07/07/2022 Board Meeting

001uh hello now is the time set for the regular board meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind um do we have the phone live just as a technical check here do we have anyone on the phone okay great yeah we have the phone kind of piped in here now uh thank you we're going to start with agenda item 1.01 uh meeting call to order sue k can you take the role sure david nigro president brittany buchanan president lynn davison president linda bove present mike gordon dean howard president pb chance present aaron wonders president and myself thank you sue we're going to go on to 1.02 call to the public call the public on agendas items um here we're going uh doing a ticking hybrid approach as we discussed last time

002we had uh you know an email address uh set up uh similar to what we've done for the last couple of years and then we also are back to in person to comments the way that we used to do it we have three in-person comments for agendas items and the each speaker is going to get three minutes i'll keep the time at three minutes i will stand and that will be the end of the time the first speaker is mark hanson hmm chair and members of the board my name is mark hanson i am a retired business owner and an active leader with various organizations arizona association of the deaf and the interpreter missed the second one i am an active member of the deaf deafblind and signing community and on behalf of those communities

003i want to make two comments first we would like to applaud superintendent reichman for filling several key positions with qualified deaf educators who are capable of communicating with staff families and community members both in asl and english that's critical and also for the selection of a new assistant superintendent congratulations and welcome second i would like to share the current sentiment within the community regarding what happened in the special board meeting that occurred on may 25th we were shocked at what happened during that meeting and the procedure itself any policy changes we would think it would be critical and would require a lot of thought and consideration as well as transparency and collaboration by key stakeholders and still we watched that video of that meeting and it became clear that on short notice chair nigro called

004a special session regarding the non-renewal of a contract that would impact three families who wanted to send their children to desert voices the quorum was barely met okay but there were three key board members all respected in their fields and all women who were not present and apparently there was a draft presented for a policy change for the responsibility of approving or not approving contracts with private agencies and the policy would indicate that the board would assume that responsibility rather than the superintendent or the executive administrative team the board spent nearly two hours talking about superintendent reichman and dr benedict's non-renewal of the contract and it was clear that superintendent reichman and dr benedict had given quite a bit of conversation and are competent and have the experience and the qualification to make that decision

005when asked she wrote the policy it was disclosed that chair and nigro wrote that policy but generally maria murphy is responsible for writing those policies it seemed that she did not have time to do so due to a family emergency no that's time okay we are all shocked by that proposal to change that policy um even though one person disagreed and had valid questions that were not addressed it seems like micromanagement of the agency and we want that policy that have recently been passed removed thank you the next speaker is rose andrea cola hello thank you for the opportunity for me to present my comments my name is rose andrea cola i've been an employee at asdb for more than 35 years i'm a member of the deaf community a mother of an asdb alumni

006and there are three things that i would like to comment on first regarding superintendent reichman as a member of the deaf community i want to state 100 support for her work in the education of our students we look forward to continuing to support her while she guides asdb for the benefit of deaf deafblind and visually impaired students second board president nigro the last meeting i watched and i was terribly disappointed and embarrassed for the conduct that i saw during that meeting i'm curious if we did truly follow appropriate procedure you repeatedly dismissed other board members who asked questions seeking more information and clarification and you proceeded to put that item to a vote when it was obvious that not all board members have been fully informed number three regarding trisha waddell she is an experienced

007educator knowledgeable about the importance of language and literacy and i am confident that she will strengthen the connection between the school families and the community i strongly support the selection of tricia waddell as principal of the tucson campus and i'm hoping that it is not just interim fourth i i want to add welcome george martin to our community we are supportive and welcoming and we hope for wonderful things thank you and the final speaker is mary rimron pictures so uh you may begin i'm waiting until they're done discussing okay my name is mary rimron and i'm the arizona association of the deaf treasurer um unfortunately azad president jason schmidt was unable to attend today but we look forward to working together with you all of you in the future in regards to agenda item 6.01

008uh george martin as assistant superintendent to simply be put the community has mixed feelings about this contract uh there was not enough time for in-depth national search and some people do feel disappointed that that process happened so quickly a level of trust is going to take time understanding and support must be demonstrated in order to earn the community's approval agenda item 6.03 contract to tricia waddell and and i'm sorry excuse me i know how to sign but i'm going to talk because they have a limited time okay um tisha waddell principal in tucson the community is excited and welcome trisha waldell is uh we're looking forward to having her leadership and her leadership skills here at the tucson campus it's been said that she is a dynamic leader and that she will do well as

009principal for asb and asd agenda item 6.06 the salary increase for superintendent reichman we are in support of a salary increase she has demonstrated a strong commitment to asdb she is making valid decisions regarding legislation that impacts asdb she is also collaborating with the leadership teams to make contractual decisions that are appropriate for the agency she has our full support in the decisions she has and will make and we agree to a salary increase and finally agenda item 7.05 ombudsman um this position was not successful in the past again a level of trust must be established in order for it to be successful and i need to make one more comment and i'm extremely nervous and upset your three-minute timeline is not equal is not fairly equal for people that are signers it takes longer

010for the interpreters to process information and the deaf people to relay their comments so three minutes is not enough time for the deaf community thank you okay we're going to move on to 1.03 information item superintendent report superintendent reichman who joins us via phone uh superintendent reichman are you present on the phone okay i thought she was on zoom so there wasn't going to be a delay so is the audio better yes no we can hear you now superintendent yes okay um hello oh there it is um superintendent we're ready for your report now if you are will i go ahead okay um can you get out to me let the next night grow positive in synthetic [Music] warranty for my apologies with you i do have a few remarks i want to share with

011you first i want to introduce mrs [Music] mr martin is very interested in creating a school culture of success for students and teachers that are also closely responsive and promotes equity mr martin has a bachelor's degree in all things biology number three environmental sciences with a minor in teacher education he has a master's degree in education administration mr martin is currently working towards his phd at northern arizona university he will be providing a brief report to the board and the community this afternoon and he will further introduce himself the second person i want to introduce that's new to the leadership team is the new principal of the tucson campus and that is miss visa rebelle miss medell has a bachelor's degree in english and theater arts from gallaudet university with a master's degree in deaf

012education from mcdaniel college he is currently working on her master's in education leadership from arizona state university miss windell started with ascb as the assistant principal of the phoenix campus that is phoenix day school for the deaf before she agreed to take on the challenge of being the interim principal of the tucson campus and first to get her principal certification and then we will make her permanent previously miss riddell worked at the colorado school from the deaf blind at a model secondary school for the deaf at gallaudet university and at virginia school for the deaf blind her area of expertise that she brings to asdb is extensive experience and bilingual education classroom instructions classroom management assessments and professional development ms fidel has worked in all sorts of positions from being a preschool teacher to an

013asl specialist all the way to being a high school teacher i think she is well positioned to take on being the principal of the school for the deaf and the school for the blind on the chisholm campus please welcome mrs waddell and then the third new leader we have coming into the agency is mr jason lilly mr lilly is the new region three director of itinerant services that serves southern arizona he comes to us from the tucson unified school district where he works as the program coordinator serving students who are deaf and students are blind he is also an adjunct instructor at the university of arizona in deaf education previously mr lilly worked at the elf hassle regional day school program for the deaf that program for the deaf provided alternate services to students for

014a deaf account 15 school districts he has 40 years of experience in education special education deaf education seniors in the classroom on 10 years as an administrator he has a bachelor's degree in anthropology a master's degree in special education he also has a masters of education in education administration he's currently working on his doctor's degree in teaching learning and culture from the university of arizona please welcome mr lilly to asdb we have a couple of agenda items that i want to know right here is later on on the agenda i will also be introducing the new unbest person miss donna williams and i will speak through her qualifications at that time the other agenda item that is noteworthy is we are providing a report from the board on the strategic plan one year before this

015report will be provided by miss courtney fresh he is the one who's been working with the leadership team to collect the data put the report together and to prepare this for the board and she will be reporting out giving out giving you an overview of the information provided in the first year the final theme i want to do this briefly mentioned is you may have noticed under the superintendent's report i hd in regulation participates to idea for related services i want to note that in the may 7th report to the board the written report there was a sentence that was stated that no asl interpreter would be allowed to attend iup meetings that's a misstatement i want to give a correction that we fully understand and follow through on anytime school districts and a lot

016of paris use class that related services personnel including american sign language interpreters be a member of the iup team and or participate in iep meetings that those related services personnel do so we do have a regulation specific to this that we have put together and i have asked maria murphy to give you a brief overview of watching the regulations miss murphy thank you superintendent reichman for the record maria murphy director of policy and government relations so um in response to the direction that was given by the board earlier this year we have drafted a regulation that essentially delineates what the iep process is supposed to look like for students who participate in the itinerant programs and what this regulation does is it talks about what the iep should contain the goals for the iep students

017what the procedures are and it spends quite a bit of time basically delineating what is the responsibility of the school district versus what is the responsibility of asdb it also discusses what the makeup of the iep team should be and specifically it does state that the interpreter is considered that their attendance would be considered mandatory if an iep team member requests that their presence be there so uh we believe that this actually um excuse me that that this uh that this reflects uh what the board's understanding and discussion was in earlier board meetings of this year and at this time i'd like to make myself available for any questions if there's questions i'm sorry that is there a question from the board uh no i this is linda linda linda okay sure linda yes this

018is linda beau superintendent reichman i hope that you're getting better i would like to ask if you don't mind giving the names of those new staff members and asking those individuals if they're present to stand so that we can match faces to names so if you wouldn't mind can you repeat those folks that you introduced so we can have them stand up and acknowledge them in the room that's the first thing that i'd like to ask is that okay superintendent rickman [Music] we are having a bit of a problem with audio so i the superintendent rightman i believe you said you would like to have um assistant superintendent martin stand is that correct yes this is an advisement um i will i've been introduced assistant superintendent george martin if you could stand up for a

019minute okay okay thank you okay and then i would like to introduce miss trisha riddell if she is in the auditorium please stand up okay and then the third person is mr jason lilly mr lilly if you are in the auditorium please stand up yes thank you and this is linda vove i do have another question is that okay president niko of course okay superintendent reichman you mentioned the strategic plan and i did read through that most of it and i do think that it's critical for us and for me to see how it has gone over that year how that implementation has gone when i read through it um i felt that it was um too important um to to just kind of touch on briefly in this meeting and rather i would like

020it if we could put this as a topic on a work study session so that we could have a little bit more thorough conversation about what's working what's not working if we need to make any changes all of all of that and we wouldn't want to do that in this meeting because i think it would make it quite lengthy so is that something that we could do with the other board members like to do something like that as well have a more in-depth discussion about that one-year report this is superintendent reichman yes miss frist will provide an overview of the strategic plan report later in the agenda and if board members wish to have a work study session to discuss more in depth we would be happy to schedule one great thank you this is

