001foreign [Music] we're going to go ahead and get started thank you so much to everybody that's here it's a beautiful faces I I get really happy when I have people here so thank you so much for taking the time to be here tonight we're going to start off with our land acknowledgment the crane school district understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the honam duet and the cumulative who descended from the Hohokam and have inhabited these lands since time immemorial the Odom whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and Community spanning countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful Legacy for Generations into the future with this acknowledgment the Creighton School District formally recognizes the traditional care and keeping
002of these lands by indigenous people is an inspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations Miss Michaela can you lead us in the pledge please to the flag of the United States of America divisible Justice all right next this world call I have myself Miss Gibson McLean Miss mcshaffrey Miss McCaleb and Miss Ayers we're all here and once again we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address the board cards that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for two cards White cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during
003public comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items they're not on the agenda this is per policy bedh that brings us to approval of the agenda I move the governing board approve the agenda as presented I would like to move course God um I would just like to move um 9A to above Personnel because I do have some questions about Esser in there um so I move that we approve the agenda as presented with the change of moving 9A to um 6A [Music] after success before 6A so make it 6A and then put 6 as 6B yes Yes actually I'm sorry it can be before Personnel so make it on 6B okay I second all those in favor emotion passes so I'll keep them thank you okay and
004that brings us to public comments Hilda do we have any public comments okay awesome thank you and that brings us to our superintendent report I just want to say that I'm so proud of our uh Kennedy at Loma Linda school for just doing an amazing job for the Kaboom partnership what a beautiful new playground we have with our partners uh about seven different partners worked with us on that and uh it's a hundred and forty thousand dollars worth of playground equipment that was installed so many thanks for our Kaboom relationships and I wish everybody a marvelous spring break I know that Pi Day is coming up for our Math teachers and plus so March 14th 3.14 is high so I'm very excited to celebrate that it's always a favorite silly thing on my part but
005uh Happy Spring break I know everybody deserves it you're working really hard and we'll come back and get back to it as we get ready for our kids thank you and that gives us brings us to governing board reports Ms um Gibson McLean I'll start off with you if you have a board report awesome thank you Miss Mick Jeffrey yeah thank you so I just want to say how um much I enjoy going to the community Forums on Thursday and Saturday and appreciate everyone who is there um and especially your honest feedback um while I was experiencing The Forum I was wondering to myself why don't we do this more often um well as it turns out we can um I've been just running up against roadblocks trying to do this type of thing with
006um bagels with the board chat with the board um the trick is you know just like unlike a board meeting the board members cannot talk it would be a listening tour so um I've asked um Administration to um set those up and the first one the focus I want the first one to be is on a listening tour with cea because they've requested you know a seat at the table um this was something that all staff would be invited to of course but I I know there's a couple of priorities um that cea would love to be heard on discipline and communication so um stay tuned for that um some of the feedback I heard that I wanted to share at these forums I heard over and over again that we need more teachers and
007we need to retain our teachers we invest way too much time in teacher PD to lose them the way we are um you know that is about money too you know in addition to um you know their salary we're just you know bleeding PD money um when we lose a teacher and we invest so much in them um we need to pay our teachers more we need to pay our pairs more we have a shortage of Paris Paras we have a shortage of bus drivers that's coming from community and um parents and teachers we also heard overwhelmingly that our community wants Gardens and that was really great to hear um I Heard the garden um oh my gosh I've I've forgotten the title which I did but get and I didn't write it down um
008our garden Master he will that is not his title but um Czar he stuck driving buses and doing other chores and because we are short staffed and he has not been able to do the job he he is supposed to be doing because of that and that is um um really unfortunate to hear but I was glad to hear it and it makes sense um it answers some questions for me so I hope we can Rectify that soon we also heard that we want the community wants input into the lck build and they have yet to see that happen and I I that's what I'm seeing too so um that was a lot of this was validating for me to hear as a board member so I appreciate everyone who came and who was online
009um and look for more Miss McCaleb um not a lot um just kind of um ditto to miss mcshoffrey I wasn't able to attend Thursday because last week I got sick for the first time since 2019 and very cranky about it because I lost a week of my life but um I was able to tune in virtually on Saturday and heard some really amazing things um and some of them we know to be not just Creighton struggles but everybody struggles but um it was just good to hear Trends and and know that where we're focusing the conversations that we're having as a board the conversations I'm hearing from staff and cabinet and teachers um that aligned with the feedback we heard from other community members too which I think is important because if we all
010think there's different problems going on we're not going to be very Solutions based but if we're all seen that we want the same things that we see the same gaps that we see the same things we're proud of as well then we have the potential to move forward so um it was just really great to hear all that feedback and I I look forward to getting more the finalists forum is April 27th so please spread the word we want that feedback it's very very powerful to us because it's five of us and we need way more than five voices on these decisions so and also just please enjoy spring break three days ahead I know they're long days parent-teacher conferences but um you're almost there and please enjoy and relax next week thank you Miss
011Ayers um I also want to say I couldn't go on Thursday because I had a prior commitment but I did um attend Saturday online and it was nice to see that all of us were there um well three were two were online and three were there um but we all participated and it was it was great to hear from people and I appreciated their honest feedback because I did feel that it was um honest um and I also want to wish you a happy spring break I cannot tell you how excited I am to go my spring break although we did our conferences like in February so like I'm not sweating the rest of this week like you guys might be um so good luck on your parent conferences and have a great break thank
012you so much so a few things with me um this last two weeks I have a kid that goes to the Creighton Academy and they just got a cheerleading team and I got to see them perform for the first time and it was one of the most amazing things to see just our middle school students cheering on and Performing and my daughter's into cheerleading so she was totally obsessed with it so I love that we added that extracurricular activity there um I know our basketball at BPA if uh is Miss Demar here I think they won the championship on on the weekend I went there and I promised my son that I would shout out his friends for winning a game at Central High School so there it is um so congratulations to them to
013the basketball team for winning um just to Echo everybody else Community Farms are really important so thank you to all those who took the time to come our surveys are still open until March 13th so we have a lot of teachers in here I know we have parent-teacher conferences coming up so if you could slip those into the parents to get their feedback because that's what we really do care and want want Community input one of the things that a lot of people don't know is that we don't have to do as a board Community forums we could have just done this behind closed doors and said hey we're going to choose the superintendent it's one of our one priorities and we could care less what anybody thinks we could have gone that route but
014that's not what we want we want true transparent input so the more input that we can get the better April 27th will be the last finalist where you guys can actually come meet whoever the finalist is and ask your own questions directly to those finalists so April 27th I believe it's going to be at 6 00 PM in conjunction with the community council meeting that we have at excelencia school so if you guys can come that evening I'm not really sure on the time because we're there like at one o'clock where we're going to be there way before but I think it starts at six so if you can start informing your parents and if you guys can show up that would be great too um and one last thing that I decided to do
015um just in a personal note is that I started a teen run club which has been really amazing I had four teens show up on Sunday morning and it's just that activity that I'm doing to build community with our teens I think as adults we navigate you know a crazy world and our teenagers do too and I wish I would have had a positive outlet just like hanging out with people and running at the park or doing something like that so I've created that space for some teens if you guys know of anybody that's interesting you are interested you don't have to be an All-Star Runner I didn't start you know running miles out of nowhere so it's just something that I I've decided to do and really developing those relationships with our teams so
016they have a positive outlet on whatever it is that they're navigating in their crazy world like ours those are the updates from me and that brings us to the next with yes yeah yeah go ahead um I brought lemons if anybody wants them that there's a whole message so I have a lemon tree too maybe you should tell me how to take care of it because it doesn't give me lemons um okay that brings us to our next which is I move the governing board approved consent agenda items a through F in accordance with policy b e d b Dash e H I just wanted to discuss one of donations um yes so which item number which items Foundation we'll see okay anybody else want to pull anything okay so I moved the governing board
017approved consent agenda items a through b and d through f all those in favor aye aye and then miss Gibson McLean go ahead and discuss item C so I just wanted to bring this to our attention um it's a habit of mine even before I was on a board I do this for when I look at when I go to any board meaning to see who donors are this isn't like a huge red flag I just want to point it out that GPD employees Foundation I've noticed we got a lot of donations from them they're all that's the non-profit arm of um an architect and Contracting Fern and so I just want us to be aware of like who we're accepting donations from and then who we contract with in the future so as to
018not create an appearance of impropriety I just want us to maybe if that's not already not on other people's radar but it's just something that I pay attention to and I would hate for people in the public to like look at this and maybe get the wrong idea so I just want to put it out there but that's something I pay attention to and I will bring up or if there are donors for example um one time I brought this out of the Phoenix Union there was a private prison organization that they were accepting a donation from which they then just decline the donations so I'm just bringing about that will be an issue for me and so depending on who the donors are and I'm pointing it out for this just so people know
019moving forward I don't have an issue with it now I'm just letting people know awesome thank you for that so I moved the governing board approved consent agenda item C in accordance with policy bedb Dash e second all those in favor awesome so that brings us to our next item which is 6a Federal pandemic relief funds update thank you for your patience good evening Madam president member governing board this evening we are prepared to discuss our progress and our updates on the Investments of our federal pandemic relief funds essers one two and three so we'll share how the expense and encumbrance process has gone and where we've landed to date in order to support some recommendations that will be coming forward in the agenda item following this relative to compensation adjustments and stipends so with
020that I'm going to introduce Pam Burkhart who's going to lead the team then Robin's going to start us off come on up Robin the pandemic task force to talk to you about where we have been where we are currently and some opportunities for in the future uh in the spring of 2020 when the pandemic hit this it became very clear quickly that the government was going to make some funding available to support schools in the Endeavors to deal with the impact of the pandemic on education and on students and teachers and we realized very quickly that we were going to need to form a group and to consult all of our stakeholders in terms of how that funding could be best spent and so we committed to investing Federal pandemic relief funds to offset this
021impact and we created some desired outcomes and those outcomes were that we wanted to empower our community to eagerly take on learning in this new environment that we wanted strong schools that were connected with and developing all of our families and neighbors that we wanted students to be nurtured in holistic ways in mind body and spirit that our students would be reading fluently and that our Educators would be inspiring learning using the best professional methods and highest quality materials our goals were to create a consistent and focused plan that would meaningfully uh connect with all of our stakeholders and stay focused throughout the course of our work um starting from those purposes in order to help ensure that as a district any decision decisions we are making in terms of how the answer monies were
022being spent the task force then proceeded to start brainstorming some ideas underneath each of those purposes on things we could do positions we might want to hire um tasks we might want to take care of materials we may want to purchase it the the length of of ideas were a few hundred ideas that came out of that process um from there the task force started kind of looking at all that all those ideas that were that have been gathered and started prioritizing them and grouping them together to help give some shape to why we would be spending money and and making sure that everything came back to these priority areas um the task force um well it was made up of a cross-section of our stakeholder groups of course teachers were involved members of the
023cea administrators of course uh parents were part of that that test course as were Community Partners so it really was representative of the community and then even as the work was being done by the task force to kind of synthesize all those ideas together we were doing Loop outs with staff to get further input as well as presenting it at a community council meeting to get further input from the community um so I'm as you can see I mean the the priorities that came to uh to the top um consistently not only with the task force but with staff and with the community um the first and foremost was focusing on social emotional learning and uh trying to hire people into positions that could help Provide support with that whether it be at the time
024we were thinking social workers and counselors um focusing on reducing the student to adult ratio and providing in intensity and learning and additional learning supports for our students um providing enriched learning during and Beyond the school day so both before and after school opportunities um increasing family and community services and having and increasing compensation and work opportunities for staff um both um certified but also classified um there were a few priority areas um that were a little outside of that because they were important for us to keep in mind because they were they are they were priorities that needed to be in place in order to make the other priorities a reality and so those are those operational realities so we also we need to focus on technology especially as we're moving into needing to
