadfastly supports teachers and students on a personal level he frequently shares remarks that encourage and affirm us he challenges us to meet the highest standards and supports us in our efforts thank you for all you do congratulations thank you Mr Michael and our next
003item is School Board appreciation month yes Maya School Board appreciation month so to you board the Ames Community School District appreciates the service and support of the community elected officials who serve on the district's board of directors these dedicated leaders serve our community and students without compensation donate their personal time and energy to overseeing the direction of our public education system and they positively impact our state by ensuring our future citizens have a quality education there is no token that can show our appreciation for everything you do for our district thank you well thank you we appreciate that all right we'll move on this evening to our discussion items beginning with our board committee updates and we will start with the equity committee um we had a couple of items on the committee agenda although
004we spent most of the time on the first one and are going to come back to the second one um director Miller presented some information about the Danielson framework and that rollout and how that's going to be going but also how that connects into equity and our definition of equity and helping teachers to really dig into that and that was a great discussion uh there are notes here from it but I encourage you to ask director Miller if you have any questions about that because there's a lot of really good things in there that are going to become part of the standard framework thank you any questions for mental or for Equity committee all right and next we have the mental health committee which met on April 28th and I did not get the minutes
005submitted so I apologize for that um but we heard a presentation from Gene Muhammad on some of the future directions for the mental health committee some of the trainings and things that we offered in schools as we are moving forward and so those minutes will be on our um are updated shortly in the meeting minutes here then we have questions for me as far as um will there be a presentation to the entire board about kind of future directions of the mental health um mental health coordination within the district or how will that start being seen yeah I think Deanie would it be fair to say that um like in the fall that would be a time that you kind of would have a rolled out of the plan for the coming year anything else
006for mental health committee all right we'll move on to our teaching and learning update and tonight we have special education program update with director Deanie Thomas I think so many things um thank you there we go better better okay um starting with three major pieces of legislation that impact and inform our special education work in the district the first two pieces are section 504 of The Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act which prohibit um public institutions including school districts from discriminating against people on the basis of disability the major piece of legislation that informs our work for special education is the individuals with disabilities education impact which ensures that all students ages 3 to 21 have access to a free and appropriate public education um and particularly covers students who have disabilities a
007key component of idea is that students are educated in the least restrictive environment possible and that's defined primarily by access to interactions with peers who do not have disabilities so in Ames we offer a Continuum of services special education services to ensure that students can have access to um the least restrictive environment possible within our existing mtss framework so mtss is a multi-tier system of support that all students receive within our system um and so we layer on additional support So students need them including special education supports at every tier of our system um special education includes specially designed instruction that's one of the things that differentiates um idea from other pieces of legislation is that it not only protects kids but it also ensures that they receive specific specially designed instruction to meet their
008instructional needs based on their disabilities so we have a like I said a full Continuum of services and so if you look at this pyramid here um on slide six the very bottom of the pyramid the widest part every student in our system has access to general education curriculum the general education report and that includes students who have disabilities and then we have five levels of programming for students who receive special education services and as you go up the tiers or up the triangle then they become more and more restrictive um which means again less access to typical care so more specialized instruction and less interaction developed um leaders who don't have disabilities so I'll just kind of quickly talk through each of those tiers um the first and least restrictive is Consulting teacher Services
009which is where a special education teacher consults with a general education teacher to provide some advice and some guidance on how they can adjust the learning environments their instructional methods those kinds of things that happens completely within the general education setting the student doesn't actually receive Direct Services from a special education teacher they receive all of their services from general education teachers and the teachers work together to meet the students needs the next layer of support is co-teaching services and this is where a general education teacher and a special education teacher work together to provide all of the instruction within the general education student or setting for all students so it's really I mean just what the name says co-teaching teaching together planning together teaching together providing feedback together all those kinds of things the
010next layer is collaborative services so this is where a special education teacher will go into a general education classroom and provide Direct Services to students within that setting um but only for students with IEDs so an example might be like um during reading block when students you know break into small groups and go to the teacher table and those kinds of things we might have a special education teacher working with a small group or an individual who has an IEP within the general education setting the the last two layers Direct Services and then special class are within a separate setting from the general education setting so Direct Services pattern during a small portion of the school day they're delivered by a special education teacher they're focused on that specially designed instruction that students need based
011on their disabilities and they supplement the general education curriculum the last and most restrictive kind of services special class service this is very rare it's a very small number of students who receive special class service this is actually modifying the general education curriculum to meet students very specific learning needs um again it's very rare it happens outside of the special or outside of the general education setting and is provided by a special education teacher who engages in some reverse collaboration with um General educational teachers to make sure that we're tied to the Core so I went through a lot of them super fast so I'll just pause in case you have questions about that before I move into some District data I have one kind of um Baseline question I love the way you've split
012up the tiers just rough order magnitude like what percentage of our students that are being served in gen across the district are kind of at those various tiers yeah you know that's a really great question a super specific answers most of their school days so over 75 percent of their school dating the general education setting so I'd say that it's probably less than two or three percent who are in that very top part of the triangle I have a few questions um when you're talking about um Consulting teaching services and co-teaching can you talk about how that relationship Works between the special ed teacher and the um and the general classroom teacher how does communication work how does accountability work those kind of things yeah so it varies depending on the school and the system
013and the situation so we have lots of different kinds of ways that that's working one of the most common ways that we experience whose salting teacher Services is when we work with like itinerant teachers for the blind um teachers who have hearing impairments or deafness those kinds of things and then our speech and language Pathologists and so they will come again um usually there are set times when those contracted service providers or contracted teachers are scheduled to be in the buildings and they will touch base with the general education teachers to give some pointers and advice so that's a little bit different because it's not really our sound right often things who are providing those kinds of services um co-teaching some people refer to it as kind of like a marriage like if you arrange
014it it might work out but it's really better if people come to that you know um so people will approach that they're I think six different ways that people can approach um the actual co-teaching but really it requires like anything lots of trust lots of planning and lots of time um okay so so I'm sorry just to clarify terms for me for me because I didn't think I didn't understand that so if you have say a student who is receiving has a special uh math goals or reading goals but it's in a general Ed classroom you call that co-teaching not Consulting teaching well it depends on what kind of services they're receiving most often if we have a student who has a math goal than they would be would be sort of a direct service
015for their specially designed instructions we have some students who are receiving co-teaching instruction as well where a general education and special education teacher are working together to deliver that instruction that's probably co-teaching I would say is the most rare okay form of service on our Continuum at this point okay so typically if somebody is say receiving pull out special instruction in math then you'd call that collaborative services that would be direct services so the teacher got the special educational teacher is directly providing the service to a student with a math course okay but the student is in the general education setting the rest of the day most of the day okay in the special class is that based on the availability of teachers and their expertise or if there's a need do we bring people
016in for that yeah no that space a special class is based on the needs of the students so we um I mean we try to anticipate in staff appropriately but if if we don't have teachers to cover the need for special classes we hire more in any case can you talk about what the relationship of accountability is between a special education teacher and a general classroom teacher when a student has goals that are being met by both of those teachers say more about what you mean by accountability so for instance who's tracking IEP goals so the special education roster teacher is responsible for tracking IEP both so all of the progress monitoring um some IEP goals we have to work collaboratively so we have some social behavior goals and things like that where we need
017to collect lots of different data points over the course of the day and so then the special education and general education teachers have to work together um to get that done but it's always the special education teacher who's responsible for maintaining the IEP okay for entering the data and that kind of thing um I'll just share a little bit about individualized education plans and the kinds of services that we provide here in the district um so this is on slide 13 here is just a snapshot per School of the number of IEPs and I will tell you that this number changes slightly daily as we have students who are exited who move who move in who become eligible so it's it's kind of a rough snapshot of IEPs in the district and you can see
018um you know that we start out in Northwood obviously has a little bit more given the total number of students that they have than our other schools compared to their total number of students and then if you go to slide 14 here you can see the third grade breakdown it's a little business meeting the blue line that's the Northwood line Northwood and then at the other end in high school are the two areas where we tend to see students repeat the same grade multiple years so students who have IEPs who come to us as preschoolers will tend to attend preschool for more than two years because they'll start sometime during the year when they turn three complete that entire year attend for another entire year as a three-year-old and then attend for a a two
