001e e e good evening at this time we'll begin the meeting and we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance thank you and we'll start with the uh item B1 recognitions and celebrations Dr croo thank you Madame President good evening tonight we have a special performance and Mr muy will introduce our guests thank you madam president members of the board Dr CTO a guests tonight we have from Will and Canyon High School under direction of Mr Logan McDonald their choir is here to perform so take it away sir thank you so he kids Legends and gods give them Applause we made it against [Music] but don't you let it bring you down breaking out of your small town show them what you're all about for the people in the contemplating hereo the atmosphere laugh me through
002your crocodile tears as your moment disaar hey kids leg and gods app OD choose yourap [Music] ofice louder louder you're not [Music] alone you're [Music] alone when the S comes on turn it up turn it up all choose yourap of [Music] choice say it louder for the people in the back [Applause] thank you so much for having excellent job thank you so much good J great job thank you have a great night also after the meeting Val concer is across the street go support the next up we have item C1 audience with individuals we do have two this evening I'll go ahead and read the statement 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 38-43
0031.01 action 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 decision at a later 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 and first we have Veronica Ramirez good evening uh board members my name is Veronica Ramirez and I'm speaking as a representative for surprise volleyball Academy also known as as SVA SVA has been present in the daart Unified School District for over 15 years and we've been very grateful for the dist for the district providing afford affordable facility usage
004for our small Sports Club adiana Ramirez the club director was notified by email on June 18th about the new fiscal year agreements and rates which originally did not seem out of the ordinary since the rates they've been paying are 25 an hour for a k through e gym rental and the doc still showed the same fees when we went to pay for our October facility JY rental we noticed that there was an extra $35 charge being applied per hour this 35 extra fee is under site specialist utility and custodial fee form States the utility and custodial fee applies during all events that include Patron viewing in addition to current fee structure um side note ours is not a patron viewing um more than half of sba's participants attend schools within the diart school district and
005we have been so grateful for the $25 an hour fee which has helped keep our fees low and has benefited many of the dice heart school athletes and families with with this 35 an hour charge in addition the hourly fee of 25 it has more than doubled that what we would be paying it is understandable if the price does not does need to be increased due to the utility but in regards to maintenance our club never leaves a mess or requires setup or takedown and we always pick up after ourselves again there's no mess that we create since we are there to use the courts for practice only this does not include Patron viewing as indicated above also the majority of the girls bring their own reusable water bottles so no trash is Left Behind
006prior to leaving our coaches do double check to make sure that everything the girls brought back is taken we are seeking to understand this additional fee and charge if and if it does apply to us in addition it also States 4 hours minimum which can be interpreted in many ways since the fee increases are passed by the board we were hoping to get clarification and understanding if this is a fee that we are required to pay can this be be decreased or even put on a slighting scale of degree of use for the site specialist utility and custodial fee again we are a small club that would like to keep our prices as affordable as possible to help provide provide the youth volleyball skills and to help the athletes grow not only in volleyball but
007also character and bring that skill and character back to the daart Unified School District Athletics thank you for your time uh she will be sending a follow-up email thank you next we have Steve Gilliam good evening resident of el marage 20 21 years and taxpayer uh it's a little constructive criticism tonight I take exception to the uh this thing that was put out uh dealing with the bond issue and I it's my personal opinion that the Kevin soter situation what he put in there is offensive to me and the people in El Mirage it talks about the surprise people what about the six schools in El Mirage what about the one down in Glendale Luke nothing about that it's only he's doing stuff uh for surprise you know PE kids and stuff that's offensive to
008me and it's all of us that are paying we pay the same percentage of taxes over there that everybody in Surprise pays so I take exception to that it seems funny that there was seven pros and one con to this situation and uh uh you know you it's talking about he's talking about uh increased security well I've got pictures I can show and there's a gentleman to my left in here that took care of the situation Surprise Elementary School unless none of you have been there it backs up to a wash that's not protected deviates transits all kinds of activity takes place in that wash right on the back side of that school elementary school I took three uh security people for a little walk of the school and showed them there was a tree
009and I have pictures of it I can show you there was a tree that was overgrown from the private property over to the school property and there was people living underneath there all they had to do is reach over and grab Susie or Bobby and pull them over the fence and have their way with them that tree shouldn't have been there it was eliminated there's a block fence that is right outside the little chain link G as you send the kids South to our neighborhood the block fence is 10 10 or 15 ft of has been tore down drug activity has been happening there and that's either HOA property or city of Elmore rise property and today tonight on the way over nobody's taken care of it it's still there the the blocks were removed
010but the vacant place the hole is still there on the way here also I looked at about 100 ft of solar panels that back up to the wash it's littered with rocks on it because the deviants go down there and Chuck The Rocks right on it who put a solar panels back there on that I know it was nobody in here I don't think but whoever put them there for whatever reason 100 yards away from the school was stupid the kids don't go inne there for shade but the Deviant throw rocks on top of it and they're breaking it that's uh it's not acceptable that you want more money to do what you can't do in the first place if you can't take care of a you don't move on to to Z and start
