March 26, 2024, Governing Board Meeting

001e kind of stepping into a role with with our with our pack so um which obviously would only be activated if the board you know chose to move forward with the bond but they have um the last several years through the last two election Cycles they've remained active so that there wouldn't be a need to like ramp a pack up um if there was a need for that pack so um I don't I think that's everybody that we have involved right Miss Shapiro those are all the involved part you're working on technical difficulties technical that's okay well thank you for your patience while on other meeting yes oh internet is super slow okay then okay I need assistance though no it's okay so while she's getting set up I what I'll share with you is

002Miss Shapiro this evening is and you may have seen it all already but um M Shapiro is going to be sharing some of the projects that have been identified that would benefit from Bond dollars um sharing the potential impacts on tax rate um some of the historical tax rate information and then um Miss Burke will be walking us through like there's kind of two different options as to how we approach it and they have you know varying differences in in what that Bond program looks like dollars and cents wise over its life cycle so they're going to present both of those to the board as well so we can get your feedback on that three and then right there yay thank you guys for your patience I appreciate it um I have uh three parts

003Mr man just talked a little bit about them the first thing I want to be showing you is the work um that we have done in the it was the fiscal stewardship committee and it uh I guess in the past had had a couple of different roles so that was where the capital planning uh kind of fell to where we shared the facilities um uh needs information and then also our technology needs and just overall Capital planning uh came into that committee um and so uh this is kind of the result of that we will have one more Capital committee to uh take a look and uh firm up this information and any feedback we may receive uh take that into consideration as we formalize uh this Capital plan and m m i this looks

004like it might be an older version of your form nope because some some of the labels and numbers is the older version I apologize it is we did make an adjustment thank you yep you're welcome um that was the one that um so we did change one I actually so um I can move forward with this one and just point out the area that did get updated and that looks so tiny can you see it let me get it a little better um I'm gonna go here real quick and just kind of overall show that it's broken into several areas uh for Bond projects this is specific to bond um and there's a new construction section uh life cycle projects come next again those are things that have to happen on a on a timeline

005um you know roofs and HVAC and plumbing and fencing things like that that just happen on a cycle we also have our technology uh projects are broken out here our bus replacement included in this bond package would be the um solar buyout that's been presented to the board in the past and um the Safety and Security project that we're working on to get the district up to a safety standard uh in the total amounts of like the most recent bonds that we've had sure so the most recent Bond was in 2016 and it was 84 million it was a um I believe it was at that time an intent to have a 10ish year bond and those Bond dollars obviously when you plan out that far uh the cost of things really change um it's

006kind of hard to anticipate and I don't think anybody would have anticipated covid or the level inflation that we saw after that um again I think I've said this quite a few times in this forum the absolute epic planning that has occurred in this District um is very impressive we have been able to complete many projects with those Bond dollars and had that Bond last us for nine years uh so uh fantastic and I know Mr Man and and when you do that there are certain things that that shift so you do the best planning you can so we're looking at an eight-year Bond plan with this Bond um the bigger pieces of it would be the school rebuild on that facility's planning that um is looking to be the builtmore campus was the next

007uh campus up for a a rebuild um through that facilities planning process can I ask um I just I'm not familiar with the facilities planning process and so how does that I guess briefly how that gets determined so we bring in um outside entities and in internal entities that evaluate our campuses based on those criteria um we have some of that information that we can share with the board in a board update I'm happy to uh bring I feel like I I might have shared some of that information in the past I'm not sure um so that outside company goes through and it evaluates all of the uh facilities and it kind of the it's got a visual so it says these systems are green they're really good you're not going to need to update

008them anytime soon you have things that are aging out and maybe yellow and then you have red which are critical areas that could be safety concerns or their lifespan has just been so extended that they need to be refreshed remodeled or rebuilt uh did you want to add something to that for the yeah no I one of the things I think beneficial was using that out out side group because it gave us another layer I will tell you um and I think Miss michaelb who's on the board now was part of the team that did the work for the 2016 Bond and we did most of that work internally and we um actually like nailed it like we we identified things that were going to fail um at kraton and things that were going to

009fail at Kennedy like with uncanny accuracy much better than what um some other entities that we had to interact with to try to get support that that we ultimately didn't get the support we needed for it were able to determine um but I do think it's better because in this case it was actual Architects that um reviewed sort of what the status of these facilities were and one of the things we learned over time was particularly with the with the lawsuit in the case with Glendale Elementary School District is that sometimes there's structural things that as clever as we are we can't see that that engineering Architects can actually uncover and tell you you should not be in this building so sorry to thank you no and a similar vendor I just I apologize I'm

010not sure how to get out of here so I could go check and see a vendor name um if you're looking for the architect's name it was ADM Group H Did they perform the latest facility review that is my recollection if it's the one that Scott had commissioned recently that would be ADM then it was ADM thank you I'm so sorry Russell it's escape to get to that and then window they're the ones stpa thank you yes yeah that was that was based on their evalua these abilities okay would it sorry I have laryngitis um would it be um because at the time though we did do partial at BPA correct so that helps with the cost model because we certainly wouldn't replace the gem um so that actually will be one less structure that

011will need to be replaced placed at that campus um but as we learned from you know trying to get Kennedy underway things cost a lot more now so even though you're seeing a budget that's larger than what we had budgeted for some of the other schools um I think the reason that's feasible is because we do have some of those we we basically I think when we built the gym it cost us about wasn't just the gym it was the gym and some of the other remodels were 5 million in total so you know if we had just built the gym it might have been like 3.5 to for so that's a cost that we don't have to incur so sorry I don't mean to be stealing all your time no not just Mr wels

012did come in and say that it was ADM uh is who he had brought back out again they did an excellent job on the last Bond cycle um and so uh their information is consistent and historic which is nice when you use that same vendor we we didn't use them on that first cycle Oh I thought you said you did we did it internally on that first cycle so it was it was our own team that made the determinations we just happened to do a really good job but then later when we had like we predicted that there'd be issues with electrical systems and like things falling off of Kennedy and then when they did and because of the Glendale lawsuit being in a similar time frame at that point we brought architechnology in I

013believe that was who it was and they told us you need to get out of these buildings um now and so because of that experience that's why we brought ADM group in to do this round of evaluations because we recognized that we we the schools were getting to an age where we needed a deeper level of expertise than what what we could provide internally but our facility staff um internally did work with that vendor um and uh Scott came to talk with the committee uh to talk about that process and how involved they were and the processes that they Ed to make those uh determinations I appreciate just sharing all that not just for me asking questions and I'll you know like at every meeting a lot of times when I ask questions it's because

014I want the public to know what I know and so I think you know there certainly could be people that live in the Linda neighborhood and are wondering why the heck they're getting the short end of the stick it seems like right and so that's why I wanted an explanation that's also to the public to hear this decision-making process right well and we do have dollars um I guess for me when I'm building out that that Bond projects and those uh dollars as Mr Man had said things can change a lot in eight years and the needs of today might not necessarily be the needs of three years from now so we do um you know we're very intentional um I have partial rebuilds built in here for Loma Linda and Mackin those were the

015two sites that needed uh that got determined and identified as needing partial rebuild so I want to let you know that is dollars that are in there okay um so at this time you know that's that's where those dollars are intended to go um without knowing the crystal ball future mhm uh that's the plan and then um some additional dollars for remodels around the district uh the solar buyout and um The Family Resource Center the Family Resource Center is more of a we're changing that from remodel upgrades to a project uh we think that that project could potentially be a lot bigger than the available Bond dollars so we're going to be looking for Partnerships um collaboration of of intent uh trying to really determine the need over there so that we can um not

016just stick new HVAC on it or maybe some paint we want it to be much more extensive and address uh that area that provides such a resource to our community so that's why we move those additional dollars in there to a 3.2 million which allows us to do quite a lot um and as with any of these dollars we're always going to be looking for other avenues of potential so I'll just point out down on our technology Pro projects uh a couple of our projects would qualify for eate funding um that's can you explain what that is please so that's when the federal government helps with these uh a paying a portion of these technology projects um through a competitive process right Jay I believe it is competitive isn't it um they only get a

017certain amount of dollars each year to distribute out changes from year to year they change the guideline shift um but I think the most important thing to know about it is um the it's actually a tax that's PL so when you pay your cell phone bill um or if you happen to still have a landline um and you pay that bill um or you pay your internet bill you'll see there's like certain FCC taxes that are on there one of those taxes goes into a pool that is then used um for federally funded projects an e- rate is the school district portion of that um and they cover a variety of things including access and some infrastructure um over the years the amount available to schools for infrastructure have dwindled as I understand it and

018Mr denal Moore an expert currently in the back of the room if if he needs to correct me um but and a lot of that has been because a lot of those dollars have been redirected to help create connections for our rural communities they're really that's where they're putting the focus of the dollars because that is such a such a problem in the country so um so there's been less available to us but some of we have been able to get some of our like Wireless upgrades and things like that covered and the amount you get covered is based on what your free and reduced lunch calculation is so for us it's often been about 90% of the cost for some of but just for clarification on what she was saying it is or is

019not guaranteed or is it a competitive process reimburse it is not guaranteed it's not guaranteed so if we didn't get that it would be a $1.1 million cost out of the bond month that Reed okay yeah that's why in there sorry go ahead sorry no I'm cutting you off I apologize I just wanted to point out that we're always going to be looking for other dollars um to to support these projects um and that's just one area that we might potentially we still need the project done so I need to make sure that there's dollars available there to get it done whether we um are able to apply for those eate dollars for that particular project or not um but we will go for those uh opportunities and then um we just plan that out

020over the eight years and that's what these sales are um so those again those are those Bond projects that have been uh put together through that process with the Facilities Review and uh just kind of normal I mean it looks pretty normal to me on on what we would typically be looking for in a bond project are the student iPads like literally replacing all the iPads or what on the the student iPads yeah just that amount okay Russell do you want to come up and speak a little bit about some of the refresh projects I just have concerns myself about one to one iPad instruction to begin with so I don't know that I want to be spending $5 million on it well and I I doubt that's one refresh cycle it's likely multiple refresh

021cycle yeah thank you for the opportunity to explain this a little bit further the iPad so my goal is to understand what our refresh cycle is for every category of equipment that we have in the district and what what its useful life is before we're P due for upgrading anything and so iPads especially uh in students hands have a little bit of a limited lifespan you know there's loss breakage uh operating systems don't get updated after a certain span of time if I'm remembering correctly it's on here twice because we're on a six-year cycle maybe a five-year cycle with student iPads uh and we're about three years in already so there would be there's two upgrades in this so do you cycle it once Apple stops servicing that model or do you do it before

