001phone to speak because i think the microphone's a little better than my laptop so i think that will work a little bit better is that good is that view good perfect okay great and we are live okay um good good afternoon everyone uh welcome to the uh the work study session i think we're getting a little bit of feedback on the line yeah or some kind of noise if everyone commute other than me hopefully it's not me let me try meeting myself okay that's good excellent okay thank you thank you everyone um so uh welcome to the meeting it is uh um so it's time to take a roll call lynn davidson here here linda pogue here mike gordon there and i do not see anyone else but for the sake of completeness mark sims
002dean howard shelly herbal and suitcase okay great uh so we do have uh five on the line uh so we can proceed with the meeting thank you uh very much if we can go to our agenda um there is a the first we'll just start with a brief review of our september 24th meeting nancy if you could provide that to us that would be great good afternoon this is nancy alexander when we met on september 24th we discussed a variety of strategic plans and liked the format of a few of them and so i put together all of your ideas and sent out a strategic planning draft with the help of leticia we have the agency's vision and mission we have our operating principles and then came up with four pillars of success that we
003concluded at the end of the meeting one was communication and relationships one was student development one was organizational culture and the last was resource management from those pillars we had discussions and we'll i'll help you bring those back around about some ideas of data driven mike manley mentioned the pso so we'll talk to tie in and we kind of got into some matrixes that we would want to use as measurement but what we're tasked to do today is to really look at the priorities and any kind of guiding principles that we want to add so that that will help the agency leadership begin to put in specific action steps and how they're going to be measured so if we have a successful meeting today we will have some priorities developed under each one of those
004pillars and we will have some guiding principles if not we'll just keep working this is a work in progress there's not a deadline or a timeline that we're under we'd like to get some action steps worked on but when we're ready so what i put together for you to help you look at all the 25 plus strategic plans that you were given were sample priorities that and then i listed where they came from and then i also gave you sample guiding principles and the list that they came from linda has a question yes thank you i do have two questions before we continue as you mentioned we had a list of different principles could you give us an idea of how you would like us to prioritize that and how are they are we or
005is that our task to prioritize them under specific pillar and what is the difference between the guiding principles and the guidelines that principles could you define that place yes okay the set um let's start with sample priorities you came up with the four pillars at the last meeting the pillar of communication and relationships the pillar of student development pillar of organizational culture and the pillar of resource management tonight i would like you to get two or three priorities under each pillar so i took all of the strategic plans and gave you samples so that was just to help consolidate the strategic plans the guiding principles will be things that specify the priorities in a little more detail for example if you had a priority under student development that she wanted to work with the schools
006okay okay oh okay i'm just trying to adjust who exactly is interpreting for me as far as voicing for me so who i would direct my questions to okay i'm getting used to the in person with the remote and in-person interpreters so i apologize okay so the first question i understood let me clarify my second question what is the difference the difference between the guiding and the guideline principles so i would like to know the difference between the two as mentioned if you can briefly get a summary of what the two would mean so that way i can have a schema okay both of those should be guiding it is a typo mistake thank you for the clarification thank you thank you i appreciate that thank you nancy that makes sense and i apologize so
007david that summarizes where we were with the september 24th meeting were there any other questions from anyone thank you all right thank you nessie i don't i don't see any others um in terms of our next item on our agenda our explanation of the strategic planning framework i think we've you've covered a lot of that in response to linda's question um but uh you know as you had mentioned we've in our last meeting we we coalesced on uh these uh these pillars so to speak and tonight's discussion which we'll move into momentarily under point three is what are the the priorities and the the guiding principles uh that we're going to have uh supporting those pillars um and as nancy had mentioned uh you know she's she's kind of summarized those 25 or so strategic
008plans from uh you know elsewhere in state and in the west uh to kind of distill some of their information although that's just you know a guideline i mean really we're open to anything um you know that the board may have but those were you know some examples from those other districts and other schools for the deaf and other schools for the blind uh so from there uh you know i if we can move on to point three uh the suggestions for the priorities under each pillar i i have some samples that i've you know or some ideas um and i'm sure that others do as well so i think if we can start if one person would like to start and then we can go kind of pull each of us um to talk
009about things although we certainly don't have to have a serial type of discussion i think if um someone wants to start with others feel free to uh to jump in uh does that make sense um is there someone that would like to to go first i'll jump in um okay thank you under the first pillar excellent communication and relationships we definitely need to have a priority of better communication with school districts uh we have a lot of special ed directors who are not happy with our agency right now um and we have uh also offered up having an open forum where they would they would run it and they would lead it to discuss some of their concerns questions about the agency and how they are interacting with it that would include possibly ade case
010and giving them a format to express their concerns and their questions and we really need to improve that communication because it's not working right now this is linda i also feel that in the deaf community we would like to ask more involvement as far as you know how we're communicating to the deaf community and our constituents and who we are working for in the community and i feel like we need more of a forum like lynn mentioned that way we can have a better understanding lynn you mentioned the school districts are we asking that as far as teachers only or who are we looking for stakeholders primarily right now is the special ed directors our students throughout asdb are coming out of our school districts and right now a lot more has been put on
011this special ed directors and it hasn't been clear how they are supposed to handle all the new changes um so primarily at this point working with the special ed directors because they basically own all of the kids at asdb they are receiving their services through asdb but they are still registered now with their home school districts correct me if i'm wrong mike understood thank you lynn yeah and and lynn i i this is david i i agree um you know i i think that we you know really need to be more customer service oriented uh when we deal with districts because we you know we are um we're not the only choice uh right so uh whether we're talking about sending uh students to uh you know our the co-ops or other districts choose to
