001buen noes good good evening buen noes thank you for everybody to being here and we're going to go ahead and get started the crane school district understands that a community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the oam Jude and Akim oam people who descended from the hokam and have inhabited to this land since time in Memorial the oam whose name translate literally to people are a vibrant culture of 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 Kayon School District forly 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 our practices policy and human relations and
002with that Dr dupin will lead us into the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you that brings us to roll call all of us are here U Mr Man Miss Gibson McLean Miss SS myself Miss Mev and Miss MC cheffrey we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address board cards 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
003comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda and that's per policy B DH that brings us to the next which is 28 approval of agenda a move the governing board approve the agenda as presented second all those in favor I thank you all right and that brings us to governing board reports and I am going to start with Miss MC cheffrey I do have one thank you um Miss MB um I I don't really have one other than I know it's a really busy time for everybody a Zella testing's going on all the fun things so um and lots of rain all week so please stay dry and stay safe thank you Miss SS yeah just a couple things I wanted to
004um say congrat uh good luck on the aill test I know people are getting ready for them I know our students are getting ready uh for them right now um so good luck on those and then just a personal note I finally um got all my stuff together and applied for my adminer today so hopefully done with that so I'm happy about that congratulations Miss Gibson mle um I don't have much other than um we had another committee meeting last week things are going well another one coming up you're always welcome to join us things are going great um and went to the equity uh and advocacy Equity conference advocacy Symposium last week in Washington DC um it was a lot smaller than some of the other things we've been to I mean Cube may
005be comparable I guess um and so anyway I just I found a lot of the stuff at the equity Symposium very relevant and helpful to kind of the work that we do here the advocacy thing was like a lot of information but not a lot of discussions so I did appreciate kind of the the breakouts in the equity Symposium better but that being said I thought it was still valuable information um that we can use to our advantage here and I don't I don't I I guess I could come back with some more specific things I definitely walked in here like two minutes before we started so I apologize but thanks thank you I just have a couple of things um I want to congratulate the builtmore prep Tigers yesterday in their girls basketball game
006and my son has a daugh a daughter my son has a best friend that plays there so we were at the game yesterday so yay that was nice to be there um also um the family Resource Center thank you for the food distribution that they just did this week we had 64 families um that were there so that's awesome our food distribution keeps getting bigger and bigger so um shout out to them for holding it down and you know there's only three individuals there and they make it happen for a community so that's awesome and yeah that's the only board report that I have and I'll switch it over to Mr Man thank you so much I'm um I'm gonna withhold any comments on the conferences because I think we had were posted for a
007discussion on on kind of our takeaways from that after this superintendent report but I um I do enjoyed the conferences and uh we'll share some more at that point um had the opportunity to be one of the judges along with let me make this back back out of the way um some of our compatriots on the executive team and a few others from our curriculum team um for the District spelling be on the 26th and so I'm very excited that uh one of our students from the kraton academy will be representing the district at regionals so um and we will uh we will endeavor to bring that person to a board meeting so that way we can more formally recognize them so um and then speaking of formally recognizing people we actually have principal Fisher
008with us this evening who has brought a very special student that you have read about in the Epic kids publication and so we'd like to take a moment to recognize her for her great accomplishment and with that I'm hoping principal Fischer will be kind enough to introduce her in her family um to the board and share a little bit about she had a compatriot who couldn't be here this evening we're still working um getting her to be able to be here thank you so much Madame President members of the board and executive Council we are very excited to have Arlin ail this with us tonight one of two of our students who had art representative at the State Fair ourin won third place in her category it's called Dragon ey and tiga kab won first
009place in her category called Golden dreams and we're very excited to have these both displayed at excellencia for their great work as well we'll make make them a permanent purchase eventually so anything you want to say about the process okay we're excited because not only has our art program been able to do some really Stellar art pieces and have them compete both in the community um as well as in the district but we will be having a student art displayed at the tempy arts fair coming up so please take a chance to look at some of those as well um just some great things happening in the art world can we would it be okay if we took a moment to get a picture with the board okay awesome I warned her that was coming
010yeah yeah you you were wise don't grab your P I'll hang by my do we need like SC um can I get you to just in the back that's [Music] perfect y [Applause] congratulations congratulations on your artwork and and one of the things I'd like to to point out about this and I think it's something we need to do more of you know we've had our student outcomes focused governance work discussions and I know we're posted to have more conversation on that tonight and one of the things that's come up often in the district is you know even though we may not be fans of the way the testing's handled it's the only measure that we currently have and we're always looking for those other measures that we can use to see our students being
011successful and so I want to thank our student this evening um and our principal for giving us another type of measure that we can look to which is our students success in the Arts which are absolutely as important as all of the other measures that we use so so thank you very much to the family and thank you to our wonderful student graas and with that I will conclude my comments for this evening thank you Mr Man and that brings us over to our next agenda item which is the nsba equity sypnosis advocacy and Institute reports myself Miss Gibson mcling and Miss MC cheffrey along with Dr dupin and Mr Man attended this National Conference and we're going to give you guys some feedback of stuff that we liked I know that Miss Gibson mccan
012kind of already talked about it but I'll differ over to miss MC cheffrey if you want to go ahead and get us started and then I'll turn it over here yeah so um uh I'm I'm going to start with the advocacy in um Symposium because that was the most recent part that I went to it was cool because we got training from some lobbyists on um kind of how to approach our Congress people um and Advocate um with them and so they had nsba has some talking points that they would like us to talk about but they said most importantly they really it's really important from them to them to hear from their local constituents and especially um the impact on children in their District so I think that um we did a good job
013doing that Mr Man Miss CA and I went and um spoke to three different um Congress people um and I'll let them uh talk a little bit more about what what we advocated for but some of the things that end nsba wanted to us to advocate for was um funding idea at 40% I learned that it's only funded at 133% which is really sad um also um healthy School meals for all which we're fortunate that we we will be getting that for our district because um because of where we are financially correct um but that's important for kids Nationwide to have that for a variety of reasons and one thing learned is that um the nutrition guidelines are so strict that they also do not want those um being changed anymore the sodium levels are
014so low the um whole grain is so um strict that it's really hard to make the food edible so I appreciate our nutrition team for doing what they can do and um using their talent to make the food as tasty as they can um knowing these challenges so anything we can do what we're doing with Gardens is a great way to kind of supplement that because that teaches kids the love of um vegetables and fruits um using it with their hands being able to harvest it that's that's one of the most fundamental things you can do um to to supplement I think it was wild to hear about how much food went to waste and how nobody would buy it during covid and just because it wasn't something anybody would buy because nobody's going to
015eat it outside of a school which is kind of depressing yeah there was a statistic that they even like tested it out on prisoners and they didn't want to eat it so it's it you know we're feeding garbage cans when we make the requirements so strict um we want them to eat healthy obviously but if they're not going to eat it what's the point in doing that yeah so um Temple grandon was one of the um keynote speakers I don't know if you know who she is if if you don't know anything about her HBO has a film called Temple grandon it was she reference it so I think she's a fan it's a it's a a bio biopic of her um she's a genius um but she's also on the autism spectrum she's um
016she was a very unique speaker and kind of um off thewall a little bit but it was really great and um she just had some wonderful things to say about you know how people learn differently and and the types of things you can do um to work with people who learn differently and gosh they're important to this world because because they contribute um uh to many in many different ways I have a family full of them so I know and it's sometimes really hard to work with people who don't learn the same way that you do um but they're obviously incredibly important to our world and and many of them are incredibly brilliant and she was just amazing so what find the movie if you can because it's it's really good um there was a
017presentation on AI which I thought was really interesting um and Mr Man I may have even written this down wrong but they said 50% of teachers are all in 50% are not there might I may have heard that wrong no you heard you heard it right I think they flubbed their okay because the normal curve is you have 20% early adopter 60% who are sort of your nervous people waiting to see how it pans out and 20% are who are pardon the expression hell no we won't go right so that's sort of normal distribution they used like I think it was like really large numbers that seem to Total to more than aund so I think that was just an error on their part but the concept is I think very valid that you've got
018your folks that are out there running with AI and they may be the ones that are kind of testing the limits of you know the tool sets and the and the systems that we have um and Maybe not maybe ahead of where we're prepared to be and then you have your folks that are taking that weight wait and see approach and then you have your folks who um you know they're they didn't really like these new fangled computer things to begin with and that AI thing you know is not happening for them right and I kind so some of the takeaways I thought were it's kind of like when the internet was introduced which seems like a million years ago now but um they did say there is no reliable AI predictor so if you
019think someone is cheating you know there's no way to really tell um so you know don't Panic about about it I think at the moment there um the takeaway was it's kind of about the learning process and not necessarily the end product which I think you know that's kind of an internet thing too and learning you know what are reliable sources um there is an AI for teachers called defit it's free um and it just helps I didn't write all this down but it helps with you probably I think it helps with the development of lesson so it auto it automates a lot of those components which is kind of near and dear to my heart because many years ago sorry for this sidebar I had a startup and one of the concepts behind it
020was why do we build curriculum but we don't give teachers sample lesson plans they end up on you know what is it teachers teachers teachers pay te teachers so um so having an AI tool that could help automate some of that sort of grunt work I think is a really powerful and useful thing so so if you're curious that sounds like a good tool diff it dfff it um and then just a couple other things I mean I went in the equity um conference I went to a couple really good seal um sessions and you know that's overwhelming obviously and some districts are getting a lot of push back on on the termal and also the word Equity but obviously there are many things that live within that you can use those words instead or
021just pick one or two you know it's there's hundreds of words that fall within seal um there was I'm G to just read one thing to you um oh the benefits ofal which I think I think we all know this but I thought this was impressive 11% Point gains in academic achievement 42% less likely to be involved in physical aggression in schools and an $11 return on investment for every dollar spent onal programs long-term decreases in violent and Drug crime convictions and lower in Risk Ry and lower risky sexual behaviors and long-term increases in college readiness Career Success positive relationships better mental health and engaged citizenship so those are the benefits so I appreciate that we have a huge focus on that um in this District so um that was really good and then lastly
022there was somewhere I just thought this was so cool um something called the dignity index that's something you can just Google it's eight points and I don't know if I'll find my have a there you go thank you Jay yes I think I've got those at home and I forgot to bring them here yes I think that's fabulous and I think it could be a really simple thing for our district to adopt it's just kind of a a goal a way to live life and get to number eight you know and and they give a set of skills for dignified disagreement yes and I think it would be really powerful for us to integrate that into some of our youth Equity stewardship work and you know conversations around uh restorative practices and things like that
023so yes yeah I thought that was that was my favorite takeaway so that's all I have but I love that we're agendized for it because sometimes when someone brings something up it'll trigger my memory so thank you yeah that way we can have these fluid conversations back and forth um one of the things about that with Miss MC cheffrey is like when you go into the dignity index website the first thing that you see is is We Believe words have power so it's sets away from that saying that we all learn as kids and we go around saying that sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me I'm so glad we're staying away from that kind of language because there is power in words and just like a child who
024is consistently told that they're not good enough or whatever it is they start adapting to that and learning into it so words really do have power and that index really teach us us on how to make sure that we're better with our words because kids are you know constant sponges and they're just picking off on what we're putting out there in the universe so we all need to be very mindful of what we're putting out there and saying but that was just another takeaway of that that I had as well can I add on what you just said if anybody um because it's a really great metaphor for that and I love that you brought up like let's stop using Sticks and Stones quote um if anybody hasn't there's videos of them online of teachers
025doing this but where they have students crumple up the paper and then talking about when you uncrumple it you can never get rid of those creases right it's the paper will never be the same um and so it's that that's what words can do so um I'm looking forward to learning more about the dignity index yeah awesome um Miss Gibson McLean do you have any other takeaways any other information things that you would like to add on yeah so there's a really good um Workshop I went to um called cre schools where transgender and non-binary students Thrive and um there was a presenter named Rebecca cing who um is the education director at the national Center for transgender rights she had a presentation that basically kind of went through how anybody who works in a
026school can be help make more inclusive spaces and so the kind of four phases she went through were educate affirm include and disrupt um we had a good conversation and you know talked about how you don't really need to be an expert in all of this to be an ally um and to help kids feel included and safe um on our campuses um oh gosh I'm remembering something I wrote down and it's on a piece of paper and now I don't have it with me um but it was a good statement I'm forgetting but anyway there is a book that just came out called The Advocate Educator's handbook creating schools where transgender and nonbinary students Thrive it came out on the 31st she's one of the authors and the other presenter who wasn't able to
027make it is the other author and so I just wanted to put that out there as a resource there's also an article on um kind of an article to go with it on the nsba website I thought she had sent me oh no she did if anybody is interested in the slides I think she did send them yes so and she also has a resource list that she sent so I can share that um with the admin here at the district as well um I just thought it was very interesting and um also interesting seeing maps of like legislation in different states and where we're at with all that um yeah so um anyway I thought that was a great Workshop I know we were all present for the lunchtime um hold on there was
028this cool uh presentation about the nation's largest African-American video oral history archive called the history makers and if you go to the historymakers dorg uh it's essentially I don't know if it's the last 10 or 20 I me the last 10 years right I can't remember how many years um that they've uh this gosh I can't even hold on she's probably here hold on let me get her name off of this I'm on the website okay I think it was Janelle was her first Juliana l Richardson sorry okay so Juliana um has been going around the country Gathering stories from um black leaders in all different states and across all kinds of fields from Arts to stem to military music politics whatever and she has gathered all of these in like a digital Archive of
029video and audio recordings to access um they did provide a sample uh lesson plan but it sounds like there's like a way to subscribe we already brought it up to obviously Jay and Dr dupin about what it could look like if our district got that as a resource because we noticed nobody in Arizona was subscribed even maybe we could even try to um talk to people at ASU about a partnership and in getting that resource because it seemed like a really great one um and so yeah the history makers. org I thought that was really cool and Miss Gibson mle if may I may add one of the takeaways from that and why I felt that was so important is that she shared the story when she was in class growing up that she didn't
030really feel part of her community or didn't feel engaged because the people who were creating that she was learning about light bulbs or you know all these different things did not look like her so she felt like she did not had no sense of community so what she started doing is getting even local people where even if it was music or people within her District or her neighborhood that started up something that were people of so those kids could have some kind of sense of connection instead of historically seeing the same individuals being the you know the runners of everything or the makers of whatever it was or the first one invented so Arizona doesn't really have a reach and I thought that would be so cool that our students can identify with people kind
031of and it it kind of brought me to the story that we heard about lar C Kennedy you know we had a Hidden Gem within this District that nobody knew so if we work with these kind of organizations like history makers I know here in Arizona um Cho bario stories is one that focuses on the Latin X um leaders of Within These communities so kids can actually start seeing people within their own community that they know or their grandparents or their parents know so they can start identifying other than just throwing them you know Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez which yes those are big Idols in our communities but in reality what kind of sense of ownership do we have when it's just this you know Idol that we haven't met or that hasn't
032really impacted them on a level of at them so that's why history makers I think was really awesome to do especially because it's really not done here in Arizona and seeing how our kids can start identifying with you know other people of color that have been leaders within their Community lastly I also enjoyed Temple Gran's presentation thought she was pretty funny um and I think she I don't know if she's intentional funny or not I can't tell um but either way I thought she provided some cool accommodations I wish I remembered them all but she had lots of suggestions for like simple accommodations that then make you feel dumb that you didn't think of them after the fact um and so I wish I don't know if she has them written down somewhere or like
033a book but yeah I took a lot of pictures of her slides so I can share those slides were going very fast there was it was just like a very fast presentation and was more into laughing and the entertainment but um the one thing that she did harp on a lot I shouldn't say harp focus on a lot was um getting our youth and kids especially who maybe aren't going to um be able to pass like structured math classes but have a gift in a certain area like getting our kids back in the trades and so I know that's something that's been taken away especially at high schools because of funding issues I'm just I don't know what's out there or what Partners we could get engaged with with to have our kids get exposed
034to those things um at a younger age or here in in K8 so there's something on my mind after that yeah I think I think there's definitely opportunities for that and one of the examples that I loved because it was so simple was for some dyslexic students if you just put the material on like a lightly colored paper like a light green or a Golden Rod or something like that for some reason being on that colored paper versus a white background helps them read it more easily so that that was a good example of what you were sharing that she just kind of gave these tips that it's like wow you know we would have never thought of that but that's so easy I'm recalling there's something about the lights yeah the Flicker and yep
035yeah fluorescent are not good maybe that explains why I have lamps in my office yeah shouldn't be a surprise to anyone at this [Laughter] meeting just one thing I wanted to add about are if you were finish on the history makers they did interview some students and I think you kind of touch on this but you know they're like yeah all we ever hear about really at school is Martin Luther King maybe Malcolm X maybe fredle you know it's like the same handful of people so it was a it was eye openening to these kids who are you know young adults right now so I think it was really cool awesome um I can go last so Mr Man and Dr dupin you guys have the floor to give your perspective normally hand it over
036to Dr dupin first but I'm going to jump in here because I I have a I had a really good presentation I attended that led to what I perceive as a very entertaining story that I'm going to share so the presentation was actually by kraton School District about our Equity journey and its Pathway to the student outcomes Focus governance work that we're doing and it was our board president Sophia CIO and Dr dupin our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning and they abs and I'm not just saying this cuz I like both of them they knocked it out of the park like the people in the room were so into this presentation honestly it's the most engaged I saw anyone in any presentation the entire conference and um and the thing that taught me that
037it was super impactful was you know I've never been to this conference before um this is the first year I've been to cube in a bunch of places and after this presentation every place I went people were waving at me they were coming up and talking to me and I'm like what is going on here like I've achieved real rock star status and I was feeling like you know my well yeah I thought is it the hair you know my ego is starting to get really big which is what I'm known for and um and then all of a sudden somebody pulled me aside and they said hey we'd really like to come in t your district and I'm like oh wow that would be really cool that presentation was amazing and then I'm like
