ASDB Board Meeting 09/10/2020

001we are live streaming okay good afternoon everyone uh it is four o'clock now is the time set for the regular public board of directors meeting for the arizona state schools for the deaf and the blind um thank you uh for joining us today we we are meeting again via zoom uh in terms of etiquette uh the same as previous meetings if you can keep your uh zoom on mute and no video unless you'd like to speak and then you can turn on your video and indicate by raising a hand or being some other visual indication that you would like to speak i can recognize you then and then we can take turns that way also i remind everyone to uh wait just a bit for the interpreters um to uh finish interpreting what you're saying

002um so there'll be some pauses at the end of every sentence and that will keep everything flowing smoothly so now we come to item 1.01 call to order and roll call [Music] sue k can you read the roll call absolutely linda bove here dean howard here president nigro president mike gordon mike natalie i'm here mark sims here myself is present and then um absent today is shelley herbald lynn davison is here oh sorry lynn that's okay i can't get my video to work i don't know what i mean okay great thank you sue k so it looks like um shelly and mike gordon are the ones that are not here today we can move on to item 1.02 call to the public call to the public on agendas items as we had done in the

003the last meeting we solicited public comments via an email address uh set up for that purpose uh limited to 500 words or less we received one email um to be read as part of this meeting sue k if you can come on and read that email certainly the email is from marcy berenberg and that's spelled be as in boy a-r-e-n-b-u-r-g and the subject is the school reopening and the comments are as follows i am concerned about the negligent stance asdb has taken regarding schools the state has met the metrics two weeks in a row and we are anticipating a third week tomorrow yet asdb has yet to open and move the date further even with strong trending many other districts are full time and those that aren't are at least meeting the needs of iep

004students some teachers are choosing to use inaccessible programs ieps are out of compliance and children's educational language and social needs are not being met classroom sizes are already below a typical classroom we can socially distance with ease we are fortunate to have large campuses that work well within the recommended parameters of this pandemic our cases are low risk is low now is the time to get back to focusing on education and our students it's time to open the school and our allow our kids to thrive uh thank you sue k um next on the agenda is item 1.03 information item executive team reports um the uh reports were provided um in the uh in the board book uh superintendent reichman are there any uh comments that you may have on on this is annette speaking

005um i just want to let you know that in addition to the written report um the next item on the agenda under the assistance assistant superintendent we will have both albert duff and paul creasy providing a short presentation so you will get a verbal report from those two individuals uh okay um excellent uh are there any questions among the board members for these individual reports i i don't see any um is um is albert duff on the call now i am sir oh hello um i just wanted to thank you again for your report um and thank you for the information that you uh uh provided regarding these um uh i iq air hepa filters um can you let me know where are these going to be deployed and how many we have so we

006purchased two of those and they are going to be deployed in the student health centers and so as students come to the student health center with any sort of symptom like uh for covid this would be used to make sure that if there was a coveted positive case that it would be contained and the air would be scrubbed in the area that they were primarily housed before being transported or picked up by parents okay um so in other words these are going to be placed in areas where we believe they're going to be students that have either coveted or suspected covid um so that we can keep the staff and the other students safer by cleaning the air in those in those areas correct that is correct and those are true hepa filters the the

007filter on it's about four inches thick um and is designed uh to work in hospital settings as well okay uh great are there any plans to to purchase more of these devices i know that some of these are in short supply but are there any plants that purchase more of them put in other areas where there might be more traffic or more students to get congregating in one area although i know we're you know we're limiting that as it is yeah the the cost is fairly high on those but um looking at the cdc recommendations was primarily to increase air flow and we've actually started that process and made sure that we're following the cdc guidelines for increasing outside airflow into all of our areas and then our next step is actually looking at a

008different option rather than an air scrubber it's actually looking at either uvc or different forms of ways of actually treating all of the air inside of our school buildings and all of our office buildings as well so a little bit different a design because of the size those air scrubbers are kind of limited in the amount of air that they scrub of only about 2500 square feet so when we think of multiple classrooms and multiple areas and the the noise that those make um it would be more conducive to actually uh change the hvac system on the roof rather than inside the actual classroom right and that's that uh you know from a long-term perspective i understand that uh preferred can you tell me more about the uvc systems that you guys are looking at

009sure there's uh uvc which is um a way of actually killing the organics inside of the air which then the virus has a hard time replicating without the correct amount or the um a substantial amount of organics inside the air there's also ionization which actually uh were ozone machines which actually uh clump um molecular items together and then it allows for the filtration system to actually take those items out of the air um so it actually increases the size of the particulate so that way a standard merv 8 would actually catch the virus okay and our filters we use merv 8 or do we use something higher right now correct we use a merv 8 on all of our units and that's because that's what the hvac systems were designed to handle so by using

010an ozone machine to actually increase the size of the particulate matter it would actually make those effective for viruses as well as other contaminants okay um and is there a time frame for when we might deploy one of the uvc systems uh right now we're in the quotation process as you can imagine pretty much every school is starting to gather these quotes so we're still in that quotation process unfortunately um and moving as quickly as we can to get that quote finalized in the meantime we still implemented the cdc guidelines of increasing outside air flow which by doing that actually we've gone to about a 25 outside airflow um or more in all of our buildings which allows us to actually change out all of the air inside that building uh four times in an

011hour okay oh that's that's great and how are we doing that um all of our units that um our commercial grade units they have uh an outside air damper and so that damper up on the roof you just merely open it up and that draws in more outside air as it cycles it through and then it pushes inside air out and commercial units in order to avoid what's called sick building syndrome which has been known since the 1970s normally had about a 10 change all that we had to do was increase uh the damper to about 25 percent and then that meant the ashrae uh or the hvac guidelines from the cdc okay great well that's that's great news to hear i know as we are preparing to have students that are going to be

012together and you know indoors that we have a way to get get clean fresh air um from the outside in there um and also to have other systems either the uvc system or the hepa system uh to try to remove uh any any uh droplets or or aerosolized particles from the air that may carry uh uh covet so uh thank you for correct yeah thanks for your attention to uh to these i know it's um uh hvac is usually not top on on our list i think but it's it's really important right now so thank you for for uh being on top of this it absolutely is thank you sir okay um if there's no other comments for 103 uh then we can move on and i don't see any uh we can move on

013to uh 104 information item assistant superintendent report dr rex so dr x good afternoon president nigro and asdb board members today my report has been submitted in writing and i wanted to do something a little different today with the net's permission we are going to let you have some direct information from the principals as well as the directors who have been working all summer to prepare and make sure that our students are ready for school but before i turn it over to those specific groups i want to give you just a little bit of great news not just good news but great news we have some preliminary information that we have been awarded what is called a cops grant cops cops grant it's a federal grant highly competitive as an administrator i've applied for this

014grant in other districts off and on and this is the first time that we've been awarded and i'm very proud of the asdb tucson campus school safety committee along with principal creasy in collaboration with it and business services the odd grant writing expertise of melissa devries as well as albert's input through facilities they wrote a grant and requisitioned four hundred thousand dollars to help support safety on the tucson campus this is a national grant and we requested four hundred thousand dollars and we have preliminary preliminarily heard back that we will be receiving about 306 thousand dollars in this grant there is a 25 match on the agency's part but only 160 grants were given to the awarded to the to the schools nationally and we are one of two in the state of arizona that

