Meet and Confer April 30, 2025 - 1of2

001are going to get started. Hi, how are you? I know. Okay, everyone. Welcome to day six of IBN. Uh this is our last actual IBN meeting for negotiations. Um looking forward to today. If you could open your folders. Um Maria really worked hard to run off quite a few handouts for us today. Um but in there you can see the agenda. It's again a full agenda. And not sure if it's on your copy, but last night as I was preparing, um, well, actually, it's not one night that I prepare. It's a lot of preparation, but as I was going over things, I did make some little adjustments um to the PowerPoint. So, if it's not exactly like the one you're seeing, don't worry about it. It's not major changes. But um on our agenda, we

002are going to devote time today for the board study that's coming up for IBN. Um most likely we will be doing that in the afternoon toward the end. Um Like I said, here is our agenda and our objectives are posted plus um what's not on there is the board study. Okay, and our IBN process skills which again are the team will complete a temperature check at the close of the meeting to protect individual opinions and perspectives. Facilitator will list talking points agreed upon by team to Emily. Emily will request consensus in the chat before publishing IBN summary toraton connection and we will check on time restraints and let's do that. Do we have any time restraints for today? Okay. Any other time, Kelly? I just have a short meeting from 9:30 to 10:30 that I'm

003just going to take in the office online and then I'll come back. You come back. Okay. Any other um after one after lunch? Okay. A um I just have to be gone for a little bit for a meeting with Dr. Pombo on my campus um at like 1:15. So I should be back by around 2ish though. Okay. Avon 9:30 to to 10 I have a bit meeting for a foster care child. Okay. Okay. Thank you everyone. Yes. Um, no. We're going to do a full Well, who knows? I mean, it depends really on our recommendations and how fast that goes. So, we'll see. Thank you everyone for your input with that. Our guiding principles um remember it's alignment with student outcomes focused governance goals sustain us and really remember this today. Okay. sustainable salary for

004all staff, sustainable health care benefits, explore revenue generation options, and adhere to budgetary recommendations. Um, remember our norms. Please review them. Um, especially when you see the comments from the evaluation today. Um, you'll see what I mean, but we really do need to focus on our norms today. And as you know, this is the scope of meet and confer work. Um, we've gone over this several times. It's up there for you all to see. Okay, speaking of our evaluation, uh, and by the way, I just want to say upfront again, thank you everyone for filling these out. I appreciate your honesty. Um, even though when I read it, I'm like, I'm a failure. Um, but it does guide me. It really does guide me. It opens up my mind. And I just want to thank

005you. We didn't have as many um, complete it, but I know this evaluation was designed to be the last evaluation. So, I did tell some of you you didn't need to fill it out. Um, and we have another evaluation today. So um please especially because this is our last meeting. This will guide the first meeting for IBN the next time. So anyway, question one, what are your opinions of our final recommendations? Well, you know, we never got to that, but we did do some um six members answered this question. We are on the right track. Making recommendations in the best interest of all employees is most effective for retention. We still have a lot of work to do. as a team. However, we need to move forward as a team and the divisive accusatory comments

006need to stop. Um, still need to make final recommendations. Looking forward to finishing and we did not reach a list of final recommendations and I agree with them. Okay, question two. Do you have any suggestions for improving our IBN negotiations? Seven members answered this question. Um the first one was the disrespectful behavior in the room has to stop. Passive aggressive comments, eye rolls, etc. are unhelpful to the process and against every value of the district. I don't think people who consistently display that behavior should be invited back next year. Second comment, I believe more oversight needs to be provided regarding the decorum of individual members of the team. I watched three to four members of the team continuously attempting to multitask as evidenced by excessive time on their phones and laptops um clearly distracted and

007not listening to the speakers and important discussions. These same people often slowed down the process because they were lost or confused. Um, we need an ongoing list of options in a Google doc so they can be viewed, edited as we move through the process and work on wording. Um, process is super sloppy and also restrictive. I'm okay with a rougher process with more flexibility or a tighter process with less flexibility. uh let's create only one document for all options preferably a spreadsheet that we can add rows or columns notes dollar amounts etc whether we table them or approved them let's get them on the same file for easy tracking if you look in your folder I didn't do um a spreadsheet but I did list all of the options that we have so far the

008tabled ones the ones that we did put on recommendations and the options that um we have for today or or have all parties need to assume positive intent and yes there is a lot of name calling and assuming negative intent of groups of employees. It's unkind and disruptive to our work. So what I say to those comments is negotiations can be difficult. um conversations might not be what we want to hear, but I think we do need to hear them, but again, I think it's how respectful we are when we're expressing our voice. Um, I know Dr. Lauren worked really hard to select members to represent as many different groups from your district and you're not only representing your house your yourself here, you're representing your group. So, um you need to be really focused

009so that you can do the best job for the group that you are representing. Um as you know, I have called out people throughout this um time. There's only so many times I feel comfortable doing that. Um I would have to say as an administrator I was um and as a facilitator now it's difficult for me. I need to get better at it. But then again I'm a professional. You're a professional and I think we need to act like professionals. Um and professionals stay focused. To be on this committee is an honor. Um, yes, you've probably volunt you probably you were asked and you volunteered, but it's still an honor. And if you didn't want to be on this committee to do the work that it requires, then maybe you should have said no. I

010mean, we only this is only our sixth meeting, you know, eight hours a day. It's a lot of time, I know, but you agreed. And when you made that agreement to be on this committee, you made that agreement to be totally focused. So we have our norms as you know. We spend a great deal of time developing those norms. We need to follow them. So please remember that today. Um and I know people are on their computers a lot of times looking at the handouts that are there. You're looking at the Google Docs. That's fine. Um, the phones, like I said, I was an administrator. I know emergencies come up, you have to check throughout the day. I'm aware of that. Um, but I don't think you need to be on your phones majority of

011the time. I haven't walked behind. Maybe I should start doing that. But again, I'm a professional. I respect you as being professionals. I don't think I have to walk on the outside to see what's on your screen. I trust you. I've trusted you. But maybe that's what I should have done and I apologize for not doing that. Um, I'm going to do better today today. I hope I'm going to try. Call me out. It won't hurt my feelings one bit, but I expect you to do better today, too, especially because your peers have um made comments about that. Yes. Speak to that, too. So like I appreciate you acknowledging like maybe you could have done some things but also we are professionals. So if you're seeing that behavior, it's also on all of us to

012remind people of the norms. It's not just on you. So like if you're writing those comments and you haven't proposed or brought everybody back to the norms, it's on you as well. Thank you. It also feels like there's a lot of policing going on of other people. Never mind. Let me stop. Let me stop. Let me stop. Never mind. Okay. Well, let's just do our best today and let's represent the our groups that we are here to represent. And I'm sure it's going to be a successful day. I'm excited about it. And I'll tell you what, this is later in the PowerPoint, but I'm going to share it now. So, this is my third year doing this. I had a little bit of training from the previous facilitator and one of the questions I asked

013him as I was learning the IBN process was how many issues do you permit? Remember with IBN we start with our forming our issues. He said um five to seven. Well, we had way more than five to seven. Um I think we had 13. I mean, I'd have to look at my numbers. I have them written down. With the 13 came 31 options. That's a lot to manage. And as I was thinking, especially after the last meeting and I went back and I was looking at my notes from him again, um, you know, 31 options is a lot to keep track of. And thanks to Dorothy from the last meeting, she caught our mistake. Um, but on the other hand, we did 13 even though he did five to seven. That was his way and

014I respect that. But then on the other hand, I think it's important for everyone's voice to be heard. So yes, it might have extended our IBN time, but I think we're making people happy that we're addressing really the results from that survey that Kelly developed and um submitted. So, it's messy when you have 31 options. I can tell you that it's very messy, but it's okay. It's okay. I think it's okay. Um, so you need to be proud of yourself that you went through all this uh difficult work to get to where we are today. Um, and so we'll see what the morning I think this morning we will hopefully be mostly finished with our recommendations. Okay, question three. Would you like to be a member of IBN next year? Six members answered this question.

015Uh, two definitely said yes. One said potentially. We will see. Maybe. Still deciding. Okay. So, we have some updates. Uh, Dr. Lauren, I think, has just a little bit, right? Did you want to point something out to them on Google, a handout or something? Yeah. Um, there's only one update that I provided. Uh, so I don't know. Let me see if I can. It's the dance of the technology. Sorry. You know, while Joel is doing that, I'm thinking about the evaluation and comments. Um, you know, I tried to be prepared for this meeting, but um, I think that I've been pretty firm on actually the IBN process skills that we do each of those skills. But I do think I've been flexible and I know Daniel at times has said maybe we could do it

016this way even though I had planned to do it another way and I appreciated that um because I think it really helped our team. So yes, are there times that we change it up? Yes. And that's okay. So sometimes we are going to be um firm, sometimes we are going to be flexible. Right? So I shared this in the chat, so maybe you've already had a chance to take a look. Um this is the aggregate data from the certified contract returns uh across several different looks. Uh this is linked in that spreadsheet as well. So, if you're looking at the meet and confer request for information, that's where it's linked. It's the very last item on that link on that spreadsheet. Um, so this is looking at a total certified RN, SLPA, and COOTA and

017special services, which includes psychologists. And please note, the psychologists have until today to decide whether or not to sign their contracts. That's by statute. I don't know why they're different. You You looked like you had something. Okay. All right. Um, so what I did was I kind of broke it down. So this is the number of contracts that we issued. And remember, we have more teachers than 274, but not all teachers are issued contracts because they might be non-renewals due to being emergency certified on a subsert or um being a return to work rehire from retirement. So those are categories that are not automatically renewed. In fact, uh annually they are sent to the board as non-renewals. They do have the option to reapply. Uh and that's a process that the schools take care of.

018So if there's an interest in having that retiree come back or there's an interest in having that emergency certified teacher come back, there's an option for that to happen. They're not represented in this number though. So that's why 274 might seem low. Um because we do have around [Music] teachers. Um yes. What was the unpublished? Is that when people don't accept or decline? That's right. Yes. Thank you for the question. Uh so the category unpublished is if they don't do anything, it just expires basically. So they they have the option to go in and reject it or accept it or not do anything. So, if they published it, published means Oh, I'm sorry. That's I I mixed it up. Published is what I just said. Unpublished is if there was someone whose contract was not

019supposed to be issued and we had to unpublish it, right? Yeah. So, it was it was an error. So, that was one contract, I think. But, sorry, I have another question. If they if it's published and the deadline has passed, which is the case right now, then then it's rejected, right? Essentially, yeah. So, if it's if it's not accepted and there's a position that's vacant because that person did not accept their contract, then the schools post the position and they hire that position. So, if that individual decides, yes, I do want to come back, they have to apply, reapply, okay, and go through that process. And that looks different at each campus. Most principles, it's a conversation. It's sort of an interview process and then they recommend and we'll just republish the contract mostly. Or

020if it's really late, then we might have to do a letter of intent. Okay. Thank you. Yes. Um when we were looking at employee data previously, like the separation data, it said that we had 365 certified employees and I'm seeing 274 contracts. So is that gap the difference? Like is that contractors um not renewals? Yep. Yep. That's where that gap comes from. Uh so this is just a couple of different looks. I thought it would be interesting to look and see by some sort of delineation of the longevity and the impact of longevity because I know that's been a conversation that we've had. So I was able to pull out teachers that are three, five, 10, 15 year longevity receiving people, right? So, this is these are the rates of return for those groups. Um

021the 15 plus, if there's something that they didn't accept, then chances are they're retiring, right? So, that's where that comes from. Um and then teachers who receive longevity contract acceptance and then by division. You could only have teachers in this district that's been here 10 plus years that have contracts. Yeah. Yeah. We also have a lot that are on ESI return to work. Okay. And they're not indicated here, but it's still it's still not a lot. But when you're talking about 300 teachers, 50 teachers is pretty good chunk. really I don't know how we compare but so majority of our teachers are in the before year three uh yeah if you look at the numbers so 138 so yeah majority of them are up to three year three or three this is a a very

022young teaching population. Well, can I want to bring us to a reminder of this? It may not necessarily have to do with age or years of experience. It's how many years they've been in the district. So, I've had like I can speak on my side. I have several teachers that have many years of experience but are new to our district. Right. So, they are represented in that large group too. So basically, we're just, oh my goodness, how do you move forward as a district when you're constantly so much turnover? Like, how do you because I was, you know, I was um in my room working in boxing on my classroom. And I picked up a piece of paper from years ago that had to do with success criteria back when we were teaching online. And

023I was I picked up paper said, "Why is the district still harping on success criterias? Why haven't we moved on from this yet?" But now it kind of like makes sense because there's really not you have a consistency of maybe like 50 teachers year after year. Yeah. You also I think you could also connect to student outcomes focus governance, right? The goals and the guardrails that are in place that how we're moving the district forward is how we move teachers forward, right? And how we support teachers in in improving their craft and not draining those groups, right? So, one of the options I think that we had on the list for today was the moving to uh from row A to row B for teachers who are after their first year. Um, which could be

024one way to kind of help fill that gap until they qualify for the longevity. So, um I'm going to pause because Vanessa is on vacation, but she's going to join us remotely. Uh, so she wants to make sure to present the information. So, if you do have additional questions after Vanessa's done, we can certainly come back to this. But I also want to honor her time since she's taking away beach time. So, how we're going to do this is we Thanks, Joe. How we're going to do this is we'll keep the stack for questions. Um, and then we'll listen to her presentation. I would like you to take out that handout that lists um I think it's the first is tabled and then it says um options that require finance and then non- finance and

025as she is giving us um dollar amounts because some of those we didn't have the dollar amounts and you're going to need that information. Yes, it looks Thanks, Kelly. It looks like this. It's a stapled one. Um, and there are some on the looks like this. And there are some options that we didn't have the monetary amount last week and I noted that um as she gives us those amounts. Would you please um write those in on that handout? They're they're also available. Uh Vanessa shared them through the chat. So you should have a document that's linked in the chat. It's also in the meet and confer requested items uh and it's called link not link options cost options I think it's toward the bottom and that's the document I think that Vanessa is going

026to share with us morning Vanessa good morning good morning it's so great to see you taking time out of your vacation to do this with us I appreciate it obviously. Uh so I did want to I wanted to uh go over the priced out options and then also um do some clarifying comments uh before I have to jump off. So I'm going to share the document just so I can walk through it um as I'm talking about it. And I think that should come up for everybody, right? All right. And then I will try to make it bigger. By the way, okay, double check your numbers. They might on your handout might not coincide with her numbers. So, just be aware of that. Okay. Yes. I'm I'm not sure which handout we're discussing, but um

027this is the options. I know that uh last meeting uh Dominic tried to put some numbers together. Um some of these numbers have the benefits, some don't have the benefits. I mean, we kind of just got a little ride with that, but the numbers are are on average. And as we know with these numbers when we pull them, it's daytoday. So what I pulled today might not be exactly the same, but it's, you know, historically accurate over approximations. So um, with the option number three, so and then going up here, we know we have 750,000. I know that number has changed. I wanted to make it a set number so nobody had to worry about the dollars and cents. I think at one point we were 124 and change and uh, we were like, let's

028do 125, but then we had that 80,000 sitting at the bottom. kind of an imaginary number because we don't know what exactly what that bottom line number will be until we close the year uh with our expenditures and our encumbrances. But and looking at those numbers once again as we've gotten uh closer to our cuto off in spending, uh those numbers are tracking right where we need them to be to accomplish our fund balance reserves and um and keep those dollars available for the things that we've discussed in the budget lines multiple times and what's been taken to the governing board. So um so I'm just going to put that up there, the 750 and then So option three, the Friday PD, I think uh Dominic had costed that out for you guys at 1.1

029million. It's definitely well above the threshold of our budget. Um something to maybe table and get deeper uh information into that as we go along. Um longevity at 20% is costed out. The A to B I I don't think that this is accurate. Um I there are so many different schedules in our system at this point. This is one of the things that the compression committee is working on. So we're trying to simplify the schedules so that we can have a good um view into fixing compression. I have an a compression update, a couple of updates for you guys today and I will get to that um a little lower in the options cost, but the A to B salary schedule that's understated. It it's not 62,000. It's definitely way more than that. Um if

030we were talking about just one schedule, because I wasn't a part of the conversation, that may be why uh that number looks low to me. So, if you were just looking at uh like maybe just a teacher's uh schedule. Um but AB schedule across the district that's too low of a number. I didn't recalc it because uh it it gets picked up in some of the compression work that we did. I'm happy to recalcul this um for us but let me know at the end of today and I can do that. um the secondyear cadre certified that option was very complex and I need excuse me I need a little more defining information so I can determine who that includes pull those values and and get a a a cost on that I apologize I

031wasn't able to cost it out I would need you guys to kind of discuss option nine a little deeper and Dominic's there to help guide to figure out how to identify So that then we could cost this measure out for you. Um contracted sub was pretty easy. We have that one at the 38,000. We also had option 12. Um putting it in those different groups brought us to a $500,000 total 2% all. Uh it's a little more expensive. It's a um and change. Pernal leave was another one of those kind of very um layered conversations. I'd need to know you know some approximates like how many days are we talking about of a benefit uh and some of that those uh other discussions will need to be mapped out. We also have some you know

032I think legal situations behind some of this and definitely would have to update governing board policy um specifically. So, if I can get some more detail on parental leave, um, happy to cost it out where it sits now. We're not able to do that. And because of that, we're not able to cost out number 16 to update the policy for 15, option 15. Um, ELLL weighted, what a fantastic uh, option. um just this one's very cool. But what this does when you weight those kids, it gives you about six additional teachers with, you know, using this year's counts. Um and that costs the 514,000, but it um aligns with two goals. So, uh without any effort sped, uh again another weighted option um 378. the two options together are more than the 750 just kind

033of when I was adding different numbers up. Um but that's the cost for that one. Um the continuing the free healthcare option is already in the budget and already been approved by the governing board. So I marked that green. It's a done deal. Um the blue green are the compression committee dollars and then the other green was the the psych um psychologist market demand. I want to talk about that for a minute. And then kind of down here at the bottom was the longevity 10% which is just you know pretty much half the 20%. So I did want to talk about the compression items really quickly and then I can take some questions. Um so the $1 an hour for the bus drivers. Uh that one was pretty simple. The reason being is because the

034bus drivers are on their own schedule and because of that we can make adjustments to them however we like. Um the psychologist was a separate conversation from the market demand. Uh so the market demand doesn't cost anything. It's just a decision. We put it in the to the salary schedule. Happy to do that. Um whatever the market demand uh was 15,000, I can't remember. Um that's a no cost. We're already paying the market demand. We just add it to the salary schedule. But after we did that and we were talking about it in compression, we recognized that our salary schedule still wasn't getting up to where we needed to be for being competitive with the other districts and it also didn't uh address any kind of compression uh with the psychologists that currently are employed

035with Kraton. So through the compression conversation, it was determined adding another um 5,000 to the schedule and this would be effective whether the market demand gets added into the schedule or not. Either option would work. This is separate from that market demand um which was to add 5,000 to the current schedule level. And then that would actually end up being a cost of about 24,000 because we currently have people sitting on that schedule that would get that $5,000 bump. So, I wanted to explain that because I wasn't here at the last one to to define that. The facilities compression, we're we're in the bucket with that one because unlike the bus drivers, the facilities drivers sit or the facilities staff sit on multiple schedules that have multiple other positions on them. So, the only way

036for us to fix this is to start pulling out those job functions. So, if I'm on a schedule and I'm a C22, there may be six jobs in there. If I just look at the facility staff, it's not looking at the other five jobs that sit across the district in that same bucket. So, the the ESP schedule itself has to be fixed. That's what the compression committee is excited to jump into for next year. Um, it is going to take some substantial work from the committee to evaluate those job descriptions and try to align that a little better so that we don't have so much spaghetti on a page. You pull one and it touches so many others. It's it's super difficult. Um, so we kind of just threw well we want to do some

037compression work next year with facilities and we were hoping that maybe like with the um putting aside maybe the 20,000 I I'm not sure. it was just a number that we put on it. Um not sure how much it will cost or what else we'll discover, but that's kind of where we sat with facilities compression. Um we knew we had made some, you know, efforts with the bus drivers and the psychologist uh last uh session with the slideshow, the ED secretaries. When we looked at them and compared them to other districts, we were actually right in the bucket. So compression committee uh did not want to make any recommendations for increases at this time. for that job function. Um, and then the other thing that's kind of new and I apologize, we had discussed this

038at the last compression committee. Uh, it was pro after the slideshow and the presentation to meet and confer before one of the other groups that we got excited about was teacher compression because what we figured out pretty quickly was that the ones that have their own schedules are a little easier to figure out and fix. um we came up with some solutions for that and um assigned a priority of compression issues. So one was years of service in Kraton. We know that at some point there were years that were um uh frozen and so I may be like I apologize there's a lot of dogs here. I may be a seven-year teacher and I'm still getting paid like if as if I was a two-year teacher. And so um that was one of the priorities

039was to kind of like address that frozen moment, those frozen moments. So um in that sorry one moment trying to put away a bunch of dogs so sorry. Okay so with the teacher compression it was the years of service. Obviously, some teachers have uh been given a placement um for their years of service that they came into Kraton. Um so that was addressed um in that it just was recognized. There's not anything we can do about that. Um and that is what the placement schedule is for in order to attract teachers with experience. So that wasn't a problem that we saw in the schedule. Um the biggest problem was not getting credit for the years of service that you've had in Kraton. So we addressed that. Um the other piece was getting everybody on one

040schedule. We addressed that and um kind of the way of looking at it was do no harm. So even um if if at some point in the history of Kraton that teacher got a bump during some time period like this where we were looking at compression in the past, that bump wasn't taken away from them. We just included and got them on the schedule where they needed to be in order to to make that pay work for them. So, the cost to address that those forms of teacher compression um and to get people spread away based on their experience as a teacher is $171,000. So, I wanted to make sure that I got that on the table today. Now, obviously those dollars um we had $200,000 for compression. Um, so if there are any additional

041dollars left on the table today after you guys talk about your options, I know we've been hearing and I don't know where people are going to settle, but I've been hearing this 2%. Um, if we were to pick the 2% that leaves us about 93 $94,000 additional to the two what does this cost? Equals let's see 46 1 2 3 plus the 2420 [Music] um plus the 171 is that what I said 1 2 241 plus the 20 and then um we're still good. Okay. I didn't want to put it in just yet, but I I'm adding it there. Okay, there you go. So, I think there's like 94 left over if you with the I just want to put that out there numbers wise. You guys can do the math. Um, but I was

042pretty excited what the compression committee was able to do with teacher compression and um I think it's a great first run through for that and not as costly as I think we were anticipating. um that would be just for um the group that is considered teacher. They have a teacher status and it's not all certified. It would just be those identified teacher positions. Okay, so that was about it. Um any questions? Can you wait? So Vanessa and the group my question is and if you could do this it would help us relating till number 10 on our handout um with facilities and the description Vanessa is compensation in compression committee recommendations requesting 20,000 to apply compression as work is completed on salary schedule during the 2526 school year. And then we had a figure of

04397,460. I guess I'm confused now. So I don't know where that what handout you have and I'm not sure where the number came from. It could have been that total of the all the compression work we did. I think that might have been a total of multiple items. So, we were given that last time as a figure relevant to how much I guess that would cost for facilities. I don't think that that's facilities. I'm I'm pretty sure that that is a a total of um all of the compression that we were looking at, the 46, the 24. So that would not be a figure we would negotiate then. So you we're just really negotiating the 20,000. Yes. I I apologize. I don't know why it says 97. It it seems like it's a total of

044something else. Okay. So we can cross that 97. So what we will be negotiating, I guess, is the 20,000. Am I right? Did I understand that that would go back to the compression committee? No. And let them decide. These are already approved dollars for compression. This is the com um the committee's recommendation um of using those dollars. So, we had a $200,000 right thing. And then the options that are on the option screen are the breakouts. I we've looked at a bunch of different numbers and a bunch of different groups and we've reported this out a couple of times. So, I apologize. I'm not sure if if numbers are getting compiled and totaled up, but for the facilities compression, we were not able to do a deep dive to get to any kind of number

045that would be 97,000. Um, all I can say is that because of the way that the salary schedules are set up, we're not able to move forward to address facilities compression at this moment in time until we do work on the salary schedules themselves. We've started that work with the teacher group to kind of learn how to pull some things together and we were very successful. The ESP salary schedule is way more complex. Every um item has three, four, five, six positions in addition to a facilities position. So the only way for us to address the facilities compression would be to pull those staff and those job responsibilities out and create a new schedule, which is what we want to do in the compression committee. We feel like that's the only way forward for success

