001I'd like to call the meeting to order will that stand for the Pledge of Allegiance one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice problem I'm sorry yes all board members are present thank you now we have a band performance Dr Dean thank you madam president members of the governing board cabinet in our community I'll turn this over to Dr crotto thank you Dr Dean Madam president governing board cabinet and guests it is our excitement tonight to have Sonoran Heights band here for us to play some tunes and the band is led by Deborah Forest so we're excited and Miss Forrest the floor is yours year we have a combination of six seven and eighth grade students um some of them started at the beginning of the year some of them have four years of
002experience so happen but it's always fun for fun so thank you for the opportunity foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] two three thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] nope thank you that was really nice great job guys next we have audience with individuals do we have any none all right Dr Dean do we have a student update Madam president Haley is not with us this evening we anticipate seeing her in two weeks all right thank you next we will move on to the superintendent update Dr Dean thank you madam president members of the governing board members of cabinet in our community we are very excited and proud to announce once again that the Valley Vista High School Unified sports program was named a top 25 program in the nation by ESPN and this past
003Monday ESPN honored our Unified sports athletes with a fun flag football game out at Valley Vista High School in which they had Miss America join them and spent some time with them as well and so we just want to say congratulations to our unified athletes coach milabar and Coach York for all the great things that they do and the wonderful experiences that our kids have we also are excited to announce and I feel a little bit bad because I'm giving away my entire update for tomorrow to you however we're also excited to announce that Shadow Ridge High School's architecture program once again won the National Championship with architecture and they continue to remain the best high school architecture program in the nation so outstanding job by the team at Shadow Ridge High School this is
004also segwaying into perfectly this is National CTE month and we are excited to celebrate all of our CTE programs and at the February 23rd meeting we have a CTE information item that we will provide to the governing board just highlighting all the programs and wonderful opportunities that our kids have available to them this is also a national high school counselor week and so we want to say thank you to all of our high school counselors and the great things that they do for all of our high school kids we are winding down the Winter High School athletic season and playoffs have begun Valley Vista High School girls basketball team started their Championship defense on Tuesday night by winning their first round game in a brand new format this year an open division format between all
005conferences 4A through 6A they won their first round and they play again tonight and we have several of our athletic teams in competition tonight in the first round of the playoffs so we're proud of them and then the last thing that I have to share with you this evening which we're very excited about we have partnered with an organization that provides veterans of World War II to come into our schools and share experiences that they had throughout their life and experiences that they had in the military and so these um World War II veterans are vetted through this organization and all the information that they provided to our students is known ahead of time and we are starting the process of having them come in and speak to some of our schools and so we're
006very excited about this when I began teaching I had the opportunity in a school that I was in to hear one of the uh surviving members from the Holocaust speak and it was powerful and profound and uh eye-opening and I remember at the time there was a push to have as many Holocaust Survivors speak as possible because they were starting to get older and we had the same now with our World War II veterans and so we're so excited about this opportunity to have them and um and it's through just a partnership that uh that we found a gentleman that I met a couple of years ago who's a big developer in town and he called me and said hey Jim I think I've got something right up your alley and he put us in
007touch with his organization and so we are thrilled to death and excited for that to happen and I'll share more information as we kick that off for the board as well so and that is my update for this evening thank you Dr Dean we will move to governing board update I finished the the last of the a school rating celebrations and we ended up at freedom and Shadow Ridge High School so again congratulations to all the schools that got that a rating I participated in the friends of the library bookmark contest and there were lots of Dysart schools entered in that contest I'm anxious to see who won um I also attended a Showcase of a collective exhibit of K-12 student artists representing Dysart and the following students were recognized for their outstanding Works uh
008K-12 it's Casey Ponte from Riverview three through five a Tessa I'm gonna mess this up civil sybils at Sunset Hills sixth through 8th grade Caden Summers from West Point and 9-12 a Malia denim from Willow Canyon High School so the Arts are definitely alive in the district um thank you to all the school counselors for everything you do to help our students succeed and I know that next month or at our next meeting there's going to be a presentation about ctes but I just want to commend Mr grieshaber and his crew for all the programs that they provide to our students and it's just one more reason to choose Dysart next we will move on to consent agenda items I will entertain a motion on who we approved the consent of agenda items as presented
