001for being here tonight so we're going to start off with our land acknowledgement which i'm super excited that we're starting having this creighton school district understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the odom jude and akima odam people who descended from the hoku come 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 of gen for generations into the future with this acknowledgement the crayton school district formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations and with
002that being said ms mccaleb can you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance all right do we have miss ayers myself miss mccaleb and ms mcshaffery here we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address the board cards must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for cards white cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda and that's reference policy bedh i also wanted to acknowledge that we have an interpreter so if anybody walks in or needs
003an interpreter we have alejandro back and i really appreciate i'm having an interpreter at our meeting so thank you so much for that i move the governing board approve the agenda as presented a second all those in favor aye aye aye perfect that leads us to public comments and it looks like we have one public comment today if i could please have for tim noor thank you yeah and you will have three minutes all right so madam president members of the board and executive cabinet my name is tim kenour and i'm an art teacher at papago school and i'm also going into my 13th season as a coach for the creighton school district 19 if you count lego robotics and i'm here tonight to kind of voice my concern over uh the perceived gender inequity
004that i see happening in our creighton athletic program and so this kind of stems back to 2018 when we made the decision to go in the direction of co-ed sports i believe that this was sort of a misinterpretation that we had on title ix thinking that if we offer girls volleyball and not boys volleyball that it had to be co-ed but looking at neighboring districts universities high schools i think it's just a misinterpretation of title ix and really title ix is to protect equal opportunity and equal access for female students in athletics and so my goal tonight is really to kind of voice the story behind the issue and hopefully the governing board can clarify its position so our district is really able to move forward in creating regulation and rules that protect our female
005athletes in our district so i'm going to use papago school as the example just it's an assumption based on previous experience but looking forward to the fall season we have soccer and we have volleyball soccer typically has about 22 students participating volleyball 16. in the past there's not a lot of girls that try out for soccer so i'll be generous and say that the team will probably be about 20 boys two girls and the volleyball team we've had a lot of male interest it's it's continued to grow now that we're offering co-ed and we'll probably end up with a team at papago of eight boys and eight girls so thinking about the total number of athletes we have 28 males and 10 females and if we extrapolate that out across the district we're looking at
006about 200 male students to 70 female students and i think that really gets away from the mission of title ix and equal access for our female students not only is this a roster concern but also in in competition and playing we also see that males are kind of taking over some of those specialized sports roles especially in softball with those like key positions catcher pitcher first base and as it becomes more normalized with coed we're probably going to see more of those opportunities that females should have to play those positions going to their male peers and so really just with all of that said i hope that our board can give some guidance or clarity uh so that we can appropriately study this issue regulate it and ultimately resolve it and we can and must
007do better to protect our female athletes thank you thank you so much i appreciate your comment all right and that now brings us to superintendent report well good evening board members and community members thank you for being here tonight uh as we are in our seventh school day with children i just want to tell you uh it is my most greatest exhale to say the train is on the track and it after two years of of of chaos and derailment that is such a high standard right now that we're all truly enjoying so normal is good and and everybody is just happy i'm hearing from teachers as i walk around the campuses thank you for the support this last week was hard but everybody chipped in i'm so glad i'm in this district um i'm
008hearing children laugh uh and and giggle and get to know one another and build relationships uh jeff i am hearing about your joke of the day at the creighton virtual academy me just tremendous sweet support across the district monte vista boasted of enrolling 30 more kids this week alone so we're watching our enrollment very closely we're actually almost too close to being spot on to projected enrollment we did factor in some decline in enrollment so we're a little nervous in a great way that we may be getting more students and once again the teacher shortage continues to be the other deep exhale so we want to continue to nurture and find and beat the bushes so that we can find the talent that our children deserve we are just off by about four staff members
009across the board and we have some plan b's in place with a couple of staff members remember we hired an additional 130 people this year position wise so given the shortage nationwide we have nationwide 73 of the districts are saying they are not filled to capacity 73 percent and in arizona alone it's 3 000 unfilled positions across the state of arizona so with our openings and our backfills we're very solutions oriented and we're evolving i want to thank the principals assistant principals team members for finding a way to think about the way they group kids it's just been amazing i want to acknowledge our schools that were recognized at the rally thank you i just want to make sure i say the right titles because i know which two schools there but uh for the
