Meet and Confer - January 22, 2025 Part 1

001e e e good morning everyone welcome to another day of IBN Happy New Year hope everyone had a wonderful holiday so if you could take a few minutes to look at the agenda for today we have it posted up there as well and if you didn't sign in please make sure you sign in and we have the name tags over there don't if we don't I want to get the name tags so as you can see we're going to have a funfilled day we have um quite a few items on our agenda that hopefully we will get through I think we will so I wanted to review um the live streaming um points that we came up with at the last minute so just make sure that we assume that the mic microphones are on

002at all times um when talking speak directly into the microphone do not use specific names when sharing and microphones as you know will not be on during small groups or breaks and lunch so our objectives today are posted build relationships among all stakeholders review and revise Norms to be applied to IBN process review the IBN process skills we're going to have an update on finance Schoolboard and HR apply IBN process skills to today we're to our topics our issues our issues toopics by developing stories interest and framing interest statements so that's what we're going to do today um we're going to determine talking points to share out to stakeholders develop our agenda for the next meeting and complete the evaluation sure I didn't know oh you have so our outcomes for today applying the IBN

003process we will reach a desired and Lasting result reach agreements effectively and fairly and sustain relationships so we're going to do a get to know activity and as you know i' like to mix you up so if everyone can get up we're going to it alphabetically by the first middle name initial so whatever your middle name is the first initial we'll start over here with a and go around now you can when they all get seated you can first welcome back so you're here oh I'm so happy we need your voice sorry I'm what's your middle name melave name James okay now that we're seated Let's uh I'd like to hear your middle names let's hear your middle names let's start with Ariel what's your middle name that you just made up okay what what

004was it CL Clark okay oh okay what is it oh I love it okay great okay yes okay of for me for a long time we didn't hear you what was it I'm not saying it again lidio lioo did I say it right I'm not saying it again okay L I like it dthy what is it Louise okay okay can we get more8 Amy love it oh okay Joel do you want to share your middle name John okay great mine's Marie Dian Marie okay speaking of names we have a new member well not really a member um participant yeah resource for us do you want to introduce Joel uh we'd like to welcome Dominic Ruth Dominic uh started in January on the 6th uh he is our new director Finance so if you remember the

005support that we had with um Dina uh he's in that position in that role uh so welcome we're glad to have them here uh we also had a couple of changes one one change in the makeup of the team I know I think the um some of the reps are aware of this but uh Yolanda and R has had to step down from participating in the meet and confer process this year uh so lordis is now going to be the elevated from alternate to actual um Person of Interest I guess I don't no uh participant um the the only other thing to add I think to that before I get to my stuff is that a reminder that uh the cameras are pretty high definition so if your U laptop is facing one of the

006cameras just to be aware of what you have on your screen okay good point okay should have known that one okay so our evaluations boy I'll tell you um I sure appreciate the comments and you were very thorough and like I said before those evaluations help guide me and that's really why some of the decisions were made today when I read the feedback so our question number one was do you feel the introduction to the IBN process skills PowerPoint that you received prior to our first meeting assisted to a better understanding of the process skills if not what improvements should be made for the future use um some by the way if you just answered yes or no I just put a number of how many people just answered with no comments so the first

007one said yes I love the PowerPoint then four people just wrote yes um the rest are comments which I'll read as a new member to this committee going off topic and less talking between people from the standpoint of observance I feel like side conversations deterred from staying focused all in all I did enjoy the process and am feeling more comfortable to contribute I just want to say a couple words about that so as you can see um if you were one of those people that were having side conversations it does affect other people's um learning and participation so please try to be um observant of that throughout the process today um someone else wrote yes I appreciate having the iband process skills ahead of time going over them while going through the process was helpful

008yes helpful for newbies and good review for returning members yes thank you it was a good Refresher before our first meeting sort of not sure how to improve maybe some shoulder partner work for engagement between members so we can check for understanding and that was the one that I sent to you before we started so we would not have been able to have those side conversations because you received it like a week early to try to refresh your memory question two did you feel comfortable expressing SE your input today if not what suggestions do you have for better communication five of you said yes you felt comfortable um someone wrote yes thank you yes the mic took some getting used to but I feel comfortable expressing myself yes I felt comfortable but would like to

009be more observant so I can contribute more yes I do not have any concerns with speaking up yes until the mics died please charge them um yes I felt comfortable I'm not sure about others question three were you pleased with our accomplishments today if not what improvements do you recommend I struggled with the slow pace of the process but I know that is necessary when on boarding new members of the team um someone wrote no during the entire interest section I thought it was a huge waste of time I will start taking smoke breaks if this keeps happening we didn't process or use the right language for some reason so again I appreciate that um I would like I would have liked to finish one of the items the microphones I felt impeded impeded the

010flow of process however the live streaming made us more mindful of our words myself included I am pleased with what we accomplished looking forward to the next meeting I am pleased with our accomplishments I think the next meeting will be more productive because the new people now have experienced the process thank you I think things can be streamlined a bit more I feel the discussion on topics or IBN calls it issues we call it issues or topics um could have gone a bit faster yes I think our actions and discussions were beneficial yes it always takes longer than we anticipate but I'm happy with all that we were able to get done it felt like it moved slow at times but I'm not sure how to fix that so the thing about interests it's supposed

011to take time because we want everyone to be able to give their feedback and we want that discussion because if we really don't know what what is at the heart of it then it's hard to come to really consensus with um our options when we get to that um there were two more comments I feel pleased with what was accomplished in the group did a good job staying on task and then there was just another yes so thank you again I appreciate you taking the time I especially love the comments it guides me like I said so today there's only two questions today so I streamlined the questions from 3: to two so more people would complete the evaluation and take the time to write some comments okay so let's move on and we have

012some updates from finance and HR which really isn't Joel's not really talking about HR but I put HR because you're in charge of HR that's right my job is my identity uh all right so uh I wanted to remind you that um in fact I'm G to go ahead and share my screen um I think those are just going to keep falling I don't know can you um exit from that for some reason it's not just a she doesn't have to yeah but H oh yeah if you have better tape so I'm having issues with connecting I think there's a there's a issue with the Dell right now so um would you mind bringing up the calendar item for today I was just getting spinning it's not connecting vibes from Air parrot Windows base so

013you have to make sure this okay yeah no worries a couple seconds it should be on the calendar invite it's just a link you might have to take off air PA and re enable it again it's g a hard time unfortunately yeah I've had to reboot my computer I don't want to spend the time to do that though okay so if you could help me's fine let's try one more time [Music] 835 on that yeah it's G yeah I'm just gonna have to reboot I think go ahead and no it's the go to your calendar Google calendar invite [Music] you don't have it all right well we'll just talk through this we'll be okay um oh I got it you've got yeah oh yeah you've got it thank you all right while we're waiting uh

014for that to come up um couple of things uh Emily is not able to join us uh at the time that we had set up for her so she's going to share a template for the communication that we can complete together and then we'll share that with her so that we don't lose that part of the process for today um as you look at the calendar invitation um adrianne's brought it up right there so uh we have links to the meet and conferred share folder um again look at the date for January 22nd there's some information in there uh we're going to spend some time talking about the governing board guiding principles as well as uh the update document so um if you could open the governing board principles for me that would be great

015so at the governing board meeting last week the governing board members uh with our two newly seated members um Mr Jones and Miss Marquez uh took some time to review what the direction would be for the meet and confer team as they look forward to approving the agreement uh when we get to that point at the end of this process uh so there are a couple of things that Chang not too much the first visual uh difference is you'll notice that they elevated alignment with student outcome Focus governance goals to be the first bullet that is intentional um that that is uh again reinforcing our commitment as a district to student outcomes focused governance uh and that all of the work that we do will need to be aligned to student outcome focused governance principles

016the guardrails and the goals that are in place as well as um as we review the standards that we've established for each recommendation that were very intentional in how does our recommendation align not only to doent not come Focus governance but also how are we going to make sure that those uh metrics will be available to show that as a matter of fact this particular um recommendation has had an impact on student learning because that's really the criteria that the governing board is going to look at as they look at our recommendations um sustainable salary for all staff and sustainable health care benefits and revenue generation objects or options are not new those are continued from last year the final bullet is to adhere to budgetary recommendations um Vanessa will share a little bit more

017about that in her conversation but we're really looking at a uh an interesting time in Arizona school funding uh some of you might be aware that there is at least one District that's been put into receivership for well there too yes U the other one just came out yesterday right okay Isaac and cartright Isaac already went they already are under receivership that was that was decided what was it last last week sometime yeah so um I think it's a testament to kraton district and how we deal with our finances that we're pretty stable in our budget and I don't want to steal Vanessa thunder so I'm going to let her talk about that um and have that conversation with you about that so those are the main guiding principles does anyone have any questions or

018any uh other information you like on this James so you use the phrase did you the button yeah then you have to talk into it for the principles does that mean these are numbered now no I what I what I meant by elevated was that it used to be toward the bottom of the list and now it's at the top of the list and that's a signal that we really need to be intentional in the work that we do so they're not sequentially ordered but it is just a visual that this is really important to the governing board and they want to make sure that that's reinforced okay now it seems to be working any other uh questions okay um if you could go back and open the meet and confer update document please all

019right so on this document you have several things that were requested um there is a link to information about contracted employees uh I what I would encourage you is to take a look at that as we're looking at compensation um if you would link uh click that link real quick and I can just kind of Orient you to what you're looking at uh if you would like additional information we can certainly do that but what this view gives you is sort of what our budgeted amounts are for agencies by role right so how much are we spending with agencies on an average per individual for school psychologist or general education teacher then what we decided was to break down what how that compares because really I think the interest from what I understand as part

020of the interest is are we overspending are we outsized in our spending for contracted employees obviously we have a need to hire contract employees so there's not much space we can't not have school psychologists we can't not have classroom teachers uh but we have to recognize that it does come at a cost so that when we don't have individuals applying for those positions and we do rely on contract employees what is the budgetary impact um so if you kind of look you can you can explore this we're not going to spend time right now doing that that would be part of your interest and your information as you're talking about compensation um and you do have links on that I'm sorry the red means that we are that is it how much the difference is

021between what we have as an average and what the agencies have as an average right so if it's black that means that we're we're coming to the good right so for instance for occupational therapists and speech pathologists we pay more than what we're paying for contractors average if it's red we're paying more for the agencies by that amount as an average so then if you could go back to the first tab on that page uh 100th day Home Room census uh the next Link at the bottom there CL yep class breakdown for 100th day whoops that's at the bottom of that yeah yeah it just didn't show up on the screen as the way it was positioned but that it's 37 I think represented for contractors for special education and 10 for Janet all right

