ASDB Board Meeting (12/03/2020)

001good afternoon everyone uh now is the time set for the regular board meeting of the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind um i'd like to call the meeting to order and proceed with the roll call um uh sue k are you able to do the roll call if i can find all my buttons certainly i believe so um david nigro present mark sims present dean howard president mike gordon president shelly herbold linda bove lynn davison present mike manley i'm here and myself did i miss anybody i hope not i think that's everyone thank you uh we can move on uh to item 1.02 uh the caller the public call the public on agendized items um i understand that we have had no uh emails um that have been received at the public

002comment email address uh by the specified time this is the format we've taken the last few meetings as we do this via zoom so seeing seeing no comments we can go to 1.03 information item executive team reports yes you all have the written reports from it hr and operations so if you have any questions about the written report now is the time to ask it didn't seem to be any questions yeah that there don't there's not seem to be any questions um thank you and if there are no questions regarding um that item we can move on to 1.04 the information item assistant superintendent report uh dr rex good afternoon president nigro and board members my report was sent from all my areas for your review but today we have actual people to give you

003an opportunity to receive current updates from our schools the statewide early learning program our statewide itinerant services and both our deaf and blind programming as well as human resources each group has been asked to give an update the most current progress and current state of supporting our students and staff i will introduce each person and then they will give their report after their report you're welcome to ask questions before we move to the next group beginning with our schools i'm going to turn it over to mrs kelly creasy and mrs courtney fritz for their section of their report hello good afternoon just making sure we're doing a sound check everyone can hear me okay looks like the interpreters are signing so hopefully that means everyone else can can hear me um so good afternoon uh

004board president nigro superintendent annette reichman assistant superintendent dr christian rex and all of you board members um we are coming to you again with a joint report um because it really is just basically the same the same information whether we're talking about the phoenix campus or the tooth on campus kelly and i continue to meet daily at 8 00 a.m i think long ago we thought for sure by december we wouldn't be meeting every day at eight but we still are meeting there's a dare here and there that we they will cancel for um various reasons but really we have something to talk about almost every day and it's really just been a huge benefit to collaborate with each other talk about things that are happening on on my campus talk about things that are

005happening on kelly's campus and make sure that we're in alignment and just have a checks and balances system so with that we're we're joint presenting and we'll take turns um this week both campuses returned from our one week thanksgiving break which was last week that was a change in the school calendar once everything had to shift so we didn't have an actual fall break but took the the week of thanksgiving off so we are all back in person uh this week after tomorrow we will have two weeks left until the winter break our goal is still to remain in person for the next two weeks up until winter break um i know that everybody unsure on this call has been looking at the data looking at the benchmarks as are we every week the benchmarks

006from today did show once again an increase uh the the school benchmarks or guidelines are still showing an overall hybrid status but in in addition to those benchmarks because as we know they are delayed we are looking at real-time data as well we continue to meet with the asdb agency team on fridays to debrief discuss that data and make any decisions that might be necessary but at this time we are continuing to remain in person up until at least winter break we have not made a decision at to what january might look like at this time so with that it is our version of hybrid learning which means we're still on a four day week schedule tuesday through friday and offering both in-person and online options whether that's a family choice or if that's necessary

007because of medical reasons and or necessary because of covered exposures so that is what we are doing on both campuses at this time good afternoon um as many of you know the aia postponed all winter sports until january and so at this time both campuses are providing after school strength and conditioning activities for high school students again our small size is what makes this able to happen as our student athlete population is very small compared to a traditional high school both campuses are aiming to participate in competitive sports in january and at this time aia has slotted a competition to begin january 5th and we are going to continue to monitor the aia requirements along with the county requirements okay and hopping back a little bit to our hybrid i know that we previously provided

008numbers as to how many students were doing the online option and we wanted to once again provide you an update on those numbers on the pdsc campus i currently have 58 students that have remained online and on the tucson campus kelly has 21. the numbers overall have remained pretty consistent since coming back in person but there has been some fluctuations so when we opened in person we asked families to make the decision from that date which mine was early october kelly's was later into october up until winter break so we're really trying to get them to make a decision so that we could plan accordingly with that being said we know that things change so we have not been so firm on that that we wouldn't let families make a change if there was a

009valid reason that they were requesting that change so we have had a few students who were online that then requested to come back in person and a few students who were in person that requested to go back fully online but that has been a one-time change throughout this period from october october until uh now so that's an update on the numbers but knowing that the same you know i think the the first time i reported the numbers it was 56 it wasn't just that two more students joined online there was a little bit more movement on both campuses for students changing their programming options in the course of the quarter and to to give you a health and safety update as courtney mentioned we did return to in-person learning after thanksgiving break this week however

010the tucson campus had to start their thanksgiving break two days early due to a shortage of transportation staff after an identified positive case within that department our families were amazing our staff were amazing as we contacted them on wednesday afternoon and let them know that we were going to be sending students home early that thursday morning that whole plan went seamless a huge thank you to the transportation department to our student health center our dorm staff our teachers and our school secretaries who are able to contact all parents on the tucson campus within a 45-minute period also as you may know there was a recent executive order released about mandating face coverings in all schools that was already a requirement on our campuses for both staff and students and i think courtney and i can

011both say that our students have been phenomenal in complying with wearing their face coverings it has been a very easy transition for them and has not become a management issue at all they are very compliant so we we're grateful to them we're grateful to their families who are working with them to ensure that they have a clean face covering every day and are coming to school prepared and with that we do want to acknowledge that these times are hard and they're challenging um hopefully we both look extremely rested and just on top of the world and on top of our game and things are just all puppies and rainbows hopefully that's what we look like um but it's hard every day is a challenge and there are new factors and new situations that are are

012thrown at us daily and that is certainly true at the you know administrative level just as we're we're making decisions and and keeping our ship afloat for lack of a better word um but it's even more so i you know i say more so i don't know it's hard to to compare apples and oranges the reality is that everybody working on campuses right now it's a hard it's a hard time and it's a challenge and what we see from our staff is that they go above and beyond for our students every single day majority of our instructional staff are having to toggle both in-person and digital learning at the same time and that is extremely hard and although we had time at the beginning of the year to do professional development this hasn't been something

013that that you know teachers learned in graduate school or something that they experienced and they're now in their 25th year of teaching or first-year teachers who didn't expect that number one their student teaching would be interrupted and then their first year of teaching they'd have to figure out how to manage you know dual modes of learning and instruction and this has been a huge undertaking and i think we need to be honest to say and communicate with the board but there are still daily challenges we see our staff growing and learning in many ways that none of us would have ever predicted and they're doing it effectively and they're doing the very best that they can every day but we would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge like i said this is hard and these

014are challenging days and we do see the impact on staff their the morale their social and emotional well-being and we try our best every day to provide support and think out of the box what can we do to support staff uh what can we do to give them you know a shout out a praise uh hang in there just recognition that that this is hard um we continue to have conversations like i said provide support come up with creative ways to try and keep everyone's spirits high we've done things like a sunshine cart where we roll around with snacks to just have them pick a snack the tucson campus to have a visit from their little annual elves so that they made an appearance this month in december which i think is helping them you

015know put a smile on their face both campuses are doing 15 days of holiday fun where staff can you know wear um jingle bells and you know christmas traditions from around the world and different kind of dress-up things just to make it fun we've both tried to do um digital e-cards again just bringing a smile to their face uh the the program that we use has one card that says things are bananas which is the k which is true and hopefully it makes everybody chuckle a little bit and know that uh we can do hard things so i guess we're coming to you today with um a request that we really think of formal recognition from the board to staff members of just knowing how hard they're working and every day they're showing up and

016they're showing up for the kids because that's what they do and hopefully you had an opportunity to read our board report and we wanted this afternoon just to provide you with the latest information and at this time if you have any questions we'd be happy to answer them for you courtney how many students are on campus right now i know you said that 58 are at home but how many are on campus so from k-12 there are about 205 on campus and then with preschool numbers um i'm sure kendra can speak a little bit more from the elp program but preschool are doing two days a week so i think based on their two days we probably have you know approximately 230 students on campus every day with their numbers included and kelly how many

017so uh between the preschool and the k-12 we probably have about 110 students on campus on a daily basis thank you this is mike manley um have we noticed a higher ratio of students with an md or mdssi label needing on-site services compared to not um so on the tucson campus um actually most of my online students are the mdssi students due to additional health concerns that have moved us in that direction which has made that online component even more challenging so yes unfortunately that's our higher population online at the moment in time and for the pdsc campus it's actually the opposite so we only have about eight students that are mdssi that that remain online uh majority of the online students are from um what we would consider the general education track of deaf

018and hard of hearing students sorry thank you if there are no other questions for kelly and courtney i want to thank you for your report fantastic information oh i see david talking sorry um yeah uh thank you i just had one other other question i know um you know looking at one thank you for everything that you guys have been doing and um i'm happy to see that uh you know the students have a choice to be on campus um or to be at home and learning online depending on you know of all the variety of factors that go into that decision um you know i know looking at the report from today um you know at least in maricopa county where 372 cases per 100 thousands that's that's three over three times what uh

019the department of health says is substantial our positivity is uh about 11 and a half percent um and uh the third benchmark is at 7.2 percent very similar numbers in pima um you know what what is that what's our time frame for making other decisions about next semester and and and what are we looking for in this data to to move us one way or the other so um for president negro we meet every friday with our superintendent assistant superintendent and maria and that is one of our topics of conversation for tomorrow so we just got the data today and we'll be taking a deeper look at that tomorrow and that is our day typically to make decisions moving forward so every friday we're meeting and looking at that and planning for what's coming next

020so i anticipate tomorrow our conversations will be thinking heavily about what we're going to do in the next couple of weeks and then what's going to happen after the christmas break okay great yeah because i mean it seems like we do have the majority of students attending on you know on campus just as those numbers get up there i you know think of concern for the you know the students and and for the staff so thank you for for looking at that are there any more questions for kelly and courtney yeah this is mike gordon um kelly you mentioned you said you said i think 110 students on uh tucson campus how's can you give me the breakdown on that i mean as far as how many are maybe k12 how many did you say

021they were early intervention or the preschool age or how's that breakdown just so i haven't kendra can probably give you more specifics into exactly how many preschool i was just kind of ballparking so i have 21 students that are um online and so i have uh 90 students that are on campus k-12 okay quite a quite a lot okay thank you hi there i just wanted to tell you that i'm here this is shelley i didn't want to interrupt your conversation but i am here welcome shelly um anyone else have a question mike oh i was just saying hello to shelly all right well if we have no more questions for our principals i'm going to thank them and let them jump off the hot seat and go ahead and go dark and we're going

