November 14, 2023, Study Session and Governing Board Meeting

001for d when hello thank you thank you so much for everybody for being so patient I was having technical difficulties but we are all here and we're going to go ahead and get started um Russell do we have Miss MC cheffrey online Okay so we have Miss MC cheffrey present Miss Gibson mcen myself miss melb and miss SS and we're going to go ahead and get started with the special board meeting study session regarding our student outcomes focused governance work and our board goals and I'm GNA go ahead and turn it over to Mr Man so we can go ahead and get started thank you so much Madam president members of the board um we're very fortunate to have Dr CTO Ramos with us this evening to continue the work that we did want to

002say it was two weeks ago we had a lovely Friday evening together followed by some time on Saturday um and one of the things that the board practiced on Saturday was how to establish smart goals for the board goals for the district and so our work here tonight is to establish those governing board goals um we we have some tool sets around the room we'll have handouts for you with data I know we've sent it out via PDF to you we've got some large charts on the wall that we'll take advantage of we have um Dr dupin um Dr Lauren Dr Pomo um and Tyson Meyers with us uh to provide some additional support with any questions about the data and I think we've got all the right people in the room to do the

003work this evening and you know the hope is if we're able to establish those goals this evening then prior to the December 12th governing board meeting we will have another study session to work on the board's guard rails for the superintendent um and if for any reason we're not able to complete our work by the start of our board meeting tonight at 6:30 then that work I would assume would spill over to December 12th and we would work to complete that and then move on to guard rails so with that I would like to turn it over to an even better man than J man um to kind of guide us in our work this evening well good evening or good afternoon everyone good to be with you again how about we just jump right

004in meaning that um we've got data on the walls uh that your leadership team has put together uh and as you mentioned hopefully you've got your your packets with you as well um if a board member of MC cheffrey has data in front of her as well she can uh start to look at what's jumping out for her and so that's what I'm going to ask you I'm going to ask you to pair up with someone uh come on over um start walking along the wall you've got staff that can help you unpack any of it if necessary questions that you have by all means please that's what we're here to do tonight so again pair up with someone come over to the wall look at the data and board member ex cheffrey if you

005would look at your packet from where you're at and then just kind of think about what's jumping out for you what I'll invite you to do is bring like a marker or pen or pencil and then just kind of put your initials next to items that catch your attention on the data and we'll begin there we'll give we'll give you some time to to do that the same for that noise I think it's the fridge oh I was like this whole time I was like what is happening over here okay okay I was like like it sounds like some sort of creature is over here okay that makes more sense now I was like is somebody taking a really long bathroom break in that room right there like that's what I thought was happening whole

006okay you know I meds this morning for [Music] for up oh okay cool okay okay oh I see that's fine yeah I got you have 4 minutes found is not yeah it's lit one us Eric what was the like I know the state definition of Fay but the continuously enrolled that was just a different term but it still means Fay so they had to be with us 10 days first 10 days then the first 10 days the time to the test and consider those percentages maybe I don't want I was just saying for the that's all good to work for the sake of statistics sub groups because there are less than 10 kids and zero percent doesn't mean anything when there's one kid um or three kids really yeah it vares from like there's percentile

007so you not don't have whatever the school is scrubing not everywh you'all been able to visit about what what you noticed yeah we did was Clarissa and we all on the committee to help establish the I stayed the last day to the vertical ulation and actually that may help you look you're looking at you know each individual by that as the whole sorry wa what what happened to me that's sh try how is that attached again is it through the case I was thinking thinking make sure students are meeting the criteria I said was [Music] seems Seems to draw for some reason start I have add really basically a I just saw for the rest of the year or I'm dying right now because I am dying you drowning now okay Bor what what did

008you notice um go ahead since Miss mcre is not in here I'm gonna diff her to her first and she's online so we can hear her and see what her thoughts are and then I'll bring it over here miss MC cheffrey yes hi can you guys hear me yes okay great um so just quickly I mean clearly we are not moving the needle um just in general um uh a couple student groups that that emerged to me is African-American students and emergent bilinguals but then also in 2022 2023 middle school math um less than 10% of our middle schoolers are passing math um in this past year um and that's really concerning um so those are my initial thoughts thank you Miss MC cheffrey um Miss SS did you have any different on similarities UMC

009can you bring bring your mic up a little bit Clos sorry thank you so math in general I have issues with um I noticed that in most grades reading is higher um but I see especially like between Hispanics and the African-American students that they're significantly lower than reading in in most grades it doesn't follow for all grades um the other thing that I was that I was wondering about is like our kids that are continuously rolled from first 10 days to the end like it's very low um so I noticed that um and then we had some conversation about others but I'll let her share those ones okay thank you Miss Caleb uh yeah definitely doubling down on the math um which we don't have math intervention in our district um which is a common

010piece um that you see like reading intervention takes a priority so I want to definitely have conversations about math and then in addition to um as far as ethnicity subgroups African-American but also our American Indian population stood out to me um a number of times and I was I guess this is kind of a positive um the economically disadvantaged subgroup was only 1 to 2% lower in most cases than the total which is good like that that's a you know to not have such a big gap is good similarly we were talking about kind of the flip side our phase students were only 1 to 2% higher than the total which is not great thank thank you Miss Gibson mle um your mic thank you um I mean I just looked at um like most

011of the black student data in both reading and math obviously the math is worse also I mean for the last three years we can't get one black eighth grade student to pass math test that's pretty wild to me um and I'm also trying to remember again when did they implement the growth thing was it just for last school year or the school year before as well are you talking about Epic no like where they they gave more weight to the growth in these oh exact path that's what I meant sorry sorry I was like I sorry I meant exact path EP book Netflix of books yeah the growth was a consistent element we're using student grow Stiles okay okay I just didn't know if there was like if these were all equal data sets that

012have been like weighed the same way more information okay this is just hi good afternoon um this is just achievement okay yeah yeah so for a to f up until the pandemic 50% of the school's letter grade was cut in half okay 25% was student growth targets sorry I know it's been a long day I don't mean to cut you off these are just percentages of people who are passing that math test yes ma'am and that language ARS test and the test has not changed since 2018 to 2019 the test itself the items have not changed the vendor changed we went from um a merit which was a a camber in based vendor to Pearson okay um but Arizona Department of Education has owned the items so the items were just imported back into the

013the testing system so so that's really what I was getting at nothing in this the way that these things were measured nothing or weighted nothing has changed so this is all equally comparable is what I'm asking okay that's all I wanted to know I didn't know if the test changed or anything like that just to make sure okay so then if that's the case um then yikes even more so all right thank you Miss Gibson mle yeah um I kind of have the same observations the one that obviously stands out the most to me is our economically disadvantaged um children especially as they get into the older grades with their English um language arts test the ASA um they dramatically get lower and lower and lower as they get older so we really don't have

014any rating support systems either for older kids so that's something that for the upper grades that maybe we need to look into along with Ma intervention to because yeah that's not one black kid we can get to pass that's that's not cool those are the observations that we have Mr Ramos I don't know if you or Mr man did you when you were out there talking did you guys think of anything else a lot of a lot of the same themes that we just discussed kind of resonated um the two things that I would add um I'm I'm particularly interested in eth grade because um I was able to be present when we were doing to work with our families to make the adjustments to our strategic plan to extend it by three years and

015one of the things that was very abundantly clear from those families is that one of their value sets was for us to prepare their children to be ready to be successful in whatever High School their child chose and as we look at these eighth grade numbers they're not numbers that indicate a high likelihood of strong success in high school so um you know one of the things from my perspective that may be an appropriate Target for a goal to honor that parental concern would be to choose eighth grade for one of those goal sets um and then I think the other piece that stood out to me outside of our black students um the emergent bilinguals um American Indians as subgroups or native American sorry I was reading off the page there um was the

016uh special education subgroup like we have some years with those groups of students even where the group's not small where you know we literally have um zero students passing so if we were to look as an example um trying to remember which grade level I saw it at here oh yeah here it is it was for sixth grade math if you look at our student students receiving special education services it's not a huge group but it's also not a small group and there's some of our most marginalized students there's 59 kids and zero of those 59 kids um were able to pass math you know yes the black students at one out of 36 is terrible but zero out of 59 is you know sadly even worse so and I want to double down on

017what Sophia said with the like phonics and literacy supports um as the grades get older like overall the ELA percentages don't go down as the grades get up but when you look at the subgroups they do but then math like the overall last year sorry in third grade was 2014 14 then it goes to seven eight and nine like what so like phonics and basic literacy supports and upper grades but also foundational math number sense numbers and operations in our Middle School yep I think another important thing that maybe folks don't think about with math is the high school graduation requirements are more specific with math than they are as far as what credits you need and which specific classes you need and so your f um like you can take English credit classes and

018who knows what any of those classes could be but with math you have to take specific math courses to graduate and you're if you're already behind then you're already behind MH so and I feel like you know once you get into upper grade standards and specifically comprehension like on the ELA side a lot of those spiral math not a lot of spiraling yeah math is yeah yeah there's there's no there's no high school math that supports basic skills so if you don't show up with the basic skills you start behind and without outside help you're going to founder MH everyone okay so now that we've um gone through what you noticed in the data um thank you for sharing um and you've also mentioned what student groups you're noticing um next question is going to

019be where do you think the board should focus attention on and so I don't want you to answer here I want you to actually work in small small group U for a little bit uh so if if it's okay the three of you can work together and then the two of you can work together see if you can come up with like one to three goals that you can collaboratively have a conversation about and then U board member MC cheffrey I'll ask you to kind of do that on your own from virtually and then we'll we'll see what what one to three goals you you come up with what I'm going to do is I'm going to project an example of a smart goal because I want you to pick back up where we left

020off and um put try to try your best to put it in this format I'm trying to project here in a sec as you'll see I have pretty much a blank one that has all of the makings of a smart gold I'll make that a little bit bigger as all the makings of a smart goal uh try to really pinpoint a student group it could be an entire uh well I want you to pinpoint the grade I want you to uh or if if you wanted to be a specific student group you can be specific to that too um want you to use the Baseline uh percentage and also the part that says meets grade level or above on that's the tool that you're thinking for a measurement tool so how are you going to

021be able to assess so that's G to be all of these are key components for you and trying to come up with one to three smart goals and work collaboratively with your partners and see what you come up with and let's see if we have some recurring themes between the board and superintendent team you have questions you have leadership team here ready to come over and support you you have any additional questions for them okay give you some time resp I really think so one of the things Sor I agree I'm just grades for the put us in a position oh yeah yeah sorry so but as far as which group to pick I'm torn because as much as I'm called by the fact that zero out of 35 African-American students past I have a

022difficult time trying to recommend targeting just 35 out of yeah think you're doing enough to raise this and that's valid too yeah whatever whatever you're putting into place support groups so I would be very comfortable with a goal targeting africanamerican students I'd be very comfortable with a goal targeting Emer Lings and I would and I but I would place the bilinguals one in language arts I believe just because of the nature of that concern um and then other group for me that's very troubling especially question who in special great question on a science [Music] topic but there was not in a master schedule kids had to have so many and I think even if they take okay yeah yeah yeah [Music] so it's like you gain what's the math test called oh yeah the a

023is same now I want that's no those are really good yeah that's a good point I was wondering that how these could be connected to that as well so yeah so if we thank you yeah please yeah so if we stayed with our African-American students for math based on what you shared which I efficient should have an impact on all of these student groups achieve I descri but then it makes me question the focus on emerging bilinguals yes our all e graders are only at 20% but oh %% why am I looking oh I'm looking at third that's why yeah I was like all e graders are suffering right now yeah oh sorry Welly to so for example say I mean this number stud the conversation was year we mov zero 35 and then our

024debate that we had if we target 35 students are we failing others but what Katie pointed out is whatever we put into place to support those 35 would be in place for all students so yeah really only need two students fast to even bring that up to 5% I mean I almost wonder instead of doing a blanket like it has to blanket well saying yeah it gradually just goes down to zero super interesting about the number is if you look at the total number of students following the C total number of students increases which LS me part of growth in total count maybe the influx of new students so where's so where's [Music] the realistic what do you think well we were try it's hard for us to I think it's hard for me to

025gauge what's realistic without talking number oh sorry eighth grade math I feel like it would be black students there's zero um I just don't know in five years like that's us you know one each person increases this a big percentage right so like I just don't know what years especially given it seems that they've gone down steadily many kids do we have every year Well given that in some of the other years one of the most mbers I see is two out of yeah so if you assume that you could achieve two out of 35 that sounds reason to shift two additional students each year oh yeah 28 0 to 28% 28% is sad but no no I meant that just feels like a lot to me but question for the group for the sub

026group I think it's a but it does change over so 28 would help protect us against the 6% and you know a lot of those I think it's I think that's definitely wor I mean that is yes but I want to align to the Strategic which groups did you oh it is you said 2 I think we should do way to think about might 2028 Yeah by 202 We're not gonna make miracles happen months the question hea do we want this oneoc on the minim proficient this one do we want to focus on high proficient or do we want to proficient yes it directs people to focus onar the ELA skill double when you talk about the emerging bilinguals was there a particular grade level you were looking at Target you also t as that

027would take so this then if we do proficient highly proficient that was that was going to be our second um goal was emerg by Lo third grade ELA I think either way I was leaning so we just need thatou you want percentages of we want percentages of kids who score of eth grade students who score oh my now we need to decide how much oh my God 7 I know but just but this this is what I mean like what was it 73 18 were partially seven that is helpful I'm so excited about this because this is like I nerd out's like I'm gonna give lindzy a spreadsheet she's gonna be all even when it's depressing numbers okay so for the first one from MP what this is where you want to be realistic I

028am not I not trying to set us up for failure I will not so I need some but I will not fail we just have to get better so 73 to 72 full Academic Year kids will earn a school 2.5 points you only have to do one% you just have to get better you just have to get better and same thing with highly proficient so we just have to move one% kids so a handful of kids so it's 3% we just have to get 3.01% to get another two and a half of the 10 that sit in acceler it's not that like the kids aren't growing data person the other day actually showed was working with my staff and had a really great metaphor he showed like know the people movers at the airport and

029he's like here's their goal and then like they're always going different speeds right so it's like here's their goal and they want to get here but you know whatever their luggage was too heavy and they they made growth but they didn't quite get to that goal but guess what now the next goal is up here and it was just like a visual like I watched my teachers like because they were my teachers were frustrated because they're going well I had this kid that but they went from being in the orange to being in the red because then we go look at the color bands and it is disheartening you went had a kid that went partially to minimally even though they grew sorry that was a side bar so what would be so statistically between

030five and s% which I may feel I would like that number to get under 50% less than 49% should be our like less than 50% of our kids to be and especially for newer teachers I mean that feels like in a different Stratosphere I'm sure to even try to be thinking about that than this one is really good he doing third grade and I don't want to start and you don't want this percentage to start off being whatever the problem we're seeing it doesn't matter who the individual corts areel As A programmatic System's in place you don't know what kids you're gonna get especially KS and speaking of transition cohorts I think our cohorts are very deceiving when we have such trans yes2 when you were talking about the factors is there there for the

031letter trades if we can get emergent bilingual sces up do that weighted in a different way or 48% would be five average of 5% per year already docent okay cross all thir probably so if you want to be specific I think that's one that's simultaneous into a you're focusing this is just horrific like Ela they're all kind of simar but what spiral we could actually have algebra every they don't have to take math their senior year and we kids actually both so for the last one accelerated kids that were but we just don't have that many kids remember random we were on where we were talking about like pre pandemic we talking and the first Target was gonna be we have an online class for algebra so so we get by separating our kids out

032weach for two hours and everybody all Strat that we use for them so even though there's one more student successful in something kind of going back to what we talked about on Saturday if we have a goal around it then then we can focus on India so you're saying eth grade grade so right now they're at 2% that is [Music] it two different test classify bias yeah Mak some the you pull the state average right um special educ or did you not get that were you not is not could include or yeah they could be double that cre I literally think I suspect normal science just proficient um I don't know how I if I could work with Joel and Mora every day because I feel like I could record you both for ASMR and

033go to sleep to your voices every night just read me any five% five times St z% of them are passing ice record wouldn't want to do that it might be considered the wor we don't have it we could just I'm just yes for typically so Bond and over could go towards curricul online platforms or apps that assist with language develop gotta it couldn't go towards the staff thank you unless we say it's for no it's interesting how similar all of it is can we not use there's two types of override yeah there's m&o and there's they change da is so it's devices and Equipment but the maintenance and operations are we now keep in mind we currently have one and the maximum we can request is 15% and we currently have 15% so if we

034pass if we only are on track to go out again in probably 2026 even if we pass it it would provide the same amount of the same percentage with currently receiving so it won't bring new monies into the system now what we could do is we could look at the priorities of that override because there's a list of things that it has to Target like right now I know it's some special area Construction how we kept math P or not math art PE music Etc um our assistant principles are specified nurses are specified full dayk is specified and then that's another place things could move if the state decided to fund full day Kay we could then say okay now we have that F we go to full the next time we write our override

035in 26 we'll remove full day from the list and we'll replace it with yeah you know programmatic yeah resources sorry did you just say that the legislature let me say telling a joke aspirationally aspirationally I would love to see them speak it into existence affirmations um okay to you're just hopeful focus on E grade got were looking at the special education maybe maybe so should we stop we have three I would write as many how is that helping there's a prosec that a lot I'm like really you're pron we are going to [Music] the percentage proficient of e grade maybe it's just because I get yelled at work it's good somebody can tell I mean yeah I get drawn into you're like sorting things and there's like pen scraping is not a sound that I

036like why are you lovingly smack all right y yes all right we're going to go ahead and regroup we had some conversations and I would love to hear the goals that we came up with to see if we can incorporate them together it sounds like we are on the same vision from what I overheard so Dr Ral um I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to miss MC cheffrey first just because she's online Miss mcaffrey did you have some time to think of some things let's hear from you yeah and I like to hear from what you guys all came up with too maybe before I talk much but um I'm still kind of stuck on the middle school math like um I I suspect that you know those grades all not all being