046in order for us to address compression within specific groups. And it looks like we're getting some momentum with that compression because we were able to address the bus drivers, the psychologist, and teacher compression. Some of those other groups, we came back with feedback that said not at this time or uh didn't think that those groups needed the compression. I do feel like there's somebody missing. I have to say when you said the 97, I'm thinking that's the 46, the 24, and the 20 and somebody else. something was small nurses that was it. Yeah, that 97 was the total. And uh what was reported back to me from the last meeting was that we weren't that the nurses um because we could only look at one tiny group of the nurses, we wanted to put them

047back into the compression so that we could do the deep dive on the L uh I believe it was the LPN's. Um we're going to have to reach out specifically to other districts. um it's very time consuming and so that one will have to roll back into FY26 to be looked at in FY26. We tried to do the lowhanging fruit and get as many done in the time constraints that were possible. Again, this is a lot of work effort on um district staff. So, this is in addition to Okay, thank you Daniel. Yeah, I had a question about the teacher compression item. Um, and I think it's mostly just cuz I don't have like what is planned in front of me, but we were considering a 10% longevity raise primarily to address compression across the

048board, but a 10% like 10% sounds like a lot, but that would be like a $200 bump for some employees or like a $400 bump for some employees. It's not very significant. Can I just say it's number three on our sheet? How um how significant would you say the impact of the $171,000 on like teacher salaries would be for those experiencing compression? So for the the staff that's experiencing actual compression where let's say they're sitting on a B schedule and they've been in the district 9 or 10 years, that's a significant compression for that particular staff member. Um so those staff members are getting would through this process get anywhere from like you know $1,200 3,000 $4,000 bump um for a lot moving from the A to the B. That's about 900 on average, 900

049to a thousand dollar bump. So that's going to address um the new year teachers moving. Um and then like I said, your 10 11 12 year teachers um they could have some substantial uh increases. So I do have I mean it was very preliminary. I'd like to clean it up a little bit and then I can send that out to the group today. So to clarify, the teacher compression item is just is primarily recognizing the years of service of all currently employed teachers. Yes. Yes. Okay. And to like I wouldn't that also create an issue in future in the future where because we have a placement schedule in a couple of years we'll be back in like sort of the same place where like people will still be stuck at their years of service from

050whenever this happened. Right. Exactly. So what this does is it kind of clears the slate for us to do actual compression work and have a salary schedule that allows us to do the compression work. So like let's say next year um we have some dollars and we want to continue to have compression be in the forefront. We'll have a schedule that we can say all right uh it will cost this much to move everybody one increment up and then the new people starting and the the existing people will at least be spaced out. It would take a dedication from the meet and confer team to think about compression every year. It's not something that could happen automatically. I think it needs to be a discussion because the team might say because of the dollars that

051we have, we're just going to raise everybody's schedule. If you raise everybody's schedule after we fix compression, then compression still stays fixed. Um, if we don't raise everybody's schedule and we do different types of things, it could uh, you know, affect compression. So, there's multiple ways once these schedules are fixed for us to keep addressing compression um as the group determines any dollars on the table. Vanessa, can I just to for my clarification, I know Kelly's next on the list, but um one of the goals in creating a salary schedule that's consistent is that in the system, we have a salary schedule for some teachers and then what's called a tiered salary schedule. And then in that tiered salary schedule, it's not complete. So there are gaps and it's really by employee, right? So one

052employee might be on tier schedule row N. And this is the attempt to put everyone on the same schedule. What appears on the placement schedule is only 10 years. But the schedule then would go beyond row K. And Vanessa, make sure I'm I'm saying this correctly, but it would go beyond row K. it could go up to row AA for instance, right? So depending on the amount of time that someone's in the district, that's the schedule that everyone would be on. And so then in future years, if there's a 2% increase or a 5% increase, that's the schedule that gets adjusted. So then the placement is still those first rows, K A through K. Um, and that should match for current teachers on that row and then placement for new teachers. So that's kind of

053I think where Daniel was getting about how does this help if we have someone who comes in on as a first year teacher in the district on RO K and there's a tenure teacher on RO K. How does that help that person? So does that that help? Well well how that helps that person is you've you've um recruited a tenure teacher and we've retained a tenure teacher and they're both on K. and they're on the same schedule. Does that make sense? But if I'm a 10ear teacher and I'm sitting on B, now I'll be sitting on K in this adjustment. That's what the adjustment means. So that a tenure teacher is is making what if someone gets placed on a 10-year schedule because they have 10 years or more of experience, it means that that

05410-year teacher isn't getting penalized for not for being frozen on a on B or a two-year, you know, when they came in and they're on a B um and didn't get continue to get placed higher through the course of the years. This creates a schedule that we can alleviate those frozen years and get those teachers up to where they would be and give them credit for the Kraton service just like we're giving credit to the person coming in from the outside that has 10 years of experience. Does that make sense? That does. And uh Hey, Vanessa, good morning. Thank you for taking time away from your vacation to provide this information to us. We appreciate it. Um and thank you to the compression committee. I do just want to say the ones in blue are

055what came out of the compression committee. So it's our job to look at those numbers and decide kind of the final say. I just want to make sure everyone's clear on that. Um then well let me Yes, exactly. So what happened last year was that the um meet and confer team said we and we and district said we need um we need a committee work for this and and then they sent 200,000 to the committee for the committee to work on the compression um based on some uh criteria from meet and confer where we looked at certain groups first. So the compression committee is looking at all groups uh but we did um prioritize certain groups first and based on what meet and confer had requested and then this is the committee's work to come

056back out of it. Obviously um I I mean I I don't want to redo all the committee work in meet and confer. I think that's why we sent it to them to make recommendations back to meet and confer and answer any questions you guys have. Yeah. And I just want to clarify that the bus driver psych facilities all came out to that 90k with the extra seven for the LPN which we said we still had to do some I know that got said I just want to make sure that was clear among the group. Thank you Kelly. I knew there that that sounded like a total. I was like how did that get on the facilities? I don't know. Yeah. And then it just all got lumped in as facilities which I think is how

057we sort of branded it initially anyway. And then the information that you were just sharing about the teacher compression that's the 171, right? That's the like moving people to like start at the clean slate. Okay. I just I was pressing that was work that when we came back from the committee with the other items, we had another committee meeting and obviously we felt like we could we could try to get that in before since me and confer scheduled another meeting and we had another compression committee meeting. We felt we wanted to try to get this forward for our teachers. Uh it was really important to the committee to get this in front of meet and confer. So we know it was a last minute uh but it was definitely one of the areas that we've

058discussed multiple years in meet and confer and the committee felt like it could be um once we finally started getting because that was the next group we were looking at um and it it just it came together really well for us to make some get some uh legs on it. Okay, thank you. That was all for me. It seems logical, but I want to make sure that I clarify. So, the majority of the teachers that um would be moving from the tiered or whatever alternate schedule they might be on, I'm probably one of them before moving to now the standard one. So, everybody would be on the same schedule, are mostly longtime employees. Correct. Tiered schedules. Yes, tiered would be um longerterm employees, okay, who got put on that schedule at some point in time.

059And what we can see what it looks like historically is that we did try to do some compression. The way we did it didn't we didn't do it in a way that would allow us to continue to watch it and keep an eye on it and keep everybody in one place so we could actually do comparative uh studies on it. So because we convoluted it, right? It actually made it more challen maybe it was a quick fix in the in the time period but it made it actually harder long term. So, because I'm just looking at our dollars, right? Like we have all these options. Like one of them is to deal with longevity, but theoretically, at least it sounds like if we did this and that caused us not to be able to do

060the longevity bumps, it would still impact the same more or less group of employees and give them that that kind of impact. Okay. All right. Absolutely. And just so I mean there are it's so much more than one or two schedules. Yeah. There's like parody schedules, STEM schedule, grant schedules. Um so uh we got it down from like I want to say six or seven schedules to two. We determined there really needed to be two different um schedules. uh and um based on on our criteria and with our teaching staff only. Um but that was a a big win for us to be able to stick them all together and uh figure out where especially those frozen teachers. It was incredible to me to find people who had 12 even. I think the worst one

061I found was someone who had it may have been like 17 years of experience and they were on like a C schedule. They weren't even on a t a tier. So somehow they got missed in that last goround too. So uh doing it this way allowed me to find all the needles in the hay stack of the people who really have been compressed for multiple years. Yeah. No, I really appreciate the idea of simplifying it since you mentioned that um doing this work got us down to probably two schedules. Can you describe what those two schedules are? One is a regular teacher um play. So the placement what we call them I don't know what we'll end up calling them. Um but it's two groups of teachers. One is regular ed teachers and the other

062is STEM teachers. I I think Joel could speak to the differences between those two teachers types of teacher, but I think it's science and math and technology teachers versus the two salary schedules that exist currently for certified teachers. There's uh the STEM one includes dual language teachers, science, math, technology, and sped resource. That's what I thought. Yes, they were. Yeah. So years ago um well not too long ago but there was a market demand on the salary schedule for those hard to fill positions and the decision was made to move them to a separate salary schedule so that their base reflected the hardto-fill positions. Um and then since then market demands were added right so there was a market demand added for resource market demand added for self-contained. So that that's where the two salary

063schedules are. Um, and for uh Daniel has another question, but I just want to clarify, Vanessa, when we look at that number, the 261,000, 200 of that is money that was earmarked from last year's meet and confer process, right? So, when you're looking at that number, if you're looking at how much it would impact this year's allocated dollars for meet and confer, you're looking at the 61,200, right? Okay. I just wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page with that. Uh Daniel, um yeah, I had a question about the because a 5k raise to psychologists uh you guys costed out as 24,000. Does that take into account because we have to have the psychologists, right? There's no world where and I guess if it be a vacancy, what there's the number of positions,

064right? And it's a $12,000 cost to the district to hire a contract psychologist. So, if even if we gave $5,000 raises to all the psychologists, wouldn't that like if we actually ended up hiring a psychologist, wouldn't that actually save us like six grand? So, so would it actually cost anything to add $5,000 to the psychologist salary schedule? Well, I I mean again, I think we we handle budgets in a global effect. And yeah, there could be some savings if we hire from a contracted psychologist and then end up hiring a um an employee instead, but that's not typical as the way um we manage budgetary dollars because it's it's too there's no way to keep track of that on a long-term basis. So yes, overall and if you were trying to manage something to a

065penny, yes, I believe that you're correct. There could be some savings from going from a contracted teacher to a hired uh employee teacher. Um, and that's always our goal. Oh, sorry. All right. I was talking about the psychologist specifically, which I'm I'm I'm man I'm trying to do dollars and cents because I was looking at our options and we might be like 12 we might literally be like $12,000 over budget if you know looking at some options and for the psychologist that the reason I brought that up is because like like if we raise our psychologist pay rate it doesn't make a contract psychologist more expensive, right? That's not what happens, right? So I'm saying but I don't know that I'll be able to hire a psychologist in that's like an unknown right now. I'm

066dealing with the known dollars of how many psychologists we actually have hired in a salary schedule. The the contract piece is not going to be calculated into that budgetary number or it's going to be taken away. Yeah, I understand. That makes sense. Okay. Wait, actually, I'm sorry. I guess based on that, a follow-up question is then where cuz like wouldn't wouldn't hiring contractors run us over our budget or I guess like like how does that work? Does it dip into carry forward? Do we hire one contract psychologist to fill like two positions? It dips into vacancy savings and and ultimately then that would somehow dip into carry forward. Yes. Okay. That's Yep. Joel, I can't hear you. I'm sorry, Vanessa. What I was saying is that contractors usually are a flat fee to the district

067and we're not paying benefits. We're not paying into ASRS for them. So there's some of that vacancy savings would include those dollars that are also earmarked. I Okay, that makes sense. So like every every paycheck basically that someone isn't hired in a job is money that will be saved regard Okay, I understand. Yeah. Okay. Any more questions? Because this is the time that you really understand what's in our options and the amounts because you'll making that you'll be making that decision. Yeah. Okay. Vanessa, thank you so much. We appreciate your input and it definitely will help us as we're finalizing our negotiations. So, enjoy your vacation. Enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you. I appreciate that. And guys, um I should be some I I don't know. It just depends. I'm traveling today, but

068if you do have questions, plea please feel free to text me and I will try to get back as soon as I can. Okay. Thank you. Um Diane, I hate to do this to you, but I'd like to call a caucus. Sure. Uh 10 10 minutes probably. 10 minutes. Yeah, if that's okay with everyone. Is that okay with everyone? 10 minutes. Cool. Okay. And then remember when you come in, we'll have someone share out. Um yeah, 9:20. Let's come back at 9:20. I guess they tell us what they wanted. Daniel, are we sharing what the top Daniel? Are you comfortable sharing what the topic is or Okay. If you want to meet with your group. Hey, welcome James. How are you doing? Good. Okay, welcome back from your caucus. Um, we are going to have

069individuals from each group just share out. Remember, we are not doing negotiations yet. So, I I really do not want to bring up conversations about negotiations because we have a process we're going to go through um for that. But, I think we would all be interested in hearing from a spokesperson about the caucuses you just had. So, Kelly, go ahead. Thank you. Um, so we just discussed in light of the new information that was presented and just a lot of numbers flying around and what's really feasible and what's not. We just kind of wanted to be aligned on what where our heads were at and what we were thinking. So, we basically went through a few options that we are considering advocating for so that we can be aligned when it does come time to

070um vote and make sure that we're all on the same page. Perfect. Okay. Perfect. Um, who Eve, are you representing your group? Okay. Um we discussed um the different cost options as well, but mostly about being conservative with how we move forward just with the uncertainty of the nation and things that are going on outside of Kraton School District. We just think that um not living in fear by any means, but being really strategic and cautious about moving forward and being conservative with the recommendations that we make. Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you. in your folders. Uh now, um if you could look in your folders, there was another handout that someone I don't remember who it was, maybe Katie mentioned that it would be helpful if we had our framing statements. So, what I

071did, and I do believe I gave you something like this before, but I think I cleaned it up a little. Well, I know I cleaned it up a little bit. So, um, what we have here is, uh, a handout that lists the issues. We had 13 and then I believe we had 15 framing statements. And the reason, um, I'm going over this with you is um, eventually I'm going to have you review that because it's important for you to remember in the IBN process, we developed our issues. as you remember. And then we talked about our interests and then through our stories um that we shared when we were looking at our interests, then we developed the framing statements and the options actually answer the framing statements. Okay? And today we're going to look at

072those options and I would like you to keep in your mind the framing statements. Okay? Now, are we going to be able to address every single one of them? Maybe not. But I still want them to be in your um thinking. Okay. Then you have the option handout um that lists the tabled the ones that we already made recommendations, which there are three. And by the way, they're pending recommendations. the board al ultimately makes the final decision on those recommendations. And then we had some options that um we need to address today and they're in two categories. Ones that require finance and ones that do not require finance. Okay. Again, here's our budget. Might not be accurate now, but here is where we're at. And by the way, I think it's important for our staff

073to know how much the district does pay for health care. It's quite a large number. It's $4.2 million. Now, we don't have to worry about budgeting it that this year because the district said they would cover it, but um I think it's important for everyone in the district to know that's a great deal of money. Um so as we know our budget what the district gave us to budget is 750,000. Um the money the compression compensation committee gave back to us was 200,000 which gave us a total budget of 950,000 minus um which we did come to consensus with uh the 2% raise. And then I had only on this one put because we came to consensus. Um I didn't put the other options on there from the compression the $9ome,000 one. I only put

074the bus driver one. Um which then led us with that money to a lot today. Questions about my um figures there? Okay, like I said at the beginning, I can be flexible and I'm willing to be flexible. Here's my thinking about how we're going to address this. I thought it would be um I know you met with your caucuses and so you know what your groups are thinking, but I I I did want you to meet with other members and just to hear their viewpoints, their thinking, and I thought it would be a good idea just to take, you know, maybe 10, 15 minutes, divide into two groups, talk about what you're thinking, share it out, and then come back and then let's have a discussion. if we need to weigh our responses like we

075h we did last year. Maybe we don't because we really don't have a lot of money here and maybe we are all on the same page with our thinking. But I would like you to um meet with a mixed up type of group. Okay. Is are we okay with that? Okay. So, that's what we're going to do. Um, and here's some things I would like you to consider when you're in your group. And I'll keep this slide up so that you can refer to it. Um, and you might want to take your folders with you, but I'd like you to review the issue and framing statements handout. Um, review the tabled options and our recommendations so far. And of course, you need to know what the options are. Um, review the remaining budget amounts. And

076if you want to do some calculation within that group, you can do that. By the way, I wanted to use my talking sticks. And they're lost. I don't know where they went. Somewhere here, but I was going to have you use the talking stick to make sure every single person talks. Okay. Um, and I'm going to just say I'm not going to assign roles or anything like that for this time, but I would like to put one person though in charge of making sure that every person's voice is um, heard. Um, give reasons for your viewpoints, use your active listening skills, and be respectful. And again, that's the amount of money we have to spend. Okay. So, how we're going to divide into our groups is by colors. So, the colors are, and if it

077doesn't work out, I'll switch it. Green and yellow. So, raise your hand if green is your favorite color or yellow. That's the only two choices you have. So, raise your hand if uh you like green better than yellow. Okay. Well, then we only have a couple. Okay. We're going to do something else. Dogs or cats? You have to select one. What's your favorite? You have to select one. Who do you love more? Dogs or cats? Can't say both. Dogs. Cats. Are you two comfortable being by yourself? I'm only kidding. I'm only I'm only kidding. Okay, we're gonna count by one and two. Okay, let's start over here. Ariel, two. Okay. Um, I'm going to randomly randomly select someone just to say what we're doing when we get in our groups. So, let's have um I

078don't have my cards. Amy, what are we doing when we get into our groups? going into the groups and we're talking about options. We're reviewing an issue. Um, and we are going into talking about specifically like budget amounts, budget amounts. Um, we're using our skills. We're we want to make sure that everybody talks even though we don't have our talking pieces and being respectful um and just giving like the reasoning behind our view points. Perfect. Very good. Excellent. Excellent. Okay, we're going to take about what do you think 10 15 10 minutes to do this. Um we can stay in this room. Um again, just make sure in your group someone takes the responsibility um volunteer for this job to make sure everyone talks and then we'll have someone um maybe share what the conversation

079was. Okay. over over here. Um, ones over here, twos. Okay, thank you everyone for um promptly coming back in. The conversations um I felt were very interesting. I felt they were sincere and I really feel that you were keeping um in mind the best interest of the district during your conversations. So, thank you for doing that. Uh let's have some um spokesperson from each group share out first group over the group that was over here. Who's your spokesperson? Okay, Dorothy. So, just share about, you know, your conversations and maybe it seems like your group came up to some agreements, but whatever whatever you'd like to share out so we can learn. We had a solid conversation about um the reality of the situation in terms of a couple of different things. the dollar amounts that

080we have to spend as well as the um likelihood of getting um a proposal passed or a presentation or recommendations passed by the board. So we had discussion about both issues and there was u mixed opinions about do we spend all of the money, do we spend a portion of the money. Um really it came down to we want we as a whole group feel strongly that regardless of how that comes out that we need to spend a substantial amount of time today really a working through the presentation for the board and making sure that we present it in a way that it's most likely to get approved. Um because that is a concern. if you've paid any attention to the last couple of board meetings, um there has been some pretty strongly held opinions

081expressed by various board members. So, we want to be mindful of that and make sure we have a thorough professional presentation for the board regardless of what um you know the end product actually looks like. Um, I think overall, and members of group number two, correct me if I'm wrong, I think overall we came to the final consensus that we felt comfortable with the 2% plus the um all of the uh compression issues being included and um beyond that um many members of the team were not supportive. So that that would be kind of the cap would be the 2% and the compression issues being addressed. Okay. Does that fairly recommend or is there anything else that I missed? Okay, that said you you shook your head no, but your face said yes. Yes, it

082did. Okay. Okay. Um, who's the spokesperson from the group that was outside? Amy. Okay. We were actually trying to wrap our brains around everything that we talked about, but essentially we were um we came to the consensus of that we had already approved the 2%. So we have this pocket of money left I don't want to say left over but essentially to figure out what is going to be best for all parties in the district. How are we going to be able to move our students forward with our SOFG goals and um and support all of the needs of all the adults on within our district as well in order to support the the growth of the SOFG. Um we didn't really come to consensus or talk too much about the different options. We figured

083that that's what was going to be happening in this larger group here. Um and I think each person kind of has different ideas or thoughts on that. So we look forward to the conversations add to that that group. Okay. I don't Adrien, are you able to put this back up? I reinserted that. So that should be okay. Okay. Um, before we move on, I just wanted to review. We talked about standards at our very first meeting. It is a process skill. It's one of our last process skills. And how that will work is first of all, the standards were developed by IBN. Um so each of those bullets is a standard and a standard really is a measurement. So when we decide on um our recommendations, we will take each of those recommendations and we

084will determine if each of the recommendations align with each of our standards. If they don't align then we won't accept that recommendation. If they do align then we will accept the recommendation to present to the school board. So really um the standards then this is for all the new members is just the measure and like I said those standards were developed by IBN this year. Um well last year I think or this year we added does it align with student outcomes focused government governance and we actually put that first because that one is one we have to really work hard with when we have our recommendations. Kelly um just to I apologize I have to step out for a meeting but it sounds like uh thank you for the recap. That was like really good

085timing on my part here. Um, just for my clarification too and for the group's work, it's not just a yes or no. We'll need to be prepared with like a statement or which specific, for example, which SOFG goal it does align with, etc. Okay, correct. I guess I'm wondering what because I did hear some of the board members say I've also been tuned in. Hard not to be a lot of a lot of drama. Um, what I heard Katie is who's coming to mind, but I forget if others said it as well. Um, that they don't want Sorry, not this Katie. Katie gives him a clean. you're like, I get it. Um, I heard her say, I don't want a research paper. So, like, how do we find the what are they looking for? Exactly.

086Yeah. Yeah. We are going to devote time today to that. Um, so we'll have that discussion when we get to that. But I don't think we want a research paper. But I do think we'll have to back, you know, maybe a little bit of research as to why. um not a thesis because you know they'll be right. Exactly. They'll be bored stiff. So I just what my recommendation would be don't say a lot but make sure what you do say really relates to what they're thinking. Dorothy uh yeah we're doing the stack if we need to but so far I just didn't want to speak out of turn. Yeah. Um, can you clarify for me because I know Daniel asked earlier, has the 2% already been gone through consensus? Yeah, we are not going to

087go back to that. That's all I'm asking was I we reached consensus, we're staying. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's a part of the IBN process. Once we reach consensus, I'm not disagreeing. I was just checking in to make sure whether or not that had been approved or not approved so far. Right. Okay. Thank you. Not approved by the board yet, but we came to consensus. Okay, questions about what a standard is. And in your mind for the new people, just think it's a measurement. Is are our recommendations measuring up to all of those things that we developed? Okay, we're not doing that yet because we have to come up with Let's go back. Okay. So now I listening I was able to go outside and I real and I was able to listen um

088to the conversations that were taking place and it seems like we're in some type of agreement. But let's have a whole group discussion. Let's look at our options right now. Let's see if we can actually go through and let's just what I'd like to do is eliminate. Okay. Just cross out. So, pull out that paper. Can we say tabled? I understand. Sort of eliminate. So, yeah. You know what? I'm glad you brought that up, Kelly, because I've been thinking about the tabled. So, so far we have six tabled. So, next year, how that would work? How do you want that to work for next year? Let me ask you that question. I'm kind of worried about the amount of um items tabled because if we say everything that we don't agree with is going to

089be tabled then we start next year with all the tabled issues. Yeah. But we can discuss like after like how we're going to address those tables because I think that's going to take a lot of time right now. Right. And I and I agree with you. Just as long as all of you know tabled doesn't mean tabled to me means they're going to be addressed. Again, that's my interpretation of tabled. Uh well, not necessarily going to be addressed, but they're going to be presented and then decided if we want to address them. I I think that tabled can just mean they go on a list and when we start next year, we can start by looking at that list and seeing if there's anything we want to pick up. So that would be up to

090the team next year to determine what to do with that list. But until then, it's just a list of items. Okay, that's my interpretation, Kelly. Yeah, which is the same as what was brought forth at the beginning of our process this year due to the surveys that we did from across the district and various departments. So I think it's no different, right? It's looking at a list and then that team will determine we want to pick this one up and continue or we can eliminate it. Okay. As long as everyone understands that. Daniel, who's No, I was just going to agreeing what she said. I feel like if we start out with a 50 tabled items next year, we're never going to be able to add anything new to it. So, I do I do

091agree like Lord said like this kind of could be a longer conversation. So, we can table a bunch of stuff now and then maybe set aside some time towards the end and eliminate from the tabled items. Would you be comfortable with that? And okay. Um I was just gonna I was just going to ask if there was why is there a reason why we don't just start with the finance options and just go one through 15 down the line. Sure. Because I feel like that would I think it's just going to get really convoluted if we start jumping around and if people are against I think like when we talked outside in our caucus, we came to like a consensus among ourselves about what items that we really wanted to push for and support. So

092I think and I think that everyone probably feels similarly about their own items. I think we're on the same page, but let's make sure. So, we'll um who would like to be our reader? Could we have someone read the options? We'll start with the finance number one, and then we will just decide if we want to. Yes. Oh. Oh, perfect. So, you're going to put them up there for us. Okay. I appreciate that. Yep. I think he has it. Do you have it as a spreadsheet? Okay, let me read them. I'll be the reader. Okay, so we're on the finance options. Um, designate one Friday per month for mandatory staff PD without students. And that was over a million dollars. Katie We don't. Am I right in that there are zero dollars to fund any

093of these or no? Well, we have the um Yes. A little over 200,000 is left. But I thought that was addressing the question. Well, we have to determine that. Okay. Yes. Because you were saying that was something we voted on last year. So, it is something. No. No. Okay. So what happened is we gave the com Do you want to go ahead Dorothy? True and and not true. So the committee last year gave $200,000 and that's not even from the new budget that's from the old budget to compression. Compression gave it back. And so since it's suggestions in our purview still as part of the budget, but then they came uh the compression committee because I'm on that um came with recommendations after they gave the money back. So I guess technically we do still

094need to approve how it's spent because they spent time on that. Would it be would it be helpful if we just had a running count of how many remaining funds we have left? Sure. I think Joel's spreadsheet has that. We have Yeah, we have $247,511 currently because we approved a 2% raise and the $1 an hour raise for bus drivers which cost $46,000. So, do we can we just write like 247k on the board or something? Yep. And it's on your handout as well. Correct. Well, yeah, because those are part of this, right? No. Oh, well they should be consensus on that. So then can we on the list of finance options? Yeah, I guess it's not on the list of finance options. Oh, wait. No. Yeah, this is Yeah, Dorothy, it's on this list.

