Dysart Governing Board Meeting - December 15, 2025

001Wait till 6 o' till 6 o'clock. [snorts] Good evening everyone. It is 6 p.m. Welcome to uh the December 15th, 2025 Daart school board meeting. I call the meeting to order. All members are present with the exception of uh President Densore is absent. The pledge of allegiance will be led by the kindergarten students from Riverview Elementary School. Please stand for the pledge of alle allegiance. >> I aliance to the flag of America. to the [crying] republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [applause] Thank you very much. And with that, we'll go to agenda item A, public hearing. It's number two, public hearing for fiscal year. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, tonight we have a public hearing uh, which is led by um, our assistant superintendent, Miss

002Spidell. >> Good evening, Mr. President, members of the board, Dr. Cto, cabinet, and community. Tonight, we are here to present the second budget revision for this fiscal year. Um, and this budget revision, even though they are um, as you recall, all budgets are required to be proposed by July 15th. If we received notification um from Arizona Department of Education that we must revise the budget, we are required to do so by December 15th if we exceeded our limits. In this case, we have not. So, we will go over the the reason for the the revision here in a minute. But, if nothing else, we just want to make sure the governing board has an opportunity to review the budget at periodic times during the year. So, that is what we're doing tonight. So, the primary

003reasons that are impacting the budget are listed below. um when we initially propose our budget, we are estimating our enrollment or what's known as the average daily membership which is that ADM acronym you see there. So at this point now that we've well into the year we have updated enrollment numbers from the state and so now we essentially have to true up to the figures that they have. Um we also adjust our budget limit once we have known carry forward amounts. So since we've revised our budget um last time we've now completed our annual financial report so we had known expenditure true expenditures and so those are reflected here. And then finally, by this point, we get our updated allocations from the federal and state agencies. And so we're able to reflect those uh known

004amounts as well. So this briefly, this is where we stand as a district on our enrollment or our average daily membership. So you see there when we initially proposed uh we had about 21,745 was our estimate. We were pretty close on hitting it on the mark. We were just short a few there. You see 21703 is the actual enrollment from the state. We then receive weights which are an awaiting is depending if you're a high school student or a K8 student we receive weighted factors from the state. So um the net difference from our estimated counts to actual is about 50 50 students and then our BE weight categories we receive are we related to um special education categories. So as you know we do continue to see increases in those special education categories. So

005we see it increasing from the 68.95 up to 7,116. So the net result you see there is our our initial revised budget was at 32,991 and we are now at 33162 essentially. So what happens is we now get additional state funds in order to account for those increased needs in our operating uh budget for the year. And so that's what's reflected here in our maintenance and operations fund. So that is specifically what this is related to. So essentially those updated weights that we're getting from the state as well as our known carry forward amounts that we do now have we are updating our budget from 222.26 million up to 224.5. So essentially that is to continue supporting our ongoing operating needs for the fiscal year. The next item is related to our capital funds. Very

006small revision downward in our unrestricted capital. That was just to reconcile with the state budget figures about $20,000 adjustment. But really the the next one is is the largest that and something to to really be um celebrating is we have been recently awarded some grants through the school facilities division. So um our facilities department has done a great job of seeking those additional resources and so our community will actually start seeing a lot of work in progress on sites such as Kingswood. We were awarded windows and weatherization project. Soran Heights is also weatherization project and really the one that's a few million is the Simmeron Springs which is a new roof as well as weatherization. So we will start seeing those um enhancements at our school sites. So obviously very very happy that we're able

007to secure that funding from the state and so that's what's driving the biggest factor there in the capital funds classroom site fund. No change here noted from our revised budget. So that's remaining the same. And then special projects fund is noted. This is just um a net result of just final allocations and carry forward amounts is really the only adjustment made there to our state grants. And as always, I like to promote this website because it does show all of our budgets and annual financial reports and all of the financial transparency we provide as a school district. And definitely welcome everyone to review that as they have the opportunity. And at this point, I answer any questions um that the board may have. No questions from the board, but since this is a public hearing

008item, are there any questions from the crowd? Audience? Not hearing any. We will move on to the uh item B, opening items, adoption of the agenda. I put it to the floor. Do we have a motion? >> I second. >> No. No. >> I'll make a motion. >> All right. I second. Thank you. [snorts] >> [snorts] >> Motion to adopt the agenda as presented as passed. Go to section C recognitions and celebrations. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Um tonight, uh we have a band performance from Daart Middle School and Mr. Mui will introduce our guests. >> Thank you, President Scabara, members of the board, Dr. Cotto and guests. Uh we are very uh privileged tonight to have the Daar Middle School band with us under There we go under the direction of Miss Jordan Mooney.

009The floor is yours. >> [music] [music] >> Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. >> [music] [music] >> One [music] time. [music] >> [music] [screaming and crying] [applause] [music] >> All right. [music] Come on. >> [music] >> down. >> [music] [music] >> Hey, you know the [music] >> [applause] >> And that's all. Next we have section D, address the governing board. Item number one, address with individuals. This is a time for the public to comment. Members of the board may not discuss items that are not specifically identified on the agenda. Pursuant to ARS 38431.01 hotel, actions taken as a result of public comment will be limited to directing staff to study the matter, responding to any criticism, or scheduling the matter for further consideration and a decision at a

010later date. In order to facilitate accomplishing the business of the district in a timely manner, a time limit of 3 minutes will be imposed for each individual or group addressing the board. When you approach the podium, please state your name for the record. Danielle Mills Good evening. My name is Danielle Mills and afterwards I would like to give you this documentation that I'll be reading from. If you would have asked me two months ago about the Daart school district, I would have told you all the wonderful opportunities the students have, the vast experiences, the music, the arts, the sports, the first responding, the trades, the culture. I would have showed pictures of my children with many of you actually in their various activities and roles in the Dais community. [sighs] If you were to ask

011me today how I feel, I would be so much less graceful. I would be impelled to tell you exactly what we have gone through as a family. I am more fearful for my child at Valley Vista High School than ever before. To be honest, I'm utterly terrified for each child and students subject to the pure evil intent not only of neglect and health, but the well-being of children that creates a gangstalking harassment approach to dealing with parents. Retribution is real. So, no amount of faith I have had in our board and our admin at the district from taking the dumpster fire into creating something wonderful can actually keep me and my family safe. can keep my son from being unresponsive, not breathing, eyes rolling in the back of his head while teammates scream for help.

012If you've never attended a wrestling tournament, I don't know how I can help you grasp the perspective of noise, crowding, and chaos. To find help in that environment while your coaches are watching is traumatizing. Ginger Richards and Nester Felix gave an order to our coach. He was following orders, I believe, out of fear for himself and his job. While forever my youngest child will know this man in the district is not a man of integrity but one simply following orders when it comes down to his life or a child's. Two Valley Vista employees, one a coach and one from the office stood watching and mocking my son in the situation. As the trainer I found to help take over this aid and medical aid to help bring my son back to consciousness and breathing, I

013was asked if 911 was called in the middle of the emergency. And as I looked back to see the mocking and eyes rolling, I replied, "No, no one's on their phone with 911." And I was directed to call. When asked where his coaches were, we pointed and it was blatantly obvious. I have limited time here today, and so the details of this blatant disregard for my son was so soul shaking that I have provided a timeline of events for the situation. Regardless of every whistle I have blown regarding fundraising, fraud, abuse, child endangerment, and blatant evil by the Daart staff at Valley Vista High School, I have shown up for the storm. and I have built a community of current students, alumni, family with integrity, a table filled with character needed when faced with these

014challenges. These orders that are given could compromise their soul. My goal here tonight is not to slander or discourage others from the Daart community or even Valley Vista, but to seek guidance and direction from the top to secure the safety of the children of whistleblowers and concerned parents at Valley Vista. As a mil military spouse, I understand that sometimes you have to change and that's where I'm at. Lisa Everett Good evening. I My name is Lisa Everett. Um I am here this evening to speak to you about open meetings laws. A couple of months ago, the board received a presentation from the district's attorney on Arizona open meetings laws. That presentation was important and it outlined not just the legal requirements you must follow, but the responsibility you have to the public you serve. Frankly,

015I was disappointed that all not that not all board members were present for that presentation. I am raising this issue tonight because I have serious concerns that some members of this board may be attempting to skirt open meetings laws by using intermediaries, specifically spouses, to communicate with other board members. Coordinating votes, relaying messages, or attempting to isolate a fellow board member through third party is not only inappropriate, it undermines the transparency and public trust. This is especially troubling when the board member being targeted is a long-term member who has played a significant role in helping the district achieve and maintain its A rating. Strong districts are built through collaboration, experience, respect, not political maneuvering. Open meetings laws exist for a reason. They protect the public's right to see how decisions are made. They ensure that

016discussions, deliberations, and decisions happen in the open, not in back channels or behind closed doors. For this district to continue succeeding, it requires all board members to follow the law, to act with integrity, and to keep students safety and educational outcomes a top priority. At this moment, I do not believe that standard is being consistently met, and that is deeply disappointing. Let me be very clear. I am calling for every board member to strictly follow open meetings laws both to the letter and the spirit of the laws. That means no coordination outside of noticed meetings, no use of spouses or third parties to relay information and no efforts to sideline colleagues who bring experience institutional knowledge to this board. Our students, our teachers, and our community deserve better. Transparency is not Transparency is not optional.

