001pledge aliance pleaseed algi to the of the United States of America and to rep Sorry Miss here Mrs Mr M Mrs Allan here Mr here so with that we're going to have our study session with the honorable Greg [Music] schuber okay so every year the auditor General's office issues a u a Financial Risk analysis for every District it's based on about nine 10 different factors um this year we brought it to the board's attention this year because there are some things in in the report that are rather unpleasant and things that we are going to have to have serious discussions so that we can correct these um I'm sorry so one of the categories is change in weighted student count um our one-year change over the previous year was 0.4% and our average over the
002last four years is 1.3% so what this basically means is we aren seeing any growth we aren't seeing any um loss of students we are basically a FL yes when those new houses be built south of can be our school district where do we get there'll be 400 houses going in there and it's non AG restricted south of Cano where where south of Cano um off the interstate on the West Side the we 400 homes built there towards mon distance between um model and re it's really going to depend on exactly where because our lines and sural line is yeah it really depends on where the development actually is but yeah open they become I just 400 do you know specifically you know where Montana is I can't answer I can find out for sure
003is the development going to be to the east of that road if that's the east of that road then that's in our district if it's the west of that road then seros remember goes around our district and then incorporates araka and Amada so that's kind of where that cut off is but then you get to the end of monana V Road and draw a line imaginary line right Road straight back to the interstate and that's our that's our District boundary in that it's going to be based off of Madera Highlands kind of specs is what they're wanting single family homes in there which so be non AG restricted and a lot of those people will be working for South 32 in pagonia that's kind of their their housing District going be have the permits been
004negotiated yet I mean it's been in the newspaper it's been I don't know think in rooftop just I'm just thr that out there that there could be possibly some kids hopefully from that District so the the good news is though is that the um you know we haven't had growth and loss and there's a lot of schools that have lost a lot of enrollment um across the state especially in Kinder first second I mean we see the trend here as well but because students leave and then students come in so it's usually three out the door three in so uh we have been pretty stable and this also comes back to budgeting so that when we come back and we say that we Vegas our budget off of kids that's pretty close to where we're
005going to be and saying if we're going to get 700 to 20 know let's face it it's a pike tree we open for 705 yeah so and we would have made it if we didn't lose kids so we are gaining kids I I'm doing tours every single day the problem is kids are moving out of the district out of the state and and when we're doing our budgets we're using this historical data to say look over the last five years we've gained a total of nine kids we thought that at least I did the new section in Manda Islands add doesn't and two years ago when that was going in we did plan for that but it just it never materialized where did those kids go there aren't there really wasn't a whole lot of
006kids they real little I see the little ones running around and the other ones are getting old so they're nice and even with the change in our boundary that we found out recently that's an age restricted area also so that were kids but that's the area she's talking about it's soua there I would I think those students are probably end up being Salas and go to so but we'll double check if they put it right up next to the Canoa golf course in that area right back in there which is what I'm that's what I what I'm thinking I think that falls in our area that because those taxpayers are right in that area right next to it so that's that's going to be it depends where the wash is that cuts the line to
007the South so this so this area we're not at risk according to the auditor general go to the sorry Oh no you're fine you're fine because because it it comes into play with what we were talking about all right so this is our budget limit Reserve I okay um if this 109 59 for 2024 yep is that the carryover into 2025 that's the carryover into this yes so the numbers on the left that is the amount of money that we carried over into the next school year so to to break it down if our budget was $5 million for this school year with our carryover our budget would have been 5,195 okay so that's how that work work so in order to remove ourselves from this high-risk category there's a couple things that we should
008that we need to think about we need to think about a getting our Reserve back to that 350 375 area um we also need to look at um when we're looking at raises you know you know not doing what's going to put us at this $100,000 remaining at the end of the school year making sure that we keep that 345 350 um buffer at the end of the school year and that's per formula the yes yes because what they say is right now if something were to happen we could couldn't cover the expect the sharp drop looks to be about $250,000 which is what cut from our budget last year is that where it came from is that why it dropped so much well so also remember we didn't do raises um so yeah that
009it doesn't it doesn't help you know so by not doing raises and having to cut 250,000 out it left us at $19,000 okay um there's a couple of ways to address this um we can take a look at Staffing we can take a look at like I said earlier doing raises and not budgeting it raises down to where we have almost nothing left at the end of the year the only way we're going to get out of this highrisk category is to get our numbers back into this area so if you remember in the past when staff and board members would look at the number of the 760,000 or the 361,000 and we weren't giving raises to the staff where we were very conservative in terms of that it was for this reason that you
010know if we don't have the carry forward and there's an emergency and we can't we don't have the funds to take care of it if the air conditioning goes down or you know something happens with building and we don't have the funds so when the audit in general looks at this amount they it marks us as high risk a district that's high risk because of the low amount of carry forward that we have but you will see there is an anomaly in 2021 that was my first fiscal year here and not knowing how the year you know progresses within this district and expenses towards the end of the year and everything else I was very fiscally conservative you're saying good I was saying a lot of notes but that is there for this reason it's
011it's done with this in mind is making sure that at the end of the year we have the finances to meet all of our obligations and covered anything that comes up you know out of the you know that's not out of the North are so the question is with the budget limit Reserve if we because it's a fouryear average so if we maintain 109,000 carry forward for the next three years will that get us out of high risk it won't because it's still less than 1% of our budget okay we need to keep it in that 350 to 375 range to keep it out Ste in that 2021 Greg pointed out she said a lot of I also want to point out that was Co so we Wen running buses everywhere all over the place
012there was a lot of things that are normal day-to-day basis that we weren't doing because we that was that Co time so that also plays into that the year matches that where obviously you're not going to spend as much but you don't have the kids on campus we we also had special funding for a lot of things yes we we spent as funding on a lot of stuff which allow larger number I find it a little sick that the state took $250,000 from us late last year well you also have to remember we do that to ourselves by not budgeting towards that number on the previous slide as as we keep saying you know well let's budget for 720 kids well I can do that but we're going to lose it but we're going to
