001call this meeting to order and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance and we've asked jane estes to lead us with that i pledge allegiance to the life of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right the first item on the agenda is to recognize we have an incomplete board a complete board not an incomplete board here today we've been struggling with uh births of twins right margaret now margaret didn't have the twins but her daughter-in-law had twins and so that took a lot of work i want to make that perfectly clear a lot of miles back and forth so we were here our first item on the agenda would be uh annual presentation of the navit
002programs by matt webber and matt you're here i think you have everything you need all right appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight i know that you've got a full agenda and so i promise i'll be brief because i want to be invited back uh just want to first start out saying thank you and we are grateful for our partnership with blue ridge schools appreciate working with superintendent bryant and chris slaughter your cte director amber lopez and appreciate working with lauren we are grateful for for working with you and being to provide funding for your district and providing central programs for those who can so let me just kind of skip forward here to the two primary reasons that we exist the first is to bring you that funding stream and remember that funding stream
003that comes to you is based upon your students in your programs your cte programs here for the rich high school and so we'll go over those finances here just a minute and then second of all for those who have the time to leave for a three-hour walk we do offer central programs for your students we'll take a quick glance at that there we go let's just jump right into these numbers so if we look real closely at these and it looks like i'm going to need to start making additional columns here so these are numbers that the public can see but our estimate for fy22 and as you were just expressing in your budget here you are you are in some declining enrollment uh but still uh in fy 22 we're estimating you to bring
004in 311 000 and i think one of the main things that i wanted to emphasize this evening is that as you as you look at that 311 000 you know where does that get spent well it gets spent in your cte programs i guess i'm just a real spas with this clear yeah okay so if we look at your programs there you have an addition there you do have cody blake who's teaching construction and so the districts that are looking at is constantly about looking at balancing the number of programs you have for the number of students you have but to be able to add a new program with these circumstances it's wonderful and that says a lot for the vision of your administration wanting to make sure that you're providing as many opportunities as
005you can here at blues high schools once again this dictates how much money that nava can send you and so as you look at all the programs that you offer of all the three schools that we serve you offer the most programs i want to jump back there so if we look here at blue ridge high school and notice that several of your teachers actually offer more than one program and so you're maximizing the the amount of money that you can bring in by having them teach more than one program where it's peaceful it's not always feasible but for those that can they do and that really really helps you one thing i want to really emphasize tonight is how much we appreciate your high school career and technical education teachers i don't want to
006spend a lot of time on covet but i do want to mention that they have been stellar in terms of offering meaningful curriculum to their students through all that and then on top of that they come back to a new year and we say oh by the way you need to get training here here and here because we're being monitored by the department of education and it's it's an intense amount of time to be a regular teacher in the classroom and then say oh by the way you're going to need to spend somewhere between 60 to 80 hours on top of that you know to get ready for add monitoring and your teachers have come to our district office they've been trained we've provided them examples and help so that they can be prepared the
007final day is coming up real quick is january 11th to have everything submitted and uh but i know that chris has submitted you're looking great uh she's already gotten feedback from ade and so once again it's something to be proud of this is not an easy business to be in career technical education it's very challenging and any time the legislature changes it up which they regularly do and what they require your teachers to do and to have documentation that's something that your teachers have to respond to so go ahead to that next slide so for those students then that have time to take off for a three-hour block and come to the college campus they do have access to cosmetology nursing assistant welding fire science medical assistant and those are other than fire sex these
008are all available right right here in the show area so once again our main focus this year has been how do we help your teachers get prepared and so we provided the nccr training and that involves jim rice cody blake the teacher training i've mentioned there's also instructional best practices your teachers have access to turnkey curriculum in all of their different cte areas and by going through these instructional best practices that gives them access to all those turnkey lessons we also provide the c10 soft capital funding we always hold our breath every year that's supposed to be a one year offering and we're in your fight with that but we just don't ask questions we just accept the money and distribute some good also i just want to make sure that you understand that we
