001five four three two one uh it is uh now four o'clock uh it is now the time set for uh the regular board meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind um we are back here in person in sedona it's great to see everyone in person uh before we begin just a brief social distancing announcement if everyone can keep their masks on while they're indoors and moving once that you are at your seat and you're six feet apart you're able to remove your mask if i could ask that if everyone uh do that that would be great um we can now start for the meeting call to order and roll call so sue k if you have the roll call sure brittany buchanan present aaron wonders present david nigro present dean
002howard sue k knife oh there he is um sue k connival present pv chance lynn davison president mike gordon i'm president and linda bove is excused for toni tonight all right thank you first our second item on the agenda 1.02 call of the public called call to the public on agendized items are there any members of the public who have submitted their forms and seeing none and we did not receive any via email we did solicit public comment via email for this meeting we did not receive any for this particular item 1.02 1.03 information item superintendents report superintendent reichman good afternoon everyone welcome to our first in in-person meeting since march 2020 really happy to see you here in person so i want to welcome president nigro assistant superintendent rex and assistant superintendent cooper and
003those of you who are here rescue with the ic department can you hear me okay uh yes we can hear i okay um i've got a couple of board members that are unable to log in to their board docs okay um so that we're speaking about the remote board members yes well no people who are at the meeting itself okay um is there an issue with with board docs they're just not whatever password they're using is not getting them in okay um do we have uh paper copies for shayna it's for shayna cooper and tv i forgot his last name sure um we're okay now this is assistant superintendent cooper you're you're okay okay um uh pv are you okay you guys are okay yes oh says that he's okay now okay uh superintendent thank
004you all right thank you superintendent uh you may proceed bye-bye all right are we all okay ready to proceed okay great we have a lot of information this afternoon to share with you all so i'm just going to give a brief 30 000 arial overview of what's happening in the agency and then others from asdb will be providing some additional information but first of all i want to start with the story just a few days ago i watched one of our internal leaders sign a story about the american buffalo or bison awesome story and something i didn't know before as some of you may know i'm originally from nebraska i grew up on the western plains and we had cattle all around like wyoming colorado western nebraska that area so i knew about cattle but
005what i didn't know is when we had the american buffalo 150 years ago that they they have very particular behaviors that are very different from cattle so when you think about cows what happens when they see a storm coming if any of you have been on a ranch you know that cows they run away they scatter all over the place and they try to outrun that storm but unfortunately some of you may also know cattle they don't run very fast they're pretty slow so typically the storms will catch up to the cattle and cause all kinds of trouble for that however the american bison or buffalo they don't do that they behave very differently the american bison when they sense that there's a storm coming what they do is they come together as a herd
006they pack together and then they turn and they face that storm and then they start running they don't run away they run to the storm and they go through the storm to the other side isn't that amazing wonderful story and when you think about that you know us as people typically when we see trouble coming the storm coming we too avoid and run away and most of the time that's not successful the storm overtakes us anyways and we're stuck in it and we're even more frustrated experiencing even more pain but if we as people can face this oncoming storm if we can come together as a team as a herd and pack together and charge directly at the storm and get through it then we will have spent a lot less time effort and energy
007and less pain as well i i think that's just an awesome story an awesome metaphor and really when i look at asdb that what we've accomplished in the last i would say year and a half we have behaved more like the buffalo we we didn't see the storm coming i don't think anyone else saw it either but when the storm came upon us last year and march we didn't fall apart we didn't run away we didn't scatter to the four directions we actually came together as a team all we didn't open when we thought we would we had to wait until october which meant we had to provide remote vegetation and we did that our teachers did that and when we came back in person in october we followed the risk mitigation protocols that we
008had set up in place and one evidence of our success is that in that one year and three months we had 79 staff that reported covet positive 79. most of them were tucson and phoenix campuses staff but we only know of one on campus transmission of the virus one so we've been very successful in keeping in place through mitigation tragedies so i'm really proud of us that asdb is an agency that we were able to hold together and then continue to move forward and then as you recall in the middle of all of that we had discussions and questions about the two campuses being in lea the local education agency and the spring we had hb 2863 passed giving us a provisional law recession law that's asked for one year the two campuses functions as
009an lea and asdb and ade the arizona department of education would work together so that we can work through the different questions and issues and then bring back a proposed legislation to the next state legislative session in january 2022 and then you the board you didn't step back and say oh this is too crazy it was covered and everything else going on no you continue to work too you develop the strategic plan and you finalize it at the last board meeting thank you so much because you have now given us a very clear direction you have given us priorities focus areas and you have made it possible for asdb to become a data driven organization so i really really appreciate the work that you put into the strategic plan we are already beginning to collect
010data we're getting ready to input some of that into the measures that we have in the strategic plan so in the last 18 months we have charged right through the storm and we're not done yet we have the new school year i mean the pandemic is still there we're having to revise our risk mitigation plan so that we address the new requirements from governor dew attendance from other staff here you will hear that our work tie in directly with the priorities and the strategic plan so we're continuing to charge a hat into the future into the heart of the storm one final piece i just want to mention to you is that the strategic plan requires fiscal resources we are internally doing a deep dive into our funding our revenues and our expenditures we are
011starting to have some conversations about how do we meet the strategic plan and meet the needs of the agency with the resources that we have and one thing that i want to share with you is that when you look at our budget keep in mind that in our budget about 82 percent of our expenditures is for personnel salaries and wages ere the health benefits that we provide and other professional staff that we contract with to provide services for us that's 82 percent of our total budget most organizations consider a healthy balance of expenditures say that best best practice is somewhere between 70 to 75 percent of the budget on staffing so we're a little heavy on the staffing and that has a direct impact on asdb in ways that most of us never even think
