ASDB Special Board Meeting (05/25/2022)

001okay it is 4 p.m and the asdb board meeting is now live hello everyone uh it is 4 pm now it's time set for the special board meeting uh of the asdb board of directors uh just quickly i'll do the call to order i don't see sue k here now so i will do it um david nigro is present lynn davison is not president aaron wonders president mike gordon present dean howard president sue cake and ifill uh is not president linda bove linda is not president brittany buchanan i'm present and tv chance okay uh great so we have three four five um six so we we can proceed uh we'll go to uh 2.01 information and discussion item non-renewal of contract with desert voices for preschool services um you know on on this one you

002know the reason that we're here today is uh the board was informed uh last week that um the superintendent decided not to renew the contract for desert voices the board knows that the voices is one of the nonprofits that provides education to some students on behalf of the agency there is a preschool contract there's also a first free contract that's not effective this is just preschool when we look at that at who that affects and really the reason why this had to be a special meeting and not um you know put on the july agenda uh there were three children three families uh that were set to go to those voices uh and uh next year in in the you know starting in august uh and now that's that's in jeopardy they can't do that

003uh in the manner in which uh they were intending so because there are three families that were affected by this uh you know we i wanted to call the special meeting um and and talk about it uh and i wanted to get uh you know people's thoughts on it you know certainly for me i'm not here to take away choice for families especially with just a couple of months before the next school year um so i uh i'm certainly very concerned about it even if it were just one family but here we have three so you know in this item you know the next item on the agenda we'll talk about policy changes and why we propose some of those but but here i just wanted to get the board's opinion on uh you know

004on this action or or anything that anyone wanted to say about this about this topic dean david i i agree with what you're saying i'm concerned about the three families that we're getting ready to go to desert voices i'm totally in agreeing agreement with the whole um issue of choice i hope that becomes a topic and then my biggest question is why did we actually cancel this contract so hopefully those will get answered in this conversation right there there is the the substantive issues of why uh it was not renewed and in a moment we can have i can see tv's hand is up but in a moment we can have the superintendent talk about that and and the board can talk about that uh you know but in terms of the the second half

005of that is what we're going to do with those three families and how we're going to make sure that there's you know a continuity of services so um uh pv i think your hand was up yes thank you president david nigro so i'm trying to understand the situation particularly with what has happened and i feel like i'm walking into this meeting not knowing enough it does seem like some of the board members might know more than others so i'm not too sure entirely where any additional information is coming from i think there seems to be a little bit of maybe unfairness to the rest of the board if some of the members appear to know more than other members i just wanted to make sure that we have that clarity in the information and the

006transparency just to make sure that the information is available to the entire board at the same time i don't want us as a board to jump to any conclusions before we completely understand the why and what is the behind the scenes workings so if the concern is the three families at the same time i do want to make sure that there are appropriate funds and fiscal decisions that are being made for the entire agency so i would definitely like to hear more from superintendent annette reichman and from dr benedek i understand that she does oversee the contract for the services provided for preschool so i would like to see and hear their thoughts and perspectives and explanations so that way we can if we have any additional questions or further discussion if this decision is

007is making sense for us uh right petey i'm not sure uh what other information you uh may be interested in um you know but again there's two two kind of subtopics to this i mean the substance of why and then what is the agency's plan for those three and and the superintendents assume generations emailed to the board explain that plan uh that was to all of the board uh i'm not i'm not happy with that plan um and i want to talk about it um but if you want to talk about substance we can do that superintendent reichman yeah if you can explain my goal is the superintendent or two folder two goals one of the goals is to provide the best educational support to all of our students at asdb my second goal is

008to make best use of the agency's resources and that is the best use of the taxpayers money so that is how i framed or how i framed all of my decisions here that framework was also applied to the decision to take a look at the options of renewing the contract with desert voices this is for their preschool services i would like to now turn it over to dr benedict because her and i have been in conversation for almost a year about this decision we did not make this decision overnight we took a lot of time thoughts and consideration and collected a lot of data to try to make sure that our impact on students were minimal so dr benedict hi good afternoon superintendent reichman and superintendent assistant superintendent rex and cooper and board president night

009grill and members of the board i want to first thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share more information about this decision um before i go into anything though i'd like to clarify whether or not everybody has received the summary that annette provided i don't know if she provided it just to to president nigro or if it went to the whole board but it outlined the why has everyone seen that document yes that uh dr benedict that email went to the entire board okay perfect thank you so you have there that you have that to refer to um it outlines um bullet points where we were three years ago why we entered into this contract um what circumstances are now that led us to this decision as well as the impact um one thing

010i want to clarify is um the three students that are being referenced that's actually not accurate um as that there are there are not three students enrolled there that are um going to be going there again next that's not an accurate statement i hesitate to go into any detail there because there are only three students and i would be completely breaking confidentiality if i went into any detail um about those children because there are so few of them and so i want to hesitate uh to do that but if you refer to the impact you'll see in the first bullet point there are more details there right and we see that i know that it's a very small number of children uh there is there are there are two children that are slated there are

011three children that would be there are are intended to go there next year next year two of which would be new uh one of which is their now um but my understanding of you know from this email uh that students being reevaluated that placement might change um but but it at least as of the date of this email last week it hasn't and again we don't have to talk more about it but there are three from the date in this email there are three students who were expecting to be at desert voices starting in the fall and are now no longer going to be able to do that possibly yes two students whose meetings have been held the district has decided on the lre the lre was desert voices i want to remind but the

012process hasn't started yet the institutional voucher has not been applied for yet um everything hasn't transferred over the ieps were just held in the last couple of weeks i want to i'm sorry go ahead i think it's i understand that the institutional voucher i mean it's we're two months away from the school year but they're slated to go there they're families and they believe that they are going there of course and so let me explain a little further for and i apologize if some of you already know this um but the decision as to what the least restrictive environment is for a child is not driven by funding source a district makes the decision as to what the least restrictive environment is for a child and how it's funded isn't parent's concern the district has

013to figure it out and so those districts i make very very clear in every one of these meetings that i attend and the only reason i attend is if the district is interested in desert voices or fbc same applies there they're interested in a possible placement there the reason i'm at the table at that point in time i'm not part of the iep team i am a possible play we are a possible placement there to share what our options are it when it comes to the decision of the least restrictive environment that does not involve asdb that involves the district and the family that are the iep team if if that team the parent and district decide that desert voices i'll use of course as an example here is the least restrictive environment that's where

014the child's going the institutional voucher became available a couple of years ago when we entered into this contract that allows districts the option to enroll the children with us since we are an lea now and then basically we then now of course are the lea and we are privately placing the child at desert voices or fbc so with that said whether the voucher is available or not has no bearing on whether a child can go to desert voices or not we of course know though that there are many factors involved when districts make decisions we all probably know that there are districts that are very open to looking at private placements for their students there are districts that really want to keep their their students in house and do everything they can to provide services

015there and certainly money is always a consideration a district's always going to look out for their bottom dollar there are multiple ways in which a child can attend desert voices or fbc they can be institutionally vouchered through us if the district so chooses the district can privately place them there there are many students that attend desert voices and fbc where we are not involved at all where the district privately places them there and then of course in the event that the parent and the district disagree to the placement and the district does not agree to an out-of-district placement then the family of course has their due process rights and they can unilaterally while they go to mediation with the district if they choose they may privately enroll themselves they may unilaterally enroll their child at

016desert voices just like fbc if desert voices or fbc say that it's an appropriate placement that they can meet the child's needs and then there are scholarships available and they work with families i don't get in i'm not involved in any of those decisions says at that point asdb would not be a part of it so with the cancer not i'm sorry not the canceling but the not renewing um our contract was up june 30 will be up june 30th and the decision to not renew well based on all of the factors that you saw in that um handout um it does not it does that does not mean those children won't go there they're out there iup say that's where they're going i i understand that's where i say that they're going but the

017way that they go there and the the path that they go there is is gone and i understand that you you know the district can privately place but that is far more complicated than what you have described um and the reason for that is the the the amount that the agency pays to desert voices is a deeply discounted rate versus what districts will pay so the desert voices came to us in january and gave a report um i'll refer to that right now their preschool tuition at that time january of this year was thirty three thousand nine hundred and seventy five dollars that's what a district would pay to privately place at desert voices the contract rate the discounted full-time placement was twenty three thousand seven hundred maybe three dollars that happens to be the

018amount of the voucher that the agency gets i will say i believe there's a difference that when there is a child that the district only gets half that voucher money i believe for preschool because it's half day um and not the full amount we get the agency and the institutional vouchers the full amount the 23 783 so it's over ten thousand dollar difference um so now what those families are facing is instead of you know i know their iep says that but their district is going to have to make a choice because the districts hold the ips in this area the district's going to have to make choice uh do i pay the extra ten thousand dollars to privately place or do i serve them in-house uh which they might do uh or do i

019i mean i'm not sure what the other options are really i mean i know we have zero men and that's it but that's the that's the financial reality of it their enrollment at desert voices is in no way guaranteed with the discontinuing of this of this contract tv this is tv uh it seems like dr benedict you wanted to respond i'll go and let you have that opportunity again i i want to emphasize that the decision as to where a child is educated is not driven by funding and where the money is coming from to send the child there and like you just acknowledge there is a lot to that president nigro but that is the responsibility of the district it is not asdb's responsibility to make sure that districts are doing what they're supposed

020to do and make the appropriate decisions for children we're there as a resource to provide our professional expertise um when when called upon um and for any district who just had a meeting and determined that the lre was desert voices to turn around two weeks later and say oh it's not the lre anymore that's not that's going to be very questionable that's going to call things into question i mean the problem is we wouldn't even be having this conversation have we just renewed the contract and that child could go to desert voices right and and pv wants to talk and i'll let him talk but the the fact of the matter is the contract been renewed that child could have gone to desert voices wouldn't have cost the agency a dime we would have gotten

021the voucher and forwarded onto those voices um and now that's now that's objective so uh tv yes thank you president nico and i would also like to remind the board that we want to make sure that communication access is equitable it's important that people do recognize that in the appropriate order that one is called on that we do have equitable opportunities to speak so please if we can request to be fair to one another when we are putting in our input for the variety of board members so with that said i am trying to understand the fiscal component aside with it being the school district responsibility that aside the contract itself even aside can you help me understand can asdb provide the similar lsl services that deserve voices is able to provide yes and thank

022you for asking that um i live eat and breathe this every day i have for the last year both desert voices and fbc um and those two contracts while they are set up similarly um they are different and that fbc has what we can't offer at this time we have what desert voices offers we didn't three years ago we only had a few individuals in-house who were trained in strategies um to promote listening and spoken language they were new to us they were primarily in our birth to three program we did not have the capacity we also had a half-day program we split children by age and not by language level we did not have a scope and sequence there were many many reasons why we sought out and put out an rfp to see