009will continue to work with your teachers and i'm expected to hear great things in fact i did have one of the directors that ate called me and said that they appreciated blue ridge's tenacity and making their submissions chris had to submit district level data but all your teachers have to submit their teacher level data and uh they they're saying that they're grateful for schools like blu-rays that are willing to jump in and get things submitted and not wait to the last minute and so they're seeing a lot of that because nav is not the only sea tennis league there's anything like that so once again i think to just wrap it up to emphasize you're going to be receiving around the 300 000 range uh you're just under 7.5 million and uh that's what she
010brought in by being a member of david uh since she came in which is one of the american original five and we absolutely appreciate working with you with your administrators and appreciate your students and so with that i'll entertain any questions i only have a comment mr merrill we appreciate the support that you've offered our programs and and just to make it clear one of the goals we had in 2015 if you remember is to increase ct participation we're at an all-time low when we were funded about 192 000 we're on target for about 311 000 and that's on fewer students so uh mr webb and his team have really focused on that and i want to let the audience know these dollars can only be used for cta cte career and technical education programs
011they cannot be used for any other purpose and so it grows that program and the program at some point becomes self-sustaining it wasn't that case though so the board supported using mno to keep our career and technology programs viable and now they're growing and soon they'll be self-sustaining so thank you for your efforts in that and for your guidance and direction matt thank you chuck matt um do you and navid have any anticipation of adding any more central campus programs in the future anyone at this point i appreciate this computer repair and maintenance you know we'll see they're going to start recruiting just just after the holidays on that we just sent out with your director chris was there in our director's meeting on monday and we do have a year a year-long program and
012so the students will be eligible to take the certification test for a plus network plus and so that's that is a year-long program so that's the main new one um you know as that skill center gets completed for those of you unaware they did break ground for that uh when you look at the road you think that's a beautiful retaining wall but where's the building it will be coming you'll be able to see right now it's just so overwhelming to look at that retaining wall but once that gets completed i'm anticipating it well done others are still in the talks but at least for this coming school year that's the main central program that we're looking at offering at the white house well are all the programs in chilo going to be at that new
013facility yes okay uh i think that they're looking at it in august well i think that they're they're initially saying december of 22 i'm i'm thinking it'll be the fall of 23. i don't like this yeah but i'll keep you posted on that but at least with this next year that's that's the main one that we're talking about right and once again that's something that'll depend a lot on enrollment how many people are interested but they are planning on advertising that heavily this coming spring are most of our programs or your programs dual enrollment credit the when they come to the college campus they get college credit for every single class so it's somewhere between and 14 community college credits that they earn so if they take some academic classes on the site dual enrollment
014or during the summer they can easily have their two-year degree but that's not for everybody this is an intense program just to get through the 44 to 48 community college credits that they do with us for two years but your robotics class is one example yes blue ridge yes you have yes you have several that are receiving dual enrollment the last time i checked blue ridge had the most dual enrollment of any high school on the mountain i apologize i don't have any numbers there because that's wordle i'm not privy to the dual enrollment side of that ledger but but i do know that you were leading admin for years i can't imagine you're not still in the top of that list awesome yeah thank you thank you thank you matt if there's no more
015questions we'll just let you go and look forward to hearing from you next time thank you thanks matt next item on the agenda is uh dr wright i'm gonna let you take care of that one thank you sir thank you judy j and estes donated 616 dollars worth of materials for reading and we're doing this as a procedure she doesn't want the recognition but we we're going to recognize you anyway jane especially for decades of dedicated service within the reading program so think you can stand up judy if you would if you're gonna kill me later but let's there she is thank you and then you're on the agenda later too you're on the agenda later too so don't don't get comfortable sitting [Laughter] thank you jane all right next item on the agenda is
016donations of mattresses and bed frames for the blue ridge professional housing donated by mountain mattress for the amount of twelve hundred and eighty six dollars dr right now explain what that is and why we got those donations absolutely uh mr webb and his team have been working really hard cody blake in his program getting our first apartment building ready for teacher housing we have two teachers that are coming to us from the philippines and they're making a great sacrifice to be here and one of the things that we promised to do is make sure that they would have housing available so they'll rent that facility once complete and so this is a donation of a twelve hundred dollar mattress to uh outfit this we're taking donations we're not putting an inordinate amount of school funds