037under 10% is related um and so maybe just following a Cod cohort might be you know or doing a middle school math goal um or or something with a middle school math cohort um and I think that I heard some people talking about um maybe our black students you know and I think um I think we should be looking at um discipline as well if we're going to Target a student group because if if the student group say is not in the classroom um because they're either absent or they're in a um suspension you know that's going to be a a a challenging part of that goal but something we should definitely be looking at um and I don't I had a lot of time to think by myself so I don't want to get

038into the house but you know an algebra option I think I heard you guys talking about but I think even like an after school algebra option would be a cool thing for us to consider and then I'll let you guys chat thank you so much for that Miss mcrey well you're obviously not too far off um right before we broke out into these sessions Miss Gibson Miss Gibson and McAn and I were having a conversation just about that and how the data with our suspension or dism policy or discipline data that we have um correlates with the data that we just received so um I know part of this framework that could live in guardrails um once we get to the guardrails if we're specifically talking about a certain group we can go and Branch

039it off into the guard rails and make those goals in the guard rails to make sure that both of those pieces live you know hand inand so perfect because that's exactly what we were talking about over here um I know that our group we were talking with Miss SS and Miss MB and we also thought that the eighth grade um math was very very um saddening to look at and the way that we proposed it was moving after speaking with Dr dupin and you know him giving us a little bit of background on the minimal proficiency versus high proficiency and how many points we get if we move you know a certain group from minimal to at least partially thank you partially proficient how that can give good points so we came up with a

040goal that said the percent of eighth grade students that score minimally proficient on ASA math will decrease from 73% because that's what the percent percentage that we're at right now to 48% by August of 2028 and the way that we thought of that in instead of doing a cohort is that we miss s made a good point that when you focus on eighth grade it kind of trickles down to the fifth and sixth and seventh grade because now you have teachers and admin kind of looking at if this is the goal for all these eighth grades what are we doing for these lower grades to make sure that they're that goal is met by the time they hit eth grade or graduate so um and the reason why we did minimally proficient to partially was

041because of the conversation that we had with Dr dupin and maybe he can elaborate a little bit more on that that um but if we move them to proficient the the percentage from them being from proficient to highly proficient is actually very very close so if we could at least get them to that part it it kind of not naturally happens that they'll move to the higher one and that's like a 2.5 um increase and that goes into the letter grades if I'm understanding correctly so that's why we made that bad goal um but it's kind of aligned to what you said so that's amazing and now I would love to hear from oh and the other half of it I'm sorry just because they're related yeah and then we did another part that says

042the percent of eighth grade students that score proficiently or high proficient on aasa Ma in math will increase from 9% to 34% by August of 2028 and if we're looking at 2028 that's five years that's basically giving us 5% per year year which after speaking with um some of the admin it's it's kind of doable it's a little bit challenging but it it can't be not done so those are the some of the ones that we thought and I would love to hear from Mr Man and Miss Gibson McLean so um our conversation we kind of bounc back and forth between looking at the broad groups and looking at the subgroups and um one of the things that um Miss Gibson mlan shared with me that I thought was actually very insightful is that even

043if we focus on a subgroup the tool sets and the um interventions that we put in place wouldn't be put in place just for that group it' be put in place for all groups so if we can get that subgroup to rise All Ships will rise together and um to stay with the eighth grade math theme um we had two groups that weed for eth grade math so two two separate goals one was our black students who currently score at 0% for eighth grade math um while it only represents 65 students um we feel that what would be done for those students would also impact the other students in the other areas um and we were looking to move that from zero to 28% over the course of five years which is pretty aggressive but

044the other thing that we know is that when we're dealing with subgroups you can end up in uh atsi for those subgroups and then that percentage that you're working against currently is 22% and it may be going to 25% so we wanted a Target that was 25% or higher and we also looked at um our uh students receiving special education services and moving their eighth grade math percentage um passing from 2% in 2023 to 25% in 2028 and we had a third goal around third grade ELA but I don't know if we're ready to move there yet or not we have a third goal on heels but figured we'd finish the math start with the math yep math right and then move on from there yeah for the math portions what it sounds like is

045that we're kind of all in in unison that our eighth graders do really need to be attended to when it comes to this math rate especially because we're sending them off to high school and we're really setting them up with no Foundation um I I have a couple comments when yes go ahead Miss MC cheffrey um having just been at the um the student um outcomes Focus governance conference in San Diego um I will say that some of the several of the sessions I went to um they had made a goal around their black students now a lot of these were black leaders but I think there is something there because it is a complex subgroup because you have a discipline Factor um um and a discrimination Factor um and I think special ed the

046same way it's a very complex subgroup so um I do like the idea of of doing these um these groups and then I I just want to share with you guys I don't think I've shared it with the whole board ever but when I when I first came on the board um Stanford Prescot who was on the Phoenix Union board um invited board members from all the feeder districts into Phoenix Union to meet with Dr gtin and he was very honest with us about some things and he said kraton is failing their kids in math now that was nine years ago and our our student achievement was better than it is right now so we have got to do something with these math with these math scores thank you so much M MC cheffrey um

047Mr Ramos the board leadership team um great work so recurring theme came up for mathematics and a conversation about um student groups that you're you're possibly considering to narrow your focus on um question is what which ones of the or which ones of those you think is going to be the best fit for you as a team um considering that I took notes for four potential um versions of this and and it could be more than one it could be more than two that's completely up to you what I want to propose to you is if there's anything that you want to focus on in the earlier years is there student groups is there grades is there you know Ela is there anything there that you'd like to have a conversation about um want to

048make sure that we we we don't leave without exploring everything that you possibly can so I'll open up the floor and see what your thoughts are I think we can iron out the math pretty quickly because there seems to be values alignment here just want to ask to see if there's anything with laa or anything with other student groups I know for our team we looked at um third grade ELA um one of the things that that Dr pombo shared with us is that there's also the ability to get I think 10 points to support um letter grades for the schools through third grade ELA and again I'm sorry it's Five Points okay sorry I misheard so oh five for ELA and five for SEI no it's and for SEI correct yeah so in our

049in our thought process was if we're even if we use the aasa scores as the target if we're moving emergent bilinguals language skills the even if we're not using the AEL score as our goal we will move that AEL score regardless so I think that's why we had 10 points in our heads because we thought we were moving that SEI goal as well um and by targeting that emerging bilingual group at third grade it's currently at 1% for 2023 and if we could move that group to 25% over five years that would have a significant impact so yes Miss MB do you want to share the one that we had because we had it on this we were kind of thinking about the same thing yeah um well one I I think there's benefits to

050both we kind of went we stuck with the eighth grade thought of like looking at our eighth grade El's and whatever you're going to be doing for those would trickle down um specifically kind of focused on something that was brought up whenever we met two weeks ago um around the lack of um like early reading phonics literacy that you know and how to meet that when you're at a middle school level um so we focused on the eighth grade El scoring proficient on a Zella to increase from 12% to 177% by August which isn't a huge jump but it would put us over the state um we got some data over the way that our district was versus the state too and it would put us higher than the state and that's always good for

051certain people out there that are trying to get rid of certain programs but I also do like the I think you can look at it either way if we look at the third graders you're also trickling up I would just want to make sure that if we do a third grade goal we aren't just focusing on Phonics and literacy instruction at the elementary level that when we when we get to the input we are also thinking about that eel for the Upper Grade yeah and I think um one of the biggest things that I've seen is that we do get a lot of um kids that are in the older grades that do not speak the language and there really isn't any intervention put in place for them we have read better B better we

052have all these programs for the lower um grades but when it comes to the you know especially your Junior High kids they're really struggling because they're put in the classroom and there's really no intervention for them so for me that's why I kept sticking to eighth grade or maybe we have to do fifth grade if it's a little better better and stay there but we we don't have enough or any um resources for that subgroup which is fifth sixth seventh and eth when it comes to emerging excuse me emerging um bilinguals so I would love to see a goal yes the lower grades are are important but I feel like that's a big gap that we have right now and it's clearly shown through the data every single year or emerging bilinguals if you look

053have decreased every single year so that's very conc concerning so so one thought i' like to share is you know when I look at the guide post that doctor Ramos has provided us it shows three goals because that's sort of the you pick three you know you're well targeted for success but it's no more than a five so one thought would be to Branch out into four goals and perhaps have two eth grade math goals but for ELA have a third third grade ELA goal and an eth grade yal and then we'd actually be able to sort of span a spectrum of things particularly if we want to be able to Target either more than one subgroup or have a target for overall plus a subgroup um it would give us multiple measures but they

054would be multiple measures that are sort of integrated with each other and so we might not be um watering our goals down in the same way as if we had five completely Divergent goals and would be ious for Dr Ramos's input on that as a pathway yeah I mean this is the magic of the work that you as a board are taking to dive into the data your leadership team has put given you a a a zooming out version of this you've been able to explore a little bit of zooming in and with that he's right I mean you get one to three you're likely to reach the one to three goals four to five you could get four or five but you're going to want to make sure you have the resources support that

055and then you still have guard rails right that you're going to entertain and that's going to require some resources so taking an approach of this I want you've said it I just want to make sure we're all clear that you're you're accurate you're very accurate in saying if you get an eighth grade goal your leadership team is likely to come back with interim goals which are going to be measurables leading up to eth so they could come back and say you know we want to look at fifth sixth and seventh and so what happens is your goals your District go your board goals um are leading away because the interim goals that the leadership comes back to can end up being in some cases campus goals so that the whole system is aligning and everyone's

056rowing in the same direction doesn't mean that anyone gets a pass not that anyone would want to think that you just want to make sure that you align your entire system that way so same reason if you go with anything in the early years you are sending the same uh message as an entire board and the leadership team that the measurabl is is is going to have everyone everyone's in on this on this movement um and so if you go with four yeah you're likely probably to get those four as long as you're making sure that you as a board allocating the resources that he's recommended and then you know you get to also vote up or down on the measurables when he brings them to you um and as I'm hearing the dialogue because

057there's excitement I will caution to not push inputs on him um because if if he if he feels forced to put inputs in place and they don't work out it's what we discussed at the training then as a board member I'd hope that you'd be willing to stand with Integrity to say these were actually my recommendations and they didn't pan out I know that's not what's happening here I just want to make sure that there's always Clarity on this the fun part will be that for you as a board you get to sit there and say I want to be convinced that these measurables are going to get us there superintendent actually has the hardest job of bringing them to you and convince you that they're going to work yes I mean you you you

058go with four goals and you go with a couple in the early years you go a couple in the later years you've covered your entire system I want to see what your thoughts your wonderings are on that conversation so for me Mr Man I I appreciate that and I do believe that emerging bilingual should be one of the priorities so I think if we stuck to those four goals and had two different math eighth grade goals the way that you stated um for me personally I think that works too especially when it comes to the interim girls and the guard rails we still have those to work out and they could eventually fall into place of the overall picture that we want and to make sure that these our students are achieving and are being

059being set for Su success um Miss MC cheffrey do you have any comments thoughts I like the idea of these four goals as well is there a way to just see the FL written out yes all right now I'm unclear on exactly which Flor we land so which the one of them was it's just not written out the same way up there yeah oh so we're not doing Target groups so no yeah I'm GNA add that in there that's why yeah yeah yeah that's I was lost number three then would be the percentage of 8th grade e students that score proficient on a Zella help me spelled that AA will increase from 12% to 177% and then whatever y'all's third grade one which one was your third grade one we did it based on um

060the AA but I don't know that we'd be adverse to switching to aella if we want to keep those two yeah let's do that common place but we'd need some support from the team on what the current AEL C scores are he's on it he's working on it okay so then going back to the math do we want like we did ours on minimally proficient versus proficient or do we want to look at the subgroups instead [Music] um I honestly for me I like the subgroup idea um but I think like because we were talking about part of the reason we chose a minimally proficient is that often a lot of those minimally minimally proficient students are in those subgroups in the same subgroups so that being said I'm fine with the sub being more

061specific with the subgroups so as a as a have your cake can eat it to guy um one of the things we could do is we could Target the minimally proficient as an Aggregate and then we could pick a particular you know we could narrow down between the two subgroups we've discussed to capture one subgroup that we also want to track and then we'd be able to actually do both for okay that sounds wonderful we're going with minimally uh hold on it was yeah the percentage of eth grade students that score minimally proficient ient on aasa math will decrease we don't want them to increase um from 73% to 48% in narrowing down subgroups my question for probably Tyson would be which subgroup had more minimally proficient because that might be redundant versus focusing on

062one where maybe we're moving all that subgroup and proficient if that makes sense that makes perfect sense so it's a good point to note too that um zeroing in on a student group is is is definitely within the Realms you're also going to be getting the data disaggregated too so although you're looking right at a specific student group you'll also get the other groups on how they're performing on that in that Arena so again same way as Mr Man said it's not going to be an either or yeah so if we were if we and it's very interesting so if we were to look at the two groups discussed our black students we had zero of 3 five so that would be 100% scored minimally proficient if we were to look at our students receiving

063special education services we had one of 57 that was proficient so that would be moving from 98% of minimally proficient so the larger of the two subgroups is our special education subgroup um but the lower performing group is our black students and that 0% even though the count has changed from over the course of the last three years um it has been 0% since 2021 sorry I'm trying to get the math you're mathing um the minimally proficient is included in these percentages it's not but it's the opposite partially yeah yeah one more time my that's so there is I'm like is there a if you're minimally proficient are you proficient so the the proficient and highly proficient is our two students are one out of 57 so the um is there something below minimally professional

064no it goes par that's all I wanted to know okay uh partially proficient and then minimally proficient so that percentage they're just saying it in a nice way Y is those two groups yeah so what I did is I just flipped the percentages unless you gathered specifically minimally proficient data we gathered specifically minimally proficient for goal one so we would need that number if we wanted to replicate that for goal too it's easy to do it for our well I don't know that it's easy or do we just want a proficiency subgroup we could go proficiency because it's the transitive property right yeah and if you choose are you listening my husband the math teacher hello I'm wondering if leaning on the African-American subgroup might be good because of that alignment with the work being

065done on discipline and strategic plan and it doubles down on all that alignment I don't know y yes I say yes so the percentage of are we still sticking to eth grade yes yeah so black eighth grade students and then what else can you finish off your numbers what else did it say will increase from zero% to oh yeah that's easy I forgot zero to 28% yeah we use 28% I like 28 by yeah we we could we could also use 25% like we discussed earlier but I don't know that that 3% is going to make 28 is good make or Breakers is the measuring tool ASA yes yes just waiting on this one yep so goal for Tyson was able to determine 8% is the current proficiency and so [Music] um I I'm looking

066at our other 12% to 177% so if we were to make a similar change here we might go from say 8 to 14 or 8 to 15 I don't know if there's a preference among the board 15 I took Tyson's advice because when we're looking at like the ASA one you have a bigger sample size right by averaging 5% per year but then Tyson was also looking at like the state and our historical gains and with a zilla specifically and those tend to be much you're crawling more than you're running so Tyson is 15% from eight to aggressive over five years do you think that's doable I think it's doable yeah okay how we how are we feeling good I feel great miss SS do you have any added comments suggestions how do you feel

067about these goals I'm really okay um Miss MB I think we get a gold star for being awesome Miss MC cheffrey I'm happy with these goals okay Miss Gibson McLean I'm happy with it I think uh maybe Dr Ramos will also take a liking to our our quirkiness like all the other vendors seemed his favorite we're easy to work with people you don't need to lie we your favorites yes um I I like these goals I think they really do align with a lot of this stuff that we hear and the five goals previous goals that we had that had no goals to it attached but what they say basically translate to this right by looking at the data we we believe in one of our goals you know in being inclusive and and Equity

068well this would this is what Equity looks to me to making sure that my most vulnerable students are achieving at the same rate that their other peers are so I'm I'm really happy with these goals I feel like they also translate very well with the Strategic plan with what Mr Man said and what the community has said eighth grade was a huge concern for a lot of our community Comm members because of the high school um transition so I think we're right on the money and hopefully when we take these out to the community they they can agree as well also cool that we started like near the same ideas yeah we were all kind of thinking the same thing and we didn't have very different answers so it just shows that how aligned we

069are for the students and that feels good yeah so on that note you mentioned as you prepare to take him to the community um the encouragement for you all is what you just experienced and what you just did that it'll be the board taking it to the community U Mr Man relationship here I just want Clarity again on here right the board will lead the community engagement so that means that when you put these drafted goals in front of your community for feedback that you be prepared to articulate how did you come up with the percentages so how did we go from saying decreasing from 73 to 48 feel really good about you as as your coach that you will be able to be just fine and stand in front of your community uh more

070than one board member for sure right uh meaning that what we say in governance is when it's one board member presenting to the community you're campaigning and so it's at least two of you uh it is teamwork and so that's the part that we said this is this work is to be authentic and you're modeling it so yeah that's key as you prepare to go to the community I do I want to see if you have any questions or thoughts before I give you some homework for next time we got to get together well I just wanted to do a plea to the governing board so um we first of all super proud of you because I'm strangely I'm not competitive and yet I think we're catching up to Roosevelt so so so um what's

071really exciting is this Thursday night we have Community Council and um one of the things that we really wanted to do for Community Council is give them a heads up on the student outcomes focused governance work we're doing but because of your both heartfelt and efficient work tonight we actually have draft goals that we could share on Thursday night but as Dr Ramos pointed out to do that we really need several of you there so um this is my plea for anyone who can be at Community Council Thursday night um I know Sophia's already on board so but it' be nice for her to not have to stand up there by herself so please do not let me stand up there by myself I will gladly stand by her side on any given day but

072it's as Dr Ramos pointed out it's more powerful if it's multiple members of the board so what time does it the actual start thing start not when there when is it open and food right right so um I think we open for food at 5 yeah 5:45 but I believe we start the program at 6 Avon will probably do about 10 minutes of announcements I think so somewhere in the 610 to 615 range we should hopefully be jumping on to student outcomes Focus governance thank awesome yay um and I know I can't be there obviously yeah I know thank you and we'll make sure the community knows why you're not there thank you [Laughter] there was juice everywhere I won't do it again um this is great um I'm glad that we're going to be

