001e e e welcome everyone today is day I keep forgetting welcome everyone today's day three of IBN um and I'd like to share our agenda I think all of you have a copy of our agenda for today I know okay how's that I know or do a little dance okay we're gonna adjust the agenda just a little bit because we have our speakers that are here right at 8 o'clock so we're going to actually um have them go first so we don't have to keep them waiting but before they start I did want to go over our process skills and if you could take a few minutes to read them I'll read them also team will complete a temperature check at the close of the meeting to protect individual opinions and perspectives and by the
002way I did put that in the PowerPoint so I would remember to do that um facilitator will list talking points agreed upon by team to Emily and Emily will request consensus in chat and then um we wanted to before we started to check on any time restraints so does anyone today have any time restraints Amy let's just go around [Music] here and I'm helping facilate they start at 2:30 so I'll okay Eve uh my daughter has volleyball practice so I need to leave at 3:45 okay I have a meeting um with executive team at 12:30 but I should be back by 1:30 so it's just a very short amount of time I'll be gone okay perfect I'm providing training to the educational secretary so I have to leave at 1 okay I have to leave
003at 3:30 okay I'm here transportation is short staff and I'll be driving at about little shortly afternoon afternoon yeah okay I'll be here yeah I'm good yeah I don't have any constraints I like how we all passing around the mic and so using the mics at the table but no time restraints now we have to pass it back okay okay so today we're fortunate to have our insurance team here and we have Jameson from okay and Darlene and they were here in past years and um so this is our time to learn and ask questions that may help us with developing our options so Jameson do you want to start and as we jump in uh there's a link on the agenda for today meeting notes for a folder that has all of the insurance
004information we're going to do a pretty high uh level overview of what is being presented as far as you know where we got where we are today with our health policy uh and there are some additional products that we can talk about after uh Darlene and Jameson are are through presenting uh so I wanted to make sure you knew that that was available to you and then you also have in your packet you should have this document uh and that's I believe what Jameson's going to start with right over you is it going to be presented up there too or just am I okay sounds good um so we will go off the first page here we call this the dashboard it brings everything and you're live yeah that's why I thought but okay um
005so this first um dashboard page kind of gives us everything that's going on uh in the top first section section one the first sentence lets us know what our overall increase is it's at coming in at a 4.23% uh to give some character around that um the average um increase right now was about 6.5 for Valley Schools um after plan changes we're expecting those to be closer to five um your all your plans aren't looking for any plan changes so the overall expected increase uh at this time is 4.23 so better than most actually a lot better the most so it's a good position to be in you'll see why how this breaks out your current uh funding rates have about $4.2 million uh for medical and RX your fixed expense which pays for United
006Health Care Services your stop loss in Valley Schools is 688,000 adding those together come to about 4.9 million when you look at the projection so my independent projection of claims was uh at 4.4 so about four 4.9% uh above uh your current when we look at our fixed expense it stayed the same so on a weighted average our new budget for next year is at 5.1 million so about 4.23% above our current funding below that is just your two plans and the current enrollment in each plans most plans are in that choice base um section two kind of just gives us some history so when we look at our 2024 plan year we had a 0% increase so that was just last year when we looked at our 2023 it was about a 7.2 which
007is the national average increase okay uh so you're you're just about around that in 2023 when we look at your loss ratio so this is what we budgeted compared to what we spent in 23 24 it ran at 85% so that means 15% better than expectations when I looked at claims that's supposed to say through December sorry through December um we were running at a 99% loss ratio so almost exactly what we've budgeted we've we've spent so far this year top right section four this tells us what is going on uh in your plan for um medical and Pharmacy so your top medical spend which is maternity not uncommon for schools um and neoplasm and then genitori system is the third and then your Pharmacy's diabetes inflammatory conditions so for those that don't know what
008that is uh that's going to be like your humas your Skyes so o um arthritis um Crohn's disease all those are all grouped into inflammatory conditions um and then your third on here is oncology which is cancer um section five does not have any impact to you guys section six shows you the trend I'm using is 7.1 for medical and 10.3 for pharmacy on the next page we're going to go through what's called high case normalization this is the process that we utilize in our underwriting methodology so uh when you are having a bad year if I apply Trend to it I'll potentially over project if you have a really good year I apply Trend to that I'll under project so this process kind of takes what did happen we remove it and put in
009what should have happened based off your demographics your demographics on this sheet it's the very top line is a 1.27 what that means is my database is a one factor your average age and gender mix is 27% more expensive than our average spend in the database that's mainly because you don't have a lot of dependence on your plan so you have mainly employees uh our database has a lot of dependence because we're a National Database uh with members across the country uh the way we do the normalization is we pull claims above 75,000 you buy a stop loss at 150,000 so we look at that first section uh 22 23 plan year you had an average membership of 695 so when I say membership that's employees spouses and children uh we are going to remove
010in my underwriting $796,000 when we look at your claims above your stop loss we had 334,000 when we look at your expected liability between 75 and 150 that's what we expected you to spend was 403 so in my underwriting I'm going to take out 796 put back in 403 which gives me a net underwriting adjustment of about $400,000 um when you look at the second time period And if you look at the table below you'll see some green at the lower Threshold at 25 to 75 and then right where I'm starting to pull claims out you're a little red you're not too red you're just a little bit above expectation uh in that area and you didn't have much severity either so severity is when you have what we call catastrophic claims so claims above
011250,000 you have one that just went to 275 so not too bad when we we look at our prior year 23 24 membership stayed about the same so 692 members in this time period I'm going to take out 381,000 you only had 107 above stop loss we're going to put back in 437,000 which so we're just going to add a little back in that time period of five 56,000 you can see all grain in that time period that means you ran much better than our expectations so we want to make up for that a little bit because you'll always come back to your demographics and so far this year um you had a little drop in membership we're at 661 we're going to remove 128 in that time Peri time period put back in 219
012have a net underwriting adjustment of $90,000 again that's just a partial Year we're only six months into that year that's typically what we see um in the start of a of a plan year any questions on normalization all right so this next page actually walks through the um the full underwriting U model for medical and Pharmacy so starting off on the medical side so that's Row one uh that's where we're bringing in our gross medical claims of 2.8 2.4 and 1.3 row two and three is that normalization we just talked about so row four is our Net medical claims after normalization of 2.4 2.4 4 and 1.4 row 9 and row four are the same we didn't need to make any adjustments um for projection purposes and then we want to convert everything to a
013per member per month that's kind of a unit cost in your uh medical plan the best way to do that is to add each month of the plan year of your membership and then divide it out by those claims it will convert it to a per member per month on row 11 in the first time period of 293 uh second time period 298 current time period of 352 and this next step is where will you apply Trend again 7.1 annual Trend but when you're applying um Trend to claims that are two years old what you do to mature those claims is you apply 7.1 to the midpoint to midpoint of the position you're analyzing to the position you're you're going to so analyzing 22 23 plan year um projecting for 25 26 there's 36 months
014midpoint to midpoint there so when you apply 7% annual Trend the 36 months to mature those claims you have to mature them now by 22% so you're going to add 22% to the 293 to get that first um period projection of 36017 second time period is 24 months midpoint to midpoint which is 14 %c to Trend the 298 to uh look like claims in 2526 from that time period is 342 Uh current time period is 15 months which is about 9% to the 352 maturing that to a pmpm of 380 386 the next step is to blend these um this also helps take out some volatility by blending them we're going to apply 20% to that first time period because it's the oldest we're going to apply 30% to the most recent completed time period
015and we're going to apply 50% to the most recent time period uh because our most recent time period is only six months we do what's called a membership weighted adjustment really what that means is we're waiting the three time periods by their m ship count by those percentages which readjusts it for the first time period of 27% second time period is um calculating a 40% and 32% for the current time period that blends together to a pmpm of 36058 representing about 65% of our spend coming from the medical side pharmacy side pretty easy just we're going to bring in our gross uh medical claims in that first row there's no adjustments so Row one and nine are the same we're going to convert to the PM PM just like we did medical so in in
016your case the first time period pmpm conversion is 117 second time period is 160 and our current time period is 187 you can see kind of a natural Trend in those numbers um that's why Pharmacy we're seeing that just in every plan uh due to utilization new medications and cost of medications are going up um the actual Benchmark right now for 2024 was 155 uh so you're a little bit higher than Benchmark you were much better than Benchmark a couple years ago when it was about 135 140 we're at 117 and now when we're looking at this last or this current time period we're at 187 again some of that is due to the oncology medications that are newer to your plan uh so we're going to apply that 10.3% annual Trend to these three
017time periods same midpoints to midpoints which converts to a 34% to the 1177 21% to the 160 and 133% to the 187 giving us uh a projection from the first time period of 157 second time period 195 current time period of 212 blending the same way we did with medical gives us a blend of 19052 representing about 35% coming from the pharmacy side uh we've talked a lot about the PM PMS we're going to add those together um and multiply them out by your membership of 679 divided by your enrollment Employee Enrollment of 570 that converts it to a per employee per month because that's how your fixed expense is adjudicated your fixed expense is the same at 10060 per employee per month when you add the claims in RX with the fixed we get
018a total fixed in claims PM of 7578 uh expected monthly spend of 431 annualized out to one uh 5.7 I'm sorry $5.1 million comparing to our current budget of 4.9 gives us an adjustment of 4.23% or about $210,000 the pie chart kind of gives us a breakdown uh your overall fixed expense represents 133% of the pi 30% is coming from the pharmacy and 56% is coming from the medical side question yep okay so just to clarify so current MERS 679 that includes all of the depend that is correct 57 is en y do we have what current enrollment was for last year I don't have it off top of my head but it should have been it's a little higher than this but not much yeah we have this year versus last year is it
019yeah I can look at okay I'm just curious because it like in a perfect world if we have full staffy next year will this be impacted greatly well but don't forget that we also have not everyone that elects benefits through the district so these are members that are actually enrolled so if they choose a different option for their benefits then they wouldn't be part of this calculation correct yeah y so we it's it's you know I think ballpark for um contract was about 30 I think right and then we had pair professionals as well if I'm just remembering off the top of my head I remember that conversation now we did have that conversation so um I know they're looking into how many people will expect to bring onto the plan um but it doesn't
020impact our our overall calculation it impacts the 5.1 because we're gonna have more bodies on it but we're just going to multiply that out by the 757 we're just assuming they're the same risk as your current population all right I also just to point out also if we have employees that are J1 V U teachers that are international teachers they are not on our plan because they have to have certain benefits that are required by the federal government uh so we we do not meet that criteria for our plan for our International teachers just the ones on J1 so they're on a separate plan that we pay for uh out of District funds for that benefit for that employee yeah they have some fun requirements it's not that it's a richer plan yeah the the
021big employment is the reinterment benefit so if there were something catastrophic that happened to the employee while they're here then we would have that benefit reurn them to their home country yeah if if they pass away yeah he was trying to keep it light yes yeah it it's part of the agreement with the iig group which is the group that does the J1 visas for us our H1B Visa candidates or teachers are on our plans and then the last page on there is just your plan designs um again no changes to those just the overall increase to the funding rates uh is is what's changed on that last sheet and then I left contributions off because I don't know where you guys ended with contributions but so any questions so what I might suggest if
022I may maybe take a couple of minutes to look over the packet uh and talk with a partner next to you and see if you have any additional questions if that's okay yeah sounds um and then we want to uh talk a little bit about some of the addition optional benefits that we're asking for meet and confer to take a look at and just kind of get a thumbs up if we want to move forward with those optional coverage pieces you also reminded me we wanted to talk a little bit a reminder who who's got the wellness app anybody doing the wellness okay couple of you good so yeah well Styles yeah yeah it's through the insurance um so there's a lot perfect so the one pass is great too that's another good benefit that's
023through United healthc cares yes those gyms um that's anybody know about one pass so if you're into gyms it's a really cool thing there's different tiers and levels to it um so like if you buy the base level you can go to LA Fitness EOS you can go to all of them um so you're not just going to one gym so if there's an EOS set is closer to your work you you can go to that but let's say LA Fitness is Clos to your home you can go to that so just gives you a variety of gyms and then if you get into the higher levels you can go to Lifetime stretch lab so there's a bunch of cool ones on there so you're not just stuck to One Gym um and then also
024who's heard of hinge benefits hinge hinge hinge Health yeah okay that's one that I want to make sure everybody knows about it's yeah it's for your muscle skeletal it's pretty much PT through the website um through online system where you're talking with a a physician to go through your exercises and then they send you equipment to monitor how you're doing with your exercises if you're doing them correctly and as you progress you work with a physical therapist to continue on with your therapy we've found that it's been much more beneficial for employees to get all the way through their physical therapy instead of going to the actual place a lot of times people have a hard time finding time to get to a facility and then walk through an hour worth of PT this is
025like you can you can just do it at your desk at work you can do it at home you know it's on your time which is nice um and then the other one is second MD have we heard about that okay second MD so second MD is great um for example a colleague in my office we have at our work um his daughter was diagnosed with lupus so they wanted to make sure that was the correct diagnosis because that can be a hard condition to diagnose so they went through second MD um all you do is you get in contact with them let them know what physician has all the information they do all the rest of the work they send it to their specialist they do a full panel review on it and come
026back with either suggestions yes it is or maybe you should try this maybe talk to this doctor so it's a really easy way to get a second opinion before you go down a very expensive treatment that you may not need on average they're finding about 25% of the treatments that are recommended are not needed so it's helping out a lot so yeah so and that's all part of the Valley Schools bundle um yeah so you already have access to that yeah so that's a benefit that I think we need to promote we have access to all of those yeah yeah Darlene are we it's an awesome program second opinion program they have um doctors their team of doctors nurses Specialists I've used them actually unfortunately but fortunately a couple times myself where it's like okay
027you need this procedure I'm like aha yeah right so I go to Second and doesn't cost you anything that's one of the benefits of being with schools okay and so what these folks do is they will get your records from your physician everybody that you've been seeing and then they will they will take a look at all that formulate their opinions and their recommendations give you a call back and then discuss it's it's called and I think we've had it in place now I want to say maybe four yeah we brought it during Co yeah yeah and it's it's just been awesome and the good thing too though is you don't pay any extra for it is there a maybe I missed it but is there a little sheet cheet that we can have as
028employees where we can have all of these wonderful applications that are part of our program yes a matter of fact in your benefits presentation and that's that is posted right on your uh your internet your in yeah yes it's on it's on our website if you go to the benefit maybe maybe we just have to pull that specifically because I don't want to see to the presentation I just want to cheat cheat of all of these apps that you can do yeah there's a there's a it's a it's well it's a slide and they're they're all on there and then how to get a hold of each because with second MD there's a phone number that you actually call and then that way that's how that process gets going yes especially if there's going to
029be directions of on this one you need your login or on this one you need to call or I think it will be very beneficial to have that definitely need that information and and you can find that um on your site and that's the benefit of signing up for the well Styles app also because you go through all of that all that information is all on that app um and it makes it prettyy easy to get to those places um we also have a well Styles Champion Miss Lisa Mena she has a mug and everything um but if you do have questions about uh well Styles or their program we there's also an incentive program with use of that um that benefit uh which we can I don't know Lisa do you want to talk
030a little bit about what it is oh okay so Lisa put it in the chat so if you to refer to that uh and so now I think maybe we give you a minute or so because we talked over the minute that I was going to give you but let's that's okay um this good information I also want to direct you in the uh overview there's um a list of the products that we currently have that we're recommending for next year we'll go over that in just a moment there is a change I think we noted this in the dental program for next year for provider uh which looks a little different than what es ESD had uh or EDS my apologies um there is a comparison in the folder that's labeled Dental in that
031insurance folder so I try to give you as much information to look at as possible because I know for some people I really want to know about dental because that's important to me uh I really want to know about um you know options for some catastrophic coverage so that's all in that folder so I guess maybe give five minutes to kind of look over things and come up if you have questions and then we'll go through the information together so this is that's that's I see right Jes think I told said I told to Google message day still did you use the right I think I think we're uh about at the point where we had given you some time to kind of take a look at the information so does anybody have any questions
032for our guests for Jameson or Darlene or any other thoughts that came to mind as we're looking at the benefits information Mr Diaz the gentleman from Gateway the gentleman from gayway thank you sir um uh uh this is just like an open-ended question and it's something I've I've always had curiosity about throughout a couple of years um uh uh can you and and you don't have to go into specifics can you speak in general uh because about things and I don't know maybe there's nothing but things we as a district uh practices policies approaches that we uh are doing that are helping keeping our rates in a good place and things that we should look out for uh be wary of maybe you would recommend don't do um to uh that would escalate those rates
033because obviously when it comes down to it at the end of the day we want to keep benefits High excuse me I just turned into a 12-year-old boy no stop stop can she speak without a microphone yes um anyhow uh yeah if you could speak to that I'd appreciate it yes so there's a lot of great things we talked about those here uh your Wellness strategy it's it's really building a culture of wellness and having everybody understand all the values that are already here that we can utilize like hinge um the one pass those things to make sure everybody has access to those and knows how to use them uh so that we all kind of live a healthier life will be kind of the best way to what we call Bend the trend um
034because the things we can't control are contracts with Hospital Systems so when we do use um the hospitals unfortunately those contracts keep going up every three they have three-year contracts um things like that new medications that are coming in there's some new um amazing technology coming through with the gen therapies but those are a million to $3 million for the use of those so there's a lot of expensive things that are coming in so the things we can control are through hinge benefits to make sure that in second MD so you've got a lot of great things that are in place it's just making sure everybody knows and has access to it that's where this group kind of as you learn more about those types of benefits you take the opportunity to help your HR
035department um to to educate those around you to make sure that they have access to that um Mental Health Services again uh through your benefits also through the EAP those are also make sure everybody has access to those because those are definitely crucial benefits for everybody uh in today's society so um as far as things not to do we've set up your plans I think in a very strong position um so that co-pays are affordable so when they are seeking care that's the one thing we want to make sure people have access to care and it's not breaking the bank so that's how the the thought behind your plan designs were built uh with that mind so um not really a question but more of an idea now how we have that automated training component
036is it possible that one of the things be is like a Rie or dive in yeah absolutely yeah yeah I think that's a great suggestion Lis um to to educate people on what are their benefits packet is and how the well Styles benefits them as an employee I think that's a great idea Lisa is happy to get those emails yes Debbie and Debbie and Debbie um yeah I believe we talked about that last year or two years ago uh was making sure that the information was disseminated I think it's actually in our bargaining agreement to make sure that that gets out so we just need to follow up and make sure that's yeah so part of that agreement was to have uh something in early April I think said April 1st but then the calendar
037timing is interesting uh so the we have virtual meetings already scheduled for the first week of April I think it's April 3D April 3rd for um for current employees uh one of the things that we've been talking with um Kendall who's also with Valley schools and she's sort of the overview overview of the well Styles program or she oversees that program is to invite uh Valley Schools to our new teacher orientation and to have some information presented at that time to really kind of get some excitement around the well Styles program and that I think would help as well to bring that attention because that's when they sign up for their benefits is during that time so just have a comment thank you Lisa the comment that I made before about the list with all
