001time set for the strategic planning meeting um the agenda has been posted on board docs uh thank you all for joining um first we have the our roll call and i'll i'll take care of that dean howard and i don't see dean on the call i do understand that he may be joining us later uh lynn davison president mark sims here president uh mike gordon i'm here mike manley i'm here all right mike uh sue k coneyful and shelly herbald i i know that shelly is not going to be able to attend today so thank you for coming the next item is the review of background information that's provided and emphasizing virtual norms i think we'll run this similar to the way that we run a board meeting in terms of you know turn on
002your um your camera if you want to talk i can recognize you and then you can you can talk i'll be on mute and when you're done then you can revert back to me and i'll take the next person in line and also speak slowly if you can and take some pauses if you are going to ask a question so the interpreters have time to do their job and the the people using the interpreters have time to to process that information so uh next going into item three uh nancy nancy alexander is our facilitator for this exercise and we'll be for the next few work study sessions um she has a few points to go over um kind of about you know what this process is i know we wanted to start this a little
003bit earlier in the spring but got delayed due to covet but she's going to go over what what kind of our timeline is um what the various milestones are going to be along the way um and then we can proceed from there so nancy you have the floor thank you very much president nigro and welcome everyone we do have with us three asdb staff members superintendent reichman assistant superintendent christian rex and executive finance director shaina cooper and so they will be here as resources for us today there are really five stages in the planning process and what we're hoping to accomplish today will be planning the plan and starting to look at what's most important the burning issues for each board member so that then we can see what we need to do to get
004you additional data and information we have scheduled october 1st as our second work session if it goes as planned then we will begin to set strategic priorities and then we will need most likely two more sessions to develop the strategic actions and how we're going to communicate and market the strategic plan the goal is to have this completed by the end of 2020 so that it can be adopted starting january 2021. so you have in your packet a virtual notebook the plan last march when we were going to meet was to have this for you and so the notebooks are sitting at pdsd and if we ever meet again in person we will distribute those for you so that you have everything located in one place the items that you have in your board docs
005include the letter that we started sent out to after president nigro and superintendent reichman and i met that talked about the basic definitions of strategic planning individual expectations most important issues and then developing that timeline and as we look at the board docs you have a calendar that we would like to under number four complete with potential dates you have the act operating principles that have been established now for three years they stand for accountability collaboration and transparency and that's how we want to operate within the agency you have the profile that has a whole host of information from the 1920s school year it will be updated this fall of course your vision and mission i also included the draft scope of work that was presented last november when you were talking about the possibility
006of finding a consultant to come in and assist you with the strategic planning what was determined was that it would be done with annette and president nigro and all of the board members and that we would have an internal facilitator myself that would help you along the way i'm not a participant i won't be offering any suggestions but i will be the one that will assist you in coming up with a very viable live strategic plan you have the work study powerpoint that eddie did that had a lot of data in it about live births of deaf and hard of hearing students you have a demographic powerpoint that was presented to school boards a year ago of what was happening with this general student population throughout arizona you have um now the revised uh calendar
007so it's the revised one that we're going to be finishing up with today you have your strategic priorities that we have been working with with the steering committee you have strategic planning definitions outlining the difference between long-range planning which takes your existing conditions and extends that into the next five years versus strategic planning where you really look at where you want to be in five to seven years and then work backwards and then a hybrid model promoted by advanced ed that really gets everyone into strategic thinking and so it takes that vision envisioning piece of strategic planning and models in a way we can become better strategic thinkers and then you've got the planning norms that president negro went over so that's really the what we have in your board documents so the first phase
008that we're going to work on today is planning the plan and the information gathering and strategies analysis and we'll start with number four in identifying the expectations from the board for the strategic planning process so this is the plan for the plan and i'm going to have you do this alphabetically this first activity and it's going to be alphabetically with your first names so coincidentally superintendent reichman annette you are first so what do you see as your expectations for the strategic planning process hello um well for being here this afternoon really my expectation for this planning process is to develop a very clear vision of what asdb will look like in the next five years that if five years from now we can take a look back and see where we are today and then
009did we get to the vision that we had so i want a vision um that we all can agree on as to where we want to be five years from today so that's my expectation annette i'm going to ask if you have any expectations in the process so we believe we'll have five meetings but um do you have will this be with the board and this team as you envision setting these priorities in the next five sessions expectations of the process itself meaning i put on the agenda any stakeholder involvement anything that is beyond the nine board members and the three um executive team members that you have with you today one thing that we can do um depending on board member interest is once we develop some possible planning we review it with different
010stakeholders maybe have town hall reading we have to be done virtually to ask the communities the parents the students the teachers and staff some of their ideas about what our strategic plan can look like thank you so the next person alphabetically is david nigro hi um you know in terms of the you know the expectations i want in terms of the process itself um i want to make sure that you know the board members bring you know all of their ideas here in the early parts of the process and then we can sort out through you know or identify any data that we may need to make a better decision and kind of sort through what the plan may be um that's that's kind of you know process type expectation um you know in terms
