May 7, 2024, Study Session & Board Meeting

001devopment inm percent of students reporting us look we can measure happiness already do that we currently in the of only reason we had a missed semester was because our legisl whatever what I'm doing right now is that I'm going to end up um Rising the putting more simple like this it when I meant that I'm going to be extra I'm going to be a little extra and I'm gonna literally read almost per pay them e e e yes we're doing this I'm about to introduce it and start get it started for everybody Ariel hi everybody welcome everybody tonight we're go ahead and get started with our study session um right now we have a quorum we have Miss Gibson llan Miss SS and myself and we can go ahead and get started with the meet

002and confer recommendations Dr Lauren Lauren if you can go ahead and get us started please thank you uh good evening president Kel and members of the board I'm here with support for our meet and confer team our interest based negotiations process tonight our goal is to share with you the recommendations that are coming forward to you um they're quite a few we had a productive year we've got 37 different recommendations that are being put forward uh so we have a strategy for helping to get through them quickly and leave plenty of time for conversation as well uh just a couple of reminders I I made sure that I reflected in the PowerPoint our policy review where uh this is related to policy HB for meet confer um and the scope of the meet and confer

003policy centered around wages salaries schedules hours of work compensations relating to fringe benefits and conditions of work that are non-instructional in nature and of a districtwide impact uh as a reminder we have a team that's made up of two different uh categories of members we have our CA Representatives we have uh they'll introduce themselves in a moment but um just to remind you we had Kelly blakley Ariel Williams Daniel Lopez James Diaz an Henry Yolanda ANZ and Dorothy green representing cea and from the district uh group it's Dr Burgess Amy Burgess Lauren Arrowwood Ivon carbajal Julie Romero Katie cardier Alex Rios and Nabor Moreno um I was helping to support the process as was Miss Shapiro um Dina dumal my uh assistants um Lisa Mina the HR manager as well as Maria Solano my administrative

004assistant and we had our facilitation through the work of Diane pesh who returned to us this year so as a reminder we had talked in a study session I think in January and adopted uh governing board guiding principles for our work in our interest based negotiation process I think the only change that was made to those um principles goals was to make the alignment with student outcome Focus governments governance goals as part of the consideration as we went through the process of vetting our recommendations so obviously the other goals still stand sustainable salary for all staff sustainable health care benefits exploring Revenue generating options and adjusting for uncertain Revenue so the standards that we use to uh evaluate each of the recommendations included things like is this legal uh is it sustainable is it affordable

005is it in the best interest of children and does that align to student outcome Focus government governance draft goals and guardrails since they're not actually adopted yet uh we met six times we scheduled three and felt like we needed more time so next year I think part of the feedback that we've had from the team was let's pre-plan and more meetings so that we can be very intentional in honoring time that people need to either make arrangements for uh what the needs are on their campuses this represents about 48 hours of work together um to come up with these recommendations we're bringing forward to you uh these are the areas that we'll be covering this evening we identified interests in benefits salary discipline Behavior support staff recruitment retention time worked and addendums safety facilities and

006equipment and our professional agreement so our first slide is really just a repeat of information you've seen before you as a board already acted on this recommendation at the February 20th board meeting this is related to our our insurance packet we are currently in open enrollment our current employees that are continuing through next year have an opportunity to go online go into their portal and select benefits for next year at no increase from their previous year which was a wonderful milestone for us as a district knowing that we wouldn't have any increase in um funds that would be lotted toward medical benefits all right so I am going to ask the committee to come forward and they're going to introduce themselves and they'll take on the role of summarizing each category uh what we thought

007might be helpful is to summarize the categories first and then go back can take questions and have conversation um obviously if you have questions that are pressing and Urgent then we can accommodate that as well thank you like just introduce yourselves um arel education teacher gayway sorry assistant principal J kyley one of the reading interventions special ucation Department teacher on assignment Neo Transportation manager Ka cardier principal at Theon Academy and I'm Amy burges the principal at L Kennedy and L school have I believe Kelly and neighbor are first up we are first up okay here we go good evening so neighbor and I will be presenting the options that the team recommended related to salary so neighbor will begin and then I'll take kind of the and um on the topic of salary we're recommending

008the district have uh the compensation committee review requirements for pay for performance and explore ways to further compensate highly effective staff prior to submitting the plan for the 2425 school year and um we're also recommending that the district approves tier raises for the 2425 school year as followed 10% for classified staff 5% for certified and 2.5 for administ staff uh the following three recommendations are all related to compression we had a lot of discussion about how this impacts various employee levels so the first one is um a certain amount of money this is just kind of a general recommendation that will be ongoing year after year will be allocated to address compression and then those results will be presented to meet and confer annually we often have as Joel mentioned our resources that come and

009present to us and so this will just sort of be on the docket year after year so that we can hear about what's going on and what updates are happening related to compression the second is for the upcoming school year 2425 we'll allocate specifically $200,000 to target employees that are affected by compression we started to kind of discuss as a group how this might happen and we just felt like we need some assistance in tackling that because we don't really know who's impacted and what areas and what what kinds of compression um Vanessa shared that it can look very different across employee groups and so we felt like we just needed to throw some money at it to be able to address the problem and then related to that possibly investigating some external Consultants because

010if it is beyond the scope of what's available within the district we may need to um ask for some assistance Beyond to address that big issue oh sorry and then I'm doing this one too sorry you're like um and then the following two are related to salary schedules so the first one was just combine it's a very easy win um it's just combining all of the salary schedules into one document and making that all available in one sort of easy to find place we um schooled a few people on the control F command you can find what you're looking for really easily we felt like having it in one document would make that more accessible to in place and then um adding a little blur of the following one is about adding a little blurb

011on the salary schedules to explain what our salary schedule is um we as union members often get questions about like what does this mean how do I read this and so just a little explanation um showing that we are a placement schedule and not a step schedule as they might have seen in other districts and finally the meeting confer team was recommending sunsetting uh some professional development hours for certified and classified employees due to funding tied to Esser funds so it doesn't mean they're eliminated just from that funding source specifically and we're saving questions for the end that correct well I was going to interject if I can um it's easier for me to ask questions as the instead of me remembering everybody's point of views and then going try to back so if you

012don't mind um if we have any comments and or questions or concerns on this salary specific this would be the time and then we can move on on to the next um I do have some questions and just my perspective when it comes to the salary um I'm wondering my one of my biggest things is that in our district we still have certified staff that are getting paid $15 an hours we're expecting um full adults who are single parents in the District caring families multi you know older generations to survive of unemployment and show up full-handed for students at $15 um uh an hour um I have an issue with that just because I know that I just random stories that I've been hearing of families being evicted of being you know employees in our

013district and I know there's a greater issue out there but we do and are responsible for almost a $30 million budget and sometimes um in the this framework it has brought to me the attention of how we are helping and impacting our most vulnerable not only our most vulnerable students but our most vulnerable staff too that we expect them to show up when they have two three part-time jobs going on at the same time right um I understand compression is a huge issue but for me to how do I say this to dehumanize a person based off of a title that they have or a position to me is not Equitable and it's not looking in the best interest for everybody so my push back on maybe this $200,000 to target employees most affected by

014compression what ideas do we have if we have certain money on how we're affecting our most impacted employees in the district that literally can turn around and say hey in and now here I am for $17 an hour um I get salaries it's a bigger issue there's State there's legislation there's so much that we can do but we do have the power within our district to move around other things and look at other stuff um when I've been asking for compression um why compression is so important literally the responses that I've gotten from several admin teachers staff is well how is a manager going to get paid the same as a crosswalk person and that kind of mentality and speaking already to me is not okay just because somebody does a crosswalk position doesn't mean

015that they're any less than somebody in a manager position or in a superintendent position or an admin position so that narrative is a little concerning to me as a board especially as we're moving into this framework of okay how are we supporting and helping not only our most vulnerable students but our staff too we expect them to show up full on and hey give your 100% a game and I want you to have a positive attitude and be good when you can't even pay your own bills at home and your employee of our district so that's just where I'm at um on salary I understand the whole 10% to classified certified administrative I saw how much we play pay our teachers on a year and it's it's not something that I'm happy with but if

016we can come up with other ideas that are not focused on titles and positions more focused on the individual and how we are really upbringing our most vulnerable even employees to me that would make more sense than focusing on you know like compression and I get it and I know that may upset some people and I get it but my mindset really is is I as a govering board president cannot sit up here and not speak out against this when I know families are being evicted and they're they're the we're the only employee that they have their employer that they have and then what's going on with them and their students and their families and it's going around the whole District it's not just you know one person or two people um I just want

017us to think about it on like what do we have in our power to actually help those people um so those are just my two cents on that and I don't know if anybody else has questions or anything else to say you oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you guys can yeah a big piece of um allocating the funds oh did you want to sharea well I was going to say I don't think it's about job title I think it about Job responsibility more than the title when you're a manager you have a lot more stress you have a lot more responsibility there is a higher expectation of you to do that work and so if you can I hate to say like so we want people to take more responsibility and more stress you tend

018to pay them more money to do that job so I think when people are saying oh you want a manager to make the same amount of money as a cross you know someone that does crosswall it's not about the title it's about the level of responsibility because if you can go and be the crosswalk guard and make the same amount of money and it's less stress and less responsibility you're going to go be the crossing guard and it's going to make it impossible ify anyone who's willing to take out more responsibility okay yeah and I was just going to say related to the 200,000 that's specifically for targeting in place it's doing exactly what you said which is looking at the individual because when we just say compression like I said it means a lot

019depending on what the title is what the job description is what the when they came into the district when we raised everything to 15 so we have a situation where some people even within the same job like a manager is only making a few cents more than somebody working below that they're technically supervising and so this money will allow our staff hopefully or maybe an outside consultant as the next one recommends to be able to do that work of digging in specifically to like who is actually impacted who is that person not just their title so I hope that that kind of addresses what you're speaking to because we had a lot of these same concerns and and um feelings as we were talking through this and we just felt like this is way too

020big for meet and confer there's no way that we could go through every single person individually and that's why we allocated the funds to be able to tackle that okay and then maybe if we can start getting more I guess more for everybody in practice because this is what I've just been hearing right it's like all this but that that does make sense and I'm not saying that somebody with less responsibility should get paid the same as somebody with a higher you know responsibility on their plate but the narrative that's getting around it's like well how are we going to get B the same if that I guess the narrative that's being talked about versus well job job responsibilities are a little bit different that's a different narrative than going around when we're asking different

021individuals and be like well they're just a crosswalk person they're the janitor of the school like how are they going to make the same amount as me I guess maybe that's how I should frame it too that when we're having these conversations I'm hoping that that narrative kind of stops and gets nipped in the bud because that's not we shouldn't devalue people by what they do but I do understand the whole responsibility and thank you for clarifying that 200,000 because that's not how it was explained to me the first time but I understand that now more um and maybe it would open up a little bit more outside the box thinking if you guys go back and talking that's just where I personally stood on it and the stuff that I've been hearing across the

022district sure and that's because I was on the phone talk to my mom who lives in Memphis and she's a manager of Brokers and she was telling me that starting pay $15 an hour I was like no way is phix and Memphis paying the same starting pay because the so yeah for sure and then last thing I'll say is the um my gosh you said something that I thought I said thank you for explaining the 200 because now it made a little bit sense it wasn't explained like that I don't know what else I said I know I'll jump in if I thank you question the followup I have for that is to I mean and I'm saying this just it I don't know what is the amount obviously we're we're talking about a consultant

023here coming in to figure this out out the most compressed person or few people might eat up this entire $200,000 because in reality that's not a lot of money okay and so I'm curious how much a consultant is going to cost and is it worth it to hire a consultant to evaluate what we can do with $200,000 totally we talked about that too and we said like yeah we don't want to spend all the money just paying someone else for what the in-house hopefully finance department can do but we also know that that department is thin so that's why it says explore we left it kind of open because we know yeah we didn't know what that would look like or how that and Vanessa said you know she would kind of do that digging