038of the apps it's already done so you just point me refer me to the right please thank you and then a question for you yeah um I'm looking at page three uh the demographics and the claims um is it accurate to say that in with the three years our population is healthier based on the number of claims I'm looking at this page what you're seeing is actually the severity you so yes hopefully we're catching things earlier so we're not seeing the severity of claims because that's what we're currently seeing in the expectation of large claim utilization you're beating that expectation yes so um while we still have Darlene and Jameson for a couple more minutes I did want to call your attention to the overview of options uh one of the things that well a
039couple things one is that uh we're we're recommending that we stay with United Healthcare uh that's been a cost savings to us over the last three years since we've been self-insured um we talked about the HMO for dental being different so I would encourage you to look through the Sigma Information uh there we will still retain Delta as a buy up plan for dental uh there are additional levels of Delta that we don't currently access um that we could add to our plan it would be an increased cost to the employee because the district will cover their portion of what we would cover for the HMO uh and that would be transferred over to Delta if you're part of Delta I am so I I pay for that buy up uh so the employee is
040responsible for the difference between what the district pays for the HMO and the the per month cost for the dental Rebecca do you have a question yeah if you look if you link there's a link in this app um where it says Delta P that's a hyperlink and and you can take a look at both plans or the levels there's level one level two and level three uh we currently offer level two as our benefit uh for Delta uh we could add level three and I believe a big difference in level three and and please correct me if I'm wrong Darlene but that's the orthodontia um that uh it it's coverage for the adults as well as a different level of coverage for the students or the children do you want so if you have
041dependence and you are interested in looking at that as an option and and as meet and confer uh one of your charges is to recommend to the governing board what our benefits packet is going to be so um you might want to take a look at that and we can take that into consideration uh Vision there is going to be an increase in the vision uh over last year uh and there's an option currently we're with United Health Vision there's an option to go I think back to vssp because I think we had vssp years ago um so if uh your prescriptions and contact coverage uh you might want to look at comparing those two we could recommend staying with the United or we could recommend moving to vssp which also has different levels I
042think there are three levels but we probably won't offer all three right oh two okay and the low plan is a 12 1224 so in other words you get frames every 24 months there's also a 12 122 where you'll get your your exams your frames every 12s so and that's a little higher plan and the rates between all three uh in because that did go up 3.5% they've been really good about keeping their rates completely flat till this year so with the vssp low plan and the vssp high plan and then your UHC Vision all those rates um vssp has kind of come in the middle so the low vssp plan the rates are lower than What U vision is going to be the high VSP plan the rates are a little higher than your
043current U so again it's just like Dr Dr Lauren indicated take a look see what you think and then come to whatever conclusion but they're they're all great the bsp though is I have to say kind of like a Cadillac of of your vision and I know there's a lot of our members that have really asked to to look at vssp again so that's how we came up to okay let's see what we can do with VSP all right and then uh employee assistance program um you can see the information there we're recommending that we don't have a change in interface um Behavioral Health we also have EAP through United so those are the two options that employees currently have that are part of our benefits package the sunli financial is your basic life accidental
044death and dismemberment that is a uh something that employees elect to pay into for coverage uh so that's not something that the district pays into as a benefit it's something that the employee elects um so if you are participa that program or not uh you would still have that option that would include short-term disability um flexible spending and FSA account there's a description of that that's through wex currently so you get the card you use it for co-pays and different types of uh payments right yes anything else on that okay um and then well Styles we talked about some of the options uh the second MD hinge Health those things that are available I know I'm going through this quickly but we have other products that are available to us as a district if we
045choose to offer them to our employees that might be helpful uh one is to offer pet insurance through MetLife I believe the pet insurance is build directly to the employee it's not a deduction from your paycheck but it's a discounted rate so if you are well we have four dogs so we probably can't afford it but um if you have a pet that you want to have a insurance policy on uh then that would be through MetLife and that information is in that folder to take a look at uh did we know what's going on with the Identity Theft Protection because we were talking about it being different than what we had talked about and down and that people know that more as LifeLock right yeah yeah we got life yeah in LIF lock so
046we might end up switching back into LIF lock that we've had like years ago but we we I'll keep dren informed so he can keep you informed uh and then the third option is uh through colonial life there's group accident Group Medical bridge and group critical illness and cancer insurance um this if you could Darlene talk a little bit about what would be a benefit for employees to have each of those yeah um with Colonial Life obviously you've probably heard that they've been around for years they're an excellent company they offer excellent benefits this is something that you um if you choose to go with you could um you could bring in critical illness they've got that policy they have an accident policy and then they have a hospital Indemnity and you don't have to
047offer all three to your employees you can just offer couple one whichever you'd like um those rates actually they just went down last year they're very affordable in coverage and uh that would be via payroll deduct so um you've got some information I think in your packet on those plans and what those entail so yeah you could get that for your spouse yourself children uh so insur yes insurance not critical illness specifically what these are these are called what these are called dread policies they're to help toti not cover yeah right right and accident insurance so you'll it's lump sums you can purchase different different different increments and uh if something happens to happen then they'll get you that lump sum payment so it's very different from your uh Medical and isn't that some of
048that portable yes so what what is that can you explain what that is what that what that is is if you were to these are based on group rates typically and if you were to leave the district you could directly work with the colonial to keep your your plant so that's they call that portable for your life yeah without the duck without the duck uh that sample is linked there uh and we there are similar districts in similar size to us that offer this as a as a optional benefit for employees so we wanted to bring that forward um and you know the intention is to have our team at meeting ER give a thumbs up on our basic package that we want to bring to the board and then also see if we're uh
049interested in adding these products um and we can talk about how that's going to play out over the next uh today or the next meeting so any that's all that we have um from the insurance side are there any additional questions or thoughts or concerns all right thank you Jameson thank you Darlene we appreciate your help and your support and we'll see you next year well I'll see you way before then but for we okay so um would you um maybe during I don't know if you would want to do that during your break is it's your break we can decide now oh yeah so um we can decide now if you want to go with um the changes or in the extras or um we can do it toward the end of today and
050make that decision what would you prefer if we do at the end you have a little bit of time to look over um the information if we do it now it's fresh in your mind can we do it the next meeting Joel I don't think that's going to be an issue I'm looking at Vanessa um if we're because we won't we'll bring it to the board on the March 4th meeting right so we could considerably do the approval thumbs up thumbs down at the next meeting for this right yeah or we could split it I mean if you if you want to split it and say let's do the ones that we know right that are currently adopted and then bring the other part back next time so I think we have those options apologize
051ARA which uh Parts um that we want to bring back and is there anything we can provide to help gole the extras which extras are we discussing like the pet p insurance and that those Colonial stuff that so sometimes in in those benefits just so you know like we could pull in a whole booklet and have a benefits booklet which is kind of like a menu of things that people could choose on their own to pay for and have because I've seen uh books that have legal aid they've got adoption assistance and so I think this is just an effort to start I mean these seem to be the things that they brought forward that they could get to us easily yeah and it's in that packet and this isn't additional cost so I feel
052prepared to vote on this right now there's no re it's it's not a cost to us and it's not a c it's only a cost to you if you choose if you want to opt in go ahead if not don't that doesn't impact their vote I don't think and it's not impacting the budget because the the district isn't going to help pay for pet insurance but if you need pet insurance it's an option you have it's just a thing it's all opt in not opt out right yeah so there should be zero people who are like I got the pet insurance and I didn't know it was just a bad idea I've seen I've seen District put this on like an HR website and say additional benefits for staff and like sometimes it's discounts to
053uh gym membership or and which I think we already have yeah and so these are just value added services to give our staff an option to go through somebody that we already have a relationship with and we and we value and Trust the relationship as opposed to them going I need pet insurance let me Google it and then they got a scam or something grab um well no I'm not gonna die but um I I really want to get some gap insurance too life Gap life Gap Gap let's just call it life Gap life Gap no I was wondering about the colonial stuff because it said that it's based off of a group so you need a certain amount of people to sign up to actually get the group rate or no no it's already
054a part of a group that's why we get a better rate districts and cities right so it's a big it's a much bigger pool than if we as a district were to go out and try to get that benefit on our own because it's all the districts that are associated with Valley Schools as well as the vmg group also works with some cities so it's a it's a pretty big group I I put this up here to the Colonial Life voluntary benefits booklet this is linked in the insurance folder on the um Google Drive so if you wanted to kind of scroll through you could kind of see if you were going to go with uh these products this is what that cost would be for the employee or if they're going to add coverage
055for their family addons for us if we choose to yeah so like like uh short-term disability sunlife um wex FSA those are added benefits the district does not cover the cost on those well so but there will be no change like I have what I have the FSA and HSA right now for our family there will be no change to that correct that's right so what we're what we're proposing is to mirror the benefits that we're offering this year and then bring a couple of different products in one we have to because of the dentals changing uh for the HMO and then the other optional products um like the ones that we we were talking about okay Kelly since we have the meeting scheduled would you say Lisa a April 3rd okay wonderful um I
056move that we vote on this wait Ariel's not here I think she's having a personal and she'll be right back so we want to wait is there any questions any other questions that people have though yeah we could do our break D and then vote after a break yeah absolutely time is it n o'clock are you ready for a break now okay let's take a little break let's just do a short break let's do like 10 minutes yeah e e e if we all can get back in our seats to get started okay Joel you're going to uh take over here I think he made it easier for us listing um really the four areas in which we're going to vote I'm not going to facilitate the voting I'll but let me just explain we're
057looking different um okay in which we're going to so essentially we have four different tasks regarding benefits the first and I think this kind of Cascades right so um we can vote on all of them today we can vote on some of them today we can figure out as we go you know what makes the most sense uh the first is to offer those optional products which would be Colonial Life the pet insurance and the uh ID Theft prote Protection coverage that again is optional coverage that the employee pays into that is not a cost to the district uh except for the resources we need to make sure that they're available to do the enrollment part and that would be Debbie uh the second one is to add a second level which is confusingly level
058three So currently in the district we have level two for Delta Dental level three is what we're proposing to add as an option again that would be an increase from level two to level three for the employee but the employee could sign for either of them so for instance I will probably stay at level two because I don't have any dependence that would need orthodon Orthodontics um level three or the third part is whether we want to remain with UHC as our vision provider or move to vssp as Vision so this is where darene was saying and there it's on the in the packet where you can look at the two plans it's the amount that you get for frames per year uh it increases with vssp right the amount of money that you'll have
059as a benefit for frames it is slightly more expensive for the um employee if we go with the highest tier of vssp yeah I would take a look at that um if there're similar plans it's just what's covered um makes a difference right and it won't be in this packet it'll be on the um in the folder yes Dent Dental you said we're getting rid of the first level no we don't offer the first level currently currently we offer level two which has more benefit that's what just a school district if you I have the buy no no what we off offer is sign this year it's EDS we pay for EDS if you choose to opt out of EDS and go to Delta you're paying the difference between what the district pays and then
060you are buying into Delta and then what we're saying with this is that with that you could do a third level which will be an increase costs to the employee because you're still only getting that $10.50 credit it would be a second level of buy up for dental but haven't we always had that or is that we've always had Delta as a buy up but we haven't had it an additional level on Delta that you could opt into right so anyone that has Delta is paying something I was about we're I have Delta Dental so we're already paying okay right right both of which levels you payre and you're not paying the full cost of Delta you're paying the difference between what Delta costs you as an employee and what the district is paying for
061so if the district is paying $10.50 next year I believe for that uh HMO you get that free if you go with Sigma or you get a reduced rate on Delta and they apply that 10 50 to Delta and just just saying we're keeping the same level of District coverage so we're not increasing a price to the district we're saying if we covered 10.50 last year we're still covering $10.50 this year we're offering you some other buy up options again you get to option in and pay the difference for the care that you think you need the district will still kick in a little bit to help most districts I don't know I'd have to go really search don't participate in helping to pay for dental in any way shape or form so just keeping
062that in mind I think that we've gone quite a few years without increases to um uh direct increases to staff on things so I I just you know I'll probably be bringing more information forward as we're talking about budgets in this case the budget for the district for the increases of the dental coverage of people jumping in what the district has to cover and the health increase um was budgeted into our budget planning um as a part of that process so for another year it's it's not causing an in a direct increase to the staff for the things that the district typically covers does that make sense but we are going to give them more options so if their costs go up it's because they've chosen to to go up in any kind of buyas
063scenario the district isn't taking anything away of what we existing cover and but there are choices going away because if you had EDS you no longer have that choice um well that wasn't a choice that was just a stay withs or Del yeah now the Cho is stay with Sigma or go to Delta and then choose between two levels of Delta sorry do that yeah so there more options for our staff and would this be time to talk just I I wonder if I should have told them yeah the health insurance and this costall yeah the fourth thing knowing that with when we're talking about just health insurance cost not the dentals not the anything else he did give you some cost in that packet you know it's like four something for the next one
064but then the current so where we are in that current just you know kind of how that goes $4.2 million of those health insurance costs are being covered by the district $4.2 million of the health insurance that we provide our staff is being covered by the district 395,000 is being bought up by staff in those choices that's it h that's nothing so I want everyone to really hear that and as a thank you yes so as we talk about health insurance we're trying to add as many options as we can for people to have person personal responsibility and choice of what they want to put their dollars towards with the knowledge that at this point in time in our life as a district 4.2 million is being covered by The District budget and 395,000 by
065employee buy ups and participation in health insurance only it was just a quick number I could pull for you wow is there anything else that we can offer for you guys before this vote only absolutely yeah that's so so what we'll do is we'll do each one separately and we can hold some over you know to the next meeting or later this afternoon okay so let's start with the first one that one is the optional that you're offering to your staff um if they want those options then they need to pay it oh I'm sorry Daniel oh sorry can we because um can we start with the overall package because then if we approve that then we don't need to talk about everything else and then if someone votes that down then we can go
066in and do specifics number four yeah because then if anyone disagrees with just approving the overall package then we can move to vote for the individual pieces yeah sure thisno if weor I was gonna say that before lunch yeah how about that can be the last thing we do before lunch how about that vision is changing it's us deciding want to go from United he to do you have information on why we would want to do that not want to do that um what they offer for instance frames the benefit is different with VP than it is with UHC there is an increase in the cost for VP um so there's something that's something to look at and those pieces of information are the two online not the folder the Google folder okay florus can
067I propose that we take a little bit of time for those who need to review because based on the schedule we're running ahead correct because insurance was scheduled from 8 to 10: so instead of wasting time now going over it why don't we just give everybody 10 15 minutes to review it so we can move to vote yeah can and then could we put the the because I think the vision is the main thing that it would be a change instead of just adding an additional so could someone just throw a link to the vision plans in the Google Chat they're they're in the yeah they're in the dock Justin you you had us something I think it's also contacts too so yeah uh but we can put the link to that folder in the
068chat that's fine okay so let's um I don't know if this is overthinking it but do we want to maybe have if you want to talk about vision and look at it together if you want to talk about D look at it together or or do you just want to work independently well no I'm thinking because that that might not I don't it's up to you all let's just take um we'll take 15 minutes if you want to talk to a peer during this time Joel's available Vanessa's available um you can get up and maybe ask them your questions so we'll take about 15 minutes it is 9:22 and so Adrian will you put the timer up thank you e e e yeah I think so because then if someone if someone's like like heads
069up so because of potential um budget cuts for next year all the department of eved stuff I want to propose some reduction of course protections it would go under benefits or it would go under teacher work but it's going to be like a lot of language and a lot of like text and I don't want to go line by line so I was think the best way to do that is to wait towards like the end of today bring it up and we can put it in the chat or something if people canie for the next session does that sound yep okay yep Kell Tim okay everyone welcome back from your break I hope you um I hope you were able to get um some of your questions answered Dorothy you have um a comment
070a question yeah I was able to look at the difference between UHS UHC and vssp which I believe we were on many many years ago actually and they're fairly comparable um yes VSP the cost to be in that is a little bit more expensive but they do offer a little bit more for the um frames I think for me who my vision doctor is is very important it's because it's not just going and getting a pair of glasses I have cataracts and glaucoma and severe Vision um difficulties so it's really important who my doctor is I don't know how many other people other employees that's really important to but I worry about because you know right some doctors take some doctors take all of them some doctors and I'm concerned about having staff not only
071have to changeed from their Dental if they were on EDS but now potentially have to change their Vision doctor for minimal um you know adjustments to the plan so I guess that's my biggest concern I don't just worry about like for me I mean I'm not voting for me I'm voting as a representative for all staff who use the vision program I just don't know how many people now their current doctor that they've been going to they have a relationship with they'd have to change doctors that that's very stressful for some people it is for me so you know for me I I think I would probably just vote to stay with UHC for that reason I'll Echo those I'll Echo those points and I feel like the differences in the plans are negligible so
072if we're talking about just comparing the two yeah we may as well stay with continuity and allowing people to keep their same doctors if there's not any like drastic reason to change so I also would opt to continue with our current plan as a glasses wear but no glaucoma sorry Dorothy oh it'll come okay well let's like Daniel suggested I like that idea let's start just with the fourth one and then we'll work our way up so some of them we might come to consensus with and want and some we may not so let's take a consensus vote for number four our old overall package which includes Signa Dental thumbs up and are we talking about Vision or not just yet not yet okay so thumbs up for that sideways down do you agree with
073car over so remaining the same with our current benefits where the district pay the same amount that they do unless youer the buy up which would be and there are additional buy up options here and here yep okay okay um Ariel okay okay so um we did come to consensus to keep this okay the next one is uh remain with UHC Vision or um change it to vssp I recommend that we remain I I recommend that we UHC Vision plan say it again Kelly I recommend that we remain with the UHC Vision plan um the sideways can you live with this or I'm on my husband so I will do whatever okay and over here um who Ariel you were sideways can you live with it keeping it okay so so we're making a recommendation
074to continue with um UHC okay the second one that is um adding and this is the paid option by the way for Delta but we're going to add another level we have to agree to add in another level right yes yeah so everyone pays for this already and now what we're doing is someone will make a recommendation that we add another level to the Delta Dental which would be level three and would be an extra cost so I guess what it is is just giving you another Choice really and you have to pay for it so would like to make that recommendation to add a level to Delta Dental okay thumbs up crossed or down okay so we did recommend to add another level to Delta Dental and then the other one again will cost