022to pull up um next is our director of early learning programs and that would be ms kendra benedict you're up my dear hello good afternoon i think kelly and courtney for their energetic report i appreciate their energy every day and their support of my programs on their campuses so thank you both um good afternoon superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex board president nigro and members of the board the unique circumstances of the last nine months have required schools everywhere to be more more creative more flexible more willing more collaborative i want to thank you for allowing me the opportunity today to share with you how the early learning program has been exemplifying these characteristics it takes more than a little creativity to educate three and four-year-olds online while at the same time offering in-person options our

023simonton ptsd and asdb locations are all doing just that as are our foundation for blind children and desert voices partners michael olivier's supervising teacher at pdsd over the preschool reports that he's giving two to three virtual tours of ptsd every week using zoom on an ipad as he walks through the preschool building showing families the classrooms 31 students are currently enrolled in tucson 22 of those are online i'm sorry 22 of those are in person and 9 are online we anticipate six more students transitioning this month putting total enrollment at 37 46 students are currently enrolled in phoenix 34 in person and 12 online we are anticipating 12 more to transition this month in phoenix putting total enrollment at 58. if these enrollment trends continue as predicted we will end this calendar year with more

024students than we did this time last year flexibility evidence-based research is at the core of what we do in the early learning program while it takes an extraordinary amount of flexibility to conduct research during a global pandemic doing so is still critical to the future success of our students i'm excited to share that after a visit to tucson and phoenix the week prior to thanksgiving haley broadway pro tactile expert and education specialist was successful in recruiting families for her study haley will return to tucson next week for three to four months during which time she will work with infants and toddlers who are deafblind and their families educating them on protactile sign language willingness the willingness of early learning providers to better themselves at their craft never stops even during a global pandemic join me

025in congratulating marlea jacobson morgan's gadden caitlyn empee and soren mickelson as they embark on their journeys to become listening and spoken language specialists i want to thank amanda benecke who will be providing over 120 hours of mentorship to these candidates over the next three to five years thank you amanda collaboration arizona uses a team-based approach to early intervention services this collaboration has never been more important to our birth to three providers than it is now we're working closely with our azip partners and developing recommendations for safely resuming limited in-person services although given recent metrics it does not appear we will be resuming in-person services soon included in azip's recommendations our guidance is guidance on providing compensatory services what that will look like has yet to be determined in the meantime our birth to three teachers

026continue to provide tele-intervention to 307 families around the state they provide alternative services meaning email phone text to 42 additional families thanks to our partnership with the ear foundation and arizona hands and voices we are currently providing 43 families with devices in order for them to receive services in closing i want to share just a few more statistics with you as well as a short story behind those statistics after months of collaboration with azit we are moving forward with serving children birth to age 3 with unilateral hearing loss this is a first for asdb and will add significantly to our teachers caseloads over the coming months the hearing screening and follow-up survey published annually by the office of newborn hearing screening and submitted to the cdc recently uh released preliminary 2019 data on bilateral and

027unilateral hearing loss in 2019 in arizona out of 80 454 births screened 184 children were identified with hearing loss of those 84 were identified with permanent bilateral hearing loss and 68 with permanent unilateral loss behind each one of those numbers is a child a family and a story recently one of our new teachers amber received a referral for a little one weeks after she started with us this summer her supervising teacher worked the case with her for for the first couple of weeks and then backed out the child was multiply involved and medically fragile so much so he was not able to go home to be with his family during amber's first three months on the job she advocated for the family and made sure they had access to their child via teleservices the child

028had a surgical procedure from which he did not regain consciousness during the last meeting amber had with the family and the medical team the parents were given an extremely difficult decision to make and they decided to remove the life support in place for their sweet child amber spent the day getting car seats for the family so the siblings could join their parents on what would be this little one's last day of life this was the first family ever placed on amber's caseload with us as an early intervention teacher the following day we received this letter from the lead social worker at the hospital i am writing in regard to amber whom i've had the pleasure of working with this past week with our mutual patient amber not only facilitated multiple conversations with parents and the

029hospital staff but she assisted the family with transportation ensured that their children had safe car seats to sit in and was president at the and was present at the hospital throughout the day yesterday during the child's withdrawal of life support she truly went above and beyond her role and we are forever grateful for her advocacy support and engagement with this family during the 15 years i have worked as a social worker in the intensive care unit i have never met someone that was so willing to assist the hospital and the family this much during this time of crisis and despair our gratitude for amber's help is immeasurable and we wanted to share just how grateful we are for her support so in closing i too want to share my gratitude for not only amber but

030for all early learning teachers instructional assistants speech language therapists audiologists administrative assistants even during a global pandemic they don't lose sight of the importance of caring for each individual they serve parents and children alike by meeting them where they are and with what they need that's all i have for you this afternoon if you have any questions i'm happy to take them thank you dr benedict for that report i did have a question about the transition from uh to preschool those transitions are always difficult in in normal times in terms of uh being able to usher families to go from the early adventure program into the preschool of you know their choosing uh and i i would assume that that's a lot more difficult now that our early intervention is is mostly or all online

031so uh can you speak to how that how those transition meetings have been occurring in the last few months um and if we're keeping track of you know the destinations uh uh for these children um you know in terms of where they're going uh and how the parents are making those decisions and are we making sure that the parents feel feel that they have appropriate guidance as to where they should place their child yes yes i can definitely speak to that thank you um in just looking at our preschool numbers they they are higher than i anticipated that they would be going into this school year but like i said in my report we're on track to end this calendar year with more students than we had this time last year i don't have any

032scientific evidence to prove this but one of my guesses is that a lot of families are choosing charter schools smaller type programs that allow for fewer students in a class which not only typically results in you know good things all around for kids but at this period of time allows for social distancing things like that so i think that could be one reason um there are parts of the state where we're having more difficulty in reaching districts um to assist with that transition and azip is helping us with that um but everything the the transition is continuing to occur within the timelines that it's supposed to occur our biggest challenge right now is our late identifications we are getting children especially down in the southwest area that are have not been identified and they're over

033two years old with profound hearing loss and i and you know courtney was very frank in in her speaking with you and i can be very frank insane i'm very concerned as to how ready these kiddos are going to be for kindergarten um we're getting kids that are identified so late right now with significant hearing loss and significant language delays and it's going to have a tremendous impact in the next few years on the kids we have entering kindergarten thank you thank you mike did you have a question yeah just a quick question um first of all that mid 2 is way too late for identification that's stark my question was um in looking at uh and meeting with the finance team yesterday it looks like we have um a lot of uh infants and

034toddlers that are identified as deafblind i think it was like 98 and i was just surprised that there's that seems to be a it felt like a very large number are we prepared with the resources that um those kiddos are gonna are gonna necessarily take it when they transition both into into preschool and then possibly into into brick and mortar i just kind of taken aback by the number of students in that category i'm so glad you asked that's a great question um i might have mentioned in one of my previous reports last spring but that seems like 10 years ago that we were in the process of planning to open a preschool classroom in tucson for our deaf-blind population we have a critical mass of kiddos down there and that is where this whole

035conversation of the research that we're now bringing here um uh it was the week before the world changed forever uh jennifer hensley um and i were at gallaudet met with some researchers who knew of this critical mass of kiddos we had and wanted to offer us their not only their support but a mutual relationship that could develop where they could help to educate us our families and and we had these kiddos that they wanted to take a look at and um and yet the program didn't open we couldn't move forward with it because of covey but we were still able to move forward with the research it's looking very different now than it had originally planned to look but um they're still moving forward with it so we still have those contacts to assist us

036we have lisa giancarelli and her group we work closely with um megan and and others in in her group amy at supporting our preschool teachers as they get these kiddos in it's a little bit easier in birth to three for our teachers of the deaf and our teachers of the blind to work together in that fashion comes a little more challenging with with preschool but we're working on that as well so i appreciate the question thank you very much can i can i follow up are we anticipating a big cohort um because i know when at the birthday of three is when that happens are we anticipating more this year or next year based on just that big group of kids ages do we need to curse it out or so if if i'm understanding

037your question correctly this time last year we had a group of kiddos that over the course of this school year the 1920 school year if we would have started a classroom we would have ended this may of 2020 with about 12 kids of deafblind kids in a preschool classroom which is a big number and sadly enough we did lose a few of those children a few of them passed away many of them have severe medical needs a couple of them moved back to mexico when the pandemic hits um so those numbers went down which made it even more difficult for our researchers to find families um to participate um so that's been a challenge so we're working really hard to identify these babies keep track of them and make sure they have resources um i

038think it that brings me to you know one perhaps notable point is that birth to three tele intervention has been an amazing tool it's we probably had an easier time at transitioning to it than preschool did most certainly because you're working with parents you're coaching parents um however for our for our blind and vi families it has been a little challenging more so than with deaf and hard of hearing because with those kiddos you do do so much more manipulation there's physical needs that children have and it's hard to point you know use the camera strategically to model and show how to do all of those things then certainly i know lisa can speak probably better to that than i can not being a blind bi teacher myself but um they are facing more challenges

039and really hope to get back in the homes as soon as they possibly can does that help yes thank you so much any further questions for kendra nice job kendrick that that's your spiel you're good thank you and next we have our director of statewide itinerant services and that would be jay johnson he's going to come on and share some information with how our amazing teachers and everyone is doing pushing into multiple districts with multiple different protocols and making it work thank you dr rex and you're right we do have an amazing team and the entire co-ops together and i'm pleased to report to the board again some amazing numbers that we have as well as the work that we've been doing as it relates to the redesign before i get to the information i

040wanted to provide on the work that we've been doing statewide i wanted to share a little bit beyond that work and i wanted to share my coveted story with the board so my covet story actually starts just around friday november 13th up to that point i had traveled over 7 000 miles within our state visiting sites campuses staff visiting with special education directors and whatnot and then on saturday november 14th i tested positive for covid i quickly contacted our hr department to let them know about my test and through contact tracing they were able to connect with all staff that i had been around on sunday november 15th to this date no other staff members tested positive to the interaction with me this goes back to the leadership this board has really enhanced as it

041looks to the redesign and the cooperatives underneath the topics of consistency sustainability quality assurance managing and changing and timing and vision and philosophy because those are been the indicators that we've had within the co-ops i'm going to pick a couple of those and report to the board how we are working on consistency quality assurance and managing change and timing along with vision and philosophy so under consistency first to give you a picture of the work that we're doing statewide we have 214 school districts and charters that we currently have agreements with statewide this brings to us just over a thousand students 1002 to be exact of those students the primary disabilities we have 189 students that are mdssi 210 students that their primary labels md 127 that their primary label is vi and 476 of

042their primary label hi consider that our staff has been putting in about 594 897 minutes a month for those students this comes out to just over 9 000 hours a month that our staff is providing services statewide to make sure that we're consistent within that statewide effort we meet weekly with our co-op directors to discuss different topics that arrange from audiology to vi services to hi services along with developing forms to align our work first the directors and i meet each week to talk about audiology scenarios these may be scenarios that do not fit into the boxes that we have for our referral form so we can be accurate with what we're saying to each one of the audiology teams and making sure that we are sending them out at the right time with the