095I see psychologist facilities. Yeah. So what we what we have left just to make sure everyone understands is the amount that's on the chart 247,511 and that's with the 2% raise. Okay. And the bus drivers sorry and we came to consensus on that. the other ones from the compression committee. We might come to consensus today and want those. Right. Could Could we add that? We can add it. When Joel can add it to his still trying to We will add that. All right. Yeah. 16 200 200 kind of that's where that right yeah we have 93,000 in the non-compression cost bucket and we have 150 thou4,000 in the compression cost bucket um although like Vanessa told us we can spend that compression money on whatever we want we just have a set of suggestions from

096the compression committee we don't and also the bus drivers thing that we approved is not addressing compression that's just a compensation issue even though it is the compression and compensation committee committee. It's not just a compression committee, right? Even though we said the money should go to compression, but that's okay. Yeah, Katie. So, the ones that like it that would address the compression and would equal out the dollar amount would be number three, 9, 10, and 11. Is that right? Well, we're what we're talking about is the committee. There was there was a presentation um by Vanessa. She zoomed in. It's in the chat, Katie, if you Yeah. And she had different numbers. Yeah. The ones that are in blue are the ones that are I think there are four or five of them, Katie.

097Yeah, Katie. There's se there's several on our list that would address compression and only some of them are from the compression committee. Well, so what I'd like to do is just read the option. And I think some of these we can easily cross off because we can't afford them, but I I still think they need to have a voice. So finance option number one, designate one Friday per month for mandatory staff PD without students. Um originally we were told that would cost 938,790, but today we were told it would be 1,135,936. Certainly we can't afford that. So cross that out. I don't uh do you want to table it? That's it. Um I don't know. I I would I'm just want to say this for the good of the order. terms of this, I really

098wonder how much of this could be modified or adjusted if we really brought it to the calendar committee because it was this year that we took out that Monday for professional development when we came back from fall break. And I know many people at my campus were like, "Oh my gosh, I wish we had that day." Um, so I'm wondering if that's something that could live with the calendar committee when they review that. Um, because I know it was brought to calendar committee. I was on that. I think James was there with me and maybe somebody else. Um is that was one of the options was every Monday we came back from a break like the Friday before was a half day and then the Monday was a professional development but it caused us to

099go back to starting earlier in July and I know that wasn't necessarily a desired option. Um but it also didn't cost us any money because of the way that we were doing it. So, I just want to kind of put that out there as maybe that's something that the calendar committee could look at whenever they meet again. I don't know if it's next year or the year after. Um, but that would be an option that would meet the cost or that would meet the component of providing some of that professional development and it would be it wouldn't cost us a dime. I know. No, no, no. Because so to look at it to look at it because like the way that we adjust it will cost Okay. So, it it is it is a day

100without students, but it's a day that we pay people. So, there is a cost to it. Okay. Sorry, I miss I misspoke. I know that there are multiple other districts. So, maybe it wouldn't be once a month, but it could be once a quarter. Yeah. So, are you comfortable tableling it? Okay. Can we I'm just because I'm confused because we're doing thumbs up to table. Can we just read the option and thumbs down it? And if anything that's thumbs down is tabled. Is that Yeah. So, let's um do a thumbs up if we table it. When I table it, who knows how many tables we're going to end up. Wait, we just said the opposite. So, if you we reread the option to eliminate it, we thumbs it down. Once it's eliminated, it gets put

101on the table list. Okay. So, you want Okay. And I just want to make sure every do not want today is going to be tabled and then if we have time then we'll go back through those other committee at the beginning of next year cycle can do that work. Okay. But I really Yes. No, I agree. I agree. I do agree. Okay. I'll read it again. Designate one Friday per month for mandatory staff PD without students. Okay. Tabled. And Joel, you're taking. Okay. Um, number two, keep current tiers of longevity to increase amount by each tier by 20%. The number I did have changed today. Um, so let's go ahead and do a arrow. I'm looking at it. Okay. Um I'm assuming I'm just gonna say tabled because that's what we just decided. Um number

102two, current tiers of longevity. Um the one by 20%. We're really going to have to T tabled a table does not it's just on a list. Uh what I imagine is that here is a list of tabled items from previous years and it's like a list of like brainstorming items for people to draw from for next year. It doesn't mean anything significant. Yeah. It doesn't have to be like a a thing if that next year that Yeah. If then if next year the team looks at all of our Tatal items and say, "Okay, we don't like any like when they're developing options. Oh, here are the previous options that were developed by by a team last year. Any of these good ideas?" It doesn't have to be like a It can even if it was

10350 tabled options, it could be, "Hey guys, take 10 minutes to look at the tabled options when you're developing options and see if there's something you want to bring." It doesn't have to be a whole Well, let's hope that at the beginning of the year those tabled items don't lead to just a full day discussion. Um, okay. So let's go on to the next one. To address um compression longevity stipens will increase by 10% amount at years 5, 10, and 15. Okay. Okay. Tabled number four. After first year of employment, level A staff who return are moved to level B and that was $62,77. Can you live with it, Ivon? Ivon, if it helps you. We felt like the compression one, remember the 171 really kind of addresses that because it allows people who came

104in with their ears to be able to move up. So, cuz I was the same. I'm like, I have heartburn over this. It feels like such an easy when it's only whatever 62,000. Right. Right. Um, James, were you okay with that? And and also it that the approving this would create more compression down the line because then that was through Vanessa's conversation. Okay. Number five. Should we do that one again or No, we're okay. Um, so number five really we have to table only because um Vanessa didn't give us any she just thought that it was too complex. I'm wait I'm sorry. We don't we don't we have to come to consensus on it. We don't have to table anything that doesn't have a pay value. Um I mean it's up to us to like

105this is clearly an item that would cost a significant amount of money. So it doesn't make sense for us to prove but we should still get consensus on it. Um because there will be some items down the line that there's not a pay value for it but it would be a very small amount of money. So like so it might be something you want in the future. Yeah. Okay. Let me read it. After second year of employment and successful completion of district new teacher cadre certified teachers are moved from current level to next level on salary schedule. monetary amount we still we didn't receive today and I guess um like what Vanessa said it was too complex to give us a number at this time. So, okay, tableabling it. Six contract substitutes will receive a

1065% pay raise as well as a stipen of $1,735 12 cents paid at the end of the 2425 school year to people employed as contract substitutes for the entirety of the 2425 school year. And originally that was we were given 42,683. Today it was $38,73569. Can we open some discussion on this one? Yes, we can. Um, does anyone mind if I go first? Go ahead. Um, so like the reason that I created this option and suggested this is because and I think I've explained this to a lot of different people, so I'm sorry if you're hearing this again. Contract substitutes aren't on any of the like pay scales. They're on their own pay scale. They get paid significantly less than a classroom teacher. Despite that, they are often expected, this is like who you'd refer

107to like as your building sub, maybe they're the substitute that is employed by the district. They're there every single day. Um many of them take over classrooms and become long-term subs and still receive that same lower rate of pay. This recommendation is specifically to address the fact that last year um they received a 5% pay. Yeah, sorry. as a result of meeting deferred last year. So this year s they received a 5% pay raise with all of the other certified staff, but they get the classified performance pay. So they only get a $500 performance pay and they also got the lower raise because this year we gave classified staff a 10% raise. And so this recommendation would give them a 5% raise to catch them up to that classified raise. It would pay them a

108stipen to make up for the money that they didn't get this year. And um for future pay raises, it would ensure that or I I think it was a separate option, but for future payraises, it would ensure they're at the classified rate because when we talk about payraises, we take into account performance pay, right? That's like part of our our total salary as like certified employees. And contract substitutes are not receiving that performance pay. They're not getting that extra $2 or $3,000. And so that I think that's something needs to be considered when we're talking about payraises. Um when I brought this up to HR at the beginning of the year because it felt like a genuine error. Um, I I don't know if you can speak to this, Joel. They're just in a weird

109bucket because they can't be given the teacher um performance pay because they're not employed as a classroom teacher, but they are still certified employees. So, even though that they're certified employees, they can't receive that performance pay. And I think the only way to make that right is to either give them the classified pay raise or to give them the certified performance pay. And it's we legally we cannot give them the certified performance pay. So I think that the only option is to give them the classified pay raise and this would make up for that. Another way to say that is they're essentially getting like the worst end of both classifications because they live in their own lane. So instead of giving them at least the benefit of one or the other, they're just getting the

110worst of both worlds. And I will also add that we can afford this and all of our um all of the compression and compensation items that we're going to support and still come $21,000 under budget. Can I jump in real quick? Yes. There's a whole another bucket of people that belong to that and those are non-instructional certified people. They're they're not getting they're getting treated like a classified person just like the contract subs are. So either either we include all of them or we don't include any of them. I don't think it's fair to do half and half. Were they also missed on the classified raise? Carolyn, do you know? I don't know that because that's really it's not just the classification, but it's the that they weren't given the 10%. They were only given

111the 5% because that was what the Yeah. Or the pay for performance. Well, pay for performance has to be classified because it's not legally we have to. You mean certified? Certified. Yes. Sorry. Right. So certified people that are not that are now non-instructional are not also not getting paid for performance. But have gotten classified. Yeah. Did they get the classified pay raise? The 10% classified. That's because that's what this is really addressing is that those non-instructional staff that don't receive the certified paper performance, they should have gotten the 10% pay raise. Contract substitutes did not because they're on their own special salary schedule. The not it's not extra duty, it's addendum, ancillary, that's the word I was looking for. When we make those recommendations, it seems like in the future we should say classified plus

112ancillary or certified plus ancillary to be really specific about which groups, but it just is an error that we're catching. I mean, yeah, I just I would really prefer that this group of employee not get screwed over by like a it feels like a almost like a a counting error or something. And Caroline, did that answer your Oh, I think my only uh the reason I flinched when you said that about the ancillary schedule is that also includes stipens for sports and there are all sorts of other that's a catch-all term. So, I think it's probably better to specify the employee group um that you want that consideration for. Um I just have a clarifying question. My understanding is we have uh at least one contracted sub at every site. Correct. Okay. Um so are

113these positions hard to fill? So it's just unfilled. Okay. Thank you. And sorry, James, to your question, like my the purpose of this is not to give them a raise because the position's hard to fill. It's just because because of the nature of our like our payroll system, they got screwed out of a 5% raise that they like or out of a 10% raise. They got the 5% instead of the 10%. Because they're being counted as a classified employee, but they didn't get the classified race. And I just want to say it go ahead when I replace the language instead of screw or error but just saying it's just the uniqueness of the category that impedes the district to provide that benefit to the employee. So there's no ill intent. Nobody was screwed over. Nobody

114was purposely making a mistake. It's just the unique characteristics of the classification. They're not fully certified. They're not classified. They're in in in limbo. So, I totally follow the intent and I think it's it's a good thing that we provide this. Did the discussion help? Okay, let's do a a revote on I'll read it again just to make sure. Contract substitutes will receive a 5% pay raise as well as a stipen of $1,73512 paid at the end of the 2425 school year to people employed as contract substitutes for the entirety of the 2425 school year. That's 28 38,73569 to improve the intent of it. So I was talking about to We're really intending to do it because it sounds like we're just giving them a 5% rate. I'm sure in the presentation we can, but

115we've already done the option. Correct. Yeah. It doesn't need to be in the option. I'm going to say like the intent of what we're voting on isn't particularly clear. It's just Yeah. when it's um presented. If it's voted on and it's presented to the board, then your intent will be shared. So, that's a good point to remember. Yeah. Well, we're waiting to see Okay. So, let's have our vote, our consensus vote again and see where we come with that. Carolyn, what was your notebook? I would like to find out if we if they got 5% and 10%. What do you mean? I think that's important. I know the other I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm sorry. No, the other the other group of people. I mean, I feel like this could

116if we're investigating this, we're finding out just now that this happened to a group of people or maybe uncovering that happened to another group of people. I feel like they should be included. Do who who would know that? Joel, is there anyone is there anyone that would know that? So non so noninstructional certified PE sorry give you information that's something we have to investigate that's what I'm asking for the opportunity to do that moment okay to come back and address that but we we follow the classification based on their salary schedule whether classified or certified on the salary schedule for determining races whether they are five or 10 question. But now there's a difference between certified and instructional. So do you mean instructional or certified? No, I'm talking about salary schedule. So what is coach?

117I don't understand. What is it? What is a person who's certified but not in a classroom? Which which salary schedule are they on? Depends. So if they're a TOA, they're on certified salary schedule. They're certified employees in a certified. Okay. I'm sorry. If if they're certified a certified employee in a certified role, then they're certified, right? Like a TOA, like an instructional coach. So, there are some positions that like in effective schools or yeah, effective schools that have certified people's people in those positions, but they're not on the certified salary schedule. So, they would receive the classified increase. Okay, does that help clarify? And honestly, this is this is the group the substitutes was the one group that didn't fit in a bucket because they're not even on a salary schedule. They're they are on

118the ancillary salary schedule. So, it's not even um their job description is differently aligned. All of those those things are different. So that the substitute teacher position is very different than any of the other certified classified positions. Okay. Does that make does that help is? And I was just going to add that the way that I figured this out was from talking to contract substitutes, going into the salary schedules, doing the math myself, seeing that there was a gap in the pay, talking to other contract substitutes, and figuring out I had to go talk to HR to figure out if they were classified or certified, what was going on with that. And so like if you meet people um who feel like they have an issue like this or if they feel like the pay

119raise is something is weird, I would highly encourage them to go talk to their union rep and like have like someone do the work to get that figured out? We have 30 days. So Carolyn, um does that conversation allow you to live with it? I guess so. investigated and sideways. Just so you know, does mean that you can live with it. If you still have questions, that's okay. And we're not voting to make this an official recommendation. We're just voting to not table it right now. And then I also Oh, is that what we're doing right now? Oh, okay. I'm um I just want to say too, as someone who lives in that category of I am certified, but now I'm considered classified. I received the 10%. So, I don't think it's as large of

120a population outside of this contracted sub. Okay, Amy. Um, the reason why why my thumb was sideways on it, it's not because I don't think that they don't deserve that funds, because I absolutely do. I'm just concerned because we have a very such a small amount of money. I want to be able to look at all the options um and really have a potential discussion about it before I thumb up because the last thing I want to do is thumb up and then oh wait we can't do this one. I just would like to be an opportunity to be able to look at those first. So that's why my my thumb is sideways and that's what my hesitancy is for. Okay. The table that's what I thought. Can we do that? Well, we if that's

121what we we can at the end, then I guess we'll go back to them again. So, this one um we kind of came to agreement that we were not going to table that one. So, that one will be one that we're going to revisit today. It's still correct. Okay, next one. Hey, by the way, do we need a break? We didn't have one. Finish the finance ones. Okay. Um, number seven, the district will create a parental leave package with sufficient leave time and an option to reserve days upon return to work. Monetary again, the amount was not provided and that was a little bit complex, Vanessa said. So uh table that did did everyone vote? Okay. So that'll be tabled. Number eight, for the purpose of allocating staff to sites under the district staff ratio

12227 to 5:1 students who are English language learners 1:1 um 1.1 um and I think that was seven teachers I guess would be the cost. I don't know why I wrote down seven teachers. And the amount I have was changed after Vanessa shared with us. $514,77. Um, let's have a vote. Okay, that'll be tabled. Number nine, um, psychologist compensation and compression committee recommendations. uh $24,000 which would be 5,000 adjustment to current filled positions. Okay, let's vote to table it or or not or revisit it bullet. 24 on the blue and compression. That was the one that came from the compression committee. So, we'll revisit that today. Okay. Uh number 10, facilities. That was also on the list. It's the 24 200, right? Okay. So, I still want to ask I still want to read it.

123Um, yes. Oh, I was looking at the psychologist one. Facil um facilities compensation in compression committee recommendations requesting 20,000 to apply to compression as work is completed on salary schedules during the 2526 school year. that 97,460 was all of those um recommendations, I think. So, we're just looking at the 20,000. So, was that one we want to revisit today? Ariel, your thumb is down. Uh I thought she said we weren't doing facilities or something like that. She said they want to do nurses. So, who is on our facilities then? No. maintenance. What Vanessa said was that the salary schedule is too confusing and all over the place. Then they need time to go and actually do the work of figuring out who needs the money and where and they think that they'll they need about

124$20,000 once they figure that out, but they're not ready to make Yeah. So they're going to look at it and determine and it's going to be custodians. So ladies, maintenance, can so can I chime in and and Moody, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think like looking at some of the things where we talk about specifically like night leads, night leads make what 50 cents more an hour than the rest of their crew that they're supervising. So that's a lot more large roles and responsibilities and you're only getting 50 cents an hour more. Nose goes on that job. BMS the health and safety of the of the school. Uh you're making almost the same amount as a parah. Um, so there's a lot of adjustments in that. And there's trade specialists who are

125making, you know, sometimes 20 bucks an hour, if that, maybe. Uh, we have landscapers that are making under $17 an hour. Um, custodians that are making under $16 an hour. And then they're everybody that is above them like their night leads like Amy mentioned they're making 30 to 40 cents an hour more. Uh same thing with it's just a there's a lot of areas in there that are you know cross work. You're doing more work. There's not enough people in those positions. Yeah. I want I want to that's why we need you here. Thank you. I'm still going to thumb it down because the number doesn't make any sense. $20,000 bucket. It's not going to do everything, but it's going to do something. And then I do think we need because the group next year

126know that this is still an ongoing issue. [Music] We're not we're not approving or not, right? We're going to keep it alive. Well, if we if we table it, it's not alive for today. No, right. Yes. So, but we're not voting yes or no on it completely. So, Ariel Ariel, are you voting to not table it is the question? So, is it okay if we revisit it again this afternoon? Ariel, sure. We can revisit it. Yeah. It says 20,000 doesn't seem like a lot for the amount of people who fall underneath facility, but it's a start. But it's a start. We're going to talk about it more later. Yeah. Okay. Number 11. Psychologist will receive a base salary increase of 15,000 market demand stipen and psychologist will not be grouped with other certified staff for

127the purpose of negotiated raises and there's no cost to that. Vanessa Vanessa said it was budget neutral, right? We just Okay. So, that one really is going to be an easy consensus because there's no cost to it. Yeah. It says mon provided, but it should be monetary mode. Right. Cross that out. That one um according to what Vanessa said isn't costing us anything. So, we will come to consensus on that though because we did take the time. Well, I don't know if we'll come to consensus, but it's going to be a consensus vote. Yes. Yes. And I know we're probably not there, but sorry. As I read this, it seems to me like a psychologist could come to HR and negotiate a salary. Um, it's because whoever wrote made this handout did not put use

128the correct language. It should say psychologists will receive a base salary increase of $15,000 in lie of a $15,000 market demand stipen. So that's just a typo. Thank you for that. Joel, will you add that up there? It's not up here because it's still Oh, okay. I have it on mine. 15,000. Yes. But yeah, the wording is not Do do you want me to put the proper language into the Google chat? Yes. Okay, I will do that. Thank you. Number 12. Okay, number 12. Uh, special ed case managers will be compensated at the extra duty rate at up to three hours per IEP for taking on additional duties, vacancies or not special ed, not of not special ed certified teachers. We didn't Yes. It's already it's already our practice from the department. Okay. How do

129we ensure that it's being by putting by putting it into our professional agreement? So, it should be no monetary cost. Yeah. We will do a consensus vote for that. Yeah. Okay. Number 12 vote. Yes. Correct. That's all we're doing now. Okay. Next one. 13. Internal advancement. If funds available, lower classified staff advancement criteria from 15 hours to 10 hours. In other words, 30 to 25, 45 to 40, 60 to 55. Monetary amount not provided. Yes. So table that or keep it for further discussion today. Okay. Uh go ahead. So this is just to encourage uh classified staff who may be close to having the the needed number of hours in order to move up in their position or whatever their classification. Is that the right way to say that? Um, we would have to go

130employee by employee and there's no monetary amount, but it seems like it would be easy enough to figure out who has these needed hours and who doesn't and it wouldn't be a huge monetary cost. It's just how many credits they have to get to move to another step on the or new sideways on the salary schedule to get more pay. Just like certified, they can bump up by getting more credits. And wouldn't HR have to approve any of those bumps anyways? So, god forbid there was a situation where someone got the hours, but for some reason it would bankrupt the school district or whatever. They would they wouldn't approve the pay raise. Yeah. Okay. I I can still thumb sideways, but what what why was this put on here? I think it's to make it

131easier for um those classified to move in the salary schedule by being able to, you know, complicate get professional development at a lower amount and still move because it is harder and that they have to pay for their professional development out of pocket. Avon I just want to say we're just table or not tableing it. Yes. So let's just use less time to discuss each one of the options. Let's just continue with the list so then we can spend all the time discussing. We can do that but still some of them might want to I just want to hear their voice as well. Okay. Table or I mean keep it not not keep Well, I don't want to say that. I would like it to stay on the list. Stay on the active list. Yes.

132Katie, what are you thinking? Did I didn't see your vote. Okay. Stay on active. Um, next one. Um, number 14. If funds available, If funds available, provide a comparable stipen for licensing school psychologist. Keep it alive or not. Ariel, um, James, you're Can you live with it not being alive because you're the sideways one? And Ann, I I'm not sure. Kelly, can you live with it? But Dorothy was up, so can you live with it, Dorothy? I just want to hear their voice. So, I was I was up because this is a very small amount. It's literally like giving them the extra thousand and we already do that for other related service providers. So, in my opinion, it's an equity issue, but um I understand if people don't want to do it. Right now, we

133have no psychologists that would be eligible for this. So, it's literally $1,000 if a psychologist got that licensing. There wasn't an amount. It was the other related service providers. It's with everything else. Um, I get it. I'm just trying to spend so much time out what that amount was based on other districts. Like it would just eat a lot of time for today. Okay. And it's it's something that the department if they wanted to do could go at a later time to do on their own. So you're at keeping it or not keeping it? If the rest of the consensus is that worthy to table, then I'm okay with that as well. Okay. Okay. Uh number 15, our last finance option, internal advancement. When transferred to a new higher position, you would receive an increased

134percentage of your current rate. Sorry, Dan. We do have one more after this. It's the one that was added from the compression committee, the 171. Oh. Oh, okay. We want to call it future compression. Hopefully, someone does. Okay. But let's stay on this one. Okay. So number 15, internal advancement. Wow, that's a mix. So I think we will um keep this one because there's quite a mix. Well, we're not doing like the votes. We're just doing keeping to further visit. Okay, that's what does anyone have the wording for the next one? Because I don't have it. 15. Do you have the wording, Daniel? I We can just We're um revisiting number 15. Do we want to just word something real quick? Approve. Approve $171,000 to be used for to address teacher compression. So all the

135ones that have a mixture of those, all of those are still on the table, right? Yes. Yes, the tabled ones are written. Joel's already captured them on the mean confer updates. Yes, we kept it. That's right. Correct. Thumbs up and thumbs down. Those were kept alive and then we're going to go through agreed to keep it alive. Could you speak in the microphone, please? If we all agreed to keep it alive, we kept it alive. Okay. And so then that's why we had a little bit of discussion in there because some people changed their mind and then we were able to maybe table it and not keep it alive. I'm confused because this one we're keeping alive even though there was a mixture of thumbs up and thumbs down but we're keeping it alive. Correct.

