ASDB Board Meeting (01/20/2022)

001uh aaron are we ready it's uh four o'clock yes sir we are live oh we are live okay um thank you uh it is four o'clock now is the time set for regular board meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind uh we did move this meeting to zoom uh when we did our quorum check we were only going to have uh two board members live in tucson so um i thought this format would be better suited uh to have uh eight of us uh or nine of us all together some of them were else or capitalism it looks like looks like looks like someone's on not on mute so everyone can meet for a moment um in any event uh we're gonna go with 1.01 call to order uh and

002roll call uh sue k can you take the roll i sure can thank you brittany buchanan aaron wonders present dean howard present myself sue k conifer pv chance lynn davison present mike gordon i'm present linda bold and david nigro i am present thank you okay um we can move on to 1.02 colon republic on agendaized items um sue k i believe we have one of those do you have that yep great if you could read that thank you certainly i just have to find it got it okay this is from mary rimron and the subject is leadership contracts for 22 20 22 to 2024 and the comment reads now is the opportunity for change at the tucson campus the administrative environment marginalized marginalizes deaf and hard of hearing individuals and does not value a deaf

003person's experience as a linguistic and cultural minority this environment has led to deaf and hard of hearing staff seeking employment elsewhere deaf and hard of hearing individuals that use asl are allowed communication access to leadership via an interpreter from 8 am to 10 am and 2 to 4 pm staff that can speak and or hear have access anytime this is one example of an unhealthy environment the systemic issues on campus are not due to communication access the environment does not display a sense of understanding for deaf culture or the value of communicating without the use of interpreters asdb is a school for the deaf not a school for interpreters the students and staff in the school for the deaf deserve to have leadership with the background and experience in deaf education suggestions to address such

004issues may be hire a principal for the school for the deaf investigate what mentoring and support was given to the assistant principal that was recently reassigned require exit interviews to be submitted to the board so as to assure discriminatory practices are not contributing to attrition investigate how screening committees and hiring committees are selected for vacant positions ensure that individuals with a background in deaf education comprise a majority of the committees as the board of directors it is your responsibility to ensure an environment that values the deaf experience it is time to consider a change in leadership for the tucson campus uh thank you success 1.03 information item presentations from foundation for blind children and desert voices assistant superintendent dr rex good afternoon president nigro and board members i have two people to introduce you to

005this afternoon first i'm asking jared to go ahead and turn on his video so we know that you're here and i am introducing the ceo jared kittleson from foundation for blind children and he is going to share some information with our board this afternoon thank you thank you dr rex for the introduction uh president nigro members of the board thank you for for having me um as dr rex said my name is jared kittleson i'm chief operating officer at foundation for blind children i oversee all of our direct programs and i have the distinct pleasure to share with you our preschool program and in this valued partnership right do i have do i have a slide deck to to share is the board following along with me i have your presentation up perfect all right

006go to the the next slide um so before we get into the preschool i think it's important to understand a little background about foundation for for blind children we are not simply a preschool we truly are a one-stop shop for for all things all things vision um starting with with birth and in that first call from parents we show up on their doorstep all the way to our oldest client which is is 103 years old our early intervention program is is is also an asdb partnership we serve over 130 families in in maricopa county um we have a robust uh school-based program which you're going to hear about shortly we we we're proud to say we're the largest preschool for visually impaired students in the country and so that's a preschool uh specifically designed for

007for students with visual impairments uh so we're proud to proud to say that um we also have an internet department just like yours as well we see over 175 students all across the state representing about 50 districts in in charters next slide in addition to that we have a a media center that it produces a braille and alternative format we have the largest braille library in the united states along with a a very robust and growing prison braille network i believe we'll be in six different prison units um by the end of end of this year um so our ability to to serve students in arizona with all their resources is growing in capacity and then on the the second feature on here i'd like to point out is is we're in a second year

008of our teacher of the visually impaired preparation program in partnership with arizona state university uh just like every other educational organization across the country we have been dealing with teacher shortages and instead of you know trying over and over again with uh signing bonuses and job fairs uh we reached out to arizona state university came up with a plan and basically bootstrapped uh a tvi uh in bachelor's in in special education program and we're going to graduate 12 teachers of the visually impaired this may and and put them on the field to to serve the students of arizona so we are very proud of of that accomplishment and i'm looking forward to seeing that come to fruition and then we we do the summer programs um transition program age for ages 14 to 22 as

009well as an adult program and then support our community your community uh with some of the events you're familiar with braille challenge white king walk etc next slide so the preschool program currently looking at at this year um looking at the data as of as of january 6 um the the preschool program that that voucher that you guys voucher students to uh represents three campuses we have a campus in the east valley off the 101 in in chandler we have a central campus which is our our more prominent campus our main campus and then we have a west valley campus just off of 75th and lower buckeye the two east and west are definitely satellite campuses compared to the maine overall the institutional voucher partnership represents about uh 20 different school districts as of january

0106 45 students in our preschool at all three campuses um and and based on on past year projections um as you guys you guys know with with preschool enrollment starts in august and continues to grow as students tuned three um and we'll we'll probably be pretty close to 60 preschoolers by the end of this school year next slide the next the this slide is is just a graphic and i won't break it down um cell by cell but just gives you an idea of a year over trend um month by month you guys can kind of see how the enrollment builds um you know month over month as the school year progresses you can also see you know over the past five years that that enrollment has continued to grow um kovid really didn't put

011a a a significant dent into the enrollment uh of our upper preschool we were pretty diligent about staying relevant and and meeting the needs of of students families and districts during covet and as a result that that enrollment was not not impacted next slide which brings me to student outcomes and i think this is probably what you guys are are are most excited about i think this is something that um our two organizations are very much aligned with um student outcomes is something very important to us this is a project we've been working on for since i've been here with and i've been here almost almost five years now is is figuring out how to measure student outcomes regardless unfortunately in the world of special ed student outcomes often result in uh very subjective long-winded

012narrative goals that are um understand understood by very few and hard to hard to measure um is and even harder to project where the student's supposed to be going and so what we did with our preschool program is we took a look at the arizona early childhood standards and created a curriculum that was aligned to those standards right so that our students were learning the skills that their sighted peers were learning and then adapted those skills to the expanded core curriculum so that our students were learning what their sighted peers are learning the skills that every visually impaired student needs to be successful and starts kindergarten with their sighted peers which is essentially what our preschool is all about so the expanded core curriculum uh which which may be a refresher for for some of

013you is is is a set of skills that every visually impaired student needs in order to access their cited uh the curriculum the same curriculum as their sighted peers so it's that that adaption next slide so this is just a sample and and leticia called me and said jared jared the the board is not going to be able to read this and that's okay this is just meant as a graphical representation as far as what these rubrics look like um these the the preschool rubric that we're that i'm i'll be referencing in this presentation is is a massive document and i'll be happy to share kendra and and i have talked about it um often and she's seen the document and this is what our teachers use this represents one section out of seven and

014these sections are aligned with the same sections that are in the arizona early childhood standards um the rubric itself and the skills progressed from a zero to ten and the reason we did that is we wanted one rubric for all of our students to take into account all abilities and the the argument for a lot of educators at that in our circles is well that doesn't measure my kid or my kids there of course absolutely and every kid is is is different at a different level but we wanted a tool that was going to measure them to the arizona state standards and where they were so this rubric progresses from foundational skills at 0 1 2 level all the way up to advanced 8 9 10 being able to show you know where a student

015was as they're about to start from preschool showing growth from the start of preschool to the end of preschool which is is what this is all about next slide and the result you get this is just a an example of one student you guys can see the seven different sections there teachers have lesson plans and curriculums that are aligned to these state standards they are documenting progress on these areas on a monthly basis and you're able to see these scores progress and some of it you can see is is is very subtle um but over time particularly in a two-year program like preschool you're going to be able to see where the growth is you're going to be able to see you know maybe where there's not growth plateau needs for intervention um as that

016student progresses into kindergarten that kindergarten teacher is going to have a great snapshot of of where you know the strengths the gaps the opportunities are for that student so that they can support that student and be successful in kindergarten next slide and here's here's another another graph just representing the the data as well you know we wanted to look at some different ways that we can represent this data to tell the story um whether it be parents districts people that aren't necessarily in our world 24 7. so they can have a better idea as far as where a student is progressing possibly not progressing etc and and to be able to to tell that story and that next slide i think i don't know if i have boomer all right so this is this is

017i i i'd like to kind of end on the presentation and then i'll take any questions you guys have um the the the picture you guys see on the the screen um is a student in our east valley campus um and the reason i want to share this particular success story is because this is uh a success story of this partnership um as much as is this this student um indy came to us last school year in the middle of a pandemic didn't necessarily wasn't necessarily thrilled and excited about coming to preschool she came to us unable to walk she was in in a wheelchair and really really struggling and she she eventually got to preschool uh worked with our our teachers our para educators our therapists um and this this picture right here is

018is a video of indy on the playground last month and she is walking dang near running around the playground uh bossing people around like the mayor of the playground and having a great time and really succeeding and i want to give us a special shout out to to dr kendra benedict uh director of early learning programs albert duff director of operations who worked tireless with me to ensure that this student never missed a day of school whether it be with the lea transition from district asdb covid um they work tirelessly to make sure the students here to school every day and it has continued to see that grow so um it's a value partnership we're appreciative of it and thank you for for giving me the opportunity thank you jared very much appreciate that and

019now i'm going to ask deanne chapman to come on the video screen and i'm here to introduce you to the ceo of desert voices dan chapman she will be now here to give you information about our working partnership with desert voices good afternoon board president nigro and members of the board um i am deanne chapman executive director here at desert voices uh first i want to say thank you for inviting us and i'm excited for this first time opportunity to present to you so desert voices we provide early and intensive direct instruction and parent coaching within the educational environment we teach children with hearing loss to achieve age-appropriate oral language and build to and begin to build literacy skills our goal is for children with hearing loss to be equipped with the skills needed to

020thrive in a mainstream learning environment next next slide please our formal partnership with asdb began in march of 2017 and covered birth to three prior to this time hearing specialists would sometimes refer families to our program so we do have a long history with your agency the graph you're looking at here illustrates the number of unique hearing specialists that refer families to us each academic year since the contract began the range has been somewhere between six and ten uh hearing specialists so we feel like there's still room to grow we would like to see all hearing specialists in the zero to three program at least tour with their appropriate families next slide our experience and the current guidelines for care for children with hearing loss has proven when a family enters our program by at

021least 12 months of age there's a high probability of mainstreaming to a typical classroom by five years of age or earlier so entering our program between birth and 12 months only increases that probability so looking at our data the average age of referrals from asdb at this time is about two years of age but also with this graph it does show the fluctuation of referrals over the past five years and um i would like to explore this more with uh kendra during our regular meetings to find out the root cause of these flux fluctuations and how we can improve this next slide so families have a choice asdb services our services or with the zimmerman clinton clinic here at desert voices we stress the importance of early intervention with a listening and spoken language goal

022and encourage making a choice that fits for the family schools therefore we are not always the appropriate placement for all families in this graph we can see that we receive the most referrals in the first year of our contract and in the most recent two years our numbers of shared families and referrals have have decreased next slide what is alarming to us here is the birth rate in arizona has historically been stable so we may assume the number of families seeking listening of spoken language services is also stable it's it's easy i think for all of us to blame the pandemic but access to our services have been available through the pandemic and in-person services returned here on our campus in august of 2021. so the risk of late identification and amplification and late or

023inconsistent intervention leads to greater challenges and longer timelines for children closing their language gap and thus reaching their full potential so our hope is that we can work together to identify how to re-regain the traction among both of our teams so we can rebuild and highlight the benefits of our great partnership and what it does for children and families next slide here we are seeing the number of children in our early intervention program that transition from those programs into our preschool or other placements and typically other placements are parent choice relocation age-appropriate skills or or they have additional needs that we are unable to to meet next slide this is the good stuff so here are the outcomes of our shared children who entered or just entering our preschool program from our early intervention program

024so the ppvt measures understanding of common vocabulary evt measures expressive use of common vocabulary and both of these tests are important indicators of how quickly kids will transition from learning to read to reading to learn then core language measures the ability to manipulate and comprehend parts of language and grammar this piece is important when we think about the conversations that occur every day in learning from this data we can see that the children that do transition are still in need of intensive services or we are wanting to ensure children that have closed the gap before age three maintain or move into the above average range when compared to their typical hearing peers a majority of our students score in the average range of 86 to 115 we do have students that fall above and greatly

025above the average we also see some students fall below the average range the main impact is on their receptive vocabulary and language and in most of those cases this is due to late identification or a child that hasn't had a focused intervention plan next slide these are our tuition rates for early intervention just assuming a family is in each one for a year you can see those amounts but we do provide scholarships to all families and tuition is on a sliding scale and the next slide let's go on to the preschool so our preschool uh partnership is pretty new this began in june of 2020. uh our hope is we will see more students in the coming months so we at least maintain the referral rate of the last two years but we certainly hope

026to see improvements in the future the others listed on this graph are direct referrals from school districts families self-referring and other professionals such as audiologists or word of mouth and internet searches included in these numbers are students who are within three months of their third birthday this is a tricky time for them because we have to balance the requirements of the iep process along with the actual educational needs of of those students and families and next slide we are seeing more of the asdb referrals enroll in the last two years from moving from early intervention to preschool but we also with our existing relationships with school districts we have continued as well to get those direct referrals and direct pay but we have seen a decrease in outside enrolled referrals and we think that's likely