010excellence in language development because we did honor our academic gains uh papago school was uh the achieving school there so well done papago and for academic growth it was excellencia amazing gains of excelencia thank you for that focus yes i see the the the what do we call the round of applause uh and then the academic improvement also went to papago so really great job and i just wanted to acknowledge that at the rally we had an amazing energy and an amazing sense of of reconnection at the at the gathering so uh i think that's all i have this evening we're going to be getting our committees moving and we're going to be getting that out and about we would like to look at vacancy savings uh in terms of things that we might be
011able to do together to help add stipends for staff but let me bring that to you later after we have a team work on that thank you uh miss mcsheffrey i do not have a board report tonight miss mccaleb um i'll just keep it brief and say welcome back and i know the energy is high and i know the kids are excited the teachers are excited lots of pictures of first day of school floating around on all the social media so welcome back and just thank you for being here and giving it your all and being a warm space for our kids as they start the new school year miss ayers good evening um i decided to be here tonight even though some of you may know that my wife did pass away on saturday
012evening i listened to a podcast that her sister had sent to me and it was all about resiliency so i know that she wants me to be resilient and she wants me to continue on and this is important work and so i felt i really needed to be here tonight um for our district and for our students um and i'd like to thank my board members for the beautiful flowers that were sent to the house and just all of your support thank you you're welcome just know that we are a bonding movie and with that we're always going to be here for you or any other board member in a situation that that is in and with that being said i would like to take a moment of silence to honor wendy's memory thank you
013guys for participating in that moment of silence and i do not have a board update today moving on to our next agenda item is move the governing board approve consent agenda items a through j in accordance with policy b e d b dash e a second okay all those in favor aye that brings us to item number nine eight and i would like to give the opportunity for jesse giambra to come and speak first before there is a presentation since we have a public comment for this yes please thank you good evening madam president members of the governing board executive team happy to be here i i personally am passionate about nutrition and so i thought i would come and share about this item because i feel one thing is that we have a really
014great opportunity with our garden program that we're rolling out to interweave our gardening education and the possibilities for nutrition education into our school day and i know that we are just at the beginning steps of even really rolling it out but i would love to see us really think about how we think about our nutrition for our students because i know right now what i've noticed anyway is that it's like if a food meets the minimum standard of what the state says then it's allowed to be sold in our cafeteria by our cafeteria maybe not this year yet but it previously was last year and i would love to think about nutrition density and how we could provide the most healthy and nutritious options um the snacks that were being sold not as part of
015lunch but separate from lunch last year included artificial food colorings and monosodium glutamate and i guess because of the portion size in one package they were they met the standard but i would love to think beyond just the minimum of the standard and also think about if that's still healthy or good for a student's brain development and learning because through observation there wasn't really any conversation with them around their snacks or if it was then the students asked well why are they selling it if it's not good for example packets of tahin which are meant to be eaten with a fruit but not sold with a fruit they were just sold by themselves and like ice cream that was like maybe sugar-free and then these like flavor-blasted chips so seeing all these things the students
016did get more hyper and also crash from it and we know that we can't really control what students eat outside of our time but we can control what our cafeteria is selling and that clearly had a negative impact they did begin to try to limit the amount of snacks the students were buying but at one point they were able to buy a 25 like whole grocery bags full so it was a little bit too much like a lot too much and uh you know we could be selling fruit personally i like buying like organic local produce and then supporting our local economies that way and so we have our garden where we can actually provide produce and education and i'd also love to see us all leading by example which to me is another good
017solution and like at our staff meeting this year they got like organic little breakfast bars they had bananas they had oranges and oat milk and i thought it was great so i feel like also the things that we provide you know during our work time can sustain our energy that we need as teachers to keep going throughout the day and i really appreciate it when that happens because even though a donut is like fun to eat it totally doesn't help me stay present when i'm teaching and so leading by example is like another great part of it so thank you very much i appreciate it thank you miss jamberry i have a question for you or a comment if you would like to ask them since it is an agenda item um do you think