022then that's a part of it uh we find that aging uh is accelerated a little bit beyond just security updates so the need to upgrade on a little bit of a faster pace is pretty significant and then I guess then my question is there's the staff laptops and the staff iPads I'm assuming that that it doesn't all overlap that some people have iPads and some people have laptops but do some people have both like how does that work yeah so we have a matrix on how we assign out Hardware to all of our staff members based off of title uh so our teaching staff are issued both a Macbook and a laptop I'm sorry and an iPad uh because they need to be very familiar and they're Mo doing a lot of modeling with the

023student type devices uh some some other staff uh do are issued both most are issued just a laptop uh and then there's a small number of positions that are just an iPad and that's all based off of need and and use cases for their job duties and sorry this isn't a question if anybody else has a question for Russell mine is a general question I just have a comment I guess um a week ago I told someone yeah lalinda is on the list next for new school so I'm out of date on um our school rebuilds um so I don't know if I just missed it um but I feel like we need to have a little bit more um communication about that um because builtmore did just have um quite a bit of they

024did they did have the gy and so um and the whole Middle School which correct I think isn't really being used anymore so so this this information is relatively new um and at the time that we did our last assessment which keep in mind was our staff making that assessment um we believed that l was in worse condition than builtmore in the intervening time period um what we've what we've learned both from The Architects and actually from observation having been at the site is that the um because of the way the site structured and the way the irrigation works on the site for watering the the actual block walls are dissolving so um so that's you know just a function of the time frame in which those buildings were built and the nature of the

025site and the amount of time that has elapsed so we've had um I've actually been out to the campus to observe flooded classrooms because some of those some of that those block walls have become sufficiently porous that the water um like if there's a big storm the water sometimes will seep through the block wall soak the carpets damage stuff inside the classrooms and so you know it's it's kind of a moving Target um and it's why ultimately even though we talked about specific sites we put the B the bond pamphlet out last time what we were Guided by um the attorney that was supporting the production of the the pamphlet was don't name schools because if things change then you'll have a problem and you won't be able to be flexible um like because as

026you can imagine you all have worked some of you have worked with me for many years I'm really geeky they said they needed a spreadsheet it had like I don't know six or 700 rows of detail in it and they're like yeah this is not what you want to DJ CU then you're going to have to buy these screws for this thing no matter what the need ends up being so they had us pair it way down to more General categories which is why you see it Miss Shapiro is coming in with more background and experience than I came in in 2016 or 2015 with so she's presenting it in more the appropriate format it would be presented in the I did back in in 2015 um but at that and that's the reason we

027know from The Architects what the current current priorities are um but it that could also change over time as well depending on you know what happens with demographics over time what happens with um you know kind of the Aging of the infrastructure over time so so do we know what a time frame would be be and and would we would those kids then be displaced you know at either school um has that have we gone that far into it's a great question we have not dealt that far into what the options would be it sometimes depends on the physical structure of the campus um and then some of it will depend on demographics like we were this is going to sound weird but while declining enrollment has been a curse where it's been a blessing

028was when we when we had to close kraton and when we had to close um Kennedy we had adequate space at other campuses to move those students into um that may still be the case um but we we don't know for a fact that that will be the case moving forward thank you well something you said actually goes to the question I was going to ask which was um you know what is what is this uh spreadsheet going to be used for is it just for today's meeting or is it something that would lock Us in on how we would spend Bond dollars if this is like we have to file something that shows that this is what the the intended use of the bond dollars are for before it even goes to the ballot

029[Music] you have to maintain that spending okay I guess my most concern was it feels like the technology and projects is like the most specific one and so I didn't know what kind of room we had if things changed in that room it would just be a technology line okay it just will say technology do you do you have one of the pamphlets um I see for context when like when we did this in 2016 it was a very similar spreadsheet it got way more detailed like Jay said and then it kind of got back to this but like even things like the columns and when you used it like this is these are estimates of how can you break some a bigger project up over time but those things get shifted throughout the bond

030sales that's fine thank you these are the categories you want to pass that so construction oops equipment okay thank you so if if the need CH the reason we lump it like that like like your point on technology is a perfect Point technology changes very rapidly so if what we need is like AI glasses for everybody we wouldn't be prevented from purchasing that by the pamphlet because we would just identify a certain number of dollars for technology I don't know if I glasses or a thing sorry Russell yeah augmented reality any other questions for Russell I know I have you up here just okay thank you thank you all right uh M Perell did you have any other additional information I'm sorry it's because we kind of got sidetracked sorry we do hang on just

031a moment I'm GNA take you to um a quick presentation and um I just wanted to give you a little bit of initial information before we have Miss Burke come forward and then she'll be sharing more details of the the bond so in this I just wanted to go ahead and give some information on tax rate comparisons as we're thinking about the bonds we have two different packages coming forward tonight for just discussion and um I wanted to show the surrounding districts those ones that are highlighted in that orange color are the more comparable districts based on various factors some were more comparable because of student count some were more comparable because of assessed value uh some are more comparable because they do have Bond initiatives you'll notice deseg districts look a little different so

032I've broken out their um assessed value their primary tax rate that's one set by the legislature um the last time they passed a bond the Bond year past their bond tax rate their M override and capital override tax rates which total the total of their secondary those are those um voter initiatives that affect the tax rate and that's your secondary rate and then the total primary and secondary so uh we're blue the light blue and we're we're in the bucket compared to our other surrounding districts so in some areas we're a little higher in some areas we're a little lower uh again there are so many factors that affect that I just thought it was good information to bring forward and shared with the board and then I added Paradise Valley and Scottdale just because

033you know they're big districts they're Unified District and so you can kind of see compared to Elementary districts how their tax rates kind of look um they're again totally different than us not really comparable I just wanted to share information it's interesting and good stuff to talk about I guess just so anyone watching understands when you say assessed value you're talking about property values property value the assessed uh property values and then um Megan will go into more details about the two different packages we we've uh put together so uh one of them is maintaining our current tax rate is a126 um the last you'll see in that brochure the last time time we went out for Bond our tax rate was a$1 51 and we raised the tax rate to a186 so we raised

034it 35 cents um at that time when we went out for that Bond one fiscal strategy when it comes to tax rate is to manage a tax rate so that you don't have fluctuations so you don't have it go up and you don't have it go down you keep it pretty flat I found that to be pretty successful especially when it comes to bond rating and having those discussions of how you support um those financial decisions I found that taxpayers tend to appreciate that more um than having something fluctuating a lot up and down that has to be um um explained uh deeper why that that's occurring so um that is kind of my Outlook is to maintain a flat tax rate and not subject our taxpayers to it going way up or way down

035which is why I kind of left it in this area so a126 keeps it where it is um these are the information for that um both of them have some pros and cons to them one uh the do26 maintains that that lower tax rate it keeps us in the bucket with the other districts doesn't put us way ahead of them um it supports that flat tax rate fiscal philosophy with no ups and downs it maintains the fiscally responsible tax rate that allows us to go out for Bonds in the future um and then the only kind ofish downside to this is that tax rate is very affected by those shorter lifespan uh items so a lot of that's that technology um depending upon how much money you need at each sale it affects that tax

036rate so what the do26 does is it gives me less dollars in that bucket to purchase the ft& items so that means that those particular projects are going to end up taking a little longer to complete under this model um uh we will get them completed it just will take us a little longer we'll have to kind of look at those cycles and push things out further into the bond if we increase the tax rate to a136 that's a 10cent increase again much different from the 35 increase that we did at the last Bond sale um this allows for the quicker completion of that technology for students and staff and to most of that's those refresh projects and a shorter lifespan again the other piece to this that I don't know um comes out very

037often when you're looking at those spreadsheets it's really hard when you're looking at that which you'll see with Megan um what this also does is it saves the taxpayers $3 million over the life of the bond so a little bit of a higher tax rate means that it decreases the debt that we're responsible to pay and it also maintains a fiscally responsible tax rate that allows for future needs so neither one of these options are extreme um they're both very doable and uh so I just wanted to share that information and some of the reasons why we would look at two different options I didn't want to just bring one thing forward to the board I wanted to give you guys some data and insight uh so that you can have options and with that

038I'm going to turn it over to Megan but need to get her Powerpoint up hang on one second vess I have one question on oh wait I'm so sorry yes questions last the tax rate comparisons um we often hear that kraton has the highest tax rate um like within the City of Phoenix because we don't have a lot of commercial um uh customers or as we have more more residential as opposed to Comm commercial um taxpayers is is that showing here like what which part of that tells that story if that even is indeed the story is it like the primary rate or the secondary rate I know the secondary rate is everything combined including um like the Phoenix Union uh oh Megan you want to go ahead and answer Madame President members of the

039board Mr Man um thank you I might be able to help you with that question it's a shifting tax burden yeah um and so while you might necess not necessarily have the highest tax rate because you have a lower um commercial um uh breakout of your property and I have that in my presentation that Vanessa is going to pull up it's shifting so rather than it's shifting to a larger commercial it it it's more burdensome or not burdensome but there's more residential property within your District right okay so that this chart doesn't necessarily reflect that right right thank you right Russell do you mind getting me into another screen and I'm gonna set the stage for you relative to assessed values um and kind of the tax base your property class um breakout and tax

040rates and then we'll talk about the two different programs that Vanessa introduced Miss Shapiro introduced and then um we'll she put some bullet points in there I'm going to point out specifically what we're talking about and then you um will open it up for questions and then did you introduce yourself sorry Megan Burke with thank you thank you I had intended to but it's okay so our role at steel is to um we are the district's underwriter um and we work with the district um prior to the board calling for an election whether you're doing a bond election or override election um and then once the board has um you know moved forward and decided that they're going to hold an election that year we help with the voter information pamphlet process um from a

041tax rate standpoint um and a structuring standpoint you have legal councel that also drafts it um they're not here this evening um and then uh after the successful election then we are the the group that then helps go out and sell the bonds so that's our role okay this is the one where you wanted to just you're up control okay so hopefully you guys have this in front of you I know it's a little bit small but this is just a 10-year history of the district's um assessed value so the um the net limited assessed property value the the maroon bar that is the base in which a a resident um or a taxpayer given if it's commercial is taxed off of so that is your tax base the blue bar is what's called your

042full cash value and that is um basically what your capacity calcul calculation is for issuing debt so um you know they're both relevant but from a tax rate standpoint the maroon is more relevant um but you'll see over time I mean there's just been continued increase um most specifically um in the last couple of years uh the last year um it's uh highlighted there as an estimate we have preliminary values that have come out in February they will become Final in August we go through the voter pamphlet time frame in July um so the timing doesn't exactly align but we will get um those are likely the values that would show up in your voter pampl for fiscal year 2425 so a healthy increase on your assessed value and that has an impact on your