043right scenario with the right protection in addition to that one of the things that the co-op directors and i did is we've started to design documentation for statewide services the docs of service page that was designed by our directors did come with a few hiccups which we needed to provide overall training for staff and we were able to connect experts in-house to support staff members that may have struggled using the google forms one comment that came from a staff member was thanking us for that particular form she stated it's good to see that the agency is starting to use the same forms inventory and policies uniformly throughout the agency under quality assurance we've been working hard with our region one and the part of the redesign as you know dr fay miller left us during

044the summer and this brought dvr along as part of that redesign process because in addition to my responsibilities statewide i've also been acting as the director for dvr so we plan next year to bring ser to be embedded into the work we've done this year going into next academic year so with that work between dvr and region 1 we've started to look at the audiology referral forms dvr designed an audiology referral form that is one hundred percent online as did region one the directors and i meet together each week to discuss the cases as it relates to those referral forms and how we're evaluating appropriate students just to give you a sn snapshot of dvr our two audiologists have received over 115 referrals this academic year that is possibly 115 more students added into the

045dvr site than there were before some of those students may not qualify for specially designed instruction that's why we can't say that all of those students are receiving services from us at this time in addition to that we've been tracking direct services versus consult only in region 1 we know that 92 percent of our services are direct services in region 2 which is our dvr location 97 percent of the services we provide are direct communication and direct work with students the other thing that we've done internally is asking the question what is itinerant teaching at asdb in order to answer that question we've surveyed our lead teachers and supervisor teachers as it relates to job duties of all teachers statewide the leads have been meeting this month in december to discuss that survey and look

046at consistencies that we have statewide also we've met with the university of arizona and their dhh department and the bi department we've also met with asu's vi department we've also met with an out of state university with the university of california their vi department and we've been highly connected with cac and azks we've had opportunities to collaborate with other dhh teachers in the phoenix area under managing change and timing one of the goals we had within the co-ops was to utilize our adot services more this academic year adot provides our services for all vehicles and they also have fueling stations around the state of arizona before focusing on this we had about 33 percent of our staff utilizing a dot as fueling stations that has risen to 66 percent and 52 percent of those staff

047members are using adot 100 of the time this cost savings can be hundreds of dollars each month the other thing the directors and i have done is built the culture of professionalism and support the work that we've done this year have enabled our staff to understand email norms meeting norms and upholding the same norms for all staff members statewide the other part that the directors and i talk about consistently is this idea of total support total support to our staff is meeting their needs in their location and what they need from us i have to give a shout out not only to our two directors paya and michelle but also all of our lead teachers supervisor teachers and staff that support each other on a daily basis it truly is a total support community under

048vision and philosophy we're getting to the idea of thinking as one co-op a couple examples of this is we had audiology equipment that was shared between region one and the ser office our audiologist even shared today it gave the opportunity opportunity for a student in the tucson area to access curriculum and without that communication between the two regions the student would not have been able to access the curriculum because the technology would have to be ordered for them that's one example that we've done statewide also we've closed the holbrook office and in closing that office we've sent materials to the sedona office as well as the tucson office we had staff that drove from sedona to holbrook to make sure that we had the right materials going up to the northwest side of arizona and

049then we also had a moving company support us to move all other materials down to the tucson office as part of that process we also evaluated our vehicles we had vehicles that moved from the holbrook office down to our dvr office to make sure we met the needs of our staff down there and putting them in the right types of vehicles with the lowest amount of mileage we've also had interpreters who have traveled between regions one example was we had a dvr interpreter that traveled to region one to support a student when an interpreter was ill the other part of our vision and philosophy is we send out weekly amazing co-op emails through these emails we provide resources support and connections to other community members as well as resources that are statewide and even out

050of state some of the topics that have come across through those emails were the post-school outcomes survey that's done through ade what was amazing through that we connected that work to student referrals to project search we actually had an interpreter that was very surprised that we collect that data every year and was able to refer one of her students to project search as a young adult we've also been able to connect to northern florida university and the virtual job fair this year and connecting our hr department we've also had the dvr interpreters sharing resources statewide with the entire co-op we've started an event called a cup of joe with jay where i've simply set up either virtual copy talks or in-person copy and sitting down and just talking about the roles that our staff plays

051statewide one of the comments that's come out through those amazing emails is i admire your compassion and acknowledging how difficult this year has been on so many many families you're so uplifting and positive you inspire me we continue to inspire not only our fellow staff members but our school districts and charters our students and even our family members knowing that we're putting their student needs first statewide with that said the last thing i'll share with you we've also been connecting our work with the statewide cder program and ed rising through that work we'll be presenting at the national cec conference under a teacher empowerment project that we've been working hand in hand with our cder counterparts and we want to make sure that we continue the ed rising connection because they are our future teachers

052ed rising is the high school program that falls under cte and for students that are interested in becoming educators not only are we connecting with the high school program but the ed rising programming that's at the community college and the university so new teachers know all about asdb and coming to work for the co-ops or our ground campuses thank you for your time today and please let me know if you have any questions this is mike manley uh just a quick question um i know that uh over the last year we've transitioned somewhat to online delivery of services um has that primarily um affected kids in the north and do we how do we go about determining which um which kiddos would do better with that kind of a format you know mike that's a

053great question thank you for asking that what's interesting is we're finding statewide the same type of work that's happening so our schools as you guys all know are opening in person one day and the next day they're closing and going virtual and we're seeing that pattern statewide we've been in close contact with our special education directors because way back in august we had about 50 percent of our staff that was providing services in person while schools was still remained on a virtual format so we probably have right around that same number still however more and more schools due to the rise in cova cases are going virtual but our communication between the fed directors and case managers have really driven that type of procedure would you anticipate the need for that going up if as

054we find efficiencies and um student outcomes or it's probably too early to ask that it's actually not too early to ask that and one of the other parts that i did prepared but i didn't i was going to try to stay within my six minutes was the work that we've done with our distance learning distance has actually expanded and these are distance students that are 100 virtual not because of covid but that they're moving the direction of saying i want my child to be in a distance learning format and we've watched that grow through distance where simply two years ago we had two students and one school now we have 91 students and 55 schools statewide and these are students that are not in distance because of covet and we continue to see that rise

055of numbers we actually have a new district that just signed on with us that they were 100 interested in distance learning and we're going to provide services for all students there on the distance format thank you any other questions all right with that thank you jay oh david's back sorry uh no just just anticipating taking over uh thank you jay um thank you dr rex um dr x is there anything uh more to add well you have i have also jennifer hensley lisa incarelli and anita i think we're going to call up jennifer hensley sorry jennifer is not able to join us this afternoon okay my apologies move on to the next report please thank you i'm going to go to lisa yancarelli then hi everyone um so as you know i'm the director of

056blind programs and blind programs are our team works to support the instructional programming statewide so since the beginning of the school year we've provided assistance training and equipment to anyone who's requested assistance because of the unique nature of this school year we um our assistance has been adapted to meet the needs of the students so what i you know i commend my team for their flexibility and their hard work and their willingness to jump in and do things um a little differently from the way we have in the past to really ensure that our students families and teachers are getting what they need we really most um all the areas of blind programs really focus a lot on equipment and access so it is our priority to make sure that students and teachers have what

057they need so the students can access no matter where they are and as we know um it changes daily so we we continue to get requests for um for equipment on a daily basis so i'm going to highlight some of the things that are happening with all the different areas that i support so the first is the arizona deafblind project we're a feathery funded grant that provides technical assistance and training to schools and families statewide it is a federal program so that means we also support families that are not within the asdb system at this time we have seen an increase in requests to provide support and guidance to our school-based teams to navigate the implementation of iep services in that remote setting as well as the typical requests that we that we get for

058assistance on communication systems access to the general education curriculum and specific deafblind strategies um we do have a strong partnership with um the elp team um too and that is part you know her team is so wonderful and that's why you see so many numbers of of our infants the burst of three with um the combined vision and hearing loss is because our teachers are diligent about it and works so closely together and then bring us bring us in so we work closely with them they meet on a bi-monthly basis to have trainings um that are specific to that birth to three environment uh the deafblind project we also provide training to um to staff through for inter specifically for interveners but it's open to anyone that wants to take it through the open hands

059open ask access modules and we do that that statewide and currently we are providing that training to 42 people statewide braille production is another area of blind programs as you know we've been working to um scale up the braille production system that was started in ser and we are in our um second year of that scale up so um we have transferred supervision of staff under blind programs for some the final will will be next year but um our statewide our production staff has been working nonstop so all of our braille technicians and brayliss are working to provide those accessible materials to all of our students so that includes formatting documents for use with screen readers or braille devices our tactile graphics and emboss braille as well as providing recordings we keep track of the

060the requests that come in and as i was updating the data today i saw that there is a a student who is now also receiving some recorded stories and i hadn't seen that before so kudos to that team and to that braille staff that is now recording stories um that may not be available in another audio format that's why they're doing that so i provided data on the the numbers but that was submitted november 5th and the numbers have changed so i want to give you an update so since the beginning of the school year braille production have completed 534 documents to use on devices and completed 1955 requests for embossed braille and tactile graphics i just want to make note that tactile graphics take a very long time and there's no way for us

061to capture that at this moment but there was a there is a significant increase in um tactual graphics and the need for um helping to add audio description to things because of schools being in that virtual system classroom teachers are relying very heavily on powerpoints and slides so that is causing our braille staff and our teachers our teachers also provide that same support um so we are we're having an increase for that moving on to my low vision team so low vision our office provides equipment support and training statewide we've been uh assisting teachers in selecting the appropriate low vision devices assisting in conducting functional vision assessments and learning media assessments which is a challenge in the remote environment so our low vision specialist has been exploring options and providing guidance because some of these

062things do need to happen in person and so what's the best way to gather the information if you can't be there in person and we also provide training on the use of those devices so um during this time we're really trying to work we're working with the teachers and the families to make sure that students have whatever device they need to access their instruction no matter where they are um we're also you know we're working with our teachers to make sure that they understand um for our students with low vision and like example my background is far too cluttered it should be um a blank background talking about lighting what is best for our kids with low vision um and cortical visual impairment so she works hard on that in talking with teachers about that

063to date our office has distributed 186 devices that includes our handheld magnifiers portable cctvs regular cctvs and monoculars moving on to my other section the american printing house for the blind repository and our assistive technology equipment um so asdb receives that's those specialized materials and equipment from the american printing house for the blind and we have a repository that sends out that equipment statewide so it's items like slant boards can be specialized equipment for science um an abacus for math special braille stickers other braille materials and any other adapted equipment from aph in addition to doing that my aph staff also distributes the assistive technology equipment that is not provided by aph so um most of our braille refreshable braille displays embossers large print keyboards so the data for that we have distributed 179 braille