024and let us know and that's I remember what I was going to say that everything is baked in in our recommendations it's baked in to have it come back to meet and confer because that's ultimately what we want is not to just have decisions be made and then like hope for the best but to have it come back to us and say is this what we asked for is this really keeping the spirit of the recommendation is it what we're trying to aim for in terms of like addressing our you know most needy employee groups so same with the with the um consultant possible consultant and then I was just going to comment that I really like the the stuff about the salary schedules um I guess about the notes um I would like to

025see maybe also the same thing I don't know I know there's this is like truncated from what's in the document but um if if you could have something similar for contract addendums I think you know things are just confusing for people so the more that we can make things easier to navigate for folks the better oh yeah and we have many new employees year after year as you know so yeah absolutely yeah yep no more I'm all good anything okay thank you so much all right good evening um Daniel and I are speaking about discipline and Behavior Support um obviously this is important because there's a book out there called keep the teachers happy so they don't eat the kids and really it's even bigger than that I mean our teachers over and over who

026quit in their first three years constantly in every piece of research will cite the kids are hard and it always goes back to classroom management um so these recommendations came out of that um the first few recommendations are really um being proactive in teaching teachers those classroom management strategies so we're talking about creating and adopting a scope and sequence so that the whole district is on the same page about what teachers should be learning in regards to classroom management and positive relationship strategies then it goes into that beginning of the year and asking every school to set aside time for schools and grade levels to make sure that they're all on the same page about expectations after that they talk about how oftentimes the Special Education team doesn't get an opportunity to collaborate as much

027about students prior to the year beginning or even in the beginning of the year about special education students with the Jen teachers so this puts that time in there at the beginning of the year and then on the reactive side of things we know that even the most excellent classroom managers and best teachers that we have that are super highly effective we still have students who are going to break the rules consistently and so with those students we ask that the district explore something that was in action prior several years ago it was um a place that if a student is consistently getting in trouble rather than suspending or possibly expelling them they would go to a location to kind of relearn the school expectations still doing work almost like an in school suspension but

028it's off the campus but it's still at a school and then be able to reenter into the schools and then finally um just to make sure that the parents are part of that process we'll make sure that that student conduct and discipline sections of the parent student handbook are updated annually and we'll really really relook at that we know there's new policy changes coming up so we'll make sure those are included and um another one of our larger like uh budget items from this year is specifically around the teacher to student ratio um this was under discipline Behavior Support because intuitively if you have less students to manage there's less you have to do less management um and so we approved uh reducing the ratio from 27 and a half to1 to 25 to1 for

029the following school year um which I think adds around 19 extra teachers to our school district or extra teaching positions um which will help again with displine Behavior Support going into the next year questions on dis questions yeah go ahead so I like I like the beginning of the year stuff but then I would have liked to see something that like also helped support teachers throughout the year especially teachers that needed it on ongoing support because I think sometimes it's a one and done I like how you guys are coming up with a common like language of procedures at school so all the kids know what those procedures are and hopefully are following all the same um but it would be nice to see something with some support because I really feel that uh we

030don't support teachers who are who are really suffering um from lack of classroom management and they need a lot of that support to see what that classroom management looks like um and how much it makes your life better like I literally I I I never send my kids to the office um do we have coaches for that or just instructional coaches that's actually on the third bullet that that scope and sequence is an annual scope and sequence to continue to support year one and year teachers throughout the year year one teachers and two year one and two what about teachers that literally just need that support like not just even one and two year teachers like I know some teachers that need additional support as well okay I I will also add that I think

031part of our difficulty around because I think all the teachers on District agree and to Katie's question our in curriculum instruction Department their focus is curriculum and instruction and so it depends entirely on the instructional coach depending on what school you're at your instructional coach may be super experienced with classroom management and might have tons of advice to help you with that or they might not know anything because they taught a completely different grade level and their focus is on curriculum and instruction right um not that that's completely unrelated but it's not you know a specific scope and sequence for classroom management um but part of our difficulty is because each School site has such different structures around classroom management Behavior it's very difficult for me to confer to dictate you know this is how

032we're going to support teachers throughout the year or there's going to be these meetings every so often because so different every site and so this feels like a good starting place to have some sort of universal language and curriculum around um relationship building and classroom management to sort of lean off of to determine how we can make things more um systematized and then when you go to the second page please and if I may while switching that just to remind um remind us that the there's a recommendation that's coming forward to include ruler and Stanford Harmony as ways to to help embed that social emotional learning across all grade levels and across the district so there are things that are coming forward for recommendations that will help support these goals and this just will solidify

033that work are those what exactly are those I mean obviously they're some sort ofal tool but are they like online or I will defer to um Dr dupin for that when we get to that point I think that's going to be brought forward at some point gotcha um the uh the the task force that developed those recommendations is meeting with the two um other in interdependent teams the governing boards committee that was working on adjustments uh improvements to the conduct policies and the um there's a the group of assistant principles that were working on creating the common Matrix around the disciplinary work at different sites to Daniel's point about the concerns about consistency their their work was to try to create greater consistency across sites so we're bringing those three teams together tomorrow evening to

034see this recommendation before we bring it forward to the board but the intention is barring any significant objections from the aggregate team is to bring It Forward on May 21st as a recommendation to the governing board as an input for our student outcomes Focus governance around um behavior supports okay sorry I didn't mean to lead us astray I was just concerned I just have concerns in general and I'll just State this in general in like continuing to push and I understand we're in the year 2024 but like there's so much stuff going on that instruction is happening on a computer or a t or on a tablet I guess we should say and so I just want to make sure we're aware of that and then also like trying to fix behaviors with an online

035platform for me is like weird this this is not an online solution it sounded like it that's why I was asking what yeah no it's um I don't know if Miss Shapiro's got her little placard with her tonight but clearly it's not on the agenda but I just want to put that out there because it sounded like something that was like some sort of app or some sort of onine no it it it it basically a lot of the focus is around self-identifying where my emotional state is and learning about you know um uh what would I call Executive function and making good choices it is not an overnight solution it's going to be a three implementation okay um but if you want to do something right sometimes those things can't be done overnight and

036so and we'll share all of that um when we bring we hopefully bring that recommendation on the 21st barring any objections tomorrow evening got you um the only other question that I had on this discipline and Behavior Support is I'm concerned about the district set the student teacher ratio to 25 to1 from 27.5 to1 and the only reason why I'm concerned about that is that um through this framework is that having temporary solutions for 20 for one school year then what what happens the year after that if we're going to reduce student sizes that's literally going to impact not only the Stress Management of a teacher if the next year we have to jump up to 32 and that's going to impact student learning as well so one of the things with this new framework

037that we've been talking about is not doing temporary solutions to get quick fix this and then be left to figure it out well we can when I asked this question uh actual response was well we can revisit it after 2025 and to me that's not an okay answer if we're going to be making changes especially when it's directly impacting your students it shouldn't be on a temporary basis and we'll figure it out next year because that's exactly the data that has gotten us where we're at where our kids are not at their literacy levels that they should be because we're kicking down well we'll figure it out next school year we'll figure it out next school year so I'm concerned with the specific one if it's a one-year goal um so the the CL size

038reduction is for one year because we were only given one-time funds that does not like that is the money that we have available for class size reduction this year that there's nothing preventing us from continuing at that ratio next year the board and presumbly me confer would just have to find that money um if that's a priority of the board see but that's what I mean then we would find the money that still puts us in an if so we may have it we may not and what I'm saying is that changing that kind of massive ratio on us an subsumption of it could happen next year just for me personally I'm not sure I'm not going to speak for my board members or anybody else but for me is very problematic and concerning because

039now we're saying hey let's do this for this year and we'll figure it out to see if we have the money or not or if this is continuing on onetime basis funds is where I I personally have an issue think so to the reality of like the actual functioning in dayto day of a school you know it's 19 teachers across the district that's about it's two teachers per school for all of our smaller schools um all of our schools experience a lot of turnover in our district um I think this year we're sitting somewhere around like 50 is open positions right in teaching positions um that is more than enough to absorb all of those teaching positions every year working in our school district um teams get shun teams get bigger based on enrollment everyone

040knows about declining enrollment right people move around grade levels um just from turnover alone each of our schools should be able to accommodate two teachers shifting around and students moving from year to year are and have always been just in our school system in America and in Arizona are used to shifting teachers shifting class sizes sometimes things shift in the middle of the year and well of course it would be best I think you know for a student to have a very consistent experience all the way up you know we're a public school district that doesn't have a modory model or anything students move from grade level to grade level and in reference to the funding um it's not a matter of like trying to find money if that if it is a priority for

041the board to maintain this um our school districts can accommodate that money that just has to be pulled from somewhere else right um the money doesn't necessarily have to fall from the sky it just has to be reallocated if that if that is a priority of the board and of the bargaining team right and I understand that I'm just saying that I'm not okay with voting on temporary solutions that's that's all I'm saying and I understand that there's a whole bunch of other nuances and all the explanations but if just for me personally I can't just say yes one year and then we'll figure it out next I understand all the other stuff I'm just saying that this is the way that it's being presented to me right now is in a temporary oneyear fix

042this is what we need and then you guys or everybody else can figure it out that's just all I'm saying but from my point of view can I just respond to that I I appreciate that comment because that was actually one of the conversations that we were having as well is why would we allocate something for one year um I think that one of the one of the pieces that we talked about was so we're reducing class sizes by two and a half kids per class size and we don't know if it's going to have the huge impact that we are hoping it's going to have and so we hope that it is going to make teachers less stressed and be able to better manage and be able to teach all of the students better

043but we're not totally positive and so we're not you know I don't like to say like it's an experiment but it's sort of like we want to see if this is going to have the impact that we're hoping and then a as we come to meet and confer next year we can come together and say hey I talked to these teachers and it really did have the impact and so then can reallocate and continue that okay can I can I ask a followup question yes um can you can I put you in the mic please sorry over here and one of just another point to consider that is when we're interviewing new teachers what every single time we interview and they have questions for us they're like what are your class sizes what are your

044class sizes um and so when we're talking about like support for new teachers and people coming into our school that we want to keep and that we spend the whole year training on on the scope and sequence of um classroom management and we've put a lot of time and effort for them to leave the next year but when their class sizes are a little bit smaller we're trying to see is this going to have that effect in their case load especially as a first year teacher or a seconde teacher because that is always always a question that they ask us what is what are your class sizes um and when they hear that this is a recommendation coming forward they're like oh that sounds great like I can work and I I'm I can work

045with all of my students I might be able to better meet their needs and while 2.5 kids less per class doesn't sound like a lot as a former Kinder teacher I swear to you it is um it really is and it helps build those relationships especially when you might have some students that need those extra additional supports whether it's Behavior whether it's academics and it helps you target some of those extra supports that they need did you have a follow-up question yeah question and this may help you a little bit is even though sometimes these numbers are set at this like what is the actual reality because I don't know that we're even keeping it at 27.5 because we can't find teachers to hire then some classroom sizes are are larger so we shoot for

046the 251 um and hope that it's going to get there but what if you have you know two classes of 26 27 like that's not going to that literally is not going to be an indicator for you to get another teacher right and and I didn't mean to bring this up to get into like all the needs and like all that stuff I was just saying that temporary solutions when it has to do with the students to me sounds problematic I'm not saying you know there's a whole bunch of stuff I know that there's a whole bunch of could bees could happen this could happen that could happen that's not what I'm saying what I'm just saying is proposing temporary for me personally proposing temporary solutions that actually impacts direct student learning it's just not

047viable for me it doesn't sound like it's a good thing to do because then we're left let's figure it out next year that's just all I was saying I also think um to Heather's Point like our school district doesn't have caps on classes the ratio means that if we have 26 or 27 kids in a class actually that's not an indicator that we need another teacher so and it's that way because it provides flexibility for the school district to assign teachers based on need and are like you know arguably 30 6 kindergarteners is very different to 36 eth graders but we do have classrooms that are anywhere in the range of 35 to 45 kids especially in the upper grades and that's why it's such a desperate need for the school district okay any other

048questions or comments um anything else in the discipline or behavior portion of it oh oh sorry was there anything else on your guys no okay all right thank you guys so much for that um conversation I really appreciate it I guess we're on staff recruitment and retention so uh staff Recruitment and Retention has been a a huge um goal of the district for many many years as it should be because teachers are the ones that are right there with the students on a regular basis so we spent quite a bit of time talking about ways that we can enhance both retention as well as Recruitment and you can see the different bullets here um there's a couple of suggestions about or recommendations that have to do with the visibility and the advertising and how to

