BRUSD Regular Scheduled Board Meeting: Tuesday, March 22, 2022 @ 5pm

001all right thank you everybody for being here today we're live now call this meeting to order and we'll begin with the pledge of allegiance would everybody stand and brian crane would you lead the pledge for us thank you allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible that you diana yeah okay we're good we're good disappeared for a moment that's all right just by way of information we'd like to excuse uh chuck waldo he was a little bit of an accident in tucson he's okay but he couldn't get here and uh diana butler uh is home not feeling well she's participating with us by way of telephone and we'd like to excuse lauren webb who has family situation today he won't

002be able to meet with us tonight so we'll begin with uh mr brad pico if you don't mind take the the microphone and talk to us about federal programs you're involved with that we are involved with i should say so in regards to federal programs which is a wonderful opportunity to seek federal grants to provide for school types of improvement for student advancement of course you remember that no child left behind in the bush administration was to push schooling forward and equalize so it's an equalization grant and uh primarily what we're doing in federal programs is we are equalization of education so if paradise valley for example receives a certain ppa per child we should be able to receive the same type of funding up here in northern arizona in a rural school district in

003order to even the gap of education for kids i'm grateful for my opportunity to serve in this district because leadership and dr wright and brenda have given me the leeway the trust and the ability to seek those types of funding programs that provide for our staff and students and it's a wonderful opportunity there's lots of fun things going on right now and federal programming of course with the esser grant on the table which is worth 5.2 million dollars to our district that was a fun one to put together and i appreciate everybody in district who who helped and pitched in for that so just a wonderful opportunity to equalize the playing field for our students in education and moving forward thank you mr pico you also should remain standing because you're a recipient of the

004br star award for this month very excited about that it may be the only time i get a picture with dr wright where we're not adversarial [Laughter] thank you brad appreciate that appreciate your service in the district our next item on the agenda would be a curriculum presentation by mr ryan grace good evening y'all um i just wanted to go ahead and start with a recap of last meeting so last meeting we went over the entire process that we went through in order to take our selection down to mcgraw-hill we we set up a district-wide committee we went out for between four and five different curriculums for each subject that we were looking at we had to first identify what a curriculum is identify our need of trying to align our grade bands making sure

005that we're providing that foundational education that's going to be every student gets this education and yes we can supplement off of that for for differentiation to go higher and lower as we need but ensuring that we have the foundation set so that the next grade level knows these students are coming to me these kids are capable of doing these things and we wanted to make sure that that the curriculum is reflective of the fact that we have high expectations for our kids and we want that baseline to be mirroring that high expectation so for this meeting here it was really just to go through the financial side of mcgraw-hill curriculum adoption um and for the most part i rounded all of our numbers up to be able to give us that ability to to be

006flexible and and since this presentation was made we have actually brought that initial quote down [Music] and i'll address that as we go through as well but just to be able to we want to make sure that we're able to purchase slightly more and give ourselves a stock for if a student needs to purchase a new book because one was ruined water damage backpack loss something like that that we have some books on hand that we can we can have students purchase from us that would bring that cost back to us but being able to have them and not wait so a student is not without while they're in the classroom so let me go ahead maybe maybe use this okay there we go all right so i went ahead and started with the high

007school adoption um the high school is going to be probably one of our biggest adoptions here i broke it down we're looking at three different subjects for this curriculum the math the english language arts and then the science for math we're looking at about 560 students will be impacted by this with that ppa or that per pupil allocation of around 138 and 75 cents presentation per student that's a six year number so it's 138 dollars but that's not per year that's per six years which brings it down to um just slightly over 23 dollars per year gets that student a consumable textbook these are two volumes of interactive textbooks digital access to their curriculum online for if if we were to need that since we are one to one it utilizes the technology that we

008already have in students hands and it also gives every student at the high school that's in that's impacted by this a subscription to alex which is a math remediation program we already pay for so we'll be able to take that subscription and remove it in order because it comes with with this purchase um and we're able to get far more with our money for alex and that remediation program going through this purchase then buying it as a standalone product so for the math side of the curriculum it comes out to just around eighty thousand dollars um moving on to english language arts it's about 380 students we did discuss potentially and this was one of the reasons why we why i rounded those numbers up to give that a little bit of cushion is we

009did discuss potentially moving that up another grade level to include another grade level in that purchase to be able to impact more students it comes down to a 140 dollars per student for six years which is 23.33 per year um or roughly fifty one thousand dollars fifty two thousand dollars for english and then for science it's back to those same grade levels as math so it's 500 roughly 560 students and these numbers can be and will be adjusted as we forecast our next grade level and we get students that are are enrolled and pre-registered and stuff like that and it can came out to be about 67 000 with the high school curriculum total being roughly 200 000 um for a six-year purchase of this curriculum any any questions on that one before i move

010on just clarification the high school will be receiving workbooks also that the kids keep and the books that they receive are there books that they will keep we receive new books every year right yes sir and they're workbooks that they can actually write in and keep themselves they don't have to turn them in at the end of the year yes sir these are consumable books yeah that student and they are in full color as well so that suit will be issued that book and it becomes theirs at the end of the year um i have a question just sorry to interrupt that each each year the the book will be updated won't it it won't be this reprinting of the same book it'll be if they update their book then we get the next year

011we get the updated version of their book yes sir okay yes sir so if we buy it this year they don't update for next year it's not a different volume then we would get essentially a reprint um but if they were to update it then yes we would get the updated version the following year when they offer it all right thanks yes sir also for clarification this is our general studies not our honors classes correct yes and so um that's the reason why we don't have physics and some of the other ones yes also and they're going to be using our traditional textbooks that we're currently using correct yes ma'am and and that is something that we can mcgraw hill does offer those and i have looked at their physics book i actually have one

012sitting in my office and if it were to be something that we do want to to push for then yes we could we could still go through mcgraw hill go through the same vendor it's the same online programming the same training everything like that that we would be able to use um for for this one the the need that we looked at was for the alignment of a general-led student correct yes and so for our dual enrollment kids that's when we re defer to mpc when they have their calculus pre-calculus physics and those type of crashes correct okay um so for for the next slide here it's sixth through eighth grade adoption um and i put it that way specifically because almost everything that you would see written on this including the quotes that we

013get say junior high or middle school being that sixth grade is is at my campus i went ahead and differentiated that is six through eight not just seventh and eighth um because of that uniqueness here for us so once again these are a six-year subscription they include online access that consumable book which is reshipped annually and here in just a minute we'll look at the shipping handling process fees the number itself is large but it is a one-time payment meaning that next year there is no money going out for this they're re-shipped annually to us without an additional cost incurred so for sixth through eighth grade in math we're looking at about 430 students that would be every student is impacted sixth through eighth grade um including our students that are in eighth grade that

014are taking algebra one um and that we also included the accelerated course in middle school as well so they do offer an accelerated course that takes seventh grade and eighth grade math and combines them into one year's course so that a student that is moving from sixth grade to seventh grade but is on track for algebra one in eighth grade does not miss any of that vital content and they go to or go to algebra one in eighth grade fully prepared for it they've seen everything that is that that has been deemed absolutely necessary within those two years within one year so that does uh does include that and the math comes out to about fifty five thousand dollars for for sixth through eighth grade english the reason that english the total number of students

015served is lower it's about 130 people lower is that we already have this program it was already purchased for sixth grade when we adopted mcgraw-hill open court for k-5 so since 6th grade was at the k-5 campus we went ahead and got them several years ago before i got here that studysync mcgraw-hill product as well so k-6 already has a curriculum in from mcgraw-hill in english which brings that number down lower for us here on this purchase and then for science you're back up to the 430 students once again that's just a ballpark number of what we have now rounded up to the next 10 so that i could get quotes put out and you can see that the the ppa goes down since 101.97 which comes out to 17 per student per year um

016and that would be inclusive of a teacher's edition as well because all of our teachers editions were included for free as part of the purchase so middle school came out to be where six through eight came out to be about 141 thousand dollars any questions on six through eight nope carry on all right so for the k5 adoption we were only looking at math and science because we do still have and i believe it's five years left on our k5 english already so we still we do have multiple years left on that one so we're only looking at math and science to be able to align these and you get a little bit more at the k5 level than you do at the at the upper levels because we're building a base so for math

017we're looking about seven for both of them we're learning about 750 students are impacted um and for science it's it's less than a hundred dollars for a six year purchase and it is right around 100 for math for a six year purchase um these come with so math comes with consumable books they're in full color k through five i mean even our kindergartners they will get a consumable book that they can write in that is tailored to them that is in full color as well so they come with that online access should we need it or for our teachers to use it it brings with it an assessment software a couple other pieces that consumable book our lowest grades i believe we put it in through second grade get math manipulative so hands-on math kits