023if someone could assist us in providing those services with the intent to continue to grow our own capacity to provide that we now have that we now have a full-day program with a scope and sequence with 30-minute rotations just like desert voices does of intense language instruction that depending on the child's mode of communication and that one-to-one or two-to-one one instruction is in asl if that is what's specified on the child's iep it is uh spoken language strategies are used um with that child with another child in another classroom with another teacher well versed in that on their way to certification and so we do offer those the primary difference is when you're at desert voices you will not see any sign language in the environment at asdb of course you will not see it

024in those 30-minute intense language instructional sessions but you will see it on the playground you will see it around the school because it's a deaf school or i'm sorry so i just want to make sure that i'm understanding you correctly dr benedict currently at asdb you can provide an lsl program and that is was not provided previously and i think that's a great significant improvement in the growth of asdb currently does asdb have a gap in services that desert voices can fulfill or will need to fulfill again no we offer that i'm sure dean will attest to though as well there is controversy within our field that sends some people believe strongly that even though we may offer a you know listening and spoken language approach in those one-on-one intense language sessions that it's not

025a true listening and spoken language program because when the children are on the playground or in other environments there is sign language however we rely on research that tells us that that doesn't interfere with the communication development of children it only promotes it um to be able to have um exposure to two languages another thing that we do very differently than we did before we used to offer what were called spoken english classes dual classes and asl classes kids arrived to school went to their three-year-old or four-year-old classroom either listening a spoken language asl or total communication dual where they spoke and signed at the same time we have moved away from that it's been a challenge for a lot of people who have for many years educated children using total communication but what we

026promote now is that we are either sign only or voice only because when you present both languages at the same time you degrade the quality of each language and you're simply presenting broken two broken languages to a child so if there are both signing and speaking children in an environment together like on the playground we do what's called sandwiching and we'll either sign speak sign or vice versa speak sign speak and it's working and it's beautiful um i know dean's been waiting for quite a while dean did you want to jump in yeah this is being a little equity equity is exactly right so this is pv uh all right president nigro if you could establish some sort of order to how we can communicate i want to make sure that everyone has an opportunity

027to add to the conversation and ask their questions perhaps one board member at a time can ask a question when that board member is done then they can turn off their camera and the next person can hey how about you give other people a chance to talk to because so far you've commanded the whole conversation okay i don't appreciate the accusation i'm a little baffled because initially when the president was talking i was waiting to be recognized and i want to make sure everyone has equal opportunity in order to make sure that you are recognized and that we have a clear means of communication and if that means the president needs to call to order um i would like to make a motion that one person be able to ask their questions and move on

028or if and allowing that person to finish their questions for clear communication access uh tv uh this is david nigro you know we uh we don't have a time limit right now i want everyone to be able to ask their questions uh and say what they want to say um and you know on zoom it's a little bit harder to do uh then in uh you know real life when we can be together in the same room uh if you would like me to call on people i can do that that's that's fine um and that's that's the you know the convention that we had followed uh when we had zoom meetings more frequently is to have the person turn on the camera and then we would know that they would want to speak and

029i would call on the person uh you know that i noticed first um you know in in the course of the last conversation dr benedict uh recognized uh uh dean uh to speak um i think that sounds fine with me uh and if you guys want me to to call on people then that's that's fine i can do that for the rest of the meeting thank you president just more than anything i want to make sure that all board members um have equal participation just need to remember that with an interpreter there is a slight delay so it may look like a person who is signing is done but they're not in fact done yet and then when the when somebody else just speaks up i i just want to again make sure that we

030all have equal access to this meeting so again if one if you would prefer one person ask one question and then move on to the next person or do you prefer waiting for one board member to finish completely and then move on i just want to make sure everyone has equal access and there's no cultural misunderstandings during this time all right uh thank you pb i can call on uh folks um and i know that dean had his hand up before so uh dean if you wanted to speak yeah thank you president niagara this is dean so i'm trying to figure out a couple things number one if we're doing the same thing that if asdb is doing the same thing that does our voices are doing what are the outcomes and we've had conversations

031with desert voices desert voices has come to our board meeting explain what they do and explain their outcomes and my impression without a lot of the facts behind it is desert voices is actually getting better outcomes with that said what's the data that shows the comparative minutes provided and outcomes and the actual true cost per student that's one of my questions thank you dean um i i will speak to part of that and then i'll let sheena speak to the financial piece of that because um the the num the dollar amount that that president niagara has referred to does not calculate the cost that we now and cure because we are in lea we now transport desert voices has no related services so if a child needs otp anything else we provide that we have

032to provide school psychologists in the event an evaluation is needed um so there's a lot many many many more indirect costs my time my staff's time um and that does not account for that but i'll let sheena go into more detail but i can respond to um your question about outcomes um because that is what it's all about right um and desert voices serves a very different population than we do we have a variety of children who come in to us come to us some with no language some with very minimal language some from homes where there are three languages used english spanish and sign that's not the typical demographic profile of a class that starts at desert voices they have had a few students and again this is very difficult because um i do

033not ever want to become near to crossing the line of breaking confidentiality and when you're talking about but a very low incident population there's risk at doing that um but the there have been instances um where children who have gone there who had a few more needs than than just the impact of their hearing loss on their language that they have ended up going back to the district desert voices would be the first to say they did not have the capacity to serve these children they did not have the background or the knowledge um i am seeing in our own program as the students that come to us who are more and more and more involved that we too are having difficulty but we take all of these kids so if you look at the

034overall outcomes of our group and their group it's going to be different now if we desegregated that data and we just looked at those children in our program that had a similar demographic profile to the desert voices children i can have that to you in july as you know as part of the strategic plan we've been participating in odyssey and all of the data is in now from this from the fall and the spring i can tell you anecdotally that it looks very very good i can also tell you that i attended all of our preschool graduations last week and just yesterday yesterday i attended our preschool graduation in east valley and i want to give take this opportunity to come in cindy drew and her instructional assistant tommy they are the most incredible set

035of educators they are out there all by themselves doing this day in and day out and they were tasked with doing what ptsd did and that's going to a full day and that was serving the needs of both children who just spoke and children who just signed and they started the year with four children ended with seven they had four graduate yesterday i witnessed the most incredible preschool graduation not to say if you think you know the ones at asdb and pdsd were great too but what she accomplished in the same room with children who had completely different needs the way she used her space the way she used her aid she was able to provide the instruction that children needed in spoken language and the instruction that people that children needed in asl because

036her aid is deaf and she signs as well the children were all up doing their performances they were all speaking signing their parents they had grown a community there must have been 30 parents grandparents communities that we don't have at asdb at ptsd because everyone comes from so far away and it was true inclusion it was true celebration of language and these kids i've never heard kids talk like that coming out of one of our programs in the three years i've been here i mean it was phenomenal and siblings coming up and signing to their deaf little brothers and sisters and i know that's just anecdotal and like i said i'll have more quantitative data for you in july that reports being prepared thank you um on the same lines you've seen i do share

037a concern and i want to make sure that we have all the data to make sure that the decision is appropriate and correct i do want to make sure that i restate my question so currently gaps and services are there gaps and services that desert voices need to fill because asbb cannot fill those gaps and the second question related to that if there are no gaps is desert voices considered a dual service and my third question is if we do um move forward with not renewing the contract i did notice in the email it says that the contract can be renewed at any time i might i want to double check to make sure i understand correctly if we do get a student referral that does need desert voices can we as an agency go

038back into negotiations and establish a contract without any delay for that specific student's needs okay so let me make sure i have your three questions one do we not have the ability to serve children that attend desert voices and therefore do we need tester voices is that your first okay and then your second question refresh me your second question i was focused on the first and the third what was your second different gaps um that are that would require desert voices to fulfill and the third is if we the contract is not renewed and we get a referral for a specific student that needs those voices can we quickly move forward to renew that contract to make sure that so as far as any gaps okay i apologize i'm sorry um as far as any

039gaps and services um again that's a very philosophical question people would argue with me that no we don't have what desert voices has but when we look at the research and um and and what works for kids not what we think works but what is shown with research to work that the environment we're providing with both both asl opportunities in just an asl environment and then opportunities in spoken language both completely driven by each child's individualized education plan yes we offer the same instruction that desert voices offers let me repeat what i said at our last board meeting desert voice is phenomenal they have a great program they do amazing things this has nothing to do with the quality of their program or what they offer and we still and have and and plan to

040continue to have a very good working relationship with them when you have a low incident disability if you divide that's never going to be good for kids we have to support each other we have to make sure our birth to three families know that desert voices is an option come preschool we tell all our families that just like we tell them deaf mentors are available that's our job to be a hundred percent impartial and to let families know about everything that's available so no we there wouldn't be a gap in services although again you could hear some people argue that i just want to be transparent second um you had asked about if a child was referred could we still send them there not without the contract if we don't have a contract then it's

041the child the district's responsibility if an iep team in a district decides that the lre for a child is desert voices they bear the responsibility as the lea to send the child there no matter how they have to figure that out um and there i will tell you one of the ethical issues that i have personally when i sit at these meetings is there are districts that are and i'm not speaking to any one district but um this is just reality because the vouchers available they'll send them there but if it wasn't that's not what the the the iep team has determined that it's not the lre and in district is but because the parents want it then they say okay you can go and i'm all for parent choice as well but the iep

042process is it works when all the right people are at the table and parents have rights and you know the spirit of idea the iep process these contracts erode that to a degree and i won't go down that road right now but it is something i want you to put in the back of your minds and might be worth discussing later on down the road um thank you dr benedict um pb president nigro did you have more comments or questions i do have additional questions that i want to make sure that you have an opportunity to speak uh you can go ahead i i have some comments as well but uh you can go ahead and ask further thank you um yeah i just wanted to let you ask as well um wanted to follow

043up with dr benedict to clarify what she was saying about philosophies aside from a service perspective and an educational perspective can asdb provide the services that desert voices provide and it appears you said yes i just want to double clarify that you're saying at this point desert voices will be considered a dual service when we can provide the services in-house correct you're on mute all right indication of services just to clarify duplication of services if we continue would be considered duplication of services right um with our recent lea status in the past i would have said no because we aren't like a local school district but since we are now my logic follows that yeah it would be seen like a duplication of services why are we in fact ade has said as much to

044me that essentially what we're doing is the district is placing the child with us we're it's just like the child's a resident of our district and now we are privately placing them at a program that we have that we have so yes if you follow that line of thinking yes i'm not a judge okay so is that a legal issue or concern that we should be consulting with the ag in regards to with the new lea status i'll let lieutenant reichman perhaps speak to that um that's an interesting question it's not that's the simple answer um pb are you uh finished with your questioning for now just a couple more please bear with me so if the contract is not renewed and the student or parents are wanting desert voices based on the iep's team's