049make sure that we are getting um the word out that we need um positions to be filled and how that's done um that referral program that also supports recruitment that we've um done a little bit in the past so spending some more time exploring those different options and then um in terms of retaining teachers conducting those stay interviews on a more regular basis so annually as opposed to um we've done them occasionally in the past but we haven't done them as regularly and just making sure that that information is being shared out so that we can um look at it and and see if there's different options to consider in the future based on the feedback that we're getting from people who are staying in the district and making that choice um the next recommendation

050is very specific to a small employee group in our district but it's a employee group that's vital to the work that the school district and the specific sites do and that has to do with the psychologist market demand um the reality is right now when we can't fill the psychologist positions we have to get um contracted psychologists which cost exorbitant amounts of money so actually by adding um increasing their market demand and hopefully Hiring Our Own employees we actually saving money so it's kind of one of those spend money to save money situations um not dissimilar from a stiens that we provide for other hardto fill positions um the ne oh loud enough you hear me um the um the next two bulletin points are about um creating effective teachers so creating a model for

051master and Mentor teachers um we know that we're going down coaches at each we're going from a coach Tu to one coaches at one site to traveling coaches and so to kind of fill the void that would be left when they're not there um looking to create a teacher Mentor Master teacher program and then also allowing teachers to pursue their own professional development I think once you get to the 15 20 year mark you kind of hurt it all and so being having that option to go out and explore your own professional development in place of professional development that's happening at the site but also has to be approved by the principal so you can't go get professional development on how to be a nurse because that wouldn't doing one any good do you guys

052have any questions comments I just have a comment like I love that last one because literally like this is the end of my like 20 well 23rd year in my district and like who hasn't like literally been in the same PD like three or four times by then I love this I think this is amazing I I want to take this back to my district and I'm pretty sure they hate me by now cuz I was like we we should do this we should do this this is awesome I love that one thank you um I love it too and I would also love to see more opportunities for those same folks to be teaching teachers in our district um I mean just like any like professional uh profession that requires you know continuing education

053I think once you're past a certain year you should be always uh in a position to be able to teach cles or whatever I call them C in my job I forget what they are CTS or whatever um you should be teaching this like that should be your thing um I don't I think we should be sharing the love within our district um and and there's so much to learn from all the folks that are here um the other thing I was going to say was I know this um agreement is a draft right now but one thing just scrolling through it and it's always a reminder for all of us is um there's a lot of acronyms that are like not explained and so for people that either aren't part of the district if

054it's District specific or like aren't tuned into all the education acronyms it might be hard to understand some of the things so I just wanted to put that out there as something to maybe look at before you get to your final draft thank you and then we have time worked and D in options time work and what oh addendum addendum hi uh so uh this section of the presentation is focused on specifically addendum related and time work stuff um and the three things that kind of came to my mind with this is a increase in communication uh an increase in transparency and I think an increase in uh incentive and positive based uh ideas uh to help um all kind of come back to building trust right um and you can kind of read through

055these yourselves but like the top one in particular the district will publish a list of available addendums and extracurricular stiens this is so like everybody has some full transparency about like what's out there what's the process for this what does it looks like so there's not like hunting through all sorts of links and guessing at what's available and guessing what's out there um and then uh the the last one um in particular I'll highlight too because has the district will direct the Communications Department to publish staff attendance data um we all know that attendance is an issue um and uh you know you you you create systems to uh focus on trying to help and trying to support um knowing that it there's a a there's a worry and a concern that sometimes you can

056create a system that is more for lack of a better word punishment based um and you don't want to in my opinion it's not a fun place to be where the focus is well we're going to create a system based on the people that break the rules the people that go and take advantage of it those people will always exist um and you try to do the best you can to contain that but the goal is to try to incentivize that stuff so that's kind of the nature of that one there to uh help see that your that your school and your situation is similar to other schools and to provide that incentive to the school uh for best staff attendance and that kind of thing just different types of program hopefully it's not a

057pizza party yeah yeah I mean the standard things is yeah those are the standard things pizza party and believe it or not like a a a a member of leadership coming and taking over your class for a period people kind of like think that's not a big deal but I went in to go uh pick up a student from a teacher's class and I said oh hey uh I need a five minute break and she's like what five minute break for me like you know was one of those things where like she was really happy I'm sorry it's like getting a baby sitter yeah it tottally is just a you know a little I get to go and take a breath so that's kind of the idea behind this any pruna questions any questions concerns

058no thank you thank you safety facilities and Equipment good evening everyone um this was a topic that was kind of near and dear to my heart um and it really kind of breaks down to three categories because the needs at some of the newer schools are definitely different than the needs at some of the older schools um so it really kind of breaks it down into three different groups really talking about facilities training Sports well maybe four and some and safety um and so some of those pieces that we were really talking about is just ensuring that safety components um on campus are really up to par ensuring that all locks are working at some of the older campuses when it's hot it might swell and it while it worked in the winter time the

059locked on work in the summertime and then um so different pieces like that um ensuring that all the locks are working really just making aware of components like signage and that very clear language about these are the expectations on our campus um whether you are a student whether you are a teacher whether you're an administrator you're a visitor to our campus a parent um this is what it means to be a member on our our campus and um the way that we conduct ourselves and having some of those clear signage whether it be at the sports game or Simply Having the policy stating of why we show our IDs in the front office um just making that very clear that clear as kind language um to ensure that we that everyone knows and understands what's

060going on and then just ensuring that um the staff is trained and in order for the like the training that comes along with like if there's a crisis on campus who's responsible for this crisis um what does it involve if something is not working facility wise what kind of training do we need or how do we you know how do we enter those tickets just all of those different components and then just making sure that um some of our our sports that whether whether it comes to uniforms or equipment they're safe they're Equitable and that we all have the right working components questions no I just have a question um well not a question but I'm glad I saw the district will conduct an annual review of the locks but I know that that's something

061that's already being done districtwide anyway so I'm just glad that I'm seeing some of the Synergy of what you guys are saying but we're already taking it admin is already taking it in their hands to um do some of the things so that's awesome that was just it I just saw the alignment thank you thank you I vividly remember playing basketball in school here and keeping score on an easel and somebody just kept Crossing out the score and writing the new score mighten and next one is our professional agreement yeah all of the recommendations regarding the professional agreement are just language that have been added to the actual professional agreement document um our professional agreements like our negotiated contract as a result of the bargaining team oh yep sorry thank you um as you guys

062already know there's a district team and a union team we get together we approve a draft professional agreement it goes back to Union membership to approve it goes to the superintendent and the district's lawyer to approve um and then it goes to the governing board for um ratification after that um the professional agreement is a big step for the school district because it helps with continuity of recommendations um the H policy for me confer was established two years ago um and unfortunately things that were developed to meet good fur before that often fall by the wayside and so um everything from when that policy was adopted to now will be in that professional agreement assuming it's still relevant and you know ongoing um that is to be you know ratified and upheld by the district

063and then in terms of timeline today obviously we're bringing the recommendations to the governing board for essentially like a first review um it's still being vetted by the attorney it's actually currently being voted on by union membership and then in May 21st we'll have whether or not both sides approved it we'll have that final draft to the governing board for approval and if it was my understanding and the May 21st may get push back a little bit just so we all know just because I think our attorney needed a little bit more time to look over the stuff that is possible I we we met with her today and there were a few concerns around some things that had some legalities tied to them so and the other piece I don't know with CA approval

064is if there are some changes if you need to go back to your membership those changes so I I'm personally less concerned about hitting that March 21st date than making sure that the items that are already exist in the meet and confer recommendations that require work by the business team and the human resources team in order to have payroll set up by July to get staff paid those are the ones that I think have more of a a timing crunch with the no disrespect but with the professional agreement gets finalized in June I don't think it's gonna right and that's just I I just want to do that for transpar transparency reasons that if for some reason we don't get on May 21st it's not that we're not we don't care we're just it will

065get looked at but yeah I and to answer or to clarify um there's obviously some level of flexibility if we have to change an acronym or comma I don't think that would require us going back to our membership for a vote or going to the lawyer but um any significant changes would have to go back to our membership for a vote okay any question yeah go ahead so I have one question and one comment um what is the what is the percent that you guys consider a simple majority simple majority yeah just majority of the MERS that vote yeah so 51% okay um and then second like this makes my heart so happy because literally this is like something that has been like something I've been pushing for for the last like four years or

066three and a half years I've been on the board and I can't be more thrilled that you guys finally have one um and that it's in the process and something you guys can look at every year now and change and I think it's going to be so good for the district I know it makes being a president and being um on the exec board so much easier to function and then on the district side just having that same language and having the same communication like this is going to be so great and you'll memorize pages and you'll be like oh page 13 or whatever because people always ask like the same questions but like I am just so thankful that you guys got this done yeah any other questions or comments thank you the the

067last slide is just a reminder this is information that you had at a previous board meeting we just wanted to make sure you had it as reference uh so then that brings us to the conclusion of our presentation if you have any additional questions any other questions closing remarks all right thank you guys so much we really appreciate all your time and effort into this thank you all right and that brings us to our next uh item which is the adjournment of the special board meeting and I'm going to take a quick like three minute break and then we'll resume with our regular board meeting is strobing okay just so you know I don't have a SE yeah oh yeah thank you also there's air in the water line so it's like spitting out water

068every two seconds just like that restroom possessed I used everything I was like that's fine I'm not having a yeah I like May if I just close my eyes it'll I'm kind of washing my hands and at the same time maybe it's more [Music] effici oh that very yeah that makes sense yeah that's the one that Sarah Beth just put yeah yeah that probably is this is is here's why we haven't applied for well maybe you're not used to see didn't exist I don't know when it started but this is this is the problem and make it a three yeah okay [Music] that's I wonder okay sounds good [Music] I like it a lot of times well did I tell you guys I went I thought she was right there I went to the whatever

069and were like no I know but they said think years before that you have like could it be like hypo thyroid like something else I was like I probably just need [Laughter] neor [Music] unless you don't want to I can ask oh you did oh those are cute e e e all right thank you to everybody if we can go grab our seats we're going to go ahead and get started thank you everybody all right we have a public budget hearing that we're going to go ahead and get started with and this is the budget hearing for the adoption of the revise number one 2324 maintenance and operations District additional assistant budgets and we can I'll turn it over to Miss Shapiro for our budget hearing thank you for your patience oh um thank you

070president CIO and board members for your patience as we got our presentation set up tonight uh we are having a public hearing uh for the adoption of the revised budget for fiscal year 2324 I did want to go ahead and present a couple of uh changes to the budget from the adopted budget previously adopted in last uh June or July was in June thank you um as we discussed at one of the uh study sessions for Budget at the end of the year in May we do our final revised budget based on the um final numbers that we've received from of various uh different areas so in this case we did some updates for our student counts um those get finalized ized uh these were pulled from April of 2024 so these are our most

071recent student counts with current funding it's very important to make sure that these counts are updated through our budget res revision process so we um in this case we went from 4 point or 4597 ADM to 4586 um a slight decrease in ADM that was about 10ish ADM um that is an extremely close number when you're trying to project this out the year before and you're not sure what your enrollment is going to be um I don't know that in a budget process uh that I've been a part of that I've ever been that close so kudos to Mr Man 10 is amazing um our M carry forward uh it goes through that calculation in October discussed that at the last meeting that's when we get that October letter so we get the final amount

072and that's because we have to close out our financials from the previous year and um file our annual Financial reports so that it takes a while for all those numbers to finalize and come through we don't have those numbers when we adopt the budget we do our best guess based on what's happening at the time so um at this point of the year is when we will have that final number from that October letter and we plug that in um that resulted in an increase of about 330,000 and and uh this directly does affect the m&o budget dollars we also updated because of those um membership numbers and those carry forward numbers all of those numbers affect that budget we had a slight increase in our classroom site fund so we updated that um those