075the employee money but it's another benefit for them even though they do have to pay um which will offer optional products like pet insurance um ID theft Colonial Life Again the um employee has to pay for it but it is an option for them a benefit actually a benefit they pay for so who would like to make that recommendation to offer optional products such as pet ID I mean pet insurance Colonial Life um that was the cancer one were there other ones besides the cancer in that okay and um the ID the theft one who'd like to make that recommendation and then we will who wants to word it for us I know any other we don't know but those are just the B on about those are those are the products that we brought
076forward to us for Valley Schools so no other part of that's not part of what we're we're voting on options that they offer their their clients so that's all they offer the other things that were brought up are like hinge and some of the other ones are free they're just included in the wellness they said they had this whole entire book or something where they had additional option that was me so is there anything else under here that the employee can pay for besides point but we will actively search for things as we move through processes to ensure staff get more opportunities for discounts or value services and and the benefit of going through Valley Schools is that you do have that large pool of insurance and beneficiaries that make it more affordable so I
077propose that we offer these optional products all that they may be for employees to opt into should they choose okay so we did make the recommendation to offer our employees um additional products such as colonial life pet insurance and I theft ID okay great okay what we're going to do next now is and then while we're doing this I'll put up my PowerPoint okay thank you we are um let's do our our little activity to start I'd like you to line up in the back shortest here to tallest um no we're not we are not moving seats all day thank you okay again this forget what Adrian told me I had to do to get my I'll get him over here okay um okay now that most of us are shortest to tallest let's start
078with the shortest person I and you know what since we still have new people here and not everyone has okay I'll wait okay since we we do have we do have new members this year and some of you have your name tags some of you do do not can you also say your name and where what school you're at or District or that information um but what I'd like you to share is something that none of us know about you so just take about 30 seconds to think about something that we don't know about you doesn't matter okay so we're going to start by our name and then share something that we would not know about you okay okay Daniel what are we doing perfect okay let's start over here Academy after my first year
079teaching I backpacked through Europe for six weeks that was really fun wow my my name's Dorothy green and I work at the district office with the sped department so I'm at multiple sites as a coach for special education teachers and I hiked the Grand Canyon when I was in fifth grade uh lorda Smith preschool uh everyone kind of knows this about me but it's so important I'm going to share I'm a huge Lor fan I am Amy Burgess and I am at L Melinda school and some people know this but I'm double jointed yeah where my hands and my feet oh yeah joining okay love we love the visual yeah uh I'm Kelly Bley I work here at the family resear Resource Center uh in the community Department I have been to every country in
080Central America I lived in Honduras for two years so traveled around all the little countries I'm Anne Henry I'm a school psychologist at excellencia and the kraton academy and my nickname and grade school was Sparkle [Laughter] good morning my name is Ivan caral the director of Community Education and I work closely with uh my friend here Kelly and I do CrossFit uh my name is James Das I'm the assistant principal at Gateway School uh to this day I have several um we'll call them shrapnel bibs uh in my right leg and two in my left leg not to where I set off a metal detector um I was a rambunctious child and uh my friends and I thought it would be amazing to have you know like cops and robbers kind of thing but we
081decided the best idea was to use actual BB guns so I lost oh oh oh oh the doctor said that it would be too it would cause more damage to dig the BB's out than to just leave them there so they're left there so do you have your leg no it it it it it the body is an amazing thing it it heals over so no not that much not that much I'm Eve Carol I am the manager of effective schools at district office so external programs um I think some people know this about me but I don't know I'm left-handed I'm I I noticed that there were a lot of us that were left-handed in this room which is really interesting um I'm Rebecca OK Conor I'm at excellencia of schools and um adding
082to the traveling of countries we've been to 12 countries in Africa and returning next year to do all of the South um Ariel Williams special education teacher gway nothing too exciting I'm a twin yeah he's a boy so we're not identical we're fraternal no um Danel Lopez Middle School social teach at Gateway uh I do fencing for fun do you win awards no not that kind of fencing okay um neighbor Moreno I'm with Transportation um I collect cars most of which do not run actual cars I just have too many and work on I do work on them too uh Justin Moody facilities I like to take uh digital analog photos an archive good for you okay well we learned a little bit about ourselves so we actually are just going to okay what do
083you want to okay let's see do you all want to share yeah let's have you all share okay Joel I feel like I share the same one every time I do this but I have a page on the Internet Movie Database from some uh movie projects that I was involved with in the early 9 late 90s early 2000s I was uh like artistic director and I I acted in one of them but they were local short films in the director put us all in imdp so all right wow after Joel anymore dang it that was a different Vanessa Shapiro the assistant superintendent for business and development I was gonna say you know something people might not know is I like math but no it's just kidding or account codes uh I've swam with sharks twice
084oh once in a cage and once not in a cage hi my name's Lisa Mena I'm the HR manager at district office not nothing crazy um I just originally for my education I was going to be a dentist I that was my and then but now I'm an HR so I know well no I I don't have any cavities or anything so like I always had a great experience at the dentist so maybe that's why because everybody's always scared and then I have little hands so I thought it would be good uh my name is Dominic Ruth I'm the Director of Finance over at the district office and I enjoy playing disc golf on my free time yeah okay I'm gonna do it right now okay okay okay mine you all know I'm Diane um
085what you may not know about me is that I twirl or I have twirled fire batons so yes I'm a fire baton twirler yes I know how to throw them up and catch them and put them under my legs so anyway um the good old days okay everyone we're gonna sit right back down where you were I know yes of the I know I wonder if there are any out there there might be okay let's quickly go over our evaluation it was clear to me when um I read them that you really like group work so anyway the question number one is did you understand the interest process skills well enough to easily apply the process to the activity if not what could I have done differently to help you better understand uh five of
086you just wrote yes and there were several of you that actually wrote comments and they are as follows yes the process used today was very helpful and easy to understand yes the meetings seemed to go quicker and felt more efficient everything was well understood yes doing interest framing kept everyone on track yes I'll voices were equally heard yes I felt comfortable with the process and comfortable asking questions if Clarity is needed the review of the interest process was succinct and clear no recommendations for improvement at this time yes although I struggle with not developing options yet well that's what we're doing today um yes I was able to effectively follow the process skills well enough to apply the process to the work that we did today question two do you feel the way in which
087the interest activity was structured better assisted with the pacing if no what changes could be made to better address pacing um yes having it timed was great thanks Adrian for that idea and for doing that for us we appreciate it um yes today's pacing was efficient and effective yes maybe a Talking Stick to encourage voice yes the activities were structured well as well as the pace at which work was done the pacing was better and felt more efficient I liked the smaller groups because it felt like we could move faster however I like the whole group as well maybe we could do a whole group for some of the options um yes pacing was excellent need to remember to use stack for full group conversations and yes good pacing it was more efficient um and
088here we had some more um pacing went well and time was respected um yes today felt productive but not rushed more voices were heard and a better understanding of the process seemed to be a great consequence of taking all issues through to the framing question stage um yes the small group assignments roles displaying the clock for every activity help us to be more efficient and productive and let's continue with the structure for future meetings and yes I think it took us a little time to get started on the first round but by the end we had the process down and lastly yes I think working in the two smaller groups worked well for our pacing and productivity today I think it's important to continue to mix up the members of the small groups to make
089sure different voices are mixed and able to listen to each other's perspectives so again thank you so much for filling out the evaluation and today we have another evaluation with two questions okay let's have our updates now we have um Vanessa are you ready to share any information that you have with us all right uh so if you look at the uh resources tab um or resources folder in the Google Drive uh there's a meet confer document uh the Google sheet called meet and confer updates for 2425 um the information that I added to this uh conversation for this time around includes um there's a report that our payroll uh manager Linda Rand to talk about the impact of the lack of personal leave time available to new employees and so she has that just
090for the last quarter or last semester right so basically from the beginning of the school year through January um so that you can kind of see in that chart um let me see if I can open it here we go uh new teacher with zero absences new teachers with a 1 to four and new teachers with greater than five and then she also has by support staff so this is a piece of information a resource for you to use as we start to talk about leave time uh I think you know Vanessa and I have been talking about it that because the district is already kind of moving forward that might be something that we can just get meet and confer blessing to continue with the work that we're already doing to get it changed
091for next year but that'll be when we talk about options um the other piece to look at is the overview of the intent to return uh we also call IT staffing survey so this is a snapshot uh aggregate of the whole District of the responses to that survey uh you can see that we only had 359 employees return the survey or respond to the survey uh that that's out of uh just under 700 employees it's on there 359 gotta keep up all right so uh it's broken down by Administration classified and certified uh you can also see percentages are indicated there and then I just gave overall numbers of employee groups so you can kind of get a sense of how many were returned um clearly I think our certified staff um admin is such
092a small number but certified staff we had a much higher rate of return so as we look at next year for options we need to figure out ways to engage classified staff in returning that document um it is available by Department by site U but we're providing the aggregate information for you yes is there an option to put like unsure in the survey because it's only like you are coming back you're not coming back or you're retiring or you're transferring right there's not an option no there's not an option no okay because I know at my particular side it's been discussed um that there's I'm only returning if there's this contingency set in place is and they said they've put that on the survey um and myself included um but is there like a way
093of like seeing that we prefer to keep the comments at HR level so we can follow up with employees there is a place for employees to ask if HR could follow up we also share those comments with principles by request uh or if there are things that we see that are significant then we'll share those as well and the executive team has access to this so the superintendent the assistant superintendents and our executive directors can I fill it out yes oh so when it says so potentially oh I about say um about have the stuff filled it out yeah and the percentages are listed on that document um so right now it said 19 resign but could be more possibly and it could be others that didn't respond that are planning to stay I can
094only give you the information that I received so I can't I'm not going to speculate about what people may or may not decide to do I know that sometimes people wait to make a decision until they know what this body is doing related to uh recommendations to the governing board for compensation and there are a lot of different factors that go into that so I'm open to suggestion on how to increase that return rate next year um and that's something that you know we always want as many people as possible to respond but I know principles uh communicate that this is available it goes in Craton connection so there are different ways that we try to bump those numbers up we even extended the deadline this year oh we did y oh I did I
095be honest with you I didn't do it [Laughter] it's not but this year I noticed I did open it oh that's a first step that's the first step but I didn't know this but I didn't know this year you were required to um put your name in your site has always been that way yes oh oh it's not an anonymous survey um aside from the comments we want to keep those protected for people who I do like Lord's suggestion of having an other or I'm not sure option I think that might increase the return rate because some people like you said they're making decisions based on mean confers or whatever so that would at least get you like well people opened it and thought about it so they're definitely not on one side or the
096other but at least give more information we can take that under consideration I think from from year to year we want to try to keep the survey consistent there is a place for comments though so people can add that to the comments can I ask a clarifying question do we know percentage wise about or oh just kidding it's down there at the bottom the percentage is at the bottom yes Dr burges they're there that's okay I'd like to to add a different perspective sure for the unsure I would I would not recommend uh to add that it's either make a decision resign return or transfer because what we want to do is want to make sure that we don't lose a candidate in Hope of somebody making a at the end of the moment decision
097so we need to be aggressive into recruiting or retaining but if somebody's unsure then that means they have the choice but it will not help us with projecting or attracting other people and as a reminder this is not a binding survey right so the the actual intent to return comes on May March 17th when your contract is published and you accept it or you don't over that course of those 15 days and then when we release the notice of intent to um assign NOA that for the classified staff also uh our district and I don't know how many districts do this but our our people our employees we all get plenty of time like three weeks including the spring break week one week before and that's that's no longer valid oh okay so what remember
098the law changed that no schools in the state can release contracts to teachers before March 15th perfect so our first opportunity to release on a business day is March 17th so then and teachers will have 15 business days that includes uh Cesar Chavez Day I think as part of that so they have they actually get an extra little day but they have an extra weekend to finish that right because it's after spring break thank you for that correction yeah um is there any other strategies um like letter of intents intent or is still against the statute like just a letter of letters of intent we can we can we can distribute yeah so if we have a person that we want to hire that's no that's not part of our school we can give them
099a letter of intent yes Eve um I would just like to uh add that I agree with Ivonne I don't think that it's necessary to put on the survey if somebody is unsure that doesn't give us any information that we're seeking it wouldn't help us with any decision- making so I mean I think only the people that are sure or decided are the ones that are filling it out and I think that that's okay because it gives us information to move forward with well and and to add to that I know as a principal and I'm sure that uh Katie and Amy can attest this as well when we see those results of who did and didn't fill it out often we'll go to those people we'll say hey I didn't see that you filled
100this out let's talk about what's happening right which could go even a further distance to helping support that person making the decision to stay or clarify for the um supervisor why they're choosing or thinking about leaving um we'll also give you access we talked last year in me and confer about the stay interview process the stay interview process should be finishing this week I think think is the deadline so we'll have data from that as well to share with you next time um I was going to add I don't think I don't think adding the option of unsure would like take away from the survey because also all these people that say oh I'm resigning I'm retiring March 15th 17 can come and they can still sign their contract so even them saying on this
101document that they're not coming back is still not a solid answer it's not until they officially reject the contract that's true but we use that information if they say they're retiring then we're reaching out to them from HR so it's not just about Staffing it's about our process in HR to be able to kind of help them understand what their options are if they already know I'm gone I'm out of here I'm taking my retirement and I'm going on the road or do they want to uh partner with ESI and become a return to work employee so those are I think that's another part of that conversation so that's why that piece helps Justin I also think like unsure like putting that as an option wouldn't be helpful as far as like yes it's a
102personal decision but it's also the district being able to engage and figure out what we're going to have to do for the upal decision but it definitely helps like this is what's going to happen we have this many people that are saying no maybe they'll stay how can we get them to stay and I think that also involves like more of a approach from HR admin to everybody to kind of be like why are you saying no what's going on instead of an unsure because because I think some of these people who actually thought about it and chose will just default to unsure and then we'll have sure we'll have 90% filled out that say unsure and that's useless information for us don't know so that those are the pieces of information that I have
103uh available for you I know there were a couple of other requests one in particular was about um turnover rate from the past several years and I'm working on that I I ran a report that did not look accurate to me and so I don't want to trust that the system is telling me exactly what's happening because it was way elevated um from where it should have been and this is a behind the the uh in the weeds kind of thing the system that we used to run those reports it only has me having access to the year before I started HR years before that I can only see Mona Vista because that was where I was as principal so we're working to correct that so I can run the reports that I need to
104get that information to you so I'm going to turn it over to Vanessa okay um can we pull up that let's see this guy that one be awesome thank you I didn't think we'd get here this quickly I had such a good shiny fun year last year uh because of the epically amazing planning of Dena and Jay um I am very used to as the budget person I hear music is it sad music okay I don't know I don't mind a background of slow sad because uh what I can tell you as a budget person who's been in it for quite a long time uh in Arizona a lot of the times when we get up to discuss budget it is not the happiest conversation um especially in Arizona we have been subjected to not
105only cuts and lack of support at the legislative level um and then just a struggle to get it done right but now we have the declining enrollment that's affecting a lot of districts and you know those are just things that we deal with I have been in districts in times of Plenty where you're growing you're You're Building schools like crazy you just can't you know they're sting can and you're trying to get space and I've been through the years of not plenty and I feel like we tend to have lot not plenty so I don't mind getting up here and talking about the hard truth what I can tell you is budget outcomes look gloomy and I don't necessarily see a big huge fix but what I know is that we have lots of people
106lots of brains working on making sure that we have the least amount of negative impact as possible so as a budget person I do that in a variety of different ways uh to protect the district fiscal health and we've talked about this we talked about this last year so when we were looking at um if we can go to the Chart please Joel thank you so much it's that last thing okay so remember I told you it's so drafty um that top number um I did get 100 day I was only 4 ADM off in my uh projection no no no good for my ego not good for that number not good for that number so there's there's pros and cons in this uh method you can highly adjust yourself with way lower you can
107project way lower than what you think your outcome's going to be in a budget planning process and then I can have that number when I do make it right I have a a number like that A $1.2 Million number or something like that um then I do a budget revision during the fiscal year typically in December or may probably in May because we have to get past 100 day so that's the most effective one which means I have a substantially lower budget going into the year that isn't going to be realistic to the budget that I have at the end of the year so pros and cons lower budget means when we get here I can say hey guys I'm going to probably bring 1.2 million back into the budget when I'm for ADM off
108that number is not accurate so I'm going to bring thousands back into the budget not Millions but by doing what I did I had more money at the start of the budget planning process which allowed me to have higher calculation in some other areas as we move forward into selling bonds there's all sorts of backend things that would give me a reason to not make our budget seem incredibly low at the beginning of the budget process so I will update that number but I want you to know that that's not going to be Millions that's going to be thousands tens of thousands okay the next number the 2% that's a moving Target I'll get closer as we get closer into um the end of the year the projected enrollment I I need to that number
109now needs to be yellow that number is going to get hit so I want you to understand these are the the big hit numbers that make the budget go up and make the budget go down and it tells us how much we have ready for next year um inflation inflation's inflation it's not as impactful as some of these other areas but we'll get a better number as we get closer Staffing adjustments attrition I know that one as we get closer to the end it's in that list that J uh Joel just had where he had the links to the other items thank you it's line okay thank you thank you guys okay um so again another number we just you know I I can get pretty close on most of these numbers and that's how
110we move into a budget is pretty close I never know these 100% until the budget's done uh I'm having to estimate what are we going to do next year I'll be in the same situation I'll be bringing you the sheet I'll say okay here's where we're at now uh so this is a good process it gets very familiar you guys will get very familiar with this slide it's the same one I use over and over and over again it's been very effective okay now I want to talk about real quick why these numbers are going to be affected so we uh did our second fiscal stewardship committee meeting uh with continuing the discussion of a fund balance Reserve process we've I think laid the groundwork to to bring understanding as to why that is an
111important thing to have we have other districts in the state that don't have that process it makes life a little harder it doesn't solve all problems it allows you a cushion to get through the unknowns so through the committee work we recognize a range a sliding scale of 10 to 20% what that means is if we have less than 10% there needs to be conversation somebody needs to be talking to me the Board needs to have understanding why would we ever fall below 10% 10% is our most minimum basic amount that we need to roll over in order to be safe and healthy and fiscally sound for the next year right 20% is the high range why do you want to do 20% Vanessa what's going on what are the risks explain it to us