045decision and in that process parents still have the ability to choose desert voices just does that mean that asdb no longer is in the middle we are no longer the middle organization yes okay and so i think i'm going to hold my second question after president nigel's comment uh thank you pb uh dr bennett if you said that um we can provide uh the same services as desert voices aside from the fact of the you know where the instructions delivered set that aside in the email that superintendent rightman sent us on may 18 to the entire board she indicated that zero of the preschool teachers zero were certified in lsl zero is that is that correct uh you're on mute dr certified with listening to spoken language national certification correct we have teachers that have

046all gone through um our our five cohorts of listening spoken language with kathryn kreimer which is continuing next year we also have a new teacher coming over whose expertise is in listening a spoken language and i will tell you that they're um i i don't want to speak for sure but i last i checked there was one certified lsl teacher at desert voices and others working toward it just like we have so it's pretty equivalent so there is one i i was under the impression that they were more um maybe that's changed over time um we've had a lot of turnover yeah i was in the person there were more certified teachers that we have none at this point and and from that email we're more than a year from even hoping to get the

047earliest one that would that we would get would be in june of 2023 uh correct right and those are birth to three teachers who work with our preschool teachers and um will continue to support that process um we even have our lsl certified individual that's down in tucson she supports the entire elp program she was even supporting the co-op this last year in yuma working with those teachers whose students they were serving in the public schools used listening and spoken language okay so there are there are some differences uh uh dean i see that you had your hand up yeah i was gonna let you finish this is dean before i had the follow-up question of that comment dr benedict just said so so desert voices does not have teachers or did i hear there

048was only one teacher that is certified in lsl so they're all certified teachers of the deaf um but and again i don't want to mistake so i would have to get that that information from um deanne chapman but okay i know in the past recent past that i was aware of um their their head of educational programs who just left she um did not have her lsl certification she was working toward it um and again there's been a lot of turnover there so i i don't know but i don't know i do know they're not fully staffed with lsm people no okay because i i just had remembered hearing something again that their their teachers um have masters listen to spoken language not best studies but i don't even know if that compares because we're

049where my head's going right now is i'm trying to figure out what's an apple and what's an orange comparison of all this and i'm i'm you know the dumb guy in the room trying to understand all these acronyms and everything's going on you know so bear with me that's kind of what i had heard as far as what's going on on desert voices on the lsl side no you're fine dean and and as a matter of fact i mean that's you were not the dumb guy in the room and as a parent you've been through this and you know and um you know um there are programs uh master's programs that emphasize asl or a bilingual approach there are master's programs that emphasize the lich steam spoken language approach the recruiting that barb shrek did

050a number of years ago before i came she got a lot of teachers out of utah and they all come to us with um experience just like you're referring to some of the teachers that desert voices likely whose programs we're in listening in spoken language and in working with infants and toddlers so we are we have a lot of that in birth to three now we don't have as much um on the asl side in birth to three um that's why we work very closely with the deaf mentor so you know we're not perfectly it's hard to be all things to all people so we have these partnerships in-house and and externally um to make sure that we can provide and i know that you no one here knows me more than you've seen me

051speak a few times in the last three years but i can tell you that anyone that knows me and having been in this for almost 30 years that i would never take an opportunity away from a child to go somewhere and if i thought this contract was going to make that happen they're not renewing it i never would have been a part of this decision and i know that's you just have to take that as face value but i felt i needed to say it uh thank you dr benedict so i think we're hearing is that the although the agency's lsl capabilities are much improved over you know several years ago they they aren't the same um and it's that you know desert voices is another option um even though that there is you know

052they're both lsl or lsl like uh they're they're not depleted and i'm not sure if did you want a response was there a question yeah yeah that was that was the question i mean i think that what we've we've seen is that they're they're they don't exactly overlap uh one and we will talk about even if they did uh because there's another there's another component to this discussion but while we're talking about the substance of the programs that are offered we have an option we have two options as opposed to just one right now or or we did before this issue what i what i'm tv i see your hand just really quick if i can respond to what um president nigro just said one thing i would really encourage everyone here to do is

053come august please come to our preschool programs please go to tucson and please come to the ptsd campus and go to desert voices they would welcome you there and go and see what's happening and make your own decisions most certainly we welcome anybody anytime to walk through our programs this last year for both desert voices and us was extremely difficult in regards to staff desert voices had to start turning kids away because they didn't have enough staff either we operated with minimal minimal staff at times and they made it through the teachers the kids and we're looking forward to a year you know a year coming up here that's not laden with covid impact and and you know hopefully being fully staffed and we're just on the precipice of just taking off and we've got

054the people to do it and the people in place and if you go and you watch what they do there and you go when you watch what we do here and you still at the end of the day feel like this isn't okay then let us know please uh thank you i did observe the class uh when they had the the three different classes a couple of maybe three years ago in 2018 or 2019 um but i haven't been uh in the last year or so um before we move on to the second part of this discussion um tv did you have another question yes i did thank you president micro a side comment i can guarantee you that uh you're not the stupidest person dean just to add to that if it would be

055it would be me because i'm the one with tons of questions here to ask so i'm really trying to understand the whole picture the full scope and get a crash course on the basics right so i really do appreciate everyone's patience in my inquisitive nature to really understand based off of my reading material and the discussions that we are having here and the other board members your opinions and thoughts i really do take that so my primary concern is that i want to have all the necessary information i need to make a confident decision with whatever decision we are making to move forward in the best interest of the students and to make it clear i really don't care if it's an asl or an lsl total communication my main point is what is best

056for that particular student for them to thrive and for them to become successful so that they can be productive members of society working and to be able to contribute back to society that is my end goal that is my focus so i just wanted to make sure that we do this right because this can potentially impact have a longer impact in the long term so i think it's interesting uh there's an interesting question in regards to lsl certification that has come up now it seems that there's a limited certification pool but there is education and experience to back that up so now my perspective is how many of those teachers at asdb whether it's campus choose some ptsd how many of those teachers actually have asl certification do you mean have they passed the aslpi

057is that what you would refer to or any sort of asl specific certification if we're going to focus on lsl certification are we doing the comparative no no there's none no it's a problem we have teachers that have tried to take the aslpi in an effort to be able to administer the vcsl um but to date um we've we don't have anyone that's in a position to be able to learn to do the vcsl um we have some very fluent people um i don't know if you've met our supervisor for the preschool ptsd he has done some tremendous things with that preschool and it is by and large a is a bilingual environment there we have half of the staff um you asked if there are certified asl teachers no but half i'd say almost

058half the staff are deaf um and native signers so we do have um that as well um but no there's no asl type of certification that anyone has i appreciate that response kendra and the reason i ask is because as the only deaf person in the board today and growing up signing or not signing i don't think that we can do a distinct comparison because we need to fully understand what it's like to teach language appropriately with the grammar appropriate processes appropriate rules and structure of a language etc so i just wanted to make sure that we're being equitable when we're talking about certification and expectations for one that has lsl background for listening spoken language we should be monitoring that as well for those that teach asl for our young birth to three and

059in addition to that i just wanted to make sure that we're also recognizing and i'm really i'm curious with the question the question with the contract for desert voices if we were to provide our services in-house can we tell desert voices what we would like or what we would require for their certifications or are we i guess best more easily able to keep our certification requirements in-house if we are servicing for contracts um you could write anything into a contract as long as both parties agree and the state procurement office says that it's all right to put in in the contract um and i would have to look but the contract was three years ago and people that are there now aren't the same people but there is a a website and i will look

060up the link and all i'll be i can share it with everyone you can see who ever who in the state of arizona or anywhere has lsl certification it's public information so you you can we can look that up anytime and we can see that um and again i know they have their own in-house training we have our own in-house training um one thing i wanted to to speak to petey and i don't know if that answers your question but when you mention the lsl certification and the asl certification one thing that i i we need to get away from i feel strongly about is saying asl and lsl in the same sentence asl is a language lsl is an approach to teaching children who are deaf how to listen and speak it is a

061it is a theoretical model that in practice has shown to have great outcomes with kids but they aren't comparable asl is a language lsl is a way to teach spoken language spoken english um i think that's important to remember sometimes did i answer your second question though yes thank you dr benedict i completely understand with what you're saying a language versus an instructional model or approach i totally get your intention and i guess my intention was to make sure that whatever we are providing whether it's an lsl approach or for providing an asl as a language instructional model approach that we are equitable and that's definitely one of our our points as a support is to make sure that we are being equitable and if we just to go back a little bit our current

062contract does require that does your voices stop become lsl certified no okay so but we are requiring our staff in-house to be lsl certified right that's not written in policy anywhere no okay so then when what is the hiring requirement for lsl instructors for asdb versus to those that are hired at desert voices so interestingly most of our teachers come from programs that similar to the one i came from 30 years ago that was very generalist in nature you learned about all of the approaches and then after you got out of school and settled into your job you started to specialize in something and so we have a very diverse group of teachers with expertise um and experience and background in in teaching through a bilingual bimodal method teaching through listening and spoken language methods

063um and i can get those exact i can i can list the staff and put all their experience there for you that might be good information for the board to have i'd be happy to do that um and then you could really sit and look and and compare and i can get those from desert voices too again it's public information um you can look up on ade's website what everyone's certification is whether it's early childhood special education it's all public information and i'd be happy to gather that for you thank you thank you um dr bennett i do want to talk about the financial aspect of this again uh superintendent rickman mentioned that she didn't feel it was uh in the best interest of uh best use of public money so i do want to

064talk about that um i did mention earlier the numbers uh that were again presented just in january um discount of full-time placement uh 23 783 that's what uh asdb pays the desert voices asd or death voices uh their actual cost the cost that they would charge a district is 33 975. you know you mentioned hey there's other there are other costs there's transportation uh there's you know there's ot there's pt potentially there's nursing potentially um you know but the fact is if those children came to asdb we'd be paying for those anyway right i mean if they came to our program uh at the ptsd campus we'd be responsible for transportation still we'd be responsible for nursing we'd be responsible for pt ot and because the desert voices under the contract is just an extension

065of the campus right i mean it's it's it's a it's by contract an extension of our own campus uh is that is that correct recommend it yes correct in that um we would also of course have to provide those services however the difference being all those services that desert voices would be contracted out which is always going to carry a higher price tag than if we have our own hanal staff that's already providing it to other children in terms of the transportation we would have contract transportation we don't have we have most of the vast majority of our transportation for fbc uh and desert voices but primarily fbc because our head that hasn't been again there's only been a couple of children there this year but with fbc they're third-party contractors or we're paying parents