073again come from those final classroom site fund amounts from the 2223 annual financial report so that changes those numbers slightly for what we feed into the budget again a normal process um so what you see is in the emo budget going from the 46 .8 million to a 47.1 million and then in that capital budget we went from the 12.7 million to 12.9 million so those increases from that page before um when we have these types of increases we typically are putting those in those areas that we know uh might need that additional budget support um so in this case we put those in the benefit and salary lines of M because we know that we're going to increase some of those through those Esser funded staff that are flowing back into the M budget

074and on the capital side we increased uh the budget for instructional materials that directly support students we know that um that's where our dollars are sitting uh in that budget this year because we have actual expenditures so when we're doing the budget revision we look at where are those dollars actually being spent a budget is just kind of where we think those dollars will be spent um and that's why those additional dollars were placed in those areas and then just the future budget considerations as we move into the process um for the next adopted budget that'll be coming to the board for the fiscal 20242 year um you know we have our ongoing concern with our decreasing enrollment uh we are projecting for that we have some very good um Trend analysis that I think

075has been working for kraton to project to the tennish um difference in ADM we also have our inflation funding versus inflated operation costs uh that's the 2% that we get for inflation funding we know that doesn't come close to how much inflation actually um increases our operational cost the onetime nature of those Federal pandemic funding that's the Esser dollars that'll be sunsetting uh as we move those back in in the district there was a uh there's been a nice flow of that information we've had many presentation on the Esser funding in that sunsetting process um so I think as we go in we're as as knowledgeable as possible about that process of moving that back into the budget um we always talk about the aggregate expenditure limit uh we still don't have a permanent solution

076to that so that'll be an ongoing conversation in our budget processes in the future and then additionally we have the state's budget shortfalls we'll have to see what they do to manage that in the future um and uh wait and see uh but at this time I think we're aligned to have a good budget revision and I'm happy to answer any questions that the board may have thank you Mr Peril do we have any questions comments or concerns no I just want to appreciate um Jay Vanessa and the team past and present because I think other districts we've seen um how kind of a uh really quick halt to the eser funds can play out if there wasn't planning ahead and I think our District's done as best we can in planning ahead and and

077making sure it doesn't feel like such a shock to the system so I really appreciate it thank you no additional questions or comments thank you very much Mar you need to ask if anybody in the audience okay anybody on the audience have any questions comments and our budget I'm not technically in the audience but I I'd like to give a shout out to the meet and confer team since they're here because while it's nice to get the compliment about the hard work our teams done our team has never been just administrators it's always been the administrators working with me and confer and some of the really great recommendations and the hard work of the negotiation in the IBM process has given us real a solid platform to stand on and so that that collaboration over

078the years has been been powerful and helpful and the fiscal stewardship committee also um played a big part in planning for the Sesser dollars and the information that was able to be collected and taken to meet and confer so again team effort so thank you okay so we can go to the bathroom not yet just kidding all right that brings us to our next agenda item which is 10A or land acknowledgement the cron School District understands that a community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the otam Jude and akima otam people who descended from the hokam and have inhabited these lands since time in Memorial the oam whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture in communities sping countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and

079carrying a powerful Legacy for Generations into the future with this acknowledgement the crayon School District formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations and with that Mr man if you can lead us into the Pledge of Allegiance Al un States all right and that brings us to 2C which is a roll call um Miss MCB is online um with us virtually hi Miss MB we have Miss Gibson mle here miss SS and myself and Miss mcrey is not present BU as noes we want to wel welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address four cards that are over here on our left side by

080the coffee um that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary Miss hais if they wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for two cards White cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on on our agenda and that's per our policy BH and then that brings us to the approval of the agenda um I'm going to ask that we make a slight change we have many amazing um special guests with us tonight and honor everybody's time so I move the governing um board approve or move the agenda item number seven which is approval of consent to

081be heard right after 3B which is adoption of revised budgets persu to policy DB second all those in favor I I I thank you that brings us to our agenda item 3B um we just heard the budgets pursuant to the policy DB and AR 15905 so with that being said said I move the governing board adopt the Revis number one total aggregate School District budget per ar5905 and specifically 15905 E1 for fiscal year 2324 second all those in favor hi all right hi thank you Miss MB and then that brings us to um item seven which is our approval of consent um inner I move the governing board approve consent agenda items a through o in accordance with policy bb- e do we want to pull n sure are we oh okay I thought that's

082what we were doing well no but I have a plan for that oh go ahead may I have a second yeah oh so we're approving everything I just I'm confused we're approving everything trusting you second all those in favor hi hi perfect um so now with that being said in our consent agenda item we just had um four new hires that are assistant principles and tonight we also have a very special day it is Mr man's birthday today so with that being said and with so many people in our meeting we are going to take another slight recess of just quick 10 minutes where we have cake to celebrate with our new assistant principles and and their families and to celebrate Mr man's birthday so before we go on to this 10minute adjournment I would

083like for us to sing Mr Man a happy birthday can we well I was gonna say can we at least announce their names yeah yeah we can after I was like yeah do you want to do that first song oh we can we could put names into the Happy Birthday song I know oh the four oh I like that our four new employees welcome to the crayon School District join up here so we can sing Happy Birthday to Mr Man and then that way we can officially recognize you so with those with my non-criminal law advice that I'm giving you right now it seems like a little bit like hazing I don't I don't know we should be doing that okay all right um so we can go ahead and get started with their happy

084birthday so we can go and head into our 10 minute um recess of celebrating our new hires and our super attendance birthday Ready Set happy birthday to you happy birthday to you happy birthday dear Mr Man happy birthday to you yay thank you all very much we're going to go at yeah and then if we could please have our new um assistant of principles that we just went ahead and approved in the consent agenda item so we can recognize you see you and then we'll mingle within the next 10-minute break so if I can have you guys stand up please and maybe just yay one two three I thought we had one more James oh there's James please please mingle with our new assistant principles we're going in a 10-minute break we'll be back at

0855 or 656 thank you e e e hello hello all right if we can make it back to our seats we're going to go ahead and get started I enjoyed meeting our new employees great the cake was awesome thank you and Miss michaelb are you back I just want to make sure you're back yes I am awesome thank thank you all right that brings us to our next um agenda item which is 48 and that's governing board reports and Miss MB if you have a governing board report I'm gonna go ahead and get started with you I'll be brief because it's very strange being a floating voice um but uh I just since I'm not there in person I want to do another congratulations to all of our new assistant principles and happy birthday to

086Mr Man thank you uh Miss SS now it's kind of boring in here guys I love having a lot of people in here it's fun allude well they know sorry did I hear your feelings sorry they're like it is boring they're like please finish this meeting so go right for real that's what you guys all want um so um I know his teacher appreci apption week um and I just wanted to reflect on something uh this morning I heard you know it's Teacher Appreciation Day which nurse's day was yesterday and I know we take the whole week and um you know they keep saying like this is a thankless job but I want to say that I like don't think it's a thankless job at all like I find so much thanks in my students

087like every single day and like having the reflection um of having those things that you know like I have a kid who um was absent so much last year because she just didn't want to come to school and her mom like would let her stay home from school um and this year she's actually advocating for herself to come to school and her mom be like oh you can stay home from school and she's like no I'm going to school mom um so just like stories like that where you see that you are um thanked every day in some small way in some small gesture from one of your students or even one of your parents um and I know we celebrate it this week and we get a lot of fun things and uh food

088and we've had food all week and I'm sure most of you guys have too um but thank you um for my fellow teachers and Educators and um principes just everyone for the job that you do and people may not say thank you all the time but I think that we see it um more often than not if we stop and think about think about those things so thank you for all that you do thank you Miss SS Miss Gibson mle um I probably am living in a different Universe because I did not know it was teacher appreciation week or maybe I just haven't had time to look at things this week but thank you everybody um and thank you for sharing that I always appreciate when you share things it makes me happy um there

089uh so Sophia is gonna to talk about this more I'm sure but there's a house concurrent resolution that's been put on an agenda for tomorrow for a Joint Committee hearing and the legislature which has like 12 different subsections it implicates things from civil to criminal to uh family issues to school stuff and so um that was weird that was the last part of her report so it's almost like a repeat yeah right I know she wasn't talking I think it was Russell's fault um anyway essentially it it would be something that would if passed would be sent to the ballot and um in this case some of the provisions would um allow for immigration officials to try to enforce things uh certain laws and certain new state laws that would be passed as a part

090of this at schools churches Health Care Facilities Etc and so it's something that everybody should be aware of because it doesn't need to be approved by the governor it would be referred directly to the ballot upon a simple majority in each house of the legislature and um the voters here in Arizona would then vote on it and if passed would be very hard to repeal such a such as like prop 203 right so just something that everybody should be aware of that's getting kickstarted tomorrow um and I know Sophia is going to touch on it some more but please go out and look at add it it's HCR 2060 yeah and just to add a little bit oh I'm sorry were you done with your governing board update I don't have anything else sorry I'm

091good I didn't mean to cut you off just to um touch base a little bit on that it's really important I just want to remind our crayon community that in 2017 I was not on the board but the board did create a resolution and I'm just going to read the top portion and the end portion of it it is on our website you guys can find it it's called resolution success for all means safety for all Craton School District safe zones and it basically says whereas the United States Supreme Court held in plier that no public school district has the basis to deny children access to education based on their immigration status citing that children have little to no control over their immigration status that the harm it would inflict on the child and society

092and self and equal protection rights of the 14th Amendment whereas immigration and custom enforcement to better known as ice of the Department of Homeland Security activities in and around schools Early Education Centers and adult school facilities Andor fear anxiety around such potential activities would be a severe disruption to their learning environment and educational setting for students it goes on to say a couple more things and it ends with by this re resolution in the governing board affirms its commitment to a safe welcoming and inclusive School for every student without regards to their immigration status their race color national origin religion sex or disability so with this um I personally in my governing board update this is a great call to action for any teachers administrators parents or students that have a need that they need

093to speak up against this bill it would be important for anybody to show up tomorrow at 1 p.m. and you know have voice heard if this is something that is laying heavy on your heart because like Miss Gibson McLean said um if it does get passed it goes into a ballot initiative and then that's a whole another process so just want to bring it um some awareness because it is something that impacts our district and it's something out there that could potentially affect us but we just want to reassure the community crankton community that you know the board previously did adopt something to protect um based on immigration status and all these different things and we will be um hopefully revisiting a new resolution and just know that we do support our students in every

094way shape or form depending of their immigration status um if you can't make it to the meeting at 1 tomorrow you can also register for the request to speak RTS system ataz l.gov and again HTR 2060 is what you need to know and then you can provide written comment there as well yes and then the second board update that I have is um as we all know the district has recently moved into a student Focus outcome governance framework and the um this work has been not only been done by the crankton school district um over a year ago almost well last year I got adopted but Phoenix Elementary School District and Rosevelt school districts are other partnering districts that have decided to Embark this journey to better serve our students and and um I want

095to say about they've been doing this work seven months even before us the work in the districts has been done by leadership and districts not anybody else I know that there's this roring around that a certain person in Ada has got a hold of this framework and just to bring a little bit light to that that work has been worked on by school districts before it got in the hands of anybody or before any got anybody got put into office this Thursday and Friday there will be an effect of governance board training at ad by the same person who has created this framework and in order to stop narratives that are going around of certain districts aligning themselves with ad or whatever the case is is this is a reminder that this work has been

096occurring in open public meetings since November of last year and that was before I got to the hands of any entity or institution now um I'd be remissed if I didn't also bring to light that the Arizona School Board Association which is an association that their whole focus is meant to develop and provide Knowledge and Skills to Schoolboard elected members had an opportunity to turn the wheel for the State of Arizona and adopting this framework and they denied it so now ad has it and it's unfortunate that it is in the hands of somebody who's leading that place from not a good place but it does not discredit the work and what we are doing and what we are reimagining for our students here in our district so the training is happening I personally have

097signed myself up to go to that training and yes I understand the person that's there has personally attacked me and this District but it's not about what's going on between these little nonsense um complaints it's about our students and in order for us to get more clarity and find out what's going on sometimes these are the things that we have to do as Leaders to make sure that everybody knows that we're there for the students not anything else and no poly tricking is what we like to call it so just this transparency some I'm myself doing it I believe some of our cabinet members will be there and it's not because we are aligning ourselves with the person who's running that department but it really is to get down to how we move the needle