009second motion made by Joe Grant seconded by Don Densmore motion carries next we will move on to item G1 superintendent mid-year report of progress Dr Dean thank you madam president members of the governing board members of cabinet in our community this evening I am absolutely proud to present the work that our administrative team our school district our employees continue to Revel in and we've made great progress throughout the course of this year I know it's a mid-year report we're a little bit further than mid-year at this point in time and quickly headed towards State assessment actually we're quickly headed towards Spring break but then shortly thereafter the state assessment and before we know it it'll be graduation as a matter of fact yesterday I had the opportunity to chat for a few minutes with Shadow
010Ridge High School student council and I said or how many of you are seniors and you know 10 or 12 of them raise their hand and I said how many of you are ready for graduation and a girl looked at me and she said it's really coming I said it is it's really going to be here and so before we know it will be there but tonight we're going to talk about um where we are from a little bit more of a mid-year report piece as it relates to the goals that we've established um at this point in time so just a reminder that our goals are based upon the four District goals and the first of which is academics and so the first goal is to increase academic achievement throughout the district and we've
011been working through that with increased accountability additionally one approach that uh that we've taken that's a little different is that my goals are formally provided to the board in conjunction with the assistant superintendents that are responsible for that as well and so that ties our work together very closely and that's a positive for us because that keeps us on track and focused forward in One Direction and we don't want to we want to make sure that we don't get scattered that we continue everything in One Direction and so our first goal was at the end of the school year to increase the academic accountability for our schools and our principals participating in our data chats which we'll talk about in just a minute and those data chats are designed to make adjustments to our instructional
012practices our intervention pieces to increase academic achievement the second goal then is for us to create or to go through a comprehensive analysis of our title expenditures and program Effectiveness um so that we have all of that done to maximize our student achievement and so this evening a couple of pieces that we want to share with you that we're excited about the first pieces that we've had uh now including the summer data chat three data chats with our principals and we've had that throughout the summer which included going through our state assessment results from last year and their improv or their school instructional plans for this year we've held a data chat after each of Benchmark one and Benchmark two and then a third meeting is scheduled after Benchmark three those data chats consist of
013the principal myself the assistant superintendent in charge of that school and then Amy Horton who provides the data for us as well and in those data chats we talked very specifically about their progress as it relates to Benchmark results how students are progressing in each grade level what um what adjustments are being made to instructional practice or intervention or what have you at each School and their plans moving forward as we get closer to State assessment in terms of the other thing I want to mention about goal a or goal one with increased accountability is I've touched with touched on with the board in the past the fact that we are redesigning ischool for next school year and based upon the data that we collected from ischool in the past several years and looking at
014the best model possible for our students to be successful and to maximize our fiscal resources which is goal four we've redesigned high school for next year to place it back from a campus-based perspective rather than the the perspective that we have right now what we're finding is that we may have as many as 2 000 high school students register for ischool we staff high school for 2 000 students and within the first two weeks a thousand students drop the course and we don't ever change our staffing and then those students some of those students don't pick up other courses they get behind in credits and that can be a result of significant failure there and then additionally we are looking at making some additional changes which I'll share with the board at a later time
015specifically focused on what high school looks like from that school-based perspective and so we're excited about that and moving forward we're going to be limiting our high school high school opportunities for students either full-time or elective you know or taking a course or two to 800 students and that those students will be prioritized by seniors Juniors and then sophomores and we actually will be eliminating the opportunity for freshmen to take online courses based upon the data that we reviewed and their success rate and so we want to make sure that our students get a very firm footing in high school before we allow them to begin to venture off into some different learning Endeavors the second piece that I would like to highlight is the thorough evaluation that we are undertaking with our title grants
016and the allocations they're in the big piece that this year has allowed us um to focus upon is consistency in our title structures and so one of the things that we found is we began to look at our Title One programs is that our schools are working very hard but working in very different ways and in very different directions and so we've worked to bring intervention programs to be more specific we have taken many intervention opportunities and streamline those into those that we have seen success with and put time and resources within that and so one of the big pieces that we are using with our titles is a program called Achieve3000 and they are spending uh their time invested in that program as opposed to being scattered across five or six and so in