021lynn davison i'd like to make a comment okay that's maria and murphy and the policy and members i thank you right for our kids lynn i'm sorry to interrupt this is the interpreter we are having a really hard time hearing would you like starting over i apologize i can trust i want to thank everyone who really looks who attends iep i appreciate all the direction you made uh so that we can just thank you lynn this is david you broke up again there maria thank you you're welcome thank you um are there any other questions uh for miss murphy and this regulation this is commissioner chance sorry ms murphy murphy thank you i appreciate you taking the time i do want to get some clarification on idea so are we saying that the policy for

022idea and for the board is there something that needs to be changed can you clarify exactly uh what we need to do in regards to the comment that was made okay so um first of all uh board member jams i do want to let you know that this is a regulation not a policy which means that changes can be made pretty much at at any time essentially this this doesn't really change anything having to do with idea what it is doing is it is essentially as i said delineating whose responsibility is what so especially when we're talking about the itinerant programs some of the responsibilities with iep meetings belong to the district some of the iep responsibilities may belong to asdb so basically what this regulation does is it's saying okay this per this entity

023is responsible for a this person is this entity is responsible for b and the the big thing here which i believe was the board's concern is that making sure that it was very clear that interpreters would be considered members of the iep team if a mandatory member of the iep team requests the interpreter's presence there so it's just it's essentially just writing that down saying if a mandatory member of the iep team says we need an interpreter there to participate in the iep meeting then the educational interpreter is expected to be at the meeting thank you i appreciate that clarification in the event that someone does request that the educational interpreter be there who and what roles can request that the interpreter be there what is their role in the meeting as well so um

024so what is their role in the meeting correct okay so it is my understanding and again i'm not a i'm not a an expert in idea but it's it's basically if they have knowledge or expertise regarding that particular child including all of those related services so um i i may request some additional clarification from jay do you want to take this specifically this is uk can i ask a follow-up that tags on two um mr chances yes um i i think for me what i want clarification is are they there to interpret the meeting or information on the child's use of an interpreter in the school setting that's the clarification so so the way that this so the way that this regulation is written it it states that if the iep team member requests the

025attendance of the educational interpreter um then the attendance of the educational interpreter is mandatory i i it's silent as to whether they're there to interpret or to offer anything else so i have a follow-up and and here is my concern if that educational interpreter is part of the iep team providing information in the iep regarding the child's use of an interpreter i i have no issue with that i do have an issue if we are not providing certified licensed interpreters for iep meetings um there's there is not all educational interpreters are certified and licensed and state statute requires a licensed interpreter for those non-educational settings and i would consider an iep meeting to be outside of an educational academic arena and therefore they should not be interpreting for the iep meeting and i would like

026to see some clarity there i would also like to add that if we are looking at language acquisition for a student utilizing an educational interpreter i also think an asl specialist needs to be involved as a mandatory participate in that iep meeting they would have the role of assessing a child's language more so than the educational interpreter would um board member connectile as i as i said this is a it's a regulation so we can make some additional clarification and uh if you would like me to make those additional clarifications and follow up at a future board meeting i would be happy to do that i would love that thank you um if i may just give the board some context um you know since last night we've been talking about this since last november

027um and it's been on our board we had a section on it in january we've discussed that we discussed it at other times um you know the key part of it that we found through that process was the although we have a similar regulation uh in the brick and mortar schools we didn't have any written documentation as to how we were going to work with districts in the co-ops and that was problematic because we were falling back on agency practice which we discovered in november left some discretion to administrators in the co-ops and that may have led to an idea non-compliance issue or at least it it opened the door for one to potentially occur although we've reviewed the facts and thus far not aware that any violations or non-compliance events have occurred but we

028felt that it was going to be best to document this process in a regulation where there just was no documentation before so this regulation mirrors uh the one from uh that we use in the brick and mortar schools but ms murphy's changed it to adapt for the fact that in the co-ops we act as service providers so we had to make some changes you know we can control well we can control the service providers we don't hold the ieps in those cases we can't control everything many of those key decisions are going to be made by the individual districts and the individual iep teams the exact makeup of the iep team is up to the iep team and the districts have a big say in that so if they if child needs an asl specialist

029uh that needs if that person needs to join the iap team that's really up to the individual iep members and that's that's fine and that's going to vary from district to district and try out the child i think what's important here at the regulation i mean there's so again this is a much broader scope than we originally set out to do but what we've done here is document a written regulation where if it's followed there wouldn't be non-compliance events in other words if you know the idea tells us that if a uh iep team member requests another iep member be present then they have to be present and the agency can't withhold that um and the agencies just can't withhold that that's the issue so ms murphy you had your hand up and then i

030think some other board members wanted to talk yes um board member knife i also wanted to point out that when it discusses in the section that it does discuss the iep team it does have a bullet that states at the discretion of the district parent or asdb other individuals who have knowledge or expertise regarding the child it can including related services personnel so that could include the asl specialist etc so even though we don't have it say asl specialist particularly that that's kind of a catch-all provision that that would take care of it in that instance um and i'm good with that my my one follow-up again is making sure that it is clear that it is not the role of the educational interpreter to be interpreting those meetings because there is state statute requiring

031certification and licensure and that makes perfect sense thank you just a technical note um if everyone on the phone can who's not speaking mute um i i understand there's some echo on the line so if we could have everyone who's not speaking vm mute and then on mute to speak okay this is board member chance making sure there was no feedback there thank you so much for that president nigro and also ms murphy for related services it seems to be a broad category and as far as their role in the meeting and at a minimum we need to make sure that we have a definition in place to clarify the role and expectation of the educational interpreter in those meetings and i agree with what board member knife mentioned about the interpreter's role in the

032iep meeting i think it's important that we do look into potentially developing some guidance and potentially becoming policy clearly delineating the educational interpreter's role in an iep meeting for example they may not be the expert on children's behavior they may not be the language analysis expert in the room they may not be the expert on whether or not the child is learning they're not the expert in those different areas the purpose of their involvement is to talk about what they've seen in the classroom how the student is using the interpreter if the interpreter is in the classroom and providing the interpretation at the appropriate time and you can even ask the student and you can ask the interpreter for specific information but it's not their role to comment on the child's language and their language

033development the best practice would be to have the expert do the analysis on the child's language and it should be someone the person that's doing that should be the asl specialist now with asdb being an lda we have to do our due diligence to ensure that we're meeting our responsibilities when it comes to the lea and we want to make sure that we have those roles clearly delineated for the co-op so there aren't those gray areas it's in the best interest of the kids to look at best practices not just what the minimum is required but we should be looking at best practices in general um this is uh david nigro um pv just just no we are not an lea with respect to these children these are all children in the co-ops the ieps

034are held by the individual school districts president nigro i have a question sure um can we get some clarification on a regulation as opposed to a policy uh mr murphy what is the difference murphy certainly so um board member beau oh sorry one second mr just a moment sorry i wanted to i wanted to um expand on my thought i i generally i do understand the difference but in this specific conversation um i understand that we have written this recognition do we need to have a policy that is something a little bit more solid giving us a little bit more for firm footing or is the regulation sufficient and i'm wondering if you have an opinion on that um i i believe that a regulation is sufficient um in this particular instance so what the

035policy does is the policy is the board's general statement of how the board believes certain actions should be conducted and then the regulation is what tells the administration and the people who are working at asdb how they are to carry out what the board's wishes are in any specific instance so in this particular case we know that the board wants to make sure that educational interpreters are included at iep meetings if a member of the iep team requests their presence there and the regulation tells us as people who work at asdb how we're going to implement that is that helpful yes that helps thank you okay are there any more questions for miss murphy seeing none superintendent reichman you may finish your report and that concludes [Music] my report okay thank you superintendent reichman uh

036we can now move on a 1.04 information item assistant superintendent curriculum instruction assistant superintendent martha [Music] thank you president nigro governing board members um thank you to superintendent reichman um assistant superintendent cooper um community staff members it's it's humbling and an honor to be here and i'm gonna add just a little context to that um i'm uh the youngest of seven i have six older sisters i grew up with a single mother who worked and i was a victim of public schools i did not learn black kids were told to sit in the black back of the classroom while the other kids were taught my mother never asked those questions when i would come home to say you know what did you learn today she would say how was school and being young i would

037say it was great because i didn't do anything that followed me until high school so when i got to college and i'm going to be brief of the story i had to take certain classes i had to learn how to learn and i went to the my counselor and i said hey i want to be a doctor and she laughed in my face and told me i could never become a doctor and that i think lit the fuel under me to never have kids in schools to be in a situation that i grew up in so i took that personally and i was a person i never wanted to be a teacher i ran away from education and i i was telling the story today i fell backwards into it by tutoring at a high

038school and found out i had the ability to teach and help students so my career has been on creating schools that where there are people who do not have the opportunity they are underserved they are marginalized to have the same opportunities that every other student has that is something i've never wavered from and i joke with people who that know me in the education field um i i tell people i create schools and reform and transform schools that i would send my kids to um and i've never wavered from that i know how it felt to be that student and so that's been my great my guiding force in my career as an educator i've been across the country in school reforms reforming public schools i've written charters opened up schools so i've gravitated towards

039making it better if for some reason if i and there was a soul-searching for me to come here um and i had to reach out to people i know to make sure that i could be here and have an impact and so it what it was a it was a something that i had to actually go through so i'm maybe going off script so forgive me but my presence and my goal is this is not just me it takes the community it takes the board it takes staff members it takes everyone to to make this go and i see myself as a part of that process school transforming schools looks magical but it is patience it is time it is listening it is not quick there are things that will move quick but i i

040am an educator i love what i do i love making schools better for people it makes me feel good at the end of the day when i know that i've broken that cycle that was once before me so um i i am a father of two um i am a husband um i love learning i when i figured out i could learn and i i just never stopped going to school and so i joke my phd my my doctorate is finished um and i'm already thinking gosh what else can i go to school for and learn um but in a nutshell i'm glad to be here i i have take taken this time to meet people to really just get a sense of where the heart of this organization and institution lies to look at

041the passion to look at the struggles to look at where people are um but you know i i welcome i will be out with leaders with people working side by side you know for me it's important to be able to see um you will always um if you need my you need me to listen or talk to like that's what i'm there for so this is a a process that takes the superintendent assistant superintendent staff members boards community community is the biggest part of of getting a school in a different direction so i'm happy to be here i have a lot of respect for the people i've met and it feels great prior to coming to here i was in mesa public schools i took over some alternative schools and turned them around and worked

042with some other school projects and i went to asu to create curriculum basically to create access for k-12 students across the country and abroad it was great we got to create we got to do it was magical but for me if you know me i am a school-facing person if there's no bells no noise no school issues i literally go crazy so um that gives you a little bit about my personality and why i'm here and who i am and again thank you president nigro and the board thank you to superintendent reichman and it took me to believe in her philosophy and her direction um it took me to to believe in the team that i interviewed with um and to meet people so although that was an interview where they were looking at me

