ASDB Board Meeting (09/09/2021)

001all right the live stream is going we're going live in 10 1. all right uh hello check uh can you guys hear me is my mic on you can okay great um i guess it's not uh on to the room like it normally is uh now is the time set for the regular board meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind we'll begin with 1.01 call to order um sue kane are you on the line great can you do the role she's not present here present david present next is item 1.02 call of the public call to the public on agendized items um we didn't get any in the email um and i don't think we got any today correct leticia so um we didn't get any uh in person so

002there are none to read the next item is going to be 1.03 information item superintendents report superintendent reichman good afternoon president nigro assistant superintendent rex we have some assistant superintendent shayna cooper we don't right now actually and the following board members mike and the community that are watching now i'm truly thrilled to be back here at the burger performing arts center in person with you all here it really is a different energy a different vibe happening here in person and talking with each other of course as usual i will start with a story this time this story is an old indian proverb it speaks to six men and women who happen to be blind the six men and women lived in a small village this village was upon a bustling street busy street the six

003men and women like to sit near the busy street because they were able to hear the interactions hear the happenings the different conversations they were very curious people wanting to know what was out there in the world they asked lots of questions they would stop travelers so these six individuals heard about a magical animal this creature was called an elephant they heard different stories about the elephant for example they heard that the elephant was strong and could plow forests and help rebuild pave roads at the same time another story was heard that the raja his daughter would ride on the back of an elephant and how was that even possible to ride on the back of an elephant the elephant must be a gentle creature so there are lots of discussions amongst the six as

004to what is an elephant they were variating in conflicting information one would say well it must be a large cow people would just make up stories really it's just a cow another would say no there's no such thing as an elephant elephants don't exist so there were so many different stories as to what an elephant truly was so in the village they overheard these gentlemen arguing constantly so they decided to send a young boy to lead the six men and women to the raja to his palace they wanted to meet the elephant so the young boy would guide the six down the road to the rogers palace one of the workers there brought the elephant to the group and the six men and women gathered around touching observing the elephant the first comment was oh

005this elephant is a huge snake a second person said no it's a column with four legs like a large cow the other would touch the side and say wow it's tough and sturdy like a wall the other blind person would say after touching the ears oh this must be a magic rug or carpet that can fly over the forest in the mountains and the last blind person said nah it's just a rope that's all i feel in the tail so after meeting the elephant they all sat around waiting for their water and they started to talk about what they observed see it's a wall no it must be a snake no it must be a magic carpet no i disagree it's a rope so they would argue amongst themselves and get louder and louder and

006louder until all of a sudden they heard stop a loud booming voice came from the village the raja appeared and said how do each of you know if you are correct how do you know they were unresponsive and the raja was a well-respected kind man and he reminded them that an elephant is a large animal and each of you only touched portions of this animal and if each of you can sit together and share your experiences and your perspectives of this elephant then you can all put the pieces together and that is what creates the elephant this is asdb and i acknowledge my part within this story i thought that i knew asdb but my part is one singular portion and i've learned over the last five years that there is still so much for

007me to learn about asdb each of us 800 plus employees have our own portion of what the asdb story is we may not know another's perspective another's experience or their knowledge or their expertise but we are asdb just as much as the board is asdb we listen and learn from one another we share our stories that we can piece together and we wove together the parts weave together the parts that make asdb asdb is our elephant just a moment as i bring up some information i apologize screen all of a sudden turned off so here it is so our goal here is how do we learn more about asdb and how do we put together all the different parts of asdb i believe you as the board are in an interesting journey we've just started

008our strategic plan we have our four pillars that encompasses all of asdb excellence in communication and relationships outstanding student outcome superb organizational culture and effective resource management each of these pillars help us put together the whole of asdb so this afternoon i would like to focus on pillar one effective communication and relationships so how do you know asdb is actually meeting and doing that we have three priorities within this pillar the first is making sure we provide first rank customer service second is building capacities with school districts and third is engaging the community and again i ask how do you know that we are doing that one way is by establishing performance measures you have reviewed the strategic plan and we've included all our performance metrics under pillar one we have already begun to collect

009our data and put together this information to be able to analyze and interpret what this data means you each have copies of the report initial report to the board i hope you did take time to review because there's some really interesting numbers there for example if we take a look at parent surveys we have been conducting parent surveys annually so this is not a new performance for us what is new although is how we are implementing it into the strategic plan so here you can actually see what has happened with the parent satisfaction surveys we release an email in may to parents which i believe was about 1 400 families in emails unfortunately we did not receive a lot of response in looking at the early learning program i believe the number is about 11

010participation k-12 setting which included both campuses and the itinerant services participation rate was about nine percent so what that means is that when we are looking at parent satisfaction of the education and the quality of services that we provide to their children it was hard to interpret that because we did not obtain enough feedback so while looking at parent satisfaction it looks fairly high the rates are as follows for the early learning program 9 out of 10 satisfaction rating and this is on a likert scale from 1 to 10 10 being the highest the best so early learning program has averaged at a nine nine out of ten parents are content with the preschool and early intervention programming in looking at the campuses and itinerant services well campuses excuse me at 8.8 and cooperatives the

011regional services were 8.3 so that indicates that parents are satisfied but we are aware that this is not insufficient not we cannot just collect parent survey so we are trying for the following year to figure out a different method and how we can elicit more parent response and if we are successful in increasing our numbers and our participation rate then we might have a better picture a more accurate picture of parent perspectives of our education and services alongside with parent surveys we also conducted employee satisfaction surveys we sent out about 850 emails we had a return rate of 350. with 41 participation can we say from that 41 that the numbers indicate satisfaction does that represent the agency well i would say overall yes probably okay as i continue to review the numbers just one

012moment unfortunately cannot find it on my screen but i have memorized quite a few so there are four parts to the employees satisfaction survey the first would indicate that they were satisfied with their position on an average the score was a 7.25 and again if you remember on this icard scale of 1 through 10 a 7.25 is average over average and if we're looking at the range from a 2.0 to a 10 the average would bring you to a 7.25 that employees are generally satisfied which is interesting when we look at the questions that were phrased but are you satisfied with the superintendent's work in leading the agency that question itself brought out the same average of 7.25 third question is the agency effective in communicating that was the lowest score it was brought to

013a six point five or so so that indicates that we still need room for improvement in communicating with our staff and last but certainly not least which was an interesting question do you believe that the agency is culturally sensitive 7.25 was the average so again out of the four questions very similar response or rating so if the question was am i satisfied with my job or if i'm satisfied with the superintendent with the leadership team or if i am not satisfied with my position we could indicate that they are not satisfied also with the leadership team as well so i think there's a connection there with communication and cultural sensitivity so that's another tool for diagnostic for us to analyze and to be able to continue offering this employee satisfaction survey so i'm happy to

014share this information with you in my strategic plan to the board so in our following year i would like to increase participation and part of this is because i want to provide feedback receive and provide feedback towards action and i feel that the some of the answers were due to some of my responses and my lack of follow-up with emails or communicating that this survey that you are taking a reminder that this these are my actions for me in my action steps so i would like to report back to you again in the following year after employee satisfaction surveys have been submitted so there is a lot of improvement to be done here within the agency but that's a summary of the employee satisfaction survey next step special education director surveys and again this is

015a survey that we historically have conducted annually this is nothing new to us but what is new is the implementation of this on the strategic plan in a way to show our work with school districts on that strategic plan so again we sent this out to 275 special ed directors or they're about that number throughout the state and we got back responses again our participation rate was low wasn't as low as the parent participation rate but it was still low let me find the numbers here so for example when it comes to the early learning program we had 17 percent itinerant services were 16 campus participation i believe was 20 responses so this is something that we need to improve on is our response rate but when we look at their overall satisfaction with the

016quality of education services that we provide and our other services it's hard to interpret the data because of the small sample size it's hard to know if this is a reflection of statewide special ed directors because of that low response rate let's see when it comes to the early learning program satisfaction was at a 9.5 for the campus programs satisfaction is at an 8.25 so generally satisfied itinerant services is at a 6.6 which is a little bit lower of a score generally satisfied but still my interpretation of this data is that it really is a reflection of the changes that we are making when it comes to our itinerant services we've recently changed our five regional co-ops into our now three statewide regions we're hiring new directors for this we have new leadership in these

017positions as i'm sure you remember jay johnson is now our itinerant services statewide director and that just happened last year about a year and a half ago or so so there's been a lot of change happening more recently with this program to make our processes more consistent and more equitable around the state so right now it might look like a little bit of a messy time because we are making a lot of changes here so my interpretation of a 6.6 is really a reflection of the changes that are happening right now in that area and that's something that we need to continue our work with our special ed directors around the state is to continue to improve that and then hopefully next year have a higher response rate from them so that we get a

018more accurate depiction of their overall satisfaction with the agency and i think i'm going to go ahead and wrap up my report i have a couple more examples but you get the overall idea and you also have a copy of my written report the report was written by courtney fritz so she has done an excellent job of helping to put together and make all of these graphics and colors and making it easy to look and find so i'm not going to take credit for her work she did a lot of this for me but with that i'm going to close my remarks and come back to the elephant that we started with with that metaphor these numbers that we just collected and we just put into the strategic plan and to the report as we