013Lo it it's better to budget for the six and 85 yeah and not have to worry about it but are controversy with that before was if we do get the students the state won't give us more funding it's a wash so that's where we kind of toyed with okay let's shoot for more let's be conservative and know that if we don't have numbers we're going to have to reimburse it so that was kind of of our approach so does anybody have any questions on this piece I mean it's a study session so it's open for questions concerns clarification so this is the exact same as the previous slide except for this is District additional Assistance or our capital budget um as you can see we are fairly consistent within our capital budget about how much
014we are are carrying over um the first two years we carried over you know $100,000 each year um but also remember since 2020 and since in 2021 school year we've been doing a lot of work around the district getting buildings fixed fixing there's been a lot of Maintenance that has gone into the buildings into the vehicles and things like thater maintenance comes out of the capital yes and also remember that when we bought the buses those GRS also come out of capital have two years left yes and we won't be getting as many for the same price so this is this is our Reserve Revenue so what this is telling us is that our 2023 audited we had 8.3 million in revenue and 7.8 in expenditures are un audited for 2024 which the audit begins
015this well we've already been sending stuff but they'll be here on Tuesday um we spent 5.4 million on $4 million of Revenue so they haven't taken into account all of the um the federal grants they haven't taken into account a lot of those granted we don't have $1.4 million in Grants but um about how much do we have in pending grants in federal grants [Music] just I know um we've approved what of the the maintenance F stuff okay so but has it come through yet right so so are those hitting the books those said the book because it shows that we spent $185,000 for some Plumbing work but it doesn't show the revenue until they do the audit to see yes they received the $185,000 okay about how much is outstanding there as of right
016now there's about $180,000 outstanding so we're still running about 1.2 deficit according yeah but also it doesn't take into account the payments of rce for all grants so Ida um esdaa so once they actually do our audit it'll it'll show up a lot better we be back with the Positive cash flow or it still be negative it should it should be fairly close it should be fairly close I think there's about another 1.2 outstanding all right so this is the change in fund balance so we had in our 22 to 23 audit $443,000 in our ml cash account County Treasurer the unau UN audited balance isga 1.3 remember that in the November December time frame that $2 million that was improperly coded to ml went to Capital so that's why you're seeing a 1.3 deficit
017right now that deficit is just over a million dollars so we are working on getting that down um but this will not correct itself until we actually have a positive cash balance and part of that also comes back to not keeping $100,000 at the end of the school year so since that was a county treasure error the auditor general doesn't care doesn't care they just report the numbers because it was the county treasurer's office because that happened to other a lot of schools that got the reimbursement it's the board's responsibility to understand that not right so that that was my original question was even though it was the county treasur error still reflects negatively on us in terms of what aitor general because the auditor general doesn't care who made the error because the numbers
018are the numbers so Capital money is redirected to operations as you can see we would have been fine but we did move $161,000 out of it into Capital that amount covers our our lease purchase payment okay our capital budget this year was only $390,000 after we cut with the December revision so that is why this is listed as a high risk if we wouldn't have done that we wouldn't have any Capital Money remaining as of last month right so that means that when a bus loses a transmission that bus is just done so they're thinking we should keep more operation funds their so their point is is you should be keeping your Capital money in your capital budget you should be leaving your money in your M account if anything you should be transferring Capital
019to M and not vice versa now remember we can only do this once and that's at at our budget adoption and once it's done it's done we can't we can't unring the Bell so here's a good one small school budget limit adjustment we don't qualify we are too big of a district to qualify um we would have to have a district that had roughly 250 kids or less to qualify for this so just wanted to put that out there as you know a piece of good news the next one here's another piece we do not have a fro tax rate um so as as you guys know property taxes is what pays is how the district gets paid um the current tax rate that we have is enough to cover our budget um if more
020housing is coming in unfortunately that means that yes we will still be able to cover our budget we may be able to drop the tax rate but we will be shipping more money off to the state because our budget depending on you know kids coming in our budget isn't going to adjust much from that point isn't our tax rate already being adjusted up it's low no no well so our tax rate is artifici it's artificially inflated the minimum tax there's a minimum tax rate that there has to be and our tax rate is the minimum tax rate so yeah we actually have one of the lowest tax rates in the state are we still giving back about 440 we're not giving back that much but we are giving back 4050 [Music] Grand Greg where in
021this report is um is it reported the loss of students from the high school that we used to get funds for it's not the only thing that's in there go [Music] back so right here that's about the only place that you're going to see with the with the loss um unfortunately you know there isn't a 22 audited that they list but this is where you can see that you know the budget you can just if you just look at the expenditure amount you can see that that's down over 2 million it's down $2.4 million and we were paying Serita right around 1.9 for High School tuition and we were using that extra as a buffer as well as using that to give out raises in December knowing that we weren't paying you know $2.3 million
022in tuition but this is as far as this report goes this is about the only spot you're going to see anything related towards that that reduction fund and after the audit it's starting soon how long until they adjust our numbers you'll see it on our next repor next year yeah next year okay that that comes out at so our big two things is we need to our reserves by quite a bit as well as something with our operation bu and they go hand in hand sure do we have an action plan for building back the reserve it's seems like a very Steep and I you we lost that big that overage that we had with the high schoolers um we had to use a lot of the reserve last year we are not gaining students
023um we didn't do raises last year so is that something you want to do your where's the money so that's where we really have to look at um districts that are in this position right we have to really recruit and get more students somehow um hopefully you know those homes are ours because we generate more funding by students that's how we get our ADM so if our students don't increase then it's um we're looking at being overstaffed right the problem has been we used to be um staffed with more students and now we have the reverse we're overstaffed with less students so um you know we need to increase our revenue and get our get our um kids get more kids to come in yeah our staffing was fine for a $7 million budget it's
024not fine for a $5 million budget so you need 30 to 40 students right we get fall apart by the time you add all the various forms of funding comes to about 10,000 you figure it's about about $9,000 per five months to do it hard can okay so just so you know our 100th day has passed any kid that comes in we don't get paid and and if you want to look at it a little bit more terribly those kids that came in like the beginning of January beginning of December those weren't even full students those are Rec we need to get them here when school starts yeah and the kids come to us have to stay here instead of getting $9,000 for that student yeah so instead of getting 9,000 we got 2800 and
025also looking at Open Enrollment you know prior to eight years ago when when I became superintendent open enrollment was frozen and we were not accepting any kids so if you remember we slowly started adding and adding staff kids and that's a huge do we for open enrollment so we have open enrollment on our on our U website we put a sign we're ordering the sign out there that says now accepting open enrollment think that will only target people going to Canyon like picnics can we do like can we boost um pay to boost Facebook posts so we attract um maybe stan9 yeah Rancho Santas and we had talked about last year at Transportation right to see when we did our Kinder Roundup and said we're accepting kids from saita did we get one family Mrs