015received this grant so i wanted to give a little shout out to the asdb campus and their school safety committee that hard work that they worked last summer on has certainly paid off and i look forward to bringing back more information on the specifics of what we can use that money for and what that grant was written for but now i'd like to turn it over to director kendra benedict for the early learning program to give you an update of what's been going on what has been accomplished and how we are doing in our current reality hi good afternoon um thank you for allowing me to speak with you all today given the charge to share with you how the elp is connecting with our families and our students three things immediately came to mind

016for without any one of them what we do wouldn't be possible that would be our community partners our teachers and our families the elp has long recognized the importance of community partnerships we value our community partners and see them as an essential member of the asdb elp team we know we are only as strong as our relationships and never has this been more evident in the last six months during which time we have brought in approximately forty thousand dollars in grant funding to support our families and students from a three thousand dollar donation from a church member in tucson will to our program to over a thousand dollars worth of books from parents in the birth to three program to the parent of one of our former preschool students at ptsd who stepped up to

017assist us with technology needs as families in the birth to three program continue to receive intervention services to a thirty thousand dollar hurster grant funding through the ear foundation that allowed for the immediate deployment of tablets to 105 families 70 with sim cards right when schools closed last march and then finally to a five thousand dollar micro grant from the communication service for the deaf out of austin and a one thousand dollar grant from asl love out of san francisco that together allowed us to support our asdb families on the navajo nation as the kovid 19 crisis took its toll and it's not over the ear foundation is currently applying for a grant through the association of maternal and child health programs that if awarded would lend additional financial support to go toward enhancing our

018existing tele-intervention programs with better connectivity and larger screens for our families in the early intervention and deaf mentor programs our teachers shortly after schools closed last spring i had mentioned to you in a board report that our teachers had come together in unprecedented fashion i am so proud and happy to report that they continue to do so the tucson preschool team recently participated in a profession excuse me in a professional development opportunity online during which they were asked about their hopes and fears and what is working and what could be improved regarding online learning this is what one teacher had to say this year has been my best year by far the preschool team decided at the end of last year to create an environment that is positive and proactive kind of take control versus

019being lost we acquired two new teachers over the summer and have introduced them to our vision we collaborate talk share laugh and we rely on each other we have decided to work together and focus on creating an atmosphere that is kid-friendly yes we have one-on-one sessions and work toward iep goals individually with our kids but our learning centers are child-based and fun in the building we do not vent we problem solve we enlisted our ias to be teachers and they work alongside us to create fun and safe places for our students we only vent on walks outside the building and usually end up laughing our way back inside this positive atmosphere has created a team i am learning with my colleagues and building professional relationships for the first time in my 15-year career lastly families

020and students as early intervention providers whether birth to three or preschool we have the extraordinary privilege of families welcoming us into their lives so that we can better help them and their children in their children's early development i think the following quote from the original sky high manual a curriculum we use in early intervention explains what we do well i enter here with respect for where i go is so sacred that few are ever invited in they bid me enter not only their living room but also their lives they share their questions as well as their kitchen they let me glimpse into the sanctuary where fears and damage dreams are kept and bid my heart to tug on the burdens that they will bear together we will laugh and be excited over a sound a

021phrase a response yet sometimes we will shed tears and disappointment this is not a solitary journey but a shared odyssey of discovery i cannot betray their trust moving from an in-person to an online instruction took a certain level of trust on everyone's part building trust virtually can be challenging but with the patience and kindness of our families the fortitude of our teachers and support from colleagues i strongly believe that that trust has been created families from across the state have expressed their gratitude to us for equipping them with the technology necessary to access their child's education as well as for providing instructions in both english and spanish on google classroom in turn i'd like to take a moment to thank rit department as well as well as all of our amazing asl interpreters and spanish

022translators without you we would not be able to in turn help our families so thank you thank you community partners elp teachers families and asdb colleagues we appreciate you fantastic thank you kendra and now i'm going to uh turn it over to courtney fritz and kelly creasy to give you an update a principal's report for our two schools good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex and members of the board hopefully you've had an opportunity to review the report that courtney and i submitted this report is due several weeks before this meeting so we wanted to take this opportunity to provide you with some updates to this information as of today only one student did not register on the tucson campus and was dropped at the 10-day mark the student's home district has

023been notified and they worked closely with us to try and connect with that family but unfortunately we were unable to do so in order to monitor student engagement a team consisting of administration counselors and school secretaries meets to discuss any student that has been flagged as having attendance concerns someone from the team reaches out and connects with the family to offer support and assistance last week we had 29 students that were identified as concerns as of today 26 of those have been resolved these numbers fluctuate from week to week and so this team is critical for staying on top of potential attendance issues and for the ptsd campus just like what kelly was sharing we too have established the same systems and procedures and trying to reach out and really make sure that none of

024our students are are falling through the cracks although this is something that we would do in normal circumstances certainly there's a heightened level of concern and a little bit more leg work in trying to get in touch with some of our families just because it has been such a a long time since the school closure so for our numbers here phoenix we had two students that we were not able to register we tried every contact that we had emergency contact phone number address you name it any type of way that we knew how to contact with them and unfortunately we were just not able to to reach those families and we are unaware of whether they have moved or what their situation um is and just like what kelly mentioned once they hit that 10-day

025mark they were dropped from enrollment but of course that does not mean that for either campus they're completely off of our list we're hoping and looking for signs and communications that one day they'll just kind of pop up and there they are and we'll grab them and and run as quick as we can um to get them re-established and set up on our campuses as far as concerns with engagement as kelly mentioned we have the same system here and it's really to try to not only help us respond more in in a prompt manner but also to show parents and students that we have a whole team on our campus that are that are trying to support you that are working through the challenges and offering solutions um and that's just been a really i

026think a positive thing that's happened although the concern is there it's nice to see people coming together to help our students so at the beginning of this week we had 17 students that were listed on the spreadsheet as concerned and as of today 10 of those have been resolved so we are still working on seven of those from this week and as kelly mentioned it's it's a fluctuation every week and and some of them do have a better week and then they go back into that concern category or some had really strong start and starting to slow down a little bit so the the ryman reason are are all across the board but definitely something that we have a plan in place we have a system established and we are monitoring that daily to make

027sure that we continue to provide the support answer concerns come up with solutions together as a team and in regards to the concerns of course that is in the digital learning environment so at this time we are continuing in the digital learning uh program all schedules that have been established follow the recommended direct instructional recommendations from ade through digital learning as well as the total instructional minutes that are required for the the various age groups so the schedules have been established to make sure that all of those minutes are being are being met through the digital platform all of the related services have reached out to the teachers first and then reached out directly to parents to make sure that those direct iep services are scheduled and are part of that child's program and are

028built into their school day we are using our instructional assistants everywhere you look everywhere you turn so they are an integral part of being involved with the digital learning and definitely helping us to provide that specialized instruction as being an additional set of eyes set of hands available for office hours available for support and so they're really helping us in a variety of ways as an agency we do have a team that has been meeting we had our reopening committee and now we've kind of shifted that to the school data committee so we do have an agency group of individuals that meet every friday morning to review the data review the metrics look at the benchmarks not only as a county but specific to individual zip codes as well the state has done a nice

029job of providing a variety of reports that provide us a wealth of information and data so we really come together every week look at that information and have discussions because we have students coming from all across the valley on my campus and all across the state on kelly's campus it's really important that we look at the the bigger picture and look at those individual zip codes it is different than a home school district that's only pulling students from one certain area based on our original plan the next date where we will be making a decision is september 25th the data is looking promising we are very optimistic that we as long as things continue on the same trajectory that we will be ready to open in person on october 6th in regards to student services