022so uh if you could scroll to where it says the date uh January 17th so you have to go a little further whoops all right all right so this document it's now looking at 100th day uh and I adjusted the colors that was a request to make sure that the colors were aligned to what the key says so if you look at this part of the document uh as you scroll down this is by grade level this is as of last Friday which is our 100th day of enrollment because that's a significant day in the finance World um each site what they class sizes are per classroom and then you can see how you know if it's green that's 25 or below anything above 25 is colored and gradiated and then the totals are to

023the side here so this is this is actually 40th Day uh I'll adjust that so you can see a little bit better so just as a side by-side comparison so where were we on Friday of last week and where were we in October for the 40th Day and have there been changes in the amount so one thing to point out is that we had seven classrooms that were above 35 this time we had four so it's you know obviously not necessarily where we want to be but just so you can kind of see a trend that could be attributed to how principles changed because there were some staffing members that were added and so that changed some of the calculations it also could be attributed to loss of enrollment of of Oh apartment complex that

024was sold and well and anecdotally I talked to a principal who has had families communicate that they're going to be leaving because they're uncertain about the future with immigration um so that I think will also impact if you were around for SP sp1070 you know that was a a big impact on the population that we serve or part of the population that we serve in the district so um so that is for you to kind of look at and I don't have the comparison um right here but I do have that information and I can get it for you later it just we just got this together Tuesday because Friday was the 100th day and the Monday was a holiday so Tuesday was when you s and was working on those in those numbers for

025um Dr uh dupin and Mr pero so all right yes just so you're aware like I'm looking at our our numbers and we're off by like about 15 20 kids from right so did you go down and look for sped yeah I'm all the way down at the bottom we're over 600 we're at 607 right so there are I need to do a deeper dive in L Linda specifically because what I had from numbers comes from the teacher rosters and the report that Yen was using was a slightly different report and some if you click inactive or active then that can change the numbers as well I was like yeah it's not quite right okay thank you so it's just we have to clean it up you know I I just felt like this it

026was important to get this to you as quickly as possible so that you would have um you know have that to start the conversation because there are definitely some things that are part of that okay so take a look at that as you're as you're going through your conversations and telling the stories developing the interest um the only other thing that I wanted to update uh Vanessa will talk a little bit more about insurance but we will be bringing some more information where did Vanessa go oh all right um we have uh information that our increase in insurance will be around 5.14% um which is lower than most surrounding districts and most providers we have not had an increase insurance for the last two years for uh medical health insurance um most increases are in

027the 7 to 8% range so we feel like five 5.14% is not a bad place to be um I know that we are and Vanessa will talk about this about how um we budgeted to make sure that that's still a benefit to the district that employees won't have to cover for themselves so we're not we're not recommending a cost sharing she can talk about that later um Health yeah and then the other areas um we have Jameson from Brown and Brown coming at the next meeting he is the actuary that does all of the numbers for the um insurance rates we'll be talking a little bit more about where the increase comes from um we're also going to be giving information on some additional products that might be available to us at employee cost but

028optional so for instance pet insurance could be something that employees could opt into um also uh identity protection coverage uh and then there's another level of dental insurance available through Delta that has more benefit for orthodontia for adults and for children uh that would be again at an increased cost to employees because the district will cover what we cover and then anything beyond that would be something that the employee would elect but we'll talk more about that at the next meeting also heads up that EDS if you're on the Eds product EDS is no longer going to be providing insurance in Arizona so they are not going to be an option Valley Schools is recommending that we look at Sigma uh that's part of the Valley Schools group there's a slight increase in cost but

029we pay that cost as a district because we pay the Eds benefit right so that still will be within the possibility of budget um and sigma has some positives one is that it's state or it's a it's across the country so EDS I know was limited because sometimes if you outside of the state and you need Dental Care you might not have coverage or if you have a child that was in EES and they were at College back east then they weren't able to necessarily get the coverage so there are some benefits to moving to Sigma um but we'll talk about that more in our next meeting so any any other questions before I turn back over to Vanessa or turn over to Vanessa all right oh and some of the I'm sorry uh some

030of the places where there isn't information yet so uh parental leave information we're reaching out because we know that I think there's at least one other District that that's doing that currently so we wanted more information from them I believe it's toison is that right tuon okay um so we're we're Gathering more information about that um we also for the CEO position we have some information from the attorney but we wanted to make sure that we have all the information before we bring that back to the group and then we're back to vessa so I couldn't share it in the file so I emailed it yeah to you I'm so sorry because I tried to drop it into our file and it it it wasn't there can we get it on that computer or should

031I connect mine connect my computer okay I go to tell I kind of like jamming on this sorry I know where I'm film but this mic stand is just enticing I let's see and someone should hold this for me hey Ariel could you hold that for me for a second Shar karaoke okay got it that's the only way I lately just go around and find out everybody's favorite karaoke song that they do I don't know Spice Girls sour dough no it's ban call been up 4:0 okay okay so we're got a check on um a point of information about when things are shared uh and where I've shared them and so I obviously have shared information uh with our governing board but in executive session and sometimes there's some conflict about when information can be

032shared and how um so I've gone ahead and um I'm pausing that right now Joel is checking on that just to to make sure so I want to go ahead and just talk about some of the things without the information piece that we'll be discussing when it comes to Budget Building for FY 2526 we've talked about some of this previously in this group I've been talking about it in some committee groups I've definitely been talking about it to the governing board for the last year um as uh Joel had mentioned the the big takeaway from what's going on with Isaac and I think he mentioned cartright that's not true it's analou analou yeah it's analou School District there were four districts in receiver or not in potential danger last year Isaac analou Santa Cruz and

033I don't remember the fourth one I apologize two of those districts were able to make the changes that they needed to to get out of danger and not be potentially going into receivership um and then anal op and Isaac were not able to do that now analou I think they did an update and said that they feel like their Administration will have the ability to um pull themselves out of it they did not have confidence on Isaac which is why uh they went ahead and put them in receivership I did go back and take a look at Isaac because I just was curious you know sometimes those things happen Esser came Esser was a huge impact a lot of people didn't know how to deal with the the inflow of money um didn't have good

034plans that's why we have many districts around the valley right now that are laying off staff because they paid for a bunch of Staff with Esther and didn't have a good Exit Plan um Mesa I don't know I know am was saying there was some others um oh boy there it goes yeah yeah I mean it it's hard man that was a that was a brand new thing none of us knew how to deal with it some of us dealt with it one way it's a it's like rolling the dice to see are you going to make the right choice when you're in a situation of unknown information we didn't know how much we were getting we didn't know how long it was going to last so I think we just got lucky uh with

035good planners that you know in several districts that I'm aware of they they made some really good planning in that and again luck of the draw sometimes you make a good one or a bad one kraton made some really good decisions gave us that flexibility last year to bring some good dollars to the table and uh kind of spin that down a little bit um as we're navigating through sunsetting the Esser dollars and then moving into what is going to be our our solid Budget moving forward in declining enrollment so declining enrollment you hear it over and over and I think that's one of those things that when you hear it so many times you just start not understanding how important it is you kind of oh yeah yeah we know we know declining enrollment

036we know um the information I just got approved to Sharon I'm going to try to turn it back on again but um we're looking at in the next 10 years losing another thousand kids we went from almost 6,000 kids to right now we're about 4500 kids it's been impactful and I've done some research on how impactful it was to our staffing what carried us along a little bit and kind of pulled it out a bit for us to maintain Staffing levels was the SR dollars um so as we're talking about declin enrollment and we're talking about fiscal respons ibility a part of that is ensuring that you have the dollars to move forward what that's called in school Finance is fund balance policy a fund balance Reserve policy um when I got here and when

037I spoke with you guys last year I said oh wow we don't have trigger language we don't have a reserve policy um there are several things that I felt that we needed to have in order to move forward so everything is transparent I don't like it being a guest when I walk in here and say okay guys I'm GNA do my best and try to bring you some money and you guys are like well where is she getting this money and how is she getting this money what makes up this money how does it work I have 20-some years in school Finance I don't know that I can bring all of that information to you guys in a couple of meet and confer sessions but what I can do is put pieces and policies in

038place that make it very transparent to our governing board to our group and to our community how our finances are being managed and what the policies are around them so in our uh fiscal stewardship committee we've talked about what fund balance policies are good for uh one of the really good things it's for is to keep you out of receivership when I looked at Isaac in 2016 they had no fund balance Reserve policy at all thank you um so they've been operating without one and we see where it got them what we talked about was how much do you need in a fund balance Reserve policy what that means is this is the dollars we're going to hold back each year that we're not going to spend spend we're going to carry these dollars forward

039you have to have a mechanism in determining what those dollars are and how you calculate it so that's what we've been doing in that fiscal stewardship committee I'm hoping at our next committee um if we can go back to that first page instead of that one oh it's just moving on its own that one thank you um is the percentage and and how do you get to that so we talked about a couple of different percentages and how you calculate it one of the easiest most clear transparent way that I've seen used in multiple places very effectively is a percentage of the previous year's expenditures so I can find out that information by the time we come to meet and confer other pieces of information I don't know uh I have to plan a budget

040so far in advance of having all of the information and knowledge of what I need to create dollars right now I've when I share this today it's so early I don't even start solidifying numbers until start in February we have to pass 100 day 100 day is a big marker for when it uh School Finance dollars um so I just want to go ahead and and kind of move into it talk about the fund balance policy Reserve kind of talk about what impacts it and and where we're headed with it and then um the biggest impact is decline enrollment so you can kind of see that the state since fy21 that's the per pupil base level funding we get other dollars if you understand how uh School Finance works because I know we have some

041new staff it is on its basic level it is your ADM which is your average daily membership so your average daily membership is not your enrollment it's how many kids make it the first 100 days of school so if they make it the first 100 days of school they're 1M and you get credit for that number if you have another kid only make it 50 days it's a 1.5 ADM if you have another kid make it 50 days I got a two ADM for three students that I had to educate so even though they were here for 50 days I still had to turn on the lights they still had to have a desk they still had to have instruction materials they still had to have a teacher but I don't get full funding for

042those two students that only came half the year so you can see how ADM and trying to collect as much ADM as you can is important and you can see the trend we've been declining for a long time um I will get the new number for fy2 I apologize there should be an aster on it that's my projected number that's a number that I think we're going to hit for 100th day I did take a look at what our preliminary numbers were for ADM and we are at 4461 so I'm like oh pretty good pretty close what that means is that when I do my revised budget our numbers aren't going to change too too much because I'll be pretty close to that we have demographers we have economists we have experts around the state