073able to work on this and let our community know on Thursday so if anybody's listening please come to our community council meeting on Thursday and I think we did great work and we're ready to hear what homework we have left Mr Ramos so homework Dr Ros I'm sorry no worries no worries um homework is to consider if your vision is is is that you own your vision um and that means that in time you'll memorize your goals you'll memorize your vision because you want your vision to be aligned to your goals and I love that keep mentioned your strategic plan you're are aligning everything in one space um and if the answer is yes then great uh we'll we'll stick with the vision that's printed on the wall if it's a no then we really

074want to have that conversation when We Gather again because it'll also be connected to your guard your the superintendent guard RADS um so just for consideration reflect on that and then I'll be sending you some some materials that you can read on it won't be too much but I'll make sure that I send you some materials on guardrails I'll send you a short video clip of some of the work that's happening around the country so that uh you can really wrap your mind around and coming in already as well with some one to three guardrails that you'd like to to bring for consideration with with your colleagues and we get feedback just as always from Mr Man since he's the one who's going to be tasked with addressing the guardrails um the pain points that

075we sometimes describe so think about what are the themes that you keep hearing in your community about things that are non students out that are non- student outcomes so these are the things that we hear around the country safety and security it's teacher turnover it's professional development it's um discipline it's uh all of those other topics that are not what students know and are able to do look forward to that rich conversation with all of you questions thoughts or wonderings any other questions or comments Miss MC cheffrey I don't have any thank you thank you Miss SS awesome Miss MB Miss Gibson McLean no Mr Man no I don't either I appreciate all the work thank you guys for working so hard being here at 4 I know it's been a long day but I

076really appreciate you guys taking the time to do this and thank you to the team for giving us the data it was awesome yes thank you all right and with that we will adjourn our special study session meeting and we will come back for a regular board meeting thank you guys oh my God it's telling me I don't have hello oh thank you Buenas noes good evening to everybody we're gonna go ahead and get started and we're going to go ahead and start off with our land acknowledgement crayon School District understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of theam Jude and akam people who descended from the hokam and have inhabited to his lands since time immemorial the oam whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and

077Community 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 Kon School District formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy in human religions and Dr dupin if you can please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance iedge Ali to the flag of the United States of America and to the rep stand thank you thank you um and that brings us to roll call I have Miss Gibson McLean here here myself Miss SS and Miss MB Miss MC cheffrey are you online with us I am perfect it looks like we have everybody here once again we want

078to welcome everybody to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address board cards that must be must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item our board secretary for tonight is um Russell since Hilda is not here miss Hardis is not here so so if there's any board um comments up there they can be handed to him um board policy provides for two cards White cards are to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda and that's per our policy [Music] BH um that comes to our approval of

079agenda and I do have a quick um motion to move some stuff around so I move the governing approve the governing board approved the agenda um with making 4A superintendent report go after 4B which is governing board um reports so the only change I want to make to the agenda is um changing A and B to make it 4B and 4 A second all those in favor I I I miss MC cheffrey I hold on sorry one second yes um I was just going to move to move 7A up um before the uh consent agenda for those folks who are are here okay perfect so that makes sense did every um Miss Hardis did you get that Hilda missis is she on Russell thank you I can hear Hilda but you guys don't seem to

080be able to hear her okay did did she get that thank you Miss MC cheffrey I just want to make sure she she got everything that was going she got it but she has comments hold on okay and we apologize Miss MC cheffrey and Miss wadis are not here because they're both out ill so that's why we're hold she's she's giving me instructions stand by thank you I'll be quiet okay so you guys someone needs to amend the motion for the approval of the agenda so you need to add that other part in there as well soad I amend the motion to approve the agenda with the changes from Miss Creo doll of 4B being moved to 4 a and as well as 7A being moved to uh before five I second all those in

081favor I I I perfect um Miss htis was that perfect for you perfect thank you it takes a village all right and that when that with approval of agend agenda done now that brings us over to public comments and it looks like we only have one okay perfect I would like to welcome Miss Marquez up to speak thank you so much for being here and you will have three minutes okay thank you uh good evening board Madame President superintendent man executive committee and kraton Community um my name is Nicole Marquez and I've probably met most of you here but I am here for two reasons uh the first one is that I am excited to officially announce my intent to run for Schoolboard next year and um as a parent of three kraton students and

082the founding president of the kraton academy PTO I have a very strong vested interest in um the continued progress and success of our district and in today's National Climate climate of Schoolboard Madness I am uh happy and feel lucky to have such an effective and stable board to join hopefully join to hopefully join um and um for anybody that might be here who lives in the district and is registered to vote please come see me after and sign my petition so I can get on the ballot um the second thing I would like to mention is that on Saturday a group of 13 parents students and teachers met at babra bilingual bookstore to discuss how we can best support our dual language schools here in Arizona um I'm happy to report that some great ideas

083were shared and we will be meeting again on December 2nd to continue building support and to plan for possible future action should it be necessary if anyone would care to join us feel free to email us at du. language. learning. gmail.com um and thank you all so much and again see me after sign my petition thank you so much um can you repeat the email one more time please sorry so that email is du. language. learning. gmail.com and December at balabas December 2nd um from 11 to 1 is when we'll be meeting again thank you so much all right that concludes our public public comments and that brings us to 4A which is governing board reports and Miss MC cheffrey do you have any anything to add um I would like to give a report

084about um the student outcomes Focus government um governance um uh conference that Mr Man and I attended but I'm going to save my voice um until and and bring it to December I will just say two things what one thing that was really great about it is that we heard there was a lot of student voice at the conference and there was the kids repeated several times that they are facing enormous anxiety and it's it's a reason that they're staying home because they're they're not feeling safe in the classroom for a variety of reasons um and just generally facing a lot of anxiety after coid so that's contributing to our attendance um and this is kids across the country it's you know it wasn't Craton kids but um I know that we're having a a

085spike in um attendance issues and and everyone is and um from the kids we heard from um they are facing anxiety and do not want to don't feel safe in the classroom don't want to be in the classroom for whatever reason one of my own children fa this as well preco actually so it's a very very difficult and serious issue um and then another thing they discussed a lot which I know we've discussed before is that kids need to have somebody one person that they can go to as a safe person and if you don't know who that kid's person is it means they probably don't have one like if if these are kids who are really quiet and not your you know leaders in the classroom but if you don't know who that student's

086person is who their safe person is on your campus then it means they probably don't have one so I thought that was a really cool session and I I mean I have like 15 pages of notes so I will bring it back in December assuming I have my my voice back thank you thank you so much Miss MC cheffrey Miss sis good evening everyone it's so nice to see a bunch of people here tonight um I just I'm really excited about the work that our board has started to um do we spent a whole weekend together not last weekend but the weekend before and tonight um before this meeting um and I'm just really excited that we are moving in the direction we're moving um the second thing I want to say is I'm really

087sorry you guys have to sit in these seats because I sat in them last week when I was here and they actually really suck so I'm really really sorry about that and I know I talked to Jay about getting some new chairs because those are really bad um I also want to say uh thank you to um the people that prepare our meals when we're here for dinner um we had great food um when we were working together and then of course tonight so um I just want to thank them for being um available to us for breakfast and and for dinners thank you so much Miss MB um really just ditto to what she said I'm really excited about the work we've been doing and will continue to do um and it's just really

088it's enlightening to and validating to know like we are so in alignment we get feedback from our community from our staff um and we're we're able to do this good work because of that alignment um and not every district has that so um I'm just really excited about all of it I also hope everyone had a wonderful three-day weekend and hang in there because it's about to be what a Fed Day weekend so almost there thank you Miss Gibson McLean I mean I'm not going to repeat everything but sure um I agree with what all you said and uh if you haven't had a chance and you're really looking for some entertainment go ahead and go on our YouTube and you can watch all the conversations we had last weekend and today I know some

089of you are just dying to go home and do that so please go ahead and do that but honestly though if you're trying to figure out what the heck we're talking about because we haven't given an in-depth uh explanation of this student governance I we've voted on it and discussed in the past but as far as like what we're actually doing and how the conversations we've had um honestly if you really want to know you can go on YouTube you can watch what we've discussed so far um and and and Community Council will bring we're going to be bringing some things on Thursday to community council at least our goals that we just um figured out today so I'm excited moving forward I think um we're in a good place if things feel good um

090hopefully we're not just like believing things feel good and they're not good I wouldn't want that to happen but I think things are good right now so hopefully it keeps going that way and I know I think for me it like feels good and I know we're going to hit some Road bumps and that things aren't going to go as well as they might but I think that we're all on the same page and that we'll figure it out even if we don't get to exactly where we hoped we would be so not that I'm not saying we're going to meet our goals y'all but I'm just saying that I know it's not all going to fall apart and we're going not going to scream at each other if if that doesn't happen so that

091also feels very good thank you oh yeah sorry I forgot I'm on that uh so Mr Man and I are ex officio members of the of the student conduct I don't like calling it The discipline committee y um it's student conduct committee um and so we've met a couple times already uh we've been digging into some interesting content um I guess it's probably a good thing that I'm there even if it's not that exciting for everyone else um so we've been talking about the law a lot and um I think you know um I'm really grateful for the staff members we have a student as well who's on the committee um and so just grateful for their time and energy that they're putting into this work um and we're making progress so we're going to

092continue to make progress we have another um meeting coming up the week after Thanksgiving I believe yeah I think so yes the Tuesday after thanksgiv or yeah Tuesday after Thanksgiving we're meeting so looking forward to continuing the work there you can also watch those on YouTube back you know there's plenty of hours of entertainment for you watch on YouTube thank you Miss Gibson McLean well I'm not really gonna go into it a lot too but the student outcomes FOC Focus governments work that we're doing is really amazing right now we did do a two study a today study session and we had a study session today to meet our goals and our goals were kind of adapted to the information that are on your right side for those that are in here we have some

093data and this is how transparent we're going to be when we're talking about our data so after the board meeting if anybody wants to head over there and see where our data is and why we decided to adapt this new framework is to be really intentional with our students and making sure that what they're learning and the um the outcomes that they they do and make sure making sure that we are doing everything possible to make sure that they're succeeding and not falling behind so that's a little bit of the data that we got to talk to about last weekend and today and um as mentioned before Community Council would be a great place to for anybody to come and join and hear about the board goals and why we decided to choose those board

094goals and have Community input on that it's very important that our community takes ownership of these goals as well because when we're working together that's the only way that we will be able to produce these outcomes for our students when we all have the same tone going around so I would love to see everybody on Thursday whoever can come starts at 6m we do have child care we provide food starts at 5:45 and it will be at Papago um Elementary School District so I'm hoping to see as many as you there um to get a little bit more of this sofg work or the student outcome Focus governance work um I also attended Our Family Resource Center baby shower that we had we had a community baby shower which is one of the most amazing

095things I love about our Family Resource Center we had about um I I want to say a little bit more than 20 um families come they got free diapers we got food we got to play Baby Shower Games and this is something that I know the community really loves and at the end of the day this is important work because those babies eventually will come feed to us and how awesome that they have a place where they can actually call Community or a home so thank you to Our Family Resource Center for putting that um baby shower I know we have two a year this was the fall we're gonna have one in the spring as well I like to say we because I show up and volunteer a little time so I take a

096little bit of credit for that too um I it's almost like I work there but I don't um so that's awesome and for any other event that are going out in the district I know that um Mr Man us as board members would love to attend them so if you guys ever have any invites in your school districts I see a lot of principles here that you would like to see us at just send them over to miss Horus and we'll make sure that if we can and our schedule permits we will be there because part of being an elected official is also being my partaking in these things with our community if I don't know my community then I don't know how to best advocate for them so if you create that space for

097us and invite us we will try to be there at least I will I try to show up everywhere and that's the end for my governing board report and we're going to go ahead and turn it over to Mr Man for his superintendent report thank you very much Madam president um and thank you for the reversal I'm going to comment on several of the things all of you have commented on and so I appreciate the kindness because um I feel like I didn't want to steal anyone's Thunder but um and I will go light on councilor great City Schools as well that um conference that Miss MC cheffrey and I attended together a couple of weeks back because I don't want to give her an opportunity to share but I did want to point out

098that um I both that it was quite honestly one of the best conferences I've ever been to because the focus was so much about the types type of work we've been doing with student outcomes Focus governance and as Miss MC cheffrey pointed out there was a lot of student voice present um in those conversations it was really powerful and one of the things I really appreciate um that we've seen from the student outcomes Focus governance work and we saw reflected at the Council of great City Schools one of the things they do very effectively is when they try to solve problems they don't just work with governing board members and they don't just work with superintendant they kind of bring both sides of the equation into the space and um create a space where everyone's

099working together to create improvements which I think really aligns with the philosophy we see emerging from the partnership that we have here and so it feels like a very good fit for the work that we're doing um and so that I think was was very very powerful um I sat in on several sessions as well I'll probably share more after Miss MC cheffrey has some some time to share a few things because we did sit in on a few together because sometimes it's helpful to have two people see the same thing and kind of be able to talk about you know they saw in that experience but one of the ones that that we kind of split up to cover more ground on that I was able to attend included Santa Ana School District in

100California and one of the things that they focused on was um trying to provide better supports for their special education students and one of the programs that they developed was instead of doing their trainings that they did for their Special Education team as focused for that team they built training that was for every teacher in the district and so you know what I really liked about that was it was a focus on um it's kind of that old PLC um kind of concept of this isn't my kid this isn't your kid these are our kids and so that our kids philosophy was really deep within that and one of the things I really appreciated about them is I said hey we have um one of our items coming up um is related to our director

101special education I said well we have a new person who will be joining us um how open are you to having conversations with our team and they said we love partners because if we share our work you will leverage what we've learned and you'll do something with it and whatever you make better all that we ask is that you share it back with us so I mean one of the reasons I love education and particularly the K12 space is that we do all share and try to help each other improve and so to have you know a group of stay away that's willing to help support us I think is is super powerful so that was kind of the power of that conference that was my best example um I really want to thank not

102only the board for the student outcomes Focus governance work this has been powerful I shared with them that I'm not normally competitive but when Dr Ramos said that we set the record for creating draft goals I like kind of gave a little you know fist into the air um because you know I know we have the best board in the world so it's kind of nice to get that reinforced for us but I also wanted to take a moment to thank Dr dupin Dr Lauren Dr pombo um Tyson Meers and the rest of the cinaa team um I know everybody dropped everything to try to pull data together quickly so we could do this work not rushed but efficiently and even with specific you know data manipulation requirements like we wanted to see you know

103total student count versus number of students passing rates and all of that stuff I know that meant pulling several data sets together to get that done so I just wanted to thank all of you for the extra hard work um to support us in doing this because this doesn't sometimes it looks like oh we just grabbed this stuff and we're doing this work but there's really a team behind the scenes that's that's helping to support us and allow us to do that um and then um just um many thanks to uh Miss Gibson mlan for her support of the uh know I can't call it discipline committee student stent support committee student conduct committee um and I think our co-chairs in the back of the room even been from that group and a couple of

104our members are here tonight um so uh I just really like that work is really important um and that team has really really kind of drilled into it and they're moving quickly and they have a lot of moving Parts they're dealing with but one of the things that was mentioned earlier was all the legal structures that are tied in and so having Miss Gibson mclan there to help us with um some of those State Statute questions really has made things I think go much more smoothly so that's been from my perspective been very much appreciated um learning about the criminal code we are we're we're deep we're we're like up to our elbows in criminal code to remember there's a student there right yeah there were a few comments that you know I won't share

105in in in public again so um and then the last thing that I wanted to share just as an awareness item is you may have heard through the media that there was a press conference yesterday afternoon um there was a group of um I guess Republican lawmakers uh that that came out to talk about a plan that they would like to put forward um to make some adjustments to the state land trust funding and how what prop 123 is used in order to create some um salary increases for teachers and so the number that's been bandied about is roughly a $4,000 per year increase for teachers um you know of course as you know working in public schools and knowing how hard our teachers work 100% in favor of seeing more money for our teachers

106um I was with a group of superintendents this afternoon um Howard Carlson the former superintendent from Wickenberg was kind of leading our group conversation with a member of the Senate that was part of this group and so one of the things I appreciate is we did at least have the opportunity to create awareness around some of the things that happen when these conversations occur where sometimes people don't take all the moving Parts into account so one of the things we shared that people didn't understand when 20 X20 happened a few years ago is if you give people enough money for a $4,000 increase and Dina who's sitting in for for Miss Shapiro tonight May fix my math for me but it is my belief that in order to give a $4,000 raise the state needs

107to provide us with $4,840 because there's roughly 21% in other um you know uh sort of required benefits costs so things like State retirement uh Social Security uh you know Federal and and state taxes and all of those things factor in and so sometimes they forget that and you may have heard a lot of noise in the news our district actually exceeded the 20% by 20 um because we really had a focus on that but there are a number of districts that weren't able to make it there and I think in many of the cases it wasn't Foul Play by the teams that were doing that work in those districts it was the fact that they technically were not given an adequate number of dollars based on you know a lack of understanding of how

108that math works so um so we'll see what happens with this if it catches fire or not um but I just wanted to share my appreciation out to those leaders around the state who are trying to keep people honest if they're going to make a promise make sure you're promising to really give us enough dollars to to fulfill on what you're telling people we're going to be able to provide so and that's was way too much but that's all I have to share this evening no that was perfect thank you so much okay so that brings us to our next agenda item which is being moved up 7A which is approval of exception exceptional student services director so I'm kind of really excited about this one um I know that this is something that the

109governing board has been talking about lately and it we've I'm just excited to get new people and get started on the new things that are going to come so I don't know if Mr Man or Dr Lauren I'm gonna turn it over to our expert Dr Lauren thank you uh thank you presidents kuo doll and members of the board sorry I just suddenly have a th frog in my Thro uh so we had a comprehensive search that was conducted for our director of exceptional student services uh human resources department advertised in the typical ways that we do uh through Frontline through ad as well as through asbo and aspa uh as well as indeed uh we had eight applicants that submitted applications and uh or eight applications and then of those six were screened and

