001foreign thank you thanks for joining us ma'am it's six so I'll give you like two more minutes oh thank you all right thank you so much for everyone who's here we're gonna go ahead and get started um the Creighton School District understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the Odom Jude and ecuma Odom people who descended from the hohoka come and have inhabited these lands since time immemorial the Odom whose name translates literally two people are a vibrant culture and communities spanning countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful Legacy for Generations into the future with this acknowledgment the Creighton School District formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is in an aspirational model of
002community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations and I'm going to begin the Pledge of Allegiance if everyone could stand flag of United States sorry for myself thank you and that brings us to roll call we have Miss Gibson McLean Miss mcshaffrey myself Miss McCaleb and Miss Myers once again we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address board cards they can be found on the left side over here by the coffee that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for two cards why cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public
003comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda this is per policy bedh I move the governing board approve the agenda as presented all those in favor I and that brings us to our public comments section I'm not sure what order I received this in so if somebody did one first I apologize because I just scrambled them all um we have Unity unique three minutes please thank you welcome thank you so much for being here um and then you can face us you can go behind the podium yeah that way everybody can hear you thank you so much gratitude um so I am a mom used to go to used to work here so to be back like in a community where my
004mom worked my dad worked in the district and then I worked in the district but um the land and the food uh for this school that is being built out for outside so the healing that it brings to our community so speaking regarding gardening and the healing that we have seen in South Phoenix as well I'm a gardener so seeing like the children just uh just grow through the land and Indigenous land and for us to approve something that will be beneficial to our community and healing is like a big big big deal and yeah and I'm a native so just speaking about that item and the importance it is like for generations to come so yeah so I appreciate if that is one of the approval items so yeah and I appreciate y'all thank
005you so much I appreciate your time okay next we have Gail Smith oh yeah sorry go ahead sorry good evening Madam president and members of the board my name is Gail Smith I'm a former Creighton uh District employee and a former Creighton student myself [Music] um my son is currently attending a school in the Creighton District um he is a medically complex child who has undergone three heart surgeries as well as multiple complex Airway surgeries I have come to you tonight because my son's civil rights are being currently and repeatedly violated by the not only by the school but out by the special education department in an email sent to All board members and administration I expressed my concerns for the repeated incidence of assault racial bullying and for my medical medically complex sense safety
006I also request an occupational therapy evaluation be performed on my son here are just a few examples of his rights being violated an occupational therapy evaluation was denied even after providing the district with an OT outside screening that recommended an evaluation be done on my child and a long-documented history of occupational therapy and fine concerns the district's occupational therapist in the 504 meeting had never even met my child items were removed from the 504 plan without my consent or knowledge my son was victim blamed for the assaults that occurred on him the school district failed to keep my medically complex Child Safe by placing him back in the areas with his abusers and he was assaulted again these assaults caused him to have more than seventeen thousand dollars of Medical Treatments and testing I was
007told that my son didn't have anxiety because the teachers didn't observe it even though he has a long documented medical history of anxiety and PTSD dating back to H3 he missed multiple days of school because of anxiety and assaults and the fail Ure for the school to keep him safe I was told that he couldn't come back to school after a hospitalization because he could not bring his life-saving oxygen tank by The District's nursing supervisor this is a small subset of ways the school district has violated fape and my son's basic human rights leaving me with no choice but to explore filing OCR complaints I look forward to a longer discussion with the board about these these issues when it is put on the edge at the end at the next board meeting thank you
008for your time we can't really have conversation with you but our next superintendent is here and we're going to make sure that he looks into this stuff for you okay thank you next we have Jessie giambra foreign president members of the board executive team and everyone here just want to say thank you so much for a beautiful school year um we made it through and I'm looking forward to what's ahead thank you also for considering and for supporting the meet and confer process we're really thankful that that is going to be on the agenda for tonight I also wanted to share that I was able to personally attend my first Phoenix Union High School District board meeting last week as an alumna it was great I mean I'm really happy I got to go it
009was also a very intense experience and I had just an observation which was just the the work that we do here in our elementary and middle school district and how you know when we do just a wonderful and outstanding job with our students it's going to make their High School experience easier and avoid some of the issues that it seems like they're facing now and so as you guys go into summer planning and meet with leadership um and you know just really Envision the year ahead one thing I would really like to see happen and emphasize moving forward is more spaces for constructive dialogue I noticed at their high school meeting that just seemed like there weren't a lot of maybe spaces for people to come together and and share you know their experiences obviously
010there's a lot of emotional things that have happened regarding safety in the high schools um and so in order to just kind of avoid that I feel like during our staff meetings you know with our community meetings with the board meetings with the leadership just more spaces where we're not only just you know talking and giving input but we're also able to just get to know one another better in our community including families and students um and I also want to speak to kind of the cultural competency of that too where I believe you know the cultures that we serve um in our neighborhoods are Roundtable cultures you know our circular cultures where everyone is invited to the table everyone's invited to give input so I think that really good things like taking steps forward
011by having creating kids Congress and that kind of thing is awesome and I think that I noticed in the Korean kids Congress shared all of their perspectives they all said I'm really thankful to be able to share my opinion and I think that that is not a privilege just for one group of students I would like to see every single student have more of an opportunity to to really give input and to influence directly our decision making not just hearing from but participating with at every level so thank you so much appreciate you thank you love your shirt and thank you all right and that brings us to our superintendent report Dr Lewis is not here but we have James Mr Mann well thank you very much Madam president um happy to to sit in
012this evening and get a little bit of a preview of moving into next year so um just had a few things that I wanted to share on my way into the space today um I Heard staff in the back talking about you've noticed some smoke in the area there is what appears to be a multi-home fire at 16th and Oak so that is in our community so both your awareness for your own safety as you leave this evening but also your hearts and prayers and an apartment complex as well yeah for for those families that may be affected and you know perhaps Our Family Resource Center can see if they can find some contacts in that area to see where we can win some support to our community we um talking with Mr Carvajal um
013it's never good news to have vacancies um but we are down to 54 vacancies as of Monday which is a lot but compared to um anecdotally compared to where we've been in Prior years I think um we're in somewhat better shape than we have been in the past which um you know again anecdotally may be related to some of the work that we can confer in the governing board's done over the last couple of months so I'm just kind of going to continue I know that team is going to keep working to fill those vacancies throughout the summer and then we've got our teachers hard at work in curriculum design studio right now had the opportunity to stop over at the Creighton Academy where they're working and just saw amazing work happening there a lot
014of collaboration some healthy debate which is nice to see there wasn't always 100 agreement always makes me feel good to see people not agreeing as they're working on things because I think you get better thinking when everybody's not you know having the same perspective and opinion and we will have I know we think school's out but we will have more than 700 students joining us again starting next Monday for summer school so we're excited to have kids back in the schools looking forward to providing them with a solid summer school experience over the next couple of weeks here and that's all I have for today thank you and that brings us to our governing board reports Miss Gibson McLean and to you I can start off with you today um I'm trying to think of
015what I know had thought of a couple things um first things first I know that I am looking forward to um having a more robust and like long-term discussion regarding safety and kind of going off of um also having attended virtually the Phoenix union meeting and having been on the chair of their Safety Committee I would really hope that we can approach things in a way that our meetings don't necessarily end up the way that things do there it gives me anxiety I don't like it um people act like super immature people that are supposed to be professionals are like gawking and heckling people teachers staff and admin are heckling community members and it's really weird and then going up there and saying they want to be respected as professionals and so I'm really hoping
016that the divisiveness if we can have a long-term conversation about safety doesn't devolve into that I would really rather not um you know it's my drop in my job every day I have some pretty interesting conversations about some pretty difficult and downright bad things and I'm still able to have those in productive ways and so I know we can do it and I hope we can um so I'm looking forward to digging into that I know it's in the works for upcoming agendas in terms of policies and and other things that we'll look into I'm looking forward to it um and finally because I really believe in like remembering people and saying their names I had a very good friend from high school her name was Carlene Richards she promoted from Larry C Kennedy I
017probably I'm going to get this wrong but I think it was 2002 she's a little bit younger than me but she passed away recently and it was cool I think the cool thing at her memorial service was seeing Creighton's staff at her memorial service even though she was 35 years old and also classmates that I went to high school with who also went to Creighton and have been friends for life and so um she was a great person super super nice and friendly and just like um somebody who embodies like what our district represents so just putting that out there thank you it was Mick Jeffrey um at the March 28th meeting when we last discussed the potential special ed investigation um president Kario doll asked that I get vendors to her and Dr Lewis
018so we could move forward if anyone missed this it's on YouTube where we discussed it it took me a little while to get this together because I probably talked to five different colleagues and one of the vendors to get advice and recommendations before completing this list I emailed the list on April 20th that's about seven weeks ago now last week I asked why it wasn't on the agenda for today and Miss Carrillo doll said that Dr Lewis claimed that she never received my email um but the great thing about email is it's easy to find so I emailed it again another time um and this time I had our attorney's email so I got an immediate response and the story was totally different um obviously it had been received um Dr Lewis in other words
019Dr Lewis continues to lie and Gaslight board members about this and the vote has been kicked back down the road to June 27th I wanted to include this in my board upgrade update because I know a lot of people are following this and there is great interest in this and I would like to see it listed on the future agenda item to update that it will happen on June 27th because that's what's being talked about but it's it's still not even on the future agenda items thank you Miss McCaleb foreign well first I hope that those of you who have a summer break are enjoying your break all of the staff who are working hard on curriculum design studio um I know it's you're still working but I know it's also rewarding work and we
020appreciate all of that as well as our teachers who are giving up part of their summer to do summer school that is so important for our students so just a huge thank you and then of course all of our 12-month employees um this is my first summer where I'm not just doing projects in the summer I'm actually a 12 month I'm like oh this is interesting working 7 A.M um every so every summer day but please find time to relax take your vacations reset um my second piece for my board report is um kind of sad I'm sorry I'm doubling down on Katie um but we have a former employee of the district Dixie pets she was an instructional aide at Larry C Kennedy and I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge and
021remember her she passed away last week those of you who worked with her if you're interested um there is not a formal memorial service but some of us are getting together tomorrow at Manuel's tomorrow evening to remember and celebrate her so thank you so much winner condolences go out to the families uh Miss Harris thank you um I just want to thank um Miss bengora from a bit more prep for inviting myself and Lindsay was there and Katie's husband was there um we got to be a part of judging for their coding Club showcase where they created apps on their iPads and then they presented the apps to us and we gave feedback and some awards and it was um some of them were very very interesting like their ideas um so I just want
022to thank her for allowing us to come over there and um judge that competition I was like wait that was like between our last meeting and this okay wow well it's like the million days of May yeah um and then the same thing with break I hope you're enjoying your break I personally have not had a day off yet but it's coming um and I'd like to say I finally finished my degree um I really didn't know what to do this week because I didn't have any homework and I feel like I'm like not doing what I should be doing because I'm done so yeah I have a really hard time relaxing so um I'm really happy that I'm I'm done with that um have a great summer and I saw some people uh planning
023for the kindergarten boot camp um last week when I stopped by the family center I dropped off a ton of donations so they probably are like don't bring any more um but ton of donations for new teachers for next year at the start of the year so they were planning really hard and I admire them because kindergartners scare me thank you thank you um for myself just a couple of things um this week is Summer Leadership with the Arizona School Board Association so that's really cool um Creighton School District it's gonna get a special not a recognition but a special spot as a panelist because of our superintendent search I believe Arizona School Board Association is doing like four or five other ones and they were really interested in how we ran our community forums
024that we had a student focus group that no one has ever done and I always I know I always say that but I'm gonna keep saying it because I'm still shocked that that's something that's not done and and these type of um superintendent searches I mean student voice should be the number one thing that we're all listening to um so that's pretty cool that um we're gonna lead the way into that talk um with all of the other school boards that are out there in the state of Arizona so that's um pretty awesome and then um no I'm doing it with Tracy Benson which was one of the yeah yeah just hear about myself hey guys we did a great job no um Art Association I I'm just one of those speakers or the panelists