011doing a new thing new projects new new this new that if you don't maintain what you got don't start any new stuff thank you Mr Gilliam thank you that's all we have okay thank you and Dr curo can you um follow up with the two speakers tonight as well as the board uh yes Madam president I will be glad to do that great thank you so much all right moving to D2 superintendent update thank you madam president well we've had a great week and some great times um in our district and so um beginning of this week we had uh a huge celebration in Shadow Ridge High School for the National Blue Ribbon um and I know we many of you joined and and also saw the news coverage on that and our state superintendent
012was out there to celebrate the school and and the kids had a huge um event on campus and did a great job celebrating their success and and we're proud of them so congratulations to them uh just yesterday our principal of Mountain View Elementary Miss Debbie Cruz she was awarded the GCU principal the month award from Grand Canyon University so they came to the principal meeting and award her that um so congratulations to Debbie and she was nominated by her faculty and staff so um it's a great great thing there and uh next week coming up um is fall break the much awaited fall break so we hope the temperatures start to drop and everybody can enjoy their fall break and come back to finish out the year so that's all I have thank you next
013we have governing board update let's see um I attended the turf dedication at Valley Vista High School so that now all the high schools have a a beautiful Turf now for the for all of their activities um I also went to the Golden Rule Interfaith breakfast and attended one of the informational hearings on the bond and thank you Dr Cotto and your cabinet for the presentation and education about the bond and answering all the residents questions um I also attend attended the Blue Ribbon honor celebration at Shadow Ridge High School and thank you to Mr horn for coming and presenting the plaque and October is principal's month so we have some several amazing principles in the audience tonight and for those that aren't here but regardless thank you to all of you for what you
014do every single day and congratulations to Miss Cruz um I have quite the list so be prepared um on the 20th of September I also attended the Valley Vista field dedication um beautiful field congratulations to Valley Vista and shout out to the culinary team the food that they that they served was it was outstanding and so was their service so congratulations to them um I attended the um um governing board candidate meeting so good luck to our candidates that are running um then I went to a couple School visits um our first one was on the 25th with uh Kingswood and I just want to say thank you um for the great discussions and uh visiting with all the staff and the kids so we had a good time um also did a school visit
015with Valley Vista um that was that was wonderful too had great discussions with everybody and then that evening I attended a drug presentation um also at Valley Vista um and thank you to the SRO that attended um it's it was it was nice to see um their participation their knowledge um information that they that they gave to the community so thank you um and then I also attended the Shadow Ridge Blue Ribbon ceremony and am so excited for them that that is a great honor um so congratulations to the students staff and parents so good job for your your hard work and dedication so it paid off thank you I would also like to say congratulations to Shadow on achieving Blue Ribbon School status that's quite quite an honor so congratulations to your staff and
016your students very nice um I also attended the candidate meeting the board candidate meeting a couple weeks ago right been a couple weeks um very informational thank you to cabinet and to Dr Coto for sharing that information with our candidates I feel like it's it's always good for candidates to know kind of what they're stepping into and I would just encourage everybody just to get out and vote um it's very important that you vote so please vote thank you apologize for the repetition but I also attended the Valley Vista field dedication um want to Echo M Drake's sentiment in regard to the wonderful job that they did um Mr Frasier and his team it was just beautifully set up um The Culinary team or um class and and Club um Not only was a food
017great but just their presentation I mean the tables were decorated beautifully it just definitely above and beyond um so it was a great evening and it was nice to dedicate that field um long awaited um also want to congratulate principal Hester and her whole team at Shadow Ridge for being named National Blue Ribbon School that's such a huge accomplishment and it's exciting that we have a Blue Ribbon School in our district so congratulations to them as well as to Mountain View's principal Debbie Cruz for being named uh Grand Canon University's principal of the month so lots of things to celebrate and I hope you all have a relaxing and fun fall break thank you I'm probably going to be a little bit out of order here um I also attended uh one of the bond
018presentations uh this one was at the Assante Library it was great information presented and very well received lots of questions um and our cabinet was was there and ready to to answer them I don't why am I echoing so much um I also attended the shadow rid Blue Ribbon uh award ceremony and big thank you to superintendent horn for being present there to present um Mrs huster with that award and and Shadow Ridge with that award congratulations to all of our students and staff and parents uh I also attended two of the um two of the four drug awareness presentations uh these were at Willow Canyon and Valley Vista great information presented by our safety team as well as several SCH resource officers that were present and just great information for any parents there's still
019one coming up I believe at diart high school and that is just after the fall break so if you are interested it's it's great information I also attended the Valley Vista um Turf ribbon cutting uh ceremony that was excellent and as you can tell the food was great um this morning I attended the freedom TR quarterly recognition for students and it was just such a great uh morning spending spent with our students that have worked really hard for that uh and that is all I have thank you all right uh moving to the consent agenda item item E1 I will entertain a motion I move the governing board approv consent agenda items as presented motion carries moving to item G1 Dr Coto thank you madam president uh tonight we continue on with our continuous Improvement