043we have Realtors we have a ton of people that we utilize uh to determine what's going to happen in the future of Arizona birth rates are a big impact um construction uh having higher housing costs is causing slowdowns for people wanting to move here I think we all know the information of why we're getting less and less students I know the governor talked about in her State of the State trying to have an impact on housing costs we'll see where she gets with that um so there's a lot of elements and uh the experts are saying decline for the next 10 years and we'll probably decline another thousand students yes um just quick question are we able to also look at staff retention for those years like is there a way to look at how

044many staff stayed to kind of just correlate as well with the declining enrollment like is that something we can look at I'm not sure I mean we can look at how many people have stayed yeah retention over years for sure yeah um I think last time I checked it was 51% yeah I had to calculate it for some of my budget things but it's real recent not over years how many years do you want okay yeah and are you wanting since Co or maybe right before covid I would probably recommend 201819 being your first start of pulling the data yes thank you thank you because I I get used to doing that and I forget not everybody does that because I have other info pieces that have come out um when you see an FY

045in a year that is the second part of the year so if you see an FY 25 that is for FY 20242 for the fiscal school year yeah so I had a question um I I can't find my numbers right now I don't know where I put them but last meeting I looked over our budget reports going back to about 2017 and I saw that even though we were declining students year after year after year after year our budget was going up and usually a little bit more than just like the 2% inflation increase um so can you explain like why even though we've been declining students like why our overall budget I mean apart from like I obviously I'm not including eser money with this why overall budget has been steadily increasing for the

046last few years the last few years they've had oh go ahead arel that's why our budget has no not our expenditures but like the our budget like the amount of money we're the number of dollars in the budget so we're going like if we had 31 million in FY 23 we had 32 million in FY 24 so we do get the 2% inflation I'll talk about that in a minute and you can see where the base funding levels go up that's typically the 2% that you're seeing there um there have been multiple years right before and right after covid that the legislature has put additional dollars into our budgets through other mechanisms and so one year we had 1.3 it's part of the onetime dollars that I offered last year uh we had a 1.3

047influx of monies from the governor specifically so we do have additional dollars that come in that are just very iffy uh there's no way to count on them and there's no way to know when they're coming or when they're going uh so they're not really good dollars to try to plan Futures with um but they are good dollars to get you through and then pay out for good one-time things um and so that's where I would anticipate without doing a deep dive into it is that where you see a lot of the budget increased dollars is that the legislature each year does try um we had the 20 and 20 so that did an influx into the budget they put aside uh some for that um so there's multiple ways that they try to add

048additional funding to education and when you have that happening it looks good if you've been in education long enough you know that sometimes they take away dollars in the middle of the year it's another reason it's a risk it's a reason why you kind of have to navigate with having a cushion in your savings account right you you want to make sure that you have savings and that's that fund balance Reserve so you can see the um the increase in per pupil spending which has been kind of netting against the decrease we had years where the decreases were a lot faster um I believe 197 was our projected uh decreases I've I've slowed that down I'm at 188 because I'm looking at Trends and I believe that our decline has slowed it'll still decline it's

049just not declining as much so those are your basic budget elements we get per pupil spending that's that base level funding it's goes times that ADM that gives us a base level budget we also get additional dollars for weighted student counts weighted student counts are those students that have special needs so when your special needs population changes you do get additional dollars for that you get additional dollars for K3 funding uh for your K3 student so you get a little bit of increased funding uh for that so depending on the the demographics if your sped population is going up your budget bottom line budget will tend to go up also not enough to cover the needs of those students uh just so you know those weighted counts are based on I think 1982 formulas for

050sped students uh they tried to go after that and then covid happened we tried to get back to it and then prop one two3 got distracting uh we're constantly going back to the legislature and saying please please please fix this problem with fed students um they never give you enough dollars for what you're putting out to educate okay so these are factors that do affect the budget um inflation I want to talk about that one um because when you see I have this chart I'll come back to it this is a chart that I use for Budget Building this is taking from the budget what I feel is going to come in extra and what's going to go out these are the parts of that um so inflation right now they've made some changes to

051try to affect inflation because inflation was going crazy like we had at one point in Arizona a 19% inflation by law we still only get a 2% inflation increase in our funding doesn't matter last year I had a 10% increase in utilities 10% it was dramatic I'm usually typically looking at one to two% increases so that was a big factor that affected our budget last year um the legislature has made made a law that says we get 2% unless unless it's less than and then we get the less than number just so you know love it um me predicting inflation this far ahead of the game is is just nothing honestly it's not uh I just put it on there so you can kind of talk about it yes um you mentioned utilities I was

052just wondering if the new solar panels that were put in on all the schools parking lots is going to affect our utility yes bring us back some more money absolutely absolutely which is one of the reasons why we did that we are constantly looking for energy efficient projects that will in turn provide a savings a cost savings but those cost savings are overtime so it's not like we immediately start seeing the savings uh we do have um we will be taking to the governing board I think in February a projected cost savings number so they're pulling those calculations together right now and taking into account some of the other projects like h AC projects that we're doing and then sorry one follow question what was that funding from Esser what was left over from Esser

053for the solar no oh that that it came from uh remaining Bond dollars from our 2016 Bond and will be paid for in and full with our recently pass Bond yes that was a big feature in passing our bond was that we were doing a a large solar project uh that hopefully we'll and and ver has done um uh present ations to the board that gave some of those I just don't have those numbers handy but we can bring those back to you guys I can look up some of those presentations and we'll have some new information so big deal with the inflation is that I won't get 2% if we're under so that'll take away from what I typically plan in the budget that's going to be a Delta average daily membership we talked

054about that I've slowed it so when my projection so that FY 25 projection I was 580m off so I'm feeling good about the number it's starting to I'm seeing tracking I pull that from history um and I have some mechanisms how I decide that number so because we came so close this year I feel like my process is sound so I'll continue to use the process and and I'm looking at that declining enrollment uh prop 206 we're not really getting impacted by that like some districts because we're at 1668 is our our current um very lowest pay and that um I I don't I got to double check that if that was 1516 that I was projecting for January of 2026 or if I have the January 25 number in there they base that off

055of inflation so that's how that number gets created again these are very very early numbers I will solidify them as I get closer to proposing a budget really cool this year asrs we have a decrease from the 12.27 last year we have a 0.02 decrease it saved A7 ,000 this year we have a 2.7 decrease and I'll I think it's like 12,000 it's on my screen I'll show you federal funds and grant opportunities we continue to look for those but it's very peoplehey uh when you don't have people available um that one's tough because you have to have time to go out and find them and manage them um so a lot of times we try to look for grant opportunities that maybe would fund a person to manage the grant that's one of your

056best successful ways to do that we just got a weifa grant which is helping us to do a lot of projects at lomalinda we got um EV bus grants that allows us to get energy efficient uh electric vehicle buses which works really well in a school district that has a smaller um mileage the bigger districts can't do it but when you have a con you know a contained District like ours it makes total sense so um fantastic thank you thank you neighbor um directly responsible for us getting very successful grants um the esa program that's the thing they're fighting about right now I don't know I think parents parents deserve choice but at the same time I work in public schools but I had uh two go to public and one go to Charter parents

057deserve Choice it needs to be fiscally responsible though that's all so they're working on it they'll figure it out eventually Governor's proposed budget it came out honestly I haven't had a chance to really dig through it it's nothing more than what she was talking about um um she's on the prop uh one 123 bandwagon okay it expires in 2025 but it's um actually calculated into the general budget limit which means we're going to get the money no matter what what they're fighting about is where does the money come from the money existing uh with the voter approved initiative it came from State trust land profits um so that's that's a big political one they keep getting on the news it's going to be teacher pay um that's how much we get 300,000 out of a

058$32 million budget it's not the biggest topic on my radar right now but it is uh very um politicized uh some of the other districts are getting millions of dollars from that U prop 123 most districts are getting in the hundreds of thousands yeah um I I had a question about the solar panels and the energy stuff sorry what is the mechan M by which we're making or saving money off of that are we selling it power back to the city or yes okay cool I'd have to pull the presentation and not go into the details I don't all that I just wanted to know if that's what we're that's typically how those projects work you sell back and then you get a savings on the the energy that you're using the A's continuing to

059be a factor the governor mentioned it oh sorry go ahead yes yep it's in there the AAL makes us uh nervous um because it's impactful if it were to ever go wrong has it gone wrong well not yet um if it were to go wrong it would take $7 million is out of our budget immediately probably mid year I'm not sure how you deal with that there's not enough paper to stop using um there's not enough pencils to stop buying 85 to 90% of a operating budget which this would affect is salaries so the only way and benefits the only way that you would um be able to deal with a $7 million cut is to cut staff literally the only way so each year the legislature has to override what that is it's a

060constitutional limit of money and so the budgets that they assign us are more than the Constitutional limit so they have to get together and say oh okay we gave you a budget through a budget formula process but it is in excess of our constitutional limit of what we're supposed to be spending and so they then have to get together and say yes go ahead and give the schools their budgets um it's terrifying because they fight and that legislature uh changes over and they have different philosophies but I think every every one of them recognizes how impactful and harmful that would be to our students and our kids so I just hope I don't know at least to those Charter kids that 35% of them own a piece of um okay sorry I'm not saying anything

061is not public record okay health insurance this year we uh Joel had mentioned it a little bit um 5.14% increase um in health insurance for FY 26 I do significant planning for health insurance um we do a prepay option which gives us a nice discount um I also try to manage some um interest earnings in those accounts so that I stay ahead of so they're charging so I prepay it and then throughout the year I'm earning interest till the end when I make the final payment so I do try to ensure that we have the best interest earnings that we can so that the little increases like this this is a smaller increase would be absorbed in the dollars that I budget and project out each year for health insurance so this year I had

062projected out about a $300,000 increase overall because that's it's a district side that has an increase in costs which is a lot more than what the employee side is because the District covers a tremendous amount of the health insurance cost so the 5.1 14% for the district is in the hundreds of thousands and then for the staff is less this year because of that planning and because of that budget projection it actually covers the employee cost we do not need to put the health insurance cost back onto the employees this year um and we are also going to try to offer some additional incentives that they can purchase themselves like the pet insurance I've seen them um in other packages where they'll offer like adoption assistance a legal assistance we'll continue to keep looking for

063those added on features for them to give uh staff as many options as possible while also doing our absolute best to manage that health insurance cost at some point we all know it'll get too much and we will have to to put some cost on there but I'll hold it off as long as I possibly can okay those are some of the bigger factors that affect the budget um and again we have to get past 100 day so as we start doing the budget planning I'll be bringing this item back to the board and back to here the yellows are very very very iffy I have no idea I'm just put numbers that make sense to me based on history so in FY 24 I have to do an adjustment for 100 day ADM because