064writers of all kinds statewide 54 refreshable braille displays and devices 33 embossers and 10 large print keyboards and finally the other area that i support is assistive technology and equipment statewide so um part of that is the tablets chromebooks and laptops so we have met the need of every request so far um and we have had um an increase of course um and we work very closely with with iet to make sure that that we have the equipment that we need and that we can get it out to um to the staff um so at the beginning of the school and we gave a total of 61 devices specifically from the assistive technology and so those devices are considered assistive technology in addition to the equipment we started a new activity to support our teachers

065with assistive technology so we began at the beginning of the school year holding weekly zoom drop-in calls and so the purpose of the call was to allow teachers to come together with our more experienced assistive technology people so they could ask questions and problem solve and get the support they needed as they were trying to navigate remote learning um many of these platforms that uh school districts were choosing were not accessible and so um we had to work work with that and figure out what is accessible so um the structure of the call is that we usually spend about 10 to 15 minutes with somebody demonstrating um either a device or resources that we found and then the remaining part of the call we it's it's time for teachers to to ask questions and brainstorm

066about um their specific needs so at the beginning of the year we had a heavy need we were meeting weekly as the attendance started to drop i surveyed teachers and they chose to go monthly so we are now on a monthly zoom call um and so we'll we'll keep that up if the needs do increase i will increase the time in the call but it really is their time to to ask ask for help we brainstorm we look at equipment um and then finally something that's um very exciting that we've been talking about and i know that i brought it up at a previous board meeting about that all-in-one system that i'm dreaming of um so this may it may actually become a reality that thank you i.t um to work with us uh blind

067programs is going to work to have their own similar email request and ticketing system that will that mirrors the the i t request system so i really i thank it for um helping us um and guiding us through this so we're gonna pilot with a couple of key staff some of our staff that request a lot so that my staff can work out how it works and and we anticipate that then any request for support or equipment that comes through blind programs will be through this one email system so that the entire team can look at it um and so that we can meet the needs of everyone more efficiently and so we're hoping that will be able to imp full implementation of that system for the 2021 school year and i'm available for any

068questions uh thank you uh that was a excellent presentation um i did have a couple questions on the uh the statewide braille production um and in terms of the requests uh you talked about a number of requests and a certain number of documents coming through um are those requests uh quizzes or tests that are a few pages or are they you know textbooks which are you know much a much different animal than just a few pages so in our system we do not do entire textbooks we only do pages that are required so it varies um sometimes they are quizzes and assignments um we do we have the textbooks but we don't braille the entire textbook we follow the scope and sequence whatever the teacher whatever the teacher has requested um i think you'll find

069that in most classrooms they never use the entire textbook so um there are there are cases where we will purchase a textbook if we feel that is needed as opposed to having our braille production staff do that we also um do the bench any benchmark testing that the district may be doing um you know we're really trying to make sure that any piece of paper that comes across a sided child's desk our blind child also receives and um we work really hard at that again the requests are are all over the place depend because it depends on the individual child we have some students that are in advanced placement courses so of course the load of reading and um requires more braille um there some are in some very advanced science and math courses which

070increases the number of tactile graphics that are required and then of course when you go down to the elementary level the the assignments are shorter the the text is um not as robust and um there the tactual graphics are are not as intensive so we have the full range right and that's really more what i was getting to is is what's the the right metric to to talk about um what the real production is producing um because there is that that gamut of you know a high school calculus book uh is a lot more content labor intensive or again not just the book but pages of it uh it's a lot more time intensive than what you might have in your second grade or or a you know a short powerpoint or something like that

071so um but you know yeah i'm not sure if there's a better metric to help us get a better idea of the you know the work that's that's being done other than just the number of requests because they they can be you know they can vary in size and complexity uh you know quite a bit yes i agree and we're open to any suggestions okay um and in terms of the uh the the turnaround time for that i know we heard some reports uh in last spring you know late march early april uh there were some delays which i think were understandable at the time given the you know the covet situation that that evolved um you know but from the beginning of the year can you give us a sense of um you know

072what the turnaround time is typically like from the time a request is made to the time uh that uh that material is delivered to a student so for it it's typically just a couple of days um we do ask that schools give us their request five days in advance and let us know the due date a lot of times it's the very next day or the same day you know once we have like the the students that have very intense work they have a dedicated braille staff um and have a relationship with that teacher and so they get things in advance when we try to work his head ahead as much as possible so there is not a delay um we really don't like it um and really ask that that our teachers um our

073class the general classroom teachers consider the production time when they're making a request because it it is difficult to produce something that is heavy tactile graphics within a day um so we we typically it's a two to three day turnaround okay great uh yeah i just want to get a better idea that we're being consistent on that and uh you know it's and it's not unreasonably long great that was all i had okay mike hi lisa hi mike um you talked about distributing uh a lot of the equipment uh chromebooks laptops etc stuff that doesn't come through printing house um is that for generally for staff use or students use and particularly when jay was talking about 90 students working remotely in distance learning how how are you connecting those equipment requirements with with i

074mean that's that's a daunting task particularly when you're talking about the north country so yeah why are you doing that and and how are you making that connectivity in that a lot of collaboration um and cooperation and so it's a mix our devices are a mix of teachers and students um to it depend you know again it depends on the request we need our teachers to have the tools that they need in order to provide instruction likewise the student needs their device in order to receive that instruction so we would do work closely with our partner districts um and and you know if they don't have what is needed typically it is something so specialized that it's something that we are providing so we do have you know our our laptops that are loaded with

075um fusion which is jaws and zoom text and you know any other sometimes it's talking type or whatever specialty um software that needs to be on there likewise with the tablets um we you know put the specialty apps that are needed on there but it does take a lot of collaboration between the the teacher the the t our teachers the classroom teachers the families and the students and um and we just you know we've had it i thank everyone for being flexible and we problem solve and we get it you know the i.t department from our asdb also worked closely with the i.t department from the districts to make sure that we have that connectivity um you know whatever issues we may have we all have to communicate and work together okay um one just

076follow up to that um um now i lost my train of thought um oh i got it i'm sorry um i was trying to be quick and i slowed myself down um when you talk about accessibility in the classroom and that some of the platforms that the schools are are using aren't accessible and i i do applaud you when you say that you don't want any that there's no material that would go across the desk uh that wouldn't in some way be accessible to a blind student uh that that is uh is not necessarily a well accepted position so i i i'm impressed by you saying that for sure um how and i know you know it's collaboration between families uh teachers etc but that's a another pretty daunting task when you you have uh

077people that aren't familiar with accessibility issues and then they have platforms that are just i mean it's hard enough getting accessibility within the field without having people that really are new to the field and don't aren't even really that well versed in in teaching uh people with cognitive disabilities so how do you address that or how how do you solve that as best you can i know it's unique and and again i that's not not an easy question to answer quickly and i don't want to run on so whatever we work with working with the team and then um we do have staff who are well-versed in accessibility and so relying on them to assist the team and work with the schools i know that we rely heavily on julie jones is works for the

078ser co-op and she is very experienced um and we rely on her a lot on our questions she from the moment school started picking what they wanted she started working on accessibility and finding ways for it to be accessible and then if it's not accessible then talking with that team um to to figure out what would be a better platform i know i heard a story about one school district started with one platform when they discovered that it wasn't accessible they actually switched so that it would be accessible to all their students so that that was really good again it's that same thing mike where we have to you know not everything is accessible and the more um the more we can educate and the the more these companies realize that it should be accessible

079to all the better off we're going to be because it'll make our jobs easier thank you sure any other questions for lisa hearing none um thank you lisa thank you hearing none annette had asked to add anita payette for our final presentation to give you guys kind of a pulse of what's happening here at asdb and hr has been busy adjusting and adapting and attempting to support our staff and student good afternoon board president nigro members of the board superintendent reichman and assistant superintendent dr rex our goal and role in human resources is to provide quality customer service support guidance and resources to assist our staff members i'd like to bring you up to date on the covet activities happening in hr since march we were able to transition over to remote work rather quickly

080due to our previous experience in working at different work sites where we provided support to our staff in their respective locations we are available to assist staff members through phone email google chat video and in person at the onset of covit we helped develop a consistent structure to implement administrative leave with pay for our staff members this entailed developing procedures for principals and directors to manage staff attendance reporting and remote work in addition we assisted with implementing and adapting processes to support and guide the completion of hiring performance evaluations probationary status reviews and the processing of human resources paperwork on april 1st 2020 the family's first coronavirus response act went into effect this act expanded the use of family medical leave and added emergency leave sick leave to those who are being impacted by cobit

08119. we implemented new leaf forms provided training to our supervisors provided notification to all our staff members of the act which started on april 1st in which will end december 31st in july we published agency communications about mask requirements self-care and self-checks as our staff came in and out of the workplace covered resources and covid testing locations throughout our time navigating this new landscape we still continued with our recruitment efforts for the school year before covid we were able to attend eight in person recruitment events and after covid there were many of these events transitioned to virtual formats in which we attended eight after after cove at the onset of covet at these events we're able to continue to feed our current talent pipeline with internships and practicums for this school year currently we have

082six interns that started in the fall and we hope to look to start four more this upcoming spring once the school year kicked off human resources continued to collect information from staff members who were reporting out sick this may entail assigning quarantine periods informing staff members of their resources so they may return back to work safely this information is being reported to maricopa and pima county health departments as well as to the arizona department of health services in order to stop the spread and keep students and staff safe and healthy we have seen an increase in request for medical leave and reasonable accommodations due to the pandemic typically each school year we have on average 60 medical leave cases that we see throughout the year currently for this school year we're at 67. reasonable accommodation

083requests have doubled from last year typically we average 10 to 15 per year we are 29 currently for this school year these increases are due to staff members who have a specific medical condition or disability that puts them at an increased risk for cobit 19. all of the work involving covet has been accomplished with support participation and collaboration from other departments within asdb at this time human resources would like to thank the asdb board of directors asdb's executive and educational leadership teams business services information technology operations and our staff members for their collaborative efforts in such an extraordinary time these times are not easy it requires flexibility patience and creativity we appreciate all of the work our staff members are doing in these challenging times at this time i'd like to thank you for your

084time and make myself available to answer any questions that you may have looks like you're off the hook anita you did you gave them all the data they're ready to move on so that that concludes my assistant superintendent's report thank you very much uh thank you dr rex uh move on to item 1.05 information item superintendent's report uh superintendent rickman good afternoon president nigro the assistant superintendent rex member of the board of directors and the asp community welcome to our december 3rd 2020 board meeting i'm happy to see you all here as you've been hearing from our leadership team there's been a lot of challenges for us so far this year we've been meeting those challenges we are providing the education and support that our students need across the state so i just want to

085express my appreciation to the education leadership team to the teachers to the staff to even our students for working so hard as you've already heard our teachers have never gone through this experience before and that's true of everybody here but i think for our teachers most of us if we never taught in a classroom we don't truly appreciate just how difficult the current environment is our teachers are having to provide in-person classroom instruction at the same time they're providing the remote instruction that's never happened before that's a new experience and with these new experiences while we're doing awesome creative productive work that's really giving high quality education and supports to our students that work is also exhausting you can see our leadership team they're tired they're exhausted our teachers are tired they are exhausted and