012partner with us in the in the co-op model or whether they choose to place students at one of the campuses uh you know we're really an option for them uh and and we should be the i mean we should be the best option that uh uh you know that they have um and uh in terms of communicating that uh with the you know not just the teachers but the the special education directors and and other district personnel is important so they feel comfortable in you know in in working with asdb to educate their students is linda david that's a really good point and that leads me to think that when we're working with special ed directors how are we communicating cultural diversity and respect how are we communicating the deaf history or the needs of
013our population within that school district if there isn't a one size fit model so absolutely how we're communicating in our best approach in servicing these students and maybe providing information in one place per se via that forum yes they do follow ieps but i think the perspectives that they hold what perspective are they coming in with a diverse perspective how to work with diverse needs and students it gets complicated and i think it we definitely should put the onus on special directors to educate their districts as well i think transparency is very important uh linda this is david um you're right in terms of the how we how we communicate that you know in terms of uh you know in terms of the you know the history and the culture um i think that's done
014it is done differently depending on on the the model so a campus that's done in one way and an itinerant model it's done uh you know perhaps a different way uh you know but in terms of the the priority i think that that not just building the capacity with the district but becoming the provider of choice should be it's something i would think would be what would be the priority um and then we can in a moment talk about guiding principles that would support that david this is nancy um so to help with this process if you look at the three priorities that you talked about and we're not going to worry so much about semantics but it is really ensuring that excellent customer service building capacity with districts and engaging the community and some
015guiding principles that go along with that that i heard were embracing and valuing diversity so that that gives a little more direction to this priority as well as provider of choice and so that's another guiding principle that helps this more clearly define what we need by by the ensuring excellent customer service so you're on a really good role here uh thanks nancy um at least um and i'd like to hear the perspective of others but um if we're if we're you know merging uh into point four guiding principles i think that um you know we need to to have our guiding principle that you know under that that item or that priority becoming a provider choice and building capacity is that the student needs have to drive decisions and that those decisions have to utilize
016data-driven practices at least from my perspective again i'd i'd like to hear others thoughts on that linda here sorry i i missed the previous comment david you were talking about um data driven um that should guide decision making um can you can you expound upon that help me understand that a little bit more uh sure so part of that there's kind of two guiding principles that be under that one is that student needs drive decisions so um you know all the students have ieps um so we know that the the teams have done their their work and uh determining what the child needs to uh you know to receive an appropriate education um and and that should drive the decision that you know the decision-making that uh is collectively uh made by uh both the
017district and uh and asb personnel and again that could be placement in one of our campuses it could be utilizing the services of our co-ops you know again either way but the idea is that the student need uh you know would drive that decision as opposed to some other you know some other factor in terms of the data drip the data-driven practices um you know we have to be able to um have some kind of confidence that these uh you know that what's selected in those um uh in the student needs or what selected ieps uh are are effective uh so or and that that have some kind of um or supportive support in uh in education and education academics so the idea would be as an example if we're going to select and again
018we just did i'll use this as an example because we just did this if we're going to select a braille curriculum we have to have some sort of information as to what that curriculum could be used for right we as we went through that exercise just recently about a year ago we saw that some work for certain student populations and others are more geared towards other student populations and we have some you know we were able to leverage the experience of others um in selecting you know one of those uh you know one of those areas same thing with uses of technology there's a lot of adaptive technology um and we have to be able to to justify our decisions to you know to say this one is the the one that's going to be
019the i don't want to say the standard um but this is the subset uh that we use that we're gonna uh that we're gonna coalesce behind um that and those those decisions can't be made in an arbitrary manner and i think by using those uh those guidelines or those guiding principles we'd be able to better become a a provider of choice because we're able to justify that our educational practices our educational services are supported by other research and other other educational academics before before we deliver them we're not we're not arbitrarily picking them and we're not leaving it on a teacher by teacher decision we have some kind of organizational guidance behind making those decisions this is linda well said david that's exactly what i mean um and when we're talking about deaf education there's
020tons and tons of different resources and information so i'm wondering how the school district special education providers how they're able to filter through this information to make sure that they have um correct data-driven information and that's a concern that i have and i want to make sure you know and and it changes for deaf education it's constantly changing there's always newer and better research driven approaches um so how are we communicating that with the special education directors to ensure that they're following it for their students who are within their districts who are deaf and hard of hearing deafblind etc uh this is you know my perspective i think the ap and they're they're who responsible who who they're the responsible team to look at that information but who's providing the resources for them and communicating
021that and you know where do they start sorry i'm talking so much go ahead okay it's okay uh this is david um and and i'd love to get the other um your perspective of others but from from my perspective it's that area is an opportunity where uh you know the agency can can really grow um and improve um i think that uh i'm not sure i had this as another priority i'm not sure if this is related or not um you know but i i i i i like the idea of um you know becoming a thought leader in in the space and you know the reason for that is you know why we look at texas school for the blind for example and that always comes up as you know one of the best
022schools for the blind in the country and and you know what what is that there's there's probably several reasons for that but one of the reasons is that they have a tremendous online resource for parents um of blind visually impaired children um they they have a lot of uh research and guidance for parents um into into how blind education and visually impaired education um you know should be conducted some of the best practices uh and they have they've kind of compiled that and they have it accessible to to everyone and i think that's that's why they're a big resource in the community because it's you know they've put that work in and they've been able to communicate that um online so it's open to everyone you don't have to call them you don't have to