030like we said digital learning another component that we did was we developed a protocol to bring students on campus when necessary so that protocol follows cdc recommendations we have a very clear step-by-step guide of what staff should do and what communications need to happen between them and the parents so it really is case by case but that allows us to move forward with evaluations that might need to be it might need to happen in person whether that's manipulatives whether it's hands-on whether it's physically getting up and moving with the guidance of the evaluator the the need is really to have the student in person we do have a protocol for that another example might be the audiologist our audiologist typically provide support for hearing aids cochlear implants those type of devices and that is something

031that we can still do on campus if needed and then the last example is technology we did deploy technology to all of our students unfortunately id can't be in each of their homes we can't have you know an id rep for each home and we wish you know that was possible but it has been great i think kendra mentioned that as well of just providing any and all support whether that's troubleshooting on the phone i know kelly and i have gotten on the phone and tried to troubleshoot um again really truly a team effort but if the need is to troubleshoot that might be another reason why we would bring students onto campus but that protocol is established and is communicated on a case-by-case basis depending on the need in addition to the i.t department

032we have to really thank our transportation department who has been absolutely phenomenal on august 17th they literally delivered materials statewide every student on both campuses received technology any assistive technology and educational materials we still continue to deliver items through our transportation department and through the mail for students so if they need additional materials if we have to switch out a chromebook deliver a hotspot our transportation department is on it and have been delivering those materials for us on a daily basis um unfortunately both campuses had to make the decision to cancel fall sports due to the delay in person start date we were concerned with the ability to adequately prepare our students for competition and we thought it was in the best interest of our student athletes to cancel we are hoping to resume our

033athletic programs when we return to in-person learning and finally for the tucson campus we currently have 13 students living in our dorm this option was offered to parents of dorm students who did not have access to reliable internet and for whom we were fairly certain that a hot spot would not remedy remedy that situation we are currently using three out of our five dorms to house these students and everything is going really well huge thank you to our dorm staff that is providing that support for those students to engage in online learning so moving forward um we know that uh covet is not going away tomorrow unfortunately i think everyone on this call and everyone across the world would probably wish that that would would happen but um moving forward although like i said the

034data is looking promising and we are optimistic we do know that for a variety of reasons there are some families that are going to want to continue on the digital um platform and digital mode of learning so over the past several weeks we've been working on a plan to make sure we can provide both in person when we are safe to reopen and for those families and students that that want that option as well as continuing with the digital platform and being able to do both of those simultaneously although it is a challenging task and and really having to look at all of the staff and how we can continue to commit to providing that specialized instruction through both modes of learning it is something that we are moving forward with so in our written

035report we provided um most we we took most of the the document that was shared with parents i think we you know removed some of the the content that wouldn't be applicable in this setting but really that document was communicated and was sent home to parents that really outlined digital learning as an option we provided questions and some critical components that we felt families should consider and think about prior to making the the choice of whether they wanted to continue with digital learning or have their student return in person that has been like i said sent home to parents and we will be sending it home to parents again with our progress reports the original date we asked parents to respond by was the end of august we have now um pushed that date back

036to september 25th so again giving them a little bit more time to make that decision for their family and for their child depending on what their circumstances might be that will allow us approximately one week a little bit more than one week to prepare those individual classrooms and individual teachers to be prepared to provide both in-person and digital learning simultaneously once we have that information from the parents like i said we'll move forward with the logistics of how to set that up but what we do know is that the accessibility piece is huge for our deaf hard of hearing blind visually impaired students we want to make sure when they're joining in from home and through video that they're able to clearly see the the teacher that might be using american sign language and or

037clearly hear the teacher if they're using spoken english to make sure that that accessibility piece is what each of those students will need additional classwork and support will still continue through google classroom as it has been up until this point once from when we started on august 17th um as i mentioned we did have an initial due date and we've since extended that so from the initial due date currently the numbers are there's 27 students from the phoenix campus that want to continue with the digital learning option and there are four students from the tucson campus so that's kind of our next step in our next phase in looking at what those numbers look like in preparation for running both programs simultaneously starting in october we know that there was a lot of information in

038our report and a lot of information that we tried to update you with this evening so at this time we'd like to open it up if there's any questions for either of us hi this is mike so i don't have any questions but thank you very much for that uh presentation is very informative and i appreciate that no problem thank you and i was just going to add that it seemed like there weren't any questions so we both want to to thank you thank you for your support um you know we we are both fully where these are challenging times and challenging times in education and especially um education for deaf hard of hearing blind visually impaired students kelly and i meet every single day at 8 a.m and i think early on we thought

039there's going to get to a point where we don't have anything else to talk about but we haven't gotten to that point yet we both have a list every day at 8 00 a.m so um the positive to all of this is i think it's really strengthened our um consistency and aligning our programs our philosophies and our approach to educating our students on both of our campuses so that's definitely been a a bright light a shining star in in all of this covid so thank you for your time and thank you for your support this is lynn i do have a question um if there is an outbreak on either campus we do have a plan we do have a plan um all of the devices that are currently deployed to students will remain assigned

040to them for the entire school year so if we had to close those devices we'll go back home with the students so everything is is being maintained in google classroom as well so that we can quickly turn around really the next day and move right back into online learning if we need to thank you ladies and now i think we're going to move into our statewide director for itinerant services um jay has had the opportunity slash challenge of having itinerant teachers that are still working remotely going into schools in a blend of a lot of things that he is going to be sharing with you next thank you dr x and thank you board members for allowing me to come in and speak with you for a few minutes about some of the work that

041we're doing throughout the co-ops statewide as well as how we're supporting our partnering school districts and charters first off and foremost i want to let the board know that our focus has always been providing the best services possible to all students statewide during the pandemic last spring our goal was to deliver uninterrupted services as much as possible and as the board knows last spring we were able to service about 85 percent of our population during the pandemic and after partnering with some of our special education directors statewide and speaking with all of them we found out that we were far beyond what they were able to do within their own school districts and charters this goes back to our goal of putting students first part of that goal is building additional partnerships and strengthening partnerships

042statewide and throughout the nation one of those partnerships that we're working on right now is with vocational rehabilitation we're working hand in hand with two of our northern arizona school districts to connect our vr team with our own co-op team and the school district teams to make sure that we're meeting the needs of students in each one of those districts in addition to that work we're also connecting our vr team members to each of our co-op directors and having them attend meetings to share information from vr as well as selling providing information back to vr from asdb in addition to that partnership we're also strengthening partnerships within arizona and outside of arizona with our state universities we have individuals that are coming to us already looking to do student teaching as well as internships throughout

043the state we held informational meetings this year with special education directors statewide about our distance learning model and how we could partner with school districts and charters that we had not worked with in the past through all of this it comes down to the services provided we've wanted to make sure we're providing the best service possible and the way that we're measuring that is by currently collecting data and providing support to staff to deliver services but to accommodate students and families to individualize those services the proudest moments i can tell you so far working with asdb is about the collaboration the communication and the reporting that has standardized our work moving from phase one to phase two the focus this fall will be to continue to ensure the equity of all students and really to

