Dysart Governing Board Meeting - August 22, 2024

001e e e good evening at this time I'll call the meeting to order and we'll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you and let the record reflect that all board members are present first up uh we have the public hearing for Di Arts instructional time model DR Coto thank you Madame President before we get to our awesome band performance we have to do a little business so Dr asai will um talk about our daer instructional time model good evening Madame President members of the board the state requ reques that the board approve an instructional time model when instruction will be occurring in a non-traditional

002way we do this at our high schools when we administer the Aspire and act we have nth and 11th graders attend school sophomores and seniors are normally off campus the teacher is required to provide an online assignment and provide office hours for those days okay and this ass shares our our funding um and we have to present this twice for any comments any public and then before we bring it to the governing board um for a vote so it will come one other time if there's any um comments we can ask for comments and move from there or questions from the governing board too at this time I'll open it up for public comment any questions or discussion from the board okay all right we'll proceed with our regular meeting uh first up we have

003a band performance thank you Madame President um Mr mcy will introduce our guests for an awesome performance thank you madam president members of the board Dr croto and guests we are very happy tonight to have the Shadow Ridge marching band with us under the direction of Mr Kerwin for we will now turn it [Applause] over and just as a little side note to this the uh we're going to get to see the marching band at their first home game which is coming up on September 6th so we're looking forward to that e [Music] sh [Music] w [Music] [Applause] thank you so much for the band and the color guard it's so exciting to see um music being performed in our boardroom again thank you give for the moment a ready okay all right uh moving

004on to item C2 Dr Coto thank you madam president uh tonight we have another um award or presentation to um celebrate and Miss Vel is going to introduce this one thank you Dr Coto good evening Madame President members of the board cabinet and Comm Community tonight I am proud to share that the district has once again uh been awarded both the association of school business officials International as well as the government Finance Officers Association um excellence in financial reported reporting related to our annual comprehensive Financial reports for the fiscal year end of 2023 and so we know every year we submit our financial reports for review it's an external um panel that reviews and they they look at it to ensure that it meets the high standards of financial reporting um they look at our

005commitment to financial trans transparency and so they really are the highest forms of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting and so um I do want to thank the entire finance department I I know firsthand just how much work goes into gathering this information and ensuring we do get provide accurate um financial information for the needs of our community and that we continue to meet those high standards and so we do have the awards here with us tonight we will be um putting them out in the lobby um cases as well for for public viewing thank you m Mel we would like to get a picture too with the plaque and the governing board and I'm a great honor to have uh the financial responsibility and transparency so if we could get

006up in front we'll take a quick picture with the plaque and then we will move on the [Applause] again congratulations um to the finance department on a job well done and thank you for everything you do we appreciate that just out of curiosity how long have we been receiving this award it it seems like we get it every year um the asbo award and correct me if I'm wrong I want to say it's been 29 years and the gfoa we're on our 20th year now amazing congratulations I will have to say too as a board member it's just such a relief to have such confidence and such a competent team and you guys always work so hard just really appreciate all of you so thank you so much all right moving to item D1 audience

007with individuals I don't believe we have any oh we do okay oh no no sorry we do not we do not have any this evening we're just so excited about this uh Finance [Laughter] award okay uh moving on to item E1 um do we have a student update we do Madame President and we are excited about that um for our first student update of the year so Mr mcy could you introduce our student guest please yes Madam president members of the board Dr Coto uh we'd like to introduce Amelia Escobar she is a senior at Willow Canyon High School and they held their first meeting last Tuesday the 13th where we bring together all our student leaders and they begin their planning for the year so Amilia is here to give us that update right

008here is good just to speak into it okay thank you um my name is Amilia Escobar I'm the student body president at Willow Canyon High School and last year I was elected to be the president of the daart Leadership Council or DLC and I'm very honored to be here to speak with all of you and I'm sure many of you know DLC is a leadership group made up of student council kids from around the district and we kind of come together to discuss our successes and our failures and I'm here mainly to see the um board perspective as well like what we can do to help you uh because student council wouldn't be able to do what we do without the support from our ad and um um I'm just very grateful to be here

009and I hope that we can through building strong Communications we can build a better environment and build inclusivity for our district alt together so we had our last meeting on August 13th and we kind of just discussed beginning of the year things so for Willow Canyon we had our back to school spirit week and our first ever assembly it was very success successful we had a big turnout and um Alto together for as a district all four daart schools had a backto school spirit assembly and Shadow and Valley both held dances which were very successful and we also have Sundown as a part of our DLC and it's very important to include them too because they have a smaller population of students so it's nice to hear their perspective of how they do things because

010they don't do dances or assemblies so they have like games in their cafeteria and they have a lot of participation as well so those are kind of our updates for this month and thank you so much for having me here thank you [Applause] thank you and congratulations on your election to the DLC um very great presentation I appreciate it thank you good job all right next we have superintendent update Dr croo thank you madam president uh just a couple quick updates uh with the sound of the marching band you know the temperatures are going to drop and also it's almost football season so when you hear the marching band it's time so with that um just a reminder that we have uh couple field dedications coming up for our two fields that are done in

011Shadow Ridge High School and Valley Vista High School so that will be um Shadow Ridge we will dedicate that field on September 6th and Valley Vista will be on September 20th so we are excited about those projects are done they look beautiful and we will celebrate those two fields and those two schools on those dates also just an update that we will be attending the policy governance Summit on um August 29th so next week uh that's put on by the trust our our insurance uh trust and looking forward to the great topics and I know some of you are joining um and going to that so we are looking forward to do that and that's all I have thank you next we have governing board update I guess I will start um I just want

012to say congratulations to our finance department and miss fedel I don't ever want to get complacent with this award I don't ever want to just say oh yeah we expect it it's just something we do um I do appreciate that after 29 30 years we are still working hard to make sure that we are fiscally responsible and transparent with our record so thank you for that and I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our police officers our sro's our ssos for choosing again to be on our campus is you have no idea you impact our students lives every day and I'm grateful for you so thank you okay I don't have an update um moving on to item F1 did you have something oh okay sorry um I move to approve consent

013agenda items as presented good I think Joe first yeah motion carries all right up next is information discussion item one uh Dr Coto thank you madam president uh tonight we start our school uh continuous Improvement presentation so with that Dr asai will introduce our schools good evening Madame President members of the board um our first school to go will be Shadow Ridge and cedrica Hester is the proud principal she will be walking us through Shadow ridge's achievement went from last year their goals from this year and their action plan and how to get there uh just as a reminder to the board we will be talking about growth as the state defines it it's on a 012 scale with one being where the average in the state is anything about above one is our goal

014good evening Madame President members of the board and Dr Coto it is indeed a pleasure to present to you our continuous Improvement plan at Shadow Ridge High School if you take a look at the slide in terms of our act and our performance we were able to maintain a level of proficiency at 60% in addition to that when we did a deep dive of the data for the ACT we did notice that we made tremendous growth in terms of our students that we were able to move to that proficient category but it was our highly proficient students where we fell a little short in the past year our goal every year of course is to have a total composite score of 20 or above and so we felt a little short because we we're at

01519.61 so that is one of our challenges that's something that we're working towards um and we're looking to I'll talk a little bit more as we go through the slide presentation if you take a look at our AI we were able to have an increase of 8% and that is a tri to our science teachers and the work that they did as well as the district resource of utilizing the a SI mimic test and it was a test that we gave throughout the school year as well as our teachers prepping our students so that is uh the reason for our success with the aai as Dr asai mentioned in terms of our growth we were able to experience growth with our ELA teachers and so in the math area area we are working towards that

016and so we look to that is also a challenge with some of our when you look at our esss classes and our resource classes and making sure that we are drilling down and making connection and having that growth so with that we intend to utilize the ISL as a resource this upcoming school year and our teachers will have training on Monday and we will go through that with the trainers to really drill down and talk about supports and what that looked like in terms of aella we and when you look at the 2223 school year we had 31 students versus 21 this past year but with that we're still able to show growth with our students within the classroom our teachers and the support that we have we have our Ela teacher leader uh that

017helps us out tremendously as well as our uh TLS on campus that supports us so we're able to make sure that our kids are continuously growing with our El students when we look at the college credit and our kids who take dual enrollment and their success rate in those dual enrollment courses um we are extremely proud of the progress that we made this past year and so that is a tribute to our counselors as well as our teachers doing those presentations educating our families and letting our students know the opportunities that they have in order to earn college credit while in high school our seals and internships if you take a look at that that increased tremendously when you talk about going from 30% to 82% and again we can attribute that to our arts