017Accountability is not negotiable, and adherence to the law is the minimum standard we should all be willing to meet. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Eric Miller. Uh, Eric Miller. So, I'm here tonight to request um that the board reconsider its vote on the resolution that was previously introduced um opposing the Whitman BNSF rail hub. This resolution was simply one more measure supporting the growing opposition to that hub. Three of you on the board voted against the resolution despite having no discussion about it. The only explanation for voting no was offered by Steve Scava who said the resolution was fear-mongering and the hub will not affect the school district. So his lack of understanding of the issue was stunning in its incompetence. Frankly, I'm shocked that such an absurd, naive comment would be uttered

018by a member of this school board. The district extends almost a Whitman and train tracks run through the district and along its boundaries. The transfer hub would absolutely affect the school district. You see, I'm a former federal agent who served on an emergency team that responded to critical incidents all across America, including mass arson scenes, bombings, and explosions. The spill or arson of toxins stored in those rails cars can contaminate the air quality and groundwater for decades. That's one reason Homeland Security classifies such facilities as a tier 2 critical infrastructure under its anti-terrorism standards. Sadly, now we live in a time where terrorism is in our country and at our doorstep. The hazmat chemicals that would pass through the school district include chlorides, ammonia, sulfuric, hydrochloric acid, and sulfuric acid, petroleum, and natural gas. Look

019what the spill of vinyl chloride did to the community of East Palestine, Ohio. The health problems are rampant. The properties are worthless. And the residents are trapped there living in misery. Mr. Scava previously whined about President Densore right here in his room. What seems after he did, what seems abundantly clear is that this no vote was simply out of spite, not out of concern for Daert. And that immature behavior belongs on a playground, not in here in the board. Instead of causing problems in order to seem relevant, perhaps the three of you and Mr. Cava can revisit this issue. The three of you failed the students of DAERT. You failed the parents of DAERT and they deserve better. So, I'm here to urge you to please grow up, discuss this issue like adults. Focus on

020working for the district and not simply working against President Densmore. And if you can't do that, you need to resign. >> Thank you. >> Can I respond to criticism? Okay. >> All right. Section E, superintendent and governing board updates. Student update. >> Thank you, President Scavara. Uh, we have do have a student update tonight and Mr. Musei will introduce. >> Yes, President Scavara, members of the board, Dr. Croto. Uh tonight we have uh Ava Newton. Where is Ava at? She there. She's coming up right now. And she's from Willow Kang High School, a junior. It's part of our district uh student body committee. And I know they've been doing a lot of work as we approach the holidays. So look forward to hearing this update. >> Good evening, Madame President, governing board, Dr. Cotto, and

021cabinet. My name is Ava Nent, and I am a junior and the student body president of student council at Willow Canyon High School and vice president of our district leadership council. At our most recent meeting, we shared campus updates, and this evening, we are excited to showcase the high spirits and charitable focus our students are bringing to the upcoming winter break. Shadow Ridge is focusing on building spirit for the second semester. They successfully hosted their December gingerbread night, which was a wonderful community event. They are currently dedicating a spirit week to support their winter sports teams, which is building great energy on campus. Finally, the student body is buzzing with anticipation following the official prom reveal and is looking forward to celebrating the season at the Desert Farm Lights. Valley Vista is demonstrating an incredible

022commitment to service this holiday season. They are celebrating with the 12 days of holiday cheer to wrap up the semester. Most notably, they are actively supporting families for the holidays through various charitable efforts. They also recently hosted a significant purple star ceremony underscoring their dedication to our military connected students. Their first formal event of the new year, the winter formal is scheduled for January 23rd. Willow Canyon is building excitement for their major dances while focusing on high spirits. They have officially released the prom location which has generated significant enthusiasm. The campus is currently in the middle of our popular 12 days of Christmas spirit week. fostering a festive atmosphere. We are looking forward to hosting our winter formal on January 24th which will transform the campus into a a magnificent winter wonderland. Daart High School

023continues its powerful culture of community engagement and service. Students proudly ant proudly participated in the Elmarrage Winter Parade and successfully hosted their winter wonderland event. They are currently focusing on service through their holiday spirit week and by organizing their annual impactful shop with a cop event. Looking forward, their winter dance is scheduled for February to kick off the new semester. Sundown Mountain had an incredibly successful semester of service enga and engagement. They completed a successful food drive and a valuable campus career day to prepare students for the future. They are now closing the semester with their winter spirit week engaging the entire student body. Districtwide, our students are leading with purpose, enthusiasm, and service as they engage the community, support our local military families, and prepare for a rewarding second semester of school spirit and

024events. We excited about what the new year will bring. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Superintendent Update. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Um, just some quick updates tonight. Actually, just one quick update. So this week we started our A+ our A breakfast for our labels. So they're breakfast or lunch. So um we have 19 plus uh two district facilities and hopefully um an extra one for number 20 when the state decides on our appeal on one of them. So uh we are very happy that our staff has uh gotten those recognitions and and the least we can do is give them a breakfast or a lunch to celebrate what they're going on. So it's been a great day. We had two of them today. So, it's been a great time doing that. And with

025that, I wish everyone happy holiday. Thanks for a wonderful first semester. Um, and I hope everybody uh gets some relaxation and has a little fun on the break. So, that's all I have. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Next item is a governing board update. We'll go in the same rotation. I would like to I would like to thank the um I would like to show my gratitude to the Valley Vista choir that performed at my neighborhood Christmas event. It was an excellent performance uh by the direction of Preston McDonald. Uh it was very nice to see Valley Vista in the community and um it was an amazing show. So I very much appreciate it. That is the only update I have. And I also want to say uh merry Christmas to everyone and

026happy holidays and uh enjoy the time off. Good evening. Um, I attended the aid lunch at Willow Canyon on the 8th. Just want to say thank you for all your hard work and dedication and congratulations to Willow. And this morning I was at Rancho Gabriella enjoying a a wonderful breakfast biscuits and gravy um with them. And I just want to say congratulations to all your hard work and dedication for your A. And again, I just want to thank everybody um and wish everybody a merry Christmas and a happy new year. And I hope everybody gets some relaxation. Have a great night. Good evening. Um I went to the Scitec Festival at the Surprise Recreation Campus on Saturday, November 22nd, where they had many um educational booths for kids and adults uh with robotics. Um they

027had the West Valley STE STEM clubs training services and youth services and it was a well attended in the surprise community and merry Christmas to everyone. Thank you. >> I don't have anything but I would like to wish everyone a merry Christmas and a safe holiday break and look forward to seeing everyone and kicking off a new year. Great one. Thanks. Next, we'll move to section F. Motion to approve the consent agenda items. I open it to the floor. >> I motion to approve the agenda. Uh consent items >> as presented. >> Agenda items. Sorry. >> Are they as presented? >> Yes, as presented. Sorry. >> I second. I >> have to wake up. Motion passes to approve the consent agenda as presented. All right, we move to section H, information and discussion. We have

028school spotlights. First off up would be Marley Park. >> Yep. Thank you, Mr. President. Uh we have school spotlights tonight. We have Marley Park with us and uh Desaert Middle School and and Dr. Asai will introduce our guests. >> President Scabbara, members of the board, Dr. Croto. It is my pleasure to present uh Miss Jessica Felix and her teachers from Marley Park to tell you about the great things they're doing there. Good evening, President Scavara, governing board members Dr. Croto and cabinet members and guests. Thank you for allowing us the opportunity to share the incredible work happening at Marley Park Elementary. Our professional learning communities, our collaborative teams are the foundation of our instructional work. They ensure that every student learns at high levels through collaboration, reflection, and action. Tonight, you'll hear from our third

029grade team, one of our most cohesive and datadriven collaborative teams at Marley Park. They they will share how they've worked together to strengthen tier one instruction, create aligned assessments, and use data to drive intervention and enrichment for every student, focusing on all. Our third grade team is made up of five amazing educators with a range of experience and expertise. Danielle Garland, Christa Bodkin, Devbie Dearza, Amanda Pollson, and Taylor Ducet. Hello. I'm going to share some of our work from the first weeks of school. The work that is essential to create the building blocks for our team. Before we could dive into instruction and data, our team first focused on building a strong foundation for collaboration. We developed team norms around cooperation, positivity, being intentional, and being prepared. These guide how we show up for each

030other each week. We also established clear data goals and collaborative team goals that align with our school's improvement plan. Academically, we're committed to decreasing the number of students below proficiency and increasing those at or above benchmark in both math and ELA. Professionally, we're moving from teaching to learning, shifting our focus from what we taught to what our students actually learned, and from collecting data to acting on data so that every conversation leads to change in instruction. This shared foundation created clarity, accountability, and unity before we even began planning our first unit. From the foundations, we move to commitment and the beginning stages of planning for a successful year. As a third grade team, we are committed to ensuring that all students learn essential grade level standards. We approach our work through the four guiding questions

031of the PLC. What do we want students to learn? How will we know if they've learned it? How will we respond if they haven't? How will we extend learning for those who already have? Every week, we collaborate to plan instruction, review data, and take action. Our focus is simple, learning for all. The graphic shows the PLC cycle. Through this graphic, you will see that in intervention and knowing where our students are at all times is essential for our team. We do not wait until the end of our assessments of learning to know where our students are. We are constantly looking at where our students are and intervening each step of the way, creating smaller cycles of intervention of instruction and intervention within the larger cycle. Our process begins with clarity. We start each unit by

032deconstructing our essential standards into specific learning targets. Together, we ask, "What does mastery look like? What would we see or hear students doing if they understood this?" We look at the standard. We look at what they learned in second grade and what they will learn in fourth grade. We get very clear on what we must own and what they must learn this year in third grade. From there, we design unit plans. We decide on what we will teach each day and what evidence of student learning will be that include built-in com formative assessments, our checkpoints for learning. These CFAs ensure we're aligned across classrooms and they give us the data we need to respond immediately when students struggle or soar. This year, we have focused on a 15-day unit plan, taking components of the standard

033to teach at various times throughout the 15-day plan, [snorts] planning out days for checks, for understandings on specific components, and response days for retach, additional practice, and enrichment. This plan allows for us to dig into the standard throughout the 15 days with several checks for understanding embedded throughout to ensure student learning prior to assessing the entire standard at the end. After every common assessment, we come together to look at a results student by student and standard by standard. We identify which students have mastered the skill, which need retaching, additional practice, and which are ready for extension. What makes our collaboration special is how intentional we are with the data. We use it to guide our next steps. Whether this means retaching a concept, adjusting a small group instruction, or celebrating progress, we built response days

034into our pacing, allowing us to retach or enrich based on real-time student needs. During this time, we move students. If one of us got a better result than the other, then they take that group that struggled the most and retach it in a different way. We group all of our students who show that they were proficient together. We go deeper into the standard of after having often having them analyze the text and show their learning in another way. We have conversations and discuss what strategies and instructional practices show that learning took place. This aligns to one of our collaborative team goals. We may have taught it, but was it really learned and how do we know? This can be hard because we all want to be the best for our students. We have to be

