001last cow comes home the cows come home all right we're ready to go we'll call this meeting to order this is a special work study meeting open to the public for public input on basically three items for a bond override and a four-day schedule for for school so we'll we'll talk about the bond and the override first and if you if you'd like I mean this is open you can raise your hand and we'll try to get everybody's comments and questions in we have to limit it to those three things we can't talk about what what was going to be served and what shouldn't be served in a cafeteria or things like that so we'll just keep it to those three things so Kimberly Miss dugdale I'm going to turn time over to you so
002you can go over this can outline Dr Wright if I could add just a couple of things so what we want to do Kimberly has a two presentations the first of which will be our current state of the budget where we are now why we are 1.3 million dollars short the impact of the covid funds the last three and a half years and the impact of those run and dry that's the first presentation the second one will contemplate the data that we have gathered through two different efforts on the bond and over right one was an old school call phones that are connected to Cable which we know most people are even older than I am in many cases much older than I am that they have a phone that's still connected to cable or
003a landline that was a different demographic still favorable second was social media the demographics won considerably younger in age and the support is considerably greater so as we're going around if it pleases the board we want to make it conversational and so as we as Kimberly goes through each slide she'll ask about the board do you have any questions of the audience we'll take time to answer those questions as long as it's Bond override we'll get through that and if it pleases the board then we'll do the discussion of the four day that we'll start talking about as a potential it couldn't happen if we started tomorrow couldn't happen any earlier than 24 25 but there's no foregone conclusion that that's the direction we're going but if it loses the board and that's what they
004wish to do in the future there is a set procedure we must follow which takes about nine months much like what we went through in the sex ed conversation wonderful remember that it was beautiful so it'll take a while to get that done that's why we need to start now the next if the the board decides to hold another work study session that'll happen sometime in May and then if it looks like that's what the board wants to do is call and vote for a bond override or both that election we'll have a special meeting two items or so the first week of June to make sure we meet the deadlines there are prescribed deadlines for these elections that we must follow and so tonight the board has asked me to organize with our team
005this forum for you to provide some back and forth on those areas are there any questions either from the board or the participants Harry do you have one Dave I'm just going to say we originally kind of thought we wanted to meet down there but the way things are set up it wouldn't it wasn't going to work we kind of in the past we've just sat around tables and and talked like uh you know individuals so just because we're up here standing in this these higher high seeds just uh you know we're not those people so we you can talk to us I'm sorry anyway go ahead we'll turn the time over to Kimberly then all right good evening governing board president governing board members so I'm going to do the state of the budget
006here at Blue Ridge at the moment so uh just a comparison for our enrollment because as you all know our budget is based on our enrollment so we are we are down about 100 students from April of last year till April of this year you can see that negative 99.3275 that's ADM so it's not actually physical students but FTE for our students so we are down about 100 students from last year at this time anecdotally I guess it's not anecdotally it's it's accurate if you look April to April those students a vast majority were from White River when there's the correlation is we quit running the buses they not those students didn't stop overnight but after a while we lost 20 in the first week and then some thereafter that shortfall is almost completely White
007River students and not being able to run those buses them just being open and if you remember board the reason that we did that is for drivers and expense it wasn't a sustainable model and so what we found is this uh frankly we still have many of the highly motivated kids that found their way there are still here but we did have a group that were counting on Transportation they're not here that accounts for a large part of that almost all the hundred shortfall thank you sure okay so we did a budget Revision in um December but we had to use November numbers because our um enrollment wasn't out yet so our enrollment from December until now is down about 27 um ADM so again that's not students that's FTE so that gives us about
008uh 135 000 shortfall with those students leaving us that we have to decrease our budget when we do our May revision um so just I just wanted you to be aware of that number um as we go forward and again Dr Wright's um correct those 27 students are majority from White the White River Area so in December we adopted the budget at 13.2 million our expenditures at the moment are 11.1 million and we have encumbrances of about 3.1 million so encumbrances are the anticipated expenses that we have for the rest of the year um that is mostly salary and we do have a big chunk of money that's going to go out for salary because teachers balance of contracts will get paid in May and that's five paychecks so that's why that number's a little
009larger than it normally would be for the month if you tack on 135 000 shortfall for declining enrollment we have a total difference of about 1.2 million dollars so that's our shortfall for this year we will be able to take care of that shortfall this year with a combination of our Capital money and our covid relief money from the federal government we've been getting coveted relief money for the last couple years because of covid that money will run out in 2024 and we will no longer be able to utilize that money to deal with any shortfalls that we may have if you remember correctly that was about five million dollars that we received a couple years ago from covid relief just a reminder our budget is about 80 percent salaries and benefits so that's where
010when we have to cut or we have to cut or we have to look at um lowering expenses we have to look at salaries and we have to look at people because that's the majority of our budget all right are there any questions about the state of the budget may I added a little bit before after that before may add a couple things Mr President so Kimberly did a great job of of outlining where we're at I just wanted to reiterate the impact of the coveted relief funds have made it so for the last three and a half years we haven't had to make Cuts we took that five million dollars and strung it over three and a half years in addition we've been dipping into our Capital as well there are a number of
011other driving factors that Kimberly will cover like inflation which has been static well hasn't been static has been increasing from about initially five percent up to as much as 11 depending on what category you're measuring it's started to slow now with all of the increases in the uh with the increases in the interest rates that's good but what hasn't slowed is the cost of operating our schools fuel has gone up considerably electricity's gone up Insurance in every category will be higher than is this year so it shows a 1.2 million dollar shortfall after those factors we're probably closer to 1.3 1.4 or higher we will not have the code funds to make up the difference so we have made proactively as indicated to the board last week we practically are making some budget reductions inside
012of this year for next it won't get us close enough to where we need to be so without a bond or an override there will be additional Cuts in the form of people and programs that's the only place we have to go those purchase services are static or rather they're they're fixed in some respect the need for them is fixed those are special services for exceptional needs kids that's not we don't it's not a decision and we're going to provide them or not we must provide those supplies ten percent of our budget 130 000 it's not going to get us there if we cut them all out so the place you have to go essentially in all the other areas we've gotten smaller teachers and fewer teacher means larger classrooms fewer teachers mean larger classrooms
013it also May mean fewer programs remain containing a Fab Lab which is amazing that costs money we have a dedicated person that manages that that provides teaching and instruction and that's a multi-million dollar facility with donations that we have it's not sustained with mno so we're having to look for alternative funding that's something perhaps an override could help out with the other is the board has approved a two percent increase for teacher salaries and counselors we won't have an increase next year without a bond and override we there's just not it's not there those those costs are not sustainable and the monies that we're using for the retention bonus those are coming from the coveted relief funds those will not be available either so we're we're living just like in a paycheck by paycheck like
014many of the other people are right now and so this is why we want to bring to this body and stakeholders a case frankly for a bond and or an override and ideally both so with that I'll turn it over to Kimberly for your second presentation yeah I just wanted to have point before I go to my second president Temptation when we had our override here in Blue Ridge in the past that expired in 2019 it was about 1.8 million dollars so that Bond or that sorry that oh excuse me that override was covering our shortfall for our teachers so we have not decreased Services since we had that override because we were able to to supplement that money with our coven money so that's where that coveted money or the Covenant money has been
015filling in for that since we have not had that money I think just for people listening and people here can we make the distinction between override and a bond sure I mean they're both have to do with taxes but the funds are used differently can you can you explain to everybody what the difference between this override and a bond is they're not the same yes so a bond is essentially a loan and it's for Capital money or capital projects so like for buildings for buses um for textbooks for things like that and mno override can pay for mno um things like salaries um supplies non-capital items and that's not a loan that's just an additional tax that comes directly to the school district I would I would also if it pleases what I'd like to
016explain mno is maintenance and operation that's salaries benefits things it takes to maintain and operate your schools that's what your m o comes from that we we get about two percent a year to the student Baseline support and I remember inflation has been running six to seven percent six to seven percent it may slow to three or four or five percent this year Arizona's inflation rate is higher than the rest of the country people continue to move here because of the climate and job elements so Arizona 6 or seven percent we're getting two so every year we're falling behind five percent Baseline support and so that's why we're in this boat it it's not a mismanagement of money again and Kimberly said it well without that override the coveted funds had filled in that 1.8
017million dollar Gap but as you you can do simple math you can run through 5 million pretty quickly but that's what kept us afloat what we're trying to convey is if we want and if the board wishes to maintain the current level of programs and services provided to our students to provide a secure and successful education we're going to need additional funding to do that otherwise The Next Step would be it's going to have a pejorative effect there's just there's no way around it it's going to be tighter means larger classrooms and fewer programs now what those mean exactly I don't know yet what we've done in the past and just recently if folks retire or resign we don't fill back those positions we have seven people retiring next year they've already put in their
018retirement five of those are not coming back we will not hire back those five teaching positions unless we pass a bond or an overwrite and or in November 23. should the board even call it okay I'll turn it over to you go ahead um can you also explain because there's a lot of confusion on the state saying they're giving more money for funding to the schools versus our shortfall so this year we will only get two percent is my prediction they have not adopted the budget yet but my guess is we will just get the inflation increase of two percent may I feel that too yeah and uh in aggregate the state is providing more but generally the schools that are getting more for an example they budgeted the legislature had budgeted I think around