025have online learning for everybody um and what we were going to do in terms of Technology um and then how we were going to sustain virtual learning for however long we were going to be not in person since none of us knew how long that would be um and then ensuring oversight and continuity of services um which is a lot of the behind the scenes work work to make sure that all of the money is being spent the way it needs to be spent and that everybody's getting the equal opportunities to um access whatever Services were being presented during this plan if I can get this so you can hear me so I will start by telling you that I am abundantly overwhelmingly glad that when we had our offending uh during the early and
026mid 2000s that I was aboard for that because it taught me lots of lessons on how to do this work and um it too was this kind of thing all of you have three different documents just wanted to draw your attention to them so that if if you need to look at them while we're doing the presentation or later they maybe of help one is just a one sheet page that's a quickie little glossary about some terms that we were asked to define the other is the whole guidance from our Arizona Department of Ed which includes at the back the allocations that were given to every District in the state it gives you some information about what we were given as guided so that will help kind of frame the work certainly don't expect you
027to read that today the third thing that you have is a budget and expense report for sr3 as of today so we're going to move along and we're going to talk a little bit about the funding timelines and availability so as all of you know we have had three separate Esser grants I'm sorry did you guys no she was just looking for one of the packets that's okay I just want to make sure that you had what you needed uh so as you know we've had the three separate Essa grants it started very early on with sr1 which actually ended on September 30th of 2022. uh that was the initial funding we had to support this work following we received sr2 funds those funds in next September 30th of 2023 and then we have September
02830 2024 to conclude our spending of Esser 3 funding so it's kind of like this wave of a rollout you're going to have to plan what am I going to do with my first grant dollars and where am I going to go with the next in terms of where we are to date as we mentioned sr1 is finished so it's spent down currently sr2 is 81 either encumbered or expended and you'll you can look at your glossary if you need to refresh your mind about those or 19 and 19 obligated obligated simply means that it is those are expenses that we included in our grant that we have neither encumbered nor we have have we expended but they're sitting there waiting to be used when it's time to use them that's uh eser2 sr3 we
029are currently 38 encumbered or expended and 62 percent obligated because it is the newest of our grants we began spending that money toward the end of last budget year and spent in the neighborhood of about five hundred thousand dollars and started this new year this new budget year with the remaining funds so I have a question sure so between obligated and um encumbered um encumbered and expenditures um the money is 100 spoken for is that correct unless we yes it is 100 spoken for and the reason for that is in order to access these funds we had to submit an application to the Department of Ed and they review the application and determined whether our our request for uses of the funds were appropriate or or not and when you do that you commit 100
030of your funds you can at at times if you need to revisit the use of those funds you can do an amendment and you can request repurposing of funds but yes when you when you talk about all three of those terms we're 100 obligated or they're 100 spoken for so just quickly if you want to look at sr1 it's uh the very next page and I'm not going to spend a lot of time because you you folks have seen this but as you know it was uh agreeant or an allocation and the amount of three million three approximately These funds were intended to be used primarily to deal with the startup of covid-19 we bought PPE gloves masks sanitizers you know all kinds of things to try to make our schools and our offices safe
031as we began to get toward the end of the use of those funds and we had uh kind of exhausted our room for storage of all the sanitizers and things which we did pretty quickly we did buy HVAC filters we bought covet testing kits then we found a little bit of money that we could use for some classroom kinds of things we you we bought newsella the Newsela subscription that our teachers are now using we did recruitment of teachers as we had on unfilled positions we did some substitute pay and some work with aim and dyslexia train that's basically what we did in the beginning with our sr1 funds we also had budgeted in that Grant eighteen thousand dollars for our non private schools that participate that's a process that we use where we're required
032to be the Fiscal Agent for Pennsylvania they're entitled to use and I can explain more about that at another time it's kind of lengthy um movie are there other questions about sr1 specifically um I do have a question this report when was this report ready are you looking at the beginning of the big packet yeah I think we uh I think we printed that yesterday okay because I I guess my concern and I just want to put this out that I'm very blindsided by this report and that we just got it today um this information is nice to have when we're gonna time right however today but when we walked in and sat down at this chair yeah actually right now however somebody else gave me the same report two weeks ago I requested the
033same information about at the same time and I was told that we were not able to have it because it wasn't ready but I have the exact same document s this is exactly the same thing that I have two weeks ago so I'm just saying like it's really hard to go through a presentation try to go through all these numbers when it's just been given to us literally within the last 10 minutes that we sat down to do that either I I truly I would not want to do that either it's a very in its own budget and expense report I did uh share this same document when I met with meet and confirmed last Thursday I believe so they had a copy of it I I I'm sorry I was unaware that the board
034wanted the this backup I brought it because I thought it would be helpful which which it it is helpful when we're making budget decisions over such a great amount of money but we have stuff that we're supposed to approve today and we it's it feels um disingenuous to make decisions off of budgets when we just got thrown all the information to us and and I feel like it puts us in a hard spot because we have people that have shown up today we have people that are here we have stuff in the agenda but we're getting thrown information at last seconds or minutes and it's it's like a it's a really hard position to be in so again and I don't think it's Miss burkhart's fault right I'm not I sat with Sophia just a
035week ago when she asked for this information from Dr Lewis and she we are just getting it just now it's it's impossible impossible to prepare for a meeting like this um when we haven't read this at all so and I you know I don't know where the blame Falls but we did ask Dr Lewis one week ago for the information um and I guess to go back to saying that the sr1 since it's been done and said all that information is here and itemize and I can go back in here and find out no that's not you're only looking at sr3 okay so where's where's sr1 information I did not bring those because I it was my understanding that the discussion was around sr3 okay and so I didn't bring them but of course you
036may have those okay I'll be happy to provide those for you thank you um and then I I guess that's a good question asking for sr1 and sr2 breakdown it's just like this made that clear and the meeting that we had two weeks ago or a week ago yes I can provide those thank you and ideally I mean this is a 30 page document um yeah I think there's like eight or nine hundred lines of code and yeah and it's it would take some time and we'd probably want to sit down and go through it because it's not necessarily uh self-evident about what's really happening right if you look at something yeah and I think that's just for context it would be nice because then we can figure out how we really want to prioritize
037right we want our budget to reflect our visions and and what we're doing and if we don't have that information it's really hard to pinpoint well this area is needed or versus that area if we're just getting a little pie graph 62 is done in 82 well what does that mean that means nothing to me yes there's lots of stuff behind all that because we couldn't get to the pie graph without looking at this so yes of course and we certainly can give you that information and I'd really be happy to sit down with anyone that would like to go through it well I apologize if I've misrepresented the board because it was my understanding we wanted to go through the process of prioritization today relative to the 1500 ideas that were gathered from the
038community clustered into four thematic approaches and then how those were allocated and obligated and then what's been expended so far so that we could be clear on what funds were available when we later make recommendations to the board for Action so I must have misrepresented your intentions my apologies I guess to follow up on that though we are there are things coming to the board for Action that involve These funds tonight correct correct so that doesn't I guess that doesn't make sense to me it doesn't and we can take more time if we don't want to make action tonight that's absolutely an option what I would encourage the board to do at this point is hear all of Pam's presentation so you can get the overall big picture and then if you choose to want
039to check into the dollars and cents Associated and assigned to the summary she's sharing tonight and then question that it's absolutely possible uh I think that the the napkin math as it's been dubbed is something that that we wanted to be nobody's talking about napkin math I'm talking about and so as I talk about that I want to make sure that we're clear on the proportions that are being recommended to help staff get what me and confer worked on so that's why this is the groundwork I'll just add I don't I don't think anyone's trying to cut off Pam or her presentation thank you I know that we're going to listen to it and all the other things still apply yes I'm here to provide you the information I brought and if you need more
040I can get that too and Pam if I made real quick one of the things as we move through the conversation tonight we're going to show is how in the analysis of the budget that you have the priority opportunities that are listed we are confident that those funds can be utilized to support tonight's recommendations and we have a set of next steps that are collaborative between the effective schools team meet and confer team members and I feel like oh the pandemic relief task force so that we can go through and continue that analysis work in deep detail in order to see if other opportunities for reprioritization exist so they're the recommendations that are being brought forward have been vetted in alignment with these priority opportunities and again we're confident that the funds exist to support
041them okay thank you okay I I will move ahead because as as we all noticed sr1 has been completely spent now we're working on azer too sr2 was a 13 million four hundred thousand dollar Grant in this grant I'll say up front that we did not need to manage funding for private schools the state department took that on for both sr2 and sr3 so you're not identifying that in the in this presentation anywhere what I will say is that we're almost spent down in sr2 we have sufficient funds to finish our any salary obligations and outstanding commitments uh through September 30th and to do an approximately 1500 to 2 000 stipend for a staff in the spring that's kind of what we've been doing we've been you know utilizing the funds and then when we
042get close to being ready we look at it and so how much money do we have now because one of our priorities was getting compensation to our teachers we did that in a variety of ways one of the ways was uh sun summer schools and after school and and other kinds of opportunities to do as additional work provide time for uh schools to do some professional development but we also wanted to do some sign and stay kind of stipends and things because we know that we're losing staff and so I won't let you know that with sr2 we're really right down to the the very end I'll mention that in sr1 the indirect and there's a definition for indirect on your little girl glossary it was 12 for sr2 it's 6.93 so it's a variable
043percentage with Esser uh two we were permitted by law to do all to fund all the things that we could do with sr1 like we could continue to buy Mass we could continue to buy the kinds of things that we needed to keep people safe now they're also encouraging us to address learning loss so now we're looking at what kinds of things do we need to support our students and our teachers to address learning laws and so in this this particular Grant we began to look at our e-lit present positions because we were concerned about reading we began to look at our child Justice and advocacy positions because we were concerned about the social emotional well-being of our kids who we understood very clearly from their families that there had been a great deal of
044trauma so we have those kinds of things we also fully funded the Creighton Virtual Academy so we have all of the staff and that that we hired for that um School in sr2 we did after school tutoring summer school all of those kinds of things and we're almost stepped down we we've spent that money exactly as we said we were going to we have enough money remaining that's in play to do like I said a 1500 to maybe a 2 000 stipend for all staff and we know we have that questions about sr2 so crane Virtual Academy is all paid for out of sr2 it is do we know what the total budget for that is I don't off the top of my head that I'd be more than happy to get it okay that
045would be great I did you know um we the I think it's the auditor General's report did report that we're paying the most per pupil at that school and it's you know it's not sustainable so um you know that's problematic um for us as a district yeah yes I can get you the okay that'd be great I just don't remember it off the top of my head and the Phoenix Union partner school districts are talking together about how to possibly collaborate and work together to offer that as a source for students who still want that service and where we might find the most cost efficiency thank you other questions answer to you know we love our acronyms so real quick we've talked about elit teachers and that's early literacy intensification teachers in keeping with that
046priority around making sure that students are able to increase reading fluency so just to clarify the um the 1500 um dollar retention stipend that we'll be discussing later that pretty much will be the rest of sr2 it's just the rest it's the amount that's left after we finished paying the you know the rest of the contracts for the people that are in sr2 at this time because we do have obligations but we looked at those obligations and said you know this is how much money we have that we can re-prioritize for this particular purpose and I've also uh in my discussions with meat and catcher last week I did let them know if that if that amount increases we will make that available in the stipend because you never know if somebody is going to
047buy something and it's not available maybe that money won't be spent you know there's always some some end of the year reasons why you don't spend all the money you think you're going to be spending you mean like in an additional stipend in the future correct is this yes this one will be we intend to pay this one out in April May I meant like if you found additional savings we could increase that particular stipend and the amount of that site how you voted on October 4th So you you're saying that stipend that we're voting on tonight is actually between fifteen hundred and two thousand yes and I believe the language reads a minimum a minimum of and I suggested that we might ask to do a minimum of so that we don't have to
048come back to the board if we have another you know five hundred dollars that we can get that we can source to that for every every person okay I think um on the recommended action it just says for how it's going to be worded it doesn't say minimum and so that's why when I uh saw the agenda item that's how I was like you're gonna have to come back here yeah on the okay I just wanted yeah I was saying the background it does but on the motion it doesn't so whoever when we get there okay I think I noticed that myself but I assume that we could yep you know you guys can take care of that that's the only reason I had the question because I was like are you coming back here