025um and I believe that's it I had other stuff but I can't remember what it is so we'll leave it at that and that brings us to approval of consent I move the governor just wanted to pull one item yes for transparency sake I'd like to prove a pull item V as in Victor okay so I move the governing via's in Victor okay um anybody else I moved the governing board approved consent agenda items a through U second all those in favor aye aye and then miss mcshuffrey go ahead and speak about item v yeah I budget was in consent it's just judge it and the final budget um at the next meeting which is like three weeks away so if anyone's interested in looking at the budget the proposed budget budget is listed here
026for you to look at um and then we'll vote for the final and have the hearing on the 27th I guess I have a question um generally speaking do do is there something that requires it to go on the consent agenda yeah it's interesting so it does it I don't know that it's legally required that live in consent it's pretty standard that boards have it in their consent agenda because it's not the approval of the budget what it actually is it's the approval to post to have the budget hearing so um so you know typically but I appreciate um our board Clerk Miss Jeffrey pulling it because it is nice to create that additional transparency and create awareness that we are putting that proposed budget out there and of course it will be posted you
027know through the necessary means normally that is through the um Arizona Department of Education site but because we are requesting an adjacent ways tax this year the hearing will not just be a budget hearing it will also be a truth in taxation hearing as well which requires newspaper notification within the community so we'll um our team will be working Ms dumeline and her team will work to get the notification for that pushed out through that newspaper mechanism as well as making certain that the proposed budget gets posted for review and I know it's an annual thing but just to be clear our budget hearing is going to happen on the 27th correct yes it is an annual thing and it will precede the meeting and then the budget vote will be the first agenda item
028within the meeting following and I just say that I know um some I think I don't know if you were in attendance but one of the um forums that we had there were two folks that came who did not have students in the district did not work at the district but just lived in the district yes and one of their big voices was that they wanted to make sure there was a lot like just transparency and finances and making sure we're even going beyond the appearance of impropriety or being you know looking like we're trying to hide anything and so I think we're just trying to be cognizant of that and that's why I was asked required to be in the consent agenda I think a lot of times and I know it's just the
029proposed thing but maybe people don't even realize that the next hearing is the budget hearing unless you're eating to like school board meetings and things so I just wanted to make sure we had some time to also say that out loud in case anyone's listening and doesn't realize that's the next meeting and then maybe in the future um we can just separate it out if it's not required just so it looks like we're paying some attention to it that's different than kind of a broad stroke of something yeah absolutely and Mr Man thank you for bringing up the adjacent ways is um that will be attached to the um the budget hearing we'll be voting on that as well correct okay so okay um in the in the budget in the proposed budget that you
030that is attached to the consent agenda item tonight that adjacent ways Levy is included and assumed in that budget okay now of course you know all of this is pending governing board right yeah so if the board were to choose not to approve that we would have an adoption of an amended version of that proposed budget and then um you know our Miss doomlin and our team would do the work necessary to make those adjustments for that adopted budget and then that would be what we would file with the state at that point Thank you so if board members have questions about adjacent ways please get with Mr van between now and the next board meeting because that is something that's been controversial before because that is something the board solely votes on it doesn't
031go out to voters but it is attacks that um will be voting on just the board yeah yeah so is it something that you're going to discuss at all at the budget hearing yeah um because it's a TR in addition to being a budget hearing they'll be the truth and Taxation um Miss dumeline will go through and kind of explain what adjacent ways is why we Levy adjacent ways how we arrived at the dollar amount that's being recommended and we have not um we have not we have levied adjacent ways in the time frame that I've been with the district over the course of the last eight years we have not had a need to Levy adjacent ways for three or four years now so four years so um so it's been it's been a
032bit and so it may not be fresh in everybody's mind um and so it's always best to make certain that you know everybody understands what it is why it is and how those funds will be used okay okay thank you any more discussion on V okay I move the governing board approved consent agenda item v in accordance with policy bedb Dash e all those in favor aye aye thank you for pulling that Miss mcshuffrey um that brings us to 6A it's the governing board asba policy um revision of 7744 and 747 um this talks about some of the medicines I guess now a new legislation passed that if a child has an EpiPen or something they can carry it around with themselves without having to be administered or go get it through a nurse so
033asba is just updating us on those little things that have passed and now we have to follow suit on do we have any discussion or any questions on these I know this is just a first reading oh yeah yeah um so I guess my question is um historically as the district had textbook selection committees or are those usually within like a curriculum committee I think Dr dupin could probably best answer that we have had textbook selection committees and adoption committees they've run in different ways in different years sometimes they've been an advisory committee to the governing board in which they've followed open meeting law and been posted they've also run separate from that and then the team reports to the board in either case these policy advisories recommend or reflect changes in the law to
034require all textbook selection and adoption committees to follow open meeting law in the future moving forward and in the past um I guess when we did have those advisory committees I guess what kind of cost I know that there's a lot that goes into open meetings that people probably don't consider and so was there any kind of significant cost I went along with and because I don't know how long they usually go on for I would say in terms of significant cost there there really wasn't any it was really mostly about working closely with the uh board secretary to ensure that all the postings are properly done that the timing is met um and that that information is is publicly available while the process is unfolding before 24 hours so they didn't get the agenda
035for me within a timely manner it then they couldn't have that committee or were there any yeah mm-hmm 24 hours in advance notice did you find any problems um with people with meeting Quorum since it wasn't made up of people no because I don't think you really have to explain the open meeting laws there's um like a difference yeah they're not a voting body uh yeah I understand um I guess just coming from having just been on and shared an advisory committee um that followed open meeting law we did have to follow Quorum and we did have to cancel many meetings the attorney advises of that Jennifer our former attorney was my attorney on that committee and so I'm just putting that out there that we should definitely make sure we're prepared because this is
036clearly something that's going to be required we're gonna have to do at some point in the future I know we're not doing this every year but when it becomes an undertaking we just want to make sure that we're prepared for any costs for anything that's going to take up time all of that because I think this is very interesting obviously so yeah based on that Insight I would say one of the costs might be us engaging our attorney to ensure we're actually yeah following all the rules around open meeting certainly so that's a great Insight yeah okay [Music] perfect and that was just a first read so it'll be brought back to us I'm sorry any other further discussion okay that moves us next to our meet and confer final recommendations section and who's going
037to lead us in this it's just connecting oh sorry and we have the members of the meeting confer team some of them that are available and in town that are coming forward um sorry my brain cannot multitask let me just plugged in thank you guys for giving up on a summer evening thank you perfect this team and those members there are not with us right now there have been amazing uh and caring and thoughtful and all of the recommendations that they have brought forward during the discussions and through the war they truly have the best interest of the adults and the students and the families in the community at heart and you have experienced those in their passionate presentations and all of the recommendations so today um we're bringing today the accumulation of all of
038the revisions of the final recommendations and the presentations of the immuno since we have a budget and so each one of them will be talking about specific slides and then we'll open the floor for your questions before moving forward okay and then Amy and Daniel since you arrived you you get to do the interactions anyone can step up to the podium would you just like me to read the slide it's just interesting oh okay so team members yeah so IBM's the process we used to come do our recommendations IBM it's like a collaborative decision-making process which the whole team uh got consensus on every single recommendation our committee members are made up from teams or from Members employees staff from across all the schools in various different departments there's technically a union team and a
039district team but through the IBM process we worked collaboratively to come with all the suggestions or recommendations the meetings that we these were the meetings that we held in we met in person and Via WebEx some of the topics we identified were to talk about were smaller class sizes compression Staffing allocation unprotected prep times and working our obligations um competitive pay and stipends as well as benefits and then the following is just a recap because it's important for transparency that everybody understands what are some of the recommendations that have been brought forward to the board in the board stop taking action on it as you can see the stipends are going to be listed they're 1 000 protection dollar stipend uh the benefits and the medical insurance for all of the staff members um followed
040by more stipends based and answers to incentivize are and attract and retain the talent that we have and then here are the mid income for final recommendations and I believe 11 and 12 that's area um so our first recommendation was about protected prep time and obligations so first and second year teachers will be exempt from the 15-hour committee currently at the moment first-year teachers already exempt so we're just adding second year teachers so they can have more time to prep lesson plan and meet with their coaches um full day Wednesdays early release Fridays before breaks but I think that won't go into effect until we redo the calendar um shift parent-teacher conferences from second week of the second quarter and second week of the third quarter and I think this was James idea because other
041districts does it because it's supposed to be what James yes the team the idea comes from a shift in thinking from uh from end of quarter to the end of time uh thinking to more Forward Thinking uh so when teachers can have conversations with parents about their child it's a more forward-thinking process so you can plan ahead rather than lament what's happened so I love that on thank you everyone and I would assume too because like I feel this stress as well like that would also allow you to include like end of the quarter assessments and thing you know projects because most time those don't get on those report cards for that quarter because you have to turn them in two weeks before the quarter is over now question with that is there something that
042ties us to a certain time frame for those conferences or is that something that districts just do on their own District but I don't think that's going to go and effect either until the 24-25 school year when we revise the calendar right um the next one is certified staff will be required to work up to six late nights a year so to create Equity across the board because some size teachers have to do more other size teachers have to do less it was based on you know your site so just kind of create Equity across the board um certified staff will be given a minimum of three thirty minute um preps protection so no meetings within that 30-minute time period so for the language on the second to the last one and I'm sorry if
043I'm just being um too detailed here but work up to six late nights a year my first question was whoa is the minimum zero um no because we always had parent-teacher conferences we always have Meet the Teacher Night there was always um some sites did Carnival there was Math and Science night so it depends on what school year was that but it was never a minimum of zero so I guess as they're like because this is required is there a required minimum number of nights you would have to require certified staff to stay or are you just saying you can't I'm I guess I'm trying to understand if this is a requirement or you can't go over six but you know that there's an unsaid then expectation that you do a minimum number of sometimes
044because it seems unclear well the idea behind it was um so a minimum of six so right now currently depending on what grade level you teach you had aptt maximum six sorry maximum of six okay I was like minimum um maximum of six so it's right now like take me if you're of your K3 you do a lot more late nice than maybe someone in middle school because you have aptt and everything else you do for lower elementary so just trying to create Equity yeah I guess what I'm saying is I would hate for a staff to misinterpret this be required to stay late say that they didn't agree to be or they weren't actually required the way this is written to stay late four nights right you know what I mean like I guess
045what I'm saying is like I could just see this backfiring if somebody said that they didn't feel like it actually had a minimum number that they were required to do versus it says no yeah when we discussed this technically there's not like a minimum of late nights you have to work but um depending on your job like you there are some things you have to do like as a classroom teacher I can't just be like oh sorry I don't feel like doing parent teacher conferences like that's a requirement of a professional obligation and so depending on your job description your minimum is going to be different right so some if you're like uh they're saying about aptt like that could be three or four late nights compared to just conferences could be two to four
046depending on how the site runs it um this is intended to be like a way to cap that so that once well no more than six no more than six so realistically everyone in the district Works late nights occasionally depending on their job capacity it's to prevent someone who has like six of those required late nights like for example conferences conferences um curriculum night parent teacher and I then being like volunt old oh you get to go run a booth at the carnival versus somebody who maybe only has one or two things that they have to do for their job restriction or for their job description then is it now able to be pulled for something like fall Carnival it's not falling on someone that already has a lot more of those responsibilities um and
047in regard to people like interpreting or misinterpreting um I think that falls under essentially our policy they can reach out to their union representative at their site we can figure that out generally speaking it says as determined by site supervisor because realistically if you just stay in your classroom and lesson plan until 6 PM that wouldn't really be considered like no one made you do that that was requirement even though it might have been a late night for you versus our other obligations and generally speaking you're not going to get looked at culturally bad if you're not staying six nights a year the equity piece that we're talking down upon if you didn't do the thing that the reason we talked about Equity is because at some sites there is like that culture of like
048you should volunteer for every single little thing and if you don't like that is a negative thing and there's other sites where it's like pulling teeth trying to get anyone to do anything and so this is a way of just making it more Equitable across the board so if you move from one school to another you're not like whoa where did I why'd I just lose two nights of my week every night or every week versus at other sites you might not be required to do anything ever right and so just it's a way of like flattening out the obligations across the board to make the schools more and if I cannot the desire from the midi Comfort team is to understand and realize that there's a fine boundary between work and life violence and