01930 million dollars for they're essentially scholarships to go to any private school you want to go to that's called an ESA and to date there's over 150 to 200 million dollars of Esa money out there already they only budgeted 30 million so that's one part the other is that charter schools are funded one-way public schools are funded another way Charter Schools receive more money per student than than public school districts considerably more so while there has been a lot of money and by the way we have in all fairness we have benefited from some one-time money from the state our Baseline support has increased but it has not kept pace with inflation one-time money means here's money once it's gone we're not giving you more we're trying to get increased base level support so we
020can anticipate what our expenses are going to be against our revenues does that answer your question Jennifer right and from my understanding the state expects public schools to use bonds and overrides for their shortfalls so they've intentionally limited the amount that they're giving because they want the community to help support their schools and because a charter school and a private school cannot go after a bond or override they are willing to not only make up that three percent but they might give them over 10 percent higher than us is that true that is correct that is true I think that the base level support is in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars per student more yes and so two thousand dollars more times our eighteen hundred and seventy five students would be in much better
021shape we wouldn't be having this conversation but you're right that the argument is well you can always go out for a button or override in fact there's only about half of those pass statewide right and a basic calculation is our budget would be higher by three and a half to four million dollars in what we have a shortfall in is is simply like a 1.2 to 1.5 so if we had that same funding we would be doing significantly more right correct because we would have another two million dollars to play with but we will never gain that correct and there will never be an equalization correct between the two well I don't know if I'd say never but I'm guessing no not in the near future right not with this legislative all right so Bond
022and override so we sent out a survey um and like Dr Wright said we did it by phone and by social media so you may have seen that uh survey come through on your phone or your social media and you may have taken it so we're going to talk about what the results of that survey are and some of the Implement implement implications of what will happen if we um don't get some extra funding so we had a total of 539 respondents um to our phone and our social media effort which I think is a good um sampling of our community it's probably somewhere in the neighborhood at 20 of our voter base yeah so about Dr Ray said about 20 of our voter base all right so the first thing that we asked um
023was um do you believe that schools are adequately funded and you can see here that the majority of people 69 percent of people said no they do not believe that we were adequately funded so of the people that responded to the survey our community believe that we we are not funded adequately to do what we're charged to do so I Dr Wright and I worked on the wording of this so we could kind of get you could kind of get an understanding of how much it would cost if we went out for a seven million million dollar Bond so it cost about two to three dollars um approximately um per for your monthly tax bill um per um 000 household yeah if can you explain the difference between the the value of the house and
024the specified yes so the value of your house that your realtor tells you is higher than what your the County taxes you on so your assessed valuation it from the county is what you're taxed on can I I'll break that down even further because I've been reading the room a little bit if you have a 475 000 home you're not taxed on 475 thousand dollars these the county doesn't has a formula that says we think your assessed value mean the value that we're going to tax you on is roughly 300 000. on a three hundred thousand dollar assessed value which would be about an average home for assessed value we're talking two or three dollars a month for a seven million dollar Capital Bond not a ton of money it won't buy half of a
025Big Mac it'll buy you a small Scooby Snack somewhere that has maybe no meat in it about so 59 of the people said yes they would be in favor of it and 20 were unsure so I think that's pretty favorable for us in our district um and hopefully that these meetings that we're having will help people with that are in the unsure category and maybe some of the no people um realize why it's important that we fund our school district so the mo one of the most popular things that people are in favor of is student safety and so as you can see here a ton of people are really concerned about student safety and one of the things so we're going to go over a list of things that a bond could pay for
026for our student safety so one of the things that we would use the money for is to re-key slash give electronic Keys around the district so every door in the district could have an electronic key one of those cards where you just swipe the door that will allow us to manage our keying much more effectively and allow us to lock people out at a push of a button or allow us to put allow people to get in at the push of a button keyless entry is the way that school districts are going to be more safe and to manage the comings and goings of people coming to the district if we did an analysis to re-key every door eight years ago and that amount eight years ago was about a hundred and sixty thousand dollars
027we ended up putting a hundred thousand dollars at it re-keying most of the doors but security and school security specifically is an evolving effort it one of the things that we know now is that most Bad actors and active Killers whether it be shooter or otherwise enter through unlocked doors most not all Kimberly will talk now our next bullet point no pun intended on bulletproof glass I really try to stay away from puns especially in this but the point is this twice now twice just recently as recent as two weeks ago a a shooter with a shotgun blew out the window of the door glass of the school and walked right through took another gun and started doing the shooting Sandy Hook same thing happened that's those are the only two times of which I'm
028aware that a locked door has been breached but what happens is these people that and they have mental problems obviously and have acts to grind they watch and they adjust their approach to what's going on the guy at the bank took a similar approach so bulletproof glass my guess is that's going to set us back somewhere between five hundred thousand and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more just to do the vegetables as you enter in the main school areas it's expensive the key re-keen and putting the card key card which would be part of the badge which will we will start requiring for everyone next school year and it's also attached the kids will have a security measure zonars we know when our babies get on the bus and get off the bus
029we can track our kids and know where they are that's another added expense we don't have now those expenses are evolving if we're going to keep pace and thank you board for enabling us to invest in our community investing in security six years ago with the last Bond of 16 million we have taken that money and we have secured our schools but with the new evolving threats we have to evolve and we have to be in front of it and so that's I'll turn it back over to you on the cost sure going and new if we need it we know that research says that we need people in our schools to support our students that are struggling and to be able to help them work through their problems Dr Wright and I were talking
030about this morning usually when someone is a bad actor they have shared with someone that they're going to do this and prevention is the best medicine we want to prevent that from happening and part of that is having student support staff in our schools to be able to help these kids when they have when they're having issues the other um thing that we were that we would like to invest in is emergency communication so there's this software that we have been talking about getting that is really Innovative where you can have a map of your school and the map is interactive and you can people that have access can click on the map where there's a camera and they like the police can immediately see what's happening on that camera it's very cool technology it's
031um was developed for First Responders so that when they come into an emergency situation like that they can see immediately what's happening so that they can take care of the problem in an efficient effective way yeah it's something uh this effort is a county-wide Statewide effort the county was granted a significant amount of money to this end one net is another provider of cell phone provider and they are setting up towers with this money everywhere one net will put an antenna not a complete Tower but an antenna on our facilities where they're needed at no cost for us this program enables all First Responders to communicate with one channel one medium fire police Federal that includes FBI Marshals DPS all of them can communicate with one channel that's not happening now there's a half a
032dozen different channels so I'll give you an example of problem we had a you're aware of the inclement weather we suffered this this winter one snowstorm I pulled up at 2 30 in the morning underneath hour and couldn't get a signal I couldn't even text I couldn't text or call we couldn't communicate as an Administration team by text or cell phone or landline for a period of time so we have some radios and we said we better move to a radio well after we've visited with this the county we're probably going to still get radios but we're moving to this one net [Music] um solution which we'll require by the way a purchase of cell phones which are about fifteen hundred dollars and we'll need about 50 of them to give to the Personnel that
033would need to have them so all these things require an investment that's really the point thank you Kimberly yeah so first step would require us to have um special cell phones and we could pay for those cell phones with our bond money uh so the next biggest category that people um felt we needed to work on in Blue Ridge is our technology and you can see a large percentage of people believe that technology is very important which is not surprising in our changing world this goes hand in hand with our student safety of course we need technology to be able to do things like firstnet and to have those interactive maps and things like that um just so you know technology is being used in the classroom daily we're a one-to-one school district meaning that
034every student has a device um so that's why we would need to purchase over 2 000 computers in the next two to three years to refresh our supply thankfully we were able to get coveted relief money to help us buy on these devices for our students but as you know with your cell phone the device goes out of um uh obsolete yes it becomes obsolete um in a couple years in our um since we have such heavy usage the heavy usage and the obsoleteness um we will need to refresh our um our computers and the cost of techno technology is increasing rapidly um with inflation and just with hard to get devices so we will need Bond money to continue to have one-to-one in our classrooms the the other area I want to add is
035on our Fab Lab and Robotics we're increasing our CTE our career technology education participation among our among our students it's growing but we have other needs too we would like to be able to have money to continue to fund building a teacher housing we're completing we've already completed two projects and we're working on completing the affectionately referred to as the Waldo Suite that is a building that Mr Waldo started building in 2007 and then 2008 we almost what happened and funding got cut so that that building has been completed almost completely finished by our career technology education construction program but that's going to require to replicate that we have the land we have the labor we have the expertise but the supplies alone to build at around 100 bucks a foot so even if you
036do a you know a 800 square foot unit it still costs quite a bit of money we're also taking some of our other areas and making temporary teacher housing because we're we're meeting the demand for our teachers that are currently employed we don't want to lose them because they don't have a place to stay and as you know housing is not plentiful in that which is available is fairly expensive so that's another example of Technology career and Technology education and the Fab Lab you're all probably aware of and you've heard at least one competition that these students had at going to a note you're going again right with the NASA this is an amazing program that it takes money we have to support that program we don't want it to go away that's going to