011of the result i i you know we i want to get beyond just saying we will improve the quality of our services certainly um but we can improve them in a in a measurable or in a quantifiable way so that we know that we've you know the work that we've done uh it has been able to better serve the students and the constituents that we serve thank you so data driven both in using data to determine your strategic priorities and data driven so that every priority is measurable with matrixes of criteria for success is what i heard you say yeah i i i yeah um you know i went to an asthma conference uh earlier in the year when when you could still travel um it was back in february and uh you know one
012of the one of the idea and the most of the meeting was about strategic planning and you know one of the ideas um that other districts use is they have a color-coded strategic plan so they may have five different areas um you know five different areas where they're really trying to get somewhere and all of their all their board meetings every item on the agenda is linked back to one of those colors um so we know that each one of these efforts is supporting you know one of those um you know one of those agenda or one of those items and and i i like that idea not because it looks nice and it's color-coded um but the idea that we're always being reminded um at all of our board meetings that you know we're
013undertaking these efforts for uh you know for a reason that we're there there's a place where we're going and these actions are going to support that even if that actually may not immediately um you know bear fruit in that meeting or within the time period for the next meeting but over the the time horizon of the strategic plan we're moving towards that goal thank you the next person alphabetically is dean howard dean are you with us i will come back to him then alphabetically as christian rex kristen your expectations i think moving forward expectations selected by the board gives me a clear vision of where to go to get down in the weeds so it would be awesome to have our items i hope we include stakeholder input i have been fielding a lot of
014questions from our stakeholders in our school districts we have a lot of changes that we are implementing during um during this time and with our schools and our co-ops and i have been fielding a lot of phone calls from our stakeholders which are districts wanting to know when did this decision happen why didn't we have any input so when we have our marching orders and you give them to me to get down in the weeds i need to want to focus on our stakeholder input as much as possible i think that's probably what i'm hoping to to bring out of this project thank you kristen linda bo you are next your expectations as a board member first of all before i begin um i'm looking at jess's background it's pretty light and it's really washing
015out her face and her hand so i'm not able to see her so i'm struggling right now to be able to understand her interpreting and she's asking if there is another darker background if so can you use it and interpreter can just go ahead and switch out her background and i'll take over for a few minutes um well as far as the vision goes really i'm out of the loop with all of this um i did try to access the board docs i was having problems accessing them for some reason my account i wasn't able to get into it so i'm trying to read through all the information and keep up with you all as we're here as a statewide agency how can we establish one line of communication so who leads that and how
016can we come together and pull together not only the agency but look at the the cooperatives um and how can we raise the bar for student excellence and achievement that's really what i want to see not the status quo you know and people working in separate and isolation i'd like to see us all working together um to as leaders you know to all achieve one goal of student excellency i want students to be successful after they graduate from school that's the goal thank you linda do you need more nancy not yet but in the next activity we will thank you the next person is lynn davidson uh i'd like a clear plan that we're moving forward and looking at the whole agency including the co-ops the early childhood with you know the goal obviously that
017our post school outcomes look look really good but we have to look at it across the whole agency not just the brick and mortar not not just the co-ops but have a plan to promote better achievement with better post school outcomes thank you nice and concise and a very holistic approach so the next person alphabetically is dr sims mark hi um my idea what i think is is is you need to define your goal and then go towards it so we should be the premier educational institution in the united states providing excellent education for every child that needs our services within the boundaries of the state of arizona and be a model for others to emulate thank you nice and thorough there as a model the next person is michael gordon um my expectations trying
018to find out bring up my video there we go sorry about that um my expectations are a little long marks is try to identify the issues or i guess uh what areas are particularly strong in our calling i've always felt that we want to try to search efficiencies when it comes to uh cost effectiveness of two center-based services now remote services and obviously school-based services how we can make that to be most effective best practices equal distribution of resources uh how we can identify what those those needs are and try to have honest conversations towards how we can um design maybe a plan for the future that will really help and at least in my case on this board has helped increase the awareness of blindness and how uh how we can help the greatest
019number of people with our with the amount of revenue were allocated thank you michael um that effectiveness and deficiencies is a little different focus appreciate that the next person is mike manley mike hi this is mike manley um i don't want to reiterate um some pieces that were already discussed i agree um if you look at the mission and vision as it stated all children in arizona which encompasses our sub-pops that this state institution is here to support our mission says all of those kids so it seems that asdb needs to be the um the true expert in the state for all of these liaisons in this state um to come as a resource as an as a partner um and making sure that those all the decisions are putting those kids first so is
020a is to be doing everything it can for all the kids in the state for all all of the varying needs be they co-op brick and mortar residential not in one of those groups but needing expertise in these areas are we doing everything we can to help those kids and families moving forward thank you mike i heard expert as well as earlier was two words describing the agency sheena cooper is next sorry hello my expectations though would be after we've set our agency priorities is that we're able to continue to work toward common goals between agency leadership the board our operational as well as our educational staff members but also hoping to ensure that we align our resources with our strategic plan by tying the budget to the plan and that we're able to create