110invited to apply there were two internal and four external candidates uh from that we had five participants in the interview process um they also completed an in basket activity uh the interview panel consisted of teachers members of the exceptional student services team members of the curriculum instruction and assessment team as well as a parent as a result of the process there were four candidates that were then selected to present their 90-day plans which were part of their in basket to that interview committee following that presentation the candidate that was referred uh met with the executive team uh Mr Man assistant superintendent of teaching and learning Dr dupin assistant superintendent of business and development M Shapiro and myself uh we held final the final interview with the preferred candidate and the candidate that we are recommending

111to the board this evening is Gretchen Kaiser Gretchen Kaiser grew up in Scottdale Sheed studied special education at Arizona State University she moved to Chicago where she began her career as a teacher in 2007 she returned to Arizona working with Scottdale Public Schools as an elementary special education teacher curriculum specialist assistant principal and then principal from that position Miss Kaiser then worked for the Paradise Valley Unified School District as assistant director of special education she continued her career with the Mesa Public Schools as a director director of special education Miss Kaiser holds a bachelor's degree in special education a master's degree in educational leadership and administration from Arizona State University so we are proud to bring Miss for Miss uh Kaiser forward for your approval thank you so much for that so with that being

112said um if we don't have any comments or questions or anything I would like to move the governing board approve Gretchen Kaiser as exceptional student service director for the special education department effective November 27th 2023 second all those in favor I hi I I am awesome yay I'm so excited and Miss Kaiser we would love if you could come up and give a few words welcome to the [Music] team thank you Madame President esteemed governing board members superintendent man and executive team members I am so honored to be here tonight thank you so much for the opportunity to join the kraton family I look forward to joining in on all the great celebrations I keep hearing about Craton I look forward to joining in and building on the many many great qualities that makes kraton

113so great to be a great District um and I look forward to being a collaborative member of the team that contines to innovate to move our systems forward as we strive for the high levels of success our students and families deserve I'm thrilled to be here I'm honored thank you for the opportunity thank you for your support thank you so much and I look forward to working with you thank you thank you [Applause] yay all right awesome so that brings us to to approval of consent and I move the governing board approve consent agenda items a through n and I'm going to be pulling o in accordance with policy bb- e second all those in favor I you thank you um the only reason why I went ahead and pull o is because there is

114a cohort that's coming up for the sofg work and right now it's named as myself and superintendent man however after discussion and speaking with our sofg coach too because there's going to be so much work from Mr Man it would be not prudent to send him to this added on cohart since he's going to be boots on the ground working on getting this data for us and all this other info so the only thing that I would like to change is keep myself there and any employee that would like to go from the cabinet or after you have discussions Mr man if you can give us a name afterwards um that would be great I'm not sure how that needs to be added in the background or how that works yeah I I think if

115if you were to uh make it as written with changing my name to um a member of District staff as identified by the superintendent okay perfect do I need to resay that or can Hilda just take note of that well you we already approved the um consent agenda items except for that one so you would I can just do it um I moved to approve agenda item o the request uh of the 2023 effective School Board cohort great City School travel requests to allow uh travel for Sophia kod doll and uh a staff member of the district as determined by the superintendent at a later date for both uh trips in February and October of 2024 so moved you're seconding it yes all those I mean second all those in favor Hi I hi thank

116you all right um all right and that brings us over to our educational services so this is the adoption of the 2 for 25 Academic School calendar and possible multi-year Mr Man I will turn or Dr dupin I will turn this over to you gonna turn it directly over to Dr D thank you Mr Man thank you madam president uh we've had a committee working diligently to explore a variety of calendar options and this evening we're going to bring you the uh kind of the current culminating efforts of their work uh for your consideration we have some data that we've collected and really have tried to craft a uh suitable recommendation for next year to get us by while we continue to explore potentially more um substantial changes to the calendar structure overall there's an

117option for your consideration to look not only at one year but to look at the structure for three years if you wish and Mr Guyer and uh Mr Diaz will be sharing all the details of the committee's work today Mr guy there is a slide deck do we provide our own laptop or I can yeah hold on let me find it used to having it all right here Madame President members of the board executive team good evening and waya noes um my name is Jeff Guyer and I'm here with Mr Diaz come on closer we're here is Representative members of the calendar committee there's a really great slide deck I can't wait to I looked at it it's all we saw it already yeah I'm looking at it right now looks great this is just

118proof that none of us would survive without Hilda yes that is abundantly clear it's funny you say that because she was a very um important member of the calendar committee oh so yeah it was great to have her on that committee she has a lot of insight and knowledge about what makes a great calendar we're so lucky to have her yay y thank you Dr I'm gonna look off to the left or the right I'm used to having a monitor right here but our committee is has been aligned to strategic plan goal one to provide Innovative learning time for our for our teachers and our students this is based oh thanks that's helpful it was that book who Moved My Cheese now we have the new book who Moved My Cheese back where it's supposed

119to be the governing board gave some guidance back in September of 2022 and they said that we want to make sure that we're aligned as close as possible to Phoenix Union that we maximize pre-service time for our teachers that we honor holidays cultural traditions and we're open to Innovation and before I go much further I want to make sure that I thank the members of the calendar committee there were formal members and informal members people who contributed there were 14 um certified and classified members of the committee made up of teachers Administration classified people from payroll Hilda as I said so it was a pretty well-rounded committee and they all contributed greatly to what we have to present tonight um it's always been our goal of the committee to present to gather stakeholder input and

120present data as our decision so it's not a it's not a recommendation from the committee it's a data informed decision based on what stakeholders think um and so we have as Dr dupin said we have the we're recommending the ver revision to 2425 with the option to extend I can look right here and we presented two options to the parents and to the staff this is draft a I think you saw this in your preview of tonight this option starts school for students on a Monday it includes an additional pre-service day for teachers it does not include PD after the fall break and it does and it's a normal school day after fall break and then instead of having an extra day off after spring break it's a return to school for everybody it does

121make space for Caesar Chavez Day and also the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as a holiday and the conferences removed per the meet and confer recommendation from last year so that's basically draft a and otherwise it's similar to what we have right now it's ends Before Memorial Day we have a two- week break 10day break in the in the winter draft B starts on a Wednesday prior to the Monday that we normally start kind of gives us a running start at the year with students and staff it does include a PD break after fall break or PD day after fall break winter holiday starts on a Friday so the Friday before the winter break is a holiday spring break through Monday so there's a day off for students and teachers after spring break it does include a

122day for Caesar Chavis day the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a holiday and the conference has removed per meeting confirm so those are the two versions hopefully hopefully you've had a chance to look through those and I'm gonna let Mr Diaz talk about some of the data and the people actually this is this is still me I I have a quick question go ahead um additional pre-service day that's professional development before uh school starts that's exactly exactly right there are nine days on draft day okay there are nine days now in Draft Day nine days before the student start versus eight which has been traditional for us thank you okay thank you so much for staff we had 247 responses um and it was a mix between 169 certified and 84 classified um you can kind

123of see how it distributes between the sites oh that's out of place don't go there yet goes last there were 342 family responses 45 of those responses were in Spanish we pushed this out to families in our s'more newsletter through the district through our Facebook page and also out through the sites there were over 9,000 clicks on the survey only newsletter that we sent but we still received only 342 responses so we hoped for more but this is what we got back we know 9,000 people clicked on it over 9,000 people clicked on it but possibly was survey fatigue or just the time of year this is what we got back for our responses I have a question did we have any paper surveys or was everything just digital and online we did not have

124paper versions everything was online is there a reason why we didn't we wanted to not hurry the process but we felt the urgency of getting the data back and getting it before you because we we know that families and and teachers are and staff members are making decisions for vacations coming up and I know the dist Support Services have to provide for subscriptions and for vendor Services often a year in advance so we felt the urgency of getting this back as soon as possible so that we can make a decision hopefully and move forward with with a recommendation Mr guy Madame President if I may add we've actually seen some nice increases in our return rates on surveys when we use digital tools most of them are their smartphone compatible so it's pretty easy for

125All Families to quickly and efficiently enter their perspectives when we do it paper pencil that means staff have to enter them into Google forms in this case so there's always number one just the workload and then number two always that question of transferring the respondent's intentions to what's actually reported so we we know that there's work to do in terms of increasing the response rate we have about 3500 families in the district so this represents as much as up to about 10% of our families which is statistically pretty decent um we don't have a way of really guaranteeing that you know one family might not have had more than one response um we tried to make it as inclusive and open as possible so we didn't lock it down to just one account you know

126like one response per email um and I think you actually had an experience with that so you know we we we believe this is a statistically valid representation of our community and of course you know we would have loved to have had 3,400 responses but we'll continue to to push those messages out with the future surveys okay thank you thanks so about 600 total responses and we want to show you some data that we got back and James is going to kind of talk us through that yeah so this is sort of a graphic representation in terms of the support one way or the other for uh a versus the B part and um so he gets a little bit of information there this is the staff version uh blue is version a I guess

127that's yellow orange whatever that color is uh version B on there too and uh just to kind of reiterate what Mr guy was talking about our our purpose in the committee was to just be data collectors uh we are not recommenders we're data collectors and sometimes there's some confusion about that U because I mean me personally I I I telling Mr Guy this is like I don't think I would have chosen this but the data speaks for itself and terms of what people supported for stuff so like this one in the staff um is 40% more strong support for version a versus version B and then three times the number of low support for version B versus version a and then the middle parts there kind of like cancel each other out in terms of

128H how things work for stuff like that so and then for the families uh similar patterns that you see in the staff on there um little slight differences but mostly the same uh 27 % more uh respondents strongly support version a versus version B and 30% more respondents uh who had low support for version B and similar patterns in the little support and moderate and regular support that you can see too so if you can get an indication of there and then uh the most fascinating things to me are the comment sections I always enjoy that part and Mr Guyer uh went through some of the comments and looked for patterns and stuff and these are some of the patterns that he noticed from the comments that were in that particular section um it's like

129a little part I guess down towards the end of the survey and uh so you can see some of the stuff in there I'll just highlight a few things that I I was a little confused about um that the uh SE seven uh seven respondents favor Wednesday consistency uh this is in reference to sometimes throughout the year where uh you have like a Friday short day and a Wednesday normal day um sometimes that kind of throws people off um I know it throws parents off we still get parents showing up saying you know where's my kid we're like well we're here till the day ends and it's a normal school day or they don't pick up their kid on the Friday when the time so it's a there's uh there was some respondents on that

130and I thought that was a little interesting thing to highlight on there um the 11 people uh had mentioned that they weren't aware or not informed of the MNC uh adopted change for conference scheduling um and the rest of those kind of speak for themselves the alignment to pxu stuff like that so oops is that it oh right you got to go back to section PA any questions wait we have to go for the big shebang right well let's just call it a choice so the data recommends version a for the 2425 school year and like we said before the option to extend that most respond us favor version a version a fits most closely with our current version it preserves traditional holidays cultural recognition be worthwhile to learn more about what our stakeholders feel

131is important through the in-depth stewardship resources survey developed by Handover that's something that we can consider late in later in the fall or early spring um but the data recommends version a for 2425 thank you so much for that information Miss MC cheffrey do you have any comments or questions yeah really like I think um it's something I've been hoping we would move to especially the Wednesday before Thanksgiving um and I like that we are more aligned to Phoenix Union now too um but obviously this is it's kind of a big change for us so we just want to make sure we communicate it um really really well and I think um the Wednesday before Thanksgiving will be great for for teachers um but might be a little more challenging for families who are trying

132to get um preparation done for pre you know Thanksgiving dinner if that's what people celebrate you know um but I think just communication on that because parents are going to have to be home with kiddos on that Wednesday which um um you know makes it a little more challenging if they're trying to prepare a meal um for Thursday but I think this is a really a great move in the right direction thank you Miss MC cheffrey um is there's any other additional comments or questions no um this calendar looks almost exactly like our calendar um and I'm really glad that you guys decided not to start on a Wednesday because it's kind of a nightmare um we've done it before and um you end up teaching um your procedures multiple times because you don't have

133a lot of students come back to school in the middle of a week so I'm glad this almost thank you Miss MB um yeah I mean ditto and I think I just appreciate the work that you guys did um again of course we always want more people completing the surveys but um that was a tremendous amount I especially I feel like in the past when I worked in this District I don't ever remember being asked about the calendar changes um uh nor in other districts so I just appreciate that there was a lot of input given um I especially appreciate the addition of Cesar Chavez Day because I think we're one of the last districts near us to adopt that so um yeah and the data speaks so thank you Miss Gibson McLean um I

134don't have anything to add other than that I was surprised by how many how many responses you got to things because I feel like it would normally be lower so I was actually surprised by it um yeah thank you for all your work yeah awesome um I don't have any additional comments the only thing is the same s Travis day I know that we talked about that two years ago and for somebody who was such a pable person in Arizona to not have that as a holiday and really you know take into account for the work that he did for the farmers and it was a big movement you know for us the Latino community so um I'm really glad to finally see that on there I'll say this really quickly that we know it

135falls on March 31st and on the years when that's on a weekend the holiday will be celebrated on either the Monday or the Friday closest to it I think that's okay un observed okay awesome yeah that's I'm I'm really happy about that so thank you for that um one comment oh yeah go ahead um Mr Guyer can we just make sure for Cesar travez day what can we do whatever Phoenix Union does like if is that how they do it they switch it from Friday to Monday depending on how close it is I don't really know find out yeah usually if it's on let's find out justserve on Friday and if it's on Sunday You observe on Monday make most sense to match probably with Phoenix Union so we'll explore that and we'll get you

136the information in a board update awesome thank you so much and Hilda chimed in and said Hilda said uh she'll make sure as well thank you okay she will too of course Miss White is would and Madam president if I could make a recommendation of course U yeah I I would it' be my recommendation to make the motion for the three years we can still move forward with that further more detailed surve survey if that survey vets information that there's a shift that's needed we can bring those future calendars back but if that survey um comes back and says yeah A's a is where it's at then we don't need to take additional action we will already be set up to move forward and we can stay focused on student outcomes Focus governance that is

137what I was going to say too I forgot to say it and you guys can always change the calendar if you're finding it's not working but if this works yeah just let it go and if you have complaints you can refer them to the survey data about how the results came out not necessarily to the committee [Laughter] chairs yeah go ahead and do it all right um I move the governing board adopt the Academic School year calendar for the 2425 25 26 and 2627 school year second all those in favor I I I perfect motion passes awesome thank you guys so much I appreciate all the hard work yes thank you always nice to go the subway that brings us to our next item which is 6B and it's the discussion about the cron Virtual

138Academy restructuring restructuring per proposal and will that be Dr dupin yes it will okay perfect yes I will give you one second Miss s stepped away for and Miss wat is Miss A stepped away to the bathroom oh I was like thank you H Hilda acknowledge it are you guys hearing Hilda or is it just me no just not just you but Russell let us know Russell is being her voice need to work on your uh impersonations Russell STI to my day J all right Madam president of the governing board once again um this topic is another bit of information for the board's consideration this evening as you know we've been very mindful about how to best utilize our Esser funds and how to prepare for the eventual sunsetting of those funds uh We've supported

139uh for the last few years our kraton Virtual Academy and we've been looking at ways to continue to serve the communities the students and families who rely on kraton Virtual um while at the same time bringing those Services into a cost model that addresses the sunsetting of the SR funds and is potentially sustainable for a long term so we're going to share the products of that work with you this evening and engage in conversation uh to hopefully get some guidance about where to go next Mr Guyer right Madam president members of the board executive team I'm Jeff Guyer still and I'm principal at CR Virtual Academy and I'm here tonight with Julie Davis she's the administrator at the M Mesa digital learning program hi too hello I'm Julie Davis as Mr Guyer said I am

140the administrator for Mesa digital learning program I have been um working in mace public schools for 26 years all 26 years of my career have been with that one district and I am spending my 17th year with Mesa digital learning so I am well immersed in in in Mesa and the online world so crate Virtual Academy is in its third year now we've had decline in enrollment matched with other Valley online schools um we currently serve third through eth grade students about 35 students we have at CV a high level of parent satisfaction as measured through Handover uh families choose CVA for a variety of reasons but it's for sense of safety parent convenience student preference medical reasons social reasons uh travel reasons uh but we've diminished over the years we start the first year

141we had well over 200 students and we had about 110 last year and as I said we're down to about 35 students now so we're recommending for your consideration that we Outsource the online teaching to an approved vendor beginning in January 2024 the idea is to provide quality learning for those families who wish to remain online or transferred to online learning and reallocate our existing CVA staff into open positions at our sites and departments we've explored three different vendors including proximity learning they're sort of a national online school also ASU digital prep local here and the Mesa digital learning program and we're presenting Mesa digital learning program as a Craton personalized so it's very cronish it has a very Craton feel I hope to show you the website tonight um local um coste effective established

142alternative for our current model of the three programs we reviewed Mesa digital learning stud out as a platform for our kraton Learners as you'll see Mesa digital learning program has been in operation as Julie said since 1999 provides quality online learning while ensuring a Craton look and feel this is you already you already know who Julie is she's right next to me here um she'll describe the program the logistics and the crate and family connection so before we get too far into it I just want to let you know that the students if if if we decide to go forward with this the students remain enrolled as Craton students they remain enrolled as crat Virtual Academy students so I just want to put that out there as the anticipatory said and I also need to

143turn around a little bit and introduce Veronica Hernandez she's our office manager and she is amazing and she has made the gears turn at kraton Virtual Academy for three years now so is her recruiter Mr Carval who brought her to me one summer three years ago and the connection was made so um so Julie's going to kind of take you through what Mesa digital learning program is like and actually we're going to click on that link not right away but I want to make sure they see that eventually okay that's fine um so partnering with Mesa digital learning programmer mdlp which is much easier for me to reference so if if I say I'm DLP I'm talking about Mesa um like Jeff had said it it really is it's a true partnership and the students