017that streamline we're starting to see a lot of success in that as we look forward into next year there are some redesign opportunities that we are bringing about with title to help us lower our class sizes in the primary grades specifically and so we're very excited about that additionally we've talked with the board and shared our plans as it relates to our summer PLC Institute with our principals and some of our directors and we are incredibly excited about summer workshop and the opportunity that our teachers are going to have all of our teachers are going to have in working in redesigning our curricular pieces as it relates to state standards and our pacing guides therein continuing on to goal B and I'll try to pick up the pace because there's four of those goals and
018I don't want to talk that long on each one of them but goal B has to do with culture and we want to increase our systems and procedures that help us to recruit and retain a highly qualified staff and our measurements of that are a couple pieces one um you know we are looking to increase and and you'll see that we have our attendance at recruiting fairs additionally we have an employee referral program that we wanted to see a large increase in um you know if our if our employees are helping recruit other employees to our district they should be rewarded for that and so we've started to really see an uptick in that as we move forward so with our first goal in 2122 we attended four career career fairs one of which was
019ours and certainly Career Fairs are starting to come back now um you know some of the out-of-state ones went away a little bit due to covid but they're starting to pop back in in 2223 we are scheduled to attend 10. of which two we're hosting additionally we are posting all of our jobs now automatically on LinkedIn on Steve School spring is that correct thank you and on indeed I don't always know all the online platforms that we use but we are working through that additionally one of the things that we are doing for um culture aspects is very informal videos that I send out and I produce and I use the word produce very Loosely I'm sure Ryan's laughing at this point yeah thank you um they're selfie videos um and um and I put
020them out about every three or four weeks um just as a a culture building opportunity as a communication opportunity with our staff and they have been incredibly well received and we'll show you an example of that right now with the Thanksgiving Video so if you wouldn't mind roll the film hey awesome dice our team I'm coming at you today from Marley Park Elementary School in Miss Rodriguez kindergarten class and I've got a couple great kindergartners here it's thanksgiving's time and we want to talk about what we're thankful for and so we're going to start with Landon Landon what are you thankful for my family your family Ryland how about you [Music] you're thankful for your family Max how about you you're thankful for your teacher well very good guys thanks and if you go back
021back to the table that'd be great you know I just want to tell you thank you to all of you because I'm thankful to each and every one of our staff members for the commitment that you show to our kids in our community you guys are awesome thank you for being fantastic thank you for doing a great job and more importantly thanks for being part of our team I hope you have a great Thanksgiving week enjoy the time off spend time with friends and family and take a couple minutes this year to reflect on what you're thankful for have a great day and so those little one to two sometimes three minute videos um have have gone a long way with our staff and I would like to point out in that video that I
022used some kids with me I had a backdrop of of a classroom and I changed levels is that the right term Ryan I changed levels so I went from sitting to standing all of these video production tools that uh that we've learned but they're great just quick videos in which you know we have an opportunity just to chat with folks and you know this kind of came about the first day of the school year I called Ryan and I said hey I'd love to send out a video thanking our folks for a great first day you know because what we've seen in the past several years is just an email to staff saying hey great job and we wanted to personalize that a little bit more and Ryan said okay great I said well you
023want to come over and shoot it for me and he said well what are you trying to do and I said I'm just trying to personally say thank you we appreciate it he said we want you just make a selfie video so I said okay so I made the self a video and we sent it out in the next and the next day he came to me he goes I need to talk to you about self-video and I said well what's the problem he said you can't wear sunglasses if you're taking yourself a video because I can see you filming yourself in this in the sunglasses so we've come a long way with the selfie videos as a matter of fact we've gone from this to um I actually have a selfie stick now what
024I can extend my arm really far out and it's great fun to laugh about but um like I said they it's been received very very well from our staff and every time we put one out I get several responses back from people just thanking us for being real and and just chatting with folks and um you know we probably I think I've maybe put out five or six at this point in time um and they're just quick little thank yous and you know little inspirational things the last one that we just put out reminded folks of one of our new um Wellness opportunities that we are launching through our benefits department and that's Financial wellness and so with our employees you know we work really hard on all kinds of Wellness opportunities we have walktober