018teacher our dance teacher band um our choir and and and also when you take a look at the internship that is something that we were able to increase as well and so when we have our work study uh our kids that have jobs outside of school and they're able to submit documentation and show that growth and reflective growth of what they're doing that helps to with our overall Improvement towards the CCRI so moving to the CCRI again we show tremendous growth in that category as as well and that is something that we take pride in making sure that our teachers our counselors our students know that the courses that they take on our campus the things that they participate in in terms of CTE classes all of that matters and it helps us in terms

019of our school label so um that area we tout too as a Improvement so in taking a look at our I AP goals our goals are focused on some of those challenges that we incurred or need to improve on when we take a look at goal one because the growth is something the growth model that Dr asaiah explained to you the zero to two is something that is new for this upcoming class um but in looking at that and having those conversations with our teachers it's important for us to drill down throughout the school year in terms of the data and really making sure that we are looking at those SC to move our students so that they're able to show that and so therefore our goal for number one the average growth from aspire

020to act on a composite score 1.0 or above the state average and so what we shoot for right now like I said if you think back to that past slide of the act and we were 19.61 we're trying to get to that 20 Mark and if you look at Shadows history we've kind of been right there and so we're trying to figure out how do we get over that that hump with the a s of course our goal is to continue to improve and we're looking to increase that um by the end of the school year our goal too was focus on the challenges that we incurred this past year where we noticed that cell phones were issue as well as students getting a class on time so in working with Mary mat we have

021been working with her um the spark you the principles as well as our first and second year teachers and it's really important that we focus on that healthy classroom that we have those expectations because at Shadow you know the H that when we talk about home and you see that home which you'll see in a few minutes that means high expectations and so we want to consistently enforce that and we need our teachers to consistently enforce that and so that is one of our goals for this upcoming school year in addition to that goal three it's all about customer satisfaction right it's all about making sure that our parents our students as well as our teachers that they can say hey Shadow is the place where we want to be so then our action plan

022what are we focused on like I said home stands for high expectation opportunities meaningful relationship and empowering our students and so this year our theme is home is where the heart is it's about building and making those connections with the students the teachers as well as the parents and so with that everything that we do from stride to making sure that we carve out that time on those Mondays and making sure that we are looking at the needs of our our students based on their data we can um put those interventions in there and meet their needs and we do this in our collaborative teams that's the whole purpose of the PLC when we go to Vegas and we plan throughout the school year is a building those strong collaborative teams where they're able to

023depend on one another and come up with strategies and really drilling down to focus on the learning of our students and we believe in that and we know that will support and move student learning and so with that we are utilizing the ISL we're utilizing that for our English and our Math teachers we're also utilizing it in our English language classrooms as well as our ESS students again it's about those high expectations ations if we have high expectations and making sure that kids are where they're supposed to be then that will ensure that safety and all of those things are taking place on our campus at the beginning of the school year we had class presentations all of admin as well as security counselors introducing making sure all students from 9th to 12th grade know

024who we are and know what those supports are and that we're there to support them in their High School experience in addition to that our counselors are currently in the classroom really Drilling down again showing students what um Services we have to offer and why their classes matter and what they can do moving forward in addition to that we will we have been in the classrooms collecting feedback giving teachers immediate feedback in terms of making sure their uh instructional objectives are posted every day making sure the cell phones are away in the backpacks and then making sure that kids are learning because that's ultimately what it's about and then we celebrate our students as well as our staff when and we celebrate them through stride and if you take a look at the culture that

025is something that we're big on when we talk about home is where the heart is we want to make sure that we're making connections with one another on campus and that we're taking care of one another and part of that is having those challenges making sure that we're celebrating our teachers making sure that we are having cookouts and different things like that that make the teachers want to be there in turn the teachers are also providing that level of consistency and fun in their classroom to make sure kids want to be there and then we're going to collect feedback from surveys along the way so that we can make improvements because it's always about looking at what you're doing how you're doing those things and how can we be better stand for questions [Music] thank

026you for the presentation um sounds like there's a lot of positive things happening in your school for sure so I appreciate you sharing some of those things but just curious um you know you mentioned like the the area of aspire and wanting to have a need to increase the math score there and you'd said you know you're needing to kind of determine what extra supports might be in place and I know you mentioned like through the through the slides about tracking student data collaborative teams focused on student data expectations for learning in PDS classroom walkthroughs but those are things that we all kind of do in all of our schools are you able to get more specific and in regard to either a challenge area or even if you want to use just that one

027example of the Aspire piece that's below that the mark that you've set that you want to reach what do you mean like have you thought of any specific interventions or based on the data what's going to move those students forward that you can share a little bit about absolutely so in working with Mary mat and we're focused on instruction in the classroom we know that when teachers have their objectives posted and drilled down and having those checks for understanding those are the important pieces of the classroom so we're going to uh she will come to our campus in November prior to that we will continue to work with our teachers uh in their collaborative team meetings we're going to break down the Horizon Benchmark data so what I referred to was the Act and the

028thing to understand with the ACT we're talking about a different class like the class that took the ACT are now seniors so now we have to review the data of where our current juniors are and we have to prepare them so the data that we will break down will be the current Horizon Benchmark one test that we gave we're going to look at that look at the standards look at where our students fall short then we're going to drill down a little bit further to see how can we organize them into small groups to support them and uh provide that support throughout the year so that's typically what we do and then we get a little help along the way um when we do another uh Horizon benchmark test so it's all about giving those

029short quick checks or those aren't quick the benchmarks take a little bit of time but we'll give another one in January and it's really about making the adjustment and what we're seeing so like tier two instruction yes yes and so and that too is also a part of that learning that we're doing with spark you training is um being able to have teachers to easily identify who are those students that are struggling within that instructional time frame and then placing them into small groups to meet their needs right away and not waiting so those are the things that we're working on and we'll look to continue to work on and that will move the instruction within the classroom and also increase student learning but the thing about the act as well as the Aspire you're

030talking about different students each year so now we got to look at where are current ninth graders and we got to work with them because the kids that the data you just reviewed those kids are in the 10th grade and they're in the 12th grade now so it just starts over again you mentioned on the the science um test that um some of the success was maybe due to the the mimic test I believe you said yes um is that something new this year or last year I believe so it was something that we made a it was intentional to focus in on something that you have to understand the Juniors and how they're different from the ninth graders the juniors are expected to take the ACT test and prepare for the AI the AC

031the a is not similar to the ACT science and so I think we have a better plan this upcoming school year because uh Miss Long Dr Longoria asked for feedback from the schools and we provideed to her so we have broken those tests out so it's going to be interesting to see how the students respond this upcoming school year based on that so yes the with the AI mimic test that was something that was so necessary to kind of drill down and prepare our students for that AI test in addition to our teachers you know their Spiral Review in there you're you're constantly trying to review terms and Concepts to prepare our students well it sounds like it was a big success so thank you thank you um I wanted just to touch base a

032little bit on the the goal to um okay and you you spoke a little bit about you know classroom management and cell phones and their impact I it's I'm really happy to see the numbers in here for the cell phone violations and that way you can you know track that year-over-year to see what you're doing if it's having an impact or not um I'm curious how you define a cell phone violation um and in doing this do your teachers uh your staff members feel more empowered at least it sounds like Statewide this not a a dice art specific issue um a common theme that you hear from classroom teachers is that they're not feeling supported in discipline processes around cell phones so it sounds like this is outlining where they are being supported absolutely so

033now if you were to come on our campus and I encourage you guys to come take a visit and come to the classrooms you're actually going to see something totally different and so by having something that's consistent and all teachers adhering to that that kids are you're greeting them at the door and you're asking kids to put their cell phones in their backpacks when you walk into the classroom you don't have to worry about cell phones you don't have to worry about earbuds those things are distractors that prevent students from learning and so that looking at the data and and thinking about the number of incidents that we receive in terms of referral that was something that we needed to focus in on okay great thank you so much thank you I will say that

034I appreciate you doing that because unless you've been in the classroom you don't understand how annoying it is when children have their cell phones and by children I mean you know high schoolers because they're such a distraction I love the fact that what you mentioned was consistency consistency consistency and that's that's the foundation of any classroom management you just you have to be consistent takes time takes energy and I appreciate you doing that so thank you thank you I have a question you mentioned the I EXL for Math and English can you explain that a little bit more so this is a resource the district Al it's a districtwide resource that is being utilized and um we were exposed to a little of it last year one of our teachers thought that they needed an

035additional resource to prepare our ninth graders for Aspire and so they utilize it for like two weeks and what it does it drills down it tailor to the need of the kid so it gives the students a assessment preassessment to determine where they are and then it builds them up and uh throughout the process when they are exposed to different questions and Concepts and so we believe with the combination of the teacher teacher engagement and also with the training that the teachers will receive and doing those checkpoints that that is a resource that we can depend on to kind of help support and spiral and give the students what they need and they also have some resources in there that supports Aspire as well as act it supports the El student so we're looking to