144are still your students they are still kraton students they are still CVA students St um but the partnership with Mesa allows for you to utilize our content our courses our LMS our teachers and what whatever else you may need um but they are still yours um we are able to provide your district with a reputable costeffective online learning platform for students in grades four through eight you want me to talk about the okay um so Mesa digital learning program um we offer services and support for students in grades 4 through 12 um so I understand that right now you have a handful of third graders and what um Jeff and I have been talking about is how we can still support those third graders for the remaining of the school year um so we have

145um a proposal and a plan in place where any remaining third graders we would still be able to support them and what we would do is actually develop content for them for the second semester and continue to support them through this partnership and then moving forward it would be fourth through e8th grade so we know you still have current third graders and we did not want to leave them behind for this remaining school year we wanted them to be able to get the support they need I have a question so that that contact that you're saying that you would develop it's not developed yet for third graders you would just figure it out as it comes we um I have um we actually develop all of our content in house so mesa's content is all

146developed by a team of teachers and a team of instructional designers um I do have an elementary specialist right now who focuses on my fourth fifth and sixth grade content and students and teachers um and she acts as an instructional designer and a coach um I have talked with her and we do have a plan in place to develop that content within the next few months and to continue continue developing it to support your third graders um but we are not expanding third graders for any other District at this time and how many third graders do we have nine nine okay um just so you know I'm going to be very transparent I don't know how I feel about that throwing nine kids away into something that's not even developed yet I know you say

147you have a plan but in order for me to make the right decision to these students I would need to know what that plan looks like I I I don't feel comfortable saying cool you'll have a plan and figure it out um if and that's why I asked if there was something developed already or if that's something you're going to work on because I don't it's a disservice to those nine students to just say yes let's move on forward and there is really no plan for those third graders yet yeah well the the plan is to develop that third grade content before January so then when the students enroll in January there is third grade content okay so in a month you would create third grade content for these us to provide yes yeah we

148used to actually provide I'm sorry I didn't hear what he said I don't know what he you used to provide third grade content yes we used to provide K through 12 and we chose to move four through 12 for a variety of reasons years ago um so we had third grade content years ago we just do not not offer it currently okay thank you for answering that question um as we said it allows the CVA students to remain here within your District all right I was saying you're not Reinventing the wheel you're saying that some of that stuff you're not having to build this all up in one month is basically that that is correct but it does have yes yes needs to be refresh and to be fair like my teachers build content every

149week for the following week like it's not it's not a we're building content on a daily basis that's what the instructional design team does any other questions regarding that okay um it's the it's coste effective as Jeff recom said um it's $175 per semester course which is roughly about per student per year um it allows um kraton to collect and retain their ADM mdlp does not or Mesa does not collect any ADM on behalf of your District you will still collect that on your own and retain all of that ADM um it is guaranteed through an IGA with Mesa Public Schools we are a program of Mesa Public Schools um it supports students in their desired format if they still desire to remain online and we're helping support that desire and it provides a personalized

150partnership that meets kraton's needs little history about mdlp um we actually started as Jeff said back in 1999 as one of four tap b programs that was the technology assisted assisted Project based instruction we are one of four programs in Arizona we then um grew to one of 14 programs in 2003 there were seven district programs and sever seven Charter programs and then aois came around in 2009 and we became part of that um since 2004 we have supported over 115,000 students from 62 partner districts across the state and in a few other states as well and really our goal has always been to support families and districts with their online le as superintendent man had said previously he was talking about partnership with a District in California and really they're they're willing to share

151and as you guys grow and learn from that and develop new products they wanted you to share back that's really what mdlp school has always been um is to share what we know and to support other districts and families in in that online space right now we currently serve about 1,800 students in grades 4 through 12 um we do have students who are concurrently enrolled so maybe they take one or two classes while they're attending another Mesa School we have summer school offerings we have full-time students who only attend with mdlp just as students who are at CVA attend and then we do have partner enrollments throughout the state um our staff right now consists of 40 adjunct teachers so we have 40 teachers supporting our students at the current moment um we have seven

152instruction designers and content Specialists those are the people who are developing the curriculum and the content on a daily basis they're coaching teachers they're supporting students um we have one programmer who is dedicated full-time um to our program and our team we have one registar a data specialist an admin assistant and then myself um and we are continually meeting the needs and exceeding student and parent expectations um just a small sampling of our of our surveys um and you would have access to all of this data as well for your own parents and for students this is a sampling of Mesa families they are overwhelmingly um they strongly agree or agree with the quality of the courses um they're standards based they're personalized um again this is just a sampling of the four of four

153questions um and but the survey obviously has much more than that we are we're very data driven and um I understand I can relate how hard it is to get survey data back from from families but we do survey our students at the end of every course um we survey our parents whenever students complete a course and then we do survey students if they don't complete a course because we want to know why you completed and what worked well and why did you enroll in all those kinds of things but we also want to know maybe why they didn't complete and what we need to fix and we are constantly looking at that that that survey data from our families and our parents and students um our proposed partnership a couple things that it would

154provide is an online learning envir environment where the kraton kids students can continue to become adventurous thinkers collaborative Learners and kind kind-hearted leaders so they could continue in the mission that you have already set forth for them um we have a proprietary LMS um so a lot of online programs use canvas and they partner that with Synergy we do have our own system that was developed in house that is actually a product that is approved by the um State of Arizona and it's an easy mechanism for you to upload your upload minutes and collect ADM um that would be given to you um we have relevant and timely onboarding so any staff members that would need to be onboarded we would provide that either remotely or in person whichever the preference is um we have

155training tools um any training that they need any tools that we need we would provide all of that um we would go through all the ADM collection and how that can be done with the state or should be done with the state um we would support um the CVA team with um State Testing accountability requirements um supporting kids with IEPs and 504s elll and so forth that learning management system that Julie referenced has a crate and look and feel it uses our logo our branding so when the kids interface with their iPads to to take these courses it looks like they're enrolled in Craton um so that's just a nice touch it's more personalized to us um in addition just a few things um additional things the courses are engaging they're rigorous they're personalized for

156the kids um we have all of our teachers are appropriately certified in the um content area that they teach um so whether it be Elementary or it be a core content area at the junior high level um there would we would provide support with the IEP resources um the kraton kids um they would still have access to on-site clubs and sports and events um we would provide on-site technical support for any of their needs or any of the parents needs um we would also provide progress monitoring tools to um any of you if you wanted it to um any of the admin team for Craton virtual to parents to students um because we do feel like I said that the data is very important um and progress monitoring is a huge part part of that

157data and then there is obviously opportunities for potential part-time or concurrence should you decide to go that route before we go to the timeline I want to pause for questions so far I know there's a lot a lot so um I'm gonna start off with Miss MC cheffrey Miss McCaffrey so far do you have any questions comments concerns yeah um a couple so um what kraton staff would we need to continue um to m maintain to support this the families still enroll through our kraton district so we would need at least an ed secretary or office manager to work depending on how many students there are enrolling or disenrolling and transferring back to our inperson schools we would need an office manager or an ed secretary who can devote part of their time if there's

158a lot of students all of their time to that task okay yeah that's pretty much it besides that actually I'm gonna actually pull that back that um and say that during testing time when we deliver the aella test and when we deliver the asasa test we are going to have the students come to our campuses our campus or our campuses to take the test in person so we would need staff uh we would need to either integrate the students in with the classrooms that are there or depending on how many students we have be able to run it in a classroom at one of the schools okay because that's required by Statute right it's required that those students take those tests yeah in person yeah and then they still would have access to on-site club

159sports events activities that's like at kraton right not not in Mesa they would definitely have access as kraton students to the Craton events and sports and activities yeah cool um and then is have you guys discussed like how you're going to pitch this to parents to these to these families like this is this is what we're moving to and if you choose not to do this what are their other options that's a great question and I will tell you that Veronica Hernandez and I have had the most success with either iners or direct phone call straight to the parents and we would discuss it with the parents first and then kind of craft with the parents how we would discuss it with their child we have a low enough number right now that it's completely

160feasible to call every family individual ually and let them know what's going on okay and then um to the last to the last bullet opportunities for potential part-time concurrent CSD enrollment what does that mean like is like I think I know what it means but can you expand on that a little bit there are a few different ideas um and and opportunities there one of them might be that a student for whatever reason might need to take part of the afternoon off as an inperson student they might need to take say the last time of the day when they have I'm I'm just going to say mathematics and they might be they might be able to take their mathematics course online with Mesa digital learning um or they might need to start later in the

161day and miss the first part of the day um they might be able to extend with an extra um uh extracurricular activity that they might add because maesa digital has a lot to choose from especially for the seventh and eth graders they get to pick from all the way seven through 12 all of their all of those extracurricular activ activities okay and Mr Guyer we talked about this when we were visiting gosh last year I think like potentially not we weren't talking about Mesa at this point but um would this be a possibility for like online algebra for kids who are interested in that potentially we're actually Gina uh Clark and I are meeting with um a representative from phoen Union next week to talk about algebra and so let's get some more information about

162that and see if we can meld that with something like this and come up with something that provides multiple opportunities for our students but it it could be an opportunity for our kids to get that algebra qualifying class in in in place okay thank you Miss MB I have so many question no so do I um so first I just want to say thank you I know this is hard work I'm in the process of these decisions myself um I know that Julie and her team um and their program is really amazing they've given me advice over the last several years with our aoi um so I just wanted to start with that um I did have just some clarification so um if they are remaining CVA students then that means we're keeping our aoi

163active correct we not using like the itm or anything correct um the sorry mixing in notes and questions here [Music] um for technology Mesa does not provide correct like or we would provide the same still provide the iPads and the Chargers and support for parents um they also have an option to use their own device and Mesa digital has a whole techn technology site uh that explains what will work and what won't work our iPads will work through this LMS okay perfect because I was also thinking yeah like if we can it's not just about making sure kids have technology but if we can keep the same technology you're reducing the learning curve especially with a new LMS um and with the technology piece you mentioned onsite tech support um like I know it's like

164you guys have on-site techport for call and email if the kids need to phys phasically come in though if they're using our devices then would they still come here I'm also thinking Mesa is a far drive and not everyone has Transportation no our devices are supported by our district it department and that would continue uh most issues we can solve right in the office Veronica can solve them um and other things we have an outstanding it team that can take it on and fix it sometimes we can fix things over the phone for the people they don't have to drive in at all perfect yeah I was like I don't know if all the families are getting down to Mesa um then um the I know you guys talked about State Testing would there be

165opportunities for benchmark assessments and I'm thinking in terms of like we're talking about all the goal setting and how we're going to progress monitor our students and if they are CVA we want to make sure we're also getting that students are certainly eligible for all the fast Bridge screening and the um the DNA Benchmark testing okay and they are they currently doing that online no going in person they come in person okay um and then I thought I had one [Music] more I had one more but I lost it so come back to me let see that was a marshmallow I know I have lots of notes about it oh I know what it was um because it wasn't explicitly written um what as far as like a typical day because I know our day

166right now is much more synchronous and mldp is much more asynchronous correct yeah MLD DP n pld ABCD is completely asynchronous okay all right now this so I'm gonna say that I didn't say that out front but is completely asynchronous the parents or the students have time any any time during the day to check in with a teacher and get one-on-one support for the assignments or their progress so far but it is an asynchronous environment okay because that's my only my only concern is just I know that we were offering you know versus some of the other programs out there that are much more asynchronous part of WI our families choose here and my program is that synchronous piece so I know that can be hard um but they do have they can check in

167with a teacher any time of day like it's not like a these 45 minutes at the end of the day yeah it's um and and I definitely understand the concern with moving from synchronous to asynchronous um and and that can definitely be a little scary and so what we've implemented within our program a few strategies and in order to support our own students who need that live instruction is our teachers do offer what we call supplemental live instruction and students can request that should they hit a roadblock you know I don't know how to do this math problem I'm you know I just took this test and I really need to review and I want to review with my teacher rather than my mom students can request that supplemental live instruction and set up office

168hours Virtual Office hours essentially with their teacher um we use WebEx in our in our district um some students just want to pick up the phone they don't want to be on camera so they can set up an appointment to either WebEx virtually with their teacher or talk on the phone with their teacher and actually get some live help you know obviously um in in some cases it ends up being face Toof face because the teacher may be at the students Bri and mortar school but oftentimes it's phone or it's webx and so students can make appointments for that um or sometimes teachers will request that of a student I'd really like you know follow you I I see you struggled on these three areas on this math test I'd really like us to talk

169before you retake that test um and I'd like us to review these problems and so sometimes the teacher will actually request that live instruction so then they can meet essentially face Toof face um you know on the phone or virtually with that student before they progress and and sometimes it's the kids reaching out just because they you know aren't sure how to get started on a writing assignment or they need some ideas for a project um and and sometimes it's you know math review because you know sixth grade math is tough so you know different things like that so we've actually implemented that um years ago and um and and all of our teachers provide that to to all of the students regardless of where they are from and the the students will have access

170to an online message box where they can send message to their teachers and the teachers check that multiple times a day um our typical response time with our teachers the majority of our teachers do teach full-time in a Mesa classroom and they are adjunct with us um but our average turnaround time is um less than 12 hours our teachers do log in almost 365 days a year um they have a few holidays off um and they can optionally take Saturday off most of them work on Saturdays um but they do work six days a week supporting our kids answering messages providing feedback rating assignments um providing the supplemental live instruction when requested and required um so they're not on 247 but if you ask them they are logged on all the time so if a

171student does need help or conversely a teacher I'm glad to hear teachers also reach out because I know a lot of our students won't we have office hours and don't we have that same thing you know there's kids who are still hesitant about asking questions even through a message box um so our our teachers we do a lot of um we have a strong onboarding program and we provide professional learning to our teachers throughout the year and we actually have quarterly plc's and and all of those things um and one of our strongest strategies is engaging the kids you know how do we not only engage through them through the content um and make it personalized for them and give them student voice and choice um and Implement those udl strategies but how do we

172also engage them through the message box and we have a kiddo who has been enrolled for x amount of days and hasn't sent us a message how how are we reaching out to them and so there are some specifics that we have in place from the GetGo but the teachers are really good about reaching out and checking in and asking questions and um you know probing the kids and and getting them engaged through that message box because we know synchronous you know asynchronous can be can be yes Russell I I have a follow-up question to that I think that's what he's he's raising his hand for um this is really good I like what I'm hearing um because I mean we're talking elementary school kids they're not the best self Advocates yet um so what's

173the engagement with parents when it comes to this and and and is there a method of teaching them it sounds like you're You' you're trying to get you've got those things in place but um can parents reach out if they're concerned and um because I just don't think elementary kids are great self Advocates period you know yes and and and we we get that as well um so yes parents can definitely reach out on behalf of their student um be we have a lot ofal and goal setting and different strategies throughout the courses that really we're hoping to teach students the skills they need to self- Advocate and to have have student agency and all of those things but it's perfectly acceptable if Mom calls for her her 10-year-old you know we we get that

174um we know that calling a essentially you know an adult on the phone can definitely be scary so parents can always reach out um they will have access to um teachers email um all of our teachers have a unique mdlp email that they so solely use for our um program they can always Reach Out by email they can reach out by phone they can always call our office I'm you know Jeff knows that I'm always available um sometimes it feels like 247 um as you guys can can understand um relate to so parents can always reach out if they have questions as well and like I had said that Elementary instructional designer she serves as one of our instructional designers and Al also a teacher coach but she also supports parents as well um and

175one thing that we had put in place years ago and we still use with mdp is any of our full-time students so students who are only with us um we actually require them to go through a Readiness module and that could be an option for your kids as well and it's actually um we set it up for one week it's a onewe Readiness module and it's kind of like a unit um that gives students and parents kind of a look at here's what online learning is all about and it takes them through different lessons within that module of time management and how to use the message box and how to submit assignments and how do we how do we take attendance because attendance looks different in the online World um and and we have it

176set up it is is it extremely easy it's honestly a push of a button so do not stress out about attendance at all or ADM it's very easy um and so we really walk through the kids through that and at the elementary level we really want the parents to go through that with their student as well so then the parent knows how to use the message box the parent knows how to support their kids with submitting assignments or taking a quiz um and so there's that one week Readiness module and then once our students successfully complete that module then that's when we enroll them in courses but we do require them to demonstrate Su success in that Readiness module before we actually enroll them um and we have dedicated teachers for that Readiness module um

177there there's actually no cost for that module but I do have um the Elementary in in fact the instructional designer for elementary teaches the module for fourth fifth and sixth graders and then two of my other teachers and designers teach it for the seventh and eighth graders um so the students would actually get to know one of the elementary teachers through that Readiness module because she would be there that sounds that sounds amazing yeah like we would I think that would we'd want that to be mandatory for our kids and thank you for the question um another reason in addition to that why we implemented the Readiness modules because we know um online learning is not for everyone and even though I've been in that space for a very long time and mdlp has been

178around for a long time I know it's not the right fit for every student and every family and as we have um developed our Partnerships we understand that it's not right for every District either and it may be right for some of your students it may not not be right for others so when we talked just briefly about the cost of $175 per course along with that there's really a 30-day trial with that for every single course um so how that works is student is enrolled in a class really they get to engage in that learning and engage with the LMS and ask their teacher questions and do assignments and if they get to we actually do not Bill our any of our districts until the student reaches 20% complete or that 30th day because

179we understand that sometimes kids get into it and they may struggle or they may say you know what Mom I want to go back in person and students you know change their mind all the time and sometimes families change their mind all the time um so we kind of have that grace period for the first 20% or 30 days before we actually do Implement a tuition charge um because we know students need and families need that that that choice and that flexibility that comes along with education thank you Miss MC cheffrey any other questions comments NOP thank you very much thank you Miss Gibson McLean um I don't I actually don't have any questions now I mean I've heard a lot of answers here about the actual instruction stuff I did have a question about

180um when this is going to be brought to us for a vote and when that is brought are we going to see the IGA that we're voting on y if um if the board is interested in moving forward with this um we would bring that IG IG back on December 12th okay um and uh one of the things that we would do prior to that is also have our legal council review the IGA okay um I do have some questions I feel uh well I guess the first question is is that we haven't even talked to any of our parents about this right how much asynchronous um time are they receiving in the classroom right now about 150 minutes a day so 150 minutes of live and about 150 minutes of asynchronous so half and