025we have you know all of these challenges to be healthy um you know quick drink and Coke Zero challenge I failed that one multiple times but we never think about financial wellness and so we have provided an opportunity for our staff to participate in the financial wellness program and we put a survey out to see how much interest we would gain Ken how many staff members did we have interested 280 of our staff said hey we we would like to participate in financial wellness and so we'll be rolling that out here in the next week or two we're very excited about that in terms of goal two which was making sure that we really optimize our employee referral program last year in 2122 we had 50 employees take advantage of that employee referral bonus so
026far this year as of January we've had 111. and so we're excited about that for a couple of reasons number one we are getting more employees who are bringing who are being recruited by our own folks right so that's investment and number two we're rewarding those people for doing that and we appreciate that goal number three is safety and as the board is aware and as our community we've worked really hard to make our community aware safety has been a very specific Focus for us this year uh and and certainly we had the tragic issue in Uvalde Texas that brought that to really the national Forefront again we are incredibly excited about the progress that we've made this year in continuing to increase our safety and our safety protocols our first goal in this area
027was to make sure that we hardened all of our front offices um once again to create more barriers uh and and more opportunities for our students and staff to be safe and then our second goal in there was to create a comprehensive school safety audit program and to implement that by the end of the year in order in order for us to maximize all of our safety measures on all of our campuses I'm excited to announce that by as of January 30th all of our sites with the exception of three have had the safety barriers installed and they are operational the three that are remaining are Sundown Mountain in which I understand uh on a quick update today there was an electrical issue we had to move a light um before we put the the
028glass in and uh I believe that's been completed and that glass project will finish uh quickly and then the other two facilities are both the support center and the district office we obviously left both of those to the end um and we anticipate that those will be done by the end of spring break and so we're very excited about that our staff is very excited about that project that's that's come out very very well additionally in terms of the safety audit piece um to date we've held 60 inspections and audits throughout our campuses and those audits have focused on risk management and emergency drill Audits and through those audits our safety coordinator Jason Yeager provides what he calls after action reports to each of our schools he will go and observe a drill and then
029he provides an act after now no I can use my um coaching voice are we good are we good keep rolling okay we're okay I can go again can everybody in the audience hear me okay yes okay like I said I've never been accused of being quiet so but we are also um uh working towards a very comprehensive safety audit that will it's back on now I can hear it that will entail multiple staff going through a school in what will be a three-quarter to full day audit on each of our campuses where we will involve all of our safety personnel the school administration we will invite uh fire and police to join us as well and we will look and scrub our buildings from head to toe from every comprehensive safety piece that we
030could consider out of those reports then will come detailed opportunities for us to continue to work through our safety protocols moving forward the number one thing that we have continued to push for and seeing tremendous success in this year is making sure that all of our classroom doors are locked and every time that cabinet goes to a campus we're checking doors constantly we're constantly checking doors Additionally the last thing that I'd like to add on this is that we started a project at Sonoran Heights actually piloted for us and now all of our other schools are moving forward towards is we we built our buildings in a way throughout the course of the 2000s that do not reflect the time that we live in today when we first built our buildings our buildings were wide
031open the front offices you would walk into and they would be wide open we used to keep the doors propped open and we wanted just a very open feel obviously times have changed and it requires us to think differently which is why we've gone back and and really hardened our front offices but we are also moving forward in placing wall wraps that are that you cannot see through on the large Windows next to every classroom door in so doing we remove another obstacle for our teachers should there be a lockdown they don't have to run over and try to cover that very large window area we still have the door in the window the small door in the window so you can still see through there and we have a small little paper that they're
032responsible for there but they don't have to Fumble with the large piece and that was something that was recommended and highly suggested by Jason Yeager in his uh from from his past experiences in working through our schools Sonoran Heights piloted that for us and they look fantastic it really jazzes up the campus from a school spirit perspective it's also Sonoran Heights red yellow and and black colors and it looks great and also provides another layer of safety barrier that you can't see into that classroom and see if people are locked down or not or hiding what have you and so now our other campuses are starting that process as they work through that we've given our campuses a couple of years to start getting that process done and they are moving very quickly and that
033as America fact I think the next campus Dr Crowder was Marley Park is about halfway done at this point correct very good so we continue to work through there and again safety is a very large very very large Focus that we have this year the last goal is resources and we certainly want to maximize all the resources that we have especially in light of the fact that we use we are funded through tax dollars and so it's important for us to be efficient it's important for us to be accountable and more importantly it's important for us to be responsible with the dollars that we use and so we had a couple of goals this year as it relates specifically to maximizing resources one was to increase the amount of of funds and grants that we