043i was also interviewing them as well and learning so it was a very um it was a decision that i made with my family i made it very quickly because for me it's about having impact and um making something a little bit better and when i leave so thank you thank you mr martin are there any questions for mr martin from the board okay thank you we can move on to 1.05 information item assistant superintendent of agency operations and support services report assistant superintendent cooper good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent martin members of the board astb 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 the reports were provided to you last week as it relates

044to other projects going on with operations and support services i wanted to give an update on the agency sunset audit as most of you are aware the audit began in april and over these last few months staff have been responding to questions and the auditors have been asking a number of questions over these last couple of months based on 13 sunset factors we had our most recent update meeting with the auditors on june 23rd and we were informed that we would receive a first draft of the audit report by august 1st with a final report expected to be issued by september 15th based on the information provided thus far the agency has made significant improvements since the last sunset audit which was completed in 2012 so i want to thank all of you for your

045hard work and continued efforts in ensuring the agency meets its responsibilities to provide the education for our students now that the budget legislation has been finalized the team is continuing to work on building the new year budget as the fiscal year began on july 1st and the agency's budget submission package is due on or before september 1st to the state's office of strategic planning and budget included within the agency budget will be funding 10 percent statewide salary increases for all asdb full-time and part-time staff also within the budget legislation we received 1.1 million dollars in one-time funding to expand the transportation and bus route capacities for both phoenix and tucson campuses and we also received about eight hundred and sixty six thousand dollars in funding to purchase food service equipment for both campuses purchase and

046install security upgrades across both campuses and install a classroom notification system on the phoenix campus as you recall this year we received funding for the classroom notification system on the tucson campus so that gives us about two million dollars in additional one-time funding we have not quite received final amounts from the state on what the agency's total operating budget will be so we are not sure what additional funding issues will be needed for the agency and we expect to receive final budget amounts in late july early august last but not least over the last few months i've been giving updates on the compensation structure analysis since i know most of you are very much interested in what to possibly expect for the upcoming school year and if there will be any additional adjustments to your

047salaries more information will be provided by executive director of human resources in agenda item 6.07 that concludes my report and i'm open to answer any questions or respond to any comments that you may have uh thank you assistant superintendent cooper and if i just make make a comment um superintendent for assistant superintendent cooper did not make enough about the auditor meeting that we had um i was at that meeting i want to remind everyone the context of this you know if we go back 10 years before many of us were on the board before superintendent reichman was here we look at the last sunset audit there were three findings and 32 audit recommendations um and if you go back and review that and you know that was quite a document uh back then 10 years

048ago we again in the preliminary meeting um which you know things may be subject to some change but as a preliminary matter there's one finding and five recommendations um so and and i've heard them and what the auditors think and it is night and day uh from what that was ten years ago so um i know the staff has worked really hard with the auditors uh since march uh to get them a lot of different information they uh you know uncovered every turned over every rock and and looked everywhere they could um so to have you know and this is not to say there's not work to be done there is work to be done um we're going to have to address their finding right away um we're starting going to start to do that

049and from a board perspective in october and that part was already kind of part of our strategic plan anyway got delayed a little bit because of covet and the findings we're going to address pretty quickly uh we'll do all of that in the november meeting uh the report will be finalized in october um this way we have the final reporter hand when we go in and take some some steps to uh to go in and respond to it but you know it's just a tremendous job that's been done by the leadership here and you know by the agency you know as a whole to know that we are operating so much better now uh as an agency than we were 10 years ago it's it's just an incredible difference and i'm um as soon as

050we hung up i called up the superintendent and i said i'm so proud that you know um that you guys are doing so well um and uh you know these these findings again we have work to do um but it is it is night and day from where the agency was 10 years ago this is commissioner james thank you i know i have made this comment before and i will make this comment again and i have told superintendent reichman many times that miss cooper hiring ms cooper was one of the best decisions for the agency it really turned things around for the agency and it really provided the board with data on funding and it helped assistant or helped superintendent reichman make the decisions that she needed to make and the board has had to

051make some tough decisions unfortunately there have been some things at the last 40 or 50 or 60 years that have not been addressed that we are finally addressing and with assistant superintendent cooper here i don't think we would be where we are without you here so i appreciate your work and i wanted to make that comment i'm so happy to know that you are at that meeting president nigro with the auditors were any other board members invited to that meeting just out of curiosity the auditor requested my presence there are no other board members out of curiosity why were no members of the finance committee invited to be a part of that meeting you would need to ask the state auditors they invited me i i didn't volunteer they wanted me to join in the

052future for something that is that important i think the board could use more transparency and there i think having someone from the finance committee at future meetings with the auditor would be beneficial i just wanted to make that comment are there any other questions for assistant superintendent cooper all right seeing none we're going to go to 2.01 action item approval of the consent agenda consistent import policy to include items 3.01 5.01 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 7.04 7.06 and 7.07 is there anyone that would like to remove any of these from the consent agenda this is board member chance yes i would like to hold aside the bureau contract excuse me the burger contract and the assistant superintendent martin contract okay and also for christopher fears sorry what number are those 601 501 let me

053get the numbers for you for the first one 5.01 6.01 6.04 and that one is specifically for christopher fears is that all also for policy changes 7.03 and lastly well that's not on the consent agenda 703 is not on the consent agenda okay thank you for that clarification that would be 6.04 7.04 704 okay yes and then last the meeting minutes 7.07 okay um are you going to move that we uh remove these from the consent agenda so moved this is linda a second okay uh all in favor of that motion please say aye aye aye aye on the phone me the motion passes those remove the consent agenda all right um we do need a motion to pass what's left of the consent agenda so this is uk i'm trying to make sure that

054i'm getting them so the one that's going to be on the consent agenda is going to be 3.01 oh five um no six and 06. yeah there we go all right so i moved that we approve the following consent agenda items 3.01 6.02 6.03 6.05 and 7.06 all second okay uh all in favor aye hi hi any opposed okay motion passes um let's see so 3.01 passed uh 3.02 action item approval of new district agreements assistant supernatural martin for our vouchers asdb data we have 598 voucher students 565 fee for service our new agreements with blueprint education we have zero students are expecting one in the fall with imagine coolidge elementary we have one voucher student and for pace preparatory academy we have one voucher student okay any questions for mr martin uh seeing none

055i i move that we offer the contracts as proposed very seconds i second second okay um all in favor next is a 4.01 information item finance report kim vitridge good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent cooper assistant superintendent martin members of the board and asdb community our most recent financial committee meeting was held last thursday june 30th with board members aaron wonders mike gordon and pb chance also in attendance were assistant superintendent cooper during the meeting we discussed the may 2022 and 2021 budget to actual comparison reports we also had a presentation from kendra benedict on eop enrollment and the overall eop program provided to you is the same financial information that was provided to the finance committee but in a more condensed summarized version the total student count for june 1st 2022

056is 22 034 an increase of 42 students when compared to the june 1st 2021 count of 2192 the major differences are an increase in the regional co-op students of 18 a decrease in preschool students of 17 and an increase of birth to three students of 45. as of june 1st we had 492 fte which includes 8.5 ftes at fbc we currently employ 717 employees some of them are part-time there are currently 118 vacancies across the agency in the financial comparative data the collected revenue for budget fiscal year 2022 is 29.2 million 3.6 percent lower than budget fiscal year 2021 revenue of 30.2 million the primary decrease is as result of voucher revenue for april was not received until june this was offset by the increased revenue for the prop 301 funds the increase in obligated

057expenditures of 500 000 in budget fiscal year 2022 compared to budget fiscal year 2021 is based on the reduction in payroll and equipment offset by the increase in professional and outside services on page seven of the report it shows the budget to actual expenditures as well as the remaining budget balance by object class by fund and by program the high number of vacancies vacant positions has resulted in salary and ere being under budget by 8.6 million dollars a year to date the professional and outside services is over budget by 900 000 since we did not anticipate the increased costs in fbc contracts or the contractual transportation services page 9 has the expenditures by operational area by object code and by fund overall the cost for each operational area has remained fairly consistent however the expense

058categories have changed specifically in transportation and food services page 12 has the budget status report for all sources it is important to note the revenue exceeded the expenditures for budget fiscal year 2022 by 464 thousand while the revenues exceeded expenditures by 2 million in budget fiscal year 2021. the budget fiscal year 2022 actual revenues were 49.5 000 compared to 51.2 i'm sorry 49.5 million compared to 51.2 million in budget fiscal year 2021. again the major differences were the 3 million decreased in vouchers offset by a 1.7 million increase in prop 301 funds the budget fiscal year 2022 actual expenditures and encumbrances were 52.8 million compared to 52.3 million in budget fiscal year 2021. the increase in actual expenditures includes 1.8 million in professional and outside services for food service contract fbc services and transportation and

059related services including one-to-one nurses an increase of 710 000 in other operating resulting from the increase in risk management and the maintenance of the fleet and increased costs of fuel if there are no other questions on the information presented this concludes my report of the agency's information and fiscal data for the business services thank you are there any questions uh seeing them we'll go to 5.01 approval of burger performing arts center and other rental agreements uh this was on the consent agenda [Music] sure this is board member chance i only request that we help this one separately for discussion because i noticed that sometimes for the burger contract we are able to have a date created before the board meeting so i want to make sure that we as a board need to review and

060approve the contracts for burger to make sure that we are getting good revenue from it for the campus what i'm seeing and what i'm hearing from the community not just the deaf community but also the hearing community is that this is a place that the community really looks to for events and we don't want to create any unnecessary barriers when people are interested in renting out the space out of curiosity are we creating more barriers by having the board review the contract for approval and what can we do to have the contract ready in place sooner so the board can't have access to that contract sooner as well i'm assuming that's a question for superintendent rickman they're asking the board [Music] foreign can you please start your statement over we're having a very hard time

061hearing you yes so what can i do is this better yes that is better thank you okay so with the burger performing arts center [Music] the contracts you see listed there are organizations in community groups outside of asub that come in contract with us to use this particular auditorium it has nothing to do directly with providing services to our students on the chiefs on campus so the recent policy thing does not impact the impact contact this is board member chance i would like to provide some clarification i want to make sure that the board is familiar with the contract requirements and if we had a specific date in mind how would we be able to review the contract before we meet as a board are we creating more barriers for the community is it necessary

062for the board to be reviewing that contract or is that something that perhaps should no longer be a contract requirement for the board to review that policy uh pv this is david um i've been uh asked to give breaks every hour and 15 minutes this meeting instead of every hour and a half um for the interpreters so we're going to take that break now so we'll be back in 10 minutes this is linda david um linda bob speaking i feel like we're you know we were kind of left hanging with a question that was on the table without an answer so can we finish getting an answer to that question and then take a break uh that's uh that's fine in another minute superintendent likeman yes again there's another connection between the contracts we have

063for the being packed and some exceeded services as for the timeline of these contracts some of them have already occurred so you are post approving these contracts so this has been the way business has been conducted between the horns and they be packed the burger performing arts center since before i became superintendent so there's no change here there's no barrier here this is this is david um this has been a consent agenda item for every single meeting in the last at least seven years since i've been on the board there's no change in this to our prior practice you can go back again look at every meeting in seven years it's always been on the consent agenda uh why we need to get board approval for these i'm not sure i'd have to go back