021a direct linkage between how our resources are allocated and how those efforts support our strategies over time i envisioned that we would be able to identify those areas that contribute less directly to our strategic goals and that we're able to become clearer on where we can work on gradually aligning our resources every with everything that we fund thank you and we know we have limited resources so to maximize those efficiencies and last but not least sue k so my expectation i think sort of pulls or piggybacks on several folks i do agree with mike that if we are true to our vision and mission we need to make sure that we are demonstrating that expertise in our strategic plan to get us from where we are at to where we want to be but i
022also agree with um some of what david said as far as making sure that everything we do um is tied back to those goals that we identify um i sit on another board and one of the things that we do with that information is also use it as part of the evaluation of the executive director of that board um so i think it we need to carry it all the way through there needs to be um a thread that ties all of those pieces together with the outcome being improved student outcomes thank you sue k and that did pull it all together for us because we know for lease the superintendents um have performance criteria that was passed in legislation so it brings it all the way around to the accountability piece so with that
023being said and what i heard in timeline is really over the course of the next five years and so we are looking at 2026 if we follow the timeline 2027 five or six years so in order to start that process annette sent out an email it was president negro's suggestion that what would be a headline you would like to see and whether it be the arizona republic or the wall street journal or something else that would be about asdb five years from now so in 2026 2027 what might be that headline you may not have had time to think about this so you have the right to pass on this activity i'm gonna go alphabetically again but i'm going with your last name so the headline for five years from now what would you like
024to see i'm going to start with linda and remember if you're not ready you can pass i'm a pass thanks the next person is shayna shayna what would you like to see that headline for me again i guess it would be along those lines of asdb has identified um resources that effectively ensure that we're meeting our priorities and educating our students which is our mix should be our main focus for allocating the resources being effective at um thank you and lynn davidson do you have any ideas for our headlines it would be a really long headline um but that we would just pick up our yeah our deaths and blind students are achieving beyond what they've done in the past and are going on to bigger and better things um i haven't had much time
025to think about it but that's my little thought thank you um i wrote similar to that that asdb demonstrates greater achievement gains than general student population was one idea that i had that is in line with the same like yours and so the next person alphabetically is michael gordon michael so much fanfare there and i didn't even have myself unmuted uh new north country asdb residential hub prospers will you say that again for us please new asdb north country residential hub prospers thank you very much and our next person alphabetically is dean howard dean have you joined us then sue k you're up next arizona state senator jane doe credits asdb with her excellence in education to get her where she's at today wow great headline thank you mike manley arizona leads the nation in
026post-secondary outcomes for the deaf and blind ambitious david your headline well i i think first uh you know similar to mike we would say that um you know the i would say the the asdb schools uh high school seniors earn x amount of dollars where x is a large number um you know in potential scholar college scholarships um but you know i i think that my other my real headline that i really want to see it doesn't even have asdb in it it's it has um one of the students uh that we serve in some capacity doing something that's great that you wouldn't have expected so um and that's that's really uh that's really my goal is to really enable the students to achieve things that that they didn't think they could achieve thank you
027annette your headline and that you have your microphone on okay we'll come back to annette kristen your headline five years out i would love um arizona state schools for the deaf and blind to host a summit to support best practices with regard to instruction as well as curriculum development or other schools that serve students that are deaf blind hard of hearing or deafblind thank you very much and mark alphabetically you're the last one um just a quick comment when you walk into i don't know people are familiar with the school but when you walk into bronx science which is a magnet school in new york it says on the wall six nobel laureates have graduated from this school and those are the types of things we should be seeing on the walls of these schools
028but the headline should be asdb's peer institutions recognize it as the preeminent educational institution in the united states thank you yes that's powerful so annette can you hear me and did you have a headline yes sorry about that i'm having difficulty um yes my headline was similar to mike mannelly in that 100 percent of our graduates both in the schools and in the co-ops one year after graduation they have a full-time job making a good wage and or they're in post-secondary education again towards getting a meaningful career thank you very much and so we can see that the agency's vision and mission is for all students that we serve and we can see that we have agreement for that expertise premier excellence efficiency those common themes so i'm going to skip and start talking about
029what are burning issues for you and then once we've identified some of those will determine then what additional information you need as well as obstacles that there might be so i heard some underlying individual ideas for the most important issues for the agency but i'd like you to take a couple of minutes and really think we we can't if we do a few things very very well we will get momentum to be able to do even more if we try to do so many things that we can't do them well then the planning process loses some of its credibility so this is going to be where david is going to go on the screen and you're going to raise your hand when you're ready to share i will not be able to see you raising
030your hand so he'll help me facilitate this part but by raising your hand please start and talk about what's most important for you to address as the agency that burning issue that you really want to have possibly as a strategic priority to focus in on in the next five years all right thank you nancy um i am seeing dr sims um your camera is on so dr sims has the the floor yeah you know since i've joined the agency and one of the reasons i joined the board is is uh the geographical disparity i i think we really have to work on delivering services across the state um in a more even fashion so people have access to it across the state and that to me is one of our highest priorities okay thank you