019work to analyze and dissect this information this is a piece that's going to help us see a little bit more of our elephant a little bit more of our agency and to help us get a better understanding of what's happening with the agency as a whole and to help us make better data-driven decisions with that that closes my report thank you for president nigro uh thank you oh i see that i have the audio now um that was one comment no no we lost it did we lose it hello okay no we haven't um the the one comment i want to make from a technical perspective is to make sure that we have amplification uh in the room because it is a big space and it seems my mic is on now um the interpreters

020mike i don't think is on is that are we on no yeah so if we can okay got it i see um thanks for for clarifying that so i just want to make sure that we do have um amplification so we can all hear uh in the room um because it is it is a large space uh were there any comments for the superintendent this is linda bove just a question for you superintendent reichman superintendent mentioned several years in the past having done this serve these surveys whether that be the parent survey but it's nice to have this data officially recognized and part of our reporting can you give us a general comparison i know this is the first time that you've done reporting with the strategic plan but in general is this data comparable

021are you seeing changes from years past to be honest i would need to ask my superintendent my assistant superintendent rex the answer to that question i think unfortunately traditionally we have low numbers of participation in our parent area i think we can definitely do a better job of soliciting our sped directors to give information sometimes the timing of the survey that goes out can affect getting quality results [Music] i'm trying to think of the all three things that you had talked about i would say they're comparable but we could probably bring back some more information just give you a couple sentences to give you some information we can send you guys an email if that would help or even bring it up in our november meeting just to kind of give you that visual of

022past and present our current reality great yes i've been here since 2018 so i'd like to see the difference in years past compared to where we are now to see if there are any ways that we can improve or elicit more responses especially when it comes to parent participation i'm not sure why parents wouldn't participate in a survey like this if we could figure out why or how we can improve parent participation or if that's something that's stagnant that the same percentage participates year after year because this is a choice for their child that they're making so having parental involvement in their children's education as far as what they want and what they expect from their children is necessary and if we don't have parental involvement then later on were behind the eight ball trying

023to catch up with what they wanted so my thought is how else can we get parents to respond is it a lack of access is it compatible with phone apps or is there a way that we can make this more accessible to parents to help garner more participation are we doing this parent participation through multiple avenues whether that be maybe phone calls or if parents don't have email accounts then maybe this survey is inaccessible to them so that's just the thoughts that i'm having at this moment thank you there uh thank you linda are there other other comments um i guess i have a few um you know i echo the concerns of linda about participation i mean we do need to have higher participation in all of these um you know especially since this

024is a important data that we're using to make decisions that affect the agency this is what the board is looking at um so you know i'd like to see much higher levels of participation so we know we're getting the full picture i don't pretend to know how to do that i think that the staff can go out and explore different ways to make sure we you know we're able to get that higher level of participation if only that we let the constituents know that we are really paying attention to this this is really important to how the agency um is going to improve and uh we need to hear their feedback and you know good or bad or indifferent we just need to hear it so we know that we're uh getting the feedback from

025a broad section uh of people that the agency interacts with you know the other part of this is these reports are good but i know we've talked about um when we made the strategic plan kind of a dashboard that we can put together um that that would be more concise and you know kind of putting a lot of this information to one place and i'm happy to to work with whoever to to do that we can probably do something web-based we could do something in excel there's a variety of ways to do it but um if we could task someone to work on that so we can get this information in a in a way that we're you know we're seeing it in a repeatable way so when we look at this next year and

026when we look at other you know there's data on variety of pillars from you know two and three and four etc when we look at it we're looking at it in the same way and we're seeing year over year as the years progressed i know we're only a few months into this but i think we do need to work on on doing that now um i was happy to see uh board docs um you know the strategic plan implemented more into board docs uh you know this meeting i think that's certainly a step in the right direction but if we can get the the reports in a dashboard type format that would be helpful as well uh the other question i had um for the superintendent is in the special director's survey analysis there were

027some i guess a couple of comments here on on the itinerant side the voucher system needs improvement and then also a comment discrepancies with satisfaction noted depending on region follow-through communication services provided etc um you know with the changes that we've made i was hoping that that last comment would would have gone away by now if if not hopefully by next year um in the you know the creating more uniformity there but if the superintendent has any comments on that point uh that would be helpful for us to hear and then also um if you can explain what voucher system needs improvement if you can you can describe your thoughts on that or or what you think it is obviously this is input from others like you know and if you can provide you what

028you think that means sure um are you asking about eliciting responses to surveys could you rephrase the question oh sure the question is so um there were two uh in the survey analysis that was provided there there are some comments on the from the itinerant side um this is the survey of the special ed directors and some of the comments were voucher system needs improvement and discrepancies with satisfaction noted depending on region follow-through communications and service services provided so i just wanted to get what you kind of more information on what those items mean or likely mean could i ask jay to speak to this issue probably johnson jay johnson if he is on the bridge line i'm not sure if he's on i know the vouchering it was confusing when ade came forward and

029made the changes in the schools it affected how we vouchered the home district has to push the button whether it's a voucher and they have that responsibility so anytime we were making changes or ade was giving information our sped directors were getting confused and so jay actually spent a lot of time explaining that meeting with fed directors we also have our advisory council meetings we did them in whole groups we did three separate advisory council meetings at the end of the advisory council meetings we gave them the survey and highly encouraged them to fill it out i think we've given a lot of information to our sped directors and some sped directors only use an itinerant services some sped directors if they have their own programs they only use our campus programs so when we

030give information often we both get follow-up calls kelly or amber will field calls well what does this mean for us nothing there's no changes while on the itinerant side jay gets to field a lot of phone calls or his regional directors well what does this mean for us you still have to push the button on your side as a school district to send us the voucher so it's been a lot of communication but i i will respond that it has been frustrating for our stakeholders as sped directors um uh thank you and and dr x um you said that that you know the the voucher system the statutory regime stayed the same as my understanding um there hasn't been a change there that the changes with the lea status flux earlier in the year that's

031that's the the primary cause of the issue not that the voucher system is any different than it was a year ago or five years ago well five years ago they still have to push the button on their end to give us the money okay so sometimes that's a lot of communication okay all right those those are my comments if there are no others thank you superintendent reichman for your report we can move on to 1.04 information item assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction report assistant superintendent dr rex good afternoon president nigro board members superintendent reichman assistant superintendent cooper the report i submitted covered the many activities and [Music] the support that we are doing to align with our strategic plan under the pillar of outstanding student development in our educational programs our birth to three

032our statewide itinerant and our campus programs have all begun to kind of settle in and serve our students across the state here it is september i have started working with our principals and directors to align their smart goals with the reflection of what is happening on our pillar 2 priorities which are early language acquisition high academic achievement and social and emotional learning each director and principal will work on their smart goals to align with the work that we have developed as a strategic plan and they have begun to find ways to collect that data for the asdb strategic plan some of it are some of it's very easy but some of us were kind of scratching our heads and trying to figure out the best way to get that information and get it in a

033usable format for you as part of the strategic plan this evening we have an agenda item for the board to approve the agency 301 plan that is for this school year every september i come to you our staff teachers vote we bring a documentation and you do it either in consent or in an agenda item there are no changes for this year this year's 301 will only affect teachers but as we prepare for next year i wanted to take this opportunity to share with the board an update on what our agency is doing for 301 as we move into the next academic school year up until this year 301 by law was designated to benefit teachers the amount of funding that we received from the past from the state for 301 was put into these

034three buckets they would give us an amount of money and the performance pay was 40 percent that was one bucket we also put twenty percent of that amount toward increases for teachers and then there was a third bucket that covered professional development opportunities which covered the other forty percent this past june our legislature passed senate bill 1139 that affects part of that law that with regard to 301 and our staff is going to be affected in a new way the new law opens up an opportunity to use 301 funds that can now be used to be paid out to other groups within our agency that support student services some districts rolled out their plans immediately some districts said wait we're going to take some time we're going to make sure that we make sure all

035the groups are included and we don't want to be in a rush to make a mistake so asdb kind of took that second plan we do not want to be in a rush to make a mistake we don't want to roll something out and forget a group we don't want to roll something out and not have the same fidelity that the teachers have been working on these past years so the odt odd team has been tasked and they've been taking the lead and formed a task force for the agency's 301 plan moving forward there's representation from the other support areas those groups that are now eligible are coming to the table and discussing along with the teachers and they've begun meeting to determine a recommendation to bring to annette and i and shayna for the

0362022 and 2023 school year this is a process we go to meetings and we start talking and we realize oops we forgot this group so they get added to the list so in the three meetings our little group has been growing but it's been it's been good it's been a lot of great conversations a lot of defining of what this means we're taking the law and trying to make sure that it will benefit all the groups that support students and finally i just wanna i wanna express my sincerest thanks to so many staff members who have stepped up in the past few weeks it truly takes a team to achieve i just returned back from the white mountains where the itinerant directors met and had the opportunity to go into classrooms observe classrooms in the