026web us that came from that from that night one or two and they've been transporting their kids here but we talked about again if we had more students then that would justify transportation and a route so try to figure that out how many students let's say [Music] inos um how many students would we need in order to get a transportation for them have we got 10 students in that neighborhood Steve what do you think if we had how many more students could me from M Royals area to transport like to actually offer transportation and I had a call from Dr valuel yesterday because one of his board members said that we don't transport to saita that we only transport to Walden and um but the conversation is we drive right by SAA um after we
027drop off at Walden we drop off and then we have special need students we do and we don't but that ultimately that decision to take high schoolers there doesn't increase our budget here at all so that actually spends more money from the budget instead of brings it back to our district to transport them to high school that we don't get compensated the way the way Transportation that's partially right partially not because the way we get trans compensated for buses is mileage and per student that's why we use student counts the bus drivers remember when we were kids but they're doing that for safety so they know how many kids are on the bus but we have to report those numbers to the state and then reimburse us so we we we kind of get paid
028for that but ultimately it's not the best move there well I'm thinking like if we can uh attract a handful of kids from one of these neighborhoods they say oh could we ride the bus we say well get 10 more of your friends to sign up and we've actually talked about like off of all mind those neighborhoods right along we talked originally a couple years ago about Rancho I I believe that's the wrong move I think that's going to the North End of serita's boundary I say we start with the neighborhoods like even old no Dallas those houses that everybody Drives By Creek those are seren if I live in those houses I would prefer my kids to come here and so you know the ones right right there by the cons before you h
029oh yeah those are notri you think they are not so wellek that cut off um and so if we targeted those areas if we targeted if we started targeting some of those which we already have quite a few families in there UMO like behind Sprout what what is that yes so that's that's our boundary line that's not in our jurisdiction but it's right next door those are the neighborhoods um targeting behind Walmart right those are the ones that I would recommend because they don't cost us anymore to transport or we have buses already that drive by it yeah so to get to the main road so you're driving Qui it you go to Rancho and you're going out of our way so if we advertise those areas we can advertise Transportation the the the answer
030to that is it's a political game so we can basically take our buses on any public road anywhere so if we decid to Target a neighborhood in Tucson we could go up to Tucson transport kids here sure you're going to make enemies with neing districts because you're taking away their revenue and so keep in mind Ser district is our neighbors we have a good working relationship with them um when you intentionally Target taking away other kids from their budget you're not going to make a lot of friends um having said that we have a lot of kids in there already that have made the choice could we transport them to make it more convenient for them yes would fellow neighbors see the buses in there and see that they have a choice yes um legally
031can we go in there with our buses yes it's a public roadway they can't stop us from going into any jurisdiction right Serita is owns the majority of Madera they own Madera Highlands right it's a their city limits and we take our bus there so that's that's not a problem there's a bigger problem that we're not talking about which is do we have the buses do we have the drivers right now we're on a Bare Bones trying to just get the kids that we already have here so we're talking about a pipe frame when I can't guarantee our families that we've had to call in and say hey you're gonna have to wait 30 minutes for us to get a bus out and get back because we're short drivers and I'm driving and everybody else
032and so and we are one of the lowest paying districts and I know it's money right we're one of the lowest paying districts for bus drivers in the state so for us we have drivers here that are amazing because they're dedicated to our district they are not relying on the paycheck most drivers are relying on that paycheck so if we increase an hour what up five five bucks yeah about like four to five bucks an hour we're belowa now so for us to do that we have to fix that for us to get drivers to be able to and it's goes back to you got to spend M spend money to make money right that's the business model but is is that the answer I don't know the buses that go by those neighborhoods right
033now are maxed out so I I can't put more than five kids on any additional bus that we have um that's going to our North Boundary because those are my full buses right so back to the buses that get the head count the high school buses more yes sir the revenue that we get off of those is that offsetting our cost how close are we it's going to be the business managers so what it does is we get the mileage that we drive for the high schools RS and then we also collect half of the capital dollars that we would have that we used used to be receiving for that so for that number of students so the answer is actually yes we are coming out ahead it does matter when we're transport transporting our
034our high schoolers is it enough ahead to pay a driver $21 an hour to match the r no and we've discussed in the past if you remember umut the high school kids loose and say Serita needs to transport and we were looking at doing that because that would free up to of our drivers because we're running two buses for the high school right now just to get our own kids in our district to and from and I hate to look at the high school kids is not in our district but at this point because of the change was made they're not technically they're not our students anymore so we're not getting compensated for them but we are transporting them because they live inside of our district foundaries which doesn't also get we are not legally
035bound but by cutting that out we lose another 26,000 if that's what we looked at it would it would be a bigger hit to our budget to lose and to be clear we're not we're not legally required to provide any transportation to any our students unless it's identified on their IEP and so that's a very small handful of kids but the reality is that's business too we want kids to come in our school we would lose a lot of kids if we didn't transport so we we need to continue to provide a very good Transportation which I believe that we do and we've gone for our ups and downs with hiring and things of that nature um in quality of buses which we several years ago got five new buses which really helped alleviate that
036and so it's just it goes back to it's to fix your problem you got to spend money and that's we don't have so I have two other quick little things um on open enrollment if we pull out the staff's kids that are here what areas are they coming from or the bulk of them coming from and then maybe that's the area that we focus on first as far as recruiting is we have kids from r that are on open enrollment we have some from Tucson actually that come in from Tucson whose parents work at um you see HC um they come here quite a few from Rancho area you know not like in one neighborhood Rancho is a really big place but they're kind of they're spread out in there yeah it's not a cluster
037it's it's spread and then isn't with all that new Rancho building because I know a few teachers that are over at um Bry and they're full and they're going to be Fuller you know is there if you haven't been through wal then they're doing expansions on the buildings right now because they already out grown their capacity so they're trying to core constructions in the middle of a of building additional room has it ever been I'm just thinking out loud since we have a little time of saying hey we'll take the kids Behind Sprouts or whatever and let's just say there's 50 and just move our districts I think that's easier seven number can we borrow those kids and so you have for well is in the same situation probably um they're in a situation where