112we would be very comfortable discussing and getting all those things put together in the um process because we recognize that this is not going to be a policy we're not going to get tied into an actual policy that goes into our governing board policy but this would be a transparent and accepted procedure that I use in the planning of budgets and it's on me to explain why it's 10 why it's 20 after I meet with that committee each year so it's a group of phisically minded people and then we talk about what the risks are the committee says say hey I say hey I think we're at 20% and this is why and then the committee can give me feedback and I have to justify it so it makes me accountable it gets more voices
113in the process and I believe that everybody has been um very thoughtful about the process coming out of the last committee meeting the committee asked me to get as close to 20% as I could they said in the culture and the current environment there are so many uncertainties that they're very nervous and concerned and I said I'm very nervous and concerned too this is a 15% based on that number uh down there 15% fund balance Reserve that is a known number we base that number off the previous year's closed financial statements of expenditures in m&o so I know what I spent last year it's been audited the books are closed closed we do a calculation of 10 11 12 13 to 20% on that number and that's what gives me that number that's why it's
114not yellow I know exactly how much that number is that's the method the budget balance carry forward is a function of creating the fund balance Reserve so what's in budget balance carry forward is how much monies we got how much we expended and how much was left over at the end of the year based on the amount of budget that we had that is either low or high when I revise it so we'll be spot on in May our budget will be exactly what it needs to be based on that amount how much came in how much went out that's how much is left that is the budget balance carry forward that then becomes our fund balance Reserve in the next year I think it's kind of a weird topic we've talked about it a
115few times and I and I know it's not I'm trying to simplify something that's very complex and has a lot of different inputs but I feel pretty comfortable with that do you guys have questions about budget balance carry forward or fund balance Reserve Mike just really because of people online here you go how much do we currently have in our fund balance Reserve I'll know when I do the the revised okay how much we had how much we have last year 8 million 8 million okay right so if we spent more this year that'll impact it that's what that budget balance carry for or the budget balance carry for estimate so with that being said um can I one more thing sorry yes go ahead would the increase of like salary for contract workers come
116from that if if we had if we didn't have that in the budget like if we have an increase of we didn't assume we would be paying so much for contract workers this year would we have moved money from that to help this year or is that somewhere else in the budget that's in the budget okay yeah we factor that into the budget that's a part of paying people so we do what's what would be the perfect scenario if I filled every seat with a teacher yes are there board guidelines on how much like what percentage of our budget should be in the carry forward no that's what we um recommended to the board from the committee it is now 10 to 20% sliding scale based on risk okay I'm sorry when was the last
117fiscal stewardship committee meeting when is the next one the last one I don't know remember the date it was a couple weeks ago he was he wasn't there I was very surprised I was very surprised I got myself there I didn't get an invite to that one I apologize not on my calendar that's why I asked I was surprised it was on mine so I apologize I think when we sent out the committee dates there was one document it had all the dates on it so I'm not sure how calendars get set on that but I will make sure that you are on them yeah we'll follow up and make sure that happens it definitely wasn't intentional um okay so budget balance carry forward you have to have a mechanism that's the mechanism that seems
118to be supported by committee and it was sent to the board in a board update it will also it's also been discussed in board meetings and when we do the budget update with the board on March 4th it'll be discussed there also to whatever level they want us to discuss it okay with that being said with all the UN unknowns some of the things that we had talked about for risk I shared with you guys last time since that time here's the additional risks that have come into play we have a federal freeze that Federal freeze we have no idea how impactful it will be here's where I'm at right now the judge has ruled that that is an illegal thing to freeze or take away monies that have already been awarded and allocated and
119the response was pound sand get me so exactly get him Mario get your badge and your gun and go get them dude that is that is a outside of me in this room kind of thing it'll play out how it plays out but all I know is uh litigation is timely and if they don't come to a result then I don't get the money then I don't get the money whether it's right or wrong that I don't get the money who cares I either I'm getting the money or I'm not right now the money is in danger so I was discussing this earlier with a member I have a contractual obligation to everybody who has a job this year that you know signed a a Noida or signed a contract that I said we're gonna
120or we said the district said we're going to employ you for the rest of this year right now as it stands the most imp acted grants would be competitive grants because those are ones that we have already been awarded and allocated at this point in time we have about 800,000 that we have not been given in the money part of that because the way that grants work is you spend the money and then they pay you back it's a reimbursement what we have had reimbursed versus what we've been awarded and allocated minus the total amount leaves about $800,000 that we expect to spend that we have budgeted that we we have put into contracts that we have put into POS for things we've entered into vendor contracts it's about $800,000 right now if they don't
121touch any other grants that we felt at when the story first started coming down weren't on the table we are now being told the other dollars could be on the table maybe not in this year but definitely in next year so in addition to the competitive grants that are about 800 1.9 million that just goes away those are the ones that have the potential to go away next year it's like 1.9 million in competitive grants we have I don't want to put you on the spot that's why I'm trying to remember it we have our title one and we have our Ida those are big grants they're not competitive grants they are we are anticipating those will be decreased so the things that those things cover do you have an amount percentage me neither it's
122so up in the air we're not sure how much the state messed with us last year and said 20% came back it ended up being like eight so it is decreasing student enrollment is decreasing that's affecting grants if everything that you fund out of your sites goes away that's funded by a grant there's no other resource to put there so right now for sure I would have to cover about 800 900,000 the rest would be starting next year we'd have to figure out how do we do with out it's a big conversation and we don't know there's a lot of things being affected I also have a $500,000 cops grant that was supposed to be coming to help um support our Safety and Security infrastructure it's cops it's a particular type of Grant it's called
123cops Grant but it's for Safety and Security um infrastructure so it's how we get cameras intercoms lockdown upgrades uh all the things we've been diligently working on part of that is funded out of the bond and a part of it was funded from this grant that Grant is entirely on hold we're actually determining that we might not get it please use them mic so I was asking the principal at our school site that um they put these lovely like badge like the badge scanners but they've only put them on a few doors is that what this grant would help support yes okay it's not the whole entirety of it it was just a por of it so it freed up other monies for us to do other things in our district it's shells you know
124okay now I don't have 500,000 here that I thought I was now we take something that we were planning in the bond that we were planning to do there's no extra money I have to not do this and do that instead Safety and Security has been an approved plan by our board it is highly important to our committee uh our community and we will continue that project and finish it it's just MoneyWise it'll look different another big hit that we see coming down the pipe uh is our electric buses it was um a lifetime plan we are entirely set up in a perfect kind of District to actually recognize huge Energy Efficiency savings it's a part of our overall big energy efficient plan um we went through phase two and three successfully we completed that
125that means it was awarded and it was allocated we put in purchase orders we're working with our vendor to get electric vehicles we got three buses and then we got or no two we got two buses and then we got five buses they have not gone to production because once they go to production we have 14 weeks to pay them or something like once it goes to production we're obligated to pay them this is millions of dollars we've now worked with our vendor to push off production until we see what happens but but if you Google it and take a look at some of the interest there's a high interest to kill Energy Efficiency type things so the EV buses are actually being highly targeted we don't know how it'll turn out so we've pushed
126it off so we don't go into production so that the district is not obligated to pay the dollars if they kill it and we're not going to get those monies then we don't get EV buses we were supposed to get 10 we are counting that we will not get the final three because we were in phase we were not completed phase we have a chance through the legal process to get the seven we will not get the three it is not in interest of this Administration that's currently in place so those are the types of things of how we're being impacted and we have to kind of think about this higher level impact in we in our budget planning and the dollars that we have available and what we keep for cushion the other Factor
127that's going to affect the line number two a lot more significantly than I anticipated we've been very excited about our student decline slowing down you got to look for the small winds we're still declining we're still slated to decline a significant number that number was a thousand students in 10 years we now have an immigration status that is absolutely impacting us I was able to go back and find some research work done for sb1070 that said across the state the decline in student enrollment in public schools was 8 to 10% is significant less students less money I'm going back to the SB 1070 years and I'm going to see what the decline for kraton in particular was I'm going to utilize that information and I've been hearing in lots of numbers I like the research
128study it was done by U OFA it was well after and they had a lot of data to look at 8 to 10% seems reasonable I have some districts that are saying they're anticipating being impacted by 30% that means that that number is going to get bigger once I find a mechanism that I feel comfortable with to decrease it it will get bigger yes do we already have families that have disenrolled do we have any data we're still Gathering data it's hard to find out but I know Avon's been really closely watching it yes we do have families maam excellencia gayway that have come and withdrawn their students because of fears on the current immig immigration um orders some districts are more impacted by that particular legislation than others we're impacted so we have to
129find a projection a number that makes sense that's in between all of those numbers so when I say it's gloomy it might be worse than gloomy so um before March 4th we will be really discussing these numbers in our exact meetings pulling in additional data finalizing the actuals that we know which is 100th day data and our budget reports and updating all of this what I anticipate is instead of a 500,000 at the bottom I'm going to have a negative that I'll have to figure out how to cover typic Ally that comes out of your budget balance carry forward which means then we're going to probably be below the 15% we just need to make some decisions anyways I'm so sorry to get up and do the downer rep presentation I I think I need
130the the music from behind uh it's unfortunate those two other things because they're super impactful like again that's why the uh Reserve is important because there's unknowables there's so many unknowables so you just have have enough cushion to deal with the problem at hand while we figure out the solutions for the future so um I'm dedicated to giving us cushion I'm also dedicated to while all of this is happening just like it has in every single year in the past in good and bad years at the end of the day what is our job educate kids there's nothing else our dental plan options they're important it all feeds down but at the end of the day student outcomes is where it's at so I highly encourage us to really be thoughtful about our processes and
131how does it affect student outcome directly I can say all day long oh if I don't have a bus driver kids can't get to school they're not going to take the test I don't know if that's a strong enough connection so we need to have good conversations about what's important for pushing the needle for our kids that is the only thing that is important and we all need to come together because student outcomes do not change until adult behaviors change and if we're not changing and doing something different in our processes we're not on the path and it starts with me as a budget person bringing you budget information to the best of my ability and giving you what I can when I can any other questions yeah Katie just if you could give us
132like a one sentence summary of like we think we have this much money to play with and what is that I think that we pay $49 million and employee benefits I think that we have other benefits I at this point in time am saying zero I am dedicated to bringing a percent of some sort to you guys I'm relying on the exec team Mr Man we are having deep conversations I am terrified about the Federal freeze and the potential decrease in enrollment through immigration so zero and that means that would be taking away the 25 to1 ratio can I once again talk about the 25 to1 ratio that was onetime monies and then we would need to get a lot deeper in budget because then we would have to take things that exist right now
133and say we no longer want these things we want that thing there are no additional dollars on that bottom line and in fact I'm probably going to be working hard to deal with negatives on that line we are going to lose grant money significantly we are going to lose students significantly we are able to manage this year and stay status quo we are able to manage next year and stay status quo with the ongoing agreements and commitments that we made to our district the ongoing ones the 200,000 for the compression we have a committee I I didn't talk about that I just want to jump right into the yucky get it over with makes me cry um yeah we have a little money set aside for that compression we definitely have put that into a
134committee we're bringing nextg into that committee instead of here we wanted to make sure that was a little more efficient because they're going to be the ones clicking the buttons I think that we need to make sure they're Highly Educated with the tools that they can use to compare groups that you send to them look at the bus drivers look at the teachers we're going to have to prioritize obviously can't do anything in one year yeah Dorothy yeah I just had a question about how uh in communication you are I assume that people that have your type job you communicate with people that have your type job across other districts and I'm wondering is that kind of the vibe across multiple District because right our our job is to recruit and retain right if our
135job is to teach students we've got to have staff in order to run the schools and teach the kids so I mean I guess it's I don't know good news of everybody's staying down in the dumps that sounds terrible but at least then we're not competing with districts that are Opera not giv a but we're the only ones not giving a raise that kind of thing do you have a feeling of what's out there Mesa set and loose how many teachers 1% they're let I know Phoenix L isos phix is closing two schools Paradise Valley just closed four schools uh Rosevelt is closing they closed or is closing schools may say is closing schools so it's not likely that other districts are coming in and going we're given a 10% raise right everybody's gonna kind
136of be Duck and Cover we gotta wait and see right Duck and Cover is a good way to describe it there's a lot of unknowns right there very much we see the chaos our staff is hopefully aligned with current events and they're seeing it too so as long as other districts aren't making different kinds of choices now one thing a district can make a choice of is pay fewer people more so I'm not going to say nobody's giv a raise but they might be cutting a significant amount of their staff in order to give the raise so I mean there's that thing I don't think we're going to be struggling to have people apply this year in teaching positions and and some of the other positions I don't know Arizona has a lot oh sorry
137I would say a lot of Arizona teachers come from out of state you're saying they're G to go back definitely I would go back home I'll be like okay yeah I was I was I was going to add I mean the whole message from the administration is we want you to go work for the private sector so actually that just because people are being laid off and no one is giving raises does not necessarily mean there won't also still be a teacher shortage people will well what I can tell you is the charters are also in Decline oh I didn't mean the private sector of Education oh okay you mean private sector of yeah they can go do CP lot yeah but then you have tolison which is now bot building the whole go keep
138in mind Tolson is one of the micro districts in this state that is growing yeah when you're growing you're making money a lot of money yep if you got where are we going to grow here we're pretty landlocked there's I mean we can knock something down and build an apartment but those aren't giving us a a good enrollment base those are transient kids they come and go come and go come and go when we about Leo said mesa's doing and closing schools and whatnot wouldn't it be their so it would it will pretty much be people who are what is it like contracted teachers um people who was just given a salary to fill a gap because we do that we also where we lay teachers off we lay them off but it's just because
139they were hired to fill a gap are you talking about attrition they just don't yeah we don't yeah well the thing that we do like um people who are emergency Sears yeah yeah we still fill the position though yeah yeah if they get their stuff yeah have we seen an increase in people applying for teaching positions in this District since everything's been going on regular teachers contract they're contract because of that same statute I think what two of them was like a way we just got one at we just got one at that it happens everywhere be seeing like an increase in amount of people compared to this time last year to this year who are applying for position for next school year I will tell you teachers do things last minute [Laughter] so oh
140there's nothing posted for next year yet uh I would say that we have seen a decline in applications overall starting last summer so they're not coming in like typically you get a bump at the end of the at the end of the first semester because you have college graduates from December but a lot of college graduates in December we're hired up by other districts that might have been paying them because they offer a paid student teaching track um and we don't currently offer that so we we have not had an increase in applications coming through the applications we're getting now are generally for next school year no um even though it's gloomy are we still planning on doing our trigger language of if funds become available these are the things that we want to prioritize
141I would I would I would highly recommend because of it being so unknown because here's the dedication when we have the dollars on the table we put them here we put them here that is my whole goal in life is to put it here everything extra that's outside of what I'm saving to take care of us comes here so when we get more over those percentages if it hands out it will come here those dollars will come here and then where are we you said the 10 to 20% is the sliding skill where are we at with the seven point whatever um I'm still waiting for the so that's a oh Dominic had to go to a meeting so I've asked Dominic uh to work with the entire District so something that's really hard for
142us is when someone puts in a purchase order at a school site or at a department for let's say they put in A1 thousand it's tiny $1 thousand Office Depot Po and they've spent $50 on it for the whole year so $950 is being tied up in of the budget number for me because it's encumbered and people are saying oh I'm going to spend that money so what we're going to start a message is going to start going out here very quickly from the finance office is if you have encumbrances you have open POS we want them closed we want them to be tight in this year especially I need people to be very conscientious and say do I need another box of pencils this year or can I get through and wait and see
143so we need people to be very thoughtful with these encumbrances of things that that they think they may spend can you do you need it if you need it spend it you got it spend it if you don't close the PO it will help our budget process go smoother yeah so I know we're giving contracts out in March and there's already language in the contract that says can be up to0 four% 2% 2% I thought we increase it a 4% it's 2% I thought it would increase but 2% reduction in um pay or that if the position is no longer available then you don't have that job based that's written into the contract already right yeah that's some of that risk management that we talk about and I know there talks about oh we won't
144cut Title One funny we'll just give it to the states and let the states decide what to do with that money but we know that this state will give it to vouchers because vouches is half of our budget what would be the process of letting people know if I mean like it's like so we find out let's say in May Department of Education is gone no more money you freeloaders go get a job Talis got so much money bias bias oh man it's sad thank goodness for them like with meet and confer come back to the table let's say we find out the process I can answer this question thank you Daniel in policy right now there isn't really a process other than that there the board will figure that out and so um per
145policy they could I mean I you know I don't think the board would give us 24hour notice but per policy it could be 24 hours it could be 48 whatever like I don't there's not really strict guidelines for reduction en force in policy right now other than to meet like the legal requirements um which are pretty broad um I was going to bring this up towards the end of the day but I have been researching and working on a bunch of production enforce um guidelines that other school districts have in their professional agreements that I would like to add to ours um I was going to bring it up at the end of the day because it's going to be a lot of language that people need to review and go over but it would
146cover things like notification timelines it would cover things like recall rights that people have for jobs um and so that if our school district does have to cut jobs we would have like a starting place to do so from in our professional agreement and it wouldn't just be starting from scratch based on trying to figure out yeah and having the crystal ball go yeah um and then also I would like to add um about the the money think Gario brought it up they they are talking about you know we want to get rid of all these grants but we're going to give the money back to the States like um of course it is possible that we just don't see a single scent of that but there's also a possibility that we lose a bunch
147of money and then over the course of a couple years we get some of it back in like a trickle and so there also needs to be things in place for us to determine what to do with that money so trigger language um recall protections for people that get RF things like that but I would caution you you don't want to start telling three years committee what to do three years out committee what to do we put in the guidelines and then is there any way we can do like we did with the professional agreement where you put it all together in a document we can all review as opposed to a lot of so I so I was going to have something ready by the end of today just to put it in the