034receive from outside agencies related specifically to the maintenance of our facilities the second one had to do with bus inspections and to reduce our bus infractions from the previous year and here's why that was a goal and it's incredibly important just a couple of years ago more than half of our buses failed the initial inspection when the inspection inspectors come out in the summer to clear all of our buses to go out um you know to pick up our students in so doing that creates a hardship not only for our staff but it takes a lot of buses out of our Fleet that can work to pick up students until we can have them all repaired and have the state agency return to inspect again do I have that right Ken all right very good
035and so this year I'm excited to tell you a couple of things number one in terms of seeking outside funding for large maintenance programs as of January 30th of this year we have had 34 approved projects with the school facilities board with a total of 13.4 million dollars of Grants awarded to us for maintenance projects this is approximately 11 million dollars more than we had last year so last year we had 3.4 million 10 3.2 something along those lines or right around there right um right around that number this year we've already had 13.4 million approved and we have about nine more in the queue waiting for the school facilities board to approve and so those are dollars that we don't have to spend out of our budget that fix large projects such as replacing
036cooling towers weatherizing and painting our buildings replacing roofs those types of things and so even down to small items I think I saw the the smallest one we have so far is Canada Ridge had a water heater that was replaced no project is too big or too small for us to ask for State funding for right and so we're excited about that and then as it relates to the the buses for this school year our major ins inspection in fractions were down to 8.9 percent um and so last year we got them down to 21 this year they're down to 8.9 and just remember just a few short years ago that was at 50 more than 50 percent so we're very excited about the progress that we're making there again maximizing our resources for the
037benefit of our community and then as we look forward I've spoken with the board just a bit about this in the past but we continue to look for maximum efficiency in the way that we operate making sure that we're not duplicating responsibilities and that we're streamlined in One Direction so everybody's rowing the same way and so we are freezing 14 district positions for next year so that we can maximize what we have to the benefit of all of our kids and with that that ends my mid-year report to the governing board and I would be more than happy to answer any questions or not your choice thank you Dr Dean I appreciate your presentation I want to say thank you for all the hard work that you've been doing I know once you were voted
038in as interim you hit the ground running and then once you were voted in as permanent superintendent you kept running despite your hesitancy to run a marathon you keep running absolutely so thank you so much do we have questions uh what mcshaffen said just and I've said before just greatly appreciate your leadership um and I'll save a lot of my questions for our executive session but in general just wanted to say that but I do want to ask just out of curiosity um that increase in monies that we have available for projects that's like such a huge difference like we're how is this year different than last year Madam president member picture that's a great question and I will tell you that there is a very intentional Focus to make sure that we write for
039every grant that we possibly can get with the school facilities board and so Bob Young and his team are being meticulous in looking for opportunities for us in which we would qualify for Grant pieces in the past he was very aware of those as well and would submit for pieces but we are to the point now where we are asking him to find every possible project and submit for those and so when I say no project is too big or too small what is a water heater a couple hundred dollars to replace but we didn't pay for that the school facilities board did we are asking but you asked we we are we are being very intentional and and it would appreciate it well and thank you but but I I have to stop and
040and say that I'm absolutely blessed to work with the cabinet team that I work with and all four of them are absolutely experts in their field and they're tremendous and this governing board and this community are so incredibly fortunate to have each of those four in each of their positions the years of just sheer expertise and experience between the four of them is absolutely amazing and the job that they do each and every single day is focused on one thing and that's what's best for our kids and you can't ask for more than that and so I just want to take a second and publicly thank the cabinet team and the exceptional job that each one of them does even can especially Ken do we have any other questions I just want to Echo everything
041that's already been said um thank you Dr Dean thank you for your leadership and thank you to Cabinet as well it has been refreshing just the level of communication that you've had with me as a board member but also the level of communication that your cabinet has as well it just seems to be working um a lot better so I I appreciate that I also just want to appreciate you know speak to your communication not just with the board but with the district with all of your employees because the feedback that I have heard from all sorts of different staff members whether they're teachers or but they see those videos and the realness of it and it's not staged and it's not high production it's not high budget I mean it's you can't get any