049not yeah I can assure you you worked long and hard on making sure that word was in there so yeah right you know we really don't want to give any of this money back and so that's the best place to purpose it because you can you can change it quickly so if there are no further questions I'll move on to s or three sr3 was a very different um Grant than either one or two because it came with some requirements that are much different than those first two grants and I will point out for you later we're in that guidance you can find that they have a side by side um pick few pages in there I'm going to tell you where they're at what they are but I'll point out to you so that
050you so that when you want to go back and read it you can find it okay so there were some requirements that were very new and they included first of all the 20 set aside that addresses disrupted learning using evidence-based strategies for academic and social emotional learning for vulnerable populations our district is uh you know considered to be a vulnerable popular a district with vulnerable populations of kids so we had to set aside 20 of our budget which was a little bit over six million dollars if you take the 30 million and you compute that out it's a little bit over a third over six million and we did uh things they wanted you to do this to the extent possible outside the school dance school year because they wanted kids to have extra time
051with teachers because they knew that the time was not going to be adequate so they were looking at after school tutoring after school programs some of it could be enrichment some of it needed to be academic and then the same thing for summer school so they wanted you to do extended summer school in our district we could have chosen to do some work during our fall break our spring break you know if we had been able to get uh you know someone who who was able to do that so that's the first qualifier that's first thing they said you have to take 20 off the top um and I think it's it's uh about a little bit over six million six million too I think we also added in sports and some clubs and things
052because they wanted us to do it after school so we're we're now paying out of sr3 the cost of doing our Sports programs after school you mentioned the basketball we're hoping to pay for the cost for the referees and the buses and all the kinds of things we're doing with that other kinds of things like Battle of the books cheer and clubs that are different schools have because that fell into enrichment and they were allowing you to do both academic enrichment and SEL so a variety of things in there the next thing they said was you have to get a committee and that is representative of the stakeholders in your District to help you decide how best to use these funds we already have the pandemic task force so we went back to them and
053said okay guys now we've got 30 million dollars and let's talk about what we might want to do and you gave us a priority list before so maybe these are some of the things we might want to consider parents parents really talked more to us about the social emotional health of the kids than they had then they did about academics they were very concerned about their kids social emotional health so we really invested in things like Kara Salas when the board that was brought to us we have Southwest Behavioral Health we have ours just as an advocacy groups and and we are looking for some materials that can be used in the classroom for those kinds of things quick question regarding the task force so I see that you included the task force membership and
054I'm hearing you say you got parent feedback for this one but I guess I'm seeing way less membership in this one and no parents on the list so I'm just curious what was going on so I so I can only answer that in one way this year the way that our committee work was done it um we decided that if you're on one committee you can't be on another so before people were on multiple committees that seemed a narrow down uh the the folks I have been very concerned that we have had no parents and we have no uh Community Partners we did up until this year and I would I would really like us to kind of see if we can't get some people we're doing it all all WebEx now so people don't
055have to come to a to a meeting and how are those meetings being communicated to the community or parents because I'm a parent of two different schools and I've never heard of an invitation to come to these Sr fund meetings so how are our parents or committee know that that's even happening um I think what we did in the beginning was send a communication out to everyone who had been a member of this Committee in a prior year so if you were a member of the committee in a prior year a communication went out and said this committee work is going to continue and we'd like to have you back unfortunately uh either I'm really not sure why well then I can jump in if that helps we did do personal invitations to all so
056like on the first two years of that task force there's a Community Partners and others listed we did personal Outreach every time and even for this year there are many challenges with adding additional workload to people's schedules people are busy other kinds of things I do agree with Pam that there is an opportunity to expand parent voice and access to this process the only sorry United We interrupt I just don't want to say that we don't have any parents when obviously we haven't even done the half of the parent involvement we haven't even reached out I haven't seen any Communications anything so I don't want us to come and say yes we we've done this communication or whatever but clearly it hasn't happened so we don't have parents because we haven't done the Outreach to
057our parents or community members so is what it sounds like to me so so I I think we we did Outreach in the beginning and you're quite right we haven't done it since I have I several times I think taught the Mr Carver Hall about uh meeting with the CEOs to see if we could in you know generate some interest again in this committee we certainly could do a post on all of the school websites and on our main page asking for people uh particularly parents I had you're right I did not do that I did not and one of the things that's a reality with this plan is it wasn't built we're kind of presenting it as a here's the sr1 components here's the sr2 components here's the sr3 it really is one plan
058that like all the colored slides that are in the appendix with those different priorities it was built as one plan that was going to be funded using the three sources along the way so throughout this process once the plan was established the Justice advocacy team was built now that's not something that you team was very Vivid at the beginning we're not going to do this for just one year we want to put it in motion and let it work over time so we this past year and I agree the committee is small and it wasn't tasked with making wholesale changes to the plan once we got it in place we were seeking to maintain it for a period of time now we're at a normal process a normal point in the timeline and Kelly's going
059to talk about this where it's appropriate and we did this exact same thing a year ago to the week last year we looked at where we were with vacancy savings what we hadn't filled and we used that to create the first round of stipends so it's not a year by year plan it's a three-year plan funded with three funding sources so we were not seeking the kind of input that we needed to make big changes and I'm not making excuses I'm just want to frame it in terms of that larger context because we couldn't it wouldn't make sense to do a one-year plan and then another one and then another one yeah how would I recall like didn't at the beginning in order to make these priority categories we did not just with parents on
060the committee but we did a lot of Outreach we did you know surveys and things like that so I guess like I agree with you I think you're not rebuilding a new committee every year for this um and it's unfortunate and I think we should do some more Outreach when we see members drop off to see if we can kind of fill those pieces but I am curious um I agree it's not manger changes but it is revisions it's adjustments and because it's such a long plan making sure that the priorities that were developed two years ago are those still the priorities now and maybe it is as simple as could we bring back some kind of survey to families you know not necessarily asking you know come to a meeting every month but maybe
061it's time to do another survey to say hey these were the priorities these this is how they've shifted over the last two years this is where we're at now do you have feedback to refine moving forward that's great feedback and in fact the pandemic task force has structured a draft of a survey to send out to our family we really did we were holding because we didn't want to interfere with the superintendent search survey because we do know that we all get a little survey fatigue it's been very intentional so that draft survey is in the hands of Hanover research right now so that they're structuring it and trying to package it with a like a stewardship kind of of survey so we look forward to Gathering additional feedback through that method so I guess
062my concern was as opposed to sr1 and sr2 there's a specific requirement with sr3 to meaningfully consult with stakeholders and provide the public with the opportunity to provide input and take such input into into account in the development of their plan and then it also goes on to list who the stakeholders must include my concern is we're not complying with those requirements of sr3 right now and I just want to make sure that there's a plan to make that happen and and I I will 100 agree with you because I have said that and that we are not in compliance because we do not have the representation that they ask us what I will also say however is that the representation was intended to be the involvement of people to develop the plan the plan
063is developed that does not mean that we shouldn't seek the same representation for me my my concern is that we would want input from parents and other stakeholders if we're going to repurpose money that they intended to be used in a different way certainly and I would also add that the plan was developed by a different group three years ago at a time when needs were different and so I think readdressing and making sure you're constantly adjusting our needs aren't the same as they were I absolutely could not agree with you more so I do believe that we and I will you know I will own taking 100 responsibility for not finding a way to reach out to more parents because I really truly we did the survey and hoping that we could gain some
064input from the survey but that just hasn't happened because of where we are with the superintendent search but we can find other ways to do that and we will commit to that I just want to Echo with what Sophia said you know I've been in here it's my ninth year and it's it's really been pulling teeth to get the district to allow community members to be on like budget advisory committing committee for example Kathy ring was on there for a while and she fell off I mean it's it's a it's a big time commitment so you can't you know it's going to be challenging to have people other than staff on these committees for three years um it takes work to get them on but we have the network of people and I'm I am
065so tired as a former parent hearing it as a parent we don't we can't find any parents who are interested in doing it it's like well you didn't even ask you you didn't ask for our help I mean how would how can we do it so so we have the social media networks we have the newsletter you know you will get people um I think yeah this is way too small even the first one I mean there's only a couple parents on there um and there's you know it's mostly staff that are making these decisions um and I think you know parents are a really important voice that are missing here just in general are you so I am I I agree with you 100 and as difficult as it is to get a high
066return on on surveys because I think most of the surveys that we've sent out the return rate is not what we would hope for but anything would be better than nothing at all so if we can get to a place maybe when we get a little bit further down the road and you guys are not where when we're past is at March 13th at the survey for the superintendent closes maybe we can let this out for parents then it will help us forward plan after we get by this particular this particular place in the road because we are going to gather up meet and good for representatives represent you know my team and look again at areas where we might be able to find the money and certainly we would want input from parents if
067we go if we do that again so we we can perhaps let the survey then um the other thing that we had to do we haven't gotten by the requirement yet sorry the other thing one of the other things that they re required that we do was develop a safe return to person instruction plan and to review that every six months and revise it as needed and then submit it to the state department we have done that uh I think we're due to submit our spring revision somewhere around the 4th of April or so so we call that safe return to school committee back together and they look at all the things that we've done to see whether we need to do any revision so that's a requirement that was a requirement of sr3 there
068was one other major requirement that does not affect our district because none of our schools are larger than uh as large as a thousand students there was a requirement that if you had a school of a thousand students or more that you the district could not reduce the it's support of that school excuse me if that was a high poverty school if it was one of the 20 up in the 25 we did not have that problem I might get a drink of water here so we're back in sr3 we find out all the things we sended in sr2 and then we we've taken on um things like like continued pay for careful Solace and Panorama we've taken on language line any of you have any of you ever used language wine uh we've done
069core one and then once again the department of Ed is managing the private schools quick question just because you meant from care Solace do we have there been conversations about how we can continue to fund that Beyond Esser you know I I guess I guess I would have to say this when you infuse the kind of money that we then choose into the district with these Esser funds and and you know the sr3 is the 30 million dollar one it's big there's going to have to be a lot of prioritizing about what we're going to do in the future because I I unless the legislature gives us with a lot of money it's going to be difficult so I can't say what will be the priority and what we won't but certainly Kiera Silas will
070be Solace will be one of the things that we'll need to look at because it's being used I I look at the reports you know every week so I I know that we have our our community whether it's our teachers or our parents or whomever are using that my apologies if you already answered this but so moving forward and I know this is a little bit jumping ahead will we be able to see a more um I guess broken down of the efficacy of what we've chosen to prioritize whatever measure we can use to figure that out so that we know how we might approach prioritization in the future and or the public could have input on that when we do have to make these tough decisions about what to keep and what to put
071I I am sure that that certainly the board would be up at the table for that decision since you when Pam talk a little bit about their requirements in lesser actually one of the things we have to provide yeah are impact data okay yeah so we're in the process this is where the relationship with Hanover research becomes so important they're helping us establish measurement parameters for the priorities and answer specifically around literacy um specifically around SEO our social emotional learning work and a couple of other areas I'm sorry yeah no that's that's right yes it needs to be I think we need to be intentional like as a board and cabinet and everybody be intentional about what data we want to get from it so that we're not last minute trying to gather data we're
072disappointed in what we were seeing so yeah so like we want the categories but we also do need a breakdown we don't need a line item like this but we need yeah but we don't want an SEL yeah we need to say like you know cjas Cara Solace you know like those sub categories um and you know I'm sure Hanover can be a big part of that so in terms of what we have to report to the federal government we are required to do impact data on only the 20 percent that's what they are requiring because that's the part that they looked at for intensified learning and support for social emotional that does not mean that we would ever not look at everything because we spent money on it but for the FED we are