035willing to say, "This did not work. Your kids got better scores. What did you do?" because we are here for all kids to succeed. We've also strengthened our daily instruction by using quick checks for understanding. Each day, we collect data points that tell us who's ready to move forward and who needs more support. We then use that information to implement meaningful differentiated centers, not just activities, but purposeful learning stations that target exactly what students need. It's incredible to see how much more confident and engaged our students are when the instruction is personalized and responsive. Our next step as a team and where we see another huge opportunity for impact is student ownership. Our students will track their own learning goals by standards. They will know exactly what they're learning, why it matters, and what they

036need to do to improve. We want to hear them saying things like, "I'm working on main idea." or I need to find more evidence in my text. That level of awareness and accountability is empowering. It's building confident and reflective learners. When our students take ownership in setting goals and tracking where they are, the impact will be exponential and the results will be even greater. The growth of this team represents what it means to be a professional learning community. They've built clarity around instruction, consistency across classrooms, and confidence in their students. This team's collaboration has not only improved academic outcomes, it strengthened their collective belief that together we are better. Thank you to our third grade team for your dedication to excellence. And thank you to our governing board for your continued support of the collaborative

037culture that allows our students to shine. I would now be happy to answer any questions you may have about the work we are doing at Marley Park. I have a question. Um over on the page the slide planning with a purpose you guys have the response and then you have a test talk and read sender AI. Can you clarify what the read sender AI is and how the response after the assessment goes into the test talk? If you could just kind of clarify that please. >> Absolutely. So the response, so the assessment, the assessment was given on 8:26 and then what they do is they come together as a team on their prep that day with the data. Um so they can see what students were at benchmark or meeting the standard, which ones need

038um specific help and they can pinpoint exactly where they are based on the question. So each one of the questions addresses a different part of the standard. So if um a student missed question two, they can group those students together. Um and then they talk through it as so they go over it with the students as well and the teacher models how so that's the test talk that they model how they would um go through it thinking aloud as the teacher. So the students can see some of the teachers thinking on how they might attack the problem or find the evidence within the text. >> Thank you. So what's the read sender AI? activity. >> Oh, it's an activity. >> That was the activity that they put on there. I'm sorry. It's Cinder Al. Read

039Cinder Al. >> Thank you. That makes sense. I appreciate that. So, that's the text they were going to use for that. >> Roger. Thank you. >> I just wanted to say this is a great presentation, lots of great information, and I absolutely love that you guys um have the kids do their own ownership. I am a huge advocate of that. Um the whole student led conferences, I I love it because it shows ownership. It shows them accountability and it seems like it's working in your program. So good job. Thank you for doing that. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you very much. >> Don't worry everybody. [applause] >> Moving on. Next we have Daer Middle School and Dr. Sai will introduce them. >> President Scavar, members of the board, Dr. Croto, it is my pleasure

040again to introduce Miss Monica Krenins and the wonderful team of Daert Middle. >> All right. Good evening, uh, President Skavvara and members of the board and Dr. Croto. Uh, we're excited to be here. I'm Monica Kinis, the principal at Daart Middle School, and with me today, I have brought our math team. Um because we are a K I'm sorry because we are a five through eight middle school our PLC's look a little bit different and I'll kind of explain that through our data as we go. But today I brought our math team. Um the reason why we chose this team to present today is because we have a lot of longevity in the um the educators that are behind us. Many of them were at Daart Elementary or El Elmarrage Elementary and then have been

041with Daart Middle for the last five years as we've been middle school. So a lot of consistency challenges that we have with math just in general um former math teacher myself is to continue our growth momentum and to continue striving for proficiency. So um my team is going to talk about um coming up with the strategies we've put in place this year specifically to address reaching every single student and driving proficiency so we can get those growth. Now, how our teams look a little bit different, how our PLC's look different than a K through8 campus. Um, well, you can see in 23 24 um that year we did a full restructure. Um, prior to that, um, that's that year we had, um, done more grade level type conversations. Um, our campus, some of you guys

042have been on our campus. It's set up in pods. We had that's how our PLC's were based for the 23 24 school year. We completely restructured our master schedule and um and then really moved to vertical teaming. So on Mondays for PLC time or prep connects, those types of things, our math team meets together, grades 5 through 8. Same thing with our ELA, social studies, and science. What we saw out of that year was huge growth um not only for our growth points, but also for our proficiency rates. So last year for the 2425 school year, we were kind of like, okay, let's make sure that this really worked. um and we feel confident that it did. So this year we're now amping up and really putting more in place on the backend data analysis

043pieces that my team will talk through first and so or next. So first up we have Miss Coransza and Miss Cisneros through one of the adjustments we uh made was to unwrap the standards. Uh we analyze each standard by breaking the standard into clear measurable skills, concepts and concepts. Unwrapping the standards allows us to identify gaps, avoid unnecessary repetition while raising the rigor in a thoughtful, intentional way. When we unwrap the Arizona state standards, we analyze their complexity and collaborate across math grade levels. This structure strengthens our instruction and ensures all students can acquire high level learning. Next, Linda Hec and Chantel Vargas. Hi. So, at Desaart Middle, um, all of our teachers complete a data analysis form after our various forms of assessments. And as a vertical PLC, what this allows us to do

044is have those data conversations um and also collaborate on um our teaching um strategies. And then Linda Hec will speak a little more as an individual teacher. >> Okay. So, yep. I'm Linda Hack and I love the data analysis chart. I'm one of those people. Um we we dissect it. Uh we we look at the standards um from the unit test, also from the quizzes. Um we really do look at that data. Um it's really important for us as we don't have a class of 25 or 30 like some of the other schools. We have five different classes of those numbers of kids. So it really helps us to stay on track. Um and it's just it's very important for me to know my progression in the classroom. And I that chart is something that

045I I look at um many many times a week. Um I use it to examine how the per um students performed on each standard. uh I look at the different ways that that the questions were asked and that way I can see well if this one was act asked in a different way how can I improve my teaching to hit that standard better. Um we chart them into numerical categories so we can see how each and every one of our students performed um and keep an eye on them so that we can pull small groups and spiral instruction and just teach better and better every day and progress. >> And next Mr. Lee, Miss M. >> Sorry. Next we have uh Miss Pedoya and Mr. Lee. >> Everyone at DAEART uh observes and is observed

046twice a year through instructional rounds. Instructional rounds are half a day of professional development where we complete observing and then collaboratively provide feedback. Uh during this time we step outside of our classrooms to learn from one another and also provide insight. We all have strengths to share and areas of growth. So this these instructional rounds empower us to do so. >> Um as one of the only new teachers at Daart Middle School, um the instructional rounds have been one of the most valuable learning experiences for myself. Um I'm a secondy year teacher, first year math teacher. Um these rounds, let me start with college. College teaches theory, right? So when I come out of college, I know theory. Uh, but instructional rounds work in a way that show me what works in real classrooms. Without

047them, I'd be learning only for myself and the four walls around me. Seeing other teachers in action showed me that small changes can have a big impact, like using Expo markers on a desk, an idea I picked up from a fellow eighth grade teacher. It's already had large impacts in my classroom. It's increased the speed of my students. It's increased the overall likelihood that they're going to participate. And lastly, it's increased on their test scores. With that being said, those adjustments made my lessons more engaging. Instructional rounds turn leading into practice and they've made me stronger for it. Thank you, Dr. uh, Principal K. >> Sorry, we have a we have Principal K and we have a Dr. K. So, there's lots of K's in our campus. Um, and we were trying to give like

048an overview of how our PLC's work and then specifically what what math are. Um, but Miss Alterano is gonna talk about what else we do. Hello. At Daisert Middle, we're finding success within our vertical PLC's and uh with the process as a whole. It's giving us the opportunity to celebrate growth when our students perform well on standards and to focus, reflect, and be ready with the game plan for next steps for those standards where we are challenged. Um, our instructional round process is helping to make best teaching practices visible for both new and our seasoned teachers. And our shared data analysis forms that all teachers complete on campus, ensure that we are digging into student data and reflecting for future strategic planning. [snorts] So what we plan on continuing and adjusting going even from this

049semester into next semester because we're constantly striving to get better um and to have that reflect in our student results is we're really focusing next semester on checking for understanding during explicit instruction um that's a piece of our learning walks um the instructional rounds from first semester. So seeing how that is translated into our classrooms um and again making sure that every teacher not only gets the opportunity to observe so that they're getting that um in the- moment learning from other teachers um but then also getting feedback from their peers not just from administration or a teaching learning specialist. Um also we're going to continue with our vertical articulation and we feel like it's working for us. Um we've made great strides with that. um and our teams, not only do they have their grade

050level teams to discuss um things, but they also have their content level teams and it just makes us a stronger unit as a whole. In addition to that, the next phase of us into next semester is to really drill down on those data analysis forms and bring back the standards direct standards that we addressed in first semester. bring back standards addressed quizzes and mini checks using both the Nav'i illuminate um uh IM whatever curriculum that we've got in order to make sure that we're ready for testing in April. Um this is a super strong team that we brought here a little shy but they're super strong and we're proud to be here tonight. So I'm here for any questions that you guys have. >> I was just wondering what is you talked about vertical versus

051pods I believe. Can you explain what that >> Yeah. Well, like the team before us, amazing group, but they're all third grade. So, Miss Hec teaches fifth grade. Mr. Lee teaches sixth grade. Uh we've got two seventh grade teachers with Miss Alterano, Miss Bedoya. Um and then Kuranza Cisneros and then Bedoya also teach 8th grade. So, when we say vertical, like this is their PLC because they will be talking about the standards throughout the entire level. And these guys team when we meet in PLC's on Monday, it's not a seventh grade team, it's the math team. if that makes sense. >> Thank you. >> And I have another question. Under the assessment grade distribution, it has PD2, PD4, and PD6. And what? >> Oh, those are class periods. So, as the middle school, um we

052Mrs. Hec teaching fifth grade, she does not have a self-contained fifth grade classroom. Um when she kind of alluded to that where she said, "I don't have 25 students. I have 125 students." So, she has class periods just the same. We run a very similar bell schedule to a high school. >> And are those the number of students on the grade levels? Is that >> we tried to mimic the grade bands of what would be highly proficient, proficient, u minimally, partially proficient. We tried to mimic that in that grade distribution there. Those are not necessarily that's on on a quiz. That's not necessarily what um would go into a gradebook or be reflected. Um after this there's going to be remediation, there's going to be um small group polls, those kinds of things. >> Okay.

053Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> All right. Thank you very much. >> Yeah. Thank you very much. [applause] We go to our next item with his uh athletic eligibility eligibility committee. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Uh tonight we have a followup on our athletic eligibility committee. It was um something that was requested by the governing board to look at the athletic eligibility. Um and Mr. Mui will present that to us. >> Thank you. Uh President Scavaro, members of the board, Dr. Croto uh the uh athletic eligibility committee uh was obviously a recommendation and uh uh took a took quite a um few months uh that we spent time on this and I want to talk to you a little bit about the the process and what we did. Um really though I want to step back

054as we and just do a quick refresher. We had shared some information with all of you um on really where this comes from and we did this back a few months ago. So, I'm not going to spend a ton of time on these slides, but I did just want to refresh to say really that the um Arizona State Board of Education has an administrative code that really guides this piece that was adopted by the AIA, obviously, and that we have to have eligibility in place um a system in place that's going to to uh provide that um and and how we're going to have that consistent within district policies and practices of how we do things. So, uh the the big piece here from the Daizar Unified School District as part of our uh grading

055scale piece is that uh we have this is the adopted grading scale that we utilize here in Daizar. Uh and that's obviously published in our student and parent handbook. So, that was something else we went over as well. We also talked uh a little bit about uh the eligibility overview and and this is the really the overall statement of that that we're require all students who participate in activities extracurricular to maintain passing marks in the subjects on a cumulative basis and that aligns with the Arizona intercolastic association and what they require as well and then uh really with those procedures and again I'm not going to outline each one of these we already did this but the grading procedures that you'll see on this slide and the next slide really provide that element of what

056our timeline is, how often those those grade checks need to happen. Um how we communicate these uh uh any of the grades. Um who the responsibility lies with in gathering that information. So these two particular slides really is the part where we got into the nuts and bolts of how we go about getting that information and then providing it uh communicating it. What's involved here? And there's a couple of uh as you as you look at all this information really you can summarize it and I thought I would just put this slide to refresh this part. This is the the you know the meat of what the policy does. Great director conducted during each sports season. And I want to just make it very clear that a sports season never lasts for an entire semester

057or it carries over from one semester to another. So it doesn't align um entirely at a high school level with a kid completing first semester grades. So fall fall sports are done and we went into winter sports and so grades are going to still be accumulated by those kids who played fall sports. So it doesn't it's not anything that that uh is comes to an end for that. So the grades are obviously cumulative during that semester uh over over time. Winter sports will come to an end here with grades then pick up again in January. So there's things like that just to kind of be aware of. um ineligibility obviously that communication is really critical in what we do. Once students are eligible to pra uh to participate the policy is that they get to

058play immediately. Okay. And that was another big piece uh that was uh that was something that was actually uh enacted um a few years back uh that was uh challenged within the practices of districts and was talked about in a lot of practices. So that's an element that exists there as well. ineligibility twice during a season. We have a practice here that they remove from the sport. So if you become ineligible twice, you can't play anymore. Um that's also to keep the standard high. And then middle middle school also we begin the process of doing middle school checks. We don't do it as much, but to get our our parents accustomed to understanding that eligibility is important to participate. So those those elements are what we talked about that piece. Now getting into the committee,

059our purpose and our drive as I walked in there is I charged them with looking at the current no pass no play procedure that we use. And so I had to go over all of those elements within the practice and then the philosophy allowing student athletes to participate with a D or higher. That's the current practice. So we were going to we were going to evaluate that. And that's what we did. Um just to have an understanding of that that committee makeup. Um we had and you can see up there I gave a summary of it but there were 25 members on that committee. Okay. We had uh four parents, three district directors that were primarily from the ed services area for academics. Four teachers, three is boys coaches, three is girl coaches, two male

060students, two female students and four ads athletic directors. So the element of our committee was also amongst the four high schools. We had representation from every high school was our intent um to make this uh committee to be successful. The meeting uh starts started in August. We used multiple meetings even had subcommittees within there to look at the research side but we wanted to look at practices used. Uh we wanted to research both local and national practices that were out there. Um so we spent a lot of time on that. We surveyed the local community which I'll get into as well. And then we took information. And so a lot of stuff we wanted to do early was get the data and you're going to see that right here in the next slides because we

061wanted to gather enough data that we could bring to the committee so that they could be have an understanding of what we were doing. So just a little bit about the the number of athletes as you'll see here and we looked at last school year. Now this is any student that compete participated in one or more sport from that school. So you can see from those numbers up there, for example, 429 at Daizard of a population of around 13-,400 kids, you're going to get that representation of that. You know, we're seeing kids in the 30 percentile of participation a lot of times on your campuses. Same thing with with shadow, you're going to see that it's in the 30 percentile for athletics. It's not all it's not all extracurricular, right? We we obviously know that

062not included in here is choir or uh um what you might see as co-curricular activities of your CTE clubs and organizations. That's not included. This is strictly athletics. Then we took it a look at some some data. This is probably the hardest data to understand, but I'm going to tell you where we started. The first thing we said is, okay, when you look at a kids report card in high school, they they generally have six classes. If I look at kids that take of our athletes during the term one and term two from last year because we can only grab data, it changes all the time, but we grabbed the data from last year and we looked at term one and term two and we said of those six classes of all of our kids

063that are participating in sports throughout the entire district, I would find that during term one, 97% of our kids had at least one A in a class of those six of all those of all those kids participating. It's not 97% were A's. That's not what we're saying or 97% of students. We're saying of six classes, they had one or more A or B in those classes of the percent of students that had that. Then you look at C's is 60% had one or more C's. D's you can see it falls off to a third. And then Fs is about 20%. So that means one of those class, one out of six classes could have been an F. of those 20 we're saying 20% of kids, right? So when I break that down by schools, I

064start to see this data drills into that part of it. So like Daiser High School, I can look at how many Fs there were amongst the students um that got when I say that to that that number, how many students there had one or more F there at Daiser High School from and in term one, term two, and I can see it at shadow, etc. going down the list. So that data was one piece we looked at, but we decided to also break this data a little bit differently. So we went another angle and we said how many grades at the quarter by grade level. Okay, so we took it off of when we said the grade at quarter level, we took that that end of first semester grade and we grabbed it and we

065said what did it look like? And you'll see here because you remember grades are constantly changing. So, we're trying to find a a point where they're st where we got a something that was submitted. This one will show you that of the of the Fs that were given, right? And then D's, C's, B's, you can see that freshmen of the grades up there with when you look at that, you can see that they struggled the most. Freshmen have a harder time in school, and that's a lot of the adapting to high school when they're learning how to and they're understanding transcripts and grades. So we spend a lot of time with remediation at that level of teaching them what it means uh as far as achievement. You look at the bars as it goes down

066the line. Sophomores you can see the improvement where you see less apps then you see it to junior level and then by senior year you have less problems with kids failing classes. Obviously you got graduation you're holding over their heads. So you see some other things but you'll see the breakdown of grades all the way across the board. So the freshman level it seems to be pretty distributed pretty evenly. And then we see sophomore year a little bit better of grades. Junior you can see that we all we do see a little bit of a dip when we looked at this data. And then the seniors you can see a much much better improvement when we looked at those overall grades by the quarter. So then we we wanted to research other districts to take

067a look and and we and I'm going to summarize this because we looked at a number of districts that were out there. Um and we tried to to go some of our sister districts. Then we grabbed districts, larger districts that were similar to us in other parts of the state. We took looked at some national models to see if there was differences. But what we were seeing was is that there are similar practices by most districts using a D average, okay, as a minimum passing grade. Um, we did see that, but I want to show some other elements that were in there. Many districts use the similar timeline, too. Okay. And most districts also allowed participation back in the sport when the student has ra had raised it to a passing mark. We did see

068that. But what we also saw was, as you might ask the question, did you see any districts that did other things that were different? There were a few districts that had um an element where they pushed the standard a little bit higher to a C. And we did see a few districts out there that also had a what they did instead though, and this seemed to be more common, not so much the C, but was the GPA at a 2.0 a C average. Now, there was only a few districts that did that. They were not ones that were in the in the area of Arizona that when we were studying this, but we wanted to make sure that we got some examples that we could actually uh um use as to something that we could

069put some teeth into and say, what does it really look like? But I want to get into what we also found about that research too and I'm going to get into that in just a little bit. So one of the questions that came up when we were doing this and we saw the GPA side is we said well let's take a look at our current athletes GPA. Let's find out what's happening with most of our GPA and our students. And so we we noticed that when we started comparing GPA of our non-athletes to our athletes and this research you'll see out there in a lot of national publications too is kids who are participating in sports are doing better in school because they have something that's tying them in. The GPA of a non-athlete 2.59

070versus the athlete was 2.91. So it's closer to that B average is what you're really what you're starting to get close to with our athlete student. So that was also telling her something a little bit more about getting kids involved, right? is going to make a difference. This one here broke it down by school. So, we were able to look at the semester last year and see what the difference was at Daiser High School, Shadow Ridge of a non-athlete athlete, um, Valley Vista and Willow Canyon. So, we wanted to see at the schools what it looked like non-athlete versus athlete and we looked at that data as well. So, that gave us an idea of what was happening um at that level also. But we wanted to drill in a little bit further and we

071said, "Hey, you know, as we talked about this, we need to survey the community." So we as we created a survey that was was uh asking some basic questions about what we were trying to determine, we sent that survey out to many stakeholders. And when I say that is we wanted to include all students, all parents, um all of our staff and and when we sent that out there as well, when I say staff, we could see teachers, um counselors, uh administrators, etc. So, as you'll see as participation in the survey, we see 939 students decided to take the survey. Okay? So, we can't we're not going to tell people they can't. And we wanted we wanted to blast that out and get as many as people as we could. 730 parents took advantage of