037require some Bond money to support that so the next topic after technology was the safety and efficiency of our buildings so like we've talked about we need Bond money to make sure that our buildings are safe the bullproof glass the efficiency make sure that we have LED lighting make sure that we have buildings sealed up so that we're not spending a bunch of money on Heating and Cooling and just keeping our buildings maintained well the next the next topic was Transportation um so right now we're blessed because we had a bond [Music] um several years ago and we were able to replace our buses but now our buses are getting old so thankfully we are not having buses break down on the side of the road and things like that but in the next several
038years we will have to start replacing our buses so we do need Bond money to be able to do that so that our kids are safe and they're on buses that are running and not breaking down and not old I would like to add Denise is our expert in this area but I remember when we purchased those buses six years ago there were about 125 000 my guess is they've gone up probably 50 Grand or more depending on the type of us the type of us we want to get are those that have changed that lower which will be probably another 20 grand 15 to 20 grand but that those that type of Technology we have some of it but we'd like to take that district-wide on a safety level as well so I would
039anticipate if the bond were approved we would add two to three buses every year the next four to five years to refresh refresh the fleet the other part I want to make just to share is our transportation needs are way different than they are in the valley in the valley if you go to this Gilbert School District and you're in the Central and you drive your bus and get in you go to the main side it takes all of 14 15 miles we drive from here to Window Rock which is really New Mexico and then on the edge of Utah when we go to page and then we go to the valley which is a three and a half hour or four hour drive by bus so we put a lot of miles on these
040buses and so that that's another reason that our transportation we need to be refreshed quicker more more quickly rather and just so you know rural we do not get extra transportation funding we get the same transportation funding that's that schools in the valley get there is no difference and Dr Wright is right the amount of miles that we put on is Extreme compared to the amount of miles they put on in the Phoenix metropolitan area so one of the things that will have to happen if we do not pass a bond or an override is that we will have to defer maintenance on our buildings because we will have to move our Capital money over to maintenance and operations to pay salaries if we continue down with the Staffing that we have and so that
041what that means is that we will not be able to fix buildings and repair buildings I was not here in 2014 but I've heard that in 2014 there were some issues with our maintenance on our buildings we could potentially go back to that if we are unable to continue to maintain the buildings at the level that we're maintaining them now I will add I I will I'm glad I know that I've seen a couple of faces that were in the on the committee and in the room when we presented this information in 2000 and early 2016. if you recall raise your hand if you remember the locker room where their visitors used to change for football near the main gym it was like a third world country and there was horrible and then the the
042uter junior high which is a beautiful building now and if you're new you wouldn't know it wasn't it devolved into a warehouse and a holding place for garbage it had been vandalized it looked horrible it smelled like an NP tuna can it was horrible and our buses we had some that are as old as 40 years old and the odometer they they had who knows how many hundreds of thousands or millions of miles they had on them we were in a tough state and now we won't get there overnight but y'all will get there soon sooner than you think it costs money to maintain these things and also in order to continue to get sfb dollars State Facility board dollars we have to demonstrate we're doing our part if we don't keep up our air
043conditioners and and pay to have them serviced or service them ourselves they will not replace them and that's fair so that takes a good amount of of effort and resources to do that those documents are required by the sfb every single year they require us to submit maintenance documents and if we do not submit those documents Dr Wright is correct they will not fund us all right so the other consequence is that we're going to have to have a reduction of services that's a reduction in support staff that's a reduction in all areas in the district um once we are if we can't move once we've moved the maximum amount of capital then that's the money that we have so we will have to reduce Services as well and as you can see the people
044that responded to the survey do not want a reduction in services I would like to interject in 2014 we did not have a band we did not have a Fab Lab we did not have an art program we didn't have as many choirs as we have now we did not have a theater program we did not have technical theater we did not have a robust robotics program and we did not have auto shop thank you what's that no con we didn't have a construction program and we had a lot of Aging embarrassingly old uniforms that's that's what we're talking about and so when board members would call me at night and say I'm so sick of seeing athletic tape put on the back of the uniform so they could run and it sticks out can
045I share the story Jennifer I said Jennifer that's our Stinger that's Buzz's Stinger of course she didn't buy that and so it was a uniform with tape it looked like they had a tail because the pants were so big for this kid to run our uniforms across the board were embarrassing and so we care about student safety and success I don't know anybody that doesn't care about student safety and success so the part of that is making sure that we have these programs we want to maintain these programs we want to maintain the level of support that you enjoy today yes ma'am also um fund the block program at that time and then we could not keep our AP classes we had significantly less AP and honors classes at that time and then our dual
046enrollment credits also were severely reduced because we couldn't find the teachers to be able to teach those classes thank you all of that's true maintenance people we were down way down in maintenance yeah it's true all right one of the things that we're we've been able to do um especially with the coveted relief money is keep our class sizes small if we do not pass a bond and or an override we will have to increase class sizes and as you can see the people that responded um to the survey would like to keep our class sizes small I can tell you as a teacher for 20 years I liked having class small smaller classes it's easier to get to students individually I think it's what's best for kids but if we don't have the money
047we can't keep the staff so we also have an issue um with inflation that we have no control over and we also have an issue with minimum wage which in Arizona we have no control over either and so those are concerns for us because those are costs that are increa going up increasingly the next two slides are going to show um how much those things are increasing so in Arizona you can see that in 2000 18 minimum wage was ten dollars and fifty cents this year it's 13.85 it went up a dollar five from last year we do not get additional funding from the state to fund minimum wage this just they just assume that we're going to pay we have to pay for it and they do not give us extra money to fund
048it this also causes an issue with compression because what's happening is when people are coming to Blue Ridge and they're coming in at a minimum wage job they're making the 13.85 but we've had people that do other jobs where we're not raising them because we can't afford it so we need to be able to also um eliminate or reduce compression as much as possible all classified jobs so maintenance staff Transportation AIDS in the classroom positions like that food service I'll also add that those roles that were just listed we're making nine dollars to 9.25 an hour in 2015. and so you take that math and and of our roughly 275 employees 100 are teachers you probably have 20 administrators and the rest are we you'd have a handful of student support the rest are support
049staff and so that has had a significant impact on our on our bottom line we don't have any control over that I remember a few years ago a person that just moved the community said all you got to do is just take 15 20 of your budget and set it aside for the next year and what I wanted to say is I wanted to start saving for my retirement when I was 23 but I didn't have a two nickels to rub together and so so poor you can't pay attention it's not like you don't want to you don't have them we don't have an extra 20 if the simple math is we're down 1.3 close to 1.3 every year and so these are the elements that have led to that discrepancy as well I would
050predict that next year next year what's that impact January across the district at the minimum is 8-14 just ballpark at how much more do you think it's going to cost how much forty thousand about forty thousand for a dollar that would just be for the salary that would just be for those people at the bottom if you put in the benefits and if you put oh I would think that if you look at all the factors involved I looked at this that it's been 18 months I think we're we're closer to every dollar is closer to 80 or 90 000 with Benefits over a hundred thousand a year so that puts you at 1.4 in the hole and just as this is just also affecting us so in fact it infects us with all of
051the supplies that we buy with our transportation with our propane with supplies that we have to buy to maintain the buildings everything is getting more expensive so we also don't have control over that so um we would like to re um so would you support a bond to reduce the budget so and you can see that people overwhelmingly um would like just like to support this to help us with our budget deficit so and you can see again here support for the bond we've got 54 of the people um in support of the and I'm on the wrong side on my computer sorry uh for 52 are in support of the bond and 22 are unsure so again um we would like to help those people that are unsure see the importance of why we
052need this money to support our district and to support our students and we only need to convince 51 percent of the people thankfully so we've got a good run to start and so for the m pays for salaries we've got 54 of the people that responded to the survey that were in support 20 were unsure and so what so what the m o um override what we were thinking was we'd like to go out for about 10 so the maximum for an MMO override is 15 but we think 10 would do what we need to do that would be about 1.3 million we would use that money to pay teacher salaries to keep class sizes small and like Dr Wright said earlier to maintain all of the wonderful clubs in sports and AP class and
053honors classes and Nabbit programs that we have now like Miss Brimhall said back in 2014 we didn't have many of these things so all of these things are funded through our override and our bond I I would wish to add that the last override election failed by 167 votes relatively low participation some of the folks that came to me and said look if you'd asked for a smaller percentage I might have voted for it but she just asked for 15 and so some of the board feedback after that time is let's look at what we actually need the bare minimum and let's see about that so our suggestion likely that the board would be that we'd go out for a 10 given that meets meets our current deficit it'll probably leave us a little shy
054but not nearly as shy as we would be without those resources [Applause] any questions what is the cost per dollar for a 10 override you included the bond but not the override costs if if we're looking at a 10 at the assessed valuation of a 475 000 ohm at 300 it would be about eight or nine dollars a month so the total if you had it say a seven to nine million dollar Bond and a 10 override the total impact would be somewhere between seven and twelve dollars a month a Big Mac meal meal number one is now more than what a value meal would cost you can you also go over I know it was explained to us in the last override which didn't pass but what the percentage does like it was explained
055um 10 keeps us from Rolling backward the next percentage would keep us where we are and the next percentage would give us a boost so in dollars can we talk about that what that look like the simple math looks like 10 keeps us where we're at 11 10 would keep us close to where we're at we still don't know all the increases yet on insurance we know they're all going up you've probably seen it in your auto insurance and everything else we think that 10 percent gets us very close though so 10 or 11 percent would probably be the ass to keep us even 12 or 13 percent would put us up a couple hundred grand a year on an mno basis free is that correct Just for information the difference between the term on
056an override in the bond into two separate things what is the term length on the override and what would be the term length and how is the bond funded so that um the turn everything's off the term length on your on an mno override is seven years but um it titrates down um on your Sixth and your seventh year so you get fully funded on your fourth or fifth or your first through fifth year and then it goes down by thirds on your um six and seven your sixth and seventh year a bond is a 30-year commitment and like I said earlier a Bond's alone can you also go through our rating as to how successful our bond bonds have been in the past and where we sit sure so from my understanding our sale