037show low pine top area see what our teachers are doing for our hi students how our interpreters are managing in classrooms how they have become part of those classrooms how our vi teachers are doing but in the past few weeks first it's been um there's been a lot that has happened a lot of personal family tragedies and they and they just keep stacking up but to the teachers and the support staff that came together quickly they've been aligning resources they've changed schedules and every everything they've done has been done to ensure that students are not missing out on any of their service they have i just i see the emails that go and the students caseloads that are being moved what we have are some amazing people that are stepping up and allowing our asdb

038staff the time to grieve and heal the work and the commitment has been humbling the problem solving and the dedication truly makes me proud to be a part of asdb and that concludes my report thank you dr x are there any comments for dr rex okay uh hearing none we'll move on to 1.05 information item assistant superintendent of agency operations and support services report assistant superintendent cooper shayna cooper assistant superintendent of agency operations and support services good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex and members of the board and asdb community each of the directors have provided to you their departmental report and as a reminder in support of asdb's priorities most of the work that we do is tied to pillar 3 support organizational culture and pillar for effective resource management the

039it department has been busy with supporting the technology needs for all returning staff and students on the tucson campus the it staff have been ensuring all of the instructional buildings have controlled access systems fully functioning for increased staff and student safety on the phoenix campus they have been working diligently to relocate staff while the l building is being renovated as part of the agency's facilities project the operations department more specifically transportation as assistant superintendent rex just mentioned has been working very hard to ensure there is no lapse in providing transportation services to our students and as presented at the board work study session on august 12th asdb is now solely responsible for providing fape they have been using internal staff consisting of chaperones instructional assistants and staff from facilities they have also been working with

040third-party contractors as well as partnering with a few districts to ensure the students transportation needs are met we're currently performing a cost analysis to determine the best option going forward this includes researching other funding sources available to us after consultation with our attorney general it was determined last week that we are not eligible for the transportation support level funding due to asdb not being a political subdivision or a school district asdb continues to research options such as working with the legislature to make legislative changes in order for us to meet the financial demands of transportation within the agency's fiscal year 2023 budget package that was just submitted to ospb last week we include a funding issue as it relates to the lea impacts of house bill 2863 whereby we're asking for an increase to our

041general fund appropriations of 962 thousand 000 to assist with the additional transportation needs to address the needs for the current year fiscal year 2022 i have done a preliminary projection of our voucher revenues and assuming that it is not too far off will have enough cash from the collected revenues to pay for the transportation financial needs that have been identified on another note it was previously mentioned that as a result of our lea status we would be able to receive funding from a school facility board for our capital and building renewal needs however upon further review by the joint legislative budget committee asdb does not qualify for that funding either as such we will continue to participate in adoa's capital improvement plan where we submit our capital funding request through that method for business services

042the financial report will be provided separately under agenda item 4.01 however it should be noted that i am still actively recruiting for the director of business services position i mentioned at the july 22nd board meeting that a candidate was selected and was going to be offered the position however after initially accepting the position the candidate declined the next day i hope to begin another set of interviews within the next week how although being down the director position and actively recruiting for two additional position the business services team continues to work hard processing vendor payments and payroll and travel claims for staff receiving and delivering ordered items making sure our agency budget needs are being met as well as monitoring revenues and expenditures for the new year last but not least the hr department has been

043working on many initiatives and projects the two percent cola wage increase for all permanent and limited staff as well as the two percent step increase for eligible teachers became effective july 25th hr worked hard to make sure that those increases were implemented and completed timely the department also completed their annual metrics report which provides data and insight on staff member demographics hiring processes new hire views fmla and ada usage impacts from covid as well as employee relation statistics and turnover ratios within the agency this was done for the fiscal year 2021 and was reviewed with the agency's leadership team if there are no questions on the report that concludes my report for today thank you thank you are there any comments or questions you know i guess i had a couple i mean one is

044just really small the the uh environmental sensors pick up pm two and a half i'm just wondering if they pick up pm10 as well that's that's a primary pollutant and uh maricopa and pima so uh we probably want to be monitoring that too if we if we can the other question i had um on the transportation item there's it's twofold one i know there's some other ancillary services uh that we are now our responsibility primarily nursing services um has there been any progress on on finding the funds to be able to serve those yeah i was actually going to mention that in my finance report that in addition to the 962 000 that we're asking for transportation we are going to be asking for about 300 and i believe 385 000 um for the one-to-one

045nursing services that are needed for the approximate five students on the ptsd campus and that would be a budget that's for next year is what you're saying no that's actually this year for fiscal year 2022 but in the budget submission i did include a total of 1.35 million to include transportation as well as the one-to-one related service needs for the nursing okay so our current plan is to ask for that as like an additional part of our general appropriation to offset those for fiscal year 2023 for fiscal year 2022 i have reviewed as i mentioned the voucher revenues and based on those um rough estimates we should be able to pay for the 1.3 million this year based on available cash right that's certainly the more urgent need okay uh pv london this is pb

046jones thank you president nigro ms cooper as i always mentioned i love your reports i truly enjoy your details and your comments and i have noticed that you said that we are able to pay with our cash balance my only concern is that if we do use our cash balance will that impact our negative balance and what will the lea projection look like starting this the following school year no it will not impact our significantly impact our cash balance as notated in the finance report we do have a cash balance of i believe 13 million dollars and that was ending june 30. um and in addition to the collected revenues that we expect to collect this year assuming we have ongoing agency needs in terms of payroll which runs about 1.6 million every pay period

047we will have sufficient monies there may be a possibility that i may dip into the medicaid revenues that we collect as well if the projections are not accurate again voucher revenues are based on enrollment for the um for the campuses as well as the itinerant in terms of fiscal year 2023 as i mentioned i'm hoping that we can work with ospb and jlbc to express the need that we will not be able to use ongoing cash and requesting that they increase our general fund appropriations to help us with the with the responsibilities that we have absolutely i just wanted to make sure that we don't hurt ourselves in our financial position when trying to approach that need now are there any legislative options or should we as the board consider maybe encouraging the need to

048look for some sort of emergency fund request in addition for this year because of that cash balance so that would that be sufficient and by how much of a percentage if something else does happen how would that impact that cash balance in the following year as of this point no for the last two or three years we have been ending with a surplus every year in 2020 we ended with a 4 million dollar surplus in 2021 you'll see with the report i'm projecting about a 2.5 million dollar surplus so the way that we collectively as an agency have been making sure that we're effectively using our resources i do not have any immediate concerns again if this continues to be an ongoing issue and we're not able to work with the legislature and or ospb

049that's where we will need to think about other options i we are looking at grant funding as an option i'm just trying to look at other other available resources to us whether that be immediate and or for the future so as of right now the answer question no i don't have any concerns okay one last follow-up i apologize i just wanted to clarify for the community i know you mentioned there is a surplus does that mean that the surplus is not extra money that is not needed anywhere or do you mean that the surplus is as in there is money available for when we need to pay any type of dues so there is no additional surplus just sitting there that's free money correct no as i mentioned there is a 13 million dollar cash

050balance so the surplus i believe what as i mentioned three years ago we really started with the i believe a six million dollar cash balance and over the years we have been able to increase our cash so there is money available should a need come for example a couple years ago when we needed to pay five hundred thousand dollars for the emergency gas line repairs on the tucson campus i was able to shift some funding and was able to come up with the money so it's just some strategies being able to make sure but as i mentioned with the 13 million dollar cash balance as of right now um assuming voucher revenues consistently run about three million dollars each month we will be fine for this year as i mentioned if it continues to be

051an ongoing basis that's where it will be a primary concern thank you and this is linda as you're saying the surplus is not there on an annual basis but when we look at grants they're not always available too so it obviously takes time before a grant is administered or given to us so you also mentioned i think there were several organizations or that asdb does not qualify could you expand on what those are yes um one of the ones i just previously mentioned um president nigro had asked us to take a deeper look into the transportation support level funding that school districts receive however the feedback that we receive from the attorney general we are not eligible to receive any funding from the tsl because we are not a school district also with the school

052facilities board similar to school districts they're able to receive funding for capital related needs again because we're not a school district we're not eligible to receive any funding as it relates to capital requests but we are able to continue to receive funding from the arizona department of administration's capital improvement plan okay thank you okay are there any other questions okay uh hearing none we'll move on to 2.01 action item approval of the consent agenda consistent with board policy to include items 3.02 4.02 5.01 6.01 6.02 7.04 and 7.06 is there anyone that would like to remove any of these items from the consent agenda okay hearing done is there a motion to approve the consent agenda this is to take tonight i hope that we well sorry um i hope that we accept the appropriate

053consent agenda as listed is there a second always competing with me lynn linda a second um all in all in favor all right say hi hi hi hi any opposed none opposed um so that motion carries the consent agenda is approved we can move on to next item 3.01 action item approval of 301 performance based plan for 2122 assistant superintendent dr rex i know you briefly mentioned this in your report but now you can more fully describe it i am back it is september and the asdb governing board must adopt a performance-based compensation system to allocate funding from the classroom site fund pursuant to subsection b of ars title 15 education 15-977 the classroom site fund the performance appraisal plans are for agency certified teachers who work with students more than 50 percent of their