049that's the background of this proposal and also to ensure the Equitable piece making sure that we're still committed to serve our community in the needs of our students for every event that will bring enrollment that will create that cultural climate that they see a personal active in the member but they're also to ensure that everybody is weighing in and participating in those nights and it's not only the the 40 staff members or the 20 staff members when other staff members are perceived not to be present in those events that are so important for our community so that's what the meaning Comfort team is proposing uh more Equitable more visibility a work balance because we understand that everybody needs to be right in their mind so they can take care of our students and our families
050it also prevents some of that like perception of other people doing too much or not doing enough because if there is someone that you know maybe I feel about my colleague or they don't go to enough events well then now it's not on me to sort of just pressure them into doing it now my principal or my site Supervisor has the ability to actually if that is the case do something about it versus just that just being the perception and no one really has a good way of you know handling it certainly so it gives the principal The Authority or or support to say hey you only have parent-teacher conferences we need help at carnival yeah good person for that yeah for those and then for those staff that have so many of those mandatory
051obligations it gives them the freedom to be like hey I have actually already have all these obligations I don't need to go run that Booth or whatever right was three 30 minutes you're aspirational or were you hoping for more I'm just curious if the sky was the limit because Wednesdays it's a shorter prep time because of specials um and then we have to do one day a week for um planning with our team I've got what we call them meaning they're meeting with the coaches and we plan I forgot what you call it plc's it's been two weeks [Laughter] and just as additional information all of our staff members receive a prep planning period every single day with it 45 minutes a standard room policy the 30 minute one is there's transition our blocks do
052not consider transition when they have to our staff members have to drop into electives or do other things and we know it's not 45 minutes and so that's why the meeting confer taking into consideration those things they said if at least we have three days of 30 minutes okay knowing that we have to work the students go to the restroom check our mailboxes this is an addition because I was like no this is it no we always okay everybody's thinking sure that out of those five prep periods a week three years three or four of them aren't being taken up with meetings how long is your prep on an early release um 30 minutes so couldn't you go for four then the other days are 45 minutes okay but you could go for four days
053of 30 minutes we could but um usually so for example we have plc's one day a week and then once a month you have mtss meetings so mtss well you know mtss so one day once a month we have mtss that we have to have I think I'm sure that you're not I'm just asking because we have for a week oh really was this your aspirational or was there something else and they can't do two meetings a week and if they do they have to figure out how to cancel one oh so you know maybe for next week for next year but this is just so like we have to do plc's and we have to do am tests once a month so we don't nest and then some weeks pocs is Council for every
054reason so it says a minimum of three but it doesn't mean that we don't have more than three thinking with this recommendation and a lot of our recommendations was currently I'm sorry I'm sorry the the on paper right now we have zero protected correct right yeah for a lot of our recommendations the thinking wasn't to get like necessarily the ideal because we figured out a lot of recommendations this year but it was rather to find like what are certain sort of like the current expectation and to get that in policy or equitability so like we talked about earlier there's not some sites where you're having four meetings a week and some sites where you have zero a week but rather it's sort of standardized where you are at least getting prepared periods a week and
055that if in the future we can adjust and add more if we feel like that is still not enough but um the current policies that we get no protected prep times my principal wants to give me five meetings a week which they never have but if they wanted to they could you know Andy he lost those meetings um thank you for explaining that I think just it's nice to know what's new what's changing from zero to something or from just a small movement because it's hard to know if you haven't been here or you're not in those jobs so thank you and I think going for Equity across across the district is a really great goal because that is something we hear about like they don't do it that way at this school you know
056like it should be more systemic so thanks [Music] thanks and then oh yes um so class sizes we tables that um the team determined that this topic item will be tabled so next year is more information is necessary to generate quality discussions oh that was it for me all right I don't want to keep looking so I'm going to look at my phone so uh so a couple of things that we talked about regarding Staffing obligations recommendations that we're making the first is related to training our current employees to help assist and fill positions that are paraprofessional provision positions that are highly qualified the difference being a highly qualified paraprofessional is a paraprofessional that works directly directly instructionally with students so they might be a classroom teaching Aid they might be an aide in one
057of the self-contained classrooms but they have a need to be able to support students in um educational settings rather than supervising on the playground or doing Crossing Duty so the idea in this is that if we can grow our own within the district then we know that that's going to create a Cadre of employees that are having the opportunity to remove a barrier to what might be a barrier to becoming highly qualified you can become highly qualified based on a test and to help support that process I know the Family Resource Center is working on some ways to help support administering the paraprofessional highly qualified tests and so there are ways that as a district we're moving forward with trying to grow that really important need in our in our schools um we're also looking
058we talked about salary sharing or vacant positions for teachers who take up the instructional duties of that position we tabled that discussion so to give you an example if we have a vacant position in a middle school setting let's say we don't have a social studies teacher then we have an obligation to teach social studies to those students in that grade level sometimes that falls on the team to plan and support even if there's a long-term sub in that position to help write lesson plans or to meet and support with behaviors so this was a way to recognize that if we have a vacant position in the funds are kind of Frozen with that position how can we capitalize on those funds to support the teachers that are going above and beyond to help support
059that situation we tabled the discussion because we felt like we needed more information about how that would be fiscally impactful in the district as well as the stress pressures and the mechanisms for determining length of time so if it's a 10-day absence as opposed to a semester or a year what does that look like what does that mean so we just felt like we had more need for discussion and fact-finding before we could make a recommendation on that I I had um the same questions about that but I'm also wondering do we know if any districts other districts do this currently or I don't know if we know about that I know we have information about um compensation for splitting classes and things like that which is one of our recommendations only similar thing I've
060heard in other districts is and it's typically at a middle school model where you have periods is if you're teaching an extra class and not having a planning period then teachers will get an extra compensation for that that's the most similar thing I've heard not necessarily the straight salary I was suggesting it if there was a starting point because I'm all about not Reinventing the wheel so if there's something out there that somebody knows about that'd be a great I think place to start the discussion next year but and I think this sounds really unique in in the conversation that we're having is that we were trying to think of ways to help recognize the efforts of the team members that would be kind of responsible and help that that grade receive the instruction they
061need and what would be a way to do that in a way that would be different and meaningful and helpful so you know it's happening anyway and you're not getting paid right right which re kind of brings us to the next point that is a recommendation is working on how to compensate teachers for receiving extra students from split classes um by using leave time to earn leave time as they welcome students in their class we're going to form a committee to look into this process because we start to think about well if it's five students going to one teacher and they're with that teacher for the whole day or if it's two students going to another you know what's the what's the cut off what does that look like what is the mechanism for Gathering
062the information about who gets the time and who is in charge of documenting that and sharing that with district and then do we have people a district that then can support the implementation of that which also kind of part of the recommendation was to have funds for the district available to have a position that could could help support in the payroll department or the HR department I'm not exactly sure which one we talked about but they will be helpful in making sure that that happens effectively and that it's not a burden on another already overburdened department so just to be clear that is a recommendation being presented tonight but it just will require future flushing out with it correct yeah and I have some suggestions because our district does do this so what they do
063is they take the rate of pay for the sub that day and then they split it amongst the teachers of that grade level or if a teacher agrees to take the whole class and that teacher can take the whole pay or if they just split it between like two um the same thing so it's not that hard the secretaries do an epar for it um and I'm really glad to see it on here because I feel like people should be compensated because there's that I mean if it's if a sub was in there like we would be paying the sub that money so why not pay our people that money because they're taking on extra people well I want to clarify though because this says compensating them with leads correct so you're saying it and
064Isaac you all get paid yeah and I've seen that model before and I guess my question would be this is Devil's Advocate I do think teachers should be compensated for having split kids because I went through that a lot um but if we compensate them with leave time are we then create possibly creating an ongoing issue because if I've been compensated with all this leave time I'm going to take it then I'm going to take it because that's the only compensation I got and we know that the reason we're splitting kids in the first place is because we don't have Subs right so are we kind of just adding to the I had a conversation about splitting the cost of the sub for that day we had a conversation about this being the preferred recommendation
065for this time and I think again with the structure of how payroll would work also using the example that I had before sometimes I'll split kids among nine teachers so then do all nine teachers split 160 dollars and that's 12 bucks right so then after taxes what is that what does that compensation look like right so and I understand that part of it is the gesture right and the recognition that it might not be a large amount but it's it is recognition of the extra work um so I think this was sort of a stepping stone to Future conversations about what that compensation could potentially look like plus thinking in terms of what the impact is to the budget because honestly we safe when we don't have a sub in that classroom that fund that
066money that's not spent on this on the sub can be repurposed for other needs so there was also that part of the conversation as well and I think generally speaking as we've talked about many times already this kind of in the last six months about um encouraging or revamping our culture into encouraging people to take time for self-care and take leave and I know it's hard but I would love for that to be in more of the norm so if you haven't and when is this committee going to be formed it's going to be ready by the time school starts what are we looking at for timeline probably by the beginning in the first quarter all right and the last recommendation on this slide is related to making sure that uh expenditure investor funds that
067sunset by December to 2023 that sunset this school year we have a plan in place by December 2023 so that employees that would be affected by the sunset would be available I would know what the plan is moving forward yeah all right uh the next slide is competitive pay in salaries um we as a meet and confer decided to recommend 16 hours of paid professional development time for our classified staff that could be used at any time during the school year so often we bring our paraprofessionals in before school starts typically their contract their work days start when students appear on campus so if we want to do any sort of training or conversations or planning we have to pay them to be here the week before so this will help in that process to
068help provide additional support for our paraprofessionals including our student supervisory aides this also allows us to have additional time throughout the year to pull them in for additional training for whatever the need is so if we wanted to do uh an hour workshop on SEL training for our support staff on the playground conflict resolution de-escalation um we have playworks in the district now and playworks would like us to make sure that we're training our paraprofessionals that are on duty in the games and knowing how to use rock paper scissors as a way to resolve conflict so there are a lot of different opportunities throughout the year and we've this will be a benefit to the sites and to the employees that are in that classification because then it gives them an opportunity to receive additional
069training I take it from what you're saying it's currently zero uh we had Esser funds that were set aside last year the year before to provide the training but prior to that it was up to individual sites to carve out money from their maintenance and operation budget which we did gladly but we this kind of provides some relief for that at least for another year as we move forward well and especially if it's something like you said that's more district-wide that we really you know or we have a lot of classified staff who work at multiple sites so right and this could be true for other departments as well so the same thing would go for transportation or other employees that would benefit from having additional training um related to certified staff we recommended eight
070hours which would be between the well during the last two weeks of the summer break before teachers are on contract they have eight hours that can be used for whatever purpose eight hours for a certified teacher so it could be if they have a committee that they're meeting with they could clock those hours and be compensated if they come in and want to set up their room that could be compensation for that time as well so that's up to eight hours for each certified teacher in the past last two weeks of July um we're also looking at applying a 500 Stockman for staff who use personal vehicles in the course of their duties that currently is set up as a system of doing odometer um right so taking notes on you know what you're starting
071your end time was and then you turn in that that information and you're compensated based on that information this was a way to sort of streamline that for all employees who use their personal vehicles for travel that could be uh occupational therapist who travels from site to site band teachers uh could be someone who's in the district who might have uh obligations Family Resource Center that they might go to other other sites to work with the CEOs and different projects and things um how did we get to this number how many people generally usually regularly use their personal vehicles so the number came from a study to look at how many what was the the low and the high rate of reimbursement and kind of came up with the number that made the most sense
072there are some some individuals that might not use their vehicle as often but we felt that having it be consistent across the board also helps for things like depreciation on your vehicle licensing taxes the things that you know you don't really think about as far as just the the high amount that we're paying for gas right now there's more to using your personal vehicle in that way Dr Lauren if I cannot do the information so our department I.T those technicians rubbles and other ones that use most of the miles around the district as they go into board for technology needs and so on average a low invoice monthly invoice is 20 the highest invoice that uh the department of finances were able to track was forty dollars so we took the higher end of forty