073only required to do that 20 so right now our with our agreement with Hanover are they looking at more than just the 20 percent are they just looking at the points they at this time are looking helping us look at the literacy most of it's the 20 percent social emotional learning components the child Justice advocacy and literacy intensification um and then they're helping us with feedback about this prioritization process so we could expand it to include some of the other pieces but those are the the biggest chunks that would have data sets associated with them we can certainly expand it it'll take longer but yes we can expand it yeah well and that's why I want to bring it up now because it will take time but I think it's important well the while the
07420 is like the the meat of importance 80 of money is still very important too and this ties to a important part of the development process of this plan the things that were the priorities that were established were not just there wasn't an I um a desire to inspire creative changes for the future because prior to Esser we were already looking at how to repurpose re-prioritize existing title funds so we're now in that space of needing to make those prioritization decisions once again the data can help us let's jump ahead and let me say one thing before we move ahead and that will just be a quickie uh little incentive because we talked so uh so much about the pandemic task force I would be remiss if I did not tell you that we have
075I'm sorry do you mind speaking a little bit closer yeah I moved over out of the way when I wasn't talking so I wouldn't breathe into the microphone I would be remiss if I didn't say to you you uh that we have had a good deal of acknowledgment from the Department of Education about the development of our pandemic task force and the links to which we went to have them involved it did not happen other places in the state and and so Dr dupin and myself both were invited to do some presentations around that we've been in some of their newsletters and things so I think we just you know I want to Pat ourselves on the back while it isn't certainly perfect and this year it's not good uh we certainly have done a
076good deal and and I want to acknowledge that Kelly you're an adult in for this to be the Slate I'm just gonna put it out there it's maybe my opinion since I was raised in the state and I don't put a ton of stock in what Ade thinks is like like going above and beyond and that's just me but I'm just putting it up there but you know what that's that's not a bad thing to feel but in this case it came from the people that were handling the SR funds and people that I hold in high regard and I don't hold everybody in my regard but there are some I do well and I will Echo because I like I feel like the present you know while we always are asking for more and
077we appreciate you guys giving us what we're asking for every time um but like there's this is way more information and detail than I'm seeing shared publicly in other districts so which is terrifying yeah like I will say I I feel much more knowledgeable about this than my own district and other districts that I have friends in who are like we have no idea what our District's spending us are on so I really do appreciate all the work that the task force has done and and the presentations and updates we've gotten throughout Pam's being humble and really what happened is there was like there was a request made for us to actually teach people about how this has been done and so it's it it absolutely we recognize how hard it's been to engage people
078and if it's that hard for us it makes me think of how very little I'm assuming these other districts are done if we're being recognized and we're already you know recognizing how hard it was to try to engage people I'm like well what the heck are these other people doing nothing like that's scary I mean I can speak to that I mean there isn't a lot I think that a lot of teachers just say they don't really look at the budget right I mean we we don't really look at the budget as teachers um for the most part unless we're involved in a committee and we learn the budget but then I don't think that that is at all shared even maybe during IBM processes or meet and confer processes because I asked that question
079today in my own meet and confer and no one could tell me the answer to how much sr3 funds that we had available so I I think I think we are moving beyond I mean we have a good understanding of this and but the community does need to know sometimes they choose not to sometimes teachers choose opt out as well all right I've been creeping over here long enough um I just wanted to jump in because as someone who definitely breaks the you can only be on one committee rule um I serve in several capacities one of which is on the pandemic Relief Committee and then the other is on meet and confer and this year the two definitely have an overlap in the funds that we're talking about and that's specifically in sr3 so
080I'm tasked with talking about the next steps which is where we can re-prioritize and look at some of the funds that are available and how we can pour them into our people because we know as we said that was one of our priorities was to increase and I know we have several distinguished guests that are waiting patiently to hear the results of this vote so and the effort to move us along um this slide that you're seeing uh or the next few slides I should say are talking about some areas that were already identified by Pam and her team as spaces that may be potential re-prioritization of funds as Eric already shared earlier the um meeting that we had around the same time last year related to sr2 was doing the exact same thing I
081stood in the same spot and told you this is what we're doing this is where we sort of saved some funds that was related to unfilled positions or vacancy savings this year we're looking more at programs that were not filled to their capacity so as an example the YMCA we allotted a number of spots we ended up getting an enrollment that was significantly lower across our sites so that's a space where we can save some some cost right and then pour it into hopefully stipends um in the discussion about who makes those decisions and how are things cut and how are those things done that was also brought up in the meet and confer process and there was a lot of energy and passion around exactly what you brought up um Madame President about uh
082the line items and being able to look at who's saying what is a priority and what isn't so in the effort of transparency a side Committee of made up of members from meet and confer was created and they will be meeting with Pam and her team to do exactly that to look at the line items I love the feedback of including a Community member or parents I think that's something that we can definitely readjust because the committee hasn't yet met we just made this decision last week but I just wanted to put that out there that is coming in I think it's the end of the presentation that we'll be meeting with that committee they'll be looking line by line at where those cost savings can happen so that we can fund and repurpose those
083funds into stipends was that clear okay you all have uh the slides that have the areas that we have looked at it's important to know here that the cost savings for this year is unspent funds so uh for example if schools were unable to do after school tutoring and that money has been sitting there that may be money that we can purpose because if they haven't been able to hire people this year then we can use that if her daddy's tired and so and so uh maybe we need to rethink that it doesn't mean that the things that are on any of these slides and I won't go through everyone because this has been a long presentation and I know that you guys can look at it just remember that this doesn't mean these things
084are going away we may move them to some other Grant if we can repurpose some money there may be some things that we can do with with some other funds but this is these are the things that when we took about a day and a half takes a long time to go through and say not spent spent what you know it's a big budget that we came up with but we are not going to to deprive our kids so I want you to know that because there are some things on here that might imply that we were and I don't want you to feel that way and that is the whole purpose of the committee right is to be able to make those decisions to have stakeholders in the room and people that were part
085of the meeting can process to be able to um uh be transparent about what is cut and what isn't and where those cost savings are coming from so just to clarify these slides 9 through 13 the opportunities for re-prioritization those are areas where we had money set aside for XYZ and we no longer need to set that money aside either we couldn't build a position or we've set aside more money than we actually needed for it correct with opportunities being the very appropriate word because nothing is set in stone and like I said there was a lot of passion around what certain things should and shouldn't be sort of on The Chopping Block um and so that's that was the The Genesis of this side committee to be able to make those decisions um so
086with that in mind uh the last should we just skip ahead then can I jump in real quick I want to affirm my earlier remarks about my confidence in the team's ability to support the stipends this slide here indicates that the total available um including existing vacancy savings plus the total of all those suggested opportunities for re-prioritization again not meaning that they go away just saying there might be less or we might have to move them to additional funding so a different funding source so that total puts us within very close reach of the dollar figure that's recommended second action item for tonight and we're confident that through this process that is here we will be able to identify the remaining balance in order to be able to commit to those type and that one
087does explicitly say minimum right Jay yes could you clarify though because on the later agenda item it says per um staff member it doesn't say a total number on the agenda item itself yeah for seven for 7B I I know it's based on but and it's also prorated on FPS so so one of the challenges and then I'll just share this real quickly if I could come up with a quick amount for you that one of the challenges is that the eight the fifteen to two thousand dollar stipend will go to the people that sign their contracts for next year it's a sign and state yeah so we don't yet know who those people are going to be that's where there's some variability we also don't know for the stipends for next fall how many
088positions we're going to have filled so you know you can take a well there's an apx at 760 employees in the district who would be eligible for the stipend and multiply that out but it was estimated at the highest number possible yeah and that's what I that's what I wanted was obvious total possible because that's not in the agenda item but it says a minimum of is it not it's as a minimum of a stipend amount to an individual not a total so when when I only bring this up because when you look at the slide prior and and Dr dupin said that number is almost the amount of the total and I'm like well we don't know what that total is but if I do 760 times 10 000 that is less than this
089so if if I if I can help with that subject hopefully this is being recorded I just want to be abundantly clear it's a floating number we don't really know what the number I believe the estimate we worked with the other day was about 9.2 million it was so um it's a little bit well it's higher than the number you're seeing here I think what Dr dupin was trying to express is the number you're seeing here is from a first pass through budget lines to identify what's available for repurposing the purpose of the team is to go through and do an additional pass because that work is as Mrs Burkhart shared was done in a day and a half so you know it takes more time to vet through there and now that um The
090Lion's Share of the work with Esther 2 is completed the team and now the adjunct committee can work together and have the time that they need in order to verify every possible opportunity but everyone from myself to miss do Molina Director of Finance to Mrs Burkhart to Dr dupin as we've looked at these numbers we all feel very comfortable that the capacity to support that dollar amount is there the work just needs to be done and the important part and Kelly sorry to um to kind of jump on what you said earlier but I think it's really Bears it's worth repeating and I appreciate you sharing it the important part is to make sure that team also ensures that things that could potentially be reprioritized that we may not want to reprioritize have replacement funding
091it's not just finding the additional funding it's making sure if we say this particular thing is a non-negotiable that it gets put back in the budget and something else that everyone feels comfortable we don't need to fund this at this level replaces those dollars and Mr Mann isn't the same fluidity true with any data sheet we would provide with numbers that they are constantly in the movement of payment or adjustment in particular when you're talking salaries and benefits those numbers are continually changing because there's a fluidity to um you know when people leave us when they come back we had an extended um we had an extended conversation um during the meet and confer process about what's called termination benefit that's one of the things that's almost impossible for us to estimate every year we
092don't know how many people who retire or leave the district when they do there are dollars owed them I I if there is a finance person out there that can estimate those at the beginning of the year I would love to meet them and learn from them because it's you basically would have to know as you're entering the fiscal year who all's leave at the end you know sometime between that point in time and the end so there are always these components of what we're dealing with the change on literally on an almost daily basis so having having more people you know you've heard us say a lot when we talk about like the budget advisory committee we have the saying that none of us is as smart as all of us having more people
093at the table to review and provide oversight I think will give us both a better product and a better sense of transparency and comfort with what's coming forward on I understand that I'm just trying to clarify because Dr Dubin said the 8.1 is short of what we would need for the 10 10 000 stipend and you just said that the and I know these are all estimated but if the the estimated highest amount for the 10 000 stipend would be 9.2 million I was just trying to figure out where 9.2 is when I've heard we have 760 something input like I'm just using the number 750 I think yeah so so here's yeah but it's not that much contract returns yeah a word of caution when you do the 750 you can't multiply it just
094time the ten thousand because you have to multiply it time the 10 000 and then multiply that times uh it won't reduce the amount of taxes that are being pulled this isn't an offset to the x amount of employee pays what this represents is the portion of various taxes and benefits that are based on employee salary that the district is obligated yeah so what ends up happening is for a lot of those types of things there is an employee District match so the easiest one off the top is Arizona State Retirement System right the employee will pay whatever the percentages the district pays the same percentage so that's part of that calculation another thing would be um there are other items at the federal level like Social Security where there's both an employer yeah workers
095comp yeah workers compensation so all of those types of factor every year we um our finance team gets from you know the powers that be that calculate all those things a percentage and it's it's Dina could probably tell you exactly it's just below 0.21 so we always err on the side of the larger number so I know when we did our calculations we use 0.21 so that way we knew it was adequate about that no thank you like I said I was assuming that I just again in the vein of transparency I think if we're sitting here going check check like we need to make sure that everybody in the audience and online understands that as well um I heard you call the 1500 to 2 000 stipend sign and stay what are we referring
096to this other statement that's you know um haven't called it anything yet we're going to do the ten thousand dollars we'll be divided into two stipends five thousand will be uh distributed at the beginning of the school year that can be a sign of stay stipend the one that that we distribute uh in just after January let's say we do it we did it this year January 20th let's say we do it some that can be a sign and stay stipend for the next year or we can wait until everybody signs their contracts and we can distribute that second half after everyone does their contracts for the 23-24 school year it's just a matter of timing we just have to figure out how we want to do that we just have it quite dot in