181half yeah okay um why are we thinking of this partnership because the enrollment at CVA has diminished and it's uh perceived as an Equitable for our teachers to have low numbers of students while we have unfilled positions in the district and also considering the sunsetting of Esser funds our teachers aren't funded out of Esser they're funded out of m&o but the other two people who work at cbaa are funded out of Esser so we have to start making decisions based on the decline in enrollment steady right now but it dropped a lot from last year so that's the main reason why we're considering that and why we're considering Mesa digital is all the other things that we've heard T tonight you know it's personal it feels very cronish they're not out to make money from

182us they're out to serve our students and our families it's a true partnership okay um I think I would like a little bit more information before we decide I know that you mentioned to other proximity learning and student or ASU I believe it was um I can't make a well-informed decision if I don't know what their asynchronous time looks like what their fee looks like if we have others um I I'm kind of nervous about even having discussion this discussion without having our parents we have 31 Stu uh 31 students I think that's a little bit manageable for us to get a hold of those parents and see how they would feel about their children being sent to completely asynchronous um I'm weary about this especially with the um framework that we just adopted um

183I I don't see I I just feel like I get the eser funds but I I I believe that that should be that's a more of a budget thing for us at the Schoolboard and if we did not prioritize that CVA school that's something that reflects on the board um directly so I don't think seeking to me this just looks like a an easy out you know by December let's get this going January we'll move all these kids we don't have any parent input we don't know how these children feel about going completely asynchronous and that's what I'm most worried about so if we are going to have these discussions I would like to have some kind of parent input before we decide on their behalf and also see what other options we have with

184ASU and proximity um especially when it comes to the as synness we just went over data I'm pretty sure our data is not as great as well and moving kids directly to asynchronous um I'm not sure how that provides us the outcomes that we want so those are my kind of things I also would like to see um how much it takes CVA to keep it running um the amounts how much we're spending on our staff those are all questions that I would like to have brought forth before we make an actual decision so we can look at all the Angles and see if this is the best decision for our district and for our students first of all we Madam President we we can provide a comparative cost model and correct me if I'm

185wrong I think we have that data and we can verify that data with each of the partners in case they have alternate models that we're not familiar with um I I our hesitation in reaching out to the parents prior to having the conversation with the board is we didn't want to Blindside our governing board so um if at this point the board feels that prior to having a further conversation on December 12th we should reach out to families um is that doable in that time yeah so so we can definitely start those conversations and get that feedback um what we would want to do is you know look at the available options we and we may want to structure an instrument or we're not promising them any particular tool set that we might not be

186able to deliver on or that the board might choose a different one but perhaps ask those questions in relation to you know there are these models available what are you know what are your preferences what are what are things that are important to you um about this dig experience and when you say that the comparison you're not just saying I heard you say cost but we're also taking into account the the synchronicity yeah we we would certainly you know showcase that because what what I can tell you honestly and hopefully Dr dup and and and Mr guy will correct me um if they have a better recollection than I do but the initial model we looked at for synchronous was basically replacing our teachers with teachers you know that would be provided to us from

187an outside vendor and that cost model was um basically I don't know 95% of what our current teacher cost model is and it didn't replace those additional staff positions that are currently funded out of Esser so to maintain that for next year we would have to move those positions that are funded out of Esser back into M and they were not M costs prior to coid and Asser um we absolutely can do it it's just it's a tradeoff against other things that we currently fund out of M and so that and that's certainly the board's purview to make that choice um so so as we look at that I think what we would showcase for you is not only the cost but what the differentiators between each of those models are this one includes this

188percentage of synchronous this percentage of asynchronous you know at at this annual cost model um and then the other piece is different models will need different levels of administrative support so um you heard shared this evening the support systems for attendance that are built into this tool set some of the other options may have different requirements to support attendance so we want to make sure we capture all of that so we're giving you an honest overview of what the differences are between the options what about the um with the other two I know we don't have all the data tonight but with the other two um Partners or potential people um what about the the ADM situation so I don't know you may know Jeff the um how ASU Prep does it my understanding with

189proximity Is that they're not tied into the state and so that would actually have to be handled by our own staff but we'll certainly ask that question because if they have a way to do that for us maybe they work with another Arizona district and they've built away we want to know that because we really want to present to you the honest you know here's the sort of joke Friday just the facts um version of the information allow the board to make an informed decision yeah I would appreciate that Mr Man and I understand that a budget is a huge thing and sometimes um it may seem right now that we can't afford it I guess quote unquote but it is important for us to get a Grand View of things and also part of

190the framework that we've been talking about is that sometimes if it's going to best serve these students to keep the online school let's say that that was the option and if we have to reallocate funds then that's what we have to do to better serve these students and honestly like this program sounds awesome but for me personally and being a parent of two kids asynchronous is very scary to me um I have a very very smart child he's gifted and he completely failed when he was online so that's just my personal story and maybe I'm gravitating this on my personal views but I it's it's just really hard for me to be sold on these other beautiful things and then that one component that our kids need the most which is the live instruction we're

191missing so to me that's not a fair tradeoff so I appreciate all that um added on information and hopefully we can make a better decision next time all right thank you so much you oh oh I'm sorry that's all right you're right Miss SS I'm so sorry all right I just had one question um I was just wondering what the transition would look like for our students and family well when the time comes we want to provide something like what Jill was describing that read Readiness module so there's communication with the families and students uh to prepare them for a transition um there's usually about a two week technical transition where the computers talk to each other and make friends with each other um but the Readiness to module as Julie described is one week

192about five to six days in length it's like a unit of study and um after that they're pretty much ready to go okay thank you um I had two other questions um so for attendants how would that work like does your system talk to our Synergy time tracker beautifully it's a beautiful thing it's it's if we adopt their LMS which it's which we would through the IG it is a one button push per week it's a one button that is jealous easier yeah I am jealous um time tracker is the bane of my existence um does uh is Mesa do you guys follow your school calendar or is it the full 365 days to complete mdlp in essence the calendar report to the state is July 1 through June 30th but each partner District adopts

193their own calendar so some Partners choose to be open entry open exit just as we are in Mesa um and they allow students to enroll virtually 365 days a year um other partners want to stick to their calendar so they have students enroll like for example you know in January on the first day of inperson they would enroll on mdlp and then they follow that calendar and then their end date is the last day of school in May so it it's whichever the partner chooses um and and some do a mix so you know if you have kids starting March that you could allow them to start in March even if you're starting in January or August okay so we can choose because yeah I think like as we're looking like the advantage to this

194would be they are still our students but as we're looking at goals and all this data it's really hard to have nine schools on a school year calendar and one not so it would be something to consider um I do I think there's amazing things like I said that you guys are doing in Mesa um so out of the three choices just because I do know a lot about the other two I I feel if we are going to partner this is a really strong partnership I am still concerned about the asynchronous time for our students um and I feel like rushed to do this in January um I like I know we were you know hitting the SR dollars but it just feels very quick versus trying to finish out this year making those

195plans having a longer transition time for our families um having more time for the staff like I know they could be redistributed in our district right now but that's also really hard on teachers to middle of the Year be put into a new school um so that's my I just I'm not against this I'm just it feels like a lot really soon and and we we don't we don't have to make a midyear transition the board could choose to make an endof year transition um my recommendation would be and I know it feels rushed but you know it really there's been a lot of research that's been put into this we're we're having the opportunity for information discussion now we have the December meeting um my concern is if we wait until March to make

196a decision what we'll do is will put ourselves on the same timetable we are for parents now just when there's no space to make another you know to to extend things even further so um if we're if the goal is to give parents an extended transition time frame making a decision in December or possibly January at the latest would give them the opportunity to have that spring semester as that transition time but if we wait until May to make a decision we'll fundamentally be back where we are in December um for for the amount of time those families have for preparation for that transition so yeah no I wasn't saying wait until May to make a decision I wasn't implying I I just wanted making this decision about the future for next year like making

197that decision in the next month or two just makes feels better it sits better with me than making a decision in the next month about January um because we already were kind of abrupt and short notice when we um stopped serving K2 students in this program um and I received that feedback directly when I got some of those students so um I just I don't want to do that again it doesn't sit well all right any further questions comments yeah I just have a followup I assume there's a cost and that's why we're rushing it or whatever if if maybe we could get a board update of like pros and cons um you know layman's terms for me please but like what is the cost of waiting you know doing another semester what are the

198other proposals and costs that go along with that um and obviously that can be in a board report but that would be helpful to me just to see the pros and cons of all the different options we have out there we can absolutely get that to the board in an update prior to the December meeting so that there's adequate time for any additional questions to be asked yeah especially the financial piece too of it right because we want to be good stewards of our money too um and making sure that we get a full scope of like how much it's costing the school right now how much are we under you know all those fun things um so we can be make better decisions um going forward any other question questions or comments thank you

199guys I know this is a lot of work and it's a lot of balancing and tough conversations so I appreciate all the work that you guys have done thank you you thank you all right that moves us to our next agenda item which is the eth through F School letter grades resolution review I'd like to also hand this one off to Dr dupin and it's ironic that it's tonight after we spent our study session doing our student outcome Focus governance work so thank you Mr Man um Madam president members of the board uh it is our custom every year after the state issues the a through F letter grades to schools to bring that information to you we've tried to keep you up to date through the board updates about how that's all worked what

200our projections were so at the end of October they were published made official and we're going to go through those tonight we are bringing forward a little more information that what we have done in Prior years this will be a bit more comprehensive in terms of the structure of a through F how they're calculated and we've also got background information if you should have any questions or things you want to drill down on um relative to specific schools so further Ado Dr Pomo good evening Madame President members of the board superintendent man and executive team and I also want to say I want to thank Tyson Myers for being here he helps lead our our team with assessment and data and also all the principles are here because we're talking about their letter grades today

201so thank you for being here I'm Gonna Stand away from the microphone but you can still hear me right yes okay so I'm just gonna talk about four things our letter the letter grade timeline just a quick review the letter grade model the kraton school letter grades and then the next steps of what we're doing about our letter grades as a team um so first the timeline before the pandemic 2016 to 2019 we had letter grades then the year 2020 um due to the pandemic there were no letter grades and then the year afterwards or postponed to the pandemic so in 21 we did not have letter grades so the first year we had letter grades was in 20122 and then this past year 2023 and then we will have letter grades again for 2024

202this is how our letter grades are determined you can see that 50% is for growth 30% is for proficiency um for our El population is 10% and the accelerated Wess is 10% and these are how these categories are broken down if if you had questions later we can go through that but these are how we get points for each of the categories and What U measurement they're using to determine the points these are the cut scores for this year that were used to determine the letter grades this graphic just shows you a comparison from last year uh for 2022 results is the black bar line and then La this current year 23 is the purple bar line and where that red line is um those are all the schools that are B's and A's and

203um and that's above the state average and if you add the B column and the a column for this 2023 year there's more B's and A's this year year than there were for the prior year so there were less um in 2022 but you can see in order to be a b or an a school you have to be above the state average these are the letter grades for our schools um starting in well what they were in 2020 which was basically the the last year that they had the letter grades determined what we got after the pandemic for the first time letter grades were given in 2022 and then our current 20 23 and just a quick overview um Loma Linda school you can see has improved over time and so this past year

204their letter grade went up to a b um the Kennedy kraton Academy Mackin and mon Vista schools they all stay the same from 2022 to 23 and then we have four schools um builtmore ex excellencia Papo and Gateway that went down a letter grade this year so you have a question well just for quick clarification because I know for example um excellencia school right I think it went from B to C but what I was informed and sometimes by two points or minimal points they drop down so they're like right on the borderline so just for transparency reason sometimes when we jump down it literally sometimes is by one or two points and we barely miss that Mark yes it is some yes one or two points and sometimes even less than a point sometimes

205that can happen it just where the cut off score is and just to connect a couple dots that's why that conversation we had earlier about how a through f is structured and when we're structuring our goals those two and a half points can make a substantial difference when it when it happens here yeah the one point can make a big difference like not just the letter grade like the point system that we got oh okay yeah definitely so what are we doing why and how and this is before the student governance like we had uh made a plan and so I'm so excited that we're all aligned and working together and working towards the same goals and so what are we doing why and how and how are we doing it so we implemented the

206datawise process which is it comes out of um Harvard but it's basically a school improvement process that has eight steps and what it is is the purpose is to improve teaching and learning for all students and it's a systematic way for data informed decision- making used a collaborative team- based approach so that all of us are working toward towards the same goal together um and that we decide on our problems together that we need to do to create an action plan there's three parts of the datawise process first is preparing so preparing for collaborative work the second part is inquiry where we're looking at the data similar to what you did today and determining what our problem is and where we need to move for our student learner problem and then also our problem with

207practice as a team and then act phases what is our action plan going to be and what we what we're going to do to progress monitor our action plan and why are we doing data wise process so that was the what we're doing it to make better decisions about instruction and assessment identify address the needs of all of our students improve student achievement and create a more Equitable learning environment for all of our students and the data wise process is uh founded on the ace habits of mind where we have a Shar commitment as a team to action assessment and adjustment intentional collaboration and Relentless focus on evidence so every decision we make is based on evidence and so how are we going to do it and this is just what we've determined as a

208team at the beginning of the year this is aligned to our Str strategic goals and also our IEP goals for all of our schools so we started and we talked about this a couple weekends a was it one weekend ago or two weekends ago that was 10% growth for all students St because this will help us raise our well our students learning and growing but also the letter grades um the process is that we want all of our leadership teams implementing the data wise process and then our instructional goal is that we're improving instruction in our classroom especially learning Target success criteria engagement and rigor I have a quick question will the um because you're part of the study session before too um and we kind of talked about it but we hadn't set draft

209goals goal like we did today do we see those learning individual student learning goals changing at all or adapting based on what those draft goals are or do you feel like there's alignment in what I definitely think there's alignment um and I think that as we're doing the strategic planning process that we'll make sure that we're aligned more directly to the goals that you are going to share with everybody we're definitely um working towards the same thing yeah yeah one favor that I would ask and I don't know how we implement this but we may want to hybridize what we're doing so it's you know November it's almost Thanksgiving and so if we pull the rug out from everybody and change what we're doing right now um we may not get the level of efficacy

210that that we would from sort of staying the course for the time being and so it's why a couple of times I've mentioned one of the things I'd really like us to to be doing is when we're having this these conversations this time of year to be setting the goals for next year so that way when feet Hit the Floor on July one everyone's moving in the same direction and beyond that what we know as people connected to education that perhaps some folks at the state don't understand is that if you really want to see a district make a change in what they're doing if you let them know prior to January they can spend their spring getting ready for next year year but if you wait till say July to try to get them

211to make a change then you don't have the best interest of students at heart because making a change at that late stage is going to have a negative impact on um teachers and students yeah that's kind of what I was thinking like stick with this it's simple and then we can really merge all the details of everything for next year yes because even our um spreadsheets are aligned to this to be able to measure we make you three to four% % growth on each Benchmark um and that's what we're looking at as um Leadership Council team and our and our schools I should ask this when you were there before but do they change the cut off scores how frequently does the state change the cut off scores for the letter grades are um right

212now they're close as possible to 2022 but they vote on them every year right Tyson every year the cut scores B yeah the State Board takes action um in October of every year um but the cut scores have not changed since Inception in okay thank you just changed the name so that's what's scary every year we know what our points are but we don't know what the cut scores are yet so we don't know if we're gonna be and there's a lot of conversation every year about changing them and there you know it's there's a dynamic among the members of the State Board about you know to what degree do they want it to reflect you know passage rates and and to what degree do we balance growth versus achievement to a specific Target tet

213and so that's going to be the conversation for the coming year is reintroducing those student growth targets where within three years time you have to make each kid has to make a certain amount of percentage increase so so we'll keep you informed as that dialogue um evolves but it's it's always kind of a lingering question mark but they have definitely worked on keeping everything as consist pretty consistent for the last seven years I mean the other thing that it brought to mind was like it's hard to then compare a lot after that so when they start changing things around Okay cool so this is just what we've done so far we during a Leadership Council and also during our um coaching session with the coaches we've been learning the datawise process and implementing it um

214each time as we're learning it and all of the schools are working collaboratively with their leadership team their coaches and their teachers to implement the different steps but we're just doing one step at a time and learning it um this first half of the year and you can see that in this timeline um steps 1 through 8 and then the second half of the year um we'll be implementing them as we're getting data and going through all the steps so the first half has just been learning the steps are you getting feedback from coaches and teachers as you go are you going to get feedback on their reception of this datawise like I guess kind of how are we measuring people's willingness to engage in this and accepting of it I get feedback from the

215leaders and the coaches I haven't personally met or worked with teachers is really getting our our whole team aligned together cludy District like all the whole District team leaders and coaches on the same page of the school improvement process anally what we're hearing is that it's a lot it there's a tremendous amount especially among leadership a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and and the and recognition of the importance of this work um and and when you build a professional development plan or like plan out your Wednesdays for the whole year and you can do that in the summer for the year ahead it it's it requires some adjustment and so people are responding to that and trying to balance initiatives that they already had in place with a refocusing and reframing around this but there's there

216is a lot of support and commitment to doing it it's just about blending it with um existing priorities at the campuses okay and that was the impetus for my comments about changing making a shift or a change yet again because it would be a secondary shift or change for us um you know because we didn't really have the Leisure of starting these conversations last February right so you the principles were left in a position to have to put things together for this year prior to bringing this on board and then we were able to bring this to bear and so that's a a shift um if all of a sudden we start moving targets as well you know we're really going to be frustrating our teachers and our coaches and our and our leaders so

217um you know I think the the challenge for us as we move forward is how do we blend in for this year the the student outcomes Focus governance in a way that it doesn't derail the work that's being done certainly but how do we ensure that the work that's being done is even if it's not getting us to where we may want to be in year one for the five year plan how do we blend that in in such a way that we know where we're going to end up at the end of year one and then structure years two through five based on knowing that um and still make significant Headway and be able to enter into next year with all of our spring planning in place for that bringing together of the datawise