066to transport or we're paying districts and in but for for these children that are going to desert voices now it's a very small number but we're using private contractors for that we are paying one parent we are paying a district and i i don't recall what the third one was i have i would have to look okay do you have an idea and are we doing any other ancillary services um we are needing uh psychology and one of the reasons that the one child already left was because we could not offer um ot and the other student is needing uh a comprehensive eval including ot and we don't have that either okay i mean do you have any um information about what what those total costs would would be i mean worse again it's there's

067a difference between going through getting it from a contractor and getting to a full-time employee that's that's elsewhere on the campus i understand that but i mean how much of a difference is that at desert voices it's going to be nominal of course right now because of the very few number of students um but i can tell you that um added to the cost is the time um and the likelihood of probably not finding someone we've had an open ot position at ptsd for months and months and months and months and so much so the pressure on the ot we had that remain just left so now we have no ot's so so we'd have to use contractors in-house we can't find staff so right but the issue is we're responsible for it either way

068whether they're desert voices or whether at the ptsd campus or providing services uh we're responsible for it either way no um again i want you to keep that 23 um metric in mind you know the the cost per student that's been reported to us for last year and that was on the agenda this is on the agenda it's on board docs um for preschool is forty thousand seventy eight dollars per student um that's our average cost per student for 96 students in the agency um so we have a contract where we pay 23 000 to desert voices to place whoever goes there if no one goes there we can send zero nothing happens we send zero we don't get any voucher money we don't spend any money that's it we get 10 students we get

069five students we get the voucher money we forward it on to those invoices we have to pay some ancillary services which we pay anyway our cost per student is still again 40 000 which is a bigger number than 23 000. usually there's no math at these meetings but but there it is um our cost per student just in classroom spending is 32 540. so even if you took away the administrative overhead that causes that number to go up to four over forty thousand dollars if you took away all of that which you shouldn't because we're still spending that we're still at 32 540 which is a bigger number than 23 000 so i i if someone could help explain and and by the way cost desert voices the 33 0985 to provide those services they're

070going out and fundraising that from the community and educating our students with that private money so i want to i want someone to explain whether it's doctor bendix or is cooper or whoever i want someone to explain how it's a poor use of our funds to say we can we have these capabilities in-house let's keep them on our campus even though those services aren't equivalent as we've discussed and we're going to spend 40 thousand dollars per student as opposed to just 23 thousand dollars through the placement of those this is annette reichman i'm gonna ask assistant superintendent shayna cooper to respond to that because it's not twenty three thousand dollars per student versus forty thousand dollars per student but let's let's have assistant superintendent cooper uh really go through and explain the numbers that way

071we're all we can have a better understanding of what it means well when we look at the average cost per student uh superintendent reichman desert voices present uh the board in january and gave a slide that had that number on there which is about what the voucher amount is are you saying that number's not accurate that that that it's not that tuition is not 23 783 president nigro that doesn't include transportation and additional costs so i will turn it over to assistant superintendent cooper to explain more and i i understand it doesn't include tuition and other costs as we explained which we'd incur anyway but miss cooper you can you can speak to that but the number is 23 if i just want you to tell me first is that is that tuition number not

072twenty three thousand seven hundred eighty dollars not correct okay i grew back in february um we issued an amendment to desert voices i realized in reviewing the contract that the voucher rate that we had in an increase back in july we had agreed two three years ago when we entered into the contract that there would be no increase or decrease no difference in what the annual voucher amount was in reviewing the dollar amount desert voices was not billing us enough to agree to exactly what the annual voucher amount was that we were receiving from ade so i issued an amendment back in february to now where that amount equals 25 488 dollars which is now 141.60 which is exactly comparable to what the voucher amount is with ade so that it's a complete wash now

073right so so it's more okay so since january that number's changed but it's changed in an amount because the voucher changed so we're still passing along a hundred percent of the voucher today that is correct so the difference in terms of the 33 seventy five that they um pre the discount from what desert voices is giving us is a little less than an eighty five hundred dollar difference not the ten thousand dollar difference and you are correct in the fact that we can't necessarily compare apples to oranges in that yes the forty thousand dollars when you take a look at it does include the agency administration the transportation it would also include any facility related um components as well so the overhead should i say the non-classroom the non-instructional base now when you just focus

074on the instructional base and as you refer to it is more comparable to the 32 or 33 000 that desert voices is billing us but keep in mind that we are operating as an agency where we're running a brick and mortar whereas desert voices is not so yes it is i mean you're 100 accurate in the fact that we're passing you know there is no difference between what they're billing us versus what um the contract is and yes it is costing us more when you take in consideration all of the other additional costs that we're having to already incur whether or not we were an lea or not right now the the transportation again i i mean that's listed out as a line item yeah on that report for for preschool it was 8 700

075i mean it was not much uh on that report that's that's in you know i hear this before this meeting it's 8 700 for the entire preschool um 96 children um so it's it's it's not that much i know that the overhead i mean the overhead we talked about the administrator over it i still think we spent forty thousand dollars um and even if you were to discount that and somehow imagine that we didn't spend the extra eight thousand to get four thousand um we're still at 32 540 which is a a higher number than 25 um and and 40 is a larger number than all of them so you know can you and again we've all agreed that transportation and ot and tt all ancillary services we're responsible for either way um but when

076the children come go to desert voices we pay them 25 000 a year about and when they come here we end up paying them just for the just for the instruction for the class of instruction we end up paying our you know costing the agency 32 540 um and then overall including the administration 40 000 so so how is it a poor use of resources to spend far more first cost per student by educating them in-house than doing it at a at the private in the private sector um president elijah do you want me to answer that question before i know i i mean it's a real question i'm not answering it i mean that's a real question you're telling us that it's not a good we're being told that it's not a good use

077of state resources uh to get to to send folks to these children to desert voices right but when we look at the dollars expended we're paying for thousands and thousands of dollars more uh like fifteen thousand dollars more to educate them in-house and if we could do it better and we could show that i mean that's one thing that doesn't matter but i i i have a hard time being told that we're wasting money by privately placing a dozen voices when it costs far more to do it in-house well i do want to clarify that if the number of students were to increase then the revenue would be higher than what the cost per student is and again we're talking about two to three students also when we're talking about resources we're not just talking

078about fiscal we're talking about the time the money the dollars the people we're talking about all agency resources so to focus just on the fiscal component to me would not be an accurate assumption to make when we're focusing on that and so i can't argue the case if we were to just to solely focus on fiscal are you incorrect no you're not wrong in that aspect when you look at the dollars again i've always said the data does not lie but you also have to take into consideration we're only talking about 96 students when we're looking at the preschool numbers and again if that number were to increase it would be a little bit higher so again and we also have to focus on classroom versus non-classroom spend so again you are accurate in that

079respect i'm i'm glad that i i'm able to do greater than a lesson um but and you're right there are other agency resources that are not incurred when the students go to this voices right um they're just not incurred uh you know they're on a different campus um and the agency doesn't have to expend uh resources in terms of time of of ftes to service those children um but they do if they were on campus for other you know for other purposes so you know again not not just the the the fiscal part of it but the time expended is all less um i mean by placing them at desert voices desert forces is going out and raising that difference between their actual cost which is closer to 34 000 from the community and they're

080using that to educate our children and saving the state money now i mean we currently only send three children there and again and let's not forget that they're gonna be three children whose presence there is going to be jeopardized by this decision but from a fiscal perspective it just doesn't make any sense to not if a child is is indicated to go there and that's the appropriate environment for that child it doesn't make any sense for us not to have this and by the way this contract if we sent no one we would incur no cost right we would incur zero costs we would send no no children there we wouldn't get the voucher money there'd be no money in and no money out um so if we renewed it and did and no one

081went there it wouldn't cost us any there'd be no resources expanded um so i know pb has his hand up uh and he can ask some questions then we go to dr benedict but my my point is it just it just seems if we're being told it's not fiscally sound that's just patently false i mean it's it's patently false um and and i i can't understand why we're being told that i don't recall anyone saying that we're not being financially sound when we're talking about the contract when we said resources we were talking about resources in general um so again i i agree with you wholeheartedly yes it is costing us more if we were to bring those services fiscally internally but again we would have to look at things holistically taking into consideration the

082programmatic the educational as well as the fiscal resources to operate the program as what dr benedict alluded to and that i would like to also add that we need to look at the student population dr benedict just stated that students at desert voices are working with students that are not similar to the demographics of students that we're working on the pdsb and tucson campuses they have different needs and some students with additional needs do cost more so again we will have to analyze more about the student populations and their needs and then connect the costs for students that way tv do you mind if i follow up really quick on what superintendent reichman just said thank you um thank you superintendent reichman i think that's an excellent point um and i also don't think we

083have enough information in regard to the fiscal information to be making general statements and coming to conclusions we did a thorough analysis of with fbc a number of months ago and it might behoove us to do that with desert voices if you're interested but there are so many pieces to this um i i can't even begin to explain between the contract between the institutional voucher process that's been changed to the lea status they all intertwine intermingle and i can describe this year as nothing more than a big quagmire fortunately our relationships with fbc and desert voices and districts are good and people have worked along with us and been patient as we have figured all of this out and student services have not been compromised and that's the most important thing thing to know um

084that i think is is very important and the other as far as the you know being good public stewards of money the the public's money i think there's also the question um to ask is it okay to direct public money to a private entity just food for thought i don't know i think legally it's okay obviously or we wouldn't be able to do it but i don't know if anyone i don't know if that's not something to consider i mean i mean charter schools exist they're not private they aren't private they're they're um they're they're funded by public and pv wants to ask a question but uh go ahead thank you i do want to emphasize again the importance of being equitable i don't have the ability to interrupt in american sign language or to

085intervene at the right point so i've been waiting patiently for my turn to make sure that i'm respectful to others so that they have their turn as well so i just want to make sure that we are acknowledging um equity for the board operation so miss cooper i'm trying to understand the fiscal aspect um assistant superintendent cooper and i would like to ask some clarification so the financial cost average cost per student for birth to three that we provide does that include the contractual costs of what we're paying to desert voices and i have a follow-up question to that response if you're referring to the preschool contract yes they are included in the instruction line under the classroom spend when you take a look at it yes it is included in the average cost per

086student and as superintendent reichman had referenced this average cost per student is just a straight formula calculation it's taking total expenditures whether they're classroom or non-classroom spend dividing it by number of students as i've mentioned before more specifically at the last work study session in order for us to get a true picture of what our cost per student is we would need to look at the population or the disability category of each of our individual students to determine what those more appropriate or more accurate costs would be for the different classifications of our students again this is something that we've traditionally provided even before i started it's just a straight formula um based on those calculations and again if we needed to take a more deeper dive to figure out what those true costs are