023you know pay to get consulting you know consulting services or something like that it's there for you to access and and i think that a lot of people do um and i'd like to see again i'm not sure that this is a related to the priority we're just talking about um but the idea that we can put some of this work online or make it access otherwise accessible to people uh it would be helpful in not just improving the the stature of the agency but enable us to demonstrate the a level of support uh of what the agency you know can do and the resources that it uh that it that it can marshal but you're right i think now currently it's there's certainly an opportunity to better communicate um some of these practices to
024to districts um although i again i'd like to hear uh the input of others and linda you asked about you know districts knowing um new methods new approaches um new research being done into um deaf education a lot of what they're going to look at you know we rely on this if they're placed in one of our brick and mortars that those teachers staff administrators have that knowledge and background what's going to happen is districts are going to look at test results because those are all going back to their home high schools now and that's going to reflect on the letter grade that they receive from the state as a school so they're going to be a lot more focused on how those students are are performing academically because it's going to affect how they
025look as a special ed department in their school it's not going to reflect on pdsd as much or asdb but it will reflect on their home schools if that makes sense so i know this can be i've heard it from a number of special ed directors and they're they're really concerned and are really going to be paying attention um and wondering if this is the best choice if this is where the kids are really receiving the the academic rigor that they that they're looking for for their kids yeah and and lynn that's a a great point that you know because the those results are going to be owned by the districts um you know with the with the new agreements have been put into place um you know we're we're accountable to those districts and
026we need to you know be sure that we're we're doing uh you know the best that we can to educate their students um you know and you know certainly um when we you know when we look at that that kind of new responsibility to that new avenue of accountability uh you know we have to i mean i think that's part of why we're doing the strategic planning is to make sure that we're in a better position to to have that accountability this is mike this is linda um there's just one small point i wanted to make here i do realize in the past schools for the deaf in general across the country were looked upon as a dumping ground a dumping ground um did i freeze dumping ground and um students who were deaf and
027hard of hearing that stayed in the school districts who were falling behind and failing were sent away to the schools for the deaf okay so that's one thing that we do need to recognize historically that has happened and we need to make sure that we are protecting the schools as appropriate and that we are still providing the appropriate education and education um be an outstanding institution for students who are deaf and hard of hearing and not just be a place that's considered a dumping ground if if you get to my point i just wanted to add that to the conversation because it is something that we have seen in the past and it was it was a horrible problem that um really brought a lot of schools to closure because districts were deflecting responsibilities um
028and putting it on the schools for the deaf and that's what i'm talking about where is the school district's responsibility in that and that's my thoughts um just wanted to share that perspective or mike manley go ahead michael um i'm looking over the guiding principles a certain it's an interesting juxtaposition between what might be considered uh student services or what might be considered a staff perspective um i mean obviously looking just under the excellent communication relationship number two is making decisions based on the best interests of students i mean that's a kind of a no-brainer i would hope but uh at the same time you know maybe not but quite a few of these you know when you talk about embracing value diversity maintain a safe and secure environment provide welcoming and inclusive environment promote
029and support personal health and well-being build resilience and capacity to persevere i guess in in this case when we're looking at these as as examples but maybe also as as templates are they are we talking about that for the students to be able to develop those those traits and uh encouraging those things are we talking about the staff to be able to follow those precepts and uh so or maybe both or and if so how uh you know how does that um how's that translated because you know i think to some degree as we're talking about the competitive nature and being a school of choice and uh informed choice etc you know being able to have what we feel are our teachers that can uh can truly walk that talk uh will be the to
030some degree one of the defining characteristics as to you know the strengths of of and the interest of of choosing asdb or primarily i think i'm talking about the co-ops right now but and again my perspective is blindness so it's it's a much smaller sample uh in in this school uh but you know our if to me that's those are if we apply these towards guiding principles for teachers i think that's a pretty important aspect and emphasis that that we might want to embrace mike this is my family i just wanted to uh pile on on uh lynn and linda's comments about uh the accountability and making sure that the perception of a dumping ground dies quickly and doesn't continue down the future so um i think uh lynn has spot on that um that's
031sort of transparent communication with our primary stakeholders which are the least that feed us children should be taken quite seriously and if we could reach out to do that and kind of with linda's point that these lias do have a stake in the future of these kids and they they're in their communities that's where their families live so you know it's a good thing that their districts are going to be concerned about their academic standing and have some accountability for that so if um as that continues those uh that academic rigor is going to continue to be a need for focus um so i would i would think that that would be a great first place for communication would be to focus on our lease that give us our kids to make sure that they
032know exactly what they're getting into with asdb and how how their needs are being met and go down that rock but i just wanted to uh pile on it i think linda and lynn are on the right path there with what probably needs to happen sooner than later for for us to make sure that we're on the right foot moving forward with our stakeholders uh thanks mike and i i certainly agree i mean i think when we look at district looks at placing a student um you know either at the at the campus or or um looks at getting services to a co-op i mean you know that's really should be based on student educational need and not you know it shouldn't be viewed as you know we're shipping the student out i mean that