072it which we were we were very happy about that parents wanted to be a part of our survey. You can see the percentage does drop off when we got into the school officials. Um we see a drop off to about 4%. Now granted we had a committee that was made up of some of these groups and they've heard this questions before so I know they get surveys from time to time but I was happy to see the community didn't want to take a take part in this. And then we said we didn't see as many administrators and that other would have been counselors. It could have been a um a special ed uh like an OT or you know a PT. It could have been some kind of specialized position that may have done that

073survey as well. So we saw that small group over there. What we did see in this is that was the participation across the board. So by grade level student participation in the survey most freshmen which is interesting they were about a third of them. Then sophomores, juniors, and you can see that the seniors by that point probably aren't as interested in taking the survey. Okay, the parent participation mostly freshman parents. All right, taking an interest in it. Sophomore, junior, where maybe parents by the senior year, hey, this is not as relevant. My kids doing well in school. So, we started to see the drop off as it well. I'm making assumptions. That's an editorial comment, but we did see that within the results here. We asked overall, this is what we saw as the overall

074on the survey. Okay, so that's a big broad snapshot picture of it. Stood should a decount for passing. That was one of the questions that was within there on that. We saw that um the yes was at 55% the no at 40 and then we had that 41 and then the the not sure about 4%. So whether they just had no opinion or not sure, I'm not sure why they would have gave an opinion but they didn't. But you can see the percentage there. Now when you break that down, okay, should a decount is passing for the sport, we know that not many administrators participated. So that data 55% to 33% for no. Okay, we know that we only had a small percentage. Then we saw the student participate uh in and that survey we

075also know and they were saying you can see at their rate 68% to 27%. Okay, when I go over to the uh parent and teacher side of things, we did start to see a split. Parents are saying yes. Uh here are the groups that the grade should be higher. Parents were saying yes, grade should be higher. Um and then um or yes, that the D is fine, but no, uh parents are saying 55% are saying no, the minimum should be higher. And then you saw the teacher side of that and we see that and we didn't have as many teachers participate but you see there 65 almost 66 almost two-thirds percent said something higher as well. So the other group is kind of hard really to put any uh you know any reliance on because

076it was such a small group as well and I don't know you know was it wasn't as it wasn't a large number but we did get an opportunity in this survey to see some of the different opinions as well that were brought back to the committee. Now um we also wanted to ask in the survey if the student does get it to a passing mark should they be able to participate and you could see overwhelmingly everybody was saying that as soon as they're passing should they play immediately that one doesn't seem to be raise any that was overwhelming we saw that we did see that if they did not agree with them participating immediately you could see some of the suggestions like did they show great improvement um you know mandatory tutoring should that be

077involved academic probation things like that. So they there was opportunity for them to provide and we gave choices and they could put another in there if they wanted to. So you know we had a lot of information in front of us. We're looking at some of what's happening out there. We're looking at some of the research about participation based on D's or C's u in athletics and the element of expectations. And so here's some of the things that um we found is that when we're looking out there at the pros of raising that higher expectation element, holding our athletes to a higher standard on campus, their leaders on campus, their athletes, their, you know, um, you know, to participate in an athletic sport, should they be held to a higher standard? Okay. Improves the possibility

078for post-secondary opportunities. That's another piece. I will tell you that the coaches in the room over and over again said we have to hold our athletes to a higher standard. And they said the reason why we already have higher standards within our athletic programs right now is because I don't want to first of all worry about if an athlete have to worry about if they're going to be able to play each week or each game. So I already have a higher standard. And secondly, if I'm trying to get my kids if they're interested in playing at a at a higher level, the most of our most scholarships out there that colleges have are academic based. So, they already knew that element within the conversation and they were talking about some of the things and I'll

079get into some of the things they do already. Um, the NCA standard we looked at, talked about how that's a pro, ensured updated grade books because teachers are going to have to be on top of their grade books if you're going to make sure that they can participate. And then finally, a positive impact to the school letter grade. He also said, "Hey, anytime that we're raising the higher bar, higher standard, you're going to have academic um pros to that as well." I mean, that's what we always want to do is high expectations. We talked about some of the cons. These are some things that we found in some of the research and having conversations and getting a hold of places that maybe did some different things. It can cause decreased participation over time. So, if

080a kid is is is a freshman year, as I talk about is that we see the higher standard there. when kids are held to the higher standards, if they don't meet the higher standard, kids and they're not able to play, they'll shy away from playing in their sophomore, junior, senior year. That was what some of the data um did display and some of the some of those elements out there. Okay. Um you have the possibility of declining student enrollment or elements of students looking for other areas. We we are a very competitive market for students. Nobody was implying in the room when we saw this. Nobody in that committee said, "Hey, we want to keep the we want a lower standard so that kids don't leave." Nobody said that. That was never the element. It

081was always we need to find a way to keep expectations higher in our programs. We also talked about conflicting message to our students of a dequalifying for graduation, but then it's not allowed for athletics. So, we said that does that does bring a different message to what we're saying. Why would it not be the same that we we think that to graduate from our high schools, it would also be a higher element? It could forfeit the possibility with lower numbers of participation. They recognize we already have certain sports when if numbers aren't high enough that there has, you know, we have those conversations of if we have to forfeit a game. Well, if you don't have those numbers, you just don't play. And we're part of the AIA. That's part of our our element that

082we agree to um is to provide those teams. So that's you know and we pay dues to that and everything else to be a part of the AIA. And then finally that last bullet correlation between participation in athletics and student success and and really that goes back to that original point of will it cause students to less participate as they as they move forward. Does it bring a negative impact towards or a negative connotation towards athletics? two things that also came came to in uh that came out in looking at the research. Um, one was would you have great inflation? But we saw that and one is that we didn't see any we didn't see that students maintained that there was no evidence that students maintained the high marks once the season was over. That

083once seasons were over that grades uh when students weren't participating, grades were declining. And I meant that as in a kid who's in fall sport that's not playing after the season's over, what happens there? So there was a lot of elements and I'm just I'm telling you these are just elements we looked at in research. But those were the big pieces. What we wanted to finish with though was what are we currently doing to make sure that our kids are being held accountable. Mandatory tutoring sessions. We do additional grade checks. Our coaches talked about all the different things and what the teachers were saying in the room. Parents said, "Yes, we we know that my kids being held accountable. frequent coach teacher counselor conversations, meaning that there's elements where counselors are involved in and helping

084to track grades. Um, we have we have schools that set up later practice times so that there's time to make sure that kids are going and getting the extra tutoring they need. Coaches are assisting in tutoring uh and study halls. Um, we also set up academic contracts with kids that are struggling. Um, and uh student athletes will bring the role models in. They'll they'll peer tutor. That's in one of the other pieces as well. But we use our student athletes that are performing well to tutor younger kids especially because we know that'll help. And these were things that we talk about in our AD meetings about how can we help kids to make sure that we're getting them on track. Um and then finally um and most of our coaches I mentioned earlier are trying

085to set those high standards uh to improve academic performance there. you know, as the committee w hashed through this um through that, you know, through those multiple meetings first semester and we got to that end, it was really there's a lot of things that we're doing positive and so that was where the committee fell. They said, you know, at this time they didn't feel that there was a recommendation to change what we're doing, but they do recognize always that we want to make sure that we're holding our kids to high expectations and checking those grades frequently. And really that if a kid is consistently failing, meaning more than two times that they can't get there, which is going to happen if you're flirting in the D area, those are the kids that we talked about.

086We said they're not going to participate anyways a lot of times. and coaches a lot of times don't want that hanging over their head every time. Anyways, so that was where we concluded it. I mean, that was the work we did. Um, I know that was a lot of information. I just want to make sure you're entirely filled in on the work we did. I'll stand for uh any questions you might have. Before the questions, I want to add to first, thanks Craig for his effort and the committee um for doing all this, but I I think to ask yourself, and we'd be remiss if stating it, what is the purpose of the rule? Why is it in place? That's the bottom line. Not to be punitive, not to make them follow the rule. It's

087to make sure they are performing academically, that they're not just letting their studies go and and focus on playing a sport. So, what is the purpose of that? And that's to make sure they're performing academically. And I think if you go back into the average GPA, that shows you our athletes are performing. They're performing better than non-athletes um across all our school. There's not one school in that district in our district that Craig showed that they are not outperforming students who are non-athletes. And I would say that's a success. That's a success of the rule. So I just wanted to point that out. I gleaned that from listening to Craig and and looking at this and I I think that's the purpose that we need to concentrate on. With that, feel free to ask Craig

088any questions you have. >> So Craig, I do appreciate everything you've put together here and to the committee. I thank you. Um, I've got a lot of questions, so we're going to start off with the first one. What is extracurricular activity? >> Yes. Uh, member Destitch, uh, Dr. Croto, the when we say extracurricular extracurricular activity, we're talking about anything that goes beyond what they're doing in their academic classes. the the element of what we have and that's a that would be another conversation but the element of what what we were looking at specifically and what I did take to the committee was specifically for our athletes because of the AIA requirements. So that was why we focused on that. But extracurricular would incorporate all the other activities that we did not incorporate into this um

089which could be another if you wanted that data we talked about that that we could gather. Well, my main thing is extracurricular, athletics, arts, whatever. It is not a requirement academically for them to graduate, right? So, this con or whatever where we say, hey, they they only need a D to graduate. So, why would we make them have something more to participate in sports? Participating in athletics and extracurricular is not a right. It is a privilege and it's a recommend it. It it is actually it's when people are out there doing these sports or extracurricular they're representing us as a district and if we just accept I mean the data completely contradicts all of our students are doing so much better if they're in athletics but let's just keep it at a D. That doesn't

090make sense. If they're excelling and we don't have this problem, why not bring it up to a C? You know, this is where I I mean, I got so many notes and I we got a long night ahead of us, but I mean, everything I looked at it was it boils down to two of the cons on there are not actually cons. So, we have more pros to go in there. And then when I look at the fact that it's teachers and parents say yes, let's hire that bar, but a majority of students are saying no, let's not in a survey. The students, I mean, our job is to make sure that our students are getting their education, right? Academics is first and foremost. So to me to allow the students to to do their