038oh it's not me they just they just saw me hanging with the awesome people at the presentation and so you know they were all like excited about what um president curio and Dr dupin had shared with them and I just kind of you know had a little bit of overs from that so the but I'm in The In Crowd finally for the first time in like you know 50 something years so um so anyway I apologize for sharing that story that way but that really was kind of what happened I'm like how does everyone here know me and then I realized That's How Deeply engaged people were in it had like a profound effect on people we've already had people reach out that they would like to come and visit they're asking us to send
039them more more resources and materials and it was not one of the things I really appreciated about the presentation it wasn't about how awesome we are and how perfect we did everything yeah it was about our challenges in this journey and where we made some progress and where we had some missteps and you know the struggles and the pathway that eventually took us to recognize that the student outcomes Focus governance was our best tool set for um overcoming some of the the equity challenges that we have within the district and um it was it was just really a great presentation I know I've gone on too long about it but it was it was so super cool to be there as not as one of the presenters and get to be in the audience and
040watch and actually participate in some of the group work that was done and see just how engaged everybody was so so that that was super super cool cool um and you know a lot of the things you heard I the other thing I really want to share is going with a group of people um people who know me know that probably right after responsibility my my top defining Gallop strength is input so I love just getting new information and tool sets but I also know I have my own lenses and so getting to spend time with different team members throughout the stretch of the conference and kind of getting their wisdom and guidance in what they were seeking really like I would have had no idea that Temple grandon presentation that that was a big
041deal and then you know Amy shared some background with me and I was like oh you know that sounds really cool I got to make sure I'm sitting in on that right and then I sat there and just it's like that old ad they used to have for one of the speaker sets where the person's face is like all pressed back you know by the I was just blown away by it it was just amazing and so you know everybody that was traveling together really for me and I want to appreciate them because they helped make the experience that much more Rich for me because they helped me step into spaces that I might not have selected for myself and so being able to use all of your lenses helped give a much broader perspective
042to me throughout the the course of the conference so and a lot of super super actionable stuff and then the chance to meet with the um the AIDS for the Congressional and senatorial folks um Mark k 's office was probably the most welcoming of everybody and just got to give a shout out to them they they were truly awesome to work with um and it was it was really nice to get to understand a little better what happens on Capitol Hill and how we can connect and have a stronger voice and advocacy for our students and our community so um appreciate the board for that and sorry Dr dupin I probably should have let you go first I went on too long it was funny during the presentation listening to people be shocked about politics
043and what we're not allowed to do in the class yeah yeah they were like what yeah when we shared some of the politics in Arizona like some people literally fell out of their chairs well and but I just want to Second what you said about um the the presentation that you guys did I meant to say that in my initial thing it was really good and and everything you said is so true Jay they were so engaged and I think it was very brave I mean we're being brave to share our goals we're being brave to have the goals that we made and they were they were like wow and I think they were really impressed with our with our goals and guard rails I really got that sense um from them and I witnessed
044um Mr man's start I think it was a phenomenon yeah I think also because the presentation included like not shortcomings but areas for growth um people were giving like pretty great input on what they think could be improved or suggestions for things for us to try on so I thought that was Co yeah well I would just add um I think one of the big pivots that we made in preparing we had spent a lot of time in our trainings up to this point as a district talking about being um creating safe spaces and so I want to give credit to president Kio because she you know was kind of sharing some new learning that she's had and she's like well really it's not safe spaces that we're trying to create it's Brave spaces because
045being safe can can also mean being kind of passive and and sitting back you know I'm safe when I'm in my comfort zone that kind of thing and so the new language that we introduced was creating Brave spaces where people feel not only safe physically mentally emotionally but also empowered to Share story to bring comments concerns bring their own experiences and so we tried to weave that throughout the message and it felt like a really appropriate shift at that time because going in you know just speaking from my own experience going into that space with Educators from all over the country board members from all over the country um many of whom were people of color and talking with them about the work that we had done and putting our goals on display talking about
046our our lack of impact with black students in particular or eighth graders in particular and just being really um trans transparent about those areas of focus and the work we feel like we have yet to do uh was was incredible and a real privilege so it was it was it was a privilege to represent the district and all the people all the voices all the work that got us to where we are and it was fantastic to present with president kuo who can really I will say Dazzle and room um was was was amazing so thank you yeah um for mine I mean that was huge it was an honor to be able to present at a national conference and have you know Schoolboard members and other administrators in the room you know to kind
047of dive in and want to know more we've gotten so many emails and in know superintendent um man has some people coming in that are really interested in the work we're doing so cadus to everybody here too because it's really showing forth all the work that we're collectively doing and um just to add up a little bit on what Dr dupin said about Brave spaces um you know it's something that I learned through one of my mentor mentors and this sofg cohort as well but at the end of the day that's what you want to do right you want to create as a parent I think about do I want my kid to be safe or do I want them to be brave and to me um that safeness and that braveness when they're feeling
048safe they feel Brave and when you they feel Brave they feel empowered and that's when kids can really get activated when they feel like they are empowered to do whatever it is that they need to do to provide the outcomes that that we them to do so that was really great um one of my biggest takeaways too is always um just because I have a background in community organizing I've been Community organizing since 2010 um when s SP 1071 Arizona so my favorite part of going to nsba is having conversations with congressmen about what they really need to get their act together on to better serve the districts so I'm going to go over three little things that we did um we spoke to them about McKinny vento McKinny vento We've ran historically into the
049issues especially with families that get served 72-hour eviction notices McKinny vento doesn't really do anything to help those families until they're actually out on the streets so we went out and advocated what kind of lenience can you give us as a school district to be a little bit more preventative versus you know flighting around last minute what we're going to do with these families that are displaced so that was one advocacy um we talked about the lunch already um another one that we did was the Federal title funds that are going to private schools in our community um we did talk to them about the esa vouchers um situation that we're facing here and how that's impacting public schools and to me it doesn't make sense if people if these private schools have an option
050of obtaining that type of money that's usually tends to be higher than the per DM that we get anyways um the ADM why are We additionally on top of that not only giving these private schools funny but we it's up to the district to follow where that money goes and oversee all that because the students are going into a private school so that was something that we advocated for too it's like hey with this Esa um funding going on we should have a little bit more leeway of not giving that money keeping the money here and obviously not buring our staff with kids that are going into the private institutions so those were a few um things that we talked about and like I said this is always one of my favorite things because they
051really get to hear from us um we sat with gigo's office um Mar Kelly's office and B bigs um and bigs was a really neat one experience just because they had no idea what mcken evento was so it was great as a colleague to bring some you know knowledge to that so they can actually move along with mckin vental and try to do something so that was good I know I know um okay well that concludes our advocacy and Reps in case any anybody else have anything else to add all right I would just say any I didn't get to go so if you guys do have slides or notes or anything if you can get those that would be amazing I just forwarded mine to Hilda and Jay thank you perfect and we'll try
052to make this a regular practice for future comp as well yeah and I like this better so we can discuss and go back and forth all right that brings us to 4A which is our student outcomes Focus governance update um the only update that I have from our end is that we're going to set forth our goals and our guard rails and we're going to talk about them are our next community council meeting that's going to be on February 20 let me pull second I don't want to give wrong info it is yes so it's going to be February 22nd at 6: PM LMA Linda school thank you for hosting us um so make sure that you guys come to the community council meeting we're going to be presenting the goals the guard rails getting
053feedback from the community I would love if all their I see a lot of principles here if we can start getting that information sent out to our community and families on take-home Tuesdays I know that's a thing in the district um just so we can get as much feedback as we can because once we adopt this we don't want to do anything without Community input first and the only update that I'm wondering is if we figured out dates after Community Council because what we plan on doing is hitting each school on its own as well for people who cannot come to community Council to give families from that specified school one more last opportunity to come and give us feedback on these guard rails and goals so I'm not sure where that's standing I'll defer
054to Mr Man yeah Mr Carvajal will come up and give us an update oh he's put on the spot thank good evening members of the board and president executive team uh we are working with principes and the CEOs to put together just a specific uh topic rather than a secondary or tertiary topic since this is so important uh for the community to provide uh specific feedback on the guard rails and the goals from the board and so we're putting together all of those dates I've been in communication with Hilda harez about availability and if it's not the board who else could could present uh since not everybody has been trained in in them and want want to make sure that we have uh clear materials and outs that help uh Gras the concept concepts of
055the guard rails goals for the members of the communi so their input is more aligned to what you you're seeking of so we're working diligently and as soon as we have all of the dates we'll give to Dr um Mr Man and Hilda so you guys have them in your calendar and just for Trans thank you so much for the update I appreciate it and since we have some of the principles here is just for transpar reasons the reason why we're asking for specific dates is that we had one set up um at CR Academy and it was in combine in conjunction with a high school fair but we weren't mentioned and to me that seemed then that was on our fault that had nothing to do with the school we kind of rammed it
056in there and shame on me because I was like let's get this out as I got excited you know I was like wo let's do this and I'm like wait a minute nobody even knows why they're coming they're thinking they're coming to one thing so I know it puts a little bit harder work but for us it's really very important to be able to get information and feedback from the community on these guard rails so we're just asking from one date to whatever date is we'll make it work up here that we can have that time and space open to the community so they can come ask questions and we can have this fluid conversation back and forth and get their feedback um but that's what we're asking for so sorry in advance but I
057am our community deserves to be part of this decision-making process as well and as far as those handouts that uh Mr Carvajal asked about we do have the English draft version now and they are working on getting us the Spanish draft version so by the hopefully by the shouldn't say hopefully by the time we have that Community Council we will have English and Spanish of the um I don't know what to call them like the infographic sheets that have a little bit more detail um and uh information on them and uh there was oh and Miss MC cheffrey is going to be joining us this Friday I think for um our student uh oh man words are failing me today kids Congress and I haven't had a chance to talk to Dr dupin about it
058yet but I'm hoping we can um take some time there to go through the outcomes focused governance with that group because they probably won't meet again before you know we're kind of in a position to start looking at adopting so we'll actually be able to get that that student perspective there as well so I think I think we've got a good lineup of multiple opportunities to engage with students Community parents Etc and we should have some better tool sets for you so you're not just going in with hi my name is and this is what student outcomes Focus governance is you'll you'll actually have some some resources awesome and I was wondering too because I'll be um out of town for when most of this happens which is fine I just I'll be curious to
059hear the feedback but can we put it out on social media as well like is there a downside to doing that I think as board members we don't want to engage in conversation on social media like but you know we can get feedback and read it that way yeah we what we can do is we can create like a you know like a fairly open-ended survey tool and something similar to what we did with Community Council last time and then we could go ahead and push a link out to social media with once we have the the infographic infographic in both languages we can push the infographic out there as sort of the um you know impetus and then give people the link to be able to then provide that that input that way if
060they're unable to make it to any of those other VES that'd be great yeah then I kind of have a followup um we definitely want the community input I love that it'll be talked about at kids Congress do we have a plan for getting more teacher voices like our staff at our schools we could certainly um try to find some time out of the principles out in the audience that can feel their hands principal to principal I'm sorry so because they you know they always struggle to have enough time time for what for what they have on their docket already but we'll we'll find a way to make some time and and just to add to that I'm I apologize but just to add that um I meet with somebody from CA on a regular
061basis and I'm giving the information to my CA member and hopefully through the union they can pass out information to teachers I know that not every teacher is involved in the union but Word of Mouth always goes around no it does I was just thinking in terms of you know even if it's just like the we could prepare something that the principles felt confident at least giving the background at you know a Wednesday staff meeting um because not not all teachers not all educators are going to hear from CA not all of them are going to watch the board meetings not all of them are going to come to community council so we just want to make sure when we're talking about making sure everyone's on the same page the adults that are working in
062our schools we we want to make sure that they're informed too so Y and and we can minimize the time impact by providing copy of the infographic and then perhaps a link to to a similar survey tool that's what I was thinking not like a 2our like PD by any means not a 45 minute drag through yeah well you have yeah and we cam push it out via the CR connection that would be a great place to put it we're actually filling up Emily's to-do list tonight so it's good keep hearing like a weird audio I know is there like somebody that is like unmuted I believe we have um someone who's part of an upcoming item that's online for us and may be slipping there okay fair enough cool we just want to make
063sure we weren't going crazy um so Mich I just have a really quick question so um when those dates are set for those sites um can we get that information um and hopefully some of them are in the evening um I'm just going to say right now I can't come on the 22nd my kids are going to be singing at gamage um cute yeah so um usually I'm really good at those things but I won't be in that one but I'll try to come to other ones if if I know I had of time yeah and definitely like if any of the at school events if there's any like first thing in the morning or end of the day it's more likely I can come I'll try to be as many as I can perfect
064um any other comments questions on sofg and once we get this settled in and we start talking about we'll talk about next steps too because we have some other coaching that we have to do with Dr Ramos um and on that note um I started the sofg cohort as well for implementations I will be in Kentucky this Thursday um getting it inperson professional development on this and it's a 9month course so it is very rigorous and I have to do homework assignments I'm just like what did I sign myself up for but here we are um so I'm really excited for that and give bring back what I'm going to be learning out there for the sofg framework okay oh yes I did deliver those to miss huarez okay so yes we have copies of
065the book and we got one for each board member and cabinet as well um whoever wants to start reading it great on their behalf if anybody else wants to know what book we're talking about which talks about all this sofg framework okay that brings us to our next item which is 5A public comments I don't see any regular public comment cards so I'll save the rest for when the items come up and that brings us to six which is approval of consent I move the governing board approve cons can we just pull a what's the the first one a yeah okay move the governing board approve consent agenda items B through G in accordance with policy bb- e all those in favor I I I and Miss Gibson McLean you have the floor for item
0666A I just thought it would be remiss to like let us just continue and vote on that without giv a thank you and a shout out to Pam Burkhart for 47 years of service in this District that is a long time um and a lot of work and energy and service that she's given to our Our Youth and our community so thank you so much Pam I want to second that because she is amazing and like there's just not even anything to describe the quantity and complexity of everything she has done in this district and she is listening by Oh yay thank you Pam thank you Pam thank you Pam thank [Applause] you cover but all right and with that I move the governing board approve consent agenda item a in accordance with policy bb-
067e second all those in favor I I I all right that brings us to 7A insights and actions from the eometric survey right thank you madam president members of the governing board and executive team as you know the Craton School District uses several different types of metrics to capture data on on satisfaction and progress particularly around Health wellness and our Equity work this year we added a tool set called ecometrics to that mix for the very first time and so this evening we have a couple of experts who are going to join us virtually to explain uh the way that eometric works and to share some of the highlights of the data and then we are working on figuring out how best to take action um considering the information that we've received so far so
068with that I'm going to introduce uh dell Johnson and Joe bird hopefully you can hear us and see us and we're ready to roll good evening gentlemen good evening very happy to hear be with you tonight Katon ISD can you hear us yes yes we can hear you I'm sorry good evening thank you we can hear you perfectly yeah thank you so being here excellent well thank you again for for having us uh Mr Man and team have gone through this information so we're just going to share with you a a high level overview so you can see what um the eometric process looked like uh what we you know what data came out of that from the response throughout the district um and uh if if and again I'm not sure how much time
069we have so if there's time for questions um we can do that or we can certainly address those at another time as well so awesome thank you so we will jump in here so again we just want to walk through with you the some of the survey details I we'll talk about what the overall score means um what the actual overall score was um and then of course we'll get into the specific areas of focus um there's going to be some you know items that were higher and lower on the on the scale um as well as comments the things that came out the most or or mentioned the most in terms of comments um and some observations and recommendations based on on that um so again just to um just you know real quickly
070U this fall uh the survey was launched to all district all District employees all staff so it would have been about 720 people that um were sent an email um and they were able to respond in these particular areas and so we don't put this up here so that you know you can absorb all of this right now I just wanted to kind of share with you the overview of what we covered so the first four areas are going to be more about experience so diversity Equity inclusion cultural competency um how are people experiencing things here in Katon ISD um and then when you look at uh Mission Vision and values uh communication leadership alignment and policy and practice we're looking more at the structure right what's the structure that's in place what do we
071have um in our plan how is it being communicated how our leaders um taking ownership and and sharing the plan um and just what's you know what's in place now so um we we do have scores um cumulative score with all of that and we also have scores in each of those areas you can take a closer look at um you know which areas are relative strengths which areas are relative you know areas of opportunity um you know and of course what the priorities would be in terms of um you know what you'd want to focus on going forward so that's what we measured um here's how we measured it so uh employees that received the survey um each statement they read um they would rated a one if they strongly disagreed with that statement
072no we're not doing that we're not seeing that at all um 10 if they strongly agreed with that statement um and of course there's you know responses everywhere in between um but what we're really doing on our on our scoring system is zeroing it on the nines and 10 so the the score is a percentage of the nine and 10 responses um across the whole across the whole district and I'll call attention here to the the the rigidity of the scale um the nine and 10 is uh it's it's a high bar right it's definitely a challenge to get everyone on board to be able to say yep we're definitely you know strongly agreeing with this statement um you know but when you think about it in terms of uh you know promotion sharing uh
073of a plan getting all people on board with with a solitary plan um you know you really need people to be um strongly understanding uh strongly agreeing uh and really being able to carry that forward so um if you think about the net promoter score if you're familiar with that it's often used in like marketing or you know other you know kind of community um branding um exercises um your nines and tens are going to be your promoters right they're the people that um are on board they know it they love it they're going to share and get others to do the same um your sevens and eights um are actually uh neutral or or passive um and so while it's not a bad score to see a seven or eight on a on a
074scale of 1 to 10 10 um you know those are folks that are actually going to be um a little bit more uh you know not not quite on the fence but um you know having a an okay experience and then so that's we you know we use the example of a restaurant review right if you just have an okay experience you're you're not very likely to go out and um you know tell all your friends to you know hey you really need to go have this okay experience too I really want you to have that like I did um and then of course you're you're obviously as you go further down the scale you're getting a little bit more negative um but your six is down to ones um those will be considered your