017into this facility but uh it looks like that we've had this just another one of many donations this is a significant one and we're grateful for mr webb and his team and of course for mountain mattress and we send all these folks including jane a letter of thank you for these donations thank you next item our br star award for december dr wright you want to take over again absolutely this this is interesting because i saw i saw some young ladies i haven't seen for like 37 years i think i see a lot of peterson girls out there and they're part of amy hathcock's family she has well her daughter's there one of her sons and her handsome husband our football coach amy is our br star and this is an award that we give
018monthly and it is amy exemplifies one or more of our core values courage respect commitment and integrity she serves as a counselor at our elementary school and has just done a fantastic job mr grace would you please come up and you can make this presentation absolutely um join us this year and we're very lucky to have her she is as committed as he gets this morning she was out there in the rain and the dark with us on logan kids and i have no doubt that she'll be there tomorrow if it's snowing and she was there in the sun she takes over any duties that we need she talks to kids she's there helping with our characters counts just trying to make sure that our kids know the path to being good people you know
019she's there to help with that um and she just meets our kids every day with a smile and most of them should only be with us for a semester so it's great to have [Applause] she is well congratulations bye only miss neyman's cool more [Applause] thank you amy here uh excellent excellent example of what can be done and how to do it right thank you so much okay the next the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda which involves the minutes from the previous meeting budget items uh other things board members have viewed as you have reviewed those consent agenda items is there any one or several that we'd like to take out and vote on individually if not we need to vote on the consent agenda itself have a motion to vote
020on the consent agenda that be motioned from jennifer in a second from chuck all in favor that would be passed okay business section of the meeting the next item would be item 3.1 we have these ladies here yeah that's i was going to ask can you introduce these ladies to us and absolutely let's uh mr grace come on up and mr webb and ingrid please introduce your your new teachers and your new counselor these are employees currently from 2021. correct so at the elementary school we're adding two new or one's a replacement position for a future that's leaving miss jennifer chandra is joining us from snowflake she is a kindergarten teacher so we're able to reduce our class sizes in kindergarten by adding another one replacing a teacher that left she's joining us with 18
021years of kindergarten experience which is a crazy high number so we're very very lucky to have her she doesn't look that old and then we have catherine doyle who's joining us also she is coming from the court she's coming from accord um she has experience with younger kids and so she's going to join us as a counselor on our campus to help ms hathcock just you know kind of make sure our kids are moving in the right direction have somebody talk to if they need to and that we're raising good human beings so we're lucky to have both of them then at the high school [Applause] at the high school we have kate bowers joining us she's actually moved to to snowflake taylor swiftly snowflake from utah and found out about a job opening that
022we had here at blue ridge and so she's going to be joining us next semester filling the class that we have with a long-term sub so she's going to be teaching english taught english classes up in utah for eight years and we'll be working with our some of our students here in several different grade levels and we're excited to have her on board and expect great things she's the teachers are super excited to have her join the english department and we're happy to read what she was able to bring to the previous school and we expect some of those students to come to blue ridge as well so thank you kate and welcome aboard [Applause] right the next item i mean the next portion of this uh motion is to get emotion to have a
023motion to accept the higher of these three individuals can i have a motion of emotion from chuck and the second from jennifer all in favor it's like they got hired thank you uh we can see excellence joining excellence thank you very much for coming okay item number 3.3 recommendation to approve the retirement or did i miss 2 2 3.2 3.2 recommendation to approve the retirement of the following employees dr wright i'd like you to talk about them yes we have uh carol godwin i i hope is going to continue i think that was what she's planning on doing carol are you going to continue with this good god bless you and we had we talked jane estes into two more years working longer than she wanted to but i don't think i'm going to get
024a third effort she's done a great job for us and so we wish to well congratulate these ladies for for the careers that they have had and we have uh for you jane well wait until carol is going to be with us 10 more years but when she's done we'll have a plaque for her too jane we hope you are jane come up we have a plaque for you so jane is is one of the stops i make when i do my walk about the campus and she has all in all the classroom all the kids that are progressing each child is noted by a sticker or where they're at and she knows her uh her kids that she's done an outstanding job but she appreciates thank you [Applause] i know she's a institution all
025right we need a recommendation to approve those two retirements i mean not a recommendation we need a motion to approve those two retirements check the motion second from diane all in favor thank you very much item 3.3 this is a recommendation to review and reapprove the financial report that we just went over right margaret martin never mind [Laughter] brenda don't explain what we're doing then hey chris this is the one oh this is for this year i'm sorry yeah this is just a correcting error on the outside okay re-approve we'll pull it up momentarily yeah yeah very good this is a different one it's this one this is the financial report okay this is this is to correct an error as part of the annual financial report for the 2021 year and this is what