033you're right the student's part of that community and and uh you know is valued in that community and we need to provide a uh you know at least as good if not better education than you know they would receive in their uh in their home school district uh if they're being placed on on campus and again that decision not to be placed on campus is really uh you know it is that campus model you know that we have at pdsd or asd for as an example that's going to provide you know certainly quite a bit of benefits over for certain students from students that need it over their their home district or their home school but we need to make sure the district is comfortable in in setting the child there if that's again in
034the child's best interest mike in terms of the mike gordon in terms of the discussions of the priorities may i think what you had mentioned it does relate to uh you know primarily to staff i think that's uh you know that's certainly important although you can extend some of those principles to to students but when we look at you know other kind of the other pillars i mean you're right that some things that we do to enhance relationships you know also help with student development i mean so that there is going to be you know some some some side effects of that i i think um you know as an example i had another um you know outstanding student development under that pillar of trying to close some of the educational gaps that we have
035with some of our students um with guiding principle of you know of equity and rigorous instruction you know those achieving that would certainly help our communication and relationships but i think that under you know if we're orienting ourselves they're probably more more squarely under the student development pillar than than otherwise if we're we're looking at that other student development pillar are there other other priorities that any of the board members have that they want to discuss one of the notes that i had in terms of priorities of student development is the sorry uh is proficiency in language and you know and again we're looking at the agency here not just the um you know k through through 12 we're really looking at the whole agency which covers uh zero to three earlier intervention um and
036what we now call the early learning program so you know a key priority for me um is is getting children especially young children you know proficient in uh you know language um and at an early age i know that's that's an issue for many of our students um and uh you know they they need to acquire language so you know to me that's another uh early childhood proficiency provisioning language um for in early childhood in early learning uh i i think should be a a primary uh priority for for us under that pillar uh with a guideline principle of access to instruction and and technology uh where it's neat where technologies is needed to support those goals but also the access to to the appropriate instruction this is lynn i agree we've got to get
037that language in early um put a lot of emphasis in that area but we also need to keep up the rigor of our education as the students progress and not water it down really look at the standards and and make sure that our curriculum is matching that next this is linda okay i think my video froze for a second all right so i absolutely support what you're saying david as far as starting early early education is vital zero to three it's pivotal for language acquisition in any children and any child and i think that if we remind ourselves that ninety percent of deaf children come from hearing families and they come into our program at zero to three the earliest education their exposure to communication and language started at home not necessarily at asdb and
038if the school districts do not have the resources how do we approach that and are school districts capable and qualified in teaching a multitude of communication modes asl if we have a child who's learning language we're not sure if they're going to be successful in spoken language or asl are they being exposed to both modes of communication and so i wonder if we are looking at language acquisition what type of language is it visual any child can learn the visual language so i feel that how are we explaining the resources to parents if they're choosing to speak with their child and and we we have programs out there for example baby einstein books that teach sign language to hearing children but yet we we remove that option for our deaf children is conflicting for me
039and i feel like if we are the experts in that field we should be providing these resources to our families and so how do we teach our parents asl how do we explain this to the school districts how how do we start with language first and it doesn't mean just a spoken language so that's that's our task i think we have to be able to prioritize any type of language and communication mode and i don't want to set our children up for failure so that's a concern of mine and i feel that the kids again if we're looking at 90 percent of deaf children are born to hearing parents we have our work cut out and so yeah wow thank you linda no i i certainly agree i think when i use the term proficiency
040in language it encompasses both um you know asl for example um and spoken language um so it's not exclusive to one or the other um i think what's you know important is that the you know the trial develops absolutely so you know some language um and and that's really you know again i think parents are the primary driver of that choice um you know but we are responsible for uh providing the resources to um to learn that i do know even currently there are um we do run programs that teach parents asl uh parents that don't that don't uh speak asl uh to to learn it um and i i think that you know if we were able to expand that to other places um and other uh other locations that i think that certainly
041would be helpful for parents that um you know choose to to have their their children learn asl that certainly will be helpful uh in terms of the you know how we're how we're delivering those that language acquisition service so to speak uh you know we have early intervention uh in that zero to three uh area um and and we have you know a few years ago we've uh combined our early intervention with our preschool program now it's elp and you know i think we're trying to to kind of hold on to parents i think we did that because there was a you know we had an issue with parents kind of getting getting and not really staying connected with the agency so they turned three and then the agency would leave and they'd be left
042to their home school districts and were able to to bridge that gap better by having um you know one director uh for both of those programs and we're able to stay in contact with those families uh through that transition which is i lived through that transition and it wasn't it wasn't perfect i mean um but i think that by having uh you know that by operating on that that level we're we're on that in that area of having the the continuous contact with uh our elp staff were able to help guide those parents to make better choices and we're still able to work with those school districts to get those students uh into a preschool program that works for them and you know as you know we have you know we we provide and i
043think um it's great we have options for uh children that do use spoken language um and they that's housed at pbsd um it's also housed now we have a new contract with a third party provider in maricopa county that can do that i'd like i would love to see more of that you know that public-private partnership if we can have that in other areas other other locations but i know that we have the staff to do that as well uh and to deliver those those services remotely for for acquiring both you know both spoken language and uh and and asl but you know for me you know if that i really think that should be one of our you know top two or three if we're choosing priorities um that that really should for student
