ASDB Board Meeting 09/08/2022

001um okay are we ready thank you uh it is now 401 now is the time set for the regular meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind board meeting uh we have a call to order uh succeed do you have the role i do um brittany buchanan she's not here yet lynn davidson present linda bobe linda will not be attending mike gordon president dean howard i understand dean will not be attending either uh we understand uh pv's on his way so he's still leonard from phoenix okay aaron wonder present um myself and david nigro uh present so that makes five uh so we do have a quorum um if anyone on the phone it's okay if you happen to drop off or have to drop off let us know because we'll

002lose quorum so we need to know we can move on to oh britney is uh now joining us um so we can move on to 1.02 1.02 call to the public call to the public for agendas items um leticia did we have any in-person submissions no okay and there there were no um electronic submissions uh either so we can move on to 1.03 information item summary of the acdh's task force language acquisition dr kendra benedict and dr jennifer scarborough hello instead of dr kendra benedict she unfortunately was not able to attend the meeting tonight but we do have michael olivier who was also a part of the task force along with the both of us so he'll be joining me tonight thank you for allowing us to summarize our experience and our involvement in this

003task force so good evening board members superintendent reichman assistant superintendent martin and assistant superintendent cooper i'm learning your new sign name thank you for your time and for the opportunity to share about the task force focusing on language acquisition this task force started gathering data approximately in february or march of this year and we worked diligently until our final report was submitted in june the task force was comprised of members from different representatives from different fields around the state asdb had three representing members so that would be dr kendra benedict myself as well as michael olivier michael currently is involved with our curriculum resource department or the odd at the time that he joined the task force he was joining as the supervisor of the preschool department and that would be at the campus of

004ptsd the three of us participated however we also had many asdb staff members who were involved in this task force however their representation in the different subcommittees was as volunteers so they were representing community members as you read through the report you will see their names and you will see them as asdv staff however in this capacity they were representing representing the community members because they are subject matter experts who happen to work at asdb so we had both skills represented asdb specific membership that was represented as well as the community asdb did have strong representation within this task force so the three subcommittees that i briefly mentioned were data and demographics systematic connections and third assessments review today we're going to briefly discuss the recommendations of those three subcommittees those recommendations are to be

005presented to the public we have received input and feedback from the community and then they will be proposed to the legislature the legislature is currently deciding what to do with those recommendations i'll get to the recommendations from the first subcommittee data and demographics they had 10 recommendations but primarily their recommendations were to focus on the validity and reliability of data we want to look at data from students around the state as well as the importance of identifying those students and having a way to track their data there are many agencies that work with these students around the state and their identifier within database programs varies between agencies we came to the realization that there is simply no centralized place of repository for this data so that was one of the primary recommendations to the legislature

006they also wanted agencies to begin sharing data it's also important to have continuous tracking for these students from birth until the age of 21. to be able to ensure that these students are acquiring language throughout the spectrum so that was the recommendations primarily from data and demographics next the findings from the systematic connections there were three primary recommendations this group focused a lot on medical professionals such as audiologists and making sure that those groups are sharing impartial non-biased information to families to parents and guardians of these children making sure that these professionals are providing all language approaches and technology options another recommendation is making sure that upon identification of the for example the failure of a newborn hearing screening that families are provided immediately with all resources available and that staff are provided screening and

007that they are able to be trained systematically so that they're providing similar information for families across the state with that said these agencies that work with children across the street across the state need to improve partnerships ongoing and work in collaboration with one another as children reach transition age those transitions should be more seamless and efficient and information needs to be accessible for all families which ties back into that need for a centralized repository for data which was one of the findings of the data subcommittee once that information is accessible it should be accessible to the public so that is why everyone needs to have access to whether our children are achieving the intended outcomes are our children thriving are they acquiring language or are we hiding that information right now that information is not

008easily accessible the final subcommittee was the assessment subcommittee and so i'd like to have michael come and give some details on those recommendations good evening i'm happy to talk about the assessment subcommittee but first i do have to express my pride in how many asdb staff members were involved in these subcommittees they showed a great deal of commitment in their areas of expertise and to the benefit of our students the assessment subcommittee had a variety of individuals involved in the first part we were looking at what assessments were available out there and there is a wide variety of assessments available depending on the agency or the group and the preference of assessment varied so we really needed to whittle down which assessments we were going to use there are too many assessment tools to just

009leave it open to the provider's discretion we focus first on birth to five and what assessments are being used for that group and then separately from ages five to twenty one we needed to look at both asl assessments as well as spoken language assessments for students who are using spoken language we narrowed that down and we recommended a total of seven assessments and i excuse me has seven recommendations and i'll summarize those briefly the first is to establish a statewide assessment team that will provide all of the assessments across the state and of course this is going to necessitate legislative funding in order to establish this program and they have asked that asdb take the lead on this so we don't want it to be a school by school or a case-by-case basis on what

010assessments are being used and how that's being done we want it to be systematic we also want to make sure that we have a qualified assessor to administer the assessments for both spoken and sign languages for our birth to five children we recommend they be assessed twice a year and five to twenty one be assessed once a year as jennifer mentioned earlier we also want to make sure that all of the information is available publicly of course redacted appropriately so that names and identifying information is not available but overall we'd like to see how our children are progressing and that information should be available for the public to view we want that assessment data to be centralized we want the assessment training and qualification process to be centralized as well to make sure that those

011assessments are being done appropriately so that's a summary of the assessment group's recommendations and i will let jennifer close this up as you may have noticed the recommendations from those three subcommittees did develop somewhat in isolation however they are not all unique there is a lot of overlap which is nice to see that that at the end result of all our work we are seeing seeing a lot of parallels and so we are seeing um a lot of the same things within this field the experts have seen some commonalities some common needs and we have come to an agreement about a lot of these items it was really nice to have that common sense of agreement there was not a lot of disagreement the experience overall was a wonder experience and at the end while

012it yes was a lot of work looking back these recommendations are something that we feel strongly about and that we are satisfied with we're very happy to be a part of this experience regardless of the amount of work involved so now i'd like to open it up to any questions that anyone on the board may have are there any questions nope seeing none thank you so much for your work and the work of the other asdb staff is a very useful information i think for the board and for things the agency may do in the future so thank you thank you next up is 1.04 information item superintendents report superintendent reichman good evening president nigro members of the ascb board of directors assistant superintendent martin assistant superintendent cooper and the asdb community welcome to our

013september 8 2022 board meeting i am thrilled that we are meeting in person i know we've done several meetings in person already but this one feels different to be in person so i will start off with my report but first a short story this short story starts a long time ago in a village under a glass dome and this village had been there for a long time many generations had lived there people were born there grew up there married there had children there and died there they didn't know what it was like outside of the glass dome they assumed that if they left the glass dome that they would die a terrible death so they had a law that said if you seriously break the law then one possible punishment would be to be thrown

014out of the glass dome and perish fortunately for many generations nobody did any serious law breaking activities until one day one man severely broke the law and the community decided to throw him out of the glass dome they expected that man to die so the village people were curious to see what happened to him and they all headed over to the glass window and looked out and watched the man that man as he was laying on the ground and began to look around he was afraid he thought he was going to die at any moment but he laid there looking around and nothing was happening so he started to move he got up stretched his arms and legs walked around he could feel the grass and still nothing was happening there was no danger there

015so he started to dance and then he looked over to the villagers and say come out of the glass dome come join me and dance with me the village people were appalled they were shocked dismayed how is this possible they couldn't believe their eyes so they met and they talked and made a decision they went and got some black paints and then started to paint on the glass dome and they painted moving up and up and up until they could no longer see the man and then they went back to their lives their everyday routines now that man his violation was what you may think he an innovator how does that story apply to asdb well it applies to us last summer in august we were looking forward to coming back to a sense of