086even with that exhaustion they're still able to every day to remind the students and themselves to wear their face covering to follow their social distancing and to wash their hands on a regular basis the one thing that you may have kind of picked up on but i want to highlight is that during this time of the community spread of the virus we've had and we do have individual staff with the virus they have been infected at the same time we have not yet had any spread in our two campuses we've not had any spread with our bus drivers with the chaperone with itinerant teachers so our efforts to really set the model of you have to wear the face covering you have to be socially decent you have to wash your hands and you have

087to stay home while you sit it's working as far it's worked really well so i just wanted to point that out to you and at the same time you asdb board of directors this fall have had two very productive work study sessions we had a work study session on september 24th and the second one on november 5th during those two work study sessions you were able to come up with four pillars and 12 priorities for the agency so before i describe that i want to remind you that in the last five to six years asdb has really been focused on rebuilding the foundation so if we use the metaphor of a house we have to start with the foundation what's been our work with the foundation well you may remember we identified and established the

088agency operating operating principles that is act accountability collaboration and transparency we have made the effort to create a culture of continuous improvement and to make decisions based on data and you heard a lot of data from our leadership team this afternoon we've also been trying to ensure as you heard from jay johnson that the education and services we provide are consistent include quality exercises are sustainable and have the continuity in our ability to provide those education and services statewide that's the foundation i think we we have it now we are building the pillars the frame of the house and those four pillars that you identified are outstanding let me start excellent communication and relationships outstanding student development superb organizational culture and effective resource management each pillar has three priorities so we have a total of

08912 priorities i'm going to detail those priorities right now so the first pillar the three priorities are is our first rate customer service build capacity with school districts and community engagement the second pillar has under the outstanding student development it's the early language acquisition it's the high academic achievement and its social emotional learning the third color is the superb organizational culture those three priorities are a culture of continuous improvement we've talked about that a few times already that we as leaders will mal model server to leadership and third we will focus on staff diversity the fourth pillar on effective resource management the three priorities are human resource optimization that is the best use of our people the second priority is human human and capital resource alignment the third is the i.t the technology integration and

090improvement so we have our framework we're getting ready to build the house of asdb so today's agenda as we go further on we look at the schedule for 2021 we are proposing two more work study sessions one possibly in february february 4th and another one in april april 8th so the next step for you the board of directors is to review those priorities to make sure that you are in agreement with the direction we're going and then to look at possible metrics for the agency when we identify the metrics then we will be able to measure our progress towards meeting the priorities that we've identified here so i just want to thank you that during this time of the pandemic that you took the time to come together and to come up with the pillars

091and with the priorities i'm looking forward to continuing the discussion with you and i'll take any questions at this time if you have any doesn't seem to be any questions so i'll turn it back over to you david uh thank you superintendent um we can move on now to 2.01 action item approval of the consent agenda consistent board policy to include items this is shelley oh hi joey mr nigro hello i do have class at six o'clock oh sorry nothing for you miss reichman i just am asking if we can move up um some of the items that we needed to discuss i believe those items seven points give me one moment 7.03 and 7.07 those two items i'm wondering if we can move those up um to discuss and vote before i have to

092leave before 6 pm uh okay thank you shelley um superintendent reichman we have discretion to do that yeah i'm not sure do we need the board to to vote to move those and take those out of order i don't know if we need the board vote to change the order of the agenda i think you can decide that you need to vote okay i'm sorry that was uh that was mark saying that we need to vote um yeah that's mark you need to vote yeah i uh that's the point i'm unclear about at the moment um would uh i guess we would have a motion we've uh let's see we're in we're currently in 2.01 um with the board uh would anyone on the board like to move that we take those two items out

093of order i believe she just asked that that would be a motion in and of itself so okay joey if we this is shelley i moved to move uh 7.03 and 7.07 up on the agenda to start the discussion before 2.01 okay um is there a second for that this is second oh okay great uh all in favor uh you can either say i or open your camera and and do a thumbs up no isd one two three i thank you i see all of us so it's unanimous that we will take those out of order um so we'll the whole 2.01 will proceed to 7.03 discussion action item proposed bill the state legislature uh superintendent reichman uh also noted that pursuant to ars 384310383 the board may vote to go into executive session will

094not be open to the public's discussion consultation from legal advice with the board's attorney as it relates to this item uh superintendent reichman yes so i'll go ahead and try to explain the proposal here and then we'll go from here as you recall earlier this year i shared with you that asdb and ade had been an ongoing conversation um with the arizona department of education ade about the responsibilities of the local education agencies leas and or district of residence dor during these discussions ade shared with us that it was their interpretation of our authorizing statutes that the lease the district of residence for students enrolled in our campus-based schools the primary responsibility for those students went back to the lea and or the district of residence um this understanding was different from how we asdb

095has understood our role and responsibility previous to that we just assumed that the minute the student is accepted and enrolled into our campus-based programs our schools then we had primary responsibility for those students that we were responsible for the registration for the curriculum for the assessment for the student academic performance on the assessment testing results and for the graduation so in those conversations becoming to understand that oh ade believes that the responsibility for the testing results and for the data reporting really resides with the local education agencies so based on that understanding we developed a document with ade that document i had shared with you earlier this year it's just a document saying policies agree to between asdb and the local education agencies we sent out that document earlier this fall to 88 school districts

09610 school districts signed and sent it back to us 78 have not signed we have gotten feedback from school districts asking us what is our impact and not being responsible for the student academic performance so that's created a really difficult situation for us um and we are now asdb we are now at a crossroad and we're trying to figure out which path to take right now i know of two paths maybe there are other paths that we've not yet considered at this point in time but the two that i can see is one is we we do nothing we stay with the status quo um we tell school districts that when they refer and we accept a student into our campus-based schools yes we provide the education we do the curriculum we do the graduation

097requirements we will provide the assessment however the assessment results will go back to the school districts and those school districts will have to include it in their um letter grade their accountability for the school district as a whole and if we do that to stay that course we continue to get feedback from school districts that asdb if we are providing education then we should be accountable for the results of the education we are providing to our students so that's the conundrum there the second possible pathway is to look at our authorizing legislation that authorizes asdb and to see if we can clarify the roles and responsibilities of asdb we did some research around the country we looked at other schools for the deaf and schools for the blind and we found examples of other schools

098for the deaf and schools for the blind who are designated as l.e.a.s in their states we look specifically at the utah school for the nafta blind they have in their state statute that says that for those students in attending the school for the deaf in the school for the blind that that that the utah school utah school for the deaf and blind is an lda for those students and are accountable for the education outcomes of those students we actually talk and whole that language in their statutes and put it into the proposed bill that you have a copy of right now so that's our proposal to you i think i'm going to turn this over to on and melissa to expand this a little bit more um on cat cobb and melissa de vries has

099been doing a pretty in-depth analysis of what it would mean for us to be an lea so on and melissa all right good evening everybody my name is oren just i guess for a little bit of history since there's been school accountability which is what since nclb days 30 years about asdb has been responsible for the scores of the students who were in the who are in the day schools um so back in the day when we had a thing called ayp ade did work with asdb to ensure that they were part of the accountability model when ade switched to the a through f letter accountability it seems like around that time for whatever reason when it came to state accountability asdb fell off the map a little bit um our scores on the state

100tests still did count toward our schools to where you could look up the schools and see uh the percentages of how kids are doing on the ames and the azmerit um but there wasn't any i guess real accountability besides that um interim superintendent marv lamer came in was that five six years ago um with a specific mission for for asdb i think part of that was to increase the accountability in the day schools while dr lamer was in he did work with ade to get asdb within the federal accountability system in which case both of our schools were deemed in school improvement they were put on school improvement plans we were able to work with both principals to really put good plans in place on how to turn around those schools dr lamar also worked

101with ade to get us funding like school improvement funding and title one funding uh and that's been kind of where we've been over the last five years is again trying to to move forth of when the kids come to us we take responsibility and accountability is a good thing um it it's that external influence that keeps people on top of their game as superintendent reichmann mentioned in the last year there's been some changes out as to how that statute is interpreted and at this point you know if the way that we're being interpreted is that we're not schools but we're institutions therefore uh the accountability has to go back to the lease ade is correct when they say nobody's being held accountable when it comes to state accountability for our kids they were under federal

102accountability for state accountability um that wasn't happening and i think in trying to clarify the statute that's something that we're trying to do to ensure that asdb can be held accountable uh can be the lea um once those kids do come to our our campus programs the i'm trying to look at my notes here melissa feel free to chime in at any time um at this point as i mentioned any of the scores that are received here will go back to the the school of record and district um that obviously is a concern of a lot of our partnering districts and it makes sense um you know the analogy that i'm kind of using is when i hurt my shoulder back in the day i went to my general physician who then referred me to

103a specialist who i worked with for a matter of time if anything bad happened between me and that specialist i wouldn't go back uh and go after that general physician um that person referred me to a specialist now it's between me and the specialist and if that specialist screws up that's between me and uh and him and her not a matter of me going back and and suing the general physician so we are we are trying to clear that up uh figure out a way that our schools can be schools um as you all know there's a lot of pride when it comes to schools for the deaf any of you that were around six years ago when we had what was it the 100 year anniversary just being all the people that showed up

104through all the different cohorts through the years and their pride to be able to have a diploma from our schools to be part of an actual school and not something to where this is more of a place where we're going to put the students but at the end of the day there's a lot of responsibilities that still go back to the home district because we're not considered schools anymore um so i would this is melissa de vries and i'd like to jump in here when the document went out about our our roles and responsibilities with the public school districts um one of the things that we did is we had a lot of questions from our home school districts and kristin rex and i fielded most of those questions and the biggest problem that school

105districts had was in the accountability piece and that was something that annette reichman had talked about when she was was kind of presenting the problem um some of our larger districts phoenix union glendale union um litchfield tucson unified um amphitheater are all districts um and there were many others that said you know why should we be sending you our kids when um we're being held accountable for them and you're not um so that was a huge um sticking point with the big changes that were implemented this last year in asdb's roles and this is oren one more time to piggyback on what superintendent reichman said we did a lot of research here to see how are other state schools for the deaf and blind doing this um utah because they are kind of considered one

106of the best we did quite a bit of research with them we reached out to their superintendent of public instruction of utah and then annette met with the um the actual superintendent of the school there but just a list of other other state schools for the deaf and blind where they are considered a kind of a special lea to where they're the lea but they're still identified as a i guess a unique entity just to go off the list the florida state schools for the deaf and blind are considered kind of the the lea utah west virginia virginia michigan colorado tennessee hawaii louisiana georgia texas alabama montana and north carolina and again i believe a couple years ago somebody on the board mentioned do we look at what other state schools for the deaf and