218process with the new learning targets because they're completely compatible it's just for us mid year is there a plan to like um I guess take this directly to teachers and stuff just in a way that explains the why and the what and how everything that I mean just so that we're clear I think oftentimes we're assuming that everybody is on the same page about what the heck's going on and there's a lot of feedback since I've even just I I haven't been even here a year yet right a lot of feedback about and this is in every place top down stuff and so so I just want to make sure that it doesn't feel like we're and not that I say I disagree with any of this I think this is all the direction we

219need to go in um I just am not in the business of trying to force things down people's throat or or start things and then have them not understand the why behind it what we're doing or the forest for the trees and so I would love and even if that looks like you know some board members um and uh cabinet members one like maybe two at a time like going to all staff or something and explaining what student Focus governance is how that ties into to this how everything is working in conjunction so that they can so that folks can see the bigger picture and it doesn't feel like another yeah I think we absolutely can do that in relation to the shift of student outcome Focus governance um and I'll let Dr pombo answer

220but my understanding is part of the way all this has been built and structured is when the Leadership Council training is done around the data wise process it's a the concept behind it is we're training the leaders but we're also trying to create time and space for them to prepare to then bring that training back to their teachers and so a lot of those conversations about the why that are happening in Leadership Council for the leaders should be being replicated at the school sites with the teachers their local leaders but um you're closer to it than I and Dr dupin I know has been deeply involved so um I'll leave it to both of you to go into more DET well that's exactly it so they they actually take the slideshow that we're doing in

221our Leadership Council and do that with their teams and the whole purpose of datawise is collaboration and that we're making decisions together not that top down um situ so they're coming up with the problem together they're coming up with the action plan together it's just that the leaders are learning it right now so it's kind of like simultaneously happening but not happening at the same rate everywhere because every staff different every leader and Coach is different that's more reassuring I just you know I was like well I mean we could count on that but if if we don't if we're doing the same thing we were doing before we're going to get that same feedback from people at the at the you know giving direct services to our kids we have um have set up

222a system so through Dr pombo and all of our uh the coordinators that are in the curriculum Department they're all tied to specific campuses so we're out at the schools while the work is happening there um in order to support the leadership as they're working with their teachers and I think and I'm sorry one last thing I mean I think that's all great I think all of this is is great I think also though still moving forward maybe you know I think there's some value in in surveying I know surveys are great everybody loves them um getting some feedback from teachers about their thoughts on this process and how it was implemented how it was rolled out did they feel like they were adequately being informed or or it collab feel like it was a

223collaborative process like I would like that in information especially as we're trying to set um guard rails for you or benchmarks like how are we how are we supposed to know that this is something that's working well right I'm not saying that it's not but I think there's just information that we should probably be gathering and being proactive about thinking about what that looks like ahead of time and not assuming that because this is a different process that everybody's going to love it and it's going to work well um I just want to make sure that we're getting all the information that we need and I think um Miss Gibson mle one of the things that Mr Man and I have talked about is doing a study session with CA as well um bringing them

224to the table once that information is said once we have a little bit more data and um doing a study session even with the principles as well so those are some avenues that we can look into um to create to make sure that we are getting a well-rounded view um of everything that's changing and to go back to what Dr jupin said I had this on slide later how we're supporting the leaders and the coaches is the periodic um professional development and then we go do site visits and meet with the team and we talk about datawise process and then go into classrooms and come up with um together like a discussion of what our plan would be and then lastly um coaching and mentoring by the coordinators from the C CIA team with the

225coaches and so this is kind of a graphic that we made that kind of shows our support from the executive team from any director or coordinator and then the coordinators and site coaches and I mean there's details in there but how we're visiting the schools um for me at least twice a quarter and Dr dupin's going um a quarter and the coordinators are there um at least every two weeks supporting the schools in this process and also instruction um and then the schools are doing professional development the same thing they're also talking about this in profession learning communities and then coaching and mentoring individual teachers with the coaches does does this take I'm sorry I have so many questions as this goes on does this take over almost pretty much all the professional development for

226the school year or is there okay I didn't know like what we're talking about here okay I just making professional development on the steps giving them how to not just like we only data wise PD for the rest of the year and I was like wow I'm sure that's going to be well received well I assume like when when the bring it back like a step back to their staff too like is that not just you know the Wednesday afternoons but is also maybe being Incorporated like in grade level meetings like okay so and the other thing too is you know we recognize that not everybody has access to like the Inception of the idea of doing something right and and that you know kind of start with Y concept that you shared earlier so

227we're we're really trying to use a bunch of different Avenues to also share out some of that why with our staff and so one of the things that's been powerful and I've got to give a shout out to Emily wasik our communications director is that she actually participates in some of these site visits and so what the reason that we have her doing that is she shares out takeaways from those site visits through the kraton connection on Fridays and so you know some of these conversations and then the other thing that's new this year is she also shares out the work that happens in the Leadership Council meetings so when the leadership teams from the sites or with the district leadership team and we're doing this work it used to be that the staff at

228the schools were like well my principle's gone and I'm not really sure why all I know is I don't have anyone here to support me um and so now are like oh there's people camping on Facebook right right but now they can you know they're get they're actually getting a feed back Loop um people that are checking in which are statistics are really good on our on our newsletter which is another credit to Emma um they can not only see what that work is but they will they will get when that Leadership Council happens on a Friday or on a Thursday the very next day on that Friday they get a summary of what their principles were gone doing so they may not agree with what they were doing but they at least know what

229they were doing right and so they didn't they didn't just leave the campus they ran away he went someplace they were actually someplace working on something and the reason that's important is some of that work has been around datawise so um so that datawise process and the principal's involvement in it is being shared with the staff and then in addition to that Dr Pomo was kind enough to join me and I think it's going live this Friday I know it doesn't have a huge listenership but for multiple modalities we've actually uh recorded a podcast together where Dr Pomo shares some of the information about the why and the process of datawise because some people aren't you know they're auditory instead of visual and we want to make sure that we're pushing information out to support

230people and answer their questions in as many different ways as we can because we know just kind of putting something out there once or posting it on a website doesn't really reach enough people so we're trying to cast that net as wide as we can and make sure that we're getting that information out there cool I like that a lot so we're going to have a regular podcast now in the district we are that will be our fourth episode um and episode five stars your own board president uh sopia codal who um explains gives a quick overview of the student outcomes Focus governance process so and we'll keep keep going from there and we got some feedback from a friend of the district um Jason raduka who is the owner of noble bread um actually

231uh donates their leftover bread for the kraton Community Foundation to distribute into our community and he was also kind enough um and we get together every once in a while and the man's brilliant and so we sharing with him a little bit about what we're doing and he had the amazing suggestion that I haven't even had time to share with Emily yet of adding a bumper to the end of the podcast with a way that people can reach back with their questions and their requests for future topics to be shared out through that programming so we'll you know be sure to add that as well just a guy that owns a bread company he's a brilliant guy that owns a bread company so I just want to end with thanking the the School principles and

232the coaches of all their hard work and everything that they're doing and working with our teachers all of our teachers everyone wants to improve it's just a new process that we're doing together to help our students grow and reach that proficiency yes thank you yes thank you so much do we have any other comments questions I have a comment I just like the idea of um Mr Man and I he shared this idea with me as well um of having a study session with um leadership principles um and cea you know I I feel like I've promised CA a study session listening session with them um many many months ago and I think this is this is something we want to get them on board with obviously with principles as well just to have ownership

233of um of how we're we're attempting to move forward with this so I love the idea of that awesome thank you I don't believe we have any other questions or comments I appreciate all your hard work and your team's hard work and I'm really excited to see where this takes us so thank you thank you thank you all right that brings us to our next item which is the aggregate performance classification princip and teachers so just to mix it up instead of putting Dr dupin on the spot we'll shift over to Dr Lauren for this one good evening again I was going to ask Mr Guyer to support [Laughter] but uh oh I disappeared I was up there and now I'm not you gotta keep the jokes fresh people we're pushing five hours here yeah

234sorry not sorry for the loopiness it's okay it's only like hour 14 straight of work normal all right so uh thank you for your time this evening I appreciate it uh we're here tonight to present the uh information relevant to the evaluation outcomes for teachers and principes for the 23 school year uh by Statute we're required to have a conversation with the board annually regarding the performance classifications of principles and teachers so I wanted to remind uh remind the board about the components of our evaluation system we'll spend just a little bit of time talking about what that looks like uh this is of course based on statute so AR AR15 d537 uh there are two main components to our evaluation system 67% of a teachers Effectiveness rating is based on classroom observ a so

235that would be up to two formal observations that are done by qualified evaluator either principal or assistant principle and some others that might be involved with that uh that data is gathered through the Danielson framework for teaching that is our adopted framework for the district and has been for many years now uh the other component so that's 67% of our uh final valuation score the other component is the data compon component uh 33% of a teacher's Effectiveness rating is based on student achievement and that 33% is further broken down into growth and achievement so on the graph you can see or on the chart uh achievement represents 30% of the data score while growth represents 70% so often what you've seen uh as we just reflected with the a through F letter grade and some

236of the conversations we had earlier this evening uh growth is a really big component of how measures are done to evaluate Effectiveness throughout the state in many different ways Dr Lauren I have a quick question are these is this uh percentage breakdown what we've been using or did it change at all this year it did not change this year no um this was changed I think three years ago there was a change in the law uh and this is this has been consistent for the last several years at least that I that I call that's what I thought I just want to thank you you're welcome as a reminder there are four performance classifications that are identified by the Arizona Department of Education highly effective effective developing and ineffective and the Hand the writing is

237really tiny and I know you have copies so I'll leave you to your own devices to review that on your own so looking at our performance classifications uh we have a longitudinal View uh from 2014 forward you'll notice that there is a gap uh that was noted in the a through F presentation that during the pandemic there were sort of uh holidays on the teacher evaluation scores uh they were carried over from year to year as we were adjusting to the pandemic and revising the way that those letter grade or those uh teacher ratings were communicated and those principal evaluation ratings were communicated so for last year and the year prior uh the data set that we used for the data portion was based on exact path uh that was the measure that was used

238at a classroom level to support uh that evaluation process um we no longer have exact path so next month I'll be bringing to you some work from the evaluation committee uh to review a recommendation for this year and what that might look like you'll also notice that on this slide there's a reference to academic progress plans uh for teachers for whom they don't have data that's State Testing or Benchmark testing uh they have a little bit more flexibility in how they determine the students that are uh the data that's collected and how that translates into uh their overall effectiveness rating so it could be uh kindergarten through second grade teachers for instance who don't necessarily have that connection to a benchmark it could be teachers in self-contained classrooms special Area Teachers so there's a variety

239of ways that that's um given that opportunity for those teachers every teacher in the district however does have the opportunity to do an academic progress plan they would work that out with their principles so having said that our teacher ratings are as follows for last school year 67% of the teachers were scored at highly effective effective was 32% we had 1% that were developing and we had 0% that were ineffective how many teachers do we have so the total end count is 363 represented in this uh in this graph chart highly effective would represent 244 teachers 115 effective and that we're developing look at you so prepared it's in my notes thank you all right moving forward to the aggregate principal ratings um we have nine principles in our district and those nine principles are

240represented here 88% receive scores of Highly Effective 12% received score of effective um what this also looks a little different from a principles evaluation perspective in that they are using schoolwide data uh so their data portion is a little different their goals are aligned to professional development goals as well as uh some other factors so their instrument looks just slightly different but they're using the same data set as teachers so now we're at discussion or questions thank you so much for that information do we have any questions or comments Miss MC cheffrey I will start with you thank you um so I mean I think I I think I make this comment every year but obviously we went through some pretty um uh serious academic achievement um uh challenges and so it's just doesn't match

241up with how highly effective our staff is um and I've discussed it with Mr Man and I think the presentation you know presents all of the reasons why the data is kind of out of sync but I mean I think we have to also that's another reason why we're we're venturing into this um student outcome focused governance um you we can all be highly effective and then our our students are are at the lowest rate of some of the the achievement levels in the state so it just doesn't match up that's all can I make a comment yes so I live this life um I am highly effective every year um my students about half of them achieve um on the ASA I consider myself a phenomenal teacher along with um all of my fellow

242teachers um I totally believe this data because I believe that our teachers do work hard they are really smart um just because their kids aren't scoring on ASA doesn't make them less of a teacher than getting if a school gets an F there's still phenomenal people out there that are working super hard um and they should be getting highly effective whether our schools are getting any letter grade I just don't see the correlation between because I do live this life um and my kids don't necessarily score but when we are working with children that um have a lot of deficit and we are working the hardest we can a lot of the time we see growth through those um I know we don't have the exact path what do we have now uh DNA DNA

243okay so now that we have that our kids are making phenomenal growth I'm sure they are my kids made 179 % growth last year but they still didn't score as well on the aasa so I think we have to kind of take some of this stuff in stride because I really don't think that it shows a lot of correlation thank you um Miss MB any questions or comments no Miss Gibson mlin okay the only question or comment or I guess comment that I have too is that um I would like to see some of this stuff too on our principles and and it doesn't have to be in a public if it's in a board update um I do believe that we do a lot of stress on our teachers and we're always focusing on

244our teachers and teachers but we do have leaders over those teachers as well and just how we hold our teachers accountable I want to make sure that we're holding our principls accountable too since they are the leaders of those schools so ask well kind of like what they were talking about this information I don't have any of this information on the principles I know that there's a certain way that a certain rubric I think you were talking about that gets done differently with principles I just never seen that especially in the three years on the board so I would like to see what that looks like as well um and then if eventually if it becomes something bigger we can bring it but board up whatever since it talks about principles and teachers but I

245know this is State statue but I would like to see that as well we we can certainly add that to a border report thank you any other questions comments yeah I just have a follow-up comment I know Miss SS this is personal for you and I understand that and you know I'm come from a family of teachers I totally get it but you know we have 0% ineffective teachers and um we have some of the lowest state State achievement for our kids and I've been in our classrooms and our I know we have some behavioral problems you know but our kids are here and they want to learn it just is a mismatch um and I just think it's it's a disservice to our kids and our families um if you're in 1% developing I

246mean that's we we want our new teachers to know that they have room for improvement I don't think there's anything wrong with that um so that's what this is about is saying look you there's room for improvement here and and that's really all it is I I think this makes us look like kind of a joke in my opinion to to say we're we're all pretty much highly effective our kids just can't learn for some reason and I don't believe that at all all right thank you so much and um I do appreciate the work from everybody in this I know that sometimes we get put in certain standards and those standards are not exactly reflective of what's going on in the classrooms so they they put us in a hard spot by judging us

247off of what grades these our students can produce so I know that's a hard spot to be in and appreciate all the teachers and everybody but um hopefully with this sofg work we can get a little bit more aligned and reshift some things so our outcomes will be better and with that being being said and hearing no more comments um we're going to go ahead and move over to our next agenda item thank you so much for that information Dr Lauren I appreciate it and that brings us to our Solar Energy Efficiency shaded canopy project thank you so much for sitting here for two and a half yes we appreciate you our our sincerest apologies no not at all we only got paid by sitting in board meetings I mean you're salar right yeah I'm

248like I mean that's why I said at work right well we you know I've been in some longer ones so no worries Tucson holds all the records so that's what I hear and you know quite frankly we've been members of the community before it's always good to be able to hear everything that's going on um you know we like to be stewards of the community too and be able to be outspoken to support you guys so we don't mind yeah so so madam members of the board I'd like to introduce Shannon repy did I say it correctly at this time of night even um and Randy Falconer and um they're both uh representatives from verie um Shannon is their resident solar sorceress expert right sorceress yeah so um well solar sorceress is just way more

249alliterative when it's almost sounds really cool print that on a business card so we um uh m Mr Wells who's our director of facilities has been working with the team he's here um Miss dine who's sitting in for uh michiro this evening um is you know Director of Finance and so um if there are questions you know kind of from our team we do have folks here who can help answer those questions um Dr dupin and Dr Lauren have also been involved because one of the things we've been looking at is appropriate placement for these panels so you know there's in instuctional implications of some of those things that the team will talk about tonight um but you know it also doesn't hurt to have someone who was last year a principal so we get

250that principal perspective as well so the goal is always cast the perspective as wide as we can and with that I will turn it over to the team and um let you share with us uh the information thank you um I do have the presentation on a USB Dr dupen if you need it uh yes you have no No Bananas so um Russell do you have a US oh I have a USB you do not have a USB do I is there a doctor on the plane yeah PA has a USB I have a USB wait and you can connect your Dell to the Apple TV it's called Uh air parrot oh it's a a way to now you're the sorcerer actually after 9 o' Russ after 9 clock anyone's a potential [Laughter] Source but

251yes thank you Madame President board members superintendent man and executive team it's it's been a pleasure going through this process and meeting with everybody gaining feedback is is really invaluable because at the end of end of the day it's it's Student First this is your this is your home right all of these buildings you know your your future plans your current plans and we really want to um make sure that we align with your goals um and I can kind of jump to a little bit first couple slides are introductory but um really our agenda is just a quick introduction and a background on our partnership within the school district um oh thank you so much how we got here you know Road traveled um you know specifics on the solar project and really break

252it down as well as uh the path forward for Success so quickly on our partnership we've partnered with kraton school district since 2016 and it's hard to believe that was seven almost eight years ago I know the last few years have been kind of a blur but uh we're excited about that and long-term Partnerships are what we take pride in uh we've worked with over 80 school districts in Arizona we have a 30-year ten tenure in the state um we like to tut our horn a little bit because we're the only K through2 Energy Services Company that actually self- performs the work we have our own technicians Engineers project managers um you know licensed electricians that actually help out in in your backyard we're located off of 34th Street in Broadway um it's it's worth

253mentioning the accolades and achievements that you guys have um received thus far in the previous Energy savings uh phase so I've highlighted here some of the energy conservation measures that you guys have already uh conducted and are in place currently HVAC lighting uh HVAC controls water upgrades and restroom remodels and so with that it was within a guaranteed savings model which is also a state statute regulated model and you've actually achieved nearly 150,000 over what the guarantee is for your District yay yay so I'll move back really quick one big thing to note um on phasing and a lot of times we phase with school districts Pendergast is a prime example what do you need now what do you need in the future um so at the time your current needs for energy conservation were