027due to a decrease in public school enrollment coming out of the pandemic next slide we do have some fears when we are looking at this graph there has been a drop in enrollment since the 1920s school year in addition coming out of the pressures of the pandemic the referral age most likely will rise and this is just giving all of us less time to close that language gap for those students and the next slide when we work together on early identification timely amplification and language intervention we will see more kids transition into mainstream classrooms in either kindergarten or their pre-kindergarten year but typically our students here at desert voices are transitioning to a mainstream classroom at their kindergarten age and the next slide this is the good stuff here we are results of our focus

028preschool services so we use the same assessments and these are normed for hearing peers these test scores you see are the same group that i shared earlier from um and we obtained these just as they were getting ready to transition so their age range is somewhere between four and six we can see the intensive services close the language gap a majority of our students test in the average range 86 to and the majority of our students score above the average range in both receptive and expressive vocabulary we do still have a few kids that score below the average range but no child is in that last range that you saw before while in early intervention this all means children that leave our program have not only made yearly progress but close the developmental gap to

029some degree between themselves and their typical hearing peers together this partnership we have set these students up for success in their future educational setting next slide here's our published tuition here for the preschool we do provide a full discount a full-time discount for school districts which does include asdb and again we we fundraise the gap and then lastly i just want to say our intent here today was to inspire ongoing conversations on how our partnership can continue to improve the outcomes of the students we serve and we hope we will be invited back on a regular basis for updates thank you again for your time and your attention and i'm happy to answer any questions thank you thank you so much deanne i have had the opportunity to personally um visit in 2016 and i'm

030sure there have been more innovations since i've been there but i also um two weeks ago had the opportunity to visit the campus of fbc on northern avenue i highly encourage any board members staff members that want to have a better understanding of that continuum of services that asdb provides through partnerships through what we do um it's mind-boggling what is happening and all the the great amazing things that are happening and at this point um president nigro i am turning item 1.03 back to you oh thank you dr rex um does anyone on the board have any questions for either ms chapman or mr gilson uh president agro this is dean howard can you hear me okay hi again dean hey um so one of the things i'd like to request is um potentially maybe

031having both groups and even zimmerman if that's an option come to the board on a quarterly basis and just give us an update as they are a strategic partner of ours um that that would be good to get some updates on how things are progressing how students are doing the numbers student enrollment that type of thing i was kind of caught off guard that we haven't had an update from this group these groups some of them not not in the in the near past so i thought it would be a good idea maybe if we could do that in the future uh yeah i mean i i think we certainly could do that um you know quarterly you know the frequency uh you know we meet six times a year for regular meetings in addition

032to other work study sessions etc so um you know maybe two or three times a year i think my work and coordinate with our with our meeting schedule but i think that's a good idea are there any other comments president nigro this is dean howard again and i'm just going to throw out a thought process since my time on the board is starting to come to an end in the same vein of progression and moving forward and thinking about the board and what asdb does um you know there might be some some discussions in the future that we could have about you know asdb on a asl stand side of of the equation being the school for that and potentially for listening spoken language you know those resources are there you know maybe that's the

033best avenue for for for listening spoken languages those two schools so just something to contemplate i think the board might want to be taking a look at that idea down the road just another thought to inject just a comment not a question all right thank you dean um ms chapman i did have a couple of questions for you um thank you um you know we do see these the numbers and i guess we can maybe go to maybe deal with birth to three first sure um so we see the these referrals um from the agency kind of decreasing in recent years and it seems like your total number of enrollment um you know or a number of students serving that zero to three is reducing is there and i just want to help better help

034me understand what the cause of that is is it that there aren't there just aren't people that are seeking uh your services or do you think that there are people that are seeking it but they don't know about you maybe it's a you know maybe maybe somehow they don't know of you for some reason um or is it is it something else great question and it's something where uh we've been trying to figure out for for quite quite some time and i would um love to get together with kendra and look at what numbers um you're seeing on identification and referral and how that looks for us but oftentimes it is families that just don't know about us we don't have access to those new new uh born screening hearings and so we have to

035depend on community partners often to talk to families about us as an option um so we don't we don't have that direct comment uh contact upfront right and that's because you know i'm trying to think of what you know the process typically is and there's you know by the time the student comes you know the asdb has you know the statewide jurisdiction for zero to three um so you know i i think that the agency is is at least letting parents know of your services i i think and tell me if you don't think that's the case um but also the you know but to come from the agency you have to be referred to the agency right so there are certainly children um who uh will go through those uh hearing screenings and it'll

036they'll be identified at a young age that we may not get to ace to be may not get to that those families may not know about early intervention and may not seek it uh but uh they may be seeking interactions with the medical community to uh get diagnosis you know for you know for these children so do you have any relationships with uh with the the medical community in in the area to try to get to to try to form a second pool of resources or second full of referrals um to see if you can at least identify other students that may may be interested in your school yes definitely we have a strong relationship with phoenix children's hospital so referrals do come through them often and also families uh will search for uh our

037types of or just look for services online and will come to us directly we always make sure to ask those families if they are already working with your agency and then we loop in their hearing specialist to make sure that they can attend the tour and then be involved with the services that we're providing here if they don't know about asdb and those services we refer them back to asdb as well so that they can access access those services great and then um in terms of the the cost you know your slides mentioned the cost of the zero to three services and then the cost of the preschool uh you know there is a contract between hdb and desert voices for the preschool so we understand that pricing structure um can you tell me more

038about the you know the support from the early learning program of acb what kind of support financial aid is that does that provide to your agency to offset some of these these numbers sure so um that is um some students are vouchered um to our school um and so that amount that uh just about twenty four thousand dollars that's the same amount that a school district um pays if they decide to directly refer and contract with us directly we currently have three students that are vouchered through asdb um so that's a really new uh system for us uh kendra and i were rushing to figure out that process in the middle of a pandemic and so that that is newer a newer way but still some school districts decide just to contract with with us

039directly because they've been doing that for many many years uh correct i understand about the preschool um and you know on the funding side of it you know those kids have ieps right so zero to three there's not going to be an iep there's not going to be uh finding support from the school district uh there is from asdb we operate the statewide you know the search three earlier invention program uh but the the numbers that we have on slide i don't know what's my number this is necessarily but it's the annual tuition birthday right um who you know does the agency um you know provide any financial help to you guys in that in that area because again that's the that's the real key part of this this year to three as you told

040us at the beginning that you tend to get better outcomes when children are identified earlier and are able to receive services earlier um you know so if you get to them at at four uh that's gonna be less effective so um you know for parents that are interested in these types of services um you know what what kind of financial support are you getting from the agency in that regard yes so an easier way to think about that is um our our hourly rate for parent coaching sessions is a hundred and twenty dollars an hour and the agency supports eighty-eight dollars of that cost and then we fundraise the difference and then with our um jump jump start program the agency currently does not support that that was a new program that came in um

041that we came up with uh after the contract had been signed so that's not part of the contract and then the toddler class it's 160 dollars per day and the agency uh supports 80 of that per um one day a week they do attend two days a week so parents once um children are in the toddler class parents are covering the second day and then we are fundraising the difference between what the agency supports what the family pays we're making up that difference in fundraising okay i think i maybe i got to read the transcript of what just said because i heard that for the toddler program uh the it's it's 160 a day uh the agency pays 80 a day um and so for the to make up that half um you said that

042the parents are paying but also your fundraising for the difference so correct um help me explain how both of those things are proven sure so our top what we do with our toddler class is we have um students attend two days a week our data shows that at least two two days a week is what is needed for us to um close that begin to close that language gap so the agency cover helps cover one day a week and then the parents are responsible for the tuition on the second day and we work with families on a sliding scale and um provide scholarship dollars for that for that second day is that is that clear okay so the parents are asked to pay and if they are not able to pay they can apply for

043a scholarship from your organization and that's given on a a need that if you're just looking at need on that or you're looking at other factors as well we they complete a financial application financial need application and it is based on their income their expenses and most families typically pay about 10 of the actual cost of those services so if they were in the toddler class that second day um they would pay 16 and then we fundraise the difference to provide them that scholarship okay and is the similar thing we talk you talk about fundraising the difference with the parent coaching jumpstart um is that a similar thing where parents are asked to pay or um it's just it's just from your general funding from your fundraising it's um they are asked to pay but

044we every every family that uh is enrolled here at desert voices is receiving some amount of scholarship dollars from us okay um okay i think that answers some of my questions there and then for transportation for zero to three who's covering the cost of transportation the families are um transporting to and from for zero to three okay and you just have the one campus correct correct we just have one campus and your your days are how long are these days is it six hours typical school day so the toddler class is three and a half hours and they come twice a week so they get seven hours of services and then the preschool is six and a half hours five days a week okay um and on the on the preschool um you know there

045is the for the voucher students are the parents being asked to pay anything on top of the the voucher now no anyone who is vouchered or has a school district contract doesn't pay any additional um funds okay and and and who arranges for transportation uh so transportation for voucher students is through asdb um but sometimes parents choose to transport them themselves um school districts also transport but again sometimes families feel more comfortable transporting themselves okay okay uh great no that's answered a lot of the questions that i had um one final time any anyone else on the board have any questions for either uh miss chapman or mr gilson all right uh seeing none thank you both and thank you dr rex uh for coming in and presenting today we can move on to 1.04

046superintendents report superintendent reichman good afternoon hello president nigro members of the board directors assistant superintendent rex assistant superintendent cooper and members of the asdb community welcome to our january 20 2022 board meeting our first board meeting of the year 2022 i'm going to keep my remarks brief we do have a lot of items to discuss this afternoon during our board meeting i just want to take a moment and step back and look at the bigger picture [Music] for you as the board members what is your authority in the governance of asdb if we look at the arizona state constitution and arizona statutes they clearly give you as the board governance authority over asdb you make decisions and leave the agency when you look at our policies you can also see that there are three types

047of authority that you have the first type of authority is legislative that means that you develop and approve policies those policies become the rules so to speak that guide our agency and what we are supposed to do so first you set those policies and then your second authority is your executive authority you have the authority to run asdb [Music] through those policies you often divert that authority to me as the superintendent of asdb the third type of authority that you have is the authority to evaluate you are able to do appraisals of the asdb agency the education that we provide the supports that we provide and also my work as the superintendent those are the three areas where you have a direct authority and responsibility for the governance of asdb that second type of authority

048that i mentioned where you are able to grant me authority that executive authority that i mentioned allows me to run the agency you set the policies and then we as the agency implement those policies we follow essentially the rules that you of the as the board have set that's sort of a broad description of your authority and responsibilities as the board and my authority that you have granted to me as the superintendent to lead the agency and run our daily operations so i ask that in future discussions in future board meetings and other meetings you keep that in mind as the board of directors you have the specific authorities for governance and you are able to grant me authorities so that i can lead the agency with that in mind this afternoon during our january

049board meeting i am supposed to present on the state of the agency in your board docs under my report you will find the agency profile and that profile outlines our work and our accomplishments during the 2020-21 school year it looks like this and i strongly encourage you all to take 15 minutes or so to read through that report consider that during the covert pandemic these are the things that we were able to accomplish our teachers our staff our leadership team is very proud of that work so please take the time to read through that and get a better understanding of what we've been doing and what's happening right now in the agency at this moment i can talk about that it's really um all about the pandemic we are all facing the omicron variant and

050it ha it has had a widespread and significant impact on all of our lives it has had an impact on asdb as well last summer we decided that our students really needed to be in the classroom and be in person we really did not want to do remote or virtual education again and that was our goal for the school year so far we've been pretty successful the fall went along pretty steadily we got it done the number of staff um who became infected with the coronavirus from august the first week of august all the way through to the end of december was a total of 60 staff that was averaging three to four staff members per week that did cause some stress on the system our principals and program directors were moving things around and

051making accommodations on a daily basis to try to cover for those teachers who were out sick and of course the instructional assistants and other staff members who were out sick as well and then we had our christmas break and we were able to take a quick breath and when we came back in january those first two weeks that we've been back in january we have had a total of 30 staff members who have been infected with coronavirus so now we are averaging 15 per week that's not doubled that's not tripled that's almost quadrupled the number of cases that we had previously and i've been counting this week thus far i think we have 10 staff members this week who have contracted the coronavirus that sounds insignificant it sounds like it's not a big deal but

052it's not just that individual who who was directly affected and tested positive we are also identifying other staff who have been exposed and may have also contracted the virus and we are doing contract contact tracing to find those individuals who may have contracted it themselves who were a close contact with that individual if they were less than six feet from that person if they interacted without a mask they are isolating at home for five days and so we are doing that contact tracing and those who have the vaccine who do not get sick are able to come back um fairly quickly but if they have not had the vaccination then they have to stay home for that five days so on a daily basis we are having to follow up with every single one of

053those staff members every teacher who was infected all of their close contacts and then we are also having to find substitute teachers and find subs for other staff members for our instructional assistants for our principals every day are having to move all of these things around and doing the absolute best that they can our super intent or excuse me our principals and our nursing directors are doing this seven days a week they start very early in the morning six or seven in the morning until eight o'clock at night because they're having to make all of these phone calls and rearrange everyone's schedules make sure that we're covered and this doesn't even account for our students our students this time do seem to be contracting covid19 at a higher rate we are identifying the students who

054have been a close contact or who have been infected and we're sending them home and then we're checking with those students in their class to see if they've been vaccinated or if they haven't and then how we have to deal with their situation whether they're sick or not they may need to quarantine at home for several days and then we have to provide the parents with information let the parents know whether or not they're able to come back if they can't come back for five days then we're contract contacting our transportation department rearranging our bus routes to ensure that we're not stopping where students aren't supposed to be picked up yesterday on the tucson campus i am actually currently here on the tucson campus and yesterday our tucson campus preschool had to close reason being