097there yet and what aligns with what the Ade will appear yes yeah that's kind of what my question was yeah we can call it a retention stipend you know they use different kinds of adjectives if you will what different kinds of descriptors if you will um for it so we could call it different things I have a question um so you said you're going to give out the first 5000 at the beginning of the year is there concern that people may leave after that you know Jake can you talk about if I could please clarify so what would I heard a meeting conferring Kelly if you'd help me make sure we're relaying it accurately the first one would be during the first semester and the second one would be during the second semester there are
098a lot of factors that go into when we issue those we have a very small payroll team so the problem when we just you know pick a date at a thin air if we just choose one at random I will tell you we will miss it because all it takes is one person being sick for a week and we're lucky if we're making payroll at all so um so what we've traditionally done and one of the things I very much appreciated from the meeting for a team and from their understanding of it their recommendation to us was actually give it to a group we call Triad which is human resources Pam's team um and the business team which includes payroll to figure figure out where in that first semester is a date that we can
099commit to that we know we can execute on so if you recall from the one that went out January 20th the desire was actually for that one to go out in November or December but there were a number of other deadlines not only in November and December but new tax tables that get loaded in early January and in order to ensure that the regular ongoing payroll didn't miss a beat and everybody got paid on a regular basis the two dates that were most viable were January 20th or February 4th and the team opted for the earlier of those two dates so I don't think we have uh written in stone day yet there's no reason to determine that date until if the board approves because it's all pending board approval but that team will figure
100out when that can functionally be distributed I find it unlikely it would be very early in the year because all of your initial payroll work that happens to make sure everybody's in the system is extremely time consuming and I think it's in the past when we've tried to do that we've missed dates ever since we we did it we did it early uh this last year this the thousand dollars stipend was early but um but we already had the work done and we did it early because the first payroll for teachers and people that are just coming back to work is not very large because they don't work you know how that is if you're a teacher it has to do with the days but we may not be able to do this when we
101did a timeline uh in Triad we'll sit down with a calendar and figure out because there are a variety of things that you have to do you have to do an agenda to even be able to pay this out so you have to get a dentist done for everybody that's going to be in receipt of the stipend in order to be legally able to give it so you have to do that first and then you have to be able to say okay what what week is going to fall in between payrolls and they do it on a non-payroll week I'll just jump in real quick I think Heather's concern was about people taking the money and leaving we talked about that extensively and we talked about it at the first round of stipends as well
102it's it might happen right and we just felt like we can't punish all of the district and the people that have poured their Heart and souls and money and time and energy and all the things to punish the few people that are going to take the money and run right that's just going to happen and so we kind of decided as a team and collectively that we would issue this stipend at some point in the first semester leaving it up to these teams to make those decisions about when that would be and just hope that people understand that this is a reflection of the work that we appreciate from what they've given us and and hope that they don't will some people of course will right but it's a drop in the bucket compared to
103the actual budget that we're working with so it's just sort of take the bad with the good okay so we've talked about it a good bit but there is a set of next steps Kelly if you want to run through that timeline real quick yeah so let's move on yeah I did I did have a couple questions I'm sorry just on the opportunities for prioritization so you've said that we're not getting rid of any of these things but they are all important um um after school tutoring for example um you know I'd hate to just kiss acabitus because we can't find people to tell them I mean that's something our kids actually really desperately need so remember this knock is a goodbye it's just shrinking the opportunities that are available so instead of opening it
104up let's say to every child there would be some sort of cap or limit based on the enrollment or the interest that we found this year so that's sort of where we capture those funds same with YMCA and a few of those other ones and like I said before some of those made us the tmce I specifically very uncomfortable and that is why we created this separate committee to be able to ask these very questions and say hold on a minute this feels very close to kids why are we creating this when we have other opportunities in other departments or other positions that possibly could be cut so that's where the super detailed line budget comes in and that work we'll go to those individuals to be able to look at right so I think
105that'll be important for the board to get confirmation that you know we aren't cutting kid things for kids yes our our hope is that I am waiting for allocations for next year's federal grants we have a bevy of them uh and I'm waiting to get those allocations to see what I might be able to move into one of those if if we can can do that that's the difficult part of this guys we didn't budget any of these things because we didn't have any money I mean that because we couldn't think of anything better to do it's all important and that's what makes it hard when you want to reprioritize it and when you need to reprioritize it you're exactly right I think maybe a helpful perspective like I totally understand what you're saying and
106maybe a helpful perspective would be to see that table with what still is being funded in comparison to what that cut is because that cut is like you said probably minimal compared to this is what is currently being used and is still set aside like just to have that perspective and to verify like that we're not cutting and then it also we're calling it a sign and stay and a sign and stay would go it would this the second part would go be paid in the fall is what if is it go to new people that come get hired in the fall you know we have we really haven't talked about that we did some rules around the last stipend we had a cut-off date you had to have been employed by a particular date
107in order to receive the stipend I anticipate that something similar to that would probably be uh called for for instance if we're if we're going to pay out stipends and somebody comes to work the day before you're going to be paying out that stipend maybe they don't get the first one maybe they get the second one and we have not really talked about that yet but that is a conversation we probably want to have because this is a sizable stipend when you're talking about a thousand dollars it's less you know you're not going to worry about that as much but when you're talking about somebody five thousand dollars you know it would it be fair to give somebody this maybe not okay or even like that first one like if you started the year with
108us like you can you signed on here in the next month or two great you're here for yeah you're here for Camp green and went through new teacher and you know orientation and all those pieces I think they need to think about it that's important so it's one of the things we have not yet discussed we the reason just for the urgency it feels like we're moving into this typing conversation which we're happy to do um is contracts right so we have a contract deadline which is March 20th and so um there was a lot of back and forth and discussion about moving this discussion to our March 28th meeting but obviously that's beyond the date so that's why some of those pieces aren't necessarily worked out and we appreciate your grace and understanding that
109there has been a lot more transparency this year with the meet and confer process and the overlap with the pandemic Relief Committee as well in making sure that we can make this happen for people and encourage them to sign their contracts appreciate you guys answering all of our questions because as um Sophia said earlier like it's hard when we get this we we want as we get through those agenda items like we want to move forward for all those reasons we just really need to make sure we all understand everything and feel confident and well and you're reliving you're reliving the committee's direct conversations okay go ahead go ahead please I was just gonna say this is exactly what we went through as a mean confer and there was a lot of anger frustration ultimately
110we came to this will make our process stronger this will make sure that we have the information that we need moving forward that we will be able to get out in front of the information that we request so that then we can make more decisions that are concrete that are having obviously a huge impacts so yes it's a parallel conversation did you want to add to that nope awesome any other questions comments were you finished Kelly yeah thank you I appreciate that as it evolves uh regularly it'll keep so that brings us over to 9A we're gonna jump in and make it at 6B which is the acceptance of financial audit reports for fiscal year 2021 and 2022. yeah so Madam president members of the board um Dr Lewis and executive team I am very
111um please I know this we have done this since before it's become a state statute to bring our audit Partners from heinfeld will meet forward to present the audits of the board um I think it's two years ago Brittany the three years ago well no you've been coming for many years oh but um but the law I think it was last year it was last year that it went into effect that it's required to have a roll call vote in order to accept the results of the audit so also several years ago I just want to point out is since we've been having a lot of conversations about when we get information to the board um You probably noted in the both each of the last two board updates that we did provide these documents
112and some information about it that was in a direct response to requests in Prior years from board members because what we used to do is attach it on Thursday before the meeting as you can see from the handouts this is a sizable amount of information so I appreciate uh the kindness of the board to receive that information early and the fact that there's an interest level to dig into it um and so with that um because I am struggling with words this evening but I'll let you introduce yourself to the board sure um and explain what you're what you've got to share with them it's a good thing thanks Jay Madam president members of the board thank you so much for having me here this evening I really appreciate it as uh as Jay said
113I've been coming for many years um even before it was required by state law so I think that that's a testament to um the board and the district for wanting to have this information um up front so you have a few different reports in front of you I am not going to take you through this entire thing I will point out the highlights so we'll start with the big one this is the annual comprehensive financial report this is the financial statements of the district and I'll just draw your attention to a couple of important pieces page one starts the transmittal letter which is updated annually by the superintendent um talking about things that are going on in the local economy long-term Financial plans of the district picked in various items like that um on page
114seven and eight you will see the the awards that the district received for the prior year act for as long as you submit this report by December 31st and and the asbo and the government Finance Officers Association both have a chance to review it you will get the awards again in the next year so that's a really commendable thing to be able to do that early I'm doing a lot of reports right now that aren't due until March 31st and so um that's really the actual deadline but a lot of districts do go early to get these Awards and it's a lot of extra work so come in definitely um very commendable to the finance department on page 13 you'll see the independent Auditor's report so that's our opinion on the financial statements as Auditors
115so we issued a clean opinion on the financial statements this year and there's really um nothing else super important to point out in that document it the next section if you wanted to look at a few different things on your own I'm not going to go through it would be the Management's discussion and Analysis which starts on page 19 and it kind of does an overall comparison and explanation of last year to this year of things that changed the other section would be the statistical section which is in the very back and that starts on page 125 and basically what you're looking at back there is summarized financial data historical data employment data information about the population of the district those types of statistical information for the last 10 years so that that can be
116really interesting too if you want to see trends of the district are there any questions on the financial statements and the act for itself before do we have any questions or comments doesn't look like I have questions but I'll ask I'll wait till the end so the end okay you bet all right the next one I'll talk about is let's do um the paper document this is the uniform system of financial records this document goes directly to the office of the Arizona auditor general it's a questionnaire um put out by them we as Auditors are required to answer yes no or n a to every question and every no or n a requires a response so um the no questions are non-compliance issues so they may not have actually nothing Rose to the level of
117reporting to the federal government in the single Auto reporting package they're just non-compliance things that that occur from year to year okay um any questions specifically on that one or should I keep going anyone have questions okay thank you Sean uh this last report here is the single audit report so this is where you'll find the results of our review over government auditing standards Independence ethics um those types of things as well as the results of our testing of the federal programs this year so uh funny enough we tested the education stabilization fund which includes all three essers as well as many other grants because the federal government calls it one Grant whereas the state likes to break it into a bunch of confusing pieces and send it out that that kind of confuses everybody
118but it is just one Grant if you look to page nine you'll be able to see the summarized um report so this goes through what our report was on the financial statements the federal Awards which federal programs we tested this is the clean this is the cleanest that this can get there's no's all the way down no significant deficiencies no material weaknesses no non-compliance with federal grants and so it looks unmodified opinions on everything and so this is the the best it can get so definitely kudos to Jay and Dina over in finance and the entire it's always so helpful to us when we come out for the audit and we come out twice a year and um and we're here on site and and interacting and testing all kinds of things digging into payroll
119and attendance and uh you know debt and this year with the major change this year was something called Gatsby 87 it was a financial reporting standard that required a big change in leases so that that took a while to kind of compile and get through but um management was really helpful and we got it together so I also issued one last report directly to each of the board members back in December probably um directly from me that's the external Auditors required communication to governance if there was any disagreements with management or any situations of fraud or anything like that you would see that in that letter I would be drawing it to your attention so that we could have direct communication about that there was nothing like that so just wanted to point that out