073dollars and knowing that the positions that we are trying to help and alleviate those traveling needs are not 12-month employees but they're nine teachers nine months so we said 40 times 12 is 480 dollars well let's just put it at 500 and so that way it's just an umbrella if somebody travels high miles one month but the other one didn't so it's still that support and that recognition that you're using your personal vehicle and clear I guess I'm just saying like I don't I don't feel like they were intentionally left out or like it seems pretty clear or yes we we know which positions are like for for example band teachers are assigned by the contracts to go to two schools or three schools give tips teachers CEOs are delivering food or going to back
074and forth so we know exactly which positions have uh the need to transfer or to travel into the system yeah so it's really just going to take existing staff members who already have that addendum on their contract it's just instead of logging and I like we're removing the the barrier of the clerical one more thing that like when I started in this district one also it's a problem in Creighton I imagine is it's really hard to track on an odometer when one school to another might be less than a mile but like over the week and the month it adds up you know but it's hard to to log that outside of like you know you're not necessarily hitting a mile right then and there so that is cool it makes more sense and does
075this take into effect any um director level or leadership um who have this stipend in their contract already I believe it was just the groups that have that traveled not as currently part of their benefits okay right so if administrator gets a stipend for travel then they wouldn't be included in this okay okay thank you which is part of our Equity lens right since some people already working in this type in some others are using so some people have a log in their car laughs uh the next item is the ten thousand dollar time only sign and stay stipend I think we've had conversations about that uh what might be interesting to note is that this is in two payments of five thousand dollars per semester one payout per semester and the the payout will
076be determined by Triad uh Triad is sort of our district shorthand for the business services budgetary people that make the decisions about timing for payroll and when does it make sense to be able to cut those checks so that it it's not burdensome on that department as well um the next 1500 science day bonus from Esser uh already was released those checks were cut add addendums were signed and people had those checks available to them on the 25th and I know that people appreciated that um I have a question that a ten thousand apply ten thousand dollars is that in addition to what we just approved no this is the same thing yeah it's the same thing okay um so last item on this slide is increasing paper performance currently our classified staff has a
077lower rate of 350 I believe for their paid performance so we're going to be adding funds to that to have it be 500 for classified and then of course the requirements for certified would be determined by what's available based on the model and the methods that we determine that because it's based on tax revenues and other circumstances so the big picture here I think is the increasing for classified staff to the 500 level thank you Dr Lauren and then 15 and 16. James so this is essentially page two kind of a continuation there of what's already been happening um and it focuses uh specifically on a particular job titles and giving either an increase or something that goes along in in raising their salary highlights are specifically bullet number one with the ad hoc committee
078to discuss alternate Staffing models the lead Master teacher model my understanding correct me if I'm wrong is that's similar to the model that came out from ASU where you had like a master teacher and then you had not Master Teachers I'm not sure what the the other one would be um and that person uh and it would have a more of a flexible uh assignment of kids and that Master teacher would have an increase as well too and the rest of them are pretty straightforward in terms of stipends that they have on there 50 cents to highly qualified Paras and training to go along uh with encouraging people especially with the hard to fill positions um sped teachers at the market demand box we've had some conversation about that as well to 7500 and then
079dual language teachers moving to a different salaries uh different point on the salary schedule so um I have a question on that dual language teachers they're not getting an extra stipend or paying or getting paid more it's just a correction right sorry if that wasn't clear yeah so our dual language Spanish teachers who are in two schools where we offered those programs they're already getting as part of their salary as typing that is Blended into their salary so it's not a standalone document that says this is your stipend it's part of the new salary so we have a tissue regular salary and then we have the stem salary it was a clerical mistake that last year on the title that were not added on the top as the rest of the teachers however on the
080on the context and everybody has been received the pay they're just not added on the title so that was something that came out on the conversations uh in the beginning comfort so it's just fixing the title what is market demand and what's the difference between market demand two and market demand one so market demand for those specific positions that are hard to feel or there are in specific special program and um it's hard to find individuals who are prepared to address the needs of each one of our most fragile students and families and so it's an incentive to attract them and so it varies from Market that demand one which you're going to see at the bottom in market demand two so we have five only two one is resource teachers um but market demand
081two is for those self-contained programs like Rye space uh there are five of them where our students May um have critical health and emotional needs that require a nurse that require a different aspect uh and more specialized training and so it's an incentive to say on top of your salary you get this market demand um the next slide relates to benefits and specifically benefits that related to Health Care Health Care my understanding is that was something that came to the board in March I believe earlier on in the year um just to say that all health care cost increases are going to be covered and that it's going to be communicated to staff during the month of April which is common practice now um I believe it's usually done through either staff meetings or through
082some sort of virtual method and they've had different ones across the district that are available to people so that's just kind of putting it down and writing for that and then the third piece is related to policy gcg which is also known as the medical leave Bank we talked about that in the first update so just having a committee form to communicate go through that process of having that medical or sick leave bank that is already in policy and just making it a reality more accessible we haven't mentioned board docs tonight but you know I'm sure people are really hanging out there looking at it thank you um our next slide and recommendation will address compression and that's um to increase or change the longevity eligibility and we're recommending adding a year three so at
083the completion of three years in the district um adding a thousand dollar uh stipend that would be paid in your fourth year and then changing the fifth year eligibility from fifteen hundred to two thousand so then that would be paid in your sixth year with the district and then year 10 increasing that from um is that 2500 2500 uh to four thousand paid out in your 11th year with the district and then adding a year 15 for those employees that stay with us for that long a six thousand dollar um stipend that would be paid out starting in your 16th year with the district does that go on the base salary then I'm sorry what was your question was that added to the base salary yes okay I factored into a pay for not into
084a paperwork okay I was just curious if is there anything then that would Factor it in if it's part of it I think it's it's separate so that's what I was gonna say it's separate okay because I heard you say yes so then I was like confused okay yes so it just it doesn't Compound on itself is what you're saying that's what I wanted to know thank you I'm sorry I misunderstanding the question so means this will help maintain Equitable longevity across all position oh we want to maintain that that it's um for all all employees in the district not based on the position that you hold um and the district will commission a new salary study to assist with compression issues to be completed by the end of December of 2023. I'm sorry did
085you say year 15 doesn't exist right now the six thousand okay it stops at 10 years we have we currently have a five year and a ten year that's all we have okay and then 10 years you said it's 25 yes currently okay thank you yes and if I cannot do that uh you you're gonna see that is longevity and Longevity it's like three years longevity but the reality is that many of our staff members leave our our district and pursue all their districts or Fields after three years been and so the idea in in behind it from the meaning Comfort team is like let's give an incentive to stay something to start instead of Five Years on my year three buy something to look forward any progressively goes up and as I said to
086go from 15 years of service or more from 2500 to 6 000 that's something that will retain the talent that we have we thought about going past year 15 I mean people like my feeling is is people that have give over 20 years of service have given almost their whole career to a district so I'm just wondering why there's not a year 20. I think at this time we want to make sure that and as you can see further in the presentations we want to make sure that we recognize value incentivize the work of everybody as we start competitive and retain the talent but also we want to be fiscal physical responsible and we want to be sustainable in each one of our recommendations totally different idea and then J and Dina um introduced this
087idea [Laughter] and I really like the those five and ten are pretty common dis you know 15 you see in districts as well but I know I I have a friend who they just um he was reaching year 10 and he's like I might move this like I love my district but I might move because I cannot move up like in Pay I'm capped out um and they just added something and so he decided to stay so I think that really does make a difference I think you know let's put this into play and and see where our budget goes in the next year and then I do like the idea of can we continue to expand that um and then I really like the idea of the year three because you're right after three
088years that's when the teachers start dropping off they feel confident they're like I got my first couple years down now I feel like I can go to another district and try something new and and we want them to stay so I think it's important to know to know it someone's been with us for 20 years this really does benefit them significantly I know it doesn't specify 20 years but a current 20-year employee is receiving the existing 10-year benefit which is twenty five hundred dollars so they they will be moved to from 2500 to 6 000. so it's not like you know I've been here 20 years and I didn't get anything extra you know they're they're going to benefit by an increase and I'm tired I can't know if I can do math right now
089it's like thirty five hundred dollars right so um so that is a pretty significant boost it would be as you've pointed out it'd be nice to differentiate even further but this is a pretty significant jump for each of those groups and one of the things that I got to observe joining the meet and confer team to help answer questions was this concern around compression and while this doesn't help with positional compression I'm someone's supervisor and I don't make that much more than them where it really does help a lot especially with these dollar increases is I've been with the district 10 years and someone who's been here with the district two years only makes a thousand dollars less than me well now that I've been here 10 years getting an additional fifteen hundred dollars under
090this new model now it's a 2500 difference instead of a thousand it may not perfectly fix it but it does help with that yeah right so just to clarify then this will like once this is in place this would apply like if I've been here 17 years am I going to get that difference that I wouldn't have gotten you you will in this in this next fiscal year okay um when's the last time or has the district done a salary study in recent history it's still a relatively fresh wound oh okay I was curious yeah we we did we did a very comprehensive it was more than just a salary study it was also like a position study it was it was a lot of things um and the recommendations that came from the firm
091that did it were relatively disruptive and we're still kind of digging through the impacts um that it created so you know one of the impacts was some compression components you know that have been problematic um some some of the things with the with the position realignments have had some unintended consequences and so um but that study was actually Commissioned I want to say was it 2019 Avon that it was originally I think it was 2020 because I remember it was my first year on the board yeah we had just finished like it had just been completed and changes were being made when we joined the board Okay so I think that was when it was implemented but you're right on this yeah so it was 2019. it was like about a year and a half
092before implementation yeah so um so you know we're by the time we get this up and running we'll be shy of a fight from the old one but what I heard the meet and confer team say is their concern for doing the study really was less about re-setting levels and more about looking at those compression issues that have been created so correct me if I'm wrong team but that compression was really the primary impetus behind it and so we're I I got the sense the intention isn't as comprehensive of a study to sort of rebuild everything it's really more of a so here's where we are now what can we do as a district to start to solve some of these some of both the existing compression problems the new ones that were introduced and
093some of the unintended consequences that have been created um that's my I would hope moving forward that there's not a short-term compression solution that then creates a repeat of the law of long-term compression solution being someone who works for a government entity with no money as well um we were given a big pay bump and then realized well this probably isn't going to come again for another 15 years and we're now in these little boxes that we've realized that we've all been applying for and we can't get out of and we're like we're going to be stuck as a tourney to for the rest of our lives and so like you know we realized well this was cool but now we're going to have a compression issue again maybe five to ten years down the
094road and then everybody's gonna be mad again so um just something to think about I know there's a lot of unintended things that happen especially the nature of not having money so money solves a lot of problems yeah perfect um so then we prioritized our recommendations after all the recommendations were finalized we met again in our separate groups we went through prioritizing the items and then we came together as an entire group to share and discuss how we had um rated them or ranked them and then since there is budget capacity which is good news to cover all recommendations the IBN really did not have any issues and came to consensus on all of our recommendations to as a team we open the floor for the governing board members if you have any comments or
095questions to the team before you go into the next step thanks for asking all of our answering all of our questions like I said last time when y'all had come I don't know how long ago that was I respect you all being professionals and what I consider to be experts in this and so I respect whatever you've presented to us as what you've agreed on and what is best for you so I trust that and I'm happy um to hear all this and I'm sorry I ask a million questions but I'm also just very curious I'm Miss Jeffrey do you have anything to add or questions um I guess just like but I'll just repeat what I said I think um getting things to a district-wide place rather than Silo um I think that's a
096move in the in the right direction Miss McCaleb um yeah I just did on that I know I've been a part of similar groups and it's a lot of you know here's the pie in the sky and domino effect when you try and one thing and it unintended consequences um on something else so I just really appreciate all the work that those of you who are here and everybody who worked on all of this all year who's theirs yeah I'm really glad that year two went a lot better I mean there's only ways that you can improve um and I'm sure there's thoughts of ways to even improve it next year but I'm really glad that um it seemed to be a little bit more cohesive um and together with everyone so um thank you