098forward for our students because our data has repeatedly shown that we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing for our students so I just wanted to put that out there that way when you guys see this stuff going on and we're there on Thursday you guys know where we're coming from and you understand that cron Elementary School District Phoenix Elementary School District and Roseville have been doing this work months and years even before a certain person was even elected into that office um and then with that I finished my board report and Miss I think I we did Miss Caleb we already did everybody right perfect so with that that brings us to our superintendent report thank you Madame President um I would like to jump on the bandwagon with Teacher Appreciation Week there

099is always appreciation for our teachers and um you know it's a shame that it kind of gets pressed into a single week but um we definitely um are happy to have the folks that we have within our district and uh we are very appreciative for having them we've got some things that'll be going out later this week to show that appreciation um May is also speech language pathology month and while I know all of us appreciate teachers because all of us had a teacher at some point um I want to give a shout out to our speech language Pathologists as well I know when my own son needed support in that regard the speech language pathologist at his school helped him out and so it is a very important thing within our district um Junior

100ambassadors right now are in Washington DC um you know I don't want to put too much pressure on them I'm hoping they're going to sort everything out there while they're there but you know if nothing else at least they're getting some exposure uh and then um I had the great pleasure uh along with um some members of our c and Miss wasik to attend the band concert at Camelback yesterday I was very proud of our students and love the fact that we have that partnership with Camelbeach where our students get exposed to that High School experience um and kind of it shows them some Pathways that may exist for them to continue in their musical Endeavors and then we also just as a reminder on Thursday evening um we actually have our Coral concerts that

101will be going on as well um um and then had the great pleasure to join our volunteer luncheon last week so another shout out to all of our volunteers districtwide of course our Community Education team just did an amazing beautiful job in honoring our volunteers and partners and um it was really nice to have that opportunity to do so um withs may have come up previously I could not recall um but it did hit social media I think last week um Craton Elementary District was selected uh as number four amongst Elementary districts in the state by ranking Arizona so that thought that was a bit of a surprise and and actually a very nice surprise and then um tomorrow night we will be celebrating our kraton district Award winners and our retirees at our annual

102um celebration event and so uh that is tomorrow I think starting around 3 o'clock at the kraton Academy Gym so that is everything that I have thank you Mr man that brings us over to 5A which is our student outcomes Focus governance update um all right we're going to start off with our draft board goals I think we've had many discussions we've gone out to the community we went back and rechecked with our student um um our kids Congress sorry with our students and it looks like um our students actually after we were there and talking and we spent a little bit more one-on-one time with them I actually had a specific student come up to me and she was just in awe of how much we're centering them in in in our goals she

103was just like the fact that you guys are willing to figure out what's going on asking for her opinion she goes this was the seventh grader um she's like that's just everything to me so it it's it's awesome to finally you know know that now that they have a better understanding on how and why we're doing this and it's literally to find out what tools what things we need to make sure that their education experience is not only a comfortable good happy one but also that we're actually giving them the tools so they can go on and learn and use the knowledge that they learn so with that being said um I don't know if we have any more discuss on the goals I think we're at the point where we can adopt them and

104unless anybody has any questions and concerns on how the goals have be WR um have been written um do we have the last updated one that we can put up there with end counts oh it's right here it's the one with end counts um I say I'd like to discuss the e one I'm sorry what was that Miss MB uh I think it would be good to discuss the eel one because we have a few different options so would it be better if would it make more sense for us if we adopted the goals by goal and then as we get the other one then we discuss them does that make sense okay so for our first goal I'm move the governing board approve the suggested board goal number one which is the percent of

105eighth grade students that score minimally proficient on aasa math will decrease from 73% in August 2023 to 48% by August 2028 all those in favor I hi I was that an was that okay and enough um okay perfect um moving on to board goal number two I move the governing board approve draft board goal number two which is the percent of eighth grade black students that score proficient on asasa math will increase from 0% in August 2023 to 28% by August 2028 all those in favor I I all right so that moves us to our draft goal number three um we have it written as the board the percent of 8th grade El students that score proficient on a zala will increase from 12% on August 2023 to 177% by August 2028 we do have

106some revisions and before we go into all the revisions and the back and forth one of the things that I did see in this and that I did discuss with um Dr Ramos is when we go back to movements of large subgroups I believe that's what leads us back to the same stuff that we've been doing the whole point of the S SOG framework is to get down to the our most vulnerable needed who needs the most help and when we start expanding it to larger subgroups I believe that's when we can get lost in translation again and start doing the same things unintentionally Without Really focusing on the specifics so those are the only concerns that I have with the revised um with the with the revised recommendations and also the um one thing

107that I want us to know before we want us to be clear is that these are our our board goals and the standards that we're setting for the district and although admin recommendations are always welcome and open this is the time for us to really realize and look from the data and the study sessions that we've been as to how are we going to move forward and actually make sure that we're moving the needle and we're not back into these whirlwinds or big subgroups of where we're getting Lost in Translation again so with that being said um Miss MB did you have did you want to start off with some questions concerns or wonderings that you have regarding our goal versus the recommendations before the questions can we just clarify this goal that we're looking

108at here is the rec is the one with the changes or the original one I'm getting confused so I said the original one but we're discussing all the recommendations because there's more than one okay but this one right here is oh yeah and and if you look at the agenda um information that we have if you look at to the one that says s SOG board goals recommendation that's the sheet that I'm looking at because that will give you the oh there you go and oh yeah I have that open I just wanted to make sure whatever one was okay yeah that's the original okay um Miss MB um I do share the same weariness about making the goals too large of groups um that being said with this specifically I do feel that the

109way Aela tests work and all of that I really favoring a grow level growth goal versus just straight to proficiency because that going straight to proficiency with a goal for a Zella means that we are discounting and and not setting up for Success our students who are coming in is pre-emergent emergent because it is not the program the testing everything around that is not set up for students to jump four levels in a year um I really like the I think option one is a little too large still but when we were talking about you know really looking at the growth by grade bands and seeing that movement I feel that option two hits on that and wasn't there a concern I think from from you guys when you when we talked from the district

110like on how we would actually do and what it would actually look like in regards to the grade bands yeah I think the concern was if we were going to try to follow the same kids because as kids test out they stop growing so if a kid meets proficiency then they're not part of the growth statistics moving forward from there but I'm gonna defer to Dr du I would concur Jay with with what you said um I think from an operation standpoint with regards to options two and three if the board chose to go that direction um a consideration might be to pick one of those bands so that we address both president cio's concerns about scope and scale and so that we don't end up with as we think about annual targets and interim

111measures if we do all three grade Bands then we're going to have an annual Target for each one of those interim measures for each one of those and it will become quite compreh quite hard to follow so our recommendation our consideration would be to pick one and then we could monitor that more inth okay um um Miss SS or Miss Gibson McLean do you have any other comments or questions on that do you I'll think about it you want to go first I guess my question would be then um what is is it going to make a difference or what recommendation do people have about which grade band would be the best one to adopt what I'm thinking and seeing is that um I believe that if we did option one and we reframed it

112to the way that it is on option one it would work and the grade bands and all that stuff we can leave it up to admin admin to come back and tell us what if that's going to look what that looks like either an intrum goal or an annual Target goal I think the bands can be eventually put in but as intrum goals for that specific goal if that makes sense um but that would be up to them to figure that out but I'm okay with changing the language of option one and to be honest with you I love emerging multilingual way better than I do e students that's just you know um if we're going to be talking about framing things and that's just sounds better anyway so I'm okay with the recommendation of

113percentage of emerging multilingual students because one thing that happens is once we adopt these goals goals they're going to have to come back and give us annual Target goals and interim goals and then we're going to have to be convinced that that's how we're going to get this info so if they come back and tell us an intrum go on abandoned we don't think we can vote it down and then they can come back and we can start those conversations but to get us started on this specific one I I think it makes more sense with Miss what Miss Michaela was saying if we're okay um doing that option do you guys have any questions concerns on doing that I guess that I'm confused because when I when I finished listening to miss MB I

114didn't think she was landing on option one well I was my thing was option one are we getting back to being too big of a group right um the only caveat I'm comfortable with option one or choosing one of the grade bands because I do think there's a balance in operations of being able to track these goals if we were to choose option one then I think we just need to be very intentional about what those interim goals are and maybe that's where we start breaking down to smaller groups Madame President if I may yes if we if the board chooses to go with option one what I could Envision us doing is presenting data and building the interim goals and annual targets around each one of the proficiency categories so what we would do

115is bring forward data that said like for example we just finished a Zella so we would bring forward data to report on how many kids are at the pre-emergent level and then set the Target around the number of kids moving from pre-emergent to emergent and then likewise how many move from emergent and that will allow us to really see potentially where the greatest areas of growth and and possible stagnation might be um and the group is is is larger but it's still a relatively manageable proportion of our population especially if we start looking at those proficiency categories uh as distinct groups and to me that that kind of makes sense and that's how when it's a little bit bigger this is the only goal that I think we're going to have a larger subgroup and

116as long as we have those interum goals and those annual rate goals really tidied up then I think it's it's still doable even though it seems like a larger group well I appreciate Dr dupin's comment too because when you're looking when you're looking at um English proficiency I it really just depends on where are we wanting to get the data and focus our data because you're not seeing the same like just because they're first grader or an eighth grader that has no tie to their levels on the aella test depending on when they started learning English right versus I like Dr dubin's comment because then we're really honing in on you know are we really effective at moving kids from pre-emergent to emergent but then somewhere in basic intermediate are we falling off the tracks

117and we're not continuing to push them forward because I have seen that data in kraton and other places happen um so I think that could be a really interesting way to Target and focus that around what we're doing in the classrooms to support the students at all levels regardless of what grade they are in yeah that that makes sense to me as well um Miss Gibson McLean or Miss sis any other comments or anything no I think after talking to Dr Ramos with you it was a lot clearer so I I agree with the explanation of the intern goals um I think that this one will work okay um Miss MB do you have anything else to add not for the El okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to move the

118governing board um adopt draft goal number three um stating the percentage of emerging multilingual students that increases one or more levels and aella will increase from 25% in August 2023 to 40% by August 2028 all those in favor I I I okay that's adopted and that goes into our last one which is the percent of third grade El students that score proficient on Aela will increase from 8% on August 23 to 15% by August 28 we also have recommendations do we have any um conversations on which one we prefer questions comments concerns there's just the one recommend or where's the I'm confused I think this is the recommendation the second yeah I didn't read the recommendation sorry I just read the original one I thought I was missing something okay no there wa just that

119one yeah I mean I feel if since we just adopted the option one for merging multilingual I feel that the original goal for seems redundant I agree even with the um yeah you're right you're you're still you're just taking one grade level and you're doing the same measurement interim goals yeah I was gonna say that grade level will likely be one of the interim goals okay so with that being said we only have three goals right now it does seem like the fourth goal would be redundant so what do we want to do do we I mean do we have any opposition to the recommendation because it is a small group and it aligns with move on one reading which is a huge piece for all districts I don't have an issue that third grade

120isal okay so um then with that being said what we can do is I move the governing board um move forward with the board goal number four recommendation of the percentage third grade students who score proficient on asasa in English language arts will increase from 18% in August 2023 to 41% by August 2028 all those in favor I I perfect I just want to clap for ourselves because I feel like that's been a long so much yes um so we will be sending out some more material on what interm goals look like our next board meeting we will be presenting some information on that too so our community and our board knows um the next steps on this would be getting recommendations of interim goals annual Target goals and the beautiful thing about this too

121is that we're going to be put on the school board eventually on a consistent calendar and quarterly as we're getting data and updates not only do we have to present those here at the board meeting but we will be going out to the community whether that looks like an site councils or nitos or Community Council meetings and bringing this information and data over to our families so they feel empowered and they know what's going on in the district as well and how they can you know collaborate with us to make sure we're moving the needle forward for our students um now that we have adopted our goals the one thing that I do request um is that our board goals be printed and they're in the boardroom visible that they go on the website as