020reports um and Dr asai will introduce our guests good evening Madame President members of the board it is my pleasure to introduce Miss Ginger Richards the proud principal of simaran Springs hi everyone good evening Madam president governing board Dr Coto and cabinet my name is ginger Richards and I am the very proud principal of Simon Springs Middle School I would like to share with you the latest news coming out of simron Springs from our last year so these are our aasa and AI proficiency data academics overall increase School average for ELA was 7% and that is 14% over over the state average we had a very small decrease in math by 2% but we still maintained a 6% over the state average we had a small even smaller decrease in science by 1% but a
021still an 8% over the state average our aasa growth data we are proud of our Ela growth data with two of our teachers being ranked the second highest in the district district for their growth at their respective grade levels in math we were very close to the 1.0 growth goal with a 0.93 we continue to focus on math improvement with our students which we will talk about later in more detail I do want to mention that two of my math teachers kind of like Ela were number two and number three respectively um in their grade levels um in the district and as for growth we really really want to celebrate um my e8th grade math who had a growth score average of 1.48 for our aella um the aella test um is tests our English
022language Learners and monitors their growth in areas of speaking Reading Writing and listening we are tremendously proud of our success last year yes we only had 13 students who qualified to take the aella but 46% of those students showed Proficiency in English and tested out of the aella so we're very proud of that we do have three um Improvement goals of course we have academic um safety and culture all of these enhance our um school and make our school um an environment in which students can learn and grow every day for the entire year we do have challenges though um we are listing um opening of a new school and realigned to more High School like structure and most of those challenges were taken care of last summer before the school even opened so we
023worked very hard over the summer to ensure that we had the new opening of our true six through eight Middle School um as for the academic goals we plan to grow proficiency of course in math and science um we are implementing the collaborative team structures in addition to working on best practices during our principal meetings thanks to Shelly and her team and we also have coaching from Solutions tree and we really want to thank the district for providing the solutions Street coaching it's been a great help for intervention in math we work to focus students um for Math and Ela in what we call our Derby Day intervention we use many different data points to focus on students who need intervention and schedule them into Derby Day uh Derby Day is like um stormat at
024Valley Vista or uh what is the one at Shadow called stride thank you stride at at shadow um additionally we have increased our walkthroughs and discussions with science teachers and we utilize our science curriculum Specialists to assist with planning and test prep as for celebrations I could talk the rest of the evening about my school because I think that everything that we're doing there is continuing the growth of our samron Springs Middle School into a model middle school but some of the biggest celebrations that we have are the Derby Day um once you hit the Middle School level it is difficult to schedule in great intervention time and I think we did a fantastic job of that and our teachers are really getting used to choosing kids and making sure that we are looking at
025by standard by student who needs to be in which intervention class for Derby Day and then rewarding those who um are doing very well with um enrichment strategies so that is going excellent of course we um integrated approximately 300 new students into our school this year and about 36 new staff members which is half of our staff is brand new to our our our school campus this year um also we have as our Ela success is over the one point growth data and aella almost tripled the number of students in reclassifying so both of those are huge celebrations for us as well um and as I always say at the end of the announcements at Simon that's the news and go stallions I will stand for questions at this time thank you I I I
026think it's incredible growth on especially with the aella the kids are testing out that's that's amazing um I do have a question sure um how how are the students embracing the true Middle School model like how how is that I is it seems to be a very positive thing is that what you're seeing from I perspective would invite you to come walk my campus at any time during any day and especially hang out at lunches and talk with the students I do that every day myself so I think I'm a little bit biased but every time I ask how they like the Middle School model they're like it it's great it's really different um the hallways are pretty crowded but but they're like we get to eat cheeseburgers every day like they you know and
027they're all over the building now um instead of just you know one hallway or the younger kids in the bottom hallway and the older kids in the upper hallway they are all over that building and they're really getting used to what it's going to be like in high school so they're really enjoying it it I can tell you I was so stressed about opening this school year and um it has been the most positive smooth this opening in my seven years of being a principal at simron Springs so it's been really fantastic that's wonderful to hear thank you just want to say congratulations on your great scores and I think you should you should share the names of these wonderful teachers you second in the district did you say and for growth uh yes the
028ELA is two teachers that were um second for growth that would be um Lara Douglas and one teacher who is now at Valley Vista that was Amanda Grady so both of those um and then in math is our eighth grade math Mr Kirchner and our sixth grade math teacher um Michael Church wow well congratulations to them you're very lucky to have them as I'm sure you know and I'm very thankful to have them in our district as well they're definitely driving positive change academically and probably more than just academically I'm sure they're just making a great impact so thank you for sharing their names and um for all the great work that you're doing sure absolutely thank you congratulations as everyone has said um I really love that you have as a celebration the integration
