001[Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] at 5 30 p.m uh roll call corey burgess here amanda amen here charlene is here our first item is 1.3 policies d-i-d-d-j-g-r that's a little difficult to say huh okay well this um i think this is kind of fortuitous because these have to do with procurement and purchasing and those kinds of things and of course we're kind of in the middle of all of that accounting and purchasing and procurement stuff right now so kim you want to show us the id and any concerns questions any questions nope okay next one this one is essentially the procedures that we use for in taking inventories the law requires that we do um image asset inventory so that's our big items every two years you guys are familiar with that okay so every
002two years every two years yeah it's every two years and um and so we've been we've been compliant with that and doing the things that we need to do one of the things that we learned in the performance audit no in our annual audit a year ago that had never been told to our business office people is that purchase orders and invoices and information for any permanent asset have to be kept for 15 years 15 years yeah and and so when the auditors were here last year their computer pulls up four or five things and they say okay let's go look for these things at your sites besides the fact that it was difficult to find the things that were listed for mountain view school um that was really difficult but there were other things
003and um and we didn't have any records for them and whatever so somewhere along the line no one had ever told our our accounts payable person that we needed to keep those records that long so we have in fact started doing the right thing with those and so it'll be six or seven years before we don't get a recommendation to keep those first 15 years so uh you know we learn things all the time and our records are our accounts payable person has been in that office for many many many years and no one had ever told her that so um so in the future when you see it on our audits it's just it will be an ongoing thing until we get it fixed all right any questions all right next one our audit
004is coming up we finally found auditors and actually it's the auditors we've had for the last five years they agreed to do our audit they will be coming and we will in fact have our reports on time are they coming right after break or did they wait another week i'm still waiting to hear the final but they're supposed to be coming the week after spring break the week after spring break so um and they send things in advance to tell us what they want what records they want pulled what things they want available so we will be doing that within timeline and this one was just changed recently in october i'm sure it was one of the updates that we had from asba questions and this is just the more specific part of that relatives
005to some things we when things exceed certain amounts that we have to um handle them a little differently oh i'm on my microphone james can you hear me really okay i'm sorry that you couldn't hear is that better is that better okay i'll sit a little closer i usually don't have to sit this close to the microphone i'm usually blasting people out so thank you for calling that to my attention okay anything on this one no this one has to do with ethics and such things as conflict of interest and making sure that that we are not um purchasing things that uh you know that either from somebody we're related to or those kinds of things we do things ethically any questions no any questions no thank you sorry i couldn't help it there we
006are there are very specific uh rules and procedures for purchasing and procurement and we are being very careful to follow all of those especially as we move into these big projects that we have with us our money so we're making sure that that we're following all of those federal regulations that we have the correct number of bids if it's uh and even if we are looking at um services from a co-op we're still checking with two with at least three of the vendors on the co-op at this point to make sure we're doing those things correctly and we even step a little more formally than it requires so we're supposed to have oral bids oral quotes for things between 10 000 and a hundred thousand dollars we try to do that when we have things
007that are over five um just so that we have good records and that you know that we're not just randomly picking people and you know vendors and doing those things so we try to we try to be even a little more specific than the policy and the law requires questions and this is just the regulation that has more more detail about about all of those things we're good and more detail any more questions this is the one that speaks to us behaving ethically with vendors particularly the kind of thing that um you know we're not going to give preference to a vendor who might offer to take us to lunch or you know those kinds of things and um and and i say that a little bit facetiously but it's not facetious because there are
008people who do business that way and rather addresses the idea of quid pro quo which we don't do you know we're going to treat all of our vendors equally and look at the look at all of the factors involved most of the time you select the the least expensive the lowest bid but there are times when that's not the best choice so for instance we recently had some things going on and we had two quotes that were within i think it was a seven or eight thousand dollar item or or service they were within about three hundred dollars of each other but the difference is the one that was lower price could not produce the what we needed for six weeks the other one could do it next week you know the week later so
009we went with the one that was a little higher because we needed it done right away questions no all right okay questions about this one nope we're good all right all right item 1.5 town hall discussions oh we haven't waited we have one more damn i was rolling yeah the ones we were looking at were that was that next set in the policy book this is one that we're specifically requesting that you approve the update of this exhibit we use this all the time we have people who request to put materials on our counters and our sites or send them home with children and we've realized lately that um the the document we were using did not distinguish and so we found ourselves always asking is this something you expect to send home with students
010is this something just for the counter for the display for adults so we made a couple of those changes to to make it a more usable form and so it is on the agenda a little bit later but we wanted you to know why we were requesting the change perfect looks good now 1.5 all right stop jumping i know right okay 1.5 town hall discussion uh mr broski this was your idea yes it was and um dr stewart and i have met at least one the only one only once complications last week um basically following a format that i found on the net it really works oh excuse me can you guys hear me okay let me do it this way um we are we can do this very easily what i would like to
011see us do whether we no matter what we do in the in the to to accept the the the housing unit whether we go ahead and listen to the lawyers or whatever we do i still think that we need to go out and let the public know what our thinking answer their questions and do the best we can to quiet any kind of concerns so i'm still pushing to do a town hall i'd like to do one in person and one virtually or maybe at the same time i don't know how that would work i was talking to james earlier and he says that we can do it and carolyn had already checked with him and so basically i'm feeling really good about this i have found a moderator for us who does not live
012in the district who based but is local actually works in laughlin and she just she has agreed to moderate for us so that we would not have to to do that function um what i would like to see is that each one of us as board members become an expert on a piece of this information ava gave us a whole bunch of questions and candy gave us a whole bunch of questions to answers and i'm sure there are other questions out there so we could possibly put a a call out for any kind of questions that you would like to have answered so we'd have some prep time for it because there are questions that i cannot answer but i'd like to see each one of us be here as part of the town hall
013and to answer questions specifically to a piece of the project does that make sense to anybody i really like the idea of having each of us have a specific thing that we get to know because that's going to take a lot of pressure off trying to get to know everything exactly and then if we become the go-to on that item then we are staying following up on where we're at with that specific item we would be required to if we could not answer to get back to that person and get that answer if they get that answer so i would also like to see us set up as an informative meeting so so other than than just having those ideas and i like getting that information of what these concerns are putting that into a