026it looks like on the second page when i was closing the fiscal year i caught an error with the one of the food service revenues it was a small area was about five thousand dollars of revenues so as you notice up on the the screen that there was some revenues that was accidentally posted to the insurance proceeds account that was supposed to go into food service so the summary um i have it up there it says old and new um food service revenue remember how i told you that we finished in the positive for food service of 67 865 dollars after correcting the revenue the food service revenue is now going to be 73 771 dollars which is still good news because we actually finished out more than what we anticipated it to be and
027then the insurance proceeds is going to drop down from sixty two thousand three hundred and ninety eight dollars down to fifty six thousand four hundred and ninety one dollars on the second page you'll see that it it affects what we call 1600 which is basically catering revenues goes from 941 up to hundred 28 forty seven dollars so that's where the increase happened in food service revenues and then old this is where the cash balance is how it affects your ending cash balance for food service sixty seven thousand eight hundred and sixty five dollars is what the ending cash balance for food service was and then the last page shows the new cash balance for food service 73 771 dollars so i just need the board to acknowledge the correction to the food service fund and
028the correction to the insurance proceed fund so i can submit the correction to ade and also let the auditors know that we have a correction to the annual financial report any questions from anyone and then can we have a motion to accept the revisions and uh recommends to revision and reapprove the annual financial report for 2021. okay have a second second for margaret all in favor that's all passport brenda thank you so much dave i'd like to add that brenda is the one that surfaced that it was posted incorrectly on the county side and she knew there was a 5 000 difference and she she found it so thank you brenda item 3.4 recommendation to review and approve the first revision of the fiscal year 2021-22 expenditure budget um dr wright or brenda would you
029like to say anything about that brenda i don't have anything else further to say unless you have any questions this is the presentation that she had just made yes and so they need the board's approval for the presentation in the adjusted amount any questions chuck i have a motion then to accept has written a second from our diana all in favor been a month thank you for all the hours brenda item 3.5 a recommendation to review and approve the november 2021 financial reports uh brenda do you want to go over those with us yes and this is the report i just put on your desks were put in front of you if you want to go to page three of the report i just gave you you'll see um at the bottom of page three
030the budget for maintenance and operation shows thirteen million nine hundred and fifty four thousand two hundred and thirty five dollars and that is reflective of what the board just adopted tonight as part of the budget revision number one the year-to-date expenditures as of november 30th is 5 million 182 936 dollars the encumbrance from july first through the end of november is eight million two hundred and seventy eight thousand one hundred and one dollars and this leaves a budget balance of four hundred and ninety three thousand one hundred and ninety seven dollars this also includes a transfer out that we still need to do of two hundred and thirty one thousand six hundred and sixty dollars the transfer is for the energy and water savings lease payment that we typically do at the end of the
031fiscal year i also want to mention that we are going to be doing some salaries and benefit transfers to sr3 three is the grant that was the five million dollar grant that we received through the federal government uh we have three custodial position yeah three custodial positions three counseling positions as well as two additional teaching positions will be transferring out from maintenance operation into that grant so we'll be reducing the year to date expenditures so the budget balance will actually be increasing so i'm not too concerned about expending or exceeding the budget so the next page on page four is the income and expense for fund 610 the budget adopted tonight is one million twenty seven thousand two hundred and eighty six dollars year to date expenses from july first through november thirtieth is a
032hundred and three thousand two hundred and eight dollars encumbrances are what we've issued purchase order for purchase order orders for is two hundred and twenty four thousand three hundred and sixty two dollars we currently have a budget balance in that fund of six hundred and ninety nine thousand seven hundred and fifteen dollars next page is the cash flow statement for maintenance and operation as of november 30th we have three million four hundred and twenty three thousand ten dollars in that account we have some cash flow or cash that still needs to be posted from the treasurer's office i'll show you here in a bit on what our cash flow currently is the cash flow statement for district additional assistance or capital fund as of november thirtieth is negative fifty seven thousand three hundred and seventy
033five dollars and then as of yesterday our cash at the county treasurer's office is six million three hundred and seventy two thousand one hundred and seventeen dollars and some change we have not borrowed any money through our line of credit so which is actually pretty good remember when the board adopted the budget we we set the budget based upon the 2000 students because of that reason we set our tax rates a little bit high for that reason we have a lot more cash coming in and we haven't borrowed any line of credit because of that so we have a lot more cash coming in for that reason we have not borrowed any line of credit so we're actually sitting pretty good as far as cash is concerned do you have any questions in regards to