012about and what do i mean by that well for example we have aging buildings on the tucson campus and the phoenix campus their average about 45 years old typically in a healthy organization and a healthy budget we would have all along in the last 40 years have been severely under funding the facilities the maintenance of facilities for a very long time we're now beginning to address to address that we've set up a capital review committee we developed a capital plan about two years ago it's just in the beginning stages we're talking about and looking to set up a contract to develop a master facility plan but all of that requires resources so there are some really significant discussions that we will have in the future and at some point those discussions will include you asdb
013board so i just wanted to kind of give you a heads up on that so that concludes my report we are the american bison we are working together as a herd and we're charging right through the storms that come our way and i will take any questions and thank you are there any thank you superintendent reichman are there any questions for the superintendent on her report no thank you we're going to move on to 1.04 information item assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction dr rex good afternoon president nigro and board members my report that i submitted has a new exciting look that aligns itself to our pillars you had an opportunity to see some of the work that we've been um completing and starting and it definitely is aligning to our asdb strategic plan in
014addition to the report that i submitted i have the following information to serve our families remotely but have been adjusting their back in person schedules as counties are opening up to serve families this blended model of service will continue to ensure safety for our families as well as our staff the elp program will continue to develop a transition plan to incorporate itinerant preschool age students into their program in the future the supervising teachers from both the statewide elp and the itinerant regions are lending their expertise in working on this plan our new pdsd principal amber atknidus and her team are ready to kick off the school year and pdsd has a theme the theme this year is rise and shine she also hosted town halls for staff and students to connect meet and talk with
015her this summer to learn a little bit more about her and her role in the principal position as well as her goals for the school year with her moving into the principal position that opened a position up and she has hired trisha waddell trisha comes to us from colorado and she brings a lot of new skills and ideas and we hope that we'll be able to have some time where you can get to know trisha a little better she will be supported by jill voight who has been working as assistant principal and has developed a lot of great systems and she will be mentoring and supporting trisha as she comes on board kelly creacy flint fears and the asdb team are back on campus preparing for our dorm as well as our day students to
016arrive the 2021 tucson campus back to school theme field of dreams if we build it g region 2 will be led by rosie hicks who joined us in april of this year this will be her first full year in the position and we welcome her skills and talents to the team region 3 in the south will actually be led by jay lisa jackson may be asked to support the agency with some of her institutional knowledge and assist with some ongoing programs and assessments that we are working on but their their retirement provided us an opportunity it provided us the opportunity to look at the duties that both positions held as well as the needs of asdb and with the help of hr both jobs were then repurposed into positions i'd like to introduce robin eichner
017and kalea cook to the odd team both began on july 1 as internal hires and we're very fortunate to have asdb veterans on the odd team their experience and expertise will continue to serve as valuable assets robin eichner will be the new assessment coordinator this position assumes many of the key duties from lisa but also dan's position her primary duties will include district administration i also wanted to give you an update on our student information system the odd is currently in the rfp process to see if the current student information system is the best product to track asdb data as we move forward with our strategic plan and the need for data tracking the rfp process should be completed by the end of august all principals and directors met last week to develop their personalized
018smart goals i began by sharing my smart goals with them and we've all been given the task of including as one of our smart goals direct alignment with the asdb strategic plan much of what the work we do aligns with pillar two but as we began to discuss and learn more we found that the other pillar other pillars fit nicely into the programming and the processes that we are developing we will meet monthly to discuss share and align the strategic plan we decided that there's a lot in our strategic plan and this will are there any questions for dr rex hearing none uh thank you dr rex for your uh report um i did want to you know thank the staff and and the agency for keeping everyone safe during uh the height of kovid
019uh as dr or as superintendent right to mention we had one on campus transmission um so i'm happy that students are able to come to school and staff were able to come to work and uh you know be be very safe in that regard um i think that's really important that we uh you know and that it wasn't because the superintendent said this is our policy and that's it that's because everyone lived it every day uh the the staff the students and the parents so uh thank you to the community for that i think that was it's been very effective and i'm hoping that we can continue culture and pillar for effective resource management as superintendent reichmann mentioned i am working with the leadership team to perform an in-depth review of our fiscal resources and
020it as it pertains to the day-to-day responsibilities the it department continuously make sure that our technology infrastructure is appropriately maintained and that's being led by paul crazy as noted in my report the operations department led by albert duff specifically our food services unit has been very busy assessing the efficiency of the food services operations and in a few minutes you'll hear more about that from albert under agenda item 5.01 the business services department through some vacancies are still working to work on our day-to-day fiscal year-end close working on building the budget for the new fiscal year wrapping up 2022 budget but also beginning to work on the 2023 budget which is due to the state on or before september first the business approval of the consent agenda consistent with board policy to include items 3.01
0216.01 6.02 7.04 and 7.05 uh is there any board member that would like to discuss what's on the consent agenda item or on the consent agenda or would like to pull one or more items from the consent agenda okay hearing none would anyone like to move to approve the consent agenda i move to um accept consent agenda items or approve consent agenda items i need to go back okay i was just gonna read out the numbers but go ahead okay okay lynn so linda's seconded correct right okay um all in favor in case they need us and some join because they have a specific student in mind that may need us so this is just five people that want to be a part of our asdb itinerary program okay i move that we approve the