148chat for everyone to review fantastic for reduction in force protections because it's frankly just from like having reviewed a bunch of professional agreements and trying to synthesize it it's too much to go through line by line by line I would um send everyone like a a thing and then you guys can all look at the thing and if there's specific areas that people have problem with we can um discuss and Target those areas on our next section and just to reiterate this is coming from Phoenix Union a number of other districts not D brain although we do yes no it it makes it more efficient to put it all together and kind of um a thing for us to review another question so how much money do we currently get and then how many positions
149are currently affected by federal dollar would need to go into a data request there's no way I could just pull that one out for you like are we talking so we know like a bunch of we get we get about $10 million in federal grants yeah so B how many positions know we're not counting uh national school lunch program in that that's not include National School launch program it is not I don't know they froze it they froze it I don't think they will well we you know here's the thing as as an entity again right or wrong we just have to go and do what we're able to do so but it would pretty much be like SP Department get a lot of federal funding right and then you have um our interventionists you
150have coaches some of our APS um all the cafeteria staff um even bus dve could we get Transportation dollars too this would be every District being sub like under that lens though so we would have to come up with Solutions probably as groups if we were that impacted I don't know how we would function or move forward yeah they want me so we're talking about like whole chunks of and then yeah it's a crystal ball though area like we we want to plan for the worst as much as we have the ability to but honestly at the end of the day we only have so many dollars and they're either gonna take away or more I mean we we got to go with what's actually happening and have contingency in place as possible but if
151they were to take all of that funding away we would be crippled I don't we would not be making the decision of how to move forward as a district we would be making the decision as public education how to move forward yeah well red states are now trying to make laws based on special education that they won't provide certain Services yeah well when there's there's blood in the water everyone's coming to get theirs right I mean course they're saying hey we're gonna give all this money back to the States you know people are rushing to the states to say hey I want a piece of the pie I'll see you up there well I think that's a little more political and not helpful for the budget conversation but I know Ivon had I was going
152to say that this is are very uncertain things and we need to learn to navigate uh one thing that I could say that it will be helpful for what we have uh to is the draft budget that you have proposed yes and give us numbers that will be fisc responsible uh to work uh with with the straty of saying if then statement plus uh we have also the data from the demographers that said that we were respected to lose students and now with the current uh immigration law in place we know that also is going to have already an impact but it's going to be a greater impact at the end of the year because many families are making plans for the end of the year right now they're just gathering information and planning for
153resources so I think with those four variables it's not good but at least it something that we can connect uh from it will be I think an accurate information to make decisions knowing that we don't have we have a great list of uh issues and so I think we all have to come together and be resourceful and see what other Solutions can we can come up uh with that may not have a fiscal impact and I'll say the only reason I wasn't ready to provide an updated budget was because of the very recent impacts with the federal I had to I needed to make sure I had a good handle and understand of where we're at right now and which ones would impact the dollars that come here because as I said there's dollars being
154impacted with oper bless you operational things that I had to kind of determine all right if I don't get those EV buses am I GNA be hurting somewhere else so I needed some planning time I definitely have that ready for the board on March 4th I will have it ready for this group prior to that and I'll drop it into our documents the two things that are that we're holding that up is the federal freeze impacts and making sure it's very thoughtful I don't want to just say oh it's this much money I need to really keep discussing with the experts and talking to the people who are in charge of Grants and I'm gathering information from across the district and from outside of the district to make those decisions but then also I needed
155to find a really good measure that I felt comfortable with for the the immigration potential impact it's a guess it's a crystal ball but I like to back those educated guesses up with some data now I have a research study and I'm going to last thing and final thing for that one is to go see how was kraton impacted when s sp70 1070 happened so I'm going to go back and look at some historic data that I don't have access to right now and then as soon as I do I should be able to update that budget for everybody and and I'll um get that dropped into our documents so um can I I would like to just summarize this conversation like top level it seems like there is somewhere in the ballpark of Z
156or negative dollars right we don't have any money to work with we should develop some trigger language so that if money does fall out of the sky we have something to do with it um and I would like to add as like a personal comment I don't think this should mean that we can literally do nothing with any money like for example I have like a item in mind that would cost I think it would be like $10,000 to fix like a very major problem for a very small group of employees something like that could probably still be on the table um because it wouldn't affect our District's like Topline budget but it would need to be something important or like a priority um because we would be potentially risking funds that would be needed
157some point in the next six months doation oh yeah and then in regard to the conversation that arel was bringing up with reduction and for stuff I will I'm also um drafting something for the committee to review thank you Eve um I'm I'm not sure if this is still relevant or not but um I was looking at the Grant funded positions we're looking at approximately a hundred positions that are funded out of Grants and the majority I would say probably about 90% of our addendums and stiens are funded out of Grants good point yeah I know they're talking about down there prop what's the what we get the what's the land prop two three yeah the L trust thing yeah I know they're talking about like I know the Republicans say oh we only want
158to give teachers a raise a limited definition whereas you have Katie Hobs who was saying that give the district the money and then let them decide how they want to give the raises if they maintain the funding at at P level fundings that's $300,000 for us no I think they talking about increasing it to give raises because I think the Republicans are trying to say oh we'll give every teacher like I think what was tampon bre sure FL around but they only want to give it to teachers and then Katie Hobs was like no let's just give this you know the districts the money and let them decide who they give she wants to include support yeah that what she's like just give the districts the money let them decide how to give the raises
159that's where exactly if we do get any kind of significant money through that process exactly yes so just to kind of uh follow up on what Eve just shared with the number of people who would be impacted by addendums because that covers like all of the extra stiens the market demand for psychologist for speech and language for OT at what point would we share with staff that those could potentially other than this live stream be going away I think that is where we are in the process of the conversation is we're identifying to put see because I don't want to go out there and go oh my gosh all the addendums are going away but so we are identifying yeah so so we're identifying right now that's where we are in the process and then
160as we get more identified I think and we get a I don't know what that looks like I just don't know if it's going away because we also have built into the budget planning covering portions of Grant expenditures so just because it could be decreased it doesn't mean it's going to be that area that's decreased we would bring all of that back in and we'd say here's the areas and what do we need to keep moving forward with to push student outcomes and so it's but and and for sure definitely but I definitely think it's knowledge that needs to kind of be for employees to be aware of because other districts offer um those things but in the salary and I think that's why we see it such a salary difference with a lot of
161AG because it's not an addendum which the fear with the Dums is they could go away um whereas if it's in a salary it can't well it can but it's a harder process it's a little harder it can go away 2% in our language I I agree I mean I think we'll use the process we've used in the past to gather information and then provide and this is a this is a forum right so we're beginning the conversations here to see what those impacts can look like so I appreciate that input and absolutely we want to communicate but we don't we don't know enough to really put out a solid communication but we are starting the communication with the people who will help us build communication right we're going to rely on you guys to
162get that input and feedback and and as we get more we will we'll talk about it but yeah this is my first go at hey by the way there might be zero do you know I've been grabbing this mic like this the whole time it's not a good conversation and it doesn't I I mean I had a totally different plan when I showed up here so um I now have to protect more of the dollars than I anticipated because of these these things anyways any other questions or anything I can do for you or provide to you outside of what we've already committed to provide is there anything I can do for you to help you have good thought processes about this federal dollars the request for data for next meeting would be federal dollars
163spent on Staffing that may be impacted by funding changes including Child Nutrition title and idea those are the three that I have is there anything else to add to that just speaking in terms of federal dollars that's on there title programs and if it's different aspects of title that would be included in this so if it's title two or title four Child Nutrition title and idea also want to let you know um I had another just side point of something I have to decrease in the budget just want to get this word out there the free and reduce uh lunch percentages went down uh because we didn't have as much um uh um intera what well how would you say it Eve can you say it like responses that doesn't that hurts us in multiple
164levels could you explain your ways yeah um we typically as a district are about 89% for eligible for free and reduced lunch uh this year we have to pull from the the 100th day and this year our district is at about 71% so we there's a significant decrease in our eligibility in free and reduced lunch and and also that's that's responses that's not what could be eligible it's because we didn't get the the paperwork back yeah it's been um increasingly hard to get and I don't know if I see this at my site it's been increas increasingly hard to get families to fill at the lunch application um my office staff and my CEO have been like outreaching to families that have not completed it like hey let's sit down I'll walk you through this
165step by step and it some we just we can't same thing last year like some blatantly refused to fill it out um and it's just been increasingly hard and I don't know why it it's because it's not impacting their wallets like I mean that if they didn't fill it out before they have to pay for lunch and they're going to get a balance and now it's not impacting them I okay I will actually throw out that the so two things that I've heard from families directly one is that generally speaking our families are inundated just like in their normal life with like scam phone calls random junk mail people trying to sign them up for things on the side of the road and so generally I've noticed that our families are pretty suspicious or wary
166of paperwork as a whole and then secondly that proposition that just passed um made it a crime to apply for any kind of government benefits if you are undocumented and so uh whether I actually am not aware of whether or not free or reduced lunch uh accounts for that but I did have at least one family tell me I don't want to fill this out because I don't know if I'm going to break the law so I think that both of those things and also like a third element at least for our our overall number I can't speak to like why families would be hesitant um I know this is like one of those things that at some sites have been passed on to teachers to manage and it is much hard harder for like
16730 individual teachers to manage reaching out to families on like an individual level than to get them when they enroll their kids or you know at some other point um where like the office staff is able to get that um interface with them so I agree with the comments made so far and like to add uh that currently the the way that um families are supporting into complete this at the beginning of the year and throughout the year is through the CEOs front office staff and also even though they're no longer required by them but they they collaborate because they know the importance of getting this data is the Department of U food nutrition uh so it it's those three positions or departments working together for that um there's a fear of the immigration impact
168that may have for those who are in the process or that they have the hope and then there's also families that they know uh that their salary or their household income is high and so they don't want to take the laborious steps of completing because they said I'm not going to qualify um and so we're trying to always go back to the community and educate them that even if they don't uh qualify or they partially qualify uh that they the the data is it's it's useful for us to get other means of uh of funds to complete um to continue to provide services to kids so it just to restate obviously there's its data it changed and it also affects the budget and it also affects grants and so we are going to get less
169there I'm also having to factor in less in the budget because in the actual budget there's a tiny little thing that comes in it's a weighted student count just like you get a a little bit so you get a one for one regular ed kid if that kid is like hearing impaired you get a little extra money for them uh definitely not enough to deal with all the things you need to deal with to help and support them same thing with the free and reduced lunch population we get that recorded we get a little extra bump in the budget um having to calculate a a big hit to that it's a substantial change so just so you know that those little things that we can try to do but I don't know how we would
170get parents to not be afraid with the the current events you know so just do our best I just want to let you know it is just another piece of data of something that has to be calculated in the budget process okay I'm so sorry boy it's making me think a little differently um but I think this district is very fortunate that the insurance is being paid still by the district and there is still a raise budgeted in if that happens so that's all good news okay if we can take a look at our Norms so we can apply those today you have them in your folder yes oh did I misunderstand that budget line when you said 2% someone said four oh okay we better make sure I guess I misinterpreted oh gosh did
171I misinterpret I misinterpreted your question um okay well you have insurance covered so let me tell you did I tell you how much my insurance went up as a retiree 175 a month that's a lot of money for a retiree so anyway um you're fortunate to have that um why don't we take our break now yeah let's although we did have one I guess we're going to have another break no oh no do you need a break 12 yeah we'll do that we'll have lunch till 11:45 okay um so we're aware of our Norms make sure that we're following them today um we spent a lot of time on developing them and especially when we're in groups um the Taskmaster um and the norm follower want to make sure that you're remembering our norms and
172follow making sure all the members are following those Norms sorry about that okay our guiding principles um important for us to remember when we're doing our options that um we are and this is going to be new because the board really wants us to focus especially on the first one alignment with student outcome focused governance goals so we're going to have to really um in my opinion defend any option that we have so we will be spending quite a bit of time whenever we finish our um options making sure that they specifically align with that first one and I don't think we're g in the past we've always when we've done our alignment um with our standards we just said a quick yes yes it'll improve student achievement but I think we're going to need
173to this year basically tell how and the reason I'm saying that is when we're doing our options we really need to keep that first guiding principle in mind if we can't defend it then we really shouldn't be presenting it um then we have our other guiding principles which is sustainable salary for all staff sustainable health care benefits explore Revenue Generation generation options adhere to budgetary recommendations okay the scope of our work for meet and confer you're aware of this but I just wanted to remind you again is what we basically can um negotiate our wages salaries salary schedules hours of work compensation relating to fringe benefits and condition of work that are non-instruction in nature and of districtwide impact so again keep this in mind when your groups are talking sometimes we like to maybe
174try to negotiate something that we're really not permitted that's out of our scope so we need really need to um have our options deal with what our scope is for this committee okay so options our goal today is to develop options for all of our framing statements and we have 17 of them so we'll see how we do with that um so the new people might want to know what is an option well the option really answers the how so how are we going to accomplish whatever we want to accomplish so fairly easy um so what we do is we test the valid validity of the op option against our framing statement um will your options meet the interests of the other parties um so you'll select the best option and we this year we
175really I think if we could try not to just have a a running list of things if we can kind of consolidate um maybe our options not to have as many as we've had in the past that would I think be helpful um but I'm not I don't want to stifle you either so um but anyway that's where we we'll find out what we um come up with when we're finished with our activity and I don't know if we'll finish it today we'll see um after listening to Vanessa I don't know um like she said we'll probably have to really focus on a lot of options that don't include money and then the ones that do include money I know it won't happen today I don't think it will then we'll prioritize which ones are
176the most important to us um but anyway when you meet with your groups um you you'll review your stories and the interests kind of to refresh your memory and then um you'll read out your framing statement and then the options will answer your framing statement so you'll list all the options everyone can think and of course without criticizing anyone or dismissing anyone's ideas and then you'll brainstorm all the options that your team can come up with and this is the place where we want to make sure all members are contributing so if you do want to pass around a pencil as someone suggested as a Talking Stick so that everyone in your group actually does have a voice that would be helpful too um but you'll anyway you're just going to brainstorm and then once
177you brainstorm your team will look at all of your options and try to consolidate them into an option to answer that framing statement you may have more than one option for that framing statement or you may not okay so this is our activity we have a half an hour so we probably could get at least one finished um so we're going to select an issue based on um our order of votes so if you look at that handout that I gave you it lists um the framing statements and we're going to go in the order of the first one on the issues it was the issues handout looked like this the first one was the one that we had the most um votes for and the last one was the least so we are going
178to start with the first one so we will select we're going to have two groups we're going to select an issue um then you're going to take your hand out with the job responsibilities that you have you're going to determine the job responsibilities um then you're going to collect your issue chart which by the way they're all together over here so we have to separate those that might take us a little bit of time um we're going to review the information of the charts because you'll want to uh refresh your mind about the stories and the interest because it was um a couple weeks ago since we done that activity once you refresh um your mind about what we did in the past you're that's when you'll start your brainstorming someone um will chart that
179and then you're going to consolidate your brainstormed options review your framing statement and determine which option best answers the framing statements make sure to include all voices and again keep in mind the guiding principles especially the first one um the first one of the guiding principles relevant to student achievement and keep in mind our scope of work so um you're probably have to call out each other in the group if that comes up where someone may need to say well that's really not in our that's not really our responsible for IBN um so make sure you're listening to everyone okay just a review of the roles we have the timke keeper the Taskmaster the norm monitor the recorder and the presenter okay so I wanted to leave that back up here so I'm going to
180call on someone and you don't have to read every single one of those but in your own words when we get into our group what is it that you are going to do for our option activity Jame James and can you speak into the microphone I'd like you to repeat what we're going to do for this activity in your own words kind of summarize it I was a little detail orientated there basically we're gonna get groups and come up with option right using exactly right right you're going to look at the what's important to remember is that you review the chart okay read the stories read the interest and then you're going to come up with options for the framing statements okay so uh you have a card there was a purpose for that card
181after last time um if your card and we'll see how this turns out if your card is red you're going to come over here and if your card is black you're going to be over here or over here wherever you choose are [Music] yes yes you can so I haven't I haven't said which group is going to get which issue but if you're not happy with the issue that the group you're in as long as you can find someone from the other group to exchange with you perfect and by the way we're going to have to sort out the charts so one person one person from your group is going to have to go through the the charts and grab your chart paper um the the okay so this group over here teacher workload balance
182and work time start end and this group over here High need students so if you can select your um people who in their roles and then we'll get the charts e e e okay if I could have everyone's attention over here your left hand up if you're listening looking for everyone's left hand yeah okay great okay what we're going to do now is your presenter is going to uh read your issue tell us a little background the little story um and then review some of the interest and then share your options let's start over here with teacher workload and you'll need a microphone area the orange first it's up to you I you I just we want to know what your issue is what's the story The interests and your options so wait until everyone
183is listening so our um issue is teacher workload um classroom teachers are unable to meet increased workload demands outside of their workday due to internal and external factors increased Behavior L commute hours and personal boundaries so how can we decrease the amount of workload outside of the school day while retaining teachers and improving our students outcomes um our first fully thought out idea was a committee will be formed by CSD to conduct a thorough investigation and formulate a plan for a 4 day school week Round of Applause no findings will be presented during the meeting confer session for the 2526 Academic Year with a recommendation for implementation targeted for the 2728 school year oh sorry make the 26 27 school year our second one was the district day will be reduced from 7 hours and
18410 minutes to 6 hours and 30 minutes eat lunch at home kids um another one that was presented was an extra protective individual prep for each teacher using a six day oh no matter how the um extra protect a extra protective individual prep for each teacher daily and then the last one the district and the Representatives will not make Ariel Melissa Williams and her fellow CC teachers ISS teachers okay comments especially when we're thinking of um you know the board guide rails guard rails and student achievement I just need some clarification that 4-day work week would be like would we pilot it the next coming school this upcoming school year and then put it into play is that where we're going with that I just needed some clarification no we're saying that a 25 26