042more low budget than a selfie video um but people do appreciate that I had one question from the piece about the ischool the transition to kind of restrict that a little bit more you mentioned freshmen not being able to participate in high school I just want to make sure that we have exceptions built around for our disabled Community president member dansmore that is correct okay yes I I know that PE is a requirement you know from the state and from our district but for those that are not able to participate in something like that we do have high schools we have opportunities and things like that yes and thank you for for bringing that up yes we do have opportunities for for those that thank you as well I appreciate it thank you okay I
043actually do have another question or two so first of all thank you for focusing on lower class sizes I sound like a broken record sometimes with you guys I'm like all right we got to get smaller class sizes so thank you for looking at that with our title funds and trying to lower those um just curious Dr Dean this is the first time that I've seen a superintendent present on his progress publicly in a board meeting what Drew you to do that what was your motivation what what was your inspiration for sharing all of this with our community uh Madam president member of the board members of cabinet and our community I have to tell you that this is the first time I've ever been an evaluation system where five people are evaluating me instead
044of one um so that's a little bit different but to answer your question directly every evaluation that I've ever had I've always felt that it was my responsibility to present to my evaluator my progress and so whether it was when I was a teacher an assistant principal or principal of director or as an assistant superintendent I believed that it was my responsibility to lay out and present the items in which met progress towards my goals and so I I felt like it was important to take that same approach and share with the governing board it's also something that I learned from one of my mentors a couple of um a couple couple years back as well and I believe it's important for the governing board in our community to be aware of our progress and
045to share that information publicly so that there are no surprises in terms of where we're headed what we're doing and what evidence we have that supports that I would like to say I really appreciate the financial Wellness opportunity for a lot of our teachers you know when we come out of school we've got master's degrees it's great but we've got college loans student loans debt and then you add a mortgage and then you add a car payment and then you add gigantic inflation you know sometimes it can feel as a teacher like you're drowning and you can't ever get out so I appreciate that Financial Wellness opportunity because there's ways we just have to you know focus on it so I really appreciate the that opportunity for our staff and our teachers and everybody um
046just one more quick question you've presented a lot of really good information for us what is one area of growth that you see for yourself one area that you think you can grow in Madam president of the governing board members of cabinet in our community I'll leave the short jokes aside because that's always where my mind goes when somebody asks me how I can grow and I usually say I've been trying to do that for about 50 years um you know we we want to continue to grow to build our capacity as Leaders so that we can continue to build the capacity of others and so as we have undertaken this school year and really a year of thoroughly analyzing every program that we have in this District so that we can maximize all opportunities
047for our folks we want to continue to provide leadership opportunities for all in our system and it was a value that I held very dear as a principal and it's a value that we want to continue to portray to all of our staff and so one area in which I feel that that I can grow and and I would say as a Cabinet as well is to continue to look for opportunities for all of our staff to become leaders in various components right and and that leadership takes a role a different role for every single person but we learn best when we have the opportunity to lead others and and when we when because we it forces us to internalize what we're doing and we want to continue to provide opportunities for that and that's
048something you know we've been so focused on our analysis that we want to make sure that we intentionally don't lose that piece and that's a piece that that I'll be really looking forward to to to doing a better job of with our staff as we continue to move forward thank you I I think you're doing in a very nice job thank you very much for what you're doing it's just always interesting to hear how we can grow so thank you do we have any other questions okay thank you very much okay now we will move on to Executive session oh sorry request for future agenda items just kidding anybody wants them one if I can request an item to review the process by which a board member's request for an agenda item is placed on
049the agenda for the no earlier than the second week in March any other agenda requests okay all right now I will call for an executive session pursuant to ARS 38-431.03 for the superintendent's mid-year evaluation at this time I move that the board adjourned for executive session motion made by Crystal Chapin second by Christine Pritchard motion carries at this time we will reconvene the regular meeting we move on to J1 action discussion item I will make the motion that the superintendent is satisfactorily progressing toward achievement of the approved goals for the 2022-2023 school year motion made by Crystal Chapin second by Christine Pritchard motion carries thank you very much at this time I will move to adjourn the meeting second motion made by Crystal checkfin seconded by everybody else sorry I closed out too early second
050okay enthusiastically second yes motion carries we're adjourned