016normalcy back to school back to normal back to itinerant services back to normal early intervention back to normal we believed that we were starting school the students would be back the teachers would be back in the classroom itinerant teachers back in to public schools working with teachers and our early intervention teachers going into the homes working with parents instead of using zoom we would be back to normal back to life pre copied we really believe that and then a time has passed and we're slowly realizing that we are not back to pre-covered life our students are coming back to school and their lives have been disrupted for more than two years so think about their experiences not knowing if tomorrow they were going to school or staying home [Music] having to use zoom trying to

017get an education remotely thinking maybe next week we'll go back to school in person their routines were disrupted we found out that our students social emotional growth was compromised was disrupted and that is not just us and this is true of students in every school across the nation students are returning to school not remembering how to behave expectations of appropriate behavior they haven't learned appropriate behaviors so we are having to address their social and emotional growth before we can address the classroom learning that is one thing that has changed the second change is is become harder to recruit qualified teachers professional staff and staff and it's not just us this is a nationwide problem other schools are having challenges finding qualified teachers and professional staff it just so happens that arizona is the fourth worst

018in the country with vacancies we at asdb have more than 110 vacancies in our agency and we are learning that those gaps in our professional staff are starting to affect our students our ability to provide the best educational support to all of our students that's the second change that's happening the third is our enrollments of students on both campuses continue to decline the number of students we have in our schools is less than before and we have to make some decisions that's another conversation for another day but i did want to let you know that there will be some critical decisions that we have to make looking at our student enrollment numbers the fourth thing that has happened this year is we are right now going through a sunset audit if you recall arizona has

019a law that requires all state agencies to go through a sunset audit every 10 years the last one was 2012 which means this year we went through the 2022 audits we started last spring the arizona auditor generals or the ag contacted us or the otter auditor general contacted us with a list of questions and we collected the information and provided it to them and have been working with the auditor general ever since last week we just got the preliminary report from the auditor general and we are now reviewing the report now what's within that report is still confidential because it is a draft it is not a final report so i wanted to let you know that this information within that report highlight aligns with our strategic plan so it will have impacts on our

020strategic plan and the agency's plan for the future and i will talk about that more later in the strategic plan president nigro asked us to provide an update on our work with the strategic plan i have asked assistant superintendent martin and assistant superintendent cooper to provide that update but i do want to say that first of all when we looked at our az merit scores from last year you may recall that not only are our students behind that come to our school they come to our school because they're behind and then the additional disruption from the pandemic caused even more significant delay and we are seeing regression with our students again that is consistent with what we're seeing across the nation second i'd like to second thing i'd like to mention is we used to

021collect data for students we served in the public school up until arizona department of education provided us with that data for students that we serve through our regional cooperatives in 2018 the arizona department of education informed us that we they would no longer be providing us with those az merit scores for those itinerant students that data belonged to the school district it did not belong to a sdb to ade we have not been collecting information from the school district and we started doing that recently so assistant superintendent martin will be commenting on that a lot of changes have been happening in our environment that will have an impact on our plan for the future now i want to wrap up with one final thought our agency leaders wrote a letter to you and they gave

022it to me they asked me to share some of their thoughts with you in that letter they talked about the importance of collaboration they work every day collaborating with students with parents with school districts with the community stakeholders they do that every day and they recognize the importance of the collaboration with you the board of directors they also recognize that if we collaborate that has to be based on common common trust mutual respect and can connegiality excuse the interpreter it is very important to do that to have those and then be able to collaborate so with all the environmental changes that were happening and changes happening within the agency it becomes even more so important for you the board of directors to support our work to support our leaders they do have two recommendations for

023you the board of directors one recommendation is to establish a training on cultural awareness cultural sensitivity and on accessibility how to run a board meeting that is more accessible to all board members those are the two recommendations that they wanted to share with you so that wraps up my report to the board and i'm happy to answer any questions are there any questions for the superintendent uh superintendent my my question uh relates to the data that we used to get from the co-ops as you mentioned as late as 2018 we used to get that we don't anymore because ade won't give it to us what's the i know that when we talked about the lea transition a few years ago we thought we could have been the igas to get that data from the school

024districts is there a plan to amend those igas to get the data going forward and retroactively so we can establish a couple of baseline years for our strategic plan purposes this is superintendent reichman i'm going to turn it over to assistant superintendent martin to respond to that question thank you superintendent reichman um president niko governing board members um thank you as well as superintendency as community so i heard that ask loud and clear in our last board meeting about the need for data we came around the table with jay johnson him and i talked about you know how could we track this data down we talked about several um avenues um one was going directly to ade to request that data um we did go down that road and we're met with a staunch no

025so we looked at how we could make this happen and i'm going to bring jay johnson up in a little bit but we reached out to districts so we've got a couple of things going on one was the start of the school year two was we have data that has not is not allowed to be released just yet until after the embargo date by the state which is sometime i'm believing in september so we were able to collect quite a bit of data we had a very good response from districts and i believe after we get past this embargo date districts will be a little bit more inclined to release that data the regional directors were out on the pavement they were instrumental in getting that collected so a lot of work has been done

026the goal was to see my directive i gave to jay is let's make this happen before the september 8th board meeting and he took that challenge and ran with it so we collected quite a bit the goal is once we get past this districts are typically used to sharing student records student information they again overwhelmingly they they shared and that was shocking to me this time of the year so i'm gonna let jay johnson come up and talk about the work that he did with his directors in the regions and what that looks like good evening everyone first i want to thank you for allowing me to speak tonight president nigro board members superintendent reichman assistant superintendents cooper and martin it's always a pleasure to come before the board to talk about the great work

027that we're doing in the itinerary program before i get to the data that our regional directors and myself have been able to work with our school districts and charters out there i did want to share a positive note from one of our audiologists that sent an email early this morning about 6 30 in the morning because he gets up quite early and the email was stated good morning it's pretty amazing to see the many elements of progress that are presented tonight at the board meeting regarding itinerant services i just wanted to say thank you it's nice to see not only a voice to the representation of the work that is being accomplished in the itinerant programs but also the need for the data to be brought forward to this team so i wanted to mention

028that to you that they're keeping an eye on the work that we're doing i do want to mimic what um the superintendent and associate superintendent mentioned and in a recent email from ade they stated and confirmed that the state testing data for students that we serve in the itinerant program is the home school district's data not asdb's data each separate school district can share or not share that data as they deem fit so that was a challenge that was already thrown in front of this the directors and i to really look at how can we make sure to build partnerships with our school districts and charters throughout the state currently we have about 201 school districts and charters leas in the state that we currently work with as of today 101 have responded to our

029request for state-level data on the students that we serve in the grades three eight and ten this process all started as superintendent associate superintendent martin suggested on saturday july 23rd we started really working with those schools to get information out we started emailing and contacting all of our special education directors that following monday on the 25th of july and our request was to receive the data by august 12th so we'd have time to put that together for our board report for tonight finding about the embargo date that we're unable to release any of that student data we currently possess but we'll be adding additional data as the semester moves along the regional directors and i work together on a spread shared spreadsheet to collect the data that we wanted to have answered the questions from

030all districts we also met weekly to discuss the challenges and brainstorm how to collect the assessment data we've been documenting our attempts including the following information which district has responded the contact person title the date the time and the mode of contact we've had whether it's in person by phone or email and of course the outcomes of the data that we've been able to collect so far the goals that we shared with our lease number one was that we wanted to collect the student achievement data and the goal to use the data to drive our continuous improvement in services with the partnerships of all of our districts and charters we also want to share with them we want to outline what the data we're looking for in the terms of the three grade levels and