185school year is when they will be formulating a committee they'll be investigating and creating a plan it might happen it might not happen in 262 is going to be based off the investigation so with with that work CL and what we're about to say um have we looked into opting to maybe one PD a month and stay within our certain hours since we do work our extra extra 80 70 75 to 80 hours a year um could we opt one Friday or preferably a Friday a month for us teachers to have a full day PD or workday or whatever our school sites decided it to be that's going to be based off of the plan and the committee but you can join a committee now hers is a total she's given another option oh you
186want to add an option okay I'll add it what am I adding um so our neighboring School District um balls School District Ops for one Friday I think once a quarter right now um for teachers to have a full day PD no kids all teachers all admin so that could be your data walks that could be your uh vertical articulation um to allow us teachers and our at our school sites to do what like to have those real life those real life PDS to take back and like really Implement really Implement um the things we're all asking for now do they still have um Wednesday early release I understand what you're saying so an up so other idea outside of the four day week will be that instead of having four days every week once
187a month once a month once a quarter once a month once a quarter no school on Friday and just teachers there and no students yeah oh I like that idea what did you want per quarter or per per month one can I add to that just to give a little bit of context context I really really love that idea um but that we tried to do that with a calendar committee um I think James maybe you were on it with me uh where we offered like that um it made us start a little bit sooner in over the summer and try have one day a quarter where we had a full day professional development with no students and it was not voted on when we adopted our calendars that was it was overwhelmingly um the
188other option I don't know if people really understood it but I I just want it was we did try to do that could we add to that option because I like that option maybe we could say that you know we say one day per month and then that Wednesday would be a full day instead of a early release day so of that week Wednesday would be a full day instead of early release day I'm not in with that it almost throws the whole everything off when you change the Wednesdays days could an option be that we move all early Tuesdays to Fridays instead of Wednesdays it will affect the when other districts that did that it affected their attendance kids just wouldn't come I I agree with I agree with what everyone is saying um
189but I have worked at a district uh prior to coming here and we did have um one day a month where there were no kids but we still kept our half day and our hours were still the same you did you add more days you would have to add because it's statutory law that if kids aren there maybe you're right but I I don't per I think we might have started maybe like three days more like exactly can I ask a couple clarifying questions and um just to help me understand better are we talking about like a 4-day work week is one option yes shortening the or shortening the day is another option so it's not this and this or or adding add an additional daily prep for Teacher right like is it it's just
190not all combined no thank you oh okay I just needed that clarified for myself okay so we have that option we have uh we got one more who is it okay James um did this group take into consideration a budgetary impact in terms of classified people who would be losing money which op for any of the options because they're hourly employees and when they're not there they're not getting money right well I mean the so that would be something that they would research and then we didn't talk about it for the other two so on specifically on the fourth one day because that's I think that's the only one that will affect the hourly employees what we know or would discuss in the conversation is that the district that we know cartright uh on the
191fourth day there uh the students are there but for child care purposes or other things and so that will be another opportunity for those classified uh employees to still have more hours or the regular hours also I was going to say for staff that lose hours you could raise salary appropriately to mitigate that because the intention is not to cost anyone money to maintain the same salaries but sta CD because we're always looking for time to meet our um second second uh point to consider and I know not everybody in the room would be aware of this I am intimately aware of this because it is tearing my brain apart because I know it's coming up and it's called Master course scheduling we have required minutes that we have to meet and I'm concerned about
192the extra prep and still being able to fit in all the minutes I'm just I'm not saying I'm before no no I'm not talking about minutes of instruction I'm talking about like minutes that we have to have we have to have a certain amount of ela we have to have a certain amount of math all that stuff Oh I thought you were referring to we're over St um minute requirements and then there are the guy recommended or the district minutes and oh I was told that there was a five minute like there was a five minute thing that we had in okay it is also possible that our specific School James because of test scores or other factors require more minutes so that might be what you're thinking of but I could be confused uh
193that's definitely not true uh but I could be confused so okay um I was also gonna say that I don't think right now we are debating options I think we are just like presenting them and then when we go to vote on individual options we can open the floor for debate about particular options can can I add on one for that um is that it like if I I absolutely love the idea for all staff but like mandatory training because we offered multiple opportunities for professional development for um some of our classified staff and some of them took advantage of it and others we they did not so if we could build that in where all these new things coming out we're ensuring that all of these people are getting trained something about like mandatory
194something yeah it's really hard when you're implementing like a new um module at your school but you can't get everybody trained on it because you can't get you can't get everyone on board because you can't get everybody trained okay so we're going to end it here and um your group will share after lunch it is 12 close enough 1210 um we'll do 45 yeah one is close one o'clock e e e just doing options we're just going to do the options that's it today and I just want is anyone again let's do another time restraint Check Yes James okay I I know we're not going to finish before 2:30 but I I'll we'll when we see leave then we'll know anyone else again any 330 215 215 330 okay so we finished over here right
195before lunch I believe um let's go over to um this option High need students and Kelly you are the presenter it was Amy but she's gone so oh okay so you'll give us a little background and share the framing statement and then your options so our uh topic was high needs students the interest statement says we need support and training for all staff members in order to support our high need students the framing question reads how do we systematically and fiscally provide training and support for all staff in order to address the high needs of our students and just a little background we talked about increasing behaviors needs of students um not a lots more non-verbal students students in diapers um not necessarily identified for special education but some are and just a escalation of
196um increased behaviors across the board and a need to address that so that brings us to our options the first one we said district and then we talked about how this could be the new director of inclusion position there's a little discussion about whether or not that lives in the sped department but I believe that it does right okay so yeah no it doesn't oh okay sorry is that what they're called director of inclusion no it's academ director student supp okay that's what I that's what we meant that's why it has a question mark curriculum got it okay thank you for the okay thank you for the background so whomever that person may be or or just said the The elusive District wherever that does live um will initiate development of site-based systematic protocols for
197crisis team response intervention including identification and training on District processes which includes threat assessment suicide assessment Etc by the end of quarter one of each school year so the reason that we added that time stamp is because this actually was a recommendation that came out of meet and coner last year and just in surveying the couple of sites that we had among our group which was three to four there was a variety of we have a crisis team all the way to we don't or if we do I'm not aware of who those people are and they're not being implemented to serve the needs that are coming out and so and there was some sites that reported that they do have one and that they're using these protocols so we just said it needs to
198be systematic across the district so that it's not just you know one-offs across whatever sites happen to be utilizing it and we felt like it's we know that you know each school has their own flavor and whatever but this feels like more of a Universal um template or process that can just be implemented across whatever site you're at are there any questions on that one or we're not doing questions we're just right cheing okay and then the second one is um the district again whomever this director position may be uh will provide a full-time highly qual highly qualified ESP who is also on the crisis response team so we talked about in addition to having these set protocols written in this first one having additional support is needed and that would be a designated person
199to provide support with uh High need students sort of in the moment and outside of a behavior interventionist or a already designated position that's there and then the third one district will provide ongoing training to all staff in terms of trauma informed practices BMC rulers Etc so we left that more open-ended because we know there are some programs that are already in place but there's not a lot of mandated trainings um this actually goes hand inand with the recommendation of the other group in terms of having that additional Friday so that would be great two of us in this room lordis and I are both being Aces uh trained currently so that's something that we could offer but we also know that there's tons of experts in various departments that could be used to help
200rule these things out and then we weren't sure about the um training or whatever roll out that looks like for the new rulers program ruler sorry okay okay and that's it okay right now does anyone have any comments any thing they want to add Kelly you'll be our recorder if we want to add anything I like all of the options I'm wondering if we could add a specific option something about like the potty training and diapering no body training of incoming kindergarteners and possibly like educational secretaries will be trained in how to have conversations with families around the importance of incoming kindergarteners being po trained already or something like that yeah that sounds like a community ed like f FRC thing actually kind of yeah um we do offer parenting classes typically for kids under
201five but that doesn't mean it's limited to that um so I'm just wondering just a question why did you say the secretaries the Ed secretaries because they're in charge of enrollment kind of the last pH oh okay very uniform and consistent because we have had the situation in the past where it wasn't and then we found out that that they were being parents were being told they could not enroll their student unless they were potty trained or until they were potty trained and then we ended up with a slew of seven year-olds coming to school that had serious special education needs but their parents hadn't enrolled them because they weren't potty trained and that's what they had been told and so we don't want that happening because we want early intervention for students who for
202a you know for a special ed reason are struggling with potty training versus I just haven't been potty trained you know what I mean like those are two very different things so I think we have to be very careful with how that's presented so that we make sure that message isn't accidentally given out again to kind of Ensure maybe that that happens can the district have uh what to expect in kindergarten like brochure that isn't done site by site but is District uh done so that it's available at each site and it talks about those expectations s yeah that's a great idea actually related to that the FRC administers the early enrollment testing for kiddos that aren't five before the September one cut off and two um teachers at builtmore helped to facilitate that testing
203last year for us and one of them created a list of benchmarks yeah kind of like expectations for for kids entering kindergarten and so it feels like that could be a good jumping off point to start with that list and then say add like oh also not in pull-ups thank you certainly I can send it to right now so Katie with that that's a little different from your option but you and I Katie could talk about that too like just you know I don't know that it needs to live here just because of my role in you know what I mean are you okay with not listening yes and in the front office that says we don't diaper we don't diaper yeah we don't even give out diapers bigger diapers for that reason actually cuz
204we're like no are you amazing are you okay with that are you okay with that not going down as an actual option then or because related to that we're in conversations right now about our Kinder boot camp program because we currently don't have funding through our grant that we get funded by but we're trying to see if we can roll it into summer school and I feel like Kinder boot camp also goes along with that same sort of vein so I would love to just brainstorm more in yeah I just let it live at the F SE appreciate what like the the necessity of a uniform statement um just because I don't want to personally break any laws um Rebecca into following law thank you thank you um when you're talking about grants for cander
205Readiness there is a grant that I know of called jump start it's uh 60 extra days of school um solely K I think it's K2 um and incoming Kinder so a little different no these would be incoming Kinders so you could do like incoming Kinders Kinder going into first grade first graders going into second got yeah let's check more for sure it's through the government called jump start okay Eve um I just wanted to add that I know uh for our transition programs um that we do Kinder round up and so like maybe that is a good time to also share the document so that every site has the document we're giving our parents the same information that is a really good point and that's actually coming up at the end of March but because
206this checklist already exists from I'm forgetting her name right now this wonderful teacher at bmore uh I I yeah I would be happy to reach out to her and just see if I can get a soft copy so I can edit it and then we can just jump jump on from there y for sure okay any other options for this one okay okay thanks Kelly so let's move on to the next two which are see employee group compensation that's LPNs mechanics psychologist Ed secretaries bus drivers and facilities and the other issue is longevity so um we're going to divide again into two groups if your card is less than five you're over here if your card is six and above you're over here and this time we're going to do things a little differently as
207far as assigning roles because I have noticed that some people seem to have the same role every time and we want to get voices out to all individuals so I have some cards with the job responsibilities and I would just like for you and your team to put them flat down and then everyone takes one and whatever card you get that's your role okay understand I don't need to repeat right okay anything less than five over here more than five over here and let's see how our group turns out okay okay good that's good thinking with the next gen and you guys were giving them groups those are the groups were prioritizing committee and so next gen's coming into the committee meeting they're teaching about that thing they're going to see if it's going to
208be usable they're going to Deep dive of how to do the salary um comparisons to other districts when did we find that out to committee well the last time we talked about here in Meet confer that we talked about whether we could use next gen or not and we've talked about it going to committee and we called the committee it's the compression and compensation yeah so are we not getting next salary data well the committee has to meet and they don't meet until when next they meet next Wednesday so I'm just saying we won't have it for you today but we can have it for you after the committee meets and they make decisions on how they're gonna webe skip that one for now and do that one next meeting and we do the next
209those prioritized groups that the meeting confer gave us is so we would be skipping longevity too then right I'm assuming if that's is that on that no okay the next one is longevity after that pay raises for everyone yeah okay let's then it the this one will be okay okay let's see how our teams uh look okay I will give you your roll card e e e not about 30 seconds why they will be hourly employees no they're not there's only certain people I'm okay our time okay could you raise your hand if you are the presenter in your group raise your hand if you are the presenter uh who over here is Kelly you're the presenter right okay so as you're presenting make sure you share the story and uh the framing statements and
210your options and start over here when you have everyone's attention Rebecca sure okay Kelly they'd like us to start here and make sure you have everyone's attention Kelly oh thank you thank you okay our topic is longevity the interest statement says we need to retain staff in order to impact student achievement according to the sofg guard rails yes the framing question is how do we improve current longev current longevity in order to improve staff retention to impact student achievement so these are options we started very high and then finished with non-monetary options or an a non-monetary option so the first one says uh keep same tiers meaning the system of uh being paid out after three years five years 10 years and 15 years so keep that same system but increase each amount by 20%
211if you're curious what that looks like they are here so the first tier would be400 2400 4,800 72 and 9600 oh we there's another option to add um after after 20 years so that would be the last one option two after your first year of employment level a staff because anybody any baby teacher starting at with zero years of experience starts at level a after their first year they would be moved to level B so essentially putting them on the next pay scale pay level uh the next option is to add an additional T tier so that's the last one that we talked about uh to longevity for 20 years we don't currently have a tier for staff that stay for 20 years even though we have some of those in the room many uh
212and that would be 8,000 but with the 20% that brings it to 9600 and then the last option is to offer an option to receive longevity compensation over two payouts instead of divided up over all pay checks so right now you just get it spread out over your paychecks throughout the year but this opt for staff to opt in if they wanted to to get a big check at the beginning of the year presumably and then a big check at the end of the year we talked about for staff who are young it makes more sense maybe for them if they wanted to see a bigger chunk as opposed to seeing that spread out throughout it's the same amount of money so this is no a monetary impact it's just a distribution distribution exactly a
213way to say oh do I want a big chunk right now and a big chunk at the end as opposed to spreading it out over the paychecks any questions anybody want to add an option okay thank you Kelly okay Becca okay so our interest was uh pay raise for everybody um due to inflation impacting all staff staying with us staying competitive with surrounding uh other school districts uh compression and booster morale and we need a tier approach for to compensate all staff groups so our options were for the 2 5 26 school year contract substitutes will receive a 5% raise of retroactively to the 2425 school year resulting in a stien of 177003 or I'm sorry 1,735 paid at the end of the 2425 school year to the people employed as a contracted sub for
214the entirety of the 2425 school year and funding permits a pay raise at a ratio of 2 to one to five to certified classified and admin employees respectively within the minimum of a 1% raise for all certified staff 25 26 school years to be implemented 2% certified 1% classified and 05 to admit yeah yes okay did you read the last one oh yeah and contracted Subs will receive a pay raises at the classified rate for further pay raises okay any questions anyone want to add to that okay oh I'm sorry what do you want to add anything to that are you no okay okay then we're finished with these two our next two are which we started by the way so that person I think we do have some options on that chart I could
215be wrong um did you want to add anything about translating we had that discussion yeah so we discovered that there are some CEOs that are already getting paid for $35 so we need to make sure that it's consistent we did check it with ourne and so that sorry sorry trying to do HR higher things okay we did run it through our attorney to make sure that was appropriate um but then when we started uh checking into it we determined that there are some in that CEO group that are actually right now getting the $35 an hour for translation extra duty pay um and the thing that I saw in it in the piece of takeaway is that it seems to be site based and is being used uh site discretionary monies are being used to
216make it happen so what I can think maybe happened and I don't know it's an assumption but maybe some sites didn't have site discretionary money and maybe had language that told a CEO or something you can't do it I don't know I don't know how it all transpired uh but what I do see is that it's possible we can do it we got it checked by legal let's just move forward if they're doing it outside their contract we don't need to change job description um I've information on how payroll has to treat it as it comes to uh calculations for overtime pay so that we're in legal status with that so I think I think we are okay with this one and it's a non-issue is everybody good with that and is there any questions
217I can answer can I just clarify what you said so I understand so it's happening at some sites we're just making sure that it's now happening at all Sites I'm not saying that it can happen at all Sites what I'm saying is if they do it outside of their if someone comes and asks them to do it there needs to be an appropriate funding source however that funding source is normally allocated those processes need to be followed so if it's site discretionary I'm sure there's a process at the site if it's a grant there's an approval process through the grant you can't just say you have to do it there needs to be a funding source it looks like the ones that it has happened with it was the site discretionary fund so there would
218be whatever the approval process to get a funding source and then however that is articulated to that person to say hey are you willing to do two hours of translating outside of your regular day and if so you'll get paid $35 an hour out of this funding source is kind of you know how that would go so yes they can do it I don't think there's a they have to do it and I don't think there's a everybody has to do it every site I think you have to have a funding source and a willing body person and we can pay them the $35 an hour just like everyone else okay so if there is the funding source it is at $35 an hour it's not their General rate it is not their General rate
219it is at $35 an hour it would be a time sheet pay assignment it needs to have HR paperwork and a funding source has to be assigned appropriately okay and then was that communicated directly to Ivon because it was his concern and his where is he he's at a meeting we definitely need to say it to him we'll tell him as an issue it doesn't seem to be an issue I don't think so it sounds like we solved it we just need to communicate that so that he can to solve it we just needed more information and thank you for let allowing us to dig into it we have to come to consensus to yeah Vanessa maybe just send him a chat or something believe since we came to consensus with these issues we have
220to come to consensus to eliminate that issue because we don't need to have it anymore so I am going to um recommend that we eliminate the issue regarding let me get the right words um compensate staff for translating regardless of position so do we agree to eliminate that I would just like a point of clarification before we do that so what I'm hearing is that it is up to the site administrator to implement that well what she just said is my understanding that because they come of site funds okay they can't ask someone to translate without paying them and they have to find basically the funding source yes okay cool sounds good are we okay thumbs up sideways down Dorothy okay okay so then let's go to hey let me ask you this question so