087similar to what we did to fbc a couple of months ago i can work with the team as dr benedict referenced to figure out what those costs are since we're only talking about three students in terms of trying to figure out what those costs are in comparison to the 34 000 before the fundraising costs are calculated when looking at the desert voices contract okay i think thank you for helping me clarify that okay so we know that we have specific costs that we have to pay for staff and for resources available for the campuses for the programs and curriculums etc i know that we pay those class regardless of what we do what i want to understand is is there a fixed cost for those students that are receiving services in-house if yes then if

088we contract out does that cost per student absorb what we're paying in those contract services or if we're contacting out is there an additional cost because we're already providing the services in-house is that clear yes your question is clear and that's what dr benedict and i just referenced we have not taken that deeper dive into determining what the true costs are for the desert um the desert voices preschool students other than determining the straight formula of average cost per student and we can do that if the board requests or likes for us to do to provide additional clarification to determine if those fixed costs or those costs for those students based on their disability categories would exceed or not exceed what it cost for desert voices if we were to contract those services out we

089did not do that deep dive and have not okay just another follow-up and then i'll hand it back over to you president micro um so from what i understand that you just said is we have an agency that actually has fixed costs we just don't know what that cost is and on the other hand we don't know if desert voices is charging additionally because there are [Music] contracting out additional resources for resources that we already have in-house i'm not quite sure dr benedict would probably know the answer to that latter part of the question in terms of what additional services that desert voices may be contracting out um that they may not be able to provide themselves i'm i'm not quite sure okay let me clarify the question so we have fixed costs for in-house

090services and we know that we know we have to pay those are resources that we are already paying for right yes that's correct so if we contract out services is that considered an additional cost on top of the fixed costs that we're already paying i would not think so because the other fixed costs that i'm aware of would be those other related services as dr benedict mentioned the psychology services any nursing services any ot services the transportation i'm not aware of any other costs that would be above and beyond what we would be required to pay to desert voices so that would be incorporated in the fixed cost calculations um if we were to take a look at it okay thank you that was my point i think you the answer is yes because that

091means we are paying for those services in-house already and then in addition to that fixed cost we are paying that 24 000 per student to attend desert voices correct correct correct so what you're saying is technically we are not paying more for in-house services we are taking advantage of additional resources and we are paying outs rather than using our internal resources um again i would feel more comfortable answering that question once we if once we take a look at the numbers to determine all of the ancillary costs to provide these services for that student to determine whether or not that statement is correct on the surface it sounds like the answer would be yes however again i would prefer to look at the data to confirm that statement okay fair enough i appreciate that answer

092now i'm wondering from a lea status if we were to accept student referrals and we offered desert voices as an option and desert voices does not offer some of the resources that we do provide as an lea we are still responsible for covering those additional costs correct correct and so as a counter argument if the school district iep team decides that they are sending the student to desert voices themselves directly who was then responsible for those additional costs kendra's sending the school district okay so that means in my view we should be considering the school district as the potential benefit because of what we're servicing now as an lea which means that we have a legal obligation in my opinion to make sure that we are providing services that we can provide and if the

093school district or the parents feel that asdb cannot meet that need then they should be able to go straight to what it is that needs that meets that need for that child instead of having to go through a second or third group is what i'm understanding is happening now with our current contract correct that's my understanding yes and but miss cooper that's not really correct right um and it's not correct for for two reasons um the first reason is the the the when we're uh the underlying school district has to privately place uh at desert voices again for that higher rate the full the full freight rate of 33 975 they're not paying 25 000 like we are they don't have the discounted rate like we are so the la has to pay substantially more

094to desert voices than than we are uh that's that's the first part the second part of it is the my understanding is the lease um voucher the lease voucher for that child and preschool is only half the amount because the state pays for half of a preschool but our institutional voucher is the full amount the amount that they would get had that were they in kindergarten um so the the the other lea their their home school district is going to have far less resources far fewer resources half of the 25 000 uh whereas we have the full 25 000 and we just pass it on to uh uh to desert voices so i mean that's that's that's where we are and the other point while while we're here the fixed cost our breakdown of is

095is is really good um that you provided ms cooper because we don't have anything charged for facilities or dorms uh or food services for preschool the only after classroom instruction the only add-ons we have is 87.98 8 798 for for facility charges i'm sorry for transportation charges and 33 seven dollars for agency administration that includes hrit but not the overall agency administration uh charge which brings us up to which is six hundred and eighty one thousand dollars so in terms of the fixed costs they're you know they're all there and outlined in that in that calculation this this is the the data where we that we run the agency from right i mean that's why we have this data that's why we have a strategic plan for you to make these things so in any

096event uh what i'm saying you know what my point is the the school district the even though the child can go back these three families can go back to their school district their school district is going to be getting far fewer resources than than we do they're going to be paying desert voices far more and that might not work out for that child it is not at all clear that those three children are going to end up at desert voices next year because of this decision [Music] i did just want to clarify again the the calculations is just an average cost taking all expenditures divided by total number of students and in order to get a truer picture we would need to look at the individual costs by the various categories and again um as

097dr benedict had mentioned it should not be the decision should not be solely focused on what funding or resources asdb can or cannot provide um and i'll leave it there in order for dr benedict to provide her response then i think we can turn it over to pv okay thank you thank you pb um two points i wanted to make that i think are critical to this discussion um that that if we do take a deeper dive into this down the road we should consider one if you're if a child is considering placement in our program or desert voices program because we offer something similar we lose that student to desert voices we lose a voucher that voucher translates into revenue for us and assistant superintendent cooper and i last year spent an extensive amount

098of time determining how many vouchered students justify the hiring of a new teacher and that might be data that you would be interested in because if we lose students then we that's that that's going to play an impact here i don't know what it is i haven't dove into it but that's that's revenue lost for us for a teacher we already had let's say we have a class we have room for two or three more kids we lose that voucher money there's that i'm sorry how are we losing voucher money if we're getting desert voices and pb really wants to speak so you can let him speak yes i'm sorry president and i grow right i mean just to clarify again i mean if we want to continue discussions i would definitely uh lead to

099you if you feel that you would like to add to any comments we just want to make sure we have equitable communication so if you want to step in just let me know it's definitely happy to yield to you yeah it's it's fine tv you can go ahead so dr benedict are you can i let you continue the only other thing i wanted to say is that districts the financial resources they have to send these students to private schools recall that for each child that has a disability category they are they receive funding just like we do there are deaf students who have interpreters there are deaf students that don't require hardly anything and they get the same amount of money for each of those students and they could have thousands of students these are

100big districts so when you're talking about big districts with thousands of students receiving money that some of the kids don't need because they have minimal service they're they have many more pots of which they can support these private placements and it's less costly for them to do that than to sometimes build an in-house program that's another thing i think that's important to consider here well dr benedict i mean we've we've just been through this i mean it's it's it's it is more costly for them right we have a contract with desert voices that's heavily discounted about 8 500 uh from what they were charged districts now i know the districts have other money we all know how the capitated payments work but at the end of the day it's going to cost districts 8 500

101more than it would cost us and that's not even counting that's not even factoring in the that they get lots of voucher money then then we do this is this is an easy yo this system this contract is an easy low-cost way to place students into does into desert voices in this case and leverage the generosity of the community for the difference i mean that that's that's what we're talking about either way it's costing it's cause it's gonna cost the district more and their taxpayer base more or it's gonna cost us you know uh you know the agency more to do it to do it in-house i mean that's we've just been through this there's no disagreement although the facts of the numbers are not in dispute um so you know again i think we've

102we've talked about the cost uh and the financial aspect of it and we've talked about the the differences in services um and that's that's where we you know that's where we are now so pb unless you have any other questions we can kind of sum up and move on to the next topic yes so i would like to clarify now i would disagree with that the facts aren't actually clear i'm still struggling to understand the actual numbers because it appears that we're still missing the data that we need more information together from assistant superintendent cooper for the actual cost for birth to three in comparison to desert voices services and the other thing i'm trying to understand is it well it was my understanding when i joined the board that the board was ordered to

103for asdb to to establish an lsl programming in-house and so the preferred method is now to contract for those services through desert voices my question and my challenge i guess from a fiscal perspective does that make sense to go ahead and pay for lsl's staff at this point if we have those classes or that training that we would provide in-house versus contracting out to desert voices maybe we would contract and continue that contract with desert voices and then close out the lsl programming at asdb because from what i'm saying we're paying for those other cell services in-house including the training and we're also contracting out to desert voices at the same time why would we spend on both that's what i don't understand so i'm trying to get down to that if desert voices can

104do a better job then great let's take on that opportunity in the best interest of the students i'm in full support of that if we could do a better job in-house and it's more effective use of our resources then release the contract i'm also in favor of that entirely but at the end of the day it's not clear to me that we i don't feel we have the facts it's a little bit of ambiguity there's a little bit of muddied water here and i don't understand why this keeps coming up is there a cost that does your voices charges to public school districts and why is that our problem what they charge and why is that our our concern for school districts when they com they're the ones who said oh well now that you're

105the least tb you're now in charge for transportation as well but they didn't give us that same consideration so i feel like we have to be fair in our choices in our understanding and how we are using our resources appropriately so if we are paying for both which i feel is a duplication of services internally and externally i don't think that is a reasonable use of our fiscal resources and i think we need to gather more information as far as what is exactly going on and if that student or the parents do decide to go to desert voices and desert voices was charging that school district more than what they would charge us again that's not our problem that's desert voices problem and that's the school district problem that is their issue why they don't

106give a discount to those school districts from that standpoint i don't know and so i would be curious to know why not and why they're not providing that same discount uh tv we we have all the information we need and we had it at the start of this meeting there's nothing else that we need more to be to uh i mean one is whether or not we even have a decision to make i mean we could talk about it it's not an action i can't do that on this item uh here um but we have everything that we need um it is our problem that that uh desert voices will charge the uh the lea more the local school district more because that means that the student may not get to go there and the

107student may be placed in a different setting than what they were expecting at least these three uh and and that's that's an issue um and why is why does desert voices charge that because that's a real cost uh teacher teacher um and labor costs have been up quite a bit in the last several years costs have gone up quite quite dramatically and that's the real cost uh this contract was done a number of years ago um and that's the that's the cost that we have on this contract so we're we're happy that we're able to leverage we should be happy that we're able to leverage the generosity of the community to help educate our children um but it is our problem because those children won't get served and you know that that bothers me that's

108why i'm on this board because i want to see children have options i want some parents have options i want to see these families have options and i want to see if they're appropriately educated we have lsl uh distance voices is not the right choice for everyone that's why we have them but they are the right choice for some that's why we have them as an option and it costs us nothing uh it's again those costs of the transportation of ancillary services we bear that cost whether they're on our campus or they're somewhere else uh that's that that's the fact of it um we it costs us far more and again you take a look at our uh at our own data that we have and that we produce we run the agency on and