136And all the ones that had the mixture of thumbs up and down those are also on the table right now. Correct. The only ones who are not on the table are the ones that had 100% thumbs down or sideways. sideways or sideways. 100% thumbs down or sideways. Correct. Those are not on the table. They're tabled. Everything is either Everything is either tabled. We're not talking about we're revisiting. Okay. So, sideways, thumbs down, those were all tabled. Yes. Okay. Because I I was getting confused about the whole process because it seemed like it kept changing in between. Ariel, I feel it's very disrespectful that you're refusing to speak into the microphone. You can hear me. It's I'm not It's not me that need to hear it. It's the people that are live streaming that are trying

137to hear it. Yes. Even the people on live stream. No, I literally just got a chat asking why people won't use the microphones. When you're on live streams, even if the mic is this far away, you can still pick up every conversation happening in the room. I've went back and watched it. So, even though it's not directly in front of my mouth, you can still hear what I'm saying because the light is green. Just remember to just speak loudly or have it near your mouth. Okay. Um Okay, Daniel, would you reread that so we can go ahead and do it? I just said approve $171,000 to address teacher compression per compression committee recommendation. $171,000. Okay, let's take a vote. 171,000 for teacher compression. I mean, yes. Correct. Keep it alive. Thumbs up. Okay. Well, that's

138unanimous that one. Okay. Now, the question is, I think we need a little break. I know it's close to lunch, but I still would like to have you have maybe just 10 minutes. Okay. And then we hopefully before lunch we can come in and do the non- finance ones. Does everybody have eight still alive or I have one, two, three, four, because that's what I can't come up with. Eight. I have eight. I have eight. Yeah, these are the ones I have alive. Okay. Hey, can we can I I'm sorry. Can we just do the finance ones first since they're top of mind and we have the money in front of us and we just had the money presentation. Is that like a bad Is that a bad idea? Like can we do the like

139like consensus? No, we have these are the ones we want to maybe talk a little bit more about. So Daniel, are you saying after break? Yeah. Okay. Before lunch. Sure. Are we I'm okay with that. So after lunch we'll try to come to maybe consensus vote on the Thank you. On after lunch, we will do our best to try to come to consensus on the finance options. Okay. Um not lunch break. So break 10 minutes and it's what time? 5 to 11. So five after. Okay. Thank you everyone. Welcome back. Hope you enjoyed your break. Okay, in looking at these, if you um checked it, really our budget looks like it could meet most of these. Um, let's go ahead and let's start with number six. Joel has it up there, the finance option. Um,

140and let's go ahead and see if and we can keep a a tally up here on the chart of the costs while Joe Joel posts that finance option. So number, it's number six on your paper. Contract substitutes will receive a 5% raise as well as a stipen. You can see that amount paid at the end of the 2425 school year to people employed as contract substitutes um for the 2425 school year. And there is the amount 42683. Actually, uh Joel, the after talking to Vanessa, that amount was changed to 735 69. I'll read it again. 735 69 Yeah, rounding up is great. Okay. Um, do we want to come to consensus on this one? In other words, recommending. Do we want to uh re make a recommendation for this one? For this one, what is

141there to fix? And what would you like to change on that? Remember to use mic. Just turn it on. Thank you. Right now it it's not very clear on what we're trying to do. Maybe it's just me. The way I'm seeing it, it doesn't seem How would you like it to to receive a 5% pay raise as well as the stipen at the end of this school year? It doesn't make it seem like it's ongoing like a 5%. It doesn't it's not worded as that stipen is would have been there. It's the difference between the five% raise the 10%. To correct the Yeah. The wording is not clear that it's meant to Yeah. contract subs for the What suggestions do you have? I think we need to make sure the wording is clear that that

1425% raise is meant to bring them up to the 10% classified and that will be ongoing because right now it makes it seems like it's one school year. So really the only word is ongoing but make sure that make sure that we know that that 5% pay raise is to bring them up to the 10% classified raise that was given in the 2425 school year beginning 2425 would that be um that part would that be part that we would just use to defend it? the word way it's worded. It doesn't seem like the 5% is ongoing and you don't realize that the stipen is meant to because this gonna be put into the Friday newsletter then 10 is not because people be like why they getting 2% they getting 5%. Okay, Katie, I was just

143going to say I agree with what she's saying because we don't want it to look like we're just picking picking out this one group and deciding to give a raise to them when there is intention behind it, but that might not necessarily be in the wording. What if we have a little caveat, but it's not part of the option? Was someone going to add something? Oh, I got a I think what we're discussing or proposing is a different option. No, we're not ch we're not changing the option at all. We're just That's what I'm saying. It sounds to me as a different option if it's ongoing. The the one that is really is to fix this year's problem. Yeah. But it would fix it in the Well, yeah, they're not going to get another. But

144if we go I I am not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying it will turn it into a different option. And I don't think we're doing that. So we just have to go with what already can we can we just in that was the intent for it to be ongoing. Can we include the well yeah can we include the intention in our newsletter is that that seems like a really easy thing that so that there's an explanation. Yeah. Yeah. Like so it's not part of the option because this is going to go in our contract. It needs to be very clear so that people who manage money like know what they're doing and it's I think the language is clear in that regard in terms of our intention and the impact like the desired impact.

145We can include that in our newsletter and in our presentation to the board. I I agree with that. I also think that's true for many of them, right? Like when we're talking about that um 20,000 that hopefully will continue and move forward, we'll be able to say, you know, we can't address every single issue with compression, but this 20,000 will go toward being able to. So, I feel like maybe we have a little blurb next to the ones that are a little vagger or need more explanation. Are you okay with that? If I mean, I'm not I'm just saying it's not very clear because it also make it seems like, okay, they're not getting the 2% raise. They're getting only this 5% raise. It's not the goal. So, I'm just saying it's not very clear

146that this is meant to address something that happened. Do you think a a little explanation would do that so that if people read that they're like, "What the heck?" And then they keep reading, they're like, "Oh, okay. I see this." We just add a few words. I'm not saying cuz like to add a few words that basically Okay. Where would you like ongoing is one of the words I think we could just we could literally add the phrase to address inequities. Not in equities to so is every year going to be 5% of the 1700? No. And so that's what I'm saying. If we just said, "Oh, knowing it's it's a different wording." That's what I'm trying to say. You don't get a raise. All raises are ongoing. Yes. But it may not be represented

147in a 5%. Sorry. It may not be represented in a 5% every year or in a 1700 stipen. That's the issue that I'm saying that we cannot just add ongoing because it will not be this right amount. I'm saying that put that caveat in there that this is meant to ensure that they got the CL the full classified raise that was given on the 2425 school year. So let's use that as a little explanation afterward. Okay. So we're just going to this is in lie of we could also say retroactive. No, we don't. We can't. That's So that is a good example where originally when I wrote this, I used the word retroactive and then Joel chimed in or it was Vanessa and said because of how payroll works, we cannot do anything retroactively because

148this is contractual language. We cannot say things like retroactive. So we can say whatever we can say things are retroactive in our explanation or in the newsletter, but things that go into our contract cannot has to be very specific purposeful language. I thought saying a 5% raise as well as a stipen. Let's just say, okay, sub twos are going to receive a 5% raise, but also we know they're going to receive the 2%. Can we put something in there to separate the 5% raise from the stipen almost? So that people are clear that so contract substitutes will receive a 5% raise period. No, it's No, because the the whole point is that they're connected because the stipen makes up for the fact that they did not get the raise this year. That's why they're in

149the same recommendation is because it's connected. But I'm saying maybe we change the words as well to something else that make it clear that it's not just a random stipen in addition. Look how confusing it is even for this group. Can you imagine? It needs to be clear. It's not just a random stipen is because to bring them up to classified static. I'm sorry. I'm hearing a lot of people who agree that it's confusing, but no one has given alternative language. Please, I we've had like 20 sessions, guys, to to write something out. I'm going to start to get frustrated here because I can't sit and listen to people say, "This doesn't make sense. This doesn't make sense." If you can't tell me something that makes sense. I'm just saying the the writing just needs

150to be clear so when it goes out to the public, people actually know what it means. Right. That's why you were saying to add a blurb. I did. I I told you what wording to add. Go ahead. Say it again. Let's hear it. What is it? I told let's add in that caveat that is meant to bring them up to the classified race that was given the 2425 school year. So where are you suggesting that goes at the front? Let's put it in the front to reach par with the CL the 23 24 classified raise 2425. You have reached parity with the 2425. Yes. Who's writing? So to reach parody with the 2425 classified pay raise, comma, and then the recommendation there that there I think that speaks to I think sorry I think that

151answers I think that impacts I've sense of this being an error because it wasn't an error. It was just the way things happened. So when you say correct makes it sound like we made a mistake. We didn't make a mistake. They're just in an unusual situation. So I wouldn't use correct. So let's go ahead and I'll read it again. It's up there. To correct the issue from raises in 2425, contract substitutes will receive a 5% pay raise as well as a stipen of $1,73512 paid at the end of the 2425 school year to people employed as contract substitutes for the entirety of the 2425 school year. And there you can see the cost. There you go. So maybe add the word given Joel to ensure parody with classified employee raises given for the 24 because

152it was it already happened just so they understand. Yeah. Does that make sense for you? That are you okay with that? Okay. So um can we have someone offer a consensus vote because that's not something I do. I want to consensus. We're going to come to a consensus or not on this finance option to ensure no not just the language on if we want it option. Okay. To ensure par with the classified employee raises given for the 2425. Does it need to say school year? Okay. 2425 school year. Contract substitutes will receive a 5% pay raise as well as a stipend of $1,73512 paid at the end of the 24-25 school year. two people employed as contract substitutes for the entirety of the 24-25 school year and then the amount is included. So did you

153make the formal consensus vote? Okay. If you agree, please raise your thumb. So in other words, we are recommending this we're recommending this be out ofression or out of the Well, it doesn't matter. They're both together. It's one budget now. We're mixing all the buckets. Ivonne James, sorry. Amy, what did what was your vote? One more time. Okay. Katie, can Katie, can you live with that? Okay. So, we are recommending making a recommendation pending recommendation for number six. I wonder if someone can be keeping track of the amount of money. Yeah, I thanks. I can do that if that's what we need. Okay, the second one. Wait, do you want to update our money pot? Yes. Okay, so then sorry, let me just I wish we had two screens. Remaining funds are 212 054. Okay.

154Thank you. Okay, perfect. Thanks, Joel. Okay, next one. for the purpose of allocating staff to sites under the district staff student ratio 27.5 to one students who are English language learners um one to one how one.1 yeah that's tabled our next one is number nine oh yeah eight was tabled was tabled Some people Yeah, I had that one. No, I had that one that we're kept it alive. Yeah, I don't I had it alive. So, are we okay to You don't have the money for it. So, we're going to um table that. I like the intent behind it, but I like it. We had no additional money. This number seven, this one was 38. Yes. Here's our starting balance. We had 950 total. Okay. Here's the figures. 51 and then we minus this much for

155our raise. So this total was 24, right? And sorry. Yeah, now we're at if the numbers weren't making sense, it's because we take 247 minus the 38 whatever. Now we're at 208776. My bad. Okay. So, now we're to number nine, psychologist compensation in compression committee recommendations on 24,000. Would anyone like to make a um recommendation? Would someone like to make a recommendation if and I'm sorry. Um I to add to the discussion, I am hesitant on this one. While I understand it was brought up by the compression committee because last year we did just raise psychologist market demand from $6,000 to $15,000 which was a $9,000 increase. And so we're looking to add more money to that psychologist pot. Um, personally that sounds wonderful. However, I'm looking at the big picture of what we're looking

156at in terms of staffing and keeping teachers and teacher retention as well. And so I hesitate on this one. Amy, thank you. An I really appreciate your honesty and feedback on that. as a school that didn't have a school psychologist for many years and was splitting psychologist you coming to my school as well and us being um incredibly understaffed as an entire district. It concerns me to not have school psychologists on all of the campuses because it really really impacts um the number of students that are being tested and qualifying and I feel like this is the first time we've been playing cleanup and catchup. Um, and that's not to like throw anyone under the bus, but when you're having to split, like a psychologist, between numerous sites, it's impossible to to get all I

157mean, you you were both split at my school. Um, so we've been playing catch-up for this entire year and we're finally getting into a good place and I'm so I'm super super concerned about not having a psychologist at every site or splitting um between large campuses. Um, Dorothy, thank you. Yeah, I I I totally respect um an Henry's um perspective as a psychologist and I agree that it the perhaps the what it looks like, right? The you know, they got 9,000 more last year and why would we be adding 5,000 more to such a small group of employees? And yet, even with that 9,000, we have failed to retain even more psychologists this year than we did the year before. And I know it's not just money. I know there's lots of other reasons that

158people may look for jobs elsewhere, but I have seen the parody um information that um Vanessa gave us and I am worried about us being able to recruit the psych the number of psychologists that we have vacancies for now projected for next year is huge. Um we may be only getting one or two back. So, that is a lot to fill and I feel like we're going to actually spend more money. Um, because without doing something to recruit, uh, we're going to end up having to have contractors because it's not a position you can just not have filled. And then contractors cost even more money than this would equal out to. So, from the special education department's perspective, it makes me very nervous not to do something more to help recruit. And I know that's

159not the end all beall. There's all kinds of other factors, but for people looking to go to a district, they do look at salary as one of the first things they consider. Okay. Um I was on the same page with an in terms of this and um I feel having two sites on the board on this process kind of gives that optic. We've seen special education rooms that also didn't have staffing for the year and I'm I they didn't get an increase last year. Sykes did. Um there aren't any like right now I think we have four district psyches and four contracts psyches. Of those only one district psych is coming back and that was due to unforeseen circumstances and also um a contractor uh is staying. So we're losing a good amount of people.

160I think this is in line with the board comments that were made is we keep throwing money at it without really looking at what the root problem is and why we're not retaining people. And that to me is the same thing in terms of like just approving more money without getting to the real root of why we can't retain. Um, and I've been here eight years and I've seen this dwindle and it's kind of always been a systemic issue. And in my opinion, throwing more money at it isn't going to solve it. Okay, Daniel. Um, yeah, I'm looking at the NextGen data that Dorothy mentioned and right now we are $10,000 below average on psychologist pay, but the other school districts that are above us do not have a market demand stipend. So, for example,

161Alhamra's base salary is at 89, ours is at 68, right? But if you add the 15, we're now competitive. It's not um like we're actually we'd actually be above average. I noticed that the other the other school districts that offer a very high base salary don't have a market demand stipen and that could also explain some of the recruiting issues is if you're just looking at base salaries you see a low base salary you move on right yeah which it is a different option but yeah so let's um go ahead James oh thank you um I just had a question you mentioned the the root cause I I maybe it was my misunderstanding but I thought the The way I I the way I assumed it was being presented was that the root cause was

162pay and it sounds like you're implying that it might be something else like working conditions or some other aspect. Can you elaborate on that? Sorry, it's my alarm for my medication. Um yeah, could you kind of elaborate on that please? Um I find it difficult to speak for everybody. Um, but I think there has been just a growing amount of working conditions. Um, to speak gently, um, there's a lot that needs to be unpacked and I've actually recommended. I really think that sped needs its own um, survey that the schools get. I can't remember what they're called. Exit. No, not exit. The panorama specific to sped. and we would be able to uncover a lot of issues that don't just impact psyches but sped teachers, self-contained teachers. And just speaking, historically, we did increase the

163amount last year. I think it was already mentioned and and that did not help to retain. So, I think that sort of speaks to it's more than just a money issue. Special education is a small world. People have talked across districts. You across across districts, contractors, all of that. So, let's go ahead and have someone make um a recommendation and let's check our vote out with this. Yeah, let's read it again. Achieve consensus. Achieve consensus to presented or not presented. To continue. Yeah. Should I read it? Read the whole thing. Are you Avon? Are you doing it? Are you making the vote so we can vote? No, I was I was just asking for clarification that if we're voting to present it as pass it as a recommendation. That's what we are. Yes. Everyone that

164we do now, we're taking a consensus vote to make a recommendation. Okay. Essentially, we're going through the ones that we didn't table and making sure that we want to put it on the final list. So, you're you're going to read it and then we're going to vote to make it a recommendation, but you confused. Do you have another question? Not not confused. I'm just trying to see the other recommendations that we haven't that we didn't table and we're I just want to make sure that we put attach money to all of them. Right. So, you're prioritizing them, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we should take a couple minutes for everybody on their own space to just go through and decide or would that be helpful? Okay. So maybe take five minutes for everybody to just go

165through what is not tabled and decide what they per So the eight ones correct? Okay. Okay. So we have eight that are not that were not tabled and they are number six. Yeah. Number six passed. So we have number nine, number 10, number 11, 13. Well, there's no monary. Yeah, I guess that's why I didn't start. There wasn't any monetary cost to 12, so that's a given. Um, right. um 13 15 and then number 16 was the 171,000 teacher compression. So just take a couple minutes and we don't have a a lot of money left to work with. So um just as a point of information, if we approved every single thing with a monetary cost, it would put us about like I think it's like $8,000 over budget. So one thing with a monetary

166cost has to go. Thank you Katie for doing that. So we'll still 24. Thank you. 2444. Keep that hidden. Did everyone have a chance to look at it? I I still see people working. 200. It was 247. Some of them I see some of them I think what he was thinking but the ones that we do we would have enough still the 247 balance that we started incorrect one we did okay that's that's okay 9 Very interesting. substitute. We already It's 46. 40. Oh, did they keep changing? Is that what I have? 46. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, what did you come up to? So the compression takes up a lot of the money right there. But then you address for a very long time. It really has. Well, hopefully you can, you know, every year

167for years. Yeah. Well, I think this year it will be. We'll see. Okay. Are we ready? Okay. So, uh where are we? Who would like to share? You all had a moment to go through each of those. Daniel made a suggestion and stated that we really have the money for most of me. The only questions I have are the ones that we still don't have money for. Like number 12 didn't apparently isn't going to cost us any money. Um number 11, psychologist. That's another one that it's no cost. Is a cost 2% raise. They're not going to get a 2% raise on that 15,000 that's going into the but we don't have to worry about it in our budget. Yeah. She said she said it's a um it's budget neutral. I'm saying it's not giving

168out but we don't have to worry about that now though. But I I get what you're thinking. So number 13 and number 15. Um sorry I just come to number 12. It is in practice already and it does cost money. So it's not budget neutral but it's not out of our funds. Correct. That's why. But I just want to make sure that Yes. It does cost money. We don't have to budget for it though. So my questions, the only questions I have are number 13, monetary amount not provided [Music] and lower class of and number 15. Yeah. Joel. So the other thing about professional growth for classified staff is that that also is taken into consideration when we onboard them. So if we're looking at just internal advancement for current employees, that might look different

169for incoming employees. So what I'm wondering is number 13 and 15. Uh what are you thinking Dorothy? I know what I'm thinking. I'm wondering if we can have a and I know we're going to hopefully get to this, but I also see the clock ticking and we have a whole presentation to prepare. I'm wondering if we can have a tiered table for next year because to me, we don't have enough information for 13 and 15 to adequately move forward. But I think that most of us and we can come to consensus if most of us support something to help classified staff um better take advantage of professional development because that has been an area where they have not as much as certified has. And we want to not only encourage the professional development but encourage

170the compensation for the professional development. And then, you know, 15 is is really just saying if you get a higher position, you should make more money, right? So, it shouldn't be a pay cut to go from being a teacher to a coach or a coach to a manager or a manager to a dire whatever the whatever the case may be. If it's clearly a step up, then pay should be higher. doesn't say how much, but maybe those could be on a really think about for next year as opposed to just a consider and dismiss like it's like the the team really recommends considering further you know looking at study into these areas. Are we okay with that? Since for today we don't have really it's hard to make a decision for 13 and 15. So

171thumbs up if we're okay with that. for today. We're going to put it on tabled for next year. What a priority table for lack of a better word. Did you vote? So, we are thumbsing up to table 13 and 15. Correct. Correct. Okay. So, we're tableabling those. Katie and Ariel, can you live with that? Okay. Okay. Sorry, I didn't. Okay. So now we're at 910. Yeah, back to nine where we were. Okay. Psychologist compensation and compression committee recommendations 24,000. Are we ready to vote on this? Make the recommend. I can't All right. Recommendations. I move I move that we vote for consensus on the psychologist. Looks like it's dead. Yeah, we're not. Yep. Hey, it looks like it's tabled. Okay, I guess we're going to table that. We're They don't want to do that. Looks

172like it's dead. No, we kept it first. We voted to to keep it alive. We did that. Now we're just killing it. I I think our second vote right now and it's done. It's done. Because if you wanted to table it, it should have been tabled the first time around. I I agree with that. Okay. Is everyone okay with that? Can't bring it up. That's true. Correct. Yes. Thank you. The next group was Yeah. Okay. So number 10, but for clarity for 13 and 15, we did go ahead and table those, not just kill them. Right. Okay. Thank you. I gotta make my notes correct, too, so I don't Okay, the next one. Um, again, I can't make the vote, so if someone I'll read it. Does anyone have any comments for number 10, the

173facility? Any discussion for the $20,000 to facilities for compression work? I got a request, a comment about this number 10. A comment, a quest, potato patata. Um, thank you. My request slash comment is could we increase that 20,000? No. No. Really? Sorry. Because it came from the compression. Can I ask a question? Clarifying question. Does that 20,000 also has to include benefits paying out of it? Right. Or is this just like this like that is just I think it's just money for y'all. But doesn't it also includes like benefits and everything coming out of because it did for the bus drivers that 47. This is not a pay increase. This is just money to say who does this impact? Which employee do we need to specifically zero in on to say this person was hired

174at this date and they're only making 20 cents more than their thing. I understand that but my whole thing is that it doesn't make sense. What's the word? Because the amount of people that's in facilities. So the bus drivers we did what the bus drivers got what 48 47 to just to give them a dollar bump an hour. Right. Right. There are more people in facilities. Right. Again this is just research. It's not but I know it's research. So we're paying 20,000 to research. No. No it's not research. And I think since there's not a lot of eyes on facilities already that we should keep it because we need to invest more eyes into this. Asking if we could increase the dollar amount. Um that answer would be no. I feel like Justin should be

175able to speak. I yeah, I just think that there's not a whole lot going on for facilities other than the 2% raise going to everybody that we should go forward with the 20,000 so that we could research it more and figure out where that money can be allocated and instead of tableabling it and keeping it a discussion every year uh kind of put some eyes on that making the recommendation. Oh, I just want to clarify. I didn't want to dumb it down or table. I just wanted to ask the question if we could just increase the 20. Can we just maybe 30 cuz this is a recommendation that came from that came from the committee. The compression committee we have to keep everything the compression committee said word for word. We're not allowed to make

176changes. I don't want to adjust, you know, I don't mind adjusting minor things on our options, but I don't want to make adjustments on that type of thing going from 20 to 30. Yes, correct. But next year, that's a possibility if you want to bring it up. I I think um the compression committee probably did some of the research and was like if we had this amount of money we would be able to address this and this and then we can spend next year with the compression committee determining those things. But it sounds to me based on the information that we got from Justin and from the compression committee that it sounds like the 20,000 is to address things like if you're the night crew lead and you're only making 30 cents an hour more

177than the people that you're supervising, then they can increase that person's salary this year and then move in that way. I think they I think what the it sounds to me like the compression committee was like to to limp through this year we need $20,000 and we will continue to research and put eyes on this so that we can address it even further. But for this year we just need 20,000 to to start. I mean like if we do just throw another $10,000 at it and they don't use the 10,000 that's fine. I'm not saying but I'm just saying more wiggle room cuz it seems like the amount of people in facilities compared to bus drivers the number just doesn't make sense. But you have to remember that bus drivers was not for compression. Bus