014group but making it informative this is where we're headed with this this is what's going on so uh the community understands that we're all on that same page that is that is part of the of a town hall usually it's a presentation by um one of the members and i would assume that that would be mrs or dr stewart and then questions from the audience basically the way it is great but we need to set a date and we were talking about the end of march weren't we yeah we weren't oh now i'm really loud can you hear me candy um yeah end of march or first of april and um so that would give us some time for you all to have a workshop session because some of the questions some of the really
015good questions are detailed kinds of things that we haven't even decided yet you know we weren't far enough into the into the process to even have some of those decisions made so it's a good opportunity for the board to say okay here are some things that we know we want it to be these way you know we want these things to be this way and have that session where you all pick the questions and then as a team you kind of decide how you want those pieces to be um so end of march first week of april uh might be you know might be good and then continue on with this information absolutely as we go so absolutely so we always know where we're at and what's going on and um yeah because there's a
016lot of this stuff that none of us are professionals on i mean that's not our avenue that we that we get that's not what we do no but there's so many very knowledgeable people in the community that would be more than willing to help answer some of those questions for us and what i've found corey is that the more input you get the more questions get asked the finer tuned things get and so you know better end product yep i love it and i will tell i didn't even know this when i was talking with melinda but um a week or two weeks ago i sent you an article it was called the spark report that was the topic of the presentation to superintendents from the ade superintendent's office on wednesday yesterday afternoon so this
017whole issue and of housing for school employees is statewide and there are these groups that are helping with it the interesting thing was that the people who did that research haven't even touched on the things that we've already learned from our attorney and um but they can offer us other things so and we can offer them what we know so the now the the network of people to help us with this is far greater than it was even three months ago that's nice one thing i would like to add as i did a lot of my own research on this as well and i find that like a lot of the inquiries that i've heard about it a lot of people don't realize that teachers is actually not uncommon right it actually exists in a
018lot of places because people want to they're like well how does a school district have the authority to do this and stuff and it's actually not uncommon and so not uncommon that when i was looking it up because we've talked about because we rent and we have talked about issues and stuff there are two school districts that i found that if something happened to my housing the first school districts i'm going to look at are those because they have teachers where it costs under 600 a month for a three bedroom two bath and one of them has a ocean view oh right so [Laughter] but but the point of the matter was as a teacher to coming from a teacher's perspective um the more that i learned about it the more that i realized oh
019my gosh gosh darn i kind of want to move now but i love my school so that's why i'm staying here for now and it's even fairly common in arizona not not just on the native american reservations it is common there when there are public schools but it's common in a number of other districts in the state it just hasn't gotten the press coverage or whatever until this housing situation has has happened and um so you know we're not alone and we now have more resources than we had even three months ago which i think is pretty exciting that's great um so at this point i think we can just go with the directive yeah um to let's get the collection of information uh that way it can be shared to us and we can
020kind of say okay i'll take this group i'll take this group and we can kind of see where we're at um and get this ball rolling sound good and melinda and i already have an appointment for tomorrow we postponed it and rescheduled it so we can get we can get going on that right and i think like a frequently asked question sheet would be great as well because some of the questions that we are getting or facebook getting or that are being asked here we actually have gone over in board meetings and we've approved and we've gone through but they might have missed the meeting they weren't able to attend the meeting they didn't see it live streamed so their question went unanswered so they asked it again even though it's already been asked and
021answered and in a forum it would be nice to be able to have those quick links that maybe they could just go to the website click on the frequently asked questions get that information or see it out there be able to click it on facebook be like did they already answer this is this something they get a lot oh it is or nope i don't see it on there and i'm going to ask it you know yeah and and um yesterday i met with the um superintendent's employee advisory committee and they had some of the same questions um and as you said they've been answered but not everybody has heard them or it goes you know how telephone goes you know somebody says it and then it gets changed so um they had they had
022good questions as well good awesome okay let's head that direction okay any other questions on this topic all right so with that we need a motion to adjourn the workshop i move that we adjourn the workshop i'll second that motion and avoid all in favor aye corey burgess i am and amen hi charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sasbrowski so i moved we were adjourned our regular meeting won't start for about 10 more minutes [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i called to order the regular meeting of the bullhead city elementary school board on thursday march 3rd 2022 at 6
023p.m roll call corey burgess here amanda amen here anna boyd here melinda sabrasky present all present uh please join me for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag 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 citizens present please sign in in the back call to the public this is the time the public may speak to the governing board regarding issues within the jurisdiction of the governing board and may stand subject to reasonable time space and manner restrictions as the governing board may establish comments will be limited to three minutes per individual unless specifically waived by the governing board at the conclusion of the call to public individual members of the governing board may respond to criticism made
024by those who've addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask the matter be placed on a future agenda however the governing board cannot take action on matters that have not been noticed in advance as part of the agenda uh we currently have one call to the public [Applause] oh they were backed by the signing sheets so we will have two call the publics all right let's start with uh ava smith good evening board members uh thank you for your time i will keep it down to three minutes tonight i wanted to thank melinda sabroski for mentioning in your workshop about the fact that i brought questions to you last month regarding the housing project as you go into the next few weeks talking about the preparation for the town
025hall i would just like to reiterate some of those pieces for you i do believe that my recommendation to survey the teachers that are current staff in the district is an important part of this project if it is in fact to help retain teachers which is as we all know a real issue right now i believe you should find out from the current staff what difference this would make you do have teachers in the district that would not necessarily need this housing or use this housing and i think that that would make a difference in how you go about planning you know the lease agreements and how many units you're going to build and how that's going to look is it really going to be to retain educators or more so aimed at bringing educators