064and look on the policies to see i would think that if one of these organizations was somehow objectionable or would bring people that are dangerous to our community to the bpac that we would take some action against it again you know we're a public agency i don't even know what that action would be um but we'd have to look into it um if there was going to be again some sort of just you know uh of some vile organization let's say to want to use the space or an organization that would bring again people that are dangerous we have to take a lot of care on this campus because we do have students and we have residential students so we want to be careful with who comes onto campus in most of those cases there's

065there's no issue and there hasn't been an issue every time we've passed this on the consent agenda as superintendent rickman mentioned many of these happened in the past we're merely ratifying it i don't recall any time in that last seven years where there has been some kind of issue with the excuse me with the group uh that's been seeking to uh rent uh the b-pack um i suppose we can direct superintendent rightman to go back and verify that the policies indeed require board approval for renting to outside groups i'm not sure if they do um or if just it's been a practice that's been carried over from you know prior administrations um with that said it's uh it is now going to be 5 20 so we're going to take that break myself they're trying

066to figure out why we're getting that kind of yeah because annette i already said i'm i'm muted too i'm off on the zoom so i'm like i don't know i do um so i can see just saying from that perspective [Music] because i usually go out this way so then i found my way to the bathroom but i got stopped like three times on the way to the bathroom um we have one minute we need to flash the lights in the hallway right now yeah flashlights in that lobby please [Music] all right it is uh it is 5 30 so we are going to return now um i think we just had that discussion is there any further discussion on 5.01 yes this is board member chance thank you president nigro i appreciate that break

067as well i'm sure the interpreters and other members of the board appreciate it also if the board does need to approve something that's already happened if it's possible to consider this from to removing this from future agendas i am definitely open to that if it's something that the board does not need to be involved with can um say something um i would like clarification from miss murphy as to whether or not there's policy on that and and the only reason i would have concerns from completely removing it even post occurrence is that if there were a group that would sue for us turning them down from utilizing the facility that lawsuit does usually include the board and i would like to have some input on whether or not that's or at least some guidance from

068policy uh board member conifel after an initial review of the policy manual i did not see anything specific that states that the board is required to approve these however again it was a very cursory review so i'd like to have the opportunity to take a day to just pour over it and make absolutely certain but yes thank you ms murphy um uh uh pv you go ahead i was gonna say the the um you know it seems like there may not be a policy that we may be able to remove it um the benefit of having it here and again it's been on the consent agenda for years and years you know the benefit is if there is a group that we think has a propensity to be violent or commit acts of destruction or

069to otherwise endanger our community here whether it be children or staff um you know we'd want to know about it and we'd want to work within the confines of the law to to mitigate that risk but that that said i know that our staff is equipped to do that and they they likely don't need our intervention thank you president nigro and i agree with you and i agree with board member connectful as well perhaps instead instead of a consent age item consent agenda item perhaps we could look at a policy change to say that it would be part of the report that we receive so we're still aware of who is contracted and who is in the building that way we can maintain our knowledge of that uh thank you pv we wouldn't need a

070policy for that if in fact this there's not a policy that says we have to approve these types of contracts um it could we could just not put it on future meetings and have the superintendent either let us know in her report um or the uh or assistant superintendent cooper whichever it fits into uh to do that but we don't we don't need another policy to to change that it really would more be practiced unless there are other board members that that feel differently or would like to keep it on this is board member dance i do think it is worth looking into and getting us the official notice on it that way at the next board meeting we can talk things over for now i would like to make the emotion to approve the

071contracts for burger rental okay zero in a second okay second all in favor say aye aye any opposed okay we can move on to 6.01 consent agenda item intent to offer fiscal year 2023 employment contract to george martin assistant superintendent curriculum instructional services pursuant to ars 3843103a1 the board may vote to go into executive session for the purposes of discussion and consideration of employment matters this is on the consent agenda item or this was on the consent agenda it is now not so we opened at any comments tv thank you this is board member jans thank you president nigro my request was for two reasons that we take the time to address the community concerns about the contract and secondly to share my experience with assistant superintendent martin to make sure that we are addressing

072the community concerns i completely understand the community concerns and i share a similar concern when we found out about the appointment i requested a meeting with superintendent reichman and she did provide me with a brief uh explanation on why the panel was in 100 support of the hiring of assistant superintendent martin and with that full confidence i was willing to accept that as an as a fair decision but i did request if it is fine to have a meeting with assistant superintendent martin a superintendent reitman did approve that last week assistant superintendent martin did confirm that he has been pretty much put in the hot seat since the first meeting and i brought those questions to him left and right and i see him kind of laughing i don't think he was expecting some of

073those difficult questions that came in that meeting and i can guarantee to the deaf community that i was pretty uh blunt with some of the questions that i asked and some of the comments that i made and he really took those questions well and it was a wonderful discussion that we had and we were scheduled for an hour we went long we went half hour over because of our lengthy discussion it was a great discussion that we had and assistant superintendent martin seemed very open to the ideas that i had from the deaf community from the deaf community perspective i brought up some of the concerns and i provided him with some potential homework he said that he was interested in reading a couple of articles one is called death epistemology in the second one

074the second article is deaf epistemology a criticism and i recommended that he read those two articles he agreed to reading those two articles we had a nice heart-to-heart discussion i talked about my experience and my background that i've had in the deaf community and the experiences that other members of the deaf community have experienced and i was pretty blunt in my comments to him about the school being in place since 1880 and talking about what we can do to change things that have been in place since then and he seemed open and ready for the challenge and i wanted to share my confidence in assistant superintendent martin i believe that we as a deaf community need to give him a chance and give him the opportunity to build and earn our trust before we decide

075that he can't have our trust the deaf community needs to give him a chance to see what he does let's see what he makes use of with his background and his knowledge in order to successfully transform asdb as an agency that's all i'm asking from the community and now i move to approve assistant superintendent martin's contract a second uh all in favor aye aye aye aye aye aye any opposed okay uh going to move to 6.04 tend to offer teacher employment contracts pursuant to ars 38 4303 a1 the board may vote to go into executive session for the purposes of discussion consideration of employment matters that one was on the consent agenda and it is now not are there any board members that would like to make a comment no there are no board members

076don't like make comment okay um i move that we approve the contract slated in item 6.04 is there a second this is uki second all in favor say aye are there any opposed this is board member chance i abstain okay thank you all right that passes now we're going to go on to 6.06 action item intent to offer salary increase to superintendent reichmann pursuant to ars 384303a1 the board may vote to go into executive session for the purposes of discussion and consideration of employment matters um here we heard earlier today and via email earlier in the week that the legislature approved a 10 increase for all full-time and part-time employees of the agency um that's fantastic news that's going to help us compete better in the market to able to recruit and retain highly qualified

077staff teachers staff leadership other other services other job classifications that will help us again i think that will really help us the agency and getting highly qualified folks uh into the agency when i met with superintendent reichman to go over the draft agenda i i asked her if it would include her and she said she wasn't sure so we looked into it and there's at least some doubt as to whether or not the legislature that uh action included her based on her contract we we looked at it uh quite carefully um so you know from again from my perspective uh i think that superintendent should reichman should join in that 10 increase i wouldn't want to leave her at least my opinion wouldn't want to leave her out um if uh everyone else was getting

078a raise i mean i'm a firm believer that the leader should eat last um and certainly that's the case here um and i do want to note this is not something that she brought up or she asked this is this is something that i um asked about and wanted to make sure that we that we get right so again it's within the board's discretion to uh to offer that increase or not um there is in the executive content of board docs that's available in the board members um an addendum that was drawn up by uh our legal counsel um to affect that um this is gonna have any discussion on that this is linda yes i would like to make a comment regarding um superintendents across the country and what their pay looks like i

079would like to say that i serve on other boards um one based in new york so what that means is that we just hired a new superintendent and their pay is commensurate to what arizona superintendents are receiving so i'm very happy with that and i do agree that this pay increase is deserved and i'm happy that as superintendent arizona is getting paid what a superintendent in new york city is getting paid and we are lucky to have superintendent rising here thank you linda are there any other comments this is board member jans president nigro you mentioned that this was written by the ag i don't see that in board docs am i looking in the wrong spot uh it should be under executive content i see it in mind right now if you're logged in

080if you're not logged in you won't be able to see it okay i would like to review that if i'm given the opportunity um do we have that printed out latisha okay i'm looking at it on linda's computer okay all right thank you i have had the opportunity to review it with that salary increase does that impact the entire executive team as well does the board need to make approvals for others or is this only an approval for the superintendent this is only an approval for the superintendent all the other leadership team would be included by that legislative action so from what hr tells me the only full-time or part-time employee that did not receive a ten percent or there's some question as to whether or not she is entitled to that ten percent raise

081uh is the superintendent so because there's some uncertainty about it uh this addendum will remove that uncertainty sorry this is board member chance again just to double check if confirmed then adoa will be increasing the pay that comes from 8008 not from the asdb operating budget is that correct no that's from our budget this is assistant superintendent kirbler to clarify we will receive funding for the agency-wide state wide salary increase for all full-time and part-time there is still question as to whether or not as needed temporary staff will be eligible to receive the 10 salary increase however that funding we will be receiving from the legislature of that amount i'm not quite sure if it's going to fully fund the 10 agency-wide and that again is what i alluded to in my report that i

082will need to determine how much of that funding will be covered from the state and then what will need to be coming from the operating budget to fund that 10 salary increase and uh superintendent just to set the context here as everyone knows on the board uh superintendent um new contract just began uh on the first of this month uh so this raise would continue for the next um three years minus about a week this is board member chance i believe i can say with confidence that i don't think superintendent reichman would be happy if the agency had to incur that cost for her increase assistant superintendent cooper are you able to find out what the exact amount is that we will be getting from the legislature for salary increases yes i clarified that we

083will not receive final amounts on the operating budget until the latter part of july early august when we receive our final appropriations i can provide more information in the september 8th meeting however i do want to clarify it is my understanding all state agencies are to be funded for the statewide salary increase and in this matter as it pertains to superintendent reichman that would include her adjustment to also be funded from the state legislature as well thank you are there any other comments from the board this is sukay i move to approve uh second uh all in favor uh to approve the addendum as proposed say aye aye [Music] any opposed and any abstentions this is board member jans i abstain okay thank you all right that passes and the next um 6.07 information discussion

084item compensation restructure anita payat executive director of human resources good afternoon board president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendent cooper and assistant superintendent martin in your board packet is a copy of a board summary on asdb's compensation architecture project the sdb compensation architecture project also referred to as acap is asdb's two to three year plan in addressing the agency's compensation and classification structure this project entails reviewing and analyzing position classifications our grading system salary schedules years of service minimum wage increases and scheduled reviews for market analysis we completed a mark analysis for all positions in 2019 which took us about three years to do that in the first phase we focused on addressing the compression in the classified salary schedule which was compounded by the minimum wage increases over the last several