018come with this we get leveled reader library libraries for our lower grades that are content related so that students can read things on their level within their content to expose them to content more and then we also get each class would get interactive read alouds that teachers can read with their students that expose them to content at their level and that's gonna be for our lowest grades where we're trying to teach those slightly abstract concepts to very young minds so for the k5 curriculum we came out to be about 155 thousand dollars just for clarification this math curriculum is not our everyday math curriculum correct okay just how to make sure people knew that this this math curriculum is is fully aligned to our state standards and it brings with it the rigor that we

019need um for our students because when we look at state assessment problems when we look at at a college level testing things like that we need students to be able to work a multi-step problem that is lengthy with words that they can go through and pull out the information that they need and from a very low for a very young age this math curriculum does that gets the kids to think critically about their math and their numeracy and things like that perfect thank you all right so on our summary of cost the total curriculum cost comes out to be about 495 000 um it is slightly lower than that like i said i rounded those up our processing fees i did not round that number up because i wanted that number to be there for

020you to see so for the processing fees which includes shipping handling and tax it comes out to just shy of 91 000 once again that is a six year one-time fee so we pay at one time and they will ship to us regardless of paper costs regardless of fuel costs or anything like that we don't pay again on shipping processing and handling it is a one-time one-time fee and then our free materials i wanted i did want to include that so we are not paying for a single teacher's edition or teacher online access and the professional development both implementation and the refresher every year is included for the the life of our purchase on this one um and i've already talked to our reps a couple different times and they are chomping at the bit

021to get that on the schedule so that we can get if we go with their product that we can get the product in the teacher's hands as quickly as possible and we can get the training done before school starts with a follow-up training shortly after school starts so the teachers that have been using it can then ask the questions that they run into and don't have have a long lag between those trainings yeah for alex we used to pay for that separately correct and that's bundled into this payment and what do you remember how much that was um i believe we currently pay roughly 29 700 for alex per year so that's an annual thing and going with mcgraw-hill and i'm going to give a ballpark number because i don't know it off top of

022my head but if you go here on hill i believe it's about 18 000 okay for six years okay so we do save quite a bit off of just alex right quite a bit actually from that and then we are looking at a couple other things and then some of the other more difficult costs that we would be looking at as well would be we're not running as many copies we're not using as much paper because students will have a color book in front of them which is something that i've i've talked to a lot of teachers they're very excited about because they know that every kid's going to have a copy of it right from there and this also does not include we opted out of social studies correct yes yes um and so

023i did want to just go ahead and just making known since i put this together dr wright has spoken to our reps about bringing down our possible purchase cost and [Music] not to get down to the penny but as of right now he has been able to talk them into reducing our overall purchase cost by thirty one thousand two hundred fifty three dollars and sixty four cents awesome um off of the processing shipping and hand can you tell us kind of what um they include in their processing fee what is that what's that so when i see the processing fee it's just it's just the line item of a processing fee so that's going to be them [Music] their reps working with us okay if that's under there that makes sense yes ma'am okay yes

024sir if i may also add some of these products they are buying from a third party and it's a pass-through cost and so that's it's a non-negotiable fee because that was the first place i went and that was the part i didn't have any room in so we went to the next thing which was shipping and that's where we gained most of our shipping and handling is where they had room um the other costs were were hard costs that are passed through costs they probably if they were smart put shipping and handling very high probably did correct and and they did so they put the shipping and handling um on this as 000. and that shipping and handling they were able to bring down um and the processing fees things like their manipulatives i'm sure

025that they're bought through a third party and there it's a pass-through cost as well as workstations that we are getting as part of this as well for our lower grades um because one of the things about math is that if you teach it hands-on to your little kids then then they tend to grasp it and carry it further and so that was something that that we wanted to make sure that we did get included in this okay thanks thank you thank you sir mr ryan mr grace this item will bring up again uh first item of business to vote on but thank you for the presentation right now are there any questions further no thank you for all the hard work yeah going into this the way you put it here but yeah that's a

026lot of work absolutely my pleasure thank you you make it sound simple right margaret yeah thank you much okay the next item on the agenda is the presentation of arizona merit scores we'll start with the high school and since mr webb can't be here we've asked mr crane to do that then after mr crane's through we'll ask mrs hoffmeyer to present that and then mr grace again all right good evening um i'd like to just preface this with uh the state keeps presenting us with a moving target when it comes to our state evaluations every year uh two years ago we had the az merit and then they changed it to the azm2 and this year we actually are taking the act test so we're just going to look at the comparisons between the test

027we took two years ago which one is it two junior highs it is okay the i'd like you to first look at the the bars on the right far right of that slide and you can see that statewide the student success rate dropped significantly in the state in 2019 34 of the students statewide passed the test and then in 2021 only 27 of the kids did did well on the test if you and so then look at ours our ela scores actually improved at the high school from 2019 to 21 by 8 our math scores dropped a little bit from 32 to 24. you guys have any questions on any of that no i would say if i might miss prison the high school can can you review a little bit of what we're doing

028for summer school to help remediate make up the learning loss yes sir so i'll actually move to the we actually have that right here so the summer school remediation in all core subjects will take place from may 23rd to june 30th we've got three teachers coming in and we'll pay them for the end for their for their work and they're getting paid really well uh to come in and and remediate in all the core subjects and so we'll have a math teacher we'll have an english teacher and then and then we've got teachers that can address both science and social studies as well we have seen because of covid we've seen our failure rates [Music] increased dramatically over the last year and a half and i think everybody knows that the online teaching was extremely

029difficult during that time we had a lot another one we had a lot of we had techno technological issues we tried to provide kids with hot spots we did as much as we could i feel to get kids engaged but we had a lot of absences we had kids who just didn't show up online on their zoom meetings with their teachers even when they did show up oftentimes kids would just have their computer on enter the zoom meeting but that then not engage in activities so it was also very difficult i must say for the teachers to adjust but i would like to commend them on what they did in moving into the and the district also by providing the canvas program which enabled teachers to upload all of their assignments and enable kids to

030access those from home and so those were some of the issues that we faced and so we are definitely addressing a lot of these things through that summer school program giving kids an opportunity i believe that the state's going to pay for that again the summer school program and so we will you know get as many kids as we can to come and engage and try to earn back some of their credits any other questions no sir okay and like i said when i began we're comparing data from two different tests the first one in 2019 was the azmerit and then in 21 it was the azm2 and like i said this year we're actually moving into the act testing for juniors and then the freshmen will take the act inspire test and then juniors

031are taking a princess science test we're actually starting that next week next week is the science testing and then in april it's in about three weeks we start with the reading writing math act tests and then we the last test we take at the end of april is the freshman act inspired test this is just a real quick question these numbers are they a pass rate or a score rate sorry those are proficient those are the students i believe that scored proficient in that subject okay how long did it take the state to get us the numbers back so in 2019 i they got them they usually get them back to us just after the school year ends and i believe they did the same thing in 21 so we get them at the very

032beginning that's a lot quicker than other years probably so and and one of the one of the reasons i think was that they the writing test is a little bit different now whereas they had to in the past with the other arizona merits they had to have at least two people grade each written essay and i think that changed a little bit so i think their grading styles changed a little bit all right so how we're addressing those gaps i already talked about the summer school and what we're going to be doing and then mr grace just talked about the mcgrill mcgraw-hill adoption and the alex program we actually started the alex program at the high school last year and the math teachers really like it um the they they think that that is engaging

033students and that students are becoming more proficient in the state standards through the aleks program and then we're starting another program at the high school called avid and that's being run by mrs jessie reek and that's district wide and what avid is seeking to do is to pull middle of the road kids in and engage them more in their academics and point them more towards college and so we're trying to target those kids we've got targeted school improvement strategies which we'll come back to in a minute and i'll let mr brad piko talk about that one and then we hired an additional counselor to try to address the mental health needs of students and there has been a significant increase in the number of students who need just somebody to talk to they need help

034parents need the direction to the services that are available in our community and then there's been an increased focus on curriculum alignment within departments and i think that's one of the reasons why we see the increase in scores in the english exam so let brad quickly talk a little bit about uh the average strategy the avid strategy is basically a research-based program and it's not ade ade is getting tighter and tighter in regard to what programs we could use district-wide statewide to be in compliance one of those one of those prerequisites is that they're research-based now so when we started to look at school improvement we began to look at the average group which was research based which ade approved made it a lot easier to write the grant but not only did it make