254met and it's great timing because a lot of times districts will choose solar first without first upgrading their buildings into an energy efficient space which can lead into putting more solar in than you need right you're maybe producing too much you're not getting the ROI based on export rates or obviously the cost to build if you build too much kind of down the drain so you've retrofitted and right fitted your school district to be energy efficient now the next step is to do solar so that you're not overproducing um it's also really good timing uh as you've heard the inflation reduction act it was signed into law August of 2022 um took into effect January 1 of 23 what this inflation reduction act does particularly to renewable energy and battery storage is it takes the

255investment tax credit which has been around for decades out of the singular space which is private investment firms that own and operate solar and actually allows public school districts municipalities higher education to recoup those back in a direct pay option so instead of the trickle down model where it goes to somebody else and maybe you recoup some portion of it actually goes directly back to the district which is a huge feat um given your District region and census track for income levels the majority of your campuses actually qualify for an additional 10% which is called the lowincome adder so up to for the most part I think all but one 40% back via direct pay to your district for the total cost of solar per site um so that's outstanding you know it's really good

256timing for you guys and we're excited to present know what that looks like moving forward for your District so and please feel free to ask questions along the way um the project path and the road traveled I've kind of simplified this a little bit though it was very very thorough and I commend uh Mr Man and executive team for really sitting down with us multiple times and putting the effort together um it's more or less a three-step process you want to get the goals aligned of the district which is really Student First and in Arizona uh that means a lot of shape also so a dual purpose between solar with a return and uh shade for students was the primary focus now once we identified those locations um we looked into some of the parameters

257for solar and how to maximize the profitability for your District uh sometimes if the electrical equipment is super duper far away or you have current or future plans to install other means of shade in certain areas we look for alternate areas so we we did that with the first step we met with the facilities team really walked the sites identified all the locations met back with the executive team to cross reference and and provide you know a real sound solution for the students and staff um the result is a roughly 60% energy offset of your current utility bills which is which is huge um utility rates year-over-year continue to rise I don't know if you see it at your homes too but they they don't seem to be going down and so when you offset

258your energy usage by producing your own energy then you're insulated from those utility costs that you know you kind of have to pay to keep the lights on um so that's the avoided future utility costs and really the federal incentive of it so Kennedy is an exciting project for us uh we loved working with the architect and the general contractor and we would continue to do so um we want to make sure that that's an outstanding um addition to the current design for the campus which we love um Kennedy is a is a huge one that I put on here too then the basketball C uh canopy location couple additional structures um and then you can see some Blended solar locations here just based on the three steps that I had mentioned before um mostly

259shade is first and foremost there are some schools where there's parking canopies as well or a blend of the two so I really wanted to out outline that here in some of these I hate to interrupt Shannon but if I could for a minute um one of the things that we really appreciate about the ver team um is that they've worked very closely with Mr Wells and his team so they're you know as frequent as we frequently deal with in schools there's multiple moving Parts at the same time and we're living through a period of time with un I hate the word unprecedented but I'll use it anyway I'm too tired for an acronym or for a uh synonym synonym thing can't even say synonym I would I would be happy to have a cinnamon

260but um but what what they've done is they're really blending um three different things that are going on right now um we have some Partnerships uh that have come to us through a variety of means including some of our board members like President C OD doll and Miss MC cheffrey have brought us some outside Partners like sustainability Alliance city of Phoenix and so we are in the process of a number of tree canopy grants and so those will bring some additional shade to the campuses and um in our consent agenda tonight you approved um shade structures for the Kennedy School through a grant from the federal government through the city of Phoenix and there will be more of those forth coming for our other campuses um and so one of the challenges with planning all

261of this out and I know you um alluded to this is we we don't want to put solar panels where trees are going we don't want to put solar panels where shade structures are going and so what the team has really done an excellent job of is figuring out for each space what's the best solution so if we put the solar panel over this playground um it's cost prohibitive but we have the possibility to get a shade structure for that playground through the shade Grant so in that case it might make more sense to then move the solar canopy over a parking area where it's closer to where the power comes into the campus it maximiz es our return on investment without taking shade away from students because we have these three different sort of

262legs of a three-legged stool to increase not only shade on our campuses but hopefully reduce overall temperatures on our campuses by removing that direct captured sunlight that's being absorbed by you know the other objects and masses on our schools so so with that is there a plan for uh Kennedy's parking lots um there is currently I I believe not solar for the parking lot but we do have um other components to provide shade I believe trees trees okay okay perfect that's what I thought I just wanted to double check because I'm like we're gonna have a really nice green Campus surrounded by a lot of asphalt that will get that will counteract which which is why in that case I mean ironically on that campus the solar structures you see in the diagram are actually

263closer the what they call the sces where the electrial comes into the campus is actually more Central on that particular campus and so these are both more cost effective locations and student shade centered locations and they're in the areas near the green spaces the parking lot is sort of the asphalt and concrete space near the edge of Campus so we're able to soften that up by focusing the tree grants into some of the tree grants into that space and bringing trees in as the shade um shade canopy for those locations a lot of car washes y someone who went to school here uh with no shade over the playgrounds and metal slides this is all just just like yes I'm with you on the metal slide subject I can't tell you how many times I

264got burnt growing up but um no so much for adding that color too there's there's so many different things I go into selecting solar locations that I couldn't imagine you'd want me to bore you with at this point but I'd be happy to give you all of that information too um but we're happy to have such a great team that is willing to sit down with us and really put our heads together to identify those locations because it's a hard decision to make and you know the team efforts definitely appreciated I just have a quick question with the parking lots that doesn't um create any less parking spaces in any of the parking lot does it no no it doesn't the way that we do it is where our columns are positioned we create them

265where the the parking SPAC is tea off okay um you know one in one of our offices I don't know who did it 20 years ago who built it they definitely didn't do it that way so we reminded of it every day and uh that's definitely something that we avoid every single time just making sure because there's precious parking at mon Vista yeah all parking typically for for schools are precious it's it's a tight squeeze most of the time um so a quick project review of the specifics here um the way that this all works per statute and some of you might be familiar with it already is uh 15- 21301 is a guaranteed savings model which I know the district is familiar with from a few years ago um any energy and operating costs

266reduced um for for for the project has to pay for the project period and that that is created to eliminate risk to school districts um so the person or or a company that is doing it such as ver G would be on the hook to pay any difference of it we have to guarantee that it pays for itself through the duration of the project otherwise we have to cut the check uh which we've never had to do and we're very good at putting together a net neutral project for you all so that you don't have to worry about that we provide annual and more recently quite regularly um reports on measuring and verifying those savings that is also an Arizona statute and it's mandated by the department of energy so it's highly regulated uh within

267your uh District we're very close on Kennedy uh we've been working closely with the architect as the school's already under construction right now so we're trying to hone in all of those specifics um but in general the 30,000 foot view here is roughly a $9 million project with $3 million coming back from the IR and first year savings at $352,000 that would be guaranteed um these are 40-year panels uh they're warrantied how many I'm sorry these are 40 year panels yes um so we typically do our models just so you can see the longevity of savings within your school district within a 40y year and this takes into account you know how the age of the panels as the years go on but within the 40 years it's roughly a $34 million long-term back to

268the district um for a $9 million investment so producing your own energy and avoiding those additional cost increases take makes a huge huge part in it I don't know if you have anything to add to theel in general yeah we don't even need Mr he's like why am I here Mr Man and I had talked about was you know there's the guaranteed time but then I mean it's not like it just stops working on day one after the 40th year or whatever yeah yeah right that's years yeah that's the expectancy that they have on these so they degrade a little bit each year we do a lot of studies on older systems so school districts will call us in to solve problems and they don't really degrade as fast as the manufacturers were saying either

269so I would suspect that 40 years is probably light still at this point in time or how long they'll last but yeah the production warranty on these panels is 30 years yeah so they have to be conservative just like anybody on their degradation rate and how long the are lasting so we base that on the conservative model for you guys too okay um so really that's it in summary what we're really excited about um as well as part of this project is what we've been doing for all the other districts as it pertains to solar the technology is there to provide stem learning opportunities we really enjoy having like kiosk a lot of districts enjoy having kiosks with in their within their vicinities and Facilities so that people in the community can see what the

270solar is producing there's curriculum plans available that were provided by science teachers there's one kind of displayed here that was developed for sixth grade students which can be really fun and it's interactive um there's a 247 monitoring platform that you guys have access to versus if somebody else owned it you can actually see and verify what your system is doing and teach students how to calculate some of these items as well if you're interested which can be really fun um those exercises I think you know I don't know I remember when I was growing up having like the the hot dog exercise right in the sun I'm from Arizona and it's similar to that right utilize the Solar Sun in those curriculum to be able to do activities and it provides a lot of fun

271for students and learning uh We've even done solar car races too for school districts which is a good time um but really that the primary item here is just giving shade to students um maximizing their their Learning Potentials and their environment for the school district and guaranteeing that the Project's going to pay for itself so that you don't have to worry about that burden um I don't know if you have anything to add in there's environmental equivalencies that the students can also do um calculations on it's provided by the EPA and so we've provided some equivalencies there to over the 40-year lifespan of solar you'd be producing over 137 million kilowatt hours um so you can do some quick uh math there on the EPA website nearly 11 million and gallons of gasoline consumed right

272or prevented of consumption for for solar we'd like to have a little fun with that on the science side yeah and this also kind of makes my brain Wonder right as a governing board member and the potential of having solar buses and all these other beautiful things that can come and stem from this that eventually can be great benefits for the school district so um yes I'm glad you mentioned that actually too because one thing that we're including within this project if you choose to move forward with with it what we've done we have a director of vehicle electrification that we actually kind of stole away from Valley Metro I did a project with him back in 2018 and use berry wise so he does long-term and short-term vehicle electrification plans for both battery electric

273buses and fleets um so another thing that we talked about with the district was how do we cover these buses and how do we get electric buses and when is it time to get those electric buses so the philosophy is the same with the path that you guys have followed thus far which is identify your building load identify your kwh usage and then go solar so that philosophy is the same for battery electric buses what we do know about those buses it's going to increase your load because it's connected to the grid now so how much is it going to increase how do we offset that with solar and potentially battery storage too so we're going to develop that plan for you guys also so that you have a long-term and short-term solution um the

274main thing that we look at you know is if you have all new buses you know is it is the return right right so it's based on age it's based on mileage it's based on um routes it's based on need um but that way we can land lay out a year-over-year kind of path for you guys so that you can reach that ultimate goal um you know and be able to use those Federal subsidies that are available now right yeah yeah we look at other grants that are other thing as well try to match up with timelines on the age of buses and so so the beauty of it is while this particular phase of implementation wouldn't include that um the team's willing to help us with that future planning and Mr Wells has been

275a step ahead as well um we don't know yet um we're still waiting to hear back but we are part of a grant that is a partnership with one of the vendors we work with um a lot of the grants require a minimum of 25 buses which isn't really a fit for us right now and so one of the local vendors um has created an opportunity for those districts who don't need that many buses to kind of go in together so we're kind of in a grouping um and still waiting to hear back as to and if I'm saying any of this wrong please correctly so um so that may those may be our our first three electric buses if that comes through so having this pre-planning will be super helpful to us and one

276of the things that that Mr Wells and I have talked about for years in relation to electric buses and solar and the potential for shade is one of the most um fuel consuming things with a bus during the heat of the summer is trying to cool it down and he taught me years ago that those air conditioning units only reduce the temperature by a certain number of degrees so the cooler the bus is when you try to cool it down the more effective the air conditioning use is the less energy you're consuming and the cooler that bus will be when it gets to kids so by being able to look at a future where we might we might add in addition to this project solar shade for those buses we may be able to accomplish

277several goals at the same time and so having the team to support us with that planning is is really super helpful that's a really good point and uh we've actually conducted uh or hired a third party assessment to conduct that just the same the the time to idle buses yeah and the fuel consumption of them and I mean the bus drivers especially right like that's a hard job during the summer and then during the hot months to have to get in those buses um we did the we covered the Valley Metro Mesa facility years ago and did that analysis there and the savings just on diesel alone before they went with some electric is is huge yeah but yes please if you have any other questions I just wanted to double down on um like

278this slide and and opportunities and especially thinking about Kennedy where they're looking at curriculum around that school um and I'm just excited to see that you know there's already some things created and and you know I'm sure the team is working on like how can we also pull this in um like I remember when I taught at the Old Kennedy um I got to do one of the SRP Green Team things and like with that like I got a little solar panel I still have it solar panel uh Fountain and the kids loved it like they absolutely loved it we got kilowatt readers and they were going around the school like it was hilarious ious how excited they were and and like I had kindergarteners at the time they partnered with a fifth grade class

279and they became like the judge and jury of every teacher that left their projector on and lights on in their classroom but um it was just awesome and it and it gave them so much ownership so I'm really excited to see pieces um like this and and it just makes me feel good about um partnering with an organization that's not just thinking of you know yeah the here's the solar panel like yeah just asked Jay this seems like a tight business model yeah I was like where's the Prof lots of Grants yes yeah we're great at finding grants we're great at finding rebates and we were elighting and uh hbac controls I mean we go out and find those rebates for you guys and grants may make a big deal that's a big difference for

280sure um and so lastly really just a path forward uh the landscape and kind of what we're working boards right now would be um if you choose a December board resolution and approval executing the guaranteed savings agreement um then the construction would begin and the goal is to have everything online by the end of 2024 this aligns with the IRA it's within a calendar year so as long as you have each system online and it's by address then that it follows the the following tax year right just like anyone who kind of pays their taxes there's a little bit more time in there on the tax side on the following year where you would get the the direct payb via check in unrestricted Capital funds in 2025 for the the year of 2024 so and

281just to make sure this is abundantly clear what we what we would be doing to do this is we'd be looking at a lowest loan product um and then what would happen is for the initial portion of the life cycle the savings the the savings on utility bills is what would be used to make make those payments however and and we need to verify the specific details on it it's our belief that if the board does decide to recommend um a bond election in November of 24 we believe we should be able to bundle the solar into that Bond and then pay off that refinancing and fundamentally re we would refinance it through a bond structure may even be more costeffective from a percentage but what we would be doing is capitalizing the cost through

282our bond payback um which would then mean that we would be recognizing each year an additional $350,000 roughly in M savings that would help support some of the challenges that we have with you know some have ahead of us so so we're we're verifying all of that and to make sure we bring you the best possible information when we come back on December 12th resolution the reason for that timing is to get up and run to meet that deadline of the end of 2024 in order to be able to realize those 40% rebates so the capital fund return for 2024 that they're talking about that would go to pay on the principle of the loan that we're getting or would go back into our I think I think there are multiple options um uh and

283one of the things that we're also verifying as what the the various available options would be so um it may make sense to pay it against the principle of the loan and um shift and by shifting it to the bond then we're shifting less dollars to the bond um the other thing that could potentially happen not wanting this to happen but let's say we had a challenge with passing a bond in 24 and we have and we have Capital needs we might want to continue to make those payments out of m&o and that would at least give us a couple of million dollars in capital money to TI Us by until we were able to pass another Bond so it it gives us a lot of options and prior to coming back on the 12th

284we'll make sure we know all the very specific dets next steps are we wanted to see the board's interest and then the next steps will be to talk to some of the financing gurus that we work with out there awesome thank you um Miss MC cheffrey do you have any other questions comments concerns no I just love this idea and um I appreciate you guys for chasing it down I know the grant part is um not easy so thank you I love it um board members do we have any other questions comments concerns awesome um I think this is great I think this is very aligned with the vision that we have especially with even the student outcomes focused governance work we want to make sure that um we are aligned in all the aspects

285and bringing not only the cost savings but bringing the instructional piece for our students is like a double whammy so um thank you so much for being here I appreciate your time and I can't wait for the next meeting to approve this so much we appreciate it thank you thank you guys all right that brings us to our next agenda item which is future agenda items does anybody have a future agenda item so I just would like another update of um Larry C Kennedy um where we stand um the last presentation we had um I still don't understand the Outdoor Learning um curriculum as a parent like I'm not sold I just from a parent perspective um maybe it was over my head um but I I I just don't understand what the curriculum is

286and I would like to know the hiring process for the principal and also where we stand on the name of it I I think I've heard pros and cons uh about Larry C Kennedy um in the community many people think it's named after John F Kennedy obviously it's not um and I know Larry C Kennedy is a is a amazing person but I can't give you the elevator speech about him myself so um those are three things I'd like to know kind of where we are I would agree with all of those and in addition to that I mean I I know I was the only person that I don't know if Amy was here but I voted no on on on the original spending but I was hoping that then we would be getting

287pretty consistent updates you know given what I thought was lacking in the presentation that we got and so I would hope to continue to get updates about what progress is being made um and what we can afford what progress is being made in the way of these grants that are like coming as they come on the consent agenda items that sort of thing um any more detail that we can see in um floor plans or blueprints or whatever I mean the blueprints I thought were lacking as well um and then like the the curriculum piece I would tend to agree with I get the gist of things to me it felt like somebody was explaining in query based learning to me but that's not a curriculum and so that's why I was like what is

288the actual curriculum not the teaching meth method here yeah we can just put it as a future agenda item so we're not discussing so much of it absolutely and and I I just want to be thorough in what we're expecting for the agenda item I also I know it's off topic but I'd like to put a plugin for the last board update because there were um quite a bit of update information in there as well which is by no means um being against doing a presentation at the board meeting but one of the things we're also trying to do is make sure that we're going to be putting regular updates in that board update so you don't have to wait for a board meeting to get that information certainly just for the public as well

289yep thank you and the only other f um future agenda item that I would have is to get an update on the renaming of the paple school that could be uh a board update but I would really like to find out where we are with that any other future that's like three we're like three hours into that I think she miss MC cheffrey was that for us or did you just forget to mute yourself no that was for you I'm sorry I'm I I would like that as well the Papo update okay thank you any other future agenda items all right seeing none that brings us to our next agenda item my motion we adjourn second all those in favor hi W notes thank you guys so much hi