085years we re-graded all positions on the classified salary schedule ranging from 1 to 22. also we want to ensure that the updated classified salary schedule structure supports any future adjustments for minimum wage increases we've identified position classifications in grades one through nine and are addressing the salary compression by aligning entry level rates with market studies and giving increases to current asdb staff members based on the years of service with asdb these positions include administrative support instructional assistant technical aid residential security transportation and entry-level support for business services human resources and facilities the salary adjustment will impact a little over 200 staff members and will range between anywhere from zero to five percent depending on the staff members years of service with asdb so to summarize for this fiscal year the following will be implemented all

086staff members as we know will receive a 10 increase to their base pay effective july 9th 2022 staff members in grades one through nine on the classified salary schedule will receive is anywhere from zero to five percent based on their years of service which will take effect july 24th of 2022 teachers will be granted an additional step on the teacher's salary schedule which will also take effect on july 24th of 2022 in the next two years we will be addressing grades 10 through 22 on the classification salary schedule as well as other salary schedules to address a more holistic approach to our compensation structure that creates a consistency of application among the salary schedules our overall salary schedule analysis and restructure is to ensure grades align with the market salary benchmarks levels of responsibility placement

087decisions assessed by education and experience with the maximum placement defined this means that staff members will not be compensated over the maximum of the grade in the salary schedule and will be redlined in 2024 and finally adding a planned schedule of market benchmark reviews to cycle through all positions every three years there may be occasions where in-range adjustments are warranted to resolve compression issues to align with external markets in highly competitive situations or to resolve pay equity issues at this time i like to make myself available for any questions that you may have are there any questions okay um i have one good this is board member chance sorry president nigro this all looks great my only question for you is are there any thoughts or opportunities or potential discussion on how we can assist

088instructional assistants to get them scaffolded to become future instructors yes with the changes that we're making currently in the classified schedule we are creating a career ladder for instructional assistants to move into other positions with also the intent to help assist with teachers i know we have done that in the past with several instructional assistants on our campuses that have become teachers thank you okay any other questions okay uh thank you uh miss maya thank you uh next up is 701 information discussion 2021 2022 strategic plan and dashboard uh superintendent reichman although i believe um courtney fritz is going to be presenting this as well yes hello this is superintendent weissman i will turn this over and miss courtney fresh to give you a summary overview of the first year report of the strategic plan

089and hopefully her audio better than mine hello yes hello this is courtney fritz can everyone hear me okay we can okay great and i will also try to speak slowly because i have a tendency to speak too fast good afternoon for president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendent cooper and assistant superintendent martin it is my pleasure to share with you today an update regarding the ascb strategic plan as you recall the board voting to approve the new strategic plan in may therefore this evening is our first year report of working with and reporting on the various measures within the strategic plan i have been working with agency leadership and key asdb staff members in order to compile and report data within the strategic plan for both 2020 2021 as well as 2021

0902022 school years during this time erin moya and i have worked extremely close together to ensure that the data recorded and the format for the strategic plan could seamlessly be loaded into a dashboard on the asdb website i am happy to report that not only do we have a comprehensive 75-page strategic plan document we also have a very user-friendly dynamic dashboard i really want to tip my hat baron and all of the work that he did to transform the data into a visual representation that is easy to access easy to navigate and easy to understand you should have received an updated copy of the strategic plan in your board materials as well as a link to the ah ascb dashboard as linda mentioned there was there's a lot and we're certainly not going to be

091able to unpack it in this couple of minutes but there are a few things that i really wanted to pinpoint and highlight for you most of the data is reported following the school year calendar for those items you will see the data points referenced in school years such as 20 and then 21-22 however there are some data points that more accurately align to the fiscal year calendar and therefore we did not change those and force them to fit in the school year calendar date for those items you will see sy21 to represent fiscal year 21. since we just just last week for this week's broadcast fiscal year 22 that data is not included in the update that you received we do anticipate most of those items being completed this month but there are a few

092related to finance in the business services department that might not be ready till october the post-school outcome [Music] cso data is also not completed for the 21-22 school year yet the itinerant program and the campus program do have last year's data included in the update but they are following the timeline provided and requested by adb so the time frame or the window opened in june and it will close in september therefore the data will be completed no later than that september due date also included in your board docs is an overview of the due dates for pillar one we have that information for the other pillars as well and this is just an example to show the master timeline that we have and that we are following to make sure that each data measure is

093reported on time throughout our workfield there were some minor changes you know the strategic plan was set up with that thinking in mind but as we started to work with it there were some minor things that needed to be tweaked if there were minor edits on the measures you will see that representative with an asterisk that says chart revised was the date to indicate when it was changed there have been some discussions regarding the need to significantly change how some of the data is reported up until this point that's specifically related to the elt and itinerary program our goal is to present this to you this evening to hear your feedback and of course determine next steps but we would like to have any changes for the 2022-2023 school year done sooner rather than later

094so that the directors the principals know what that data collection looks like for the entire year in your board docs was a supplemental report for the elp program they are part of a new program and therefore wanted to provide a full comprehensive picture of their work this year versus just sticking with what was in the strategic plan j johnson has also worked on a draft proposal for the itinerant program which will include reporting iep goal attainment data versus the state assessment data that has been a challenge to gather from the individual school districts and ade for their district students as i mentioned our goal is to really fine-tune the data reporting within the associated plan so that it accurately reflects the work the programs are doing while also staying true to the format and consistency

095of the strategic plan this evening we are really looking forward to hearing from you the board in regards to what has been done thus far and the information that's been reported to you and so at this time i will open it up for any questions or comments you might have there any questions for courtney yes courtney and board members as well i do want to reiterate what i said at the beginning i didn't realize that i should have made that comment later on in the agenda um i went into a sprint rather than a slow walk that's what i tend to do so i do want to reiterate what i mentioned earlier in the meeting i do think that it would be valuable to us as a board to have some more in-depth conversation about

096this it was our responsibility to develop this plan it took us a year or longer and we have been very hopeful that it would work and so i really want to i know that so many people have worked very hard on collecting this data and working in the strategic plan um you did mention courtney that there are some specific deadlines and due dates um that that you're working within and i would really love to have time to um hear more from specific departments that are collecting and using this data so that we become more familiar with it and again being our responsibility as the board to create that strategic plan i would love to see whether it's operating effectively so i would like to ask president nico if we could create a work study session

097in the fall to have some more time to sit with the strategic plan report thank you linda we're going to be talking about upcoming work study sessions later in the meeting so we can take that out there and and i sprint it again i did it again are there any other questions i had a couple of questions and this is really more for superintendent reichman 2.23 a uh nb it looks like in ela and math we uh we we had a decrease over last year and wanted to know you know what we're thinking about what we need to do i mean that's part of the reason why we have the strategic plans that we we you know we don't know where the problems are if we don't collect any data so we did that and

098here we are with you over your data and now we can see where we need to focus our efforts so obviously that's one of my few others here um and again supernatural recommend you don't have to speak to that right now but i mean to me that's that's one of the areas where we need to focus our efforts to improve for next year i also would include um well we'll go ahead if you have any any responses to that superintendent yes this is superintendent reichman we are well aware of the ela english language arts and math scores and then do you need a really focused on that which is part of getting back to school improvement and this will be one of the priorities that assistant superintendent martin will be focusing on for the next

099year and beyond uh thank you superintendent um also maybe this is for courtney 2.24 a the itinerant data seems to be unavailable um is that because we don't have good data sharing agreements with some of the cops or is that for some other reason this is courtney um yeah the short answer i would say yes um jay johnson as well as other agency leaders have tried to figure out the best approach in gathering that data aeb has [Music] given different answers at different times but i believe it kind of all goes back to the itinerary program and the services they provide they are not the teacher of record assessing the students with the state assessment they are the provider for the iep goals as written in the iep uh that's the best oh sorry i

100didn't mean to interrupt you well no you can go ahead okay i was just going to say that the itinerary program has not been successful in getting the data directly from ade the other discussion has been getting the data from the individual school district and that has also not been successful right and if we if we thought it could be gathered that way there's discussion of it would it accurately reflect or measure the work that the itinerant program is doing and so that's why at this point jay johnson and his team have worked to propose looking at the iup goal attainment data versus state assessment data not meaning they're not going to look at it at all but if it's not readily available do we have other data that is readily available that we can

101use now to monitor and measure and look at the effectiveness of the program uh thank you courtney i remember at one point we did and again the azmerits evolved but years several years ago we did get easy merit data from the co-ops and also when we were having our lea not lea discussions recently you know one of the you know one of the pro lea factors was that we would own the data for the brick and mortar students um but that was mitigated i remember dr rex telling us that we could amend the igas pretty easily to be able to get access to that data and you're 100 right we don't own it the individual lease that we work with own it um but if we ask nicely hopefully they can give it to us

102in most places because i would like to see uh that data in the ituner again we saw it several years ago on uh azmerit scores um and that helps us give a you know a picture of who we're serving um in the itinerance you're right um you know the the instruction that the core academic instructions being done by the las in those cases and not not by our employees but we still want to see how those students are doing um so i think that would be important for us if we don't have it in the igs that we amend them to to get it so that we get a better picture of who we're serving and again you know the co-ops are serving around 2000 students a year so it's a it's a large cohort

103of uh children that we we need to be monitoring yes and i will say that although it's not the state assessment data we were successful in getting the pso data for the itinerant student so that is something positive that we're you know at least making some headway and are able to have that data at this time sure thank you um and superintendent reichman 4.2 the facilities plan i know we had that as part of our strategic plan it got delayed a bit for various reasons in the last year as we mentioned earlier in the meeting it's going to become much more of a priority the second half of this year getting that together in response to you know what the auditor general's findings are likely going to be so i want to make sure that

104we are on track again a little bit later in the meeting we're going to discuss work study sessions related to that but i want to make sure that we're you know responding to that appropriately so next year we're not you know we're not seeing it you know we see some significant progress in the next year and that in 4.2 um also on 4.4.4 that's the cost per student i don't see preschool included we probably should include that we have in our other previous finance report reports so i think that needs to be added back along with a weighted student number if we can the way the student number's in um it's like it's a couple of data points above that but if we add it i think would be easier to add it to this

105one so that um just like we can on the uh on the more detailed report that mrs cooper gives us we can multiply the cost per student by the weighted student number and get to the total programmatic budget president yes i have a question for clarification this is linda we had a little bit of a hard time hearing so can you go back to um the school started with the w i think the interpreters didn't catch it weights the weighted student number the weighted student number yes right if we can add the weighted number it's in the strategic plan it's just not also in that um you know in the 4.4.4 i think it'd just be easier to read if it were in there as well so it's easy to check you can multiply quickly