035it a lot easier to write the grant the program is solid jessie reek has done a phenomenal job researching avid bringing that to the table so that we could we could utilize that so in the tsi program which is a grant that we do utilize here in the district it funds about 35 000 a year so as we start talking about paying all these extra costs and teachers at summer school please understand that these are all federal programs that are supplying this money and through the support of dr wright brenda and others other leadership we're able to move that forward so the esser grant requires uh 20 of that grant to be utilized to make up student learning loss so in the case of our district that's about 1.2 million dollars so in the grant

036we were able to write things like summer school remediation avid is a tsi program that funds itself within what we're trying to do and it basically targets three subgroups of children within the school district they target the population the native american population as well as the el population and so we get together with our rep katie clenser from the state of arizona and we have zoom meetings and i have to drag the pencils into those and it's really nice because it puts us on track to do our cnas our fishbone activities and everything that we're doing towards school improvement it's robust it's meaningful it's dignified and it gets us ahead of the it gets us ahead of the race and so avid is a program that we're using that the faculty seem to like it

037offers a professional development it offers professional development that targets those three subgroups and the high school the junior high are the two targeted assistant campuses that were that are using avid right now as a side note we've taken in the elementary school faculty in regard to avid and that training is not being funded by tsi and funding that program out of another federal grant because we think it's robust we think it's meaningful and we like to see the parallel learning amongst our faculty from grade level the grade level any questions hey brad do you guys have any other questions i had one question came up oh thank you i had one question come up and with the new testing for this year where will the baseline come since it's new testing for us this year

038will there be a baseline from other school districts or will next year be the baseline for the following year i believe next year will be the baseline okay all right thank you if if i might add mr president the act was selected i think it's a wise choice ironically some of our top students just take the arizona merit and they don't care they're filling in the bubbles they know it's not it doesn't mean anything to them they don't need to graduate they're already accepted to college it didn't matter to them but if you're given to them as juniors and it's an act they see how it applies and it's free and they know i need to do as well as i can on this and it also helps us to align our instruction we know

039what's being taught on that and it helps us prepare our students better for that and we think we're going to get greater buy-in by the students because it will apply to them that's one of the things about arizona merit has no teeth other than it has a you know pejorative label that you throw on the school there's kids can get a zero on it still graduate doesn't matter so act i think was a great choice that was driven by the faculty and administration i agree with it i think that's great didn't sound like something the state would come up with on their own do we still have our act prep class as a skinny yes cool all right any other question that's all the questions i have anybody else have another question or comment all

040right thank you soft meyer good evening technical difficulties give me one second sorry hold your hold your mouth like this there it goes stick the tongue out well thank you um i want to go ahead and show you some of our comparisons this is showing you our 2000 um oh gosh okay sorry same colors there they are nope let me go back okay that's elementary okay yep there it is all right thank you this is going to show you that uh the azmerit of 2019 and the azm2 um basically uh i mean this is a very similar test um different name but both assessments through the state you can see that in each area we we actually had so from 2016 through 2019 our uh our numbers were pretty level they stayed right around where

041they are 2019 with a couple areas that were a little bit you know one or two points increased but in 2021 you can see quite a difference in both ela and math at the 7th and 8th grade level i did not include our science we take 8th grade science as well because we did not have uh 2019 we had a 51 passing rate 2021 was a pilot test we didn't get any results for that one our 2016 through 2019 scores were very similar right around the high 40s to 50 percent in science what we noticed very similarly to the high school the factors that led to our decrease in achievement were significantly student absences we had so many student absences whether it was while we were online or in person due to covid due to

042family difficulties and hardships so that was definitely our number one factor in our decrease technology issues were mainly not necessarily we had so many technology efforts at the district side but things that were happening as far as low internet at home not being able kids not being able to communicate or to to log in from home and not as a result of anything on the district side of it more you know again family difficulties or technology issues with internet services at home our online instruction as well we found just was not it is not it just didn't help in-person instruction definitely is we are finding junior high level the kids need to be in school learning in a classroom it was difficult to get them just as mr crane was saying difficult to get the

043students engaged even if they you know some of them get in zoom some would be engaged many of them would not um it was difficult to get them to turn on their screens so that we could interact with them so that was a difficult piece as well and then we also noticed just some of the curriculum it which is great that we're addressing this with mcgraw-hill just submits consistent curriculum from k-12 so most significantly though i mean between student absences and then the mental health needs as mr crane mentioned as well students are coming to school either while they were online while we were learning or you know last year they they were coming to school with some really heavy needs that we needed to help them address and so the test was not their

044top priority um you know just getting through each day was a big priority for them and that became our priority how do we help these kids get through a day successfully and feel valued and loved can i ask a question in regards to this because i i'm having a hard time understanding like how we compare to the state do you have the state standard numbers that we do so with the state we had let me go back um so our state comparison we were actually very similar into the state in 2019 2016 to 2019 we were similar um typically one or two points below or right on level with the state um 2021 the state dropped as well we still fell probably um i would say on average about five points below where the state

045was as well do you know if there's any research in regards to school districts that went to like an online program versus in person during our covered time i'm not sure if there is a published version of that but i i will look into it and actually i'll i'll get back to you on that because that would be really good information for us to have as well so in order to address the gaps we have our teachers and i will just tell you that you know during all of the covid closures and then when the kids were back in hybrid and then when they came back fully our teachers have just adjusted and helped these kids try to transition from one way to another and they've done an incredible job we are we are focused

046more on our we're doing a lot more data analysis of our kids our teachers talk regularly in their plc groups and actually on a daily basis about how the students are doing and what can we do we have some flexible schedules for students so if they need a little more help in math or english we can give them a little bit more help in that area if we need to change their schedule so that they're getting that that help then we can do that as well we also have some literacy-based remediation efforts going on particularly in our title 1 reading classes our title 1 reading and special education classes which helps our lower readers and that's read naturally which helps our kids become the ones who are struggling with fluency and then of course with

047comprehension read naturally is a program that really helps them focus on getting that fluency and comprehension up we also are working on testing strategies so we have our enrichment wheel at the end of our school day our fifth hour and this particular four and a half week block is our ready set test and during this particular time we have scheduled events for the students today it was an awesome day it was school-wide math bingo where the kids got on zoom with uh from the classroom a teacher got into zoom with two different teachers and we had kids winning bingo school-wide it was incredible uh and they had kids had a great time we're trying to just get them a little bit more excited about if you know kids don't love testing time so um we're

048just getting them prepped for it showing them a lot of different testing strategies and i'll jump to avid because this avid program also helps with that the avid program that we've we've implemented at the junior high as as far as getting those kids their middle middle of the road college and trying to get them interested in college we also have used avid to try to make a lot of school-wide consistency changes um having some different practices in the classroom that are more consistent we're just getting started with it and we've started to go through some strategies our last training was on having kids writing more focused note-taking and getting more writing in the classroom and so we're starting to work on getting some of those strategies into each of the classroom so the kids are

049seeing things consistently in every class we also have frequent visits with our students regarding their mental wellness miss montoya she visits with kids on a daily basis but she has also she's also implementing the safe spaces training for every 7th grade student every 8th grade student in fact our 8th grade is going through that training this thursday with her and that gives kids some strategies on emotional resilience and how to cope with some of the feelings that they're having but also who to go to if you're struggling with different events at home different events at school and gives them some outlets as well as some paths to success um as and then our focus on our vertical alignment we're excited about the mcgraw hill i'm excited to see what after the first couple of years

050what kind of changes are we going to be seeing from kindergarten through eighth grade um just to see some of the consistent practices that we'll see throughout the that adopted curriculum [Music] and then our summer school remediation program is going to be running from may 23rd through june 16th we've already sent our invitations out to several students who we feel would be benefiting from that but it's open to any student who is either needing a safe place to come in the summer or needing that special remediation we do have four teachers for our summer school as well as two aides the teachers are going to have one teacher for math um one for english a social studies science combined and then our special education teacher as well who's going to be teaching each of the

051subjects i do feel once again i just want to say i i feel like the junior high staff the teachers are doing an incredible job working with the kids they this is the staff that understands junior high kids understands the emotions that they can go through gives them some grace um as they're going through some of these things and then is all they're all also pushing them towards success and helping them realize what their potential is do you have any questions for me i do thank you appreciate it i i have one real fast one so do we do year-long english and math we do okay and then social studies social studies and science sciences is on that rotation there are semester long classes [Applause] thank you thank you appreciate your information mr grace i'm

052back again okay so uh we're facing some of the same issues our 19 data was over a test called the azine merit this is the azm2 this year we will be taking the aasa instead and like mr crane said a belief that this year will be a baseline to compare against because we haven't taken this test before our science test in the past has been in grades four and six i believe last year it was in fifth grade it has become an interval test the science test now so last year was a field test meaning that we did not get any results back our students did take the test we did get to see what that practice test looked like but we got zero results back from it being an interval test now that test