055we had 11 teachers and instructional assistants total and eight of them could not come to work eight out of 11. they were either infected with copin 19 or they were exposed and they were required to stay at home or they were sick and they had just gotten a test for colby 19 but they had not gotten the results to determine whether they were negative or positive so we have these children at home who are sick who have been infected with coping 19 and as a result of the number of staff that were sick we had to to close the preschool next week we will be remote via zoom for that reason fortunately our parents are very understanding and they're working with us to make this work we are very fortunate in that regard we're also

056fortunate that the supervising teacher is very well prepared they had planned ahead for this eventuality and they already had the curriculum and materials ready to go to send out to families and parents in case this were to happen so that they can work with their preschool children next week while they're at home we are grateful for that our bus drivers um similar to the rest of the nation are facing a shortage we do not have enough drivers on the phoenix campus at the phoenix day school for the deaf we have 18 bus drivers um positions excuse me we have 18 positions eight of them are filled we only have eight full-time bus drivers that means we have 10 vacancies we have been attempting to recruit bus drivers for quite a while now and that has

057not been successful we are transporting students via contracted transportation services we're contracting with several different transportation agencies now those bus driving companies have hit their limits they are not able to offer us any additional services that means if one more full-time bus driver becomes sick or is otherwise absent we are going to have a significant challenge on our hands for the phoenix students providing transportation to and from school will be a problem does that mean we have given up that we have decided we can't do it obviously no we are continuing to problem solve we are um thinking outside the box and trying to find creative solutions to this issue i have faith and confidence that our leadership team our principals our directors our director of operations our manager of transportation all of those individuals

058all of our educators all of our staff are working very hard to make sure that we are able to achieve our goal which is to keep our students coming to school on our campuses in person we are making that effort so i just wanted to give you that information because currently we are in survival mode we are trying to keep our schools open and we are hoping that soon the current surge will start to decline and some of that pressure will be relieved until that happens i know that our agency leadership team and our teachers and staff will continue to do their best to figure out how we are able to get back to educating our students in a normal manner at the end of the day this is about our students and our students

059are experiencing that pressure they are feeling that stress so think about our students they've already faced all of these these challenges at home these challenges with um being deaf and not being able to keep communicate with their families in many instances maybe having additional disabilities being blind or visually impaired and that's compounding the stress that anyone else in this pandemic is facing when they come to school every day they don't know what's going to happen they don't know how their routine may be disrupted because they might have a different teacher they might have a different instructional assistant and we all know how important it is for our students to have emotional and mental health and emotional and mental stability that is provided by the routine that we are trying so desperately to provide we are

060not providing the most stable routine right now because of the pandemic once we start to just to see a decline in cases we really need to regroup we need to have those hard conversations and refocus our energies on bringing our kids back re-engaging our students in their learning getting them motivated again so that they can learn and that they can improve their academic skills and develop those social emotional skills that we know are so critical for them we are continuing to commit to being here to being present to keeping our students involved and engaged and being as supportive as we can in their education and that concludes my report thank you superintendent reichman are there any board members have any questions for the superintendent about a report uh seeing none we can move on superintendent

061right thank you so much and all the staff for uh continuing to work through in these last few weeks it's uh i know it's been very difficult um and you know appreciate all your hard work to keep the schools open as best that we can with the staff that we have that's that's healthy next is uh 1.05 information item assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction report assistant superintendent dr rex thank you president nigro board members asdb staff and viewers of our january meeting i also will keep my comments brief but i have something very exciting that i must share so at this time stephanie johnson if you can turn on your video screen i just want to introduce our board and the asdb stakeholders to region 1 director stephanie johnson who has joined us on the

06217th of january by the way she has no relation to statewide director jay johnson who is also serving as the region 3 director but stephanie comes to us from deer valley unified school district and i look forward to her skills as a systems thinker to support our statewide redesign i've really seen with what superintendent reichman hit on today the true need for our directors and principals to be present for our staff as well as offering grace and supporting them i see a need for our directors to be out in the field meeting with our teachers our interpreters audiologists braillists admins and to truly support the work and the quality of service statewide stephanie will be working in region one for the remainder of this semester she will be working on the completion of staff evaluations

063supporting the work that's already been started developing a better understanding of region one as well as our agency this semester so welcome stephanie i just wanted the board and asdb to have an opportunity to have a look at our new region 1 director as annette alluded to as we continue to adjust and align the challenges and the changes of covid we are certainly moving on almost a daily scale i cannot tell you the amount of emails that we are updating and keeping to ensure that we have all the information for the newest cases how that affects our classrooms but i do want to assure this board that our programs are prepared and they will be ready to move to remote if necessary i value everyone's effort and the grace that they've given to each other

064and the support and the collaboration across all the educational programs people are stepping in and stepping up and i see that and i want to make sure this board understands all the efforts that are making sure the kids are able to learn i appreciate all the work that's being done and that concludes my report thank you dr rex are there any questions for dr rex about her report david i i don't have a question but i did want to mention that um both pv um jantz and linda bove have joined the meeting uh yes i i did see both when they both joined and i've noted the time at which they joined for the minutes thank you okay um all right hearing no further questions we will proceed to 1.06 information item assistant superintendent of

065agency operations and support services assistant superintendent cooper thank you good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex members of the board and astb community each of the directors have provided to you their departmental reports which i will provide a summary on and add to based on additional information that has come forth since the reports were provided last week all if not most of the work we do is tied to pillar 3 superb organizational culture and pillar for effective resource management the it department has issued more than 70 computers to staff and are on track to have the remaining 30 issued in the next few weeks the installation of the tucson campus classroom notification system that we receive funding from the state for is expected to begin in the next few weeks this system

066will provide a much needed audio as well as video public announcement system for our students that have been without for about six years the team is also working on finalizing the statement of work for the it network infrastructure refresh for all copper data runs on both ascv campuses that we plan to have completed before the end of the school year the operations department more specifically transportation has been working diligently to continue to address the transportation needs for our students and as superintendent reichman just provided you some of the challenges that the transportation department on both campuses are experiencing as a refresh in terms of where we are with recruitment for our drivers ptsd transportation is continuing to limp along with roughly 50 percent of the required staffing on the campus despite current recruiting efforts the

067pdst campus has limited success in finding additional cdl and non-cdl drivers due to house bill 2863 pdsc transportation has been required to coordinate the transportation of all fbc students which as jared had mentioned is about 45 students pdsd transportation has been able to either provide the transportation directly to these students or we've had to contract those services out to third-party vendors the tucson campus has had more success in hiring both cdl and non-cdl drivers and is performing well considering the national bus driver shortage for the food service department they have been able to correct and implement new guidelines in order to ensure compliance with all of our food-related allergies and requirements in addition they've been able to resolve some of the initial billing and claim issues in order to finalize the transition from in-house services

068to the food service management company for business services the financial report will be provided separately under agenda item 4.01 if you recall the last few meetings i've mentioned that the business services department has been vacant a few positions well we were able to finally fill the one last vacant student accounts club tucson campus position with an internal candidate which she is expected to start in the next week or two if you recall that position had been vacant for more than six months with that position now being filled the department has just had two staff who retired on january staff um january 7th excuse me so now we have two additional vacancies that we're trying to actively recruit for one of them being the procurement specialist and the other the payroll travel manager plans are in

069place to cover the work of those two positions until they are filled or the work is redistributed the early learning program broke the three vendor contracts with desert voices fbc and zimmerman have all recently been extended for another year to expire january 1st 2023 and a meeting has been set up in february to begin a thorough review of the contracts and amendments needed before they are set to expire so we have ample time for negotiations over these next couple of months the implementation of a new student information system will be delayed until fiscal year 2023 excuse me school year 2023 school year 2024 while we search for a vendor to develop our accounts receivable and payable needs and this portion of the system was not included in the original request for replacement of our cis

070which is currently power school but it is truly an integral part of our system and helps with our tracking of our voucher revenues as well as our fee for service billing last but not least the hr department has also been working on a number of initiatives and projects they've provided several virtual informational session meetings to our various leaders within the agency to include covering topics such as remote work how to deal with conflict fmla and skills for non-defensive communication to build our program and expand on the number of hires through practicum and internship placements so far for the 21 22 school year hr has been able to finalize placement for both campuses eop as well as the itinerant teams in addition to the work the four departments are doing i continue to actively work with

071several of the staff to analyze the current staff compensation structure to ensure internal equity and external competitiveness we are working to modify salary schedules including but not limited to eliminating compression issues for the entry-level positions that come from the minimum wage changes and reviewing the pay rates for various positions based upon market studies one of the first groups that we've been able to look at a little bit deeper and looking at changing the pay rates would include our instructional assistants and our technical aid intervenors which we hope to be able to make those rate changes effective beginning in july 2022 with board approval at the last board meeting in november the minimum wage paid schedule changes were approved with which increased the hourly rates from 12 15 to 12 and 80 cents affected this past

072january first and it affected about 130 staff if you recall i mentioned that tucson proposition 206 was approved in november which would increase the city's minimum wage for tucson from 1215 to 15 by january 1st 2025 and increasing it every january thereafter the first increment would be 13 effective april 1st 2022 at this time we still have not had an opportunity to complete the review of the details and determine if and how those rate increases will be implemented for our tucson staff members and as a reminder as an agency under the state of arizona we are not required to follow the minimum wage increase for arizona or its cities however we have been able to remain competitive with other employers and we do try to increase the minimum wage based on the city and the

073state's suggested minimum wage increases again i hope to be able to provide more information at the march board meeting i appreciate the work that each of the directors and their teams have done and continue to do for the departments for the students for the agency that concludes my verbal report however i'm going to turn it over to our executive director of human resources anita pyatt to provide an update on strategic plan pillar 3 superb organizational culture and at the march board meeting i will be providing an update on pillar 4 effective resource management thank you shayna good afternoon board president nigro memphis members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendent dr rex and assistant superintendent cooper i'm going to be providing an update on pillar 3 which is superb organizational culture in this pillar there

074are three objectives and the first objective is regarding our professional development plans and evaluations for our staff members right now our organizational development division team which is our odd team has been busy since the onset of the school year with professional development training purchasing professional development subscriptions and assessments for asdb staff members today asdb staff have participated in 22 external trainings nine internal trainings well an additional 10 that are ongoing currently our staff continue to participate in training virtually whenever possible and consistently rate external trainings at a rate at an eight in survey results this external training ranges among different business and educational aspects here are a few that i'm going to briefly list to give you a sense of the variety of topics forklift train the trainer by industrial commission of arizona see the

075spectrum of the aph low vision products from bisphero e iep pro bootcamp ade idea transitions conference pragmatic and socially equitable sld eligibility for our internal trainings we we have been providing those miss barbara randles our staff development specialist has been providing trainings for customer service and seven habits of highly effective people in addition we have julie jones an itinerant teacher from region 3 who's provided braille note touch resources for our staff members kalea cook our instructional technology specialist is providing instructional technology training for staff members who work in the classroom as well as all the support staff ms cook has been steadily providing support for google elite and we video training in the topics that kalea has been providing um wevideo google sheets google forms and google meet our surveys show a steady satisfaction rate

076of 7 or above for those writ for those trainings beginning in february we'll be sending out a google assessment to all asdb staff members to gauge their competency in the google suite and identify areas that need refinement the odd has also purchased professional development subscriptions for our campus-based related service staff this year these subscriptions are to assist and supplement the phoenix into tucson campus a friday professional development series the organization the odd team is also partnering with the principals and presenting in the areas of differentiated instruction behavior management and active engagement survey data was collected at the end of november and it will also be collected at the end of april and here are just a few samples of those subscriptions that have purchased we have purchased things for our occupational therapists eipa mentor track

077asha for our sl our speech language pathologist and audiologists physical therapy intervenor training and iterate online currently we have 23 itinerant teachers of the deaf who have begun a 14-week webinar training with fairview learning itinerant teachers do not have control over cur student curriculum however they are able to support the existing language curriculum with this program fairview gives literacy tools that help construct mental linguistic frameworks that allow students access to increase their fluency in english and asl the first online session started on monday january 10th and so the odd team will be collecting the survey data on staff progress and the satisfaction of that program at the end of each quarter in addition odd in partnership with jennifer scarborough the director of deaf programs had staff members participate in an asl proficiency interview testing it

078was determined that four teachers of the deaf one from each program from our phoenix campus our tucson campus elp and original cooperative would participate in the specialized instruction to assist with their goals these teachers are participating in this advanced asl training on saturdays in the month of december and january odd will also be looking at the rochester institute of technology asl testing program as well the teaching strategies gold this is an assessment given to preschool and kindergarten students which is a state requirement this data helps support developmental milestones for our students and we plan to use this data making decisions about the students and where they are in their development the first in-house teaching strategies gold training was held for five new staff members from the preschool programs which had a satisfaction rating of 9.6

079robin eichner our assessment specialist is doing the in-house training for our staff as collaborating with foundation for the blind children and also desert voices we have first upload of that information to the state and are working on future discussions with teachers and supervisor staff to improve the documentation process the last part of objective one and pillar three is our working on improving the submission of performance evaluations for this school year last year in review of performance evaluation data that we the results were 34 of performance evaluations were not completed or turned in we're looking to decrease that number we started the year off with sending out resources and tools and provided performance evaluation training for supervisors we plan to send out information to supervisors in february regarding the performance evaluation deadlines for our completion and