044make sure that we're using data to drive decisions for all students in the co-ops to end this verbal report i wanted to share with you a story that will warm your heart this comes to us from one of our o m teachers and i'll read the email that was sent to us i've been working remotely and virtually with a student who is very in a very rural high school throughout the hybrid o m program during his iep meeting the parents agreed to meet with me in an urban area either in phoenix or tucson two times this year in order to provide an immersion of actual application and practice of the concepts and skills the student has been learning through our online instructional sessions this is awesome for two reasons first the student will be well

045prepared to know which street crossing strategies to use at various intersections so that our time will be mostly spent the practice runs with much less time introducing and teaching the concepts and theories behind the skills secondly it'll be greatly reduced the transportation and travel time expenses for the agency also i just received permission to conduct an o m assessment for a middle schooler in this case i will first work with the student online to start to develop relationships by gathering background information current knowledge and understanding of o m concepts and skills and the insights to the approaches i may want to use when assessing the student in person i'm excited about this process of figuring how to conduct part of the o m assessment through the remote platforms this is one of many stories that

046we receive weekly from our team statewide each week we share these stories out with the entire co-op team so we can see the strategies that we're using statewide to deliver services either remotely in person or a blended model again i want to thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today and i appreciate your support moving the co-ops from phase one to phase two and i look forward to the work that we'll be doing this fall thank you for your time thank you jay i think some of the themes you've been hearing is adaptability and tenacity on the part of our staff members no one has given up everyone keeps pushing forward and adjusting and you also board members have heard that this would not be possible without i.t so at this time paul

047can you share a little information on how you have been able to deploy devices and make sure that we are we are able to provide the accessibility in our programs thank you good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex and members of the board the it department has been focusing on ensuring that our staff and students have the ability and unnecessary tools for digital learning we have inventoried image prepared and sanitized computer equipment for assignment to staff and students we have deployed 640 chrome devices 350 windows laptops 500 windows desktops and 485 tablets we have procured and deployed 130 webcams to equip every classroom on both campuses so instructional staff can use their classroom computer for digital learning we have also provided 45 cellular hotspots with internet filters that have been deployed to

048students without internet access every campus student has been assigned assigned a device for the entire school year this includes chromebooks ipads and braillenote touches students served by our regional cooperatives have been assigned devices by their home district or by asdb we have worked in close partnership with lisa yancarelli and her team to help with the deployment of assisted technology devices we have worked successfully with 15 school districts and one charter school to connect itinerant teachers with the students that they are providing services to we have procured 200 google voice licenses so teaching staff can communicate with parents and conduct agency business this is more cost effective than acquiring a cell phone we have successful transitioned our web conferencing from webex to zoom and google meets both platforms are much more student-friendly and have also proven

049to be accessible on the devices such as braillenote touches the start of this school year has been unlike any other in partnership with the campuses and the regional cooperatives we have ensured that staff and students were ready for digital learning throughout the school year the it team will continue to provide support and address technology needs as they arise i have provided you the i.t department board report in your board packets and i'd like to take this moment to make myself available for anyone any questions you may have hello paul um hello thank you for your uh presentation um just a question i know we talked about uh you know the hot spot distribution one this is you know an excellent um and large-scale deployment of technology so i'm happy that we're able to get uh

050devices into the hands of of our students so they can be supported um during their uh the virtual uh education period uh we talked about 45 um virtual hot spots for for those students that needed internet access i know that we have students that have or live in areas that are a bit remote and may not have reliable lte service do we have any kind of solution for them or or how have they been been served in this period yes um first of all uh we we recognize that cellular services hit or miss in a lot of the outskirts of locations of the state and in those situations we have gone as far as to look for other types of support and that means either contacting the local school districts working with them to see

051if we can get them our students on their their wireless network if it's close by um we also have um use state resources um there is a website and i forget the name of it but it's it's uh sponsored by one of the state agencies that collected a map of the state of arizona and identified all the local public wi-fi access areas areas those are at schools libraries other public spots that the state is or others are allowing public free wi-fi we have looked at resources with local isps cable service providers and anytime we've seen reduced cost or those types of specials that come up we send the information out to our our instructional staff to get into the hands of those parents that that do not have access to wi-fi um and in some

052of those cases where specifically on our tucson campus i believe kelly did refer that uh we have some of those parents made decisions if they didn't have internet access for their student to um allow the student to come onto our campus on tucson and stay in the dorms so that they can uh be able to get educational opportunities through that okay um thank you uh you also mentioned the use of a google voice in some cases is there any plans to to move more of our telephony services to google voice um actually at this point this was one of those um unique situations where um in the past we didn't really need to look that hard as far as getting cell phones to everybody but because of covid and everyone working from home that was

053a unique situation that we had to deal with quickly and since we were already a google g suite domain we looked at that option because it gave us flexibility of being able to have staff forward their desk phones to this number and be able to access their voicemail and also use their computer their chromebook using headsets and video conferencing to make calls if they had wi-fi and so that is something we're looking at just recently um with in october i believe there's going to be the new asnet 3 contract and we're really hopeful in that they have uh will be providing more uh benefits for us as a state agency through soft phones through cisco and so that's an option we're really looking forward to and seeing if that's something that would benefit us and

054give us improved flexibility uh great uh yeah i know a lot of the uh you know those those ip you know ip phone solutions are typically a lot less expensive and and they're more distributed and easier to use in a work from home setting or a remote setting so i'm happy to hear that we're we're looking into some of those items uh because we we we're not necessarily going to be at our desks in person uh all the time soon or for the time being uh were there any other questions um for the board members for any of these any of these items no i don't see any hand so thank you dr rex um and and all who have spoken uh we can now move on to we have one more sorry yep okay

055oh sorry dr x we we we let albert talk a little bit at the beginning but i actually asked him to prepare something so if you let let him just finish up and then we'll be good yes of course i i apologize for that uh go ahead albert no problem president nigro good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rex and members of the board my name is albert duff and i'd like to thank you for allowing me to take a moment to let you know about the current actions and accomplishments of the asdb operations team first asdb operations has been supporting the implementation of a mitigation plan for kobe 19 this includes prevention protocols in the form of administrative engineering and ppe controls to reduce the likelihood of exposure on our campus and

056regional co-ops we have sourced and begun to distribute ppe cleaning supplies barriers and other recommended forms of protection such as the air scrubbers for our student health centers we are also going to supply our campus students and all staff work work directly with students with a clear face covering to help protect them while supporting their communication needs with the addition of the safety coordinator asdb has begun partnering with arizona state risk management to ensure that not only are we working on the current situation but also reviewing and starting the process of implementing multiple safety programs within the agency we will be communicating and partnering with all of our departments to make sure that every staff member is supporting a safety culture within asdb as of right now during remote learning asdb operations team has come

057together to ensure that our students are being cared for and ready to learn as kelly already mentioned this includes delivering needed material prior to school starting including i.t and classroom equipment throughout the state of arizona second we have begun delivering meals to our students to make sure they are all well nourished and ready for the school day no different than as if they were on site this includes cooking boxing and delivering over 1600 meals a week in the phoenix metro area and over 500 meals in the tucson area this also includes a weekly box offering for students outside the metropolitan areas this coordination and teamwork between transportation and food service is outstanding and shows what dedication asdb operations has to the success of our students while all of this is going on the task of