178drivers was compensation. I know to bring I know compensation. I'm saying like the dollar amounts just doesn't make sense. But I'm not saying the table. I'm just saying if they don't use extra 10 discussion dancers. Okay. Okay. But I I appreciate your voice again but bring that up next year for sure. Katie, did you want to say something? Okay. So, who is going to Let's I'll make a recommendation that we approve the uh compensation recommendation from the comp compensation and compression committee for as it relates to facilities by applying $20,000 as they see fit to address compression. Okay. Okay. You can live with it, Ariel. I just don't think it's enough money, but I can live with it. Okay. Thank you, though. Sorry, I don't want to keep harping on this, but can I just

179clarify? So, it's research and throwing some money at the actual problem if that happens. Okay. I just want to make sure we're clear on that. And then, and then the work continues, right, Ariel? We can continue to say like, hey, we unear these issues. So, Dorothy, can you let us know is there a specific group you guys talked about from facilities or is this is just we're going to randomly we're going to we don't know who's getting it right now for facilities. So, to be honest with you, Vanessa came up with that amount. I don't know how much work she had been able to do in terms of looking at very specific job des job job titles. I know that some of what she described is the problem is how we name our employee groups

180is diff under the category of facilities is very different than other groups. So there may have been you know that complicating things but I can't tell you how much she time and energy she put into it. She just made the recommendation to our committee that she felt like with 20,000 she could at least get started on addressing some of the issues that she did uncover. Okay. Okay. I have another question too, Joel. A quick question. So these dollar amounts that we're giving, these dollar amounts do not include let's say benefits, payable benefits like um No. So that so this 20,000 that's also including money we will have to pay out for benefits too. Yeah. But I'm asking like the number amounts like contract itself. We don't know how it will be used. Thank you for

181your hard work. We will trust that it will be used. So we don't know exactly who is affected by this. So we can't say what that is going to equate to. We know that 21% of any kind of salary is you add that 21% to it, right? So this would be part of the work that Vanessa and business services and uh based on the recommendation of compression to meet and confer and meet and confer approval will figure out what that's going to cost and how that's going to be imp implemented and who it's going to affect. I'm just asking for clarification though. So when we give like for example when we say oh a 2% raise for everyone in that 2% raise we're calculating how much the teacher also pays for Vanessa's included that included

182that in the numbers that she has presented and so that's 38,000 for substitutes that also is going to include our pay benefits. Yeah. And at 48 we said for bus drivers to give them a dollar increase an hour that also includes pay for benefits. Yes. any option that has a cost associated that Vanessa figured in except for I think the the 9-day PD1 and she didn't have that costed out with the benefits. I would just like to clarify $20,000 is not a lot of money especially if you're going to have to include benefits in it. That's all I want to say but I'm moving on. Moving on. Okay. Number 11. Um, psychologist will receive a base salary increase of 15,000 in lie of market demand stipen and psychologist will not be grouped. That was a

183no cost one. So, but we still let's still do have someone make the recommendation. Yeah, I recommend that we vote to approve number 11. It's a no cost one. So, but we still want to put it down as one of our Just clarification. It's not a no cost to our budget. But no, no, cuz we it's but we so it makes that 2% the budget we made for that 2% raise that budget has to increase but it doesn't come out of our budget. It does come out that 2% raise we um dumbs up understand it's technically not cost neutral because now that 2% money we set aside for 2% raise has now has to be increased because now that 15,000 becomes part of their base pay making amount of money we have to spend for

184a 2% raise across the board more so it's technically not budget neutral actually it would save us money if we hired a psychologist I do know it would say but I'm just saying it's not technically called we have the revised language though in lie of the market demand, right? Because the way it's worded here is and it's changed up there. So, it will okay. Okay. Number Yeah, I recommend we approve number 11. It it should have already been changed in lie of Yeah. Thank you. Okay, everyone. Okay, let's go to number 12. I would just add to be careful because we do have like speech who also have a market or have another stipend and to be careful in terms of adding that in because theirs are specifically tied to C's that have to be

185renewed every year and I don't think we have a check and balance to make sure that that's being done. So sometimes we hire them and they have it do we? Okay. Okay. Perfect. Okay. Number 12. Uh special ed case managers uh will be compensated at the extra duty rate of up to three hours per IEP for taking an additional duties vacancy of not sped certified teachers. Someone want to make a recommendation. We don't have money for that one. I recommend that we approve this one considering it's already a a practice at many campuses. This is just a ma uh manner to put it in. Yeah. To officially document it and then to ensure that it is happening. So there's no monetary cost. Okay. So she's making a recommendation. Let's Ariel, we're waiting. Mhm. Okay. That

186one um we're making a recommendation. Okay. So that's all of our finance ones. 16. No, it's not all of our finance ones. Oh, that's a big one. Katie, what's the what's the balance that we have left right now? Perfect. Thank you. Okay, so number 16 is the one um approve 171,000 for teacher compression. Someone like to I move that we approve the teacher compression recommendations of 171,000 as recommended by the committee. I just want clarification. What exactly? So I understand it's to move people but what was discussed in so I think like Vanessa talked about um this was about addressing people who had been frozen I'm thinking she's referring to those 2008 to 2016 or whatever there was about seven or eight eve right eight right years that we did not move at all we

187were completely frozen so I believe this is to address this. I I think some people may be under the misunderstanding that this means all people will move. I don't believe that's what Vanessa said. It has to do with specific employees that did not move. Like the one that she described as an example, there was a year 17 teacher who was making what would be comparable to a year three teacher. And so obviously that is needs to be corrected. And so it was to correct errors that not errors correct situations that she found that were com were affected by compression. Although although wait I my understanding was that it would move everyone because not with that amount because everyone is frozen. Yeah. No one receives yearly pay increases. Okay. But she was talking about the a

188specific set of years and not everyone was employed by the district at that time. So this would impact to me it kind of offsets some of the things we talked about the options that we tabled related to longevity because the people who are going to be impacted by this are the people that have been here since at least 2008 when this occurred. So be people in the 15 plus years. So it it will compression doesn't mean everyone it means whoever is affected by a dark situation. And so I'm not I'm not done. So it means that you can put a a bracket of saying 15 to 10 or six. It just means people who are in that situation. So but only certified teachers. So my understanding because I think you probably you need to add

189some wording to this then. So the the intent of this is certified teachers who are still employed to this day in the district. there was here in the 2008 through 2006. Those are some of my assumptions about what those are examples of people that I believe will fall into this category, but I don't know the exact details of everything that she affected by compression. It's very similar to the 20,000 for facilities only this is 171,000 based on her work that she's done so far for certified teacher specifically. when when this goes out into the weekly connection or whenever we present this to the board whatever I think a lot of teachers are going to be confused when it comes to this because right now it's there's no clarification so there needs to be more some

190type of language as I would agree that the language needs to be carefully worded in the Kraton connection when this goes out and maybe Vanessa can help with some of that because this is coming directly from you know the committee that she led's recommendations. Yeah. Maybe we need to add areas affected by but we need clarification. What areas was affected? Because you have someone that's been in the district five years. Well, I'm affected by compression. I don't make that much more than a first year teacher. That's not their role. But it don't matter what their role is. If the intent and behind it is not clear, everyone can make their own assumption that oh, I'm affected. I I will strongly encourage anybody who believes they're in as a affected by compression to reach out human

191resources or payroll requirement in which they can get all of their answers uh for their questions and explanations. I think we're getting into the wits of operations rather than just the recommendations and approval. No, I feel like I'm not. So we're going to So our so the thing we're going to tell people when people read this in the weekly on that Friday connection that if you think you're affected by compression you reach out to see that what I'm saying. So there needs to be more wording in the language if you don't want to add years. How about approve designated areas for compression to address teacher. Yeah. this because it might not affect everyone. We can't see that work. We don't know who. I mean, but that would mean like put wording in there so when

192people see it, they're not assuming that they're one of those people. There needs to be more wording because right now it can be any teacher. you know disable I'm saying like but it's but the way it's ordered it's approving compression committee recommended means they have to find where the compression is so it doesn't necessarily in a sense I think it's okay because people compression is but people have been asking about that $200,000 compression thing we passed all school year because they knew we passed it but now we're passing basically the same equivalent of what we passed last school year and people was asking about the 200,000. I know I mean but we're creating the same sit the same situation where everyone was confused with where the 200,000 went. Now everyone's going to be confused where

193the 171,000 oh I'm sorry. So I just want to jump into the conversation and say that these are this is one of the few recommendations that that were recommended by the compression uh committee and so they have done or they may have answers to Ariel's uh questions and I hear you Ariel on the concern of about clarity of the message but I think one of the message that we can convey in our communication is great we're moving toward fixing compression is not totally fixed But at least we're selecting a specific individuals like bus drivers, facilities, and now the t-shirt group saying we are attempting to correct all of those situations. I think that's a great message. It's not an ending message. It's not a super detailed message, but it's a message in a positive direction

194to to improve uh the negative impact of compression and the fact that it's going to address it. We don't know where it's going to address it. that I'm just saying just there's not a few words we can add into it for clarification for when people read this. I don't think we know the words to add. Can we add maybe clarification from them? I I totally agree with you and we don't know which years they specifically were. I have a good idea. Um but and especially if you've been in the district long enough, it's the compression has hit you twice potentially. So um what I'm wondering is something on like will be addressed on a case-by case basis. But we don't want everyone emailing HR because that's what's going to happen. You're going to have people

195emailing Joel. Can we cannot just give uh if we're thinking it's the people that was here doing those salary freezes, can we just give a tenative years? If you were here doing these gap years, you are potentially impacted by compression. Bum tone. She is worried about the wording that everyone will potential it is so that people So do we want to add will be addressed on a case to case basis? No because anyone's going to email HR will be addressed through the recommendations of the compression committee because we also want to give Yeah. I'm wondering if maybe it's the the compression committee will use the 107 will determine who is impacted and um reach out or something along those lines like they'll determine who's impacted and make the determination of how the compression will be

196resolved something along those lines potentially from these I wouldn't I wouldn't because I don't what I'm remembering from the committee meeting is that they weren't all necessarily falling into that bucket because you in that. Weren't you in that conversation? No, that's a different committee. Sorry. So, just maybe put a period after 171,000 and add just another sentence. The compression committee will determine where where what would determine fund aotment. I don't know. I think you're still going to get emails, but people want to know who's in charge of the purchase committee. Well, Joel Joel has a full-time job. He can address those emails. Okay. So, let's go ahead and do a consensus vote for this. Someone needs to make that fund aotment. Are you okay with that? A lotment of funds. a lotment of funds where

197most applicable applicable and since Vanessa is the head of that committee that would be that'll be perfect. Yes, I think so. Yeah, we just don't know the answers to them. Okay. Who would like to um I've done enough make the um recommendation in the consensus vote? I recommend the meeting of fair committee to approve compression committee recommendation to address t-shirt compression 170,000 170,0001 the compression committee will determine a lotment of funds okay let's have our vote but Ariel you can live with it right I can live with it okay good got that so our secretary over here Katie has been doing such a great You have money to spare. 171. We're all getting free lunch. Yeah. No, we're going to show our uh fiscal conservativeness to the board by having coming under budget. Yes. Okay.

198We um Yeah. just you're going to subtract that from that and then we'll see what we get. So I think we did a great job on that. Oh, we even have money left over. Not much. No, but that's but still that needs to be a part of the presentation. Yeah, I agree. We were being very mindful and spend every single penny. We were trying to be conservative. Yes. Okay. after lunch um we will quickly and I mean like an hour at max um do the non- finance options uh maybe it'll go um quickly we'll see um there aren't too many of them and maybe you want to think about that so we will come back at let's see Five of Okay. How about just one? One. Okay. We'll do one. One o'clock. Okay. Okay. How

199many fin one four? That's right there. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome back from lunch. I hope you all enjoyed your lunch. We had a great um morning I feel. Uh so far we have if I counted correctly I believe eight recommendations and now let's work on the non finance um recommendations. I don't know you do we need to break up in groups again or can we just kind of go through those and um do we need to have any discussions with them or can we just try to do a consensus vote on each of them? Okay, let's try that. Are we okay with that? Okay. Um, let's see. Get my paper in order. Finance non finance. Okay. So, the first one is the district will provide a full-time highly qualified ESP who is also on the

200crisis response team. Okay. Would anyone like to go ahead, Dorothy? I just had a couple questions about the wording of this because I remember somebody else brought this up last time we talked about it that it almost sounds like especially just for this as opposed to what I think the intent was was just to ensure that there is a highly qualified ESP who is a part of the crisis response team rather than this that will provide sounds like we're saying in addition to or instead of I don't know the the wording the other thing that as we start to work on this list um I think one of the other messages that we heard pretty loud clear, not necessarily specifically from the board, although they commented on this at one point as well, but definitely

201from our own district administrative team, is that, you know, the amount of recommendations we had. Correct. And so I'm I'm wanting us to be cautious about that as well. And while I absolutely think we should have a highly qualified ESP who is a member of the crisis response team, that seems kind of like a no-brainer to me. Is it at the level at which it warrants a you know recommendation from the meet and confer team rather than just a well is that something that like so at the sites the principles are they they told that that they principles determine who the crisis response team will be and then there's training that's provided to that group but that's where like before we even I haven't even looked through all the all of them but I want

202to make sure that we're not just sending what I know are not frivolous but might feel frivolous or because of the number overly controlling um recommendations as I think was perceived to have happened in the past. Okay. Thank you. Um Kelly, wasn't there a list Joel? Correct me if I'm wrong. Wasn't there a list of exactly that basically like uh items recommendations that lived in certain departments that should just be I don't know reminded or I don't know the right word to say. Was did that exist or am I Use your mic, Daniel. Oh, okay. There wasn't a list of recommendations that didn't necessarily need to live within meet and converge recommendations, but we didn't want to fall off the map, so we basically allocated like this department needs to make sure that this is

203happening. Yeah, I think if I'm not mistaken, some of that language ended up in the professional agreement last year. Um, so that's probably that might be what you're thinking of. Um what I think a piece of information about this particular option is that each site is required to do a safety plan uh that's on file and it's accessible by um the the business services, right? Don't you all work with the safety plans or is it facil it's facilities, right? Scott Wells does those? Okay. Okay. Yes. So, Scott Wells. Um, and so part of that recommendation to have an ESP on there, they're generally on there because they're already trained, right? So, a lot of the ESPs that have the CPI training. Um, and it's determined by the site who's on that committee. I think the

204spirit of this and the issue is Wait a minute. Hold on a minute. I'm sorry. Um, Ivon, I just wanted to clarify. I think the spirit and the the sort of intent behind it was that on some sites it's happening and some sites it's not. So this is just a way to kind of make ensure that it is happening across the board. Similar to the issue with the sped um case manager threshold and that it's a practice that's ongoing but or or for some sites it's ongoing but not for others. So just to make sure that not only is it happening but that there's also a a highly qualified ESP and that's why we put it on there. Is that right? I mean is that what you're thinking? Yeah. Avon I just want to add

205did the number of initiatives did on the ensuring that they participate so that uh group of individuals that are represented and employs and bring other perspectives that other employees may not see because they don't do the work. And then I just want to make a note that um even though it says non finance option if the meeting is during the day they will have to find coverage for that ESP. If the meeting is after the school day, then that person will have to be volunteer to work or will have to be paid over time. So I don't think they Yeah, I was just right. Yeah. Um Rebecca also, which is a good question. Ariel just told me, she goes, "Um, how do we even know who's on a crisis prevention team?" And I think that's

206like something good to like add that it will be clearly stated at your school site. X, Y, and Z is a crisis prevention team. So technically that's already in the that's already in the um uh provisional agreement. It is. Right. So if it's not happening, it could be you should bring it to your supervisor first and try to resolve the issue there and then it can be grieved beyond that if there's not done enough improvement. Okay. So everyone spoke. Would someone like to try to make the recommend um the re recommendation so we can do a consensus vote? I have a suggestion that this just get added to the existing crisis team language that's already in the PA. just add including a highly qualified ESP. Is that something we're able to do? Is that something

207we're able to do, Joel? Is that our authority? Right. Just an ongoing a professional agreement would need to be approved, but we can just say to be added to the crisis prevention language and then put the piece that we want. Yeah, I was gonna say the final professional agreement has to be approved by the board anyways. and we have to present our options to them. But yeah, it can be rolled into the existing um language about the crisis intervention team so that it's not an additional thing. So it's not an additional recommendation. Okay. Um well, let's we should we uh let's let's take a vote on that because I would like to take a vote on that. Okay. So I move that we add language regarding ensuring that a highly qualified ESP is included in

208the crisis prevention team in the existing crisis prevention team language of the professional agreement. Hario how we send this recommendation to the board. We're just going to add it to the professional that's what I'm that's what I'm saying. Nothing nothing can be added to the professional agreement without being approved by the board. It has to be approved. I know like you have to approve the professional agreement, but are we sending this on the PowerPoint slide as a recommendation or we're just going to add this language to the professional agreement and when they approve the professional agreement they're going to improve? We should make it aware to them though, right? I mean, we can't just like add things embedded and not Yeah. not let them know an Easter egg. Yeah. So, I think it would be

209a recommendation basically to add it to add to the professional agreement. Change that language then. revision to crisis team language impressional agreement the district will provide a highly so we'll provide it sounds like will include yeah includeclude so we should say the team the crisis team willclude will include at least one highly qualified ESP yes because it could have more than one okay would someone um let's go ahead and do our consensus vote I need someone to call that out so actually Joel doesn't even need to say the district will it should just say the crisis team will include Yeah. Oh, that'll even be better. That district will Yes. Uhhuh. Much better. They did not. Yeah, they were not. Yeah, that looks good. Okay. All those in favor? Uh, let's do our vote now. That

210what's written up there that we agree to? Okay, perfect. Uh the second one, contract substitutes will receive payraises at the classified rate for future pay raises. Comments anyone? I guess I guess my only concern with this is that while historically we have given class when we've used tier raises we have given classified not every year but more often a higher percentage than maybe certified or admin. We don't know that that's always going to be the case. Is there some reason why we couldn't just like Joel was recommending it specify for certified and contracted substitutes who have an ancillary schedule get this percentage versus this percentage. I just get nervous about what happens when the year when certified or ad let's say admin gets 10% and classified get 2%. Are these this employee group going to

211have a problem with that? I would if I were them. I mean responding to that I guess Dorothy is that it's very similar to classified employees that would earn a slightly higher salary than like our like lower wage classified employee. So I think of like an office manager is like a classified employee who receives um like the classified raises which are usually given all like in a tier justified being higher. So I think it would just put them in that bucket of those exempt classified employees which you are right the best thing to do would be to isolate out as many positions as we can and give targeted raises but we've seen year after year after year that we don't necessarily always have the time and resources to do that and so I think that

212this is a good stop gap measure that in the future unless otherwise stated they get lumped in with classified because it's not like they don't get a raise it's just that right right I guess so I guess if I were right now they're being lumped with certified brainstorming for next year. I like I often wonder as um she was talking about there's certified positions like I don't know Kelly, do you like being called classified versus certified knowing that you're a certificated teacher? I know there's you know managers and coordinators who maybe aren't necessarily thrilled with being called classified versus certified because they are certificated employees but but that's where there's Exactly. Yeah. It doesn't bother I'm good with it. Well, hey, be careful what you say. Well, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Um, let's go

213ahead and Someone has to do this. Um, I recommend we vote for consensus on this item. We're doing a consensus on number two. Caroline, you're okay. Okay, that one has passed. Uh, pending. These are all pending, remember? Okay. Number three, the school board will adjust the policy of medical leave assistance program to include parental leave. This is the basically the sick bank. So instead of just your sick days going to whatever other ailment someone may need sick days for, they could use it for parental leave. Right. So right now the sick bank is only for medical. Is that Rachel? We're on number three under non non finance. Oh, I'll remember this one. So when you give away your days when you donate Yeah. When you donate your days, they can only go to the medical

214leave like Okay. So it can't go. Is that something we as a team can't do? Yeah. My understanding Joel is that by like if this is in our professional agreement and then the board then approves the professional agreement that is like a promise by the board that they will adjust policy per this intention. Yeah, I I understand what you're saying, but I think in the sequence of events, you know, there's more that has to happen to adopt a policy than just having in a bargain agreement. So, if you think about all the work that's been done this year on all the student conduct things, you were on that committee last year, I believe. So, it's there's a process to recommend policy and then the board has to follow those guidelines. So, I I don't know.

215I I feel like it could be a recommendation, but I also don't know how quickly they could act on that or if it could even be grieved in a bargain policy if it's not part of the regular policy. So, could we change the language to be softer to say something along the lines of the school board will initiate the process of adjusting the policy or with the intention of adjusting the policy? Like what like whatever the language would be to um say that they have to at least begin that process so they can then go through those steps and make their own decision. Can we just like that? Would that would that like meet your issue, Joel? I'm just trying to think of it from the board's perspective about being told to do something. Do

216we have something called parental leave? Like is that even a designated? Well, no. We we talk about Oh, leave time, right? So, it's it's all general leave. We do call some of it sick and we call some of it personal, but it's all the same bank, right? I get that. But we don't have anything that we call parental leave at this point. No, that language comes from FMLA. Yeah. Right. So, when you request to have leave time because of the birth of or of a child or fostering or adoption, all of those things. Um, then we call it parental leave. So, it's not gendered, so it's not maternity or paternity leave. To to clarify, why would the board feel like they're being told to do something if they're agreeing to do it? Like if it's

217a recommendation and they agree to the recommendation, why would they feel like they're being d like directed to do something? I I'm just postulating. I don't know. I'm not a member of the board, but I also am wondering, you know, the sequence of it just to know and we don't have a sense of the board of whether or not this is a priority for them. doesn't mean that it can't be put forward, you know, and maybe maybe this is another place where it could be an additional exploration of it because we had a different one that we weren't going to do parental leave. That's what I'm so I think this is one is connected to uh options the financial side number seven the district will create a parental leave package with sufficient leave time blah

218blah blah and we table that one. So I would recommend to table this one in regards of if I was a board and that was presented it I will feel like I've been told what to and that's part of the priorities and I know that the the direction that we have received from the board is align it to sog this has no alignment to sog so I will say let's table it I kind of have to disagree because I think they're two separate items this is looking to be able to use medical leave assistance. And so if you have a parent, say a good amount of teachers, right, who have children, this might allow them to come back if they're able to be paid for some of their leave versus automatically quitting. um I think

219rewarding it and maybe saying like it is recommended that the board consider adjusting the policy or I think there's a way to reward it but I think it would be something that would be good because there are you know parents that might be able to stay or it could be impactful um to some of our teachers. So I think when I think about medical leave assistance program the way it is in policy is that that's a bank for people who've exhausted all their leave time who are something catastrophic not because of birth. That's why this language spec specifies parental leave. So what we're asking is for all of the employees of the district to donate leave time to donate to somebody who just had a baby. If we only have 20 days to give, we

220give five days to that person and then we have someone who has cancer and is hospitalized or has catastrophic catastrophic illness before their short-term disability kicks in. Those are very different situations and it doesn't mean that they won't give that to that person, but then that takes days away from other people that might have a catastrophic need. So that's that's what I was going to say to Ivon's point is that Ivon, it's not related to the other parental leave thing. It's completely different. It's just about the sick bank. Um, and the reason why, and I'm sorry if like you weren't there for that conversation or if it was in a small group or something, the reason why this was suggested is because when we were talking about implementing parental leave, it was told, well, we

221already have short-term disability and then we then the question comes, well, what about people who don't have enough days or they run through their days and so they have to take unpaid days as a result, like their short-term disability is enough to cover. Um, and then we said, okay, well, what about the leave bank? which is like the purpose of the leave bank is because even if you're hospitalized for like a catastrophic incident that is applies to short-term disability, right? And I think we felt a little weird that one thing into it. What if they opt in for short-term disability? I think we felt weird that two people could be out on short-term disability, but one of them could be eligible for the sick leave bank and the other person wouldn't be. And so we

222felt like adding parental leave to the sick leave bank would adjust that. And it is only for people that would run through their days on short like in addition to their short-term disability. It wouldn't be for just everybody, right? It wouldn't be for anyone that has a kid. It would only be for people who have a child, run through their short-term disability, and don't have any PTO days remaining. And in terms of the SFG goals comment, I mean, it aligns to retaining teachers. I I told this anidote in a small group earlier, but I mean we've had like a revolving door of teachers um at my school because we have a vacancy as a result of a teacher leaving and not coming back after their maternity leave. So, and we're have to fill that position

223for next year and you can't meet those goals if you're not retaining teachers. I just want to say not everybody's a parent. I'm not a parent, but I have donated to the lead bank for whoever needs it. Um and also the sofg is more alignment into direct impact with students. We're still um some of the recommendations we can make the case of retaining the teachers so that we can impact teachers. But again I want to make I want to honor the direction from the board on the number of uh recommendations that we're putting forward for for approval and the close alignment to student impact not so much adult. Uh Mr. Dr. Carbaja, can I add something to that? As a mom, and I've taught through both of my pregnancies, um, if I was able to