038they're looking at again they're losing students they're not getting the funding that they were getting for the kids for their loss so they're starting to look at also um not hiring teachers who retired through attrition right they're they're trying to tighten up their budget as well because they don't have the students to maintain um what they're doing so maybe it would be worth approaching them with that hypothetical if we take that small neighborhood behind Sprouts where we already have buses going it would alleviate their construction needs to build more buildings but you're a huge part I'm going to tell you what it is because our boundaries between us and Serita are horrific so if you look at it um seren's School District boundary is shaped like a sea that encompasses our district which is ridiculous
039it doesn't make sense we in reality we should have all of elephant head but we have a road that we drive through Serena's District to get to the one road and know head that we have and it just doesn't make sense for transportation years ago we looked at redoing that it's not going to happen easily because one of two things have to happen um one is you can't just change District boundaries because it changes the tax rate none of our voters are going to vote to take in additional kids from Sera because it will increase their taxes so that's that's the challenge that we faced before Miss Rico came in this was a conversation that we had way before of how do we fix the boundaries and that's why is the taxpayers are not going
040to make that vote to change our district boundaries because they really don't care the shape of our district um in the ease of that but they do really care about the increase to their taxes and if they um vote themselves into the Serita District right so where they live is now in the Serita District now they're paying for all of the kids that attend the Ser School District which is a lot more than our 650 yeah right and so that's where you're going to run into those issues um so that's it's not such an as easy as that and then the second way when we did that research is the state comes in and says you can no longer operate and they shut you down and then they can change your District boundaries by having
041another District swallow you up um and so that's not what we want to do with our lovely School District there's a reason why people want to come here open enrollment and that's because of our small size um and the quality of Education our smaller classroom sizes our transportation department that that functions very well those are the reasons why people want to go here so we don't we don't want to be swallowed up and become a part of 3 uni School dist yes what are the demographics of the the 700 homes that to within they are in an age restricted area so we didn't gain any students from from that change and the influx of kids who are coming and going I failed to mention that they're um foster kids so we have a lot of
042foster parents in our community now that are fostering kids and they have them for maybe you know two three weeks and then they go back to their schools or their place back in their homes so that's the the entering and withdrawing that's happening at school as well what's the percentage do you think go foster kids that be gosh I don't know if I could give it an exact number but I do know we've had a few Foster families recently where reunification was possible thing busness and that the um reunified parent actually got a house in the area and are trying to open R their students here so there are some of those kids that we are holding on to but unfortunately like Mrs Rico said some of it's out of our control and the fact
043of their parents might live in Tucson or they might live in you know the Phoenix area or something like that they were down here with Grandma Grandpa temporary B temporary a lot of temporary placements and then they but for every story like that you get the the parent mom and child moved here from Florida to get away from an issue and issue got resolved day and a half later they're moving back to floor literally parent two are in a day and a half later the child's been withdrawn so it's we can't control who moves in and who moves out necessarily to to a large degree um and you know those those stories are no result a lot of times they leave it's no result of the school of quality it's just life happens when you
044get a job transfer get a job transfer um when you get evicted from your home you've got to find a place to live and maybe here with um this St happens a lot you move here temporarily with Grandma and Grandpa and say you get back on your feet because we live in our district boundaries the majority of it is a RCT and that's always a challenge and so we see that where they come in and then eventually the parents get back on their feet and they get a house Tucson right in wherever and they off they go at no fault of our own but that's just part of those we're also looking at our preschool kids right because they a lot of kids that are here in preschool we get maybe 10 8 to 10
045that are going to start here as Kinder I have 17 to 20 children who are going to kindergarten in um some of those kids are here in enrollment I have several families whose parents are teachers in s they bring them here for preschool and then they want them where they are teaching for when they start elementary school so I have 17 to 20 probably about 10 of [Music] those I think it's definitely worth exploring more ways to increase Revenue before we look at cutting costs yeah we've got to really sit down and instead of just begging gray is figure out where we get $250,000 without too much pay and um do we have a a goal of when we would like to get that that rollover balance back up to 35375 we like to do
046it by the end of 26 well it's not going to happen this year no no how how aggressive are we going to approach it from my standpoint should but from my standpoint the next budget that I present to you I'd like to be working towards that yeah and unfortunately it will and I'm making assumptions based upon you know the past I am assuming that the amount of an increase that we're going to receive from the state in our funding formula is not going to cover the increase in the cost of living okay I I'm making that assumption so so with that being said I could see another here where we don't do arrays simply because we need to get back to those types of numbers and if we did do a raise it's almost a
047slap in your face raise and what I mean by that is I can give you half our percent yeah that is almost insulting and that's not where I want to be and again again we keep with our title funds and with our grants funding and you know working with in collaboration with free to be able to receive the grant so that we can continue to operate and offer our students viable curriculum and a well balanced education so it's just um are there things that we could reevaluate on the capital outl schedule science curriculum coming so we're in a good place with curriculum because we have our read our math for one place that we haven't um really looked at is the science adoption because we've been kind of holding off we know that we needle
048school um so you know we've been really trying to optimize the resources that we have um so that it's not to budget I don't think I've seen the maybe in and so I think we're we're in a pretty good place when it comes to curriculum and what we you know have been able to purchase students as far as theal funding goes I I think the items that we would need capital for were in a good place um the items that we would use that we normally use that for on everyday basis is Furniture you know when we have to buy new desks new chairs when we have to buy new computers because you know there computer are cyclical you know we have a group of computers that will no longer be supported at the end
049of the school year that replaced um the the the hardest part about it is you know take out the lease purchase payment that we have on the buses is that catastrophic bus F you know we had a turbo go in one of our buses that blew metal into the rest of the engine so now it's you know 40,000 lb paper but the least pay if something happen to correct yeah those buses are still under warranty and else thank you thank you Greg and thank you everyone and thank you for those of you that were here to listen to our to our report okay we'll take a if you are here for um our Cults of the month students please come up and give Miss Jenna your name oh and we have Miss Miss is already