080to decrease that number for objective 2 this is the model servitude for leadership by creating leadership opportunities and increasing our agency communication the agency has sent around 84 agency communications so far this year to staff members these communications cover covet updates strategic plan updates our agency vacancy list our agency safety newsletter our organizational development division monthly update newsletter and various communications that create agency awareness on important topics we are in our second year of the emerging leaders program based on feedback feedback from last year action plan coaching will still be in place for those who want to participate and the emerging leaders will receive the same leadership coaching content that the executive team receives the number of participants has almost doubled in the second year we have 21 staff members participating this year this program

081consists of staff members from as teachers audiologists and interpreters orrin katchkov director of odd has action plans and coaching sessions to review the program with the participants the participants have involved in the learning about decision traps behave smart teams and emotional bank accounts and as assistant superintendent cooper had previously stated human resources has been working on creating 12 informative sessions which we refer to as super sessions for our supervisors we have um 12 scheduled we've done 5 for this year have completed those so far and so we'll continue that until the end of april for objective 3 this is reviewing our the current data that we have on our students and our staff and how those numbers compare for our culture and currently odd is working with deaf mentor program coordinator christina voyer to identify

082pillar 3 baseline data as part of her leadership goals in the emerging leaders program the agency currently doesn't have a way to identify which staff consider themselves deaf hard of hearing blind deaf-blind or having low vision the survey that's already been completed will provide the agency with information to achieve this pillar's objective currently we are working on gathering a committee together to look at accessibility and language this committee will look at what we've done so far that is successful and what we can do better and the data will and this survey will also provide a baseline for us this concludes an update on pillar three at this time i'd like to make myself available for any questions that you may have thank you are there any questions all right um seeing none uh we can

083move on to the next part of the agenda um 2.01 i do note that it is we are 90 minutes into the meeting so um lucky if the interpreter is a 10 minute break so i'd like to take a break for 10 minutes and return at 5 40. hello everyone it is 5 40 so i'd like to bring everyone back hello um we're going to resume uh 2.01 action item approval of a consent agenda consistent with four policies to include items 3.01 5.01 7.02 7.03 and 7.04 i trust that everyone's reviewed the consent agenda would anyone like to remove anything from the consent agenda uh hearing none uh i move that the board accept the consent agenda as proposed i see a second from sue k uh all in favor uh you can turn on

084your video uh with the thumbs up and if we can get the count here um it should be everyone i all right um any opposed no okay the consent agenda passes and we go on to three um sorry 3.02 action item approval of new district agreements assistant superintendent dr rex thank you president nigro as a reminder i've been asked by our board to identify when we bring on any new districts to our regional itinerant statewide program we have a few that are joining us within region one we have carpe diem collegiate high school and in region 2 hearn academy which is a ball charter school and madison elementary school district so i'm asking this board as an action item to approve the joining of three districts to our statewide itinerant program thank you dr rex

085uh board members have any comments on these three new additions all right uh seeing none i i move that we accept these three contracts is there a second i see lynn then and we'll record that excuse me president niger this is linda yes yes president nigro um i was blocked from turning on my video momentarily so i'm not sure if um my vote was visible i'm not sure what happened there why my video might have been blocked um for 3.02 we're we're indicating it right now so we i can see it right now the previous vote the preview wasn't enabled okay yes my video was blocked so i wasn't able to participate in the previous vote i tried to to turn my video on so i just wanted to make sure that um for the

086record everyone who wanted to vote was able to vote sure um i was able to see the others um and and uh so we will you and you did vote in uh positively on that last one great can you repeat your question president nigro uh on on 2.01 you did vote uh yes correct yes yes okay great um and on this one i think we have everyone that's on the line has voted yes except for mr wonders who has abstained okay great now we can move on to 3.03 information and discussion item uh educational interpreters role and responsibilities pursuant to ars 384310383 the board may vote to phone an executive session which dropped the open of the public for discussion or consultation for legal advice with the board's attorneys um so this one goes to

087dr red i believe this may go to superintendent reichman if you are going into executive session okay yeah that is a conversation from our november meeting that was asked to be brought back yes sir okay uh yeah you're listed on the agenda this is superintendent rankman um president nigro if you wouldn't mind allowing me to start the conversation there are two parts here one part um well really i should say two questions there are two questions here the first question is is asdb in compliance with the requirements with the individuals with disabilities education act i-d-e-a that's the first part or the first question and i invite uh miss debra i'm sorry the interpreter missed the last name it's debra sterling ms debra sterling to give a brief presentation and ms sterling will talk about the

088specifics of idea and our requirements so that will potentially answer the first question and after ms sterling's presentation the board will have opportunity to ask some questions you can ask questions here in the open forum available to the public or if you prefer we can go into a closed executive session in that executive session you would have the opportunity to ask questions specifically for legal advice to ms sterling so that's the first question and then the second question is how asdb is implementing best practices related to educational interpreters and their roles and responsibilities in the iep individualized education plan team meetings okay so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to miss sterling well uh superintendent rickman i think before we speak with uh ms sterling i'd like to move to go into

089executive session to obtain legal advice uh from ms sterling you don't want the presentation first president nigro oh there is so there's a serious presentation for for the public as well that that is not legal advice correct yes um i would say ms sterling could provide a brief presentation first um and then the board can decide if they would like to go into executive session at that time to ask more specific legal questions for legal advice from the sterling okay um mr elling if you're comfortable with that then we can go ahead good afternoon can you hear me i can't hear you yet yeah okay good afternoon board members and president board president nigro and asdb staff i was asked specifically to look at the role of the educational interpreter in terms of being part

090of the iep team in addition to the federal statutes that i will cite in a minute i reviewed the following materials the eipa guidelines of professional conduct for educational interpreters classroom interpreting parents what does special education law say about educational interpreters and the congressional re research services that is put out comparing the statute and the rules when i was asked to do this my first review was of the statutory requirements is set out in 20 usd 1401 i sent that to you i actually i apologize i didn't send that part to you um that part is what was the definition of related services provider of which an educational interpreter is considered and categorized as an education as a related services provider what i did provide to you was the actual statute that sets out what

091is required for an iep team the iep take the federal law requires that the iap team include one the parents of the child two not less than one regular education teacher of the child if the child is anticipating going into regular education not less than one special education teacher or appropriate not less than one special education provider a representative of the lea who meets specific criteria set out in statute about explaining different options and the next one is an individual can interpret instructional implications of evaluation results and that can be one of the other people already on the team the next one is one i want to focus on because it says at the discretion of the parent or the agency other individuals who have knowledge or specific expertise regarding the child including related services

092provider so that's where the related service services provide is specifically mentioned as being a part of the iep team at the request of the parent or the agency and the last i don't want to leave it out that when appropriate the child should be included on the team um there also is part of this iep's theme statutory scheme they have provisions where if a specific service or related service providers area is not being discussed at the specific meeting that there is a procedure by which that person can be excused from the iep team meeting and there's another procedure by which if their area is being discussed um they can provide information to other that they can provide their input even if they cannot attend um the rest of this i just focused on what the

093statute actually requires and thought that would be a good basis if there was any discussion um does anybody have any questions i don't believe we have any questions right now it is at the board's discretion if they want to go into an executive meeting yeah i i i yeah correct um i already moved earlier although it was on second not seconded yet but i already moved to go into executive session are there any seconds to that motion this is pv a second okay um all in favor please turn on your video and give a thumbs up thank you i think that's everyone any opposed okay uh so we're going to enter executive session um david i need yep yep okay um go ahead okay i just wanna okay all persons present here are reminded that

094it is un uh hold on one moment i don't know if that's the one i'm supposed to all right i'm going to read the same one all persons present are hereby reminded that it is unlawful to disclose or otherwise divulge to any person who is not now present other than a current member of the board or pursuant to a specific statutory exception anything that will be or transpired or discussed during the executive session failure to comply is a violation of ars 38-431.03 okay uh thank you i think for um the board members on the zoom call we should you should see a breakout room invitation now uh please join that uh and then we will come back out into the main room we are finished uh thank you okay i think that we are all

095back uh into the public session um thank you everyone thank you mr sterling for our discussion um so now um as superintendent reichman had mentioned we're uh on to the the public portion of 3.03 if anyone has any anything to to discuss unless mrs reichman you you um superintendent rickman you'd like to uh kind of reframe this yes i would prefer to let um i apologize for the interpreter mr j johnson um provide a presentation on the current agency practices regarding how we do business specifically um in relation to the three lead interpreter positions and then from that information we should be able to continue the discussion uh okay that sounds good mr johnson thank you board and thank you and superintendent reichman for giving me the opportunity to speak today today we've also invited

096all three of our elite interpreters throughout the state to be with us for any questions and or comments that the board may have as it relates to the current practices within the itinerant program when we look at the redesign and the work that we've done as a team we noticed that we had five regions as we're aware of a short two years ago and with those five regions we found that we were doing inconsistent practices throughout the state of arizona we found that some of our interpreters did not have a voice at any of the iep meetings and or giving information to any iep teams we also found that sometimes we had folks that were ill prepared to attend an iep meeting based on their background based on the questions from the team and based

097on the needs of the student we met together as a team the three lead interpreters as well as rosie hicks and myself to start discussing the programmatic changes that we could make as a team we also reached out to dr christian rex as a team of leaders to come together to determine what we were doing statewide not only within the itinerant program but also at pdsd and asdb tucson crown campuses what we found was the ptsd team had developed a format that all interpreters completed prior to an iep meeting this form was then shared with the dhh teachers to provide an update as it relates to interpreting the expressive language of the student and the needs of the students as it relates to growing through the communication standards they would need at pdsd we took

098that information then back to our lead interpreters shared that amongst the team and also determined that we may want to adjust the form and look at next academic year to make it more fitting for the itinerary program but we all agreed it was able to give us some standardization throughout the state so all interpreters had a voice at all iep meetings we then looked at how we would share this out with the entire team we sent the information out statewide to all staff so we'd have the opportunity to have that discussion as a team we reached out to our lead supervisor dhh teachers and developed a pattern so the interpreter not only sent the information to the tod but also to the lead dhh and their current director this enabled the team to look through

099the information share amongst the team and make sure that we were prepared for any iep meeting and or any discussions the iep team may have this enabled all interpreters to have a voice at all iep meetings throughout the state of arizona there is opportunity for interpreters to attend iep meetings when we're looking at access to language we also look at iep meetings that may need additional support as it relates to the students needs when they attend the iep meeting and or needs of the iep team we found that this practice has not only enabled the team to come together but also given us good data as it relates to the role of the i the interpreter when not only attending the iep meetings but also their role working within the school system this has given

100us the opportunity to really look at how interpreters provide services on a daily basis to the student that they're assigned to i'm very proud of the work that the team did coming together and pulling together that short two years ago five different regions under three lead interpreters rosie hicks and myself to really look at what best practice could be within the agency and mimic what the schools have been doing in their press packed past past practices again i appreciate the work of our team i appreciate the voices that we had at the table and i appreciate the standardization that we've had within the itinerary program i'll be available for any questions from the board annette frankman or dr rex for the remainder of the time thank you mr johnson uh superintendent reichman did you have

101anything further to say this is superintendent raymond no now is your opportunity to ask any questions of mr johnson and we also have our three lead interpreters with us and mr johnson would you mind introducing those three lead interpreters to the group please so that the board knows who they are absolutely can we have the three lead interpreters turn on cameras and i'm gonna have them introduce themselves so we'll kind of go by region with that we'll start in southern arizona so mj would you mind introducing yourself first and how many years you've been with the agency sure thank you very much jay and um dr dr rex and uh reichman my name is mary jo munis i work in region three um i've been with the agency for 17 years and 14 years as

102a supervisor for interpreters thank you mj we'll move our way north just a bit to brian in region 2. hello everybody sorry about that hello everybody um my name is brian von fulmer i'm the lead interpreter for region 2 in phoenix and i've been working for 10 years what they used to do already interrupt this is aaron um somebody has their mic on can we restart that portion please thank you are you sorry about that feedback [Music] is that any better [Music] no not really brian now we can't hear you at all there's always something [Music] hey brian go ahead and just turn down the volume on your computer that's probably the issue they're all in the same spot okay is this better it seems like you might have multiple windows open or your volume

103is turned up it's all the way off sorry it looks like it's mj that has her mic on how about now is that a little bit better gotta love technology it works great sometimes and then sometimes it doesn't sorry but hello my name is brian von fulmar i am the lead interpreter of region 2 in phoenix and i've been working for astb for 10 years thank you brian yeah technology can be challenging for all of us now and again and last but not least certainly not least we'll go to the north and to the west and linda would you mind introducing yourself and yours with the agency okay hi can you hear me my name is linda sullivan i have been with the agency for 16 and a half years 17 years i've been lead

104interpreter for about 10 and a half years now and i'm in the yuma area and a lot of the northern and western era part of arizona thank you linda this is superintendent reichman now as board members it is your opportunity to ask any questions that you may have of jay and the three lead interpreters hi this is lynn um i'd like to know what the procedure is now for interpreters we know that they are related service providers who may or may not be attending the iep meeting what is the procedure for having them attend they they have critical knowledge of the student um many of them most of them see the kids way more than any of the tods especially in the itinerant area [Music] so what is the policy of having them attend iep