031the students impacted and last we wanted to share with them the districts who did not respond to remind them of the importance of the data and of course contacting the special ed directors and reminding them how we can build that partnership moving forward this timeline of course was at the beginning of the academic year as we all know just started at the beginning of the school year many of our districts were overwhelmed with getting their own staff started additional students on their campuses and now that the school year is underway we plan to reach out to the leas again who have not replied to us at this point we plan to personally reach out to those districts and explain the need and how they can assist us with that data all along there have been

032challenges that have been in front of the regional directors and myself as we can move forward with this work the first challenge was of course the timing of the request posed the greatest challenge and it was right at the beginning of the academic year many of our lease had staffing shortages hiring new students enrolling and day-to-day tasks that they were doing the lea simply did not have the time or the capacity to gather the data needed another challenge we found was a various contacts within the lea in the terms of who collects that estate assessment data and sometimes our special education directors did not have access to the data in their own districts or charters but then referenced additional staff members that we were connected to for those data specialists in some instances they were

033guarded with the data we have a few districts in our state that are waiting for the embargo date before they'll release it to us and they also didn't feel it fell between in the partnership of services as part of the asdb itinerant programs some leas see the itinerary program as a need to know partner for this information so again we're going to continue to work together as a team meet weekly as we already have to make sure we brainstorm how to collect additional data on the remaining about a hundred districts out there that we have not heard from are there any questions relative to this work uh thank you mr johnson i know um trying to coordinate with a couple hundred school districts on this this must be very difficult and um you know i

034understand there's going to be some complications um you mentioned that you have data from about 101 of them you know if you need anything from the board if you need us to amend an iga if you need to take some other action please bring it to the board um and we'll consider it uh you know it's important that we get that data um and again if it's not here today that's okay but i want to be sure that we're working towards getting as much as we can we in terms of the children that we serve between 5 and 22 there are 354 on the campuses there's 108 in the itarians so it's the vast majority of the students that we serve that are school age or above preschool and we need to know how we're

035doing that's what we put in the strategic plan i think if we had realized i mean we would have addressed it a little bit earlier had we realized that that we were no longer getting the state i think when we made the strategic plan we're like well we we saw this data before so we thought it was still there but in any event uh if we can keep working on that anything that you guys need that from the board please bring it to us at the next meeting and we'll you know we'll certainly consider it we'll be happy to do that thank you for the offer thank you all right um are there any other questions for superintendent reichman gordon um annette you mentioned uh in the end of your report about um trainings about

036board member about board meetings and accessibility could you reiterate that a bit and just explain how that would work or what the plan is for that please so if you all recall at the july board meeting at the end linda bove recommended to the board and i think the leadership team at asdb caught that recommendation that you all be involved with some sort of training that focuses on cultural awareness and sensitivity and also focuses on accessibility and how to be more sensitive to access and to make sure that everyone has equal access and it is designed and we design the meetings in such a way so that all participants have equitable access and participation within each meeting there are those types of trainings out there and we also internally have those kinds of trainings we

037have deaf awareness orientations we just talked about developing a blind awareness orientation so we internally within the agency are trying to figure out how we and our staff can become more aware and more sensitive and more equitable and how we interact with each other so that is what i meant by that comment okay thank you um also in your report you mentioned that there's going to be braille literacy classes that are will be offered to families uh what kind of participation are you anticipating or have you have you heard so far i am not sure of that information that is a training that we do provide to parents or we will be providing to parents but the best person to answer that question would be lisa yancarelli so we um have had a request for

038braille literacy classes for our families and so we are working on developing that a survey will be going out in the next few days to survey families on the best format for that class whether people are available to do the class in in person or whether we need to offer it virtually we have we will be contracting with dr penny rosenblum to teach the class she has taught the class in previous years for our agency so i'm not sure the level of interest that we will have but we will um we will conduct them this this semester it will start october 13th and um whether that's in person or virtually it depends again on the response from parents and then we will look at offering another doing another offering in the spring semester and and

039grow from there so the course will offer basic braille the great basic braille code but then also some literacy strategies and how to make for example story boxes to go along with literature how to encourage your child to use braille things you can do to you know to increase literacy within your home thank you you're welcome um there any other questions for the superintendent uh thank you and uh superintendent argument accessibility going to extend to the the forms that we present for the board meetings that will make sure that they're accessible i know the forms that we have on some of the documentation that we have today i'm looking at it now don't necessarily have um graphical descriptions in every graphic and and things like that to make it accessible to screen readers president nigro

040i'm not sure i understand your your point my point is if we're going to be talking about accessibility we should make our documents accessible to those that use screen readers to access pdf documents and other documents electronic documents are you um speaking of board materials yes board materials i think currently our agenda is in braille and then the other documents are attachments with it to the agenda they're attached to the agenda so they are pdf formats they're pdf documents um so if we're discussing accessibility i would have to do more research honestly i'm not aware of the accessibility of pdf format yeah there are um some tagging here you can run an accessibility report which i just did uh some of the graphics that we have and some of these reports don't have alternative text

041which again if we're going to talk about accessibility we need to make sure that everything we put up here is going to be accessible if that's going to become an issue all right i will follow up on that all right thank you we can move on to 1.05 assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction superintendent martin to give you president nigro board and update one of the things i think superintendent reichman threw out is how we would use look at you summons using this azmerit data and how that will drive schools where we're at is kovit you look at any school that's dysfunctional it's the culture that's the heart of that dysfunction covet has did a number on culture and that culture disconnects teaching and learning and it's a tremendous impact across schools so we'll be there's

042a lot that we're looking at doing in in the schools we'll look we have a lot of data points we'll be unraveling azmerit data will be used to validate the interventions and things that we've tried throughout the year we'll be using data throughout the year benchmarks performance-based data mtss sel data social emotional learning data so there are a lot of points of data that we have to collect as well as some other changes that we'll be doing instructionally inside of the classroom right now we're with the principals and i um we've got a lot on the table we're looking at framework we're looking at a lot of different things and that will bring in a lot of different data points so this will be throughout the year something that we will have to try tweak

043try we'll go back between research and practical base back and forth so we'll use this azmerit data as a way to validate its post at that point how we did throughout the year and that will inform the focus of our changes of going into the next year and things that we will further tweak um so that is something that once we have schools and positions that are filled we have a lot of things now that are in holding patterns because we just do not have the people power to get some of these programs off the ground so one of the first things that the principals ask is that we start with our portrait of a graduate and this is what we want our students to look like when they walk out of the door this

044is then we'll plan backwards as to how to make that happen so we'll look at we'll look at installing grit making sure they know how to work hard and we'll also look at installing agency agency and the standpoint of students have to be able to know how to ask for the help that they need that agency will also be in the community as well and as well as we have to have places opportunities for these kids to go once they leave here otherwise we're teaching them to work hard just to be tired so there has to be some type of opportunity so we use a lot of data points to look at and reimagine where we are culturally so a lot of what we have to address is we have to reconnect teaching and learning

045we have to re-establish that culture but a lot of it right now is we have a lot of other work to do with positions to fill so questions there any questions for assistant superintendent martin tv hi this is uh thank you president nigel this is pb chance i do have a question for assistant superintendent martin i noticed in your report that you mentioned the sunset audit discussing a draft report and i understand that that report has been delayed after meeting with the auditor and it seems that asdb has to submit a response to the auditor by had to submit by september 1st but i don't see that document is that response to the sunset auditor going to be submitted to the board for review or or where can we see that there's uh those are