075detractors so those folks um you know in the in The Branding marketing kind of Evangelical sense those folks would would be the negative reviews right they would be bringing out um not just you know I didn't have a great time but here's why um this is a place that I you know I wouldn't recommend um so again your nines and tens are really what we're focusing on um there's a a little bit of color coding that you'll see throughout the uh throughout these slides um what we're showing here is just the three kind of segments um below 35 um is going to be our red so anytime you see that color it just means that the percentage of responses is below 35 and that nine and 10 are strongly agree um somewhere between 35 and
07665 it's going to be this yellow group and then green would be above 65 so that's kind of the the goal for for any of the areas of focus so our first piece of data is actually our response rate so we did have um again 720 emails went out um 474 um people um responded and completed the entire survey um for a percentage of 65.8% so about two-thirds of um of voices were you know heard people volunteered to share their information and um give suggestions and kind of you know let people know let leadership know kind of where we're at right now so that's definitely a good thing just to to give you a sense our right now our um our overall kind of average response is between 65 and 70% um so we really
077shoot for that 70 or above um we of course have organizations that don't get nearly this much but um you know this is definitely a good number to be able to take the closer we get to 100 obviously the more we can take that as you know a census um but in this case you know we're not trying to take a really small group and and you know project outward um this is actually a really good sample size to to be able to see what people are are saying and what they're experiencing so without further Ado here's our overall score 37.6 and so again what that's what that's showing us is that throughout the whole survey um all respondents all Focus areas all items um 37.6% of those responses are in that nine and 10
078or strongly agree and if you go over to the middle here you can see the you know the large bar here um we're just over that line so we're up into that yellow category so between 35 and 65 um obviously you know good to not be down in the red um fairly uh you know fairly difficult especially early on to be anywhere near that green bar green box um above 65 so while we you know put that up there it's it's it's more it's definitely more aspirational um but we do see organizations continue to move up as they uh focus on these specific areas so um and as we continue over to the right hand side of the slide you can see our overall K12 score right now um is 29.1 so from a uh
079comparison um obviously um you know Kon you're you know you're doing better than better than the average and as we get another layer into um the resp responses we can now see um at the top here we've got our distribution so thinking about our you know our scale showing the nines of T the sevens and eights and the uh one to six responses um you know as you can see it's about you know a third a third a third um couple things about that obviously 37.6% in that N9 and 10 um another 31.5% though are in that seven and eight right so they're on the right side of the scale right they're on the side of the scale that you want them to be on the question would be how would we get you know
080this third how would we get them to start to scoot more toward this strongly agree what would things have to look like and then of course we want to get this number as as small as possible as we as we go and then over on our leftand side you can see our our Focus areas so each of these areas has anywhere from two to four specific items that are the statements that we talked about where people are responding to that statement um and then this just shows you the percentage of strongly agrees in that particular area so inclusion being our highest um down to communication being our lowest and on the right is is just more of a visual um you know zero being in the center so if they were all zero we do
081just have a DOT um if they were all 100 we'd have a nice big round wheel um what's really interesting as we go um year-over-year with organizations both you know you know obviously K12 organizations but also higher education uh Corporate America um law enforcement um we actually see that this pattern is is fairly um indicative of your culture so as as we move these things out yearby year um the shape actually does tend to stay fairly similar so while we can really focus on communication say we want to really work on that and get that way up as that goes up um so do all the other areas and focus so um we we may always see that communication uh gravitates toward that bottom but but of course we can keep you know keep improving
082that communication and moving that up um absolutely and then looking at it a little bit actually the next next couple slides are are are more um not that we've you know delivered bad news but this is you know really good news as you look at the next couple slides because number one um again is we expand out that scale the nines and tens you know it's again it's it's a tough bar it's a high bar um but if you include the sevens and eights together with the nines and tens um as you can see you've got quite a bit higher number here so you know almost three quarters of the district um is strongly agreeing on the leadership items you know not too far behind inclusion diversity um policy and practice Mission Vision and value
083so again um in that kind of middle group as far as nines and tens but if you add the sevens and eights to that now we're up into that green green area and everything except communication so that's that's kind of that good news where again this this group of folks is um is there how do we help them kind of ease into that nine and 10 strongly agree and the next bit of I guess good news for you um not so not so great news for for other districts that we work with but um this is just the the side-by-side comparison when you think about um not just the overall score but um each particular Focus area um you can see that there's definitely uh you're definitely definitely winning that competition here in all areas
084except the communication it looks like communication on the um on the average has been just slightly higher um but again that's moved up over the over time as well so it's good to see how that compares and if we get one more layer into the data you can see the particular items that we that we had employees respond to so um diversity um we had you know these are the top four so again what we're looking at is the um High the percentage of um nine and 10 responses these are the four that were the highest across the whole survey so we had you know again one of our diversity items one of our leadership items one of our inclusion items and one of our policy and practice items and so this is a place
085this is actually a kind of an exerpt from um the snapshot report which is going to show each and every item in this way so you can kind of look and see again this is what this is what people responded to um we you know hopefully these are actionable as far as when you you know read that you say yeah I I would hope that everyone saw that and ly agreed with it um if the number is not as high as we want it to be um what are some steps we can take to make sure that we're you know that we're moving that direction were participants required to answer all of the questions or could they skip some um they we only had completed uh completed surveys so yeah they the the data we're
086looking at now is is all responses everyone responded to the whole survey okay thank you wow so these are our top four and if we flip that scale over and look at the um we'll call it the bottom four but it's actually the highest percentage of one to six responses um so as you can see two of our communication items one of our cultural competency items and one of our diversity items which is interesting to see we had one of our diversity items in the top actually the top and then we had one of our diversity items um toward the bottom that's definitely something to something to think about and in each of the focus areas there was a place for comments so employees would um you know make their selection one to 10 and
087then they had a chance to offer some commentary on um that particular Focus area and so the these are um the the topics that came out the most we saw the most kind of cluster around each of these topics where the most comments were were shared in that particular area so um you know again we were able to to pull those out we do have uh we have sentiment scores uh we have summaries of each of the focus areas we have summaries around each of these topics there's a lot of information again that's why um tonight um you know we really just wanted to make sure you've got a high level understanding of of what the overall data looks like um hopefully this even would be enough to take a look at what some of
088the priorities might be um and again we you know we had a good good conversation with with Mr Man and leadership team to be able to um go a little bit deeper on this and take a look at um we have also data by demographic so um you know location um you know job type division um some folks were able to select um with prefer not to answer of course but they were able to select some more personal identifi S as well so race ethnicity gender um sexual orientation um disability things like that so um some of it might you know some of it as we as we talk through some of it might be relevant to um you know specific action in those areas others you know it's just showing that there's not a
089not a real difference in how people are responding based on these particular identifiers um so again more more from the team on that but um again these are some of the areas that that came out the most um again not to try to make everybody absorb all these right now I just wanted to make sure that some of those key terms were were highlighted because we did get a lot of really good uh really good feedback really good Insight people really did want to share um their experiences you had examples of what's working well you had examples of of things that are uh are challenges uh and so that's one of the recommendations that we would U really kind of put forth is um you know make sure that you're you know using some of
090these terms you know using this language as you are um sharing results outward and letting people know um you know first of all thanks for providing your feedback um you know people took took time to to share their not only the responses but you know to um you know put the comments in and really make sure that their voices are heard so um definitely good to see and again that's speaks well to the response rate as well that you're obviously doing some good things to you know have people that are invested and and and care to participate and and really want to make things as as good as they possibly can make them here at at Katon so um definitely good to see that um and then just you know again some of the observations
091you know obviously Mission Vision and values being one of the higher areas um what that's showing us is that um there is a connection right people are seeing the connection between the policy that we put forth um and the actions that are happening on a day-to-day basis um as far as you know again just directly policy and practice they're seeing that it's there right they're seeing that it's going to move things in the direction that um you know that we're trying to move it in um and then as far as alignment goes again we see some organizations that have great plans um and then you know it's really hard to get that into action right you youve got this is what's written down but um you know whether it's we're too busy we you know
092resources whatever it is you know we don't seem be um taking the actions that we've put on paper um so definitely good to see that that's one of the higher ones people are saying yes we have that connection between those things um as far as communication goes um we are again even even seeing that in in the bottom um there are some things that that are indicative of of communication being a strength for you because when you look at the comments when you look at some of the relationships between the scales um you can actually see that um the plan is getting out there um a lot of times what happens though is the second half of the um how you know we know what we're supposed to be doing but how are we doing
093on this today right are We Are we almost there are we doing well are we you know is it terrible do we really need to change what we're doing um so continuing to um kind of keep that cycle going of of we're going to share out what we're what our goals are what we're trying to do but we're also going to make sure we keep letting people know know where they are succeeding where those successes are happening and um what people can continue to do to make sure that that keeps keeps going and as far as leadership goes obviously um it it begins and ends with leaders um the more you can um you know have that ownership uh the more people can see that leaders care and and really want to keep things going
094the right direction um and then over time devel veloping more um informal leaders right people taking ownership and taking leadership in in these areas um whether they have a title of supervisor or you know administrator or not um there's a lot of folks that have been here for many years and and have done a lot of good things and um they've got so much knowledge to share um so if you can help those folks Buy in and and really make sure that you know they're um sharing with others um that's going to be really helpful as well [Music] um so as we mentioned as far as U you know recommendations go um the leadership team has this information uh you know I'm assuming already had some really good conversations around that um we'd love to
095continue to to be part of that dialogue just to make sure that we understand the steps you're taking um you know if there's other clarifications we can we can help with um we want to make sure that that's part of the process and then also um correlation so we have seen organizations uh we we actually have two survey tools orgam metrics is our other tool and that focuses on organizational alignment um to Mission Vision and strategic plan and then of course ecometrics that that we're looking at here now um we've seen correlation between particular Focus areas and other things that are happening throughout the district so for example um we have districts that that connect um you know they have different um pillars in their plans and among those pillars are going to be specific
096you know uh whether it's a survey that's in the community uh know a teacher evaluation number uh even student data um we would just would love to know and understand from a you know month-to month year to year um where some of those connections are uh and so you know when our inclusion number is X um um you know what does our um you know discipline number look like or what does our turnover number look retention number look like um and so um again just over time that's definitely something that we'd want to recommend you continue to think about um and if there's ways that we can help with that process um on the data side or even just organization of like what we think might be uh connected um that's you know we love
097to do that and and you know obviously the more more we can establish those connections uh the more not only can you be focused on doing the things that are going to make an impact um but as you're getting more people on board to be able to show them um this is what this is the impact your action is having um that again goes a long way to getting more and more people to to Really Buy in and and make sure that they're taking their part and running with it so that would conclude what we have to share this evening um Mr Man I wasn't sure if you wanted to say anything uh around this or if there's questions or yeah I first off I'd like to share um how much we appreciate the opportunity
098to work with with Dell and and Joe and the team and we feel like we're not just getting survey data back we're getting actionable information that will put us in a position to work to improve um you know how our how our employee experience is with relation to equity um f fascinated and interest interested as well in the orgam metrics especially as we move into this sofg work so we'll probably have some conversations around that um and see where where there may or may not be a fit um moving forward um and then I know there's some other tool sets that we'll be having conversations about through some of the Partnerships that Infinity systems has where they can even get us some additional actional inform actionable information back I also want to um he's a
099very good friend so I'm not going to share which district but we have a uh I'll call it a sibling District right next door who also participated in the same process and um it was very interesting being able to compare and contrast our data you know with with that other District we saw a lot of similarity you know and a few differences here and there so I'm one of my hopes is we may be able to leverage some of our Partnerships with other districts to maybe even work together and go in together on some of this work um because we have those strong relationships and um and then the last piece I will add because it ties into our conversation earlier about the um the equity conference is that unbeknown to me apparently Dell's nephew
100was in the audience at the presentation and so when we gave a shout out to Infinity systems he pulled me aside and said hey I was there and I just want you to know we were watching you and you you did the right thing and gave that shout out so so we were you know you never know who's watching wherever you are um and so that was actually kind of nice that that they saw that we were making that correlation about the benefits as well you know as part of our presentation so um with that if the board has any questions you know we're we're happy to engage in more dialogue with this as we move forward um one of our our two challenges in moving forward is figuring out next steps and really taking
101some opportunity to digest the data even more to figure out where where is our lowest hanging fruit and what things can we act on um quickly and efficiently while we're juggling you know all of the other balls at the same time you heard Joe talk about how some districts either because of lack of resources or lack of time they do the survey but they don't necessarily close the gaps on anything and we really don't want to put the effort into surveying and not close the gaps I had an opportunity at a at a prior District years ago to work with some folks from the wp car school at ASU and we were working on customer service and one of the things I learned from working with them is the only thing worse than not asking
102people what their experience is is asking them and then not doing anything about it so that's right I miss some people who could be listening right now should be people who should be listening am I one of my there you go so thank you for that board members do we have any comments or questions defer my questions and comments till the end yeah I may have missed this part but when was this survey conducted October okay would have been October 2023 okay um I mean I think this feedback is really important and I agree with everything you've said we've got to share it back and I think you know we could even again in in the internal newsletter you know I know we've been doing this but um and poor Emily I don't know if
103she's in here anymore but you know I've worked in the communic corporate Communications world my whole life so um the there's always room to improve and you're always going to hear complaints about not getting enough communication so that's um that's just a fact but I think with us that goes hand inhand with transparency too which is something we're all working on improving so I think since that one is like our lowest one I would think we could do a when we when we share this back out you know how can we improve communication with you what does that mean to you you know does that mean try work continue to work on being more transparent or what does that mean to you just an open-ended question you might get some some more feedback but I
104think definitely we need to Circle back um Can can I jump in on that real quick before you move on so one of the things I noticed as we drilled down into the question sets and I wish Emily was still here because you know it's you immediately see communication your title has communication and you and so you own it right and and and she's a very empathic person and so you know it's got to be hard to see when when I looked at the drill down on the questions that Joe shared with us what I found very interesting is they weren't low scores in relation to things like are we doing big you know is the social media pushing it out there is is the you know do we have a strong newsletter presence are
105we getting sort of this broad information out it would it look like to me and and correct me if I'm wrong Joe andelle it was a lot of loop closing about within small work groups like the smaller groups within our organization what that what those Equity issues look like in those groups and one of the nice things about the way the survey is structured even though some of it was voluntary um because we gave the opportunity for people to identify their work groups we should be able to drill in like are there is this across all work groups and we've got some big work to do across the board or are we being you know disproportionately affected by a handful of pockets where where this isn't happening and in any organization there's always you know
106those sectors that are that are more challenging than others we've got those groups of employees that don't regularly get into email we've got those groups of employees that have very limited work schedule so you know and I'm not saying that's where it is we need to do more deep Dives to determine that but I think you know kind of to the point of and I appreciate your sensitivity for Emily having worked in the field I don't think you know none of this is saying we have an Emily problem but what it is saying is that we have some areas in our district that need her amazing touch to help them be able to communicate more effectively within within those groups and where we've where we've seen her be very effective is in help not only
107getting the big message out but in helping other groups within the district do a better job of internal communication and we just need to figure out where we need her to drill down and help some of those other groups accomplish that in relation to the equity work so I don't that doesn't need to be right so D and Joe if I'm wrong please please correct me and set me on the straight and narrow here no that's absolutely right I was going to mention um you know we we've had the conversation you know hundreds of times where you know the the communications person says whoa this is uh oh um but but no it like you said when you drill down into the individual items we're really asking specifically about diversity Equity inclusion and the plans
108the you know the process the you know how leaders are doing with that um so it's really specific to this subject matter it's not how is our general communication um and so a that your spot on it's it's it's you know it's really specifically focused on um this subject matter but then also um and you you mentioned this the the demographic information is a good way to really break that out to say okay do we have you know a similar score across the board do we have certain Pockets that are you know scoring higher in communication we have certain Pockets that are scoring lower in communication um and then the you know the obviously you know what work do we need to do in each of those areas but then I would also add um
109putting some of those specifics in there um not only on you know where we are right now with these things but um you know what what people can do to continue to drive that forward um as people see um you know sometimes communication is not just you know we need to tell you what the plan is um oftentimes it's this specific action that this person did really helped us with this part of the plan or this you know this Behavior this action this this way of you know way of uh you know moving through the district is something something we need to see more of and so kudos to to this person for doing this but um it doesn't just mean they're a great person it means that they're doing this particular thing that helps
110our this part of our plan so really connecting connecting those actions um with examples um just to refine the communication right it's not just we need more communication it's we need to make sure that we're continuing to refine and and share the the specifics are going to help us move forward and then and then kind of as you spoke about trying to identify some lwh hanging fruit I think right there could be an opportunity to weave that right in and get started and then also Mr Man was talking about the importance of uh neighboring districts or benchmarking and things like that the Arizona ecosystem continues to expand districts like the Isaac's District have taken part now and I've got a few others that are going to be joining real soon here as well so we'll