018it would be more beneficial just to get rid of that stuff and substitute them with healthier snacks or should that be an option available still oh i don't think that they need to be there at all and healthy snacks would be a good option or none because they're already getting lunch thank you all right yeah go ahead just for clarification is this snack sold just to make money for some function at school it wasn't a school fundraiser it was from the cafeteria department i can't really speak to the money but it wasn't like a club fundraiser so it was part of like the cafeteria yeah i was from the cafeteria thank you okay thank you and i guess whoever's gonna present if we can have you thank you so much there we go thank you
019good evening madam president members of the board and cabinet it's a pleasure to be here tonight to give a brief update on the child nutrition and wellness department so a quick overview of what we're going to be looking at tonight is a quick review of our summer meal services as well as some federal program waiver updates and the remaining challenges that child nutrition departments continue to see as a result of the covid pandemic and a brief look into the head of what we're going to be looking at for this coming year for our department so summer meal services we just wrapped up summer meal feeding on july 29th that was our last service day we began on may 23rd so we were out there in the community from at the very beginning we were at
02019 different locations throughout the community during the entire summer we were at all of our school sites not only during summer school activities but throughout the entire summer where breakfast and lunch was made available to our community for any child 18 years of age or younger additionally we partnered with our transportation department again this summer where we reached out to 11 of our mobile sites this has been a huge success for us as we've been able to capture a lot more of our students at apartment complex for popular bus stops where we know a lot of our students are are at in total we've served over 91 000 meals during the summer so a huge kudos goes out to the entire cafeteria department i'm thankful that they chose to continue to work during the summer
021and wanted to work during the summer and we're willing to get out there in the heat and keep our community fed and our students nourished and ready to learn this year so a huge thank you to them uh as as summer was still going on we were many of the child nutrition departments across the nation were anxiously waiting um to hear from congress what the outcome of the pandemic waivers would be we knew that they were set to expire on june 30th however there was the keep kids fed act being heard on the floor there was a glimmer of hope for a while that we would continue to see the free meals extended however at the very last minute this language was removed from this act and so that required that school lunch programs across
022the nation return back to normal operations so in order for children to continue to qualify for free meals they would have to go back to completing meal applications so as soon as we knew that we started our communications on july 1 and i think earlier this week you guys might have received an a board update a detailed list of all the communications and flyers and sample postcards and posters that were sent throughout the community and there was um great success with that um as of august 10th here's some data on where we stand with our school lunch applications um this is unheard of just just so you know in past years even with the rollover i'm getting 75 of our district to have completed an application by i think day three of the school year
023is just just wasn't ever seen so we are very proud with this number i pulled the numbers again this morning and we are sitting at 80 percent of our students having an application and completed so the numbers that you see here for the sites are um they changed daily so this is where they stood as of august uh 10th which is very good um just to add on to that i think this turnout is amazing and i think a lot of it had to do because i even got a personal phone call from somebody so the added on steps that you guys were doing to make sure that you were reaching families even though i had completed it already but i got that phone call so i thought that was really good and i'm sure
024that phone to phone contact is um easier because emails and stuff in backpacks or letters especially with all these mailers coming out it's easy just to toss things so i appreciate the personalized phone calls thank you i appreciate that yeah we've asked a lot of the cafeteria staff and our cafeteria managers we've asked them to personally reach out to the families that have yet to turn in an application just so we can try and capture as many as we could by day one so again some big kudos going out to our cafeteria staff there they're pretty amazing um so continued challenges that we see as a result of covid are some some significant supply chain challenges as i'm sure many of you know when you go grocery shopping you continue to see shorts and outages
025we see the exact same thing unfortunately when we're putting in orders and and whatnot a month or even two months in advance we're still seeing some of these shorts so that affects our menu obviously with having to make quick substitutions on the fly in some cases we are not even realizing what's being substituted until it lands on our dock so efforts that well another big challenge is the increased cost in all of our foods and supplies so we've seen anywhere between 10 and 20 percent increase in all of our foods and paper supplies so it's a pretty big budget hit but what we're looking at as efforts to offset some of these challenges is taking a look at the warehouse freezer as you know back in i think it was may and june or june
026we appreciate the approval of the remodel if you will of the district's warehouse freezer to expand its space this is going to help us in a couple of different ways first and foremost we're going to be able to get product directly from a manufacturer to us so we can hopefully start to count on materials being here and what we we know what is here we will skip the middle man of having to go from a manufacturer to a distributor to us so i'm looking forward to that as well as then saving some money on the cost of eliminating that middleman so we don't foresee these increased food costs coming down in any near future for us so any way that we can start to save for the future on bringing in mass product will will