224bank my leave prior to having my That's a different issue. Well, yeah, if I had more leave time, it as a mom and you do have a lot of new teachers who are married, so maybe, maybe not. Um, might want to be having children very soon. Um, I think as an admin and as a district, we should look at that because in all reality, those will retain your teachers if they can put in maybe an extra like two to three weeks so they can help with that. Like I think that's a big deal. So remember, the leave bank is based on donation. This year in the two times that we've asked for donations, we have a total of 20 days. we've used 15, so we still have five days available. So, there are going to

225be some years where we might not get any. And if we don't have any then or we get one and this teacher gets one day as opposed to the person with the catastrophic illness. So, I I think I I'm getting a little um emotional, but I'm I apologize because I don't mean to feel like I'm coming off as not supporting parental leave or the idea. I just feel like there are a lot of unintended consequences to something like this that we I think it begs more discussion. My knowledge I thought it was us individually. I didn't know it was a whole school. Um, I just as as somebody who uh has been in the district for a long time and also used my saved time for maternity leave, I was in the district for 14

226years before I had my daughter and I had enough time saved up to take the full um leave time and I saved some of it. I saved an extra 10 days so that when I came back that if she got sick I could be home with her because I knew that my husband couldn't do that. Right. That's my own planning. But I think um if you haven't used FMLA specifically for family birth um you might not know that it takes a really long time to save that amount of days. And the amount of people that aren't going to have enough time saved up when they give birth is going to be probably 95% of them. So, if we're gonna say like 20 days were donated and I don't know how many people had babies this

227year and I don't know how many people got cancer, but like I I I would think that every single almost every single person that has a baby is not going to have enough time to take the entire time and have days saved up. And I think I think our country should do something different for paternal leave. I don't think that our group should. Okay. Thank you, Kelly. Um, after listening to the discussion, it sounds like there's more that needs to be uh worked out with this. So, I propose that this is added to what we could call like a parental leave package, which could include a discussion about changing this medical leave assistance program to include parental leave. Um, but it sounds like just like the parental leave itself has to be worked out in

228the logistics that this could be tabled to priority tabled priority tabled to be um to be just flushed out a little bit more. Okay. Um, would you make a a vote for that? We can Well, or we Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm not proposing to table it, but I'll make a a motion to um adjust the policy of medical leave assistance program to include parental leave. but with the caveat that if you put your thumbs down that it's going on the tabled as opposed to the done list. I don't know what we're calling that. Okay. So, let's vote on that. Um Ariel, you want to vote? Okay. Okay. So, we're going to table that and everyone's okay with it being tabled as opposed to just dropped entirely. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, and I

229don't know if you want to put it with that other one, Joel, if that makes sense. Or I'll Thank you. Okay. Number four, and that's the long one. Um, uh, that's the class sizes for general education shall correspond to the following. Um, you have that information. I'm not going to read it all. We've been over it many times. Um, So, someone would like they would someone like to make the motion for the You want to reread it? Okay. And then Diane, we're doing first round vote and then discussion if needed, right? And then we can do another vote after discussion. Thanks. Okay. Okay. Are we ready? Okay, someone make the motion. Um I motion that we approve option four of the non- finance options. Okay. So let's do a vote. Okay. We have let's have

230a little discussion if you um three. We'll start with Yeah. Could we get some discussion from the thumbs down? Yep. Who would like to start? Um, I'll start. Okay. I mean, I don't really want to. That's all right. We need to hear your voice. So, I I I think class sizes are really important. I think most of this is already happening at the sites. And when we're talking about the recommendations that we're making to the board and reducing the number of recommendations, I think that this should be one that we don't include in our recommendation until next year because this could be perceived as adult convenience and not as um what's best for kids. Even though I I already know people are going to say this is what's best for kids. I 1,000% agree. I

231agree. I know that class size matters. I do. I just think that having this recommendation is going to um water down the recommendation that we are making. And so for me, it's something that I think is really important and should be communicated to all sites, but I don't think it should be a recommendation to the board. Okay. I think next is Ariel. Um I think it's great that some of us are making an effort to cater to the governing board and I get the whole governing board policy about adult convenience. Go ahead, Ariel. So, you're concerned that we're weighing our options on what the board I'm just going to take a step out. Okay. She's very rude and disrespectful every time I speak and I don't do it to her when she speaks. So, I'm

232about to go. Okay. Um Dorothy. Yeah. On that note, I I do think we want to remind ourselves of the norms. Like if somebody's sharing, even if we disagree with what they're sharing, making a statement is impactful to them emotionally, psychologically, it's interrupting their flow of thought. So, I think just like we would ask others to be mindful of those norms, we need to all be mindful of those norms. Just my two cents worth because I I get her point. Um, the other thing I wanted to say is that I respectfully would disagree with um, Eve's position on this because I believe this is an area where there's clear research that class size has an impact on student outcomes that we could find and present to the board where some of our other things are

233a little bit more broad and more, you know, it's about teacher retention. this is very clearly aligned to SOFG goals and I think that they would appreciate hearing us talk about and discuss something similar to like the ELLL weighted thing because that's you know basically we're in that same category in my opinion that we're talking about what is best for improving student outcomes and this is a place where we could open up that discussion more than some of our other recommendations. So, I think it is worthy of having that opportunity to say that that's what we were focused on with the board. Okay, Daniel. Yeah, I guess I would just address some of the concerns. Um, number one, uh, this is not happening at all sites. I had a very instructive conversation with Amy, um,

234because she was skeptical about this at first and then she came to agree that it was a useful recommendation because she kind of gave me the same answer of like, well, these are things that I already do. These are steps that I already follow and even if we're assuming the best of intentions like we always have new principles and new assistant principles who get in charge of who who are put in charge of like you know balancing class sizes and they don't always know what to do or what steps to take and this is like a very clear list of some possible steps and then at its most restrictive it all it only requires is that written communication is sent to teachers about what is being done. Um, in terms of the comments about the

235board, I guess I'm just confused how you could say something is best for kids, but we are afraid that it will water down the other recommendations, and so we don't want to include it in our list of recommendations because that to me feels like, well, yes, this is best for kids, but I like I I don't really know what the barrier is here. I know the board said we want to streamline and focus to the SOFG goals, but the board this this is like two paragraphs. So, I feel like I'm working with my students or something when I give them something to read and they're like, "Come on, you really expect me to read all this?" It's like, "Yeah, it's it's half a page. It's not I mean, this was I like again, this is

236work that I had to go do to go read somebody else's professional agreement and find something that matched our ratio and do the math and figure out the class sizes and lift it from there to put it up to here." And yeah, I'm not sure that that's what she said, though. I I don't think she's worried about the length of it and how much there is to read. It's just Am I wrong there? What is that? That's my I all I'm saying and I didn't I didn't make this very clear. I'm trying to be strategic and prioritize things that we bring to the board so that we can be really focused and concise so that they understand the alignment. That's all I was saying. I think that makes sense. But I also think that we

237should treat the board like adults, like professionals, like people with, you know, some criteria that they, you know, at the bare minimum they were like elected. Well, when you when you say like I I'm sorry, but the only way I can interpret like well, we are worried that this will distract from or it will water down. To me, it seems like you are either worried about our ability to communicate something, which could be a reasonable like issue or you're worried that for some reason they will misinterpret. I would also say I am worried about our way to communicate with the board because the past two board meetings it hasn't been received well. So yes, number one, I am worried about our ability to communicate concisely and with purpose and the outcome that we want with

238the board. That is accurate. Number two, I'm not not treating them as adults. I'm trying to be strategic in our communication so that we can negotiate and get what we want. So, I'm trying to be strategic and prepared. I'm not trying to not treat them as adults. And to me, that is condescending and that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is let's be strategic and let's negotiate strategically to get what we want. Can you explain what it is that you want that is a higher priority than class sizes? The 2% raise for everybody. And can you explain how that is more aligned to SOFG goals than making sure the class sizes are balanced? I cannot. But we already approved the 2%. Wait, so then why No, but why do you personally want that so

239much that you need to be strategic about our other recommendations to ensure that the 2% raise is passed? Because I think if we go in there with multiple recommendations and things that distract from what we really want that they're going to say no to all of the things. I think that there are a lot of egos that are involved and I don't think that us trying to create a battlefield is the way to go about this. I think that we need to be strategic. In other words, watch the number of options. But um and I will say even in the past we have oh gosh we've presented up to 20ome to the board. We're way below that now. I mean if that makes I think that makes us feel a little bit better. Yeah. And

240we're at like so we're not presenting nearly what we have. Um nine that should help. I mean, even if we were to approve all the rest of these, which I'm don't think we will, um, we're well below of what we normally present to them. Uh, yeah. So, I don't know if that's going to help your thinking or or what, but but I appreciate what you're saying, Ivon. And then Amy, you have something. I just I just appreciate all the conversation. I want to add to the conversation. Again, we know that there's a lot of research that said class sizes is important, but also there's a lot of research that says that teacher efficacy and that we have nothing that we're uh promoting like uh professional development or empowering teachers so they can be better uh

241in in instruction. And so sometimes I can have a big class size, but if I have all of the tools and the coaching and the mentoring, I can address them even though it's a lot of work. Okay. Sometimes I can have a small class but if I don't have that support that mentor and those skills I may not be that effective. So I want us also to consider there is research for everything. Number two, I want to say that if going to um IPS's concerns that the number of uh options, yes, we have presented a several number of options in the past, but what's different right now is the guidance and the board came to talk to us to say align to the vision to the SOFG uh vision. And so if I'm negotiating and

242I want whatever I'm presenting to be approved, I'm not going to present something that is already being implemented with gaps of services because it's already happening. So I rather adjust at home and say hey on board principles remind that this is instead of using one space for an option because that may break or risk the fact to approve the ones that we really are all in consensus of doing. So it's just a negotiation uh stratey and I think I think that that that's that's all the comments. Um, I I'm sorry. I I'll let you go first. I was I was next though, but I know you just came back, so you can Ariel is next. Oh, I was just going to ask how many recommendations are we putting forward so far? Also, we got that

243doesn't seem too much. Okay. Um, I was going to say that I think Ivon to your point about well, we don't have anything regarded to instruction. It's because our focus explicitly says we can't address instruction. So we could not actually like mandate something like like PD or whatever things like that unless we found a way for it to be a working conditions issue or a salary or wager benefit like this is one of the things that we have control over because it's a working conditions issue. Um maybe some more specific PD um or instruction things we could touch on. I am again um asking like like I and maybe this is just from my experience so I want to explain further like reading other school districts professional agreements. We have like a 20 30 some

244page Google doc a lot of that is salary schedules. Other school districts have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages legal. they go through hours and hours and hours and hours of bargaining and you know we're a smaller school district so I don't expect that of us but I again I think it is um difficult for me to swallow that I know the board said we want things to be focused and aligned to the SOG goals but a lot of what we're talking about is teacher retention a lot of what we're talking about is working conditions for our teachers to ensure that they can do their jobs and again I am confused as to what it means that we need to be strategic what are we trying to pass if not things like this a

2452% % raise. I really don't think the board will be happy if all we come to them with is a bunch of financial packages about giving employees more money. I actually think the board is going to go, "Well, where are the things aligned to the SFG goes?" We go, "Oh, well, teacher retention." They'll go, "Okay, but do you have anything that addresses the that addresses the conditions in the classrooms? Do you have even one recommendation?" And looking through our recommendations, we don't. This would actually be the only thing that directly affects a classroom on this entire list. The only thing, every other thing is a financial package. So, if you really want a 2% raise and you're worried about this um you know impacting that, then yeah, we kill it. But you're going to go

246to the board and tell them, "Don't worry, guys. We killed everything except for these couple of raises. Message received." And that's not going to go over well. I promise you. And if you want to talk about being strategic, what I think we should do, sorry for my language. My bad. I what I think we should do is go back and kill our raise and then get six more teachers, right? like but that won't be good for teacher retention and I acknowledge that which is why I have this class size recommendation that I think will help address some of those issues too. I think that's the last thing I have to say on this. Okay, Ariel's next and we're going to spend about five more minutes and then we're going to move on. Ariel, oh I

247was going to say earlier I um I know some of us really want to focus on what the board thinks what the board wants and I agree with the board sentiment. um students outcomes doesn't change until adult convenience. But just because something will positively impact an adult does not mean that we're just doing what's best for teacher and what's teacher um convenience. the mindset a teacher has in the classroom. The teacher ability to be able to pull small groups, do centers, do classroom management, report cards, contact parents, behavior chart, all of those things that really directly impact students and families is based off how many students are in the classroom. And when you have 30 kindergarters in a classroom, that makes one behavior issue seems like five. So, it's just better teacher, you know, just

248being able to be there for students and families. Okay. Thank you. I think I'm next. Yeah. Um I just wanted to add in response to the comment about how this may or may not be happening at certain sites. To me, that is the purpose of this body of mate and confer to um make sure that things are equitable across the sites that no matter which site a staff member happens to teach or work at that they are receiving consistent working benefits. And it just like the sped example where this may or may not be happening with certain case loads because of the supervisor or whoever it is that's upholding that. That's the same case here. This may or may not be happening. And that is the problem. And we can't just rely on leadership deciding

249to implement something or not. We need to have these things written down so that they can be followed and we make sure that it is consistent across all of our schools. And that is what makes this body so influential and important is that we're looking at what's working on all the sites and then making sure that we can implement that as best as we can across the board. And uh this is going on. It's actually increasing by.5 our class size at least for the kindergarten one and even more the grades beyond. Um and I think just like we're going to give explanation and caveats for where we came up with these recommendations to the board, we will do that with this one as well. And I think that we have plenty of research and legs

250to stand on to say why this is beneficial to the students in the classroom and therefore the goals that we are all trying to achieve. Okay. Um Amy, we'll do Amy, James, and then Ivon and then we're going to move on. So So I walked in a little bit late on this. Um I had to come from another meeting. Um, so, um, I I've been hearing the conversation and strategic is my love language. Um, so I mean, literally we had to do Strength Binders. It's number one for me. Um, oftentimes drives district crazy because I'm like, have you thought about? But anyways, um, I digress. I want to bring it back to um, there was a comment about professional development. One of our options was directly aligned to professional development when we were talking about

251the Friday, which I would absolutely love to be able to do and I know teachers would absolutely love to do it. We we just don't have the financial capability to do it. Um I would love to be able to cap all of our caps our class sizes. Um I just want us to be a little bit cautious and when I say this is there is never in my 20 plus years in education has a class size ever come at 27.5. 27.5 is our ratio. Thank you. 27.5 is a ratio. It's always like how can you do this or what can you do? And um I think like and I know different administrators handle things differently at at different sites. Um and so I and I know for example at my school I had which it

252would technically fall into this ratio. I was begging Joel for two teachers and I got one. Um which is what we could afford and what we could do. And so we had to be pretty strategic and we had to come up with different options and my teachers came up with different options than what I was pl what I in my mind was going to do and we went with what they said because I was like that's a great idea and I was thinking that I needed to make a multi-age three four class and my fourth grade teacher said no third grade super important it's move on when reading we between the two of us we have like 40 plus years of experience we can handle large class sizes give these new teachers small classrooms um

253So, I just don't want to tie our hands when it comes to the creativity like of our teachers when they're problem solving. I just don't want to to to lock us in. That's my only concern. And I honestly don't know if I'm one way or another on these numbers. I really really don't. Um I've had large classes sizes as a teacher. I had 29 in kindergarten in my second year of teaching. Um I had 38 in second grade one year. Um, and that was when it was we had the 4-hour model and so I had um 38 kids. That was that was bonkers year. But anyways, I I know what it's like to have large sizes, but if I correct me if I'm wrong and I could be incorrect on these ratios, but in order

254to have class sizes affect like student outcomes, they really have to be at 15 to1. Is that correct? All the research I swear that's the number. Yes. The smaller the better, right? And so yes, there is a big difference between 25 students and 26 students in a classroom or 28 students and 32. Um, but nothing comes in like this perfect package. And so I just don't want us to stop the the creativity around problem solving these because no grade level is the same and the experience is not the same and I just don't want us to stifle that creativity. So, I just want I just don't want to lock us in. That's what that's why I'm just saying I I just want to put that out there because I know that there is different problem

255solving capabilities at at different schools and what people are capable of of. And it's honestly also dependent on the grade level of, you know, do these teachers have more experience versus these teachers or do I have all new teachers between these two grade levels? It allows for that though because it says but not limited to and it says may it and and I was this is I'm sorry to break the stack but at the back at the bottom it says the only thing that's required by administration is to provide written communication to teachers of any pro probable possible solutions within 10 days everything else is optional can I sorry can um I think maybe that is where I didn't do any written communication as a principal it was a conversation that we had as a

256problem solving with 20 different people So this is just saying that once you came up to that that outcome that you came up with even though it was their outcome that every teacher that would have been affected would have been notified as to what the outcome was. Can we shift it to notified then? That's what it says. I thought it said written communication. Yeah, that's that is notification. Written notification. It's like a PWN instead of just telling you what happened. But this is but what I'm saying is we had a verbal communication with all parties that were affected in a meeting. So then to do a follow-up is just an extra step. happen as an administrator. I honestly wouldn't think of that. So that's why I'm saying can we just notified like written slashnotify like

257it doesn't does it that just seems like an extra step when that problem is already solved. Um James um so my love language is the power of wheat. I believe in the power of wheat. Um, I would agree there's there I mean in fairness there's not a lot of teeth to this um in terms of like cap sizes, but nobody's going to convince me the class sizes don't matter because they do. Um, uh, I I have a suggestion, just a suggestion. Um, and my suggestion is because when I look at this from an administrative standpoint, uh, to me this is a process thing. Um, it's not really a I I don't really see it as a recommendation. I see it as a process thing. Yes, it is a recommendation but not not what I typically

258see. Um, so my suggestion would be because my understanding is you meet with the superintendent on a regular basis, right? Um, so my suggestion would be that this goes because really the the person that is going to say you must is the superintendent, right? So if there's a leader at a site that is not following this, take it to the superintendent and then if it's not something that's followed up on, then next year when you come back, you can say, "Hey, uh, this is continuing to go on. We've gone through these steps. We've talked with this with a superintendent." uh because I feel like if you if you develop it from the from the Wii point where you're working together and trying to go and make that because they're right, you know, these these should

259be things that happen districtwide. They should be. Um and if you got some creative things as well, even better. Uh but um I think that the argument would have a lot more weight if you come back next year and said, "Well, we tried to do it this way. We had those conversations. There was no followup. these people are still doing it. They're not listening to the superintendent or the super and I I I can't imagine somebody not listening to the superintendent, but um it's not happening. It's not going forward now. We need to go through and put this on um um as a as a recommendation. James, wait, can I ask you a question? Yeah. Are you suggesting that we should instead of putting this in our bargaining agreement and trying to resolve it at

260the lowest possible level that we should first ask people to personally appeal to the superintendent when their administrator is not to have your leadership go and talk with the superintendent and say this is not happening at this site. Can you do something about it and have this there as a document? Because honestly, we've been doing this for years. I'm sorry. We've been doing this for years. Like that's that's what this is. We've done all of those things and we've arrived here at Me and Confer because that that is what has been happening for years. So you're saying that there I mean what's not I guess I'm confused. What's not happening? There are teachers sitting at 31 32 kids which is would violate this um mass of 28 times. So I get that but I mean

261in fairness all they have to do is send an email or a notification saying it's not happening. Well, it's important James it's important then that the principal can send an email that says we have investigated these solutions and for these reasons we cannot implement them and it might be the case that there is no possible solution but that is very different from sometimes there's a class of that and you know going oh well you know so and so is a first year teacher so I don't know sucks you get all those kids right or oh well because of this other reason or because you know this or oh that kid's not too bad there are lots of reasons that I think are very casual and would not look good in in an email that people

262use for sticking teachers with a lot of extra kids and it's important that teachers understand here are the steps that we've gone through to try and solve this problem and we've arrived at no possible solution that's very different from uh nothing we can do about that sorry and no requirement for explanation no requirement for so but what do you what do you hope to accomplish though because I mean all I it give teachers a mechanism on their own without having to appeal to the superintendent without having to harass anybody to say, "Oh, my professional agreement says these are should be my numbers. I'm over my numbers. Can you investigate some solutions in working this?" And the principal would be able to go, "Oh, okay. I will." And follow up with them. And so that they

263have some written record of, "Oh, there's this issue. I tried to solve it. My principal tried to solve it and we've arrived at nothing." And that's okay. That's different from I brought it up and I was ignored, which currently is means that you have to do it. It's just like there's something there to follow, to try and and if it and if it can work, great. If not, it's there. You tried. It's this is not saying you have to do it. Yeah. I guess because right now, if I go to my principal and I say, I'm over my no. Well, I don't even have a number to be over, but you know, I have, hey, I have too many kids in my class. They can go, yeah, teaching's hard. Bye. And then what is what

264is my recourse? I mean, what this I I I it's an option out there to look at, I think, is is what it is. It's not I don't disagree with what you're saying. I'm just saying at the end of the day, it's just going to be an email. I mean, that's perfect. What do you That's all we want. Communication, but it was something written communication. I I guess that's what my concern with saying notice just simply notice is that's what often happens. It's in passing. It's verbal. It's oh nope, sorry. We can't do anything about it. Whereas this provides a mechanism for written documentation that says yes, we pursued this. We attempted to problem solve this situation with the people who were directly impacted and this was what we came up with. This is problemolving

265with your staff. It's an it's just I my interpretation when this came to be was it was just something if there's an issue that you can look at and it's a guide. It's a guide really and there's no and there's no guide out there and I think that's the issue. We're only going to spend because if we look at the clock it's 2 o'clock. We're going to spend maybe two minutes. We'll go through Ivonne and keep your comments. I hate to do this guys and gals. Keep your comments precise. Okay. Yes, class sizes matters, teacher efficacy matters, time matters and there's a lot of resources for that. Uh my concern is not just only the communication here that I'm I'm okay hiring the par profofessional even if it says budget capacity I understand that the

266caps of the class sizes I'm I'm an easy why because we're are declining enrollment and we have the data for this year in which there's only specific cases in which some classes are way over and there's a reasonable explanation of why. Okay. Next. Ann did were Ann, were you finished? Okay. Um, Ariel, you don't know how to spell my name, Joel? I just got just got I was just messing with you. I had to ask. Um, but also um does a solution could be at Oh, AW. There we go. Uh, a solution. So you from way this is worded doesn't really say you have to hire a parah and you can just be okay at those busy transitioning when you're getting the kids ready for recess a per will come in 10 minutes before and

267that can be a solution to the big class sizes but also I just see this I feel like a lot of emotions teacher emotions a lot of frustration can simply be dealt with if administration acknowledge there's a problem. So going to a teacher and be like, you know what, I've noticed that you have a really big class size. I've noticed that and these are some things I've thought about to help you and thinking about budgeting everything else. Just kind of acknowledging what's on the teacher's plate and just let the teacher know that you thought about it. doesn't necessarily you have to do something grand but just a CD is a way of just acknowledging what teachers are going through. Okay. No, not across the board. No, we get complaints all the time. So, it's a

268guide. I guess it would be a guide to the administrator to go to. Um, is that it, Ariel? Thank you. Um, Amy and we're going to keep it very um Yeah, I'll be brief. I think the only sticking point really for me is like the the written communication. And it's not that I don't want to provide it, but quite frankly, there's a billion and one things going on and sometimes I forget. I had a big meeting with my staff. I didn't do the writing, but we all sat down and have an agreement. It feels like it's one more thing to do. Um, and I also don't want to add more to teachers plates. I don't want to add more to administrator's plates in terms of well, you even though we sat down and do this

269meeting, you didn't provide written communication. So therefore, I have a grievance. It wasn't because I didn't want to. It was I didn't even think about it because everyone present was there already notified. Are we okay with adding a word that says written or verbal? That changes the option. Yeah. Yeah. We're not changing the option. And also have to make it a practice, right? Just like anything else. And Kelly, well, if that happens, you resolve the grievance by writing an email that that would that would resolve the grievance. There's no like monetary punishment for a grievance. It just kind of feels like and I've I've got you. And well then why would but why would your teachers if you come to them and work through this entire process them why would they then chase down a

270grievance and write a gotcha agreements if you have done this creative process right this is for principles leaders that do not do that that are just like oh well I'm going to respectfully disagree but I'm not going to go into detail about that and and I'm not going to say it has anything to do with my staff that I'm working with this year. Okay I think we've devoted enough time to this specific one. Um, let's go ahead and do a vote and see um what happens um with this one. Do I need to move? So, I need someone to make a motion. I motion that we vote on approving this class size recommendation. Okay, let's go ahead and see a vote. Okay. So, we have Ivon. Could you three live with it? And you're and

271I again, five minutes max, guys. We're moving on. I just I like I at this point I feel like Ivonne said it better than I did, but like why would we waste a recommendation on something that should be happening? And also if if we're worried about um my comments about being strategic and bringing things to the board, then maybe we don't do the 2% raise and we focus on things like class size and maybe like the ELD weighted thing and like things like that. Maybe we go back to that. If we go back to things like that, then then it we don't need to spend the rest of the afternoon preparing a presentation because it's already aligned. We've already I appreciate that, but we're already made the We're not gonna I know. I know. We've

272already made the recommendation. That's why I'm saying we need to be strategic. And now we're going on and on and on about the rest of these options. And we're not going to have time to align the 2% raise for everybody to our SOFG goals. And we're going to come to the board and they're not going to approve any of our recommendations. That is what I'm concerned about. Okay. Ivon. Um, you're a definite no. Can you live with it? I love James suggestions because this is already happening in most of the campuses and so I think there's will be another solution without having to be included as a recommendation in a professional agreement. Okay. So is your answer no? No. Okay. Then we it will be tabled for next year. It's just Yeah. Or do you

273want to table it and bring it back next year? Okay. Then we're not going to table it. No. Um apparently for this one. We are not there's no problem. We're going to the non was stable. Yeah, but now we're we just voted on it and it we didn't reach consensus. So, okay. So we are down now to options continued. Number five, for the purpose of balancing class sizes, students classified as English language learners and students receiving this is different. And students receiving special educa. This should be in the financial the other one the 1.1. It should be with the financial options because there's a cost to it. It's even more expensive. So this one 1.2. Yep. Uh someone make a motion so we can do a vote. I motion that we thumbs down this recommendation.