034that we have a motion to accept the november report emotion from chuck second from diana all in favor thank you brenda that's makes it real clear sometimes okay next item is a recommendation a recommendation to review and approve the school year fundraiser events dr radio explain what that is this is a new requirement statutorily the board must approve all fundraisers and so we provided that list it's fairly exhausted oh it is exhaustive and it's long saw the legs most of it occurs at the junior high and the high school levels there are some at the elementary and in order to have a fundraiser it has to be board approved so you have the list and if we have more between now and january we'll add it to the january meeting any questions on that list
035we i know i looked at it pretty ambitious kids appreciate them hey then all we need is a motion to vote on item 3.6 which is the fundraiser events for 200 for 2021 and 22. motion from anybody chuck second from margaret all in favor thank you okay next item is a recommendation to review and approve the school facilities board project award bid of 1 million 450 000. this has been long in coming this has been long coming jv has been i hope you recognize all the people who put in a lot of work into this project has jb and roger put in hours and they we've uh jb and i have made more than one truck trip down to the uh sfe in my pickup truck too lobbying for this and so thank you for
036staying after it and those uh those dollars are are not paid by local taxpayers that comes out of the state bucket and so that is a big project and we're lobbying for more we still have a number of air conditioners and some other roofing jobs that are still that we're pushing for so congratulations and thank you jb thanks they aren't going to start on that in the middle of the winter are they no like they did the auditorium and cost them twice what it should have cost hopefully they've learned yeah okay so can we have our motion to accept item 3.7 have a motion from jennifer a second from chuck all in favor thank you that's all unanimous too okay next item 3.8 recommendations review and approve arizona state mandated minimum wage increase dr wright
037do you want to explain or brenda explain the impact that has on our district and our budget what i did is i ran the those individuals that are currently earning the lowest minimum wage and increase those up to actually gave them a 65 increase up to 12 dollars and 80 cents an hour and that's going to be about a 30 000 impact with benefits so and that takes effect as of january 1st of 2022. you do have the list if i might add mr president this is in total this is about a 275 to 300 000 hit since the beginning of the minimum wage increase and so it is it is fairly significant like everyone else i don't know that has as much as an impact because you're having to pay you're having to compete
038we'll talk later about transportation and some of the struggles we're having in buses and the plane will have in january for that it's just it's becoming more difficult to hire folks so but there's some real this is a this is a baked in fixed cost now it's a tough mr walden uh just for clarification i want i'm assuming that all this is unfunded mandate so absolutely true to arizona funding legislature said you have to do it but they didn't give us anything we'll give you money to do it you have to do it exactly is this causing any salary compression in other parts oh absolutely if i might add in 2016 we went through an exhaustive study and we looked and we suffered a lot of compression among the teaching staff during the years of
0392009 through we're seeing some of that not to the same extent we're seeing some of that on the classified side we don't have the budget capacity to do anything about it right now but it is something that we're well aware of and in many cases the market's taking care of that i mean if you remember we increased bust wages bus driver wages fairly significantly three years ago we did that because that was the market it's what it takes to hire and so those positions that are in high demand are likely going to go up any other comments or we have a motion in to accept the recommendation of the minimum wage requirements item 3.8 as written a motion from margaret a second from jennifer all in favor thank you item 3.9 a recommendation to review
040and approve the school year proposition in the 301 uh first portion of performance payments dr wright you want to explain that yes sir also you bet the the reason that this amount is pretty static although we've had on paper we've had a much larger contribution from the state for performance pay in 301 is they're still in question the statutory spending limit so the state if you remember because of the influx of cova dollars and the reduction of about 52 000 students statewide there's more revenue than they had the expenditures had dropped and the revenue had increased so the state has to approve an increase in an artificially established spending limit that was set in i think 1982 and so our i'm pretty confident they'll do that we've we've been all the superintendent statewide our lobbying
041for that if you recall a group of us met with the speaker of the house and the senate president both of whom were very willing to support it and understood the need especially impacted rural schools so we're confident that'll happen the 301 payout the first one would be a thousand dollars if this is rectified the spending limit is increased we'll make good on the higher amount that we represented earlier this year so it could be a much larger more substantial payment in the spring if the legislature does what we're hoping to do and approve that but for the first one the teachers have met the requirements the principals have reviewed it and the folks that have qualified for this have been listed and that list has been provided for the board and requires your approval