111be able to compare you to others and obviously we can redact the names but you'll still get the the number comparison to see where things are excellent thank you no and I just one last thing on the communication I appreciate um you bringing it up and I appreciate the clarification because that is really common to say oh we're struggling with communication and then people just inundate with more and not the right kind and that can actually have a negative effect so yeah I mean that all sounds right to me yeah and I think just one other comment the most common topics page this data review I mean these are all things I've been hearing for the past decade and unconscious bias jumps out at me because I remember Carla Rivera Cruz brought that up and
112you know maybe it wasn't presented in the ideal way but man woo it got shut down um people were so offended by that term um and I'm just glad that we're bringing it back up again because it exists in every human being and it's not something to be embarrassed about it's something we need to talk about I think this is great that's like a 15 years ago we should have been there yeah thank you Miss MC cheffrey any other comments or questions Miss SS yeah so it was this has this data been shared back with like employees it it is not yet we brought it here so executive team reviewed it first um we did give a little bit we were a little bit out of sequence because we were part of a presentation at
113the asba winter conference with some of the preliminary data so that went out publicly ahead which would not normally be our practice but it was shared with executive team um recently we got more of the data a couple of weeks ago and then we wanted to bring it to the board before we pushed it out to all of the staff and so um you know it's one one of the things we're trying to create as a common practice is making sure that not only are we providing this information to the board but where possible you know we really want to do it in a public forum you'll see that later this evening you know when when we share some information about the Esser plan and you know some of the budget issues that that our
114team will share with you um in past years you know I think a lot of that's been handled and ex excutive session and there's really no reason for it to be behind closed doors if it's information it's information and there's really no reason it it can't be public so um so we're you know uh I don't know if it was Miss MC cheffrey or someone else mentioned earlier that transparency challenge you know the goal is really to kind of take all the curtains off that will create growing pains because people you know are not used to it and so there'll be all sorts of accusations about well why you know why why are we talking about this with the board why is this in public but the reality is until we get better about building
115our common practice as being able to talk about things in public openly and making it available to everyone um we're we're not going to get away from those challenges that create that are created by those blinders of things happening sort of in the back room you know away from away from that public view yeah um and think that's a great point I I bring it up because as a teacher in Isaac I did take this um eometric so um I'm familiar with the kind of questions that were asked also like one of those people that want to see the data back and um I know that we probably won't right at the moment but I think it's important as a as a staff member and a teacher that has taken this that we do get
116the results back y um and I think it's a topic of conversation because I just I know that after we took it um there was conversation that was had like amongst the teachers um already and so I just think it's important for that transparency like we've been talking about and just some people just want to know data like especially when we talk about so like communication sometimes is so subjective because some people seek that communication and they want to understand what's going on and some people could kind of care less they are those people that don't check their email or they are those people that just like go with a flow every day I'm one of those people that want to know all of the data yeah um and so I really like that that
117you brought this to us um but I do I would like to see it brought back to the staff as well absolutely and and that's been our attent Our intention all along I think the point I was trying to make earlier is that when we share it back like it's not an uncommon practice for us to go we took a survey we got the data here you go board here you go public here you go staff we're going to throw it in the connection and then that's the that that feels sometimes to leadership like we've closed the loop we took the survey and we've told everybody about it but that's not the end of the story right the end of the story is what actions will we be taking in order to make improvements based
118on the feedback we've received so we we will put the data out there in it's raw format which may create some consternation but we will then follow up on that with what did this data tell us and what will we be doing to try to create Improvement and then the gold seal standard from my perspective is for us to then come back again and share we committed to doing these things because of this data we received here's what was done right so just kind of that to me that's the final closure of the loop but it's not a loop it's one Loop in a chain and then the chain continues when we do follow-up survey work to see what are our results now and and I would warn the board and our community and our
119and our staff to not be shocked if we see an implementation dip going from first survey to Second survey because the other thing that the survey work does is it gets people thinking about these Concepts and when we share the results out it gets them thinking more deeply about it and when we share what we're doing to make improvements it gets them thinking more deeply about it so the second time they take this survey and I don't know if if Joe and Dell have any experience with this happening with other districts clearly this is our first go around but my expectation would be our staff become more informed consumers of the survey and as more informed consumers they are going to be harsher critics than they may have been the first go own and I
120will add they mentioned that at the equity conference that that does indeed happen with seal stuff too once people are more um educated about what it is they're being asked about then they're like oh actually we're not doing that kind of a job now that I know what you're asking me I thought we were great but I didn't know it should be like this yeah exactly yeah and sometimes it's as simple as you know you've now stated you've stated the goal so you've said you've told everyone here's the expectation here's what we want to be doing um and so if they've seen that and then you know we're just kind of waiting for that result to come um it can be a an opportunity to to rate it a little bit more harshly you're right
121well I think especially when like knowing communication is one of our harder pieces and and we need the specifics on what you know and how um but with that too like some of the the steps we're taking everything with sofg you know nothing happens overnight um and I think some of what we saw was you know oh our strengths or that people know there's a plan right right but they are going to be looking for as you said Joe the results right and so it just becomes that much more important when we talk about our benchmarks and those you know just like we progress monitor our kids right we're not going to see it all overnight but are we at least meeting those benchmarks and how are we communicating that out um because people want
122to see progress right um and I I just really appreciate I appreciate how in-depth this is um I'm excited we're doing this and I appreciate everything you shared about you know just doubling down because as an educator I taken culture climate surveys every year for all the years I've been in education and I have yet to see anything done with them um so I just really appreciate the intentionality behind this and um just want to publicly say like we're holding all of us accountable to actually doing that thank you um okay so I have a question I don't know if this is for Joe or Dell and forgive me for talking to you by on a first name basis but I can't read problem I can't last names um just so I understand them correctly
123um Miss pus are you able to bring up page 19 again where it has the E ecometrics data review and comments I don't know if you're able to pull it up here but if not on these com oh Joe could do it okay on these comment topics these are specific comments from the employees based on a peer-to-peer interaction right as an employee of the institution I just want to make sure that I have this understood correctly yep so yeah this would be this this would be the most common terminology that people used in the comments talking about those specific areas in there so yeah I mean some are going to be specific to other other ones okay and the only reason why I asked that is because and thank you for that clarification is because
124I'd be remissed if I didn't bring up the homophobia the racism and the ableism one of the things that we' just learned in this sofg framework is that student outcomes will not change until adult behaviors change and if our adults in this institution are acting this way no wonder our kids are behaving in the classrooms targeting each other calling them names and not respecting each other so one of the big culture changes with this sofg framework is that we're going to hold the adults in this institution accountable too and the fact that we haven't really moved on to see who's experiencing this homophobia or racism is a little alarming to me because I want my staff to feel Brave in their environment too and if our staff are not feeling brave then it's not going
125to trickle down and we sure as heck are not going to have Brave students in the classrooms so my ask after receiving this data and looking at it is I don't know if in a future board update I'm not going to put a time frame but I would really like to see what we're doing about these specific comments and it's repeated on here multiple times and for me for one staff to feel unsafe because they feel like somebody's being hobophobic against them or racist against them or creating some kind of ablism is something that needs to be addressed Within urgent matter so um I would like for our cabinet or superintendent to bring us an update on what we're doing to specifically help with that those issues and um also create a plan if you
126can come back and let us know a plan on how we're going to you know get our communication a little bit more up one of the things in this sofg framework as well if we don't have smart goals we have data but if we're not putting any action or attainable goals to it then all this is for show and just for fun um I am however very appreciative that we got this done I know it's the first time in the district that we actually have something that we can have sensible attainable data and work towards to see how we make this more of an inclusive Equitable workspace so I'm glad that our superintendent took the lead on this to be transparent and getting these issues fixed but if we can and I'll leave it up
127to you Mr Man to give us a time frame on when you think um that information is available but I I do want to send that sentiment all over the district that yes our student outcomes are not going to change until the adult behaviors change and by what I'm reading off of this of our staff is that adults in this institution are behaving with each other this way and that is not acceptable and it's it's a culture that shouldn't exist in this environment for our staff let alone our students I think it's very important that we set a standard of everyone modeling kindness the only way we're going to move move the needle with our students is if all of our adults are are modeling the behaviors that we want to see from those students
128absolutely so um whenever you have an opportunity to give us some feedback and see what we're doing um to make sure that our staff not only feel supported but actually safe and brave in their environment yep we I think what we'll do is we'll take a look at the data first before we commit to a timeline to see like what the lift actually is um and then and we probably won't get that for you in the next upcoming board update because it'll take more time than that to dig into it but by the one after that we should be able to have a timeline for you in kind of a course of action and then thank you for that and the only other question I have is how often do you feel in your professional
129capacity that we should be doing these kind of um surveys so we know if we're moving up if we're going down or if we're progressing or not how often should we is this a yearly thing is this every two years without survey burnout yeah without survey burnout but enough time to give us as an institution you know different implementation um methods so we can actually keep getting our scores going up or lower in some instances well and let me answer that if I can when I first met Mr Man at the cube conference I knew immediately he was a special superintendent when I met the school board I knew the school board was on board because of their energy with the presentation that we had shared and how much they got on board in terms
130of the relationship between the board and Mr Man very positive one of the best districts I've began to work with and uh Joe can attested this too because we did something extremely special we got a survey launched within six weeks to present at the asba school board we've never done that before so that's huge steps in letting me know and then also hearing some of the comments from some of the other board members tonight also reign supreme and you know double down and triple down on the efforts the energy of what crate ISD is doing so that said I have no issue in terms of knowing that the data that you have you're going to move forward with it we always recommend at least doing it once a year why because that should at least
131give you enough time to implement some of the changes excuse me and incorporate some of the professional development in order to continuously move that needle forward so I offer that up with with uh much uh conviction okay thank you do we one more question yeah go ahead going back to the just because you reminded me because you pulled the slide back up going back to that slide 19 I just had a clarification on how it's organized because on the right column the first five are repeated again oh yeah those are okay so it was just a question on like how are these organized like why is there a space between those just got duplicated yeah it looks like okay okay yeah thank you thank you for that clarification I didn't know if there were like
132different categories or I was missing something so thank you any other questions or comments for Mr Man or Dell or Joel regarding ecometrics data I guess I was just surprised by how many people actually responded I mean honestly it's kind of a good number um was it just an email that was sent out one time or how did that go so I I I'm a huge fan of um Maya kulpa so um sometimes we don't realize the wisdom of the partners that we work with so when we when we launched the survey um it was primarily distributed via email and um and and one of the things that we had given guidance was we've been doing all this fishing scam work and so please don't have this be a request from the superintendent because we've
133been training everybody you're going to get these fishing fishing scams with a request from the superintendent but the standard template that the team uses actually makes that request and it did indeed go out that way and I believe that I need to stand corrected because I do think it helped you know even though we had those concerns around fishing what we did did to mitigate that was Emily sent out a notice to everybody and then we followed up in the kraton connection you know to make sure people were aware this one's not a scam asking you to do something for the superintendent this is genuinely request because we really and there was a nice letter that went with it about you know the importance and that we want to hear your voice so so I
134could be wrong like I thought I was a rock star last week and I clearly wasn't um so I do have some delusions but I I do think the ask like the way the ask was was important and then we get a lot of push back on doing everything electronically people always want us to we create paper forms you know do this I think sometimes we water down you know sort of like when we create too many methodologies people get confused and they don't know like which direction they're supposed to go the consistency and then the repetition because the other thing that the infinity systems team did is they kept track of who had responded or not and then those who did not respond they did um multiple follow-ups with them so I think I
135I I what I have to say is they were right I was wrong I don't I don't mind admitting when I when I'm wrong um and then the other thing I would say is um the methodology that they used was really really effective and they're a good partner because rather than putting the onus on us to get an effective return rate they created the tool sets and the methodologies to ensure that we got an effective return rate so you can quote that in your advertising material J that's cool yeah I'm just knowing kind of what that looks like it sounds like it sounds like a chore to try to get people to respond so I was impressed even if it isn't above the 70% or whatever the target was now do you all have the
136fun little screen that rewards you when you find the fishing thing and you report it we I like doing that at work it's kind of fun yeah we even had I believe um since our since our esteemed it directors in the back of the room I believe he even rewarded some people with some actual Swedish fish early on when implemented I was gonna say we started giving out gold goldfish fish when someone reports what they think might be a scam so I was probably most reported this year for being the scammer so do do you get Swedish Fish just for that I'll just go buy a bag of them um um perfect do we have any other comments questions perfect thank you guys so much for presenting and thank you to all the staff who
137did it just know that I'm a True Believer that we're going to take all the feedback that we got and act upon it so you guys don't feel like your voices are just not being heard so thank you for bringing this to us thank you so much thank you y thanks for having us have a good night all right that brings us to our next agenda item which is 8A approval of compensation for emergency split class coverage and this says pilot so I'll turn it over to Mr Man Madame President members of the board I am going to hand this one to Dr Lauren um and I believe he has a presentation to share that kind of gives some of the background information on um what's being recommended and how we got here Madame President
138members of the board I'm uh pleased to present this information and I would be even more pleased if I could get it to project uh Russell I'm getting a red um I am so sorry before we start I um we have a public comment on this agenda item I apologize so I'm GNA have the public comment um read first and then we can move into the discussion of it um that's going to be from Daniel Lopez and it is for this agenda item and we have on his behalf Miss Ariel oh I know you always thinking oh dangel it must been a rough year for you changed you're looking good Dan I love your shirt by the way thank you also this is from Daniel Lopez members of the board as a member of the
139Mee and confer team last year and this year and a union member the implementation of compensation for teachers split classes sorry I'm reading from my phone my phone's cracked I'm so sorry this recommendation was P oh so I've been deeply frustrating this recommendation was passed last year and teachers are just last week being told by the district that they will not be compensated for split classes until this month meaning all of our SP classes from August to December are unpaid we have been told that it is up to the board whether or not we are back paid for our split classes so I'm asking you please order that teachers will be back paid for the split classes that we have documented going back to August of this school year thank you thank you for that
140okay and and I will proceed with the presentation and then if we have feedback off of that comment we can after the presentation thank you so uh just to give some background uh we are recommending that the district pilot a plan that will compensate teachers impacted by accepting students from a split classroom by dividing the daily substitute rate of $160 per day among the affected teachers that are impacted by that split so the number of teachers that are receiving students divided by 160 would be the amount of pay uh the compensation does not currently appear on existing adopted salary schedules so therefore it requires board approval uh the pilot that we are proposing would run from February 1st through May 23rd so just to give some little bit of a background on the story really
141on any given day our District's fill rate for guest teachers ranges between 49% and 82% U obviously uh there are some challenges with making sure that we have qualified guest teachers in the classrooms uh we do understand that emergencies happen uh there are often times when a substitute is established for a job for whatever reason they are not able to fulfill that job so maybe they have an emergency um Mondays and Fridays s tend to be the days where we have the most need uh Wednesdays are the days where we tend to fill those uh positions pretty easily we've had as low as 38% coverage and we've had as high as 74% coverage so it does VAR widely I think the consistency is that when a teacher is asked to absorb addition additional students for
142the day often time it's very limited in the amount of time they have to prepare um at as a principal I remember many many days almost every day asking teachers to take additional students um you know Miss Smith is sick we have 25 students can you take five of her students uh and that happens regularly and consistently across the district and I know it's not just a specific kraton issue um so the the conversation we've had in the meet and confer process over the last several years was how do we then recognize and uh honor the teachers willingness to help support and to be part of that solution to help students have a day with a teacher when there isn't one available if you look at the uh graph that I have posted we took
143this data from the fall U we looked at the number of absences or vacancies that need to be filled across the district we had a total of 1,678 from August through December uh of that we had 93 that were filled by a substitute through our ESI partnership that's the organization the contract agency that provides our substitute service so about 54% uh of our vacancies were filled not filled were about 46% mind you this includes teacher uh assignments that aren't filled because we haven't hired that position so sometimes we are you know fortunate to have long-term Subs that would be able to take on that position um but often there there's still that Gap and we still have that need to fill that position if you look at the bottom of the graphs sorry the table
144at the bottom talks about what that cost is reflected in that $160 rate so if we were to fill from last semester all vacant vacant positions with a guest teacher at $160 per day that would represent $122,000 expense if you add the cost of benefits to that which is a 21% increase over the regular pay then we're looking at 148,000 approximately and that really is to kind of frame for our employees that we pay benefits for that's the number that looking at so if we're looking at how do we budget for filling these positions with staff from the kraton district that that's where that 21% would come in I'll pause and see if anyone has any questions because I know sometimes tables need some conversation I'm pretty sure I understand but just for the clarity
145of public so when we pay subs from Kelly Services the district does not pay benefits if we are paying teachers a similar rate to cover split classes it's not like it's acting like a separate stien or something like that it gets rolled into the regular paycheck and so it does in percentage of benefit matching that the district is do yes that's correct that's exactly right I have a question yes where has the money been going the savings been going for when we don't have Subs before this so I I will defer to my partner but I think U most the money that we've been using to cover Subs over the last few years has been out of essr funds so they're not necessarily earmarked as substitute funds it's a pool of money that we draw
146from what we're saying with this position or this idea is that we're now going to start to draw some of that money to help cover for teachers who need that compensation so a lot of times it creates a cushion right so if we know that we're not funding these positions that are vacant then we have that ex that money from something to go to somewhere and and again just pointing out um what Dr Lauren Lauren stated for the last several years these monies have been just coming down as needed so there wasn't necessarily A a budget effect so that we had to carry forward or anything like that since it was coming from those Esser dollars it is something that um and I think a big reason why we're looking at a Pilot in order