019and a half year or a third year as a as a four-year-old so that's why that number looks so much bigger than than the other numbers and then like I said on the other end um we do see kids start some equals and not have a need for that specially designed instruction maybe they need 504 still we know a lot of disabilities don't just disappear but a lot of times kids don't need that specially designed instruction that requires special education anymore they just need some accommodations and that kind of thing but at the high school end because students can stay until age 21 and continue to be educated toward their special education goals that's the other area we'll where we'll see chips repeating grades um there's just kind of a snapshot of the number of
020IEPs per grade level and you'll notice that the the preschool looks really really small and the reason for that is because they're a very specific guidelines around preschool ratios both for special education and for general education the other reason is because all of our preschool teachers currently are both special education and general education teachers so a lot of their workload is actually general education as well as special education which is unique to Northwood and then the other buildings are fairly consistent in terms of the teacher workloads for special education there are seven uh performance domains associated with special education and I'll just kind of really quickly go through these not all of these do we provide directs to this one I'll explain that a little bit in a minute so we have academic goals those
021are your Reading Writing math um problem solving comprehension listening comprehension those kinds of things adaptive or adaptive Behavior goals those are your living skills working skills just functional skills to adapt to everyday life and surroundings Behavior which includes both your expression of emotions self-regulation interaction with others those sorts of social behaviors Communications are receptive of the language that you get and express of the language that you give health which has to do with both the general condition of the of the body the physical body and the mind so mental health is included with how um hearing and vision so the ability to perceive Sight and Sound and then physical which is your gross motor your fine motor your Mobility um of those the the main areas that we focus on because we contract a lot
022of our speech language pathology hearing and vision services things like that the ones that the most common kinds of performance domains for the district are Reading Writing math so those academic goals that's by far the biggest group of goals that we have than behavior and then adaptive behavior and so you can kind of see on this graph the rate down there so on that grab line how do we compare compared to like other districts like do we tend to have a higher percentage of IEPs the same less do you know so my senses that our percentage is pretty comparable to the rest of the state and the country overall um we do seem to have some Pockets like our preschool programs in particular does seem to be um in terms of IEPs and especially for
023students with more significant disabilities and then I guess this might be a terminology thing um how do 504s figure into this um are they overlapped with kids that have IEPs or is that separate and outside of this consideration yeah so the protections of Section 504 apply to all individuals with disabilities so um Section 504 is kind of an umbrella that would Encompass students with IEPs the the key difference in practice especially designed obstruction so students would buy before plans tend not to need specially designed instruction but they do need some accommodations or supports adaptations to the environment that kind of thing okay thank you so the the academic domain has the most goals you mentioned that so I'm going to ask you a leading question is any of those or any of those domains more
024important than the other domains I would say no okay that's what I was hoping you would say yeah but it seems sometimes when we hear there's more goals in that section we figure that's more important to learn the quote-unquote academic goals as opposed to these other areas yeah I understand what you're saying I don't think um and this is just a meat this is a personal opinion not a necessarily A District opinion I think that sometimes maybe we're a little more accepting um of some variation in human and and how humans do things in non-academic areas in the school than we are of variations and academics thank you um so then what I have for you next is a breakdown of um each of the major goal types here by school um except for adaptive
025Behavior because breaking that down much more would would cross us into a territory that we shouldn't be in in the public meeting of of jeopardizing people's confidentiality so um for reading goals you can see that across schools barely consistent and then once you get into grade levels again you see that kind of stepping down pattern as students are Meeting those goals closing gaps and not needing um to have reading books anymore similar patterns with writing goals except that writing goals are much more rare at the preschool level and so we won't see that that kind of stuff down pattern when we get to preschool with math goals um again the pattern is is pretty similar we have a little bit of a bump at the middle school level um in the math goals overall in
026the magicals per grade level and then finally Behavior goals and again these are the social behavior goals so they're regulating emotions um social peer interactions those kinds of things and this is where we see they start to really drop up we don't I didn't include a breakdown at the high school per grade level because the numbers get so small for Behavioral sometimes so that is just kind of a snapshot of special education and I would be happy to answer any other questions you have I have a few questions so you said there's you know different levels of services that children can receive how do you determine which type of service a child receives yeah so the IEP team um decides that so we start with you know if a child hasn't already been identified and
027and evaluated and all of that are aea Partners work with families to get consents they go through an evaluation process determine that the student is eligible and then bring in the school team and so then the Lea that's us the aea and the parents work together to decide what is appropriate programming for students and I know you said you don't have numbers but let's just use um reading or math as a goal that often are they receiving services within their classroom versus Direct Services where they're pulled out of the classrooms yeah so I would say that well so keep in mind that all of our students so students without you these are General educational students first so all of our students are receiving um intervention supports within their classrooms in all areas for most of
028most of our students do receive some sort of direct instruction for direct service outside of the general education setting it varies a little bit depending on the need so like for example a Wilson um lesson that's a structured um reading program takes about 45 minutes so it's pretty common to see 45 minutes for reading for a student who has that specific need um it can it varies pretty greatly for other so for a child who's pulled out of the classroom for Direct Services what's the expectation of um for the last period or class time they're missing in terms of that instruction they might be missing yeah so a lot of times we try to it depends a little bit on the building in the specific situation first that's often addressed in their iuk so in
029their activities and their services um we try to schedule those things so that the secondary level during times when they might have study hall or their win time or those kinds of things so that they're not missing any kind of academic instruction at the elementary it gets a little bit trickier because there's a lot less of that time um and so and maybe during their like independent work time and then they would have some accommodations or what they're learning in the special education setting helps for the worse than that so for elementary kids because it is a little more difficult right because there's things happening in the classroom all the time does the district have a goal of pulling them out less often and keeping them a classroom and receiving services in the classroom it's
030always cool okay yeah so what are you doing to work towards that yeah so we have a couple of schools um Mitchell and Edwards in particular do a really nice have been doing a really nice job of piloting some things over the last couple of years um we haven't written a specific goal that's something that we should we could look at everything I've read or my experience with pulling kids out I'm to read additional services makes it difficult for them with their classmates and so I would really encourage the school to work towards not pulling kids out and doing I I know it's complicated but trying to get services in the classroom especially in elementary school where you don't have those study halls and things that you can pull kids into for sure thank you
031for presenting this I I mean it's obvious there's a lot of work going into helping all our students and that's awesome yeah I guess one question I have one final question might be you know if you had a magic wand what would you change that would make it so you could do it better like what roadblock or challenge is getting in the way that you really wish you could do something about that you'd like us to know about wow that's a good question I wish I had known that the question was something I'm sorry I didn't prepare well um you know I think I think that there are a couple of things I think first mindset like um director Lynn Titus was saying we know that having kids being fully included in classrooms to the
032greatest extent possible is good for everybody um to make that successful everybody has to work toward a mindset of inclusion um and embracing people's differences so if I had a magic wand I would love it if everybody can be like we all belong here and deserve to be in our classrooms thank you thank you so to repeat what I think I understood and I'm sorry I'm despite having had some experience especially in my personal life I also like there's a lot of this that I don't know um it sounds to me from what you said that most special education serve that co-teaching and collaborative services are relatively rare and Direct Services are more are more common do you have a sense of What proportion is within each of these I know you again you can't
033give you can't get you can't give like full percentages but you have any sense of like what the proportions are I don't know how do you have solid enough numbers right I mean I can find that out right I don't work back to you know that I don't feel like I have a solid enough even to like if it's a sense of like half a third or not it got sense like that okay how do you determine which one of these tiers um a student belongs in and what the least restrictive environment is for them and how the system can respond to them like how do you know if a student can get bumped back from Direct Services to collaborative services or down the pyramid to more inclusive education sure that's a great question um
034so again we those are all IEP team decisions so the parents or the family and then her older students both rights have transferred the students themselves the school and the aea work together to look at the the convergence of data so lots of different data sources to kind of make that decision about what would be most appropriate you know it's not I'm not going to say that there's an exact science here because we have to take into account lots of things so we look at you know students test for as we look at students progress monitoring scores we look at how long it's taking um students to to make progress towards their goals and and what kinds of intensification we need to do with instruction but we also look at other things like um social
035emotional factors or Reason of traumas or things that the might influence and might lead us to to believe that maybe students need a different setting for a little while to reset and come back um parent requests has a lot to do with it too okay so if you determine that a kid can't that a less restrictive environment would be say co-teaching that a kid would be eligible for code teaching then how does that Dynamic work in the classroom I mean and how does for instance I imagine that sounds like a heart like one that requires a lot of professional development for the non-special ed teacher the one who isn't certified in special ed how does that professional development work yeah so we have in the past um not real recently but in the past I
036this is my 20th year of the district that I was a special education teacher here before so we have partnered with um aea to provide some really um specific training related to co-teaching over the years um because it's not a model that we have used consistently in the last few years we haven't you know with coveted and all that we were trying to keep things apart um it's not training that we've provided recently but yeah they're they're definitely trainings available and it is hard to do and it does require a lot of time and it requires an investment of financial resources because to train people to give people time for plan Aid to give people time for reflection and dialogue and all I mean it's an expensive option but it can be a really good