022contracts that set forth in the agenda any opposed thank you the motion carries we're now on to 4.01 information item finance report assistant superintendent cooper good afternoon as you all are aware i am wearing two hats right now since the director of business services position became vacant july 1st and still has not yet been filled thankfully we were able to complete interviews on tuesday and i do believe we have possibly identified a candidate i will be reaching out to the candidate sometime tomorrow and we'll be presenting that to the board for approval at the september 9th board meeting our the team has been working on preparing for the fiscal year and close of the transactions for 2021 since that did close on june 30. we're also working with the state to close the fiscal year
023as such the budget fiscal year 2021 reports as of june 30th will be presented to the board at the september 9th meeting as the fiscal year has not yet been closed due to the transaction still being processed last month ade tentatively awarded asdb over 870 thousand dollars in funding from the elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund the funds can be used through september 30 2024 and we're currently putting together plans for student support and other appropriate uses of those funds the sr3 monies do require 20 percent of the expenditures to be used for learning recovery so we will be folding that into the budget plan as well the proposed 2022 budget has been presented in the report and is based on initial appropriations and what we expect to collect in revenues resulting from our
024initial budget projections positions we do have approximately 99 vacant positions which consist of the teachers instructional and residential service assistants interpreters bus drivers and other various positions on the bottom of page three begins the financial summary where we begin to compare may 31 2021 information to may 31 2020 the budget fiscal year 2021 collected revenues of 30.2 million was about 769 thousand dollars lower compared to last year's expenditures of 31 million and that's primarily due to the decline in what we were able to spend in our federal and state grants medicaid rental and gift donations total obligated expenditures of 52.3 million are higher by about 923 000 when we compare that to last year's amount of 51.767 percent of our expenditures providing instruction and student support and 12 percent in agency administration the remaining 21
025of our expenditures are in the areas of transportation operations food services and our two statewide service programs for the deaf and blind programs on page 10 of the report through may 31st 2021 we are showing a surplus of about 2.1 million when you compare actual revenues of 51.3 to actual expenditures of 49.2 million based on initial projections for fiscal year end close i am projecting about a 2.5 million surplus once we closed the fiscal year so that has been consistent with the last three years where we have been ending the year with a surplus based on the review of the financial data there are no immediate concern process reviewed multiple companies and awarded the contract to k-12 by elior k-12 was awarded the contract based on their ability to provide services their company history as
026well as cost of the contract k-12 currently provides services to many arizona districts including benson tunsan tombstone and thatcher unified school districts k-12 also provides services for the mississippi school for the deaf and blind i have invited k-12 to present about their services today and how they pro how they plan to provide a great meal for every student please allow me to introduce amy gibbons from k12 also due to presentation limitations uh you'll be able to see her presentation on board docs as you scroll through she'll make note as she goes from one slide to the next good evening thank you so much model and we really do try to make sure that every student we serve is given a great meal next our agenda this evening is just a quick introduction of our company
027how we're going to align with the arizona state schools for the deaf in the blind in our responsive partnership plan next k-12 by elior is a chef-centric food-focused company we are 12 distinct hospitality companies that are united by our passion for food service and excellence we now are umbrella under the name of k-12 by elior you might know us in the field by summit or avians or perhaps lancer or aladdin next collectively we have more that we service more than 2 000 schools in over 500 districts across the united states and annually we prepare over 150 with specialized training for our staff to allow effective support for your students in staff with special menus and service line identifiers in braille digital menu boards technology resources real-time communication access translation apps braille identifiers and qr reader
028codes for your students and staff our menu software website nutraslice has a text to speak option we also will have a certified dietary manager to support all the special dietary needs of your students we will offer guest chef exhibition cooking and sampling programs we plan on increasing food quality and adding more variety for your students and staff and we will we will have an annual student survey as well as probably monthly students with staff and students we have we will customize your menus based on student needs and local preferences we have a catalog of over 3000 recipes and 75 of our menus are scratch made next on this slide you will see an example of what the cafeterias will look like once all the marketing has been installed we will utilize our roots marketing campaign
029next and through our triad tuesday's global bites and additional marketing we plan on being able to engage your students we have try it tuesday pick 3 for any students that perhaps bring lunches or breakfast from home we plan on marrying council that meets quarterly and has discussions what does that entail who is part of those discussions sure we partner with the principals at each school to choose who would be on that council what we will do during that time is offer samples of new menu items allow students and staff to have feedback on what they would like on our menus as well as nutrition topics that they would like to see thank you my second question i noticed that you mentioned an annual survey for our students is that set in stone as an annual
030basis or is that up to discussion to do something more on a quarterly basis a quarterly survey to review with students that then could be addressed in tandem with those culinary council meetings is that something that's potential absolutely so our annual student survey is simple students will pull that item and replace it with something they do like we also talk to students when they're in the cafeteria every day and we also look inside garbage cans to see what students are eating and what they're throwing out so we can change those menus oh thank you also just to make sure that we had uh considerations for our bi students as well as our blind students we've also made sure that all the vi students in blind have heart trays hard silverware in order to work with
031that we're also looking at the menu to make sure that our vi students considerations and special needs are also addressed within the menu and lastly with k12 because they have such large resources the special meals are also a high priority and those are the special dietary restrictions on our students so we're ensuring that every student receives not only a great meal but a safe meal okay the first option was to look at vacancies in asdb and to do internal transfers some of our food service employees selected that option the second option is to transfer to the new food service company to apply an interview and see if there are opportunities there with k-12 and the third option is to apply else elsewhere our human resources have been actively working with all ten to help them