057of bonds has been really good I think we have an A minus rating which is a great rating um and I don't think we've had any problem issuing a bond at all we never have but in fact last time we had an a rating just a without minus or plus a rating that rating earned us another million dollars in funding that did not come from taxpayers it's because it the price of the value of our business went up by a million bucks we got to receive that at no cost of the taxpayer so we I still we have an A or an A minus rating somewhere in there the bonds that we've had in the past have we been able to pay pay them off sooner we we've been no we're not a schedule um
058you don't normally pay them off earlier you just um you're on your schedule and you just um tax to pay what you have existing we do have some bonds expiring though I want to add that we have a bonding capacity last time I looked at a somewhere in the range of astronomical money 90 to 120 million dollars we're only using 30 less than 30 16 15 28 27. so we have a huge bonding capacity but we're asking for a small portion of that and part of our rating is because of our how we manage our debt and how we pay our bills on time it's just like if you went to finance a house you'd have a lower rate if you have a a good credit score that's our credit score how many bonds are
059expiring and what does that mean for the taxpayer so we have one Bond expiring and what that means is that when that Bond expires there'll be a lower tax rate um it is um when you say which one elementary school bond or the 16 million dollar Bond of the two of which I'm aware elementary schools initiated in 2007 I think 2006 or seven 2016 for the other one right so on the I'll find you the exact answer but the information from stable doesn't list the title of the bond it just says that it's going to be expiring so I'll find out for sure when is our energy and conservation whatever your energy our Energy savings right yeah two year I believe it's two years but let me find out for sure that is um 200
060about 230 000. [Music] why does it come up and grab a microphone I can't hear very well sorry yeah Lauren you know I make sure that Mike gets passed around for questions um is the bond and override going to be on the same ballot during the same building time it can be if the board chooses to call for a bond and or override election it would be on the same ballot no it's one vote the bond would go for seven years excuse me the override would be in effect for seven years staging down in year six and seven and the bond would be for a designated period of time between 10 20 and 30 years depending on the project they would be separate separate so in other words Kimberly makes a good point they're separate
061questions which means there'd be two lines on the ballot do you favor override yes or no I make them simplifying it do you favor a bond yes or no they'd be separate on the same ballot so if the last time failed by 167 votes what do you do to advertise to make sure that you get enough votes what's the method of advertising so that people are aware of it particularly now that we have more to Second Home people who aren't up here all the time I I think honestly it was uh this the effort was fragmented at best well intended but it was not I would say not necessarily well organized and got a late start so I mean the boards could respond to that I can't participate in that effort and I don't mean
062to make any disparaging remarks about people's efforts but I would say that a lot of folks the election came and went and they didn't even know about it so it was a handful of hard-working people that were insufficiently supported we would need a well-organized big team of people that use social media and by the way the district cannot participate or use any of its resources once the election is called up to now we can say what we want but as soon as elections called we cannot participate so it had to be ptso parental groups stakeholders youth programs that that want to have I'll add another thing ahead one of the coaches came to me and said we would like to turn the high school area into for a youth sports what would the community think
063about investing in the high school facilities to enable Youth Soccer youth football and everybody to use the field more frequently lights on the field at this at the soccer field and the turf field to reduce maintenance and water and allow more use of that and that's a community question that's something we probably would want to ask on the next meeting the point is though it have to have a very well organized effort leveraging social media especially to get people that are younger participating there was a big negative feeling at that time of that last boat too all over the United oops all over the United States there was a negative feeling about everything and it affected it affected the vote on that my recollection of that election is that for people that voted that same
064day we actually won that election and then it was reversed when they had the melon ballot and a large percentage of those ballots were individuals that not that did not reside in the area and they did a calculation there was a large percentage of people that actually lived permanently in another location but kept their registration in our community and so they didn't even meet the criteria to be able to vote for that election and we did not have the opportunity to pull those ballots prior to because we did not have enough time to review that so that swing literally swung heavily as soon as those non-permanent residents milled in their ballot there wasn't a big information push to those people either they did not know the problems that we were facing because people would say
065well what is happening at Blue Ridge they had no idea but they hold a vote they have the you know the possibility of swinging an election but they didn't have the information as to how dire it was that and the the feeling in the United States of negativity did not help us at all I will say this too I thought was really interesting I wasn't here during that time but we went over the demographics with a consultant and the voters from the age of 18 to 40 were a very low number 32 there was only 32 people between 18 and 40 that voted so we do need to focus on that demographic for sure because those are the people that have kids in school we had a very low turnout that year too for voting
066and that hurts because all the negative people come out and vote it does it's true so we as a board we have the we have the option to choose between an override or a bond or both okay so those are those are some of the decisions we're going to have to make whether we're going to decide whether it's just a bond just an override or a bond and an override when it comes down to I think we have until June to decide on that so and I think we need to get more information from the community because I'm one of those horrible voters that if you ask for one great if you ask for two I think you're greedy and I'm going to vote no for one of them so that's just if I wasn't
067on the board and didn't understand that was my perspective as I would pick one or the other but I would not pick both and we need to see if that's similar to a lot of other people in our community we don't want a divided vote ruining our chances we also have engaged a consultant to look at it and it's interesting because our demographics are similar to Miranda the Marana school district has a lot of similarities the one difference where the two diverges in growth they're growing like crazy and we're getting smaller but the other part ethnicity permanent residence snowbirds a lot of the same elements and they the schools that went with a very well stated and organized Bond and override passed at a higher rate than one that had just one question and what
068he said is people either going to say yes or no and sometimes it's heck yes and sometimes Hypno but heck yes one on those votes as a g version I think and I think another thing too is that we need to work with the town because um in our last projects that we've done it was told to us that the way your school goes so goes to town and if your school is sliding backwards or losing population or has an inability to maintain then it's hard to it's hard to draw people to the town so the town slides back there's no new building you lose businesses so if you keep your if you keep the urgency about your school and keep focusing on that the town Rises up to so it has to be a
069town and school effort I am my thoughts go to the north end of the school district um shallows growing and they have land to grow and they're going to continue to grow and they're going to pull I think people that live in the North End of our school district just think they live in shallow and that's where they're supposed to go to school so I think we need some type of educational process and when you get your taxes it tells you what school district you're on but how many people they're renting a house have any idea where the school district they're in so I think we need to um I don't know I I don't even know how to approach that but I think the north end of the school district really needs some attention
070because I think we've lost some of that any ideas from that's why you're here I hope to give some ideas about that or maybe just a comment about that given that we have to we cannot use District resources to get the word out I know that we have a pretty I'm hoping that we keep the vibrant ptso that we have at the elementary school what's going on at the junior high and High School boosters ptsos up there in order to get the word out because I think both primary and secondary have vested interests as a resource teacher in the elementary school you can bet you can know where my dollar is but I also know having raised two kids that the secondary is just as important because we have to keep those kids in school
071getting what they can in terms of Nabbit and the CTE and all that kind of thing so I guess it's really a question for secondary what's going on at that level to really get the word out because this is going to be important to turn those into even though they were the non-resident we need to get our parents out and get our parents registered to vote and forget whether I'm Republican or Democrat this is not a Republican or Democrat issue and I don't want to turn into that either that is a really good point really good point and I don't think we should look away from that at all I think it is it is maybe we haven't focused yeah we're not Democrats Republicans we're School Board yeah as the Americans that's a ptso person
072but there's another one here too and someone who's now been at all three sites um you've nailed it it's the parents and we have amazing parents but [Music] um we've got to bring them and we there has to be some sort of strong push not from ptso or parents but really from the schools too and I'm meeting with Mrs Hoffmeyer tomorrow because I have some ideas about this but it's there the parents are there and morale is high among parents especially at Junior and high school and we're seeing that at the elementary school too but I have heard of parents of families who are going to opt to homeschool or go to one of the private schools for this step or the other and I think that these are issues we can address I just
073wanted to to agree with you really it's we need to pull the parents in it would be so nice if we could get as many people voting as come to our open houses the first week of school that elementary and middle school is packed and I don't know what you do to attract that many parents or get the excitement going but if we could have that many people voting in an election because if you look back on the number of people that have voted in our elections that concern schools it's really bad it's really really low and it shouldn't be it shouldn't be at all because we can't turn right around the next year and do the same try the same thing that doesn't work Mr Grace one thing I'd like to add because I
074mean we can't we can only do so much as a school to push this but what we have done as a district is to open up our social media platform and try to increase and bolster that and I think Kyla can probably be backing up on this one but if we put something out on social media we're getting we started off getting very low numbers and now we're getting several hundred engagements per post of people looking at them things like that because one of the ways that we can get people in the building without physically getting them in the building is to show them what's going on because there's not enough hours in the day for everybody to take off to come visit their kids to see what's going on in the classroom and so
075across the district our social media push and presence has gone up to try to highlight the positivity and then the great things that are happening at the schools another thing that's different when you compare the different bonds that Blue Ridge has passed if you go back far enough this population now quite often both parents work and so that makes a difference too as to how much they know about what's going on in our district in years ago people came in they volunteered in the classroom they knew firsthand what the teachers needed and what the buildings needed but that's I don't think that's probably happening right now unless we push to get the information out I can speak I can speak a little too as well to the junior high because we we do notice that