053is going to be given in fifth grade eighth grade and i believe 11th grade is where that science test will be and so we should this will be our first year of of getting results back on the azci test so i compared we have grades three four five and six take their tests um i was looking at the math and the english so i have actually two slides here this is going to be the math for the elementary school in 2019 we were slightly below the state we were fairly close to what the state average was we fell sharply in a couple great bands in math and i wasn't here for the online part of the year last year my first day was a week before we brought students back in person however i can

054tell you that elementary school teachers don't get into teaching to be on a computer they are people people and so we ask them to jump through hoops to teach kids online and the vast majority of them far exceeded probably their own expectations on that and so while we we did drop in our data i think that a lot of that was due to that online for our younger kids i know that my own daughter is currently in kindergarten if we were to go online and she were to be online somebody's going to have to sit with her or she's not going to do it i mean she's five years old the fact that she can log into a computer just blows my mind that she's able to do that and we kind of see that

055same mentality up to about fourth grade we had students that were logging on to to their zooms they were there they were not engaged regardless of what we did on on our side students were not engaged those that are naturally capable were still naturally capable those that had parents that sat with them and worked with them they still did well for a lot of our students we were just lucky that they logged on and we were able to see that they were okay in a lot of instances so yes in our grade levels for 2021 we did drop it is a different test and it did get more difficult the problems are more in-depth they were some of them were multi-step problems some of them were multi-problems within a paragraph as you got into fifth

056and sixth grade you would read a passage for a math test and then there would be three or four questions that you have to go through as well as graphs that have to be manipulated by a student on a computer in order to find the data that they needed to then do the math involved um and so we were our third grade was still fairly close they were actually right around the state average in fourth grade we saw dip but there is a big transition in fourth from third grade to fourth grade math that is one of the biggest transitions that kids see in math as well as sixth grade math starts to bring in more abstract concepts and it's just a a more difficult math we also face some student apathy when you hit

057sixth grade having been a sixth grade teacher towards the end of the year there is quite a bit of student apathy which is something that we are working diligently this year being in person to address address that any questions on the map before i go to the english so basically the same thing can we get like what the state standards are to or this yes absolutely and and we did see a drop across the state um in a couple grade bands we were very close to that drop still in a couple we were we were far below and those are areas that we are working as targeted areas on our campus this year to bring those up as well as moving into next year developing our plan of not just this year it's not what

058do we do we had a bad year we now how do we bring up one year how do we move forward how do we continue to raise those expectations um as we go i should have asked this before the other principles too but have you had a chance to look at the state results comparing the metropolitan areas where they have easy act most kids have easy acidic acid accessible wi-fi compared to the rural conditions so i looked at them according to who i knew were in person for the majority versus who would be online in person schools from my view of the data tended to do slightly better they all saw a drop the entire state saw a drop i did not look at it from that point of view but i definitely can and

059report back to you on that one i do know there are places in the valley that have poor wi-fi too yes they just don't live in areas where they have it or they can't afford it i've talked to a couple of teachers that i know down there that taught elementary and they said it was a big bust even for the kids they expected to be able to carry on they didn't do well at all and that was probably third grade and while this shows our assessment data we had connectivity issues and we had online issues all the way down through kindergarten and then bringing students back when students were out they'd still go online then you have a teacher that is at all great bands at my level were teaching to an online student while

060also teaching to you know 15 or 18 students in the classroom and some of those students they require constant attention of are you you know please pay attention make sure you're paying attention having them answered while they're online having them be on the board so they can interact with their class that sort of thing and then we also see at our age level when you talk about eld students you see a language barrier we have a couple students that they don't speak english at home so having their parents sit next to you even though you're teaching them their parent doesn't speak english so they can't really help them to the level that we'd like so yes while we're looking at data we did see those across the great bands at the elementary school that's interesting

061though that everybody went down so for i don't think that actually so i'll go ahead and start talking about the english um for english we have we have two different kinds of of english happening or of reading happening at the elementary school we have students that are learning to read we have students that are reading to learn and that's a break in one grade level so up to third grade we are learning to read and from fourth grade on we are reading to learn and those that are still learning to read in fourth grade are doing both um simultaneously so we had very good scores across according in relation to the state in 2019 we did see a dip in that a lot of that from what we can tell of analyzing the rebound the

062coveted rebound for when students came back the growth was exponential because they were actually with us in their exposure level to words to books to sentences to that structure was high it was exponential growth it just didn't grow back the year that we needed that we had lost and so we did drop our numbers were better mostly because this test was not more better than math mostly because this test was not as as changed as the math test it wasn't as in depth it's a reading test and the previous test was also a reading test and so that kind of kind of stayed the same for us we do have a program that we use um called lexia reading that we use k5 and then they have a sixth grade version called power up that

063we use as a remediation that tailors the remediation to the student last year if we could get students on it at home we could get parents to support it and be behind and get their kids on it that we had them do it as soon as we brought them back it was one of our main focus areas um within our day and so once again the state dropped in this area we dropped in this area and we were we were below the state um and and that is something that we are we are actively addressing um we see it in all of our grade levels we run a data wall k5 in our building where you can see where students are at level it's color coded so we know what where our students are at

064we're seeing growth by having students at school we're seeing growth through solid instruction in the classroom one of the areas we we have a reading consultant that comes in one of the areas that we're focusing on is tier two instruction this year to try to bring that up and for those that don't know what tier two is tier one is going to be your general ed instruction tier two is that remediation within the classroom so what are we doing within the classroom for students that still aren't getting the content after we deliver it the first time and so we're working um we have an additional staff member in kyla butler being on campus that works with teachers on their instruction and we are working to implement that tier two instruction to complement our tier three

065because we also have a title reading program as well so we would like to see a bigger increase in reaping this year the test the aasa is going to be very similar they had already purchased the to my understanding they had already purchased the questions from azmerit so that it should be similar to the azmerit that we've taken in the past for the aasa in third grade this year we are also getting a listening portion which is new and we don't have a lot of information on anything other than how to give that test but it's 15 minute reading fluency test where students are going to listen to part and read part which i'm assuming we probably won't get a whole lot of data back on as well because it'll be a field test we

066also took a new writing test this year i think the junior high took the writing test also so we took a benchmark or a field test writing test that they're going to be implementing next year separate of the reading with the writing portion that we already take now and like i said we don't know a massive amount about that test other than the fact that we took it this year as a benchmark and as a field test and we'll give more information as we move forward factors leading to that decrease online instruction with with little kids is difficult student absences we were subject to the same thing we had a lot of students that were absent um for a long time last year we have some large families we have multi-generational families when one person

067got sick that student stopped coming to school for a while whether it was them or not um and in some cases it was their parent or their grandparent that monitored them online and when their grandparent or parent was sick and unable to do that they weren't online and then engagement we had engagement issues same as as the junior and i had same as the high school had of students that would log on and were not engaged we did have students have their screens on we had them mute themselves so that you could teach without you know their dog barking in the background but getting all of that and getting small children to manage technology at home is uh was a challenge in its own and i think our teachers did a phenomenal job working on

068that and then the reduced accessibility to tier two and tier three instruction last year with pulling small groups is is not possible online um we did do some tier three um title last year online those students had to log into a different zoom work with our title teachers but once again these are our students that are lower that need that additional help and we're asking them to take multiple additional steps to get there whereas now we go pick them up from the classroom we walk them down to the room and we give them that instruction much easier so and then student age and supervision issues were absolutely a factor for us so addressing those gaps in remediation so we spend quite a bit of time looking at data monitoring viewing our remediation efforts myself my

069dean of students and ms butler who works with our teachers in curriculum instruction we spend time with an instructional focus every three weeks where we go in and do walkthroughs in classrooms and give feedback directly to teachers within the day so that they know you know what we're seeing as an additional set of eyes and then just being an increase on data awareness knowing where our students are knowing our current reality of where kids are and going from there we have frequent visits with our plc groups our plc groups meet as a grade level each week they talk about their students they talk about what they're doing in class and and we spend time working with them so that they know uh they have our support and whatever we can do we heard that our

070students need more exposure in kindergarten to text and so mr robinson our dean of students now reads books to them every day at lunch to the entire grade level at one time he reads books to students so they get more exposure in that unstructured time throughout their day we have professional development that targets areas that we need we do have avid at the elementary school it's mostly based around student advocacy being an advocate for themselves if they don't understand something knowing that they should raise their hand that they can raise their hand it also focuses on organization and note-taking strategies so students are more organized and able to keep up with their stuff keep their mind a little bit more focused and they're not you know searching for everything that they own we have our