097for all your hard work I know it's hard work as I am my IBN co-chair and um it is a lot of work and I appreciate you guys fighting for our district and I also want to put in a plug for the union because these people should be joining now right because you are representing all of them and you are fighting for them and you got them ten thousand dollars so they're dues are made they can make their due payments now so I really hope that you guys have a lot of people that join thank you um yeah and just just reiterate great work um I just want to point out real quick too when it comes to the benefits um I think realistically we're in a financial spot that we don't know what's going
098to happen with our budget um vouchers as we know and this is just a transparent thing those have been passed who knows where those millions and millions I think it's 900 million dollars um is gonna it's unaccounted for who knows where it's going to come from so I just want you guys to know that that's in the back of our heads too because we don't know what our budget is going to look like next year or the year after that so um we have to really take into consideration those type of things I think the ultimate goal um is to have better student outcomes for our kids make sure that they're achieving getting the services that they need and sometimes money will have to be shipped around in order to meet those needs um and
099one of the things that I did notice is that in our budget for benefits and I'm just really proud and this is what I'm going to say is that 8.7 million dollars of our budget goes directly just to staff benefits I've been talking to other school districts neighboring school districts that are double or size and their budget is way lower in benefits than ours so I just want to know that you guys are in a really really great spot we believe that Medical Care should be for everybody it should be accessible and we really really value that but just know that you um our staff really does have the upper hand and our medical benefits not every District um one of the districts in Cartwright they don't even offer any benefits they're they're all of
100their employees are up to themselves if they want to get coverage or not so um I love the recommendations but we really do have some hard things coming up that we really are going to have to discuss and work together I love that we have our meetings with our with our cea representatives and that's how we can work through these hurdles but the reality is is that who knows what's going to happen and we already do do a lot and and I noticed in the budget and it's and it's in the attachment in the budget that um I we went up four percent and I can be correct but I'm assuming that that four percent inflation of our budget going into benefits was basically mostly because of those benefit prices went up so we do
101value that that's one of the important things I want to make sure all our staff are covered in that sense um but just to let you guys know that that's us as governing board members that we're really going to have to sit there and marinate and see what what we can keep and what we can to what we can continue to sustain or not but like always I appreciate all this work I know it's hard work and it does bring a lot of good light and different options and creative ways um just so we can get get our kids the stuff that they need so I appreciate it thank you guys thank you um if there's no other questions comments or concerns that will bring us over to 7B I'm really excited about this this
102is the approval of oh my um of the assistant principal for the Papago Elementary School so if we can have our beautiful special guests whoever's going to talk about this absolutely members of the board executive team we are so pleased to bring you forward this amazing candidate many of you already know her she's been in that district for several years and I just want to let you know a little bit about the process the process uh when we open the position we had 19 candidates from internal and uh external candidates from several experiences and different backgrounds um the process included paper screening for experience quality of responses and work history uh after rigorous screenings the top candidates for each site were selected to participate in an in-basket and then from the in basket they went
103into a diverse panel com price of a teacher staff parents and students and the panel strongly supported Dr Jessica grant for the final interview within superintendent Dr Grant currently serves as an instructional coach at Belmont Preparatory Academy she holds a doctorate of Education in graduate certificate from Northern Arizona University additionally she holds a masters of Art in curriculum and instruction from Grand Canyon University as well as a Bachelors of Arts in education from Arizona State University Dr Grant begin her teaching career in 2016 as a middle school math teacher at Papa was school where she also taught third grade so we are so happy to bring forward Dr Grant for your approval yay this is really exciting I appreciate all the years and services that you've done um it's just great to see just a
104young powerful woman out there as an assistant principal I know you're going to do amazing things and it's a really great role model for our students that doesn't matter as long as you get your education in place look at how far you can go so it's a great example to lead by and I'm so appreciative that you're still in our district and I don't know if anybody else has anything to say if not I can just move on with the motion um congratulations to you for making out of 19 candidates um I just want to say that that's really impressive that we're getting 19 candidates for a position like this and that speaks volumes about our district and about the school so so without further Ado I move the governing board approved Dr Jessica grant
105for the position of assistant principal effective July 1st of 2023. second all those in favor hi hi and I'll just know that Miss um Gibson McLean stepped out to the bathroom but I'm pretty sure she would have been an eye but she's not going to be recorded and that's why oh we were in the middle of a vote would you like to vote on approving Dr Grant as the assistant principal for um Papago effective July 1st 2023. yes congratulations we're so happy to have [Applause] Dr Rhonda is there anything they would like to visit sure I just want to say thank you um it has been a difficult process absolutely to get here but I think it was a good process because um as you know I started my teaching career at papagon and just
106like everybody else wanted the best candidate to come forward because it's a special place it's a great community so excited it gets to be me and knowing that we have a lot of work to do but it's my community and it's where I want to be so thank you for approving this congratulations okay that brings us over to nine a um which is the approval of the guaranteed maximum price GMP for the bond funded rebuild of Kennedy School I do have two public comments to this agenda item so I will be calling both of you first um if you whenever you come to the mic just state your name and address I mean um well just your name you don't have to give me your address I was reading the back of the card and
107you will have three minutes so first we have Brian Kennedy thank you so much for being here with us tonight thank you I am from a sustainable living community nearby called the Enchanted Forest and I'm here to help advocate for the trees and the children for a better future um I specifically wanted to talk about the the planned Estuary area there was a lot of concerns during our last meeting uh that it wasn't realistic with the the biology and Ecology of the desert environment um and so I Drew up some alternative plans because there were no alternative plans and this is just done on the fly but I do have I do have some some drawing skills I think um so essentially um I believe the whole area should be um turned into one irrigation
108Zone um and with a water catch because if you're going to have a massive water storage you can't have it just exposed because it's not a sustainable system you'll you're not going to just be able to create a bog out of nowhere but we can benefit from having a a top to bottom spiral or or stairs that that lead down to an area that is catching the water and this will be a different bio biology um Zone where we'll be able to grow trees that aren't normally grown in Phoenix but um you know this this is already being done in parts of Phoenix so we know that this is doable um also the the huge issue with um a pond of that sort uh in the long term is also the biomass buildup so you're
109going to have algae and animals and and plants that are actually building up that will need to be mucked out and and I I never really saw a long-term uh plan that didn't involve some some massive uh overhaul every so often and that would completely mind you reset parts of your biological experiment you know it's it's it's a an estuary uh for for showing turtles or or I don't know what kind of other experiments they want to do with it but if you have to scoop it to clean biomass then you're you're resetting everything you're actually hurting it but it's it's a it's a very difficult balance to keep something like that going in some place it's not supposed to be and so I'm I'm just saying that we have um much cheaper solutions that
110actually offer a different type of gardening experience um and and these plans aren't just off of nothing they they're actually other other scientists and organizations that are are doing things like this so essentially you create a three minute went up I'm gonna let you just wrap up your last sentence that's fine it's just a big funnel that creates a water catch and this is the the benefit of it and and you have stairs for growing that spiral down and a walking path along those those growing areas I have a question for you so is there something specific that you saw in the plans um that you think are are not going to work out and this is why you I see the water feature specifically as being more of a selling of a postcard idea
111than something that's actually long-term feasible or something that we want to teach our children because we want to teach our children to biologically improve things in an area restore but in a feasible way right and in a way that that isn't going to to set back people in the future we need something that's sustainable right and going to to not cost huge amounts of money in the future okay there's a wetland yeah please question um I'm sorry I had to step out for a moment what's your name Brian Kennedy and where do you live in the district yes I'm from the Enchanted Forest okay where's that 32nd and Thomas okay um so basically what you're describing is like a small Salton Sea type of situation where it just evaporates the way we currently are proposing
112it right the way we're currently proposing it um it is going to be just like the other ponds around the city now those ponds weren't built to be uh wildlife sanctuaries they actually have to be restocked with fish not for any other reason then it's not long-term sustainable for fish you know those ponds require a significant amount of resources because they're poorly planned um water surface actually on evaporation only cools the water efficiently it doesn't actually provide cooling for the air above very much at all as opposed to if we have layers of canopy provided by trees which my whole funnelite concept is actually about helping create a three-tier system of growing that has total canopy coverage eventually um trees naturally diffuse light cut down on Heat and the evaporation is helping everything in the
113environment it actually creates its own separate micro environment do we have any other questions or comments I appreciate this information because I took a a special class that was a cohort it's called Urban heat leadership and we talk about and it's done by the nature conservative conservancy and they talk about you know heat mitigation and tree planting and there is a lot more than just the surface of building upon throwing water and hoping that it sustains itself so I appreciate you bringing this to light I I know that there's a lot more and I'm glad that our project managers are here because we're going to be asking them questions of what organizations where they're getting this information and hold them a little bit more accountable to what studies they have actually done to make sure
114that if we're going to create this type of space it's actually sustainable and we're not just adding on to the drought that we already have yeah I'd love to come back and talk more any other time okay and just I just wanted to make a comment hopefully that's reassuring but I know Mr Mann is working closely with um Creighton Community Foundation which has a extensive Garden knowledge and working on some aquaponics Solutions and um water cisterns like underground so um so we are working with those guys so um thing but I really appreciate you bringing uh this info we talked about the water cisterns before it's like Planet Doom we gotta think differently out here thank you very much thank you just as an additional piece of information because um what he was referring to
115is the Wetland area part of the plans um which at the last Community Forum like there were several people who had concerns about it and I just wanted to point out um and all of this is on board docs so everybody can look through it but when we actually get to the item um to discuss for approval tonight the Wetland area is actually an alternate that's not included in the GMP we're voting on tonight okay just for transparency sake and clarity that's what I was looking for I was like I didn't think okay thank you all right that brings us to our other public comment on this item Jessie giambra foreign thank you madam president I wanted to speak to this item because I mean everyone is really excited I think about the new school
116and um I fully support the Outdoor Learning concept I'm excited about it and I was at the community input session and one I noticed a few things I really like a lot of the ideas but basically I just kind of want to know like what is the community process going to be for the co-construction of the different phases moving forward because I know that um there were there seemed like a lot of a lot of really good Community input and I felt that this has been to my knowledge the only Community input Forum since covid um I was part of one that was online and this is the the next one that I had heard about and I know there were a few community members who had said we were part of the community groups
117that but then we never heard back from anyone since covid and so they you know wanted to be part of it and so as a teacher there were a lot of things I like that I noticed that um you know for example we talked about the Outdoor Learning Court we are when we were there and I was informed that you know this is meant to be a specific learning space and I just kind of noticed that it didn't really feel like a classroom space with like surfaces places to write like a circle meeting area and like kid-friendly Landscaping like things like a lot of gravel or tiny rocks and plants and so just little things where I was like well I really hope that we can be part of this so I guess what I'm
118interested in is just what is going to be the process for Community input to actually make a difference moving forward and to see what types of updates have been made since that Community Forum um and then I think just some things about the ins well mainly the the inside there were like just some ideas like I didn't see a library or Studio spaces and then with the outside um I was a little concerned when I saw the Garden area because I saw what I saw was a lot of concrete and I was like oh no I would never want to have to like Jackhammer up something later you know like so we need to make sure that the people were are actually working there are really going to be part of the planning as much
119as possible which I really respect the Architects and the vision and I know they do have a lot of expertise so I'm not many meaning to be like negative about it at all but I do also at the same time I would like to work there I'd like to send my own kids there so I just really feel invested in making sure that like honestly it's like easier to work with dirt than it is to work with concrete so I just kind of want to know about the process for Community being part of the discussions um not only now but also along the way so thank you so much thank you do we have any questions or comments no I just um I think it is really you know I think the there was input
120on kind of the overall vision and direction and you know what we were going for um but I agree that now it's like okay well now there's this very specific area and what do we want that to look like and there are some really cool ideas that came out of um the community input forum and I I would like to continue to see more of those as it's like some of those kind of I don't want to say hotly debated but you know the areas of the plan especially the ones that aren't going to be covered right away I think that leaves us some really amazing opportunities to continue to bring the community in and kind of hammer out those details there were some great ideas um that were brought up about you know kind
121of Unfinished areas and and the school having um kind of like the what is Awakening seeds and um so I think continuing that process on these areas that are not yet fully committed to and developed Miss Gianna thank you for just your um continued comments and you know support of the um District um I was out of town for that meeting um and I understand you rallied some folks to to get there I appreciate that too and I did watch the meeting um although it was a little bit hard to hear um on the YouTube channel just feedback um for um it um but it felt like not a new meeting it was except for the community was that was there but it was basically a rehash of what we did at our study session