029of the 300 new students and you didn't make that a challenge so I'm so impressed with that um I I'm loving to see the numbers um you know with with positive growth and um well above the state average so thank you so much for all of you all that you're doing well thank you it's a pleasure I love it every day thank you yeah I also want to just piggyback fantastic job the numbers are wonderful keep up the good work your staff's doing wonderful thank you thank you and next we have the feeder school to simron Springs the incredible St Brown principal of Western Peaks Elementary good evening Madame President board members Dr Coto and cabinet I am very uh proud to be here today and uh talk to you about our uh School Improvement
030that we've been going through at Western Peaks our continued Improvement um let's see here okay there we go I know how to work it um on our aasa this year uh in or this past year in ela and math we did go down slightly from the year before that um 3% in ela and 1% in math however we still remain um 20% above the state average in ela and 27% above average in math so while we don't want to go down we are happy we are staying well above and have a goal to increase that much more we do not have ai for last year because we were just a K4 school last year um but we're excited because now we have fifth grade and so um we will be able to include that data
031for next year for our growth on the asasa we did have the medium average growth um slightly above the state average 1.09 for ELA and 1.1 for math so we were um happy with that growth and on our aella we had just under 30 kids um who qualify for El and we are incredibly proud of the growth that we made with the aella uh 27% of our students um were immediate were intermediate and we went on proficient from 11% in the 2022 23 year to to 38% proficient last year and so we are just tremendously proud of that growth in Proficiency in language some of our celebrations are that we are well above State average in ela and math we continue to push ourselves to improve ourselves we know we're doing better than the state
032average but we want to do better than we've done each year before that uh we also have made growth in both Ela and math and the celebration with the zel proficiency um that it's just phenomenal um I remember when Dr asai called me and told me of our proficiency level and I was like Wow and she said what are you guys doing and and truly we have just honed in on that targeted El instruction or English instruction and the integrated instruction in every classroom and it has paid off because our students are definitely benefiting from that we also I didn't think about it but as I listened to Ginger share about uh Simon We with the addition of fifth grade it feels like we really don't have different people it's our same kids that were
033from fourth grade just as fifth graders now but we did increase with um teachers so we have some new teachers and it's the K5 model is going very well and we love having everyone it's it it just feels like they've always been there even our teachers um in thinking of challenges I wanted to be able to talk about really what our biggest challenge is that I think is affecting us overall as a school and that is that um we have continued to have a large number of students needing tier 2 instruction um tier 2 intervention and so we had to really get down and look at the why of that why do so many kids need intervention why is that tier one that should work for the majority of students not working for enough and
034so this year to support that we are doing professional development for um using the Strategic instructional design that we've learned through spark teaching them um how to in the middle of their lesson use ramp which stands for reteach abandon move on or practice and really getting into being able to pull small groups make adjustments on the fly during tier one instruction and um extend for those kids who already have it so that we can really catch more kids during tier one before we move on to tier two also um having all teachers align their instructional objective learning activities and formative assessments to the standards we've been very heavily focused on that and having the teachers pull small groups during tier one our teachers have been phenomenal with tier 2 small groups um but not all
035doing it during tier one so we've been looking at how to structure their tier one time how to lesson plan to create that time for small groups during tier one so that's how we've we are addressing it uh for our goal we have um a few different academic goals because we don't want to just focus on our third through fifth graders who are taking the assessments but we want to focus on the K2 kids also because we know that we have to build the foundation for them to do better when they get to third and fourth and fifth grade so we want to have 1% or 1.0 or greater growth uh for ELA and math for fourth and fifth grades for ELA and math proficiency we want to increase by 3% or more we also
036wanted to look at our third grade minimally proficient Ela students and we want to decrease that number by 10% this year because we did not gain those points last year from the aasa um all also we want uh at least 55% of fifth grade students to be proficient in science this is our Baseline year and um so of course we want to increase that but we want to start to make sure at least 55% do that and then we want 20% of our yell students to reclassify to a higher proficiency level and we want our Kinder through third grade students to increase the percent of students at or above Benchmark by 5% by the end of the year uh some things that we're doing to make sure that that happens is through tier one small
037groups intervention groups during tier 2 our PLC teams are creating smart goals for each unit that they um plan for Math and Ela and then each PLC team is also identifying a specific teaching strategy that they will all employ during that unit to um help improve instruction as well and then our teachers and students are tracked Mastery of the essential standards so students have their own tracking sheets and then teachers are tracking that as well so that we can make sure all of our students uh reach that Mastery level this is some examples of how they track so this is like um first and second grade students tracking their own data and then this is higher level this is fourth grade students tracking their own data and they also set their own goals too so
038for goal two we want to um decrease behaviors in the classroom and increase student engagement and so last year when we were examining our student discipline uh we saw that most of the behaviors most of the referrals were the incidents were occurring in the classroom and that alarmed us because we know with really good classroom management we should not have that high of behaviors and so we we are focusing by increasing student engagement to keep kids very engaged and busy in class but also doing work with our teachers on healthy classrooms and then last summer um at the PLC Summit we learned about using the PLC at work process to teach essential behaviors and then to provide interventions for students and so we are also implementing that this year and then goal three is to