046two separate things so we had to respond to the jlbc by september 1st which we did um they had some questions that were kind of above and beyond what this the sunset auditor has the deadline for replying to the draft audit has not yet passed that's going to be i believe it's next week and this is pv jans okay so where is asdb's response will the board see that response at some point the response to the jlbc or the response to the auditor general both um superintendent reichman has possession of the september first correspondence um i don't think there's any issue with her emailing it to the board that's the response to glbc the other response is not yet complete i'm assuming that you'll it'll be circulated when it is the state auditor did request

047that superintendent rickman distribute the draft report to the board on a confidential basis the information that is still confidential at this point so i'm sure she is ready to do that we just got that email a few days ago okay i appreciate that update thank you i just want to make sure that we are up to date with that process my second question regarding azmerit i understand using data for making appropriate decisions regarding what is in the best interest and benefit to our students i do just want to caution regarding the azmerit it is not normed for esl students and that includes our deaf students who use american sign language as our first language and those who may have spanish or other languages spoken in the home and we do have students whose family are

048immigrant families and refugee families and that has an even greater impact on those students so i just want us to bear that in mind if we are using azmerit data we may have an intention for we have our an intention for all of our students to be bilingual and it is not necessarily fair or appropriate to consider their progress based only on that on that testing all of our ieps regard require that our students be bilingual and if they're not bilingual then they're not performing well and that's not necessarily a fair assessment of our students and their skills and their intelligence that's not necessarily a fair assessment of how asdb is performing either realistically how we approach the data how we consider that i'm wondering if there is any other assessment tool or evaluation tool

049that the board could recommend to the leadership team or the administrative team for example the drp as one other possible assessment another metric to monitor a student's progress without that sense of setting them up for failure thank you for that tv uh yes i agree with you um it it is a it's a data point um it's something that when we tweak and go through this picture and develop our metrics we should be able to see how our students are performing clearly and if we do not have those right metrics in place all throughout the year we should also be able to see that clearly as well so at that point when we get azmerit data in it's kind of like a you know this is what we have and is there any validity to

050it is there something that we can validate from that test data with us our picture is going to look a little bit different so fully aware of that but open to any ideas of any assessments um anything you recommend i'm open to any resource so thank you thank you this is board member chance and my recommendation would be perhaps for the specific subject areas we ask those teachers what they suggest as appropriate assessment of knowledge and skill and we may also consider what gallaudet or rit ntid used to assess some of their students knowledge and skills and see what we can glean from those institutions rather than reinventing the wheel at the same time that would give us more accurate data and testing that is more appropriately norms for esl students and that is one

051thing that i really do want us to keep in mind is that all of our students that we are evaluating have ieps and that means that every single one of our students is going to have at least one disability at least one disability that will impact their learning and their acquisition of language whether they are deaf or blind or deaf and blind deaf plus other disabilities blind with other disabilities all of them will be impacted by that and so our teachers are our experts they i would like to ask them how they measure our students and assess our students and perhaps we can use additional tools that already exist such as the drp i talked to my son recently and he was frustrated because he said he um he gives up really quickly and i

052uh if he's if he's frustrated with something and so i wanted to talk to him about that he sat down to take a test and he couldn't understand the test and he felt frustrated and he gave up and he said his peers feel the same way and that test is an accurate representation of his skills or the progress that he's made and i think that's a pretty common occurrence with our students so how can we address that so right now i just wanted to at least make sure that everyone's aware of that and let's ask the right people in the right subject matter right subject better experts for their expertise so thank you great point um i have been working with ntid we are we'll be coming around the table around research and around practices

053for our schools the principals and i have a trip to gallaudet to pick apart their schools we are probably looking at november or the spring we have to set that date there are some other things in there that i i haven't mentioned um but the goal is to learn to glean to pick apart so our trip to gallaudet um is to to visit their schools to pick those schools apart um i've gotten superintendent reichman's um okay and blessing to move forward with ntid when i started i reached out to ntid um on a whim and i was contacted back and we would have conversations in the evening email sometimes phone on the weekends and we they have agreed to work with us so a lot of what i'm looking at is there's a lot of

054people we have to bring around the table teachers are a huge part of that that input that we'll get and there's a lot that i will be recruiting teachers from from schools from all different levels so they're a huge part of that also i think for me i'm trying to look at this picture not from the inside and we have to look at this differently and so for me i have been engaging with researchers about this issue of what do we need to do what are our best our breath what works and it's a complicated picture but so we will be um engaging and bringing a lot around the table as well as structures that we will put into the schools to make sure that our teaching and our teachers are supported and the the

055learning and teaching is happening with fidelity so some of those things i won't speak on just yet but this has been for me listening learning seeing taking in data and input from just about everyone and so i can kind of see the picture of where we are and where we need to go i don't currently think we have an answer for what we have to tackle and it is going to look differently so i have challenged the principals to look at this picture differently look at how we can reimagine and reinvent and recreate these schools how can we make them go um so that is what we've been picking apart um and they have answered that call and that call is usually on the weekends at seven at eight o'clock at night when i have

056an idea and they respond so that's to let you into some of that process that's what i've been picking apart um superintendent reichman has been great also i've been bouncing things off of her as a sound board so um that you know schools are multi-layered there's a lot of work that we need to do but i've never approached any school thinking it cannot be done so that's where we're at thank you president nigro thank you this is uh board member dance just one follow-up question first of all that's great news uh assistant superintendent martin that's a very positive thing to hear the progress that you're making one thing that i do want to recognize is how much i appreciate your willingness to take a back seat and to listen and to gather the information before

057we start jumping to conclusions or test action steps i want to thank you for your willingness to listen to the staff that we have and the resources that we have to offer i do want to acknowledge that and thank you for that one area that i did want to mention for consideration is that when we talk about language acquisition is there any discussion of testing or evaluations that can better assess not just the literacy the english reading and writing for our students but the spoken language acquisition and the american sign language acquisition or the braille literacy of our students yes and no um yes where we have been is looking at we have to get serious about our language programs in the schools i think that will drive a lot that's an area that we

058have to pick apart dissect this is a discussion we're having this is not a discussion that we've got into very deeply but it is a component that we have to work on as well as looking at different ways to assess our kids because again our kids learn differently and we've got to be able to understand how they learn it doesn't mean that they can't learn and we have to be able to assess that so yes that is an area that we will get into um i think right now there are so many other pressing things and big items one is hiring one is having the staff to start moving forward and when we start to unfold this that language piece is a huge piece of the schools and the schools will look a little differently

059but the goal is to equip them to do what they're here to do and that's to impact teaching and learning so thank you thank you so much on a related note but slightly tangential um i was wondering if there were any discussions being held or thoughts about student recruitment and or retention for example we have deaf kids who are acquiring language and doing well who then transfer either out of state or to other schools and they are not staying within our campuses is there anything that we're doing to retain those students to then be good language models for their peers at the campuses rather than transferring out to other schools for the deaf who are offering students out of state services for example are we competitive with other schools for the deaf across the nation

060who allow and recruit deaf students how do we keep those students on our cam on our campuses is that a conversation that we're having indirectly meaning i think in order for us to [Music] be re-established we have to be known for being great at what we do we have to lead by showing the community not just local but national who we are um it is engaging people um from for ntid for instance to let them know what we're wanting to do and where we're wanting to go so i've always had the philosophy of when you come over and take over a school no one wants to go there because it's failing but when you build it and you you re-imagine it i've always had the problem of people wanting to get into the school so

061i do believe that if if you put a program together and you build the school that kind of sells itself i'm not a great marketing person or salesperson i do believe in what i do and i do push the people around me to do better not just for me but for the students and community we serve so my goal is to how can we build this school how can we reimagine this school to make it to where people actually want to come here to where it is recognized on a different scale um so that's my goal going into it um so i have not had those those direct um conversations but i know that i can't at this point promote anything um the way we currently are and this is not to say that we