109that data shows us that it costs us far more to produce this you know this education now i believe we have more lsl students on our campuses and that's that's great i'm happy to see that we've improved those offerings i i really am i think dr benedict's done a great job uh in the last few years building up those resources and really changing that program she's done a lot of what we've asked her to do and i'm proud of that program but if they're if there are children and there are families where desert voices are the right place to go it seems to me that at an option that cost us nothing that we should still have pv well the fact that it costs us nothing to provide services for students to go to desert

110voices but if we were not the lea it would be the cost of that school district not ours so that means it would become an additional cost considering our new lea status and i don't think it's appropriate to quote the data we have because it's from that shows numbers that were antiquated pre-lea for birth to three and i think i was seeing this point that that information is for the average cost of all students we need to break it down more to see what's going on especially when we bring the lea responsibility into the picture if we were not an lea then we would not be absorbing the cost the school district would be absorbing the cost just like they view us as an lea we are responsible for those transportation costs we have accepted

111that responsibility and we're paying those costs so if the school district says desert voices is the best placement they should be absorbing that cost and that includes resources and buildings and the things we're already providing so that means that the student goes to a different lea and we have to use our response our resources with our students and our ethical legal responsibility is to answer to our agency to provide instruction and our resources to our students and not absorb the cost for other school districts who won't or can't provide those services and when we offer those districts a conference a contract directly with us and they want to use our services that's great pay us and we will provide those services for those students if they want to go through desert voices then they should

112go direct to desert voices and again i clearly support what is best for the students if we are paying for those dual services is that a best use of our resources i think it just from a basic standpoint it does not make sense and we need more information just making a statement saying we know that's not going to cost us money is not a good statement to make um i know we do need to take a break for the interpreters then we can come back uh and move on um you know but to be very clear uh the lea status has no bearing on this discussion none at all um prior to the lea status the transportation was paid by the local school districts now that's on us and that's on us either way whether

113they come to campus or they go to desert voices or wherever they go that transportation's on us because we're an lea now that's the same for every student and it's not duplicating services we have children that we're serving in the lsl classrooms on on campus it's not a duplicate it's another option uh and it doesn't cost us any money you have to understand that when we get those children in when those districts voucher those students to us we get more money from ade than they do we get twice as much uh that's that's the way the voucher works so we get more money and then we pay that money to desert voices it nets out to zero um but it's very clear how the money works um and that's there's really no no debate about

114that anyway we're going to take a 10 minute break uh for the interpreters we're going to come back at 5 50 and then we're going to we're going to finish up thank you all right uh it is now 5 50 and we are back um so just finish up we were on 2.01 information discussion item i think we've had the discussion that we're going to have unless there are any other board members that want to comment on this and there are i don't see any uh so from here again we're uh you know the situation is unless the superintendent changes course uh we're stranding three families uh for next year um and we're ending a contract that is not going to be easily replaced uh we'd have to go out rebid it that took a

115year last time uh again a contract that costs us nothing if we have no one um and that's that's where we are unless the superintendent reconsiders so uh we can move on now to 2.02 discussion and possible action item policy change to give the board soul authority to terminate slash non-renewed contracts with service providers that directly serve asdb students and this one i know it says maria murphy but i'll i'll take it from here uh miss murphy um so just to give the board some context uh you know stranding this is this is not the first time we dealt with the superintendent stranding kids for services um on short notice uh or at least attempting to a few years ago in 2018 um they were the superintendent was dealing with an issue up in flagstaff

116uh and the superintendent um informed them that that she had intended to terminate their uh the iga uh and strand 39 children 39 families without services the board heard of this and uh the board acted in early 2019 uh to change policy lb to add where the agency is a party to an intergovernmental agreement iga that provides a right of unilateral termination the astp board must act to provide approval prior to the agency i'm sorry mr niagara president nigro this is the interpreter you're reading that really sorry if you wouldn't mind slowing down a little bit i want to make sure i include that in the interpretation thank you sure uh where i'll i'll say more slowly where the agency is a party to an intergovernmental agreement iga that provides a right of unilateral termination

117the asd board must act to provide approval prior to the agency exercising such a right the asdb board may call a special meeting for the purposes of taking such action so that policy was put in in direct response to that situation because the board felt at the time that we did not want the superintendent to have the authority to strand children without services without some sort of continuity plan we we understand sometimes from time to time contracts need to be terminated or not renewed that may happen but if it does the utmost importance of the agency is is to make sure the children get a continuity of services and that there's some phase out period when asdb can phase out their services and some other provider can phase in and the child's education is not

118affected that again was very important to the board at the time uh and we wanted to take that power back uh it looks like here there is a loophole that needs to be closed the situation here is a third party provider that's not a school district so there's no iga so that policy lb that change that we made a few years ago to prevent this precise thing uh did not apply uh because of the technicality that we were not dealing with the school district were dealing with a nonprofit so to further that intent of the board a few years ago and seeing that this has happened again it's proposed that we add very similar language to refer to third parties that directly deliver services to children on behalf of asdb so if a child is

119being directly served by a third party provider with this proposed policy the board needs to approve that termination or non-renewal and that's so that the board can be certain that it's done in a manner that serves that child fully that allows the transition to happen and make sure that that child's education isn't hurt because of some administrative or bureaucratic squabble are there any comments on this ms murphy do you have anything to add i guess before we take comments from the board um not at this time president nigro um i'd be happy to answer any questions if there are any questions but no i i think that's an accurate restatement of the history all right uh thank you ms murphy are there any board members that would like to comment on this uh pv oh

120let's um brittany go ahead and comment okay brittany thank you pv i appreciate that i just wanted to it's not a comment about exactly what's going on i just feel like we're using incredibly polarizing language when we're talking when we're saying um stranding students um from listening to this whole thing it sounds like students still completely have a choice families still completely have a choice it's just we're discussing the vehicle on how that is exercised so i don't feel whatever decision that we're making is going to be stranding anybody and i'd really appreciate if maybe we kind of moved more towards some neutral language especially since this has been kind of a heated discussion uh your point taken uh is taking brittany um you know potential disruption of services how about we say that i

121think that sounds maybe a little better thank you okay uh pv thank you okay i'm trying to understand not just the history but also the potential impacts of this policy change my experience working for this state is i understand that the state procurement law and procurement procedures are not easy to understand and my concern is if we as a board absorb that responsibility what is the legal and contractual obligation of the board that we may not be aware of and one other thing we do have a list of questions here i want to make sure that we address my greatest concern right now that i'm noticing is that this service and policy would impact students and families directly um but i'm looking on the agenda and i don't see any opportunity for public comments and

122i'm concerned that we as a board are making this kind of decision without public comments reviewing board policy it does say that the board shall be open to public comments and that's not on the agenda so does that mean we're not follow following the policy that we set to ensure that we have the opportunity for public to comment what if the public does have a comment on this issue and currently on the agenda we are not allowing for public comments and that's a concern i have i want to make sure that we're giving the public an opportunity to participate in this decision process with we need their input as we discuss to make this decision i also have a concern in regards to policy change for our legal status when you look at b b

123section b b specifically states that we have legal status in order to carry out the will of the people we are not elected officials but we are government appointed to act in the best interests of the state and the people we represent most importantly are the deaf hard of hearing blind visually impaired students who deserve to have the opportunities to have their representatives heard and if we're not allowing for public comments it feels as though we're not doing our due diligence to make sure that they have the opportunity to participate which would be in potential violation of policy bb and in relationship to bb we have another policy in section bba which specifically states that we have public we need to allow public comments as i previously stated also it mentions the impact on section

124b-e-d-h that says shall have public comments as well um sorry excuse me cdb policy specifically states that we shall allow for and meet and look into discussion of each item of business that this is the superintendent's responsibility that makes that insurance we have complete transparency and i'm hearing from the leadership team stating that there is not enough information to provide to the board and i still have questions that have not been answered and cannot be answered without additional research and data i want to make sure that we acknowledge that we have that responsibility under bdb that we have all the information that is necessary reviewing my notes and my understanding is with bdd that we as a board establish a policy that the superintendent is to follow and execute those policies that we have established

125what i don't understand is if this was an issue previously why was that not addressed then and i'm puzzled at the use of the word loophole when the language within the policy clearly states that we set the policy and the supreme superintendent executes those policies another part of the superintendent's responsibility states that they are responsibility for facilitating the daily runnings of the agency and they can delegate those operations as necessary to their employees so if we are to change the policy that means we are pulling all of that authority all of that responsibility to our level that's a question and if the answer is yes then how many times do we need to come back and revisit the policy state procurement law state procurement procedures for not renewal of contracts and what do we do

126if we can't meet in a timely manner and we're missing those contract dates are we stuck with that contract are we as a board responsible for absorbing those costs will that hurt students if we cannot meet in time to ensure that that contract has attention to it but it's necessary because we've taken all the authority to the board level and if that issue is considered a loophole then i'm wondering does that mean we're saying as a board from a philosophical perspective that we don't trust the superintendent to run the daily business operations of the agency and that means that we need to take over the day-to-day operations of the agency i i want to be careful with the message that we're putting out there i feel like this is not transparent and we are violating

127different policies as i've already stated and i have concerns of the legal ramifications i have questions about the country the contracts and the impacts and we do not have an attorney general here we cannot go into an executive discussion or executive session to discuss with the attorney general so my question is are we jumping ahead way too fast i don't want us to get stuck in a legal situation where we are violating procurement rules and where we are stuck not needing enough time in order to handle these contractual issues uh maybe or can i respond to those that's that's quite a bit of things uh actually sorry we were just switching for the interpreter so there wasn't a natural pause there so in continuation i apologize for that so in continuation i just wanted to

128make sure that we are acknowledging that we have about 20 to 21 contracts related to direct student services and several of those contracts include temporary temp agencies for 101 services some of those contracts are also for transportation in emergency situations and also some of those contracts are in related to foreign language interpretation some i've also noticed are services that we contract out to provide additional support especially for preschool and for birth to three so if we were to absorb the authority for of those contracts at the board level how much harm are we causing to the student and the operation of administration if we do become the sole responsible entity without allowing the leadership team to do their um uh tv let me respond you you've you've gone on quite a bit there's a number

129of things that don't need to be addressed number one it's a special meeting we don't need to have public comment um that's that's fine the meeting was properly noticed uh in compliance with the open meeting laws we have a board email address anyone can email us we haven't gotten any emails that's that's one two to to think that this somehow uh with this language if you read it to think that this somehow means that we're now going to be engaged in the state procurement process is ridiculous and it's not what this policy says it says that the if the if the asdb is considering unilaterally terminating or failing to renew a contract the hdb war must vote to approve that's it it's just vote to approve when the administration wants to terminate a contract all