032and smooth over the transition to whatever is next in their lives we have been successful with seven but we do have three left that we need to do the reduction in force in doing that then these three individuals become eligible for unemployment unemployment insurance so back to you president nigro okay um team has done their best to help people smooth the transition for their life not everyone is going to be happy about these changes but i do think that it has been important for us to show that we are making an effort to make this change as smooth as possible and with that making that smooth transition i think has happened with most of these employees and as a last resort if we have to do the reduction in force that was our last option
033so i do want to commend your work that you and your team have been doing thus far i am supportive of this reduction in force so i would like to make the motion to approve the recommendation from superintendent reichman for a reduction in force okay thank you pv uh are there any uh seconds to that motion this is uk i second that possible candidates to be an on budget person and you chose um karen grandin so karen grandin worked with asdb since 2018 about three three and a half years as our onboard person and the one thing that i wanted to point out to you is that in 2017 2018 we did things backwards you made the selection presented me with this election and then when i checked with our arizona procurement rules rather than
034working for you as the board of directors so this time i decided let's try to do it through the arizona procurement system um to figure out how to do that our procurement specialist lou estrada did some research and she found an on buds person international association that's already a vendor in the arizona procurement system and the onbudsman international association and yes has a list of members that anyone could submit their letter and resume to us as a potential contracted vendor we posted and announced a good match for asdb in terms of working with you the board and working with the agency that we can go back to how we started up with karen grandin and do it again that way it worked with karen grant or i mean what are what are our options what
035can we do what's your suggestions what do you want me to do and that's why this is on the agenda and said possible action because i wasn't sure you would be prepared to take formal action so if you just want to have this conversation and provide me with feedback or think about it and put it on the agenda for the next board meeting we can do that it's just putting it on the table here so that two maybe three times and the five years i've been here we've had the state on budsman's office contact us with the complaint and then we would respond to them into that complaint so that's happened a handful of times do we set up a more formal arrangement that's a good question and we can explore that the other idea
036that sort of has popped up in regards just from the standpoint of when we have a client complain and can go all the way up to fair hearing through the ag's office and under the ag's office a lot of times they kick us back to formal mediation with that client and those mediators work out of the ag's office and then we pay maybe take another look at the ombudsman and the role i personally think what was just explained is really good because it has a has a familiarity with arizona with how things work at the legislature with asdb with our community so i think we should take a step back and see just like what was explained but at the same time maybe there's some thought process of uh maybe expanding the the role of
037the ombudsman in the sense that says you know they shouldn't be within the agency they should be you know a pure true ombudsman and what kind of does that look like are there outside organizations that may be able to fit that bill for us and i say that in the sense that the legislature you know historically the ambassador has not had much interaction with the legislature is there um do you envision an expanded role for the unboxed person that would involve interaction with the legislature i i think it's just something that has just been over the years i've just seen that that issue kind of grow and you know it's it's an issue i think just that might be a potential i might be completely off base in that mindset but it's just something that
038keeps coming back to me that the agency has a good job of you know going to the legislature and having this conversation superintendent rickman does it a great deal but maybe there's a role on the ombudsman side that kind of sees it from all angles because i think sometimes it just depends on the political wind if you will the legislature what could be happening to asdb short term and long term at the same time we need to make sure that the board understands the um and the superintendent's intention here there are multiple factors that need to be considered when we are bringing on an ombudsperson if we are bringing in someone outside how could we possibly consider the out their outside interest potentially influencing the board and whether that would be a benefit to the
039agency or potentially a benefit to the students or not my biggest hesitation is that if we were to engage in outside umbuds person for example through an agency or through the procurement process however the case may be that person will likely not be familiar with deaf blind deafblind visually impaired individuals and may make recommendations that might put national level perhaps another possibility is to approach agencies that have a similar population and view of services who perhaps need an ombudsman as well and we can discuss a cost sharing agreement so for example we could consider acdh they may need someone who to perform similar services perhaps the governor's council they may need an individual who is sensitive to the disability community so there may be opportunity to engage in a partnership and again protect the agency's
040mission uh thank you pb uh mike i believe you uh wandered the floor yes thank you um i apologize if there's been a job uh announcement or a job description that was circulated uh i apologize but i didn't see it so i was hoping that maybe that could could be um distributed to the members reichmann has several possible avenues to take to approach this situation and she's asking the board what we would like in terms of how she proceeds so that's my understanding is that now we have an opportunity to talk about that process and figure out what avenue to pursue and potentially look into additional options that we haven't considered yet some of the concerns that have been shared is that if we have a job posting as you mentioned would that individual be
041working for the superintendent or for the board do we need to consider a separate or outside position or contract who would report directly to the board rather than to the superintendent could we work with another agency to partner could we uh look through for a procurement contract that already exists in this system of course taking the risk that that individual may not know anything about our population that we serve so i my understanding is that's the intent of this conversation let's facilitate those so those are just some thoughts on my end thank you um pv this is pv dance i have a question for you what does your a mudson structure look like in the arizona department of education um well so we it very it's a wide agency so it's hard to to nail
042down a specific i think there's multiple intake excuse me i'm sorry mr wonders if you could speak into the microphone a little bit better yeah sorry got off track um so within the department of education it's it varies between program area i think in some part depending on the customer service facing front obviously there's more intake points for that we have various functions so we have dispute resolution services i think it probably varies significantly depending on the size of the district i think the larger districts have a much more sophisticated process and probably a more broad spanning process for that but i can't really speak to specifics about any individual district and this is pv again and why i'm asking these questions um i think that might be where um the board could start looking