071vertical alignment focus which which we'll be pushing into for next year we already have our mcgraw-hill for english and so that has been an area that we have focused on this year is making sure that it's being implemented with fidelity so that we know the baseline and when our students move to the next grade level we know what that student is going to be capable of doing then we have three different summer schools that happen at the elementary school so we have our eld summer school which goes through one of our title grants if i'm not mistaken i think it's title three that miss hearst puts together is for our eld students we have two teachers one we'll do uh first through third the other one we'll do four through six and each of them

072will have an aid as well to try to give as much small group instruction as we can we have esy for our special ed program that has a certified special needs teacher as well as a special education aide that work with our special needs students and then we have our regular summer school program which is first through sixth and we have a teacher and an aide at each level and we hope to get between 25 and 30 students and focus on those concepts that extend from year to year within math and english so try to bring those up students that need that help to make sure they're successful the next year as they move on and then i've reached out to [Music] the high school about potentially having some of our our honors students our

073nhs students if they have a need for service hours or something like that to come down and help us with summer school so that we can get even more one-on-one instruction if we can questions thank you yes sir appreciate that a lot of stuff to be digested there and i appreciate the high school the junior high and the elementary school and in taking the time to assess and make plans so that we can bridge that gap that we lost so badly during the covet those those months that year that was just erased so i appreciate the effort and the work that you've done there next item on the agenda is uh the consent agenda board in looking over the consent agenda is there any particular item that you would like to have removed so that

074we can discuss separately and vote on independently 2.10 do we have anyone here for the out of state or anybody to talk about maybe the principal we do we are our outstanding chess team and coaches here on town because we'd like to hear about that it's kind of bad just to say okay they can go that's 210. okay so can we have a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented with the exception of 2.10 to be voted on independently have a motion jennifer in a second for margaret all in favor that's diana are you still with us thank you all right thank you all right that would be passed okay item 2.10 uh come on up we're we're here to hear a little braggin yeah bring your kids bring your kids with you too

075i knew they were hanging around for that they had to listen to everything so every year we um i tell the kids when we prepare for state that if they place the top ten we're going to go to nationals and this year we placed eighth in the state and it's the number one 3a school in the state of arizona so it's pretty good and this year nationals is in memphis tennessee and we're trying to get approval so we can travel it's kind of late we're trying to finish some fundraising and money raising but we want to go to nashville or excuse me memphis tennessee um for five days we'll go wednesday it's a travel day our thursday will be like a cultural appreciation day then friday saturday sunday will be the actual tournament nationals and

076then monday will travel back so does this include more than their age group who knows just high school nationals but do they compete against all ages in high school or are they according to no yeah it's super nationals happens every four years in nashville because the national united chess federation is based in um close to nashville but they bid on it every other year and this year the memphis did one so cool it's not very far away are you excited oh i'm very excited would you would any of your kids like to say anything i'm excited for them yeah i think this is super cool so we've already raised i'm sorry we've raised a ton of money already like all the chess team each of us who are going i've already raised 400 or more

077even and so the money's covered we just need the approval for it wow and this guy right here he's a vegan and if we go to memphis tennessee he said he would eat meat at a smokehouse there so we're going to make them one of the things was their first round it stayed they didn't do well so i said look guys what it's going to take and i said you know i don't eat meat so if we win we get to go to memphis i'll have some memphis style barbecue so that was that was part of the bathroom i love it okay now it hardly seems like a penalty yeah that doesn't sound like no it doesn't seem like a penalty i just want to say that everybody on our team has worked really hard

078and gotten better at chess like chris even and some other kids who had never like played chess before or only a little bit have gotten tremendously better at chess and we've just had a lot of fun uh so memphis would be a really cool place to go to uh for that can you introduce all these guys okay this is um trevor this is um marshall that's chris we have two seniors um james goza and alan yeomans and james on the um golf team so he's not here tonight and then alan is banned so he's not here but both those guys the last two years with the kova there's been no travel so it's kind of like they're you know capstone for their chess career here at the high school so and they did they work

079really really hard it was it was a tough year and they um we started off kind of struggling and then we finished strong so it's pretty nice well i'm proud of you i've been bragging to those that will listen to me i think it's pretty pretty sweet that you get to go do this great great experience thank you any other questions or comments no i think all right we need to bring this up to a vote we have a motion to accept item 2.10 and our travel arrangement says have a motion have a second all in favor aye aye congratulations all right well thank you so much really appreciate it thank you glad you're here send the message back somebody put it on facebook or something all right item next item on our agenda is

080for the board to vote on the presentation of the mcgraw-hill [Music] curriculum that we're about to purchase any comments from the board any questions or any concerns about that let's just continue it's a continuation of the presentation we just get to vote on it under the business no i think it was very well presented hours and hours a lot of work i'm excited because it uh it brings a standard that will be carried from one grade to the next all the way from k through 12. and i've always felt like kids want to own their book yeah and i think that's important we've gone through the era of everything online teachers preparing their lessons from what they can gather online i mean now teachers have books and kids have books and they correlate together just

081easier for subs that come in too oh yeah i just think it's going to be great in regard to that so if there's any other further comment or questions from the board we have people here to answer those questions you have no i think it's a great year to be doing this all right after covert and everything good then uh did everybody hear that diana said it was a culmination culmination accumulation of a lot of work thank you mr pico i see you shaking his head and he's always correct in my english but there's a reason that appreciate that okay so can we have a motion to accept the purchase as presented of the mcgraw-hill curriculum for the next six years i have a motion for margaret second from jennifer all in favor aye aye

082aye okay that would be passed unanimously okay uh dr wright would you like to explain item 3.1 yes we have i don't believe mr lloyd is here tonight but we're seeking approval to hire a bus driver this is a replacement position how many positions do we need to fill as bus drivers i denise denise by the end of the year we will need to we will need three drivers for three different routes mr lloyd will come to us at a great time he'll i hope to have him on a route by the middle of april and very excited to have him with us i have reached out in my pool of drivers and i have a couple that is looks like it's going to come to us they're going to move here with with the

083opportunity to help us with our other two rounds so i'm hoping that that will be covered by the beginning of next year so uh with this edition you will need an additional three two more yes two more great thank you denise appreciate that so we have a motion to accept the hire of um who is it uh jeff lloyd as a in the transportation department the motion out of his second second margaret all in favor the eye all right thank you diane okay item 3.2 recommendation to approve the junior leadership jla after school program for the elementary school dr wright you want to talk about that or you want to defer to mr pico mister we we've done i just want to add we've done this for years yeah mr pico has the details of

084how to get past it on on the hill the jla vicki solomon asked if she should be here to present i told her i'd do it if that was okay jla is a great program they target about 20 students and we pay for that out of a federal grant those students are targeted they're taught leadership they're taught challenging skills i know i've been to a couple of their events and they're really neat it engages their parents it engages their skills it engages their their thinking skills in regards to problem solving relationships with one another and this year there is also an element to social distancing and mental awareness and what we would call sel social emotional learning and so i'm excited about that piece of the jla and what they bring to the community and

085to the school district jla was new to me when i came to blue ridge unified and as i've gotten involved with that and watched that program flourish under the shimmers over the elementary school who just do a phenomenal job they're the ones who really deserve the credit they gather those kids together they target those kids they bring them in bring their parents in if you ever have an opportunity to come to one of their closing ceremonies it's really a treat to watch to watch those kids do all the activities that they that they've learned through their their program will the shimls continue in this so far yes okay great any questions from the board or comments we have a motion then a motion from jennifer a second second secretary all in favor aye aye thank

086you that also passed okay recommendation to approve the renewal lease agreement with the church dr wright and uh maybe ron do you guys want to both talk about this no we got uh i'm sorry we have i missed one the three point three oh three point three sorry ron three point um i put a check mark on it and i didn't mean to recommendation to approve the district's e rate for 2022. dr wright yes sir and i failed to mention that uh mr neal's out sick tonight he's been not feeling well for a few days chris is going to handle the presentation i have chris's presentation here if you'd like to follow along chris doogie is also part of the technology program he understands this presentation and so he's going to present tonight thank you

087chris thank you guys for having me so mr neilsick so i'm going to present our key rate for our school year 22 23. uh so we have three items that we're going for for the first one is the quarter mountain campus network infrastructure um we're going to do a full replacement project the equipment there was originally installed in 2013 so it's nine years old now we're looking at getting one new router 18 48 quart switches and eight ups power supplies and their battery backup okay so this power so that we can go shut things down properly the total project cost before the 80 e-rate discount is four thousand 124 hundred seventy dollars and sixty four cents the actual district cost though is twenty four thousand eight hundred and thirty four dollars and fifty three cents