122I don't think we've I still don't think we've done enough because um because exactly what you're saying so that's concerning for me too thank you so much thank you too I don't know if I have any time in my three minutes um but I as far as the implementation of the learning programs too I think I don't know what to say about it other than it has to be part of the groundwork and I know that you can't know now who's going to be working there um but it should be influenced and co-created at the same time and I think like the amount that we're supporting our Gardens now is still really dependent on a lot of volunteer work um and if we're going to be having an outdoor learning school it's going to take
123um so much vision and so much energy um so yeah I'm just looking for I guess the reassurance in the organization of that moving forward so we can all feel excited and positive about it and like we're really going to get the most out of this experience so thank you thank you yes I appreciate it thank you so much um that concludes our public comments to this so I'll turn it over to whoever is going to leave this conversation we have representatives from Facilities Management Group with us this evening as well as Chase Building team of course my voice would go away right at this moment and what'll Gilmore Architects um so I am I'm going to turn it over to Tammy Caraway from Facilities Management Group kind of give us a walk through of
124some of the overall budget um following our resolution of whatever we're under attack by I think we have a roach so we're going to take a short recess until until it's cleared so we have no distractions I'm petrified okay what's this hello oh there it goes thank you all right back in session so um I'm going to turn it over to Tammy Caraway from Facilities Management Group barring any other invasions of our meeting to walk us through an overview of the upcoming project the irony in all of this is of course we're trying to build a campus that gets us closer to Nature and then when there'll be more bugs visit us um you know that that created this slight pause in our in our regularly scheduled approach thank you so much thank you and
125good evening Madam president members of the governing board I am very delighted to be here it's been a while since I last saw you a month six weeks ago but I am Tammy Caraway with a facility Management Group and as you are well aware uh we are your District representative with the design build construction team so uh we have your best interests at heart um I will tell you that we have reviewed all the documents that you have in your board package as well as a significant amount of documents that got us to this point so we've reviewed everything and we believe that everything meets or exceeds the expectations of the district um I actually am happy to hear community members here and making comments um because I'll I'll share something in a minute that
126I think will indicate that there are still things yet to tweak there's there's still some open books some chapters to or at least a few pages to be written um but the design and construction team of Weddell Gilmore and Chase Building team have uh completed the bid documents and taken all bids by pre pre-qualified bidders uh to reach the guaranteed maximum price so that is the GMP that we refer to um the document that you you have a couple different documents one identifies the GMP for building and grounds as well as adjacent ways you also have what we consider an overall project budget and that's a key element that budget those budget numbers are just what they they say they are we we have a fixed GMP to fix GMP numbers but that budget will
127fluctuate fluctuate and flex a little bit during the process and the reason for that is because we don't have all of our furniture identified yet we don't have all of our kitchen equipment selected yet it's all identified but we are working with food service to identify exactly what is needed in the way of non-permanent kitchen equipment so those numbers sit outside of those GMP numbers which are provided and those are listed under things like other services or miscellaneous I.T so there's a number of different light items just like your household budget that we track um so addressing some of the if I may just some of the public comments that like I say there are areas where we are still making selections and there will still be continuing input uh all and we are also
128working to when the subcontracts are bought out those will we should see some Savings in some areas hopefully we know construction prices fluctuate a lot right now but that's that is one of the areas that we could see some some buy down in we also have other areas for contingencies that can be released at different points and then the the district working with us are very actively seeking grants we've submitted for a water conservation Grant we I know there was a meeting to discuss being trees donated with I believe the Arizona sustainability Council Alliance sorry yes Alliance uh and uh we also in the GMP one of the things that we've already garnered is a Sports Court donation that is the actual slab of the court and ideally or not ideally but it was really
129nice to see that that Court actually increased in size slightly so that that is a donated item that is reflected in the GMP so we're we're constantly seeking funds and moving funds so that we can take advantage of the grants donations and anything else that we may have so with that I will answer any questions and as mentioned we have uh representatives from both Chase Building team and model Gilmore here thank you um do we have any questions or comments different areas so I don't want to take I don't want to I can't ask all my questions at the moment because I want to let people kind of do the areas but I have a question about um in the beginning agree to talk about the first please go ahead and move on to the
130other concerns I guess sure yeah well I just once I guess about the bitter list um I think um that I was the only governing board that gave Mr Mann feedback um uh about subcontractors and if we had preferences for um women-owned business minority-owned business um locally owned companies do you remember that Sophia you were not at that meeting so I'm not I wasn't at that meeting but I remember that okay so is what you're talking about yeah um at the study session yeah it was the studies we were sitting down here at this table we also talked about it I thought at the meeting that that I would we talked about it um like two years ago when we approved the first approval of Chase for this building I think it was like two
131years ago so can you just go through that document about there's a percentage of um locally owned businesses that we have Incorporated based on kind of the board's desires I don't know which document that is and the bitter list I think it was just I don't think it's I think the information they gave us is the the businesses identified as what we were looking for not necessarily that we picked out of that like seven people who were small women business enterprises um put in a bid okay and so what what was missing here I thought was um uh Union based shops if that is a If That Matters to anyone it does speaking for myself and also like I mean at the end of the day cool there's a lot of bitters but what did
132we end up with as far as people who actually secured on Subs in terms of like their representation here I guess I can cler um and I'm gonna speak up on this I guess um since you guys um do the negotiating for us and everything what efforts have you done to to align your Partnerships to what the governing board has requested into those like how how's that played out how have you searched out intentionally these type of things that we want for the go okay um well as far as preferential there is not a statute that I am aware of I could be misspeaking but there's not a statute that I'm aware of that that does require that for this type of project it doesn't but it was a sentiment of the board yes as
133a whole and it was told two years ago to whoever was here and I believe both of you were present here that day and it was a sentiment in the direction of the board yes yes and so what steps have you guys done to follow that sentiment of the board I think that probably would be best answered by Chase Building team thanks Madam president members of the board thank you so much for having us we're super excited about this pro project and just everything that's occurred over the last uh a little over a year now as you mentioned uh but as far as it goes to uh Union um you know basically just kind of recapping on what what happened uh since our last board study session we went out to over 334 bidders that
134were really local to Arizona some of them do have a national presence but all of them are really local to Arizona and the Phoenix Market as a whole um as far as kind of the designations whether Union or minority designations um we we kind of always do that first filter of safety quality and then the value that's going to be provided uh kind of as Tammy mentioned not too are aware that is a union requirement but certainly something if it's a sentiment of the board to be able to provide that's something that we want to look at as far as where we're at in terms of soliciting these and actually saying that commitment to these trade Partners none of these have uh official commitments to this project so this is certainly something that we want
135to discuss with is why we really provided an abundance of information here and what you see is 109 bidders submitted on this out of the 334 so we can certainly go through that bitter list and uh identify which ones maybe do have a union presence I know sometimes the elevator companies do have a union presence along with fire alarm different trades so certainly if that's a lens that we want to go through and really take a fine fine-tooth comb we would love to do that further at this point we haven't committed to any because we we haven't really been able to at this point so that's where we kind of stand as a union does that answer your question it does and I appreciate that and I just think that overall even if you guys
136are just an Architecture Firm or if you're just doing these things we want to be intentional with everything we do in our district and we're building those Partnerships with unions that leads and operates you know networking it opens opportunities for not only our students but for our parents into trade school and having those relationships in place is vital to what our community this and what we believe as a district so that should be I mean for me that would be high priority other members can speak for themselves but um I think it's really important that we're seeking out those type of Partnerships certainly I mean obviously I'm live in the house I grew up in I'm from this community for many decades now it's been a blue-collar community lots of folks who are union members
137and in the trades and my dad was a team Sergeant sheet metal worker my my uncles were Sheet Metal Workers my grandfather was a steel worker I completely value the idea that we are valuing labor and we're hopefully employing folks for this undertaking that live in our community as well hopefully that there's some reach there and so that would be definitely a plus for me and my intention in trying to um be intentional in in the big picture of how how we undertake things in this District any further comments on that specific notion um not just that I'll triple down on I think you know the next step before committing is that we do want to look at who are union based you know who are the small business who are local to our community
138and and to Echo and to add to that I think the union focus is great and like given the makeup of our community I would also love to see us having like minority and minority contractors involved in this project as well yeah certainly we love to do kind of analysis on that that selection once we get to that point with your approval here tonight um okay the other question that I have is um what efforts have you guys done to negotiate these prices as Representatives as our district I would hope that anything that's going over the bond I mean it looks like it's two two million dollars roughly um what have you done in our name to negotiate those prices because I know those can I understand that change orders and that kind of stuff
139happens especially because we've delayed it for so long I I get that construction and materials are a little out of hand but I want to know what exactly you guys steps have you guys done to Niger can negotiate those prices versus the grants I already heard that piece but what other steps or efforts have you guys done yeah absolutely so it really begins with us making sure that we get a healthy participation in the project you know that's the best thing that we can be doing here in the community is making sure that there's big participation around this project and uh as we mentioned before and even around the teachers you know there's quite a bit of a demand for that labor pool out there and we're happy to say that over a hundred bidders
140that submitted on the project is is there's a lot of competition around that so the best thing that we can do is make sure that we have a sufficient number of bids to be able to actually compare off of and then start to go through our process right the first thing is going to be based on that safety Factor right so we're always going to be examining we believe that that bitter list that you see which is kind of the Consolidated one here the ones that actually submitted are all going to be qualified on the safety uh and that quality side so it really comes down to us doing our analysis to making sure that we're looking through these plans to quantity takeoffs using technology to really make sure that we have an understanding uh
141that these are complete bids right because we are not going to come back to this board and ask for change orders as part of this project this is a guaranteed maximum on price and so to do so we need to make sure that we've got it very thoroughly so and that happens in basically our own analysis fmg's analysis what a Gilmore's analysis and making sure that we have the correct quantities and then also comparing all those trade partner proposals to make sure that they're even so that we're not getting major misses along the way the best thing that we can do as I mentioned is just have that uh you know participation to make sure that we have good comparisons to compare off of and uh you know we're happy to see on multiple of
142the major major trade line items uh six six bids which is is pretty remarkable you know it's been hard to get a lot of Labor as you as you know here in the market especially local so we had great participation and we feel like we were able to vet it to a degree that provides the best value for the district any follow-up questions or comments on that um I mean just like kind of going back to being when we first started out with this Bond and looking at it and I was pleased to see the GMP coming in under um the oops sorry I just had it pulled up now it's gone um so coming you know very close to the to the 20 000 when we looked at this like five six six years
143ago seven maybe even when we initially um we were aiming for around twenty thousand and so for it to for the GMP to be this close when you take into account uh or yeah a million not a thousand um um for it to be that close I just I'm very grateful for that because not only we had seven years of inflation but we've also had a pandemic um and a lot of other variables in there so I was pleased to see these numbers I was a little terrified at first before I opened everything so it's not really under it's it's 21 900 million and then we have a list of items that will be left out because we can't afford to do them and I'm not sure what this list adds up we don't have
144a total but um it's I know I was saying from like our like when we first got the bond and I was on the committee and we were aiming for a general like 20 million I was saying I was very pleased to see it that close to that with everything that's happened I think but I think what we're what we're saying is this price tonight is for section A So eventually in the long term it's going to cost a lot more than yeah if I may chime in on that you know one of the things that we found you know that's unique to this site which is actually a real benefit too is we share the site with the compass center as well so there's really two different entities on this site that's sharing it
145so it makes it a lot larger than a typical uh site may be in itself um so that's where we really kind of focus on the critical features um certainly nothing that's lacking in the features that's provided in this design and really the you know you mentioned the budget and it was certainly challenging to be able to reach this especially in today's environment and the inflation but one of the the amazing things of Weddell Gilmore and the team and really the community input was is we decided to place these buildings in the former footprint of the past campus and what that allowed us to do is to be able to maintain those fields areas which have beautiful trees Lush grass great Landscaping in place that allowed us to really reuse that save the money's there