062have a lot of dedicated educators we have a lot of people who are here for the right reasons i've met tremendous people who are hungry for wanting and ready for the change and again we go back to this cultural thing from from covet so again we build it we do it well and i think it speaks for itself i've had schools where i've had waiting lists and i've had people lobby districts to make that school a place where they can get into so that's the work that i'm focused on doing right now and i'm sure there's people better than me who can do the marketing part but yeah thank you well i think you did a phenomenal job just there of that marketing pitch um that's kind of what i was hoping you would say

063and i am hoping that the community at large as well as the board will see and hear your comments that your ultimate goal is this concept of if we build it they will come so we want to make sure that we have the right supports in place the right beliefs the right attitudes in place that we need to build the system in order to have them come so thank you for your comments uh thank you we can move on to 1.06 information item assistant superintendent of agency operations and support services assistant superintendent cooper good afternoon reichman assistant superintendent martin members of the board the asdb community and staff members each of the directors have provided to you their departmental reports there is no additional information that has come forth since those reports were provided to

064you last week as superintendent reichman mentioned in our last boarding on july 7th there was feedback that was received on the strategic plan pillar 4 effective resource management and i wanted to go ahead and give an update on those items more specifically with the average cost per student by program which is outcome measure 4.4.4 it was mentioned that the early program preschool cost may have not been included in a separate line item in the chart i do want to confirm that the information is in the chart and the cost will be reported similarly as to how the spending by operational area report is provided on an annual basis also with outcome measure 4.4.6 which is our fiscal stability and efficiency it was mentioned that there does not appear to be much progress on that report

065that does appear to be true however based on a review of the information a revision will be made to the chart to better display and communicate the goal of the metric and so what that would include would be including priorities that we will be funding what work has been done towards those improvements and reporting how that money is received as well as how it is going to be spent also in the strategic plan is objective 4.2 which is our long-range master facility plan in order to provide a quick overview of that master facility plan work session that our director of operations albert duff will be conducting on october 20th i would like to also lay that foundation by providing a high level overview of our current reality and why the need for a master facility

066plan a master facility plan actually establishes the framework for the orderly growth or the consolidation and development of our capital improvements on our campuses and it will be developed in a five section document consisting of our educational programs where we'll be reviewing what programs will be continued into the future exploring those programs as assistant superintendent martin has briefly talked about in trying to ensure that we're better serving our student population it will also address our current facilities which should be in conjunction with our demographic study and our educational programs will also be evaluating the potential buildings that may need to be renovated demolished as well as constructed for new buildings also as i mentioned with a demographic study we'll review the demographic study that our vendor lacroix milligan associates did a couple years ago reviewing

067that looking at the enrollment trends as superintendent reichman had also mentioned and then also that fourth piece would be the actual implementation plan and so we'll be working with an architectural design firm to help us build that infrastructure for renovating and demolishing the new construction and then we'll also be working with various legislatures looking at funding opportunities to help us with those support needs to get those resources we'll then also make sure that we're evaluating those plans based on the initial planning process this will involve the work with each of you as board members we'll be looking at establishing new policies and procedures and making sure that we're continuously improving that master facility plan this will then also be shared as we've briefly mentioned in prior board meetings with the sunset audit we have received

068an initial finding we're working on working on that recommendation addressing that and that is specific to the master facility plan and again as as i mentioned our director of operations will be providing more information in that work study session so all of that will align with our agency strategic plan um it's been quite some time that we've needed to evaluate that infrastructure making sure that it's meeting the needs of our changing environment and also looking at where we are under utilizing our facilities some of our programs are outdated as assistant superintendent martin also mentioned so we'll be up tying all of that together with our resources looking at the master facility plan tying that into our educational programs as well so i did want to mention though however we do have different reporting requirements different

069than how our school districts do so it does put a strain on the agency's budget when we're looking at budget limitations the capacity in terms of addressing how our departments are growing looking at how we're causing inequities among the various services that we have and looking at new potential and more successful educational programs we have also through various conversations have talked about the lack of funding when it comes to the resources needed and how we are limited when it comes to that one of the areas that we have not quite addressed within our budget development is the need to focus on deferred maintenance each year we do as part of our capital and building renewal submit information to the state in terms of what renovations we're looking at doing how those average and median age

070of our buildings are just specifically on the tucson campus the average is about 40 years excuse me 48 years i believe just looking at that the phoenix campus the average age of those buildings is 38. um so ideally we want to make sure that we're looking at improving our capital improvement processes working with the legislature just looking at various resources i don't want to steal the thunder from albert but just wanted to at least provide that framework get us thinking be prepared for that meeting which is scheduled for october 20th and that actually concludes my report and i'm open to answer any questions at this time thank you uh miss cooper i do know in your report so the agency received about 3.3 million dollars for some capital improvements where where did that come from

071that came from the state legislature in terms of our general fund operations that is derived from the capital improvement plan that i had briefly talked about okay great um and has the agency done any estimates as to what it would take to take the buildings on both campuses and restore them to you know a useful life of one let's say if we're at a useful life of an average of 48 here and 38 on the phoenix campus about how much would that cost in total i will defer that i can see albert is actually coming to the stage i'll have him specifically answer that question okay board president nigro yes actually we do have that information as well as our replacement value for those buildings as part of our insurance process as well so all

072of that can be discussed and it's pretty detailed and i don't want to take up too much time so that way we can discuss that in the work study session right but what's the number off the top of my head i'd have to go look but it's well over 100 plus million dollars okay um thank you are there any questions for miss cooper i do this is board member chance one member one thing i wanted to clarify when we say the average age is 38 for the phoenix campus and then the tucson campus the average age is 48 years old when was the last time that a new building was constructed on either campus definitely before my time however however uh board member pv that would be 2007. okay so that means that's at least

07315 years to start do you know if there's any chance to even compare to a comparable school district when do they typically build or renovate their buildings how often do they recycle or refinish these buildings typical recycle or re refreshing um programs are based on the individual aspect of the building so for example roofs plumbing systems whether that be the shell structure each have a different refresh period so for example you typically want to refresh plumbing every 40 years electrical every 15 to 20. so school districts tend to build that out in long-range planning is something that we do internally and something we add to our capital and building renewal process specifically what we're talking about here that's a little different is master facility planning which is tying that directly to the educational programs as

074we know that we have a big educational change need as assistant superintendent martin mentioned so rather than just doing a typical refresh we have to really kind of take a step back look at it holistically and ask okay what programs do we currently have now as well as the ones that we want in the future or ones that maybe need to be consolidated or changed and then meet the what i would say put the cart before the horse in that aspect of that we want to make sure that we put the horse in front of the cart which is allow us to make sure that our educational programs drive our need for our facilities rather than make our educational programs fit into the facilities we have now so each one of those going back to

075the original question though you could see typically most of those schools would refresh about every 30 to 40 years to completely demolish and put in a new building you definitely do want to not you do not want to go past 50 years on a building for any life structure you just see that becoming a dangerous point as you can see the average age of 48 years as well as the median age for 48 years on the tucson campus we are at a critical juncture for that tucson campus and the phoenix campus is closely approaching okay so you may not be answer be able to answer this question but who has the final authority to decide whether a building or a institution needs to be demolished or renovated who has the ultimate authority to make that

076type of decision we are in cooperation with adoa and so we work with what's called the general services division so the general services division would provide a recommendation for a building to be closed or demolished or potentially renovated as they do in what's called their quadrennial so every four years they do an inspection of the building or are supposed to in the ten years i have been here that has been uh one time that they've done that so they're not as proficient as with that reporting aspect as they should be they would provide information in that report based on each one of those core functions of the building whether or not it is in disrepair in need of repair replacement or at a point of condemning the building they would make that that determination the