088this is a second part of a project that was approved last year the first part was for the main campus doing the whole reboot of there and that was approved by the board on march 16th 2021. the next item that we're going to report is our direct internet pack access so we're up for renewal on this we only had one competitive quote for this this is through sparklight currently are we're paying 3450 a month for 700 megabytes per second down as our internets our new costs under the negotiations are one thousand six hundred fifty eight dollars a month for uh one thousand megabytes down that's forty three thousand seven hundred seventy six dollars for three years uh the actual district cost for that will be 331.60 a month that's a 43 speed increase with a

08952 saving for the previous cost the last item is going to be the ethernet private line this is our direct connection that connects the main campus with the porter mountain campus so that we can transfer information back quickly between the two campuses we only had one competitive quote for this as well the current cost before our 80 e rate discount is 1282.50 at two gigs the new cost will be one thousand one hundred ninety nine dollars still at two gigs and that comes out to be seventy two thousand two hundred ninety eight dollars for three years the actual district cost is going to be 239.80 per location so since we have two locations that's going to come out to be 479.60 a month total and that's a 6.5 savings from the previous cost and that's

090our three items you guys have any questions i think that's pretty good yeah actually i did a great job and got us a lot of discounts this year yeah that uh how do you negotiate these yeah i would love to negotiate some numbers like that for myself is this going to be adequate i mean with the the uh upgrade to the porter mountain campus is that just a patch or will that be adequate to carry us beyond the next couple years so this is all an upgrade so this is all new equipment coming in new switches so it's going to allow more connectivity and faster speeds throughout the district okay throughout the building sorry when does this start if we okay that once we get approved and everything goes through we'll have to work with

091sentinel get a project rate unfortunately given the climate that we're in it's hard to get equipment so it might take a minute but we won't know until we get it all approved and we start the actual project okay thank you any questions diana do you have a question no thank you all right so can we have a motion thank you chris appreciate that unless you have anything else you'd like to share thank you much um we have a motion to accept item 3.3 in regard to the e rate for 2022. the motion is second all second all in favor aye all right okay thank you diana that's approved now 3.4 recommendation to approve the renewal lease agreement with the church dr wright do you want to speak or ron would you like to speak first

092absolutely first of all i just uh thank you for allowing us to be here i represent just one of 11 men that lead our church brian is one of them and some of the others are represented here we just want to reiterate that our number one goal since our partnership in 2010 has been has been to be a blessing to the church or to the school district so we've worked very hard in all of this time to to understand that we've been here to be a blessing and so we really hope and pray that that has been evident it's it's been a pleasure throughout the years even over this last year as dr wright had mentioned last time of course like many houses of worship we've done many memorial services and weddings and community events

093at our church here on campus but also on top of that um continuing to partner with the school when it comes to dances and junior high events and different things just as in the security training that we had yesterday over at our place and so continues to be be an honor we took what you said at the last meeting and we put some things down on paper and i hope you guys have had a chance to read what we came up with i'm going to just summarize it really quick before i take any questions from you guys we hope that you guys will find this satisfactory we wanted to do a 20 increase on our rent just right away but because our but we're already in our budget year we're asking that we could split

094that over two years so do 10 this year and 10 next year on our rent and the 10 next year of course would be including the cost of the living increases on top of that we would like to take the utilities and increase it by 20 this year and then do cost of living increases moving forward on that and so that's a quick summary be happy to take any questions uh or any yeah any questions question comment the term was five years right yes okay and the term we're asking for is five years because like we discussed at the last meeting that is helpful for us as we plan into the future what uh what scale will the uh cost of living come from what study what survey social security administration okay facts and figures

095and we just pulled from that chart and that's what's actually referenced in the lease questions did did you have any problems during cobit like other churches still about financing and lack of people and i mean it doesn't seem to me to be as bad up here as it seems to be in other places that actually lost churches that they closed we have so we've seen a decline in attendance and thankfully our people have been faithful in giving because you know sometimes they quit coming they quit giving too yeah so yeah we're planning on that not happening are you back to your regular membership as far as our regular services yeah good numbers are still creeping back up so i'm just going to ask a couple questions and i know that you know the answers and

096you've already presented it but we i want to make sure that there's clarification just so you know that we know and we know that you know so the first question that i get a lot is um smoking on campus and no smoking in the parking lot not necessarily the building so so what we so just give you a heads up on that there have been things that come up and dr wright lets me know right away um we have a great working relationship and i think he would attest to this we work super hard to address any concern whether it's a banner that's up or you know cigarettes in the parking lot has been a big one we've we've had extra signage put up and we have our security i guess you would call it

097on sundays just reminding people that that there is no smoking on campus and we've also alerted our janitorial team to be out there to be picking things up if there is anything left out there one point that was made to me and i will remind everybody that there are a line of cars there and we have seen people who are picking up kids for some reason i'm not a smoker but for some reason smokers think that that's not littering and we have had some of that where people are there to pick up students and they are putting out there not saying that's all of it right i'm sure we take some of it but we've been working hard and that's true with anything we we just want to know about it and then we'll work

098our hardest to to fix those things right we always see people in cars passing through smoking right and i think that that's what we just needed to know is what you're doing to ensure that that's not happening because of course whoever gets blamed is definitely is usually the person that might not be participating in the act yeah right and then the next question that a lot of people ask is in regards to signage and i think that you've already addressed that but can you explain how you're handling the signage on the road yeah um anything specific um people keep asking if like when it's appropriate to have signs up and when it's appropriate not to have something okay and so just so you know any time we go to do something extra like a sign

099on a fence or even the use of the back property we go through the regular channels of of requesting those things and so i worked closely with mr aikens and we asked for approval dyno timelines in the past have gotten sensitive like you know we want we need to let our people know about an easter service and of course we want it out there a month and a half in advance that doesn't always work we're negotiable on that we just deal with it as they come up we were told that we could put the ones up down by the as you pull out of the theater just with service times um but i would say again our goal is to we don't want to offend anybody and so our our goal is to always put

100up signage and pull them back down to respect everybody's religion that may be coming through here you know on campus throughout the week and so anytime that comes to my attention i'm super sensitive to that because the last thing that we want to do is to uh put people off in any way especially our community that we live here right awesome um one question that wasn't addressed but just a question that i have in general because you're here um are you making a good one i'll have brian yeah are you holding um like a a bible study or are you able to do that on cam um with your kids during school times for high school students um we could coordinate a release time if that was the board's objective you could have a release

101time we presently don't don't have a really time doing that we did it for a year i think that was just pre-covered and yeah pre-covered and then we didn't pick it up past that but um is your question are we having that or can we or both oh okay um and that would be up to our lead team to bring it back to propose that we could do that again and and which the church did they came to us for approval and the board approved the release time and we had it and so yeah absolutely i just want to add too that i'm the one that always calls ron when we get the complaints about the smoking and there were times where and it's sad because they're little kids and there's parents with rolled up

102one to smoking throwing a cigarette out that's it wasn't their membership however when it has been ron's been clear about look you're putting our lease at risk there's no alcohol on campus there's no tobacco there's no vaping and they just do a really good job of monitoring that so i'm confident that this team's doing their part and when mistakes are made they're they're not slow to react i think a lot of parents consider their car off limits like they're not out of their car doing it so it's okay right transparency is battle that but we understand what's at stake and we we fight that perfect i think that you've been more than flexible in making the changes to the lease agreement and i think it's awesome i'd like to mention too that that corner of

103the campus without you guys there would just look awful probably even though we keep it up on the outside there's nothing to replace somebody in a building because if there's no one in it it's going to look abandoned no matter what you do to the outside and it's a real credit to our like i mentioned a janitorial team we have a lot of volunteers that really take care of the inside of that thing so if and when the time ever comes that we are not there we will be handing over something that i know you guys will be proud of yeah it's a spectacular space i i wanted to add too if i might that the outside wouldn't look good because they painted the house it was that weird orange baby diaper orange or something

104and they painted it for so it is being well maintained and if we ever have any problems i would also add that they have effort around security making sure the envelope is locked and closed and they participate in all of our drills so one thing reverend we are going to do is is involve your team within an assessment of our pa systems to make sure everyone can hear everywhere including our necog friends all of our special education head start preschool and your facility and the fab lab we've got a gap there that we need to fill and what's one of the things we identified when asus came recently and by the way we did use the church's facility we appreciate that for another three hours and so it is i wanted to add that it's

105a great partnership for our school from my perspective and we do have uh we do have also because we're in the same building we have an integration with the even the alert systems and so pops up on all of our staff phones and things like that when something like that comes up but we work hard to keep keep the doors locked and all that cool that's good well a lot of your people are parents too or grandparents of kids here yeah and i love that aspect actually when you think about whole whole holistic view of everybody is we work with the same families that you guys work with in our church and in our schools and so in a lot of ways we have the same mission to see people do well any questions comments