042any questions comments about that if not then we have a recommendation to approve the first portion of the performance payment for 301 as written in item 3.9 i have a motion from the chuck segment from diane all in favor thank you that also passed okay item 3.10 recommendation to review and approve the early graduation one of our high school students mr webb do you want to explain that we don't have to discuss the name of that person but uh has that person required fulfilled all the requirements we have all that information but i'd like to hear your recommendation there's two students in there that were recommending early graduation for they both have fulfilled all the requirements for graduation receiving their diplomas so we're in support of their request to graduate earlier with their plans which
043hopefully will one wants to start schooling in the next semester and then the other was working as a veterinary assistant and preparing for colleges and for the fall semester and but yeah definitely approved their we at the high school approved their request to very granular growth that's what we're bringing it to the board to see your approval thank you any any comments from we have a motion to accept the early graduation for those two students i have a motion from chuck second from margaret all in favor that would pass also item 3.11 a recommendation to review and approve blue ridge professional housing policy gcbda and tenant lease agreement which we've reviewed it's pretty lengthy this is for those two teachers yes it will be the same agreement lease agreement we use for all of our
044tenants for any of the future housing that's created it's gone through legal mary spent an inordinate amount of time gathering information our legal one of our attorneys looked at it and approved it and i think it's the board had a chance to look at it as well and comment provide some i think insightful ideas and so i think we have it buttoned down pretty well i'm sure we're missing something but it's not glaring that's for sure it's not it's substantially more than a handshake right yeah it's pretty straightforward yes ma'am yeah all right any questions about that or any comments or anything so we have a motion to accept that as written in item 3.11 second sure okay all in favor that was also passed okay item 3.12 a discussion and possible approval to move
045the board meeting date to the third tuesday of every month this comes up at the request of dr wright because there are so many meetings he has to attend on on tuesday that pull him away and he ends up you haven't got a ticket yet have you no sir i just when i just had go for my i couldn't i ran and i don't run fast enough to get a ticket right for my office if i may mr president we i serve on a couple of committees one is the board of education for the professional practices advisory committee and i had to excuse myself early today so they're having to carry it over tomorrow because i've got to be here for the hearing and so it's it's pretty rigid because they have people's lives in
046the balance and their certifications there's attorneys involved that meeting always happens on the second tuesday on the on the commission for post-secondary education it's always on the second tuesday and then on the other things that we have for our professional communities most of those meetings occur on tuesday as well so if if the board would be so gracious to move it one week later it still gives finance time it doesn't change the day and it would be very much appreciated any problems with anybody i mean one tuesday's as good as another tuesday i mean so if there's no problems should we have a motion to vote on moving the board meeting to the third tuesday of every month instead of from the second tuesday of every month i have a motion promotion from chuck a
047second from diana all in favor that is also pastor unanimously new year's too it's always so quick okay item 3.13 is uh piggybacked with the one that we just did this actually moves the next board meeting to january 11th 18th sorry no jokes anyway so if uh if there are no concerns about moving the meeting to january 18th we have a motion to move it so what to january 18th a motion from jennifer a second from margaret all in favor that's good thank you all right the last item uh 3.14 would be dr wright giving his a kind of a preview and a report of what needs to be done yes sir thank you the first one i want to recognize the certificate of achievement for excellence for financial reporting brenda and her team are
048again recognized for this has been several years in a row i will add that i had met with the latest team heinfield and meech the lead auditor on that and you have to understand if you look at the for instance let's look at the the opportunities you have to make a mistake every day teachers take attendance we have 750 kids in high school that have four classes and every class takes attendance over the period of 185 days there's a lot of opportunities for a mistake the same is true with our purchase orders and our requisitions and payments all those things are made and posted and out of an entire year when they're looking at it we come down to maybe eight or twelve findings now i'm always telling her i'm not asking her to be
049perfect and have to be perfectly fine if we had no fraud the bills are being paid on time and there's mistakes once in a while it's okay but she strives for perfection um and they're coming very close to it and i just wanted to make sure that the board knew that's not a a normal outcome one thing i can assure you of this we don't have to worry about wearing orange uh suits don't look good orange margaret does i don't and we're jennifer does see you're getting them all mixed up too there you go salmon but i'm very i'm very pleased with the the level of professionalism of her staff brenda's also in addition to the chief financial officer she is the she directs the operations of transportation and food service i handle the day