091survey and say 65% of us want to keep it at a D that that's not fair. That's like me allowing the toddler to decide I can just stick my fork in my electric socket because it's what I want to do. It's easier for me. And that's where my frustration is. It's not at you. And I do appreciate all the work. That's not it. But it's like our job is to make sure our kids are getting educated first and foremost. So that's I appreciate what you said. I don't agree with the assessment. If we are saying that our students are doing better than the nonathletic students are doing and then we can go through do the non-athletic students get monitored do they get um support services made available to them every two weeks you know how

092does that fair to the students that aren't active >> thank you member Destich are you okay thank Well, you as I'm I'm sorry. Were you waiting for my response? I'm sorry. >> No. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just I mean I like I said, I got a lot here, but I'm just trying to narrow it down, but those were some of the things. So, >> yeah. And I member Destitch, Dr. Dr. Cron, I I do want to just um uh make a point to say too that I know that the survey results and how they looked at it um we did not make that the a primary or one of the even the top considerations and what we were looking at and talking about. we continue to fall back to data when u I I don't

093have extracurricular data in front of you but what I would what I will u attest to is every time I've ever looked at this over my 30-year career is that students that are involved in extracurric extracurricular activities every time have have a uh are performing higher academically you're almost at a B a B average with your GPA that are on there of your student athletes you're probably going to see that I mean it's going to when you start to put other extracurriculars in And and the other the the um you know the other the other piece to that um to that point um of what we provide for our our students that are non athletes and I and I would I would yield a little bit to to uh Dr. Asai on that but I

094know that there's elements of of intervention uh support practices that we put in place for additional tutoring um outside services what's supposed to be provided for any student that's getting an F. I mean, I I would say that it's not acceptable for us as an in academic in institution to accept any kid who's failing. In fact, looking at that data, I want every one of our kids to participate in sports. So, that's an editorial comment though, but but that's where where I landed when I looked at that. So, um but that's I understand that piece and uh I I appreciate your comments >> and I do appreciate what you're saying, but if we go to the slide on here, the groups that said the grade should be higher. Can we go to that slide, please?

095>> Yes. Sorry. >> There you go. To me, parents and teachers should have the biggest say, right? I mean, the teachers are the ones that are teaching these kids and they want them to excel. And the parents, these are their children. They want them to do better. And if we're already at a B level for the majority of our students participating, why would we not look at going to a C? I that's that's just where I'm getting confused. And you know, again, I think Miss Mui pointed out this was part of a survey. It wasn't the decision makingaking piece. It was part of a survey. So, this was one piece of many that came into the committee's final recommendation. So, I know it's a survey and what they said, but it wasn't what determined the

096final outcome if I'm not mistaken. Correct, >> Dr. Cotto. Yes. Um, that is that is true. And and uh I I do I do believe and I don't know. So, I mean, it would take a lot of time to get into those elements, but I do believe when you start talking about um those particular elements of just reading off a survey, which you have to because we didn't drill down. We didn't ask other questions. We didn't ask, should the requirements be harsher on teachers to keep their grade books up to date. I mean, there's things that I would want to say then that I want to make sure happening then if we're going to say that we're going to take that that element and I don't know who those specific it could be. You know,

097there's always elements of opinion and I think a survey is important, but we didn't ask a whole ton more questions within there. >> Again, I I would go back to my first statement, too, is what's the intent of the rule? It's not to be punitive. It's to make sure student athletes are performing in their classes and not just showing up to play sports. Again, I I think the data shows that um I I don't know if going to a sea, what's the purpose of going to the sea? Is it is it that would be another rule I guess on top of the original rule is to make sure the students the spirit of the law is to make sure students are showing up to school and participating in their classes. That is the spirit of

098the law when it was written in 1985, 40 years ago. So to increase it and tight it, tighten it down to me is a little bit more punitive because they're involved in athletics than it is to say, are they performing in their classes? If those grades were reversed and our student athletes were getting a 1.9, then I would say they're not performing in their classes. we need to look at doing something different. But I don't think the data shows that in this instance. >> I agree. I mean the data shows that our students that are participating are getting B's >> be average. So to me, why would we justywilly keep it at a D level? >> Can I join in? Yeah. So I I just wanted to add a little bit about this. Um, so

099when I was in high school, C average is what you had to have to play sports. And I understand I'm old and things change, but I would like to see, and maybe we can we could talk about this, um, but can we do a pilot program where we don't do punitive, but we kind of understand what would the impact be if we changed it from a D to a C? What would the impact be on the, like you said, the teachers keeping their grade books up, you know, closer to date, like on a daily basis kind of scenario? What would the impact be for the children who would not be able to play because they don't meet that new threshold? What would the impact truly be if that that student wasn't able to play in

100that sports or that team and then we wouldn't be able to that team would have to forfeit? I would like to see the actual like that data because I know they're considered cons, but I would like the just a just a nice little pilot program where we just kind of grab the data behind the scenes and no one really knows the difference. >> Yes, President Scabara. I I know that uh yes, Dr. Longoria is here. Um I she we had that conversation. I don't think I don't think it would be difficult for us to really go back and look at um data. If it was at the C average, then how many of those athletes, but we we can maybe drill into a couple of sports and see what that would look like and how

101that would impact them. So that could be some data that we can we can do some more research on. Can we also throw in like choir and band as well because that's considered extracurricular. >> We can. >> So we can have the true, you know, impact. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> And just to to be clear, choir and band do, they they're not considered in that whole piece. So, um, because it's it in the spirit of the law, it was a, uh, and as the AIA sees it, if you go back to one of those beginning slides, it was the intercolastic activities of competitive nature that in involve more than one school and have a championship, a winner or a rating is >> no and and I understand I just >> we can include

102anything we want. So, >> I just want I just want to see because when I when the school I went to, it was a C average for anyone who did anything extracurricular period. So choir and band we had to meet the the the ratings as well or even if you're in tech club or something >> we can look at same way >> we can do that. All right, we move to item I, action and discussion. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, tonight we bring to you the approval of if my computer will quit going all over the place. Uh, the recommendation of the revised budget. So, you had the presentation earlier. There is no presentation. I'm just turn it back over to you for a motion and approval or any questions that you may have.

103Motion to approve 2025 2026 revised expenditure budget. >> Second. Motion passes. [snorts] Go down to item number two. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, tonight we bring you chapter three, business operations. We are not recommending any changes. Uh, this is a yearly item where we the board reviews policies that are already in place. Um, and we bring to you any changes that we may have. We do not have changes in policy 3. So, with that, we will stand for any questions you may have. >> Any questions? Any question? >> I'm not sure if this is the right agenda time, but is there a way that we can look at um instead of annually approving all these policies that have had no changes, do like a three-year review cycle so that every 3 years we look

104at them and then just the ones that make changes we get so we're not bombarded. Is this the time and place or not? >> No, that would be for next future agenda items. >> I thought so. Thank you. All right. Nope. I >> I'll go ahead. Motion to approve policy chapter 3 as presented. >> Second. Motion carries. Go to item three. >> Thank you, Mr. President. Uh, tonight we bring to you uh a recommendation to approve our pre-educator um preparation. It's actually an enhancement to our educator preparation program and Dr. Asai will give us a brief presentation on these enhancements. >> Good evening again, President Kavara, President Scavara, members of the board, Dr. Kto. Uh tonight I'll be presenting on the educator professional program which in DAERT we call our ready to teach program. Uh

105to refresh the board's memory and all of our memories. Um ready to teach is where we take students who come out of college without a teaching degree. They have to have a bachelor's degree. They enter our program. They go through a variety of training. They're placed in the classroom and after two years they can earn their Arizona teaching degree. Uh we are one of many districts in the state to offer this opportunity. Our current program currently has over 40 participants actually 50 in the classrooms. Uh the program includes weekly job embedded coaching. So these participants meet with an instructional coach each week or teaching learning specialist each week. They go in and observe what they talked about implementing and then they postconference. There's 170 hours of professional development a year and it allows them to

106earn their Arizona teaching credential. It really is Daert's way and many school districts way of uh firming up our teacher shortage. Uh the colleges are no longer producing the number of candidates they used to colleges that are graduating less teaching degree people with teaching degrees. It helps us in recruiting and retaining highly qualified effective educators because if these people weren't in the classroom we would have substitutes and a rotating basis. Uh it ensures students receive quality instruction from certified teachers and it ensures candidates learn the DACA DAERT way from the onset. And that was one of the big selling points for us is I can't guarantee you what ASU is teaching uh teaching candidates but I can tell you what we teach here in DAERT. By the numbers uh this year we started with about

10757 EP teachers in classrooms. Right now we have 51. Uh we h we have some attrition because this is new to them. We have one student, he got his engineering degree, decided to go into teaching. Um, he's doing great. You know, another person might have got their accounting degree and they came and they decide not to be a teacher. Uh, that's really hard when they get into our classroom and they leave after three or four weeks and we have a classroom that goes to rotating subs. Again, we have preschool through 8th grade, uh, fine arts, special education. Uh, they are at, um, 23 of our schools because of the ESS. and we already have 10 that have graduated from our first cohort. So, we're really proud of that. That being said, there have been some

108issues that are encountered when we ask people why they're leaving. Uh, one is some of these uh candidates have never been really exposed to a strong classroom model. You could have gone through some high schools and never had a really strong teaching model. You could have been where teachers presented but didn't really teach. Uh, they site lesson planning. Lesson planning is a big one. In college, I spent three years learning how to lesson plan. They have about four weeks in the summer where they learn to lesson plan, if that. And even though it's ongoing and supported, lessons lesson planning is an intricate um very hard thing to do. And not uh the third thing they lack is they had trouble with classroom management. Classroom management is a learned skill. Lots of us learn it in