044development uh i think that should be at least one of our top two or three um priorities to make sure that we devote the resources we need to the elp program uh to get uh our children to acquire language that they we set them up for success later um in their uh again whether they come to our campuses or whether they stay uh in in their home schools uh so they acquire language early and they're not lagging behind their peers which is which is so often the the case unfortunately and linda that that our birth to three it used to be our birth to three program parent advocate program those staff go into the homes and work with the parents the school districts do not have anything they don't touch the kids until they're three
045years old at age three that's why we wanted to blend this to make a better transition and then the school district is involved um in services and how how they're provided where they're provided whether it be a preschool at their home school with other services coming in to work with those children or if it's on one of the campuses in their preschool programs but birth to three is still even though we put them together is still separate and the school district doesn't become involved until age three david this is nancy and that's my point like you said so from three and on um the district is involved so from birth to three how does that work how do we collaborate with the school districts for students who don't have services until they start with the
046district of three um for well for zero to three we don't work with the school districts at all because they're they're they're just not involved um the early intervention program throughout the state is is administered by the agency i'm sorry uh linda you were speaking right so so they have they have no involvement um in that zero to three years okay that's eddie yes okay i'm clear now thank you yeah i think right man mike manley did explain a little bit more about that i'm not very familiar with that with the school district's responsibility in zero to three if they had any mike manley sure this is mike so i was having trouble unmuting my machine um so federally speaking there's idea encompasses several aspects idea part c is actually governed by des so birth
047to three is outside of the scope of at the education realm uh it's early intervention services their governing body is like i said des that doesn't change until age three so uh at age three or two two years ten months districts can start to take a look at the service plans that those top infants and toddlers had and transition them into a school-age iep so so for example preschool is uh basically three and four-year-olds with an iep but before that it's a separate funding stream with separate uh governmental uh regulators for the state um so asdb is a little unique in that they group those two uh groups together but that's that's how the fiscal piece goes and the accountability piece goes so they're both they're both under idea idea b is three to 22
048in arizona and then idsc is is defensive so i know that like uh there's the state director of idea part c and a state director idea part b and they they work for different state agencies but we do meet and talk so there is some collaboration there but they are from different systems um and statewide whether a child is um eligible for participation in asdb or not if they have a different disability that would qualify them for an ap it's similar handoff between basically the azip the early intervention folks and the iep team which will hopefully happen before h3 which is the requirement so that's that's how that piece is structured and asdb just handles it a bit differently in that we as an institution we have the birth through 22. and currently our service
049coordinators who work with our birth to three families they guide the parents to get them to their school district to get those kids registered when they're two years 10 months start the process to set up an iep meeting i've sat in on many of those transition meetings and decide where services would best be provided so that's really an important part of what our service coordinators are doing with the families that they're working with you yeah and linda r is david our our ability to kind of have some kind of bri i don't call it a bridge service but uh to have some contact with the parent after age three um you know for a few months i think it's helpful um to make sure that they're guided in the in the right place and that
050transition happens effectively uh you know there are plenty of districts that run their own programs um you know for for blind children and deaf children uh and and that might be you know what that student needs and and we can still make sure that they're getting the services that they need in their home district but that's that's not every child and and you know we're able by having that um you know being able to provide uh some kind of guidance um post three to three and a quarter or three and a half um you know we'd be able to to steer that student into in the right direction to a program that that's going to suit their needs um again it's it's arizona we you know parent choice is really a guiding principle for you
051know all of the educational systems so you know we you know can't compel a child to go from one place to another but you know we can give parents the information they need to make a decision that's that's right for them and their family so in terms of that you know the the proficiency in in language um and uh maybe perhaps related is proficiency and expanded common core um which is uh you know kind of a related uh you know related curriculum um and at least from my perspective our guidance principle there is to make sure that there's access to instruction appropriate instruction and access to appropriate technology um you know to me those are the the two key aspects in that uh to support that pillar david this is nancy alexander i have summaries
052for you for sample priorities that i can do for the first two if you'd like me to now or i can wait until the end and summarize all four whatever would work best for you uh maybe wait till the end and summarize that um unless i mean is there any more discussion on the outstanding student development pillar that the others have you know in terms of priorities in terms of what they'd like to to see it um you know listed as those two or three priorities uh we've addressed okay so it says to develop um creative thinking skills do you know do you see those statements where it says develop the creative thinking skills a critical and relative the interpreter is missing the exact wording that you're looking at it's under the guiding principles she
053pointed and linda pointed out developed critical and creative thinking skills and as you guys have been talking about these i've got all the notes down that we will then put into um wording for you to take a look at to make sure we we were able to capture all of the guiding principles but i did include that and develop critical and creative thinking skills as we look at ways that we're going to have a priority of outstanding a pillar of outstanding student development with a priority in early learning proficiency and language a priority of making sure that we have the academic accountability to close that achievement gap and to keep the rigor that's standard based so those were kind of the three priorities that came up under that area along within the guiding principles that
054you have been sharing with us and this is lynn we also need to keep in mind consider the social social emotional aspect that um our kids struggle and they they need that social emotional support um because they don't they don't get it in the same way hearing kids do so um i think we need to keep that as a priority as well mrs lynde i agree i i would agree as well lynn okay if uh if we can move on to the the third pillar of superb organizational culture um are there are there any suggestions for priorities under this pillar um from from my perspective um you know one of our priorities uh i mean i i have two i mean one of them is modeling servant leadership i mean i i think that our