054time the asdb 301 committee meet several times a year to discuss and develop the plans for the following school year eligible teachers in asdb schools our statewide itinerant and the early learning program vote to accept or reject the plans that are presented in order to come to you there must be at least 80 percent of the vote for these plans with 194 teachers voting 175 were roughly 90 percent of the teachers accepted the presented plans for the 2021 2022 school year the plans were submitted for your review we have a campus school-based plan itinerant teaching performance plan and the early learning performance plan so i am here before you all to hopefully get a motion and a second and a unanimous decision to pass our 301 plan uh thank you dr rex uh any board

055members that have any discussion on this item no are there any motions to approve the plan is proposed this is uk i i hope that he accepts the plan as proposed by assistant superintendent dr rex thank you sue k is there a second any opposed i'll abstain and and one abstention okay um that motion carries um next item uh 3.03 action item approval of new district agreements assistant superintendent dr rex the board has asked that whenever we bring on new districts to our family that we make it an action item that we you all can see it and it doesn't get sometimes things get lost in consent so we are looking for the approval of new district agreements for acorn montessori harvest prep academy and welton elementary districts uh thank you dr x is there

056any discussion on these contracts are there any motions to pv [Music] would you give me a little bit more details about the preparatory academy harvest prep that is a charter school out of region one and they have decided to come on because i believe they might have a student that will be joining them and they wanted to be proactive and already be on board so that way if that student that family chooses to have that student attend then they can receive services i think that's fantastic that's fantastic news and i would commend everyone in that school i'd like to see other charter schools do the same and we may be able to model from this so thank you for that thank you pv are there any motions to accept these contracts as proposed this is

057pv commissioner jam i would move that we approve these contracts as listed on the agenda for these new school districts uh thank you pv any seconds well i'll second so all in favor approving the contracts as proposed hi i'm stan okay we have one of one abstention any opposed no okay thank you the motion passes we can move on to item 4.01 information item finance report assistant superintendent cooper our most recent finance committee meeting was held last thursday on september 2nd with board member giants and superintendent reichman the formats as well as more detailed information pertaining to the agency's fiscal update was provided and discussed with the committee in summary we reviewed a lot of information we went through the budget fiscal year which ends the month of june 30 2021 and and we also

058went through the first month report for budget fiscal year 2022 which would be for the month then july 31 2021 compared to 2020. we reviewed the budget to actual comparison reports the available cash balance student enrollment student teacher ratios filled full-time equivalents as well as reviewed grant revenue and expenditure information provided to each of you is most of the same financial data that was provided to the finance committee but in a more condensed summarized version the expenditure plan for fiscal year totaling 63.9 million and the proposed operating budget request of 65.2 million for fiscal year 2023 was submitted to ospb on september 1st and as mentioned in my assistant superintendent report included in the submission was the funding issue decision package requesting an increase of 962 000 for the transportation needs but also included was

059the request of 385 000 for the contracted one-to-one nursing service needs the total of the funding issue was 1.3 million dollars we will wait over the next month or two to determine if there's any questions if additional information is needed by ospb and we will go through that information at that time as referenced on page one of the financial report as of august 1st asdb had 2078 enrolled students comparing that to last year's enrollment of 2117 there has been a decrease of 39 students and taking a look at it broken out the decreases within the site-based campus schools and the itinerant co-op k-12 students of 130 students offset by the increase in the birth to age 3 and preschool students of 91. on page 2 you'll see that as of august 1st we calculated about

060521 filled ftes and over 760 staff members we did have approximately i believe 94 vacancies that were actively being recruited for that includes teachers instructional and residential service assistants interpreters bus drivers and other various positions page three begins the financial summary and as of june 30 as i previously mentioned we did show a surplus of 1.9 million when you compare actual revenues of 58.8 million to actual expenditures of 56.9 million there are still quite a bit of outstanding grant reimbursements that we're waiting to receive for example we're waiting to receive reimbursement for two quarters from department of economic security for the rsa vr grant um also funding from the uh million dollars that we're spending the last little bit of money on um we were able to get an extension until the end of january

061to spend the final thirty thousand dollars once that's spent we will ask for reimbursement for those monies uh revenues from last year of 59.8 million and expenditures at 55.5 for fiscal year 2020 we ended up as i mentioned previously with the surplus a cash surplus of 4.3 million so just over those two budget years we've already exceeded about six million dollars in revenues for those years as noted on page nine for budget fiscal year 2021 we spent about 56 percent of our expenditures on instruction and instruction support on student support and 11 percent on agency administration since it is the end of the quarter also included in this month's report are the fourth quarter basic financial statements which begins on page 11 and as a reminder the basic financial statements consist of our balance sheet

062our income statement as well as our statement of cash flows for the fiscal year not based on the budget year and as i mentioned also previously our ending cash balance as of june 30 2021 was 13.3 million dollars in cash page 14 begins the financial summary for the months ending july 31 2021 in comparison to 2020 which is the first month of the fiscal year of the 3.5 million dollars in expenditures that consists of 84 of payroll and the other 16 on other operating expenditures on page 20 you'll see as of july 31st we spent 57 percent on instruction support on student support and then 14 percent on agency administration on page 21 it does show that we have a two million dollar deficit when we compare actual revenues of approximately 1.5 million which includes

063what we've received and collected as well as what we've expended from our general fund appropriations in comparison to the actual expenditures of 3.5 million as i continuously say this is not of any particular concern as we start the fiscal year on july 1st however we don't start receiving voucher revenues from ade until the end of september so that's when we'll actually start to receive the collected revenues last year at this time we had almost a 3 million deficit revenues at that time were 2.1 million and expenditures were 5 million and as a reminder the budget and fiscal year begins in july the school year begins in august but there's still day-to-day payroll as well as other operating expenditures that are continuously being incurred so again that means we're using available cash to help get us

064through until we receive those collected voucher revenues so what that means is we're just having to monitor our cash balance very closely as well as making sure that we use other funding sources available to us because as a reminder our general fund appropriations is received on a quarterly basis we don't receive that funding up front if there are no questions on any of the information presented that concludes my report for the fiscal update for the agency uh thank you were there any comments says pv i would like to make a comment i'm sure sue k might have a giggle at my comment but our reputation in vr especially when i joined this board has been one of lots of questions and again my second term here we've had a lot of good discussions about all

065of the numbers and making sure that everything is up and up and i just want to commend assistant superintendent cooper your your attention to detail is outstanding i also want to make sure that those in the community understand that unfortunately we don't receive our state appropriated funds in a lump sum which then we can spend from um there is a lot of piecemealing of how we are paid um at the same time we have bills that are due up front um and so we rely on a lot of that cash flow and so i know there's been a lot of concern about the change in lea status and the ramifications on our funding for transportation and i think that this year the challenge is just to stay on top of that but it also allows

066for a lot of good conversation to see what we need long term from the legislation to make sure that this is sustainable for our students and to really promote our role as an lea so again i look forward to see what we can do with our proposed budget and we can continue to see how things work out thank you so much for your work and for your patience with me thank you um the one question i had uh i know that when we talked about the transportation liability that was going to be new to us um that 800 to 900 000 um in our work study session that that was a there might be that liability may be greater um that's that's how it was presented to us so um and and perhaps several hundred

067thousand dollars greater so i know that you've kind of included the liability and transportation that we know about including and the ancillary services that we know about together in that 1.3 million dollar request um you know what's our plan if if that liability for transportation is is significantly more how we're going to handle that that's where i briefly mentioned that using the surplus revenue from medicaid as you may have heard me say in other board reports i mentioned that when i first started we had over a million dollar deficit just in the medicaid funding we were using it as a slush fund over the last this will be going on our second year where now it it is closer to about five to six hundred thousand dollars of a surplus um so that's available to

068us again um if enrollment increases voucher revenues would increase so that could also be additional revenue available to us as well as i mentioned we're going to look at some grant funding opportunities i know our director of operations albert duff is working on looking at some funding now as a possibility no guarantees we're in the early stages of reviewing that but we do have some resources available to us but i do want to mention although it may increase it may also possibly decrease so it's just um some rough estimates that albert and i as well as the rest of the team were able to come up based on the information that we do know for example even with the one-to-one nursing services i know we put in for five nurses but as of right now

069correct me if i'm wrong i think we're only using three so we're using three nurses we're having a contract with two vendors to help us so we're trying to make sure that we're being conservative but also fiscally sound at the same time so we do have the resources available for this year um assuming that my projections are accurate for us should that increase um now if it increases to a million dollars and i might say oh no that may be an issue um but a couple of hundred thousand dollars i think we we should be fine especially considering what this with the cash balance of 13.3 million um we will be able to get us through like i said unless something significantly changes which could happen again that may through the projections off but based

070on the information that i do know there's no immediate concerns as it relates to that okay thank you are there any other comments no hearing none we will ask them a quick clarifying question before the transportation issue with the decision package does it contemplate the out years for so for fy24 and 25 assuming similar liability to what's happening right now or is there a difference as we go down the road i believe that it does based on again the information that we do know that's assuming that all we'll be able to hire and fill all of our vacant positions um that we're able to reduce the burden of having to contract out i know we're working with hr to be creative in terms of looking for example at non-cdl drivers to assist us um so

