001we'd like to start our meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance everyone please stand Margaret would you lead isn't that I pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right I'd like to excuse Dina Butler and Jennifer they'll be participating in this meeting online with us by phone and uh looks like we have some visitors Dr Wright do you want to introduce the visitors and we'll just uh start right there sure we'll start with someone I know well shamaine Wright in a presentation with the music her music group hi good evening I'm more nervous about this than I am 800 kids um the great musical it's called dig it it's about archeology and world history
002um the sixth graders are exploring five different ancient civilizations including Egypt Mesopotamia China Rome and Greece tonight we're going to have the opening scene and then we're going to go right to Egypt thank you for letting us participate we're so excited can we come sit down in the audience so we can see please thank you so much okay to set the scene there are two kids who live on an archaeological site with their parents and they're snooping around at night they're not supposed to be out and about so that's where we're going to start Pokemon okay ah what what is it bones and of course we did here with three million years old wow [Music] that's a great idea coming up what are you talking about I didn't say anything ah yeah what's yours [Music]
003[Applause] [Music] a skeletons [Music] but skeletons can't talk can they uh [Music] where we where we came from where we are here we are um [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] um [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] plants will grow bowing down the good fruit the years of starvation will be over thank you and good night [Music] [Applause] [Music] come here [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] let's wait [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] heard from my esophagus Now work on my sarcophagus I want my I really want my mommy [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] at the elementary school with 140 of our favorite friends that was great thank you so much I think you deserve another round of applause all right next item on on the agenda is uh
004recognition of the October BR students of the month Dr Wright yes sir let's start with the high school could you Mr Webb introduce your student of the month I can actually our student of the month for this month is Carrie best she's unable to be here she is teaching in a class at the dance academy studio so I'm going to go ahead and read the nomination teacher nominee in Paris somebody that knows a lot about her who might be a little bias on the nomination because it's his daughter but when you hear everything that she does you'll see why she was nominated and why she was chosen for the student of the month so she ran the NHS VR blood drive which hit 153 of the blood drive gold she helped organize homecoming and all
005the events she is president of both the NHS and senior class and likely it will be valedictorian she's also a National Merit and semi-finalist and a good shot at being blue ridge's First National American Scholar and certainly she was one of our two girls State reps at past summer and she did all those while taking dance classes for for 20 hours a week and teaching three classes herself plus she's just a great kid so all those reasons and more we're nominating Kerry best is the high school student of mine thank you Mrs Hoffmeyer if I could have Riley Rosen come on up please Riley was actually nominated by a couple of her teachers and when I look at the the plaque actually says in recognition of demonstrating one or more of our core values courage
006to respect commitment and integrity and Riley checks all four of those boxes um she's actually been nominated by a couple of her teachers as being an outstanding role model in her classroom getting involved in the outdoor and extracurricular activities we've actually used her on a couple of occasions as a student guide because we know students are going to be comfortable with her new students coming into the building or be comfortable with her guiding them in the classroom to the classrooms and around the building so we're just really lucky to have Riley she is a great role model for other students and quite a leader on our campus so Riley wrote [Applause] thank you Mr Grace Elementary School this month our student of the month is none other than Sam Shumway and then I have Miss
007City langto his teacher to say a few words about him foreign [Music] [Applause] he is honestly he has a great sense of humor he works super hard he works really well in my class and having the year that iPad it's been great to have the student exam in my class so I cannot think you're not standing [Applause] thank you good job kids and thank you families for coming for that presentation for the recognition of the October BR Star Award Mr tooman can you please come up and make the tell us a little bit about the recipient who's unable to make it tonight but give us a little bit of background on Steve it's an inside joke good for Steve thank you sir Mr Grace will you make your presentation for your teacher of the month
008at the elementary school our October teacher of the month um I asked him last night if she could come to the board meeting tonight she said what are you gonna fire me I said no not at all so our October teacher of the month is Tisha pokaba our classroom is always running at the utmost capacity um I enjoy going in there she had the great rapport with her students she works well with all of the other staff and she is she is one of our go-to people on campus in Spokane thank you foreign thank you our next recipient is unable to make it tonight and Mr Webb asked if we could make that presentation in December so we'll move that presentation for Cynthia Roethlisberger to December thank you thank you those uh I think those