106thank you appreciate that i know last month was a little bit awkward when we you know and hate that but i think we we have now uh proved that we're not really subsidizing the church as some people in the community might say with public funds so we appreciate what has been done and how you guys renegotiated i think we're all comfortable with that now thank you very much so we need a uh a motion to accept item 3.4 the lease as presented to us from the church i move that we do that looking forward to the release agreement yes that we approve the lease as presented for the next five years yes okay got a second all in favor say aye aye aye we're saying i for your benefit today everybody else is going looking

107at me cross-eyed raising their hands why are we doing this twice okay uh next item on the agenda is uh 3.6 a superintendent's report dr wright will turn the time over to you oh i'm i'm doing it again sorry sorry 3.5 yes sir dr wright we'll let you discuss that too yes a sole source provider is needed if you exceed ten thousand dollars inside a fiscal year you have to provide rest in that rationale you can do it you just have to provide the rationale our rationale is simple we've been working with jesus v hermosa for almost seven years he is without a doubt the foremost expert working with schools and children on preparing for threats and active suitor events and it was he's been working with us would be to bring another less qualified

108group in would do a tremendous disservice to our staff and students and the safety that we have trying to build and so it would be it would be a big mistake to do that so i'm asking permission for the board to name this crisis reality training who is also the sole owner of that is mr jesus v hermosa to be a sole source provider brenda is there anything else i need to add to that move okay thank you any questions from anybody on the board okay we'll vote for out of the three point four all right we got a motion thanks diana we got a second all in favor say aye aye i'll also pass unanimously okay i think i can count to 3.6 safely now without missing anything thank you dr wright so as

109a part of the general board update uh obviously we've been focusing on the last two and a half days on safety and security our our students are some of the few that get the training that is provided and it's it's top notch it's not a once and done type of thing we're always looking at our processes procedures we're updating them we've made a lot of progress over the last five years there's still some gaps we have to address one is the sound system we're going to be working to have it evaluated and then press the sfb to make those replacements because it's a safety need and we're going to go through the process to identify those needs and then we will uh we'll work to that end to get it approved on april 8th i'll

110be meeting with uh so the sfb director the state school facilities board director will come in and i'm going to take him on a tour along with jb of our elementary school campus to talk about the flooring issues we have the roofing issues we have in the waterproofing issues that we have as well we're very close to getting that project to prove it would be a lengthy expensive project but i'm confident with with some support we'll be able to get that done so that the full press is still on with that we have had a chance to reschedule we're going to reschedule that bid in order to make sure that you know we're following along in all the protocols and processes through the state and we remain committed to getting as many funds as much

111as we can much support as we can from the state we've had success we'll keep after it the next is this is that we're operating in a very uncertain environment and one of the things one of the many things that i'm proud of is that all every move we made have made we make it with a great deal of fiscal responsibility and we want to make sure that whatever we're doing is sustainable right now we're in a very uncertain time proposition 208 was recently struck down that would mean 4.5 million dollars to the district uh proposition 8 is dead it's gone now there likely be something else in the next year here and a half to take its place in some way shape or form and while we hope that that's going to happen i

112can't budget on hopes and brenda and i go through every line item when you increase salaries you increase your fixed cost a fixed expense does not move and the only way to do that is lay off people and so one of the some of the feedback that i've had over the teachers over the years we'd rather have smaller classes among anything we'd love to have higher salaries and smaller classes but if you got to choose try to keep our classes small if you remember we hired three over at the elementary last year in positions teaching positions we're declining enrollment we're not growing our adm is around sixteen sixty that's the number we're funded on that's less unless every year you cannot continue to increase your expenses and do that in a responsible way it'll catch

113up now do we have a lot of essay funds we do but those funds are one-time funds we're going to spread those over a 36-month plan and so what we're doing right now and what we're proposing is to look for and send out the email this afternoon look for another way to provide and re for especially for our teachers let's take the segments of employees our s our classified staff have been getting significant increases on a percentage basis because of mandated increases and so the problem that we have with that is we have some people that were making seven or eight dollars now that are now making 12 and a person that was making 1250 is still making 12.50 but they've been here longer that's salary compression or wage compression we're not in a position

114to fix that right now with 208 passing or something like that we could be on our teacher salary side we provided a significant pass through what we had a one-time payment in proposition 301 pay if you remember the state enhanced that bucket significantly one year we passed all of those dollars on to the teacher between the 301 and the retention it was about 6800 bucks if i remember right this year we do not know but what we're trying to evaluate we don't have that information for the board right now because we don't know what our 301 allotment is yet and we can't make plans in advance of the data that's irresponsible but we will become to the board we should be prepared by april board meeting to have those allocations and we could propose another

115teacher you call it what you wanted stipend a retention bonus for the upcoming school year but it won't approach 6 800 but i'm not prepared to recommend percentages of increases for teachers without the funding to support it long term otherwise we're up to we could give hey we can give a 5 this year and then next year we might be looking at a you know a 25 layoff that doesn't make sense to me i don't think that's responsible we have through the years demonstrated we want to compensate our teachers fairly and if the board remembers that state said well we'll pass a 20 percent increase and if you recall 120 percent it was 16 by the time it landed but we gave the teachers 20 percent two reasons one we felt it was the right

116thing to do we had the budget capacity at the time secondly we did not want to erode trust and so we're doing all we can to get our teachers as much as we can in a way that's responsible i will say too that and it is true that we have enhanced the compensation for teachers above any other category that's the market and that's condition teachers are hard to find they're hard to retain good teachers are one of the most important things you can do for student success and the board knows that and i certainly know that as do my staff it's our intention to do the most we can but i'm just i would not propose a salary increase and create more fixed costs it's already 80 percent of our of our bills are about

117salary and benefits correct 80 or 82 percent and that's as you know that number baked in it just doesn't move the only way to do it lay off people we don't want to do that we're working to create some at least some certainty frankly give us self give ourselves some time for the state to get together i'm not counting on the legislature to do the right thing that's why we're hustling with sfb to get every dollar we can so we're not taking out a capital we're taking more money out of capital every year moving it into maintenance and operation we have created like i said 24 to 36 months of certainty and a coveted calendar that's that's not too bad i'm hopeful and optimistic that there will be another form of 208 that will be

118made either through uh it'll either surface through another initiative and it'll be on the ballot or maybe the state will pass in full assault i doubt it but i think it will come but it's going to be at least a couple years do you disagree with the timing on that brenda okay even if it were passed in november we're not going to see that in the upcoming school year and so uh the other thing i want to point out is inflation is about 7.98 in arizona the state gives us 2 we're taking a 6 cut still in resources our wages are going to go up categorically we've had to enhance over the years bus pay just to find our drivers to keep our drivers the board just approved and it was a modest stipend but

119it was it was good faith and it was appreciated for those that stay we'll pay them a stipend at the end of the year and so we're doing the best we can with very limited resources but i want to make it clear it's not a any type of commentary on the value of our teachers i mean i hope i've demonstrated over the years we have a couple in the audience tonight that we care about them they're important to us and we want to do what we can to properly compensate them but we can't do it in a way that's unsustainable or irresponsible and so that's it board have any questions on on that issue or that that topic before i go there and some people not our staff but public doesn't understand the monies that

120can be doesn't understand the monies that can be spent and where they can be spent i think we've done a pretty good job of educating the staff and us but that's where the problem lies and i will recognize this this inflation is hurting everybody but it hurts people the most at the lower end and at the middle of the of our economy that's who it hurts the most and if for a single teacher it's already tight and now inflation's kicking in i mean we feel that we're working hard to try to even expand our our teacher housing offerings i met with a person from the town and a developer trying to figure out how we can come up with more teacher housing more affordable and provide more opportunities for teachers we already have to retain

121them it's becoming more and more difficult so i wanted to make sure that was out there i also want to report to the board that there's not going to be a health insurance increase that the district will obtain any increase which is a two percent we're not going to pass that on to the employee all of our employees that are high deductible program which is all but i think seven will not have an increase in insurance insurance is increasing everywhere seven to ten percent as high as fifteen percent what we are not in a position to do is to continue with a with seven people on the ppo side it's a very rich plan the administrator that working that's working that we help that administers our plan is no longer subsidizing it we can't afford

122to subsidize it either and so people that are in the ppo it will be cost prohibitive chances are they'll either drop the coverage altogether or they'll migrate over to the high deductible plan we're increasing our contribution from twelve hundred to two thousand that's an eight hundred dollar and it's that's a one-time deal we'll evaluate it next year but it's not a fixed cost it's a variable cost that we evaluate every year so we're trying to give back what we can and we know i mean just honestly with inflation as it is with the price of gas and food and everything else we won't be able to keep pace with it and funding is not reflecting that either so it's it's never been more important to just be very careful with what we're trying to do