107blind are doing and we have been doing that and uh as superintendent reichman said what what we're proposing in that bill which i would still argue is a draft to some degree is really what some of these top-notch schools for the deaf and blind are doing to provide the best access uh for their kids so this is melissa again um one of the things that we had looked at too was would the bill impact some of our funding chain our funding streams and right now um what we're looking at in this draft bill does not affect our our funding stream which is right now the um in the voucher program in the institutional vouchers and so that's a separate part of arizona statute and in the changes that um we were talking about and discussing

108in the draft and have been you know working through as a team um the changes that have to do with the funding pieces um the r2 um 404 that that does not change as well as um the classroom site fund the 15 1305 that does not change as well um another area that that had been kind of brought to our attention as a possible area of concern was in the area of um resolution um and with our if if there's a dispute among parents and um our providers our home school district arizona department of ed dispute resolution gets involved um prior to this year we were held accountable if the action um was us not implementing the iep as it should be planned if it was something that the school district said that they were

109going to do or were supposed to do and the school district was like held accountable so again our proposed changes in looking at us becoming accountable does not change the accountability that we've always had as far as dispute resolution and and making sure that we're going through due process we still share in that responsibility and if it's something that we said that we were supposed to do um then we're the ones that we want we want to be held accountable for what we were supposed to be doing and this this is oren i guess the last thing to add is the whole point is how can we make it to where asdb when it comes to the accountability that the every child in arizona is held accountable but the ones who are in our day

110school we're the ones who will be held accountable um we were in federal school improvement before so you know going back to that if we're in improvement we'd be in federal improvement and then on the state side to put us in the a through f accountability which is on the state side the accountability model uh superintendent reichman i don't know if there's anything else you wanted us to elaborate on i think we have given our board members a lot to think about so i'm going to turn this back over to david uh thank you superintendent and uh from here i think if there's any any board member that wants to discuss this with our attorneys we'd have to go to executive session to do that um so that probably makes sense to do that first

111um is there any board member that would like to to enter executive session for the purposes of discussing this with the attorneys so just out of clarification david the smart sims you it would be to speak to our attorneys about whether or not we can or can't recommend a statute or is it to speak to our attorneys about whether or not there is or isn't a legal issue um it's not whether or not we can we can take this action it's it's whether or not we have uh by if this if this were adopted uh would that change our legal position on you know various items uh throughout the agency uh in other words if we were to to put this forward forward um you know would we have uh would that change your legal

112position with regard to any event or matter that's that's ongoing um okay i mean okay i i'm not sure that that's the legal counsel i mean it's typically you know is there a legal counsel about this specific issue not what are the downstream implications of it you know that would be something that if that legal issue arose then we would need legal counsel okay mike um i have uh i have some questions legal questions that uh about potential conflicts about where this red line might be headed and i'm not sure if that would qualify for executive session or not but i'd like those questions answered by our aeg if that's possible suggesting executive session yeah i'm just not sure i'm okay if you want to go there i mean it seems to me the concept

113is to have a discussion about whether or not this is or isn't a good idea in other words you know the status quo is actually a new status quo as compared to reverting to the prior uh way that the agency would work now so i'll just throw in my two cents um the the data and the history and the test scores do not demonstrate that that prior situation before this change to the new status quo was the least bit effective that the agency was doing a good job in fact the perception out in the community was it was an insulated world an insulated institution that nobody could change or nobody could get um to to move it was kind of the the kids were put into this system and the system did what it did

114and the districts really didn't have any say and i would say it's pretty reasonable to say that the flagstaff issue is a direct result of this that the flagstaff district didn't feel that they could hold asdb uh accountable so from my perspective uh i'm not sure why we would want to lessen accountability um you know the the question that ort said was you know um or the question what that was posed was why should a district send a student to asdb when the district is accountable the fundamental answer to that is is because we're the pros from dover and we provide great services and we're going to help your kids so much that it's going to reflect well on your district that seems to be a very simple answer to that question not well this

115not a shimmy about who ultimately is responsible because it's about the kids not about the measurements um the other comment i'd make is the analogy of the surgical specialist so i am a specialist and so the way i'm held accountable is if i don't do a good job the primary care doctor doesn't send me any more patients and so that's why you actually want these trails of accountability so if you don't do a good job and the district gets a bad outcome they'll stop sending you patients or students so to me this seems like a a very great transformative thing i actually haven't heard what would be the fundamental crux reason that we would want to send this statute to the legislature so if there's some i i would like to hear from the the

116executive team what the fundamental thing we are doing or why the status quo is something we should go away from so i don't need legal counsel for that i would just say if the board thinks that that's okay i mean seek legal interpretation but from my perspective i'm a no unless somebody can tell me why we want to revert to something that historically demonstrated poor educational outcomes for several decades thanks uh thanks mark and uh right the discussion of whether or not to adopt this certainly is is in public and not subject to executive session um so you know certainly we want to have we want to hear your comments on that which we just did um in terms of the the uh mike i know that you had some legal questions um is it

117something that you would like to go to executive session about to ask our council or do you think these questions are more related to whether or not we should approve this this measure or if you have additional questions for the administrative team if you're a no you don't need what's that if you're a no you don't need legal counsel can i ask who wrote the who wrote the red line who wrote the red line um we uh murphy she did that um again using the utah state schools for the deaf and blind their statutes we just literally pulled that out and put that in to the current draft that we're looking at i think uh yes hello mike um yes i use the utah statute as a template based upon my understanding of what the

118administrative team wanted to achieve with um with this red line and what did the administrative team want to achieve with this redline the administrative team to my understanding in a net correct me if i'm wrong but the administrative team wanted to be able to accept accountability specifically for the campus based schools so we are specifically talking only about the tucson based campus and the phoenix day school for the deaf and accountability would remain with the uh districts of residence for those students who are based in the itinerant programs i'm not sure if we need to go an executive session or not but i would prefer that we do if i'm going to ask questions that might be questionable just to make sure that we're on the same page um i uh if there are questions

119that that are aimed at getting legal counsel then we certainly can do that if they're if they're hard questions that relate to other matters then now you know here's the place to do it have we all right um so and right did we consider um the full scope of arizona revised statues as they surround what it means to be an lea i guess specifically and i'm not a lawyer so at a first read um like the definition of lea in 34 usfr or sorry cfr 323 had we considered the the full scope of how um this might conflict with either other state laws or federal laws or how it might affect funding like specifically outside of the band that was written and provided is that for me to answer mike for the executive team or

120maria certainly okay so what i can tell you about my process is that we went ahead and um did a round table with our subject matter experts with oren with melissa i also had the opportunity to consult consult with shaina cooper um regarding the financial implications with paul creasy regarding any e-rate and i.t implications i also had the opportunity to meet with um annette with kristen multiple times and we did have we did run this by um deborah sterling r-a-a-g for review as well so and annette if you'd like to jump in please go ahead yeah i think the question is did we do a thorough analysis of other related state statutes and federal statutes no we have not done that obviously we know we need to do that but what we have right now

121is a draft and we recognize there will be revisions as we go along annette i'm just going to jump in and say i did have the opportunity to i'm and i apologize for interrupting mike i'm sorry i did have the opportunity to look at um statutes for other states as well um which is how i i hit upon the utah statute as the one that seemed to be the best fit for um what the stated objective was so i i did do yes some of that so if we're looking at utah and i apologize am i am i interrupting mark i see a hand up i guess my question is um like for utah there are accountability laws and there there are definitions um that the law that you cut from looks like it was

122one among many that looked at the full scope of accountability funding a whole host of out of items that would allow that to happen and i i'm i'm concerned that we're inventing a term limited lea which seems to limit um input from the district of responsibility while at the same time holding i think from the abstract doing trying to both have accountability for asdb but at the same time holding the district's responsibility to account to some extent and i see some obvious conflicts with federal statute in the way that it's written that and if i'm i'm i'm not a lawyer but um some of the pieces i i don't know how they ended up endorsed by asdb to share if we haven't done some basic testing against federal and state statute like i'm i'm very

123uncomfortable with um just the narrow band of edits that was shared with the team without looking at the full scope of the legality of what's being suggested um and i know that for several years we've talked about the issue of having representation like our iep meetings and buy-in from from the stakeholders that we're attempting to serve with these populations i don't know if the perception of cutting them out of the out of the accountability pieces for the kids that are living in their communities that eventually after graduating they're going to be going back to those communities how we want to uh limit the the scope of influence that our stakeholders have when it relates to um providing us students um i have a a a couple of questions um uh have we explored um i

124mean we haven't had a whole lot of time uh to consider the new stat the new what people folks are calling the new status quo um but i think if looking back we can we can point to some issues with data reporting and um outcomes and a whole host of issues that the current status may assist with and if we want to be held to account for the test scores why can't we be held to account by the lease that are sending us these kids i i know as a former special ed director high school aspect director you know i was one of the folks that would go to every iep at asdb because those were my kids i understood that this was the least restrictive environment for those kids but i was invested in

125making sure that they had the best experience we could give them and whole adam was willing to be held quickly for those kids because they're my kids um the perception that we're kind of moving away from that i think i've perhaps some ethical problems with that but also some legal issues and how that would fit um how that relates to idea which has i understand a bit of a different well that's the federal law might have a different um philosophical take on lre but when when we're looking at holding um someone to account to ensure that the at least i think these kids need to have as many eyes as we can have on them you need to have uh people really concerned about how these kids are testing how they are doing post-secondary um

126if their seo needs are being met active participation by community members in iep meetings annually and i'm just really concerned that this might take away from some of those steps that we've been trying to look forward to and i'm also not super sure that the way this is written it looks like you're weird that and i was a little i you know saw this for the first time a couple days ago um without really anticipating that this is coming down the pike but um you know writing writing narrowly writing that we're also going to now be accepting federal funds it's a bit more complex than that so i'm afraid that this might not be the tool if the goal is to access those federal funds that this might not be the way that we're actually

127going to accomplish that if that's what you're trying to accomplish um so there are a number of concerns and i'm not sure if this is the uh the right timer or version of how this is gone or if we want to and maybe this is actually part of a strategic plan i mean this wasn't discussed that if this is what the agency that wants to see happen over the night oh currently maybe we should all build it out and talk about what the benefits are because i'm not sure if we've had that opportunity to look at what's in the best interest of these kids long term and uh um i'm not uh prepared to vote uh for something that i'm not sure ethically i'm i'm with yet not saying that there's that uh that there's

128not plenty of room to hold a lot of folks to account when it comes to the outcomes of these kids but i uh as a as a former consumer i would i would be remiss to think that um creating any kind of a barrier between the least that that are having these kids attend with us um if it's in their best interest to limit the accountability to make sure that those folks know that these kids are taken care of and that's more of an emotional piece that i didn't wasn't quite going to go down i think just the legal concerns of how this is written with the narrow scope comparing it to a state that does not have a state institution in their constitution um that doesn't have the same voucher funding flow that doesn't