037option too so what enables that Financial I mean are you saying that a financial commitment from the district to financial commitment from the aea from the district so so the aea is not paying for that training well for the I mean we would pay for the training or they oftentimes will do training for us for free the the cost isn't so much on the training the cost is in the carrying it out because you have to be able to have time for people to co-plan if they're going to go to each yeah which means less availability for other things which means that you have you need to have more staff okay we're hearing a lot about parent choice coming from our legislature so if a parent hasn't requested an IEP for their student or if
038they're even resistant to it but teachers and others feel that it would be beneficial I'm curious what steps are taken then none parent parents retain the right to give with older remote consent for special education and related services at any time [Music] all right well thank you thank you thank you all right next item on our agenda is the post 2023 24 school fees which is Dr Hopkins good evening good evening good evening so it's a knife or discussion is a review of the draft or the proposed uh fees schedule uh for the 23 24 school year um you can see overall on the first time uh that there's not a proposed increase to the authorized fees that would apply to all students so the general uh textbook rental fees that are assessed to all
039students are proposed to feel the same for next year and as you scroll to the next page you'll see some changes so specifically just starting from the top um the middle school and high school replacement uh fees for drag needs and padlock I would propose that those are actually fines um so we the board is to approve the fees assessed to students anything that is lost or damaged property that is damaged that's a fine not a fee the guidance from the Department of Education draws a distinction between those two I would argue that those are both fines and thus the reason that they're proposed to be removed isn't because we no longer might assess that of that exact same amount of money to a student it's because it's a I would suggest it's a fine
040not a theme but there there were no proposals to increase the cost so this isn't like taking it off to increase the cost someplace later it's just that it's probably not appropriate in my opinion on a fee schedule there were some things that were proposed to be increased in costs so from a process standpoint um buildings were given the opportunity to look at this list um at times work with the specific departments to get an assessment of our the costs that you that are incurred within your department increasing and therefore when you see recommended changes for increased cost that's coming through that process because those departments are incurring with costs um so you can see um there's a couple of suggested increases for the cost of rope cleaning particularly the band robes at the high
041school you'll see that both the middle school and high school have proposed an increase of 10 each respectively to the activity ticket and both have indicated that they I apologize I'll need to make that change that they call it an activity ticket not an athletic ticket but that ticket would work to get into activities as well you can see a proposal for a five dollar increase to the cost of the yearbook that is of course a voluntary purchase for students another proposal for an increase to a cleaning fee or magical costumes and then a new fee um that had not previously been assigned to students was the cleaning of the DECA jacket The Proposal of that sponsor was to get that on the fee schedule so that could be assessed to students for dry cleaning
042of that jacket bees uh that have regularly been charged to kids that we do need to add to this schedule or the fees for driver's education uh that 325 dollars has been consistent for the last several years and actually in a contract the driver's education extends through one more year and then we'll renegotiate that contract and you may see two years from now a proposal for different fees for that and the cost of reimbursement for a failed pseo course is set by pseo legislation but it is 250 and it would be appropriate to have it in my opinion on our fee schedule uh we have charged that in the past but we have not had that on our reschedule and then at least from what I'm hearing for the first time in many years there
043is a proposal to increase the the fees for Transportation uh those proposals um you know typically arranging where from four dollars to um as much as 16 for the for the total cost nowhere um even come close to the amount of increase in cost over the last several years before Transportation but a nominal increase in fees at least in my opinion nominal increase in fees was suggested what what questions could I answer for you as you think about what will be brought back to you as a final draft I think that I'm pretty sure that we have talked about this a year ago and talked about the same set of fee increases and I just don't fully remember all the answers um can you talk about how the fee waiver system works I understand that
044it uh you know I get the basics the the document explains that um that there's a whole fee waiver for free um before for free lunch students and a half fee waiver for reduced price but how does that work in practice and does it apply to all fees some fees what um Chris do you mind if I let you hop into this thanks so um students who qualify for free reduced lunch their um parents can um request to have their fees waived it is not automatically it does have to be waived it is the Parent's Choice sometimes the parents choose not to wait fees um you might have a situation where um you're just going through a little bit of a rough uh patch and I can't afford lunches but I can afford my fees
045I don't I don't want them waived so it's a personal choice on the parents um for free it's a hundred percent for um reduced at 60 percent is the reduction um it applies to all mandatory fees so um it would apply to the um the the textbook fee is that what we're calling it now um it um would apply to um transportation that's one that de has said that even though it's a um discretionary busting and a choice it is a waveable fee um anything that is related to Student Activities would not be waived okay so um your activity tickets that's a choice that's not a that's not something um this that is required um drivers educate I say driver's education drivers education is one of those that the state has said that that every
046child is required I think to take drivers in to get their license not necessarily through a school district but that is a waivable fee um the non-waveable fees are going to be anything that is not required for curriculum so if you notice instrumental rental would be required for the class that would be a waivable fee okay um the cleaning of a Deca jacket that's an activity that's a choice of a student to participate in that activity that's not waitable um really I like um you said 60 this memo it says one half unless I'm seeing something wrong so third paragraph down or fourth paragraph down on the first page P waivers are available for low-income students uh required fees will be raised for students who qualify for free lunches or meet other specific eligibility requirements
047introduced by one half for students who qualify for reduced price I think we'll have to check I thought it was I thought it was a 40 charge but maybe it's 50. yeah we we'll check and make sure that we address it next time uh as you're voting it's set by Statute so whatever the statute is is what we've what we do we we could also if if the word feels like it's a better way to communicate with our community we could create a key in asterisk those fees that are able to be uh waived as per this if that is a better way to communicate I mean I think that would probably be helpful for parents and students sure yeah yeah I think that'd be great yeah I pursue the feedback precisely what this is
048for yeah yeah for instance parking I mean is it optional is it required I mean getting to school is required probably there's some other way to get schooled from those students but yeah parking is optional yeah I mean but yeah I would imagine there are a lot of students who don't feel like parking is optional but yeah right yeah I imagine there are a lot of people we will certainly mark this based on code not on how people might feel right right Market yeah that's where I find that would be available yeah the only one that I mean you know this you would know the one I'm going to say the one that continues to bother me from the equity lens is the Activity one yeah I get how it's not required but we want
049our students to feel like they can come to activities and do things I would love for us to consider and maybe talk about in the future what we could do to see if we could make it so kids could get them to reduce drink to um given our goals and things we'd like to accomplish might I propose that we figure out a way to help Provide support for students to go to activities that don't include us reducing that fee but still still accomplishment accomplish the I mean accomplishing that goal and we want student belonging we want students coming I love seeing students and not only athletic events but you know the Arts events things like that um yeah and it seems like putting that it seems like a small barrier that maybe we could do
050something about I know there are Creative Solutions that others have used that we can I'm sure we'd ramificate the activity fees is that just for sporting events is it where is it for our no they want to they want it to be an activity not athletic fee so the yeah they wanted to be for and it's a revenue into the Student Activity fund not the general funds so um we're fairly limited on what kind of revenues we can generate in that fund um the activity tickets is one fundraising is another gated missions so in fact they were they're very specific in their feedback to me this year in the process of changing the name to an activity ticket rather than an athletic ticket and my understanding is the conferences raise the prices as well that
051because I had it going through my whole group that everybody was getting asked to raise their prices so some of it was generated by the conferences foreign just to summarize for myself I'll wait to denote uh those fees that are waivable Clarity around the one half or the percentage of reduction and then um ongoing work on uh ways to find ways to get students to activities uh who want to be there who may not be able to afford the activity ticket without certainly violating that code also need to update the date under authorized student fees it says 2122 yeah thank you appreciate that good catch okay thank you very much thank you thank you all right thank you Dr Hawkins and we will um we didn't have anyone sign up to speak on our discussion
052items although I forgot to check the zoom if you check group it looks like I'm assuming public forum for both of these um so I will go ahead and open our public forum and read our statement on public comments residents of the district students attending the district parents or guardians of students attending the district and District staff members May address the board about any topic relevant to the district whether on the current agenda or not those who wish to speak must sign up at the beginning of the meeting speaker participation is limited to three minutes once per item the views and opinions of citizens addressing the board do not necessarily reflect those of the Board District administration or staff speakers are to remember that Iowa law prohibits the board from discussing specific employees students or
053their performance student speakers will state their name in school others will state their name and address [Music] Department numbers that you would check out and see whatever I could do it or not I I tried to call her the number you can learn things their I don't know I I don't have a phone myself I don't have a computer I don't have email anymore I'm kind of wondering yeah did did she you said you wanted to talk to somebody and did you do that so we're not able to discuss anything that's not on the agenda but if you'd like I'd be happy to talk with you after the meeting um and I can update you on on what I found out okay all right okay thank you all right now no this doesn't we don't
054have any closed sessions after this meeting all right uh Britney landscard the acsd board purpose I'm so sorry can you state your name and address for me yeah Brittany Lane 3502 Willowbrook Circle the Ames Iowa five zero zero one zero the acsd board purpose statement is unsolved the Ames Community School District commits to equity and access that empowers every individual to reach their full personal and educational potential we believe that you as a board keep this in mind when making decisions that directly impact our students we also believe that time and concern was taken by the administration to identify budget cuts with the aim of minimal harm however the current solution to a to remove shift and share teachers in the related arts throughout our elementary schools presents challenges for students and teachers additionally doing