221when we started developing our issues we decided that we would try to get through all of them and if we could great if not you know sad but I'm kind of worried are do you want to try today just to try to get through all of them and then when we go to our next step we'll go as far as we can is that yeah raise your hand if you're leaving at 2:30 we're about to leave lose like lots of people one two Oh I thought you were two in just two oh okay sorry I thought it was more than I I know with Jeff for those of for those of for those of you who worked with Jeff he told me you used to do five to seven issues a year well we've done
222you know we've done a lot I'm not I'm fine with it if you're fine with it I think we should get through the issues today develop options if people aren't here they can review what we did and come in with options ready like I think next session if we have like an hour set aside for people to say okay I listened to the video I did the work I've made the language here are some options we can add them to the list and then next session we can go through get consensus eliminate and then evaluate and I think that should be fine and we'll again start when we start next time if we get through all these options we'll start at the very beginning with the most the ones who had the most votes and
223if we can't get through all of them then we will stop yeah does that Mak sense to all of you okay I'm not going to do a consensus vote because it's just the way it's going to be um okay so our next two then are parental leave and class size and by the way class size comes up every year here since I've been here um okay so when you go into your group we're going to follow the exact the same protocol as we have in the past get your charts review the stories the interests the framing statements and then brainstorm the options um Katie question um yeah so I know class size and the pay raises are different um posters but how would we different because I there's probably only going to be one pot
224of money unless there's enough you know to do everything that we want but how do we how do we differentiate between the two or do do we need to put that in the options like so um for like looking like class size is like an issue I know it obviously leads to like the the option of like reducing the ratio which would cost money but for example instituting some class siiz caps um would actually not cost anything necessarily um when I looked at other professional agreements and other bargaining agreements that have class siiz caps um like the language that they all use is the district will within its budget capacity Implement acceptable Alternatives that may include but are not limited to um and then they list things out and so for example if you have
225a class that's overc cap you can move kids and that's doesn't cost anything right you can move like if you have a class at 38 and a class at 34 move two of those kids cost Zar right and we would still be within we'd have some language that would allow that whereas currently if you have a class at 38 and a class at 32 you know it's kind of just up to whoever that that whether or not that happens right so that would how it usually goes it's usually like we have class sizes in all first grade classes that are 33 you know and so where does the 34th kid go do they have to go to a new different School even though you know they're in our boundaries or what have you read around
226that so like for example I'm looking at Phoenix or I'm looking at Roosevelts right now and like so like have options that starts with site driven options so reassigning students to a different teacher reassigning students to create a combo class right within a grade level band um assigning PA professional staff to support large class sizes in the effective grade level um reassign a teacher once the student enrollment exceeds Max in a great uh effective grade level and then on a district level hire PA professional staff to support large class sizes reassign a teacher through District inade transfer at a teacher right so some of those things would cost money but all of that comes with the caveat of within budget capacity right so if it is the case that you have like a ton of
227like kids well all those extra kids should mean extra money right and so that could be more hours for a PA that could be assigned to that grade level that could be enough money to hire an aid or it could be enough money to hire a teacher depending on the amount of kids it just depends which is looking at all this language it's all very flexible and it it comes with the caveat within budget capacity so like for example if we um don't have enough money to do a 1% raise but we do have like I don't know $200,000 that's enough for two or three teachers right that could be used to alleviate class size caps like that's what the district can do with the money that is not enough for a raise but is
228enough that it could be spent on something so are we saying that if it's because what I'm hearing you say is that if it is under 1% we would go to the it would go to class sizes but if it's over 1% It would automatically go to the overall teacher raises with class sizes as a second it would go so over 1% it would go to teacher raises under 1% it would go to whatever the district is deems necessary per like policy whatever right which one of those things could be class sizes but again like it's up to the district to decide its budget capacity so if the district has $500,000 a float and they decide they need it for something more than class sizes and it goes to that then like we're not prioritizing
229like that because it's it's impossible for us to consider all of the district's budget needs and we will once we you know have our options then we rate them for what's most important to us to least and then as the money comes we know well we can afford this you know and that's how that's how we'll go about doing that but we can't afford this so what's more important to you class size or pay raise I mean uh we'll do that as soon as we pretty much know what the budget is I would assume probably maybe the March meeting um I'm assuming does that answer your question okay so then we're going to go again with a parental leave and class size um parental leave will be parental leave will be over here class size
230will be over here and just for the fun of it without using our cards I'm going to let you select and see what we end up with over here if you want to be parental leave come over here if you want to be class siiz go over there let's see where we're at and again you have the cards I believe and use the cards randomly to select your um leaders for the job responsibilities and we'll set the time as soon as the groups are okay that one where's what did we do with your group cards are they over there Dorothy are you guys gonna join oh you're leaving okay oh that's right oh oh my gosh okay are you which group were you in that group okay oh good okay are you okay with uh
231three does anybody would anyone like to move over to this group for Parental leave okay thanks Eve which card which these are the and I don't know where the rest are there's one over there or two hey Joel okay um are we ready to get started okay not even not even they Ma anything family you that's that's I mean so you were already comp spe because B said e for know [Music] re cre you're spe so are you proposing [Music] feel [Music] right yes know [Music] Daddy okay no that right sure first show meas love I'm gonna do right C it's TR see I if you're I need to not keep sitting in [Laughter] [Music] myat too some feary just don't know going to share now okay so if you are if you're the presenter
232raise your hand who's the presenter over here okay um and make sure you share the story the interest the framing statement and your options and make sure you wait until you have everyone's attention um parental leave staff who are new parents are likely to leave or resign because they don't have enough accured accur accured accured acre PTO to take time off as needed and or the resulting cost of child care make staff question question the benefit of staying interest how can we meet the needs of new parents while retaining hly qualified staff these are the days of our lives so our parental leave options the district will create a parental leave package with sufficient leave time and an option to reserve days Upon returning to work number two two the district will advertise donation to
233SI time bank to provide extra hours towards maternity leave or parental leave any questions options yeah this says seek Bank y okay well maybe they if they qualify for MLA and they run out of days halfway through [Music] um could we start a paternity leave Bank where people can donate time I don't know no we have the yeah just sick C can no you're thinking of the S Bank yeah I had my oldest I was a teacher for like year and a and but he's saying that the current medical leave bank is for people with no changey directly to a policy that's there has the policy but it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get it because there's a committee that decid who gets it so you can ask your co-works to donate to the
234medical Lead Bank but there's no guarantee that committee is going to reward that time to that person um the district will adver the district will advertise donation to SI time bank to provide extra hours towards parental leave will uh change the SI time bank to provide they call medical leave bank right but also I feel like there should be like a I feel like there should be like a last resort because like cancer you can't plan for cancer you can always plan for the uterus well sometimes not always I said something change policy change policy the the board would have to act on it so we gave them a recommendation so it would actually be a policy change to time bank adding but I also feel like we shouldn't make that something people are dependent
235on because once again it goes to a committee and then the committee has to decide we'll give you the time that's why it's an additional benefit to the first right the first one is the package that's like the main one and then this is like if you're out or your baby is excessively sick or whatever I don't no no you can't use like oh my baby's sick let me go get no no no no no you have the on FMLA well in the committee that would be just another item on the committee list to look at correct medical leave Bank paternity leave no medical leave Bank y you could take off bank that's it that's M yeah to include to include you take off the whole thing by extra hours and just put maternity paternity
236leave maternity leave or paternally leave parental parental leave which by the way covers okay we need to read it again um the district will adjust policy of the medical leave assistant program to include parental leave Katie I know we've talked about this before but I feel like a lot like just like last year these are all coming out to be the district will and I was was just kind of looking up some other collective bargaining agreements and they're worded differently than that ites it doesn't just say like the district will the district will the district will it so give us an example we can put the board will because this is like a board change so we can say the school board I mean it just says certain things like the following are paid holidays
237for or um policy let's see vacation pay will be paid at the rate of employees May C carry over unused acred vacation they just kind of are stated eliminating first few words like we could say right a parental leave package will be provided leave time right exactly just like that yeah yeah are we in agreement with that do so I would I I would also just say that the reason why this language was included like this is because for the past couple years we were having difficulty making sure everything was implemented and a common response to some things that got dropped was just well we didn't know who was supposed to do that and so no one did it and that's why and when we wrote up and approved the professional agreement last year we
238included these things to be very specific about who is doing what um so if we are comfortable removing that language that's fine we have a grievance policy o or we could maybe at the end of this like write it and remove that and then brainstorm kind of in parenthesis like here's who we're thinking where we're thinking these things would live we've said they're happening here's our recommendation for where they might live but you can decide yeah I yeah I also um some bargaining agreements also specifically named usually departments that are responsible for things I think we've shied away from that in the past but yes for specific things that could be useful like this is probably a human resources issue be a benefit coordinator yeah I I appreciate that conversation because when I feel like
239when we say things like the district will it feels divisive to me and like we're not assuming positive intent and I think we want to create a culture where we're assuming positive intent and we're United and unified and making these decisions so I appreciate using different language or you give j a t-shirt that says the district and and then the rest of us will say [Laughter] will that's it yes that's it I did want to just say that um in other uh bargaining groups I've seen different composition and I think sometimes um we have a representation actually at the conversational table and so you'll have HR representation Finance repes representation and so when these types of things do come up it's more needs-based like an item might be hey um staff are having a really
240hard time finding this kind of information and so then like an HR department can come forward and go oh wow well we have this tool because they're part of the the part of it and then it it then they're part of the solution and they can say this is what we can do like because as opposed to the district will do this thing and then the reason it's there because we keep failing to do it well sometimes it's because it's not legal or it's and we don't know it until we start trying to implement it or it's not feasible because of Manpower or it's not the way that our systems work and so I think that sometimes some of that just comes from not you know necessarily having everything that you might need in order
241to make these decisions and we try to do our absolute best but once again we will do our absolute best like we always do okay um one thing I would like to remind you and we went over this earlier is remember we have to provide measures for our recommendations so as you're brainstorming your recommendations in your minds or as a group you might want to think how are we going to measure that that it's really going to increase student achievement we just can't say anymore this will improve student achievement we're going to have to you are going to have to basically when you present it to the board um provide that measure that you're going to use so that will be a task that we will also be doing um which is going to take
242quite a bit of time um but just remember that as you're developing your options okay anyone want to add to that and I think what we'll do um listening to you Vanessa is I think I'll have you and Joel when we're doing this part of the conversation once the group has brainstormed their ideas their options now um then we're going to open it up to both of you during the sharing time to offer your input would that work for both of you that rather than going around to the small groups when we're doing our sharing is when we'll have you actually um provide your Insight and your input absolutely and sometimes it may be we have to rely on other staff on our teams that'd be perfect yeah might need Dominic here we might need
243you know um Scott here we might need well neighbors here or he was here so instead of them attending the small groups they will actually um share during this open time okay I think that would work yeah let's try that and see okay sounds good oh a side note you know how we do the welcome back rally everyone have T-shirts you know what district office you do you guys should get t-shirts for the welcome back rally that says the district the district the district will the front says the the back says will yes okay yeah so class size we came up with two options would you give us a little history first yeah oh sorry um our interest is how can we systematically balance class sizes to prioritize student safety and learning so the problem
244right now like was based in the that word systematically is that of course we have a staffing ratio of 20 of right this year is 25 to1 in previous years it was 27.5 to one and so right now we get one teacher for every 25 students um but we don't actually have a a system for balancing out class sizes and so our first option um which we borrowed from Rosevelt is um it says class sizes for Gen EDS shall correspond to the following and we have grade level bands a Target and a Max for each grade level band So for kindergarten the target is 24 to1 the max is 20 28:1 for grades 1 through 3 the target is 26:1 the max is 30 to1 for grades 4-6 it is the target is 29 to1
245the max is 34:1 and for grades 7 through 8 it is the target is 31:1 the max is 36:1 and then if maximums are exceeded the district will within its budget capacity Implement acceptable Alternatives that may include but are not limited to and then at the site level there's four things written down um for example they can reassign students to a different teacher by leveling classes within the same grade level they reassign students to create a multi-grade class within a grade level band they can assign a parah to support large class sizes in affected grade levels they can reassign a teacher um once student enrollment exceeds the max enrollment level um and then District driven is higher PA professional staff to support large class size large class sizes and affected grade levels reassign a teacher
246through District initiated transfer or three add a teacher and then at the bottom we have that site driven steps will occur prior to District driven steps site administrators will provide written communication to affected teachers of any probable Sloss Solutions within 10 working days so Our intention here is to be very flexible while still having some guidelines for both teachers and administrators about how Staffing should be done and so we spoke from like a teacher perspective if I'm a teacher and I'm a middle I'm I'm a seventh and eighth grade teacher if I got 33 kids that might suck but I'm not at my Max right I'm expected to be able to handle that even though I'm a little above what we want and I also know that my principal is not trying to give me
24733 kids right that's the the Target and if I'm a principal right and I have a class at 38 and a class at 33 it's not just like oh well you know everyone's has a lot of kids it's okay we need to take two of those kids and put them in the other class so that we're meeting our maximums right um and then our other option and then also we spoke a little bit about how like for new principles for principles that maybe like have their own system but don't have anything in writing like for how to do this especially as there's turnover it can be useful to have something on paper for like a way to distribute um class sizes and then related to that we also have an option um tied to this
248that says if funding allows the student to teacher allocation 27.5 to1 um because that is what this system is set up for if you average all of those targets it comes out to 27.5 to one um will be reduced and the resulting class siiz targets and maximums will be reduced appropriately so I'm not going to do the math no one here wants to do the math but if we had more teachers than 27.5 to one you could figure out what the ratio is for this and then reduce all of it appropriately it would all go down by one or two kids questions option yeah yeah and then if we if we decided to if for example if this got approved and not the other one or whatever right um if in the future the ratio
249reduces we have more than uh 27.5 to1 uh teachers if we have like 25 to1 again for some reason um you know as long as these guidelines are being met they can be used however right I just have a a a comment maybe or like a a perspective to consider um I I would caution Us in putting something like this where we could potentially be moving kids out of classrooms I know for my daughter that would cause a lot of anxiety and I feel like that's really disruptive to the child's learning environment so if there's a way that we can not do that I think it goes back to the guard rail of adult convenience and like nobody wants to have large class sizes I I recognized that there was a time that I had
25038 first and second graders in my class and so like I understand how difficult that is but I also really really really want to caution us to disrupting the child's learning environment for the adult yeah I would say respectfully this is not very convenient for us right it's not convenient to move kids around it's not convenient to reassign teachers it's not convenient to hire people this is actually a lot of work actually the the most convenient thing to do is to wash your hands of it and leave things as they are not do anything um and I think when it comes to reassigning students to other classes that's mostly a preventative measure so for example like it's very rare that kids show up on the first week and you got like two classes of 40
251or whatever right and things don't get moved around the first week that's not it's not as disruptive for your kid to be in a class for a few days and then they get moved I think that depends on the child and I think that I think that um we should consider the best interest of the child at all times and I do not think that moving kids out of a classroom where they have built relationships and had a certain teacher for a certain amount of time is appropriate but that's my perspective what length of time do you think is appropriate I mean I I don't know I don't I don't I don't have a do you have an option you'd like to add no I I would just like to share my perspective that I
252don't think that we should do things that's disruptive to Children I'm I'm I'm sorry if this if I appear to be like hostile right now but it's because this is like a huge problem in our school district and I know for a fact that no principal no teacher is going to move or reassign students because it's easy for them or convenient for them um they are doing that usually as a last resort because they have to because what is really not good for the learning of a child is to be in a class of for example 37 or 38 students right or if you're in kindergarten 29 or 30 students and then of course when it comes to what kids to reassign a lot of this problem especially with caps when it comes to maximum
253class sizes is students who enroll midy year because every year there's a a big enrollment right right in the beginning and there's a little bit of shuffling that happens right and then once the shuffling is figured out the things are pretty stable and then you get these bumps of enrollment throughout the year if I'm teaching halfway through the year and I get a new student right and if we have some caps in place my Ed secretary or my principal or whoever's assigning classes knows oh we can't assign this kid to this class because we're already at the maximum we want to assign them to this other class right because we have some guidelines in place my understanding is that is what's already happening when kids are enrolling they're not so can I provide maybe a
254little bit of clarification that I will say that is um I can speak about a that is happening at most of the sites like that's what the educational secretaries do they're like oh you know we're getting a new kid this teacher has 28 this one has 27 we're going to put him in the 27 class um but I also want to provide maybe a little bit of context because that actually did happen at my school and totally get is that we sit down and have conversations with all of the teachers so for example we hired an an additional third grade teacher so rather than their classes being at over 30 they were at like 20 um and it really helped level out those classrooms but we had conversations about which kids would go where and
255who to separate from whom and so it does happen it's not ideal but um that I know it it so it's like maybe that's the piece like reassign students so it to another classroom maybe so I want to put it in place and maybe this was my understanding of it is that when an additional teacher may be added to the grade level so I'm not going to like you lost three kids but I still have three more than you so I'm going to move one over to your classroom it's more like maybe when an additional teacher is added to the grade level at least that's my understanding I don't want to move students like so it happens every year kids go and they they come and for whatever reason sometimes it happens more in one
256classroom than another classroom um and it's Midway through the year and we get that 100 day influx of uh kids that come through so I don't want to move kids that have already been with a teacher for like half a year to another classroom but it's like maybe the caveat to that is is like when an additional teacher is added to the grade level then they're leveled up and I also I I would totally agree with that and like like I said like it says right here you're if you're leveling classes the only reason that would happen is if students are enrolling and somebody messed up and assigned them in the wrong place right or you have two classes over cap I guess and some when one class some drop right that could be like