039increase our percent of parents and staff who would likely or very likely recommend our school from 84% to 87% and in addition to all of the wonderful things we do at at the uh Western Peaks Elementary School we also are doing things like really trying our best no matter who they're working with who a parent a visitor works with that they're having excellent customer service um that we are supporting our staff because sometimes they feel very overwhelmed and stressed and so as administ ation myself and my assistant principal we work really hard to make sure they feel supported and we can do whatever we can to help them and then also we um have multiple student extracurricular clubs at the K5 school to get our kids very involved in their school because we think if
040we can build that foundation in K5 then as they go into middle school and into high school they will be set up to be active participants of their school community and and so we are going to continue doing that with multiple types of clubs and with that I'll stand for questions that was amazing is that was that our last CIP of the year no okay I gonna say well you said the bar high I'll tell you great job than um the way that you I love all of your measurable goal I mean how you made each goal very measurable by your percentages throughout um the fact you took so much time to really do a deep dive into why there's a larger number of students in need of tier 2 intervention and then my goodness
041that aella proficiency that's just amazing thank you great job thanks for everything that you're doing thank you I will also say thank you for all your hard work I mean 60% average proficiency for laa and math is a lot higher than we see you know across the state in different areas um and especially with what we learned through the study session that the test is kind of rigged to where you don't get to be proficient so I you know and I I feel like maybe we should do an information item on that for everybody because looking at and seeing that 60% of your students demon demonstrated proficiency on this test doesn't mean that that more students weren't proficient in their objectives in their state standards but this this is a very significant achievement especially for
042a test that's designed to I don't know I feel like it's basically rigged itself kind of um but that's that's incredible and thank you for accepting our fifth grade students and our K5 school so we can actually have a true Middle School I I feel like there's just such a big difference between fifth grade and sixth grade yes and if if you've ever taught freshman if you've ever taught freshman who come from a K8 school they're just they're just fun because they don't know how to be at high school they just don't you know they've been babied from this classroom to this classroom to this classroom and they they haven't been taught okay this is how you behave in the Halls you walk by yourself and this is what you do you know so I
043really appreciate you and Miss Richards for I guess kind of pioneering or piloting that in our district I know that's kind of a big undertaking for you both but I just thank you thank you for doing that it's all it's my pleasure we love having our kids another year longer we we always hate to say goodbye to them um but and we're doing everything that we can to kind of start preparing them for that middle school so they kind of have their own hallway fifth grade does away from everyone else and uh they're switching classes and things like that so we're trying to ease them into that Middle School model thank you and I just wanted to say this is this is wonderful your your numbers your goals everything is there anything else that we
044can do to help you with the tier two is there anything else that you know the district can help you with I know you guys kind of have this handled but if if you have a lot of students that are are needing this if there's anything else we can help you with you know um I'll have to think about that and and follow up with you if I can yeah um I know you know our teachers work so hard every single one of them um and and we have you know we follow that District scope and sequence and we we have a it's a pretty rigorous schedule um sometimes I think if we were able to have a few more days you know on certain Concepts um we might be able to reach some more
045kids but overall each teachers doing everything in their power to work with the kids before school after school during intervention time um so I think it's just a matter of helping you know not everything has to be taught whole group and and I think that's it's just kind of an an understanding and moving into that with all of our teachers some of our teachers Do It um but not all and so you know they're they're doing a great job of making those adjustments this year I have fantastic teachers I was going to suggest before or after school but if they're already working at that that's awesome yeah great absolutely thank you thank you thank you so much everything that everyone has already said but I just also want to ress you know I really appreciate
046the level of detail that you put into this thank you thank you okay okay moving to item G2 Dr croo thank you madam president uh tonight uh Miss pel will bring to you um the expenditure analysis of our M override so not to be confused with the bond but we currently have an override this is is required by law that we do this every year and she report out so M Mel it is yours thank you Dr CTO Madam president members of the board cabinet and Community um as Dr CTO mentioned tonight I have the information related to our M override it is a voter approved initiative um and it provides additional supports for our students so first of all I do want to thank the take the opportunity to thank our community and our
047taxpayers for their support in providing this additional funding source so why the meeting um we are uh required by Statute 15481 to share this information a public meeting between those dates of September 1st and October 31st at which um we provide an update on the programs that are being funded through the override and so it allows an opportunity for our community to be informed on this initiative so daar as mentioned it currently has an override in place it is uh approved for 15% of our Revenue control limit um for fiscal year 24 that that amount is noted there about $24.5 million is what is funded and added to the maintenance and operations budget capacity limit it is approved for a total of s years um however as noted there it is funded for the First