009awards are important years and years ago I won an award Casper the ghost costume does that tell you how many years ago it was and I got a plaque it's one of my cherished possessions from years and years ago remember Marshall Kagan no credit I'm way too old for that anyway we won't go there okay the next items on the agenda are item number two and it covers items from 2.1 and all the way to 2.8 board are there any items on the consent agenda after you've reviewed them that you'd like to pull out and vote on separately none Jennifer are they naming for you okay Diana no they're not okay so can we have a motion to accept the consent agenda as written have a motion from Chuck I have a second from Margaret
010all in favor hi and we got two guys also okay item uh three point one recommendation to approve the annual financial report for fiscal year 2021 and 22. Kimberly would you like to go over that with us and hit the high points for us sure thank you um good evening governing board president governing award members and [Music] reports to the AFR stands for uh I do have a PowerPoint presentation oh there we go okay all right so what is the AFR the AFR is our annual Financial reporter I won't read the whole slide but there are multiple sections of the AFR if we're it's for all of our funds including Food Service K3 reading program School level AFR um classroom site fund AFR so there's multiple reports that are due um on October 15th in
011the state of Arizona so I've had a busy month so the way that we prepare for the AFR um is we do a multitude of things again I won't read the whole entire slide but some of the things that we do do is clean up our books from the prior year to make sure that they're all balanced and ready for the annual financial report once they're balanced and cleaned up then we start with preparing the annual financial report and one of the things that we do test for is that we're making sure that we're spending the correct amount of money in our sped department and our Title 1 schools so that's something that's checked by the state department every year um we also review the general ledger for our mno and our Capital expenses and
012all of our expenses these are our major expenses I'll show you some graphs here in a minute that contain these expenses so you can see where we have spent our money over the last year so the expenditures for 2021 and 2022 equal 19 million 718 039 and you can see how it's broken apart up there by mno by Capital by impact Aid classroom site fund classroom site fund just as a reminder that is um what was formerly called prop 301 and that's for teacher pay and teacher increases and bonuses we have um our federal grants and then we have our stay Grant just so you know that state Grant is our priority Grant and when I show you the graph here in a minute you're going to see that it's zero it's just because the
013all of the other numbers are so large and that Grant is just so small and we only have that one Grant from the state so you'll see here in a second you can see right there that that state grants are zero it's just because that one's so small you can see that the majority of our budget comes from our maintenance and operations budget our next largest slice of the pie is our federal grants and I work with um Brad Pico on all those federal grants that's our next biggest chunk then our next biggest chunk is our classroom site fund and then we get a little bit of money from Impact Aid so just a reminder impact 8 is from um uh the federal government and that is for our Native American students who live on
014native land all right so Eminem that's our biggest slice of the pie so how did we spend mnl as you can see that the majority of our m o budget goes to salary and benefits so we spend most of our money on paying teachers the next part the next thing is supplies and purchase Services just so you know purchase Services is for teachers that have retired and have come back for um people that do otpt speech pathologists people like that are purchase services that we pay to come in like the Navajo County um schools Consortium has those vendors that come in and help with our special needs students um and so here you can see this is mno by function so this is how we spend our money um in different categories like instructions student
015support and instructional support you can see those things combined are the biggest piece of our pie then we have plant operations so that's Mr tooman's department and that's keeping our buildings running keeping them up to date keeping making sure our roofs aren't leaking things like that then we have transportation and then we have General Administration which includes all the administration including the principals all right are there any questions about the FY 22 AFR I like grabs oh thank you I worked really hard on it quicker to see yeah than just numbers Jennifer do you have any questions this is the same as gets published correct okay any other questions Diana do you have a question all right thank you thank you all right so we have a motion to accept the annual financial report as
016presented okay we have a motion by Margaret and a second by Chuck all in favor aye plus the eyes that's unanimous okay item 3.2 recommendation to approve the statement of support for the override of the Constitutional constitutional aggregate expense expenditure limit I'd never make it in Congress yeah okay that's at snowflake high school education I'm sorry I didn't say that no you're too honest dang it anyway um we we saw that and Dr you want to just explain the technicality of what this is I'm all in favor of personally sure the issue of the aggregate limit was something that was born in 1980 and there has not been any substantial movement or changes to this issue since then and so 42 year old problem and so what it does is put a cap on how