120and Brittany if I could I think it's really important you use the phrase unmodified opinion yes so I know one of the things that's come up in conversations with the board is about when these audits happen like do they go through the superintendent do I get to you know make adjustments to things um when they say an unmodified opinion sometimes the Auditors will come back to us and say well we're going to find this in your in your audit and we will make an argument for why look there was extenuating circumstances and sometimes you know in in the past I think there's been one or two cases where the Auditors said look we still have to find this but we will allow for you to provide your explanation if I'm hearing that oh okay so
121so I see what you're saying if there's a finding correct if there's a fight there's a finding yep you in the single Auto reporting package management does have the opportunity to respond and say what the planned corrective action is yeah so but what I think what's important is that letter that goes directly to the board the fact that what you're getting is an unmodified opinion means that it has not been tampered with by the management of the district that's coming directly from Beyond that's true that's true and in the context of um kind of in the single audit report when we say unmodified opinion it means that we have a clean opinion meaning um we didn't have to we didn't have to change our opinion on the financial statements or the federal Awards because there
122wasn't say enough evidence for us to even apply them so a little bit different context yeah but I understand what you're saying to you yeah so I have a couple questions so do you still work with a board member to review it we did that once I still do um well um we still call a board member every single year to do our annual fraud interview and open it up for any questions that you might have um it's not necessarily a review of all the reports because it's taking place before they're prepared okay it's during field work but yeah we like to alternate who we talk okay so you haven't been will be I'm just curious who you worked with this year I don't I don't recall it wasn't me that made the call okay
123okay um I've only done it once on my nine years so uh let's see you did Esser funds within this single artist okay we tested the compliance for them okay are you able to tell me like um have you verified that everything we've used and planned to use Esser funds meet the federal guidelines for supported use that's a good question so when we do the single audit and thinking about it we're we're testing everything that was spent prior to 6 30 22 that was an approved award so it has to go on to your single your FIFA so with some of these Awards there's some differing things whereas you'll get a contract after year end say in September but they'll say hey no you can go back to the prior year and grab monies but
124maybe you haven't done it yet so those wouldn't be included um necessarily but they might be because they're it's very single audits are not what they used to be they cross lines and cross fiscal years now on those Awards but anything that was spent out of s or one two or three because three I believe had about five hundred thousand dollars spent in 22 so anything spent prior to 6 30 22 that that that was in the sifa and reported as an expenditure of 22 we would have included a sample in our payroll test work our disbursement test work we would have tested internal controls over the compliance requirements as well as the compliance requirements and making sure that they were tested accordingly any sort of reporting period of availability procurement it's all samples but
125yes we tested all of that um do you know what the process for allocation of Esser funds and who is running it as far as the state no within our district oh no we don't we don't necessarily get involved in we do look at allocations to make sure that they're in compliance with the with the compliance requirements set by the federal government okay so the federal government is very different from the state government though okay so we're reporting to the feds when we're testing your federal report okay Federal Awards and we don't do any sort of you know advising or opining on business management decisions at all so we're looking strictly at Federal compliance requirements occasionally some State compliance requirements will will be in there as well okay thank you foreign any other questions or
126comments doesn't look like it okay all right thank you so much for that thank you for having me so with that um I will move the governing board except the audit reports for fiscal year 2021 and 2022 in compliance with ARs 15-914 dot h dot or Point whatever second and then I have to take a roll call per person so miss Gibson McLean aye Ms mcshuffrey hi I myself aye and Miss Ayers hi motion passes and that brings us to 7.8 which is approval of the first retention stipend for the return of contracts for the 2023-24 school year used to add the okay the one the second one has it the first one doesn't or yeah one of them had it in one there we go yeah the first one does not before we get
127and who's going to be discussing this no no discussion okay I do have we can have a panel of people ready to answer questions if you like um we have some of the members of the median Comfort team ready to answer some of these questions so please members of the medium Comfort team all of those who are still present please come forward and be recognized for your hard work facilitator you moved Diane so I didn't see you uh Diane she's also our external facilitator so if you have any questions about the process she's also ready to answer um some questions for you thank you guys for being here does the board have any questions or comments about the 1500 base retention stipend sign and stay sign and stay go ahead I just I just wanted
128to specify um because I know there's some overlap with the Esser committee but the 1500 stipend is intended to go out by the end of this year and it is a sign and say sniping so it would only be for employees who are signing their contracts for the following year awesome anybody else have any questions I have a request that would cover both of these and I'm not sure who to direct it to I am totally into this I support everybody coming to an agreement my concern is keeping data um moving forward about how this actually impacts retention um just because I would like to have that data in the future if we're having a position again to have the ability to give out stipends my only concern is to make sure that we know
129what that like the the rate is for the retention with the stipends if we can track that somehow I don't know what your conversations are I don't know if targeted stipends were discussed or anything like that and so I'd want us to have this picture possible in the future if we were ever in this position again and so I'd love to have that tracked and not miss out on that without thinking about it moving forward so we made at the end of our process we made a list of um just recommendations and things that we wanted to refine for the process moving forward so we can definitely add that and I think all of us version our heads like yes we definitely want to make sure that we collect that data I don't know even
130if that falls to who the facilitator or the the person in HR but we can make sure that it's added to the list of other priorities that we wanted to begin next year's process when absolutely we can collect HR in the podcast collector retention and the impact of this riders that we have implemented so we can add that to the responsibilities and bring also the members of the meeting confer so we can share that data and everybody has a common knowledge sweet thank you thank you I also just wanted to say um that I I understand this is all work you all did outside of your regular hours and it's a new newer policy that y'all are still like trying to make sure you're working through the right way and everybody seems to be trying
131to come to the table to do this the right way and so I just really appreciate everyone's time and effort and energy and to getting this done so thank you So based on that a little bit um you know I really I've been struggling with this a bit because um we have we do know there's still a big gap in the district between teacher pay and Leadership pay um and you know this is a different bucket than our normal raises um I realize but um you know I have a proposal or an idea that I'm sure will not be popular popular with some and I I doubt that I'll have the board votes for this but um you know we talk about creating a leadership um path for teachers so that they can go into
132Administration and make more money but you know the teachers I know in my family my good friends they want to stay in the classroom you know because that's where they love to be and I know we're competing with some districts that are paying teachers more um salary um I have a friend who's at a charter school who's making um quite a bit more like 68 000 um you know um she used to work at this District actually um so what I had thought about um proposing and I will all propose it um is that anyone that this stipend goes to anyone making less than six figures only um in this district and I understand that is life-changing to those folks um and that above the six figure amount we cut it in half this is
133supposed to be a retention stipend um and we have a massive retention issue with teachers Paras bus drivers custodians we do not have a retention issue as much with our leadership team so I'm talking about the 10 000. only the ten thousand but oh we're not well we're in the 1500. Katie had just prefaced you wanted to talk about both you're mentioning them both together the data thing that applies to both right okay so I guess I was following that track so this is specifically to that so you can keep that in mind as you make your votes on this one okay thank you so for this specific one do we have any more comments or feedback okay um um okay I move the governing board approve of retention well I'm gonna move the governing
134board and amend the approved a retention stipend of a minimum of 1500 based on remaining sr2 funds for the 2023-24 school year to be distributed following all deadlines for the return of contracts work agreements to all staff who returned signed contracts work agreements by the deadline all those in favor I I unanimously process okay that brings us to 7B approval of second retention stipends for the 23-24 school year and Miss mcchafree um first of all is there any discussion on this especially with I wanted to add two other points which I always forget all of my thoughts but um the other thing is you know I think that there's there's a power dynamic in the meet and confer process because we do have administrators in there but I heard nothing of that from the people
135I talked to who are in the room um but again that can be unconscious I think too um but um the people I talked to thought the committee was really really aligned so I will add that too and that's makes it even harder for me to make the statements that I I made but um I do really believe that if we're talking retention um that 100K Mark is a fair not personal you know way to cut off and still make it seem a little bit more fair for those to kind of bridge that Gap so um before we go into any motions because I guess we have two different ideas um at the table is that the last week I'm just going to share a personal experience last week I was at the Creighton Academy
136basically a full-time employee we had some call outs I was the chair of the Scholastic Book Fair and I saw it all unfold in real time on how hard and how everybody was busting their butts to cover for the teacher the librarian was out our front office was out and I understand that we all have opinions and we we we all do have you know there's some disparities we understand that and we're working really hard on that but that day really brought me into light of how important it is to have our leaders as principals to and everybody that it takes how everybody just worked around just to keep the the place running for the kids at the end of the day this is about our kids and if we do not um reward that
137whether you're a principal or you're an administrator it really does take a village to do all that and I saw it for hand um it's really easy to make assumptions and opinions of things but I literally did not work for a week just so I could provide that service to these kids that said that we were going to have there and if it weren't for my the flexibility of my job I think the Scholastic Book Fair would have been canceled and we wouldn't have raised that money for the PTO that goes back to our kids so whenever we're making these decisions and these things get brought up at the table at the end of the day we really need to look at who this is going to impact if we don't have bodies running these
138buildings we will not have kids who need to be holistically been taken care of um I go back to our mission I go back to our statements that we make you know that we are supposed to be this collaborative kind-hearted leaders and whatever opinions we have and who's making what at the end of the day it's taken a lot just to keep us running especially in the climate that we are legislatively where public education as we know it is under attack in every single aspect of it who knows what's going to happen with these next coming vouchers that are coming out that's 300 million dollars that nobody accounted for and guess where those funds are going to come out of first it's going to be us so if we have this money right now to
139value and all the work that you have guys done I I believe that it's a fair charge just for everybody um it's just crazy the power and the love that we really do have for our kids because at the end of the day that's what we need to think about is how is this going to impact our kids if we say no to this and we do this to this and that to that at the end of the day that's not a service to our kids so that's my opinion on it that's all I'm gonna say we have two different things you can move forward with that motion if you would like and then if it doesn't pass then we move on to the next one I would still like to make it oh yeah
140yeah go ahead I'm sorry I didn't mean to shut you guys out on the okay that's okay first of all it represent your admin okay so you do have admin that are members so you are representing all members here yes thank you um and the second thing is is I've been able to play principal for this past year through my college courses and I can't imagine all of the things that happen during the day that I haven't seen But what I have seen I'm a very empathetic person and so walking through the shoes of principles um on The Daily like it's amazing it's like a lot of thinking and work dealing with a multitude of things um and I have been a teacher for 22 years and I know we we work hard as well
141um but I like really commend the principles for everything that they have to do as well um and you I mean I haven't heard this is really weird but I haven't heard any complaint really about a principal like this year um per se which speaks volumes because um you know we always think about oh who's the bad egg right um but I feel and maybe Kelly you can tell me if there's been you know yeah so so I just think that this is like fair and equal in um really valuing um all of our people and I really commend the work that you guys have done um and I hope that I can do the same with my district as well so thank you thank you miss her Miss McCaleb you said it well um
142and as did you um I just this is important to Value all of our employees it we cannot run a school a district without every person at every level everyone needs to be involved and we need to show you all that we value you um listen I'm the first one to hate power structures all I do is get paid to fight the government every day right so I'm always about fighting the man um but at the same time right um that's why I asked for this data because I think I could be sueded to make a decision like that if the data showed me that there was an issue there that being said I don't have that data right now and what I do have is the word of these people who've made agreements and
143had conversations about what they think is best for each other and so that's what I'm going off of and and that's where I feel I stand right now and I think that's probably the best the best way to go given what I have so you want to share this see it I wanted to um I know it really asked directly but I think the position of the meet and confer committee we were talking about this specific stipend um we were trying very hard not to like determine how much people in specific positions should or deserve to be paid because it's a very divisive conversation when there's time there are times to be divisive and there's times to have like set and firm priorities and I think some of our other recommendations do Target some of
144those areas of worse retention um there but there's also times to be unified and we're talking about such a large pot of money I mean we all found it very productive to have like a very strong unified I mean it was a unanimous vote um with no dissenting voices in the room when it passed I think that that perspective of just trying to get as much money out to people as possible and then also keeping in mind like I think some of the concerns about um you know people in the district were more well paid receiving even more money I think that really comes into play and we're talking about things like flat percentage raises right because if you give a five percent raise to everybody that's a lot more money to someone making a