058facility improvements has not stopped on our pdsd campus we have replaced the elementary school playground flooring in the preschool and now scheduling the replacement of flooring in four additional buildings we're also starting the process of plumbing upgrades within the preschool on pdsd to accommodate for our little ones on the tucson campus we have started the process of building a new science lab and scheduling the replacement of flooring in our elementary and middle school building in addition we have replaced over 50 percent of all of our food service equipment on both campuses to ensure that our food production is of high quality asdb fleet operations has been working towards right-sizing our fleet in partnership with the arizona department of transportation and replaced over 25 percent of our antiquated light duty fleet in fiscal year 20 and

059fiscal year 21. in addition we are starting the process of having adot manage all of our fleet maintenance and replacement this will make sure that our fleet is up to date and well maintained so our teachers and staff are able to reach students in every location throughout the state providing an equitable use of resources we're also adding gps systems to all of our vehicles and that's quite the change so we can monitor where all of our fleet is throughout the state uh as noted asdb operations is making sure that our current challenges are being met while looking towards the future so we're dealing with the cove pandemic but also making sure that we're not falling behind on our other obligations which is something that our team is doing a fantastic job of making sure that

060uh all of those things are are being handled and with that um i would like to say thank you for the time thank you albert and that completes my report thank you dr x now i think we can move on um to item 1.05 information item superintendent's report superintendent eichmann hello everyone good afternoon president negro members of the board um assistant superintendent rex and the asdb community i'm happy to see you all here as you have been hearing from our leadership team we've all been focused on and working very hard on two very important goals these goals are embedded in our mission statement which are first of all to provide the best education and support possible to all of our students and second is to ensure as much as we can the safety and well-being

061of our students and our staff those two are the most critical goals we are meeting during this time of the pandemic at the last board meeting on july 23rd you will recall we showed you a video and that video showed our preparation and planning for students to come back on both campuses at that time we were planning for students to come back on august 18th and if you recall who was during that time to have to come back to school districts back to the campuses the arizona department of health services established three metrics and we've been using those metrics to make the decision on an ongoing basis as to when it would be safe for our students to come back to our two campuses and as we know at that time we realized it wasn't

062going to be shaped for students to come back on august 18th so we made the decision to go ahead with online education starting on august 18th and we've been providing online education we're in our fourth week right now you've heard from principal chrissy and principal fritz about their work their teachers work their professional staff work to give the best education possible online to these students so with that you've heard from the early learning program we continue to provide hella early intervention to families with children with zero to three that are zero to three we are also our preschools are providing online education similarly to the schools with a lot of support from parents of course we're talking about children that are three to five our itinerant itinerant services as you heard is providing online specialized

063instruction and support and some in-person specialized instruction and support depending on the student and the school district this has required a lot of creativity a lot of changing and trying to figure out how to meet student needs um i was going to share with you two stories one story i was stealing from mr jay johnson but he already shared that story with you the story about the student learning o m instruction online and will be getting actual practice with his parents taking them to a city to learn the second story i wanted to share with you is a student in an area with no cell phone reception a deaf student you were able to deliver a chromebook to that student and the student found a nearby school with wi-fi so every day he's been getting

064on his atv and driving to the school so that he can connect his chromebook to the school's wi-fi and get his education from the tucson campus that is a really terrific example of when we provide the opportunity and the resource to sometimes student is motivated we can successfully provide the online education access to online education while we've been addressing this very dynamic covert pandemic environment working very hard to meet the needs of our students at the same time we continued our work in what i call second order change you remember it was a year ago in the fall in the november board meeting i shared with you that the agency was just beginning to engage in second order change and at that time i decide i defined it as a systems change a system change

065that is that is discontinuous this discontinuous and yes disruptive well obviously with the coverage pandemic it's already been very disruptive at the same time in this time of disruption we have continued to focus on the second order change the other point that i want to kind of add to the second order change when we implement a second order change the only way we can maintain it is to also have a cultural shift and our agency is right now going through a tremendous cultural shift and what i mean by cultural shift is we are changing how we think how we make decisions how we plan plan for the future we are using data to make decisions you just heard some of our leadership team talk about data so we're much more focused on what do we

066need to know what data do we need to collect collecting the data analyzing it and then using that information to inform our decision-making process are we doing that 100 of the time not yet but we're getting there we're doing it much more often than just a year ago the second piece that's happening now is we're engaged much more in planning you've heard some from the leadership team about some of the plans that we have developed and again this is a real change in our thinking that we are becoming much more proactive instead of reactive we're thinking about the future and we're trying to plan contingency planning if a doesn't happen then b and if b doesn't happen then g really trying to think through and plan for what may come so depending on how long

067you want me to speak i can go on for quite a bit but for now i'm going to just talk about five examples the first example is last fall set up a contract with lma which is a group in tucson that does different kinds of research projects for school districts and other organizations lma has been working on a demographical study of asdb enrollment trends they've been looking at our historical data and they're using that to predict the future enrollment trends almost done with their research they're writing the report right now we hope to get the report i think sometime in october maybe early november they will be presenting to us sharing their findings and then training us on how to do our own demographical analysis in the future that will help us with long-term planning

068the second example is we just set up a contract with lma the same group to do the first workforce analysis and we're going to be focusing on related services personnel like physical therapists occupational therapists speech language pathologists and so on we want to take a look at their work in meeting the student needs as you know every student has an individualized education program and in the iep it spells out what kind of services are needed including the ot and the pt and the slps and others so on we want to know are we meeting every iep has written is our staff successful in meeting every iep in terms of the kind of services provided and the amount of time that's provided we also want to know do we have sufficient professional staff to meet the

069student needs are we understaffed are we overstaffed we really don't know we don't have any data to tell us if we have the right staffing with the right skill set and the right number that really meet the needs of our students so that's the second thing that's happening right now um a third fourth examples are i think you heard about these two from the leadership team one example is the digital learning plan if you look at our asdb web page you will find our digital learning plan and in that it spells out what we are doing to provide digital online education to our students the other plan i think is up on the web page now is the risk mitigation plan mr duff just referenced that that risk mitigation plan is for when our students

070come back on campus we have protocols to keep our students safe and our staff safe as well so those are planning documents that we have created and put up i think final example i will share with you is that you heard from mr johnson he talked about attendant services just want to remind you that it was i think a year ago that dr sims suggested that we combine our five regional co-ops into one statewide delivery system we are moving towards that goal um with mr johnson starting last april one of his first paths was to look at how we can move forward with streamlining our regional cooperative services july 1st we combined three regional co-ops the eastern highland region the north central region in the southwest region those three regions have been combined into region

071one they're under the leadership of miss michelle lucie and she's been working with the three cooperative centralized of course she discovered very quickly that each region had their own way of providing services she's been working very hard to streamline and to make consistent between the three areas how services are provided to our students and that's an ongoing process that again is a great example of assistance change that we continue to be engaged in even while addressing the needs of our students during the pandemic i have many other examples i'm happy to share them with you at another time if you want to hear more this concludes my report and i'm happy to take any questions uh do any of the board members have any questions for superintendent reichman don't see any um thank you superintendent

072reichman for your continued uh work in this period both in uh reading the agency uh to handle covid uh and the return to school uh next month as well as uh some of the changes that you discussed in particular the um the changing of the management of the co-ops um the next item on the agenda is 2.01 action item approval of the consent agenda consistent with board policy items 3.01 3.02 4.02 5.01 7.02 and 7.03 uh would any of the board members like to remove one of these items from the consent agenda and i i don't see any uh one wanting to speak um would anyone like to move to approve the consent agenda i see su k raising her hand i i move we approve the consent agenda items 3.01 3.02 4.02 5.01 7.02