071yes it does look at the immediate years for example within the next one to three years we as i mentioned we'll need to look at legislative changes in terms of for example with the 50 that we're receiving in voucher funding we're going to be doing some analysis around what we would like that to be increased to since we know that significantly is not and you know it's significantly less and not enough even for one student but yes it does help us and i'm sure working with ospb and jlbc i'm sure they'll probably think of things that we're not thinking about but at this time we're using the information that we do know based on contracts that we're working with with the the school the various school districts that we have mousse with some of those

072districts that we are working with are backing out in terms of looking for us to reimburse them so we're having to to shuffle for example working with contracted vendors to help us with the day-to-day needs that's where i mentioned we're having to ask for the principals to help us in terms of finding staff to help provide the transportation but again i think the staff is working very hard working overtime to make sure that all of the needs within within the agency for transportation is is definitely being met and and we'll continue to work with ade as well to make sure that we're collaboratively working together to make sure that we are getting our needs met at the same time david um shannon i'm not sure if this is a question for you not necessarily with

073finance but it might be for operations or maybe for kristin or maybe even kelly when i i see there's six blind students living in the dormitories uh what are the ages or how what's the format of that type of residential setting for only six students but also of of seemingly of similar or varying ages so what how does that work and also i guess what the multiple disabled group and multiply disabled with uh with severe impairments how what are those dormitory settings how is that formatted please i think kelly might be the best good afternoon we actually have more than six blind students in the dorm so that number is not accurate okay it is more um we have the girls in one dorm the boys in another just like we do for the deaf

074we have a couple of multiple disabled students in those dorms that may require some additional staffing some more one-to-one services um but they've been here for years so we're used to programming for them but yeah we have in my head i'm trying to think but i think probably closer to 10 to 12 kids in the norm for blind right now and we have more coming okay thank you any other comments hearing none we'll move on to 6.03 discussion and action item renewal of superintendent's three-year contract for july 2022 to july 2025 presumably ars 431 03 a1 the board may vote to go into executive session which will all be open to the public for the purposes of discussion consideration the employment matters as it relates to this agenda item so i guess i'd like to

075begin by moving that we go into executive session is there a second a motion to go into executive session this is linda bove okay so we'll take that as a second um all in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay um sue k do you have the um statement that you need to read now before we go into executive session yes i do great persons present are reminded that it is unlawful to disclose or otherwise involve any person who is not now present other than the current member of the afc board or pursuing the specific statutory exemption anything that has transpired or has been discussed during this executive session failure to comply is in violation of ars 38-431.03 all right thank you sue k we are going to go into executive session in the other

076room um and those on the phone will magically be transported into the other room so thank you hello all right are the folks on the phone back in the main room okay i have lynn do we have sue kay and dean all right excellent so we are back um just wait a moment aaron has gone up okay so we are back again we are in 6.03 and i is there any discussion uh now or if not i'm at least i'm prepared to make a motion okay um well i move that we offer the superintendent an additional three-year contract which would run through begin at the right after the expiration of our current contract would run through june 2025 at the substantially the same terms as our current contract with the exception of a two percent

077increase in compensation based compensation a second this is pb okay um if there's no discussion on that then we can move to a vote um all in favor hi any opposed uh and no extensions okay uh great thank you our next item 7.01 discussion and action item asdb campus-based schools is an lea in this this item you know we've uh we've talked a lot about la status over the last year maybe even a little more than that we've you know gone through our strategic plan we've completed it and we've dealt with the legislature nade earlier in the year we had some legislative changes but it really wasn't until a few months ago that we were able to really focus on this issue and really have the staff kind of research all of the complicated and

078not so complicated questions i think you know early the year at the beginning of the year there were a lot of known unknowns in this process and since this spring we've been able to get a much better handle on on those so they're they're mostly known knowns now there's always going to be unknown unknowns um but i think we're we have far fewer known unknowns maybe even none and we had a work study session last month where we talked about you know what what being an lea means for our site-based campuses what how the how the agency would have to operate differently on a going forward basis how they'd have how the agency would have to operate differently if we were to choose not to have the site based schools be leas so now it's

079time for the board to discuss what we'd like to do about it you know again it's possible it's a possible or it's an action item we don't have to take an action but if we want to decide to be an lea or ask the legislature to make that more permanent and potentially ask the legislature to make some other changes that would support that now be the time to to talk about it so i i don't envision that we'll have all the details of that squared away today but in terms of the decision as to whether or not we want to pursue lea status on on a permanent basis in a in a way that the statutory regime supports completely uh we should we should discuss that now so are there any comments uh one way

080or another as to whether or not we the board should support lea status for the site-based programs linda this is linda you know i'm just thinking prior to the issue of the lea discussion the function of asdb was truly similar to what an ilea truly is and i think just opening up that ellie pandora box per se gave me an opportunity to review what we've been doing and where we're going and i feel like i have more faith and confidence in asdb in remaining legally an lea agency i don't want what happened to us previously to happen again i don't want to lose any funds so i don't see any reason why we would stop that process and i would like to remain an lea and i would like to permanently maintain that to make

081sure that our staff our students are all safe and secure our leadership team and bottom line our kids are protected those are my thoughts thank you linda other other comments pv this is pv thank you president nigro i also would like to see the asdb history is pretty interesting and when we found out that we were not an lea that truly changed the direction of the agency and i feel like it caused some issues some barriers and obviously through conversations in officially establishing the lea we must recognize that it's not a one fix all i feel that the lea designation allows us to address things in different ways and to be able to configure how we approach these barriers or issues i think it would be wise of us to support the lea status and

082to even request potentially considering with legislature to revisit the issue of what supports are necessary for this agency to truly function and thrive as an lea for example we encounter the transportation issue and the cost and the qualifications because we may not be abiding by the law of the previous laws and so i i think we need to give the agency and the superintendent the ability to have these conversations to identify those issues and to present possible solutions or possible approaches with the board for us to consider and to weigh our options in making sure that we minimize the negative impact of the transitional change to a complete lea for years to come as we figure out and learn what it truly means to be an lea and what the legal requirements are what are

083the fiscal requirements and what are the financial impacts etc and this is linda you're right pv i agree i feel that now that we've come together and we have a committee a group of leader leaders and people within the ade department we have this task force and i think that's when we're able to recognize the different issues and the barriers that we may be facing and now i'm now thinking twice you know you have a really great point we have to come together and talk about what these issues are whether we see them or not and how we can address them thank you linda um i i am i am in support of this idea however my my caution or my hesitation is making sure that we are getting all of the funding that an

084laa would actually qualify for to be able to address these costs that we have not been used to paying like the transportation like the nursing that type of thing and what is the impact to us if we are not going to be able to get those those funds if we move forward with the lea i i agree that i think it is in the best interest of our students and i do want to support the leadership team in this decision um but i i want to know that i guess we have a backup plan a plan b financially if we aren't going to be eligible for some of these funding resources that other leas are eligible for thank you sue k uh pv this is pv i also would like to respond to you suzuki

085that this is why my comment is important we have to open the door to allow the opportunity for superintendent and the leadership team to actually engage in dialogue in conversations towards that in finding and identifying all these pieces to the board instead of for example in previous board we were not able to have these conversations until they impacted us i would rather be a more proactive approach in allowing them the opportunity to meet legislature and discuss and identify to provide that kind of support for the next two to five years to really just have a comprehensive solution and to be able to find all the pieces and throughout this process we can hopefully find the funds that we are supposed to receive with the intention for us to be fully labeled as an lea and

086so for the legislature to actually follow through with their intentions for us to operate as an lea which of course includes financially uh thank you are there are there other comments this is linda yes sir thank you president nigro i do have a question from shaina cooper president superintendent rex prior to this issue with lea how did we receive funds for transportation was that it all is all the funding for transportation is budgeted for within their general fund appropriations and did we previously qualify i know there were two organizations or agencies that we did not qualify for so have we never qualified we've never have no so we were exploring that with the lea status change ms cooper if i could um just clarify that the some of the sending districts do fund transportation currently

087um and then they seek uh funding through the transportation support level um which is available to school districts is that is that correct that's my understanding correct yes so to the extent that transportation is provided by the districts uh currently um the the funds for that transportation is flowing from ade eventually but by statute that flows from ade to the the transporting district via the tsl um funding source correct and because we're not because of the disparity or the uh uh disparity we'll go with that um between the voucher statute which provides for fifty dollars of transportation per year per student um and the tsl statutes um we're not able to access the tsl funds well correct me if i'm wrong superintendent write me if i understood correctly from ms sterling from the ag's office

088it was more specific that the tsl funding referenced school district um yeah i think that that's the particular legal reason why we we wouldn't be eligible uh at the present time yes but i i i think it's important for the board to understand that the you know the money is ultimately coming from the state to transport the trial then the state is is currently providing that funding um but they're doing it through the tsl mechanism to the districts themselves um but again because of the statutory regime our agency is not able to use that funding source for that reason yes and that's correct and although we do pay for transportation from the general fund the plus side is we're budgeting for what is i believe 28 30 staff members but we're never fully staffed with

089those bus drivers so there is a budgetary surplus because i'm i'm assuming that at some point we will be fully staffed but with the national shortage of drivers it kind of helps us in that aspect but if it ever comes to a time where we are fully staffed and we're going to need to find additional staff and the additional monies again that's where it's going to possibly hurt us and eat into as i mentioned the general fund appropriations this is linda just to follow up i'm thinking if we're not considered a school district is there any way that we can change that status is there any opportunity for us and is there a process will we never be what i guess i'm exploring for more information right i think what we would need to do