055so goes against the district's stated priorities and strategic planning goals which we will address individually educational equity and Improvement educational Equity ideally means that every child receives the necessary resources to reach their full academic and social potential both inside and outside of the classroom this extends beyond the instruction and encompasses a child's sense of safety and belonging which are fundamental prerequisites for learning without feeling safe and a part of the Community Learning is impeded or cannot take place teachers devote a considerable amount of time to building relationships with their students establishing a mutual trust respect develops for each other through consistent structure and expectations in and outside of the classroom the current solution is akin to pulling a brick out of the foundation of a house it will reduce meaningful teacher engagement and available time
056to invest in student relationships resulting in more difficult class management and an increase in negative behaviors students with individualized education programs who already face untenable challenges in a regular classroom as well as students with attachment difficulties will be particularly effective related arts teachers regularly use their time to create a sense of community in the school and undertake activities that Foster camaraderie among students this is evident in the extra time they spend with children in the gym the art display in the Halls monitoring lunch and recess helping staff a club for the girls in stem working at PTA events and more this encourages positive behaviors increase socialization by your student achievements and more efficient classroom management because our related arts teachers see our students year after year they know them well and can interact with them
057on an individual level thank you Brittany larika gentle colleague 3205 Red Fox Road Ames Iowa um as one special education teacher at Kate Mitchell put it succinctly when Kate Mitchell had to share Fine Arts teachers with other schools there were many years when we had no art on the walls no choir and no field day this ties directly to the opportunity gap for disadvantaged students at any school step optimal availability and engagement from our related art teachers for exasperate the opportunity gap for disadvantaged students and widen the equity Gap due to inconsistency in staff and teaching styles around 48 percent of students at Kate Mitchell come from families with low economic status these families have limited resources to supplement their children's public school education and activities with external organizations additionally this change change will impact
058meaningful collaboration between teachers and staff working together across classrooms is essential to ensure consistency for students during the transition between teachers this involves using the same teaching method for provided curriculum as well as the same methods for handling student behaviors and expectations a simple example a former kindergarten teacher Illustrated this by sharing how she relied on the related arts teachers in the building to ensure consistency in basic activities such as how to correctly hold scissors without a related arts teacher available on site permanent or on site all the time these basic skills are taught inconsistently the second aspect is transparent Financial Planning and process our group of Representatives has spent a considerable time analyzing data for the Ames Community School District and two Iowa districts that are most similar in size we have met with
059our district CFO we've consulted with our HR Director via email examined individual Ames Elementary School fact sheets and utilized various sources resources to search for data that is not always publicly available or easy to find we have organized this data in a manner that is highlighted that highlights the comparative inequities within the Ames Community School District and to those similar size districts we have provided a link to the data via email and have copies available for review tonight we are under the impression that when the budget is prepared enrollment numbers matter most enrollment numbers do matter but only to the extent to establish the exact dollar amount the district has available for spending purposes within the financial boundaries we believe that the district's diversity equity and inclusion and student support staff need to play a
060bigger role and do so at the earlier stages of the budget formulation to not lose sight of the district's Equity commitment communicating with eei and support staff or staff directly engaged with the students at Kate Mitchell for example could have informed the district about the proposed catcher cuts and how they will disproportionately affect the elementary school already experiencing the most inequity thank you thank you Megan traxel hi I'm Megan Drexel from 2409 Suncrest Drive District priority number three is recruitment retention and development of a high quality staff while removing three teachers seems like a clear deviation from this point already this decision has a longer term repercussion in retaining high quality staff according to a 2012 study by Johnson craft and papay high teacher turnover rates occur primarily in schools within significant low-income and minority
061student populations such as Mitchell these findings are largely attributed to unsupportive work environments like those that occur by reducing prep time and increasing individual student load the proposed sharing of teachers across several elementary schools meets exactly these criteria undesirable and inefficient work environments for teachers at the schools with substantial populations of low-income and minority students while Kate Mitchell has the largest share of these populations Sawyer Meeker and Edwards serve them as well if public education is to provide effective teachers for all students then those schools the schools need those students the schools those students attend must become places that support effective teaching and learning across all classrooms variety 4 is clear and consistent communication to support positive and proactive Community relationships from what we can discern the first public hearings regarding the budget occurred on
062April 24th while contracts were due to the State per state law April 30th although likely unintentional there was little time for affected stakeholders to react to these proposed cuts fellows PTO today put out a letter a petition that received over 265 signatures during the work day today but this still does not allow time for parents not on social media during work hours to react to this decisions this proposed budget will also have continuing effects with respect to communication across these stakeholder groups going forward related arts communication to parents will be hindered because of the number of students sections and buildings that the teachers will have to manage history is a great teacher sharing sections among schools has not worked in the past teachers traveling between schools have less time to do more prep and less
063time to get to know students outside of their 40 minutes of weekly Face Time leaving them with less time to be engaged in each School community finally priority five is a safe and responsive system that promotes the mental health and well-being of every individual the mental and long-term effects of inequity are obvious classroom management and consistency impacts achievement in all areas especially from marginalized students in addition to having the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged students by almost eight percent Mitchell has the highest black and African-American and Latino student rates in all of the Eames elementaries Mitchell staff do a wonderful job trying to bridge the disproportionate gaps already created by socioeconomic reasons but this Choice specifically and actively pushes down students who are already disadvantaged within our society while this solution is based on enrollment
064numbers removing these positions specifically affects the Mitchell Elementary staff and student teacher ratio as well as many Mitchell families who don't have the resources to speak for themselves thank you Amanda Thompson well Amanda Thompson 33-23 red fox proposed Solutions we realize that actionable Sustainable Solutions are important and needed we believe that such Solutions can be found and include retaining full-time related arts teachers for all elementary schools we will not be shy about asking the district to rehire the art teacher specifically full-time at Mitchell either losing her implies losing the time her parents volunteer at Kate Mitchell our students depend on an optimal learning environment and the Goodwill of volunteers and deserve to have an art teacher like her we understand that we do not have full knowledge of budget related intricacies but we have identified
065some solutions that we believe deserve full consideration we gather data from the CFO and HR directors to learn more about EAS and substitute teachers per an email from the HR Director on average 8.44 of all teachers are absent each day in the district for non-work related reasons with 396 full and part-time teachers this averages out to 33.5 teachers out every day this number does not count additional staff for professional development athletic Scholastic or other club events hiring EAS and substitute teachers is costly HR resources are needed for reviewing applications interviewing onboarding expenditures for advertisement background checks and more these expenditures will only increase the district's loses the two when they lose the current contract and substitute teachers due at the end of the Esser funds offering related arts teachers to work as substitute teachers to
066round out their full-time hours has multiple advantages first it allows the district to look for high quality Personnel in-house saving time and expenditures needed when hiring from outside second our students will have a substitute teacher they know respect and Trust more often frequently changing substitute teachers and is inefficient at best and not conductive to learning third it provides consistency and familiarity to our students reducing poor behavior and lost teaching time fourth additional time available to related arts teachers due to insufficient enrollment can be utilized for administering administering tests for children with 504s and IEPs that require quiet testing lastly several related arts teachers we talked to expressed a clear interest on taking on these responsibilities this would be a true win for all the district the related arts teachers and our students thank you thank
067you Mary Daly hello um Mary Daly my name is Mary Daly I live at 3103 Cedar Lane Ames Iowa 50014 we were unable to obtain complete information about the annual costs of all surveys and external Consultants however we did learn that the pan that the Panorama survey alone costs 23 500 with about 1 000 family responses this averages out to roughly 23.50 per family response while we understand its value we are unsure that everyone looking at the results for guidance understands the results can offer limited Insight due to voluntary response bias responses will be skewed toward individuals with internet access and time to complete the survey in the first place we encourage the district to think more creatively to obtain similar data more reliably especially given the on-site OnStaff data research and assessment specialist and
068robust in community resources available at Iowa State University who not only has statistics and data science faculty and students but also the nationally recognized Center for survey statistics and methodology the amazing Ames magazine costs 32 271.11 and just Postage and printing in 2022. in the first three quarters of this year that cost is already 28 156.23 which results in a rough estimate of thirty seven thousand five hundred and forty one dollars and sixty four cents overall for this fiscal year this does not include the staff hours to write photograph and design the magazine additional staff hours go toward the podcast we ask that the district recently did a cost of benefit analysis to better understand if these marketing expenses result in a net gain for the district District we imagine also that many parents would
069prefer retaining face-to-face teachers over indistrict promotional materials thank you thank you Mary Angie to work hello I'm Angie Dewar 3103 Whitetail Lane here in East we also performed a homegrown unofficial marketing Market Equity analysis of the two most closely sized districts in Iowa button and Bettendorf and the tumlin roughly 500 fewer and more students respectively in stating the following results we do not wish to criticize or question established District salaries rather we wish to point out the message sent by looking at just the raw numbers for the 22-23 school year administrators were comparatively paid ten thousand dollars more than the next highest School District while the average teacher was comparatively paid two thousand dollars less our stools district has the lowest teacher but highest administrative pay and this Gap will grow with proposed salary adjustments