064I project that number that was that first page that was this one when I buildt the budget that fy2 I made up that number and I said oh I think based on all this other stuff and this thing and if I do this math and then I turn this around and I put this on a spreadsheet I think this is going to be 4457 what it's tracking to look like right now is 4461 which means I'll get a little increase I I don't think it's going to be that big that was my first year so that number isn't going to be 1.2 million for just a handful of 80 uh it was that big my first year cuz um the projections coming out of covid were a little harder to be spot on so it's

065good for my ego when I'm spot on and I go yeah look how close I got not good for the dollar amount when I'm spoton because that means I don't get as much um savings back into the budget because what I'll do is in May I'll do a revised budget with the new 100th day numbers which will increase our budget by an amount it won't be 1.2 million again these are so early but I wanted to show you the process um the FY 25 projected enrollment decrease again this is that projected amount that I I moved to 188 and that's that one's pretty close that's the number that comes out of the budget 2% base support amount increase if we get 2% depends on what inflation's doing at the time of budget Vision or budget

066creation sorry budget projection that'll be in June uh June and July is when we propose and adopt budgets so I have to guess right now and as we get closer uh I'll keep watching that inflation number in Arizona and and trying to determine that was what it was when I looked it up when I made this uh last week two weeks ago 1.56 which means that number will decrease too minimum wage we don't need to worry about I took that one out medical cost increase for the district and for the employees I'm anticipating about 300,000 so that's extra money into the budget that I have to spend inflation I kept it at the 1.56 that number the 419 that's what I expect to spend more on the things that we buy and that we have

067to have and that we buy every year this is not new expenditures these are current expenditures and I anticipate the cost going up for them um utilities increased last year I did need to add it to the budget because it was so significant I usually scoop it up into the regular inflation cost because that's usually about what our utilities increase is last year it was 10% for electric so I had to put that number in there I took it out this year I just wanted you to see that's not going to happen this year uh contingency funding for Staffing I am looking for what that means is that after the 100 day we sometimes will get an influx of students and that means that we need to create new positions for teachers that happens sometimes

068because Charters there's it's a bad habit not all of them do it yeah it's it's a bad habit some do some don't I don't know um they're like oh we got all of our funding some I don't want to make blanket statements there are some good Charters out there um so I typ Ally budget in some dollars for that happening because I know that we will increase after 100 day and I'm not getting additional dollars for those teachers I have to kind of set aside some money for that I'm trying something different this year because I just am not liking the bottom line number yet uh what I'm trying to do this year is make Staffing adjustments for attrition that's normal attrition for as we decline enrollment we don't rehire those positions I get some

069cost Savings in that not a lot because we had declining enrollment it's like this Peter Paul thing I'm going to try to handle contingency funding out of the attrition savings I don't usually do that I just felt it was going to be a tight year and I wanted to try something new it'll work or it won't I don't know we'll see what it does is it will allow me to put more dollars into the bottom line which I bring here for you guys to determine what to do with um dollars on the table uh yes um can you talk a little bit about um reasons we may or may not be receiving deseg money it feels like we don't get deseg money that was um something that happened in the past and there were only

070like 10 districts that got through a lawsuit with the federal government and they were able to become deseg districts there are no new deseg districts it's not something that you can apply for or get you can look it up in the Arizona revised statutes there is some a good history if you look at the history of deseg in Arizona there's a really good article that gives a lot of information about it but it's not something that we can get I think they are I think they have to be unified too yeah Phoenix Union but they're just High School right oh they're just high school so it's not a are they okay I just know that it was a federal government thing it was about you know trying to yep yeah I that's what I'm saying

071I would read the history I mean yeah that are getting it but it isn't available for us to apply for a get now so they got it through that lawsuit with the federal government it was like with the 607s yeah it was a while back and they got it and there's no Mor getting I'm not saying that that might not become a thing in the future but it would be through the federal government a process that the the federal government were suing or they're suing us for not having segre or for having segregation when you shouldn't have it [Music] yes okay sorry uh you talked before about the fund balance policy do dis have a fund balanced policy almost yeah f i I had a follow-up question about that because you're giving us numbers with

072a 15% fund balance Reserve is that again very preliminary based on the information I have right now that could also change well that's what I was going to say is not the the money number but the fund balance Reserve policy number at 15% like um is that what you're going to the board with no okay so I'm going back to the committee to share information about fund balance Reserve policy and the committee will make a recommendation to the board gotcha okay thank you I picked a number in the middle I can talk about it so you're you're that you have a a committee work can you I guess I'm con because I've never heard that before I could talk about it James because I'm on the committee I don't want to take away from yeah

073so no I'd like to talk about it a little more and if Daniel wants to go ahead and share what we've got so far I have a couple of extra pieces that the committee doesn't know yet but I'll be sharing at our next committee meeting but I will share today our last committee meeting for the fiscal ship committee U Vanessa came to us with essentially like she outlined some risks to the school district um and a fund balance Reserve policy is essentially would be like a minimum that we would need to have in our carry forward um from this point forward like set by policy so for example a 15% fund balance Reserve would mean we need would need around a minimum of looks like 5.8 million for next year um and that would be

074money we have to keep in reserve so that if any of these projected risks bear out we have money to cover them um the committee talked about some different numbers so for example Vanessa had us look at a range of percentages um we talked about how 5% or I think it was five to 7.5% was probably too low right that would mean our school district would have like $2 million in reserve which felt like um pretty low and like even in previous years like I know we were pushing some pretty high carry forward numbers but um we never dipped below like 2 million right that would be like a really low floor um but we didn't talk about what we wanted a fund balance Reserve policy to be we just I think we settled on

075somewhere between you know 10 and I think we said 20% were our two like low and high ranges um so we didn't actually pick a number yep yep um and I'll talk about that a little bit too so um the next number is that budget balance carry forward estimated the estimated number I don't know that's 5.6 right now that's because I have a lot of stuff encumbered in our system money that we may or may not be spending again it's very early for me to kind of know because this is like on a very low level let me just say we put in a blanket PO for $5,000 to Office Depot and then I only spend $300 this year but I've encumbered $5,000 it is cting in my book says it's looking like they need

076to spend it um so you know in December J is very hard to determine that number but what I can tell you is from past experience at this level with that amount I'm anticipating it to to give me like another I say it so early Dominic knows my pain right now I maybe another million maybe a million ah don't hold me to it though 800,000 800,000 to a million is what I think come back into that number which then will directly add to the bottom line number yes is that the same is B bbcf what is it budget balance carry forward is that the same as fund balance are those the same terms well one is the amount that goes forward and one is the amount that they're the same pocket of money yes but

077that we're holding like on in case there's a whatever horrible emergency okay that we're not it's not just something horrible it's the day-to-day the day-to-day um functions of a school district in declining enrollment that we can't touch though in terms of like what we have to once it goes to the board as a policy it would be something that we wouldn't touch because it would be a recommendation that the board will put into policy and then that means that everybody will know what it is yeah and as Daniel said we looked at a bunch of different percentages and I do want to talk about those for a minute where we settled was between 10 and 20% I like to have a range I don't like to be like stuck on one number so probably what

078we would take to the board would be a range that the business operations staff person me or whoever in the future uh would determine based on the future outlook of the district so in declining enrollment you want to stay higher um if we all of a sudden turned our declining enrollment around I would absolutely go hey I think we should bring that down a little bit um the another big factor that's happening right now is that um our taxpayers very graciously passed a bond for us so many districts didn't pass their bond I have a huge obligation to our taxpayers to ensure the best outcome possible with our bond so one of the ways that you do that is when you have a bond sale you try to get the best rating as a district

079we have like Fitch and Moody's and standard and poor they will look at our district finances they will look at our financial statements just like any um private or public company and then they will assign a rating to us that's like a credit score so you want to get the highest credit score that you can because then when you go out and sell bonds you get the best interest rates better interest rates means that taxpayers save money when we're paying back the bond because a bond is a loan so you're taking out a loan and you're trying to get the best interest rate just like a house or just like any other kind of loan the way you do that through Bond ratings I've been made aware through several of the bonds that are so

080I'm timing our bond sale for our best Outlook our best outcome you tend to not want to do a bond sale when they're flooding the market with the school bonds because then investors they just they have so much opportunity out there that you don't get the best rates so I've timed our bond sale taking that to the board and um March for an April sale that'll get me a little past the bucket of bond sales from schools they tend to do them a little earlier what we're seeing over and over and over which has become a rating standard for Moody fit and standard and pore across the board they're looking for a 20% fund balance Reserve in order to get you the one of the pieces to get you the best Bond rating I have

081a huge obligation to our taxpayers to get us the best Bond rating I possibly can my recommendation is 20% right now I don't see it in the numbers so for me to get the best Bond rating I'm kind of in this little bucket of I don't know that I can do 20% and have dollars to bring to the table for me and confer exactly so we have to kind of be thinking about that as I get closer to what this can be it's a big concern um I will tell you there are other districts that have even larger fund balance Reserve percentages tson has 30% because of the risk levels they have they also are a growth District but they also were in the ditch for Bond ratings they had to make dramatic changes in

082order to get the higher level Bond ratings to save their taxpayers so um that was a very strategic choice on their part to go at that 30% and they got all-in support from their their meet and confer their bargaining their Bo their community and they were able to turn around their bond ratings so it's not as desperate as that we're like not the top rating uh I think we're you know so like there's the top there's the next I think we're this one then there's the bottom so there's like probably 10 steps you can go down on bond ratings we're not we're not sitting at the top I'm trying to push that Bond rating up to get a better interest rate 15% may or may not do it I um we'll see I'm hoping for

083better outcomes with the inflation and with the uh budget balance carry forward so that's kind of where we're sitting right now the fund balance Reserve policy will go to the board what I anticipate based on what the committee information was and kind of what people have shared with me I'm looking at a 10 to a 20% range that gets recommended by the business person and then that goes to the board and I say this year we recommend 20% because we're going out for a bond sale next year we recommend 15% because we don't have a bond sale and we want more money on the on the table for staff yes yes that that's those are the the numbers you're looking for so what I'm looking for right now is that budget balance carry forward bbcf

084I have an estimated number based on what I see in the system right now of the doll we're spending right now what I'm seeing is that we're anticipated to have $5.6 million to roll over which then would be not quite making the 5.8 that I need to hit 15% this early what I can tell you is a lot of that there's things that are encumbered that will not be spent but we have to keep them encumbered for the year water electricity you know we don't know what those those fluctuations so you and when anybody who puts in a PO you know I have $5,000 PO for this but it just didn't pan out we only spend you know this much of it half of it so as those things start trickling in through the rest