031dr sims is there anyone else that would like to make comments at this point um i see linda uh linda you're now recognized um for me what i feel is a priority is children having full access from birth up to language primarily birth to five having that full access to language and asl absolutely has to be a part of that and a part of that child's life from the beginning so that's an important issue that we need to focus on and it really should be from the beginning and that's it for now thank you i see linda raising her hand again no no okay uh sue king i agree with what dr sims says in regards to the disparity based on location and geographics but i i also um [Music] really would like us to
032sort of think outside of the box about how education can be delivered and i think we've had some insight into that because of covid but i i don't want us to have um just an expanded box i want us to be um creative in our approach on how to best serve those kids not only wherever they are geographically but wherever they are in their education journey to get them to the point where we do have those outcomes when they graduate okay thank you and there are others i saw mike families oh there's mike i see mike mike you're not recognized emily um i think a priority um needs to be collaboration and partnership with the leas for which our agency is attempting to provide the best services to put these kids in the best situation
033long term so strengthening the collaboration between and partnerships true partnerships um between the lease and asdb to better clarify what and how we're providing extremely important resources to these kids uh linda i see linda okay so i've heard from about two or three already and i do feel that those are important priorities um i have a question um as mark and mike manali were speaking talking about the geographic location of students and for me how are we monitoring those students who who leads that um because you have one monitor that says that could say the student is doing fine another monitor who may thinks that's different so who's managing that process and collecting that data so collecting that data and having it in our strategic plan there's a lot of variables that happen across the
034state um and you know we do want to make sure that we're providing equal access we're having equity and i know that dr sims really likes to look at that equity and i agree and i i heard that a lot in our previous board meeting uh making sure that we have equity across the state but who's responsible to monitor that and is that the leas responsibility who's making sure that they're following idea there's a lot of smaller issues that we have to work through within the larger issue before we can get to that priority so is that eventually the big picture you know is is that but there's a lot of cleanup that has to be done to make sure that there is equity across the state so what what steps will be taken so
035i do agree with the comments that were stated before me however um i'm very interested in early childhood and language development okay so i want to make sure that even we're having equity within each of the regions do they have access to language development who's monitoring that okay thank you thank you linda other others i see the dean has joined uh as well um uh dean we're sharing uh what we think priorities may be for uh the agency and uh to go over the uh kind of the etiquette uh just as in the board meetings uh when you'd like to speak you can turn on your video and then i could the moderator either me or or nancy will recognize you and then you can speak i see dr sims has his video on so
036dr sims you have the floor thanks um as a comment you know one of the things i think we struggle as a board is is because we all have some semblance of subject matter expertise that we sometimes mix implementation with strategy and so sometimes we talk about how we're going to implement the strategy but it's really the strategy itself we need to formulate and then let the executives execute on that strategy because i think sometimes we mix those two concepts and so i'm not saying it's bad but we need to focus on giving them a goal and then letting the executives of the agency obtain that goal if that makes sense okay thank you are there others that like to speak about priorities um i don't see any right now um nancy would you like
037to move on to the next next step point we certainly can um when we think about these priorities um and in light of dr sims comments about strategies um that once you set your strategic priorities the um kristen described it as being in the weeds but it's really that's on the direction that you give to the executive teams and with their support of all of their staffs then they're the ones that will execute out the devil and the details with these strategies and then come back and share progress with the board and so as we look at that what would you say are some of the obstacles that you believe prevent the success of some of these strategic priorities we know you have limited resources so we heard shayna talk about keeping those priorities so
038that the priorities are tied into the resource allocations but what would be some of the other obstacles that you think that we run into uh thank you nancy uh mark um i i see your dr sims i see you that you've opened your video um uh i would say one of our major obstacles is the mindset that our resources are limited as compared to perhaps not correctly allocated and i think that's a pervasive mindset that we don't have enough resources as compared to where we allocate our resources i'm not sure we don't have enough resources i just think it might be how we allocate them okay thank you would you like to expand on that mark when you look at the resources they're significant right and so the issue is not necessarily a lack of
039resources that perhaps maybe the resources have not been expended on the rural students and those types of things so um you know obviously if we had unlimited resources then that wouldn't be a problem but there is a language where we automatically kind of say there isn't enough money that's kind of a built-in language when we have these board meetings we talk about there not being enough money i'm not sure that's really the case i think the answer is yes it's painful and sometimes difficult to reallocate the money but i'm not sure the conclusion necessarily is we don't have enough money um because i i mean i think there's a substantial amount of money in this organization relative to our outcomes and mark maybe you can expand on on the allocation me i i understand that
040you know as you know the funding comes from different sources can you talk about how you think it may not be deployed efficiently or effectively uh today well i think frankly the money's been allocated historically and so what i mean by that is is there have been maybe without uh rationales that are consistent with what maybe we all see as our strategy the money has gone into certain buckets in certain ways and a lot of that has just happened through momentum not necessarily without rationale and so there is to some extent maybe some resistance to change those allocations because they've historically always been that way but it doesn't mean that they've always been that way and that's the right way for them to be um so uh you know there is i mean i don't