129have uh uh you know there's basically 53 different ways because the territories of the united states 53 different unique ways that these schools are put together we've talked about this um repeatedly and you know god bless arizona in 1916 when we became a state uh we wrote a constitution and it memorialized state hospital and arizona state schools for the deaf and blind um so i think before we could consider acting we should maybe take a step back take a look at the full scope who how do we hold ourselves ourselves being used to be how do we hold ourselves accountable do we have data streaming agreements that we could point to issues and we have we explored other options before um coming up with a a fairly narrowly written state piece of state legislation that

130might perhaps create more issues than it solves um and can and before we go about that take a deep dive take a look at the other state statutes that are perhaps more difficult to rewrite than this one and take a deep dive look at how this interacts with ideaa um philosophically or we're this at rsea ade is held to account by osep who sees things fairly black and white um and if we haven't taken a look at how this affects any of those pieces um i'd be very remiss in being able to offer support um at this point or if if this is truly what that the board of directors wants to see happen for our kids in our state and i'm not sure if we want to go over some of those legal questions

131now in executive session or not uh or if we want to hear out what some other folks have to say but um and i'm not even sure if we're looking for an action item right now superintendent or if we're just looking for discussion i would like to hear from other board members their thoughts as well this is lynn i agree with mike um i and going back to what melissa said about school districts reaction when they first found out that the test scores would go back to their schools i know and i heard from a number of districts that were shocked and oh no that can't happen we're not providing instruction we don't want to be responsible for the test results but that was an initial reaction and what i'm hearing now and i cannot

132speak for all school districts the ones that i am i hear from and there's a few um they want to make sure that asdb is accountable for the kids that they can keep an eye on those test scores and if they aren't coming up to where they need to be then districts they want to do what's best for their kids and by having that little bit of accountability and contact um they can make sure that their kids are getting the best that they can get i i'm i'm not for this bill at this point are there other board members this is uk um i liked the the point that mark brought up that if this or it might have been mark it might have been mike um but if this is a way that we

133are looking to move that i i do think it needs to be part of the strategic plan and i for one would like to have a more in-depth discussion to make sure that it's not only in alignment with um current state educational statutes but also with the federal ones and maybe put it on the one of the agendas for one of the upcoming work study sessions as part of our discussion within the strategic planning process i i don't want to make a short-sighted decision and i do think we need to look at some of the macrocosm impacts as opposed to just the current microcosm impacts are there other other board members that would like to speak this is mike i just have a quick question um i think the statistics are the number of districts

134that supported and how many would not sign on what what were those figures currently do we get those or not so so this is oren at the current count we have had 10 out of the 88 that submitted it okay thank you and uh superintendent right to clarify this is we're only talking about the brick and mortar schools correct not not the co-ops yes that's right we're only talking about the campus-based schools which is pbsd asd asv those three schools great um and i would know um you know in terms of the strategic plan it's kind of already there so we we have one of our um guiding principles uh his accountability is paramount and defined um so this is you know this issue certainly um is is is in our strategic plan now um

135so when we talk about it that's the one of the principles that we're furthering by you know by attacking this and related issues yeah mike um or david so that's where i'm confused i'm i don't understand how not allowing the district to hold us accountable makes us more accountable i i don't i don't think that's the the issue right so the current the the way that this worked a couple of years ago is that the agency would be or some of the schools ptsd and asd and asp would be accountable for the the testing scores for those students as opposed to those scores being attributed to uh their ascending leas um and then this this change uh would be would mean that that reporting responsibility or the change that that happened you know a few

136months ago in terms of interpretation was that the the sending lease would be responsible for reporting uh that data as opposed to the the agency itself so so the the the in other words the scores from the brick brick-and-mortar school students not the iterative students the attorney students were always and continue to be under under their under their individual lease but here instead of being aggregated and reported as as asdb scores they'd be sent back to the lease i think part of it would be harder to see how we're doing if we're not aggregating those scores together and reporting them ourselves and being accountable for them uh to ourselves this is not to say that uh you know there may be other issues with this that as mike pointed out but if we have i

137think you know generally more accountability is better than than less you know for as an agent help me understand and i'm not an educational pathway expert so you know all the money and all of the acronyms and all of that are way beyond me right i i don't really have an idea what idea is but that's an aside the the the reality is is the district chooses or suggests that a student go to the brick and mortar school correct and sends funds that way correct um well it determined there's a determination that it's the least restrictive environment and they right and then the ib team decides to send it to the one of the brick and mortar schools right and so as a if you look at the district as somebody who and then they

138they say oh my gosh look at these scores we're not going to send them there anymore because they're not doing well why why is the pathway of accountability gone i mean to me that's a relationship issue in other words there's nothing that would prevent asdb from getting those scores from those districts and so if you then it's entry and aggregation unless i i i don't understand but ultimately you know the measurements of your outcome the scores are what they are the issue is is if you look at the district as a customer then they can hold you accountable for what happens to the product that you deliver and so if you put it all within asdb then you're kind of the kids are put on to these brick and mortar schools and then the districts

139kind of wash their hands of where they actually referred so going back to that specialist primary care analogy the primary care doctor sends them to the specialist and doesn't care about the outcome of their patient no that's not how it works the primary care doctor sends somebody to a specialist and wants their patient to continue to succeed which is exactly what the home district should want is that their kid to succeed and the way they know they're succeeding is they get the test scores i i i'm just not understanding unless somebody can help me how that's a bad thing i understand it's a more difficult thing but i'm not sure that it's a bad thing oren did you want to add to that with what we're doing currently versus sure so under no matter which

140direction we go if it's the new status quo we're trying to go back to the old status quo under both situation the iep team always had the right to pull the kid from our day schools if they didn't feel like it was the least restrictive environment so in no matter which model we go the home district always has that mechanism to say at the iep meeting we're not seeing the growth here or we're not liking the scores therefore um we might be second-guessing this least restrictive is different than quality right in other words what they could say is is this is maybe the we have to look for a different least restrictive environment because you guys aren't cutting the mustard it could i mean the least restrictive environment is supposed to give the child the

141best access the to the education so if we're not showing that we're doing the scores then it could be what else is out there what are the other options for the student and no matter which way it goes that'll always be an opportunity for the iep team not every district sends to our agency so there are districts in the state that do not interpret that our agency is the least restrictive environment that there are alternatives that are just as suitable for children correct in their determination in their determination they have students of which we are not the least restrictive and they don't see us as the least restrictive environment right because what we're talking about are two different things least restrictive is different than best quality and so the question becomes from my perspective it's

142about the quality in other words so when they say that sometimes they're maybe using that as a little bit of a word to say well this is a least restrictive environment too where they're kind of like saying but it's really a better education i'm not saying it is or isn't the case but that sounds to me to be like the best competition for accountability out there right it's a free market concept that you know the way that the the the tide will rise is through competition and so if if the agency can't deliver a good educational product the parents and the school districts will vote with their feet they'll go somewhere else when you take away that accountability it's great you have a passive people kind of the the district drops them off and it

143doesn't become it doesn't reflect on them so whether or not that is the least restrictive environment's not the issue they're not held accountable in the reverse about quality and so to me it seems like this is and i suspect that's why ade came to this conclusion that ultimately somebody thinks that this is a better model in terms of accountability that's my i could be wrong but mike manley would have better insight i'm just kind of shooting off the cuff there because again i don't know any of the acronyms and actually i think our decision was based on the attorney general not in a vacuum right but my point is is those statutes exist for a reason so somebody want to make sure that we're protecting these kids and making sure that folks are watching out

144for them so that's you know uh action whether or not there should be forwarded as a statute i'm sorry uh mark so you you're you're moving to decide yes or no should we advance this statute to the legislature well i think we should decide i mean i think that's i can ask for a second or not i mean well we're to vote to decide that i think you should move to either table this or move to not send it uh or move to send it i mean one of one of those three things right so i make a motion to have that vote the the other vote to not send it well yeah well that's what i mean we can have that vote but you have to make a break we have to take one

145of those right i'll second that motion this is dean wait are we voting not to send it or to send it not if you say yes you are voting not to send it okay so we have a motion to not send this bill to the legislature um so all in favor of of not sending so again to be clear voting for this motion means we are not sending this bill this time to the legislature we're in this form to the legislature so all those in favor uh say hi hi mike uh any um is that did you did you vote yeah i i'm sort of on i sort of have a question of does that completely pull this off the table for future discussion or if there's a will there be a revisit uh that's

146it just means that we're we're not going to approve it or send it to you at this time right okay at this meeting or in this form yes okay then i'm in favor of that okay all right uh any opposed no okay um so that uh has concluded so we will not say that mike um i don't i you know as an employee of the department of education and a certified special ed teacher we are invested in the success of these kids and a hundred percent um if we can work with superintendent uh reichman and get to the gist of where we want folks to be held to account we're a hundred percent open to doing whatever we can do to help um the ourselves populations that are serving in in this institution constitutionally defined

147institution um and i i you know obviously the discussion isn't isn't over but um i want to portray the willingness to do what we think is the in the best interest of these kids in the state um from littlefield to yuma so we need to cover the entire state and think of what's in the best interest of all these these kids so okay well we can't be voted to not move this forward now this discussion is going to continue and i'd really like for this video okay okay sorry soapbox i'm wanted to throw that out there uh sure thank you um so now uh we can move on to the next agenda item uh so we we had voted earlier in the meeting to move out of order just a bit uh i believe we're

148going down to 707. uh discussion accident action item election of 2021 board officers pursuant to policy uh shall be the last meeting in the calendar year um so for this one we need a president and a secretary uh so we should uh probably discuss president first if there are any uh discussion i'm so sorry to interrupt this is the captioner i am in dire need of a break okay i'm so sorry i was trying to find a spot but i'm i'm not very accurate now and i just need that break okay um is there uh is it possible to take a five-minute break um can i i'll i'll i'll move to to adjourn for not i'm sorry i'm editor i'll move to to take a five minute break sounds good i'm gonna need ten ten

149okay um all right we will pause now or if does anyone uh does any of the board members um second that motion uk does suit does okay great uh all those in favor for ten minute break say hi hi hi dean manley oh any of charlie any opposed okay i don't see any opposed so let's all take a break um it is now 6 30 at 6 40. uh we will resume uh so thank you hello everyone it is uh now 6 41. i want to make sure everyone is back online and that we are ready to resume all right excellent um thank you everyone so we were on 707 election 2021 board officers pursuant to policy um we will need a president and a secretary uh so i'll entertain discussion first for president i

150would like to nominate david nigro to continue uh thank you um i uh i certainly would accept the nomination shall we second uh are there any other nominations okay um all right so then you've you've uh would you move to uh i moved to nominate david nigro to be our president for the next year okay uh thank you lynn and a second mike manley like the second uh mike uh okay uh all in favor uh say i or show you a show of hands be good thank you um and any opposed and seeing none um that carries uh for secretary uh i'd like to open it up for any nominations for secretary sukay why don't we keep the team together move to nominate sue k i am not opposed um to that at all the