122well so everybody knows you know a nice area of where that stuff's going to be at and eventually we can even get it to the site levels I think it's just important for everybody to be on the same page and seeing where the district is moving forward and just being more visible the more we know the more knowledge we have and the more power we cultivate I think that's where we really start making the changes I imagine you would make the same request for the guard rails once we get there yeah and I'm about to go into guard rail right now I just wanted to finish the goal topic first but yes those would be the the same expectations um yes I'm so excited um do we have any other questions comments or concerns about

123goals next what what's next before I move on to guard rails okay perfect um I'm so excited and one last thing on the goals thank you so much for the team I know it hasn't been easy I know it's a lot of work I know that it's a lot of questions and a lot of new wonderings fears whatever it is that this may bring but I'm just really excited that we're finally going to start having some goals and a vision to our district that really is going to focus on how we get our students um the resources they they need to actually be able to be you know read and do basic math um moving on to our guard ril I am going to go ahead and read off um some quick information on what

124guard rails are and why we have them um Hilda do you if I email you something are you able to project it on the um screen it's it's just the same thing guardrails just so in case anybody wants to follow along on the screen um and I sent it to you but basically um goals and guard rails and this is what I'm going to start off with even though School Board only has only a few members usually between five and nine depending on the school board you have um Schoolboard members may still disagree on what the community's vision and values are if school boards aren't careful they can't start focusing on the wants and wish of individual community members rather than the vision and the values of the community as a whole to resolve this

125and create a way of holding the school system accountable the school board votes on two things the community's vision for student outcomes these are called goals and we just adopted our board goals and number two the Community Values that must be protected why in pursuit of the goals these are called guardrails and this is why we've had the Strategic plan for the past three years getting feedback on what that vision and Mission looks like for the district the last two months we were going to um cafos around the school districts to get parent feedback and we've gotten all the community feedback um some of examples include I'm not going to go over the examples of the goals but an example of a guardrail the superintendent will not propose major decisions to the board without first

126having engaged students parents community and staff why are guard rails written ask prohibitions this is another question we've gotten from the community a lot this is one of the first questions that the commonly comes up so it's perfectly natural to wonder at the court guard rils are written the way they are one allow the board to protect the values of the community and I understand a lot of emphasis on our goals there's been some misunderstanding on why we're just focusing on standardized testing and not you know the whole child but this is where all this lives in board goals is directly on what us five board members are doing to make sure we're moving the needle forward for our students however with all the feedback and everything this is where everything lives in within the

127guardrails um so it's allow the board to protect the values of the community while allowing maximum freedom for educators to serve the unique needs of students it is not obvious at first look but written guardrails are as prohibitions on superintendent Authority what the superintendent may not do accomplishes these two objectives while writing them as directives what the superintendent should do actually violates both here are a few different ways to think about this that usually help people who are first learning about the power of guardrails an example of how goals and guardrails work together to protect values while maximizing um the school's Freedom recently and this is just a short story recently I needed to go to the airport so I pulled out my phone to get an Uber when I opened the app again to

128get another Uber what's the first thing I tell it exactly I tell it where I Envision going I gave them the goal that I expect my Uber driver to accomplish so I typed in the airport and it found me a ride now on this day I happen to know that the most obvious route to the airport was a major highway that was temporarily shut down for construction so when the driver pulled up I hopped in and told them not to take the particular Highway what was the value I was trying to protect by telling them not to take the route exactly the value I was trying to guard was time I gave them a guard rail to adhere to on the way to the goal to the airport at this point I've shared two critical

129priorities with the Uber driver the goal my vision for where I want to be and the guardrail something they aren't allowed to do because it would violate what I value getting there before my plane left once I've given them goals and guard rails who decides which route to take yes the driver and who decides whether to go left or right the driver and who decides whether to speed up or slow down the driver as long as they are headed in the direction of my goal while honoring my guard rail every other decision regarding how to operate the vehicle is Theirs to make this application of guard rails illustrates a crucial point there were about eight options for how to get from where I was at the airport by providing a guard rail do not take

130this one route I'm protecting my value ESS well while preserving freedom for the driver they select of which of the remaining seven options to use much of the time Schoolboard members behave in the opposite manner instead of telling the driver which option is off limits they tell the driver which option to take this approach simultaneously fails to Center the key value worth of protecting while using depriving the driver of the freedom to choose the route they believe is the best instead of choosing from the remaining seven of the eight options based on how best they can protect the value they're directed to focus on the one of the eight options that they must use regardless of whether it protects the value and then it's just goes into examples of guardrails and this is why we

131go out to the vision I mean we go out to the community to get vision and values because this is where the guard rails would live now with that being said and all that information on how the guard rails and the goals and everything comes together to actually protect the values of the community we have some proposed um guard rails and I'm going to start with the superintendent guardrails and I have some amendments to make that I would like for us to discuss because what I've realized is we've had like I said Community feedback on how are we measuring the happiness of our students how are we making sure that we're not just shoving them down with tests and giving them more anxiety since we're getting in these goals and um starting off with our

132first goal [Music] um I would like so our draft goal that we have the number one says the superintendent will not cause or allow conditions practices or procedures that are ined equable or insufficient for students the revision that I have it says the superintendent will not neglect students social emotional health wellness and development with that kind of guard real it gives our superintendent and our administrators the ability to come back back and tell us what interm measures that will look like to make sure that our students are feeling that their health wellness and development in our school system is actually something that they're happy and comfortable with so the the less wordy we get I think the more our Administration is able to look at the feedback come back with some intrum guard rails because

133our guard rails are also going to be monitored so we're going to have data on consistent data showing if we're meeting those guard rails or not having a hard time understanding how that's not redundant given what we have on number two I can you yeah I haven't got there yet and actually I was asking to um remove number two okay yeah can can you repeat the revision your suggesting sorry yeah the superintendent will not neglect students social emotional health wellness and development that would basically take care of one and two and kind of a number three too because number three talks about wraparound services and I believe social emotional health wellness and development all ties in into that I was gonna bring that up but you also were super into the access to a Community

134Education Center which is very specific and wouldn't necessarily be addressed yeah and I think um the reason why I'm taking the wordings out of Family Resource Center and access to Community Education is because I do believe um that is a heavy um thing that our community wants and I think our superintendent and admin know and they will be able to make that into an inum goal just to make sure that that keeps operating in our in our district number three also yes so the superintendent will not neglect students social emotional health wellness and development I believe takes care of guard real basically one two and three do we have any questions comments and you have no other suggested amendments I I do I just wanted to get through those because I I don't want to

135well like I would want to hear everything before I do questions and comments that's fine so that one and then the next one would be um number four I would like to amend it to say the superintendent will not allow cultural non-responsive to impact student experience or staff Effectiveness wait cultural what now cultural nonresponsive non-responsiveness responsibity responsive yeah to impact student experience or staff Effectiveness and I think that guardrail um encompasses making sure that we have relevant culturally relevant you know materials and it focuses on staff Effectiveness meaning professional development could be encompassed as staff Effectiveness all these different things could live under that and that would be up to our superintendent or cabinet to come back and let us know how that would be measured in inum goals and then leaving number five Asis

136the superintendent shall now allow adult convenience or preference to take priority over the academic progress of students can I see number four written down sorry yeah I have sloppy handwriting sorry okay I guess I'm trying to like um and we can change the wording of it in layman's terms like what do we mean by cultural nonresponsive basically saying that we have to have cultural relevant information in our district it's just wording it in a weird way basically in the you would not allow to it to not happen if that makes sense um Miss Michaela Miss SS or Miss Gibson M Clean do you guys have any or even any questions comments um I feel I really like your wording your first suggestion not neglecting students social emotional health wellness and development I feel like it

137does encompass two and three I still think there's room for one to still live as is I'm sorry can you okay can you repeat that so I I really like the wording like I agree some of these are really really wordy and I think the wording that you suggested the first change of not neglecting student social emotional health wellness and development I do do feel that encompasses where we were going with uh guardrails 2 and three but I do think that guardrail one as it's written could also still stand by itself okay um Miss Gibson McLean and Miss SS I agree with that yeah because I think one can apply not just to the health and wellness and all those pieces but it also addresses Equity of academic Equity of access to technology you know

138correct okay yes I can see how that that plays so for now we have the superintendent will not neglect student social emotional health wellness and development the superintendent will not cause or allow conditions practices or procedures that are inequitable or insufficient for students the superintendent shall not allow adult convenience or preference to take priority over the academic progress of students and the last one that we have maybe we need to change the wording or if we can um get some different wording the superintendent will not allow cultural nonresponsibility to impact student experience or staff Effectiveness yeah the language on that one's just like rough for me to it's like catches me up I don't know if we could like change change the words and have it still mean the same thing I don't know I

139don't have a suggestion I'm sorry my brain is fried well I think to make sure that we're not like I think the cultural responsiveness should be a part of for but I also want to make sure we're not losing that you know we're making sure not just culturally relevant but relevant to the practice differentiated you know those are pieces that we talked about a great deal so how about if we just keep number four and we say the superintendent will not allow the district to operate without a system to recruit and retain strong teachers by empowering staff through culturally relevant and differenti differentiated professional development I feel like that reads better than the cultural non responsivity okay perfect yes okay so do we have any other questions comments or wonderings on these guard rails if

140not I'm going to start naming them one by one so we can start adopting them no okay so I move the governing board approved draft superintendent guard rail number one the sup the superintendent will not neglect student social emotional health wellness and development all those in favor I I perfect I thought we agreed to keep number one I'm moving it to number sorry just making sure we're all on the same page next guardrail guardrail number two I move the governing board approved da draft superintendent guard the superintendent will not cause or allow conditions practices or procedures that are inequitable or insufficient for students second all those in favor hi hi hi okay I move the governing board approved draft superintendent guardrail to read as follows the superintendent will not allow the district to operate without

141a system to recruit and retain strong teachers by empowering staff through culturally relevant and differentiated professional development second all those in favor I and our last superintendent guardrail is I move the governing board approved draft superintendent guardrail that reads as follows the superintendent shall not allow adult convenience or preference to take priority over the academic progress of students second all those in favor I congratulations cron board we now have superintendent guardrails W all right and that moves us to board guard rails because one of the things that we are learning with this sofg framework is student outcomes don't change until adult behaviors change and we can't expect to hold other people to certain standards if the board is not holding themselves to certain standards and guard rails as well as well um I think we

142spent a lot of time the very first time on our board guard rails I gonna read them as go unless anybody has any questions or comments but I think that these are pretty straightforward and I feel we're in the process of adopting them do I have anybody different okay um so here we go I move the governing board approv draft board guardrail number one the board will spend no less than 50% of its meeting time monitoring progress on student outcome goals starting at zero today which is today's date of May 7th 2024 and will be by 50% by the end of the second quarter of 2024 but obviously not the second quarter so by the end of 2024 December of 20 24 December so okay and they mean like or maybe just starting today maybe

143we say starting at zero today and we'll be at yeah we'll be at 50% by the end of 2024 second all those in favor I I I okay I move the governing board um approved draft board guard ra number two the board will not allow 5 years to pass without an equity audit a policy review and a sped review all those in favor I I maybe explain one more time for people who don't know about why three is crossed out so we had a board guard rail says the board will not operate without an annual self evaluation of strengths and weaknesses in a plan for team building and board professional development that include anti-racist training within the framework it already is in there that a board self evaluation must um occur so it's within embedded

144in the framework and we didn't want to be redundant to our guard rail since it's something that's expected to of us already so that's why we took it out thank you for clarifying that Miss um gbon mle um moving on to our next board guard rail I move the governing board approved draft to board garil number three which is the board will not conduct its duties duties without including students families teachers staff and community members inclusive of those that speak languages other than English in a manner that inspires broad Community ownership of board policy second all those in favor I I and our last is I move the governing board approved draft board guard rail number four that says the board will not perform or appear to perform any of the responsibilities delegated to the

145superintendent second all those in favor hi I yay congratulations spard I'm really excited for this um thank you guys so much for really really taking the time to go over these guard rails goals I feel like for once we really are on a path of tidying things down and even with our guard rails next steps would also be getting some intrum guard rails and then we will have the opportunity to discuss those vote on them or vote them down so yeah in term goals for the guard rails all right I think they're called interim measures if I correct interim measures [Music] um all right um did we have any other updates or any questions or concerns or comments from cabinet or Mr Man at all on any of this first well I I thank you