106you know these are the these are my weighted students this is my cost per student and then i get back to the total programmatic budget it's similar to the other reports that mrs cooper has given us and then um 4.4 sure i think you're bringing up some really good points and some great questions that i am very interested in knowing more about and i think you're sort of um giving me more reasons to want to sit down and have a longer work study session and look at a lot of these numbers in this data that is so important um i don't fully understand the struggle with um getting that state data that seems um yeah i wonder i wonder why that ade has made that so difficult and hasn't responded or has responded with different

107answers so we are under the department of education correct so i'm just struggling to understand why we wouldn't be able to get that data i mean so that's not correct we're not we're not uh an arm of the department of education okay okay so then that leads me to my next question um then why should we follow ade regulations if we're not under them so now now this is this is sukay i don't know if i'm are you hold on this is i think one of the points of clarification is the information that we are able to collect on the campuses as opposed to information that we can collect via the co-ops because this co-op students belong to their individualized districts those districts are the owners of that information and i think that is where

108we find it challenging to be able to collect comprehensive and accurate data on those students because they are not technically considered ours okay i understand thank you stephen this is board member chance is it possible to have separate agreements have separate igas to have a contract amendment if school districts decide to do that could we include language about information sharing that way we can get that information more easily through a contract agreement through co-op services pv this is david i believe that that it is uh when we update these igas uh periodically and we have i don't know a couple hundred maybe or or so um and that was one of the things that we were going to do were we not to proceed with were we not to have lea status we would have

109lost all the data related to the students that attend the brick and mortar schools and that would have made it much harder to track their progress um but the idea would be that we would include that in the iga agreements um again they're updated periodically could they be updated by it being an addendum all at once um that really depends on you know a school district by school district case i would like to do that or i'd like to see if that can be done so that we can get access to that data and we can better track the students that we serve in the itinerant program um you know but again as as sue kane mentioned um you know that student data is the school districts and it's it's not ours so they they

110could technically say no if they wanted to i agree and if the igas make it difficult to get the information then maybe we could consider putting language in the itinerary contract so when they agree to our itinerary services they're also agreeing uh as part of the contract to share data on the students who are providing those services too uh correct that is what the igas are they're inter governmental agreements between the school district and the agency to provide those services so we we should be able to include terms like that in the future great um and then one more just small item 4.4.6 it looks like there hasn't been any progress there um we we probably want to make some progress for you know for next year there any other questions about the strategic plan

111report the dashboard looks great by the way if anyone has seen the website it looks great i'm doing the pdf as well but uh that's just an excellent job on that i know it took a long time to put that together i know we've seen kind of the beta version of that in the past but it it looks pretty good it's accessible to the public this is really uh you know this is really great to see a year out from uh you know where we began and this is board member james thank you president nigro you stole my thunder there uh i appreciate that comment thank you and um two other things that i wanted to mention we need to be aware that we need to be careful with some of the data covid may

112have impacted some of those data points and so we need to be aware of that and we can't use that as the end-all be-all covet unfortunately significantly impacted deaf education and deaf education services so that's something that we need to keep in mind as far as future analysis goes the second point that i wanted to make with the ela and the improvement that we've seen we have been as an agency working toward this lea status and now that we know that we are a bilingual bicultural school we need to focus on english and asl and we need to formalize that instruction we have been doing formal english instruction and i think that this is a good time to start down the path of recognizing that we need to create a strategic plan for formal asl

113instruction to help those deaf and hard of hearing students improve their science skills and give them that language foundation that first language foundation will help them focus on their second language and they can't be formally taught english but only have social asl i think it's so important for students to have formal asl instruction as well what are we doing to make sure that we have formal asl instruction for the students if there is nothing i believe we need to address that gap to ensure that we are providing those campus staff the opportunity to pull in asl specialist to provide that instruction superintendent reichman can you respond to that yes this is superintendent reichman um right up until this point we've been focusing on establishing the basic curriculum if you recall we started with the english

114language arts curriculum english the first year i believe that was in 2017 2018 the next year we established the math curriculum the year after that the science curriculum and then the year after that is social studies we we then got products with the covert pandemic the shutdown of the schools so we have not yet really gone back to the beginning she needed the ela curriculum we have been working on what's called the bdc the bilingual glamour quick clip that uses american sign language as a first language to teach that as a language and to use it to scaffold english as a second language some of our teachers understood campuses in the elementary schools are using the dbcdc on top of the national geographic english curriculum not all of them are doing that so what what

115um mr dance is suggesting is something that we are working towards it's not where we are at today and some within the next year or so we need to start you visiting the entire curriculum model that we have and start from the beginning the good news is we spend five years into implementing the different curriculum whereas previously the schools didn't have formal curriculum at least for a time now we have formal curriculum in all the subject areas so with the new assistant superintendent martin you will have the opportunity to review and to see where we're at and then how do we move forward we also have in-house experts within the organizational development division with mr owen tata and his team of the education specialists that have been working on developing materials and training related tcdc

116the bilingual grammar curriculum and uh i'm speaking of specifically tina charlter rose andrea cola and indian michael olivier so we have the pieces in place now it's just putting them all together and that's those are the next steps for the agency thank you superintendent thank you superintendent i appreciate your comments and i agree with you i think that that is a good challenge for assistant superintendent martin to address as well i want to mention how critical it is that we have the experts who can provide asl assessment to identify language gaps and to also identify how we can scaffold their asl language to assist them with the bridging of the english language and as a board we should provide the same level of support to the lsl students and so when i think about the

117pdsd campus there are two asl special specialists there and we need more we need them to be an important part of the iep team especially when working with the youth at that critical language window it's so important that the children have the opportunity to have that exposure and to have more than just access to two asl specialists on a campus in theory we should be able to provide asl specialist services for the itinerary students as well if the iep team would agree that that service would be necessary so what is the plan to expand the asl specialist positions because i would like to see that number increase as of today we do not have a specific plan to increase the number of american sign language bachelet that said like i said we do have the

118pieces within the agency today that we didn't have five years ago so it's a matter of putting those pieces together determining what the gaps are and what resources would need to be reallocated to sell in those gaps we are just on the front end of doing that thank you super dent reichman are there any other questions or comments on this item okay as seeing them we're going to go to 702 information discussion item legislative update marie murphy director of policy and government relations good evening board members you have before you the abstract that i wrote providing a summary of the arizona state legislative session um assistant superintendent cooper uh covered most of the major takeaways for asdb so i do not believe that i need to guild the lily any further um at this time

119i would just like to make myself available for any questions regarding this year's legislative session there any questions pv yes this is board member james miss murphy i really appreciate your work and your effort during the legislative session i was a little bit disappointed to find out that the allocation for transportation costs were a one-time allocation do you have any idea or insight into why that was a one-time allocation rather than being a recurring funding source was there a reason given there was no specific reason given to me board member chance from what i understand the request that we made was a rather large request it was it was almost kind of like a moon shot um to put it in perspective we asked for around two million dollars in recurring funding when we were

120looking at hiring 20 additional teachers for the early learning program versus 4.2 million dollars recurring for transportation this year so i believe that they they wanted to do something to help us but i think that 4.2 million recurring was a pretty big ask and i think that this year we are going to be probably much more precise in what we're asking for with our decision package to ospb and we will come back again next year to ask for additional funding um you probably don't recall but the first time that we asked for the funding for the 20 additional teachers we were shot down but we came back the next year and we got it so we just need to make sure that we are being pleasantly persistent and i i feel confident that we we

121should be able to get something in in the future but yes i i understand it was a disappointment i was disappointed too great thank you does that include the mileage reimbursement request or is that a different request the so um house bill at 2566 was basically drafted in such a way that it looked at doing a per route mile and it also included increasing our capital outlay by tying it to something additional tying it to something similar to district additional assistance the one-time funding that we were given is a line item that just says additional transportation assistance for increase in student accounts so that i i believe that so long as we use that funding for transportation we can decide where we would like to specifically direct that funding for what purposes great thank you

122and hopefully next year we can try again with that request for the mileage rate uh increase and hopefully we get that approved sometime in the future yes together any other questions for miss murphy on this okay so now we're going to go to 7.03 information item introduction to possible discussion of policies g p e c g p e c a e e a e e a a and g gbpd marie murphy director of policy and government relations good evening again so you have before you the red lines of the above title policies the policies were posted to the public for review i have not received any comments regarding the policies from the public however i would like to note that board president nigro reached out to me with some questions in regards specifically to policy

123gbpd this is the new policy that was intended to combine eliminate the three policies which were felt to be redundant and to combine it into one new policy with those questions that he had specifically in regards to medical marijuana and wanting to add in potentially some things from the policies that were eliminated we are continuing to work with our assistant attorney general on on fixing some of the language in in this proposed policy so i want to let everybody know that when this comes back for a second read this is going to be looking different than what it is looking like now simply because we want to make sure that uh when we are doing uh drug testing of our employees that we are covering all of our bases and taking a 360 degree view

124on that uh thank you ms murphy and i just want to elaborate on that i mean some of the policies you see that several of them were just wholly eliminated and then there's this new proposed unified one um you know but there's some some holes in it um that we need to fix i mean one of them is you know under the influence of alcohol and under the use of drugs are defined defined in the policy but they're not used anywhere in the policy um importantly there's no prohibition of an employee you know reporting for duty under the influence of alcohol or drugs it's just our prohibition of them making using manufacturing those drugs while on duty while on campus so you know we need to we need to certainly fix that hole you know

125the the existing policy does account for the medical cannabis law that arizona has does not account for the recreational cannabis that was just passed a couple of years ago and we're going to need to account for that so we'll need to again medical cannabis users have certain labor and employment protections that we need the policy to reflect as for recreational users that's a stickier issue my understanding is that we can treat recreational cannabis use just like other illegal drug use so if there's a test that that shows a metabolite of cannabis that um you know that that would be the same as another a positive test or another illegal drug or we can treat it more like alcohol where you can't be under the infl again after the policy is updated it can't be under

126the influence of alcohol at work or on duty or around children um or you know while on premises um but uh we wouldn't um you know take advantage action if there was a you know metabolite found from you know consumption that was that was off off duty and not done children not on premises etc uh and i really want to see and and so that the board can have some input on that um i really want to see what asba says if there's a best practice out there that they published what they think i want to see what the board thinks on that because that's something that we'll have to wrestle with with this with this policy whereas on the medical side i think we have to mirror what the medical cannabis law says about

127you know what the certain protections are and again i think that's limited to intoxication you can't be intoxicated at work and you can't have toxic metabolites in your system while on duty but if there were metabolites found we may be prevented in some circumstances from taking adverse action the other part of is we want to make sure that we're covering abuse of otc drugs as well although they can be abused abuse of prescription drugs and even there are some prescription drugs that are taken as needed to treat a medical problem under the supervision of a qualified practitioner and they still might impair certain you know the operation of the machinery or driving or other things like that so we need to make sure that we account for all of those things um in this policy