026in so i think as a google form survey sent out to the district to every site every employee and asking you know some simple questions asking for their feedback you guys are the school board for the district and i feel you should hear from the employees in the district regarding this project the town hall is going to bring in the community which is fantastic and they thank you for that but the district employees need to be asked about this housing project so please keep that in mind and i hope you will send out a survey asking them i also was interested in finding out if the board members have actually walked the property it is up off of silver creek i looked at some pictures of it and i had some questions regarding the foundational
027cost i don't know how much that's going to be not an expert in that field as you said earlier corey but i feel it's important that everybody is aware of what this property looks like because it's a blank slate on all levels and then timeline that was something i didn't consider last month what is the timeline on this project obviously it's a large project it's not going to be ready by this next school year so are you looking at two years out and then in that sense what are you doing to retain the educators currently for this next year or the following year and i would be interested in knowing about the amount of units that you're building how many staff will be available you know to participate in this housing project is it only
028going to be 20 apartments is it going to be 100 apartments that would definitely be something you could garner from the survey from the district as well and then the rent the rental market is really crazy right now i stated last month it was anywhere between eleven hundred and twenty two hundred dollars per month right now apartments houses whatever have you so you know please talk about the discussion of the amount of rent thank you candy thank you we can destroy um i live here in bullhead city i had sent an email to the entire board and i appreciate the people that forwarded it over to carolyn because i didn't have her email address but nobody responded to me except carolyn and that kind of bothers me a bit because i don't want you speaking
029as a as the board but i'm sure you have some thoughts on some of the questions that i proposed and asked i have some real concerns about the price the rent rate my tax dollars and your tax dollars and everybody here are going to be building these these homes for these people i am nothing against good teachers i used to teach i love the district i had know most of you um i've been here forever i have nothing against helping the community at all but how can you pick and choose um what about the established teachers that um just for instance i don't but i'm saying i own a house and my mortgage is a thousand dollars but hey the district is going to offer brand new whatever two-bedroom i don't know what kind of
030situation housing for five or six hundred dollars a month i'm no fool i'm going to rent my house out for a thousand or two thousand whatever and i want in on this how do you pick and choose it doesn't make sense and how do you think it's not discrimination you're only going to be renting to school district employees it's public money that's building these it's if you're a private entity i would have no questions or concerns about any of this but you're using our money but you're discriminating against maybe i have an employee that i'd love to bring in from vegas a potential employee that can't afford to live here but you guys are going to be offering housing to teachers again it's not against the teachers at all but you're going to be offering
031something i'm you're competing against me for me to be able to bring in a good employee a quality employee versus you you've got a big advantage over me i can't offer them a 500 or whatever the magic numbers are going to be i think that's discrimination and i think i love the idea and i i don't really know this young lady at all um about this the questions and surveys i think you're going to be real surprised the carolyn addressed the issue when i asked her about what about the other employees that have houses and plan on staying in their houses this is a benefit you're giving to employees you can't pick and choose unless again like it's a coaching position or a something something position but we're talking a position that basically affects their
032salary how can you pick and choose which one of the district employees are going to benefit from this and which ones aren't if i was an employee i'd probably have some real issues with this not against the person not against any of you but you know my this person that teaches in the class right next to me is getting great brand new housing for again i'm picking a magic number five hundred dollars but you the district and community aren't offering me anything to help compensate what i'm doing you know the logic on a lot of these things just doesn't make sense again i asked and the young lady also said has anybody walked this property i know dr stewart answered me and said yes i did i went up and walked this property i have
033no idea if anybody knows how much this is going to cost to prepare this property there's no utilities there's no street there's no access to it other than a dirt path where's the money coming from who thought through all the steps to get to this wonderful housing situation for teachers i i don't know in the money i guess it's coming from esther funds but that's our money folks that's our money we pay the government so they can bring it back to us and stuff um i don't the who's who's in charge who's managing these places where's the money coming for the maintenance you know who's going to be legally responsible if somebody a teacher on with contract damage is one of these things and we have to fire the teacher or whatever where are the
034legal fees going to come from to pay for all these things these are all great questions that we're going to use in that town okay i understand yeah we're on time like i said i got a bun and also just one more thing you know god bless our country and everything we can do for our teachers and everybody else but you know what it's a slap in the face to any veteran who can't afford housing in this area you're offering a lower income or a lower level rent but look at the number of veterans that could benefit how about you build one house for every teacher and one for offer it to a vet let's be real let's be honest we gotta look at a lot more than just we bought property and i gotta
035tell you and i know i get it i get it i own a business and a couple weeks ago i thought just curiosity i need to know who else knows about this um not everybody gets facebook access or doesn't want it you know stuff like that not everybody subscribes to the newspaper you know how do people get to know this information i had 30 different people in my business over two different days well some other ones that wouldn't answer and i asked every one of them what they know about the school district in housing for teachers not one of them and i talking ages from probably early 20s to well into older numbers not one of them knew a thing about it but they all live here they all are taxpayers in our community we
036we're not uh we're trying to work through all of those things and and that's why we're doing the steps we're making okay that's why we're working on that so there's a lot of questions financial and working on it you guys yes okay i i get it my time's up i get it i get it and i appreciate the extension can you give me the questions can you give me your questions oh the one that are they the same ones that are in the email basically okay okay thank you thank you item 2.6 adoption of the agenda need a motion to adopt the agenda i make emotion that we adopt the agenda i'm sorry you had a motion i'll make a motion that we adopt the agenda i'll second melinda sobrowski all in favor aye corey
037burgess aye amanda aymond aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sobreski so moved item 2.7 donations we want to thank all those that stepped forward and help out our community in their donations fox creek junior high plants from susan gerber for the salsa garden and construction club and an estimated value of 25 dollars diamondback a 200 gift card from walmart for classroom supplies from ed west fox creek junior high 15 gift cards to teachers for positive incentives for the alpha delta kappa several treats for the dance held on february 17th from jolan blanson and ryan perry an estimated value of 103.24 cents thank you again for all those who stepped up and helped our schools uh item 2.8 superintendent reports dr stewart mr president and board members you have our standing reports for miscellaneous