041know what uh what other granularity you're looking for david but uh that that would be i mean if you look at it there's never been a rationale for why our money spent the way that it's just frankly always been that way and so the institutional memory that justified that would never pass on throughout the institutions because basically anybody who had all of that institutional memory basically turned over around the time mike gordon and i joined the board and so we've just kind of kept on doing what we did before and i think that that was based on certain priorities that were brought to the table to the uh organization but not a perhaps equitable and distributive priority and i guess i'm still confused by that um you know and i i'm very confused by that
042um you know we know my statement or that rationale uh by the by the statement about how it's it's you know the the the agency is funded um through a variety of sources as you know and uh depending on the student that we're serving um we have different responsibilities with respect to that student and we have different funds that are available uh to service that to service that student i'll give you a perfect example um the trust fund that we have for the organization was actually funded by a visually impaired individual historically but if you look most of those funds have gone towards hearing impaired individuals disproportionately so that's a microcosm of example so in the the trust fund though is there um and i know we get a very small amount of our funding
043from that uh is there a is there a limitation on that trust fund no there's not but that doesn't justify the contra distinction of overly funding hearing impaired or visually impaired i mean it's been disproportionate incredible it's always gone to the brick and mortar schools on the h.i not always substantially gone to the brick and mortar schools on the hi side historically in terms of that maybe um if you can you know expand on that i know that we you know uh with students that we don't provide that are not the brick-and-mortar schools the students are served via the co-ops we don't do all of the other things we don't teach academics we don't do transportation we don't provide nutrition we don't do all those other things so the the amount that you know that
044we that we spend is at the at the behast or the direction of the local school districts and many of those relationships are are fee-for-service as as you know that's true but we do get a certain amount that's general funds money correct uh that's right we get about i think it's 20 or 21 million from the general fund now that we have because we can't raise people spend that across anywhere in the agency correct uh that's right many of those i mean there may be some limitations but in in general okay so look at the distribution of that money and i would posit to you it is not equitable across the agency across the state okay and that's really i think what i wanted to know is that you know we we have different relationships
045with students we have certain responsibilities with respect to some groups of students and not to others uh namely you know do we have to provide the academic education and transportation and nutrition to uh students from the co-ops and the answer is no we don't um you know versus the university of the others um but look at this discretionary travel discretionary travel has gone disproportionately to the the students at the brick and mortar schools than it has to the co-op so there's no reason that they shouldn't be able to do discretionary travel as well that would benefit their in cultural integration educational integration and all those things i'm not sure that that should be limited by a brick and mortar school um you know in terms of that though you're still talking about going to see
046uh traveling to have some sort of enrichment is that right yeah whatever that would be okay um i mean i think that that that's a microcosm that's a a particular vignette or example of some of those issues so if you're going to have equal opportunity then you would want equal opportunity across the agency and i guess so i think what you're saying is that the the general funds money what you're saying is that the general funds money needs to be sent differently than it than it is today even though is that what you're saying i'm not saying that what i'm saying is is we have historically spent it for a certain way that doesn't necessarily and i'm not sure there is a historical justification that is consistent with the values and the mission of the
047organization i think it is just a perpetuation of something that was established at a certain point in time in the organization before frankly our current mission and vision was adopted i can tell you that it does predate that and so the reason we seemingly continue to do it is because that's how we have done it i'm not telling you i mean it is possible although i think personally unlikely that we could go through this whole exercise and say we are exactly spending the money exactly how it should have been and weren't we amazing that we did that before we did the strategic plan that's possible but i think unlike it i don't have the answer i'm just challenging the allocation okay uh mike i think your video was was open mike manley yes this is
048mike manley sorry about um the buttons on zoom um maybe to clarify um just thankfully uh for the agency um with the nets hiring of miss cooper we might be in a position where we can answer some of those historical questions about how and why those proportions are where they're at um which is a good thing i don't know if previously uh we were in a position to really take a look at data and answer those questions um but maybe we maybe we could take a fresh set up eyes and and take a look at how those proportions are actually panned out and consider um is that is that part of where we're heading in the right direction um without uh you know blaming the ghosts of the past but uh having some clarity on
049the where we are financially i know that over the last two years um i have a much much greater understanding of kind of the ins and outs of the fiscal aspect of the agency that really wasn't clear until the last until um superintendent reichman uh brought some transparency at peace so maybe those are some questions we can answer uh with data now that we didn't have access to in the past i'm not saying that uh the proportions are um i just don't think we've had access to look at that until recently i don't know if that is helpful at all but um having more information about uh where and how the money's coming in is a wonderful thing that um we could leverage now are there others that would like to speak about that about