050going around packing them out there's also cookies in the back so you can grab a cookie napkin and we [Music] re by hard no [Applause] I'm [Music] that's [Music] it's look at it like this state gives us spe [Music] GL but here's the [Music] we [Music] I for [Music] Happ [Music] ni [Music] all right well welcome everybody we're going to pick back up we just finished a study session over the auditor General's findings it was you got here earlier you could have seif so with that our next step is to um approve our agenda Mrs yes Mrs Allan yes Mr yes and next is approve the minutes from our January 14th I'll make a motion to approve the January second yes Mr a yes sorry Miss Alan yes and we have call the public look
051like it moving right along so we're gonna have two reports from our superintendent and the principal report and then we'll get to you guys take it all right good evening president a members of the board members of the community and our amazing Cults we have some exciting things to show you for our February board report so as you know as they're bringing it up our uh theme for the year is our friends theme so this is episode seven the one where kindness is in the air with love of reading and Valentine's Day and our sweetheart Gayla so a lot of things to be proud of okay our sweetheart G was a huge success and I'd like to um special shout out to our Continental Education Foundation for all of their hard work it was a
052beautiful evening and true Testament of a c a continental family community United um our sponsors increased by 5 to $6,000 this year we worked really hard getting new sponsors and new um members to join us to contribute so there's a special shout out to Miss Bonnie CL and juli who are on the left of the slide and then then Mr Dick Roberts that's there with Mrs wellas and I he was a board member here at Continental and he actually started the foundation more continental and we celebrated our 20 25th year anniversary of the foundation so um truly when you think about our community and how committed they are to our students and to our families and staff Mrs uh clar and Mrs ceri don't have children here anymore their kids are already older graduated from
053college but they are truly they continue to stay committed to the success of our school uh which we are so appreciative of we also did a um the staff voted on who was going to be the teacher of the year and our parro the year so Mrs deoy our Middle School Ela teacher and Miss Kim stff stary of Paro received um the award for the year and they each received $500 from the foundation so they were very excited about that and uh we also there's some of our Kids In Action there and our members of the rotary that are there at the bottom left it's not showing yet but the 5050 drawing went for $516 so um one of our rotarians from B the rotary who are also major supporters ended up winning um the
054$500 so it was a beautiful [Music] time we really do have a presentation for you okay and I'll just continue with the report and we can get the pictures but we had an ad assisted technology team um came to present last month Mrs Suarez plan for the h assisted technology team to come to Continental for a make and take professional development uh they made a lot of visual V visual schedules adapted book holders and much more um for the students that they serve so it was a really neat you can see pictures up there of the make it make and take it session they so thank you Mrs Suz where's mrsz okay she stepped out um I attended a tech power and Equity conference in Phoenix and we talked about how to select launch and
055evaluate Pilots of AI teaching and learning tools um as you all know AI is just huge and up and coming the state has guidelines for schools on AI implementation there's a lot of resources for um teachers to use and uh so we are developing a task force and we'll soliciting input from our parents from our parent advisory parents I did a u meeting with our student advisory kids and with our staff on just what do you know about AI um have you used any AI programs are your parents using AI so it was really interesting and fun to see where they are so we'll be developing plan for that um and at that conference they just talked about the power of setting our leadership brains on fire and literally my head felt like it was
056on fire because there's so much to learn and know and read but um the staff always says yep you send the boss to a training and she comes back and everybody's on fire now because we all have a lot of learning to do to keep up with um best practices for our students and for our teachers and there we have the student advisory and staff meeting that we had where I um mentioned that we met with to talk about different things of AI and so we're talking about all these programs and I don't know parents how many of you have used chat GPT okay what about Gamma there's a gamma program that's there on the bottom there's something called napkin there's also something called CLA there's notebook LM and then there's magic school for teachers
057so all those are programs that I had heard of two of chat GPT and magic school but like I said there's a lot to learn about what's out there for us to um explore okay our tax credit update uh super excited about that and we've been making a plea on everybody get your tax credit money in asking our teachers to try to get um the parents of the clubs that they participate in to um to donate tax credit and I'm so happy to say that up to date we've received $156,000 427 of tax credit funds which is an increase of 48,000 from last year so we use tax credit money for all of our clubs Sports tutorials um to pay our sponsors and to buy material that those clubs need and that our athletic department
058needs as well so thank you parents for um your contributions and if you know people who still haven't donated their tax credit please send them our way uh school project updates again um we reported last month that we had 11 open projects so um there's a report from Mr Greg that the roofing and weatherization projects have been submitted but sfb the school facilities board is not going to be funding any more projects this year so we'll have to wait to see for next year and then our cafeteria SE lines I don't know if kids went to home to talk to you about it but the project has a new um a new complication there's a crack in one of the grease traps and a collapse line from the grease trap to the main sewer so
059a structural engineer is needed before the project can move forward so we're working on that do we know what is that com okay uh we had the baby goats came to visit preschool and kindergarten class which is always a highlight so there you see our preschool kids with Dr Robinson there on the left and the baby goats and then um I was able to catch a baby goat so that mrsas could cuddle with the Little Goat there on the right hand side so that was a fun did you roke it no I didn't I actually had to just catch it on foot they're really cute you have a career fair Mrs and Mrs Alonso attended the U OFA career fair so we are not anticipating the need of too many new teachers as we just
060spoke about in our budget um but we do need still a school psychologist we we will be needing a music teacher so we're just kind of like to go to the fairs to see who's out there just in case they're sh changes in the summer our dual language enrichment team we went to visit some schools in Enix so four dual language teachers went along with Mrs weas and I and um we learned so much from the schools we got a lot of information and ideas and we're excited to continue our collaboration and our refinement of the program and we we saw students who have been in dual language since first grade and Kinder who were actually doing projects giving feedback in Spanish presenting in Spanish reading complex text highlighting words so it was very exciting
061because we you know we've always known that it's possible so we're really trying to just enhance our program to make sure that our students do leave Continental bilingual biliterate and that they can read and write in Spanish as well love of reading week it's not too late to sign up to read in a classroom We Love Our Guest readers and our volunteers so there we have our read with the dog program that comes we had um I try to get into every single class to read this week so I think I read to about 10 classes yesterday it's a fun time there's some more pictures we're using our outdoor reading piece garden and of course our rotarians love this time of year where they come to read to the students as well generation schools network