105meetings you know lin that's a great question and thank you for asking that so i'm going to kind of give the bones i'll give the bones part of that but i am going to turn to the three experts because they're the ones that are helping us manage that and that will be mj brian and linda so the bones of it is is that we took the format as i mentioned before from pdsd and we push that out statewide so each interpreter can make their own copy of the same form which then looks at everything related to the interpreting services that a child is receiving there's also a portion that gives us a narrative on what's happening in the classroom concerns they may have issues going on and those type of things as well that then

106form gets sent out to the lead tud as well as the tod working in that particular school with that student and the director that group then comes together reviewing that information making sure we're asking questions what is happening in the classroom concerns they may have what would be happening as far as maybe expressive language or whatnot and then determine as a team whether or not they need additional information and or if the interpreter would need to attend um again based on if there's access to language based on a lot of different factors and then what they do is that form then follows the dhh the tod at that time to go to the iep meeting and be able to share all that information but to again to see some of the real world part of

107that what i would like to do is to call in the three leads to give us an example from each region when they've utilized that information and how it's actually bettered the process to help us really move forward so every interpreter has a voice at every meeting because again sometimes ieps are during the academic day and then we would you know look at services not being provided for a child after their work hours there's a lot of different factors so this was a way for us to just for many years jay and we usually make sure that all the pertinent team members who have knowledge of a student are able to attend the meeting in person because if you've been in these iep meetings you know that many things come up during the discussion that

108isn't on a piece of paper and we can discuss best practices after we hear from the yeah every league and and again i agree with you that there are a lot of schools that will look at the that the availability of the team to be there but we look at we have about 200 220 school districts and charters we work with and i can tell you that the practice is all over um as far as when meetings are held and we don't really have control over when that case manager is going to hold the meeting but i'm going to turn it over to mj first to kind of give us you know an example on when they've utilized that information and what the outcomes have been for her interpreter um again being part of that

109and the conversation that she's had not only with the tod but also she works hand in hand with karen our lead um supervisor teacher down in tucson so i think i don't know if her video is still on or not mj thank you very much jay and i appreciate your questions and i absolutely understand your concerns definitely the role and responsibility of the interpreter is to provide information regarding access and definitely we have to look at various components of when an interpreter provides information to the team um we have about 60 interpreters in total and and if you look at interpreting there's many different philosophies of how do you go about remaining in your role and responsibilities so i the directors and the leads kind of sat down and try to put systems in place

110where they can intend and share information however just making sure that they stay true to their role and responsibility and speak to that um because sometimes if an interpreter misspeaks or maybe kind of um talks more towards the curriculum or behaviors that is not an area in which we have expertise versus the teachers so what we really want to do is protect the interpreter protect the agency and making sure that we build a system in which the interpreters can successfully speak to the role and responsibilities and you're very right the way i look at it as an interpreter it's a little bit different than the teachers teachers attend an iep what they do is they go from an iep and then they have it the following year so they collect data so it's testing and

111everything and then everyone comes to the table the role of an interpreter is immediate it's immediate to um educate and re-educate and explain to their stakeholders the hearing teacher classroom students and the deaf student what the role and responsibilities i'll give you an example for instance closed caption we all know that deaf children need to be exposed to that so as an interpreter we wouldn't want our staff members to say well we're going to bring that to the iep in a several months and ask the teacher to have closed captioning we're doing that immediately so whereas teachers are collecting data we are we are working with the stakeholders the teachers the staff members the students and being able to uh modify what needs to be done in that moment so hopefully at that mo at

112that junction there's there's less to say at that iep but i completely understand what you're saying we are not saying that interpreters don't have much to bring to the table but we want to make sure that they're speaking definitely to the role and responsibility i hope this maybe provides a little bit more information i'm not sure if you have questions for jay and typically i would um i don't know if you know this mj i've been a teacher of the hearing impaired for many many years and i've worked with many many interpreters and have been in many different positions in many different school districts um the interpreter does bring a lot to the table and typically what would happen and what could be instructed by the agency whatever is that the tod and the interpreter

113talk about what's going to be discussed at the iep meeting so that everyone's clear in their roles yeah they don't discuss how they're doing academically but interpreters have so much information about how that student is communicating with their peers interacting um just classroom activities i can't tell you how much valuable information i've gotten from my interpreters in those meetings um so lynn again i know it is a team approach you're looking at and mj can you go more specific into how you've utilized what we've looked at as far as policy procedures where maybe the interpreters not attended but how their voice has been there and how they've partnered their work with the tod sure absolutely with this new model in the systems in place um that we have a form that we borrowed from pdsd

114which jay had already mentioned so it's a checklist of various um features of the language and communication access and they're there to give that to us as leads to the director that the tod and the tod supervisor and if it's deemed just to be able to attend an iep they attended i had one interpreter down in saurita area south tucson that because of the specific needs of that student a further discussion was needed at the iep and that that interpreter attended but again it's guided and and i definitely support what you're saying and i value your investment and interpreters um very dearly can i give you an offset of something that does happen more than not because we're looking at 60 interpreters i had an interpreter that was at a school assigned the principal came

115in and said is the interp is the student using you and offhand said no it doesn't really look at me in the afternoon that interpreter was in my office and i said i i think you're supposed to be at the school site why are you here the interpreter said the principal dismissed me the interpreter is not needed so that's how detrimental it can be as far as relationships with districts it could be an offset comment that we want to make sure that again it was harmless it maybe have been accurate but we have to make sure that interpreters are speaking in a particular structured way regarding their role and responsibilities i've been pretty lucky i've worked with fabulous interpreters and i i don't know what i would have done without them um how how many

116cases like that compared to how many wonderful successful supportive interpreters do you have and i know you know i've talked to phoenix college and and their program and they do weeks talking about how to participate in an iep the importance of the iep and um and not to go off on you mj it's just in general i the eipa lists the importance of interpreters at an iep meeting uh we have um hands and voices we have boys town through classroom interpreting which i'm sure you're all familiar with they all say interpreters should be attending iep meetings as best practice um and it's that's always been my practice for many many many years and i will have the interpreter participating as a team member and then get an interpreter for the student if he is attending

117so that that i absolutely support what you're saying and i've been in the field for 30 years imagine not having an interpreter but i also made it to give you a wider scope for tucson we hire a lot of practicum students they come right in in year one year two and again we're pushing 60 people forward and trying to get them all trained to know exactly what to say legally the legalities of an iep um it's there is challenges i guess i would pose to the superintendent i would pose to jay what happens when that when our team is not prepared in that way what is the detriment to the agency what is the detriment to the district so so and here's the thing i know we could probably write dissertations and papers on so

118many different topics that we're already kind of touching on here but one of the things lin that i wanted to share with you is that as we were doing our research we didn't know and did not only look internally on what we were doing as a practice within our agency and knowing what the two campuses were doing comparative to the itinerary program but we also looked externally and i did speak with special education directors that have their own program very similar to glendale union and asked them and said tell me about how your interpreters participate and it might be surprising to know that the directors i spoke with said our educational interpreters never attend an iep meeting they and i'm just sharing with you i'm fine i've worked in mesa in tucson and and they've

119always participated i'm just sharing with you and and really what it came down to we had an imbalance of the work that was going on and the imbalance was we had things that were happening throughout the entire itinerant and not just in one region or another we were finding all types of either concerns um from all walks of folks and we brought it together with the three leads like i mentioned as well as dr rex and as well as rosie hicks so we could all talk about this together very an open conversation and what we determined was is we needed to have a system that was set and that system was to bring forth all the voices of all the interpreters when mj mentions the 60 interpreters they're not all just in southern arizona that's

120throughout you know the entire state and then how do we support them in an accurate way to make sure that it's a standardization and that standardization was the procedure that was shared with you and what we found is it's been very positive interacting because the tod now having a good understanding of what's happening within those classrooms and a good understanding of what's happening in the basis of the information they're receiving prior to an iep which then could affect them writing goals as you know could affect them looking at the service time that's there there's a lot of factors that go into that and that's the pre-planning that we're now doing throughout the state does that say that an interpreter will never attend any iep meeting that was never what was stated to anybody but what

121we're looking at is do we need to attend all iep meetings and that's what the team came up with and again we had our dhh folks also involved in this conversation got their feedback and looking and saying it's like looking the eye in iep being individualized not all kids need all services so we were looking at saying well do all kids need all interpreters to be there and that team coming together and the answer that they came up with those experts within our field said no but there may be times that they need to attend and that's where we look through that standard practice and what we could be doing with that i did have some conversation with the u of a and their programming there they're actually looking at adding in a more component

122under idea and really understanding as a related service what their role is with that i'm in the midst right now of working with holly so she's actually going to build a module so they understand the difference between what an association may say versus what the public law has to say and what idea has to say so we've got good conversation happening at multiple levels with that and i'm just you know from the the public comments at the last um board meeting i've gotten a number of calls from various different people and there's there's a lot of concern out there i'm concerned basically about kids and making sure that the information is on the table iep meetings are are really important and we need to get talked to special ed directors and the comment i got

123was if they went to due process and the attorney asked was everyone present at the table who has information about this student the answer would have to be no you know i think lynn it would be great for us to get a study session with you and really talk to some of those folks that are within those concerns because then we can always look this is an ongoing process and i know you know as well as i do and as well as everybody that's on this um call right now we all want to put students first we all want to make sure we're doing what's right for every student there and like i said we took all the information we had at the time we took all of the data that we had we took

124all the experts opinion within the agency and outside the agency and like i mentioned the university as well and really tried to make the best decision we could based on all that information but we're always open for additional conversation and i would be i'd welcome that and we have none we heard some last board meeting could we hear from the other two um sure and i think give somebody else a chance um so lynn and i do want to recognize that you're right we did hit it here at the last board meeting from one region of the state um the other two regions we had not heard voices from that one region that we did not hear from was mj's which she shared information on that but let's continue through the state and brian you'd

125be up next in our pattern with that can you talk to and speak to how your folks have utilized this format and the form information and how it's gone to the tod and how it's actually impacted the work they're doing yes thank you jay um so we had used the same form uh that was given to us from ptsd and all of our interpreters have followed that um they've submitted a documentation based on what information they felt applied to the students uh mr von palmer um i'm sorry this is uh this is david uh i started to interrupt you um it is 7 10 so it's been 90 minutes so i do want to give the interpreters a 10 minute break so we're going to return at 7 20. perfect thank you thank you okay

126everyone it's uh 7 20 so we're back um thank you for that uh for that break um mr johnson i had some questions for you uh when you're ready sure uh sure so um and again i just want to kind of summarize uh you know what we've been hearing and and and what prior practice was so prior practice um you know was uh prior practice depended on uh the region or different depending on the region for depending on the school so in some regions uh educational interpreters attended iep meetings as a rule um and at pdsd they filled out a form uh that was then submitted to the iep team for the meeting as part of your standardization to ensure uniformity of services across the state you surveyed a variety of practices both within the

127agency without and you along with others made the decision to adopt the ptsd format statewide by using the form uh for all educational interpreters uh to submit it to uh to the iep team for their meetings is that is that correct yes and what we found was is in some regions of the state our interpreters weren't involved with the iep team at all okay so we wanted to give them an opportunity to be involved okay so um across the state you know an iep as you know is an individualized document so uh you know if we have 68 children and we looked at 60 ieps there none of them are going to be the same but in general are the educational interpreters part of the iep team well i think as debra mentioned earlier they're

128considered a related service and many related service folks are part of teams and giving information that's there we also know that sometimes our even our gen ed peers or our special education peers don't attend iep meetings but then we'll give a summary of performance that's happening with a particular student so that does become part of the record and that information is included either as part of the met determining services and or helping develop iep goals or service time but if i were to look at again the group of students that we're talking about um look at their survey there ieps the ieps have an iep team you know specific named individuals part of the ihp team uh you know their general education teacher some of their special education teachers some of those related service personnel

129um are the educational interpreters in general uh listed and are part of the iep teams for these students i think i know where you're you're going with that so if we look at the signature page that's when we would know who's in attendance right for any iep as you guys know there isn't a location that's on there that lists through either iep pro or other iep programs that specifically lists an iep educational interpreter but like i said we have many folks who attend all types of iep meetings and met meetings that um would be under that related services umbrella which could be a multitude of an ot a pt and slp which again may not attend all meetings but then their voices are heard through any iep okay so what you're telling me is the

130educational server interpreters are typically not part of the iep team there isn't a location on the signature page specifically for an educational interpreter i i can tell you that and it varies our state is a local control state so what varies from one district could be very different in the district right next door we find that within the itinerary program all the time as it relates to the services that we provide that are standardized but then how the school district goes about how they actually implement the other portions of the iep can vary from district to district i understand that in the itinerant services model the local school districts have a great deal of control as to how the ieps are formed but as the agency we see all of these right we have a

131survey of all of these ieps and i guess i'm not asking whether or not there's a signature line that says educational interpreter i'm asking if educational interpreter you know john doe has he been added to the iep because you can add people to the iep teams right when you build the ieps you add you make up your iep team and there's not a form that says educational to our proven that's not applicable to everyone with ieps um there's a form that you add names and their respective roles uh i've seen them i deal with ips for a long time um you know personally might beat up my first one uh so you know you add those roles and there could be it could be ot there could be speech therapy um and those people are

132named as individuals on the iep team and that's in uh and you know i know that the tools um the tools enable you do that the it tools enable you to do that but even if the ip tools didn't enable you to do that that's not necessarily make something right or wrong either but i guess what i'm hearing from you though is that educational interpreters as you as having seen ieps across hundreds of students that we serve in the internet uh itinerary services uh organization you're saying that most of the time the educational interpreter is not a member of the iep so i think you're bringing up a great question and i really think it's something that our team could go back and do an audit and actually give that information in february when we