147to see how much is it actually going to cost um and and getting some data as as we try to make a recommendation like this so we're trying to put together the initial and that's not even the is that the whole annual that's August to December that's the fall yeah yes so just to it's going to cost us $148,000 if we do this pilot program from February to April I mean what's the date August to December that would be the amount for August to December yes so if we were to include if we were to add August to December to the pilot then you're looking at approximately that much money the challenge is we don't know necessarily how well the record keeping has been kept for who had split classes who didn't if they did
148it equitably across sites so did one site keep really accurate records and another site not so those are other conversations for consideration that I want to bring up later in the presentation I say with that one thing you know as we move forward into full pilot so this is aside from the do we go back to August to December but moving forward into February is making sure that there's a system for that not just to document it but also how our sites Distributing that because that's going to skew a lot of numbers if I'm a teacher that because of how many sections we have in the grade level I always get nine or 10 kids but then at this school they have four first grade classrooms so they only get five or six kids you
149know and things like that and and I know that that's a lot of numbers and variables but we need some kind of guidance to make sure that it's being distributed properly and we're Gathering the data accurately do we know how much do we pay a um how much do we pay of a service fee if need to that agency that gets us the subs is there a fee Associated to the district for that service yeah I believe it ends up being another it's $200 per day yeah and and this is not part of the presentation but it's an important historical component to have because you might ask yourself why don't we just have these individuals as our own employees and the answer to that is Proposition 206 so when prop 206 passed most districts were
150pushed into a space to work through another firm because of the level of complexity of trying to manage the 206 required leave with individuals who work on a daily basis so for um for every 30 probably going to get this wrong so someone correct me if I'm wrong if this this doesn't have to be accurate but just gives the concept but for every 30 hours worked I believe the employee is supposed to receive one hour of leave time so if you have if you have Subs doing that now you create a brand new problem which is where I've got I've got a science teacher who's out I make a call to ESI they assign us a substitute and then the sub says Hey I've built up eight hours of leave time I'm going to call
151in sick today too that really doesn't help the district actually if you call ESI that doesn't happen but if they were our own employee that could be a scenario that would occur and so there you know no I'm not dissing in prop 206 there's a lot of wonderful things in it but one of the things that they didn't do when they built it out is they didn't think about governmental agencies and how the impact would be very different than the way that it impacts private companies is that the is that correlated to or maybe it is what covers um like they can only work 120 days out of two separate ESI so the ESI substitute program is what we were driven to by virtue of prop 206 the with the 120 days component has to
152do with return to work retirees which also ha our partner for that also happens to be ASI so there's often confusion between those two programs because they're both with the same partner but they're they're two completely separate animals and if I might add U one of the things that is not reflected in this information and that's something that we're going to need to track also as we're going to roll out this pilot is the impact of contract Subs because we do have employees at each campus that are permanent sub Subs that are Craton employees that are hired to be in classrooms so what you're seeing the impact you're seeing here is not even considering those positions on that campus right so some of that vacancy might have been absorbed by somebody on campus rather than
153doing a split so that's something that we have to figure out a way to disagre that a little more closely and just noting I'm I'm sorry Mr M cheffrey go ahead um so this this that we're looking at right now this isn't actually what we're voting on tonight this is just information it's just information yeah yep uh I will add though that since we've been Gathering the input from the sites over the last what today is the fifth um we've had 16 absences that have been covered by split teachers or by splits that sites have put in now it there's a timing of whether site has put it in immediately or they wait till the next day so there might be more that comes to it but we've already seen use of the uh input
154measure so that we can start to gather that information um one question I have and I don't know if you have a straight answer but we have various principles here do they usually end up using more of the split service in the classrooms versus the what is it called the ESI yeah the the preference from my personal experience um the preference is always to have a a substitute teacher uh the limitation is that there aren't enough Subs to go around so uh when I met with our esir rep a couple of weeks ago there are 90 substitutes that would be available to work in kraton District 58 regularly work in kraton District so we're part of our conversation when I was talking to our rep from ESI is how do we bolster that so what
155do we do to draw substitutes to the kraton district and help them feel welcome valued um supported what are some ways that we can maybe reach out more do some recognition programs things like that so that we can increase the number of Subs that choose to come to kraton rather than go next door to madis or to go to Osborne or baltz well it's hard too like I wonder they're not our employees but I wonder if there's a way that ESI maybe can do some I don't want to call it a survey but some kind of Outreach to get input because I know like I've been a teacher where I've had a sub you know that I was scheduled a month out and then the day of it was cancelled and sometimes you find out
156why and sometimes you don't but there were times when we found out why and it was oh well last minute I got off offered one that's closer to my house so I didn't have to do the commute that day you know like it's and I get it you know it's people's lives but it's often a financial like and a you know decision for them that okay this is better for me to do this day um so I would just be interested in how we could get some of that information not us specifically but you all in trying to do exactly what you're talking about is like let's bolster the frequency of getting Subs because yeah this is the splitting classes is never the ideal it's the last resort we want to compensate for when it
157happens but there's definitely a root problem right and it's not kraton specific yeah okay uh to give a little bit of background so there were discussions last year in the internet uh interest based negotiation process through meet and confir to recommend to the board that we created a way to recognize an honor teachers to compensate them for this work there was a little bit of um confusion in some of the language so in some documents it says uh to give leave time as a a payment for split classes some of the documentation was actual dollars so that when we met as a compensation committee to start to do this work in the fall we talked about what would the benefits of either option be the one that we as a committee decided to focus on
158was doing the um splitting the pay of the substitute rate uh comparing it to local districts we did compare to a lot of districts near our site or our school districts and most do some sort of monetary compensation I think there was one that offered professional development and one that was a little squishy about well we don't really do that right now in that way um so when we had that idea of moving forward with this then we started to do some of the work work of planning to have that implemented yeah because if you offer a leave you can accidentally contribute to that's right that's right you're just you're kicking the can down the road like you're you're incentivizing by saying take more days not that we shouldn't take days off but self-care is
159important but I wouldn't want to incentivize causing more strain on additional teachers yeah so just to give an idea of what our planning and vetting process was most of the work came through the compensation committee um we had a couple of meetings in the fall plus a subcommittee meeting that looked at this information uh we took it to executive team for feedback Triad if you're familiar with our Triad team that's our finance department Human Resources grants and payroll so it's basically the fiscal Services side of the house and we meet weekly to problem solve and triad was very helpful in developing some of the processes so that we wouldn't overburden the payroll department for instance because that's going to be a pretty heavy lift for payroll and to recognize from the business services perspective who
160Monitor and supervise the office managers from a site uh systems perspective is this going to overburden or over tax the office managers for instance uh so we also went to Leadership Council talked to office managers uh brought it back to meet and confer for additional input in January and then through catting connection uh this is just an overview of the people that were most involved in the compensation committee on this process uh there were some teachers or some individuals who are on the committee that weren't really involved in this process um but we have the teachers there for you to see and the other staff members so this is an overview of the pilot structure so from February 1st through May 23rd uh basically what's going to happen on a daily basis is that there
161will be at each site an opportunity to identify by teacher in grade level who needs the coverage determine the number of teachers that will be impacted up to nine so that means that for some of those situations there's going to be a much smaller payout if you're dividing by nine teachers and we also had that as a request from one of the principles because often in middle school and different situations there are different ways of splitting and it might vary from site to site so we wanted that to at least be an option currently the the information that I'm seeing on the spreadsheet is that most of the splits are between four and six so far so far um we talked about the rate so we'll take that $160 daily rate and we'll divide it
162by the number of teachers who are receiving students um there's a documentation through Google form we're also asking that the site supervisor administrator sign off on that process so that there's a verification of the expense for the payment uh and then that compensation will be paid out monthly so it's going to be off cycle for our payroll department so that they it it's not going to be an every paycheck implementation of the payment that'll also kind of give for lack of a better term this would give a a bigger pot of money at one time right so if there's a let's say I'm a third grade teacher and I get classes split to me four times then that's four times maybe $40 a day rather than one time with $40 which you don't see that
163as easily in a paycheck so yay for my extra $12 that in the latte right uh quick question so the daily sub rate is 160 but we pay ESI 200 is that right yeah I'll verify the amount but think that that's the rate because that's the rate we use we figure grants okay a couple of concerns so um one of the concerns that we heard earlier from the comment was that the pilot does not address split classes from August to January so we'll uh be interested to hear the board's feedback on that concern um I think part of the challenge as I mentioned before the documentation for that how do we make sure that we're being good stewards of public funds by knowing exactly what is accounted for in that since there was such a
164long Gap and it is frustrating I know that there's frustration that it took long a long time to get to this place with this process but I feel like we're we're on the right track as far as the systems we have in place and hopefully it'll be sustainable uh which is the next point that we can work with our business services with Miss Shapiro and talk about how we can forward fund the this through the future um can I ask a followup question there um I know that it's my understanding that through some of the recommendations from Mee and confer last year that we going to require extra time to implement there were like implementation calendars that were figured out for that is that my understanding for some of the items on the recommendations and
165I guess my question then is was there one for this and if if not why not I don't remember there being implementation count calendar or deadline specific um but I can go back and take a look I I just recently went through since we're we we have our meeting confer session tomorrow and one of the requests was to look back at all of the recommendations that have gone to the board and I know this is ancillary to this topic but the sentiment from me confer the team is that there's some duplication of effort from year to year or there are things that get talked about that don't necessarily get addressed and then how do we know it's been addressed or what's the time frame for making sure that it's addressed appropriately so I think those
166are really great points that I'll make sure to bring to our meeting tomorrow yeah I guess what I'm trying to get at is H having heard the public comment and hearing this I guess I'm trying to find out I know it's one comment but like was there an expectation I know maybe the expectation was as soon as possible that could be all dependent on a lot of things right sure but I guess how is this going to land um what were the expect what was the General expectation of people when and what information was I guess communicated from meet and confer people to teachers and I'm just wondering then like is that where this request is coming from I I'm just I just want us to not like um completely ignore the comment that was
167um maybe I can provide a little bit of insight on that is that last time if I remember correctly um this was put on the me and confer recommendations however that was at the same time we were having the discussions with the stips so I think what ended up happening is that we kind of all got into the honing in of giving the $10,000 stiens and retention so it kind of drifted away and maybe through both ends dropped the ball because it wasn't really talked about more but I REM I I vaguely remember being an executive session some of this stuff being t talked about and then us kind of swifted in Gears on that because then the topic became you know the whole stiens and doing the $10,000 back and forth so that's from
168what I recall um I'm more talking about like what because even if we had that conversation right there were still recommendations that were presented to us and I believe this was in that it was yes and I think that that what was lacking was a specific timeline uh and I will take responsibility for kind of being behind the eightball and some of this because you know transitioning and making sure that we're moving forward uh in a way that honors our process in our committee structure um to make sure that we're doing that feedback loop and we're making sure that we're engaging as many stakeholders we can uh to get some input um knowing that there's this this expectation that's kind of pushing it and I do I do appreciate app that and I do understand
169the frustration so I'm wondering is there a way or what the cost would be to meet somewhere in the middle like if we were to back pay from January I mean I'm curious what that looks like well and if I may add um I was actually gonna see if we could table this so I wanted to ask specific questions on budget what it looks like if we did you know that and give the information back to us and bring it up to the next board meeting so we have that budget numbers and that was one of the questions I was going to ask if we did do the back pay what does that look like because I know that we don't really have a system in place of who did what and who split what
170classes so if we tively try to do something what does that look like how much that's going to cost us and then I forgot the other question because I jumped the gun but um I I was going to propose that we table this for the next board meeting so we can get some of those questions answered and then we can make a more fiscally responsible decision in all parties just to clarify you're saying table all of this or just table the August to January part I would say table all of everything because I it it can just the way that my brain works I don't know and we can all decide August to January this is just informational the only thing we're voting on is to start the pilot in February so we don't want
171to delay that yeah if I and if I could make a suggestion yeah go ahead Mr Shapiro feel free to like reach this far and smack me across the face if I say something wrong I I I think I think the biggest challenge January and and um is that it you know I it was a surprise to me to find out that there was a site that had been tracking but we were unaware of that um it is my understanding and maybe some of the folks in the audience could help with nods of the head that is not universally true across the district so that so the the biggest challenge is the equity issue that it would create um I do believe and people will want to strangle me because this will create a work
172hardship on them but I do believe you know January 8th is so recent that we probably could backwards engineer that and there's absolutely no reason and I'm getting the face from Miss Shapiro so correct me I don't mind I I hope I've made it abundantly clear I don't mind being wrong but um I guess what I would say is I would want to vet the process um with the site leadership U and and probably run it through our Auditors to make sure that it is auditable oh good point um and that we could uh gather information like that what that should look like I want to get some guidance on that when you're saying that you're talking about back pay or back pay I'm talking about a back like a process to go back and
173gather information okay what should that look like and what does it need to have included with it to stand up for audit do we have the ability to pull that information working with our site leadership I was going to say like I as much as I think it's a valid discussion I think there's a lot of things like that that we can't even make a recommendation I know we're not voting but if not all schools have been tracking for the pilot we have a tracking system I would love to pay everybody back to August don't get me wrong I one from an equity perspective don't want to pay the teachers who split classes at one or two schools and not at others or five teachers at this school but miss two of them um and
174then also additionally if there wasn't a process in place like that's we don't we that could be sticky legally so there so there's an expression I love which is don't let the great be the enemy of the good right yes so um there is absolutely nothing preventing Miss Shapiro and Dr Lauren from looking into the ability of going back to any of that back pay you would not prevent that if you voted on moving forward with the February 1 pilot and I feel like we would be adding and I'm sure other people will be mad at me and there's always someone who's going to be mad at me but we have teachers out there that are splitting classes and I'd like to start getting them paid so I my personal recommendation would be to vote
175on the February 1 if you're if you're in favor of it we have we have the numbers and the statistics statistical data for that if we hold off too long yes we'll continue to collect the data but you know it it right that means people are waiting that additional period of time in order to get that payout and you know regardless of what happens with January 8th to February 1st or August to February 1st regardless of any of that I think it's important that we start compensating now and that we start gathering this data so we can get you a solid recommendation come like right around the corner where we're going to be needing to make recommendations about budget for next year yeah I think my request I didn't think it would necessarily involve tabling
176I think you know we obviously just talked all about areas for growth communication we've as a board and superintendent and leadership team understand the work that we're having to do to rebuild trust in this district and so I think that that's a big component in any time there's valid concerns like maybe and I'm just assuming the place that was tracking this is the same place where the complaint is coming from and so there was clearly some in in expectation that was misinterpreted and so I would hate for that to Fester into something that's unnecessary and so I would like for us to do the best we can to figure out how to address that yeah and one of the things I know we are doing as a practice now and others can correct me on
177this if I misspeak on it but the communication that goes out for me and confer is being compiled by Miss wasc so she comes to the end of the meetings to gather that from the group The Group reviews it she actually throws a draft into a chat and then that draft is reviewed by the members to make sure that everything in that draft is accurate so um so the beauty of that is that um everyone should have a common understanding of what the information is I will tell you as a human being who works with a lot of other human beings regardless of that fact there will be people who make claims that you know the information is different than what's you know on the black and white piece of paper and so I think
178it's really important for everyone involved in the process to make sure that they're part of that conversation at the end of the meeting they're ensuring that's what's reflected is accurate and that they're participating in that chat group to make sure that anything that's captured erroneously gets corrected before it's pushed out in the kraton connection you know at at the end of the day because that is is ultimately the public record that we have of what what's being recommended forward that and then the presentations and and the information Dr Lauren presented to you tonight came directly from what was presented by meet and confer as recommendations last year certain perfect any other questions or comments oh go ahead Miss SS so um my one question is about half day coverage yes um so are you going
179to do so like if a teacher leaves half day then are you going to take half of like the $80 and then do that okay yep that's an option on the forum for them to note that it's a half day coverage which is not the same as an early release I was going to say difference releas still a full sub right um and so just just for the people on the board that haven't experienced this um I think there are some great benefits to this um I think it creates value with people um and showing um you know that that they do deserve to have something when they take in extra students in their classroom um I've been lucky enough that I have a very small classroom this year so when my teammates are gone
180I take their whole class which I think also creates value because the teacher I mean the kids are getting an actual teacher that is um you know able to teach a subject and continue their learning on um and I think it also helps like our our problem with Subs um every district is going through sub shortages um especially after the pandemic when people are like peace out I'm done um so I think that's a benefit I think you've solved one of the deficits that I find in my district is that um how to capture the accuracy so I really like your Google forms I'm going to take that back to my team um because sometimes we rely on our secretaries to to to do all the work and then when they don't do it then
181we get upset and then it creates like a big chaos because some of us like in my district we haven't been paid like for all of our time and it might just be one or two schools because of that secretary so that creates chaos but I think you solved it with the Google form plenty of incentive to fill out a Google form yes yes and so um I I I just find it as a huge benefit I'm sorry that we can't like the back pay I think it would be a nightmare if everybody was doing it and it was Equitable yes I feel um bad I feel also that I totally understand um where they're coming from because as teachers we always have teacher friends in other districts and we know that other districts have
182been doing this um my districts have been doing it for the last three years and so I feel like we're behind everyone else and so I kind of understand that frustration because I feel like we should have been doing this a long time ago um but nevertheless those are just kind of my thoughts on those thank thank you Miss SS any other discussion or questions okay thank you so much for that presentation and um so if I read this as is it does not include the back pay yeah correct making sure so with this I move the governing board approve the pilot to provide additional compensation for emergency class split coverage from February 1st through May 23 3rd 2024 second all those in favor I I I and Madam president members of the board we
183you know Miss Shapiro will look into the feasibility of of other options um Dr Lauren will look into you know what do we have as far as recordkeeping and then we'll be able to bring back to the board you know if there's any feasibility of closing any of that Gap so thank you so much yeah thank you perfect that brings us to our next item which is 10A fiscal year 2425 budget projection and I will hand it over to Miss Shapiro Madame President board members and super an I am excited to present our initial budget figures to be used uh building the fiscal year 2425 proposed budget um this also is the process that allows us to calculate a dollar figure to take to our meet and confer which we will be doing tomorrow um