130the state procurement laws are going to be followed just like they are today there is nothing this is about about taking a specific executive decision power and having the board approve it as opposed to having the superintendent approve it uh on his or her own uh the state procurement laws are going to be followed just like they are today and there's not going to be any difference to the state procurement process than there is today this is just the decision of whether or not the the the executive decision of whether or not we're terminating or failing to renew a contract is going to vest with us we're not taking in all that responsibility that's that's a ridiculous reading of it uh that that is not what it says uh facially um there's no reason to

131have legal advice uh for that you know for this you know this particular policy now that said had any of the board members asked me in a timely manner to have the a.g here at the meeting i would have gladly said yes i was asked yesterday afternoon when it was too late uh to get her here because it had been within 24 hours uh if i'm asked in a timely manner i will change the agenda for anything um but in this case we you know we couldn't do it uh in terms of policy changes um we do have the first read policy to pass this today we'd have to waive that we can do that by board motion uh it's a it's one motion to wave and then and then another motion to adopt this

132um you're telling saying that we don't have data that is not what we talked about for the last hour and a half at all um there's no more data that we need to make this decision um but that's that's about desert voices this is closing a loophole what this is uh can you guys hear me okay i just froze for a minute this is closing a loophole what do i mean by a loophole a loophole where children can have their service providers or the school that they go to changed on short notice and not have a guarantee that they're going to be able to go to that school or have that service provider and you're right there are several there's around 20 of them uh and when they change we'll we'll have to prove it

133these these are contracts that goes on go on for years if the administration feels that they want to make a change or they want to do an rfp or whatever they want to do they can put it on the next agenda for the next meeting and we can approve it or not approve it just like we did for the igas we made the apology for policy for iga that doesn't mean that the iga agreements are any different the board approves all the igas anyway so that's that's where we are on this we're closing a loophole that makes sure that we're ensuring continuity of services uh for our children um and again anyone could have emailed us we didn't get that email i i you know the board didn't get any um and and it has

134nothing to do with uh uh taking responsibility for conducting the state procurement office or the state procurement procedures this has to do with with the authority to make the executive decision to terminate the contract that we already have thank you president nico and i do still have concerns and i recognize you have the law degree in the background experience and but at the end of the day i i want the consult with the ag and i can't commit to a board meeting you know i believe i believe yesterday or this morning so the fact that we don't have enough information i don't feel confident in making that decision so i do have some questions for miss murphy if you don't mind if you can come on screen i would like to ask you some questions

135to answer questions thank you so i'm wondering if we do have a specific contract that the superintendent decides to not renew or to terminate so with this current policy if it does apply if this contract has a specific due date for decision that we cannot convene in time to vote what happens with that contract typically is that a violation of the contract if we're not able to vote in time to make that decision um pv i i don't feel comfortable um really answering that question um because i am not a licensed attorney and i i can't really speak to what would be a contract violation and what wouldn't that's that's not within my purview but um i saw superintendent reichman raise her hand so perhaps she can answer that question i also am not an

136expert either but in our contract if you read it it does have a termination clause it is stated in there and it does describe what we would need to do if we do determine that we are not renewing the contract and or terminating the contract so we would follow that process this is pv thank you superintendent reichman so i'm wondering what would change that process if we were to as a board have the vote before the superintendent can go ahead and proceed with that superintendent here for the purposes of the desert voices situation would have to bring it to the board we would have had to bring it to the board in may at the may board meeting for your consideration and for open discussion and a vote before we could we were able to

137inform desert voices about terminating the contract so it would require more time in advance to work with the board members you know about making the decision on renewing or non-renewing or terminating contracts this is tv so if the board cannot convene or if administration or the leadership team realizes that they do need to make a decision to terminate or not renew the board and the board has yet to convene or it's too close to the contract expiration date what happens with that contract are we forced to continue the contract or what what is the exact verbiage that is given to the board in order to give us time to make the vote no pass a certain date superintendent superintendent reichman here yes the procurement office can extend contracts for three months for example to give

138us more time to make a thorough decision in continuing the contract it also gives the board more time to convene to call a special meeting great thank you with that consideration in mind with the procurement office if we do accept the authority to terminate or to not renew a contract we as a board perhaps overlook some important components of the contract requirement does that mean that the board is now responsible for the error pv this is david the board is always responsible the board has ultimate authority and the board has ultimate accountability we're always responsible pv here so as you say with what you're saying the policy actually states different so currently it is the superintendent and the leadership team that has the ultimate responsibility to execute those contracts if they don't do that work

139then we have the authority to terminate so if the board is not in concurrent then who is then responsible tv we are responsible for any error what i mean by that is our names are on the caption of lawsuits when the agency gets sued uh we're responsible the age of the board is responsible for the agency we delegate that authority to the superintendent and and other staff we do but the board is responsible for the agency uh and they're accountable for the agency again when we get sued it's our names at the top so we're responsible for the error you know where you know the agency is responsible um you know for that so it's not a question of you know it's not a question of who you know who is technically responsible for an

140error we're all responsible for an error um that's what we have to understand we all have that that responsibility uh the other thing to understand is that all these contracts are are at least a year uh we have teacher contracts i mean if we if we screwed up and didn't renew teacher contracts we wouldn't have an entire staff that doesn't happen because we we have a good superintendent and we have good leadership and they bring us the contracts well in advance in march of every year and we approve those contracts when we have igas that come on board that need students that are served they're they're brought to us on a periodic basis uh if that got screwed up if we didn't and children didn't get served that would be a problem we have a

141good staff that does that brings those contracts to us we should not be worried at all um that in a course of a contract uh of course of performance of 12 months that any one of the of the administration of the leadership team would forget to renew or not renew and bring it to us in a lot of time these decisions are made months in advance and they have to be to ensure continuity of services so i'm not worried in the least that the the staff is able is going to be able to bring us these issues in in a timely manner because we do have months and for some reason there is some kind of unforeseen circumstances the superintendent mentioned almost all of these contracts have built-in extensions for short periods of time where

142we can convene and address it so i i don't have any concern uh that we're gonna miss something we again the agency brings us many contracts i mean how many contracts do we approve in the course of a year i mean hundreds just for employees alone that's that's that's never been an issue for the agency we're very good administrative staff thank you president nigro and i'm not worried about who's at the top of the list for the lawsuit for me is who is accountable so who will hold the board accountable in the end if something does go wrong as opposed to the leadership team going wrong and so we hold them accountable absolutely so my second concern i have with for mentioned statements was that the need is just not too complicated so is this

143are we getting over complicated so my concern is that we're adding a lot of layers to the process and making this more complex than it needs to be which may not be a good use of agency resources and not a good use of agency time we have been operating with our superintendent and the leadership team as you mentioned they've done a very good job and she's a great leader in leading her team but we do have that one contract that has come up that there is a disagreement on the impact of the three potential students and the families so i don't think that this is an overreaction i mean to pull in all of the direct services which means we're absorbing some of the day-to-day operations at this point from the leadership leadership team we

144can't say oh that was good well at the same time if we're pulling the expectation away so it's like that's a little bit of a mixed message um in regards to the public comment portion and so if the policy clearly says that we shall have public comments allowed uh there isn't anything on the agenda for that time given so i'm assuming that we did not follow our own policy in establishing that on the internet i'm sorry um pb are you talking about if you're talking about bedh it says the board shall establish the procedures to receive input from citizens and then there are things that we you know that we should establish procedures to have so we should we should have procedures to have public comments on agendas items that's what it says in bdh

145that we should have procedures for that and our procedure is that we don't need public comments in special meetings however it does say that all open meetings do require to have public comments so this is a special meeting then and it's on the agenda which which policy are you are you talking about let me pull it up just a moment on b-e-d-h it specifically states there shall be two separate calls to the public first call shall allow for comments on agendaized items i looked at the agenda and there is no call to the public and there is no call for public comments on that specific agenda item right so you need to understand two things the top part of that says the asdb board therefore establishes the following procedures to receive input you know that

146it and that's those are establishing our perspective that means that we're establishing the uh our procedures or we need to establish procedures our procedures are we don't need public comment at a special meaning the second part of that is uh if that if let's just ignore that part you know let's just ignore that other part of it for now if there wasn't uh for again this is not a this is a general meeting this is not a spec this is a special meeting it's not a general meeting um to discuss a particular purpose even if that were the case then that's already done right um that doesn't affect whether or not we can adopt a policy in accordance with our other with our other policies and we can we we can take action this is

147a properly noticed meeting it's in public it's being broadcast um so that's that's i mean that's the issue um we don't need to have the and again we can have ms murphy look at this if you want um we don't need public comments and even if we didn't and even if we did need public comments let's say for the sake of argument we did if we didn't have public comments in a meeting that doesn't affect our ability to take other action at that meeting i'm not sure where you're getting the interpretation we don't have to allow public comics it says at the top of section b-e-d-h it says all regular and special i want to emphasize that word special meetings of the asap board shall be open to the public and then underneath it says

148specifically the asb b board therefore sell establish and follow procedures to accept feedback from the public and we have not received input from the citizens based on agendas items i want to make sure that we are being transparent with the public on this issue and we are not being transparent as it stands we are not following our own policies that is my concern tv um oh it says all special meaning should be open to the public and this is open to the public uh it's being broadcast live we're following that it was properly noticed it was properly agendized um the we should this is that we shall establish policies to receive input right and that's that's our typical uh you know typical practice for regular meetings um what i'm saying is even if that we

149needed public comment let's just say and again i don't i don't i don't concede that point but if we did that is no bearing on other actions that we could take at this meeting okay it was properly noticed um it was properly agendized we got no emails none no emails no one had anything to say about this policy so if you want transparency that's there transparency means that the public can see our business and that's that's what they saw it's on board docs it was on board docks in the appropriate amount of time the policy that we're talking about that's proposed that was there the agenda was there the information to access the meeting was there that's what transparency means and they could always email us that's fine you can always email the board but

150that doesn't preclude us from taking action here especially action that's needed to close a loophole that we thought we closed several years ago well the point is it can't be a loophole if it was established in policy that the superintendent is required by the board to execute those policies that we've established and second we can't say that we're being transparent to the public if the agenda is not reflecting that we're open to public comments i feel like we are going in circles um and we will continue to disagree and i accept that i just want you to understand that my responsibility is to represent the community and i want to make sure their voices are heard and i want to present that concern to the board and make sure that you understand that we have