048full five years so it was implemented in um fiscal year 2122 was year 1 we are currently in year four of that override on that timeline and so um it's approved for full funding through 2526 if not approved for continuation it does start phasing out by a third every year uh with it being fully phased out after fiscal year 2728 so the purpose of our approved maintenance and operation override is noted there um it supports our current programs as well as it focuses on expenses such as t uh teacher salaries and benefits and so um these are the items that were noted in the voter pamphlet at the time um and so we'll go over in a little bit more detail of the funding um supporting those those areas so as a reminder the override
049is funded through maintenance and operations so it cannot be used for any Capital items this is solely um teacher salaries benefit benefits staff salaries and benefits as well as any program costs that are non- capital items um so in fiscal year 2425 the override was spent in those areas identified here in the pamphlet and we see about 2.2 million provided for compensation for uh funding for teachers class siiz reduction was about uh 9.6 million of the override and it's really to maintain the current levels that are in place right now that are funded um through the override knowing that if it wasn't in place we would potentially have to look at those ratios and those class sizes um as was no is it would no longer be supported um by this additional almost $10 million
050the reading and math supports as well as Music Arts and Athletics are provided um account for about 10.2 million of the override amount and full day K so um that portion that's supported by the override accounts for half the FTE of our kindergarten teachers and so that totals $2.5 million so in total we see those outlined expenses is a $24.5 million for the fiscal year 2324 and as noted the override is supported through a secondary tax rate and so this slide provides a history over the last nine years you see um in in fiscal year TW sorry 20156 is when it was starting to get phased out and so that's why you see that lower amount it was renewed and so now in 2324 is at 24.5 for a126 per 100 assessed valuation and so
051um in fiscal year 2425 um just for context currently it's a $25.5 million for do8 um and so at this point that's just a brief update on our override but I'd be more than happy to answer any questions I don't know if you can answer this but with the um the 9.6 million portion that goes towards the class size reduction can you give us a comparison of what that would look like with and without the override maybe like an [Music] average I'd have to because in general that amount is about 130 teachers or so and so to go through we'd really have to analyze what that ratio would look like um okay really kind of revisiting what that classroom size structure would be um so I don't want to necessarily provide one at this level
052because it would vary also based on grade levels and a K8 versus a high school level too okay but it would have an impact since it funds a pretty significant amount of teachers in there it's about 10 she said 30 maybe a little bit more up to 160 teachers that's what that 9.6 is equivalent to right but we couldn't say like okay right now I'm just going to throw out numbers these are not real right now we have a average classroom size of 28 it might go up to X we don't we don't have that figure Madam president uh off the top of our heads we don't uh we'd have to go through and and see where the reductions would be in those hund and we'll just call it 50ish teachers um they would go
053up significantly I can tell you that I mean just by sheer numbers but we can figure that out yeah just curious okay any other questions okay thank you so much for the presentation I haven't moved yet um in regard to revisiting that the the override as far as um discussing whether or not that would go on a ballot again when would those conversations start happening Madam president um member brard um well the next year is the last year of that so it would have to it's going to actually start pretty soon um and we need to have that discussion of whether we are going going to put that committee back if you remember the committee that we had discuss both and they did discuss that so um we need to decide if we want to
054reconvene that committee or we want to start with a whole new one uh the nice thing is uh that committee that looked at the two issues they know a lot of background on it already so um that that will be coming in the next few months okay because we need to be ready to go into the cycle for obviously the following election cycle okay thank you love call for questions all right thank you moving to action discussion H2 Dr Coto H1 I so sorry H1 thank you madam president um tonight you might have seen the smile on Mary Dell's face because she gets to do the annual financial report tonight and that's like the Super Bowl of her year so um with that um we have Miss Bidell again doing our AFR thank you Dr
055Cotto again Madam president members of the board cabinet and Community tonight yes I am very pleased to be presenting um our financial summary information for the 2324 fiscal year it is a very long process um I do before I get started really want to um give a shout out to a few of our finance staff back there one of our budget analysts and accounting coordinator they do the heavy lifting so I've really got to give them um commend them for all their hard work it's a very detailed process all of this while last week we had our external Auditors here too so it's a simultaneously working on on reports it just really compiles all of the general ledger for the fiscal year so we'll briefly go over that but would be remiss if I did
056not thank them for all their hard work so again our annual financial report it provides information on all the district's finan cial activity for this past fiscal year uh we compile it as required by the board to um to be approved by the board by October 15th and so after the board's review we will then be submitting it to ad by that deadline um at that point once it's submitted to ad it then starts being reviewed reviewed by a number of of agencies really the auditor general then starts reviewing it to be sure that we're um in financial compliance they look to make sure the coding is accurate they then start calculating their dollars in the classroom report so and then a lot of the information on we we use to compile our annual comprehensive