076we we need some more parent involvement and so I do think that this move that we've made with this uh the stakeholder committees at every at all of our campuses that's a great move where we can get a lot more involvement from our community members and our parents and then we're looking at as well as other opportunities for parents to come into our building and really be involved in some of the the data points that we want to share with them as far as student achievement and social or excuse me is uh and mental Wellness we have a lot of ideas in place and we're going to continue to work on that piece of it but I agree that that is something that we definitely need to boost at the junior high and the secondary
077level so back to like my original question tied in with all that if you can't do like a TV commercial or anything like that because that's a different kind of advertising and the school can't actually be involved in the advertising can you do like I'm in the hallway that's leaking at the elementary school and all the other half of the sixth grade has moved and all of fourth grade has moved so when they start to do the repairs can those repairs go on social media can we show the parents this is what the Bond's for this is what we need the money for this is what we're trying to do to make things better because they're not worded like that but can we show them that this is where your money goes this is what
078your taxes do so that they know we're trying to make things better for kids because they don't come in the building I'm at the very last room in the very last hallway in the corner nobody comes back there that's one sixth grades back there you know so today thank you as we should be um but but the parents don't see all that and so the school district's going to be involved in rebuilding all that putting in new windows and new drywall wall and floors and that's all for the kids we can man I think that's a great idea showing in our social media right now because once once we make a decision to do this we we can't put anything on our social media the school's social media we have what Facebook Instagram and uh
079Twitter Twitter we have the school's official accounts there and once we decide to go for a bond or override or above we can't say a word about it but up until then I mean we should we ought to we ought to be going there instead of saying all the good stuff we ought to be showing all the big cracks in the floor and the water dripping in the ceiling and in all the broken windows and and the kids sweating to death because air conditioning is not working yeah this is why we need things there can be a political action committee formed of people in the community and every year both times I've been here for both elections a committee has been formed and there hasn't been a problem getting donations that committee can do just
080what you're suggesting there they can do that but I like the idea too let's get ahead of it before it's called and let's demonstrate the needs by show and tell on social media Ali had a yeah I agree I think that's a great idea to show the needs ahead of time similarly your question about how do we involve parents who are more Junior High in high school because you do have the ptso at the elementary it's incredibly hard to get parents to volunteer like I've been a ptso president you've got Sarah here and we're like calling every person in our phone to ask them to volunteer and I used to feel really bugged when parents would have kids get older and then it was like what like you phased out you've done your dues you
081don't have to do it anymore and guess what that's me now not because I've done my dues but because my kids involvement is in sports so I would say rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and say how do we get parents to come out at the Junior High in high school I'd say use use where parents are already coming out and supporting in their Sports and while the school might not be able to say it all of the sports team's parents are in communication with one another so I think trying to go through the sports teams and acknowledging this is the thing that's going to get cut when your kids don't have funding they're not having their Sport and you already have the parents showing up at the schools for sports so I don't
082know what the regulations are there on how the school can reach out but I guess before that you say it official maybe start saying it through the sports teams of okay well if we want to keep doing this then let's get that groundwork going with the sports team families that are already involved before we call the issue can a parent get up before a soccer game or a football game and address the people that are there sure well it wouldn't be football or soccer no no it wouldn't be football or soccer but whatever's left yeah Fine Arts are the other ones we have a good captive audience Mr Webb it would also it not only sports but any of the other all of the programs that we've talked about the CTE the navit the Fine
083Arts programs those are all additional things that do so well at the high school and kids that's what they really look back and enjoy and what makes a high school a good you know this is a culminating experience is what they feel in their high school year and so how do we help those parents understand the importance of that for having that available for their kids so yeah I agree with you with the sports but also in all of those other classes those same conversations can be held and should be held with the kids and hopefully those and and how do we encourage those kids to have that conversation when they go home to talk to yeah I really want to do the welding class but it's going to be hard if I'm having to
084drive myself there and I can't drive myself there or how do we make sure that I can still do the construction trades class here on Sunday at school and get a job outside of high school where I'm going to be making good money and and maybe that'll help me make my decision whether I want to go to college or not so it's those are the Avenues that we definitely can hit I'm in total agreement I think that I just recently went to a non-profit seminar through MPC and they brought in a consultant that looked at how do people get information in our County and I was actually shocked newspapers and print ads less than 10 percent but cost almost 90 percent do you know that Tick Tock is actually really high in our community had
085no idea plus YouTube and Then followed by Facebook but Instagram is the least and I thought oh I use Instagram the most so when it comes to information I think that we can do a better job in our community we can do a better job to support our community and then have those inexpensive ways to show the great things we're doing let me give you an example for NASA and I don't think a lot of people recognize this so my daughter is the only girl in this Nance Rover competition the only one I think it's really sad there should actually be at least 10 to 12. all the rest are boys so she's welding and she's doing everything and this NASA competition over 30 countries from around the world petitioned to come to this program
086and in every state every state in the United States they had more than one request to be part of this NASA rover competition there is only eight schools in the United States that there was accepted to this competition and we are the only Public School in the entire United States actually in the world because none of these other schools that come that has been invited to this NASA competition this is a huge deal this is something that not one school district in Arizona was able to accomplish and we usually win and we beat the colleges in how they've produced this amazing NASA rover this is the information that people need to know that that program every year there is a person that goes on full scholarship to one of these huge technology schools like MIT
087or whatever so I that's the only one I know my daughter came home what's Massachusetts Institute of Technology and I'm like only a scholarship opportunity for you to go um but that's a really really big deal so we need to be able to join forces as a community to figure out how we do this same thing is you know we'll talk about in a little while our our school schedule and our days our kids reap this benefit I have the same daughter as taking three college classes right now so she'll only have like three classes left after she graduates from Blue Ridge to have her associate's degree those programs are the ones that are significant risk but I don't think that a lot of the community knows but like NASA in itself this is something
088that the state should be coming to our school and saying how wonderful we are because we're the coolest by the way in the entire nation the coolest Public School in the entire nation and I would say in the world when it comes to NASA that's a big deal so there was a question um who who can vote for like who should we be targeting for the override of this election who all can vote is it do they have to be a homeowner do they have to pay have taxes that they're going to be affected or can anybody vote anybody's registered it doesn't cost renters a dime they can vote as long as a registered voter and their kids are in our school district or they live in our school district kids don't be in our
089school district county so if you live in the county you can vote in this election if it's in our school district boundaries so we do have a large portion of our boundaries that are into Show Low and a large portion of our boundaries that are in the county Dr Wright and I said we were going to go knock on those apartment Doors Down by Show Low Lake this next time go door to door asking people to vote you still up for that yep and Catherine some ways going to make cookies we're going to hand them out she's not here to defend herself so she said yes we're in oh so my question would be why not and I know we're far away and we're considered a third planet from the valley get a TV station
090up here and interview those kids and talk about it because I guarantee you most parents here have cable in one way shape or form that's right and I don't care whether it's the fox station channel 5 or 12 whatever even the Tucson stations yeah get someone up here to actually physically do an interview and then get that on social media that hey your kid's gonna be on TV tonight we've uh we've sent it to every news outlet that would listen I did at National locally Statewide what we need to do is figure out we do belong to that school Finance reform thing that she's a world Network we'll get somebody over there but that's how I'm going to do we tried that though invitations haven't worked so far so we need to get somebody else
091to compute our home our horn for us Arizona Indiana we have part of our community includes homes that are outside the they think they're outside the school district they're inside the school district but they they're somehow this feeling like if I don't have kids that go to the school district I'm not included in supporting that or I don't live or I can vote so I agree with Mr Webb that you have to get the word out that you can vote and you know and and who can vote to support the school Sarah bromke just just volunteered to help out Kyla and she's only going to do TV which I think is really awesome she's doing traditional way to go TV or our own old people social media we need to tap into some of our
092high schoolers who are gone title like Jensen cook and I mean Noah had been he was a viral Tick Tock sensation so we we could definitely I think access those kids if we formed this pack and pull the kids in but also it does go back to the older community members or second homeowners of people who don't have kids and we do have to reach them because they don't care we have strong support in the in the country club especially Pinetop Country Club that supports our scholarship but a lot of those people go home before the vote happens or they don't hear all the support because they always vote earlier they vote by mail and they're not aware of everything that's why it was too late last time and I think we need to consider
093those people because they will support the school because they realize that that also affects the value of their home be is there any other comment regarding the bond or override if not I think we'll move forward to Dr Wright we'll turn this time away again for the uh for for a school schedule okay so for those of you have met with uh two or three different groups of teachers kind of just organically and other staff members expressing their views on the four-day school week the uh as I've mentioned earlier if you just are joining us there's a prescribed path that the board must follow in order to adopt a four-day week a big part of that is community input there are three stakeholder communities committees that have been formed at all levels elementary junior high