043tax rate which we'll talk about in two slides but on the next slide so this is to your point um your residential so for your legal class breakout for your this is for your limited property value not your full cash value but the what the tax base is for um taxpayers is you know you're 69.3 70% um residential uh only 28 um makeup is commercial you know there's West Valley districts that are largely industrial and so that's literally flipped um and so that's the shifting tax burden that I was referring to so your tax rate is average compared to all the other comparables um there just might be more of it that is you know relative to to a resident than commercial in your tax in your tax area Okay so this um is your

04410-year tax rate history um the maroon is your um NOP sorry override the maroon is your M override the blue is your bonds um and when Miss Shapiro was referring to the do26 and the13 6 that is on specifically the bond only um your secondary tax rate is made up of bonds and then both youro override and your daa override so her reference to the do26 and the1 36 was just comparing to this blue um this blue portion of the bracket that you see right here the thing that has occurred over the course of time and building off of what was in your voter pamphlet in um 2016 the reason you've continued to see a decline in your secondary tax rate is because when we are at this stage of the game we are limited

045in what we can show in a voter pamphlet by Statute so for planning purposes and I'll show you in in another slide we are limited to a growth rate that is under what you actually have been achieving so as you achieve a higher growth rate and you've set your bonds you've gone out you've sold bonds um ultimately what happens is it it produces a lower tax rate because we've assumed a lower assessed value we've set your you know we've set what your bond dollar debt services and then as the assess Valu is come in and it's higher it it just produces a lower tax rate so that's kind of a function is what is what has happened over the last um couple years Miss Shapiro mentioned it and in 2016 you know we went as

046high as do 86 um based on the assumptions that we used in that voter pamphlet this is um there is a bond debt limit um and so that is more off of on slide two um that that would be a function of the blue bar um so this is you can issue debt that is 10% of your full cash value so this is um this is a you know basically this is what the the full cash value is of all the property within the district um so right now today the district could go out if you had authorization which you don't um you you could go out and sell $42 million of bonds today um based on what the AV is growing to for fiscal 2425 you could go out and sell at that moment

047in time should the should you approve an an election and the election was successful you could sell $77 million in bonds but a bond authorization when you go out to voters is for a 10-year period so we have to pre-plan um for you know you know the next several years the reason I put this here is because 85 million over a 10-year period I mean this this value you can see it grows 30 million from year over year if you went out 10 years you could essentially go out for um a bond you know north of 200 million that's not what we're looking to do um but I I give this to you as context for you know how we plan and and and how it is conservative based on what your AV will grow

048towards okay so the next couple slides are and I apologize I know it's there's a lot of information here but um so it's a little small the um the current Bond um bonds currently outstanding uh in the black is what the district has currently sold and we are limited in a voter pamphlet to assume a growth rate for the first five years um so you'll see over there fiscal year 25 26 uh through fiscal 2930 we are limited to show your growth rate at no more than the last 10e average so your last 10e average of your assessed value is 5.06 even though you'll see that this year you are going to have a growth rate of 7.57 so that that's kind of my previous comment explaining why we we're Limited in what we can

049show in a program and then when it comes in higher that's why the tax rate goes a little lower um then that debt that you see there is your existing previously sold debt the district has bonds outstanding um from the 2016 authorization we sold Bonds in 2017 2019 2021 and so that principle and interest associated with that debt is locked in and that's what your tax rate will be based on this growth rate model um should you do nothing else um then moving back to your grow rate after the 5.06 which is the 10e average we are limited in a voter pamphlet to show only 20% of your 10e average so that's why it drops to the one we you know this likely will be well in excess of that but that's what we're limited

050to um sorry I see it no this is good I just saw it flashing so I don't know if you guys are seeing the same thing there sorry so what we've done is um schedule out based on the previous Excel spreadsheet that Vanessa had um based on kind of what your timing needs are for projects to be complet and assumed a sale of 20 million in 2025 20 million in 2027 29 and then 25 million the balance in 3031 and targeted to achieve a tax rate level of a126 what her point is and you'll see it in a minute um if you look at those bottom um orange boxes is that a amount is for ft& so we can only amortise bonds for short-term eligible projects in the first five years of the loan and

051so that first sale um you'll see there's you know 450,000 there one and a half million for the next two sales and then you know 3.5 million for that final sale total debt service associated with um the this bond package for 85 million you'll see is the 135 135 million do you see that in column okay okay Miss Shapiro can you then move to slides forward this is the dollar 36 so what you'll see now is rather than $450,000 in that first sale in 2025 for short-term eligible projects it jumps to 1 and a. half million um it jumps in the next two sales from the 1 and a half million to 2.1 million and 1.8 million and then Ai and final sale you know it's like 5 um 5.3 million that was the point

052she was trying to make is that we able to um move short-term eligible projects to be repaid and um used or paid for quicker um and then the total debt service ass associated with this model we still did 20 million 20 million 20 million 25 million but with the increased tax rate you'll see total debt Serv service now of 136 million as opposed sorry 10 we looked at this um I don't I don't know that it's right here I think it's on the breakup and this that we had in our spreadsheet yeah yeah it's about 3 million 3 million less so we did move some of these numbers around and we'll um redo these sheets for final versions as we get closer but as you pay off debt faster um then it obviously reduces your

053interest cost so um I think something is we need to fix there but yeah so just for my clarification if I understand what you're saying correctly it's a higher tax rate but ultimately the taxpayers are spending less money on the bond that's correct that's correct and um if you go back to um so one more page forward so here you'll see then the average home value in the district is 252,000 that's the average um obviously there's a lot of property that's well in excess of that but the the cost for that scenario one on an annual basis is $181 thou $181 um whereas if you go two more slides forward um you know that's $84 so um it that's just kind of the difference between the 10-cent tax increase is $3 um so I don't

054know if there's discussion um I I don't know that we necessarily need to make a decision about the tax rate implication here I'm mostly available for questions and I think then you guys can talk internally about um how you would you know like to proceed forward do we have any questions comments or concerns from board members I know everybody's thinking right now a lot of pro information to process yeah so and it's It's Our intention to you know based on board feedback to come back with a recommendation to the board at the April board meeting um April's a little unusual because of the nsba conference we only have the one meeting um but we feel like pushing into May would probably be too late to bring it as an item so um so that April

055meeting is likely the sweet spot for us to kind of come back and and ask the board if they have desire to move forward yeah and if you have a time yeah here's the time schedule so this is the county deadlines um for moving forward with an election um so the board does need to um submit uh a recommendation to which you plan to move forward in July you have to submit your um pamphlet to um the elections department so you know again you could wait till May but then also so you know it's causing your pack delay and there's lots of other implications so at a minimum though you want to do something by June but that's I think why the staff has made a recommendation to have me present this initially and then

056come back in April with for foral formal board approval so you're not necessarily looking for um feedback on the the different tax rates you're just saying well maybe you are but you're just saying this is kind of where we want to keep it within as these two yeah I mean theoretically I mean the district could go out for $100 million Bond and you could raise your tax rate you know 30 cents but in working with staff there's obviously um sensitivity around an increase in a tax rate um we could go out for an election and have a decrease in a tax rate but likely what you would need to do in that situation is um a lower bond amount or you know the short-term eligible projects would have to be delayed um there's implications with

057that because of you know your device requirements and and and the need to do that so we're trying to balance all of the different you know um variables and you know we put in front of you um you know a maintenance of and a 10% or sorry a 10cent if there was board discussion and and there was other options that were you know wanting to be um reviewed or looked at we'd be happy to you know share those and and I think our leaning at this time so it would be good like if anyone has an opinion on this is that while you know we're we're always avoiding increasing tax rate where we can it feels like that 10cent increase is fairly modest and ultimately saves our taxpayers 3 million dollars over the life of

058the of the bond plus gives us greater flexibility to be able to um affect projects where they need to happen because while we schedule all these projects out as we've watched watched over the last nine years sometimes something crops up that causes us to have to change a timeline on something so having that greater flexibility is really beneficial it gives um the team more flexibility to react to problems and sometimes they're not even problems sometimes they're blessings like the um electric bus Grant so we were fortunate to have some districts couldn't take advantage of it because they didn't have bus Bond dollars and the grant doesn't pay for all of it so being able to have some of those available for things like that earlier in the bond sale versus later might create opportunities that

059would be available to us so that's probably not the best example but it's just something that's come up recently so it's kind of a a very recent example of where that flexibility becomes very powerful so in layman's terms how would you explain to someone yes we're increasing it by 10 cents or whatever um but saving how much three three million yeah I mean and that's based on a 5% interest rate assumption and right and the actual growth rate that we're restricted to in a voter pamphlet but in you know in the materials that will be you know produced for the uh election we would help you know help with drafting any language that would try to describe that to a Layman taxpayer okay so but but it's just so I understand yeah and with my

060head um it's basically we're paying the debt off sooner so right okay yeah and just think about if you have 30-year mortgage and you end up paying off in 20 years your the interest cost associated with that re you know faster or rapid payment of your debt you'd save you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest it's the same concept here okay thank you there's also an added Advantage because if you're able to tackle the projects faster the taxpayers see the results but progress versus seeing it nine years from now any other oh sorry didn't me interrupt it all is a balance any other questions concerns um is 10 cents usually the norm um the only reason why I'm sitting here and thinking is that we don't really know with all these vouchers and

061what the future looks like with funding for public schools I'm not sure where that lays so I think we have an added Advantage maybe given the community that we're in um is 10 cents usually what usually is in I know you said that it's moderate has it ever been a little bit more has it been it it really has given the history of our district I haven't been here through the history of all the bonds that we've done but has there been any specific times that we've gone for higher amounts yes so what what I can't show you um but I have it in front of me um is the voter pamphlet from 2016 and at the time because the district so in 2016 the district did a bond election and the last election that

062they did prior to that bond election was in 2009 and it was only for 44 million so 2009 and 2016 correct how often can you run bonds um you if you ran a bond election this year you could run a bond election next year what is and I I don't want to get two in the Weeds about it yeah yeah sorry but um you if you do a bond election and it's $100 million you have 10 years to sell all $100 million but there is nothing that prevents you from selling that in four years so in year five you could go out and do another bond election got it but what happened was you had done a 2009 bond election it was 44 million your tax base was much lower um and you know you

063did a couple a couple sales in the $20 million range at the time prior to doing the 2016 bond election your tax rate was $151 for Bonds doing an $85 million bond election which was double the ask we showed in the voter pamphlet a tax rate of $186 so that was a 30 Cent 35 Cent tax jump on bonds just on that program alone in 2016 in 2016 you could do 85 million with no tax impact you could do 85 million with a 10-cent tax impact you could do it with a 20 cent tax impact that would just mean we would amortise your bonds even quicker than what you saw in scenario 2 and the debt associated or the interest costs associated with scenario 2 would be even less um it's dependent on every some