057financial report statements which is what we then submit for Awards as well so this is really just the the starting point for all of the financial uh reports that come from that point on so we'll Begin by reviewing just high level um some of our our main funds so maintenance and operations as you know that is our largest fund so it accounts for our salaries and benefits it accounts for um supplies purchase Services utilities Transportation costs really this is the operating um backbone for the entire district and so here we see the breakdown by program area so regular education accounted for 67.8% of the budget um expenditures special ad was 25.5 Transportation accounted for 6.2 and the K3 reading program was 0.5 um% of the of the total expenditures so in total you see the
058budget that had been approved for fiscal year 2324 was at 22.7 million with actual expenditures of 183.2 so it did leave approximately a 19 and a half million budget balance but I do want to um just kind of remind on the board as you previously remember we did approve or the government board approved that retention stien to be paid out later this fall so there is a big uh portion of that that is earmarked specifically for that retention stien so that'll be paid out um later next month as well as um a few months ago a fund balance policy was approved by the governing board and that was in order for us to start increasing and targeting a reserve amount from our budget in order to ensure that we are well poised for just any
059changes in in funding and so this is definitely targeting towards that goal that we've that we've set our unrestricted Capital fund that is um what is also known as District additional assistance this is the main piece that we receive from um the state we usually receive about $13 million um that budget amount of 19.8 accounted for the prior years's carry forward so that's what you see um total expenditures was 14 million so we are carrying over about 5.8 million just to continue to support that fund's capital projects and ensure that we also leave a healthy Reserve just in case of any unanticipated expenses in capital the emergency building renewal grant program that's the funding that we receive through applying to the state um to the school facilities board um this had 7. million 7.4 million
060in approved projects and you see about 7.2 million in expenditures with just a little small amount that's going to be um left over to complete any um construction and progress related to those programs classroom site fund had a $37.4 million budget with 15.6 million in actual expenditures and again the the restrictions on this one is we utilize the fund primarily for salaries and compensation for um to eligible staff um we are continuously looking at this fund to see if we can expand its um its far-reaching ability and ensure that it's being used according to the usfr allowable restrictions um but we will continue to see what other programs we can continue to pay from this funding source and then here's the summary of um our special programs or I'm sorry our special projects funds so
061this includes our federal grants state grants Food Service cash funds as well as the instructional Improvement and so really just wanted to highlight the largest one there is the federal grants you see was about 31 and a half million in budget with 29.3 in expenditures and so the the largest part of that amount is related to Esser which as we know it finalized its activity in fiscal year 2324 and then here's just a couple other just um informational areas so our bonds outstanding we did pay um from fiscal year 23 of 69.4 currently at June 30th we have 54.4 million remaining in bonds outstanding and then also just a small thing to not is a part of our goal D is just to identify and maximize any additional resources that we can um find and
062so we do have a 146,000 small amount but we try to always just find additional Revenue that to um it's part of our ongoing operations of paying our vendors but we actually do receive uh a small rebate if we pay through an Electronics fund transfer to our vendor so it's a little bit more work but it does provide still additional funding source to to supplement any additional needs that the district may have and then as mentioned I wanted to just touch a little bit on this this is our estimated um classroom spending report so when we finalize this this is what the auditor general uses to start compiling an estimated District um spending report and so that report typically comes out in late January and I know that the governing board receives communication on that
063um but we like to see where do we think things are going to land and so our finance department does an excellent job of just estimating based on all the data um and they're always right on with projections so we really anticipate these being accurate figures um once the report comes out in a few months um so it's broken down here into two main areas so they provide the report in classroom spending which they consider to be those functions they're on the left hand side instruction student support and instructional support and then they look at how much we spent in non-classroom spending so there you see the bottom section of administration plant operations Food Service as well as transportation and so when combining those three top functions we estimate that the classroom spending will be
064about 71.5% so slight decrease from the prior fiscal year and then the non-classroom spending would be about 28.5% um so a slight increase from the prior fiscal year so it's always important when we look at this we want to ensure does this reflect what we expected does this show because the the percentages tell a story but is it the story that we intended to tell and it really is because when we look at it we know that in fiscal year 23 we had increased classroom spending because we had a lot more expenses related to Esser that were're going in for instructional supplies we were purchasing instructional technology for our students Chromebooks teacher devices things like that and so we had a significantly less amount this year in fiscal year 24 related to that so we
065would expect to see a dip um and then conversely on the non-classroom spending that amount increase makes sense considering the increased efforts we've had in security so we purchased security cameras we purchased um you expenses related to school resource officers those things while they are Grant funded we funnel those expenses through the district and so it does hit this report so it makes sense that we would have a non-classroom spending increase while having a related classroom spending decrease not significant I'm still happy to see that it is above the state average um but this does help us to see that the story makes sense based on what the goals of the district have been has been and what our Focus has been this this past fiscal year and as always our financial reports are we