090is go back to the legislature next year and and that's one of the things that we would direct you know we we could direct our staff today to come back to us in november with a statutory package that fixes some of the issues that we've identified in the last few months um you know one of those would be the transportation issue um and i don't know what form that would take at this point but the idea would be that there's funding for transportation now that's not new um what would be new is the mec is allowing the mechanism that funds that transportation to be directed to the agency um as opposed to yeah i know that um you know currently we're asking for an amount of money to to increase our general fund appropriation and

091you know quite frankly that's not a great solution right because that we could be uh our estimate of transportation could be wrong as mrs cooper told us it could be less and we don't you know again not that i'm against getting more money but if we don't need it we don't need it we shouldn't be appropriated it so if it's less that's not a perfect solution if it's more than we're looking into our cash reserves which we may have for other issues as again as ms cooper said when things happen like a half million dollar gas line repair that's needed you know we have that money available to to make those needed repairs so you know to me if we were to ask the legislature to enable us to use or to access those tsl

092funding mechanism we would get an amount of money that's proportionate with the transportation needs that we're seeing and those transportation needs vary from year to year and likely from semester to semester as students enter and leave the school and i do want to add that it's not just transportation either so you're looking at about 400 000 just for the the related service needs at at this point the nurses um so yes um working on a legislative fix seems to be the most appropriate um method for us at this point yeah i would agree that we need to ask the legislature to somehow um solve that issue um and again in a way that's that's um proportionate with our deed i i don't think it's a good idea to have a general appropriation for what we

093we want that's that's not a great mechanism we wanted to be able we wanted the funding support that we get to be proportionate with the the needs of the students that we serve um other other other comments uh pv so my understanding of the current situation is do we do we need emotion in order to give superintendent reichman the necessary authority to be able to approach the legislature to have those discussions i feel like if we do proceed with this route then we need to keep it pretty loose we need to not only focus those discussions or that authority on transportation but rather allow for other support services as needed and we may need to delegate that authority for several years to be able to approach legislature first solutions as things arise obviously continuing the

094conversation with the board but also allowing superintendent reichman to gather the data and then to present us with options and then to be able to have those conversations with the legislator and of course relying on maria murphy and her expertise as well as superintendent rickman okay are there any other comments i mean from do i need to make a motion um i think that we we uh you you can i'd like to make a few comments um myself uh you know and when when i look at it you know we i look at it from the viewpoint of our strategic plan we've you know we spent that time to gather what's important to us and what our agency needs to be successful and how we're going to measure whether or not we're successful and we

095need autonomy to do that not being an lea robs us of autonomy if we look at our goals in pillar two um you know one there's a question of do we even get access to that data in every case if we're not in la because that data flows back to the sending school districts um that would be a lot harder to to get if we don't get it from every school district um so that's that's even the first point we need to we need to have access to the data before we're able to use it and see what it is um but at the same time we need to be able to have that greater control um to be able to make choices to improve um the you know the quality of education that we

096provide the students um and to have a better chance at improving their their educational outcomes so you know when we look at finances uh yes this year there were some one-time essar funds um that were at a substantial level you know those are not going to be present in years going forward and if we look at the as we looked in our last meeting or our work study meeting you know the transportation costs and the ancillary services are going to far outweigh any federal funding that we anticipate receiving in the going forward years so we need to to find a way to solve that even if we can't solve that or if we can't solve that in a way that's perfect i still think that the lea is the way for us to go because

097we need that autonomy even if we have to alter other things in the budget um you know our and that would affect our our pillar four goals um you know but to me uh we really need the autonomy and the ability to uh to make those decisions and have that that level of control that we have now uh if we're going to continue the improvement that the agencies made and continue to execute on the strategic plan you know that said uh we we definitely need to work with the legislature to fix uh the transportation and the ancillary services issues um there are a couple of other ones as well but you know those are the two biggest ones those are the ones that kind of put us upside down financially the transportation issue you know

098that funding exists anyway it's not a new service that we're deciding to provide um it's just by you know stroke of of accident that we're not able to get that tsl funding that the districts get and i recognize it's not exactly one-to-one because tsl is done by average daily route mileage and some of those children that are you know transported to us now are with you know they're transported with with other students from those sending districts um you know on other routes that are happening anyway so it is not one to one i recognize that i think we should all recognize that um but at the end of the day the you know the transportation funding is is the need is far greater than 50 a year per student and we should we should need

099a way uh to access that system um it could be a different way and i don't think we have to decide what way is best for us but i think from uh you know from our perspective if we ask the leaders if we one affirm our desire to become an lea for the campus-based schools and two direct the leadership to look through the statutes now and propose to us in november a package of potential changes that would solve some of these issues i think we'd be in a step in the right direction because in november we can come back and approve that package or make changes to it or discuss it uh and then we can send that to the legislature for them to weigh in on what they think and again as we know

100in the political process anything could happen so you know you don't always get what you want but we can at least be a good position to say we've looked at this thoroughly and these are the changes that we would like to see to make sure that our funding is you know remaining consistent that we're still able to provide all the services that our children need and we're still able to have the autonomy so that we can continue to execute on our strategic plan well said president nico i would definitely second the motion that you propose uh okay well i guess let me formally make it um so i i moved that we affirmed the agency's intent to be classified as an lea for the site-based campuses and to direct the staff to examine the current

101statutes and regulations and propose proposed changes to the board in the november meeting to resolve the issues that were identified in the the prior work study session seconded this is linda i waited for you okay um all in favor hi uh any opposed uh president i will abstain from this but look forward to continued uh discussions between ad and astv sure um and we have one abstention uh great uh excellent thank you i think that that um you know is going to enable us to go on to the next phase here um but you know again we have to orbit we shouldn't discount that the level that we have to work with ade as well so we're you know again we're happy that you're here and um you know we're happy that you're here as

102part of this process as we uh kind of transition to to working with the legislature and ade to make sure that we uh you know make this change and are in a position to continue to serve our students well um next item is 7.02 information possible action item ombudsman superintendent rickman yes thank you board president nico so i'm here again to talk about the ombuds person at our most recent board meeting in july up in sedona we all had a discussion about what it is that we should do with the ombuds person position i was tasked to follow up with the one candidate that we had had in virginia who expressed an interest in working with us with the asdv agency as our ombuds person and that's what we did we followed up with the

103person who had expressed interest in virginia that person then responded with some questions those questions were pertaining to about how many hours of actual service would be provided dollar amount provided to the previous ombuds person and i had told them that three years ago our ombuds person had earned 21 000 over three years which was averaging about seven thousand a year and we had paid the previous on buds person directly we followed up with them again asked if they were interested in setting up a temporary contract with us and we followed up multiple times to no response so we are not exactly sure what that means but as of right now we do not have a contract for an ombudsperson and for those services so just wanted to keep you abreast of that change when

104i was thinking and preparing about this board meeting and what type of information would be beneficial for you all i decided that you may want to hear some of the information about the numbers and what kinds of complaints how many complaints how those complaints have been resolved and our hr director anita pyatt collected some data for us and she put together a report and when i saw that report i asked her to add that to the board meeting materials for you all i have also asked her if she would come and give you a verbal presentation of that summary data just to give you a general information of those numbers i've asked her also to speak to you about the various resources that our staff has where our concerns are if they have concerns where

105do they go what does our policy say how we solve these disputes internally and what external resources they have access to so again so that you have a better understanding of what resources are available to our staff members if and when they should have a concern so anita if you're here in the audience our executive director for hr if you would come up good evening board president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendent dr rex and assistant superintendent cooper i appreciate the opportunity and time to provide an overview of the employee relations data and related information as well as options that our staff members have to address their concerns in your board packet you have been provided the data that was collected for fiscal year 2021 which provides the types of complaints and

106or discipline that was addressed by asdb and or outside federal and state agencies in addition you'll also see a five-year overview of employee relations and different category types currently we have 14 i'm sorry currently we have nine board policies that provide staff members an internal process to report and address their concerns well we have formal processes that address the way our staff members may formalize their concerns they do have the opportunity to bring their concerns in an informal manner and work through resolving those at the lowest possible level before starting the formal process in addition a few of these policies do require an informal conversation with their supervisor or where they're alleging their concerns before submitting that concern through the formal asdb process staff members may contact human resources for guidance advice or assistance in

107resolving concerns our role is to assist staff members and supervisors by following agency policies and ensuring we are working within the law when a staff member contacts human resources for assistance they fall in one or both of two categories category one would be an informal complaint meaning they come to us looking for options willing to discuss their concerns and looking to resolve that concern during that conversation they had they can choose that route of doing that informally they also have the option of doing that doing their bringing up their concern in a formal manner which is addressed through our asdb policies and so that is that staff members ability to write up those concerns and submit that to their supervisor to have those addressed in addition staff members also have outside state and federal agencies