146madam president I think what I'd like to share is the excitement that we feel as staff about being able to focus our efforts around very specific very targeted um student facing work and we all share a United desire to ensure that the needs of the whole child are met and as a result of those efforts academic Excellence is achieved by all of our students so we are we are very excited we are very committed to doing this work and we're grateful to be involved in this process yeah it very well said um I what I think is powerful and I think one of the things we are going to struggle with as a district is narrowing focus it is always easy to choose to do more the hardest thing in leadership is choosing to take

147things off the stack and so as I I talk with our leadership team as they share with me some of the pressures and concerns that their teachers have it's overwhelm and our you know our state really doesn't help us because they're busy trying to pass new laws to persecute groups of people and I notice that schools are in the list of those locations because we know what our schools need is more administrative and police work to do and and hopefully people understand I'm being sarcastic um but you know rather than focusing in on the the education and so for me it is very gratifying to to work with a governing board whose focus is on student outcomes not adult convenience not adults politics but what what are we doing to help move kids forward um

148and I do think that this framework will help us I think the challenge we have ahead of us is trying to figure out how to accomplish that narrowing and the last thing I want to share because there's a lot more alignment in this board meeting Than People realize um probably looking in from the outside but you'll notice even though we took a break to meet with our new assistant principles we had a change in practice this evening where things like those staff approvals that used to be agenda items are now part of our consent agenda and that's because we're trying to streamline the meetings for a focus on looking at and and focusing in on these measures and keeping ourselves very focused as a governance team of the governing board the superintendent the administration on

149the task at hand um and then also in that same consent agenda the board approved this evening uh travel for uh members of our district team to go to Harvard University this summer to receive additional training on datawise so datawise is a practice uh that Dr pombo brought to us this year that we've been working with our leadership team on all year and again there's there's alignment there knowing the board's movement towards student outcomes Focus governance the entirety of our leadership team's Focus has been on how do we get ready for that how do we start to move the systems the system forward even though we don't have everything we need yet we don't have all the information that we need yet and so that that movement that development with data wise is preparing us

150to deal with student data more effectively to be more knowledgeable about it to be able to drill down into it deeper in my if I were to make a birthday wish this evening it would be that sometime in the near future I would be able to walk onto any of our school campuses and enter a conversation with one of our students and they could share with me information about their student student data what they're working on what their goals are what the plan is to get them there so we um you know we see that work as threads throughout everything that's happened this evening whether it be in consent or in this conversation and approval of this and so I'm way too wordy tonight I don't know why I'm so wordy tonight but I just

151that's my way of expressing my value and appreciation of of the board's movement in this direction to keep us focused on what's best for students and particularly with ensuring that our guard rails are in place so we're not just driving students academics academics academics we're looking at them as human beings and how we can help build resiliency in them emotional stability in them and help them develop strong executive function so they're able to not only be bright intelligent and knowledgeable but they're able to be effective and able to advocate for themselves in society so anyway I'll shut up now no that was wonderful thank you so much and I want to thank everybody cabinet even to us this is not easy work it's a lot of learning like I said I'm in a cohort that

152doesn't end in for another five months every Monday or every other Monday you know three hours of doing this it's a lot of work and I really appreciate board members taking the time and really going into this journey because the way that I personally seen it see it is that we are the last line defense for these students and if we're not focusing our energy on how to best serve our students so they have the tools they need to basically make it in this world um we're so used to survival survival no it's time for us to reshift what we can do for our students and I think this is the step in the right connection or in the right direction to finally reimagine what is possible for our students and we're going to get

153down and our board meetings are going to be looking a little bit different but it's all going to be for students what's working for them what's not and one last thing I always like to say this isn't who's done the right thing who's done the wrong it was a bad person here or a good person there this is not a right or wrong good or bad thing this is what is possible for our students and I'm just thankful that we have support from the board members and cabinet that we're all in this together to make sure that our students are getting what they deserve and they they need so with that being said I look for forward to our next meeting and start getting some data and really start getting to see what what is

154happening with our students and our data and why they're um we're why we're not moving the needle for them so thank you can I just say really yeah of course I just want to thank everybody who's obviously everybody has to be on board with this and it you know we're taking a step out on faith here and we're trying something new and if we just continue to do the same things we've always done we're going to get the same results and so we're we're going to do something new and we're gonna I have the utmost confidence that the people in this District are the best people and and that you can rise to the challenge and if we're going to have if we can if we believe we set High expectation for kids and they'll

155rise to them then I should expect the same out of the folks that work at this district and if you can't expect that then you're probably not expecting that out of the kids either so I I'm excited to move forward I think that we're going to see growth in progress and you know what we're all going to be here together figuring it out if we don't see what we what we are hoping we end up with right and that's where we readjust and we figure out and we move forward so I'm excited to try something new to to just think outside the box because again doing the same things we always we've always done haven't really gotten us anywhere different so thank you thank you Miss Gibson melen uh Miss MB or Miss SS any

156final comments before I move on to the next agenda item just a ditto to what everyone said I've watched a lot of board meetings from a lot of districts over the years and it's really invigorating to be a part of this work as an educator myself um I know I'm on this board but I take as we've been going through this I've kind of like gone outside of myself and been like wow I really wish I was seen this on more boards right so it's really exciting thank you anything Miss SS yeah I mean I did all the same as what's been set up here um I just think that we get on the board to make sure that our kids we care a lot about students just like employees and I think that this

157is a step in the right direction because otherwise like literally we're being like some boards that are just complacent all they do is push through things that need to be pushed through and there's not any focus on this students I do that enough in my day job yeah I don't need to be a cog and a wheel here so I'm appreciative of that right so I just feel like we're we're doing something we're in it I think we have the best intentions um when it comes down to it um so uh with the Rumblings that have been going on I just think sometimes that we have to remember that we are doing something that we truly I think all believe in our hearts is something that is going to change um uh our district for

158the better and for our students um and I truly believe that we have goodness um going forward I think all of us do um in hopes that this is going to be something fantastic thank you and that brings us to our next agenda item which is 6a public comments Miss harez do we have any public comments thank you and that brings us to 12a which is an update from our governing board advisory committee to review policies [Music] y Tak you guys have sat here this whole time thank you get this right good evening uh my name is James Das uh and I'm the chair for the governing board advisory committee to review policies on student conduct and discipline um and these are the some of the members that were present at the uh committee as

159well too and as they come up they will introduce themselves too so um the uh committee members that you can see up here uh represent a good cross-section of different stakeholders uh we've had a student uh we have different uh people that were uh uh different employees from different parts of the district uh we really made a concerted effort well we Mr Man and other people really made a concerted effort to try to get a good cross-section of people that uh could participate in a committee that requires a lot of um a lot of patience a lot of deep thinking um and uh some really actually amazing conversation uh it's it it was a a really really for me a very powerful experience to be a part of it and I was thankful for it

160uh the purpose of the advisory committee as stated by the governing board was to update these outdated policies that we had that were related to uh discipline and align it with the work from uh that you do uh as a board with the student outcome guard rails and stuff and other things that you guys are always talking about throughout board meetings uh to have some consistency there was definitely a a an interest in trying to make sure that that across the district and everywhere else that there is uh um Fidelity in terms of how discipline was meted out and also and how things were interpreted uh there was a real concern with that um for uh as stated by stakeholders that have probably talked to you a lot and definitely have talked to us as

161well too and plus it just for a Clarity purpose guiding uh and guiding those practices as a person who implements discipline it is very helpful to have clear policies and clear guidelines and how that so align that stuff create consistency uh remove carceral language if you're like me you had to look that word up um but essentially I think uh uh she described it best at the at the last meeting we have for Community Council which is that idea of the school to prison pipeline type of thing and uh try to avoid that and really go along with something that is you know Do no harm less negativity um less more like you're bad uh more about how can we support and help you out so uh that was kind of the driving force for

162the committee itself and uh this is sort of the timeline that we followed and uh you'll see that it is a work in progress um and as we go along you'll see some of that stuff about how what our next steps will be later on but we had the policy changes in 81 we met on average about twice a month and uh just discussed different things made some decisions about what policies to cover we as we went along we kind of evolved into including policies that weren't uh necessarily under the original intent but we felt like they fit in um and you'll see things that we in this presentation that uh that were brought up as well and just to reiterate um there's some uh I I think that that especially my my opinion is

163uh this committee uh had some real difficult conversations um and some real uh controversial topics and uh one of the things I valued is that I didn't feel like any person in the room was sidelined or any person in the room felt intimidated or any person in the room felt like they were dominating the conversation it was it was a fascinating uh process for me uh because sometimes when you do committee work there's one person that kind of like goes and dominates stuff and I think I don't know I kind of feel like we all have our own little space and um at no point did I ever feel like things were disrespectful um or uh uh uh controversial in a way where feelings were hurt because some of the conversations I think were tough

164conversations to have and we both kind of like went back and forth it was it was it was fun I mean it's I don't know fun is the best way to describe it but but you you you have these conversations and you're like oh man I really feel this way I really feel this way and then you'd have somebody uh like uh somebody would say like she would say my Wonder is I was like oh that's an adrianm it was a really it was a really good it was a really good uh U I don't want to say negotiation tactic but it was a really good communication technique uh in my opinion to how how you kind of it's not it's not your you're not attacking a person you're not going after a person you're

165just like trying to go and cover a controversial topic I mean essentially so anyhow uh that uh that's the progress that we've had all the way up until our most recent meeting at 5724 as well so can I just say I'm really appreciative to hear you say that you felt like you didn't waste your time and that you felt like you valued this process especially given the conversation I had with you in the parking lot some months ago um it makes me feel happy that that you're not leaving this experience feeling like you did a bunch of work and wasted your time and nothing came out of it so was in a different head space but well here you are James yeah no no yeah that was that was that was long time ago James

166I feel like I shouldn't be saying these things but anyhow so uh moving on people James moving on uh to I don't know who's next oh great so Megan and I are G to kind of go over um very general like overview of what the changes were for each of the policies that we were able to get through um you're obviously going to see the track changes um once the lawyer has gone through them um so the first one is ji and jir and that's the students rights and responsibilities we as a committee especially hearing the charge that we had um wanted to make sure that we weren't investing or we weren't creating a policy that was just going to be blind compliance like you come to school to obey the rules and do the

167things that you're required to do but that we are really growing future adults um and that they have a responsibility to their community and so a lot of the rights and responsibilities are not only what's going to benefit them um learning those rights and responsibilities but also what's going to be like a contributing Force within our community um we also realized that as we looked through them there was a lot of uh information on the physical safety of students um and their academic um Pursuits but we wanted to make make sure that we incorporated a focus on their psychological and emotional wellbeing so you'll see a lot of that um especially when we're talking about restorative practices the next one that we went through um is very similar it's the student conduct uh so we

168made sure that we were again it was focus on the expectations that we believe you capable of these things and these are um what we're going to hold ourselves all to including the staff and the adults versus this is just you're here to obey so that we can get what we need to get done it's wild how many s that word was in all these policies obey and obedience and everything yes it was a lot ofy compant language from 1800s for you yeah so we definitely wanted to make sure that we were um matching and mirroring what we're trying to do now uh we also included in this area um information about when compliance is not required of students because we want to make sure that we're thinking about empowering our kids um and that

169they can advocate for themselves when they are being wronged or harmed in a certain way um so we talked in there you'll see that it's about um if an adult is asking you to um do something that goes against your personal safety or makes you feel uncomfortable um if they're asking you to do something that would cause harm to others um or if they're asking you to break a no a known rule within the school Community or the district Community um that you do have the opportunity to empower to be empowered to say like that's not meeting the expectations of our community and then the last one that I'm going to go over today is the jic it's harassment intimidation and bullying we noticed in the policy it was kind of scattered um there was

170really no like cohesiveness about how these um interplay with one another and so we organized the policy components um with harassment being the domain that um intimidation and bullying will occur under uh we also made sure to go really thoughtfully and redefine what is harassment what is intimidation and what is bullying um I we specifically wanted to bring up our kind of expansion of the bullying definition and making sure that we were including like pretty universally recognized components um in school systems now that bullying is a repeated act and that it also is um an situation that's occurring where there's a perceived or actual imbalance of power within the two students the offender and the victim so we made sure to include that kind of information there as well um and then lastly harassment we