109student teaching. Um and when you're going straight from college into that classroom experience with 34 seventh graders, uh that can be really hard to manage. So we have um kind of brainstormed and come up with a solution and it is to allow to create our prepp uh program where these candidates would do a sort of student teaching. So in January they would go into a mentor teachers class. They would watch that mentored teacher doing modeling and guided practice. They would collaborate in planning sessions with their mentor teacher. They would learn how to lesson plan. uh they would slowly take over small groups when we do small group instruction after we see they can do that. They would take over the classroom. They will not take over any of our third through 8th grade um English

110or math or science until after our testing season. Uh but they could take over social studies and then they would gradually go until they go all day. They would in essence have the same teaching experience, student teaching experience uh that those of us coming out of university have had. If we decide this is what we want to do, we've outlined our timeline. The first thing we would do is after this board meeting, we would announce to principles and teachers that they have the opportunity um they have the opportunity for teachers on their campus to apply to be mentor teachers. Uh we really want to vet that process. We want to make sure that after the teacher applies, the principal says yes, this is one of my best teachers. We want to look at test scores

111for growth and percentage passing. uh because obviously we want these people to be mentored by the best of the best to produce great results. Uh in January we would hire those mentored teachers. They will receive a stipen which is on the next slide. Uh for the teachers, the current candidates that are interested, we would examine the current interest list, those who have already reached out to Miss Shernikov saying, "Hey, I want to be part of EP next year." And we would call them and say, "We have this opportunity for you to do student teaching." Um, if we didn't have enough, we do, but if we didn't, we would hold an interest session. Uh, for those that are interested, we will also hold an interest an interest session where we review the expectations for it. We

112expect them to be there every day. We expect them to sub one time a week uh because nothing gives you classroom management experience like subbing for someone else's kids. There would be an application process if we have more than 15. And then they would be placed between January 12th and February 2nd. They would end on the last day. they will learn how to do checkout, uh, which is a big thing. You have to make sure your grades are posted and everything's finalized. So, it actually give them that, um, experience checking out as well. We are proposing that we give each of the 15 mentor teachers a thousand stipend. It is going to take those mentored teachers. I'm already teaching third grade. Now, in addition to being responsible for the 30 kids in my classroom, I

113also am training another human being. That's going to take time. So, we think it's fair to compensate them into our teacher. We would pay the student teachers at the rate of our sele rate. Um, which Mary Dell figured out because she's better at numbers. Uh, but it would cost approximately $236,250. Uh, this is does seem like a high price tag, but the price of teacher turnover. We would be paying for subs. We have to pay for recruiting. We have to pay um for many things and the training we put into them. So, the total cost of the program would be $254,550. I may interject. That comes from professional development money. So, >> thank you. >> Yeah, I probably thought you were going to ask a question. >> If there's any questions. Well, I just like

114the idea that you're having them with mentor teachers so they can learn how to do it and instead of just putting them in their on [music] their in a new classroom on their own. >> What What would be the difference between like a teacher's aid and this kind of a >> situation? So the teachers aid doesn't do lesson planning. The teacher's aid assist when we do have that like a resource para or we have instructional assistants. They help with behaviors. They might help with a small group every now and then. For the student teacher, they are, you know, the first couple weeks they're sitting and kind of scripting what their teacher does. They meet with the teacher at the end of the day and they might ask, "Hey, why didn't you redirect this kid or

115why did you make this uh this decision?" After they do that, they're actually co-planning lessons or watching the teacher plan and asking questions. They're getting that I do really eventually they're doing it with their mentor teacher. The mentor teacher might say, "What standard do you think this aligns to? you know what Kagan strategy do you think will work here? How how what would be the best way to model this and then eventually that student teacher will be writing the lesson plan for the class and taking over the class. >> Thank you. >> I would add to that too um classroom management a model of good classroom management. It is the foundation of a successful classroom. And if I do not know how to manage a classroom, when I take over a classroom, disaster happens quickly.

116And that provides that opportunity for them to observe and see a good model of how a classroom is managed. >> Well, I think it's a great idea. So, thank you. >> Yeah, Dr. Absolutely love this program. And with the cost of the program where it's the student teachers. So if if we usually um branch out to like a third party or another agency to come in and student teach, how much how much money would the um district be saving if we're not utilizing that third party? >> I'll defer to Mr. Mattingley. >> Uh board president, governing board members. uh that's usually through an MMO agreement approved by the board and typically there's not a cost from our end for the student teacher. Uh if anything uh the universities now have changed their way of doing

117business with our school districts throughout the state of Arizona and that is uh to get them in the classroom sooner and teaching on a contract. Uh so uh the cost isn't there from a student teacher standpoint from a university here with us growing our own our pathway career pathways that we're offering our our in-house employees that have those degrees looking for that pathway like Dr. Asia said you know it's just well worth the minimum cost we're dealing with. So with the substitutes, so if I know we use another agency for substitutes. So how much would we save on that if we utilize these teachers to substitute instead of going through the agency? >> Board President, governor board members, I'm not sure there's there's a comparison to give an answer to that because >> it would

118be 175 a day that we use them as a sub. >> Okay. >> So times 15. So what we have to figure out how many days? I don't know off the top of my head. So it but they make $175 a day. So if they replace a sub one day a week um for let's just call it 15 weeks. Let's say 15 weeks. Um so you have 15 times 175 times 15, >> right? >> Okay. >> That's that's a math program. That's a problem I'll be collecting tomorrow when you check. >> You're the math guy. [laughter] >> Okay. Thank you. as it's kind of funny since we just went from the the sports section to this one is like we do need a true feeder system just like sports do, you know, bring it on

119up and this is this is awesome and I I truly appreciate your guys' efforts on this. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Motion to approve the pre-educator preparation program is presented. second. I vote yes. >> Yes. Motion passes. All right. We move to item number four. >> Thank you, Mr. President. We have come to the um Steve Mattingley show for the next uh items, a lot of items. So, um with that, we will turn it over to Mr. Mattingley for number four. Thank you, Dr. Croto. Uh board president, governor, board of members, the first action item, discussion action item that uh we'll be addressing is it's an annual process. All school districts go through this where they have to uh vet out their contracts of any sort. Uh notice of employments of any sort for

120all their employees. Uh the first stage is getting it back to legal counsel to review any possible law changes etc. Uh and this like I said this is an annual protocol that uh we go through. Uh so today on this action discussion item, it's all of our types of contracts we have for all of our employees including our classified notice of employments exempt and non-exempt. Is this for questions? Are we good? >> Cutting board president. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Any questions? >> I do have one question. I know. Shocking, right? Um I was going through all the contracts. I didn't really have any issues with them. But my question is where is the billet description of these jobs? Um I was trying to go through the policy manuals and you know obviously we had a

121lot. So but is there some place where we can go to look at the description of the actual tasking there to do not just the contract? Thank you. >> Board President, governing board members. Um we we do have a a library of all of our job descriptions, hundreds. Uh it doesn't fall in the realm of these contracts because it's a global contract. Uh there's numerous types of teachers. It's just one teacher because the law governs that. And so we do have job descriptions uh for hundreds of job titles we have. And so that's not a part of the actual contract, but it is a part of the process when we hire somebody and the expectations and uh what they what the employee is aware of. >> Thank you. I just wanted to know that because

122I was looking in there to see if it maybe it kind of said, "Hey, you're going to do XYZ as part of this contract." But no, thank you. And I had no other questions or concerns. I just wanted to ask um one of the positions is school psychologist and what does that involve? Is that >> Sure. Uh board president uh uh governing board members school college psychologist plays an important role providing students support when it comes to their learning and behavior. And it's not just that support to the actual individual students. It's a part of a process through our um special education program. It's necessary. They play a key role in ma managing the process from start in between intermediate and finishing when it comes to student assessment evaluations their academics what the minutes might

123look like along with other key players that play a role in this these children's uh IEP and individual education plan. So a psychologist is one of our major major uh players in managing our special ed programs. >> Oh for special ed? Oh, yes ma'am. Yes, ma'am. >> Here are no more questions. I make a motion to approve administrative certif certificated or certified certificated and licensed employees contract language and benefit packages for the 2026 2027 school year. >> Second. >> Mr. President, we may need to do a roll call because I think our computer's frozen if it doesn't pop up. Did it come up? >> Yes. Okay, we're good. >> Motion carries. >> Board President, Dr. Croto, if since it's the Steve Mattingly show, do we want to just continue after the vote or does do

124I need to be introduced every time? >> He'll bring up the next item and you can continue, Mr. Mingley. All right, then. >> Um, Mr. Manley, number six. >> Oh, sorry about that. >> Five. >> Oh, sorry. Five. >> Uh, board president, board uh, governing board members, this next one. Now that you have approved those uh, administration and uh, certified and lensure contracts, this is specifically to to allow us now to issue those contracts to set employees that hold those positions. Motion to approve eligible administrative, certificated, and licensed staff for reemployment and authorize the issuance of employment contracts for the 2026 2027 school year. >> Second. [clears throat] >> Motion carries. We move to item six. board president, governor, board members. Uh this next is similar to the process with the exception of this is

125a notice of employment. This is not a contract. It is a legal document, but it is not a contract. This covers our classified exempt and classified hourly wage. Uh again, as a reminder, uh these documents have been vetted out and reviewed uh accordingly by uh legal counsel. Motion to approve the notice of employment language and the benefits package for hourly and exempt classified staff for the 2026 2027 school year. >> Second. >> Motion carries. We go to item number seven. >> Uh thank you, board president and governing board members. Uh now this is the part where uh we uh asked the board to consider uh approving all those qualified classified uh staff members that qualify for an NOE which is a notice of employment uh to continue employment u for the 2627 school year. >>

126Any questions? Motion to approve the issuance of notices of employment to eligible classified staff in their current positions at the 2026 2027 salary levels with benefits commensurate with the position. >> Second popping up. >> Motion carries. Now we go to item number eight. >> Thank you board president and governor board members. Uh this is not contracts now. It's the recommendation to approve an appointment of an interim high school assistant principal uh that will be placed at the Daizart High School. That is Miss Kayla Oliver uh for the interim assistant principal. So we're excited to bring this to the governing board. Uh the govern board is aware or has the ability to review the resume of Miss Oliver and uh so we're excited to bring her to the board and ask for your consideration tonight. >>