027help us in the long run and looking ahead at the beginning of the year it was wonderful to finally after two years bring all of the staff back for our welcome back meeting we bring the entire department back and we provide them some professional development so we gave some back to basics trainings as well as brought in a keynote speaker to provide some motivation and excitement for the staff so hopefully they're ready for the start of the school year one of the other really exciting things that we have coming up for this school year is reestablishing the summer or the supper program with the current partnership with ymca so in the coming few weeks we should have that which is at all of our schools which is on all of our sites so supper will
028eventually be rolled out to all of the sites one of the things that we're always looking at is our meal participation we want to see every kid eat with us we want to see them eat breakfast and we want to see them eat lunch with us so we're always trying to be creative with what we're offering or how we're offering it and just trying to find ways to get these kids to come in and eat with us we know if they're fed that they're going to be ready to learn so and then lastly is the increased social media presence i think that did play a key factor in us getting a lot of the applications this year so we'll continue to push the social media presence continuing to build upon those personal relationships and their
029communication with our community and so with that i can do the presentation thank you i have a couple comments and questions first of all congratulations on your outreach because i know that is challenging to get those applications filled out um when you say increase meal participation like i know breakfast is a challenge if you show up late then you don't necessarily get it right like but what about lunch is that an issue [Music] it's always an issue if a kid's not eating with us we want to know why and we want to see what we can change or what will make them come want to eat with us you know not everyone loves school lunch some are picky eaters some parents prefer to pack a lunch which is perfectly acceptable but there's other avenues that
030we can still have them participate so if a mom or dad want to pack a lunch but they want to let their kids get a fresh fruit or a vegetable and a couple sides that is still driving in participation into our program so we'll try some different marketing techniques to bring in these kids okay and then i did want to follow up on the snacks because i did hear about that um last year um and even prior to that i think um what is the current situation with the snacks and i heard that that's a revenue generator for the district and that's why it was started i mean these are just some rumors that i heard um and that you know kids are buying 10 um things of chips at one point and these are
031kids that possibly qualify for free and reduced lunch and they're yet spending a chunk of change on chips for lunch so where do we stand with that we did put limitations on the snacks so yes in the beginning there were some kids i think buying extra snacks for their friends so we did quickly change some of the guidelines and those about coming in and buying all the card snacks when did those guidelines take place because as of summer school my son was still doing that and my son was one of the ones that was coming home with red fingers and that's all he was eating at school okay so when did those guidelines take place they took place last school year so during the summer we'll just provide more technical assistance to our staff and
032making sure they reiterate those guidelines and rules okay and was it implemented as a revenue generator for the district why are we doing that no it's it's simply just an all-a-car program so oftentimes we're hearing one of the biggest complaints our kids are still hungry after they get our meal and they want extras so all the carts are another way for them to get just an added items so they can always buy a second fruit they can always buy a second vegetable they can buy a second juice and then the a la carte items are also available the revenue that's brought in i can is is not it's minimal it does not make an impact on our budget at all okay and and then since we're back to um having to do an application and
033and it's um based on income you know we got that grant a couple years ago that gave free lunch for everyone even prior to kovid and that was eliminated the lunch shaming you know like what does a kid do if they don't have any money in their account and at one point i think they got a cheese sandwich what happens we are no longer doing emergency meals regardless of where their balance is all all children will receive a meal okay and they're not uh how do you if if i have forgotten or neglected to pay my um my lunch i assume you're reaching out like one-on-one to parents okay okay great um and so is there a plan to um you know try to make the some of the snacks a little healthier i mean
034i know if chips are there they're going to buy chips not an apple right i mean that's the problem yeah we always look at the the nutrition standards we are regulated by federal standards on what we can and cannot sell so we will always ensure that what's out there is is meeting these standards okay and and then just finally on the garden thing too um you know we're kind of getting up and going on a couple of partnerships but is there um if if gardens start producing um a harvest is there a plan and a setup to welcome that that food into the cafeteria absolutely we've always often times the gardens can't harvest enough to feed all of the kids at our sites so once gardens get going we usually try to partner with whoever