085of the year I'm anticipating based on history not because anything I know about in the system today but what I see is when I look at it in December January I usually see like in this situation 800,000 to a million-ish change in that number to the plus so I'm anticipating bottom line number with all the factors that I don't know the magic eightball 800 to 1.5 but you can't hold me to that number if it comes back and it's 300,000 I'm just saying all those yellows I don't know I will not know I'll start knowing a little bit uh after February I think I think Sor knowing at least closer estimate of that money when when do we think we would have a you know a better after February so early March yeah I was

086just going to orient new people with kind of the process so typically um Vanessa will bring us these numbers and thank you using number yeah being um forth coming with them as as you know last year I didn't even bring it until after February I didn't bring it this early because of the unknowns and I hate telling you guys something and then it doesn't pan out sure sure sure sure but we we hear that you know we understand that um and then typically what happens is she'll come back once there's more solid numbers with some um easy to calculate what we love to say napkin math which is do by tenel as far as like raises for example she'll say like a 1% raise across the board would be this much and then we can

087just multiply from there so it just makes it easier for our work because obviously this is like a paired down version of the budget but it's simplified so that we can work with it that way um so hopefully that's helpful just to kind of like Orient you with like what what does all this mean for us in our work so I wasn't able to bring the 1% and the reason why I haven't brought it yet is because I realized as I started calculating it out is that the 1% is inflated with the onetime uh money expenditure that we approved last year which was with onetime monies so last year was very clear that we did a um uh staff student ratio for teachers we moved it from 27 to 1 to 25 to one uh

088and we did that with onetime monies um so that is inflating the amounts for the 1% yeah so it ended up funding however many teachers I don't 18 more teachers in order to um deploy those out to the sites again that was onetime money right now I don't there's no money there's not enough money to cover that right now in the onetime monies like with this projected which is not the real projection so if it comes out to be like anywhere close one 1.5 would get us through 1.5 would would cover it uh with with very little leftover for anything else if you wanted to extend that choice again another year yes um sorry uh so do these numbers include maintaining our current student to teacher ratio no that's what I'm saying because that was

089with onetime monies last year so what it did was when I started pulling the 1% I saw the so we had a $2 million increase in raises I see the $2 million in our budget that's ongoing that meant that I felt we had enough space for ongoing money for time and it was $2 million was the ongoing money with all the little bits and pieces the market increases there we went over my number last year it made me very nervous I see it in the numbers this year it is what it is money's money um so that $2 million is ongoing that is in the budget because those were ongoing dollars which is why I always make sure to tell you when you're making decisions what is sustainable for ongoing and what is not the

090raises the 10% for classified the 5% for certified the 2.5 for admin that is ongoing for now on that's not getting taken away the one-time monies were used for the change from 27 to 1 to 25 one those dollars I don't see them in this year's do number yet yet it could get there though if we do end up with a closer to you know an over a 1 million uh that could be a potential as you guys are looking at the dollars and deciding what to do with them right so if we have enough dollars on the table you could say hey we're going to continue that or you could say hey these dollars we want to make sure because the dollars that I bring you this year are going to be ongoing dollars

091so if you choose to put them in pay and raises that would be ongoing yes um sorry to have so many follow questions so um if the our fiscal stewardship committee comes to you with a range of 10 to 20% for uh fund balance Reserve like because we're not going for are we going for a bond next year no we're doing a bond sale this year right okay and so you're aiming to get the best possible interest rate this year for taxpayers yes okay so you be going for 15% which is like in your mind the highest possible fund balance Reserve like what because if it's up to you left up to you you're the one making the decision so what number so what I would say is I would do the best for our

092community of staff and our taxpayers to me that's 15% what I want is 20 but that's very one-sided so then that brings no dollars back to this table right right because if we because even at 15% we're looking at we're looking at um higher class sizes and no raise looks like no at these I would say what I said was I think we're going to come back with 800,000 to potentially 1.5 million on the high end these numbers are so preliminary I would not base any decisions off this at all okay what I anticipate is like I said last year that I'm going to be bringing you guys a million-ish every year to decide what to do with is where I'm tracking [Music] yeah well although um we've talked about trigger language because again like

093we always talk about budgets you can you can can always predict losses but we can't predict if the legislature is like whatever so for example God forbid let's say uh the FED pulls the Department of Education gives it back to the States whatever that means maybe the state sees that as a reason to throw a bunch of money at us right I don't know yeah but so you can't predict things like that so it's possible that because of um legislature budget items that we could get more money that it's impossible for us to project right which is what has happened the last three or four years that is what I always recommend to teams is to when you don't have a lot of dollars is to Prior prioritize the needs so that as in if

094additional dollars come through what I would say is you need to put that into the language is kind of like trigger language that says if the state gives us additional dollars here's what we want it to go towards and then you prioritize that and I think we had a question over here first did we well I I was gonna say what Dorothy said it's it sounds like it's going to be either or but us maintaining and covering Insurance costs still yes that's already in it yep so that is a a win for our staff too right there yes and I'm cover and and we have in that um budgeted amount the ability to cover the slight increase for dental also do you had a mic oh that was what you wanted Katie said it I

095was I was going to ring it up I'm like I mean it's not class sies and no racist or races but I'm like oh the benefit of uh the cover of the benefits I was going to say it's not all doom and gloom we got you know the ability last year to um spend down some of those accumulated ongoing monies that we were kind of holding which is what Daniel referred to when we were talking about fund balance the fund balance had kind of gone up because we didn't know what was going to happen with covid so through the mechanisms we had ongoing monies that were accumulating that we that we decided to put back to the staff now that we've eased out of covid and Esser dollars um the onetime monies were the onetime

096monies a lot of that was that 1.3 million that the governor gave us that I was hoping for this year but it it hasn't it hasn't shown up if it does though again this is a process and this is the preliminary and this is like the this is a worst case scenario um what we're hoping for is best case scenario that the legislature comes back with a good budget and gives us some additional dollars yes when did we know that does anybody remember it was late it was March I think it was March I don't does anyone remember when I what meeting I brought the two million yeah I was probably pushing you guys off like like don't make me do this it's too soon oh they yeah they're in session they're doing things they're

097doing all sorts of interesting fun things immigration yeah yeah that's unfortunate um and they hold off on that budget till way way late so I got to tell you A lot of times we're making decisions and they haven't even finalized their budget we just know that certain things are in law and and unless they really like especially voter initiatives and things like that those things we kind of count on um I I I think Daniel made a good point we know a lot about the what we're not going to get we don't know a lot about the what we are going to get and that's why I think it's always important for bargaining groups to really put that information into your language that says if additional dollars come out this is what we want to

098happen with it prioritizing it yeah for sure for sure so we have a lot of things that are important this year getting that good um credit rating the highest credit rating we can if I can even bump at one level I'll call it a success if I could bump it to the top that would be great I'm trying to manage the 15% by timing of the bond sale that's kind of where I'm I'm I'm using every tool at my hands to try to get the best rating possible and so I'm making some decisions what is the lowest fund balance Reserve that would allow you to bump it one rating I that's up to the rating agencies I wouldn't they're going to look at all of our financials they're not looking at just one piece what

099they want to see is and and what I'm hoping for I'm going to stand on Jay's Laurels is what I'm going to do I'm going to show how well we navigated through covid when they go because they talk to you and they talk about your financials and on those phone calls we going be talking to the rating agents about don't be so worried about that 15% or whatever it ends up being look at our history look at what we've accomplished look at how well we navigated those dollars the choices that we made and how we gave it back to our staff and when we did it so I'm really going to be talking about our history a lot and our forward moving choices so it's going to make a big impact the fact that we're

100able to sell bonds the fact that we pass that our community passed the bond so it's not just this number this number is just one in a long list of things that I'll have to navigate to get us the best Bond rating before the sale so I'll be doing like in March yeah I really got to tell you 15% I don't know that I could go much lower than that it's going to be something that I would not support um as your financial person and doing the best for our district and our taxpayers but it is what it is I make do with whatever happens um does anybody want any more information about fund balance oh you know I did want to tell you something so like this year a big uh a big month

101is October October is a huge month when it comes to school Finance it determines how much sped funding we get we got to make sure that our sped numbers are spoton because you don't get to go back you have the census um and so what happens is if you aren't spoton with your student data you lose dollars now you recoup those dollars at some point but you will lose dollars when it comes to the sped census this year here it doesn't look like our preschool sped kids got over into the funding formula because the state made a change in their system and how our data is uploaded and our system didn't wasn't able to navigate it by October we got the numbers in by November um there was also another situation with our free and

102reduced numbers that that didn't get over either again system things these are normal things that happen every single year these are not things that are people's faults this is not like somebody did something wrong this is the normal day-to-day operating of a school district these things happen and that's why I need risk money because I had to cover 500,000 $500,000 is what those two data situations cost us one of them I'm going to recoup in May the other one I'm not sure yet because I don't know if it made it to the census yes Mike you I agree that some of it is like the systems change over and and things like that that are in inevitable there are um parts of it that are um based on staff and them doing what they need

103to do in our special Edge system so um we have a an a member of our team that works on that um very consistently and she is constantly working with staff to make sure that they have things finalized by the right date because there the census requires that and if that paperwork isn't done correctly it it does affect our bottom line dollar that is dependent on staff members specifically special ed staff members doing their due diligence with paperwork absolutely but nobody walks in knowing that right correct and that has been I will say with some of the turnover of Staff with the fact that we have um a bigger chunk of contra contractors that does have an impact because we can only do what you know the employees have to do that work and if

104they don't it does cost us money in the end so it does but I I would say that that does go back to navigating the day-to-day operations of any entity or organization is that you will have turnover you will have whatever level of getting those people spun up and sometimes it's good sometimes it's not it is hard to be spoton in every area especially when you're talking about people um and understanding of complex things of of their responsibilities you know uh we've been talking to principles about training programs again that's more staff we don't have um most of the training that we get in a school district and in every school district I've been in is on the job training um you can make that here's the thing you got a 30-year person sitting in

105a desk they don't have a manual they don't have Des procedures and they've probably taken on about a bazillion jobs that is not in their job description because they're high functioning they've been here for 30 years you lose a 30-year person you're in a mess you're in a mess and it's nobody's fault you should make sure that 30-year person if they're going you know if they have the ability and you're paying attention to it hey can you just make sure you write down the things that you do at least when you go I'll know what I got to try to figure out but when that person leaves I don't know what they were doing that happened over a course of 30 years so turnover is impactful that you mitigate it as much as you can

106again that's a $500,000 mitigation for me this year I I want to chime in here and say like in like yeah like it's probably hard to point to a specific person and say this is your fault but it is the responsibility of the school district and going to throw it out there that's an administrative task you know like what the employees are doing make sure they're trained make sure they're recording their job process make sure there's desk manuals procedures things like that and um you are correct that this is like a huge huge huge problem all across our school district that when someone turns over everyone's looking around going what did they do in their job wait how did they do that oh they made all these things happen and then the thing doesn't happen