123are there any questions on either the health care increase or any of those comments and talking about something that no one ever wants to talk about is the override correct so we are going to be in our last year it's already out it's already out so we don't have any additional funds nope that that went from uh an allocation every year down to about five about 58 and we used that money for a lot of our salary increases we did subsidizing that now we're using sr3 sr2 and we're spreading those allocations out over about a 36 month period and is there talk about going out for another one or is it not a wise decision at this time my feeling is i think they're going to be very very difficult to pass i think 2024

124be a very contentious election and when when there's a lot of contention people tend to say no to everything and so i think it's becoming more and more difficult and that's always the legislation you can pass bonds and overrides well they only pass it about statewide and it's normally in low socioeconomic areas where they do pass that's that's not going to happen up here taxes tax rates up here have gone sky high i don't know if you noticed in your own tax tickets there's a lot of increase in taxes in pinetop lakeside and also in competing school districts but uh it's crazy crazy and it's not all the school that's getting the result of that taxes that tax increase the fire district gets a lot the northland pioneer college gets a lot and i would

125have to say they get more than we do when it comes down to educational which is tough and we should be in the bulk of that we're getting smaller every year which means there's fewer resources and the folks that are moving in second homes retirement homes families aren't moving in it is uh so as i said before we're going to get smaller i would imagine we'll probably be a two-way school within three to five years and probably somewhere stable and about that that area based on the size of the community and the trajectory of the decline in enrollment yeah affordability in pine top lakeside is tough for for families affordable income i mean affordable homes in pine top's lakeside is tough to tough to find the city is talking about some affordable housing going into

126the wagonal area which would be in the district which would be manufactured homes i think that would probably help us but that's a small thing compared to where the whole district lies demographics thank you if there are no further questions that topic may go to the next move on the the free and reduced lunch program we were at 64 pre pandemic that number is is higher but we have to find the folks we only have about excuse me about 29 39 percent of our kids register right now because it's been free for everybody and that's not happening next year the federal government's shutting those funds down so we're making a concerted effort to get everybody to register for that if they're even on the border go ahead and register for us so we'll have a

127campaign now to the end of the year and then again next year we have to do it all over again but our allocations for title one which is substantial i'd say approaches a million dollars the concentration of students that are participating free and reduce it matters and so we have other programs too and some students that are living in middle class the lower middle they might be able to qualify for free act or there's other options that they have and oh yes our e-rate funding that we just saved a couple hundred thousand in is also based on our free and reduced uh program our sr3 allocation was based uh quite a bit on that allocation as well so it's important we understand that we're working hard on our tax credit program they're down tax credits

128have been sort of trailing down but like the test scores they just dropped off the planet during covet and they really haven't come back we're working at it we're trying to do the best we can but that is a funding source that is uh that's becoming a little more difficult to secure i've already talked about the sfb and i will establish with board permission um we'll get this next and and actually in april for uh convene a group to convene in may and perhaps june folks that are interested in wanting to review what are the current practices for sex ed in the appropriate age groups and what we're doing is it sixth grade through twelve or fifth grade through sixth grade this is a national nationwide it's a big topic because some districts are talking

129uh bringing in sex ed to kindergartners preschool primary age we we haven't done that we won't do it that's not part of what we're doing what we will do share what we have been and it's the board's prerogative to say we're not doing it at all um this year because there were some questions and worry about it we haven't done it and we won't do it without permission next year our hope is to have a consensus and come back to the board in july in advance of school start and say this is the program we've been doing and either we want to complete with this or we want to go in a different direction we'll i will listen to the committee's feedback and try to get consensus and then come to the board with a

130recommendation before the start of the new school year no later than august normally it doesn't start for a few months after that either and uh are there any questions within that effort all right well that concludes my report thank you all right next item on the agenda is a call to the public and let me just go over the the parameters for that the public is invited to make comments to or request of the governing board regarding items that are not listed at this time elsewhere on the agenda those wishing to address the board are asked to submit a request to address the governing board form available from the secretary that'd be mary ford to the governing board members of the board may not discuss items not on the agenda therefore action taken as a

131result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter or scheduling the matter for further consideration and discussion at a later date the operating rules of the public are as follows individual time limit is three minutes per person and time cannot be seated to another individual so if there's anybody that would like to address the board it's a great time now to do that um nobody's submitted that we have one down here yeah can we get you to sign in um we'd like to maybe we can do that in retrospect if you'll give us your name one graduated last year and then i have one in high school and one in elementary school [Music] we've discussed their days things of that nature what is going on and anything that's concerning them

132or anything like that we personally don't watch certain news networks things like that at home for certain reasons and my daughter was telling me that there was a few teachers that were putting on say cnn i personally don't care for cnn and i don't want my children to be affected by it for multiple reasons one being that the network has had multiple problems and i can list them out with the people that they employ being involved in a lot of sex crimes and things like that especially against children you know pornography zoom there's some zoom meetings that were on that one exposed himself to the entire world the network never fired him to suspend him and then brought him back on i would think that a network that is sponsoring that kind of activity and

133allowing it to continue to happen and the numbers um i could go on and on at the sexual assault cases and the current investigations on child sex pornography and things of the employees that work at that network is highly concerning that we're allowing it to go through our schools and on top of that the journalism that's coming out is seeming to be a little more one-sided and not the investigative journalism that i think that our students and our future leaders should be able to be following that kind of example i think it should be left up to their own minds to make their own decisions and thanks and and to do the full-on investigation without one side either way giving their their push i guess you would say to what they believe that they should

134be believing themselves i think it's a i just don't think that the the what they're putting out there is suitable for our children so that's my comment my concern so thank you thank you i think we'll probably let some of the principals handle that and uh maybe if you have some concerns you direct directly talk to them but we'll have everybody look into that if that's all right with you dr wright yes and i can respond so what i'll say is what i've learned with the teachers they use a balance i don't know which classroom is but most of them we use fox cnn msn bbc a little bit of everything knowing that some people have a political bent and they don't like it and so uh i get i'll talk to the principal and

135see are we having people just show one network i think you can look at any network there's been a lot of bad misbehavior i mean that's hollywood and that's what the news has become sort of hollywood but i've noted your concern i will visit with are you a high school student miss i'll visit with your i have my element my elementary and junior high here tonight i'll talk to them i'll talk to mr webb when he gets back and i'll talk to mr crane tonight thank you for your concerns sexual misconduct yeah yeah like i think fox news has had the same thing i think emma all of them have had it i think so i'd say taking that out aside i think it the point that you've made that i that resonates with me

136we need a balance and so if it's skewed to one channel all the time i don't think that's balance i haven't seen that but i haven't been in classrooms like my principals have so what i'll do is i'll be glad with the board's permission i'll visit with my principals and report back next next board meeting is that fair okay thank you thank you very much thank you thank you for coming yeah thank you took courage to do that okay good all right anyone else good evening thank you so much and i didn't get one either because i came in a little late so i apologize thank you so much for allowing me to speak i appreciate you guys um last time i came and you guys did the easy merit and went through that beautiful

137presentation so thank you so much i just again want to clarify you guys said um i'll take third grade because that was the last thing so in third grade in elementary math your results if i'm correct was 31 in 2019 and in 2021 it comes 27. does that mean 31 of the total of the grade how many students because it didn't say how many students you know took the test the azmeritor am whatever you would like to call it um so is that a 31 percent i think it's a 31 of those that are proficient not thirty one percent of all the kids thirty one percent of the test takers were proficient so is there a a more in depth that we could get absolutely arizona state board of education has everything you want where

138we need to go just to double check and make sure again what to me i just think as a taxpayer you're talking about money right we fund the school this is private i'm sorry not private public private school public school so i've helped funding this school and to me i would just love to get a little bit more in depth what's the actual percentage like if you guys do another presentation that you would say okay our third grade in 2019 had an eighty percent rate on their math scores to me that would be a little bit more detailed right and i know you're saying i can go to easy i get that yeah but i was just saying i still appreciate it i think the numbers would be a little bit to me helpful of

139even certain parents in the community so um i appreciate everything thank you again for taking your time and doing that so i appreciate your time thank you good thank you that also takes courage to do that had similar questions myself but yeah um any other comments anybody else like to address the board if so going once going twice gone all right so we need a motion to adjourn the meeting i have a motion for margaret oh yeah thank you i was waiting for that and then i forgot these guys keep me going right legally thank you next governing board announcements is item number five on the agenda governing board meeting will be held tuesday april 19th at 5 pm and may 12th at 5 pm in this location nobody needs to change that all right

140thank you appreciate that i didn't turn the page okay now can we have a motion to adjourn i have a motion from jennifer thank you secretary margaret all in favor say aye aye thank you