146and make sure that we can focus in on the building the parking lot the infrastructure um and the queuing that's going to happen on this new side area so certainly as those new grants come along there's a lot of really cool features that we wanted to make sure that we price and got the market analysis on when it comes to price to make sure that we know what those would cost as we're hunting for you know grants and opportunities but as far as the actual campus goes it's kind of unique where we're sharing it with a couple different entities right now and can we get some clarification on because my understanding is there's a decent amount of opportunities for these alternate items through grants like we already have potentials yeah I bet um if I
147could there's I think there's four different ways that we're looking at um attacking the alternate items and if the team would please correct me if I misrepresent any of this so the first one is if you look in the GMP there's a fairly healthy um contingency fund and the contingency fund is there for those things that you can't anticipate like let's say all of a sudden block doubles in price and you know we've tried to plan for what we would expect increases to be but you know something that's unexpected happens so those dollars are there in order to handle those contingencies that the problems you run into on a job site that you might not have anticipated if we don't run into those problems then those contingency dollars are still part of this project and
148they can be reallocated based on the prioritization of you know the the team that's working on the design to determine you know what can we add back in based on having those dollars available so that's that's one of the areas another related area is and I think um Tammy referenced this earlier you know we're trying to get the best price we can with the best knowledge of what's going to happen and there are times when things cost more but there are also times when things cost less so the hope is if something is able to come in under budget then those dollars would be added to that contingency fund and would also be able to be used to capture some of those alternates the other the other places that of course we're looking and Tammy
149mentioned this earlier is any place that we can gather grants or donations um and you know as she mentioned the donation that came to us for that slab for the sport court is an amazing partnership because it is a woman engineer who's working on her doctorate who lives in our community and her doctoral work is on how these slabs cure and what happens to these slabs in that curing process I'm probably butchering the technical nature of it but all of and this is and I'm going to say too much and I apologies but it's so cool and I'm such a geek but um all of the data that is used in Arizona right now is based on Texas because no one's ever done this research in Arizona and so someone who lives in our community
150not only someone who's living in our community but I think our board president referenced a powerful woman we have just approved for our assistant principal a powerful woman in our community who's getting her doctorate in engineering is going to do that study and that work on our campus and as a result of that we're going to have a sport court that that concrete is going to cost the district nothing and it's of a larger size than what we would have been able to provide under under the rest of the estimate so those those are the type and that came from the community it came through that person meeting Mindy Zapata or Noemi Zapata from our Head Start partnership and so you know this is where we really want things to come from Miss mcsheffrey mentioned
151earlier we're of course working closely with the Community Foundation as well and some of the things that they're doing with gardening in the community and a number of other partners so um I don't know that that will get us to being able to do all of these things but I will also tell you that staff has approached me and said but if there's an item on this list that's over a million dollars a staff member come to me and say yeah we've done this before with other projects and I have a better way we can do it and it's you know we don't need to do all of this we can end up with a better result doing it ourselves in a different way so that's not an excuse for the fact that these things
152don't fit in our budget and then the last thing is we've heard from our community tonight there may be elements like that zone B that the way that they're currently designed you know Mr Weddle may be able to address all those concerns and explain why that is a very valid way to do it and everybody may agree to that we might want to find a way to do it that way or we might want to make adjustments to that portion of the project and that may have impacts on what we do moving forward as well so this may not everything may not be put in place exactly as we see it today even though it's an amazing design fine because as people start to work and live in the site they may determine that there's
153things that they have a greater desire for than what we have currently planned but what a per what is approved tonight and what will be solidified are the plans for Section a correct so so if if the GMP is approved this evening it would be for that work on Section A it could potentially include some of those other items if the budgetary capacity um you know remains because of things like cost under runs or the contingency funds now I guess then regarding subsection is Phase a specifically I'm curious I have not I have yet to hear and maybe I missed it but what the interior of these buildings the plan for them is is this a concept that looks like Creighton Academy is it traditional classrooms also why no library or Tech Studios as we
154heard tonight also the courtyard concerns were any actual classroom teachers consulted in that area and how it would logistically and practically work for a teacher who's trying to utilize it well I'm actually gonna I would love to stab at those answers but I have someone who will give you a better answers Madam president members of the board uh happy to be with you tonight my name is Philip wattle with Weddell Gilmore Architects um so an answer to your question about what's included in zone a it does include the full build out of the school both exterior and interior and we've been working not only with the design committee which includes faculty staff community members but we've also worked with Creighton's Kid Academy kind of going through different ideas as well as several uh Community meetings
155so the interior of the school does include full build out under this GMP budget in the zone a it does include a library in media that is part of that budget uh it does include steam Labs Art Labs music Labs so I believe it has all of the lab spaces that we were talking about is that in building a or that is all in a there's nothing in it the one thing I guess I would like to kind of frame what's in a and what's not because we've been working very collaboratively with the district with fmg and Chase Building oh no I meant specifically in building a b or c not phase a are is the library because it's not on here that's why I'm asking the library is all the things no no there's
156building a b and c in Phase a and I'm asking where is the library building a b or c okay I'm just asking because it wasn't on here and I think that's why it opens to a patio okay cool so yeah all of those are included in within the GMP in zone a and I think strategically we really tried to look at Zone a as what are the kind of critical components for this school when it opens to be able to be fully functional and operational and achieve the vision of indoor outdoor education and that educational Courtyard and the build out of all the interior spaces are absolutely critical to that so none of that has been cut as a part of the effort to try to maintain that 22 million dollar bond fund the
157things that have been treated as alternates are essentially the elements on the Northern portion of the site which we feel like particularly based on some of the community feedback we've received that that's actually an opportunity for us to have more time to kind of integrate more Community feedback into that and to allow those areas to evolve over time going forward I guess then to reiterate my questions specifically to phase a what is the I guess I'll do them one at a time what is the interior of these buildings look like what is the concept physically speaking are they open classrooms it's something like Creighton Academy or is it a traditional classroom looking situation they are not open classroom like Creighton Academy they are more closed classroom and part of the driver for that is that
158we have classrooms that are exterior circulation that open directly onto the courtyard so whereas in Creighton Academy the breakout space was an interior Atrium space within the middle of the building our kind of heart of the school is the Outdoor Learning Courtyard and so we have classroom spaces that open directly into that space to allow for that indoor outdoor education and then um kind of going off that to other sub questions one is what do those openings are there lots of Windows facing that courtyard do the are the doors like with Windows or I guess how is this going to look in terms of if we're going to be opening to there are the kids going to be able to kind of see that the courtyard during we do have Windows that open to the
159Courtyard the doors also have glass in them um having views to Nature we feel is a really important component of this school given its Mission while also trying to do that and protect from direct sun so we're trying to find ways to shade that but also provide direct views to landscape into the courtyard so that you so that teachers can supervise what's going on if they have students that are working outdoors and indoors it gives them the ability to be able to kind of have visual contact and continue to be able to supervise thank you so much and also we heard from Miss giambra during public comment some concerns about the courtyard in terms of its practicality and logistically speaking the use for an actual classroom teacher I don't know if I can adequately reiterate
160what your concerns were but it sounded like maybe practically speaking it didn't sound like the best option and I'm wondering what if anything from that very last Community Forum we have has been taken in and possibly implemented in this or if nothing I guess has kind of changed with regards to this so from the last Community Forum we were actually uh already well into kind of pricing and bidding the project so no changes have been made since then that doesn't mean that we can't evaluate changes going forward I will say that we have five Outdoor Learning environments within that Central Courtyard and they do provide different scales of spaces and different Furniture configurations so we do believe that there is opportunity for Outdoor Learning in those spaces and that it could accommodate that but that's
161certainly something that we can review with the District staff and other team members as we're going forward and if we need to make adjustments there are certainly opportunity for that that will be one of the last things to be constructed on the project so we have a little bit of time on that if we need to make adjustments going forward yeah like just on that vein I know there are teachers on the design committee but I think as it comes down to like planning the details of that specific space I would like if the district pulled in some teachers who are not currently on it but who maybe are already using some out because some of our schools have in the past or still do have some kind of outdoor classrooms and so I think
162it'd be good to figure out who those teachers are who have experience with that or maybe teachers who have had experience of that in other districts and bring them in um for some feedback on kind of all those little nuances of the space like the concept itself is great I think it's all those little tweaks on what do the little mini species within that look like design from the design team's perspective we 100 agree with you and and those kind of Lessons Learned are incredibly valuable for us going forward to make sure that we hit it correctly um so we would welcome and appreciate that input um I know we have a partner for school and we are also possibly exploring another skating partner for the district as well I know they are at the
163community Forum what's the feasibility of like skate feasibility in this area [Laughter] suggestion would be to talk to your insurance carrier because that there is a liability um just just like you know so many things can be associated with the school so that would be the the first you know suggestion would be to discuss that but having said that if that if there's a desire for that and if you have something that's already working on another campus then yeah by all means okay yeah and we've we have partnered with skate after school several times we do work closely with the trust to make certain that whatever that partnership is that all the liability insurance is in place um I think one of the things I've learned about the skate after school folks is they're very
164creative about what kinds of spaces I'm sure the other partner is as well so one of the things we need to do we had them very early on in the process and somewhere along the line we lost the we kind of missed a step in making sure that they attended Downstream meetings so we really just need to get them back to the table and have them look at things and then give us some feedback and they also um very often come with grants themselves to add components and so um that may be another opportunity to help enhance some of the other spaces one of the reasons we like working with Weddell Gilmore is they are very creative about like is there a way if they can bring a grant and create some spaces that would
165work for skateboarding can we place them in such a way that they also act as some of the swales that we want on the campus to do water retention capture and help with xeriscaping and some of those types of things so um definitely a partnership after our our Forum it came up as well this was a hiccup on our part and we need to reclose that Loop and make sure we re-engage that partner um sure sorry one last one and I'll open it back up but after our Esther presentation when I saw what happened over the years with the Esser committee my question then is who's on the design committee how big is it when's the last time they met has it dwindled is there enough voice on that Committee in a varied voice what's
166going on with the design committee yeah so I will take a stab and I don't have all the exact numbers in front of it yeah clearly so generally yeah anything I say take with a grain of salt but none of it to represent we have had several permutations of this design committee some of this work was done pre-pandemic rolling into pandemic and the numbers have ranged anywhere I think the largest we ever had was we have about 35 people for one of the meetings that included like external Partners teachers staff a lot of Kennedy teachers at that time um we have since grown and shrunk over time um a lot one of the clearly not an excuse but one of the big challenges was keeping people engaged throughout the the pandemic period and we have
167purposefully sought bringing some additional experts to the table so some of the folks who are on the current committee um actually some some of them brought To Us by board members so like Dr Steven zeiker from ASU I think Thomas mccheffrey brought to us we made sure we added him to the team we have Partners who work for um have worked for Desert Botanical Garden and um Boyce Thompson Arboretum we've brought been a person who's a retired facilities manager for Marana School District who wanted to help support the project so we really have it's been a broad array I would say our last design team meeting was very small I think we had about a half a dozen people show up but that was we also I think scheduled it across a holiday week which
168was a mistake but the one immediately prior to that I want to say we had somewhere in the 12 to 15 range show up and how long ago um April I believe yeah April yeah and about how many people showed up to this community Forum that was held um if from as far as community members are concerned if you were to um not count any of the staff and people from other school sites that showed up probably somewhere in the 8 to 10 range is what I recall does that sound right to the other people who were present yeah so it was about 50 staff yeah there's probably about 20 total and it was about 50 staff and a board member um and the rest were either members of the design team or community members
169who had joined us so I guess going off of that too then the very last thing that I forgot to mention that I remembered from the comment was I know it's part of phase H but it is addressed with a grant I would want to make sure we bring in an expert voice in in deciding whether those Garden Planters are made of concrete or whether we could see something more like what we've seen with uh Jeff Bowles and the engineer he's working with at that church that's over on um 51 correct yes and I think that that system seems a lot more sustainable than that that is really one of our big intentions with area H and you know we've had some conversations with uh Mr Bowles and members of his team we here's one
170of the things I have learned in the time I've been with the district one of the very first things I got to do when I started here was be part of the opening of the community garden at Loma Linda school and one of the having had the opportunity to work with the community there one of their biggest frustrations that has been repeatedly brought to my attention is it is very difficult to sustain Community Gardens if you're depending upon School staff availability and also if you're depending upon members of the community because the community Ebbs and flows and changes and the school staff's level of interest and their ability to have the time to participate Ebbs and flows and changes and so we really feel like with that area H if we are going to have