107and everyone goes oh dang the thing didn't happen and like those are like yes there's no reason to point make blame or point fingers but it's not like it just fell out of the sky or it's an act of God or nature like well I think it's it's not just an administrative role it's every single person's responsibility it is it's everybody's responsibility to make sure that they have at their desk the things that they need to to do their job I'm not going to be able to create for that person that's taken on all the other roles it's it's not something that I can create a procedure for that but I can make sure that we have the basic procedures for the job functions that we bring in really great people that have process background

108who know how to set up procedures internal controls we hire really fantastic people that's not reten that's not uh retaining that's bringing them in and that is a million different choices that we make do we choose to do more longevity do we choose to move up the salary schedule to entice people to come and work for us and their fantastic people and they bring good stuff into our organization it's a balance there's no one right answer we're all navigating it the best we can especially you guys in this room you're doing the really hard stuff you're taking lots of information and then trying to make really good choices is and I think you guys do an excellent job you did an excellent job that last year I I hope that staff appreciate what you did

109and the hard work that you put in you're doing an excellent job again this year you're asking the right questions you're putting the right stuff on the table and we're getting you the data as quickly as we can and a lot of brains are going towards this so I congratulate you and I'm very proud of everybody who serves on these committees it's not easy because when people start pointing the fingers about who did what wrong a lot of times it's us in this room so if you guys have any other questions about money it's way too early don't hold me to it but I um but I'm hoping for the best outcome and I would highly recommend that you work some language in this year about uh if we get additional dollars from the legislature

110above and beyond whatever that fund balance Reserve you know is that we make and put some mechanism in place to make sure that it goes into the staff as would be my recommendation or whatever you guys come up with whichever way that looks any other questions I have one but it's kind of going back to the for um spreadsheet that you shared Joel about the uh contractors that analysis so it has like we have 32 sped agency hires do we have a number of how many sped positions there are that we can compare that too to get like a person okay thanks that data was fascinating whoever asked for that that that was great stuff did you guys see it only cost 7,000 more for a teacher use it use those contracted services and you

111know it didn't seem to be really the sped that's about 177,000 more that one of those contracted people are costing I think when I was looking at that number The Specialist and things like that was only about 177,000 I know that in personal finance that probably sounds like a lot but when you're talking about a $32 million budget 17,000 it it starts but it's really important to know how many because we got 17,000 time 20 177,000 Time 5 177,000 time 50 that makes a difference right of how big and impactful that is but did you guys see the nurses number wow well I I'll also throw out there that again like yes I don't I'm not saying lead positions vacant or something but a contract teacher is someone that is like not wrapped into is

112from my understanding not wrapped into our benefit system as like an employee they're on whatever their contract agency is like giving them right I'm sorry like contractors get benefits through their contrac and Company not us they get benefits well right that's that's what I was goingon to say contractors often don't get benefits aren't aren't that's gonna be your question what yep so the we have contractors who don't get benefits who are not not Union not really tied into the community often have various levels of training sometimes you get great contractors sometimes you get pretty rough contractors the principles I think have very little ability to like you know vet people before they hire them because they're going through a contract agency and like it's difficult to tell someone's like professional experience when you're going through

113those agencies and so the the quality of teacher we get out of the Contracting agencies um does not necessarily always reflect a $3,000 difference however I mean you know there's going to be great contractors and there's going to be awful contractors just like there's great gen teachers and awful gen teachers that aren't contractors um but it's not a good trend for our district to just just because it's cheap to bring in contractors just want to throw that out there and just to point out that we also have the ability to hire from contract agencies if we pay the do not compete clause so we did that last year we hired at least two special education self-contained teachers and uh two General Ed teachers they're now our employees um so that's that is a possibility and

114that rate that varies from agency to agency and not all agencies are the same so I I can't hear you she want I was looking at the table again you guys mentioned that 17 basically almost 18,000 for a spad contract teacher is not that much because it's a um it's specialty teachers I'm I'm just saying psychologist speech and occupational therapy which is the specialty teachers are all a different line item than the sped resource teacher and the sped self-contained so the sped resource teacher that's about 18,000 it's not is that just a sped resource teachers that's not all the other specialty people correct yeah so on that um breakdown let me open it back up so I'm not speaking so res sped resource is your resource CC and then sped self-contained is specifically for the

115regional programs uh and then I broke down psychologist speech pathologist and occupational therapist separately yeah so that's eight about 18,000 is just for cc resource tees right right okay what about Paris as an average um pars I didn't include because I didn't I wasn't asked to provide that for classified okay and I could that could be misunderstanding I can certainly add that because we do have a handful of pairs currently that are being paid through the number the 32 sped agency hon wouldn't include the parot correct okay and I also just want to say I wasn't saying that it wasn't a a big number it was smaller than I anticipated for the General Ed teachers and then it was progressively getting more but the question you know know about how many of that again it

116all accumulates and if you can save $7,000 you can save $7,000 right and the interest is not to go out and get more contracted teachers the interest is to hire in again the interest of this group is what pushes that so what brings in more teachers so we got to be thinking about that so yeah we but we do what we got to do to make sure we have what we need for students right and this is really focused on contracts so I did not include how much we spend say for Teach for America uh because they their fees administrative fees that we pay to Teach for America uh same with our uh International teachers or are J1 and V H1B Visa teachers you know how much we pay for those Services as well because

117there are employees so I really was trying to keep this information just to who we have not hired but we've contracted out for that those Services right sorry and then just last question for the plus 21% I'm assuming that's like retirement benefits and anything Associated okay and then if you look so a lot of this information would come to you on your uh compensation um statement that the total compensation statement that you get through the district I think this year we sent them Lisa we sent them in July right um so that's when you look at that breakdown that also includes so the uh insurance benefits and things like that so that's all broken down that's why those numbers are included so now I'm confused again okay so it says plus 21% which is one

118column Plus benefits a separate column so what's the 21% retirement the district is required to pay payroll taxes and so that's the district P portion the employer portion of the payroll taxes which is going to be Social Security Medicare okay um uh asrs workers comp unemployment all of those different things equal about 20 we all use 21% it goes up and down like the 12.27 for the um um the asrs savings you know that goes up and down so that's going to change but it typically is right in there with some decimals you know at 21% then what happens for a medical benefit you can't typically do a percentage for a medical benefit because uh everybody has different things and we pay different things for different choices um and so typically we use an average

119for budgeting which is if it's a benefits eligible position and I'm budgeting for if they choose to have medical I typically budget 7,000 I don't know what you you use the 7905 came from last year's okay is that what I came up with last year so I take all of that and then I average it out based on how many people are picking insurance and then I do averages for budgeting purposes some people cost us a little more some people cost us a little less some people don't cost us anything because they're choosing like their your know spouse's insurance or they have a different um in the retired military or something so that's why those columns are separate one is payroll taxes and one is a medical B okay I think um Diana's chopping at

120the bit I am so we're a little behind on our agenda but I I think it was worth it and um I know I learned a lot from you so thank you Vanessa and Joel thank you for your information we're going to take a break now it's almost 10 o'clock so we're going to do a 15 minute break it's 10 o'clock so we'll see you back at 10:15 e e e everyone we're going to get started a little Lou that's okay everyone if we could take our seats now um you I don't know why this isn't I guess I gotta it's not don't thank you yep got it okay just a quick review we've had this slide before but we we will be doing a lot of um discussions today so I want you to

121make sure that you're managing your emotions um be aware of everyone's emotion we'll be doing a lot of small group work so you will be in a small group so be aware of everyone's emotions in your groups ask many questions and wait for answers ask more questions if needed um if having issues with emotions take ownership to work through that issue and if you need a few minutes to regroup take the time to do so and these if you can read those right now I won't read them to you but if you could take a moment to um review the active communication skills that you will be using today hey so at our last meeting um when we were revising our Norms we um wanted to see how the live streaming went and at the

122end we were we decided that we do want to do the live streaming and which means um the confidentiality Norm we said might need to have some changes made to it um that group when they shared some of the things that they said was maybe we don't even need this one some of the people in that group said well there's a couple that are still relevant but we might be able to move them somewhere else to one of our other norms and then there was conversation that well maybe we do need to keep it because if people aren't watching the live stream we still need to have that Norm um so uh that's what I need to ask you um now that I'm sure you've had an opportunity to look at those do we still

123want to revise the norm confidentiality do we want to make any changes to that or remove certain things that might not be applicable and there was even talk U I think maybe it was lordis maybe tell me if I'm wrong the last one maybe was a process um skill not really part of a norm um that might have been was that the one I think it was so feedback what are your thoughts are you happy to keep it the way it is just wanted to throw it out from our last discussion or do you want to make any changes to it dthy can use your mic oh yay um I just wondering about bullet number three I'm not quite sure even what it means team will complete a temperature check at the close of a

124meeting to protect individual opinions and perspectives yeah because we wanted to make sure that everyone was feeling okay within our groups so that when you left you were you felt pretty good so that's why I guess I'm just not sure what that has to do with confidentiality that's more of a social emotional check-in as opposed to what what does that have to do with confidentiality yes but that's noer because so we may not even need that that might be one we want to to eliminate can you take notes on that for me please um okay with eliminating that because it's true it's live stream now so everyone knows what's going on so unless so I would be okay with just adding those do we already have a list of presses that we follow you know

125we don't okay so maybe we start that document and these two can be added to that and we can add things like um and we didn't do it this morning either even though we talked about time as well but doing like a time what do we call it time constraints or concerns have to yes that way you know if somebody's leaving or what your purpose is so maybe that can be added to our press yes so I move that we remove the last two bullets um but leave the first two related to confidentiality did you have something Jim no okay so Kelly would you say that again please uh yeah I don't know if we're following Robert's Rules either maybe that's part of our proces discussion as well but I move that we remove the

126last two bullets from the confidentiality norm and move them to a processes so we would only have the two top bullets for our confidentiality so let's do a consensus vote with that are we okay with that okay Ariel are you good with with removing the last two bullets okay so will you take notes that we're going to start um and I every um what I'll do then is at every meeting I will have a slide that will say process skills and we will have those those two plus the time restraints one so that that way we are sure that we'll be doing that okay perfect okay now we're getting to the meat of it um oh what am I do oh my I didn't know this thing worked backwards you held it okay so last