062was here today our continued professional development for our teachers talking about depths of knowledge and questioning um we talk about how to um increase the level of rigor in the lessons that teachers are presenting so um it was a good training that we had today and I also went to an avid meeting this morning on return on investment as you know we are an avid school so we're really talking about how well we articulate our vision for instruction at our school and um as Leaders how and how often are we communicating that Vision to the staff and how do we know if our staff is clear on the instructional Vision so we'll continue our school Improvement efforts and level up leadership level up our leadership upcoming events jazz in the desert by the rotary mark
063your calendars and then we're super excited about our Continental musical Alison Wonderland that will be here April 4th and 5th and I know that we have grandparents coming flying in from out of state to to come watch some of our kids in this musical thank you have a great evening and have a Happy Valentine's Day appreciate it [Music] good evening everyone evening so my principal's report is very sweet and me sweet well it could be sweet but it's short and sweet um it's about our winter Benchmark data for middle of the Year assessments that we just took for district benchmarks so just to let you know this first slide is for reading we want to see a whole lot more blues and greens when you look at the yellows they could either go into the
064greens or head into the partially proficient areas um when I first started here as a team the team here and you're a part of the team has been working really hard with getting our students out of the red area which is minimally proficient so for they're at middle of the year we want to see them near the 50s because there's percentiles because we are still have half a year of curriculum and standards that need to be taught so when we look at the projectiles the percentiles this is based off of in the nation so we're doing pretty good when we're in the 50s and up and we're projecting that we'd like to be near the 70s before the end of the school year that is our hope that is our goal and when we look
065at all of these tabs when we Mark when we click on these tabs the different colors it'll tell us as a site leadership and it tells the teachers which students are falling in those areas and what standards they need to go back and retach and what standards they're really the students are really progressing in getting an understanding so that helps us middle of year to continue to modify our instruction and go back to do retach and enrichment opportun for our students and then as you can see where we're at at math as well language usage is Grammar and Writing so many of your our students K K1 does not take language and usage they start that test in second grade so this is where they're looking at sentences they're looking at grammatical errors they're looking
066at punctuation and they're looking at sentences that that are given to them in questions to figure out how to find the errors and how to fix them and science we're doing pretty good too in that area we have currently Mrs Zabo she's our English language development teacher so so she works with students our population of students where English is not their first language so it could be various other languages that are their first language and she's helping them to gather those skills along with our teachers so that they're able to be English proficient right now State the state mandates that we do an aala spring test called AA or isella and she's finishing up that test with our students our students worked so hard and every year we have a good chunk of them who
067test out and are now proficient in English so we want to thank Mrs AEL and the team that's helping her right now with testing is Miss L and miss miss L Fleming and Mrs alen so and all of the teachers who've been on board cooperating and helping us to that testing part but this is State testing for the rest of the content that we teach and I I will be sending this home on the family Weekly Newsletter so you know the dates I know many vacations are planned and a lot of parents will ask you know when when is State Testing going to happen so for science State Testing only Fifth and eighth graders take that science date test and they'll be taking that in March and it's three parts and then we have writing
068so our aasa for writing oral reading fluency and Mathematics that all kicks off on um March 31st and we'll be testing for two weeks so we'll start on March 31st and we'll be finished the following Friday just like we did last year and those tests are only grades 3rd through eth so what we what do we do with this data we do data digs is what we call them when we get together as a site leadership team with our teachers and our support staff to analyze the winner data our teachers get to look at their specific classroom data grade level teams look at their overall grade level data and then we as a site leadership which is our math coaches our reading coaches our English language development teachers or special education director all of us
069come together to figure out how we can support the students progression and be able to implement any interventions that are needed so those are our next steps that we'll be doing now that we have this winter Benchmark middle of the Year data and um it's just that continuing and monitoring of student progression so I want to thank all of you students in here if we can give you all a round of applause because you're moving right along and it's so fun to walk around and see you in class learning teaching each other teaching us as the adults on campus so thank you for your hard work and we thank all of you families for supporting our Colts and everything that they do because they come to school ready prepared and they're making great success so
070just a few announcements if you didn't know already it's love of reading week and um we did send this link home in the Continental family Weekly News tomorrow is cozy up with the book so it's where you're pajamas Pajama Day Thursday's hats off to reading wear your favorite hat and Friday the 14th is our hearts love to read wear any type of Valentine's Day themed apparel we have math and science night tomorrow so it's family night we welcome all of you and your extended families to come and enjoy math Insight night it will be at from 4 to 5:30 and it'll be taking place in the cafeteria we have a lot of fun if you've never been there there's stations that are set up for Math and Science and you can interact in those stations
071with your with your Colts and there's Raffles and prizes and it is coordinated by our teachers so our teachers put that on and they've been working really hard to prepare for this night for you all and we have Continental Kindergarten Roundup which will be taking place next Tuesday from 4:30 to 6: p.m. so if you know any potential future kindergarteners or people that might be interested in open en rolling here at Continental please send them our way and if they're not able to make it please give them my contact information which is also on the weekly the cult family news you can give them emails or have them call the front office so we can set up guided tours and answer questions and I want to thank our third graders are do we have any
072third graders in the house that were in the musical on Friday let's give them a round was amazing so if you haven't been able to come out to our our musicals for elementary I highly recommend that you come out and see all the work our students do they memorize their lines they memorize the songs they memorize their movements I was I was in the back of the cafeteria and we were jamming out with you guys so thank you so much for putting on an amazing show and thank you all for being there to support them as well and I'd like to take this time to thank the Continental School District Educational Foundation for 25 amazing years some of you sit on our board and if any of you are listening um from our foundation we
073want to thank you for your continuous dedication passion and inspiring us and supporting us if you don't know about our foundation they do fundraisers and the biggest fundraisers for their annual fundraiser is the sweethart Gaya if you've never had a chance to attend I highly recommend going out next year it was at the historic canola Ranch it was amazing they have silent auctions they have yummy appetizers live music our students perform and it was a beautiful night for a great cause our foundation does so much and they give so much back so when you walk around our campus and you see playground equipment you see the musical playgrounds the instruments that our students play I mean there's benches that some of our foundation um board members come and and make art work with them um