184evening I think we're ready for that presentation Russell somehow I get the best presentations I'm not sure that's planned but I'm excited about this one for being sarcastic not at all not even a little bit like if you guys knew me you don't I I very much goober over no numbers and I get very excited when I get into um a wonderful organization that has made very good decision making uh to plan for we're just gassing up Jay and I know no we're where I'm excited because I finally found someone geekier about these numbers don't get me going on account codes uh that's happy we need an exact session for that no not through an entire day with Trey before I was even on this this is a true story and you were hardcore in
185that session I don't like numbers so um I think I I did put a lot on this slide I apologize I probably should have cut this into pieces so that we can kind of go through and discuss a lot of this information has been presented to the board and to meet and confer in past sessions where I had a lot of information as opposed to Dollar figures so these are the dollar figures that come from some of those it that we've discussed in the past these are our inputs and uh decreases that would be going into our next budget year so if you'll take a look at that first item that's our fy2 24 adjustment for our 100th day ADM we have to project our enrollment our enrollment was projected very well um which means
186that when we do our budget Revision in may we are looking uh to go ahead and add back into our budget approximately $447,000 keep in mind these figures are preliminary and proposed um they are subject to change but these are numbers that I feel confident that um this is probably what it's going to be like unless something very extreme were to happen at the legislature which we would all be needing to deal with this is great um our thank you our um fy2 projected enrollment um we had discussed this before we're seeing a slight decline or I would say it's slowing down a little bit so we're still having declining enrollment it just isn't declining as quickly or rapidly as we've seen in the past I did make an adjustment in the budget number for
187that um a big factor when you're doing budget is you're going between two different data points so you're looking at enrollment which isn't how we're budgeted you have the ADM which is a a proportionate share of a students 100 days of membership they may have 20 days they may have a 100 days we get a factor of one if they have 100 days so there's a slightly different um calculation when you turn these into budget numbers and that's why I've put in there the 228 total weighted student count which is what would affect a budget um so with that declining enrollment I'm looking at a little bit at $1.1 million out of uh Less in our budget because of the declining enrollment we also have our 2% base support amount increase there which another good
188to the posit positive number then we're going to have to take a look at our expense adjustments we know that we're going to factor in something for inflation um right now it's tracking about 3.1% I'd like to tighten that up as we get closer to the proposed budget in June so that number can potentially change if inflation when I go and check the CPI numbers is uh increased I'm feeling pretty good with the 3.1 um again historically this is a process that I've used used for many years so I feel pretty comfortable in this um space some really good news um our minimum wage we not needing to make an adjustment in this next budget year because kraton has already brought the minimum wage base above minimum wage and we actually have a couple of
189Cycles we'll be get getting through before we have to worry about it since we're at $15 an hour and um projecting again it gets kind of projected with that CPI because that's how they base that calculation for the next increase iteration in January I'm anticipating it to be about 1480 again these are way out and as I get closer to those um dates uh those numbers will get tighter uh inflation to goods and services I've got at the 3.1 so that's an additional 195,000 coming out of our budget just for increased cost we also know that there is a utilities increase out there of 11.3% with APS um anticipating that around 200,000 um it's another one to kind of wait and see um throughout the year we do have where class sizes will get larger
190we need to um put out for another teacher or another staff member of some sort this is a very typical budgeting component which is a contingency fund for HR so that they can address those needs throughout the year I'm recommending to replenish that funding of um approximately $500,000 we also got um no I'm sorry I skipped past it because I my glasses on the medical cost increase was zero this year fantastic again a lot of great decision making from the administration prior to me getting here um we saw some uh good results moving from uh one program to our new program it did I believe cause a little bit of angst during that process and that turnover uh and it seems to be working very well and people have um been able to get the
191medical care that they need we had an asrs decrease of 0.2% I don't know why I just put it on there 5,000 to the good I know that that number never goes in our favor so I was just kind of excited it's usually you know taking more every year so that was interesting um through attrition again with that declining enrollment we will have natural attrition so that number goes back into our budget we have a couple of uh numbers here that are going to depend on some conversations that we have through the process and you'll see a little more of that in the Esser presentation will be happening right after this one where we have some existing positions that had been moved for funding purposes into Esser with the anticipation that those would move back
192in some of those are uho funded positions and that's the cost there some of those were Grant funded positions so the intent is to move those back into those grant funding sources if available we also had some new Esser created positions um specifically those contracted Subs uh there was an IT Help Desk position and a plant manager position um I have those coming back into the M budget there are some conversations going on with some additional position so that number potentially could change um as we go through the other presentation I know they'll be speaking to that we also have that budget balance carry forward which has um been targeted to be spent down and that was collected over those several years of Esser in order to prepare for this year um we also have
193some information that's coming out very loud and clear from the auditor General's office that fund balance uh fund balance management is something they're specifically going to be looking at in performance evaluations or performance audits so you want to make sure that you have a very um uh a clear and concise plan with your targeted spin down um and with the management of your fund balances so I will be bringing additional information in the future as I develop that plan for kraton and um uh provide that information to the board of how that plan will look like so when we're audited it'll be nice clean and transparent um that brings us down to the bottom which is a black number that's great it's in the plus that's two two million with a little bit of change
194and um if we can go to the next screen I'm so used to that number being read I'm just number is never not read um that's why I was so excited about this presentation so what that means is uh we're taking approximately $2 million of emo ongoing salary support to meet and confer tomorrow ongoing salary support are the dollars that would um uh be used to provide salary increases and could be ongoing so those would be percentage increases in salaries of whatever that looks like it could be um percentage increases of longevity um it'll be up to the meet and confer group to kind of make determinations on The Best utilizations of the those M ongoing salary supports based on the direction from the board the other U monies available for meet and confer this
195year is the 1.2 million of one-time funding that was uh Governor hobb's uh state aid adjustment that was made into this year uh that we've um G to that would have carried forward in our budget balance carry forward uh that we're going to pull out as a one-time it's just onetime monies so uh that would be the stiens retention things that are like one-time only cost it's not something that's going to be carried on into future ongoing monies we also have about 600,000 of onetime funding coming from those fund balance adjustments so about 1.8 in um onetime funding I went ahead and put um it's kind of like a menu so me and confer will make some determinations after their uh conversations and their interest and um so I give them the amounts of things
196so 1% salary cost which would be something that could be funded out of that ongoing salary support is $347,000 so however many percents they want to use out of that 2 million I believe it comes out to be about 5.7% if we just do the math but again if there's a an interest to put some of that towards longevity or to put that in different areas however that looks I just won't know so this is not to say what we are doing with those monies this is just to give some information of what a 1% would cost and M pero that 1% is for all staff that 1% is for all staff that would be funded from general fund so when I calculate that um I will say that I do include Grant funded positions
197because grants can't necessarily take on the increases that we bargain for um so we do need to calculate that into our number we do try to put those increases in the grants but if not we're not going to not give increases there so it would have to be supported from the general fund okay um also the cost of a $1,000 retention stien and those would be one-time funded dollars could be used in that area is um 874 th000 and that is based on the recent $5,000 stien that was just paid again just math thank you for that presentation board do we have any questions comments concerns hearing none the only one that I have is I I feel like you it's very nice to see this not being in the red um before I got
198on the board I would come to these budget meetings and I was like red everywhere what going on so it is really nice to see that so thank you for the information yeah it's almost a wash for the M basl budget adjustments so that's exciting and I will say that based on some of the conversations tonight I would have to bring in um when we're talking about uh the split compensation those dollars would you know uh could affect that two million so we'll start with that and and uh any effects to that um we would bring back to let you guys know what the final dollar figure was of what Mee and confer had um to negotiate with awesome thank you so much for that information all right um that brings us back to 10B
199and we do have a public comment for this so I will go ahead and call up Miss Ariel up here first to give us a public comment and then we can go into the presentation thank you board um Madam president uh my name is Ario Williams I'm teacher in the district um I would like to speak to a dis agenda item so the greatest asset of a school district is a students and teachers so today I'm here to ask you if you care teachers have been screaming into the void for years about what they need watching leadership jump through jump through hoops to find funing for cja at the expense of their teachers has been mind numbing teachers who once believed in cat and District are walking away and it feels like no one cares
200hearing teachers say I can no longer I no longer have the personality for teaching and creating School District my personality is too playful why can't our kids have teachers that are playful teachers spending hours of their personal time planning and prepping but nothing ever seems enough do you care if we call ourselves cgas will you jump through ho through the same Hoops to find the funding for smaller class sizes elit teachers who have become essential to providing quality EOD pullout and an additional two teachers on every site to provide reading intervention for students fourth through 8th grade 70% of the middle school students at Gateway are testing high risk for phonics if we start calling our fourth through eighth graders cjas will we find the funding to provide reading interventionist for them so there is
201hope after kadon so the teachers who once believed in kraton people like Tim no will continue to believe in Katen Esser funds are gone and CGA need to follow we want smaller class sit to make students behaviors more manageable we need academic support for struggling students we need a cell curriculum and time built into the day we need more adults in the building they can provide academic supports thank you Miss Ariel I'm going to keep you up here for a few seconds because I have a question and I don't know if the other board members have a question and this is why I appreciate you speaking to this item because we can have this honest dialogue back and forth um it in your professional opinion what have you noticed the CJ have done and have
202you noticed that since cjas have been on campus any behavior issues fixed gotten better um no for I only can speak to what I've seen um for example I have asked many times for our CGA to go into address bullying like Duke l daily do groups do something to address bullying and racism that happening and he has nothing's happen um it's just basically the kids run out of the classroom to go spend time in the cja office room um if you go in there kids are laying on the floor for example a first grader hit my one of my fourth graders in his private area and I went into the room and I saw him laying on the floor you know snacking on the iPad and I was like you know he just hit a
203kid in the private area yeah I know he had a rough morning I'm like yeah my kid did too but okay but I just I don't feel like we've seen a change in behavior in the past two years to justify cjas and I understand the purpose behind cjas when it was first built was they were going to provide professional development to teachers they were going to teach teachers how to do community circles they were going to help teachers implement social emotional learning and none of those things has ever happened when was the last time you guys had a community circle at the site that you're at what do you mean like um our principles sometimes leave one on Wednesdays where we all separate into two circles and they ask us a question and the teachers
204pass them around and we answer it if that's what you mean but nothing integrated with students no not really not that I've seen okay yeah of course and then I'm going to defer it to other board members if they have any questions I'm sorry but thank you so much for being bold and having this honest conversation with this because it is important and maybe this question can I just point out just I'm sorry just a housekeeping thing the last time we did this I don't know if you remember oh you weren't here that day Lori bird who isn't who was our replacement attorney for the night said we were we are not allowed to do this Q&A do you remember Hilda I was scolded and yelled at um and yelled at and yelled at by
205her because supposedly it's a violation of open meeting law so just I appreciate your if it's agendized even got it thank you for bringing that up Miss MC cheffrey I would just just stop and say I would rather have you know reading interventionist for fourth through eighth graders on a site and EIT teachers who can provide EOD pull out on every site ra if I had to pick over cja positions I like the idea of what it was the purpose behind the idea was behind I think it was great but I think there there's just so many bigger fires that needs to be put out first and a lot of that has to do with instruction and students having the ability to access the education in the classroom so a lot of their behavior could
206be stemming from the fact that they just cannot access the curriculum because either their reading is too low their writing too low their math is too low and I think we should probably try interventionist especially in that 48th band to see if we will have a decrease in Behavior if students start to feel more successful in the classroom thank you did you just want to my question wasn't really for her my question was a was just a question in general I suppose with c cja um are they are they teachers like or are they counselors like what's their background I guess I just want to know that was my question and if it's not appropriate have to answer you can tell me it's not appropriate but that's just a general question that yeah I just
207had that general question and Mr duban before you proceed um Miss Ariel thank you so much for bringing that information up I appreciate you coming up and speaking go ahead Mr dupin um the child Justice Advocates are um they're considered teachers on assignment so they are funded as as teachers they do work extra days Beyond a typical teacher contract so their scope is similar to say an instructional coach or an effective schools coach the credentials that they have vary depending on the role so some of them do have teachers certification some of them have a background in um like um like social emotional learning support or counseling I I believe only one of the people in that role actually has full um like a master's in social work or that kind of credential they're not
208counselors they are not social workers because they're not cred credentialed as such thank you all right and with that in the public comment um we will go ahead and turn it over to Dr dupin um for the presentation of this transition planning of sr3 funds as soon as I get on to the screen we'll get started that's loud I'm oh I don't think it's F if I use that in the courtroom I think you're fine don't have any shame okay well this evening we're going to share with you just an update on where we are with the SR funds in terms of the overall investment and then recommendations for the transition away from use of those Sr funds for key priorities whenever we talk about us or funds oh I want to point out really
209quickly I'm going to be supported in this conversation by Miss Shapiro and I want to introduce if you don't know uh Miss Jasmine hayatt Dominguez Jasmine would you mind coming up just take the podium Jasmine is a coordinator in our effective schools department and she's been really instrumental especially the last last year and a half in making sure that we're we're managing effectively our grant funds and she's been a huge support to miss Burkhart and the other members of that team so um we're we're bringing her forward this evening to assist us um in this conversation can I can I add to that she came in absolutely clutch when we ran a foul of delays at ad in order to get the $5,000 stien work through the system in time to get it paid and
210so um without meming we probably would not have managed to pull that off and it would have been a mutiny and well I would probably not be sitting here with you today but um and so I'm not sure whether I appreciate her for that or not I'm just teasing but I um I just wanted to take the moment because I think sometimes people don't know what people do in the district and they also don't know how critical they are to some of the important things that happen and um to me that our our staff really deserved and needed that $5,000 and um Miss Dominguez was one of the key people who made that happen that's really helpful that term effect of schools is pretty Broad and big well we were reflecting today as we get
211into this we manage Esser through certainly there's an intersection with our finance team our HR team um the payroll team but but a lot of the overall oversight happens through effective schools and it that team has been set up to manage the existing entitlement funds that we've relied on for many years and with the Esser funds it you know the way we kind of thought about it this morning was like you know the regular system was kind of like draining a bathtub when the Esser funds came in it was like trying to drain a lake with the same number of individuals the same kinds of systems and so some of the challenges we've encountered internally have been based on just that infrastructure so Jasmine in this role has been is an example of a change
212that was made to help move those funds along and her expertise has been uh very critical so we're grateful and thanks for being here tonight your re Ward is a board meeting do a good job and you come to the board meeting good evening so whenever we talk about Sr funds we always try to bring back to the original purpose that was established by the original Task Force at the you know at the outset of the availability of the funds and this is repeated information so I'll be brief um just the idea that we wanted to use the Monies to address much of what even was described in the public comment where we're looking for you know supporting empowering the community because at that time that was a huge huge issue um connecting with families
213and neighbors making sure that we're holistically nurturing mind body and spirit um reading was identified as a as a fundamental priority in making sure that all of our students had what they need to read fluently and inspiring our teachers to use the best best methods and the best resources so all the all the Investments all the work has has been intended to align toward this broad set of purposes as you know the SR funds came to us in actually four different buckets but we're currently in that sr3 period and we have until September 30th of this year to draw down the remaining funds and with that Jasmine's going to work her magic perfect uh good evening Madame President board members executive team so this is a a chart to represent where we're at with our
214current Esser expenditure um this is only for Esser 3 you'll see that there are um a really large portion of blue funds light blue and dark blue the light blue funds are um our current percent about 73% of our funds that are have been encumbered or expended which means that those are funds that we either have open purchase orders for or have already spent down in our total S3 allocation so remember that this allocation spans three years um and so it's any any time within that three-year period um the remaining funds the dark blue the 5.2 yep those are obligated which means that in our budget we have budgeted them for a specific purpose that aligns with um the plan set forth by our Task Force at the beginning of our s allocations those funds
215would only be changed if we went through an amendment process because they've currently already been approved by ad our last approval was in December the 15.4 and the 6.4 those are part of Lea set aside funds Esser has a requirement where 20% of our funds go to mitigating learning loss and so those funds have a specific purpose we have 15.4 that have been obligated toward you know items such as summer school or our elit program Etc things that specifically we are doing to mitigate the learning loss and the 6.4 are is the portion of it that's already been spent down so this is just a dollar amount because I think sometimes it's really helpful to see what does that translate to what portion of our 30 million allocation are we talking about so our again
216light blue that is the funds that have been already expended or encumbered at just over 22 million and I should say to you this is as of uh the approval of our Second Amendment which was in December and this also the blue also includes the second half of the ABS stien payout for the end of the year yeah that blue is our entire stien pay out which is about 9 million um so that's all been encumbered because we already have you know it's already set up in our system to go to all staff that will qualify uh both certified and classified the 1.5 is the remaining funds that have been obligated but not yet spent down so those funds have been approved by ad but are you know could be amended uh if there was
217a different purpose and the remaining you know comes out to just over six million is our uh Lea set aside so a portion 4 million has already has been set aside U as part of our obligated amount and the 1.9 gosh it is really hard to see right here and I have contacts uh but the 1.9 is what's already been expended did you want me to take that one sure um there had been a a request to kind of have an an overview of where those dollars are actually being expended um the total there of that 23 million on that prior slide is the light blue and the yellow so it's the portion uh that we've spent and encumbered this does not include anything obligated these are actual expenditures it's the same number on two
218different slides it broke this out into objects objects being the the thing that we purchase and so salaries and benefits you can see are taking up the largest portion of those dollars 88% um next is those purchase services and this you can kind of see the alignment of that um expenditure breakout does match a lot of the Esser language of um what we were prioritizing and and uh it did go into salaries and benefits because teachers are what make the biggest effect on students um and then we have some uh smaller areas of some instructional materials I know I believe those were Jasmine do you remember the instruction materials piece was that part of the so the 167 a big portion of that was for our sips program which is a supplemental a supplemental material