050the obstacles that we face um i see uh miss cooper i just wanted to add um just a few comments um as it as we talk about our resources i do agree with quite a bit of what um mr stems was talking about and that's exactly why when the question was asked what would be my expectation was to talk about how the allocation of our resources are aligned with our strategic priorities a lot of what we have done in the past has been based on historical which i have tried to change in the last two years that i have been here i have implemented processes where there is more involvement with the agency um from the various directors executives principals the leadership team in terms of that process is on them to develop what they're
051semes submitting and requesting as part of their budget submission package so that has gotten a little bit more better should i say over the years in terms of how our resources are allocated and where we need to better identify those operational um ineffectiveness as well as trying to make sure that we're efficiently using those resources because yes we do have 55 56 million dollars is that enough i'm not sure again i think the key point is that we're identifying what those priorities are and i can better align what our budget should be but i can definitely say that i am in very much an agreement with most of what he he referenced when it talked about the historical and trying to justify how our budget was developed in the past um which i've been trying
052to uncover the last two years and also as it relates to the trust fund monies we are only limited to four percent of our investment portfolio which has been roughly about a hundred and forty three thousand dollars a year now there is a process i believe um assistant superintendent rex can talk about that a little bit more but there is a vetting process there is a board um there is involvement from the various departments in terms of what they're looking for to increase those operational needs specifically for the students now how that's allocated again there is a vetting process but um i definitely hope that is that is one of my expectations to to better align similar to what mark sim said our resources uh mike gordon i think this is pretty consistent with when
053we're talking about expectation when it comes to operational effectiveness efficiencies um this is a conversation i feel like we've had several times in the past be it at strategic discussions or at board meetings when it it just comes to allocations and uh it is a talk about historical perspectives and ghosts of the past it's you know it's a institutional model that has was established in tucson over 100 years ago and and in some ways we are still living within that construct of a residential facility with a very small census and a uh a finite albeit i feel large budget but with a big allocation to support that that uh historical institutional model and uh that seemingly i'm interested to see that that is is emerging as an initial priority out of uh some of the
054board members because i do think that's an important aspect about how we're spending our money obviously programmatic excellence is something that any institution should have as a ultimate ambition and goal and that that is is clear and i'd love to to see us achieve that uh as soon as possible um fiscal prudency and uh and um effectiveness though is something that doesn't just come through instruction it comes through some tough decisions and particularly nowadays because we don't know where that budget will fall out in the next year or two obviously not what we've been receiving just as a consistent uh year by year increase that's it dave all right thanks bye are there others does not not look like it um okay so uh nancy if we can move on okay so now it comes
055to the hard part this is the heavy lifting so everyone's kind of talked as some of their expectations they've talked about some of the limitations there's um i see bubbling up really four kind of focus areas that i have heard you talk about one is resource allocation and having um a an obstacle maybe is that institutional history and or maybe not even having until shayna came a really clear understanding of those allocations and then prioritizing as you look at those i heard from one board member about zero to five in the early literacy i heard from another board member about promoting partnerships and then embedded through everyone's comments for these post-secondary outcomes or really focusing on student achievement so that those doors are open wherever they want to go once they've graduated from the schools
056um what you all have to decide next is what you want to have for additional data so that you can help fine-tune these priorities or think about them and and really get some consensus and then once you tell us what the data is and additional information that you need we can bring that to the october 1st meeting i don't know president nigro if you get a different read on that that you wanted to share with the group no no i don't i don't think i don't think i did um you know in terms of now if we're we're talking about what kind of specific types of data that we that we're going to request from the agency does anyone have any any particular i see mike is raising his hand very quickly i apologize this
057is mike was that my permission to go yeah sorry thank you um i think a satisfaction survey from the lease we serve um with some specific questions would be a good place to start um it's where we get our children that uh we're endeavoring to take care of um i think hearing from them if uh how we can better serve these kids would be a good place to start okay uh dr sims yeah one of the things that's come up repetitively in the board meetings is the concept of well there are 49 other laboratories across the united states doing this so it would be understanding what other states are doing how they i mean we're not the only ones that have geographical diversity you know a diverse student population i mean clearly this is something
058that i would think almost every state except for maybe what delaware and rhode island has to struggle with so you know what are other states doing is there the data of every other state and what their programs look like because although we want to be innovative we don't have to reinvent the wheel because i suspect we could borrow ideas from multiple states and really come out with some very good solutions okay thank you are there any others i mean to uh yet to me um you know i think if we talk about resource allocation um you know we the majority of the agency's budget uh depends on on enrollment um again there are those that attend the brick and mortar schools those we serve in the co-ops uh we get fee-for-service in many in many
059cases although not all so those are those depend on the number of students that we serve we do get that kind of block from the general fund of about 20 million dollars some of that we use in early childhood education and some other obligations that we have some of that we use in the brick and mortar schools because we do provide all the other services you know the the direct academic instruction uh transportation nursing extracurricular activities nutrition etc um so we probably won't need to remind you know board members what you know where that goes and and and uh where that money is spent if we're going to talk about reallocating in some way that we should talk about that um and we should also talk about you know some of the the data the