070emailed to the board earlier We additionally compare the number of employees at the district office to the district offices in Bettendorf and the Tomlinson again we realize that we likely have an incomplete picture but the overall settlement was still the same even after making adjustments to remove admin positions we do not have the do in Ames the next District in size has only 64 of the administrators that we do there is a note with an ecsd or a large increase in it individuals as well as supporting staff and hon Dr Lawson's 100-day plan report dated December 16th discussed how Staff feel that recent hires at the district level had contributed to a feeling of top heavy Administration among staff or Personnel budgets that been reduced at the building level this comes at a time when
071student services and needs are Paramount in light of this we feel that the district needs to prioritize face-to-face positions for our students the proposed teacher cuts and Eve to maintain the top heavy status quo rather than addressing what benefits students our last proposed solution is free more Equitable representation of all schools in the district this can be achieved by having a school board and district office parent and or teacher liaison from each of the district's eight schools the Liaisons have the knowledge of each school's unique culture and situation doing so will help all populations be represented and half of once thank you so much for listening to our concerns we know that your time is valuable and our in your care for students is apparent and unquestioned we stand before you as a group today
072hoping to have Illustrated that retaining all full-time related arts teachers for all elementary schools including reinstating the art teacher at Mitchell is not only important and vital for optimal student outcomes and Equity across the district but that with creativity this can also be achieved financially thank you thank you Angie Natalie key Ross different styles good evening my name is at 3007 Evergreen Circle aims um I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you for your hard work for the students um I'm here to share our petition results that has a collection over 160 signatures in the last couple of days regarding French education at the Ames High School the question is titled we passed the Aims Community Support District to hire a new French teacher in Ames High School and we've
073got a copy of the petition um it has come to our attention that the quantum full-time teacher friends teacher is retired retiring at the end of the semester and there has been no job posting to hire a new French teacher it is not clear to us if the school district has an internal candidate the full-time position and or is planning on hiring on you part-time teacher in our understanding based on 2023 2024 enrollment friends needs sections meaning we need a full-time teacher for six sections and an additional teacher for the other transformations um if you can share any information that is available today they'll be much appreciated if not and there's no plan of hiring a new teacher we urge you to take action quickly to find a qualified candidate to ensure there is no
074Gap in the French education for the Quran and incoming students at Ames High School thank you for your time thank you Natalie Rob James good evening I'm Rod James from 150 campus Avenue Ames we received an email on April 28th and Dr Lawson informing us about the budget cuts that are being made to the district he and I quote remains committed to fiscal transparency through ongoing engagement with you our families students and community members in this same email we learned that he and CFO Chris stenzlin knew about and started planning the budget cuts as early as January it has not been transparent we're being informed after decisions are made this email is all we heard about this process and not even our principals were allowed to speak about these Cuts until April 28th I'm here
075to claim that district office and the school board have unfairly targeted the classroom particularly at the secondary level when the district has faced budget cuts made by inequitable decisions and refusing to Bear any of the financial burden themselves we as staff and administration should be working together at all steps of the process to consider reducing or combining positions at all levels of our district keeping our students at the Forefront of the decisions being made tonight the school board will be approving a 3.2 percent increase and his base pay for administrators contrary to the report in the April 28th Ames Community School District budget snapshot that everyone will be receiving a 2.79 increase in their total compensation package teachers base salary increase is less than a tenth of a percent additionally this is in line with
076the district's five-year trend from 2018 to 2022 where administrators have seen an increase of 16 percent to their average salary over five years compared to teachers increase of 1.3 percent to their average salary over the same period the status was collected using Iowa Department of education's school district financial report card for Aged we live and work in a school district where the people who run it refer this from the classroom decide how much they make they decide who takes the burden of the budget cuts and who continues to get raises the teachers who are closest to the students and who in arguably have the greatest impact on their success are faced with the awful decision of who Among Us who sacrificed their job so that the rest of us have the resources to keep teaching
077the kids the least that you could do is actually have the transparency you claim a dealing district office could take just some of the burden and some of the guts and use the pressure on the rest of us yes there might be some reorganization necessary but not any more than what our action schools are already doing we are also understaffed additionally although any reorganization at the top would be inconvenient it would not be nearly as detrimental to Student Success as any reorganization in any of our schools remember that the role of the district office is to support Educators to best meet the needs of all students in the district despite all the positive communication regarding our impact to the district even truly know what's happening in our classrooms that can count on one hand the
078number of times I've seen district office Personnel during school hours at AMS this year I have more but it seems like my time is up so thank you thank you okay and then we do have at least one person signed up to speak via Zoom um Don Wallingford if you can just start out by stating your name and address you've been given permission to speak you might need to unmute okay you're still I don't know if you're speaking but you're still muted if you can unmute and then you should be able to speak okay um I think we'll have to go ahead and move on but if you do come back or you watch this later you can always email us with the remarks that you were planning to make and then we also have
079Laura Lee medima signed up but she's no longer in the meeting it appears okay all right then with that I will close our public forum and move on to our consent items I'm motion we remove consent item C reappointment lists second okay any discussion um is there an implication of this as it relates to legal connection to offering contracts to teachers I mean this is basically the vast majority of our staff and I know in talking to teachers today they're looking forward to getting contracts um so how does this play out that's a great question should we be discussing it now because yeah so I mean it would pull it to discussion items right is that okay do we need to discuss why we want to pull it or do we just save that okay
080I'm sorry you can you complete your case if you would like to do that before we vote yeah oh no I'm sorry we can't just got to tell okay so we'll vote okay we'll vote if all those people say aye opposed name okay thank you so we've just voted to discuss it before before including it in the content items I move we approve the remainder of the consent agenda as presented second okay so then we will move to um gifts to the district the superintendent's office received the completed form for and recommends acceptance of the following gifts at two thousand five hundred dollars we received two Ada wooden picnic tables from Iowa State University university civil construction and environmental department for the benefit of Edwards elementary 556 dollars cash from Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames
081for the benefit of the Hope pantry 277.37 from Northminster Presbyterian church for the benefit of the Hope pantry from Iowa realtors association as part of project Jack we received 250 cash for the benefit of Fellows Elementary we received 100 cash from couples Club One a group of the ISU Women's Club for the benefit of Hope pantry from Marlene Geiger we received excuse me 25 cash for the benefit of the Hope pantry another 25 cash from Joan and Dennis said for the benefit of the Hope pantry and from John and Laney hill we received twenty dollars cash and again for the benefit of the Hope pantry for the district for the district so I'm sorry we're not able to allow questions at this time um so it was moved by beerbaum seconded by Franzen to approve
082the consent agenda with the removal of I don't know I forgot what I see item C so all those in favor say aye opposed name past the 7-0 okay board secretary can we now discuss the pulled item the board has the discretion of where they put it on the agenda okay yes so I would say that's your discretion you can put it some people put it at the beginning of the action item some put it at the end of the action item okay okay um let's go ahead and put at the beginning of the action items okay so yeah I just you know we've we've heard emotion yeah I mean of approval of the reappointment list for 2023-24. second uh I think I need more clarity I think there's some questions raised about um the
083percent increase and the different groups that we've been raised since the females we've got and I'm just a little unclear because it looks to me like maybe the math is not how I understood it um so I'm not ready to approve this because I have Equity concerns yeah as far I mean I haven't run the number systematically but it does look like there's a 3.23 increase in every item on the administrator's list or in every position on the administrator's list with the exception of the one place where we have a person shifting position but everybody who's continuing in the same position it looks like there's a 3.23 increase in administrators-based salary whereas there's a lower percentage increase in all the other positions and lower in variable percent increase in all the other positions so if
084we could talk about that that would be helpful so um the package is still a 2.79 percent there are a number of positions that the board has already approved that are not on the reappointment list that were hired at lower salaries so when you so the Middle School principal the the high school principal and um well there'll be a recommendation at some point coming for the Meeker we don't have a salary on that yet but um so um those aren't in there and when you put those decreases in it reduces the total salary increase for all of the administrators to 2.35 with the 10 increase in insurance that brings the package up for all of the administrators to 2.79 percent so they're the new hires are being hired at lower than the original than the
085people whom they're replacing yes okay and that was how the 3.23 percent was determined was because it was what made the math balance out unset 2.79 percent right I I do what in Excel it's called goal seek to a 2.79 package by increasing the salary and that's what and I do that for each group and we've consistently done that and if I if there were other groups where I knew that we had already hired people at different salaries sometimes it's the opposite sometimes we've hired people at higher salaries than what their predecessors have and that then reduces the amount of salaries that's available for other people in the group so it's hit both ways it just happens this time that we had um to principal positions that based on experience and education were way high
086on the salary schedule and the ones that are coming in are lower on The Matrix that we use for for administrator salaries so the 2.79 I'm sorry I'm trying to get to why I'm still not sure I understand why it looks like three points two three three point two three three point two three wouldn't because it's for the whole the group as a whole except for the superintendent who the board sets yeah that's the superintendent's salary right so yep we have what we have one um Association or Union which is the teachers and then we have um I'd have to look at how many but five or six what we call meet and confer groups that are they have life benefits they have like um salary structures um so each one of those that you