219we purchased to support our reading Intervention Program um we have currently 15 reading interventionist across all of our sites and we didn't have a common program for them all to implement so sips was purchased that's a big portion of what that is including also um like embedded coaching to make sure that the materials were being appropriately used I have a quick question the rating interventionist that you just talked about what grades do they target primarily K through three so we have nothing in place for the upper grades a few of the sites do uh like Flex their interventionist so for example if there is um you know because of the way the master course schedule is if there is an opportunity to have let's say this interventionist these classes are all at you know recess
220prep DA they might also go serve fourth grade let's say but um it's not intended to serve the the higher grades it's where possible Right the model is primarily for uh early literacy thank you of course and then the next slide so these are the same expenditures but we're detailing these by function objects and functions are part of an account code string um that's set to us in statute of uh we all as school districts have to use those similar account code strings I knew I could talk about account codes um it is a puzzle and a story it is amazing to me that you can have a string of numbers and know so much and this is another piece of it is a function so incredibly important uh classroom function 1,000 that means those
221are direct dollars into the classroom uh and you can see that that percentage is heavily weighted over there at the 43% direct student support that's another um function that's a 2100s I could go through all the numbers but um those are uh the the student support where that comes in direct contact with students uh I'm I'm so sorry because in Esser I don't have all of the backend knowledge of what is happening there in my mind when I talk about budgets I'm talking about nurses and um uh OTS and PTs and speech and things like that those tend to be those direct support areas in the grant so we that is where the CJ live it's also where the we have um specialist uh CGA specialist so some classified pair professionals who are also supporting
222in that capacity uh originally in the grant we had um assistant principles which I believe also kind of lived there in the in the student support bucket there's a variety and I could you know we could generate a list and I think actually on the slides coming up you'll get a a clear idea of what specific positions are are headed in there and then uh I have aor I apologize um clarification you said assistant principles are being paid out of essr funds sorry originally they were in Esser we we moved many positions into Esser to create capacity in our m&o and other budgets that's part of the carry forward that you saw on the previous presentation and I think it's important to note it didn't just generate that carry forward it so there was a
223decision that came forward from Mee and conf first several years ago to implement and I can't remember what the real name of it is I'll call it what everyone calls it the parody study we did not have adequate funds to implement that in one year we would have had to roll it out over four years rather than doing that we implemented a plan where we rolled it all out in a single year with support the the recommendation for meet and confer was to use Esser dollars to help support it Esser dollars were not eligible to directly support that pay increase so the way we did it is we took groups of positions that were eligible to be paid out of Esser and move them into Esser to create capacity in m to provide all of
224those rat es and it was it was a significant increase across most positions throughout our district um and attempted to do some correction of the uh compression although we were only able to solve about 15% of the compression it is also how we got those um we were the first district to get our minimum wage up to $15 an hour we funded that by moving those positions into Esser so they were never meant to live there they were kind of placed there it's kind of like when you have a balloon with ballast right so when you want to go up you have certain things you're throwing them overboard you know you're going to go back and collect them up later you're still going to have that weight but in order to be able to get
225that lift you've got to get them out of the balloon we move positions out of the balloon so that way we could create that lift of those raises okay that just makes sense and I just had that clarify question because it was my understanding that when we originally ran bonds the and principal and principal supposed to be be paying out of those bonds so that money should have already been living somewhere they are listed in the maintenance and operations override and so there is that is the primary funding source for our assistant principles our nurses Etc in this case you know we we are not a district that typically plays Shell Games with money but in order to be able to meet the needs and what so part of eser was also working with that
226pandemic relief group that was actually specified in sr3 that you needed to have certain people at the table in order to make decisions about those funds the combination of that group and meet and confer had a very clear message of prioritizing some of those things that we were doing with compensation and there was no way to get there other than saying what can we move into Esser in order to be able to support those priorities thank you um and then also uh teach support another big chunk went to um that piece and then the rest is uh much smaller percentages but again I think the takeaway there was that the majority of these monies have been spent on salaries and benefits and the majority of these monies have gone directly into the classroom which we
227appreciate and those are just numbers straight out numbers simple so moving forward and knowing that these funds are going away at the end of September um you know we we've really taken a hard look at what the continuing priorities are again much of what was expressed in the public comment this evening um social emotional learning and behavioral support stands high as a clear and present need um and that comes out of the board committee that's working the assistant principal's group much of the teacher feedback that's received it's evident that that is really a high priority in addition to that the academic achievement gains that are that are prioritized in our student outcomes focused governance work with very targeted populations and as well as what the Strategic plan calls out in terms of growth goals for
228everybody and the 10% increases that we're working hard to achieve we've begun to make equity and Justice and advocacy progress that clearly is not something that we have concluded um my only one of the thoughts I was having while we were going over the equim metrics data is I wish we had it from you know like two years ago it's so hard to look at it now and see it in that yellow and and think of all the things that we have yet to do but we don't really have something that we can say well what did it look like before we started this work over the last two years what did we what did it look like before we used Sesser funds to partner with Wade and Benji what did it look like before
229child Justice Advocates and I don't really have a good data set to show that what we have now is something that says hey you know we're a little bit beyond where peer peers are across the country but it's hard to make a direct correlation so but we know that that priority remains family and Community Services through our through our Family Resource Center and our um Community Education team remain a high priority technology for learning before the pandemic we weren't quite yet one to one for all students now we've got technology all over the district in every child's hand and and it it requires a tremendous amount of um infrastructure support not to mention the professional development associated with using those tools effectively and then oversight and continuity of services these these resources still have to
230be managed they have to be accounted for there's completion reports that have to be done there's just a lot associated with using the money and then showing how the money was used so what we want to talk about now is thinking specifically about positions um the kind of the two buckets of positions that exist within Esser at the present time um there are there remain positions in Esser that were that did exist prior to the pandemic but they were moved into Esser to create capacity and and carry forward in ml so much like what Jay described oh sorry no it's okay um so some of those positions still exist they haven't yet been moved out um and then there were positions that were created new in response to the pandemic based need so there two
231kinds of positions that remain in Esser so what we want to share with you tonight are three recommended sets of action steps based on those categories of of positions um the first action step is to move the remaining positions that existed prior to the pandemic back into their original funding source so Vanessa Miss Shapiro referenced several of those in her M&L budget update um so the list is here we've gone through we've combed through um everything in order to ensure that those positions are identified to move back into their original funding source which can either be M some of them existed in our in our title entitlement grants that we had before so we get Title One title two title three title four which is outside the prview of this particular conversation but we could
232certainly bring additional information back about those um because they're significantly smaller than Esser and so what we're now trying to do is get go from the pond back to the bathtub but not the same way we were before but with the right or the tools and the strategies that are going to impact those those existing priorities go ahead Miss Michaela um are all positions that existed prior to the pandemic returning back to their original funding source that is the that is the intent of the recommendation yes um one of the questions I mean one of the things that I think would help me understand this a little bit better too and I don't know how my other colleagues feel curriculum coordinator what does that look like how much is that money how much is it
233and how much of it is going to be starting being taken out you know how much are we paying Rec curly curriculum coordinators what what is the price of the the two so I I only included in the budgeting process any of those positions that were previously funded out of memo um so these were previously these are basically like the safe positions that we were already paying for these before Sr funds kicked in exactly and most of these I would say most of these positions were paid out of a grant funding source so I don't necessarily have or I have obviously I have the cost of all of them the only dollars that I grabb to pull into the budget process were the ones that were going to that were in M before and are
234going back into m um if we were are do we have a safeguard uh that these will be covered by those grants or those We believe We do have capacity to address these positions what I what we can do we can absolutely give you dollar I can't do it off the top but right give you dollar figures associated with each of these positions that's relatively easy to do um we are actually in the process at at this week of going through all the existing federal grants that we have and evaluating the capacity of those grants to accommodate these recommendations so that that is absolutely work that's happening in fact it's happening tomorrow and Thursday and until it's done got it thank you uh a couple of these positions too there like you'll notice the 4.2
235teacher on assignment instructional coach there are some things associated with um addressing one of our schools that was in very comprehensive School Improvement you'll recall a couple years ago we actually had a school that was in f- status and so it needed a little bit of additional support um kraton Virtual Academy has a portion of an instructional coach and a portion of some U well that's what it is a portion of an instructional coach so the rest of that instructional coach is paid out of regular Title One funds so that's why some of those numbers look a little strange so then these are the this is the list of positions that are being recommended to sustain um based on available alternative funding sources so either the additional capacity that exists now in M or additional
236capacity that exists in Grants due to carry forward um so the contract Subs which we address those had high impact high value uh and are perceived to be very effective the effective schools coordinator um I can speak to that directly because that's Jasmine um but the continuation of that role is is essential to making sure that that department runs well there's also um the child Justice and advocacy programming is in there the you know the thinking around that and I recognize that it's a controversial role what we've done in our data collection has revealed that the perceived value of the child Justice advocacy role is is is appears to be very Personnel dependent so the more and I would say that that's true likely with anybody on that any role on that list the perception
237of the value directly correlates to the experience we have with the people in that role so there are there's that's why the little asterisk at the bottom indicates that everything we would put here has to would have to to some degree be realigned in order to fit within an existing title one Grant or within an existing Federal grant um if we're using federal funds so the best example I can give you is with title one right now or even Esser it's really hard to get anything approved that speaks directly to social emotional learning because it's just such a hot button politic politicized weaponized body of work so will'll need to be able to get whatever this is ultimately through the grant approval process so we're looking at systematizing the work of the child Justice advocates
238in a way that draws on things like executive function um peer-to-peer relationships and um communication all of those fall under the umbrella of culturally practice they fall under the umbrella of equity and inclusion but they they have the right label that match the what is likely to be possibly funded so just to clarify some of these positions they might stay the same in name but the roles and responsibilities and expectations of them might have to be changed due to sorry to step on your the funding that they're coming out of essentially I would say yes and the like some of the names might even have to change if we can't get them through a grant approval process but the intent and again I'll go back to child Justice and advocacy because it's such a top
239it's it's so present um the intent there was to create a role that could support the intersection of social emotional learning behavioral support and Equity so we tried to create a a different concept and way to frame that body of work as it would be needed to be implemented in schools to improve outcomes for children and to support teachers there's lots of ways we can I think talk about that without losing the intent I don't know that those terms will make it through Grant approval at this time do you do we currently have um a full service Community Schools Grant through the federal government or no we do not I think that's one to look into as something that would probably not that would probably be encompassing of what you're discussing I think I mean
240it's like wraparound Services it was during the um Obama administration obviously went away is back now in the Biden Administration um full service Community Schools Grant thank you well that's a whole other um element to this conversation is seeking alternative options for funding sources which is which is important though and that's the kind of feedback and ideas that we're looking for I have more at the end of this presentation yeah and Dr dupin just to add real quick since we're talking about the sustain uh um um positions I think what would be helpful for us too especially since a child Justice advocacy um positions are in here effective schools coordinator I'm not really sure what that role is if we can get information on the last two years what these positions have done how they've
241progressed have we seen any progress is there any data attached that you know what we originally attended these positions for have actually done the outcome that we expected them to have just because I have a hard time voting yes let's sustain this positions where I'm not even sure what an effect a schools coordinator does or what their role is or what they have done in the last two years that this position has been created so if we can get a little bit more information on specifically the the um positions that we want to try to sustain is how they've what outcomes do we have from those positions yes absolutely we might want to hear from the teachers as well on their perspective on it as well because I feel like sometimes we might not get
242the true picture without their their voice as well is what they because sometimes like as a teacher I the district may have a different standpoint from what I actually see happening within my school um and so it could be a different perspective so that might be like some good data to bring back as well not just and I'll defer that to our cabinet to figure out how to make that happen I think that too helps because I know as you were mentioning earlier we don't have as much as far as the numerical numerical data right um for specific correlations but there are ways we can get feedback from teachers I think it also helps in providing guidance if some of these positions might need to change kind of what they look like in the daytoday
243maybe that feedback not just on is this position valuable and having the impact it is but also okay in areas where you're still seeing gaps maybe if we're reframing some of these positions the feedback from teachers could help guide that as well I think that's valuable I think the other thing that it would be helpful for us to provide is um sort of what are the other funding opportunities and what are um what are the intentions with the position so um I'll use the cjas as an example there are a number of grants that are available out there that those positions are eligible for um you know we heard advocacy for reading interventionists we'd love to find a bunch of extra funding sources for those reading interventionists but they they don't fit into things like
244um the the some of the federal safety grants and and some of those pieces they're very specific about what you can use those dollars for um we are just as concerned about the effect Ness of those positions and what we've gotten out of them over the last two years as the people that you've heard speak today but we're also working from a fairly large data set that tells us that one of the number one concerns from our teachers is behavior so to eliminate the position if it's not effective is fine but we can't give up on finding solutions to these Behavior challenges and one of the things that we've come to realize is we really need a program and we have had the opportunity in some of the conferences that we've attended to see neighboring
245school districts using programs that are quite effective and so we we want our committee that's looking into that to look at those programs the concern and the challenge that we have is let's say we selected we went to one of the neighbor districts and it's like oh my goodness this is the answer to everything um if we don't restructure a position like that to support the implementation of that program then all of that burden falls on principles and teachers and what we're really fundamentally trying to do is not put more burden on those individuals so I'm not advocating specifically for that position um and if it if it quacks like a duck and it walks like a duck then it's a duck so you know if we end up in a position where we have
246a funding source to retain something similar to that and we use it in a different way you know what I would ask people to please do is watch watch whatever this creature is and then if it quacks like a duck and Walks Like A Duck all of our doors are open tell us it's walking like a duck and quacking like a duck but if it Soares like an eagle and it's actually making an impact then let's not just throw it out because I think moving forward we need to be intentional and we can do more like I I know I worked in high schools I was in wraparound Services I worked in programs where all we did was te two and tier three interventions and pulled kids out of classrooms and did home visits and
247like it was just like hard work every day and we had to keep data we had to be able to present why we were so valuable on the campuses we were at and earn my salary like I had to earn my salary every year I was hosting Grant people and walking them around and being like this is what we've been doing here's all of the results I've gotten um and and I ran a pro I developed and then ran a program at three different high schools in Portland because of the success I was able to show through data now I know so often times it's really hard to quantify some of those successes in in this realm but there's a way to do it but you got to have to plan it ahead of time
248and be keeping that data because then we're in this position where we don't have anything to really measure things with right again then you have this this like issue of individuals in the positions right obviously there's going to be issues with what kind of quality you're getting and P and how that all works out but you know um I mean I could just go on and on about this I I think that obviously there is a need for this I would hate to see all of that fall back on tier two and tier like the tier two and tier three things can't just be dumped on principles and vice principles and whoever um and if this isn't working correctly or people are just like slacking like that's not cool either so we have to figure
249it out and figure it out fast we don't have time time to be wasting to figure out is this working and I understand the need to like take our time and evaluate I there just has to be a sense of urgency with that because I would hate for us to continue to waste time and hear that that this things are not being implemented in the ways that they're supposed to be I would love to see some data moving forward if we were to continue to keep this program for the next year to like make it very clear that this is what our expectations are to see what happens from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year I don't know what those metrics look like what those measurables would be
250maybe they can tell us or maybe teachers and staff and principals can tell us but I think there's something there that has to be shown if then there's a long-term conversation um I know I I just mentioned that Grant I don't know if we get any 21st century dollars um we do do some schools like I've said before you know in in my and I I I know I'm not the end I'll be all of this but like I saw how we could integrate being we my my program was existing we also integrated becoming an americore Vista site into that we integrated BSW and mssw interns into that so they weren't like because you can't replace obviously with the Vista you can't replace existing positions but there's so many ways to leverage resources and make
251this work um and and integrate that and then also still have those Partnerships with the Community Partners that we already have in the schools to kind of have things working cohesively um and I I know that some of that's happening to some extent it's just there's not a lot to show for it in terms of data is what I'm trying to say and so it's hard to hear that not see any data and then decide trying to have to decide well what are we going to prioritize when we don't don't know what value to place on things yeah and and I think I think something that's important to clarify so um this team's been working on this for seven months now yeah we have identified that when we don't have strong data sets to bring
252it back but we have the anecdotal data like what was shared with you tonight we know the program is not universally effective so we're not coming to you saying this isn't as effective as we'd like it to be we'd like to continue it what we're coming to you and saying is what we're doing isn't working the way we want it to work but we can't just say let's just eliminate those FTE and say good luck teachers right we we need to fix it and we need to make it work and so it is my expectation and I think this team's expectation that we should be looking at everything with data we've implemented a new sips program for reading intervention how effective is our reading intervention we should know that if it's effective we should double
253down on it if it's ineffective we need to change up what we're doing with reading intervention if we bring it if we bring into play reading or math intervention you know at that 4 through eight level we should be tracking are we getting results ads from it or not so we're you know we're on a process we're on a pathway to student outcomes Focus governance the goal of the team is to be able to track all of this and have it be accountable but I can't my challenge is I you know I'm hearing a lot of people's frustrations from prior years and I yes I was here and and I was in at many times as frustrated as people you're hearing share but I can't go back to the past and change the way things