055administration should be you know focused on helping and well should be in you know it is today but should continue to be focused on helping um the you know the staff serve uh our children um and that's that really should be the the the focus of the focal point or the stance of leadership is to to serve um to serve the staff i mean to me that's uh i think that's an effective model um so that leadership can work together uh to accomplish these things and one of the guiding principles there is really removing removing obstacles for you know for staff to accomplish what they what they need to accomplish uh i also wanted to advance the climate of continuous improvement um you know the the idea that you know there's there's probably always room
056for improvement we should always be doing something to improve the way we're doing things both large and small so we we should be able to to have a priority of building some sort of continuous improvement feedback or into the the processes that we have in the in the agency you know and that can be that takes a variety of forms i mean one way is to look at things where go that go wrong and and perform some sort of uh you know either root cause analysis where we're taking a look at you know what led to that to that problem i don't want to you know implement uh six sigma or anything like that but you know if we can look at if we have an escape so to speak um where where in the
057process did it go wrong not necessarily to point blame it at one person or another but to see where the process could be improved and i think this is lynn i think it's important to keep professional development going to make sure that all staff get professional development to increase skills in deaf ed vision and to also what's going on in general education where their standards are um some of the strategies they may be using that would be effective with our our um brick and mortar schools to kind of bring them up into the 21st century and and have them competitive with with some of the um the things that are happening and i know we have to go through professional development all the time um and whether it's i'm the only deaf ed teacher and
058none of it's ever related to me but i always learn something from it that i can apply and i think that's something we need to really keep a focus on that and i don't know if it would be included here and i know we've been working on it for a few years a number of years is to develop leadership within and and look for leadership without so that we can create a leadership team to be able to fall back on if anybody leaves that's a great a great point um you know in a couple of areas i mean you know one professional development is you know we value our teachers and and we value our staff and we should be able to support them in in improving the the way that they do their jobs
059and and keeping up with the advancements and you know in the field you know in terms of uh you know developing homegrown leaders i think that's important too i mean in other organizations i've been involved with they uh always try to say you have to you have to you have to find your perspective of replacement right yeah you have to mentor a couple of people um you know that you know to be able to uh develop their skills and improve their skills so you know it's time for for you to advance um you know you can look behind you and say well i have i have a couple of people here or three people that um you know have been observing and have been approving and and and that know you know about this about
060this position and will be able to be successful there this is linda so thinking to what you're saying david and also with what lynn has mentioned if we're choosing teachers who are motivated or driven for deaf education or visually impaired students we have to also consider their backgrounds is this individual deaf is this individual blind what experience do they have not just academically so that way we can bring in more people from our communities to be role models for our students and i often times do see teachers who may be deaf but are plateaued they they don't they're not given opportunities to move up in their careers because let's say a hearing person may have obtained that position and so how do we work collaboratively with teachers that come from that marginalized background and how
061do we support our unique community and i feel teachers for the deaf at schools for the deaf should we have more deaf teachers that work directly with these students and how many can we do we see in this public school setting how do we support our school districts to identify leaders within our deaf and our blind communities that way they have more of a commitment and attachment to our communities into our students so i think if we're looking at inclusivity we have to start with the people that we hire and the the partnerships that we create within our stakeholders in our communities it's it's completely different to have someone come in with academic expertise but not that actual life experience and i'm sure that could be said for the blind community as well we if
062we're looking at people from diverse backgrounds how are we looking at inclusivity within their field how can we promote the experts teaching the experts i don't know i might be preaching to the choir but i'm putting out my thoughts out here and these are just my ideas this is mike mike gordon uh linda you are who wants to become the next president right like let's look at if the next superintendent is deaf or blind that's who we were looking for right because that's what's going to lead our school our agency because that's what we do that's who we are and so i'll just stop rambling now yes good point linda what you're saying is so pertinent to the importance of hiring staff that have understand sensory deprivation understand blindness i don't know how many blind
063staff there are at asdb out of our 600 employees but i know it's an important aspect of uh role modeling and training and again walking that talk and uh i'm sure it's the same in deafness and very important um you know we have a different approach at savvy in that we we we do non-visual training and when our staff we hire new staff they they spend at least the first couple weeks but as much as 400 hours in their first year in under sleep shade and non-visual training and an immersion so uh it's an important aspect of what we do and i think it's an important aspect of of learning rehabilitation in uh in a in a real setting from folks that that know how to teach it so i i think that's very good
064linda not something that's really really discussed very often either in regard to that specifically thank you uh uh linda this is uh david i mean i think you're you're right um you know i know when we did our last uh superintendent search we had i believe six finalists and and five of them were at either visual impairments uh or over death um or were hard of hearing uh so you know when you look at education and all of them you know were highly qualified they were principals at schools for the deaf or schools for the blind or former superintendents at other districts um you know in schools for the deaf uh so you know again when we look in in education that's uh you know we in deaf education especially you know we happen to
065to find you know very often that there are deaf individuals in in the field and i know we have you know quite a number at the agency uh but i think maybe what what you're asking is you know how can we develop them so that uh you know when leadership positions uh do arise that they're in a good position to uh you know to be competitive for those positions when they you know when they when they do arise um are there any other any other discussions about the organizational culture i know we have a couple of priorities that i i have proposed linda has proposed a very good one are there any other any other discussions on that no okay here now if we can go on to effective resource management that was our last