073and 7.03 okay thank you do i have a second uh mike manley this is my family all second uh thank you um so all in favor to approve the consent agenda um you can turn on your video and make a sign of ascent uh so i have such i'm voting yes uh csu k z yes mike manley is yes lynn is a yes my coordinator zs linda bova's esteem howard is the sn dr sims is a yes all opposed and there are none so that carries thank you moving on we are looking at 4.01 information item finance report from gina cooper uh shayna are you on the call now yes i am but it looks like i'm having some difficulties with my video yes i see well you can uh proceed with voice as as

074needed i'll mute myself okay anna cooper executive director of business services good afternoon board president nigro superintendent reichman assistant superintendent rutt members of the board and the asdd community provided to each of you is a financial report that was presented to the finance committee based on data as of july 31 2020 for comparative purposes the reports also show data as of july 31 2019. our most recent finance committee meeting was held yesterday on september 6th with board members manali ann gordon and superintendent reichman the meanins of the meeting have been included with today's consent agenda items in summary we reviewed and discussed the budgetary and fiscal year budget to actual comparison reports the available cash balance the grant revenues and expenditures report and reviewed student enrollment as of august 1st 2020 and compared to august

0751st 2019. before i begin summarizing the fiscal data i would like to inform everyone that the agency's fiscal year 2022 budget submission package was successfully submitted to the governor's office of strategic planning and budgeting last week the submission comprised of our operating budget request totaling 59.2 million dollars federal funds grants information totaling 3.4 million and the five-year strategic plan i would like to give kudos to the budget team as they have played a tremendous role in implementing new processes for budgeting across the agency as well as utilizing financial methodologies to determine fiscal needs the process also aided in the development and recent submission of our annual budget package to ospb ongoing efforts will be made to analyze specific programs in order to improve both effectiveness and efficiencies and i will continue to provide support as

076we develop our agency's strategic plan so we can ensure that our fiscal and operational resources are aligned with the plan now that the school year has started oh sorry about that now that the school year has started our vouchering team along with the campus and the regional cooperatives working with the data registrars have begun with the home school districts to begin vouchering our students so that we can in turn receive the associated revenues for our enrolled students there have been a few hiccups though i must admit due to the recent changes abe has been uh made but we are working through them so hopefully we can start to receive those voucher revenues within the next few weeks with several months into the kova 19 pandemic though it still is difficult for me to really draw

077some conclusions about the potential impact to our operations for the year especially since we are new into the school year we're continuing to have everyone think about how to spend less and continuing to try to implement the cost saving initiatives where we can look at other available sources to use unfortunately a lot of covid 19 related expenses have not qualified for reimbursement as the federal government has been more focused on agencies that are more impact by the pandemic such as the hospitals police health and social services etc as such though our general fund has been impacted by these costs in addition to monitoring our spend we're also looking at our revenues which is mostly tied to enrollment if enrollment declines and our revenues will also but if our enrollment does increase our revenues will increase

078since jlbc is still projecting a shortfall of 62 million dollars for fiscal 2021 based on the gene fiscal reports there are possibilities that the agencies may see some reductions to our general fund appropriations to help offset the state's projected shortfall jlbc and our ospb staff have indicated that there are still a lot of questions and concerns about the revenue shortfall for the state for fiscal year 2021. updates are expected in october while we still continue to wait and get our answers on what we don't know related to our finances we will continue to focus on ensuring that the budget adequately funds our operations and meets the needs of the agency to include developing the effective mitigation strategies as well as exploring new opportunities similar to last year the budget was constructed with reserves to meet

079unforeseen contingencies and or anticipated opportunities that may arise throughout the school year so those were just some informational items i wanted to give updates on if there's no questions or comments at this point i will just provide a brief summary on the financial reports that were provided to the finance committee as well as to you all previously to today uh for comparative purposes the reports also as i mentioned before do show data as of july 31 2019 as referenced on page one as of august 1 2020 there were 530.37 full time equivalents that were filled and 76 vacant positions as of august 1st 2020 we had 2117 students this time last year there were 20 excuse me 2054 students so a little bit more last year at this time we're still continuing to monitor enrollment

080for september um but you'll be able to see the details for the august first enrollment comparing both years on the bottom of pages one and two of the report page three begins the financial summary um and what i've done is just compare last year to prior year our collected revenues is 51 compared to 35 000 last year uh which is a little bit about 86 000 primarily from the decline in the medicaid as well as the e-rate revenues that we've received thus far for 2021. total expenditures have decreased though slightly by about 91 000 mainly due to the decrease in payroll and other operating expenditures payroll has decreased slightly due to the decision to not pay employees for work performed for work not performed until the start of the school year so that has helped

081a little bit as a result of the coven 19 pandemic other operating expenses have also decreased due to the timing of our electricity payment we didn't make that until august although expenditures are showing a slight decline from last year to this year we do have some expenditures that were not originally budgeted for as i mentioned before for example covert related items but funding is being provided to respond to the pandemic where we're ensuring i believe mr duff did indicate where ensuring ppe is provided such as face coverings humanity shields are being provided as well as making sure that the needs and safety of our students teachers and staff are being met this also includes improving the use of education technology and supporting the distance learning similar to what um mr creasy has talked about as

082illustrated on the budget status report on page nine you can actually see though we are showing a deficit for budget fiscal year 2021. that deficit right now is showing 2.9 million dollars when you compare actual revenues of 2.1 million to the actual expenditures of 5 million again what that really means i've said it before is that we're our fiscal year ends june 30 2020 so we're having to use our available cash balance although this is not of any particular concern because again typical to the start of the fiscal and budget year we don't begin receiving voucher revenues until mid to late september so as i mentioned it's very important that we receive those voucher revenues within the next couple of weeks last year at this time we did have a deficit of 1.9 and remember

083again the budget fiscal year begins in july so although the fiscal year begins in july the school year begins in august there's still payroll as well as other operating expenditures that are continuously being incurred as a result of that though i'm still continuing to closely monitor our cash balance as well as making sure that we have a fund available funding sources and that we're trying to use those other funding sources until we receive our revenues we are working on preparing our august monthly updates based on a review of that preliminary financial data there are no immediate material concerns based on what i do know other than what i've indicated previously where we'll continue to monitor our revenues expenditures and cash balances very closely as well as monitoring student enrollment and identifying hopefully if there's no

084cuts to our general fund appropriations we will continue to plan for uncertainty with budgeting prudence and ensure that our expenditures do not exceed our revenue sources any continued unforeseen needs or requirements created by the kova 19 pandemic will require expenditure reductions across the agency to ensure fiscal solvency if there are no questions on any of the information i presented this really concludes my report for the agency's informational and fiscal data thank you are there any questions for ms from any of the board members and i don't i don't see any thank you thank you um thank you for that report um and i know we'll be closely looking at this especially as we we look at the budget next year and uh see how the agency may have to adapt to um you know to

085the overall context of the of the state budget uh thank you so that the next item on the agenda then is going to be 7.01 that's information item introduction of possible discussion of policies a c a g b b g c g i h a and k b uh maria murphy miss murphy if you are on the line could you start your video and you may begin i am good afternoon board president nigros superintendent reichman dr rex members of the board my name is maria murphy i'm the director of policy and government relations for asdb you have before you the red line revisions of the policies i did not receive any concerns of the policies that were presented from any of the board members they were posted to the public on the asdb website i