145hundred thousand dollars but when we're talking stipends um that is we referred to ten thousand dollars as a life-changing amount of money and it is to somebody making thirty thousand dollars it's a really good amount of money to someone making fifty thousand like our average teacher is but to someone making a hundred thousand dollars I wouldn't I don't know if you'd consider a ten percent raise life changing it's really nice for the one year um but you kind of get that scale I guess of impact already just based on um you know how much money it is for each of those groups and then we also talked about similar to how we mentioned how we don't want to punish everybody for a few people trying to run with money similarly like that group of people
146making a hundred thousand dollars in the district is hopefully small enough that it is not a huge budget impact to you know take five thousand dollars away from those people um but just the animosity that could be created from that kind of decision um you know I think everyone understands the value of principles I mean teachers make the school run but we only really get to see our classrooms right in the classrooms near us it's not good to have your principal leave right I think everyone can agree on that regardless of how they're doing or if they can improve or do something better you don't want to see a new person come in that doesn't know anything about anything just because you happen to upset the person that was there previously off of a decision
147like that so I think it definitely is a priority of being confirmed moving into the future to consider which groups of our employees are most impacted by retention we also talked about compression which we're bringing up later um and focusing more heavily on those groups but that's something we need more information for and with the tight time scale of Esser and also with contracts going out we really wanted to prioritize just getting money out to people as simply as possible um which as I think it was mentioned before again there was some overlap with the asset committee but this stipend is intended to go out five thousand dollars in the first semester five thousand dollars in the last semester to everyone that is employed on the day it goes out so it's not sign your
148contract next year and get the other five thousand it is not oh well you were hired this year you don't get it if you are an employee on the day the money goes out you get that five thousand dollar check so it can be used as a hiring bonus as well like or it can be advertised as such because if we can hire you before the money goes out it is a hiring bonus effectively right and similarly it can be retention for somebody who might be looking to leave in the middle of the year is having a rough spot they know that some of that money is coming later in the year as well um or if we need to hire someone halfway through the year it scales uh similarly to how it would for
149like full-time math but thank you Daniel Lopez okay any more comments yeah I just have a few more comments um you know this is certainly not about people not working hard and it's not about principles I mean I just want to reiterate that the people I talk to or just really happy with their principals and how they have stepped up during this shortage like they have to fill in for everyone so um it's not about it's not about that at all um and I don't want to punish a group of people for a few bad eggs either um but I do want this District to work on this and I don't like the percentage flat raises that have been going on for quite some time um because that's put this that's put us where we
150are today um and um those of you who are in leadership who are principals you know support your teachers I know some of you do really well but I think there's room for improvement there too I've um you know a principal makes or breaks the school and that may not be about like bringing Donuts in but maybe it's about like um you know giving a teacher a 10 minute break while you go into their classroom and teach you know and that goes for everybody um that's something I heard you know that was you know we have we're forced to do that during covid um people District District level people having to go in the classroom and and sub for an hour you know that would do um be a huge amount of support for a
151classroom teacher so I would like to see more of that kind of support from our leadership and I would like to see us getting you know closing the Gap a little bit so I am not going to make a motion um because you know we're not in agreement so um those are my comments okay perfect so with that I move the governing board approve a second stipend at a minimum of 10 000 prorated on FTE funded from sr3 for the 2023-24 school year to to be paid into installments all those in favor aye thank you guys so much for all your hard work every single one of you just want to take executive privilege here for a minute Diane pesh is our new facilitator to this process and the bumps in the road and the
152the various conversations are all part of this journey that got here and I know you're an Artful facilitator Kelly thank you for recommending her it's been a delight to see your Harmony and development in the feelings that came forward tonight so thank you Diane pesh thank you guys and congratulations who moved a doctor's appointment from Show Low to come down here and be here tonight I just want to point that out oh you're perfectly fine space thank you so much I appreciate that and congratulations okay that brings us to 10A um asba staff will give us an update on the superintendent search you're doing this on purpose you're just going to stay late every time no I feel like I'm part of your record-breaking meeting awesome getting to know the district exactly well I feel
153like I'm part of the family and that's one thing that we are quickly learning about the Creighton district is there is a huge sense of family um thank you madam president members of the board I'm Tracy Benson with Arizona School boards Association um we appreciate your time tonight we wanted to do a check-in just to let you know about where we are in the search process are we gonna checked out so oh okay okay in the folder folder yes okay sure that's fine um where is it under Library under PowerPoints yeah search and Survey updates there we go so just to let you know we are on target with our outcome goal of of working with you to select the highest qualified best fit superintendent to lead the Creighton Elementary School District and also with
154your process goal of ensuring Community input and transparency in the process um we are in phase two of the process which is the application Phase and also the discovery phase in terms of the application Phase we are in the middle of the application period the online application opened on February the 14th that will close on March the 17th we are in the midst of advertising and promoting the position that is well underway and our data shows that you have a significant number of folks who are interested in the position um we won't give you any hard numbers because we don't have um the full number of applications in but based on the volume of folks who our data shows are looking at the position and starting to to take action related to it we feel
155real confident that we're going to have a solid number of qualified applicants to bring to you when that applicant screening happens on March the 25th as you know first interviews are scheduled for April the 20th and then the finalist interviews and that finalists form that a number of you mentioned at the beginning of the meeting will happen on April the 27th so we are absolutely on track in exactly where we ought to be in phase two of your process so I believe that is that particular agenda item if there's any questions on process I I don't have a question on process but I do have I guess an idea or thought um I know that we only have 186 surveys returned as of right now and that's not an ideal amount that I think we
156would like we have um parent-teacher conferences coming up and a lot of the talk has been having a printout for them I know this is only like an online Link but actually having a printout where teachers can give to the families while the Parent-Teacher conferences are going on how can we make that happen and get that to our teachers yeah so I I don't want to speak for your staff but I think a plan is underway to do that I mean that's absolutely a strategy that is effective and other districts have used to make sure that they are on school sites and even in teacher classrooms when those parent-teacher conferences are happening and the process is pretty straightforward like I said um folks have done it in the past you hand them out you ask
157them to turn them in at the district or at the um school office and then collect them and then they get input and they're part of the tabulation okay so yeah I know I want to hear if there is a plan well also on that too like I know in the past we've done surveys where like have an iPad out with the survey that's what I was going to suggest um so that parent who's waiting because your other conference is running late or they're early they can do it while they're waiting fun oh I'm just looking at Emily because you will have this variety of that advertention but as your Community Education director it will be not worthy to say that one of the barriers in this service is that every response is highly academic
158and our families may not be able to understand exactly what is being asked in addition every every question requires an answer and is quite lengthy and so if there's a possibility of make those modifications not so much on the language of the items of each one of the questions but at least not require every single question to be answered that will help us remove some barriers and increase participation for the families so I know that the poor in the last meeting move the boxes of comments that's to be the first things and so if that's some of the incentivized to people to say here are my comments and ignore the rest of the questions instead of having to require each one over there the the boxes or the multiple choices I think that will increase
159the feedback that the board is really wanting to receive from the community members okay I'll share more about that when we go through the survey results if that's if that's all right okay okay did you have another question I'm Sorry Miss Michael um I know it's like procedurally did we I after we get an answer about WebEx for the 20s April 2017. oh yeah that was something that got addressed on Saturday yes April 27th if the if we're going to have virtual option as well it's a Russell question oh okay and we'll meet with we'll meet with Russell and we filled in other District staff that are needed in that meeting to make sure that we've got those Logistics set up and the folks who are in online have the opportunity to do two things
160number one submit questions and number two provide feedback that you'll see when you are deliberating on who you're going to select and one last thing was is that I didn't see a quick nice link and that's probably on our end where it says yeah in the website it says we're looking for a superintendent search but we didn't have the job posting or like a link to click and there's the job posting of qualifications so I think that's something that should be added because it wasn't easily accessible if we have a candidate and they go to our website it you can't find the link of where to apply okay sorry not to labor but on the virtual option I know for Saturday it was webinar mode and so yes we could ask questions but in the
161chat um so I don't know if thinking about the 27th like how this is a Russell question but like making that a little more um interactive I don't know what our limitations are I know like Zoom bombing and all that um but I'm just thinking kind of going back to what you were saying um Yvonne about like accessibility like typing in the chat and getting out your thoughts can be hard so so let me explain the way the Forum Works um because this might help to answer the question so we're going to start at six o'clock that's typical it'll be 90 minutes we spend the first 15 minutes um letting folks know how it's going to run and at that time the people who are there submit their questions so the people who are online
162during that 15-minute block can submit their questions we then collect the questions and then the facilitators ask the questions rather than having everybody who's there ask their own questions sometimes you know they can be grouped together and and that sort of thing um so the people online I think should be able to do that and it's fairly easy way and we'll be able to see what the questions are and include them in the questions that are submitted by the people who are there in person then when it comes time to provide feedback um the people who are live in the room have a comment card and they fill out the comment card what we've done in the past for folks who are online is given them an email address that they can email their comments
163to or we've also provided an online form where they just click on the link and quick type in their comments and have the same amount of time that the folks who are in the audience do to provide that feedback okay so I was just saying like I've tried to do WebEx on a phone yeah and using the chat on a phone is impossible so I don't know if there's a way during that 15 minutes if somebody needs to auditorily share the question that they would like submit it like I don't I don't know what that would look like I just know that WebEx is incredibly clunky depending on what device you're on so the chat is not necessarily accessible maybe we can provide whatever email we're using for the Forum part but in the beginning
164just for those folks who may have an accessibility issue and providing their questions up front we could do that too yeah something yep any other questions or comments on that okay okay it's important though it is um so that go ahead no okay go ahead yeah okay so um the next thing we wanted to share with you is um an overview of the input we've received to date from the community survey as well as the community input sessions um and as you know this all contributes to the leadership profile um that we're developing for you that that you'll be using to screen applications and then also develop um the themes for the questions that you'll be asking the candidates and the finalists uh so this gives you an idea of who has taken the survey
165so far this is as of noon yesterday there were 186 people who completed the survey about two-thirds of them identified themselves as working for the district um 30 identified themselves as a family member with a student in the district and you'll see that there's some overlap as well with um 14 the next biggest group uh of folks who had children who had attended schools in the district at one point um I want to mention the um what Mr Carvajal brought up and the Order of the questions um I actually think you got greater persistence by having those narrative questions at the front 186 people took the survey there were probably 170 comments in those open-ended questions at the beginning by the time we got to the final questions on the survey where it was selecting
166a couple of items you had 155 people continuing to answer those questions so the persistence on the survey throughout it is pretty strong compared to others that I've seen so that's a good thing and not required and they're not answer every question then right yeah okay they can answer I think that was your question was like do they have to fill out an answer for every question yes because we practice with the it's an effort to ensure that we have a major robust responses the department of communication we attempted to take the survey and we noticed that they were required that's why I brought that comment forward I wonder if sometimes like if you click on it at all then you have to answer that question you're clicking on maybe I'll double check that but
167I don't think that they're required um but I I will absolutely double check it because we want to make sure that's true perfect and thank you and we'll uh reassure that uh message through our specialist and especially next week during parent teacher conferences yeah and I do appreciate your feedback about the um the language that's that's used in in some of them that does seem um academic and it could you know um throw some folks off thank you for that I do appreciate that I'm concerned about um well clearly I'm concerned about family input obviously but there's been zero feedback from students in the district yeah I understand the same issues are probably going to apply there I'm wondering how we can get feedback maybe it's not through this survey maybe it's some version of