066pillar if we have any discussion on different priorities for that pillar one of the priorities that you know i have is is to optimize human resources um and and as a guiding principle to focus on efficiency and and lean management i think when we look at our um you know if we look at our the business reports that we get every meeting i think we're running at about 12 in terms of overhead um or administrative costs uh and that you know i think there's probably opportunity there to to improve some on that um i'd like to be able to say that we you know we that we can increase the amount of dollars that we that we spend the agency to direct student service and direct uh student programs and you know transportation uh you
067know to and from those programs uh so i think there might be some opportunity there um and that's you know again um making the management system you know a bit more lean a bit more efficient than it is today i don't know that i necessarily have a number in mind but i i think where we are is maybe a bit much is there any any other suggestions on that in terms of you know our ability to to optimize the human resources uh without hearing any of the other priority that i had in my notes for the to align the human capital and resources so so a guiding principle there would be to encourage effective facility management i know you know our use of the tucson campus has changed over the last few years and you
068know we i think we you know to be good stewards of that facility um you know we may have to make some changes as to how we use the campus uh either again we've these are things that we've talked about in the past you know either leasing to outside groups or repurposing buildings for different uses um you know i'm you know perfectly happy to to repurpose groups and start a building and start to program there so we can serve more children or serve the children we have with uh with deeper you know deeper services but you know at the same point i i want to make sure that we're you know we're using the campus that we're using all the campus and we're using it effectively i know now we talked again a few years
069ago about the dorms um and and their use and and the footprint of the dorms has decreased although with covid um it is you know my understanding is that we we have some space um some extra space to provide some distance so that's that's a good thing uh that one that we happen to have that now for covid but at some point in the future you know when the the that that threat uh to the agency is reduced i'd like to be able to um you know kind of go back to the more compact uh management of the especially with the tucson campus and to the extent there's there's management at the pdsd campus and that we can effectively use those resources i'm certainly open to that too i think the campus there is you
070know it's used differently and it's a it's in a uh you know it's a day school it's not not a residential school so um or it's not at least partially a residential school like the tucson campus oh linda so my thoughts on what you mentioned david and you're right having the two different campuses and i'm a product of a school for the deaf and a residential program and i grew up at a school for the deaf even though my parents are deaf and yes the language exposure was rich there but i think the social emotional development that i acquired at school for the deaf was critical and we have to remember that especially with our population of students and the activities that are promoted at schools for the deaf they're able to participate in clubs
071after school because they live in dorms and how we collaborate with school districts because of the dorm opportunity and they're activities that are so rich within our communities that we we have to you know historically remember that this is how our students relate and we're talking about the entire state of arizona so what opportunities are we able to give to other students that live in remote areas if they did not have the chance to come to the school for the deaf and or blind and then i think the more we connect our our population with our school districts and really enhance our the quality of life for school for the children at the schools for the deaf and what would it look like if we changed that and we no longer provided a residential program
072deaf education would change and it would have been an abrupt change and i understand being cost-effective and but yet maintaining growth and i see the downside to both options and if we do lease out to an outside organization could that blame itself an opportunity to keep the dorms because we are leasing other properties and i i go back to the social emotional development of our students and things that they don't find at home unfortunately it's it's yeah thank you linda yeah and and i do i i mean that should be clear i'm not saying that this is a guiding principle of producing or usage of the dorms um as a deliberate measure you know if there are fewer children that are parents that choose to send their kids there that's one thing um i know
073the uh i'm not sure if you were there for that visit we did a couple of years ago uh when they implemented the sentinel zone um you know area where the where the children go where the residential students go uh after school and that's a i mean that's great i mean that's a the central zone is really an amazing place i think um and they have you know the ability to to engage in different um you know activities there uh and also if you looked at the when we did the dorm tours uh the students were able to live collectively um they do their own laundry they cook their own meals they decide what meals amongst themselves that they're gonna cook um they they go and obtain that food um you know locally and then
074they come back and they they cook and then they clean up and that's uh you know that's all extra it's all expanded common core you know things especially for deaf or i'm sorry for blind children um those are all expanded common core life skills uh that we just you know we don't outside a residential program you don't have you know it's hard to get time to do that uh right so because you know we have all of these extra hours in the day to be able to learn those life skills uh and that's you know that that's you know to me i think that's that's really important for the the students who choose to come to the residential campus certainly that's not the right choice for every child of course um but what i mean
075by you know effective facility management is that we you know we're using the campus that we have and the resources that we have on campus effectively that i don't want to have um you know empty buildings uh i want to be able to use them and and whether that's used by a third party that's that's one thing we'd have to carefully select who would you know lease to etc and and and what uses they'd have or if we repurpose them to uh you know to provide other services or enhanced services um you know that that's another option too i know i think one of the buildings we have in the tucson campus was used uh first for some technical education classes um and now i know my understanding is that many of the students there
076you know go off campus for that uh now um if we can you know repurpose that that building for some other use that's productive um you know i'd wanna i wanna hear about that um and in terms of the you know even expanding the resources we've talked about programs you know having programs again you know the the population of arizona is um you know centered in in maricopa county um there's also a significant population down in pima um and then some near near flagstaff if there's and then there's a lot a lot of rural communities and and it's a challenge to reach those rural communities but we need to we need to do it um if the uh if the answer is that we need to have either lease you know some other space somewhere