274Yeah. Motion that we consensus thumbs down. Okay. Is everyone's thumb down? Okay. Okay. So it said no and we're not tableabling that. Okay. Number six. determine riff language and we're going to link that in the communication was already presented in the Google chat many meetings ago. Yep. I motion that we approve the riff language as written with the I believe there are two additions by the lawyer. Okay, let's Would you like me to make one right now? If you give me five minutes, I'll make one. Okay. Do you mind J um Daniel if we move to the next one while you're doing that? Okay. So, while he's um looking at the specific wording, we're going to go to the last one. Um psychologist will be permitted to work one day from home or offsite. So,

275we need someone to make a motion for that. I move we approve this recommendation. Okay. So, let's do a vote. Okay. Oh boy. Um, what was your vote, Rebecca? I was with it. Okay. Live without it. Yeah. Um, do we need to have a discussion here or it's it's pretty much it's pretty much down. Okay. I have a question though. Isn't this already happening for the contracted people? Yes, a lot of the contract agencies do have this written in their language. So, the contracted people to contracted sites already get this and we're just saying we're going to give it also to the non-contracted psyches. Not all contracted sites have it, but most most have it. Okay. Amy, I was just going to say not all contracted have that. I know it's that's not the case

276at my school. So, I think that there's so many that are down that we're just going to um that's going to be a no. Yeah. So, that is a no and it's not going to be tabled either. Um you see a list of the the nine that we I think Joel has clean list of the nine that we have recommended. Yep. Wait a minute, Joel. Okay. Um Joel has been writing these down for us. Thank you, Joel, so much. It really helps. All I've been what I've been doing is I've been moving them on that document that says that's called options tabled finance non- financial and recommendations. And so the recommendate recommendations are there. So those are bulleted. And then as they've been getting completed, I've been moving them over to our spreadsheet that we

277can use to do the standards. So they're all they're if you look at that meet and confer recommendation spreadsheet that's linked in the meet and confer the one that I always have those links, it's there. So it's in in both places. Such a hard time. None of them are Um, yes. Oh, thank you. About the riff language, I just wanted to explain real quick the changes from the one with the notes with the lawyer to the clean version. Um, I just adopted all of the changes the lawyer recommended to language. There's only a few, they're very minor, um, that they suggested for clarity. Um, I did not remove sections that said legal opinion is that this is not a process required by law, so can be modified or deleted, because we can modify or delete

278it, but we don't have to. So, I just kept those in. And then at the very bottom, there was a comment from the lawyer saying that we already have non-discrimination protections, so it's redundant. However, um I spoke to someone in Tucson who has like very similar rift who included something in their RIFF protections that employees currently on a performance improvement plan are not eligible for RIFF. And the the reason that was is because it opens the district up to wrongful termination lawsuits. Because if you're on a performance improvement plan, there's a bunch of legal language about how you've been given an opportunity to maintain your employment. And then if you get rifted, because it's district administration deciding who gets rifted, even if it's based off objective criteria, it's a really easy wrongful termination lawsuit to

279say, "Oh, I was put on this plan and then I was let go without being able to complete my plan." And so, um, and then the other things are just there. So, it isn't just like a one-time thing for a performance improvement plan. Is that some place I was missing it, Daniel? They can all read it. See? Yeah, I put it in the chat just now. The clean copy. So, are you copying from the lawyer in the resources folder? If you want to read it before we vote or you feel comfortable enough with Daniel's explanation to go ahead and move on. Honor, did you want to say something? Yes. Okay. Yes. I do appreciate all all of all of the work. I'm just concerned that as I've listened to the explanation is what you think

280is important to keep despite the the attorney's uh advice. Oh, so the at the attorney wasn't saying to remove it. The attorney was saying that since it's not legally required, it could be removed. And so there's like for example, there's a section about protections for certified staff awaiting recall. We're not required by law to protect staff awaiting recall. Um but that is just a that is like the language that's like the thing right. So if we wanted to we could remove that but there's legally we don't have to remove it. I just have not put the amount of uh work in it just like you have done and so I just I just don't know enough to fully thumb it or what don't you understand? Because Daniel I would have to say is our expert

281here because he went out and did the research. So maybe you could ask him what questions you have. Well, I he just explained that he decided to keep something even though the lawyer said that we don't need it. And so I just want to make sure that so an explanation I would I would give like if I were to make an analogy. It's like saying well we don't have to give people um PTO by law. You could remove that if you wanted to. That's true but that doesn't mean we have to remove it. So, for example, like the reason why we have reduction force protections and I want guidelines in our contract, one of those things is that when people get rifted, like our teachers, right? If they get fired during reduction force, we want

282them on a recall list and we want to be able to recall them off of that list. The lawyer was just saying that that's not required by law. So, if you want to, you can go in and remove that, but you don't have to. Yeah, but you don't have to. And if you don't have to, meaning does that mean then that you have to hire them in order of the rift? Um, you'd have to go in and look at the specifics, but yeah, that's basically how it works, right? Is that anyone who gets rifted is put on a recall list and before you hire new employees, you call through your recall list, right? I was riffed my second year and I was like, um, they rifted up to 13 years. So, I knew I was

283I was a secondyear teacher. I knew I wasn't going to get called back because they had that in their policy. They hired back according to years of experience. Yes. There were so teachers they were just letting them walk out the door. 1980. Okay. Oh, wow. Yep. Yep. James, a little bit of information there. I got a question. Um uh and I don't know if this is still the case, but I remember years ago that uh with the RIFF policies that you can't make, um experience the uh one of the uh uh when you're bringing people back uh the reason like if you had two people of equal quality, then you can you can base it off of years of experience. But if you had somebody that had a poor evaluation or something like that and

284they were, you know, had different years of experience that you can't make that the sole requirement. Has that been Yeah. If is that Yeah. If if you look, it says the following criteria may be in descending may be used in maybe used, sorry, the lawyer did not add the word used may be used in may be used in descending order with decisions made at the first available indicator. And then it goes down a like a long list of criteria that can be used to determine and they based it on date of contract signed. Okay. If you were one of these teachers that held out to the last day of your contract and then you're rift signed their contract first was hired back before you. Okay. Thank you. I don't know if that's what districts would

285be, but okay. Do we feel comfortable enough for someone to make a motion? Yeah. unless anyone has any other specific questions. I would like to make that motion. I motion we reach consensus on the riff language. Okay, let's go ahead and have our vote. Okay, that definitely will be a recommendation. I have a side question for you, Joel. That's it. We did it. Round of applause first. did it. Has there been an increase of applicants since so many districts are like closing down schools and whatnot? Has there been an increase of applicants any of our openings? Uh we've they've been trickling in. So it it hasn't been a cavalcade yet. So no, it is now 2:15 and and the obviously the hard to fill ones, they're still very slow. Back at 2:30. 215. We're taking

286a 15minute break. Back at 2:30. I really want to congratulate all of you for coming up with recommendations that I think are truly going to move the district forward. So, let's give yourselves a round of applause. You deserve it. put a lot of hard work into these. So, congratulations everyone and you deserve a lot of praise for what you did, the time you gave of yourself because I know how difficult it is to be away from a campus and then come back and do double the amount of work. So, um thank you so much. Okay, we're going to move on to our last um process skill which is alignment to our standards which for the new people again that's our measures and Joe so kindly um put everything on a spreadsheet like one of the

287um recommendations someone gave in the evaluation. So there it is on a spreadsheet for you. So what what we have to do now is we have to take each one of our recommendations and we have to see if they align to each of our standards. So what we've done in the past and we're going to do again this year is um you will just read we're going to divide into three groups. We have nine recommendations, the healthcare, but even though the healthc care one, we still have to align because we never did that. So, we really have 10. So, one group um is going to have more than the other group, one more. But, so what you will do when you're in your group is um first of all, take your computer or at least

288one person has to have the computer and be the recorder. And what we will do is you'll read the recommendation and then you'll just go right across. Is it legal? Yes. If it is, check if is it sustainable? Meaning, can we keep up with it? If it is, you'll check it. Is if it's affordable, you'll check it. If it's in the best interest of children, you'll check it. And if it aligns to SOFG, student outcome focused goals. I would imagine most of them are now. Um, since we're going to do this in three small groups, it should go fairly quickly. If they don't align align, then we're going to have to have another discussion when you come back in. usually they do align to our standards. Um, so when you're in your group, again, let

289me repeat and then I'm going to call on someone to repeat. Uh, when you're in your group, one person will use their computer and another person will read out the recommendation. Um, and I will assign you the recommendations. Once that recommendation is read, then you're going to go across on the spreadsheet and make sure that each one is aligned to our standards. And the check will show that it's aligned to the standards and the rationale, which is that the one with the the draw down. No, how this Okay. And you'll see the spreadsheet and Joel, you're going to tell them how to get to that, right? In case they It's in the um Where is it again? Oh, we're You need editing rights. Each group is going to be assigned certain so everyone needs to

290do okay yes I am changing the uh updating it to be editing. So does everyone know where it is? I think a lot of people logged in. So, it's on the it's in the meet and confer folder, but it's under resources and it's called meeting. I'll I'll put the link in the in the chat. Okay. Thank you, E. Um and then we're are we going to hold on the PowerPoint? Do you want me to talk about that now? Um what do you feel comfortable with? What do you Are you okay? Let's do it now. So in preparation because we are getting close to the end of our time um I've put together a skeleton of a draft of the presentation for the governing board study session and um so this is all the introduction stuff

291but as we get further down here sorry it's just takes a little bit to I do have the goal polls if you want to look at those more completely. The guardrails are in there as well. And then I just have blank pages for compensation and conditions of work. Um it would be helpful to kind of think ahead and be able to um determine who how that presentation's going to run and we'll we'll figure out who's doing a presentation at the end of the day. But if you wanted to dump some of the things into the presentation already or if you want to leave it in the spreadsheet and then I can move it over, I'm fine with that too. But I just wanted to let make sure you knew that this was available. So be

292so before I call on someone to repeat the directions of what you're going to do in your small groups, are there any questions? Do you feel that? Since there's only 10 and there's three groups, you'll have three each. One group will have four. Do you feel that 15 minutes is enough time? Okay. So, we'll have 15 minutes. Um, Rebecca, I'm going to call on you to repeat what we do in small groups. Wait a minute. Let me here. Excuse me. Okay. Um, we're going to go through the recommendations, read through them, uh, click if they're legal or not, and see if they align to our SOFFG model. Each of our standards. Yeah. And then, um, besides aligning to each of our standards, we're going to actually fill out the section to give a description. Questions?

293Okay. So Joel, would you mind putting that up there again? You know, I realized that we didn't do assigned seating today and so we have everyone is by like administrators certified. It's diff it's different. I would like the groups mixed up today. So we're going to count off by Let's count off by threes. And once you're in your group, I will let you know um which ones you're going to do. So, let's count off by threes over here. One, two. Okay. One's over here. Not yet, though. Two's over here. Thre's over here. So, one uh group one, you're going to take the first four. Okay, group two is going to do five, six, seven, and the other group is going to do 8, 9, and 10. Okay. So, it is now we're going to meet

294back at 3:00 and we'll just do a really uh brief sharing of what you your you and your group came up with. Okay. So, groups one over here now two three and you guys decide who's going to have the computer um and doing the inputting. Yes. Okay, perfect. Okay, we're going to get started. We'll start with um group one. So, if everyone could give us their attention, please. Um, is that group three over here? Amy, do you want to move over here? You don't have to move to your seats, but just move over so we can actually visually see the faces. Um, who is the speaker over here, Rebecca? Okay. So, you did the first or four, right? Yeah. I think we might have a couple duplicates, but that's okay. We just did one through

295three because somebody else did it for us, which whoever did it. Thank you. Perfect over here. And benefits was already kind of done. We just added an SOFG rationale. And for benefits, we put offering a robust benefit package and paid for by district is a tool in the district's recruitment and retention of staff. Okay, which is true. For number two, we have compensation of $20,000. Um, our recommendation is for facilities. The compensation and compression committee recommends the requesting of $20,000 to be applied to the compression as work is complete on the salary schedule during the fiscal year of 2025 2026 school year and it checked all of the checks we need. Um and our rationale behind this is addressing salary compression is not just about fairness to staff. It is the strategic investment in the

296quality and stability of the employee workforce while by valuing lordy sorry um by valuing and retaining experienced my computer is freaking out. Sorry. um valuing or retaining experienced employees and attracting highly qualified new staff. Schools will create a more supportive and effective learning environment that ultimately leads to the improvement of of student achievement. Okay. And our last one was also compensation uh with a budget of 38,736. And this is a recommendation uh for a classified uh substitutes to ensure the uh the parody with classified employees raises given for the 20 2024 2025 school year. Contract substitutes will receive a 5% raise as well as a stipen of $1,73512 cents pay to the end of the 2024 2025 school year to the people employed as contract substitutes to the entirety of the 2024 2025 school year.

297And this aligns with our rationale. According to our rationale, contract building substitutes are in their own delineation of employee category and they are technically neither certified nor classified. This employee group, this employee group are are allocated as classified staff for pay for performance, but were not given the classified this classification when raises were allocated for the 2024 2025 school year. We are recommending that we adjust the classification discrepancy and allocate the additional 5% pay increase. And this aligns with our rationale due to students are more likely to engage with a engage and respect a substitute that they know and trust. Consistent presence allows the substitute to build trust with students, creating a more comfortable and conducive learning environment. Over time, a consistent substitute can learn individual individual student needs, learning styles, and potential potential challenges,

298allowing them to provide more targeted support. Does anyone go ahead for contract subs? Yeah, it's up. Yeah, because we wanted to have about why we were bringing this I I had Dr. Lauren, I had to like refresh my screen like six times. Does anyone want to add what they did? It really appears pretty thorough to me. Okay, wonderful. Uh, group two. So group two we have sorry the page is unresponsive now um we have the 2% raise the compression for teachers and the the bus driver the bus drivers thank you um it's a good thing that he froze with my notes in on. Um and so our approach was to we did the legal, sustainable, affordable and then we selected that all of these um recommendations go directly impact into all of the goals of

299the SOFG and specifically we selected uh three of the guard rails, two from the superintendent, one for from the board. The one for the board says that they will not conduct any business without including students, families, community and staff. uh especially those who speak the same language as the family to create community and then for the superintendent guardrails. Uh it was not to allow uh the operationals of the districts without having insufficient equitable um resources for for students and human resources are some of those most important. And the other one can remember the other guard rail from the superintendent that we selected was um a system to recruit and retain strong teachers by empowering the cultural relevant differences. Then the next approach that we have was to see all of the other factors and political

300things and and and finances that affect and so we said that a 2% raise will be a modest but meaningful step toward helping employees bridge the gap. Uh knowing that um inflation is about a 7% so 2% is not even close to that. Uh it also recognizes the cost of housing and support to staff members um so they don't have to uh require an excessive overtime or multiple jobs to make sure that they afford things. And we included two examples uh in a fair market um rent. Um a one-bedroom apartment, it's around 1,400 1,400,000. So, uh, a member who makes $18 $18 per hour will have to work 78 hours per week in order to afford that apartment. Uh, another example that we put is if it's a two-bedroom apartment for a single parent, and

301we know we have many of those in our district as part of our staff, the rent for that two-bedroom apartment, it's around 2,300 a month. And so somebody earning $18 per hour will have to work an average of 128 hours per week in order to afford that. We also say that uh as a declining enrollment district, the first step is to ensure that the students come to school. So uh ensuring that we um provide that race to retain bus drivers will be the first step to to improve student outcomes. we need to we need to get them here uh in order for us to provide all of the services. Uh equally we said that um equity is about addressing the the compre compression ensuring that the teachers who have been here through the troubling times

302that we make sure that the years of experience and responsibilities are reflected into their compensation. Um we also um included notes that um retaining the teachers um requires uh investing time, effort and funds uh to develop their skills. And so one examples are the ACI AC SEI trainings for teachers. And those 20 teachers that currently are participating, they have love participating. They have impact in their students as it was reported to uh in the last couple of meetings to the board as part of the progress monitor. And so ensuring that we don't lose those 20 teachers that we keep them the the uh the 2% raise will help them stay. Um equally uh we have other group of employees administrators and uh classified that directly may not work or impact instructionally into the students but

303they create the conditions uh for student success and student progress. And so having classified employees that participate in community council and SEI and and native uh family nights uh that speak the language of the families, it's it's it's an important uh and essential uh uh resource for the district to keep. And so uh again creating those groups create the conditions to improvement student achievement even though they're not delivering instruction to the students. So that's why at 2% across the board, it makes it makes sense. Cost of living and uh student impact. Okay. Wow, that was thorough. Go ahead. Yes. So that's why I merged the the sales but Okay. Do you want us to question the board on the right? No. I thought they don't do presentations anymore. No, that's why it's a study session.

304So, if you remember last year, we did a study session. Um, and thanks for clarifying clarifying asking for the clarification. Uh so on the 6th the study session starts at 5:30. We have a half an hour to present the recommendations. There'll be opportunity for dialogue. Uh the board can't vote during the study session but it's an opportunity for this team to present the rationale. Um you know create opportunity for the dialogue. If it goes past six it might you know it might go a little longer but five half an hour is what's scheduled so far. And then the there will be two weeks from that point and then that would be uh opportunity for CA to vote on the recommendations and for um if there was any need for clarification from the lawyer, but I

305think we already worked that out with the RIFF language. Uh then the next board meeting it would be a board item that will probably be in consent. they may pull it from consent uh if they feel they need to have a conversation about it as a board before they act. And then after that um once we know that if the 2% is going to be the adopted increase for next year then we'll present salary schedules at a future board meeting probably the first board meeting of June. Yes, can I ask a clarifying question? So for that study session on the 6th, which is just next Tuesday, they'd have the tables and it'd be kind of more that more. No, it'll be Will they be up there? They'll be up the day. It'll it'll it'll still

306be the formal. That's what we did last year. Okay. But you would want all of us in attendance. We wouldn't all necessarily be presenting, but we would all be in attendance. Yeah. And I think after this process, we were going to kind of get a pulse on who wants to present for which um item. And then my recommendation would be we could meet beforehand. I don't know that we're going to have time, but we could also come together maybe at 4:30 before the board meeting and do a little practice of uh the presentation and go through. I'll clean up the PowerPoint. I'll add things to it. Uh and then make sure I get it out to everybody to preview and then have that opportunity to have that practice. Um, yeah. I noticed that you put

307it on our calendar. Like you sent out a calendar invite already for I did for 5:30, but what I can do is change that so we can send it out for whatever time you all decide on. Gotcha. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Uh, the next group. Yeah, we had all of the uh costneutral options or recommendations moving forward. So the first one with psychologists moving the base or receiving a base salary increase of 15,000 in lie of a $15,000 market demand stipend um that one we said uh could relate to all of the SOFG goals and with regards to guard rails um that it would not cause or allow conditions or procedures that are inequitable and our justification or rationale was that adding the market demand stipend to the base salary will assist in attracting

308and retaining qualified school psychologists which ensure that our most vulnerable students needs are met. Um for the second one, sped case managers compensated at the extra duty rate at up to three hours per IEP. Same um it can be applied to all of the SOFG goals. um same guard rail that it uh allows conditions that are equitable and sufficient for students and it ensures that our special ed students individualized needs are being met and we're in legal compliance. The third one is revision to crisis team language in the professional agreement to include a full-time highly qualified ESP. Uh in terms of guard rails, we said that this one um does not neglect students social emotional health, wellness and development. This ensures that their emot students social emotional needs are being identified and that sufficient supports

309are available to staff and students. Uh social emotional well-being can directly impact academic outcomes. And then the last one is reduction in force guidelines. Um, again, this can impact all of our SOFG goals. In terms of guard rails, um, we noted that it was it encourages recruitment and retention of strong teachers. Um, and it also does not allow adult convenience or preference to take priority over academic progress. And we noted that RIFF protections help ensure that we're retaining as many of our professionally developed and experienced teachers as possible in a budget shortfall. Okay. Anyone want to add to that? Okay. I think it was very thorough. Good job, everyone. Hey, as you're you can stay where you're um seating. And I know you have this in your folder and I haven't done this in the

310past, but I really thought it would be interesting for us to see how going through the IBN process delivered results. So when we started out, we came up with issues and I think you all know the the issues by now, but I wanted to read the framing statements. And as I read them, this will only take five minutes. I want you to think about our recommendations and did we meet those framing statements. Maybe we did, maybe we didn't. Maybe we did some of them. Maybe we didn't. So let me read them. And I just, like I said, I just want you to think to yourself, we're not going to have a conversation. just think about how we did. So the first one um was workload and work time start end. How can we decrease the

311amount of work workload outside of the school day while retaining teachers and improving outcomes for students? How do we bring clarity, consistency, and fairness, equity to work hours across all sites? The next issue was high need students. Our framing statement was how do we systematically and fiscally provide training and support for all staff to address the high needs of our students. Next issue was employee group compensation. How can we address compression for our hourly employees? How can we make compensation for these subgroups more competitive to avoid losing staff to other districts, sectors, agencies? longevity. How do we improve current longevity to improve staff retention to impact student achievement? Pay raises for everyone. How do we improve current longevity to improve staff retention to impact student achievement? Compensate staff for translating regardless of position. How do

312we maintain compensation while retaining highly trained interpreters? Parental leave. How can we meet the needs of new parents while also retaining highly qualified staff? Class size. How can we systematically balance class size to prioritize student safety and learning? Internal advancement promotion. How do we compensate internal promotions competitively to avoid decrease of salary? Maintaining health benefits. assuring there is a free option. We didn't develop a framing statement for that one because we know the district was covering that. Special education workload relevant open positions or leave of absence. How do we compensate special education employees for additional workload due to vacancies? Two more to go. PTO days, new teacher illness pay. How do we clarify available leave time for all staff? provide sick time for new employees, including those on probationary status, and address the gap between

313yearly payout for accuredly acred leave ones over 180 days in max separation. Came to consensus, by the way, to eliminate this issue because the district remember already researched and developed a plan for that um which will be implemented remember next year. Um the last issue salary advancement for educational level. How do we compensate psychologists for achieving lenture and how can we competit competitively compensate employees for their education level. So those were all of our framing statements that we developed options for. Um, overall as I read them, there are a couple that we did table or decided not to do, but the majority of them I do think we came up with some excellent options. And again, you should be very proud of yourself. Um, before we do the board study, a couple more things I

314would like to um discuss. At the very first meeting, um, we were concerned about our one of our norms and I said that we would re um I want to make sure I'm going along with my with where I'm at. I what we said is we would wait to the last meeting to find out if we wanted to adjust the wording of one of our norms which was our consensus norm. So does anyone have any opinions now that we went through the process especially it's fresh in our mind from today and when you look at what your norms are in um I think I have it in the PowerPoint um if not your norms are in your folder do you feel that there still is a need to reward the consensus um norm It's actually