168this survey that's like differentiated for students of certain grade groups to be able to give feedback on maybe it's in a bigger group well you know the four question thing you had you had of the community input what and that's basically what you're sharing with us is strengths and challenges um maybe we could somehow get that out to students just those four questions with the other you know open boxes um yeah I mean if there's a way we could send that to all students I mean you know Friday Friday fun yeah there's got to be prizes for that yeah we're gonna have some incentives yeah I don't know what that looks like I'm sorry I don't have a solution right now I apologize um but I just you know I would love that there be
169some student participation yeah yeah and that's and that for wrong one that we had that could be even a good one that we could have with our families that are not able to go through every single one but student council and like kids Congress would probably be the best part to start at because they're already involved and they already have that kind of stuff so that's an easy one and I'm just going to throw something out there um the Phoenix Elementary District when we did their search last year they invited a group of students to come and meet with the finalists before the main Community forum and gave them it wasn't long it was maybe a half an hour to hear from the finalists and then ask them a couple of questions so I'll just
170plant that seed it's a possibility I think that's a great Point um in the we've done a bunch of listening sessions on the Phoenix jeans city and what we found is when students were in the same room with any other group they were much less likely to share or ask any questions but when they were isolated and able to ask questions they did yeah okay I like that idea thank you would if if we were to develop um something a modified four prong for the students what impact would that have with you guys as far as timeline just because I know this was closing March 13th if we wanted to have their feedback added to these four components what I'm just thinking of that in terms of break is next week I think I think
171the way that it would work is that we include them in our finalists so when we have the community Forum on the 27th that we specifically open it up let's say 4 30 to 5 only for the students groups and then at six o'clock we open it to the general because at least they have input and they can ask those direct questions and we have their input for when we're going to make that decision that day and we didn't do it without that student voice considering your spring break is coming up I think it would be a rush to to maybe get student input at this point because we'd want to have it before we finalize that leadership profile for your screening which is on March 25th so I think that might be a little
172bit too compressed to and that's why I wanted to bring that up because I don't want people like doing the work to make this work a survey if we're not going to do this survey and instead do the finalists day yeah I think that would work better I just wanted to clarify Okay so yeah okay and then we can talk more about that if we that's what the direction that we want to go in we can just let you know okay um any other questions about the survey before she moves on comments okay perfect so the next thing we're going to do is share as as I said the results of the survey not the full results but summary of the results of the survey and then also the community input sessions and I just
173want to let you know that they're very consistent between the survey and the community input sessions the feedback that we received and as Mr Greer and I sat here tonight we also noticed it was very consistent with the conversations that you were having in this boardroom tonight so I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Keith Greer to share more superintendent Lewis honorable board exec team we're so happy to be here but what we want to do tonight since the hour is like we want to tie together some things for you a lot of things you've talked about already we didn't have to give you that and we don't want to read it to you either because I think that might bore you to tears well let's let's tie some things together emerging interests
174and priorities successfully recruited selected and retain highly qualified staff that's important to you you've been mentioning it this is our third time through fourth time we count the two survey sessions that we had that's important and that not only is it important to you as a board which is kind of interesting the board said the same thing in our individual interviews that the community said as well as the the staff other thing have parents staff community members and students as appropriate in developmental recommendations so we need all those people involved when you make a decision now here are your highly ranked attributes one have a great communicator and in being a great communicator individuals want this leader to be visible in the community and be authentic proven success as an instructional leader in improving academic
175performance we live in an A through F world and I know you like Ace and you know because the way that you pluses wouldn't be bad either but the A's are are definitely not something that you want to take a look at and then have an appreciation and respect for the diverse population we can see the diverseness of the board we look at the teachers who come up they're diverse so we want to make sure that that don't gotta lie to us about the board right now oh you're the verse I trust me yeah personality personality does count you again values and prioritizes social emotional learnings and Equity how important is that and then the ability to analyze and prioritize competing priorities we heard that tonight with the teachers and and the raises bilingual would
176be a plus those are some of your challenges recruiting retaining and compensating qualified skilled staff that's classified and certified didn't have a whole lot of problems with that tonight as you approve those stipends student discipline kept coming up safety and social emotional well-being that's a topic that really your new leader is going to have to address and improving academic performances again it came back but particularly in math and reading Superior strengths your family and student oriented culture we saw a bunch of little ones coming to those meetings perfect we we see the staff not throwing Tomatoes right so we know that they they're on they're on point with you recognition and celebration of the diversity everybody clap tonight they recognize how hard of a job you have and they appreciate it strong community and family
177involvement and support the individual that was a Community member that was there on Thursday what a joy that was outstanding and those individuals who came into the meetings from the community the the one man and woman that was there Had No Children Here at all and they came in and they offered their input a caring staff again that's that's important that's a strength of yours and then excellent communication with staff families and the community hey you can't go wrong there so those are your strengths those those are your challenges any questions that you might have about this but like I said it overlaps the individual meetings that we have with the uh with the board and what we're getting from the community and staff it's the same thing any questions I don't have any questions
178but I I do have that same sentiment that this whole process has really shown me that we really are aligned with their community and the needs and the voices that our community needs is obviously something that we've all in one way or another have discussed brought up so it's just really rewarding to know that as elected officials in reflection of our community that we kind of are in that same vision so that's that's been good to to see that we kind of are aligned with them um does anybody else have any questions or comments that's perfect start going that validation I think it it gives me this is a huge huge task and so it gives me more confidence in taking this on knowing that we're not representing five people we really are representing everyone
179so I'm gonna give it back to my colleague Miss vincently all right we just also wanted to share with you about the community input sessions and um before I share the data about that and kind of summarize that I just want to say that it was obvious um how valued folks who were at those sessions felt and how appreciative they were and I think one of you mentioned that at the beginning um of the session tonight so that was abundantly clear to us so you may have noticed when folks checked in they had an opportunity to say sort of which group they represented I don't think everyone checked in but of those who did I think most people did um there were 30 people total who did the majority were staff five community members from
180the district a former employee those amazing neighbors who were here on Saturday so those are the folks that were here um and I would say that those who spoke and those who filled out those quadrant boxes really reinforced what we saw on the surveys a couple of other things that emerged from those Community input sessions were this idea of the adventures collaborative and kind-hearted leader to match what you are trying to um nurture in your students um that deep understanding of the community whether they are from the community or have had experience in communities similarly diverse similarly sized similarly situated um we did hear more strongly at the community input sessions the priority was appreciated about professional development um someone who would grow the district's focus on equity and social and emotional learning and the
181ability to analyze and prioritize programs which I think Mr Greer mentioned also looking at for which things is the juice worth the squeeze right um and then also we feel that you may need to hire a Master Gardener because folks really love your garden program right um but really just that whole idea of supporting the the whole child I think that came through with all the conversation about the gardening program and with that I believe the next time we will see you we'll be when when we're back on March the 25th I'm sharing with you the the final information from the surveys that will be in that leadership profile and then working with you to look through all the applicants in this position I was going to say a big thing going back to that
182first thing you mentioned on the last part was not just it was just like not switching up especially from staff but sticking to the Strategic plan we've already adopted in the mission and trying to implement that more effectively rather than trying to create a whole new having someone come in and start over any other questions or comments I guess my only other thought that's still sticking with me is I still want to try and get more kid input I mean if we wait until that very last day that's going to be a chaotic I remember you know we're getting feedback from everybody and then we have to go into executive session and make a decision um based on what happens over those two hours basically um if it doesn't have to be part of part
183of this leadership profile necessarily I would just like to hear what kids kids say maybe we can do that on our own as a listening tour um in some way but just if everyone can just kind of keep their thinking caps on about that I would like to I don't want to miss that constituent of ours you know a potential would be to ask students between now and the first interview if you could ask a question to the new superintendent what might it be and maybe give them a couple of choices or I don't know you you could potentially frame it some way like that because there is a pretty significant period between when you screen applicants and when you're going to have your first candidate so anyway go out there any other questions or
184comments thank you so much for the update we look forward to hearing more information in March and then we'll be in contact on how we decide to do that student sounds good okay thank you thank you I was gonna say we need to like mention like like I don't know if we can just throw at them what question are you going to ask the superintendent they're going to be like what well it could be like a 10 minute little lesson I don't know and I think that goes back to there was a comment about that on Saturday though too not just for our students but as we move forward through this process and leaning preparing for that finalist I think we do need to and sorry Emily this is probably going to fall on you
185but we need some more education just to sing yeah and was like so who's running for superintendent yeah like no yeah so however you know maybe social media campaign with little snippet I don't know something to educate what a superintendent is yeah maybe it could be a newsletter campaign Emily even even for the students too sending it out to teachers and say hey teachers please let your students know the board wants to hear from you and maybe there's a way they can and you probably need to explain to kids what the board is because I think that's right I mean I mean Emily and I are good at that yeah all right thank you guys so much I appreciate your time all right that brings us to agenda item 10c legislative political report I will
186not have anything until the next board meeting because I will be at the Capitol this week getting all that fun stuff so if anybody else has anything to add on I I won't have anything definitive perfect all right that brings us to our future agenda items I have a couple ones I'm gonna allow anybody else to give theirs first if they need some I still feel very much like okay I'm I'm waiting almost two years for this now so I think it's an important thing that can identify money savings and other things that we don't know what we don't know you know so I would like to see that on an agenda sooner than later yeah yeah okay understood anybody else have any future agenda items maybe it's it's prudent for us to think about
187um when we were talking today about an executive session maybe on a study of the current things that are funded through Esser and looking at um like the study that is going on like what is uh what a study session be okay yeah I'm talking about like maybe at the beginning of next year but I just want to put on there because I tend to forget about things Okay this may not be an agenda item I I just want to keep I'm going to keep pushing accessibility and a lot of other districts have maintained the ability to give virtual public comment after covet and I think it's important for us to still provide that opportunity especially for people that are homebound or have disabilities that prevent them from attending our meetings in person or they
188have other obligations where they can attend virtually but can't be here in person so I don't know how we can get that done I don't know if it's through an agenda item or if we just need to talk to Russell or what but I think we just Direct on whoever we need to direct yeah it doesn't have to be a future agenda item that's something that we can kind of like what we did during covet where we allowed people by a certain day to do virtual comments but we can discuss that but no it it doesn't have to be a future agenda item and we can discuss that more and then direct to do that anybody else future agenda items I have one one all at the same time and discuss as a whole because
189um prioritize those um on Saturday you know I did get feedback from asba that you guys should be auditing stuff right now so your superintendent can hit the ground running you know so um I'm not crazy to me asking for these things so I would like the board to discuss as a whole and prioritize okay perfect um and for me um future agenda item I would like to put um an update of Larry C Kennedy I think that that's one of the things that were coming up we haven't talked about it we haven't really decided anything so definitely put that as a future agenda item maybe as a study session um the crane Virtual Academy as well I think that's a big source of where our money is going and before we drastically make any
190changes I would like for us to talk about what that looks like since that's coming up right around the corner and um future agenda item not nothing in the near future but board committees I want to get started on actually having um us having some type of committees and we can discuss that later but those are the three things I would like to see in the future basically funding what that looks like in the future how do we can sustain it what are we going to do yeah so more that aspect versus how the school's going it's more the financials I guess portion of it we need to start having real conversations about those type of things and that's it for me Perfect all right guys this brings us to our last item I moved
191the governing board adjourn second all those in favor thank you guys so much for being with us tonight I appreciate all of you