128and at the same time you know we need to make sure that that if there is an employee that has a substance abuse problem that we support them and they're getting help and treatment for that that's in the proposed policy but you know again just to reiterate that that that we are um supportive of uh employees that that have a problem and that uh seek treatment and seek help to to remediate it are there any other questions about that yes this is board member chance i have two things is there any consideration or referral to adoa policy on this topic they do have some very specific procedures as supervisor as a supervisor i have to follow and we have to make sure that our our policies are in alignment with adoa as well so in

129answer to that question board member chance asdb is not considered a system a agency and because we're not a system a agency we're not held to um 80 ways personnel rules now um we can certainly if there are um policies or procedures that we think would be helpful that could be of use to us in general application we certainly can adopt some of those um policies and practices but as a general rule we're not required we're a little bit different okay thank you for that information i appreciate that i do think it would be worth taking a look at the 808 policy just in case there's something that they have that we think is great we wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel we could use it or borrow it and modify it to include certain

130uh things like medical cannabis if they already have if they have something that's tested and it's worked then we definitely don't need to reinvent the wheel now as i'm looking through the policy i don't see anything about the eap the employee assistance program or any supplementary resources or services to provide support i think it would be important to include that in policy and procedure that way staff is aware that the eap is available to them and supervisors should also be recommending the use of eap as much as possible i know that human resources does an excellent job of publicizing eap services what i would say is that if we want to include information about eap services that that would be something that would probably be a little bit better suited to a regulation um so

131we're we're certainly i'm certainly open to that so we i understand that we need to do a little bit more work on this particular policy and yes thank you this is um sukay i am really just in support and i second what board member jan said i think there are some adoa policies that would lend themselves very well um whether or not um aseb is a system a agency and i i would say that the alcohol and drug policy would be one of those thank you get any other questions for ms murphy okay thank you miss murphy um next up is 704 cons this was on the consent agenda item approval policies gcd and gcch marie murphy director of policy government relations this was on the consent agenda item and now it is not um

132so these these particular policies cover um situations for individual asdb staff members gcch covers bereavement leave and the main difference that is being proposed with that particular policy is that staff members uh will now be expected to require some kind of um supporting documentation by submitting a copy of an obituary a prayer card copy of a death certificate basically just to verify that there was actually a death in the family and then gcd discusses annual leave and holidays and the main difference in that that we're proposing is that a non-exempt employee will be compensated hour for hour of additional pay at the current hourly rate and working on a holiday has to be approved by the superintendent or the designee go ahead thank you president nigro what prompted the revision of this policy how did

133this come up this policy was revised at the request of human resources oh and and uh director piott would like to go ahead and offer you a little bit of additional information on why anita piatt here are you referring to both policies or one in particular both policies okay so for the bereavement leave historically our policy has always stated that you could only have one a year and so with the covet pandemic there are situations where employees were you know losing family members in multiple situations and so it was a hardship and so that's why we updated that policy and what was the reason for the second policy so for the second policy for the holiday leave we wanted to address that staff members if they were going to work on a holiday it had

134to be approved meaning those were essential um functions that needed to be carried out over a holiday and so that's why that was changed great thank you for that first one some of the questions that i um had were answered by the uh answer that i got i did i didn't realize that we weren't under 8008 it does make sense now now that i know that are there any opportunities or were there any opportunities to compare this policy to adoa's policy for example uh adoa says that if you have any out of state travel is a mandatory five-day bereavement something like this should be at an individual discretion if something occurs then it would be a three-day bereavement if something else occurs then it would be a five-day bereavement for example yes we did review

135ada's policies and so i believe ours mimics there's where it's um three days for in-state and then five days for a out-of-state or longer travel time right but in here it says may approve and i do have some concern that if a person is out of state and if there's an out of state death and the person puts in the request and it is denied i would don't think that would be fair or reasonable i think that there should be certain language in here for out-of-state travel just making that note to the board um we uh it's certainly possible that we can pass this policy and then ask for another one to account for that come back next next time and i guess i would say that because it says may approve we wouldn't want

136someone to think automatically based off where the funeral is at obviously out of state would be five days but if there's an exceptional long travel time let's say somebody lives in tucson and they're traveling to the four corners that they may not be going out of state it may be still in arizona but that's a far distance to travel for that that funeral exactly and that's why i think that it should be more clearly delineated that way it's not at the discretion of an individual if it's let's say more than a four hour drive hypothetically then that would make more sense if it's out of state that makes sense i i don't want it to be a decision that's made at a lower level and not have it be equitable i want everyone to have

137the same benefit from the policy so for the extent for the extended leave for bereavement leave that would be need required to be proved by the superintendent and or the designee but again in here it says may and so i know that the adoa regulations say or policy says that if it's an out of state death they automatically are given five days of bereavement to keep things equitable and i think that in here you might want to say all right testing okay okay so for example this is only a hypothetical if it is a for if someone is going to a funeral that's four hours away then they would be given two days that way it's more clearly defined in the policy so just to clarify what you're recommending is to put in there that

138the the um approval of additional days would be for four hours or more is that what you're recommending i think it could go one of either ways if an employee has an out of state death i think that they should automatically be given five days which would be in compliance with the adoa policy that's already in place it's and secondly or you know this is another option if someone had to go somewhere and let's say it was at least four hours or further away then they would automatically be given those five days i i'm working with hypothetical numbers here and i think that's something that could be uh worked on but the term may in there does make me nervous i think that there should be certain parameters that if a then b or if

139c then d someone is given three days or five days okay okay um it has been another hour and fifteen minutes so we do need to take a break for the interpreters so let's hold that thought and come back at 6 57. okay everyone it is uh 6 57 we are at approval of policies um so i know that there's been some discussion of potential amendments to this um you know one option is just not to pass policies right now and have them come back next time in september the other time is to uh pass one well right we can pass one or both um and then have another amendment uh come up at the next meeting you know it's really up to the board this is board member chance president nigro i move that

140we pass that we approve both of the policies with the understanding that we would like to have the opportunity for continued revision on bereavement leave and that's something that we'll talk about get updated language at the next board meeting can we pass a policy that we're not accepting no we can pass the policy and then they'll be further provisions okay gotcha all right okay yeah the other part is not really for the motion it's just awesome so i'm just saying we're gonna um the motion to clarify is to pass the policies but the staff understands that further revision is likely gonna be warranted or at least explore to the next meeting this is uk i second that motion uh all in favor aye aye okay any opposed no and then we're going to go on

141to 705 information discussion item on votes person position superintendent reichman hello this is superintendent reichman i will take this brief i just wanted to share with you the board of directors that we have just hired a new unboxed person for asdb this person is miss donna williams you have her bio in the board docs agenda please take a few minutes to take a look at that he is a classic practicing attorney that focuses on conflict resolution outside of the courtroom she has expertise in mediation she works with individuals organizations and small businesses to resolve conflicts using specific mediation techniques she happens to be an instructor with the university of phoenix she teaches courses on criminal justice effective communication and mediation she also works with the arnona department of education she works with parents who have

142children with disabilities who are disagreeing with school officials on idea requirements and services being provided to those builders in public schools she served as a mediator in those situations to resolve those conflicts so she has considerable special education expertise there's a bachelor's degree in sociology from university of california in san diego her law degree is from the university of california davis she is licensed to practice as an attorney in nevada maryland and in arizona she will begin to work with us next week monday july 11th i will be sending out an email to the agency sharing information about miss williams to the agency and to the community as well as contact information and how to reach out to her yes questions from us that staff would like someone to speak with as well as other

143stakeholders including the community and that's what i wanted to share with you this evening no action required just for your information thank you superintendent are there any questions for the superintendent this is linda i just have a couple of things that i'm wondering about and i and i may have um overlooked this from previous conversations uh i think that this came up a couple meetings ago and a lot of that information has left my mind i'm wondering about the frequency of work what do you have in mind or what is the agreement with ms williams and what would her compensation look like how has that been arranged just as a board member i would like to know that information and please do forgive me if this is something we talked about and i just forgot

144there was a lot going on in those previous meetings all right um miss williams is working part-time she can work up to 19 hours a week we are not providing benefits we are giving her a direct hourly rate i cannot share that information in this public forum but i am happy to share that information in an email to the board [Music] okay thank you i appreciate that are there any other questions casing none we're going to go to 7.07 approval of minutes of the regular board meeting of may 5th 2022 the special board meeting of may 25th 2022 and the finance committee meeting of april 28 2022 this is on the consent agenda and now it is not okay um if there are no comments i move that we remember james sure thank you president

145niagara just trying to get that document pulled up appreciate your patience i'm looking through the meeting minutes and i noticed that there was one objection that was noted in the minutes many of my other objections on specific policies and issues were not included in the minutes i do think that is an important thing that we need to include for the record i would like because i made comments when i made my objections and i think it's also important to include some of that negative language that was used um is there a negative language in particular that you are uh would like to see in there yes i can give you an example terms like being ridiculous terms like being called an things like that that's important i'm sorry who i don't recall that ever being

146said by anyone at the meeting it is on the record it is on a recording so it is there and i i was able to view that and who okay it i i watched it afterwards because i was unable to and it is on the recording i i'm not sure by whom but it is on the recording i'd i'd like to go back and take a look at that um you know in terms of the the specific um you know uh points i think we can we can update that um and we can go back and look at the recordings anything in particular like to have on there for the other ones we can move to accept the other minutes okay so i moved to except minutes for april 28th and may 5th okay uh

147all executive okay all in favor aye aye aye any opposed no okay um 808 call the public call the public on non-agenda items we have two that were submitted and sue k will summarize they're they're actually very different the first non-agenda item was submitted by marcus titus in regard to the assistant superintendent um so the overall concern is that um the changing environment of asdb as far as the number of students dramatically dropping here on the the campus and in the residential programs and the concern of how to either a increase those numbers or make this a viable campus again and they're just their concern of wanting to see this be a place like it was when they were in in school here um and the second is a comment from samantha moore um in

148re and the subject line reads board president needs to go um and it just in summary it is saying that president nigro is oppressive and has discriminated against the death he did not listen or handle board meetings effectively with deaf board members and this is how he acts towards the agency that will impact the campus as a whole uh thank you and then we go to 8.02 discussion possible auction item agenda items for the next regular board meeting scheduled for september 8th in tucson and we're post work study on the master facility plan uh so here sorry it's been a three-hour meeting [Music] well i was just going to introduce the item so we have um you know potential agenda items for september um and then uh in tucson it looks like october 20th we

149did a doodle um poll before the meeting uh looks like october 20th is going to be the date for the master facility plan work study session as i mentioned the master facility plan is going to be a big push for the second half of the year and then going forward it was the one to find where it is likely going to be the one finding uh from the auditor general um is the uh that we have to address the facilities and again when we get that report uh in october we'll see in great detail and the board will get a draft of that um you know in advance um the agency to my knowledge has not gotten a draft yet we only have those um uh oral summary of a preliminary finding so there'll be