094and high school that must participate within that it's an open meeting a series of open meetings that need to occur just like tonight and so there's really no structure other than share with the board what your feelings are regarding that I just want to reinforce there's been no decision made that we're moving that direction I mean I have my own opinions and I'll withhold those for a while but in the end it just it needs to the board needs to have your feedback to kind of get some direction as to where we're at now we recognize this is not a one and done this is a long process but uh I'll just I think Mr President you open it up right the reason he's put this out here is because I I made him do
095it he didn't want to do it right now he said yeah we'll do that because I have people come into me and I know we have people in the on board that are coming to them with that question you know shallow desert snowflake desert Round Valley does it and why don't we do it we tried it once and Lauren were you here when that happened what happened when we it's anybody what happened when we went under that four-day period so that was at the early stage when we were trying to do reteach and enrich Friday and um kids would come in to take the bus into school and then they would just leave and then go to the movie theater hang out on Town wherever there was no teeth in having them be there on
096Friday and so it was hard to patrol those kids coming in another part of it that a downside of that is the school spirit on Friday for games and activities it was hard to have that if there were no kids at school typically you'd have your your pep assembly pep rallies on that day of a game if kids were gone participation in those activities kind of dwindled as well and and just if I might add Mr Webb it only applied to the high school k through eight was a five day so we had not had a district White how Lauren remembers it is I mean I I interviewed in November of 2014 on a Friday and there was no one at school I said where are all the kids they weren't in school and so
097I the reteach didn't work that's clear for a number of reasons but so this question is a district-wide four day and to be clear for the board for their evaluation we're talking about everything being closed all offices everything the only thing would be open would be extracurricular support Transportation custodial and that's it none of the offices none of the schools would be open on that four day I will add that anecdotally the schools that have gone to four day that used to be five day it could be an impact of a lot of different variables but all the schools locally have gone down in letter grades that went to from except for snowflake that have gone from five to four so we're four and a half right now just to be clear we're not on
098five or four and a half so snowflake is a unique environment that none of the other school districts but I think that Matt like has an enrichment Friday correct a reteach Friday snowflake so from so my I'm the only board member that had kids in high school during that so I'll give you my perspective I loved it and the reason why I loved it is because my kids are heavily involved into sports so I loved it because my kids were taking AP classes and they needed additional time especially during basketball season when sometimes we have three away games and it gave them an opportunity to have one-on-one with the teachers I loved that component I felt like academically it was awesome the kids that were going were the kids that were the a students the
099kids that were supposed to be here were the kids that weren't the a students and I know that a lot of teachers tried to get those students in and I did and it became a problem I was one of the Swing votes to make us go back to a five day even though I loved a four day and the reason why was because of Bob London and Bob London and I was like don't talk to me about it four days my favorite I don't ever You're Never Gonna Change My Mind mind I told my kids I'm got your back we'll never vote for the opposite and Bob was like our our Sports is diminishing our school spirit is tanking our kids aren't graduating from school and the kids that are the ones that are supposed
100to be here are not coming and the ones that are the kids that are supposed to be here that are coming are doing things that are really bad in the community and that truly was happening so um could there be Corrections and changes absolutely I think that the implementation was very poor I feel like you can still have an enrichment Friday and it can maybe be done a little bit differently but our kids that are um maybe I still don't know how to solve the problem with highly involved children and an opportunity for them to catch up I think we're still lacking in that so I don't know I'm I'm a swing either way but um I saw the huge benefits for the highly excelling kids that wanted to do another additional project at that
101time that's when the the Robotics and NASA rover competition was bigger better because Friday was build day so they were there all day Friday and now my daughter's staying till eight o'clock at night every night trying to build and so it makes it a little bit difficult to get homework done so I don't know so I don't know what my answer is yet but I love the idea of a reteach enrichment but I don't know what's the best option so my kids loved it but I see from a school standpoint it was an absolute disaster some I think that's that's the issue we have you know snowflake is the model always put up there I think they have a whole different Community than we do they have highly motivated parents for one thing and highly
102motivated students we have what is it 45 or free and reduced lunch here or something like that 40 below poverty and 52 percent free and reduced lunch so we're looking at a whole different demographics than that so I think we're looking at the masses compared to a group of kids that are highly motivated they're going to succeed no matter what like that like your kids are Jennifer so I don't know feedback that's what we're here for well they didn't shut down they didn't shut down either during covet did they no no just I don't know if you've heard but I've heard from a couple of other people that show low is revisiting their four day week and they may be looking to go back to five um I've got a few notes here so I'll
103just spit them out right now a four day week with and I understand that we wouldn't extend the school day means 36 fewer days of school that's a quarter that's a lot I'm a special education teacher for second and third grade students and I know that I need every minute of every day that I can get them into my room my students when I look at my second and third graders right now the vast majority of my students are reading at a first grade level I need time with them and if I don't have Fridays it really impacts everything that I do with them because for a lot of my kids when they're out of school they slide back idea you know as like other teachers when my kids come back in August I have
104more than just a summer slide I have a bigger slide because given our demographics as Mr Merrill just said my kids don't always have somebody in their corner at home that's willing or can in some cases even provide review of math concepts or letters and sounds or just reading a decodable text and you know this is my fifth year in the district and I'm proud of the work that I have accomplished with my kids our kids and I send them on to fourth grade with a pretty good track record of getting and achieving all of their potential I'm also sum up with this I have a student former student she repeated third grade last year because of the pandemic here and when I see her today tall much taller vibrant a smile and she feels
105like she can accomplish anything and she's making the honor roll and this was a girl two years ago that couldn't do that or even last year and I'm not saying we take the credit she's doing the hard work but she needs time in school and I just worry about some of those kids that don't have anybody to advocate on the home front and you know there's just so much that gets wrapped into it I think you know we talked about the difference in the demographics and the school districts a big problem we ran into aside from the problems the high school had with discipline for the kids that did show up on Fridays we we also know that there were some instances where there was no babysitter at home or they expected the only the
106older children to take care of the younger children because they couldn't afford a babysitter or there's no supervision at all for any of the kids so they're not doing homework you know that that's pretty much a day that you need to worry about and I appreciate your you saying what you did about that too um so I am currently a sixth grade math and social studies teacher at the elementary school last year I was in eighth grade science teacher at the junior high I have 24 years experience in education as a teacher and instructional coach and a Content coordinator I had large classes last year I had some classes that had 34 32 kids in it they were hard to do science and have Labs every week but they were doable I can do the
107larger class sizes if I need to but what I need to have is the kids in school I'm part of the groups that met with Dr Wright and my understanding is that if we went to four day there would not be anything on the Friday and there would not be any extension of the other days for instructional time like we would stay the same length I had kids last year who missed sixth grade because of covid who missed part of seventh grade because of the hybrid and the eighth grade science test was composite of sixth grade seventh grade and eighth grade and it didn't matter how hard I worked I was not getting them to pass a test that they missed three years of instruction on I have kids this year that are in sixth
108grade that missed fourth grade they missed fifth grade part of it they can't multiply they can't divide and so I'm teaching them pre-algebra in sixth grade and we're trying to do all the other skills too my kids love being last year and this year they love being in school they love being in person they don't want to be on a computer they don't want to be home by themselves last year I had kids who win their sisters or brothers were sick they had to stay home and take care of them because there was no daycare available they would email me and say Miss Grace I'm home because my little brother's sick what do I need to do I think that if we had Fridays off they would be the babysitters I know that the daycares
109around here there's not enough of them for people to sign up for Fridays only my my children pay for my grandchildren over the summer so they can keep their spot for the fall when they have to go back but I also know that I have a lot of students I have homeless students I have everything else that cannot afford to do that and so their kids would just be by themselves we have a new curriculum it's rigorous it's showing positive results in my grade level at least my kids are excited they don't complain about it but I need the time to get them where they need to be to build those skills that they're missing and right now when I turn on the TV what I see is a nation that blames education and blames
110teachers for all the lowering scores that came out last year after testing and yet they don't want to give us solutions they don't want to give us money and I think taking away the instructional time would be one more step backwards I think that we need the instructional time so that we can demonstrate to parents and other people that we're trying to do the best with what we have we're trying to get your kids caught back up we're trying to make up for those gaps that's it yes back here um just one thing to consider is that this district has two full-time speech therapists and one part-time correct and I know I can't speak much for the for the part time but for the two full-time therapists they can hardly fit in the kids they
111need to see the meetings they need to have the paperwork they have to do and the testing they have to do in the five days that we have they they have a hard time just squeezing in to that five days if you were to take out a fourth you know go down to four days I don't know how you probably have to would you would probably have to hire another speech therapist because they don't have the time in five days let alone in four also for child find as well that our only day to do that is is Fridays and I don't know where we would fit that in either so and what else uh I just like to reiterate um what was said about child care I think in our community there's maybe three
112day cares whatsoever and a large portion of our demographic has both working parents and so uh you know with two working parents the kids have to do go somewhere so if you can't get them into a daycare what do you do and that can actually affect you know people's ability to get hours or work on a Friday because they'd be required to stay home and and take care of their kids so I think that it sounds good in theory but in reality it wouldn't work for Our Generation uh with two working parents um I taught it snowflake so I feel like I have a little bit of insight as to what um is going on over there we mentioned or you mentioned the um the demographics is very different from the demographics here I actually