035is you know in charge of the garden programs and we say let us know when a harvest is about to to take place and we will bring in the product on our own and then we can serve that in the lines to supplement what they they about that might fit into our repurposing of facilities for farming teasing a little bit but bigger harvest we're always happy to supplement yeah great thank you um one question as well is there a reason why we even sell chips like do i mean just because we're allowed to is there a reason why we're even doing it it's just something kids obviously like um so we we offer everything we have you know fruit strips we have fruit vegetables so it's just a variety is there anything stopping us from
036continuing to sell that like if we said we shouldn't tell them and because i know that i'm city city council jesus student council and other organizations like when they have like you know the falls or the ptos or they meet the teachers those are available there and you know they get treats but during school hours is there a reason why we're offering these chips or stuff to the kids we could work with the student councils on and we have at papago when they were wanting to bring all the cart sales and we provide some nutrition education on here's the difference between a bag of chips and fresh fruit and fresh vegetables what do you guys want on your a la carte line and let's make it balanced so we try to have those conversations with
037the kids did you have something to say no it was already asked oh i did well i just had one other thing to follow up on i have also heard complaints about just the limited time kids have to eat that might not fall under your area but i mean like 15 minutes to eat lunch do you is it is there a district standard across the district or i will defer that question to dr dupin thank you madam president members of the board we're very fortunate to have ms bronner as a member of our team and she's been very collaborative at helping us to maximize the amount of available time that we have during the day the lunch periods typically there's typically a window of 45 minutes that is to include meal time and recess in
038the middle of the day so we have a variety of approaches at the schools that include you know sometimes they play first and then eat sometimes they eat first and then play really depending on the available space the supervision and the amount of time throughout the day that they have to to provide meals to students so it's it's tricky because oftentimes it's too much time for some kids and way not enough for others so we try to balance it out give the younger kids typically a little bit more time but that window that we have to work with is about 45 minutes long thank you i don't think we have any other questions thank you so much for your time thank you all right and that brings us to 11a future agenda items oh i'm
039sorry i don't know why i missed that 10a discussion in arizona school boards association aspa 2023 political agenda and approval of delegates to delegate assembly so um i don't know if anybody else would like to be a delegate we haven't really had a discussion i guess this is the time that we have the discussion right i don't know if anybody else is interested in doing it i've done it before so i've done it a couple times okay i was looking at my calendar i am attending the asb law conference for the days leading up to that so unless there's someone who wants to do the delegate on saturday i can you could totally be the delegate i already have other leadership roles in asba so um if somebody else i would love to open the
040opportunity for somebody else to experience that it's a pretty neat experience so i don't know and then yes i can do that okay and then if it's okay i could be the alternate since i'll be there already so just in case so um and for those who don't know what asbas we talk about them they're the arizona school board association and they have a delegate assembly every year basically all the school boards get together that are part of the asba and they talk about what their priorities will be for the lobbyists of asba to advocate for on behalf of the school districts and that's what it is we all come together only the delegate gets to vote on certain things that's why each board in different districts have so just for transparency and why we're
041doing this um so i'll make the recommendation now is move the governing board authorized lindsay mccaleb asba delegate or sofia carrillo doll as the alternative delegate to vote on behalf of the governing board on such aspa proposals which are in alignment with the district's vision mission and our goals at the delegate assembly to be held on september 10th 2022 a second all those in favor aye aye and i perfect and now that brings me to 11a which is future agenda items do we have any i have one so i would like to bring the title ix policy and any regulations regarding it um there does seem to be a perception that we require co-ed teams and i don't think that's actually is a requirement but i'd like just for the board to discuss it and
042kind of send a message uh of how we feel about it and i'd like to prioritize it like get it on next our next meeting so it can be resolved for fall sports which i know are coming up quickly we also are going to put together a team to to tighten up the handbook so i think that'll be helpful i don't know that we'll do it as fast as that but what are your thoughts just in terms of agenda development they both need to be done prior to the start of this fourth season so we're looking at it in the in the next two so maybe the second meeting in september we could have something sure is that soon enough for the when do fall sports start i don't know madam president i don't know
043the date off the top of my head exactly but we do we're getting ready to have the coaches meeting within about the next two weeks and then they'll have time to recruit athletes and so forth so within about a month well why don't we if we could get it on the next meeting at least to discuss our feelings about it and that could direct your handbook right two so we wouldn't need the handbook by the next meeting perfect okay that works yes okay awesome any other future agenda items okay all right i move the governing board adjourn a second all those in favor hi hi hi thank you so much for everybody thank you have a great night you