150a draft and those a whole process before we get to final but that final should happen in october so we'll have some weeks to review it or some days to review it in detail but again that's going to be an important thing is to take a look at our facilities plan and try to move forward president nigro this is uk this is something we have brought up kind of here and there in board meetings in the past and i know that superintendent reichman has held town hall meetings for community stakeholders i would like to touch on that again and again suggest that [Music] that there be board involvement in those one of the things i think just based on the comments that have come up in recurrent meetings i think one of the things that

151we need to address in a town hall kind of forum is sort of the evolution of asdb i think a lot of the concerns and comments that have been brought to the attention of the board based on how asdb used to be and how vibrant it used to be as a campus i think the community needs to understand the responsibility of asdb under idea as opposed to how it might have run prior to idea and public law 94-142 i you know understanding this as being a least restrictive environment and how that needs to be identified before students can be here i think is some of why we see some of the the comments that we keep getting so i think if we could address that possibly in a town hall where um superintendent reichman kind

152of does an evolution and possibly have board there to hear community concerns and even ideas and suggestions for how we should move forward i second that and i'm in support of that as well this is linda i support that very much okay and then linda i think earlier in the meeting you had mentioned you wanted to have um you know perhaps a small work study on the strategic plan is that is that correct yes okay um if the board would like to do that we can i don't know that i would call it small but i would like to have okay sure um we can do the the doodle poll again um i'm not sure when the timing of that will be it will probably be in late november or early december based on our

153current schedule um but we can we can do that and then set the date via the doodle poll like we normally do okay sounds good thank you thank you i do actually have one more thing that i would well a couple of things that i would like to mention sure i'm not sure if this would necessarily require any action but at least for some discussion um i i've not always known whether something should be an agenda item or something should be a work study item but there is something that i've uh discussed with superintendent reichman um so when it comes to a policy establishing a new policy or changing an existing policy policy if i recall um and if this is a memory that has stayed with me from when i first joined the board

154my very first year on the board there was a policy committee and i do remember sitting on that policy committee once wanting to learn about that and i sat with a couple of board members here who who are here present currently in this meeting um and what i'm wondering is does that policy committee still exist or where are we at with that um so i would like i would like to see that policy committee function continue to function i do think that like with our finance committee and um having a policy committee to have more in-depth conversations um and be able to bring back information and recommendations to the full board i think that would help us run more efficiently and effectively and stick to um to more efficient timelines and so that's something that

155i wanted to suggest it was erecting that policy committee media or policy committee that doesn't currently exist and if it if we could then i would like to stay on that and have a couple other board members join me i'm not sure what needs to happen in order to for that to occur president sure so we can agenda is that for another meet for the next meeting um but the you know the the short answer is a number of years ago um someone who's not the former president of the board who is not on the board right now um kind of in a in a meeting just said okay we'll have a policy committee and you know you two are on it um and that was uh and that that's what he said um as

156we looked at it later um the you know there is a policy that uh says there that the special president formed committees um should be uh for special purpose and should be ad hoc and for a limited time and have a set end date that the only standing committee is the finance committee so to continue to have a policy committee or to have a policy committee we'll need to update our other policy that says there's a standing committee of finance and then there's a standing committee of a policy committee so we can do it if the board wants to do it but we have to change and i don't know the number of the letters of the policy offhand but we do need to change that to make a policy committee as a standing committee

157that doesn't have an end aid and isn't for a specific purpose um just also for a point of clarification that we as as david said it was sort of just fallen told um previously and but there are a couple of us that do um do read-throughs and ask questions and provide comments and feedback to maria murphy when she is doing red lines um so i i and i'm one of those people um so i i don't know if that is what you are meaning or if you are looking to have a specific committee that meets on a regular basis to discuss the policies or to just discuss the the changes that the hr team and maria murphy are making to policy so i'm i guess i'm asking for clarification sure yeah absolutely um i would

158like to be able to ask more questions and um and get into the why of certain things and get clarification and have time to have that conversation outside of the regular board meeting we can bring that information back um with you know three committee members um and i think it would be more efficient in terms of time and give us a little bit better balance or more fairness in examining those policies i think i think a three-person committee is sufficient um and you know if we are able to express our view and take the time to really talk through it um you know i think that we would preemptively address a lot of the questions and concerns the board might bring up in a public in a policy conversation at a board meeting right and

159so it gives us an opportunity to have different views shared so hopefully that makes sense i agree to take that clarification okay um thank you we can um superintendent uh right if you're gonna make a note to agenda is that for the next time uh to change the policy at least talk about it um you know i add that anything on you know that this agenda goes up usually before you know the friday before meeting uh you know you can always email anyone any of the staff um if you have any questions you can email ms murphy about a policy or or anyone miss cooper mr martin the superintendent right men you can always ask them questions about why is this on here what's the back story here what's the context help me you know

160help me understand this um i do understand what you're saying i am if we couldn't ask those questions in advance and things like that and i think that it has a bit of a different feel than three people sitting together and really talking through things in that moment it's a much more organic conversation rather than i send an email and they get an answer and then they send another email i want to see those different perspectives and i want to get into a dialogue about some of these things and for myself as a deaf board member um i i feel like i really want to have that that contact that eye contact that physical contact where we can be together in a room and really and feed off of each other learn from each other

161i don't want to be isolated um and have that siloed kind of information sharing only if this is the right question is asked at the right time i think it would make it more collaborative and so that's why i brought that up so i have a follow-up comment if that's okay sure yes okay thank you i have discussed that with superintendent reichman um i want her view um her input and i feel like um as a board member um it could be a work study i'm not i'm not entirely sure um i know that we've got a lot to do coming up in terms of work studies already but in terms of the board and the school the agency staff as well and i'm sure sue k is aware i would like to look into

162what is called power privilege and depression plus autism that could be a workshop or a training or that kind of concept i think it's important for us to sit together and talk about what those things mean power privilege oppression autism and i think for the board it is important to to sit and listen to um to that information and so um you know i would like to know from the superintendent what her vision is i know she's had some ideas on some work that she's been doing and i want that to be on the record so thank you this is the internet's weightless those speaking to power privilege and oppression we don't have formal training specific to that we are developing and have developed training pertaining to the deaf community the deaf culture and american

163sign language that we're beginning to provide to these staff members as they come to asub as new employees again we're on the front end of rolling that out but obviously when we talk about the deaf community the deaf culture in american sign language the topics of power of tribulation and oppression are intermixed into those discussions i looked at and i have spoken about this before and one idea that is being presented is some kind of cultural awareness sensitivity training to the board of directors as a collective and if this that interests board members individually and collectively i am certainly open to researching training opportunities and setting those up for members of asub board of directors thank you this is linda thank you superintendent reichman um and that is exactly why i brought this up because

164now i as a certified deaf interpreter um and sue k as an interpreter as well working outside with the community are finding a lot of discussion about power privilege and oppression and this is a very important topic and we're having to do a lot of self-assessment and self-reflection um it's making us better making personally me a better interpreter and i think that it would be a great thing for board members to dig into and i think most of the board members on this board are privileged if we're being honest um and i won't i won't speak to power and other things but i do think that it's important that um we are able to have that conversation so we can ensure that we're having uh showing mutual respect for each other and that we are

165a strong leading body and so that is some training that i've had to take um online and i um it has been very useful and i thought that those perspectives might be useful um for the board in my four years here i have seen um i've seen a need for that i think that it's an issue that needs to be raised and superintendent thank you for um listening president nigel uh i will turn it back to you thank you thank you can i add one more piece to that um in support of what linda is saying i think also um you know we i have brought it up here in regards to the um ombudsman position i i think it needs to be a larger agency goal as far as diversity equity inclusion and accessibility

166and i think as board members we need to make sure we are doing our part to emulate that as best as possible and be role models in that way and i i would support any type of training that as a board member that we could participate in i know that there are um there's things out of harvard and a few other places on implicit bias assessments and then follow-up trainings and things like that and i i just think it would be good for us to sort of do a little self-analysis and check ourselves all right thank you sue kane you know with that i'll move that we set the proposed work-study uh for october 20th and that we have one at a date to be named later about the strategic plan and the progress thereof

167this is board member james i've been thinking since linda and sue k made their comments also prior to the meeting a community member did come up to me and give me their thoughts and their opinions uh it was a staff person who told me that the the board is dysfunctional and that was something that was brought to my attention and so i feel like maybe a board retreat might help bring the board together and it was really a valid point and a good suggestion something that i've been thinking over and especially as linda and sue k made their comments i suggest that the board takes some time to get together privately and to talk about why we're here you know we're here for the kids and the executive team is here for the kids the

168staff the teachers those who work in transportation instructional aides support staff we're all here for the kids and so we need to get back to a position where we're remembering the reason that we're here and we're here for the kids and it's something that we always need to keep in the back of our mind and so i suggest that we perhaps consider a retreat or some opportunity to get together to talk things over because whether we like it or not part of that sunset audit and part of the master facilities plan will require some tough decisions and we want to be able to make those decisions with the kids best interest in mind and we need to focus on our ability to work together to get that to that place okay um we uh we

169certainly can do that in the the context of the november december meeting um you know again it can be in private it's got to be open um doesn't necessarily have to be broadcast or recorded but it does have to be open to the public and properly noticed president nigro we have done similar to work study as a retreat where it was open to the public we just did not allow for let's just say we were able to contain commentary and include public in part of that discussion yeah no no we've certainly done it before we can we just you know we have to follow the rules yeah agreed okay i mean we can certainly do that on the meeting for the strategic plan so again i've moved to set that meeting on a date to

170be determined and set the october 20th date for the master facility plan is there a second i second uh all in favor hi hi hi any opposed no okay um action item 9.01 at german this is commissioner james oh sorry yes pv thank you just wanted to i wanted to make sure that we continued the discussion for future agenda items for future board meetings there are two things that i think are important that we need to consider as future agenda items first i think as a board we do need to get together and consider possible ramifications of policy changes when it comes to contracts i we may need to get the assistant ag feedback on that i want to make sure that we're all on the same page with the common understanding of our responsibilities

171when it comes to the contracts make sure that we have full understanding secondly we also need to recognize and understand excuse me sorry that for language acquisition we are actually incorporating early learning and that we have something on the agenda to talk things over so we can see those specialized services identified and provided for early intervention for those who are birth to three plus for those who are in preschool i also would like to continue the discussion of the asl specialists in the k-12 arena and also the funding sources and that could be something that the finance committee could talk over i thought that uh that was a decision that had already been made i thought that we were already providing that service in early intervention but we are not providing those comprehensive services like

172o m evaluation services for students who are blind but those are services that we should be providing to the students students long before they come onto campus when they're in that home environment so we need to have a discussion about how we can ensure that those resources are in place in those areas that's an area that the board needs to take action to address okay um superintendent cube no not the same i know we're going to 9.01 action item adjournment um you move to adjournment i do move thank you sir a second this is uki second uh all in favor say hi hi any any opposed all right all right uh thank you everyone uh thank you to the staff i know we're back in person again thank you for producing a great meeting [Music]