087see is a group within itself that is um considered as a group so if I can clarify that that would be the same across all those groups So within one of the other groups the 2.79 wouldn't necessarily mean every person in that group is getting exactly the same increase 2.79 is the package right and then it just depends on the group so the EA group specifically there is such a wide range of um hourly rates and um number of hours they work and number of days they work that we we calculate that on an a per hour increase to the EA group you have the 30 Cent increase as opposed to um someone that's higher at the getting two percent and someone lower getting two percent just because of the way that group works it's
088just not feasible to do it on a percentage basis for each employee and it affects our beginning rates there as well but everybody else it's a percentage and so for the teacher group it would depend also on the salary schedule so on the teacher group it's going to vary greatly on whether they're still moving on step so when um it's a 2.79 package again for the teachers which adds that 10 Insurance increase but that also includes steps so even before we put anything on the base we were at over a two percent package um just for moving everybody on steps and that insurance increase so each individual within the teachers is going to be a little bit different depending on where they where they are on the the education on the horizontal and where they
089are in the vertical on number of years they've served with us um and the ones at the at the top um have have maxed out their steps so they don't get a step increase so it's it's it's specific to each group how it's how it works so do we have to adjust administrator salaries in a separate category from say adjusting administrative support or EAS or technology or I mean we have different categories and we have right just so separately within each category so it you know when you're looking at a total compensation package the reason we um have different groups is they might have different leaves they might have um in our case every everyone in the district gets um only 100 a single paid um we don't pay anything towards family but when you're
090looking at that total compensation package the higher the salaried person the less the insurance is as a total part of their compensation package or if you're looking at um for instance in the eager a group where you might have a salary of fifteen thousand dollars but health insurance of ten thousand health and dental and all those other insurances of ten thousand that insurance is a much higher piece so that's why we look at those groups differently um hey it just that's always been the way in all the districts that I've ever served in you look at those individual groups who are like in their salary and benefits so but what that would effectively mean is that say for the EA group there would end up being a lower percentage increase in salary because of the
091higher relative impact of and and they you know the the EA staff in particular work um basically 10 months and get 12 months of insurance where um our custodial group Works 12 months and gets 12 months of insurance so so there's something disquieting about looking I mean I haven't read all the numbers I'm seeing numbers run by somebody else but there's something disquieting about seeing that we are giving a 3.23 increase in salary for administrators across the board and like substantially lower percent increase um in salary yes and salary I understand um for existing continuing employees in other categories it makes more sense to me now how we've arrived there but it feels um it's just quiet it's concerning for me I think in a previous year it was a reverse wasn't it that's what
092I said some years when um which felt weird that year too because right yeah it's when we when we've hired people that there's been a number of years where we've hired people that have come in higher than their predecessor and then that takes away um the percentage of salary that's available for all the other administrators within the group my goal when I'm looking at budget is that the cost of the package will be X and that's what I calculate into budget when we're looking at what we need to do for Budget modifications so a 2.79 package for each of these groups is going to cost X regardless of how you get there he said and that's how most districts calculate that the districts that I've been in I mean teachers are usually on a right
093there's a salary schedule based on and it depends you know um my previous District I had five unions and five meet and confers we just have the one Union here so in in those groups um and and we didn't pay 100 of insurance and so sometimes more was put on salary and less on the insurance but you have to be affordable under the Affordable Care Act so you have to be considered there in my previous District we the teachers and administrators got 90 of Family Insurance paid so our salaries were lower I know in some of the numbers that we were presented today I know those are districts that's the case in some of those I know that some of the districts provide a large um contribution to the 403 B's for their administrators because
094there's no there's no um biker hypers on that and so it's a way to get additional salary to employees without those related um payroll taxes so you really have to look when you're looking at um groups across districts to understand how their benefits are structured and on ISB they do a really good job at that of showing those different pieces of how you get to all those different compensation packages for different groups yeah I I thank you I have a better understanding how the how the package works as a whole I agree it just because it's looking at the whole package it feels I don't know there's something that bothers me about it because I'm thinking about what money do people have to pay bills and you know your your insurance package doesn't doesn't do
095that so um and this is me just I'm trying to better understand how how districts tend to do this so um and it just it depends on the the culture of the districts how they like I said my previous District paid 90 of Family Insurance I had my husband on Family Insurance because it was very cheap but my salary was quite a bit lower when I came to Ames it was single I made my husband go on his employer's insurance which he had to pay for wasn't even 100 single um but it was still cheaper but my compensation package is almost exactly the same when you looked at all of it and I know that's hard because people don't they don't view the insurances you're saying paying the bills but it is a very um
096important benefit when we think about increases that's where the disparity seems to yeah so a different way to do this would be to assess the two point I'm not suggesting that we need to go back and redo this all right now because I don't know what it's um but but a different way to do this would be to calculate the 2.79 across all groups and then to look at how this affected so instead of trying to get to 2.79 within the category of Administrators which ends up with 3.23 for continuing employees would be to calculate a 2.79 across all groups in like we couldn't do that on the teachers group because that's negotiating so of the 1.3 million of salary and benefit increases almost a million of it was the teachers group yeah I understand
097so about 300 000 was the rest of all of those groups that you saw I think one additional question we got and I just I know from previous budget discussions and I just wanted to clarify um maybe with You Chris the district office expenditures for district office staff I know last year went down by 15 or so I think the year before that went down in some way too and I I know this year there are open positions and aren't being hired so it's effectively going down again I don't know the exact number but I'll if I remember right one of the reasons those numbers can look the way they do is because the is it the TLC there's something about like the teacher leadership things things like that end up looking like their district
098office right really the number of Staff in the district office that are in the teachers group we have a number of staff that are in the Technology Group we have a number of staff that are in the admin support group um and then a number that are in the administration administrator group the the the teachers um that are based in this building are Grant funded they're funded under the teacher leadership um compensation Grant um which has to be used either for that purpose or for teacher salaries so that's a new law that just passed that we could use it for TSS purposes which is in addition to the negotiated seller settlement it's not it can't replace it it's in addition to it um so those positions that money would have to be used for a
099different purpose and could not be used to um yeah I think one of the questions we got was just why that number in district office looks large for our district in particular and I think it probably comes down partially to how those get counted in other districts um because districts might not be consistent in how they count those type of teacher Grant recipients and and I and I streaks um allocate their staff that um the business office staff was not one of the ones listed but um the benefits person the person who administers all of our health insurance is in HR in a lot of districts that's in the business office so in those districts I I know in Ottumwa the um the benefits person is in the in the business office staff because um
100the Ottumwa business manager has done a lot of communication with our uen group on Staffing and who's where um so it's it's just a matter of you can't always just compare raw numbers yeah to know if it's Apples to Apples and I know last year we did an extensive study and look at that and if I remember right I thought that study showed that our Administration Staffing overhead compared to other districts was actually fairly the same or lower if I remember right I would say we're low yeah and that was a study across all the different staff regardless of buildings based on function and role and everything um Ellen when was that study it was done um with Dr Vincent as part of the budgeting last year yeah I remember that talking about the Staffing
101model okay yeah the Staffing model and the Staffing model looked at it more as functional roles as opposed to which building that person might be technically assigned to or she was comparing us not to other districts but to I don't know what framework well there was an event model which was based on student numbers it was based on ell it was based on free and reduced that determined kind of those support roles out in the schools like counselors and nurses and those type of things and then there was the administrator compensation model that she put together that determined it basically we'd kind of hired administrators based on whatever they requested kind of and and it's hard to explain but administrators are Market based and so we compete with the Metro um that's a difference in
102another sometimes you know a time was kind of down there by itself um and um would compete with smaller districts we're competing with larger districts but she put that that salary Matrix together that said this is the base salary and then we add on for years in the district we add on for years in um of administrative um experience we add on for a master's degree or a PhD so there were two different ones last year I think the main takeaway I wanted to get at is just a reminder to the board that last year there was an extensive amount of work put into this to Baseline as compared to those studies and to look at some of the things that Chris was mentioning there to really kind of put us on the right track
103for that because we hadn't done that in a while no I I recall so that I think I guess trying to remember back to that I thought that had to do more with positions than dollars and salary increases yeah and it was relative to a model that had been put together from my memory not a comparison to other relative districts I would also point out that Bettendorf I would say it's in a metro area yeah it's a relatively wealthy School District in a you know not as big in metro area as the you know Central Iowa but it's a decent metro area um I also happen to know that Bettendorf provides a 30 contribution to their administrators 403b that's not recorded in their salaries as well as providing Family Insurance so thinking about what our
104presenters from the public forum had to say I'm wondering if there's a way we can get this rationale out about how this works to the community and teachers to even our board um before we get to this point with misunderstandings about how we arrived is there a way to do that next year or as we go move forward so we might want to make sure that we're focusing on our discussion should only be on the motion on the table I'm not discounting your question I appreciate it but we'll want to make sure that we're discussing the motion which is whether or not to advert the reappointment list fair enough the point you're making I would encourage you to make in comments from the board though as a thing for next year okay now that I'm