038updates um excuse me i did meet yesterday with the superintendent's employee advisory committee and uh on items that they wanted to discuss um and so i will tell you that there will probably be a couple of other policies coming to you from recommendations from that group and from our administrators and they also had questions about the housing the proposed housing projects so they are they are trying to get the word back out to our employees so is it sufficient probably not uh but at least it was a good start for some of that um the other thing i will report to you is we've been trying for about a year and a half now to move forward with updating our website we've not been happy with how it looks and how it functions right now
039and so we've had presentations from four different vendors the last one was today and the committee in fact met after that and we will be bringing to you next month the proposal for a new website for the future so i just wanted to give you an update on a couple of last-minute things that have happened any questions for dr stewart is this a time to bring up something i i noticed about discipline was i i have a hard time with the names on some of this stuff is this where the discipline came in that aggression seems to be high in the in almost every school do we have counselors or somebody who is working with these excuse me these children yeah melinda we're really fortunate last year we did receive one of the state extra
040grants we had prior to that only one counselor for the entire district and so that gave us four more positions we have four of the five filled we've been unable all year to fill the position next door at the middle school those counselors are very busy we know we know from everything that we're reading and hearing that our kids have some real issues that have come about because of the change in their lives for the last year and a half and and one of the one of the ways that the kids are dealing with the stresses is not having good self-regulation skills and so aggression has been a real issue we've been addressing it we're working also with our local behavioral health agencies we're reaching out to all kinds of resources but we also want
041to expand the current programs that we use we use sanford harmony and second step second step as our first two tiers of that we want to expand that next year so that we can do some tier three things with some kids who are really really aggressive but it seems to be it seems to have escalated exponentially over the last two years it just it just seemed like when you have a kindergarten kid acting out like that that basically there's something very wrong right because we know that the younger they are the more likely they are to act out when they're frustrated because they don't know any other way to let us know that things are bothering them and uh so we've we've been trying to address those um and we just keep working on it
042we keep working at it but it's also one of the reasons that um you'll you notice in in tonight's agenda is my request for an additional position oh no it's not in tonight sorry it will be next month but i will be asking for an additional teacher and two additional paraprofessionals in our life academy because we want to do everything we can when a student is behaving in ways that are dangerous or unacceptable in our regular classrooms that we're not just booting them out on the street we want to have alternatives to help them to really focus on whatever their issues are and then reintegrate them as quickly as we can back into the school it's kind of unfortunate to have to do it on the other hand it's fortunate if we can make sure
043that we are doing those things as opposed to just kicking kids out because that doesn't is not in the best interest of any student and and and we and it's increased the need has increased because those aggressive behaviors have moved down to younger ages thank you i will say dr stewart that in looking at the discipline the three element or little school element diamondback and sunrise and desert valley their discipline's been really low compared to what i remember so kudos to the administrators there and the counselors there because their their numbers are very low the element the junior high the and the middle school i get it that's unfortunately the part of that uh age group but but the other ones are a lot less than what i remember and i appreciate your perspective on
044that charlene because i'm sure the principals and the assistant principals will be happy to hear that comparison um uh you know that that that is better because our perception is that is that it isn't but maybe our perception is based on the on the level of aggression as opposed to the number of aggressive incidents because there have been some pretty uh really aggressive kinds of things any other questions all right thank you very much uh 2.9 board member updates do we have any updates from board members at this time all right item three consent agenda before we get to a motion on the consent agenda is there anything anyone wanted to discuss i did have two items um i had a question on our personnel dr stewart uh marybeth espinoza is listed much lower than
045our other staff is there this is an individual who did not start with us at the beginning of the year and i didn't when i went through this i didn't i didn't catch that we have several people whose salaries look very low compared to what they should be because they didn't we put we just gave you what their current salary is as opposed to what it should be because we had several people who didn't start until either after first quarter or close to the middle of the year so if when you make your motion relative to this one of the things that you could do is say you know the salary that should be for an annual salary because this is this is prorated on you know they were on the correct step but it's
046pro-rated because they were not working the number of days or number of hours that they would have been if they'd started at the beginning all right so that is the great question thank you returning employees these are the returning employees in other words salary it's their currency right all right um i have a question yes soul source vendors it's the literacy program that we currently are using or is this uh is it district-wide or is it just one or two of the schools uh as i recall the sole source that we have listed is one that is being used by the grant that we have for early childhood literacy and yes so this has to do with this has to do with the vendor that the person who wrote the grant picks it has been
047an issue we have tried for three years to explain to this person that procurement rules in arizona require that we get we just went through that exactly that's when i brought when i thought about this yes and and good for you for catching it uh it's actually been one recommendation in our annual audit for the past three years because we could not get this individual to understand that there are procedures that we have to use in arizona and we're in the last year of this grant i will frankly tell you that if this were not such a valuable program for our preschoolers i would have cancelled our participation in this grant because of the issues but it is such an awesome opportunity for our kids our preschoolers get many many books and people to read
048to them through this program so it's it's such a benefit for our kids that it's been worth putting up with the headaches shall we say i did have one more i believe it was on here was i did want to give a congratulations to our fox creek olympiad incredible incredible job um so congratulations to them and they have another competition coming up and hopefully that's the state competition uh so thank you to our teachers that that put forth all that extra effort for them uh for this program and it's really nice to see those championships coming in on the olympiad um so yes congratulations to you uh anything else on the consent agenda okay then i'd like to move that we approve the consent agenda minus item 3.4 returning employees uh can i have a
049motion or a second to my motion i'll stick hey all in favor aye corey burgess hi amanda amen aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sebastian so moved uh item 3.4 i'd like to make a motion that we approve our returning employee list based off current board approved salaries can i get a second right all right then let me modify my emotion um do we have that you can just say it because you can make the motion however okay you can make the motion however you want right then i'm going to modify my motion um i'd like to uh make a motion that we approve the returning employees based off of our current board approved salaries and the addition of our presented step raises for our staff i second that motion amanda amen all
050in favor aye corey burgess hi amanda eamon aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd i'm melinda sabrasky so moved that brings us and you'll want kim to get mr tucker on the phone for your old business okay at some point you can you know wherever you want but uh that way he can share the uh his opinion yes the attorney's opinion so you can decide when you want to identify 4.0 and then give the attorney a call 4.1 uh item 4.1 reconsideration of a special election i'd like to take this time to get our attorney on the phone to update the board on where we're standing with this hi mr tucker this is bullhead city elementary school district with you how are you i'm doing well how about you i'm good thank you for being with