127week we spent a great deal of time on developing our issues I listed those for you as a refresher in case you might not remember what we ended up with for our issues there were actually more than that but we ended up combining some of them and we have a total of 15 and I put those in order of most votes to least and I'll be going back to this slide when we begin yes can we add facilities to the employ conversation we to the employee group compensation what did you want to add bus drive I mean facilities yeah I think are can we do a consensus quick for that because can we can we add that okay okay so today we're going to just work on interests and the only reason we're going to

128work only on interests is because we have an idea of budget but we really don't know and as we found out last week this section takes a lot of time so we are just today hopefully going to end up having our um framing statements complete for as many issues as we can get through today and we're going to do those in small groups so I wanted to quickly review what the process is for determining um which really our final um process for interest is the framing that's what we want to get to today our interest framing for various um issues so remember the interests are the why so why focus on interest why do we want to know your your interests and this by the way is where it does take time because we want

129to hear everyone's voice and why do we want to hear your voice it's because interests Define the problem interests allow for a variety of possible solutions interests help us evaluate a possible solution interests allow for a solution that may not involve compromise and it focuses focuses on interest provides increased understanding between people in Conflict so um the IBN process skills for doing interests are as follows first when you're in your group you're going to tell your story and that will be um accomplished by having everyone individually do that you're going to explain the problem and issues in detail clarify analyze and present then um once everyone actually um tells their story you're going to then um write well next actually there's and then we want to do a collective story so once everyone individually shares

130their interest then you're going to write one Collective story trying to put all those interests into one Collective story and then you're going to determine the interests so that that was where if you look over here we have the examples where we had the we needs and then after we do that the last thing you will do is then do your um your statement your framing of your statement and we do that in a question form and over here you can see where is it where we did last time so we have the story um the interests and then the framing from all that was an example we and we said how do we maintain um compensation and be Equitable so all of that the all that um came from listening to people writing the

131stories and developing the interests so the interest framing statement even though it's in written as a question we call it a IBN calls it a statement um that's then where we put our options too so today we hope to get I don't know how many we'll get finished but we'll see that's our job for today okay so when you're telling your story individually just keep in mind that what do you know about the topic or the issue what do you want or need to know about the issue and what is the concern with this and we want everyone to participate so what once everyone participates in their individual story then you are going to write the collective story you're going to combine um what everyone said and you'll find there's a lot of similarities there

132as you probably know and there is the example um that I gave and I'm not going to read that because we went over it the last time but it's there so um the interest why do we want this behind every issue is an interest an interest represents your need or want what do you hope to accomplish what are your concerns and fears here's some example of Interest statements and I used the issue um insurance benefits and I think if we're just we use some continuity here with starting those with we need I kind of like that and then um once you have your interest interests then you're going to look at all your interest and try to frame it into um a statement and you may end up having more than one um interest framing

133statement it depends okay and here's some examples of uh framing statements kind of going quickly through this because we went through this process last week um this is just a refresher so the process for the activity we're going to be doing next is you're going to meet in a small group everyone is go um you'll share what your issue is we'll assign that to you we're going to start with the very one that had the most votes and work our way down so you'll start with your issue and then individually everyone will share their stories and then once everyone St shares their stories um there their interest baby basically then you're going to write one Collective story from your whole group once that story is written then you're going to write your interest statements and

134then lastly you're going to frame your interests okay so how we're going to do this is we're going to before we do this I want to call on someone to repeat what we're going to do in our groups Dorothy you have a quick question I did yes I do have a quick question um I was wondering about because I see how we're about to count off by twos yes and I don't have a an I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this but I wondered if we wanted to think about the balance of people that are in groups and sometimes that happens when you count off randomly and sometimes it doesn't for example we only have two gened teachers in this whole group and if they ended up in the same group and the

135other one had no teacher perspective and I get that like I can represent a teacher and a and a administrator can represent a teacher and I would like to see them one in each group I I totally agree I wonder Let's Do by twos and then you know each other's job position probably better than I do so once we have our groups and we're then let's discuss and see if we need to move anyone and by the way when we finish it because each group is going to do a different um issue right okay so when they share out if the other group wants to add to that they're well welcome to do that or if they have concerns because I want everyone's voice okay so what I'm asking now is someone to repeat what

136we're going to do when we get in our group and let me just pull a name here Eve you're the lucky one I called when we get in when we get in our group what exactly what are we going to do Eve we're going to create our framing statements what are we start with and you're new the interests do this we'll start with our interests and then we'll tell our story and then together we'll come up with our framing statements we'll do our interest statements interest statements do our framing statements that's really good for being new sorry to put you in that but you know I randomly call the names I'm really impressed okay so we're going to get in our groups so in your folders you do have um a list of the job

137activities the role activities in your groups we will always be using those so take those out but we're going to count off by twos we're going to meet with your group um then you're going to tell your story about the issue so the group understands your thinking um brainstorm your thinking with the team on chart paper do not evaluate others throughout that process so if you don't like what they're saying please don't say anything this is a time for individuals to express um their interests then you're going to write the collective story on the chart paper um write the interests on the chart paper and then you're going to frame your interests into a statement so so once you get into your group the first thing you're going to do is you're going to assign

138group roles you're going to have a timekeeper a Taskmaster a norm monitor a recorder and a presenter okay so I'm going to go back to the slide that has our issues okay so we're going to start with group one we'll have teacher workload balance and group two will have high need students so let's start with Kelly your one okay so one's um over here two's over here and let's see what makeup of our group is Amy all administrators are Ino okay we let's go there and then we'll we'll move youel I'm gonna ask you this I know your comments wri app how much you think [Music] okay let's look at the groups um one's over here two's over here so we can look and see where are you guys but go there first and then

139we're GNA move Okay so um okay go to two Amy or okay one how does it look now okay but there's three extra people one neighbor and you okay that works good one two are you okay but then we have look at the mix we need to bring one person over here okay Eve you come over here six one two three four five are you okay because you guys don't have as many they have like eight you okay okay um if I could have everyone's attention okay if I could have your attention it is 10:40 and we're going to do this in 15 minutes I think that should be enough time so at 10:55 do uh with the timekeeper do you have your roles yet okay I'm gonna take a minute then to have you

140raise your hand I want to see who the timekeeper is okay Daniel you put yeah okay there are the roles again make sure you have everyone is assigned a roll yeah we'll get we just need Cher okay raise your hand if you're the timekeeper I know Daniel is over here timekeeper who's the timekeeper okay who's the Taskmaster okay um who is the norm monitor okay okay um who's the recorder okay Ion you're the recorder okay and the presenter okay who arel a presenter okay let's get started e e e and I was like sitting somebody gonna check this like I know I was seeing it so I was gonna yeah when you're a new office manager yeah sometimes you start typing some people are not me you know you one to be there and usually

141if they don't have any stud but it's that's the thing is it's like yeah the work needs to be done but it's like there's no solution I for example sorry that's like a scheduling issue we got prep we got for example conts [Music] okay um we that wasn't enough time really for one of the groups so we are going to extend it do you want another one no we're not doing options yeah I don't want to no how much time do you think you need over there Dorothy how much time do you think you need but could you answer that five okay five minutes yeah do you want another one yeah let's do e e e sir can you yeah our presenter will be sharing when they're finished we're going to ask did they meet

142really everyone's interest because we are in two groups and we're hoping because our groups are larger that maybe everyone's voice is going to be heard through the members of the larger groups so once they finish the question I'm going to give to you is do you want to add any anything that wasn't addressed okay so let's start over here Ariel is the presenter and when you're presenting tell us again what the issue is and read your Collective story and some of you didn't do needs you just went right to interest if your group felt that you could do that that's okay go ahead hello I am presenting teacher workload um our interest was how could we create a sustainable workload that allows teachers to succeed therefore students to succeed and be you know highly effective

143our story is classroom teachers are unable to meet increased workload demands outside of their W work day due to internal and external factors increase behaviors longer commute times and personal boundaries yes hand oh sorry could you said uh it was your the interest was teacher or the thing was teacher workload yes teacher workload maybe I I misunderstood that I thought maybe okay I thought it was never mind forget it I withdraw my question okay um our interest question is how can we decrease the amount of workload outside of the school day while retaining and improving outcomes for students okay and we do not have any need statements sorry at this time okay so does that um kind of address the interests for all of you does their framing statement address your interests as well I'm

144asking this group yes you got to use the mic can you guys speak on didn't you say something about a shorter commute uh no not oh yes on no we were talking about the internal and external factors that is um you know is making the increased workload um even more unattainable um now with the cost of living increase not many teachers actually live in this area Area Teachers are actually moving further out Buckeye um surprise tolison LaVine does that answer your question okay okay thank you Ariel you're welcome people out there on the internet okay oh this group over here who's our presenter okay it's me all right what am I starting with walk me let's wait till we have everyone's attention okay go ahead okay so we're starting with our uh you're yeah your

145issue so our issue is high need students in um in a variety of Reason uh areas right so we are seeing an influx of students with multiple needs examples behaviors many are wearing diapers non-verbal a lot of physical behavior um they might not be identified or they might be initially a level a in special educ ation and needing more support um it's impacting many different areas so all kinds of staff so not just classroom teachers but admin and offering support coaches bus drivers kind of everybody um so that was kind of our Collective story and and as well as you know um pointing out the amount of time and energy it's taking impacting work life balance for a lot of people because it's such a um overwhelming support during the day and then kind taking

146that home with you um and so we looked at needing to support uh teachers um and also staff retention a lot of Staff don't have experience with working with high need students and so they might not come back or they might leave mid year um including our Paris support and any other individuals who are working um with this population uh a lot in the beginning of the year and so how you know how it's impacting everything okay okay all right interest statement okay so really what they did is they that's their story okay there were so many to just have like one story so but we wanted to make sure we included all of the different facets that were impacting all of the campuses uh interest statement is we need support and training for all

147staff members in order to support our high need students and then the last statement is our framing our framing question how do we systematically and fiscally provide training and support for all staff in order to address the high needs of our students okay wow um any does that address your concerns your interests over the other group okay well done everyone great work okay we're GNA move on keep the same so I think your interat that was your interest statement the last part where we were talking about oh there was your question how do we Fring question framing question I know you talked about in their training for staff also think like maybe streamline the special education um process too because when you get kids coming in who do not have IEPs and high needs it's

148not very easy to get the help they need sometimes right and that would follow under support like one of the as to look at like how do we support in all areas so that would include special education are you okay with that Ariel okay okay well done we're going to go we're going to keep the same groups and we're going to go to the next topics this group already started on the topic um Dorothy what is where we at on the topics they did the they're doing the third one longevity okay so um I'm going to say 20 minutes okay 20 minutes and remember I'd like to really see the needs Collective story and frame okay needs Collective story frame e e e I know okay both groups are finished uh early I guess everyone