105discussing it right now I feel like there's got to be a better way to do this but I also realize that we need to take action on this now um so I guess that's kind of where I'm at and I'll save some comments for the later about maybe what we could do yeah I'm I remain really uncomfortable with what we have here so can you share related I mean I know this is what are the implications of postponing a vote on this um for the teachers I don't believe there's any implications I think those contracts are already out the contracts are out um I think there's probably um maybe not with um like the technology stuff and the administrative support staff and administrators um actually I think administrators their contracts have to be out by
106um May 15th right yeah they are containers right um so the administrators might be a little bit different I think it's just more that as soon as those reappointments lists are down we get those letters of um we call them letters of Employments for the rest of the staff they're not contracts we get those out so um Kristen do you want to come up and help me out thank you um there is a there are there are several implications okay okay thank you there are several things um administrator contracts we do want to get them out because we want that we want to have them um that settled and get them committed so that they'll stay here once they sign it then it's harder for them to leave so um there's also the question of
107continuing employment for purposes for of unemployment so when a school district employee who doesn't work year round um doesn't have a job during the summer the district does not have to pay the unemployment taxes if they file for unemployment as long as they've been assured of or they have reasonable Assurance of employment next year until we get those letters out the the Iowa Workforce Development will not say that our employees have reasonable insurance of employment next year and that would apply them to all the other employees so our our administrators they're 12-month though right yes okay and our facility established too but to be clear if we pull if we postpone it it's the whole list not just the yeah I was just trying to clarifying yeah I'm wondering from the board perspective um acknowledging
108that there's some questions and Desiring to understand better understand how these package increase are um I don't know why equitably distributed among our staff I would say um I think that from the board perspective um we have a really high level job of um setting an expectation for our staff in terms of how those things are how they carry out the work of the district I'm wondering if that's a broader conversation that we have at another time but possibly allow the business to continue on um that's what I'm thinking through in terms of the reappointment lists and and the work that the district needs to do because they are running a business and we are in the final stretch of school and um thinking if if there are concerns that board members have about an
109approach that the the district has taken and if we need to better understand that approach and understand better understand other districts and how they're managing that perhaps that's a time I think we're doing maybe a retreat in July but maybe that would be an opportunity for us to better understand it and if there's a different direction that we feel like the staff we'd like the staff to consider that we would make that suggestion at the that time yeah I think um as we think about kind of from the board perspective of that goal of Recruitment and Retention of staff that this is an important issue because perceptually right it doesn't look Equitable I understand that there's where I'm getting a much better understanding of how it might be but um the one thing I would
110add is that we never um settle on all of the other groups until we're settled with the teachers and we settled considerably later this year with the teachers than we have in most of the time I've been with the district so that's kind of crunching that timeline too I realize that's been yeah everything was delayed this year and partially because of property reassessments and things like that I understand all of that I have and given how much everything was delayed this year I have no desire to hold up the business of the district and also I'm really concerned that our spreadsheets ended up producing the results that looks really inequitable um and I don't know what to do about that I think that's the key part where I'm at is what would be if we
111delayed what would the change I'm not suggesting I'm suggesting that we delay I I agree and I am just as I'm looking at this and considering it I don't see in my head for the overall situation any change that I would be discussing so I think um I like the idea that might be just might be brought up later and I also think this idea of having the board have some more understanding in this process um through the treat Retreat that sounds good um but I think we need to allow the district to move forward with the business of the district so I'm not sure if it's appropriate to say it but I'm I'm seriously considering voting no on this which is not something I typically do um but and it's not because I want
112to hold up the business of the district is because I don't think that this process this this process doesn't feel Equitable to me it doesn't feel like a solution that is in everybody yeah I'm having a hard time getting to yes on this and at the same time it's not because I don't see holding up the district's business as being appropriate here I think it's totally appropriate obviously for you to say that you're considering that yeah I mean that's what we're discussing right yeah just to make sure that you do know the options there could be the opportunity for a different motion um if we wanted to ask staff to do something different and bring it back at a later date um yeah I mean I we could request a re-analysis of the data in
113a way that produces a more Equitable solution I don't know it seems like that would be extremely hard to get to I don't know that it would be in my mind it wouldn't necessarily be a re-analysis of the data but we would be directly asking them to do a different plug-in a different number or to recalculate I mean to recalculate in a way that pulls data in a way that produces a more Equitable outcome I mean I think it would just be reducing the the percentage for the one group probably is what we would be asking for right or I mean pooling category strikes me as a more Equitable I don't think we can pool categories because of the salary schedule and the fact that I understand you can't do it for teachers I understand
114teachers are in a pool of part I didn't understand that we couldn't do it for cooling say administrators with custodians yeah um well there is a just there is the opportunity to make a motion if you would like to the problem is that I don't know that we have time custodians have a salary schedule too oh so custodians have there's a it's not a salary schedule but they have categories within theirs they used to be a union this is the first year that they did not re-certify so we moved all of their um Union contract into the handbooks so they're it's pretty specific to that group that maintenance custodial group um the the EA groups have different um hourly rates depending on whether they're a regular EA whether they're a special ed level 2e8 level
1153 EA whether they're a preschool EA so yeah that's why I was saying the option that I would see would be to ask for a lower percentage on the salary only for the administrators that are listed okay I mean so that that's one possibility I'm not trying to take away money from the whole pot um it seems that the money could that the increase in money I'm not trying to make the pie smaller I'm suggesting that the pie could be better divided to make the increase in it more Equitable across all categories um I still haven't quite understood why it wouldn't be possible I didn't entirely understand the explanation for custodians but from what percentage I didn't hear a reason that we can't say pool administrators and EAS I don't feel like just those two
116groups would accomplish well an equitable outcome either though I think that that the reality of the situation is too you would we have an appointment list we have people that have an expectation based on that of what they would be agreeing to and anything we would do at this juncture would be taking from one set of people and moving to another that they are and would make somebody unhappy well so this is what I think it might be better to consider for the future I think 3.23 from somebody's making 150 000 a year and increasing 1.5 percent for somebody who's making thirty thousand dollars a year I'd kind of go for that so again um so for instance the the total package I know they presented the EA because that's all I got asked for
117was salaries but the total package for the EA group is 4.2 million or almost 4.3 this is fy23 um 4.3 million which um I think they said um 2 million so about half of that salary the restaurant's benefits um so but the benefits are the same across the categories right no not actually the the EAS um get plan four paid for everybody else in the district gets plan two paid for so sorry plan two versus plan four means uh different deductibles and out of pockets okay and what's the relative value of plan two versus plan for it well they're both high value plans they're both what would be considered Cadillac plans out in the public um plan two is a 250 deductible and plan four is a thousand dollar deductible or things that make less
118so we're saying that the EAS are getting a hun a thousand dollar deductible and there are other categories of employees are getting a 250 deductible but the EAS should be grateful sorry I don't think I said that okay sorry you didn't say grateful you didn't I guess I'd like to ask if you're going to make a motion okay um but we have to make I am not sure what I can ask for at this point Amendment Amendment to the motion already on the table thank you yes okay um so what is our deadline for submitting the um for for I mean a deadline by which we need to have but by which administratively we need to have all this taken care of um microphones thank you there is no statutory deadline for offering the contracts
119to administrators is that your question okay so there's no statutory deadline at what point do we start to incur problems with respect to um with respect to unemployment insurance and things like that at the point when people may be looking to go and take a job somewhere else okay so we have no clear deadline by which we need to have the salary numbers approved I would say probably you know at least by July 1st well yeah obviously for the nine-month staff that could apply for unemployment it would be by the last day of their contract year because they have the last day of school yeah so the left to school is May 31st they don't have days after that you know not support staff okay okay so the last day of school that was by
120May 31st in terms of applying for unemployment insurance though we're not talking about laying anybody off right here in these numbers no but they would need that letter okay that's right we need to be able we need to provide them reasonable assurance that they have a job next year right by the end of this school year or they will get unemployment and we will be liable for it yeah so to be clear about the salary increases that we're not talking about none of these salary changes involve laying somebody off yeah I understand I understand yeah so I'm hearing from what it sounds like that there's not as much urgency as I thought there was though I would still like to get these numbers taken care of as quickly as possible because I think everybody needs
121to know what they're making next year um but it doesn't sound like there is an immediate deadline by which we need to have these salary changes I guess I would just say from the board perspective that um it is really important to have to know what our staff will look like next year I understand and that it's late already so yes there's no contract you know no statutory or contractual deadline um but that doesn't mean to me that it's not um urgent so there's not a sense to see this done I don't know if we can have a if our motion can have a date on it or what but I mean we meet again before the end of the month right and um I I I feel like that a lot of the people
122that This concerns would at least appreciate the time for us to discuss whether or not this is Equitable or as Equitable as it could be um yeah I mean I feel like a greater reason to leave a district is inequities but right and especially when the inequities are affecting the people I mean when is most importantly to people at the bottom but in this case there is substantial inequalities that are affecting people at the bottom of this of the pay scale I would also like to um mention that it can take weeks to get folks to sign their letter you know their letters for next year to know that they're going to be back and once we don't have them in our buildings anymore it's a lot harder to get them to um to get