151a missed opportunity to clearly allow the public and tell them that they can make a public comment and since the agenda does not say that it does not give that sense to them and i will move on to the next point miss murphy i do have a follow-up question for you so my question is with the draft of the policy changed were any legal considerations made when the writing of that policy was proposed to the purchasing office of the responsibility to terminate or not renew a contract um i'm not certain that i understand the question pb could you please restate it sure when the policy was um drafted that we is being proposed did we consult with our ag or [Music] get any legal advice to consider the possible impact to procurements or purchasing requirements

152when it comes to terminating or non-renewal of contracts to answer your question pv no i did not seek the advice of the assistant attorney general did you draft this policy that's being proposed um i did not draft the specific proposed language um and and that was um simply because i i had a um a a personal family um yeah so i i mean i drafted it uh i drafted the proposed language um it mirrors the language that was earned in this in the existing policy and i'll tell you we've we've adopt policy routinely at every meeting and very rarely do we get ag input on policy changes very rarely um and this one again there's no implication of state procurement law here um this is just the asdb board retaining the power themselves to terminate

153or renew a contract that's already been negotiated and entered into via the state procurement process so there's there's there's no legal concern uh here um and again that's almost never you know again we adopt contracts i mean i want to be crystal clear about this every regular meeting we're dealing with and over the you know we're dealing with at least some iga um over the course of the year we award hundreds of contracts most of them in the march meeting hundreds five six hundred contracts um you know for for employment contracts and leadership contracts you know for the most part we adopt policies literally at every meeting and again almost none is their consultation with uh with the ag okay clarify if miss murphy did not draft this policy and she is our policy experts

154um she knows the inner workings of the agency was miss murphy consulted with um at the draft of that policy mr yes miss murphy had a personal issue that she needed to attend to so i took the first shot at this and i gave it to her for her comment she commented on it and it's here it is okay president nigro i have to be explicit i'm very concerned with this recent development and kind of taken back my understanding according to policy section bbaa specifically states individual board members only have the authority over ascb affairs to own only by votes at a legal meeting of the asdb board so where did you president nigro get the authority to draft a policy that you are proposing to the board tv i this i'm not drafting the

155policy that's and saying it's policy i don't have that authority miss murphy had a personal issue i worked with her to i gave her some proposed language she commented on it and here it is it's not policy it's brought to the board in an open meeting to vote on my understanding is that you delegated you had communication without board involved involvement for the writing of that policy incorrect i had communication with the staff member not with other board members and and it is okay to have for board members to have communications with staff members okay to have communication with the board yes that i agree but to take the authority of what looks like a board member to drop and propose a policy i i feel that's not an appropriate procedure we should be following

156and it seems like the board was not involved in that discussion or in the process of developing that policy and it seems like you've already set that policy based on your draft and now you're making that proposal to the board as if that was policy implemented with the best intention of the agency it kind of feels like we need more information to better understand what's happening and the intent behind the policy it seems a little bit skewed uh pv this is the time for the board to talk about the policy it's a proposed policy uh it's not the actual policy yet the board has to vote on it that's why we're here that's why we have this meeting is for the board to look at this language we look at policy language every meeting and

157the board can make changes to that policy in fact we often do we talk about it we talk with ms murphy about it we make changes to those policies uh that happens every single meeting um is this can this change yeah that's this just that language can change we cannot vote on it we can vote on it we can make changes to it that's why we are here uh this isn't a policy that is you know somehow already approved um it's it's here for the purpose of this meeting uh and and for discussion that's why it's here um and again the policy mirrors what the board did several years ago right i mean it's again closing that loophole now at the time the board again you can go back to the meeting and watch it

158the board of the time was concerned about igas because that was the issue that arose at the time was we thought that we were going to disrupt services for 39 families here there's disruption for three families um and that's that's how it is um and that's why we're closing that but again the language if anyone makes a motion later today to adopt this policy we can change that language any way that someone would like that's why it's here for comment that's why it's here for discussion thank you president niagro and i know that dr benedict has a comment do you mind if i follow up with his with doctor with the excuse me night girls comment then i can thank you so uh right so when we're first saying to allow the board to discuss

159the policy i think it's just it's important for us to notice that these discussions are being held during board meetings not before the board meetings and not being through just one person so we had no idea that this policy was even drafted by a board member without our feedback or input so it for me it seems like it does violate bbaa so i just wanted to make sure that we're not overstepping our authority as individual board members second i do understand the concern with the impact on the three families absolutely we cannot say that this loophole this is a loophole when this was addressed previously when the board was on the oversight so it is responsible for the board to address these kinds of concerns but to have full transparency and conversations prior with everyone

160involved which includes public comment and input in addition to that i think we also need to keep in mind the three families that are being impacted that they are not losing access they are not losing those services they still have the ability and the opportunity to attend desert voices it's just not going to be through us so that's from what i understand from what superintendent freikman and dr benedict have stated so this isn't a disruption in services that we have to fix now that we can receive that they can still receive services but not just through asdb so if we establish that that is my only conversation so thank you president nicole appreciate it and doctor okay thank you um you need to unders what you need to understand pv is that this is the

161time for the board to meet i can't consult with other board members and neither can you and neither can any of the board consult with other board members about things that are going to come before the board that's that the reason we have it here is so that the board can talk about it that's that's the issue um you know we can't and the board can do whatever the board wants to do uh with that um but that's why we have this meeting here we can't do it beforehand right we we can't have board members talking to each other beforehand um and and and uh and doing it that's why we have it here this is our time uh to talk about it and again the point about doesn't voices as we've been through before

162those three families are they're going to have a disruption services they have to reconvene iep meetings they have to figure out where those children are going to be placed based on the best interests of that child then the school district might have an issue with that i don't know it's going to cost the school district significantly more money and that might jeopardize their placement um and that's that's an issue and that's what we need to that's why we're here today may i speak uh present and i grew up uh yes of course thank you i i realize it's not conventional necessarily for someone like me to raise their hand to speak um but um i've been communicating with kristin on the side and asked if i i could do that um in reference to the

163three families that everyone is referring to um i want you to know that i've spent just about 30 years of my life doing this and the insinuation that we would strand children cuts really deep i have already made a promise to deanne chapman and to superintendent reichman that i would work alongside with these families and with the districts to make sure that the relationships that we have built this last year maintain and continue to flourish and i will make a personal promise to you president nigro that i will do what i said i would do i will be following up with districts i will ensure that the ieps are going to be implemented as they are written and if it comes to be the case where a district is adamant about not sending a child

164because the voucher is no longer available although that is not okay i will certainly come back to superintendent reichman and we will discuss our options as to how we could potentially support that child i cannot make any promises of course but i will do everything in my power to work alongside desert voices the families and the districts to make sure these three families are taken care of um thank you kendra and uh and kendra we know you're all very dedicated to the families i mean i again i don't want that to get lost in uh in this um and by the way i do know that uh policy bg says that suggestions regarding the content of content of policies may originate with a member of the asdb board the superintendent staff member a parent a

165student a consultant a civic group or any resident of the state the policy proposal shall be referred to the superintendent for detailed study which is exactly what happened here um in any event are there any other comments from the other board members uh i'm hearing i'm hearing none there are no other comments on this on the potential uh policy change david this is mike so are we are we doing anything with this or not like i mean i've done that we've been running around in circles for three and a half for three hours yeah i i think here what a uh someone would need to make a motion to uh waive the first read policy we'd have to approve that and then the second would be a motion to approve this language uh and and

166then we need a vote to prove that we're talking just about bringing the same type of action or same type of of uh information to the board at meetings to determine that this type of you know not-for-profit contractor contract would not be terminated without our for prior approval similar as we did with the iga that that's exactly right it would affect about 21 contracts we have i don't know dozens and dozens of igas right and certainly in the same way that we we do that on a personal personnel level we do it all the time for the annual review of an approval of contracts which are even more obtuse for us than certainly uh contractual agreements with providers that's that's exactly right well i'd make a motion to whatever it was you just said yeah

167so it's uh i'm taking that and the reason i say that you know we're getting run down all this style i understand so a motion to suspend the first uh read procedures is that is that right mike yes okay um is there a second this is dean i second all right all in favor um you can turn on your your camera and say i um i have me saying hi britney saying aye mike saying hi uh aaron saying hi um any nay i think it's pv is the only one saying nay okay so that motion passes and then are there any motions to pass the policy as presented i'll make a motion to pass the policy is presented okay is there a second second uh okay all in favor say aye point of clarification yes

168before the vote i do have a point of clarification to bring to the attention my only concern with this vote my current concern is that this policy and procedure would then potentially create a conflict of interest which means that the person with the conflict of interest needs to abstain themselves from voting and uh who do you think why do you think there's a conflict of interest from my understanding someone is the chair of fbc the president of their board that oversees contracts which has a direct connection to acb contracts so they have the authority to override the superintendent's decision to terminate or to not renew any contracts i just want to make sure that we maintain our good boundaries for the for the purposes of transparency um pv i would i would agree that if

169the issue was the fpc contract itself i would of course refuse myself that that is without question um this is a policy that's generally applicable to hundreds of contracts so there's not a uh and fec is just one of them and again i am on the board of fbc i'm not the president of pc anymore my term has ended but i am still on the board i don't own fbc fbc doesn't pay me um everyone you know knows about that and again if if we were if the board were acting in uh directly about the fbc contract then yes i would of course refuse myself provided at the time i was still on the board of fbc um but here this is a policy that's generally applicable and because fbc is a a contractor or

170vendor to asdb many of the asdb policies that are generally applicable and applied to vendors apply to fbc as as others do so again this is uh this is not a conflict of interest for me um because this policy is generally applicable um to to all the vendors but should this issue come up with fbc then and and um and at the time that it comes up and i'm still on the board of fbc uh then yes i i would would recuse myself uh if there was a con if if there were conflicts so again there's no i don't have any substantial interest in fpc um because again there's no i don't get paid i don't own fcc um and this policy doesn't um uh relate to the fpc contract is that does that make

171sense to everyone on the board this is dean that makes sense to me i agree is this britney i'm good with it okay can i ask just one quick question before we vote sure of course um just a point of clarification on the proposed policy change the language is around unilaterally terminating or failure to renew is does that also apply to contracts that might have like multiple extensions like a three-year contract with one-off extensions for like a subsequent set is the intent for those to come before the board with the expectation that in general they would likely be renewed for those additional years yes if it was a three-year contract with a one-year year renewal that one-year renewal would come to the board okay thank you just wanted to clarify sure all right um all

172uh if we're all clear with that uh all in favor of the of the policy aye all right and then no is pv uh and then no is pv okay so that that passes again um all right thank you uh everyone we we go on to action 301 action item uh adjournment um again thank you everyone uh we just need a quick motion i'll move to adjourn there a second off second okay all in favor aye and pb says no okay uh thank you everyone i i appreciate your time today thank you thank you david