113left snowflake because of the four day week it put a very hard strain on me as a teacher trying to get through all of the curriculum that needed to be to get through those students who were not thriving just did not because there wasn't enough time there wasn't enough space to get to everything they needed those students who have that support at home and there are a lot of snowflake students who have that support um and they're they're going to succeed no matter what um and so that's one thing that I just really fear if we do go to a four day week just the strain it will put on students and teachers do you know if they completely shut down the whole campus on that day they did reteach and enrich like okay was
114done prior here behind you on the reteach day you mentioned that your daughter came in and got help and for her it was more of enrichment because she was already in the higher programs and your daughter is an example of someone who's going to succeed no matter what because she has you as a teacher the person that I want to come in for the enrichment is the one who doesn't have the transportation and everything to get there and they're the ones who are going to fall farther and farther behind if we are closed completely on Friday the children like your daughter and the ones that I want no one gets the enrichment and then everyone Falls farther behind I yeah I agree with that so my um oldest and my youngest actually have some pretty
115significant learning disabilities and that's why I loved it because I was kind of selfish because my kids had one-on-one instruction time with their teachers so that's why enrichment was great for us so our kids my kids never had a four-day school day I was just grateful that 90 of the students were gone because then the teacher spent one-on-one time with my kid for four hours so it was a very selfish thing I thought on my part and my other two children my middle kids that didn't need to have the enrichment and they're like well I have A's in my class I'm like I don't care you go anyway so my kids still went five days a week but it was wonderful if there's any way that we can solve that situation where a kid can
116get four hours of one-on-one time with their teachers can we figure out how to do that in our override budget that's where the kids are successful and that's where there's research that talks about enrichment and I think that's what's most important when you start to slide back enrichment goes away and if you want a kid to be successful then they need to have the enrichment activities they need to be in sports and music in theater and NASA and then those are the kids that are successful in education especially those kids with learning disabilities but I agree because it was a very selfish thing for me I'm like hey no one can show up that's cool because then my kids are now in calculus where they were on an IEP and they were struggling in math
117and now they you know they're in college and doing excellent because they have the one-on-one with their teacher time so I love you guys but if we can figure that out one-on-one with teachers it's it's probably nothing more than about 150 million dollar endowment we can make it happen no problem sure no problem I'll win that 100 billion dollar lottery or something whatever there's there's more questions too yes I have one um so I'm retired I guess I'm Community now but I also had two boys in high school during the four day week and I was teaching full-time five days at the elementary now my boys were not taking a lot of AP honor classes so they were home every single Friday and they couldn't go in to get help because the classes that they
118had there were already kids there supposedly being helped or it wasn't a lot of gifted and I didn't care for it at all they both played sports sports like my brother had said went down the tube the kids had no they never had a pep rally even the dances I think were somewhat limited that year because they're just they just weren't doing activities and I can say even though I'm retired now and I I do feel bad for teachers because it probably would be nice to have a three-day weekend and be able to replenish yourself as a reading specialist it would be the worst thing for my kids because even the two days of the weekend we see where they forget things that we've taught and I can't imagine then every week losing a third
119you know an extra day so there's three days and we're starting over on Monday and then if they're absent a couple days due to an illness you're only getting two days to teach a brand new concept and hopefully they can Master it so just speaking out there sorry guys okay so I question if and maybe this is a if wishes were fishes thing but for teachers if you could have the students there that need the extra help wouldn't a Friday where you have less students in the classroom be easier and why not we shoot those mics I can't hear a word I'm sorry it's not like I'm the only one talking because we actually all talked about all this but yes so like like I have your kid right now so we she she would
120love it because I have her for Math and she doesn't like math but I have Monday through Thursday we do all the concepts and everything and even though Friday is a half day we do our assessment and everything and so then I can use that and I can decide what I need to reteach and all of that and if I lost that even that half day and I went to four days then I still have to have a time where I assess to see are we making strides and what do I need to reteach so now I only have three days to teach and I'm going to do my assessment day and so now my days are even shorter and if we have a snow day thrown in there or a water pipe breaks then
121I have even less and I'm down to two days and when do I teach like when do I actually get it out there I would rather have all of them there all the time than have every time someone's gone I look at the room and I think oh my gosh now I'm gonna have to catch that person up and I'm gonna have to catch that person up I'd rather have everybody there or nobody there you know I think the one of the one of the arguments for four day would be Finance it cuts down the costs but if we're still Staffing with teachers and everything on Friday and keeping the buildings open and everybody here then we haven't saved a penny we've just lost and we're going backwards I was and this is anecdotal but
122I went to Sonic the other day on a Friday two o'clock in the afternoon no no it was it was we went about 11 30 and it was a pack of about 30 Junior High kids there and and they didn't have a thing to do and it was bad I'm telling you I never heard so many F words in my whole life if boys and girls and it was it was bad and when they left that place looked like a garbage dump and I was saying what's going on with these kids you know Junior High principles going like this you know that's just the age you know but anyway but and I and I had some bad feelings from that and I've also learned that that school district in the last what seven years eight
123years has had four different superintendents so I don't I think they're just struggling to find a median where the community is happy and they're still getting good grades but I can tell you right now their grades are going downhill they're not they're not benefiting the kids some of the parents are happy because they got another teenager boy that's working building houses because there's a lot of that going on down there and so I think you know there's I don't know where my mind lies but you can kind of get an idea where my mind lies so anyway just my own personal feelings and comments can I ask a question about the hours so um my oldest son had pretty significant learning delays and I tried really hard the school was different then and so I
124actually removed them from public school school and put them into a private school and in that private school he had eight kids in his classroom for three years and it was only taught four days a week now in that four days a week we had three hours of homework every night and it helped him be more successful but in his classroom was two-parent households correct with a class size of eight and so I think in comparison just on an average day the class size of eight could you accomplish significantly more than a class size of eight versus a class size of 20 okay just in general and if you have a four day because I know that there's some teachers here in this community that now we're teaching in the larger class sizes that used
125to teach at some of these private schools and there I I don't want to speak for them but they're totally Pro four days it was great for our family because we had Ketchup Day for homework so explain to me that difference because four day worked really well with this group and our fifth day was when we would play the inner Collegiate sport activities was our fifth day so that's why school was out anyway because everyone was gone playing soccer and basketball and volleyball and all that stuff so is there a comparison has anyone taught in that type of scenario and then taught in a public school yeah so Ed and I taught at a four-day school week with in that at Bisbee and there are amazing Arguments for five day and I certainly have a
126little boy at home who needs every little extra they can get but he's getting it believe me he's getting it um and we loved it and we when we started at Lowell School in Bisbee it was a failing school so the state had come in for an improvement plan it was I mean we stripped down and you go bottom to top and look at everything and um we used a program that I'm talking about that's what I was referring to earlier with Miss Hoffmeyer that brings parents in um and it was a true four-day model we did assessments on Thursdays we were required even though I didn't I mean I knew what my kids were doing throughout the week I didn't need a little test to know if they were succeeding or not but we
127it was absolutely an important part of our week those Thursday tests the DFAS and then of course it moved on to this huge data collection and by the time we had moved up here but Lowell school was a b grade in School and that wasn't because of the four day week necessarily but it was because we addressed those other factors that are so real and in Bisbee we if you don't think we have parents up here who care we do and just because families are poor it doesn't mean they don't care or they're not motivated but in bispy we were dealing with cartels we had incestors I I that's such an icky word but we had very crazy I mean it was the Wild Wild West it still is and um and we were able
128to at that school we just were able to create something in the district even on four day so I'm saying that not because I mean I could go either way I kind of like having the structure of the five day but we did have a very successful experience with that and I'd love to talk about it more at another point where I'm not the person who disagrees with everyone else [Music] another question um if you would do a four day would that require you to extend the school year I've I've read articles and about going to a year-round school district or year-round school and having more breaks throughout is that something that's ever been explored or talked about we operate on an instructional time model we already go longer than we need to fairly significantly
129the elementary school day may be elongated but extended by 15 minutes and the other 20 to 45 but I don't think you would actually go longer we'd have to I'd have to do the analysis though there are 36 fewer days so we'd have to do the analysis it the answer would be possibly but we're not talking about the middle of June we already get out the 19th of May so maybe the first week of June would be just a guess sir and I could find more about that and if you'll give Mary Ford your contract and contact information on follow-up with you Mary's right here I'm sorry Mary he's right here go ahead [Music] so I know a lot of teachers are here we've talked about this I think the other thing that we have
130to be caucus and aware of is our classified staff our cafeterias staff all those people who would suffer with a four day week they would that that's a that's up to the that would be a financial decision for the board some districts what they've done is go ahead and pay them the same over four days so it's actually a pickup for them but I'm just I'm saying that would be my vote if we did do that I wouldn't want to cut pay and we can't lose bus drivers or support staff so all of this all of the staff members would have to be done that's why there's really not a huge financial pickup you don't do it for financial reasons you do it because the board would believe it's going to be better for kids
131and better for staff yeah okay that certainly clarified that because yeah the research that I've been reading it says that the cost things are really minimal one to two percent so um you know it saves on the heat and running thousands and that kind of thing that your larger effects stay the same salaries and benefits and all that so I want you guys to take a good look at the board I know we all look older compared to Jennifer because I'm old too you know not as old but we all had kids that went through this district and I think all of us had kids that started in kindergarten and graduated in the school district so I'm thinking back and some of you might remember when Blue Ridge was in the football playoffs every year