149understands the process now so let's go ahead and share out we'll start um let's start with this group over here first okay so our uh interest was longevity okay wait a minute hold on until it's quiet okay longevity um and the story behind that is uh we don't see that kraton is retaining staff long enough and we know historically by not having that retention we are constantly investing in staff that don't come back which then really has that final impact on student achievement because when you're constantly as a student when you're constantly getting a new teacher who might not have all of the training or experience you're not um possibly making as much growth and so what we're seeing is um not only in the classroom but just all over as well a constant turnover

150with staff which impacts all facets of the institution yep um our interest statement was we need to retain staff in order to impact student achievement which is part of our student um governance yes um and then our framing question was how do we improve current longevity in order to improve staff retention to impact student achievement okay well worded looks like you got everything into that so good job lores um anyone want to add to that and team and team anybody want to add to that yeah that was pretty interesting how you're able to word it to really combine all the interest good job okay arel um are topic was Employee group compensation um our story is specific subgroups of employees or underpaid when compared to other surrounding public and private sectors as well as contract

151agencies um compression continues to have a direct impact on our hourly employees our interest questions slash needs we combine overachievers over here how can we address compression for hourly employees how can we make compensation for these subgroups more competitive to avoid losing staffs to other districts sectors and agencies wow well done as well um anyone did they get to the essence of what you all were thinking in relation to that issue okay well done um it's 11:30 so we're going to actually do one more each group we have time and Dorothy would you read out what the next issues are next would be pay raises for everyone and compensate staff for translating regardless of position but we already did we already did that one one so parental leave is after that okay so raises for

152everyone and parental leave pay raises for everyone over here sure yep okay okay perfect no i' I'm about to put for e ch comp any here for knew knew know every [Music] AB sold it anyone get that I said it one time I don't know right I call it SP control I know that's do third of so that's par [Music] however say and interest no yes expensive [Laughter] put B both groups are finished so let's have our speakers get ready and we'll start over here with parental leave Ariel dinks are lucky what do you call someone that sing Oh single with I'm a syn I'm a syn single income no kids I'm a sync um [Laughter] did you just make that up now yes that's very cre well what am I I'm a sink I

153guess um we're talking about parental leave um and our story is Staff who are new parents are likely to leave or resign because they don't have enough accured acur ACR PTO to take time off if needed and or the result resulting cost of Child Care makes staff question the benefit of staying um we didn't come up with any needs because we're cool like that oh we turned the needs into a a interest question right away how can we meet the needs of new parents while also retaining High qualified staff get a mic clarifying question um for Parental Leave Act if this like comes into play with this like a like for myself I have two babies at home and at times they can't go to daycare because they're sick with that also include that because

154I have to take my own personal like PTO or my own personal sick Lea to stay at home or my husband has to because we don't have child care for the day um we didn't go that in depth because we were just comeing up with stories and interest but that could be part of the story or an option that's that's that's like that's something like I've thought about like I've already had children and I'm not having children anymore but it still affects us like last year my kids had hand fit mouth I was out of the classroom six days that that might fit like like who was saying Katie when we're doing our options I think it could could make it fit in there but if we want to make sure then we should write

155our own framing statement if we remember to address that are you okay with having an option under that then I just wanted to ask that yes can I ask a clarifying question this is talking about for families that are having babies correct like yes new parents thank you um so I think I don't know if this was captured in any anywhere of the story um and I don't want to get into options but I just want to also bring to the Forefront is that I as a principal and as a a a mom that had both of her babies in this District um is that now they're old but um at is that from so many different staff members whether it's been classified whether it's been certified whether it's been teachers or coaches or admin

156their experiences with like um their leave time has so been so vastly different and just like yes this is covered but this form didn't get so I don't know I'm just bringing that up because it seems like a process needs to be really be streamlined so um I just want to bring that up in in the Forefront and I know we have new people and new um but like the pr should be very similar across all that was part of the need that we talked about was that this a lot of this already happens and Joel actually kind of joined our conversation as a resource as well and talked about well these options are available or people can do this or they can do that but it's just hard because it's not written down and

157it's not clear it is written down but it's not written down as parental leave is that fair okay what's written what's written down is the process for requesting leave when it qualifies for leave of absence right unpaid leave so FMLA or parental leave based on FMLA requirements there is a communic document that didn't exist last year okay that is now in place that has all a lot of the FAQs that people have asked and some of those conversations that you and I had and other people have had with me from molinda because you had a lot of you're welcome employees who had pregnancies last year but those conversations have been streamlined and we also have kind of transitions in departments that make that conversation different so that it it's called Uh communicate on FMLA or

158leave and it's posted on the website so it sounds like we're as Daniel said 80% of the way there right it's just a matter of making it even more streamlined making it even more available to all new parents so that it is clear because right right this is about and it's about if you don't plan the pregnancy then then you do not have the same benefits as somebody who did and that's not fair because it should be accessible to everyone and this sort of covers that more which yeah we did that was part of our story is that because if they don't buy into shortterm disability then they don't have the same benefits and they might not even understand that right well we should have Federal paid parent to leave but here we are but

159anyways uh that that was part of our story though is that to get anything clo to get leave for your pregnancy at this time requires you to combine ideally short-term disability and FMLA and like as a leave whereas parental leave would just be a singular policy that addresses all aspects of that rather than being like multiple things that you have to [Music] yeah FMLA is a law that protects individuals with their position in employment and offers the opportunity to have unpaid or paid if you have purchased uh if you have PTO available so I think what this conversation is more about is can we have a benefit of Parental leave that's paid that doesn't impact PTO right so then at the end of a parental leave period whatever that is um then you would have

160the access to your PTO and that wouldn't have been impacted um currently you can reserve PTO at the end of your 12we FMLA you can say I want to come back and have five days available to me and we district will work with you on that but it's not automatic and it's not part of what we have as a parental leave program it it could yeah yeah but parental leave as I understand it is really based on pregnancy and birth or adoption Foster you know so there are other areas that are covered as well did that answer your question or ideas Amy okay I think I understand Joe but um Joel Joel I'm sorry um but also so would this be like a set like amount off so like would this be like yes or

16112 weeks P versus the FMLA you're jumping to options so we're just saying how can we support so we don't know specifics we don't know anything fleshed out this is just a need that we saw and that's why we're bring it to the T that discussion will happen when we get to options okay we set to move on to this group okay okay so our um area was pay raise for everyone our interest is inflation is impacting all staff so how can we you know combat that um and staying competitive with surrounding um districts so um our framing question was how do we offer competitive compens compensation in order to retain and attract staff to um impact student achievement okay kind of says it all really I mean that's the essence of the issue anybody

162want to add to that are you okay okay so before we break for lunch um could you sit down and I want to just kind of get your opinion about the activity and if you like it and what do you think of the process we used okay let's take about five minutes and I'll cut you off at five minutes so you can have lunch I would like to know what did you think of the process for this activity um would you like to continue the same process in the afternoon the way we just did this um any comments KY I appreciated the process I felt like we were efficient with our time I think projecting the time is a really great idea because it keeps all of us urgent kind of like oh we got

163five minutes left like let's keep cruising um I my only suggestion would maybe be to mix up the groups just so that we can hear other voices and kind of hear different perspectives and work with different for the whole afternoon or each time we switch maybe how many do we get through four two each uh yeah three each so maybe maybe we keep that because there's what 15 right so we'll keep the same group in the a different group in the afternoon but throughout the whole process sure because we'll be finished we're half almost halfway finished any other suggestions that's a good suggestion thanks Kelly yes um I don't have a suggestion just more of a question um in terms of the timeline for meetings uh do we should we be concerned about prioritizing one

164of these things are we at that point are we just going to go through all of them and then prioritize later do any of them have timelines or things that are more pressing that should be addressed first that's question well the way I prioritized them today was by the tallies so the ones that had the most tallies were the ones that were first and second second and I'm assuming that's how we will actually do our options we'll start with the one that had the most tallies okay and the second part of that do we is there a sense of urgency on any of those like that we need to dig in sooner and not go through the last six or do you feel as a facilitator that we're good to go through these things like

165with the same process and then take them Next Step yeah I'm I'm hoping we can finish them all we're this went um today oh yeah today we'll finish with the interest today no question um and then it's the options and we'll probably do the options the same way I would imagine and see where we go and hopefully we can finish but really we'll see some of them we know are going to take more time than others and we'll have more of an understanding of the budget as time goes on so that will help us that's why I wanted to do all this so then we can spend more time on the options once we have the budget thank you good question thanks for asking okay we're going to go to lunch it's close enough to

16612 and we'll see you back here at 12:45 because you have to drive somewhere some yes 12:45 okay everyone enjoy thanks for uh your feedback this this morning you're wonderful e e e back everyone anything exciting happen happen at lunchtime did you really oh my gosh can you tell us what happened phone and I could see a car coming really fast behind him and I saw him start easing like this way like one more and I said who dude well dude like that I yelled and he turned around and looked at me and stepped back and the car went boom right what a good feeling that must have been wow you know I'll share I'll share a real quick story um so as you know I have a place in sholo and I was driving

167home from Phoenix and there was um a truck next to us it was two lanes and the back of the truck was on fire and he had no idea it was on fire and like we're like rolling our windows down and like fire fire and he's just looking at us I'm like fire plus there was a gas tank and it would have been a major finally he pulled over I don't I don't know what happened but um he but thank God he pulled over because there were little kids in that vehicle too and it was so so scary but some of the things we see as we're driving it's a good thing we're observant so we can help others so that was good good feeling okay so we're g to move on and uh we'll

168we let's see we're going to switch our groups up and uh that's a good question now that I think about it because we don't want to count off by choose um let's count Let's Do by our Let's Do by the alphabet so if your first name let's start from a to M we'll just see where this takes us uh we'll go by the first letter of your first name so if you're a to M you're one if you're LMN o to Z you're a two okay let's see where we are with that and we'll probably have to switch them around a little bit so one's over here two's over here o to Z a to M it's going to be funny if we're the same oh boy okay we're gonna let you voluntarily go over

169where you think you need to be because that's way too many yeah yeah well no that won't happen because we're not going to I just want you guys mixed up a little bit Katie you're you can be over here because there's a lot of um Ariel that'll be good over there we're gonna have some of you that are going to be together a little bit one two three four yeah that looks good one two three four five six six seven two three four five I think that'll work okay I think this works it's enough of a change Dorothy can you read us the next topics okay if we can tune in we're going to go through the same framework that we did prior to lunch and Dorothy where are we at with the issues yes

170the first one will be the first group that you readal Ado okay class size internal advancement promotion um we will have 20 20 minutes and we'll have the timer on for you to monitor but before wait don't start it yet um you need to select your roles in your group so we need to T for