257an option but something there has to be some special circumstances to cause this that is almost certainly triggered by students entering mid year there's nothing else that would cause this to happen well also I can just say you know from experience also if they don't show you know like so we tried we tried to do 28 28 28 and then out of one class 23 show so if I can just give some context looking at our 100th day number going off the ratios that are in this option currently we have zero kindergarten classes that go over this the maximum we have one first through third grade class that goes over the maximum this is districtwide we have one fourth through sixth grade that goes over the maximum and we have zero seventh and eighth grade
258that go over the maximums which I think also demonstrates that most of our principles are doing this are following these procedures but we need to have something written down some there needs to be some guidelines somewhere to structure that because if it's not structured then you know it kind of is just up to individual discretion which is not always the best thing in place also at speaking of like saying oh smaller class sizers is for adult convenience we need to you know not do what's best for the adults and do what's best for the students being in a classroom of let's say 30 first graders compared to random number 20 makes a huge difference more time for small group more 101 time the teacher more time to ensure that every child is getting those basic
259reading skills which we know is kind of lacking but smaller class sizes does benefit the adults but it benefits the students even more because the adults in the classroom already got their access to a free appropriate adequate public education is the kids in the classroom who was trying to receive the education not the teachers and I will add that this is one of the Bigg I agree this is one of the biggest drivers of turnover and there's nothing more impactful for a kid's learning than their teacher dipping mid year because they've been sitting on a 40 person class all year right okay let's take one more comment then we're going to move along um I I don't know maybe we are we allowed to amend options or yes that's what this discussion is about so
260maybe then because if I'm a teacher or someone that isn't sitting in this conversation and I'm reading this where it says reassign students to a different teacher by leveling class sizes the same grade level that doesn't that reads to me like oh you know I can do this any at any point in the year at any time I can just move kids around where there needs to be like a systematic when an additional teacher is added to the grade level or when um within the first so many days you know because we have 25 to one in each class but sometimes you know 25 show up in this class and 12 show up in this class so maybe we can amend that so it's a little bit clearer I'm for that I mean it's up
261to you all I think that's fair I have a side question um like this would go in and everything we come up with goes into the collective bargaining right but it doesn't go into policy so I guess like thinking when I think of how I am guided to do my job I always go back to policy first so do we just like need to as principles get into the habit of like always going to policy and collective bargaining or is there a way to marry the two um the collective bargaining agreement is a contract cont ract entered into by between the school district and the union so I mean yeah like it's not so policy supersedes the collective bargaining agreement so if the school board wanted to go and write or change policy that is
262in disagreement with our collective bargaining agreement um the the policy would supersede our agreement right so if you're checking two and there's a discrepancy policy wins state law federal law wins but it's just like the law right policy isn't going to tell you every single law you need to follow you need to be able if in applicable cases yeah you need to check the policy the the bargaining agreement and then also in some cases like state or federal law right it's like these are all things that are guidelines need to follow and in terms of marrying the two so some school districts have um what they would refer to as like an employee handbook that is like a 100 200 pages long like Phoenix Union High School District their their professional Agreements are like 200
263pages long and includes a lot of policy we last year and the year prior when we were like drafting ours um I think there were a lot of people that were like we really don't want this to be 200 pages long and so we chose to Omit a ton of policy from it that would have been reiterated to Omit a bunch of guidelines from it that would have been reiterated um and just have only our bargained language in there so that it's as short as possible and it's still sitting at like 25 pages is so I I think those there is a world where there is a handbook that includes the collective bargaining agreement but um those are very long and unwieldy and people I think were opposed to that when we discussed this pre
264previously but wait a minute when the board votes on this doesn't it become Pol District policy like when we did that whole thing of cont one interrupt it's a contract like a vendor contract almost so when we created that policy that says um teachers should get at least what three uninterrupted preps a week that wasn't added to board policy it's not board policy it's an it's a contract entered into between the school district and the Union right which the school district promises to uphold by signing the contract just like any other contract they would sign um and the implic of that is like you know they follow the contract Etc in places where push comes to sub the employer does not follow the contract you usually go to court over it is what like that
265that that's what the enforcement mechanism is it's not in policy it's a contract like you would have a contract with a vendor or a business or anything else so my question to you to all of you is as I'm looking at this and I'm thinking that's are those going to be like even Amy brought up you know we're not going to do the wording of it today but we will when we prioritize and we decide you know what we're going to do that's when if we need to reward we need to reward but boy that's that can be a lot of separate recommendations right there um I I think so one way we can structure that Dian is we can have this as a recommendation and then if we want to recommend like if someone
266wants to offer a recommendation that is this but with slightly a different language that would be a second recommendation right but I'm I'm putting this forward as One op option because it only makes sense together right or does it I mean is there I mean that's my question if someone like if someone like to propose a different option that omits or includes more language that's fine but yeah just because it's long doesn't mean it's it's all one thing I mean I see this as one option you know and then the district will within its budget capacity Implement acceptable Alternatives that may include but not limited to I kind of see these as different not the only one well yeah I'm sorry Daniel I'm so sorry um I am the only ele I should say Elementary
267School teacher speaking on small class sizes versus large class sizes last year I had three High need students at a capacity of I think I had 23 kids I was able as that one teacher to those 23 kids with those needs I was able to meet them where they needed versus this year with those same high need students I'm sitting at 30 and I'm not able to um as a classroom teacher I was just telling Daniel I think these numbers are real looking at it like this because then us as teachers aren't going to the principles complaining like well here I'm at 33 like I I don't really get to say anything because my Max is 34 so think those numbers are real what I'd like you to do because it's it's lengthy um and
268I'm not saying it's not good I'm I'm not judging you at all it's lengthy um and you will see the communication I will type it all out I would like for you yeah and I I'll type retype it but I'll add it to your the communication I'd like you all to really take some time to look it over um and if you you know take notes if you want to add if you think anything needs to be deleted or rewarded make sure you come prepared next time with um because we could spend hours just on on this especially the wording um and we can do that at the next meeting um after you've had time to really digest all this because it's quite a bit um now Daniel you said Ros was it Roosevelt or
269were all of I'm just curious for myself is the rest of that from Roosevelt too or is that what your team came up with okay okay so that's how they explain all of the numbers okay okay would anyone like to add any information about class size okay so it's 3:05 um I see Emily is here we didn't take a break we didn't do an afternoon break um let's do a 10-minute break okay and then we'll actually I don't think we're going to I don't know if we're going to finish or not we'll see let me think about it during break 10minute break so come back about e e e okay um I was able to go over with Emily during the break what we did today and then I'd like to be able to release
270her so she doesn't have to hang around here the rest of the time because I know what we're doing so is it okay if she reads what she's going to put in the communication and then um we actually tell her if it's okay and you know you have to agree with it anyway online so go ahead em Emily yeah just share yeah if you could share what your yeah oh wait a minute I want you to hold on sorry everyone I'm going to make a change okay I hope this doesn't offend any of you and if it does I can take it okay so let me know so Vanessa shared with me some information that she um researched about one of our issues and I want her to share it with you because I think
271after listening to you when we were developing our issues and listening to the stories I don't think we have to meet in a group to come up with options like I think that might be one that we might be able to say oh well that's what we wanted but I want to make sure okay so would you share what you shared with me about PTO days new teacher illness pay because we might be able to do that right now and come to you know come up with our maybe who knows I don't know and if not that's fine we'll do it next week and we'll put it in a group and we'll go through the process and then also I wanted to um clarify on the work committee for compression and compensation they're not making
272any decisions uh I think they're doing the work and then I think our understanding is we had 200,000 to put towards hot immediate compression but I mean I I think the process that is we'd communicate some of that back here and we'd say hey here's where we identified is there any kind of heartburn if not let's fix it so I just wanted to clarify Joel said I may not have been clear when I was discussing that committee work earlier um CEOs are already getting paid $35 an hour for two of them and so we said move forward because it's based on funding available funding and a an intent for people to want to do the work and if so they would get paid outside of their hour day for $35 an hour B want to
273follow up with you on that and then also on the PTO leave time I'm going fast because I gota leave at 3:30 um this was already a problem identified on the operational side before we even brought this up as an option here in this room and we had discovered through the transition of payroll Personnel that we have some highly inefficient processes in uh the system one of those things resulted in staff uh teaching staff certified teaching staff uh receiving a different type of pay for their very first paycheck as opposed to the 3 days being a full pay because that's something that we're able to do um so as a part of that and a part of those discussions we determined that there's a highly inefficient process going on when we're occuring some of the
274leave and then how we're occuring it uh it was causing us some angst so one of the things that we had already talked about and kind of thought this might be a good thing uh was pre front loading half of the leave uh based on how much leave whichever type you know it's by work group or FTE however you normally acrew your leave if you acrew five days a year if you acove 12 days a year whatever that is hours um we had talked about that it would be a lot easier for us to process it if we front loaded it uh like and and the thought that came up around that table was half and half so if you would normally acrew six days for the entire year of your contract you would get
275three days starting when you start work and then you get three days like January 1 and so that was something that we were already looking to try to implement in Phase to it will require a policy change so we were going to work through policy to try to make that happen it would uh absolutely help us on the operational end or you have one it's dead here is De um I just had a quick question about um but when people were work additional hours let's say summer school or they do extra training or something after school and they're paid extra do they earn leave time from that no so we only earn leave time from the contract hours okay so I don't know if that would be acceptable what I heard was that teachers uh
276especially new teachers who haven't had a cruel of a any type of uh PTO um don't have anything when they get started and I think that our process that we were already looking at may may help with that so I don't know that is a big interest on the district side to move to something uh more of that nature and it meets the requirements of prop 206 and moving it into a PTO Bank versus multiple Banks of leave to navigate one of the things that happened this year is because of change over in payroll staff they used to take the sick leave and then they'd move it into the personal leave and then now a person who has a crw thought well I'm sick I've got leave I'll take my leave and we had a
277bunch of docking happened at the beginning of the year that we had to kind of go back and reverse just the process itself is gangly and cumbersome we would like to make it not cumbersome easier for operations to navigate and easier for staff to understand what their leave box banks are and uh so anyways wanted to put that out there I didn't know D thought it might help us I know with our stories when we told our stories I don't remember who it was was talking about the new teachers and how when they miss school at the beginning they don't have any days so what she just explained that would take care of of that issue I don't know if it would take care of PTO though would it no would it so what I'm
278asking you is does that take care of our issue yeah I mean would be for next FAL year we go we figured out the rest of this year and put it in place we'd figured out the rest of this year go through the policy changes that are necessary that takes several readings with the board um and then it the intent would be to get it started kicked off for next school year we'd have to vet legal I mean there's a lot of work we need to do with it when it comes to the policy part of it um but the initial looks that we've done uh we feel that we have the skills and the power to make it happen so we think we can do it Daniel yeah I was just saying we want
279sick and leave together and to start with some amount of sick yeah yeah leave we' start with an amount of a PTO and and just like the and then the beginning of each year cool yeah and whatever you acred you'd have available yeah and there's a big thing that there's a mess in there because um uh hourly people should get hourly leave and salary people are should be getting daily because their contracts are are calculated daily so uh there could be some changes like that that we would communicate out uh if we had to move because what we've seen is that salary staff uh in the system are being calculated as hourly and that's causing another issue and problem for our system and for our payroll staff so we need daily calculated people to have
280leave that looks like daily like this is my day off and then uh or half day or full day and then hourly people who we have to keep track of in a much different way have hourly leave buckets um and we would articulate all of that and communicate that out to staff uh so they don't go oh my gosh I had 300 hours and now I have you know what however many days that is I don't do math in my head I do it on a calculator but I learned in accounting school Daniel did you want to say something Daniel no okay so what I'm asking you is do we want to negotiate that anymore and develop a recommendation a formal recommendation if it's already going to be accomplished I yeah I propose that we
281remove the option and then um just issue yeah and then just uh Vanessa if you can report rep back to us just on updates and whatever it is that you find out or where we're at in the process okay would you say it again but say issue uh can I propose that we remove the issue of the UniFi PTO new teacher illness new teacher well illness pay okay so let's come do a consensus vote thumbs up if you agree with that okay okay so um that would be in the minutes too Emily that would go in the minutes I get leave a good inad of hurricane GL thank you guys thank you okay we'll have Emily when um she's ready you can be filling out your we are going to end here shortly you can
282be filling out your evaluation right now that'll be your ticket out but I don't want you to leave yet because Emily's going to share and we're going to do no we're going to do a temperature check and we're going to discuss the agenda for the next meeting and just to remember after Emily shares with you um what she's going to put in the communication update for the kraton connection make sure um if you if there are any changes or anything you let her know by Friday next Friday yeah okay Emily so so started out with representatives from Valley Schools joined to discuss benefit options in the categories of and please excuse my typos I'm typing quickly U medical dental vision EAP life insurance short-term disability flexible spending and wellness the meet and confer team approved
283the benefits options to go forward for approval by the kraton governing board for the 2025 2026 school year you can find the approved list of benefits attached below so I have a a list from Joel attached to the meet and confer information for the Craton connection yep thank you yep not approved yet um Miss Vanessa Shapiro presented the budget realities and current climate with concern to enrollment Decline and federal freeze impacts the group discuss the student out comes Focus governance goals and guardrails and then the team then used the IBN process to discuss to start discussing options the issues discussed are as follows teacher workload balance High need students longevity pay raises for everyone parental leave class size PTO days new teacher illness pay and then I Hadad due to time the following topics were
284not discussed but are still on the table for future discussion and that's employee group compensation internal advance ment promotion special education workload and salary Advanced education level that the employee group compensation will also be discussed in the upcoming compensation and impression committee yeah Emily I was going to add well we're actually removing that one altogether because it's living in that committee so it won't be one of our options which one the compensation groups one got it with the LPN yeah yep okay so this will not be on there it's being referred to the compensation compression committee hold on I don't know what I just did create a different paragraph then yeah employee group compensation B lot is being referred to the compensation compensation committee compensation compression committee and we'll report back to M confer with
285Rec their analysis okay and then so let me get that off here and then I have uh the group came to consensus to eliminate extra pay for translation outside of the workday the team also voted to remove can we explain that why they why it was eliminated because it went to the attorneys and it was determined that it's already happening essentially we just need to streamline it one is that we're able to provide the extra pay yes and the second is that um we're going to make sure that that's applied equally yes across sites based on their budget funding capacity yes maybe say that to the mic Ivon wasn't here for that and I think that's important for the world to hear as well well if he missed it twice do you guys have a
286mic over there oh Eve maybe you can pass a mic down so that Joel can no no have have mic soft I'm holding it for Joel and that's so like me would you like me to hold it I'm gonna hand this to you to say that one more time while I write it down the issue was eliminated about who because of uh because we it is it was vetted through the lawyer that it is an option already available for employee groups to receive the translation funding eliminated du to attorney recommendation that it was vetted vetted yeah vetted through the attorney um isue was illuminated because and that is it is an option of currently available based on site funding options site funding options then you want to assure that all Sites you said something about
287rece that or able to do that or something Ivon will talk to them yeah so we'll make sure that it's that will be communicated yeah to be to the changes um okay I'm gonna I'm going to rework that and we'll be at to sites okay I'm gonna uh fix this sentence structure y got it thank you for that context um and then the last part the team also voted to remove the PTO sick Lea because it's already being addressed to buy business services and then I have uh the changes for the 2026 school year will be communicated to staff so I'll I'll re reformat this uh paragraph to show the why and the it's being communicated or will be communicated make sure you look at that communication when she sends it out to you for
288your approval Dorothy will catch all your typos should there be any I listen you're not the only [Laughter] one okay thank you okay I appreciate you okay let's do a temperature check um right here how did we do today any comments how are you feeling any concerns that we need to address for the next meeting just checking in um I think it is mildly concerning that a lot of people left and we should all try our best to not to to be here the full time because I really am going to be very frustrated if people who left then come back in another session and say I don't like this thing or I'm frustrated about that thing when they were not here to be part of the process and developing the options or especially once
289we start getting consensus on things because I if we if we give consensus on something and it's you know consented to and someone shows up and it's like I don't like that then if um we need alternates make sure the teams have alternates I appreciate that um yeah I'll Echo that too and then Daniel will you just keep us updated on the reduction en Force document yeah give me like two hours oh great it sounds like he's gonna send it out on the chat yeah I'm gonna send because we talked earlier about some reduction en Force guidelines I'm going to send something in the Google Chat it's not for anything it is just for everyone to review of some sample reduction en Force guidelines that we could use so that everyone next time when we
290come to bargaining that we can uh be on the same page about some stuff any other comments okay so I was just going to remark um for next year Daniel one of the things that Kelly and I can do when we schedule dates is to kind of pay to look at what we have on that Cina calendar because I think that was we did yeah but you know things change so we'll just we'll do whatever we can to to make sure that we're trying to avoid because I think that's a big piece of that so our apologies for that oversight did I get everyone's card if not oh there's some over there okay um okay so next meeting we will finish developing options and I believe we only have one let's see we have the
291employee group compensation special education workload um and salary Advanced education level so we will right away start with that and then we will um look at our wording on our options we'll go through all of the options and see if we want to adjust any of the wording on them I think um hopefully we'll have some more budget information and then look at prioritizing our options and um finalize our [Music] options and then I don't know where we're going to fit but we are maybe next meeting I have to think about it we really do need to look at guard rail number one and go through our options and determine how we're going to prove that that option really truly does um is going to improve student achievement and maybe we'll do that before we
292do the finalizing of the wording because if we can't if we don't think we can really defend that we may not want to have it as an option okay all of them so we're going to have to really and you might want to look at those again at home and kind of in your mind say we're not going to be able to really justify this option um because we need to do that he wanted to share something no I'm just kidding um in in in regard to that I think one of the things that um Vanessa and Diane and I were talking about is that if you can think about the goals and the guard bills in terms of measurable outcomes uh or inputs that would show that we're meeting sofg goals and guardrails based
293on our recommendation so think in terms of a smart goal or something that's connected to the data um that I think will go a long way to help support what we're recommending moving forward to the board just a suggestion okay everyone well thank you again for your participation um we always appreciate you and what you're doing for the district and I look forward to seeing you in what two more weeks what's the next date 26th February 26 enjoy your time