171also expanded those acts of harassment and what those might um play out as so that we better matched what we're currently seeing in the school system um with the kids and their ability to use technology and also their abundant use of social media we're seeing harassment that really wasn't reflected in what our policy has um currently and then lastly jic KR um just very interesting for whatever reason it was just almost a word to word repeat of the jik um and so our committee is recommending that we go ahead and remove that for redundancy issues hi I'm Megan um so next up we have JK which is our student discipline policy so when we read this we realized that there should be more differentiation between the K through 4 discipline policies and the 5 through

172eight um so we updated some wording there um we didn't change any of the statute but we did reorganize the policy just for better readability um for whoever is reading um we also clarified and added examples of off-campus speech um just more updated um things like social media and relevancy to the students having technology all day like their iPads um yeah next is the jld DB which is the restraint and seclusion policy so our district focuses currently on using Crisis Prevention and intervention strategy to deescalate students um which means we're limiting restraints to only when really really needed um which is when the student is a danger to themselves or others so we just changed some of the wording in this policy to make sure it was aligned to our District's goal um and our

173District's training and then the last one that we did was the student dress policy um we made sure that all religious wear was protected within our policy so some wording there um we also tried to honor that student self-expression and focus um within the policy um and so we changed some wording to only prohibit dress when it's evident that it's causing A disruption um and then the last thing that we did within that policy is talk about when it should be updated we sort of added a timeline um and what it looks like to update it so those are definitely the ones that we were able to get through and we're happy to answer questions about them um but we also have these policies to continue and Mr H is gonna kind of go more

174in depth about that those our timeline yeah James is right we had a lot of fun and unfortunately we didn't have time to have all the fun we really wanted to have um and so um we actually made sure to look through all of the relevant policies and make sure we weren't missing any that could possibly be looked at we are also making sure that the ones that the P the package of policies that you'll get presented to you um um are the most critical ones and that none of the ones that are the ones I'm about to just kind of roughly go through wouldn't be in conflict with the recommendations that we've made that said there's still some rewrites and things on some of these that will need to be looked at at some

175point in the near future um so um jicf that deals with secret societies and gang activity um jih which is about student interrogations searches and arrests um JKD which is a removal of students from school sponsored activities and uh jke which is about expulsion of students um and actually J is suspension students yeah yeah I was gonna say I was say wait wait we were so close to finishing JKD but there was also some mention of expulsion in student discipline right correct okay because it's always are just repeated yeah there yeah the student discipline policy talks about suspension and expulsion and then JKD and jke go go more a little bit more in depth in terms of um the practices behind um suspension and expulsion and we want to make sure we that those get

176go get gone through well some I don't know whatever English I'm using right now been through to make sure that what recommendations you are going to get don't actively like contradict what's currently in this policy so if you do improve the student conduct there won't be any sort of um conflict there but we definitely should go through them um so um um so our last our final meeting was on April 30th I know and obviously we're here tonight and we're waiting and the next really The Next Step steps will be when the torne's done looking through them and and we're able to get those policies to you for a first read and then subsequently for the the second read um and we hope you enjoy reading every single word of them we're trying to get

177it so that maybe somebody will at the attorney's office will do track changes so you can just see what it was and what it's been changed to so you don't have to cross reference everything um but we do have some recommendations um for you in terms of moving forward so um we do recommend that um you reauthorize this committee's committee to do continue this work um next school year um we um um we also recommend that you um think about whether it's the same committee or a different committee uh look at making sure that we're looking at staff the policy that relates to staff Behavior as it aligns to the student Behavior to make sure that those are in alignment with each other um we um we are recommending um that the committee um should

178exist next year um work on creating a policy specifically regarding hate speech we we talked a lot about it we struggled with because there's there's no real good definitions out there so we kind of got to a place where we just felt we couldn't delve into that this year way too big to try to take on yeah but we recognize the importance of it um and then um there are a couple places where you'll find even the recommended pocy changes that um that um authorize site administrations to to um contact law enforcement when outside legal parameters um and um we just those are some things we want to make sure that you note and then have whatever conversations you want to it as governing board related to those parts of those policies and that's itur

179up um thank you so much first of all I want to thank every single one of you for being on that committee because I know that the student displ policies it's it's a lot of work and when I started um looking into it and I was like wait a minute we haven't had some of these changes since the school started I mean we were originating in the 1800s what are we doing so I really really appreciate all the hard work and I and I was laughing up here because I think it's so funny how you guys already know oh that's JKD like you guys already know where the names so it's awesome it doesn't go unnoticed I really appreciate it and I love the recommendations of hate speech is something that's really that's going around

180and it's an impediment to students learning and the fact that we don't have anything really facing that and it's a recommendation this is why the work is so imperative and I'm just so grateful for you guys and taking your time I know you all have families you work and then you still come over here and devote your time to making sure that our policies are aligning not only with what the district and community's vision is but to make sure that our students are really being taken careed of in a non-discriminatory way so thank you um I don't know if anybody else has any comments or questions Miss MB since you're online I'll start with you if you have anything give you don't that's fine um no just to emphasize um I know this was a

181very heavy lift and I really appreciate it and um also finding a balance because for this type of work you don't want a committee so huge that you can't get work done um but you guys were still able to as James said find a cross-section where you still had different voices so I think that's really important um I also really appreciate that um and I'm looking forward to reading every word but um really being intentional about the expansion of understanding that our kids worlds are Way Beyond just the physical face tof face and that's a really hard thing to navigate I'm speaking as a principal right now um and so I think that's really important that we have um and James also kind of mentioned this too you know as administrators we need that Clarity

182we need that consistency and as the world changes and the technology changes and the way our kids interact with one another changes we have to be clear about how we interact with them in those situations so I just really appreciate all of this work and I'm looking forward to seeing the policy changes thank you Miss michaelb um Miss A's anything to add on I mean I think this is just such an out of the box kind of thing that um you guys have done um and just the whole work of the committee working on something that needs to be updated and not just accepting what we have now because it's so punitive as it used to be and we know that we don't want to be punitive to our students um so thank you for

183all of your work I I just I really am looking um for to seeing how this is going to affect our students and Katie thank you for being the liaison and coming to extra meetings um besides board meetings um to be a part of this because this this is just really amazing work um and I hope other school districts see this working and decide that you know this is something that they need as well and maybe we'll be the model for it so thank you thank you Miss sis Miss Gibson M cleen yeah I just you know think that there are ways for um again I think good lawyers find ways to make laws work for them or to work around laws and so I think that what we have here is the best we

184can do for that in the policies we have reviewed and because there you know sometimes people don't want to even start with things because of how how the laws are in Arizona and so they feel like there's nothing they can do but there is wiggle room and there is opportunities to change things here and I think we've shown that um I also just a I'm so happy with how everything like played out I've been on committies at the city I was the chair of the Phoenix Union Safety Committee i' had way too many people uh the committee I was city had too many people and like and also people get angry about things all the time and like none of these conversations or anybody's screaming at each other or people yelling or angry like it

185felt like people were listening and we were having good conversations and um it just felt like good work and actual work was getting done and the other thing about those committees that I've been on is you spent so much time and energy and at the end of the day nothing gets implemented so it's very exciting to like even though I wasn't voting on any of this stuff to be a part of it and contribute and have PE be a part of the conversations and know that these are things that will actually um be implemented and that the work's going to continue and have a direct impact on students and and our community so I'm excited to continue to have fun if you all are um as long as reys if you're watching you're okay with

186me coming to all these meetings over and over again so anyway um I I want to thank each and every one of you I mean you're taking time out of your day and each of you like James said has your own special experiences perspectives life experiences and also right now what you do in your work and your expertise and so you all showed up with that all the time um and and I just appreciate each and every one of you because you put a lot of effort into this and even Even Adam you know some of the time yeah Adam did extra meetings and even extra meetings on top of the meetings um with Miss abadaka so you know I appreciate Adam I know you're not here right now I know some of this was

187boring for you but I really appreciate you man can I throw a few comments yeah of course um first off I want to comment that um Miss gipson mlan as ex officio member was like ex officio MVP because even though she wasn't a voting member and she wasn't crafting policy she really I know she frequently says she's not an education attorney but a lot of the laws we were dealing with in these po policies were criminal statutes and she really helped the team navigate those and help them hone and focus their work so that way they could delve in and dig into the areas um I don't know that it I honestly I don't even know that we'd have this much work done if it wasn't for the assistance that that we received from her

188so I just I didn't want that to go uncredited because it was certainly observed um I also want to point out that you know we have a lot of different groups that get together and do things and at the end of the year we're like oh here's what got accomplished and we often forget like everything that happened in the in between period so our chair started this presentation of Mr James Diaz but what we need to remember is we also had a disruption because we lost our original chair partway into this process and Mr Diaz stepped up as as as did um well um actually it was um Allan who stepped up as our coach I mean it just felt like we all were just on top of things so um so I special it

189expertise was so helpful in so many things yeah we I it was AB absolutely critical because then that those considerations were captured so I just wanted to thank both of you for stepping up because I know in addition to stepping up James stepped into a new role as an assistant principal that I think was helpful to the conversation for the same person twice and he filled in for the same person yes that is true good good observation um and Allan in Allan in addition to being on this team served on one of our other committees that was working on those recommendations we talked about earlier and we'll be actually working with his co-chairs and people and all three of the Committees tomorrow night to bring that forward in alignment with these recommendations so we're trying

190to create that tight alignment so we don't have one group going off over here and there other groups going off over here and none of it really aligns together um and I just think I just wanted to make sure I pointed those things out because it sounds like it was smooth and to the point of how well everyone got along there were a lot of disagreements along the way I observed them so I don't want everyone to think that it was smooth sailing and there were never any disagreements but what was powerful was this team set an example of high levels of executive function in choosing how they engaged with each other over disagreements which was also great modeling for our students and and and our staff so anyway those were the few comments I

191wanted to throw in there thank you so much again I appreciate everybody's work and I am so excited to see the recommendations and continue the work because it is imperative and one thing that I've always said that if we're going to spe things our policies our policies should match what we're saying and I knew that that's not what was happening so thank you so much I appreciate it one more thing you remiss miss valades miss miss Hilda and Jennifer thank you so much we wouldn't have been able to do all the meetings without you so I appreciate it thank you to say one more thing yeah of course I I really want to thank the board and superintendent for taking this on because as a parent I you know my kids come home with these

192stories like well nothing's happening and and then you know dealing with admin and and you know there's th this is a great way to make our district more cohesive and to put everybody on the same page so I'm really happy that you invited me to be on this and you know it was real and it was fun but was it real fun it depends on how Nery you are thank you so much I appreciate you guys all right and that brings us to our next agenda item which is 13A future agenda items do we have any future agenda items Miss Michaela B start with you since you are online um not a future agenda item but just uh a heads up as you plan into June that June 25th I will be out of town

193at the ist conference so awesome thank you there's any major votes or discussions if we can avoid June 25th that'd be preferable also gonna be out of town on June 25th okay sorry it's okay and a number of kraton Staff will because they're also going to the same conference so I'm not going to a conference but I am having a vacation and I haven't had one in a long time so we may need to schedule an additional meeting because if if we don't have Quorum on June 25th um we may need an additional meeting to adopt the budget okay um and it may not even make a difference whether we have Quorum on the 25th because we're also somewhat dependent on the state actually passing a budget they seem to not be so focused on

194funding things like education and very distracted by other things they haven't even started any budget discussions so yeah and we're in what uh may now yeah so I'm I'm a little dubious about their ability to their obligation to the public okay that that sounds perfect um Miss SS or Miss Gibson McLean any future agenda items we don't have another so it's just the the 4th and the 25th are the only dates in June for meetings correct okay I will likely need to leave a little early on the 4th so if we do have big votes if we could move them to the beginning but also we probably won't have a put that out there perfect I don't have any future agenda items so hearing no other future agenda the items that brings us for 14a

195I move the governing board adjourn second all those in favor I I mues thank you everybody for being here have a good night thank you bye by