064districts do $500 million bond election and they show no tax impact some do it and they have a 50 Cent 50 Cent tax impact so it's really what you know about your community um your community is supportive you've had you know your tax pass or sorry your election passage rate um for the last bonds or the last election was 55.6% um so you know you're not you know 49 51 type of situation so it's it's really what the the cabinet and board um is most comfortable you know presenting and and alsare we kind of guided um Miss Burke to be somewhat conservative just because we were concerned about some of the comments like Miss MC cheffrey shared that there there is a sense in our community sometimes the tax rates high but I don't think

065that's a function specifically of kraton because keep in mind in our district we have kraton for tax rate we have Phoenix Union for tax rate um those two things show as schools we also have U Maricopa County community colleges that district has recently um passed some Bonds in recent years um and then there's you know there's there's a whole bunch of other elements but what families seem to notice at least the ones that I've spoken with is that the largest chunk of their secondary tax rate that they're paying really is for the two school districts for um for kraton and for Phoenix Union and so that that has been where we've had some communication from the community in the past about concerns around around tax rate okay I don't have any oh go ahead and

066just just for um reminder sake uh the overrides expire not for a while right yes so we you know we've and and I'd be happy to um provide Miss Shapiro with the chart that I may have even given it to her the chart I used to use to track all the elections but um what we've been doing is we found that the even years the gubinatorial and presidential years are the most successful for us so we've tried to schedule things to where we're not going out more than every other year so our hand isn't always out number one um so we're hitting that success successful election cycle but then the the other reasoning for it was to not try to not go out for two or three things at once so if we were to

067go out for this bond in 24 it would really be the right timing to go out for both overrides the m and the capital again in 26 so that would be the first time where we'd be in a position where we kind of need to run them together and that has to do with you know the down cycling of M if we don't if we if we don't pass it by 27 it starts to down cycle and then the and then the capital sunsets at a certain point so to be able to to make sure both of those are maintained over time we would actually need to float either float both of those elections in 26 or go out in back-to-back years where we might try an odd year um but you know based on

068the data that we have it looks like those even years are our more successful time frame sorry for taking that one I'll let you take it in the future I just had the history so absolutely and and there is on sorry there is on slide four um there is a history of bond and override um c s these are successful these aren't the ones that were unsuccessful um in the under the tax rate table sorry we didn't go into detail on this I know we were trying to keep this to a minimum um but one thing to point out is ml it says the last year that's the last year m&o does ratchet down um so they're good for seven years full for five ratchets down in six and seven by onethird in each year

069if it's not renewed so the year that you do see see would be if it just phased out and and and you didn't go out for a new but the daa was last done um in 2020 so that to Jay's point we would want to go out that's a full for seven years by 2026 yeah Mr Man I apologize you can I I'm not very form okay any other questions concerns comments all right thank you for your time thank you so much so Madam president members of the board with apologies to Miss Shapiro having noticed the time that it is at 7:22 in our full board meeting were you gonna shoot were you gonna pass me an out I missed out on that no I was gonna say what you're about to say okay sorry

070do you want to say it no go right I keep stealing I keep stealing your thunder today um it we might want to table the budget conversation for a future board meeting we have we do have more time and space with that than we do with the bond we just knew that was coming up in April um and if you're okay with that so with apologies to you both for suggesting it and for stealing your suggestion of it and I just I I would I would be grateful for uh time to spend uh discussing discussing the budget the budget process there's some uh changes in the in the requirements of reporting I think they're fantastic changes uh and they allow us to uh present the and develop the budget in um a way that I

071would have been doing anyways uh so it's great to get that information out there and be very transparent with the process but I do want to have time to discuss it explain it and and add value as to why that transparency is really um important for a school district and I also want to make sure that I get information from the board members on the types of things that you would like to see as we're developing the budget and the um types of information that that maybe need to stand out for you that I can go into tell you know the areas that I goober over might not necessarily be the areas that you guys uh enjoy as much um I I really jazz on uh how the budget's broken up with the account coding

072I've talked about account coding before I think it's fantastic to have a set of numbers that tell you everything it is amazing so um the budget is absolutely aligned with that account coding process so maybe I can make account code joy in everyone so yeah I'm I'm if I have no objection from the other board members I'm okay if we table the budget discussion to another time just to give us more clarity and give you guys more time to do that as well um do I hear any objections no since it's a study session Hilda Miss Hardis okay perfect thank you so much so with that being said we're going to go ahead and adjourn our study session I'm going to go on a quick two-minute recess and then we'll be right back with our

073regular board meeting thank you sorry Josh how much we value have in the top half of our district and how the bottom half can average it out to 20 that is wild even though there's four and6 million Homes at the one end I know I mean we're talking people that live on 32nd Street in Stanford yep yeah well what I was saying is they presented to the board go is that even I'm going to stag this because I know she likes to look at these e yes okay thank you very much Ward this we're going to go ahead and reconvening the meeting and we're going to go ahead and start with our land acknowledgement the cron School District understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the oam dude and

074Akim oam 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 and community Community spanning countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful Legacy for Generations into the future with this acknowledgement the C 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 we will have um Dr Lauren start us off with the Pledge of Allegiance flag of the United States of thank you and that brings us to roll call we are all here miss Gibson mcling Miss SS myself miss maleb and miss

075MC cheffrey thank you we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address board cards that are on the left side um that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary 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 open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda and that that's po that's per our reference policy BH that brings us to approval of agenda I move the governing board approve the agenda as presented second okay all those in favor awesome and that brings us to our

076governing board reports and Miss Gibson's writing so miss MC cheffrey I'm going to turn it over here first I do not have one today awesome thank you Miss MB I'm Gonna Save my voice okay I danced in the rain too much this weekend and so wedding went well now I have no voice Miss SS my voice is bad too I was at the wedding but I didn't dance in the rain I didn't scream a lot it's just been like this for a long time I don't know when it's going to come back so I have nothing tonight miss Gibson m um well congratulations to Lindsay and happy birthday to sopia um thank you yeah I we had a we just had another I guess hope everybody had a good Spring Break um and people got

077some relaxation in we had a committee meeting was it last week it was last week not this week okay it was last week um and we're chugging right along I'm honestly I will say surprised but I don't want to jinx us or anything um so so we've gotten through um wow dress code and then we've uh tackled a couple of other big things and so please join us next week I I believe it is next week on Thursday if I remember this is all just a quiz for youj yeah I know like you're just it's like are you supering just look at my calendar right now but I'm not um next week uh again we'll be here and so obviously it's March so we're really getting into the um to the uh grind here to

078try to get uh all of these because it seems like every time we think of something we're like well this is a related so hopefully we don't coming to you and asking for an extension I hope that we can get through everything by the end of uh the year and and the date that we've the dates we've prescribed so again if you would like to please uh come to our meetings in person or watch them online you can provide public comment um as well so thank you to everyone on the committee for their hard work and contined hard work thank you for that um just a board update that I have is that I know that we have some really cool events going on this week that I'm really excited for I know that we

079have our art expo I believe it is tomorrow um yes so at five o'clock so if you guys can go ahead and make the art expo at mon Vista to Showcase are the beautiful art I know we have some beautiful ones over here and on the left side this is amazing work from our students around the district so that's always awesome um I know that a lot of the schools are having their own kindergarten um fairs so that's cool um excellencia has one coming up tomorrow and I know Thursday BPA has one um so that's really awesome and I also know that in the month of April we have um The Family Resource Center is actually putting on together a baby shower for the community I don't know if that and you guys knew that

080our family resource puts those together so we um pregnant persons can come in sign up and they get free diapers we throw food baby shower we do games we do the H nine yards and it's remarkable what the ladies do we're also going to have a kindergarten um fair I like to say we because I live at the Family Resource Center basically so I take a lot of Pride and ownership in what they do so there's also going to be a kindergarten Fair going on in the districtwide at the Family Resource Center there and it's really cool because um they have different countries that they're representing and it was awesome to see all the parents um we did a tour of the Family Resource Center for first things first which is who the family res

081um Resource Center is Grand funded by and um Governor Hobbs um it's a part of Governor Hobs Administration and they were really excited with the stuff that we're doing in the Family Resource Center there's I believe 88 Family Resource Centers in the whole state State of Arizona and our Family Resource Center is one of the few if not only that has certain um enmities like giving out diapers for free or the DCS grants that they just got to help community members get their water paid their gas so if you guys know anybody in the community that's needing assistance Our Family Resource Center has direct dollars for that so it's really amazing to see all the work that our specific Family Resource um is doing and that's why it was so happy to see some itemized

082um numbers on there for them for the bond because they really hold the epitome of this District you know or parents go there our zero to five children go there all the services that they have um so it's it really holds the district together so um if you guys can check that out that would be awesome as well and that's the only update that I have for myself I'll go ahead and turn it over to you Mr Jay I know it's late I know it's your birthday and so I'm going to keep it very very short um I'll start with some some sad news um a longtime teacher in our district um Lan for H um we recently found out had passed away um and for those of you who knew Leanne she was just

083an amazing bright light of energy but also um she was our music teacher at Papago for many years and I just remember enjoying so many performances uh that she was behind I think she brought students to perform here in the boardroom a couple of times and and at a variety of other events so m h was my music teacher in the 90s wow there you go it's a small world and there's always connections right so I'm very very sad for that news and of course condolences go out to her family um to kind of build off of the committee work that our policy committee is working on um we also have our our student conduct and behavior support team that's looking for proactive supports for our students and they have actually reach the point where

084they have their rubric for how they're going to measure possible programmatic elements we could bring in to support um our our teachers our staff and especially our our kids throughout the district for next year and they have actually started their tours I think their their first tour of the school district to look at the program they're using was actually this morning so um so they're out there trying to get that work done so that we were able to look at um bringing some programmatic elements in uh bring a recommendation forward and then bring programmatic elements in for next year so I'm just going to go with those two for time but um thank you for the opportunity to share those things and one thing I forgot to mention is I didn't know that we had

085our first spases what's our special education didn't we have that last week oh my goodness that was my other one it was our CAC I can't I forgot that um yeah I got to be there it was awesome it was so awesome that they were struggling nobody wanted to leave um I my my test the next morning got canceled but I was supposed to be fasting for a test so I ducked out earlier than I wanted to I wanted to be there to The Bitter End with everybody but I realized I wouldn't get to to have my last meal before before my test so um so I didn't get I have no idea you guys could have stayed till midnight for all I know I know we were like Beyond 30 minutes past our time

086and people were still hanging out and I think one of the big things that we learned was that we need to build in time for the families to connect because they really loved connecting with each other as well but my thanks to the whole Special Education team everyone involved in in pulling that together I know been in planning for a while um and those families so we had if my count is right and somebody correct me if I'm wrong I think we had like eight or nine distinct families that showed up but we had more individual because there was two parents from some of those families um and that actually for us historically is a lot but we'd like it to be more but one of the things that we charge them with is toing