074on their eighth grade year and those benches are out in the back they were just put out on the back playground under the tree if you can see it's beautiful artwork artists and residencies we have our um third fourth I believe third and fourth grads that are going to be with the artist in Residence who's dance a dance instructor and she comes and she's going to be her name is Mrs Sherry she's going to be working with the third and fourth grade classes to put on a beautiful dance show that's going to be happening um in April or the end of yes the end of April so we'll make sure to put that in the qut family news but all of these amazing things that happen wouldn't be possible without the foundation and without all
075of your help many of you attend the sweethart Gayla many of you donated prizes and and baskets for the sweetheart Gaya all of that goes back to our students and our teachers and they have the opportunity to fill out Min Grant applications so that they don't have to be spending money out of their own pockets teachers have amazing ideas but many times how many of you have run into teachers at night at Walmart shopping for things I'm sure you see them because they're always shopping and trying to do projects with the students so thank you so much for your support and we thank our foundation thank you thank you now for our students if you could start lining up and you'll bring your certificates with you parents please make sure that you're not camera sh
076you can come up and record you can take pictures like to thank Jaa because they have they give uh certificates or little cards for them to get free ice cream and then please make sure if you want once once we read through your certificate if you'd like to meet your child at the table to pick out a shirt you can help them with the size shirt that they're going to get [Music] okay students when you come up you'll say your name and your grade okay [Music] Luke completes his assignments with a smile he is helpful and kind to his peers and to me he always follows the safety rules on the playground and in class he has improved drastically academically and with his behavior in the past few weeks I love teaching and having Luke
077in my class Miss lorine Gracia congratulations [Music] Hannah is such a joy to have in library she comes and excited to check out books Hannah follows the rules and helps remind her classmates to also follow the rules she's always willing to lend a helping hand to her friends and help them pick out a book if they do not know what to get Hannah you are an amazing kiddo thank you for being such a wonderful Library friend but she has another written by her kindergarten teacher Mrs tessle so that was from Mrs Le in our librarian Mrs tesso writes Hannah is a wonderful and kind friend she makes everyone feel welcome to play Hannah is very responsible to do her best work in kindergarten she's a great friend and helps others when she is finished it
078is a pleasure to have her in my class Mrs tesle congratulations Hannah my name is Tatiana and my grade is first grade Tatiana is an exemplary student she always shows how kind and respectful she is she always looks out for the well-being of others she is responsible for her chores in the classroom and she's an excellent helper thank you Tatiana for being an example to others Mrs Negi [Music] congratulations first grade Axel is Cult of the month for January 2025 Axel is an amazing young man with a big heart his laughter is infectious his smile makes others want to smile he loves to read books and share and read with others in the reading Center he is responsible for himself his supplies and works hard in the classroom I look forward to seeing what you
079can accomplish the rest of this year keep on shining bright Axel congratulations Miss [Applause] my name is Jam I'm years old second [Music] grade it is such a pleasure to have Jameson in my class he consistently demonstrates kindness responsibility and a strong work ethic he is always willing to help his classmates creating a positive and supportive classroom environment his dedication to completing all of his work is truly admirable and his friendly considerate nature makes him a joy to be around Jameson is a wonderful friend to others and always approaches every task task that they can do attitude I am so proud of all that he accomplishes and look forward to seeing him continue to thrive congratulations Miss Janette [Applause] [Music] Hannah has shown so much strength and growth this year she has work hard to
080meet her academic goals as well as building positive relationships among her peers when faced with a difficult situation Hannah chooses to rise above and do what is Right Time and Time time again I am so proud of Hannah and grateful I get to be her teacher this year congratulations Hannah for Mrs lane third [Music] grade shall we shows kindness and respect to everyone at school she helps others when they're in need and assists in class daily Shelby always follows our school rules without reminders and encourages her peers to do the same she's a wonderful example of what it means to be a leader at our school congratulations Mrs Lane [Applause] [Music] by Nature Layla already has an amazing kind personality she's always willing to help everyone and is so respectful towards everyone not just her
081teachers lla works extremely hard in the classroom and she completes assignments in a timely manner she has such a she is such a go-getter mentality and is a very caring person congratulations lla for Miss way my name is Ren I'm in Ren is an incredible helper in class and throughout the campus she's a very caring student that puts in 100% % of her effort in all school work she is always one of the first to ask to help or guide students to a destination if they need Ren has set something some amazing academic goals and I know she will accomplish them Ren you are a rock star in our class thank you for having such an amazing love for school and for your classmates way to go congratulations Mrs HW [Applause] gr Jasmine thank you
082for being such a hard worker I see how much effort you put into everything you do and I hope you continue this you always come to school ready to work and and in a good mood if one of your peers needs help you are there to help however you can your positive attitude will continue to help you succeed keep working hard in being a great example of what a cult should be congratulations Jasmine for Mrs [Music] monya Isaiah Cisco came into our school as a new student this year he brought with him a positive attitude and a smile he is always polite and kind to others he participates in class and is willing to help others Isaiah always follows the rules and gives others a gentle reminder when needed he is a great addition to
083the Colt family and he was nominated by the middle school teachers congratulations my ranata is the kind of student who leads by example she approaches her studies with a deep sense of responsibility and dedication her assignments are always turned in on time and more importantly they reflect the care and effort she puts into her work she doesn't just complete tasks she strives for excellence consistently delivering quality that showcases her commitment to learning we are proud and nominate rata for January's Cult of the month congratulation to the SCH congratulations if we could have all our pults come up here for a picture and then if they can remain while we just give two of our staff members their um Awards [Music] parents if you want to come up closer and take pictures that would be the
084time [Music] to two three ask [Music] so every month um here at Continental School instead of having employee of the month we have the golden hor award um since we're the Continental Colts and so the way that these uh staff members are chosen is they're actually chosen by their peers so every month their peers vote on who they think is gone above and beyond which happens a lot because our our staff here is amazing so without further Ado we're going to introduce um the January um golden hesho Award winners so the first one is if she's not here Mrs Haiti ponds we she is a programmatic assistant for our special education department so she works one-on-one with students and she is amazing and we will make sure she she was very on HED and very