050to day on transportation denise reports directly to me all of the reporting and all the all the other things run through brenda's office so she and her team are very busy and they're very good at what they do and i just would be remiss if i hadn't taken the time to recognize them for their efforts thank you thanks brenda i saw your certificate the next one is i want to just i really want to recognize a couple of people one chuck had an idea four or five years ago why don't we have teacher housing and it was just sort of left rhetorical until he and i were walking around campus i think it was last june and we ran into the office and he said hey my old office work chuck for those who don't
051know has had a lifelong and life career in construction and so through the efforts of mr webb cody blake and a good class of cte kids this this is a very nice apartment it is not uh it doesn't look like an old office check when it's done lauren's gonna show you and give you a tour but that was a great idea we've also identified since then three other buildings that we could use and this is professional housing meaning teachers or administrators that we otherwise wouldn't probably get without that support and so it's a it's a great idea that was brought through to realization and uh i can tell you mr webb probably has 50 hours at least maybe 75 and tape and texture and flooring and unfortunately he can fix things and so he had
052a he has that tax he's done a great job with it his brothers have helped his wife has helped and cody blake and his his team have put a lot of time we've been very blessed to have home depot lowe's mountain mattress a lot of these other folks stepping up and helping us to say nothing of the other resources that are coming in and so it's been really neat to see the idea and then to see it brought to life and so i thank you mr walder for that and lauren for your efforts in the teacher housing we're going to continue to expand that next if are there any questions mr president on that one before we go on how how soon will this one be finished i i've met one of the ladies that
053teaches at the high school and she's anxious yes sir so was lauren so his lord this friday friday does she know that and he's not a contractor so that's right that's that that's that's accurate if his contract you had two or three weeks but that's true that's good i'll just go on record here we're not slamming contract that's right [Laughter] you might need one something i do i have one the school safety this is a serious topic and it is something that this district has invested a substantial amount of human power capital and effort in i'm proud of the efforts that have been made since 2015 for a district of our size we are we're well prepared you're never completely prepared and you're never done it's always an ongoing effort i will tell you the
054principles and administrators and teachers take the effort seriously they take it seriously our kids are doing a good job of taking it seriously we've worked with jesus via hermosa one of the foremost experts in this capacity nationwide and he's been a pleasure to work with he'll come back in march for a two day thing some with kids community members and staff when you see the oxford shooting you have a little bit of a reminder that could happen here i reminded a number of folks and i was just talking to one of our community members we had the sad event of officer darren reed being shot point blank and murdered four years ago or so and that assailant came down to lake of the woods a half an hour after school got out what if that
055had been half an hour earlier and school was in session maybe he'd have kept going i don't know point is you can it could happen here it could happen here and by the way the rural areas are at much greater risk than the city areas for these types of events while we're well prepared we're nowhere near done so we're going to continue to prepare our staff and our students harden our facility and the exterior envelope we have made one concession requested by the teachers and i think it makes perfect sense and i believe we'll carry it forward and that is this the doors are locked all the doors are locked if you remember every door in this facility that has a student or an office has a lock on it all of them that was
056about a hundred thousand dollar effort and months in the making getting done we're allowing those to be up propped open because they're locked which is fine because even in the protocol if it's a lockdown the first thing the teacher would do if the doors open a shot rather is open it up sweep it get everybody in shut the door and they don't open after that a law officer law enforcement or fire has a key and then we're quiet it's quiet the lights are on we're away from the door and we're quiet and so there are a number of other things that are have sort of creeped in uh with this accident and i hate to jump on and i won't criticize our brothers and sisters from michigan the fact is though there's some pretty serious
057mistakes made that will cost that district dearly and so one of them is that the child was never searched student was never searched the bag was never searched police was never called our police would be called the bag would be searched we would have reasonable suspicion and so those protocols are in place we're taking it a step further though and say okay we have a we have a potential we are a report of a student that might have a weapon what do we do right now we have a protocol that's okay we want to got to get it to the point where it's really buttoned down and so we're going to work on that intervention component and so there are some pieces that we've surfaced every time one of these things happened it it hits
058you like a ton of bricks and so we take the time to research it to study it to learn what mistakes were made what could have been done differently what should have been done differently what would we do how would we respond and we get a little bit better those efforts will continue the covid the vaccine effort is is is here again tonight they're here to six o'clock got two more minutes to get your shot no and they get eight more minutes and you have uh but we're leaving the doors open to enhance the ventilation and frankly the teachers wanted it and it seemed like a reasonable give back the fact that you open the door anyway if you're on lockdown it made sense and so we'll stay with that and are there any questions