087others and they left energized to bring others so I know you know it's it's going to continue to grow and it's going to be an amazing feedback loop for us as we continue to dig in and and improve our programs throughout the district so again thanks to the team for for that effort yeah and I just want to say thank you too I know that I wasn't there I had to take a last minute trip that week but I'm really thankful for you guys um supporting us I know it's been a Talk Amongst the community and one of the things that we really strive to is listening to the the committee and I know that this is something that we've been um not neglecting but it's it hasn't been operating the way it should and

088I know that this is the starting point I know we only have a few families but that's the way that it starts right but what I'm most grateful for is that the initiative was done to actually hearing the community and bringing these families together to actually advocate for their students so that's awesome and it's very aligned with theg framework that we're also doing so I appreciated that and I wanted to make sure that that was that was brought up thank you for catching I'm just going to throw one more quick story because it's so awesome I'm going to embarrass um Miss Green in the background there and Dr dup in here but one of our parents who was there with their two children one who currently um is in our program and one that is

089one of our future attendees um in our district um he I had been introduced to him outside of Mack and school like I think last year because we ran into him I was with Dr dupin and Dr dupin was his principal when he was a student at that school school and Miss green was his teacher so it what's amazing and super cool is we do have like multi-generational families within our district and seeing them not only bring their kids back here but participate in opportunities to give us input and feedback is really so for me it was super exciting to have a former student who was I know we have a for we have former student board member but they have a former student who um who you know who actually was then part of

090our convers about what we're doing for students now so I I just wanted to share that just really quick because it's coming to mind and I would hate for her to just be barely mentioned but you know I think Miss V I we used to call her Miss V started in the district at a time when we didn't have a lot of money for music and art education and I recall her only being able to come so many times a month or a week like maybe like once a month because I'm sure she went to all the sites and uh I feel like she always did like the most she could with what she had which was interesting I'm sure um now looking back but she had a choir for us at monov Vista we

091also had a recorder choir which I'm sure our parents all enjoyed um and and we even she was even on the cuss with technology because we created we did a fundraiser where we all sang songs on a cassette tapes that she then mass produced and we sold for a fundraiser which I'm also sure sounded fantastic um which included like Barbie girl and things like that so it was great it was a great time she was a great teacher from what I recall so I'm sorry for uh her loves on loss thank you for that and thank you guys for all the work you're doing in the district um Mr man I didn't me cut you off was that it no it wasn't I'm s I'm sorry to have stretch I just thought it was the

092story had touched me when watching it unfold so okay perfect so that brings us to our student outcomes Focus governance update which this which is the sofg framework and for the past few weeks I think we actually completed our site councils now now I wasn't there to make it to the last few weeks but we've been going around we started it off with Community Council getting feedback on the new goals that the district is doing I think with all the feedback and I'm hoping everybody had an opportunity to look at it we can discuss the five goals if we need to make any edits and if not then I think we're ready to move forward to adopting them um I've gone through the feedback I've talked to people in the meetings in person and it

093seems like our goals are very aligned with what the community is saying um you guys can see it in the paperwork I don't know if you guys have any edits to any of the board goals I'm not talking about guard rail guard rails right now but from what I personally have been hearing and seeing a lot of them seem to be very aligned of not making major um changes the only concerns that I am hearing is um that our goals are very eighth grade based and a lot of the families were stating well what about the third grade and the second grade and fifth grade um I think part of this framework um and and having this interactions with our community is part of like educate education on our part and their part too where

094we're going to have interim goals within those goals so that's going to be up to once our goals are adopted to our superintendent and our administrators to come back and tell us well this is what we're going to do in the meantime to get to that overall 5year your goal and it can be focusing on third grade literacy it can be focusing on what we're doing in fifth grade I'm not sure what that looks like but once we get to that point we'll get to discuss um what we if we accept those intrum goals or not so I guess the question here now is after reading the feedback do you guys have any major concerns about changing the goals that we have do we have any edits what are you guys feeling thinking the one

095edit that I saw in here um about changing like the teachers to staff um it was under the guardrails we're talking about board goals um right now and then sorry yeah no it's okay um I think the board goals maybe if we can pull that up and have it up here too because I know that administrator had some adjustments on some um of the board goal so um think only the biggest thing that stood out well one going back to yes we had feedback on the eighth grade but I think that goes back to those interim goals and also realizing that five years from now the eth graders are the third graders now so um but the one that I heard like the most discussion about was um the looking at the 8th grade elel

096students and measuring using the aella to measure simply because if you're newcomer students if you know there's something else going on that you've have not been evaluated throughout the time like are we going to get to that and that was brought up by several um folks and I don't have the perfect answer for what that it's are I'm trying to recall the numbers do we remember like what the because I remember a lot of times I was having those feelings and then when we talked about actual numbers of students and what that looks like to move the the meter then I would feel better so I don't recall the actual numbers of students well and I I don't mean to put Dr dupin or Dr pombo on the spot but I know that the aella

097scores and the El students were one of the things that there were some potential recommendations for a possible shift so I don't know if if you have that you are okay perfect thank you um so that that and that information might help with that concern that you've heard because I think they structured it a different way to make it a little yeah a little clearer more understandable and ensure that it's attainable so and then I also wanted to make sure we we discussed or thought about the concerns over calling out um eighth grade black students um on the map just because um some students had some issues with that and there is a privacy issue in in because the number of kids are so small um and if we want to I don't want I

098don't want to unintentionally be adding any shame to these kids um and bring up possibilities for bullying of these particular students um in my experience that wasn't something that really was brought up in the community forums especially talking with parents I know I wasn't there when kids cogence happened and I know that was one concerned but it hasn't some it hasn't been something that I've personally heard at the different sites with administrators teachers support staff parents I that's just not something that is going around I understand that it could be a concern to um separate you know different people and how they the lens that they see it in but I don't I personally don't believe that this would cause any added on bowling or any added on any of other that especially because I

099haven't heard it around I don't know if anybody else has a different experience but that's not something that has been a a prominent concern going around doing the tours it just came from students that's and that's it was well I guess I just want to clarify it was one student right no it was actually it was I remember being communicated at the last meeting yeah we we shared the story from one student but um if I remember correctly Dr dup and you were there I think it was about three students who had raised concern dur course of the meeting am I remembering correctly that's correct yeah I guess I'll just clarify on the Privacy issue right like again I'll say that we're not violating any privacy because these scores are published and so if there's

100just an inherent privacy issue because of the number of people we're not revealing any information that isn't already publicly available is what I'm trying to that's my whole thing right so I understand we're highlighting something at the same time it's all information that's on the add website as it is right I know kids aren't going to go hang out on the ad website I also know most people aren't my other thing though is that um I also don't know how many kids are going to hang out and look at our board goals and talk about them if they're not in kids Congress all those things to say they're valid I mean if there are there concerns they are valid concerns and I have a lot of follow-up questions and Curiosities about all of that before

101I just go ahead and strike that as one of the goals and and I think a lot of conversations can go around with this if we decide to adopt this on maybe a strategize and have a meet a conversation with Mr Man on how we will present this especially when we're talking to students um but also I don't necessarily feel that it's something that we should completely strike out because um it's not something that I commonly have heard going around well there's another kids Congress in April I mean I'd love to have a followup with them myself after you know us discussing it a couple times um I think it's something that would be valuable for you guys to hear and there's probably other opportunities to hear from them if that's not a convenient time

102but I think think you know I'd like to think that our kids are not bullying each other about silly things like this but um I also want to be living in reality and not give them an opportunity to use that um especially for black kids I mean this came from someone who possibly identified and and again we don't know that was something that was brought up um just recently at builtmore there's not a way you know people identify differently on and there's not a way to identify as multi-racial and black you have to pick one I guess you can't separate that out so it's just complicated and I don't want to I don't want to unintentionally contribute to something that is shaming kids or you know putting putting them in an uncomfortable situation any further

103than they may already feel like they are right and I think that's why after the adoption of the goals there 's going to be a lot of communication back and forth not only with the students but the community and the parents um because I also think in our leadership roles and making sure that our students are attaining and receiving the best resources they can our data historically assuring that our black students historically year after year after year have met none of the criteria so in my I I understand but in my in my um governance mode is it's imperative that we give the resources and the attention to the most vulnerable and from the data that we've pulled from 2016 it keeps showing up that our black students are the ones that are being impacted

104most by the lack of whatever we're doing so I think that's why it's important to um have goals like this because then all our resources and our time and our efforts are going to go to who is being mostly impacted and clearly um one of those most impacted is black students given the 0% of them going on to high school without knowledge on math so um I I think that's why um if we decide to adopt this goal after tonight it's a very crucial that we do have a conversation with admin and our superintendent and maybe even our um principles to make sure that we're relaying the information where it's not intended to be in a hurtful matter versus uh this is what we're going to do because this is the group that's most impacted

105and we're going to give all our resources so you guys can be up to everybody else and then I think also using the right language like not even impacted like as adults and I'm not talking I'm not targeting anyone here teachers whatever I'm talking about every single adult in this issing us like we've said in this is responsible for all of this and so nothing at all should be placed on the students as far as like ownership of this at all and so as adults we definitely need to have these types of goals because until people are not acting like they're colorblind until people are are actually making sure that that all students are being served equally these numbers are not going to improve and I think that's an important point I think if we

106move forward with this as a goal it's important that we frame it not as these students have failed but that we failed these students so um so at a minimum that that framing needs to be in place so that way we're not putting the blame on the students but um I do agree one of the things I always am concerned about and we've had this happen a number of times one of the dangers when you're involving a lot of people in conversations about things is you don't want them to give their feedback and then feel like their concerns were not were not heard so I I want to make certain I think Miss MC cheffrey suggestion that we that we go back to that student group I think is is an important one um as

107we've tried to be more collaborative in the district one of one of the unintentional harms that's been created at times is that sometimes you know people feel like well we gave you our feedback but you didn't do what we asked you to do well sometimes you know we take the feedback we Implement what we can from within that feedback but there's multiple feedback there's multiple factors so um I think it's important for us to make sure we're we're having those conversations as well I just checked my calendar and I am free on April 19th at 11:00 a.m. so I'm going to do my best to make it that kids Congress and then I know um this has already been brought up but I I was hoping that we would have um the recommendations of Dr

108pumbo and Dr dupin um side by side with our board goals just so we can see you know because I think there was some quite a bit of thought put into that you know just so we can kind of see what their recommendations were as well when we do get to a final adoption meeting or board meeting before I think it was the last one yeah I believe it was last board meeting to I know there were language yeah it was at the end of the present the data presentation that we went through was March 5th okay so it wasn't the last one it was it was two board me no this yeah it it was the last board meeting because it's still march it feels like it's April already it feels like this meeting