315in the PowerPoint if you wanted to or did you think we did okay? It's fresh in our minds. We just went through consensus voting. Dorothy. So, um, while you were reading the framing statements, I was actually checking off the ones that I believe we covered with our recommendations and I pretty generous. It's not actually I only found five out of the 13 issues that um we are sending recommendations forward to. Now, we created options for all 13, right? But we are only sending recommendations forward on five out of the 13. Bless you. So, I mean, if we're doing a mood pulse check, I'm fairly unsatisfied with the final recommendations being for being sent forward. And I wasn't sure why, right? I was struggling so much with my mood and five out of 13 is why

316I'm struggling. Yeah, there was a couple that I was I I will say maybe disappointed about, but you know what? we are a team and everyone Yeahess I I think um Daniel if you don't mind me going I think consensus voting um undermines any kind of team dynamic because it allows one person to kill a recommendation um like obviously if you have majority voting or even two-thirds voting like there could be someone who votes no and is unhappy about that and that can under undermine a team dynamic too. Um, but when you need every single person to be a yes, then that if one person is a no, whether or not it's a valid reason that they're a no or whether or not they just feel strongly about something, they can kill a recommendation all

317on their own. And it seems like a number of our recommendations which addressed our framing statements were killed um through the consensus process. Um, I would also say, not to like speak to Ariel's point specifically, but we had several issues where Ariel would have like questions or want to ask something. And I feel like there was a lot of pressure to get a yes. And because if Ariel was a no, it would kill the option completely. I think there was a lot of pressure to shout down um discussion or questions or things like that because there's a possibility of even one person, you know, slowing down the process or killing a vote. Whereas if it was majority vote or two-thirds vote, um there probably wouldn't be nearly as much pressure because someone could vote no

318and have their own reasons for voting no and express that without actually derailing the whole process. Yeah. And if I remember correctly, I think that was your suggestion at the very beginning um is to do a percentage. So, and this is why we couldn't come to any agreement at the um the first meeting and I wanted to bring it up to address again. Um it's your team and it's a decision you make. Um so again do we have any ideas? I mean would you like to continue the way it has been? I mean or next meeting the first meeting you spend again how many a long time discussing this? I think it would be great if we could come to an agreement today so we can when you start next year we'll know what consensus

319means. James. Um so I I can see both sides. Um uh but just one thing to add to the conversation. Uh just like um Mr. Lopez has mentioned about how one person can hold things up. Um uh years ago uh we had a uh a meet and convert issue. Um it was during what is lovingly called the Westad years. uh where uh an issue came to meet and confer in which um they were trying to uh move to extend the school day. Um I I don't remember what it was at the time, but they extended the school day and you know arguments were done. the whole process was at the end and then there was one person uh that held it up and um so I I guess uh for me um what I worry

320about is um I just worry uh because uh sometimes thing you we get that group think and sometimes a dissenting view is um is is an important thing. Does it slow down the process? Does it make does it mean that fewer things go through? Um yeah, it certainly does. Uh but sometimes um that's not a bad thing. So that's my opinion. Uh I would strongly support not as just a majority but a twothirds um vote so that it wasn't I agree with you. I think everybody needs to be heard and that that I like the idea of if there was somebody who could not get to thumb at least sideways that their objection or whatever is like duly noted and expressed and doesn't hold up the entire um process. I I just think twothirds is

321is a more reasonable expectation for consensus. Um, so I've just kind of listened to the conversation about what everyone is having right now and I agree with you when I heard you say five out of how many items? I didn't 13 13. Um, I was like, "Wow, that's that's not very much." And so then I started really looking through it through it even closer and then I re came to realize that well some of it's because we fiscally can't afford to do a lot of those things. we can either do this or we can do this but we can't do both or we can do this this and this but then we can't do this. Um so I do think that is is a a component of it. Um I don't know if I necessarily

322agree with the idea. I really of a twothirds or you know if two people disagree or if one person disagrees I really do think we need to come to a consensus as a team because there are many perspectives whether you are classified whether you are certified whether you're a teacher you're an administrator your district and really I think we can come to the best solutions when we really work together and there were several times today and and multiple different um options that came forward that may not have got a thumb up or may have gotten a thumb down Um, but had a word change happened like it it would have made some people feel more comfortable and it could have gotten a thumb up. So when I think about it that way like if we

323can have a little bit more flexibility or let's make if we can make some of these shifts and if it's like no we can't then we have to also live with like no I don't agree with that. So um and I think that happened several times today and in multiple different um areas not in just one or the other. And I really think that we have very smart people in this room and we're represent many different aspects of the Kraton community and so when we can work together is when we can come up with the best solutions. So I really personally feel like we need to have that consensus that that thumb up. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I I had a direct response. I actually really like that suggestion um because I do

324think there were several times where if we had been able to talk about how could we change that to um you know if somebody was close to going you know at least them sideways what could we do to alter this or change it to get there we that was shut down immediately and I know that's part of our process so maybe that's the part of the process that we need to think about changing that there is room to navigate or negotiate some of the wording in order to get to consensus rather than this. It's this or nothing kind of thing. Cuz that's I think what leaves, you know, a bad taste in in, you know, the majority's mouths or feelings if one person's thumbming it down because we couldn't talk about different ways to word

325it or different ways to even adjust it to make it palatable by everybody. Yeah, I think that makes sense. the meaning of getting but the thing is when we're getting to the meeting we don't know yet how people are going to feel about it. So I think that's fair not to say nope at this this date and time no options can be changed that feels harsh and feels like it's against the idea of collaboration and negotiation in a process like this. So I I actually really appreciate that recommendation. Yeah, I was going to Oh, I was just going to say that the value of interest based negotiation over positions based negotiations is that it allows for creative thinking. It allows for the input of a lot of ideas from people that might not otherwise be

326involved in in a positionsbased negotiations process or bargaining process. But looking at our recommendations, I mean, we have benefits, which we always talk about every year. No creativity really involved there. Um, we have three from just the compensation committee that we didn't adjust or really we just approved, right? Um, and one of those we didn't approve and that's part of the process, too. Um, which leaves us with six recommendations. One of which is just a pay increase. And of those six, like there's one that's like it's already a thing that exists at the school site that we're just putting on paper. Another one is again just a pay increase. Move the market demand to the base salary. There's nothing creative in here. There's nothing stellar. There's nothing. It actually seems that we killed all of

327those things. All of the really interesting creative. Like I think of the 4 day school week thing, right? Um that was killed because we were afraid of scaring off the board. I think kind of is like the the rationale really is like, you know, being strategic. And it seems like we really uh threw the baby out with the bathwater here and got rid of all of the things that are beneficials about interest based negotiations because when I look at this list of recommendations, I don't see anything that couldn't have been created just by, you know, the union exact team sitting down with the district exact team and them going, "Okay, our compensation committee came up with these recommendations and or what does the union want to see this year? Oh, here's some things you want

328to see. Okay, let's go back to our budget person." 30 minutes later, okay, here's the budget for next year. What can can the committee figure the numbers out? two meetings later, we could have gotten an agreement with these types of recommendations. Um, which I think is fine if that's what we want to do, but I just don't see why we had to waste like 30, 40 hours developing like why are we going to develop seven or eight framing statements that we don't address? Why are we going to tell stories endlessly about these different topics and then sacrifice a variety of like that workload topic that was something that we spent hours talking about and we don't have a single option to address workload, not even one. Um, so if all we're going to do is

329thumb a pay raise every year, that's fine. But that give I'll do we do that in two hours, you know, and I just I don't see why we did all this work. Yeah. Just the context of that, that's the other um way that districts negotiate, which is called traditional negotiation. And each side just kind of brings their items to the table and there's not a lot of discussion. It's just like back and forth of each each side deciding on what we ultimately come up with. And I agree, it kind of seems like that's where we landed at the end of this. No, this is really our first year of addressing student outcomes focused governance. It's a learning process, I believe. Um, and hopefully we can get some more input from the board to further guide

330us. Um, I think it's important that your views are expressed um on how you felt throughout this process. Um, and hopefully we can get some feedback as to how to move forward with this. But we didn't we didn't spend as we had the speaker this year and yeah, this is really our first year of really delving into it. And every first year, you know how it is. It's Yeah, it's a little messy. And Go ahead, Avon. I just want to go back to the consensus twoirds of the consensus. I know that at the beginning of the year and I couldn't find it. You explained the difference between agreements and consensus but I couldn't I couldn't find it. So I'm not I'm not going to use that analogy and I will say I rather do the

331consensus because the the consensus it uh applies to the commitment that we all have as a group. If this uh twothirds for the majority then that's where the narrative and the message can divide this team. Somebody can say, "Well, I didn't vote for that or I wasn't." And so, if it's all of us together, all of us supportive. If it's not twothirds, that's when we can lose the division over there. I know at the beginning of this year, we re I think it was the first session or the second session, we address somebody from this team said no, no, no, no, twothirds of majority. It was the consensus. And so today was my my my uh place and I know I was the person who said no into one of the other ones and I

332have my my reasons and I explain those reasons but I just I just want to make sure that if it's the not Ivonne not so and so but if the meet and confer group that's what we all leave that door and we all commit to the same messaging. Yeah. Yeah, it makes it difficult too. You know, I think the conversations that we have moved some people, but when you have as many um options that we always end up having, it seems, it really does limit our conversations and our our abilities to really delve into it. I'd like you to think about that next year. And I'm not just saying we don't want a lot of options, but I think we really maybe need to to be maybe a little bit, bless you, a little bit

333more selective with our options so we can devote the time that's necessary to hear the back and forths and with the open minds um that's necessary. So again, it doesn't seem like we have agreement on consensus. It seems like half the room is like three4s no consensus on consensus, but we will further that discussion. Um, another thing I want to achieve, Kelly worked really hard at the very beginning of the year getting input from the staff. I did not do that by myself. The way I am Kelly and and the CA leadership team. Thank you. And the CA leadership team worked hard to put together the survey and distribute it for IBN. And remember, she brought those um issues forward. And then once we had those issues, we went around the room and added. So

334next year actually it'll be the IBN survey and then we'll have all those tabled items too that we have to address. But Kelly, um could you tell the staff a little bit um how how was it developed? And I think we talked a little bit about this before, but it might have been last year. Um how are the questions um developed? How is it distributed? How is it collected? Yeah. So, we really lifted it from other associations around the state that have successfully implemented these surveys, and that's kind of like where we got the idea. There's a staff member from Aea that's assigned to our local that helps us to organize our negotiations process. And so, he suggested that we start doing these um tours of various departments within the district to be able to

335capture more voices. And so, um, Ann really put it all together and Daniel kind of like organized the processing of it. We talked about doing a digital survey, but we felt like paper copies were just easier to be able to take with us as we went to various departments. And then we just kind of divided and conquered. And we had a lot of ideas at first with things that were lifted from other uh associations, but we ended up with four main categories that we felt like were consistent issues that fell um within the the problems or scope that just came up year after year. Um, and that came from I've been on the main confer for many years. Dorothy served for many years and then takes her step down and comes back through. Um, so

336we wanted to keep it brief enough where folks had a chance to prioritize their items. So that's the way that we organize. I think I showed this in the first meeting, but we have a one through five scale and we have the various categories and then each issue that falls within the categories and anybody can note their one through five. And then there's a spot for more um additional comments if anyone wants to write those. And then we just collect some demographic data on how many years people have been in the district etc. They are um benefits facilities site district support systems. And this one doesn't have a name but I think it is oh JK working conditions. Yeah, I think benefits falls within um compensation because it has inequitable pay. Yes. Under there. So

337this one the title is just on the wrong side. So working conditions, benefits, facilities, site district support, and then systems. Um um so uh when you were doing the tours, did you hit all employee groups? We did not. That's just shortfall of the way scheduling worked out. We try to hit most of them and then we try to use our site steward system which is our representatives that are on each of the campuses. Unfortunately, we have a few campuses that don't have a site steward at the moment. So, we tried our best to fill in like Anns a site that doesn't have one. So, she was able to step in over there. Um I think and the same with like even on the sites, cafeteria workers are sometimes trickier. Maintenance staff are tricky to nail

338down because they aren't always there when staff are there when teachers are there at least. Um I have a little more flexibility in my new position, but I'm also new. So I'm learning every day all the things. So that made it difficult to Right. So, um I mean my my suggestion slashrecommendation is when we did we did something like this years ago. Um we had a digital version that went out to every employee in the district so everybody had access to it no matter who they were or where they were. And then at the time we had asked principles to have allocate time in their staff meeting like 10 minutes where they can go over and have that in-person thing. And the same thing would be with department heads. And if I remember correctly, uh

339the HR director at the time and uh someone on the leadership team of CA would hit some of these auxiliary places like transportation, do North things like that to to uh to get those people that are not techsavvy and prefer the paper just so you can get cast a wide net and get as much uh input as you possibly can. Yeah, those are great suggestions. I did attend like an officer manager meeting. Um I know Ann presented to the special education department. It I came over to um I think we missed transportation this year. Yeah, last year we did at them. Yeah. Uh oh, okay. Thanks, James. We'll get you on our list. Sorry, James. Our side. I went around to our members and gave them the survey. But it should be You're absolutely right.

340It should be included members on members as wide as we can. Um no, there's not. And there could be that's another Yeah, that's another avenue. I'll go to suggestions. That's where you could link that be the very first message of the year and then a link to the input survey. Yes. Yeah. I'm I'm glad that James uh brought it forward because I was going to say in the spirit of collaboration uh and to ensure equity of voices so every position everybody in the district has access to provide with that guidance of um topics or or challenges or information. I think it it should be a collaboration with the meeting confer uh rather than just CA um because we're all going to use the the data. We should all have access but everybody will have the

341opportunity to uh res respond and and tell us what is it that they're concerning because otherwise if it's just uh a small number of people participating and their story is two people then we stretch that story into across the district. And so the more the more um participation that we have, the more that we know like that's a story that we need to address and follow. Well, and to be fair in response to that, so for example, when an came to the special education department, she obviously did not talk just to the CA members in the special ed department, she talked to both non-members and members of the special ed department. So yeah, while we didn't get to all departments, the departments that were gotten to were equitably asked for their input. And also on

342from my perspective, like the reason why I just asked our members at my schools because I mean that's one of the benefits of being in the union is that you have a site rep that you can go talk to that will represent you in bargaining. Um whereas that is not necessarily as true of non-members. I mean, it's not like I'm going to ignore people that aren't members, but um if we have to do all the work to develop the survey and push out the survey and interpret the survey results and then bring it to bargaining, then you know, I mean, if some if there are other people who would like to contribute to that process and to make sure the survey goes out to more people. That's what I said in the spirit in the

343spirit of collaboration. I said we can this group can develop uh together and then send it and then we all can have access and help with all of that. That's what I'm proposing. Maybe meeting. Yeah, I was just going to say Joel and I and Diane meet probably at the end of this year. We'll meet and then we meet again uh before the school year starts so we can just build that into our planning processes. I know Ann wanted to add something. Um I was just going to add kind of what I was saying what Ivonne was saying and what James was saying as well is so one of the things if we're worried about not being able to meet all staff members because of when they come on campus and things like that. So

344for example, I created a QR code for the panorama survey so that you know if night crew is clocking in later, they can just take it right there and they have access to it or things like that. um or so that if they're not always techsavvy, but that's like just another way to kind of help target people to do it so that we can get feedback from all parties. I literally hung it on the time clock plus. Do you want me to read it? Yeah. Would you all listenable? It's the same same process it's always been. You're okay. I'm fine. I was just going to skip the reading and just put it straight in the chat. Do we need to offer anything to you? I have it. I I think I have it solid, but

345I'm also open to feedback. And we're never shy with our feedback, are we, Emily? Um, speaking of speaking of things in the chat, um, I'm going to update our professional agreement and put it in the chat by the end of the day on Friday um, for people to thumbs up. I don't we don't really need like a deadline, but the sooner it gets approved, the sooner it can go to our members to vote on, the sooner it can go to lawyer. I think we want to get it back by May 20th if possible. That's done annually. Yes. And the the the process I talked with Joel earlier there'll be like a I guess what you'd call a first approval of it on May 20th just to communicate out to staff like what is in the

346agreement and then in June or July whenever the salary schedules go out there'll be like a second approval with the updated like an update with the salary schedules that Kelly and then um Sophia then sign. Are you talking about May 6th? Is that what you meant? No, sixth is the study session. And that's when we do our presentations, when we inform the board, and the 20th would be when they vote on it. Got it. Got it. So by our to our members by the 20th as well. Okay. So if we could try to get everyone to have consensus on it, I don't know, like Monday or Tuesday, that would be I guess. Yeah, we can have anyone who hasn't voted on it by Tuesday, we can bring it up at the study session. I I

347think in the past what we've requested is that the meet and confer team attend but not everyone has to present. So I just wanted to throw that out there if that's that's what you want to continue doing. uh or um and as I mentioned before, if we it feels like we probably won't have time between now and the 6 to meet separately. Would we be open to having a uh like a 4:30 4:45 gathering? We can go in the small room over here and give an opportunity for those who are presenting to kind of talk through their slides. How does that sound? That's next Tuesday. You should have the board meeting on your calendar as a study session. I sent it out to the meet and confer group and essentially Joel the presenters will be

348presenting the Rex and then the justification or our ration. Yeah. Yeah. And I I kind of put them in the slideshow already. I could certainly add the SOFG language or put it in the notes or what I I don't know what you think makes the most sense. I could separate them out, have one bullet per page and then put the SOFG alignment. I would think the next page like leave all the Rex on one and then the very next slide have the SOFG alignment. That would be my first thought, but I don't know. Yes, Mr. Diaz. I don't know if I'm jumping ahead here, but me personally in terms of uh like who's presenting and how that decision is made rather than having a conversation about that. I I'm I'm personally speaking for myself, I'm

349comfortable with like saying who doesn't want to be up and present because not everybody does. and then having Kelly and Joel decide, you know, this person is this, this person is there. Um, that way you don't have to go around and decide as a group. That's my recommend. I don't know if you had something already in mind. Yeah, unless someone has real passion about any of the items, you know, um, and feel very strongly that they want to support. I think, uh, Katie mentioned she was interested in helping support the 2% conversation. Um, and we can have a couple of voices per item. It doesn't have to just be one person. So, yeah. And I also remember the conversation about uh the messenger is just as important as the message. So, [Laughter] one through nine.

350Yeah. I guess we should start there. Is there anyone who is not comfortable speaking? I' I'd like to not. I don't think the board is particularly thrilled with me right now. So I would not want to hurt our chances of the recommendations being passed. So I think I would abstain in the interest of strategy. I'm being realistic and honest about I mean you seen our test. Yeah. I mean, your reputation precedes one board comment, but Okay. Yes, absolutely. But that's totally fine. That's valid. Anyone else? Good. So, I think if we have I don't know if we want to put it on the chat so that those who aren't here right now can have a chance to say whether they want to present or not. And then from there, like you said, if anybody has

351any passion about a certain one, then they can be assigned it. Otherwise, we can just go through if everyone's okay with that. Plus, we have the information from um Plus, we have the information from that activity we did today that's really going to guide you. So, um yeah, it's pretty easy. Yeah. And and it's not a real board meeting. It's the one where they're like sitting in the room. It's a little less intimidating than like, you know, they're going to be Oh, they are going to format. Oh, sorry. Okay. It's intimidating. Yeah. And I, you know, like I said, it's very important for them to know and I honestly feel as a facilitator, we really kept them in mind throughout. I don't think a meeting went by where it wasn't mentioned. Um, and hopefully we

352can learn a little bit for next year. Um, okay, you're finished. Okay. Um, hey, I would also like, um, I know it's on your evaluation, but the streaming I think went well. Did you all agree? I mean, I was very nervous about it at the beginning, but I'm I was okay with it. Last I checked, our last one was up to I don't know if I'm right, Adrian. Maybe I dreamt this. Over 900 views. What am I? Now, I was a hundred of them. Like I said, I'm on it all the time, but I know I wasn't more than I know it wasn't more than a hundred times I was on there, but how many views did we have? I'll tell you, I like um Mr. Man said, your staff cannot say that we're not

353open and transparent. I mean, with this being streamed and then Emily doing the um Kraton connection and then the communications that we're putting out, they're informed if they want to be. Adrien 962 views. Oh, wow. That's pretty good. Yeah. So impressive. So, you know, your district is very interested and that says a lot. That's good. I mean, I think by the end of it, I forgot we were even streaming. And that's what you want, right? You want the conversations to feel as authentic as they would be regardless. So, it was I know we had some qualms at the very beginning because we were all like nervous about where to sit and how to not be seen and all of that, but for me, it stop it stopped being an issue at all. Yeah, me too.

354I kind of forgot. I have a comment James. Um I so this this is not a conversation now but something I think about for next year is like the level of transparency and what becomes productive and what becomes counterproductive. Um, sometimes I feel like uh some misconceptions uh that that went out um and even to the board kind of created in my opinion a little bit of an environment of uh a lot of cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. And um um and I I keep coming back to my my my example before of nobody wants to see how the sausage is made because it's just not fun. And plus, people can misinterpret stuff and things are out there and they may just be out there for consensus, but they're not things that may

355even get passed. But people fixate on stuff and they all of a sudden become a lot more um involved in the process than than than they should be. Um um and I think that that can create some some issues in my opinion. Okay. Well, thank you for that. You know, I'd like to go around and you know, we did have some accomplishments, everyone. I know some of you are very disappointed. I get it. But when you think of where we started and where we are now, I know there's a little bit of disappointment, but you still did a very good job for your district. Um, and they're going to appreciate it. this the the raise alone is I mean that's where the majority of our money went. It didn't leave us with much else to

356do. Um and I think you should be proud of that plus some of the other um options. So don't leave here too sad. Um your voice was heard um and you know things were tabled for next year and if we really want to address them then we we revisit them next year. So, I'd like to make sure that we thank Adrian back there who sat here for six sessions streaming. Thank you, Adrian, and Dr. Lauren for all of his help and input into the Google Docs and um sending emails out to you. And then we had Lisa and Marie is not here, but they were a big help. and Dom and Emily back there. Emily, every week showing up. Every time we meet, you show up and thank you, Emily. Yes, we appreciate you. Okay,

357so if we could go around before we leave closing, make sure you fill out the evaluation. That's your exit ticket. So, just um try not to make it. I just would like some positive things before you leave. Just thoughts, Ariel. We'll start with you. just thoughts about everything, not just today, you being a member, like what's your thoughts? And we know a little bit from what you expressed, you know, some of the the things that you're a little bit disappointed, upset about. I'd like I'd like for us and I really would like for us to end in a positive note. So I really would like and I'm not just saying this to you Ariel, you're the first one. Um anything negative can be written on the paper and I'm going to read it and I

358will publish it. Um but I just want to end in a positive note. So what do you think Ariel? You've been on IBN for many many years and what are your thoughts? I spoke about James and I just feel like I'm kind of disappointed that only did money stuff. I wish that more than just money, oh this is the most stressful one I've ever honestly feel this way. I think um you really do need to find out from your board, you know, what we went through and did we interpret it correctly. Maybe we didn't. We don't know. Like I said earlier, this is the first year. Um that's something you'll need to find out um to to move it forward. Daniel, um I'm really happy about the transparency and the live streaming. Um, it's an

359open meeting, so people have a right to see what's going on in here. [Music] Um, other than that, I don't think I have anything else to say. Um, and I wrote this in in the evaluation as well. I enjoy the discussions by different stakeholders because it holds me responsible for keeping my mind open to the perspectives of others. And I think, you know, regardless of how right we think we are in the way we think about things, it's always important to be reminded that there are other ways of thinking about things and other perspectives. So, I like that um charge to be open-minded and think, "Oh, I hadn't thought about it that way." And and be open to other ideas. Uh yeah, in that same vein, I appreciate that this process exists. I think the

360district really values hearing diverse voices and making sure that people are included in decision-m and I really feel that having a a voice on the team and being able to be a part of the process and I know that that's fragile and can be taken away uh unfortunately and we know that across the state that is the case in other districts. So, I appreciate that we still have that and that that we can be realistic about what works and what doesn't and talk about how it might evolve because maybe a traditional system is more fitting for us and that could be what this process evolves into. But I know that we'll be able to have a voice at least for now in um what that looks like and how it evolves from here. Um and

361I'm happy to be a part of it. Um positive. I agree with Daniel that uh live streaming it and having allowing for broader access so that people can access it when they're off of working hours. Um I know that we had a lot of members who were commenting on it who felt like they were more active engaged in the process and able to be a stronger part of the process because they could watch it.