123their attention they don't check their emails they don't you know so to get to find out for sure if they're coming back we want to have as much time as we can before the end of the school year to have um get that lined up okay so our next board meeting is May 22nd Monday May 2 have an emergency meeting I would assume this wouldn't qualify for an emergency meeting I don't believe Chris well an emergency meeting is a meeting you call without 24 hours notice so or um deal with salary increases Chris we're talking only about we're talking about administrator salaries and we're talking about difference from 3.2 percent to what percent well um so the total increase for the administrator package is a hundred thousand dollars so that's what I was getting at
124um the Delta we're talking about is if anything was changed is what and 10 of that's insurance which can't be changed and if I can well bike and I first follows the the salary um but in the dental went up a little bit so um it the amount that would that you I mean I'm not saying philosophical if we want to reduce the administrator's salaries that that's not perfectly fine but the amount that that's saving is not going to be a substantial increase to the EA group there's just there's two minutes all the others right any other staff could you share if that I know we've asked you a lot of a lot of prepared for yeah are you able to share if you took that down to zero for the increase how much savings
125that would be I think I ran that before the meeting and it goes from 105 000 down to 20. okay now what is it zero percent increase per administrators okay reduce confused if the administrators get no increase at all right it would be about an 80 000 savings and if you spread that among other groups that would be so if you how much can you share again how much was in the um the total teacher like what is the total amount spent on the teacher package just under a million dollars so I guess the reason I asked is I understand the philosophy that we could discuss as a going forward but pragmatically the amount of change would be very small for any of the other groups because the administrators are in I remembered this from
126the last time when it was the opposite I'm not sure if that matters to me though can you want to make a motion yes um I I guess do we need to we would need to remove the whole item and then the you'd move the amendment on the on the floor which is to approve the appointment list as presented and do we add the then to then you can do whatever you want as far as the amendment so so we have to amend and vote and then make the amendment you would amend and then vote on the motion as amended okay so you you wouldn't need to vote to amend the motion and then if you want to table it you would have to table it to a date certain so then the date of
127the next meeting okay so first she's we're voting on whether we will amend without amended motion so okay um I move that we amend the motion to table this um so if you want to move to table you're going to move to table to the next meeting it's always to a date certain and then it will be taken off the table at that point that I don't believe there's I don't have my um well you can do either but you don't amend end table you either table or you amend so here's what I want to do and then you can tell me how to sit okay what I wanted to pack and see what it would look like if we had equal equal percent salary increases across the groups where we're able to do that
128that's what I wanted that's what I would like to do as well yes I would like to do this I would like to do it as quickly as possible even if it means having another meeting yeah adding an extra meeting for the schedule and I would suggest that the table you would just want to table this because yes and you'll table it to the next meeting so if that's a special meeting then it's a special then it's that date or as else it's the next regular make so you'll want a table to the next meeting okay all right so so I move that we table to the next meeting second yeah no discussion no vote so as long as it's moved and seconded it's tabled and my computer fell asleep all right um moving on
129to our next action item delivery for notice and filing of superintendent's recommendation to terminate the contract of a non-covisionary teacher at the end of 2022-23 contract year for Jessica president Shields cook I am delivering a copy of the notice and recommendation to terminate the contract of a non-probationary teacher for notice and filing no discussion or action is to occur at this time thank you all right the next action item is the 2022-23 proposed budget amendment and setting date and time of public hearing I moved the board order the board secretary to publish the proposed budget amendment and to set date and time of the public hearing from May 22nd 2023 at 5 30 pm second moved by seconded by linkitis discussions so to make it clear for us and for the public this is just
130for the 20 for the current existing budget which means it really has no implication for what's happening next year that yes this does not increase revenues does not increase taxes right it is amending our statutory control lines to uh um adjust for it so for instance we added some positions under Esser funding after the start probably the budgets prepared 18 months ahead of um so we weren't quite sure what we were doing with all the Esser um we um I tried to estimate in the nutrition fund how much reinstating meals and then we did Universal breakfast so um um but that's part of it and then under the construct the other area or the construction area we bought LSI I mean that was a purchase that wasn't um considered when this budget was put together
131any other discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed name passes 7-0 policies for action I move the board approved the policies as presented second move 513 seconded by Branson uh discussion all those in favor say aye aye opposed nay pass the 7-0 student representative board and staff items will begin uh this evening with our student representative will uh hello so I know uh very complicated budget wise but I know there has been a decent amount of concern among high school students at least about not rehiring the current teachers that are retiring particularly when it comes to language education I know it was already mentioned tonight but uh specifically the French I have a lot of friends in French who are worried about uh if those will continue next year because I
132believe from my understanding the teacher who was able to teach that class will not be able to meet the current size uh and number of uh students taking French so I there's just been some worry um so I wanted to bring that to you uh and maybe talk after the meeting about that thank you all right items from the board we'll start with requests from staff which I did write down um a few this evening um so first for director Thomas the um percentage of collaborative versus consult or Consulting teacher versus Direct Services um and then we had on the fees whether the percentage fee waiver is half or 60 percent uh which fees are waivable and then for a future discussion how to allow student inclusion without um eliminating that fee and salaries and
133then you know come back with much more discussion about um can I ask a clarifying sure yeah so um do do we if we're not going to have a special meeting we need to get those reappointment lists on the next do we want to just recalculate and do new reappointment lists or do you want I'm not sure what I'm being asked to do at this point I understand your philosophy of what you want and I can do that I think that we probably need to to do a special meeting and maybe ask you to come with a couple of different options because that would be great yeah I think I think at this point probably if I'm sorry it creates work for you yeah but um yeah I think a few different options are probably
134what we need to discuss and I would get to the most Equitable solution given the constraint legal constraints we have if board members want to pass along feedback students or ideas to me I'll compile those to share with admin other items from the board so to reiterate what I started today earlier there's an old phrase that statistics lie it's not a pejorative phrase it just means that looking at numbers themselves uh can lead to different conclusions and it doesn't give full background in context to what those numbers are so whether we decide to amend what we talked about earlier whether we leave it the way it is I still want to suggest that we find a way to communicate our process and those the rationale behind the the numbers we come up with so that
135the community teachers board members all everybody can understand how we got there whether we agree with it or not that we find a way to make it clear so that there's not this kind of confusion and stress that we bring on by by just thinking the numbers will speak for themselves right thank you thank you and I would say I mean I know that this year was unusual and we had delays in terms of building the budget that we just had to deal with so it is what it is um but yeah I think more communication and clearer communication certainly can help well and I would commend Dr Lawson for the email that he did send out uh widely with staff in that I think that was more communication than actually I've seen in some
136years past it was maybe later than we would have liked but I think that's something we could take up and talk maybe in the retreat this summer for example of um how this process could look um next year I'm going to make a comment just because I am the I am the legislative of liaison and because we have people in the room um this is frustrating for all of us because since 2017 this stage has shortchanged public education please take your frustrations Beyond us we are told what we get and I know it's so frustrating to see and try to understand how these Educators make the decisions they do but please help us and I'm going to quote a senator that sent us some information that so we are provided it's a student cost per
137pupil so that's what we're given from the state so the percentages is is that this year alone this was last fall the state sure changed your kids education by 742 dollars in one year that's 9.1 percent cut to relative to inflation so if any of you have a kid in sixth grade I do your child has already had their education shortchanged by nearly sixteen hundred dollars please please I know that um our area Representatives have a tendency to be in favor of some increases but please help us because we advocate for this we are trying to spread the word that we cannot short short public education the way that we have because when that happens these are the kinds of decisions that our Administration have to make and we have to sit here and my
138heart hurts every time I get an email from many of you so understand that we all do because we want to figure out and we're challenging our administrators how do you navigate this how do we support you but it stinks so please understand we hear your concerns we understand them help us to share the message broadly please thank you I would also say um I don't fully understand a situation with the aea depending on how you count it we are talking looking at either flat funding for the aeas or dramatic cut in aea funding depending on how you calculate the budget the way the budget changes look um but I am we've just been we just had a big special ed presentation Special Ed is going to be very hard with declining support for aeas
139so that's a major issue to talk about as well any other items from the board I'm looking forward to the end of the year and students had prom and there are good things going on too we're in budget season from our perspective but kids are excited and doing things and out having track and field events and all sorts of things I would like to we were thanked for being um on the board for board appreciation it's also teacher appreciation this week and I'd like to applaud all our teachers who are out there every day supporting our children all right items from the superintendent no items from the superintendent outside of thank you teachers for the work that you do this has been a a really tough process and so just know that we are we
140are pushing forward with everything that we have um and we'll continue to do that for you and happy Teacher Appreciation Week and happy board appreciation all right so board planning calendar um we will work with uh JD to schedule a special meeting um as soon as we possibly humanly can outside of that our next regular meeting is on May 22nd anything else on the board planning calendar all right and then we will take a short recess here um about we'll take about five minutes um and we'll reconvene for our work session and we'll be ending our live broadcast at this time