109stretched into nice to see them just side by side and have give some thought for that yeah are we able to do that or no is that have them side by side like um the recommendations we had from March 5th and our goals right now yeah is that possible I don't know oh no no no no it's okay we've got it we they're here they're just not it was part of the PowerPoint wasn't it yeah it was part of the power point that's the problem because it wasn't by themselves it was part of their PowerPoint it was it was on the last slide I believe can we can can you guys just send it to us so we can look at it between now and the next board meeting we're not voting on anything tonight

110yeah we we can absolutely um and actually rather than just sending it to you in its current format I don't think it would be a hardship to put the two sets side by side and send them out to you so yeah and we don't have to wait for a board update we can just go ahead and push that that' be great that's all yeah in fact we'll probably have it's gonna take more than like 15 minutes about it you know and and in addition to that and I haven't had a chance to share this um our extended exec team which includes do pombo um um gret uh who's our new um uh and I'm sorry to address You by first name it is late and my brain is not working but our um exceptional student

111services director um and several members of the team including Tyson who you worked with on the original goals are going to be working with uh Dr Ramos on April 2nd to try to get some more information and start moving forward on some of those HMS and some of those pieces so we'll have some information from that that we'll need to share out with you anyway so as we share that out um we'll also we'll share this out as well so that way you hopefully we'll be able to get you a lot of different pieces of information um after next week it's gonna actually a week from today that we'll be doing that it'll probably take us a day or two after that to pull pull things together and get them off too um and then

112just for next board meeting we will be taking action on those board goals so I just want to make sure that everybody's reading their materials reading everything coming forward with your questions or setting up those one-on ones if you have questions before because um where our community feedback is done we have the we have all the paperwork the community feedback um Dr pombo brought up those recommendations last meeting so for the next board meeting so we're all aware we're going to be voting and have a discussion so just make sure that once those materials are sent out to you we're actually reading them going through and not using this time to look for paperwork or ask questions um just so we can get those goals settled and I'm assuming the next meeting is going to

113be after that kids Congress meeting so that will play out it's not it it'll it'll be yeah unfortunately it's the Tuesday prior to the Friday of so okay um I don't think it's a matter of not reading it that we had a lot and then we had these possible adjustments the end of our discussion last time but it's being able to then look at those next to the ones we have and figure out are we meshing them so I think that's what we expected to be able to see tonight yeah and I I apologize for not having ton and it's it is it will be important for me to Circle back with the kids I'll just be honest with you so yeah and that's fine nobody said it yeah we won't be able to do

114it before the vote it sounds like like so yeah well we if do we want to Circle back with the kids and make sure we're because it's the same kids Congress right so that's the only thing is that if it's only three kids and it's the same amount of kids how are you getting more information that it's an actual issue within the students that's what I'm trying to get at if we go back to kids Congress what's your solution off of that if it's only the same individuals it's it's about having a conversation with them and saying look this is these are the discussions that we had with the board you know do it does it make you feel any differently or are those three students are they students at three different schools um believe

115it on were two of them were from one school and then one was from another school is it possible to coordinate a conversation with before kids Congress um please could I'd be willing to participate in that conversation if it's possible to coordinate it if that's what we're trying to do is have that conversation again again prior to the next prior to the vote if that's not feasible well if if I um if I'm following the conversation correctly I don't know that there's new information that we'll get from those kids but I think it's a matter of of addressing their concerns so and and if I'm misspeaking Miss MC Jeffrey please correct me but it it feels like you know if if that's the volume of that feedback and the board feels comfortable taking action that

116Tuesday prior to that Friday meeting that conversation could still take place at kids Congress and it would really just be explaining here here's here's what we've here's the here's the goals we brought you originally here's what we've adopted they may be identical they may be slightly different depending on how you feel about some of the recommended changes um and then and then have a conversation with them about we heard your concerns and we value them and here's why we still chose to move forward in this way and here's we're going to do as we communicate the goals out to try to address the concerns so I don't I don't know if that would help I mean I feel like it's Rel leaving out the other kids and kids Congress to just yeah because there the

117other ones were all there sitting there and listening to the conversation so I hate to exclude them um I was just trying to come up with a solution that would please people but if that's this is fine with me I'm just a solution person so I was trying to think of something on the fly but it's fine I'll go to kids Congress too I'll be at the meeting I'm eager to hear it thank you they're fun okay um I I personally believe that's the action step that I would like to take what Mr Man recommended but I am only one voice so it's up to the rest of the board what you want to do but at this point I believe that for the next meeting we should go over the board goals and look

118over all the information and and start making a decision on adopting our goals um that's just where I'm at it at this moment any other comments okay uh moving over to the guardrails I really do think that we need to get our board goals straight first and then the guardrail conversation can come up so we can move that over to the next um agenda item especially because I need to follow up with Dr rals on on the guard rails as well um one of the ones for sure that we're not going to do is the board self evaluation and I'm going to make sure that all the other ones don't intersect with stuff within the framework I'm really hoping um we're taking the responsibility also of reading the book um just because I know that

119there's a lot of questions or sometimes stuff comes up and if we're reading the literature of this um framework it it really depicts and goes into detail on why certain things are written a certain way or why certain goals or guard rails are executed in such a a certain way so that's part of our job too make sure that we're reading in and and understanding the material and if we're not this is the perfect opportunity to ask questions or set up one-on ones to make sure that we're getting Clarity on either the guardrails or the or the goals but I think guard rails and goals mixing them together when we're adopting them can get a little bit confusing so I'm going to if everybody is okay we're going to table the guardrail conversation until we

120can kind of get our goals um in place and set up um couple comment um I would I would like to if we could make a note to add staff just so that we don't lose that note because I think that was a good um addition to which one sorry to the guard rail to the board guard rails oh board sorry we we're missing the word staff in there really okay that's all easy yeah yeah yeah and then um why was the this one removed the board will not operate without a self annual self- evaluation So within the framework um the self evaluation um we end up getting a sheet and it tells us the self evaluation is within the framework already that has to be done once a year already so if we added

121it as a guard rail it's already expected of us to do a board self evaluation every year so it kind it's like double doing we're wasting a guard rail basically on something that we're already going to be doing yearly anyways so that's what ni thing to have out there publicly because I did get some comments about that you know like who's GNA hold you accountable for doing that and it's like because we haven't done one for a couple years so it was nice to just have it public that's all yeah um but I think that's the anti-racist training because there was comments about that too I'm I'm I'm sorry I was still on the other one what about the anti-racist training how come that was removed um I don't I think it was I think

122it was accidental because it was oh yeah part it was part of the self-evaluation yeah so we I think I don't think that was intended to be removed it's not in the fra yeah it's not in the framework um but our goals are very anti-racist can I ask a question um it's my understanding that we will adopt eventually an entire framework yes and in that adoption we could amend the evaluation section to include that portion if we yes we can add it too okay and I thought it was going to be added to the superintendent's guard rail as one of the indic that the board will not go out without self evaluation every year that the anti-racist thing was going to be added as an indicator somewhere and that could be an indicator to as

123like an interum guardrail that's why the guardrail conversation I kind of was like let me set it off to the next agenda because because there is a lot of but yeah the anti-racist can be yeah under the superintendent guard rails well I just got good feedback that's all yeah and I don't think it was meant to be taken out it was just the self evaluation portion of it but we can include it within the self evaluation in the framework that it exists already um do we have any other questions or comments regarding the guard rails okay um Mr man did you have anything to add on to the sofg framework conversation I I appreciate the conversation I appreciate the fact you know that we've we've gathered so much input and feedback and I and I

124do appreciate the concerns but making sure we honor the the concerns of the students as well so I think we can address all of that um and and as I said we'll be getting the side by side out to you along with anything else we get from Dr Ramos son on the second we'll get that out to you the end of that week so that we have it sooner rather than later instead of having to wait for a board update and hopefully that'll uh put us in a good position to be ready to have the the work that we need to do in April so awesome all right I'm going to move on to the next agenda item which is public comments we do have one public comments and I invite Claudia Garcia board um

125aw some conversation huh that was happy I didn't expect that uh so I just wanted to speak about the recent uh personal lawsuit against the board and just kind of reassure the board that uh trying to connect with other parents to organize our support for our current board and um you know I really think that there's a place here got to look hard to take the high road on this um but but but I I think that if I had to speak to any parent and explain why why we should um support our uh dual language aversion program at builtmore it's because we do believe that it is delivering it is delivering according to the state standards I have two children who have gone through the program they are both uh above average academically they

126are just fine um and you know it's brought to my attention that there's a point about uh engl English Learners being at the program that that that's really the problem and I say so what okay so what so there's a couple of English Learners in the program guess what my biggest surprise at billmore was not all the Spanish-speaking kids that joined the program it was all the uh excited and Earnest uh non-english uh speak non-spanish speaking families that were there to put uh their children in this dual language immersion program and just the goodness that that brought to my kids life you know I'm I'm out of District my kidss could have gone to Hopey or they could have gone to Great Hearts but they would not have had the Multicultural experience that they had

127at builtmore and I think it's difficult to explain to someone outside of this situation all the advantages that that offers but it's been huge I mean they will take that with them forever and I want them to be people who go into the world who understand what it's like to be sensitive to others who understand a sense of the world and our dual language immersion experience erience has given them that and it is because of the school district like I said we came out of District to come here and it's just been a Priceless experience so you know there's there's so many layers to this lawsuit um that there just has to be a way to find the high road I think looking at it technically legally um would be you know to explain to

128the parents you know where the board is going you know get some feedback um can only help you know I know the eight people that I heard back from today no one said oh that's great the board's being sued like no nobody said that no said that's amazing no everyone said us is the this is awful he's a bad man um so uh just so you know I know eight people who got back to me they each know eight people who know eight people and uh just want to reassure you that we are trying to uh do what we can to uh organize we just need a little bit of guidance and I think could certainly make a political impact if with with that um and and you know and I want to hit this

129point too because it's important about what you were talking about there the there's this balance between sensitivity transparency execution and that's what government's about right that's why we have government because government is a public trust We Trust our public officials to make good decisions for them I don't have it all the time in the world world to uh figure out what standard my kids should be learning to I trust my government the market cannot solve everything that's why there are Environmental Protections that's why there's public education because we need a government it's not supposed to be for profit and so that's the message I would give to my fellow parents that built war and I want to reassure you that we're going to do what we can um little a little bit of feedback would