132and that requires several weekend several Fridays that kids missed and when I was doing I was volunteering in the elementary school and I'm looking at all these kids and the teachers are just shaking their heads like we lose so much having kids in class Friday and just losing Saturday and Sunday and starting over on Monday with some of them but when we let or we didn't always let school out but when so many families missed on Fridays that was another day tacked onto that weekend that hurt the education process and then we had some parents that said well since we're taking Friday off let's take Monday off too and so then those kids would only be in school Tuesday through Thursday so you've got a group that has to catch up like that or you
133have a stretched out family that has kids in college and they're like everybody's going to the ball games so let's spend that time and go see so-and-so at their college so it's not just what you decide on the whole group it's what parents decide to back and that did not work well at all it was like having a four day week in the fall because we missed so many Fridays so we we promote all our activities but when they get good that means they miss more school so you know if there's just a domino effect and whatever you decide to do and I really enjoy listening to the teachers perspective on kids that miss and kids that miss during during coven and I have grandchildren that mister and covet far longer than we did here
134and it's it's horrible if you don't have parents that can catch them up what is our absentee rate on Fridays 17.6 I don't know how many days can we miss per calendar year what how many days can a student Miss per calendar year well technically ten okay uh technically 10. I use those really well by the way I say and they add technically I would like to add to the conversation a little bit I'm Rachel catalase 18 second grade I totally agree with everything that my co-workers have said I'd like to bring up a couple other things I have two kids in the district that are um one lower elementary one Upper Elementary both receive Social Services one gifted one resource and they would be heartbroken if we took away Friday to be honest they
135are sad when we have a snow day weird kids but um they love being in school and um I think they would be pretty sad I was one of the weird teachers that was thrilled when we were going to full day Friday because I could do all sorts of enrichment on Friday afternoon but um one of the things I wanted to mention was since I teach second we got babies in our class I really worry about them going home on Thursday and not eating until they come back to school on Monday a lot of our kids we mentioned just the free reduced lunch they eat lunch on Thursday and then we have the backpack snacks which is great but they're not going to eat until they come back to school on Monday for breakfast and
136that's concerning for me another thing that I was concerned about also going to the high school level I worry about the programs that we just were mentioning that if we can pass this bond in this override these programs but if we cut those hours I don't know how that would work for them to even have those programs anymore I know that it's the minutes are great I don't know much about it but I know that the minutes are important so on top of what has already been said I just those were a couple of things I wanted to add to the conversation I just wanted to mention too I'm a classified staff I'm in the front office at the elementary and my family is like we're really lucky because I don't have to work but
137I work because I like to be there and um but as a mom I would love the Friday like I love being around my kids and my kids know I love being around them we have a lot of kids at the elementary school and I'm sure at all the levels that don't know their parents love being around them so being at home for that Friday for my kids they would probably be more High achieving even though they're not in school for those kids that is damaging for them to be at home longer to have be in that environment and they need to be at school where they see that people want them around and you can tell from the teachers our teachers want their kids around they love them they want them um we have
138third graders that take care of their first graders they they do and it's because the daycares are full they are 100 like cost wise they could get their daycare paid for but they can't get into the daycare because it's full um I just and on a selfish level I worry about my high achieving kids in school every day if that Gap gets widened even more because they're going to you know once they get to the high school level they're they're able to be separated out they're able to be an AP they're able to do those sorts of things but in the younger levels they're being taught to a level where with the the kids that need the help and um there's something else anything else can say but I can't so that's all you're a
139good person because you see all sides of this being at the elementary and the position you're in and that's you know that's invaluable because you see the people that care and want their kids there and you see the people that are just so frustrated because there's nowhere to put their kids where it's supervised and even if they're there does that mean it's meaningful no it doesn't really because they're one of a bunch of kids being looked after they do get a meal but you know it's not as good as somebody else that can stay home with a parent that's home and actually do something that's enriching or spend time on extra homework so she's a good person to evaluate our demographics she's just a good person well I was gonna say that but and I
140I do think important as a I've always been a working full-time mom and so I was fortunate enough to be a director so I had four kids at the hospital hiding underneath a desk on Fridays on because my kids were in private school on Thursday so I was fortunate to be able to do that because I could not find child care probably 75 percent of the time so if my parents couldn't drive up to take care of my kids on Friday they were eating a lot of Hospital ice cream you know and so I can see that that is a pretty significant issue that we have to think about unless the whole Community can rally around all of these parents that have careers that they have to be at on those Fridays our whole entire
141Community can't shut down especially you know if you're in the trades and if you're in medicine you have to work to take care of people and it's not just those people but if you miss a job in some of the jobs you don't have a job they don't even allow you out for doctor's appointments or anything like that so if you miss or say say for instance you're working with a group that cleans houses if you don't get that many people satisfied during your week you won't have a job so that's what they face too it isn't because they don't want to be around it's just they have no other choice and those are the families that are receiving the backpacks and stuff they're not making enough even working as many hours as they can
142to um accomplish what they want to you know we've we've talked a lot just about the Elementary's kids but the Junior High in high school I think are just as critical for the four day you know I five kids went through the school kindergarten to to graduate and they've all become successful adults and I attribute it to the education they got because and the foundation they got here and the foundation they received here was not just all academic they had to do hard things I mean they had to work I mean I can remember my son sitting Mrs Peterson had to make him pass it he had to pass a test before he could go to a state playoff basketball tournament so the whole basketball team was sitting in the Hall waiting for him in
143Mrs Peterson to pass him on that test before he could leave no pressure and no pressure you know but hard things make good kids and and so I think that you know I look at the board here and we have Chuck and Diana and Jennifer and Margaret and they are all professional Educators in one way or another I'm not I've observed what this community went through when they went through the four day I thought it'd be a good thing I thought it'd be a good thing but I watched our school spirit I saw our competitive level in sports in every sport dropped to uh to where people are calling us you know I I don't want to say it but um we weren't the Blue Ridge that people remembered and and I don't want to
144say it was exactly attributed to the four-day work work week I think there were a lot of other factors but I think it was a perfect storm and I think in the last couple of years we have recovered substantially from that I know the elementary school I love you people you are doing such uh great work to teach those kids and you love them and I know the junior high and high school teachers love those kids and they're working hard for them and I know their coaches love those kids individually and that's what it takes and and I I personally think it's okay to do hard things I personally think it's okay for kids to have to go to school on Friday I think it's okay to learn discipline in their lives and I think
145it teaches them how to depend on other people [Music] in their team sports or whatever so that's that's what I observed and honestly that's why I'm here is so we can bring back to that level what we used to be that I remember my kids thriving in even though it was hard my girls I can't tell how many nights I set up to midnight with them while they cry on the edge of their bed because it was hard to do this or my sons you know who who participated and had grades they had to maintain and and practices were hard and things were extra and it was hard for them but you know what they wouldn't have it any other way because it's made them who they are and I think that's what you're doing
146is making kids into great adults and I appreciate that so much and and I thank you I mean to Moses I feel the same way and I also know that for many kids Blue Ridge is their family aside from their own family but maybe in some ways a lot better family and they feel the support they feel the continuity and some of these kids they have to have that every day and when we talked about that four day I thought well you know I I see the benefit for the for the top kids who always want more and will always accept more help but I just thought it was a really bad idea for allowing some kids not to be in school because you're never going to get the ones that you need to be
147there Transportation maybe they have no push at home to better themselves it's up to them or maybe they're babysitting and they can't come in so or they're you know they are the ride for everybody else so they can't come in so there are all kinds of things like that to think of in our community but I think we have to remember that we are some of these kids only family or the ones that care the most and I see these these teachers out here and I'm just blown away I mean we always have really good teachers in our whole group but the elementary teachers see these little kids come in and and that is so important that they have the continuity of the whole week the way I feel so unlike Chuck if you'd like
148to just kind of wrap it up I think we've hit seven o'clock and what everybody said as much as needs to be said if you'd wrap that up I'd really appreciate it well I'd like to make a few comments first but uh Dr Wright um I would like it if we could get some documentation from the other districts especially the ones around here that are doing this in particular I'd like to see the results of their test scores for a couple years before they went on the four day week and then since they've been on the door four day week to see what's happened academically ACT scores um grades attendance his attendance gotten better for four days or worse also as far as the community has it affected crime uh things like that kind of
149ripple effect things do they see less problems with psychological problems with the kids or worse that kind of thing I would like to see some of that data from the schools that have been doing this the teachers in Show Low too like the four day week because they can use that fifth day if they're allowed to be there but it doesn't always mean that their AIDS can come that fifth day and they need those AIDS like for special education in order to plan ahead or have a good meeting with a parent or anything they have to have that Aid there because of the AIDS input but they don't get paid to come in on those days so that's another thing to look at or paraprofessional last chance to make a comment so um we spoke
150of the override and it sounds like it's something that we really want to do I cannot see the announcement of a four-day Work Week go together do they yeah so in other words we spoke of uh highlighting our programs and doing everything that we're doing for your families one of the ways of highlighting that would be uh stating that we we are going to stay on a four and a half day or even a five day and save our families the child care costs and the food costs but I gotta gotta say that making an announcement that we're going to go with a four-day is I wouldn't say that's good advertising for for the override point taken thank you very much thank you uh if there's nothing further then I think to officially close this
151can I get a motion to close I have a motion from Chuck I have a second from Margaret all in favor of during this meeting meetings adjourned thank you so much