043at what superintendent reichman needs we may be able to model what we do based on another school district of course asdb as a school for the deaf is a unique agency and in a somewhat odd position i'm teetering on the brink of a state agency and also a staff to kind of fit their issue within one of those nine or ten different avenues and sometimes depending on the issue it may have overlapped uh between two of them and it was you know we got things that were um you know kind of filed in the wrong place so to speak and we had a we had to change that we had you know issues of of staff um you know not being afraid to kind of come forward um you know for fear of you know
044some sort of retaliation which of course we would never do um but if they don't feel comfortable they don't feel comfortable but we still want to hear the feedback um so you know we still want to get any kind of issues um dealt with and and and raise them in a way that that we can manage them so what we did on from the policy level is we consolidated those nine or ten to i think four uh primary avenues and we organize them shown otherwise uh so what the average person does is kind of figures out what the real issue is and then guides that person to the appropriate you know avenue for um you know vindicating their their complaint or their grievance again it depends on the subject matter and then the abundance person
045would give us a report of her work and there wasn't uh you know in terms of the cost i mean this is not a full-time position i think we spent about seven thousand dollars per year uh in the last four years uh on the previous umbuds person so it was not um you know it's not a full-time position by any means um although that depends on you know a low you know caseload of course and that's why the contractor avenue looks more attractive to us in terms of being you know separate yes the karen brandon was an employee but we you know so that you know that is a fact uh but she operated independently uh folks so you know that specialized experience was important to us our old umbus person had that experience i'm
046not sure about about this one or the one the resume that that came across here uh but that is something that we're you know you would really need to to look at so from from my perspective uh you know i'm not i'm not certain that the resume we got is going to be you know accurate i mean there's certainly a possibility or going to be the good fit for us there's certainly a possibility to enter into a contract and then move away from that contract uh if if it's not working for us or to get someone in the interim well you know for the next three months or four months will we transition to someone else i think that would likely be okay you know at the same time the uh sharing as such had
047mentioned with another agency might be helpful that person would have a knowledge of arizona a knowledge of state policies and they'd be local they wouldn't you know be doing everything our policy can change we we didn't have one we didn't have one of these policies four years ago uh we we created it we uh met with some committees we met with some other community and we've we've crafted these policies we can always change them uh if there's a desire to do so but uh to have an unbuzzed person that continues on uh you know in the role that we we've had it uh that's you know to me that's really what we're looking at unless there is some desire to change those policies or to look into them more for more in depth oh tv
048thank you president nigro this is pb jams i'm considering two things i think it's necessary for the board of two considerations will arise so we need to make sure that we of course consider our recent strategic plan regarding communication and relationship i believe it falls under that pillar and it also could align with effective resource management as complaints arise an ombudsperson being involved could have a long-term impact or result on the agency so it's important that we have the right person who has the correct information to make the decisions that will benefit the agency in the long term thank you pb um that does raise the question of our if we do uh enter into the contract with the uh the vendor that has uh submitted their rfp um ms cooper do we have a
049right a unilateral termination in that contract or is it are we committed for a year or six months or for some period of time and we can only terminate for for cause it is my understanding that we can do the unilateral i'm sorry it is my understanding we can do the unilateral but i will confirm with the procurement manager okay great so in other words if we were in a full-time position uh you know at all it's it's much more limited than that historically um and i guess you know in in terms of if we were to do hire the person that responded the rfp temporarily i'm not i don't know that she necessarily has the experience working with deaf individuals and blind individuals that i think was one part that you know might have
050been a bit lacking so i know i'm not necessarily enthusiastic about that but i do understand that we uh we need it on budsperson we've been without them for a few months uh we're likely looking into september before we make another decision at the earliest so that's that's something for the board to consider do we want to extend another few months without one or do we want to try to have this one until we agree to a more more permanent more sustainable solution pv this is pv jam perhaps because this is coming to the board and we have a very short time until school information okay are there other comments on on this matter from the other board members unlike in zoom i can't tell if uh the people attending remotely are raising their hands
051or turning on their cameras i i don't have any um you know visual indication i just have the audio indication so uh to the extent that you'd like to to speak just just go ahead and speak up this is sukay kind of to piggyback what pv was saying i was wondering if we would need to make a motion tonight to authorize the leadership team to move forward in that direction for an interim for interim coverage of the ombudsman position until we have a chance as a board to develop that more fully uh that's a great a great comment i think what we could do is have a motion where we would allow the superintendent to uh we would allow her at our option to enter into the contract with the rfp provided that there is
052a unilateral right determination um that we have our unilateral right determination uh and that trying to think other terms that we might need but i think that's it as long as we had that unilateral right determination and more sustainable selection or more permanent selection the agency can do that but we don't necessarily need a board motion or act to do that so i'm not sure how to state it but i would like to move that we allow annette and the leadership team to move forward with an interim contract with the person that we have through the office of procurement with the limitations that they understand this would be a fee for service for the number of hours used for a intermittent period of time until um this position can be developed more fully okay at
053the superintendent's discretion at the superintendent's discretion thank you excellent um thank you i would uh second that motion like you know from my perspective i do have concerns over somebody that is completely out of state that is not going to be in state coming into our school and our districts and kind of just like going through our stuff i mean i guess this it would you know the files and data would be relevant to their job position but i guess i would personally feel more comfortable if this person was much more local than all the way across the united states can i um i i wholeheartedly agree with you and i don't i'm not suggesting this as a long term i'm suggesting in the case of some a complaint coming up until we are able