060the amount of services we provide both to uh the the students in the brick and mortar schools and the students and the co-ops because you know we they have different needs right i mean that they have very different needs um and that's why it's called an iep because each child is as an individual need and that plan is individualized so um you know there are some students that that have less of a need than others that's that's kind of the nature of the of the agency so we should have a better idea of that um mark i say your camera is is lit up yeah um you know i think we have to decide philosophically if this is an approach to deliver what we are obligated or need to deliver or what we aspirationally want
061to deliver as an ideal because you know if this is let's see what we statutorily have to deliver based on statute and iep well this just can be relatively formulaic um and so i i understand that that's recurrent language and philosophical framework to use but i'm not sure that that's really an aspirational or necessarily consistent with what i would consider the ultimate strategy to make this a premier institution and deliver premier education i mean even if somebody's iep doesn't say they need it it doesn't mean you don't deliver it because it gets the child to where we ideally want them to be okay dr sims are you saying that we should supply that we should provide academic instruction or nutrition or transportation to students in in the co-ops who who that that is currently being
062served by their lease i you know i mean it depends if it's statutorily um uh prohibited or not um and it also depends on whether or not that's in the child's best interest i think you you'd be hard-pressed to go wrong if the institutional value i mean you know i i'd have to know the specifics but i'm not sure that that's something that would be precluded necessarily if that if that helped that child okay that's very that's very interesting um you know the the the way that we the way that the co-ops serve is they're really one of several competitors to provide uh services that to support um you know the child's uh uh needs so it's not necessarily academics right now um or nutrition or transportation or other any of the other ancillary services
063um because they're they're already served in their local school district like any other school student in that local school district so um you know to me it seems that we want to improve our services so that we can be involved in more of the local school districts in the cooperative setting as opposed to some other providers right there are many leas that hire their own tbis and they hire their own o m instructors and their own uh teachers of the deaf etc uh there are others that use other agencies they're not not this one uh to provide those services i think to me we want to improve so that we can be more competitive with those other providers um but i'm not i mean certainly in strategic planning we're open to anything but i'm i'm
064i just don't see how it fits that we would you know send in you know social studies teachers let's say um to supplement hey man i'm not sure what the motivation is to to use that particular example i mean you know the point of the matter is is if it's if it's to provide what's statutorily minimally required or iep minimally required i think that's a different philosophical approach as compared to providing to get the best possible outcome so if it doesn't say somebody needs perhaps a particular device to be able to interact educationally but that's what's going to get them there and the best i would hope that maybe their teacher would appeal to the agency and we would provide it despite the fact that we're not statutorily required and i think that's a little
065bit different than a social studies teacher well you had mentioned you know providing academics or providing other other services and that's that's the you know i think that's the that's the disconnect that we're having i'm not saying that we can't go beyond what what the statute provides um or what an iep provides um but what i'm saying is it tends to be the philosophical approach that we've had right but but in that relationship though if we're talking about a student in the co-op the the you know that student is a student in that lea that lea serves most of the the child's educational needs not all they they they bring in us for uh for certain specialty services um but they provide everything else and they they keep the you know a large part of
066the of the voucher money to service that and we get a part to provide those services now can we provide you know what what do we provide i mean certainly at a minimum what the iep uh has and that should be what the child needs but if there's something above and beyond that i'm interested to see hear your thoughts about what what that could be how we could identify it and and what be beneficial to to provide it i leave that to the experts which are the teachers i think it's a philosophical approach not a specific statutory uh being specific statutorily or regulatory above uh if that makes sense it's the same reason why some teachers bring school supplies into the classroom right because they know that the classroom does better if they do that
067rather than saying well we just don't have any money for it we're not going to do it okay are there any other uh i see uh linda linda is now recognized so i was watching the conversation between mark and david um and i seem to get a little more clarification talking about you know providing additional services above and beyond the iep and of course you know we have to legally follow the iep so those additional services above and beyond it has me thinking uh you know can we find those exemplary teachers get them to the school how do we get those exemplary teachers to work you know whether it be on our brick and mortar schools or in the cooperatives do we need to pay them a higher salary in order to recruit them do
068we know how to get those exemplary teachers here in order to to provide that additional service for the students and as we all know teachers don't get paid the best here in the state of arizona but a lot of teachers look at ascb and they think oh arizona i'm not going to go there you know due to the pay so is there more incentive that we can provide to attract those higher qualified teachers so something that we should think about and i think that's something that's important to me is that we're we're attracting those highly qualified exemplary teachers so that's my thoughts thank you thank you linda are there any other cause i see uh lynne yes i just want to um go back to what mike had to say mike manley had to say
069about partnerships with the school districts i think it's going to be critically important for us to really work on that especially with our new with the changes and the new agreement with the school districts i think it's that's something we're really going to have to take a look at there's going to be a lot of implications i believe sure are there are any other comments on that on this section okay um nancy you can bring us to the next door of business the next order of business is really to look at a timeline in future meetings sometimes in this process things bubble to the top such as a huge priority is to look at in school districts closing of schools because of declining enrollment you know i mean there are things that are a little