077only person who has the authority to close a building immediately due to safety reasons would be the state fire marshal and the state fire marshal performs typically an annual inspection of the buildings for safety and life safety aspects but their scope is fairly limited only to life safety and not necessarily general condition or what we would call quality of use within those buildings or the purpose of that building so it's it's multifaceted i would say ultimately at the end of the day it is up to actually us here in the room to make the final determination whether or not we want to demolish a building or request to build a new building so we get to drive that discussion okay how many buildings on the tucson campus and how many buildings are we looking at

078from the phoenix campus that would be considered condemned or in need of significant repair that's something that we would go over in more detail during the master facility planning and work study session as of right now none of our buildings are condemned we do have quite a few surplus buildings that would definitely need some a lot of maintenance or repair in order to bring them up to a standard that i would say would be acceptable for occupancy but none of our buildings are currently condemned okay so you had mentioned that that responsibility really falls on everyone here in the room and so that would include us as board members as well my question is where's the board been for the last 20 30 40 years because some of these buildings obviously are quite old based

079on the comments that you've made how did we get to this point um i believe and granted i wasn't here so it's pure speculation at this point the last major build happened in the early 1990s which means that the information came from the 1980s demographics with that in mind that particular growth that we saw in the late 70s and early 80s drove the board as well as members within that group of leadership to make determinations to expand buildings from that period of time on we have seen a decrease after 1980 of our student population on both campuses and so with that in mind or shall i say the tucson campus because the phoenix campus really didn't start until really about the mid 70s so with that in mind i would say that they thought it

080was one and done and it just fell off of everyone's plate and i do not know exactly why or how that became a problem for the board as well as leadership at the time but i'd rather focus on today and that we have some amazing experts here in the room one of our contractors that we're working with uh is actually named john dickinson he actually builds an architect for deaf and blind schools so he's someone that we will be partnering with during this process so we have not only experts in the room but also other contracted experts to help us but as stated it really does derive from and grow from the educational programs and it's something that i'll point out here as a little prelude whenever the first campus moved in 22 1922 to

081the tucson campus there were four buildings built a dormitory for the girls dormitory from boys an administration building and a maintenance building and i'm gonna ask and see if anyone's willing to raise their hand of those four buildings once missing out of a school a school education so we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past so we will be going over the history of asb construction shall i say in our work study session and that will help us strive to avoid those past mistakes and make sure that the education building and the needs of our students come first and so i'm excited to work with assistant superintendent martin on those education programs and supporting that with new buildings or renovations to our buildings and i'm pretty sure looking at what we had from

082our cip meeting our capital improvement plan meeting with adoa they are excited to partner with us as well and we'll be actually lending a hand in the master facility planning process thank you just wanted to make sure that we all are understanding as a board the weight of that responsibility to recognize that the unfortunate reality on our campuses is that they have kind of gone under the radar for several years and that it falls on us to look at the buildings that we have and i do think that there is value in not looking for quick fixes so i appreciate the time that we're dedicating to work together to figure out how we want to tackle this issue obviously it's very complex and multi-layered i'm looking forward to the work study session on the master

083facilities plan thank you thank you um and i note that in the you know the mid-teens we had uh certainly more pressing issues with the superintendent's selection and superintendent search and after we did that we have long known that facilities is an issue in fact it was a key part of the strategic plan um you'll note that no progress was made on that um primarily due to covet that was disrupted so that's where we are today at least how we got here the last six or seven years but um that doesn't negate the uh the prior several decades of um poor capital planning um the superintendent uh assistant superintendent cooper we will need maybe 10 or 15 years of enrollment data for our next for that work study session um so uh that's probably and

084then also the demographic data that you talked about all right so moving on we're going to go to um actually it's 5 30. yeah i just want to meet this is um board member brittany um i just want to say you know about the works today in the master facilities plan um i know that when i came down here for the last board meeting i actually scheduled a tour i live in phoenix i've never been down to this campus that was my first time on campus i set up a tour with albert and he kind of took me around and it was i think it's really important if you're a board member here upcoming or anybody that's part of this decision making that we're going to move forward for to please schedule a tour and

085actually get your boots on the ground and see what is going on in our school i don't think that we can sit here in good conscious and look at paper and make decisions for families and students and people from that are current here and our future without actually seeing what we're actually doing and where our money's actually going and where it should be going and where it shouldn't be going so i'd really encourage everybody especially here on the board um to schedule a tour and albert was super amazing so i would just like to put that out there uh thank you thank you i agree with you i did i'm sorry this is assistant superintendent cooper thank you for that brittany i also did want to mention albert did a tour with our ospb budget

086analyst what was that maybe last week as well so getting them to visibly see our infrastructure as well to get them on the radar in terms of looking and having them aware that we are going to be submitting some funding issues as it pertains to the facility plan so we are encouraging not only internal as you mentioned with the board but others as well as well as the external agencies so building that network amazing thank you thank you um it is 5 30 so we're going to take our break for the interpreters we'll come back at 5 40. what's up [Laughter] okay yeah yeah that is true yes that is true yeah check check one two check check this microphone right here [Laughter] thank you meeting in just a few seconds if everyone can return

087their seats you you guys ready okay uh we are back we're moving on to 2.01 action item approval of consent agenda consistent with board policy to include items 3.01 3.04 3.05 4.02 5.01 6.01 6.02 7.01 and 7.02 do we have a motion to accept the consent agenda this is pb jams um thank you president nigro i would like to make a motion that we remove agenda items excuse me i lost my number just a moment 6.01 and 6.02 from the consent agenda okay do we have a second for that okay that is not seconded i move that we accept the consent agenda is there a second i second uh all in favor of the motion say i i and sue k are you on the line it's okay okay uh sukay can you hear me

088it's okay i can okay thank you any opposed and any abstentions this is pv chance i'm staying okay great um okay we have the consent agenda that is now passed uh we're going to 3.02 action item approval of new district agreements assistant superintendent martin we have three contracts for approval one in each region mojave accelerated elementary in region one in bullhead city region two basis scottsdale region three solomon elementary district in solomon arizona thank you uh i move that we accept these contracts uh is there a second well second thank you uh all in favor say aye uh uh any opposed and any abstentions thank you okay we can go on to 3.03 action item approval of 301 performance based plan for school year 2223 assistant superintendent martin president nigro governing board members if you

089have reference if you have questions for that but i these are submitted to you for approval for the upcoming prop 301 performance-based pay any questions you have one for campuses itinerant services um okay are there any questions for assistant superintendent morton okay i move that we approve the 301 performance based plan okay uh all in favor say aye aye any opposed and any abstentions this is pv jan seymstein okay thank you um next is 4.01 information item finance report kim batridge director of business services good evening board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent cooper and assistant superintendent martin members of the board and asdb community our most recent financial committee meeting was held last thursday september 1st with board member aaron wonders present also in attendance with superintendent reichman and assistant superintendent cooper during the

090meeting we discussed the budget submittal for this for fiscal year 2024 the june and july 2022 financial reports our budget request includes one funding issue of 2.7 million for additional funds for transportation since the 1.1 million we received for fiscal year 2023 was one-time funding and this is an ongoing cost to the agency the full budget will be available on the website within the next day or two provided to each of you is the same financial data that was provided to the finance committee but in a more condensed version the total student count for august 1st 2022 is 2066. a decrease of 12 students when compared to the august 20 august 1st 2021 count of 2078. the major differences are a decrease in the regional crops cooperative students of 26 a decrease in the preschool

091students of an increase in site-based students of two and an increase in birth to three of 23. as of august 1st we had 480 fte which includes 8.5 fte at fbc at that time we employed 693 employees however some of them are part-time most of them are part-time there are currently 146 vacancies across the agency the highlights of the june 2022 financial report are that we ended our revenues exceeding our expenditures for by 4.2 million while the fiscal year 2021 ended with a deficit of 1.1 million our revenues are 2 million under budget and our expenditures are 4.3 million under budget at that time however previously incurred budget fiscal year 2022 revenues and expenditures will still be posted in fiscal year 2023 our cash balance was 20.8 million compared to 12.9 million in june 2021.