051us i'll turn this over to the board president is this marked for an executive session uh it is not we are in open session right now okay good evening um good evening i appreciate you taking the time to spend with us uh we have on our agenda tonight uh reconsideration of the special election um what information can you share with the public and with the board at this time concerning this topic right now yeah and i i i prefer i prefer it i'm sorry audio off yeah and uh thank you for inviting me to appear i'm i'm watching you folks [Music] thank you for inviting me gail turn the audio off on your youtube it's on a developer it's a 45 second delay so that's going to confuse you if you leave it on okay
052so i'll just i'll get out of youtube and i can just talk but it's been fun to see you all okay now i wait 45 seconds no you are live now your youtube was giving you a 45 second delay so you are live now i'm sorry you're talking to a dinosaur i'm not uh um as as one person said i'm i'm at two with electronics i'm not at one with them but nonetheless it's good to be with you thank you i typically would talk about this kind of a matter in executive session but i can give you general guidance on this topic and then if it gets into how you should go forward and legal ramifications then we could either continue it to an executive session or it's up to you folks but there's nothing
053to hide i think there's a specific law ars 15-3426 parens six excuse me close parens which teach which deals with teacher teacher edges differently than it does construction of quote school buildings close quote which is taken care of in other statutes and in the aac so ars 15342 states that the district governing board may construct or provide in rural districts housing facilities for teachers and other school employees that the board determines are necessary to operate the school so i did provide a letter which hopefully you have so i put in bold that the governing board may construct and that's different than other statutory provisions which state that subject to an election of the positive election by the electorate so this says governing board may construct the second thing i highlighted was in rural districts housing
054facilities as opposed to school buildings those are two different term terms used in the two different types of statutes and then a critical piece of language that the board determines are necessary to operate the school so this statute specifically says it's a board determination and the only condition really is that it be a rural school district so i looked further into the question of whether or not the bullhead city school district is a rural district and there is a specific statute that allows or that defines bullhead city school district as a rural school district that statute is ars 15-249.13 wherein it's stated for the purpose of federal funding eligibility determinations that are made by the department of education that involve the geographic location of the school district or charter school rule means located number one
055there's two options in a county with a population that is less than or equal to 10 percent of the population of the state two things that we looked at number one what was the rural definition and the funding part of that definition i'm informed that it's it's planned to use s or 3 funds for the construction of the teacher ages so therefore this statute appears to be on point because this is a determination made in the instance where it's federal funding number two i use my math skills to figure out the percentage of the state's population residing in mohave county according to the census bureau website bullhead city has a population of approximately 40 000 people mohave county according to the 2020 census was 213 267 people and the population of arizona according to data
056was seven million two hundred and seventy nine thousand which means mojave mohave county has about three percent of the state's population therefore those were the critical factors which led to my opinion that for the purposes of constructing the teacher ages with federal funds bullhead city school district meets with meets the definition of rural and that's the only precondition in statute 15-342 parent six close parens which allows the governing board to make the determination of whether or not the teacher ages are necessary and they should be constructed so that's a summary of what i've what i've done and what i've found and based upon that it's my opinion that this governing board can make that determination and construct teach reaches so i'm i'm here for questions if anybody's still awake any questions no sir you've answered
057them for us thank you all right thank you you have a good evening okay i will you folks do the same thank you bye all right um i hope that clarified for the board um the purpose of that call to our attorney so at this time i am rec i am going to motion that we reconsider the holding of the special election that is scheduled for may 17 2022 for voter approval uh to build the housing on the district property um and we cancel um the special election i have a couple questions okay okay first okay so the first question i would have is when do we have to cancel it far uh very soon yeah i think it's in the next week where we still have to pay some money and how much is
058it again it's going to be around 70 000. yeah it was quite a bit yeah quite a lot yeah that's a lot for an election it is kind of uncomfortable for me to not have an election without first having that i agree with having a teacher staff survey of some sort um and figuring out how they feel and things like that and um possibly after clarifying and looking into what possible housing benefits that we can offer to employees that do not take up the housing because it is kind of unfair like let's be honest i'm not quite sure what other schools do so that would be something but at the same time at 70 000 and stuff like that but i definitely think that even if we as a board have that ability to not
059have it as an election we should definitely still make a priority to ensure that everybody within the district has the ability to to be a part of it you know what i mean like that that's the purpose of the town hall to have that information meeting so that's that's why we're going that route but we have to cancel the meet the or we spend 70 thousand dollars so that's the thing i just wanted to make sure that also because i know as the public is listening to this they want to have input you know what i'm saying and for us to take their input away we have to be clear that okay we're still going to actually keep your opinions in mind we're going to talk to the teachers we're going to do all these
060things and stuff like that but it's 70 right do you see what i'm saying so so if we have the ability to not have to spend that money then i definitely agree with that but as long as we can reassure the community that we're not forgetting and i can answer that that was the information that was initially given to me by this county superintendent and so when i followed up with him because uh uh mayor brady called me and he said i'm not sure that that's accurate so i immediately followed up on that and i did report that back to the board that that that initial information that i had received was inaccurate i shared it with them in good faith but as soon as we found out that it was more than that we
061you know i let them know exactly where where we were going with that we have we have a timeline for using the or three funding and this is a huge project we would still have to pay for the in the general election it might not be as much but we would still have to pay to have it on the ballot and we're under we're under a timeline to do these projects by september 30th of 2024 so another putting this out another six or seven months could be a huge difference absolutely but the issue is that if they decide tonight not to have an election we can begin moving with the project yes and we do have a motion on the floor yes without a second they're releasing a second that motion amanda amen okay all
062in favor aye corey burgess aye amanda eamon aye charlene some diaz mr president if i may i'd like to assure folks that we don't want any secrets about this we want all the information that we can get out there and for instance a couple of the concerns that ms boyd had are things that this group will need to decide relative to answering all of those questions there are lots of details and as melinda said you know we're drilling down into much more fine details at this point that's where we need lots of input from people and i'll give you an example of something i hadn't even thought of and i certainly am not the expert on this but when i met with the superintendent's employee advisory committee yesterday two suggestions that they had right off