108that they can go to to report concerns that they would like addressed currently with our asdb policies we do allow staff members to complain regarding any discrimination in relation to employment law as well as any concerns that they have that are they want to grieve or they have a complaint that they want addressed that does not fall under the employment law arena with outside agencies such as the state and federal level those state and federal agencies provide processes for employees and or applicants to resolve their disputes that allege acts of employment discrimination that are prohibited by equal employment opportunity laws and regulations in other words they believe they've been subjected to unlawful discrimination based on race color religion sex national origin age disability genetic information sexual orientation reprisal for participation in any equal employment opportunity

109process or opposition to discrimination we do have policies that address those as well internally for asdb one thing i'd like to note staff members are not required to work within asdb if they want to go out to those outside agencies they can go directly to those agencies to report their concerns in the data that i provided when you look at last fiscal year we looked at what types of complaints came in there were 15 informal complaints from staff members who met with human resources to discuss their concerns during those conversations when they were reporting their concerns they had indicated in those conversations that they would reach out to the ombuds person in our process for processing those complaints we would notify the ombudsperson that they may be receiving contact from a staff member regarding their

110concern out of the 15 cases with the 15 complaints that were made last fiscal year none of those cases resulted in a formal complaint through our internal process through asdb policies or through the state or federal agencies however keep in mind i do not have any data to support that out of those 15 cases those force those four staff members or those four complainants actually reached out to the ombuds person nor do i have any data to support that the onsprez person was contacted without knowledge of human resources being contacted meaning staff members could go directly to the ombuds person if they chose to without contacting human resources out of the 15 complaints were step where staff members are able to address their concerns informally first with human resources like i said they did not

111lead to outside entities complaints so they weren't filed with outside agencies however in last year's data we did have five complaints that were filed with outside agencies eighty percent of those complaints four out of the five those complainants are already most are already separated from employment with asdb um so they're filed when they're no longer with asdb so it's in some cases we may not know there is a concern or a complaint until after they've left employment or they've been terminated for cause i would like to open it up for any questions that you may have regarding the report and the list of avenues that staff members may have to report complaints this is uk i'm sorry for the echo you guys um i i guess my question is i i understand that they can

112be referred to policy but are there any let's just call them user friendly tip sheets or flow charts or something to that effect that would be a little bit more visual maybe a little bit easier for the end user to understand the processes that are available to them um i i know that the discussion the larger discussions in relationship to an ombudsman but how easily accessible is the current processes for people to take advantage of so every year we do provide through our safe schools on annual training for our staff members review of those policies so that they're aware they're also in our handbook i think that is a good point that you bring up that we can create those charts or timelines for staff members that would be a visual which would be easier

113to relate to than the policy language so that's something that we could do to provide to our staff members our policies are available on the website as well as we provide those policies to staff members even when they don't specifically ask for them so my follow-up question is for some of those external resources like the date ombudsman's office and things like that um is that something that we could consider from the board standpoint as an option to not have a contracted ombudsman and would we have to pay for their services should somebody go to them it is my understanding in reviewing the arizona ombudsman citizens aid website any state agency employee can file a claim on that website it does not talk about any agencies paying for those services so it does has a list

114of agents state agencies where constituents can report can report their concerns to have them addressed with that specific agency and arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind is listed as an agency thank you there any comments can i just ask you a question yeah um so to the point of the arizona arizona state citizens ombudsman's office do we have an understanding of the types of complaints that our previous ombudsman was working on if those are in alignment with the types of complaints that would be submitted to that office or was our previous on budget primarily handling more internal staff complaints as opposed to maybe outside constituent complaints i am only aware of the employee related complaints that the ombuds person handled for asdb i'm not worried of anything i'm not aware of anything

115outside of that i'm not sure if she provided any reports that would support what type of complaints that she worked on yeah there there were i mean in her reports there um you know so the the the state and once person uh you know is a resource for employees of the agency but uh the unboxing person that we have um did deal with complaints from either just members of the community generally from students and from parents i don't recall any student complaints in buzz person although maybe there was one or two um there were parents i mean you know that would uh go to the um vice person from time to time so those were definitely present uh in her reports and we can go back on on board docs and take a look at

116them um so but i would you know in terms of my informal survey it's it's primarily employees and parents and to a lesser extent students and to a lesser extent outside members of the community okay if that's linda yes this is linda i just want to i know this is awful i'm sorry i should address everyone before i continue to speak thank you president nigro i just want to raise my hand so quickly just let me pull some thoughts together just a moment as far as an action plan superintendent reichman what are you envisioning are you wanting us to bring in someone temporarily as an ombuds person or is this the task that we're assigned with where are we at with this conversation can you clarify what you're envisioning superintendent reichman here yes i guess

117the first question would be is the board committed to the idea of having an asdb ombuds person that would be my first question my second question is if the answer is yes that the board is interested in having an asdb on buds person then i would recommend that we actually post for that position as an asdb employee similar to the previous time so if we post this position then we can recruit for candidates and when we we receive that list of candidates the board can start conducting interviews and selecting who would be the most appropriate ombudsperson and then we can do a direct hire now understanding an asdb employee and what that looks like they will be reporting to me so there lies an issue but in reality that employee reports back to the board

118so that would be the only crux in that situation so my first question is are you committed in the idea of having an employed ombudsperson for the agency other considerations are if we were to hire someone to start working with us that the board requires this individual to develop a data collection plan what type of data are you looking for from the submits person anytime that they are performing any actions for asdb and working with staff this person can then report back to the board with the collected data so every board meeting you would have a report directly from the ombuds person the previous person i reported back to internally that i internally worked with we configured how to establish a survey system a data collection system and what types of reports we would present

119to the board but unfortunately that did not occur so if you were to ask me today exactly what did that person do during their three-year term i would not be able to have any reference or any evidence so as miss piette mentioned she does not have any data in regards to the ombudsperson's previous position here so those are my thoughts i guess that is the first question is the board committed to having an asdb ombuds person if the answer is yes then i will proceed with the posting and we'll go from there thank you president nigro so sue k i'm sure you're going to laugh i'm pretty sure but i think to answer superintendent regman's request i follow up with the second question i'm sorry i'm not directly answering your question but it seems that

120on the employee side there are a lot of resources for individuals to initiate some sort of mediation so in my understanding i remember from the previous board discussion there wasn't so much of a concern for employees because they had plenty of resources which was great is are there resources or is there a process for the agency to address for parent grievances or complaints if so who handles that specifically and if no who should handle parent complaints this is a net a specific process for addressing parent complaints i don't believe we have any maria may want to be able to speak to this more but we do have policy for public uh concerns or complaints yes we do have policy in place yeah i believe that we do um because when we did the um budsperson

121policy we consolidated the seven or eight different complaint policies uh we kind of simplified them and we we did it by constituency so we had one policy for members of the public and we had one for parents one for students and one for employees and two the employees had two two kind of sub rounds this is pv so as a follow-up because this is why i asked the question for employees it seems like we have these resources which is excellent so who would respond or take care of any complaints for the parents or for the public is there anyone in particular correct me if i'm wrong but it's pretty much laid out in the policy so if there's a parent complaint then there are steps that you go through they submit an actual complaint and

122you go through a process i don't have that policy in front of me apologies this is superintendent reichman and as you can see we don't often get parent complaints so within that question how do parents bring up their complaints i guess we're not sure what the process i'm sure someone is familiar with that but i personally am not but if you're asking me if when parents do contact the ombuds person the previous person i don't think that occurred there's no evidence indicating that any community member had contacted the previous ombuds person i don't believe so i think there was just an asdb employee relation that contacted the ombuds person however again i don't have any evidence stating otherwise so i just have what i have heard at this point this is pv another follow-up so

123superintendent reichman and the rest of the leadership excuse me leadership team what is your opinion and your perspective in wanting and needing an unboxed person if there are no if there is none then what is the plan for the occurrence if we do receive a community or a parent complaint however it be rare have we ever discussed that do we do a what wait and see what are you envisioning what are you wanting from us the board this is annette we actually have not discussed that and i believe that's the other piece of the elephant that i don't know about anyone else here like to have a response to that the uh in looking at the policies um the the public concerns from the public or complaints of the public have to be filed with

124the principal director of the particular site uh that's at issue and then there's you know so that that's who deals with that and there's a procedure in the policies to do that um i'm still looking at the at the whether the parent one i think that's very similar but i i'm still trying to grab it now each policy has um kind of a not necessarily a timeline but it kind of explains you know you try to handle things at the lowest level if a parent has a complaint they probably should start with the teacher or whatever the issue is try to solve it there if it doesn't work there then you can take it up and it kind of it's progressive i guess is how i would best describe it and it's it's mostly about

125communication um there are you know we try to respond within 24 48 hours to any concerns if if it's longer than that it usually makes it up to me a little bit quicker because that's just how we want to do business unofficially you know we want to handle things or at least have a communication or a response within 24 hours but there's a process for complaints this is annette and again parents when they bring up concerns we definitely do not ignore them it never goes unnoticed and i we feel that parent concerns that i have heard about have always almost always have started with the teacher and then they moved up to the principal and then the assistant superintendent before it arrives to my table so once in a while parents will choose to go