017much money the state can spend well what this letter does along with many other organizations it sends a a notice to the state legislatures that we the legislature that we need help and that there is real impact for not approving this change and so every year now in March before a specific date March March 1 presumably the state legislature has to approve an over expenditure essentially and until they Rectify it there was a deal made with the governor and a couple of other folks that they thought they had a long-term fix but that hasn't been possible yet and so this is just a statement from the board saying we we're in support of coming up with a solution a long-term solution to support our schools it means about 1.5 million dollars to Blue Ridge if
018it were not approved in March and then so you're left in position we have to come up with 1.4 million dollars with only six weeks of school left which would be a huge burden and so that's what this letter States and it just it's just more of a symbolic effort but it does put folks on notice that this is an important issue for our school district any questions on that from the board comments [Music] it's sent to it's supposed to be sent to the governor we know the governor is never going to see it but we know his staffers are going to see it and we know we we hope that he sees the staffers see hundreds of those letters with the same problem and that might Garner some support that's our hope so if
019they don't uh pass a stop get stop gate thing in March that means we have to come up and and give the state one point yeah or we just have to cut that out of our budget well one or the other and for practical terms it would be nearly impossible to do that yeah our solution would be we would be done with school in March yeah we'd have to close the doors a hardship on everybody yeah and so the state will say we'll just use your Esser dollars or those you have to write in Grants you don't create a grant in a week or two it takes time and they have to be approved and as a cycle so the only functional thing to do would be we're done we're closed for this year and
020so that has been really the lever and I think parents remember what that's like having kids at home and with nothing else to do when school's closed that's that's not good and so I think that is uh there are schools with the capacity to weather that we're not one of them any comments questions if not we have a motion to vote on item 3.2 but motion I have a second Margaret all in favor okay that would be a totally unanimous vote all right next next item 3.3 recommendation to approve the classroom visitor policy yes sir um read that do we need to go through that in detail or perhaps just hit the high points I could this this basically opens up the classroom to everybody that that there are Hoops to jump through before they
021can go not difficult ones but just ones that need to be addressed so that we have a handle on who is in the school yes sir the statute requires that you make schools accessible and that the board adopts a policy ours is pretty generous you need 24 hours notice and that has to be provided to the principal and to the respective classroom teacher can't just walk up and say demand to go into the classroom it doesn't work like that and so there are protocols in place there are also expectations of the participants they're observing they're not participating so we outline these in the policy the policy that we're asking the board to adopt reflects one that's similar being adopted with school Statewide I think some of them have 48 to 72 hours advance notice we're
022a small community our principals felt they could make the change as long as they had 24 hours notice to get prepared and then to set forth those expectations this is not an opportunity for people to come in and to protest and to disrupt our classrooms and to tell what we should be teaching how we should be doing it it's simply to observe they can take notes they can't use a recorder they can't take pictures of kids they can't talk to kids they could simply observe that's what the statue requires and so policy supports those procedures this policy also includes those that would like to volunteer in a classroom in the steps that they have to do to volunteer in the classroom this we're your teacher supervision we would have we'd have a similar process it's
023a it's it is just but it's outside of this it's just our volunteer and we'll accept volunteers anytime there's a process like if they're going to be supervised they don't have to be fingerprinted but there's a some paperwork to complete right and they could go in so that wouldn't be just a little bit different but it's the same Spirit access to the classrooms yeah I just like to say I think as a former teacher this is long overdue and especially given our current climate and um of things going on in the world and demonstrations and so forth that this is a good thing and needs to be done same thing with me as a former teacher I have people just walk in to the gym unannounced probably didn't know some of them unless I knew
024him from basketball games or something so it's nice long overdue I think and most people check with teachers and the principal first for anything that's planned but you know this keeps people that have an extra grind gives them time to cool off a little bit you know after they contact the principal before they actually come in and see for themselves what's going on well they do have to have a visitor ID that's numbered that they have to check in when they leave too so all right any other Jennifer Diana have any questions or comments thank you so if there's no further discussions we have a motion to adopt item 3.3 have a motion from check and a second from my Margaret all in favor that would be an eye for those [Music] eggs we everybody
025voted positive okay item 3.4 new curriculum review and discussion we won't be taking in action but this is for the new social studies advanced placement the AP curriculum it's in office now for those that would like to review how long will it be there well there's a minimum requirement we normally goes between 90 and 120 days that the purpose of this practice is just to get let people know in a public open setting hey we've got an AP advanced placement curriculum book support that we're wanting to put up for review and possible approval and so when we bring something on like a textbook like this not a supplement but it's something that's actually used as a guide we'll make the board aware we'll make the community aware it's in the office presently at the district