054to define this position and fill that need internally whether it's internal to asdb but internal to arizona i think i think pb's comment of needing to have that backup plan in case there is a complaint before that is developed we should be prepared for that eventuality who is currently handling complaints if there is one either or that i'm uncomfortable giving to my teacher if they're a student um they don't and without fear of that the invites person saying hey you know this you know i have this information and uh you know there's some level of confidentiality there uh that's that's what we have interrupted so in terms of the complaints or grievances that all is still fully functioning uh we just don't have the investment and we haven't since the the resignation several months ago
055okay thank you pv has a comment this is pv jams again i would like to recognize your comment brittany that is certainly valid and i share your concern the issue that we're addressing right now is again we do not have that centralized person who can handle things if they escalate to a certain level we don't i think that if the board were to allow the leadership team and superintendent reichman to use their executive decision making to figure out how to proceed in that temporary contract that gives the board and the agency some kind of protection at the same time giving us the flexibility to ensure that we are on the right track and we remain on the right track in the long term if that person does violate confidentiality and nef or violates any aspect
056of the contract they don't have to deal with just us they have to then deal with the state of arizona and that is something that no one in the state takes likely lightly so that would should hopefully alleviate some of your anxieties thank you um and you know from from my perspective uh you know in terms of the the person being in you know in virginia i have not read the state procurement contract uh because it is very long complex but miss cooper i would think that we have uh that the vendor will be submitting to personal jurisdiction and venue in the state of arizona meaning that it would not be difficult for us to kind of drag her into court if we needed to not that i expect that we would um motion that
057is on the floor say aye aye aye aye uh all opposed okay uh the motion carries um superintendent reichman i think you have the direction from the board that you need uh that you've asked for in this item and uh we look forward to revisiting this in the next board meeting next item is 702 information discussion item legislative update marie murphy good evening board president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman assistant superintendent speaker and rex for the record my name is maria murphy i'm the director of policy and government relations for asdv i'm going to impose upon you for about 10 or 15 seconds to just make a personal digression and just say what a pleasure and how happy i am to be here and see all of you in person it's been about
05814 15 months since i've seen and except for the financial aspects which all of those became effective as at the start of the new fiscal year july 1st the budget went ahead and passed on june 30th so we got it basically done as close to the deadline as we possibly could and we have spent the last few weeks just trying to tease out exactly what was included in the budgets this year so what i can tell the board is 150 000 was included specifically for asdb for um an update of the classroom notification systems in tucson and we did receive some additional funding in inflation for the baseline for students because um 2863 included um session law language ade and asdb made a joint committee and have started working on what does lea implementation start
059to look like for asdb over the next year we met and had an introductory meeting on june 22nd we had our second etc so we had a whole three weeks of vacation and as of yesterday we're we're back in the saddle again preparing for for the next legislative session one item that i would like to note is because the budget bills were signed so late into the fiscal year this year i was able to alert the executive slash operations team about the possibility however remote that we could be potentially looking at a partial government shutdown if the bills were not passed by midnight on june 30th so uh superintendent reichman took the bulls by the bull by the horns and got the entire group together and we started contingency planning for what does it look
060like on july 1st if there is a partial or total government shutdown so the entire team pulled together was able to come up with the draft contingency plan so we are still in the process of finalizing that plan ms cooper would you like to take that because we were aware of that ahead of time yes it will tr um it will have no impact it will just mean that we will have to inform ospb and jlbc anytime we plan to use more than the appropriated revenues within the cooperative services fund we would have to make sure that we have excess cash to spend anything over and above beyond so now we will have three appropriated funds one being the general fund the second being the schools for the deaf and the blind fund the third
061being the regional cooperative services fund the primary reason for them separating out the regional cooperative services fund was because it made up a substantial amount of our other services that we have our other funds and so that was the primary reason to separate that out but it has no impact in terms of budget we project the budget based on enrollment for those students within the cooperative services fund as well as expected fee for service and vouchers and as just a follow-up question to that is is there consistency in growth year to year in those funds i guess so for establishing a projection for a needed appropriation it's fairly consistent it's not wild even dropped off and maybe no one did but i thought i'd make that clear um it's because i don't have zoom and
062i can't note it myself the next item is 703 information discussion item introduction of possible discussion policies g c k a i k f b discussion on policy bbbd marie murphy yes thank you for president nico so you have before you the redline policies gcka ik a fb and eeb for discussion they were presented to the public i have not received sorry i i have not received any public comment regarding them but at this time i would like to make myself available for any questions okay um i would like to note the bbbd discussion and i just wanted to bring this up to the board uh for discussion as we transitioned back to you know primarily in-person meetings uh historically we would have all of our meetings in person and there we'd have a a
063phone line for board members that weren't able to make it for one reason or another they'd be able to participate telephonically just like as they are doing today we wouldn't be able to see them we didn't have zoom at that time or members you know we can miss meetings if needed if that has to be we can use the technology whether it's zoom or uh the telephonic line um if for some other for some reason we have to there's there's no problem with that uh i don't you don't want there to be any i don't want there be any barrier to attending a meeting um certainly if it's you know just location i i don't want there to be any barriers to to be able to attend and participate uh effectively but if the board
064wanted to discuss and i think the reason we have this here is if the board wants to discuss amending the policies to uh you know set an expectation as to what percentage of in-person attendance the board members would have versus uh attendance via other means you know right now uh there there isn't you know our attendance policy is is essentially after if you missed two meetings in a row uh you get a talking to uh by me um but fortunately i haven't had to do that um i don't believe that my predecessors have had to do that in the nearly six years have been on the board but you can although you can get around that by missing every other meeting so maybe that's not a great um a great item either but you know