130go a long way um but but we we you have you have you're G to have a quorum you're gonna have some people behind you so thank you so much I appreciate your words thank you all right and that brings us to our next agenda item which is um approval of consent I move the governing board approve consent agenda items a through D in accordance with policy bb- e second all those in favor I I and that brings us to our next agenda item which is acceptance of financial audit reports for fiscal year 22 and 23 it's the Miss Shapiro show tonight so I will turn it back over to you thank you Mr Man yeah uh Madame President board members and Mr Man uh we have tonight uh Mr Joshua jumper who is a

131CPA and a certified governmental uh finance manager with our external audit firm heinfeld and meech I believe I will be able to do the technology with no assistance oh but somebody needs to exit out of this first thank you for your patience also no problem one thing we've learned over the years is Auditors have a lot of patience they will outweight you if they have to oh I see okay oh so if you just let me know when you're ready I will I'm ready go ahead all right the next slide uh good evening uh members of the board Mr man it's my pleasure to be here uh to present the audit results for the district's annual audit for the year end of June 30th 202 3 so we're looking backwards uh and I have some

132slides here but I'm going to keep my comments fairly brief uh and not dive into anything too specific but again happy to answer any questions you may have uh so just uh to start with what is the annual audit uh for the district and what does that look like and what reports get issued uh so we're the external Auditors and we're procured through competitive proposals so go through the the district's normal procurement policy to be uh selected as the external Auditors and the year under audit I'm speaking to was the fifth year of the audit on contract uh so just wanted to lay out the timeline for the annual audit uh so way back last May the engagement letter which uh gives approval to begin the audit uh process was done in June we made

133an on-site visit for some preliminary audit procedures we came back in October to do more uh audit procedures in line with the issuing of the AFR uh and then in December uh the financial statements were issued uh not on this slide but then in January and February the other reports were issued which I'll touch on in just a minute so uh the audit reports that are issued so uh the first one's communication to governance so this is a letter that's included in uh your documents uh which I'll touch on in a minute the annual comprehensive financial report so the acfr this is the district's financial statements the single audit reporting package so this report is submitted to the federal government and reports the district's uh spending of federal grants and any findings related to to

134those and then the U uniform system of financial records compliance questionnaire the usfr so that is required by the state and so we assist in reviewing that and submitting that to the state uh so the scope of audit Services uh provide an audit in accordance with us generally accepted auditing standards government auditing standards uniform guidance I'll roll off some other long words uh and then complete the usfr compliance questionnaire okay so just getting into what's our responsibility as the external Auditors and then what's the responsibility of management when it comes to the audit uh so we uh do fraud Communications inquiries to various members uh at the district um to just uh ensure we're uh looking for that and being aware of anything that may have Arisen but ultimately the responsibility for fraud at your

135entity lies with management and the board so just distinguishing between that uh the the audit isn't necessarily geared to to catch fraud 100% of the time and ultimately the responsibility lies with management and the board which goes into we provide reasonable not absolute Assurance sound a little like a lawyer in that statement but it we're uh it's true all right go to the next uh so summary of audit adjustments uh and so if we came across any uncorrected misstatements in the financial statements we I would be required to communicate that with with you here and also in the letter in your packet uh please to report there were no uncorrected misstatements uh for the year ended June 30th 2023 and then just touching on some non audit services that are done in conjunction with the

136annual audit so we assist with the preparation of the a for in terms of getting the data from the district and compiling that report and then um the schedule of expenditure of federal Awards in the data collection form which both go to the federal government some other required Communications uh please report we had no disagreements with management uh during the audit process uh they sign the representation letter at the end and then okay go ahead to the next slide I'll just touch on some of the reports so I'm not going to get into the reports in specific items or numbers in any of the reports but pleased report that the financial statements had a unmodified opinion and uh in non-ac accountant speak that's a clean opinion so pleased to report that the financial statements were

137free from material misstatement and then this is more just for your reference if you wish to look through the the act for uh those are the pages on specific areas single audit reporting package again this is the report that goes to the federal government pleased to report there were no findings noted in that report looking at the federal grants for the year we looked at the Esser Grant and the title one Grant reported no findings I know that's a big yes so great news and then oh yes the big usfr compliance questionnaire so we spend a great deal of energy on this report that goes to the state because it covers a bunch of different areas of the district that we look at so these are just a few procedures of management and board uh

138accounting records cash and revenues procurement student attendance travel processes and procedures credit card purchasing cards you name it we probably look at it in some form fashion and so in total this uh questionnaire has uh about 170 questions that we have to answer or no and so I'm pleased to report uh in this report that went to the state there was only nine no answers uh and just minor items noted uh so M Shiro wanted me to touch on perspective in comparison to other districts and so uh we also other we audit other school districts in the state um and I would without getting into specifics but definitely the the number of NOS or the number of items we were required to note to the state was on the low end in comparison with all

139districts as a whole and so we the audit process went well uh and happy to answer any questions you might have do we have any questions or comments I know that it's a long report and I appreciate everything that's done and I also appreciate that out of all the things that we do and out of all the questions that are asked that we're actually in compliance we didn't have any issues with ESR funds or title one which I know that that's always a big um thing so it it just speaks volumes of the district so I am appreciative of that and and I would like to point out with that um usfr compliance questionnaire uh it does change the questions change year to year uh when the auditor General's office rolls out out um has

140different focuses uh I would be concerned if we this is going to sound weird but I would be concerned if we had no findings in the usfr compliance questionnaire we know that the uh District runs a very large process I mean just even to process payroll to take student attendance um is it involves a lot of people and the risk to human error is very high in some of those processes uh so you know zero is really hard to maintain so I'd probably say go look again um so and those things are not to say that that's not important or something to strive for but that does give us a measure of processes so the compliance questionnaire make sure that our processes are flowing the way that we expect them to do um when we're

141talking about fraud fraud involves uh developing internal controls so our Auditors are good partners in that but it's our responsibility to develop those process processes that are likely to reduce the chances of fraud um and we work closely with our Auditors to make sure that our internal controls are good uh it's not necessarily digging through every single piece of paper and seeing if there's something right or wrong so I'm just I'm super impressed with Kon once again um to me uh anything on the compliance questionnaire under 15 is amazing um so 15 I think is like oh that's fantastic it's a celebration so to have nine to have less than 10 especially with uh student attendance that seems to be the most common one that most districts have um it's very difficult uh and and

142as Josh said it's it's a yes or a no so when you're reporting attendance and you put it in there and you say well 959 that's a half day absence which we required to report for some reason it doesn't affect funding they just make us report it uh for some reason um but uh and you and you should have been 958 was the one that cut it off and it was one minute and and you reported a half instead of a full or vice versa the question is did you report it properly and it's yes or no they don't I'm sure they care uh but one minute it happens it happens so nine is excellent very impressed very impressed with kraton and just uh the changeing the law a couple of years ago one of

143the things that's required with this so we've always had I mean it's as long as I've been here um heinfeld and me has been kind enough to come and Report um it's now required that the board take action by roll call vote to accept the audit so I just want to make sure we don't it's late and we're all tired and I just want to make sure we didn't miss that um in the process this evening okay do we have any other questions comments or concerns regarding the audit before I go into the motion I guess did you guys work with a board member on this this year as is tradition or is that not I don't know yes we always have at least a phone call discussion with a board member and of course

144now you asked I can't remember which one of you I spoke to but I I know everyone's here uh but yes we speak to a board member each year and uh and it's just it's typically random and usually due to availability and who's available when we're on site so called me and I missed your call more than likely I will say thank you for coming thank you for doing this work and um thank you for the added entertainment of your facial expressions this evening I really enjoyed it you don't have a poker face no other oh go ahead sorry this is super nitpicky but um for all of like for a lot of these it's no or yes but also Na and the drop downs but on the one on 23 about completing High School

145requirements and we don't have school why is that no and not na that's a good question I I believe in the form so the form gets submitted to the auditor general and it's an online form that we we basically go in and put yes no and then a comment if applicable and I believe in that one it was just due to their form having an error we couldn't put any a so that gets us down to a that's why I brought it up it wasn't it picky but you know competitive yeah sometimes there's not a perfect match between the questions us auditor general or the Arizona auditor general Arizona auditor easily give them feedback on that like forget about it if we got to contact someone at the federal once again a form coming to

146us usually late in the day and not formatted properly yeah all right well I don't believe we have any more questions comments or discussion on this so thank you so much for the presentation I appreciate it and I move the governing board accept the audit reports for fiscal year 2223 in compliance with ARs 15- 914 second all those in favor um and I have to do it by raw call sorry I remembered Miss Katie Gibson McLean I miss SS hi myself I miss MCB hi Miss MC Jeffrey hi awesome thank you so much that brings us to our next um discussion item which will be um I invite Miss Earl which is the principal of paple school and the equity committee and you guys will be providing an update on information gathered regarding the renaming

147of papagal school so welcome thank you so much for being so patient with this sorry for keeping you out so late on the school night school's canceled tomorrow right hey hey hey that's Friday I think the board will give you a holiday Friday it's Friday I'd love to CES Chavez count I didn't even know I added her Powerpoint to the folder okay thank you it's not up to me right no I'm trying you just have to think harder Vanessa you'll get it there it's currently in use try while the computer's deciding if it wants to connect it's not letting me connect here PR is it in meetings Hilda yeah be yeah and if you um if power if you go to featured go under documents thank you you're talking about the presentation there it is

148y I think the computer's tired too yeah everything's moving slowly tonight I'll try to speak slowly too I happen to speak um if you want while that's loading or do you want me to read the letter or do you want to read the letter I think we can read the letter for right now sure please oh sure dear cron School Board um I trust this letter finds you well we are writing to formerly request permission to proceed with the selection of the new Papo Elementary School our existing committee composed of diverse stakeholders has thoroughly and there it goes considered the matter and has determined that a name change is essential to better align with their school's core values the committee is eager to embark on the process of choosing a name that reflects the inclusive

149and Forward Thinking nature of our school Community we understand and are committed to adherent ing the requirements set by the governing board for a school name change we kindly seek your approval to move forward with this important initiative and assure you of our commitment to a transparent and collaborative process thank you for your time and consideration and it there's a whole bunch of names attached to who are part of the Papago Equity committee excent thank you so much for reading that good evening um board members for president and executive team um today the pan Equity team is honored to present our formal request to change the school name um tonight we'll review our progress today in three stages which we have listed here um examination exploration and advocacy I'd like to introduce um the equity

150team members they are all listed on the screen but three are present here with us tonight one is Isaiah Washington he is our child Justice Advocate and Equity team facilitator he will be uh uh presenting with me tonight and also miss Terina Dixon our preschool teacher and Miss Senna tzuka who is a kindergarten teacher thanks for joining us tonight yes thank you thank you thank you and also miss um Dixon has been a longest member of this committee this is our either third or fourth year Mr Washington joined us last year and Miss tomooka joined this year so just a little background about that thank you for everything you guys do so this uh Team wanted to make sure we talked about all the different phases and make sure that you kind of could see