092the main increase is in the regional cooperative funds of 3.8 million and the classroom site fund of 2.5 million historically we will not receive any new voucher and fee for service revenues for the 2023 school year until later in september or october so this cash balance helps us to meet our obligations in the first quarter of the fiscal year i would also like to point out a few changes in the financial reporting blind programs were previously tracked under the tucson campus but to be consistent with death programs we have moved them under the administrative statewide programs in addition yuma was moved from region 1 to region 3 and the region 1 preschoolers have been moved under the early learning program budget fiscal year 2023 reflects the draft budget of 67.8 million that will be updated

093to 68.1 million to align with the budget submitted to ospd and jlbc as with budget fiscal year 2022 we will not divest any of our funds from the trust fund since we have a cash balance of 224 000 and that will cover our current request for this fiscal year the july 2022 and 2021 revenues and expenditures are relatively consistent there is a decrease in other sources of revenue since we received surplus property funds in budget fiscal year for vehicles that were sold sold the major difference in expenditures is an increase in equipment with the purchase of chromebooks for the students of 326 using emergency connectivity grant funds in budget fiscal year 2023 if there are no questions this concludes my report thank you are there any questions this is pv chance thank you president nigro

094can you give us a bit more information about your sense of what kind of positions are currently vacant 146 is obviously a significant number compared to the previous school year so i'm wondering are there specific areas that are vacant more so than others i believe there was 38 teachers and 18 instructional assistants and there were like 11 drivers and 50 other staff classified staff yeah uh pv this is david um in the assistant superintendent yeah and this isn't superintendent cooper's report pages 12 through 16 has all of the category all the classifications and all the positions that are open so if you you can take a look at those you can see that they're divided by you know phoenix campus attendant services and then divided by job classification great thank you so much i wanted

095to make sure that the community was able to get that information as well my concern especially right now is what is what efforts are being made for recruiting are we sort of waiting until the next school year to be able to try to fill those positions particularly for assistant principal positions this is assistant superintendent cooper no we are not waiting we post those positions as they are needed per the request we have a process where the staff are required to provide justification we also have been looking at as you have may may have heard excuse me we've been looking at staffing in terms of aligning staffing with student ratios we've talked about that quite a bit but to answer your question specifically we are not waiting to post those positions when the school year occurs

096as soon as they're they're needed they're justified it works its way through the process and we're beginning the recruitment and i'm sorry this assistant to cooper i also wanted to mention we are actively recruiting we just hired a new hr recruiter within the human resources division recently and he is expected to start on monday there are any additional questions for ms mitrich thank you no thank you next up 703 information item on bud's person presentation donna williams good afternoon board president nigro board members superintendent reichman assistant superintendents cooper and martin and the sdv family my name is donna williams and i am the asdb umbuds person thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit about myself and my role as umbud person i have a short presentation to share the office of the

097umbudsperson is really about collaboration we heard superintendent reichman talk about the importance of collaboration and so it is important in this role as well when i started in july it was important that i gather as much information about the agency and the people working in this agency to determine kind of the scope of this role and how i could be of service and of help to the agency and so one of the things i did was set a lot of meetings took a lot of time and talked to a lot of people and i'm grateful for the time that they spent with me sharing about this organization next slide please so the goal will be to facilitate positive relationships among staff students and the public again through collaboration ensuring fair processes ensuring accurate information and

098also helping to resolve concerns and that is the main role of the young buds person next slide please this slide just has a little bit about myself just to summarize i am an attorney by practice i've been an attorney for many many years in 2010 i decided to transform my practice into conflict resolution and so i have been a practicing mediator since that time i've had many roles where i have been problem solving for individuals for agencies for businesses and so i bring that expertise with me i'm also a contractor with the state in special education conducting mediations with parents and teachers trying to find needs for the educate trying to meet the educational needs for students in the state of arizona so what is an ombudsperson so there are a number of things that

099um i came up with with the help of the leadership the agency as well as superintendent reichman and so i'll share some of those things sometimes the umbus person is just an active listener right an ear to bounce things off of i can provide options for resolution respond to questions questions about process about policy about who what when where why and how explaining those policies and procedures that may be misunderstood i can also facilitate mediate communications between individuals and groups that is kind of the typical skill that a mediator brings to the process i can also help find steps to resolve problems and help people talk through that resolution process one of the important things that the person also does is looks for trends in patterns and problems and complaints and then brings that information

100to the attention of the superintendent and of the board so that the appropriate discussions or actions can take place so um next slide please the umbus person also though works within boundaries right so as much as the role will assist both internal and external um agency issues there are some boundaries that the god that the empress person should stay within so one the m buds person will not direct agency departments to change a decision or a policy again the feedback from people that use the service there may be some trends that bubble up that i share but ultimately it's up to those departments and the agency to make whatever decisions they want to based on that data and that information the unboxed person will not offer legal advice testify or produce documents in legal or

101other proceedings conduct investigations that responsibility will remain with human resources at the direction of the superintendent the mbus person will not substitute for formal channels so the agency already has extensive policies and processes to follow regarding complaints and grievances and while people may utilize the services of the young buds person doing so does not change those processes and then i won't advocate or take sides or address personal disputes outside the agency for example if you're having problems with your significant other your landlord your neighbor those will not be issues that the the unbutts person will address next slide so the role of confidentiality in this process will be key to building this program and sustaining it and so i want to take just a few minutes to talk about confidentiality and dealing with the ombudsperson

102we are going to obviously i'm collecting information but the information that will be shared from the office will be aggregated data that doesn't have personally identifying information issues obviously obviously regarding safety and health issues as a mandatory reporter will obviously be shared but outside of that communications with the office will be confidential and also the the um buds person will not communicate with attorneys or be involved in the matter what legal steps have been taken and so the role of maintaining confidentiality belongs to everyone and one of the ways that we do that next slide please is to safeguard the information that is received through the office and so we have set up a number of processes where you would engage the m buds person which i'll talk about later but so that i'm really

103the only person that receives that information it makes it easier for me to safeguard it that means though that the person using the service also has to be responsible for safeguarding the information and so if i'm keeping your information private and you're broadcasting it that defeats the whole purpose of confidentiality so it really is a two-way street so again as i stated before the aggregated data that is gathered from the program will be shared with the superintendent and the board just for the purpose of seeing how the services are being utilized and then again what trends or opportunities there are for larger discussions or changes in process and policy and then finally the next slide please the continuum of available services is really a a chart that we came up with that really shows you

104kind of the range of opportunities to engage this office starting with information being kind of the most general moving into mediation being the most involved and so if we look under information as i stated before provide information about policies and processes share additional resources around problem solving and other concerns serving as a neutral sounding board right so just someone that you can bounce ideas off of and then again providing that feedback to the superintendent and the board on the trends that i'm seeing moving on to navigation which is helping users of the process understand and navigate the policies and processes through the agency making suggestions regarding effective problem solving and techniques and then role-playing difficult conversations and and serving as someone who can provide feedback for those difficult conversations and then discussing what to do