059on this aspect of safety protocol or any other concerns the board might have like it may i might address yes sir um well i was wondering about metal detectors like the one in oxford kid came in with a pack pack had a gun in it is there any thought about that i don't know what they cost or whatever but the if they're staffed appropriately there's two things you have to ask yourself the board would have to decide is that the type of environment we want is do we feel like that's going to be a a device that's going to limit it and really eliminate shooting jesus is feeling as if you had a staff of people that were well trained and you had the capacity to do it of course that would be the and
060your school was designed to do that that would be the best possible outcome but no one had very few people have that type of a facility our facilities just using this one as an example has so many points of entry and i would say it's not it's it's impractical i i don't think that i think there are other ways of creating a safe environment with having to go to that extent at least into in the present in element where we're at right now one other thing i know we were working hard to get school resource officers and we had some here do we still have them or i know there's a number of school districts in the state that have done away with them we had a grant issued we had an officer that we
061extended an offer in these instances you worked with the local police department when the police department did their background check he failed the background check kind of ironic it ended up costing his job as where he was at when it surfaced so he had some in his background and he was serving as an sro so we don't have a school resource officer we are not going to get one this late in the game unless somebody moves in in january when the grant will expire soon and we can't we've even looked at taking that and transferring it to counseling unfortunately that's not available it's a federal grant and they don't allow it to be re-characterized so it like everybody else officers are hiring as well given the climate of law enforcement i would think we would
062be hard pressed now we do live in pinetop lakeside though and it is an area that people like to live so i'm not saying there's no way we'll find one but i'm i will i will suggest it'd be difficult okay and then i think uh i just want to add our appreciation to the health care workers the doctors nurses practitioners all of those folks that are working tirelessly our hospitals are at are above capacity we we have a county call every wednesday that cova deaths are higher now than they've ever been here locally and there are roughly a very high high percentage of the people that are getting sick are not vaccinated and that's just the fact not a political statement it's just a fact and so we're continuing to offer those vaccinations we'll have
063another one after the beginning of the year i think it's the 4th mary january 4th and then we'll have another one in the spring so we're doing our part thankfully the participation is increasing locally but there are i mean we've all probably had i've had a good friend that passed away from a 53 so it's just a it's a tough deal we want to thank though our our health care workers and doctors and first responders they're working i mean i i talked to dr smithson you know he's i don't think he has had a day off since i don't know march of 2020 and i don't think that's unique i think a lot of them are working margaret's son is an emergency medicine doctor and he's working all the time so we our heart goes
064out to more appreciative of their efforts and i'm also thankful for the efforts our staff puts in jb's team works really well with our leadership teams to make sure our facility's as clean as we can be and our teachers are doing a great job of staying healthy and and doing their best to support kids and i think that's important to note and with that i don't have any other information unless the board has a question that's on this list questions thank you we have an announcement that our regular board meeting will be january 18th at five o'clock this location we brought back call to the public this meeting uh just i'll go over the outline of call the public public is invited to make comments too or requests of the government board regarding items that
065are 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 to the governing board form available from the secretary of the governing board which is mary ford members of the board may not discuss items that are not on the agenda therefore action taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to 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 cannot be seated to another individuals so if anybody would like to address the board at this time we'd be happy to hear you you're welcome to do that and uh
066just give your name i think there might be a forum at the back you can leave do we have a mic do you have a mic good evening thank you so much um the question i have we're just following up is uh last um grace talked about your enrollment was kind of down and you were talking about truancy officer i'm just trying to recollect um if you can just kind of give me an idea of how that has improved within the last month that would be one thing i would just like to know if you dr right you want to address that or you want to talk personally to her about that later i i think i think we'd have to put it on i could uh put it on the next agenda yeah but
067it's not it's not an item on the current one uh we'll we'll open that up next month and discuss that thank you any others if there's no others we have a motion to adjourn i have a motion from chuck the second from margaret all in favor and also being endless so