036utilize that um in a strategic way to support our students so how often are you using it is it quarterly or so we just um bought this program and like I said we're scheduled to meet with the trainer on Monday our teachers are and so I wanted our teachers to have a say a Buy in to how we're going to go about utilizing it so we're going to come up with a plan on Monday but we just um got access because it's school year so you can't you know funds aren't really Ava ailable yet so and Drake this is a common resource we use at our elementary schools a lot it really targets by standard so teachers can assign one standard to you another standard to to Craig it allows for differentiated homework or when

037they're pulling students for tier two the rest of the class can work on their individual assignments great okay thank you okay thank you thank you and our next CIP presentation is from The Fabulous Debbie Cruz of Mountain View Elementary all right I think that's the right height okay Madame President members of the board Dr Coto and our dice Art School District board um cabinet as well as our audience thank you so much for allowing me to be here to share all the great things that we're doing in Mountain View um first thing is I wanted to share please move the slide forward there oh nope too far okay let's try again nope too far there should be one more slide Maybe not maybe we'll just go right forward okay all right well we have had

038a slide with our beautiful uh logo this year we are called The Dream buers um and so we're an awesome team just like Lego is an awesome team you going know the team awesome and we are building dreams for students each and every day and so it's really important to us at Mountain View and as we dig into our data we're going to talk about a lot of the work that we're doing to build those dreams for every student so first of all as you look up to the screen you will see our aasa and our AI proficiency data in the green areas we're very excited we made growth we are also above the state average the science portion which is a side we have some work to do in this is a challenging area

039for us we are above the straight State average but we want to do better so you can kind of see that there as we dig into our integrated action plan goals you're going to see exactly how we're digging into each one of these areas to address them to ensure that we're providing the best education for all of our students for our overall growth and I know that um Dr asai shared with us the one the 01 and two ultimately we want to be one or above and we could see in math that we definitely met that and we definitely met this um state standard but for ELA we did not so that's a challenging area for us and we want to dig deeper into that and really look at those standards and do what we're

040look at what we're doing for tier one as well as tier two and everything that we're doing for students to make sure that we achieve that as we move forward aella we are making a lot of growth one of the things with aella for Mountain View is throughout the year um just like our student enrollment fluctuates so does our students that would be considered taking the ailla test so at the beginning of the year we started with about 24 students at the end of the year we had about 32 this year now we're back down to 26 so this number is really changing for us all the time but you can see that we're making growth as we're moving more students growing into those higher areas into the inter intermediate and proficient areas we have

041some areas that we want to move our pre-emergent and our basic but definitely growth is happening there for us and this is also another Target area for us as well so our first goal and from the integrated action plan based on our data and we do a very large data dig with all of our staff where we dig in not only into our academic data but we look at our attendance data uh we also look at our referral data and we look at everything as an entire school we need that full panel data in order to make decisions to help students in all areas we know that attendance is a big thing that's if a student's not at school that can impact their lack of opportunity for education so we try to make sure we're

042taking that full picture as a staff what can we do in all areas so our first goal is by May of 2025 students will increase proficiency scores by 3% on all of the areas of aasa they'll increase the per percentage of students that are at above Benchmark by 3% and also we want to increase our zel proficiency scores by 3% for all El students as well and our action steps to get there is students will learn the standards following daer scope and sequence and I know that we talked a lot um my colleague talked a lot about Mary maton and this is a big deal for us because this is digging deeper into instruction and as we've moved into diart and you're going to hear me talk about the teaching and learning cycle it's further

043down but this is a big part of everything we do each and every day for every student student um students will experience instruction lived in a do2 or higher we don't want to be in that that automaticity just giving me answers we really want the deep thinking to take our students further because we know that's what they need not only to pass a state test but what they need in real life um they'll receive targeted enrichment intervention based on their data we are very intentional in our tier 2 and we also are using iel as well to support that with our students to make sure it's differentiated for every child um our students will be analyzing their own data and setting goals as well that's a big Initiative for us this year and our staff

044will be participating in ongoing professional development that's aligned to data curriculum resources and assessment that also be participating in planning meetings that are focused on data and strategies standards alignment assessment and that diert teaching and learning cycle with the work that we're working with Mary mat a big Focus for us is knowing that if we're going to increase our data we need to know as we're teaching along the way where is every student at every moment and how are we implementing assessment to help us with that for formal and informal so we know a lot of times we use that exit ticket or we might use a benchmark but we need to think about I just gave some direct instruction did my students get that or not so we're really being intentional with checking for

045understanding throughout our entire teaching and creating short and long-term smart goals which our teams have already done and created WE Post those on our doors and as we achieve those goals we change those because we go to our next goal and so forth and we also are participating in data digs so we do a huge data dig at the beginning of the year from the previous year schools data but we are doing those throughout the entire school year and looking at all the different ways so not only when benchmarks happen but when our unit assessments happen when our modules happen and when we finish things to say where are we at uh we just finished beginning of year aadience that's a step for us to dig in now with our teams and say where are

046we at what students need more support with that and how do we provide that as a school our next goal is about referrals um at mvs our goal is to decrease by 20% for the next school year we made a decrease this year here which we're proud of but we want to do better we know that hand inand academics and behavior and attendance all go together and this is very important to us so our action steps to do this is the staff will be trained and Implement check and checkout for students with more than three referrals we know that we can see that if a student has three referrals we need to think about what other supports do they need to be successful because this is not only impacting them behaviorally it's impacting them academically

047we're going to implement schoolwide discipline expectations and also the district expectations consistently collaborate through the RTI process and identify specific and targeted interventions we have a great RTI process at Mountain View where we meet monthly and we're going to dig deeper we have an awesome Behavior coach and we have ssts to support us with this process and really figure out what does the student need to be successful maybe they need some more instruction specifically on how to get along with others or maybe they need some instruction on how to play fair so working through those things with our students and providing that to them through our RTA process um our staff has an overall proactive way is we have lion leader tickets daily and we've asked each staff member on campus to give out 15

048minimum tickets a day um and those would be based on be a learner be safe be responsible and be ready so all of those would be given to students in 15 a day by each staff member um and then we tabulate those every Friday um Mrs hazer is going to wave she helps out with that uh those are counted every Friday and what we do is we actually share that data with the school because that's important to us because that's a proactive way to look at behavior and try to give incentives for students to do well uh we're going to create an Implement Behavior contracts aligned to our mvs expectations and those are going to be based on student by student as needed based on the needs that they need um there we go um

049our goal three is 100% of Campus collaborative teams will implement the PLC process with Fidelity as measured by identifying as a greenel on the PLC Continuum rubric absolutely this is a goal for us uh PLC and Mountain View is natural every single Monday we're meeting we're working together and we not only work as grade level collaborative teams but we also work cross so we're doing a lot of vertical articulations so we have now we're our fifth through 8th grade science teachers are having specific articulation about essential standards not only just about what's going on in fifth grade so that's really building these teams to go deeper with all the learning across our campus so our action steps for this is all leadership team members are trained in supporting the implementation with the collaborative teams uh

050we've been meeting with our leadership team we started always in July with them we talk through all the normal things and I know some of you wonderful people got to attend the PLC with us so you know the norm setting all those great Foundation things that we want to put into place some of the first things they do is look at their smart goals short-term and long-term and this year we dove into making Collective commitments which is that second one not only do we have a school mission Collective commitments and a vision but our teams made their own based on their students and made their own Collective commitments aligned to what their students need based on the data dig information they had they participate in planning meetings focused on data standards alignment and assessment that's

051that dier teacher new learning cycle it's that kind of triangle that we have and really just making sure we continue to know we teach we assess we teach we assess we teach we assess and continue to do that and again those smart goals um and participate in professional development for teaching and learning cycle with a focus on assessment and again I put in there checking for understanding because that is a big piece for us one of the things that we did when we did our data dig is that we deciphered what's holding us back from Meeting those challenges and we really do feel it's getting deeper into those checks for understanding throughout our instruction and ensuring that it's individualized checks for understanding we know we can collaborate well and our kids can collaborate well but

052making sure that when we're checking it's truly what they know our last goal is that all students will regularly attend school as eviden by reducing the amount of chronic absences defined in 18 days or more by less than 5% of the students and I think we all know attendance matters we know that if students are not at school they don't have that opportunity to learn so we are really working hard to get them to school so we're creating an attendance team and that's a that's a work in progress we're getting there um and we're going to have protocols and steps to support our students and families um one of the biggest things we did as that third bullet down there is we started implementing contracts and these happened at parent teacher conferences and this was