063the top were will we can we make sure that some of these units are ada accessible well okay that's a great idea and we certainly need to make sure that that happens but we need to you know we need to know that now and not six months from now and the other one was can this be pet friendly well if that's one of the things that helps us keep people or help people come that's an easy thing for us to do but those are the kinds of details that you all can decide relative to those details and rent and all of those other questions so a lot of the things that you all are asking are simply things that have not been addressed yet but will be before we go much got to farther point
064i mean the public needs to know what's going on and you're you're like the cart's here and you're there of course before the order yeah i mean you're asking you're bringing a question very good about it things like that i didn't think about that one adh i did but anyway you're not viewing him you're not giving anybody room to get involved to find out what's going on you've made the decision it's done deal you're gonna proceed doesn't matter what all these other things are going to cost you or what we're going to do with them or how we're going to handle them or what's going to cost all of that absolutely matters and we've been very forthright and and forward with with our stewart but we are see the in and understand katie i'd love
065to talk to you about this in depth i would absolutely love to um you don't have all the information and i think once you do have more information then you i would hope you wouldn't feel so strongly against this um okay okay okay all right like i said we need to get back to the board meeting now we need to keep going through because my kids fly out tomorrow and i want to be there and spend time with them tonight so we're going to we're going to get through our agenda now and and we'll have a town hall meeting and we're going to become experts and we're going to do our thing and we're going to go through so here we go thank you mr president okay uh item 5.1 classroom capacity dr stewart mr
066president and board members i shared with you and with the public recommendations for classroom capacity for this coming year it is this they are the same numbers as the current year and we made our best guesses last year for capacity two things are important about that one is for us to have some idea of how many teachers we need and the second one is we have to establish capacity before we can address the applications for open enrollment i will tell you that all of our at least 75 percent of our classrooms are above capacity right now because our students did return we based our numbers last year on you know on what we were guessing people were coming back and we and we put people in those positions but there's we don't have any real
067reason to change the capacity it's just a matter for us to be able then to build our new budget based on current enrollments and parents telling us the kids are coming back and it helps us determine for open enrollment purposes so i didn't see any reason to change the administration didn't see any reason to change those to recommend the same things any questions on that dr the transitional classes are is that the 18 next to it is that the capacity that is the capacity for those classes and we anticipate keeping some of those may shift you know as kids move we may need to add transition at a grade level that didn't have or maybe have two at a grade level that had only one and the grade level that had one before might not
068need it but where our our goal is that in another year we might not need any transitions or very few and we can fold those back into our regular budget the transition positions are all paid from sr2 and will continue to be paid from esser funds sr3 as well so those that allows us to have those smaller classes and they've been pretty successful for our kids any other questions okay we need a motion on item five point one accept those capacities or set those capacities for each of those grade levels in each of those rules do we have a second second all in favor aye corey burgess i'm amanda ehman aye charlene diaz so moved item 5.2 new employee positions dr stewart mr president and members of the board at this time i'd like to
069have approval uh for a new position for the to wrap up the current year and that one is for uh the p second p e position at the middle school uh historically we've had a male teacher and a female teacher last year we dropped one of those positions we muddled through and and we've begun to have some issues so it's a little awkward to only have a male teacher and have mixed classes so i would like to recommend and have approval to put that position back in we have at least one position at another school that we have not even done anything with this year other than funding so this addition will not impact our budget in any way for the remainder of the year we know we are unlikely to find a teacher at
070this point but at least that would let us put a substitute in there and have uh have the second person in the pe classroom the other is relative to the new budget i'd like for you all to approve so that as i'm building the new budget i'd like to have five of the current part-time bus driver positions changed to full-time and the reason there are several reasons for this one the main reason is it would allow us to have one of one bus driver at each of our five sites to go in the work in the middle of the day and help with lunch lunch supervision and relieve some of the duties that our teachers have it's not going to relieve everybody it's an elementary district and so there's almost always duty assignments for our
071teachers but if it can reduce by one the number of teachers who have to be on those duties that will relieve some pressure for people the second thing is this is also a good way for us to retain some of our younger bus drivers they come and train with us they work with us but they're part-time jobs and they have families our older drivers don't care they'd rather work part-time for a lot of reasons but the younger drivers of course would like full-time jobs and so we're much more likely to retain some of those folks if they have a full-time job so it benefits transportation it benefits us as a district it benefits our kids i see it kind of as a win-win-win and that's for the next budget not for the current budget and
072that is sustainable yes it is transportation has been so difficult this year with everybody but i mean if this would help us retain so our quality employees that we have for sure i mean our bus drivers if you know any bus drivers out there who want a job they train they work through it all they do it all right here in the district please reach out for an app we are needing uh bus drivers thanks for the ad [Laughter] any other questions can we get a motion on item 5.2 i move to approve the new employee positions all in favor aye corey burgess i'm amanda eamon hi charlene diaz hi anna boyd so moved item 5.3 exhibit khc dash e distribution and posting of promotional materials dr stewart mr president board members this was uh
073that exhibit that you looked at during the workshop and we'd like you to approve it so we can put it into action [Music] any more questions on the exhibit all right did i move we approve item 5.3 all in favor aye corey burgess aye amanda eamon aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd so moved item 5.4 representative at the insurance meet and confirm meeting dr stewart mr president board members we will be having a meeting on march 16th of the combined meet and confer committees and some presentations relative to insurance so that we can establish our contracts for the coming year or two-year period however the case may be it's always good to have a board member as part of that process did we have a board member that would be willing to represent us at
074the uh i don't think they intended but it sure looks like they're hiding so without receiving a nomination like emporium force told anybody would like to what's the is that no it would be it would be from probably from about four to six pm it's yeah it's it's only about a two hour it's uh it's a wednesday you need more do you need more than one member um ashley one board member and then uh um i'm going to ask a couple of community people what we're kind of doing is replicating the way that the old trust functioned where there was a board and uh and then ambassadors from the sites so in this case the ambassadors from the sites of the representatives from the district are the two meet and confer committees and if we