105next so i've done x y and z what should i do next and really having a discussion about what the possibilities are and then facilitation helping the parties explore differences so we move from individual utilize utilization of the service to now working with two people or more in the facilitation process which is helping those people engage in constructive dialogue leading difficult conversations within teams and groups in the agency promoting understanding and also developing workable solutions for those issues and then on to conciliation again more involvement with the groups with the individuals helping them clarify issues doing maybe some shuttle diplomacy building bridges helping really build a framework for communicating more effectively in those areas so it's the idea of restoring repairing and rebuilding relationships and then offering creative solution and then finally probably the most

106intensive work that the um buds person will do is exploring facts in a manner that ensures that parties understand each other and communicate better really determining exactly what the problem is between parties between groups and helping them develop workable solutions moving forward and then helping them memorialize whatever those solutions are so that everyone has the same framework on how to move forward with communication so how do you engage the buds person we have a phone number we have email and we have a request form that we have created and i think in order for us to keep the kind of data that we want to keep in this service whether you reach me by email or phone you will be directed to use the form because that is our way of collecting the data that

107we'll need to um to explore so um i have made a promise to get back to whoever utilizes the services and sends an email or phone call or submits a request form to back to them within two business days i'm available to me virtually of course we all are right but i can also arrange for space in person at one of the facilities and then we are preparing an evaluation form so that following the use of the investment services we can get feedback on how that experience was for users and then the last slide is my contact information this concludes my presentation i'm happy to answer any questions uh thank you uh welcome certainly to the to the agency thank you are there any questions yes this is board member chance i i do have

108a question uh like president nigro mentioned welcome i do look forward to being able to work with you it sounds like you have a wonderful background and it seems like you are potentially exactly what we're looking for but what are you doing to become familiarized with issues or potential conflicts when it comes to the disabled population or different perspectives pertaining to our population so and thank you for that question since my arrival as i said i've been meeting with agency leadership and once we officially roll the program out i'll have opportunities to engage the public i'll kind of do a tour if you will of different community organizations different departments explaining the role of the unboxed person and then getting a real sense for the need in those areas and so this is all going

109to be kind of an exploration over the next several weeks so i'm hoping that those issues will bubble to the surface and i'll have a better idea of where some of the concerns are hopefully that answers your question in a way i also want to make sure that you do take the time to recognize and understand the perspective of individuals with disabilities i think that will be helpful in any sort of conflict resolution especially when it comes to our agency and your program absolutely and i completely agree and certainly if you have some suggestions and some avenues that i can explore along the way i welcome those suggestions i'm sure assistant superintendent martin can fill you in on some of these suggestions that i sent his way perfect board just uh one quick question for

110you you spoke about getting the program up off the ground getting to engage the community what is the timeline going to be like to get uh kind of up and running and begin to to service folks that need to come to you and then when can the board expect to start to receive information about kind of the outcome of some of the different trends that are being seen well technically and from an infrastructure standpoint we're ready now so we have the processes in place we have the paperwork in place and so as we begin to make these introductions and more public introductions and we can open the program immediately in terms of my reporting about the data that we're receiving it really depends on how busy i am i mean i think i should probably

111wait until i have something of value to share but i anticipate at least reporting out quarterly to the board on the progress of the program okay thank you um and maybe just one quick follow-up question to that as well um what is the kind of communication strategy to let folks know that the program is going to be available so i'm working with superintendent reichman and the assistant superintendent on that rollout and so it's a work in progress but we're going to blast it as far and wide as we can because we do believe that it will be a valuable service to the agency and the outside community thank you my pleasure thank you are there any other questions this is okay could seem to be cutting out there a little bit if people could just

112are you still there okay great so um you cut out a little bit there but i think the message that we heard was that you would like us to this is david uh you'd like us to um identify ourselves uh prior to speaking correct yes i don't know who that understood that was uh board member wonders uh just now but we will uh be sure to uh identify ourselves um again this is david um no other questions we'll go to 7.04 superintendent reichman oh sure i want i wanted to take this moment to interrupt i do think we need to go back to 6.01 and 6.02 those two were removed they were not removed no one seconded the motion to remove them and i move that we accept the consent agenda okay yeah thank you

113no problem um so now we can go to 704 a review of open meeting law on recording minutes pursuant to ars 38 43 1. the board may vote to go to executive session which will not be open to the public for a discussion consultation for legal advice with the board's attorneys as it relates to this item uh and now that we're in that i'd like to move that we go into executive session pursuant to ars 384310383 for discussion consultation and legal advice from our attorneys is there a second this is lynn i second all in favor say aye aye hi hi are you opposed any abstentions this is pv i abstain okay um great so we can go into the executive session no there is the admonition um that well for lack of a better

114term succeed do you have that i i do all persons present thereby reminded unlawful to dispose or otherwise default person who is not now present other than a current member of the ascb board or pursuant to a specific status anything that has transpired or has been discussed during this executive session failure to comply is a violation of ars 38-41.03 thank you the board is going to go to the executive session room do i need to bow back that's a great question i'm not sure i don't think so i think they can handle i think they can do it okay i'll hold okay thank you all right okay everyone are we all back um do um interpreters do you need a break it's coming up on seven two guys okay no thank you president negro but

115the interpreters were able to rotate through breaks during the executive session okay great thank you okay uh 8.01 call to the public on non-agenda items leticia i don't believe we've gotten any um papers before and then there were no comments that were sent in prior so we can go to 8.02 um discussion and possible action item agenda items for the next regular board meeting scheduled on november 10th in phoenix and proposed work study date on the strategic plan reminder october 20th is the work study for the master facility plan so october 20th is the work study for the master facility plan i highly encourage everyone to attend it's a very important issue for the agency you know going forward and i think over the next months and year that's going to be really important to

116get that work done um it looked like in a doodle poll that we did prior to the meeting it looked like february 9th was the um date that worked best for like eight out of the nine of us so that had the most yeses and that's going to be february 9th to talk about the kind of the update as board member both mentioned at our last meeting it's going to look at the strategic plan the progress that we've made in that first fiscal year we've already identified in the last meeting the areas where improvement is going to be made that's one of the reasons we have the strategic plan so um we we know we've commented on where the improvement needs to be that meeting is going to be to talk about the efforts that

117have been going on this semester and that are ongoing throughout the year to seek improvement in those metrics um as well as other metrics where we've uh you know that we're also measuring um so we're going to talk about what we're doing to to improve that the different tax tactics that we're taking again the strategic plan is the you know the way that we know when we're there and if we see that some uh lack of progress or regression in some cases uh we're gonna test the staff with with working on that so uh that's february 9th we'll we'll have to have a motion in a i might as well have a motion now to approve that so i move that we except february 9th 2023 is a work study session on the strategic plan

118uh is there a second this is land okay and then for 802 is there any um agenda items that you guys would like to see for the next meeting in november there is um brittany um yeah i would like to look at maybe examining a new policy for a meeting when we have a call to the public and they come up to the podium maybe extending the amount of time that people that need interpretation services oh yeah i i was just going to do that this meeting there just weren't any um uh there just weren't so it's president's discretion for the time um and i was gonna we talked about that uh i think last meeting there was an issue that came up um so i was gonna do three minutes um for oral speaking

119in four minutes uh for people uh that use sign language or asl um and go from you know go from there then keep the 500 word limit for things that are emailed in have you asked a person that uses interpretation services if four minutes would be sufficient for them i spoke to a board member last time but i guess i can do that i can put that on my agenda for for before the next meeting because it is you know so four minutes or four and a half minutes whatever that is you know that that's okay with me okay yeah we just didn't have any meeting any comments today are there any others uh okay great so moving on we're gonna go to 9.01 action item adjournment i'm this is lynn i move that we

120adjourn this meeting hi second uh all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed any extensions okay uh we'll see you guys in november thank you so much i appreciate it again to the media and the interpretive staff and the interpret interpreters thank you again for all of your hard work and for being back in person we have these great new lights they're amazing thank you you