053a contract with the family just to have a conversation about your child has missed five or more times how can we help what can we do and a lot of times we find out different things maybe there's something more going on the in the family that we weren't aware of maybe it's h something going on with chronic illness or so forth but getting that conversation going with our families about attendance showing them that it matters and also showing them how much it does impact their child daily is very vital um we're going to build on our current practices that we've been doing and communic unting with our families doing check-ins with them and then also implementing positive attendance incentives to support growth being made we not only do those for our students we do for

054our staff because we know having our staff there each day is also vital to Student Learning we have the awesomus attendance cart that's the most perfect attendance you could get to full of snacks for our kiddos and that goes to the class that gets chosen we also have our attendance unicorn charts and we also have our perfect attendance awards that go out to our students as well so we're really working hard to get our kiddos to know that we also um advertised a lot about attendance on our social media um because we know it's really important to have them at school and I will stand for questions thank you for the presentation um it sounds like through a lot of the things you discussed and outlined this is probably going to be what's going to

055address these two areas but just curious do you have anything in particular in mind regarding the aasa ELA score like increasing that score as well as increasing the aala proficiency by 3% for El students yes so I'm going to talk a little bit about the ELA first so uh with the ELA specifically we actually dug down into specific grade levels and certain kids identifying where we need to really tighten up on tier two and then also which grade levels we need to tighten up on how are we doing our tier one what's going on in our classrooms what assessments we're using the check for understandings really came out for us to see that we needed to do them throughout instruction and then also providing all of our teachers with what are those great things within

056learning that we need to do in every classroom so we will be doing a lot of goal setting with some of the grade levels that we want to make sure that we're making that growth with as well modeling that and supporting them as well with the um aella a big important thing for us for aella is that our pool of students that are taking that is is smaller um but we found out through some of the work we're doing is that we need to really dig in and say what is the AEL testing for our students we know the Isel has four parts and we know they have to have an overall composite score to pass all of them so which parts are holding our students back and what does that look like and sound

057like for instruction if I know the students being held back from the writing portion how am I supporting that in the classroom during integrated instruction and targeted instruction and we are really diving into that to talk about what does it look in our classrooms and also how is it assessed to make sure our alignment is there just like we do with our other academic areas so that's a lot of professional development we're doing a lot of data digs a lot of consistent work we're continuing to do with our teams and do you find that like you use those same strategies and things across the curriculum for those kids so if it's writing doesn't just have to be in English it can also be helping support in writing with like science and social studies things like

058that absolutely cross-curricular for sure yes definitely um thank you for that can you think of any challenges that you guys have as a school that you want to Target I think for me is um for our school is we want to always make a Year's growth or more and so that Ela that's that's a big one for us AI um AI for us because it's Fifth and eth grade we have had a lot of conversations specifically about we know that the fifth grade students are taking it but those standards that they're being tested on in fifth grade are actually third grade standards so how are we ensuring that we as a staff are really hitting those standards in those grade levels previous to there because they are not retaught they just get tested in fifth

059grade or vice versa in eth grade so really talking to our staff and digging in deep with that and our staff was very um in-depth with this when we dug into it and we had some great things that came out in summer workshop during the science workshops that we shared we have a steam leadership team that's really doing a lot of work with that this year too to show them like how those standards if we don't teach them here they will not come up but they're going to be tested again so definitely we're doing a lot of work with that I appreciate all the detail you put into this I it it um it's uplifting to hear so I appreciate all the work that you're doing and I absolutely love the um the positive reinforcement

060yes with the with the tickets and how that's we know that is just incredible a shape Behavior where we want to have it so great job thank you for sharing thank you thank you thank you madam president if I could um first I'd like to thank Miss Hester and Miss Cruz on great presentations the exciting thing and I think you're going to start hearing it um and those you've been on the journey with us the last couple years you're really starting to hear um the growth from the summer workshops and the professional learning communities and digging down in that data an analyzing the data where our where are our students at what are they learning what do we need to do if they're not learning and you're really starting to see that Blossom um it's

061exciting to hear it uh we are working on solid instruction with that and making sure our teachers are the best they can be in the classroom and with all this as we continue to put all our resources in that um the outcome is increased student learning so um we're excited about this process and I think you'll see that as we go through the year as a theme through all of it thank you um I agree I definitely seeing a theme and um just hearing um different language in the presentations and how you're presenting the data to us it it's it's refreshing to to hear that it's being tied back into the standards always and and that you're you're ad adapting and you're changing and you're making sure that our students are successful for these assessments

062so I appreciate that okay moving on to item H2 Dr Cotto thank you madam president moving on we have a quick update on our enrollment and Staffing for this year and Mr mattingley will be doing our presentation uh thank you Madame President governing board members uh my presentation is based off uh just a simple update on enrollment and Staffing but before I do and you get to hear this in got some feedback sorry about that I have to recognize uh someone real quick Kevin Shipman he's our planning administrator if he's in the room could you stand up stand up there you are I'm going to share something with the the governing board in my 20 years in HR I've never seen what I'm getting ready to tell you or I've never experienced it and that

063is a 05% off Mark of projection of student enrollment every District uh has a extremely difficult task at the beginning of the year to project what their student enrollment is going to be and so I just wanted to make sure we recognized Kevin Shipman and how accurate his projections were it it makes a difference in everything we do mainly with our finances if we miss the mark by three or 4% it could it could be really damaging and typically you're around 1 to 2% Kevin this year is at0 5% off pretty impressive and I mean really impressive thank so I just wanted to thank Kevin and his hard work and the team he serves and thank you for all your do so so with that let's get on to this data uh this is 10th

064uh day data uh this is what basically we say 10th day because it's the drop and we wanted to show a comparison of last year's data and this year and as you can see the four categories on the left is accordingly and then overall the aggregate data is we're 57 students up compared to last year that's what the aggregate all right that's from pre uh prek all the way to our high school students okay uh the next uh slide here is I just want to show you some of the work uh prior to me getting here uh the human relations department is engaged in in managing uh either hires transfers within a position or a DAC that means going to a different School different department uh so about 814 uh moves are attention to detail

065on a particular employee uh pertaining to either hire or transfer so that's quite a bit work and and definitely uh kudos to the human relations department uh that manages that uh so that's just the work labor effort since January 31st of 2024 the next slide is now we'll get into our vacancies right now we have a vacant position in high school our math position uh our K8 teaching positions are around six positions total toal and vacancies and this is August 16th data this is when I submitted it to be processed to Jenna uh and then our remaining teaching SL certified positions you can see there those there's a total of about 10 different titles with different FTE allotted to them with vacancies uh and then these are our remaining classified vacancy titles which is about

066a total around 20ish uh 2ish titles that have vacancies I I was kind of just scanning uh this today uh bus drive we we have no vacancies in bus drivers so that's should be removed I can't remove it so I think that's a reflection of of the great transportation department that's going on and the culture that's being built by Danny there the director as well as uh some movement that took place a couple of years at this governing board engaged in improving uh salary schedule that is hard to beat so I just wanted to give uh credit to the governing board along with John Coto who was a part of that uh move so uh last uh the recruiting efforts uh I I have to share with you that this isn't possible without uh relationship

067and a partnership with our public relations uh department and you can see the different uh things that um events activities uh approaches to our recruiting efforts uh one of the uh things I'm really proud of that this governing board has approved is the employee referral program it is word word of mouth is your best way to recruit and when you have a culture like we do in our Unified School District it's easy to sell the product and get people to come work for us hence the low numbers you saw today so with that uh I will stand down and take any possible questions thank you very much can you remind us what the referral program incentive is uh yes ma'am uh so it's when a uh there's certain like cabinet does not qualify Administration uh

068principles do not qualify but other employees qualify if they refer somebody and we hire them it's a total $500 total that they would be paid out but it' be broken up in two different stiens and that is the first three months of retainment of that employee would be $250 $250 and after an additional three months after that for a total of six months being retained with the district they'd get the other 250 for a total of $500 okay thank you thank you for for your presentation it's very encouraging to see a small amount of vacancies I was going to say the same thing that's amazing so thank you to all that were involved in all of our recruiting efforts and retention efforts I mean this is incredible um especially when it comes to bus drivers

069I wonder how many districts can say that they're fully staffed with bus drivers I mean there was a time when we had a lot of vacancies in our transportation department so I appreciate I appreciate all the work everybody's put into this and I will say as we're looking at the recruiting efforts in this list on here I of course brag up dard any chance I get and I was at work the other day and I was trying to find I think one of the best videos we've ever created which is the one that says inspire me I can't find it Ryan we have to we we need to redo that we need to resurrect that's like the best and I it's things like that efforts like that like from all different aspects of our district