065from my perspective uh is the board interested in having a policy that says you know maybe 50 of the meetings that you attend would be in person in a given year or in a given calendar year and then the others can be um you know attended electronically uh or maybe you don't want to update the policy and we'll have it as is um i just want to get a better idea from the board uh you know what their what their expectations are so that we can get on the same page in terms of uh you know in-person attendance and attendance via technology thank you president nigro i'm sure everyone is like waiting with baited breath what's baby going to say and i'm not here to disappoint you i do have a question my interest is
066about board member attendance um is 50 typical what is average what is is there some sort of standard what is this 50 attendance oh i meant if we were to change the policy to say 50 are attended in person and then the you know the remainder could be attended via technology so so not that a board not that the expectation is that your a board member is here half the time it's the expectation potentially that there's some percentage of in-person attendance that would be expected and is and storms can often come unexpectedly or if there's limited transportation and they're unable to arrive at a location that we've decided as long as we have some sort of clause that leaves it up to the president's discretion to waive that 50 requirement i do think that 50
067requirement would be a good idea um with that clause to waive it at the president's discretion um uh pv i hate to interrupt for a moment um i understand that i have been uh remiss in failing to take a break at the 90 minute mark so i apologize uh for that um the uh the staff does need a break i think we typically break every 90 minutes um so pv if you could hold your thought for a moment while we take a short 10 minute break okay all right thank you though that's the only thing i got going for me hello everyone thank you for that break and we were resuming resuming our meeting on we left off on 7.03 information and discussion item ms murphy if you can return in case there were any
068questions i know pv was um in the middle of a statement on which i unfortunately had to interrupt him uh but you can continue thank you president appreciate that and thank you for the interruption i think a break was necessary and beneficial for all of us i also want to recognize that 50 in-person attendance i think is a good idea with the potential for having some sort of clause that that 50 requirement could be waived at the president's discretion that way if an emergency were to arise you have the ability to use your discretion in those special circumstances another question though as representatives of the community people who work within and serve with these populations and represent these populations i think it is also important that we include some sort of percentage for being part
069of the meeting regardless of whether that's in person or remote i think we need some sort of minimum attendance okay thank you pv other other thoughts on the tense policy yeah i would i would just agree with what pv was saying i think it would be wise to also have a contingency baked in okay i i would like to import right um in zuki right now our bbbd says that after two consecutive miss meetings uh the board president is going to send a letter um to to the board member that missed the two consecutive meetings if there are three consecutive meetings that are missed then the president has to meet with or write to the board member to determine whether or not resignation is in order and to report to the full asd board of
070this communication um you know fortunately that i haven't had to do that again i don't think my the predecessors that have served with me as a when i'm with me i've had to do that um so it hasn't been an issue for us so i i'm i'm less concerned about the overall attendance policy because i think we we have we generally have good attendance and again board member is going to miss a meeting or two um you know over the course of their three-year term i mean that's that's part of life um but in in what i'm more concerned about is that we have an expectation that if we have an in-person meeting that you know we don't just have one person that we have as many people in person as we can uh and
071then if the technology is used uh to you know kind of allow board members to still participate even if they may have other obligations professional obligations they have travel obligations etc so it looks like what i'm hearing is if we can have a policy that you know our expectation is that we're at least half the meetings we're going to attend in person and it could be an excitation it doesn't have to be you know you get a nasty letter then i think that would be good all right does that sound good ms murphy it does would you like me to include the language um that uh in person could be at the discretion of the board president yeah i think i mean if we use the word expectation it's not a shell or a must
072it's not a you know a word for terms of requirement um you know we could make a requirement and then say exempted at the discretion of the i mean i don't know it has to be the board president but maybe that's the right way to go if we do use that if we do if we do make it a must or a shell okay uh great thank you very much i'll have it ready for the september first september perfect and then yeah that'll be first read in september and then it can enter the next time yes okay our next item is 705 information possible action item board work study on august 12th 2021 the date for the poll results uh on that one that was the date that the poll said we should have our
073meeting so i would like to move that we have our our meeting on august 12th and again this is the work study session i second that uh all in favor aye aye david is that an in-person meeting um yes that is that is in person um you know work study sessions so not as formalized as our uh regular board meetings um there will be a i mean it's in person but there will be a telephonic option it won't you know if you can't join in person you won't be excluded from it okay well we when you're talking about electronic i mean we just voted on this but nonetheless uh we're talking about still having a possibility of a zoom option as just compared to teleponic though right yeah i think the i i prefer that
074we have some kind of video component to it um especially because just because you can get that individual information for those that need it um and it helps everyone really as opposed to just on the phone okay and of course it's better for me too because i can't i can't see who else is on the line and what they're doing exactly thank you okay thank you all right so um that motion has passed so august 12th will be our meeting it'll be in person there will be that technological component to it um that's the more you know informal work study session meeting um on the uh dlea issue that we talked about at the last meeting uh next is 801 call the public for non-agendized items and we so again in this meeting we had
075a hybrid approach or combined approach we solicited emails and then also there could be any members of the public that are in attendance can fill out the form and indicate that they would like to speak i don't believe that we've gotten any of those forms on this matter for any member of the public that is here we do have an email that was timely received and i'd ask sue k to read it thank you it is an anonymous email from concerned asdb parent and the subject is just concerns and the email is as follows as a parent to a student i am concerned about the state of affairs at our schools and believe it is crucial that the board addresses these concerns one merit pay what merit pay standardized increases are in place for staff