026office will it be online also yes it will then it there is there's references to it online in the the book and it's being able to get access to it is online as well thank you all right next item is uh superintendent report Dr Wright you want to tell us what's going on yes sir we're back in good and the bad right back in class tomorrow uh we had professional development today I also want to let the district know that we sent this out on social media but former student and 2021 graduated for 2020 2020 graduate Dylan Baca through his efforts starting as a sophomore in high school continuing into his sophomore year at Columbia University through his efforts in indigenous people's day was signed by the president United States a kid did that and
027so the politicians will try to take credit that was a kid's effort that was Dylan Baca organizing that he organized a non-profit I mean it's not an accident he's going to school at Columbia he's very bright but some of many of our teachers were helpful within that effort so I just want to give those kudos to a brat a 2020 grad that is making a big difference in that day is you know that we've just recently celebrated October 10th and I think that's a great thing to let our community know yeah did he graduate in 21 [Music] oh yeah that's what's 20 it'll be 22 23 so it was 20 21 okay I don't thank you we have had today that the executive team spent about three hours on a reunification plan and we're working
028to make sure that if we have an incident a natural disaster something that requires a lockdown of schools or anything else that requires we remove our kids we talked about how to best do that the trust has provided resources for that and so I'm not going to put the cart before the horse on this one but we we made a lot of progress today and in the coming months we'll be able to roll out to the parents how they can help us during reunification what's required and so there's some familiarity with this process and they're not showing up to school demanding to have their kids and it gets disorganized you saw what happened in the West Valley a few months ago when it wasn't handled appropriately and a parent tried to storm the school and
029he did and they tackled him he had again it didn't end well for him and so there are steps that are required to ensure that students are safe and staff are safe and that it's organized all of those laws remain intact we still have the right to operate in a way that's safe organized orderly and that is conducive to an educational environment none of that's got thrown out the window and so we take great care in making sure our administrators and our staff members understand what the procedures are for each of these incidents and this is one that if we had to deploy it would take hours and it would be messy and people would be frustrated but our goal is to keep everybody safe and eventually if everybody ends at home well and things
030will be fine so it's an undertaking that we've been working on as part of our emergency response plan and this was the next step we made a lot of progress in that we're also continuing to update our emergency response plan we recently went through an extensive evaluation on all the campuses and District district-wide we're receiving those reports we'll report back on that in probably 60 days and preliminarily we are in good shape there were a lot of compliments paid to our principals and our staff members especially teachers for doing the things we ask them to do like anything there's gaps we've identified them we're going to get those fixed get better at some other things but generally we're well prepared and I'm proud of the staff for that that marks about a seven year effort
031ongoing and it will be an ongoing effort going forward we don't have any other items there are a lot of things going on check brusd for your athletic schedules and events coming up for in our music world and also in the Athletics we're proud of our kids we have a lot of kids participating a very high rate and our coaches and sponsors working very hard to support these youngsters and we're proud of them as well are there any questions from the board Mr President Jennifer Diana have any questions all right thank you next item on the agenda is called the public we'd like to open some time for anybody that would like to address the board to do that this time we'd ask you to state your name and leave that with Mary Ford so
032that we can have that on record and we would like to limit you to about three minutes and ask that you don't see that to anybody else but we'd entertain uh comments from anybody right now oh can we get a microphone [Music] my name is thankful for Kimberly thank you for your report I appreciate it it was very nice you did say it needs to go in by October 15th which is coming up so have you sent that report already to the state no you're not allowed to send it to the state until it's board approved [Music] it's okay and is the PowerPoint also going to be on the YouTube or is it YouTube that is streaming that this is on or how can someone just get the power it's streaming it's on the streaming
033YouTube that's true okay great thank you I appreciate it thanks any others if not we'll go to any announcements the next two board meetings will be as follows November 15th at five o'clock here in December 13th at five o'clock here we will now excuse those who are on phone with us participating in this meeting remotely we will ask the board to go into an executive session discuss a student disciplinary matter thanks Jennifer well excuse me now [Music] all right so can I have a motion from the board we have a quorum and we'll go into executive session as a quorum I have a motion a motion from check to go into executive section a second from Margaret and we're voting on that and that is all in favor okay