171a community garden we need to have a partner organization that's going to help us support that the other thing we have tried to do and um and we've actually through a variety of Partnerships brought to us from several board members including Miss Jeffrey we've gotten grants prior to the pandemic to try to open our schools after school hours and on the weekends you know clearly that had a pretty big hiccup last couple of years and one of the things that we know is it's difficult to get and sustain those types of operations grants and it is difficult for the District to have enough free funding to be able to support the Staffing to support those things so where we really feel that we need Partnerships and support it for this site we really want it
172to have a lot of community use so in addition to needing support from some of those organizations for things like the Community Gardens we also need some support to help provide some supervision after school hours to allow broader Community use of the site to do that we need trusted partners and so you know we're really going to be seeking those Partnerships and clearly one of the longest established Partnerships we've had has been with the Creighton Community Foundation yeah and just to add to that I think it's very important especially because we're going to be doing like gardening outside I think obviously we have a climate justice issue or a climate issues here in Arizona and I want to make sure that we're intentionally going and partnering up with those non-profits organizations I know that a
173Community Foundation gets brought up a lot but we have a whole bunch of different ones that Focus just in Phoenix our ZIP code on exactly how we can mitigate heat what we're looking to conserve water and not just because we're planting a whole bunch of trees that's also we we need water and there's non-profits around that already have established you know parameters how to avoid all that so I want to make sure that when we're really doing this we're not just picking somebody from nationally we really need to focus on our non-profit organizations and our and our you know people around here that really know this community and how we can fight that yeah and I I couldn't agree with that more and I would say the same for like our xeriscape spaces right we
174really want to work with our local experts because xeriscaping in a different region of the state where xeriscaping even in a different part of the valley like if you look at what the weather conditions are in Santan versus you know where we are in Creighton District here um you could put things in that work perfectly there and they'll die here and vice versa so we want to make certain that you know we're looking at what works specifically within you know our actual environment that we're operating on that same note as far as phase a goes for tonight and as far as what our Landscaping looks like are is there room for improvement can any of that be adjusted after tonight's vote foreign it can certainly be reevaluated I guess I would just encourage that there
175probably be more discussion around that the Landscape Architects that we have on this actually are a woman-owned firm who are uh very close here to the district and they are a highly recognized firm who specialize in developing native Landscapes that are dealing with uh trying to create microclimates dealing with water harvesting creating rain Gardens bioswells they just recently finished a project at Arizona State University that won a national ASLA award that was able to create through biomass and shading cooling that was able to reduce the radiant temperatures by 15 degrees in the areas where they were planting so I think they are a highly recognized expert and so I would just encourage that we look at what is actually proposed closely let them make their suggestions take input and if we need to make adjustments
176there's certainly that opportunity but I feel like that we have worked very hard to try to be very responsible and responsive to those desires through this process certainly and I guess just looking at the documents I've provided it's unclear to me what has been proposed with that in that regard I was going to say like I think it would be helpful like the presentations we've had in board meetings have been good but they've been very big picture up to this point I got so much more detailed information by going to the community input forum would it be possible to share some of those like the presentation and some of those details and you know draft sketches and things like that with uh the board secretary so that all the board members can do that I
177was like taking awkward photos during it but yeah I mean I feel like again the name of that firm ly yeah that's what I was gonna ask I feel like we're in a moment that we're rushing this we are in a transition so literally Dr Lewis isn't even here this is supposedly her vision it's I I it barely has a vision to it if you ask me but um I propose that we table this until we get some of these things answered and we have the opportunity to meet with our new superintendent prior to jumping into a vote right now because this is something you know our old superintendent wants to click you know check off her list um I'm uncomfortable with the relationship that Dr Lewis has with Chase construction I've said that before
178um and I don't want this to be something that we're rushing into because this is something she wants right now when we have a lot of questions unanswered and we still do not have the community input that I have asked been asking for for two years I never got an audit that I've asked for for over two years and I think if you really want a transparency that would be a really easy way to get that we have a quote to do an audit on Creighton Academy for thirty five thousand dollars that's about half of what um we were told that something like that would cost um so I don't understand why that has been obstructed for so long so I am not comfortable with voting for this tonight and I propose that we table
179it Mr Man um what happens if we do table this I it's my understanding that we have a certain time limit since it's been extended already because of the bond money so can you explain to us how that would affect this project what you explained at the study session yeah he was in the study session it was oh it was when you were not at the meeting I was the president for the evening I think we all just set it up but for clarification we're bringing up this question again and where this is a different meeting so I would like for Mr Man yeah yeah so so there I mean there's there was I think there's two completely different sets of concerns here one is um that when we do a bond sale the expectation
180is that 85 percent of those dollars are expended within a three-year time window so right now we are still on track with that three-year time window so depending upon the amount of delay that could have an impact um it it doesn't um I don't have the exact date is it this year fingertip no it would be roughly two years from September is my best estimate so um so you're remembering something that I'm forgetting here because I don't have the numbers in my fingertips so but I think it was last August or September that we did them on so correct and then um but the the other component of this is I just need the board to understand and this is not to put any pressure whatsoever this GMP is dependent upon this vote tonight the
181prices are highly volatile so I you know there's no way that this team can guarantee that GMP if we were to push this decision off in fact I had a call from Tammy I remember if it was earlier today or yesterday asking me to make certain that the team was ready to make sure that if the board approved this tonight that the PO was cut by Friday so the pricing doesn't slip because the market is still that volatile when it comes to pricing so so my concern would be I have zero concerns over you know ultimately who builds it whose Vision it was to begin with what what I've what I've seen over the last couple of months is and we saw it tonight when was the last time we had community members come out
182to support something that we've never seen at a board meeting before to talk about how wonderful some new project we were doing is and then be so concerned that they went to the trouble to create drawings and sketches to show us how we can do it better so what I would hate to do is get us into a position where we're not able to build this project because you know hiccups mistakes some of them maybe even mine along the way have left the board in a place where you're not feeling comfortable voting on this tonight so I would never in a million years suggest you vote on something or especially vote Yes on something that you're truly feeling uncomfortable with um but I I feel ethically compelled to point out that um I don't know
183what the GMP that would come back to you would be if we had to kind of go back to the drawing board and redo some of this work and just for last minute clarifications this doesn't mean if we approve this that if we run into some other organization or some other input this does not mean that it's set in stone and that things cannot be changed or worked out in exchangeable communication correct yes that's absolutely correct and the team um from the meeting on May 17th the community Forum meeting um that it was very we all discussed it afterwards it was very much recognized that the quote wetlands area area B which is outside of the scope right at the moment needed to be kind of re-looked at with and the comments taken into consideration
184uh but in reality I'm sorry to interrupt in reality the only way to make that happen is if every puzzle piece still fits if you're changing something within we're still operating in the same bucket right and so if something doesn't work we're going to be stuck with something I mean if if whatever we want to switch out isn't going to fit in that missing puzzle piece space is what I'm trying to right say so there is something we could run into if we get into a situation and I'm not saying we can plan for every contingency and I know this isn't and like entirely in the it wasn't like you know obviously the pandemic happened right but now we're in a position where like we're voting on probably the most money I'll ever vote on
185on this board and I don't even have Clarity on what the heck is in this plan I do not feel comfortable and I ran for the board never thinking that I'm going to vote on something especially for this much money and have some little plan thing here that like barely tells me anything about what's going on I just for me morally epically living this is my community and I know what I I feel doesn't feel right to me is voting on 26 million dollars with like this basic ass plan thing that I've been presented and I'm just putting I'm just being real and I want to get floor plan when not since I've been on the board I just want to say that I feel like we've had this money for a while I feel
186like if we wait we're gonna have to go out and get another Bond and I'm not sure it's going to pass at this point because we really haven't done anything we have this empty lot with nothing we need to start showing something for all of the money that we we have for this my other question is is we heard we're not going to come to you with change orders we're not going to come to you to increase the GMP at another meeting what what assurances can actually be made that are set in stone for that so so the there are legal grounds for the GMP okay um so um once the board approves the GMP and Chase Building team has agreed to it it's my understanding that they're held to complete the project within that
187budget where things tend to shift and adjust to see it on every board and I I will give you I'll give you several good examples um something ends up costing more or the district chooses to make a change that costs more with the district um you know we talked about subcontractors and the sente talked about you know we can go back and apply that lens that lens may cause us to choose a subcontractor that cost twenty thousand dollars more than a subcontractor who doesn't need the lens that may meet the values of the board so that's the direction we want to go but then that will consume um that contingency fund right or and that's the point where it's like it would have been great for that to have been like the plant like followed
188all along what I'm hearing from you is that this was communicated two years ago and that should never have to happen down the road is what I'm saying like changing that to be in the intents of the board well that that would that it's it's not a change it's that that would always happen based on a GMP process because because the reason that they solicit qualified bids is to see what things cost certainly and that's to determine a GM but if that lens was never there there's we run the risk of having that happen more times than you might have anticipated if that lens was not there you'd always choose the lowest cost exactly that's what I'm saying so and that lens seems to have not okay um I don't mean to cut anybody off
189but I I no it's fine and I think we've all made our opinion apologies if you guys want to move with the motion to table it you're more than welcome to um and then we can go off or if that's what you guys want to do if there's no more back and forth you could we can vote on it if it doesn't pass then we go on to the next motion okay so I move that we table this um at least um into July the July August time frame and when we get some more information from our new superintendent um with some questions that we all have and at least get an opportunity to meet with our new superintendent and and discuss um and just take a little bit more time a second okay we
190have a motion and a second all those in favor and I'm going to do a roll call Miss Gibson McLean Miss McCaffrey myself no no no Roshan does not pass um I move the governing board the guaranteed maximum price GMP for the bond funded rebuild of Kennedy School through construction manager at risk all those in favor and I'll do a roll call again Ms Gibson McLean Miss mcsheffrey aye motion passes okay that brings us to our last um item which is of course what's the plan then if we're going to mitigate some of these concerns because we tried to mitigate after the study session and that seems like it didn't go well at the community form like yeah that's fine and we can have sent an email to our superintendent with the things that we
191want and the discussions and then we can go from there makes you understand there's not a lot there so I'm just putting it out on um I think Hilda if you can figure out which meaning I found the April 18th study session does have some floor plans but I know there was another presentation before that yeah if that can be shared with all board members yeah and I think um that information can be sent on the next board update and then um whenever miss mcshuffrey or you just to note Miss Jeffrey stepped out it's 8 37 um or Miss Gibson McLean whatever concerns direct concerns so whatever outcomes you would like to see if you can direct those so we can have those conversations directly also during the community Forum one thing that won't be
192in the physical email presentation is they did like a fly overview video and um I sat there and recorded it so if I can get it to you or upload it to a drive maybe so we can share that I think that's helpful visually so yeah but if they have it they should be able to provide it you don't have to do it that information that they have how big it just gets sent to us and and figure it out yes send you whatever you to make sure that everybody is on board and understands what is to move forward okay all right thank you I appreciate your guys's time um future agenda items does anybody have a future agenda item okay I'll go with mine um the only thing that I'm gonna add is um
193talking about CBI CBI e a oh policies I was like Community Bridges oh no no no okay it's okay um well actually the exhibits don't have to be um put in right exhibits can be changed without is that correct Hilda okay just over okay so CB it's CBI and then the exhibits are CBI EA CBI Dash EB um do I have CB in here no CB and CBA all these have to do with evaluations of the superintendent um superintendent performance-based compensation review they all kind of go hand in hand and um and our superintendent evaluation our student outcomes are at a lower percentage for bonuses than anything else and I think that's a problem student outcomes and student achievements should be one of the priorities we have one job is holding our superintendent accountable and
194if we're not producing that student achievement or student outcomes then we're not really doing what we're we're supposed to be doing so all these would change a little bit of the superintendent eval and what lives in policy but we can have a further discussion on that but all those goal tied together any other future agenda items um no but just as a heads up I will not be at the June 27th meeting as a reminder okay this will be at a conference awesome and then just as a public comment this evening will there be will is there a guarantee that the special ed investigation will be on the next agenda it is June 27th and we will have our attorney present as well thank you all right with that I move the governing board adjourn
195all those in favor I thank you guys have a great night