075have a board member uh in in the old trust there was one board member from our district and one board member from the high school district and three community people so if we have one board member you could have two i don't think you want to have a quorum but uh but you could have two i don't i don't see that as a big issue and then we'd add we'd like to add at least one person from the community and perhaps two okay we can have two we can have two so i don't know what i'm doing it's forward it's probably it starts at four and i'm guessing it's going to take a couple hours so do we need to make a motion for that to well if you have volunteers maybe not or do
076we have to appoint or yeah because we have to appoint the board members to participate right now where you can have a volunteer or appointed member to participate so that's the only reason so we just have to approve the volunteers so i would like to move that we approve our two board member volunteers for this committee which two there was three i said i didn't know what i was doing okay i thought wow i missed something so uh mr browski and miss diaz i'll second that nomination or approval all in favor aye corey burgess hi amanda eamon hi charlene i'm out diaz thank you that's amazing okay item 5.5 possible action on a recommendation from the superintendent to dismiss emergency certified teacher darren meyer dr stewart mr president board members um as you see i'm
077recommending that we terminate an employee a teacher who has been hired this year on an emergency certificate and it is legal for you to do that with 10 days notice to this individual did we have any questions at this time then i would like to move that we approve the recommendation and dismiss darren meyer do we have a second all in favor aye corey burgess hi amanda ayman aye charlene diaz hi anna boyd so moved item 5.6 possible action on the recommendation of the superintendent to non-renew renee munoz dr stewart mr president and board members this is a first-year teacher in our district and my recommendation to non-renew is based on professional conduct not on classroom performance are there any questions no we'll call for it um yeah i would like to move that we
078have approved the recommendation of non-renewal for renee munoz do we have a second i'll second that motion all in favor aye corey burgess aye amanda eamon aye charlene diaz okay so moved item 6.1 future topics so with future topics um because we talked about purchasing the land we talked about some of those things i think it would be really great time that we actually talk about where we're at in purchasing land because we haven't gone past purchasing the land because that was one of the things that if we stop the whole project right there we just own a great actually pretty prime piece of land that people were bidding for closure is tomorrow and we can perfect so if we can give an update with that um if we can give an update with if
079we have um because i know that we had already sought out some of the information on what it was going to take to see where we start like phase one of the project yes that'd be a very great thing because every time we come up here and talk we get lots of questions but we don't always provide information of questions that we know we have so um even if that would help us kind of get some information out there absolutely um to kind of get an update on his steps and i'm not a project manager i'm not involved with that's real estate that has never been my thing but i would love to see if there was somebody that had phases for us yes and we can proceed with plan yes phase two is this
080phase three is this phase four and where we're at in those phases absolutely and we had just kind of put all of it on hold because first with the aggregate spending limit and and then with uh learning about whether we needed to proceed with the boat or not um so absolutely we will have those kinds of things for you the closure on the uh on the purchase is tomorrow they extended it so we knew we had it past this board meeting so and then um with the town hall meeting if we can kind of get that on the date and the agenda and everything for our next yep next next okay perfect absolutely any other upcoming all right moving on to 6.3 this is where we're at date time location of future meetings we have
081set for april 14th of 2022 uh for our workshop and meeting uh this is the time i would like to do the uh meeting the informational town hall at this one if that's okay so well at a workshop before can we do it can we yeah no no we can change the time yeah we'll have to increase do this okay so let's talk dates then mr president could i also throw into the mix um uh we're having that meeting on the 16th about insurance with with the whole team if we are to dis discontinue if we were if the recommendation would be to discontinue our contract with kairos with whom we have our health insurance and our pharmacy insurance they we must cancel that by april 1st so i was suggesting to you that we
082have a meeting after the 16th between the 16th and the 1st that could be two things one could be the planning that you all are doing together for the you know have a board actual a real workshop where you're doing the planning for the town hall and your pieces and all of that as a workshop and then have the meeting to talk about insurance to to decide on whether we're staying with kairos or going you know going to move to somebody else so that could be the workshop would be longer than the meeting i think in that case but uh to have that meeting sometime between the 16th and the first and then plan your when you actually want your town so we could have that town hall the town hall could be after april
0831st at that point or um or after the 14th whatever you all decide i think the night of the meeting you have for your planning is when you could set a date unless you want to set it tonight which you could for your town hall let's just set it tonight and give a couple weeks notice that way yeah i was just saying we might want to just if we do that you're talking dr stewart about doing um a workshop for us to gather figure out who's doing water yes yes on the 16th no no between the 16th and the 1st right between the 16th and the 1st because at some point in there you all do need to take some action relative to insurance and it struck me that both of those could be at
084the same time the workshop and then that meeting could be the same the same evening and that was why i was suggesting that to you and then pick a date for you know if you want to pick a date for your town hall and uh anything relative to that we get all the information those questions ready to go so we kind of know who's going to be what part on that between the 16th march 16th and april 1st to find out who's going to get what areas what questions where we're going to be so have that as a workshop then have the meeting to handle our insurance that same night at that point we can determine when we want to have the town hall because then we'll have a little better idea i kind of
085have a feel of what information i have to go get you on the insurance it has to be done by the first but that's why that's why we'll do that before then yeah so we'll have the workshop before that to discuss what questions and and problems and i'm going to be in charge of x you're going to be in charge of y so on we'll we'll figure that out on that meeting that's before april 1st right um then we'll have that meeting that's before april 1st to determine what we're going to do with insurance right right and then that evening of that all those three those two things we will set the date for the town hall and our next meeting does that work so now when you figure out what day between the 16th
086and the 1st works for everybody [Music] that might be a little quick to well you could relative to kairos probably i would say our normal workshop because this isn't the yeah this isn't going to be the town hall this is to get all those questions kind of figure out okay i'll take this topic i'll take this topic we know what some of these questions are people can bring more questions whatever we have but if we figure i would say five o'clock because then we have an hour if we do that then i i would prefer a monday wednesday because i do tutoring for on tuesday and thursdays until six o'clock dang math and i know it's math it's such a shame and i always feel bad leaving those little types every time we have these
087meetings but they're much bigger types than your takes [Laughter] so you're the yeah i mean we could start it at six because then i wouldn't have to leave as early that's not my thing is i just don't like leaving them for like because i always leave like an hour early if you guys are up for that i'm i'm fine and i don't want to do that more than once a month okay a six pm on a on a what day were we talking though because it's gonna be a tuesday thursday because you're till eight so we wanna do it on monday wednesday though so we wanna do a tuesday thursday because you're till eight because you can be here by six yeah so if we do a tuesday thursday because you can be here at