070and different departments everybody has such a huge um part in in getting where we are and just thank you all because if if we're not fully staffed then our students aren't getting the absolute best experience that we want them to have so thank you all very much appreciate it I'd like to add to the whole piece um and you'll see this in your update this week but it fits in perfectly with this that the district um has been awarded by Forbes um list of America's best instate employers so that will will be coming out uh in Forbes Magazine pretty quick um and they have a thing and I have more details for you in you update but the dier district is listed as best in state employers for 2024 by Forbes so another reason to

071celebrate awesome thank you um with the with the vacancies do we have any um areas that are more critical than others right now as far as maybe a larger number of vacancies Madam president Gover board members first I'll say this as you know everything's extremely critical right now especially with the shortage of staff and it's not just teachers it's classified it's admin it's across the board education right now is not that attractive to the consumers looking to build a career and so that's a very difficult but I would say you'd find more of your uh special ed needs is is where are our challenges are at the most okay thank you okay we're good all right moving on to information item H3 Dr croo thank you madam president tonight we have an information or excuse

072me a presentation on the information on family education rights and Privacy Act otherwise known as furpa and Mr mcy will be presenting this to you Madame President members of the board Dr C um and bringing you information on uh this this particular uh law and and really the information surrounding it uh furpa as it's uh referred to uh quite frequently uh a prerequisite I would tell you anytime you're talking about furpa this is something that within the education world and what we do um it's it's uh embedded in many of the trainings that we do at the beginning of the year especially with those that interact with records uh in the front office it's Revisited each year during registration trainings and with our administrators so it's a vital part of ensuring that we're following this

073uh furpa is that federal law that protects privacy of educational records for students um and you can see on there the history of it it started in 1974 uh and it applies to all schools that are receiving funds from the US Department of Education uh and really when you think about that too is that uh uh there's the other one you'll hear sometimes herpa and other types of well all types of those laws that are really protect protecting uh Records when you're dealing with an institution so where can you uh where can I find the info on this particular law it's actually embedded in these particular policies you will see that in the policies that we have 5-33 is the main uh policy you're talking about under uh a with Student Records the annual notification

074five uh the 303b uh directory information and then um the third one you'll see on there 303c there's the Student Records uh and that's any request to amend records and a hearing procedure so diving into that a little bit more here's some key rights that you have under furpa you have rights to access so a parent um um or eligible students uh can inspect and review the students educational records so that particular parent has rights to those records parents and and when you think about any request to amend those those only the only people that can amend a student's records is the parent or student that can request uh Corrections uh that could be like an emergency contact things like that but it could be a variety of things um within their records that we

075hold right to consent or disclosure of that information the school must obtain written consent before disclosing personally identifiable information okay and that would be uh anytime we identifiable information is that's the parent parent who is owns that information so if we were ever to be releasing that and you talk about with some except exceptions you're talking about some very uh and those are very specific legal grounds that would be involved whenever you're giving out uh information uh when you would say there was an exception and then the right to file a complaint a parent student can file a complaint with the Department of Education if furpa is violated so if we ever were to violate that and give out information on a student that's why we record information student a and student B that's why

076we uh deduct information and and other things like that to protect uh students these are the types of uh educational records uh so it's any information that's directly related to the student and these are a variety of examples that you would see uh grades transcripts anything that's uh dealing with those academic pieces the the class rosters student schedules you'll see disciplinary Rec contained in there um any of your contact information student emails um it could be extracurricular activities you'll see advisory enrollment um any of their health records are immunization and uh also Student Financial information here are some of the exceptions as I mentioned earlier but these give you some specifics what cons when consent is not required school officials with legitimate educational interests um you also will see other schools where the student seeks

077to enroll okay so that could be when they're releasing because it's like a college opportunity or things like that certain government authorities for audit or evaluation purposes um letter D there health and safety emergencies obviously if we're in a situation where we need to provide some type of support for that student in that situation uh to a medical official and then there is directory information that is contained in there and that's unless we do the opt out so sometimes you get into the opt out piece when you talk about that where parents always have the right to opt out of uh for example the asab test they can say I want to opt out for my information to go to go out to the um to colleges and Military and things like that so there

078is the opportunity for parents to do that and we always contain that that is a requirement that we give them that ability to opt out and we hit that every year with parents it's part of our acknowledgement process what does that information include on the directory information students name address and phone number the date uh and place of birth um participation in uh any of those activities in sports as mentioned uh any dates of attendance and the degrees or Awards received so that's directory information that could be uh that could be provided the opt out option schools must inform parent students of their right to opt out and that's what I was mentioning earlier it's a very important piece to this process uh it also can it also involved any when we do pictures in

079the yearbook things like that so parents do have all those rights and we make sure we adhere to that each year um and that's always contained in there so you'll see it with uh you know the one question you'll get on that is a lot of times is what if the kid's participating in sports once you've decided to be in a public form like that that Chang es the game a little bit because now you put yourself out into the public eye like if I'm playing on the football team so it can it can be that people could have taken pictures when you're there but during the school environment at school that's where it's obviously we protect that in our school environment most common SC scenarios in uh um when we talk about discipline uh

080this is what it could look like there's a conflict between student a and student b as you can see there we would mention what's happened to student um student a and students A's mother was uh um inquires as to the punishment of student B so we will list it as that um then you'll see as those are um explained underneath first the school cannot confirm the name of student B we cannot release that second even if the parent knows the identif of student B they're not allowed to know the other students's consequence so we never will dis you know disclose that information and let them know that okay even when they when they bring that up in the conversation uh and that note at the bottom there as you'll see in both instances the information

081is personally um identifiable information about a student which is specifically protected uh unless any exception exists and again those would be extreme situations so I will stop there and open it up for any questions you might have I have a few questions um moving back to that that last slide um that was a big part of why I requested this this item um but I am curious and I understand everything that's presented here but I'll just give you a hypothetical um if if my child is in a conflict with another with another student as a parent am I able to request a description of the circumstances that my child will be going back into in other words can I ask and be told whether the other student student A or B whatever we want to

082call them whether they will be within access to my child will can that at least be shared Madame President uh absolutely there is a conversation of contact with the other child so we will have those conversations um depending on obviously the severity of what we're talking about here so if it's something where we say that they're in the same classroom we might have a conversation even where we talk to the teacher about that we don't want those students in contact with each other working in the same groups in the room right going more extreme it could be that we we would actually have the conversation about the movement of a child and also the elements of or even just it could be as simple as what's happening at recess or at lunchtime but we we

083can always talk about the contact uh piece and it could be more EX than that where it's actually that there is a separation uh in place that we will enact and then we we also make sure that the staff that are only the staff that are involved with that would be the ones that would be notified so that they could enforce it okay thank you and additionally if it was a maybe a more extreme situation where there might be a an order of protection involved between one student and another um that would be honored obviously within our capabilities and then um and and if we weren't capable then maybe uh other OPP opportunities would be provided yes Madam president uh we have to honor those orders of protection especially when when those come in from

084a court order we are required to honor all court orders so um it it will a lot of the court orders that I have seen in in my past have been ones that will say that the students are to have no contact on the campus so we have to then pay attention to to the scheduling and normally it's at the high school level we hope we yes and and so you'll you'll make sure that no classes lunch is different things like that but we also give the directive to both of those students not just to the student that it was it was telling to stay away from but it's also to that student you're not to make contact either and that's also part of that directive okay all right thank you the other um piece

085and and I actually wasn't even expecting you to say this um but the directory information uh you mentioned the uh the asbab testing and I know that as a as a board member I get that question every single year from freaked out parents why is my child required to do this and I always say Well they're not required well the school says that they are um so w with that said um if you are to opt out from the directory information because you have that in mind do you then potentially lose out on other opportunities then from this I mean or is it a is it a menu of options that you're opting out from is it a general opt out Madame President and I don't have the the form in front of me with

086specifics on ASAP I will tell you though that you can opt out specifically for the military piece asfb is scores that the student is released to the student so the student can make the choice to send those scores for other things so if there's a specific um uh you know technical school or something where they want that information to go to that can benefit them for financial you know opportunities to go to that school then that would be that those scores are always available to the student um by the school to make sure that those can be sent to that that organization but the military pieces always an option for opt out I want to make sure that maybe I didn't present the question correctly um taking the test is that opt out we honor

087the students who do decide to uh to opt out and I will I will I will defer to Dr asai on that one as well okay we would always honor a parents desire to opt out of asbab perfect okay awesome thank you I may want to add it right then yeah but I may want to add to that that it is one of the things that our schools are graded on by the state of Arizona and the Department of Education that the number of students that we have take the ASVAB test is a criteria in our state labels if you remember back to when we did that um it is one of the indicators that the Arizona Department of Education uses okay so that's another reason why we encourage everybody to take it that seems