151my my one concern is if the governor's office should come around to um appointing my um replacement on a cth's board i would no longer be representing acdh that might my term with asdb would be done if they don't move me into another position we'll keep you until that time ck okay yeah yeah i i was going to say we had the exact same conversation last year and right we did look they did interview me for for the board position so that's a that's a step in the right direction okay that is um so i have uh uh dean your hand is racing i'm seconding the motion second in the motion excellent um so all those in favor for suitcase to be secretary okay uh any opposed and not opposed so that that carries um

152thank you sue k uh so with that done we're gonna go back to 2.01 a shelly um just to let you know i'm going to step out i have to return to my class okay i will see you all the next time all right thank you um 2.01 action item approval of a consent agenda consistent report policy to include items 3.01 5.02 7.02 7.04 and 7.05 uh do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda or to in the alternative to remove any of those items from the consent agenda it's flynn i appre i moved to approve uh action item 2.01 okay uh do we have a second i second okay i see um 2k seconds uh all in favor please say i or raise a hand or a thumbs up and any of

153any opposed okay so the percent agenda passes we can move on uh to 3.02 action item approval of new district agreements uh dr rex there are two uh new agreements that are up for consideration um did you have anything to say about either of those not at all i just know that that was a board request whenever we added new districts to make you all aware of what we're bringing into our house so this is a simple action item with a uh someone to motion and a second great um and these dr x these are all the typical agreements i know sometimes with uh some of the tribes we have special you know terms and things like that so there's there's no other term that's out of the ordinary no okay uh great so do

154i have a motion to approve these contracts i move that we approve the new contracts okay second okay sue k second uh all those in favor um say i or a wave or a thumbs up hi your video bye and any opposed okay thank you um next up is item 4.01 information item finance report shaina cooper jana cooper executive director of business services good evening board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex members of the board and the asdb community our most recent finance committee meeting was held yesterday on december 2nd with board members manali and gordon and superintendent reichman in summary we reviewed in detail and discussed the october 31 2020 and 2019 budgetary and fiscal year budget to actual comparison reports the available cash balance the grant revenues and expenditures report and also

155looked at the student enrollment as of november 1st 2020 in comparison to november 1st 2019. provided to each of you is the same financial data but in a more condensed summarized version and as referenced on page one there were 519.53 filled full-time equivalents and 71 vacant positions as of november 1st for enrollment as of november 1 2020 asdb had 2092 students and as of november 1st 2019 we had 2104 students so a difference of about 12 students you'll see the details of the decrease on the bottom of page 1 as well as on page 2. page 3 begins a financial summary based on the comparative data for october 31 2020 compared to october 31 2019 and what you will see is that the collected revenues for bfy are budget fiscal year 2021 of 4.1 million

156which is 1.6 million lower compared to last year's 5.8 million dollars the decline is primarily in our voucher revenues received as well as the loss of a majority of the ade federal grant funding that we've talked about previously which have included the title 1 title 2 title 4 as well as the idea basic and preschool grants so what that means is we have not been able to spend on those grants because they were not awarded which means we have not been able to receive reimbursement for any of those expenditures that would have been incurred on those grants total expenditures have decreased by about a hundred thousand dollars and most of that decline is due to the in-state and out-of-state travel although our expenditures are showing a slight decline from last year to this year we

157do have some other operating expenditures that were not originally budgeted for but the funding is being able to provide and respond to the coronavirus pandemic where we still are continuing to monitor and ensure our staff as well as students and teachers receive the equipment and supplies needed so example the face coverings and humanity shields and we're also improving the use of our education technology and supporting the distance learning on page nine of the report you'll see comparing actual revenues to the expenditures that i've talked about we are showing a deficit of 5.6 million dollars when you compare those actual revenues to um expenditures and so what that means in layman terms is that we've been having to use our june 30 available cash balance as well as our general fund appropriations again as i've mentioned

158before this really isn't of any particular concern at this time as we are still waiting and are expected to receive the voucher revenues for the month so there are no concerns there what i've had to do is just continue to monitor the cash balance as well as making sure that we're using other other funding sources until those revenues are received you'll also notice in this month's report because the first quarter basic financial statements were not able to be provided in the september 9th board meeting you'll also see the financial reports for the quarter of september 30 2020 and 2019 i include those reports on page beginning on page 10 and those reports consist of our basic financial statements which would be our balance sheet income statement as well as our statement of cash flows for

159the fiscal year uh with the ongoing cova 19 pandemic again it's still difficult for me to continue to draw conclusions about the potential impact to the operations for the year we are still continuing to encourage everyone to think about how to spend less as well as continue to try to implement continuous cost saving initiatives where we can and look at other available funding sources to use the team is still continuously working hard on processing payroll invoice payments and we're also reviewing and preparing our november or excuse me our july through november monthly budget package updates and based on all of the data so far they're not any immediate material concerns based on what i do know again i still continue to monitor our revenues expenditures and our cash balances very closely as well as watching

160our student enrollment and usage of the general fund appropriations so we will continue to plan for uncertainty as well and making sure that our expenditures do not exceed our revenue sources and any continued unforeseen needs or requirements created by the kova 19 pandemic will require expenditure reductions to ensure that we're fiscally solvent if there's no questions on any of the information presented that concludes my report of the agency's information and fiscal data thank you are there any questions or comments for ms cooper uh mike just i'm continue to be super impressed with the level of transparency that shayna brings to this um it's extremely helpful and she can answer questions um straight away it's it's it's night and day um i'm super appreciated and it gives us a very clear picture of what what's going

161on thank you uh thank you are there any other questions for miss cooper no okay uh seeing now we're going to go to 5.01 action item approval of superintendent evaluation um you uh all have seen in the executive content section of board docs the uh results of that evaluation uh that was conducted uh in the last few weeks um if there's any if anyone would like to take discussion of it um you know we certainly can do that ernie i just wanted to say thank you um five of the nine committed evaluations um those five valuations were put together into a summary sheet dr nancy alexander did that for us um just general summary and generally the evaluations provided evidence that the board continues to be supportive of the work that i'm doing as your

162superintendent and the work of our agency um the the highest rated areas were specifically on the leadership delegation that i'm good at delegating to the leadership team different responsibilities that i have good report with the deaf community um you also said that i'm really good at keeping you informed about the most recent policy changes about issues that are going on um some areas for improvement uh where i was rated lower one was i need to improve my relationships in working with the blind community another one was to bring together the board with the agency leadership team to have more collaboration between the board and the agency leadership team so um an area of focus which i am doing will continue to do is that continuous improvement of the agency the entire agency and that i

163need to continue to work with you as a board to increase your knowledge and understanding of the agency's work we've commented that in the areas of operations and finances that we've been able to demonstrate significant improvements and that another area that i need to improve on is to really focus on communicating with external stakeholders including the blind community there were several mentions of wanting to know more about the work that the regional cooperatives are doing you need to be providing more information related to that so that in a nutshell some other feedback that you provided i really appreciate you taking the time to do the evaluation and i will do my part to follow up on the feedback that you've given me thank you superintendent um if there are no other comments on that um

164we can vote to we can entertain a motion to approve the evaluation for the record mrs uk so moved i see a second uh all those in favor all opposed okay thank you um and the next item is going to be 7.01 introduction and possible discussion policies gc fca gcp and gcr uh ms murphy good evening board members you have before you the red lines of policies gcf ca gcg and gcr they were submitted to you for review um there was one question regarding some language about gcfca and i'm going to continue to work with um director pyatt to just get some clarification around substitute certifications they were posted on the website and i have not received any public comments on them and at this time i am available for your questions no oh no

165okay sorry um so uh miss murphy um before these come up for uh the second read we'll we'll have the answer to that the substitute uh yes yes and i believe that what you were referring to was reciprocal certifications and so what we'll do is we'll tweak the language to make sure that it's very clear that we're talking about substitute certifications right yeah that's that's exactly it yes yes and uh miss payat and i have a uh we're going to get together and just figure out how we're going to tweak that language on monday okay oh great thank you if there are no other questions that there's information items so we can move um down to 706 discussion of possible action items calendar for 2021 regular board meetings um i think superintendent right and you

166can discuss um part of this um i think we're really what we're doing is um looking at or the primary thing that we're doing is looking to schedule the work sessions in february and april but uh superintendent reichel yes and also just to put on the table the january meeting is scheduled to be in tucson um knowing that the the community transmission continues to increase we may want to exchange that to phoenix and to continue the virtual meeting until perhaps the summer that's the other so there was two parts to the calendar that i wanted to bring back to the board for consideration uh correct and and uh i think the other issue um and again i i understand you know the the covet situation being what it is it was looking you know much

167different in september it's looking a lot better and now it's not looking great um the other issue i think in july we have set that meeting for flagstaff and i understand there may be some difficulty getting space there but sedona looks like the better northern location or an area around in the sedona area um is that that also um the case yeah that's true yeah thank you for reminding me yes great so maybe on on this we would relocate the july 22nd meeting uh from flagstaff to sedona i i hope that by july we'll be able to to do that in person um you know we'll we'll of course we'll see um does there any issues with the february 4th or april 8th dates um or if we if we can't do that we can

168follow it up with a doodle poll and and approve it in our january meeting but if anyone has a an issue with those dates please please let us know now it doesn't look like we have anyone with an issue with that date which is great um and then moving to to phoenix is there any anyone with an issue of moving the january meeting to phoenix with the likelihood that that will be done virtually no okay um great so i i think if if that is all set then i think we would entertain a motion or i can make a motion i move that we um adopt the proposed work session dates of february 4th 2021 and april 8th 2021 as well as move the location of the january 14th 2021 meeting to phoenix from tucson

169and moving the july 22nd 2021 meeting uh from flagstaff to sedona second a second okay uh all those in favor uh i see mike mark uh lynn dean and mike manley uh any opposed okay great um so we've now made those changes uh leticia if you can inform the board perhaps in some calendar invitations on those um and and or otherwise distributed to the board so we we're on the same page that would be excellent um uh item 8.01 call the public call public on non-agendized items um again you know in keeping with the uh the earlier entry we advertise the the public comment email address in advance of the meeting we did not receive any emails to that address for item 8.01 so we can continue to 8.02 discussion item agenda items for the

170next regular board meeting scheduled for january 24 january 14 2021. um anyone that would like to have some discussion on that uh no seeing seeing none uh we'd move to 9.01 actually i'm adjournment limp that's my job i moved to adjourn this meeting okay uh in a second um uh suitcase seconds all those in favor say aye all opposed okay thank you everyone um for making this possible for coming uh coming to the meeting um and uh thank you to the media department to for getting this together and again assembling what i know is a difficult production to get get it together get the capture and get the interpreting um and uh you know making sure that meeting is accessible to all um and again uh thank you so much uh a have a good

171good rest of your month thank you happy holidays everyone thank you happy holidays happy holidays