088six the stuff that's going on in the city the week of the 16th through the 20th there's no other meeting set um so i'm just a little concerned that the turnaround from the evening of the 16th to the evening of the 17th maybe a little quick push but the next tuesday would be okay the next tuesday is the 22nd right uh nothing on this list so we don't have a con conflict is everybody okay on the for 6 p.m on march 22nd so on march 22nd what are we doing on march 22 march 22nd at 6 o'clock we're going to be presented with the questions that have been submitted so she's going to have this if anybody else wants to submit questions they need to have them to us before that's what we need to
089tell people so get them to the district before that time so we can figure out because we may not have the answer to these questions i don't think we should tackle them then because we're gonna we're kind of figuring out okay i'm gonna take this group you're gonna take that group you're gonna take that group and then we'll set the time that we'll come back to answer these questions so we kind of know what's going on and it gives you and it gives you a chance i'm sorry to interrupt it gives you a chance as a group for some of those questions for you at least to as a group decide okay we'd like to see i'll use an example um we'd like to see here's what we'd like to see in terms of what
090the rent might be not nail it down to a certain set of dollars because we're not going to know that at this point relative to the expenses of running running this property deciding do you want the district to be the property manager do you want to hire a property management firm you know that kind of thing so you would be making some decisions relatives to some answers and then some of the others you might not have you'd have to do a little research on so it's really it really would be a workshop okay so and that's march 22nd so could we ask that the questions be turned into the district by march 16th i mean of course there's so many trickles and questions after we're not going to say no you can play with that
091friday if you want to change yeah 18. extend it to the 18th because i'm just saying that way they kind of have a deadline to get them in i mean obviously if they submit them later if we are able to look them over we're not going to say no but if we can have the bulk of it those questions then we can kind of sift through and right you know if if 12 people asked how much did the land cost well that's more frequently you know so if we can kind of get some of those things ahead of time yes so then it's not what we're doing here each night where exactly we get questions but we don't have the answers because we're not there so we don't know what the rent's going to be
092but that's a big question yes it is because that's what people want to know and how are we going to choose between you know 100 applicants and we have 25 housing units exactly how is that going to go and we don't know those answers yet but we do need to start making plans on how to approach those absolutely if we keep continuing through and everything goes through the way it is absolutely and in the meantime i can also reach out to some of the other districts in arizona who have teacherage that would be great and say how did how did you how did you determine these things criteria and and what do you you know what do you have going on so at least you guys have some information to start from yeah that was
093just what i was going to reiterate to remind people that this isn't new there are other school districts who are doing this successfully okay so because other school districts are doing successfully they have a lot of these answers already ready for us so a lot of people who are wondering like how are school districts doing this or whatever like that because like again what i said earlier is i feel like a lot of people are thinking that this is brand new it's never happened before that we're setting a new president or something like that or not this has been around for a while so one follow-up with that too is are we going to have a chance between and i know we got spring break coming up but to to do some sort of survey
094with our staff since it's been requested multiple times like is there a is there a quick google sheet we can get out there and ward would like us to do that can we give our directive to do something like that um just a few short questions i don't need them to have a long one but just a few short questions so then we can gather some information and i know that we're asking a lot because it's coming up on spring break and they're probably already on vacation if they haven't left yet um but just to check their email we have that time after break yeah we've got that whole week so yeah if we could gather something about that you know asking them about you know would this be a benefit to you would you
095be interested in it how does it you know would you you know is this something that if it's an option for you because i know we keep talking about like if we have an employee who's with the district and this is employees we keep saying teachers teachers teachers but this is for staff members and and we keep talking about you know but and it's you know retainer recruit but it's both it's and it is and two of the people on your list tonight of resignations left because they do not have housing yes and just to add in i know there's a lot of concern about you know we have all this staff but only limited housing i'm of a strong mindset just because we can't help everybody doesn't mean we don't help anybody we have
096an excellent opportunity here and no it's not going to be able to help everybody it's not but that doesn't mean we don't help what we can help well i know we emphasized it before we we have some single teachers we've got some young teachers we've got some older teachers some veteran teachers but they're willing to room with people or they come in in a group of that's been recruited together or they've retained together but they've just lost the apartment but now there's a house so even though it's a three bedroom two bath or a four bedroom two bath or whatever they could do things so even if it's two bedrooms or three bedrooms or whatever it happens to turn out to be it's optional there's teachers that have shared the entire time i've worked in
097this this community um they all get together and they rent a house together they even converted a garage to an apartment you know so it's not just one family or one teacher with their husband children wives or you know wives and children or what vice versa it could be two or three in one home if they choose if that's open an option so it's not just 25 individuals it could be 50. that we can yeah definitely yeah find on those lists see where we are absolutely set that up um so that those days work for everybody 20 seconds and to answer i'm sorry but to answer uh uh amanda's other part then the business part of that meeting would be about the insurance so those would really be the only two things at this time
098that would be on that agenda and that's just for us to divvy up our sections and then the towel hall will come after later yes okay yes at least we have some one question and one suggestion the question is what deadline do you want me to publicize for the 18th to have their questions submitted by okay that's for the public yes the second is a suggestion in the past with superintendent searches and other things like that we have emailed out a link to a serving month so that one person or a couple of people are not being bombarded with hundreds that's whatever's easiest that's great going to do yeah employees give them a survey monkey link and then it's just all tabulated yeah whatever is easiest yes that's what i was thinking post that survey
099monkey and and and then i i mean it's not the same i get it it's not a vote but it it gets it out there to the community that they even though we just canceled for 70 000 dollars because we wanted to save that there's an opportunity there to have a voice and it may be two different sets of questions but or it could be one set of questions you guys work that out whatever you see is best i agree with that work it out work it out but great suggestion thank you having a thousand emails coming in great kim likes emails yeah kim loves emails what is her email address again what's up [Laughter] yeah thank you lance that was a good suggestion all right anything else on that okay at this time i'd
100like to make a motion that we adjourn i'll second that motion amanda amen all in favor aye corey burgess i'm amanda eamon hi charlene diaz hi anna boyd we are adjourned thank you thank you you