070more specific than what you all have come up with so i think as far as next steps if we can agree on the october meeting and three more meetings then david and annette and myself can take this information and shape it into some ideas with additional data that we could provide for the october first meeting does that sound like a viable next step for everyone and so we had tentatively planned you see the revised calendar that were in your board docs we had this work session on september 10th you have your regular board meeting you are all invited to the steering committee if you remember on that's on september 23rd that particular session that group that meets um are really the 50 key leaders in the agency and so we could think of ways that
071we might want to share and gather some ideas from them that you had a work session at one time planned for september 24th but leticia put that in the calendar i did not have that so we could have a september 24th we could have an october 1st then a november date and then a december date and that's in the chart that she gave us we can just pick some thursdays from uh four to six if you would like and then or i can have leticia go out and do it the way she asks what times you have available yeah nancy this is david the the doodle uh poll is probably the best way to schedule that and then at the next board meeting we can approve those dates um i know we have the next
072one calendared so we're we're set with that um but if the teacher can do some uh a doodle poll for everyone that'll be able to settle those dates and then we can confirm at the next board meeting and david i will follow up with leticia and get that organized with her all right great so once we have those dates it's it's not well focused right now this process gets it's messy because it's um really thinking differently it's not the extension of the past you know it's not to say that we want um to do this this and this for what our existing way of doing business but instead we want to really change how i heard thinking out of the box differences some of those types of things so you're just going to need to
073have continued discussions as everybody processes what we talked about today to try to get into a narrower focus for those strategic priorities there's not a hurry to do that if it takes more than a couple of meetings that's okay because really when you get down to then operationalizing these priorities that you've set as a board that's the work of the leadership and individual staff members to present to you how they hope to accomplish what you set out as strategic priorities okay so a doodle poll will be coming out we'll have you approve that at the september 10th meeting um we'll reconfirm the september 24th meeting of uh that was already in the makings the october first one we'll confirm those and make sure we have good representation and then we'll have two more dates and
074then you and at night david will meet at the beginning of next week we'll schedule a time and so as all of you are thinking about things you can certainly um send an email to me and i can be the um the receiving end of those different ideas if you would like me to i'm on on the asdb email and i will just gather that and then put it into a form that could be shared with everybody if you've because we've talked about a lot of things tonight and people need time to process what they've heard okay so david do you need anything else from the group right now if what i'd like to do is just have closing comments and go around alphabetically again if there are any closing comments and you of course
075can just pass so i would start with the net do you have any closing comments in that yes just wanted to let you know that i listened to you i heard you there were a lot of really thoughtful serious discussion here i really appreciate your time your consideration your thinking outside of the box here i look forward to coming back in september and taking it to the next step and really establishing or re-establishing the priorities for the agency so thank you for your time this afternoon and that's it for me thank you annette david did you have any closing comments uh no thank you everyone for your time and your thoughts um and uh you know look forward to the to the next meeting dean howard closing comments none for me but thank you kristen
076rex closing comments linda bow closing comments i'd like to say thank you for the opportunity to gather tonight and as a board member i really like to know each of your thoughts are what your philosophies are and learn those and understand we need to work together as a team rather as a group of individuals so i am definitely seeing um and understanding each of you better during our board meetings we have so many duties and priorities to talk about so this session really gave me an opportunity and a valuable understanding into each of you and it was been a really great time just to see all these different viewpoints and nice that we could bring them to the table so thank you thank you linda lynn davidson closing comments no i'm good thank you dr
077sims closing comments um i've said enough thank you michael gordon closing comments no i'm good too thank you mike manley closing comments this is mike thanks thanks just really quickly i think it's critical that we do look five years into the future um but we're we're a governing board in quorum right now correct i could um make a request um you know we are certainly an unprecedented times right now um if it's possible could we get an update at our next board meeting about how um we've mitigated uh the state home order um as an agency and how we're helping our kids out um just to get an update i know we took a look at um the opening video at the last board meeting um i'm just wondering if we could uh get an
078update on how how that is going as an agency and and how we've um what we've done and how we've assisted folks in the in in the interim until uh those metrics get back into a place where we can move forward great and and that and kristen will follow up on that mike thank you any closing comments shayna no i'm okay thank you and lastly sue k any closing comments i just appreciated the dialogue today and just wanted to say thanks for that and um thank you nancy for facilitating i think it made for a good discussion thank you very much sue k it's the beginning of many we'll take all of this information and help narrow a little bit of the focus but there'll be discussions when there's philosophical beliefs that need to be
079really sorted out you may need to relook at your vision and mission there's a few options that you might want to consider so we will get that plan so people feel it's like it's a good use of their time at the next planning session i want to thank all of you for your participation and look forward to continue working with you have a good evening thank you and president negro do you need a motion to juror uh you know i don't think we need one but for the good of the order i suppose we should have one this is uk i i move that we adjourn this is lynn i second uh all in favor you beat me sue k yeah i'm seeing uh all thumbs up uh from lynn and from dr sims and
080linda and sue k and mike manley uh and all opposed i don't see any opposed thank you very much everyone thank you thank you good night everyone you