088like a silly requirement considering everything but okay I don't want to get to off topic anything else anybody please have a couple of quick questions um when you talk about under right of access it says parents can inspect or eligible students what would be an eligible student going back to I'm AG three maybe there I'm sorry was this the one you were referred to yeah the very first one it says parents can review or oh I'm sorry yes yes uh and and I'm going to also if I'm if I uh miss the Mark I know I'll get help on this one I as I know I've interpreted this particular P piece to right to access uh member Grant is that um eligible students because the student who's actually it's their own record or it can

089be because there is emancipated students as well and so they have the rights to their own record so they have the they are the eligible students that are involved with when we say parents or the eligible student that's actually able to see those if it's a record about them about an event or an incident we may have to redact information but they do get to see what was uh what the event was about okay and then could you expand on exceptions to the written consent it says school officials with legitimate educational interests could you please talk about that a little bit more the uh school officials with legitimate educational interests um that when we say uh uh educational when there's and and I'm going to again I'm going to give a couple of examples but

090school officials uh this could be uh this could be an administrator that's involved when we say a school official because they're making a decision about the the child uh specifically um and in some cases even an SRO um we might consider them one of our school officials that has to make a a decision based on the educational interest and for the family in gathering information that can also include counselors um as they're looking and and schedules are planning and things like that so I had a couple of questions kids talk right so even though that the record is going to say student a and student B if student B's mother calls and says well I want to know who student a is we can't give out that information right but if student's mom says oh

091I know student b or I know student a was suie I know it I know it because my kid told me I know who it is and what are you going to do about it we would respond with I'm sorry but we cannot disclose that information and even if a parent is insistent that with this altercation they don't want their child involved with the person they think is student a whether it might be it might not be um how would we handle that if a parent came in of student B and says well I know it's I know student a is Suzie because my kid told me and my kid's best friend told me and everyone's sitting at at the table told me so I don't want them around each other anymore how would we

092address that yes Madam president member Chaffin um what I would tell you is is that uh in those situations we are always trying to be solution oriented these are great examples because these are scenarios that we actually bring to our administrators to walk them through of how to have conversations with parents uh anytime that they're approaching that where they're asking us about the you know the specific interactions um we will obviously we will direct that towards we need to find a solution for your child we can talk to you about your child's specifically and we want to find a way to make sure that they're comfortable so in that conversation if there's something you're asking us to do do we need to have a staff member speak to that would you like to come down

093and have that conversation with your child in the room um and maybe we talk about where they're sitting at who they're interacting with and if we need to make any kind of adjustments to their you know when it could be when they're when they're being you know where they're eating at other things like that that we can assist with in that process thank you and then one more quick question are we just approved sending our students data to the state schools as an opt-in process correct through the the state schools we just had a discussion but parents have to opt into that correct yes we did we're actually hitting pause pause on that for right now though even though it was approved we will be pausing on that okay thank you I was just going

094to ask how that related to furpa but if it's on pause thank you very much I just want to thank you for outlining furpa um and so and then sharing that how limits of information the limits that the district has on what information can be shared and not shared and I'm hoping it'll give our community a better understanding of why the district is unable to answer um certain questions pertaining to the stories they may see on the news or social media that it's not a matter of the district wanting to avoid difficult discussions it's just a matter of following the law and protecting the privacy of our students um I know as a board member and a member of this community I can assure you that the district um is very uh mindful of just

095taking issues pertaining to students very seriously whether it pertains to injuries or allegations against students or staff I can honestly say that our superintendent um makes personal calls to each one of us to update us throughout the process gets guidance from the attorney as appropriate follows applicable laws District policies but he's always putting the safety and the well-being of our students first um so following the presentation I'm hoping that our community will feel um that despite what they may read on social media the district is working within the limits of the law to investigate all the concerns it just may not be at the speed that people would like it to be but it's a matter of doing it right and responding lawfully so um and I know too that I'm probably not the only

096board member that when I hear something or see something on social media I called the superintendent right away way um so you've got not only a very Mindful and concerned superintendent C cabinet staff that obviously takes student injuries incidents allegations very seriously but you have five people up here that were elected by your community to be your voice and um work in the best interest of students and I know I'm not the only one that when we see things we act on them immediately because we care about the students as well so um again just want to make make sure that it's not that we don't want to respond um it's just that we have to do it in a specific manner following all laws and policies and I can tell you that um there's

097been several things on social media lately and I can tell you with 100% certainty that many of them are false or lacking huge pieces of fact-based information so I just I appreciate you outlining that further so people can understand the laws behind why people may not be getting the answers that they like but people are getting answers it just may not be the speed that they would like so I appreciate all the time you put into this I really appreciate your comments Miss Pritchard um I I did have one other um question just just for transparency sake we mentioned our school resource officers um and I see here you know know for health and safety emergencies I just want to clarify um if we have a student with um with with special needs that might

098not be acting um with typical um Behavior you know if we if we have an officer that might think that that a child is having a medical emergency would maybe that is like their Norm are we able to communicate um anything with our officers whether it's an SRO or SSO about their U maybe a medical condition or something that might cause them to behave a certain way um Madam president I can answer that we work in conjunction with our law enforcement so yes if it's a medical emergency as you see there um it's on a local campus it's um crucial that they're working with our Administration when they see and they and they provide that information back and forth they're in constant communication and if a child's health is in danger absolutely would share that

099information okay if their health is maybe not in danger so in other words if if we're going into lockdown for instance um and a child is not behaving the way that the the other children are behaving and maybe is not going under a des because they they're unable to for whatever reason are are those things being communicated uh they are being communicated um they're unable to um behave the the way a normal student would behave in certain circumstances yes we are in communication about that perfect okay thank you and I might add too A lot of times um they know because our our ssos and our SRO are amazing because they do develop um those relationships on campus and they start to really know their campus so um they really know what's going on in

100their campus and they they're out there they're constantly talking with kids so they know a lot about the campus um even before that so and it's important that that we note that about our officers thank you very much for adding that I appreciate it any other comments okay thank you U moving to item i1 Dr crto thank you madam president um tonight we bring to you the recommendation to improve revisions of our trust model policy and adopt policy 5107 which is the purplle star schools you know we had the first purple star school in Arizona with uh Luke which they are now a purple star school so there's a policy coming out um it's important to note here this is not our normal cycle of review with our policies these are trust policy revisions that

101come out every summer from the trust so there's either a law or a legislative act or some wording that the trust um has found that these policies need to be um reviewed or changed um we will still conduct our policy reviews as we do every year and go through each section with the governing board so these are the revisions that are being um recommended by the trust at this time so um and you can you've had those again we some of those are additions the 5107 policy is an addition of a total new policy on purple star schools so with that um we will stand for any questions you may have on any of those policies I'm just curious on the purple star do we have any schools that are interested in and applying besides

102going besides Luke that already went through the program do we have any other schools that are interested Madam president member Drake we do actually um uh Freedom traditional um has expressed interest in applying for purple star as a matter of fact they've met with our Luke Air Force Base leison about um opening the school to some of the military children that are interested in going there and um Miss Wolford is looking at the steps needed uh to be the next purple star school in our district so awesome thank you I have a couple um in regard to 4204 for mandative reporting um I just want to I know I ask this almost every time it comes up I just want to confirm again that we don't have any procedures in any of our schools that

103that require the the teacher the staff member to go through their nurse or maybe their counselor or principal to make the report that they make it themselves um that that is correct and I Mr Man can answer Madame President gun board members absolutely uh the the other piece is uh the main focus of that was to ensure that school districts are reporting to ad as well for unprofessional conduct from our staff and that was uh the big to-do on this one but yes you know as far as the other piece yeah okay because I know that um it wasn't long ago that I I I became aware of a situation where staff were being told to no it's been a while since I was told that it would go have to go through a nurse

104or the principal but not too long ago staff were um instructed to kind of keep documentation and kind of monitor for a while and I just want to make sure that we're clear and perhaps it's the beginning of the school year maybe this can be worked into a next Monday PD I would guess I would ask Dr Cody make sure everybody is fully aware that it's not anyone's job to ensure that the abuse or neglect happened it's any suspicion so there should never be a log of possible concern if there's a concern it needs to be reported so I just want to make sure that that's happening and that understanding is Crystal Clear um Madame President uh member Pritchard um that is clear and and they get this mandatory reporting also in dier Essentials so