254were done ear where we're implemented the only thing we can do is make certain that we're bringing data forward as we move forward it's why you saw the equim metrics data toight you know we're trying to become very data informed in what we're doing we are blessed and fortunate to have people like um Dr pombo with us now who are teaching datawise to our our leadership teams at our sites and we're Drilling in on student data in ways that I mean I don't the people in the audience could tell you better than me but I don't think we've drilled down in that way for more than a decade so um none of this is going to happen overnight and so if people are frustrated because we're seven months in and it all hasn't magically been
255transformed what I would say is look to the changes that are being made incrementally those will have an impact over the long term and and we can't you know some of these things that are water under the bridge we've got no way to go and go back and fix what happened but I also don't want to just give up and say oh well I guess we can't affect student Behavior good luck I hope I hope things work out in your class I 100% agree with the comments that we heard tonight that first best instruction is an effective Behavior strategy every child in every classroom is engaged all the time what I'd like to see them engaged in is the instruction if they are not engaged in the instruction they will be engaged in something else
256and you'll and you'll end up with incidents like the incidents we heard shared with us tonight so it is definitely a key factor in what we're doing but I don't think we C when I talk to our neighbors and I look at these programs that they've implemented they're having the same problems we're having they have much one of those districts I worked for in the past I helped Implement some of the the um strong first tier instruction in that District they are strong in that area already they are still dealing with behavior problems implementing these programs they're putting staff Behind these programs and they're starting to see improvements in some of those Behavior challenges so I just don't want to give up on trying to fix the problem because what was implemented hasn't been as
257effective universally across the board as we wanted it to be and I apologize if I'm speaking in I also don't want to see a divisiveness between like we like a one or the other y thing like we need reading interventionists and we need people who are providing these supports to we need both yes it has to be a multipronged approach and that's why I brought up like the clarification earlier like we can we can be renaming these position we can be reframing them even if the name is the same because I agree I don't want to get rid of FTE if we don't have to especially because that does fall directly back on our principles on our APS and it also falls back on every teacher who is dealing with that and feeling like they're
258not as supported because there's one or two less humans on the campus to support them regardless of what their title is um but yes moving forward because we are not Time Travelers making sure that we have some data because there are going to be difficult decisions and at the heart of all this like we're looking at titles these are humans so we also need to keep that in mind um I don't know if I'm jumping the gun but I'm looking at the conclud and going back to the sofg framework that we're taking right and kind of bringing up Miss Ariel's point is that I understand everything however for example conclude crayon Virtual Academy office manager conclude principal at crayon Virtual Academy um I'm not sure why in these slides in the bottom where it says
259priority I remember our online school being one of our priorities and before but it's not in here I must have seen it some on another slide or maybe I'm jumping the head to next in the append okay um but what I'm seeing um here is that um we have we may not have had data on the behavior issues but what we are hearing still is that for the past two years whatever stuff we have implemented hasn't really been working we're still having the same behavior issues but here we have data that shows our student outcomes aren't where they're supposed to be and whether that was an oversight on the board or administration of we should have funded our Online Academy a little bit better or not we're so quickly to conclude that when we have
26032 students that are basically going to be left with oh this is it whatever um and that's I feel personally what has gotten us to the data points that we have right now that we're always leaving it up to like oh well we didn't do our job well enough or we weren't stewards of our money so now we're in this position let's oh well let's let's move on to the next and from the points and from the feedback I'm getting from these slides that's what it's seeming to me as we're prioritizing um people's position over the students and if for the past few years we've had certain positions that till this day we have no data or we have no concrete evidence that it has implemented or worked in a certain way then we need
261to to miss skips and McLean's point is we need to act fast because our students are suffering from it especially those 32 online students and I know that's a different um kind of conversation but it's it's just daunting to me to see that we're so quick to get rid of um you know a system that has 32 kids that are going to be left with no other options but we're willing to keep other jobs that maybe in the two years from what I've heard we don't really have any concrete data of behaviors increasing because of these positions and that's about if I read correctly that's about 8 nine 10 they have assistants they have a universal coach and eight that's like about 12 positions just for one um I know the yes stewardship and maybe
262we haven't really talked about that the work that corwell um and way did that's a huge implementation of creating that positive behavior culture so maybe we emphasized on that I also know that we have one um specific school right now that's operating almost at a 500 school capacity without an assistant principal while all the other schools have an assistant principal too so there's a lot of stuff that we really need to start focusing on and making sure that our budget is aligning to what we're saying if we want to bring up these student outcomes then maybe we should focus on rating intervention we have nothing higher math one of our you know goals is to make sure that our eighth grade students can pass math we have no intervention in math so there's a lot
263of stuff that we do have to talk about and I think we do have an urgency and it's not well let's continue to see if this works we've had the two years if the data is not there then we're going to have to start making some difficult decisions it is what it is and I just want to I just want to correct something that that I'm concerned might be a misunderstanding here this shows the office manager and the principal for the kraton Virtual Academy as reductions that is not intended to be that we're closing that program out it's just that a principal to support 31 students is not a full-time position and an office manager to support 31 students is not a full-time position so um originally and I know we're a little behind the
264eightball with bringing back information to you on on the possibilities for future Virtual Academy but when we get to that presentation and I believe it might have been included in the information in the last board update part of what's built into the cost models for each of the options is a percentage of a principal and a percentage of an office manager and so they're they're backed out as full positions here because they're coming out of the Esser funding but if we maintain the the ongoing programmatic element of the Virtual Academy we would then have to budget in that I don't know if it was a02 or a three for a principal and an office manager and we're not going to get a point two or a point three so we're going to need to look
265at where do we have other things that are happening in the district that don't require 1.0 and combine some things together and there may be some synergies in combining say a a smaller School principal with that person also having oversight for that Virtual Academy so there there may be a way to accomplish that where the smaller school is okay with a point8 and that person's always physically on grounds is okay with the point8 office manager and that person's always physically on grounds but 20% of the time they're helping to support that Virtual Academy so I just I just don't want to create a misconception that this is assuming closing the Virtual Academy those conversations have not happened yet okay thank you for that clarification can I get clarification on just because it's a term that
266can be used very broadly the 13 instructional Specialists yes so when we did the literacy intensification role one of the components of that role was a par professional position so at the present time there are 13 pair of professional positions that exist across the district that are deployed to support a variety of of purposes some of them do indeed work within the reading classroom to lower group size some of them do other things they they exist to fulfill a variety of par professional roles across the campus so it was part of the literacy intensification priority so and essentially it's not that we wouldn't have PA pros at all this is just the 13 additional ones that we created to provide additional support that is correct okay and there may be further conversations about these as
267we look for ways to sustain them because we had you know we've had conversations in in Leadership Council and some other spaces there was I believe this was one of the positions there was strong advocacy for so it is we it's not like we're ignoring the feedback we're getting this is where we're at at this moment in time we we're trying to figure out how do how do we effectively absorb that feedback the challenge always becomes and and this is the challenge I had to throw out there for people if we want to keep this then what are we giving up instead right when you have a household budget and you decide you want want to add another streaming service does that mean you're giving up some Starbucks or a different streaming service or you're
268not eating out one night a week so you know it's the same thing when you deal with the school budget if you want to have 13 instructional Specialists that you hold on to that the funding source has gone away what else is it that we feel like we would like to give up in order to support and also just to add um a quick side note is that we are losing some staff due to these Sr funds I know that we just recently lost a great um parent Le on to our neighboring District which I'm excited for them but we really do need to act on this because um we have certain employees that are starting to get scared and I would hate to be in a position where we're doing this last minute too
269and they don't know I do not like I would hate it if I didn't know if I was going to have a job tomorrow or the next month or whatever so we really want to be cautious of that too before we start losing more staff because of the unsureness of what's going on we need to be very proactive I mean yes and not reactive I said that correctly with that um Mr man I'm I agree with you I think you know yes if if Specialists are a priority then there is something else has to be given up so my ask would be only because as a principal I've been in these conversations for six months where my district has come with a plan based on the numbers based on what you know was created as
270as her positions and as principles we've all come back and said no these are non-negotiables these are priorities and yes I am willing for my site and it's varied at different sites you know at my site we can do with one less of this um so I just ask that that is the principal's feedback is taken very seriously and that those conversations are happening very frequently especially right now um as we move forward into making these decisions because no offense to our district level cabinet but at the site we we see things that are prioritized differently and it doesn't have I bring up that it's different it can be different in each site too because that's important it does make it a little Messier but it's important that each site has the priorities for what
271they need and we're working well what yeah and with ultimately what the students are going to need and that we stay away from you know what's going to keep us safe but what's going to be the better outcome for these students and I would yes and that to say as we work through this process one of the things that we're getting triangulated feedback around is the idea that there does need to be consistency so I'll revisit the child Justice advocates for example some of I think what we're hearing is based on different approaches to implementation and support So when Mr man's talking about programmatic alignment or implementing a program that whether it's reading intervention or child Justice and advocacy or tier one instruction there need to be some common elements elements that are just to
272you know for that non-negotiable piece and recognizing each campus does have really interesting and delightful challenges so we're trying to to balance those pieces so this is our timeline just sorry I just wanted one more clarification on the last one um the last bullet like what does that mean okay so this speaks to you know at any given time we have a number of vacancies and we have people right now to president koo's Point people are making decisions about what they're going to do for next year so we anticipate the ability to absorb all these positions into other existing vacancies it may not be the exact same role I'll use the intensification class size reduction and flex teachers there's 15 positions we typically hire 65 to 80 or more teachers in any given year so
273the ability to find um um assign roles for these individuals is is highly likely without anybody losing their their job okay so the last bullet doesn't mean we'd be removing positions that might increase class sizes because class size is a conversation that'll be happening at meet and confer so at this moment in time our current class size ratio is 27.5 to one that remains unless we get a different recommendation from me and conf just when I read the bullet it to me it sounded like we have 15 positions that were meant to reduce class sizes and if we get rid of them they'll go back up and I I think I misunderstood your question because the when we started with the literacy intensification priority we kind of rolled out Literacy intensification for K5 and then
274an El support role for 68 that was the initial intent and then what happened was the need was actually around like needing to provide some of that school level flexibility and some buildings just really needed to reduce class size so they so we added flexibility to allow the principles to use those positions in different ways so some did do class size reduction some stayed with that original model of literacy intensification and then the flex position was a you know kind of a way to fill gaps and holes and or create new kinds of programming so that's an an example of how fun priority turned into three different types of implementation and in actual practice the majority of these individuals correct me if I'm wrong gentlemen but the majority of these individuals ended up being plugged
275into V position vacancies so it wasn't necessarily that you know there's 15 extra teachers it wasn't necessarily that each of the eight schools had two extra teachers they had these two people hired for these positions but then they had two holes that didn't get filled so these individuals filled those two holes so moving forward this is the intended timeline that we have in place and this may need to adjust based on our conversation this evening um tomorrow's meet and confer the same conversation is going to be part of that uh interest based negotiation discussion and then we're looking at being able to Pro to on the 13th provide preliminary Staffing allocations to the sites and to the principles in particular and what that is is your list of how many teachers you're going to get
276next year based on a projected enrollment and then with that then you kind of know you can start knowing where you can where people can slot into from that list on the slide prior and then also factoring into this is the is the idea that we're opening Kennedy School next year so back to that slide people who may not have an Esser funded position we're opening a whole new building where there will be vacancies that we anticipate staff will be able to move into um and then moving forward with a goal of issuing contracts by March February 23d so it's a it's a closed timeline yeah and and and to to your comment about like how does this timeline align um within the last six or seven years in Arizona because of the teacher shortage
277districts have moved up when they do their contracts over and over again so it used to be normal to do contracts in like March April time frame like I remember you know in the early 2000s we did most contracts in April it is more common place now when when I talk to my peers like several of our neighbors have that same February 20th 23rd date so that is everything's kind of moved up it's kind of like when people started competing for kindergarteners used to be kindergarteners had all their info sessions in March now people are doing it as early as December most people do it in January or February and it's just a lot of that also has been affected by the school year moving back into August to accommodate the testing window so so
278if if I can summarize just some of the feedback and takeaways for the team in the next two weeks what I heard was a desire to get more information about what those positions cost any of the impact data that we may have it sounds like the greatest interest is really around the child Justice and advocacy role um including teacher perspectives might say with that the impact of some of those instructional Specialists was their significant positive impact got it I think the impact of all of it is important and then framing that I and please tell me if I'm on the right track kind of framing it into some structure you know given the capacity of our existing grants how much of that could actually be sustained because like our title Title One budget for example
279is we anticipated it's going to be somewhere around you know three and a half million dollars I'm being optimist so you know you're going from 32 million down to three that's that's the scope of the of the of the challenge so is does that sound accurate for me it does I don't know if anybody else has any other questions comments feedback sounds accurate and I know it's sounds weird but moving forward even if it's a pain in the butt but if it means we can have the positions that we need I mean even I've been in positions before where we've had to like almost like billables you know as the employee explain what work we did that would fit into what Grant I mean if it has to come to that it has to come
280to that so that we can make things work as a puzzle but I think that's an a thing that could be done as long as people are trained correctly especially with the wound Services I think I think we do some of that now with time and effort logs is I think the current parlament that's used for it so that's correct for then for the again going back to the fact these are humans for the notice of position discontinuation um One have any of those conversations started informally and then two were all of those positions were all of those humans told when they were hired explicitly that it might very much might be temporary so I'm gonna I'm going to say based on our expectations yes and yes there you know everybody who was hired into
281an Sesser funded position the the direction at the time was to ensure that they were aware that these were positions funded with one-time dollars onetime funds is how we talked about it I think where it might be a little shaky is with like those literacy intensification features if they're filling a regular third or a fourth or an eighth grade class it is possible that they may not even know that that the accounting behind their role is tied to Esser so I would say that's the one area where it's that's why I asked because I've seen that happening in other districts where people were moved into Esser who had been with the district and were not aware that they were moved into Esser but but what I will say is for for most of those individuals
282if you were moved into a third or fourth or fifth grade position even though the position you were originally hired into was funded out of Esser and is going away fourth or fifth grade position still exists right so you know it's not like there's a line of teachers waiting to come in and take that job away from that person so you know I I don't know you know the extent to which that's going to have an impact on those individuals and what we really need to figure out very quickly is you know how do we how do we find which groups maybe don't have Clarity and make sure that we provide that Clarity to those groups and the only other question or feedback I have is that a February 20th is the notification of position
283discontinuation but our board meeting is that day isn't that a premature um a premature date if you haven't even heard final feedback from the board I think it is that's one of the adjustments that we could could make yeah if you can just do the discontinuation of the posting of notifications until you have that conversation with us after the 20th so you guys have the feedback of what the board is thinking one of the things that we had talked about that in terms of procedure is it's not just like you know a letter that says here your position is no longer continuing it would be intent is that it's a conversation so next week we're having a principal meeting to talk about you know like to provide a list like here are the positions that
284exist on your campus that are tied to Esser so they can look at it and make sure that they have that accurate understanding and begin to then prepare what those conversations might look like so it's not just a because the approach is going to be different for different kinds of positions future it's just a matter of hey you know the the accounting behind your position is different now but here's the thinking next year have this same job exists it's going to be different funding source but it still exists um some cases the the funding for the current positions going away but here are a list of positions we anticipate being vacant that you were qualified for that you could apply for in the transfer process okay I mean it says finalize ction process for principal
285at Kennedy School on the 20th does that that doesn't mean the board is voting on it that day we're working very hard to bring to you a recommendation for that role on February okay we have anticip we are working on interviews for next week okay at a robust pool of candidates and a robust interview team and a robust interview team and we have a zalot testing happening right now which is sort of colliding getting all that input into the decision but our objective is to bring a recommendation that night I would just say if the position discon continuation notification is delayed at all it needs to be delayed very minimally um yeah like two days or three days I'm just saying until we have our feedback and you know there's a way of having some
286informal conversations you know from Principal to staff member and things because and I do think that a lot of those informal conversations have been having what I can't guarantee is that they've had that they've occurred for everyone or that we've reached all but this has been coming for three years and we're kind of just at that point where it's painful and but it's but it's present and okay well do we have any other questions comments perfect I want to thank everybody I know this is a really hard conversation but just know that first and foremost we're putting our students first and our money and our resources needs to really put into the kids so um just keep that in mind as we're having these conversations um and with that said that brings us to Future
287agenda items do we have any future agenda items I have um a couple if we can do a family resource update I would love to hear from our Family Resource Center have them present talk about the awesome things they're doing our Community Education as well at s point and um oh and I would like to put Bond conversation to have a bond conversation at some point that one may need a study session so oh yeah and yeah a study session for the bond yes and you just made Vanessa very happy been working hard for that study session awesome just flagging the one that I put on opening campuses after I'm looking at all the other ones other than the one for the update for CVA in March I think mine probably has some budget implications
288that we should consider before like if we could get some information so that maybe we could try to see what that would look like and then I thought it was my understanding to that the sorry go ahead and finish that I sorry I was done oh yeah um and it was my understanding that the future Craton viritual Academy needs to be put on the next board meeting just because we've been pushing that so so much we're trying for that March meeting we just need to confirm the availability the presenters so it'll either be that one or the following one depending on presenter ability okay um this has been on the board for two to three months is there a reason why we haven't reached out to them in the last two to three months to
289make sure they could be here for the 20th I thought we had recent conversations okay um I think that needs to be ASAP but we'll have the discussion in our 101 okay anything else all right I move the governing board adjourn all those in favor when noes thank you everybody for coming I got