085touched and she said I don't do anything for recognition I do it for the kids because I love them and um she's excited for us to be able to give this to her tomorrow in front of the students in class but her team or her colleagues that nominated her and this is a bunch of their comments put into one summary Hai Pond goes above and beyond for all her students and other students she puts their needs before her own she Plus she always lends a helping hand to other staff members when she sees they need it Katie is always so helpful and positive the students love seeing her on campus and enjoy talking to her she brings so much shine to our campus and is always ready for any Adventure congratulations Miss and the next
086award goes the next recipient that was nominated by their colleagues is Mrs Tina Casey and Mrs Tina Casey is our primary one of our primary special education resource teachers Tina has been a tremendous asset to our special education department she is always willing to roll up her sleeves and dig in never pawning tough stuff on to anyone else and she does it all with a smile she's a continental gy from day one she's gotten right to work and they they said you roll up your sleeves and got right to work she's always helping out when needed she's positive friendly and funny from the first day of school Tina has been Allin 100% despite challenging situations that arise she's positive and nothing seems to ruffle her feathers she's very good at what she does and is
087a great asset to the Continental teaching staff also Tina is fun to be around and his witty she's fantastic digs right in and does what needs to be done she's Smiley positive and funny Tina is flexible and she rolls with the punches even if things aren't going as planned congratulations Mrs Casey [Music] Round of Applause well with that we'll take a short break youall are welcome to stay around for another hour or so or feel free to take off thank you for coming I have to tell you this from the parents can we have a round of applause too for our parents and families that came out tonight [Music] spe what you're asking person [Music] signment who's [Music] thank you thank you so with that it is Andre consent [Music] agenda this is an action
088item case you forgot motion approve it I make a motion to approve that agenda I'll second any discussion on any of the consent items M yes Mrs Allan Mr and that takes us to new business open [Music] enrollment so again um the district is required to make a yearly determination for space on open enrollment and um to have the board approve the letter so you have the information there before you March 1st 2025 is the first deadline for the applications and um they'll open up March 1st Clos on April 3rd and we'll get letters up by May 1st and again we will no later than July 15th for new student applications to let them know since we wait for our current students and students move into the district to be registered and our website has
089been updated with the current information as [Music] sorry I didn't about how many open enrollment stud currently I don't know 40 40 students that includes staff and 8% okay M Le yes Mrs Allen yeah Mr AUST yes and next is to approve our um deing board goals for this 2526 Year I'll make a motion to approve the board rules 2526 Year mber yes Mrs Allen yeah Mr a yes [Music] and next is to increase the art Club fee from $5 to $6 student I'll make a motion to increase the Fe of from five to $6 second yes Mrs Allan yes Mr a yes and from which been waiting for the first read of the policy new policy advisory this is just discussion and information they are attached for your reading so that next month we'll
090be looking at second read approv and it looks like we get to hear from Greg again hey I know it's been a while since I've had a chance to speak so um here's your District Finance report um as you can see in the report on page one here we got about $ 45500 th000 left within our ml budget the majority of that money is still going to have to go towards unpaid benefits with within payroll so that's your Finance report for today our um insurance that you negotiated last time they that's a multi-year it is a onetime it is a onetime deal so I've asked them if if our rate increas is less than 2% or less than the 5% if we can hold on to our 5% guarantee one more year yeah um I
091haven't got an answer back I couldn't remember if that was but for the upcoming year we have a guarantee no more than 5% awesome okay that's that takes us pretty much here almost to the end you need still need make a motion to approve the district financial report second Miss yes Mrs Allan yes Mr a yes and as you can see there's a ton of events where we could possibly have a quorum um and when I was at the bolts meeting we discussed and this is the right way to post for a possible meeting so with that um any information discuss question Laura KY I would like the discuss the possibility of US changing our our informal procedures um we don't have written down or anything but to change our discussion period around items to
092before we make motion inad of our physical practice afterwards what do we think yep I was at the bolts meeting and was talking to you know Chris from Bale kind of the he's really into um the what is that called um the the law the Parliamentary procedure yeah the parliamentary procedures and stuff and he says it's perfectly legit to talk about it before there's an actual motion which I've always had me too I have struggled with it too so he said we could just make it more of a policy so do we need it's not a formal policy we can just decide prce for discussion first then the motion after the discussion yeah and we can still discuss after the motion a good one and is there anything we need to um anything formal we
093need to do in regards to the minute um and our um version good so at the bolts training they also stated that if you have the meetings recorded either just virtually or just being recorded um not online but just like the recording the voice is recorded you do not have to do minutes so we're kind of doing we're doing both where it's usually one or the other I would say I'm formal a formal change we need to make or it's not it's already in policy that we can do um that if the meetings are reported that we do not require written minutes um but we brought it up a few years ago and uh the past board preferred the written minutes and didn't want to go the route of just having them um live stream
094so at this point we could decide if you decide that just the minutes on the live stream is sufficient yeah then that'll say Jenna to work smarter not harder and have to cor take all the minutes but it would still need to have the approvals the minutes approved at each we yes it just wouldn't be a I think it sounds like redundant work right now so I think that would be great so what would you I'm trying to visualize how that would look on the next minute the next meeting to approve last month's minutes would you just have a link to the video in there if we wanted to watch it so that we can go back and look in the agenda in the agenda would you just have to link in yeah I can
095attach the YouTube link to so that we when we get our agenda we want to go back and look at it if there's something that we wanted to question before we approv that's good idea I'm all for that good okay it's good news now we can work smarter not harder yes yeah you said it works smarter not harder we need to make a motion to change any of that no it's already can do it that way we just um also just one thing I I do have a conflict with uh June 10th board meeting um it's Tuesday June 10th and I'm proposing that we either have the meeting on the 11th or the 12th which is Wednesday or Thursday and Greg does have to submit our budget by the 15th um I would I would
096prefer be on a Thursday rather than the Wednesday just because it's my late dat okay the 12 is that that's everybody okay Kelly June 12 June 12 right that's the Thursday yes I'm good okay perfect so we'll move the June meeting to the 12th and then at our next board meeting we will have the schedule for the upcoming board meetings for next year so with that everybody's still good with having them on Tuesdays Tuesday okay yeah okay Tuesdays it gives us a little bit more time to get the reports uploaded and and to be still in a Tim so with that we'll take a break and sign some paperwork Kelly you'll be in in the morning toight correct yes okay am I okay to yes yes okay thank you have a good night okay by
097bye [Music] prepared [Music] for I don't know does have any you're going to have you're going to get gra no just the regular web page [Music] and we did talk probably Joe we talked about showing the [Music] when did it stop I seear District info so there wasone that but therea [Music] have you have a new vend this I know you're [Music] have looks different right are you doing I did have you want you I don't know just let me know open tomorrow oh and we are are now adjourned at 58 and 41 seconds good job I got wait