086did not receive any concerns in regards to the policies presented and with that i would like to make myself available for any questions at this time okay are there any board members that have questions for miss murphy uh seeing none uh thank you thank you okay um as we move to the next item uh 7.04 uh action item approval of strategic plan development works session dates for 2020 uh superintendent eichmann yes um just wanted you to consider um an edition of a work-study session for november 5th at the last board meeting you approve to have work study sessions on september 24th and october 1st we're now adding one more for november 5th so just present it to you the board to determine if you want to add another work study session uh linda yes um

087i am thinking about hmm one moment here give me a moment at the last um work study session that we had i found it to be kind of less effective than i had expected it to be honestly um i was hoping it to be more collaborative and maybe have more of the discussion um allowing the board members to be involved and not like um the board meeting sessions that we have here so personally i just felt that i don't know during a work study i think the purpose of that maybe we can change the purpose of that and maybe you know have a different approach as far as the board meetings um there's a lot of new things going on we have the pandemic and everything there's a lot of responsibilities and things we need

088to take care of so i think it's our responsibility just to make sure that we can make it a more collaborative and effective meeting um i'm not sure maybe if we could have you know a focus a complete focus on a specific date this is the interpreter i need to clarify we froze for one moment what date did you say okay so i'm just wondering if we could move the dates um forward um to january just to give us some time to contemplate and to think and to see what thing how things are going and you know to know more about the situation as far as the pandemic it would just to give us you know more time to be prepared to be able to support the school and support the support the leadership team

089and all of that i think it is critical um you know because we're talking about a plan for five years out just this is just an idea that i'm considering and i wanted to put it out there so that maybe we could kind of push that forward um i mean time is getting quite close and then we had we did approve that but then we did have the pandemic and we do need to think about those individual board members as well and the school staff they've been working so hard trying to take care of everything that's going on all that we've heard tonight i'm so impressed with the wonder creativity and everything that they've all been doing um online learning and the like so i think that we need to kind of pause and take

090a breath um and just that's that's what i was considering and i'd like to put that out there for the board to consider uh thank you linda and i i see that mark has his hand up as well but uh just to clarify uh linda would you like us to propose that we move that next work study session from november out into january is that is that something that you'd like to see and also uh have an agenda that's a little more open-ended than it was last time is that right yes let me clarify and thank you um for asking that question um i believe the next one is september 24th is that correct that's correct right we have the 24th and then that's what we have let the other ones that we have left

091in 2020 could we move them on to 2021 and that's what i'm proposing um because we don't have dates for 2021 yet correct uh correct that's going to be our next agenda item for the regular board meetings to discuss those dates [Music] right okay so i would like to move those two extra sessions out to 2021. um i see that mark does have something to say so i'd like to hear what he has to say yes um uh dr sims i i agree with uh linda's sentiment that it was not very collaborative um i think either we need to go to what i would consider an unmuted situation i think the refereeing actually prevents uh spontaneous conversation which would be normally what you would get during a work study or one of those things it

092it was i i don't think it was your intent but it was almost like a meeting with you david like we were all talking to you rather than talking with each other i think the other option frankly is to for the people who are willing to go into a space and be socially distanced um there's enough uh space within the campus and honestly if the expectation is that the students returned to campus i don't think it would be unreasonable for the board to do the same with social distancing i think we should keep those two dates i think if the dates were more productive i think people would be more excited about adding an extra date but i did feel it was very restricted in terms of being able to have spontaneous conversation and so

093i'm fine to keep the current dates and you know if need be we could add another but i i do think this is something that we need to move along even though we do have the pandemic uh in terms of giving the overall feedback and getting a plan personally that's that's my take on um are there others that have would like to talk about this uh lynn yeah i agree with the sentiment i i don't feel it was as productive as it could have been when we've been able to kind of feed off each other and come up with ideas and counterpoints um but a different structure i think would be good and as linda said right now there's so much thought concentration and effort on just making sure we're servicing students were obligated under

094our ieps to make sure all that's done and then to put an added uh thought into what do we do in five years i think we're having a hard enough time figuring out what we're going to do tomorrow anyway that's my thought okay uh mike gordon yeah i i think i think if we're gonna continue with the sessions which i think we will in september and doing him virtually i think what mark said also uh it's it's really important that we stay unmuted and maybe even stay on video if as we can because that's what we do here at savvy for most of our important meetings we we we make sure everybody is unmuted and that way you kind of can't i don't want to say you hide behind your mute but but everybody is

095is kind of feels free to be able to participate in real time and you're not waiting for somebody to unmute to come in and say their part and you can really you know you can talk over each other if you have to just like a regular meeting it's not it's not nearly as uh structured as raising your hand and coming in it's more spontaneous and and uh you know if if we're going to continue remotely i think anything we can do to open it up and make it a little more free to uh participate will would probably be to our benefit okay uh sue kane well i agree with most of the sentiment my concern is um that will not allow for the folks relying on the interpreter to participate as freely because trying to

096bounce back and forth from who's talking and finding you know watching the interpreter and then having the interpreter identify who's speaking and that type of thing i think that's going to really cause for some communication um breakdown for those folks utilizing the interpreter so i i i would like it to be more you know free-flowing but i think we need to be conscious of that and so in that way i would agree if we had the ability to be in a location where we were social distancing um that might be a more accessible option uh thank you sue and linda i see that you would like to speak yes i'd like to add to what sue k had just mentioned you're right i mean with overlapping of conversation i do depend on an interpreter and

097it may be one or two of us that definitely depend on that and we don't want to be behind you know as far we want to be able to keep up with the information um i understand definitely it would be great to be able to be spontaneous but i think in person would be best if we have that type of structure it definitely i would be able to see who is speaking and it would definitely be more visual for me as well it's tough here on this online platform so i think maybe for the next meeting are we thinking about possibly being in person um of course social distancing as well so that we can you know have that open discussion so for the next meeting it's the 24th how do y'all feel about meeting

098in person um annette is it possible that we could do that yes we we can do that we can set up a group that would be large enough to allow for in-person interaction and social media at the same time you may have to limit the number of visitors so that we can maintain the social distancing okay um are there others who would like to to speak now and i don't see any um yeah dr sims the you know the the zoo format obviously is not ideal um i think one of the reasons we have the kind of refereeing part of it is you know one the platform and two that use the interpreter so i agree that being in a room together is much better um i think that based on the various benchmarks that

099maricopa county um has been meeting in recent weeks seem to suggest that thus meeting in a room and being socially distant uh would would be feasible uh and i think i think we can do that um and that's for the meeting on the 24th so i don't think we need a board action to set the time in place right now for the 24th but i think what we are looking for now are um at least one thing to make sure that to see if we can get some guidance on when the next two sessions the october 1st and the november 5th session are going to be we're hearing you know we're hearing that some board members may want to move those into early next year um and uh there's discussion on on that so uh

100dr sims um i would suggest that you schedule them as they are on the agenda and if after the next one people find they're not fruitful then we can push them into the following year um i think some of the desire to move them was maybe based on the fact that they didn't think they got much out of the last one so there's no reason that if you commit to these and the one that happens on the 24th happens and it's not productive and people could say let's pull the plug and not get together the other two times okay uh linda yes i absolutely support what dr sims just mentioned yeah i think we go meeting by meeting and see how everything goes and see how we can improve that communication and then we'll talk