066want to ensure Financial transparency to our community so um this website is still out there it points also to um ad once we upload it it will it will take you directly to the ad website um and the reports are always there um for public viewing and any questions that may come up and at this time I will take any questions from the board um I'm sure we've talked about I know we've talked about this before but could you please clarify when we when you talk about the classroom site fund you said salaries and compensation are elig for only certain eligible staff so yes Madam president member member yes so that amount is intended to be used um as you as you know we do have to follow within the uniform system of financial records
067specific requirements for that for that funding source so that fund is intended to be used for class size reduction teacher compensation increases it could include the base pay performance pay component um teacher development um those type of expenses so we can't take those monies and use really outside the classroom they've now expanded um a little bit more to provide student support services so as you recall in fiscal year so our current fiscal year we actually now have our student support technicians um that are going that are currently being funded out of that out of that um fund that wasn't an option years past but now that they've expanded it to that student support we wanted to really maximize and capitalize on that availability welcome um I I think what I heard you say was that
068the non-classroom spending had a had an increase because because of the maybe the focus on safety and so even though some of those positions are are Grant funded it's still going to increase that that percentage correct Madam even though even even if we're not paying for it Madam president that's correct and so we received still we are um recipients of these federal federal dollars and so even though we um we receive well it it really kind of ACC as all of our other grants right so we receive it as federal revenue received on behalf of the district and then we do that adjustment to show that that expense is really we're beneficiaries of this of this funding source and so while the original funds doesn't flow through our district we still like all of our
069other grants that we receive we still have to show all the activity through our through our general ledger system to to show really full transparency of everything that is occurring within the district's activity right but that's not captured on the actual report though like with ad corre correct I'm sorry what's not captured sorry if you don't mind clarify yeah so if somebody was were to look at it year-over-year that that number is not going to be captured it's not going to say oh well they had an had an increasing Grant Madam president that's nowhere on the report correct correct so what the report will show when you see the auditor general report and I I like the pie chart form but they and they have something similar to it but what it will show is
070really what you'll see kind of on the right hand side it just shows classroom spending is this and now non-classroom spending is that and so there's not necessarily that context provided to State this is why um those are just things that we we like to analyze within the finance department to ensure that does this reflect what was intended what what we would have expected to see um and for analytics we like to ensure that it it makes sense and so when we looked at what functions were increasing and decreasing it was specifically attributed to those those two main items but um and as you see that the security officers and any kind of Security expenses that's going to be in that section of plant operations on the chart of accounts that's where those expenses get
071get put in so it just it's looked as as a non-classroom expense got it thank you very much welcome okay thank you I move to approve the annual finan report and related Financial reports for fiscal year 23 24 second motion carries okay now we're moving to item H2 Dr CTO thank you madam president uh tonight we start um our first board meeting with uh looking at our policies so last meeting or the meeting before that we adopted all the changes that came from the trust tonight we are starting our policy monitoring which looks at each section we are starting with chapter 5 and we have a few changes for some policies in chapter 5 and Dr asai will highlight those changes good evening again Madame President members of the board tonight Administration is recommending minor
072edits to 5201 5203 5207 and 5410 5201 reads no flag other than the United States of America and state of Arizona may be displayed on school grounds including classrooms and unless it is country state or United States military flag used solely for educational purposes within the adopted curriculum any other flag must be approved by the superintendent or designate prior to displaying if and only if it is used for educational purposes and only during related instructional periods flags of higher education institutions School flags penants and awards representing academic and extracurricular Awards shall be permitted as part of the College and Career program 5203 makes changes to clarify language regarding a valuation of students as an example the IEP team has been changed to the Met team for evaluations while IEP team is not incorrect as most
073are members of the Met it is more accurate 5207 defines a supplemental material and clarifies that the vetting form should be filled out and approved prior to use this aligns with the practice we're currently using 5410 clarifies language in regards to water it formerly read student athletes and now reads all students participating in a district sponsored event and those are the changes proposed thank you and thank you Dr Coto um and Dr asai and whoever else was involved in getting these um these changes made any questions on anything no I just Echo the words of thanks and also um specifically thanking Dr Coto for working hard on the 5201 that was something that I felt was very important and I appreciated the support and his hard work in um just making sure that our country's
074flag is um at the Forefront and given the honor that it deserves and um as far as as in regard to the rest of it in there as well I think it's well written and I appreciate your work on that okay I move to approve the revisions to policies as presented motion carries next we have item i1 request for future agenda items I would like to request an information item on our state test based on the information that we learned at our study session um I don't know if it's got to be we don't I don't know if we need an ad rep or I don't know if they can do that again but I feel like it would be information for everybody because when you here State Testing you think one thing standardized test
075but what actually occurs the actual test is entirely different so I feel like that would be a very good conversation for us to have anything else okay thank you moving to to J1 I move to adjourn the meeting head back we are adjourned thank you