151the broad picture of what we've been doing and the process that we took and it's it's in steps over three years so um we worked through the phases and we wanted to request the name change tonight and so the first year and the first step of it was to was examination so we really wanted just be introduced to the issue which we were informed about it and then we started kind of researching and we started presenting about what we knew that was like this deep and then we found out o that people had a lot of questions and I only shared this much information so we went a lot deeper and so in the second second year we were able to um go a little deeper and we realized the last time I presented here

152we realized we still hadn't shared with our younger students and so this year year three we added lower grade students to be included in that process so we've had um parents we've had Community we've had um multiple staff and also Native American Family nights um over the past three years um and moving into the exploration where we were um digging deeper into identity development and also um developing our name suggestions that's the second um phase and it's taken a couple of years to just kind of get a few suggestions and then kind of refine the process so that's what that's about and Mr Washington will show a little bit more and so tonight we're here after all of this work to be able to say we really do think it's time ready to formally propose

153a request to make a name change so Mr Washington okay I skipped the slide hold on um but the other thing we wanted to make sure we um sorry Washington that we wanted to make sure you knew about is that we really do think that um this decision will not only reflect our District's dedication to equity Equity or just our schools but it will really serve as a catalyst for this broader Community to kind of reconsider the use of the word pepo so there's still a freeway there's a golf course there's a park there's a lot still named after pepo and so if ours changes I think the the effects it may have are so we wanted to make sure we we've re recognized that this is an important set for us so now welcome

154Mr thank you uh good evening folks um Madame President governing board members Mr Man um so part of our role as part of the equity team um on that year two so the first year that I came in uh was really looking at listening to the examination that um Mrs Earl had shared with us at staff meetings giving us more information about the name kind of history behind it and looking towards that um we were able to also work as an equity team to receive a range of perspectives and input as she shared through our staff in those staff PDS we met about um coming up with some ideas and some cons considerations uh we also had uh some community members share their input where that that was through Google forms and Google surveys um

155as well as some cons considerations with students uh we also had an opportunity to talk with our Native American families and get some of their considerations and their suggestions with this um and moving forward we have also throughout this whole process let me State uh we were always being mindful of the governing board policy as well as making sure that we were having our community here as well as our Native American representation with any decisions or considerations that we had uh this year been super we're excited to work with our Equity team uh having it be a lot larger having some new voices as well as some folks that have already been doing some of this work uh we focus a lot of our work on reviewing our Purpose with the school name change as

156well as giving some more information for you know maybe some of the students that hadn't really heard about why we were considering this or even just as we know if any of us have been in the classroom we have to uh review with our students they got to remember what's been going on uh so we made sure to create some present presentations and share that with some of our lower grade students as well as sharing a Google survey and getting their voice getting their input and uh getting some suggestions many of them I guess had a idea that maybe we wouldn't be Panthers anymore so they always wanted to put Panthers in there we also had some creative things I think some of us some of them wanted Hogwarts and that nature um but uh

157after getting yeah after getting some of that data we as a a site Equity team looked over the data of the suggestions that we got from our students as well as those suggestions from the community and staff uh and we were able to look at at least top three that you'll see that are listed there uh and we were able to look at these suggestions and we looked at the governing board policy as a team and really tried to look at do these suggestions meet the criteria for that governing board policy and does that align with our Native American representation and with our community um So based on the criteria of the governing board policy and with some of the uh Native American representation some of the top name suggestions you see here are Agave

158um so that came up in one of our staff meetings looking at the agave plant holds significant cultural and symbolic value in uh Native American culture whether that was with medicine or with food and things of that nature um and one note here could be a fitting res representation for resilience and sustenance that's what we always want with our students and with our staff uh another one that came up was piesta uh now namely that goes with piesta Peak which geographically is the peak that we see from our Second Story Windows as we look out so you know it really makes sense with our with our uh our area plus gotta love the pee there can still go with Panthers so all those kids worried about Panthers it could connect um but also uh looking

159at it's named after an Army soldier Lor pesta a member of the hopy tribe who was the first Native American woman to die in combat while serving in the US military so again recognizing that Native American representation um another one that came up was Desert now we weren't sure what we would have with desert uh but we wanted to make sure that we were incorporating desert because it does acknowledge the Papago tribe who are now known and now identify as the bana Autumn Nation um which which translates to Desert people so those are the three suggestions we have come up with as a committee um and thank you for your time we're open to some questions and suggestions from our committee team thank you so much for the presentation I am full-heartedly thankful for you

160guys taking all this time spending it in the community I'll open it up to my board members but for myself I really don't have any feedback other than you guys are doing an amazing job and whatever you bring forth I can I'm more than trustworthy that it is representation of the community that you guys are leading so I'm I'm okay with whatever you guys decide as a community and bring forth I I I'll deflect to you guys but I love the names I love the three and I love the where the vision is going and I think you guys are doing an amazing job so thank you for taking the time and you know like you said this could lead into something more of a ripple effect in the city so that's that's great so

161thank you um any comments Miss MC cheffrey um thank you very much for the presentation and um I've been wondering why it's taken so long but I really appreciate the fact that you took your time I know you got some push back in the beginning do you feel like um you came to a consensus do you feel like everyone came together in the end or there is there going to be still some people sad to lose the name that's been around for a long time I think we'll still see if few but overall I think they they've because it's been going on a long time that some of them are also wondering why hasn't I out one either so I think but because we've been talking about a long time at least it won't be

162a shock to most people and so for that reason I think it shouldn't be push there shouldn't be too much push back and we have a lot of efforts that we've made to communicate with parents so what's your next step how how do you think you're going to decide the from the three well that's what we wanted that's why we came to because we wanted to make sure we were following policy and also making sure that um if we had any additional steps that you'd like us to take before we before that's why we came tonight and wanted to well I'll put my two cents in I I like all three of these so you know whatever happens happens but I love the idea of um naming it after Lori piesta and the fact that

163you can see pesta Peak from the second floor is really cool that's I think been a hard name for the valley to get you know get used to It's A Hard name to pronounce but I think you guys would be leaders in you know adding that that name to another um another entity so that's just happens to be my favorite but good luck picking the picking the top one thank you Miss MC cheffrey any other comments yeah um so I really appreciate all the work y'all have done it's really great to see the the effort and the energy that's been put into this I appreciate the suggestions I think think I'd be really interested in knowing if there's any way to have any conversations with any Tana Autumn leaders because um you know and I'm

164not saying this in any way but you know Native American folks are not a monolith and tribes are not a monolith and I I while I appreciate Lori pesta um and thought that that would maybe be have been a more fing name for my middle school Al monor than what it has right now that's another thing but um uh I don't know that maybe given what reasoning behind the name change in general to like switch to the name sake of someone who's Hopey I would prefer to see us celebrate the T AUM tribe in in some way rather than to just settle for something that's Native American and so whether that be a leader from their tribe or words that you've and I like the the direction of the desert people um so so I

165I would love to see if there's any way to explore that a little bit more to honor their tribe rather than to than to just go away from it Alto together um and just to give a little bit of context because I know this conversation was started during the pandemic and you weren't on the board we actually had the vice chair I believe he was at that time of the Tona hamination um and we actually met or sta not me personally but admin and I know I don't know if you had the pleasure of meeting him um missl but there was a conversation um going back and forth and they kind of the green light of whatever this process has got into but we did vet it with we made sure that we were intentional

166in making sure that somebody from the TOA nation was helping us and when we first started the process that's how it was and then they kind of it felt kind of like a blessing like okay you guys got our input now this is you guys can do whatever you want and whatever works for your community so I'm not saying that that's not something to look into but I just wanted to make sure for Community Clarity because it has been a couple of years that was how we started the process was um side by side with the vice chair or the chair at that time certainly and I actually I believe I watched one of those meetings and then was here in the audience for another one where you presented and so I guess what I'm

167more looking for as a convers specific conversation about potential names not necessarily history or blings or things like that yeah yes um any other comments concerns questions um trying to save my voice but I agree with a lot of what was said and um just all the work you guys have been have put in um I I like all three names um the only thing is does aave fit in our policy because it's not a geographic location or area well it depends on how you know there's no policy police and it depends on yeah and how you interpret policy but having a geeky son whose um specialization is sustainable horiculture um the Agave Terraces are sort of a geographic location and are very like they're kind of a important component of that culture through throughout

168you know not just our state but all the way down into Mexico and if you were to go to Mission Garden in Tucson um one of the things you would see that they're working to recreate is the Agave teres they have agave Festival every year that members of the tahana um Nation participate in so um so I think it it while the word Agave itself refers to a plant it does also have a regional connotation in the sense of you know the places where those Agave grow so it's a little bit of a stretch but and being the lawyer type of lawyer who wants to just find a way to do it rather than saying you can't do it this has no statutes on the policy we can just amend this policy and add whatever

169the heck you want to it before we do the name change yeah or or even I'm just being transparent yeah or even suspend the policy or suspend the whatever I mean if nobody wants to set the president fine but how often are we getting name Chang this yeah on so it it feels like maybe a final double check through maybe some sort of community survey might be in order um we could push it out through our Miss Wasola who I know is online watching this in case we made more work for her um could uh could go ahead and push it out through our community newsletter and we could kind of gather some feedback on sort of the three finalist names and then um with the other concerns addressed I don't know if you still

170have a con contact or if um if president uh kuo might be able to get us a contact where we could also maybe do a check-in with um with the tribal Elder who helped us out you know first go around and say here yeah where we so we could kind of knock those two pieces out and just move forward from there um you know adjacently we've had I think out of a roughly 166 feedback for Kennedy we actually had 160 in favor of keeping the name so that we had that survey worked fairly well I think 166 is a pretty good um return rate for something like that and um and having that overwhelming support so hopefully we can get a similar level of return to kind of have some efficacy um for the results

171that we're seeing for this process as well and I'll reach out back out to Mr uh Juan buendia that was his name yes that's he was the chairman of the sales District which is one of 11 political districts in the to Nation so yeah he um is definitely somebody we can reach back out that would be epic thank you okay well do thank you so much yes any other questions comments all right thank you guys so much for everything we appreciate it yes thank you thanks to these two thank you thank you so much and staying late sorry I know I know you have to be at it again early in the morning so we appreciate what you do all right and that brings us to our next agenda item which is future agenda items

172do we have any future agenda items the only thing I would suggest based on public comment tonight is maybe to consider having as an agenda item something that Robert approves to give as an update throughout the process of the lawsuit that's a possibility just for public transparency yeah we we can absolutely explore that yeah okay any other future agenda items hearing none we move on to our next which is I move the governing board adjourn second all those in favor I W noes thank you drive safely