105every employee is presented with that information and has to review that every year year and the part of the 4204 it's not a change but if you read about the child abuse reports it says um that they shall immediately report this information to a peace officer or DCS Department of Child Safety so um it is clearly in there and we do review that yearly with all employees and daer Essentials do all employees that are employed with daer take disert Essentials or are some excluded well um I'm glad you asked that so um there are times where right now we are trying to make sure that all employees do that so we are going through that system um sometimes we have some subs in there that are in our system or not in our system so

106we're working on processing that is Our intention to make sure that all employees do dier Essentials so maybe in the meantime I mean would it hurt at an upcoming Monday PD since we know not everybody's in the system quite yet with d Essentials that this reminder be mentioned so all staff can hear it we could do that thank you and then the only other question I had was 5105 and that was just more of a question so can for open enrollment can disciplinary records be considered when deciding whether to Grant open enrollment Mr mcy would you like to take that or would you like me to answer that uh Dr Coto I can I can assist with it and I'm sure you'll you'll help me if I'm there's anything I'm missing but uh when we

107talk about Open Enrollment uh really that we cannot consider uh I'll say it this way is that discipline records are not a criteria for an open enrollment student um however when the student is enrolling it's important that our administrators work meet with the the family to talk about those disciplinary records that may be coming in so it allows us to create an appropriate plan for that student coming in but legally we can't deny an enrollment an open enrollment uh practice because of their disciplinary procedure now if you're talking about if we're talking about there's certain types of discipline like long-terms or other things like that that changes the criteria do we have and this was not under this Administration so tell me maybe it was incorrect but um I thought for and it might have

108been Freedom don't quote me 100% that students who enroll or who um express interest in becoming a student at predom and that when we were doing that process process they disciplinary records were reviewed like you weren't guaranteed enrollment based on if you were coming say from another District school and had a lot of disciplinary issues that used to be an issue that used to be a criteria I don't know whoever M Madam president member Pritchard it may have been in the past um it is not legal to do that we do not do that now that cannot be a factor in ruling out um open enrollments in our district okay thank you sorry are you are you saying from another District or are you saying within District before it was see if I can try

109to find it okay I I just have a question or request for followup for more information um on 5404 with the administration of none um specifically there's a question on whether or not the there is a standing order for Health Care Professionals I.E our School nurses to administer it under their scope of practice so I would just like a followup for more information on that um with that said I also know that historically this is so far uh we're very fortunate that this is a non-issue um but we we know that the the risk of that of something like that happening with an opioid overdose on one of our campuses is is greatly um heightened um so I would just like more information around the um the healthc Care Professionals restrictions if any on administering

110the lock Zone Madam president I will research that and get that to you thank you any other discussions okay I move to approve policy revisions and Adoption of trust model policy 5107 as presented who seconded first motion carries thank you moving to item I2 Dr croo thank you madam president our last presentation to the uh this evening is on our Arizona State um Arts proficiency seals so Dr asai will introduce our speaker it is my pleasure to introduce our director of Fine Arts Mr Marinelli who will go over our Arts fine seal or our Fine Art seals sorry it's a mouthful good evening Madame President governing board cabinet and Community tonight sorry is that better tonight we are bringing information to the board on the Arizona state seal of Arts proficiency and approval for the

111continuation to administer the seal it's been a few years since we brought this seal before the board um so I'm going to briefly touch on the purpose of the seal and its requirements um just as a refresher um and then there's been some minor changes as to how we've administered the um seal over the last couple years as we've had the time to kind of feel out how it works um so I will talk to you guys a little bit about what those changes are that we've done as a district um so just as a refresher here are the goals um set by the state and outlined by them um so ultimately I'm not going to read through all of these but it's to celebrate the Arts to celebrate our students that are participating in

112the Arts to recognize these kids that are going above and beyond as well as let them experience what the Arts could look like in their career and get them ready moving forward um past their High School careers these are the requirements set forward by the state for the seal um they need to have a GPA of a 3.0 or higher so a b average or higher in their qualifying Arts courses and or creative um Career and Technical education courses so we'll talk about what those are in just a second they ALS o need to have four minimum credit um requirements in one of the following ways it's a crazy formula um they need to have either four credits in one of the following artistic disciplines so dance music theater Visual Arts or media arts um

113or they can have three credits in one artistic discipline of the ones I just listed and one qualifying creative um CTE course or a separate artistic discipline so maybe three music and one art or three music and one photography um or they can also have two credits in one artistic discipline and two credits in either CTE or a different art form but they have to have one of those combinations there can't be a0 five in there it's got to be two and two three and one four all the way across the board um they also have to complete 80 hours of Arts related extracurricular activities in any Arts discipline not necessarily their own um and they need to complete a student Capstone project so so as far as approved courses um that meet the state

114requirements go any courses listed in the high school selection guide um coded as Fine Arts will count so they have to have the fa in front of their their course code um along with creative CTE courses following under the following Pathways so animation digital photography film and TV production and stagecraft those were determined by the state um and in order to meet that qualification by the state um they need to have their program standards um include essential Arts elements within the CTE courses so with that um I've attached for you guys the actual full um course list if you really want to look through all of them um great reading I've also attached in your packet a course proposal for three CTE Pathways that currently do not count towards the art steel at the state

115level I'm proposing to the state that culinary arts Aesthetics and hair styling Pathways qualify as creative CTE courses um this will allow us to capture more students um and like I said in order to qualify the program standards need to include essential Arts elements and standards and I believe at this time the courses in those Pathways do meet that requirement so I'm going to put it back in front of the state and see if we can get that changed the next piece is the Capstone portfolio project um these are all the pieces of what they consider qualifying as that Capstone Pro uh project so a Capstone portfolio is a project-based learning opportunity for students to showcase the culmination of their knowledge while fostering Real World skills and experiences the portfolio and process should encourage Learners

116to apply their knowledge and Mastery of the Arizona Arts education standards in a way that interests them and furthers their individual goals and lastly through the Student Art um or through the student Capstone portfolio students should demonstrate their artistic literacy through their ability to create perform present produce connect and respond as an artist so this again is what has been set forward by the state so this is the part that we've kind of changed throughout the course of the the five years that we've been administering this seal um we have moved um to a portfolio requirement instead of a singular Capstone project um we have found that doing a culminating digital portfolio over the course of four years is showing us the students growth much better we're getting a better product we're incorporating writing we're

117getting to do a whole bunch of different pieces that kind of Encompass what the kids have done over the course of their four years we've built it into their semester finals and end ofe finals so regardless of if a student their freshman year planning on applying for the art seal they're still building that portfolio folio so by their senior year kids that automatically qualify because they've met those four credit um requirements they don't have to sit there and go back and do this huge Capstone project they've built it over the four years regardless so we're capturing more students and getting a better quality and those students that maybe don't meet it and can't you know qualify for the art seal they still have a beautiful portfolio that they can utilize for college entrances they can

118use it for any workplace um Arts positions that they're working towards so um within that portfolio this is the minimum of what we require all of our students and teachers push them obviously to go much further but it needs to include a student biography their student artistic resume um which is where they put all their extracurricular activities as well um and four examples of commun cumulative excuse me student work um in a reflection so one per credit hour or a year of study and then their future goal statement so that cumulative student work looks like them putting in samples of their cont concs throughout their year the samples of their solos any individual projects they've done and then they write one large reflection on their growth that's outlined by a bunch of standards that we've

119put into that slideshow for them so the fun stuff the numbers um here is our data over the last five years so I've given you guys two different charts um the first chart is the Statewide data this is provided to us by the state um starting in 2019 was when we first began this um so five years ago now um and then below is below that is our district data so you can look vertically and kind of see where we're at so 2019 um we started with 47 seals administered last year we ended with 228 seals administered of those 228 seals we had 22 students double seal and one student triple seal the year before we had two students triple seal fun fact all three of them are sisters runs in the family um but

120the neat thing is is they spent a lot of time um in I School taking their core and other stuff so they could spend their High School careers truly just focusing in on the Arts so that just tells you how dedicated these kids are um so we're very proud of that additionally that first year in 2019 we were third in the state for the amount of seals um that were administered this last year um we were first in the state the next closest to us was Tempe Union High School school district with six high schools um and they had 179 seals so not only did our numbers come close to doubling we also were nowhere close to the next school um and the schools that are below us are all High School Union districts which

121have a lot of high schools that we don't necessarily have so we're proud of that and I attribute that again to my teachers the counselors that the schools were really pushing um and getting the kids in the right classes as well as the the administrators on the campuses so we appreciate their hard work and we will continue to work towards this with that I've provided you some links that I'm not going to go into but if you have any questions I would take those I do I'll go first I just wanted to say thank you because if anybody has an idea of the things you do on a daily basis I was there I was there watching D take a personal PTO day so she could set up for the Arts Festival she's like all