101about the next one and kind of move from there um but i think that's a good idea i think it's excellent i support that uh lynn i agree okay um are there others that would like to speak on this i have a motion to approve the schedule on the agenda second okay uh all in favor of approving the agenda as proposed say hi uh i see sukay mike manley mike gordon lynn linda and dr sims and myself are all and dean are all approving all opposed uh none okay that is complete uh the next item 705 discussion possible action item set the calendar for the 2021 regular board meetings um we have a proposed calendar here do any of these dates not work for for any of you lynn would you would you like to

102speak no okay um there all right sue so am i to assume that we are continuing in our positions because i'm i'm really attached to the acdh for now i mean there are you know the for the entire year we've had three board members that have been serving uh that whose terms are expired uh but are serving under the statutory provision that allow them to keep their seats uh until the governor appoints uh new um people to those seats or reappoints them to those seats though and as of now the the governor hasn't done that i've reached out um since kova but there there hasn't been um any any movement from the governor's office in that regard so i think for now uh we should all assume that we you know the folks that are

103serving on those expired terms are here until they're not um until the governor either makes a reappointment uh or or some other um change i will i will go with that answer um i only have one um conflict and that's the july 15th the um i have another wedding okay um so i i actually don't the march 11th one i'd like to move probably a week before if that's possible um so let me get my calendar out um if we can go to march 4th is probably better for me um and then does anyone else have an issue with uh with july 15th uh you know we could do july 8th or july 22nd um david yes i'm mike uh if i'm looking at the right one the uh november one is on november 11th

104which is veterans day yeah i do see that um maybe november 4th might be a better day or before the 18th i'd say one of those two probably the fourth might be a little bit better david the other thing to consider is do people want to go to somebody uh to yuma or flagstaff uh that is that is right um i know that you know in the past we've been to flagstaff and we've been to yuma uh i think the you know we moved away from that because our attendance uh wasn't as good for those meetings as it is when they're in in phoenix or tucson um that's why we've been meeting in phoenix and tucson the last two or three years but nevertheless that is an option i think the ability to attend remotely

105has made that much better so some of that was because you either um showed up or you're kind of telephonic or not at all i think it at flag it was not telephonic even or it was difficult so i think the the remote attendance has gotten better but i don't disagree with you that attendance went down yeah the in-person tenants i mean you know through technology like this we can meet and that's helpful but you know there are some limitations uh to it i i would still expect everyone to attend you know in person or telephonically but i always try to have as many people in person as we can i you know again that that's my preference i don't know if that shared with it with others but uh so in terms of the

106these dates um can we say can we tentatively say march mark four let's see um we say march 4th and then november 4th july perhaps we move that back to july 22nd okay all right so i think if we have those dates clear is there anyone that would like to move one or more of these meetings to a place that's other than phoenix or tucson uh sue k no oh no no uh linda oh sorry i was looking for the interpreter okay yeah i actually from here on out i would prefer to either do phoenix or tucson as well that's my choice maybe sometime in the future maybe if necessary but we are able to change it later throughout the year right locations uh yeah we certainly can i mean i think we need the

107time if we were to change it we need time for the staff to uh you know prepare for the uh you know for the production um so we could do it probably at least one board meeting ahead i wouldn't want to do it much more than that uh but in the past i think we've had the you know for obvious reasons we've had this bullet shot yeah because it's a bit cooler up there um i think the fall meeting if i recall was in yuma that was a number of years ago i forget and they yeah i think that you know the purpose of having it at a flagstaff or yuma would be so that people would physically be there for the meeting and if people are still going to be electron doing it telephonically

108or virtually then it kind of to me it kind of defeats the purpose of saying we're going to be in flagstaff and none of us are in flagstaff yeah that's certainly that's certainly a concern um you know if we were talking about the january or march meeting uh i i'd be more concerned if we were to schedule the july one for flagstaff i i hope that we can all be together and have the public you know there in person or at least have it open in person um in july of next year i that could be wishful thinking on my part but uh and again as linda mentioned we could always change it i mean that's many months away we can we can change that if we need to okay so um if if that's

109the case um if there's no other discussion about about tentative locations uh or dates um then i would like to move that we accept the revised schedule so that's march 4th uh that's as produced but with the exception of march 4th july 22nd and november 4th and moving the july 22nd meeting to flagstaff and again we can we can always change these locations as conditions permit or don't permit um you know depending on on covet and other things so if that so i i would like to make a motion to uh to adopt that schedule is there a second a second okay all in favor uh so i see uh sukay saying yes mike manley's saying yes lynn davidson saying yes dean saying yes mark's saying yes and linda's saying yes now all opposed mike

110are you um abstaining all right he voted yes okay all right so let's let's set that for the schedule um i i hope that again that the work study session i think that we can do with social distancing um the regular board meetings uh we'll you know continue to take a look at data as we come up to those meetings um and make a decision as to whether or not we think we can safely do um an in-person meeting i i'd like to say that i hope that we get our next board meeting in person uh perhaps with some some guideline or some distancing in place uh but you know we're always looking at the at the data and the benchmarks to make that decision okay um moving on 801 call to the public uh

111on non-agendized items uh again we we set up an email address for the purposes of receiving these comments we did not receive any uh by the deadline so we are going to move on to uh i'm sorry the discussion item for the next regular board meeting 8.02 discussion item agenda items for the next regular board meeting scheduled for december 3rd 2020. um are there any specific agenda items that the board members would like to see on the next meeting agenda david this is mark sims um my comment would be um more about us getting the type of update we got today from the staff in the interim right in other words you know we're looking at three months which i think is fine but getting maybe a repo just and you know it doesn't have

112to be a lot of work like them just sitting down and cutting a video and sending us a video about how opening up went and what are the challenges just to kind of keep the board prized i don't want them to have to do a lot of work to do a formal document but it'd be really nice to just let us know and actually i think it would help the public uh some sort of art to be clear you want an update from the from staff members on on how the the reopening is has been proceeding well like similar to what we got today from all the staff members i mean actually even what they did today could be done on video and sent to us before the meeting but in the interim doing that

113as well might be helpful okay this is linda just wanted to clarify when you're speaking of a video are you talking about what staff and students etc are doing for the reopening and we watched that prior to the meeting or is this some kind of can you clarify what you're looking for in the video a little bit not clear with that sure it was uh similar to the reports that we got today not all of them but you know i'm not as concerned about the hepa filters um on a regular basis but for instance the reports that lynn gave out outreach gave birth to three and the principals gave they're all telling us which students are and aren't coming in and things like that that's kind of changing very quickly so it'd be nice to

114know after the open in october sometime or it could be added on to the agenda of the work study but getting some sort of update okay so and this is a through video before the board meeting so i see what the objectives would be as far as updates something more consistent through video and sent to us so that we can view that prior to the board meeting rather than reading it in paper form or english form correct yes that would be correct okay understood just wanted to make sure that uh annette and david we were all on the same page okay thank you are there any other others uh seeing none um you can move on to action to item 9.01 action item adjournment uh do we have a motion to adjourn lynn i move

115we adjourn this board meeting and a second linda all right uh linda is seconding yeah um so all in favor yes i second i see that we're all saying uh we're all showing ascent uh all opposed all right uh thank you very much everyone um appreciate your time and the effort of the of the staff um thank you again board members and uh have a good night thank you david thanks so much thanks dude thank you good night everybody thanks everybody later best job jay