133come together we're going to have a work study session with the board and i think that would be a great opportunity for us to come back to the table and give some of that historical data that we have and then also look at where we've been moving forward together i could look at that and give a report back to the the board during that work study session right and i'm interested in current i mean historical is is fine but i'm really interested in of the ieps that we help serve and you're right school districts provide some of the services on their own it's we only you know provide certain services uh for our expertise uh do we have educational interpreters as members of the of the iet iep team is that a frequent occurrence is

134that in all cases is that no cases is that in 75 percent of the cases um we're interested in whether or not these iep teams include educational interpreters and from what what you're telling me is i guess if you're saying that they're that they're your senses that they're generally that you don't know the exact number but in general you believe that they are not members of the iep team so again i would need to look at the data that we have we have just over 1200 students within the itinerary program so i could pull our teams together to research that and then have that prepared for the board in february and really speak to that i really want to speak you know i would be speaking from the cuff and i'd rather not do that

135here but i'd rather have the real hard numbers for you and we would look at the current ieps that we have in powerschool so we could pull that and see how many of them had educational interpreters attending versus not attending so it's not just attending just as a member of the team i'm i haven't i'm not speaking about who's attending yet although we're going to get there i'm talking about who is a named member of the iep teams and when we survey all of the ieps that we help serve do what percentage of them you know for for deaf students obviously there's no blind students need them unless they're deafblind um for the students that we serve that use educational interpreters what percentage of them are named members of the iep team or are not

136members of the iep team it is what i'm looking at that's that specific point uh the second part is uh do you are you aware that of parents asking whether to name an educational interpreter as part of an iep currently i have not received any information from our locations of parents asking why an educational interpreter was not present at a meeting not present again i'm not not talking about attendance at meetings i'm talking about uh are you aware of a situation where a parent has has in an iep meeting or called an iep meeting for the purposes of at least saying i would like to add an education the educational interpreter that works with my child to the iep i am not aware of that but again i could look at our current data and

137do a deeper dive for our february meeting okay uh so if we go if we move on to attendance uh it is now you know you've now pushed this form model out to the engineering services organization uh so the agency you know what you're telling me is that you've made an agency decision to i would say discourage or prevent educational interpreters from attending iep is that is that correct i don't know if that's the wording i would use what i would say is that we want to make sure we're reviewing all the information about the services a student is receiving to make sure that it's deemed appropriate for an interpreter to go to that meeting and that's the process that we're looking at and that's why that information is provided up to the tod the

138lead supervisor tod and the director so again that team can come together and really look at the needs of the child the needs of the program and then the needs of of our educational interpreters they're they're still important i mean that process have there been any instances where recently since the forum uh practice has been uh implemented had there been any instances where it was determined that an educational interpreter was needed at an iep meeting absolutely there has okay so since so so since this change has been made there have been determinations that educational interpreters were needed in an iep meeting and did they in fact attend those iep meetings they did under the direction of the tod and the lead tod and the director okay and that for the times that the uh it

139was determined by others that the educational interpreters uh would not need to be at the meeting has has the educational interpreter ever disagreed with that uh determination and thought that they should contend there has been some conversation um within a couple of the regions of the state um with interpreters understanding um how we're utilizing that important information but then again going back to the iep team the the team and the res responses that we've received back from our schools is they felt like they had all the data that they needed from the educational interpreter at that meeting could we get numbers of how many um interpreters have attended meetings who were requested can we see some numbers and lynn i would be happy to pull that together for our february meeting that would be awesome

140thank you and then uh for has a parent ever requested that an educational interpreter be present at a meeting the only request that i'm aware of is if a family has requested that it was to have access for the child to be at the iep meeting either it could be a student-led meeting or maybe we have a high school student that's in attendance of their iep meeting and then we have provided the educational interpreter to provide access for that student uh so you're saying if the student because you know there are times for older students that they age in the ietv you're saying that in instances where the student attends the iep meeting uh the parents have asked for the educational interpreter to be present it's been rare that our family has asked that because

141again since we have a process now we've known that on the front end and we've approved that interpreter to go to the meeting but so sometimes the parents might be a little anxious and maybe they're not aware that that educational interpreter is going to attend so they may reach out to us just to confirm but it hasn't been like a parent request because we try to be more proactive than reactive with that and then that way that proactive approach is assigning the educational interpreter to attend okay um in cases where the child is not present at the iep meeting has a parent ever asked for the educational interpreter to be president not to my knowledge but again i could reach out to the team to see if some information has been provided okay um and

142on these iep meetings where the educational interpreter is not present uh are is the agency is it the standard practice of the agency to obtain written consent of the parent uh for the excusal or lack of attendance for the education um we have not developed that procedure with that and that has not been requested by any one of our school districts or charters okay so uh the agent so it's it's our agencies practice to not send the educational interpreters in these in these cases but you do not believe that we're getting parental consent for that that is not something that has been you know bubbled up to my level at this point um again you know when we look at idea and we look at the practice with our school districts and charters they're the

143holder of the iep so they are the case manager they are you know the lea that's in charge of that iep so if there was information that they requested from us if someone was going to be in non-attendance and they wanted parent permission we would provide that and work collaboratively with them but none of the districts nor charters have requested that from us since they are the lead and case manager those are all my questions for for now is there anyone else i don't know if we still wanted to hear from the other leagues you know i think um i mean we certainly can i mean you know we're we are going to talk about best practices and uh you know things of that nature so we certainly can't if there's some interest that they

144can briefly uh give us an extended income okay thank you and i know brian was going to share how how he's utilized uh the format and how the tod has been able to use that information and brian are you still us there you are hi yes i'm still here thank you um so in region 2 uh historically we have attended iep meetings before in the past so this is a bit of a new venture for us but we've all complied with the processes that have been requested which is filling out the ptsd form and i do know that the ptsd form um was utilized in a way that on their campus if an interpreter was with a student for a couple hours only they would be providing that form the rest of the time they

145were with deaf staff so who could speak to the language use of the students so i think we're kind of trying to take the form and mold it to what we do which i think could definitely be beneficial as in the past we've never been asked to provide anything written ongoing there are tods that we work with in our region who will reach out and say hey can you provide something for us so there it has been around the board that they've been asked to provide that but nothing standardized again as jay was mentioning nothing completely standardized across the whole agency so we're starting to move in that direction um and i do know that there were many times that interpreters have requested specifically to go to iep meetings um and i don't believe uh

146they were allowed to go to the meetings so um there's seems to be a little bit of inconsistency that way um but i think that as we move forward in this new direction i think we can all come together and find a way to create a more standardized system that creates a voice for the educational interpreters um because i do support some of the opinions that were voiced today regarding the interpreters being in attendance at the meeting and i'd like to specify attendance at the meeting is not to go and interpret at the meeting for a student that they see every day it would be attendance at the meeting to sit at the table with the other members of the team and we've done that all all along in the past so i i would

147hope that that there would be some discussion in the future about that that we could do that um i know we have had an interpreter approved to go to the meeting to interpret for a high school student who was in attendance at her own meeting but i i think that having a little more voice from around the agency from some of the staff that we work with out at the member schools i think that would be a great opportunity to find kind of a happy balance that way so other than that if there's any additional information you need i'm sure we'll all be gathered for the february session and we can provide some of that for you thank you brian thank you and we don't want to leave out region one i know linda you're

148also i think there okay hi oh there we go now you can see me yes before colvin i was the lead director for swr which is which is yuma and in yuma swr we attended iep meetings and we also provided an interpreter if the student was there so that the interpreter who is with the student every day was part of the meeting then when covet hit i took over as lead for the northern and western part of arizona also and we found that there were some of the newer interpreters there that had not been trained on how to attend a meeting and what to say at a meeting so there were some problems that came up so i understand the need to have the same thing all around and to figure out what to do

149like our questions we did always write a paragraph and give it to the tod and it was put in an iep that was standard but our form that we use was different from pdsds was different from what the other regions used so we've now handed out the pdsd form to our interpreters and they're using that to fill out and they're requesting to go if they would like to go um i know one we we felt it was best if that interpreter did not go because their brand new interpreter i have not had a chance to train that interpreter on what to say at a meeting and we didn't want any problems to happen because of that i have had a couple interpreters who went to the meetings but they were as the interpreter because they

150were high school students who attended their own meetings and they were deaf deaf that need an interpreter at the meeting and whatever your decision whatever the decision is that's made i know that i've talked with my interpreters in yuma and we will honor and respect the decision and abide by whatever the policy is thank you linda and you know i want to kind of reiterate you know what the three interpreters have said with this and the leads that are out there that we looked at as all the information that we had from the entire continuum from zero to a hundred and what we were looked at saying is what can we do as a standard practice to involve all folks within the agency all iep members and our partnering school districts and charters and what

151we made was the decision with all voices present and as i mentioned before we also reached out to our dhh our tod counterparts and making sure that we had the information from them as well and what the leads had kind of touched on in some cases we had a lot of documentation on the front end and in some cases we had zero documentation on the front end so we improved that part of the process and then also considering the need and purpose for the interpreter to be there one of the things that just recently came up in with another region of the state was an interpreter was being asked to attend an iep meeting because they were considering using them as a paraprofessional and as we all know within our agreements our interpreters are there

152to interpret for a child and not to cross that boundary over to a paraprofessional now that doesn't mean they're not another adult in the room that can assist you know from one thing to another but there's a very fine line between interpreting and acting as a paraprofessional and what we're trying to do is align those efforts throughout the state so our school districts and charters understand our role as part of asdb and the needs of that child that may need a one-on-one paraprofessional assigned to them and the interpreter is not in that role so that's been one of the things that we have found through this process we're able to take a higher view of all of the schools and all of the regions and finding that in some cases in the past we may

153have interpreters that have been in dual roles attending those iep meetings in that dual role and really thinking on how much time they were interpreting versus how much time they may have been a paraprofessional and thinking about what's in the best interest of that child and looking at the district to provide that pera rather than having our interpreters in those dual roles so that's one of the things that we found as as almost an unintended consequence we didn't realize that that was happening but as we collected more data from our school districts and charters we're able to see that there had been some misunderstandings throughout the field of interpreting and how do we make sure that we make that a strong agreement between the districts and myself and the districts and our agency and the

154districts and each one of the regions so that's one of the things that's going on and a matter of fact we're going to be holding a meeting with one of our districts that had that misunderstanding coming up in the next week or so so we can understand our role and their role as it comes to the education of the child thank you i just want to read a couple things i have tons of information i can read on all night but i'll save it for our work session but just quote this was from the eipa classroom interpreting eipa standards the interpreter should be present at iep meetings as a member of the educational team and not as an interpreter the interpreter should share observations about how well the student understands the interpreted classroom or any

155other issues related to interpreting hands and voices the individuals with disabilities education act of federal law has classified educational interpreters as a related service provider this means that the your child's educational interpreter should participate in iep meetings as a service provider not as an interpreter for the student and i have more but that's all i'm going to bore you with tonight um thank you for listening to me uh thank you lynn are there any more uh comments from the board again this is an information only uh item so we can't take any action here but if there's any any other comments we'll move on and i don't see any so let's move on to 4.01 information item finance report thank you president nigro our most recent finance committee meeting was held last thursday on january

15613th with board members gordon jantz and wonders superintendent reichman and principal akap meetus from the phoenix campus the formats as well as more detailed information pertaining to the agency's fiscal update was provided and discussed with the committee in summary were reviewed in detail and discussed the budget fiscal year 2022 numbers the available cash balance student teacher ratios and filled full-time equivalents as well as the grant revenues and expenditure reports we review the per student revenue and cost and also spent some time with principal acap needs describing the current student enrollment population on the phoenix campus we hope to be able to have our directors for early learning and the itinerant services programs provide similar information regarding their student population to the committee please note that the business services staff were not able to prepare the

157december 31st finance reports due to the agency being closed the last two weeks of the year and did not have enough time between the return break and the due date for report submission as such all the finance reports that i will be discussing and summarizing is based on data as of november 30th we will provide the december 31st and january 31st reports at the march 3rd board meeting as referenced on page one of the financial report asdb had 2130 enrolled students as of december 1st an increase of about 22 students from last year's student count of 2108. the increase is primarily within the itinerant k-12 and birth to age 3 programs offset by a decrease in the site based k-12 and preschool students when you review the current school year 21 2022 student count you'll

158see that as november 1st we had 2143 students and as i mentioned as of december 1st we one hundred had thirty so a d slight decrease of about 13 students from last month as of january 1st the student count has risen to 2167 and included in those numbers is desert voices preschool students at 2 and fbc preschool students at 45. on page 2 the average revenue cost and voucher reimbursement averages per student is shown by program you'll see that the 21 excuse me the 2020 2021 school year student count the average voucher revenue per student ranges between 26 to thirty two thousand dollars the average fee for service and membership fee revenues per student is a little over fifty three hundred dollars the average cost per student is anywhere between seven thousand to seventy six

159thousand the seven thousand would be for our birth to three students and the highest would be seventy six thousand for the tucson campus students preschool and phoenix students average about 31 000 and our itinerant students average at about 15 000. please be reminded that these calculations are just based on averages regardless of disability type and so what that means is we took those calculations based on averages regardless and did the total revenues and expenditures for the for our programs divided that by the number of students in the future i would like to be able to provide more defined numbers where we're able to show the student costs per disability category rather than just focusing on the four different programs as you know asdb receives voucher funding for our site-based and some of our itinerant preschool