126directly to the board as what has recently happened correct they may have contacted the board and when they directly contact you i as as superintendent take responsibility for that and sending them back to the principal and then we have a meeting a discussion to figure out what to do and then i then take responsibility for following up with the parents and informing them what the next steps are at the same time keeping the board in the loop so that way you know that we are taking the concern seriously and that we are following up with these concerns and so i please know that our principles do follow up they're currently following up today or tomorrow for quick turnaround as quickly as possible so that has been my experience thus far in the five years i

127have been here as your superintendent and i my belief without any evidence is that we would never ignore any parent concerns we do not take them lightly and any parent concerned for example we had one two weeks ago and it happened to be that the parent included me in the email conversation so i immediately followed up with the assistant superintendent and she followed up with the principal and the principal immediately set up a meeting with that parent with the teacher and so the parent had concerns legitimate concerns to their child's education and relationship with the teacher so and we had two in the last two weeks and i can tell you with that as a matter of fact that we do follow up immediately we take those concerns seriously thank you president nigro superintendent reichman

128i have a question for you um based on that can i interrupt for just a moment um it may make sense for um a small break at the moment um just for uh for the staff and the interpreting staff to take a break is that okay linda can we let linda finish her statement that she started and then take the break sure that's fine with me thank you so my question for superintendent reichman i hear your comments and the report from miss pyatt and we have all these policies for different groups of folks and that's all well and good do you think that the board needs to consider hiring an ombud on bud's person or not just a direct question do you think that it is that it is necessary or do you feel like

129it's not necessary with the other options we have if you're asking my opinion i'm happy to share my opinion in my opinion i don't think that we need a designated ombudsperson for asdb but that is my opinion it is your decision as the board thank you i thank you i was leaning towards that but i i wanted to trust your judgment but any other comments i would welcome but my feeling is that we may not need a designated ombudsperson okay let's take a a five minute break and then we will return two minutes all right um i think we are ready to return to our meeting so we were discussing the inbox person policy were there any other any other comments about about the policy itself or any potential action here this is pv i

130would echo linda's sentiment so she kind of stole my question that i had for superintendent reichman i appreciate you sharing your opinion i think at this point i would follow with that recommendation that at this point we don't need a designated asdb ombuds person we may just want to hold off on that for now okay any other comments i mean uh from you know from my perspective i i think um you know the simplification we did with the complaint procedures um several years ago uh helped um you know i think that you know in trying to recall you know why we had the inputs person policy in the first place and um you know sometimes we'd get kind of like anonymous complaints and we wouldn't really know what to do with them i mean we'd

131investigated the best that we could but you know without getting more information you know it was hard to do that and we want to make sure that if there is a problem we we discover it and we fix it uh and you know the ombudsperson policy you know kind of helped i i would hope uh sort through that um you know so in terms of you know not having one right now that's that's okay but you know in terms of having that position there so that parents or students or employees could go to that person with you know any kind of issue that they may have as opposed to going to those other procedures directly i think is helpful you know in terms of the board uh you know we we have a board email

132we're always welcome to receive email uh we we read it um you know we we like to get it but we only meet every other month right so six times a year and you know if there's a if there is an issue then you know that's not the best form to have something raised and dealt with you know immediately um you know the better form is to as dr rex mentioned is to to bring it to the appropriate person usually at a more localized level um to to have it resolved and that it can be resolved more more quickly typically and it can be resolved you know in a in a manner that's that's hopefully uh amenable to all parties uh so again we can we can move on if that's what we so choose

133i would think that next meeting if we want to decide not to have a blessed person we can remove the ambulance person policies that's okay um you know but for now we can if there's no other objection we can we can just move on to the next point okay here now let's go on to uh 7.03 information and discussion item introduction possible discussion policy bbbd line on board member attendance ms murphy good evening president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendents you have before you the red line bbbd regarding attendance expectations as you recall this was discussed during the july board meeting i believe that the alterations that i have made commemorate that discussion and what the desire of the asdb board was but if anybody has any questions regarding the policy i'm

134happy to answer those questions at this time uh thank you miss murphy and and you know as uh we discussed up in sedona uh you know as we we go back to in-person uh meetings i think we want to have some sort of uh you know regulation on that again there's a an attendance policy i think if you have to make two meetings then then i have to talk to you or if the president has to talk to you um you know for some for some reason uh you know here i think we we can all make it a commitment to attend at least 50 percent of meetings so that be three meetings per year uh you know as a in person and if you're not able to uh you just have to you know

135show a good cause or give a good explanation as to as to why that is to the to the board president uh you know so there's some you know kind of standard there i think that um at least to me that that's a good compromise to make sure that we have a good in-person presence uh every meeting um but we're still able to support telephonic participation uh because we you know i think that's important too not everyone's able to meet with us physically every every single meeting i know this is first read so we don't have to take any action but if anyone has any other comments okay thank you ms murphy thank you for your work on that next is 7.07 discussion possible action item work study session dates topics early learning acquisition and

136agency budget um this is an item uh that uh board member member bove wanted to have a work study session on that she discussed at a recent meeting we did the the doodle poll and it looks like the november date is is a good date for everyone there are two other dates in october i'm not able to make those dates um that doesn't mean we can't have a meeting but but i wouldn't be present at the meeting so if if there are any other objections to that november date i believe that was leticia that's the november 11th i believe which was the november day november 18th i'm sorry um yeah it's on my it's on my phone so let me grab the uh result this is for the work study session yes this is for

137the work study session so this would be um you know about an hour or two in phoenix at ptsd this is pv i'm not going to be able to make it i actually have another board meeting at that time okay yeah it looked like uh october 14th we only we wouldn't even have a quorum on the 14th um and on the 7th october 7th we'd we'd have two missing board members and we'd have two missing board members on november 18th so it'll be you know they'd be equivalent um so it's november 18th does that work for everyone um then we can we can go ahead and do that now at four o'clock okay four yes four o'clock at uh ptsd in phoenix we'd have telephonic participation as well and again that would be to go

138over the uh the early learning acquisition um that was this that was uh at the request of board member both okay um i think we do need a motion so i'll i'll move to set a work study session date of november 18th at 4 p.m at ptsd in phoenix on that topic are there any any seconds to that second okay all in favor all right all opposed okay uh then we'll we'll have that work study session uh 801 call to the public call the public for non-agendized items we received three comments in time sue k could you read those comments absolutely so the first one was from an adriana dorsey and the subject is qualified interpreters and her comment is most states allow for qualified chirps i personally know of multiple quotas spouses of death

139and qualified interpreters living here that can't work professionally as asl terms since they are not certified asdb should try to get that change washington state has a registry of interpreters both certified and qualified in order to become an officially qualified perp you must submit a letter from a deaf person a certified interpreter and or an organization as references this standard is wonderful we have so many skilled interpreters living in our state that would benefit from this change as well as thousands of deaf in the community asdb has such a strong voice that is possible to affect change the second is from alexa sloan and the subject is education and the comments read hello i am a deaf mother of one deaf cobbler and i am here to share my experience and my goal in the

140future for my daughter i am not sure where would where would i take my daughter to the school she could have access communicate socialize and learn her own language and culture i heard the concern by another that a hearing principle cannot communicate with deaf children and their family and have to order an asl interpreter it isn't a good idea what about our ipod deaf hard of hearing and visually and blind members provide the communication the language the culture education and etc change it and improve to better in the future and will be growing up more opportunities for future deaf hard of hearing and blind students and then our final call to the public for a non-agendized item is from samantha moore and the subject is where is asdb and the comment reads i am a

141proud alumni of asdb class of 2011. i cannot emphasize how blessing ascb is for me as a deaf student the access asl to the education resources community students activities you name it creating memories personal cultural growth and education and employment opportunities and so much more asdb has opened many doors for me and will continue to do so however i have some concerns for the future deaf and blind students at asdb recently someone i personally know was visiting ascb with their child who is deaf the principal could not communicate themselves with the deaf family and had to call in an asl interpreter what is this how embarrassing another story a deaf parent brought two deaf child to asdb and they were automatically referred to a mainstream school to be evaluated why cannot asdb do this themselves

142and they should know how to evaluate a deaf student asdb has a big campus why not utilize them for evaluations etc also why is asdb continuing to hire hearing teachers staff and faculty arizona has hundreds thousands of other schools for those hearing teachers staff and faculty members where are our our bypass and visually impaired blind board members teachers staff who can provide direct communication language culture and more to our future current dot and bbi students i want to add that some people have come to me with concerns that ascb current standing actions can lead to audism meaning pushing aside deaf and blind people who have the abilities to do what these hearing non-disabled asdb teachers staff and faculties are currently doing asdb is not representing the staff and bvi communities if they continue to hire

143continue to hiring individuals who have no affliction with both communities uh thank you sue k next we have 802 discussion possible action item agenda items to the next regular board meeting scheduled for november 4th 2021 in phoenix are there any particular items the board members would like to see on the agenda i know we talked about it before but we will need to see the lea statutory package at that meeting anything else no okay um then we can go to 9.01 action item adjournment this is lynn um great uh thank you everyone uh so nice to see everyone in person uh be back in tucson um thank you again to the the media staff uh for producing this um i know it's a bit different than our normal meetings but we're getting written close uh

144so again thank you uh for the board members your time and for the staff for your time and being with us tonight thank you everybody have a good night thank you