127Motion to approve the appointment of Kayla Oliver as interim high school principal assistant principal for 2025 2026 school year. Second board president, governing boards. I see that it's passed with four. I would like to introduce Miss Kayla Olifer to you if you don't mind just for a second if we can recognize. [applause] Motion carried. Now we go to item number nine. Uh board president, governing board members. Uh this next uh few uh four or five coming up are now to approve the appointment of the administration's administrators that I'll be describing here to everyone. And so the first one will be Miss Amy Crowe. Uh if you recall, she was an interim principal uh approved by the board and uh so she has gone through an interview process uh through uh administration here at cabinet and

128we're now recommending to the governing board to approve her as the appointment as the principal of within Daert Unified School District at Freedom. >> I would like to motion to approve the appointment of Amy Crow as the elementary school principal for the 2026 2027 school year. Second. >> Motion carries. Congratulations. >> Board President, may I introduce Miss Amy Crow one more time for everybody. [applause] >> We move to item number 10. Governor Board President. the governing board members. Uh it is uh next my honor to uh bring to the governing board to consider the appointment of Dr. Michael Fowler. He is placed currently at Simon Springs where he will continue uh as being appointed as the principal. >> Motion to approve the appointment of Michael Fowler as elementary school principal for the 2026 2027 school

129year. Second. >> Motion carries. >> Uh board president, if if I may ask uh Dr. Michael Fowler to be recognized. [applause] >> We move to item 11. >> All right. uh governing board president and governing board members. It is now my honor to uh request consideration for Miss Samantha Centenno. Sorry about that. So uh she was currently approved by the governing board to be an intimate and now we're through the interview process as well just like the other two administrators I've described uh to uh be appointed as the principal there at Daart High School. Motion to approve the appointment of Samantha Centenno Centenno as high school principal for the 2026 2027 school year. >> Second. >> Motion carries. Uh board president, if I may recognize [applause] We move to item 12. >> Board President, Governor

130Ward, uh members, uh this next recommendation, uh we also bring to you with the honor the for Mr. Michael Barola. Uh he is you had approved him as an interim assistant principal. He's currently placed at Willow Canyon High School. We are now asking for consideration for the appointment assistant principal uh at Willow Canyon High School. Motion to approve the appointment of Michael Bur Bolo. Barola, sorry, as high school assistant principal for the 2026 2027 school year. I apologize for messing up your name. >> I second. >> Motion carries. board president, governor, board members. Uh, this I believe my last one. >> Oh, sorry about that. >> Mr. Bolo, [applause] sorry. I was focusing on that. Uh, I misunciate his name as well sometimes. >> Feel bad. >> We move to uh item number 13. >>

131Governing board president, governing board members. Uh, I believe this is my last recommendation to the governing board. It's got that humming going on. Uh this uh next recommendation also is uh the governing board approved Miss Jessica Torres at Surprise who at currently surprise assistant principal as an interim. Previously we are now bringing to the governing board uh to be appointed as the assistant principal at Surprise. Uh so we're excited to bring this to the board. Motion to approve the appointment of Jessica Torres as elementary school assistant principal for the 2026 2027 school year. >> Second. >> Motion carries. >> And Jessica Torres, I won't forget you. [applause] Now we move to item number 14. Recommend. >> Thank you, Mr. President. It is not Mr. Matting Le's item. So with that, we are going to uh

132talk about our district calendars. We go in three threeear cycles. They are up again and that is by a calendar committee and that will be Mr. Mui who explains that process to you and presents the calendars. >> Thank you. Uh President Scavaro, members of the board, Dr. Croto. But we uh um we have began that uh uh that time where we start to look ahead um at the uh cal school calendars. Uh currently we have adopted all the way through 26 27. So the calendars that you're finding in front of you are 27 28 28 29 2930. Those three school years. So all the way through 2030 is what we were looking at. Um we obviously have to adhere to 180 school days. Um but when we bring the committee together um and we got

133this uh process uh that committee was made up of stakeholders that included parents, teachers uh um support staff, administration and district office representation. Um obviously throughout the entire district. Uh obviously we looked at we looked back at some of the information that had been provided to us in previous years. Um we have uh obviously studied uh calendars uh previously. This wasn't a new process before. Um the uh there's previous surveys that have been done. Um just a few years ago a survey was done within there. There's been uh elements of asking the community what they want. Um but that piece is why we we uh took that time to discuss that in the group. Um right now the co the calendars that you're seeing in front of you that uh that we've put together as

134a recommendation provide very much a similar mark uh that we would see uh presented in the current calendar. So we adhereed to much of that element. Um uh much of the committee discussion um was really looking at obviously the start and the end of the school year. Um it uh the committee also spent time discussing how long, you know, when you look at the the elements on there of how long each quarter is. Um we do have natural breaks built in between fall, winter, and spring breaks that are built in there that divide the quarters up. So you'll see a start early time in August and then you'll see the time towards the end of May that each of those calendar cycles um it it does uh it does um um come close to as

135you compare to other um other areas around the valley. Um I don't know that we every time we'll line up with the universities which is another totally different but we don't look at that to try to line up for families what we do um is is best for the for the DAR community. So that was the work the committee did. Um the uh the one thing I will tell you is is that in looking at it, we did pay close attention to um you'll see all three of those calendars are showing a start date um in that early August starting on the Wednesday. Um uh there's a there's a few reasons behind that. Some of that was coming so close to uh on 2728. You'll see that. You also noticed on 2728 in November, we

136have that November, we have Veterans Day on a Thursday and so we did we moved that because of that to not have the school on the Friday. Um, attendance was very difficult this year having the calendar set up where kids would go to school on Monday, then they had Tuesday off. You guys lived it this year. Those of you um that obviously even, you know, have kids in the district know what that looked like. It was a consideration on the committee and why they recommended they discussed that in 28 29 and 2930. you're you're really up against um uh the holidays of during winter break and and you get closer to you know obviously um when you start talking about holidays of Christmas and other things that came up in the conversation um you know

137in the holiday season of not running all the way up to as you see on 2829 um trying to uh conclude by the 21st and not going to Friday the 22nd that was that thought process and then in 2930 :30. Um the thought process was again uh not going all the way up and having it end on the 20th and instead of Friday the 21st. So those were the big considerations that were made in that aspect. Otherwise, very similar. I will uh stand for questions on the work of the committee and the and the calendars. >> I appreciate the overview because it actually answered my question about the the three leading days on each year and why it was that way. So thank you. That's the only question I had. >> Thank you. I have

138one stupid question obviously uh for graduation it's TBD right now and I understand that you know you [snorts] guys have to when this gets updated will it come back to the board for approval after we get the graduation dates or are we just good approving like this? >> Yeah, President Scabbara member Destitch. Uh a lot of times when when this happens obviously that's a big element that Dr. Croto will bring back to you. Yes, ma'am. And it's a it is a good question. I mean, obviously we've we've experienced, as you know, um the elements of where graduation venues, but we do have to get the date obviously set because um we have to make sure families are able to make those plans, especially for anybody who's traveling as well. So, uh so yes, that'll be

139that that that date is decided and and uh I know Dr. Croto could tell you further, but I know we try to have that those dates planned a few years in advance um when we do this uh and he's lived it a lot longer than I have on doing those, but that's generally the the intent >> and right now we live at the mercy of our facilities. So, it depends on facility availability and they don't usually book out that far. So, as soon as we get those, we will bring them back to to announce those officially. >> Thank you. I motion to approve the adoption of the school calendars for the 2027 28 28 29 2029 2030 school years as presented. >> Second. >> Motion carries. We we move to item number 15. >> Thank

140you, Mr. President. Uh tonight, um I ask that we set the uh executive session for my midyear evaluation. Um I will do a short presentation. We're going to do it a little differently this year. Um and um each of you, and I'll explain this more in January, but each of you will receive an email uh with me with a couple links. So, a link to a form and a link to all of the um midyear um data um artifacts. And that way you will uh be able to fill out that form ahead of time. That form will all be combined, all five of you into one form. We got love technology. So, we can do all that and then we will go into executive session and discuss that form. So, that will speed up that

141process. uh you'll be able to I will get to you um very beginning of January. I think I have like January 7th or 8th on there and our meeting is not till the 26th. So you will have um a few weeks to go over all that and make any notes or comments that you want on that into that form. So I'm asking tonight um to set that executive session for the midyear evaluation as our January meeting which I believe is January 26th. Motion to establish an executive session on January 26 of 2026 for the superintendent's midyear evaluation. >> Second. Motion carries. We move to section J, request for future agenda items. >> I have an item for the agenda. I would like to have a discussion on the it's called the CO2 learning center coalition

142which is a supplemental curriculum for science education to challenge the National Science Teaching Association's position statement on climate change and indoctrination. The CO2 Learning Center was established in 2015 to promote the scientific process of empirical, measurable, objective facts and a means for testing hypotheses that can be replicated and potentially disproven. Policies that do not adhere to the scientific process risk grave dam damage to the economy and science. More carbon dioxide from fossil fuels produces more plant life and food for the world. The coalition is comprised of more than 100 of the top experts in the world including physicists. >> Can I interrupt here? >> We can have it as agenda item and we'll do the discussion at the next meeting. This is just to add to the agenda. >> Okay. And I have packets of

143information to give to the governing board members and um Dr. Shelley Asai on this learning center. >> Okay. Thank you. [snorts] I would like to add to the future agenda items to look at the reviewing of our policies instead of on an annual basis. If they do not change, maybe do a three-year review, instead of every year getting all of these to look at and then if there's a law that changes it, then we would review it at that time for approval. So, I'd like a future item on that. Thank you. I would like a agenda item to review policy 1-105 board members conflict of interest. Uh in there just specifically we can uh review the what it considers a board member relative. It does not follow the um ARS 38502. It does a different

144definition. And I would also like to see if there could be a a conflict of interest policy piece against um not against but on if a board member has a relationship with a Daart employee. >> Okay. I will we'll get that on agenda and I will get a legal opinion for us. >> Thank you. We move to section K executive session. I motion to convene to an executive session. >> I second. Motion carries.