160and k-12 program students some of our itinerant program students on the other hand are considered fee for service or consult students and we do not receive revenues for our birth to three students funding gaps for program costs are covered through our general fund appropriations and other funds such as grants and donations on the top of page three you'll see that as december 1st we had over 509 filled ftes and 747 staff members we had approximately 95 vacancies actively being recruited for which mainly consisted of our teachers instructional assistants interpreters bus drivers and other various positions when we started off the school year as of august 1st we had about 521 filled ftes 94 vacancies and 762 staff members on the bottom of page three begins the financial summary and you'll see that collected revenues are

161at 8.6 million versus 7.7 and the difference is about 925 primarily from grants surplus revenues from disposal of assets and gifts and donations that we have received revenues from current year expenditures plus our open purchase orders were at 23.9 million versus 25.3 million and most of that decreased results from the extra pay period we had last year where we had 27 pay periods versus the 26 this year so this time last year there were 11 pay periods paid whereas this year we have 10. and as a reminder our average cost each pay period just for payroll is about 1.6 million dollars on a bi-weekly basis and our total payroll expenses is at 15.9 million which is on average about 77 percent of our incurred expenses to date you'll see that we spent about 54 of

162our expenditures on instruction and instruction support on student support and shared services and 11 on agency administration you'll also see on page 10 that we have a 3.3 million deficit when you compare actual revenues of approximately 17.4 million to actual expenditures of 20.7 last year at this time however we had a deficit of 4.5 million dollars revenues were 16.7 million and the expenditures were 21.2 million as a reminder and i know you probably get tired of me saying it but the deficit that we continue to have throughout the school year is not of any particular concern as again we're always one month behind in receiving our voucher revenue which replenishes those expenditures that have incurred prior that month our available cash balance you'll see in the report as of november 30th was 13 million dollars

163and that again is comprised of cash collected from various funding sources which again most of those are restricted for specific purposes i want to mention that our new director of business services kim bitrich will begin presenting the finance reports starting with the march 3rd board meeting and if there are no questions on any of the information presented that concludes my report of the agency's information and fiscal data for business services uh thank you are there any board members have any questions for miss cooper i i have a few i just uh miss cooper i'd like you to go over again uh some of the costs per student um you talked about the voucher revenue um for students uh varies between i believe 26 000 and 32 000 depending on disability category is that correct yes

164that's correct and and the average and the cost per student for ptsd is i know you've said it just before but if you can refresh our rights roughly about thirty one thousand dollars the cost for ptsd students so the cost would be now last time we talked about let's meet president niagara just a moment yes there was a one of the interpreters computers crashed so just give us a moment to sub out miss cooper could go back for a moment yes um to answer the question our average revenue per student ranges 26 to 32 000 and i believe the question was the average cost per student for the ptsd students is about 31 000 based on actual expenditures of 7.9 million and a little less than 260 students well and that's and that's where i

165want to ask some questions right because last time uh i i said in last meeting i said hey look our expenditures by program we can look at our pdsd revised budget uh on this reports on page six we can divide divide by the 241 enrollment and we get a number about fifty four thousand fifty four thousand six hundred and forty three uh and you agreed if you go back and look at that tape uh not there's tape anymore actually uh you agree that that was about right that was in the ballpark um and now you're telling me that it's a number and that far and that far exceeds the voucher river so now you're telling me that it's in fact thirty one thousand dollars so that's and when i look at your report today i

166can do that same math and say they're revised and by the way this is you're pulling out administration there's 9.9 million dollars on the line item for administration 13.169 million dollars for the entirety of pbsd but that is we'll put that aside if i take the 13.169 million dollars of budget for ptsd and divided by 241 students which is found earlier in the report i get fifty four thousand six hundred forty three dollars so can you help me understand how both of those things could be true so remember that the numbers i'm providing is based on last year's actual expenditure specifically for the ptsd campus um and so taking the the total expenditures which you'll see on the report again is roughly well i see 12 million for last year 7.9 million just for the

167instructional program expenses for the ptsd campus notice just the instructional components of that so that would include for example all of the instruction all of the student support includes food services all of those expenses specifically for that we do exclude administration expenses but this is just the cost associated with the student per se expenses which again is less than what you'll see on the previous report that's why this report only shows 7.9 and yeah and and let's let's go through that a little more right so you're saying if you look at la so that number is based on last year uh the entire year and you're saying that we had a budget of 12 million dollars for pdsd but we in fact only spent seven and a half seven point nine million dollars okay this

168oh that's the budget now is there an actual total encompasses i mean i see an actual expenditure of 3.9 if i'm looking at on page six um but but you're not but you're saying that that 31 000 number doesn't include administration or what what doesn't it include it doesn't include any not available the phoenix sample is as well so you may be referring to the actual budget and not looking at the actual expenditures so the budget and and i see the i see the revised question that was the math that we did last time we talked about last time the revised we looked at the revised budget column divided by the number of students so you're saying that the budget balance if we look i can and i was looking at 2021 and i know

169we're still in that year we can look at between you know the year prior that's fine um and there's a an original budget and then there's an actual expenditure of 3.9 million is that that that number is as of november 30th okay so you're saying that so you're showing the 12.1 original budget which again is for the whole year the four million you're seeing under expenditures is actually just from july through november the little less than eight million dollar number that i gave you is for the entire year okay so last year and so last year we budgeted 12 million dollars but we in fact spent 7.9 million nine million dollars that's correct 7.9 correct okay um and so we had a large surplus in that area we did not we did have i'd have

170to go back hold on one second [Music] because it seems like you're telling me we're budgeting for fifty five thousand dollars per student and we're coming in at thirty one thousand dollars a student when we've actually spent the money but that doesn't make much sense to me that we're over budgeting by that by millions and millions of dollars yes and again that's based on the original budget we did have to make revisions throughout the throughout the remainder of the year remember july through november is four months into the fiscal year we still have about eight more months still left into the year i'd have to actually look at the year to date pbsd numbers to give you what compare the actual budget to the expenditures to determine also if there was a revised budget throughout

171the rest of the fiscal year as well okay because because this because that that's a big difference right for over because it seems like we're doing that this year too right i mean we have a revised budget of 13 million dollars and the the you know the actual expenditure is 4.3 it says i mean that and again that's as of november 30th time um but [Music] i mean where where where are those extra millions of dollars going i guess we normally never get out every year we do budget about 58 to 60 million dollars and most of that is because of payroll however throughout the year we are averaging a little over if i recall about two million dollars in in vacancy savings so we're predicting that we're going to have all positions filled from

172july through june and ultimately that does not occur you just heard me say we had a little less than 100 vacancies so at the time we're building the budget we're assuming that all of these positions that we're actively recruiting for are going to be filled so most of that two to three million dollar gap between budget to actual is mainly payroll um also there we do budget for any obligations that we will have for example contractual services sometimes those contractual services in terms of those projected costs will be a lot less than what we initially incurred but most of the million dollars to maybe about two to three million dollars in over projections as again payroll okay because you know overall i mean we look at the you know lined up and we have a

173revised budget of 61 million dollars yes and we're looking at you know the the actual expenditures at 20. again this isn't the full year and maybe i need to look for your snapshot but it seems that just seems you know uh kind of off to me if we're budgeting for so so much more than if so much more than we're actually spending and then that drives a question of where's that extra money going right it's not actual action it's not money it's budget there's a difference between budget actual expenditures so again as i mentioned most of what we're budgeting for extra is assuming that all those positions are going to be filled also that actually helps us if there's unexpected expenditures that do occur as you've heard the last two three years since i've been

174here we've actually been able to end in a surplus rather than a deficit and that's based on comparing to actual revenues we get actual revenues of about 60 million so we're going to assume that we're not going to exceed what we incurred in expenditures our actual expenditures have been averaging between 58 to 59 million dollars recently um but again i expect that to be less this year because of that 1.6 million in an extra payroll last year so you'll hear more information in the work study session that i will be doing uh i believe in the next two months in april next two to three months in april and i can walk through more information at that time also you're more than welcome to sit in on the finance committee meetings that we have right

175before the board meetings as well right but but again that's a different you know i'm getting a much different story today than i did last time right i'm getting uh the you know so we're budgeting what you're telling me is that we're budgeting 55 000 a student but we're only spending 31 000 on on the pdst campus for last year for all of last year actually we project revenue based on the actual voucher revenue at that time that we have enrollment as of the october 1st data count so it will not be based on actual expenditures we take projected enrollment times projected voucher revenue and that's what we're projecting in terms of voucher revenue per student and again as i mentioned at last board meeting when you asked me the question i did not feel

176comfortable responding to the answer because i did not have the information in front of me at that time so that's correct that's correct and you did agree though that it was in the ballpark and that's so so that's why i understood that to be correct uh so what i guess what i'm saying is that the budget we're budgeting at one level nearly twice the amount that we're actually spending no i would disagree with you um okay and and and tell me why if we're if we're if we have a budget and i know that the budget assumes that we're gonna have all these vacancies filled sure but if we have a budget of 13 million dollars this year for bdsd and again i mean we could talk about tuesday doesn't matter um and we know

177our enrollment and and you're telling me that last year we budgeted 12 million dollars 4.1 and we actually spent 7.9 although that excludes various other services i mean there are exclusions that i'd like to see but you're telling me that we only spent 7.9 so that's that's millions and millions of dollars that we've over budgeted um and i'd i'd like to know why and i understand yeah things come up i mean that's i mean i'm not complaining that we didn't spend all the money um or that we had it left over to be able to provide transportation which we weren't expecting i understand that but you know is that a normal practice to over budget by a factor of you know 2x no it's not and again that's something that we're still continuing to work

178with the budget team um is to actually project more accurately which is why we actually do it based on actual revenues projected as well as more in terms of enrollment projections actual expenditures in terms of looking at our actual obligations um but no it's not a should i say normal practice to over inflate but again that's something that we're continuing to work on these last these last two years so yes you are correct in that aspect and again like i said in terms of us being able to have the extra vacancy savings because we do not fill those positions that has helped us in terms of being able to offset any of those unexpected obligations that we have so for example even with the transportation expected costs that we have with elliott with the lea

179changes that has also been included in the projections of the 60 million dollar budget as well so again we may be over projecting in terms of those dollar amounts but it's based on that information that we have at the time that we're building the budget july through august so we're also building a budget one year in advance uh actually sometimes two years in advance um so that's why i say throughout the year we're having to make constant revisions working more closely with each of the individual departments um so that's something we continue to strive on and as you know um and you've been here for a couple of years that's something that we're trying to to continue to make improvements on okay um and so these actual expenditures for the campus you said they do

180exclude a lot of things what do they include is it is it just teacher time and instruction or is it teacher an educational interpreter and and other certain other staff um you know and it's food service i think you mentioned that tell me tell me what it includes the transportation it also includes food services it includes the all of the uh the educational instructions your teachers the instructional assistants the tech aid intervenors it also does include your support services staff so it would include the educational interpreters um the student health center um so that's where most of those expenditures are is for the instruction side okay but not the and just one thing there you mentioned transportation and but we're talking about numbers from last year right last school year when we weren't responsible for

181transportation right so what transportation did we spend our funds on staff most of our transportation expenditures is for staff so for the ptsd campus last year of the 1.3 million dollars in transportation costs for ptsd 000 of that was just for payroll the remaining 300 000 was for other operating expenditures for example for our equipment for the buses um and so forth okay so what you're saying is it's not transportation for for students like we're doing this year uh because we didn't have that obligation so when you're saying transportation it's a much smaller uh it's a much smaller number but that doesn't include school administration and upkeep of the physical plan no it excludes the facilities it also includes any of the donations any other of the statewide services that we have with our blind

182and deaf programs um and it does not include for example any of the administration hr business services superintendent odd any of that it excludes all of that right that's all in the administration statewide okay and what was the average cost per student on the tucson campus i'm getting one second for the tucson campus it was about 76 for the 112 students their total actual expenditures was 8.5 million okay and 77 right because that's that's the number you know more in line with the with the budget but it seems like i'm sorry what was their total expenditure there nine million 8.5 8.5 okay okay all right are there any other questions tv yeah it's just one thing i wanted to add and for clarification purposes being on the finance committee one thing that we kept discussing

183was yes absolutely we have a predicted budget as far as what expenditures we would be providing services for and so those are first the student services that they need whether it's for the faith purposes for free and appropriate educational so that's the minimum requirement that we have to project project a budget for part of the challenge in the issue that has come up that we've noticed is that many of those vacancies are not filled which in turn impacts the actual expenditures because those positions have not been spent therefore we payroll costs are technically saving but yet we still have to predict the expenditure budget for next year for the following year for example in the second example that was given those vacancies that have not been filled that was related cost with positions that we're

184not just doing for payroll for example if you have resources or materials or office supplies etc in relation to those positions that we don't use those resources that means that the funds were not spent so we still are putting that in the projected amount so in order to be able to provide the appropriate and reasonable accommodations or at free education for our students the challenge between making sure that we are projecting appropriately and we have enough financially at the same time expanding and making and knowing the real world issues that have occurred with the pandemic since the historical issues within the board and the finance committee i've always i've noticed that ms cooper has been very specific and very detailed with business services and i appreciate that i think in the other way around we

185haven't had previous projected items or operating costs we were always in the red so we were over spending so now like she said she's able to flip that we have a surplus so i really commend your work and i see that that change and this is a good type of problem to have per se so i just want to put that out there and again thank you again ms cooper for your continuous work and your efforts within the finance committee thank you tv thank you right i think we really need to see year over year these are year-over-year numbers but we need to see that the totals and we need to see where we're projecting the spending to be right because if you're telling me that that we're under we're under budget by millions of