077else um and run you know similar to what we do um you know up north there's a couple of places up north where we we do that um and bring children to those programs if we need to expand something like that um or try something new that's that's another um you know a way to align our you know our human and our capital resources and be able to deliver services in in locations that aren't our main campuses and outside maricopa and pima but we need to be able to again marshal the human resources to go to go do it and marshal the the capital to go do it um are there are there any other i think linda you try to say something yes um it says um attract and retrain retain qualified personnel is
078that okay right okay yeah yeah so i'm looking at that and i think that's important that we are bringing i want to speak to that that we're bringing qualified um teachers of the deaf and qualified teachers of the blind and visually impaired and that we're retaining them so how are we doing that um and how do we do that um you know often times they come looking for training and they earn their degree and then they leave they do their internships and then they leave um so i think it's important that you know we're we're bringing in those qualified personnel and staff and we're keeping them here and that throughout the cooperatives as well i wanted to add that as well sure and and i certainly uh agree with that i mean part of that
079is under the you know the organizational culture we want to have a culture that uh you know where staff want to work we want to have a culture that supports staff in their professional development um so they can grow professionally um part of that is you know resource management in terms of making sure that we can take you know competitive um you know compensation for you know the teachers and the other staff and there's you know several hundred teachers and there's hundreds of other staff so we want to make sure that every job classification we're able to offer a competitive package um you know relative to you know local school districts um you know that may be competitors for those you know for those for those folks um and in terms of you know our
080resource management you know again aligning that or or being more efficient i mean we hopefully can get you know more um you know more money directed towards direct student service i hope um as part of those efforts uh to increase efficiency so that we can uh you know use the money that we have if we don't have any increase in our in our budget um and again i don't know what if prop exactly passed or not or what the implication of that is for the agency i don't know yet um but if we were to say that our budget is fixed um you know how can we how can we get more you know more services from that uh how can we deliver more services with that same amount of money to the children i
081think that's that's to me is is one of our you know our challenges linda speaking and other different challenges um but we also you know we have our challenges and we also can have our goals and things that we want to see happen um and that's where we use our creativity to solve these challenges to overcome these barriers um that's something that i'd like to see happen that's my my thoughts so is that clear i know this is a strategic plan so we have to think outside the box and i know with coronavirus when that impacted the closure we had to think outside of the box with how we're providing education and we're still moving forward with our planning process you know we're coming up with the principles we're being creative with how we're going
082to address some of these barriers and we need to continue to do so no i i certainly agree linda and i think that's our you know kind of after today's meeting um you know uh nancy and i and internet will meet and kind of you know call us our notes here um and that'll give some direction to the professional staff to kind of come up with um kind of the rest of the plan in terms of what are some specific and measurable uh goals or items that we're going to look at um to support these uh you know to further the priorities and and to be in keeping with the guidance principles um so that's that's kind of the next next part of that is to um challenge the professional staff to to come up
083with some of those and and they certainly have um input from the the other strategic plans that that nancy has gathered um and and their own ingenuity to develop that um but i'm certainly looking forward um to their their input and then our next meeting we can go through that um and and have our input on on that or either ask questions or have some give them some notes on that so we can you know we can kind of hammer that out um is there any other um input in terms of the the priorities um and uh um and guidelines that's that's where um you know we've kind of merged items three and four but if there's any other input on these um we'd certainly like to hear it now and then and then i
084can kind of close up with with with number five okay so so hearing none we'll go to item five the next steps in the strategic planning process um i'll meet with uh with annette and nancy um in the near term we'll kind of hammer out what we've discussed in our meeting today again as i mentioned they'll send that to the professional staff and and they'll kind of give us their you know what they what they think are our measurable um areas that we can that we can really look at and uh and then that we'll come back for our next planning meeting our next week is a regular board meeting so it'll be the traditional setup uh but the the work study session after that um to go back and forth with the staff over
085that um once we get that kind of hammered down then i think we'll be well on our way we'll have a draft plan um so which will be which would be great because once we have that we can start tying our meetings together with that plan so that we know that all of the steps that we're we're taking all the actions that we're taking are meeting are going to be supporting you know one of these priorities and we're going to be doing it in accordance with one of these guiding principles um and uh and also we can start getting some baseline data you know quite quite frankly so that we can begin to measure progress um and then you know over the next year or two we can determine uh you know where progress is
086being made and how quickly it's being made and whether we need to devote resources to one area or another to uh to push that forward so um thank you everyone for joining us i think we you know i think we accomplished quite a bit here in terms of building out our strategic plan um and uh you know we got to hear the board and their input um and uh again thank you very much i appreciate it we'll see you in in december thank you david i have a question when is the next board meeting this is linda i'm not sure if latisha's on the line i know it's in dece i think it's early december but i forget the exact date it's yeah it's december 3rd okay december 3rd no okay december 3rd and then
087our next planning meeting following that is when yeah um yeah i don't believe that we have that scheduled yet we uh you know because of covid we had to cancel a couple of those meetings and and uh and then there was the meeting where we didn't have quorum in october uh so we got you know we're a little delayed of where we wanted to be you know primarily due to covet um but i think in our next meeting um you know we we've already set the meetings for um and and when those will be and where those will be but uh we'll probably need to uh schedule in at our next meeting some tentative work study plans so so bring your calendars next time okay all right um thank you with that um we can
088we can adjourn uh and again and thank you to the the staff and and and uh media and uh mr moya for for producing this i think um it went really well this is our first in-person slash zoom meeting um and i think uh i think it went well so um again thank you for all of that um you know production and to the interpreters and as always they do great work you thank you thank you everyone bye