122right I'm going to be sick on Friday so I can set up for the Arts Festival uh the principal's going to let me in and yes so I very few have more dedication and more competence and intelligence and you we better take PTO day to help set up the Arts this was years ago years ago before I in this Ro before I was in this Ro yes this was when she was still a teacher she was still a classroom teacher but she was head of the no no she was a classroom teacher but she was also the music team lead and she like every time there was a festival or something or other she'd be like you I'm going to be sick on Friday just so you know anybody else who wants to come hang

123out after school I I'll be there but it's and you're incredibly knowledgeable and very skillful at what you you do it's because you care about the students you care about the teachers you're involved and I just wonder how you have all the energy to do everything there a lot of caffeine today yeah but I did want to ask a question can you maybe highlight for everybody who's not a music art teacher what are the benefits for our students for obtaining this seal absolutely um so one of the big things is that any of these students that want to continue to go into the Arts in college it's not like an education major where you just go decide you're going to be an education major and sign up for the school and take the classes as

124a music major as an Arts major as a theater major you have to audition to get into the School of Arts um and so they are looking at everything you've done in your high school career so your regionals um any of your auditions that you've done your portfolios so by them creating this portfolio they're a ahead of those kids that are auditioning as freshmen um into colleges so that's one piece it's recognized around the state so this is a state seal not a national seal like the Seal of by literacy um so our three major um public universities all recognize the art seal so that is another notch on their resume when they're coming in to apply for these schools um students that are not going into the Arts and you know not everybody's going

125to go and be a music Ed major um leads to being a music person you know our our theater kids you know will go and do that and then come back and work in the theater so they're not all going to go do that um but those students that aren't just to develop the skills of building that portfolio and understanding what it takes shows the dedication even just to employers um and I would be remiss to mention that the addition of giving students chords um at the end of the year is also a really big thing that they just love so that does help they do get cores at the end of the year um but really ultimately it's it's what we're building in these students and that work ethic that we're building um and

126then being able to display their thought process and reflection over their four years and their High School career of what they have done and seeing that portfolio from that freshman year in you know those drawings to where they wind up when they're turning in their AP portfolios it's you just see the growth um and that alone is the benefit and the kids really get into it if I I would have loved to include some of the portfolios but we just talked about furpa so um but their portfolios when you look at them and see they've they've put themselves into it it's just it's phenomenal to see it's really neat I appreciate that because you can get into the school you can get into na you can get into uova but getting into the art Department

127into the music department into the theater Department completely different story so just because you get in school it doesn't mean you're going to pass your audition so I I do appreciate all of the effort I was just going to say having two uh daart graduates one uh super bummed that she missed it by a year they didn't have art seal for my oldest but um definitely in the Arts uh inquire it was her thing um and then my my little one who's not little um was class of 21 so she was able to get her uh art seal but what I can say is just whether you know they actually get the seal or not as far as if they missed that cut off before we had this amazing program the Arts can just so

128enhance um even their academic we know that the studies with even music and math and you everything so when we talk about like you know the the um the perks of it or you know aside from just the amazing opportunities that your programs offer all of our students um in the moment you know it just build s like who they are and how they develop and how they interact with their world as well as helping with that academics piece and um you just work so incredibly hard I know you do I I I hear stories of of what you do um throughout the district and I just appreciate everything you've done for all of our di art students and we're just very fortunate to have you so thank you so much thank you did what

129everyone else said and thank you so much for taking all those sick days and just to be clear it was not not Dr croto that was in charge then um my my oldest was actually one of the first recipient so he was one of those uh one of those few uh the very first year and you know just to miss pritchard's point I mean the correlation between um you know knowing music I mean it really is another language so you're bilingual you know you're you're already AC and thought process and math and especially for these marching band kids talk about work ethic that it builds and the character that it builds and it's it's incredible um what our what our schools offer what our teachers offer and these kids come out of these programs I

130mean really truly better human beings all around it's not about um I mean you know of course to the kids it's about Winning State or going to state but it really is truly the experience of it all and the portfolio I just so appreciate you you you mentioning that I wanted just to ask a little bit it because I know that you know things change for students all the time whether it's you know personal life family life things happen if we have a student that maybe is going into um music or an art program their freshman year and then they realize maybe they're a little overwhelmed elmed and then they they have to pull back on some of those extracurriculars so maybe their sophomore year their junior year they're you know just catching up on

131core stuff to be able to graduate senior year they've got a little extra wiggle room they can put some of those back in if they are able to make it during the freshman year are we still are we requiring that portfolio to be created so if they're in the class that is final so if you're looking at the way that we've built it their freshman year for semester one they're building out their biography um and they're building the initial website I've given them all a template so it looks the same across the board from school to school because we wanted to really start aligning that so we weren't you know requiring a thesis over here and then requiring two sentences over here okay um so we do have that all aligned now um so it's

132if they're in the class they're making that portfolio as part of their their freshman year um same thing at the end of the year putting in their reflection if they take a year off it's the next time they take a class remember they have to have four credits right that's always going to be their final so regardless they're doing it somewhere in those four credits and that's the way we built it we built it so if your kid's at Shadow and then they transfer to you know Valley their sophore year the portfolio goes with them it's all loaded up the teachers just transferred over we're not losing any of the work um so it doesn't need to be consecutive in other words so you could have two of the freshmen and then two two senior

133yep and get okay so they're basically when I say four courses or four years depending on what they're at um it's at the end of that course they've built out their reflection for that course for that Year great okay thank you yeah absolutely thank you so much so on this part about 80 hours of art related extracurricular activities what would be considered some of those activities that's a lot of I mean I get it but what are some of the things they could do possibly y so it sounds like a lot of hours but if you know any of our kids they get that in their freshman year um so it's outside of school rehearsals it's participating in any of the concerts any of the festivals it's the work that the kids are putting in

134to create their portfolios outside of the school they do tons so volunteering at the festival would be 15 hours hours it's not even a question if any of these kids are hitting that that's the least of my concerns when we're going through and trying to prove stuff I was just curious because we have a kid maybe who's well not maybe but you know it's kind of hard to do some things after school if in the CTE program so they can't go to the clubs which I assume the club would be part of Club EXT rehearsals if you're not in a club because you're in a CTE program you can't get back for it so there are other things they can do there is yep even just attending a concert it could be outside of school

135they go and see the West Valley Symphony that's here on the weekend they bring in a program that's ours and when will you know if the department of Ed accepts these additional um requirements should you guys approve it this evening I will turn it in tomorrow to the state um and I'm hoping that in the next couple weeks we find out because it will impact the entire State well I think this is I mean this is a great idea because truly there there is some you've ever been I have been to the west nech and all of that and seen some of these things and it you got to be creative to do that stuff you have to have a vision anyway so thank you so much for all your work the have one more

136question go ahead sorry real quick does the courses that you mentioned um that were we will be approving or looking to approve tonight are we offering all of those courses now so everything in the the large list yes the three that I mentioned Aesthetics hair styling and um culinary arts well culinary I know the culinary we do the hair styling and I don't I'm not Jim um but if we're we don't have those programs on our campuses our kids go to westc and they still get the high school credit on our campuses for it so we'll be able to utilize those okay perfect thank you okay I was just curious how many students have signed up so far this at the beginning of this year do we have a a number so we I this

137is how I capture all the kits um I hand go through every students every senior's transcript um to find kids that have Arts courses look and see if any of their transcripts meet the qualifications and put them on a list if those kids are in class with those teachers they reach out to them they fill out they know that they're on track for the Arts seal those kids aren't currently in an Arts course but meet the qualifications the teacher that they took the most classes with becomes their Mentor teacher they tasked with reaching out to those kids or the counselors reach out to those kids to let them know that they're eligible and that we need them to go through with finalizing that portfolio again we built it into their final so they should have

138it ready to go um our seniors are our last class that didn't necessarily have it from the very beginning so they might have to do one or two extra things but that's how we're capturing all of them so I don't have it an actual list right now oh okay thank you Madame President if I could um first of all I want to thank da for all the hard work um she subtly the talked about the list a little bit um but if you didn't catch it um we have 228 art seals this year U there are 43 districts in this state that participate um and we are number one out of those 43 um about 133% of all the Arts deals that come out of the state come from this District um and that's her

139leadership that's her team she's put together that's the focus that they have on providing opportunities for kids and so um with that we say thank you thank you to you and your team for what you do um it's making a huge difference so I just wanted to point that out because she's subtly went over that as she presented the data but um it's important to her that's obvious and um we appreciate all the efforts so thank you thank you is this where we moved to give her a couple vacation days back second all right I move to approve the district continued participation in the Arizona State of Arts proficiency seal motion carries next we have item J1 request for future agenda items okay I move to adjourn the meeting Joe motion carries we are adjourned

140thank you