186dollars and the surplus last year was refreshed by recollections between one and two million dollars is that correct it was about two million about two million right so if if we're if we're over budgeting by millions of dollars for each program right you know a factor again i don't know 1.8 x maybe on for both ptsd and tucson i mean the board really is going to have to see where where that extra budget was actually spent right we allocated it for these uh for those programs um we didn't get a red line or uh we weren't uh you know we didn't get a five million dollar surplus or a ten million dollar surplus we got 2 million so i think we're going to need to see how that happened um in more you know in

187a year-over-year type or not year-over-year year-end format yes and i can provide that uh thank you all right uh if there's no other comments we can move on this is tv president sure yes i also also like to add a couple of things within the finance discussion the committee discussion some things that we also touched on as a reminder is what is forecasted that budget is the minimum amount that we have to have in order to maintain services and with that is with all vacancies that are filled all materials all resources to be able to provide the service so for example one thing that came up within the finance committee discussion was that we had almost over 100 vacancies within the agency which obviously impacts expenditures and so another part of trying to forecast our

188budget is that some of our revenues that asdb is receiving are one-time occurrences so these are one-time receivables and so when that fund is spent then therefore that that fund is not a continuous form of surplus and it does not contribute back to asdb so it might seem like we have this surplus amount now where in fact that that's a fun that's already been distributed so we no longer have use of that surplus per se and then the second point i'd like to discuss is that shane and i did discuss extensively is the language is not per se surplus that's not really what it actually means it's a positive cash balance which means that by the end of the actual financial fiscal year that the actual expenditures would be more closer to what we had

189projected because again we are receiving all of the invoices we are deceiving all the different contracts and we're paying out for that so the different vouchers that we are receiving sometimes we are told that we will be receiving this specific amount and so we budget for that and then later down the road they've actually changed that amount and and so that puts us in a situation where we have to redistribute it once again so i say this because it does come up on in our financial committee discussions and it's funny because during my first session in the committee which was scheduled for an hour uh in my understanding now i this is why i scheduled for an hour and a half from here on out i'm constantly asking questions like you resident and i grow

190and so about the different things and there's lots of good questions and items that we cover and you make a great point but there are other sides to this there are very detailed assessments that shaina cooper does perform with their team that impacts expenditures and speaking again on a positive to what we were looking at three or four years ago before miss cooper was involved this was the opposite so we were going over by budget constantly so again we're in a better situation than we were four years ago uh thanks tv um you know the agencies had vacancies dozens and dozens of vacancies and operated for years right i mean that's that's you know i know that we're budgeting for 100 extra positions but we we are nonetheless operating without that um and and that's

191been like that for quite a long time that predated the pandemic uh but i you know in terms of budgeting for you know one you know 1.8 times the amount that we're actually spending is is you know something that we're really going to have to look at um and i think we're going to dig a little bit deeper there because that's that's different from the information we got last time uh and and we're gonna have to take a look a much closer look at that in my view not a problem at all um in any event uh we can move on to 7.01 information discussion item introduction possible discussion policies kd ca g ccg and jfab uh ms murphy i think we're on 6.01 david just a moment if i can interrupt sorry oh oh

192i'm sorry no you're right we are you all right i did miss one i have it you know i have it highlighted on my board dog tonight i thought that was when we were on because i'd already moved it uh i'm sorry 6.01 information discussion item leadership contracts for 2022-24 superintendent right yes thank you president nigro i will just keep my presentation brief this is on the agenda because i would like to inform the board that we do have some considerations for you when we are discussing contracts for the march board meeting you may recall that about six years ago you the board were provided two-year contracts with the executive directors so when i first began as superintendent in 2016 the executive directors all had two-year contracts the purpose of that was to streamline a

193smooth transition for the itinerant superintendent into my position as a permanent superintendent so after the initial year i decided to recommend to the board one-year contracts with the executive directors the principals for the purpose of having flexibility in the evaluative process if we had the best kind of leadership within the agency and so as you know we have made some changes throughout the leadership team and so i am now ready to go back to the two-year contracts i do have confidence that the current leadership team at the next board meeting which will be held in march i will be formally requesting and offering two-year contracts for those that are on the executive director positions also for the principals and those who have worked in their current capacity for more than one year we do have

194two new leaders in the agency that just started within the last year so i will be offering them one-year contracts for the rest i would like to offer two-year contracts so i will be taking some time to meet with you individually as board members to discuss this further before next march board meeting so that you can make your final decisions so that completes my presentation president are there any board members that would like to take discussion on this uh hearing none uh you know from my perspective uh i was on the board um back when there was interim uh the interim superintendent that proceeded superintendent reichman and you know historically we had done one-year contracts with the leadership team uh and that's you know more or less a norm in arizona uh we did two

195years to smooth the transition to the new superintendent right we didn't want that institutional knowledge to depart after the new superintendent um was was identified and hired uh so we did that we got some preventative reichman and she had a smooth transition um in that time period for that leadership team she's since made leadership chain uh team changes the boards you know made those changes uh as well uh and we have the leadership team that we have today uh without regard to the individuals who are currently in leadership positions uh presently as we heard earlier in the superintendent's report the board can act in certain ways and it can in others uh so we we we have certain tools at our disposal and others we don't have i mean we can change policy and we

196can un-delegate things to the superintendent as we would like that's very complicated and in a lot of cases may be unnecessary but one of the important tools that we do have is offering these leadership contracts uh that that is you know that that is a very important function of the board it's important uh important government uh governance function and to have a two-year contract in a situation where we have a superintendent that has just signed a three-year contract for next next school year so we're three and a half years to the end of that contract we're not going to have a transition most likely uh certainly i don't want to have a transition before that time period um but we're going to have a three and a half year time period with the consistent superintendent

197and i don't know that it's in the best interest of the board to give to your contracts as a rule because it robs us of that governance function uh it's it's one of the few levers that we have and it's uh you know would have to be exercised with care and with diligence certainly but you know two years is it it just doesn't it doesn't seem to make sense for the board to do that others may disagree and that's fine um but that's that's my perspective i agree david i think it the year-long contracts are are good i agree okay uh thank you so this is committee member pb jams and i would just like to say that for my opinion as part of the board we uh appointed superintendent reichman for the purpose and

198that purpose was to lead the agency with our oversight and we needed to trust your opinion and we needed to trust your input and if she feels confident in her leadership team then we also need to trust her professional analysis of the team and we are giving the superintendent stability like we wanted so that she can be able to continue to work with the agency and we should be able to give that same level of support for her leadership team and i don't necessarily think it's a bad idea to have a two-year contract if that is what the superintendent desires and if we disagree with the superintendent because of her choice then that's a different conversation but over so far it just seems from these comments and the performance that she's done it just seems

199positive and we just needed to give some level of trust and support to superintendent as well linda i think you you had your camera open did you want to say something uh it's late in the evening yes this is linda and i'm just having some mixed feelings uh just about what i've heard over the last few days i don't know if this is an appropriate place or time to talk about this so i would like to either go to an executive session but i know at this time it's a little bit late in the evening to do so but i just feel strongly uh just this need from the deaf members in the deaf community here at this campus that just we're not happy with certain well and before linda i don't want to interrupt

200but uh for this agenda we can't speak about any individual uh or um because we have an agendized that before that this is just in general leadership contracts for you know for two years to the leadership team uh but we cannot talk about any individuals this is this is at a general level that affects you know all of the all of the contracts not any particular person or role okay um i'm not clear am i i apologize am i not being clear oh i just what is the purpose of this item oh uh the purpose of that is misunderstanding something here sure it it it appeared to me that you may have been starting to make statements about a particular individual or a particular role and and we can't do that in this in this

201item so i want to make sure that that doesn't happen this is a leadership contract oh i just we're talking about offering a two-year contract for executive leadership is that what we are talking about and it's whether the decision to make it a one year or a two-year contract correct uh correct as a that is correct okay so talking about two years versus one year and what is i just needed to get some more information or opinions about that and that reichman needs to be able to go into more detail uh two years versus one year i'm i'm happy with the leadership team so if we wanted to do the two years then i've just to me i'm not comfortable with having it be two years just wanted to put that out there and i'm

202done thank you this is superintendent reichman i was just saying that i changed the one-year contract because i wanted to make some changes with the leadership team and you know we've done that we've made some changes to the leadership team and as now i'm looking at our leadership team and i have the confidence in their work and their skills their knowledge i am ready to offer a two-year contract with your agreement [Music] and obviously that's your decision i can only make the recommendation and i'm just saying from my view as a superintendent this leadership team that we have as of right now i am comfortable with working with them and offering it to be two years and that's based on their performance as of late for the last five years so i'll go ahead and

203give this back to you president nigro okay um thank you superintendent reichman um if there are no more questions and now we can really go on to 7.01 information and discussion item introduction possible discussion policies kdc a gcc and jfabd is murphy good evening this is one of the interpreters the caption i'm not able to really hear you yes maria this is aaron um i'm sorry i did not hear that maria we're struggling to hear you okay um let me try to speak a little louder is that better yes that is better okay wonderful sorry about that so you you have the red lines before you of the three policies that we are proposing to change um two of the policies are of procedural changes the one policy that i would note is substantive is

204policy gccg which changes our procedures regarding the transfer of approved annual and personal leave and these changes are being made in order to make asdb's policies more consistent with other state agencies and with the department of administration so at this time i can make myself available for any questions if there are any okay um seeing none thank you miss murphy and we can move on to 8.01 call the republic call the public on non-agenda items uh suit do you have those two i believe we have two do you have those two to read i do all right thank you okay the first one is from danny lawrence um and it is the subject is the regional cooperative crisis thank you for the opportunity my name is danny lawrence and i moved my child out of

205state because i couldn't educate my son with the lack of statewide services provided by asdb my son flourishes now and has the assistive technology instruction that was impossible to find with your organization last semester he had a 4.0 grade point average and is on track with the new nemeth instruction to take college entrance exams in two years recently i was made aware of your november board meeting by some teachers who were asking for help with employment retaliation from asdb regional cooperatives after leaving arizona a year ago i became an educational advocate helping families support students in countless iep meetings when i watched your meeting i was absolutely in tears and horrified to hear that educational interpreters were being forbidden to attend iep meetings plain and simple it's a violation of idea 300.321 and a molestation

206of the iep process and its intent under federal law if a family or school district requests the attendance of these professional and asdb intervenes in denying them their federal rights then both asdb and the school district served by the cooperative are in jeopardy of civil rights violations additionally i can find no policy change made or approved by this board that supports this rampant rampant denial of meaningful participation i would caution this agency with its newfound lea obligations to discontinue this discrimination to regional cooperative students i am offering comments in support of students and their teachers to determine what is best for children not the state agency or school district how that is possible without the most knowledgeable educational professionals at the table is beyond me and i encourage families and teachers facing this reality to

207make a complaint to the office of civil rights finally in that same meeting were the complaints of board members about the lack of attendance at the august 2021 meeting and the technology challenges if asdb can't hold a meeting in a regional cooperative due to the lack of technology availability can you imagine what it's like to expect assistive technology instruction for a child in that same setting thank you for acknowledging the sanity of my family's experience in arizona that was the first meeting in five years that this board left either phoenix or tucson and you expected live attendance in a viral pandemic while board meetings at asd campus campuses have no live participation it's a shame this organization has so little interest in the hand that feeds it it's time for asdb to become the campus

208exclusive community center that it is and quit playing statewide educational service provider it's time to sunset the regional cooperative cooperatives if this board isn't interested in learning more about them or supporting cooperative teachers and students you literally are doing more harm than good quit committing fraud by except accepting statewide legislative dollars asdb does not intend to use for a statewide equitable education thank you and then the second one is from mary rimron um in regards to the meaning of lre asdb tucson has a hearing perception of least restrictive environment the campus programs are not being represented in good light at iep meetings in the tucson area during placement meetings it has been shared that asdb tucson students are not on grade level and the classes are and the classes are behind academically a middle school

209student themselves requested placement at asdb and was left in tears when it was denied it also appears that asdb tucson will not accept placement of a deaf or hard of hearing student that has interpreting services in their public school this is considered lre the u.s department of education has statements regarding lre and how it relates to deaf and hard of hearing students language access peers and direct instruction are just a few of the considerations to take into account when considering lre for deaf and hard of hearing students in order to address this issue please consider sending certified educators of the deaf to represent asdb tucson for iep and met met meetings provide training to asdb tucson on the specific considerations of lre for deaf and hard of hearing students according to the u.s department of

210education all right uh thank you sue kay uh 8.02 discussion possible action item agenda items for the next regular board meeting scheduled for march 3rd 2022 at pdsd are there any any particular issues that the board would like to address at that meeting um hearing none i think we can move on uh to 9.01 action item adjournment uh flynn would you like to make a motion here i am yes i'm moved that we adjourned this meeting all right i will 2k seconds that all right all in favor say ah you can turn on your screen there we go and okay any opposed all right excellent thank you everyone um again i know as long as meeting thank you to the interpreters for sticking with us for so long uh and to the media uh production

211team who made this all possible i'm pretty short noticed uh to move this to zoom but i think it it went across pretty well so so thank you again for all of your efforts there um to make that that quick decision there to to move us back to zoom for this one i um hopefully we'll be back in phoenix uh uh for for march and i know we have the work study in uh february also in person so we'll see everyone then again thank you very much have a good evening