076and faculty based on performance and cost of inflation how do we keep and then reward our best performers are there yearly reviews to maintain staff with good performance and measures to reduce those who do not meet department expectations year after year what procedures are in place to bring those not performing well to the standards of other individuals what is the time limit to bring these individuals up to those standards number two annette reichman within her five-year tenure what genuine accomplishments have been made beyond a five-year observation of bamboo grassland a farmer does not plant one seed only and watch it grow but tends to the rest of the crops and gardens number three nancy alexander why does the school pay for someone without quantifiable data of accomplishments as a contracted consultant with the responsibility of
077a strategic plan where is her strategic plan we have paid to have is it is it the standard for any organization to take two years to prepare a plan without execution what controls does this consultant really have why does her linkedin account state she is an asdb superintendent search facilitator isn't that complete is she the person who runs the agency and annette is the token face for asdb number four kelly creasy as a principal of the tucson school why does it appear as though she is uninterested in pushing to make her school the hub it has been for the deaf and blind communities in the past as principal why does she not know asl the community language she serves asl is the third most commonly used language in the us so why wouldn't she know
078the asl as the leader of the deaf school why does it appear as though her campus has its own agenda to protect itself and not move with advancements in greater learning while keeping keeping complacency and mediocrity as the standards for its mission is hr a part of the problem for not finding a suitable person to run a school with some of the lowest scholastic numbers in the state how do those scores compare nationally with the same school setup number five lisa yancarelli as leader of blind programs why does she not have successful programs in place like the deaf programs like camp leap and the deaf mentor program what is her plan for our blind students success other parents have complained on the lack of blind student support isn't that the main purpose of her position
079is her position and necessity or is she not qualified for the position thank you for making this public platform available for submissions as i am not able to attend the meetings i will do more submissions for subsequent meetings on where i believe the board should be should turn their attention uh thank you um 802 discussion possible action item agenda items for next regular board meeting scheduled for september 29th 2021 in person in tucson and before i open it up to others i wanted the board to as you you probably noted um we're linking the things that we're hearing about the things that we're doing uh in this meeting with our strategic plan to make sure that our efforts align with that plan there but we're continuing the the implementation of to make that more clear
080so board docs actually has a which is the application where we run all of our meetings that has some of those capabilities built in um latisha uh showed me how she could do that she showed me another district that does that and she's looking into learning to adapt or use the board docs to to accommodate that so you'll be able to click in um you know let's say on the financial report let's say or particular pieces of it you'd be able to click through and board docs and that would link to the specific goal and it has the metrics of that goal so that was the you know for for the next meeting for me i at least like to see one hopefully that will be working to some extent uh on our next for
081our next regular meeting in board docs um i also like to see the the dashboarding so to speak of the data that we have in our strategic plan and how i'd like to produce or have produced the formats of those reports so if that's in board docs like that other school district does where you can click through it and see where we already know say this effort relates to this piece of data we can click through and see it that would be great um also if there's a consolidated dashboard where we can take a look at the you know all of the metrics that we've enumerated in the strategic plan and see that in one place and go through that uh you know page by page and and data by data to see our progress
082and to see if we're making the progress that we that we want to see thank you president micro i would like to see if we could continue the conversation about the ombuds person and that role and what that looks like whether we need to expand the policy or integrate other options i think it's worth having it as a discussion point and potential action item for a future agenda i would like to see what superintendent reichman and assistant superintendent cooper have as far as findings during that meeting as well thank you pv in terms of the uh just to clarify so you're proposing um changes to the to the policy or or are we always focused on the the subject of finding a specific resource just more specifics to have a discussion on which avenue we
083would like to pursue for a long-term permanent solution whether that be a neutral third party like we're doing temporarily or whether we want to have the discussion to develop contract requirements and expectations as a board just to further the discussion on what our options are as we get some more exploration in the meantime i think that the loss of karen has hurt us more than we realize right now i think that now that we have seen the unique needs of this person the struggle will be to find someone with the qualifications she has left some big shoes to fill okay um so i think i'm hearing both then because we certainly want an item where we talk about the the search for the above person and the specific staffing that we would need we could
084also have another item where we discuss potential changes to the policy if any of the board members would like that that policy changed or amended in some way to expand or contract the role of the inbox person okay um are there other other items for next time no okay um hearing uh none we're gonna go to 901 actually i'm adjournment and before i uh entertain lin's motion uh to adjourn i would like to thank um all the you know the media and all the staff uh for setting up this meeting in sedona they've done a great job i don't know if you at home can see what they've done here but it's um there's quite a bit of material here uh to produce this meeting that all had to be you know none of it
085was here natively it all had to be brought up uh from uh you know from our facilities uh and uh and set up and there's there's quite a production um area over there with several staff members that are able to you know to produce this event so i know this uh particular meeting especially because it was not housed at one of our um schools it was not housed in pinkster tucson where we have a lot of this equipment that's that's here it's it's it's available uh we know what our bandwidth with capabilities are we know where our technology is um and to to kind of move this uh up north was quite an undertaking i understand that we're here for a few days uh setting up and they've done a great job so so thank
086you and everyone should even though you don't see it in the broadcast um it should be appreciative of our staff for that uh so 901 is the german has anyone moved to land yes this is my duty to move that we adjourn meetings uh second uh all in favor aye aye thank you thank you again so much um for for being here and for having our first in-person meeting uh since march of 2020 it's nice to see everyone in person and we will see you we'll see you on august 12th and then we'll see you on the next regular board meeting in september thank you you